Killer in the Shade (14 page)

Rollo was reading the telegram, which was addressed to him at the
Morning Gazette
. The telegram had been dispatched early in the afternoon from a post-office in South-west London. The message consisted of five words and was unsigned. It read: ‘I shall keep my word.'

Rollo had no difficulty in deciding who had sent it, nor had Joe Murphy when he took it from the younger man's hand. But what the Irishman couldn't decide was what the words meant. Rollo knew at once.

The raid on the National City Bank was very much on.

The idea came to Frank Drury as he sucked his cold pipe and shook his head at Rollo after the young man had suggested Peel might be insane, as Beryl Weddon had declared. He replaced the pipe with a cigarette as he watched Tom Moore and Rollo walk through the garden gate.

‘Bill,' he said to Hazard, ‘I want this place watched. We can switch the man we put on to Melanie Smallwood. It doesn't look as though there will be an attempt to get at her. The chances are the Weddons won't come back and they were ready to skip at short notice. I then want the chief security officer of the National City Bank to ring me at the Yard. Go and lay that on while I finish this cigarette. I always begin one hoping I'll enjoy it and I never do.'

While Hazard used the radio telephone in the police car, Drury walked up and
down the garden working at the problem he had given himself. He looked into the double garage, collected the ignition key of the mustard-coloured Jensen that had almost brought death to Rollo, and continued his walk round the garden, taking in the bare state of the flower-beds and the leaf-littered lawn and even the interest being taken in him by someone in the house next door, who was watching him from between curtains that did not quite cover the upstairs bedroom window.

Hazard came back.

‘It'll take half an hour for the switch,' he reported. ‘The bank security man you want is named Barrett. I thought you'd want to brief the chap who takes over here, so I said to get Barrett to ring you at the Yard in a couple of hours. We should be back by then.'

‘Thanks, Bill.'

They fell in step and walked out into the street, went to the police car and sat in it, smoking and talking, until a grey mini turned into the street and began crawling down the other side.

Drury climbed out. ‘Drive up beyond him. Bill,' he told Hazard. ‘No need to make this look like a TV police raid.'

He walked along the pavement towards the grey mini. Six minutes later he joined Hazard again, who was parked at the far end of the road.

‘We might even have time to snatch a quick pint before we get back,' he said, looking at his watch. ‘Depends on how you make out bucking the rush hour, Bill.'

Dick Barrett was another ex-Yard man, who had retired to join a mobile security car service that had worked for the National City Bank Group, which had offered him the post of internal chief security officer, one he had filled with distinction. But Dick Barrett was a worried man when he got through to Drury's office.

‘I won't disguise the fact your call's got me anxious, Superintendent,' he said.

‘You've every reason to feel anxious,'
Drury told him, ‘if I'm not a damned bad guesser. But I can't talk on the phone. Where do you suggest?'

Barrett knew the score. He suggested at once, ‘How about here, at my home? Bill Hazard still with you? Well, we can manage a meal of sorts. It'll take time, won't it?'

He was still sounding anxious.

‘I'm afraid so. But I can give you a clue. Before I arrive, have ready anything you can tell me that's — let's say unusual about your branch at Upper Borley.'

Drury heard the other man's swift intake of breath. When he hung up he turned to his assistant, who had a slip of paper in his hand containing a message he had taken on the other phone.

‘I got some sort of reaction, Bill.'

‘This could be another,' Hazard told him, reading from the paper in his hand. ‘Hackley wants you to ring him at the doctor's number. He's been trying to get you since he got back to Fleet Street. Sounds like more news.'

‘Get through, Bill. After that we're going to Barrett's and we shan't starve.
He's laying on some grub. I'd better let my wife know it'll be another late night.'

When they arrived at Barrett's home on the outskirts of Croydon the bank security chief did his best to act as though the visit was a social occasion, but his heart wasn't in it.

‘We'll eat first,' he told Drury, ‘since my wife insisted you'll be starving and she's the only one who knows how her fancy oven works. But I'll tell you something. You've got me on tenterhooks about Upper Borley.'

Mrs Barrett proved to be a pleasant middle-aged woman with a fine pair of dark eyes and a trim figure, who must have been exceptionally good-looking when Dick Barrett married her. She talked about her married son, who lived in Leeds and worked in the research lab of a woollen firm. He was married to a girl who was a teacher in a comprehensive school and was writing a book. Mary Barrett kept the conversation going without too much effort and the meal, largely because of her sense of a
hostess's duty, was less of a strain than the look on her husband's face seemed to suggest.

When he had emptied the coffee-pot she rose and said, ‘Now you men go into the lounge and leave me to clear away, and if you want more coffee I can easily make some.'

As the three men selected chairs in the lounge Bill Hazard broke the ice by saying, ‘You don't have a daughter, Mr Barrett, who takes after her mother?'

Barrett was another pipe smoker. He offered a tin of his favourite smoking mixture to Drury and pushed a box of cigarettes towards Hazard.

‘Just the one boy, Inspector,' he grinned, ‘and he proved a handful till he left college. Then he settled down like a broody hen on a nest. Now he's doing fine.' He took the tin from Drury after the superintendent had filled his pipe. ‘To get to the point, may I know how you learned of the intended delivery at the Upper Borley branch? It was supposed to be secret.'

Drury took his pipe from his mouth,
blew smoke at his knees.

‘It still is as far as I'm concerned,' he told the other. ‘You'd better listen to something that isn't to go beyond you, Barrett. I'm here because I think we should co-operate. That way we might both miss at least one headache each.'

He went on to explain in part his reason for believing there was to be a raid on a branch of the National City Bank.

‘First,' he said, ‘I thought it might be head office, but I scrubbed that because I'm sure this mob I'm interested in aren't geared for a tricky
rififfi
job. It'll be startling, but not on that scale. Then it came to me — maybe the Upper Borley branch.'

‘That's what I'd like to know,' Barrett broke in, still on edge. ‘How you decided on that branch.'

Drury didn't answer at once. He smoked his pipe like a man trying to relax but not quite succeeding.

He said, ‘My main reason, apart from what I've just told you, Barrett, is that I don't believe the manager will return to
the Upper Borley branch tomorrow.'

‘Something's happened to him?'

‘Let's say, if I have any say in the matter, something will happen to him,' Drury said enigmatically.

‘You can't enlarge?'

‘I'd rather not at the moment.' Drury sounded cautious. ‘I'd have to take it up with the Assistant Commissioner first.'

‘Like that, huh?'

‘Even more than you think, Barrett.' Drury wasn't in a hurry to put the question that mattered. He wanted Barrett to get the weight of the problem without knowing what it entailed. Finally, he said, ‘Now what's so special about that particular branch?'

Dick Barrett's eyes pinched together under the dark heavy brows given emphasis by the balding hair above them. The remains of a summer suntan left the top of his head looking sallow, the lower half pale, and with his lean features this gave him the appearance, in Bill Hazard's critical eyes, of looking like a rooster who had been in a barnyard barney.

‘To put you in the picture, Superintendent, I've got to explain some company policy.' Barrett put down his pipe, rested elbows on his chair-arms and clasped his hands over his chest. Hazard decided he looked even more like a rooster that had lost a fight. ‘After the Great Train Robbery some of the directors became restive about the bank's involvement in returning old Treasury notes. Then there was that business at Purley, where a Hampshire security van was attacked in a lay-by and looted. The critics at head office felt their point had been made. You follow?'

Drury nodded assent. ‘Go on, Barrett. I'm with you.'

‘They pointed out that the risk was in making for Central London, so what was wanted was decentralization. They wanted returned money to be kept away from Central London until the last moment. It should be returned to a branch in the London suburbs. Secretly, without fuss, so that no one would suspect a large sum of old notes being left at a branch overnight.'

‘Overnight?' Drury said quickly.

‘Yes, that's all. The next day the money would be escorted into Central London in a carefully staged convoy of private Q cars and vans. That couldn't be done all the way from the provinces. Sooner or later the process would give itself away. But on the short run to Central London from the suburbs in the rush hour it would be different.'

‘In the rush hour,' Drury nodded. ‘Yes, that would cut the speed.' He seemed to perk up and grinned. ‘Now you're going to tell me the system works.'

‘We've used it four times in the past eighteen months. And it works,' Barrett said. ‘At least, it has up to now.'

‘The Upper Borley branch is next to take such a delivery, that right?'

Barrett nodded. ‘Tomorrow. The day after the convoy is laid on to take the returns to head office. After that it's the responsibility of the Bank of England, who collect from them.'

‘Thank God it's not tomorrow and the stuff isn't held at Upper Borley tonight,' Drury said.

Barrett's glum expression didn't lift. ‘It was to have been held there tonight after having been delivered today,' he told Drury in a heavy voice. ‘But I altered the dates at the last moment.'

Both Yard men were staring at him. ‘In God's name, why?' Drury asked, pushing forward in his chair.

‘At the request of the branch manager, Cecil Weddon. He said it would be much more convenient for his staff to have the delivery a day later.'

‘Was that difficult to do?'

‘Not difficult, but it meant getting on to a number of people, and these delays are always — well, a strain, you know.'

‘I know only too well,' Drury agreed quietly.

‘We've never before had a request for delay after arrangements have been made, agreed, and fixed. So this change was unusual and totally unexpected.'

‘But you agreed to it?'

‘What else could we do? The branch manager has to accept responsibility while the stuff's in his bank vault, usually a compartment with a door
opened by a key. The arrangement has to accommodate him.'

‘You could shift to another branch.'

‘For a delay of only twenty-four hours?' Barrett shook his head. ‘That was where it became tricky.'

‘I can imagine,' Drury assured him. ‘How much is being moved and from where?'

‘Just over two hundred thousand collected from the West Country branches.'

‘Would make a nice haul. How much is it insured for?'

A mask seemed to drop over the security man's face. ‘I'm the security officer,' he reminded Drury. ‘I'm not involved in the office work.'

They stared at each other. Bill Hazard eased his collar. The lounge seemed to be getting warmer.

‘Well, we'd better talk about it, Dick,' Drury said, his manner becoming more familiar. ‘We've got a shared problem. If I'm not mistaken that Upper Borley branch will be raided tomorrow night after the stuff's been delivered.'

Barrett's comment was softly blasphemous.

His wife opened the door and said brightly, ‘Now what about some more coffee?' At that moment there was a power cut.