Darkness and Confusion

by John Creasey

  Gideon went in first.

  “Mr. Morrison?” he said tentatively.

  The man on the bed turned his head at last. The strange thing, to Gideon, was that he seemed to be relaxed in mind as well as body, as if killing the murderer had drawn all the hatred and vengeance and tension out of him. He looked rather tired.

  “I haven’t anything more to say,” he stated quietly. “I killed him. Such a man should not be allowed to live.” His eyes widened slightly. “You’re Mr. Gideon, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t you have done the same, if it had been your child?” Morrison demanded.

  After a long deliberate pause, Gideon answered: “I don’t think so, Mr. Morrison. I hope not. But it isn’t for a policeman to show emotion or express opinions. We have to act according to the law. I understand you have refused legal aid.”

  “I don’t need legal aid. The facts speak for themselves.”

  “I’d strongly advise you to have it, nonetheless,” Gideon urged. “Is it a question of money?”

  “Not entirely – I simply don’t intend to defend myself,” said Morrison. “I shall let the facts do that.” He looked away. “I’ve no doubt my wife will need help, but I don’t want to see her. Can you make her understand that?”

  Gideon hardly knew what possessed him as he stood looking down on this small man who was so composed, so absolutely convinced that he had done the right thing.

  “So you are going to take your vengeance out on her too, are you?” he asked. “A jury might understand what you’ve done so far, but very few human beings could understand what you propose doing to your wife.”

  Morrison’s whole body stiffened. After a long, penetrating stare, he turned away from Gideon, did not look at him again, and would not speak. There was no point in staying longer, Gideon decided, Moore needed much more reassurance than Morrison did, and Gideon did not think there was the slightest danger that he might try to kill himself.

  He deserved and needed so much sympathy and yet in one way he made it difficult to feel any sympathy for him.

  “If you ask me,” said Moore, a little later, “I feel sorrier for his wife.”

  “She with friends?” asked Gideon, gruffly.

  “With her mother,” answered Moore. “I’ll go and see her soon. I’d like to get the Press job over, Commander, so that I can have that drink.”

  As he finished, the lights went on.

  At that moment, also, the lights went on in a small factory, only half a mile away, and machines on the late shift began to hum again. Two foremen electricians made a hurried round of the factory, pressing down switches which had been turned off immediately the power cut had come. The night manager of the firm – a branch of Electronics New Age – picked up a telephone and called a number on the other side of London, the main factory near Barking.

  “Mr. Roscoe, please,” he said, and after a moment a man came on the line.

  “Roscoe.”

  “We’re in business again,” the night manager reported, with obvious satisfaction.

  “Thank God for that,” said Roscoe. “How much production did we lose?”

  “About ten per cent of the shift,” the night manager answered.

  Roscoe grunted, said: “Try to make it up,” and rang off. Then he pulled some production graphs towards him and studied them closely. He was a scanty-haired man in his forties, and worry had engraved deep lines on his forehead and face.

  Slowly, almost fearfully, he shook his head.

  Honiwell, a big, endearing kind of man with curly, brown-grey hair and a quiet voice, ate heartily of the casserole which Kate had prepared, drank beer, and talked. He obviously needed to talk, but he really hadn’t much to say that was new. Everything that could be done in the Epping Forest search was being done, and until someone who knew the murderer came forward, there was little chance of getting him.

  “Someone knows who it is all right,” he said. “How they can live with it, I don’t know.” He helped himself to more potatoes. “I must admit I’d like another job, George. I mean, another assignment,” he added hastily. “Anything going that would have a therapeutic effect on a kindly old uncle like me?”

  The name ‘Entwhistle’ flashed across Gideon’s mind but he did not utter it.

  “Hey, Dad!” It was Malcolm, at half-past seven next morning. “You’ve got your picture in the paper! Can I come in?”

  Kate slipped into a dressing-gown, and called easily: “Yes dear; of course.”

  Malcolm pushed the door open with his foot, and appeared with tea and two morning newspapers. Gideon was much less interested in his own photograph than in one which took up the whole of the front page of the Daily Mirror.

  It was almost unbelievable, perhaps the most dramatic picture he had ever seen.

  A photographer had taken the picture at the exact moment that Morrison had shot Luke Oliver. The expression of horror on Oliver’s face, the way his hands were held upwards and. outwards as if to fend the danger off, was quite remarkable. Morrison’s profile was set and he held his gun at arm’s length. The thing which pleased Gideon, however, was the fact that two men just behind Morrison had grabbed him; one was actually touching his shoulder. They had been ready for a physical onslaught but taken absolutely unawares by the shooting.

  Who wouldn’t have been?

  “Everything’s ready, sir,” McAlistair said, an hour or two later. “Mr. Honiwell says you saw him last night. Mr. Brewer’s got a new report on the Morden Bank robbery and Mr. Hughes believes he has the man who robbed the Tottenham Post Office. He wants a warrant. Mr. Macintosh has the details of twenty-seven teenagers caught smoking marijuana in a Hampstead cellar last night. Sir Humphrey Briggs called to say he’s sorry but he can’t improve on the time he needs for his report. Mr. Lemaitre will be calling about eleven o’clock. Mr. Piluski telephoned to ask if he could see you at two o’clock. Oh—and Mr. Hobbs is flying down from Scotland this afternoon.”

  That startled Gideon. “Did he say why?”

  “He said the weather was very bad, sir.”

  Hobbs really meant that he knew Gideon had too much on his hands. Gideon gave an appreciative little smile, then glanced through the files, and said: “I’ll see Mr. Brewer.”

  There followed an hour and a half of intensive study of cases which were already preoccupying some of the C.I.D.’s best men. None of these was sensational or dramatic, none would rate more than a few inches of space in the newspapers, but all were representative of the average, everyday crime which the Yard investigated. The most worrying was the Hampstead drug case. It was difficult to see these drug-addicted youths, the hippies, the flower-people, the love-ins, as part of the true pattern of modern society, but it was, and it was no use hoping that the craze would be short-lived. In certain ways, it grew stronger. One could be revolted by some of it, one could approve of some of it, but the Yard knew that it would be – in fact had long been – exploited by criminals. Catching an addict was easy, catching his supplier very different indeed. There was, now, much more overlapping of crimes than there had once been. To get their drugs, addicts stole. To spread their drugs wider, the suppliers traded on every form of human weakness. Gideon could see a whole new pattern of crime emerging, and it worried him; but for the time being he could only cope with the evil which showed on the surface.

  He had finished just after eleven o’clock. At ten minutes past, Lemaitre telephoned, more brisk and slightly more self-assertive.

  “We know young Jensen went to Jackie Spratt’s Mill Lane office. A neighbour saw him. No doubt about it at all. But he wasn’t seen to leave, George.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Gideon sharply. “That he didn’t leave?”

  “He certainly didn’t after dark, we were watching too closely. And the neighbour says he didn’t see an
yone cycle away during the afternoon. The neighbour’s an invalid, sits at the window all day.”

  “Did Jensen have a bicycle?”

  “Oh, yes – that was his regular means of transport – got his initials on it, in green paint.”

  “Have you looked for the bicycle?” demanded Gideon.

  “You bet your life we have. It’s not at his home, nor at the Youth Club he goes to some nights. The one place it could be is behind Mill Lane. How about a general search for stolen bicycles in the area – if we went to Jackie’s to find out if any of their employees had lost bicycles lately we could go and look in the cycle sheds behind Jackie Spratt’s place,” Lemaitre suggested.

  “Good idea,” approved Gideon.

  “Okay, I’ll get to it.” There was a slight pause, before Lemaitre went on: “Still taking it on the chin for us poor slobs who can’t do our jobs, I notice. At least you got your picture in the paper!”

  Gideon rang off.

  He spent the next hour drafting his notes for the Ministry of Power and the industrialists, then sent for Sabrina Sale. She made no reference to the previous evening, looked if anything even more prim, and worked at the same high speed. Gideon gave her a bundle of correspondence, including his notes.

  “Let me have this back as soon as possible this afternoon,” he said. “Let me know when you’re coming, too – I’ll make sure the window’s shut.”

  She smiled pleasantly as she went out.

  He worked solidly through reports until one o’clock, expected but didn’t receive a call from Scott-Marie for details of the Morrison shooting case, had a sandwich lunch and coffee sent up from the canteen, and at two o’clock precisely, expected Piluski.

  And at two o’clock precisely, Piluski came in.

  There was something intense about this man, about his deeply grooved face, and at this moment there was also a hint of satisfaction. He had seldom been in direct liaison with Gideon but now accepted the novelty of the situation without fuss, as a man superbly sure of himself, completely self-confident.

  “We’ve started tackling the problem from the top,” Gideon said, without preamble. “How have you been getting on from the bottom?”

  “Would you like the general picture or the conclusion first, sir?” asked Piluski.

  “The conclusion,” Gideon answered.

  “It is organised sabotage. It is done by various people, none of them yet known, who know exactly what they’re doing. There are a lot of power stations in London which feed the current straight out to the consumers instead of going through the grid – and that’s where most of the trouble’s been. Most of the security men I’ve talked to see it entirely as a local problem – the theories go from a form of vandalism to a way of forcing overtime so as to get more pay, but one, at the New Bridge Station, has been doing some research on his own – he doesn’t like what’s going on at all.”

  “He’s our man then,” said Gideon. “What’s his name?”

  “Boyd – John Boyd.”

  “The name vaguely rings a bell,” Gideon said.

  “He was with the Kenyan Police Force for a while, was retired after independence and took a job with the General Electricity Generating Board,” replied Piluski. “He was at the Yard on a month’s course, when in the Kenya Force. What worries him most is the serious effect this could have in winter. It’s bad enough now, but there’s plenty of electricity in the grid, no problem in switching over once the need’s obvious. It’s that which convinces him that it’s skilfully organised, sir. Do you mind if I suggest you go to see him? You’ll see what he’s driving at much more easily if you’re on the spot.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Power House

  Along the river, between West Ham and East Ham, thickly populated districts of London where the rows of small houses in drab narrow streets were dotted with big blocks of flats, rising seven or eight stories high, was the New Bridge Power Station. Beyond it, nearer the outskirts of London, was the mass of industrial buildings ranged about East Ham, Barking and Dagenham, where the giant Ford, company sprawled close to the river. Further out still were the mud flats of the Thames Estuary, the Essex marshes, the North Sea and Europe, but here among this conglomeration of homes and factories old and new, it was hard to believe that there was any world except the crowded streets and the narrow, straggling shopping centres. Here, a big proportion of London’s industry depended on electric power for its life. So the people depended on it, too. Gas could feed boilers, domestic cookers, refrigerators; could heat water, could serve in a hundred ways, and so could oil. But even these fuels depended on electricity, to switch on and switch off valves and supplies, to start a flame or to dowse it.

  Gideon, at half-past ten next morning, sat with Piluski in the back of the big Humber, driven by the man who had taken him to Richmond and Wimbledon Common two days before. Perhaps the contrast with those green and pleasant places was why this area depressed him. He had never worked here, except as relief many years ago, and if there was a part of London that he didn’t know well, it was this.

  At the end of a long, straight street with houses on either side, he caught his first glimpse of New Bridge Power Station. Two streets further along, Piluski said to the driver: “Turn here.”

  This was another, almost identical street, and even fitful sunlight and the tapestry of shadows could not give it beauty. Yet as they drove along very warily, for toddlers by the dozen played on the narrow pavements and older children cycled precariously between kerb and road, Gideon caught glimpses of beauty. Flowers, in windows; here and there, a house freshly painted; on the window sills of the first floors, flower boxes which caught the sun and made rainbows of their own. Brass letter boxes and knockers were brightly polished, steps to the front doors newly whitened. By the time he reached the power station the sense of depression had gone.

  New Bridge Station was neither new nor old. It was a little older than Battersea, with which Gideon was so familiar, and much newer than Lots Road. But it was more like Lots Road to look at, tall brick walls dark from its own smoke, the smoke of factory stacks and tens of thousands of tiny chimneys fed, even today, by hard fuel which sent its smuts and smog into the frowning skies.

  Big notices on a wall said: NO PARKING. SLOW! DANGER. DON’T BLOCK. The car reached the wall and turned left, opposite high green gates wide open. SLOW! was painted in huge letters on the gates, and KEEP OUT UNLESS ON BUSINESS only a little smaller. A man in uniform rather like the Port of London Authority Police stopped the car, saluted, and looked in.

  “Commander Gideon for Captain Boyd,” said Piluski.

  “Oh, yes, sir. May I see your pass, please?” Piluski showed a green card. “Thank you. If you go between the two big buildings to the far end, you’ll find an officer who will help you.”

  “Thanks,” Piluski said. As he sat back, he remarked: “The building on the right is the generating station, on the other side are water storage tanks and boilers.”

  There was a deep, throbbing noise, much more noticeable than it had been from the gates, apparently coming from the generating shed. As they drove nearer, it became louder still. At the far end a big double door was open, and quite suddenly noise seemed to possess Gideon’s whole body, throbbing smote his ears and seemed to quiver through every vein and nerve. Another man in uniform, sitting at a land of sentry box, stood up as they approached.

  “Oh, yes, gentlemen, Captain Boyd is expecting you. Parking space seventeen, please, and then a messenger will take you to the Captain’s office.”

  Captain Boyd certainly had the situation under control.

  As they got out of the car, the noise undoubtedly became greater, and the ground under their feet seemed to shake. Gideon looked about him, seeing the high, grimy buildings, the mass of parked cars, a few workmen moving about, some briskly, some far too casually. There was a sta
ircase leading to the side of the generating shed, and the door at the top opened as Gideon looked up. A man appeared. He was in his forties, Gideon judged, big and powerful, and he moved very decisively down the steps. He wore a beige-coloured suit which was somehow not quite right in this home of blacks and greys, dark greens and grimy whites. The sun caught his close-cropped, very fair hair.

  “There’s Boyd,” Piluski said.

  “I’ll be at least an hour,” Gideon said to the driver. “Get yourself some coffee.” He moved off with Piluski as Captain Boyd reached the foot of the steps. Boyd was perhaps an inch taller than he, Gideon, and there wasn’t much in it for breadth. Piluski was a pygmy compared with both men.

  “Commander Gideon?” Boyd had a big, bony hand, a firm but not a crushing handshake. “I’m very glad to see you.” He had hazel eyes flecked with tawny brown; quite remarkable eyes. His features were craggy, and his skin shone, as if he had been freshly shaved.

  “Glad to see you, Captain Boyd. Will you lead the way?”

  Boyd turned and went up very quickly. Gideon followed a little more sedately, looking down on a row of green-painted oil tanks, each one of which probably held a thousand gallons; at huge stacks of coal; at hundreds, probably thousands, of barrels, all holding fuel oil of some kind. Two huge stacks rose high above their heads.

  The drumming noise grew louder, until Boyd opened the door at the top, and Gideon stepped through.

  It was like stepping into the eye of a hurricane. All about them was a fury of noise, a controlled howling, whining din; yet there was stillness. Down on the right, beyond a guard rail which reached shoulder height, were the enormous turbines, painted bright orange, utterly still and yet creating a strange impression of movement as well as power. Here and there stood white-smocked men, most of them with clip-boards in their hands, while a few others in blue boiler suits sauntered about. Beyond the generators was a huge wall of fuses, each as big as a telephone, each shiny white. Above this and in the spider-like criss-cross of steel girders in the roof, were neon lights, most of them giving a fair imitation of daylight.