CHAPTER ELEVEN

Deception

David answered his telephone at home one evening.

‘Good evening, Captain,’ said the voice. ‘This is the transport department.’

David recognised the Commander.

‘It’s OK to talk,’ replied David. ‘This is my wife’s bridge night. She’s out.’

‘Now we’ve got that formality over,’ said the Commander, ‘do you have what I wanted?’

David replied that he had the only copy of the cine film that he had been asked by the Commander to take of Mary and Greg’s wedding party. David wanted to know if his boss would like him to mail it or take it to his office.

‘Oh no, no’ came the reply, ‘I don’t wish to have anything here. I wonder if you could arrange for me to have a viewing in the near future somewhere?’

‘Are you willing to come down here, where I have the projector and screen etcetera?’ David asked the Commander. ‘In a couple of weeks my wife will have departed for Australia to see our daughter and grandchildren. She will be staying out there for a month or so. We will be undisturbed.’

‘That will be splendid. Call Miss Kershaw from a secure phone in a couple of days to fix up the meeting. I wish to bring a colleague to see the film and to whom I will introduce you.’

‘Commander, what about the golden rule you were at pains to remind me about last time we spoke?’

‘Oh, my dear friend, you’ve been around long enough to know the rules of management. We make the rules; you obey them. Only we are allowed to break them. I look forward to seeing you again soon.’

The line went dead.

***

At the inquest, Harry was glad of his brother’s company. He gave evidence of identification of his friend and he was asked to say how he had met him in the first place - a matter which made Harry and his brother to later wish they had sought legal advice, as they were in open court with press reporters in attendance.

The courtroom reminded Harry of a school classroom. The coroner sat at a table with three clerks taking notes or handing them to him. To his left was a witness box like a raised pulpit with a Bible on the shelf. Harry was required to hold the Bible in one hand while he swore to tell the truth (reading from a card in the other hand). After he had finished his evidence of identification he stepped down to listen to the next witness, a police sergeant.

‘The victim was reported to us as a missing person by the last witness. We subsequently found the victim’s van by the river Thames. An extensive search over many days failed to find any trace of the victim. It was not until a resident in the Borough of Putney reported a drain blockage that the victim’s body was found in a sewer. The marks found on the victim’s neck and legs by the forensic pathologist, together with blood samples we found in the victim’s van, led us to the conclusion that the victim had been strangled as he sat in the driver’s seat. There was evidence that he had put up a considerable struggle before his life was extinguished.’

Harry broke down and sobbed. ‘The bastards,’ he cried as Chris put his arm round his shoulders and helped him out of the room.

As predicted, the verdict was unlawful killing, and the body was ordered to be released for burial. Chris and Harry found the police sergeant who had given evidence to be very kind and helpful. After the conclusion of the inquest he said he was sorry that his evidence was upsetting to Harry but that unfortunately it had been necessary. He gave them the name of a local funeral director, who they visited to make the arrangements for cremation in Torquay. Chris and Harry did not get back to Buckfastleigh until late that night.

The funeral service in Torquay took place a week later. So it was that Bill Fossett and his wife, Chris and Rosemary Curnow, and Mary set off for the crematorium. Mary elected to drive Harry in Greg’s Rover. She thought that she, on her own, was the most likely of them to alleviate his distress at this time. The other four went in Chris’s car. Greg stayed behind to man the office.

On the coffin lay a sole sprig of heather which Harry had picked on Dartmoor the day before. It had seemed to him to be appropriate - life for Selby had been much better in Dartmoor Prison than was meted out to him after his release.

As they drove out through the gates of the crematorium they were surprised by a man wearing a belted beige raincoat and a flat cap. He was carrying a large press camera with flash and closed in on them as they moved slowly out into the main road. The flashes from the camera made it impossible to recognise or remember details of the photographer. In indignation Chris pulled up in the road outside but by the time he’d got out and run back to the gates the photographer had jumped into a car and been driven off.

The following Sunday the News of the World carried a picture taken from the nearside of the Rover clearly showing Harry in the passenger seat and Mary driving, under the headline “Putney Murder Victim Buried by Cellmate”.

Chris drove over to the cottage at Buckfastleigh immediately after Harry’s phoned request.

‘What can we do about this?’ Harry said to his brother.

Chris thought for a moment before replying: ‘Probably nothing. Batten down the hatches comes to mind. It’s a huge violation of your privacy but the gutter press do it all the time. Sooner or later your conviction had to be known. It wouldn’t surprise me if some at the shipyard outside of myself, Greg, and John Dalton knew already. Sorry, Harry, but that is how it works.’

After hearing the news, Mary and Greg both knew people who might not be pleased one little bit by that photograph in the newspaper.

The Commander was one, because he recognised Mary Norfield and wondered about her involvement with a crook. Another was Captain David Worthy, RN retired. A third person was Nick Wroughton, who had not known about Harry’s past history but had met him at the wedding party. He only knew Mary as Greg’s wife. He also did not know that the Commander knew Mary. As for the Commander, he knew that Mary didn’t know that Nicholas Wroughton was in “the service” and that Nick didn’t know that she was. On top of that, none of the others knew that Don Carruthers was one of them and it was Don who had recruited Mary to the organisation and who raised his eyebrows a long way when the picture was drawn to his attention at work the next day.

So many people, bound by an oath of secrecy, had been drawn into a web of lies spun by the Commander. He knew all of them, and yet most of them did not know each other.

The Commander may have been pleased with his network but he wasn’t pleased about the fact that he had not been told by Mary of her association with a certain Selby Somerfield-Smythe, deceased, and ex-Dartmoor Prison.

***

A week after the News of the World affair David phoned Greg to report his good news.

‘I didn’t tell you the outcome of my ‘accidental’ encounter with the Sheikh in the Imperial Hotel because I thought it might be tempting fate. However, I am flying down to our Monte Carlo office next week to finalise the details for one of the largest yachts we have ever sold. I am arranging for it to be crewed through the Suez Canal to the obliging Sheikh Samad in the Gulf. If it hadn’t been for your tip-off about the Imperial Hotel, this sale would not have happened. I’ve allocated five thousand pounds from our fee to your office.’

‘More good news,’ said Greg: ‘we will be selling L’Enterprise for Mr Lucas. He says that he just doesn’t have the time to make use of her. I did not, of course, mention when he phoned me that Mrs Lucas had already predicted that course of events.’

‘You are well aware, Greg, that discretion is part of every job.’