‘That much is true,’ Sandilands said. ‘Damned annoying old goat. I nearly throttled him myself once. And his wife Cassandra is a saint. Poor dear! Hopkirk, you would do well to go back and speak to her again when she’s had a chance to recover her equilibrium.’
‘Oh, I don’t think it’s me she’d be wanting to open up to, sir,’ said Hopkirk with a sly glint in his eye. ‘But I’ll make a note.’
‘Get on with it, Hopkirk.’
‘No reason at all to suppose these men we’ve got banged up in Vine Street held a personal grudge … they were easy enough to hire. To recruit to any cause or none. One of them at least drank every night at the same pub — Ye Olde Cocke in Petticoat Lane. The bar round the back’s full of ex-soldiers on the lookout for a bit of action that’ll bring in cash. They put themselves about for all sorts of strong-arm stuff. Bodyguarding, chucking out and, yes, rumour is: killing. They could just as easily have been home-bred Cockneys, or Italians or Russians or Lascars. They’re all on the menu.’
‘Could have …’ Bacchus’s voice was dismissive. ‘Speculation. We prefer to deal in certainties — established facts. You may not have been aware that the older one of this pair of charmers — whose identity seems at last to have been established — has been in our sights for some weeks now, his activities monitored. We rather regarded him as one of our targets. Two of his drinking cronies report straight back to us — on the books, you might say. Money changes hands occasionally. If we’d gained access to this villain at once we’d have known what to ask him and how to ask it.’ He shrugged. ‘We could have passed one of the inside blokes off as a prisoner and stuck them in a cell together … listened in to the conversations … for starters. But here we are, left playing guessing games.’ He tapped his neatly trimmed fingernails on the table to underline his irritation.
‘Would the super care to indulge in a little more speculation? The provenance of the weapons used?’ Rupert Fanshawe took over the polite grilling. ‘How did two Irish lads get their hands on service Webleys?’
‘No clues about the weapons,’ Hopkirk muttered. ‘Nothing unexpected from fingerprinting. But, as I’m sure the captain knows, London’s awash with Webleys. They could have been provided by whoever commissioned the hit. No reason to suppose the instigator ever laid hand on the guns.’
‘No indeed. These deals are arranged anonymously, by telephone. Which brings us to the third shot. The one to the heart that finished him. Browning or the like, you say?’
Hopkirk nodded and passed a copy of Spilsbury’s postmortem report over the table. The Branch men fell on it and spent some minutes absorbing it while the CID maintained an anxious silence.
‘At this distance it looks as though we’re contemplating a fatal shot fired by the taxi driver, his lady passenger or a third hand hiding in the shrubbery,’ Fanshawe commented.