by John Creasey
Much About Riordon
It was the radio, and as they approached the windows the tune finished and the dispassionate voice of the announcer gave the next piece, which some little-known performer on the harmonica was about to render. Janet, pale because of the effect of the tune on Roger, said with forced lightness: ‘It was a mouth organ, darling.’
‘Yes,’ said Roger. ‘Yes, I thought it was. Sorry, sweet.’ He half-turned to look up at her, and touched the back of her head. ‘That dream had associations with the Concerto, and I don’t think I’m really awake yet. But I can walk into the dining room, don’t coddle me!’
He was more himself after lunch and went for a walk round the front garden, wearing only a dressing gown and slippers. Janet was hailed by an acquaintance who passed in the road and went for a gossip, while Paula was intent on some knitting. Roger went slowly and deliberately towards the far end of the garden. There, half-hidden in shrubs and against a background of hawthorn, was one of the Yard men who had been detailed to guard the cottage.
‘Oh, it’s you, Sloan. Good. That’s a big help.’
‘Hello, sir,’ said Detective Sergeant ‘Old Bill’ Sloan, his fresh and ingenuous face showing satisfaction at the sight of Roger. ‘Glad to see you about again. How are you?’
‘I’m all right,’ said Roger. ‘Listen to me, and warn me if either my wife or Mrs Dean come this way. There was some music on the Light Programme just before one o’clock. I don’t know what it was, except that there was a man who played the Warsaw Concerto. On a harmonica,’ added Roger softly. ‘Find out who it was, and get word to the Yard at once even if it means leaving here. Understand?’
‘Roger!’ Janet’s voice came, clear and a little anxious. ‘Roger!’
The sergeant slipped out of sight, hidden by the hedge and the trees, and Janet rounded a cypress. She saw Roger, who made a face at her.
‘You fool, I thought something had happened to you!’
‘And why should it, right here and now?’ demanded Roger. ‘Where’s Paula?’ He put an arm round Janet’s waist, glanced round with mock apprehension, and added: ‘As she’s not in sight, you’re going to be kissed.’
‘You’re much better,’ said Janet breathlessly, some minutes later.
Roger’s spirits remained at their new high. He successfully led Paula into believing that he was not only much better in himself, but was thoroughly enjoying the rest. There were moments when he almost convinced Janet; had she not seen his expression when he had awakened, and his tension when he had heard the Warsaw Concerto, she might have been fooled. Certainly nothing else happened to disturb the serenity of Hinton Magna.
Roger and Janet were on the porch when Lessing arrived. Dusk was beginning to cast its shadows, and the birds were settling down noisily. The sound of faint organ music came from the church, where the organist was practising the anthem for the morning service. There was no sign of Sloan or any of the other policemen.
There was little prospect of talking quietly to Roger that evening, but one or two leading questions in the few minutes that they did contrive to have alone made it obvious that Roger had not yet received Chatsworth’s permission to talk freely.
All of the party were in bed soon after eleven o’clock.
The peacefulness of Hinton Magna and the starlit beauty of the night, even the occasional hooting of an owl, made it easy to relax. For two days they did little else. Sloan called to see Roger once a day, and also handed him a typewritten message from Chatsworth, telling him that he could pass on all he knew to Mark and giving him a résumé of what Mark had been doing.
That was on Monday.
On the Sunday there had been a considerable disappointment for Paula: relatives descended upon the Byrne family at the Manor, and Marion Byrne was unable to get away, even for half an hour. Mark affected enormous relief, and called it fate. The day passed pleasantly, with little or no undercurrent, except Mark’s misgivings about the sincerity of Chatsworth’s promise. They were dispersed early on the Monday morning, soon after Sloan’s visit.
Roger, dressed in slacks and a tweed jacket for the first time since his convalescence had started, disarmingly suggested that he and Mark would be in the way at the cottage, and proposed a stroll to the village to replenish Mark’s stock of cigarettes and his own of tobacco.
They did in fact call at the village shop for cigarettes, and then they went towards the Manor grounds, and there, in a clearing surrounded by saplings and shrubs, where the grass was cropped short by rabbits, they sat down and lit their pipes.
On the way to the village Roger had told Mark of Chatsworth’s message, and so there was no need for preliminaries.
Roger smiled a little reminiscently, patted his adhesive plaster, and looked at Mark’s hand. ‘The marks of the beast,’ he said, almost flippantly. ‘I wanted to keep you out of this show.’
‘That was a friendly thought,’ agreed Mark with a grimace. ‘The thing that I can’t grasp is why Riordon’s still at liberty. I don’t doubt there’s a pretty good reason, but I’m damned if I can see a glimpse of it. He is dangerous, isn’t he?’
‘Let’s stop talking in clichés,’ said Roger. ‘Dangerous isn’t the word. He’s deadly. I haven’t yet made up my mind whether he’s insane or not. Mark, you’re going to have a shock in a few minutes.’
‘I’ll try to take it.’
There was a queer expression in Roger’s eyes; it was as if he were looking at something a long distance off.
‘I’ve known Riordon now for about six months, but he has been active a great deal longer than that,’ he said. ‘He specialised in confidence tricks and blackmail, the two varieties of crime which, given victims of some standing, are likely to remain undetected. I’ve talked to several of Riordon’s early victims, and they all say the same. He didn’t drive them too far. As far as they could be, in such a business, they were satisfied. They had a shock when I turned up and started questioning them.’
‘How did you learn their names?’ inquired Mark.
‘One of the victims wanted to get his own back but was anxious to avoid the publicity of police action. So he hired Pep Morgan.’ Morgan was a private inquiry agent. ‘Morgan, having no idea of what he was up against, took the case on. Riordon was, and is, so filled with conceit that in the early days he did not take ordinary precautions, and Morgan managed to get hold of a notebook which had the names of the victims and the amounts they had paid. There were no details, just the names and addresses. Then something broke, and Morgan had an “interview” with Riordon. Morgan came to tell us about it, without mentioning his original client, of course.
‘Then the wife of a permanent official at Whitehall disappeared. She was fifteen years younger than her husband, and was known to have affaires. We found her in a cottage hospital in Surrey. One of the nurses had seen her photograph in a weekly paper, and remarked on the likeness. Riordon had kidnapped her, and fed her with drugs. I won’t mention her name,’ said Roger, and for the first time tension fell upon him, a bleakness showed in his face. ‘She had arrived at the hospital dressed in rags, suffering from exhaustion, and giving no name. She was very nearly insane, and in fact is still undergoing treatment. Now and again she mentions one name – Riordon’s. The medical and nursing staff all agreed that it terrified her.’
Mark’s mouth was dry.
‘She hasn’t yet told us anything else that happened to her,’ continued Roger, ‘but we had a sudden crop of similar cases – disappearances, usually of youngish and good-looking women who eventually turned up suffering from drugs, loss of memory, a complete nervous breakdown. Most of them mentioned the dreaded name. In many cases they were wives of highly placed Government officers, in others the wives of young senior officers in the services, particularly Air Force men. How they made contact with Riordon we don’t yet know. None of them will talk freely, either b
ecause they can’t or they daren’t. Can you see the picture forming?’ Roger added quietly.
‘It’s not nice,’ said Mark. His voice seemed to choke him.
‘Nice! It’s the very heart of evil! Mind you, at first we didn’t think a great deal of it. We took it for granted that Riordon used drugs. There were indications that he dabbled in black magic, too, and there are always a few sensation seeking women who will do anything for kicks. But some of the people involved weren’t the type, and that was puzzling. Well, we assumed that we had only to catch Riordon and put him under lock and key, to make him break down. We knew he must have some infamous establishment somewhere, and kept searching for it, while we had his description from Pep Morgan and the earlier victims. All the time, of course, it was wise to keep the business secret.’
He paused, then added slowly: ‘It wasn’t a question of hush-hush for the sake of the reputation of high Government officials. There might have been a case for that alone, but there was much more to it. The commander of a submarine, say, suddenly discovered that his wife was not at home, that she stopped corresponding, and that her friends and relatives had no news of her. Delegates at Disarmament Conferences learned that their wives were missing. Nuclear physicists doing secret work suffered, too. For each one it was bad enough to create for the husband a particular hell of his own. But supposing the Riordon story was released? Supposing that each husband knew that his wife was one of many, and that most of the others had come back physically and mentally wrecked. You begin to see?’
Mark said thinly: ‘A problem. Yes.’
‘For better or worse it was decided on the strength of that to keep everything quiet and to go for Riordon by stealth. Once we had him, we thought, it would be reasonably safe to let the story break, but while he was at large it couldn’t be done. Chatsworth saw the Home Secretary before making any decision, of course, and I believe it was discussed by the Cabinet. The hush-hush policy wasn’t ours alone, you see, although we recommended it. Chatsworth decided to warn off anyone who tried to horn in from the outside, and you were one of his especial concerns – as well as one of mine! It was inevitable that sooner or later you would see that something unusual was brewing, and you wouldn’t have been yourself if you hadn’t wanted to take part in it. So Chatsworth decided to warn you, if you did show interest, and to follow it up with a brief spell in the lock-up if you persisted.’
‘H’m,’ said Mark. ‘It might have been justifiable, but did he really have authority?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Roger, and screwed up his eyes. ‘You’ve only heard part of it yet. Riordon was pretty catholic in his choice of victims and chose the daughter of one of our top nuclear men. We’ll call him Smith. Smith relied a great deal on his daughter, and when she disappeared he began to search for her, especially as the police appeared to take little interest in the case. I don’t know who saw Smith when he first reported it, but whoever it was made a hash of the business. Smith should have been reassured enough to send him back reasonably happily to work. He wasn’t, so he began to look for his daughter himself.
‘The odd thing is that he found her and she was all right,’ continued Roger slowly. ‘She’d been scared, but no more. She wouldn’t tell him exactly what had happened, though. He settled down again, while she went on normally, until—’ again Roger paused, and was quiet for a long time, before repeating: ‘Until he heard from Riordon, who wanted five thousand pounds. If he didn’t get it, he said, he would take the daughter away again. Smith came tearing round to the Yard, and I saw him myself. Chatsworth did, too. We told him as much as we thought was safe. We wanted Riordon as soon as we could – that was about two months ago – and we still thought that we had only to catch him to stop his little game. He had slipped through our fingers twice, and usually had been warned of our coming by the mouth organ rendering of the Warsaw Concerto. A fantastic touch,’ said Roger with a crooked smile, ‘but only one of such touches. However, Riordon realised that our attentions were getting dangerous, and for the first time made us realise what kind of a man and what kind of job we were up against.’
‘Well?’ asked Mark after a long pause.
‘He kidnapped both Smith and the daughter,’ said Roger simply. ‘After a week he sent the daughter back again with a letter. It was very short and concise. He named many people whom he had under his control and told us that if he were arrested none of them would be seen again. They included some of our most brilliant nuclear and chemical research workers. It dawned on us then that the main motive was his kidnapping of the scientists. Some of their womenfolk had been influenced by drugs, but we put that down as subsidiary. In fact they were the important factors, for the research men were persuaded to go somewhere –
I don’t yet know where – to see their womenfolk. The men just disappeared. They all went on the day before Riordon named them.’ Roger drew a deep breath, as if he too were fighting against belief in this horror. ‘They matter, Mark. Two Harwell men, two specialists on conventional high explosives, two medical research men, some of the best brains in the country are missing.’
‘It couldn’t be much worse,’ Mark said slowly.
‘Blackmail on a vaster scale than I’d ever dreamed about,’ Roger said flatly. ‘There have been times when I haven’t been able to believe in it, but there it is and we have to face it. Thirty or forty people are missing, one in every four a woman. Presumably they are in Riordon’s power. The major problem is to find where they are. Until we know that we dare not hold Riordon, for fear he has arranged for them to die. It would be a macabre conception of the purposes of hostages, and he has said that it is just what he will do.’ Roger paused, and went on slowly: ‘The possibilities are frightening, but you don’t need telling that. For one thing Riordon might be able to find what these people know, and could pass on vital information to Russia or China. As far as we know we’ve blocked any channels he might have of sending them abroad, but until we find the missing people, he has us where he wants us. Once we’ve found them we can go for him. Until we have, we can’t. It’s as simple as that. Of course,’ Roger added, ‘the theory of first getting Riordon, who’s at the heart of the business, and so breaking up everything else, has to be considered. The trouble is that we aren’t by any means sure that Riordon is in this on his own. He must have assistance, and he might have someone ready to step into his shoes if anything happens to him. Not easy, is it?’
Mark pulled a few pieces of grass from a molehill, and then said slowly: ‘If I hadn’t seen Riordon I don’t think I would have believed it.’
‘Well, you have. And now you’ve some idea of what the man might do. Obviously it isn’t a case of orthodox police investigation methods. I’ve been working on it for weeks, as you know. Those night calls always came when someone else, usually a woman, had been reported missing. The morning when you followed me’ – Roger smiled – ‘I’d seen you, and I had an idea what Janet wanted you to do! – it was rather different. The body of one of Riordon’s victims had been found in the Thames, on the other side of the Albert Bridge. She’d been seen to throw herself in the river, and there was no doubt that it was suicide. Equally there was no doubt that she had been driven to it by Riordon. Just why he decided to have a cut at me then, I don’t know. Incidentally, I haven’t yet thanked you for keeping me afloat,’ he added abruptly.
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Mark uncomfortably. ‘I haven’t stopped cursing myself for letting them throw you in. How did you know, anyhow?’
‘Sloan told me yesterday,’ said Roger. ‘Well, that’s the position as it is now, and I don’t see that we can do a great deal until we’re both fit again. I wouldn’t like to risk a clash with Riordon in my present state, and you’ – he looked at the bandaged hand, poking from a sling – ‘how did you really get that?’
‘Punching Riordon.’
He went on to explain what had happened, and added: ‘Which reminds me, Riordo
n is convinced that you’ve got something which could be dangerous to him, and that no one else has it. Have you? Or are you fooling him?’
Roger said thoughtfully: ‘I may have it.’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘I’ve discovered one or two little items of information,’ said Roger. ‘When I picked up some papers which Riordon had in his pocket one day, there was a small map amongst them. I can’t remember it in detail, but I think I would be able to remember more if I saw the map again, or another of the same place. I marked the one I found, to try to be sure it wasn’t slightly altered, to confuse the issue. It was quite small, and there were no names on it, but the usual little dots indicated towns or villages. I haven’t any idea what part of England it’s in, and can’t even use the map again and get a cartographer to trace the district for me. Riordon managed to get it back.’ Roger scowled. ‘There are times when I think we’re still underestimating him. The map was stolen when my pocket was picked on the way to the Yard.’
‘If this were any other case that would be funny,’ said Mark.
‘Yes, wouldn’t it,’ Roger said drily. ‘Well, there it is. Riordon may think that by seeing the map I’ve seen enough to be dangerous, and – what’s the matter?’ He broke off at a gesture from Mark.
‘Now steady,’ said Mark quickly. ‘You’re not seeing the wood for the trees. Your pocket was picked, and the wallet was stolen?’
‘It was.’
‘And you’ve assumed that Riordon did it?’
‘Or one of his men, yes,’ agreed Roger slowly. ‘But—’
‘There are times when the police are much too orthodox,’ Mark told him sadly. ‘He wouldn’t have come to your place, he wouldn’t be so desperately anxious to find you, if he didn’t think you had the map. Someone else did that pocket-picking.’
Roger said slowly: ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re right. Why the devil hasn’t someone seen that possibility before?’