by John Creasey
“She isn’t this morning, as a matter of fact,” said Gwen, “she’s gone to get her hair done.”
“She’s done what?”
“She’s gone to get her hair done, it was ever so greasy, and I’m quite all right—”
Stone said harshly: “I don’t want either of you to be alone in this shop again—ever. If I’m not here, get a neighbour, or hire someone else, but don’t stay here alone. Understand that?”
“I—I’m perfectly all right, Mr. Stone,” Gwen protested.
He stared at her, and he thought: “That’s what Mabel believed.” He was always thinking about Mabel, blaming himself for ever leaving her alone, and hating himself for what he had allowed to happen to her and to the unborn child. There were so many things he wished he had done during their marriage, the many things she would have liked, the places she would have visited; but he had always been so careful, so anxious to save. Now he had plenty of money, all the money he could want, and no one to share it with, and the feeling that in a way he had robbed Mabel.
It hurt to think of her.
It had been like a savage torture in the early days, when he had talked to West, fighting for self control, somehow making it appear as if he were taking the loss well, actually aflame with anger and hatred. Then West had said something which had stung him into saying that he would hunt the murderer down, and that had eased his tension and his agony. Nothing else did. He could not talk to his mother, to Gwen, or to anyone; but he could make promises to Mabel almost as if she were alive.
“I’ll make them pay for it, Mab.”
“Don’t worry, pet, I’ll kill them for killing you.”
“I’ll kill the devils, Mab.”
After the discovery of the murderer’s body, he had been stunned, and for a few hours the hurt of Mabel’s loss had been greater than ever, but then his thoughts had carried him to a different mood; a newspaper, he did not remember which one, had first suggested that Endicott had been murdered to stop him from talking, and implied that there was a gang involved —a gang of men organised to go round to rob shopkeepers, to attack and to murder defenceless women.
And the police did nothing.
Stone felt no personal animosity towards West; in fact he rather liked West. But he also sensed that there was nothing that the Yard man could do to help him. As he had told West, he had spent days at the local library looking up back copies of newspapers, and had been amazed and appalled by the number of attacks on shopkeepers which were reported and the few which seemed to be solved by the police. The determination to search for the murderer of Endicott, and so for the real murderer of Mabel, had come slowly, yet once he had accepted the need, it seemed a normal, natural objective. It did not matter what it cost, he must find the man who had killed Endicott. He could spend everything he had, all Mabel’s money, on seeking vengeance.
He had seen his mother only once since the funeral, and had a bitter quarrel because she had obviously seen Mabel’s death as a good thing for him; she had never liked Mabel, and never understood his love for her.
The newspapers helped in his task, chiefly the Globe, the paper which had employed the clever artist. The Globe had told the story of Endicott’s death “through the eyes of his lonely widow” and he had read that closely and then read everything he could find about this woman, Ruth Endicott. By far the biggest and most informative article had been in a popular weekly magazine, the Home Talk. That had concentrated on her face, and she was quite nice looking, and on her figure; it had shown pictures of her in bathing suits, bikinis, almost in nothing at all. The captions had meant little, but reading between the lines Stone had come to one conclusion.
Endicott’s widow must know who had employed her husband, and therefore who had killed him.
So Stone had set out to get to know Ruth Endicott, so that he could learn everything she could tell him. He knew exactly what he had to do, and he also understood the dangers. If those employers knew that he was interested in her, then they were quite ruthless enough to kill her as they had her husband; or to kill him. It had to be something very clever, something which no one would suspect; he had to make the woman’s acquaintance soon, but quite naturally.
Then he thought: “I wonder where she shops?”
One of his tasks had been to go to the neighbourhood where she lived—that sordid, squalid part of the East End—without being recognised, for his photograph had been in all the newspapers. The answer to that had come simply and, like the answer to everything else, quite logically. He must disguise himself. The simple way was to wear a beard. No one was committing a crime by doing that. He could get one from a theatrical make-up place, what did they call them?—theatrical costumiers. He could have one fitted, could find out how it was done, could pretend that he was going to take part in some amateur theatricals. They wouldn’t care what he was going to do with the beard, all they would want was the sale.
It had cost ten guineas. When he fitted it on, it altered his appearance completely, and there was no risk of anyone recognising him unless they knew him well. With it, he could go where he liked in the Whitechapel district, and the first time he went there—without saying a word to anyone—he concentrated on finding out where Ruth Endicott shopped, especially where she bought her groceries and oddment shopping.
It did not take him long to find out that she patronised two places.
Once he knew that, the next step was quite logical and quite natural; he had to buy one of the shops.
XII
NEW OWNER
THE shop near the Whitechapel Road was the larger, much better stocked, a much better business proposition, but it would need a lot of capital, and at least five assistants. In any case, the Cockell shop group was interested, and it was ideal for conversion to a supermarket. The other shop, nearer Brasher’s Row, was much more the kind of business which Stone hoped to get; he would be able to buy it, stock and goodwill together, for no more than three thousand pounds, and the elderly man and woman who kept it would probably think themselves lucky to get as much. One of the daughters of the old couple came over to the shop once or twice a week, to let her parents go out for a few hours; otherwise, they were tied to the place day in and day out.
Having discovered the shop, Stone was desperately eager to get possession, but with a systematic and logical approach which had always characterised him, he knew that he must go about it carefully, so that no one could have the slightest idea of what he was doing. That was why he just disappeared from time to time; if Mrs. Klein or Gwen had known where he was going it would be dangerous, for the police would find out; if he lied to them, the lie might be discovered; if he went off without a word and came back when he wanted to, they would come to accept this, and they would not have him questioned.
On the first of his disappearances, he had discovered the addresses of the two shops and also discovered a business Transfer Agency in Aldgate which specialised in the sale of small shops. Wearing his beard, he went there and said that he was looking for premises in a certain area, within the two to four thousand pounds price range, inclusive of goodwill; he “explained” that he had spent his childhood in the district, and had always wanted to come back. Myerson, the youthful-looking Jew who talked to him, was completely uninterested in his reasons; the Jew was bright, alert, rather quick-speaking, a man who knew practically every shop in the East End of London, and who realised quite well that from time to time the police watched him because he was suspected of dealing in stolen goods. He was completely free from serious suspicion, completely innocent of crime, and in fact a contented and honest man who acted as unofficial moneylender in the district at reasonable rates of interest.
Myerson had an application form filled in on which the would-be buyer gave his name as Simpson, Joseph Simpson; and he promised not only to arrange a view of all shops now on sale, but to find out if others would be suitable. When Joseph Simpson said that he was moving about a lot, and would come and see him occasionally, while
letters could be addressed at a collecting office in Battersea, the Jew asked no questions. This client had the finance, he knew what he wanted; it was no business of his, Myerson’s, where he had obtained the money.
None of the shops which Simpson saw on his first trip with Myerson was what he wanted, but on the second visit, Myerson greeted him effusively.
“I have just the business you want, Mr. Simpson, the very one! An old couple own it, they are not very hard-working people, they have very little capital, so it has gone down, down, down. And it is not the right position for a supermarket. Mind you, it can become a very good business, very good indeed. Personal service, that is what it needs, personal service. And this old couple, they have a country cottage, ready and waiting for them, a customer for the shop could not find the money, after all, and they have the cottage ready. So they will sell to you for—” Myerson’s deepset eyes were very thoughtful, as if he were trying to calculate the highest figure that Simpson would go to. “For fifteen hundred pounds, yes, and also the property itself for fifteen hundred pounds more. You have everything—freehold property, business, stock, goodwill, all for three thousand pounds. Isn’t that what you want?”
“It might be,” Simpson said. “Where is it?”
“Mr. Simpson, my car is outside, this very minute we can go and show you these premises, and although I warn you they need decoration, they need some repair, there is no better business position in all of the East End of London. Come, please!” Myerson slapped on a Homburg hat that was a little too large for him; it pressed his large ears down. Then he led the way, flatfooted, out to a Hillman Minx, weaved through Aldgate’s thick traffic, and brought his client to the shop where Mrs. Endicott did much of her shopping.
Stone, alias Simpson, hummed and hawed and finally offered two thousand five hundred pounds; they split the difference.
“When can I take over?” he demanded.
“In a week’s time, Mr. Simpson, or two weeks—just as soon as you wish it.”
“Let’s make it in a week’s time,” said Simpson-Stone.
His first job was to give an order to a local painter and decorator to paint the front of the shop, and a signwriter to write: Jos. Simpson. He was tempted to have the paint white on red, but did not in case someone else realised how much like the shop in Kemp Road it was. He moved in at the weekend, and spent all of Sunday turning out the stock rooms at the back, getting some land of order out of the chaos, studying the figures, especially the mass of bad debts. He hoped to find that Mrs. Endicott was one who owed money, but her account was always paid up weekly; however, she always came in several times a week.
One of the peculiar facts about the disappearance of Jim Stone from Clapham was that he did not realise that he was being watched by the “woman reporter” from some weekly gossip paper. She had asked him for an interview, he had refused flatly, and the second time, he had been rude to her. He had noticed her about several times since then, but gave her very little thought. He was in fact looking out for a plainclothes detective, who he knew was keeping an eye open for him. When the man failed to appear for three days in a row, Stone hoped that the police had given up, but was still very careful. He had planned his actions thoroughly, and knew exactly what he meant to do.
He woke up on the Saturday morning, one of the busy mornings, said that he was going to get the van out, went to the yard—and simply disappeared.
Detective Sergeant Bella Dawson had a room in a house nearly opposite this yard, and she was up and dressed, half expecting him to go out in the van. She went downstairs to get her motor-scooter out of the backyard. When she reached the street she heard the grocery van’s engine warming up. She was over-tired and a little careless, because on the previous occasions when Stone had disappeared, he had not taken the van. He drove out of the alleyway which led to the shop’s backyard, as she reached the corner of Kemp Road and Middleton Street. He went on towards the High Street and the Common, and she followed. So did another motor-scooter, a moped and a small car; there was nothing at all unusual in such a stream of traffic.
A combination of traffic lights, a greedy motorist who cut her off, and astuteness on the part of Stone, gave Bella Dawson her unhappiest morning for a long time. She saw the van pull round a corner near a biscuit wholesalers, felt quite satisfied that Stone was getting supplies, followed leisurely and parked some way along the street where the van was parked, and waited for him to show up again.
He didn’t appear.
“I know what he did, Mr. West—he just walked away from the van and left it parked. I checked as closely as I could, but I can’t be even sure which way he went. I’m desperately sorry.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Roger. “He’ll probably be back in a few days and you can have another go.”
He dismissed Bella Dawson, resisted the temptation to tell himself that in the same circumstances a male officer wouldn’t have been fooled, and drafted a general call for news of Stone, making it clear that this was for police stations only; he simply wanted information.
Roger was disgruntled and still uneasy; the whole case seemed to be dogged by this kind of “bad luck”. And when a week passed, and there was still no sign of Stone, no message, no news of any kind, he began to think that they had lost the man for good.
He wondered whether Cyril Owen was going to box up his side of the job, like Bella Dawson.
Once he had accepted the commission to work on the Shop Robberies case, Detective Constable Cyril Owen settled down to work out the details and to decide exactly how he was to to go about the job. He did not know it, but he had a lot in common with Stone, particularly the logical mind and the ability to take a situation calmly. His one lapse with West had taught him the folly of speaking on impulse, and he was determined not to make that kind of mistake again.
His first task had been to find a reasonable explanation of why he should move to the Brasher’s Row area, and he hit on a similar idea to Stone’s, although there were some important differences. The one thing Owen knew plenty about was bicycles. The internal combustion engine didn’t greatly interest him, and he regarded mo-peds, or power-assisted cycles, as the refuge of the effete; but he could take a bicycle to pieces lovingly, and reassemble it so that it was as good as new.
In the Whitechapel Road was a big cycle shop, which dealt in second-hand machines. At one time this had been owned by a man who had sold more stolen bicycles than anyone else in London, but it was now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Walsh, a young couple who were as honest as Myerson, and who had only one trouble; lack of staff. They both worked late into the evening and at most week-ends, and the only help they got was from unreliables.
Regularly the Walsh’s advertised for a cycle mechanic, and when they had a call from a youthful man wearing a windcheater and green plus-fours, a little freakish in this day and age, they were puzzled. Certainly he wasn’t like any of the other applicants. He gave his name as Orde, Cyril Orde, and said simply that he loved “messing about with bikes”. He had never been an official mechanic before, but if they would care to give him a week’s trial, say, they would have some idea whether he was any good. He was fed up with his present job, and provided he earned enough to live on, that was all he wanted. And—could they recommend a place where he could rent a room? He didn’t mind getting his own food.
The room the Walsh’s recommended was not in Brasher’s Row, but in a street leading to it. On his way to his room, Owen had to pass a corner grocery shop, which was being repainted during his first week-end in the district. Owen gave it no thought, except to note that it was the kind of shop which had been raided so often. There seemed little risk of a shop in this neighbourhood being on the danger list, dog didn’t eat dog. Owen actually passed the bearded owner of the shop, presumably the Jos. Simpson of the fascia board, but did not suspect his real identity.
Owen’s next job was to find a way of getting to know Ruth Endicott, and it wasn’t difficult to lead up to the subject of Ruth at t
he shop, where lanky, prematurely bald Walsh immediately swallowed the bait.
“Yes, that chap Endicott lived near here, in Brasher’s Row as a matter of fact. He was a proper swine, used to beat his wife black and blue, no one could ever understand why she put up with it. Nice girl, Ruth is. My wife used to go to school with her. You never know when she might pop in, she bought a machine from us a few months ago, comes in to have it oiled and cleaned. She never did like getting her hands dirty.”
“If she didn’t like work, perhaps that’s what her husband didn’t like,” remarked Owen, lightly—and realised at once that the flippancy did not go down too well. It had been flippancy which had annoyed Superintendent West, he would have to check all such impulses. As the situation was, he had worked into the right position nicely, and if he played his cards well he ought to be taking Ruth Endicott out within a week or two. He had underrated himself to West, thinking modesty wise; the truth was, most girls found it easy to like Cyril Owen.
During the period that Stone and Owen were angling for position, and the week in which they got settled and were poised to start work on the widow, who had not the slightest idea of their interest, Roger West put the finishing touches to the campaign against the Shop Robberies.
Each Division had now supplied the details required. The maps in the Map Room were smothered with the red-headed pins with white and black dots to distinguish between shops which had been robbed, and shops which might be. Moreover, all the police forces in the country, as well as the Divisions, had made arrangements to report shop robberies to Roger by teletype. On the wall of his own office he had a sketch map of England and Wales, with a supply of the Map Room’s pins. He had a Chief Inspector, two detective sergeants and three detective officers working on the job, sifting all reports, and sending through any which they thought wanted his personal attention.
Any similarities in the way shops were raided, all similarities in the kinds of goods stolen, and everything the local police discovered, were carefully noted. In the London Divisions, Roger had managed to arrange a system by which every shop which might be raided was passed by a policeman on duty at least once an hour. It meant that other places were watched very sketchily, and had obvious dangers, but he persuaded his superiors to take that chance. One thing became apparent; only the “little man’s” shop was raided. No supermarkets were affected, even when one was within a few hundred yards of a neighbourhood shop.