The Case of the Innocent Victims

by John Creasey

  Roger flicked his transmitter switch.

  “West speaking.” This way, he had at least avoided telephone calls at the house, and waking Janet; nothing short of an explosion would wake the boys. Against that, there was the time, the fact that he had been on the go since half-past eight this morning, and the fact that he really needed a few hours of quiet thought, to decide on the best way to handle this case.

  “Chief Inspector Gibson would like a word with you, sir; hold on please.”

  “Right.” They would be getting Gibson on the telephone, and connecting him with the walkie-talkie; the ways of crime detection got better and better. Gibson wouldn’t call for the sake of it, either.

  “Mr West?” His voice was hardly distorted at all.

  “Speaking.”

  “Cartwright’s on the run, sir.”

  “Sure?”

  “No doubt about it, sir. He was in a sports car, a new MG, and when he realised that he was being followed, he hared off.”

  “Damned fool,” said Roger, although this was what he had anticipated. “Got a call out?”

  “All ready when you say the word,” said Gibson.

  “I’m saying the word,” Roger told him. “When he’s picked up, take him along to Cannon Row, let him cool his heels for three or four hours, and then telephone me. I’ll come right over.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gibson said.

  Roger flicked the radio off, started the engine again, and turned into his drive. This made it look certain that Roy Cartwright was the man they wanted, and it ought to make him feel good, but in fact it didn’t. He left the car outside the garage, so that he could get out again in a hurry when he was called, and then opened the front door of the house very stealthily. A strong smell of new paint greeted him. He always managed to forget that they were having the decorators in; Janet was blueing his first year’s extra salary as a Superintendent. He went along to the kitchen, found coffee all ready to heat, sandwiches under a silver-plated dish cover, and a bottle of whisky and a syphon of soda on the kitchen table. The whisky would make him sleep, the coffee would keep him awake, just as it would keep Janet awake if she drank it too near bedtime. He needed the two hours or so of sleep that he would get.

  When he crept into his bedroom, anxious not to disturb Janet, he remembered the way he had gone on tiptoe, sixteen years or so ago, when Janet had been nursing the boys and sleep had been vital to her. He closed the door silently, listened to her steady breathing, and then felt a sudden onrush of mingled dread and self-blame.

  What the hell was the matter with him?

  Cartwright had gone on the run, and all the police in London would be on the look-out for him now, but he hadn’t given a serious thought to the real danger: that if he were the killer, he might strike again tonight. It wasn’t a question of bringing him in, and letting him cool his heels; his capture was desperately urgent.

  Nothing he could do would help, though; it would be a waste of time going back to the Yard. He probably wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he would get over that, and might even get some ideas. In fact, he was drowsy as soon as he got into bed next to Janet. Her body warmth seemed to steal over him, and make him forget the pressing anxieties and the fears.

  Cartwright would soon be caught, he told himself; in a couple of hours the telephone bell would ring. He went to sleep.

  A few miles away, in one of London’s more beautiful dormitory towns, a young mother lay awake, hearing her husband snore faintly, and looking at the open door of the bedroom. There was no whimper of sound, nothing to tell her of the baby, sleeping in its cot. After a while, she got out of bed and crept to the door, across the passage where there was a dim light, and into the nursery.

  Her baby was there.

  She stood peering down, and absolutely still – until the telephone bell jolted her into movement. Desperately anxious not to have the child disturbed, she dashed out and into her husband’s study, snatched up the telephone, and gasped: “Who is it? Who—”

  “Look after your baby,” a man said. “It might be next on the list.”

  When her husband came hurrying, she looked shocked and frightened.

  Chapter Five

  Headlines

  It was broad daylight when Roger woke, and at first he could not understand why he was startled at finding that, and why it seemed wrong. Janet was sleeping with her back to him, so it wasn’t yet seven o’clock; on weekdays her mind was like an alarm clock, for seven. He heard the chink of milk bottles in the street, and then realised what was on his mind.

  He hadn’t been called: so Roy Cartwright hadn’t been caught. No one at the Yard was so soft-hearted that they would ‘forget’ to call him.

  Roger went downstairs for his inevitable morning chore if he were up first: to make the tea. He looked for the papers at the front door, but they had not arrived. He hurried upstairs again, and glanced in at the boy’s room. Martin, called Scoopy, his elder boy, now over fifteen, looked as if he were outgrowing his bed; one bare foot was stuck out of the clothes at one side, and his big arms were raised above his head, the backs of his fingers touching the wall. He was fast asleep. Richard, called Richard, just a year younger, was snuggled so deeply beneath his clothes that only the top of his dark head showed. Roger pushed the sheets back from his face, and the boy stirred but did not wake. He was breathing through his slightly open mouth; catarrh or hay fever, or whatever they called it, was a constant trouble to him.

  Roger went out.

  He could not get his mind off the fact that Cartwright was missing. He could imagine what Ledbetter was feeling: ‘I told you so’. Ledbetter had felt sure from the start that Cartwright was the man they wanted. If he were, and if another child died, then part of the responsibility would be his, Roger’s.

  He heard footsteps outside, and went downstairs to see the newspapers, the Globe and the Gazette, poking through the letter box. The whistling kettle was beginning to squeal. He had to open the door to get the newspapers out, and one of them caught. He tugged, and tore it. In a bad mood, he hurried along the passage because the kettle was now whistling shrilly, and he knew from experience that the sound was likely to wake Janet. He snatched off the whistling cap, and the steam stung his fingers.

  He swore as he shook them.

  Something about his attitude and his mood suddenly made him grin.

  “You go on like this and you’ll give them a hell of a day at the office,” he said to himself, and let the kettle boil silently while he opened the Globe. The baby murder was a front-page story, of course, skilfully written and presented; Spendlove had kept his part of the bargain. Martha Wise’s Gazette was less predictable. Roger opened it, and the headline which seemed to leap out at him was exactly the one he had hoped to avoid.

  BABY-KILLER AT LARGE

  Were they taking a chance of libel against Cartwright?

  He read the story, written by chunky grey-haired Aunt Martha. It was sob-stuff, but it was good. Every young mother who read this would have a surge of anxiety, perhaps of fear. Every cot and pram would be guarded with especial care today. Well, why not? But supposing this was the angle the Gazette intended to take all the way through? It was after new readers, it lived on sensation, and there wasn’t a trick unknown to it or its staff. Roger skimmed through the story, but found no mention of Cartwright, only of ‘a man’ being questioned by the police. There was a photograph of Anne Kindle and the child in her arms, a big picture probably enlarged from a snapshot, for the edges were so badly blurred; but it was impossible to mistake the identity of the woman. He made the tea.

  Janet was snuggling down in bed, but awake. “Ugh,” she grunted.

  “Hallo,” Roger said, and bent over and kissed her forehead lightly. “You’re as bad as Scoop.” He put the tray down on a bedside table, and tossed the newspapers on to the bed. “Been awake long?”

  “I woke when you got up,” Janet asserted, and now she sounded more wide awake. “What’s up?”

  “No
thing.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Janet said, and sat upright. Her dark hair was showing quite a lot of grey, but was still very plentiful, and its natural wave was her chief pride. Her hair net, of pale pink, was pushed a little to one side. She looked sleepy, although her eyes were alert. She was attractive and finely built, and she clutched a woollen bedjacket from the chair by her side, draped it round her shoulders, and went on: “What time did you get in?”

  “Twelve-ish,” Roger said.

  “Did you have a nasty case?”

  Roger showed her the Gazette front page, could guess the immediate reaction; she actually winced. Their youngest child was nearly fifteen, but it could catch her as sharply as that. She scanned the story, then looked up at him.

  “Have you caught the man?”

  “I may have let him get away.”

  “Oh,” said Janet, and he knew that she understood the fear that was passing through his mind. He could say to her what he could not possibly say at the Yard; she was a kind of safety valve. “I could see there was something,” she went on, and glanced back at the paper. “The mother looks very young.”

  “Twenty-four,” Roger told her quietly. “Sweet, I’m going to have a quick shave, and then get off to the Yard in a hurry. Mind getting my breakfast before you dress? I’ll tell you what it’s all about as I have it.”

  “Of course,” Janet said.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, as a clock was striking eight, Roger went out to the garage. He felt less tense, because he had talked freely. Janet had gone upstairs to change and to get the boys up; they were likely to be late this morning, but that was no change. As he opened the doors of the car, parked where he had left it for the expected night trip, he heard a window bang up and his younger son call: “Good-bye, Dad!”

  “’Bye, old chap! See you tonight.”

  “Hope so!”

  Then Martin’s hands appeared on the younger boy’s shoulder. Richard was moved aside as if he were a feather, while Martin filled the whole window, his fair hair sticking up in its morning dishevelment, grinning at some protest from his brother. He waved and called: “Any chance of being home for supper?”

  “I’ll try to.”

  Richard’s head appeared, over Martin’s shoulder; he was grinning, too. They were a good-natured, good-tempered, happy pair. Roger started the engine, reversed, and headed for the Yard. Very little traffic was about, there were more cyclists than motor-cars, and only one or two buses. He kept to the main roads, not the Thames Embankment, which he would have used during a busier period. The boys and Janet had taken his mind off the immediate anxiety, but it was still there, and it went deep. He could not shrug off the fact that there had been good grounds for detaining Cartwright, and for taking him to the Yard for questioning, but that he had lost the chance.

  The day shift men had just come on duty at the Yard, and there was briskness in the way they greeted him, in their movements. He had used the Embankment entrance, parked close to the foot of the steps, and hurried up into the big ‘new’ building. Sergeants on duty in the hall looked as if they were very glad to see him. He met no senior officers, and when he went into his own office, it was empty and very tidy. Gibson, who shared it with him as his second-in-command, had probably been out most of the night. Roger saw the newspapers spread out on his desk, and looked through the headlines, to find that one other paper had taken the same angle as the Gazette; the others had followed Spendlove. He called Information.

  “Anything fresh in about Cartwright?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Damn it, he can’t have vanished into thin air.”

  “No, sir,” the man repeated; there wasn’t much else he could say.

  “Any word of his car?”

  “No, sir.”

  Roger said: “Well, put this out as a general message: find where Cartwright usually garaged his car, and find out what other garages he would usually have had access to. Make sure that all builders’ yards, garages and possible parking places are covered. Get all Divisions on to that, quick.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Roger grunted: “Thanks,” and rang off. The truth was that nothing would put him in a good humour until he had found Cartwright. And he would want to concentrate on the job. He pushed the newspapers aside, and opened the first of the folders on his desk; Gibson shared his obsession for tidiness and it helped to get the work done more quickly. These were reports on the various jobs going through, and unless something exceptional had happened during the night, half an hour would be time enough to deal with them. After that he could have a word with the Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department, Hardy, and put everything aside except the Cartwright job.

  Then, he saw a memo, from Gibson, which read:

  8.10. Message received from Ledbetter about a missing baby. Have gone to AS Division to check. Have asked murder team to stand by on your instructions.

  Roger’s heart contracted; this might be the dreaded development, although this baby was missing, not dead. Would the killer of the Shaw and Kindle babies take a victim away?

  He stared at the message and read it until he had it off by heart. It was twenty to nine. Gibson, sound and unflurried, had not harassed him on the road, but handled the situation this way, after trying to get him by telephone. A radio call to him while on the road would have been picked up by all the Divisions, and it would have been known at once that Roger West had dropped a clanger; there were plenty who would find cause for satisfaction in that.

  He picked up one of the three telephones on his desk.

  “Get me Mr Ledbetter, of AS.”

  “I’ll call you, sir.”

  Roger put down the receiver, and began to look through the reports on the other cases; the clearing up of a robbery in Kent, some reports on a poison pen investigation, notes from the City Police about a suspected share fraud, and Divisional reports on a variety of cases. The telephone bell did not ring. No one came in to see him, but it was early yet. There was a report signed P.C. Loratt, Police Officer, AS Division B Station, which gave a few details about Mrs Kindle’s neighbours, husband and friends: this was from the constable he had spoken to last night. He scribbled a note asking Ledbetter to give the man a pat on the back, then looked impatiently at the telephone. Ledbetter was probably out on the job, and almost certainly irritable because he had been called out early after a late night. The pressures at the Divisions were as great as those at the Yard.

  The telephone bell rang and Roger took up the receiver quickly.

  “West here.”

  “I can’t get Mr Ledbetter, sir, he’s out on a case, but Mr Gibson is asking for you.”

  “Put him through.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gibson was as dependable as he was solid physically; a man who grew on one. Roger had not particularly liked him when they had first met, had not been sure that they would make a good team; he had no doubts now.

  “Hallo, Gibby.”

  “I’ve had a look at the new baby case,” Gibson said, “and I don’t think it’s connected with the Kindle job.” Roger wondered if the other man had even the slightest idea what a relief that was. “The baby’s older, nearly a year. There’s no sign of the body, and it looks like an abduction. I’ve got a suspicion that the father knows all about it – it’s one of the broken home jobs. But if you don’t mind me saying so, I think you ought to come over. Ledbetter’s on the scene himself, and it would calm him down a bit.”

  Roger found himself grinning.

  “I’ll come. Where are you?”

  ‘Tenfold Street, Ealing Common.”

  “Give me half an hour,” said Roger.

  He had swung from depression to a kind of gaiety in two minutes, and it made no difference that, in its way, this was as great a tragedy as last night’s. The important thing was that he need not feel responsible for what had happened to this child.

  But there might be others. This made no difference to the great urgen
cy of the need for finding Roy Cartwright. He wasn’t even sure that he should go to see Ledbetter; it might be wiser to concentrate on Cartwright. He put in a call to the nursing home where Anne Kindle had been taken, was told that she was still sleeping, made one or two notes for the Commander, and went out. It would probably be wise to make Ledbetter sweet. It was a clear, bright, late spring morning, a good-to-be-alive morning, and he ran down the steps of the C.I.D. building with as much ease and light-heartedness as Scoop or Richard would have done. He was actually at the door of the car when he heard his name called from the top of the steps. Perhaps Cartwright had been found.

  He turned, and shouted: “Hallo?”

  “Message for you, sir.” A bare-headed, fair-haired uniformed sergeant came hurrying, a big man who looked ungainly, being slightly knock-kneed. Roger went to meet him, and the man was a little breathless as he went on: “The MG sports car belonging to Roy Cartwright has been found.”

  Roger said: “Oh. Where?”

  “In the Thames up by Duke’s Meadows, Chiswick, sir. Looks as if it was driven straight in.”

  “Cartwright?”

  “No message about him,” the sergeant answered.

  Chapter Six

  Case to Case

  “Ask the Chiswick chaps not to move anything until I’ve had a look myself,” Roger said to the sergeant. “Say I expect to be over in about an hour.” It might prove to be an hour and a half, but that would seem too long a time for the Divisional people to wait, and he might be able to get the job at Penfold Street finished quicker than he expected.

  The traffic was much thicker coming into London, and he was held up at every traffic light on the way to Shepherd’s Bush, but from there to Ealing Common the road was much clearer. At twenty minutes to ten, Roger was in Penfold Street. Several cars were pulled up halfway along a street of Victorian terrace houses, all larger and more pretentious than those where Anne Kindle lived. There was a small crowd of people; and he wasn’t surprised to see Aunt Martha and Spendlove.