The Whip Hand Read online

  The Whip Hand

  A REX CARVER MYSTERY

  VICTOR CANNING

  CHAPTER ONE

  NEVER REFUSE A KIPPER

  I had my feet up on the desk, smoking and staring at the far wall, going over in my mind the horses for the first race at Kempton Park that day, when my secretary came in.

  Hilda Wilkins, spinster, forty-three, living at 20 Circus Street, Greenwich, with her father, a retired ship’s steward, was efficient, intelligent, unattractive, and always right – a splendid secretary, but a non-starter for a gay night on the town. We had a reasonable dislike of each other, and got on fine.

  “Ring Duke’s,” I said, “and put a fiver on Moorwen. First race Kempton. What are you doing?”

  “Larkspur.”

  I gave her a little pitying smile. Of course, Larkspur came up that afternoon.

  She put a card on the desk, and said, “The bank telephoned. I said you were out.”

  I nodded. No matter how much money I made, and from time to time I made a lot, I never seemed to shake off an overdraft that was a constant worry to Wilkins.

  I picked up the card. The edges of the pasteboard were lined with gold leaf. It said – Hans Stebelson, Cologne. A good, big address.

  “He’s waiting to see you,” said Wilkins.

  I could tell from the tone of her voice that she didn’t like him. But that was no surprise. There were few people who came into the outer office of whom Wilkins approved.

  “How do you read him?” I asked her.

  She paused for a moment, silently shuffling the categories into order, and then said, “He looks prosperous. But he’s not a gentleman. There’s something flashy about him. Perhaps a little common. He’s not worried – like most of them. I’ve had him there for ten minutes and he hasn’t fidgeted once. His English is better than yours – except when you want to make an impression.”

  She wasn’t giving me everything. She always kept a little something back to toss from the door as she went out. She was a snob, of course – particularly about clothes and education. A made-up bow tie could give her a headache for a day, and the one thing she disliked most about me was that I had gone to a provincial grammar school in Devon.

  “Divorce?”

  “No. I asked.”

  She always did because she knew it was something I never touched.

  “Wheel him in.”

  She got as far as the door, and then turned and looked at me. She had a habit, just before she tossed anything at me, of raising her right hand and tucking her hair back a bit over her right ear. Her hair was red, a kind of dirty rust, and she had the bluest, most honest eyes in the world. Although I could never imagine myself in bed with her, I knew she was a treasure.

  “I have a feeling,” she said primly, “that whatever it is, you ought to say no.”

  “You have a twenty-five per cent interest in this business, Wilkins. I own the rest and make the decisions.” I’d never called her Hilda in my life, and never would.

  Hans Stebelson was a big, fleshy man, with an enormously round, overgrown, unsmiling baby face. His eyes might have been made of brown plastic – and they would certainly never know tears. He sat down bulkily and made the chair creak, and he looked calm and monolithic. He wore a dark-brown suit, probably Italian, and a thin strip of knotted tie against a silk shirt, the tie held by a little gold clip shaped like a hand. He had a gold signet ring, and a fat gold watch on his wrist which was probably nuclear proof and must have set him back a couple of hundred guineas. There were two gold-topped fountain pens stuck in his outside breast pocket, which must have made Wilkins wince.

  He rested a large, dough-coloured, regularly manicured hand on my desk and said, “I’m over from Cologne for a while, and I want you to find a girl for me.” His brown eyes dared me to misinterpret this, and he went on, “She’s a German girl who came over here on an au pair job. But she gave that up and went to Brighton. At least she sends cards from there to my sister in Cologne.”

  “No address, of course?”

  “No address.”

  I wondered if they were the usual kind of cards people send from Brighton.

  “Is she a friend of your sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why no address?”

  “Because she doesn’t want me to know where she is.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her father and mother – they’re both dead now – did me many kindnesses when I was young. I feel like an elder brother towards her and try to keep an eye on her. She’s headstrong, irresponsible. But she resents any interference from me.”

  I said, “What’s her name?”

  “Katerina Saxmann. She’s a blonde, about twenty-two years old. Very attractive. Blue eyes. She came over from Cologne last March. She speaks English, French and some Italian.”

  “And what does she do in Brighton?”

  “I don’t know. Some job – because she writes to my sister that every morning before work she takes a walk on the pier.”

  “In that case it wouldn’t be very hard for you to find her yourself.”

  “Maybe, but the moment she saw me she would move on. I would prefer just to know where she is and what sort of life she’s leading.”

  It sounded very straightforward, but then it always did when they had decided not to tell you the truth. But the trouble in this game was to spot when they had decided not to tell the truth. For the moment I was not committing myself.

  I said, “Where are you staying?”

  “Brown’s Hotel.”

  “What sort of trouble do you imagine this girl could get into?”

  He shrugged his big shoulders. “God knows. She’s young, headstrong, adventurous, a big appetite for living. She thinks she can look after herself. We all do at that age. I just want an eye kept on her for a while. Then, when I know what kind of life she’s leading, I can make a decision. She could be sent back to Germany for breaking her au pair contract, no?”

  I shrugged my not-so-big shoulders non-committally, and then, deliberately pitching it high, said, “The preliminary work would cost you a hundred pounds, plus expenses. Money in advance. This kind of job takes up a lot of time. Half the fee returned if I’m unsuccessful, but the expenses stand.”

  Money talk usually sorted them out. Without hesitation, he took out a gold-tipped wallet, eight months’ pregnant, and counted out twenty five-pound notes, recounted them, and passed them to me and, to show perhaps that he was reading me as I read him, he said, “This assignment is perfectly legitimate.”

  “Who recommended you to come to me?”

  He hesitated and made no effort to cover it. Then with a slight convulsion of the gross baby face which I took for a smile, he said, “I work for a very big international organization. My chairman – who knows of my concern for this girl – suggested you. Not that he knows you. But he has a friend called Manston who told him that you were the best in London.”

  I didn’t even let an eyelid flicker. But if this Stebelson touched even remotely the edges of Manston’s world then I knew that I hadn’t overcharged him.

  After I had ushered him through into the outer office for Wilkins to see out, I went back to my desk.

  Manston could have recommended me, maybe. But I didn’t see it. I’d worked with him a few times, but not on anything which got publicity.

  So, just to make sure, on what could, after all, be quite a simple job, I called a man I knew at the Yard and said Katerina Saxmann and Hans Stebelson to him. Unless it was vital I always liked to keep on the right side of the boys and, when I couldn’t, I always tried to be polite about it. I called them or they called me. Friendly. But it only needed one step out of line to prove just how deep friendship with the law could be. Deep,
deep and far under. And that was only the law. Beyond the law, you could go deeper still, deep and dark, down below the anemone and coral line where the big security sharks lurked. Down there they’ve never heard of friendship. Some of them screened their own wives before they kissed them goodnight.

  This man said no to both Katerina Saxmann and Hans Stebelson. That was at five o’clock.

  Five minutes later I left. I stopped in the outer office. Wilkins was sitting behind her typewriter, darning one of her father’s socks.

  I said, “I know it’s high season, so I’ll bet you five pounds that you can’t get me a room at the Albion, Brighton – overlooking the entrance to the pier. For tonight and maybe a few more.”

  She nodded, raised the sock to her mouth and bit off the end of the wool to free her needle.

  “Phone me at the flat.”

  She nodded again.

  I went down the stairs and stood in the doorway, looking out into Northumberland Avenue. A girl went by in a summer frock, and there was a long ladder in the back of her right stocking. Two pigeons, doing a courtship display in the middle of the road, made a Ford Consul slow almost to a stop. From the angry movement of the driver’s lips I could tell that he didn’t think it was love that made the world go round. The dropping sun winked redly on my brass plate, which said – Carver and Wilkins. It had just been Carver until, in a bad year just after I’d begun, Wilkins had insisted on emptying the old tea-caddy on the mantelshelf in Circus Street and coming to the rescue – with a look in her eyes which had dared me to show even a two-second flash of gratitude. Without saying anything to her I had had the plate changed.

  I went down to Miggs’s place for a half-hour workout. Behind his garage, Miggs had a small gymnasium. It was a couple of guineas a session – dear – but a lot of people went. Miggs had been a sergeant in the Commandos. I had a pint with him afterwards and then got the tube home.

  Home was a flat near the Tate Gallery: a bedroom, sitting-room, bathroom and kitchen, nicely, and expensively for the most part, furnished, but somehow always damned untidy. From the sitting-room window I could see the river.

  It was a quarter past six when I opened the door.

  He was sitting in my deep club armchair, wearing a raincoat, and holding a glass of my whisky and soda in his hand, but having the decency to smoke his own cigarettes. I never asked him how he got in. Doors don’t present any problems to them. He was new to me.

  I said, “Nice evening,” and went and fixed myself a whisky and soda.

  He said, “Feels like thunder to me.”

  I went to the window and looked out. It was a warm evening and a light breeze brought me a tangy whiff of river mud and petrol exhaust. The tide was running up and three barges went by low in the water, like sodden black sausages. So far as I could see, he hadn’t got anyone parked outside. I sat on the window-seat and lit a cigarette.

  Blowing smoke, like a goldfish breathing, I said, “Well?”

  He said, “If Manston hadn’t been on holiday, they would have sent him.”

  “Nice of them.” But I knew they would never have sent Manston. He didn’t run errands.

  “He’s got a high regard for you. In fact, the whole Department has – so I’m told.”

  “Told?”

  “I don’t run with them normally.”

  He yawned, flicked ash at a cigarette tray and missed it, and then with a coy look said, “Stebelson.”

  I said, “The liaison has been tightened up. I only phoned the Yard at five. I suppose that’s the result of the recent stink about co-operation between police and security. I’m glad to see it.”

  “Stebelson,” he repeated.

  Now, in my business, nothing is given free. Everything has a price. If they want to put the screws on they can. But they usually wait until they get really annoyed. That’s the weakness of the whole system. They wait until they see red and then it’s often too late.

  I said, “Property recovery. He had certain things nicked from him in a night club, and he doesn’t want any publicity. Recovery is a speciality of mine.”

  “Oh, yes. They told me that, too.”

  “He’s from Cologne. Staying at Brown’s. Has a fancy line in cards.”

  I flicked Stebelson’s card across to him and he caught it as it skimmed through the air.

  His eyes on the card, he said, “It wouldn’t be ethical to ask you what the property was?”

  “No.”

  “What has Katerina Saxmann got to do with it?” His eyes were up and on me, going right through to the back of my head.

  “She was,” I lied, “a girl he met in the club. He was none too sure that he’d got her name right. Bit tight at the time. Any more? If there is, you can come and help me scramble the eggs, and we’ll open a very cheap bottle of Spanish white wine.”

  He shook his head. “Some other time. No, there’s no more, except—”

  I waited and then gave him his cue. “Except what?”

  “Except that you won’t mind if I call and have the occasional chat? Just to keep in touch. Nothing official. Just informal.”

  “Do. I’m a great one for informality.”

  “Fine.”

  He stood up and moved to the door. When he put his fingers on the handle and half turned to me I knew he was going to do a Wilkins.

  “They tell me,” he said, “that they gave you a chance to come in once. Why’d you refuse?”

  “I like being alone and making my own working hours. You know, take the odd day off to go fishing.”

  He nodded. “I should watch the fishing. You could end up in the river.” He winked and then was gone.

  I opened the door after him and heard him go down the stairs. From the window I checked him across the street. He turned the corner without looking back and that was fair enough because if they were going to watch me somebody else would take over from there.

  Five minutes later Wilkins called.

  She said, “You owe me five pounds.”

  “Take it out of the petty cash and charge it to Stebelson. Expenses.”

  I cleared the line and then called Miggs.

  I said, “I want something posh. Tonight at seven. Sloane Square.”

  He grumbled, which with Miggs is a lot of bad language, but promised. After that I scrambled some eggs and drank a glass of milk with them. Then I pulled my sitting-room curtains almost over and switched on the light. I packed a case and went into the bathroom, leaving the sitting-room light on. I dropped the case through the window and followed it. It wasn’t the garden of my house. It was the garden next door and their front door opened round the corner of the street. I walked in through the kitchen, where Mrs Meld was cooking kippers for her husband’s supper. He was hunched in a stupor on a hard chair watching television, completely transfixed.

  Mrs Meld said, “Evening, Mr Carver. Off somewhere?”

  “A whiff of sea air, Mrs Meld,” I said. “The fancy just took me.”

  “And why not, seeing as you’re single and fancy free? Have a kipper first?”

  “Not tonight.”

  She took the pound note I handed to her, winked at me and, as I passed through, called, “It’s always nice to see you, Mr Carver, even when we ain’t supposed to.” She said it every time and her laugh followed me out of the front door.

  A taxi dropped me in Sloane Square. A few minutes later I was crossing the river on my way to Brighton. Miggs had got me a cream-coloured Jaguar. Very posh. Brighton lay ahead. If only I’d known then that I would have been a happier man if I’d stayed and shared Mr Meld’s kippers....

  CHAPTER TWO

  GIRL ON THE PIER

  I was up at six o’clock the next morning, sitting at my window in the Albion, watching the entrance to the pier. There were few people about. By nine o’clock I hadn’t seen any girl go on to the pier by herself, or a girl who might fit the description I had of Katerina Saxmann.

  During the morning I telephoned Wilkins.

  I
said, “Anything interesting turned up yet?”

  “They,” she said, “phoned and asked for you. Wanted to know where you are.”

  “And you said?”

  “That you’d probably gone racing for the day.”

  “Good.”

  “Is it?”

  “I’ve a feeling – yes. Why should a man hand over a hundred pounds for a simple job like that? Where there’s a hundred, there’s more. Remember the bank manager.”

  “You’re too naïve about money and men.”

  I could not think of an answer to that one so I hung up and went for a walk along the front, and tried three or four coffee-bars. Then I spent half an hour in the Aquarium before lunch and had a few minutes’ staring match with a gigantic conger eel. I slept after lunch and frittered the rest of the day away. I can sleep and fritter the best of days away. It’s one of the qualifications for my profession and it saves the feet.

  She was there at half-past eight the following morning. She came along the promenade from the direction of Hove. It was a fresh morning, the wind coming up Channel, the tide well in, and the waves gargling along the long line of pebble beach. She was bare-headed, her long blonde hair falling loose about her neck. She had her hands in the pockets of an open coat. I kept my glasses on her until she went through the pier turnstile, and then I went out after her.

  I was sharply dressed for the part, young man on holiday, well-heeled and looking for company.

  I found her at the far end of the pier, behind the pavilion where the early-morning anglers had their rods propped against the rails, lines streaming away into the green and yellow curd of water, and little bells at the rod tips, waiting to ring when the cod or bream or flounders or whatever it was they hoped to catch gave the signal for hauling in. There was a mess of baskets, tins, and untidy gear along the boards, and nobody spoke to anybody else.

  She was leaning over the rail, staring out at the smoke trail of some ship on the horizon. I leaned over the rail a couple of yards from her and stared at the smoke trail too. Then I lit a cigarette and half turned, watching a man beyond preparing to make a cast. She paid no attention to me. She was a biggish girl but there was nothing out of proportion. Her profile was good and she had a long, generous mouth and her skin was sun-brown, the kind that made me want to put out a finger-tip and touch it. I put her through all the tests: bikini, baggy old sweater and trousers, and lying on a bed with her violet eyes half shut. She came out with full marks. I knew I was going to be disappointed if this was not Katerina Saxmann.