by John Creasey
‘And I’ll have you know,’ the policeman was saying heavily, ‘that you’re under arrest, for interfering with…’
The touring-car drew up, and the portly figure of Superintendent Miller—carrying, as always, that vague impression that he was standing on the floor of his threshing-room—rose up.
‘I had to persuade P.C. 19732 not to touch that gun,’ greeted Kenyon. ‘Convince him that I’m not a public enemy, will you?’
‘I’m not so sure that you’re not,’ said Miller, but he said it sotto voce.
In twenty minutes the avenue was cleared. The body of the cyclist was on its way to the morgue attached to St. John’s Wood Police Station, while the still annoyed P.C. 19732, convinced that his own superiors were against him, was voicing this opinion to his colleagues. He was also itching to get to a quiet spot where he could smoke a cigarette.
‘It’s me breathing,’ he told a companion. ‘If I don’t have a puff every now and again I can’t get me breath properly.’
This somewhat ambiguous statement passed unchallenged. Within twenty minutes P.C. 19732 was smoking, in secrecy, and feeling better; and he was telling himself, with a suddenly dilated courage, what he would say to the Chief Commissioner when the investigation concerning Superintendent Miller was held….
Jim Kenyon, meanwhile, was discussing the affair with a worried Miller and a startled Aubrey Chester, both old acquaintances.
‘It’s getting to this,’ Miller concluded, over a whisky-and-soda: ‘I’m seriously worried. You can’t keep it dark much longer.’
‘I can keep it dark,’ Kenyon told him, ‘just as long as a grateful Government believes G.C. worthy of his hire. Don’t worry, Horace. Get Tiny to fix a post mortem on the cyclist as soon as you can, and let me know when he’s through, will you?’
‘All right,’ said Miller, grudgingly. His eyes strayed towards the bottle.
‘Have a drink,’ Kenyon suggested affably.
Mary Randall had been motherless for most of her life, and many people, including Mrs. Denbigh Morse, had endeavoured to make it up to her. The nearest approach to the real thing had been the affection of her aunt, Angela Wyett; but Angela Wyett was a spinster and a pronounced feminist, and her one-sided views and prejudices had spoiled her.
At the close of that afternoon’s moment of sheer terror, when the shooting had started and Kenyon had striven to protect her, Mary had looked up and seen Diane Chester. She had known that Diane was greatly admired for her cool, fair, English loveliness. She had known also that Diane was held in great affection, but she had never known why.
She knew at that moment.
Diane had been walking quickly towards the avenue, with Aubrey a yard or two in front of her. She had been smiling, and there was a serenity about her which seemed to envelop Mary in a cloak of comfort.
‘Let’s get inside,’ she had said. ‘Jim will clear things up more quickly if we’re not hindering him.’
And as if by magic Mary had found herself walking through that great, dark, mausoleum of a hall—into those lovely, sunlit rooms beyond.
For a moment, Diane had stood outlined in light, her fair hair and perfect complexion, the warm beauty of her eyes, only enhanced by the sun. It had been a strange transition, moving into this brightness from the horror of outside: an exchange of terror for tranquillity.
‘You can take off your hat in here,’ Diane had suggested calmly, in her drawing-room. Her voice was quiet and musical; it was a voice, Mary knew, that had thrilled thousands during those early years when Diane, before her marriage to Aubrey, had been on the stage. ‘Yes, Soames, we’re ready.’
Portly, pontifical and austere, Soames had wheeled in a tea-trolley, set the cups and saucers carefully, bowed and left the room.
After a quarter of an hour which should have seemed like an age, but which for Mary had actually passed very quickly, Kenyon had come along the drive with Aubrey and the fair-haired Superintendent Miller. She knew the three men were talking together in the next room—then finally the Superintendent left and Kenyon and Chester came in.
They were both smiling: Aubrey a little diffidently. He was a remarkable-looking man—slightly reminiscent, on his least successful days, of a kindly Brer Rabbit.
‘All tidied up,’ said Kenyon, hiding the worst of his anxiety with practised ease. ‘A nice little welcome home, wasn’t it?’
Mary, enormously relieved that he appeared to be whole and in one piece, smiled back. ‘Sure you’re all right?’
‘No damage at all,’ he assured her, then turned to Diane. ‘Do you think you can persuade Mary to stay here, while I keep hostilities in the front line?’
‘I think so,’ said Diane.
‘She’d b-better t-try to g-get out,’ said Aubrey.
Three Dancer Lane, Oxford Street, proved to be one of those establishments where the window decoration consisted of a single hand-woven carpet priced fabulously, two Egyptian vases with their price-tickets turned the other way, and three articles of beaten brass not priced at all. A dark-skinned man was standing inside the shop, as though waiting for someone intrigued by the mystery of those reversed tickets and unpriced brasses to enter. Two or three other assistants lined the walls of the shop, standing rigidly to attention, or so it seemed to Jim Kenyon.
He had discovered that a first-floor office opposite the shop was vacant, and he had rented it. On the morning following the shooting in Regent’s Park he sat at the window of the office, hidden by curtains and bored by what he saw at the business address of the dead Ali Bin Fathi. Bob—or Robert Montgomery—Curtis was with him. Curtis was a giant of a man, with lazy, humorous brown eyes, and a pleasant but ugly face. He had only recently become a member of Department Z, and the novelty of it still compensated for these stretches of boredom. It was not so for Kenyon.
‘I’ll give it another hour,’ he said. ‘Then one of the others can keep you company.’
‘Thanks,’ said Curtis, affably.
The hour passed. Almost on the stroke of the last minute a heavy footstep sounded on the stairs and a heavy hand played a tune on the panelled door.
‘Think it’s going to rain?’ demanded the well-proportioned young man who entered, a young man who was careless with his dress but careful with his hair, and who was nearly as large as Curtis and Kenyon.
‘Not unless the wind changes from South to West,’ replied Curtis, brightly. ‘How’d you remember all that, Wally?’
‘Got it written down on my shirt,’ said Wally Davidson, unabashed. ‘ ’Lo, Kenyon, ‘lo Bob. Busy?’
Kenyon stifled a yawn.
‘Like that, is it?’ said Davidson, suddenly depressed.
‘But it’ll wake up,’ Curtis prophesied. ‘Bound to be a little bust-up soon.’
‘Two little bust-ups,’ Kenyon grinned. ‘I’m going to leave you to it, friends. Just a word of warning. If you switch the light on, have a good look at the bulb first. If there’s any liquid in it, turn the light off and phone the Yard.’
‘Lamp going to blow up?’ asked Curtis, hopefully.
‘Now aren’t you clever?’ murmured Kenyon.
‘Goodbye,’ said Curtis.
‘S’long,’ said Davidson, languidly. He was invariably weary and frequently dejected.
As Kenyon left the block of flats and entered Dancer Street he saw a Daimler limousine draw up outside Number Three, the establishment of Persian Sales Limited. From the Daimler stepped a tall, elegantly-clad woman, beneath whose left arm drooped the silky tail of a Pekinese.
He caught a glimpse of her face as she entered the shop, and recognised Lady Denise Clare, famous throughout the world for her biting indictments of modern manners and modes. He felt instinctively that any visitor to Persian Sales would be a client rather than a customer.
Kenyon knew Lady Denise Clare, and her husband, a Permanent Under-Secretary at Whitehall. Both were reputed to be unblemished pillars of society, and the visit to the shop where Ali Ben Fathi had worked suggested that t
he establishment carried on an outwardly genuine trade. It was possible, of course, that Serle’s Arabian friend kept his pro-Serle activities entirely separate from his Persian Sales operations.
‘But not likely,’ murmured Kenyon to himself.
He walked thoughtfully towards Piccadilly Circus, stopping at a telephone kiosk to call up the Department. Craigie answered.
‘News?’ asked Kenyon.
‘No,’ said Craigie. ‘Nothing’s happened anywhere. The reports are in from Somerset, and there’ve been no movements.’
‘No sign of S?’
‘No,’ said Craigie, and Kenyon could almost see him frown.
‘I’ll drop in after I’ve seen Forbes again,’ he offered.
‘Be careful,’ warned Craigie.
Kenyon grinned as he replaced the receiver. Craigie’s ‘Be careful’ was almost a watchword throughout the Department.
As he stepped from the booth, his interest quickened. Lady Denise Clare was alighting from her Daimler again. She had made short work of her visit to Persian Sales, and she was now descending on a gown shop, the Pekinese still elegantly held, her gaze fixed above the heads of the crowd.
Kenyon was looking at the dog, and it was only by chance that his gaze rested on its owner’s hand. For the third time in twenty-four hours, that peculiar shiver went down his back and he felt a strange, paralytic coldness.
For Lady Denise Clare’s fingers were tipped with those pink crescents. Like Dickson’s, like Ahmet Ali’s—like the policeman’s!
10
The Mark Again
Kenyon experienced a peculiar sense of unreality as he stood in Regent Street and stared at Lady Clare’s Daimler. Suddenly he moved across the pavement to a position in which he could see the chauffeur’s hands. The day was hot and the man was not wearing gloves. Nor were his fingers marked.
Kenyon strolled towards the Circus, wiping his forehead. He was getting rattled; he admitted it. The thing was beginning to have all the qualities of a nightmare. Soon, he told himself, he would find himself running round the streets of London looking at everybody’s fingers.
Before he did reach that stage, however, he would have to be convinced that there was a connection between the drug Forbes had found in Ahmet Ali’s body and the fingertip crescents.
At Scotland Yard he found Miller, but not Forbes.
‘He went home late last night,’ Miller told him, ‘after working on the cyclist. He reckoned to be in by eleven, though.’
‘Twelve now,’ said Kenyon glancing at his watch. ‘We’ll give him another quarter of an hour and if he’s not here then, we’ll ring him.’
‘Meanwhile, I’m busy,’ said Miller, applying himself to a long list of figures. Miller and his expense-sheets were one of the institutions at Scotland Yard.
Kenyon, waiting patiently, gave Forbes a quarter of an hour, then asked Miller for the doctor’s number.
‘And four’s seven and a penny,’ said Miller, ‘seven-eight-twelve and five’s fif—no seventeen, and four make twenty-one. That’s ten pounds and ten shillings over, ten—thirteen…’
‘Telephone number,’ murmured Kenyon.
‘Quiet!’ growled Miller. ‘Thirteen-eighteen twenty-three-twenty-five…’
‘Tele…’
‘Will you…’ began Miller. As he waved a protest, an infinitesimal blob of ink dropped from his pen.
For one pregnant moment Miller scanned his handiwork. Then reassured, he sank back, breathing heavily through his nose.
‘Victoria three-two-seven-eight,’ he supplied, and Kenyon lifted the telephone.
For a solid three minutes the burr-burr of the ringing sound hummed in Kenyon’s ears. In those three minutes a polite operator told him four times that she was trying to get his number, and finally that she was sorry there was no reply.
‘Well,’ said Kenyon, ‘you did your best. Thank you. Forbes must be on the way,’ he told Miller.
‘And two’s twenty-five,’ said Miller, with a sigh of accomplishment. ‘That’s done that. Eh? Forbes on the way?’
‘He’s not at his flat.’
‘Ah,’ said Miller, regarding his expense-sheets with tender satisfaction. ‘Then he must be on the way.’
‘What a brain,’ said Kenyon, wonderingly.
There were so many things that needed doing, but until he had heard the result of Forbes’s autopsy on the dead cyclist, he did not feel free to start. He had learned, earlier in the morning, that there had been no clue on the cyclist’s clothes or body as to his identity. The usual call had been sent out for identification, but there had hardly been time for results. The man had been about forty, as far as the first doctor could judge, and death had been caused instantaneously by a broken neck.
‘And we’re trying to find where he bought his gun,’ Miller had said, ‘It’s an English make, and a popular one.’
At twenty to one, Forbes was still missing. Kenyon lit another cigarette.
‘I don’t like this,’ he said. ‘Can you come along to his flat and look round?’
Some fifteen minutes later, the two men stood on the landing of Tiny Forbes’s flat. It was on the third floor of a large building, its windows overlooking Victoria Station.
Miller rat-tatted. There was no answer. He knocked again, and Kenyon pressed the electric bell. Still no sound came.
‘Try again,’ urged Kenyon.
Miller tried, but without response. Kenyon, tight-lipped, took a bunch of skeleton keys from his pocket and inserted one into the lock. Miller made no protest. If he had been less worried by the silence from within, he would have admired the big man’s handiwork as the lock suddenly clicked back and Kenyon pushed open the door.
They went in.
‘Oh, my God!‘ groaned Miller a moment later, and there was anguish in his voice.
Kenyon paled as he joined him and saw the body of Dr. Horatio Forbes stretched on the floor, head towards the door. In the centre of the forehead was a small round hole, bluish at the edges and encrusted with dried blood. He must have been killed instantaneously.
And then Kenyon stopped, a foot from the body, and stared down.
Clutched in Forbes’s right hand was an automatic.
Miller saw it, a split second after Kenyon. The Yard man went very still, and one word dropped from his lips.
‘Suicide!‘
‘Looks like it,’ said Kenyon, trying to make his voice sound natural.
He dropped down on one knee beside the body, although no examination was needed to tell him that Forbes was dead.
He was very nearly convinced, too, that it was a genuine case of suicide. The gun was clutched tightly in Forbes’s hand, and the forefinger was locked in the trigger-loop.
‘And yet,’ said Miller, ‘a suicide usually does more damage. He must have held the gun at full arm’s length.’
Kenyon shook his head.
‘Not necessarily. It’s a small-bore automatic—.20, I should say—and it’s not powerful. He could have fired it about six inches or a foot away.’
Miller shrugged. Kenyon knew that the Super, too, was not yet fully convinced that it was suicide, and he could understand why. But suddenly, and quite terribly, Kenyon knew the truth.
There was no doubt that Forbes had killed himself.
For on the dead police-surgeon’s hands, faint, but deadly clear, the little crescents of pink were imprinted.
Kenyon pointed to the fingers, without comment. Miller paled, and his voice came thickly.
‘The mark!’
‘The mark of the crescent,’ said Kenyon.
Probably for the first time in his life, Jim Kenyon entered the office of Department Z without quip or pleasantry. He nodded briefly to Craigie, his lips very straight and thin.
Craigie took the news coolly.
‘Forbes,’ he echoed quietly. ‘I liked Forbes.’
‘Killed,’ said Kenyon, in a queerly high-pitched voice, ‘by the drug that he warned me about.’
Craigie’s brows went up.
‘You mean…?’
‘He was a victim, addict, junkie, whatever you like to call it,’ said Kenyon, savagely. ‘He guessed that by telling me, by raising the point after the post mortem, he would be asking for trouble. So he took the only way out.’
‘You mean that he was afraid of Serle knowing that he had made the report?’
‘Serle—or whoever Serle’s working for.’
‘Call it Serle, for the time being,’ said Craigie. ‘How would Serle know that Forbes had talked or reported?’
‘I don’t know. There’s the obvious messenger in Dr. Matthew Dickson, of the Wesdand, but apart from that…’ He broke off for a moment, with a mirthless laugh. ‘There’s an idea at the back of my mind, and it’s—foul.’
‘Let’s have it,’ Craigie prompted.
Kenyon hesitated, carefully choosing his words.
‘Supposing Serle’s running some kind of labyrinthine organisation? Supposing that every member is a drug-addict, and that his or her particular form of drug-taking shows the little fingernail crescent?’
Kenyon paused. Craigie nodded, and for once did not pull at his pipe.
‘And supposing,’ went on the big man, ‘that you find the crescents everywhere. Supposing, for instance, Miller has ‘em.’
‘Miller?’ Craigie was shaken out of his calm. ‘He hasn’t, has he?’
‘No,’ said Kenyon, ‘but Forbes had, and to date, from my own observation, a bobby, a house-surgeon at the Westland, and Lady Denise Clare. I saw her this morning.’
There was complete silence in the office. Craigie seemed to feel the coldness that possessed Kenyon. There was a quality in the idea Kenyon had suggested that curdled the blood, a foulness, different from anything they had previously encountered. The realisation of what they might be up against swept over them more powerfully than ever before.
They were fighting something stronger than a criminal organisation. They were fighting an organisation held together by a craving; a craving that would make its members dependent on one thing alone, answerable to that one thing alone—the essential continuity of their supply of drugs.
‘You see,’ Kenyon resumed, his voice harsh, ‘we’ve already come across these people in unlikely places. We might find ‘em anywhere. We might find them at the Yard, or among our own men. Forbes’s report could have been seen, and a message sent to Serle.’