12

“When I first came here,” said Superintendent Groener, “this stretch of the river really was the Port of London. Full of cargo boats heading up for the Surrey Docks on the south bank or the India and Millwall Docks on the other side. All shut now, except for the Royals and they’ll go soon. Nowadays it’s a leisure-orientated highway.”

The Superintendent had a North Country voice with the faintest burr in it. Agreeable to listen to, Every found.

“I expect you get all sorts,” he said.

“We certainly do, Colonel. Pleasure steamers, yachts, private boats of all types and sizes.”

“But you still get an occasional – I don’t know the right word – I should call it a tramp steamer.”

“Coasters. Yes, a few of them, but not above the Royals. Small craft, two hundred up to twelve hundred tons. The Princess Line uses the King George V Dock. One or two foreign lines like the Elskamp and the Lorraine prefer the Old Gun Dock and the Scotland. Cheaper dues and they’re handier for their customers in East London, you see. But I gather it isn’t docks you’ve got your eye on right now?”

“We don’t think that our friends would risk landing this particular cargo at an official dock. They’re well guarded and it would be properly scrutinised before it was allowed out. What we had in mind was a wharf or pier.”

“Got plenty of those,” said Groener cheerfully. “You can have a look at them as we go. More’n a hundred, I guess, between here and Gravesend.”

They were seated in the forward cabin of one of the new Thames Division boats. Every had been admiring her smart black and white paint and chequered sides and now he felt the drive of her twin 220 horsepower turbo engines as they headed out into London Pool.

He said, “What can you get out of her?”

“Twenty-seven knots. Maybe thirty, if we were pushed. But anything we might have to chase is slower than we are. And we’ve got enough radio equipment to cut it off, or call for reinforcements if we need them. That’s our mainset radio, netted to the Information Room at the Yard. The other’s the marine radio. We can talk to ships on that, through Channel 14 – that’s Woolwich – or Channel 12 – Gravesend. We can pick up any ship between here and Southend on one or other of those frequencies.”

He looked proudly at the bank of shining instruments in front of him. Like a child, but with an unchildlike toy, thought Every. Loud hailer and siren. Flashing lights and warbler. It was a police car on water. An extension of the land arm of the Metropolitan Police.

“I’ll try to define the problem for you,” he said. “What I visualise is a coaster coming up river. She’ll have entered her manifest at Gravesend and passed Customs. If she’s a regular visitor she may not have been searched. In fact, we’re indicating that that’s the way we prefer it.”

“Let them come up here and put their heads into it, right, Colonel?”

“Absolutely right. Ostensibly, they’ll be heading for the Royals, or maybe one of those private docks you mentioned.”

“Then our search area will be Blackwall Point to Barking Creek. There’s nothing much beyond that except the Ford Motor works on the north bank and Erith Marshes on the south. In this stretch, you won’t have to deal with more than fifty wharfs.”

“I suppose that’s an improvement,” said Every.

They were swinging round the corner where Greenwich Reach ended and Blackwall Reach began. It was calm November weather and the river was dozing in the sun. Small, brightly painted public houses; riverside parks with children playing in them; a sunken barge which formed a gallery for a row of solemn sea-birds.

Superintendent Groener was speaking to him, pointing out the sights on his beloved river and Every was listening to Groener, but he was thinking, at the same time, about something quite different.

“That’s Lovells Wharf. They deal with sugar, and the next one’s a scrap-metal wharf. Morden Wharf and Delta Wharf. They’re non-operational. Bow Creek. Instones Wharf’s in there, but you can only get in at high tide. You can just see – over that old lock gate – Greenland Dock and South Dock. Part of the Surrey group. Both closed up now and used for water activities. Canoeing, skiing and that sort of thing.”

Was it going to be possible, thought Every, just for once, to get ahead of the opposition? To forestall the man who called himself Liam? He would be engaged in landing illegal explosives and that would put him outside the law. A type of vermin, really. No one could blame the farmer for pulling the trigger. As he thought about it, he felt the anger mounting inside him and he distrusted it.

He was a professional. Just as Liam was a professional. Professionals might kill each other, but they did not get angry about it. His first instructor, old Major Vinelott, who had killed a great many people in his time, had said to them, ‘Think of yourselves as surgeons. You combat terrorism, as surgeons cut out diseased organisms. If they allowed sentiment to affect them, the hand that held the knife would be unsteady and the results disastrous. So I say to you, put aside personal feelings. Put aside passion. Do the work you are trained for. Cleanly if you can and efficiently, but above all dispassionately.’

“Coming up to Blackwall Point now,” said Groener. “So better keep your eyes skinned. That opening on the left is Bow Creek. Take you straight up to Canning Town station, but it’s a high-tide entrance and you might not get out again. If I had to pick a south bank landing place it’d be about here.”

“Why just here?”

“I’ll bring the boat over and you can see. Once you were on shore you’d be on your own. No houses or factories. Just the wharf and a quarter of a mile of track running across the marshes till you hit Woolwich Road.”

“Ideal for us as well. Easy to block a single track. Whose wharfs are they?”

“The first one, just below the Point, is Universal Wharf. Don’t know much about it, but we can put an enquiry through. The next one is Breakspeare. Run by a transport firm called Blaikmores. Nothing against them. Then Suffolk Wharf, said to belong to one of the co-operatives. After that Angersteins and the two Charlton Wharfs. Then Durham Wharf – that’s a firm of glass bottle manufacturers. British Ropes, Silicate, Thames, Warspite, St Marys and St Andrews, Mastpond, Tuffs Wharf and The New Ferry.”

As they closed on the built-up area round the Royal Dockyard, the wharfs were coining thick and close together. Every wasn’t bothering to write names down. He knew he could get them out of Gaze’s List. He was more interested in assessing their possibilities as clandestine landing places. The first three, as Groener had said, possessed clear advantages.

“Not much on the north bank until you get to Harland and Wolff. You’ll have heard of them. Then the Silvertown Rubber Company. Tennis balls and golf balls, among other things. The next lot are all Tate and Lyle, until you get to Standard Telephones and Cable. This is Gallions Reach. You can see the Barrier ahead now. Peruvian Wharf. They take gravel. Millwall Wharf, non-operative at the moment. Freight Express. They deal in specialist metals. Now you can see the two private docks I told you about. That’s Scotland Dock. It’s the bigger of the two. Proper lock entrance, outer basin and inner basin. It used to handle quite big craft, but of course any vessel of any size now is containerised and offloads at Thames mouth. The smaller one – we’re coming up to the entrance – is Gun Dock. It’s only got a single gate so you can only use it at high tide.”

Every glanced at the two docks. There was a small coaster in Scotland Dock. Gun Dock seemed to be empty. He was certain, in his own mind, that the opposition would not risk a dockside disembarkation with all the formalities and chances of detection. No. It would be a sidling-up to a wharf with a party waiting on the crane and a lorry in attendance. It need take no more than a few minutes. And if he could read the riddle of Arthur Drayling and the boys, he could be waiting for them. No mistakes this time.

He knew, though he had pushed it into the back of his mind, that his feelings were coloured by guilt. If his men had done their job properly at Cuckmere Haven, Liam would not have got away and his stepson would still be alive. He wondered whether the strength of his feelings was apparent. He hoped not. Reggie Mowatt might have guessed. He had a considerable respect for the shrewdness of that stout, soft-spoken man.

They were past the Royals now, swinging up towards Barking Creek.

“Not much on either bank in this stretch. On the south it’s the Arsenal, or what’s left of it, and the Thamesmead development area. On the north it’s the Gas Light and Coke Company. Plenty of wharfs and jetties, but specialised equipment for handling coke and coal and that brings us to Barking Creek.”

“Looks the sort of place a ship might tuck itself away in” If it was careful about the tide, certainly. And it’s navigable for some way up. Again, one long road leading up through the Eastbury Level, to the Barking bypass. I’d notch that up as a possibility. Nothing much more between here and Erith.”

“Then let’s turn round,” said Every. “I’d like another look at Universal, Breakspeare and Suffolk.”

Back in headquarters’ office, with charts and gazetteers spread over the table, they went over the ground once more.

“If you’d like my personal opinion,” said Groener, “I think there are three sorts of wharf you can rule out. First there’s the ones that operate under what you might call the public eye. No one in their senses is going to land a dicey cargo at Nile Street Stairs or the Steamboat Pier.”

“Right,” said Every. He took a blue pencil and drew a line through two and then, after thought, two more of the names on the sheet in front of him.

“Then you’ve got quite a few firms who are much too big and respectable to play in with a fiddle like this one.”

“You know them. You’d better mark my card for me.”

The blue pencil came into operation again. This time more than a dozen names disappeared.

“The last point isn’t as definite as the other two,” said Groener. “But I think it’s sound none the less. Quite a few of these wharfs have got specialised equipment. Bucket hoists and mechanical shovels for dealing with coal or coke or gravel. I don’t say they couldn’t be diverted to take an ordinary load. Suppose your man has a pull with the managing director, or even with the crane boss and says, ‘Just as a favour, I’d like you to land this consignment for me.’ All right, maybe he’d do it. But it’s the sort of thing that’d get talked about. Which is the last thing your man would want, I guess.”

“I agree,” said Every. “Take them out.”

“Particularly,” said Groener with a smile, “when, so I’m told, you’ve got a couple of politicos working along the south bank.”

“Politicos? Oh, you mean Special Branch men. That’s what you call them, is it? How did you hear about them?”

“There’s not much happens on this river or either side of it that we don’t hear about, sooner or later,” said Groener.

“So that’s the form, Micky,” said Bearstead.

He was in the CID office at District and was talking to Detective Chief Superintendent Michaelson, a teddy-bear of a man, known through the length and breadth of south-east London as Micky. He was a notable police officer and would, in the general view, have been one, or even two, grades higher if he had not, on one occasion, spoken his opinion of Haydn-Smith’s German wife when she had tried to interfere in a police operation.

“Most of this information came from Groener, at Thames Division.”

“You can bank on any information he gives you.”

“Added to and cross-checked by two of our men.”

“I see.”

Michaelson did not add that he had heard his own boss, Commander Tancred, describe them as ‘two cowboys who ought never to have been allowed off the leash’.

“Between us we’ve narrowed it down to four probables and two possibles. Three of the four probables are in your district. They all back on the Bugsby and the Greenwich Marshes and are all served by a single road, running south towards Woolwich. The other probable and the two possibles are on the north bank in ‘K’ District.”

“Let’s have the names of our candidates.”

“Taking them from up-river, the first one is Universal Wharf. That’s almost on the tip of Blackwall Point. Next is Breakspeare, which is just below the South Metropolitan Gas Works. Then the Suffolk Wharf, said to belong to one of the co-operatives, but no one quite knows which. The bull point about all of them is that they lie just below the western entrance to the Victoria Dock Tidal Basin. That means a ship could continue, as long as possible, on its stated route. If it arrived at that point after dusk, when the factories on the north bank had shut down, there’d be no one to notice if it stopped for a few minutes before it carried on, into the Royals, as per schedule.”

Michaelson had his own chart spread in front of him. He said, “It sounds very feasible, Bruno. Much better, certainly, than trying to offload in the middle of Woolwich or Plumstead. What about the owners?”

“That’s what our men have been busy on. They’ve unearthed a few facts. Nothing specific against Blaikmores, who run the Breakspeare, except that they seem to do most of their transport work after dark.”

“Curious,” agreed Michaelson, “since they’d have to pay their drivers night rates.”

“So I thought. The only odd thing about Suffolk is that no one seems to know who it does belong to. Everyone who is asked says someone else. Universal is the pick of the bunch. It’s run by two brothers called Roberts. One of our men recognised them. He says that their real name is Rodzinsky. If he’s right, they’ve both got form. Nothing recent. Their last convictions were seven or eight years ago, in connection with a protection racket they were running in Stepney.”

“To mount a permanent watch on those three places you’d need eighteen men. If you were asking us to do it here at District, we’d have to immobilise the bulk of our Direct Support Units. Which wouldn’t be a popular idea. If you want our CID personnel it’s even worse. Do you realise, we’re so short-handed, we can only afford to have two CID men on night duty for the whole District? People who natter about over-manning ought to look at the statistics instead of shooting their mouths off. Did you know that we have fewer policemen per head of the population than any country except Iceland?”

Bearstead couldn’t help grinning. Michaelson normally looked like a teddy-bear; now he was giving a performance as a ruffled teddy-bear. He said, “It’s a hard life, Micky. Sometimes I wonder how you manage to survive.”

He knew the difficulties. The 1980 changes had abolished the separate CID chain of command up to Central. CID Chief Inspectors at Division now reported through their own Divisional Commander. This had left Michaelson at District out on a limb. No one reported to him at all. He was a colonel without a regiment. He knew that CID officers still went to him for help and advice, but this was a personal equation, the result of the esteem in which Micky was held. True, this made him available to take charge, in an emergency, of any major incident squad set up at District level, as had been done in the Southwark and New Cross riots. In each case Micky’s handling of the police had reduced what might have been a major disaster to an unpleasant, but controllable crisis.

“I suppose,” said Michaelson tentatively, “that it’s no use suggesting that Special Branch might handle the whole thing.” When Bearstead said nothing, he added, “Stupid suggestion. You’ve got worse manpower problems than we have.”

Bearstead said, “The people who are really equipped to do a job like that are the SAS. Every would jump at it.”

“And think what a stink it would raise. Army doing routine police work for them.”

“There’s no percentage in chasing shadows,” agreed Bearstead. “It’s clear that if this job’s going to be done properly it will have to be a straight uniformed job done through the Reynolds Road Division.”

“And equally clear,” said Michaelson, “that Brace won’t immobilise eighteen of his men without getting a clearance from Tancred here. And he won’t give it without going right up to Central.”

“Which means bringing in Haydn-Smith, who’ll block it if he can.”

Michaelson did not feel called upon to make any comment on this. He had got into trouble for criticising the Assistant Commissioner’s wife and had no desire to compound the offence.

He said, “One thing’s been puzzling me a lot. Everyone seems set on the idea that when this cargo of explosive is landed it’s coming to this neck of the woods. Not one of the Midland or Northern ports or Scotland, but right here, in the heart of the metropolis. I’m sure there’s some reason for this odd notion, but no one’s explained it to me.”

Bearstead hesitated, but not for long. He knew that Michaelson was totally discreet and he needed his help. He said, “All right, Micky. For your ears alone,” and repeated what he had told Anthony Leone, only more shortly, since, in this case, much of the background could be omitted.

“So the key to this is Olaf Firn.”

“That’s right. You’ve got to appreciate what an important figure he is. He would only have taken on this particular assignment if he thought it was vital and needed very tactful handling.”

“You say he was posing as a journalist.”

“That’s right. His paper, he said, was interested in a report about racial tension. A perfectly trivial matter, incidentally, involving two boys having a scrap in the street.”

“Has anyone asked the Paki kids what he said to them?”

“The Probation Officer asked, but they wouldn’t tell him anything. However, in the end, they did let slip a few hints, which their father passed on. It seems Firn was really interested in the idea of further trouble occurring between them and the white crowd. Juvenile gang warfare, he called it. And naturally that appealed to them. All boys like the macho implication of being called a gang.”

“Not only boys,” said Michaelson. He sat in silence for nearly a minute. Bearstead waited patiently.

“I expect you’ve thought of this,” he said at last. “Stop me if you have. This cargo, if it’s four hundred pounds of explosive and is hidden in some crafty way among slabs of marble or statues or ironwork, would total up to something like half a ton in weight.”

“Or more.”

“And therefore you’re arguing that it would need some sort of crane to sling it ashore and put it into a truck.”

“Right.”

“But suppose it isn’t planned like that at all. Suppose the explosive is split up into a number of smaller packets. A strong boy could easily carry a load of fifty or sixty pounds for a short distance. There are any number of places on Greenwich and Plumstead Marshes with tracks running close to the bank and footpaths leading down to the river’s edge. So all they’ve got to do is get a lorry as close as they can and the boys act as porters for the rest of the way.”

“It’s an idea, Micky,” said Bearstead, “but I hope to God you’re not right. If you are, we’re not going to need eighteen policemen. We’re going to need a couple of hundred.”