Gideon's risk

by J. J Marric

  J.J. Marric

  GIDEON'S

  RISK

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  1. Need for Decision

  "He did it all right," Appleby said. "The question is, can we make it stick?"

  Gideon did not answer. He sat, massive and pugnacious looking, with the bright light from the window which overlooked the Thames shining on his thick gray hair, which was combed straight back from his forehead, and on his strong, rather rugged face. The light made his eyes glint, and put one side of his face into shadow.

  Appleby, an older, thinner man, white-haired and balding, had just looked in on his way home. It was after six o'clock, and Appleby, near retirement, seldom stayed late these days; the work of Scotland Yard had worn him thin and anxious. He stood with his back to the window, one hand stretched out rather like an orator impatient to make his point.

  "If you ask me, it would be a mistake to prosecute, George. You can't afford to risk a not-guilty verdict. We had those two last year, and we haven't stopped being laughed at since. And Borgman's too big. He's got too many influential friends and far too much money. Damn it, he owns a newspaper, a book publishing business, he's in newsprint, magazines, commercial TV, films—he's the cat's whiskers, and don't you forget it. It's no use telling me that the law for the rich and the poor is the same, either."

  In his deep voice, but mildly, Gideon said, "I didn't know I was telling you anything."

  "What I say is, it's better to let him go and watch him. If he ever tries again, we'll get him then even if I'm not here to see it, but the fact that we're watching him will clip his wings."

  "Will it?"

  "You know it will, George. Here's a chap with everything to lose by crossing swords with us, and nothing to win. What he wants is a fright; scare the wits out of him, and he'll behave himself. Would you like to spend the best part of your life in quod, knowing that if you were outside you could spend money like water?"

  "I see what you mean," Gideon conceded.

  "What you mean is, you don't agree with me," said Appleby disgustedly. "It isn't often I disagree with you, either, but you can chalk this up as one of the occasions. At the most you ought to keep digging and see if you can turn up anything more to make the case stronger; it'll be asking for trouble to go on what you've got now. There's one good thing," Appleby added, almost smugly. "The P.P.'s office will stop you, even if you can persuade the Old Man that you ought to put Borgman in dock. I've spent most of the afternoon going over the evidence, and we simply haven't got enough on him, there are far too many ways he can dodge. And he'd have the best counsel in the country—Percy Richmond for a fortune. Remember the last time Percy got his teeth into one of our chaps at the Old Bailey—poor old Fred Lee? Fred's never really recovered from it, he's nothing like the man he was—always jittery in case he does the wrong thing, or forgets something. You'd probably have to go in the box yourself on this case, remember."

  "Wouldn't want anyone else to," Gideon declared.

  "Be a fool if you didn't try to get a stooge," said Appleby. He moved back to the window and leaned against it, his face shadowed against the light, but his eyes very bright; he spoke with unusual vehemence, for obviously this meant a great deal to him. "George, I've been in this dump for forty years. I've seen every kind of mistake made a hundred times. I've felt like hell about some, and laughed up my sleeve at others, but I don't want to see you make a bloody fool of yourself. Bigger the man, harder the fall. It's not only a personal matter, either. If I were to get slapped down, or held up to ridicule by Percy Richmond, or if one of the other superintendents copped it, we would get over it. But you're the great infallible of the Yard—"

  "Dry up, Jim."

  "Well, that's what the public have come to think, and you know as well as I do that the Yard lives by its reputation. More people associate you with the Department than they do anyone else, and you mustn't take a risk of being smacked down by a smooth-voiced Q.C."

  Gideon moved back in his chair.

  "Not even if it means letting a murderer get away with it?"

  "I could name a dozen killers who've never been tried. What's new?"

  "Nothing's new," Gideon agreed, "but I don't want Borgman to go free because he's rich and influential. If he was a poor man, wouldn't you advise me to have a go at him?"

  "He wouldn't have a genius to get him off, then," Appleby declared.

  "Perhaps not," conceded Gideon, placing his large hands on the desk in front of him, and pressing them down lightly; the fingers were broad and the tips rather blunt, but the nails were well shaped and well kept, and the mat of dark hairs on the back of the fingers added to the impression of strength. "I don't know what I'm going to recommend yet, Jim—I've got until tomorrow morning to decide. If I could have a free night for a change, I might be able to decide the right way." He gave his rather slow grin, but there was no smile in his eyes. "You've known the truth for as long as I have, and now there's hope of establishing it. Borgman killed his wife, inherited her money, and married another wealthy woman inside a year. Really want to let him get away with it in case we get a slap in the face?"

  "George, if I thought there was a fifty-fifty chance of fixing the devil, I'd give half my pension for it, but the first wife died over four years ago. There's been no real evidence until this last month or so. Now we know for certain that the nurse who attended the first Mrs. B. had been Borgman's mistress for a year or more, and continued to be for six months. Then he married the present Mrs. B. and there's evidence—of another nurse who made a statement on her deathbed—that just before Borgman's second marriage, his mistress was paid off with a thousand quid—and she hated his guts. She told this other nurse, an old friend of hers, that Borgman had given his first wife an overdose of morphia."

  "Trying to argue that it doesn't sound feasible?" demanded Gideon.

  "Of course it's feasible, and of course it happened, but all you've got is a statement by an old woman who died just after making it. It isn't even hearsay evidence."

  "It's enough to make me want to talk to that nurse who was Borgman's mistress, and could have helped him to murder his wife because she had hopes of becoming the future Mrs. B.," said Gideon.

  "Nothing to stop you trying," conceded Appleby, "but the nurse emigrated and got married, we don't know her married name, she might be dead for all we know. And even if we found her, we couldn't fix extradition on the strength of what we've got. You're doing what you're always telling us poor mugs not to do— just guessing," Appleby jeered.

  Now Gideon grinned.

  "Call it a hunch," he conceded. "Jim, you're probably right, and the Public Prosecutor's office won't go ahead with it even if I could carry the Old Man and our legal department along with me. They'll all agree with you—the new facts don't really strengthen the case. They wouldn't prosecute before and they won't now. But I thought they should have prosecuted even then." He stood up with a single movement, unexpectedly brisk, and looked huge behind the desk, his six feet carrying his great breadth of shoulder well. "That telephone hasn't rung for a quarter of an hour, must be a record. Let me get out of here before it starts. I promised Kate I'd try to go with her to a film tonight." He stretched out for his hat, which was on a stand at one side of the desk, while Appleby stayed by the window, as if he wanted to go on protesting. "Come on, Jim. Let me drive
you home, and you can get the rest off your chest on the way."

  "It'll be just a waste of time," Appleby grumbled, but he moved to the door, picking up a bowler hat as he went. In the empty passage, his stride was as long as Gideon's, although he looked only half as broad. "You haven't another reliable witness and you've got to face that, George. The doctor gave a certificate, the woman was likely to die anyhow, and once a doctor's signed his name he won't retract. In any case, you'd be asking him to remember details of something that happened some years ago, and Old Percy would make hay of him, too."

  They were swinging along the passage, Gideon planting his feet down with a thump and leaning forward slightly, Appleby inclined to walk on his heels, A door at the end of the passage opened and a small man hurried out, and stood aside at sight of Gideon.

  "Good evening, sir."

  "Evening. Everything all right?" Gideon asked.

  From inside the room, a man called, "That you, Gee-Gee?"

  "No," Gideon retorted.

  "Half a mo'," the caller boomed, and a moment later he appeared at the open door, a middle-aged man with reddish hair and the look of an Irishman, although there was not a trace of brogue in his voice. "Everything's clear in your notes except the bit about Tiny Bray."

  "Ever known anything about Tiny to be clear?" asked Gideon.

  "Did he say that we could expect that furrier's job to be pulled at Leventhal's or not?"

  "He said it might. I didn't want the Division warned because we've had false alarms before, and old Hoppy's a bit sore at the moment," Gideon explained. "I shouldn't talk to the Division unless Tiny rings up again, if I were you. Just have a couple of our chaps near Leventhal's."

  "Accidental like," the red-haired man said dryly.

  "They could have been round to see that Robson woman about her missing husband," Gideon suggested. "We know that if those furs aren't raided by midnight they won't be tonight—you can work it without upsetting Hoppy."

  "About time he was put out to grass," remarked the Irish-looking man, Superintendent O'Leary, and then realized how near Appleby was and gave an infectious grin. "No offense meant, we could use you for another ten years!"

  "Wis there iver sech a man wid his blarney?" riposted Appleby. "Come on, George, or you'll be doing his work for him all night, as usual."

  He went on. Gideon and O'Leary nodded, complete understanding, and Gideon followed Appleby, who had nothing to say when they reached the lift. It was empty, at their floor. Appleby opened it, stepped inside, and then let go a broadside. "If you exhume Borgman's first wife, you'll be starting a load of trouble for yourself, and the rest of us. Why don't you wake up to it? I tell you I've checked everything. You've had three of our chaps and the Division working on this for three weeks, ever since the old nurse made her dying statement, and they haven't been able to dig up anything except the fact that the nurse was Borgman's mistress."

  "Keep trying," Gideon urged. "Find out where she went and who she married and where she is now."

  "George, what have you got on Borgman? What makes you think you could make a case stick?"

  The lift stopped.

  "He did it," Gideon said simply.

  He dropped Appleby near Chelsea Town Hall, and then headed through the thin evening traffic toward Fulham and his home at Hurlingham. He drove, as always, with extreme care because he was so preoccupied. He was a deliberate man by nature, and the range and intricacy of his work as Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard made him think not twice but thrice about every decision he made. His ability to think quickly without becoming careless made him outstanding, although he was the last man to believe that he was exceptional or infallible.

  But he knew that he was good at his job.

  It was late September. He had been back a week from two weeks' holiday on the Continent, and his face still had some Swiss mountain tan. The holiday had done him a lot of good, slackening a year's build-up of tension. He could have done with twice as long, but it had been the first real break for years. September had been a quiet month at the Yard; for some inexplicable reason it often was; rather as if the men on the other side of the battle Gideon was always fighting also needed a holiday.

  Of the inquiries into big cases which had started before he had left England, only one had remained "live" when he returned: the Borgman case. He had been uneasy about it from the beginning. The old nurse might possibly have done so without being certain, but deathbed statements were usually reliable, even though they weren't evidence. No personal motive for her making such a statement to implicate Borgman and his mistress—a woman now in her thirties, whose name had been Kennett—Jane Kennett. The fact that she had emigrated had been significant—she had apparently tried to get lost.

  There was the hazy possibility that she was dead, and if she was Gideon wanted to know how she had died. Long before the dying statement, the police had been suspicious about the death of Borgman's first wife, without having a hope of making a case. That had rankled in Gideon. No one had given morphine poisoning a thought, though; Borgman's wife had been involved in a serious motor accident, and there had been some reason to suspect that the brakes on her car had been tampered with, and a certain amount of circumstantial evidence that Borgman himself had tampered with them. In those days he had employed a chauffeur-gardener, but driven his and his wife's car himself a great deal; and he was a good mechanic. The new information about morphine overdose had come out of the blue, and was an indictment of the officers who had investigated. Someone had slipped up badly; the relationship between Borgman and Nurse Kennett should have been discovered years ago.

  To get confirmation of morphine poisoning, there must be an exhumation; but because Borgman's wife had been in great pain, two doctors had given her morphine at different times. Each would testify to that, so to give the case a strong foundation an exceptional quantity of the drug would have to be found; even if it were, a good defense could put sufficient doubt into the minds of the jury to nullify its importance—unless Nurse Kennett could be found and would testify. Appleby couldn't be more right, but that didn't alter Gideon's opinion about John Borgman, once a poor man but very wealthy since inheriting his first wife's money. He now owned race horses and an ocean-going yacht, was the friend of many people in high places, as well-known as any film star and in some ways better liked. He was getting away with murder.

  "If I'm right," Gideon admitted to himself, and turned into the street where he had lived for nearly thirty years, since the day when he had brought Kate here as a young bride. He drew up outside the house, got out, and looked at the woodwork. It could do with repainting; the outside hadn't been done for two years, and, smoke-free zone or not, paint soon became black in London. He was very proud of the house, and liked to keep it spick and span. It was one of a terrace, and the white paint showed up the dull red brick. He pushed open the iron gate, detected a slight squeak, told himself that if he didn't get busy with the oil can it would become really noisy; then the door opened and Kate appeared. Gideon saw her face light up at sight of him, and that did him good; he wasn't surprised when she said:

  "Hallo, dear. The Yard's on the telephone for you."

  He gave her a peck of a kiss as he passed, moved briskly along the narrow hall, and picked up the telephone, not troubling to try to guess what the call was about. He had come to accept it as part of life that the Yard would find him wherever he was. He was not even gloomy at the thought that this might mean that he would have to go back tonight.

  "Gideon," he said.

  "Sorry to stop you on the doorstep," said O'Leary, "but there's a job just come in you'll want to hear about. Tiny Bray's been beaten up so badly that he isn't likely to last the night. He's at the North London. They're giving him blood transfusions now."

  "Know who did it?"

  "No."

  "Tiny say anything?"

  "No, and not likely to. The Division's got a man with him, of course. If he comes round it
'll be for a few minutes, that's all."

  "I might nip over and see him," Gideon said slowly. "Hold on a minute." He was aware of Kate going into the dining room, aware of a car passing outside, but he was seeing the little man who had informed the Yard about a plot to raid Leventhal's in Bayswater; a little mouse of a man with a strange, unhappy history which had turned him into a police informer; a nice little fellow with a pleasant wife. "Mike, someone found out that Tiny squealed, and we can be pretty sure that this job was done by the mob planning to raid Leventhal's," Gideon went on. "Turn a couple of chaps over to checking the most likely mobs, will you? If you think it's worth it, talk to NE and QR and see if they've heard any buzz. Ask young Christy to spread news of this round, quick. Tiny had a lot of friends."

  "Wouldn't like to talk to Christy yourself, would you? He'll eat out of your hand but bite mine."

  "Don't talk nonsense," Gideon said, and added almost with alacrity, "All right, I'll talk to him. Where did it happen?"

  "Walker's Cut."

  "Was Tiny on his way home or on his way out?"

  "Don't know."

  "Find out, will you?" asked Gideon. "And if you come across anyone who was near Tiny's place, let me know." He glanced at the open door leading to the kitchen, and could hear the sizzling of the frying pan.

  "Thought you were going to take Kate out."

  "We all get ideas," Gideon said. "Thanks, Mike." He rang off, hesitated, and was not surprised when he saw Kate coming, tall, very brisk-moving, so pleasant of face and expression. She stopped in the doorway, and Gideon shrugged his shoulders and held up his hands apologetically. "Looks as if you'll have to go alone," he said. "I've got to be on tap. Sorry."

  "I'll try and arrange something," Kate said, and there was no hint of resentment in her voice. "Is it bad?"

  "Might be."

  "Feel like two chops, or one?"

  "Two!"

  "That means you didn't have any lunch," Kate said. "One of these days you'll suffer for missing meals. Ten minutes, dear." She went off, and Gideon dialed the number of the NE Divisional Headquarters. As he did so, much of what he knew about NE came automatically into his mind. It was the East End Division, a tough one, and Christy had been newly promoted as its Chief Superintendent, largely because Gideon had rooted for him. Some kind of feud was going on between him and O'Leary, and Gideon meant to learn more about it, but there was no hurry. There was the sizzling and the smell of frying chops; there was the ringing of the telephone at NE; there was the mental picture of Tiny Bray, probably in an oxygen tent, having blood transfusions and breathing his last, with his wife sitting by his side and a Divisional detective sitting watching, in the forlorn hope that he would come round and be lucid enough to name his attackers.