by John Creasey
Gideon put out whisky and brandy, and plugged in a percolator for coffee, as well as put out some biscuits. The front room was crowded with furniture from the dining-room, so he would have to talk to the newspapermen in the room where he had seen Honiwell. He wished, vaguely, that he could have used the best room but it did not trouble him as it would have troubled Kate. He kept pondering the way Mesurier had spoken; the very fact that he wanted to come was a measure of the urgency he felt, but that ‘at once’ spoken in his quiet, deliberate way lingered in Gideon’s mind. It was a quarter-past twelve when the front door bell rang and he went to let them in. Before he could speak, the smaller of the two men, a stranger to Gideon, spoke in a low-pitched voice which also carried a sense of urgency.
“I don’t think we were followed, but I’d like to make sure.”
Instead of asking “By whom?” or raising any kind of difficulty, Gideon said: “We can soon find out without standing on the doorstep.” He let them in, and ushered them towards the living- room, then picked up a telephone which was by the kitchen door; dialled the Yard’s information office, and said: “Commander Gideon . . . it’s just possible that someone is taking too much interest in my home. Have it checked, will you, and call me back?” He rang off on the man’s “Right, sir,” and motioned to chairs. “It’s been known to happen,” he remarked. “Whom do you expect – militant dockers or these other people, the Strike Breakers?”
“Either or both,” the small man answered.
“Commander, I’m sure Mr. Brill would not raise any alarm without feeling justified. Have you met before? . . . Malcolm Brill, Commander Gideon.”
They shook hands.
Gideon motioned them to chairs, found that both preferred coffee, heard a little about the temporary settlement of the strike in Fleet Street, recalled some of Brill’s searching articles and even remembered his photograph; but the man was smaller them he had expected and not at all impressive to look at. He seemed so young, his pale green eyes and pallid face smeared thick with freckles and his fair hair slicked over his big, bumpy head. Gideon poured out coffee and sat in an old rocking chair. Hardly had he steadied the chair than the telephone bell rang and he put his coffee on the table and went to the telephone.
“Gideon . . . are you sure? . . . good, thanks.” He rang off, saying as he moved back to his chair: “You don’t appear to have had company when you arrived and certainly no one’s loitering now.”
“Good,” said Mesurier, with obvious relief. In this light his brown eyes and lean face seemed almost baleful.
“I thought I was followed when I got off a bus from the docks, and walked to Mr. Mesurier’s place,” Brill explained. “I spent the evening in the dock area, much of the time with Willis Murdoch, and some of the dockers resented it.”
“Did you find out about the Strike Breakers?” asked Gideon.
“Strike Breakers?” Brill echoed, looking puzzled.
“I didn’t tell him anything you’d told me,” Mesurier said. “I wanted him to draw his own conclusions.”
“Strike Breakers!” breathed Brill. “That would explain it.”
“Explain what?” demanded Gideon.
“I pretended not to notice, but a lot of the men at The Docker and other places I went to were carrying weapons,” Brill answered. “They hid them when I appeared but had them all right, from rubber hose to knuckle dusters and bicycle chains to hammers. It was as if they were getting ready for a real shindig, not a scrap where they’d simply use their hooks. There was a lot of resentment at my being there. Murdoch took me to some private homes and to one where a committee was at work, and of course my ostensible interest was in the strike. But there was something much more than strike action on their minds. What is this about the Strike Breakers?”
Gideon told him, briefly, and his impression of Malcolm Brill rose sharply. The man saw all the implications quickly, and obviously was deeply concerned. When Gideon had finished, he said to Mesurier: “Then I think I’m right not to do that piece for tomorrow.”
“So do I,” the news editor agreed, and added by way of explanation to Gideon: “Brill feels that the situation at the docks is so delicate that anything he writes could do more harm than good.”
“I hope all the Press thinks that way.”
“They won’t,” said Mesurier. “The Mail and the Express say the time has come for a showdown, and they would back the Port employers to the limit. I’m going to do an editorial asking both sides to have a four-week cooling off period, but—” he broke off, with a thin-lipped smile. “Well, this isn’t anything to worry you with, Commander.”
“Don’t be too sure,” Gideon said. “Apart from knowing that a strike will be another blow to our export trade, if trouble’s brewing we need to have to place a lot of men at the ready.”
“And the recorded crime rate will go up,” Brill remarked drily.
“Do you agree?” Mesurier asked Gideon.
“When wages and money are short there are always people on the fringe who add to the pilfering and petty thieving,” Gideon agreed. “But I’m not worried about that. There could be – well, you know the dangers as well as I do. The question is, how can we side-track the worst?” He rocked a little, frowning, and at last went on: “Will you fix that paragraph in a late edition, Mr, Mesurier?”
“Yes.”
“Will you send me a copy of it, at the office, in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Then we’ll take it from there,” Gideon said, and added: “I’m very grateful.”
Mesurier spread his hands.
“As I said this afternoon, I’ll be glad to help at any time. Have you been able to give much thought to the dock strike situation, Commander?”
“Not enough,” Gideon admitted.
“No doubt that’s true of all of us,” Mesurier rejoined drily. He linked his hands together rather as if in prayer, and went on: “If there is an attempt to cause trouble tomorrow, and if you are able to prevent it from developing, it’s just conceivable that the two sides in the dock dispute will find common cause. They’ll both have cause to thank you. I’ve been wondering if there is anything at all you or the police could do to get them talking again.”
Gideon said heavily: “I can’t imagine the Home Secretary agreeing we should even try.”
“I suppose not,” Mesurier agreed, moodily. “All the same—” He stared over the tips of his fingers at Gideon. “Will you consider it?”
“I’ll let it drift through my mind,” Gideon promised, and added with a curious kind of laugh: “I wouldn’t let fear of the consequences stop me if I thought there were half a chance. How did you avert your strike in Fleet Street?”
Brill said out of the blue: “Mr. Mesurier worked himself into the ground to get a postponement. At least we’ve a month to play with.” After a moment’s pause the little man suddenly banged a clenched fist into the palm of his hand, his eyes blazed, his whole face seemed to catch alight. “Why the devil can’t both sides see that it’s in their own interest to find the answers? Why do they have to behave like enemies? I spent the evening with Willis Murdoch, and that man believes absolutely in what he’s doing. He’s not a troublemaker or a Commie, he just wants the best terms he can get for his men, but he never looks at the industry as a whole. He never seems to realise that he can’t get the best terms if the docks aren’t flourishing. And the Dock Employment people are the same. They can only get the best profit and the best job if they’ve a satisfied labour force, but they seem to see organised labour as a mortal enemy. Why can’t they get round the table to work out the best way to get the most for everybody? Why do they have to be enemies?”
The last word seemed to ring and echo about the room.
Enemies – enemies – enemies!
Gideon had a swift understanding of how this man felt; w
hat put such understanding and compassion into his articles. And Mesurier, now looking at the feature writer over the tips of his fingers, was smiling in obvious approval.
He said quietly: “They don’t have to be. Traditionally they are. And it’s the same with most of industry.” He moved his hands and began to get up. “I wanted to be quite sure you knew that the dockers were ready for the Strike Breakers, Commander. Good luck for tomorrow.” He rose to his full height as Brill stood up more slowly. Brill was obviously still carried away by his own rhetoric and his own passion, and drew his hand across his forehead, muttering: “People are such fools! Even the best of them.” Then he seemed to change his attitude, actually seemed to shrink, as he added: “I’m sorry, Commander. I shouldn’t let myself go.”
Gideon said quietly: “Until you rang I had been letting myself go about a different situation altogether. So had one of my senior officers.”
“On what subject?” Mesurier asked.
“Illegal immigrants and Rachmanism among landlords,” said Gideon. “Can this be off the record?”
“Yes,” Mesurier promised.
“Yes,” echoed Brill. “Until you release it.”
“There’s a rumour that a shipload of immigrants went down with all on board a few weeks ago. There are at least two shiploads off the coast at this moment, waiting to slip past the coastguards and the police. The whole situation wants taking up by a newspaper who will really get behind it.” His expression seemed to ask Mesurier: “How about you?”
Brill raised his arms and dropped them helplessly to his sides.
Mesurier said: “Not the Daily News, I’m afraid. We’ve cried ‘wolf’ on the subject far too often. You need one of the bigger, mass circulation papers, but the trouble is that the political overtones are such that they’d fight shy of it.” His eyelids drooped; Gideon was slowly beginning to realise that this was a mannerism which indicated that he was concentrating very hard. “How official is this?”
“The lost ship, strictly—”
“Off the record, no doubt! I would tell any big circulation paper, though. It might slip on to the record – the need for a major national campaign to draw attention to the landlord racketeering and the extent of the illegal immigration. Would you like to talk to one of the owners who could help if he would?”
“Very much,” Gideon said.
“I’m seeing them all tomorrow at eleven o’clock,” Mesurier said. “I’ll fly a kite or two, Commander.”
Gideon had a feeling that he almost said: “George.”
Brill, very quiet after his outburst, said “Goodnight” and followed Mesurier out of the room and the house. Gideon saw them to Mesurier’s car, a vintage Bentley, and went back as a church clock not far away struck one.
Mesurier, who lived in a flat near St. Paul’s, drove Brill home and left him, and Brill, who had sat silent, went along to the front door. He was, in fact, extremely thoughtful; half-vexed with himself for his outburst, half-pleased because Gideon had reacted at least as well as Mesurier. And there was no doubt at all that Gideon was on the side of the angels as far as he, Brill, was concerned. Any man was who believed that two sides should work together, not in conflict. His thoughts ranged over all that had happened that night, and his two concerns were the threatened conflict and the man he knew as Old Homer. He would have liked to have talked with the other newspaperman.
He went in, very quietly – a habit developed so as not to wake the children; and tonight, out of concern for Rose. It was half-past one, and she would have been home an hour or more ago. As only a faint landing light was on he knew she had gone to bed. He went to the downstairs cloakroom so as to avoid running water upstairs, where it could be very noisy, and then went upstairs with hardly a sound.
Then he saw that the main bedroom door as well as the children’s doors were all wide open, and when she went to bed on her own, Rose made a point of closing the door. He went in, puzzled, and made sure she wasn’t in bed. He switched on the light and saw the odds and ends lying about: toiletries, two bras, a pair of dress shoes obviously rejected for the night; most certainly she hadn’t been back.
But it was after half-past one. Where was she?
“Jack,” Rose said, nibbling at Ledden’s ear, “I must go. It’s half-past one. You must help me dress and do me up at the back again.”
“Every time I undo you,” Jack Ledden said, “I shall oblige by doing you up again. But not yet. Not just yet.”
Quite suddenly he was upon her; insatiable.
I wish he would come now, Old Homer’s wife thought, drowsily. It must be nearly two o’clock.
Soon, however, she slept.
Her husband lay in a stupor between consciousness and unconsciousness, between sleeping and waking, in the bicycle shed only a hundred yards from the dock gate.
Brill lay awake, hardly able to think clearly, only able to fear. Every now and again he got off the wide double bed and went to the window, watching for a few moments, but there was no sign of Rose. At three o’clock he was at the point of calling the police, or Ledden, or even Maisie; he had to do something, he could not believe that Rose would stay out as late as this deliberately; there must have been an accident. The police was a nonsense thought, but the need to talk to someone, to ask about Rose, was overwhelming; and suddenly he went downstairs into the little room where he worked, looked Ledden’s number up in the directory, and stood with his finger hovering over the dialling circle.
It was crazy.
But he must find out!
If there had been an accident—
He dialled, shivering as he did so from fatigue or from anxiety or from some secret fear. Brrr-brrr. Brrr-brrr. The ringing sound went on and on until he banged the receiver down, and stood by it, trembling.
Where was she?
Had there been an accident?
He couldn’t simply wait. His own news desk might have some information, or at least would be able to get some quickly. He—
A car sounded, outside; slowing down.
He turned towards the passage door, listening, then went into the front room, his heart hammering. He heard the engine idling, until suddenly it stopped. The silence seemed absolute. No door slammed, no footsteps sounded. He went to the window, which was bay-shaped so that one could look in each direction along the street. No one was towards the right but a small car was double-parked a few yards along on the left. The rear lights seemed vivid in the near darkness.
As he grew accustomed to the dazzling effect of that, and of the dim street lamplight, he saw two heads in the car, close together. His mouth seemed to go dry. His body became as of stone. But he made himself move at last, and went upstairs to the main bedroom; his and Rose’s. This, also, was at the front and had a bay. He moved to the left side one. Now he could see the couple, in each other’s arms; he saw the man kissing and caressing the woman, whose hair was dark, like Rose’s. He knew that this was Rose and Ledden but refused to admit it. He hated himself for watching but could not make himself turn away. He drew in a hissing breath. That man’s hands—
At last, the woman moved. She opened the door and got out. She was Rose. The man got out the other side; he was Ledden. Rose, head tilted back, was wearing her favourite black dress. Oh, dear God! Ledden came round the car and slid his arms beneath hers from behind, and held her. They were drunk with love. He had never seen Rose more beautiful. Never. God!
He would like to cut Ledden’s hands off!
Chapter ix
HOMECOMINGS
Rose said, whispering: “You must let me go.”
“Never.”
“But you must!”
“Never, and never and never!”
“Jack, please.”
“When will you see me again?”
“I—I don’t know when.”
“When?”
“Soon—soon.”
“Tomorrow? That’s today, now.”
“If—if I can.”
“You must swear to it or I won’t let you go.”
“All right,” she whispered. “I swear.”
“Seal it with a kiss.”
“Jack—”
“With a kiss!”
She leaned her head back against his shoulder. His hands were upon her bosom, and slowly his lips were upon hers; insatiable in every way. Even now she felt desire stirring, and his hands moved, and she almost sobbed.
“Jack, please.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Yes, tomorrow.”
“And remember, that means today.”
“I—I’ll remember.”
“Walk straight to the front door,” he said. “Let yourself in. When you’ve gone in and closed the door I’ll drive off.”
“All right.”
“And—don’t look round.”
“All right.”
“Go,” he urged.
She half-expected him to draw her back, but he did not. She walked away from him, feeling more than a little dizzy, and faltered at the kerb.
Malcolm saw her. He stood like a block of ice; watching.
Ledden made no move.
Rose climbed the low step and approached the door, making very little sound. Suddenly she disappeared from her husband’s line of vision. She must be in the porch. He heard her key. He heard the door open. Ledden watched very movement – tall, dark, handsome, dashing Jack Ledden. The door closed. Ledden turned on the instant and took the wheel of his car, an old-fashioned M.G., which started with a surprisingly low-pitched hum. The car moved off. There was no footstep on the stairs.
Oh God, breathed Malcolm Brill, don’t let me kill her.
He heard nothing.
But he could ‘see’ her in the other man’s arms.
My God, if the man were here he would break his neck!