by John Creasey
Roaring with laughter, she looked very attractive with her bright gold hair and bright make-up, her well-moulded breasts and trim waist.
Then she stopped laughing and for a moment she looked cold; in a strange way, deadly.
“No working for yourself, mind. Everything, even the cash, goes right into the kitty. Anyone who tries to cheat Aunty Martha won’t try it again. Remember, I’ve got eyes – wherever you are, you’re being watched. You won’t come to any harm if you play fair with me and your partners but you’ll come to a sticky end if you don’t!”
She paused, and looked menacingly from one now straight and startled face to another. She let these last words of warning hover in the air, then with a curiously sinister inflection, finished: “Or your fingers will. Don’t make any mistake!”
There was another pause, before her face and voice brightened again.
“But you don’t have a thing to worry about as long as you play fair! Now let’s go and tuck in, loves.”
In fact, all of them were a little subdued, and two of the girls were looking at their hands, as if imagining what would happen if Aunty Martha caught them cheating.
That was June 4th; the day when Lemaitre went on board the Queen Elizabeth II in New York and after a word with the Purser and the Master-at-Arms, went along to the Chief Steward, who had the four smoking-room stewards ready for questioning; two of them resentful, for they were anxious to go ashore.
And it was the day when the tall gangling man who worked for Archibald Smith wormed his way through the shrubbery and built a little ‘blind’ through which he could see the whole of the court. He had brought cold tea, sandwiches, fruit and chocolate and, being an intelligent man although he looked such a fool, he also had a spray of insect repellant. Not least, he had also taken along with him a miniature camera.
It was the day when, at The Towers, Lou Willison spoke to Barnaby. They were in the old kitchen of the house, where showers had been installed and all the gear was stored. The room was high-ceilinged and gloomy, but dry. There was a view of the gardens and the thick shrubbery, and of the path which led to the hidden tennis court.
“Can you restrain yourself, Barnaby?” Willison asked.
“I surely can, Mr. Willison.”
“When you’re out there on the courts it will be a great temptation to blast off with the service, the first chance you get.”
“I know it, but you don’t have to worry.” Barnaby looked at his sponsor with an understanding smile. “I won’t do that, Mr. Willison. I can get through the early rounds without it, sir, I’m sure I can. I’ll use it only if I’m in trouble, but I don’t expect to be in trouble until we get to the last sixteen.”
“Barnaby.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You can be over-confident.”
“I know it, sir, but you don’t have any cause to worry. Mr. Willison. If I get myself in trouble that early, I don’t deserve to reach the final this year, sir. I won’t be ready for it.”
Willison’s bright eyes blazed.
“Good God, man! This is your year, it has to be your year! Don’t you realise how much—”
He stopped abruptly, because the puzzled expression in Barnaby’s eyes reminded him of something it was easy to forget. He had never told Barnaby how vital victory had become to him. It was not that he didn’t trust Barnaby, and he had earmarked ten per cent of any winnings for the young negro; but he was far from sure that Barnaby could carry the weight of such a responsibility. It was enough, might even be too much, that he had to carry the weight of his own ambition and the pride of his own race. Until now, Willison had understood these things perfectly and had rationalised himself into acceptance of them. But since so much had come to depend on it, Barnaby’s winning had become an obsession. Thank God he could be objective enough to realise that to place such an additional burden onto Barnaby’s shoulders would have been unforgivable. He wanted to help the lad to restrain himself; that was of vital importance to them both.
Barnaby, finding that Willison simply stopped speaking, spoke very quietly and obviously without the slightest suspicion of the truth.
“I understand the effort needed, sir, and know how much money you have spent on me. I won’t fail you, Mr. Willison – you can be sure of that.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” Willison said huskily. And clapping Barnaby on the shoulder, he went on: “Let’s see how you’re doing today.”
“Jeeze!” gasped Sydney Sidey, from the security of the :blind—”
“My gawd!” he gasped.
“Strewth,” he wheezed, realising that he was talking too loudly.
“It ain’t bloody well possible!” he muttered.
He put the camera to his eye, but only a cine-camera could possibly show the impact of Barnaby Rudge’s sensational service, and the whirring would be too noticeable. He clicked, clicked and clicked again, to take different angles of the action, refilled his camera and took yet more. The only sound except the soft clicking was the padding of rubber-soled feet on the court, the curiously menacing whang! each time Barnaby hit the ball, the sharp p’ttz! sound as the ball struck the court, and a metallic rattle as it volleyed against the tall wire fence.
After a while, the practice stopped.
“I never would have believed it,” Sydney Sidey told himself. He was sticky with sweat and his eyes seemed likely to pop from his head. “I never would have believed it!”
At last, the car and the motor-scooter crunched away up the drive to the road.
“I know one thing,” Sydney Sidey told himself aloud, emerging warily from his cover. “I’m going to get a lot of dough on him. Even if I have to hock everything I’ve got! I want a coupla hundred quid, at least! No one can stand up to him – they haven’t an earthly.”
Then a peculiar thought struck him; in fact, went through him like an electric shock.
How much was this worth to Archie Smith, the mean old bastard? Smith was paying him only a lousy hundred quid, yet if he didn’t know the truth about this darkie, he could be taken for millions!
“I’ve got to be very careful,” Sidey warned himself, as he walked along. “A man’s got to look after Number One.” A little further on, he was seized by another thought. “I wonder what I could squeeze out of old Arthur Filby? That could be worth a lot of finding out!” Then, as he climbed into a small, well-kept, five-year-old Morris 1100, he gave a choking laugh. “Phew!” he gasped. “Whee! What a bloody walking miracle that darkie is! Now that really is a cannonball!” He started the engine. “If I could put a thousand quid at tens, say – more, maybe, but tens at least – that would be ten thou! Blimey – I could retirel” He gave a different, excited little laugh. “I’ll find a way,” he told himself, and tapped the camera in his pocket. “That’s worth a fortune, that is! Every picture tells a story, and all that. Gorblimey, I’m going home!”
That was about the time, too, when a dark-haired man with a deep cleft in his chin and a deep furrow between his brows, was reading a report about the inquest on Charles Blake, whose body had been taken out of the river. The inquest was to be held on the following Tuesday. Police, said the report, were treating the inquiry as a murder investigation and were hopeful of getting results in the near future.
The man gave a laugh that was not unlike Sydney Sidey’s.
Then he went into the head office of Jackie Spratt’s Limited, Commission Agents and Turf Accountants, in the Mile End Road. It was an old, converted warehouse, the ground floor now a remarkable communications centre which received information constantly, from all over the world, and despatched it as widely. Every kind of sporting result was recorded here – Australian football, American baseball, tennis, golf, swimming, cricket, racing – horse, greyhound, dirt-track, go-kart – every kind of result was gathered in and put through computers to get the finest possible assessmen
t, both of form and of bets placed. And before taking bets, the company checked with all of their information so that, as they said, they could take the lowest possible risk while being scrupulously fair to their customers.
The whole building was equipped with closed-circuit television, so that the latest computerised figures were displayed on every screen at the same time. Telephones buzzed and lights flickered, as a dozen men and girls worked at a giant switchboard which occupied the whole of one wall. Each of the operators had earphones, and each had a simplified form of teleprinter, at which they were constantly tapping.
The big, black-haired man with the heavy brows – Charlie Blake’s murderer – went up to the fourth floor in a newly-converted lift which had once been used for moving crates of toys. Up here, it was very quiet. Even when he opened a door and saw two men standing watching a race on television, there was only a murmur of sound. He closed the door and joined them.
These three were the Spratt brothers – Mark, Matthew and John.
They were a remarkable trio, in appearance: so different that, but for a certain similarity in the rather high cheekbones and craggy eyebrows of all three, it would have been difficult to believe they were brothers. John, with his aggressive good looks and toughness, was a sharp contrast to Matthew, a man of medium height with rather thin lips and thin features – a mousey-looking man. The youngest and smallest was Mark, only five feet three, dapper, well-turned out in every way; he had a sharp nose, a pointed chin, and eyes that were very bright. In spite of his near-foppishness, he was much more aggressive and bold in his actions than Matthew: at times, indeed, he was as bold as John. These three were now the only directors of the company, although at one time a prominent London financier, Sir Geoffrey Craven, had been on the board. They much preferred the family control . . .
The race finished, and Matthew switched off the set and turned to greet his brother. There was a hint of real anxiety in his face and voice as he said: “Hallo, John. How are things?”
“Couldn’t be better!” declared John, heartily. “We don’t have a thing to worry about, except feeding our tonic to the horses.”
And he laughed again; not only strikingly handsome but tremendously confident.
Matthew still looked a little troubled, but Mark clapped his hands in something near elation.
All over England and Ireland, and in several places in France, ‘the horses’ were being treated as if they were precious – as indeed they were. The finest bloodstock in the world, horses born and bred by their owners with the dream of a Derby win in their minds and hearts, would soon be heading for Epsom Downs and the race which captured the imagination of the world.
It was a very good year for three-year-olds.
And each owner, even of a horse not very much fancied, had a secret hope: that this year the Derby would be his.
The owners, from the richest in the land to small syndicates made up of men risking nearly all the money they possessed, could think or talk of nothing but their horses. The jockeys, each with his own dream, lived, slept, ate and thought their Derby mounts. The trainers, with so much reputation at stake, took extreme precautions to ensure their horse could not be injured or doped; would not catch cold, or be trained beyond its peak. And every owner and trainer, every jockey and even stable boy, said to himself: “This is our year!”
“This,” John Spratt added, lightly, “is our year.”
Mark nodded, perkily. Matthew, whose face still held that note of apprehension, said nothing at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Man Who Confessed
For Gideon, it was a quiet weekend.
Now that the weather was better – still warm, but without the humidity – Kate seemed much better, too.
The weekend brought the people out in swarms. Londoners who did not go to the country or the coast, thronged the parks. The Lido at the Serpentine in Hyde Park was as bright and gay as any seaside resort; the boating there and on the other park lakes, on Regent’s Park Canal and on the Thames vied with any South Coast harbour. Everyman and his wife, in short, were out and about; even those who did not travel were busy in their gardens.
Gideon himself first mowed and then trimmed the lawns, both back and front, and thinned the front privet hedge. Kate hoed the one or two flower-beds and the small vegetable-patch – and for supper produced, in triumph, some radishes, spring onions and a lettuce which nearly had a heart.
“I wondered whether you’d like to go out to a meal?” he suggested.
“I’d rather not, dear,” Kate said. “You don’t mind cold beef, do you?”
“Tell me the time when I mind beef, however it comes!” Gideon retorted.
The truth was, he realised, that Kate didn’t want to make the effort of dressing to go up to the West End. Well, that had happened before, and she seemed bright enough – bright enough to be vexed with Malcolm when he came dashing in only to say he had to go out again.
“Malcolm, you haven’t had a solid meal—”
“Pooh, been eating all day! Just got to put a collar and tie on.” He rushed upstairs, and Kate was more put out than Gideon would have expected. But when he appeared again, spruced up, face shining, hair brushed, tie straight as a rod and shoes newly-polished, she appraised him with amused affection, and did not ask the obvious question. When he had gone, husband and wife looked at each other across the kitchen table and laughed.
“Girlfriend,” Gideon hazarded. “His first?”
“George, dear,” said Kate, “his twenty-first! For a detective—!”
They laughed together, and Gideon thought comfortably: she’s all right; it was just the heat. He turned to the sports page of the Sunday Sun and glanced through an enthusiastic editorial under headlines which trumpeted:
GREAT MONTH OF SPORT!
First Test – the DAKS – Wimbledon – The Derby With Wimbledon beginning tomorrow, the second England v. South Africa Test Match starting at Lord’s on Thursday, the DAKS Tournament at Wentworth providing the first major golfing event of the season and the Southern Counties Swimming Championships at Crystal Palace, this week begins a great month of sport.
Add polo at Windsor, where the Duke of Edinburgh will be playing, Greyhound-racing, Hot-rods at Wimbledon, rowing on the Thames, Cycle racing at Herne Hill and Athletics in half-a-dozen sports centres and stadiums, and we have a truly record June ahead of us. And the week after next with the Derby and the Oaks thrown in, will be furiously exciting.
At Wimbledon, six out of the first eight top seeds in the Men’s Singles are professional: three American, two Australian and one from Ecuador. Some of the unseeded players . . .
As Gideon read, it struck him with redoubled force that if any one man was to keep his finger on the pulse of London’s sport, he would need to be chosen quickly; it was already plenty late enough. And as the name and mental picture of Chief Inspector William Bligh kept recurring to him, that of young Tandy dropped into the background.
Bligh was due if not overdue for a superintendency; but everything which could possibly go wrong for him had gone wrong, in the past two or three years – including a divorce. There had been no breath of scandal, but somehow among certain authorities divorce of itself carried a connotation almost of stigma: an inherent suggestion that a police officer should give a perfect conventional example in his personal as well as his official life. Gideon believed, quite simply, that every man’s private life was his own and should only be considered officially if it could have an adverse effect on his work. Significantly Bligh, either because of tensions and emotional crises, had failed on several cases, including one which had received a lot of publicity. On the other hand, he was an ardent and exceptionally well-informed sports enthusiast, and did a great deal of work for the Metropolitan Police sporting associations.
Gideon tried to put him out of his mind, but only half-succ
eeded.
Kate went to bed early, and Malcolm came home late, with one or two smears of badly wiped-off lipstick on his mouth. Half-amused, half-thoughtful, Gideon pretended not to notice. But he was uneasily conscious of the fact that ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ of this generation took things for granted which still shocked him a little and would probably upset Kate a great deal. Well, at least Malcolm looked happy . . .
Kate was up at her usual seven-thirty, next morning, singing under her breath as she cooked breakfast. Penelope called, to say she would be back next day, instead of that evening.
“Had a wonderful wow of a weekend!” she told Kate.
“Wonderful wow of a weekend!” Gideon echoed, as he drove to the office. He was still half-amused, and a little preoccupied. Penny had once seemed very serious over a boyfriend – had, in fact, been engaged to him – but these days, seemed to have a variety of beaux. Now that she travelled with the orchestra, of course, she was home much less.
“And she’s twenty-five,” he reminded himself. “Don’t you forget it!”
He reached his office a little after nine o’clock. It was warmer again and much more humid than over the weekend; the duty policeman in the hall was already looking damp and sticky.
His own office was cooler and the fan working – as far as he could judge no one else had been issued one. Who—?
His thoughts stopped him in his tracks.
“Could Scott-Marie have—?” he muttered, incredulous. Then more strongly, derided himself. “Nonsense! It couldn’t be!” But he was thoughtful as he took off his jacket and put it on a hanger before turning to the reports Hobbs had put on his desk. The top one was about Charlie Blake’s murder, and Gideon opened it to find a cabled message: Telephoning Monday two o’clock London time Hopeful of results Lemaitre.