The Calleshire Chronicles Volume Two: a Late Phoenix, His Burial Too, and Slight Mourning by Catherine Aird

Author:Catherine Aird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

I DO HAUNT YOU STILL.

14

The various instruction courses attended by Police Superintendent Leeyes left their scars in a way which would have astonished the highly skilled instructors who lectured at them had they known.

Like a sticky snail the Superintendent strewed a trail of imperfectly assimilated concepts behind him: not only did they show where he had been but they were a nuisance to the unwary. The latest one which he had gone to—on business management—had proved no exception to this unhappy rule.

Whether the sophisticated ideas of big business—in this case “management by objectives” (objectives: commercial)—could be related to the police force (objectives: law and order) was doubtful. Naturally the course organisers, well able to count potential police heads, did not harp on this point.

As the burden of their spiel lay in measurement they were—from time to time—in difficulties about this. Measurement of commercial success requires only the ability to count. The proof of the police pudding isn’t always in the eating. As any Home Secretary knows, measurement of successful police work takes a judicious blend of faith, hope, and charity.

There had been one other aspect of the management course dear to the hearts of the lecturers. It was called critical path analysis and it had made a deep impression on Superintendent Leeyes.

He had tried to explain it to Sloan.

“It’s a great idea. You work out the right order for everything before you start doing anything.”

Sloan had given it an ear. The Superintendent was given to instituting new ideas at the police station without much warning, and it was as well to be prepared.

“Then,” enthused Leeyes, “you don’t waste time going over the same ground twice.”

Sloan had been temperate in his response. Nothing was ever as easy as that.

“All you have to do,” the enthusiast had amplified, “is to decide what’s got to be done and then work out the best order to do it in.”

Sloan put the telephone down now after talking to Fenella Tindall and tried to do just that.

It wasn’t easy.

What might pass for good organisation in a biscuit factory might not be the best course of action in a murder hunt.

There was a pair of emerald and diamond clips unaccounted for—a pair of emerald and diamond clips which, after all, hadn’t been a birthday present for Fenella Tindall. And if the receipt in his pocket was anything to go by, last seen with Richard Mallory Tindall.

There was a secret report about United Mellemetics about which much the same could be said. Unaccounted for and last seen with Richard Mallory Tindall.

There was an unknown Italian gentleman—and you couldn’t, thought Sloan wryly, have a more sinister phrase than that. He and his wife, Margaret, were conscientious visitors of museums and art galleries. “An unknown Italian gentleman” sounded like the title of a Renaissance painting. Anyway, whoever he was he had been careless enough to miss his aeroplane last night—the night on which Richard Tindall died. Sloan wasn’t sure yet whether he ought to be worried about Giuseppe Mardoni or not.

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