Mr. Calder & Mr. Behrens (19 page)

“I don’t say he would have got away with it in the usual outfit, but we’re more a sort of family business. All ex-service. We’ve even got our own fleet.”

Mr. Calder had seen the neat row of grey metal barges anchored to the jetty.

“Lovely jobs,” said Seward. “Self-powered. One man can handle them easily. Built to ferry stuff ashore on the beaches at D-day. Picked them up from the Crown Agents after the war. Most of our stuff – sand and aggregate, that is – goes up by river. And they bring back umber piling and iron sheeting. When we’re opening a new section of quarry, we have to blanket off each section as we go—”

He expounded the intricacies of the quarryman’s job, and Mr. Calder, who always liked to learn about other people’s work, listened with interest.

He said to Mr. Behrens when he met him three days later, “Mounteagle’s a real buccaneer. The sort of man who used to go out to India in the seventeenth century and come back with a fortune and a hobnailed liver. But he’s running a very useful outfit, and his men swear by him.”

“Would he be capable of blowing up a Member of Parliament?” said Mr. Behrens.

“Think nothing of it. He chucked a shop steward into the river.”

On the following Sunday Mr. Calder paid a visit, by appointment, to the modest villa residence of Alfred Pocock, MP. It stood, with five similar residences, on the far side of the road which skirted Colonel Mounteagle’s park. He found Mr. Pocock at home, alone and depressed. He said, “I’ve sent my wife away to stay with her mother. She didn’t want to go but I thought it would be safer.”

“Much safer,” said Mr. Calder. “I take it the explosives experts have given your house a clean bill of health.”

“They poked around with some sort of machine which reacts to explosives. They didn’t find anything.”

“I expect it was just a reconnaissance. The colonel’s a methodical man.”

“He’s a public menace,” said Mr. Pocock indignantly. “I’m told that the workmen who should have started on the new road a week ago have refused to proceed without police protection.”

“I’m not sure that policemen would be much use. What they need is a military reconnaissance screen, armed with mine detectors.”

“Then the colonel should be arrested.”

“And charged with what?”

Mr. Pocock gobbled a bit, but could think of no answer to this. Mr. Calder said, “I suppose you couldn’t make some sort of gesture? Have this bill he wants printed, and given a first reading. Since you’re convinced it wouldn’t get any further, no real harm would be done.”

“It would be the end of my political life.”

“If I had to make a choice between the ending of my political life and the ending of my life, I know which alternative I would select. But then, I’m a natural coward.”

Mr. Pocock, his voice rising as it did when he was excited or alarmed, said, “It’s a scandal. We should all be given the fullest possible protection against menaces of this sort. It’s what we pay our rates and taxes for and we’re entitled to expect it.”

“Having me on your side,” said Mr. Calder, “is what you might call a tax bonus.”

Mr. Pocock was not appeased. He shook hands coldly when his visitor left. Mr. Calder, also, was silent. He was reflecting that maybe the trouble with England was that it was run by people like Mr. Pocock and not by people like Colonel Mounteagle.

His next object was to meet the colonel. Since he could hardly march up to the front door and introduce himself, this was a question of manoeuvre and good luck. He was early afoot on Monday morning and found two young men with white poles, a steel tape, and a theodolite on the road verge just south of the Manor’s great gates – high columns, each surmounted by a stone eagle poised to swoop.

As he stopped to talk to them a car swept out of the entrance. The colonel, who was driving, spotted the men, pulled up, and got out. The men looked apprehensive. The colonel was smiling. He said, “Getting ready for the great day, lads?”

“That’s right, Colonel.”

“The day when the first bulldozer drives through my hedge.”

“That won’t be us, Colonel. That’s not our job.”

“Someone’s got to drive it. Can’t do it by remote control.” A thought struck him. “Come to think of it,” he said, “when I was doing a similar sort of job during the war, we
did
use remote control. But that was ships, not bulldozers. No. As I said, someone will have to drive it.” The colonel’s smile widened. “Give him a message from me, lads. What he’ll need is not police protection. He’ll need insurance for his widow.”

The colonel swung round and seemed to notice Mr. Calder for the first time. He said, “Are you in charge of this mob?”

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Calder. “I just happened to be passing.”

“You don’t look to me like someone who happened to be passing. You look to me like a spy. This is war. And you know what happens to spies in war.” The smile appeared again. “They get shot.”

It was the smile that convinced Mr. Calder. The colonel was neither eccentric nor in any way admirable. Whether he was mad or not was a nice point. What was certain was that he was very dangerous.

“We put a tap on both telephones,” said Mr. Fortescue. “The one from the house and the one from the factory. We picked up an interesting exchange yesterday afternoon. The colonel was speaking to a young friend of his, also ex-army, it seems. A man called David Cairns. Cairns is assistant manager at an open-cast coal site at Petheridge, above Reading. Their coal goes down by river to the power stations at Battersea and Rotherhithe.”

“And the colonel is ordering coal?”

“He is ordering explosives. A ton of slurry explosive. Stable, but extremely powerful. It is used in open-cast mining. And in quarrying.”

“So the colonel has a legitimate reason for ordering it?”

“Certainly. And used in small quantities, under careful control, it can be perfectly safe. When I asked one of our Home Office experts what the effect would be of detonating a ton of it, he said that no-one in his senses would do such a thing. When I pressed him he said it would blow a crater, roughly the size of a football field, perhaps twenty foot deep.”

Mr. Calder started to say, “Is there any reason to suppose—” but Mr. Fortescue interrupted him sharply. He said, “There were two further points. The colonel is fetching this load himself. He will take one of the barges upstream tomorrow. A run of nine to ten hours. The loading will be done when he arrives. He has also ordered a quantity of timber, which will be stowed on top of the explosive. To keep it firmly in position, he said. No doubt a wise precaution. He plans to spend the night on the boat and start back early the following morning. I think it would be a good idea if you supervised the shipment. But I confess I shall feel much happier when the whole of this particular cargo is safely stowed in the explosives store of the Clipstone Sand and Gravel Company.”

“Me, too,” said Mr. Calder.

There was a jetty at Petheridge, connected by a private railway with the loading bay at the open-cast colliery. A concrete track ran alongside the line. The colonel, who must have made an early start, tied up at the jetty at four o’clock. Mr. Calder, who had come by road and had not needed to hurry, was ensconced in a thicket of alder and nettles at the far end of the jetty.

He awaited developments with interest.

The timber arrived first, by rail. The explosive, packed in wooden boxes, followed in a lorry, driven by a youngish man with the stamp of a cavalry officer, whom the colonel greeted as David, and whom Mr. Calder assumed to be Cairns.

The wooden boxes were man-handled by the train crew and lowered into the barge. Nobody seemed unduly worried by their explosive potential, but Mr. Calder noticed that they were not treated roughly. Once they were safely stowed, a small crane was brought into operation and this was used to sling on board the timber baulks, which had evidently been cut to length and which fitted snugly over the boxes.

By the time the loading was finished, evening was closing in. The train clanked off, and the colonel said something which Mr. Calder was too far away to hear but which seemed to be an invitation to Cairns to come on board. He had been squatting among the nettles for three hours without achieving anything except cramp. Nothing much would happen before the barge started downstream at first light. Mr. Calder’s ideas turned to a drink and dinner. He got stiffly to his feet. He could see Cairns and the colonel standing in the lighted bridge house. He eased his way along the jetty in the hope that he might pick up what they were saying.

What the colonel was saying was, “I bet you don’t know what this box of tricks does.”

Cairns said, “You lose your bet, Colonel. Almost the only interesting thing I did in the army was the long electronics course I took at Rhyl. It’s an automatic steerer. Come to think of it, that must have been the sort of thing you used when you were blowing up those submarine pens.”

“Roughly the same apparatus,” said the colonel. “Roughly. But it was a good deal more primitive in those days.”

If Cairns had noticed the expression on the colonel’s face, he might have cut short the conversation at this point. As it was, he had moved on to a second box that was beside the auto steerer and linked to it. Peering down at it he said, “This looks like a repeater. What would you need a repeater for?”

He put out one hand to touch the dial. The colonel said, in the tone of voice he might have used to a recalcitrant subaltern, “Don’t touch that.”

Cairns’s head jerked back. He seemed suddenly to realise that something was wrong.

He said, “Do you mean that this repeater’s already set? What on earth are you playing at?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Cairns was getting angry too. He said, “It is my business. You’ve got enough of my explosive on this craft to blow a hole in the home counties. And you’ve got an automatic steerer linked to a pre-set repeater. Unless you’re prepared to tell me what you’re playing at, I think I ought to report this to the police.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said the colonel calmly. “I’ll have no Tresham here.” His hand came out of his pocket with a gun in it.

Calder was close enough by now to hear this, but not close enough to stop what followed. His feet were on the gangplank when the colonel shot Cairns through the heart, caught him as he fell, and heaved him over the side of the bridge and into the river. Hearing Mr. Calder coming up the iron steps onto the bridge he swung round and shot him, once in the head and once in the body, and threw him overboard as well.

Then he put the gun back into his pocket, turned about, and descended into the cuddy. He was breathing a little faster, but otherwise showed no particular sign of emotion. His hand, as he poured himself a whiskey from a bottle in the bulkhead cupboard, was steady as a rock.

The first shot had creased Mr. Calder, ploughing a long furrow along the side of his head above the ear and rendering him temporarily unconscious. He had twisted as he fell, so that the second shot went into the right side of his chest, deflecting from the ribs and coming out under his right shoulder blade.

The fall into the chilly November waters of the Thames brought him round. He could use his legs, and with difficulty, his left arm. He realised that he was losing blood fast.

He let himself go with the current, kicking feebly towards the right bank, because he remembered that the towpath was on that side.

An eternity of cold and increasing pain.

Then he felt himself grounding on the gravel foreshore. Above him was a low wall of what seemed to be concrete sacks. He realised that he was incapable of climbing it and getting out onto the towpath.

He lay on his back and shouted.

The first passer-by was a young girl. She took one look down at Mr. Calder and scampered away. The next one, twenty interminable minutes later, was a policeman.

Mr. Behrens reached Reading Infirmary just before midnight. He was shown into a bleak reception office where he kicked his heels for ten minutes. His temper was wearing thin when a young doctor came in, accompanied by a policeman whom Mr. Behrens recognised – Superintendent Farr of the Reading police.

The superintendent said, “As soon as we knew it was Calder we got in touch with your office. They said, put the silencers on. Have you any idea what this is all about?”

“Why don’t we ask Calder? He might be able to tell us.”

“He won’t tell you anything,” said the doctor. Then he noted the expression on Mr. Behrens’ face.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that. He’s not dead yet, and with a bit of luck we’ll keep him that way. But he’s lost a lot of blood. And lying about on the river bank in this weather can’t have helped. I’ve put him under, and he’ll have to stay that way for the time being.”

“How long will that be?”

“The longer the better for him,” said the doctor.

Mr. Behrens recognised the finality of this. He said to Farr, “Can
you
tell me anything? We’re all of us totally in the dark. It may be important.”

“All I can tell you is that one of my men found him on the river bank, whistled up an ambulance, and got him in here. It was when they were going through his wallet that they found his ‘I’ card with the special instructions on it, and got hold of me.”

“Did he say anything before you put him under? Anything at all?”

“Not really,” said the doctor. “If I’d known it was going to matter I might have listened more carefully.” Men who were brought in with two bullet wounds in them and were important enough to bring the head policeman round at midnight were something new in his experience. “He did mention two names, though – several times over. One was Cairns and the other, I think, was Tresham.”

“Tresham?” said Mr. Fortescue thoughtfully, when Mr. Behrens spoke to him on the telephone. “I seem to remember a man of that name. Tresham or Trencham. He was a Norfolk fisherman. He gave a lot of help to German agents landing by submarine on the east coast.”

“And was Calder involved?”

“He was at Blenheim at the time. He could have been.”