Good and Justice

by John Creasey

  “Yes,” Gideon agreed. “Who buys it. We should have some idea on Monday, Merriman’s collating information about wholesalers and main distributors.”

  “That old ox still around?”

  “Let’s go and have that coffee,” Gideon said. “Have you told anyone else, Lem?”

  “No, sir. The Commander gets to know the big stuff first, in my book.”

  Gideon put a hand on his arm for a moment in a rare gesture, and as they went into the kitchen, he said: “Thanks for cleaning the lawn mower.”

  Kate was in the living-room, hovering over the coffee percolator, tall cups, biscuits and chocolate cake. She asked Lemaitre to stay for lunch, but he refused with obvious regret. By the time he had gone it was after twelve o’clock, and Gideon was thinking more clearly than before about the situation.

  It simmered in his mind all the weekend.

  There were the moments of sadness, when a van collected the furniture from Mrs. Jameson’s attic flat. There were minutes of deep satisfaction when both Gideon and Kate were upstairs in the soundproofed attic, Kate playing, Gideon humming, sometimes a hymn, sometimes an old music hall song. A newspaper reporter rang up to ask if Gideon had any comment about Arthur Dalby and his girl friend Janice.

  “No. And you should know better than to call me at my home on a—at any time,” Gideon corrected hastily.

  “Have to take a chance sometimes, Commander,” the reporter said reproachfully. “Did you hear about Sylvia Russell and her new baby?”

  “I know she had a new baby.”

  “And both doing fine,” the reporter said. “I showed her and her husband one of your special SOSs about that. If they’d had a boy instead of a girl, they’d call it George!” Before Gideon recovered from that laughing statement, the reporter went on: “Is it true there’s a special investigation going on about large scale thefts from the big markets and from the docks?”

  A bright young man indeed, thought Gideon; and there did not seem much doubt that this was the question he had really called about. There was no time to hesitate, and Gideon was never in favour of the direct lie.

  He said: “There will be, if the thefts really reach a big scale.”

  “Come off it, Commander! They’re enormous, and you know it!”

  “What newspaper do you represent?” asked Gideon mildly.

  “The Echo. And by the way my name is Elliott. Commander, off the record, are these food thefts worrying you?”

  “All thefts worry me.”

  There was a moment’s pause before the other said: “Well, thanks, Commander. Goodbye.” He rang off before Gideon could make any further comment. Gideon waited only a few moments before lifting the receiver and then skimming through the E to K section of the London Telephone Directory for the Echo. He asked for the News Editor, who came on briskly: “Who’s that?”

  “Commander Gideon of—”

  “Good-evening, Commander! How can I help you?”

  “Do you have a reporter named Elliott?” asked Gideon.

  “No,” the man replied. “Are you planning a special news story on food hijacking?”

  “I’m not, but features might be. Care to hold on?” Gideon held for what seemed a long time but the other came back at last and said: “No, Commander. It’s not on our schedule. Do you mind telling me what this is all about?”

  “Someone named Elliott is using the Echo as a cover,” Gideon said.

  “Could be a freelance,” observed the News Editor. “It has happened before. If we get a story offered, I’ll let you know.”

  “Be glad if you would,” Gideon said, and rang off.

  He went back into the living-room, where Kate was watching the Sunday night play on a BBC channel. She was so intent, that he didn’t disturb her. But in some ways he was more worried than ever.

  Later that evening, Kilfoil, Black and Graaf met again in Kilfoil’s apartment, sitting in their accustomed positions, drinking their accustomed drinks. But there was, now, a tension which had not been there even on the meeting earlier in the week. Obviously they were waiting for a telephone call, or for a fourth person to join them. Eventually a young man was admitted by a manservant. He lost no time, saying as the door closed: “I talked to Gideon, Lemaitre, Firmani and several divisional men. None of them gave me the direct negative, just said they were investigating the incidents one by one. But I don’t believe them. I believe they’re really going to move, that they’ve already started to see how big it is.” He looked into Black’s deep-set eyes and went on: “And when the police really get on the move, they’re like a steamroller in action. Nothing can stop them. If you want my opinion you have to do some very quick thinking.”

  Lancelot Black asked Kilfoil: “How many men can put a finger on us, Horatio?”

  “That’s your job,” Kilfoil protested. “How many do you think?”

  “I know my side of it. I’m thinking of yours.”

  “Two,” said Kilfoil, slowly. “Two and possibly three, know that we’re working some racket.”

  “Joe?” asked Black, flatly.

  “None,” Graaf said. “I keep all the facts and figures that matter and all the names and personnel in my head. No one can get to us through me, but your twenty—man, that’s dangerous.”

  Lancelot Black said: “If he’s right about the police attitude, that’s dangerous. So are Horatio’s men. We need to keep a very careful watch for two or three more days, and if the police look like closing in, then—” He brought his hand down with a chopping motion. “We stop.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear last time,” Graaf said.

  “Well, you’re hearing it now,” retorted Black crisply. He narrowed his eyes as if lost in thought. “We can’t take chances. We’ve got to warn everyone concerned and we’ve got to make sure they don’t talk.” The others exchanged glances while Kilfoil moistened his lips. Then Black’s eyes opened at their widest and he said: “We’ll call a meeting. We’ll question each one and find out if he’s had any trouble, or noticed that the police were being more active than usual. We’ll meet at—” He hesitated, and then went on: “At our warehouse in Smithfield. Seven o’clock, Wednesday—no, Thursday. You tell your two or three,” Black added to Kilfoil, “and bring anyone who might know what’s going on.”

  As they went downstairs in the lift, Graaf said in his almost aggressive manner: “Do you think he knows what you’re planning?”

  “What we’re planning,” corrected Black, and laughed. “No, Horatio hasn’t got a thinking cell in his brain. He ‘thinks’ I want to ask them questions.”

  “I know one thing,” Graaf said.

  “What particular thing?” demanded Lancelot Black.

  “Nothing would make me go to that gang of thieves, partner. Nothing in this world.”

  “But Horatio won’t be able to wait to get there,” Black said, and he gave an explosive laugh. “And we’ll be doing what the police want, won’t we? Putting a stop to the hijacking!”

  He laughed again.

  Graaf didn’t laugh; he shivered.

  17

  “THAT GANG OF THIEVES”

  ONE of Gideon’s deep preoccupations over the years had been: why did men from a good honest background, who earned a reasonable income, turn to theft, pilfering, the dozen-and-one forms of larceny which did so much harm to society and took up so much time of the police. At best a homespun philosopher, he knew that this was a motivation allied to that behind shop-lifting by women who were well-off by ordinary standards; stealing out of tills by shop assistants; “borrowing” by bank cashiers and others in positions of trust.

  He could understand when there was an acute need of money to meet an emergency; he could understand the pressure caused by gambling debts, by overspending on hire purchase. He could even find excuses as well as reasons for
many of these but—why did so many people who did not need to profit from crime seize the first opportunity, and then go on and on?

  The drivers on the refrigerated lorries, for instance, were highly-paid; why did some cheat? Why did some deliberately go into transport cafés and overstay their break-time, knowing their vehicle would be gone when they went outside? It was not so much “what makes men steal” which preoccupied him as “what makes men with plenty of money in their pockets steal?”

  There was, of course, no easy answer, unless the obvious one was right: that there was a brain defect in those who stole, just as there was a brain defect in men like Arthur Dalby, and others like Moreno. He accepted the fact that of a family of three brothers, say, born into the same background, given virtually the same care by parents, the same educational opportunities, all three would turn out very differently. One might be as near a saint as human beings ever were; another as near a devil; the third, neither saint nor positive sinner, could be merely a nonentity.

  The simple truth was, then, that though he could not fully understand, he must accept the situation. It preoccupied him a great deal in the early days of the week which followed the first realisation of the size of the food thefts. Many of the men involved, and by his reckoning there must be at least twenty actively concerned, would be ordinary family men; happily married or not, according to the luck of the draw, probably proud of children who were proud of them. They were the people next door; the trusted neighbours, except that in the bitter experience of the police one could trust only those whom one knew for certain to be trustworthy.

  Those van drivers really puzzled him.

  Cockerill, who came in on the Tuesday morning with a magnificent purple, blue and black eye, half closed, and with some partly healed cuts and scratches, said helplessly: “They get a hundred quid a week when they do a full week – and they can work a full week whenever they want to. It beats me.”

  Sam Tollard was one of the drivers.

  He was a married man with a son and a daughter. It was a happy enough home in an apartment block near the docks. At forty, he had managed to put a few thousand pounds aside, he had some sizeable endowment insurances, and as far as he knew, not an enemy in the world.

  And as far as he knew, only he and the man who paid him for the jobs were aware that every now and again he delivered a full load of meat to a big buyer, was paid cash for it, and kept two hundred of the cash for his trouble. He had been doing it for so long that it almost seemed part of the legitimate side of his job. His work kept him away from home for long hours, but he had absolute trust in his wife, and she in him. No week passed when he did not take her and the kids a small present, and treat them to a flash restaurant and the pictures.

  Roger Banner was also one of the drivers.

  He was younger than Tollard but also married, and a good-natured man who played rather than watched cricket and football at weekends, and went shopping on Friday evenings with his wife, taking turns at pushing the pram which held his children, one-year-old twins Sarah and Martha.

  Both these men, and all the others whom Graaf had called “that gang of thieves” received notices to be at the Battersea warehouse on Thursday at seven o’clock, even if it meant turning down a shift. It did not occur to any of the men to object. There were the long-distance drivers, the van salesmen, two or three tally-men – white collar workers – at the docks, an inspector of goods traffic on the railways, one or two key workers at Smithfield, Billingsgate and Covent Garden markets.

  There was one other man involved, one who had worked with Lancelot Black since his early days, but had twice been jailed for robbery. He was an expert on explosives, and he was an expert at asking no questions. When Black told him to take sufficient nitro-glycerine to a certain warehouse at Smithfield, and exactly where to hide it, he obeyed. It was in position a day early: on Wednesday.

  On Thursday morning this long-time friend of Lancelot Black was found dead at the foot of the stairs in the tall, condemned building where, he lived. His neck was broken, and the autopsy showed that he had been full of whisky; there was little doubt that the coroner’s verdict would be one of death by misadventure.

  On the Tuesday before these things happened, Gideon, Cockerill and Firmani, with Merriman sitting in as a kind of talking reference book, went over the facts as they were now known. Whatever his faults, Merriman had done a thorough, almost a brilliant job. He had the figures for the main cities in the United Kingdom as well as for London, and the total value of the stolen or misdirected food was colossal. Cockerill said: “It’s five per cent of the total food bill, Commander.”

  “The wholesale total,” Gideon said. “Yes. And how far have we got with the finding out where it goes?”

  “No more than we knew before,” Cockerill said. “As you instructed, Commander, we went carefully, not wanting to raise any alarm. We know of at least five wholesalers who take stolen goods of any kind and ask no questions; but they can only be a small percentage.”

  “Thousand,” interjected Merriman, unexpectedly.

  “I can tell you this,” Firmani said, “one in six of the restaurants on my list have been buying from dubious markets. If they can save ten per cent they save it. If it hadn’t been for those eels—” He broke off.

  Gideon said: “The distributors must be very big.”

  Cockerill grunted, Merriman grunted, Firmani raised both eyes and then said:

  “One big one or a lot of little ones.”

  “One big one, most likely,” declared Cockerill. “To fix this with thousands of distributors would need a huge administration. Did you have any luck with the Food Retailers Association, Commander?”

  “I’ve been promised some kind of report this afternoon,” Gideon answered. “I’ll let you know if it has much to say.”

  He nodded dismissal.

  They went out very quietly. Gideon watched the door close, then moved to the window, taking up his favourite stance and watching the ever-changing scene. The weather had turned unpleasant in the last few days and the grey Thames was pocked by a million rain drops. He singled out one pleasure boat as it disappeared beneath Westminster Bridge, going perhaps as far as Richmond and Teddington Weir; then turned away.

  There had been little briefing that morning; very few major problems had cropped up over the weekend, but that meant little. Crimes committed might still be discovered, crimes from murder to the comparatively trifling. He was ill at ease with himself, and quite suddenly knew what he must do. He called the Commissioner, who answered his own telephone in a voice which sounded a thousand miles away.

  “What is it, George?”

  “Do you have half-an-hour to spare, sir?”

  “Now?” asked Scott-Marie, obviously hesitant. “I had planned—” He broke off. “Half-an-hour.”

  “Should be plenty,” Gideon assured him.

  “Then come along right away.”

  Scott-Marie was a tall, lean, military-looking man, good-looking in an austere way. Gideon, who had not seen him for several weeks, was startled; lines at Scott-Marie’s mouth seemed deeper, as if a sculptor had been at work on him, chipping at the hard, leathered face. Now he waved a hand towards an angular-looking armchair. It looked too small for Gideon, but from experience he knew that it was not only big enough but also very comfortable. Scott-Marie had his own chair positioned so that Gideon did not have to face the window-light while looking at him. He did not speak at once, but waited.

  “Two things, closely related, sir,” Gideon said, aware of, and grateful for, this characteristic gesture. “We’ve been criminally slow getting onto the size of the food thefts. We still don’t know the full extent of it, but it seems to have been brilliantly organised and I’m sure as I can be that it’s big enough to have an effect on the national standard of living.”

  Scott-Marie, for once, was startled into saying: “Can
anything be as big as that?”

  “I’ve convinced myself,” Gideon stated, “and I’ve been trying to think how it could be done.” When Scott-Marie simply nodded he went on, choosing his words with great care. “I think it could be done by forcing down prices, forcing the small trader out of business, leaving the largest share of trade in the hands of a few large chain or multiple stores who could fix prices as they wished.” Still Scott-Marie was silent, and it was impossible to say whether he was agreeing or disagreeing. “The price-fixing wouldn’t be our business,” Gideon said, “but the steps being taken to reach the position from which it could be done are our business.”

  “Most certainly,” Scott-Marie agreed.

  “A major distributor must be involved,” Gideon said, “and I’d like to start investigating them all.” His lips widened in a grim smile. “And that’s a tall order.”

  The Commissioner did not argue. “If it has to be done, it has to be done. Do whatever you think necessary.”

  “Thank you, sir. It may take some time but I’d like to plant a man in most of the head offices and main branches of the biggest chain stores.” Gideon shifted in his chair. “Then there’s another angle that really gets under my skin.”

  “And that is?”

  “The way the van salesman for those eels was murdered. It was quick, callous and hideous, sir. The man who could order it could do anything. When I first started this investigation I wanted to keep it quiet, but that hasn’t proved practicable. A lot of enquiries have been made. On Sunday I was questioned by a bogus newspaperman about our plans, so was Lemaitre, and several others. I’m afraid of another ruthless act if we get too close.”

  Gideon stopped.

  Scott-Marie leaned forward, looking at him very intently. It was as if he were asking himself questions and then answering those questions, the main one being whether Gideon was absolutely serious. At last he said: “Are you saying that you think we should take some of the suspects into protective custody?”