by John Creasey
It was also anyone’s guess whether the Prowler would be out tonight. The fact that he’d been out seven times this autumn had been one of the reasons why Gideon had decided to come on nights for a week. He didn’t expect to catch the Prowler on his first night, but he might see something which had been missed, or, when he got the early reports, might be able to suggest new moves against him.
A second reason for coming on nights was based on reports from the East End of increasing rivalry between the gangs of youths. Such rivalry could become ugly and create a serious situation, and Gideon wanted to keep his finger on its pulse.
In London itself the gangs operated only by night.
Now there was Mrs. Penn and her missing husband and her fears. There ‘were dozens of Mrs. Penns and dozens of missing husbands, and only once now and again was it a police matter; usually it was just a case of a man, who, like Lemaitre, couldn’t stand living at home any more. Or else the man was a callous beggar, who had no more interest in his wife.
There was the mother of the missing child.
There were dozens of other cases, some already reported and some still to come. Perhaps all of them would be quickly solved, or else would peter out; and perhaps one of them would become a sensation, perhaps a murder was lurking, perhaps that child was already dead.
The police would be on the lookout everywhere now.
It was a quarter past seven. The sergeant would soon be back, and Appleby, who was to work with Gideon for the night, ought to be here at any moment. Appleby was used to night work, an elderly, thoroughgoing man without much imagination but with a profound knowledge of his job and of the underworld. The C.I.D. .would come to a standstill without its Applebys but -
Gideon scowled, for the telephone rang.
As he stretched out for the receiver, he had an odd feeling, almost a premonition of bad news, and he did not reckon to allow himself the luxury of such things. Perhaps it was because it was night, and there was the smoky fog outside, silence on the road and on the river, and silence in the passages, too.
“Gideon.”
“Inspector Wragg of GH Division would like a word with you, sir.”
“Put him through,” said Gideon, and relaxed and grinned. Wragg was the man who had won promotion because of his interest in Greek gods and Roman relics. What a lot of bull one said to one’s children sometimes! Had he sounded unbearably pompous? He’d meant to talk as man to man, but looking back felt that he’d lain the moralizing on with a trowel. Still, facts were facts, and Wragg -
“That you, Gee-Gee?” Wragg had a crisp voice.
“Yes.”
“Thought I’d get straight on to you about this,” said Wragg. “Had a teletype about the kidnapped baby ten minutes ago, and then only a few minutes after a kid was taken away from a car on my Division. Four month-old boy. The mother’s frantic.”
As he listened, Gideon had the premonition again; this was going to be a night he wouldn’t forget in a hurry.
3 The Baby Snatcher
The child lay in its cot, sleeping.
The room was warm. A faint glow of light came from beneath the door, and the sound of voices, which seemed a long way off, was just audible. Above it, soft and even, was the child’s breathing.
Here was peace, with no knowledge of evil.
Sounds from the street came into the room from time to time: the beat of a car engine, the rattling of an old bicycle, three times in quick succession the staccato beat of a motorcycle engine, which developed into a roar outside the window and then died away. Men and women walked, all briskly, in the cold night.
Then there came a sharper sound nearby, quick footsteps close to the window, followed by a clear ringing sound inside the house. Almost at once the distant voices stopped, a door opened, there were more footsteps, and these passed the door where the baby lay sleeping.
The front door opened.
“Oh, hello, Lucy!” a woman exclaimed, with obvious pleasure. “Come in a minute, dear.”
“No, May, I’m not coming in,” said the woman named Lucy. “Jim and I wondered if you and Fred would like to pop in for an hour. There’s ever such a good programme on the television. First there’s Dobson and Young, you know …”
“Well, come in a minute, it’s too cold to stand here,” said May. “I’ll ask Fred, and I expect he’ll jump at it. Between you and me, dear, I don’t think it will be long before we get the tele’ ourselves. He’s always moaning about not having it when everybody else has, but what with two children at grammar school and now Baby, it does seem an awful lot of money.” The front door closed. “How would you like to have a look at Baby while I go and ask Fred?”
“Love to.”
“He’s a pet,” said May in a softer voice, and there was a faint sound as the handle of the door turned. “That’s what he is, an absolute pet. I put him down at half past six and as sure as I’m here he won’t stir again until seven o’clock tomorrow morning. What about that for four months old?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” said Lucy.
The door opened, and light fell into the room but not directly onto the child, for the cot was behind the door so that bright light from the passage could not fall upon its eyes. They crept in, whispering, one woman short and with a mop of frizzy hair which showed up like twisted wire against the light, the other of medium height, plump with untidy dark hair. They stood at the head of the cot, just able to make out the dark head and the face, until the child’s mother stretched out a hand and adjusted the blue woollen shawl a little, feeling the warm patch where the child’s breathing fell.
“Bless him,” she said in a voice what was almost choky with emotion. Then she turned and hurried out along the passage toward the kitchen and her husband. There were voices from the kitchen, and then, clearly, May’s voice:
“Oh, he’ll be all right; he never does wake up. What’s the matter with you tonight? We’ve done it before, haven’t we?”
A gruff voice followed: “Oh, all right, if you really want to.”
“If you’d rather stay here on your own with your nose stuck in a book, that’s all right with me,” said May, as if crossly. “I’ll be just as welcome in my own.”
“I said I’d come, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t sound as if you appreciated the kindness very much.”
There was a pause; then a half-laughing “Oh, you,” and May came hurrying, to have another look at her baby, and to draw Lucy into the passage.
“Fred’s coming, dear. He always puts up this act. It’s pride really; he doesn’t like to think that if we want to see anything on the tele’, we have to come next door for it. Read him like a book, I can. I’m just going to pop up to the bedroom and tidy my hair …”
“Oh, don’t worry about your hair!”
“I couldn’t let Jim see me in this mess; he’d start feeling sorry for Fred,” said May, the dark-haired, younger woman. She turned and hurried up the stairs, calling back, “You can wait, dear. No, you go back to Jim, and Fred and I’ll be along in a couple of jiffs.”
“I’ll wait,” decided Lucy.
Fred came along, a stocky, grey-haired man with a smell of strong tobacco about him, and looking at the baby, smiling a gentle smile, and then they waited in the passage a little awkwardly until May came hurrying. Her hair didn’t look much tidier, but she had dabbed on powder and lipstick, and was licking the tip of her forefinger and running it along the length of her eyebrows.
“Come on,” she said. “All ready.”
As she went out, she glanced round the front-room door. As Fred pulled the door behind him, he also glanced round. Then the door closed with a snap, there was a clatter of footsteps as they went out of one entry into another, voices, the opening and closing of the door.
All was quiet inside the house. For some minutes, all was quiet in the street. Then, from across the street, someone came walking.
It looked like a man of medium height, dressed in a big raincoat, a
trilby hat and rubber-soled boots or shoes, and making little sound while walking; at most a soft, sliding sound. No one was in sight. It was a street with two rows of about fifty small, terraced houses on either side, each of two stories, and there were three lamps on either side. The lamp nearest the child’s house was clearly visible, but the others were almost obscured by fog, which was much thicker now. A car passed the end of the street and its lights showed vaguely, but clear enough to show the smooth skin of a woman’s face; this was not a man. The car disappeared as the shrouded woman reached the doorway of the child’s house.
She bent down by the letter box, put her fingers inside and then groped gently, touched a piece of string, and pulled. There was a slight metallic sound as a key came out, tied to a string. She inserted the key quickly, pushed the door open and stepped inside, then closed the door without looking round.
She began to breathe hard, hissingly.
She leaned against the door for a moment, then straightened up as if with an effort, and walked toward the door of the front room, the passage leading to the kitchen, and the narrow staircase. She hesitated outside the door, and then went up the stairs, quickly but with hardly a sound. There was enough light from the narrow hall to show the four doors leading off a small landing. She pushed each door open in turn, and shone a torch inside and the light fell upon beds, walls, furniture, a bathroom, hand basin, a mirror which flashed the brightness back; but this was not what the woman was seeking. She turned away and went downstairs, and hesitated again at the foot of the stairs, then turned toward the kitchen. Obviously there was nothing there, or in the tiny scullery, that she wanted. Two rooms remained: the front room and a smaller one next to it.
She opened the front-room door.
After a moment, she saw the cot and the child.
Her breathing became very heavy as she slipped the torch into her pocket, where it fitted snugly; and went close to the cot. Obviously she knew exactly what she wanted to do, and did not waste a moment. She pushed the bedclothes back, so that the baby lay wrapped in a blue blanket which enveloped all but his head, and lifted the bundle. She held it against her shoulder, one hand in the middle of its back as if she was quite familiar with it, and then pulled the shawl off at the top of the cot and wrapped it round the baby. This took only a few seconds, and soon the woman was stepping out of the room and into the passage, closing the door with her free hand. She took four strides to the front door, opened it and peered out.
A man and a woman, or boy and girl, passed on the other side of the street, and a motorcycle roared by.
The woman with the baby stepped into the foggy night and closed the door behind her with a snap. The house next door was in darkness, for the television was in a back room, out of sight and hearing of the street.
The child’s eyes fluttered, but it did not wake.
The woman lowered it now, so that it was cradled in her arms, but didn’t carry it with any outward pretension affection; in fact she walked quickly, pumping the child up and down a little. Although the shawl was wrapped about the head, the little pink face was completely uncovered, and fog swirled about the mouth and nose.
Suddenly the baby coughed.
In the distance, there were the noises of the city.
“Well, thanks ever so, Lucy, and you, Jim,” said May Harris. “It’s been ever so nice, hasn’t it, Fred? I enjoyed it very much.”
“Best show I’ve seen for a long time,” agreed Fred Harris, who looked as if he meant it.
He was red-faced with the warmth of the little room, where the television screen still showed its picture, but the sound had been turned down so that there was only a ghost voice which might have been a million miles away. May Harris was as flushed as her husband, her eyes were bright, her face was shiny as if she had not put a powder puff near it that evening, and her hair was a dark untidy mop. But there was merriment in her blue eyes, and much more character in her face than in Lucy Fraser’s. Jim Fraser was an elderly man, nearly bald, with sharp features and a lot of deep lines at the eyes and mouth; he and his Lucy were fifteen years older than the Harrises.
“Glad you could come,” Fraser said. “Sure you won’t stay and have a cuppa?”
“Oh, I couldn’t leave my baby any longer,” said May Harris. “It isn’t that I think he’d come to any harm, but you do hear of such things don’t you? Fred, if you’d like to stay for a cup of char, I’ll go and finish off that bit of ironing.”
“Never outstay your welcome, that’s what I always thought,” said Harris. “They don’t want us cluttering up the house.”
He laughed, Fraser protested, May argued, Lucy went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. May was still protesting that they shouldn’t stay when the tea was brought in, a large brown pot and white cups and saucers crowded on a small, wooden tray.
“Well, now it is made we may as well stay and have a cup,” Harris conceded. “Like me to pop in and have a look at the brat, May?”
“Don’t you call my child a brat!”
There was another general laugh as Harris went to the door. The house was identical with his own, and he could have found his way blindfolded. Once in the passage, he took out his pipe and lit it, as if he couldn’t do without it for another moment. Then he went out, leaving the front door on the latch. The fog was much worse than when he had come here, and even the nearest street lamp was only a patch of misty light. The footsteps of people not far away seemed a long way off. In spite of the weather, he stood on the doorstep drawing at his pipe and adding smoke to the fog; then he strolled to his own house, let himself in with his own key, and noticed nothing at all unusual. The key on the string banged gently against the door. He didn’t go into the front room at first but along to the kitchen, where he put some coal on the fire which heated the hot-water boiler behind the fireplace.
Then he went to the front room.
He opened the door softly, crept in, saw the foot of the cot, let his gaze shift quickly toward the pillow - and caught his breath. For a moment, he did not seem to be breathing at all. Then:
“God!” he gasped.
He spun round and switched on the light, not knowing what he expected to find. There were the bedclothes, turned down as if his wife had lifted the baby out, but - nothing else.
He made a strangled sound.
He pushed the cot away from the wall, as if he feared that by some miracle the child in swaddling clothes had been able to climb out of the cot and had landed on the floor close to the wall. There was just a blank space. For a moment he stood as if he had lost the power to move, but suddenly he turned round, reached the passage and called in a loud voice:
“Jackie! Millicent! “
There was no answer.
He hesitated, his hands clenching, turning his head this way and that - and then, as if driven by some compulsion which he could not resist, dashed up the stairs. He made the walls shake and the staircase quiver in his fear as he called again:
“Jackie! Millicent!”
There was still no answer.
All the rooms were empty - his and May’s, the tiny room where the child slept during the night, the room with two beds, which Jacqueline and Millicent shared. His daughters were out, he didn’t expect them back until half past ten; there was a nearby school-and youth club they went to every Tuesday.
He stood on the little landing, a stocky man with greying hair, a big face, his clenched fists raised at chest height, an expression of bewilderment touched with horror on his face and in his honest grey eyes. He licked his lips.
“I can’t …” he began.
Then he gulped, and started down the stairs, and as he went he said in a hoarse whispering voice:
“May, what’ll May say?
“It can’t have happened, I must be …”
He broke off.
He went into the front room again, where the light was so bright and the cot was empty, and he knew that it was coldly, cruelly true. He stared at the door, lips set
tightly and pipe forgotten. He heard sounds, without knowing what they were. The dazed, horrified expression was still in his eyes as at last he moved toward the door.
“May,” he said chokily. “Oh, God.”
Then the front door was pushed open, and his wife appeared, still flushed and obviously anxious and alarmed. Fred stopped, quite still. He did not need to speak, for his face told her of reasons for great dread. Her expression, already anxious, changed to one of sudden alarm, but not yet with fear or horror. She moved quickly toward him gripping his right hand tightly.
“Fred, what is it? I heard you shouting. What …”
He tried to speak, but could not.
“Why don’t you say something instead of just standing there?” cried May. “Why …”
Then - and it was only a few seconds after she had entered the passage - the significance of the open front-room door and the bright light inside seemed to strike her. All colour drained from her cheeks. She pushed her husband to one side and ran into the room. She stared at the cot, her hands raised, her mouth wide open, and the light from the ceiling shone upon her eyes and seemed to put stark terror into them.
She jerked her head round to look at her husband. She could not speak. There was a moment of awful silence, and then tall Jim Fraser spoke from the porch.
“Everything all right there?”
“Fred,” May said, in a queer little voice, “it can’t have happened. It can’t, it - oh my baby. Where’s my baby? Why did you shout - Jackie! Millie!” She swung round suddenly toward her husband, saying as if to herself. “They’re home early, they’ve taken …”