to the outer office opened quietly behind me.
Oakley said calmly, ‘This is not a Mr Crisp, Didi. This is a Mr Kelly Hughes. Mr Hughes will be leaving.’
‘Mr Hughes is not ready,’ I said.
‘I think Mr Hughes will find he is,’ she said.
I looked at her over my shoulder. She was carrying a large black looking pistol with a very large black looking silencer. The whole works were pointing steadily my way.
‘How dramatic,’ I said. ‘Can you readily dispose of bodies in the centre of Birmingham?’
‘Yes,’ Oakley said.
‘For a fee, of course, usually,’ Didi added.
I struggled not to believe them, and lost. All the same…
‘Should you decide after all to sell the information I need, you know where to find me.’ I relaxed against the back of the chair.
‘I may have a liking for gold dust,’ he said calmly. ‘But I am not a fool.’
‘Opinions differ,’ I remarked lightly.
There was no reaction. ‘It is not in my interest that you should prove you were… shall we say… set up.’
‘I understand that. Eventually, however, you will wish that you hadn’t helped to do it.’
He said smoothly, ‘A number of other people have said much the same, though few, I must confess, as quietly as you.’
It occurred to me suddenly that he must be quite used to the sort of enraged onslaught I’d thrown at the Wests, and that perhaps that was why his office… Didi caught my wanddering glance and cynically nodded.
‘That’s right. Too many people tried to smash the place up. So we keep the damage to a minimum.’
‘How wise.’
‘I’m afraid I really do have another appointment now,’ Oakley said. ‘So if you’ll excuse me…?’
I stood up. There was nothing to stay for.
‘It surprises me,’ I remarked, ‘That you’re not in jail.’
‘I am clever,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘My clients are satisfied, and people like you… impotent.’
‘Someone will kill you, one day.’
‘Will you?’
I shook my head. ‘Not worth it.’
‘Exactly,’ he said calmly. ‘The jobs I accept are never what the victims would actually kill me for. I really am not a fool.’
‘No,’ I said.
I walked across to the door and Didi made room for me to pass. She put the pistol down on her desk in the outer office and switched off a red bulb which glowed brightly in a small switchboard.
‘Emergency signal?’ I enquired. ‘Under his desk.’
‘You could say so.’
‘Is that gun loaded?’
Her eyebrows rose. ‘Naturally.’
‘I see.’ I opened the outer door. She walked over to close it behind me as I went towards the stairs.
‘Nice to have met you, Mr Hughes,’ she said unemotionally. ‘Don’t come back.’
I walked along to my car in some depression. From none of the three damaging witnesses at the Enquiry had I got any change at all, and what David Oakley had said about me being impotent looked all too true.
There seemed to be no way of proving that he had simply brought with him the money he had photographed in my flat. No one at Corrie had seen him come or go: Tony had asked all the lads, and none of them had seen him. And Oakley would have found it easy enough to be unobserved. He had only had to arrive early, while everyone was out riding on the Downs at morning exercise. From seven thirty to eight thirty the stable yard would be deserted. Letting himself in through my unlocked door, setting up his props, loosing off a flash or two, and quietly retreating… The whole process would have taken him no more than ten minutes.
It was possible he had kept a record of his shady transactions. Possible, not probable. He might need to keep some hold over his clients, to prevent their later denouncing him in fits of resurgent civic conscience. If he did keep such records, it might account for the multiplicity of locks. Or maybe the locks were simply to discourage people from breaking in to search for records, as they were certainly discouraging me.
Would Oakley, I wondered, have done what Charlie West had done, and produced his lying testimony for a voice on the telephone? On the whole, I decided not. Oakley had brains where Charlie had vanity, and Oakley would not involve himself without tying his clients up tight too. Oakley had to know who had done the engineering.
But stealing that information… or beating it out of him… or tricking him into giving it… as well as buying it from him… every course looked as hopeless as the next. I could only ride horses. I couldn’t