Odd though. Joe usually warned him when he was going to be away from home overnight. He’d snatch up the weekend bag he always kept at the ready behind his door and go whistling off. He was fanatical about his security and Alfred enjoyed playing the role of guard dog. When he was at home, no one got near his young tenant, and Alfred was usually at home. A tough and uncompromising man, the scars of the bullet wounds that had brought about his early retirement from the Met were not visible but somehow they were perceptible to those who needed to be intimidated. He was very familiar with police life and London crime. He knew most villains respected the sanctity of a copper’s home life in an old-fashioned way, but at the elevated level where Sandilands worked, the villains were of a different order. Alfred suspected that the assistant commissioner’s name appeared, scrawled in chalk, on certain high security cell walls in Wormwood Scrubs, and probably topped lists inked in a scholarly hand into the back of leather-bound, gold-clasped diaries on desks in Westminster.
He picked up the receiver and gave no more than the exchange number. He heard the reassuring sound of a woman’s voice. Not lovely Lydia and not that cocky little Dorcas Joe was entangled with. The stranger asked if she was speaking to the janitor. A snooty woman with a plum in her mouth. Confident. Middle-aged. He didn’t much like the sound of her so he gave her his rank: “Detective Inspector Jenkins, retired, here, madam.”
“Oh, even better! Jenkins! Just the man I wanted! Glad to catch you, Inspector. This must be the assistant commissioner’s landlord I’ve got?”
“Yes, madam. And whom have I got?” he asked with an hauteur that suggested he objected to an assumption of intimacy with a female stranger.
There was tinkling laughter as she picked this up and: “So sorry! This is Phoebe Snow. Assistant Commander Sandilands’ private secretary. I’m ringing from the Yard.”
“Well, you’re unlucky today, Miss Snow. I’ve no idea where he is. I just know he’s not at—”
“I know he’s not at home,” she interrupted crossly. “That’s the problem. He’s not here either and he was meant to be. Someone’s mightily displeased, you can tell him when he surfaces again. I wasn’t able to warn him when he rang in just now. I’m not alone in the office,” she added mysteriously in a low voice. Someone in the background cleared his throat. “He wants me to pick up some overnight things and have them brought down for him. I have a list of items he needs so if you’ll just let me into his apartment in … say … half an hour, I’d be most grateful. If by any chance I get caught up here—I’ll send a chap down. That’ll be … hang on a tick …” She referred to someone else in the office and then: “Kerry Onslow can do it. Be sure to ask to see his warrant card. The boss is fanatical about security, you know. Got that? Half an hour.”
Jenkins went up to Joe’s flat in the lift, unlocked and found the weekend bag standing at the ready in its usual place. He checked the leather luggage label that was always attached to the handle. His sister’s address in Surrey was the one currently on show there. It usually was. Left over from last time. His home from home. Thoughtfully, Jenkins untied it and slipped it into his pocket. He locked the door firmly behind him and went back downstairs.
“May I speak to Assistant Commissioner Sandilands if he’s with you?” he asked Marcus’s butler a minute later. “Urgent. It’s his landlord here in Chelsea. Name of Jenkins.”
“Hello, Alfred, Joe here. You catch us still at the breakfast table. Got a bit of trouble have you?”
Joe listened with increasing alarm to an account of Alfred’s phone call and his reaction to it.
“First—you were quite right to be wary. My secretary is indeed Phoebe Snow but she’s never at the Yard on a Saturday and she has a delightful Welsh voice which no one would describe as ‘plummy.’ So, effectively, you’ll find yourself greeting a stranger in about twenty minutes. A stranger? What’s the betting they send their Mr. Onslow? Mr. Onslow will be expecting—after a quick, token, matey flash of a forged warrant card—to be shown into my room to rummage about getting together some of my possessions from an imaginary list. And what’s the betting he won’t be by himself? Look—I don’t want them anywhere near my room. But—above all—I don’t want them anywhere near you and your family. I know your circumstances on a Saturday. These aren’t East End thugs, hired round the back of the Fighting Cock in Seven Dials for twopence ha’penny; they’re certainly international no-goods, probably with protection at a diplomatic level and possibly armed. They’ve killed already and I have their next target down here with me. I want you and your family to move out. That’s an order, Alf, and I want it executed in the next ten minutes. This is the Assistant Commissioner speaking, not your friend and tenant.”
“Think on, Joe. If I stick a ‘Gone Fishing’ notice on the door, they’ll smell something fishy all right. It will just put off their next visit. They’d be back again later in a filthy temper. I’d rather know who and how many and when and get off on the front foot.”
Joe was silent for a moment. “Makes a lot of sense, Alf,” he said. Alfred could almost see him break into a grudging smile. “In fact, I remember having said much the same thing myself on one or two occasions. Very well. But two things: get the family out of there and get back-up in. Any thoughts?”
“I can ring the local nick and have two mates here in five minutes. I know the beat boys. They sometimes call in for a cup of tea and a chin-wag round about this time of the morning. If your friends call by, they might be a bit put off their stroke to find the lobby full of uniformed Plod,” Alfred said cheerfully.
Joe’s heart sank at the thought of two pink-cheeked, unarmed bobbies squaring up to the squad of professional killers he suspected his opponents could field.
“Listen, Alfred …” There was a pause as Joe gathered himself to say, “There’s one more thing you can do for me and I want no arguments! I want you to put that address label back on the bag before you hand it over.”
After a moment’s puzzled hesitation, Jenkins grinned. “Of course. Doing a bit of tiger hunting are we? I’ll ring you back when they’ve taken delivery.”
THEY ARRIVED EARLIER than expected.
The pair strode confidently into the lobby of Alfred’s shabby but spacious Georgian house, flicking an eye over the black-and-white tiled hall and its occupants. A professional eye, Alfred judged, as they didn’t show by the bat of an eyelash that they were at all disconcerted to find themselves faced by a lady mopping the floor, two small boys racing their toy cars from one end to the other and three policemen. One was retired and in his shirt sleeves, the other two were decidedly still operative and in full uniform. One constable, one sergeant, both holding mugs of tea. They’d been sitting on the stairs, cheering on the boys and now they rose to their feet, effectively blocking any access to the upper floor.
“You made good time, gentlemen! Very prompt. But that’s the Met for you—always ahead of themselves,” said Alfred, moving from his apartment door to greet the newcomers jovially. “Alice!” he called to the woman whose mop seemed to be advancing dangerously close to the two pairs of shining city brogues. “That’ll do fine. Give us a bit of space, will you, love, and go and start on the ironing.” Next, he shouted to his grandsons: “Oy! Sid and Ian, put those cars down. Look, here’s your Saturday sixpence. Go to the shop and buy yourselves some aniseed balls or something.”
“Ooh, ta, Granpa!” The boys abandoned their toy cars and hurried out, arguing the merits of treacle toffee and gobstoppers.
“The lads are just taking their morning break before they go on duty,” he said, indicating the uniformed pair. “Can I get you two a cuppa? I can squeeze two more out of the pot. No? Right. Oh, before you tell me how I can help you—a bit of ID, if you wouldn’t mind?”