Cargo of Eagles Read online

  ‘Between her and the young solicitor? It crossed my mind it might be worth passing on to the County. The whole business is their pidgin by rights, only the complaint started at this end. He eyed Campion shrewdly. ‘This is the place where Teague’s wallet was found. You knew that, of course? It’s him you’re really interested in, or so the Top Brass whisper to me. A lot of people would like to know where he is just now. I wonder why he left that little pointer behind?’

  ‘A “Kilroy was here” sign, or would someone like you to think so?’

  ‘I’m not a member of the Coincidence Club myself,’ said the sergeant. ‘The answer is at Saltey—the answer to both enquiries. That’s my bet. They’ll pick him up down there and good luck to them. We can do without him in my manor.’ He closed his briefcase. ‘Well, it’s been nice meeting you, sir. Fancy you knowing old Oates. It was quite a shock to see him again this morning. He must be older than God and he’s beginning to look it. Still as bright as a button, though.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ said Mr Campion.

  After the rain the pavements were beginning to steam. The promise of high summer was in the air. He decided to walk, to sort out the elements of the problem and to restore his own self-respect by approaching his club without a sense of guilt.

  In Soho Square the scent of new cut grass bewitched the air, whispering of cricket, garden chairs, strawberries and dalliance in the shade.

  He strode briskly, almost jauntily, into the Adam brothers’ masterpiece which is Puffins and was half way across the chessboard hall before the door porter caught up with him.

  ‘This came for you about half an hour ago, sir. By hand. I was to give it to you personally.’

  Mr Campion opened the stiff white envelope with misgivings. Inside was a single sheet of plain paper inscribed in a precise scholarly hand which was all too familiar. The message was very brief.

  ‘I’m afraid that the position has deteriorated. There is very little time. L.C.’

  4

  The Road to Saltey

  ‘LADIES AND GENTS,’ declaimed Morty in the tones of a professional guide, ‘we are now approaching the site of Mob’s Hole, notorious haunt of mobsters, dandies, doxies and all the picturesque riff-raff of seventeenth century London. On my left a prospect of Wanstead Flats and on my right a car breaker’s yard which seems to have been abandoned owing to pressure of business.’

  He was in tremendous form, elated as a schoolboy, and his companion was beginning to feel that it was time to cut him down to size.

  ‘If you drove and talked a little more slowly,’ said Dr Jones, ‘I could take in more of the lecture. Abandon the Cockney accent which does nothing for your professional image and remember that I want to meet Hector, in one piece, at half past six.’

  ‘Blast his smug go-getting guts.’ Morty was subdued but not defeated. ‘But I must get this off my chest. Bear with me, share my obsessions. Hear the fruits of my eager researches into this byway of history. If I’m incoherent the fault is yours. Do all your patients adore you, too?’

  ‘Get on with your lecture.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Morty reduced the elegant Lotus Elan to a legal limit. ‘But right now we are at the start of my discovery. New readers begin here: Mob’s Hole, a sort of roadhouse and open air barbecue, really existed, you know. Ned Ward, the London Spy, has a terrific description of it. It was bang in the middle of that heap of decaying ironmongery according to the old maps, and apart from being a picnic haunt of dubious café society, the sort of coxcombs, bullies, whores and pimps Ward wrote about, it was also notorious as a Safe House, if you know what that means.’

  ‘I don’t, but no doubt I’ll learn.’

  ‘You certainly will if you put up with me for long. Well now, a Safe House was an inn or a lodging with no questions asked. Suitable for thieves, smugglers, political refugees—anyone wanted by the authorities, in fact. You’ll find relics of them dotted all round the Thames Estuary. A man on the run was naturally afraid of the main roads with their big coaching inns because they were the obvious places to watch. The road block idea isn’t new. The Army, the Preventative Men, the thief catchers and so on have always used it since there was any sort of law. No, a man who wished to move secretly went, generally by night, from one Safe House to the next, making for a quiet part of the coast—some place where smuggling was regarded as being a proper trade and where inhabitants minded their own business.’

  ‘Like Saltey?’ suggested Dido.

  ‘You have it in one, my proud beauty. Mob’s Hole to Mob’s Bowl, in fact. This was the route and it runs through some pretty queer country as you’ll find out. London’s back door, with a couple of centuries of unemptied garbage pails still awaiting collection by the look of it. It’s a dreary run on the face of it but it has its charm for the likes of me.’

  ‘An acquired taste no doubt. Do you include the romance of Gallows Corner and the Great Southend Road in your saga?’

  ‘I can do better than that.’ Morty was still enthusiastic. ‘I can dodge both of them for you if you don’t mind a rough ride. Our eighteenth century friends didn’t greatly care for that ominous crossroads. They used a mixture of loops and short cuts. It’s not been easy to trace, and if I weren’t so brilliant, intuitive and hard-working I would never have found it. But now that this particular piece of research is completed I’ll tell you something which really is odd. Highly remarkable, as we say in Saltey.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Dido. ‘Amaze me if you can. And keep both hands on the wheel when turning sharp corners if you wish to remain just good friends.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Morty was not penitent. ‘But this is genuinely odd. I was driving down from town last week rather late at night, after midnight in fact, and using my special route which is particularly impressive at night because once you’re dear of the streets there are miles where you hardly pass a house at all and you get a tremendous sense of loneliness.

  ‘There I was, idling along—you know my style—when I was aware of someone behind whose headlights were shining in my mirror. I let him pass, making sure he’d turn off, but not on your sweet life. He was right with me all the way, ma’am. Once I stopped and smoked a cigarette just to let him get clear of me in his darned old white jalopy with a bashed-in tail, but in ten minutes I caught him up again, still dodging along, just as I was. He even used my special cut through the ghost town which I always thought was pretty fancy and custom built for me alone. He fetched up in Saltey. How about that?’

  ‘Now that certainly is odd.’ Dido straightened her back. ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘Mr Jonah Woodrose,’ said Morty, ‘whose family name if you trace it back is as ancient as anything in England. Woodrose—Woodwose. The Foliate Man, the Green Man, Robin Good-fellow, the nigger in the original woodpile of Christianity in this country.’

  ‘Play it cool,’ advised Dido. ‘Fairies and sprites don’t drive elderly cars. They go in for nutshell chariots, if I remember. But you’ve got a point there. What’s your theory, master?’

  He considered. ‘Could be a sort of inherited memory,’ he said at last. ‘More likely tradition and force of habit. This was the track his forebears always took to Stratford and the other markets, so this is the way he goes. With all that inbred blood in his veins he’s likely to be a creature of habit. I wonder what he was doing in London in any case?’

  ‘You sound as if you knew the answer.’

  Morty hesitated. ‘I don’t, and I wish I did,’ he confessed. ‘But it did occur to me that he might have gone to post a letter, something that he didn’t want to arrive with a Saltey postmark.’

  Dido shivered involuntarily and to Morty’s delight moved her shoulder a little closer to him.

  ‘It’s beastly,’ she said at last. ‘You know, if there was any sentiment involved in all this I’d give up. I mean, if I was grinding the faces of the widow and orphan by accepting the house, or doing some splendid young farmer out of his rightful home I’d be off like a flash.
But I’m not. This is just pure venom and wickedness, and I won’t put up with it. I’ll . . . I’ll . . .’

  ‘I love a good fight,’ said Morty. ‘I’m right by your side, lady. When you stick out your chin like that you could have my entire kingdom just for the pleasure of holding your coat. I could start, of course, by holding your hand.’

  ‘You’ll keep your hands on the wheel,’ said Dr Jones tartly.

  Morty, sliding a glance at her, realised not without surprise that she was a grown woman, competent, finely tempered and not quite the beleaguered sylph he had been picturing in his daydreams. The thought depressed him and he drove in silence for a twisting mile.

  ‘I suppose you do know where you’re going?’ she enquired at last. The road they were following had become little more than an open track through coarse grassland. An occasional broken fence marked a boundary and an empty bungalow standing isolated in an expanse of uneven ground, distemper peeling from its blind stucco face, emphasised the desolation. A narrow board nailed to a post displayed the words ‘Victoria Crescent’ in fading gothic print.

  ‘This is my Ghost Town,’ explained Morty with a certain pride. ‘Not unlike the shanty towns of the Gold Rush days—very like them in spirit, now I come to think of it. It’s a derelict area and I’d say it always will be. A swamp which used to be called The Trough. In fact it is the site of an old land swindle, the sort of thing which was popular at the turn of the century. The operator bought a parcel of quite useless country, fairly near to one of the newish rail tracks, marked out a grandiose development scheme on a map—the Royal Esplanade, the shopping centre, Empress Avenue and so on—and divided the whole area into plots of half an acre or so apiece.

  ‘Then he brought down a load of suckers by special train, which you could get in those days, gave them a champagne lunch in a marquee erected for the occasion and held a sale. By then everyone was as high as a kite and the promoter sold off his land at a fantastic profit. One or two of the poor boobs actually built their dream homes here, but the roads and the drains and the Town Hall never appeared. Probably the neatest real estate trick in the calendar and darned nearly legal, too.’

  Dido wrinkled her nose. ‘And all on the back road to Saltey,’ she said. ‘It’s been a great experience but I think I’ll let Hector get me back tomorrow by some orthodox method, like taking me to a railway station.’

  ‘Damn Hector.’

  They drove in silence for some time through an area of new open planned villas, writhing television masts, mini cars and mass produced respectability. The uncompromising predictability of street after street was as depressing as the straggling wasteland they had passed through and they intuitively shared the relief of reaching open countryside again. It was flat and uninspiring but now there was a tang of salt in the air and the rain-black road snaked between carefully tended fields, occasional weather-boarded farms with stridently new outbuildings and elm trees which were gnarled and bent by the coastal wind.

  ‘The last of the old forest is just ahead,’ said Morty. ‘That bit of a rise on our left is probably the highest point for miles. They’d have felled that timber years ago if the land was worth cultivating, but from now on it’s sour ground, mostly. That’s what protects Saltey from civilisation—it’s on the road to nowhere and you have to make a great U-shaped detour to get there anyway. It’s virtually an island cut off by the saltings.’

  The scrawny woodland had retreated from the verge and the road curved gently to the left approaching a sharp T-shaped corner where the signpost read ‘Saltey only. No through road.’ An ugly red brick farmhouse with a slated roof stood at the corner with its barns and pigsties hard against the tarmac. Tattered posters proclaimed that there had been an auction of livestock and furniture some time since and a notice board announced that the entire freehold property was for sale.

  ‘What the hell!’ Morty pulled the car up with a squeal.

  Ahead of them two cars were drawn up half blocking the road and immediately beyond, barring the way completely, was a laundryman’s van, skewed directly across the turning. A push bicycle leant against the wall.

  ‘Looks like an accident,’ said Dido, becoming professional. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  They got out together and as they approached the van they saw that a group of people were confering beyond it. A young policeman, his trousers still in bicycle clips, eased himself gingerly round the obstruction and came towards them smiling sheepishly.

  ‘Been a bit o’ trouble,’ he said. ‘I can’t be in two places at once, can I?’ He turned and raised his voice to include the three men who stood together in the lane behind him. ‘I wonder if one of you gentlemen would mind doing a little traffic duty at the corner or we’ll have both roads blocked? Now sir, if you’re going to Saltey you’ll have to wait, and if you’re not will you please move on?’

  Dido pushed forward.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ she said. ‘Is anyone hurt? Morty, you can keep the road clear for a minute. Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, miss. I’ve only just arrived, coming from Firestone.’ The constable was flustered. ‘If you can get round here you’ll see what the trouble is. There’s a young girl—or I think it’s a girl. She may be hurt but she won’t say.’

  Beyond the van in the neck of the lane the cause of the confusion was immediately clear. The road was covered with broken bottles which had been systematically smashed and distributed across the surface for several yards. The van which had been approaching Saltey had driven right into the vicious, jagged trap and had skidded to a halt.

  Not far from it lay a motor cycle whose owner, dressed in bedraggled black leather and a white crash helmet, stood disconsolately beside it, a muddy back turned to the rest of the company.

  Dido, whose shoes were not designed for such treatment, picked her way delicately towards the solitary figure.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘What happened to you?’

  The black back turned further away and Dido repeated her question.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  There was still no response. Dido took a step forward and swung the leather torso deftly towards her. Its owner had clearly not been expecting such treatment, for the eyes behind the mica visor of the helmet gleamed venom.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ said Dido firmly. ‘So don’t be silly. If you’re hurt at all, you’d better tell me.’

  ‘Oh, get knotted!’

  There was no doubt now about the sex of the motor cyclist. She was very female, very angry and twitching with suppressed emotion. A smear of mud and blood down her cheek did not hide the fact that she was white with rage and excitement. Jerking away from Dido she addressed herself to the world at large.

  ‘Can’t one of you bastards give me a hand?’

  The driver of the van who had been examining the damage to his tyres shuffled towards her, kicking the glass from his way. He and the policeman lifted the machine upright.

  ‘Fork’s twisted,’ said the van man. ‘You were plumb lucky, miss he nearly ran you down.’ He considered the massively engined monster with a mechanic’s eye. ‘Not much wrong with it, I’d say. Nothing that a wrench wouldn’t cure. It’s a heavy old thing. Sure you’re O.K.?’

  A shout from over the wall interrupted the discussion and a burly golden head which could only have belonged to a countryman appeared. An elderly birch broom was waved aloft.

  ‘That’ll do the trick now, won’t it?’ he said triumphantly. ‘Someone’s been having a rare old game here, by the looks of it. That’ll give you something for your notebook, eh, Mr Simmonds? Better than hanging round that old Demon come closing time.’

  He was a large man, remarkably pleased with himself. Vaulting the wall with the agility of real strength he began to sweep with energy and precision. The two other men followed him, kicking at stray fragments.

  ‘A proper mystery for you, Mr Simmonds,’ he continued, ‘not but what I could give you a tip where to look. Yo
ung tear-ways. That’s what you want to go after if you want my advice. And when you find ’em take the buckle end of your belt to them and ask your questions afterwards. Only sort of talk those young devils understand. . . .’

  Dido returned to Morty. Some of the girl’s anger seemed to have infected her and she took his arm sharply as a support whilst she pulled off a shoe to remove a fragment of glass.

  ‘Little bitch!’ she said. ‘One of your friends from the sea wall, I suppose. Damn lucky not to have hurt herself and she curses like a fishwife when I try to help. That machine’s far too heavy for her anyhow. This is a foul place, Morty. If it weren’t for Hector—and—’

  ‘That’s the only good thing I’ve ever heard about your infernal legal eagle,’ said the young man. ‘At least it means I’ll see more of you. Whilst I’ve been on point duty I’ve also been having a snoop around. There’s a great pile of bottles behind that wall, all neatly stacked—or they were. Previous owner was quite a connoisseur. Champagne, Haut Brion, Mouton Rothchild, Volnay . . . all the best labels. Perhaps that’s why he gave up farming.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ agreed Dido. ‘Don’t look now, but isn’t one of those cars a white Ford with a badly dented boot?’

  ‘It is, and Mr Jonah Woodrose in person is now sweeping the road and directing the proceedings. None of them can have been here long. Miss Tearaway probably took the corner at speed and came off very lightly considering that she might have cut herself to pieces, smartly followed by the Nine Ash Hygienic Steam Laundry. P.C. Simmonds is the local sheriff and not a very bright specimen. Saltey doesn’t take kindly to the law. I don’t think he arrived with the speed of light, but merely happened to be cycling this way.’

  ‘I have a feeling,’ said Dido, her arm still linked with Morty’s as they kept guard over the main road, ‘that this was intended as part of the Welcome Home celebration for me. Beware of our dog, it eats strangers on sight. I can’t see why or how anybody knew when I’d be arriving. It’s just a nasty little itch in my bones.’