by John Creasey
“That’s what I’d like to do,” Gideon said, enormously glad that he had come here; this man was one of the few who would really understand what was driving him. “So I’m in a cleft stick, sir. Make some arrests and tell the organisers that we really are getting close to them; or let things go on as they are until we get a fuller and clearer picture which would lead us to the main criminals. If I choose either, and it goes wrong, it could be disastrous.” When the Commissioner sat and waited, he went on heavily: “I’m not asking you to make the decision for me, sir. But before I decide one way or the other I think you should have the chance to veto either or both.”
Quietly, Scott-Marie replied. “I’d like to think about it, and I’ve a man coming in five minutes. I’ll be in touch in about two hours.”
18
EITHER OR BOTH
AS Gideon was saying: “I think you should have a chance to veto either or both,” to Sir Reginald Scott-Marie, one of the oldest police constables on the Metropolitan Force was looking into a room which was a curious mixture of grubbiness and glitter; of junk and valuables. It was on the top floor of Poberty’s Buildings, in Whitechapel, on the fringe of Lemaitre’s division. The constable, whose name had grown to suit him, was Old, commonly known in the division and among the people with whom he worked as “Old Charlie Old”. Getting up four flights of narrow stairs had been an effort, but from the moment he had learned that his namesake, Charlie Larsen, had been found at the foot of the stairs with a broken neck, he had meant to come here.
Old Charlie Old had a great many attributes, loyalty, courage, tolerance, not being the least. But no one would have called him brilliant. His ideas, such as they were, were born out of experience, and what thinking he did was along the most conventional lines. Over the years that he had served here, and they were over thirty, he had come to know and accept a great many residents of the district, and, having a good memory, he knew who had been inside and for what offences; which wife would be faithful when her man was in prison and which would not; which mother needed watching, especially when in drink, for her children’s sake; which mother managed miracles on a small or negligible income and kept a large family spick and span.
Old Charlie Old, then, was part of the district. Even when the great changes had been taking place in the operation of the Force, younger men were being drafted in and the older ones retired, he stayed. He did not know that this was because his superiors all knew that his knowledge of this particular part of London was invaluable. Even thieves in trouble would go to him, and many a wrong-doer, when taken away by the plainclothes men for a well-earned two or three years sentence, would plead: “Keep an eye on my old woman, Charlie.” And Old Charlie Old would nod and say: “Right you are, Bob,”—or Syd, Jim, Joe, whatever the name might be. He always got the names right. No one would ever know how much his kindness cost him in hard cash, but he didn’t smoke, had only an occasional glass of beer, and a wife who earned nearly as much as he did at a gown and mantle manufacturers in Shoreditch.
This morning, he had come back on duty after two days off, and heard about Charlie Larsen. The inquest hadn’t as yet been held, but the facts were known by everyone, and it did not surprise Old Charlie that the other man had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck. The marvel was that he hadn’t injured himself long before. Old Charlie’s visit was due to something very different: curiosity. For Larsen, especially when on the way to being drunk, had often passed on what he called: “Li’l ole secrets”. In fact he said very little, except that he had influential friends, and didn’t have to worry about his future. Old Charlie Old had noticed – without actually asking – that he seldom bought groceries or foodstuffs from the corner shop, now glorified by the name Supermarket, or even from the bigger shops in the nearest main road. He had a secret source of supply. Whether he stole them or not Old Charlie could only guess. He didn’t think so.
One thing Larsen had paid for was his whisky, from a nearby off-licence.
He had no regular job but took odd jobs whenever it suited him. He was, for instance, a standby pall-bearer for a local undertaker, as well as a messenger for many of the shops.
Now, Old Charlie Old looked about the room.
The bed was solid with a good, fairly modern mattress. Two big electric heaters would keep the room warm when London was freezing. There was one hide armchair which looked inviting and two smaller, velvet covered ones. On the mantelpiece was a French porcelain clock which was of beautiful colouring and design; Old Charlie knew instinctively that it was very valuable. Next to it was a cheap alarm clock, a tin tea-caddy with a garish design, and a dozen dust-gathering odds and ends. On a corner table was a silver candelabrum, which looked as if it had been lovingly polished, next to a cracked ash-tray. A bottle of ink which seemed to have dried up, flanked another, cleaner ash-tray with some white pellets in it.
He picked one up and sniffed. It had a faint and distinctive smell, and yet he could not place it. A bit acid, he thought; it lingered in the nostrils. Then he spotted, among the rubbish on a table behind the door, something he had not dreamt he would find here: an old detonator.
He went close. Yes, that was a detonator, the kind they used in plastic bombs and nitro-bombs, which would explode either at a set time if it was wired to a timing device, or under a slight impact. He did not pick it up but asked the empty room: “Charlie, what have you been up to?”
He began to search more closely, in cupboards and drawers, until he found a half-full box of the detonators on top of a cupboard – out of sight until one stood on a chair.
“Strewth!” Old Charlie exclaimed. “He’s been fooling me all these years.”
He went out, closing and locking the door, going down the interminably long staircase, stepping over the white chalk marks with which the police had outlined the dead man’s body. He could have used his radio from here but he did not altogether trust walkie-talkies; they did the job all right, but bigtime crooks could get the wavelength and monitor the reports to and from policemen and headquarters. He walked, dropping a word here and a word there to people at their windows or doorways, until he reached a crossroads where he knew a police patrol car would appear soon. One did, in less than five minutes, and pulled up at his signal.
“Want some help, Charlie?”
“How about a lift to the station?”
“Hop in. Getting secretive in your old age, are you, Charlie?”
“Just find my legs get more tired than they used to,” Old Charlie replied evasively.
He reported in person to a sergeant, the sergeant reported to an inspector; the inspector sent the sergeant and Charlie Old back to the flat for a closer look; the sergeant did not share Old Charlie’s misgivings about walkie-talkies, and he reported straight back to the inspector.
“They’re detonators all right, sir. And that’s not all. There are some pellets of Firex about the place, the stuff the fire chaps think started the fire when Jackie Baker was killed. And tucked away under the bed are a couple of tins of gelignite, brand new – it looks as if they were stolen with that lot out of the Hi-Build yard last week.”
The inspector immediately went up to see his superintendent, Lemaitre.
Lemaitre was in his office; it was his habit to keep his door open so that anyone who wanted to see him could do so. A closed door meant Keep Out, and no order was more effectively obeyed. Lemaitre, intently studying papers, looked up immediately.
“Sit down, Perky.”
“I’m not sure I’ve time, sir,” said the inspector, and launched into his story.
During this same period, Gideon buried himself more and more deeply in the figures and the general situation, concentrating on the distribution to wholesalers and the retail outlets for the stolen goods.
Mr. Westerman spent those two hours sitting at his office desk, trying to concentrate on work, but unable to prevent his eyes from
straying towards the photograph of Janice which looked up at him from a neatly folded newspaper. His secretary and everyone concerned with the business seemed almost as shocked as he.
Now and again, when alone, he would clench his fist and cry out in anguish: “Where is she?”
During those two hours, the door-to-door search being made for Arthur Dalby and Janice Westerman was slowed down by two bank robberies, two smash-and-grabs, and a suspected plot to rob a bulletproof car which was to collect old currency notes from a bank in King’s Cross and take them to the Bank of England for destruction. Nevertheless, it went on relentlessly. The police had taken the position of the Jaguar as a central point, and from there made a circle approximately half a mile round it. This took in an enormous area of London, which included the mass of guest and boarding houses serving the University of London, huge apartment blocks, as well as hundreds of small, pleasant streets of Georgian or late Victorian houses.
By sheer chance, Janice Westerman’s flat was easier to approach by car from the perimeter of the circle than the heart; it would be among the last to be visited, and the officers in charge of the search estimated that if they could keep fifty men on the job they would be finished by Friday at the earliest.
Most of the time, now, Janice was frightened, for she had no doubt that she was being kept prisoner. So far all their supplies had lasted, but they would have to contact some shop, or else cut down on eating, before this day, Wednesday, was out. She still did not know who her jailer was, but she knew that he was bordering on the pervert.
He would not put on the radio, and she had no television. The thing which saved her from absolute boredom and despair was the record player. And in some moods he would jump up from his chair, pull her from hers, and dance to frenzied music, wild, exhilarating, breathtaking. He would start to drag her clothes off, but before he had finished he would collapse, exhausted; too exhausted for love.
After these periods of fierce excitement, he would become moody. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, he would stare at her. All this time, he kept on the wig, and she had no idea whether he realised that she knew that he wore one. It was after one of these unnerving moods, when he said: “Let’s eat, I’m hungry,” that she ventured, in the calmest voice she could summon: “We’ll have to go to the shops, soon.”
“We stay here,” he said, sharply.
“But we must get some food,” she protested. “We’re out of milk and eggs, there’s hardly any bread, most of the canned food—”
“We stay here,” he repeated, and his expression changed, his lips tightened, there was viciousness in him.
She shot him a quick, nervous glance. “Unless you want to go hungry one of us must go and get something.”
He said roughly: “If anyone goes, I go.”
“But why can’t we both go?”
“Because I say so.”
Anger welled up in her, and had it not been for the accompanying fear, she would have shouted at him. Freedom was what she worshipped, was why she had left home, was why she lived here on her own, dependent on no one and beholden to no one – except, occasionally, her father. She liked the flat because the rest of the house was used as offices. She liked being on her own, without neighbours, without close friends, preferring strangers and short acquaintances; but this man—
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.
“I want to do my own shopping,” she said, “and I don’t see—”
He had sprung out of his chair, and was striking at her face, before she realised that he had moved. He struck her with the palm of his hand, a vicious blow on either cheek, and then drew back, breathing hard; his lips seemed to have disappeared into a thin line. Her cheeks stung and her anger rose to fury; but terror was greater. She sat and stared at him, wide eyed.
He backed away, saying viciously: “If you don’t want me to get violent, just do what I tell you, in bed, out of bed, everywhere, all the time.”
How could she take such an ultimatum from any man?
Whatever the consequences how could she possibly let him get away with it?
And if she did, this time, what hope was there for the future between them, be it a day or a week or a month. She had never been dominated and controlled and she wasn’t going to be now. Whatever it cost her, she had to fight back. He was staring at her as these thoughts went through her mind and it was almost as if he could read the defiance in her.
Her heart was beating so fast she felt as if she were choking.
She couldn’t get the words out, but – she had to. She could not meekly submit—
Unless she just pretended to, and at the first chance that came, escape. He couldn’t keep watch on her all the time.
“Come on, let’s know what you’re thinking,” he cried. He was in front of the chair, feet slightly apart, hands held out in front of him, the fingers curled and the palms downwards; an animal, about to pounce. An animal. A terrifying animal. But if she let him get away with this, where would her self-respect be? Her sense of independence?
“Get away from me,” she said, “and I’ll tell you.”
“You tell me now.”
“Get away from me, and I’ll tell you,” she repeated. “I don’t want trouble with you, but I don’t take orders from you or any man. So—”
He leapt at her. He grabbed her wrists as she tried to fend him off, and hauled her up from the chair. It was as if he had a dozen arms and legs and fists and feet. He was breathing hard and she was gasping, quite sure that she was about to die. He dragged her into the bathroom and dumped her on a stool. She felt him yank her arms behind her and fumble at her wrists; he was binding her. At some stage he had fetched a rope she used when she went camping, and when her wrists were locked together with this he tied the other end to the lavatory chain that hung from the high cistern. When he had finished he was breathing in loud, animal gasps. He buried his fingers in her hair and pulled savagely, and then tied a scarf round her mouth and the back of her neck, so that she could hardly breathe.
She heard him go; heard the door shut; heard the key turn; and heard him move away. After that there was only the gurgling of the cistern and the harshness of her breathing. If she was to live, she had to breathe more gently, the gasps were almost choking her.
If she wanted to live—
The real question was, would he let her?
At the same moment, two bells rang on Gideon’s desk, the internal one and the Yard operator’s. He took a chance that the first would be Scott-Marie, lifted the other receiver and said to the operator: “Whoever it is, hold him or have him call back.” He picked up the second receiver as he put the first down and announced: “Gideon.”
“This is the Commissioner, Commander,” Scott-Marie said, so formally that he must surely have someone else in the office with him. “I’ve decided that you must be guided by your own assessment of the evidence. Whatever decision you reach I will support, of course.”
“Thank you, sir,” Gideon said, not really sure whether to be pleased or sorry. “What time will you be free?”
“Not until late afternoon, if at all. But I shall be home this evening.”
“Thank you,” said Gideon, and rang off.
Scott-Marie had left him on his own and that was really how it should be, but he did not relish making the decision. Arrest as many as they could now, and warn the big shots; or wait and take a risk that even in a short time irreparable damage could be done. It wasn’t often that the connection between police work and something as basic as cost of living and the life of the community was so obvious. For a few seconds he forgot the other call, but recollection came and he lifted the second receiver and asked: “Is my caller still waiting?”
“Yes, Commander.” There was a click, and then Gideon heard Lemaitre’s voice. “Hallo, George. We’ve found a store of Firex
, some gelignite from a recently stolen store and a man who might or might not have died by accident. Shall I give you the story over the telephone, or come and see you?”
Before Gideon had answered, before he had really made up his mind what to say, there was a tap at the communicating door and Tiger looked in, apologetic and yet insistent.
“Sorry to worry you, sir,” he said, “but Sir Bernard Dalyrymple is here – actually here, sir, waiting in the hall. May I tell him you’ll see him?”
19
SIR BERNARD DALYRYMPLE
GIDEON said to Lemaitre: “Hold on, Lem,” and to Tiger: “I’ll gladly see him but won’t be free for twenty minutes, possibly half-an-hour. Find out if he would like to do a Cook’s tour of the Yard and if so get a senior man to take him round. If not, find him a comfortable chair and a cup of tea – what’s the time?”
“Half past three, sir.”
“Right.” Gideon nodded dismissal and before the door had closed was on the telephone again to Lemaitre. In the way that he had acquired while in this office he had dealt with the two problems at once, and knew exactly what to say and do. “I need everything you can tell me now, Lem, and may need to see you later. Go ahead. “
Lemaitre, sensing his preoccupation and the need for urgency, brought him up to date with the Charlie Larsen, detonators and Firex situation, lucidly and yet vividly; and he managed to get a word in for Old Charlie Old.
“Is he still working?” Gideon asked, astonished.
“And still as blind as a bat in some things,” replied Lemaitre. “We wouldn’t have got this without him, but he’s known Larsen for twenty years and didn’t realise he was an explosives expert.”