“What I get,” Alleyn said at last, “is no doubt a great slab of fantasy. It’s based on conjecture and, as such, should be dismissed.”
“We might as well hear it,” said Fox.
“All right. If only to get it out of my system. It goes like this. Ferrant is in La Tournière and Syd Jones is in Saint Pierre, having arrived at the crack of dawn yesterday morning. Syd is now persuaded that Ricky is spying on him and has followed him to Saint Pierre for that purpose. He has grown more and more worried and on landing rings up Ferrant. The conversation is guarded but they have an alarm code that means ‘I’ve got to talk to you.’ Ferrant comes to Saint Pierre by the early morning plane — Dupont says there’s one that leaves at seven. They are to meet in the café opposite the premises of Jerome et Cie. Ricky sits in the café being a sleuth and squinting through a hole in Le Monde at Syd. At which ludicrous employment he is caught by Ferrant. Ricky leaves the café. Syd, who seems to have gone to pieces and given himself a jolt of something, heroin one supposes, now tells Ferrant his story and Ferrant, having seen for himself my poor child’s antics with the paper and bearing in mind that I’m a copper, decides that Ricky is highly expendable. One of the two keeps tabs on Ricky, is rewarded by a thunderstorm, and takes the opportunity to shove him overboard between the jetty and the ship.” Alleyn’s eyes closed for half a second. “The ship,” he repeated, “was rolling. Within a couple of feet of the legs of the jetty.”
He walked over to the window and stood there with his back to the other men. “I suppose,” he said, “he was saved by the turn of the bilge. If the ship had been lower in the water—” He broke off.
“Yes. Quite so,” Fox said. Plank cleared his throat.
For a moment or two none of them spoke. Mrs. Plank in her kitchen sang mutedly and the little girl kept up what seemed to be a barrage of questions.
Alleyn turned back into the room.
“He thought it was Ferrant,” he said. “I don’t know quite why, apart from the conjectural motive.”
“How doped up was this other type, Jones?”
“Exactly, Br’er Fox. We don’t know.”
“If he’s on the main-line racket — and it seems he is—”
“Yes.”
“And under this Ferrant’s influence—”
“It’s a thought, isn’t it? Well, there you are,” Alleyn said. “A slice of confectionery from a plain cook and you don’t have to swallow it.”
There was a long pause which Fox broke by saying, “It fits.”
Plank made a confirmatory noise in his throat. “So what happens next?” asked Fox. “Supposing this is the case?”
Alleyn said: “All right. For the hell of it — supposing. What does Ferrant do? Hang about Saint Pierre waiting—” Alleyn said rapidly—“for news of a body found floating under the jetty? Does he go back to La Tournière and report? If so, to whom? And what is Syd Jones up to? Supposing that he’s got his next quota of injected paint tubes, if in fact they are injected, does he hang about Saint Pierre? Or does he lose his nerve and make a break for Lord knows where?”
“If he’s hooked on dope,” Fox said, “he’s had it.”
Plank said: “Excuse me, Mr. Fox. Meaning?”
“Meaning as far as his employers are concerned.”
Alleyn said: “Drug merchants don’t use drug consumers inside the organization, Plank. They’re completely unpredictable and much too dangerous. If Jones is in process of becoming a junkie he’s out, automatically, and if his bosses think he’s a risk he might very easily be out altogether.”
“Would he go to earth somewhere over there? In France?” Fox wondered. And then: “Never mind that for the moment, Mr. Alleyn. True or not, and I’d take long odds on your theory being the case, I don’t at all fancy the position our young man has got himself into. And I don’t suppose you do either.”
“Of course I don’t,” Alleyn said with a violence that made Sergeant Plank blink. “I’m in two minds whether to pack him off home or what the devil to do about him. He’s hell-bent on sticking round here and I’m not sure I don’t sympathize with him.”
Fox said: “And yet, wouldn’t you say that when they do find out he escaped and came back here, they’ll realize that anything he knows he’ll have already handed on to you? So there won’t be the same reason for getting rid of him. The beans, as you might say, are spilled.”
“I’d thought of that too, Br’er Fox. These people are far too sophisticated to go about indulging in unnecessary liquidations. All the same—”
He broke off and glanced at Sergeant Plank whose air of deference was heavily laced with devouring curiosity. “The fact of the matter is,” Alleyn said quickly, “I find it difficult to look objectively at the position, which is a terrible confession from a senior cop. I don’t know what the drill ought to be. Should I ask to be relieved from the case because of personal involvement?”
“Joey,” Mrs. Plank called from the kitchen and her husband excused himself.
“Fox,” Alleyn said, “what the hell should a self-respecting copper do when his boy gets himself bogged down, and dangerously so, in a case like this? Send him abroad somewhere? If they are laying for him that’d be no solution. This lot is one of the big ones with fingers everywhere. And I can’t treat Rick like a kid. He’s a man and what’s more I don’t think he’d take it if I did and, by God, I wouldn’t want him to take it.”
Fox, after some consideration, said it was an unusual situation. “I can’t say,” he admitted, “that I can recollect anything of the sort occurring in my experience. Or yours either, Mr. Alleyn, I daresay. Very unusual. You could think, if you weren’t personally concerned, that there’s a piquant element.”
“For the love of Mike, Fox!”
“It was only a passing fancy. You were wondering what would be the correct line to take?”
“I was.”
“With respect, then, I reckon he should do as I think he wants to do. Stay put and act under your orders.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“If Ferrant comes back? Or Jones?”
“It would be interesting to see the reaction when they met.”
“Always supposing Ferrant’s the man. Or Jones.”
“That’s right. It’s possible that Ferrant may still be waiting for the body, you’ll excuse me won’t you, Mr. Alleyn, to rise. He may think it’s caught up under the pier. Unless, of course, the chap in the ship has talked.”
“The ship doesn’t return to Saint Pierre for some days. And Ricky got the man to promise he wouldn’t talk. He thinks he’ll stick to his word.”
“Yerse,” said Fox. “But we all know what a few drinks will do.”
“Anyway, Ferrant has probably telephoned his wife and heard that Rick’s home and dry. I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if he’s in the habit of sending her postcards with no message.”
“Just to let her know where he is?”
“And I wonder — I do very much wonder — how far, if any distance at all, that excellent cook is wise to her husband’s proceedings.”
Sergeant Plank returned with a plateload of enormous cheese and pickle sandwiches and a jug of beer.
“It’s getting on for three o’clock,” he said, “and the Missus reckons you must be fair clemmed for a snack, Mr. Alleyn.”
“Your Missus, Sergeant Plank,” said Alleyn, “is a pearl among ladies and you may tell her so with our grateful compliments.”
7: Syd’s Pad Again
i
When Ricky had eaten his solitary lunch he was unable to settle to anything. He had had a most disturbing morning and himself could hardly believe in it. The memory of Julia’s blouse creasing under the pressure of his fingers and of herself warm beneath it, her scent, and the smooth resilience of her cheek were at once extraordinarily vivid yet scarcely to be believed. Much more credible was the ease with which she had dealt with him.