The All-Purpose Bodies: A Fast-Paced Thriller (Commander Shaw Book 11) Read online

  The All-Purpose Bodies

  Philip McCutchan

  Copyright © Philip McCutchan 1969

  The right of Philip McCutchan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in 1969 by George G. Harrap & Co Ltd.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  About the Author

  1

  Learoyd’s full lower lip jutted dangerously and he said, “I told you, I can’t flaming remember, so let’s just leave it, shall we?” He half turned in his chair behind the desk, eyes flinty as he watched John Kingsford standing by the lofty, panoramic-view window. That window looked out over the vast complex lying beneath its hateful cover of torrid, downward-pressing heat and humidity, looked out and away, right across to the distant mainland. Learoyd scratched his head, running powerful, blunt-ended fingers through a thick mop of greying, wiry hair. “I don’t know what bloody business it is of yours anyway. You’re my number two. Not my bloody nursemaid, right?”

  “Just as you say.” Kingsford, whose straight back had somehow managed to express its total disdain for the man behind the desk, turned now and faced him.

  Learoyd was aware of the dislike behind that critical scrutiny. He scowled and said with sudden viciousness, “Unless you’re Canberra’s bloody spy. Is that it — eh?”

  Kingsford gave a quiet laugh. “Oh, don’t be absurd. What’s there to spy on?”

  “You tell me. Go on — tell me!” Learoyd waited. “Well, if you won’t, I’ll tell you: me bloody boozing habits, right? You think I was boozed down there in Brisbane, don’t you, Kingsford? So boozed I don’t remember a flaming thing?”

  Kingsford’s thin face twitched slightly, the lips started to curl. He said, “I don’t know. As you’ve hinted, it’s not my business, is it?” Fastidiously, he flicked dust from the rolled-down sleeve of his khaki shirt. “I stick to my own department. Let’s do what you said a few moments ago, for God’s sake.”

  “What was that?” Learoyd lowered his heavy, shadowed jowls and stared upwards so that white appeared below his pupils — a yellowish white flecked with tiny broken blood vessels.

  “You suggested we leave it,” Kingsford answered mildly, moving away from the window, “and I think that was a good suggestion. So if you’d just like to check through a few matters that arose while you were away,” he added, pushing forward the file he had already placed on Learoyd’s desk, “I’ll be able to get along to the desalting plant.”

  “To do what?”

  Kingsford shrugged and said, “Carlsen reports a spot of bother.”

  “What sort of bother?”

  “Nothing much, I fancy, but he wants me to check an analysis and I like to take my own samples when I do that.”

  *

  Fifteen minutes later Kingsford left the air-conditioned room and came out into an open gallery, with movable glass screens, running right around the top of the administration building, into the suffocating heat clamping down like a kind of miasma over the man-made island lying ten miles off shore. This was the highest point on the island and by walking round Kingsford could have an all-over view of the whole of the huge industrial complex and the two-lane causeway that connected it with Cape Scott. Kingsford never tired of this view. Always, it helped to restore his balance after an interview with Tracy Learoyd. To the extent that he had been closely connected with it from its inception, from the first blueprint, the first mad dream of things to come, Project Lifeforce was his own brainchild. And a really magnificent brainchild it was, too. The two 500-million kilowatt nuclear reactors on the island complex provided electricity for the whole of the Northern Territory and much of Western Australia and in addition, and most important of all in fact, it produced fresh water from the surrounding sea which its vast pumps sucked up through the intakes to the pressure chambers. That fresh water was channelled through to the mainland where, via a great network of surface pipes, it was pumped through to the heart of Australia, that heart that so recently had been desert, to irrigate the land, to grow the trees and plants that had halted and reversed the terrible soil erosion, to water the sheep and bring prosperity to the outback properties and thus indirectly to the continent as a whole. Already a large sector of that semi-dead interior had been utterly transformed, was now a greening, pleasant land crisscrossed with its life-giving water channels fed by the gushing pipelines leading in from the Indian Ocean, and when the network was complete the whole of that arid central land would spring alive. It had riled Kingsford — grieved him, really — that a man like Tracy Learoyd should have been appointed administrative director-general; as a pure physicist with no bent at all for administration, Kingsford had not of course expected or wanted the top controlling post himself, but he could have named any number of less prickly characters than Tracy Learoyd to work with. But, beside an impressive record of experience in administration, Learoyd, so it was said, had excellent connections in Canberra and especially in the Ministry of Scientific and Industrial Research …

  Kingsford sighed and turned away from the futuristic scene below. He went inside, making for the lift. As he reached for the button a hand touched his shoulder. “Hullo, there, John. Audience with the boss?”

  Kingsford turned. “Morning, Doc. Yes, I have.”

  “How d’you find him, John?”

  “As usual — prickly, moody, taking offence at everything one says.” The lift doors slid silently open and the two men got in. Kingsford bit his lip and looked at the establishment medical officer reflectively. Then he asked, “Did you see him when he — got back?”

  Hartley nodded. “I saw him, all right! As a matter of fact he came to see me.”

  “I shouldn’t be asking you, I know,” Kingsford said hesitantly, “but —”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Hartley said with a grin, “and I shouldn’t be telling you either, but after all, you’re next in the chain, so … well, I found nothing wrong with him. Nothing at all. Heart and blood pressure okay … I gave him the works, you know. All I could do was suggest he cut out the liquor. I reckon that’s the only trouble.” He frowned at Kingsford from under heavy brows. “Efficient enough, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes,” Kingsford answered. “He’s on the ball most of the time, I’ll give him that.”

  “’Mmmm,” Hartley said musingly. Then he met Kingsford’s eye and said, “Know something? When a man in Learoyd’s job takes the equivalent of French leave to go on a boozing spree, well, maybe it’s time someone saw that Canberra was suitably informed.”

  Mirthlessly, Kingsford smiled. “Funny you should say that, Doc. It’s pretty well what he was on about himself.” He told the MO what Learoyd had said, and added, “Whatever he thinks, though, I’m not the sort for spying or surreptitious reports. I’ve got more important things to think about than intrigue, Doc. If any reports go in, they’ll have to be medical ones!”

  Hartley nodded. “You’re right, of course.” The lift reached the ground floor and they walked out into a snazzy, streamlined foyer. Crossing this, they emerged thro
ugh glass doors on to the top of a flight of steps leading to the forecourt.

  Kingsford was about to go off to the desalting plant when he hesitated and said suddenly, “Doc, do you think there should be a medical report?”

  Hartley laughed. “Truthfully, yes,” he said shortly. “But I’m going to fall down on my duty, I’m afraid. I have a wife and four kids and I’m fifty-five years of age and if the government kicks me out I’ll never get another billet. And I don’t need to tell you, John, that’s just between you and me, right?”

  “Of course it is,” Kingsford said. And it would be. He knew exactly what Hartley meant. Tracy Learoyd had those powerful friends in high places. A man didn’t stick his neck out, not if he valued his future. It didn’t help his conscience, but there it was, and as he’d said to Hartley, Learoyd was efficient enough at his job. It wasn’t really likely the booze would make him blow his top to the extent of damaging the interests of the complex … Kingsford grinned rather mirthlessly, shrugged the thing off, and went along to take his samples.

  2

  In Focal House, EC3, Max nodded at his secretary after she had brought me in and said, “I’m not, repeat not, to be disturbed on any account till Commander Shaw leaves, all right?”

  “Very good, sir.” The door shut behind Miss Prentice, spectacles, sensible skirt, and all. Max sat squarely behind his desk, thick, short, and very powerful, just looking at me for a while, his eyes sharp and searching. I was feeling a little acid about being sent for in the middle of what I’d been given to understand were a few days off, but I’d been long enough now with 6D2 to know it was different from the old defence ministry set-up — I’d been a civil servant in effect then, tea breaks and all and damn the taxpayers’ contributions.

  Max grunted and looked down and opened the middle drawer of his desk. He brought out a thin file and took something from it and passed it across to me. “Recognize that?” he asked. It was a photograph.

  I looked at it, briefly. “No,” I said. “Should I?”

  “I suppose not. He was over here not so long ago and his face was in all the papers, but I’m not blaming you if it didn’t stick.” He tapped the photograph, which I’d already shoved back on his desk. “That’s Jake Dunwoodie and he’s the minister for scientific and industrial research in Australia.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I remember now. So?”

  Max said, “So he’s disappeared.”

  “Oh?” I said rather blankly. “Does anyone really care all that much? Even his wife left him, I seem to recall — it was quite a scandal, wasn’t it, not long before he came over here —”

  “That’s right,” Max interrupted. “She’s English, a general’s daughter. But —”

  “She should have known better,” I said, “than to have married Jake Dunwoodie. Not a very pleasant character by all accounts.”

  “He still,” Max pointed out heavily, “has to be found.”

  I said, “I guess you’re probably right, but who else would want him and why? Maybe he’s just crawled away and died somewhere.”

  “That’s for you to find out, Shaw. I’ll give you what facts I have, and God knows they’re thin enough on the ground.” He glanced at the file. “Jake Dunwoodie disappeared exactly two weeks ago and for political reasons this was hushed up and so far the press hasn’t got on to it. Even the man’s wife hasn’t been told — there was no need for that anyway, as they’ve parted. Officially he’s resting at his sheep station, which is at a place called Andaratta, right out in the bush between Broken Hill and the Murrumbidgee. It wasn’t from there that he disappeared, by the way. He was on a private visit to Brisbane at the time. That much is established. Precious little else is, I gather. Our Sydney office was asked to take this on, as a matter for the greatest discretion, by Canberra. They’ve made no progress and they’re under extreme pressure. So they’ve asked for you to be sent out.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said. I didn’t mind a trip out to Australia. That morning, as I’d looked out of the windows of my flat into that typically filthy London forenoon, my thoughts had been one hell of a long way from the bright sunshine of the Southland and the wonderful blue sparkling water of Sydney harbour and the golden sands of Bondi. The vision that came to me now was a whole lot better than slicing rain and dirty wet streets and traffic wardens, crowds and rush hours and taxation …

  “You’ll take your orders from a man called Slattery, G. K. Slattery, who’s our top man out there. He’ll fill you in on all the background insofar as Dunwoodie himself is concerned.”

  There was something in Max’s tone that made me ask curiously, “Just what does that mean … insofar as Dunwoodie himself is concerned? Is there more in Jake than meets the eye?”

  Max grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised, but that’s not what I have in mind just now. The fact is, this isn’t the first disappearance that’s been bothering the authorities in various parts of the world over roughly the last couple of years.”

  “Oh?” I said. I was puzzled. “People have always disappeared, haven’t they? Husbands flying the nest … victims of murder, and so on … that sort of thing?”

  “That sort of thing, yes,” Max agreed. “These disappearances have been somewhat different and there’s been a kind of pattern about them. They haven’t been welshing husbands — or wives incidentally — as such and so far as is known they haven’t been the victims of murders — some of them have even turned up again after an interval, and those cases have all had the shared experience of remembering nothing whatever about the period of disappearance. Just a blank in their awareness. And all the people concerned, or at any rate those we know about, have been persons of, I don’t say of importance, but some kind of prominence — not by any means on the Dunwoodie scale, but prominent in their own spheres. They include doctors, lawyers, educationists, businessmen, engineers, scientists, and in one or two cases fairly big-time villains — clever villains, you know what I mean, embezzlers, conmen — not louts.” Max shrugged. “I don’t know where that leads us I’ll admit, but I suppose there could be a thread that links Dunwoodie in.”

  “These other people,” I asked. “Where have they been from?”

  “I told you, many parts of the world. This country — France — West Germany — America. Some from Japan and one or two from South Africa and Rhodesia.”

  “And this has never caused any heart-searchings on the part of the authorities?”

  “No, not until now.” Max reached into a box for a cigar, felt it, held it to his ear, lit it. I refused one. He went on, “The known cases have been widely spaced out in geographic terms and none were quite big enough to cause a storm. It’s just that they’re on the records of the various authorities and the computers have brought them together — that’s all.”

  “And Dunwoodie has acted as a kind of catalyst?”

  “In a sense, yes.”

  “Is he,” I asked, “the only one to disappear in Australia?”

  Max said, “So far as we know, yes. Undoubtedly the only big name, anyhow.”

  I said, “But we can’t be sure about the lesser fry.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  I said, “Well, you mentioned that some of the earlier cases had turned up again. There could be more who’ve done that — people whose absence hadn’t been noticed in the first place. Couldn’t there?”

  Max seemed dubious. “Oh, I don’t know. Pretty well everybody has someone who’d notice they hadn’t been around. An employer if nothing else!”

  “Not if it happened during the annual holiday,” I remarked. “However, that can wait. We’d better concentrate on Dunwoodie himself, I suppose. What do you think is behind his disappearance, sir?”

  Max closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and said, “The answer to that, I think, must depend on whether or not we believe he is linked with the previous cases. If he’s not — well, it could be any number of things, many of them purely personal. He’s a man who has plenty of enemi
es, after all! On the other hand, if there is that link … well, it won’t have escaped your notice that all the known disappearances have been from non-communist countries?”

  “No, it hasn’t,” I said, “but then would we get to know about any in the communist countries anyway?”

  Max smiled and shrugged but didn’t comment.

  I said, “So you suspect a political basis?”

  “Let’s say I wouldn’t rule it out entirely.”

  *

  Max had wanted me to go out right away and in fact he’d had the reservations all ready for the next BOAC flight out for Sydney, but I said no. I said I wanted to do a little scouting right here in Britain first. I said that among others I wanted to have a little chat with was Dunwoodie’s estranged wife. He’d told me she had come home and was living temporarily in her father’s flat in West Kensington.

  He asked with a touch of tartness, “What d’you mean — among others?”

  “I was hoping there might be some of the returned bods available.”

  Max ran his eye down a list of names. “There were two of those,” he said. “A state schoolmistress in Hounslow and a doctor of science in Huddersfield. We’ve checked already. The teacher’s gone to America on an exchange arrangement with a girl from Memphis, and the doctor in Huddersfield is dead and cremated.”

  “Oh,” I said blankly. “In Huddersfield?”

  Max looked irritated. “No,” he snapped. “In Leeds, as a matter of fact. Does it matter?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “May I have the list?”

  “With pleasure,” he said, and handed it across.

  It was no help and it left me with Flair Dunwoodie.

  I decided to call right out of the blue, without any kind of advance warning, and chance whether or not she was in. As it happened, she was; so was General Wainbridge, the father. They were both a little wary of me and I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere at all unless I put my cards on the table. They both seemed decent enough behind the natural suspicion and I felt I could trust them so I produced my 6D2 authorization and told them the truth, which was that I was the agent for a private but government-backed fact-finding organization that specialized in pretty tough assignments. And I told them something else as well, which I suppose I shouldn’t have done. I told them Jake Dunwoodie had disappeared.