It was full of policemen, making laborious lists of things found and wrapping some of them in brown paper for fingerprint tests later. In the hallway two constables were waiting with a well-worn coffin to remove the deceased, and they had to ease their way past them to reach the front room. Another constable came through the broken front door with a billycan, a handful of enamel mugs and enough sense to offer tea to the Super first.
Ranklin had never seen a police investigation in action before and was struck by how slow, how mills-of-God it seemed, in contrast with the few seconds of action that had caused it. Like gravediggers on a battlefield, perhaps.
“Have you found anything?” Mockford demanded of a searcher in the front room.
“Nothing much, sir, but-”
“Then probably there’s nothing here. Try again later.” He took a spindly chair, shook the heaviest dust off it, and sat down. They all found places to sit, and the four of them filled the room nicely. So then they had to have a fifth, a sergeant with a notebook who looked carefully at the wall before leaning on it.
The single gas lamp had been lit and curtains, only thick enough to blur the vision, pulled shut.
“First, sir, can you tell me why you didn’t just watch this house and the motor-car, and send word for us?”
“Not that easy,” Ranklin said. “We didn’t know which house except by following the kids who were to tip them off that we’d arrived. Then we either had to charge in at once or lose surprise. Basic military tactics.”
“This was not a military exercise – sir.”
“I don’t know . . . it might be best if it somehow was. You’re going to meet a lot of pressure not to say who we really are.”
“Don’t write that down, sergeant,” Mockford said quickly, then sighed. He was used to being told “your superiors won’t like this”, but not to its being true. And certainly not to Ranklin’s sympathetic tone, as if the whole thing had been just an incident that was nobody’s fault. “You could still have just set a watch on the house – sir. Even if they knew you were out there.”
“Again, I can’t agree. They’d either have sat tight and you’d have had the Siege of Sidney Street all over again or they’d have broken out – they were armed, but didn’t know that we were – and what then? A shooting-match in the middle of the street? Either way, you’d have had more people killed, probably including Ma’mselle Collomb.”
Privately, Mockford might well have agreed But even a siege, with dozens of police, hundreds of soldiers, thousands of pounds worth of damage and several more deaths, could have been somehow made normal. Coroners’ verdicts, court cases, committees and commissions would have chosen heroes and villains and fitted the whole thing into the British way of life. Instead, one man had been killed by the wrong people in the wrong way and it didn’t fit at all.
A man didn’t have to be thinking of his pension to think like that. He need only think of what he had devoted his life to: law and order, a proper way of doing things. Without that, you had the jungle – whatever Dr Gorkin might say.
Mockford grunted and wriggled on the undersized and rickety chair. “Let’s look at what these two villains intended, then. One’s dead so we can’t question him, the other seems very reluctant to talk to us – did he say anything to you? You can take notes, sergeant.”
Jay said: “He didn’t want to say anything but we . . . we persuaded him.”
“Don’t note that, sergeant,” Mockford said wearily.
“I had to speak German to him, although I think he’s Russian or Latvian or something. I don’t think O ’ . . . Mr Gorman could follow it all, but he gave excellent moral support.”
Ranklin could imagine O’Gilroy smiling his smile and clicking the Browning and sighting it occasionally at various parts of the man’s body.
“What it amounts to,” Jay continued, “is that they were going to drug the girl, wait until dark, then take her away in the motor and dispose of her. Of course, once he knew his colleague was dead, it was he who’d done everything, planned it all, been in charge. I imagine that’s an old story to you, Superintendent.”
The sergeant, by now thoroughly confused, looked at Mockford. He nodded, and then they waited in silence for the notebook to catch up. Not true silence: the cardboard-thin door and walls passed on every movement in the house and a garbled mutter from every conversation.
At last Mockford asked: “And who got them to do all this?”
“He described a man who could have been your -” Jay nodded to Ranklin “- Feodor Gorkin. But I hadn’t, as one might say, completed my inquiries when your chaps arrived.”
Mockford grunted. “I should think he was very glad to see my chaps arriving.” He got up, threaded his way to the door and bellowed: “Inspector McDaniel? Do you know anything about a Feodor Gorkin?”
From somewhere at the back of the house McDaniel called: “I think the French inspector does, sir.”
Mockford looked back to Ranklin, who said: “I first thought he was just an anarchist journalist and pamphleteer, but he’s beginning to look more and more the ringmaster. Only I don’t know of what circus. He was staying at the Bloomsbury Gardens house.”
“But there weren’t any clothes or luggage that might have been his,” Jay said. “So we rather fancy he’s gone.”
Mockford seemed about to give an order, and Ranklin said quickly: “Our Chief was going to ask Special Branch to keep watch at the ports for him. I meant to ask Miss Sackfield just when Gorkin left, but we had to hurry on here.”
“Did you?” Mockford asked pointedly. When Ranklin said nothing, the Superintendent went back to his chair and sat down carefully. “Now, did anybody mention the murder of Guillet?”
“I knew I’d forgotten something,” Jay said sunnily. “I said to our chap: ‘You murdered Guillet,’ and he looked blank and Mr Gorman made a . . . a gesture -” putting a loaded pistol to the man’s head, probably “- and it suddenly came back to him: the other chap had murdered him, he’d only watched.”
“Jesus Christ,” Mockford said heavily. “Yes, I see – but I wonder if you do? Your heavy-handed and quite illegal questioning of this man, which defence counsel will bring out at a trial, may make it impossible to convict him of either murder or kidnapping – do you realise that? He may actually go free.”
Jay looked contrite. “I’m most frightfully sorry. Perhaps we should have shot both of them.”
That hadn’t been the right answer. Mockford looked at Jay without expression for a moment, then turned to Ranklin. “I suppose I’m still not allowed to know just what it is you’re doing or looking for?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then will you answer me this, sir: is it more important than solving a murder?”
Ranklin felt Jay and O’Gilroy looking at him, and felt also that he shouldn’t be answering for them. But really he had no choice; he was the senior, his answer would be theirs, and his first duty was to protect them.
He temporised. “But you’ve solved your murder. We know it was those two thugs and they used the Simplex.”
“No!” It was a sudden bark. “To us, just knowing is not solving it at all. Every bobby on the beat knows who’s done what. The hard part is catching and convicting them and that’s what we have laws for. Not so we’ll know, but so we can do something about it. And be seen to do something. A murder isn’t solved until someone’s been hung for it, all nice and legal.
“So I’ll ask you again, sir: is whatever you’re doing more important than us solving a kidnapping and murder?”
Ranklin didn’t answer immediately. He was remembering how shocked he’d been at the idea of the law being manipulated to bring the “right” result to Langhorn’s extradition. Hadn’t he said something about it setting us back three or four hundred years? Yet now he was blithely assuming that laws would be twisted to protect the Bureau.