The Man Who Hated Banks & Other Mysteries
Page 20
Knowing the Superintendent, Baxter thought he would not like to be in that particular prisoner’s shoes. However, the interrogation had appeared to proceed quietly. He could hear the rumble of voices from the upper room, and the only request which had come down had been for a cup of tea. Since the tea had gone up he had heard nothing at all. Taking a soft line to start with, thought Baxter.
It was while he was thinking this that he heard a car coming down the lane. It went past the substation, turned, and came back.
Three men came into the Charge Room. They were all wearing stocking masks. The tall thin man in front had an automatic pistol, an Army issue .455, thought Baxter, who was something of an expert on firearms. The two men behind, who looked to him like typical South Bank toughs, carried shotguns.
“Come away from that telephone,” said the thin man. “Sit over there, on the floor. Behave and you won’t get hurt.”
Educated voice.
Baxter did what he was told. One of the shotgun merchants took post in the street doorway. The thin man, followed, it seemed to him slightly reluctantly, by the second, disappeared upstairs. Baxter watched them go with mixed feelings. The man in the doorway was also nervous. He seemed much more intent on watching the street than the Charge Room. But for his instructions, Baxter would have liked to have made a dive for his legs.
It was while he was thinking about this that there came a single shot from upstairs.
When Mr. Henderson entered the upstairs room he saw, to his surprise, that there was only one man there. It was a bulky, red-faced man, with angry blue eyes, who was sitting on the edge of the table, swinging one leg. He guessed it was Superintendent Browning.
Mr. Henderson said, “I have come to relieve you of your prisoner.”
Browning continued to swing his leg.
“And I’ve no time for argument. If you don’t take me straight to wherever you’re holding him, I shall be forced to shoot you.”
Browning said, without moving, “Your boy friend’s not here. He’s half a mile away by now.”
“You’re lying. He is here.”
“He was here,” said Browning. “But we’ve finished with him. He’s tucked up in bed, in a nice cell at headquarters. He wasn’t very brave.”
Mr. Henderson took a step forward and said, “You damn—”
“Cool it. We didn’t have to lay a finger on him. He spilt all he knew in double quick time. It’s already been typed and signed.”
“Now I know you’re lying. Lying and bluffing. He wouldn’t open his mouth, whatever you did to him. And I still think he’s here. I’ll count down to five. No more. Five—”
“You’re in dead trouble,” said Browning calmly. “All of you. Who’s that character behind you with the rabbit gun? It looks like Banks. Can’t you make him see some sense, Banks? You’re finished. You’re blown. There are forty men round this station now.”
“Four – three—”
“Look out of the window if you don’t believe me.”
Banks took a hesitant step towards the window. At that moment a great many things happened at once. There was a crash of glass from the street. A shotgun went off. Banks grabbed Mr. Henderson by the arm and started to say something. Browning had slid off the table and was coming steadily towards Mr. Henderson, who shook off Banks’s hand. The gun he was holding went off. The next moment the room seemed to be full of policemen.
First in was a massive and unmistakable figure in a tight blue suit.
Detective Chief Superintendent Morrissey said, “That’ll be all for now. Give me that gun.”
Mr. Henderson surrendered his gun without a word. Banks had already done so.
“That really turned out very nice,” said Morrissey. He was sitting on one end of the bed in a cell at Leaman Street Station. Mercer was sitting on the other end. “Tolhurst picked up the worst wound – bang through the upper arm. Cut an artery. Lucky the boys knew what to do or he might have bled to death. Russ got one in the calf. Bull was the best off of the lot – only nicked his sleeve.”
“We were lucky, too,” said Mercer. “Lucky he fired I mean. It’ll add five years to his sentence.”
Morrissey considered the prospect with satisfaction. He said, “Get him up in front of Maxwell or Bligh and he’ll be lucky not to get life. All the same, I never thought we’d draw him out. Did you really believe it was going to work? That he’d come out like a mixture between Sir Galahad and the Lone Ranger to rescue his boy friend.”
“It was a chance,” said Mercer. He sounded very tired. “The only chance there was. He’d got the whole thing so sewn up that we’d never have connected him, in his bijou residence, with the sharp end down here. I don’t believe you’ll do it even now – without Bobby talking. I don’t suppose he has?”
“Not a word – yet,” said Morrissey.
“Love’s a great thing,” said Mercer. He yawned uncontrollably.
“The next point,” said Morrissey, “is what are we going to do with you? I think you’ll have to stand trial with the others. We’ll get you out quietly as soon as the trial’s over. Then I think you ought to go abroad for a bit. Any ideas?”
“Pakistan? Shallini would like to see her family again. Do you think the treasury will stand it?”
“I don’t know whether they will or not,” said Morrissey, “but they bloody well ought to.”
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1979.
THE TERRIBLE MRS. BARKER
MRS. BARKER, WHO STRODE into Inspector Petrella’s office one morning, was a tall, upstanding woman with the carriage of a guardsman. Her age was difficult to guess. Her apple-red cheeks belonged either to extreme youth or extreme old age, but from her thick shock of iron-grey hair he judged her to be the wrong side of fifty. She was followed by Constable Whitty.
“I told her,” said Whitty, “she couldn’t come in without an appointment.”
“That’s right, young man.” She turned to Petrella. “The name’s Barker. Mrs. Barker.”
“I told her—”
“You did your duty.” Mrs. Barker dismissed him with a backward wave, and thrust out a large, red hand with so compelling a gesture that Petrella found himself shaking it. The grip was every bit as strong as his own.
“All right, Whitty,” he said, “she’s got here now. I’d better see her. Sit down, will you?”
Mrs. Barker lowered her weight on to the office chair, which creaked a protest. And as soon as Whitty had closed the door behind him, she turned her light blue eyes on Petrella and said, “I’m being followed.”
“I see,” said Petrella. “Well, I’d better have your full name and address, then.”
“Emmeline Freda Barker,” said the woman. “Maiden name, Postgate. Address, 29, Crayborne Street. Six of them.”
“Six?”
“Following me,” said Mrs. Barker. “Four men and two women. One of the men has lost an ear. There’s a bit of it left. It looks as if it’s been bitten off.”
Petrella got up and moved across to the window. Gabriel Street was not empty, but there was no one in it whose presence he could not account for.
“I don’t think they’ve followed you here,” he said.
“They wouldn’t be just standing outside. They’re too clever for that. Or Bunny may have frightened them away. He gets rid of them for me sometimes.”
“Bunny?”
“That’s what I call him. He’s my boy. Of course, I rely on him a lot. And I’ve got plenty of friends, too. There’s nothing wrong with my disposition.”
“Certainly not,” said Petrella.
“But Bunny’s the only one I can really rely on. I’m afraid he’ll find himself a girl some day, and then, of course, he won’t be able to look after me. To tell you the honest truth, I sometimes wonder if he isn’t a bit soft. I mean, you’d have to be soft to tag around all day after a woman like me, when half the girls you meet would give their eyes for you, now wouldn’t you?”
Petrella felt he had to
concede that one. Also, he had a lot of work to do, so he reached for the bell under his desk.
“Oh, Wilmot,” he said. “This is Mrs. Barker. She has an interesting story to tell us. I’ll get her to tell it to you, as I’ve got to be off now. You can use my room.”
He spent the rest of the morning pursuing some inquiries into a case of self-inflicted arson, and had something to eat at a quick-lunch counter with a man who had once been a cat burglar, but had lost his nerve on the roof of a four-storey house, and been rescued by the fire brigade, a blow to his pride which had caused him to abandon crime and become an informer.
At three o’clock he got back to his office and found an indignant Wilmot. Even in uniform Wilmot had never looked much like a policeman. In plain clothes, the resemblance to a teddy boy was startling. Nevertheless, Petrella knew that quite a useful brain functioned under that unspeakable haircut.
“How did you get on?” asked Petrella.
“Fine,” said Wilmot. “Fine. I’ve got it all here. Six pages of it.”
“How long did it last?”
“An hour and a half, with me,” said Wilmot. “Then I was called out. Luckily Sergeant Shoesmith came along then. He’s got some more. She’s followed round by six of them. Night and day.
“One of them’s lost an ear. And another is coffee-coloured, but he’s got six golden teeth. They never leave her. But they’re crafty. They keep out of sight almost all the time. And when they crowd her too much, she sends her Bunny after them. He’s quite a boy, her Bunny. He soon chases ’em away.”
Wilmot looked with distaste at the six pages of ink-stained foolscap. He hated writing. “She’s cracked, ent she?”
“Yes. Acute persecution mania. Not uncommon.”
“If she’s cracked, why did you let her waste my morning?”
“I thought it’d be a useful experience for you,” said Petrella.
It was a week later that Wilmot said, “I saw our girlfriend again last night.”
“You saw who?”
“Ma Barker. She was eating in Dan’s Place. That’s a joint I use sometimes down Water Street. And I’ll tell you a funny thing.”
“No. Let me guess,” said Petrella. “She was sharing a table with a handsome boy called Bunny.”
“She was all by herself. I kept away. I didn’t want her coming over and telling me a lot more stuff. And when I’d finished, I hung back a bit and let her get off first.”
“Very wise,” said Petrella. “Most persecution maniacs have a strong mother complex. You’d be meat and drink to her.”
“That’s not half of it. A minute later another man – I hadn’t seen him before – he must have been keeping out of sight, too – he got up and went out without paying his bill.”
“I bet that upset Dan.”
“Dan had seen him all right. If this boy had been walking out without paying, Dan wouldn’t have been upset. He’d have thrown the cash register at him. But I guessed he’d paid his bill before. And that looked like he might have been waiting for Mrs. Barker to move.”
Petrella said, “In those places you usually pay when you get your stuff. There’s not much in all that.”
“Not taken by itself, there isn’t,” agreed Wilmot. “The only thing was, I got a look at this boy when he was going out. Coffee-coloured, and a mouthful of gold teeth.”
Petrella considered the matter. He did not underrate Wilmot’s detective ability, though it was more instinctive than logical. On the other hand, there were thousands of brown men, West Indians, East Indians, Portuguese, Lascars, and all sorts; particularly in the dockside area round Water Street.
And one in three had gold teeth. They seemed to use their mouths as savings banks.
“You’d better keep your eyes open,” he said.
But it was Petrella himself who saw her next. He had spent the afternoon and evening talking to the Port and Customs Officers about a case of illegal immigration, and was on his way home when he spotted the figure ahead of him. There was no mistaking the grenadierlike set of the shoulders and the martial stride. As he watched her, she turned in at the door of a café.
Petrella gave her three minutes’ start, then went in after her. There was a row of stools at the counter, and Mrs. Barker was planted on one of them. She had ordered herself a mug of coffee and was sitting with her chin in her hands staring at it. Petrella squeezed past, and made for a table near the end of the room.
It was ten minutes before Mrs. Barker stirred a muscle.
Then she straightened up on her stool, grasped the mug of coffee and drained it off, slapped some money on the counter, sprang to her feet, and marched out of the door.
It seemed to Petrella that this spasm of activity was reflected in a series of smaller, reactionary movements inside the room. A man lowered a paper he had been reading. Another got up and walked to the counter. A third, a tall man who had been occupying the table in the far corner, rose to his feet and strolled towards the entrance. The tall man was putting on his hat as he moved, but this did not conceal the fact that all that remained of his right ear was a ragged fringe.
Petrella folded away his own paper and started to move, too. A minute later he was outside. The street was deserted. He stood and listened.
Away to the left he had no difficulty in picking up the drumbeat of Mrs. Barker’s tread. He started to run.
At the end of the road he slowed down so that he could turn the corner without apparent haste. He was wearing rubber-soled shoes, and his method of pursuit was simple but well-tried. You waited until your quarry had turned the corner and then ran after him, trusting to catch up before he could turn another. It was an excellent method, provided the streets were all of roughly the same length.
Ferry Street, at the far end of which Mrs. Barker and her shadower were moving, was a cavern of darkness, walled by high warehouses and lit by infrequent lamps. Petrella waited until the two figures were a dim blur at the far end. Then, having much leeway to make up, he started to sprint. He had gone twenty yards when something picked his ankles from under him.
He flew forward through the air, and came down on the unyielding pavement with a force that drove all the air from his body. At the same moment his head cracked up against something hard, and the blackness was prickled with points of light. There was the salt taste of blood in his mouth, and a pounding in his ears.
He got up on to his hands and knees, and let his head hang. Then he realised that the noise he was hearing was not inside his head. The pounding was someone running.
And as the sound grew faint, he realised, thankfully, that they were running away.
Wilmot, who was on divisional night duty at Gabriel Street, tried to conceal his emotions when Petrella arrived.
Petrella said, “You look at me once more like that, Wilmot, and I’ll have you booked for insubordination. Get some hot water and the first-aid kit. And I haven’t been drinking.”
It took ten minutes to make him look roughly presentable. The palms of both hands were raw where he had come down on them, and there was a bruise like a tomato on the side of his head.
“I thought I’d been coshed,” he said. “But it wasn’t that at all. I hit a fire hydrant when I came down. Luckily not when I was actually diving but when I was rolling.”
“He tripped you?”
“That’s right,” said Petrella. “As neat a trip as you’d ever see at Highbury or the Valley. I flew through the air with the greatest of ease. It was the landing which was the hard part. If he’d wanted to finish me off he could have done it with one hand. I was out. But he ran away.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“I can tell you two things about him,” said Petrella. “I can tell you what kind of cigarettes he smokes. I found fag-ends in the doorway where he’d been standing. And he’d been there half an hour at least, because I found a number of them.”
Wilmot thought this over in silence. Then he said, “So you think Ma Barker—” and stopped.
“But why?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” said Petrella. “We’re going to do some work. By which I mean you, not me. I’ve stuck my neck out too far already. You can have Baldock to help you. Start by getting a candid camera shot of the lady, have it blown up and sent to Central for checking. She might have a record. If not—”
“I know where she lives,” said Wilmot. “The woman who keeps the house is a friend of the aunt of the girl I’m going with. She’s a great talker.”
“Which is?”
“All three of ’em, actually,” said Wilmot.
A week had gone, and Petrella was beginning to be able to handle a knife and fork without actual discomfort, before Wilmot reported.
“She’s clean,” he said. “No record. But that’s more than you could say for her old man.” He paused with the assurance of an actor who has a good line coming.
“Her name’s not really Barker at all. Do you know what? She’s Mrs. Andy Kelling.”
“Good God,” said Petrella.
His profanity was excusable. For Andrew Kelling had been, in his own way, a remarkable man.
When, as sometimes happened, houses in the Shires, residences of stockbrokers in Surrey, or villas of City magnates on the middle reaches of the Thames were broken into, and the jewel cases of lady guests were swiftly and silently emptied, the newspapers usually made some references to a “Country House Gang.” But the crime reporters suspected, and the police knew, that this was largely eyewash. For Mr. Kelling was a gang unto himself. He was his own Intelligence Service, his own Chief of Staff, his own cracksman, and his own receiver.