by John Creasey
He tried to convince himself that a kind of sixth sense was working in him, and that he knew he ought to stay at the Yard, but emotionally he rejected this.
He looked through the reports in his briefcase, the ones which had been on his desk, and tried to convince himself that these must be dealt with tonight. As he looked through them, he admitted to himself that all could have waited.
He could go across to the pub in Cannon Row, and get dinner or a snack, but it would mean talking and drinking with others from the Yard, and he did not feel like it. He sent for a messenger to get him coffee and sandwiches, and was waiting for the elderly constable to come back with these, when his telephone bell rang.
“Mr Pendleton of South-West Division would like a word with you,” said the operator.
Pendleton was an old acquaintance, one who would not ring through as late as this for the sake of a chat.
“Put him through,” Roger said.
A moment later, the Divisional Superintendent spoke in a voice which had a slightly north-country inflection.
“Hallo, Handsome. I think I might have some news for you.” Somehow Roger almost expected him to say ‘for thee.’ “I’ve just had the circular and the photograph of the man Lewis. I think I can tell you where he is.”
6
RAID
Darkness was settling gauntly over London as the police moved on the hotel where the missing man might be. It was just after eight o’clock. Roger was in the Divisional Superintendent’s car, being driven by a middle-aged officer who seemed to drive by instinct, knowing every corner, every twist in the long main road, every traffic light, and divining the intention of other drivers. Three more police cars were converging on the hotel, which faced Clapham Common, a broad stretch of parkland on the far side of the river from Roger’s home yet within a stone’s throw of it. As the car turned into the road which overlooked the common, a couple showed up in the headlights, squirming on the grass beneath a tree, oblivious of the rest of the world, or else not caring.
“One of these days we’re going to have to clean up the parks,” Pendleton remarked sourly.
“How far away is this place?” asked Roger.
“The man with the one-track mind. Just round the next corner,” Pendleton answered. “Queer thing, coincidence. If our regular police surgeon hadn’t been on holiday, we wouldn’t have used Dr Abbott. If we hadn’t used Abbott we wouldn’t have recognised this chap when he went to see him as a patient.” Roger had already heard the story, once, but Pendleton was always inclined to be garrulous, partly to make sure that he rammed his point right home. “And if Abbott hadn’t come round to the station tonight and seen the photograph, we’d still be in the dark. Funny thing, coincidence,” he added prosily.
There were stranger ones . . .
A board was fastened to the wall surrounding a corner house, reading, ‘Common View Hotel’ – that was the place.
The stone wall was high and looked thick. Shrubs and trees showed behind it, hiding much of the hotel building itself, but Roger could see a grey slate roof, the chimneys, the top windows. There were two drive gates, and a small circular drive with a shrubbery in the middle. This house was like hundreds which faced parks and commons in the London area. A light shone at the porch, and as the car moved slowly past a light was switched on over the name-board, showing it up very brightly. A youth on a bicycle came out, whistling. A second police car passed, coming from the other direction; Jameson and Klemm were in this, Klemm driving. The raid had been laid on by Pendleton, and Roger resisted a temptation to ask questions; the Superintendent would get round to everything in good time.
Three houses along there was a narrow road, and another police car was parked in it.
“That’s covering the back. We’ve got one on the far corner, and the one with the coloured chap will wait across the road near the common,” Pendleton explained. “Not exactly expecting trouble, are you?”
“I don’t know what to expect.”
“Well, we’re ready for anything,” Pendleton said confidently. “We’ll go in now. Okay?”
“Yes.”
“Impatient so-and-so,” said Pendleton. They were back on the road overlooking the common, and turned into the hotel driveway. Lights showed upstairs and downstairs. A man sat reading an evening paper close to a window with a standard lamp by his chair, and the scene of a small private hotel could hardly have been more normal. Yet the place had a dilapidated look. As the car pulled up just past the front door, Roger saw an old garden umbrella and a child’s pushchair in the porch. He got out one side, Pendleton the other, and they entered the wide porch together. Insects were humming and darting about the lamp’s cheap, tinny shade. As they opened the door, a bell clanged loudly, obviously in warning to whoever was in charge. The hall was wide, there was an old-fashioned hat and coat stand, a shabby imitation Persian carpet, doors which needed repainting, walls which had been distempered a long time ago. A flight of stairs led off to the right, a narrow passage to the left and a door marked ‘Private.’
Nothing happened.
Pendleton looked round and saw a handbell; he picked it up and rang it heartily, and the resulting noise was deafening. As it faded, Roger thought he heard a thump upstairs. Already a warning was flashing in his mind, but Pendleton seemed to take all this for granted.
No one appeared.
“Time we took a look round,” Roger said.
“Okay, okay,” Pendleton agreed.
He broke off when the door marked ‘Private’ opened and a tall, lean man appeared, with a kitchen apron round his waist. He had a scared, bird-like look, which may have been partly due to the thick lenses of his glasses. At the same time, a woman appeared on the stairs, youngish, plumpish, with very full calves and very slim ankles. Her dark hair was a frizzy mop against the light on the half-landing above her.
“Good evening,” said the man.
“Can I help you?” asked the woman.
Roger had an impression that she was scared, too, and he was quite sure of one thing: she was breathing hard, as if she had been hurrying. Obviously, there might be a dozen innocent reasons. He spoke to her, as Pendleton spoke to the man.
“We are police officers.”
“Police!” the man gasped.
“Police,” whispered the woman.
“I believe you have a Mr Lewis staying here,” said Pendleton. “We’d like to see him, please.”
“Lewis?”
“No one named Lewis is here.”
“No one,” echoed the man.
“You’ve made a mistake,” declared the woman.
She was almost gasping for breath, and could not prevent herself from glancing upwards when there was another thud on the ceiling. Roger no longer doubted that someone up there was in a hurry. The man with the thick glasses was stretching out one hand, as if to detain Pendleton.
The woman said, “I really don’t know what—”
Roger pushed past her and ran up the stairs. As he reached the half-landing he saw the back of a man who was standing in a doorway, and called out to him, “Stop there!”
The man moved farther into the room clumsily, and back-kicked the door. It swung to, in Roger’s face. He twisted round and put his shoulder to it, and took the impact without any pain. Someone was leaning or pressing against the other side.
He shouted down to Pendleton, “Watch all the windows!”
One or two people were trying to close the door on him, but he had little trouble in keeping it ajar.
A woman inside the room cried, “Mind his head!”
Roger kept his right foot against the door to make sure they could not slam it, then drew back and threw his full weight against it. The door sagged inwards, and was stopped by a chair lodged under the handle.
The woman cried out
in despair, “I can’t keep them out!”
Someone came running up the stairs; it was Pendleton’s driver, big and burly and middle-aged. He took in the situation at a glance, called, “Wait for me,” and lumbered up, getting into a position from which he could hurl his additional weight.
The woman in the room screamed, “David, be careful!”
Roger and the driver thrust hard against the door at the same time; there was a crack of splintering wood. The door opened wider, a broken chair fell to one side, and a woman was staggering backwards, visible only in the half-light of the evening. She neared the window where a man was climbing out in a peculiar way.
As Roger steadied himself in the middle of the room, a bedroom, a man called from the grounds, “Stay there!”
Another man, Jameson, called out as if in fear, “Don’t let him fall!”
Roger saw the woman thrust herself between him and the window, still trying to keep him away from ‘David;’ then saw that the man at the window was holding another man’s wrists, and this second man was dangling out of the window. Roger took the woman by the shoulders, gripped, and thrust her to one side. She swayed out of his sight, and he forgot her. The man called David was obviously trying to lower the other to the ground. Roger rushed forward and leaned out, gripping the wrists of the dangling man. David struck at him ineffectually. All at once the man’s full weight fell on to Roger’s right arm, as David let go. Instinctively, Roger tightened his grip.
It had all happened so quickly there was hardly time to realise the danger. The weight of the man dragged Roger forward, and as the window ledge came only halfway up his thighs, his feet almost left the floor. His heart gave one great convulsive beat. Let go or fall out rang like an ultimatum in his mind, but he was not really conscious of it. He saw the bushes, and a concrete path immediately below. He saw men weaving and dodging about, torches shining up into his face with little bright blinding orbs. He heard a car engine roar and saw headlights blaze, but neither mattered. The weight got too much, and the man he was trying to save slipped. Desperately, Roger grabbed at him, and in an awful moment, felt himself topple out. Then suddenly a powerful arm encircled his waist, and held him firm.
Afterwards, Roger realised that the danger had lasted only for a few seconds, but at the time it seemed like minutes. He thought vaguely of the things he had heard: the woman’s ‘Mind his head,’ and Jameson’s ‘Don’t let him fall.’ Then he saw a crumpled figure on the concrete, and Jameson bending over it, dark head quite unmistakable. Others gathered round the huddled figure, while two men stood staring up.
In the room with Roger was a tall, lanky man, the woman, and two detectives.
Down below, a man said to Jameson, “Is he all right?”
Jameson didn’t answer, and Roger turned back into the room. The man, ‘David,’ stood in a corner, shoulders drooping, eyes despairing. The woman sat on the side of a double bed, her face buried in her hands, and a detective stood over her. Yet Roger had a feeling that he was absolutely on his own, that no one else was even near. His head was swimming. That annoyed him, for nothing had happened, he hadn’t been hurt. His heart was still thumping like a trip hammer and sweat had broken out all over his body; it was like being in a steam bath.
He moved slowly, towards the bed, glad to sit on the edge, opposite the woman. He thought she was crying; certainly her shoulders were heaving. He fumbled for his handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his forehead, and then realised that his mouth was parched and had a curious, almost bitter taste. He saw a wash-hand basin in one corner, made the effort, and went towards it. His legs were like lead. He let the cold tap run, rinsed his face, filled a tooth-glass with the water, and sipped; it was tepid. He drank a little more, then put the glass back. His hand was quite steady.
He could see everything clearly now, and felt much better. He began to think, too. The man in a heap on the concrete ground outside the window might be seriously hurt, might be Lewis alias Van der Lunn. He wanted to find out. He wanted to question the man and the woman here. He wanted to know what had been going on.
‘David’ had a nasty scratch on his chin and a speckle of blood at his lips and nose, thin grey hair like a golliwog’s, eyes screwed up. He was looking towards the woman, and as if oblivious even of the men who were watching him, he took a step towards her.
“Don’t cry, Beth. Don’t cry.” When she didn’t answer, but stayed there with her shoulders heaving and her face buried in her hands, he swung round on the man on his right and shouted, “Don’t hurt her. Understand – let her alone. It wasn’t her fault, she wanted to stop me. You can’t do anything to her!”
Roger moved forward.
“I should think we could get her at least five years in prison,” he said roughly. It was difficult to get the words out because he was still not quite himself, but they came clearly enough and with a significance that the man could not fail to see.
“What?”
“You heard me,” Roger said.
“But it wasn’t her fault – I swear it wasn’t! She didn’t know anything about it until yesterday. She tried to make me stop. Can’t you understand?”
“I know that unless you can prove what you say she’ll look as guilty as you,” Roger said. One part of his mind was waiting for news of the man who had fallen out of the window, the other concentrated on this tall, almost hysterical individual. “Do you really want to help her?”
“You bloody fool, of cours“There’s just one way. Tell us the whole story now: what you’ve been doing, what started it, why you kept that man here, why you tried to escape from the house?” Roger, suddenly himself again, nodded to the man holding the prisoner’s left arm. “Let him go. Do you write shorthand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take down what this man says,” ordered Roger. “My questions and his answers.”
So it began, Roger’s words quietly authoritative above the sound of the shrill tones of the prisoner, the woman’s sobbing. From outside came the babel of men’s voices, footsteps, the noise of cars coming and going; then suddenly the urgent ringing of a bell, telling Roger that an ambulance had just arrived. It could only be for the man he had allowed to slip from his grasp.
If that man died, whose fault would it be?
7
SICK UNTO DEATH
As the man, David, talked he kept glancing across at the woman, Beth, and occasionally twisted his long, scraggy neck round, as if as preoccupied as Roger about what was going on outside. The noises had tailed off but soon another car engine started; almost certainly the ambulance. Roger’s questions were brisk and to the point, aimed at getting the story out of the man, David, quickly, and he was sure of one thing: emotionally upset with the knowledge of failure and worry for his wife, this David was more likely to talk freely now than at any time.
His name was David Arthur Bradshaw.
Beth was Elizabeth, his wife.
The man who had tried to head Roger and Pendleton off downstairs was his brother, Joshua Bradshaw; and the other, plump young woman was Joshua’s wife, Rebecca.
The basic facts were that Joshua and Rebecca owned the hotel, and Beth lived here most of the time, helping her relations. David was a steward employed by the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
He swore that he did not know any details about the man whom he had lowered through the window.
“If you hadn’t come I’d have stopped him from falling . . .”
Roger let that pass, and asked, “Who is the man?”
“All I know is his name’s Lewis,” David Bradshaw went on tensely. “Listen, I—I was forced into it. Blackmailed. I—”
He moistened his lips, and then words poured out of him. “You’ll find out sooner or later; you may as well know now. I’ve smuggled a few bags of diamonds in, the people I’ve worked for threatened to report me if I
didn’t do what they ordered. I had to.”
He had been given tablets to mix in a drink for Lewis soon after the aircraft had left Johannesburg, he said. He tried to pretend that he believed they had been to help the man, but at heart he obviously believed these tablets, and others he had given the man during the flight, had caused his sickness.
“He just sat in his seat all the time, looking as if he was in a coma. He didn’t get out at Cairo or Nairobi, just sat there, I tell you . . .”
Someone, he swore he didn’t know the man, had come to meet Lewis at London Airport. Bradshaw said he had seen nothing more of Lewis until, on the same evening, another strange man had brought Lewis to the hotel. This man had told Bradshaw to keep him there until given further instructions.
Next came a garbled story of family dissension: Joshua and Rebecca had wanted to send for the police, David had confessed to them, Beth had pleaded to give him another chance. Fear in case Lewis should die had made Rebecca send for a doctor without David knowing.
It was a pathetic story in its way, with a ring of conviction about it.
Only on one thing was David Bradshaw absolutely adamant: he said he did not know the names of the people he worked for, that the individuals who gave him the diamonds to smuggle were different each time, that he had never before seen the man who had brought Lewis to the hotel, and there was nothing at all he could do to help the police to trace him.
In David Bradshaw, even now that he had recovered from the worst shock, there was deep and burning fear. He would not admit to it, but it seemed to show in his eyes and make his lips twitch and his voice unsteady. It passed itself on to his wife, who had recovered from her paroxysm of crying and sat on the bed, dry-eyed, staring, a handsome woman if one could forget the pale traces of her tears and the redness of her eyes.