by John Creasey
Roger ordered a cup of tea, and took it to Hargreaves’ table.
He sat down.
Hargreaves put his knife and fork down, and slid his right hand towards his pocket. Behind him, Sloan moved slowly.
“No need to crowd me,” Hargreaves said, thinly.
“Two’s not a crowd,” Roger said. “Mind telling me why you went to Micky Lamb this afternoon?”
Hargreaves had bright little brown eyes. His hand crept into his pocket, and his whole body tensed.
“My business,” he said. “Who’re you?”
“I’m a police-officer, and—”
Hargreaves snatched his hand from his pocket, with a gun in it. Sloan swung his arm and caught the youth a ringing flat-handed blow on the side of the face. The gun barked. A girl behind the counter screamed, another clung to her companion.
Hargreaves crashed to the floor, out of his chair, while Roger took his gun, and Sloan slipped on the handcuffs.
It was all over in three minutes.
There was a silent journey to the Yard.
They took the prisoner to a waiting room. He started off with a show of bravado, but it didn’t last for long. Within ten minutes he was confessing that he had planned to break into a house that night, that he had got the gun from Micky Lamb, and knew others who often did the same. He worked for himself. He only stole money; wouldn’t have anything to do with jewellery.
He said that he had never heard of Ruth Linder.
The call for the other youthful ‘customers’ to be picked up went out as soon as Roger finished questioning Hargreaves. Squad cars quickly rounded them all up. Only one managed to get at his gun in time to use it, and he did no damage. Three were insolent and refused to talk; the others admitted that they had got the guns from Micky Lamb. By nine o’clock that night Roger knew how many crimes they had committed. Most of them stole only cash; a few took jewels. Micky Lamb bought these, at a low price, and expected a cut in the cash yield. He supplied guns, coshes, knuckle-dusters – any kind of weapon.
They always had to return these next day.
There was a loosely organised gang, with Lamb the leader who took no active part, but often told the youths of likely places to burgle.
There was a form of oath of secrecy; and Lamb held them down by threats of what would happen to them if they squealed. One or two, it was found, had been badly beaten up after showing signs of revolt.
None of the prisoners admitted having heard of Ruth Linder.
All of them showed something of the bitterness and the warped thinking of Gedd and the youth Randall, who had shot Hann-Gorlay. It was a mixture of bravado and callousness, which Lamb had traded on.
“It isn’t the big thing,” Roger said to Sloan.
“We agree about that, anyhow,” Sloan said dryly. “Supports your argument, doesn’t it? That it’s not a closely integrated gang.”
“More or less,” Roger agreed.
“I think that half of ’em would have cut out carrying guns if they’d the thought they might meet a copper with one.”
Roger forced a grin. “The other half would become more deadly, but we won’t argue.”
“Going to pick Lamb up?” Sloan asked; and obviously thought they should.
Roger said: “Let’s see what he does when he realises that he isn’t going to get any of his guns back tomorrow. And let’s see who else contacts him.”
“All right,” said Sloan, as if grudging his acquiescence.
“There’s one thing—we’ve picked up nine of the brutes. That ought to give Brammer and the Citizens’ League a smack in the eye. I can’t see many jobs being done tonight, either.”
Roger didn’t answer.
“Can you?”
Roger said: “Look at it this way, Bill. Every man we picked up lives in the southwest. There are a lot more districts of London. We could get a crop of trouble in those others. We’ll alert all the Divisions outside of the southwest. If this is coordinated in any way, there’ll be hell to pay in those districts tonight.”
There were several burglaries in which the crooks were armed; one policeman, two night watchmen and a taxi driver were badly injured, two girls at a cinema pay-box in the East End of London were coshed and a commissionaire badly injured in another raid. There were several more that night than on average.
Two of the crooks were caught.
One was an older man than the youths the police had found before. The other was no more than twenty.
Neither of them admitted knowing Ruth Linder or Micky Lamb. The older man had a gun which he had picked up just after the war – a revolver. The youth had a .32 automatic. He said nothing, but Roger had his movements traced, and discovered that he often visited a shopkeeper in Bethnal Green, not far from Ruth’s shop in the Mile End Road.
Under sharp questioning, the youth admitted that he got his gun from there.
When Roger had been called out to Putney, weeks ago, he had felt the sudden tension when the Yard had been geared to make a tremendous effort. He felt the same tension now – but the effort would be greater, and the stakes higher. Little had been said to anyone, but everyone seemed to sense that a crisis was coming – and that developments were beginning to favour the police.
With nine men due to appear before a magistrate that day, Roger had the shop in Bethnal Green covered. It was owned by a little man named Rickett, who ran a small jeweller’s business, and whose reputation was excellent – nothing at all was known against him. But during the night the same facts had been discovered about Rickett as about Micky Lamb. He had a lot of young fellows among his customers – and several had called the previous afternoon and evening, many more than usual.
From ten past nine onwards, the youths went back to the shop.
None stayed long.
Each was followed, and as soon as he was out of sight of Rickett’s shop was detained. Each was shocked into silence.
The last called a little after eleven o’clock. Nothing else happened for an hour.
Roger and Sloan, who had been watching for the past two hours from a window in a fiat opposite, went into the shop. Rickett was by himself. The shop was gloomy, nothing like so clean and attractive as that of Micky Lamb.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” Rickett was a podge of a man, with a pale face and porcine eyes buried beneath the flesh. He smiled at them. He had damp lips, and spread his hands. “How can I help you?”
“You’ve had it, Rickett,” Roger said. “We’ve come for the guns.”
“I—don’t understand you, sir, I—”
“And everything else they’ve brought back to you this morning,” Roger said, and lifted a flap in the counter. “Mind if we come through?”
“Yes, I do mind! I protest—”
“Tell the beak about it,” Roger said.
They found a small arsenal in a packing case behind the shop. There were twenty-nine automatic pistols, mostly .32’s, and dozens of coshes, knuckle-dusters and knives. In a safe they found a lot of stolen jewellery, some in its setting, some taken out. There was a small furnace oven for melting down gold.
Roger brought one of the youths – the one most likely to crack – and questioned him in Rickett’s presence. Between them, they told the same story as of Micky Lamb. Rickett ran a loose organization, youths formed a kind of secret society, the weak ones were beaten up. Another thing came out: any youth caught by the police had ready a phony story about where he’d got his weapons.
“Do you work with Micky Lamb of Chelsea?” Roger asked Rickett.
“Micky who?”
“Lamb.”
“I have never heard of such a man,” Rickett said earnestly. “I wouldn’t have started all this, but I had to. I—”
Roger grinned, sceptically.
“But it’s true! The bitch of a woman …”
“What woman?” Roger flashed.
“She has been visiting me for two years now,” Rickett told him viciously. “Always by night, Chief Inspector
, so I can never see her face. She—she blackmailed me—”
“How?”
“She knew I sometimes bought a few jewels to help some poor fellow out,” Rickett muttered. “Now I have to give her a share of my proceeds, West. She started the gun business, made me get the kids together. If I’d refused she would have given me away.”
Rickett swore that he didn’t know who the young woman was. He knew Ruth Linder, and didn’t think it was her – but couldn’t be sure.
“Where did you get your guns?” Roger was still maintaining pressure.
“Oh, I bought one here, one there,” said Rickett. He licked his lips.’
“Why always .32’s?”
“They’re easy to carry, and it’s easier to get ammunition for one size,” Rickett said.
That was reasonable.
“We’ll take him to Cannon Row, Bill,” Roger said.
Half an hour later he was back at his office.
It was going well; the first real crack had been made. The statements were fitting in with his own theories, which always helped. The story of the blackmailing woman sounded exactly what he wanted to hear: could point another finger at Ruth. He’d tackle Lamb, soon; or else Sloan would go crazy.
He wished he and Sloan weren’t differing so much.
He could see Sloan’s point of view; it was simply a matter of disagreement. Sloan believed in the lash, and would feel safer if he carried a gun. Who could blame him? A policeman was a policeman, not a social reformer.
The telephone bell rang.
“Sergeant Peel for you, sir,” the operator said.
Peel was watching Micky Lamb’s shop.
“Put him through.” Roger was eager. “Hallo … hallo, Jim. Any luck!”
“Pauline Weston’s just gone in to see Lamb,” Peel said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Night Of Terror
Pauline’s now black Morris Minor was parked outside Micky Lamb’s shop.
Roger drove past, with Sloan beside him. Peel was at a comer not far along the street, and other police were watching. Peel came up as they turned the corner and slowed down. His eyes were shiny with excitement. The feeling that they were nearing the end was in him as it was in most of them – a kind of repressed excitement. “She’s still there.”
“Anyone else with them?” asked Roger.
“No—expect anyone else?”
“I’d like to be sure,” Roger said. “When Pauline leaves, you follow her. I’ll go and see Micky.”
Peel didn’t actually say it, but looked as if he thought: “Not before it’s time.”
Peel moved away from the car and glanced along the street. Roger and Peel got out. They hadn’t been there for more than five minutes before Brammer’s girlfriend left the second-hand shop. She looked pale – but, then, she always did. She did not look about her, or appear to wonder whether she was watched; was perfectly self-possessed.
Peel was soon after her, in an MG.
“Now for Micky,” Sloan said.
Roger grinned. “At last!”
They knew what Micky Lamb was like – a tall, aristocratic-looking man with iron-grey hair, a courtly manner, and extremely good looks. He was known as something of a dandy.
He was in the shop with his wife, a plump, middle-aged woman, when Roger and Sloan entered. He glanced at them quickly, and Roger sensed that he had recognised them as police. He smiled at them in a way which was obviously meant to lull their suspicions, then moved towards the back of the shop, with a word of apology, and: “Come and see what I have here, my dear?”
His wife followed him.
Roger waited until they had both disappeared, then went after them.
Micky Lamb was hurrying towards a door which led into a back yard, and an alley through which anyone could reach the main road.
“I shouldn’t, Lamb,” Roger said. “We want a little chat with you.”
Lamb was in the doorway. The yard, and the illusion of freedom, were in front of him. His right hand was at his pocket. There was another, curious illusion; that the man was in fact much younger than his years. He reminded Roger of all the youths who had been arrested – had the same defiant, sneering manner.
“Don’t be a fool,” Roger went on. “The shop is covered, back and front.”
“Mickey, listen.” The plump woman’s voice was hoarse and her eyes were frightened, as if the years had put fear into her. “Micky, don’t do anything silly; don’t try to get away.”
Roger drew nearer. His gun was handy but he didn’t take it out. Sloan would expect him to – but oddly, it was with Sloan that he felt that he had to handle this without one.
Micky Lamb’s hand bunched in his pocket.
“If you use your gun,” Roger said, “you’ll have a lot longer sentence.” He held out his hand. “Give it to me.”
Micky didn’t speak.
“Micky,” the woman repeated, in that entreating voice, “don’t ask for trouble, dear; don’t—” She caught her breath.
A Chelsea man in uniform was turning into the yard.
There was a moment of tension, when it looked as if Micky Lamb might try to shoot his way free. Roger still kept away from his own gun, still held his hands out; but he watched the bunched fist, ready to fling himself to one side.
“Roger, use—” Sloan began.
“Micky—” gasped the woman.
“Stop your damned bleating,” Micky Lamb said.
He moistened his lips, then took his hand out of his pocket – empty. In a flash, Roger and Sloan were alongside him.
Sloan took his gun out.
“That was sensible,” Roger said. He felt vindicated; foolish. “Take it easy, Mrs Lamb.” He nodded to the Chelsea man to look after her. “Where do you keep the other stuff, Lamb?”
Lamb said: “Who squealed?”
“We reached you in the end. We always catch up.”
“Who squealed?” asked Lamb again.
“Let’s talk about it later,” Roger said easily. “I’ve a search warrant, but you can save me a lot of trouble. Where’s the stuff—the arsenal?”
“To hell with you,” Lamb growled.
It was more bravado than anything else. The veneer of culture wasn’t very thick; and his power of resistance was weak. He led the way upstairs. The store of guns, coshes and knuckle-dusters were kept in an old oak coffer beneath his bedroom window. There was as much stuff as there had been at Rickett’s place.
There was more stolen jewellery.
“Let’s get this stuff checked as soon as we can,” Roger said to Sloan. “See if it ties up with any of the stuff found at Ruth’s place.” This was while Micky Lamb was watching them at work. “Know Ruth Linder Lamb?”
Lamb didn’t speak.
“Did you know Uncle Benny?”
“Everyone knew Uncle Benny,” Lamb said.
“Are you working with Ruth?”
Lamb didn’t speak.
“Or Pauline?” Roger asked, smoothly.
Micky Lamb said viciously: “I don’t know who she is. She comes here by night, hides her face—and puts the black on me. She made me start the arms racket, she—”
“Was it Pauline Weston? The girl who was here just now?”
Lamb looked startled.
“I—I don’t know. She’s often here as a customer, but the other one comes at night. She discovered I—I fenced a bit. From then on I was under her thumb.”
“And liking it,” growled Roger.
Lamb said again: “Who squealed, West?”
“Don’t let it worry you—we just got round to you. It took us too long—”
“Was it Brammer?” Lamb spat at him.
Lamb was held at Cannon Row. He refused to make a statement, but would probably change his mind. His wife was being questioned while Roger went to his own office at the Yard to look at anything which had come in.
The telephone rang while he was scanning reports.
“West speaking.”
“It’s Peel here,” Peel said, and he sounded vitriolic. “I’ve lost Pauline, Roger. She meant to give me the slip, and did it.”
“I’ll put a call out for sweet Pauline,” Roger said softly.
An hour later he pulled his car up outside the Fleet Street offices of the Courier, but didn’t get out immediately. He lit a cigarette. Two plain-clothes men, who had come on ahead of him, nodded as they passed.
He drew at the cigarette.
He could still remember the venom with which Lamb had flung out that question: ‘Was it Brammer?’ Not long before, Pauline Weston had talked to Lamb, and then driven off in the car which had been used in Roger’s kidnapping.
Ruth Linder had accused Brammer of stirring up the trouble.
The one thing which cut across the theory that Brammer was in it, if not behind it, was the fact that he had talked of Pauline’s once-red Morris Minor. For the rest, Brammer fitted. If Brammer were behind, or even associated with a lot of brutal young criminals, it would have been easy for one of them to have put the stolen jewels in Ruth’s room. Brammer could have fixed it, but – why? The obvious argument against it, the thing which made it appear illogical, was the fact that Brammer was more responsible than anyone else for the uprising against the crimes of violence.
But if he wanted to make the task of the police almost impossible, surely this was a way: the League, any corps of Vigilantes, would incite the criminals to greater violence; give the police a fantastic task.
Logic mattered; but Lamb’s venom when he had spat out that question seemed to matter just as much.
‘Was it Brammer?’
Roger got out of the car, dropped his cigarette and stamped it out, and went into the main entrance of the Courier. It was a palatial place of shiny walnut veneer and chromium furniture and fittings and four lifts.
Brammer’s office was on the third floor.
Roger didn’t ask for Brammer, but went straight to the office. He didn’t want to give the man a moment’s warning. He wasn’t sure that it was the time to accuse Brammer. He wasn’t sure about anything. Ruth was under charge but free – and if she were guilty, responsible for a blunder that it was hard to believe she had really committed. Over-confidence might explain the jewels at the flat, but Roger pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind.