by John Creasey
The assessor stumped off towards his own car.
Lemaitre moved away from the crowd: this was no moment to talk to Jeff Mickle. He saw P.C. Race on duty at the far end of Dove Lane, and went towards him. Race drew himself up. Lemaitre did not quite understand his own reaction to this officer, except that be knew be did not like him, did not really trust him. He had known him only as a uniformed figure for several months: this morning was the first time that he had really talked to the man. He was used to being watched covertly, to knowing that men were often self-conscious in his presence, as with any senior officer, but there was something more than that about Race.
“Hear the speech and the plaudits, constable?”
“Yes, sir, every word.”
“Do you know Mr. Mickle senior?”
“Only by sight sir.”
“Had a good look at everyone here, have you?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve kept my eyes open.”
“Hope you have. Seen anyone like the youth you glimpsed?”
“No, sir.”
“Had any brainwaves about him?”
“No, sir. I wish I had.”
“Sure you wouldn’t recognise him again?” asked Lemaitre.
“It was very dark, sir.”
“Yes. But not inside the factory.”
“I couldn’t see the flames until I was in the yard, sir, and I didn’t see anyone inside.”
“Did you have a close look?”
“Yes, sir – and I kept the station informed all the time.”
“That’s what your walkie-talkie is for,” remarked Lemaitre. “Be a bloody poor copper if you didn’t. In my young days we were lucky if we had a bicycle so we could get to a telephone quickly. Tell me again exactly what you saw.” He noticed others drawing near, but did not see any reason why they shouldn’t hear what P.C. Race was saying.
Race seemed to swallow hard, as if he were nervous.
“Well, sir, as I told you …”
Race was sweating. He thought: He thinks I’m lying. Then he thought: He can’t have any idea, can’t possibly. Aloud, he was saying: “I saw the fire and immediately radioed the station. I considered opening the door, but it seemed to me unwise, sir, a draught can make a fire worse. Then I looked in a window, and all I could see were flames. If—if I’d known the watchman was there—” he broke off, hating the gaze of people nearby.
“Well, what would you have done?” demanded Lemaitre.
“Tried the door, sir.”
“Although it might have fanned the flames?”
“I would have had to try to help him, sir.”
“Yes,” said Lemaitre. “Yes. Absolutely sure you didn’t see anyone else about except the boy who cycled off?”
“I didn’t say he was a boy, sir – I said he was a youth.”
“But you wouldn’t recognise him again,” Lemaitre persisted.
“No, sir.”
“So he might have been a boy.”
“I suppose so, sir.” Race was becoming both confused and resentful.
“Or an old or a middle-aged man,” Lemaitre remarked, apparently more to himself than to Race. “Did you notice anything peculiar about old Mickle today – in anything he said, I mean?”
“I couldn’t understand why he kept on saying no one was going to drive him out of business.”
“No,” said Lemaitre. “Nor could I.” He nodded, and went on his way.
Race, staring across the scene of destruction, did not see the blackened mess. He was back at the window, seeing old Walter Garratt lying there, crawling away from the staircase, clothes alight, but crawling; so be must have been alive.
Gradually, the picture faded from Race’s mind, but it left him feeling weak and heavy-hearted. A sergeant came up and spoke to him, and suddenly he realised that he was being told to sign off duty and go home. He must look all in. He must pull himself together. No one knew what he had done, or failed to do, and no one could ever find out.
If only the man hadn’t moved.
Race reached his bed-sitting room just after two o’clock.
That was the very moment when Sheila Morrison, holding her mother’s hand lightly, saw three other girls a few yards ahead, broke free, and ran towards them.
Luke Oliver was on the opposite side of the road.
He watched the child, and his heart beat until he was almost suffocated. She was beautiful. Like a sunbeam, running. The light made radiance of her golden hair, of her beautiful eyes. And she was all golden – pretty face, and long bare arms and long legs, bare halfway up the thighs. All the girls wore that kind of dress, but there was none as exciting as that particular child.
“Sheila!” her mother was calling. “Sheila! Come back!”
Sheila stopped and pirouetted round, laughing. She ran back to her mother, arms widespread, and Lillian entered into the fun, spreading her arms in welcome, catching and swinging the child from the ground.
Luke Oliver felt as if his heart would burst, and for the first time he stopped and stared openly, although he knew that was a thing he should not do. This time, it didn’t matter, for the picture was such a delight that half a dozen people paused to look, and an elderly woman exclaimed: “Oh, I wish I had a camera!”
Oliver passed her, as she looked round for approbation. Another woman nearby said. “So do I.” But in a few seconds the little incident was over, cyclists pedalled on, the woman stopped looking at the mother and child, a milk-roundsman drove along on his electric float. Further away, by the entrance to the school, a crowd of older children gathered round a sweet stall. From the big, old-fashioned school, built around the time that Mickle and Stratton’s factory had been built, came the summons of a bell.
Sheila, walking sedately now, released her hand again at the iron gates.
“Good-bye, Mummy.”
“Good-bye, darling, and wait for me or come home with someone you know, remember.”
“Oh, yes, mummy, I’ll remember,” Sheila caught up with her friends again, and went skipping off.
Lillian walked briskly towards the corner, a dozen or so other parents about her, some pushing prams, some with toddlers walking. In her own way Lillian was as attractive as her daughter; but Oliver, now on the other side of the road, hardly noticed her. He was still dazzled by the golden radiance of the child.
Chapter Six
The Children
Some seven miles away from Richmond but on the same side of London’s river, another golden haired child was going to school.
She did not look happy. There was no spring in her step, no radiance in her eyes. She had better features than Sheila Morrison, and it was possible that she would grow up to be the more attractive, but now there was a faint, almost perpetual frown on her face, as she stared downwards. The other children, gambolling along the pavements that led up to the school, passed her by. Only one of the women, a teacher, took any notice of her. She watched this child’s slow but deliberate walk until she went into the building.
A mother came rushing by, child at her hand.
“Hurry up, Doris, or you’ll be late.”
“All right, Mummy!”
“Hurry now!”
The child Doris began to run, with other late-comers. The woman who had brought her noticed the teacher’s subdued, preoccupied expression, and said half-laughing, half-gasping: “You look as if you’d lost a pound and found a sixpence, Mrs. Davis!”
“I haven’t lost or found anything,” the schoolmistress said. “Did you notice the Entwhistle child, Mrs. May?”
“Which one?”
“The youngest one – Carol.”
“No, I can’t say I did. I must get Doris to school earlier. It’s ridiculous to have to run every day.” Mrs. May was getting her breath back. “You’r
e worried about Carol Entwhistle, aren’t you? As if you haven’t enough worries on your hands.”
Hannah Davis didn’t respond.
“The other two Entwhistle children are all right,” the woman asserted.
They were neighbours, on a new estate only five minutes’ walk away, Hannah Davis small and dark and always sober looking, Mrs. May big and floppy and light-hearted. Each had three children, roughly the same ages, each had moved to the estate about the same time, but little else tallied between them. Hannah Davis’s husband had been severely injured in a road accident several years earlier, and had suffered injuries which had prevented him from taking up his former work again. He was now a lift-operator at a big store in Richmond, bringing home only half the money he had once earned as a capstan operator at an electrical factory nearby. Mrs. May’s husband managed a supermarket, and was in line for promotion; he now earned at least three times as much as his neighbour.
“I must go into school,” Hannah Davis said. “How well do you know the Entwhistles, Mrs. May?”
“Not so well as all that, they keep themselves to themselves,” the mother declared. “But I don’t see if the older ones can take it all right, why it should affect the younger one. After all, she hardly knew her father, he was away from home practically all her life.”
“That’s so, of course, but children in the same families do differ a lot, you know.”
“Well, Clive’s a jolly enough little fellow. If you ask me,” went on Mrs. May, as if the other had not spoken, “there’s something a bit queer about Carol. I don’t think she’s quite normal. Do you know I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh!”
“That’s what worries me,” replied Hannah Davis.
“You can’t take everyone’s troubles on your shoulders, so don’t worry about it so much,” advised Mrs. May. “Those children are lucky to be together. It’s not everyone, relatives or not, who would take three children of a murderer and give them a good home. If you ask me, the Entwhistles are a family in a million.”
“Oh, I’m not criticising the Entwhistles,” said Hannah quickly. “I expect they’re as worried as—” she broke off.
“Go on, say it! As worried as you are. I don’t understand you, Mrs. Davis, I really don’t. How’s your husband these days – I don’t seem to have seen him for ages.”
“He’s fine,” Hannah said. “I must go.”
She hurried off, the last to go into the school.
In fact, she meant that her husband was as good as he would ever be. She sometimes wondered whether Mrs. May, or any other of her teacher friends or neighbours, were discerning enough to realise what a distressing life she was living. She had to wake Fred, half-dress him, get his breakfast, get him into the invalid car which he could manage himself. Then there were the children. Then there was the problem of doing her job at the school. Then again there was Fred, tired, disgruntled, often bad-tempered and at best dispirited in the evening. He could just put himself to bed.
She was not thinking about herself today, however, but of the Entwhistle children. They lived on the estate with cousins of the Geoffrey Entwhistle who had murdered his wife. It had been a sensational trial, especially because of the three children, Clive, aged eleven at the time, Jennifer aged seven, and Carol four. When it had first been known that the children were to come to Camberwell it had been a nine days’ wonder, some approving, some – for reasons which Hannah Davis could never understand – arguing that the children ought to be sent much further away from the Lewisham home where the murder had been committed. Their aunt and uncle were in their forties, too – too old for such young children. Clive and Jennifer mixed well, but Carol was one on her own.
Hannah went into her class room, and the noise subsided.
Yes, she was worried about Carol, and she wondered whether she could do the slightest good by going to see the Entwhistles, virtually the foster parents. She did not want to be told to mind her own business, but someone ought to try to help that child.
Gideon was also thinking of a child: the one who was missing and for whom Epping Forest was being searched. Honiwell, the Yard superintendent in charge of the investigation, had just telephoned.
“They’ve found a size three shoe, probably the missing child’s,” he had said. “Unless it’s vital for me to come, sir, I’d like to stay here until dark. Can’t do much after dark.”
“No. How about coming to my place for supper,” Gideon suggested. “We can talk about the situation then.”
“Good idea, sir! I’d like to. About half-past eight, say?”
“Do fine,” said Gideon.
He was thinking that he ought to warn Kate about a supper guest. At the same time he was wondering whether to approach Sir Reginald Scott-Marie, the Commissioner, direct about the sabotage. The Assistant-Commissioner was at a conference in the Midlands, but he was also very sensitive about his authority, and approach to the Commissioner should be made through him. Gideon scowled. The A.C., a comparatively new man, was efficient, was even likeable, but he did have this passion for the proper channels. It did not raise Gideon’s spirits when he reflected that he, Gideon, could have had the job, which had been offered to him by Scott-Marie, something over a year ago.
He put in the call for Kate, and asked the operator: “Is the Commissioner in, do you know?”
“He was half an hour ago, sir.”
“Thanks,” said Gideon. It was now half-past two, and if Scott-Marie had been in at two o’clock then he had had one of his notoriously frugal meals in the office. There was a belief which Gideon did not know whether to share, that such meals indicated that the Commissioner had indigestion and was not in a good mood.
The telephone rang, and the girl said: “Mrs. Gideon, sir.”
“Hallo, Kate,” said Gideon. “Are you going to be in tonight?”
“Well, I wasn’t,” Kate said. “Not until half-past nineish, I’m going to hear Penny’s recital at the Town Hall, but if—”
“Can you leave something in the oven for me and Matt Honiwell?”
“Yes, of course, dear – I’ll put a casserole in, and make a trifle. Is he—oh. It’s about the Epping search, I suppose.”
“Yes, love. He can’t get away until after dark.”
“He’ll be tired out,” said Kate, almost reproachfully. Then she brightened. “It won’t matter if I’m not in until later, then?”
“Might be better,” Gideon approved. He hated driving Kate out of the living-room in the evening, but she would not want to hear the details of this case. “I—” he broke off, when his other telephone bell rang, said: “See you later,” and rang off. Almost immediately this bell rang again; someone was trying to get him on the direct outside line, someone through the Yard’s exchange. He lifted both receivers at once, said: “Just a moment” into the direct one and “Gideon” into the other.
It was Honiwell, and there could be little doubt of the reason for this call.
“George,” he said. “We’ve found her. I wondered if you’d like to come out yourself.”
Heavily, Gideon said: “Dead?”
“Raped and strangled.”
“Oh, God,” groaned Gideon. “Who found her?”
“We did.”
That was a good thing; if the volunteer force of searchers had succeeded it could have led to a crop of such organisations, most of which would be unwilling to co-operate or take orders.
“No, I won’t come out,” Gideon decided. “Can you still make it tonight?”
“It would help if you’ll send a car.”
“I’ll fix it,” Gideon promised.
“Thanks. And George.”
“Yes?”
“I think we ought to put this out on every television and radio channel tonight. People must look after their children better.”
; “I know,” said Gideon gruffly. “I know. I’ll see to the television angle.”
“Thanks,” said Honiwell.
Gideon hesitated before speaking into the other telephone. He might have kept anyone waiting, from the Commissioner downwards, but that did not seem to matter.
“Sorry to keep you,” he said at last.
“That’s all right.” It was Sir Humphrey Briggs, in a subdued voice. “I gather from what you were saying that the child’s been found in Epping Forest.”
“Yes,” Gideon said heavily. “Couldn’t be much worse.”
“Bloody lunatics,” Briggs growled. “Only a madman would—” he broke off. “You don’t want moralising from me at the moment, that I know. The Bethnal Green fire was arson, started by the kind of plastic, petrol bomb type which can be made by anyone with a knowledge of elementary chemistry. You could have another fire-raising problem on your hands.”
“Thought as much,” said Gideon, gruffly. “Thanks. When can I expect your detailed report?”
“Can you wait forty-eight hours?’’
“If I must.”
“I’ll improve on it if I can. You can quote me now, if it will help,” Briggs said, and rang off.
Gideon leaned back in his chair, linking his arms behind his neck, trying to absorb everything that had come to him in the past hour or two. It had been as busy and as ominous a day as he had known for a long time, and he needed time to think; to get his priorities right.
There wasn’t enough time, that was the trouble: not enough time, not enough men, not enough skill, not enough anything. That being the condition, how could he do his job properly?
Slowly, his mood changed.
He allowed everything he had been told to filter through his mind until he was satisfied that he would forget none of it, and then made himself consider what he should do next.
“I’ll see to it,” he had promised Honiwell, but it might not be so easy as all that. This was an issue on which the Assistant Commissioner ought to be consulted, and he couldn’t be. Gideon deliberated, and then made up his mind, asked for Scott-Marie, and was told he was engaged. Gideon rang off, made his usual pencilled notes more neatly than he would have for his own consumption.