So she realised that I hadn’t come to talk about china.
“…. and a name came into my head which I had totally forgotten until that moment. At about the time when my husband died, Randall Blackett was becoming very friendly with a rather terrible little man called Arnie Wiseman. An appropriate name, I thought, on the only occasion that I met him, because he looked as though he knew every shortcut in the world of finance. I had wondered whether Blackett was planning to bring him into the company, but I knew that it would never do, because my husband could not have tolerated him. However, soon afterwards my husband died, and Blackett bought our shares, as I told you, and took over the whole company, so that my feelings about the odious Mr Wiseman did not arise. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. Mr Wiseman disappeared! One day he was there and the next day he wasn’t. It made a great sensation at the time and was in all the newspapers. Of course it all happened years ago, and I expect most people have forgotten about it, though some of your friends in business circles may remember it. I suspected myself that he might have gone a bit far in one of his shady deals and thought it prudent to remove himself to South America. Enough of such ancient gossip. Do come and see me again next time you are down here.”
As Susan folded the letter up and locked it away in her desk, she was thinking that Rebecca Woolf was a lot shrewder than people gave her credit for.
On the day that Susan received these letters, Randall Blackett was driven into London from his house at Virginia Water. He dismissed his chauffeur, Harald, and the car in Queen Street and walked through the lanes and passages which lie behind Cheapside, finally arriving at the inconspicuous offices of Messrs. Gowers and Tring, Private Enquiry Agents and Process Servers. He was evidently expected and was shown straight into the offices of Wing Commander Gowers, the head of the agency. The Wing Commander had a typed document of three pages which he handed to Blackett, keeping a photocopy of the same document on the desk in front of himself.
Blackett read in silence for some minutes. He had a thin silver pencil in his hand and marked two of the passages. When he had finished, he said, “Is Dixon one of your most experienced men?”
“He has been with me for a year or two.”
“He doesn’t seem to have discovered a great deal that we didn’t know already.”
“He has discovered that Morgan is a slippery customer.”
Blackett said, “Yes,” and studied the report for a further minute in silence. “What about this girlfriend?”
“An ex-girlfriend, I understand. You know that we managed to make an arrangement to listen to Morgan’s outgoing calls. He rang her up once and had a rambling conversation, but she soon choked him off.”
Blackett said, “It’s not good enough. I’m becoming very interested in that young man. I want you to put three of your best men on to him.”
“We shall have to wait for a bit. He’s off tomorrow morning on one of those Rayhome tours.”
“Rayhome, yes.” Blackett seemed to be about to say something and then changed his mind. He said, “When he does get back, I want to have any telephone calls he makes from that hotel taped. I want to know exactly what he does say.”
“Even to ex—?”
“Particularly to ex—,” said Blackett.
“And why do you want to know that?” said Raymond Perronet-Condé.
“Simple feminine curiosity,” said Susan. “What a lovely room this is.”
“When my club did finally decide, after two hundred years of male chauvinism, to admit females for luncheon, they naturally devoted time and thought to producing a suitable ambience. And don’t change the subject. Why are you interested in the late Arnie Wiseman?”
“Is he really late?”
“After seven years have gone by without a man being heard of, I believe that even lawyers are prepared to assume that he has passed on to a better—or a worse—world. In Arnie Wiseman’s case a worse one, I should guess.”
“Was he a crook?”
“I seem to remember that the last time we lunched together you asked me the same question about Randall Blackett. The answer’s the same. Wiseman has never, to my knowledge, been convicted of any criminal offence. But if you’re asking me whether I, personally, would have trusted him with a penny of my money, then the answer’s no. He had at one time, I believe, been a solicitor, specialising in commercial work. He was reputed to know a great deal about the Companies Act and all the ways of slipping through its meshes. In the end he tried to be a bit too clever, and the Law Society clamped down. He wasn’t struck off. Warned, I think. Gave up private practice, went into the City and managed to make quite a lot of money one way and another. He used some of it to buy into Blackett’s company, Blackbird. The rumour was that he’d loaned Blackett some money when he needed it in a hurry.”
“Of course,” said Susan. “That makes sense. Harry Woolf.”
“Harry who?”
“Woolf. He was dying of cancer. He offered Blackett his own and his wife’s shares in his Blackbird Property Company, for one hundred thousand pounds. He gave him a month to close the deal. Blackett made it only a day or two before the deadline. He must have borrowed the money from Wiseman and given him a fat slice of his own company in exchange.”
“Very possibly. It was early days for Blackett. He wouldn’t have found it easy to raise money like that on the open market.”
“And then Wiseman disappeared.”
“Post hoc, but not necessarily propter hoc?”
“If I’d paid more attention in Latin class I might have some idea what you’re talking about.”
“I mean,” said her uncle, “that Wiseman certainly disappeared
after
he had become a director in Argon and a sharer in its fortunes. Are you suggesting that he disappeared
because
he had done so?”
“That’s just what I’d like to find out.”
“It’s not easy to disappear nowadays. Not in this world of telephones and telexes find international press coverage. A man might manage it, I suppose, by joining a lamasery in Tibet or becoming adopted by an aboriginal tribe in the Papuan jungle, but, sooner or later, one can’t help feeling a television reporter would roll up to get the exclusive inside story.”
“I can’t really imagine Arnie as a monk or an aborigine, can you?”
“On balance,” agreed her uncle, cutting himself a slice of the famous club Stilton, “I think it is much more likely that he is a small heap of whitening bones.”
“Could you find out if anyone has any ideas about that?”
“How do you suggest I would set about it?”
“Dear Uncle Raymond,” said his niece, gazing at him with her candid grey eyes, “I know all about you. I mean, about the other job you do when you go on those business trips to the Middle East. You must have some contacts in official circles. Couldn’t you ask them?”
“I might,” said her uncle cautiously, “if I could give them some plausible reason for wanting to know. I don’t think it would wash if I told them it was simple feminine curiosity.”
“I suppose not,” said Susan.
Mr Perronet-Condé thought about it. He said, “Change your mind and try some of this cheese. It really is delicious. I might be able to get you something without causing too much stir. A friend of a friend.”
“I’d be very grateful.”
“The only thing is—be careful!”
“Careful about what?” said Susan, startled by the urgency in her uncle’s voice.
“About the way you use that knife. You should never cut a Stilton cheese vertically. Always horizontally. Let me show you.”
“In many ways my education was sadly limited,” said Susan. “Very little Latin. No instruction in cheese cutting.”
Blackett knew, and Sam Lyon knew, that the Blackett empire was now easily the largest client of Messrs. Martindale, Mantegna and Lyon. He expected, therefore, a measure of deference when he visited their offices, but he never tried to ride roughshod over the senior partner. Sam was not only a shrewd accountant. He was personally very well acquainted with all Blackett’s affairs. On this occasion he wanted some information
from Sam. It was not directly connected with his own affairs, and he could not demand it as of right. He had to proceed cautiously.
After half an hour of professional discussion he said, “By the way, what’s happened to that young man who used to help Hopkirk? Looked after some of my matters?”
“David Rhys Morgan, you mean?”
“Was that his name? He was certainly a Welshman.”
“I’m afraid he was not satisfactory. Between you and me, he drank too much. He even brought drink into the office. We couldn’t shut our eyes to that.”
“Of course not. What became of him?”
“I was able to find him a job more suited to his—ah—talents. With a travel agency called Rayhome Tours. I understand that he conducts coach loads of trippers around the Continent.”
“That was charitable of you, Sam. I suppose you had to tell his new employers about his habits.”
“Certainly. They were not unduly worried. I gather that a measure of conviviality is an advantage in a courier. Actually, he was the second man I’ve sent to Rayhome. You don’t remember Moule, do you?”
“The name rings a faint bell.”
“In his case there was some excuse for his failings, poor chap. He was engaged to that very nice girl, Miss Blaney. Julius Mantegna’s secretary. The one who was killed in that accident on Highgate Hill.”
“I remember Phyllis Blaney very well, indeed. In Julius’s day she looked after all my files, business and personal. She always knew where to put her hand on anything. Wonderful girl. Terrible tragedy.” He paused for a moment and then said thoughtfully, “I hadn’t realised she was engaged to one of your staff. Naturally, he’d have been upset.”
“Personal life and business life don’t always mix happily. Get a couple safely married, and they settle down. It’s when they’re in the betwixt-and-between stage that you get trouble. Up in the air one day, down in the dumps the next. That might have been one of the reasons Morgan went to pieces. Gerald Hopkirk told me he’d had a blazing row with his girlfriend. A very nice-looking girl. He brought her to our Easter office party. Intelligent, too. I gathered from the few words I was able to have with her that she was a qualified accountant but wasn’t practising.”
“That sounds like a waste of talent,” said Blackett. “Brains
and
beauty. I could probably find her a niche in one of my companies. Seriously, I’m always on the lookout for people like that. Do you happen to know her name or where I could contact her?”
“I don’t. But Gerald will. I’ll ask him and let you know.”
“That would be very good of you,” said Blackett.
The giant truck and trailer had been unloaded from the Channel ferry at Dover in the late afternoon and had come to London through Canterbury and the Medway towns. It was evidently following a route which had been marked out for it and was now stationary, halfway across the open top of Blackheath whilst Fred, the co-driver, tried to read a map by the dim light on the dashboard.
He said, “Right at that next roundabout, Charlie. Left again when you get to the bottom.”
They ran down Maze Hill, swung left past the Royal Greenwich Hospital and right again, towards the river.
“If you ask me,” said Fred, “this is bloody daft. Why didn’t we go straight across the Heath? New Cross—Old Kent Road—New Kent Road. Straight into town. Left here, Charlie.”
“Must be some reason for it, I suppose,” said Charlie philosophically. “Do what you’re told and don’t ask questions. That’s my motto.” He was handling the monster with the light firmness of a man who has driven heavy-goods vehicles all his working life. “Less traffic this way, perhaps.”
“Not much traffic anywhere.”
The evening had closed in, and an early autumn mist was drifting up from the river. The yellow Continental-type headlights were a help, but they had to drive quite slowly.
“Right here,” said Fred, “and left again at the end. Should bring us out into Tooley Street.”
They were crawling along a completely empty stretch of road, bounded on both sides by shuttered warehouses. The overhead neon lamps shone through the mist with a bluish tinge.
“Turning coming up,” said Fred. “Just round the next bend.” And then, in a sharper voice, “Bloody hell! Watch it!”
Charlie’s reactions had been fast. He had crammed on the powerful vacuum brakes.
A van was parked, just round the bend, broadside on, blocking the road. The giant truck juddered to a halt with its nose inches from its flank. The next moment the road was full of men. The doors of the cab were wrenched open. Fred, who resisted, got a punch in the stomach which sent him crowing and whistling into the gutter. Charlie, still being philosophical, was sitting on the pavement with a man standing over him with a pick helve.
Around them, matters were proceeding in silence, without undue haste but with no waste of time. The padlocks on the doors of truck and trailer were cut with metal shears, and men became busy in both. Bales of paper were thrown out into the road. Other men cut the cords round the bales, stripped open the cardboard coverings and started to throw the contents into a great pile in the middle of the road.
Charlie watched, fascinated, as the pile grew. Other men were busy with jerricans of petrol, sousing the paper.
“Bloody Guy Fawkes won’t be bloody in it when that lot goes up,” said the man behind Charlie. “Better be moving back a bit, I suggest.”
“Good idea,” said Charlie. He shuffled farther along the pavement. Fred, who had got his breath back, crawled after him.
A second van had drawn up behind the truck, blocking the way back. It had a blue police sign on it. A car, coming up from behind, had been stopped, and at the corner a motorcyclist in police uniform was advising the driver to back.
“Lorry on fire round that bend. May go up any moment.”
The car went hurriedly into reverse.
The truck and trailer were both empty by now. Someone tossed a bundle of lighted rags on to the pile and backed away quickly as the whole mass exploded in white flame.