Assassins

by Jim Eldridge

  ‘Very well,’ nodded Shortt. ‘See what you can do.’ He turned to look at Stark. ‘But I’m sure you agree, Chief Inspector, that the best way to stop any such threats from these people – real or imagined – is to catch the perpetrators of these crimes.’

  ‘I do indeed, sir,’ said Stark.

  Stark’s first act on returning to the Yard was to call on Chief Superintendent Benson to report on the meeting, but he learned from Benson’s secretary that he was out for the rest of the day, ‘on important business’.

  Distancing himself from me and anything to do with me to avoid his career being tainted, decided Stark.

  He went to his office, where he found Danvers waiting for him.

  ‘How did it go, sir?’ asked Danvers.

  ‘Exactly as expected when politicians organize anything,’ said Stark. ‘It was a talking shop with everyone covering their own particular areas of responsibility. The one thing everyone agreed on was that it’s up to us to find the killer.’

  ‘So we’re being held responsible?’

  ‘We are the lowest notch on the totem pole, Sergeant. Of course we’re going to be the ones.’

  ‘What do they think of this Hand of Justice organization?’

  ‘Special Branch are sure they don’t actually exist as a viable organization, and they’re going to do their best to discredit them enough so that the general public won’t believe in them either.’

  ‘Do you think they’re right?’

  Stark frowned. ‘I think that any outfit that can stick these leaflets over half of the richer areas of London in a very short space of time, without anyone getting caught doing it, shows coordination and organization. Personally, I wouldn’t rule them out. But then, I’m suspicious of everyone. What’s happened here?’

  ‘Sergeant Watts from Camden Town phoned. He asked if you’d call him as soon as you got in.’

  ‘Did he say if he’d learned anything?’

  Danvers shook his head. ‘He said he’d talk to you.’

  Stark shrugged. ‘Charlie always was a bit tight-mouthed,’ he said. ‘His mantra is “Knowledge is power”.’

  ‘Bacon,’ nodded Danvers.

  ‘Who?’ asked Stark.

  ‘Francis Bacon – 1561 to 1626,’ answered Danvers. ‘From his Sacred Meditations.’

  Stark looked impressed. ‘I must admit, I can’t see Charlie Watts reading Francis Bacon. Pulp thrillers and cowboy books are more in his line. Anyway, let’s see what he’s found.’

  Stark dialled the number and heard Charlie Watts’ voice say, ‘Camden Town police station. Sergeant Watts speaking.’

  ‘DCI Stark here, Sergeant,’ said Stark. ‘My sergeant, Sergeant Danvers, said you called.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Watts enthusiastically. ‘I think we might have something on those blokes who did you over.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We put a discreet tail on Pete Stamp, like you asked, and he’s been seen in close company with a couple of blokes who fit the description: one big, muscular bloke and one small, thin bloke.’

  ‘Have you got names?’

  ‘The big bloke’s called Joe West, the small one’s Eddie Saunders. Ring any bells?’

  ‘They do indeed, Sergeant. Especially Eddie Saunders.’

  ‘Yeah, I thought it might. It’s a long time ago, though.’

  ‘Some people don’t forget.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about them?’

  ‘Pick ’em up. All three of them. On suspicion of attempted murder.’

  ‘Attempted murder? You sure?’

  ‘I am at this moment, and we need something strong to keep them in custody. Do you think you’ll be able to lay hands on them?’

  ‘No problem. We know where they are. I can have them here inside the hour.’

  ‘Fine. In that case, I’ll be along. I’ll bring my sergeant with me so I can introduce him to you. He’s a good bloke; you can trust him. One thing: when you bring them in, put Pete Stamp in a different cell from the other two.’

  ‘You got it,’ said Watts. ‘See you soon, Chief Inspector.’

  As Stark hung up, Danvers burst out, ‘They’ve found them? The men who attacked you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ nodded Stark.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘I’ll tell you in the car on the way to Camden Town,’ said Stark. ‘It’ll be good for you to meet Charlie Watts. He can be a very valuable asset, especially if you want someone to keep an ear to the ground as you move on upwards in this job.’

  ‘You think I will?’ asked Danvers.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ said Stark. ‘And, what’s more, you think so, too.’

  THIRTY

  They took a car from the motor pool, with a driver Stark was unfamiliar with. As they drove north from Scotland Yard, Stark made sure the glass panel between them and the driver was firmly shut before he started recounting the story behind the attack on him, and the reason he was so sure that they’d caught the guilty men.

  ‘It goes back to before the war. To 1910. I was twenty-three years old, and I hadn’t long got into the detective division as a DC. Before that I’d been a uniform with a beat in Camden Town. Charlie Watts was a beat copper out of Camden Town at the same time, too, and wasn’t yet a sergeant. A little girl had been raped and killed. Annie Angel. She was five. Local gossip pointed to it being a tearaway called Wilf Saunders, but we didn’t have any evidence against him.’

  ‘Wilf Saunders? Relation of this Eddie Saunders we’re going to talk to?’

  ‘Wilf was Eddie’s older brother. Wilf was eighteen. Eddie would have been about twelve. Anyway, I went to talk to Wilf Saunders, and he pulled a knife on me. We struggled, and during the struggle the knife went into his throat. Cut the jugular vein. I did my best to save him, but he died.’

  Danvers looked at him, shocked. ‘He died?’

  Stark nodded.

  ‘But … it wasn’t your fault!’

  ‘That was what the enquiry said,’ Stark nodded. ‘They even gave me a commendation. But Eddie wasn’t convinced it was an accident. I remember he came up to me after the inquest and shouted at me: “You did Wilf! I’m gonna have you for that!”’

  ‘But that was ten years ago!’

  ‘I know, but for someone like Eddie, that feeling of revenge is something you carry with you for ever.’

  ‘But why attack you now?’

  ‘Maybe because my name got into the papers over these murders, and it provoked him to put his threat into action. Who knows? But I’m sure that Eddie and this Joe West character were the ones. And once I get Pete Stamp talking, we’ll nail them and put them away. And that’s why I need you with me, Sergeant. So that when we question Pete Stamp, you’re there to see that there are no threats from me of physical violence, no coercion. I don’t want some sharp lawyer getting this case thrown out and Eddie walking around free to put my family at risk. Because that’ll be his next target: my son or my parents.’

  As he saw Danvers settle back on the seat, the bewildered expression on his face showing that he was struggling to take in this information about his superior officer, Stark’s mind went back to that time: 1910, a year and a half before he met Susan. When he was still carrying a torch of sorts for Eve Angel, even though she’d been married for seven years to one of his best pals, Ben.

  He remembered he’d told her he loved her once, when she was still Eve Adams, just before she got engaged to Ben Angel. He’d had to have a drink to work up the courage to tell her, and she’d laughed and told him not to be so silly, so he’d made a joke of it, pretended he hadn’t really meant it, just a piece of fun. But he had meant it, and it had broken his heart when Ben and Eve told him they were going to be married, although – again – he’d put a brave face on it, made lots of jokes about it, and had forced himself to smile throughout their wedding.

  There was no doubt that Ben and Eve were happy. Baby Annie had arrived a year later. And for the next five years, Stark had eased his pain by thro
wing himself into work. He’d studied for exams and worked hard, building up a good reputation in the force, and then applied for the detective division.

  DC Paul Stark. That had been in 1910. In that same year, little Annie, then aged five, had vanished. She’d been waiting in the street while Eve had gone back indoors to get something. Eve swore she’d only left Annie alone for two minutes. Maybe three. But when she went out, Annie was gone.

  At first, Eve thought that Annie was playing a joke on her, hiding, or maybe she’d wandered around a corner. After Eve had searched and hunted high and low around the nearby streets, and knocked on neighbours’ doors, the awful truth sank in: Annie was gone.

  Her body was discovered later that day on a patch of waste ground. She’d been raped and stabbed.

  Questions asked suggested that a young man called Wilf Saunders was the most likely. He’d been warned off by other parents to leave their daughters alone. Some little girls reported that he’d offered them sweets to go with him, but none of them had done so. The more questions the police asked, the more the answers pointed to Wilf Saunders. But there was one problem: Wilf claimed he was helping his mum at home all that day, and his mum backed him up in his story.

  The fact that Mrs Saunders had a reputation as a liar and a drunk, and was also fiercely protective of her sons, cut no ice with Stark’s superior officers. Saunders had an alibi; there was nothing that could be done.

  What was the point at which Stark had decided there was something that could be done? He guessed it was when he saw Wilf Saunders’ smirk as he asked him again about this alibi. Yes, it was that smug smirk that had done it.

  Had Stark actually gone in search of Saunders to kill him, knowing that they would never get justice in a court of law? Or had he, as he’d always told himself, just gone to have a private talk with Saunders, man to man, to try to force him into confessing? He knew that Saunders was guilty. Saunders knew he knew. And Saunders knew that there was nothing Stark could do about it.

  Stark closed his eyes to bring the scene to his mind. A hut by the canal where he’d found Saunders. No, not found him; he’d followed him. This hut was Saunders’ private lair, and Saunders had reacted with anger when Stark had pushed open the door to find him. Angry words. Both of them shouting. Who’d struck the first blow?

  I did, Stark told himself. A punch into that smug, self-satisfied face, blood spurting from Saunders’ nose.

  That was when Saunders had produced the knife. Was it the one he’d used to stab little Annie to death?

  Stark remembered Saunders lunging for him, and grabbing Saunders’ arm. Then the struggle, both of them fighting to get hold of the knife, and realizing that this was it; this was the end for whoever lost.

  The knife sliding into Saunders’ neck. The gush of blood.

  Could he have stopped it happening? Could he have disarmed Saunders? Had he really wanted to disarm Saunders?

  The aftermath. The inquest. The enquiry. Exonerated, except in the eyes of the Saunders family. Not that Mr Saunders got very much involved in the condemnation of him; Bill Saunders had never been much of a father, away most of the time. No, the hatred towards him had come from Mrs Saunders and young Eddie.

  ‘You killed our Wilf!’ Both of them had shouted it at him.

  He’d ignored them. The police inquiry into Wilf Saunders’ death cleared him of blame. He was even given a commendation for bravery for tackling a man armed with a knife. On the streets of Camden Town there seemed to be tacit approval for what he’d done. The dangerous thug who pestered their daughters was gone. The streets were a bit safer.

  For Eve and Ben, nothing was good. The death of Wilf Saunders wouldn’t bring their beloved daughter back.

  Eve took to wandering the streets, sometimes in her nightdress, talking to little girls who would have been about Annie’s age, but her appearance – her desperate smile and staring eyes – frightened the girls and they called for their mothers, who chased Eve away. Finally, Eve took Ben’s cut-throat razor one day and slit both her wrists. And then, just to make sure she did the job properly, she slit her throat.

  Ben found her body when he came home from work, and the neighbours talked for days afterwards about the horrific animal howling they heard from the house when he found her.

  That was the end. Ben moved away, unable to cope with the constant memories the area presented to him. Some said he’d gone up north; some said he’d gone to sea.

  Stark had made an attempt to find him, but life caught up with him. He was promoted at work, he met Susan, Stephen was born, and after that there was just looking forward. Although he never forgot what happened, never forgot Eve and Ben, or Wilf Saunders, other things took precedence. And then there came the war, and everything he’d experienced before, all the horrors, were eclipsed during those four years. Wilf Saunders was in the past.

  Until now.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Stark and Danvers sat across the table from Pete Stamp. They were in the same interview room where Stark had questioned Stamp before, but now the atmosphere between them was very different. Stamp was worried, Stark could tell. His confident swagger of their earlier interview had gone; now he was a man brought in for questioning, arrested, trapped. His whole manner was that of someone who was trying to keep his frightened desperation from showing, and failing.

  ‘You see, Pete, we’ve got an issue here,’ said Stark, his tone concerned. ‘As you know, we’ve picked up Eddie Saunders and Joe West, and they tell a very different story to yours. According to them, it wasn’t just that you came up with the idea of telling us that story about the two Irishmen; you were the one who came up with suggesting the attack on me.’

  Stamp shook his head. ‘No, no.’

  ‘Well, that’s where we’ve got a problem, Pete. You see, that’s two against one. Which, when it comes to court, will carry more weight with a jury. Especially when the charge is attempted murder. That’s twenty years inside, hard labour.’

  Stamp stared at Stark and Danvers, horrified. ‘Attempted murder?’ he repeated.

  ‘Assault with a bladed weapon,’ nodded Stark. ‘That’s attempted murder. Stabbing.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that!’ protested Stamp.

  ‘But you admit you made up the story about the Irishmen?’

  ‘No! That was Eddie’s idea!’

  ‘What was Eddie’s idea?’ asked Stark.

  ‘Me saying they was Irish blokes.’

  Stark nodded thoughtfully, his eyes on Stamp the whole time. ‘Maybe you’d better tell us the whole story, from your point of view.’

  ‘It ain’t just my point of view, it’s the truth!’ insisted Stamp. ‘Eddie come to me and said him and Joe were in a bit of bother. They’d had a run in with a bloke and the police might be looking for them. If I went to the police and said I’d seen the two blokes running away, and said they was Irish, that’d let ’em off the hook.’

  ‘And did they tell you who this bloke was they’d had a run-in with?’

  Stamp shook his head. ‘No! If I’d known it was you, Mr Stark, I’d never have done it!’

  Inwardly, Stark smiled to himself at the lie. ‘And the business of seeing them in Crowndale Road …’

  ‘That’s what Eddie told me to say. He said to tell the police I saw these two blokes come running out of Camden Street and into Crowndale Road, and say I heard ’em talking, so that’s how I knew they was Irish.’

  As Stamp was led back to his cell, Charlie Watts put his head into the room and asked, ‘Who do you want next?’

  ‘We’ll have Joe West,’ said Stark.

  Joe West was indeed a big man. Well over six feet tall, wide muscular shoulders, thick arms, and a face that looked as if it had been hit many times, with a flattened nose and thickened ears. A boxer, thought Stark. No, a bare-knuckle prizefighter.

  He sat in the chair, his face grim, scowling at the two detectives.

  ‘The thing is, Joe, there’s a good reason why we’ve broug
ht you in over this assault,’ said Stark quietly, almost apologetically. ‘We’ve got a witness who can identify you. A woman who lives in Camden Street, just round the corner from Plender Street. There’s a street light just outside her house. And she says your cap fell off as you were running past it.’

  ‘My cap never fell off!’ snorted West indignantly. And then he realized what he’d said, and it was as if a wall came down between them: his mouth set in a grim line, his jaw clenched, he looked past them instead of at them, turning on himself. From that moment, if he heard what they said, he showed no sign of it, made no comment of any sort, didn’t even acknowledge their presence.

  ‘So you admit you were in Camden Street with Eddie Saunders on the night in question?’

  No reply.

  ‘Was the purpose of the attack just assault, or was it attempted murder?’

  No reply.

  ‘How long have you known Eddie Saunders?’

  Again, no reply.

  After a further ten minutes of no response of any sort, Joe just sitting rigidly still on his chair, his eyes fixed on a spot in the wall behind and just above Stark and Danvers, Stark got up and went to the door of the interview room. ‘You can take him back to his cell,’ he told the uniformed officer on duty outside. ‘Then bring us Eddie Saunders.’

  After the door had closed on the constable and Joe West, Stark said to Danvers, ‘Right, you take the questioning of Eddie Saunders.’

  ‘Me?’ said Danvers, surprised.

  Stark nodded. ‘It’ll be good experience for you, and it won’t be what Saunders is expecting.’

  The door opened and Saunders was escorted in. Whereas Joe West had been obstinate, like a block of stone on legs, and Pete Stamp had been nervous and apprehensive, Saunders swaggered. He had a cocksure smile on his face. He didn’t wait to be invited to sit; he took hold of the back of the chair and sat himself down on it, then shuffled it around so that he was directly facing Stark, a look of aggressive hatred and a challenge in his eyes.

  ‘Edward Saunders,’ began Danvers, ‘I am Detective Sergeant Danvers and this is Chief Inspector Stark. We have received information that you and Joseph West, in conspiracy with one Peter Stamp, were engaged in an assault on DCI Stark on the evening of the twelfth of October outside a house in Plender Street, Camden Town.’ He looked at Saunders. ‘What do you say to that?’