Free Gunrunner by Graham Ison Page B

annual Trooping the Colour ceremony for which Her Majesty the Queen always arrived on Horse Guards Parade as the clock struck eleven. And the commander always arrived at Curtis Green as Big Ben struck ten.
    ‘Mr Brock, a moment of your time.’ The commander didn’t even break step as he passed the open door of my office. Nor would he ever address me as Harry like real CID commanders did, presumably for fear that I might call him by his first name. I’m not sure he could cope with that.
    But the commander is not a real detective, even though he fancies himself as one. After a lifetime in the Uniform Branch, he was visited upon us by some genius in Human Resources at Scotland Yard who probably imagined that it would widen our illustrious leader’s experience – and doubtless add a new dimension to the way we poor workers set about our mundane task of investigating murders. I’m not sure, however, that his knowledge of curbing unruly football crowds and instituting diabolical traffic schemes would help us very much. Mind you, he was very good, and very prolific, when it came to writing memoranda.
    I followed the great man into his office.
    ‘Did you have a pleasant Christmas, sir?’ I enquired, not that I cared, but such social niceties tended to put him off his stroke, albeit temporarily.
    ‘Oh, er, yes, thank you, Mr Brock. Very quiet, of course. Very quiet.’ The commander settled himself behind his desk, and spent a moment or two surveying his overflowing in-tray with the sort of relish with which a hungry man contemplates a hearty meal. ‘Be so good as to bring me up to date on this suspicious death you’re investigating at the airport, Mr Brock.’
    He would never call a suspicious death a murder in case it turned out to be manslaughter or even suicide. A bit of a pedant, is our commander.
    I summarized what we knew so far. ‘But I’m not too happy about Nicholas Hammond, the dead woman’s husband, sir,’ I continued, intent upon feeding in a few red herrings, and explained how he’d gone to New York without knowing what had happened to her. ‘Seems a strange sort of thing to do,’ I added.
    ‘Yes, very strange, very strange indeed, Mr Brock. Are you considering arresting him?’
    ‘Not at this stage, sir. In the meantime, I’m having enquiries made about his business. It’s in Mayfair.’
    ‘In Mayfair, eh?’ The commander was always impressed by prestigious addresses.
    ‘But there are others in the frame,’ I said.
    ‘In the frame?’ The commander contrived to look both irritated and mystified at the same time. He knew perfectly well what I meant, but he always affected ignorance whenever any of us used the jargon he abhorred.
    ‘Yes, sir, Bernard Bligh for one. He’s one of the directors of Kerry Trucking who was apparently annoyed that control of the company didn’t pass to him on Richard Lucas’s death. Lucas was Kerry Hammond’s first husband.’
    ‘Her first husband? You mean she was married before? This all seems rather complicated, Mr Brock.’
    It seemed fairly plain to me that if she was now on her second husband, she’d been married before. ‘And then there’s a former driver called Gary Dixon who was prosecuted by customs for smuggling.’ I said, managing to confuse the commander even further, which, of course, was my intention.
    ‘He sounds like your principal suspect, then,’ said the chief confidently. In his simplistic view, anyone previously convicted of a crime must have committed the one currently under investigation.
    ‘I don’t think it’s as straightforward as that, sir,’ I said. ‘But time will tell.’
    ‘Yes, but don’t waste too much time, Mr Brock. I expect to have a result soon.’ Using his customary technique of implying dismissal, the commander put on his half moon spectacles, intended to lend him gravitas, and drew the first file from the top of his in tray. But then he paused and looked at me. ‘I should be inclined to detain this Nicholas