Murder, London--South Africa

by John Creasey

  Copyright & Information

  Murder, London - South Africa

  First published in 1966

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1966-2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN EAN Edition

  0755136098 9780755136094 Print

  0755139437 9780755139439 Kindle

  0755137760 9780755137763 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the 'C' section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers' Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey's stories are as compelling today as ever.

  1

  MISSING MAN

  “Handsome in?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone seen Handsome?”

  “Not since lunch.”

  “Handsome. Handsome! Anyone seen Handsome?”

  “If I had a nickname like Handsome I’d want to hang myself,” said a middle-aged detective sergeant at New Scotland Yard. “It’s bad enough looking like a film star, let alone being called like one. Handsome, Handsome, anyone seen Handsome?” he mimicked.

  “Is someone asking for me?” enquired Chief Superintendent Roger ‘Handsome’ West of the Criminal Investigation Department. He was irritated, but he knew the sergeant for a somewhat disappointed and consequently jaundiced man, and bore him no ill will, so he did not reveal the fact that he had heard everything the other had said as he approached a corner of a passage in the offices on the Embankment. He looked inquiringly into Sergeant Gorlay’s startled grey eyes.

  Gorlay was quick of thought as well as movement, a lean ferret of a man. He drew himself up to an attitude almost of attention, so as to emphasise respect.

  “Good afternoon, sir. Yes. There has been a call for you. I believe that you’re wanted in the Assistant Commissioner’s office.”

  “Mustn’t keep him waiting, must we,” said Roger, and he lengthened his stride towards his own office. As the door opened, the sound of his telephone bell came clearly along the passage, and the door closed on his “hallo.”

  The man with Gorlay, another detective sergeant, grinned and said, “Handsome is as Handsome does. He couldn’t have failed to hear you.”

  “Could have,” Gorlay conceded.

  In his office, Roger sat on the corner of his desk, glancing at four reports which had been put there since he had left only half an hour ago. A shaft of October sunlight, reflected from the River Thames, shimmered on a section of the dark, shiny desk. The office was at its brightest, for there had been hardly a cloud over London’s sky all day.

  “You’re through,” the operator said.

  “West here,” said Roger. “Is that right you’ve been after me?”

  “If you’d been away much longer I would have wanted to know where you’d been,” retorted the Assistant Commissioner gruffly. “Come along right away, will you?”

  He rang off before Roger could say another word. Roger stood up from the desk, but did not go immediately to the door. He moved to the window and looked past the bright green of the leaves of the plane trees on the Embankment, and the traffic, towards the broad river beyond, and the mass of London County Hall on the farther side. He was not thinking about the river scene, nor even of the sun. He was telling himself that first Gorlay and now Hardy had made him feel angry, and that was a bad sign. He had covered his irritation with the sergeant just as he must with the Assistant Commissioner, but he needed a minute or two’s respite and he would need more than minutes to analyse his feelings.

  Was there any justification for feeling mad? Wouldn’t he have laughed off both things only a few weeks ago?

  He turned away from the day’s brightness and went out. He moved as he always did, with a kind of restrained briskness, as if he knew exactly where he wanted to go but something prevented him going too fast. The Assistant Commissioner’s office was upstairs; it wasn’t worth taking the lift. By the time he had climbed the stairs he was actually hurrying. Doubtless Hardy had been annoyed by something, too. Probably, he would be back to normal when Roger arrived. On the other hand, for a senior officer at the Yard to be told that he might have to explain where he had been for half an hour . . .

  Roger began to smile. He had been out to lunch. With his wife. On a working weekday. That was little more than an annual event. He reached Hardy’s office, and was about to tap when caution made him go on to the secretary’s room, next door. Hardy was a man of moods and there was no point in exacerbating the situation. He went inside, and a middle-aged woman, who was bending over a typewriter, glanced up. It was obvious at once that she was out of temper, too; she usually had a smile which brightened her homely but pleasant face.

  Now she said, “The Assistant Commissioner would like you to go straight in.”

  “Thanks.”

  Often Roger would have asked her what was up, but today he decided that it would not be wise. So he tapped at the communicating door, and as he did so the keys of the typewriter began to clatter, as if snapping out a coded message of defiance.

  Hardy was at his big, dark, shiny pedestal-type desk, with its In, Out, Pending, and other trays. The office was not large, but there was room for more chairs, more furniture, more filing cabinets. The bareness gave it a look of austerity, and in a way there was a look of austerity about Hardy, too. He was an aloof man, one who had come up from the ranks and had been given this eminence because no one better was available at the time. Sometimes he gave the impression that he was a
s soured as Gorlay, but Roger was never sure this was so. Hardy was probably a lonely man, not quite big enough for his job. He was not heavily built, as old-time Yard men went, but rather spare-boned, dressed in neutral grey, giving the impression that he was a little too well brushed. He had a rather broad face and deep-set eyes. All his features were good in themselves, but the assemblage wasn’t particularly striking, rather as though everything had been done by an indifferent artist.

  “So you made it.” Hardy was frowning.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Roger said. “I’d no idea you wanted to see me this afternoon.”

  “Couldn’t very well. I didn’t know myself.”

  Suddenly the frown disappeared, Hardy squared his shoulders and drew in a deep breath, as if mentally he was pushing something aside. Bad humour?

  “I’ve had urgent instructions from the Commissioner. There’s some kind of trouble over at South Africa House, and he wants you to go and find out what it’s all about.”

  It would have been easy for Hardy to say that this was because he, Roger, had been assigned to a number of cases with overseas angles, and had proved to have a flair for getting on with people and policemen whose outlook was very different from most in Great Britain. Hardy did not take the opportunity, implying rather that he was sending Roger to South Africa House because he had been told to, not because he thought he was the right man for the job.

  He added, “Go over there at once, will you? The man you want to see is a Mr du Toit, the Consul General if I understood him properly.”

  “Do you know what it’s all about?” asked Roger.

  “Someone left South Africa for London and didn’t get here. There’s a pall of secrecy for some reason – and I don’t know whether the Commissioner knows more than I do and didn’t choose to tell me, or whether he’s as much in the dark as I am. You’re to go because of your well-known discretion,” Hardy added, and there was no doubt at all of the sarcasm in his voice.

  Roger contemplated him, biting back a comment, and then turned towards the door, saying, “Sometimes that gets stretched a bit too far.”

  Hardy asked sharply, “What does?”

  “My discretion. Incidentally . . .”

  Roger reached the door leading to the secretary’s office, half opened it, and said clearly, “I took my wife out to lunch today.”

  He paused long enough to give Hardy a chance to disapprove, but the senior man didn’t take it. Roger went out, and the door closed. At least Hardy’s secretary had thawed a little, and she stopped typing.

  “You wouldn’t know what I’ve done wrong, would you?” Roger asked.

  “I don’t even know what I’ve done wrong!”

  Roger smiled . . . and was chuckling by the time he reached his own office. He had counted four fresh files on his desk twenty minutes ago; now there were eight. He picked up his briefcase, pushed all the files in, and went out immediately. He wouldn’t need his murder-bag – at least, he hardly expected to. He walked along the corridor to the sergeants’ office, and saw Gorlay and two others, each busy at high desks; form-filling was a kind of plague at the Yard.

  Gorlay looked up, and started.

  “Tell the operator that I’ll be out for an hour or more, will you? And I may have to telephone for my bag – if I do, bring it by car to South Africa House. If you’re not around make sure someone is.”

  “Right, sir!”

  Roger went along the corridors and out the back way, across the Yard, into Parliament Street, and then along Whitehall. It was a wonderful Indian summer, and he was wearing a lightweight suit which he had bought in Australia only the previous year; it wasn’t often he had a chance to use it here at home.

  Whitehall, the colour of its older buildings neutralised by the bright sun, had a kind of splendour which it was hard to forget and yet easy not to notice. He wondered why he was acutely aware of it now – its breadth, the distant view, the sight of Nelson atop his column, the newer buildings which in themselves seemed so stark and bare, yet which somehow merged with the old ministry buildings. He went past the Horse Guards where a hundred or so late-season tourists stood staring at two guardsmen sitting still as statues on their black horses, red cloaks and burnished helmets a reminder of dead glories. Dead? Roger saw the sweep of Trafalgar Square, glanced across at the Admiralty Arch and down the Mall, which looked cool and beautifully green. Dead glories? Were they so dead?

  He now knew why he was thinking so much about them and not noticing so much today. It had nothing to do with the tourists or the clicking cameras; it was because of the way his thoughts had quickened when he had been told there was a problem in South Africa House. If one looked up South Africa in a gazetteer, one found it listed under ‘Foreign Countries,’ but somehow that seemed wrong, whatever one might think politically. In fact, of course, it was very difficult to think of South Africa without being influenced by the background of the politics which had brought about the change from ‘Commonwealth’ to ‘Foreign.’

  He crossed Trafalgar Square at the end of the Strand, and turned towards the massive building on the right. He went in. The hall was cool and spacious, and the commissionaire as Cockney as any London policeman; in fact, he was the next best thing to a member of the Force, and when he recognised Roger he drew himself up much as Gorlay had done.

  “Afternoon, Mr West!”

  “Hallo, Baker – couldn’t get into another uniform quick enough, I see.” Roger saw the half-proffered hand, and shook it, callouses and all. “You can’t have been away more than a year.”

  “Two and a half years, sir. Amazing how time flies, isn’t it? It wasn’t so much the money,” he confided. “It was doing nothing that got me down. Live in a flat, you see. My wife can look after the window-box, and she soon got tired of having me about the house. Who do you want to see, sir?”

  Roger almost told him, but the inborn caution, which made the difference between a born policeman and merely a good one, stepped in, and he grinned.

  “Public Relations – I forget the chap’s name.”

  “Mr Morgan that would be, sir. Second floor. Take the lift, and . . .”

  It seemed to Roger that Baker’s voice was still echoing in his ears when he reached the Public Relations office. He was welcomed into a magnificently walled room, with panelling rather like an ocean liner’s, by a pleasant-looking, well groomed young woman.

  “Oh, Mr du Toit’s on the next floor, sir. You’ve been misdirected. If you’ll come this way . . .”

  She had a slight accent, a pleasant perfume, a friendly and natural manner. By the time he reached an office marked ‘Consul General – Enquiries,’ Roger’s mood was very much better than it had been since he had first heard Gorlay.

  When a middle-aged man asked if he had an appointment he realised that, whatever the reason for his visit, it wasn’t widely known; it was a good thing he had been careful. He was led by one secretary to a second, and finally into another richly panelled room, with high windows and a high ceiling; one wall carved with wild animals, the opposite wall with covered wagons and men and women in olden day dress. From a desk larger than Hardy’s and set in front of the main window, a very tall man stood up. Roger had a curious impression that the man was watching him almost with suspicion, certainly with wariness. Yet his manner could not have been more pleasant; his voice was also very slightly accented. He was probably older than he looked, which was about thirty-five.

  He shook hands, and motioned to a leather-seated armchair.

  “Please sit down, Mr West . . . a cigarette? . . . so you are cutting down on smoking; nearly everyone seems to be.”

  Du Toit waited for Roger to sit, went back to his own chair, and placed his hands on the desk in front of him, the fingers linked.

  “Mr West, I am indeed glad to meet you, and to know that you have been selected for this ver
y delicate task. A man of very great prominence in South Africa left Johannesburg by air four days ago. It is believed that he reached London Airport on Monday, but since then no one has any idea where he may have gone. I think I should say at once that we do not believe he would have disappeared of his own accord. I am sure you see our problem.”

  2

  MYSTERY

  Roger did not answer immediately, partly because he did not quite know what to say, partly because he wanted time to try to sum up the man as well as the situation. As he sat appraising du Toit, he realised there was a third factor: simply that he was not considering this in the way he would in Australia House, or even the United States Embassy. He did not believe that du Toit’s counterpart in either place would watch him so intently; almost warily.

  Du Toit waited until it almost became a test of who could stay silent the longer. Slowly, Roger found himself relaxing, and he smiled faintly as he said, “I see a little of the problem.”

  “I will give you all the details which we have so far, including”—du Toit placed his right hand on a pale pink folder—“the report from our Pretoria and Johannesburg police headquarters.”

  “One basic thing first,” Roger said.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this a political matter?”

  Du Toit did not stir in his chair, but it seemed to Roger that the pressure of his hand on the reports suddenly became much firmer.

  “Would it make any difference to you, as an official of the Metropolitan Police, if it were political?”

  “As a policeman, of course not. As a person it might, and the trouble is that the two sometimes overlap.”

  “At least you admit your prejudice,” said du Toit. He withdrew his hand; he also seemed to withdraw into himself. “I am not sure how I should react to this, Superintendent.”