by John Creasey
‘Just for facts.’ He turned into a main road near Hammersmith Broadway, where five roads met and the lumbering red giants of the buses loomed over the black Humber Hawk.
‘Shawn’s inclined to give her her head, is he? He’s too easy with her?’
‘Isn’t that a guess?’ taunted Lissa.
‘A deduction. His wife usually sleeps late, the maid arrives at nine, and Shawn and his son get up early, so someone gets the breakfast.’
Lissa laughed.
‘They don’t have a cooked breakfast. But you’re right, David takes the easy way with Belle.’
‘Has there ever been any threat to the boy?’
‘I’ve not heard of one.’
‘Do you know of anybody with a personal motive for wanting to hurt either of them?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Marino said they were rich,’ Roger remarked after a pause.
‘They were both rich at one time, but Belle lost her money. David has plenty for the two of them, but—’ Lissa hesitated, as if seeking the right words, then went on very slowly. ‘I think if she still had her own money, she would take Ricky and leave David high and dry. It makes it sound as if I don’t like Belle, and that’s not so, Superintendent. But I do think David’s money holds Belle where nothing and no one else could.’
At Ealing Broadway, near the Common, where women and young children and here and there a nursemaid were sitting about or playing beneath the shade of trees, Lissa told him where to turn off for Wavertree Road. Soon they were driving along the narrow, tree-lined avenues of the housing estate. They passed countless houses which looked very much alike, the red bricked walls, the concealing hedges. Everything had the neat and tidy look that was so typically English.
From the end of Wavertree Road, Lissa directed him to the culde-sac, shaped like a horseshoe and with three houses in it, the Shawns’ the middle of the three. This house was brick-built, the top was timbered, and the tiles were weathered to a dark red. Window frames and doors had been recently painted, and the garden was spick and span, dahlias nodding multi-coloured heads and ragged petals in the quiet wind. In the garden of the house on the right, a grey-haired woman stood looking up at Number Thirty-One.
As Roger switched off the engine, they heard a scream, then a man’s voice, followed by more screaming which shattered the suburban quiet; even here the note of hysteria was clearly discernible, with its message of anguish.
Lissa Meredith was out of the car before Roger. She ran to the gate, which stood open, and flew along the yellow gravel path to the front door. The grey-haired woman stared apprehensively at her and at Roger. By the time Roger reached the porch Lissa had opened the front door and disappeared. The screaming became louder, the distorted voice made words sound like raw wounds.
‘It’s your fault, it’s your fault, I hate you! I hate you, I could kill you! Get out of my way, get out, get out!’
Roger went into the hall, closed the door, saw Lissa halfway up the stairs and two people – obviously the Shawns – at the head, on the landing. Belle was struggling wildly in her husband’s grasp.
Chapter Four
Hysteria
Belle Shawn wore a dressing-gown, wide open; beneath it, a pair of filmy pink pyjamas. Her hair was blown about as if caught by a high wind; she was kicking at Shawn and trying to wrench her arms free. As Lissa neared them, she got one hand away, and her fingers clawed at her husband’s face. Pain made him relax his grip, and Belle pulled herself free, turned and rushed down the stairs – and saw Lissa for the first time.
She screamed: ‘Ricky’s gone, Ricky’s gone! Fetch the police, he won’t. Fetch the police!’
She almost fell down the next few stairs, and when she was a step above Lissa, Roger could see the distortion of her face; the wild expression, the lips stretched so tautly across the large white teeth that it was like looking at a hideous mask.
Shawn was in a sleeveless vest and trousers. His face was a mask, too, but it wasn’t hideous; except for the burning eyes and the barely noticeable working of the jaw it would have been expressionless. Blood welled up from two parallel scratches across his right cheek.
‘Fetch the police!’ screamed Belle. ‘If you won’t—’ She caught her breath, but it was only a fleeting pause, there was no chance for Lissa to speak before she cried: ‘You’re as bad as he is! You’re worse, get out of my way!’
Roger saw her hand rise, saw Lissa stagger to one side.
Shawn called: ‘Belle!’
Belle pushed past Lissa, stumbled again, saved herself by grabbing the banister rail, then raced down the remaining stairs dressing-gown flying behind her, bare legs long and shapely, pyjama coat rucking up. She didn’t see Roger until she was past Lissa. She didn’t stop, but veered to the right. Guessing he would try to stop her, she put out both hands to fend him off. She was sobbing, her lips were drawn back over those large teeth, which now seemed ugly. Her eyes held the glare of madness.
Roger ducked, dived, caught her round the knees and brought her down. She struck her head heavily on the carpet, didn’t cry out, but lay still. He straightened up, pulled the dressing-gown over her legs, and then knelt beside her.
The quiet was unreal, a false calm in a storm; everything about this episode seemed unreal, even the quiet note in Shawn’s voice as he said: ‘I’ll take her.’
Roger drew back, and Shawn gathered his dazed wife in his arms and carried her upstairs. Lissa followed him without a word, and they disappeared into a room on the right. Now there was the feeling of a lull before an even greater storm. Roger had a vivid mental picture of the man, very big and powerful and with startling good looks; and of his burning eyes.
Another man appeared from the kitchen, a third to ‘Herb’ and his guide at the Embassy, sleek, youthful, fair, fresh-faced; his smile probably hid embarrassment.
‘You take risks, Superintendent, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes. Who are you?’
‘Mr Antonio Marino sent me, to stay around until Lissa arrived with Superintendent West from Scotland Yard. How would you like to prove you’re West?’
Roger took out his wallet and flashed his CID card, gave the man time to look at it, put it away, and asked: ‘How long has this screaming been going on?’
‘It just blew up. Anything you would like me to do?’
‘Make sure you haven’t touched anything in the kitchen.’
‘Only a chair.’
Roger said: ‘I’ll see you in a minute,’ and went to the dining-room, where a telephone stood on a table near the window. He covered the receiver with his handkerchief, then dialled the Embassy. All the time footsteps thudded on the ceiling, but there was no other sound; no crying. Marino was soon on the line.
‘Roger West,’ announced Roger. ‘That doctor isn’t here, and he’s needed in a hurry.’
‘He’ll be there very soon,’ Marino promised in his lazy voice. ‘I’m glad you called, Superintendent. The Ambassador and the Commissioner are to have lunch together, and the Commissioner has been good enough to agree that you come and talk to me afterwards, instead of going straight to Scotland Yard.’
Roger didn’t comment.
‘What can you tell me?’ Marino went on.
‘That you will have to have some publicity, even if you say there’s been a burglary,’ Roger said. ‘One of the neighbours probably knows what’s happened – Mrs Shawn’s voice can be heard a long way off. Make sure that doctor hurries, won’t you?’
‘He’s already hurrying.’ Marino sounded worried. ‘Is Pete Kennedy there?’
‘If he’s the fair-haired man, yes. Just a moment’
The man was Peter Kennedy. He spoke to Marino, then put the instrument down and said: ‘I have to be on my way, Mr West, unless there’s anything you need that no one else can give you.’
‘Just evidence that you are Peter Kennedy.’
The other grinned, showed a badge, and gave a mock salute.
After he had gone, Roger
looked about the room, inspected the cups and saucers and everything on the table, reading the story they told; that the Shawns had been overwhelmed with tiredness at the end of the meal, had dragged themselves up to bed and had ‘slept’ for twelve hours and more. At eight-ten when Lissa Meredith had arrived, they had been unconscious; probably they had come round half an hour or so ago.
He walked about the room, which wasn’t large – perhaps fifteen feet by twenty or so. It had a fitted carpet in pearl grey, the furniture was contemporary, spindly and expensive, as far removed from utility as a mink fur coat from a coney. Everything was pleasing to the eye. There were no pictures, not even the half-expected abstracts, only three framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Roger looked at the middle picture, which was of the boy.
He had a small, sensitive, frightened face. Frightened, Roger wondered. Why did he get that impression? It was the face of a child who lacked confidence; yet it was impossible to say why Roger was so sure of this, unless he had been influenced by Lissa’s strictures on the mother. The expression was one he had never seen on Martin-called-Scoopy’s face, or Richard’s. He had seen it on the faces of boys who had been in trouble; urchins from the street, puffed up with a braggadocio which usually collapsed when they reached the threshold of the Juvenile Court. He had seen it on the face of a neighbour’s son, and learned afterwards that the couple had quarrelled day in, day out; divorce had brought the child a kind of peace.
Sensitive, then, and frightened – or lost? Yet the son of wealthy parents, with everything life could offer.
The boy was certainly like his mother in looks, and although Roger had only seen her face ravaged with grief, he realised she was a beauty; according to Lissa, a petulant beauty.
Roger examined the back door more closely, found one or two scratches, gave it more attention, and felt sure that the man or men had entered this way. In half an hour he found nothing else. He poured the dregs from each coffee-cup into small medicine bottles he found in a cupboard, after rinsing them out; he poured the milk from the jug into another bottle, placed samples of the sugar, coffee and all the food he could find into a small basket he discovered in the kitchen. All this, without destroying prints that might be there. He felt curiously on his own, and badly wanted a team; he would have settled for Bill Sloan.
He heard a movement outside the kitchen, but didn’t look round. He could see the door in a small mirror hanging between the two windows. It was Lissa. She came in quietly; he didn’t think stealthily. She wasn’t smiling or frowning, but looked intent. He waited until she was halfway across the room, and then turned.
‘Hallo.’
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Mr West, you’ve got to make David believe you’ll find Ricky.’
‘Have I?’ Roger said heavily.
‘It matters more than almost anything else you can think of. You must make him believe that you will find the boy. Even if it means faked evidence.’ Her eyes demanded that of him, and he knew that she felt this need desperately. ‘Because if you don’t—’
‘He will listen to ransom talk,’ Roger suggested.
‘Ransom,’ she said. ‘Yes, he will.’
She drew nearer, a hand touched his, the honey-coloured eyes had a faraway look. In a tauter voice, she said: ‘You’re very hard. I can tell that. But you must convince David that he will do harm, not good, by talking terms with anyone. It could be for money. It’s more likely to be someone who wants to high-pressure David for his secret knowledge.’
The telephone bell rang.
She turned, swift as light, towards the door, but Roger reached it just behind her and gripped her arm. She didn’t try to pull herself free, just walked along the passage, speaking in a whisper.
‘David will answer it upstairs. We can listen in in the dining-room.’
They were at the dining-room door, and she meant to reach the extension telephone first. Roger slipped past her, actually pushing her to one side as he picked up the receiver. A yard away, she stood defiant and resentful. He couldn’t mistake the curiously gruff quality of Shawn’s voice, although Shawn was only giving the number of the house.
A man said: ‘That David Shawn?’
‘Yes,’ said Shawn.
‘David Shawn,’ repeated the caller, as if he were rolling the words round his tongue. He was English, or his voice was English, and Roger had expected an American. ‘How long have you been awake?’
Shawn said: ‘Long enough.’
‘So you know.’
‘I know,’ Shawn said.
He didn’t alter his tone, but Roger could picture his face, the burning eyes, the way his jaw clamped and the way his lips moved as if uttering each word caused pain.
‘Don’t do anything,’ the caller ordered. ‘Just wait until you’re told what to do. Just wait’
He rang off.
Roger held the receiver close to his ear, and could hear Shawn’s heavy breathing. Slowly, that receiver went down. Lissa moved away from Roger, and swift brightness of a smile drove away the frost of her resentment.
‘Was the conversation worth hearing?’
‘He had orders to wait and do nothing.’ Roger replaced his receiver. ‘And you think he’ll obey.’
‘I’m afraid he will obey. I think—’ Lissa paused, frowned in concentration, and then went on more rapidly, drawing closer in a conspiratorial way. ‘I guessed a lot, but David told me the truth just now. He and Belle were in danger of breaking up, and only Ricky kept them together. He agreed to have Ricky here in a desperate effort to stave off the collapse. It would be a disaster to him, or he thinks it would. She will blame him, of course. She will say if he had given up his assignment and gone back home, this would never have happened to their son.’
‘Would it have happened?’
‘Shawn is important, very important, doing work only he can do. This could prey on his mind so much that he would be unable to carry on with it.’
‘Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk freely to me or someone at the Yard,’ Roger said. ‘We can’t blunder about in the dark. Go back and tell Marino that, will you? Tell him we can play hush-hush as well as he can, but if he wants results quickly, we’ve got to know everything. And I don’t care a damn what arrangement the Ambassador and the Assistant Commissioner or the Queen’s High Admiral might come to. Use my car. I’ll wait until the doctor arrives.’
‘What’s got into you?’ she demanded.
‘I ought to be on the telephone, ought to have told the Yard everything an hour ago, to warn all ports and airfields, all railway termini, every kicking-off point from England. The police ought to be on the look-out for the boy, have his description in every police station, in every newspaper. Tell Marino that.’
‘And leave you alone with Shawn.’
‘That’s right,’ Roger said.
‘That won’t do you any good,’ she said. ‘David Shawn won’t talk to you about his work or anything that will lead up to it. You have a job to do too, Superintendent. You have to convince David that you can find the boy – that he doesn’t have to start doing what the others tell him yet. Will you do that?’
‘I will try,’ Roger promised. Obviously, he had to try.
He went to the front door with her, and she smiled and waved from his car as she settled down at the wheel. He fought the temptation to watch her until she was out of sight, turned, closed the front door with a snap, and hurried up the stairs. He tapped and went into the bedroom, without ceremony.
Belle Shawn lay in bed, the clothes drawn up to her neck, her face pale, her hair very tidy. Shawn was by the dressing-table, fully dressed, except for his coat and shoes, and was combing his thick, dark hair. He used Roger’s trick, looking at the door in the mirror.
‘Lissa said a doctor’s coming,’ he declared.
‘He should be here,’ said Roger. ‘Did Mrs Meredith tell you that I am—’
‘The man from Scotland Yard.’ Shawn finished combing his hair, and turned round. His expressi
on was blank, his lips were tightly set, betraying the way his teeth clenched, and his eyes still seemed to burn. He took his coat off the back of a chair, and began to put it on. ‘The police are out,’ he declared flatly. ‘This is a private matter.’
‘Keep it that way,’ Roger said.
Shawn stopped moving, in surprise.
‘If you don’t care whether you see your son again or not,’ Roger went on, ‘keep it private.’
Shawn finished adjusting his coat, then moved slowly towards Roger. He was like a bear, massively powerful, but there was no clumsiness in his movements. His shoulders were bent, but he was still inches taller than Roger. His features seemed to grow bigger as he drew nearer. He moved his arms slowly, his great hands settled on Roger’s shoulders. His fingers gripped, firmly, then gripped more tightly, as if he could crush the flesh and the bone. It hurt, but Roger didn’t move, didn’t flinch.
‘You mean well,’ Shawn said with great deliberation. ‘But don’t get in the way. I don’t care what you say. I don’t care what anyone says. This is not official. It isn’t going to be official. I sent the boy away, understand. I sent him away. I know where he is. I drugged his mother and myself, so that she couldn’t prevent me, because I knew the boy was in danger. Understand that, Mr Scotland Yard? No one’s been kidnapped, everything is just fine.’
Chapter Five
The Observant Policeman
But for his eyes, Shawn could have been just a piece of sculpture hewn out of dark sandstone. His large features seemed more than life-size, and only his eyes were alive, telling of a man in anguish. The pressure of his fingers biting into Roger’s shoulders grew stronger; like a killer’s grip.
Roger said: ‘So everything is fine.’
‘You heard me.’
‘All right,’ said Roger. He tensed himself, then wrenched his shoulders free and backed away. Shawn didn’t move after him. It came to his mind that Shawn would squeeze the life out of anyone who got in his way. Now, the man was in the grip of fierce passion roused by deadly hurt and deadlier fears; but he must always have the capacity for passion. ‘All right,’ repeated Roger. ‘Now make your wife believe what you’ve told me.’