THE SPANISH WAITER: EIGHTEEN

The secret service under Mr Smith is quite capable of dodgy dealing...

The Governor wasn’t seen so often out of his office, but this day there was something he had to attend to by passing a buck and he couldn’t put it off any longer.

“If anyone wants me,” he muttered to Mr Tiddles (his cat who shouldn’t have been in the office, but had somehow managed to follow him there) I’m not in.”

Mr Tiddles might have replied that his absence would be obvious to anyone who did happen to want him but such a thing was unlikely seeing as the number of people who ever wanted him could be counted on the claws of one foot and anyway he had quite limited linguistic skills.

Outside, he morphed into Mr Smith, leaving Mr Tiddles in total charge of the office, and strode to the nearest tube station.

He wanted to see Retired Inspector Jimmy Hewitt. Enquiries (made secretly using a secret code on a hidden branch of the Internet) had elicited the fact that the good Inspector was no longer a serving police officer but might usually be found either in The Bull and Balls for an hour in the evenings or on his back garden weeding and talking or possibly singing to a wide variety of flowering plants and a fine array of tomato plants in growbags, if he wasn’t discussing the weather with the old codger next door.

That old codger was usually absent from his garden because he spent a huge amount of time making sure the Retired Police Inspector wasn’t actually on his own patch before he ventured onto his own far superior floral plot with not a single growbag in sight, and proceeded to pluck out any weeds that dared poke their foliage into the unwelcoming air.

But as he clambered onto an underground train Mr Smith frowned because he had a problem that to his mind shouldn’t have had anything to do with him.

He had been informed that trouble had threatened three of his agents whilst they were on holiday (and he was sure it was a well-earned holiday because didn’t all his agents work hard for their pay and times off?) And that trouble needed his personal attention, at least to start with before he passed the aforementioned buck. So he was standing crushed on an overcrowded tube train from which he would transfer onto an overground train going to Midshire. Then his journey would end at the small market town of Brumpton where the good Inspector Hewitt had once served the law with honour and generosity. At least, he thought that must have been the case because the man had retired with his record unblemished. In fact, to go further, he had from time to time rendered minor assistance to the hard pressed agents under Mr Smith’s control, either this incarnation of the man or an earlier one who rejoiced in the same name.

Brumton was a remnant of the Industrial revolution and still displayed areas where ancient soot just wouldn’t wash away no matter how hard it rained, though there were modern estates of double-fronted detached houses for the more well to do, and it was in one of these that Inspector Hewitt (retired) spent his fading years.

Mr Smith knocked on his door after adjusting his well-adjusted tie and he waited for it to be opened. Which it was, because it wasn’t late enough for the Bull and Balls to be open and the weather not quite good enough for Inspector Hewitt to be lost in his back garden amongst a multitude of growbags.

“Oh no, it’s you,” growled the retired Inspector when he saw who was waiting expectantly on his doorstep.

“It’s good to see you,” smiled Mr Smith, “I need to come in. There are things to be discussed.”

“Nothing’s got anything to do with me any more,” replied Inspector Hewitt, “I’m happily retired.” But he did lead Mr Smith into the front room with its floral wallpaper and yucca plant like an alien giant in one corner.

“As I said,” smiled Mr Smith, “there are things to be discussed.”

“And as I said, I’m a pensioner with no interest in crime as long as it keeps away from my door.”

“But you have a good memory I’m told,” smiled mr Smith, who’d been told nothing of the sort.

“I can just about remember what I had for tea last night, if that’s what you mean,” growled Hewitt, which was a lie because the truth was he had forgotten eating yesterday though he had a vivid recollection of several meals at special dinners when he had been dressed in his best uniform complete with medals But then he’d been a younger man with a miore demanding appetite and enjoyed displaying his importance to the town.

“The Maybe case,” smiled Mr Smith, using an unusually friendly tone of voice, “you know, that teacher you had convicted of murdering a thug, nearly twenty years ago.”

“I wish folk would keep their nose out of that case,” grunted Hewitt, “I had that probation woman round here a couple of times wanting to tell me how I got it wrong!”

“But you didn’t, did you?” asked a troubled Mr Smith, “you didn’t get it wrong, did you, and the corpse of Mr Carter never turned up, did it? Shame really: it would help me no end if there was a pile of bones I could point at when questions get asked.”

“Are questions being asked then?” The retired Inspector was suddenly curious. His interest had been piqued by the second visit of the probation officer, the still rather attractive Geraldine Bonny who he thought might just be a widow at a loose end, and he was a divorcee with nobody keeping him warm at night.

“They say that your dead man is alive and well and travelling through Spain, and I don’t like it,” replied Mr Smith, “I don’t like it at all. Justice being done is an important element of our democracy, and if a man gets locked up for doing nothing on the word of a policeman who made it all up then something’s very, very wrong in the world.”

“I resent that!” snarled the ex-policeman, “and in my own home, enjoying my own yucca plant too!”

“Mr Maybe is at the moment a waiter in a Spanish Hotel, and your Mr Carter, the one who you insist is dead, was served by him only recently,” sighed Mr Smith. “Vegetable soup followed by something Spanish. Now I want you to think very hard before you answer this: what evidence did you have that Mr Maybe was more than a school master but had actually murdered Mr Carter?”

“The Superintendent…” muttered Mr Hewitt, “he said…”

“He said something?” asked Mr Smith, doing his best to sound understanding and not exactly succeeding.

“He said the evidence was there!” almost wept the retired detective when it dawned on him that he’d gone along too easily with a man about to retire and who had wanted to leave the force in a blaze of glory. Then he remembered, somehow, though many long years had passed, that Superintendent Islet had received a very peculiar visitor at around the time that Maybe had been convicted.

“It was one of your lot!” he almost shouted, “one of the ghouls you work with pushed him!”

“No representative of the Firm would do any such thing,” Mr Smith assured him, “and I want you to forget we ever had this conversation if you don’t mind. You don’t want anything nasty to come back from the past to haunt you, do you?”

The retired detective Inspector Hewitt was no wimp, though. He was no toy for the powers that be to manipulate, and he never had beem.

“I don’t mind the truth coming out,” he growled, “no matter how much it tarnishes my name, and I’ll tell Geradine Bonny that much if she calls on me again!”

“Oh dear,” sighed Mr Smith, “that could lead you into all kinds of trouble. You might even go to prison yourself! I mean, falsely locking up a school teacher on no more than a personal guess!”

“How dared…!”

“Well, that’s all. I’ll see myself out,” and Mr Smith’s smile was o broad it was sickening. The buck had hopefully been passed.

© Peter Rogerson, 15.11.22