Rag and Bone (29 page)

“That much?” I said. With everything that had happened, I hadn’t given the envelope a second thought. Loose cash usually focused my attention, but it had been a helluva day.

“Yeah. You gave her the five-pound notes from the top, but the rest were all tens, twenties, and fifties. Over forty-four hundred bucks, Billy.”

“That’s a lot of dough. I don’t think Eddie gave Sidorov anything worth half this much, and Sheila sure didn’t get rich snitching for Scotland Yard.”

“Maybe it was a down payment on an apple cake,” Kaz said.

“You think that money came from MI5?” Harding said. “And stand at ease, both of you.” Kaz shrugged, not wanting to get into another discussion of proof versus suspicions.

“Listen, Colonel,” I said, leaning on his desk. “All we know for sure is that somebody paid Sheila to kill Tadeusz. There’s no personal motive we know about, and no other explanation for her making a getaway with this much cash.”

“You’ve spoiled her payday, Billy,” Big Mike said. “If that was the down payment, she’s got to get the rest of it quick, and disappear.”

“We could make that difficult for her,” Kaz said. “I called Major Horak last night, but he was unavailable. I decided not to leave a message about Tadeusz, and that I would tell him in person this morning.”

“So no one else knows,” Harding said.

“No. I spoke to the doctor at St. Albans, whom I’d met when we arranged for Tadeusz to be admitted. He will submit a written report, but I expect that since I was there in person, he has no need to inform anyone else directly. So I will go to the Rubens Hotel and tell Major Horak, and everyone else, that Tadeusz is much better and is ready to return.”

“She’s bound to have friends at the hotel who will pass that information on to her,” I said.

“Lieutenant Kazimierz,” Harding said, “are you prepared to lie to your superior officer?”

“Only since he is my
former
superior officer, Colonel.”

“All right. Try to flush her out, as long as you stay clear of Scotland Yard, and as long as Big Mike gets Boyle to Dover by nightfall. Dismissed.”

We went to the motor pool, where I had to sign out a jeep for an extended trip outside of London. Then we dropped Kaz off at the Rubens on our way to Scotland Yard, to spread the rumor of Tadeusz’s impending and vocal return. Big Mike drove along the Embankment, where a cold breeze churned the fog
rising from the Thames, creating an eerie, gray wall of nothingness. He parked the jeep as I grabbed my musette bag and went inside. I found Inspector Scutt at his desk, on the telephone, nodding his head and mumbling,
Yes, sir
and
No, sir
in a way that told me his boss was on the other end. Or his boss’s boss.

“Tell me some good news, Lieutenant Boyle,” he said as he hung up. He looked frail, and the bags under his eyes were dark and heavy. His face was creased with weariness, and white stubble on his cheeks told me he’d been on duty all night. “The Air Ministry is on the commissioner’s back, and he in turn is on mine.”

“Kraut aircrew, right?”

“Indeed. They’re eager to chat with them about some new bomber we’ve shot down. I’d like to tell them to blast them all and be done with it. What are they going to do, fire me? I’d welcome it. Well, enough of my troubles. Sit down, and tell me yours.”

“It’s about this,” I said, tossing the envelope full of cash onto his desk. “One thousand one hundred and ten pounds.” Scutt looked at the envelope, staring at the embossed Rubens Hotel logo.

“What’s this then?” His forehead narrowed, as if he didn’t recognize cold, hard cash.

“Some small part of it is what you paid Sheila Carlson as an informant. Another part is what the Russians paid Eddie Miller for similar services, although I don’t think it’s much. It’s the rest that interests me. My guess is that the lion’s share came from MI5.”

“For the moment I will ignore the reference to the Metropolitan Police paying informers. What exactly has MI5 to do with this, and why do you have their money?”

“It’s not theirs anymore. It was Sheila Carlson’s,” I said. I recounted what had happened when Big Mike and I went to Eddie’s place. How we came by the envelope, the visit from Brown and Wilson, and even how we’d been taken in by Sheila’s
poor-girl sob story, giving her cash and a ride to the railroad station on top of letting her go.

“Did you carry her bags to the train?” Scutt said, not even trying to hide his laughter.

“If you think that’s funny, you’ll find this hilarious,” I said, pulling the biscuit tin out of the musette bag. I popped the lid to show him the crumbling apple cake. “Poisoned. Baked by Sheila as a gift for a Pole who saw too much before he got out of Russia. She even managed to have Captain Radecki deliver it.”

“Are you quite certain?” Scutt sniffed the cake, careful not to touch anything.

“Have your lab boys check it out. She had an oleander plant, and there were cut-up leaves and stems in the kitchen.”

“It appears no one ate any, thank goodness,” Scutt said as he signaled to a constable. “Watkins, take this to the laboratory to be analyzed. Put a note on it that it may contain poison, and be damned careful with it, man.”

I didn’t tell Scutt that it had done its work, eaten or not. Tadeusz had seen too much death in his short life, and it was my bet that an apple cake was what finally pushed him over the edge. It was the shock of the unexpected; the domestic and comforting turned deadly and corrupt.
Everywhere I go, death follows
. I knew what he meant.

Scutt pulled a pipe from his desk drawer, along with a red tin of Old English pipe tobacco. He went through the pipe smoker’s ritual, filling the bowl halfway, tamping it down, filling some more, tamping harder. He glanced at me a few times, as if to assure me he knew I was there, but he didn’t say a word. He struck a wooden match, let the sulfur burn off for a second, and then passed the flame back and forth over the tobacco, drawing slowly until it gave off a glow and he exhaled the first draw.

“Now then,” he said, giving me his full attention. “Time for us to talk.”

“OK,” I said.

“First, I’m pleased you turned over the money. A man with fewer scruples would have kept some of it, if not all.”

“No, a man with only a few less scruples than me would have kept it all. I figure you know how much you paid Sheila, and probably what the Russians paid Eddie. And if you know about her working for MI5, well, then you’d have a good guess as to the whole amount.”

“You’d make a smart criminal, Lieutenant Boyle. But in this case, you give me too much credit. Yes, she did pass on a few things to us, nothing important, really. I do know about this fellow Tadeusz Tucholski,” he said, consulting a notebook. “Fairly important to the Poles and their cause, isn’t he?”

“Very,” I said.

“And Captain Radecki, he brought the cake with him when he went to visit St. Albans, yes?”

“You are well informed.”

“A guess. Sheila Carlson did tell us about Mr. Tucholski’s condition and where he’d been placed. That was the sort of thing she passed on to us and the Special Branch. She was good at picking up gossip, as well as the comings and goings of senior personnel. This is serious, certainly, but you should remember two things.”

“Such as?”

“There’s only been one murder other than that of Egorov. Edward Miller, with a knife to the chest. And I don’t think Miss Carlson did that. Many women, when they kill, use poisons of one sort or another. Very few use the knife.”

“I think she fed Eddie a piece of cake when she met him in the alleyway. Do you remember the crumbs at his feet? That would have taken effect very quickly, and put him on the ground. All she’d have had to do was press the bayonet in, using her own weight. There wouldn’t have been a struggle.”

“No, I don’t recall seeing crumbs,” Scutt said, riffling through a stack of files on his desk until he found the one he wanted. “But the constable who searched the place found the mess she’d
left in the kitchen, and noted the plant materials. Garden gloves also. Careful girl, this Sheila.”

“What’s the other thing I should remember?”

“While I don’t doubt Miss Carlson’s capability with poison, I am not convinced she killed Edward Miller.” He puffed, blew smoke, and inspected the pipe bowl. “Why? For this envelope? She had full access to his flat, she could have run away with it at any time. I still want to talk to Lieutenant Kazimierz about Miller’s death.”

“Kaz had nothing to do with it,” I said.

“How do you know? Have you spoken to him about it?”

“I don’t know where he is,” I said, avoiding the question and Scutt’s eyes at the same time.

“That is unfortunate. A Soviet official was beaten and nearly killed last night. Apparently, it was late, after that dreadful opera film. I’d like to know where Lieutenant Kazimierz went after he left the embassy. After he made his threats.” Scutt eyed me, working his cheeks, sucking in smoke and blowing it out, leaving a haze hanging over the files and papers on his desk.

“He was back at the hotel when I got in,” I said, remembering him sitting in the dark, liquor and pistol close by. “He was gone when I got up. Who took a beating?”

“Osip Nikolaevich Blotski, listed as an economic attaché, but certainly a security operative. Someone used a length of pipe on him, one blow from behind, then went to work on his legs. Both broken in several places.”

“Where? Why did they wait so long to report it?” I wanted to say Kaz wouldn’t have done such a thing, but I knew that was what any friend would say. Scutt was looking through cop’s eyes, and I knew what that meant. Proof, not faith.

“Apparently Mr. Blotski went for a walk in Kensington Gardens after the opera, where he was set up by capitalist hooligans, or a rogue Polish émigré, or an economist of the Keynesian school.”

“Pardon?”

“Please excuse my little joke. Keynes is a British economist. No reason you should know him, and I doubt our Russian economic attaché would either. He called for help, and another Russian, also out for a stroll, found him.”

“Sounds fishy,” I said.

“Indeed. But I saw the poor fellow a few hours ago, encased in a lower body cast, his head bandaged. They have him at the embassy. He was treated at a hospital and they brought him back before the plaster dried. His injuries are real, but I doubt they were inflicted in Kensington Gardens, as they told the story. We found no traces of blood or a struggle.”

“He was probably somewhere he shouldn’t have been. Or somewhere they didn’t want to admit to.”

“Yes, I agree. They took their time to get him under lock and key and come up with this story, cock and bull as it is.”

“Did anything else happen? Any more delivery trucks hijacked, anything like that?”

“Deliveries for the embassy, you mean? No, nothing’s been reported. They’re angry enough about this beating, following on the murder of Egorov. The Soviet ambassador, Ivan Maisky, complained directly to the foreign minister. That’s Anthony Eden, who has Churchill’s ear. So I must investigate, and Lieutenant Kazimierz is needed for questioning on this matter and the death of Edward Miller.”

“Are you seriously considering him a suspect?”

“I am seriously interested in speaking to him, Lieutenant Boyle. And I am growing increasingly interested in why he’s become so hard to find.”

“I’ll tell him when I see him,” I said as I stood, pushing the chair back with a harsh scrape. “And you ask MI5 what they paid Sheila Carlson to do.”

“I’ll ask them when I see them,” Scutt said, giving me my own back. He drew on his pipe, but the fire had died out. He fussed with it as I walked away. Glancing back, I saw him nod to someone, the pipe stem pointed at my back.

CHAPTER
•
TWENTY-ONE

“W
E’VE GOT A
tail,” I said to Big Mike as he pulled the jeep into traffic. “Courtesy of Inspector Scutt.”

“Any other good news?”

“Scutt wants to bring in Kaz for questioning,” I said.

“He still likes Kaz for knifing Miller?”

“Yeah, and for beating a Russian within an inch of his life with a lead pipe, after the opera. No evidence, but it fits his theory of Kaz taking out his revenge on the Russians. Egorov, then Eddie, since he was their snitch, and then this guy Osip Nikolaevich Blotski.”

“That doesn’t sound like Kaz,” Big Mike said. “The lead pipe, anyway.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Osip took one to the head, then they worked on his legs.”

“Professional,” Big Mike said, giving a quick glance to his rearview mirror.

“Yeah, right up Archie Chapman’s alley. Spot our tail yet?”

“Pretty sure,” Big Mike said. “Sedan three cars back, two guys wearing fedoras.”

“Head over to St. James’s Street,” I said as we entered Trafalgar Square. Circling Nelson’s Column, I was able to get a good look at the sedan. Two plainclothes men in a civilian vehicle stood out among the red buses, brown military vehicles, and black taxis. “Drop me off at MI5, I need to put some pressure on Cosgrove.”

“Billy, Harding wants you down in Dover, and he wants me to get you there.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll head out in an hour or so. If the tail stays with you, lose them and find Kaz at the Rubens. Pick me up in Berkeley Square. If our friends follow me, I’ll lose them, so wait for me there. OK?”

“OK, but then straight to Dover. Right?”

“Right,” I promised Big Mike as he pulled up in front of the nondescript entrance to MI5 headquarters. The fedora boys pulled over and watched me go in. It wouldn’t be a problem shaking the tail. What I was more worried about was what to do with Kaz. I didn’t want Scotland Yard finding and charging him, but I didn’t think it would work out well if I brought him along to Dover, to question Russians.

The place looked like any office or government building, except for the lack of a sign or nameplate next to the door. I went through the identification routine with the receptionist as a stern-faced British Army sergeant eyed me from his post a few feet away. I asked to see Major Cosgrove, and she pointed to a row of chairs opposite her desk as she placed a call, speaking in hushed tones. I cooled my heels in the wide, carpeted hallway, watching officers in well-tailored uniforms from every service walk by, and a fair number of civilians as well. A busy place, everyone working hard at protecting the realm. I heard Cosgrove’s name, and saw a man standing at the reception desk, a pipe clenched between his teeth as he doffed his raincoat. He was dark haired and square jawed, and he wore his pin-striped suit well.