by John Creasey
“Milk or cream, sir?”
“Hot milk?” Gideon glanced up.
“Yes.”
“Milk, then. Very comprehensive report, I see.”
“Thank you.”
“Who produced these meeting minutes?”
“Constable Conception, sir.”
“Constable, who?” Gideon taking the proffered cup, was startled.
“Conception,” repeated Henry, and gave a funny little laugh. “No one can ever believe it, first time.”
“Heard of it as a Christian name,” mused Gideon. “How long has she been on the Force?”
“About a year,” answered Henry.
“Did she come straight here?”
“No, sir. She was transferred from NE Division. You’ll remember there was a time when we had some trouble over immigration in this area, and I asked for someone who might be able to smooth it over.”
“I remember, and you told me about her,” Gideon said. “But I’d forgotten. Is she Jamaican?”
“Yes, sir.”
“H’mm,” said Gideon, in an almost forbidding tone. “Sure that’s wise?”
“In what way. sir?”
“Can she be objective? No use fighting prejudice with prejudice, Chas.”
“I—er—I don’t think there’s the slightest doubt about her objectivity,” Henry replied, a little stiffly. He watched as Gideon moved across and picked up a chocolate biscuit. “I have every confidence in her.” As if with a flash of inspiration, he went on: “Would you like to see her, sir? She’s waiting for my summons.”
“Yes, good idea,” Gideon nodded, as if this were a new notion to him, also. “But let me get the situation absolutely clear, first. She came from NE Division, and has been working undercover here, posing as an enthusiastic member of the group of agitators, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Plainclothes, when she’s here?”
“Oh, she’s Detective Constable, sir.”
“What happens if she’s recognised when she reports for duty?”
“There isn’t much risk,” answered Henry, and added with just a hint of impatience. “We’ve handled it very carefully, sir. She concentrates on this job and reports by telephone or sees me at night. It’s only in emergency that she comes in during the day, and then she arrives by car. It’s most unlikely she would be seen by anyone who knows her.”
“I see,” said Gideon, heavily. “You use her on this exclusively, you mean.”
“And in a consultant and advisory position on other matters, relating to immigrants and—er—racial problems.” Henry’s answer was obviously rehearsed. “I felt that the danger of a major demonstration during the Test Match warranted full concentration, sir.”
Gideon’s “Yes,” was non-committal.
Henry was quite right, of course; and the Yard had half-a-dozen plainclothes officers concentrating on the problems of integration. Some were trivial, some went very deep. But Henry certainly should not have done this without consultation; at Divisional level, he could not be sure that he wasn’t cutting across lines already drawn up by the Yard.
If he said so now, however, he might put Henry on the defensive, and such a mood would probably convey itself to the girl – Good God, Conception! – and make her feel awkward. Even as things were she would be only too conscious of talking with the Commander.
“Yes, it certainly needs concentration,” he said. “Go and get her, will you?”
He finished his coffee, ate another chocolate biscuit, had a flash thought that Kate would discourage him from having any chocolate during the day, for he was beginning to fight the weight war, wondered how Kate was, and poured himself more coffee. Henry was doubtless taking this proffered chance of briefing the girl – probably, he grinned to himself, reassuring her that he, Gideon, was not an ogre!
There was a tap at the door, and Henry brought the girl in.
Gideon’s first reaction was: “What a nice little thing.”
She was on the short side, and could only, with the height rule, just have scraped into the Force. She was trim, neatly-dressed in a cream linen suit, edged with brown. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat of the same brown hue, carried brown gloves and wore matching brown shoes. There was something very frank and open about her face, with its broad yet delicate features. She wore lipstick and the curiously smooth dark honey-colour of her skin might owe a little to make-up.
She moistened her lips, and he saw that she had nice teeth, one of them gold-capped. That gold could betray her, unless she painted or covered it as part of her disguise.
“Detective Constable Juanita Conception, Commander,” Henry introduced.
Gideon nodded and put down his cup, smiled without showing quite how well-impressed he was, and asked: “You really think there’s serious trouble brewing for Thursday’s big match, do you?”
“I’m quite sure there is, sir,” she answered. Her voice was pleasant; perhaps a little trembly, although she controlled any nervousness well.
“Then it’s a very good thing we know.”
“Yes, sir. I think so.”
“What kind of trouble, do you know yet?”
Gideon noticed Henry watching very tensely, as if afraid the girl might make a bad impression.
“I only know a little, sir. In the organisation there’s a small central committee which makes that kind of decision and they’re not going to announce their plans until the last moment. I’m not on that committee.” She hesitated, and gave a hesitant little smile: “They think there might be a leakage of information, sir.”
Gideon chuckled: “I don’t blame them!”
That was the moment when Detective Constable Juanita Conception relaxed – and the moment when the Superintendent, also, seemed to lose his fears. The girl’s smile, this time, was bright and flashing, and Henry chuckled, too; evidence of how pent-up he had been.
“Constable Conception thinks she has some idea of what the Committee might be planning,” he put in.
“Good. What is it?”
“The one thing I know, sir, is that they have managed to get hold of a thousand tickets for Thursday, the first day of the match,” the girl told him. “Out in the open tickets, I mean. The bleachers, sir.”
“A thousand?”
“Yes, sir. The Central Committee had a lot of the members buying – some of them went back three or four times for more tickets.”
“Is this common knowledge?”
“There’s a lot of talk about seeing the game, sir,” said Juanita Conception, “and they all seem to tell me more than anyone else – any Jamaican is supposed to be just crazy about cricket.”
“And aren’t you?”
“I’d prefer one hour at the Centre Court at Wimbledon, sir, to a whole Test Match – even if it was against the West Indies!”
“I see,” said Gideon, drily. “Don’t ever tell my son that!” He moved to a big armchair and sat down. “Have you any idea how many people are likely to be involved?”
“A thousand, I suppose.”
Gideon, momentarily taken aback, suddenly chuckled again. This girl put him in a good humour and he was extremely glad he had not created problems of tension.
“Where will they come from?” he asked.
“I’m not sure, sir, but I do know at least fifty are coming in from Europe and they say there will be some on the s.s. France when she reaches Southampton from New York. That will be the day before the match begins.”
“I see.” Gideon looked at her very levelly, so that her smile faded, and she waited. But there was no tension; obviously she was at ease now. “Constable – do you think your identity has been suspected?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you think would happen if your collea
gues on the Action Committee found out?”
She didn’t answer at once, and Gideon prompted: “Haven’t you thought of that?”
“Often, sir,” she replied.
“Well?”
“I’m sure there’s no danger,” Henry put in quickly.
The girl looked at him gravely for a long time, then turned back to Gideon, and he had no doubt at all that she would answer truthfully and that her opinion would be well-considered. She frowned, slightly; it seemed to narrow her features and to give her an added attractiveness.
“I think they would disfigure me, sir,” she answered at last. “One or two might want to kill me.”
“Juanita!” exclaimed Henry.
“I do, sir,” insisted Juanita, without even glancing at him. “They feel very strongly about the apartheid situation, and they would believe I had betrayed them.” When Gideon made no answer, she added in a hushed voice: “And in one way, they would be right, wouldn’t they? That’s the awful thing about—” She broke off, and after a pause went on in a different, almost defensive manner: “You did ask me, sir, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I wanted to know and I am very glad to know,” answered Gideon. “You started to say something about—”
“What I’d like to know is whether there was anything new last night,” interrupted Henry.
It was obvious that he had been searching for some justifiable way of interrupting, that this change of mood was far from his liking. And his exclamation: “Juanita!” told its own story: this was more than an official association – which could result in another cause for worry. She reported to him ‘at night’ he had said. Where? From the moment the conversation had taken this turn he had tried to break it up, but the girl did not even glance at him; her only concern at that moment was with Gideon. And Gideon, also, ignored Henry, who did not try again.
“It’s the most awful thing about the world today,” she went on, flatly. “You have to spy on one another, if you believe in a thing strongly enough. And most of the Action Committee believe passionately, sir – they really do. Some of them – I really do think some of them would go to the stake for what they believe in. They hate apartheid. They certainly don’t mind a few months in prison.” She continued to eye Gideon levelly, but paused for a long time; it was his time to speak.
“Do you hate apartheid?” he asked, very quietly.
“In a way I do, sir,” she answered, without hesitation: obviously she had long since worked out her attitude about this. “But primarily I believe that you’ve got to obey the law, sir. You’ve just got to be law-abiding. I think a demonstration, especially an ugly demonstration about this—this game,” she said with almost scornful emphasis, “could do a terrible lot of harm. You just have to believe in something, sir, and I believe in law and order.”
Gideon spent a long moment looking intently into her alert, eager face, sensing that she was almost begging him to understand, then cleared his throat and asked: “And you’d go to the stake for it, in your own way, would you?”
“Well, of course,” said Juanita Conception, quite simply.
Gideon drew his gaze away at last and spoke to Henry: it was almost as if he had only now remembered that the other man was still present. At the back of his mind, there was a very great admiration for this young woman, and it was easy to understand that Henry might have become very attached to her. Henry was married, of course, so that could create all manner of complications. But the girl was remarkably level-headed and would probably keep any situation under control.
That wasn’t the immediate worry, anyhow.
“We’ll have to make sure that she doesn’t go to the stake, Superintendent,” he said, briskly. “I’d like you to go very closely into the situation and come to the Yard in the morning so that we can discuss it more fully. Is there an Action Committee tonight?” he asked the girl.
“We’ll meet in one of the coffee bars or perhaps in one of the members’ flat or house,” Juanita told him. “But there isn’t an official meeting.”
Gideon nodded.
“Be very careful,” he ordered. “Be very careful indeed, Constable. And remember that if it became necessary we could withdraw you from this assignment and keep on top of the situation some other way. You’ve done a thoroughly good job, and if we manage to stop trouble at Lord’s, it will be largely due to you.”
“Thank you – very much,” Juanita managed, huskily.
Soon, she went off. Soon after, Gideon finished his talk with Charles Henry, without making any reference to the way the investigation had been conducted so far. He was driven away, a little after three o’clock, and passed Lord’s in bright sunlight.
“I’ll bet the match will be rained off,” he grumbled, then grinned: he reminded himself of Lemaitre.
“I tell you,” said Kenneth Noble, one of the inner council of the Action Committee: “I don’t trust Juanita. I’ve seen her talking to the same copper, twice.”
“If you feel like that, we’d better have her watched,” replied Roy Roche, the chairman and chief ideas man of the Committee. “If she is a two-faced bitch, the quicker we find out the better.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
’Charm School’
“Now this is the last day of the course,” said Aunty Martha, happily. “And I don’t think I’ve ever had a better class. I really don’t!” She beamed her approval at four boys and three girls, who smiled back in whole-hearted agreement, obviously aware that they were good. “I just want you to answer me a few questions, and then we’ll go and have some dinner – I always like to celebrate, when I’m sending a new bunch of young people out into the world! When I’ve asked you the questions, you can ask me anything you like. No cheek, mind you!”
They all laughed, delightedly.
The room was small but very cool, in spite of the heat outside, for there were wide open windows and a cross wind. It was two days after Gideon had called for a survey of petty crimes such as shop-lifting and bag-snatching, and the weather was still very warm but not so humid. People were beginning to talk of the long, fine summers of their youth; the older folk of the fabulous one of 1921, when First World War cannons had been fired into the sky to try to make clouds.
“Now, let’s begin,” Martha almost cooed. “First, I want that look of injured innocence – the ‘surely you don’t think I would do such a thing, officer’!”
Immediately, the smiles faded, and each face seemed to change. Any stranger, seeing it, would have found the abrupt transition so astonishing that after a first startled silence, he could only have burst into laughter.
It was as if a mask dropped in a flash over each face. Eyes widened and rounded, one pair of lips parted as if in horror, one girl frowned, one boy looked both frightened and indignant at the same time. Martha got up from her desk and moved among them, touched eyes and cheeks and parted lips, chins and hair and even noses.
“That’s very good, Kitty.” She fingered an almost piteous mouth. “Just a little less like an idiot, dear – don’t open your mouth quite so wide! There, that’s better . . . George my boy, don’t look as if the nasty policeman is going to drag you off by the ears and put you in prison. He won’t – not if you’ve learned everything Aunty has told you . . . Dulcie, that’s just right – butter wouldn’t melt in your pretty little mouth, would it? . . . Leonard, the only thing you have to remember is not to be cheeky when you open your mouth. You look like an angel . . .”
She frowned at a girl. “Bertha, love, your face is all right but you really should do something about your bra! If you stick out like that, there isn’t a man who’ll be able to take his eyes off you – you’d never be able to pinch a thing. Be flat when you’re working, dear, at least! What’s that . . . When you’re not working, love, you can stick out like a pair of Mount Everests for all I care! . . . Cyril, don’t look so happy . . . Y
es you do, pet, your eyes do. We’ll have another try in a minute . . . Well, now for questions. All ready?”
There was a loud chorus of ‘yes’.
“Then the first question is, how many of you work together?”
“Three!” came a chorus.
“Why three, lovies?”
“Because two of us can be on the job and the other can take whatever we’ve got.”
“That’s right, dear. What else can Number Three do, pets?”
There was another chorus.
“Keep an eye out for the cops.”
“That’s it, exactly!” enthused Aunty Martha. “Now, what happens if you spot a cop?”
“Get to hell out of it.”
“That’s right, George – get to hell out of it! You never take a chance with the forces of law and order, see? It doesn’t matter how rich the pickings, you run. You can’t get many pickings in—”
“Jail!” one cried.
“Prison,” called a girl.
“The lock-up,” said a third.
“The hoosegow,” squeaked a boy.
They were all laughing happily; they continued to laugh, and even Martha Triggett kept bursting out with hearty laughter, but at long last she sobered.
“Now there’s another thing. We’ll have a car in two different car parks, and you’ll each have a key to the boots – both boots. When you want to get rid of some of your ill-gotten gains, go and dump them in one car or the other. You needn’t worry after that, I’ll see the cars are driven away when the time comes.
She paused giving them time to absorb all this.
“That’s for next week, not tomorrow,” she went on at last. “Tomorrow’s Monday – you can get a lot of practice in. Just mix among the shoppers in the High Street, and in the market – but keep out of the stores and supermarkets: they’ve got electronic eyes. You know you must get rid of the stuff quick, don’t you? . . . Could be a car boot, or a shop, or a van, wherever you’re told. The important thing is to be quick, every time. And if you think you’re being watched, scram! I’ll clear the stuff – you don’t have to worry about that. First share out, next Sunday. You’ll get equal shares, everyone shares and shares alike in Aunty Martha’s cooperative!”