The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) (12 page)

‘You think you can stick it on him?’

‘Yes, I think I can,’ I said, ‘because frankly I’m convinced he did it.’

‘Some information received?’

‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘We’d none of us get far without some of that after all, would we?’

‘Now don’t start taking the piss,’ he said.

‘I’m really getting so interested in the rest of that factory,’ I said, ‘that I’m going to try and check it out.’

‘Well, you won’t get far.’

‘What are they really making up there that’s so bloody secret?’ I said. ‘Come on, Charlie, whatever it is, disguising it as a shoe factory was an incredibly stupid idea if you ask me.’

‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Look, you could be talking about a government department.’

‘What else could I be talking about?’ It’s a typical civil servant idea. They live in egg-boxes, these people – no one in his right mind’d ever swallow the notion it was a shoe factory. Shoe factory!’ I shouted. ‘You don’t get people in white coats with heads like a goose’s egg and a degree in physics making bloody shoes, not even in these hard times!’

‘Look,’ said Bowman, ‘don’t be the greyhound, son, give the hare a chance. Don’t be deliberate, see? Just leave that factory alone.’

‘But how can I, if Hadrill’s connected?’

‘Don’t be so fucking holy!’ he shouted. ‘Do I have to draw you a map? Give them a bit of flannel, pass it back upstairs. Do what I did. Please ’em, please ’em, all you have to do is to please ’em! I’m trying to help you, son – just concentrate on your plastic bags.’

‘You’re not running this case, Charlie – I am.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he said, ‘you are a right nut and I’m humouring you for it, but you’re stretching it, calling me Charlie. I hate it: I’m always telling you.’

‘You’re cunning,’ I said, ‘and it’s what makes you stupid, Charlie – I like you but you do get on my nerves.’

‘Well, I don’t like you, sergeant,’ he said, ‘it’s no good, I just don’t – there’s something about you, like arrogant or something, that gets right up my nose.’

‘It’s not arrogance,’ I said, ‘it’s my plain thinking. I’ve got no rank to win, none to lose, I think clear.’

We stood up at the same moment; the truce was over.

I had been checking on Pat Hawes through the computer, but it wasn’t easy, because a lot of what I wanted had a Branch star on it, and that meant you had to get far up to the top before you could get access to the file. But I was interested why the Branch had ever been on to Hawes at all, so I went as far up as the voice which, after I had told it why I wanted the material, reluctantly went further up still. This enabled me to find out that for a good while Hawes (with his brother Andy, dead now down to a villains’ shootout in Stockwell) had been mixed up with the Soviet Trade Delegation over at Highgate. Trade Delegation was the polite Russian name for their espionage services in this country. Normally, that was none of my business, but I was interested to see, in this context, that we had been giving it a great deal of attention lately. What one of its branches did (the one I cared about) was subvert our higher-ranking politicians if they could, and that was where Pat and Andy had come in. If there was one thing those two specialized in aside from downright naked villainy it was running moody companies. The companies were nothing but expensive notepaper and a kosher letterhead, with registered offices in a shed in the brothers’ back garden in Greenwich. Then they got hold of idiot punters, greedy MPs attracted by easy money, and put them on the board. All the punters had to do – anyway, that was what it looked like at first – was commit themselves by signing share certificates, then carry on and just draw directors’ fees. But quite soon things would get more complicated for the punter. He would find himself having straight questions put to him by ‘fellow directors’; the subject would invariably be classified information. It was really tricky for the punter. If he kicked across with the
answers, fine, well then he had betrayed his country and could carry on drawing his fees again in peace for a while. If he refused, Pat and Andy would reveal that the company that was paying him was completely bent, and would threaten to pull the rug out. This happened often, because these moody companies were financed from Highgate; and if there was one thing the Haweses hated, it was having to pay anyone money for long. Neither were the Russians a charity organization. Then there would be a sudden by-election, the sitting member having resigned through ‘ill-health’.

The Fraud Squad and the Branch had had a lot of trouble so bad that at one point Chief Inspector Verlander had put up a notice in his room that read: The Following MPs Will Not Be Served. Once, a junior minister had had the rug pulled out too soon – as Andy Hawes remarked at the minister’s trial, ‘just to see what would happen, like’. What happened was that the junior minister, who was on bail pending the verdict, blew his brains out on the steps under Albert Bridge, while the cabinet minister involved strolled off for a bathe while on holiday in France, ‘drowned’, and then turned up in Cape Town with a bird. All that was arranged by the brothers, because the Soviets had decided that they might still make use of this minister after all. It didn’t work out, though, because the South Africans blew the whistle on the ‘swimmer’ and two officers from the Yard went out and brought him home on the next plane. The public thought it was a terrific giggle but they hadn’t been told everything, otherwise the government would have looked even more stupid. A large quota of Soviet ‘trade delegates’ was returned to Moscow marked Not Wanted, and that appeared to be the end of it. In my view the ex-minister should have drawn a good ten; he unfortunately only got three, though, and did two at Ford open. Still, it was the end of his political career, and so I should bloody well hope.

When asked at his trial how he had managed to swim all the way from Antibes to Cape Town the accused replied bitterly: ‘Well, I had my water-wings on, didn’t I?’ At least he had
learned things – he knew better than to implicate the brothers, who had turned some evidence for the occasion, but by no means all of it.

Now, though, over in Stoke Newington, people with nothing better to do could still gawp at the padlocked gates with weeds under them where the two Haweses had originally started up in business. The writing on the gates read: HAWES BROS, DEALERS IN NON-FERROUS SCRAP. There used to be another inscription underneath in semi-literate white letters: This Firm Runs The Manor, No Coppers Here.

But the whole lot had been painted out now, similar to the folk that had run it.

I went to see Pat Hawes; he had just moved to Wandsworth, so I didn’t have far to go. I saw him by appointment in an empty cell in the Punishment Block. The customary scene – section 43 and a screw outside.

‘Hello, Pat.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Whatever I like that you’ve got to give,’ I said, ‘might be a little, might be a lot.’

‘If it’s questions you won’t get any answers. I’m not very easy,’ he said, ‘no, I’d say I was a difficult man.’

‘You must be a masochist to talk like that,’ I said, ‘because this is going to be sheer agony for you, I’ve come here to loosen you up a great deal.’

He looked at me full of age-old lies. He still looked big, but not so fit – not like back in the days when he still had an iron bar in his hand. He seemed to me now a man for whom the murderous rush across a pub at someone he thought was being deliberate was now over – and I hoped for good. He was a London whelk out of its shell that therefore stood no chance: a clever man, resourceful, oversexed like the rest of us and who, as well, trusted no one. Violence, his only cover, had consistently uncovered him,
discovered him. But in my role I was watching him, seeing how jail life, jail food and jail inactivity were in the process of turning him to jelly. Yet when I thought of how he had taken life and maimed it, that separated us, and then I stopped bothering about his state.

‘You know a man called Jack or Jackie Hadrill?’

‘By sight, yes. Who doesn’t. But not to know him, no.’

‘Now look, you’re trying to take me for a cunt,’ I said, ‘which as far as I’m concerned proves that you’re one. Now don’t fuck me about – Hadrill was practically on the firm. I say practically because after he marked your card for that shoe factory he then grassed you to Serious Crimes.’

‘Oh well,’ he said, gazing away at the wall, ‘no hard feelings, that’s how it goes.’

‘You mean how it went,’ I said. ‘Hadrill’s dead.’

‘Yes, I saw that on telly,’ he said. ‘Nasty.’

‘Right, there’s nothing much worse can happen to you than winding up boiled and stapled into five plastic bags. You know anything about it?’

‘Me?’ he said. ‘In here? You’ve got to be joking.’

‘I just don’t know what’s happened to my jokes,’ I said, ‘and yours are pretty flat too. The fact that you’re in here has nothing to do with it. Hadrill’s dead, you’ve got a motive for wanting that, I’m the man who’s been told to find out about it, and I’m going to.’

He didn’t say anything straight away, just stood looking ahead as if he wanted to have a stiff shit. ‘I know what they really make up at that factory in Yorkshire,’ I said. (I didn’t know.) ‘Where it says they make shoes. It isn’t shoes.’

‘It was shoes the night I was there,’ he quipped. ‘But maybe they’ve started on something else now.’

‘Don’t be cheeky,’ I said. ‘Are you still saying you just took the wages?’

‘Right.’

‘Well, that’s funny, because Hadrill knew there was a fucking sight more to it than that. That’s what got him interested in you. I know, because he left a note. More than a note really. More like a letter.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ said Hawes. ‘Hadrill was just a grass. He got us bang to rights; now he must have grassed someone else, got up their nose and was topped, and who fucking cares?’

‘You might find yourself doing a lot of caring,’ I said, ‘because I’m beginning to reckon that you thought you’d better top Hadrill before he came to us about what got lost at the factory besides the money.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ he sneered, ‘I’m completely and totally mixed up, what you’re talking about.’

I attacked on another front. ‘What it is,’ I said, ‘you’re sick with fright, because you’ve heard that we’re not going to stop until we’ve found out who did Hadrill, who had him done, and why. You hoped his body was going to get dumped out with the garbage, didn’t you? You didn’t think the bags were ever going to be found, did you? Well, now you know what’s happened – your man made a right royal fuck-up, had to leave his signature, had to leave the bags for the caretaker to find. Also the job had “done for money” written all over it, a right villain’s work, and that’s dropped you straight in the shit, as if you weren’t in it already.’

Hawes started to look unhappy, and it didn’t surprise me. ‘I’ve been through all the people who’ve had visiting orders from you,’ I said. ‘There’s your wife and your eldest boy, who’s doing borstal now I hear, a real chip off the old block. And then there’s your brother-in-law, Tony Williams, he pops in and out too.’

‘Well, why not?’ Hawes said. ‘He’s family, ain’t he?’

‘You’re not being helpful,’ I said, ‘which wouldn’t be so bad, except that I know you could be helpful if you wanted.’

He shook his head. ‘I can’t help you at all, copper.’

‘Look, you’re not being very bright either,’ I said, ‘so I’m going to put this simply. You’ve got a lot of bird to do yet, a lot – and you
can take it from me that the parole board’s not keen on you, so you might find yourself in the death having to do practically all of it, particularly if we give the board a push. After all, you’ve killed three men and badly damaged a lot more, so why not?’ I looked round me. ‘Still, I suppose it’s not that bad in here, not for you. I hear you just about run the maximum security wing. You’ve got some screws bent. You’ve got money outside, plenty of it, and then you’ve got Williams; after all, he’s the governor of the Nine Foot Drop, and I bet he’s always good for a bit of the ready.’

‘What’s Tony got to do with it?’

‘A lot,’ I said. ‘That pub of his was the last place Hadrill was seen alive. We’ll come back to that. Meantime, though, speaking of governors, I believe the governor here’s not a hard man. Not hard with you anyway – he doesn’t want a riot on his hands. Then you’re a snout baron. I’ve had a long talk with the principal officer and it seems you’ve been in front of the governor for working a few tabs in, a bit of shit. Sells well in here, doesn’t it? Why, Christ, for a killer, you’re leading the life of Riley in here.’

‘Well, it could be worse,’ he smirked. ‘All the same, it’s bloody bad.’

‘You moody bastard,’ I said, ‘if you don’t cooperate with me I’ll make it fucking impossible. How would you like to do the bird you’ve got now, and then double it?’

‘You can’t work that, you bastard!’ he screamed. ‘There’s a fucking law in this country!’

‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘and I’m it. And if you won’t help me, and if I have to prove the hard way that you had a connection with Hadrill’s death, then you’ll find yourself back at the Bailey before you’ve even had a chance to do up your shoes, do you hear? If I can show, as I mean to end up doing, that anyone ever even mentioned the name Hadrill to you, well then, a word with the DPP’s office is all it takes. And here you are – it’s not as if I even had to go to the trouble of arresting you. None of it’s difficult for me. Dicey for you, though. You mightn’t be able to take all that
extra bird. Suppose you drew thirty altogether, why, you’d be seventy-two by the time you came out, Pat, do you realize that? Think of it! You could go mad in here; folk do. And think of all that money you’ve got koshered away outside, and never a chance to spend five p of it till you’re an old cunt on a stick. And again, who knows, they might have changed the currency or something by the time your release comes up; things happen fast outside these days.’

‘You bastard!’ he shouted. ‘Fuck you!’

‘That’s OK,’ I said, ‘let it rip. What matters is, when you’ve finished, are you going to help me or not? How was that Hadrill meet set up? Who arranged for McGruder? Tony? You?’