Roller Coaster

by Michael Gilbert

  She said, “I hear that Sergeant Stark has drawn the short straw for Friday.”

  “That’s right. He and Sergeant Pearson – the one they call Lofty – are going to drive the decoy car on Friday. Incidentally, how did you know?”

  “Dad told me. He can be quite indiscreet, sometimes.”

  “That I doubt. My guess would be that he only lets you know things that don’t matter, or things he wants you to pass on.”

  Lee thought about this. She said, “You may be right. He’s got a mind like a crossword puzzle. Sometimes he gives you an easy clue and when you fill the answer in it doesn’t fit with the words that are there already. But in this case, even if he hadn’t said anything, anyone would have guessed that Dod Stark would be number one for this job.” She looked at Perry out of the corner of her eye and added, “That’s the sort of man I go for.”

  “Brute force and bloody ignorance.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, bimbo. OK, he clobbers people sometimes, West Indians chiefly, but only to teach them to keep in line.”

  “He oughtn’t to clobber anyone, at any time, for any reason at all.”

  “You’re saying that because you’re jealous.”

  “Certainly not. I try to keep my temper, that’s all. If I lost it, and lashed out, I’d be carpeted for sure by the superintendent.”

  “And we all know that for you the sun shines out of Petrella’s bottom.”

  Hoyland started to be indignant, but found himself guffawing. As soon as he could speak he said, “You really are a vulgar little girl.”

  “If you’d been brought up by my Dad you’d be vulgar.” Lee speared a fourth cake. “And I can tell you something else about your sanctified superintendent. He’s worrying Dad.”

  “Worrying him? What about?”

  “Seems when they were making arrangements for Friday he was the one who took the responsibility for issuing firearms.”

  “He isn’t afraid of responsibility.”

  “Didn’t say he was. But what Dad said was that if anyone was going to decide about that sort of thing, it should have been his boss at Area.”

  “Liversedge? He’d have taken a week to make up his mind and then said ‘perhaps’.”

  “You’re missing the point. Petrella didn’t have to take it on himself. I’d guess he only did it because he likes to be a big man.”

  “Unfair.”

  “OK. But if things go wrong and Stark and Pearson should happen to bump off a couple of black guys, he’ll be thrown to the wolves, no question.”

  “He’ll make them a tough meal,” said Perry. “Have another cake.”

  “Why not?” There was an interval of silence as she sank her sharp teeth into a slab of fruit cake. When she had cleared a path for speech, she said, “Your skipper is not the only one with troubles. Dad’s got a plateful of his own. First it was Lovell breathing down his neck about the Farm Boys. Now something seems to be blowing up about Lampier.”

  “Lampier,” said Perry. “Yes. Wasn’t he going out with you at one time?”

  Lee looked at him for a few seconds. Then she said, “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two. Why?”

  “When you say things like that, you sound as if you were twelve, maybe fourteen. ‘Going out’! For God’s sake! Why don’t you say what you mean? All right. I was hot for him. And we went the whole way, whenever we got a chance. Which wasn’t often. Especially when he took up with those bloody Farm Boys. After that I hardly saw him. Then he got jugged and I had to drop him altogether. If Dad had seen me within a hundred yards of him, he’d have blown his top.”

  After which unusually lengthy speech she refilled her mouth with cake.

  Perry, who had been thinking, said, “Do you remember a bod called Flower? Ernie Flower.”

  “Yes. Dad told me about Ernie. I had to sit in his office every evening to take calls from him.”

  Perry said, “And wasn’t there a theory that something you let slip—?”

  He wondered if Lee was going to throw the remaining cakes at him. She managed, with an effort, to control her feelings. She said, “Naturally, all my best friends told me about that. It was a filthy rumour and a fucking lie. And anyone who thinks that Dad believes it and that’s why he hasn’t let me help with whatever he’s up to with Lampier, can bloody well stuff it up his arse.”

  “Sorry I spoke. As a matter of fact I didn’t believe it. But tell me this. Have you got any idea what your Dad is up to? Is Lampier someone he’s sold to the Farm Boys to do the job Flower fell down on? Has he allowed him to be jugged and promised him a free pardon, when the curtain comes down and the band is playing ‘God Save the Queen’? Or has he really gone over to the opposition? For God’s sake, whose side is he on?”

  Speaking unusually seriously Lee said, “I don’t know. Honest I don’t. When Dad was running Flower he had quite a team. Lovell and his number two, Chief Superintendent Watterson, and his own number two, Charlie Kay. Now, I really believe he’s flying solo. The only hint he’s given is that he wants to know whenever Lampier changes his pad. He’s got some of his old north London squad looking after that. It’s a full-time job. He seems to move almost every week.”

  “Sounds as though he’s running scared.”

  Lee said, “If you were involved in any sort of play where my father was pulling the strings, you’d be scared.”

  Perry said, “Have another cake.”

  He hoped he wouldn’t forget what Lee had said, because he intended at the first opportunity to pass on a carefully edited version of it to Petrella. With Ambrose guarding the telephone it wasn’t all that easy for a junior detective constable to get alongside the superintendent. He was busy working out a plausible way of doing it, when he reached Maplin Road and the problem was solved for him.

  Ambrose said, “The top brass wants you.”

  “Then I’d better go right up.”

  “And get your skates on. He’s in a hurry.”

  Hoyland ran up the stairs, knocked on the door and went in without waiting for an answer.

  Petrella looked up and grunted when he saw Hoyland. He did not seem to be in an amiable frame of mind. He said, “Were you aware that we possess just one, useful, runabout car?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And are you also aware that no car can really be classed as useful when a vital part of its engine has been removed and no one knows where it is?”

  “I had the carburettor off to clean it, sir. I can put it back in a couple of minutes.”

  “I can allow you five. Not a minute more. I take it you can drive?”

  Hoyland, who had been messing about with cars since he was twelve and had started driving them at a highly illegal age, said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Then bring her round to the front. I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve put through one telephone call.”

  After making the call Petrella pocketed a key from the desk drawer and picked up the heavy lantern torch that lived on his desk. As soon as he was in the car, he started to rap out directions.

  “Down to the Mile End Road, along it to the second traffic lights, right into the A1205, down it till you reach the East India Docks Road, left there to the A1206. Turn right and once you’re across the Blackwater Basin slow down and wait for instructions.”

  This was fired at machine-gun speed. And it worried Hoyland. Not because the instructions caused him any sort of difficulty. Before he was transferred to the detective branch he had quartered that area, on foot and in patrol cars, and was exhaustively familiar with every street and turning in it. The directions he had been given were totally unnecessary. All that Petrella had to say was, ‘Cubitt Town by the quickest route.’ No, what worried him was something different.

  He knew that a certain type of senior officer would snap out a string of instructions at top speed in the hope that his subordinate would be forced to ask for a repeat; an opportunity for heavy sarcasm and a rocket for inattention. But he had not thought tha
t Petrella would indulge in such a performance. Which led to a further uncomfortable conclusion.

  It was rumoured that the super was running into trouble with his own superiors. Could it be—perish the thought!—that he was allowing it to get him down and was losing his cool?

  A quick sideways glance went some way to reassuring him. Petrella was smiling. He had noted that his driver, instead of following his careful instructions, had taken an alternative and quicker route. He had snapped out his orders at speed because he was half an hour behind schedule. One of Inspector Trench’s men had been keeping an eye on the three boys he was after and his last-minute telephone call had confirmed that they were, very probably, where he wanted them.

  The blood-stained history of the Packstone Building had been passed on by Arnold, under excruciating oaths of secrecy, to his two friends, and the place had become a natural meeting place for them, a perfect gang hide-out. But none of them would dare to stop there for one minute after dark, of that he was sure.

  “All right,” he said. “Hold it. And listen carefully. That turning you can see on the left is Packstone Passage. As soon as you get into it, cut the engine. It’s a gentle downhill slope. Halfway along, opposite that big building on the right, there’s an old loading bay. You should be able to get into it without having to restart the engine.”

  Hoyland nodded. He performed the manoeuvre easily and neatly. Petrella, speaking softly now, said, “You’ve got two jobs. The first is to see that no one steals the car. Something that’s very likely to happen in areas like this. The second, and more important, is to keep an eye on that air-shaft in the pavement. I think, and hope, that there are three boys in that building. They go in and out by the air-shaft. If I flush them they may try to get out that way. You won’t have much difficulty in stopping their bolt hole.”

  Hoyland nodded again and Petrella climbed out of the car, being careful to make no noise shutting the door, and crossed the road. He had the key of the front door ready. It was a big key and a heavy lock, but Trench’s man had greased it and it opened with no more than a soft click.

  The door gave onto three shallow steps leading up to a fair-sized lobby. Double doors on the left led to the main apartment, but the voices, which he could hear quite clearly now, came from somewhere higher up. There were doors in the corner on each side of the hall. Since his first visit he had been careful to keep clear of the building, but the owners had supplied him with a plan and he knew that both of the smaller doors opened onto staircases which led down to the cellars and up to the balcony which circled and overlooked the main apartment. He thought that the voices were slightly closer to the right-hand side, so he opened that door very softly and started upstairs, stepping like an experienced burglar on the edge of the treads to avoid creaking.

  The door at the head of the stairs was slightly ajar. He opened it a few inches further and peered through. The boys were there all right, squatting in a semi-circle with their backs to him. They were studying a piece of paper.

  “Let’s have it again, Arnie,” said Winston.

  There was more light up here in the balcony than downstairs, but Arnold had no need of it. He had read the document so often that he knew it by heart.

  “See, what it says is, the Sentinel offers a reward of twenty thousand pounds for information leading to the identification and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the death of Philip Poston-Pirrie.”

  There was a murmur of gratification. Even if they had to divide it, it would be—what?—near enough seven thousand pounds each.

  “Lovely,” said Delroy. “So what do we do to get it?”

  “What you do,” said Arnold, “is you listen to me.” The other two were considerably older than him and bigger, but there was no doubt he was the leader. “First thing is this. Last Saturday the coppers were round your place, talking to Barry’s mum. Right?”

  “That’s right. Only it wasn’t his mum they wanted to see. It was Barry. Which they couldn’t do, because she wouldn’t let them.”

  “Right. Next point. Yesterday was the first time Barry’s been to the Athletic for a week—”

  “Nearly two,” said Winston.

  “Hasn’t been there,” said Delroy, “not since the night that reporter was round wanting us to tell him stories about the police—”

  “We might have done,” said Winston, “if he’d been going to shell out. What we didn’t see was why we should do it for nothing.”

  Arnold had allowed this brief interruption. Now he brought them back sharply to business. “You haven’t forgotten, I suppose, that even if no one else would, Barry did talk to him. For half an hour, wasn’t it? All alone with him. And when he’d finished, the reporter didn’t seem interested any more in the rest of us. He just buggered off. Like as if something Barry had told him had put him in mind of someone he ought to go and see—”

  Delroy and Winston nodded their heads. They could follow Arnold’s train of thought, and the golden conclusion it led to.

  “What you’re saying,” said Delroy slowly, “is, if we knew what Barry told that reporter, we’d know who it was he pushed off to see—”

  “And since he disappeared that night,” said Winston, “the man he went to see must likely have been the one who pushed him into the river. It’s a snip.”

  “It might be a snip,” said Arnold coldly, “if we could find out from Barry what he said to the reporter.”

  “Couldn’t we make him tell us?”

  Delroy’s mind was running on pocket knives and matches. Steel and fire. Arnold, whose mind had been following the same track, said, “Wouldn’t work. First, because if you did anything like that you’d have his mum after you.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” agreed Winston hastily.

  “Second, because we’d have to catch him alone and take him away somewhere to work him over and that’s not on, neither. Didn’t you see when he come up yesterday evening one of his crowd – cousin, maybe, something like that – a big buck? He’d been sent with him, I’d guess, to look after him.”

  “The one who was talking to Bert Branch.”

  “That’s the one. Best part of an hour. While Barry was trying to get someone to take some notice of him. They went away together.”

  “What we might do,” said Winston, “next time he comes. Get him up the other end of the room. Game of shove-halfpenny or dominoes. Something like that. He’d come all right.”

  “Glad to find he’d got three friends left,” agreed Delroy with a smirk.

  “OK,” said Arnold. “OK. But when we get him there, how do we make him talk if he doesn’t want to?”

  “Offer to cut him in on the reward,” suggested Petrella.

  He had never seen three boys move quicker. One moment they were squatting on the floor. The next they had jumped for the far door and hurled themselves down the stairs, Arnold leading. He heard the clatter of their footsteps as they went. They were making for the cellar, he guessed, where they would find the open end of the air-vent, at the top of which they would find Detective Constable Hoyland.

  So no call for hurry. He followed them at a leisurely pace.

  When he reached the cellar Winston was waiting his turn at the air-vent. Delroy was halfway up it and from above him he could hear Arnold, who seemed to have run into trouble.

  First, he shut the door at the foot of the stairs, in case the boys tried to double back. Then he grabbed Delroy by the ankles and pulled him back into the cellar, after which Arnold acknowledged defeat and came down.

  Petrella unhitched the lantern torch from his belt, switched it on and placed it on an up-ended crate. Then he turned a second crate on its side and used it as a seat for himself. The three boys watched him apprehensively. He let the silence hold. It was a curious little torch-lit tableau.

  Stick first, then carrot, thought Petrella.

  He said, “I suppose you know that you’re trespassing.”

  This didn’t seem to worry them. Trespass was
not something that featured high in their list of sins.

  “You’re infringing the rights of two lots of people. First, there’s a firm of accountants who have appointed a receiver.”

  “Receiver?” said Arnold.

  “Not the sort of receiver you’re thinking about. It’s a legal term.”

  He noted that the boys were now quite easy. Lawyers and accountants were unfrightening.

  “Then there’s a second set of people. They haven’t exactly got any legal rights, but they probably feel, by now, that they’ve got some sort of rights.” He paused. “I’m talking about the Farm Boys.”

  This went home, right to the heart.

  “I don’t think they’d be too pleased if they knew that you’d been making free with this particular building. And I’m certain”—he turned the light of the torch so that it fell directly on Arnold’s twitching face—“that they wouldn’t be at all pleased if they knew that you had been a witness at one of their so-called trials. Well?”

  But Arnold was almost beyond speech. He said what sounded like ‘I diddun—’ and then could get no more words out.

  “I’ll tell you how I stand in the matter. I don’t particularly want to see you tied up in a sack, with your hands chopped off, and dropped in the river. Which I imagine is what would happen if I gave them a hint.”

  He thought for a moment that he had gone too far and that the boy was either going to faint or be sick. He managed with an effort to say something that sounded like, ‘You wouldn’t do that.’

  “I wouldn’t. On one condition. That you are prepared to help us.”

  “Oh, I am. We all are.” Three heads jerked up and down. Certainly they would help. No doubt about it at all.

  “Then I’ll tell you what you can do. It’s not difficult. Mention the reward to Barry. He probably knows about it anyway. Then tell him that if he’s prepared to let you know just exactly what he said to that reporter, you’ll be able to fix things so that he’s in line – with you – for a share of the twenty thousand pounds.”