The Devil's Home on Leave (Factory 2) by Derek Raymond Page B

But he was one of those folk with ears so big for hearing what didn’t concern him, you wouldn’t believe. His mouth in the photograph was correspondingly small, except when you offered it money; then it expanded in an alarming way and a lot of stuff came out of it – big stuff. It was always more than enough to send somebody down for a long while. I hate grasses. I use them because I have to, but I hate them. I had met Hadrill, though he mightn’t have remembered because it wasn’t my case. He’d done well for himself, he thought; he was smug, frightened, gay and a tiny spender. Now, if he were still alive, he mightn’t be sure that he’d done that well. Still, it had been the good life while it lasted – good clothes, food and a bachelor’s pad in W11, thoughhe’d kicked off, like plenty of other people, in SE12. I’d seen Jack around on his manor up at the Gate; everybody had. He drank over at the Wild Card Club up by the underground, wore a clipper-style cap which was supposed to make you think he was something out of
The Onedin Line
(he sometimes said he was, after his fourth pint) and tight knee-length boots. He probably went to bed in all that and thought he was a fucking Sturmbannführer every time he had a wet dream.
    But he was just a grass, and I considered that other interesting thing about him, that he was gay. A gay grass.
    ‘Well,’ I said, ‘now we know it was Jack Hadrill. We know it two ways – what I got out of this man Smitty and the note.’
    ‘Yes, when you leave a note like that it makes it almost official. The DPP’ll like that,’ said the voice.
    ‘Do you remember the last thing Jack did? It made him a lot of taxpayers’ money, but it got him in right shtuck as well.’
    ‘That was over Pat Hawes, wasn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, we didn’t handle it. Too high-powered for us.’
    ‘We didn’t handle it, sir.’
    ‘No, that’s right, we didn’t. Hadrill went to Bowman over it.’
    ‘Chief Inspector Bowman.’
    ‘Yes, Bowman, that’s the man, over at Serious Crimes. Jack grassed Hawes over that big wages snatch up north, out York way, and Hawes drew a lot of bird because a security guard was killed and so, what with his form, they threw the book at him, and a good thing too.’
    ‘You think eight years in Parkhurst or Wakefield will improve his morale, sergeant?’
    ‘He never had any. If I’d been Serious Crimes I’d have liked to know more about that business with the guard. He was going off shift; he wasn’t even armed, it says in the transcript. Either Hawes was just trigger-happy, or there was more to it, I’d say; I like the second possibility better. Still, having people like Hawes out ofcirculation does clear the ground for other business. Mopping up the same old thieves and murderers time after time does get monotonous, you feel you’re getting nowhere.’
    ‘We’re quite the philosopher today, sergeant, aren’t we? So you still want to get after McGruder, do you?’
    ‘I’ve started. I want to get after him even harder now, sir.’
    ‘Good God,’ said the voice, ‘you finally said it. I know I’m only a deputy commander, but I thought you were never going to.’
    I imagined he was trying to be funny.
    ‘Hawes never forgets,’ I said, ‘people like that never do from their viewpoint, why should they? There’s every reason to think he had Hadrill done; he’s got plenty of money available even if he is inside. And Hadrill told Serious Crimes a lot about that raid, you’ll remember, but neither they nor the DPP’s office thought fit to go after it at the time.’
    ‘No, that was killed from on high,’ said the voice.
    ‘How high?’
    ‘High enough. What the mind doesn’t know, the heart doesn’t grieve over, sergeant; you must know that old saying.’
    ‘I know lots of old sayings,’ I said. ‘One of them is that what’s allowed to go cold can be warmed over. I can’t remember the exact words.’
    ‘The exact words,
sir.
’
    ‘That’s it.