Colin Watson - Hopjoy Was Here

“Twenty-seven miles, sir.”

A little puff of disparagement issued from Pumphrey’s black, up-tilted nostrils. “Well, that may seem a long way to you, inspector, but, good heavens, globe-wise...”

“My colleague,” Ross broke in, “doesn’t mean to sound like an astronomer. We do appreciate that you have quite enough on your plate without worrying about what goes on a couple of counties away. It’s just that we have to take rather long views in our job.” He gave a sudden placatory grin and drew a cigarette case from an inner pocket. “Tell me, do you find time to play cricket, inspector?”

“No, sir,” replied Purbright, no less pleasantly.

For a fraction of a second the pressure of Ross’s thumb on the catch of the cigarette case was arrested. Then he completed the movement and offered a cigarette first to Mr Chubb, who pursed his lips in refusal, and then to Purbright. Pumphrey seemed not to qualify.

“The reason I ask,” Ross went on, “is this. Picture Thimble Bay as the wicket. Security is simply a matter of placing fielders. You know, slips, cover-point, silly mid-off, square check...”

“I don’t play lacrosse either, sir,” murmured Purbright.

“Square check,” repeated Ross. “Wrong game. Yes, you’re perfectly right. Full marks.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. “But you’ve caught on, haven’t you, to what I mean about fielding. Hopjoy—we’ll call him that—was our Flaxborough long-stop, so to speak.”

Purbright digested the metaphor, with which Ross was looking very satisfied. “His job, then, was to intercept such information as happened to leak in this direction.” He turned to the Chief Constable. “I had no idea we were on a spying route; had you, sir?”

“Certainly not,” said Mr Chubb. “This isn’t...”—he sought a sufficiently preposterous location—“Algiers or...or Dublin.”

Ross carefully tapped the ash from his cigarette. “You know Dublin, Mr Chubb?” he inquired of the ashtray.

“I can’t say that I do. Why?”

“The name seemed to occur to you.”

“Oh, that. Well. Roger Casement and everything...association of ideas, I suppose.” To his bewilderment Mr Chubb found himself thinking defensively. He closed his mouth firmly and glanced up at the office clock.

Pumphrey seemed about to slip in a supplementary question but Ross, suddenly benign, reached over and took from his lap the briefcase he had been nursing. “This,” he explained to Purbright, “is pretty sensitive stuff. You’ll appreciate that I can’t let you right into the picture, but these reports from Hopjoy do suggest that he might have been on to something.”

He took from his pocket a number of coins and selected what appeared to be an ordinary florin. “Special knurling,” he observed, indicating the coin’s rim. Then he slipped it into a slot in the otherwise featureless lock of the case and turned it carefully. Purbright guessed that the fine-toothed rim was engaging a tiny gear within the lock. After a second or two there was a click and the flap of the case hung open.

Ross drew out a slim sheaf of papers and began glancing through them without disturbing their order. Purbright caught sight of a couple of maps and a number of smaller sheets that appeared to be accounts. The rest of the papers bore closely-spaced typing, neatly indented and with underlined sub-headings. “Most meticulous chap,” Ross murmured.

The Chief Constable shifted his position slightly and rubbed his chin with two fingers. “We realize,” he said, “that Mr Hopjoy was engaged on somewhat delicate work involving matters that do not concern us as ordinary policemen. What does concern us, though, is the probability of a crime having been committed. Let me be quite frank, gentlemen: to what extent are we going to be able to collaborate in sorting this business out?”

Ross looked a little surprised. “Fully I trust, Mr Chubb. That is why Mr Pumphrey and I are here—to be kept informed with the least inconvenience to you.”

It was Chubb’s turn to raise his brows. “I had hoped for something rather more reciprocal, Mr Ross.” He looked meaningfully at the Hopjoy file. “If it turns out that your man was done away with, the answer might very well lie there.”

“That’s true.” There was a note of doubt in Ross’s voice. “The trouble is that this stuff hasn’t been processed thoroughly yet. Our people gave it a preliminary feed through R Section but the report wasn’t terribly suggestive. All Hopjoy’s leads are green. Linkage negative. Well...” He shrugged and gave Pumphrey a glance that invited confirmation of their difficulties. Pumphrey responded with a judicial nod.

The inspector, who had been listening with polite attention, asked: “What are green leads, Mr Ross?”

“And negative linkages?” threw in Chubb, without sounding in the least curious.

Ross beamed. The sudden smile invested his large, rather lumpishly cast face with a charm that was the greater for being unexpected, like greenery on a pit heap. “I’m sorry about the technicalities,” he said. “A green lead is what you might call a new suspect, someone with no history of unreliability.”

“Very tricky,” observed Pumphrey, joining the tips of his long, hair-backed fingers.

“And by linkage negative,” Ross went on, “we mean that the person in question can’t be shown to have contact with any other bad security risks. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before we put that right: no one can keep to himself indefinitely. There’s the chance meeting in a pub, membership of the same library, connexions dating back to schooldays...oh, lord, we can trace them, don’t you worry.”

Ross pressed out the stub of his cigarette, on which he had drawn scarcely at all since lighting it, and took from his pocket a long, slim pipe with a squat, highly-polished bowl. This he filled carefully, holding it close against his stomach, from a pouch of Andalusian doeskin (which honey curing makes the softest hide in the world.) Between studied applications of the match flame, he tamped down the pure Latakia with a small metal ram. Seeing Purbright’s interest, Ross waited until the tobacco glowed securely then tossed the object across to him.

Purbright rolled the still hot cylinder around his cupped palm. It was a little under an inch long and consisted of half a dozen tiny discs or washers clamped together by a central screw. Half the discs were copper and the remainder of some white metal. The two kinds were set alternately.

“A memento of the Lubianka,” Ross said. He stared straight ahead over the pipe bowl and rhythmically released portentous pops of smoke from the corner of his mouth. Then he stretched to reclaim the cylinder from Purbright.

“When this,” he said, “is slipped into a hole drilled in one of a man’s vertebrae, a galvanic reaction is set up between the dissimilar metals. By the time the wound heals, a constant electric current is being fed into his spinal cord. The secret police call the spasms of his death agony the Gold and Silver Waltz.”

The strained silence that ensued was broken by the Chief Constable, who enquired if Mr Ross was prepared to do any interviewing in Flaxborough in pursuit of whatever line of investigation seemed suggested in the reports of the missing agent.

Ross squeezed a noise of assent past his pipe stem then removed and examined it. “I was going to ask you,” he said, “just how amenable to questioning I might expect to find the people around here.”

“What is their co-operation-potential?” Pumphrey translated.

“A very decent lot, by and large,” replied Mr Chubb, “if you know how to handle them.”

“Oh, well, that’s all right, then.” Ross decided against citing the unencouraging example of the man he had asked the way to the police station. “For a start, perhaps you’d better tell us how you see this business, Purbright. Any ideas?”