An Uncivilised Election

by John Creasey

  White: Fight for Peace Committee meeting places

  Blue: Q Men ditto

  Black: Riot spots

  Red: Danger men and women – F.F.P.

  Yellow: Ditto Q Men

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” said Parsons. “All my own work.”

  “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “As much as I want to,” said Parsons. “Nick King-Hadden says you’ve seen him.”

  “Yes. What happened at Paddington last night?”

  “If you ask me, there was an organized clash and someone was paid to weigh in with this broken bottle to hot things up,” Parsons said. “The difficulty is we can’t be sure that it wasn’t someone who was just out to make a scene. Some of the youngsters these days seem to love the sight of blood. It began as a small demonstration there.” He pointed to a black pin. “See how close it is to a Q Men place? Asking for trouble. About two hundred F.F.P. people turned up with banners and placards, and we had men nearby to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. A carload of the Q Men drove up, spilled out, and started to bellow questions and push the crowd around. It didn’t take long for the fight to start, and people were hurt. The broken bottle was found at the curb. If we hadn’t had our uniformed chaps on duty, it might have been a lot worse. Nick hoped there might be a print or two on that bottle, but n.b.g.” Parsons shrugged. “It’s the kind of thing we’ve got to strangle at birth, George.”

  Gideon didn’t speak.

  “Don’t you think so?”

  Gideon said heavily, “Can we strangle it at birth?” He was frowning. “Why should anyone want to cause that kind of trouble at this stage in the election?”

  “That’s what I’ve been talking about all along,” said Parsons. “This nuclear age has generated a damned sight more emotional neurosis and nerve sickness than we realize. If it attacks you, it’s an acute form of anxiety complex. You’re bloody scared, and hit out blindly because you are. Then there’s the politically explosive situation of relations with Russia. That’s hated by the Q Men. It so happens that most of them are extreme right-wingers who think pacifism is blind cowardice and regard the F.F.P. as the worst kind of pacifism. So what we’ve got is two lunatic fringes of extremists. They each hit out meaning to hurt, and each sees the other as its natural enemy. That’s the chief danger, George. Blind, unthinking, emotional prejudice. And it’s fed on both sides by a lot of people who ought to know better.”

  After a pause, Gideon said: “I know what you mean. I half agree with you!’

  “Half.”

  “That’s right, half,” repeated Gideon, good humouredly. “You mustn’t overlook the streak of common sense in the average elector. It’s there, you know. If we get too much of this kind of behaviour, there will be a revulsion against both groups and neither will be able to stir up serious trouble. Their own supporters will fall away.”

  “Not the hard core,” Parsons objected quickly. “And there’s a big hard core in each group.”

  “Feel strongly about this?” inquired Gideon.

  “Couldn’t feel stronger.”

  “Which side are your sympathies on?”

  Parsons looked puzzled.

  “Sympathies? Who said I had any sympathy one way or the other?”

  “Haven’t you?”

  “No,” said Parsons flatly, but he was frowning, and for a moment looked away from Gideon. The window was opposite a blank brick wall, and the dull red of the bricks absorbed most of the daylight. “No,” he repeated. “And I don’t have any political association either. But I’ll tell you what I have got, George. I’ve got an old-fashioned feeling that this is the best little democracy in the world. When I hear people talk about the Mother of Parliaments, that’s what I assume they mean – the mother. I think we’ve developed the best system of democratic government that there is anywhere in existence, and I don’t exclude the Scandinavian countries or the United States. We’ve got out faults, God knows, but when it comes to the day-by-day practice of political democracy – I mean a democracy which gives everyone a vote – there’s no one to touch us. Then these bloody fanatics come along with their half-baked idealism, and they drag along all the lunatic fringe dupes. They pick up the odds and sods, everyone who thinks he or she has had a raw deal, anyone who doesn’t fit in, the physical and the mental misfits. If the F.F.P. Battle Committee was dealing with people of its own mental calibre and own intelligence level we wouldn’t have anything to worry about, but they’re dealing with fanatics, idiots, morons, and dedicated megalomaniacs as well as a lot of poor sods who are plain frightened, and a lot more who are simple-minded idealists who think we can put the world right by waving a wand.”

  Parsons went on talking in a quiet, low-pitched, even voice. Gideon had no doubt that he felt everything he said with almost passionate sincerity; and Gideon marvelled that he could work with a man for years, give him orders, confer with him, and believe that he knew him – and yet hardly know him beneath the skin.

  “These people are more dangerous to humanity than all the nuclear weapons put together,” Parsons went on. “They can destroy the mind, they can corrode the heart of democracy, they can destroy everything we’ve worked for over the centuries. That’s what I hate. That, and the mob at the opposite extreme. Every chance they get the Q Men shout or sing about being for Queen and Country, and maybe most of them are loyalists. Like to be reminded about some other loyalists who’ve been busy in the last few years? The French OAS, for instance. Remember what they did, George? I was over in Algiers to bring Cotton back on the drug-smuggling job when they blew up a car in a busy street, killed about fifty people and maimed God knows how many more. That’s what their kind of loyalty did – turned them into dangerous killers. They stop being nationalists and decent people, they become barbarians who kill, rape, rob, destroy, who will do anything to hurt for the sake of hurting – because they can’t get their own way.

  “I hate both sorts, George. Any objections?”

  Gideon said, very slowly, “I think it’s a pity more of us don’t feel like you.”

  Parsons raised one hand. “You mean that?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Oh,” said Parsons. He gulped. “Well, I should have realized it. Thanks, George.”

  “Just one thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “They hate a thing or a system and don’t care what they do to hurt it. We hate a thing or a system but we’ve got to make sure that in beating it we don’t do a lot of harm to ourselves.”

  Parsons was smiling constrainedly.

  “Point taken, George.”

  “Check with me daily, won’t you – at home at night if needs be.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was told you were out most of the day.”

  “I am, mostly, but I knew you would be in this morning. I’ve sent the two sergeants out.”

  “Are they shaping up well?”

  “They’re pretty good.”

  “How many more do you need?”

  Parsons grinned again. “A dozen!”

  “I’ll detail six.”

  “You mean—all right, all right! I know you mean it. George, this is the first time I’ve felt that we’re really taking this threat seriously. Thanks.” Parsons rubbed his chin, and went on: “And you haven’t even asked me how I’m handling it.”

  “Show me,” said Gideon.

  “Right!” Parsons turned, picked up a round ebony ruler from his desk, and began to point. As he indicated different places on the map, he talked. There were the known meeting places, the danger spots where the two groups might clash because one or the other held rallies there. There were the key workers in each group, workers who, Parsons believed, might become dangerous because of the passion of their fanaticism. There were the meeting places for the coming election, too, the committee rooms run by the various parties; everything was shown on those maps.

  In the cabinets were comprehensive records of the different local committees, and dossiers
on individuals, with data as complete as Parsons could make it. Among those he took out was a slim file, marked: Amanda Tenby.

  “Here’s one I wouldn’t like to trust round the corner,” he declared. “She’s a weirdie, but she means what she says. She volunteered to fly into the Pacific when the last American tests were being carried out, and she would have gone too. She’s worth a couple of hundred thousand pounds, inherited from her grandfather. She’s been disowned by her family – her mother’s dead, it’s just her father, who’s a true-blue Tory and still believes in gunboat diplomacy. She’s been to Japan and looked at the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She knows as much as anyone on the F.F.P. Battle Committee, and she pays for a lot of the work that the extremists do. She’s about as sexless as a carrot, but her money draws the men to her. So do her brain waves, and she has plenty. I rate her the most dangerous of all the F.F.P. people, although we’ve never caught her out in any serious breach of the peace. She’s known to all our chaps and I’m having her specially watched.”

  He took out two photographs of Amanda Tenby, one so vivid and effective that it was almost as if she was in the room with them.

  “See those eyes, George? Fanatic’s eyes, that’s what they are. Got quite a profile, though.” He handed the pictures to Gideon, and went on: “Here are some of the things she’s been up to lately: She attends every meeting of the Battle Committee, the real heart of the F.F.P. movement. She’s been to seven local committee meetings – and wherever she goes a nasty spot of bother follows.”

  “Was she out last night?”

  “No,” answered Parsons. “She doesn’t run into that kind of trouble. But last night’s fight was at Paddington. She was at the St. John’s Wood Local Committee three nights ago. It’s a queer thing, but something always blows up after she’s been to a place.”

  “But you said the Q people started last night’s shindig.”

  “I didn’t, you know. I said that a couple of people we couldn’t place started it, and got away. We don’t know whether they were Q Men supporters or F.F.P. supporters. We don’t know whether she sponsored them or whether they weighed in just for the hell of it. But here’s an interesting graph, George.”

  Parsons drew out a kind of genealogical tree, drawn up in pencil. At the top was Amanda Tenby. Stemming from her were different local committees, with the names of some of the members. At each there was a red mark. Gideon counted; there were seventeen red marks in all.

  “If you study that closely you’ll see that she visited each place within seven days of violence taking place there,” said Parsons. “Some might call it coincidence.”

  “Was she the only one to visit all the places?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone else visit any large proportion of them?”

  “Yes – man named Ronn, Daniel Ronn. I can’t make Ronn out,” Parsons admitted, frowning. “He’s got all the qualifications for being one of Quatrain’s group. Same kind of background, same kind of social activities, same kind of business and commercial interests as Quatrain, and yet he’s a member of the F.F.P. Battle Committee, and seems to be Amanda Tenby’s boyfriend. I didn’t tell you that she left home at half past four the night of October 14th and walked to Ronn’s place, getting there at ten past five. Funny kind of thing to do, wasn’t it? If she’d spent the night with him and left in the early hours it would be understandable, but this way round looks all wrong.”

  “Any idea what she wanted?”

  “I’ve got four different reports on her from men who noticed her as she walked, and they all say the same: she looked starry-eyed. And don’t tell me that it might have been young love, after all.”

  “How long was she with Ronn?”

  “About three hours.”

  “Then?”

  “She went back to her own flat, and as far as we can judge, behaved normally – if the way she behaves could ever be called normal. I’ve had as close a watch kept on her and her contacts as I can. Now you’re going to give me more men, I can check much closer. I don’t like the combination of Amanda T. and Ronn one little bit. Ronn knows everybody.”

  “What’s really worrying you?” asked Gideon.

  “I just don’t know what they’re up to,” confessed Parsons. “Now with Quatrain, on the other side of the picture, it’s as transparent as glass. Funny thing about Quatrain. I hate everything he stands for, yet everything I find out about the man as a person I like. In his way he’s a single-minded idealist who believes in his cause so fiercely that he doesn’t care how far he goes to make it succeed. He’s stinking rich, remember. He’s said to be worth a million, and I know for sure he’s worth at least half. He’s got a lot of financial support from others.” Parsons put away Amanda Tenby’s file and took a photograph of a man from another folder. The man was in his forties and strikingly handsome, almost with a film star’s looks. In his eyes there was something of the intensity that showed in Amanda Tenby’s. A profile photograph was just as striking, and Gideon studied it closely. “My sister always says he’s the nearest approach she’s ever seen to Ronald Colman,” went on Parsons. “And I can have a man full time on him, too. You’ve done me a world of good, George.”

  “Pleasure. How about the banning of fireworks? Is that laid on?”

  “Yes. Every police force has fixed it, George. Saturday the 8th will be official Guy Fawkes night this time. Fridays and Saturdays are usually the noisiest anyhow, and the election will be almost forgotten by the Saturday.”

  Gideon thought, a little wryly, that Parsons was almost certainly right about that.

  Amanda Tenby walked swiftly along Dean Street, Soho, watched by policemen who were always in the vicinity, and by two C.I.D. men who were making inquiries into the activities of some of the nastier strip shows. Amanda walked with a slight stoop. Her dark hair was blown back from her high forehead by a stiff wind, and fluttered about her shoulders. She wore black stretch slacks, which fitted her lathlike body so tightly that a lot of people turned to look, or stared from across the road. She seemed oblivious to all this, even when she heard a woman ask:

  “Is that male or female?”

  A man said: “Hush! She’ll hear you.”

  “Cut off the hair and she’d be a he!”

  Amanda walked on until she reached a small restaurant with faded gold lettering on the window, green-painted woodwork which must have been in the same state throughout the last war, and a very narrow door. This was one of Soho’s more famous restaurants. She nodded to the headwaiter, and slipped upstairs, silent as a wraith, noticed by very few. She stopped for a moment at a door marked 1908 Room, gave a perfunctory tap, and went inside.

  Ronn was there, with another young man.

  This young man was nearly as thin as Amanda. He wore big glasses with blue-tinted lenses. His mouse-coloured hair was spiky and overlong. His face was bleached of colour like that of a man who worked indoors or in artificial light most of the time. He had a big forehead, a small snub nose, rather a thin mouth, and not very much chin. He sat by himself on one side of a small oak table with a high-backed bench behind it.

  Ronn stood up.

  “Glad you’ve arrived, Amanda,” he welcomed. “We’re starving.” He smiled forgiveness. “This is Mr. Travaritch!” His smile widened, and his voice dropped. “Professor Travaritch, I should say.”

  Amanda did not shake hands at first, but stared at the spindly Travaritch as if she wanted to study every line on his face, and meant to make sure that she never forgot him. It was almost embarrassing. At last she sat down, and, sitting, held out her thin, bony hand.

  “Good morning.”

  “I wish you good morning,” Travaritch said. He had a rather hard voice, unexpected from a man with so fragile a figure. “I am very glad to meet you.”

  “I told Cleo that we would be ready to eat as soon as you came,” said Ronn. “If you want to say anything, you’d better get it over. Then we’ll have to wait until Cleo’s gone.”

  “I
just want to ask one thing,” Amanda said. Her eyes seemed huge; it was almost as if she were trying to hypnotize Travaritch. “Is what we want possible?”

  “Yes, it is possible,” Travaritch said.

  “If we can come to terms,” put in Ronn.

  “We will come to terms,” Amanda declared softly. Then there was a tap at the door, and the proprietor, Cleo, came in.

  In the late afternoon Parsons studied a written report about all this. Amanda Tenby and Daniel Ronn had been to lunch at Cleo’s, in Dean Street, and a waiter had told a policeman that a third person, a man, had also been present. Neither Amanda nor Ronn had used his name in anyone’s hearing, and Cleo himself did not know what they had been discussing.

  “They were so damned cagey it must have been something nasty,” Parsons reflected. “At least we’ve got a description of the chap they lunched with.”

  About the same time that Parsons was studying the report Piper tapped at the door of Gideon’s office. When he entered he looked annoyed. Gideon was going through some memoranda which had come from the Home Office about the forthcoming election. He was also reflecting that until one was actually imminent, it was easy to forget how a general election affected every aspect of police work. Keeping the public order was as much part of their job as investigating crimes, but it was seldom so obvious. Being preoccupied, he didn’t notice Piper’s expression.

  “What’s new?” he asked.

  “We’re too late, that’s what’s new,” said Piper. Lemaitre looked up sharply, as if there was some implied criticism of him in this. “The Daily Globe’s running the story of the Quack tomorrow. Littleton called them this morning, and they were evasive. Now we know why. Dowsett says that they’ve been to see half a dozen of the women in Sydenham, and three in Chelsea have been interviewed, as well as some of the people in the other districts. They’re going to use it in their Sex Special. Littleton wonders if you could persuade them to run the Identikit picture at the same time, and so make the best of it.”