The Blue Lamp
By Bernard Wolley and Stuart Slade
Chapter One
Paddington, London, July 1951
“Don’t be a fool. Give me the gun, son.” PC George Dixon said to the young man who had just robbed the cinema.
The veteran constable was unarmed, as almost all officers of the Metropolitan Police were. He had not even drawn his truncheon, but simply held out his right hand towards the young man.
*
Dixon had served in the police for over twenty years and was within a few months of his retirement. He had experienced the years when he was very much respected by the people on his beat, then the years when he was ostracised, called a collaborator, Quisling, traitor and worse behind his back, and occasionally to his face. If anyone had asked why he had stayed in the police during those dark years he would have told them that maintaining law and order is even more important when everything else is falling apart.
That in 1947 he was revealed as being the leader of a Resistance Cell, or that the Resistance fighter he had once arrested had volunteered to be sacrificed to maintain Dixon’s cover made no difference to the constable. He did not do the job to gain the adulation of the public.
*
Dixon repeated his gentle, almost fatherly request to the robber. He thought for a moment about the probationer he had recently been training, PC Andy Mitchell, who had come to the Met via the RCMP and Canadian Army military police. Mitchell would probably have wanted to get ‘tooled-up’ so that he could fill this frightened young man with bullets.
Early on in his training Mitchell had bemoaned that he no longer carried a revolver. Dixon had admonished him, saying that the British ‘policing by consent’ model only worked because officers were unarmed.
“If we start carrying guns, Andy, then we might as well go the whole hog and wear black uniforms and have sub-machine guns.”
*
Tom Riley was terrified despite the Luger pistol he held in his right hand. He had not expected to be confronted by a policeman on leaving the cinema. He had not felt this frightened since 1947 when he had to hurriedly hide his dark uniform before fleeing to London.
The policeman took a step towards Riley, who pulled the trigger before he realised what he was doing. The Luger spat once and Dixon folded up, hit in the stomach. Riley shot him again, this time deliberately.
Dixon fell to the pavement, his helmet falling off and rolling into the gutter. He feebly reached for his whistle, hoping to summon help. Riley stood for a moment looking at the mortally wounded constable before quite deliberately shooting him in the head and walking off.
The Home Office, London, March 1950.
“My word, Bill, this is strong stuff!” Sir Humphrey Appleday said putting down the script. “I like the character of George Dixon; he’s a stereotypical British Bobby of old. It’s just what we were looking for in this film.
“I think we may need to tone down the shooting scene. I’m not too sure about this Riley chap shooting Dixon in the head…”
Bill Shaych snorted in derision.
“You think a British audience would be squeamish, Humpy? They’ve just gone through seven years of war, five of which were under German occupation. People have seen and done things that make the murder of George Dixon look mild.”
“Very well, I shall leave that to you and your fellow film makers.” Appleday conceded. “Have you got actors lined up for Dixon and Mitchell?”
Shaych nodded.
“Jack Warner is pencilled in for Dixon; I’ve spoken to him and he is very keen. I have a couple of Canadian actors in mind for Mitchell. Dirk Bogarde will be Riley.”
“Capital.” Appleday said. “I met Bogarde in Ottawa in 1943, you know. He was in the signal corps at the time. A sound chap for an actor.”
Shaych smiled at Appleday’s name-dropping. He turned to the other person in the room, an official who was shaking his head at the same thing.
“My Goad, Humpty, do you no’ like to drap names.” Sir Robert Byrne said. “Is there anywan you hivnae met?”
“Well I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Ginger Rogers.”
“Anyway, Bill, why have you asked me to this meeting?” Byrne wondered.
“Two reasons, Robert. Firstly you work for the Treasury and this film will need money and some of that will need to come from HM Government. Secondly you are a writer like me; in fact I’d say you’re the best living writer I know, other than me, of course.” Shaych said with a smile.
Byrne chuckled.
“Well you certainly know how to charm a body, Bill. I’m a hack writer of romantic drivel compared to you. But I’ll see you get your money.”
“Now, now, Robert, it takes a lot of talent to write what appears to be romantic drivel.” Shaych said with a chuckle. “In any case the man who wrote a poem remembered across the world every New Year is hardly lacking talent.”
“Will you be taking a writing credit on the film?” Appleday asked.
Shaych shook his head.
“Certainly not; Tibby Clarke had the original idea and he did most of the work. I’ll be a producer.
“Clarke really was a policeman who was in the Resistance, and he did arrest a fellow member so that his cover could be protected.”
White City greyhound track, West London, July 1951.
The dogged work of PC Andy Mitchell had led to Tom Reily being tracked down to the White City greyhound track. Helped by ordinary members of the public as well as professional criminals, Reily had finally been cornered by half a dozen constables, including Mitchel. He had drawn his Luger and held them at bay while a crowd gathered.
Inspector Cherry, visible in his peaked cap, began to step forward. Hoping to convince Reily to come quietly, but Mitchel stopped him.
“I’ll do this, Sir.” He said. “Tom, it’s over, put the gun down and we can have a little chat.”
“Get back!” Reily shouted. “This thing is loaded!”
“You can’t shoot us all, Tom.” Mitchell said calmly. “After all, how many bullets do you have in that Luger? Five, six?”
“And even if he does he’ll have us to deal with!” A voice shouted from the crowd.
The murmurs of agreement made it clear that the safest option open to Reily was to surrender to the police. The crowd would tear him to pieces.
The Home Office, London, March 1950.
“Now that is an ending, Bill!” Byrne said excitedly. “The young copper leads the villain away to the acclamation of both the honest citizens and professional criminals.
“Would I be wrong that you are portraying Andy, and I notice that the script calls him Andy rather than Mitchell, as the new face of policing? That perhaps the old police dies with Dixon?”
Shaych nodded.
“Andy represents a new breed of policeman who is not tainted by the Occupation. He has taken on-board the best of men like Dixon, and will take the police forward into the future. Both myself and Tibby want the viewer to think that every constable is either a Dixon or an Andy.”
“The Commissioner will be pleased.” Appleday remarked.
Shaych laughed.
“Well, Humpty, I was hoping that you might manage to get me and Tibby an introduction to the Commissioner…”
“You cheeky, Bugger!” Appleday said somewhat uncharacteristically. “By the way, what do you plan to call the film?”
“The Blue Lamp.”
2004 - The Blue Lamp
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Two - Through Angles eyes
Lecture Theater, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
The usual applause went around the lecture room when the projector finished the film and the disk popped out (only to be pushed straight back in). The Blue Lamp was one of the few films that always got a round of applause at its final scene. The young policeman Andy arresting the vicious thug Riley and leading him away never failed to bring the audience to its feet.
The lecture room was crowded, not just because it was a chance to watch a classic and much-loved movie on work time but because word had spread Angel was back in town and giving some more lectures on shooting. Police officers had converged on Oxford from all over the Thames Valley and those who couldn't find a seat were standing in the corridor outside, peering in through the doors.
"All right, people settle down. For those who haven't been here before, I'm Angel, and all the rumors you have heard about me are probably true. Technically, I'm supposed to be teaching armed response officers how to shoot. Or, to be more accurate, I'm teaching you when and where you should shoot. Here's the first lesson; if the situation ever gets bad enough you have to shoot your way out, you've failed. What this comes down to is, I'm teaching you to recognize a situation that is about to turn bad and to avoid getting killed in it. This is called risk assessment and threat analysis. This is something you should be doing on a permanent basis; every time you are on duty you should be aware of your surroundings and any potential risks they pose. At the same time, you should also be exuding what Sir Robert Peel called 'ready courtesy and friendly good humor'. They're as much weapons as a gun or that nightstick you carry." Some of the more perceptive police officers glanced at each other. They realized that this was exactly what Angel was doing right then, exuding friendly good humor while constantly watching for a threat to emerge. It dawned on them she was alive because she never stopped watching for that threat to emerge.
"Now, let's think about the film we have just seen. It's a great film, probably the best police film ever made. The version you have just seen is the full print; when it's shown on television it's slightly cut. They take out the third shot to Dixon's head. That's a pity; it makes a point. This film is brilliantly acted; Jack Warner and Dirk Bogarde play the key scene to perfection. Believe me on that, I know quite a few cheap, stupid thugs like Riley. Every detail in this scene is correct and appropriate. Now, let's go over that scene and ask the question that nobody wants to ask. How did George Dixon manage to get himself killed?"
Angel looked around at the room. It was silent as the meaning of her question sank in. Her audience were looking at each other, trying to decide what, if anything to say. "Nobody? All right, let's look at that sequence again."
She pressed the keypad on the projector, putting up the critical sequence. PC George Dixon came running around the corner towards the cinema that had just been robbed. Riley was leaving the foyer, a Luger pistol in one hand but hanging down by his side. He lifted it up and aimed at the police officer. That's when Angel froze the frame. "This film is brilliantly directed and the camerawork is superb. What are you all looking at?"
Eventually, Constable Gregory spoke up. "I know this is wrong, but the gun."
"That's not surprising; the way the scene is shot, the cameraman is making you focus on that pistol. He's putting you in George Dixon's place." Angel had sat with the scriptwriter of The Blue Lamp and the reasoning behind every shot had been carefully explained to her. There had been far more to making a film than she had realized. "But, that Luger is the least important thing going on here. Yet, Dixon is staring at it. Its fixing his attention the way a poisonous snake fixes a person. When a rattlesnake shakes his tail, it’s not the rattle that’s dangerous but that’s what people look at. That's why the snake shakes it. So the victim doesn’t look at the head with its fangs and won’t see the strike coming. Remember people, it’s the hands that kill you and the eyes control the hands. What he should have been staring at are Riley's eyes."
She ran the film forward a few seconds. "Look at his eyes. They are fixed on Dixon. Riley is frightened, he's panicking but his eyes are fixed on the policeman in front of him. This is where we start talking about risk assessment. Now, if he was looking around, his eyes flicking from one thing to another, that tells you he is frantically trying to find an exit route; he wants to escape, he wants a way out. He hasn't decided what to do yet. So, the risk is controllable; you have a chance to convince him that you are the way out. If he gives up, right now, it’s a petty crime and you can make sure that he gets out of the situation with his skin intact. Watch his eyes, if they drop down, the pistol will follow and you can move in to take it. Not until then; the perp must decide not to shoot before you try and take his gun.
"That isn't the case here, nowhere close. Riley is staring at Dixon. He's made his decision, even if he doesn’t realize it. He has selected Dixon as his target and all he needs is the final motivation to make him take the shot. Dixon gives it to him by moving towards him. He means well, but he's crowding a frightened man, cutting off his options, threatening him. And, of course, Riley shoots. Remember he had already decided to do that, all the thoughts that go into squeezing a trigger have already been made. Remember what I taught you about trigger control; if we do it right with a steady squeeze, it's always a slight surprise when the pistols go off. That's what you're seeing here. If Dixon had been watching Riley's eyes, he would have known the kid was ready to shoot. Now, what other clue did he have that the situation was extremely dangerous for him?"
"Dixon can see Riley's face. Well, most of it."
"Good boy." Angel gave Constable Anderson a complimentary smile. It was, of course as faked as all her other 'human relations' gestures but he had deserved it. "He had tried to hide his face by pulling up the neck of his sweater. It didn’t work, of course, it only covered his face from the tip of his nose down and what was exposed was easily recognizable. Even worse, look carefully at the sequence and you can see it sliding down. I'm not sure if that was deliberate or accidental but it means that Dixon can recognize Riley and will know who he is. Dixon is a witness, one whose word will be accepted by any court in the land. If Riley wants to get away clean, he has to kill Dixon. That's the significance of that third shot; it shows that Riley wasn't just interested in escaping, he wanted to kill Dixon right from the start.
"So, based on what we can see here, we have our risk assessment, the one Dixon never made. He was facing a mortal threat right from the moment he arrived. If he had made even an elementary risk assessment, he would have realized how dangerous the situation was. Threat analysis should have told him that the danger wasn't that gun but the fact that the man holding it had already decided to kill him and had every motivation to do so."
"What would you do in that situation, Angel?" Constable Andrews had found the insights into the situation fascinating and he was seeing the situation with different eyes. He had assumed Riley had just panicked and fired. Now he was beginning to understand the situation better he understood that Dixon had been the wrong man for the time and place. The much-loved Constable had indeed got himself killed.
"As Riley or Dixon? And as me or as the character?" There was a chorus of replies from her audience which Angel interpreted as 'all four.'
"Right. I'm Constable Dixon. In this situation, I'd back up and put as much distance between me and that gun as possible. It cools down the situation and in any gunfight, distance is your friend. Riley was panicking, terrified at the thought of what he was about to do. That doesn't assist in accurate shooting and most people don't shoot handguns accurately anyway. The further you are away from the gunman, the less likely you are to be hit at all and much less likely to be killed. So, back up. You know who Riley is; he won’t get away."
"Now, I'm Stupid Crook Riley. I'd try and shoot my way out and never stop running for the rest of my life. Which won’t be long." Angel paused. She was reflecting that there was a time when she had been a stupid street thug, had shot her way out of the situation and the price she had paid for doing so. She shook herself slightly before continuing.
"All right, now I'm Career Criminal Angel. I wouldn’t be in this situation. Stupid petty crime is not my thing. But, if I was here, I'd roll down my sweater, then hide, or even better dump, the gun. And then I would walk, not run, walk away from the scene. Dixon comes running around the corner, expecting to see a criminal escaping. I'd have a good chance of simply walking away right past him and around the corner. Then I'd be gone. If Dixon had twigged it and arrested me, I'd have gone along without a struggle. Why make a bad situation worse?
"Finally, I'm Constable Angel. The moment Riley pointed that gun at me, I'd kill him. Without warning and without hesitation. Riley would point that gun and less than a second later he would be dead on the ground. Always remember that. You can have a gun pointed at me and I can draw and fire my boys faster than you can realize what is happening and squeeze your trigger. Most professional gunslingers can. Don't believe westerns; what wins gunfights isn't speed or accuracy, it is the unflinching readiness to kill another human being. Most people don't have it. You don't."
Her unspoken words but I do. hung in the air. She waited a moment for the lesson to sink in and then continued. "Now, there's another danger here, one that doesn't really apply at street level, but will become more important to you as you go up through the ranks. Anybody know what it is?"
Constable Fraser spoke up. "Overthinking a situation?"
"Good boy!" Fraser turned slightly and looked proudly at the officers on either side of him. Angel gave him a quick grin of acknowledgement. "That's exactly right. It is perfectly possible to assess and analyze your way into an early grave by allowing thinking about an action to prevent you from taking any action. The most common cause of this is worrying about things that are nothing to do with you. Put yourself in Dixon's position. He may have been thinking about the image of the Police or how he should not look like a Blackshirt in a post-Occupation England. . . ."
"Britain." Constable Wooley interjected; the American habit of referring to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as 'England' had always rankled him.
"Whatever. He may have been concerned about whether this was an armed robbery or some other offense, about his own reputation as the friendly, fatherly local cop, what the charges would be, all sorts of things. None of that mattered. He should have been concerning himself purely with the situation in front of him. So he missed all the warning signs he should have seen and instead made his decisions based on irrelevancy. That killed him. I've taught you about muscle memory, how you have to practice with your pistol until the mechanics of operating it are an ingrained reflex you don’t have to worry about. You have to do the same with your minds. You have to know what are important factors and what are distractions. Keep aware of everything around you but also mentally identifying and concentrating on what is important and soon, you'll do it unconsciously.
"All right, you've got a lot to think about there. Let's look at the scene done right. At the end when Andy Mitchell arrests Riley." Angel keyed more numbers into the projector and the last two minutes of the film played out. "Lot of things here. First is the whole message of the film. Everybody wants Riley gone, the public, organized crime, the police. That support makes the police's job much easier and much safer. Now, look at Riley's eyes. He's doing what he wasn't doing earlier, he's looking around for a way out. He's waving his pistol around but he hasn’t selected a target. People are staying well back, because the police are telling them to, and so they are not pressuring Riley into selecting a target. He won't shoot because he doesn't know who to shoot. He does know that every way out is blocked but he can't work out who is the primary threat. Then, Constable Mitchell, Andy, tells him that he is the only way out, that the only way he can escape is to put the gun down. Look how Riley drops his eyes. That's the signal it's safe to move in. Another thing, look at the drops of sweat on his forehead. They're stationary; if he was psyching himself up to shoot, they'd be rolling downwards. I will tell you all about the signs to watch for in another lecture.
"By the way, a fun thing. When these scenes were being shot, the crew simply hired all the passers-by as extras. Years later, somebody was watching this film and saw that more than a quarter of them really were armed."
Laughter spread around the lecture room. "All right, people. Time to grab some lunch; then we'll go to the range for a practice shoot. Remember, bring your eye and ear protection. You shoot; I'll watch and then we can work on perfecting your skills."
Angel picked up her bag and ambled over to the Canteen, chatting with one of the policewomen who had managed to insert herself into the course. She wasn't certain whether it was tact or happenstance but there was pizza on the menu. She was about to join the line when a voice snarled behind her. "You lying skank!'
Angel turned around. There was a policeman behind her, one she recognized as an official firearms instructor. She happened to know that, as a group, the small number of firearms instructors really resented her presence here. "I'm sorry?"
"I heard that crap you were talking. Nobody can outdraw a leveled gun. If you say you can, you're lying."
"It's a question of situational awareness. Not just me, any good gunslinger can do it."
"I'd like to see you try, you murdering . . . Triad . . . . bitch." A stir of anger ran around the canteen. Everybody was aware that Angel was a high-ranking Triad member but she was helping them do their jobs and becoming quite popular in the process despite her undeniably sinister reputation. Many of the police officers were beginning to look on the Triads as, not enemies, but opponents. People who had similar interests and would cooperate in making sure the game was played by the rules even if they were on different sides of those rules.
Angel wasn't insulted; in order to be insulted, she would have to have the ability to make some kind of connection with the instructor. Anyway, viewed objectively, his comments on her character were correct although she suspected he would have used a racial slur if he'd had the chance. Only, the police force was very strict about that. Angel didn't understand why; to her ethnicity was just a fact. She couldn't comprehend why it should be used as an insult. "We can do that. People, please get behind the tables there. You, what's your name?"
"Howell, Detective Inspector Howell."
Angel opened her bag. Inside were three generic-looking Berettas and some eye protection sets. She took the real guns out of her holsters and replaced them with the ones from the bag. The paintball guns had been carefully weighted so their balance and trigger pull were identical to her stainless steel 98s. "Eye protection, put it on. And take this. I'm sorry, I don't have a SIG-Sauer paintball pistol. You'll have to use a Beretta. Rest of you, a lesson. Always be prepared."
"You want to make a little bet on this?" Howell was smirking. Angel nodded. "When you lose, you sit on the station steps, cleaning my shoes. All of them."
Angel nodded. "And when you lose, you spend a day wearing a policewoman's uniform. Including the underwear, just like a Canadian submariner."
A laugh ran around the canteen, partially dispelling the tension that was building up. Angel looked around. "Constable Andrews, could you make sure that nobody comes through that door please. We don't want anybody getting hit by strays. Everybody out of the line of fire, please."
Conrad had told her to say 'please' after every request so she had followed his advice, right up to the next line. "DI Howell, point your gun at my face. Fire when I start to draw."
The people watching suddenly realized that the life had gone out of Angel's eyes; there was no glitter of reflected light, just a cold, black abyss. Looking at her, Howell had already decided to cheat by firing without warning when suddenly his vision was blotted out by green and red splatters and the cracking of his eye-visor. He felt heavy, excruciatingly painful impacts in his chest and more in his stomach ending in his groin. He doubled up and fell to the floor, whimpering with the surge of pain that turned into a wail as it spread through his body.
Angel was lying on her back, both guns in her hands. She'd seen the flash of slyness as she'd told him when to fire and known he was going to cheat. She had also seen the tightening of the skin around his eyes and lips that told her when so she had done her usual cross-draw as she dived backwards. The first paintballs had hit him in the face visor, cracking it open, the rest had walked down his chest as she fell. She hadn't tried to hit him in the groin but couldn't help but feel pleased she had. As far as she could see, he hadn't managed to get a single shot off.
She got to her feet and looked around. "When I said, be prepared, I was. I keep my paintballs in the canteen deep freeze. Puts a level of menace into things. Makes them more realistic."
The men present instinctively crossed their legs while the women started laughing. On the floor Howell was still writhing from the impact of the frozen paintballs. He tried to say something but couldn’t get it out. Instead, the policewoman Angel had been speaking with looked at her with a broad smile on her face. "You knew he was going to shoot first, didn't you?"
"Oh yes. I'll tell you the signs to look for when we do our next lesson." Angel put her paintball guns away and restored her Berettas to their holsters.
Angel was finishing off her pizza when Conrad came in. "Angel. I just passed a moaning Detective Inspector covered in paintball splatter and hanging on to a railing for support. You didn't, did you?"
There was a burst of noise from the canteen occupants that Conrad mentally translated as yes, she did, and it was about time somebody took Howell down a peg or two. He shook his head. Life around Angel was never dull. "The Chief Inspector wants to see us. Something really odd has happened in Marsh Baldon. Again."
Lecture Theater, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
The usual applause went around the lecture room when the projector finished the film and the disk popped out (only to be pushed straight back in). The Blue Lamp was one of the few films that always got a round of applause at its final scene. The young policeman Andy arresting the vicious thug Riley and leading him away never failed to bring the audience to its feet.
The lecture room was crowded, not just because it was a chance to watch a classic and much-loved movie on work time but because word had spread Angel was back in town and giving some more lectures on shooting. Police officers had converged on Oxford from all over the Thames Valley and those who couldn't find a seat were standing in the corridor outside, peering in through the doors.
"All right, people settle down. For those who haven't been here before, I'm Angel, and all the rumors you have heard about me are probably true. Technically, I'm supposed to be teaching armed response officers how to shoot. Or, to be more accurate, I'm teaching you when and where you should shoot. Here's the first lesson; if the situation ever gets bad enough you have to shoot your way out, you've failed. What this comes down to is, I'm teaching you to recognize a situation that is about to turn bad and to avoid getting killed in it. This is called risk assessment and threat analysis. This is something you should be doing on a permanent basis; every time you are on duty you should be aware of your surroundings and any potential risks they pose. At the same time, you should also be exuding what Sir Robert Peel called 'ready courtesy and friendly good humor'. They're as much weapons as a gun or that nightstick you carry." Some of the more perceptive police officers glanced at each other. They realized that this was exactly what Angel was doing right then, exuding friendly good humor while constantly watching for a threat to emerge. It dawned on them she was alive because she never stopped watching for that threat to emerge.
"Now, let's think about the film we have just seen. It's a great film, probably the best police film ever made. The version you have just seen is the full print; when it's shown on television it's slightly cut. They take out the third shot to Dixon's head. That's a pity; it makes a point. This film is brilliantly acted; Jack Warner and Dirk Bogarde play the key scene to perfection. Believe me on that, I know quite a few cheap, stupid thugs like Riley. Every detail in this scene is correct and appropriate. Now, let's go over that scene and ask the question that nobody wants to ask. How did George Dixon manage to get himself killed?"
Angel looked around at the room. It was silent as the meaning of her question sank in. Her audience were looking at each other, trying to decide what, if anything to say. "Nobody? All right, let's look at that sequence again."
She pressed the keypad on the projector, putting up the critical sequence. PC George Dixon came running around the corner towards the cinema that had just been robbed. Riley was leaving the foyer, a Luger pistol in one hand but hanging down by his side. He lifted it up and aimed at the police officer. That's when Angel froze the frame. "This film is brilliantly directed and the camerawork is superb. What are you all looking at?"
Eventually, Constable Gregory spoke up. "I know this is wrong, but the gun."
"That's not surprising; the way the scene is shot, the cameraman is making you focus on that pistol. He's putting you in George Dixon's place." Angel had sat with the scriptwriter of The Blue Lamp and the reasoning behind every shot had been carefully explained to her. There had been far more to making a film than she had realized. "But, that Luger is the least important thing going on here. Yet, Dixon is staring at it. Its fixing his attention the way a poisonous snake fixes a person. When a rattlesnake shakes his tail, it’s not the rattle that’s dangerous but that’s what people look at. That's why the snake shakes it. So the victim doesn’t look at the head with its fangs and won’t see the strike coming. Remember people, it’s the hands that kill you and the eyes control the hands. What he should have been staring at are Riley's eyes."
She ran the film forward a few seconds. "Look at his eyes. They are fixed on Dixon. Riley is frightened, he's panicking but his eyes are fixed on the policeman in front of him. This is where we start talking about risk assessment. Now, if he was looking around, his eyes flicking from one thing to another, that tells you he is frantically trying to find an exit route; he wants to escape, he wants a way out. He hasn't decided what to do yet. So, the risk is controllable; you have a chance to convince him that you are the way out. If he gives up, right now, it’s a petty crime and you can make sure that he gets out of the situation with his skin intact. Watch his eyes, if they drop down, the pistol will follow and you can move in to take it. Not until then; the perp must decide not to shoot before you try and take his gun.
"That isn't the case here, nowhere close. Riley is staring at Dixon. He's made his decision, even if he doesn’t realize it. He has selected Dixon as his target and all he needs is the final motivation to make him take the shot. Dixon gives it to him by moving towards him. He means well, but he's crowding a frightened man, cutting off his options, threatening him. And, of course, Riley shoots. Remember he had already decided to do that, all the thoughts that go into squeezing a trigger have already been made. Remember what I taught you about trigger control; if we do it right with a steady squeeze, it's always a slight surprise when the pistols go off. That's what you're seeing here. If Dixon had been watching Riley's eyes, he would have known the kid was ready to shoot. Now, what other clue did he have that the situation was extremely dangerous for him?"
"Dixon can see Riley's face. Well, most of it."
"Good boy." Angel gave Constable Anderson a complimentary smile. It was, of course as faked as all her other 'human relations' gestures but he had deserved it. "He had tried to hide his face by pulling up the neck of his sweater. It didn’t work, of course, it only covered his face from the tip of his nose down and what was exposed was easily recognizable. Even worse, look carefully at the sequence and you can see it sliding down. I'm not sure if that was deliberate or accidental but it means that Dixon can recognize Riley and will know who he is. Dixon is a witness, one whose word will be accepted by any court in the land. If Riley wants to get away clean, he has to kill Dixon. That's the significance of that third shot; it shows that Riley wasn't just interested in escaping, he wanted to kill Dixon right from the start.
"So, based on what we can see here, we have our risk assessment, the one Dixon never made. He was facing a mortal threat right from the moment he arrived. If he had made even an elementary risk assessment, he would have realized how dangerous the situation was. Threat analysis should have told him that the danger wasn't that gun but the fact that the man holding it had already decided to kill him and had every motivation to do so."
"What would you do in that situation, Angel?" Constable Andrews had found the insights into the situation fascinating and he was seeing the situation with different eyes. He had assumed Riley had just panicked and fired. Now he was beginning to understand the situation better he understood that Dixon had been the wrong man for the time and place. The much-loved Constable had indeed got himself killed.
"As Riley or Dixon? And as me or as the character?" There was a chorus of replies from her audience which Angel interpreted as 'all four.'
"Right. I'm Constable Dixon. In this situation, I'd back up and put as much distance between me and that gun as possible. It cools down the situation and in any gunfight, distance is your friend. Riley was panicking, terrified at the thought of what he was about to do. That doesn't assist in accurate shooting and most people don't shoot handguns accurately anyway. The further you are away from the gunman, the less likely you are to be hit at all and much less likely to be killed. So, back up. You know who Riley is; he won’t get away."
"Now, I'm Stupid Crook Riley. I'd try and shoot my way out and never stop running for the rest of my life. Which won’t be long." Angel paused. She was reflecting that there was a time when she had been a stupid street thug, had shot her way out of the situation and the price she had paid for doing so. She shook herself slightly before continuing.
"All right, now I'm Career Criminal Angel. I wouldn’t be in this situation. Stupid petty crime is not my thing. But, if I was here, I'd roll down my sweater, then hide, or even better dump, the gun. And then I would walk, not run, walk away from the scene. Dixon comes running around the corner, expecting to see a criminal escaping. I'd have a good chance of simply walking away right past him and around the corner. Then I'd be gone. If Dixon had twigged it and arrested me, I'd have gone along without a struggle. Why make a bad situation worse?
"Finally, I'm Constable Angel. The moment Riley pointed that gun at me, I'd kill him. Without warning and without hesitation. Riley would point that gun and less than a second later he would be dead on the ground. Always remember that. You can have a gun pointed at me and I can draw and fire my boys faster than you can realize what is happening and squeeze your trigger. Most professional gunslingers can. Don't believe westerns; what wins gunfights isn't speed or accuracy, it is the unflinching readiness to kill another human being. Most people don't have it. You don't."
Her unspoken words but I do. hung in the air. She waited a moment for the lesson to sink in and then continued. "Now, there's another danger here, one that doesn't really apply at street level, but will become more important to you as you go up through the ranks. Anybody know what it is?"
Constable Fraser spoke up. "Overthinking a situation?"
"Good boy!" Fraser turned slightly and looked proudly at the officers on either side of him. Angel gave him a quick grin of acknowledgement. "That's exactly right. It is perfectly possible to assess and analyze your way into an early grave by allowing thinking about an action to prevent you from taking any action. The most common cause of this is worrying about things that are nothing to do with you. Put yourself in Dixon's position. He may have been thinking about the image of the Police or how he should not look like a Blackshirt in a post-Occupation England. . . ."
"Britain." Constable Wooley interjected; the American habit of referring to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as 'England' had always rankled him.
"Whatever. He may have been concerned about whether this was an armed robbery or some other offense, about his own reputation as the friendly, fatherly local cop, what the charges would be, all sorts of things. None of that mattered. He should have been concerning himself purely with the situation in front of him. So he missed all the warning signs he should have seen and instead made his decisions based on irrelevancy. That killed him. I've taught you about muscle memory, how you have to practice with your pistol until the mechanics of operating it are an ingrained reflex you don’t have to worry about. You have to do the same with your minds. You have to know what are important factors and what are distractions. Keep aware of everything around you but also mentally identifying and concentrating on what is important and soon, you'll do it unconsciously.
"All right, you've got a lot to think about there. Let's look at the scene done right. At the end when Andy Mitchell arrests Riley." Angel keyed more numbers into the projector and the last two minutes of the film played out. "Lot of things here. First is the whole message of the film. Everybody wants Riley gone, the public, organized crime, the police. That support makes the police's job much easier and much safer. Now, look at Riley's eyes. He's doing what he wasn't doing earlier, he's looking around for a way out. He's waving his pistol around but he hasn’t selected a target. People are staying well back, because the police are telling them to, and so they are not pressuring Riley into selecting a target. He won't shoot because he doesn't know who to shoot. He does know that every way out is blocked but he can't work out who is the primary threat. Then, Constable Mitchell, Andy, tells him that he is the only way out, that the only way he can escape is to put the gun down. Look how Riley drops his eyes. That's the signal it's safe to move in. Another thing, look at the drops of sweat on his forehead. They're stationary; if he was psyching himself up to shoot, they'd be rolling downwards. I will tell you all about the signs to watch for in another lecture.
"By the way, a fun thing. When these scenes were being shot, the crew simply hired all the passers-by as extras. Years later, somebody was watching this film and saw that more than a quarter of them really were armed."
Laughter spread around the lecture room. "All right, people. Time to grab some lunch; then we'll go to the range for a practice shoot. Remember, bring your eye and ear protection. You shoot; I'll watch and then we can work on perfecting your skills."
Angel picked up her bag and ambled over to the Canteen, chatting with one of the policewomen who had managed to insert herself into the course. She wasn't certain whether it was tact or happenstance but there was pizza on the menu. She was about to join the line when a voice snarled behind her. "You lying skank!'
Angel turned around. There was a policeman behind her, one she recognized as an official firearms instructor. She happened to know that, as a group, the small number of firearms instructors really resented her presence here. "I'm sorry?"
"I heard that crap you were talking. Nobody can outdraw a leveled gun. If you say you can, you're lying."
"It's a question of situational awareness. Not just me, any good gunslinger can do it."
"I'd like to see you try, you murdering . . . Triad . . . . bitch." A stir of anger ran around the canteen. Everybody was aware that Angel was a high-ranking Triad member but she was helping them do their jobs and becoming quite popular in the process despite her undeniably sinister reputation. Many of the police officers were beginning to look on the Triads as, not enemies, but opponents. People who had similar interests and would cooperate in making sure the game was played by the rules even if they were on different sides of those rules.
Angel wasn't insulted; in order to be insulted, she would have to have the ability to make some kind of connection with the instructor. Anyway, viewed objectively, his comments on her character were correct although she suspected he would have used a racial slur if he'd had the chance. Only, the police force was very strict about that. Angel didn't understand why; to her ethnicity was just a fact. She couldn't comprehend why it should be used as an insult. "We can do that. People, please get behind the tables there. You, what's your name?"
"Howell, Detective Inspector Howell."
Angel opened her bag. Inside were three generic-looking Berettas and some eye protection sets. She took the real guns out of her holsters and replaced them with the ones from the bag. The paintball guns had been carefully weighted so their balance and trigger pull were identical to her stainless steel 98s. "Eye protection, put it on. And take this. I'm sorry, I don't have a SIG-Sauer paintball pistol. You'll have to use a Beretta. Rest of you, a lesson. Always be prepared."
"You want to make a little bet on this?" Howell was smirking. Angel nodded. "When you lose, you sit on the station steps, cleaning my shoes. All of them."
Angel nodded. "And when you lose, you spend a day wearing a policewoman's uniform. Including the underwear, just like a Canadian submariner."
A laugh ran around the canteen, partially dispelling the tension that was building up. Angel looked around. "Constable Andrews, could you make sure that nobody comes through that door please. We don't want anybody getting hit by strays. Everybody out of the line of fire, please."
Conrad had told her to say 'please' after every request so she had followed his advice, right up to the next line. "DI Howell, point your gun at my face. Fire when I start to draw."
The people watching suddenly realized that the life had gone out of Angel's eyes; there was no glitter of reflected light, just a cold, black abyss. Looking at her, Howell had already decided to cheat by firing without warning when suddenly his vision was blotted out by green and red splatters and the cracking of his eye-visor. He felt heavy, excruciatingly painful impacts in his chest and more in his stomach ending in his groin. He doubled up and fell to the floor, whimpering with the surge of pain that turned into a wail as it spread through his body.
Angel was lying on her back, both guns in her hands. She'd seen the flash of slyness as she'd told him when to fire and known he was going to cheat. She had also seen the tightening of the skin around his eyes and lips that told her when so she had done her usual cross-draw as she dived backwards. The first paintballs had hit him in the face visor, cracking it open, the rest had walked down his chest as she fell. She hadn't tried to hit him in the groin but couldn't help but feel pleased she had. As far as she could see, he hadn't managed to get a single shot off.
She got to her feet and looked around. "When I said, be prepared, I was. I keep my paintballs in the canteen deep freeze. Puts a level of menace into things. Makes them more realistic."
The men present instinctively crossed their legs while the women started laughing. On the floor Howell was still writhing from the impact of the frozen paintballs. He tried to say something but couldn’t get it out. Instead, the policewoman Angel had been speaking with looked at her with a broad smile on her face. "You knew he was going to shoot first, didn't you?"
"Oh yes. I'll tell you the signs to look for when we do our next lesson." Angel put her paintball guns away and restored her Berettas to their holsters.
Angel was finishing off her pizza when Conrad came in. "Angel. I just passed a moaning Detective Inspector covered in paintball splatter and hanging on to a railing for support. You didn't, did you?"
There was a burst of noise from the canteen occupants that Conrad mentally translated as yes, she did, and it was about time somebody took Howell down a peg or two. He shook his head. Life around Angel was never dull. "The Chief Inspector wants to see us. Something really odd has happened in Marsh Baldon. Again."
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Three – Through Igrat’s Eyes
The Main Dining Room, The Inn on the Green, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
“Isn’t Angel joining us?” Madeleine Evans looked around, slightly disappointed. To her, Angel had an exotic, dangerous air about her that she found fascinating. She’d been hoping to learn a bit more about her, trying to understand somebody whose mentality was quite different from anybody she had ever met.
“No.” Igrat thought carefully before speaking. “If there was a parallel party to this, a boy’s night out, she’d be with them, not us. Angel’s been working alongside men all her life. She’s comfortable with them in a way most women aren’t. She’s the ‘girl who is one of the boys.’ Also, she’s like a female cat; cats and Angel have a lot in common. You know how a female cat who isn’t on heat can walk right past a male without him paying any attention to the fact she is a she? Well, Angel does the same; she exudes non-availability.
“I’d never thought I’d be able to afford to eat here.” Phoebe Spencer was looking around at the dining room, her eyes bulging slightly. “This is fabulous, Irene, thank you for arranging it all.”
There was a murmur of agreement around the group. Out of uniform and in their best clothes, properly-made up and with their hair styled instead of tied back in the regulation bun, Igrat’s guests looked quite different from their daily appearance as policewomen. As the group had assembled, each member had privately played the usual game of identifying and pricing the outfits the others were wearing. Mostly that was quite easy because the number of good women’s clothing stores in Oxford was limited but Paige Lawson and Natasha Gallagher had tried the same thing on Igrat. They’d estimated the cost of the cocktail dress she was wearing, come over all faint and had to be revived with a small glass of sherry each.
“Is it true that the Inn is owned by the whole village?” Paige was looking around at the dining room, admiring the way it had been decorated. Somehow the designers had managed to capture the essence of a traditional English country inn without turning it into a caricature or pastiche.
“It is; and all the staff but Chef Murray and his students are volunteers from the village who donate the time to keep the place going. I do four evenings a week here as a barmaid.” Igrat glanced around. “While we’re alone here, Isolda Rowley will be joining us. ‘Lea is bringing her over right now. Once she’s here; don’t try and help her or fuss over her. She has to feel she can manage on her own, that she doesn’t need to depend on other people. And she can, she just has to believe she can.”
“How is Isolda doing? Really?” Natasha sounded genuinely worried. The news bulletins on her progress had been bland and uninformative. All eight policewomen present had watched The Blue Lamp as well and remembered the scene where the officers had been told that George Dixon was ‘a little bit better’ only to hear a few minutes later that he had died.
“Really? The bullet shattered her spine and wrecked her spinal cord. She’ll have to wear a back brace from now in and probably leg braces as well. The physiotherapists are trying to retrain what’s left of the nerve connections in her spine to allow her legs to function. That’s why you must let her do things for herself. There was a Navy lieutenant Frank Wead who had similar spinal damage yet ended up commanding a carrier so it’s not hopeless but she was very badly hurt.” Igrat looked over to the kitchen door; Chef Murray had appeared and gave her the “ten minutes” sign.
“Irene, are you sure we can’t chip in for the cost of this?” Phoebe was still looking at the dining room and the large table laid out in the middle. The other women were nodding in agreement. They knew ‘Irene’ was wealthy but this seemed to be taking advantage.
“I’m sure. Look, this is a Tuesday, the slowest day in the week for any restaurant. Even after The Badger closed down, we still only have a scattering of guests on Tuesday nights. I discussed a prix fixe menu with Chef Murray and that cuts costs right down. You will have to sing for your supper though, each course is one that Chef has been developing for his own restaurants and you’ll have to fill in a brief questionnaire about what you liked and what you thought needed more work. Apart from that, the Home Office is paying the check. Except for alcoholic drinks of course. This is a good occasion for us to talk off the books you see. The Police Force is changing, there’s a lot of policy discussions going on and Thames Valley is being used to validate some of the conclusions being drawn. The fact that you’re all Constables and Sergeants without the old ‘Women’ prefix is just an early sign of that. I’ll let you into a little secret, there’s a new uniform coming, a different color, a bit like RAF blue and it’ll be the same style for men and women. Polo neck shirts, no collars, ties or cravats. Oh, here we are. Welcome to the Inn, Isolda.”
“Sorry I’m a little late, I’m not as quick on my feet as I was.” There was a round of laughter at the joke, something that pleased Isolda Rowley greatly. Behind her, Cristi slipped past and made her way into the private office. Igrat had left her party dress and ‘refresh’ supplies there. She was also pleased to see how Cristi had avoided diverting attention from Isolda’s entrance. She is growing up fast. Isolda had heavy crutches on both arms that she was using to support herself. It was painfully obvious that she had very limited use of her legs and was doing little more that drag them behind her. Eliza Kelly, the girl who was standing in for Igrat behind the bar, looked up, recognized her and her eyes went wide. That tipped off the half dozen men at the bar.
They glanced around as well, then jumped to their feet. “Your permission ma’am, but we’d like to raise a glass to you. May your health be good and your recovery swift.”
Every guest in the bar raised their glasses, causing Isolda to blush. “Why thank you. I’m on meds right now and can’t drink alcohol but when I’m better, perhaps I can come back and return your toast?”
“You’ll always be welcome here ma’am. Any time. All of you.”
Igrat decided it was a nice way for the party to enter the dining room. She led her guests in, trying not to look too much like a sheepdog herding the flock. By the time everybody was in and seated, Cristi had changed out of her day clothes and got herself ready. She glanced over the cards and found she was sitting on Igrat's right. Igrat turned to the rest of her guests. "This is my little sister, Cristi. She's studying to be a forensic pathologist at Baillie College."
Igrat was at the head of the table of course, with Isolda at the other end. That wasn't just an honor, it was also so she had the easiest path in and out of her seat. Chef Murray came from his kitchen and seated Igrat while his assistants and the waiters seated the other guests. That wasn't something Igrat had planned but it made a pleasant start and also made sure Isolda was seated easily without the assistance being apparent. Each of the guests looked at their name cards and noted something significant; while their names were printed in full, their respective ranks were not.
The waiters were bringing out the first course. The menu card described it as "British Onion Soup - A British country version of the French classic, made with locally-brewed ale, fresh-baked bread and topped with a melted selection of traditional English cheeses. Igrat tasted her soup and found it exquisite. Still, its time for business to start. "What did you think of Angel's lecture on how George Dixon got himself killed?"
To Igrat's delight, all her guests, including Cristi, thought that over while entranced by their soup. Eventually, Phoebe dabbed her lips carefully and put down her spoon. "Ohh, that was superb. Angel talked a lot of sense and her advice was really good where the confrontation in the film was concerned. Dixon did handle it very badly. But she was wrong when she said Dixon got himself killed. I think he was killed because the other officers at the station let him down."
"Especially the policewoman." Natasha looked up defensively. "Well, she did, didn’t she? I think that's why we're all here. To learn from what she did wrong."
"Police Sergeant Grace Millard." Paige surveyed her empty bowl mournfully. "Please, sir, can I have some more?"
There was a burst of laughter around the table. Unseen in the kitchen, Chef Murray gave a quickly-hidden beam of pride. Igrat scanned her group. "She obviously made an impression on you Paige. Her part only lasted for two or three minutes."
"And she did everything wrong, I was sitting there, cringing at the way she treated that poor girl."
"She should have known something was wrong, right from the beginning." Natasha shook her head sadly. "If she'd been on the ball, Riley would have been pulled in much earlier and that Cinema robbery would never have taken place."
"It never occurred for her to ask why Diana had run away from home." Igrat sighed and the expression was quite genuine. "Even when she said she would rather kill herself than go back home. That was screaming out that she was an abuse victim. Probably, almost certainly, her father."
"There's a lot buried in The Blue Lamp that wasn't obvious to a 1949 audience." Madeline was very thoughtful. "There's so much we know now and watch out for but back then . . ."
"That's no excuse." Paige sounded quite heated, then got herself under control. "When a young girl runs away from home and will do anything rather than go back, up to and including doing away with herself, well, we're all coppers, we know what the score is. They knew back in 1949 as well. It was a policewoman's job back then to deal with women and children and sexual assault should have been at the front of her mind the moment she heard that suicide outburst. Diana was both woman and child yet Millard treated her like dirt. Literally, drove her away."
"And insulted her. Ohh, very subtly at first, but increasingly overtly as the interview went wrong."
"Like telling her she would be found a job, obviously a minimal-wage manual one, when she already had a reasonable job for a young woman in 1949." Isolda made her first contribution to the discussion. The truth was that, given her injuries, she wasn't sure she was a policewoman any more.
"And then suggesting she would be found a place in a hostel where she would be with girls her own age."
"Sounds like a prison to me." The exchange had happened so quickly that Igrat had lost track of who had said what. "A hostel with girls her own age? That's pretty bleak. If I'd been given that option at her age, I'd have run screaming out of the room."
Listening to the exchange, Cristi was hard put to stop smiling at Igrat's 'at her age' since that would have been a long, long time ago. "May I say something, sis?"
Igrat smiled although she thought Cristi will still too self-effacing for her own good. "Of course. Go ahead Cristi."
"I watched The Blue Lamp last night. I picked up on the parental sexual abuse thing as well but something else occurred to me. The way Millard treated Diana, I got a really hostile vibe from it. One thing we're being taught about this sort of thing, the first thing that a girl in that position will do is go to her mother. But what if the mother already knows and has elected to do nothing? Perhaps because she is afraid that doing something to protect her daughter will break up the family or even because the daughter getting abused is taking the father's attention away from her. Suppose Millard had a daughter in the same position and had elected to do the same? Keep quiet and say nothing - but feel really guilty about doing so. So, when she meets a girl who had the courage to run away from that situation, she hated her for doing what she wished her own daughter would have done."
"It makes a lot of sense although it's pretty thin evidence." Natasha pursed her lips. "But why didn't Diana tell anybody?"
"Please, I don't want to insult anybody, but something everybody my age learns is that nobody will listen to us. Boy or girl, doesn’t matter. Try and talk to somebody and the parent just says 'oh they're just kids.' And that's all that happens." Cristi looked around nervously and bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”
"Wow, there's a shot across the bows." Paige looked around, noting how many of her colleagues looked guilty. "And a very timely one I think. Thank you Cristi. I think you just helped a lot more people than you realized. You know, that's hinted at in The Blue Lamp as well."
"You mean that bit where Millard turns to Diana and tells her that 'some people just won’t be helped'. I wanted to punch her in the face when she said that. That wasn't just stupid, it was cruel. Because Diana wouldn’t obey her orders." Phoebe sounded angry as well. Fortunately for her blood pressure, the soup plates were being collected and replaced by small individual fish pies. Once everybody had theirs, Igrat led the way and dug into the herbed mashed potatoes. The pie was filled with a mix of salmon and cod in a cream sauce. For a few minutes all that could be heard was the sound of eating.
"It could have been so different." Natasha sounded desperately sad.
"The pie?" Paige couldn't believe anybody had found something wrong with it.
"Well, it could use something to provide contrast to the fish. Some peas or thinly sliced mushrooms perhaps." In the kitchen, Chef Murray pursed his lips and thought about that, then nodded and made a note on his pad. He would try that tomorrow and see how it came out. He also made a note to invite Natasha back for a tasting session.
Unaware of the honor about to be bestowed upon her, Natasha continued. "But I meant the interview Grace Millard had with Diana Lewis. If she'd only listened to Diana, talked with her rather than at her, given her sympathy rather than orders, Diana would have opened up to her. She only went with Riley because he paid attention to her. She'd been ignored for so long that any sort of attention was better than none. Even being roughed up and bullied. The fact she tolerated that tells us what her home life must have been like."
"Surely not." Phoebe was very fit and confident she wouldn’t have put up with the treatment Diana Lewis had received from Riley.
"You'd be surprised. For somebody who has been ignored, neglected and abused, they'll take the abuse as a payment for an end to the first two. But, if Millard had only listened to her, Diana would have opened up and told her what Riley was really like. And the fact that he was into some pretty thuggish things other than smacking her around." Igrat smiled at the waiter who had removed her empty pie dish and replaced it with slices of boneless chicken stuffed with choritzo, beans and tomato. Once again, there was an intense quiet as the party addressed their meals.
Eventually, Isolda pushed her empty and polished plate away. "That's all it needed. Millard let George Dixon down all right. You know what I think it was? Look how mannish the film made her appear. She was behaving and acting like a man. Or trying to. Hard and aggressive. She behaved that way when she was speaking with Diana Lewis because she believed that was the way the men around her expected her to behave. And so she shut down and silenced the one person who could have stopped the whole tragedy from happening. She condemned George Dixon to death, and Tom Riley too because he was sure to hang for what he did. All because she wanted to be one of the boys and behaved the way she thought they would approve of."
There was a long silence as that sank in. Isolda flushed at the heat of her outburst and addressed herself to her stuffed chicken. Phoebe shook her head. “Irene, was the Blue Lamp intended as an instructional film for us. Showing what happens when things go wrong? Or , more accurately, aren’t done right?”
“I don’t know, I can ask. But its funny how we can watch that film and it’s over an hour of entertainment yet was we dig into it, the whole thing changes into a tragedy of errors and misjudgment.”
Paige broke the concentrated silence. "I've been thinking about what Cristi said. About nobody listening to people her age. It's true, we all know it. We need to do something about that. We've got plenty of young police cadets. Why don’t we make it a part of their course to come to a police station and talk to people of their own age? Perhaps they can get answers we can’t.”
There was much nodding as the dinner plates were cleared away and replaced with clementine, star anise and ricotta cake decorated with a spoonful of crème fraiche. Igrat took mercy on her guests. “Don’t worry, you’ll be working out in the gym tomorrow.”
“Who’ll be teaching?” Cristi had a shrewd idea that the answer involved old Roman exercises that were almost lost to history.
“’Lea will. That’ll upset another group of traditional instructors.”
Cristi glanced around. “That will burn off the calories. By the way, where is ‘Lea? And Angel?”
Igrat smiled. “They’re off with Conrad. Solving another mystery.”
Isolda looked very tentatively at Igrat. “Irene, may I ask something? What is it with those two? They’re obviously a couple but . . . . . I just can’t imagine Angel being married to anybody.”
Cristi and Igrat exchanged looks and then burst out laughing. Eventually, Igrat answered, “No, they aren’t married. I suppose ‘platonic lifetime partners’ would be the best description. I would add that they are the only two people around who don’t realize they are in love.”
That caused another round of laughter. Natasha was the first to succumb to curiosity. “What’s the mystery, Irene? I haven’t heard of any murders recently.”
Igrat shook her head. “It’s an odd case. Somebody stole a horse-box from the riding stables a couple of nights ago. Nobody can work out how or where it went. It’s pretty minor but one of the grooms was watching the place that night and the owner accused him of the theft. Conrad spoke to him and is convinced the poor kid is innocent. So he’s trying to find the evidence that exonerates him while ‘Lea helps with the muscles and Angel makes sure he doesn’t come to any harm.”
Paige leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “So, Conrad is currently the safest man in Europe.”
“Just about. Now, who would like some coffee? And brandy is on the house.” Igrat leaned back and smiled, happy with the success of her party. Once her guests had departed, she would transpose everything that had been said from her mind to computer disk and send it to Chris Keeble. The idea about using young cadets to interview teenagers alone was probably worth the cost of the dinner party.
The Main Dining Room, The Inn on the Green, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
“Isn’t Angel joining us?” Madeleine Evans looked around, slightly disappointed. To her, Angel had an exotic, dangerous air about her that she found fascinating. She’d been hoping to learn a bit more about her, trying to understand somebody whose mentality was quite different from anybody she had ever met.
“No.” Igrat thought carefully before speaking. “If there was a parallel party to this, a boy’s night out, she’d be with them, not us. Angel’s been working alongside men all her life. She’s comfortable with them in a way most women aren’t. She’s the ‘girl who is one of the boys.’ Also, she’s like a female cat; cats and Angel have a lot in common. You know how a female cat who isn’t on heat can walk right past a male without him paying any attention to the fact she is a she? Well, Angel does the same; she exudes non-availability.
“I’d never thought I’d be able to afford to eat here.” Phoebe Spencer was looking around at the dining room, her eyes bulging slightly. “This is fabulous, Irene, thank you for arranging it all.”
There was a murmur of agreement around the group. Out of uniform and in their best clothes, properly-made up and with their hair styled instead of tied back in the regulation bun, Igrat’s guests looked quite different from their daily appearance as policewomen. As the group had assembled, each member had privately played the usual game of identifying and pricing the outfits the others were wearing. Mostly that was quite easy because the number of good women’s clothing stores in Oxford was limited but Paige Lawson and Natasha Gallagher had tried the same thing on Igrat. They’d estimated the cost of the cocktail dress she was wearing, come over all faint and had to be revived with a small glass of sherry each.
“Is it true that the Inn is owned by the whole village?” Paige was looking around at the dining room, admiring the way it had been decorated. Somehow the designers had managed to capture the essence of a traditional English country inn without turning it into a caricature or pastiche.
“It is; and all the staff but Chef Murray and his students are volunteers from the village who donate the time to keep the place going. I do four evenings a week here as a barmaid.” Igrat glanced around. “While we’re alone here, Isolda Rowley will be joining us. ‘Lea is bringing her over right now. Once she’s here; don’t try and help her or fuss over her. She has to feel she can manage on her own, that she doesn’t need to depend on other people. And she can, she just has to believe she can.”
“How is Isolda doing? Really?” Natasha sounded genuinely worried. The news bulletins on her progress had been bland and uninformative. All eight policewomen present had watched The Blue Lamp as well and remembered the scene where the officers had been told that George Dixon was ‘a little bit better’ only to hear a few minutes later that he had died.
“Really? The bullet shattered her spine and wrecked her spinal cord. She’ll have to wear a back brace from now in and probably leg braces as well. The physiotherapists are trying to retrain what’s left of the nerve connections in her spine to allow her legs to function. That’s why you must let her do things for herself. There was a Navy lieutenant Frank Wead who had similar spinal damage yet ended up commanding a carrier so it’s not hopeless but she was very badly hurt.” Igrat looked over to the kitchen door; Chef Murray had appeared and gave her the “ten minutes” sign.
“Irene, are you sure we can’t chip in for the cost of this?” Phoebe was still looking at the dining room and the large table laid out in the middle. The other women were nodding in agreement. They knew ‘Irene’ was wealthy but this seemed to be taking advantage.
“I’m sure. Look, this is a Tuesday, the slowest day in the week for any restaurant. Even after The Badger closed down, we still only have a scattering of guests on Tuesday nights. I discussed a prix fixe menu with Chef Murray and that cuts costs right down. You will have to sing for your supper though, each course is one that Chef has been developing for his own restaurants and you’ll have to fill in a brief questionnaire about what you liked and what you thought needed more work. Apart from that, the Home Office is paying the check. Except for alcoholic drinks of course. This is a good occasion for us to talk off the books you see. The Police Force is changing, there’s a lot of policy discussions going on and Thames Valley is being used to validate some of the conclusions being drawn. The fact that you’re all Constables and Sergeants without the old ‘Women’ prefix is just an early sign of that. I’ll let you into a little secret, there’s a new uniform coming, a different color, a bit like RAF blue and it’ll be the same style for men and women. Polo neck shirts, no collars, ties or cravats. Oh, here we are. Welcome to the Inn, Isolda.”
“Sorry I’m a little late, I’m not as quick on my feet as I was.” There was a round of laughter at the joke, something that pleased Isolda Rowley greatly. Behind her, Cristi slipped past and made her way into the private office. Igrat had left her party dress and ‘refresh’ supplies there. She was also pleased to see how Cristi had avoided diverting attention from Isolda’s entrance. She is growing up fast. Isolda had heavy crutches on both arms that she was using to support herself. It was painfully obvious that she had very limited use of her legs and was doing little more that drag them behind her. Eliza Kelly, the girl who was standing in for Igrat behind the bar, looked up, recognized her and her eyes went wide. That tipped off the half dozen men at the bar.
They glanced around as well, then jumped to their feet. “Your permission ma’am, but we’d like to raise a glass to you. May your health be good and your recovery swift.”
Every guest in the bar raised their glasses, causing Isolda to blush. “Why thank you. I’m on meds right now and can’t drink alcohol but when I’m better, perhaps I can come back and return your toast?”
“You’ll always be welcome here ma’am. Any time. All of you.”
Igrat decided it was a nice way for the party to enter the dining room. She led her guests in, trying not to look too much like a sheepdog herding the flock. By the time everybody was in and seated, Cristi had changed out of her day clothes and got herself ready. She glanced over the cards and found she was sitting on Igrat's right. Igrat turned to the rest of her guests. "This is my little sister, Cristi. She's studying to be a forensic pathologist at Baillie College."
Igrat was at the head of the table of course, with Isolda at the other end. That wasn't just an honor, it was also so she had the easiest path in and out of her seat. Chef Murray came from his kitchen and seated Igrat while his assistants and the waiters seated the other guests. That wasn't something Igrat had planned but it made a pleasant start and also made sure Isolda was seated easily without the assistance being apparent. Each of the guests looked at their name cards and noted something significant; while their names were printed in full, their respective ranks were not.
The waiters were bringing out the first course. The menu card described it as "British Onion Soup - A British country version of the French classic, made with locally-brewed ale, fresh-baked bread and topped with a melted selection of traditional English cheeses. Igrat tasted her soup and found it exquisite. Still, its time for business to start. "What did you think of Angel's lecture on how George Dixon got himself killed?"
To Igrat's delight, all her guests, including Cristi, thought that over while entranced by their soup. Eventually, Phoebe dabbed her lips carefully and put down her spoon. "Ohh, that was superb. Angel talked a lot of sense and her advice was really good where the confrontation in the film was concerned. Dixon did handle it very badly. But she was wrong when she said Dixon got himself killed. I think he was killed because the other officers at the station let him down."
"Especially the policewoman." Natasha looked up defensively. "Well, she did, didn’t she? I think that's why we're all here. To learn from what she did wrong."
"Police Sergeant Grace Millard." Paige surveyed her empty bowl mournfully. "Please, sir, can I have some more?"
There was a burst of laughter around the table. Unseen in the kitchen, Chef Murray gave a quickly-hidden beam of pride. Igrat scanned her group. "She obviously made an impression on you Paige. Her part only lasted for two or three minutes."
"And she did everything wrong, I was sitting there, cringing at the way she treated that poor girl."
"She should have known something was wrong, right from the beginning." Natasha shook her head sadly. "If she'd been on the ball, Riley would have been pulled in much earlier and that Cinema robbery would never have taken place."
"It never occurred for her to ask why Diana had run away from home." Igrat sighed and the expression was quite genuine. "Even when she said she would rather kill herself than go back home. That was screaming out that she was an abuse victim. Probably, almost certainly, her father."
"There's a lot buried in The Blue Lamp that wasn't obvious to a 1949 audience." Madeline was very thoughtful. "There's so much we know now and watch out for but back then . . ."
"That's no excuse." Paige sounded quite heated, then got herself under control. "When a young girl runs away from home and will do anything rather than go back, up to and including doing away with herself, well, we're all coppers, we know what the score is. They knew back in 1949 as well. It was a policewoman's job back then to deal with women and children and sexual assault should have been at the front of her mind the moment she heard that suicide outburst. Diana was both woman and child yet Millard treated her like dirt. Literally, drove her away."
"And insulted her. Ohh, very subtly at first, but increasingly overtly as the interview went wrong."
"Like telling her she would be found a job, obviously a minimal-wage manual one, when she already had a reasonable job for a young woman in 1949." Isolda made her first contribution to the discussion. The truth was that, given her injuries, she wasn't sure she was a policewoman any more.
"And then suggesting she would be found a place in a hostel where she would be with girls her own age."
"Sounds like a prison to me." The exchange had happened so quickly that Igrat had lost track of who had said what. "A hostel with girls her own age? That's pretty bleak. If I'd been given that option at her age, I'd have run screaming out of the room."
Listening to the exchange, Cristi was hard put to stop smiling at Igrat's 'at her age' since that would have been a long, long time ago. "May I say something, sis?"
Igrat smiled although she thought Cristi will still too self-effacing for her own good. "Of course. Go ahead Cristi."
"I watched The Blue Lamp last night. I picked up on the parental sexual abuse thing as well but something else occurred to me. The way Millard treated Diana, I got a really hostile vibe from it. One thing we're being taught about this sort of thing, the first thing that a girl in that position will do is go to her mother. But what if the mother already knows and has elected to do nothing? Perhaps because she is afraid that doing something to protect her daughter will break up the family or even because the daughter getting abused is taking the father's attention away from her. Suppose Millard had a daughter in the same position and had elected to do the same? Keep quiet and say nothing - but feel really guilty about doing so. So, when she meets a girl who had the courage to run away from that situation, she hated her for doing what she wished her own daughter would have done."
"It makes a lot of sense although it's pretty thin evidence." Natasha pursed her lips. "But why didn't Diana tell anybody?"
"Please, I don't want to insult anybody, but something everybody my age learns is that nobody will listen to us. Boy or girl, doesn’t matter. Try and talk to somebody and the parent just says 'oh they're just kids.' And that's all that happens." Cristi looked around nervously and bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”
"Wow, there's a shot across the bows." Paige looked around, noting how many of her colleagues looked guilty. "And a very timely one I think. Thank you Cristi. I think you just helped a lot more people than you realized. You know, that's hinted at in The Blue Lamp as well."
"You mean that bit where Millard turns to Diana and tells her that 'some people just won’t be helped'. I wanted to punch her in the face when she said that. That wasn't just stupid, it was cruel. Because Diana wouldn’t obey her orders." Phoebe sounded angry as well. Fortunately for her blood pressure, the soup plates were being collected and replaced by small individual fish pies. Once everybody had theirs, Igrat led the way and dug into the herbed mashed potatoes. The pie was filled with a mix of salmon and cod in a cream sauce. For a few minutes all that could be heard was the sound of eating.
"It could have been so different." Natasha sounded desperately sad.
"The pie?" Paige couldn't believe anybody had found something wrong with it.
"Well, it could use something to provide contrast to the fish. Some peas or thinly sliced mushrooms perhaps." In the kitchen, Chef Murray pursed his lips and thought about that, then nodded and made a note on his pad. He would try that tomorrow and see how it came out. He also made a note to invite Natasha back for a tasting session.
Unaware of the honor about to be bestowed upon her, Natasha continued. "But I meant the interview Grace Millard had with Diana Lewis. If she'd only listened to Diana, talked with her rather than at her, given her sympathy rather than orders, Diana would have opened up to her. She only went with Riley because he paid attention to her. She'd been ignored for so long that any sort of attention was better than none. Even being roughed up and bullied. The fact she tolerated that tells us what her home life must have been like."
"Surely not." Phoebe was very fit and confident she wouldn’t have put up with the treatment Diana Lewis had received from Riley.
"You'd be surprised. For somebody who has been ignored, neglected and abused, they'll take the abuse as a payment for an end to the first two. But, if Millard had only listened to her, Diana would have opened up and told her what Riley was really like. And the fact that he was into some pretty thuggish things other than smacking her around." Igrat smiled at the waiter who had removed her empty pie dish and replaced it with slices of boneless chicken stuffed with choritzo, beans and tomato. Once again, there was an intense quiet as the party addressed their meals.
Eventually, Isolda pushed her empty and polished plate away. "That's all it needed. Millard let George Dixon down all right. You know what I think it was? Look how mannish the film made her appear. She was behaving and acting like a man. Or trying to. Hard and aggressive. She behaved that way when she was speaking with Diana Lewis because she believed that was the way the men around her expected her to behave. And so she shut down and silenced the one person who could have stopped the whole tragedy from happening. She condemned George Dixon to death, and Tom Riley too because he was sure to hang for what he did. All because she wanted to be one of the boys and behaved the way she thought they would approve of."
There was a long silence as that sank in. Isolda flushed at the heat of her outburst and addressed herself to her stuffed chicken. Phoebe shook her head. “Irene, was the Blue Lamp intended as an instructional film for us. Showing what happens when things go wrong? Or , more accurately, aren’t done right?”
“I don’t know, I can ask. But its funny how we can watch that film and it’s over an hour of entertainment yet was we dig into it, the whole thing changes into a tragedy of errors and misjudgment.”
Paige broke the concentrated silence. "I've been thinking about what Cristi said. About nobody listening to people her age. It's true, we all know it. We need to do something about that. We've got plenty of young police cadets. Why don’t we make it a part of their course to come to a police station and talk to people of their own age? Perhaps they can get answers we can’t.”
There was much nodding as the dinner plates were cleared away and replaced with clementine, star anise and ricotta cake decorated with a spoonful of crème fraiche. Igrat took mercy on her guests. “Don’t worry, you’ll be working out in the gym tomorrow.”
“Who’ll be teaching?” Cristi had a shrewd idea that the answer involved old Roman exercises that were almost lost to history.
“’Lea will. That’ll upset another group of traditional instructors.”
Cristi glanced around. “That will burn off the calories. By the way, where is ‘Lea? And Angel?”
Igrat smiled. “They’re off with Conrad. Solving another mystery.”
Isolda looked very tentatively at Igrat. “Irene, may I ask something? What is it with those two? They’re obviously a couple but . . . . . I just can’t imagine Angel being married to anybody.”
Cristi and Igrat exchanged looks and then burst out laughing. Eventually, Igrat answered, “No, they aren’t married. I suppose ‘platonic lifetime partners’ would be the best description. I would add that they are the only two people around who don’t realize they are in love.”
That caused another round of laughter. Natasha was the first to succumb to curiosity. “What’s the mystery, Irene? I haven’t heard of any murders recently.”
Igrat shook her head. “It’s an odd case. Somebody stole a horse-box from the riding stables a couple of nights ago. Nobody can work out how or where it went. It’s pretty minor but one of the grooms was watching the place that night and the owner accused him of the theft. Conrad spoke to him and is convinced the poor kid is innocent. So he’s trying to find the evidence that exonerates him while ‘Lea helps with the muscles and Angel makes sure he doesn’t come to any harm.”
Paige leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “So, Conrad is currently the safest man in Europe.”
“Just about. Now, who would like some coffee? And brandy is on the house.” Igrat leaned back and smiled, happy with the success of her party. Once her guests had departed, she would transpose everything that had been said from her mind to computer disk and send it to Chris Keeble. The idea about using young cadets to interview teenagers alone was probably worth the cost of the dinner party.
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Four – Thorough Conrad’s Eyes
The Old Manor Ranch, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
"The Old Manor Ranch?" Angel looked around at the establishment.
"It's named after the Manor House that was here before the Occupation." Adam Carroll looked around. "The blackshirts blew it up in 1946. When we rebuilt, we kept the name but that was all there was to keep. Rest was rubble."
Conrad was looking around the scene. It was serenely beautiful, the magic hour when the sun was setting and a soft grayish light suffused the landscape. The whole countryside seemed to exude peace and tranquility. Conrad shook himself, realizing the calm had led him into poetry and possible even the danger of purple prose. "I think Angel meant the ranch part."
"Well, we're trying to attract American tourists so we thought it would make them feel at home here." Carroll looked around a little sheepishly.
"Ya do know most of us live in cities don'ya." Angel had let her New York accent out which was usually a warning something was badly wrong although this time Conrad guessed she was simply making a point. He had to admit, though, to Angel, riddling somebody with bullets was also simply making a point. She caught Conrad's eyes and he saw her roll her own slightly.
"You don't seem to have much security here." Conrad looked around. The gate on the front path was obviously intended to keep horses in, not people out. He had a feeling that the Land Rover parked by it was unlocked and the keys had been left in the ignition. That gave him a thought. "I don't suppose any vehicles are missing as well are there?"
Carroll shook his head. "We checked them all, none missing. In fact none moved since the previous afternoon."
"So the thieves must have brought their own." Conrad hesitated, on uncertain ground. "How difficult is it to tow a horsebox away?"
"Normally, not very. Especially if it's empty. Standard saloon car can do it as long as it's got a towing hitch. The one that got took, it's different. They'd need a Land Rover at least."
"Why's that?" Conrad realized that he had the 'got somewhere important' feeling. Behind him, a group of five riders had come in, four being tourists on a cross-country trek, the fifth their guide. One of the horses was looking around, seeing if there was an apple in prospect. Then, it saw Angel, paused for a second before whinnying in fear and trying to move away. Angel just stared at it which made the animal even more nervous.
"It was a very unusual horsebox." Carroll hesitated. "What do you know about the equine bloodstock situation here?"
"Not very much at all." Conrad confessed. There was a sound of car engine and Achillea pulled in, being very careful to stay away from the horses. She actually quite liked them and was a practiced if inelegant rider. Nevertheless, she didn't want to get an accidental dent in a borrowed Rover.
"All right. During the Occupation, the Germans took every horse they could find. People think of the German Army as being some ultra-modern mechanized force but it wasn't. Their primary means of mobility was horses and they worked them to death. Being on the Russian Front didn’t help. It was bad enough before the Yanks came in; before then the Germans were losing 80,000 horses a month. But when the Yanks started dropping jellygas on the supply columns." Carroll's voice faded away when he remembered he was speaking with Americans.
"It's really called napalm." Angel said helpfully.
"Yeah . . . . . sorry. Look, there were 1.2 million horses in this country in 1939. When the war ended there were less than fifty thousand. The Germans took the draft horses for transport, the hunters and estate stock for their officers. Then came the Great Famine. Everybody and his brother had rifles and a horse would feed a family for quite a few days. How many were left by the time the harvests came back? A few hundred? No more than that. All the old bloodlines were gone. The records too, the Germans made a huge point of burning records so there was no way of proving anything wasn’t what they said it was. When we got some breeding stock to try and rebuild the horse population, they were draft horses, since that's what we needed most back then. It wasn't until the 1970s that we started trying to rebuild the racehorse stock. We ran the first post-war Derby at Epsom in 1974. And that was using imported horses. We're breeding them successfully now but my dad said that the thoroughbreds we have now are quite different from the pre-war ones. Very nervous and skittish they are. Overbred, my dad reckoned. Bloody loonies I reckon."
"Why are you telling us this?" Angel was obviously bored.
Carroll looked at her with resentment and was about to be indignant when he saw her eyes and hurriedly changed his mind. "To explain why the stolen horse trailer is so special. It's been built especially to carry racehorses. Six wheels to make sure it's steady, proper suspension to give a smooth ride. Anything to stop the horse in the back panicking and trying to kick his way out. Cost a small fortune these trailers do; that's why we're so cut up about losing it."
"You have racehorses here than?" Achillea had joined the group but had stood quietly, listening.
"I wish, miss. We'd like to get into that business but a couple of good thoroughbreds would set us back on our uppers for decades. There's only a few breeding centers and they're real careful with their horseflesh. Even getting a prize-winning stallion to cover one of our mares would be more than we can afford and there's no guarantee we'd get any horse at the end of it, let alone a good racer."
"So, why do you have the specialized horsebox needed to carry a racehorse safely?" Conrad had come back to the point.
"To be honest we don’t really need it. We was left it by an old lady here; she was convinced that she would make her fortune running racehorses. She had all the gear but sort of forgot to get the horse. When she passed on, it all came to us. You were asking about our security? Well, that horsebox was probably the only thing we had worth stealing. The horses we have here are good riders but racehorses they are not. Anyway, this is Marsh Baldon. Nothing happens here. It's not like those villages down in mid-Somerset. They've had so many killings down there, whole stretches of the countryside have been depopulated by horrible murders."
"Nothing to do with me." Angel murmured quietly. "Never been down there in my life."
Conrad wasn't sure whether she was joking or not. That was the trouble with Angel, nobody could tell whether something was her morbid sense of humor at work or a genuine comment on a situation. After all the years he had been with her, he had become convinced she spent a lot of time privately laughing at people's apprehension about being in her presence.
"So the racehorse stud farms are heavily guarded?" Conrad was intrigued by the way the situation as developing.
"Yeah. And the stables. People want to get in to nobble a favorite, get information to fix the race or steal some horse juice."
"Artificial insemination." It was Achillea's turn to try and be helpful.
"Yeah." Carroll looked slightly pleased he hadn't had to say so in front of two ladies, one of whom reminded him of all four horsemen in general and the one horseman, who habitually rode a pale horse, in particular. "Horse juice is worth a lot of money."
Conrad was very thoughtful about that. "I'd like to speak with the stableboy again."
"Keith?" Carroll looked guilty. He had been convinced the boy was involved in the theft but Conrad's doubts had made him rethink that. "We can go and see him right now if you like."
A few minutes later, Conrad was sitting in the farm kitchen, sipping from a cup of tea. “I didn’t do anything, Mister. Honest. I wouldn’t let Mr. Carroll down like that.”
“He’s a good boy, Sir.” Mrs. Carroll brought the boy a cup of tea to calm him down. This is England after all. Conrad reminded himself.
“Look Keith, I believe you and so does everybody else here but we have to find out what really happened. What I would like you to do is to close your eyes and tell me everything that happened that night. Step by step. Try and remember everything. The details could easily be the key evidence.
“Well, sir, I was night watchman from ten onwards. We all do night watch on rota. Double pay and the next day off as paid holiday. So, I sat up by the main gate; there’s a little hut there, you must have seen it as you came in. Every thirty minutes, I would walk around the farm, check the stables were secure, the horses were quiet and all the lights were out. The real thing to watch for is fire, that’s why there’s somebody up every night. If there is a fire, the first thing after sounding the alarm is to get the horses to safety. That means to the paddock behind us. About midnight I stopped in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee. Mrs. Carroll leaves a thermos of coffee out every night so the watch can have a cup.”
“That coffee is left where?” Conrad began to suspect what must have happened.
“Right here. On the kitchen table with a couple of cups. Us stablelads can come in and get a cup any time they want.”
“That’s right, Sir. I brew a fresh batch every evening.”
“Good, we’re getting on nicely. So you continued to do your rounds every half hour?”
“I think so, but my eyes were very heavy and every so often I kept realizing everything was black and I’d open them again. I must have kept dropping off to sleep.” Conrad nodded; that rang very true. Also, it was not something Keith would want to admit if he could avoid it. On the other hand admitting to a small offense was a tried and tested way of avoiding accusations of a more serious one. “Then the sun was up, I went out again and the horsebox was gone.”
“And you never heard anything?” The boy shook his head. “Mrs Carroll, I suppose the coffee thermos has been washed out.”
“Oh yes, Sir.”
“That’s a pity. It would have been nice to know what drug they used.”
Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon.
“You do realize this is a gated village, Conrad. The roads in and out are shut off every night. So, how did they get the horsebox out of the village?”
“Not all the roads are gated, Angel. The Green Roads remain open all night. It hasn’t rained here for a couple of weeks, the ground on those roads must be hard. The thieves drove in and out using those. Which means they are either locals who know the area well or this heist was carefully planned.” Achillea had a glass of single malt in her hand. Angel, of course, had her rum.
“Green roads. That’ll do it. There’s a whole maze of them back there and most of them aren’t on the map.” Angel gulped the rest of her rum and refilled the glass.
“I was speaking with the people in the bar a couple of nights ago, about the Resistance around here. Apparently the green roads drove the Germans and the Blackshirts mad. You see, it was Quisling policy not to deploy blackshirts near their own home regions. So, none of the occupiers knew where the country green roads and paths went. Meant the Resistance could move around without being spotted.” Achillea smiled to herself. She had good memories of working with the resistance; in particular of negotiating a deal with a bunch of homicidal Scottish resistance fighters. She reminded herself to tell Angel that story one day.
“Are we going to follow up on this horsebox business, Conrad.”
“I’d like to, if you don’t mind.”
“No problem for me. Just tell me who you want blown away.”
That time Conrad caught a twinkle in Angel’s cold eyes. Yes, she is teasing me. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. This is an odd case though and if we don’t solve it, that boy Keith is going to have it hanging over his head. I can hear the old women talking now. “No smoke without fire.”
To his surprise, Angel was nodding in agreement. “Get this sorted out now, we can prevent a lot of problems for him in the future.”
Achillea felt her eyebrows lifting up in sheer shock. “Am I hearing this right?”
Conrad and Angel looked at each other and laughed. “Will you tell her or shall I?”
“You do it Conrad, I’ve been lecturing people all day.”
“I’ll need another brandy.” Angel got up and went over to Igrat’s bar to refill her own glass and Conrad’s brandy snifter. The little scene amused Achillea; most people who knew who Angel and Conrad were and that they lived together assumed that Angel spent all her time plotting complex and devious murders while Conrad knelt in a corner praying for her soul. Achillea knew that the reality was their private life was much like that of any couple with the exceptions they slept in separate rooms and they never talked about their respective work. Achillea had heard them discussing a huge range of subjects from plant care to the relative merits of Lincoln and Studebaker cars but never Conrad's priestly responsibilities or what Angel did for a living.
“’Lea, you’ve seen The Blue Lamp haven’t you?”
Achillea laughed. “Hasn’t everybody right now?”
“Have you noticed that the three times the London Firm is depicted, they don’t call it that of course, they are actually working either with the police or at least to the same ends? Right at the start, 'Mike' the local Firm member, refuses flat to work with Tom Riley on the grounds that Riley and thugs like him cause so much trouble it gets in the way of more profitable enterprises. Then, later on, they work with the Police to locate Riley and enable him to be taken into custody. The Blue Lamp makes an important point there to the audience. Thank you, Angel."
Conrad sipped his brandy. "You see, organized crime depends on popular support if it is to succeed. So do the police. If one loses that support, the public will side with the other to drive the unsupported group out. Now, what the public want is everything kept quiet and peaceful. They like to live securely and as undisturbed as possible. So, if there is an 'understanding' between organized crime and the police so that the public can live undisturbed, so much the better. As the Blue Lamp shows us, the police will make agreements over small things in order to prevent much worse ones. Women can walk the streets provided they do so in defined areas and don't do so in respectable neighborhoods. Organized crime will allow, encourage . . . "
"Or order. . . . " Angel said pointedly.
" . . .. their people to be arrested peacefully if they get caught as long as said arrestees are treated properly and not brutalized. And when something threatens the peaceful environment, they cooperate to calm things down."
"That's one of the things that is worrying Chris and Humpty; there's been a couple of cop shows recently that show the police acting like the worst kind of American police. Beating confessions out of people roughing up local citizens. Trouble is, there's an element over here who want to copy that." Angel looked around. "Bad news."
"You mean like shooting people with frozen paintballs?" Conrad sipped more brandy and grinned at her.
Angel grinned back. "I've got my eye on Howell. In some ways, these lectures I'm giving are a honey trap. We're trying to identify the people who should not be let anywhere near an armed response unit. Howell's high up on the list. He should never be allowed to touch a gun, let alone be a firearms instructor."
"As he's about to find out." Conrad had heard the rumors floating around. "But, back to the Blue Lamp. Remember how the film also shows how helpless the police were when that little girl knew vital information but wouldn't tell them because her father had told her not to trust the police? They had to win her confidence before they learned the vital clue and that wasn't easy. Yet later, at the dog track, the Firm helped the police because they did have confidence in them. Remember what that civilian said. 'Chance to do yourself some good Mike'. In other words, you do right by them, they'll do right by you. You have the same thing in the 14K, don’t you Angel? People who cause too much trouble and stir things up too much?"
"Remember those street thugs we met a few years when we were trying to find those forgers?" Angel smiled gently. Thonburi was now peaceful and well-policed by local standards. The deals she had negotiated had worked well. "They're in jail. Somebody dropped a dime on them."
"And they'll never get the chance to be Tom Rileys." Conrad remembered them clearly. "That works for everybody. And clearing Keith's name now will stop him drifting that way before it starts."
The Old Manor Ranch, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
"The Old Manor Ranch?" Angel looked around at the establishment.
"It's named after the Manor House that was here before the Occupation." Adam Carroll looked around. "The blackshirts blew it up in 1946. When we rebuilt, we kept the name but that was all there was to keep. Rest was rubble."
Conrad was looking around the scene. It was serenely beautiful, the magic hour when the sun was setting and a soft grayish light suffused the landscape. The whole countryside seemed to exude peace and tranquility. Conrad shook himself, realizing the calm had led him into poetry and possible even the danger of purple prose. "I think Angel meant the ranch part."
"Well, we're trying to attract American tourists so we thought it would make them feel at home here." Carroll looked around a little sheepishly.
"Ya do know most of us live in cities don'ya." Angel had let her New York accent out which was usually a warning something was badly wrong although this time Conrad guessed she was simply making a point. He had to admit, though, to Angel, riddling somebody with bullets was also simply making a point. She caught Conrad's eyes and he saw her roll her own slightly.
"You don't seem to have much security here." Conrad looked around. The gate on the front path was obviously intended to keep horses in, not people out. He had a feeling that the Land Rover parked by it was unlocked and the keys had been left in the ignition. That gave him a thought. "I don't suppose any vehicles are missing as well are there?"
Carroll shook his head. "We checked them all, none missing. In fact none moved since the previous afternoon."
"So the thieves must have brought their own." Conrad hesitated, on uncertain ground. "How difficult is it to tow a horsebox away?"
"Normally, not very. Especially if it's empty. Standard saloon car can do it as long as it's got a towing hitch. The one that got took, it's different. They'd need a Land Rover at least."
"Why's that?" Conrad realized that he had the 'got somewhere important' feeling. Behind him, a group of five riders had come in, four being tourists on a cross-country trek, the fifth their guide. One of the horses was looking around, seeing if there was an apple in prospect. Then, it saw Angel, paused for a second before whinnying in fear and trying to move away. Angel just stared at it which made the animal even more nervous.
"It was a very unusual horsebox." Carroll hesitated. "What do you know about the equine bloodstock situation here?"
"Not very much at all." Conrad confessed. There was a sound of car engine and Achillea pulled in, being very careful to stay away from the horses. She actually quite liked them and was a practiced if inelegant rider. Nevertheless, she didn't want to get an accidental dent in a borrowed Rover.
"All right. During the Occupation, the Germans took every horse they could find. People think of the German Army as being some ultra-modern mechanized force but it wasn't. Their primary means of mobility was horses and they worked them to death. Being on the Russian Front didn’t help. It was bad enough before the Yanks came in; before then the Germans were losing 80,000 horses a month. But when the Yanks started dropping jellygas on the supply columns." Carroll's voice faded away when he remembered he was speaking with Americans.
"It's really called napalm." Angel said helpfully.
"Yeah . . . . . sorry. Look, there were 1.2 million horses in this country in 1939. When the war ended there were less than fifty thousand. The Germans took the draft horses for transport, the hunters and estate stock for their officers. Then came the Great Famine. Everybody and his brother had rifles and a horse would feed a family for quite a few days. How many were left by the time the harvests came back? A few hundred? No more than that. All the old bloodlines were gone. The records too, the Germans made a huge point of burning records so there was no way of proving anything wasn’t what they said it was. When we got some breeding stock to try and rebuild the horse population, they were draft horses, since that's what we needed most back then. It wasn't until the 1970s that we started trying to rebuild the racehorse stock. We ran the first post-war Derby at Epsom in 1974. And that was using imported horses. We're breeding them successfully now but my dad said that the thoroughbreds we have now are quite different from the pre-war ones. Very nervous and skittish they are. Overbred, my dad reckoned. Bloody loonies I reckon."
"Why are you telling us this?" Angel was obviously bored.
Carroll looked at her with resentment and was about to be indignant when he saw her eyes and hurriedly changed his mind. "To explain why the stolen horse trailer is so special. It's been built especially to carry racehorses. Six wheels to make sure it's steady, proper suspension to give a smooth ride. Anything to stop the horse in the back panicking and trying to kick his way out. Cost a small fortune these trailers do; that's why we're so cut up about losing it."
"You have racehorses here than?" Achillea had joined the group but had stood quietly, listening.
"I wish, miss. We'd like to get into that business but a couple of good thoroughbreds would set us back on our uppers for decades. There's only a few breeding centers and they're real careful with their horseflesh. Even getting a prize-winning stallion to cover one of our mares would be more than we can afford and there's no guarantee we'd get any horse at the end of it, let alone a good racer."
"So, why do you have the specialized horsebox needed to carry a racehorse safely?" Conrad had come back to the point.
"To be honest we don’t really need it. We was left it by an old lady here; she was convinced that she would make her fortune running racehorses. She had all the gear but sort of forgot to get the horse. When she passed on, it all came to us. You were asking about our security? Well, that horsebox was probably the only thing we had worth stealing. The horses we have here are good riders but racehorses they are not. Anyway, this is Marsh Baldon. Nothing happens here. It's not like those villages down in mid-Somerset. They've had so many killings down there, whole stretches of the countryside have been depopulated by horrible murders."
"Nothing to do with me." Angel murmured quietly. "Never been down there in my life."
Conrad wasn't sure whether she was joking or not. That was the trouble with Angel, nobody could tell whether something was her morbid sense of humor at work or a genuine comment on a situation. After all the years he had been with her, he had become convinced she spent a lot of time privately laughing at people's apprehension about being in her presence.
"So the racehorse stud farms are heavily guarded?" Conrad was intrigued by the way the situation as developing.
"Yeah. And the stables. People want to get in to nobble a favorite, get information to fix the race or steal some horse juice."
"Artificial insemination." It was Achillea's turn to try and be helpful.
"Yeah." Carroll looked slightly pleased he hadn't had to say so in front of two ladies, one of whom reminded him of all four horsemen in general and the one horseman, who habitually rode a pale horse, in particular. "Horse juice is worth a lot of money."
Conrad was very thoughtful about that. "I'd like to speak with the stableboy again."
"Keith?" Carroll looked guilty. He had been convinced the boy was involved in the theft but Conrad's doubts had made him rethink that. "We can go and see him right now if you like."
A few minutes later, Conrad was sitting in the farm kitchen, sipping from a cup of tea. “I didn’t do anything, Mister. Honest. I wouldn’t let Mr. Carroll down like that.”
“He’s a good boy, Sir.” Mrs. Carroll brought the boy a cup of tea to calm him down. This is England after all. Conrad reminded himself.
“Look Keith, I believe you and so does everybody else here but we have to find out what really happened. What I would like you to do is to close your eyes and tell me everything that happened that night. Step by step. Try and remember everything. The details could easily be the key evidence.
“Well, sir, I was night watchman from ten onwards. We all do night watch on rota. Double pay and the next day off as paid holiday. So, I sat up by the main gate; there’s a little hut there, you must have seen it as you came in. Every thirty minutes, I would walk around the farm, check the stables were secure, the horses were quiet and all the lights were out. The real thing to watch for is fire, that’s why there’s somebody up every night. If there is a fire, the first thing after sounding the alarm is to get the horses to safety. That means to the paddock behind us. About midnight I stopped in the kitchen and had a cup of coffee. Mrs. Carroll leaves a thermos of coffee out every night so the watch can have a cup.”
“That coffee is left where?” Conrad began to suspect what must have happened.
“Right here. On the kitchen table with a couple of cups. Us stablelads can come in and get a cup any time they want.”
“That’s right, Sir. I brew a fresh batch every evening.”
“Good, we’re getting on nicely. So you continued to do your rounds every half hour?”
“I think so, but my eyes were very heavy and every so often I kept realizing everything was black and I’d open them again. I must have kept dropping off to sleep.” Conrad nodded; that rang very true. Also, it was not something Keith would want to admit if he could avoid it. On the other hand admitting to a small offense was a tried and tested way of avoiding accusations of a more serious one. “Then the sun was up, I went out again and the horsebox was gone.”
“And you never heard anything?” The boy shook his head. “Mrs Carroll, I suppose the coffee thermos has been washed out.”
“Oh yes, Sir.”
“That’s a pity. It would have been nice to know what drug they used.”
Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon.
“You do realize this is a gated village, Conrad. The roads in and out are shut off every night. So, how did they get the horsebox out of the village?”
“Not all the roads are gated, Angel. The Green Roads remain open all night. It hasn’t rained here for a couple of weeks, the ground on those roads must be hard. The thieves drove in and out using those. Which means they are either locals who know the area well or this heist was carefully planned.” Achillea had a glass of single malt in her hand. Angel, of course, had her rum.
“Green roads. That’ll do it. There’s a whole maze of them back there and most of them aren’t on the map.” Angel gulped the rest of her rum and refilled the glass.
“I was speaking with the people in the bar a couple of nights ago, about the Resistance around here. Apparently the green roads drove the Germans and the Blackshirts mad. You see, it was Quisling policy not to deploy blackshirts near their own home regions. So, none of the occupiers knew where the country green roads and paths went. Meant the Resistance could move around without being spotted.” Achillea smiled to herself. She had good memories of working with the resistance; in particular of negotiating a deal with a bunch of homicidal Scottish resistance fighters. She reminded herself to tell Angel that story one day.
“Are we going to follow up on this horsebox business, Conrad.”
“I’d like to, if you don’t mind.”
“No problem for me. Just tell me who you want blown away.”
That time Conrad caught a twinkle in Angel’s cold eyes. Yes, she is teasing me. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. This is an odd case though and if we don’t solve it, that boy Keith is going to have it hanging over his head. I can hear the old women talking now. “No smoke without fire.”
To his surprise, Angel was nodding in agreement. “Get this sorted out now, we can prevent a lot of problems for him in the future.”
Achillea felt her eyebrows lifting up in sheer shock. “Am I hearing this right?”
Conrad and Angel looked at each other and laughed. “Will you tell her or shall I?”
“You do it Conrad, I’ve been lecturing people all day.”
“I’ll need another brandy.” Angel got up and went over to Igrat’s bar to refill her own glass and Conrad’s brandy snifter. The little scene amused Achillea; most people who knew who Angel and Conrad were and that they lived together assumed that Angel spent all her time plotting complex and devious murders while Conrad knelt in a corner praying for her soul. Achillea knew that the reality was their private life was much like that of any couple with the exceptions they slept in separate rooms and they never talked about their respective work. Achillea had heard them discussing a huge range of subjects from plant care to the relative merits of Lincoln and Studebaker cars but never Conrad's priestly responsibilities or what Angel did for a living.
“’Lea, you’ve seen The Blue Lamp haven’t you?”
Achillea laughed. “Hasn’t everybody right now?”
“Have you noticed that the three times the London Firm is depicted, they don’t call it that of course, they are actually working either with the police or at least to the same ends? Right at the start, 'Mike' the local Firm member, refuses flat to work with Tom Riley on the grounds that Riley and thugs like him cause so much trouble it gets in the way of more profitable enterprises. Then, later on, they work with the Police to locate Riley and enable him to be taken into custody. The Blue Lamp makes an important point there to the audience. Thank you, Angel."
Conrad sipped his brandy. "You see, organized crime depends on popular support if it is to succeed. So do the police. If one loses that support, the public will side with the other to drive the unsupported group out. Now, what the public want is everything kept quiet and peaceful. They like to live securely and as undisturbed as possible. So, if there is an 'understanding' between organized crime and the police so that the public can live undisturbed, so much the better. As the Blue Lamp shows us, the police will make agreements over small things in order to prevent much worse ones. Women can walk the streets provided they do so in defined areas and don't do so in respectable neighborhoods. Organized crime will allow, encourage . . . "
"Or order. . . . " Angel said pointedly.
" . . .. their people to be arrested peacefully if they get caught as long as said arrestees are treated properly and not brutalized. And when something threatens the peaceful environment, they cooperate to calm things down."
"That's one of the things that is worrying Chris and Humpty; there's been a couple of cop shows recently that show the police acting like the worst kind of American police. Beating confessions out of people roughing up local citizens. Trouble is, there's an element over here who want to copy that." Angel looked around. "Bad news."
"You mean like shooting people with frozen paintballs?" Conrad sipped more brandy and grinned at her.
Angel grinned back. "I've got my eye on Howell. In some ways, these lectures I'm giving are a honey trap. We're trying to identify the people who should not be let anywhere near an armed response unit. Howell's high up on the list. He should never be allowed to touch a gun, let alone be a firearms instructor."
"As he's about to find out." Conrad had heard the rumors floating around. "But, back to the Blue Lamp. Remember how the film also shows how helpless the police were when that little girl knew vital information but wouldn't tell them because her father had told her not to trust the police? They had to win her confidence before they learned the vital clue and that wasn't easy. Yet later, at the dog track, the Firm helped the police because they did have confidence in them. Remember what that civilian said. 'Chance to do yourself some good Mike'. In other words, you do right by them, they'll do right by you. You have the same thing in the 14K, don’t you Angel? People who cause too much trouble and stir things up too much?"
"Remember those street thugs we met a few years when we were trying to find those forgers?" Angel smiled gently. Thonburi was now peaceful and well-policed by local standards. The deals she had negotiated had worked well. "They're in jail. Somebody dropped a dime on them."
"And they'll never get the chance to be Tom Rileys." Conrad remembered them clearly. "That works for everybody. And clearing Keith's name now will stop him drifting that way before it starts."
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Five – Through Achillea’s Eyes
Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon
“I wonder if Humpty and Robbie Byrne knew fifty years ago that the film they were creating would still be used as an instructional and training aide half a century later?” Achillea had frozen the film and was looking at the image on the television screen.
“Bill Shaych wrote the script but he spent a lot of time consulting with coppers who’d lived through the Occupation and its aftermath.” Igrat had a glass of white wine in her hand as she relaxed. She’d just completed her first courier run for almost a year, taking a briefcase full of critical financial documents from London to Geneva for the Standard Chartered Bank. It had taken less than a day but it was a start and being back at work had made her feel good. After she’d made her delivery, as usual directly into the hands of the named consignee, she had gone to have lunch with Branwen and Loki. Only, Loki was out of town and Branwen had been evasive when Igrat had asked after him. Igrat was slightly hurt by that. She and Branwen had always got on well together despite the feud between Loki and The Seer.
“I can’t help thinking about Diana Lewis.” Achillea was still staring at the image of Diana Lewis on the screen, her face contorted with pure, undiluted hatred after Tom Riley had tried to strangle her. She was spewing out the words that she had to know would send him to the noose when Achillea had pressed ‘pause’. The face staring out of the screen was twisted and ugly from rage and betrayal. “Doesn’t she remind you of somebody?”
Igrat looked slightly confused, not by the question but by the fact she didn’t quite have an answer despite her reputation as being an infallible reader of people’s souls. She shook her head reluctantly.
“Look how, in earlier scenes, she kept claiming that she was happy, that she was doing well, that she was better off now than she had ever been before. And, if what the script implies about what happened to her at home is right, she might have a point. But, the truth is that she was submitting to being bullied, humiliated and brutalized. Only in the end does that all come pouring out when it's obvious that she hates herself, what she has become and Tom Riley for making her into somebody she despises.”
Igrat said nothing but started looking at Achillea with wide-open eyes. Achillea smiled to herself. Having one up on Igrat in the area of relationships was an achievement. “Try Angel.”
“Angel can’t hate anybody any more than she can love anybody. Let alone hate herself.” Igrat was shocked by the idea. She was so used to the idea of Angel being a dispassionate killing machine that the idea the situation might be so much more complicated disturbed her. Yet, as she thought about Achillea’s suggestion, she began to see the sense behind it. “That's why she's so damned good at what she does. And if a Tom Riley tried that crap on her, he’d end up like an ambulatory headless colander.”
Achillea snorted at the description, coming to the conclusion that Igrat was spending way too much time in the kitchen with Chef Murray. “No, Angel can’t hate anybody. How and why she loves Conrad is beyond my understanding. But, Conrad keeps saying that buried under all her scars, there is a good person inside Angel. Of course, he loves her as well, I think because he recognizes the person she could be. That good person inside her looks at the Angel we know and doesn’t like what she sees. Just like the person inside Diana Lewis in the Blue Lamp sees the cringing, victimized doormat she’s become and doesn’t like the sight. The problem is, or perhaps it isn’t a problem, is that Angel’s inability to feel empathy with anybody also means that the ‘good person’ dislike for who she has become, has no outlet. It’s all bottled up inside her. That's why she drinks so much. She's self-medicating against the conflict between who she is and what the good person inside her wants to be. There’s another problem. Angel isn’t stupid. . . . “
“Far from it; she’s smart. Really smart.” Igrat was having a serious problem stopping her jaw from dropping open. This was a side of Achillea she had never suspected existed.
Achillea nodded. “And she knows who and what she is. She believes that she can’t change herself so, she convinces herself that she likes what she is and doesn’t want or need any kind of redemption. Just like Diana Lewis. For all that, Angel would like to be a nice person but doesn’t know how to be. Nobody was ever sympathetic to her until she met Conrad, so she never had a role model who could teach her how to be pleasant to people. Given her head injury, she can’t puzzle it out for herself. It’s like a blind person trying to work out what color is for themselves. She doesn’t know what nice is, so she copies the behavior people who do know. Like Conrad, like you. You’re the first people who have been friendly to her.”
“And you?” Igrat looked at Achillea with a sly smile.
“Angel is the best partner I’ve ever had. She's completely business, no personal vanity at all. When we’re strategizing, she doesn’t object if her plans get discarded when a better set of options comes up. She doesn’t gloat when her plans turn out to be the best for a given situation.” Achillea thought for a moment. "You know something, I do know why she loves Conrad. She sees him as the knight in shining armor on a white horse, the person who will teach her how to be like other people. He's her passport back to the normal world, the world she thought would be forever closed to her. I hope he never lets her down; it'll be the end of them both if he does. She'll blow him away then do herself."
"That's a pretty grim thought." Igrat shook her head. "I wonder if Conrad knows that."
"Of course he does. He's as perceptive as you are. He's often said that having Angel around is like juggling live hand grenades. He knows he can bring her out of the darkness so he's prepared to take the chance - and pay the price for failing if that's the way things pan out."
"That would be so sad. If, after they both tried so hard, it went bad."
"What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.” That's one of the things that Dottore taught me when I was at the Ludus. "He also told me that I was always to seek to associate with people who are likely to improve me. Angel never did that, never could do that, until she met Conrad. And Suriyothai of course. Suriyothai is everything Angel would like to be. One of Dottore's lessons was very applicable to her."
"Which one was that?" The insight she was getting into Angel fascinated Igrat. When Chris and Humpty started this campaign to get the British Police back to basics using that old film as a pattern, their efforts have had a much wider impact than they could possibly have guessed.
"I sent her a letter that included a quotation, 'If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you need is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.' Something Dottore used to say when somebody was worrying about a personal problem. Angel and I discussed that one for weeks. That's what Diana Lewis never understood. She allowed herself to be victimized by everybody, by her abusive father, by Tom Riley, by that policewoman whatever her name was. She could have ended all those problems by studying herself and changing her approach to life. By fighting back instead of folding and submitting."
"That's more or less what Angel did." The ramifications of the subject were fascinating Igrat. In all the years she'd known Achillea, she'd never seen her open up like this. How much people have misjudged her, how they have misunderstood the person she is, has just become starkly apparent. What people think is a void inside 'Lea is something much more profound than that. It is an enormous tranquility within her soul. She is really deeply at peace with herself and the world around her. It's only when she stands next to somebody like Angel who really does have a void where her soul should be that 'Lea's true nature becomes apparent. "After her father raped her and her priest betrayed her, she made the decision never to be victimized again. Everything else she is comes from that."
"Angel would have become Diana Lewis if she hadn’t had the strength of character that she does." Achillea thought carefully about that. "No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity. Angel never had anything in her life but misfortune so she never allowed it to crush her. When she met Conrad, when he took that shot for her, he opened a door out of the misfortune that had engulfed her. Now, she's edging through that door and I think she's afraid of what's on the other side. I think she’s afraid of being happy in case it makes her weak."
Igreat thought about that for a long time while the face of Diana Lewis stared at her from the television screen. Eventually, she finished her wine and sighed slightly. "You know, 'Lea, we've never talked like this before. I wish we had."
"Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.” Achillea looked across at Igrat.
"Dottore?"
"Dottore" Achillea agreed.
The Old Manor Ranch, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
"You are discriminating against me because I'm a murderous criminal. Assuming I'll know the best way out of here with a stolen horsebox is . . . micro-aggression!" Angel did her best to look indignant. The horses nearby backed away nervously. They could sense Angel was different from other most humans, was seriously wrong, but they didn't quite know what to make of it.
"I am not discriminating against you because you are a criminal." Conrad looked at her solemnly. " I am discriminating against you because you are Chinese."
"Oh, that's all right then." Conrad and Angel exchanged equally solemn looks and then burst out laughing. Cristi had been telling them about some of the stranger beliefs a number of her fellow-students had. Going around searching for grievances to get upset over was just one of them. Conrad had heard it all before, of course, students never changed, but such things were new to Angel. She found them ridiculously funny and had reminded herself to ask Ai what her fellow students were like. It was something she would have to learn; Angel had just been promoted to Vanguard and was clearly destined for high rank if she lived long enough. It had made her lack of any formal education a serious problem that she had resolved by hiring a schoolteacher as a tutor. All the time she and Conrad were in Bangkok, she was taking lessons and doing homework. Now, she was just beginning to understand how little she knew.
"So, let's take it from the top. Somebody stole a horsebox. Not any trailer but a horsebox. They had lots of choices that would cause less interest if they were just shifting property, stolen or otherwise. Horseboxes are unusual and noticeable."
"Logical assumption is that whoever took it intends to steal a horse. Not just any horse but a racehorse. They stole one that is specially designed to carry racehorses. If they just wanted any horse, they'd also want to attract less attention by stealing a more mundane box." Angel thought about that. "Why from here?"
"That one is easy. Adam said that all the racing stables are well-guarded and secure; the value of the horses ensures that. These specialized boxes are expensive; having one but no racehorse must be unusual.”
“If not unique.” Angel’s eyes narrowed. “I wonder how they knew this particular farm had a racehorse box but no racehorses and thus not carefully guarded. And was open to being stolen.”
“We’ll have to find out if there is a registry of those trailers. Now, we know the two main roads out of the village are both gated, they were closed at ten and not re-opened until after the theft was discovered.”
“And the one to the east leads through Toot Baldon. There’s a crew working on what used to be The Badger Inn. They saw nothing.”
“Let me guess, a Chinese work crew?” Conrad hadn’t made a very incisive guess. The Badger Inn had been bought by a Chinese family who were turning it into a top-rank Cantonese restaurant. It was only logical that they would employ Chinese contractors.
“That’s right. So, both main roads are out. That horsebox had to go out by way of the green roads. And most of them aren’t mapped.” Angel folded her lower lip under her teeth. “They couldn’t go north or west, either would take them right back into the village and anybody driving around after midnight would be noticed even if they could get out. They had to go south or east. There is a green road that leads south but it swings west and brings us out by the church. That one won’t work. I suggest we go and have a look at the eastern side of the farm. They had to go out that way.”
The farm was its usual muddy self. Angel had her customary cowboy boots on, Conrad had taken the trouble to buy a pair of real country wellingtons, not the imitations offered to city people, and was handling the mire with aplomb. He was struck by a sudden thought. “Lucky Igrat isn’t here. She’d wear heels and sink up to her knees.”
“No, she’d manage to make muddy wellingtons look good. There’s a gate ahead of us. And it’s not locked.”
“Any luck, Conrad?” Adam Carroll had come over to join them. “Good morning, Angel.”
“Hi.” Angel was watching Conrad carefully. “Is this gate ever locked?”
Carroll shook his head. “It’s designed to keep the livestock in. That’s why it opens inwards.”
“You never drive a vehicle out of here?” Conrad was looking at the ground near the gate.
“No. This just leads to the paddock. Horses go through there. If we ever had a fire, we need to get the horses to safety as fast as possible. Fire is the great fear of every stable owner.”
Angel nodded. “I saw a horse that had been caught in a stable fire once. I had to shoot it.”
Carroll looked guilt-stricken. “And I was talking about . . . . Angel, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Long ago and far away. Conrad, have you found something?”
“Tracks. The farmyard is hopeless but the area under the gate itself is much drier and hasn’t been disturbed. There’s tire tracks here. Adam, do you recognize them?”
“Only that it’s a Landrover. One of the new ones. SUVs you Americans call them. Still got a good towing capacity though. And the tires are nearly new. Look how sharply-defined the treads are. They don’t stay like that for long on a farm.”
Conrad and Angel bent over the Ordnance Survey map of the area Angel had bought. “This paddock, it’s part of a Green Road isn’t it?”
“It was . . . .” Carroll was hesitant. “This one was disused for twenty years or so. I had the part that was on my land deregistered and then fenced off the paddock. If you look carefully, you can see where it ran. There’s another gate over there and the road continues from that. Would you like me to come along?”
Conrad thought about that. “Good of you to offer, Adam, but could you call the police and tell them we’ve found tracks from the vehicle used by the thieves. We’ll nose around, see what else we can find.”
“Paddock’s a lot drier than the farm ground.” Angel was walking ahead of Conrad, unconsciously acting as point for him. Bodyguard instincts Conrad thought. “Hey, another track fragment.”
“Looks like the same pattern. On a dead straight line between the gates as well. I have a good feeling about this, Angel.” They climbed over the second gate and found themselves on a broad, straight stretch of green road that led to a long line of old-growth trees a hundred yards away. By the time they got there, it was apparent that the green road went through those trees and turned sharply right the other side of the line. One of the trees had scrape marks on it where the horsebox hadn’t quite had room to turn.
“Notice anything, Conrad?” Angel was surveying the route they had walked with professional eyes. “The path back there has trees on the left that mask it from the houses further down. Here, the trees are on the right of the green road and they still mask it. Could have been made for a quiet get-away.”
A hundred yards later, the track they were following turned hard left. It went dead straight for the same distance before going through another line of woods. This time, though, the trees were on both sides of the path and the road had a hard, stoned surface under a thin layer of dirt. The shelter of the trees and the stones all meant that there was much more evidence of a vehicle having driven down the green road. Conrad stopped and looked hard. “Angel, this is as near straight as makes no difference. I bet this was a Roman road once. The surface is good and hard as well. Keep heading south?”
Angel agreed. It was about another half mile at most before the road they were following passed a single house and joined a proper metalled road. “Well, that’s it Conrad. We know how they got the horsebox out. The only question is, did they turn right or left?”
“Could be either. There’s a fair amount of traffic on the road. I’d say as long as people didn’t draw attention to themselves, nobody would notice a Landrover towing a horsebox. Of course, if they went racing round and skid-turning like those thugs in The Blue Lamp, somebody would remember them but this lot are too smart for that.”
“Not smart, Conrad.” Angel was thoughtful. “Professional. This was carefully planned by people who knew what they were doing. So, why do they want a racehorse?”
Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon
“I wonder if Humpty and Robbie Byrne knew fifty years ago that the film they were creating would still be used as an instructional and training aide half a century later?” Achillea had frozen the film and was looking at the image on the television screen.
“Bill Shaych wrote the script but he spent a lot of time consulting with coppers who’d lived through the Occupation and its aftermath.” Igrat had a glass of white wine in her hand as she relaxed. She’d just completed her first courier run for almost a year, taking a briefcase full of critical financial documents from London to Geneva for the Standard Chartered Bank. It had taken less than a day but it was a start and being back at work had made her feel good. After she’d made her delivery, as usual directly into the hands of the named consignee, she had gone to have lunch with Branwen and Loki. Only, Loki was out of town and Branwen had been evasive when Igrat had asked after him. Igrat was slightly hurt by that. She and Branwen had always got on well together despite the feud between Loki and The Seer.
“I can’t help thinking about Diana Lewis.” Achillea was still staring at the image of Diana Lewis on the screen, her face contorted with pure, undiluted hatred after Tom Riley had tried to strangle her. She was spewing out the words that she had to know would send him to the noose when Achillea had pressed ‘pause’. The face staring out of the screen was twisted and ugly from rage and betrayal. “Doesn’t she remind you of somebody?”
Igrat looked slightly confused, not by the question but by the fact she didn’t quite have an answer despite her reputation as being an infallible reader of people’s souls. She shook her head reluctantly.
“Look how, in earlier scenes, she kept claiming that she was happy, that she was doing well, that she was better off now than she had ever been before. And, if what the script implies about what happened to her at home is right, she might have a point. But, the truth is that she was submitting to being bullied, humiliated and brutalized. Only in the end does that all come pouring out when it's obvious that she hates herself, what she has become and Tom Riley for making her into somebody she despises.”
Igrat said nothing but started looking at Achillea with wide-open eyes. Achillea smiled to herself. Having one up on Igrat in the area of relationships was an achievement. “Try Angel.”
“Angel can’t hate anybody any more than she can love anybody. Let alone hate herself.” Igrat was shocked by the idea. She was so used to the idea of Angel being a dispassionate killing machine that the idea the situation might be so much more complicated disturbed her. Yet, as she thought about Achillea’s suggestion, she began to see the sense behind it. “That's why she's so damned good at what she does. And if a Tom Riley tried that crap on her, he’d end up like an ambulatory headless colander.”
Achillea snorted at the description, coming to the conclusion that Igrat was spending way too much time in the kitchen with Chef Murray. “No, Angel can’t hate anybody. How and why she loves Conrad is beyond my understanding. But, Conrad keeps saying that buried under all her scars, there is a good person inside Angel. Of course, he loves her as well, I think because he recognizes the person she could be. That good person inside her looks at the Angel we know and doesn’t like what she sees. Just like the person inside Diana Lewis in the Blue Lamp sees the cringing, victimized doormat she’s become and doesn’t like the sight. The problem is, or perhaps it isn’t a problem, is that Angel’s inability to feel empathy with anybody also means that the ‘good person’ dislike for who she has become, has no outlet. It’s all bottled up inside her. That's why she drinks so much. She's self-medicating against the conflict between who she is and what the good person inside her wants to be. There’s another problem. Angel isn’t stupid. . . . “
“Far from it; she’s smart. Really smart.” Igrat was having a serious problem stopping her jaw from dropping open. This was a side of Achillea she had never suspected existed.
Achillea nodded. “And she knows who and what she is. She believes that she can’t change herself so, she convinces herself that she likes what she is and doesn’t want or need any kind of redemption. Just like Diana Lewis. For all that, Angel would like to be a nice person but doesn’t know how to be. Nobody was ever sympathetic to her until she met Conrad, so she never had a role model who could teach her how to be pleasant to people. Given her head injury, she can’t puzzle it out for herself. It’s like a blind person trying to work out what color is for themselves. She doesn’t know what nice is, so she copies the behavior people who do know. Like Conrad, like you. You’re the first people who have been friendly to her.”
“And you?” Igrat looked at Achillea with a sly smile.
“Angel is the best partner I’ve ever had. She's completely business, no personal vanity at all. When we’re strategizing, she doesn’t object if her plans get discarded when a better set of options comes up. She doesn’t gloat when her plans turn out to be the best for a given situation.” Achillea thought for a moment. "You know something, I do know why she loves Conrad. She sees him as the knight in shining armor on a white horse, the person who will teach her how to be like other people. He's her passport back to the normal world, the world she thought would be forever closed to her. I hope he never lets her down; it'll be the end of them both if he does. She'll blow him away then do herself."
"That's a pretty grim thought." Igrat shook her head. "I wonder if Conrad knows that."
"Of course he does. He's as perceptive as you are. He's often said that having Angel around is like juggling live hand grenades. He knows he can bring her out of the darkness so he's prepared to take the chance - and pay the price for failing if that's the way things pan out."
"That would be so sad. If, after they both tried so hard, it went bad."
"What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.” That's one of the things that Dottore taught me when I was at the Ludus. "He also told me that I was always to seek to associate with people who are likely to improve me. Angel never did that, never could do that, until she met Conrad. And Suriyothai of course. Suriyothai is everything Angel would like to be. One of Dottore's lessons was very applicable to her."
"Which one was that?" The insight she was getting into Angel fascinated Igrat. When Chris and Humpty started this campaign to get the British Police back to basics using that old film as a pattern, their efforts have had a much wider impact than they could possibly have guessed.
"I sent her a letter that included a quotation, 'If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you need is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.' Something Dottore used to say when somebody was worrying about a personal problem. Angel and I discussed that one for weeks. That's what Diana Lewis never understood. She allowed herself to be victimized by everybody, by her abusive father, by Tom Riley, by that policewoman whatever her name was. She could have ended all those problems by studying herself and changing her approach to life. By fighting back instead of folding and submitting."
"That's more or less what Angel did." The ramifications of the subject were fascinating Igrat. In all the years she'd known Achillea, she'd never seen her open up like this. How much people have misjudged her, how they have misunderstood the person she is, has just become starkly apparent. What people think is a void inside 'Lea is something much more profound than that. It is an enormous tranquility within her soul. She is really deeply at peace with herself and the world around her. It's only when she stands next to somebody like Angel who really does have a void where her soul should be that 'Lea's true nature becomes apparent. "After her father raped her and her priest betrayed her, she made the decision never to be victimized again. Everything else she is comes from that."
"Angel would have become Diana Lewis if she hadn’t had the strength of character that she does." Achillea thought carefully about that. "No man is crushed by misfortune unless he has first been deceived by prosperity. Angel never had anything in her life but misfortune so she never allowed it to crush her. When she met Conrad, when he took that shot for her, he opened a door out of the misfortune that had engulfed her. Now, she's edging through that door and I think she's afraid of what's on the other side. I think she’s afraid of being happy in case it makes her weak."
Igreat thought about that for a long time while the face of Diana Lewis stared at her from the television screen. Eventually, she finished her wine and sighed slightly. "You know, 'Lea, we've never talked like this before. I wish we had."
"Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.” Achillea looked across at Igrat.
"Dottore?"
"Dottore" Achillea agreed.
The Old Manor Ranch, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
"You are discriminating against me because I'm a murderous criminal. Assuming I'll know the best way out of here with a stolen horsebox is . . . micro-aggression!" Angel did her best to look indignant. The horses nearby backed away nervously. They could sense Angel was different from other most humans, was seriously wrong, but they didn't quite know what to make of it.
"I am not discriminating against you because you are a criminal." Conrad looked at her solemnly. " I am discriminating against you because you are Chinese."
"Oh, that's all right then." Conrad and Angel exchanged equally solemn looks and then burst out laughing. Cristi had been telling them about some of the stranger beliefs a number of her fellow-students had. Going around searching for grievances to get upset over was just one of them. Conrad had heard it all before, of course, students never changed, but such things were new to Angel. She found them ridiculously funny and had reminded herself to ask Ai what her fellow students were like. It was something she would have to learn; Angel had just been promoted to Vanguard and was clearly destined for high rank if she lived long enough. It had made her lack of any formal education a serious problem that she had resolved by hiring a schoolteacher as a tutor. All the time she and Conrad were in Bangkok, she was taking lessons and doing homework. Now, she was just beginning to understand how little she knew.
"So, let's take it from the top. Somebody stole a horsebox. Not any trailer but a horsebox. They had lots of choices that would cause less interest if they were just shifting property, stolen or otherwise. Horseboxes are unusual and noticeable."
"Logical assumption is that whoever took it intends to steal a horse. Not just any horse but a racehorse. They stole one that is specially designed to carry racehorses. If they just wanted any horse, they'd also want to attract less attention by stealing a more mundane box." Angel thought about that. "Why from here?"
"That one is easy. Adam said that all the racing stables are well-guarded and secure; the value of the horses ensures that. These specialized boxes are expensive; having one but no racehorse must be unusual.”
“If not unique.” Angel’s eyes narrowed. “I wonder how they knew this particular farm had a racehorse box but no racehorses and thus not carefully guarded. And was open to being stolen.”
“We’ll have to find out if there is a registry of those trailers. Now, we know the two main roads out of the village are both gated, they were closed at ten and not re-opened until after the theft was discovered.”
“And the one to the east leads through Toot Baldon. There’s a crew working on what used to be The Badger Inn. They saw nothing.”
“Let me guess, a Chinese work crew?” Conrad hadn’t made a very incisive guess. The Badger Inn had been bought by a Chinese family who were turning it into a top-rank Cantonese restaurant. It was only logical that they would employ Chinese contractors.
“That’s right. So, both main roads are out. That horsebox had to go out by way of the green roads. And most of them aren’t mapped.” Angel folded her lower lip under her teeth. “They couldn’t go north or west, either would take them right back into the village and anybody driving around after midnight would be noticed even if they could get out. They had to go south or east. There is a green road that leads south but it swings west and brings us out by the church. That one won’t work. I suggest we go and have a look at the eastern side of the farm. They had to go out that way.”
The farm was its usual muddy self. Angel had her customary cowboy boots on, Conrad had taken the trouble to buy a pair of real country wellingtons, not the imitations offered to city people, and was handling the mire with aplomb. He was struck by a sudden thought. “Lucky Igrat isn’t here. She’d wear heels and sink up to her knees.”
“No, she’d manage to make muddy wellingtons look good. There’s a gate ahead of us. And it’s not locked.”
“Any luck, Conrad?” Adam Carroll had come over to join them. “Good morning, Angel.”
“Hi.” Angel was watching Conrad carefully. “Is this gate ever locked?”
Carroll shook his head. “It’s designed to keep the livestock in. That’s why it opens inwards.”
“You never drive a vehicle out of here?” Conrad was looking at the ground near the gate.
“No. This just leads to the paddock. Horses go through there. If we ever had a fire, we need to get the horses to safety as fast as possible. Fire is the great fear of every stable owner.”
Angel nodded. “I saw a horse that had been caught in a stable fire once. I had to shoot it.”
Carroll looked guilt-stricken. “And I was talking about . . . . Angel, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Long ago and far away. Conrad, have you found something?”
“Tracks. The farmyard is hopeless but the area under the gate itself is much drier and hasn’t been disturbed. There’s tire tracks here. Adam, do you recognize them?”
“Only that it’s a Landrover. One of the new ones. SUVs you Americans call them. Still got a good towing capacity though. And the tires are nearly new. Look how sharply-defined the treads are. They don’t stay like that for long on a farm.”
Conrad and Angel bent over the Ordnance Survey map of the area Angel had bought. “This paddock, it’s part of a Green Road isn’t it?”
“It was . . . .” Carroll was hesitant. “This one was disused for twenty years or so. I had the part that was on my land deregistered and then fenced off the paddock. If you look carefully, you can see where it ran. There’s another gate over there and the road continues from that. Would you like me to come along?”
Conrad thought about that. “Good of you to offer, Adam, but could you call the police and tell them we’ve found tracks from the vehicle used by the thieves. We’ll nose around, see what else we can find.”
“Paddock’s a lot drier than the farm ground.” Angel was walking ahead of Conrad, unconsciously acting as point for him. Bodyguard instincts Conrad thought. “Hey, another track fragment.”
“Looks like the same pattern. On a dead straight line between the gates as well. I have a good feeling about this, Angel.” They climbed over the second gate and found themselves on a broad, straight stretch of green road that led to a long line of old-growth trees a hundred yards away. By the time they got there, it was apparent that the green road went through those trees and turned sharply right the other side of the line. One of the trees had scrape marks on it where the horsebox hadn’t quite had room to turn.
“Notice anything, Conrad?” Angel was surveying the route they had walked with professional eyes. “The path back there has trees on the left that mask it from the houses further down. Here, the trees are on the right of the green road and they still mask it. Could have been made for a quiet get-away.”
A hundred yards later, the track they were following turned hard left. It went dead straight for the same distance before going through another line of woods. This time, though, the trees were on both sides of the path and the road had a hard, stoned surface under a thin layer of dirt. The shelter of the trees and the stones all meant that there was much more evidence of a vehicle having driven down the green road. Conrad stopped and looked hard. “Angel, this is as near straight as makes no difference. I bet this was a Roman road once. The surface is good and hard as well. Keep heading south?”
Angel agreed. It was about another half mile at most before the road they were following passed a single house and joined a proper metalled road. “Well, that’s it Conrad. We know how they got the horsebox out. The only question is, did they turn right or left?”
“Could be either. There’s a fair amount of traffic on the road. I’d say as long as people didn’t draw attention to themselves, nobody would notice a Landrover towing a horsebox. Of course, if they went racing round and skid-turning like those thugs in The Blue Lamp, somebody would remember them but this lot are too smart for that.”
“Not smart, Conrad.” Angel was thoughtful. “Professional. This was carefully planned by people who knew what they were doing. So, why do they want a racehorse?”
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Six - Through Chief Constable Watts Eyes
Chief Constable Malcolm Watts' Office, Thames Valley Police Headquarters.
Chief Constable Watts had spent the last few minutes in his private bathroom, admiring his new uniform in the mirror. The old dark blue jacket and trousers had been replaced by a much lighter slate blue-gray suit that oddly enough was harder to see at night in poorly-lit urban areas than the dark blue had been. The jacket had four patch-pockets and a slate blue webbing utility belt. The white shirt and dark blue tie had been replaced by a roll-neck shirt in the same color as the suit. The whole effect was smart, elegant and clearly civilian, but also spelled authority and business. The designers, Watts decided, had done well. Very well indeed.
He went back to his desk and lifted up the file on his desk, making his feeling of contentment vanish. Detective Inspector Howell had decided to make his dispute with a civilian consultant formal by filing an official complaint. Watts was an old-school police officer who believed that such disputes should be sorted out privately. Nobody benefitted from making official complaints against fellow officers. It was pointless making them against civilian consultants since they didn't care whether people liked them or not. Especially this particular civilian consultant. Ah well, time to get this over with.
He pressed the button on his intercom. "Send DI Howell in please."
"On his way, Sir." His secretary had the useful talent of conveying voluminous messages simply by the tone of her voice. This time she had told him that DI Howell had not been pleased by being kept waiting for thirty minutes. On the other hand, the wait allowed me to finish my morning tea in peace and admire my new uniform. "Detective Inspector Howell, I have received the report of the investigating officer concerning your complaint against the civilian consultant Angel assigned to us by the Home Office. We need to discuss the conclusions of that report. I must advise you that I have already discussed this report with her and she has accepted its findings as being fair and valid. I must also advise you that she declined to be represented by a lawyer."
Watts paused, reflecting that what Angel had really said was that she carried two lawyers around with her all the time and that she had never found any use for a third. The truth was, he had actually enjoyed the cup of tea they had had together. Another report he had on his desk explained why. That also had a bearing on the present interview.
"I choose not to be represented by a lawyer, Sir." Howell spoke stiffly, obviously realizing from the introduction that this was not going well for him. In Watt's opinion, it was the first sensible decision he had made.
"Very well. The investigating officer interviewed all the witnesses and has compiled their statements. This was made easy by the fact that there was an overwhelming degree of concordance between them. We have multiple statements that you initiated the situation by calling Angel a liar, a 'murdering Triad bitch' and a skank. Using the last insult, in particular, is something I personally find to be reprehensible. The female officers present are unanimous that, even though the word was directed at another person, they found your use of it to be personally demeaning. Despite that, the investigator noted that none of them registered a complaint against you for creating a hostile work environment through the use of discriminatory language though they were entitled to do so. The witness accounts are also unanimous that you issued the challenge to the confrontation, using the words 'I would like to see you try' as an invitation to stage a demonstration. Is this correct?"
"Well, yes, but . . . " Howell was beginning to understand that he was the one in trouble.
"So you admit that initiated and demanded the confrontation that resulted in you being hit multiple times by paintball rounds."
"Frozen paintball rounds . . . I didn’t mean a shoot-out in the . . . I had to call her out, the things she is teaching will get our men killed. What do you expect from a gangster?"
"It was hardly surprising you lost that duel. Do you know that Angel is a triple-nickel expert with her guns? That means she has a demonstrated ability to score five kill shots on five moving targets at 50 feet range in five seconds. And repeated that feat three times in one day. As far as is known to the Triple Nickel Association, there are only 114 people in the world who can do that. You, DI Howell are not one of them. You might be interested to know that our investigation prior to hiring her as a consultant has shown there are no outstanding warrants against her for any crimes, murder or otherwise. She has an interesting number of speeding tickets though. As to her membership of the Triads, this is not a secret. I would remind you that the Triads are not an illegal or prohibited organization and being a member thereof does not contravene the law any more than being a Freemason or an Oddfellow. I must add that referring to her as a bitch was both inappropriate and needlessly abusive. I might also remind you that, having saved the lives of two of our officers at considerable personal risk, she is substantially more popular in this station than you are. Finally, with regard to your most recent accusation, that of getting our men killed, are you aware of the confrontation that took place last night at the Odeon cinema on Magdalen Street?"
Odeon Cinema, Magdalen Street, 12 hours Earlier.
Constable Gregory had heard the scream and come running around the corner. In front of him, a young man was standing with a bloodstained knife in is hand, using it to hold a small group of people at bay. Behind him a weeping girl was leaning against the window of the shop next to the cinema entrance, holding her arm and blood staining the front of her dress. A man was on the ground not far from her wailing and holding his stomach. Gregory's immediate thought had been to continue towards the scene but he remembered the killing of George Dixon in The Blue Lamp. That stopped him in his tracks while took a breath. He could hear Angel's cold, harsh voice saying assess the risk; analyze the threat. Never go into anything until you know what the score is.
"Sir, please put the knife down." Gregory looked at the young man. It’s the hands that kill you, the eyes direct the hands. Look at his eyes.. The man's eyes were darting round, scanning from one person to the next, looking at the street on either side of him as well as the one Gregory was standing in. Yet, all the time, they continued to dance back to the girl, checking to see how she was. In contrast, he was almost ignoring the man on the ground. Gregory took a step backwards and immediately the near-hysterical tension in the man's eyes slackened. Distance is your friend. If he hasn’t decided what to do, don’t force him into a decision that you will both regret. That was when Gregory made his risk assessment; there is no risk here unless the actions I choose to take create one. The kid with the knife isn’t a threat unless he thinks he is cornered and believes he has no other choices left. So, let’s create some other choices for him.
"Did any of you see what happened here?" There was a bus stop by the cinema with a group of people around it. They were looking at each other, each wanting somebody else to make the first move.
Eventually one of them looked down. "There were three of them yobbos. This kid here and his girl came out the cinema. One of them yobbos tried to grab her, you know, makin' fresh. She pushed him away, he pulled that knife and tried to slash her. She threw her arm up to protect her face but he cut her arm bad. Her friend went to protect her, there was a struggle and the yobbo ended up on the ground. Kid must have taken the knife from him. The other two ran off."
The people around the bus stop were nodding. Gregory turned back to the young man with the knife. "Look, Sir, there isn’t a serious offense here, not as far as you are concerned right now. May not be one at all from what I hear. You're protecting your girl and that's what my report will say. But, you keep waving that knife around and this could get serious, especially if somebody gets hurt. Right now, you can do yourself a lot of good simply by not making things any worse. You put that knife down, we can get your girl to hospital and I can tell my desk Sergeant that you surrendered the weapon to me immediately on my request. Look at her, she’s bleeding badly. Please, let me help her.”
“He’ll kill us. He tried to slash Ellie’s face and then to gut me. If I put the knife down he’ll grab it and kill us.”
“No he won’t, Sir.” Gregory touched his truncheon. “If he as much as moves, I’ll use this to play Beethoven’s Fifth on his head.”
“Boom, boom, boom BOOM!” Gregory didn’t know which man at the bus stop and said it but it caused a ripple of laughter and more tension drained out of the air. Gregory realized he accidentally said the right thing. By quoting the famous sound-bite used by the Free BBC during the war, he had identified with the heroes of the Resistance, not the hated blackshirts. That made Constable Gregory feel quite ridiculously proud of himself.
The small group around the bus stop were looking at each other again. Suddenly, without anybody saying anything, it was apparent that they had come to a consensus. “What can we do to help, Constable?”
Gregory rose to the occasion. A deep breath and a sudden clear picture of what needed to be done filled his mind. “Two of you men, watch the man on the ground. Don’t get too close to him. Ladies, do any of you know first aid? If you do, help the girl. What’s your name Miss?”
“I’m Ellie. Eleanor Weston.”
“Alright Eleanor, these two ladies will help you bandage up that slash in your arm. Are you a student at one of the colleges here?”
“We both are. I’m sure that’s why those men attacked us.” Ellie was shaking with delayed shock. One of the two women from the bus stop was hugging her while the other wrapped a scarf around the gash in her arm. “Please don’t arrest Ken, he saved me from getting carved up.”
“He’ll have to go before the beak, he did stab this person who attacked you. But, I’m pretty sure the case will either be dropped or he’ll just get bound over for a year or so. This person though.” Gregory indicated the man on the ground who was still moaning despite the fact that the amount of blood on his clothes showed his wound was superficial at worst. “He’ll be going down.”
“Good to know. Constable, that’s the new police uniform isn’t it? Looks sharp.” The oldest man at the bus stop had spoken and he looked at the new uniform with interest.
“Looking very good Constable.” One of the women looked up from comforting Ellie. “Handsome.”
“Come on Daisy.” Another man at the bus stop protested weakly.
“Sir, if coming between an officer of the law and a compliment from a lady isn’t an offense, it should be.” Gregory gave the man a disarming grin and was rewarded by a round of laughter and some ironic cheers. Courtesy and friendly good humor. Damn, it does work. Behind him another police car and an ambulance had arrived but he was already content with the knowledge he had the situation well in hand.
Chief Constable Malcolm Watts' Office, Thames Valley Police Headquarters.
Watts finished reading the incident report. “Based on Constable Gregory’s report, Kenneth Evans has been cautioned for public affray and released without a formal charge being made. His girl, Miss Weston, has a severely cut arm and will require a stay in hospital. Evans is with her now. The man who appears to have led the attack is Kevin Small. He’s been charged with assault and GBH. He has form.”
“So? Gregory is a fool. He was faced with an armed man and should have called the armed response group. We’d have sorted it out.”
Watts felt like crying at the man’s obtuseness. The last scenes of The Blue Lamp came to his mind, where the young thug Tom Riley was trapped in the greyhound racing stadium and the local citizens had aided the police in bringing him down. Constable Gregory had, in Watts’ opinion learned much watching from the film and applied those lessons along with those from Angel to bring about an almost perfect end to what could have been an ugly incident.
“What would you have done, Detective Inspector? Turned up with a group of officers carrying guns, screamed orders at everybody and thrown your weight around? Arrested the kid and his girl? Can you tell me one thing you would have done that achieved something, anything, that Constable Gregory did not?”
“Well . . . .”
“You may be interested to know something else. By this morning, we had three telephone calls on the hotline from members of the public. Two of them just said how polite and friendly Gregory was when dealing with the situation. The third told us the same and added information on where we could find the other two yobbos. They’re in custody now and singing like birds. They are so desperate not to be charged, they told us all about a bicycle theft ring being run by Small. Cleared up quite a few annoying crimes from the last year or so.”
Howell looked down at his feet. There was quite simply nothing left to say.
Watts nodded, recognizing that the point had been made and driven firmly home. “Your complaint against our civilian consultant has been dismissed. In addition, your clearance to carry firearms has been re-examined and revoked as has your instructor status. Angel remarked that you had taught the students assigned to you all the wrong lessons. I think the events last night have made her point quite well. You will be transferred out of the Thames Valley Police and will be on gardening leave until another post is found for you. If you wish my advice, if I was in your position, I would seek different career opportunities outside the Police force.”
Lecture Theater, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
When Constable Gregory entered the lecture theater, the entire audience rose to their feet and burst into applause. A split second later Angel followed them having observed that this was the accepted form of behavior and copied it. When it died away, she gave Gregory a friendly grin. “Constable Gregory . . . . good boy. Now, could you join me up here please.”
Once he had made his way to the podium, Angel turned to her audience. It was the largest group she had in attendance with many of the officers coming in on their days off. “For those of you who haven’t been here before, there is no rank in this room. The intention is to get to the truth and to find the best ways of doing things. I think Gregory’s work last night shows how much progress we have made. Greg, please tell everybody, in your words, not the police report words, what happened.”
“Excuse me, Angel. Before you start, might I have the privilege of addressing your class?” Angel blinked slightly and nodded. Watts smiled his thanks and stood beside her and Gregory on the podium.
“I won’t take much of your time up but I have some news for all of you. Firstly, for those of you who have come in on your day off to attend this training course, you will receive full pay for your time here and time off in lieu.” Watts listened to the cheer that went up. “May I say how impressed the Thames Valley Police Authority is by your desire for professional improvement and will recognize that fact in your records. Talking about personnel records, there is an official commendation waiting for you, Gregory. Much deserved if I may say so. Finally, our armed response squad is being stood down and its members reassigned. DI Howell has decided to leave the force and seek other opportunities in the private sector. A new armed response squad will be appointed; Angel, I would like to discuss that with you at some point. Thank you, fellow officers.”
As Watts left. He heard Angel picking up the day’s lesson. “All right, people. Greg, tell us what happened. The rest of you, don’t interrupt but if you have questions or think Greg here made a mistake, note it down and bring it up when he’s finished. Remember, we learn most from mistakes.”
Watts walked off down the corridor, thinking over the scene in the lecture theater. When Angel’s consultancy contract had been discussed, the question of her mental condition had come up. The force psychiatrist had explained that some of the primary affects of being a psychopath included that she was completely unable to have empathy with other people, that she had no understanding of morality, and defined what was right and wrong purely on a utilitarian basis as it affected her. Another affect was that psychopaths were extraordinarily skillful at manipulating the people around them and mimicking their behavior to the point where their real nature was completely concealed. Watts realized he had seen that talent at work and found it more alarming than the pistols Angel habitually carried.
Once again, the words of the psychiatrist came to his mind. “A sociopath will pull every dirty trick they can; a psychopath will pull every dirty trick they can get away with.” That took his train of thought back to The Blue Lamp and he found himself wondering what would have happened if Angel had been in Tom Riley’s place. He realized that she would not have opened fire on George Dixon, simply because it would not have suited her interests to do so. That took his mind over The Blue Lamp and he realized the decision to make the film the starting point of a campaign to re-assess and reconsider the developments in the Police during the half century since it had been made had gravely underestimated the value of the film. It was much more than just a starting point, it was a measuring post against which all the changes in practices and procedures over fifty years could be evaluated. Thinking it over, he came to the conclusion that it really was a well-made instructional film on the techniques of community policing with equal stress on what was done right and how easy it was to do things wrong. Watts found himself reconsidering the car chase towards the end of the film. That had seemed like an exciting interlude but thinking about it in light of the discussions he had been hearing, the writers had appeared to be stressing how dangerous the chase was to the people around the city. Had that entire sequence been a coded warning against such chases? The chase itself hadn’t caught the murderous little thug and had nearly caused a tragedy in the process. It was the radio room coordinating the chase cars to block off his exit that had ended his escape.
“Chief Constable, we’ve got a man come to the desk with some information about the horse box theft. Who is handling that now?”
“Technically Atkinson but he’s still desk-bound so Conrad helping him out with the leg work.” Watts suddenly felt a pressing urge to do some real police work. “I’ll speak with him.”
A few minutes later, Watts was back in his office with his secretary bringing in a tray of tea and a plate of biscuits. “Now, how can I help you, Sir?”
“Name’s Bill Evans. Your lot met my son Ken last night. Little idiot. If it hadn’t been for your Constable, he’d have got himself into a world of trouble. Anyway, that’s what made me come in. You done my family a good turn last night, perhaps I can do you one. His horsebox theft? Well, there was a bit in the paper this morning about them thieves using the green roads to get away?
“That’s right, Sir. We’ve traced the route they used although it didn’t help much. They knew the green roads pretty well from what I understand.”
“Maybe not. You see, I run a local bookshop and we’re the local agent for Her Majesty’s Stationary Office. We had a man come in a few days ago asking about the Green Road system and wanted a map of it. Well, he didn’t know that there isn’t such a thing of course, but I sold him some Ordnance Survey maps and showed him what to look for. He was a foreigner, had an accent. Not German but similar to it. Blond hair, rough, craggy sort of face. What really stuck in my mind is he was a big man, tall, towered over everybody else. You got an artist, perhaps I can help draw a picture?”
“I think that we can arrange that. Some more tea first?” Watts pressed the button on his intercom. “Sylvie, another tray of tea please? And could you bring the Jaffa Cakes? Mr. Evans has been really helpful to us.”
Chief Constable Malcolm Watts' Office, Thames Valley Police Headquarters.
Chief Constable Watts had spent the last few minutes in his private bathroom, admiring his new uniform in the mirror. The old dark blue jacket and trousers had been replaced by a much lighter slate blue-gray suit that oddly enough was harder to see at night in poorly-lit urban areas than the dark blue had been. The jacket had four patch-pockets and a slate blue webbing utility belt. The white shirt and dark blue tie had been replaced by a roll-neck shirt in the same color as the suit. The whole effect was smart, elegant and clearly civilian, but also spelled authority and business. The designers, Watts decided, had done well. Very well indeed.
He went back to his desk and lifted up the file on his desk, making his feeling of contentment vanish. Detective Inspector Howell had decided to make his dispute with a civilian consultant formal by filing an official complaint. Watts was an old-school police officer who believed that such disputes should be sorted out privately. Nobody benefitted from making official complaints against fellow officers. It was pointless making them against civilian consultants since they didn't care whether people liked them or not. Especially this particular civilian consultant. Ah well, time to get this over with.
He pressed the button on his intercom. "Send DI Howell in please."
"On his way, Sir." His secretary had the useful talent of conveying voluminous messages simply by the tone of her voice. This time she had told him that DI Howell had not been pleased by being kept waiting for thirty minutes. On the other hand, the wait allowed me to finish my morning tea in peace and admire my new uniform. "Detective Inspector Howell, I have received the report of the investigating officer concerning your complaint against the civilian consultant Angel assigned to us by the Home Office. We need to discuss the conclusions of that report. I must advise you that I have already discussed this report with her and she has accepted its findings as being fair and valid. I must also advise you that she declined to be represented by a lawyer."
Watts paused, reflecting that what Angel had really said was that she carried two lawyers around with her all the time and that she had never found any use for a third. The truth was, he had actually enjoyed the cup of tea they had had together. Another report he had on his desk explained why. That also had a bearing on the present interview.
"I choose not to be represented by a lawyer, Sir." Howell spoke stiffly, obviously realizing from the introduction that this was not going well for him. In Watt's opinion, it was the first sensible decision he had made.
"Very well. The investigating officer interviewed all the witnesses and has compiled their statements. This was made easy by the fact that there was an overwhelming degree of concordance between them. We have multiple statements that you initiated the situation by calling Angel a liar, a 'murdering Triad bitch' and a skank. Using the last insult, in particular, is something I personally find to be reprehensible. The female officers present are unanimous that, even though the word was directed at another person, they found your use of it to be personally demeaning. Despite that, the investigator noted that none of them registered a complaint against you for creating a hostile work environment through the use of discriminatory language though they were entitled to do so. The witness accounts are also unanimous that you issued the challenge to the confrontation, using the words 'I would like to see you try' as an invitation to stage a demonstration. Is this correct?"
"Well, yes, but . . . " Howell was beginning to understand that he was the one in trouble.
"So you admit that initiated and demanded the confrontation that resulted in you being hit multiple times by paintball rounds."
"Frozen paintball rounds . . . I didn’t mean a shoot-out in the . . . I had to call her out, the things she is teaching will get our men killed. What do you expect from a gangster?"
"It was hardly surprising you lost that duel. Do you know that Angel is a triple-nickel expert with her guns? That means she has a demonstrated ability to score five kill shots on five moving targets at 50 feet range in five seconds. And repeated that feat three times in one day. As far as is known to the Triple Nickel Association, there are only 114 people in the world who can do that. You, DI Howell are not one of them. You might be interested to know that our investigation prior to hiring her as a consultant has shown there are no outstanding warrants against her for any crimes, murder or otherwise. She has an interesting number of speeding tickets though. As to her membership of the Triads, this is not a secret. I would remind you that the Triads are not an illegal or prohibited organization and being a member thereof does not contravene the law any more than being a Freemason or an Oddfellow. I must add that referring to her as a bitch was both inappropriate and needlessly abusive. I might also remind you that, having saved the lives of two of our officers at considerable personal risk, she is substantially more popular in this station than you are. Finally, with regard to your most recent accusation, that of getting our men killed, are you aware of the confrontation that took place last night at the Odeon cinema on Magdalen Street?"
Odeon Cinema, Magdalen Street, 12 hours Earlier.
Constable Gregory had heard the scream and come running around the corner. In front of him, a young man was standing with a bloodstained knife in is hand, using it to hold a small group of people at bay. Behind him a weeping girl was leaning against the window of the shop next to the cinema entrance, holding her arm and blood staining the front of her dress. A man was on the ground not far from her wailing and holding his stomach. Gregory's immediate thought had been to continue towards the scene but he remembered the killing of George Dixon in The Blue Lamp. That stopped him in his tracks while took a breath. He could hear Angel's cold, harsh voice saying assess the risk; analyze the threat. Never go into anything until you know what the score is.
"Sir, please put the knife down." Gregory looked at the young man. It’s the hands that kill you, the eyes direct the hands. Look at his eyes.. The man's eyes were darting round, scanning from one person to the next, looking at the street on either side of him as well as the one Gregory was standing in. Yet, all the time, they continued to dance back to the girl, checking to see how she was. In contrast, he was almost ignoring the man on the ground. Gregory took a step backwards and immediately the near-hysterical tension in the man's eyes slackened. Distance is your friend. If he hasn’t decided what to do, don’t force him into a decision that you will both regret. That was when Gregory made his risk assessment; there is no risk here unless the actions I choose to take create one. The kid with the knife isn’t a threat unless he thinks he is cornered and believes he has no other choices left. So, let’s create some other choices for him.
"Did any of you see what happened here?" There was a bus stop by the cinema with a group of people around it. They were looking at each other, each wanting somebody else to make the first move.
Eventually one of them looked down. "There were three of them yobbos. This kid here and his girl came out the cinema. One of them yobbos tried to grab her, you know, makin' fresh. She pushed him away, he pulled that knife and tried to slash her. She threw her arm up to protect her face but he cut her arm bad. Her friend went to protect her, there was a struggle and the yobbo ended up on the ground. Kid must have taken the knife from him. The other two ran off."
The people around the bus stop were nodding. Gregory turned back to the young man with the knife. "Look, Sir, there isn’t a serious offense here, not as far as you are concerned right now. May not be one at all from what I hear. You're protecting your girl and that's what my report will say. But, you keep waving that knife around and this could get serious, especially if somebody gets hurt. Right now, you can do yourself a lot of good simply by not making things any worse. You put that knife down, we can get your girl to hospital and I can tell my desk Sergeant that you surrendered the weapon to me immediately on my request. Look at her, she’s bleeding badly. Please, let me help her.”
“He’ll kill us. He tried to slash Ellie’s face and then to gut me. If I put the knife down he’ll grab it and kill us.”
“No he won’t, Sir.” Gregory touched his truncheon. “If he as much as moves, I’ll use this to play Beethoven’s Fifth on his head.”
“Boom, boom, boom BOOM!” Gregory didn’t know which man at the bus stop and said it but it caused a ripple of laughter and more tension drained out of the air. Gregory realized he accidentally said the right thing. By quoting the famous sound-bite used by the Free BBC during the war, he had identified with the heroes of the Resistance, not the hated blackshirts. That made Constable Gregory feel quite ridiculously proud of himself.
The small group around the bus stop were looking at each other again. Suddenly, without anybody saying anything, it was apparent that they had come to a consensus. “What can we do to help, Constable?”
Gregory rose to the occasion. A deep breath and a sudden clear picture of what needed to be done filled his mind. “Two of you men, watch the man on the ground. Don’t get too close to him. Ladies, do any of you know first aid? If you do, help the girl. What’s your name Miss?”
“I’m Ellie. Eleanor Weston.”
“Alright Eleanor, these two ladies will help you bandage up that slash in your arm. Are you a student at one of the colleges here?”
“We both are. I’m sure that’s why those men attacked us.” Ellie was shaking with delayed shock. One of the two women from the bus stop was hugging her while the other wrapped a scarf around the gash in her arm. “Please don’t arrest Ken, he saved me from getting carved up.”
“He’ll have to go before the beak, he did stab this person who attacked you. But, I’m pretty sure the case will either be dropped or he’ll just get bound over for a year or so. This person though.” Gregory indicated the man on the ground who was still moaning despite the fact that the amount of blood on his clothes showed his wound was superficial at worst. “He’ll be going down.”
“Good to know. Constable, that’s the new police uniform isn’t it? Looks sharp.” The oldest man at the bus stop had spoken and he looked at the new uniform with interest.
“Looking very good Constable.” One of the women looked up from comforting Ellie. “Handsome.”
“Come on Daisy.” Another man at the bus stop protested weakly.
“Sir, if coming between an officer of the law and a compliment from a lady isn’t an offense, it should be.” Gregory gave the man a disarming grin and was rewarded by a round of laughter and some ironic cheers. Courtesy and friendly good humor. Damn, it does work. Behind him another police car and an ambulance had arrived but he was already content with the knowledge he had the situation well in hand.
Chief Constable Malcolm Watts' Office, Thames Valley Police Headquarters.
Watts finished reading the incident report. “Based on Constable Gregory’s report, Kenneth Evans has been cautioned for public affray and released without a formal charge being made. His girl, Miss Weston, has a severely cut arm and will require a stay in hospital. Evans is with her now. The man who appears to have led the attack is Kevin Small. He’s been charged with assault and GBH. He has form.”
“So? Gregory is a fool. He was faced with an armed man and should have called the armed response group. We’d have sorted it out.”
Watts felt like crying at the man’s obtuseness. The last scenes of The Blue Lamp came to his mind, where the young thug Tom Riley was trapped in the greyhound racing stadium and the local citizens had aided the police in bringing him down. Constable Gregory had, in Watts’ opinion learned much watching from the film and applied those lessons along with those from Angel to bring about an almost perfect end to what could have been an ugly incident.
“What would you have done, Detective Inspector? Turned up with a group of officers carrying guns, screamed orders at everybody and thrown your weight around? Arrested the kid and his girl? Can you tell me one thing you would have done that achieved something, anything, that Constable Gregory did not?”
“Well . . . .”
“You may be interested to know something else. By this morning, we had three telephone calls on the hotline from members of the public. Two of them just said how polite and friendly Gregory was when dealing with the situation. The third told us the same and added information on where we could find the other two yobbos. They’re in custody now and singing like birds. They are so desperate not to be charged, they told us all about a bicycle theft ring being run by Small. Cleared up quite a few annoying crimes from the last year or so.”
Howell looked down at his feet. There was quite simply nothing left to say.
Watts nodded, recognizing that the point had been made and driven firmly home. “Your complaint against our civilian consultant has been dismissed. In addition, your clearance to carry firearms has been re-examined and revoked as has your instructor status. Angel remarked that you had taught the students assigned to you all the wrong lessons. I think the events last night have made her point quite well. You will be transferred out of the Thames Valley Police and will be on gardening leave until another post is found for you. If you wish my advice, if I was in your position, I would seek different career opportunities outside the Police force.”
Lecture Theater, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
When Constable Gregory entered the lecture theater, the entire audience rose to their feet and burst into applause. A split second later Angel followed them having observed that this was the accepted form of behavior and copied it. When it died away, she gave Gregory a friendly grin. “Constable Gregory . . . . good boy. Now, could you join me up here please.”
Once he had made his way to the podium, Angel turned to her audience. It was the largest group she had in attendance with many of the officers coming in on their days off. “For those of you who haven’t been here before, there is no rank in this room. The intention is to get to the truth and to find the best ways of doing things. I think Gregory’s work last night shows how much progress we have made. Greg, please tell everybody, in your words, not the police report words, what happened.”
“Excuse me, Angel. Before you start, might I have the privilege of addressing your class?” Angel blinked slightly and nodded. Watts smiled his thanks and stood beside her and Gregory on the podium.
“I won’t take much of your time up but I have some news for all of you. Firstly, for those of you who have come in on your day off to attend this training course, you will receive full pay for your time here and time off in lieu.” Watts listened to the cheer that went up. “May I say how impressed the Thames Valley Police Authority is by your desire for professional improvement and will recognize that fact in your records. Talking about personnel records, there is an official commendation waiting for you, Gregory. Much deserved if I may say so. Finally, our armed response squad is being stood down and its members reassigned. DI Howell has decided to leave the force and seek other opportunities in the private sector. A new armed response squad will be appointed; Angel, I would like to discuss that with you at some point. Thank you, fellow officers.”
As Watts left. He heard Angel picking up the day’s lesson. “All right, people. Greg, tell us what happened. The rest of you, don’t interrupt but if you have questions or think Greg here made a mistake, note it down and bring it up when he’s finished. Remember, we learn most from mistakes.”
Watts walked off down the corridor, thinking over the scene in the lecture theater. When Angel’s consultancy contract had been discussed, the question of her mental condition had come up. The force psychiatrist had explained that some of the primary affects of being a psychopath included that she was completely unable to have empathy with other people, that she had no understanding of morality, and defined what was right and wrong purely on a utilitarian basis as it affected her. Another affect was that psychopaths were extraordinarily skillful at manipulating the people around them and mimicking their behavior to the point where their real nature was completely concealed. Watts realized he had seen that talent at work and found it more alarming than the pistols Angel habitually carried.
Once again, the words of the psychiatrist came to his mind. “A sociopath will pull every dirty trick they can; a psychopath will pull every dirty trick they can get away with.” That took his train of thought back to The Blue Lamp and he found himself wondering what would have happened if Angel had been in Tom Riley’s place. He realized that she would not have opened fire on George Dixon, simply because it would not have suited her interests to do so. That took his mind over The Blue Lamp and he realized the decision to make the film the starting point of a campaign to re-assess and reconsider the developments in the Police during the half century since it had been made had gravely underestimated the value of the film. It was much more than just a starting point, it was a measuring post against which all the changes in practices and procedures over fifty years could be evaluated. Thinking it over, he came to the conclusion that it really was a well-made instructional film on the techniques of community policing with equal stress on what was done right and how easy it was to do things wrong. Watts found himself reconsidering the car chase towards the end of the film. That had seemed like an exciting interlude but thinking about it in light of the discussions he had been hearing, the writers had appeared to be stressing how dangerous the chase was to the people around the city. Had that entire sequence been a coded warning against such chases? The chase itself hadn’t caught the murderous little thug and had nearly caused a tragedy in the process. It was the radio room coordinating the chase cars to block off his exit that had ended his escape.
“Chief Constable, we’ve got a man come to the desk with some information about the horse box theft. Who is handling that now?”
“Technically Atkinson but he’s still desk-bound so Conrad helping him out with the leg work.” Watts suddenly felt a pressing urge to do some real police work. “I’ll speak with him.”
A few minutes later, Watts was back in his office with his secretary bringing in a tray of tea and a plate of biscuits. “Now, how can I help you, Sir?”
“Name’s Bill Evans. Your lot met my son Ken last night. Little idiot. If it hadn’t been for your Constable, he’d have got himself into a world of trouble. Anyway, that’s what made me come in. You done my family a good turn last night, perhaps I can do you one. His horsebox theft? Well, there was a bit in the paper this morning about them thieves using the green roads to get away?
“That’s right, Sir. We’ve traced the route they used although it didn’t help much. They knew the green roads pretty well from what I understand.”
“Maybe not. You see, I run a local bookshop and we’re the local agent for Her Majesty’s Stationary Office. We had a man come in a few days ago asking about the Green Road system and wanted a map of it. Well, he didn’t know that there isn’t such a thing of course, but I sold him some Ordnance Survey maps and showed him what to look for. He was a foreigner, had an accent. Not German but similar to it. Blond hair, rough, craggy sort of face. What really stuck in my mind is he was a big man, tall, towered over everybody else. You got an artist, perhaps I can help draw a picture?”
“I think that we can arrange that. Some more tea first?” Watts pressed the button on his intercom. “Sylvie, another tray of tea please? And could you bring the Jaffa Cakes? Mr. Evans has been really helpful to us.”
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Seven – Through Isolda Rowley Eyes
The Snug, the Inn on the Green, Marsh Baldon
Isolda Rowley looked around at the assembled group and smiled proudly. "Look, everybody!"
Then, she put her crutches down and very carefully stood up. It was a wobbly stand and she looked as if she might lose her balance and fall at any moment but she was standing on her own. Walking was still obviously out of the question but she had undoubtedly come a long way in the six months since she'd been shot.
Igrat led the cheers and applause, then waved to the barmaid. "Kelly, another round for us not-coppers. We've got a toast to offer."
The drinks arrived and the party got the toast out before Isolda's strength failed and she had to sit down again. Still, it was a victory, all the more creditable because it had been so hard-won.
Chief Constable Watts sipped his beer with enormous appreciation, smacked his lips and contemplated the virtues of a country inn serving fine beer from a micro-brewery. Despite offers from his companions, he’d had to pay for his own pint in order to avoid any appearance of impropriety. The rules were very strict and, despite the convivial atmosphere, he was in uniform, on official business. So, he had to stick closely to the official guidelines. He could join in the drinks, he could even stand a round, but he couldn’t accept hospitality. As another police officer though, he could, however, buy Isolda another Coca-Cola and did so.
“Business first. Angel, what’s your opinion on car chases?” The car chase at the end of the Blue Lamp was still worrying him. He could see a patrol car slamming into a line of schoolchildren and the carnage that would cause.
Angel looked up, her eyes expressionless as usual. Watts had noted she seemed to have drunk about the same quantity of liquid as he had only hers was Bacardi 151 rum and his was beer. Policing was a hard-drinking professional but he had the firm and well-founded idea that Angel could go shot-for-shot with any officer he knew. He also came to the conclusion that her liver was bullet-proof. “Damned stupid thing to do. Why make risks for everybody? Look, we can outrun a police car anytime we want. We can’t outrun your radio.”
Watts had noted the ‘we’ and judged that the quantity of over-proof rum she had drunk was having an effect at last. “So, you would recommend against a high-speed car chase?”
“Damn straight. You’ll always lose. The cheap punks you’ll be chasing don’t care who they hit. You do. The dumbasses will deliberately run down a couple of people so you have to stop and help the injured. How many times have we watched The Blue Lamp, Conrad?"
Conrad sipped his brandy and thought about that. "Five I think. Every time we watch it we see more layers to the story."
Angel turned to Watts. "There you are. See, the film is paired scenes. One shows something being done wrong, a bit later it gets shown done right. George Dixon gets himself killed by doing it wrong, Andy Mitchell gets his man by doing it right. The stupid policewoman screws it up by not listening to Diana whatsherface. Later another cop does it right by listening to her and acting on what she says. Your police cruiser people nearly stage a massacre by running down all those schoolkids, later the radio room positions the police cars to block the way out and force the dumbasses into crashing their car. Show it done wrong, then show it done right."
"Angel is right." Isolda gulped down a good portion of her cola. The sheer effort of standing unsupported had tired her and given her a raging thirst. The back brace she knew would be her constant companion from now on was also hurting her. She was prepared to endure that; the bullet that had hit her back had severed almost two thirds of her spinal cord and she looked on every bit of use in her legs she recovered as a priceless gift. "I've been watching the film a lot recently and I've been thinking about that scene where the policemen are practicing as a choir in the canteen."
"Bit old fashioned that, I thought." Inspector Gladstone had a beer courtesy of Malcom Watts who had waived the 'no drinking in uniform' rule since this was the Snug and existed so that people who weren't supposed to have a drink, could.
"I don't think so." Isolda sounded thoughtful. "Oh, the idea of a choir is very much a scene of its time but the basic idea is still valid. It's building a team, you see. All the branches of the force are cooperating and building mutual confidence in each other. It doesn't matter what the activity is, as long as people are working together. That gets to be a habit and it sticks. When I’m in physiotherapy, they keep us in groups for that reason. The 'doing it wrong' part was right at the beginning when Andy Mitchell greets a CID detective in the street and has to be told not to do it again. Then, CID don’t share information on the jewel robbery with the uniforms and that leads to Dixon getting killed. Then, when they do all work together, it goes right and Tom Riley is arrested."
"A good point." Gladstone drank some more of his beer. "Angel, your lectures are doing the same thing. That's why so many people come in to listen. Sure, the things people are learning really help us but we're getting a Thames Valley Force club forming."
"They call it the Good Boy club." Isolda had already heard about it although her injuries prevented her from attending. "An officer has to get a 'good boy' from Angel before becoming a member. I think that tells us we've lost something over the years."
"Back in the day, the station was the center of people's lives. They would eat there, stay on for social activities, like the choir. Then, policing somehow just became a job. People's homes and their lives drifted away and the station became somewhere they worked for a few hours each day. Something of the old time team spirit died as a result." Watts shook his head sadly. "Army friends of mine tell me the same is happening there. Back in the day, the mess was the center of regimental life and everybody stayed on there. Now, once their duty is over, they pack up and go home to the wife and kids. Soldiering has become just another job."
"We ought to do something about that." Isolda was thinking about her own position. She had assumed that she would be invalided out of the police service as a result of her injuries and had been astonished when she was told she could stay on for as long as she wished. She was desk-bound of course, but was now in charge of computer research assistance for investigations in progress. She had been amazed and more than a little overwhelmed by the well-meant helpfulness of her colleagues. Yet, she had detected the awkwardness that had lain behind the friendly comments and undoubted goodwill. As if people didn't quite know what to say or do yet, and so were forcing themselves to make the effort. In some ways, Isolda preferred Angel's icy lack of sympathy. It meant that Angel was treating her the same way she treated everybody else.
"There are companies that do training courses that are supposed to build up team spirit." Watts mused.
"Do you really want to go that way?" Conrad looked around. "The problem with the old days when the Police were a separate entity also meant they were distinct from the community they policed. They were their own individual clique, them inside and everybody else outside. That led to corruption on many levels, not just financial. Angel's been stressing the importance of keeping the community on your side and working together with them. Won't going back to the old days of the police station being a sort of self-contained monastery make that hard?"
"He's right you know." Gladstone saw Conrad's point very clearly. "Somehow, we've got to build up team spirit on the force, make policing a vocation again instead of just a job, without making the public think they're being left out."
"The old days weren't as perfect as we like to think now. There were a lot of abuses back then, even before That Man got into power." Watts drank some more of his beer and suddenly noticed Angel was staring into space and assumed she was thinking about the team-building issue. She was actually remembering being on the floor of a police station back room, her hands handcuffed behind her back, while several policemen made a very sincere effort to beat her to death.
She shook herself slightly and waved to the barmaid for more rum. "You can't force things like that on people. It has to come from them to you. Make it known that there is funding for morale and social activities, ask for suggestions and see what comes in. You'll get some good ideas. You might even get a choir."
Watts laughed and finished his beer. "Now, we have a new lead on the stolen horsebox. Conrad, you and Angel found the way out and that was a real break for us. Then Constable Gregory took heed of his lessons, wrapped up an incident quietly and without fuss with the result that a more-or-less innocent kid didn’t get a record. So, his father decided that he owed us and came in with some information. Apparently, somebody came looking for a map of the Green Roads system, not realizing that any maps of the Green Roads were quietly pulped years ago.”
“My father tells stories sometimes about the Green Roads and Bridlepaths and how the Resistance used them to fox the Germans. They could be one place, then slip through the woods and be somewhere else by the time the Germans came looking.” Isolda drained her glass only to find a refill had already been put in front of her. “A couple of times, the Germans went into the woods but got lost in the maze of footpaths and all the other things out there. Woods all look the same if you’re not familiar with them and in summer it’s hard to steer by the sun. There is a story that a German patrol and a Resistance group met in the woods one day and they came to an agreement that the Germans wouldn't see the Resistance and the Resistance would show the Germans how to get out of the woods. I doubt if it's true.”
“But it’s a really good story and that’s why there are no maps of the Green Roads.” Watts had another pint delivered for himself and one for Gladstone. As senior officer, he paid for the drinks. “Anyway, this guy, he wasn’t British. Fair-haired and he had an accept. Swedish perhaps, or Norwegian. Both countries are rebuilding their racing stock now but the existing stud farm owners are charging them an arm and a leg to have a mare covered by one of their stallions. So our working hypothesis is that some bright spark came up with the idea of stealing a stud stallion. That way, they can save themselves the stud fees and make money by charging other stud farms for . . . . err . . . . services rendered.”
“Swedish or Norwegian?” Achillea looked up from her whisky. “Any ideas which?”
“Our bet is Swedish. There are four racehorse stud farms in Sweden, all privately owned. There’s one in Norway and it’s owned by the government. I suppose it’s just possible that the manager of the Norwegian stud is trying set up an off-the-books business but my bet is Swedish. Assuming our witness was right of course.” Watts frowned, he had forgotten to include something very important but he honestly could not remember what it was. No matter, I’ll look up my notes tomorrow.
Conrad frowned; there were a lot of things worrying him about this theory. "So, the theory is that a Swedish stud farm owner is trying to steal a top-rank stud stallion so he can make his fortune breeding racehorses? Why would he chose to steal one from here? Simply getting the horse out would be a major problem. Why not go to the Czech Republic or Slovenia? They both breed racehorses. Or Austria, although that's a little bit close to Germany."
"The Austrian and Czech horses are Lippizaners, not racehorses." Isolda looked up. "I did some research on this when the racehorse issue came up. Of course, the horses were evacuated to Italy early on when the war started."
Conrad looked sharply at Igrat and Achillea when that was mentioned. He'd heard rumors that they'd both been involved in the operation that had rescued the Lippizaner horses from Piber in Austria and given them sanctuary in Italy. Igrat caught his glance and just lifted an eyebrow. Some things were better not discussed, especially in the presence of short-lived people.
"If they hadn't been, they'd have all died on the Russian Front or been slaughtered for horsemeat. That's what happened to all our horses." Isolda sounded incredibly sad. The truth was that, while the British horse population was being rebuilt, it was being done so from imported stock. The old bloodlines had been wiped out and the new horse generations weren't 'their horses'. Igrat had heard the same lament from Brigadier Strachan. "Anyway, there's only a couple of stud farms in the Czech Republic, the Slovenian horses are Lippizaners and although there's half a dozen stud farms in Poland breeding racehorses, they're all state-owned. Strange as it may sound, Britain is probably the closest accessible source of top-rank breeding racehorses to Sweden."
"That makes sense." Conrad still didn't like what he was hearing. There are too many loose ends and the situation is inelegant. A criminal case is a piece of fine art. In the end, all the parts fit into a whole. Here all too many do not. "If somebody was transporting a racehorse, it’s a long way to go with a highly-strung animal. He'd have to go all around the Baltic. Flying the animal across the North Sea would be a lot easier. And there's less control up there."
There were nods all around the table. Any aircraft flying an unregistered flight plan over Eastern Europe would find a trigger-happy fighter sitting by its wing very quickly. Memories of the second World War and how it had ended died very hard.
"Your research showed how many stud farms with pedigree racehorse stallions here?" Watts was watching Conrad chew the situation over and realized he didn’t like the situation at all. Watts agreed with him, his 'blue sense' was telling him something was very wrong as well.
"You do a lot of computer research now?" Achillea asked the question more out of curiosity than anything else.
"There's nearly thirty. We've gone from being horseless to probably the leading breeding center in Europe. Only Italy and Spain come close to us. My job now is to dig around on the cyberweb, Achillea, and get the basic information the investigations need. I can't walk a beat anymore so it’s a good job for me."
"Adventure or Dungeons and Dragons?" Achillea grinned as Isolda blushed deep red. Yup, she does play computer games in office hours.
"How many of those are near here?" Conrad was indeed gnawing away at the problems. The one that interested him most at this point was why the horsebox had been stolen from Marsh Baldon and not somewhere else.
"Not as many as you might think." Isolda thought carefully. "There's about four around here, and a fifth down at Avebury; that one is part of the Manorial estate there. It doesn't really breed racehorses that much, I get the impression it does so to cover costs. There are a lot more in East Anglia and the South."
"So, why did they steal the horsebox from here?" Conrad was working around the issue and trying to identify the anomalies. Nothing seems to quite fit, that means there are a lot of important pieces missing.
"I checked up on the number of specialized racehorse boxes. There are two datafiles appropriate, one is the list of registration numbers from the ninth circle of hell."
"The DVLA at Swansea." Watts said helpfully.
"The DVLA has a registry number for every trailer above a certain size in the UK. Racehorse trailers fall into that category. I downloaded the list and comailed the British Racehorse Breeder's Association, asking for theirs. They maintain one so that a breeder who gets stuck without a trailer for some reason he can borrow one from another stud farm. They came right back with their list. I compared the two."
"That must have been hard work; there are probably hundreds of them." Gladstone was being very complimentary; it was obvious that Isolda had put a lot of work into this case.
"Several hundred, yes. But I had both lists electronically using the same file format, so I did a comparison using the registration plate number. They were nearly all identical but there are six racehorse trailers that appear on the DVLA list but not on the BRBA list. Two are owned by Valiant Commercial Vehicle Rentals and are rented out as needed; I called them and both are on short-term hire to a stud farm up in Lincolnshire right now. The other four are owned by farms that do not breed racehorses. One is in Kent, one in Hampshire, one is at The Old Manor Ranch here in Marsh Baldon and the other is near Ipswich. Right in the middle of a cluster of stud farms; I'd guess the owner rents it out as well."
"And that adds another problem to the list. Why steal a racehorse box from here when there was one in the middle of a cluster of stud farms? The thieves could have easily stolen that box, stolen the horse and made it to a disused airfield all in one operation." Conrad was really confused. The picture was shattering and flying to pieces, not assembling itself.
"Perhaps that one was being used? Or was too heavily protected? Or perhaps they'd picked a horse that wasn't in that group of studs." Angel looked at her glass and finished off the contents. "You know, if they wanted to go to all this trouble to steal a stud stallion, wouldn't they choose the best one they could find? What are the leading stud stallions. How do you measure that?'
"I'll get back to the BRBA tomorrow and ask." Isolda sighed gently. She needed her rest since it was amazing how tiring living without being able to use her legs was. This was something TV shows never mentioned when it came to being shot."
"You can come with us, Isolda." Watts spoke decisively. "My driver can run you home and then take me back to my place. You set up, Rupert?"
"Wife's picking me up in ten minutes. She wants to know why we've got such a commitment in police time and effort to a simple horsebox theft though."
"Because, if we don’t wrap this up, that stable-lad will have it hanging over his head for years." Conrad said.
"Because it'll make Conrad happy to clear the kid." Angel looked at her empty glass and shrugged. She'd had enough.
"Because if we let minor crimes ride, the locals won’t trust us to solve major ones." Watts was a devout belier in that theory and it seemed to work.
'Good boy."
The Snug, the Inn on the Green, Marsh Baldon
Isolda Rowley looked around at the assembled group and smiled proudly. "Look, everybody!"
Then, she put her crutches down and very carefully stood up. It was a wobbly stand and she looked as if she might lose her balance and fall at any moment but she was standing on her own. Walking was still obviously out of the question but she had undoubtedly come a long way in the six months since she'd been shot.
Igrat led the cheers and applause, then waved to the barmaid. "Kelly, another round for us not-coppers. We've got a toast to offer."
The drinks arrived and the party got the toast out before Isolda's strength failed and she had to sit down again. Still, it was a victory, all the more creditable because it had been so hard-won.
Chief Constable Watts sipped his beer with enormous appreciation, smacked his lips and contemplated the virtues of a country inn serving fine beer from a micro-brewery. Despite offers from his companions, he’d had to pay for his own pint in order to avoid any appearance of impropriety. The rules were very strict and, despite the convivial atmosphere, he was in uniform, on official business. So, he had to stick closely to the official guidelines. He could join in the drinks, he could even stand a round, but he couldn’t accept hospitality. As another police officer though, he could, however, buy Isolda another Coca-Cola and did so.
“Business first. Angel, what’s your opinion on car chases?” The car chase at the end of the Blue Lamp was still worrying him. He could see a patrol car slamming into a line of schoolchildren and the carnage that would cause.
Angel looked up, her eyes expressionless as usual. Watts had noted she seemed to have drunk about the same quantity of liquid as he had only hers was Bacardi 151 rum and his was beer. Policing was a hard-drinking professional but he had the firm and well-founded idea that Angel could go shot-for-shot with any officer he knew. He also came to the conclusion that her liver was bullet-proof. “Damned stupid thing to do. Why make risks for everybody? Look, we can outrun a police car anytime we want. We can’t outrun your radio.”
Watts had noted the ‘we’ and judged that the quantity of over-proof rum she had drunk was having an effect at last. “So, you would recommend against a high-speed car chase?”
“Damn straight. You’ll always lose. The cheap punks you’ll be chasing don’t care who they hit. You do. The dumbasses will deliberately run down a couple of people so you have to stop and help the injured. How many times have we watched The Blue Lamp, Conrad?"
Conrad sipped his brandy and thought about that. "Five I think. Every time we watch it we see more layers to the story."
Angel turned to Watts. "There you are. See, the film is paired scenes. One shows something being done wrong, a bit later it gets shown done right. George Dixon gets himself killed by doing it wrong, Andy Mitchell gets his man by doing it right. The stupid policewoman screws it up by not listening to Diana whatsherface. Later another cop does it right by listening to her and acting on what she says. Your police cruiser people nearly stage a massacre by running down all those schoolkids, later the radio room positions the police cars to block the way out and force the dumbasses into crashing their car. Show it done wrong, then show it done right."
"Angel is right." Isolda gulped down a good portion of her cola. The sheer effort of standing unsupported had tired her and given her a raging thirst. The back brace she knew would be her constant companion from now on was also hurting her. She was prepared to endure that; the bullet that had hit her back had severed almost two thirds of her spinal cord and she looked on every bit of use in her legs she recovered as a priceless gift. "I've been watching the film a lot recently and I've been thinking about that scene where the policemen are practicing as a choir in the canteen."
"Bit old fashioned that, I thought." Inspector Gladstone had a beer courtesy of Malcom Watts who had waived the 'no drinking in uniform' rule since this was the Snug and existed so that people who weren't supposed to have a drink, could.
"I don't think so." Isolda sounded thoughtful. "Oh, the idea of a choir is very much a scene of its time but the basic idea is still valid. It's building a team, you see. All the branches of the force are cooperating and building mutual confidence in each other. It doesn't matter what the activity is, as long as people are working together. That gets to be a habit and it sticks. When I’m in physiotherapy, they keep us in groups for that reason. The 'doing it wrong' part was right at the beginning when Andy Mitchell greets a CID detective in the street and has to be told not to do it again. Then, CID don’t share information on the jewel robbery with the uniforms and that leads to Dixon getting killed. Then, when they do all work together, it goes right and Tom Riley is arrested."
"A good point." Gladstone drank some more of his beer. "Angel, your lectures are doing the same thing. That's why so many people come in to listen. Sure, the things people are learning really help us but we're getting a Thames Valley Force club forming."
"They call it the Good Boy club." Isolda had already heard about it although her injuries prevented her from attending. "An officer has to get a 'good boy' from Angel before becoming a member. I think that tells us we've lost something over the years."
"Back in the day, the station was the center of people's lives. They would eat there, stay on for social activities, like the choir. Then, policing somehow just became a job. People's homes and their lives drifted away and the station became somewhere they worked for a few hours each day. Something of the old time team spirit died as a result." Watts shook his head sadly. "Army friends of mine tell me the same is happening there. Back in the day, the mess was the center of regimental life and everybody stayed on there. Now, once their duty is over, they pack up and go home to the wife and kids. Soldiering has become just another job."
"We ought to do something about that." Isolda was thinking about her own position. She had assumed that she would be invalided out of the police service as a result of her injuries and had been astonished when she was told she could stay on for as long as she wished. She was desk-bound of course, but was now in charge of computer research assistance for investigations in progress. She had been amazed and more than a little overwhelmed by the well-meant helpfulness of her colleagues. Yet, she had detected the awkwardness that had lain behind the friendly comments and undoubted goodwill. As if people didn't quite know what to say or do yet, and so were forcing themselves to make the effort. In some ways, Isolda preferred Angel's icy lack of sympathy. It meant that Angel was treating her the same way she treated everybody else.
"There are companies that do training courses that are supposed to build up team spirit." Watts mused.
"Do you really want to go that way?" Conrad looked around. "The problem with the old days when the Police were a separate entity also meant they were distinct from the community they policed. They were their own individual clique, them inside and everybody else outside. That led to corruption on many levels, not just financial. Angel's been stressing the importance of keeping the community on your side and working together with them. Won't going back to the old days of the police station being a sort of self-contained monastery make that hard?"
"He's right you know." Gladstone saw Conrad's point very clearly. "Somehow, we've got to build up team spirit on the force, make policing a vocation again instead of just a job, without making the public think they're being left out."
"The old days weren't as perfect as we like to think now. There were a lot of abuses back then, even before That Man got into power." Watts drank some more of his beer and suddenly noticed Angel was staring into space and assumed she was thinking about the team-building issue. She was actually remembering being on the floor of a police station back room, her hands handcuffed behind her back, while several policemen made a very sincere effort to beat her to death.
She shook herself slightly and waved to the barmaid for more rum. "You can't force things like that on people. It has to come from them to you. Make it known that there is funding for morale and social activities, ask for suggestions and see what comes in. You'll get some good ideas. You might even get a choir."
Watts laughed and finished his beer. "Now, we have a new lead on the stolen horsebox. Conrad, you and Angel found the way out and that was a real break for us. Then Constable Gregory took heed of his lessons, wrapped up an incident quietly and without fuss with the result that a more-or-less innocent kid didn’t get a record. So, his father decided that he owed us and came in with some information. Apparently, somebody came looking for a map of the Green Roads system, not realizing that any maps of the Green Roads were quietly pulped years ago.”
“My father tells stories sometimes about the Green Roads and Bridlepaths and how the Resistance used them to fox the Germans. They could be one place, then slip through the woods and be somewhere else by the time the Germans came looking.” Isolda drained her glass only to find a refill had already been put in front of her. “A couple of times, the Germans went into the woods but got lost in the maze of footpaths and all the other things out there. Woods all look the same if you’re not familiar with them and in summer it’s hard to steer by the sun. There is a story that a German patrol and a Resistance group met in the woods one day and they came to an agreement that the Germans wouldn't see the Resistance and the Resistance would show the Germans how to get out of the woods. I doubt if it's true.”
“But it’s a really good story and that’s why there are no maps of the Green Roads.” Watts had another pint delivered for himself and one for Gladstone. As senior officer, he paid for the drinks. “Anyway, this guy, he wasn’t British. Fair-haired and he had an accept. Swedish perhaps, or Norwegian. Both countries are rebuilding their racing stock now but the existing stud farm owners are charging them an arm and a leg to have a mare covered by one of their stallions. So our working hypothesis is that some bright spark came up with the idea of stealing a stud stallion. That way, they can save themselves the stud fees and make money by charging other stud farms for . . . . err . . . . services rendered.”
“Swedish or Norwegian?” Achillea looked up from her whisky. “Any ideas which?”
“Our bet is Swedish. There are four racehorse stud farms in Sweden, all privately owned. There’s one in Norway and it’s owned by the government. I suppose it’s just possible that the manager of the Norwegian stud is trying set up an off-the-books business but my bet is Swedish. Assuming our witness was right of course.” Watts frowned, he had forgotten to include something very important but he honestly could not remember what it was. No matter, I’ll look up my notes tomorrow.
Conrad frowned; there were a lot of things worrying him about this theory. "So, the theory is that a Swedish stud farm owner is trying to steal a top-rank stud stallion so he can make his fortune breeding racehorses? Why would he chose to steal one from here? Simply getting the horse out would be a major problem. Why not go to the Czech Republic or Slovenia? They both breed racehorses. Or Austria, although that's a little bit close to Germany."
"The Austrian and Czech horses are Lippizaners, not racehorses." Isolda looked up. "I did some research on this when the racehorse issue came up. Of course, the horses were evacuated to Italy early on when the war started."
Conrad looked sharply at Igrat and Achillea when that was mentioned. He'd heard rumors that they'd both been involved in the operation that had rescued the Lippizaner horses from Piber in Austria and given them sanctuary in Italy. Igrat caught his glance and just lifted an eyebrow. Some things were better not discussed, especially in the presence of short-lived people.
"If they hadn't been, they'd have all died on the Russian Front or been slaughtered for horsemeat. That's what happened to all our horses." Isolda sounded incredibly sad. The truth was that, while the British horse population was being rebuilt, it was being done so from imported stock. The old bloodlines had been wiped out and the new horse generations weren't 'their horses'. Igrat had heard the same lament from Brigadier Strachan. "Anyway, there's only a couple of stud farms in the Czech Republic, the Slovenian horses are Lippizaners and although there's half a dozen stud farms in Poland breeding racehorses, they're all state-owned. Strange as it may sound, Britain is probably the closest accessible source of top-rank breeding racehorses to Sweden."
"That makes sense." Conrad still didn't like what he was hearing. There are too many loose ends and the situation is inelegant. A criminal case is a piece of fine art. In the end, all the parts fit into a whole. Here all too many do not. "If somebody was transporting a racehorse, it’s a long way to go with a highly-strung animal. He'd have to go all around the Baltic. Flying the animal across the North Sea would be a lot easier. And there's less control up there."
There were nods all around the table. Any aircraft flying an unregistered flight plan over Eastern Europe would find a trigger-happy fighter sitting by its wing very quickly. Memories of the second World War and how it had ended died very hard.
"Your research showed how many stud farms with pedigree racehorse stallions here?" Watts was watching Conrad chew the situation over and realized he didn’t like the situation at all. Watts agreed with him, his 'blue sense' was telling him something was very wrong as well.
"You do a lot of computer research now?" Achillea asked the question more out of curiosity than anything else.
"There's nearly thirty. We've gone from being horseless to probably the leading breeding center in Europe. Only Italy and Spain come close to us. My job now is to dig around on the cyberweb, Achillea, and get the basic information the investigations need. I can't walk a beat anymore so it’s a good job for me."
"Adventure or Dungeons and Dragons?" Achillea grinned as Isolda blushed deep red. Yup, she does play computer games in office hours.
"How many of those are near here?" Conrad was indeed gnawing away at the problems. The one that interested him most at this point was why the horsebox had been stolen from Marsh Baldon and not somewhere else.
"Not as many as you might think." Isolda thought carefully. "There's about four around here, and a fifth down at Avebury; that one is part of the Manorial estate there. It doesn't really breed racehorses that much, I get the impression it does so to cover costs. There are a lot more in East Anglia and the South."
"So, why did they steal the horsebox from here?" Conrad was working around the issue and trying to identify the anomalies. Nothing seems to quite fit, that means there are a lot of important pieces missing.
"I checked up on the number of specialized racehorse boxes. There are two datafiles appropriate, one is the list of registration numbers from the ninth circle of hell."
"The DVLA at Swansea." Watts said helpfully.
"The DVLA has a registry number for every trailer above a certain size in the UK. Racehorse trailers fall into that category. I downloaded the list and comailed the British Racehorse Breeder's Association, asking for theirs. They maintain one so that a breeder who gets stuck without a trailer for some reason he can borrow one from another stud farm. They came right back with their list. I compared the two."
"That must have been hard work; there are probably hundreds of them." Gladstone was being very complimentary; it was obvious that Isolda had put a lot of work into this case.
"Several hundred, yes. But I had both lists electronically using the same file format, so I did a comparison using the registration plate number. They were nearly all identical but there are six racehorse trailers that appear on the DVLA list but not on the BRBA list. Two are owned by Valiant Commercial Vehicle Rentals and are rented out as needed; I called them and both are on short-term hire to a stud farm up in Lincolnshire right now. The other four are owned by farms that do not breed racehorses. One is in Kent, one in Hampshire, one is at The Old Manor Ranch here in Marsh Baldon and the other is near Ipswich. Right in the middle of a cluster of stud farms; I'd guess the owner rents it out as well."
"And that adds another problem to the list. Why steal a racehorse box from here when there was one in the middle of a cluster of stud farms? The thieves could have easily stolen that box, stolen the horse and made it to a disused airfield all in one operation." Conrad was really confused. The picture was shattering and flying to pieces, not assembling itself.
"Perhaps that one was being used? Or was too heavily protected? Or perhaps they'd picked a horse that wasn't in that group of studs." Angel looked at her glass and finished off the contents. "You know, if they wanted to go to all this trouble to steal a stud stallion, wouldn't they choose the best one they could find? What are the leading stud stallions. How do you measure that?'
"I'll get back to the BRBA tomorrow and ask." Isolda sighed gently. She needed her rest since it was amazing how tiring living without being able to use her legs was. This was something TV shows never mentioned when it came to being shot."
"You can come with us, Isolda." Watts spoke decisively. "My driver can run you home and then take me back to my place. You set up, Rupert?"
"Wife's picking me up in ten minutes. She wants to know why we've got such a commitment in police time and effort to a simple horsebox theft though."
"Because, if we don’t wrap this up, that stable-lad will have it hanging over his head for years." Conrad said.
"Because it'll make Conrad happy to clear the kid." Angel looked at her empty glass and shrugged. She'd had enough.
"Because if we let minor crimes ride, the locals won’t trust us to solve major ones." Watts was a devout belier in that theory and it seemed to work.
'Good boy."
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Eight – Through Inspector Gladstone’s Eyes
Police Constable Isolda Rowley's Office, Oxford Police Headquarters, Oxford.
"I got the list of top-ranking stallions at stud. All breeding stallions in the UK are listed in the Main Stud Book. Horse isn't there, it doesn't exist as far as the racing world is concerned." Isolda had the information she had received from the BRBA on her computer screen. "There's not as many of them as one might think. They must work pretty hard."
"That we should all be so lucky." Inspector Gladstone sounded wistful.
"If it was the mares working that hard for money, the Vice Squad would be running their owners in for living on immoral earnings." Isolda sounded indignant but she was smiling. "All right, well the stallions are ranked on the basis of their performance during their racing career, how much prize money they brought in, their temperament, how many mares they have covered since then, what the performance of their foals has been and so on. The secretary at the BRBA has offered to give me a lesson on in-depth calculation. Basically, a horse that had a good racing career but whose descendants haven't shown up well will rank much lower than a stallion that had a lack-luster racing career but whose descendants win a lot of prize money. There are four ways one can breed a horse. Natural where the mare is brought to the stallion and he does his thing. Artificial insemination where they collect fresh semen from the stallion and use a syringe to shoot it into the mare."
Isolda's face was a picture of disgust. "Yuk. Then, semen can be collected from the stallion and chilled for delivery to the farm where the mare lives. Double-yuk. Finally it can be collected, frozen and stored, then purchased from storage and delivered. I hope they warm it up first. All the breeders believe, apparently without any supporting evidence, that the probability of getting a satisfactory offspring declines as one goes down that list. There's a big premium for natural conception."
"That supports the theory that somebody is trying to steal a stallion for breeding purposes. What's the price differential between natural and frozen?" Gladstone was intrigued by the glance into a world he had barely knew existed.
"Big and it gets bigger as one goes up the scale. Top rank stallions are classed as 'Breeder's Elite Elegant'. To get that ranking, a horse needs to have won a lot of prize money during his racing career including a good selection of classics and his descendants need to have done the same. In addition, the horse needs to look good hence the elegant grade. To have a mare covered by a BEE stallion will cost over fifteen thousand pounds although most stables will offer free return visits if the first mating doesn't take. By the way, the stud owners won't take just any mare. Since the performance of offspring is the major determinator of the stallion's ranking and thus the fees it can demadn, the owners will only accept mares with really good track records."
"So an owner with a stable of mediocre mares can't get a top-rank stud stallion to cover them no matter how much he pays?"
"Exactly. Doesn't this look like a theft now? A frozen sample from the BEE stallion I just mentioned will probably cost about six-fifty to fifteen hundred pounds. A small fraction of the cost of a natural with the rest spaced between but clustered to the low end. The lowest grade of stallion is just 'Licensed' and a natural there will go for around two hundred pounds with 'frozen' at a hundred, but the chance of getting a big winner from a 'Licensed' is almost nil. Does happen once in a very rare while though."
"So, the way to make money is to get hold of a Breeder's Elite Elegant and offer him to mares who wouldn't normally be considered?"
"Well, yes." Isolda was hesitant. "The problem is that every racehorse must have its pedigree registered and without that registered pedigree it can't run anywhere in the UK. Or any country that has racing relations with the UK. There's no way around that; somebody tries and they get warned off."
"Warned off?"
"Told they are not welcome to compete at any British race meeting, formal or informal. If somebody allows them to compete at a meeting, they get warned off as well. It wouldn't surprise me if the company that parks the visitor's cars would get warned off too. The BRBA rule racing with a rod of iron. So, if a BEE stallion vanishes and starts turning up on pedigree registration documents, it, the owners and everybody else gets warned off and their career in racing is over. And that applies here, the US, Australia, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, India, anywhere the BRBA has a friendly relationship with the racing authorities.
"Sweden and Norway?"
"Oddly enough, no. Their breeding program was so limited that they never established official relationships."
"That fits. All right, back to the original question. Who are the leading stallions? We'll look at the Breeder's Elite Elegant only."
"Well, the grand master of the Breeder's Elite Elegant class is a horse called Shergar. He's been around for a long time; born in 1978, did three racing seasons in the very early 1980s before being retired to stud. In three years, he won 436,000 pounds in prize money. Pretty much all his foals have turned out well and his owners charged fifty thousand pounds for a natural. At twenty five, he's getting on now and apparently his fertility is declining with age. His mares are getting more and more free returns. The thing about him is that he's a really nice horse, not a loonie like most racehorses. Everybody likes him. His current owners have made it public that even when he retires from stud, they'll keep him on in honorable retirement until he passes."
"Nice of them."
"Twenty years at stud, a hundred naturals a year at fifty thousand each? That's a hundred million pounds that horse has made for his owners. I think they can afford it. Anyway, Shergar is famous, people pay to see him, he does appearances, even television commercials and he earns his keep from that alone. Its rumored one of the pension companies has already signed him up to do advertisements for their old age pension schemes."
"Who owns him?"
"Nobody in particular; he's owned by a syndicate managed by the Bank de Commerce et Industrie in Geneva. You know what Swiss banks are like, we have no chance of finding out any more than that. Shergar lives on a stud farm in Wiltshire, just outside Devizes. With a horse like that, I bet it's well-guarded."
"Yeah, but it's not that far from here. You know, the thieves might well be thinking that a horse nearing retirement anyway won’t cause as much of a hue and cry as one that's at the peak of its stud career. I've got a feeling these horse thieves might well have Shergar in mind.
"We'd better tell Conrad and Angel. They've been in on this from the start. Where are they?"
"Down in the lecture theater; Conrad's going to give a lecture on how to interrogate prisoners and Angel is starting him off by explaining why beating people up in the cells is a bad idea."
"Our people need that explained?" Isolda was shocked.
"Those television shows have a lot to answer for. Enough people think we go around beating people up to make our task much harder. You know, Angel came up with an interesting idea, use one of those new computer cameras to put our station desk on the cyberweb. So, people can see what is going on in their local station all the time. We'd have to be damned careful of course but it might be doable. Anyway, Angel explains things differently. We tell our officers beating up suspects in the cells is wrong because it's wrong. Angel is showing them why it's wrong because it makes our job harder and more dangerous." Gladstone laughed. "When I was a cadet, if anybody had told me I would have a Triad assassin in my station teaching my officers about community policing, I'd have had his urine tested."
Isolda looked up from her screen diffidently. "Is Angel really an assassin? I know she's a member of her Triad, we only need to see her tattoos to know that, but Triad membership is not illegal. I've seen for myself how good she is with those guns of hers. After all, I'm alive today because of her, and I know she has no qualms about killing people. But . . . actually killing people for money?"
Gladstone paused, and when he spoke his voice carried a lot of authority. He was one of those leaders who never needed to overtly exert authority; instead he led by example. But, now the authority was apparent and not to be disregarded. "I know there are a lot of rumors about Angel and she has a sinister reputation. But, I must remind you she has never been accused of an offense in the United Kingdom, there are no warrants outstanding against her and she is not suspected of having committed a crime in this country. Since we, as a just and law abiding country, hold that every person is innocent until proven guilty, we have no reason to believe she is anything more than a highly competent consultant.
"Isolda, ask me personally what I think, and I would say, in private, that she is a Triad assassin, almost certainly a very senior one. But, as a police officer, I would say she is one of us now and her actions have assisted us greatly. As you say, she has saved the lives of two valued officers, perhaps more if you count those who have finessed critical situations into something less harmful by following her advice. So could you forget what I said, please."
Isolda nodded. “Forget what?”
Lecture Theater, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
“All right, how many of you have worked over a prisoner. I don’t mean subdued a prisoner who was behaving in a manner likely to endanger everybody including himself. I mean tuning up somebody who has been arrested for a vile offense. How many of you have done that to a man?”
There was an awkward pause while everybody looked at each other. Angel smiled grimly. “All right, none of you. But you’ve all heard of it happening right? Any of you report it?”
There was another silence. Angel nodded. “All right, let’s pursue it a bit further. How many of you have heard of a woman being beaten up in her cell by police officers? And done nothing about it?”
There was an outraged outpouring of emphatic denial from her audience. After a couple of minutes, she held up a hand and the noise stopped as if by magic. “So if you all found out that a couple of your fellow officers had beaten up a woman in her cell, you’d be outraged and make an official report, but not if the victim was a man.”
Once again there was a surge of noise, this time reluctantly agreeing with her. When it dies down, she asked a simple, armor-piercing question. “Why?”
There was a confused murmur. Meanwhile, Inspector Gladstone had quietly let himself into the room and was watching what was happening. Angel looked around, gauging her time. “We’ve already established that female criminals can be as violent and as vicious as men. And as dangerous. So why do you react so differently when the victim of this kind of vigilante ‘justice’ is a woman?”
Eventually, Constable Jenkins raised his hand. “Because beating women is wrong.”
“And beating helpless male prisoners isn’t?” Jenkins sat down confused amid sympathetic looks from the rest of the audience.
Angel looked at her thoroughly uncomfortable audience. “You see where trying to say something is right or wrong will get you when you don’t think out why? Let’s take as a starting point the standard police instruction, that prisoners must not be beaten or otherwise maltreated. The official answer on the why question is because it’s wrong. We’ve just found out that doesn’t get us anywhere so let’s look into the issue. Put yourselves into the position of a member of the community. You know somebody, let’s call him Sammy, who got taken away by the police and when he came back he looked like he had done ten rounds with the current heavyweight boxing champion. Whoever that is. Are you going to help the police and put another kid in Sammy’s place by doing so? Would you help the police and put a woman in that position?”
There were vigorous denials, mostly at her last question, then as her audience thought over what she had been saying, to both. “All right, now, my brain doesn’t work the way yours does. Terms like right and wrong don’t have the same meaning for me as they do for you. I define right and wrong as what is good or bad for me. That means that I have to think through these things very carefully. In my role here as a member of this force, I thought through this issue and as I did, I began to understand how wrong maltreating detainees is. Because it makes our job far more difficult and dangerous. The prospect of somebody who has been arrested being beaten, or killed because any serious beating has a good chance of killing the recipient, will stop the local community from helping you make that arrest. It will stop a criminal submitting to arrest quietly and instead make him resist with every tool available to him. Or her.
"On the other side of the matter, knowing that not putting up resistance will result in the arresting officer telling the beak than ‘the prisoner offered no resistance and came quietly’ will induce the beak to knock a couple of years off a sentence or even substitute probation for jail time. For that reason alone, being known as a fair cop in force that treats people right helps you every day you are out there. That’s why you should report any such abuse of prisoners immediately. Because the person who will pay the price for not doing that is you and the people around you right now. Doesn’t matter if the victim is a man or a woman, there are good hard, practical reasons why working them over is wrong.”
Angel paused and got her breath back under control. “And it’s stupid and unnecessary. Because it’s much easier to get a confession without all that. I’d like you to meet my friend Conrad. He’ll tell you how.”
Conrad got up and smiled gently at the very disturbed audience. “I’d like a volunteer. Now, who has something to hide? You, front row, yes, in the middle of the row. Could you come up here please? Thank you. Now, your name is?"
Angel slipped away to the back of the hall where Gladstone was watching. He nodded in recognition as she joined him and pointed to the door, the obvious message they needed to talk. Once outside the lecture theater, he looked at her carefully. The thin nylon polo-neck sweater she wore covered her tattoos but they seemed to glow through the black fabric. "That was an interesting introduction, Angel. I'd never thought of things quite like that before."
"In the States, it’s a real problem. Violence against prisoners, up to and including killing them, is common enough that everybody about to be arrested expects it to happen. So they fight back hard when they are about to get arrested. That echoes throughout the whole system. It turns petty offenses into serious ones and serious ones into fatalities."
"I was in the Navy before I became a copper. The first thing we taught young officers was never to give a drunken sailor a chance to take a swing at them and so turn a minor offense into a major one. Get out the way until the master at arms has the situation under control. I suppose you're saying the same thing." Gladstone took in Angel's attitude. To his surprise, she was listening to him and thinking over what he had said. If his suspicions about her rank in the Triads were correct, she was probably the equivalent of a Chief Superintendent at least. And yet she still listens to a mere inspector. This girl gets more confusing the better I know her.
"A bit of it." She thought a bit more. "One of the Peelian Principles is that a police officer should always refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. That applies to a lot of places other than the police of course."
"When I was first on the force, there were always half-jokes about awkward prisoners who fell down the station steps or tripped over the Constable's bicycle. Now, those TV shows have everybody half-convinced it happens all the time."
"And those half-jokes about steps and bicycles lead directly to some cheap thug shooting it out with you. Remember the start of the Blue Lamp where a dumbass is escaping from the cops, crashes his car, tries to leg it and a citizen stops him, only to get shot dead? That's where 'tripping over the Constable's bike' ends. Somebody dying who shouldn't have." Gladstone was shocked by Angel's voice, not because the cold, harsh contralto was loaded with emotion but because it contained none. Her delivery was completely neutral, she was just stating facts. "I wouldn't worry about those TV shows too much though. They're already beginning to die out but they reach a set number of people. On the other hand, word of mouth reaches an exponential number. That kid Greg dealt with a few days ago? You can bet he's told all his friends how reasonable we were and decently he was treated. A few of them will have dealings with us; if they say the same thing to all their friends, word gets around fast. I happen to know that the Chinese community here believes that if they don’t resist arrest, they'll do themselves a lot of good."
They were interrupted by laughter from inside the lecture theater. Conrad had just persuaded his interviewee to confess to taking two digestive biscuits from the tea trolley plate instead of one. The Constable was bright red-faced and wondering how it had happened. Conrad was now explaining to the audience how it had been done. Angel heard his words from outside. "The first step, the thing you must do, is to get the person you are interviewing into the habit of answering questions. Simply asking them to confirm their name is a good step. They'll rationalize that since you already know it, there's no harm in telling us."
"What happens if they don’t say anything, Conrad?"
"Just keep talking. People are gregarious, they instinctively want to communicate. Just keep your voice down, don’t lose your temper, be polite. Take every little step and build on it. Ask them if they want a cup of tea. If they say yes or no, they've broken silence. If they just nod or shake their heads, its half-way there and you can build on that. Take your time, they aren’t going anywhere soon. Now, let's have another talk. The policewoman with black hair, front row? Could you come up here?"
Gladstone looked at Angel again and saw her eyes shining with pride at the display Conrad was putting on. She caught his eye and half-smiled. "He's really good at this you know. I think only one person has ever avoided confessing to something they did. He's also cleared a lot of people."
"Talking about that, we've got a lot of information on racehorses and we think we've identified the one they are after." Gladstone explained everything that Isolda had found out. "Shergar is it, we're sure of it."
"There's another possibility, whoever is about to steal that horse is going to hold him for ransom. From the amounts of money involved, they might believe that the owner would pay to get him back."
"That's bad. If they're a bunch of wide boys on the make, they'll have no idea of how to handle a racehorse. It'll end bloody. A bad end for a nice horse."
Angel nodded in agreement. "It'll be soon. They'll want to pull something like this on a new moon. That's the next three days or so."
It was obviously the voice of a skilled criminal speaking from experience. Once again, Gladstone looked at her, remembering the notes from the psychiatrist. The shrink said that everything she does is for her own benefit and promoting her own interests. So, why is she helping us? What does she want? Just what the hell is she up to?
Police Constable Isolda Rowley's Office, Oxford Police Headquarters, Oxford.
"I got the list of top-ranking stallions at stud. All breeding stallions in the UK are listed in the Main Stud Book. Horse isn't there, it doesn't exist as far as the racing world is concerned." Isolda had the information she had received from the BRBA on her computer screen. "There's not as many of them as one might think. They must work pretty hard."
"That we should all be so lucky." Inspector Gladstone sounded wistful.
"If it was the mares working that hard for money, the Vice Squad would be running their owners in for living on immoral earnings." Isolda sounded indignant but she was smiling. "All right, well the stallions are ranked on the basis of their performance during their racing career, how much prize money they brought in, their temperament, how many mares they have covered since then, what the performance of their foals has been and so on. The secretary at the BRBA has offered to give me a lesson on in-depth calculation. Basically, a horse that had a good racing career but whose descendants haven't shown up well will rank much lower than a stallion that had a lack-luster racing career but whose descendants win a lot of prize money. There are four ways one can breed a horse. Natural where the mare is brought to the stallion and he does his thing. Artificial insemination where they collect fresh semen from the stallion and use a syringe to shoot it into the mare."
Isolda's face was a picture of disgust. "Yuk. Then, semen can be collected from the stallion and chilled for delivery to the farm where the mare lives. Double-yuk. Finally it can be collected, frozen and stored, then purchased from storage and delivered. I hope they warm it up first. All the breeders believe, apparently without any supporting evidence, that the probability of getting a satisfactory offspring declines as one goes down that list. There's a big premium for natural conception."
"That supports the theory that somebody is trying to steal a stallion for breeding purposes. What's the price differential between natural and frozen?" Gladstone was intrigued by the glance into a world he had barely knew existed.
"Big and it gets bigger as one goes up the scale. Top rank stallions are classed as 'Breeder's Elite Elegant'. To get that ranking, a horse needs to have won a lot of prize money during his racing career including a good selection of classics and his descendants need to have done the same. In addition, the horse needs to look good hence the elegant grade. To have a mare covered by a BEE stallion will cost over fifteen thousand pounds although most stables will offer free return visits if the first mating doesn't take. By the way, the stud owners won't take just any mare. Since the performance of offspring is the major determinator of the stallion's ranking and thus the fees it can demadn, the owners will only accept mares with really good track records."
"So an owner with a stable of mediocre mares can't get a top-rank stud stallion to cover them no matter how much he pays?"
"Exactly. Doesn't this look like a theft now? A frozen sample from the BEE stallion I just mentioned will probably cost about six-fifty to fifteen hundred pounds. A small fraction of the cost of a natural with the rest spaced between but clustered to the low end. The lowest grade of stallion is just 'Licensed' and a natural there will go for around two hundred pounds with 'frozen' at a hundred, but the chance of getting a big winner from a 'Licensed' is almost nil. Does happen once in a very rare while though."
"So, the way to make money is to get hold of a Breeder's Elite Elegant and offer him to mares who wouldn't normally be considered?"
"Well, yes." Isolda was hesitant. "The problem is that every racehorse must have its pedigree registered and without that registered pedigree it can't run anywhere in the UK. Or any country that has racing relations with the UK. There's no way around that; somebody tries and they get warned off."
"Warned off?"
"Told they are not welcome to compete at any British race meeting, formal or informal. If somebody allows them to compete at a meeting, they get warned off as well. It wouldn't surprise me if the company that parks the visitor's cars would get warned off too. The BRBA rule racing with a rod of iron. So, if a BEE stallion vanishes and starts turning up on pedigree registration documents, it, the owners and everybody else gets warned off and their career in racing is over. And that applies here, the US, Australia, Italy, Spain, New Zealand, India, anywhere the BRBA has a friendly relationship with the racing authorities.
"Sweden and Norway?"
"Oddly enough, no. Their breeding program was so limited that they never established official relationships."
"That fits. All right, back to the original question. Who are the leading stallions? We'll look at the Breeder's Elite Elegant only."
"Well, the grand master of the Breeder's Elite Elegant class is a horse called Shergar. He's been around for a long time; born in 1978, did three racing seasons in the very early 1980s before being retired to stud. In three years, he won 436,000 pounds in prize money. Pretty much all his foals have turned out well and his owners charged fifty thousand pounds for a natural. At twenty five, he's getting on now and apparently his fertility is declining with age. His mares are getting more and more free returns. The thing about him is that he's a really nice horse, not a loonie like most racehorses. Everybody likes him. His current owners have made it public that even when he retires from stud, they'll keep him on in honorable retirement until he passes."
"Nice of them."
"Twenty years at stud, a hundred naturals a year at fifty thousand each? That's a hundred million pounds that horse has made for his owners. I think they can afford it. Anyway, Shergar is famous, people pay to see him, he does appearances, even television commercials and he earns his keep from that alone. Its rumored one of the pension companies has already signed him up to do advertisements for their old age pension schemes."
"Who owns him?"
"Nobody in particular; he's owned by a syndicate managed by the Bank de Commerce et Industrie in Geneva. You know what Swiss banks are like, we have no chance of finding out any more than that. Shergar lives on a stud farm in Wiltshire, just outside Devizes. With a horse like that, I bet it's well-guarded."
"Yeah, but it's not that far from here. You know, the thieves might well be thinking that a horse nearing retirement anyway won’t cause as much of a hue and cry as one that's at the peak of its stud career. I've got a feeling these horse thieves might well have Shergar in mind.
"We'd better tell Conrad and Angel. They've been in on this from the start. Where are they?"
"Down in the lecture theater; Conrad's going to give a lecture on how to interrogate prisoners and Angel is starting him off by explaining why beating people up in the cells is a bad idea."
"Our people need that explained?" Isolda was shocked.
"Those television shows have a lot to answer for. Enough people think we go around beating people up to make our task much harder. You know, Angel came up with an interesting idea, use one of those new computer cameras to put our station desk on the cyberweb. So, people can see what is going on in their local station all the time. We'd have to be damned careful of course but it might be doable. Anyway, Angel explains things differently. We tell our officers beating up suspects in the cells is wrong because it's wrong. Angel is showing them why it's wrong because it makes our job harder and more dangerous." Gladstone laughed. "When I was a cadet, if anybody had told me I would have a Triad assassin in my station teaching my officers about community policing, I'd have had his urine tested."
Isolda looked up from her screen diffidently. "Is Angel really an assassin? I know she's a member of her Triad, we only need to see her tattoos to know that, but Triad membership is not illegal. I've seen for myself how good she is with those guns of hers. After all, I'm alive today because of her, and I know she has no qualms about killing people. But . . . actually killing people for money?"
Gladstone paused, and when he spoke his voice carried a lot of authority. He was one of those leaders who never needed to overtly exert authority; instead he led by example. But, now the authority was apparent and not to be disregarded. "I know there are a lot of rumors about Angel and she has a sinister reputation. But, I must remind you she has never been accused of an offense in the United Kingdom, there are no warrants outstanding against her and she is not suspected of having committed a crime in this country. Since we, as a just and law abiding country, hold that every person is innocent until proven guilty, we have no reason to believe she is anything more than a highly competent consultant.
"Isolda, ask me personally what I think, and I would say, in private, that she is a Triad assassin, almost certainly a very senior one. But, as a police officer, I would say she is one of us now and her actions have assisted us greatly. As you say, she has saved the lives of two valued officers, perhaps more if you count those who have finessed critical situations into something less harmful by following her advice. So could you forget what I said, please."
Isolda nodded. “Forget what?”
Lecture Theater, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
“All right, how many of you have worked over a prisoner. I don’t mean subdued a prisoner who was behaving in a manner likely to endanger everybody including himself. I mean tuning up somebody who has been arrested for a vile offense. How many of you have done that to a man?”
There was an awkward pause while everybody looked at each other. Angel smiled grimly. “All right, none of you. But you’ve all heard of it happening right? Any of you report it?”
There was another silence. Angel nodded. “All right, let’s pursue it a bit further. How many of you have heard of a woman being beaten up in her cell by police officers? And done nothing about it?”
There was an outraged outpouring of emphatic denial from her audience. After a couple of minutes, she held up a hand and the noise stopped as if by magic. “So if you all found out that a couple of your fellow officers had beaten up a woman in her cell, you’d be outraged and make an official report, but not if the victim was a man.”
Once again there was a surge of noise, this time reluctantly agreeing with her. When it dies down, she asked a simple, armor-piercing question. “Why?”
There was a confused murmur. Meanwhile, Inspector Gladstone had quietly let himself into the room and was watching what was happening. Angel looked around, gauging her time. “We’ve already established that female criminals can be as violent and as vicious as men. And as dangerous. So why do you react so differently when the victim of this kind of vigilante ‘justice’ is a woman?”
Eventually, Constable Jenkins raised his hand. “Because beating women is wrong.”
“And beating helpless male prisoners isn’t?” Jenkins sat down confused amid sympathetic looks from the rest of the audience.
Angel looked at her thoroughly uncomfortable audience. “You see where trying to say something is right or wrong will get you when you don’t think out why? Let’s take as a starting point the standard police instruction, that prisoners must not be beaten or otherwise maltreated. The official answer on the why question is because it’s wrong. We’ve just found out that doesn’t get us anywhere so let’s look into the issue. Put yourselves into the position of a member of the community. You know somebody, let’s call him Sammy, who got taken away by the police and when he came back he looked like he had done ten rounds with the current heavyweight boxing champion. Whoever that is. Are you going to help the police and put another kid in Sammy’s place by doing so? Would you help the police and put a woman in that position?”
There were vigorous denials, mostly at her last question, then as her audience thought over what she had been saying, to both. “All right, now, my brain doesn’t work the way yours does. Terms like right and wrong don’t have the same meaning for me as they do for you. I define right and wrong as what is good or bad for me. That means that I have to think through these things very carefully. In my role here as a member of this force, I thought through this issue and as I did, I began to understand how wrong maltreating detainees is. Because it makes our job far more difficult and dangerous. The prospect of somebody who has been arrested being beaten, or killed because any serious beating has a good chance of killing the recipient, will stop the local community from helping you make that arrest. It will stop a criminal submitting to arrest quietly and instead make him resist with every tool available to him. Or her.
"On the other side of the matter, knowing that not putting up resistance will result in the arresting officer telling the beak than ‘the prisoner offered no resistance and came quietly’ will induce the beak to knock a couple of years off a sentence or even substitute probation for jail time. For that reason alone, being known as a fair cop in force that treats people right helps you every day you are out there. That’s why you should report any such abuse of prisoners immediately. Because the person who will pay the price for not doing that is you and the people around you right now. Doesn’t matter if the victim is a man or a woman, there are good hard, practical reasons why working them over is wrong.”
Angel paused and got her breath back under control. “And it’s stupid and unnecessary. Because it’s much easier to get a confession without all that. I’d like you to meet my friend Conrad. He’ll tell you how.”
Conrad got up and smiled gently at the very disturbed audience. “I’d like a volunteer. Now, who has something to hide? You, front row, yes, in the middle of the row. Could you come up here please? Thank you. Now, your name is?"
Angel slipped away to the back of the hall where Gladstone was watching. He nodded in recognition as she joined him and pointed to the door, the obvious message they needed to talk. Once outside the lecture theater, he looked at her carefully. The thin nylon polo-neck sweater she wore covered her tattoos but they seemed to glow through the black fabric. "That was an interesting introduction, Angel. I'd never thought of things quite like that before."
"In the States, it’s a real problem. Violence against prisoners, up to and including killing them, is common enough that everybody about to be arrested expects it to happen. So they fight back hard when they are about to get arrested. That echoes throughout the whole system. It turns petty offenses into serious ones and serious ones into fatalities."
"I was in the Navy before I became a copper. The first thing we taught young officers was never to give a drunken sailor a chance to take a swing at them and so turn a minor offense into a major one. Get out the way until the master at arms has the situation under control. I suppose you're saying the same thing." Gladstone took in Angel's attitude. To his surprise, she was listening to him and thinking over what he had said. If his suspicions about her rank in the Triads were correct, she was probably the equivalent of a Chief Superintendent at least. And yet she still listens to a mere inspector. This girl gets more confusing the better I know her.
"A bit of it." She thought a bit more. "One of the Peelian Principles is that a police officer should always refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary, of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty. That applies to a lot of places other than the police of course."
"When I was first on the force, there were always half-jokes about awkward prisoners who fell down the station steps or tripped over the Constable's bicycle. Now, those TV shows have everybody half-convinced it happens all the time."
"And those half-jokes about steps and bicycles lead directly to some cheap thug shooting it out with you. Remember the start of the Blue Lamp where a dumbass is escaping from the cops, crashes his car, tries to leg it and a citizen stops him, only to get shot dead? That's where 'tripping over the Constable's bike' ends. Somebody dying who shouldn't have." Gladstone was shocked by Angel's voice, not because the cold, harsh contralto was loaded with emotion but because it contained none. Her delivery was completely neutral, she was just stating facts. "I wouldn't worry about those TV shows too much though. They're already beginning to die out but they reach a set number of people. On the other hand, word of mouth reaches an exponential number. That kid Greg dealt with a few days ago? You can bet he's told all his friends how reasonable we were and decently he was treated. A few of them will have dealings with us; if they say the same thing to all their friends, word gets around fast. I happen to know that the Chinese community here believes that if they don’t resist arrest, they'll do themselves a lot of good."
They were interrupted by laughter from inside the lecture theater. Conrad had just persuaded his interviewee to confess to taking two digestive biscuits from the tea trolley plate instead of one. The Constable was bright red-faced and wondering how it had happened. Conrad was now explaining to the audience how it had been done. Angel heard his words from outside. "The first step, the thing you must do, is to get the person you are interviewing into the habit of answering questions. Simply asking them to confirm their name is a good step. They'll rationalize that since you already know it, there's no harm in telling us."
"What happens if they don’t say anything, Conrad?"
"Just keep talking. People are gregarious, they instinctively want to communicate. Just keep your voice down, don’t lose your temper, be polite. Take every little step and build on it. Ask them if they want a cup of tea. If they say yes or no, they've broken silence. If they just nod or shake their heads, its half-way there and you can build on that. Take your time, they aren’t going anywhere soon. Now, let's have another talk. The policewoman with black hair, front row? Could you come up here?"
Gladstone looked at Angel again and saw her eyes shining with pride at the display Conrad was putting on. She caught his eye and half-smiled. "He's really good at this you know. I think only one person has ever avoided confessing to something they did. He's also cleared a lot of people."
"Talking about that, we've got a lot of information on racehorses and we think we've identified the one they are after." Gladstone explained everything that Isolda had found out. "Shergar is it, we're sure of it."
"There's another possibility, whoever is about to steal that horse is going to hold him for ransom. From the amounts of money involved, they might believe that the owner would pay to get him back."
"That's bad. If they're a bunch of wide boys on the make, they'll have no idea of how to handle a racehorse. It'll end bloody. A bad end for a nice horse."
Angel nodded in agreement. "It'll be soon. They'll want to pull something like this on a new moon. That's the next three days or so."
It was obviously the voice of a skilled criminal speaking from experience. Once again, Gladstone looked at her, remembering the notes from the psychiatrist. The shrink said that everything she does is for her own benefit and promoting her own interests. So, why is she helping us? What does she want? Just what the hell is she up to?
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Nine
Igrat's Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon
In Conrad's opinion, one of Angel's most agreeable gifts was her appreciation for companionable silence. She was not one of those people who seemed driven to fill every moment with some sort of chatter; instead she was quite happy to enjoy long periods of contemplative quiet, or to allow other people to think in peace while she slipped her earphones on and listened to one of her private heavy metal disks. She was sprawled out in an arm chair doing that when Conrad looked across at her. She noted his glance, turned her Discman off and pushed the earphone clear. "Something worrying you?"
"This racehorse and horsebox case. The pieces don’t fit together."
"Damn straight they don't. The whole set-up is crazy. If somebody wants to do a heist, this is a damned good lesson in how not to go about it."
Conrad got up from his armchair, poured Angel a rum and treated himself to another glass of Armagnac. "If you were stealing a racehorse, how would you do it?"
She smiled her thanks for the drink, swirled the Bacardi in her glass and stared at it while she thought carefully. "Remember I've never stolen a racehorse so there's some things I don’t know but I'd still want to go in and out as fast as possible. The longer a caper is in play, the more time is available for something to go wrong. I'd get a small group together, a couple of guys who know how to handle horses, somebody who knows how to drive and somebody who is either a qualified vet or at least has a lot of experience in treating animals. Plus a couple of heavies to back me up. Then we'd go in, steal the horse and the horsebox in one go, get to the airfield and be out the country before the alarms went off. It’s one of those operations where the planning would take weeks but the job would be over in minutes.”
“This job has gone on for nearly a week now.” Conrad shook his head. “It’s almost as if the people responsible are deliberately telegraphing what they intend to do.”
“Usually, when people do that, it’s to provide a decoy from the real target. That way, the cops all start watching the wrong targets while we go in and take what we really want.” Angel swirled her glass again, staring at the rum. “What beats the hell out of me is why they stole the horsebox in the first place and now why they’re keeping it somewhere. It’s a needless increase in risk. If they are stealing a stallion, why not steal the box from the farm as well? The horse will be familiar with it, being in something familiar will keep him calm and it reduces the points of risk.”
“But the racehorse stables are heavily-guarded. I thought that the idea of stealing the horsebox from somewhere else was that the thieves wouldn’t have to take on a hard nut like that.” Conrad thought it through. “But that isn’t true, is it. If they were stealing a racehorse, they’d have to hit a heavily-guarded stables anyway. So you’re right, why hit two targets instead of one? And why so far in advance?”
“Because the thieves want everybody to think that this is the theft of a racing stallion. Then, when a stallion disappears from a stable, everybody puts the two together and assume they are two sides of the same caper. There’s another reason why this is all wrong. Turn up at midnight with a horsebox at a racing stables and there’s only one thing one can be doing.”
“Stealing a horse.”
“Damn straight. It’s going to get very bloody, very fast. Guards will be what, half a dozen stable lads with shotguns? They’ll be turned out as soon as that horsebox starts to come up the road. If this is a bunch of city wiseguys, there’ll be a pitched gunbattle and on home ground, I’ll put my money on the stable-boys. Add the police coming in fast, and this is the one time in ten thousand they need an armed response squad, and it’s a mess. Bodies everywhere and the horses will be in a screaming panic assuming some of them haven’t been hit.” Angel shuddered expressively at the thought of a caper turning into a chaotic mess. “Criminals aren’t in business to commit crimes, we’re in business to make money as easily and as conveniently as possible. This isn’t either. I’d do this by stealth. Slip in by foot cut the telephone wires and take the guards down quietly. Preferably slug them. Quieter than killing and creates fewer problems down the road.”
“You mean like that stable-boy was drugged?” Conrad suddenly realized that the removal of the horsebox from The Old Manor Ranch had been exactly the kind of quiet professional job Angel would have run. It was quite different from a prospective raid on a stud farm.
“Yeah, Find a way of doping the guardhouse coffee – or something. If it did come to a confrontation, and we’re already inside and in control, those stable-boys had better be smart enough to put their guns down fast. Then, collect the box, load the horse into it and hitch it to a towing-vehicle. Either bring that in after the place is secure or steal that there as well. Then out to the nearest airfield. There’s quite a few airlines who specialize in flying horses around and one or two of them moonlight now and then.”
Conrad sipped at his brandy. “Suppose the horse isn’t being stolen. Suppose it’s being ‘disappeared’, to collect on the insurance. That would make sense wouldn’t it?”
Angel nodded slowly. “Take it somewhere remote, shoot it, dump the body in a pit and the owners claim the insurance. Not as easy as it sounds, horses are damned hard to kill. All that muscle acts like body armor. There’s a spot in the forehead about the size of your thumb, the bullet has to be put though there. If the head moves, even a fraction, doesn’t work. If that is what’s going on, that horse had better hope the people who are taking him know what they are doing.”
It was Conrad’s turn to shudder at the prospect. He knew enough about horses to understand just how quickly the scene could turn into a nightmare. “To make that viable, it would have to be a horse at the end of its stud career though wouldn’t it? Or at least one that wasn’t doing well. No, wait a minute, insurance would be based on future earnings, not past value. To make a job like this worthwhile, it would have to be a horse that’s already a bigger prize winner and have its stud career ahead of it.”
“Right on. I doubt if the insurance on a clapped-out stud-horse would be worth much. Only if the horse had a major public relations profile and still had an earning career in prospect. Didn’t you say that racehorse in Wiltshire was signed up for advertising?”
“Isolda found that out but yes. It wasn’t that much but it would fund retirement and make a bit on the side. Not as much as the insurance payout. There’s one problem with that though. The horse is owned by a man called Loki. He's the head of the consortium anyway. He’s one of us; you haven’t met him yet. There’s no way he would ever permit a plan like this to kill a racehorse that’s served him well for so many years. He’ll be the brain behind finding him an advertising deal to pay his retirement costs. He’s . . .” Conrad stumbled for words, “a very warm-hearted and generous man but he’s one of those people who tries to do good things and it never quite works out the way he expects. He assumes that because he has good intentions, everything will go the way he wants it to. And sometimes it doesn’t.”
“But the other members of the syndicate might think that a faked kidnapping for ransom would bring in more money faster and go behind his bank.” Angel had an edge over Conrad; in her world, the double-cross was an ever-present possibility.
“Wouldn’t a bunch of investors who only know horses as racing machines come up with a scheme like this? Angel, we’ve got to get down there. The police have staked out a dozen stud farms but that’s the one. I’m sure of it. The stupid thing is, Loki doesn’t really care much about money; if the other investors didn’t want to take part in his scheme to retire the horse, he’d have bought him from them himself. All they had to do was tell him.”
Angel’s Car, on the A-338, heading for Chilton Foliat.
“I love these English town names. Where do they all come from?” Angel’s eyes were fixed on the road although Conrad guessed that her usually large peripheral vision was taking in a lot more side-detail than most drivers.
“These are the Chilton Hills. I think a Foliat was a flowering park owned by the Lord of the Manor. There are two hamlets near here you’ll love. Straight Soley and Crooked Soley.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Angel snorted with laughter. “If we even move here, Conrad, we’ll have to get a place in Crooked Soley.”
The casual assumption that they would stay together was something that Conrad found tremendously pleasing. “We’re lucky Chilton Foliat is within the Thames Valley police district. It’ll save us a lot of awkward explanations.”
“Not as many as you think. We’ve found a couple of officers from West Country and Midlands sneaking in.” Angel was checking her mirrors and the roadsides carefully despite the speed she was holding which was, as usual, well excess of the speed limits. To Conrad’s intense surprise, she paid her speeding tickets dutifully.
That led Conrad to do something he usually avoided, asking Angel a question about her work. “You know, you’re really confusing Rupert. He can’t work out why you’re helping the police. He knows you’re Triad of course and is sure you’re an assassin.”
She glanced sideways and grinned. “The preferred term is hatchetman. Or hatchetwoman. It’s an honorable title that goes back a long, long way. You want to know what is going on as well, don’t you?”
“You’re doing a good job for the police here, just as you’ve helped our local police at home a lot. I can’t help wondering why?”
Angel slowed down for a stop sign then accelerated through it. “Conrad, I’ve been meaning to talk this over with you for some time now. Ever since our first visit here in fact, because what’s happening is going to affect our lives together. What do you think is the main problem the Triads face now we are moving out of our home areas into an international environment?”
“I suppose moving in on the territory that other gangs have already staked out as their own. It ends up with you fighting gang wars and that’s costly.”
Angel shook her head. “We don’t do that. In fact, Triads don’t do street crime any more. The last gang war we fought was against the Black Dragons in Singapore in the late 1980s. We gave up street crime because the returns are too low and the risks too high. We can make much more money with much less risk by stock fraud, credit manipulation and computer crime than we can on the streets. Don’t get me wrong but there are pretty vicious Chinese gangsters but they’re not us. Have you ever read the history of the Triads Conrad?”
Conrad shook his head. “I know the Tongs are mainland Chinese and Triads are expatriate Chinese but that’s all.”
“Good boy, that’s more than most people know. When the Chinese began to live abroad, they became an abused and persecuted minority. You see the law and the police were in the hands of the established local residents and they didn’t like us at all. It wasn’t uncommon for anti-Chinese riots to be organized by the cops who would stand and watch while we were lynched – or worse. So, the Triads formed as self-defense neighborhood associations. They linked up so that if there was trouble in one area, hatchetmen and hatchetwomen would converge on the trouble to protect their people. And of course, defense associations need funding and since the police were the enemy, the Triads turned to crime. We collected protection money of course – and earned it – and also started other things. But always, the core of a Triad House was to protect the Chinese people in its area. And that’s the problem Conrad. People. We don’t have enough people. The Chinese communities outside Asia and the US are mostly small groups who stay inconspicuous and fly under the radar. Don't make trouble, don't compete with established powergroups, find business opportunities others have missed. We do the same. We infiltrate, not invade. We make ourselves allies, not enemies."
Angel came to a junction and drifted onto a side-road. "The B-4138. This'll take us right in. Is there really a village called Hayward's Bottom? Who was Haywood?"
"Probably a farmer who had rich farmland alongside a stream. That sort of valley floor farmland is called bottom land. I'd never thought of a Chinese community being short of people."
"Over here it is. Only a small majority of Chinese are Triad and only a small minority of Triads are criminals. You already know that. There's probably no more than a dozen or so trained Sai-Lo in the whole of the UK. In Glasgow, we had to pull in Sai-Lo from Rotterdam, Marseilles, Naples, all over. It was Glasgow that made us think. Up there, our Sai-Lo were working with the police. Not officially of course, but in reality we'd keep a situation under control until the police turned up to take control. By the time most of our people pulled out, the new Triad sub-house up there and the Police had an understanding. If we can get the police to protect our community properly, we don’t need to and that means we don’t have to do things the police don’t like. If the locals see the Triads working with the police, they'll trust them as well and keep them informed of what's going on. Same way we keep informed of what is happening. So, when somebody vandalizes Mrs. Mao's take-out the police deal with it and we don’t have to."
"Community Policing." Conrad saw what was happening including the bits Angel carefully wasn't saying. "You're trying to make sure the police and the local Chinese get along together. How does this affect us?"
"I'm going up in the Triads, Conrad, you know that. When we met I was a Sai-Lo. An experienced, very skilled one for certain . . . "
"And modest . . ." Conrad added.
"And modest. But still a Sai-Lo. Then when we partnered, I started going up the ranks pretty fast. Red Hatchet, Straw Sandal, now Vanguard. And not for any individual House but for the 14K as a whole. I'm not a street soldier any more. And I'm not a hired gun any more. Just before we came back here this time, I spread word that I'm not taking any more freelance contracts. Crooked business partners and cheating husbands all over the world sighed in relief. I have retired from that, something I never thought I would live long enough to do."
"Thank God." Conrad let the words slip out.
"I thought you might say that." Angel was grinning. "Don't be too relieved; I'm still your friendly local crook. Just command level instead of street operations. But, it will change how we work together. Here we are."
A police range-rover was parked across the road with its lights flashing. Angel came to a neat halt about a foot from it and got out the driving seat.
"Excuse me ma'am, there is a police operation in progress. We'll be finished up as quickly as we can." There was a long pause as the policeman looked more carefully. "Angel? You coming to advise?"
"Evening, Greg. No we got some news. Conrad and I put our heads together; this isn’t what we think. Is Inspector Gladstone in charge here?"
"Certainly, come with me." A few yards down the road, they crossed a rise in the ground and saw the long entrance drive that led to the stables. "We have another team blocking the other way but we think they'll come out this way. It's straight, the other road is pretty twisted. Sir, Angel and Conrad are here."
"You were right, Angel. It's going down right now. We're poised to go in if it gets violent but otherwise we'll contain the situation rather than aggravate it." Gladstone was aware that he was almost repeating the Gospel according to Angel verbatim.
"It won't Rupert." Conrad had taken over explaining the situation. "This isn't kidnapping breeding stock, its insurance fraud. The stud farm owner is in on it. They're going to take Shergar out into the woods somewhere and shoot him. Then they'll make like it was a ransom demand all gone wrong and pocket the insurance money."
"I didn't think of the stud farm owner being in on it." Angel spoke quietly.
"He had to be; it's the only way they could get the horse out without there being a slaughter down there. I knew he had to be the moment you mentioned the horses getting hit by accident."
"Hey, you two. We got the note. What gives." Achillea and Igrat had turned up. Conrad didn’t want to think how fast they had come down; Angel's driving was aggressive, Igrat's was reckless. He quickly explained what was going on. When he got to killing Shergar for the insurance, Igrat held up her hand. "No way. Won't happen. Loki has his faults but he would never allow that. He might go berserk if he found out somebody else had done it though."
"We think that it’s the rest of his syndicate pulling a fast one on him. They're going to cheat him out of the insurance money as well."
"Have they ever met Lagertha?" Achillea sounded vaguely fascinated. "If not, that would explain how they thought they could get away with it."
"They're moving down there." Constable Gregory gave the alert. "Everything peaceful and quiet. You were right Conrad, the stud farm owner is in on it. Six-by-six Rangerover towing the horsebox. Coming this way."
"Get ready everybody. Armed officers, you can leave your weapons in the cars. We've got Angel here."
It seemed like an age before the Rangerover came up the hill. It stopped, smoothly and elegantly, the moment the driver saw the road was blocked by a police vehicle. Then, the whole scene was bathed in light as the other three police vehicles turned their floods on. "Occupants of vehicle, please leave the vehicle. Now."
The driver and an elderly man got out the front seat of the Rangerover, keeping their hands clearly visible. Two more people got out the back, taking the same precautions.
Conrad recognized them all immediately of course. So did Achillea and Igrat. Angel, not so much. Only one of the four was familiar to her. "Naamah, what the are you doing here?"
Achillea shook her head. "Ut ipsum canes infernum vilis ad asinos de semine tuo usque in ramis nasus."
Igrat's Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon
In Conrad's opinion, one of Angel's most agreeable gifts was her appreciation for companionable silence. She was not one of those people who seemed driven to fill every moment with some sort of chatter; instead she was quite happy to enjoy long periods of contemplative quiet, or to allow other people to think in peace while she slipped her earphones on and listened to one of her private heavy metal disks. She was sprawled out in an arm chair doing that when Conrad looked across at her. She noted his glance, turned her Discman off and pushed the earphone clear. "Something worrying you?"
"This racehorse and horsebox case. The pieces don’t fit together."
"Damn straight they don't. The whole set-up is crazy. If somebody wants to do a heist, this is a damned good lesson in how not to go about it."
Conrad got up from his armchair, poured Angel a rum and treated himself to another glass of Armagnac. "If you were stealing a racehorse, how would you do it?"
She smiled her thanks for the drink, swirled the Bacardi in her glass and stared at it while she thought carefully. "Remember I've never stolen a racehorse so there's some things I don’t know but I'd still want to go in and out as fast as possible. The longer a caper is in play, the more time is available for something to go wrong. I'd get a small group together, a couple of guys who know how to handle horses, somebody who knows how to drive and somebody who is either a qualified vet or at least has a lot of experience in treating animals. Plus a couple of heavies to back me up. Then we'd go in, steal the horse and the horsebox in one go, get to the airfield and be out the country before the alarms went off. It’s one of those operations where the planning would take weeks but the job would be over in minutes.”
“This job has gone on for nearly a week now.” Conrad shook his head. “It’s almost as if the people responsible are deliberately telegraphing what they intend to do.”
“Usually, when people do that, it’s to provide a decoy from the real target. That way, the cops all start watching the wrong targets while we go in and take what we really want.” Angel swirled her glass again, staring at the rum. “What beats the hell out of me is why they stole the horsebox in the first place and now why they’re keeping it somewhere. It’s a needless increase in risk. If they are stealing a stallion, why not steal the box from the farm as well? The horse will be familiar with it, being in something familiar will keep him calm and it reduces the points of risk.”
“But the racehorse stables are heavily-guarded. I thought that the idea of stealing the horsebox from somewhere else was that the thieves wouldn’t have to take on a hard nut like that.” Conrad thought it through. “But that isn’t true, is it. If they were stealing a racehorse, they’d have to hit a heavily-guarded stables anyway. So you’re right, why hit two targets instead of one? And why so far in advance?”
“Because the thieves want everybody to think that this is the theft of a racing stallion. Then, when a stallion disappears from a stable, everybody puts the two together and assume they are two sides of the same caper. There’s another reason why this is all wrong. Turn up at midnight with a horsebox at a racing stables and there’s only one thing one can be doing.”
“Stealing a horse.”
“Damn straight. It’s going to get very bloody, very fast. Guards will be what, half a dozen stable lads with shotguns? They’ll be turned out as soon as that horsebox starts to come up the road. If this is a bunch of city wiseguys, there’ll be a pitched gunbattle and on home ground, I’ll put my money on the stable-boys. Add the police coming in fast, and this is the one time in ten thousand they need an armed response squad, and it’s a mess. Bodies everywhere and the horses will be in a screaming panic assuming some of them haven’t been hit.” Angel shuddered expressively at the thought of a caper turning into a chaotic mess. “Criminals aren’t in business to commit crimes, we’re in business to make money as easily and as conveniently as possible. This isn’t either. I’d do this by stealth. Slip in by foot cut the telephone wires and take the guards down quietly. Preferably slug them. Quieter than killing and creates fewer problems down the road.”
“You mean like that stable-boy was drugged?” Conrad suddenly realized that the removal of the horsebox from The Old Manor Ranch had been exactly the kind of quiet professional job Angel would have run. It was quite different from a prospective raid on a stud farm.
“Yeah, Find a way of doping the guardhouse coffee – or something. If it did come to a confrontation, and we’re already inside and in control, those stable-boys had better be smart enough to put their guns down fast. Then, collect the box, load the horse into it and hitch it to a towing-vehicle. Either bring that in after the place is secure or steal that there as well. Then out to the nearest airfield. There’s quite a few airlines who specialize in flying horses around and one or two of them moonlight now and then.”
Conrad sipped at his brandy. “Suppose the horse isn’t being stolen. Suppose it’s being ‘disappeared’, to collect on the insurance. That would make sense wouldn’t it?”
Angel nodded slowly. “Take it somewhere remote, shoot it, dump the body in a pit and the owners claim the insurance. Not as easy as it sounds, horses are damned hard to kill. All that muscle acts like body armor. There’s a spot in the forehead about the size of your thumb, the bullet has to be put though there. If the head moves, even a fraction, doesn’t work. If that is what’s going on, that horse had better hope the people who are taking him know what they are doing.”
It was Conrad’s turn to shudder at the prospect. He knew enough about horses to understand just how quickly the scene could turn into a nightmare. “To make that viable, it would have to be a horse at the end of its stud career though wouldn’t it? Or at least one that wasn’t doing well. No, wait a minute, insurance would be based on future earnings, not past value. To make a job like this worthwhile, it would have to be a horse that’s already a bigger prize winner and have its stud career ahead of it.”
“Right on. I doubt if the insurance on a clapped-out stud-horse would be worth much. Only if the horse had a major public relations profile and still had an earning career in prospect. Didn’t you say that racehorse in Wiltshire was signed up for advertising?”
“Isolda found that out but yes. It wasn’t that much but it would fund retirement and make a bit on the side. Not as much as the insurance payout. There’s one problem with that though. The horse is owned by a man called Loki. He's the head of the consortium anyway. He’s one of us; you haven’t met him yet. There’s no way he would ever permit a plan like this to kill a racehorse that’s served him well for so many years. He’ll be the brain behind finding him an advertising deal to pay his retirement costs. He’s . . .” Conrad stumbled for words, “a very warm-hearted and generous man but he’s one of those people who tries to do good things and it never quite works out the way he expects. He assumes that because he has good intentions, everything will go the way he wants it to. And sometimes it doesn’t.”
“But the other members of the syndicate might think that a faked kidnapping for ransom would bring in more money faster and go behind his bank.” Angel had an edge over Conrad; in her world, the double-cross was an ever-present possibility.
“Wouldn’t a bunch of investors who only know horses as racing machines come up with a scheme like this? Angel, we’ve got to get down there. The police have staked out a dozen stud farms but that’s the one. I’m sure of it. The stupid thing is, Loki doesn’t really care much about money; if the other investors didn’t want to take part in his scheme to retire the horse, he’d have bought him from them himself. All they had to do was tell him.”
Angel’s Car, on the A-338, heading for Chilton Foliat.
“I love these English town names. Where do they all come from?” Angel’s eyes were fixed on the road although Conrad guessed that her usually large peripheral vision was taking in a lot more side-detail than most drivers.
“These are the Chilton Hills. I think a Foliat was a flowering park owned by the Lord of the Manor. There are two hamlets near here you’ll love. Straight Soley and Crooked Soley.”
“Oh, that’s good.” Angel snorted with laughter. “If we even move here, Conrad, we’ll have to get a place in Crooked Soley.”
The casual assumption that they would stay together was something that Conrad found tremendously pleasing. “We’re lucky Chilton Foliat is within the Thames Valley police district. It’ll save us a lot of awkward explanations.”
“Not as many as you think. We’ve found a couple of officers from West Country and Midlands sneaking in.” Angel was checking her mirrors and the roadsides carefully despite the speed she was holding which was, as usual, well excess of the speed limits. To Conrad’s intense surprise, she paid her speeding tickets dutifully.
That led Conrad to do something he usually avoided, asking Angel a question about her work. “You know, you’re really confusing Rupert. He can’t work out why you’re helping the police. He knows you’re Triad of course and is sure you’re an assassin.”
She glanced sideways and grinned. “The preferred term is hatchetman. Or hatchetwoman. It’s an honorable title that goes back a long, long way. You want to know what is going on as well, don’t you?”
“You’re doing a good job for the police here, just as you’ve helped our local police at home a lot. I can’t help wondering why?”
Angel slowed down for a stop sign then accelerated through it. “Conrad, I’ve been meaning to talk this over with you for some time now. Ever since our first visit here in fact, because what’s happening is going to affect our lives together. What do you think is the main problem the Triads face now we are moving out of our home areas into an international environment?”
“I suppose moving in on the territory that other gangs have already staked out as their own. It ends up with you fighting gang wars and that’s costly.”
Angel shook her head. “We don’t do that. In fact, Triads don’t do street crime any more. The last gang war we fought was against the Black Dragons in Singapore in the late 1980s. We gave up street crime because the returns are too low and the risks too high. We can make much more money with much less risk by stock fraud, credit manipulation and computer crime than we can on the streets. Don’t get me wrong but there are pretty vicious Chinese gangsters but they’re not us. Have you ever read the history of the Triads Conrad?”
Conrad shook his head. “I know the Tongs are mainland Chinese and Triads are expatriate Chinese but that’s all.”
“Good boy, that’s more than most people know. When the Chinese began to live abroad, they became an abused and persecuted minority. You see the law and the police were in the hands of the established local residents and they didn’t like us at all. It wasn’t uncommon for anti-Chinese riots to be organized by the cops who would stand and watch while we were lynched – or worse. So, the Triads formed as self-defense neighborhood associations. They linked up so that if there was trouble in one area, hatchetmen and hatchetwomen would converge on the trouble to protect their people. And of course, defense associations need funding and since the police were the enemy, the Triads turned to crime. We collected protection money of course – and earned it – and also started other things. But always, the core of a Triad House was to protect the Chinese people in its area. And that’s the problem Conrad. People. We don’t have enough people. The Chinese communities outside Asia and the US are mostly small groups who stay inconspicuous and fly under the radar. Don't make trouble, don't compete with established powergroups, find business opportunities others have missed. We do the same. We infiltrate, not invade. We make ourselves allies, not enemies."
Angel came to a junction and drifted onto a side-road. "The B-4138. This'll take us right in. Is there really a village called Hayward's Bottom? Who was Haywood?"
"Probably a farmer who had rich farmland alongside a stream. That sort of valley floor farmland is called bottom land. I'd never thought of a Chinese community being short of people."
"Over here it is. Only a small majority of Chinese are Triad and only a small minority of Triads are criminals. You already know that. There's probably no more than a dozen or so trained Sai-Lo in the whole of the UK. In Glasgow, we had to pull in Sai-Lo from Rotterdam, Marseilles, Naples, all over. It was Glasgow that made us think. Up there, our Sai-Lo were working with the police. Not officially of course, but in reality we'd keep a situation under control until the police turned up to take control. By the time most of our people pulled out, the new Triad sub-house up there and the Police had an understanding. If we can get the police to protect our community properly, we don’t need to and that means we don’t have to do things the police don’t like. If the locals see the Triads working with the police, they'll trust them as well and keep them informed of what's going on. Same way we keep informed of what is happening. So, when somebody vandalizes Mrs. Mao's take-out the police deal with it and we don’t have to."
"Community Policing." Conrad saw what was happening including the bits Angel carefully wasn't saying. "You're trying to make sure the police and the local Chinese get along together. How does this affect us?"
"I'm going up in the Triads, Conrad, you know that. When we met I was a Sai-Lo. An experienced, very skilled one for certain . . . "
"And modest . . ." Conrad added.
"And modest. But still a Sai-Lo. Then when we partnered, I started going up the ranks pretty fast. Red Hatchet, Straw Sandal, now Vanguard. And not for any individual House but for the 14K as a whole. I'm not a street soldier any more. And I'm not a hired gun any more. Just before we came back here this time, I spread word that I'm not taking any more freelance contracts. Crooked business partners and cheating husbands all over the world sighed in relief. I have retired from that, something I never thought I would live long enough to do."
"Thank God." Conrad let the words slip out.
"I thought you might say that." Angel was grinning. "Don't be too relieved; I'm still your friendly local crook. Just command level instead of street operations. But, it will change how we work together. Here we are."
A police range-rover was parked across the road with its lights flashing. Angel came to a neat halt about a foot from it and got out the driving seat.
"Excuse me ma'am, there is a police operation in progress. We'll be finished up as quickly as we can." There was a long pause as the policeman looked more carefully. "Angel? You coming to advise?"
"Evening, Greg. No we got some news. Conrad and I put our heads together; this isn’t what we think. Is Inspector Gladstone in charge here?"
"Certainly, come with me." A few yards down the road, they crossed a rise in the ground and saw the long entrance drive that led to the stables. "We have another team blocking the other way but we think they'll come out this way. It's straight, the other road is pretty twisted. Sir, Angel and Conrad are here."
"You were right, Angel. It's going down right now. We're poised to go in if it gets violent but otherwise we'll contain the situation rather than aggravate it." Gladstone was aware that he was almost repeating the Gospel according to Angel verbatim.
"It won't Rupert." Conrad had taken over explaining the situation. "This isn't kidnapping breeding stock, its insurance fraud. The stud farm owner is in on it. They're going to take Shergar out into the woods somewhere and shoot him. Then they'll make like it was a ransom demand all gone wrong and pocket the insurance money."
"I didn't think of the stud farm owner being in on it." Angel spoke quietly.
"He had to be; it's the only way they could get the horse out without there being a slaughter down there. I knew he had to be the moment you mentioned the horses getting hit by accident."
"Hey, you two. We got the note. What gives." Achillea and Igrat had turned up. Conrad didn’t want to think how fast they had come down; Angel's driving was aggressive, Igrat's was reckless. He quickly explained what was going on. When he got to killing Shergar for the insurance, Igrat held up her hand. "No way. Won't happen. Loki has his faults but he would never allow that. He might go berserk if he found out somebody else had done it though."
"We think that it’s the rest of his syndicate pulling a fast one on him. They're going to cheat him out of the insurance money as well."
"Have they ever met Lagertha?" Achillea sounded vaguely fascinated. "If not, that would explain how they thought they could get away with it."
"They're moving down there." Constable Gregory gave the alert. "Everything peaceful and quiet. You were right Conrad, the stud farm owner is in on it. Six-by-six Rangerover towing the horsebox. Coming this way."
"Get ready everybody. Armed officers, you can leave your weapons in the cars. We've got Angel here."
It seemed like an age before the Rangerover came up the hill. It stopped, smoothly and elegantly, the moment the driver saw the road was blocked by a police vehicle. Then, the whole scene was bathed in light as the other three police vehicles turned their floods on. "Occupants of vehicle, please leave the vehicle. Now."
The driver and an elderly man got out the front seat of the Rangerover, keeping their hands clearly visible. Two more people got out the back, taking the same precautions.
Conrad recognized them all immediately of course. So did Achillea and Igrat. Angel, not so much. Only one of the four was familiar to her. "Naamah, what the are you doing here?"
Achillea shook her head. "Ut ipsum canes infernum vilis ad asinos de semine tuo usque in ramis nasus."
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Ten
Interview Room, St Aldates Police Station, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
"Gusoyn, I had Parmenio on the telephone this morning. He wants you to take charge of this group here and help me get this situation wrapped up quickly and quietly. Could you start by telling me just what the bloody hell you people thought you were doing?" Assistant Commissioner Chris Keeble glowered at Gusoyn with all the displeasure at his disposal. Which was considerable. He'd been suddenly dragged down from London to find Naamah, Henry McCarty, Gusoyn Rivers and Phoebus Apollo all sitting in the St Aldates Police holding cells and waiting to assist the police with their inquiries. It didn’t help matters that Conrad and Angel were both smirking or that Keeble knew he would soon be getting a sarcastic telephone call from Suriyothai about knowing what was happening on his patch.
"Is this interview room secure?" Gusoyn looked around. "I do not think it would be wise if the conversation we are about to have was recorded somewhere. Could you please start by telling me what we are being charged with? The transfer of Shergar was perfectly legally and authorized by the legitimate owner of the horse."
"We are aware of that." Gusoyn's unfailing politeness and good manners weren't really helping Keeble calm his annoyance. "The owner of the stud farm has already been released and is on his way back to Chilton Foliat. Miss Shafrid is driving him in her Aston Martin and she's smoothed him over nicely. He was mumbling about wrongful arrest at first. As for you four, you are being charged with being in possession of stolen property, to whit one racehorse grade horsebox, valued at six thousand five hundred pounds. Which puts the offense into the aggravated theft bracket and could get you all up to two years inside. Parmenio suggested Dartmoor but thought that the solitary confinement cells might not be cold, damp and miserable enough."
"Oh dear." Gusoyn winced slightly. "I can assure you that we knew nothing about the stolen nature of the horsebox. As far as we were concerned, this was a perfectly legitimate transfer. We even have an export license for the stallion although I do admit that it does not say the horse is Shergar. I was asked by the owner, our old friend in Geneva, to drive the horse to the airport. He wanted a smooth ride because racehorses are jumpy. Apollo was going to fly the aircraft. Henry came along because he is an expert at handling horses and they trust him on sight. Naamah is here in case Shergar got sick on the journey and she knows how to look after animals as well as humans."
"Henry McCarty." Keeble shook his head. "If he's thinking about one of his famous jailbreaks, you'd better tell him there's good news and bad news. The good news is there are only three officers in this station trained to handle firearms. The bad news in, they were trained by Angel."
"I can assure you, Assistant Commissioner, we have no intention of creating any further unfortunate complications."
"I'm glad to hear it. Now, where were you taking that horse? And why so secretly?" Keeble looked around. "Be advised that, as of last year, all interviews in British police stations are recorded unless there are national security issues involved. Blame Conrad for that; his interview techniques have become standard teaching material. Suitably anonymized of course. This time though, I have invoked national security which has raised some eyebrows. So start explaining yourself."
"We were asked by the owners to take Shergar to a horse farm in Virginia. Near Jamestown. That farm." Gusoyn looked at Keeble and saw comprehension beginning to dawn. "You see, Shergar is too well known over here. Everybody knows his blaze and socks and the way he liked to hang his tongue out of his mouth. If he went to Avebury with the other two, somebody would spot him soon enough. Over in Virginia, nobody knows him and even if somebody thought he was familiar, well, he would just be a horse that looks a bit like a famous racehorse."
"But if he stayed here, somebody would recognize him and realize he wasn't getting any older." Keeble sighed. "All right, the horse movement is legit, we can drop that. That still leaves the stolen horsebox. And you should have told us what was going on. We could have smoothed it all out for you."
"We did not know that there was anything that required smoothing out. We thought that this was just bringing a . . . deserving . . . horse over to Virginia so he could live in peace. The Rangerover and the horsebox were waiting for us when we got here a couple of days back." Gusoyn's eyes widened slightly. "Please do not tell me the Rangerover was stolen as well."
"Fortunately for you, no it wasn't. Stealing a sixty thousand pound Rangerover would be a very serious offense that we would have great trouble covering up. It might well be considered treasonous. Especially since Her Majesty views them with favor." Keeble decided that he was having altogether too much fun. "It turned out the vehicle was purchased legally by the Banque de Commerce et Industrie and their London Office has confirmed it was loaned to you for the purposes of bank business. There's a lady on her way down with the paperwork. You've met Lagertha I assume? All right. If we can straighten out the farmer the box was stolen from, get him to drop any charges, then we can give you an official caution and let you four go. You're lucky the Home Office owes Conrad and Angel several fairly major favors."
Police Holding Cells, St Aldates Police Station, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
Conrad was stricken by mortal guilt and knew that he would be obliges to form copious acts of contrition for the unholy glee he was feeling at this precise moment. Over the years he had been involved with many rows with Naamah over her judgmental attitudes and her habit of being both judge and jury when the occasion arose. Now seeing her sitting in a holding cell, waiting for other people to sort the legal issues out seemed to him to be proof positive that the ways of the Lord may take their time but justice was eventually done. Quite apart from anything else, the sight had put his soul at somewhat greater ease with the knowledge that eternal justice did exist.
"Are you all right Nammie? Is there anything we can bring you in?" Conrad tried to, not very successfully, to hide his smirk under a concerned and friendly smile.
Naamah decided not to notice it. "I could do with some toilet stuff. The soap here is standard institution issue."
Conrad handed her a box of necessities. Actually Igrat had made it up before she had left for Chilton Floriat and it contained everything Naamah might need for a short stay in jail. Angel had a box with her as well. She handed it through to Naamah with her usual, completely faked, smile. "I thought you might like some clean clothes so I brought you a new dress."
"That's very kind of you Angel. Naamah managed to hide the disbelief in her voice; she knew very well that Angel was completely incapable of empathy. She also noted that the box came from a famous store in London that specialized in the highest quality Shantung silk. She reflected that Angel must have worked fast to organize the gift. Then she opened the box and saw just how fast Angel could organize things when the occasion demanded. The dress was indeed printed Shantung silk, dark gray in color with the traditional printed pattern of large black arrows. "Very funny. But thank you."
"You must be Henry McCarty. We haven't met before." Angel spoke quietly, trying to hide her instinctive need to draw down on somebody who might possibly be her equal. "I have your pistol safe in my custody. Who the hell uses revolvers in this day and age?"
"I'll show you one day." Henry's eyes were twinkling slightly. He knew a fellow gunslinger when he met one. He also knew and understood the instinctive desire she felt to try herself against the best. He had always felt the same way but this time he knew he had finally met his match.
"I'll look forward to that." Angel smiled with anticipation. Behind her Naamah was holding her new dress up against herself. Conrad avoided saying how much it suited her. Just barely.
Chief Constable Malcolm Watts' Office, Thames Valley Police Headquarters.
"The Banque de Commerce et Industrie accepts full responsibility for the inadvertent purchase of a stolen horse-box of course. We will return it to the victim of the theft as soon as you are able to release it from custody and we will make sure he receives generous compensation for the great inconvenience to which he has been subjected."
Chief Constable Watts poured his guest another cup of tea and offered her the plate of mixed orange and raspberry Jaffa Cakes. She gave him a beaming smile of thanks and carefully selected the plain chocolate and orange flavor. "I'm afraid that unless the original owner can be persuaded to drop charges against the thieves, that might present some difficulties. I'm afraid your bank was negligent in not checking that the registration details you were provided with were authentic. I do appreciate that there was some urgency in this but your accountant really should have taken more care."
If I could reach high enough I would pound the stupid idiot on the head with a battle axe. I just wish the moron wasn't a full axe-handle taller than me. Lagertha gave the policeman a dazzling smile, set off by perfect white teeth that complemented her ice-blue eyes and ash-blonde hair perfectly. That and her build made her Viking heritage obvious to anybody with even a limited knowledge of the Nordic gene pool. "Yes, I will indeed discuss this with him. I think a spell in charge of our branch in the Faroe Islands will give him time to reflect on the need for proper attention to detail." Would that I could do that; it would save Branwen and I a lot of problems. Iggie's going to be furious.
Opposite her, Chief Constable Watts couldn't help feeling that he had seen her somewhere before. "Excuse, Miss Vynnytska, have we met before?"
"Please, call me Katerina, or Katrya if you prefer. My family name is a mouthful. I did some television advertisements for the Bank last year, explaining our new family of investment schemes. Our agency thought a real banker would be able to explain the issues more convincingly than an actress. Chief Constable, I have full authority to sort this problem out as quietly as possible as long as the Bank's name is not involved. Obviously, if it got around we had been taken this easily, our reputation would be harmed."
"Please, call me Malcom." Watts got another full-power beaming smile in response. "If you can persuade Mr. Carroll not to press charges, then I can release the horse-box back to him today. We can then drop the remaining charges against our four detainees. We still have a good lead on who actually stole the box."
"You have, Malcom? That is very welcome news." Oh Crap. Don't tell me Loki left a paper-trail. Lagertha didn’t reveal it but she was suddenly worried.
"An informant reported that a very tall man, possibly from Switzerland or one of the Nordic countries, was asking about Green Roads. He may just be a tourist of course. Obviously if Mr. Carroll doesn't press charges, we'll have to let that drop but the file will still be open. Do you come from Switzerland, Katrya?"
"My family is Ukrainian but we moved to Switzerland some years ago. Would you come with me to negotiate with Mr. Carroll?"
"I would love to, Katrya, but I'm afraid I can't officially be part of that negotiation. I will authorize any equitable agreement you may reach though. We have a consultant here, a Mr. Conrad de Llorente who is very persuasive. I'll ask him to go with you if that's all right."
The Old Manor Ranch, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
"Did you know that Igrat lives here?" Conrad was sitting in the passenger seat of a Skoda limousine, enjoying the luxury of the ride. He could see the Rangerover following them along with Angel driving it.
"I didn't, not at the time. Loki knew but didn’t tell me. I only found out when Gusoyn picked up the horsebox and Rangerover. He mentioned in passing that he would be dropping in to see Igrat after getting the horse out. Igrat's going to be furious when she finds out." It was the third time Lagertha had said that and it suddenly occurred to Conrad that she was genuinely nervous.
"What was Loki thinking about? Did he explain himself?"
"It goes back about two or three years ago. Shergar is twenty five now, that's a good age for a racehorse. For the last few years, his fertility has been declining steeply. It used to be that his mares never got free returns, now they do all the time. So we started making plans to retire him. Loki bought him off the syndicate that had owned him, then arranged some advertising and sponsorship deals for him to fund his full retirement down in Avebury until he died of old age. Only, a few months ago, it became apparent he wasn't aging. In fact, he's gone through transition, just like us. This is a big problem; all the agreements are signed and it wouldn't be long before the truth came out. So, we were going to ship Shergar to the Jamestown ranch where he could join the others. Once he was safely tucked away and the gang out of the country, Loki was going to make it look like Shergar had been stolen for ransom and had disappeared, his body never to be found again. We might get the insurance money, we might not. The important thing to Loki is that Shergar was safely hidden away.
"Anyway, the bit he explained to me was that we needed to steal a horsebox to make it obvious the horse had been stolen. That sounded logical to me. I've stolen quite a few horses myself back in the old days. Only, it wasn't true. Loki stole that horsebox for one reason only and that was because he thought it was a funny prank to play on Igrat, stealing something from under her nose like that, and he thought it would embarrass her father. It was only after Gusoyn mentioned that Igrat lived nearby now that I put it all together and confronted Loki."
"Oh Dear God." Conrad knew that Loki sometimes let his sense of humor get the better of him but this was way across the line.
"You've never seen Igrat lose her temper have you? Keep in mind she didn’t do that even when those two thugs in Geneva beat her into a pulp." Lagertha looked really grim, for a second her usual sunny good humor was replaced by the bleak, dour expression of a Shield-Maiden facing battle. "This time, she'll lose it. This the farm?"
A few minutes later, they were in the stables and Conrad was briefing the owner on what had happened since they last met. "Mr. Carroll, I'd like you to meet Katrya Vynnytska, Vice President of Legal Affairs from the Bank de Commerce et Industrie. She would like to resolve this issue on behalf of her company. Quietly. You see, your horse-box was stolen as the result of an extremely childish prank which then turned serious. Some real crooks sold the box to Miss Vynnytska's bank and put her company in a very awkward position."
"I have arranged with the police to return your horse-box immediately if you drop the charges. They can do that because it won’t then be evidence in a crime. Obviously they can't return immediately if the investigation is still active. In addition, you see the six-by-six Landrover? That's brand-new; it only has a couple of hundred miles on the clock. The bank will give it to you, free and clear, as compensation for the inconvenience you have suffered. I have the necessary papers in my briefcase. All you have to do is sign them. Your part of the deal, in addition to dropping charges, is that you will also sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement that will prohibit you from mentioning my Bank's involvement in this matter."
"It's a good deal, Mr. Carroll. Everybody benefits, Keith gets his name cleared and we avoid ruining somebody's life over an idiotic mistake."
Carroll nodded in agreement. "We were all young once. All right, I've always wanted one of those six-wheelers. You got a deal Miss Vynnna . . . . Vina . . . "
"Katrya. We better go inside and start signing papers." Lagertha hesitated. "Could you show me around your place here afterwards?"
Angel had parked the Rangerover and came over to join Conrad. "Who is the blonde?"
Conrad thought he detected a slight note of jealousy in Angel's voice, then dismissed it as impossible. Improbable anyway. "That's Lagertha, she does the same sort of thing for Loki as you do for Suriyothai and Achillea does for the Seer. She's a bit more like you though, she's a fixer as well as muscle. She's also one of us. She's using the name Katerina Vynnytska right now."
Angel reached out and tapped the side window of the Skoda. "Did you know this was bullet-resistant?"
Conrad shook his head. I should have guessed that. "Hello, they're done."
"Conrad, could you and Angel act as witnesses for us? Adam and I are setting up a business partnership. He wants to get into the racehorse stable business, has all the expertise but doesn't have the resources. We want to increase our profile there, have the resources, but not the expertise. So, we're setting up a new syndicate. I've drawn a quick memorandum of understanding. We just need independent witnesses for it to be legal."
Angel looked at Lagertha thoughtfully. "You're right Conrad. She's a fixer."
Interview Room, St Aldates Police Station, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
"Gusoyn, I had Parmenio on the telephone this morning. He wants you to take charge of this group here and help me get this situation wrapped up quickly and quietly. Could you start by telling me just what the bloody hell you people thought you were doing?" Assistant Commissioner Chris Keeble glowered at Gusoyn with all the displeasure at his disposal. Which was considerable. He'd been suddenly dragged down from London to find Naamah, Henry McCarty, Gusoyn Rivers and Phoebus Apollo all sitting in the St Aldates Police holding cells and waiting to assist the police with their inquiries. It didn’t help matters that Conrad and Angel were both smirking or that Keeble knew he would soon be getting a sarcastic telephone call from Suriyothai about knowing what was happening on his patch.
"Is this interview room secure?" Gusoyn looked around. "I do not think it would be wise if the conversation we are about to have was recorded somewhere. Could you please start by telling me what we are being charged with? The transfer of Shergar was perfectly legally and authorized by the legitimate owner of the horse."
"We are aware of that." Gusoyn's unfailing politeness and good manners weren't really helping Keeble calm his annoyance. "The owner of the stud farm has already been released and is on his way back to Chilton Foliat. Miss Shafrid is driving him in her Aston Martin and she's smoothed him over nicely. He was mumbling about wrongful arrest at first. As for you four, you are being charged with being in possession of stolen property, to whit one racehorse grade horsebox, valued at six thousand five hundred pounds. Which puts the offense into the aggravated theft bracket and could get you all up to two years inside. Parmenio suggested Dartmoor but thought that the solitary confinement cells might not be cold, damp and miserable enough."
"Oh dear." Gusoyn winced slightly. "I can assure you that we knew nothing about the stolen nature of the horsebox. As far as we were concerned, this was a perfectly legitimate transfer. We even have an export license for the stallion although I do admit that it does not say the horse is Shergar. I was asked by the owner, our old friend in Geneva, to drive the horse to the airport. He wanted a smooth ride because racehorses are jumpy. Apollo was going to fly the aircraft. Henry came along because he is an expert at handling horses and they trust him on sight. Naamah is here in case Shergar got sick on the journey and she knows how to look after animals as well as humans."
"Henry McCarty." Keeble shook his head. "If he's thinking about one of his famous jailbreaks, you'd better tell him there's good news and bad news. The good news is there are only three officers in this station trained to handle firearms. The bad news in, they were trained by Angel."
"I can assure you, Assistant Commissioner, we have no intention of creating any further unfortunate complications."
"I'm glad to hear it. Now, where were you taking that horse? And why so secretly?" Keeble looked around. "Be advised that, as of last year, all interviews in British police stations are recorded unless there are national security issues involved. Blame Conrad for that; his interview techniques have become standard teaching material. Suitably anonymized of course. This time though, I have invoked national security which has raised some eyebrows. So start explaining yourself."
"We were asked by the owners to take Shergar to a horse farm in Virginia. Near Jamestown. That farm." Gusoyn looked at Keeble and saw comprehension beginning to dawn. "You see, Shergar is too well known over here. Everybody knows his blaze and socks and the way he liked to hang his tongue out of his mouth. If he went to Avebury with the other two, somebody would spot him soon enough. Over in Virginia, nobody knows him and even if somebody thought he was familiar, well, he would just be a horse that looks a bit like a famous racehorse."
"But if he stayed here, somebody would recognize him and realize he wasn't getting any older." Keeble sighed. "All right, the horse movement is legit, we can drop that. That still leaves the stolen horsebox. And you should have told us what was going on. We could have smoothed it all out for you."
"We did not know that there was anything that required smoothing out. We thought that this was just bringing a . . . deserving . . . horse over to Virginia so he could live in peace. The Rangerover and the horsebox were waiting for us when we got here a couple of days back." Gusoyn's eyes widened slightly. "Please do not tell me the Rangerover was stolen as well."
"Fortunately for you, no it wasn't. Stealing a sixty thousand pound Rangerover would be a very serious offense that we would have great trouble covering up. It might well be considered treasonous. Especially since Her Majesty views them with favor." Keeble decided that he was having altogether too much fun. "It turned out the vehicle was purchased legally by the Banque de Commerce et Industrie and their London Office has confirmed it was loaned to you for the purposes of bank business. There's a lady on her way down with the paperwork. You've met Lagertha I assume? All right. If we can straighten out the farmer the box was stolen from, get him to drop any charges, then we can give you an official caution and let you four go. You're lucky the Home Office owes Conrad and Angel several fairly major favors."
Police Holding Cells, St Aldates Police Station, Thames Valley Police, Oxford.
Conrad was stricken by mortal guilt and knew that he would be obliges to form copious acts of contrition for the unholy glee he was feeling at this precise moment. Over the years he had been involved with many rows with Naamah over her judgmental attitudes and her habit of being both judge and jury when the occasion arose. Now seeing her sitting in a holding cell, waiting for other people to sort the legal issues out seemed to him to be proof positive that the ways of the Lord may take their time but justice was eventually done. Quite apart from anything else, the sight had put his soul at somewhat greater ease with the knowledge that eternal justice did exist.
"Are you all right Nammie? Is there anything we can bring you in?" Conrad tried to, not very successfully, to hide his smirk under a concerned and friendly smile.
Naamah decided not to notice it. "I could do with some toilet stuff. The soap here is standard institution issue."
Conrad handed her a box of necessities. Actually Igrat had made it up before she had left for Chilton Floriat and it contained everything Naamah might need for a short stay in jail. Angel had a box with her as well. She handed it through to Naamah with her usual, completely faked, smile. "I thought you might like some clean clothes so I brought you a new dress."
"That's very kind of you Angel. Naamah managed to hide the disbelief in her voice; she knew very well that Angel was completely incapable of empathy. She also noted that the box came from a famous store in London that specialized in the highest quality Shantung silk. She reflected that Angel must have worked fast to organize the gift. Then she opened the box and saw just how fast Angel could organize things when the occasion demanded. The dress was indeed printed Shantung silk, dark gray in color with the traditional printed pattern of large black arrows. "Very funny. But thank you."
"You must be Henry McCarty. We haven't met before." Angel spoke quietly, trying to hide her instinctive need to draw down on somebody who might possibly be her equal. "I have your pistol safe in my custody. Who the hell uses revolvers in this day and age?"
"I'll show you one day." Henry's eyes were twinkling slightly. He knew a fellow gunslinger when he met one. He also knew and understood the instinctive desire she felt to try herself against the best. He had always felt the same way but this time he knew he had finally met his match.
"I'll look forward to that." Angel smiled with anticipation. Behind her Naamah was holding her new dress up against herself. Conrad avoided saying how much it suited her. Just barely.
Chief Constable Malcolm Watts' Office, Thames Valley Police Headquarters.
"The Banque de Commerce et Industrie accepts full responsibility for the inadvertent purchase of a stolen horse-box of course. We will return it to the victim of the theft as soon as you are able to release it from custody and we will make sure he receives generous compensation for the great inconvenience to which he has been subjected."
Chief Constable Watts poured his guest another cup of tea and offered her the plate of mixed orange and raspberry Jaffa Cakes. She gave him a beaming smile of thanks and carefully selected the plain chocolate and orange flavor. "I'm afraid that unless the original owner can be persuaded to drop charges against the thieves, that might present some difficulties. I'm afraid your bank was negligent in not checking that the registration details you were provided with were authentic. I do appreciate that there was some urgency in this but your accountant really should have taken more care."
If I could reach high enough I would pound the stupid idiot on the head with a battle axe. I just wish the moron wasn't a full axe-handle taller than me. Lagertha gave the policeman a dazzling smile, set off by perfect white teeth that complemented her ice-blue eyes and ash-blonde hair perfectly. That and her build made her Viking heritage obvious to anybody with even a limited knowledge of the Nordic gene pool. "Yes, I will indeed discuss this with him. I think a spell in charge of our branch in the Faroe Islands will give him time to reflect on the need for proper attention to detail." Would that I could do that; it would save Branwen and I a lot of problems. Iggie's going to be furious.
Opposite her, Chief Constable Watts couldn't help feeling that he had seen her somewhere before. "Excuse, Miss Vynnytska, have we met before?"
"Please, call me Katerina, or Katrya if you prefer. My family name is a mouthful. I did some television advertisements for the Bank last year, explaining our new family of investment schemes. Our agency thought a real banker would be able to explain the issues more convincingly than an actress. Chief Constable, I have full authority to sort this problem out as quietly as possible as long as the Bank's name is not involved. Obviously, if it got around we had been taken this easily, our reputation would be harmed."
"Please, call me Malcom." Watts got another full-power beaming smile in response. "If you can persuade Mr. Carroll not to press charges, then I can release the horse-box back to him today. We can then drop the remaining charges against our four detainees. We still have a good lead on who actually stole the box."
"You have, Malcom? That is very welcome news." Oh Crap. Don't tell me Loki left a paper-trail. Lagertha didn’t reveal it but she was suddenly worried.
"An informant reported that a very tall man, possibly from Switzerland or one of the Nordic countries, was asking about Green Roads. He may just be a tourist of course. Obviously if Mr. Carroll doesn't press charges, we'll have to let that drop but the file will still be open. Do you come from Switzerland, Katrya?"
"My family is Ukrainian but we moved to Switzerland some years ago. Would you come with me to negotiate with Mr. Carroll?"
"I would love to, Katrya, but I'm afraid I can't officially be part of that negotiation. I will authorize any equitable agreement you may reach though. We have a consultant here, a Mr. Conrad de Llorente who is very persuasive. I'll ask him to go with you if that's all right."
The Old Manor Ranch, Marsh Baldon, Oxfordshire
"Did you know that Igrat lives here?" Conrad was sitting in the passenger seat of a Skoda limousine, enjoying the luxury of the ride. He could see the Rangerover following them along with Angel driving it.
"I didn't, not at the time. Loki knew but didn’t tell me. I only found out when Gusoyn picked up the horsebox and Rangerover. He mentioned in passing that he would be dropping in to see Igrat after getting the horse out. Igrat's going to be furious when she finds out." It was the third time Lagertha had said that and it suddenly occurred to Conrad that she was genuinely nervous.
"What was Loki thinking about? Did he explain himself?"
"It goes back about two or three years ago. Shergar is twenty five now, that's a good age for a racehorse. For the last few years, his fertility has been declining steeply. It used to be that his mares never got free returns, now they do all the time. So we started making plans to retire him. Loki bought him off the syndicate that had owned him, then arranged some advertising and sponsorship deals for him to fund his full retirement down in Avebury until he died of old age. Only, a few months ago, it became apparent he wasn't aging. In fact, he's gone through transition, just like us. This is a big problem; all the agreements are signed and it wouldn't be long before the truth came out. So, we were going to ship Shergar to the Jamestown ranch where he could join the others. Once he was safely tucked away and the gang out of the country, Loki was going to make it look like Shergar had been stolen for ransom and had disappeared, his body never to be found again. We might get the insurance money, we might not. The important thing to Loki is that Shergar was safely hidden away.
"Anyway, the bit he explained to me was that we needed to steal a horsebox to make it obvious the horse had been stolen. That sounded logical to me. I've stolen quite a few horses myself back in the old days. Only, it wasn't true. Loki stole that horsebox for one reason only and that was because he thought it was a funny prank to play on Igrat, stealing something from under her nose like that, and he thought it would embarrass her father. It was only after Gusoyn mentioned that Igrat lived nearby now that I put it all together and confronted Loki."
"Oh Dear God." Conrad knew that Loki sometimes let his sense of humor get the better of him but this was way across the line.
"You've never seen Igrat lose her temper have you? Keep in mind she didn’t do that even when those two thugs in Geneva beat her into a pulp." Lagertha looked really grim, for a second her usual sunny good humor was replaced by the bleak, dour expression of a Shield-Maiden facing battle. "This time, she'll lose it. This the farm?"
A few minutes later, they were in the stables and Conrad was briefing the owner on what had happened since they last met. "Mr. Carroll, I'd like you to meet Katrya Vynnytska, Vice President of Legal Affairs from the Bank de Commerce et Industrie. She would like to resolve this issue on behalf of her company. Quietly. You see, your horse-box was stolen as the result of an extremely childish prank which then turned serious. Some real crooks sold the box to Miss Vynnytska's bank and put her company in a very awkward position."
"I have arranged with the police to return your horse-box immediately if you drop the charges. They can do that because it won’t then be evidence in a crime. Obviously they can't return immediately if the investigation is still active. In addition, you see the six-by-six Landrover? That's brand-new; it only has a couple of hundred miles on the clock. The bank will give it to you, free and clear, as compensation for the inconvenience you have suffered. I have the necessary papers in my briefcase. All you have to do is sign them. Your part of the deal, in addition to dropping charges, is that you will also sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement that will prohibit you from mentioning my Bank's involvement in this matter."
"It's a good deal, Mr. Carroll. Everybody benefits, Keith gets his name cleared and we avoid ruining somebody's life over an idiotic mistake."
Carroll nodded in agreement. "We were all young once. All right, I've always wanted one of those six-wheelers. You got a deal Miss Vynnna . . . . Vina . . . "
"Katrya. We better go inside and start signing papers." Lagertha hesitated. "Could you show me around your place here afterwards?"
Angel had parked the Rangerover and came over to join Conrad. "Who is the blonde?"
Conrad thought he detected a slight note of jealousy in Angel's voice, then dismissed it as impossible. Improbable anyway. "That's Lagertha, she does the same sort of thing for Loki as you do for Suriyothai and Achillea does for the Seer. She's a bit more like you though, she's a fixer as well as muscle. She's also one of us. She's using the name Katerina Vynnytska right now."
Angel reached out and tapped the side window of the Skoda. "Did you know this was bullet-resistant?"
Conrad shook his head. I should have guessed that. "Hello, they're done."
"Conrad, could you and Angel act as witnesses for us? Adam and I are setting up a business partnership. He wants to get into the racehorse stable business, has all the expertise but doesn't have the resources. We want to increase our profile there, have the resources, but not the expertise. So, we're setting up a new syndicate. I've drawn a quick memorandum of understanding. We just need independent witnesses for it to be legal."
Angel looked at Lagertha thoughtfully. "You're right Conrad. She's a fixer."
Re: 2004 - The Blue Lamp
Chapter Eleven
Igrat's Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon
"How is she?" Achillea looked over at Conrad after he had come out of Igrat's room. The atmosphere was tense with the people present still trying to comprehend what had happened. After Lagertha had explained to Igrat that she and Loki had stolen the horsebox, Igrat had, as Lagertha had predicted, gone ballistic but in a way that only Naamah, Apollo and Gusoyn had ever seen before. Igrat had reverted to type. Suddenly and without any warning she had turned into the vicious wildcat she had been when they first met.
"She's calming down now." Conrad shook his head. It had taken all his persuasive skills to convince Igrat to get herself back under control.
"I hope so, she offered me a hundred thousand sovereigns to kill Loki." Angel wasn't joking. It had taken both Achillea and her to pull Igrat off Lagertha and drag her out the room while she screamed out the offer. Igrat was the one person whom Angel had not credited with the potential to go berserk like that. Fortunately, Lagertha had had the sense not to make matters worse and had stayed out of the brief, violent struggle. "What just happened?"
"You did not accept the contract did you?" Gusoyn looked across the room from where he was sitting with Apollo.
Angel shook her head. "I've retired from taking private contracts as of a few days ago. I just work for governments and my Triad now. Anyway, that would be what we call a jackel contract. Very dangerous and even if the killer survived, they'd never be able to work again. They’d be running for the rest of their lives. For that, a hundred thou isn’t nearly enough."
"Governments and Triads. Is there a difference?" Apollo found Angel fascinating and really wished that she would open up and talk more about herself. He was realistic enough to realize that would never happen. Instead, he rubbed his shoulder where Igrat had stabbed him centuries before. Seeing her go berserk had made the old wound throb in sympathy.
"Not really." Angel looked around. People were speaking very quietly, almost as if they were afraid any noise would set Igrat off again. “I think the Triad leadership listen to their rank and file members a bit more. But I may be prejudiced there. Conrad, you didn’t answer me, what just happened?”
Conrad wrenched his mind away from Igrat and to one of his prime responsibilities; keeping Angel advised on how to relate to people. “Have you ever seen a seven pound female cat go berserk and attack a 120 pound dog because it threatened her kittens? Well, that’s what just happened here. When Lagertha told Igrat about Loki’s prank, Iggie instantly saw it as a direct attack on Cristi and responded just the way that cat would. Lagertha was unlucky enough to be the bearer of bad tidings, that’s all.”
Angel shook her head, obviously still bewildered. Conrad looked at her and realized the problem; Angel had no greater understanding of the relations between parents and children than she did of any other kind of human relationship. She treated children the same way she did everybody else. Oddly, that was something children somehow understood and they liked her for it. Now, though, the same complete lack of empathy meant she simply could not understand why Igrat had acted the way she had.
“This is an English country village, Angel. It’s still isolated, very closely knit and the people who live here have mostly known each other’s families for generations. It’s a very trusting environment, people don’t lock their houses, they leave cars parked unlocked and with the keys in the ignition. Children go around from house to house and their parents know everybody keeps an eye on them. That trust extends to people’s lives; everybody knows what’s going on here. To get accepted in this environment takes a long, long time and people who don’t make it are frozen out. They become outcasts. To say it takes generations is only partly a joke. At the moment, Igrat and Cristi are accepted here very provisionally. People are quietly watching them, sizing them up and deciding if they are suitable people to become a real part of the community. Especially since they are Americans and thus real strangers.”
“Think about when we’re out running, Angel.” Achillea looked up. “People are friendly and polite to us, they give us a wave as we pass but it’s like there’s a glass wall between them and us. We’re here, sometimes, but we’re not part of the community. We’re strangers.”
“Like the tourists when we’re back home, Conrad? They’re there but not there.”
“That’s it. Well, Igrat’s worked really hard to make the grade. She joins in all the village activities without trying to take them over or tell people what to do. She’s friendly and helpful without being pushy and Cristi follows her lead. She’s been quietly but obviously respectful of the community and its ways. Now, with that stupid prank, Loki has put her, and Cristi’s, position here in danger. If the community decides that they can’t be trusted because of Loki stealing that horsebox here, the balance will swing against them and they’ll get rejected. Nobody will say anything, nobody will actually make the decision but they’ll become outcasts.
“Now, for Igrat that doesn’t matter too much; we’re all used to being separate from the community we live in. But, Cristi is a young woman and to become a social outcast at her age is, in her eyes, just about the worst thing that can happen to her. Cristi also has a self-confidence problem, she always has. She hides it well but it’s there and if people tell her things about herself, she tends to believe them. That really worries Igrat by the way. So, Loki’s little stunt has the potential to do Cristi a lot of harm. Add into that something else. This isn’t the first time that one of Loki’s little jokes has caused Iggie serious problems, sometimes very dangerous ones. Normally she lets it slide but this time, it wasn’t Igrat who was put at risk, it was Cristi. And that flipped Igrat into mother cat mode. Are you all right, Lagertha?”
Naamah and Lagertha had come back into the living room from the kitchen where Naamah had been administering some needed first-aid. Before Igrat had been pulled off, she had managed to split Lagertha’s lower lip and leave one cheek seriously swollen and inflamed. “I’ve put arnica on the swelling and it’ll go down soon enough. You’ll have to be careful with that lip though. Give it time to heal.”
Lagertha nodded carefully. When Naamah gave first aid advice, the sensible listened. Namah glanced at Conrad. “How’s Iggie? Does she need sedating?”
Conrad shook his head and repeated his earlier comment. “She’s calming down now. Henry’s keeping a discrete eye on her but I think the crisis is over. We’ll have our Iggie back by morning.”
“I never thought Iggie would just explode like that.” Angel was, perhaps now more than ever, aware of how little she understood the relationships between people.
“She came close to it once before, during that New York business a few years back. When the bad guys kidnapped Cristi. Iggie came close to going berserk then; I had to face her down.” Achillea shook her head. “I really thought I was going to have to stop her going after them by force. She saw reason that time; tonight the situation blew too fast. By the way I took her knife as well, the little one she keeps as a hold-out.”
“Igrat never had children. All that mother stuff has built up inside her but she never knew it was there until the child she saw as her own was put at risk. Then it all boiled over and came out at once.” Naamah’s lips twitched. “May the Gods help us if ‘Lea gets into the same position.”
“If somebody doesn’t wish to be aggressive, don’t feed your temper, or multiply incidents of anger. Instead the wise man suppresses the first impulse to be angry, then begins to take pride in the days on which he did not become quarrelsome.” ‘Lea smiled sadly at the idea of her having children. “Igrat’s taken pride in those days for a long, long time. I think the memory of the way she blew tonight will do more than anything else to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“Seneca?” Angel thought she recognized the quotation.
“Epictetus. Via Dottore of course.” Achillea smiled at the memory of her mentor. “Here’s another one for us all. ‘So does a misfortune prevent you in any way from being just, generous, sober, reasonable, careful, free from error, courteous and free? In short, does misfortune prevent you from doing those things which together make human nature complete? No, it does not. Only you can do that.’ Perhaps you ought to tell Loki that one.”
Lagertha winced as her mouth twitched and started her lip bleeding again. Naamah didn’t say anything, just dabbed a cloth in cold water and gave it to her. When Lagertha spoke, her voice was slightly blurred. “I’ll have to do something to Loki to make sure he doesn’t do this again. He went way, way too far this time. Angel, could I tell him you took that contract?”
Angel shook her head. “Bad idea. For one thing, if it gets out I took a contract on somebody and they’re still alive a month later, it hurts my rep. That’s not good. For another, playing jokes about killing people gets people really seriously dead. I killed somebody once who thought pulling a toy gun on me was funny.”
Angel didn’t mention she had been twelve years old when that had happened. She noted though that Henry, Achillea and Lagertha were nodding in agreement. It was Henry who spoke from the door of Igrat’s room. “Angel is right. I think every gunslinger has done something similar. I know I have. Wild Bill Hickok killed his best friend that way as well. A gunfight is so fast that there just isn’t time to think that it might not be real.”
That was a line of conversation that made Conrad profoundly uncomfortable. “The problem is, of course, that when Loki finds out how much harm this alleged joke of his could have caused, has caused, he’ll be stricken with remorse and come running over to make amends. That probably isn’t a good idea. Lagertha, why don’t we get Chris Keeble to tell him that the Oxford Police have identified him as the thief and there’s a warrant out for his arrest? He likes Britain and makes a point of coming over to watch the Field Gun Race championship every year. The idea that he can’t set foot in the country without being arrested will really get to him. Especially when we tell him in a year or two that we were having a joke at his expense.”
Lagertha laughed, winced and dabbed her lip again. “That’ll do it. For a start. Look, I’ve got to go back to London. When Iggie returns to the world, tell her no hard feelings, not on my part anyway. I did much the same thing when somebody tried to murder my son once. By the time I finished head-butting him, the would-be killer wasn’t recognizable.”
“How many children did you have, Lagertha?” Angel was impressed by the idea of head-butting somebody to death.
“Two, a boy and a girl. I lost two babies to miscarriages, I guess now I was starting transition then. The girl died of plague when she was young.”
“And your son?”
“Oh, he became a rich and famous king. After he had conquered Northern Italy, and the hearts of most of the ladies there. That’s why there are so many blue-eyed, fair-haired Northern Italians. Good night all, and I really am sorry to be the cause of all this. I’ll make sure Loki is as well.”
Oak Hall Farm, Schley, Gloucester County, Virginia
“I keep forgetting how beautiful this place is.” Conrad was looking around the ‘farmhouse’ with delight. It was a downsized version of a standard Virginia plantation house surrounded by 52 acres of rolling land butting on to the Rappahannock River. “Given the amount of fighting that went on here in the Civil War, I’m surprised it wasn’t burned down.”
“By the time the Union Army got here, Parmenio was what amounted to Grant’s Operations Officer. So that wasn’t a problem. Making sure we didn’t get burned out by the Confederate Army was a bit more difficult. This whole area was fairly strongly Union.” Naamah swallowed her third glass of brandy. She’d spent an interesting hour in The Seer’s study, explaining to him just how a simple job like moving a racehorse across the Atlantic had been so thoroughly messed up. Fortunately, Gusoyn had performed his usual quietly efficient job of straightening everything out and had worked with Chris Keeble and Sir Humphrey to make sure everything was wrapped up. The Seer had conceded that having Conrad investigating something as trivial as a stolen horsebox was something nobody could have really anticipated and Loki playing his usual games was enough to screw anything up. Taking the two together meant that nobody should have expected things to go smoothly.
“Angel, the Seer would like to see you now.” Gusoyn came into the reception room with a relieved expression on his face. “Apollo, it’s a beautiful day; you want to go riding?”
The two left while Naamah told Angel how to find the Seer’s office. It was tucked carefully away so that the modern computer equipment in it didn’t disturb the illusion of a home straight out of the 18th century.
“Angel, come in please. We need to have a talk.” The Seer stood up as Angel cautiously came through the heavy oak-paneled door. He shepherded her to a seat in front of his desk, then sat down.
“It wasn’t Conrad’s fault you know. He just did his thing. If anything it was my fault. If I hadn’t been for me trying to . . . . ” The Seer smiled at the way her first thought had been to defend Conrad.
“I know. It was Loki’s idiocy that made a real mess of things. Actually, Angel, the truth is I’m very pleased with the way you’ve been handling things. I’ll be honest, when Igrat found you and wanted to get you out, I read your record and my first thought was to leave you on Death Row. One way or another, you wouldn’t have lived long enough there to cause problems. I was wrong, Igrat was right. You have much more potential than anybody, except her, could have guessed. Sir Humphrey and Chris speak highly of you. Snake says she owes me big-time for sending you over to her and that’s a debt worth having.”
Angel wriggled slightly in her seat on hearing that Suriyothai had spoken well of her. “So, I’m not in trouble over the horse thing?”
“No. As I said, you’ve done well. It’s a pity it’ll be a few more years before you can come here more often. We’re actually meeting down here so you and I could talk without you going too close to New York. Normally, I live in northern New York State, but with Shergar arriving here, I wanted to see what all the fuss had been about. So, everything fitted for us to meet here.”
“How is Igrat?” That made the Seer look up sharply. Angel’s voice contained a note of genuine concern. Does that mean her concerns for other people are beginning to spread beyond Conrad or is she simply playing me? Knowing she’s a psychopath I ought to be betting on the latter but Annemarie Delagarza says that there is evidence her head injury is slowly healing.
“Igrat’s better but I’ve made her start seeing a therapist. One of us of course. There was much more pressing down on her than Loki’s stupid pranks and she needs help. None of us can afford outbursts like that. If you and Conrad like, I’ll make sure she stays in touch with you while she recovers. Now, to business.”
“Ah.” Angel was looking both curious and suspicious.
“Anyway, Angel, I understand that you are now the Vanguard of the 14K Triad, reporting directly to the Shansen. That’s a big jump up. I don’t think the Triads have ever had a female Vanguard before.”
Angel’s curiosity and suspicion deepened. “I don’t think you’re supposed to know that.”
“Angel, I know. Leave it there. Secret Societies are never as secret as they think they are.” The Seer hesitated. “That applies to us as well. One of the things we learned when we started preparing to come out of the shadows is that a lot more people know about us than we had realized.
“The fact is that you’re now becoming a senior officer. Do you know what the worst mistake a senior officer can make is?” Angel shook her head. “It’s called playing private. It’s somebody high up the chain of command who thinks that they belong on a battlefield, doing things that are far below their pay grade. Usually chasing around, pretending to be Lieutenants and fighting small unit actions. They usually call it ‘leading from the front’ or ‘inspiring the men’. What usually happens is they get themselves killed in some suitably glorious and pointless manner and leave their army without anybody doing the things they were being paid to do. The results are usually disastrous and sometimes catastrophic. Don’t play private, Angel. You’re not a street warrior any more. You’re management. Manage.”
“I know but . . . . I don’t know how to.”
“Yes, you do. You do it all the time. You manage, you take responsibility, you behave like an officer, you just don’t realize it. What you don’t know now, you’ll learn by doing. Look at the work you did in Oxford; you managed the training courses and reorganization of a police region smoothly and made it the example that, one by one, other Police regions in England are following. Well, if we exclude pumping an idiot full of frozen paintballs. I don’t think anybody else has done that but I suppose every job has its compensations. The point is, the sort of things you did as a street thug are not your responsibility any more. You are going to have to learn do send people out to do things that you once did for yourself. Put bluntly you’re too valuable to everybody who employs you to see you getting killed on the street. Stop playing private. You’ve outgrown it, something nobody ever thought would happen. Remember what happened to George Dixon in The Blue Lamp? He wouldn’t come off the street, wouldn’t stop being a beat cop. When he got killed, all that experience, all that knowledge, all that wisdom died with him. He should have come off the streets years earlier and passed that wisdom on to the next generation. You need to take that example to heart.”
“I’ve retired from doing contract kills now. Does that count.”
“Very wise. I bet that made Conrad happy as well. It’s a start. In military terms, Angel, you’re becoming a general and you have to behave like one. I’ll help you as much as I can, so will Snake. So, I suspect will your superiors in the 14K. It’s not the end of the process though. What do you think my background is? Before I became NSA?”
Angel thought quickly. “I assume from what you said that you were a General?”
“Many times, in many different armies. More than that, I’m what the ancient Macedonians called a Strategos. That’s the next stage up from being a General. Generals win battles, the Strategos wins wars. Angel, you’ve got what it takes to be a good Strategos. The way you planned and executed the Glasgow business proved that. Something else you must learn. You don’t do street work yourself any more, you send people you trained to do it for you. That means you’ll be creating an Army. To be a good general, you must love the army you created but you must always be prepared to destroy the thing you love in order to serve a greater end. That’s the price we pay for all the privileges Generals have.”
Hours later, it was only when the shadows started moving obviously across the wall that they realized how long they had been speaking. Angel walked across to the window and looked out, showing The Seer one reason why she had survived a life that should have killed her. Most people looking out of a window stood squarely in front of it; Angel stood to one side looking out at an angle. She was watching the horses in the paddock. “Those four horses down there, the ones that stay apart from the rest. They the ones like us?”
“Three chestnuts and the gray? Yes, they are. The gray’s the first known long-life horse. We found him in 1871; it’s an odd story. He trod on a nail and got tetanus. They were going to put him down but as a last resort they called Naamah over to see if she could help him. She fought really hard for him, used all the experience she had treating battlefield injuries and beat the odds. She had him brought over here in case of a relapse and after a few years we realized why she had beaten those odds; he wasn’t getting any older. We had to tell people he'd had a relapse and been euthanized. He still remembers that she saved him. Normally he’s a willful horse but he’s always gentle with her. Anyway, let us return to the rest, it’s time for evening drinkies.”
Conrad looked up as they re-entered the parlor and his face broke into a great beaming smile when he saw Angel, one which Angel returned. Watching her, The Seer suddenly realized the difference between the genuine article and the one she faked for the people around her. Angel tucked her lower lip under her teeth, a gesture that Conrad well knew was her getting her nausea at the idea of human contact under control. Then she walked up and hugged him. “Come on Conrad, drink up. Tomorrow, we have to go home.”
Igrat's Living Room, The Old Rectory, Marsh Baldon
"How is she?" Achillea looked over at Conrad after he had come out of Igrat's room. The atmosphere was tense with the people present still trying to comprehend what had happened. After Lagertha had explained to Igrat that she and Loki had stolen the horsebox, Igrat had, as Lagertha had predicted, gone ballistic but in a way that only Naamah, Apollo and Gusoyn had ever seen before. Igrat had reverted to type. Suddenly and without any warning she had turned into the vicious wildcat she had been when they first met.
"She's calming down now." Conrad shook his head. It had taken all his persuasive skills to convince Igrat to get herself back under control.
"I hope so, she offered me a hundred thousand sovereigns to kill Loki." Angel wasn't joking. It had taken both Achillea and her to pull Igrat off Lagertha and drag her out the room while she screamed out the offer. Igrat was the one person whom Angel had not credited with the potential to go berserk like that. Fortunately, Lagertha had had the sense not to make matters worse and had stayed out of the brief, violent struggle. "What just happened?"
"You did not accept the contract did you?" Gusoyn looked across the room from where he was sitting with Apollo.
Angel shook her head. "I've retired from taking private contracts as of a few days ago. I just work for governments and my Triad now. Anyway, that would be what we call a jackel contract. Very dangerous and even if the killer survived, they'd never be able to work again. They’d be running for the rest of their lives. For that, a hundred thou isn’t nearly enough."
"Governments and Triads. Is there a difference?" Apollo found Angel fascinating and really wished that she would open up and talk more about herself. He was realistic enough to realize that would never happen. Instead, he rubbed his shoulder where Igrat had stabbed him centuries before. Seeing her go berserk had made the old wound throb in sympathy.
"Not really." Angel looked around. People were speaking very quietly, almost as if they were afraid any noise would set Igrat off again. “I think the Triad leadership listen to their rank and file members a bit more. But I may be prejudiced there. Conrad, you didn’t answer me, what just happened?”
Conrad wrenched his mind away from Igrat and to one of his prime responsibilities; keeping Angel advised on how to relate to people. “Have you ever seen a seven pound female cat go berserk and attack a 120 pound dog because it threatened her kittens? Well, that’s what just happened here. When Lagertha told Igrat about Loki’s prank, Iggie instantly saw it as a direct attack on Cristi and responded just the way that cat would. Lagertha was unlucky enough to be the bearer of bad tidings, that’s all.”
Angel shook her head, obviously still bewildered. Conrad looked at her and realized the problem; Angel had no greater understanding of the relations between parents and children than she did of any other kind of human relationship. She treated children the same way she did everybody else. Oddly, that was something children somehow understood and they liked her for it. Now, though, the same complete lack of empathy meant she simply could not understand why Igrat had acted the way she had.
“This is an English country village, Angel. It’s still isolated, very closely knit and the people who live here have mostly known each other’s families for generations. It’s a very trusting environment, people don’t lock their houses, they leave cars parked unlocked and with the keys in the ignition. Children go around from house to house and their parents know everybody keeps an eye on them. That trust extends to people’s lives; everybody knows what’s going on here. To get accepted in this environment takes a long, long time and people who don’t make it are frozen out. They become outcasts. To say it takes generations is only partly a joke. At the moment, Igrat and Cristi are accepted here very provisionally. People are quietly watching them, sizing them up and deciding if they are suitable people to become a real part of the community. Especially since they are Americans and thus real strangers.”
“Think about when we’re out running, Angel.” Achillea looked up. “People are friendly and polite to us, they give us a wave as we pass but it’s like there’s a glass wall between them and us. We’re here, sometimes, but we’re not part of the community. We’re strangers.”
“Like the tourists when we’re back home, Conrad? They’re there but not there.”
“That’s it. Well, Igrat’s worked really hard to make the grade. She joins in all the village activities without trying to take them over or tell people what to do. She’s friendly and helpful without being pushy and Cristi follows her lead. She’s been quietly but obviously respectful of the community and its ways. Now, with that stupid prank, Loki has put her, and Cristi’s, position here in danger. If the community decides that they can’t be trusted because of Loki stealing that horsebox here, the balance will swing against them and they’ll get rejected. Nobody will say anything, nobody will actually make the decision but they’ll become outcasts.
“Now, for Igrat that doesn’t matter too much; we’re all used to being separate from the community we live in. But, Cristi is a young woman and to become a social outcast at her age is, in her eyes, just about the worst thing that can happen to her. Cristi also has a self-confidence problem, she always has. She hides it well but it’s there and if people tell her things about herself, she tends to believe them. That really worries Igrat by the way. So, Loki’s little stunt has the potential to do Cristi a lot of harm. Add into that something else. This isn’t the first time that one of Loki’s little jokes has caused Iggie serious problems, sometimes very dangerous ones. Normally she lets it slide but this time, it wasn’t Igrat who was put at risk, it was Cristi. And that flipped Igrat into mother cat mode. Are you all right, Lagertha?”
Naamah and Lagertha had come back into the living room from the kitchen where Naamah had been administering some needed first-aid. Before Igrat had been pulled off, she had managed to split Lagertha’s lower lip and leave one cheek seriously swollen and inflamed. “I’ve put arnica on the swelling and it’ll go down soon enough. You’ll have to be careful with that lip though. Give it time to heal.”
Lagertha nodded carefully. When Naamah gave first aid advice, the sensible listened. Namah glanced at Conrad. “How’s Iggie? Does she need sedating?”
Conrad shook his head and repeated his earlier comment. “She’s calming down now. Henry’s keeping a discrete eye on her but I think the crisis is over. We’ll have our Iggie back by morning.”
“I never thought Iggie would just explode like that.” Angel was, perhaps now more than ever, aware of how little she understood the relationships between people.
“She came close to it once before, during that New York business a few years back. When the bad guys kidnapped Cristi. Iggie came close to going berserk then; I had to face her down.” Achillea shook her head. “I really thought I was going to have to stop her going after them by force. She saw reason that time; tonight the situation blew too fast. By the way I took her knife as well, the little one she keeps as a hold-out.”
“Igrat never had children. All that mother stuff has built up inside her but she never knew it was there until the child she saw as her own was put at risk. Then it all boiled over and came out at once.” Naamah’s lips twitched. “May the Gods help us if ‘Lea gets into the same position.”
“If somebody doesn’t wish to be aggressive, don’t feed your temper, or multiply incidents of anger. Instead the wise man suppresses the first impulse to be angry, then begins to take pride in the days on which he did not become quarrelsome.” ‘Lea smiled sadly at the idea of her having children. “Igrat’s taken pride in those days for a long, long time. I think the memory of the way she blew tonight will do more than anything else to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
“Seneca?” Angel thought she recognized the quotation.
“Epictetus. Via Dottore of course.” Achillea smiled at the memory of her mentor. “Here’s another one for us all. ‘So does a misfortune prevent you in any way from being just, generous, sober, reasonable, careful, free from error, courteous and free? In short, does misfortune prevent you from doing those things which together make human nature complete? No, it does not. Only you can do that.’ Perhaps you ought to tell Loki that one.”
Lagertha winced as her mouth twitched and started her lip bleeding again. Naamah didn’t say anything, just dabbed a cloth in cold water and gave it to her. When Lagertha spoke, her voice was slightly blurred. “I’ll have to do something to Loki to make sure he doesn’t do this again. He went way, way too far this time. Angel, could I tell him you took that contract?”
Angel shook her head. “Bad idea. For one thing, if it gets out I took a contract on somebody and they’re still alive a month later, it hurts my rep. That’s not good. For another, playing jokes about killing people gets people really seriously dead. I killed somebody once who thought pulling a toy gun on me was funny.”
Angel didn’t mention she had been twelve years old when that had happened. She noted though that Henry, Achillea and Lagertha were nodding in agreement. It was Henry who spoke from the door of Igrat’s room. “Angel is right. I think every gunslinger has done something similar. I know I have. Wild Bill Hickok killed his best friend that way as well. A gunfight is so fast that there just isn’t time to think that it might not be real.”
That was a line of conversation that made Conrad profoundly uncomfortable. “The problem is, of course, that when Loki finds out how much harm this alleged joke of his could have caused, has caused, he’ll be stricken with remorse and come running over to make amends. That probably isn’t a good idea. Lagertha, why don’t we get Chris Keeble to tell him that the Oxford Police have identified him as the thief and there’s a warrant out for his arrest? He likes Britain and makes a point of coming over to watch the Field Gun Race championship every year. The idea that he can’t set foot in the country without being arrested will really get to him. Especially when we tell him in a year or two that we were having a joke at his expense.”
Lagertha laughed, winced and dabbed her lip again. “That’ll do it. For a start. Look, I’ve got to go back to London. When Iggie returns to the world, tell her no hard feelings, not on my part anyway. I did much the same thing when somebody tried to murder my son once. By the time I finished head-butting him, the would-be killer wasn’t recognizable.”
“How many children did you have, Lagertha?” Angel was impressed by the idea of head-butting somebody to death.
“Two, a boy and a girl. I lost two babies to miscarriages, I guess now I was starting transition then. The girl died of plague when she was young.”
“And your son?”
“Oh, he became a rich and famous king. After he had conquered Northern Italy, and the hearts of most of the ladies there. That’s why there are so many blue-eyed, fair-haired Northern Italians. Good night all, and I really am sorry to be the cause of all this. I’ll make sure Loki is as well.”
Oak Hall Farm, Schley, Gloucester County, Virginia
“I keep forgetting how beautiful this place is.” Conrad was looking around the ‘farmhouse’ with delight. It was a downsized version of a standard Virginia plantation house surrounded by 52 acres of rolling land butting on to the Rappahannock River. “Given the amount of fighting that went on here in the Civil War, I’m surprised it wasn’t burned down.”
“By the time the Union Army got here, Parmenio was what amounted to Grant’s Operations Officer. So that wasn’t a problem. Making sure we didn’t get burned out by the Confederate Army was a bit more difficult. This whole area was fairly strongly Union.” Naamah swallowed her third glass of brandy. She’d spent an interesting hour in The Seer’s study, explaining to him just how a simple job like moving a racehorse across the Atlantic had been so thoroughly messed up. Fortunately, Gusoyn had performed his usual quietly efficient job of straightening everything out and had worked with Chris Keeble and Sir Humphrey to make sure everything was wrapped up. The Seer had conceded that having Conrad investigating something as trivial as a stolen horsebox was something nobody could have really anticipated and Loki playing his usual games was enough to screw anything up. Taking the two together meant that nobody should have expected things to go smoothly.
“Angel, the Seer would like to see you now.” Gusoyn came into the reception room with a relieved expression on his face. “Apollo, it’s a beautiful day; you want to go riding?”
The two left while Naamah told Angel how to find the Seer’s office. It was tucked carefully away so that the modern computer equipment in it didn’t disturb the illusion of a home straight out of the 18th century.
“Angel, come in please. We need to have a talk.” The Seer stood up as Angel cautiously came through the heavy oak-paneled door. He shepherded her to a seat in front of his desk, then sat down.
“It wasn’t Conrad’s fault you know. He just did his thing. If anything it was my fault. If I hadn’t been for me trying to . . . . ” The Seer smiled at the way her first thought had been to defend Conrad.
“I know. It was Loki’s idiocy that made a real mess of things. Actually, Angel, the truth is I’m very pleased with the way you’ve been handling things. I’ll be honest, when Igrat found you and wanted to get you out, I read your record and my first thought was to leave you on Death Row. One way or another, you wouldn’t have lived long enough there to cause problems. I was wrong, Igrat was right. You have much more potential than anybody, except her, could have guessed. Sir Humphrey and Chris speak highly of you. Snake says she owes me big-time for sending you over to her and that’s a debt worth having.”
Angel wriggled slightly in her seat on hearing that Suriyothai had spoken well of her. “So, I’m not in trouble over the horse thing?”
“No. As I said, you’ve done well. It’s a pity it’ll be a few more years before you can come here more often. We’re actually meeting down here so you and I could talk without you going too close to New York. Normally, I live in northern New York State, but with Shergar arriving here, I wanted to see what all the fuss had been about. So, everything fitted for us to meet here.”
“How is Igrat?” That made the Seer look up sharply. Angel’s voice contained a note of genuine concern. Does that mean her concerns for other people are beginning to spread beyond Conrad or is she simply playing me? Knowing she’s a psychopath I ought to be betting on the latter but Annemarie Delagarza says that there is evidence her head injury is slowly healing.
“Igrat’s better but I’ve made her start seeing a therapist. One of us of course. There was much more pressing down on her than Loki’s stupid pranks and she needs help. None of us can afford outbursts like that. If you and Conrad like, I’ll make sure she stays in touch with you while she recovers. Now, to business.”
“Ah.” Angel was looking both curious and suspicious.
“Anyway, Angel, I understand that you are now the Vanguard of the 14K Triad, reporting directly to the Shansen. That’s a big jump up. I don’t think the Triads have ever had a female Vanguard before.”
Angel’s curiosity and suspicion deepened. “I don’t think you’re supposed to know that.”
“Angel, I know. Leave it there. Secret Societies are never as secret as they think they are.” The Seer hesitated. “That applies to us as well. One of the things we learned when we started preparing to come out of the shadows is that a lot more people know about us than we had realized.
“The fact is that you’re now becoming a senior officer. Do you know what the worst mistake a senior officer can make is?” Angel shook her head. “It’s called playing private. It’s somebody high up the chain of command who thinks that they belong on a battlefield, doing things that are far below their pay grade. Usually chasing around, pretending to be Lieutenants and fighting small unit actions. They usually call it ‘leading from the front’ or ‘inspiring the men’. What usually happens is they get themselves killed in some suitably glorious and pointless manner and leave their army without anybody doing the things they were being paid to do. The results are usually disastrous and sometimes catastrophic. Don’t play private, Angel. You’re not a street warrior any more. You’re management. Manage.”
“I know but . . . . I don’t know how to.”
“Yes, you do. You do it all the time. You manage, you take responsibility, you behave like an officer, you just don’t realize it. What you don’t know now, you’ll learn by doing. Look at the work you did in Oxford; you managed the training courses and reorganization of a police region smoothly and made it the example that, one by one, other Police regions in England are following. Well, if we exclude pumping an idiot full of frozen paintballs. I don’t think anybody else has done that but I suppose every job has its compensations. The point is, the sort of things you did as a street thug are not your responsibility any more. You are going to have to learn do send people out to do things that you once did for yourself. Put bluntly you’re too valuable to everybody who employs you to see you getting killed on the street. Stop playing private. You’ve outgrown it, something nobody ever thought would happen. Remember what happened to George Dixon in The Blue Lamp? He wouldn’t come off the street, wouldn’t stop being a beat cop. When he got killed, all that experience, all that knowledge, all that wisdom died with him. He should have come off the streets years earlier and passed that wisdom on to the next generation. You need to take that example to heart.”
“I’ve retired from doing contract kills now. Does that count.”
“Very wise. I bet that made Conrad happy as well. It’s a start. In military terms, Angel, you’re becoming a general and you have to behave like one. I’ll help you as much as I can, so will Snake. So, I suspect will your superiors in the 14K. It’s not the end of the process though. What do you think my background is? Before I became NSA?”
Angel thought quickly. “I assume from what you said that you were a General?”
“Many times, in many different armies. More than that, I’m what the ancient Macedonians called a Strategos. That’s the next stage up from being a General. Generals win battles, the Strategos wins wars. Angel, you’ve got what it takes to be a good Strategos. The way you planned and executed the Glasgow business proved that. Something else you must learn. You don’t do street work yourself any more, you send people you trained to do it for you. That means you’ll be creating an Army. To be a good general, you must love the army you created but you must always be prepared to destroy the thing you love in order to serve a greater end. That’s the price we pay for all the privileges Generals have.”
Hours later, it was only when the shadows started moving obviously across the wall that they realized how long they had been speaking. Angel walked across to the window and looked out, showing The Seer one reason why she had survived a life that should have killed her. Most people looking out of a window stood squarely in front of it; Angel stood to one side looking out at an angle. She was watching the horses in the paddock. “Those four horses down there, the ones that stay apart from the rest. They the ones like us?”
“Three chestnuts and the gray? Yes, they are. The gray’s the first known long-life horse. We found him in 1871; it’s an odd story. He trod on a nail and got tetanus. They were going to put him down but as a last resort they called Naamah over to see if she could help him. She fought really hard for him, used all the experience she had treating battlefield injuries and beat the odds. She had him brought over here in case of a relapse and after a few years we realized why she had beaten those odds; he wasn’t getting any older. We had to tell people he'd had a relapse and been euthanized. He still remembers that she saved him. Normally he’s a willful horse but he’s always gentle with her. Anyway, let us return to the rest, it’s time for evening drinkies.”
Conrad looked up as they re-entered the parlor and his face broke into a great beaming smile when he saw Angel, one which Angel returned. Watching her, The Seer suddenly realized the difference between the genuine article and the one she faked for the people around her. Angel tucked her lower lip under her teeth, a gesture that Conrad well knew was her getting her nausea at the idea of human contact under control. Then she walked up and hugged him. “Come on Conrad, drink up. Tomorrow, we have to go home.”