by John Creasey
Roger said heavily: “This business must hurt like the devil.”
“Not knowing whether she’s alive or dead or what happened to her or what might be happening, it’s awful. I can hardly concentrate.” Batten’s voice was hoarse. “Oh, I can pull myself together when I have to, it hasn’t stopped me working properly, and I’ve a personal reason for wanting to find her. So I’ve an extra incentive, you see. But—what if it comes out, sir? The newspaper people are always asking questions and these Fleet Street chaps are different from the local ones. They don’t care what they ask.”
“Have they been at you about this?”
“Not at me, sir. But they keep asking about Linda. Why, there’s one man from the Daily Call who’s actually asked whether she had any other reason for disappearing, whether it’s a hoax, so to speak. And some have been asking if Linda had a lover.”
“Who have they asked?” demanded Roger.
Sympathy took away the edge of anger but anger was there because such a situation had existed without his being told at once. If a newspaper broke this story it could have smashed on his head without the slightest warning. The relationship between this man and the woman in his life wasn’t a police issue but the behaviour of police officers was; both of them had laid themselves open to blackmail.
There was also the human element, so very real and painful; this man was in anguish.
And there was the police angle, cold and relentless.
“Linda lives with her married sister, sir, and her sister and brother-in-law know the situation. They’re very broad-minded, and they’ve an extra room at their flat. It’s in a converted house, rather secluded, you know the one – I pointed out a Mr. Withers, didn’t I? He owns the place. And did I point out Stephenson?” Batten sat further back than he had been and nearly knocked over the tea. “My dear God,” he exclaimed, “what’s happening to me? I can’t even remember straight!”
“Why should you think I might be interested in Stephenson?” asked Roger.
“Only because he’d been with Caldicott a lot,” answered Batten.
“Who else have these newspapermen approached?” demanded Roger.
“Two—two or three of the neighbours, sir.”
“At the flats?”
“Yes. The tenants told Meg – that’s Linda’s sister, sir.”
“Have the newsmen asked any policemen?”
“If they have no one’s told me,” replied Batten.
“Do any of your police colleagues know?”
“I can’t be absolutely sure, sir, but I don’t think so. I’ve never confided in anyone and I’m sure Linda hasn’t either. A few of them might have an idea but I don’t think they know for certain. Linda and I have never—never let on at the station, none of this touching hands business. We’ve always been very matter-of-fact. Good friends, you know, but there’s a lot of good friendship at the station. I would have said that no one knew, but after this, well, I can’t be sure.” Batten spread his hands, and went on in a hoarse voice: “What am I going to do, sir? Tell Mr. Isherwood? It’s—it’s a bloody hard thing to do, but I’m not worried about that so much. I just can’t see straight and I don’t know the best course.”
Roger said quietly: “I think Mr. Isherwood must be told.”
Batten gulped. “I daresay you’re right, sir.”
“Like me to tell him?”
“Would you, sir?” For the first time since this discussion had started Batten actually brightened up. “If—if only you would! I know I’ve no right to involve you, but—”
“This wouldn’t be involving me,” Roger said. “I can say that you made a remark which made me wonder what was going on and I forced the story out of you.”
Batten passed his hand across his eyes and muttered: “Thank you, sir.” After a pause which seemed to last for ages, he went on: “What—what do you think I ought to do, sir? Leave the case?”
“It isn’t a decision for you or me,” Roger said. He watched the man who had become wizened and old-looking, and felt the warming of compassion, so he went on: “I know what I would do.”
“What’s that, sir?” Batten was eager.
“I’d put you on the case full-time,” Roger said. “I’d keep you so busy you’d have no time to worry. And I’d tell you to answer any questions the press put to you.”
“About us being lovers, sir?”
“About you being good friends. What about your wife in all this?”
“Well,” Batten said, chokily. “Well, I don’t really think she would worry all that much for her own sake. I think—well, she probably knows there’s someone, but so long as I keep the home going and don’t start throwing any money about on bits of skirt it would not worry her. The scandal might, though, and she’d be in a bad way if she thought it would hurt the kids.”
“Tom,” Roger said gently, “obviously there’s a risk that this story will break. You’re quite right about London newspapermen, they can be ruthless, and in this case they wouldn’t be doing their job properly if they said nothing once they had proof. You should tell your wife; I feel quite sure about that.”
Batten didn’t speak.
“And I’ll tell Mr. Isherwood as soon as we’re in Salisbury,” Roger went on. “It’s time we got a move on.”
“Yes, I know,” Batten said. “I shouldn’t have worried you about it. My God, I didn’t think anything like this would happen! When I gave Linda that locket with the camera in it – it’s a Japanese mini-camera, wonderful little job – I thought she’d find it useful. It was a birthday present, sir. She can’t wait for the day when she’s promoted to sergeant, sir, she—”
Batten broke off, with a catch in his breath.
Roger could almost hear him saying to himself: but supposing she’s dead!
His car was standing close to Batten’s, and he drove off first, troubled but not yet worried that the man might do something drastic, such as take his own life. Yet there was anguish in his mind and he had a terrible battery of censure to face: letting Isherwood know, telling his wife, facing the critical comments of his colleagues and friends; facing headlines. Roger pulled into the side of the road a few miles up, and waited. Soon the pale blue police car appeared, and he started off again; there seemed no immediate crisis.
Twenty minutes later, at half-past four, he entered the police station. He had a feeling that the men at the desk and who moved about the hall and passages looked at him with sharper attention than they had, but he couldn’t be sure. The door of “his” room was open and Kempton was there with a copy of the London Evening Standard spread over the desk. He looked up, and sprang to attention.
“Glad to see you back, sir.”
“Thanks. What’s going on?”
“This,” Kempton said, twisting the paper around so that Roger could see the headlines. They spread right across the paper in a two-line banner which no one could fail to read yards away. And they told Batten’s story in the way he had feared most:
MISSING POLICEWOMAN’S SECRET LOVER
“How about that for a turn-up for the book?” Kempton demanded. “Isherwood’s nearly apoplectic over it. Won’t talk to the press or do or say a thing until he can discuss it with you. Sorry to throw this at you the moment you get back, sir. Would you like some tea or something before you go and see him?”
“No,” answered Roger thoughtfully. “But I’d like to freshen up. Check that he’ll be free in ten minutes, will you?”
It was a minute or two longer than that before he tapped at the door of the chief inspector’s office and went in. Isherwood was putting down the receiver. He was pale and for a moment tight-lipped; obviously something had hit him very hard. Roger was suddenly aware of the great variety of pressures to which the headline could subject this man, whose dark hair was brushed back from his forehead, whi
ch was white and smooth as a billiard ball. His black moustache was trimmed so neatly that it might almost have been false. On his desk was a copy of the Evening Standard, opened out so that the front and the back page showed.
As he beckoned, his telephone bell rang, and he motioned to a chair and growled: “Have you seen that bloody thing?” He picked up the receiver as Roger nodded, and rasped: “Inspector Isherwood . . . No, I haven’t.” He banged down the receiver and glared at Roger. “That was the fifth call I’ve had from a national newspaper to ask if I had any comment. The chief constable has—” He broke off. “Oh, hell. Why should I let off steam with you?”
“You have to growl at someone,” Roger said mildly. “Did you know about this romance?”
“No. None of my business, anyhow.”
“You mean, private lives.”
“Yes.”
Roger said: “I don’t know, Jack. I really don’t know.”
“Can you stand there and tell me that none of your officers has ever slept with a woman other than his wife?”
“No, of course not.”
“Do you ask around to find out what they’ve been up to?”
“No.”
“What the hell, then?”
Roger said ruefully: “If one of our men gets involved with a woman and it affects his work I have to take notice. And there’s a lot of temptation in London.”
“No doubt,” Isherwood growled. “And in Manchester, where I came from, and in Salisbury, if it comes to that. I had a woman sitting in that chair you’re afraid to put your fanny on, offering me bed and massage as often as I liked if only I wouldn’t charge her husband with embezzlement. Bloody attractive woman, too. Don’t talk to me about temptation! Every possible way to prevent a copper doing his job is thrown at us yokels as well as you sophisticated coppers in the great metropolis!”
Roger sat down and grinned.
Isherwood glared for a few seconds, and then slowly relaxed.
“Oh, bloody hell,” he growled. But he looked better and his colour was more normal.
“Now I know what it feels like to be a sergeant,” Roger said. “Jack—”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Jack, do you know who her lover was?”
“No, and I don’t bloody well—” He broke off. “No,” he repeated, and looked very tense. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“Tom Batten.”
Isherwood seemed to freeze. The blood drained from his face again. He put a hand on his desk as if he needed to steady himself. He didn’t speak for a long time. The telephone bell rang suddenly, despairingly, but although he started involuntarily, he didn’t seem to hear it. Roger leaned forward and lifted the receiver.
“Mr. Isherwood’s office,” he said gruffly.
“Mr. West? Mr. Kempton wonders if you can spare him—”
“I’ll call him back,” Roger said, and put the receiver down. He was watching Isherwood who seemed to be about to faint. The silence dropped again, broken only by Isherwood’s heavy breathing.
At last, Isherwood said in a husky voice: “And it was right under my nose. If the newspapers get hold of this, my job’s gone for a Burton. You can be sure of that.” He lowered himself to his chair. There was a fringe of perspiration on his forehead; a myriad of tiny beads. He eased his stiffly starched collar, still looking at Roger, and seemed to gain fresh strength as he asked: “Sure?”
“On his personal statement.”
“My God!” Isherwood said. And then he added a phrase which lifted Roger’s heart to a height he wouldn’t have thought possible at that moment. “Poor old Tom.” Then he went on in a voice which was hardly audible: “I bloody well ought to lose my job, too, if he could talk to you and not to me. Bloody hell! What kind of a copper am I?”
13
Whisper
Roger simply sat back and waited; there was nothing more he could usefully do and say, but he still felt deep satisfaction at this man’s attitude. Where both he and Batten were concerned there had been moments of self-revelation, and each man would be better for it.
Isherwood bent down to a cupboard in his desk.
“It’s early,” he said, “but I never needed a whiskey-and-soda more. And you?”
It would be churlish, and might be hurtful to refuse.
“A tot and a splash,” Roger accepted. Soon, each man sat with a glass at his lips, sipping. Roger was more glad of it than he had expected.
“Will you tell me all you know?” Isherwood asked.
“Yes, of course.” Roger told the story economically. Time was passing all too quickly and circumstances might soon become pressing. There was Kempton’s call to return and there might be a lot in from the Yard. He tried to explain Batten’s feelings but he did not have to plead for the sergeant; Isherwood had proved himself above all else a human being.
But the policeman wasn’t far behind, for he said: “Should I take Batten off the job?”
“I’d sooner put him on it full-time.”
“Will you work with him?”
“Of course,” Roger said. “I’m going to leave Kempton here part of the time. I shall go to and fro.”
“Suit yourself.” Isherwood closed his eyes for a moment before going on: “One thing’s certain. This isn’t the time for me to say much to Tom.”
“No,” Roger said. “Except—”
“What?”
“Let him know that if he helps to find Linda Prell, he’s earned himself a kind of reprieve.”
“Could do. Handsome—”
The use of his nickname told Roger how he was regarded by this man.
“Yes?”
“What’s going to happen if the press finds out?”
“They’re going to use the story.”
“Can’t we stop—”
“Shouldn’t even try,” Roger interrupted. “I don’t think you would if it came to the point.”
“Shall I admit that I know?” Isherwood wondered aloud.
After a pause, Roger answered: “No, I don’t think so. Not to the press, anyhow. You need time to think about this.”
“I certainly do! And to think instead of react.”
“There’s one danger,” Roger observed.
“What in particular?”
“That this Batten-Linda Prell situation becomes so important that it supersedes the real problem: whether Linda is alive or dead.”
“I know what you mean,” said Isherwood. “You needn’t worry about that.”
“Not where you’re concerned perhaps, but where I’m concerned,” Roger said. “I nearly forgot to ask you what I wanted to know when I came in.”
Isherwood finished his drink and laughed, more natural than at any time since Roger had come in. The perspiration had smeared, and he dabbed his forehead with a snow-white handkerchief as he settled back in his chair. He gave the impression that he was on top of himself; that shock following an angry reaction to the headlines was subsiding.
“Well,” he asked, “what did you want to know?”
“Whether you can imagine why Linda Prell was kidnapped,” Roger asked.
“No,” said Isherwood. “It’s puzzled me from the beginning. The stuff in Leech’s gallery was worth three hundred thousand pounds, as it proves, but all in bits and pieces. Anyone planning to steal that would be art thieves in a big way and they would want safety at all costs. They wouldn’t be likely to take risks with a police officer unless she had heard or seen enough to put them inside for a very long stretch. Or she could have stumbled onto something sinister. All of which is guesswork,” Isherwood added impatiently. “Have you any idea?”
“Even we Yard chaps have our pride,” Roger observed.
Isherwood frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“We hate being laughed at.”
“Oh, I see! All right, I won’t laugh very hard.”
“Nice of you,” murmured Roger. “What in Salisbury is really big enough to steal?”
“Local family art treasures apart, you mean?”
“Yes.”
Isherwood frowned, pondered, wiped his forehead and his neck again, drained the glass to its last dregs – there really wasn’t anything there – and then answered.
“Stonehenge? Or the cathedral?”
Roger himself wanted to laugh but controlled the impulse.
“Getting warm,” he remarked.
“You can’t be serious!”
“I’m very serious.”
“My God!” choked Isherwood. “You don’t mean—you can’t mean the Sarum Magna Carta?”
“Don’t I?” asked Roger. “Can’t I?”
He had expected a startled reaction and even some ridicule although he was sure Isherwood would try to stifle that. He certainly hadn’t expected the frown which settled on the other’s face; or the parallel lines of a groove which appeared between his eyes. Isherwood did not regard this possibility as ludicrous at all. In fact it brought something to his mind: a new anxiety. He was obviously pondering this deeply before making any pronouncement, but he spoke at last in a very low-pitched voice.