by John Creasey
“I’ve looked …” Fred began, and choked. “Looked - everywhere.”
May didn’t speak.
Jim Fraser appeared in the doorway, sparse and thin and old looking and puzzled.
“Everything is all right, isn’t it?” he began, and then saw them and realized that horror was here. Quite suddenly he became a different man from the elderly, easygoing neighbour who was always ready to lend a hand. His voice became firmer and touched with authority as he moved forward, going on: “Here, what’s up? What are you looking like that for, May?” He glanced toward the cot and immediately understood, and his voice became even more authoritative.” Say you’ve looked everywhere, Fred?”
“Y-yes. Y-yes, I …”
“My baby,” said May Harris, in that queer little hurt voice. “Who’s taken my baby?”
“Fred, nip next door and tell Lucy that she’s wanted here,” said Fraser. “Tell her to make it snappy. Then go along to the phone box at the corner of Grettley Street, and dial nine-nine-nine. I’ll look after May while you’re gone, don’t worry. Looks as if someone just picked the baby up, doesn’t it. No sign that anyone did it any harm, is there? Lot of funny things happen, and babies usually turn up. Come on, Fred, get a move on.”
Thus he averted panic, then.
Appleby had arrived at Gideon’s office, a clean-shaven man with grey hair which he kept short, a fresh complexion, rather bright, beady, glittering grey eyes, a thin-cheeked man with a long nose, a big mouth and, by reputation, a sense of humour; the kind of humour that put tacks on chairs. He was a Cockney who spoke with a nasal twang he had never quite overcome, and he was reputed to know more thieves’ slang and Cockney rhyming slang than anyone else in the Force. He had come, in almost flustered, not realizing that Gideon would be in his own office, and expecting him at the office of the Chief Superintendent usually on duty at night. Now he had settled down at Lemaitre’s desk, with dozens of papers spread out in front of him, looking much more like a busy bookmaker than a C.I.D. man.
“Sorry, old pal, I must be slipping.”
“My fault, Charley,” Gideon said. “I forgot to send a message saying I’d be here - couldn’t come to your office, as far as that goes, but now you’re here we’ll call it a day. Or a night.” He grinned as he sat back in his big chair and looked across at Appleby. “I haven’t heard you say it yet.”
Appleby looked puzzled.
“Say what?”
“Who it’s a good night for.”
Appleby gave a quick smile.
“Oh, the Prowler. Got the Prowler on the brain, some of these people, but I admit I’ll have more peaceful nights when the swine’s inside. Real trouble with the Prowler isn’t the harm he does by scaring the wits out of these kids. Oh, it’s bad enough, but - you want to know something?”
“Always ready to listen.”
“One night last week. we had twenty-seven blasted calls through nine-nine-nine to say that the Prowler had been seen,” Appleby said, “and we had to make twenty-seven bloody investigations on a night when it took every patrol car and Squad car we had twice as long as usual to get around in the fog. The Prowler does a hell of a lot more damage stopping us from getting on with other jobs than he does to these girls.”
“You might sing a different tune if you had daughters of your own, Charley.”
“Coupla sons have been quite enough for me and the old china to handle,” Appleby said without arguing. “Funny business, these babies, isn’t it? Two snatched.”
“You know how things often run in pairs,” Gideon remarked, more to get Appleby’s reaction than anything else. Being close to his pension often seemed to blunt a man’s approach to his jobs, made him fall back on routine and the conventional approach, which often saved a lot of trouble.
“I know how they run in quintuplicate sometimes,” said Appleby dryly, “but these two babies were snatched within a few hundred yards of each other on the same evening. One from the southern edge of GH Division, one from the northern edge of AB Division. If you ask me, that’s one for the curiosity stakes.”
“I’m with you there,” Gideon said. “Hope we don’t get a third. Anything else look worth special attention?”
“Not yet,” said Appleby, “but the night’s hardly started.”
“Don’t I know it,” agreed Gideon, and got up. “Been down to the Information Room lately?”
“Half an hour ago. Your young hopeful was still there.”
“I’ll nip down and have a word with him, and if he’s still hanging around I’ll send him home,” said Gideon. “Won’t be long, but I might pop into the canteen on the way back.”
“Have one for me,” said Appleby.
So he was alert, apparently right up to his job, and as zestful as a man fifteen or twenty years his junior; Gideon decided that, if there was a weakness in the night operation at the Yard, it didn’t lie in any slackening of Charley Appleby’s keenness.
At his normal slow, deliberate gait Gideon walked toward the stairs. The lift wasn’t at this landing, so he walked down; it was only two flights. The ground floor had the deserted look which he didn’t relish, but as he reached the Information Room it was like going out of the shadow into sunshine. The big room was well lit. The uniformed men with their long rakes, like croupiers at four green baize tables, were all moving little blocks of wood which represented the patrol cars in the districts they covered. Each table represented one of the four Districts of Metropolitan London, and each was an administrative area. There were small coloured counters showing the spots where crimes had been reported that evening.
Several men sitting at the radio transmitter, with earphones on, were at ease just then, and lounging against the front of the transmitter was young Matthew, who hadn’t yet noticed his father. Whittaker was in his small office, talking on the telephone. Teletype machines clattered busily, recording messages from magic, silent voices, and strangely disembodied sounds came faintly into the room.
A sergeant sitting by the receiver said:
“Here’s a call.”
Matthew straightened up eagerly, and still didn’t notice his father. The big clock on the wall showed that it was nearly half past nine; the large second hand ticked round abruptly every second.
“May I …” Matthew began.
“Yes, put ‘em on.” The operator motioned to a spare pair of headphones, and then said briskly. “Scotland Yard.” Matthew jammed the headphones on, his eagerness really something to see; how like Kate the boy looked sometimes!
Then, his eyes lost their brightness. His lips set. He made no attempt to get the headphones off, but obviously he didn’t like what he heard.
The operator kept saying, “Yes … Yes … Yes,” and made written notes, swiftly. Gideon stepped behind him and tried to read the notes, but they were in shorthand and he didn’t know the system which was used.
“Yes, we’ll send at once,” said the operator. “You are Mr. Frederick Harris, of twenty-seven Hurdle Street, Fulham, and while you were next door at a neighbour’s house your four-month-old child was taken from your house… . Yes, Mr. Harris, we’ll have someone with you in a very few minutes, and we’ll do everything we can.”
He rang off.
“That’s three,” he said, and the tone of his voice matched the look on Matthew’s face.
Matthew had seen Gideon now, was staring at him.
“Hurdle Street, Fulham,” Gideon repeated, as if to himself. “That’s CD Division and not far from the other two snatch jobs.” He nodded at Matthew, and then moved toward a long counter and picked up a telephone. “Give me Mr. Appleby, he’s in my office… . Hello, Charley, another baby’s been stolen, CDDivision this time. I think I’ll go over myself and see how things are. Flash me if you want me.”
“Righto,” said Appleby. “
“Come on, Matt,” Gideon said to his son as he put the receiver down. “You can come with me as far as Wandsworth Bridge Road, and can walk home from there. Won’t be a c
ouple of jiffs.” He moved his massive body very swiftly, and went to Whittaker’s office. Messages were being flashed to patrol cars in the Hurdle Street area; in a few moments the Division would be called, then the teletype messages to the other Divisions would start going out. Here was a major task, and somehow that showed in the attitude of all the men down here, in the way the rakes were pushed about, in the attitude of the men sitting at the radio.
“I’ll get everything done, George,” Whittaker said.
“Thanks. And try this - send someone from GH and AB over to Hurdle Street. Each must be a chap who’s been working on the baby-snatch job in his Division. We want to find out similarities and all that kind of thing. Who’s on duty at AB?”
“Dixon.”
“He won’t lose any time,” said Gideon. “Dixon and Wragg, hmm. Tell ‘em I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” said Whittaker.
“Come on, Matt,” said Gideon. “I …”
He stopped in the middle of what he was going to say. A new message was coming in, a distant voice sounded clearly, and two of the radio operators glanced at each other in a swift, meaningful way which told its own story. Matthew watched. Whittaker was already on the telephone but was looking out of his office.
An operator said, “Okay, right away.” He turned to look at one of the District map tables. “Smash-and grab raid at Kilber’s in Hatton Gardens. One of our men injured trying to stop the car’s getaway.”
“Okay,” the patrol-car said, and began to put out the messages.
Gideon put a hand on one man’s shoulder.
“When Mr. Whittaker’s off the telephone, ask him to call Mr. Appleby, in my office, to have Hatton Gardens checked. Seems a queer place for a night smash-and grab job to me. Better have the street and district cordoned off.”
“Right, sir”
“Come on, Matthew,” Gideon said, and this, time they got out of the room without being interrupted.
4 Common Factors
It was much foggier in the yard than when they had arrived, and the Embankment lights were all invisible, little more than pale haloes in the murk. But it wasn’t the kind of fog to keep traffic to a standstill; there was at least a fifty-yard visibility. Squad cars were on the move, engines roaring, the carbon monoxide from their exhausts smelling strong and unpleasant on the fog-laden, windless air. Yellow fog lights shone on the fog, cars passed and Gideon got into his own, making the body sway to one side with his fifteen stones, and Matthew got in the other. Doors slammed.
“Listen, Matt,” Gideon said, “I’ve got a lot on my mind and I’m not going to talk much, but don’t let that worry you.”
“No, I won’t.”
“You’ve had a quick look at what the job can be like,” went on Gideon. “Sometimes it goes on like that right through the night, but often nothing very big comes of it. We’ve got this baby-snatching job tonight and we don’t like it. It’ll be all right if we get the babies back but hell if we don’t. The job can be hell. There are times when I’ve hated what’s happened.”
“I can understand that,” Matthew said gruffly.
“Good. Here’s another thing you ought to bear in mind. That radio operator used shorthand. He can also speak Italian, Spanish, Russian, Greek and Dutch. There’s bound to be someone with the Scandinavian languages and someone else in the building who knows others. You can’t know too much, and you can always find a use for what you know.”
“I could see that, too,” said Matthew thoughtfully. “Especially about the shorthand. I thought the only decent job you needed shorthand for was journalism. One of them did hold a long conversation in a language I didn’t understand, too.”
“Well, you kept your eyes and ears open, anyway. On the whole, did you enjoy it?”
Matthew didn’t reply at once, and so puzzled Gideon, but it was too difficult to drive to allow him a glance at the boy. He turned round Parliament Square as a bus loomed up dangerously close, and he let it push its way ahead.
“I didn’t just enjoy it,” Matthew said quietly. “I was fascinated, Dad. I want to be a policeman more than ever.”
Gideon said, “Well, don’t be in too much of a hurry.” He was wondering what Kate would say and what he ought to do. Matthew had undoubted brilliance, and a scholastic flair. The Force wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind for the boy.
He couldn’t think about it then, anyway.
Fifteen minutes later, Matthew got out of the car to walk toward Hurlingham, and Gideon turned into a narrow side street which took him to Hurdle Street and the disaster which had struck at Number 27.
It was never possible to tell how human beings would react under this kind of savage pressure and shock. The mother’s reaction might vary from shrieking hysterics to cold, frightening quiet. The best reaction was tears developing into words which wouldn’t stop. As Gideon approached the front door at 27 Hurdle Street he heard a woman talking so fast that it was difficult to distinguish the words. If that was Mrs.Harris, it was a good thing.
The street was crowded with police cars. Neighbours were out in strength, in spite of the biting cold and the fog. Front doors were wide open, light streamed from them into the street, and from windows also; yet there were places where it was impossible to see across the road. Policemen and the public made shadowy figures. People were coughing; someone gave half a dozen loud sneezes.
Inside the front room was Wragg, of GH Division, a man not unlike Appleby to look at, but with jet black hair smoothed down glossily over his smallish head, and a black moustache. In the room with him were photographers, fingerprint men and two others who • were taking measurements of the position of the cot. There was a tall, bald-headed man and a short, stocky one - the stocky man had the hurt baffled look of a distracted father.
The woman was talking somewhere else in the house.
Wragg flashed a quick smile; he had very white teeth.
“Hello there,” he greeted. “I thought you wouldn’t belong. These chaps don’t need telling anything, though.” He glanced at a portly man standing by the window of the little, crowded room; that was Willy Smith, of CD Division. “We had a message just now that a chap who was on the baby job at AB will be here soon, too.”
“Good,” said Gideon. “Who’s the father - stocky chap?”
“Yes. The other chap’s a neighbour, named Fraser.”
It was like Wragg to hand out information wherever he was, and like Willy Smith to let him; there was no false Divisional pride in Willy. He grinned at Gideon, but behind the grin there was anxiety for this man and his wife and the stolen child.
“How’d it happen?”
Wragg explained briefly and comprehensively.
“How’d the snatcher get in?” asked Gideon quietly.
“Well, they have a key on a piece of string just inside the door; you can hook it out through the letter box. Thousands of people do that. It doesn’t help to tell them its inviting trouble. Looks as if the key was hooked out, anyway. No prints on the door; no scratches, either. But the front-room window’s open a couple of inches. He could have come in that way, too.”
“I see,” said Gideon, and stepped to Harris’ side.
“Mr. Harris?”
Harris looked up almost blankly, and nodded.
“I’m from Scotland Yard,” Gideon said quietly, “and I would like you to know that we shall do everything humanly possible to get the child back before the night is out. I expect the others have asked you to try to think of everything that might help us.”
Harris nodded again. He looked rather like a man who was punch drunk, and didn’t quite know where he was or what was going on. He wasn’t likely to be any help to anyone. The chief hope lay in the neighbour or in the child’s mother. There was no point in talking to her now - while she was talking nineteen to the dozen just inside the kitchen.
“Place to talk next door,” Willy Smith volunteered. “I fixed it with Fraser.”
“Let’s go,” said Gideon
>
The room looked in turmoil, the street looked like the scene after an accident, but in fact the situation was completely under control, and no time was wasted. Gideon was used to the matter-of-fact way in which the men went about their job, the quiet questions, the unflurried search for fingerprints, footprints, anything that might give the slightest help. Plain-clothes men were questioning the neighbours, too, trying to find anyone who had been in the street during the time that the Harrises had been out of their house. More policemen were on duty outside Number 29, and as Gideon went inside he had to duck, the top of the doorway was so low.
Here, the front room was better furnished, and obviously little used. The light was bright, and a gas fire hissed and glowed more yellow than red.
“I was on the snatch that we had earlier,” Wragg said. “House in Field Street, much the same type as this. Young parents, named Dean. First child, four months old, asleep in a ‘carrycot’ in the back of their little car. They were out shopping, and parked the car in a side street near their road. They say they weren’t away for ten minutes, but when they got back the baby was gone. By the time I got there, the mother was in hysterics. Still is, probably.”
“Any leads?”
“None at all, but …” Wragg stopped as there was a tap at the door and a big, burly-looking, youngish man appeared with a shock of gingery hair, red cheeks and bright blue eyes. He was wearing a new-looking overcoat and he stood at attention.
“Mr. Gideon, sir?”
“Yes,” said Gideon, “You from AB Division?”
“Yes, sir. Detective Sergeant Hill.”
“You were on the spot at the baby-snatching job, weren’t you?” asked Gideon, and motioned Hill further into the room. He closed the door before obeying, and obviously regarded Gideon with awe. He had very large hands and long arms, and he looked astounded when Gideon offered him a cigarette from a fat silver case, kept for offering.
“If you don’t mind, sir, I won’t just now - never smoke except when I’m at home.”