Two men in twenty

by Procter, Maurice

  It was Archie. 'Come down here to the Roebuck,' he said. 'Use the back door. There's a little snug behind the bar.'

  Wondering a little, Cain went to the Roebuck. He knew that Archie was a careful man, but all this business of dodging from pub to pub seemed to be rather unnecessary. Of course, there was always the possibility that he was being extra careful because one of his boys had run into trouble.

  Archie was alone in the snug at the Roebuck, sitting facing the window. Cain sat down beside him. 'How's things with you?' he asked.

  'Fine,' said Archie, watching the window. It was curtainless, but it had frosted glass up to a height of six feet or so.

  'What's all this runaround?' Cain wanted to know.

  Still staring at the window, the other man said: 'Hush.' Then a hand could be seen through the clear part of the window. It waved twice, giving the 'all clear' signal.

  Archie relaxed, and turned to look at Cain. He raised the glass of whisky he was holding, and sipped. Cain looked at the whisky.

  'No,' said Archie. 'You don't need one. You weren't tailed here, and nobody but a friend of mine saw you come in. You'll go out the same way. There's no need for anybody in this place to see you at all.'

  'Hey, what is all this?'

  'What have you been doing, Howie?'

  'Resting. In the country. Why?'

  'This last day or two the C.I.D. boys have been asking about you. Quiet, like. Just a word or two, tactful like an elephant. But they're asking everywhere. They really want to know if you're in town.'

  Cain was appalled, but he grinned hardily. 'They got nothing on me,' he said. 'I dare walk into Scotland Yard this minute, only it's a bit out of my way.'

  'What have you been doing, Howie?'

  'Now then, Archie. You know I don't go in for publicity.'

  'Somebody does, the way the bogey men want you.'

  'I tell you I'm clear. I must be clear. Very likely they want to talk to me about some job I never did, just to make sure it wasn't me.'

  'You're a customer of mine. You've got one of my cars now. If you're picked up with it they'll be putting the infrared on the engine number.'

  'That's what I'm here for, to get rid of it.'

  'What for?'

  'Common caution. You know I change cars every so often as a matter of principle.'

  'When you're doing jobs with 'em, you do. And you've had the same modification on every one. What was that for?'

  'Private business.'

  'If the coppers got you and the car together, and saw the modification, would they know what your private business was?'

  Cain hesitated for half a second, which was half a second too long. 'They wouldn't know in a month of Sundays,' he said. 'But anyway, you can take it in and find me another one.'

  'I wouldn't touch it with a long cue. Do you know where there's a good gravel pit?'

  'No.'

  'Well, I do. And I have a boy who knows it, too. It's a nice deep old pit with forty foot of water in it. That's where your car can go. It'll cost you fifty nicker.'

  'For a little dumping job like that?'

  'Reliable men cost money. You want to be safe, don't you? This boy will brush away tyre tracks and everything.'

  'I pay fifty quid just to destroy a perfectly good car? It don't make sense. Couldn't you just take it and break it up for spares?'

  'No. Not this one. I want to be safe, and I've got a feeling about you, Howie. You been on some big job, or a lot of little larks which have made the bobbies wild. You do this thing my way, or you don't get another car.'

  'I can get a good second-hand car anywhere.'

  'That's right. And I know a man who's going to sell you one. A right car, bought proper. It'll be yours, legally.'

  'What will you get out of it?'

  'A small commission, and an easy conscience. I'm not trying to do you down, Howie. I'm just playing it the safe way for both of us.'

  'Oh, all right. When do I take delivery?'

  'In the morning. The man will meet you right here in this snug at opening time. Bring seven with you. That'll be O.K.'

  'Seven hundred? What sort of a car is it?'

  'The one I have in mind is a six-cylinder Wolseley, in lovely condition. You'll like it.'

  'It looks as if I'll have to believe you about that.'

  'It looks as if you will,' Archie replied. 'What number have you got on your Rover, and where is it?'

  Cain told him. Then he sighed as he took the car's keys from his pocket and put them on the table.

  * * * * *

  As Cain travelled by bus and Underground to his rendezvous with Dorrie and Flo, he pondered the bad news which Archie had given him. It seemed to be a fantastic development. He could not believe that Scotland Yard men were seeking him by name in connection with the crimes which he had planned and committed, so he concluded that he had become a suspect, merely on the grounds of possibility, for some crime of which he was guiltless. They just wanted to talk to him, to 'turn him up'. Unfortunately the business of turning up would include questions which he did not wish to answer. And if he refused to give a reasonable account of where he had been and what he had been doing he could find himself in all kinds of trouble. Some bright copper might even get a sudden vision of the truth, and set about the business of tying him up with the XXC jobs.

  So the thing to do here, he decided, was to avoid his own home and haunts in London, and return to anonymity in Granchester as soon as possible. In this respect he had a gnawing fear that Dorrie and Flo might have hurried through their meal and then gone to the Caledonian Road house to air the beds or something. If the police were watching the house—well, they might already be tailing the girls. In London, off duty as it were, they would be unsuspicious, and easy to follow.

  Even if all was well, Dorrie would be a problem. The police seeking Howie Cain? She would assume that all was over, and that the cops knew everything. She would think the only way out was to beat it to New Zealand or some place, or go and get buried in the country. She didn't understand that a stranger in the country was like a hoarding advertising free beer, noticed by everyone.

  He carefully cased the public house in Charing Cross Road before he approached it. He could see no person who aroused his suspicions. From the tiny lobby of the place, he looked through a glass-paned inner door and saw Dorrie and Flo. There were only seven more people in that bar, and none of them could have been a police officer. He entered.

  'You've been a long time,' Dorrie complained, with a glance at the jewelled watch which had long since been redeemed from pawn. 'It'll be midnight before we can get the beds aired.'

  So they had not been to Caledonian Road. That was good news. Cain played for time by purchasing for himself a wedge of pork pie, a turkey sandwich, and a pint of ale.

  'You girls have a good meal?' he asked, with a mouthful of pie.

  'Not so bad,' Dorrie said. 'Will we go when you've had that?'

  'Why bother, just for one night? Sunday night, we can get in anywhere. We'll find a nice little hotel.'

  'Did we come all this way just to stay one night? I thought we were going to do some shopping.'

  'We must do some shopping,' Flo followed up. 'I haven't a thing to wear.'

  Cain pretended to give the matter some thought. He said at last: 'I've got to go back tomorrow. Tell you what, you two stay on in the hotel, and come back on the train on Tuesday.'

  'Why can't we stay at home?' Dorrie queried.

  ' 'Cause I don't think it's wise to go home just now.'

  Dorrie looked sick. 'Oh no!' she said, not loudly but with feeling. 'Now I can't go to my own home. The only place I want to be.'

  'It's only for a little while. The bogies want to talk to me about a post-office job I didn't do. Eventually they'll find I had nothing to do with it, and then we'll be able to go home. Till the barrage is lifted, we'll be safer in Granchester.'

  'What post-office job?'

  'Somebody did one in Clapham a fortn
ight ago. You know very well that couldn't have been me, but the coppers don't. They want to see me, but I don't want to see them. I shall get the word when they don't want me any more, and then we can go home.'

  'Who's going to tell you when it's blown over?'

  'A friend. The same one who just gave me the griff.'

  'Archie?'

  'Shush. I didn't say Archie. You know he don't like his name to be mentioned. By the way, I got myself a right car this time, bought legal. So's everything'll be on the square when we go back home. Careful, that's me.'

  'Like—' Dorrie began. She had been going to say: 'Like when you picked up that wallet.' But it was no use making matters worse. Perhaps Howie's suggestions were good ones. He was very clever, she knew.

  'All right,' she assented. 'You'd better get yourself another drink before they close. Then we'll go and see if we can find a place to sleep.'

  14

  Cain's hope that the Granchester police would not seek a solicitor in the matter of No. 11 Grange Gardens had been well founded. Their line of inquiry took a direction which he had not foreseen. They simply went in search of a previous tenant.

  Martineau's first action was to consult the city Burgess Roll. It had not been brought up to date for that year, and it gave the tenant's name as Doris Baker. The Post Office Street Directory gave him the same information. Detective officers became busy in Grange Gardens, learning what they could about Doris Baker.

  A few of the residents had known her by sight, and some knew also that she had taken in lodgers. But nobody remembered having seen her recently, and it eventually became apparent that nobody had seen her for more than a year. The police were already beginning to think that she might have died when one officer interviewed a Lithuanian woman who remembered hearing, some eighteen months before, that an old lady had died in that part of Grange Gardens where number eleven stood.

  'So she died,' Martineau said. He consulted the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths, and received confirmation of this, together with the date of death.

  'So who got the property?' he asked, and added: 'There might be a will at Somerset House.'

  The Metropolitan Police were consulted, and a C.I.D. man went to Somerset House in the Strand and read the will of Doris Baker of Granchester. The information he supplied to Martineau was that the property known as No. 11 Grange Gardens, and all its contents, had been left to a Doreen Baker, and the adjacent properties Nos. 20 and 22 Naylor Street had been left to a Florence Baker. The will was twenty years old, but had only recently been executed.

  Twenty-four hours after the receipt of this information came a report from Scotland Yard. Officers asking questions about Howard Cain in the Caledonian Road area had learned that his household there consisted of a good-looking woman who was thought to be his wife, and another woman, also good looking, who was thought to be her younger sister. It was believed that the sister's name was Flo.

  Coming from London, where people sometimes do not even speak to neighbours whom they have known by sight for years, the last item of news was regarded as a piece of pure luck. Martineau started another inquiry by the Metro, to ascertain if and when Howard Cain had married a Doreen Baker, but in his own mind he was certain. 'That mob might be bedded down in Naylor Street at this very moment,' he said. 'What a lovely set-up. A house in this town all ready for them to run to, when they thought London was getting a bit too warm, and another pair as a second string in case they had to make a quick move.'

  So, within twenty-four hours of the exodus from Grange Gardens, the police were aware of a link between that place and Naylor Street. And one day after that, while Howie Cain was deciding that he ought to change his car, they became morally certain that his wife's name had been Doreen Baker and that his sister-in-law's name was Florence Baker.

  'If they're at Naylor Street,' Martineau surmised, 'they'll be there for a few days at least. Sunday's a bad day for casing a place. Not enough people about. We'll leave it until tomorrow.'

  * * * * *

  Ned France had given up his room in London when he moved to Granchester. In the following weeks and months he returned several times, but not to the old place. On the Sunday in April when he returned with Cain and his women he went and booked a room at a quiet hotel in Sussex Gardens.

  After leaving the hotel he caught a bus in the Edgware Road. He alighted on Regent Street, and then he strolled around looking at car showrooms. His general uneasiness about affairs in Granchester had recently come to include a dislike of the city's railway stations and bus termini. He wanted a car of his own, and he had no intention of buying it from a man like Archie Ransom. After moving from showroom to showroom for an hour he had a meal and a drink, and went home to bed.

  On Monday morning he went to one of his three safe-deposit boxes and put in fifteen hundred pounds. This sum raised his hidden assets to nearly eleven thousand pounds. When he left the bank he still had eight hundred pounds in fivers in his pockets, and this was enough to buy a small car and still have some ready cash for emergencies.

  There was nothing showy about the car he chose. It was an olive-green Morris 1000 in excellent mechanical condition, and he surmised that it would get him along at eighty miles an hour when he needed to hurry. He drove the car to Granchester at a moderate pace, making himself familiar with it, and only giving it full throttle once or twice to see what it would do.

  In Granchester, not far from Naylor Street, he stopped at a new filling station for petrol. A man who looked like the proprietor stood near while the tank was filled by a youth. France asked this man about garages to let.

  The man considered him, and the car. 'You might as well be asking for the moon,' he said. 'I have a bit of ground at the back. You can leave it there for thirty bob a week till you find a garage.'

  France did not want to seem to be too easy in matters of money. 'Thirty bob for a bit of spare ground?' he queried.

  'All right then. A quid a week, payable in advance.'

  France agreed to this. He paid one pound and left the car behind the filling station. He walked to Naylor Street, feeling safer now that he had transport. He had no intention of telling anybody that he had bought the car. Everybody at 22 Naylor Street would assume that he had returned from London by rail. They all knew that he had been to London for financial reasons. Each one had his own way of safeguarding his money. No one confided his method to another.

  * * * * *

  On Monday morning Chief Inspector Martineau went to look at Naylor Street. He knew the district well, having served around there as a young constable, and he knew before he went that the street would not give anything like enough cover for close observation. He merely hoped that his men would be able to watch front doors and back doors from a distance, and report movements.

  From Churlham Road he looked at Naylor Street and saw that the even numbers were on the right-hand side. By standing at the corner on the left-hand side he was able to count doors and pick out 20 and 22. He turned his back on Naylor Street and looked at the shops on the other side of Churlham Road. He saw that old Otto Neubaur was still in business as a pork butcher at the shop on the corner. Otto had always lived in the flat above the shop, and the curtains were still there. Well, it was a bit much to ask a man to let policemen sit in his front room and spy on the neighbours.

  Next to Otto's place was a small Co-operative grocery of the old-fashioned sort, and there were no curtains in the upper windows. Well, a Co-op manager would have no objection to the police using a storeroom as an observation post. The Co-ops had suffered enough from the XXC mob in all conscience.

  Martineau crossed the road and stood beneath the Co-op upstairs windows which was nearest the corner. It was no use. 20 and 22 Naylor Street could not be seen from there. In Churlham Road itself Otto's was the only possible lookout post. Martineau shrugged. A man could only try. He entered the pork butcher's shop.

  Otto was serving a woman customer, and he did not look up when the detective's tall, w
ide frame filled his doorway. From the doorway it could be seen that he was not so spry nowadays: he moved heavily, attending to the woman's wants without much interest. The only things foreign about Otto were his name and his ancestry. He had been born in England, and he had always lived above the shop, which had been kept by his father before him.

  The woman paid her dues, and Otto threw the money carelessly into a counter drawer. Evidently his ideas of modernity had never risen as high as a cash till, and there was not a bacon-cutting machine in sight. As the woman departed, he rested his knuckles on the counter and looked at Martineau without recognition.

  'Are the sausages here as good as they used to be?' the policeman asked.

  This challenge made Otto throw back his head and raise his eyebrows. 'Harry, lad!' he exclaimed, putting out his hand and smiling broadly. 'In the flesh and as cheeky as ever. I thought you'd forgot all your old friends.'

  'Nothing of the kind, and I'm here to prove it. It's just that I'm an awfully busy fellow.'

  'Ah, I know,' said Otto, shrewd now but no less friendly. 'I'll bet you want something. That's why you're here. You want some real special sausages for a party? Some of those little 'uns I make to order?'

  Martineau sighed. 'I wish it was as simple as that. I need to have a policeman watching Naylor Street, and this window of yours upstairs is the only one which will do. I know it's a lot to ask, but. . .'

  'Is it important?' Otto wanted to know.

  'Just about as important as it could be, for me.'

  'I wouldn't like to get an old customer into trouble. Who're you watching?'

  'Nobody you know. These people haven't been in Churlham a week yet, and they'll soon be leaving. They're a real gang of thieves.'

  'You can have the back-door key. I'll lock the door into the shop so as some hungry bobby doesn't get tempted to have a fry-up with my sausages.'