He looked down at himself. Sleeping in a swivel chair had done nothing for the press of his suit. If he left it on, he’d look like a derelict in secondhand clothes. He rubbed his chin. Whiskers rasped under his fingers. They’d only add to the impression of seediness.
Then he looked to one of the file cabinets across from his desk. On it, still neatly folded, lay his dress uniform. He’d never found time to take it to be cleaned, but it was in far better shape than the clothes he was wearing. Without hesitation, he got out of his suit and put on the red tunic and striped trousers. Some of his men would raise an eyebrow at seeing him in uniform, but not so high as if he’d stayed in the suit. He telephoned the duty desk. “This is Colonel Bushell. I’ve been, ah, working up here all night. Could you fetch me up a razor and some shaving soap?”
“I’ll send them directly, sir,” the sergeant at the desk said. “I heard you were in the building, so I thought you might be wanting them.”
“Thank you,” Bushell said, and hung up. The night man had warned his replacement, then, Some things didn’t change from the army to police work.
The RAM who brought him the shaving implements did indeed blink to confront him all gleaming in crimson and gold, but held his incredulity to the one blink. Bushell was certain that, by the time he came downstairs, the entire headquarters building would know how he’d chosen to dress. He walked into the lavatory, turned on the hot water at a faucet, lathered up, and scraped the straight razor across cheeks and chin and throat. He nicked himself a couple of times; the blood matched the red wool of his tunic. That tradition went back more than two thousand years to the Spartans, who hadn’t wanted their clothing to betray their wounds. He dabbed at the nicks with a paper towel, then surveyed himself in the mirror. His eyes were redder than they should have been, the hollows under them deeper and darker, but he’d do.
The RAMs he encountered ostentatiously ignored his uniform as he made his way to the little kitchen not far from the duty desk. There he almost bumped into Samuel Stanley, who was fixing himself a spicy-smelling cup of Earl Grey. As an old friend, Stanley enjoyed - and took advantage of - the privilege of staring.
Bushell took a waxed cardboard cup and advanced on the coffeepot. He poured steaming coffee into the cup, drank it down hot and black and bitter. “All the rankers from Victoria are in their fancy dress, so I thought I’d match them,” he said. The explanation did not sound especially convincing, even to himself.
“Uh-huh,” Stanley said, which meant he hadn’t convinced his adjutant, either. Stanley went on, “Chief, you’re going to kill yourself if you spend all your time here, and you won’t do the case any good if you’re too worn to think straight.”
“I know,” Bushell said, “but I was so busy talking with the people from Victoria last night that time got away from me.” That was even true, though he didn’t mention what he and Patricia Oliver had been talking about. He went on, “I thought I’d get more rest here than by driving down to my flat and back.”
“Mm, maybe.” Samuel Stanley watched him gulp another cup of coffee. “However much rest you got, it wasn’t enough.”
“It’s never enough,” Bushell answered. “I’ll make it up after we have The Two Georges back.” When he said it, he believed it. By the way Samuel Stanley swallowed wrong and started coughing, he didn’t. After a moment, neither did Bushell. Something else would come up, and he’d push himself just as hard for that. And then there would be yet one thing more. . . . “If we don’t push ourselves every day, we don’t belong in this business.”
“Can’t argue with you there,” his adjutant conceded. He cocked an eyebrow at Bushell. “I suppose Lieutenant General Sir Horace Bragg and his band of merry men are certain they’ll have the case wrapped up in tinsel and string by about day after tomorrow? That’s the way it usually goes when they deign to come down from their mountain and do some real work.”
“You’re a cynical soul today,” Bushell said. “Anyone would think you were a police officer, or something similarly disreputable.” He and Samuel Stanley both laughed. The humor had a bitter edge to it, though, for Stanley had spoken unvarnished truth - and any police officer with more than a year on the job was steeped, indeed pickled, in cynicism. Learning what your fellow man was capable of all too often failed to endear him to you.
Stanley lowered his voice: “The other thing is, Chief, that if you say that too loud, somebody besides me will hear you.”
“Me? What about you, Sam? Why, if you weren’t dead right, I’d have to speak sharply to you about lack of proper respect for those illustrious enough to work out of Victoria.”
Bushell did not bother to keep his voice down. Sir Horace knew his views on the ivory tower - or perhaps the whited sepulcher made a better comparison - that was Victoria. And if Sir Horace hadn’t known them, Bushell wouldn’t have cared if he heard. His commandant had done him a favor in more ways than one in getting him out of the capital after his marriage so spectacularly collapsed. Samuel Stanley said, “Well, I’d better get back to it. And so had you, or the redcoats from Victoria will land on your back, knock you over, and kick you while you’re down.”
“It’s not the redcoats I worry about. After all, they’re policemen, too, after a fashion.” Bushell chuckled, both at his adjutant’s scandalized expression and his own wit, but he wasn’t more than half joking. He went on, “The ones who scare me are the politicos. They want the rabbit pulled out of the hat right away, and if the rabbit’s not there to begin with - ”He spread his hands, palms up.
“Watch yourself, Chief. That’s all.” Stanley hurried out of the little room. After a moment, Bushell left, too. He was only slightly surprised to find Sir Horace Bragg talking with the sergeant at the duty desk. Sir Horace might not have gone into the field for a good many years before this, but he worked hard at whatever he did. More than brilliance, dogged, unyielding persistence had got him the lieutenant general’s uniform he wore today.
He spotted Bushell in turn and hurried up to him. “Good morning, Tom. I was just asking your man there where I could get myself round a cuppa. I gather you had the same notion.”
“I just got myself round two coffees,” Bushell answered. “Now that I’ve topped up the boiler, I’m ready to hit the day head-on.”
“You’re ahead of me, then.” Bragg raised one of his bushy eyebrows. “In uniform, are you? Not on my account, I hope. Unless I’m no more senile than I think, I don’t recall you being much one for such fripperies. Or did you sleep in your office and put on the only fresh things you had?”
“Sir, you know me too well,” Bushell said with rueful admiration. “Tomorrow you’ll see me in civilian clothes again, I expect. You’d better, because if I’m still in uniform then, the sky will be falling.”
Without waiting for a reply, he bounded upstairs to his office. As long as he had the coffee surging in him, he intended to take advantage of the energy it lent. He tore through paperwork, then telephoned down to Gordon Rhodes to see if any fresh evidence or leads had come in while he snatched sleep. The call, unfortunately, proved a waste of time: Rhodes had heard nothing new. A RAM came into Bushell’s office and dumped the morning mail delivery onto his desk. He had a secretary next door, but made as little use of her services as he could: he was better at doing his job than at handing off parts of it for others to do. He rapidly sorted through the envelopes. Some went into the waste-paper basket unopened. Others got a quick skim and then joined them there. After a few minutes, only half a dozen items were left. He set them aside to be dealt with individually. One was from the New Liverpool constabulary, the detailed report on the autopsy of Honest Dick the Steamer King. Bushell glanced through it, then put it away for detailed consideration later - it didn’t offer any immediately obvious clues to the murderer’s identity.