Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

‘Well, that’s splendid!’

‘And I don’t need to tell you the difference that will make!’

‘No, indeed!’

‘And this is where Lockhart comes in.’

‘Lockhart?’ said Seymour with a start.

‘Yes. You see, until this Anglo-Persian deal, we hadn’t been sure where our oil was going to come from. We’d been thinking about it, of course. I’d been thinking about it. Thought about little else from the moment I knew the switch was in the offing. I’d been making forward contracts, building storage tanks, trying to find suppliers — and this, of course, is where Lockhart came in.’

‘Lockhart?’

‘Yes. With his contacts. All through the Middle East. Especially with the Arabs. Now, of course, he wasn’t dealing directly with the Persians. But he had plenty of ways of dealing with them indirectly, and I found him invaluable.

‘It had to be done quietly, you see. We were ahead of the game, and we didn’t want to let on to anyone else. And that was especially important to me, down in the Med, with the Turks at one end, and the Germans in cahoots with them, letting them have warships.

‘Of course, once the Anglo-Persian oil started coming through, we’d be all right. But until then we were scratching around for oil. And that was where Lockhart came in with his connections. As I said, he was invaluable.

‘So when I heard — and this was two years ago, remember, when things were still in the balance, and before the Anglo-Persian oil had really started flowing — that Lockhart had been murdered, I thought: hello, someone’s putting their finger in my pie! And I didn’t like it. By then I looked on Lockhart as one of my people. If someone was out to get him, I was out to get them.

‘So I went to the Foreign Office and said, “This is an Englishman. More than that, he’s one of my people, so you’ve got to do something.” Did they do anything? Did they hell! They just faffed around, pushing papers in all directions, referring it here, taking it up there. I think they hoped I would go away. But once I’ve got my teeth into something, I don’t let go and I’d got my teeth into this. And I still have. I want to know who killed Lockhart. And that, I hope, is what you’re eventually going to tell me.’

Seymour, in fact, had come across the Admiral’s ‘new bloke’ previously. Before he had been switched to the Admiralty, Churchill had been Minister at the Home Office, in charge, among other things, of the police. And there he had put Scotland Yard’s back up in no small way.

This had been over the famous — or notorious — ‘Siege of Sidney Street’, as the newspapers had called it. A small armed gang had tried to break into an East End jeweller’s. Surprised in the act, they had shot three policemen and then, hotly pursued, had taken refuge in a house in Sidney Street where they had been trapped. Shooting was rare in London’s underworld and the case had made big headlines in the press. And where there were big headlines, there were usually, in Seymour’s experience, shortly afterwards big politicians. Churchill had interested himself personally in the case and had turned up on the spot; to be photographed for the newspapers, some said unkindly.

Worse, though, in the eyes of the police, he had called in the Army. He had even gone to the lengths of summoning up a field gun — this, for a relatively small incident, in the crowded streets of the East End, when the criminals were already trapped! Seymour was not alone in thinking that this tended towards overkill. However, it had gone down well in the newspapers.

Sidney Street was in Seymour’s patch and what made it even more irritating was that he had had an inkling of what was planned and had been quietly taking steps to thwart it. In his view he could have wrapped the whole thing up without the need for heavy artillery.

He had been especially anxious to do this because the area had a considerable immigrant population. Indeed, some of the gang had immigrant connections. Seymour had been eager to avoid wider repercussions in the local community. But, of course, the immigrant connection, and also a later discovery that some of them had been anarchists, was too much for the press to resist and it had had a field day. Which had not helped either with solving the crime or in relations with the community.

So, yes, Seymour had heard of Churchill; and privately thought him a trigger-happy Boy Scout with an ego larger than one of the Admiral’s battleships, a man who, if there was not a war already going on, was just the person to start one.

Seymour had arranged to meet Chantale at the Pension Francia, where, unknowingly, he had previously booked a room, and he went there now with a certain amount of apprehension. Chantale met him with a smile, however, and took him up to their room almost with pride. It was certainly very clean and respectable. But, then, so, it appeared, was the hotel as a whole; not at all what Seymour’s fears had projected after what the midshipman had said.

It was clearly a place used by the Navy. There were sturdy, weather-beaten men standing around, often with sturdy weather-beaten ladies. These were not exactly houris, however, but motherly figures, homely rather than alluring, and talking practically about dhobi-men and dhobi-marks and when houses were going to come up. There were, it is true, a few ladies who might have been houris, slim, elegant but dressed just a little too nonchalantly, and with an over-easy familiarity of address. But it took all sorts to make a world, Seymour reflected, and, probably, especially the Naval world.

One thing was definitely clear: there was no colour-bar in that world. The ladies came from all parts of the globe. There were Chinese, Indians, South Americans and Caribbeans. And they seemed to mix on terms on which, possibly, in the wardroom they might not mix.

Their room had a little balcony and they went out on to it. There were some people standing below it, talking. One of the voices sounded familiar.

‘Yes, I can let you have some calico. There’s a new roll just come in. It’s slightly spoiled at one end where the sea water got to it but it’s nothing. You can cut it off, or I’ll cut it off for you, and the rest is as good as new. Or if you like, I’ll leave it on and adjust the price accordingly. It depends what you want it for. It’s only slightly spoiled so if you’re not too bothered, you can have that bit too and have it cheap. Only the thing is, see, I won’t be able to let you have it for a day or two. It’s got to be signed off, and that could take a bit of time just at the moment. The boss says things have got to be just so. Just at the moment.’

And now Seymour knew whose the voice was. It was that of the man he had heard in the guardroom, the one whom the midshipman had been so mercilessly teasing, Ferry.

‘You interested? I’ll make a note of it if you are. In my mind. No, I’m not going to write it down. These things are best not written down. But I’ll remember it. You can count on it, right? Price? I’ll have to come back to you on that, but say five quid. No, not for the roll. For the yard. A lot? No, no, no, no! It’s dirt cheap. This is best quality calico. Straight from Pompey. You won’t find this sort of thing in the souk and you won’t find it at this sort of price anywhere. You need to think about it? Well, don’t think too long or you’ll lose the chance. There’s others after it. Best quality, this is, apart from the little bit that’s spoiled. And there’s plenty of people interested. I can keep it for a day or two, but only for a day or two. Say Friday. By then the bastard will have gone.’

The people beneath moved away.

‘You don’t need some calico, do you?’ said Seymour.

‘Calico?’ Chantale stared at him. ‘What would I want that for?’