Murder, London--South Africa Page 3

  “Some trouble over a packet of industrial diamonds. Customs wants me. Sorry.”

  He nodded to Roger and Jameson and went out. As the door closed, a man said, “Editorial,” into Roger’s left ear, and Jameson spoke quite urgently into his right.

  “Excuse me, Superintendent.”

  “This is Superintendent West of New Scotland Yard,” Roger said into the telephone. “Ask Mr Soames or his deputy to speak to me urgently, please.”

  He covered the mouthpiece with his hand and looked up at the South African. “What was that?”

  “If it was Mr Van der Lunn on that aircraft, sir, he was behaving in a most unusual manner.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr Van der Lunn does not like staying in aeroplanes if he can avoid it. He is a restless passenger, and whenever he has a chance to leave the aircraft, he does so. I would not like to be sure it was Mr Van der Lunn.”

  “Nice point,” Roger said. He heard the newspaperman’s voice, and added quickly, “Check with Klemm, will you? Keep it under our hats for the time being . . . Mr Soames? . . . I’m fine, thanks, but with a bit of a problem on my hands . . . yes, I would feel funny without one, wouldn’t I?” he laughed mechanically, thinking of Jameson’s doubts about the identity of the man on the aircraft. “As a matter of fact one of your men might be able to help us, and I’d like to get in touch with him.”

  He knew that Soames was a kind of one-man-band at The Globe, one of the old type of Fleet Street editor whose chief fault was reluctance to delegate any real authority; but he was known to have the fierce loyalty of his staff.

  “Who d’you want?” he asked.

  “Nightingale.”

  The silence which followed surprised Roger, for Soames was not one to hesitate. The delay went on for so long that Roger wondered if they had been cut off. The other two were whispering together by the window, Klemm’s black glossy hair gleaming in the light, Jameson’s a mass of small, tight curls, reflecting nothing.

  “What do you know about Nightingale?” demanded Soames, abruptly.

  “I’m asking you where he is.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  Roger was tempted to ask the editor to stop stalling, then realised that there must be a strong reason for his attitude, so he answered mildly, “No, I don’t. He was at London Airport on Monday afternoon, and I’m looking for a man who came off a plane and hasn’t been heard of since. I thought Nightingale might be able to help; he keeps his eyes open.”

  “He hasn’t been heard of since,” Soames echoed.

  “That’s right.”

  “I mean Nightingale.”

  “Nightingale what?”

  “Hasn’t been heard of since.” Soames sounded very gruff.

  This time it was Roger’s turn to be reduced to silence. Although he understood what the other man had said, it was almost impossible to credit it. He shifted his position so that he could squat on the corner of the desk, and asked, “Do you mean he really hasn’t been seen and hasn’t reported since he came to the airport?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “And you don’t know where he is?”

  “I don’t. West, what makes you want to talk to him?” Now there was an anxious note in the editor’s voice. “Don’t give me that stuff about wondering if he happened to notice anything.”

  “How long are you going to be at your office?” asked Roger.

  “Until after midnight.”

  “May I come and talk about this?”

  “Whenever you like.”

  “If Nightingale shows up, send a message to the Yard, will you?”

  “Yes. Can’t you give me a clue?”

  “I’ve a missing man to find, and so have you. I didn’t know of any connection before and I don’t now, but obviously there could be. What job was Nightingale covering?”

  “Diamond smuggling,” answered The Globe editor promptly. “I don’t know whether you’ve been told about it, but a lot of industrial diamonds are being smuggled out of South Africa. They’re sold to big users in various countries, at cut prices – and a lot of them are then stolen from the buyers, who can’t do much about it because they’ve bought diamonds they know have been stolen. Did you know about this?”

  “I knew some had been stolen in New York and Amsterdam,” said Roger. “We’ve been asked to keep our eyes open.”

  He had little doubt that Hammerton was on that investigation now. “How many countries are involved to your knowledge?”

  “Seven.”

  Roger hoped that he showed no sign of the shock that total gave him; in fact, the Yard knew very little about this racket.

  “Wheels within wheels,” Soames went on. “Nightingale has been on the story for several weeks. Is that what your man was involved in?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Roger said. “I’ll come straight up to your office.”

  “Don’t let anyone see you or I’ll have half my staff trying to sell me a story of crime inside The Globe,” said Soames.

  He rang off.

  Jameson and Klemm had finished talking, so Roger had to push this new development to the back of his mind, and consider Jameson’s theory, that the man at the airport had not been Van der Lunn. At least Hammerton wasn’t back yet. He had been called out by Customs officers about industrial diamonds, and that seemed too much for coincidence. Why did one always think of South Africa when thinking of diamonds? He mustn’t forget that Soames didn’t. Seven countries. He watched the alert face of the African and the sallow face of Klemm. There was something in common between them, a kind of restrained eagerness.

  “Let’s have it,” Roger said.

  “Everything I know about Mr Van der Lunn contradicts what we have been told about the passenger,” insisted Jameson. “I think it is certain that if it was Mr Van der Lunn, then he was sick. Inspector Klemm thinks perhaps it would be a good idea if we were to question the crew of the aircraft and show them a better photograph of Mr Van der Lunn. We are not likely to be able to interview them again for some days.”

  “Unless you’d like to do it yourself now,” Klemm said.

  “Jameson knows a lot more about it than I do. Have a go at them,” Roger agreed. “Don’t forget that one of them might have seen the passenger get off – the fact that the stewardess and the second pilot didn’t, doesn’t mean a thing. Klemm, you know Nightingale of The Globe, don’t you?”

  “I know what a long nose he’s got.”

  “He’s missing, too,” said Roger. “And since the night that Mr Van der Lunn was last seen. Thread him into the questions – the crew probably knew him. He was chasing a story on stolen and smuggled industrial diamonds – any possibility that Van der Lunn might know anything about such diamonds, Lieutenant?”

  “He would know something, yes. He is a director of de Beers, and he also owns a small mine which he inherited from his father. It is an independent producing mine, but sells only to de Beers, the diamond monopoly. Also he surveys for blue dirt as well as all kinds of minerals such as oil, uranium, gold, platinum, and copper. He would not smuggle or deal in stolen diamonds. He is a very wealthy man, but . . .” Jameson broke off. “It is very interesting indeed, Superintendent.”

  “When you’re sure you’ve done all you can here, get back to the Yard,” Roger said. “Don’t report to South Africa House until we’ve been able to talk things over.”

  He gave the lieutenant a reassuring smile as he went towards the door. As he reached it, it opened and Hammerton came in, obviously not pleased.

  “Found anything?” Roger asked.

  “Sand where there should have been diamonds – can’t do very much with a man who’s got two small wash-leather bags full of sand rolled up in his pyjamas and a pair of socks, though, can you?” Seeing Roger’s expression
, he added hastily, “Don’t worry, we know the chap, and I’m having him followed. Queer thing, though.”

  “What is?”

  “We get a lot of whispers about diamonds being brought into the country, but never find any. We’ve had a lot of near misses like this one. You know we’re on the lookout for packets being smuggled from New York and Amsterdam, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  ‘And five other countries,’ thought Roger.

  “Where are you off to?” asked Hammerton.

  “I’m going back to town,” Roger answered. “Jameson and Klemm are going to talk to the crew, and there’s a job you can do for me if you will.”

  “What is it?”

  “Let me know all you can about a Globe reporter named Nightingale,” Roger said. “How often he’s been here, who he talks to, whether he meets any special planes, anything you can dig up – including whether he has any colleagues working on the airfield with him. Think you might have some word for me by eight o’clock tonight?”

  “I’ll try to,” said Hammerton. “I never did like Nightingale. I hope he’s got himself into trouble.”

  Roger was very thoughtful on his way back to the Yard. Butterworth, the Detective Superintendent who knew more about the ways of diamond thieves than anyone else in the Yard, was out on a job, but a Chief Inspector who often worked with him reported that no official requests for help over diamonds had been made except from New York and Amsterdam.

  “Industrial and small diamonds are known to have been stolen in small parcels from Paris, Bangkok, West Berlin, and Madrid, though. We haven’t been asked for help.”

  So the Yard did know more than he, Roger, had realised; that was cheering.

  Roger left for Fleet Street almost at once.

  4

  THE EDITOR DECIDES

  The Strand, with the Law Courts towering on the left, stretched almost empty of cars towards Fleet Street, where the road narrowed and the buildings on either side became massive and modern giants towering over the midgets of the past. Newspaper headlines and newspaper names seemed to be on every hoarding and every window. Six huge red buses in a row came tearing down from Ludgate Circus as Roger’s car swung to cross the road; the driver was going to do a U-turn. ‘Police cars can do anything,’ the cynics would complain, but this wasn’t marked as a police car. The driver pulled skilfully behind the end bus and stopped almost directly outside the office of The Globe. A pale-faced policeman came strolling along, as if he had all the time in the world, the words, ‘May I see your licence?’ on his lips. The driver got out, winked at him, and opened the door for Roger. The policeman began to stare thoughtfully across the road.

  The Globe was not only London’s oldest daily newspaper, it was housed in London’s oldest newspaper building, a Victorian relic of which a lot of people were proud and about which a few were sentimental. Inside was a panelled hall, scratched and worn, leading to passages, lifts, small boys waiting to run errands, old commissionaires who looked as if they were waiting to die. Roger slipped into an open grille lift which was about to close; the lift-man nodded, as if he were weary of going up and down, up and down. A small, greasy-haired boy with some envelopes and a middle-aged woman with dyed red hair and too much make-up both got out on the floor marked ‘Advertisements.’

  “Editorial, please,” Roger said.

  Editorial was a maze of passages created by wooden partitions which hid most of the workers from sight, but did not keep out the noise. Typewriters clattered with urgent speed, teletype machines ticked their gossip, a dozen telephone bells seemed to be ringing on a muted note, dozens of people were talking at the same time. One man kept saying, “Speak up, can’t hear you . . . speak up . . . speak up!”

  All this noise floated over the tops of the partition walls, but at the far end of a passage some offices were completely walled off. One of the doors was marked, ‘Editor.’ Roger went in. An unexpected beauty of a girl, charming as a Mayfair model, elegant but not sleek, with a smile which was bright but not forced or brazen, looked up at him from a desk.

  “Mr West?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr Soames would like you to go in at once,” she said. She stood up from her desk, which was quite large and tidy, although there were a lot of papers on it, including copies of the evening’s newspapers and some of that very morning’s. She went to a communicating door, and it would have been impossible not to notice her legs, beautiful legs, and the way her dress gave subtle emphasis to her figure. She opened the door, called “Mr West” to an unseen occupant, and stood aside for Roger to enter. They had to pass very closely, and their bodies touched. Roger did not recognise the perfume which she used, but it had a rare, almost heady quality.

  Soames was at his huge square desk, a mountain of a desk on which newspapers, letters, proofs, and oddments of copy-paper made the snow on the peaks, and the ink-stands, ashtrays, telephones, bottles, glasses, teapot, milk-jug, and cups made the foothills. He half-rose from a big old-fashioned swivel-chair, a rugged and chunky man in his sixties, with a lot of grizzled hair and a stubble of yesterday’s beard in the deep crevices of his face. He had shaggy eyebrows and the deepest of deep blue, penetrating eyes.

  He stretched out his hands, gripped, and dropped back into his chair.

  “Not a day older,” he almost jeered. “Still the Yard’s glamour boy, I see.”

  “Still the same peculiar sense of humour,” Roger retorted, sitting on a chair placed comfortably for him. The girl had gone out. “What’s this about Nightingale?”

  “And still on the ball. Who’s going to give first – you or me?”

  “Off the record?” asked Roger.

  “Must it be?”

  “Absolutely, for the time being.”

  “I’m not going to like that,” complained Soames.

  “Then let’s just talk about Nightingale,” Roger said. “He was after smugglers of industrial diamonds, expected to find someone on that plane, presumably went after them, and didn’t come back. So he could be still on the trail or he could have met with an accident.”

  “Right,” Soames confirmed. “You win. Off the record, what’s going on?”

  “Do you know a man named Paul Van der Lunn?” asked Roger.

  Soames shifted back in his chair, and seemed to settle into it as awkwardly as a huge piece of granite. He had a prominent jaw, which jutted just now. He gripped the padded arms of his chair and his fingers began to knead the worn red leather.

  “The director of the Afra Mining Company?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it was him,” said Soames. He breathed out through his nostrils, as if trying to pretend that he was some dragon whose belly was filled with fire and brimstone. “I should never have agreed to keeping this off the record. Nightingale telephoned from the airport – that was the last thing we heard of him. He said he thought Van der Lunn was on the plane, but couldn’t be sure. He went after someone else, and I checked to find out if Van der Lunn was in town. We asked South Africa House, asked the London office of the Afra Mining Company, and asked the news agencies who had been at London Airport. Each time the answer was the same – no. But it was him.”

  “Wasn’t Nightingale positive enough?”

  “Nothing is sure enough for us except absolute proof.”

  “Did Nightingale speak to you about Van der Lunn?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do I have to use a hammer and chisel to get the story out of you?” demanded Roger.

  “You could try telling me why you’re interested.”

  “All right,” said Roger, promptly. “Van der Lunn was travelling under an assumed name – Lewis. He started out on the plane from Johannesburg as far as we can tell, and was supposed to have disembarked at London Airport. He wasn’t seen afterwards. We’ve checked closel
y, and there’s some doubt as to whether it was Van der Lunn. He didn’t behave like himself, and, if it was him, then he was either ill or frightened – we don’t know which.”

  Roger paused. But as Soames simply waited, those deep, deep-set eyes unwinking, he went on. “South Africa House made preliminary inquiries, got nowhere, and called us in. The job was handed to me by Hardy from the Commissioner, and I was ordered to make sure that it was kept secret. Do you know du Toit of South Africa House?”

  “Slightly.”

  “What’s his reputation?”

  “He’s okay.”

  “He convinced me that there are good reasons for secrecy so a, I’m under Home Office orders to say nothing, and b, I’m sure that it’s right to say nothing.”

  “So don’t let me do anything to make you change your mind,” retorted Soames drily. After a long pause, he went on, “You were going to ask me something.”

  Roger thought back, and at the same time reflected how much he liked this man, that Soames’ reputation was at least as good as du Toit’s, and that Soames’ political convictions as well as the editorial slant of his newspaper were anti-South African, or perhaps, more accurately, anti-Apartheid.

  “I was going to ask what Nightingale said about Van der Lunn and also what else he said.”

  “He told me that he thought this passenger was Van der Lunn,” declared Soames, “He also said that he stood by at Customs and learned that Van der Lunn was travelling with a passport in the name of Lewis. That this made it seem even more likely that there was a story in it for us. Did I want him to follow his nose and go after Van der Lunn, or did I want him to stay with the industrial diamonds job? He knew that I would always like to get in first on anything which might have a political slant on Anglo-South African relationship, so he gave me the chance. But he really wanted to find the truth about those diamonds. He’s been on that particular job for over six months, and it’s become almost an obsession with him. A lot of parcels of diamonds, mostly industrial or for costume pieces and bought illegally, are being stolen from many parts of the world. From South Africa, Amsterdam, New York—”