Criminal Imports

by John Creasey

  He let himself in with a key, as usual, and called out, “I’m here, Annie,” also as usual. There was no answer, which was surprising. Annie had taken the kids somewhere and had left a note in the kitchen. He reached the open kitchen door, and Darkie Jackson said:

  “So you’re here.”

  Darkie had a touch of colour - not much, not enough to be noticeable unless one looked for it. He had a lean, swarthy face and a domed forehead, with very close dark curls. He was quite a slick dresser; he was also slick with a knife.

  Klein gasped, “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you.”

  “Where’s my wife?”

  “Taken the kids to the pictures.”

  “But she’s always in when I come home!”

  “I persuaded her to disappoint you tonight, daddy. I said I had some important business to discuss with you. Don’t look so sick - I gave the kids their ticket money.” Klein was still standing in the doorway. He was as angry as he was frightened, and he was very frightened indeed. He and Darkie were the same kind of build, the same height, the same age, but Darkie was hard and tough, and physically Klein was flabby and weak.

  His voice grew shrill.

  “You’ve no right to come to my home!”

  “No right, Jerry?”

  “No, you haven’t! I won’t allow it!”

  Darkie did not move out of the chair, but he moved his left hand from his pocket; in it was a flick knife, the blade hidden.

  “No right, Jerry?” he repeated softly.

  “You can’t scare me! Get out of my house.” Klein knew that he had to make a stand, that if he gave in now he would never be able to assert himself; he knew it in the same way that he always knew it was crazy to buy stolen goods, yet always did. “You heard me!”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing you right,” Darkie said. “I just want a little talk.”

  “We can talk at the shop.”

  “But the shop’s being watched.”

  “That’s a lie! That’s a damned lie!”

  “It’s the truth,” Darkie asserted. “Ever since that smash-and-grab yesterday the cops have been hanging around inside or outside. Why didn’t you telephone me about the raid?”

  “Why should I?”

  “You know how worried I get about your profit margin. Were you insured?”

  “Yes, I was. Do you think I’m a fool?”

  “I think you’re a very nervous type of individual, and pretty forgetful. It was a mistake not to call me, I had to discover what happened through a pal - a real pal, not a weak-livered rat like you.”

  Jerry gasped, “Don’t talk to me like that! Don’t–”

  Darkie leapt out of the chair. There was a sharp click as the blade stabbed out from the sheath, and Jerry backed away, a scream on his lips. The blade seemed to shimmer in front of his eyes as Darkie gripped his throat with his free hand, and squeezed the scream to gurgling silence. He kept Klein pinned against the wall for fully two minutes, while Klein struggled for breath but made no attempt to free himself. All his nerve had gone, as if slashed with that knife.

  Then Darkie let him go and he almost fell forward, clutching at his neck, gasping for breath. Darkie watched him sneeringly, suddenly pushed him into a chair. Klein collapsed into it.

  “Why didn’t you telephone me?”

  “I didn’t-I didn’t think you’d want to know.”

  “I want to know everything that happens if you have the cops in your shop. How many Rite-Times were stolen?”

  “Two– two,”

  “Only two?”

  “I swear it!”

  “If you lie to me, I’ll–”

  “I tell you I swear it!”

  “How many watches were stolen?”

  “Two, only two.”

  “The flicking dicks - why were they so long in the shop?”

  “How– how should I know?”

  “Did they check your stocks?”

  “Yes– yes, they did.”

  “They check the Rite-Times?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  “It would only have made them suspicious if I had.”

  “As if they weren’t suspicious,” Darkie said. He touched the side of the knife, and the blade snapped back; the click of sound made Klein flinch. “They ask where you got them?”

  “No!”

  “Didn’t they check stocks against invoices?”

  “I told them I’d lost a file of invoices a month ago.”

  “I hope you’re always as smart,” sneered Darkie.

  “I - I try to be. I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Jerry,” Darkie said, “did they see Orlova’s invoices?”

  “I swear they didn’t!”

  “Okay,” said Darkie. “Okay.” He stood over Klein, playing with the knife. Click - out. Click - in. Click - out. Click - in. The bright steel dazzled Klein, and the movement of the blade became so swift that it made him dizzy. Click-click-click-click-click-click. “They aren’t going to find out where those watches came from, are they?”

  “Not from me.”

  “Not from anybody.”

  “I– I’m the only one who knows.”

  That’s right,” said Darkie in a tone of surprise. “So if you’re the only one who knows you’re the only one who can tell them, aren’t you?”

  “I won’t tell them.”

  “Jerry,” Darkie said, “I want to tell you something. You listening?”

  “Of course I’m listening.”

  “You love your kids?”

  Klein almost screeched, “Yes!”

  “You love your Annie?”

  Klein began to gasp and fight for breath again, before he managed to ask, “What– what have they got to do with it?”

  “If the cops find out where you got the Rite-Times, you’ll know what they’ve got to do with it,” Darkie said. He held the knife upward, the blade glistening bright and cruel, and the needle-sharp point was only inches from Klein’s sweaty cheeks. “How’d Annie look with her face laid open, eh? How would the kids–”

  “No!” gasped Klein. He thrust his hands out and Darkie could not withdraw the knife in time. It sliced through the heel of Klein’s left thumb, but he hardly noticed the searing pain. “Don’t touch them, don’t touch them. If you ever touch them I’ll kill you, I swear I will. I’ll kill you!”

  Darkie actually drew back a pace, as if the intensity of the threat stabbed him with fear. Then he slapped Klein across the face with a force that sent the jeweller lurching against the wall. Blood dripped from his hand to the spotless, rubber-tiled floor and made big red blots against the pale green.

  “Don’t ever threaten me again,” Darkie said. “And don’t squeal about those watches. You know what will happen if you do.”

  He turned and stalked out, and the door slammed. Klein stood for a few minutes by the sink, blood dripping on to off-white porcelain and on to the pointed toe of his shoe. He kept catching his breath, almost sobbing. At last, slowly, fearfully, he held his hand under the coldwater tap, and the water turned to crimson. It ran up his sleeve, staining the starched white cuff of his shirt. It dripped to the floor. It ran along his fingers. He dried it with a tea towel which smelled faintly of coffee, then wrapped the towel round his hand and went unsteadily into the bathroom and across to the first-aid cabinet. He took out a patch of medicated adhesive plaster, pulled off the tea towel, and pressed the plaster on the clean cut.

  He kept moistening his lips.

  When he took a whisky and soda his hand throbbed so much it almost drove him out of his mind, but it was better when the family came home at last, the children excited over a wild West film.

  Annie Klein gasped, “What have you done to your hand?”

  “I cut myself,” Klein lied. “It’s not much - I just cut myself.”

  Annie stared into his bloodshot eyes. She was a tall woman, too thin, so flat-breasted and narrow-hipped
that some people were surprised that she was the mother of three big and boisterous children. Klein tried to outstare her, but could not, and he knew that she did not believe him. She made him pull the plaster off the cut, bathed it in antiseptic, put on a quick-healing salve, and made a better job of taping it. It was not until the children were in bed that she asked flatly: “Did that man who came here do that?”

  “What-what man?”

  “The man who was here when you came. The man who said he had important business with you.”

  “I– I didn’t see any man. What– what was he like?”

  “He was a redhead with a bruise on his chin. You saw him all right.”

  A redhead? A bruise?

  It hadn’t been Darkie; someone else had come to see Annie, not Darkie. They were really ganging up, they really meant business. Klein found it difficult to breathe again, but when he could speak he said with whispering vehemence:

  “Don’t ask any questions. Don’t ask anything. Understand me? You’re not to know a thing.”

  That was about the time when Nina Pallon stepped into the apartment in the Bingham Hotel, overlooking the beautiful green grass of Bingham Square. She hugged her mother, gave her stepfather a much more fervent kiss than usual, and said ecstatically:

  “I’m going to love London. It’s wonderful - it’s beautiful. Why didn’t anybody tell me what it was like before? It’s so huge - it seems like everywhere!”

  “Where did Abel Schumacher take you?” asked Henderson, obviously pleased with her reaction.

  “First of all we walked–”

  “Walked!” echoed Felisa Henderson.

  “Yes, it’s the only way to see London, absolutely the only way. And Abel knows it so well. He’s promised to take me to the East End tomorrow, and Kensington the next day, and . . .”

  “That was certainly the right thing to do,” Felisa Henderson said when Nina had gone to shower and change. “In a way it’s better than if she was going around with a gang of teenagers.”

  “It’s just right for a day or two, anyhow,” Elliott Henderson agreed.

  Alice Clay was alone in her flat for the first time since the assault. She locked the doors and shot the bolts, made sure that the windows were secure, and kept the television set on low, for fear of missing sounds. She had never been so nervous. She never wanted to see a man again.

  Florence Foster wasn’t at all afraid. She had never been of a nervous disposition, and although the enormity of London had overawed her for a few days, she was used to it now. She did not know how long she would stay, and it didn’t matter, because her time was her own. Six months ago the widowed aunt with whom she had lived since childhood had died, leaving her with a house, £3,000 worth of furniture, and nearly £25,000 in money and securities. She had been both housekeeper and secretary to her aunt, living in an obscure village in Wiltshire. Now she had let the house furnished to an army officer and his wife who needed it for a year, and in that year she meant to travel.

  But London intrigued her, and she might stay here for months.

  If she did, she would want a small flat, or even a bed sitting room with a kitchenette and her own bathroom and W.C.; she was too thrifty by nature to stay in a hotel for long. The cooking here was good, though, and a few days wouldn’t hurt.

  She refused to admit it to herself, but she was intrigued not only by London but by the handsome man sitting at a table opposite her. He was an Australian, or so she had heard him tell another guest. He had a rather full, dark moustache which made him seem old-fashioned, and his manners had an Old World courtesy too.

  He was a Mr. Frank Matthews, who had been here only a day.

  She went to the lounge for coffee, and Matthews came in a few minutes later, to see that nearly all of the red plush chairs were occupied.

  She gave a rather timid smile.

  He approached her.

  “Is it all right if I sit here?”

  “Of course,” she said, and hoped devoutly that her smile had not been to brazen.

  In the little house in Fulham, Barney Barnett was clapping his hands together and saying over and over again:

  “So Quincy’s back, who’d ever believe it! Old Quincy here, large as life. Bless his old cotton socks, won’t it be good to see him?”

  “You be careful with Quincy Lee,” cautioned Maggie. “The police might know more about him than you do.”

  It was a funny thing, but since the decision to send her to the coast again Cynthia had looked brighter and had coughed much less. Michael Dunn told himself that everything had been justified. Kismet Cosmetics would never miss a few hundred pounds; it was their own fault to allow such flaws in their accounting system.

  He did not really convince himself but he stilled the voice of conscience for the time being.

  Out for a stroll with Cynthia that evening he passed another couple, strangers, getting out of a car in a house which he knew was owned by Kismet. It was rented to new members of the staff, often those from the American parent factory, until they found a permanent home. Dunn had no idea that these were John and Jill Pommeroy, and that Pommeroy had come to make a secret time-study and investigation into the manufacturing and accounting systems at the factory, where profits were far too low.

  Maria Lucci and Giovanni Mancelli were sitting in the back of a car being driven toward London Airport. All the arrangements had been made for Lucci’s body to be sent home, and now Marie was anxious to rejoin her children. Giovanni glanced at her set face from time to time, and when they were stopped at traffic lights on the Great West Road, he said: “What are you thinking, Maria?”

  “I am thinking that those people lied about my Benito,” she answered. “And I am thinking that if you are a man you will stay in England and find the proof.”

  “If only I could!”

  “You must try,” Maria declared fiercely. “You must talk again to this man White. I do not trust him - do you trust him?”

  “No,” answered Giovanni. “No, Maria, but I will be honest with you. I am frightened of him.”

  7: Reports

  OnWednesday morning the face of London had changed. A drizzle of rain concealed the skylines and dulled the river, smeared windows and coated roofs and walls, made pavements slippery and slowed traffic down. It was 72 degrees Fahrenheit and muggy, as unpleasant as a summer day could be. Gideon and most Londoners accepted this without conscious thought, not even with resignation. The visitors, especially those who had arrived in yesterday’s golden sunshine, were very disappointed, for it hardly seemed the same city. Street noises were muted, umbrellas were dotted about like sinister black mushrooms.

  Gideon’s desk was as dull as the day, yet piled with reports, some long, some short, some typewritten, some pencilled. He looked through them before his daily briefing with the superintendents, to make sure he was abreast of all the latest developments. If he didn’t, if “Gee-Gee’s losing his grip” or “Gee-Gee’s slipping” began to go round the Yard, a little of his authority would be lost and might be impossible to win back. The others, senior men or beginners, could disagree with him, argue with him, feel angry with him, even resentful and even vengeful; none of that mattered much. It was vital to know exactly what was going on. It had taken years to develop a system and to discipline his own mind to this need; now it was automatic, even though it sometimes took a great deal of effort to switch on. He read those reports dealing with pending matters first.

  Report from L2 Division: two Rite-Time watches seen in window at Allen’s, High Street.

  Report from CD Division: Barnett spent most of the day at home, went to cinema in afternoon, alone.

  Report from Supt. Parsons: Signora Lucci flew back to Milan. Giovanni Mancelli stayed in London to look after interests of Signora Lucci. Body to be flown to Milan May 12 subject our approval.

  Report from Chief Inspector Luther: Jerry Klein, jeweller where 39 Rite-Time watches found, injured left hand. Cause of injury unknown. Appears very nervous.
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  Report from Leadenhall Street: Office of Thos. Cook & Son Ltd. report that twenty-seven West German marks changed for a German student yesterday appear to be forgeries.

  Gideon made a note on this one: Today - job for Oliver.”

  Report from Central: Abel Schumacher still at Bingham Hotel. Also Nina Pallon.

  There were the new cases, dozens of them, but none of any known importance, certainty none of any size.

  There was a sharp ring from the switchboard.

  “Yes?” Gideon was studying the case of the suspect marks.

  “There’s a cable for you from New York, sir, reported by telephone.”

  “Read it to me.”

  “It begins: ‘Snider booked today fingerprints make him a certainty. Thanks.’ The signature is Nielsen.”

  “Good!” Gideon was gratified. “Have them send the confirmation to me, will you?”

  He rang off on the girl: “Very good, sir.”

  Her voice was comparatively new at the Yard but she did her job with minimum fuss and, as far as he could judge, maximum efficiency. The report from New York was a good start for the day and his mood was bright when Lemaitre arrived, wearing a trilby with a plastic rainproof cover, and carrying a dripping mackintosh. Lemaitre’s smile was more than bright, it was merry.