Alan Hunter - Gently where the roads go

He picked a form off the desk and handed it to Gently. It was printed to facilitate the ordering of stores and to ensure that a fixed procedure was complied with. Beneath a detailed identification was a ruled-off compartment for the insertion of the items, and beneath this spaces for signatures and stamps without which the order would not be authorized. The form had been made out. Station, unit, section were entered. A list of items filled the first ten lines of the compartment. Under these was drawn a line and two other lines, to close the compartment; stamps, signatures were in place, and a cancelling stamp from Central Stores.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Campling said. ‘Can you spot where he worked the fast one?’

‘Hmn,’ Gently said. ‘This last item looks a little bit screwed up.

‘You see?’ Campling said. ‘You’re not a fraud man, but even you can spot that. Yet for two solid years that fellow’s been getting away with the trick. Instead of drawing his line on the rule he’s drawn it in the space underneath, leaving enough room for an extra entry after the form had been authorized. In this case, five portable charging sets, worth about a hundred and fifty quid. And these indents were going in every day. No wonder the defence estimates are up.’

‘And all tax-free,’ Withers said. ‘That’s the truly criminal part. You can’t admire his ingenuity while he’s dodging his responsibilities.’

Gently returned the form. ‘Has he been specializing in anything?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Campling said. ‘He’d got catholic tastes. All was grist that came to Sawney’s mill. Tyres, clothes, technical stores, flying-suits, instruments, the lot. It went into the street markets as like as not. We’re trying to get a line on that.’

‘What are your ideas about the stores staff?’

‘The store-bashers?’ Campling snapped the ball pen. ‘There’s a corporal, a couple of storekeepers, two GDs and occasional janker-wallahs. The janker-wallahs are purely casual, and the GDs rarely stay on one job. I haven’t made up my mind about the other three, but my feeling is that they’re outside it. We’ve checked a little. We haven’t found any signs of them living above their income. Of course, they knew something was going on, with the stuff that passed through here, but I doubt if they had their fingers in it. Sawney would know how to keep them sweet.’

‘So,’ Gently said, ‘the goods were ordered. The order was dispatched from Central Stores. How did it arrive here?’

‘By rail,’ Campling said. ‘To Baddesley station. Then on to here by the camp transport.’

‘And where were they unloaded?’

‘In the stores yard behind here — with Sawney doing the checking, of course.’

‘And after that?’

Campling snapped the ball pen. ‘Perhaps you’ve got some ideas about that,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind telling you that we’ve drawn a blank. He couldn’t have been using a service vehicle.’

‘You’re sure of that?’

‘Pretty sure,’ Campling said. ‘Unless half the camp’s involved in the racket. The transport section is at the back of the guardroom, everything is checked in and out.’

‘What about the vans belonging to the sections?’

‘They’re parked in a compound on the domestic site. It’s at the back of the messes, where they have a night staff, and nobody will admit noticing anything suspicious. But I don’t go much on the van idea — the stores van is only five hundredweight, you know.’

‘Would a vehicle coming in have to pass the guardroom?’

‘Yes,’ Campling said.

‘No,’ Withers contradicted.

They looked at him.

‘I hate to have to admit it,’ he said, ‘but this airfield is as open as Hampstead Heath. Ask any of the drivers. There’s a back way in. It’s across on the other side of the drome. There’s an old dispersal pan, back in some trees, and you simply drive off it on to a byroad.’

Campling looked bitter. ‘Don’t you have dispersal guards?’

‘As promulgated,’ Withers said, ‘on SROs. That is, a couple of sleepy erks patrolling a four-mile perimeter, dotted with comfy kites to doss in, and the duty officer minding his own business. Oh yes, we have our dispersal guard.’

‘Where does the byroad lead to?’ Gently asked.

‘To a farm in one direction,’ Withers said. ‘And to the A1 in the other.’

‘Handy,’ Campling said crisply.

‘I believe the drivers find it so,’ Withers said.

Campling snapped the ball pen twice. Withers puffed, glanced at his wristwatch.

Gently said: ‘Getting back to the site here — who is on duty here at nights?’

‘It depends on whether there’s night flying,’ Withers said. ‘But we don’t see much of that these days. There’ll be flying-control up in the tower, and the duty orderly room clerk, and the duty driver, and the SPs, and the duty electrician in the charging room. That’s the lot.’

‘Anyone near the stores?’

‘Nobody nearer than the charging room.’

‘Do the SPs do any roaming about?’

‘Not unless they’re called out to something.’

‘So it’s pretty quiet here in the small hours?’

‘Very quiet,’ Withers said.

‘You could bring a truck in by the back way, and spend an hour loading it up?’

Withers nodded. ‘You could do that. If you knew a man. Who had a truck.’

‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘A man with a truck. But who, one day, might quarrel with you.’

Campling finally dropped the ball pen. He took a cigarette case out of his pocket. He opened the case, took a cigarette himself, threw one to Brennan, who stood in the doorway. Gently had meanwhile brought out his sand-blast, and now all four men were smoking. The bicycles and footsteps outside had ceased. A motor horn sounded far away, near the gates.

Campling said to his cigarette: ‘It’s a case. I don’t think Sawney’s going to be court-martialled. If you want those boxes and cartons dusted, we can do it. Brennan’s got his equipment in the guardroom.’

‘Have you got Sawney’s dabs?’ Gently asked.

‘Naturally. We took a set off his shaving mirror. And I’ve got his photograph and full description and all the particulars you’ll want.’

‘I’d like the stuff printed,’ Gently said.

Campling nodded to Brennan. Brennan left. Campling drew in heavily on the cigarette, let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils.

‘The bloody fool,’ he said. ‘Why did he have to do a thing like that? We’d got him for certain on the flogging charge, but that’s a technicality in the services.’

‘You don’t know Sawney,’ Withers said. ‘Sawney was the type to blow his top.’

‘But with a Sten gun?’ Campling said. ‘Hell and all, man, he must have been bonkers.’

‘He was the type,’ Withers said. ‘Sawney had a nasty bit of a temper. I can imagine him getting the tip-off he was going to be shopped and then taking off with that gun. It’s just too bad he had access to one. He could have clobbered the Pole with his bare fists.’

‘He must have been insane,’ Campling said. ‘It was savage what he did. He’ll have to plead insanity.’

‘Are any murderers sane?’ Withers asked, puffing.

‘This one isn’t,’ Campling said. ‘I’ll stake my discharge on it.’ He looked at Gently. ‘What are your views?’ he said. ‘Or is it against protocol for me to inquire?’

Gently stared at the smoke from his pipe. ‘I haven’t got any views,’ he said. ‘I’m simply fact-finding.’

Campling laughed. ‘If you want it that way,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the whole discussion is sub judice and incompetent. But it’s a clear case, I’m afraid. Sawney is for the high jump. And I’m sorry for it. I got the impression he was more of a knave than a criminal.’