by John Creasey
He shrugged, then looked at Gideon out of that one visible eye with an expression of bewilderment. He was not sure of himself, not sure of Gideon’s reaction. That was not all. He was looking much more tired than when he had first arrived. The injuries, added to the shock of the accident and the effect of the drugs, were taking their toll. This man needed two or three days off, at least. He also needed a strong injection of self-confidence, must not be sent away from here thinking that Gideon thought he had fallen down on the job.
“You did what anyone at the Yard would have done, knowing the circumstances,” Gideon said, and added quickly: “What I can’t understand is why you think you went wrong.”
“Isn’t it obvious, sir?”
“It’s not obvious at all. You alarmed them, yes. They were alarmed about the search for Jackie Baker, but you weren’t involved in that. In both cases, they were forced to show their hand.” Gideon hesitated and then amended: “I don’t know about forced to: the fact is they did show their hand. So we know we’re up against something big, possibly nationwide, certainly covering London and the whole of the Midlands. We needed to know. But now that we do—” He smiled dourly, and spread his hands.
“I can’t wait,” Cockerill said.
“You’ve got to,” Gideon answered. “You and I don’t tell a soul that we believe your accident was a deliberate attack on you. And we don’t pursue the enquiries openly for a few days. That way they should be lulled into thinking there’s no need to worry.”
“And that way I can take time off,” Cockerill said drily.
“No use working on the job until you’re fit,” said Gideon. He sat back, looking into that one bright eye, and went on slowly: “Why did you mention Quickturn, Cocky?”
“Well, they were very handy, and they always are very handy. What’s more, they’ve bought an interest in some wholesale grocers, butchers and fruit and veg wholesalers. They’ve spread wide and they’ve got the facilities. But I’ve got to admit it’s no more than a guess,” Cockerill added quickly.
“Intelligent guesses are always worth checking,” remarked Gideon. “Who’s working with you on this?”
“Detective Inspector Merriman,” answered Cockerill, and put into Gideon’s mind a big, heavy-jowled, heavy-paunched man who was as nearly a “typical” detective pictured by the public as there was at the Yard. A few years ago Merriman had been involved in a Flying Squad accident which had broken his left knee and left him with a stiff leg. He had asked for a job inside the Yard, and had become one of the most reliable record-keepers and organisers. He did not fit into Records or into Information but had made a niche entirely for himself.
“Doing what?” asked Gideon.
“Getting a complete picture of the men at all the main markets, and the main wholesalers, sorting out the difference between the sellers and the buyers; making graphs and generally getting everything down in black and white.”
“Keep him at it,” Gideon said. “Any idea how long it should take him before he’s through?”
“Four or five days.”
“Just about right,” Gideon said, and Cockerill laughed.
The near-certain thing was that nothing could be done much more quickly where the markets were concerned, and he must know it. But the investigation into Jackie Baker’s murder had to go on, intensively, with Firmani in charge. Gideon brought Cockerill up to date on that: the search for the supplier of the fire-raising material, for the man or men who had locked Baker into the warehouse before setting it on fire. This way, Cockerill would rest more easily, knowing that everything was being handled under Gideon’s direct guidance and that nothing was being kept from him.
It was a little after eight o’clock when Cockerill left for home; nearly half past before Gideon had finished his notes on the report, for it would be several days before Cockerill turned in a written report. Once finished, Gideon sent for his car and drove himself home to Kate.
She was downstairs, and her eyes were glowing.
“I loved it up there!” she declared. “Who had that absurd idea of moving from Harrington Street?”
At nine o’clock, Arthur Dalby was waiting, again, for Janice. He was in the old Jaguar, parked in the street not far from the big, modern house where her father lived. He knew her as Janice, now; knew that her father was a wealthy businessman; knew that he might be on a very good thing.
In more ways than one!
As that thought struck him, he thrust his head back and roared with laughter.
This time no one noticed him.
At nine o’clock, Sylvia Russell said to her husband, in a tense voice: “Darling, I think—I think it’s beginning. Please—please send for the doctor.”
At nine o’clock, Dr. Kelworthy’s wife sat alone in the front room of the small house they had shared and stared blankly ahead of her. The strange thing was that she could not think, except of the way she had talked to Jonathan last night. If only she hadn’t, if only she hadn’t!
And a little after nine o’clock the three men who were directly responsible for the murder of Jackie Baker and indirectly responsible for the attack on Chief Inspector Cockerill, were gathered together in an apartment in Knightsbridge, surrounded by luxury, and faced with ugly facts and uglier fears. But they kept these fears in the background as they faced the facts.
13
MASTER PLAN
THE shortest and tubbiest of the three men sat in the middle of three armchairs, his legs so short that he had to use a stool in order to rest his feet. He was beautifully dressed in a suede suit of pearl grey, black leather shoes of modern styling, and a dark blue tie. He had a round face and blue eyes, often merry-looking. His hair was cut short but curled a little at the temples. He was Horatio Kilfoil, the Honourable Horatio Kilfoil, only son of an Irish peer who had served both Ireland and England well. Lord Kilfoil served on the boards of many companies, including food importing, distributing and manufacturing companies, and was wealthy in his own right.
So was his son.
He himself did not quite understand his own motivation; there were times when he told one or both of the men now with him that it certainly wasn’t the profit motive only, substantial though it was. And that was true. What he didn’t say, and perhaps didn’t know, was that there was a flaw in his character which made him, almost compulsively, a criminal.
The second man in the long, elegantly furnished room which overlooked Kensington Gore, was very different. He was entirely self-made, profit being his only motivation. He had started life as an assistant porter at Covent Garden Market, worked – and stolen and cheated – until he had enough money to buy his own business in the market, gone into a dozen profitable side-lines, including the buying of stolen goods of any kind. Eventually he had sold out of his business in the market and set himself up as a general food distributor and producer. From this, he had extended various ventures until he owned or controlled at least a hundred food wholesalers in the country. Still not satisfied, he had started a small chain of grocery stores or supermarkets which – because he could undercut most competition – were beginning to flourish. He was a tall, austere-looking man with a high-bridged nose, and the ambition to be taken for an English gentleman. He had even acquired a convincingly aristocratic voice which could fool most of the men with whom he dealt. His name was Black, Lancelot Black.
The third man was quite different from either of the other two. He was the accountant, a genius with figures, and a brilliant organiser. He was younger than either of the others, each of whom was in the middle-forties, and he looked younger even than his thirty-five years. There was the sharpness of a ferret about his face, the upper lip protruding slightly and the chin receding; he had pinched features and large, dark eyes which had a rare quality in eyes of such colour; they were cold. Lifeless. Yet his mind was a computer in its own special way.
He was an Am
erican of Dutch extraction, and his name was Graaf, Joseph Graaf. He dressed carelessly, having no thought of appearance, only of facts and figures.
Now he sat on Kilfoil’s right, while Black sat on Kilfoil’s left. Coffee and brandy was on a circular table in front of them. This was Kilfoil’s home; a bachelor, he found it easier to entertain the others for business than they, who were married, found it to entertain him.
They had been watching the news on television, waiting for mention of Cockerill’s “accident” or of the murder of Jackie Baker.
Neither was mentioned.
“Scotland Yard officers this afternoon arrested Paul Moreno . . .” they heard, the announcer going on to relate the story of the death of Kelworthy. It held no interest for them, and they harked back to their own affairs.
“Cockerill must know it was deliberate,” said Graaf.
“It was an act of madness,” stated Kilfoil.
“We’ll get more from the newspapers in the morn—” began Black, and then he drew in his breath: “Quiet!”
“The Ministry of Food and the police, working in close co-operation, believe they have traced the source of the outbreak of food poisoning which affected diners at many of London’s best-known restaurants last night,” the announcer stated. “Superintendent Firmani of New Scotland Yard, in charge of the investigation, does not think there is any danger of a fresh outbreak provided all stocks of. . .”
“I knew the police were dumb,” Black said. “But this dumb is too much.”
“They’re pulling the wool over our eyes,” said Graaf.
“Or they cannot find out what they want to know,” declared Kilfoil. “One thing is certain, gentlemen. We must be extremely careful from now on.”
“The Baker business was crazy,” Graaf said in a reedy voice. “To let him go round making a few pounds a day—”
“Joe, you don’t mean that,” interrupted Black. “Baker and a hundred like him bring in big money, and you know it. The difference was that Baker knew that I was involved, and he had to go. The others have no idea who they’re working for. The real idiocy—” He stood up and began to pace the room with long, easy strides; he was a striking looking man, particularly in comparison with the other two. “The real idiocy,” he repeated, “was attacking a man from Scotland Yard.”
“That was a mistake, certainly,” Graaf agreed.
“The man who made the mistake mustn’t live long enough to make another,” said Black, very distinctly.
“We can’t go around killing people with impunity,” Kilfoil protested. “A murder is a murder, Lance.”
“We’ve killed before and we’ll kill again,” insisted Black, “and we won’t hand ourselves out a lot of hypocritical hogwash.” He looked down at Kilfoil with narrowed eyes. “We’re not playing for chicken feed.” When neither of the others replied he turned to Graaf and demanded: “Are we, Joe?”
“No, sir,” agreed Graaf. “We’re certainly not playing for chicken feed.”
“We’re in this for millions, and if we play it cool and if we make sure no one can betray us we can be exactly where we want to be in a year from now.”
“A year and a half,” Graaf amended. “All right, a year or a year and a half. That’s the time it will take for us to have control of all the major food outlets in the United Kingdom. That’s what we are aiming for, that’s what we are going to get, and anyone who stands in our way or who makes serious mistakes has to go.” He looked from one to the other. “Have you any arguments?”
“On the principle, no,” Graaf replied.
“So what’s your objection on the practical side?” demanded Black.
“That we cut out the small business, and that we shift from the present operation to the markets, and undersell the competition until we can buy it.”
“I am in absolute agreement,” Kilfoil declared.
“Oh, are you,” said Black, heavily. He leaned forward to pick a cigar from a box on the table, broke the band and then pierced the end with a gold pin. “Oh, so you’re both in agreement, are you?” That was a growl that denoted he was both angry and impatient with them. “Well, let me remind you of one reason why I don’t agree with either of you.” They waited, until he had lit the cigar and tossed the match into an empty fireplace. “Twenty to thirty million pounds,” he stated, flinging the figures at them with a nonchalance he had no intention of being taken seriously. “When we started out we wanted fifty millions, now we only want twenty to thirty.”
“But we have it!” cried Kilfoil. “Our shares in Quickturn and the other stores—”
“Shares and money aren’t the same,” Black said gently. “Tell him, Joe.”
“We could raise the money on the shares,” Graaf said, with a streak of stubbornness sharpening his voice.
“But we’re not going to,” declared Black. “Not while I’m part of this organisation, and it would look bloody funny without me. We can pick that money up in a year at the rate we’re going. If we stop now, if we slacken the tempo, it will give the others time to get their breath back. They’re not going to have the chance. We’re going to hold all Quickturn stock, we’re going on with a cash business, and when we see a weak link in the chain, we cut it out. That’s how it’s going to be.”
Graaf said slowly: “What happens if I won’t go along?”
“Then you get out.”
“I’ve got too much tied up in this to get out, and you know it.”
“That’s right,” agreed Black. “We’ve all got too much tied up in this. We’re going on cutting corners and dealing in cash and forcing the little shops out of business and some of the big chains, too. They close down, we buy or we swallow them up for cash – and we get the cash the way we always have. I’ll run that side of the business.”
“What the hell happens if the police catch up with us?”
“That will be just too bad,” Black said. “But if we’re careful and we don’t do crazy things like attacking senior detectives they won’t catch up with us. It won’t occur to them that the hundreds of individual hijackings are organised by one group. They’ll go on chasing one at a time, and we’ll make sure no one knows who he’s working for. You can leave that to me. You handle the money and the figures, Joe, and you sit with your father on all those boards of directors, Horatio, and at the end of a year”—he gave a sardonic grin—”or perhaps eighteen months, we’ll be just where we want to be, with all the main food distributors in our pocket. Have you ever stopped to think how much people will pay for food when they’re hungry? Have you ever considered what happens to a government which tries to keep food prices down by cutting the profits?”
He paused; and then he laughed; and in a few moments he said: “We can’t afford weak links like Baker, or fools like Webber in Coventry.”
Neither of the others argued any more; it was as if he had beaten down their arguments by the very strength of his will and the power of his voice.
That night, the owner of the car which had nearly killed Chief Inspector Cockerill, was found dead at the wheel of the Jaguar, which had crashed into one of the bridges spanning the M1. No one else was in the car with him, and the experienced policeman who found him said that it looked as if he had fallen asleep at the wheel. The number of the Jaguar was sent to London, and the following morning Detective Inspector Merriman checked it; it was not the number of the car which had caused Cockerill’s crash, so he simply made a note of the report and the number and made no request for the dead man’s car to be closely examined, or brought to London. The trouble with facts is that, to see them in their true light, the viewer has to have imagination; and this was a quality to which Merriman was almost a stranger.
But facts he collected as a bright lamp collected moths; in a way his mind was as much a computer’s as Joe Graaf’s.
At half past eleven that night, Jani
ce Westerman looked into her companion’s eyes, and realised what she should have realised before. He was very tired. Even when she had left her father’s house and returned to the car he had been dozing. She could remember now the violent start he had given when she had opened the car door, how something akin to terror had shown in his eyes in the light of the street lamp. She hadn’t spoken, and nor had he. He had taken some minutes to settle down at the wheel of the car, and forgot to put the headlights on until she told him. After that he had driven well enough, and to her surprise, he had not headed for Wimbledon Common. Halfway down Putney Hill, with the closed shop windows lighted and a few people about, she had asked him suddenly: “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” he had answered, “starving.”
“There’s an Indian restaurant open over there – if you like Indian food.”
“You’d like any kind of food, if—” he began.
She did not know what he had been going to say. “If you were as hungry as I am,” would have been apt enough, but so might several things. She was puzzled by the sudden way in which he broke off and then glanced at her slyly, as if trying to see whether she had noticed anything. “Then let’s go there,” she said. There was plenty of parking space so late at night, and within five minutes they were eating curried chicken, with sweet chutney, coconut, sultanas, almonds, “all the fixings”, the little Indian waiter had said. He did eat ravenously and yet not crudely; she simply could not make him out.
Now, they were near her flat, a small apartment on the third floor of an old house in Bloomsbury, not far from the London University. She saw him caught by a fierce yawn at a time when he could not take his hands off the wheel.
She wasn’t sure what to do.
She had been so sure—
She had been going to get out of the car at a red traffic light, wave and run off; he would never find where she lived.