A Man Condemned Read online

  A MAN CONDEMNED

  Roderic Jeffries

  © Roderic Jeffries 1981

  Roderic Jeffries has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This work was originally published under the pseudonym Peter Alding.

  First published in 1981 by John Long.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  All the characters and events portrayed in this story are fictitious.

  Chapter One

  The conference room at county HQ was one of the few graceful rooms in a building which, while attractive when seen from the outside, was mostly ugly on the inside.

  The assistant chief constable, in his late 50s, a grizzled man with the chunky face of a prizefighter, said: ‘Well, gentlemen, when all the talking’s done, that’s the size of the problem. We have to guarantee Jazeyeri’s safety.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ said Detective Inspector Fusil, not for the first time.

  The ACC squared up some papers and slipped these into a grey folder. ‘There’s no point in arguing. We’ve had this directive and that’s that.’ He stood. ‘Mr Jazeyeri is moving into Windleton Manor on the fifteenth of October, which means we have just over four months. I want the preliminary report on security on my desk in one month’s time.’ He picked up the folder. ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’ He left, his long, brisk strides taking him quickly out of the room.

  Menton, his thinly featured face set in lines of sharp irritation, snapped: ‘You should have understood from the beginning, Fusil, that the matter wasn’t open to discussion.’

  ‘If a thing’s impossible, sir, someone needs to point that out.’

  ‘Not under these present circumstances.’

  ‘I’d have thought . . .’

  ‘I said, the matter is not open to discussion.’

  Fusil, his mouth expressing a little of his feelings, turned and became very occupied with making a note on a sheet of paper. Menton, annoyed by Fusil’s curt way of bringing the conversation to an end on his own terms, but having the sense not to pursue the matter any further, nodded at Passmore and left.

  Superintendent Passmore and Fusil walked out of the room together and along to the stairs. Passmore chuckled. ‘You know, Bob, there’s one thing they forgot to teach you at training school—tact.’

  ‘There’s too much tact flying around. We can’t guarantee the man won’t be assassinated. Haven’t the authorities learned anything from the assassinations all over the world in the past few years?’

  ‘You’re missing the point. They know the situation as well as you, but they’re using their own language. What they’re really saying is, do your very best.’

  ‘Aren’t you missing the point? What they’re doing is covering themselves if anything goes wrong. On the desk of every good bureaucrat there’s a notice—the buck moves on from here.’

  They crossed the high entrance hall and went out of the front door, then round to the left to where Passmore’s car was parked beyond the vehicle inspection bays. The superintendent, becoming portly because his wife was a good cook, started the engine, backed, then turned on to the track which led round the building and through the main gateway to the road.

  Fusil settled back in his seat. ‘Have you any idea why such a fuss is being made about Jazeyeri? He’s obviously very wealthy, but we aren’t usually ordered to pay special regard to rich men just because they’re rich.’

  ‘I’ve an idea, thanks to a cousin who’s in oil. When the Shah was in power in Iran, Jazeyeri was one of the big wheeler-dealers in oil; his name cropped up a couple of times in that enquiry into sanction-busting in Rhodesia.’

  ‘If that’s the case, why’s the government now so concerned about what happens to him? Rather than that, you’d have thought they’d have refused him entry into the country.’

  ‘Nothing’s ever as simple as it looks. Britain was officially imposing sanctions, but there were reasons why this policy wasn’t readily acceptable, not least of which was the fact that at one time or another Russia, America, France, Germany, and for all one knows every other major producing country, surreptitiously traded with Rhodesia. So Britain, though a good United Nations member, allowed oil to be shipped through, having a regard to future trade after sanctions were lifted.’

  ‘Politics!’ said Fusil scornfully.

  ‘The art of the possible.’ Life had shown Passmore that there was a great deal to be said for learning such an art.

  ‘So I suppose that when the balloon went up and there was the revolution, Jazeyeri had to get moving. He put the black on the British government to have him in this country and protect him, or he’d tell the world the truth about the British?’

  ‘Put in its crudest terms . . . But yes, I imagine that’s more or less the way it’s gone.’

  They passed through the outskirts of Barstone and reached open countryside. Because of the past wet weather the corn was bright green, silage was still being made and grass intended for hay was lying in the fields, rotting: but kale and root-crops were growing strongly.

  Fusil took his pipe and tobacco-pouch from his coat pocket and began to pack the bowl. There was an easy friendship between the divisional superintendent and him which was never placed under strain by the fact that Fusil was the junior and that, at least nominally, CID came under Passmore’s overall command. ‘It seems from today’s conference that there’s very good reason for thinking someone will try to murder Jazeyeri.’ He struck a match and lit the tobacco; Passmore hastily opened his quarter-light. ‘Is that soley because he helped bust sanctions, or are there other reasons?’

  ‘Other reasons. He was a wheeler-dealer, with the powers and responsibilities usually restricted to ministers. A couple of years before the Shah was deposed there was a strike threat at the Tahiri oil-refinery. Jazeyeri needed the refined products to meet a multitude of contracts so he called in Savak to sort out the situation. The ringleaders were identified and arrested and that was the end of that strike. This cousin of mine happened to know one of the men who was arrested. Up until the revolution the man’s family had failed to discover what has happened to him . . . The wife just presumed she had become a widow.’

  ‘Jazeyeri sounds a nice kind of a bloke.’

  ‘I’ve heard of nicer,’ said Passmore dryly.

  Chapter Two

  Three men sat in the small, mean downstairs front room of one of the back-to-back houses in Canada Road in north Lewisham.

  ‘Everything is right?’ asked Ertl, in his laborious, heavily accented English.

  ‘Like I said, everything’s fine,’ replied Whitehead. He ran his fingers through his red hair which he wore too long for the shape of his face. ‘If I’m doing a job, it goes smooth.’ He spoked challengingly. Had he been less of a braggart and more self-honest, he might have admitted that in some way, which he wouldn’t readily define, Ertl disturbed him. It wasn’t fear, because he feared no one, but it was perhaps an instinctive acknowledgement that Ertl possessed the kind of steely indifference to co
nsequence which he so admired but would never possess.

  The third man, Cromartie, came to his feet. Physically, he and Whitehead were very different since he was built squarely, Whitehead whippily: they were almost as different in character—he was slow and careful, Whitehead was quick and reckless. ‘I’m movin’: seein’ a bird.’

  Ertl: ‘You will speak nothing to her?’

  It might have been just a question or it might also have been a threat. Whitehead would have resented it, Cromartie was apparently undisturbed by it. He leered. ‘I ain’t seein’ her for the talking.’

  Cromatie and Whitehead left together and Ertl settled in one of the chairs. Whitehead boasted too much and Cromartie was slow, but neither fault mattered in the coming job. And, come to that, he didn’t want them too smart . . .

  He lit a cigarette. The room he was in was small, dirty and damp. It made him remember, through the force of contrast, his old home with its large, airy rooms, all spotlessly clean . . . It was a long time now since his memory had drifted back to those days when he had lived with his parents . . .

  He had never known his father as other than smartly dressed, very prosperous, very complacent. But immediately after the war his father had experienced poverty and all its attendant humiliations and it was odd that far from the experience teaching him anything about life it had, when he became prosperous, merely reinforced his good opinion of himself . . . His mother believed in her husband and God. If she ever had to deny one of them, God would suffer.

  He’d gone to a socially conscious school where he’d mixed with boys from his own background. It had all seemed right and natural—weekend cottage in the country, summer holidays in the sun, winter holidays on the snow slopes . . .

  At eighteen he’d gone to Heidelberg University and there, through meeting people from other and very different backgrounds, he had come to believe that it was wrong for one person to enjoy luxury while another suffered penury and he had joined a left-wing group. When he had spoken at home about his new views on politics, his father had laughed and said that it was traditional for undergraduates to turn to socialism or Marxism while training for capitalism. He had had bitter arguments, not over his beliefs, but over the fact that his father had refused to take such beliefs seriously.

  Perhaps if Brigitte had not gone to the university in his second year his father would have been right to laugh. After all, somewhere lurking in the back of his mind there had always been the certainty that one day he also would own a spacious house with a large garden . . .

  Brigitte had had long blonde hair, an oval face, dark blue eyes and a mouth designed, built and equipped for passion. He’d never been certain about her background, because she’d steadfastly refused to discuss it, but he’d always believed it to be petit bourgeois. Her radical politics had contained all the fire which, he’d sometimes admitted to himself, he lacked: often she had jeered at him for being a man who mouthed words he didn’t truly believe. Then, one autumn afternoon, Rhodes had come to lecture their small group. Rhodes had used words as a blacksmith uses his forge, shaping in red heat. Brigitte had been overwhelmed by him. Indeed, following his further visits, there’d been a time when Ertl had been desperately jealous . . .

  Rhodes had proclaimed that words only took one so far, then there had to be action: only with force could the existing society be overthrown. He’d proposed a raid which would kidnap the state prosecutor who’d be held hostage for the liberty of three terrorists who had, a month earlier, hijacked an Israeli plane and murdered the crew. He might have been a brilliant orator, but he was a poor plotter. Ertl had told him that the raid, as proposed, hadn’t a chance in hell of succeeding. He had refused to listen but had called Ertl a coward and had persuaded Brigitte to promise that unless he joined in the raid she would leave him.

  Just about everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. Finally, Schmidt, the fourth member of their group that night, had panicked and had fired at a policeman from nine paces and, unbelievably, had missed. The policeman had returned the fire. Schmidt and Rhodes had been the first to run. Perhaps Rhodes had been remembering the old saw that he who fights and runs away . . .

  Ertl hadn’t known Brigitte had been hit until they reached their car and drove away, frantically trying to get clear of the area before the police could set up roadblocks. Then she had said it was only a superficial wound and didn’t hurt. But when they’d reached the outskirts of the Sarden forest she’d begun to moan and he stopped the car. In the light of a torch he’d seen the blood . . . He’d tried to move her into a more comfortable position before turning round and making for the nearest hospital, despite the consequences, but she’d shrieked and had gone on shrieking until she died, a few minutes later, soaking him with her blood . . .

  His grief had been bitter: so bitter that he had sworn to revenge himself on the society which had killed her. Ironically, her death had lit within him the fires of a fanaticism which not even she had been able to spark while alive . . .

  Ertl left the chair and stretched. Because she had died, within the cover of an ancient oak in the Sarden forest, Jazeyeri, condemned in his absence, was going to die, no matter how desperately he tried to stave off his fate . . .

  Chapter Three

  Miss Wagner came into Fusil’s office after knocking on the door as she always did, although Fusil had told her a hundred times not to bother. In her late middle-age, she was becoming more determinedly stubborn than ever. ‘Good morning, Mr Fusil. I have had Mr Menton on the phone, wanting to know if we’ve sent him the papers in the Parsons case.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I believe he hoped to receive them before now.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘I promised to get back on to his office. What shall I say?’

  ‘Anything that’ll calm him down.’

  She sniffed, to show her displeasure.

  She was, he thought, efficient, thoughtful and a hundred and one per cent faithful: which meant she was also tyranical.

  Detective Constable Kerr, his brown, curly hair in its usual state of disarray, hurried into the room and said cheerfully: ‘I’ve just had C division on the blower, sir. They’ve put in for two witness statements which they need p.d.q.’

  ‘Fit ’em in as best as you can, but don’t break yourself doing them: C division always shout louder than they need.’ He studied Kerr. ‘But that isn’t an excuse for leaving ’em until next week.’

  ‘Of course not, sir.’

  ‘Has any crime come in since the night list was posted?’

  ‘Only a breaking-and-entering from one of the weekend cottages down by the cliffs. Sounds more like youngsters than anyone else.’

  ‘Who’s going to it?’

  ‘Yarrow’s another job out that way and he says he’ll have a scout around.’

  Fusil could remember when every breaking-and-entering was treated as a major crime and therefore investigated thoroughly; but over the past few years the amount of all crime had increased to such an extent that with undermanned police forces only some of the breaking-and-enterings could now be properly investigated. Yet every time a youngster got away with a theft, he learned to hold the law in greater disrespect . . .

  ‘By the way, sir, the darts team won.’

  ‘Keep it up and you’ll end as champions.’ He watched Kerr leave and not for the first time wondered whether he had ever been able to take life quite so casually as Kerr seemed to.

  Miss Wagner coughed. ‘I think Mr Menton is expecting to receive those papers by tomorrow at the latest.’

  ‘They’re not urgent and I haven’t the time.’

  ‘I’ve put the folder on your desk, just there.’ She pointed.

  He swore.

  ‘Perhaps if I come back and get them just before lunch?’ She smiled, showing an over-generous amount of teeth, and left.

  He stared at the folder. Menton was a stickler for carrying out all procedures as laid down in the book, but an appreciable amount of pap
erwork could have been done away with if only he had been ready to cut even a few corners . . . Fusil dropped that unhelpful line of thought. If experience had taught him anything, it was that middle-aged detective chief superintendents did not change their characters.

  He reread the night crime list. Three breaking-and-enterings, four cars stolen and not yet recovered, a couple of fights down at the docks, a domestic assault and battery with the brutally injured wife refusing to press charges, a spate of muggings between ten and midnight, an unusually high number of drunk-and-disorderlies, a missing girl of sixteen, a bad hit-and-run, an attempted suicide . . . Sometimes it was difficult to remember that for the majority of people the world was a reasonably orderly place.

  *

  It was a quarter to eleven and the armoured truck was due within the next quarter of an hour to collect the wages, which would have been counted out and put on one side to be exchanged for the requisition note.

  Ertl looked through the window of the parked Jaguar, stolen early that morning in south Wandsworth. The high street was not very busy: there was plenty of room on the pavements, the supermarket had only a few customers in it and the dress-shop to the right of the bank was empty. People in crowds tended to notice less than people with plenty of space around themselves . . .

  Whitehead unwrapped a fresh stick of chewing-gum, scrumpled up the wrapping-paper and put it into the right hand pocket of his dark blue overalls to avoid leaving traces. ‘It’s coming up to ten to.’ His voice sounded dry, despite his constant chewing, but then most men suffered some physical peculiarity on a job.

  ‘There’s a copper coming up the street,’ said Cromartie, who was keeping watch on the opposite pavement.

  Neither Whitehead nor Ertl made the mistake of turning to look.

  ‘He’s moving past the bank.’

  Barclays Bank was two doors down from the cinema and the Midland Bank was fifty yards further on; since there were three banks in a short stretch of the high street, Ertle was contemptuously surprised that the police didn’t keep a much better watch, especially as this was a Friday when most firms collected wages.