Chapter Twelve

A grey, cloudy dawn was breaking when Gunther Frey set out with his poodle on their regular morning walk.

Gunther worked in an office in the centre of Munich and it was an act of faith with him to take Mitzi out before she was left alone in the flat all day. Every morning, they left the door in Morassistrasse and walked along the embankment to the Ludwigsbrücke, where they crossed the Isar.

It was cold and wet underfoot, the weather having changed from the mildness of the previous evening. Mitzi pranced along at the end of her red lead, while Gunther, still half-asleep, trudged behind with his head buried in the upturned collar of his overcoat. The street lights were still on as the pair crossed the bridge.

They walked along the path that split the river lengthwise, across the top of a breakwater that joined up two islands in the river. Behind, on one island, lay the great bulk of the Deutschsmuseum. Ahead, the flood weir carried on to the next island which carried the Maximilianbrücke. The grey waters swirled sullenly alongside Gunther as he stopped to unhook the little dog’s lead.

Mitzi shot off, pirouetting and prancing on the deserted path. The grey sky and the sodium lamps shone on the water as Gunther tramped on, thinking about his income tax. The surroundings were too familiar for him to spare them a glance. Then Mitzi darted away and began to yap incessantly.

She had stopped at a railing on the deep side of the weir and here, wagging her trim little tail, she kept up a persistent staccato yapping.

‘Ach, be quiet, for Heaven’s sake,’ muttered her master, walking past. Mitzi stayed put and Gunther had to come back to her. ‘Right, back on your lead then,’ he threatened, as she continued to stare down and bark at the river.

As he stooped to fix her lead to the collar, he casually followed her intent gaze down into the swirling waters. Bobbing sluggishly in a blind angle of the concrete buttresses, were the shoulders of a man.

Every few seconds, eddies in the water would roll the body slightly so that the back of the head and buttocks appeared. The second time this happened, Gunther’s horrified eyes saw a jagged wound at the back of the lower ribs, as if something had burst out from inside, bloodied flesh gaping from a long tear in the jacket.

He took a grip on himself and looked to see if the river was likely to dislodge the corpse from the backwater and carry it over the weir. It seemed to be making no progress downstream, however, and taking a chance on its not getting swept away in his absence, Gunther Frey began running with Mitzi back to the Ludwigsbrücke and the nearest telephone.

‘One bullet is still in there, lodged in the spine.’ The pathologist announced this blandly to the court judge, who, to his sorrow, had to be present at all criminal post-mortem examinations in Munich.

Two mortuary attendants lifted the big body from the X-ray machine in the comer, to the stainless-steel operating table in the middle of the room. The scene was the basement chamber that was the forensic mortuary of the Munich medical college, not far from the part of the river where the body had so recently been found.

The judge sat uncomfortably on a hard chair at the side of the bare white-tiled chamber. ‘What about that wound in the back?’ he asked.

‘Pah! A red herring – nothing to do with the death.’ The pathologist, Korb, was a small hard-faced man with sparse red hair.

‘One bullet entered the front of the chest and didn’t come out again. The other went in the throat and straight out of the side of the neck.’ He waved a rubber-covered hand at the corpse as the attendants settled it on the table. ‘That gash must have happened as the body was floating down river, probably caught against a tree stump or a bridge support.’

He turned back to the body and, knife in hand, stood impatiently while the assistants fussed around getting things ready. A police inspector and a uniformed patrolman stood by as Korb began his examination.

The elderly judge slumped in his seat with a sigh. He had seen too many post-mortems, but they still revolted him. He envied the British system, where the only contact the judiciary has with blood and gore was through the hygienic medium of foolscap documents.

Korb was looking intently at the exterior of the body again, before starting to cut. The clothing had already been carefully removed and lay on a side table, each garment labelled and packed in a plastic bag.

The pathologist studied the face, neck, and stomach, then an attendant rolled it over for him to see the back. Eventually he came back to the neck again.

‘Shot twice from the front. Probably the first shot was in the neck. It could hardly have been fatal – it passed through the windpipe but missed all the important arteries – too far forwards.’

‘Why was it the first shot, Herr Doctor?’ asked the police inspector respectfully. Korb was one always to be used with respect. His acid tongue and temper were renowned in Bavarian police circles.

‘Because the wound in the chest must have penetrated the heart and caused almost immediate death,’ snapped Korb. ‘One would hardly shoot a mortally wounded man a second time in such a trivial manner.’

The inspector had reservations about a shot through the windpipe being trivial, but he kept his mouth shut.

‘What sort of range was he shot from, doctor?’ asked the judge.

The pathologist thumbed at the spread out clothing and then pointed at the neck of the corpse.

‘Not much help from the suit after being stirred around in the Isar for hours, but the skin here tells us a thing or two.’

The judge rose and walked over to the post-mortem table. He saw a neat hole punched in the throat at the front, with a faint speckling of black on the surrounding skin.

‘This one was pretty close, but not contact,’ explained Korb, ‘The entrance hole is not jagged from the tearing effect of the cartridge gases as it would be at a mere few centimetres range, but it was near enough to produce this tattooing from flecks of un-burnt powder on the surrounding flesh.’

‘So what sort of distance, sir?’ sought the inspector, pencil and notebook hovering at the ready.

Korb made a gesture of impatience.

‘Can’t be exact, man. The type of weapon, the size of the propellant, the age of the cartridge, the type of powder – they all make a difference. These new explosives produce very little powder burning, not like the old black stuff.’ He seemed to savour some past memory for a moment then hurried on with the work.

‘Say less than half a metre – probably quite a bit less.’

He bent very near the dead man’s neck and examined it minutely.

‘No singeing of the hairs on his neck – again probably more than a dozen or so centimetres, but less than fifty … does it matter?’ he ended with annoyance.

‘We try to reconstruct these affairs, doctor,’ said the judge mildly. ‘So far the inspector here tells me that the site of the killing is known. A gardener in Thalkirchen reported vandalism to the police early this morning. There were signs of a disturbance in a flower bed on the Brudermühlbrücke, and at the bottom of the slope at the river’s edge, there were bloodstains and signs of dragging of a body into the water. That right, inspector?’

The judge, sorry for the detective’s brow-beating at the hands of Korb, was sheltering him under his wing with kind words.

‘Yes, judge, a regular fight must have gone on from the edge of the road right down the bank to the water. I’ve got a skin-diver searching the river bed now, looking for the weapon – it may have been thrown in after the corpse.’

‘Some hope!’ muttered the pathologist crossly.

‘What size gun would you think it will be?’ asked the indefatigable policeman.

‘Small hole – hard to tell, really. Something less than nine-millimetre, I should say – not a Luger anyway.’

He pointed to the X-ray, still dripping developer, which hung on an illuminated box on the wall. ‘Have a look at that, the bullet is buried in the eighth dorsal vertebra in the middle of the back. You can get some idea of the calibre from that, but I’ll be getting it out for you soon, anyway.’

After looking at a similar hole in the chest, the doctor began the bloody business of the internal examination. The judge noted that he was particularly interested in the teeth.

‘The fillings seem a bit odd-looking … can’t place what it is, but I don’t pretend to be a forensic odontologist; I’ll get a colleague down to look at them. They certainly aren’t local work.’

The examination went on for half an hour, being punctuated by scarifying flashes from the photographic flashguns fixed in the ceiling over the table.

The judge sat patiently, his thoughts gently on his disturbed breakfast – it was still only ten o’clock, the police had moved fast after Gunther had reported the body in the river. The detective scribbled in his notebook whenever Dr Korb muttered some scrap of information, and the patrol man stood immobile the whole time, chewing the cud like some sturdy bullock.

Eventually the pathologist threw down his knife with a clang and went to a sink to rinse the blood from his gloves. The judge slowly came back to earth and the eager inspector stood almost panting for the final revelations.

‘Shot through the chest almost dead centre,’ began Korb, pushing off the tap with an elbow. ‘The second entrance wound is just to the left of the centre of the breastbone, quite low down. So it’s gone straight through the heart and finished up in the spine. Here it is, Inspector, if you want it for the lab.’

He walked back to the post-mortem table and carefully picked up a shining bullet with a rubber-tipped forceps, so as not to harm any identifying marks.

‘You’re lucky it’s not deformed, even though it has gone through two bits of bone … odd calibre, looks something like a six-millimetre.’

The detective took a small cardboard box from his pocket and laid the bullet reverently in a bed of cotton wool. ‘Yes, doctor, I doubt if it came from a German pistol. It’s copper-jacketed, so it’s from an automatic, not a revolver, in all probability.’

He gave it to the waiting uniformed man, with instructions to rush it to the ballistics laboratory of the police department.

‘Ask them if they can identify the make of weapon as soon as possible, tell them we’ve got no gun to compare it with at present.’

The black-uniformed patrolman saluted briskly, coming to life at last. After he had hurried out, Korb spoke again. ‘Anyone missing from the city lately?’

‘No, sir … we’ve had a few girls and a couple of children reported this week, but no man for a fortnight – and the last few of those were nothing like him.’ The detective gestured to the opened body on the slab.

The pathologist smiled cynically. ‘Don’t worry about the fortnight; this chap’s only been dead a short time. When I saw him first at nine o’clock, his temperature was still thirty degrees centigrade. Even in the Isar in winter he couldn’t have been dead longer than say, twelve hours.’

The judge bobbed his head wisely.

‘Are we going to get any help from you in identifying him?’

‘General stuff only at present,’ replied Korb, drying his hands on a cloth while he gazed thoughtfully at the remains. ‘Approximate age from appearances and X-rays of some bones. He appears to be in his middle thirties. Then height, weight – all that stuff is written on the form there. No scars or tattoos to be seen.’

He reached for an open jar of stomach contents and put it to his nose. He offered it to the judge but the older man jerked his head back. ‘Just tell me, doctor – I’ll take your word for it,’ he said wryly.

‘Drink – a strong smell of beer and spirits. I wonder where he was last night. He certainly took a skinful.’ He took another sniff at the jar, all revulsion having left him years before.

‘Another thing, judge, he has small injection marks on his arms which are septic in some places – looks exactly like the unsterile jabs that a drug addict gives himself. I’ll get an analysis done, but that will take a day or two.’

‘He’s a big man, doctor,’ ventured the inspector.

‘Yes, heavily muscled. He has some thickening of the eyebrows and a twisted nose which might suggest that he was used to being in a fight now and then. I’ve seen it in many strong-arm criminals, not necessarily boxers.’

‘You say his fillings look foreign – what about his clothes, any lead there?’ asked the judge.

‘All the pockets emptied and the labels tom out, sir,’ explained the inspector. ‘Good quality suit, I just don’t know whether it’s foreign manufacture or not. All Western clothes look much the same, except to an expert tailor. The tom labels were almost certainly done by the killer at the time of death, the rips are fresh and deliberately confined to the inner pockets and neckbands of the shirt and vest.’

The judge got up and went to look at the clothing.

‘So to add up all we know, doctor, we’ve got a big man of possibly foreign origin, who has been shot twice, the one through the chest having killed him. He was either drunk or had been drinking heavily, and he may have been taking small quantities of narcotics – right?’

Korb nodded abruptly. ‘You can add that the first shot through the neck was a wild one, at close range and the second one a more deliberate discharge, possibly at a slightly greater distance, designed to kill. From the signs of the struggle on the bridge, with absence of blood at the top of the slope, it seems that they fought up there, but did not use the weapon until they reached the bottom.’

The detective took up the tale here. ‘The killer must have been cool enough to empty the dead man’s pockets, rip out the tabs, and then push him into the river … I wish I knew what he did with the gun.’

By the afternoon a fairly firm opinion as to the deceased’s country of origin was arrived at by the dental expert, who declared that the technique and materials of the numerous tooth fillings were typically British.

The detective was a little sceptical about relying too much on this evidence, but he had dramatic confirmation from two directions within the next few hours. Firstly, the ballistics department reported on the bullet extracted from the dead man’s spinal column. The inspector muttered a summary of it to his assistant.

‘Not a metric size projectile … a .25 inch copper-clad bullet, corresponding to 6.35 millimetres … from the rifling pattern left by the barrel it must have been fired from an automatic weapon with six right-hand grooves with a pitch of one turn in twenty-five centimetres. The groove width was 0.56 mm and the land width 2.65 mm … this corresponds to the specifications of the British Webley self-loading pistol, made in two models, one hammerless, both of .25 inch calibre. One has a short free-standing barrel, is small and is unlike any other German or Continental weapon.’

Almost before he had digested all this, a motorcycle roared up to headquarters with a courier sent from the Brudermühlbrücke with a pistol that an aqualung diver had just grovelled from the bed of the Isar.

It was a .25 Webley automatic.

Already a photograph of the dead man, touched up to look as lifelike as possible, had been printed and, armed with a copy, a squad of police were questioning airport staff, railwaymen, and taxi drivers.

At seven thirty, a cab driver who had not seen the photograph but had heard of the location of the murder, came forward to say that he had taken two men to the bridge around midnight.

While he was in the C.I.D. being questioned, a detective brought in another taxi man who recognised the dead person as a fare he had taken from the railway station to the Pension Walther.

The detective inspector soon found that both drivers agreed that the dead man’s companion on both trips must have been the same fellow. The only point of dispute was that the first taxi man said that the man spoke good German with a Cologne accent, while the one who took the pair to Thalkirchen swore that the second man was Munich born and bred.

The time of the train that they had left was checked and was found to be the Tauern Express from Ostend. A call was made to Interpol in Lyon for assistance, asking for the names of all male passengers who had booked on that journey to Munich.

The inspector spent part of the night looking for the second man, who was now the prime suspect. The description from the cab drivers was too vague to be of any use – Golding’s nondescript features functioned just as well outside Britain.

The next step was a visit to the Pension Walther in Schwabing. Wormser, cursing Schrempp for involving him, had to admit that he had given a room to the tall Englishman.

‘Why didn’t he sign the register?’ demanded the detectives.

Wormser gave a cringing shrug. ‘It was his first night, Officer. He was very tired after his long journey – I thought I’d not bother him till the morning. But he didn’t come back.’

‘Come and open his room – let’s have a look at his luggage.’

Wormser was in a spot again. He had already acquired the case, when he had to restore the original owner’s belongings in the room he had given to Draper. He tried to explain and tied himself up in a worse knot. Eventually he produced the case from his office.

‘When he didn’t come back I thought he’d ducked off without paying his bill … so I kept his case as security.’

The inspector had his own ideas about Wormser but the other matter was the more urgent. He rummaged through the case.

‘No passport … no papers,’ he said in disgust. In fact, Conrad’s passport was floating in the North Sea, after Jacobs had flushed the pieces down the toilet of a B.E.A. Comet on his way back from Hamburg.

A junior detective picked up a silk shirt from the case. ‘Made in London, sir … has the initials C.D. on the neckband.’

‘Corps Diplomatique?’ suggested the inspector sarcastically. ‘Come on, Wormser, you’ve been up to something … tell me about the man who brought him here.’

‘I didn’t know his name … I don’t even know the name of this man.’ He pointed to the case.

‘Hard luck. Why did they come here – to this particular hotel? You must have known the second person.’

‘I recognised him … he stayed here once. He was an English student,’ lied Wormser desperately.

Exasperated, the inspector grabbed Wormser by the arm. ‘Come on, back to headquarters. Bring that case, Hans.’

When they arrived at the office, there was a list from the French Railways sent via Interpol. It showed that only twenty four males had booked all the way from Ostend to Munich at that slack winter period. There was only one name with the initials ‘C.D.’ and that was Conrad Draper. There was no address given.

‘Have to check with London’s Scotland Yard for that, they can get the full bookings from the London railway offices.’

‘What about the other man?’ asked his assistant.

‘He was on the same train.’

Wormser came in for another heavy session of interrogation, but he gave a deliberately vague description that would have fitted a quarter of the population of Europe.

The inspector reported to his senior early next morning.

‘I feel that both these men had only a fleeting association with Munich, sir. I think that the motives are all back in England and I suggest that we inform the London police of all the facts’

His chief, already flooded with local crime, was only too ready to give his blessing for the inspector to pass the ball to Scotland Yard.

Back in his office, the detective picked up his telephone and asked for London.

Benbow took the call about noon on the Tuesday. He rapidly noted down all the information, asked for written confirmation and, after profuse thanks, put the phone down. He dialled Information Room to find out why the case had been given to him.

‘The officer who liaises with Interpol told us to put it through to you, sir.’

He rang the chief inspector concerned and was told something that almost sent him up to the ceiling.

A few moments later Bray came in with a fresh armful of papers.

‘So! Here’s a turn-up for the book, lad!’ The Admiral was leaning back in his chair with a great grin on his face.

Bray waited patiently for the oracle to speak.

‘Just had Germany on the blower,’ announced Benbow.

Bray tried to imagine the Russian premier saying it in quite that tone of voice.

‘Munich to be exact. They had a shooting there yesterday.’

The sergeant waited expectantly.

‘Conrad Draper had a hole blown through his chest.’

Benbow looked so pleased with himself that Bray felt sorry when he had to say, ‘Draper? Never heard of him.’

The Admiral’s pale brows came together in a frown.

‘Course you have, boy. The turf wizard of Brewer Street.’

Bray’s face opened up slightly.

‘Oh, him! Yes, I’ve heard of that chap. But what the devil’s that got to do with us? Surely we’ve got enough on our plate already.’

He waved despairingly at the piles of documents littering the small room. Benbow sighed with the resigned air of a dedicated teacher of backward children.

‘Listen, while uncle tells you all about it. This might be a tie-in with the Rita Laskey job … and God knows we could do with one.’

He hoisted his feet up on to the corner of his desk and Bray sank on to the only other chair.

‘I had this call from the German coppers to the effect that one Conrad Draper, of London, had been fished out of some bloody river there with a bullet hole in his chest … in fact he was found in the water less than twenty-four hours after he had arrived by train from England. Part two of the mystery … another bloke who was with him just before he was knocked off, was on the train with him – and he’s vanished.’

Bray looked blankly across the desk.

‘So what? Why drag us into it?’

Benbow’s fat lips gave a Cheshire Cat smile.

‘That’s what I wondered when Morris rang me – the Interpol Liaison bloke. I asked him why he’d shipped the call onto me, the most overworked and downtrodden character in the Yard. Know what he said? Calm as you like!’

Bray shook his head dutifully.

‘He said that earlier this morning the Jerries rang up asking for a check on bookings on the train to identify this Draper and on the serial number of the gun that shot him. And stone me, it was a .25 Webley that was registered in the name of Ray Silver of the Nineties Club.’

It was Bray’s turn to look surprised. He leaned forwards with his hands braced on his knees, as if he was ready to take off in a sprint.

‘Silver and Munich. I don’t get it.’

Benbow began destroying a pencil in his teeth.

‘Nor do I. How the hell Conrad Draper fits into this, I just don’t know. But here’s another thing. The German post-mortem says that he had injection marks on his arms. Looks as if the common factor running through this case is drugs, chum.’

‘But where does Golding – and the girl Laskey – come into this?’

Benbow shrugged.

‘There’s one thing similar – the bloke on the train and our friend Golding both have the knack of appearing and vanishing into thin air – could they be one and the same?’

Bray whistled. ‘Nice theory – but we’ve only got the Nineties Club to link them up.’

The chief inspector hauled himself upright and reached for his Nikita-type felt hat.

‘Yes, lad, theorising never bought the baby a new dress – let’s get around to the Soho sin market and have a few words with the Draper outfit.’

They took a car to Brewer Street and climbed to the headquarters of the late bookie’s gambling empire. Benbow enquired of the first clerk he saw and was directed to the big room at the front. From the attitude of the staff, the news of Draper’s death had not reached them yet.

They found Irish O’Keefe making the most of Draper’s absence. He was sitting behind the big desk, with a glass of Conrad’s whisky in his hand and one of his cigars stuck in his lips. Another half-dozen lay safely in his pocket.

He leaped up guiltily as Benbow pushed his way into the room. Irish scowled when he saw it was the police and dropped back into his seat.

‘What’s the game? We don’t like coppers coming here – it’s bad for business.’

Benbow sat on the comer of the desk, snatched the cigar from the little man’s mouth and glared down at him.

‘Here’s some news that’s going to be even worse for business. Conrad Draper is dead … murdered.’

Irish turned white on the spot.

‘You wouldn’t be after kidding me!’ he croaked.

The detective shook his head slowly.

‘Come on, Irish. Let’s hear your end of the story. I haven’t had the chance of dragging you into the nick since that last bit of false pretences you pulled – but I’m always ready for another trip.’

It was an empty threat but O’Keefe was too shaken a man to realise it. He gulped, took another swig of his late boss’s whisky and talked.

‘He belted off the day afore yesterday – got me to book a train ticket and sleeper to Munich … was it there he was done in, Mr Benbow, sir?’

‘Yep, shot with a gun from the Nineties Club.’ Irish’s eyes almost popped out on to his cheeks with surprise.

‘Not Silver’s! But he took it off him.’

His voice trailed away as he realised that he might be saying too much. In his philosophy, half a word was too much to tell a copper.

Benbow leant over and grabbed his shoulder.

‘So you know something about it, eh? Look, chum, I’m not in the mood to mess around with you. You spill it now, or I promise I’ll take you in as an accessory after the fact and throw the bleeding book at you.’

He put such virulence into the words that Irish, with the knowledge that his boss and protector was no longer available, decided to cough.

‘He was like a mad thing on Friday night, sir … he went around the Nineties Club very late and Silver must have told him then that Golding was going to Munich next day’ His voice died away as Benbow and Bray closed around him to stare at him as if he was the Oracle of Delphi. He looked up at them fearfully.

‘Sure, I only said the truth, sir,’ he began uneasily.’

‘You’re doing fine … carry on,’ said Benbow exultantly. Bit by bit the whole story, as Irish knew it, was unfolded. How Conrad had been cuckolding Golding, the business of the tape recorder, the attacks Draper had made on Silver, and how he had taken the Webley from him.

‘Why did he go to Munich after Golding?’ demanded Benbow.

‘I don’t know at all, sir … Draper wasn’t the sort of man you asked. He told you if he felt in the mood, but if he didn’t he was just as like to knock your block off – powerful big man he was.’

He shook his head sorrowfully and took another suck of spirits. ‘Don’t know what we’re going to do now, I don’t.’

‘What d’you know about Golding?’ snapped Bray.

‘Nothing about him, if you know what I mean. I’d seen him in the club, I knew he was keeping Rita … but what he did, I don’t know.’

‘Come off it, Irish,’ grated Benbow. ‘Your boss was tramping the same set of stairs to the Laskey woman … you must know something about him … why did Draper go after him to Munich?’

Benbow had at last found a small chink in the solid wall of non-cooperation in Soho and was determined to lever it wide open.

‘Draper was as mad as hell when he heard that she’d been croaked – he reckoned Golding had done it.’

‘Why should Golding have done it … just because he’d found that Conrad was sleeping with her?’

Irish shrugged nervously. ‘Search me, guv’nor.’

‘Did he ever threaten Golding?’

Irish considered this over another swig of Scotch. ‘He never had a chance … he had me on the runaround for days trying to find Golding.’

‘And did you?’

‘Sure, never a wisp of bleeding hair did I see!’

‘And what colour was his bleeding hair?’

Bray could almost see the mental brakes going on as the shock of Draper’s death began to fade and his natural distrust of the police take its place.

‘I don’t remember – sure, that was just a figure of speech.’

Benbow, who was now standing alongside the little fellow’s chair, grabbed it and tilted it back. Irish went back with it, spilled his drink into his lap, and howled as Benbow slammed the chair back onto an even keel.

‘Listen, O’Keefe, cut that out. I know you’ve been Draper’s watchdog for years. But your boss is dead now and if you don’t help me nail his killer, I’ll rake up enough dirt on you to keep you inside for a twelve-month. Now come on, let’s have some sense. You know damn well what Golding looks like – and where he comes from.’

He finished his speech with a resounding thump on the back of the chair which jerked Irish forwards.

‘I only seen him a couple of times, honest,’ he whined. ‘He was the sort of bloke that don’t look like anybody in particular.’

‘How tall was he … fat, thin, dark, blonde … come on.’

O’Keefe gave a convincingly genuine but utterly useless description of Golding. Benbow scowled.

‘The average man again! Irish, if you can’t tell us what he looked like, tell me where he came from, what he did, where he went.’

The ugly dwarf from Dublin made routine protests again but eventually told what he knew.

‘The only place I ever saw him was the club. He didn’t know me nor Conrad. He used to take Rita there … I heard he was pretty thick with Ray Silver.’

He hesitated and looked from one to the other.

Benbow caught the look and bent down so that his bulbous nose was almost pressed against Irish’s face.

‘Spill it all, sonny – it may save you a short haircut and a heap of mail bags.’

Irish gulped and took the plunge.

‘Conrad was on the hook – not much, no mainlining, only skin-pops – but he used to get his junk from Ray Silver … and I heard tell – not Gospel, mind you – that Golding was the big man with the supplies. He used to distribute to all the hundred-deck men.’

‘And this gun was the one that Conrad took from Ray Silver?’

‘Yes … Conrad never used an iron.’

Benbow kept at the little man unmercifully but eventually was satisfied that he knew no more of any importance.

‘Take him down to the Division and get a statement, Bray,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t charge him with anything yet until we make up our minds which offence will get him the longest stretch.’

He threw a baleful glance at O’Keefe and strutted to the door as if he were about to take the salute in Red Square.

At the Yard, he found that the sergeant from the Drug Squad had left him a report from the laboratory. This confirmed that the white powder from the shelves of the safe was a mixture of morphine and heroin. There was also a long cable from Germany giving the details of the post-mortem and investigations on the body from the River Isar.

When Bray came back about four o’clock, he found Benbow thoughtfully staring at the dusty picture of the 1936 water-polo team, which was the only ornament in their office.

‘The plot thickens, lad. We’ve had the report from Munich, with a photo … it’s certainly Draper. And the lab have found drugs in that dust from Silver’s safe. So with O’Keefe’s evidence, we’ve got enough to take him in. The Nineties Club should be out of business for a few years.’

Bray looked puzzled. ‘Why did all this business happen in Munich? If they wanted a punch-up, they could have done it here just as well. And where the hell is this Golding now?’

Benbow tapped the transcript from the laboratory.

‘This is the answer in Munich. It’s one of the places on the Near East pipeline for narcotics. Vienna, Paris and the Balkans are the big places, but Munich is a clearing house as well. It gets in from Turkey and the Levant as well as directly from the Far East.’

‘You think they went there to collect the stuff?’

‘I’m sure Golding did … don’t know about Draper. We’ve no evidence to say he ever dabbled in the business side of dope, only the pleasure aspect, if you can call it that.’

Bray wandered restlessly around the room.

‘What do we do now? All this seems so disjointed. Bits and pieces of crimes with Golding’s name running through it all. What are we dealing with: a homicidal maniac or a dope smuggler?’

Benbow shrugged magnificently. ‘Search me, comrade, but we’re going round to see this Eurasian creep. He may be able to throw some light on it – before we drag him off to a cell. He’ll be one less fly on the Soho dung heap. Give Sergeant Roberts a buzz, will you. I promised to let him know.’

Again the club was visited at a discreetly early hour. This time it didn’t matter, as Benbow had authority to close the club as being undesirable premises pending Silver’s prosecution. He arrived with the two sergeants at about six thirty and barged past the astonished doorman, who was rigged out in a pullover instead of his Victorian outfit.

The three detectives marched through the deserted club, past the chairs piled high on the tables and the empty bar. A single bare bulb burned in the ceiling and no one, not even the barman, was in sight.

‘Hope the bastard is here,’ muttered Benbow as they filed through the alleyway backstage to Silver’s office.

They found him standing at his cupboard, counting bottles of spirits. He swung round in surprise and gave a crafty grin when he saw who had arrived.

‘What d’you want this time, coppers?’

Benbow wasted no time or words but strode across the room and put a detaining hand on the surprised owner’s arm.

‘Ray Silver, I am arresting you and you will be duly charged with being in unlawful possession of narcotic drugs, namely heroin and morphine, in contravention of the Dangerous Drugs Act. Anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence. Now then, chum, what d’you say to that?’

Silver’s face came up in red blotches that matched the red brocade waistcoat that stretched over his spherical stomach. He shook Benbow off and went to sit behind his desk, clawing his way like a blind man along the edge.

‘What are you trying to pull this time?’ he asked huskily. ‘I want my lawyer – you know damn well there’s nothing here, you looked the other day.’

His voice was shaky and hardly more than a whisper.

‘We found enough in your safe to fix you, Silver,’ said Sergeant Roberts harshly. He had a hatred, amounting almost to an obsession, of drug traffickers. He had seen too much of the degrading results of their trade to show any sympathy when they were caught.

Benbow was less emotional about it. He grinned at Silver’s deflation.

‘You want to use stronger boxes next time – the last ones leaked.’

‘I want my solicitor,’ blubbered Silver. He reached out a shaking hand to the telephone.

Benbow calmly trod on the loop of flex that hung over the end of the desk and the instrument came crashing down to the floor before Silver could touch it.

‘Oops! Sorry, accidents will happen,’ grinned the Admiral, leaving the phone lying dismembered on the carpet.

‘Look, chum, you’re for the high jump but if you cooperate with us a bit, we might put a word in for you before the judge puts on the Black Cap.’

Silver wavered then plumped for the chance to get his sentence reduced. He told them the whole story, ending with Golding’s trip to Munich.

‘He went out of here like a bat from hell – raving mad! ‘

‘And he took your gun with him?’

‘Yes – a .25 Webley – I had it legally too. Police permit, licence – the lot!’ countered Silver defensively.

Bray took Silver away to the West End Central Station to be charged, while Roberts and Benbow stayed behind to have another look around the club. They went to the deserted bar and turned the lights on. Between them they went through the place with even more enthusiasm than the time before. All the shelves and cupboards were turned out, but nothing came to light. Benbow looked in a recess under the sink and saw a waste bin. Something odd struck him but it was a few seconds before he could pin it down.

‘Roberts – come and have a shufti at this.’

The sergeant came over and looked.

‘Cellophane paper – looks like lots of cigarette wrappers.’

Roberts looked at the packets under the big mirrors and nodded.

‘All wrapped as usual.’

Benbow stared at the cellophane in his fingers.

‘I’ve seen a gag like this with gaspers before,’ he mused. ‘Are there any more in the cupboards?’

Roberts went back to another shelf behind a glass door, in the comer of the bar.

They found what they wanted here. A couple of dozen uncrushable packs had had their outer wrappers stripped off. Between the cardboard and the silver paper inside was a thin polythene envelope, filled with white powder. Benbow rubbed his hands delightedly.

‘Lovely – just what the magistrate ordered, eh, Roberts?’

They carefully wrapped up the rest of the cigarette packets and went down to the police station.

Bray had just finished taking a statement from Ray Silver. The Eurasian was sitting dejectedly behind a cup of cold police station tea in an interview room.

‘Silver, we’ve found enough heroin in cigarette packets in your dump to send you down for years. What have you got to say about that?’

Silver had plenty to say, most of it unprintable, but the gist of his words was to the effect that it must belong to someone else. ‘Where did you find it?’ he demanded.

Benbow told him and he poured out another torrent of foul language.

‘That effing Snigger, that’s who you want,’ he squealed. ‘The cunning bastard. Look, I take back all that statement. It was Gigal that was behind this … done it all behind my back and got the blame put on to me.’

He gladly gave them Snigger’s address in South London. Now that he suspected Snigger of splitting on him, Silver was all for dropping his employee as deeply into the mire as possible. By eight o’clock, Silver was locked in a cell, and the Nineties Club had been padlocked by the police.

The detectives went back to the Yard and Benbow and Bray tramped up to their box-like office to turn to the next problem, the tracing of ‘Snigger’ Gigal.

‘Shall I get the Division to pick him up in Fulham?’ asked Bray, his serious sixth-form face anxiously reflecting his eagerness to get on with the chase.

Benbow picked up an appetising new pencil and eyed it thoughtfully.

‘I wonder?’ he mused. ‘Will he run now that he knows we’re on to the drugs angle? He might lead us to Golding if we’re lucky. Let’s give him a bit of rope.’

He lumbered to his feet and pushed his hat to the back of his head.

‘Take Sutcliffe with you … watch Gigal for the next few hours and see if he goes anywhere that might be a lead to Golding. If he hasn’t tried to communicate before midnight, you’d better knock him off and we’ll try to get something out of him.’

Benbow’s hunch came off. Half an hour later, Bray was sitting in a coffee bar almost opposite the Nineties Club. He had a clear view of Gerrard Street and of Detective Constable Sutcliffe, who was leaning against the wall of the pin-table saloon next to the club. Sutcliffe looked eminently in character, with sideboards, a thin moustache, and pointed shoes.

At twenty to nine, a small man walked briskly up to the club door then stopped and looked in puzzlement at the new padlock. The spiv-like character levered himself off the wall and came over to him. ‘No good trying to get in, mate – they closed it up just now.’

‘Who did it?’ he said, pointing uneasily at the padlock.

‘The rozzers, mate – they hawked the boss man off in irons too.’

Sutcliffe was a devoted amateur actor and he warmed to his role now.

‘Are you a member?’ he hissed dramatically, ‘because if you are, I’d chuck my card away and buzz off before the bobbies come back.’

Snigger muttered under his breath, looked furtively up and down the street, and hurried away to the pub on the comer in search of more details.

Sutcliffe gave a discreet thumbs-up sign to Bray, who left the cafe and followed Snigger into the public house.

Across the crowded smoke-filled bar, he saw Gigal talking earnestly with the landlord and being told with expressive pantomime what had happened at the Nineties Club that evening. Snigger downed a double whisky then hurried out to hail a taxi.

By this time, Sutcliffe had brought the police car from further down the street and had parked it near the public house. It was an unobtrusive blue Morris Oxford, a borrowed ‘Q’ car, instead of the usual black Wolseley which would have given the game away. They were able to follow the taxi through the slow traffic without any trouble.

‘He’s going in the opposite direction to his home,’ observed Sutcliffe. ‘He lives down in Fulham.’

They were now heading up the Tottenham Court Road.

‘Are we to tail him wherever he goes?’ asked Sutcliffe, with visions of all North London and the country beyond in front of him.

Bray shrugged. ‘Let’s see what happens – he’s turning right here anyway.’

The taxi stopped near the University Union and the barman got out.

‘Drive straight past and stop around the next comer,’ snapped Bray. Before the constable had brought the Morris to a stop, Bray was out and walking back to the comer. He sauntered after Snigger and followed him a short distance to the block of flats in Ferber Street.

He hung about when the ex-jockey went inside. As soon as he heard the slam of lift gates, he dodged into the open entrance hall. The automatic lift had a row of lights above the door and he waited until the red flicker stopped at the fourth floor. A moment later, Sutcliffe joined him and they both stood concealed in the stairwell.

Before long, the lift motors whined again and as Snigger stepped unsuspectingly into the hall, they moved forward and hustled him off to the Yard for questioning.