Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett [92]
He wondered what he would do if he ever came face to face with the man. I’d shoot him out of hand, he thought, before he killed me. Faber was a pro, and you didn’t mess with that type. Most spies were amateurs: frustrated revolutionaries of the left or right, people who wanted the imaginary glamour of espionage, greedy men or lovesick women or blackmail victims. The few professionals were very dangerous indeed; they were not merciful men.
Dawn was still an hour or two away when Bloggs drove into Aberdeen. Never in his life had he been so grateful for street lights, dimmed and masked though they were. He had no idea where the police station was, and there was no one on the streets to give him direction so he drove around the town until he saw the familiar blue lamp (also dimmed).
He parked the car and ran through the rain into the building. He was expected. Godliman had been on the phone, and Godliman was now very senior indeed. Bloggs was shown into the office of Alan Kincaid, a detective-chief-inspector in his mid-fifties. There were three other officers in the room; Bloggs shook their hands and instantly forgot their names.
Kincaid said: “You made bloody good time from Carlisle.”
“Nearly killed myself doing it,” Bloggs replied, and sat down. “If you can rustle up a sandwich…”
“Of course.” Kincaid leaned his head out of the door and shouted something. “It’ll be here in two shakes,” he told Bloggs.
The office had off-white walls, a plank floor, and plain hard furniture: a desk, a few chairs and a filing cabinet. It was totally unrelieved: no pictures, no ornaments, no personal touches of any kind. There was a tray of dirty cups on the floor, and the air was thick with smoke. It smelled like a place where men had been working all night.
Kincaid had a small moustache, thin grey hair and spectacles. A big intelligent-looking man in shirtsleeves and braces, he spoke with a local accent, a sign that, like Bloggs, he had come up through the ranks—though from his age it was clear that his rise had been slower than Bloggs’s.
Bloggs said: “How much do you know about all this?”
“Not much,” Kincaid said. “But your governor, Godliman, did say that the London murders are the least of this man’s crimes. We also know which department you’re with, so we can put two and two together about this Faber…”
“What have you done so far?” Bloggs asked.
Kincaid put his feet on his desk. “He arrived here two days ago, right? That was when we started looking for him. We had the pictures—I assume every force in the country got them.”
“Yes.”
“We checked the hotels and lodging houses, the station and the bus depot. We did it quite thoroughly, although at the time we didn’t know he had come here. Needless to say, we had no results. We’re checking again, of course; but my opinion is that he probably left Aberdeen immediately.”
A woman police constable came in with a cup of tea and a very thick cheese sandwich. Bloggs thanked her and greedily set about the sandwich.
Kincaid went on: “We had a man at the railway station before the first train left in the morning. Same for the bus depot. So, if he left the town, either he stole a car or he hitched a ride. We’ve had no stolen cars reported, so I figure he hitched—”
“He might have gone by sea,” Bloggs said through a mouthful of wholemeal bread.
“Of the boats that left the harbor that day, none was big enough to stow away on. Since then, of course, nothing’s gone out because of the storm.”
“Stolen boats?”
“None reported.”
Bloggs shrugged. “If there’s no prospect of going out, the owners might not come to the harbor—in which case the theft of a boat might go unnoticed until the storm ends.”
One of the officers in the room said, “We missed that one, chief.”
“We did,” Kincaid said.
“Perhaps the harbormaster could look around all the regular moorings,” Bloggs suggested.
“I’m with you,