Petrella at 'Q'

by Michael Gilbert

  Petrella said, “I suppose both the Masons were involved in it.”

  “Certainly. They had ten men taking part. We had thirty. Now that the Masons are inside, some of the others will start talking. We may even be able to pin the Nicholls and Lloyd killings on to them. It’ll be a long hard fight once the lawyers get going. But I fancy we shall get there in the end.”

  This seemed to be the cue for Petrella to leave; but the Assistant Commissioner had something else to say. He seemed to be picking his words very carefully.

  He said, “I should not have bothered to explain all this to you personally, Inspector, if I had not had a very good report about you from Superintendent Watterson at Division and Commander Baylis at District. You understand?”

  “I understand perfectly,” said Petrella. “And thank you very much.”

  As he was walking back across Westminster Bridge he took out two sheets of foolscap paper and tore each of them into sixty-four pieces. Then he threw them over the parapet. A brisk St. Valentine’s Day breeze caught them and fanned them out and the tiny paper snowflakes floated down and landed on the broad bosom of the Thames.

  Spring

  Captain Crabtree

  It was the moment when spring turned into summer. The showers of April and the warm sun of May had brought up a bumper crop of weeds along the roadways and wharves of what had once been a busy dock.

  “The union found new jobs for the dockers,” said Petrella. “The lesser characters had to shift for themselves. The gatemen and clerks and tea-boys and runners.” He was talking to Detective Sergeant Milo Roughead. Once Petrella had got used to the attitude of disenchantment with which Eton cloaks its pupils, he found himself discussing many of his problems with him. Lower Dock was a problem.

  “So what did they do?” said Milo.

  “A lot of them went back to sea. As deck-hands, engine room assistants, stewards, or cooks. It was the family tradition. In their own way, sailors are just as cliquish as miners and dockers.”

  “And the ones who didn’t go back to the sea?”

  “There was an alternative occupation open to them,” said Petrella sadly. “Crime. Not so much the actual lifting. The disposal of the proceeds. If you hand the stuff over to a fence, what’s the going rate? Twenty-five per cent of the value, if you’re lucky. And always a chance that the fence will shop you, to save his own hide.”

  “You sound like a disillusioned burglar,” said Milo. “What’s the alternative?”

  “Ship it abroad. You can get good prices in Ostend, Amsterdam and the Hague, for the sort of stuff they were lifting; jewellery, gold, old silver, watches, guns, cameras. And less chance of discovery all round. It only needed organising.”

  “Do we know the organiser?”

  “I know his name,” said Petrella. “He’s a gentleman called Captain Crabtree. And that’s all anyone does know about him.”

  “How do we know that much?”

  “About six months ago, someone lifted a collection of gold coins and medals from Carfews. It was shipped abroad, no question about it. The insurance reward was so big that if the stuff had been in this country someone would have ‘found’ it for sure. The night after it happened, three young tearaways got lit up in a pub down by the docks. One of them – his name was Fred Carting – said, ‘No one’s going to see that little lot again. Captain Crabtree’s looking after it.’ One of our snouts was in the bar and heard him.”

  “It sounds a bit thin to me,” said Milo.

  “You haven’t heard the end of the story. Next day when Fred turned up at work, he had two lovely black eyes and a tooth missing. Now, the point is that Fred is a pretty fair lightweight boxer. To mark him like that would have needed several people. Say, two to hold him and one to hit him. And Fred never made any complaint to anyone. He accepted his punishment and he accepted it without a squeak.”

  “Just like a public school, really,” said Milo.

  Captain Crabtree came under discussion at the conference which was held every Monday at District Headquarters. Chief Superintendent Watterson was in the chair.

  “He’s running a regular export agency,” said Petrella. “There are dozens of ways of getting round the Waterguard and the Docks Police. They can’t search every member of the crew every time he goes on board. And if they don’t want to run even that risk, there’s nothing to stop them postponing delivery until the ship’s been cleared and is lying off, waiting for the tide. Run a small boat out to her. If all the crew are in the game, the officers won’t know a thing.”

  “What makes you think it’s organised on that scale, Patrick?”

  “Our fences are beginning to squeak.”

  Watterson guffawed. He found it difficult to get upset over the troubles of receivers of stolen goods.

  “They’ve probably got a union,” he said. “Why don’t they go on strike?”

  “It’s no laughing matter, sir,” said Petrella. “You know as well as I do there are only two ways we catch thieves. Either someone squeaks and there’s not much chance of that here—”

  “They’re a tight-lipped crowd,” agreed Chief Inspector Loveday who looked after the Borough.

  “—Or we trace the actual goods back to them. But if the stuffs all going abroad, we lose that chance as well.”

  But Watterson was in too good a humour to allow himself to be depressed by Petrella. He said, “There’s a third way of catching them, Patrick. Luck.”

  It happened that same evening.

  The two boys had taken a lot of trouble over getting into Mr. Plowman’s pawnbroking establishment. Barry had a brother who had worked there for a few months, and had found out all about the alarms on the doors and windows; alarms which sounded in the charge room at Patton Street Police Station, two hundred yards away. Rex had had the idea. There was an empty office above the dry-cleaning establishment two doors along from Plowmans. They had broken into this in the quiet hour before the pubs shut and had then waited patiently. They knew that the police patrol went past at one o’clock and again at five. It gave them four hours.

  A trapdoor at the head of the stairs took them up on to the roof. After they had watched the one o’clock patrol go by, they crawled along the leads, fastened the rope they had brought with them to a pipe and climbed down again to first-storey level. This brought them opposite the window of Mr. Plowman’s office, which was over the shop. They had to take a chance on whether an alarm had been fixed to this window. There hadn’t been one when he was there, Barry’s brother said, and he was usually reliable about things like that. Barry kicked in the glass with his foot, slipped the catch and they climbed through. The door into the passage was locked, but since the lock was on the inside this was no great obstacle. Five minutes later they were in the shop itself.

  Here there were drawers and locked showcases to be dealt with. The work was slow because they had to keep out of the direct line of sight from the shop window, which was brightly lit all night; a form of advertisement which Mr. Plowman thought worth the electricity bills he incurred.

  It took three hours to fill the satchels they had brought with them. Rex said, “What about that little lot, eh? Just for finishers.”

  It was the window display. Engagement rings, ladies’ watches, earrings and brooches. All good stuff, guarded only by a sliding glass panel, held in place by a tiny lock.

  “Pity to leave it,” said Barry. It had been half an hour since anyone had gone past in the silent street outside. “Break the glass, grab what we can and scarper. Right?” He swung the heavy case-opener which he had been using.

  This was when their luck deserted them. The breaking of the glass set off one of the alarms. They heard the car coming.

  “Out,” said Rex.

  They raced upstairs, slinging the heavy satchels round their shoulders as they went, climbed out of the office window and dropped into the yard behind the shop at the moment that the police car squealed to a halt in front of it and three men tumbled out.


  Sergeant Blencowe, who was an experienced man, said, “Two of you round the back, quick.” He then got busy on the car wireless and called up two more cars.

  What followed was a game of chess. The boys knew the board, but Sergeant Blencowe knew the moves. Ten breathless minutes later, one of the three police cars cruising along West Road, spotted two figures scuttling down East Bank Street, alongside the Creek.

  “Got ‘em now,” said the driver and spoke briefly on his wireless. The area between the Creek, the river and the abandoned dock was, as he knew, a cul-de-sac. Two of the cars blocked the only two roads in as the third shot down East Bank Street in pursuit.

  But the boys had disappeared.

  Ten minutes later, when Sergeant Blencowe was scratching his bald head and swearing, a launch of the Thames Division on routine patrol saw two objects bobbing in the water. The Sergeant in charge swung his spotlight and identified them as two sleek heads.

  “Odd time to have a bathe,” he said.

  “No law against it,” said Barry as he was hauled aboard. They were taken to Leman Road Police Station and searched. Nothing was found on either of them.

  “All the same, we’re taking you in,” said the Sergeant. He had been listening in on the “Q” Division net.

  On the following afternoon, Petrella strolled down East Bank Street with Milo Roughead.

  “We had to let them go,” he said. “No one got a clear identification. All they could be charged with was midnight bathing, which isn’t a crime yet.”

  “I suppose they dumped the stuff in a friendly house,” said Milo. “They’d just have had time if they were quick.”

  “I expect they did,” said Petrella. “And if we could get two hundred search warrants, we might find it. Or again, we might not.” He stopped to watch a game of hopscotch that was being played on the pavement under the generalship of a red-haired girl of nine. None of the children took any notice of them.

  Petrella said, “As a matter of fact, I’m not so interested in where they put the stuff. What I’d like to find out is where they went into the river. They hadn’t got time to do anything elaborate like picking locks or cutting their way through barbed wire. The launch picked them up off the East Quay, a few minutes after they were seen running down this street. They must have gone almost straight into the water and it can’t have been much lower down than this. The tide was on the ebb. They couldn’t fight current and tide. They’d just go down with it and pretty fast. They must have gone in two or three hundred yards above where they were picked up.”

  “Not many possibilities,” agreed Sergeant Roughead. The strip of ground on their left, between East Bank Street and the Creek, belonged to a marine engineering works. It had a high wall topped with broken glass. When they reached the point where the Creek ran into the river, the road swung to the right. On their left was a line of derelict houses, guarded by a fence of corrugated iron sheets, the tops cut into points, an awkward obstacle to surmount even in daylight and with the help of a ladder. A hundred yards along were the railings of the deserted dockyard, topped by a treble row of barbed wire.

  “We’ve come too far,” said Petrella. “If they did go in here, the current would have carried them a lot farther down. We’ll go back.”

  At the point where East Bank Street turned through a right angle and ran along the river there was a gate in the wall which they had overlooked, with a board on the wall beside it. The lettering was weather-worn and was difficult to read.

  “The Church of St. Barnabas, Lower Dock. Holy Communion on Sundays at 8 a.m. Evensong at 6.30 p.m.” And underneath, “Arthur Sabine M.A., Rector.”

  “Good Lord. Yes,” said Petrella. “That’s old Sabine’s church. Let’s have a look at it.”

  They pushed open the gate, which had neither lock nor bolt, and saw in front of them, on the rising ground, at the point where the Creek ran into the river, a space of well-mown grass and in the middle of it a small, neat building topped by a disproportionately high spire. The construction was red brick, weathered to the colour of old burgundy, with ashlar-work corners.

  “One of Wren’s pupils, wouldn’t you say?” said Milo.

  “My knowledge of church architecture is as slight as I guess yours is,” said Petrella coldly. “Anyone who put up a church in these parts three hundred years ago would be certain to copy Wren.”

  “Some of it isn’t three hundred years old,” said Milo, unabashed. “That ashlar work’s been renewed lately. Must have been an expensive job. Good endowments, do you think?”

  “Or a generous congregation,” said Petrella.

  The west door swung easily on its hinges. There was nothing dim and religious about the interior. The word which came into Petrella’s head was “ship-shape”. The windows, which had evidently suffered in the Blitz, were plain glass with a few coloured lozenges let into them. Through them, the afternoon sun glinted on the brasswork and was reflected from the well-polished woodwork of the pews. Some of the memorial tablets on the walls were old, but the armorial devices and the lettering had been freshly picked out in black and scarlet and gold.

  “I hope that the brightness of the colouring does not offend you.”

  The Reverend Sabine had come in very quietly. His appearance matched his church. His white hair was neatly brushed, his face glowing with a serenity which was firm and secure but not soft.

  “I had an expert here from Winchester recently. He persuaded me that the tablets and effigies in our churches were originally all brightly and cheerfully coloured. By the time the colours wore off, people had forgotten what they once looked like. Or perhaps they associated bright colours with Roman Catholicism. At all events, they let them fade. An epitome of our lives, wouldn’t you say? When we are young, everything is bright. As we grow older, things turn to grey.”

  Petrella said, “I like the colours very much, sir. I like the whole church. Is it very old?”

  “It was built in 1670.”

  “By a pupil of Wren’s,” said Milo hopefully.

  “Certainly not. By the master himself. Do you remember that poem – the one which suggested that Wren sited his churches so that ships coming up river could see—how does the line go? ‘A coronal cluster of steeples tall’. I’m certain that’s why he chose this precise spot. Our spire may not be tall, but it must have been one of the first which the sailors saw.”

  “This has always been a seafaring parish?”

  “Indeed yes. Many quite well-known sailors are laid to rest here. You are interested in local history?”

  Petrella said, “I think I ought to introduce myself.” He did so.

  “Do I gather that you are here on business?”

  Petrella explained what had brought them there. The Reverend Sabine said, “What you suggest is perfectly possible. I never lock the gate, or the church for that matter. It sounds risky, but in fact I have never lost anything.” He was leading the way out as he spoke. “The boys could have run straight down the lawn here, past my boat-house – that, incidentally, I do lock up – and dived straight into the river. If they are local boys, I don’t doubt they can swim like fishes. They spend half the summer in and out of the water.”

  The bank of the river had been built up here against the winter floods and was capped with a flat wall of stone.

  “At half past four this morning the tide would have been just on the ebb. There’d have been another two foot of water. It would have been a safe dive for a boy.”

  “I expect that’s what happened,” said Petrella. “It would fit in well with the point they were picked up at. Thank you very much. I’ll come back some time and have a proper look at your church, sir.”

  “You’ll be very welcome,” said the Reverend Sabine.

  As they were walking back up East Bank Street, Milo said, in a voice which he tried to keep carefully noncommittal, “I suppose you noticed, sir—?”

  “If you mean,” said Petrella, “that the Reverend Sabine seemed to know the time the boys
dived into the river, a point which I had not mentioned—”

  “That’s it, sir. Didn’t you think it was odd—?”

  “I didn’t think it odd at all. I imagine that everyone in this neck of the woods knows exactly what happened last night. Every detail of it. You have to remember that Lower Dock is not simply a neighbourhood or a parish. It’s a family.”

  The red-haired young lady suspended her bossing of the hopscotch players long enough to catch his eye and wink at him.

  Barry and Rex were drinking in the private bar at the back of the East Indiaman. They were as pleased with themselves as any two young men who had done a good night’s work for which, in due course, they would receive a fair reward. They had both had a number of drinks, but neither of them was drunk.

  “Christ,” said Rex. “Here comes Soapy. What does he want?”

  A small thin man, with the look of a bookmaker’s runner, was pushing through the crowd towards them.

  “Pretend we’re not here,” said Barry. He swung his chair round and presented a broad back. Soapy was not upset. He annexed a third chair, dragged it to their table and sat down.

  “I want to talk to you, boys,” he said.

  “We’re not boys,” said Barry. “We’re girls in drag.”

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Rex, “accosting two young ladies in a public house.”

  “I’ve been brought up respectable,” said Barry, “and I intend to stay that way. Now you are here, could you lend me a touch of powder for my nose, dearie?”

  Soapy said, “Very funny.” He didn’t sound amused. “That was a nice job someone pulled at Plowmans last night. I see in the papers he claims he lost twenty thousand quid’s worth of stuff. Mind you, I expect he’s laying it on a bit, for the insurers.”