by John Creasey
“… . Darling,” she cooed.
“Why don’t we …” Bill leaned close to her, and finished the sentence so close to her ear that no one else could possibly hear it. Three couples got up and went out, the women yawning. A Polish waiter yawned, too. Business was bad, tips were bad; if they could get rid of the couple in the corner necking, the rest would probably go. The band began to play again, but no more briskly, West Indian music in that African setting.
“… s’go,” breathed Bill.
He stood up, and the girl Florence put her hands in his and let him pull her to her feet. She swayed, apparently very drunk. The diamonds on her finger scintillated so brilliantly that one of the remaining women stared enviously, then plucked at her husband’s coat to make sure that he didn’t miss this evidence of some man’s readiness to spend freely on his love.
Ten minutes later the couple went out into the misty night; the West End was still remarkably clear of fog. The blonde leaned heavily on Bill’s arm as they waited for a taxi, which wasn’t long in coming.
“Ensor Street,” Bill ordered, naming a small street in Soho, and then he helped the blonde in, and climbed in beside her, close beside her.
The taxi vanished about five minutes before a police car pulled up, and a plain-clothes man got out and nodded to the commissionaire as he hurried down to the night club. He looked round, grimaced in disappointment, and then spoke to the head waiter… .
“Yes, sir, there was a man like that, and a young lady, but - they go, not long ago, they go.”
The Yard man reported by telephone.
“Well, we can’t do anything about it,” Gideon said gruffly. “No crime to take a girl to your flat even if you’ve done it fifty times before in …” he broke off. “All right, you come back, nip over to the Grand Hotel, and look slippy. Fingerprints and Photography have someone on the way. Couple of bedrooms have been entered and it looks as if there’s a lot of loot. The job was discovered ten minutes ago; there’s just a chance you’ll be in time to pick up the chap with the stuff on him.”
Nine rooms had been broken into at the hotel, and a rough estimate of the valuables stolen was ten thousand pounds.
In spite of concentrated work of all the Departments, the police didn’t find a single significant clue.
Gideon replaced the receiver after one thirty, made a note about the Grand Hotel job, then leaned back and stretched - his arms were so long that he looked like a massive birdman. He yawned, then ran his hands through his hair.
“You young chaps,” scoffed Appleby, “you can’t take it half as well as we old men. Why don’t you go and take a nap? I’ll call you if anything blows its top.”
“Not a bad idea,” said Gideon mildly.
“Did we stop Bigamy Bill?”
“Missed him by minutes.”
“That son of a gun has all the luck,” said Appleby, as if with envy. “Only has to snap his fingers at a girl and she’s ready to pop into bed with him, and after that he sells her the marriage idea so well she can’t make over her cash and securities fast enough. You know, Gee-Gee,” went on Appleby, leaning back in his chair and spreading his hands in the desk, and for once apparently wholly earnest, “human nature beats me. It does, really. Especially girls where a chap like B.B. is concerned. They read about it in the newspapers - once a week or so there’s a big spread showing how a crook like Bill got away with it - they get all the juicy details in the News of the World and a hell of a lot of awful warnings from judges and magistrates all over the country, and what do they do? Fall for the first charmer they meet. Got any theories about it?” In fact Appleby was not interested in Gideon’s theories, only in his own simple Philosophy. “Look at the number of sweeties Bill’s fixed, in more ways than one, too. He must be fifty-five if he’s a day. I can remember when we had him in dock for bigamy. He got six months, but he also got wise to the situation - he could go to any length short of marriage, and get away with it. Since then he must have ruined thirty or forty kids and probably a hell of a lot more we know nothing about, because the poor sinners don’t want to tell the world what fools they were and how much he sucked them for. You want to know what I think, Gee-Gee?”
“Yes.” This new slant on Appleby interested Gideon; each man had his pet ideas, and some were worth sharing.
“We laugh at Bigamy Bill,” went on Appleby. “You’ve only got to mention his name, and you get a grin. Why the first time I heard it tonight I was grinning like a Cheshire cat - half wishing him luck too. You try it tomorrow. Just slip B.B. into the conversation with anyone, and see what happens. Always good for a horse laugh, like stories about ma-in-law and flatfoots on the beat. But the truth is he does a hell of a lot more harm than a chap like the Prowler. You may say I’m talking through my titfertat, but you could be wrong about that. Take the Prowler, now. We’re bound to get him soon, or else scare him into being quiet, and at the most he’ll have attacked a dozen girls and frightened the wits out of them. Maybe his Lewis girl will pop off, so he’ll become a murderer. But B.B. now - he’s ruined more girls than the Prowler’s ever thought of, and all we can do is to try and warn each new girl before she’s swallowed the bait. We’ve tried to get him on intent to defraud, and what happens? His counsel puts the girl up in the box, and before it’s over she admits that she knew exactly what she was doing, and B.B. gets off and laughs at us. Now there’s a man I’d like to put inside for the rest of his natural.”
Appleby stopped, put his head on one side, then ran the length of his forefinger underneath his nose and sniffed with a noise like a distant bandsaw. “Hark at me. Always ought to have worn my collar the wrong way round, and no one ever realized it!”
Gideon said quietly, “There’s a lot in it, Charley. The chap who first said the law was an ass had something.”
“But it’s the law and we’re here to enforce it,” said Appleby, wrinkling up his face in a rueful grin. “I know, I know, and I can see you’re in training for the next Assistant Commissioner. That’s the kind of ropey stuff he trots out when he gets a chance. I …”
One of his telephones rang.
“About time someone stopped me gassing,” he remarked. “All aboard for the crime stakes; wonder what we’ve got this time? Anything from rape to murder and dear Mr. Policeman my pussycat’s not come ‘ome… . Appleby speaking.”
A telephone rang on Gideon’s desk.
“Gideon : . .”
Gideon pushed a note pad away from him as the operator said, “Its Superintendent Smith, sir.” He felt himself tense. By now Willy Smith had probably finished his rounds of the doctors who had signed the death certificates of the infants.
“George?’
“Yes, Willy?’
“Got two possibles,” Smith said, and there was a note of excitement in his voice. “There’s a Mrs. Golightly across the road, at forty-two Hurdle Street; lost her baby about two months ago, and she hadn’t been right in the head since. The landlady of the place where she used to live had a baby a few months older, and this Mrs. Golightly used to take it out of its pram up to her own rooms. The landlady gave the Golightlys notice. We got this from a neighbour who knew her before she came to live in Hurdle Street - neighbour’s only just heard about the missing Harris baby. That’s the most likely. Then there’s an unmarried girl whose baby was taken away from her and put into an adoption home a month or two ago. The girl signed the release at her mother’s insistence, but ever since she’s been a bit queer. She lives at Hill Street, Chelsea.”
“That’s nearer you than Hurdle Street,” Gideon said crisply. “Go and check on her.”
“Who’ll do Hurdle Street?’
“I will.”
“Right,” said Willy. “I can get to my place as quick as any patrol car.”
He rang off, and Gideon stood up abruptly. Appleby was scribbling a note and looking across at him as if he didn’t like his expression.
“What’s up?’
“Might be on the track of that ba
by-snatcher,” Gideon said. “I’m going to Hurdle Street. Tell Info to have a patrol car at Number forty-two, quick - No,” he changed his mind as he reached the door. “There’s a car round the corner from Hurdle Street; have the crew call at Number forty-two - a Mrs. Golightly.”
“Gorblimey Golightly!” Appleby exclaimed. “Here’s a chance to throw some weight about.” The door closed on his last word, and Gideon almost ran down the corridor.
The fog, thick but on the move in Parliament Square and on the Embankment, was much thinner a little way from the river, and at no time was Gideon slowed down to a crawl. The city was empty and it seemed dead. There was no sound from the river, and no lights showed across from the other side, not even the lights of Battersea Power Station, with its huge chimneys and its massive square block. Now and again another car came toward him, lights ghostly in the murk. There were few policemen about; too few.
He kept picturing Mrs. Harris’ face when he had first given her hope and then snatched it away again, and was grimly aware of a kind of personal responsibility which everyone else would scoff at, but which was deep and immovable in him. He could keep in touch with the Information Room and Appleby from the car; there was no need for him to sit at his desk all the time.
He kept the radio on.
There was a cacophony of words and phrases continually spilling into the car as instructions flew to and from the Yard, to and from the Divisions. The dead night seemed to come back to life. There was no light but that of Gideon’s headlamps, dipped toward the curbs, but the night seemed full of light - brightly lit offices, houses, clubs, hospitals, homes, police stations. With the radio off it was a dead or at best a sleeping city; with it on there was a pulsing throb of life, of bustling activity, a sense of swift exciting movement everywhere.
Then:
“Calling Commander Gideon, calling Commander Gideon.”
“Gideon here,” Gideon said. “I can hear you.”
“Message from Chief Inspector Lemaitre, sir.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Good reason to believe Mr. Hemmingway right about the situation in NE Division, sir.”
“Right. Give me Mr. Appleby.”
“Yes, sir.”
So Hemmingway had been right and he had been wrong; there seemed nothing particularly sinister about the gathering of gangs in the East End. Well, it wasn’t the first time by a long way that he had been wrong. He wished Appleby would hurry, but the man was probably on the telephone, making his cracks, or writing down his notes in that immaculate handwriting, being bright and breezy and hiding - what? Theories about the almost criminal idiocy of the law?
In five minutes, Gideon would be in Hurdle Street.
“Appleby speaking, Commander.”
“Charley, listen,” said Gideon. “Take half the men we moved into the central districts for the Prowler, and have them go to NE at Hemmingway’s disposal. Get ‘em there quick.”
“Okey dokey.”
“Thanks,” said Gideon.
“Don’t run away,” said Appleby hastily. “Something else here you ought to know about. Just had a telegram from the Surete Nationale.” His pronunciation of that was almost perfect, Gideon noted with surprise; his French accent on that word at least was better than his English. “You know that Guthrie girl who was cut up and buried in the French Pyrenees last year?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve dug up evidence suggesting that there was an Englishman named Forrester with her,” said Appleby, “and they say Forrester’s on the way from Paris by air - he got away before the Paris people could arrest him. Will we meet him at London’s airport?”
“Any evidence?’
“They say they’ve a basketful, but didn’t quote it; they’ve a man coming over on the same plane to see us. The silly mugs saved a couple of hundred francs by telegraphing instead of getting us on the buzzer, and the aircraft’s due in any minute. It’s a special flight and had a few spare seats.”
“Have the Customs detain Forrester and the Frenchman,” said Gideon.
“That’s a relief,” said Appleby, “I have.”
Gideon was surprised into a chuckle.
Appleby rang off, and now Gideon switched off his radio, for he was very near Hurdle Street and didn’t want another interruption. He found that his heart was thumping with a most unprofessional anxiety as he turned into Hurdle Street. Where before there had been a crowd not far short of a mob, there were now only one or two people standing about, and a solitary police car. Lights showed at three places, one of them Number 27; that was at the second floor, so Harris had persuaded his wife to go upstairs. The other lights were at the front door and the second-floor window of Number 42 - or what he guessed was Number 42.
A Mrs. Golightly had lost her child and had tried to find some solace in another woman’s. The landlady must have been seriously worried to have made her leave. It was at least possible …”Remember the motorcyclist said a man was seen carrying the kid,” Gideon said to himself almost roughly, as if he resented the way his tension was rising.
He pulled up. Yes, this was Number 42; the black numerals showed on the fanlight. Outside the house a uniformed policeman waited, advancing as Gideon got out of his car. The night was quiet and the fog almost clear here; just a murkiness which gathered about the lights. There was a gentle but rather cold wind stirring what was left of the fog.
“Gideon,” said Gideon. “Anything doing here?”
“Been a bit of shouting since the detectives went in sir, but my orders were to stay right here.”
“Shouting?” Gideon moved swiftly, with that pulsing, almost frightening beat of heart. Inside this house was exactly the same as the Harrises’ across the road. There was a narrow passage, the narrow staircase and at the foot of it an elderly couple who looked scared, dressed in overcoats and night clothes, the woman with grey hair in big curlers, the man nearly bald. With them was a plain-clothes man, saying patiently:
“I am a police officer, and all I want is the answer to a few questions.” He recognized Gideon, and moved aside quickly. “Evening sir.”
“Anything?”
“Found a baby upstairs, sir,” the man reported. “An ambulance is on the way. Don’t know whether we’ve saved it or not. Half suffocated.”
As he spoke, a woman screamed upstairs.
Upon the scream, an ambulance bell rang clearly in the street.
10 Rescue
“Go across to number twenty-nine and ask Mr. or Mrs. Fraser to come over here at once,” Gideon said to the man. “Don’t let them waste any time.” He squeezed past to the stairs, but found time and opportunity to glance at the old couple and to smile with heartening reassurance. “We’ll need to know how often Mrs. Golightly has been out tonight,” he said. “Is Mr. Golightly up there with her?”
The woman answered, “No, he’s away during the week.”
Oh, God, thought Gideon.
He hurried up a staircase so narrow that one arm brushed the wall, the other the banisters. The woman upstairs was screaming wildly, a man was speaking - then suddenly the man spoke more sharply; there was a louder scream. Next there came a sharp sound, as of a slap across the face. The ambulance bell had stopped ringing but the beat of the engine suggested that it was now pulling up outside.
Gideon reached the landing.
A bedroom door stood wide open, just beyond the landing. Two policemen in plain clothes were there, one standing close to an attractive young woman in blue slacks and a tight-fitting grey-jersey. She had one hand at her cheek, as if she couldn’t believe that she had been struck. Her eyes held a glitter which Gideon had seen too often before - the glitter which suggested that she wasn’t sane.
As Gideon drew near, he saw the bed, another policeman kneeling in front of an infant on the bed and applying artificial respiration with enormous hands which looked large enough to break the baby into little pieces.
There was no sign of life in the child.
; The pretty woman suddenly snatched her hand away from her face and flew at the man who had struck her, and so great was her fury and so wild her strength that she carried him back toward the wall. Then she turned and ran toward the door, as if she had not noticed Gideon in the way. Her lips were parted as though she were screaming but could not make a sound..
She saw Gideon.
She flung herself at him bodily, as if believing that she could force him back, but, although he couldn’t stop a collision, he hardly budged, and she was flattened against him for a moment. Then she struck at him. He caught first one wrist and then the other, and held them tightly in his big fingers, making her helpless although she kicked wildly, stubbing her toes and hurting herself much more than she hurt him.
“Handcuffs,” Gideon said sharply.
“Yes sir.” The man she had pushed aside slipped shiny handcuffs out of his pocket as if by sleight offhand and fastened one loop over Mrs. Golightly’s wrist, one over his own. Perhaps it was the touch of cold steel, perhaps it was Gideon’s massive figure; certainly something quieted her, and she turned away and covered her face with her free hand.
Behind the door were an old raincoat and a faded trilby. Wearing those and the slacks, it was easy to see how she had been taken for a man. Gideon looked at her without compassion.
The ambulance men and a young doctor came in from the landing, and the child lay there, still as death, with those great hands ceaseless in their desperate work of rescue.
Two minutes later, Fraser hurried in, shivering in an overcoat over striped blue pyjamas, sparse hair standing on end, eyes watering. The doctor had taken over, saying simply that they must deal with the child here; the ambulance men had gone down to their ambulance for the portable oxygen unit.
“Sorry about this, Mr. Fraser,” Gideon said, “but is this the Harris baby?”