by John Creasey
She went hurrying by, oblivious of everything.
She turned in to her own suite, with a dressing room on one side and a bathroom on the other, all Regency, all beautiful, and hers. When she shut the door, she could at least shut the rest of the house off, the artificiality, the lifelessness.
My God! she thought. He’s been having me watched. He’s actually been spying on me!
She stood in the middle of the bedroom, feeling almost numbed. After what seemed a long time, she muttered, “I’ve got to get away! I simply must!”
Downstairs, her father and Oliphant went into the drawing room, where her mother sat looking at a television set. Coffee was on a low table in front of a long couch. Newspapers and magazines in great variety were in racks by each seat and chair.
“Oh, hallo, my dear” said Falconer. “Where’s Christine?”
“She has a headache, Richard, and has gone to her room.”
“Indeed? She didn’t complain of a headache at dinner.”
“I thought she looked a little unwell,” remarked Oliphant.
“She is probably planning to go and see her friends. That should make her feel unwell,” Falconer said coldly. “Have you the report for me on her friends, Oily?”
“On seven of them,” Oliphant answered.
“Are they satisfactory?”
“Those seven? Wholly.”
“What of the others?”
“Well, there is a young man named Judd. She sees a good deal of him,” Oliphant said. “But I know very little about him - only that he has a small antique shop in Hampstead and appears to be doing well.”
“Indeed,” said Falconer heavily.
Oliphant gave a small, almost plummy smile.
“I shouldn’t assume that he is using Christine in the hope of doing business with you,” he said.
“That is exactly what I fear he may be doing. Have you tried to find out his background?”
“Yes,” said Oliphant.
“It’s not like you to admit failure.”
“I haven’t admitted failure yet,” Oliphant retorted. “I have asked Alec Hobbs if he can make some inquiries, and he will be in touch with me tomorrow.”
Falconer nodded, seeming reasonably well satisfied.
“How is Alec?” asked Charlotte Falconer, as if hoping to change the subject. “He was so distressed by poor Helen’s death. I really wondered whether he would ever get over it.” After a pause, and while she poured coffee, she went on: “I could never understand why Alec elected to become a policeman.”
“Some people would call him a detective,” Oliphant replied.
“Is there any difference?” asked Charlotte indifferently, looking at her husband. “Richard, will you have brandy or a liqueur?”
“Brandy,” answered her husband. “Brandy.”
Deputy Commander Alex Hobbs, Gideon’s deputy and chief assistant at Scotland Yard, sat back in an easy chair reading an American police manual, storing much of what he read in his card-index file of a mind, and half listening to Swan Lake on a stereo record player. He could hear cars passing along the Embankment in front of Ayling Crescent, and now and again a heavy lorry changed gear as it turned to go over Chelsea Bridge. Very occasionally a tug or a lighter hooted on the river.
There had been a time, even as recently as six or seven months before, when he would have been troubled and restless, still fighting the loneliness which had followed the death of his wife. During her long illness, they had lived in a flat not a quarter of a mile away, overlooking the same stretch of river, and her last awareness, as she lay propped up on pillows in a bed close to the window, had been of the river. When she died, Hobbs’s immediate inclination had been to get completely away from this all too familiar part of London but eventually he had settled on a small suite of rooms in a modern block of flats in Chelsea. Pleasantly though somewhat severely furnished, it provided excellent service; he had nothing to worry about but getting his evening meal; and he could, whenever so minded, leave the washing up to the maid in the morning.
He would have given up, almost certainly, but for the slow growing of his interest in Gideon’s daughter
Penelope. He was falling in love with her; and the Gideons knew it. But Penelope was so young, and so full of enthusiasm for younger men...
He finished a chapter and put the book down, yawned and stretched, then looked at the brandy and the empty glass on a wine table by his side. Suddenly he placed his hands on the arms of his chair and sprang up, a very fit, very lean man of forty-five, dark-haired, handsome in an almost artificial way.
He turned to the window.
Here again he had forced himself to overcome an impulse to draw the curtains every night. Helen had liked them open, and when she held been well - and even during her illness when she had been able to stand - they had often put the lights out and gone to look at the view, the Embankment and the bridges, the luminosity of the smoke pouring out of the squat chimney stacks of the Battersea Power Station, the coloured lights of the Fun Fair at Battersea Park, the slow, smooth-moving lights on the river craft. The view hadn’t changed. The awareness of being alone strengthened noticeably, and he made himself stand rigidly there.
Slowly, remembered grief and present tension eased, and he relaxed.
As he did so, his telephone bell rang.
Moving toward the table where the telephone stood, within hand’s reach of his chair, he glanced at a clock standing on a bookcase which lined one wall to waist height. It was quarter to ten, late for a call from the Yard unless it was an emergency. He picked up the receiver.
“Alex Hobbs speaking.”
“Good evening, sir,” a man said, with a slight North Country accent which Hobbs immediately recognized. “Thwaites here, sir - sorry to bother you so late.”
Whatever else, this was no emergency.
“That’s all right,” Hobbs said. “What is it?”
“You asked me to make inquiries about a Lancelot Judd, an antique dealer of Hampstead.”
“Yes,” said Hobbs.
“I would like to discuss the situation with you, sir.”
“Tonight?”
“I have a full day planned tomorrow, and to do it then I’d have to put off several cases, but of course if you—”
“All right, Thwaites,” Hobbs interrupted. “Come to me here, will you? Have you eaten?”
“Oh, yes, sir!”
“Good,” Hobbs said. “Where are you now?”
“In Hampstead Village, sir. I’ll be about half an hour.”
“Right,” Hobbs said. “Have you been here before?”
“No, but I know where your flat is, sir.”
“Press my downstairs bell and take the lift to the fifth floor,” Hobbs told him. “I’ll be at the flat door to meet you.”
He put down the receiver and stepped back to the window. In some ways a more incisive man than Gideon, he had acquired a surprising number of Gideon’s methods and Gideon’s attitudes. In fact, although they came from vastly different backgrounds, they thought in much the same way. That was why Gideon had recommended Hobbs as his deputy. Hobbs, one of the public-school policemen, came of a family which had been both rich and esteemed three hundred years ago. He had been to Repton and King’s College, Cambridge, and while some thought him aloof, even snobbish, all agreed that he was a first class policeman. Now he thought over everything he had told Thwaites to do and what he knew of the Chief Inspector. Thwaites had had a North Country upbringing, followed by twenty years at the Yard; at forty-four or five, he was a rather untidy, comfortable looking man, who had acquired a love and deep knowledge of antiques.
“Always liked to poke around second hand shops when I was a boy, sir.”
And he still enjoyed poking around, Hobbs believed; even when he was inquiring into an art theft, looking for stolen goods, getting information about others to be shipped out of the country, Thwaites enjoyed touching, looking at, and assessing the value of every kind of antique,
painting, and objet d’art.
Also he was a dedicated policeman.
It was disturbing that he wanted to talk about Judd, for it suggested that all was not straightforward. Was it possible that Lord Falconer’s daughter was involved with a suspicious character?
5: Rumours
“Brandy?” asked Hobbs as his visitor sat down.
“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d rather have a beer.”
Hobbs selected one of several bottles from a tray, poured it into a pewter tankard, poured a little brandy into a large-bowled glass for himself, and sat down.
“Cheers.”
“Cheers.” Thwaites drank, Hobbs sipped. “Well, you’ll want to know what I’m making a mystery about, sir,” Thwaites said. “And it is a bit of a mystery. This Lancelot Judd is about twenty-five, comes from Brighton, quite respectable family. He got a place at Trinity College, Oxford, read History and Philosophy and got his M.A. all right. His parents couldn’t afford to do much, and he worked during the holidays at an antique shop in Brighton. He’s a Peace Marcher and C.N.D. man, but otherwise he’s not known. I checked with Brighton about the place where he worked. No evidence of crime or excesses of any kind.”
“So he’s in the clear, except for political interests,” Hobbs remarked.
“That’s the tricky part I wanted to talk about,” Thwaites said. “He’s in the clear, but some of the people he runs around with are”—he hesitated—”well, sir, they’re what you might call on the fringe.” “Fringe of what?” demanded Hobbs.
“They pick stuff up at second hand shops and markets and pass it on to the better dealers. One or two of them are believed to have handled stolen goods, although there’s never been any proof. And there’s one thing that sent all my warning signals going off at the same time, sir.”
“What was that?” asked Hobbs.
“Judd’s present girl friend is Christine Falconer, only daughter of Sir Richard Falconer. How about that, sir?”
Hobbs put his head on one side, eyebrows raised, and then broke into a chuckle.
“All right, you’ve scored,” he conceded. “That’s why I wanted you to check Judd.”
“I did wonder, sir,” said Thwaites, and drank the rest of his beer. “It could be young love, of course. Or it could be that he’d like to get inside the Falconers’ house and see what kind of security there is - and maybe leave the odd window unfastened. Does Sir Richard suspect something like that, sir?”
“I think he’s aware of the possibility.”
“Can’t say I blame him! Do you know what the security is like, sir? I’ve never been inside the place but Mr. Frobisher has, and he says it’s like a museum.”
“And it is.” Hobbs got up, took Thwaites’s tankard and refilled it, and sat down again. “Have you talked to the Divisional men at Hampstead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Got anything?”
“No, I don’t think so,” answered Thwaites. “Only rumours.”
“What kind of rumours?”
“That there’s a big buyer around town.”
“Buyer of stolen antiques, you mean?”
“Buyer of anything at the right price,” answered Thwaites. “And the rumour isn’t only in Hampstead, either. It’s in Chelsea and Fulham and the West End - that antique supermarket, as they call it - as well as the suburbs. And I had a word with Brighton, as I said, and Salisbury and Stratford-on-Avon. The word’s out that there’s a big buyer on the lookout for anything special in pictures and antiques, and that he doesn’t care where it comes from - will ask no questions, in other words.”
Hobbs, brandy glass cupped in both hands, sniffed at the bouquet and looked thoughtfully at Thwaites over the brim. Apart from the noises outside and Thwaites’s rather heavy breathing, there was no sound. At last, he lowered the glass.
“Do you know anyone behind it?”
“Not a soul,” said Thwaites.
“Who spread the rumours? Do you know that?”
“The runners, as usual.”
“No one runner in particular?” asked Hobbs.
“Haven’t been able to put a finger on any one, sir. It seems to have started a week ago, and just spread. And the Falconer place could be very vulnerable. Prevention’s better than cure,” Thwaites added sententiously.
Hobbs sniffed brandy again, pausing as if he wanted the fumes to go through his head and clear his mind before making any comments. Then: “What are you doing?”
“I’ve asked the reliable dealers to pass on any word they get, but that’s not good enough by itself, of course.”
“It certainly isn’t. Any ideas?”
“I can’t say I have, sir. Except—”
“Well?” Hobbs knew the other was waiting to be prompted, and also knew how very shrewd this slow-speaking man was.
“I thought we might pick up one or two runners and pay them enough to keep them loyal,” Thwaites suggested. “Someone who would pass any word on to us without letting us down. See what I mean, sir?”
“It’s hardly original,” Hobbs said, almost disparagingly. “Can we rely on any runners?”
“One, for certain,” Thwaites said. “And two or three others I think would be all right.”
“Can we afford to take a chance?” asked Hobbs.
“Don’t see why not,” said Thwaites. “And we could compare the different reports. If there’s a common factor, we’d soon find out. The only risk is that the runners might reveal that they were working for us, but that wouldn’t matter, as we wouldn’t ask them to look for anything specific. I wondered if you would think it over and, if you agree it’s worthwhile, have a word with the Commander.”
“I’ll do that anyhow,” Hobbs said. “Who is the one runner you think we can rely on?”
“Man named Red Thomas,” answered Thwaites, without hesitation. “He’s always absolutely clean, though he’s always in need of money. No one likes him but everyone trusts him.”
“Why doesn’t he have any money?” asked Hobbs.
“Spends what he gets too freely,” Thwaites said with a grimace. “If you agree, sir, the first place I’d send him would be to Hampstead. The more I think about this Lancelot Judd and Christine Falconer, the more I think Hampstead’s a place to concentrate on.”
“I’ll talk to Mr. Gideon in the morning,” Hobbs said.
Gideon listened with his customary close attention next morning, and came to a conclusion more quickly than usual. It was almost as if he had been pondering most of the night, as Hobbs had been.
“Give Thwaites his head,” he ordered. “I’ll support him if anything goes wrong.”
“Good,” said Hobbs.
“And Alec - keep me in close touch,” Gideon warned.
“I will,” promised Hobbs. “If there is a big buyer, we want to know who he is and whether he’s been buying
for long.”
“We need to know that very much,” Gideon said. He nodded dismissal and Hobbs went to his smaller room next door, but before he could have settled at his desk Gideon lifted the interoffice telephone on his desk and dialled him. “Alec,” he said as soon as he heard the other lift the receiver, “this is worth a teletype inquiry to New York and Paris, and anywhere else abroad that might have some information for us. See to it, will you?”
“At once,” said Hobbs.
“I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Thwaites,” Red Thomas promised. It was the day after his visit to Lucy Jenkins, and the same time that Gideon was talking to Hobbs at the Yard. “I haven’t heard anything yet, but that means nothing, as I haven’t been listening. I keep myself to myself, you know that. I’ll phone you whenever I get anything, Mr. Thwaites.”
“Between nine o’clock and ten in the morning is best,” Thwaites told him. “Here’s a fiver in advance. For every reliable piece of information, you’ll get another one, and a bonus if there’s anything we can act on.”
Red took the five-pound note with the same alacrity as he had taken th
e two notes from Mrs. Bessell, backed a few steps, then went out of the Chelsea Divisional Station, where he and Thwaites had met. Once outside, he walked very quickly toward King’s Road, as if he could not get away quickly enough. Traffic was thick and there was a line of five buses outside the Town Hall. Red jumped onto the first of these and sat on the edge of a seat close to the platform. A Jamaican conductress took the sixpence he offered, and he accepted the ticket which rolled out of her machine, without a word. When he got off, on the far side of Albert Bridge, he walked toward Fisk’s shop.
On the other side of the road was a young policeman, one of the two who had seen him the previous day.
Lucy Jenkins was in the shop, using a damp chamois over some china pieces. She looked up, and the moment she recognized him, her features froze.
“The old man in?” he demanded.
“No, he’s out again,” she said, almost vindictively.
“No wonder he never does any business, he’s always out,” complained Red.
“That’s his business,” she retorted.
“All right, all right. I want to look at those pictures again.”
“Look where you like,” she said carelessly.
Thomas went across to the pictures leaning up against the wall, and began to play the familiar game. It was silly, really, because all the runners did it. He went through picture after picture and pretended not to be interested in any but lingered over several. She began to play her usual game of guessing which ones interested him. The pheasants, she decided, and was immediately worried because they were the best among the pictures and she could not knock much off the asking price. The old man had told her the limits.
Red selected a picture - yes, it was one of the pheasants.