by John Creasey
“Could there have been an accident?” asked the brash reporter.
“I phoned the local hospitals and the police station and his office,” Harriet informed them. “Then I thought he might have discovered something about what was going to happen this morning, and came here. I thought he was bound to be here,” she added, helplessly.
“Willis, you’ll regret it if you don’t let me have a word with you!” The voice of the wizened little man, thick with frustration, rose to a frenzy.
Brill saw Murdoch look at the man, and was surprised. He wasn’t impatient or annoyed at being harassed; he was thoughtful and patient. All yesterday evening he had been, too – this militant strike leader with the pallid prize-fighter’s face. The eyes behind the thick-lensed pince-nez were rather pale blue.
“You’d better make it worth my while,” he said mildly, and moved away from the others, while the wizened old man tottered after him.
Brill felt a curious sense of tension.
He was no longer consciously aware of his own emotional crisis; he sensed a human story, the best kind there were. He wanted to hear the other two talking but knew better than to move towards them; he also wanted to soothe Mrs. Holmes. A group of policemen with some dockers were coming towards the gate now and the rest of the men there turned to these, leaving Malcolm Brill and Harriet Holmes standing alone.
“Can you—can you do anything?” the woman asked.
“If it’s possible I will,” Brill promised. “And I’ve a feeling that Willis Murdoch will try.”
“If it doesn’t interfere with Union business he will,” Harriet said with a touch of bitterness. “He—” She broke off, and closed her eyes; Brill recognised all the signs of a sleepless night and great emotional distress, and hoped that by simply being by her side he was some help.
Suddenly, Murdoch called: “Can you come here?” He was looking towards them while the wizened man was nodding his head to no one in particular, as if he could not be more pleased with himself.
Harriet started off, caught her foot against a broken cobble, and would have fallen but for Brill’s quick grab at her waist. She steadied, wriggled her foot and then went on, obviously not hurt. Now Willis Murdoch towered over them both. He looked more formidable, more impressive even than when he stood up in front of a crowd. No one else was within earshot.
“Mr. Holmes,” he said. “Tig here saw your husband go back to The Docker, and afterwards saw him go round to the lavatory at the side. He thinks two men followed him.”
“They did,” asserted Tig. “I swear it, they did!”
“But where did he go?” asked Harriet tensely.
“Into the docks, I think,” Tig said. “In fact I could swear to it. I didn’t think anything of it until I heard you asking about him, and then I said to myself—”
“Shut up, Tig,” Murdoch ordered. “Mrs. Holmes, I don’t want to scare you but he is missing and there was a lot of funny business going on at The Docker last night. We all know Old Homer, if he thought there was a story he’d go for it. Maybe he heard rumours the same as Mr. Brill did, and someone decided to stop him telling the story.”
“Oh, dear God!” breathed Harriet.
“The important thing is, duck, they’d want him out of the way until after the meeting, so he might turn up any time. Easy as kiss-your-hand to shut a man up for a few hours. So what I think you ought to do is go back home in case he returns. Don’t want him scared, in turn, do we? And Mr. Brill and me will get busy looking for him, so we can’t lose.”
Harriet said in a husky voice: “You will—you will do everything, won’t you?”
“I’m going to see Mr. Boyd, the employers’ representative here,” Murdoch said. “And Mr. Brill’s going to talk to the police. They owe him a favour, and in any case they’d go to town on this job. You don’t live far away, but I’ll fix a car for you if you like.”
“No,” Harriet said, decidedly. “I’ll walk. I’d rather walk. I feel suffocated.” She put out her hands towards the men while Tig eyed her, a cretinous-looking old man. “Thank you – thank you all.” She turned and hurried off, watched now by the men at the gate, for the group of police and dockers had gone.
Murdoch said: “It’s only a couple of hundred yards to Boyd’s office. Let’s go. Tig – keep your mouth shut, understand?” He led the way as Tig gave croaking assurances, and they were out of earshot of everyone although little groups of police stood about. “I didn’t tell her, but Tig saw him knocked over the head last night when he came away from the privy. Instead of telling me he went and drank himself to a stupor. He’s only just come round and remembered.”
Malcolm Brill said: “My God!”
“We need this place searched, every nook and cranny,” went on Murdoch. “If you can persuade the cops to let all their men join in I daresay I can persuade Boyd to let all the men stop working the ships to look for Old Homer. He will if he’s got any sense!” Murdoch added with grim humour.
They reached the small three-storey building across the front of which ran the words: Dock Employers’ Federation Offices, and within two minutes Brill was at a telephone in a small cubby hole where he could not be overheard, and within three minutes grey- haired, long-jawed, thin-lipped Raymond Boyd of D.E.F. was listening to Murdoch. His was a corner office on the third floor, overlooking a great expanse of the docks, the berths, the shipping, sheds and railways tracks. Some ships were being worked and noise of clanking and squeaking came into the office.
Boyd’s desk was shaped like a horseshoe, and he sat in the middle on a swivel chair.
Murdoch, sitting in front of the desk, spoke in his usual laconic, emphatic way. These two men, foredoomed it seemed always to be in conflict, had both respect for and understanding of each other. No one could approach them in their knowledge of the docks and the problems of labour and working methods.
When Murdoch had finished, Boyd asked: “Do you have any idea where Holmes is?”
“Not the foggiest. He could have been dumped over the side at any one of the quays, for all I know. But he might still be alive. If you—”
“I know, Willis,” Boyd said, with an unexpected smile. “If I authorise all work to stop, and all personnel to join in the search – with pay,” he added drily, “with pay! Then after today’s fracas everyone might be in a more flexible mood and we might get a postponement of strike action.”
“Well, doesn’t it stand to reason?” asked Murdoch.
“I don’t know whether it’s reasonable, but I’ll do it,” Boyd promised. “The search will have to be properly organised. Will you work with the P.L.A. police and the chaps from outside?”
“Just give me the chance,” Murdoch said.
When on the telephone to the Yard, Brill took a chance and asked for Gideon himself, and was put through at once. He put the situation briskly and lucidly, prepared for some exploratory questions which would give the Commander time to think. Instead, Gideon said on the instant: “I’ll send instructions to all C.I.D. men in the area to work with the dock authorities. The Uniformed people have their hands full, but they’ll spare some men, I’m sure. Where can I get you if I need you?”
“I’ll be at the Dock Employers’ office or the Dock Workers’ Union office,” Brill assured him. “If I’m out with one of the search parties someone will get a message to me. Thank you, Commander.”
Chapter 14
SEARCH
Policemen, newspapermen, white-collar workers, tally men, railwaymen and detectives, dockers and ships’ crews who heard of the search, all joined in. One thing which quickly became apparent was the highly efficient organisation on both the employers’ and the employees’ side. With Murdoch as virtual director of operations and the P.L.A. Chief Inspector in charge in the main dock, the whole area was divided into sections, and each section put in charge of a man who knew
it well enough to organise a systematic search. Even before it began a different mood among the men became apparent. Black and white, English and Irish, Indian and Pakistani, Chinese and Greek, Italian and Spanish, but mostly native-born Londoner, went into action side by side with the police showing a vigour and a goodwill which caused many people’s hearts to gladden.
It warmed Willis Murdoch’s.
It cheered Raymond Boyd.
It was balm to Malcolm Brill.
Every old hulk, every old shed, every crate in every warehouse, every ship’s hold, all were searched. Every stack of fruit and provisions, every bulkhead, was visited by the men who marked off the places they had searched on plans of the docks. Every small boat, every stack of old tyres, every boiler house, machine shed, inspection pit, dinghy and lifeboat was searched, and many remarkable finds were made.
In one shed was a sack of silver, tarnished over the years, obviously dumped after a robbery and never recovered. In another, a haul of small machine tools, apparently ready to be smuggled overseas. Old cars and old cycles, wallets and handbags, shoes and old socks. Old trunks and suitcases, metal boxes and attaché cases, umbrellas and walking sticks and seven old perambulators, every imaginable kind of thing was found. Among piles of oranges were boxes of apples from some illicit deal.
But no body was discovered; no sign of Old Homer.
Nearly every search party passed within a few yards of him, sometimes several men at a time, but he did not know. He was oblivious of everything, being unconscious. The whistling sound had stopped and there was nothing to suggest he was still breathing.
Tom cats; dead dogs; the bones of animals of many kinds and shapes and sizes added to the junk – while Harriet Holmes moved about her small house, getting an early tea ready for the children who were not yet home from school and did not know their father was missing.
As all of this went on, the police began the mammoth task of charging all the prisoners they had taken from the dock gates with causing or attempting to cause a breach of the peace. The total arrests, after all, were eight hundred and seventy-one, including over two hundred dockers. This was far too many to take into the police station and charge individually; too many to take into the East London Police Court next morning, even if they could be charged. The counter-blow had been a major triumph but now it was providing a major headache. Strictly speaking it was a problem for the Public Prosecutor’s office but in fact it was a problem for the whole of the Force, not least for Gideon.
Gideon was in an unusual mood, not of dissatisfaction, disappointment or even frustration but a combination of all three; and this unsettled him. Part of the time he blamed his mood on to the fact that his wife was away, and Penny, too; the disruption of home life was all very well for a few days but this had been going on for nearly a week. There was much more to his mood, however. The concern and anxiety over the immigrants’ situation was constant, and if he were compelled to point to one factor which affected him more than any other, it was the fear that a cargo of human beings had gone to the bottom of the North Sea.
If it had, could it have been deliberate?
The answer to that question was probably the explanation of his mood. For out of his deep knowledge of people, the warmth and goodness and generosity as well as the coldness and the callousness, he knew that there were men evil enough to kill with such awful ruthlessness; who saw Pakistanis, Indians, Jamaicans, anyone whose skin was not white, as sub-human creatures.
The world had come a long way but in some ways it had not moved at all. The attitude of those who today dealt in immigrants and in drugs was almost identical with the slave-traders of a century ago.
It was strange that he, Gideon, who had spent his life among criminals, and had seen human nature at its lowest, should now be so appalled by something which, had he made the effort to think, he must have known existed. Undoubtedly the way Honiwell had unburdened himself, his “I just can’t keep it to myself any longer. It’s beginning to prey on my mind,” had stirred Gideon deeply; and the story itself had shocked as well as horrified him. Now he began to wonder if he could have prevented any disaster by giving the matter deeper, more concentrated thought.
He could not remember a time when any particular case was all pervasive, influencing his thinking about all others and lessening the impact of some. He did not feel the great ‘lift’ which affected nearly everyone at the Yard as the news of the triumph at the docks came in. He should have been there, of course; it would have done him a world of good.
In the middle of the afternoon, as reports of the identity of the men arrested at the docks was trickling through, a number of factors preoccupied him, and to get his mind clear as well as to try to overcome the mood he put them down on paper in a series of headings:
Bank robbery at Clerkenwell – arrest expected.
Missing newspaperman at Number 1 dock – no news.
Sussex coast suspect shipload of immigrants – no news.
Honiwell – no news, but he would not be at Lowestoft yet.
Cache of heroin and cannabis found in Hampstead hotel.
There wasn’t much there; not really much.
Gideon stared at the list for at least five minutes, a new thought stirring in his mind. There wasn’t much there – he had delegated virtually everything. He wasn’t personally involved enough. He had given most of the briefing – as over the bank robbery – to Hobbs. He himself and his life at the Yard were going through a period of transition. That was surely at the root of his strange mood. That, and the fact that since Malcolm Brill of the Daily News had called, his telephones had been silent. The great tides which swept through Scotland Yard were leaving him high and dry.
“I haven’t enough to do,” he said aloud. “I’ve too much time to think!”
When one of three telephones on his desk rang, that which came through from the Yard’s exchange, it actually made him jump. He picked the receiver up quickly, even eagerly, and heard the Inspector who cleared calls for him and Hobbs say: “Here is Mr. Gideon.”
“Who wants me?” asked Gideon.
“Commander,” Mesurier of the Daily News said. “Lord Nagel of the Unity Press Group is not uninterested in the problem you were discussing last night. I thought it safe to tell him that you had organised the dock coup, and I’ve no doubt that impressed him. While Unity Press isn’t the biggest of the popular groups it is very big, and the Daily Star, its chief daily, is very much a ‘cause’ newspaper.”
Gideon felt his heart lifting.
“I think Nagel would have been interested even without the outstanding success at the docks today,” Mesurier went on. “Are you by chance free to dine with him and me tonight to discuss the whole immigrant situation and what you think Unity Press could do to help?”
Gideon already felt as if he had been given a new lease of life.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be free anytime, anywhere.”
Mesurier gave an unexpected, pleasing chuckle. “You really are the greatest enthusiast I know!” he said. “Lord Nagel’s home, 21 Hanover Terrace, Hyde Park – at seven o’clock, then.”
“Wonderful!” breathed Gideon.
He put down the receiver but before he was aware of the full impact of the news, before he could even begin to relish it properly, the bell rang again, quivering beneath his hand. He let it ring for a moment, thinking how much he would like to talk to Honiwell about this. Slowly he put the receiver to his ear and as slowly announced his name.
A man with a mellifluous voice uttered one word and contrived to make it sound like a whole sentence. The word was: “Congratulations.”
Deliberately obtuse but instantly aware of the beautifully turned-out man whom he had met in Fleet Street yesterday afternoon, Gideon asked: “On what? And who is that?”
“I am Nigel Simply,” the other announced, in
the same tone; he sounded half-amused but at the same time very earnest. “And my congratulations are on the success of your dock manoeuvres.”
“I’m sure everyone at Scotland Yard will be grateful,” Gideon said drily.
“I mean you personally, Commander. You did inspire the Stop Press paragraph in the Daily News, this morning, didn’t you?”
“I asked the newspaper to send a good man along to find out what he could,” Gideon answered. “If that is inspiring anything, all right.”
Simply chuckled, quite deep in his throat.
“The hero who won’t admit being one! Commander, I am going to write my version of your part in this affair in my column for tomorrow, and I wondered if you would care to give me a little other information about a variety of things. If I came to see you, could you spare me a few minutes?”
Gideon almost said: “No,” and dithered for several seconds, while the man at the other end of the line waited without saying a word. Finally Gideon pushed his lips into the mouthpiece as if the other could see him, and answered: “If you don’t mind the risk of wasting your time, yes.”
“I will most certainly take that minimal risk! May I come at once?”
“Yes,” Gideon said. “I’ll leave word in the hall that you’re to be brought straight along.” He rang off on Simply’s ‘thank you’ and in the same movement picked up the internal telephone. Now things were moving at the kind of speed he was used to, and he was in a buoyant mood. Even when Sir Reginald Scott-Marie, the Commissioner, answered in his familiar but aloof-sounding voice, buoyancy was the keynote in Gideon’s “Gideon here, sir,” he said.
“George,” said Scott-Marie, “the docks result was most rewarding and the method masterly.”
“Sir Giles Rook and Lawless of the Port of London Authority—” began Gideon.
“I know exactly what happened. The City Commissioner telephoned me half-an-hour ago.” Having silenced Gideon, Scott-Marie went on drily: “But I’m sure that isn’t what you wanted to talk about.”