by John Creasey
“How—ah—how long have you known him?” he asked. He pictured the sallow, handsome face of the youth who had been in the dock and remembered how impressed he had been, how sorry he had felt for the boy.
“A few weeks,” said Maisie.
“How much did he pay in all?”
“A hundred for me and a hundred each for the others,” Maisie answered.
“Did you know what the charge would be?”
“We knew we were to say he had been with us that evening during those hours. Later when we heard what he’d done, we thought it was a great joke at first. Mario loves the guitar, and can’t bear to get even a scratch on it—” She gave a hollow laugh. “We didn’t know it was going to be so serious,” she went on. “Even I wouldn’t have agreed if I’d known there would be a murder charge. Or anyhow,” she went on with a flash of honesty, “I would have wanted at least five hundred pounds.”
“Why do you need the money?” Roger demanded.
“That’s nothing to do with the police or anyone,” Maisie retorted, so tight-lipped that he was quite sure that it would be a waste of time forcing the question. “I need a thousand, and I’m halfway there. That’s all you have to know.”
“What about the hundred pounds from the photographer yesterday?” asked Roger.
“That would have been a big help,” she admitted. “I’d have had only four hundred to go. You don’t happen to know anyone who will give or lend me five hundred quid, do you?” She was half-joking, but her eyes betrayed the fact that she was half-serious, too.
“Can’t Rachel Warrender help?” asked Roger.
There was no need for him to rub in the fact that earlier today she had talked so glowingly of Rachel, and this evening had had that violent quarrel with her. He saw Maisie frown, saw her lips tighten, and wondered whether he would get any kind of response.
At last, she said, “No.”
“Why did you quarrel tonight?”
Maisie closed her eyes, and seemed to force each word out with an effort.
“I told her I’d lied,” she said.
“You told Rachel Warrender?”
“Yes.”
“So she thought you were telling the truth in court?”
Maisie looked resentful and it was a long time before she responded, still as if she were making a great effort.
“Yes. After the police charged him, Rapelli telephoned her and asked her to help him.” Maisie took another cigarette and it quivered between her lips as Roger held the flame for her, then went on huskily, “She told him she wouldn’t at first, but then she changed her mind and came over to my place and questioned all of us. She hadn’t the slightest idea we were lying. We—er—told her all four of us were having fun and games in bed, and she was pretty disgusted, but she was certainly fooled.”
“I see,” said Roger. “Well, it was quite an alibi, even if it was phoney. Tell me, do you ever disport yourselves four to a bed?”
She threw back her head and laughed with surprising heartiness as she replied, “It has been known! We have to be hopped up, and once we are, then inhibitions go out of the window, orgies come in at the door! I think you have to be a pretty wild person, wild in sexual life, I mean, to start it, but once you do—” She broke off, letting smoke drift up past her face and considering him through it; it gave a touch of mystery and of greater sophistication to her expression. “Handsome,” she went on, still with a hint of laughter in her voice, “you’re shocked, aren’t you?”
Roger pursed his lips.
“You are,” she insisted. “I can sense it. My, my, what innocents our policemen are! No wonder so many criminals can get away with murder.” She laughed again. “We’re really quite mild, you should visit some of the Soho and Chelsea orgy-parties!”
“We do,” said Roger drily. “When we raid them. So Rapelli was so anxious to escape from the charge that he paid out two hundred pounds for you all to lie for him. How well do you know him?”
“I’ve had a night or two out with him,” Maisie answered. “You have to admit he’s a handsome type, and although he may not look it, I can tell you he’s quite a man!”
“Oh, I admit it!” said Roger. “So he paid you and the others in advance to lie, and you told Rachel you were telling the truth, she believed you and thought, with your evidence, she could get Rapelli off. Thanks, Maisie. I’ll have a little talk with him soon. Where does Fogarty come in on this?”
“Fogarty is quite a man, too,” she stated.
“And you,” said Roger, “are quite a woman.”
“That’s right,” said Maisie. “Sexual or multi-sexual or whatever the psychoanalysts call it. Did you see The Man From La Mancha?” When Roger nodded, she threw back her head, and, to Roger’s astonishment, burst into one of the songs from the show. She had a full, ringing voice and the acoustics of the cell block suited it perfectly. “One pair of arms is like another, I don’t know why, or who’s to blame. “I’ll go with you or with your brother. “It’s all the same.”
Then she stood up and with a lift of head and surge of bosom she reached a crescendo with a purity of note which made the man with them drop his ballpoint pen, brought two policemen to the foot of the cell steps and several other prisoners to the bars of their cages to hear although they could not see.
“ They ’ re all the same . . .”
The notes echoed and re-echoed so loudly that it almost seemed as if she were still singing. Then she dropped her hands and covered her eyes with one hand, groping for her chair with the other. The last echoes faded.
“That’s me,” she said, hoarsely.
“Maisie,” asked Roger, “do you go from man to man just to make money?”
“That’s right,” she admitted.
“Won’t you tell me why you want the thousand pounds?” he almost pleaded.
“No, I will not.”
“All right.” Roger stood up. “Would you rather stay here for the weekend or would you rather go home?”
He so startled her that she stood back a pace, staring at him, her eyes widening, and for a few moments there was absolute silence in the room. Then, in a taut voice, she asked, “Would you really let me go?”
“Yes. I made the charges and I should proceed with them, but if you undertake to appear in court on Monday morning, you can go home tonight.” When she didn’t answer, he went on, “You don’t have to. I’m giving you a choice.”
In a mumbling voice, she answered at last, “I’d like to go home.”
“Right,” said Roger briskly. “As I live in Chelsea I’ll run you there on my way.” He stood up. “We’d better have a word with the superintendent before we leave.”
Nixon, far too experienced a policeman to show any surprise, went through the formalities of release, and, at Roger’s suggestion, promised to send a patrol car after them.
“Don’t want any more wild charges, do you?” he asked dryly.
Soon, they were on the way, Maisie next to Roger in front of his car, the police car a hundred yards behind. Maisie’s thigh ran warmly against Roger’s on the bench seat of his Morris and he did not know whether it was deliberate or not. She was staring straight ahead, not smoking; she had a pleasant profile; if she were not quite so plump she would be very pretty, he thought.
“Do you know Hamish Campbell?” he asked.
“No.”
“He was the man outside your door this morning.”
“I know—I saw the evening papers by the courtesy of the police! His name and photograph were there. I knew he was at the club where Rapelli hit Verdi over the head.”
“Do you know Pearson, the man who was with him?”
“No.”
“Did you know Verdi, himself?”
“No.”
“Did you know that Rapelli went to this Doon Club?”
“I knew he went to a lot of music clubs and discotheques, he was a nut on pop beat music and erotic dancing. There are a lot of nuts. Let me tell you this, Handsome, bef
ore you drop me—first right at the end here, then first left and the third house along,” she interpolated. “Rapelli and I knew each other but we weren’t in each other’s pockets. I can tell you what he’s like as a lover, but I don’t know anything else about him—not that counts, anyhow.”
Roger made (he two turns, and pulled up outside the house in which Maisie lived, one of several in a short terrace. This part of Chelsea was a strange mixture of architecture; there were a few Tudor cottages, at least one early Georgian house standing in its own grounds, and some early Victorian houses, all mixed with small blocks of modern apartments built on the sites of houses which had been bombed out of existence during the war.
Roger stopped, and leaned across her to open the door. She waited until he touched the handle, then, seizing his arm in a surprisingly tight grip, held it to her bosom. Leaning sideways and imprisoned as he was, his face a little lower than hers, Roger was acutely aware of her breath against his cheek. Maisie leaned forward, her eyes bright and mischievous, her lips parted. Suddenly she bent her head and thrust her lips against his, moving so swiftly that he had no opportunity to turn away. It was several seconds before she drew back, pushed open the car door, and thrust one leg out to the pavement.
“Handsome,” she said. “I promised you the truth and now you know it all. I don’t hate the way I earn my money. I have a very big appetite. I eat men. I could eat you. Come and see me when you’re off duty. Just give me enough time to get nice and tarted up for you. Any time. And I don’t mean as a paying guest, either. I mean just as a guest.”
She got out and slammed the door.
He sat without moving for what must have seemed a long time to the men in the patrol car. He wondered whether they could have seen anything through the rear window of his car, but their headlights had not been on and there was no street lamp near. It didn’t much matter, anyhow. He flicked his lights and almost at once one of the men got out of the car and came hurrying towards him.
“Sir?” The man pushed his head close to the open window.
“I wasn’t able to ask Mr. Nixon before,” Roger said, “but I want you two to watch this house, particularly Miss Dunster, until some men come from the division to keep an eye on it and her. I’ll talk to Mr. Nixon by radio.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Thanks. Goodnight.”
The man’s “goodnight” followed Roger as he began to move off. He drove slowly, turning the corner before calling Nixon and putting through the request which was tantamount to an order. Nixon made a light remark. “Didn’t think you’d let her go for the sake of it, Handsome. I’ll fix it.” Roger grunted and rang off.
Now he had to make a quick decision.
He touched his lips, still slightly tender from the crushing pressure of Maisie’s. He had never known a kiss like it, nor such a body, so demanding and yet so yielding.
It was lucky he was a staid old married man, he thought, smiling to himself and dismissing Maisie from his mind. There were three things he could do.
First, go back to Janet. She would be glad to see him, he felt certain, and anxious to make amends.
Second, go and question Rapelli. It was late and Rapelli, even if not asleep, would be tired and therefore more likely to talk. And if Rapelli once cracked, then the case was over.
Third, go and see Rachel Warrender, and chance her mood.
He knew that he should go back to Janet, that to force himself to go on working was an example of the excessive attention to duty which so often exasperated her. But if he went back and found that her mood had hardened, it would probably lead to an argument, possibly a near- quarrel which could carry them far into the night.
And he had to be fresh and fit next morning.
Chapter Fourteen
VISITOR
Roger yawned and rubbed his eyes. The truth was that he was in no shape to interview and interrogate anyone, wasn’t alert enough and must not attempt it; there was no emergency, and he was nearer Bell Street than the Yard. So he would go home. As he drove slowly and with extreme care, he found his thoughts roaming at will over the past with Janet. In this part of Chelsea and along the embankment, across the river in Battersea Park and a little further afield, on Clapham Common, they had done most of their courting. He had been at the Chelsea division in those days and Janet had lived in the next borough: Fulham.
She had been so lively, pretty; damn it, beautiful!
As she was beautiful today. If only she would not get so upset!
Her time of life, of course, simply heightened moods which had always existed. In those courting days she had always been acutely disappointed and often angry when he had had to break a date. Several times he had nearly lost her. He gave a twisted smile at the recollection of that, and of jealousy. When a young man was in love as utterly as he had been there was a special kind of torment in being forced to leave one’s beloved with others: knowing another man was playing tennis with her, or taking her home, or to the theatre or pictures.
And—his smile broadened—he remembered the first time he had been compelled to arrest a young woman who had resisted, almost savagely, and then turned all her considerable seductive charm on him, with Janet looking on.
Her voice came out of the past.
“You needn’t have handled her like that . . . You actually seemed to enjoy it!” And for a while there had been tension, with his heart in his boots. It had been touch and go whether they had spent the rest of the evening together. But they had; that was the very evening when they had walked along Bell Street and, as a result, started their married life in the house where they still lived. There had been clashes, all of them—well, most—over the restrictions of his job. But all of these had passed, and if it were true that of recent years the conflicts had lasted for longer periods and tension sometimes dragged on, Janet would come out of the menopause and sooner or later he would retire.
The recollection that he could resign whenever he liked and take a job that would give Janet all she asked came out of the blue. He actually let the wheel wobble for a moment and forced a passing motorist to pull out. The driver glowered. Roger turned into Bell Street, and as he did so a man came out of one of the houses, turned towards King’s Road and hurried away. There was something furtive in his manner, and Roger knew why.
The woman at that house, Natalie Tryon, was miserably unhappy, with a husband with whom she stayed only for her children’s sake. This man was her lover, who visited her whenever her husband was away.
Roger pulled up outside his own house and turned towards the garage, then put on the brakes, appalled at a sudden, devastating thought.
Supposing Janet had a lover!
Supposing she had become so lonely and miserable that she had sought and found consolation.
Wouldn’t that explain her moodiness, her attitudes, her thinking?
Roger sat absolutely rigid, and had been there for three or four minutes, hardly able to think clearly, when a shaft of light appeared from the front door, and then Janet’s silhouette appeared against the porch light.
“Darling! Is that you?”
He made himself call out, “Yes, coming!” Opening the car door, he saw her hurrying towards him. The light from street lamps were soft on her face, and she looked at her best. She moved beautifully, too. Suddenly, she was close to him, and he closed the car door softly, habitually remembering not to wake a neighbour’s baby. As suddenly, he took her in his arms, held her almost too tight for a moment, and then kissed her.
A few moments later, breathless, they drew apart. Neither spoke as they linked arms and turned towards the house, until Janet said, “Will you leave the car out?”
“Yes, it doesn’t matter on these warm nights.”
“I’ll put it away if you like,” she offered.
“No. Leave it.” They reached the porch, still arm in arm. He knew that her mood had changed even more than his, that now she was calm in spirit. He did not know how to tell her what was pa
ssing through his mind, and she saved him the need to say anything.
“You lock up, I’ll make some tea, darling, and we’ll have it in the kitchen. The boys have both gone to bed. I’ll pop up and get into a dressing-gown.”
“Good idea,” he said. He locked and bolted the front door, checked the windows of the sitting and dining rooms, then hesitated. He would be more comfortable in a dressing-gown, too, and especially in slippers. Quickly he went upstairs, and into their room.
He stopped short.
Spread across the bed were open photograph albums, loose snapshots and seaside pictures, and a glance showed that these were all of the days of their courtship and early marriage. None showed the boys, even as babies. The pillows were rucked up and the bedspread had been pulled down. On one pillow was a screwed-up handkerchief. Roger picked it up and found that it was damp; she had obviously been crying. He looked more closely at the albums; there they were at a tennis party, at a dance, with a crowd of young people on the beach: always together, always looking happy.
Roger lost himself in retrospection, now and again thinking: Thank God I came straight back tonight. He lost count of time, until, disturbed by a footfall on the landing, he looked up and saw Janet.
She came in.
“I meant to clear all that up before you came in here.” she said.
“Why, darling?”
She stood a little distance from him, and answered, “It seemed like a kind of blackmail to leave them out!”
“Some blackmail! I’ve been think about those days, too. Remember that buxom blonde I arrested at the tennis club for raiding the dressing rooms?”
“Shall I ever forget her!”
“She wasn’t unlike Maisie Dunster,” he told her. “Only Maisie’s much more attractive.”
“ And seductive?” Janet, quite free from tension now, went on, “Darling, I hate myself when I behave like I did tonight, I really do. No, don’t interrupt.” She put a hand over his lips, and went on with words she had obviously rehearsed over and over again. “I know you have the job to do, I know we’ve had this kind of upset before, I know there are times when I hate the job so much that I could climb on the roof and cry “down with Scotland Yard!”—” She paused, momentarily, a gleam of laughter in her eyes. “But deep down I also know that you love it more than I hate it, that you couldn’t really live without the Yard but I can live with the situation even if I do have to let off steam sometimes. You needn’t worry, you really needn’t. Just—” She broke off again and went on with only a slight change of tone, “Just keep me hopeful with promises of what we’ll do when you do retire. After all, it won’t be more than five years now, and we’ve had twenty-five already, so it isn’t really too long.”