Gideon Combats Influence

by John Creasey

  “Well, yes, I’ll be glad to! Can’t say my money will be on Black Eye, but if you think it’s a good thing I might change my mind.”

  “Come into my office and have a look at the form,” suggested Soames, and led the way. Kingsley felt dazed and bewildered as he followed, more bewildered when Soames poured out a whisky and soda and raised his glass. “Cheers.” They drank. “Kingsley, I hope you won’t mind my being frank,” Soames went on, and immediately Kingsley’s alarm returned, and he went tense, “but you’re a bit short of cash, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but it won’t last,” Kingsley made himself say. “I’m in line for promotion any time now, and that will be worth at least another five hundred a year. That would put me in funds. I assure you that I won’t leave my account standing too long.”

  “I could put you in the way of an extra hundred a month, no questions asked, no tax, no worries,” Soames said easily.

  “It sounds too good to be true!” Kingsley felt a flare of excitement which echoed in his voice.

  “It’s true all right,” Soames assured him. “It’s simply a matter of taking a slight risk. It mustn’t be done too often—-just a killing now and again, and my principals will find it well worth that hundred a month. It’s simply a question of slipping a little stuff into the right place—anyone who’s trusted can do it, and you’ve got a first-class reputation.”

  “You mean—doping a horse?”

  “Just pepping it up a bit, or unpepping it,” Soames said, and gave his most pleasant smile. He had the look of the glamorised young Nazi: the same upright back, the same flat head, the same spare body and square shoulders, and he always seemed to be at attention. “Everything will be arranged, and you’ll be told what horse to fix in good time. You’ll be given the dope in liquid form and all you have to do is get it into the water the horse drinks. There’s not a chance in a thousand of being caught, provided it isn’t done too often.”

  Kingsley moistened his lips.

  “How—how often?”

  “Oh—two or three times a year,” said Soames. He went to his beautifully-figured walnut desk, took out a loose-leaf book, turned the pages deliberately, and then came to one which Kingsley saw was headed with his name. “I see you’ve chalked up sixty-four pounds ten,” Soames went on. “To show that I’m serious, I’ll mark this; paid, and advance you the first month’s allowance. You have only to say the word.”

  He opened a drawer and took out a bundle of new one-pound notes, fresh and crisp, and held together with a brown paper band. He ran his thumb over the edge of these and they made a whirring sound, like a pack of cards being bent back and then allowed to flip forward. He put the bundle on the desk, smiled up, and said: “How does it sound?”

  “Supposing—supposing I don’t manage to do it?” Kingsley said huskily.

  “You’ll find a way,” Soames declared confidently. “You’ll find the principals very understanding and helpful, too. It’s simply a matter of co-operation. If there’s a big win, you’ll get a cut in it. Shall I cross off this account?”

  Kingsley said: “Yes. Yes, please. I’ll do the best I can.”

  The smell of the horses, the air of excitement, the sight of the jockeys and the trainers, the smell of leather, all of these things were like a drug to Kingsley, and that morning he felt a fierce excitement to go with it; and nervousness, too. He had been told how best to put the tiny soluble capsule of liquid into a pail of water; had practised on his own, and was quite sure that he could get away with it. No one seemed in the slightest degree suspicious, but when he actually let the capsule fall in he felt a moment of panic, and had to force himself to stand still. There were three people within sight, but none of them took the slightest notice of him, and the capsule disappeared beneath the surface at once. He moved away. An hour later, he stood in the enclosure, glasses at his eyes, watching the bunch of horses tearing round Tattenham Corner to the straight. The excitement of the crowd, the roaring, the sun shining on the motley, were all almost non-existent: he had doped a 25 to 1 outsider, and had been told that with the dope it could not fail to win. It was Disc, with a young apprentice up, and no one really gave it a chance. He saw the colours, green, red and white hoops, in the middle of the bunch; five horses were all very close together. Then he saw Disc begin to surge forward, saw the apprentice make for a gap in the rails, heard the sudden hush as the crowd watched the favourite being overhauled. Teeth gritting, hands clenched, fingers like steel bands round the glasses, Kingsley saw Disc sweep past and pass the post two lengths ahead of the field.

  And he had put twenty-five pounds on it; twenty-five pounds at 25 to 1. He had made a fortune!

  Mixing with the thousands on the heath were Surrey C.I.D. men as well as some special squads from Scotland Yard, all on the look-out for pickpockets and con-men. The sun was warm, men carried their coats and jackets, women in light cotton dresses had their handbags hanging over their arms. Grey topper was next to cloth cap, the latest Dior next to a dress from Marks and Spencer. Sunshine reflected from the thousands of cars, making a sprawling rainbow of colour – and sunshine reflected from the glasses of a man who was making his way towards the motor-cycle park on the Downs. He was looking towards the ground all the time, and in spite of the heat he wore a raincoat and a trilby hat pulled rather low over his eyes. Now and again he glanced up and round, as if afraid that he was being followed, but no one appeared to take any particular notice of him.

  At that moment, no one was.

  His name was Carslake, and two weeks ago he had murdered a man named Robson, because he was in love with Robson’s wife. Until yesterday he had thought there was a chance of getting away with it, but the morning’s papers had been full of the discovery of the body, and his own photograph had been in several of them, with the ominous words: ‘Hector Carslake, whom the police think may be able to help in inquiries.’ He did not know what to do. He had only a little money, and doubted whether he could get out of the country, for he had never had a passport. His chief hope was that he could get to Ireland; he had a feeling that a stretch of water would help to make him safe.

  He had come here partly because he spent most of his free time at the races or studying form, and he had lost two pounds on the first four races, when hoping desperately to make enough to last him for several weeks.

  He was a biggish man, slightly splay-footed.

  He pushed between the rows of motor-cycles and motor-scooters, looking for an old one which would not be conspicuous, and which he could wheel away easily and so get a good start. He believed that there were so many people on the Downs that he would get away; there was safety in numbers, he kept telling himself; it was easy to get lost in a crowd.

  He spotted an old Norton, with the paint badly scratched and the rubber of the pedals worn smooth. He stopped by it. No one was near. He held the handlebars and released the stand, then wheeled the heavy machine into the path where he could ride it. He stared down at the ground all the time, not daring to look up in case a carpark attendant or one of the policemen saw him, and came to make sure that it was his machine. Now that he was on the point of riding away, he was near panic.

  Some way off, a detective sergeant from one of the South London Divisions glanced towards the motor-cycle park, when the sun glinted on a man’s glasses, a hundred yards or so away. The sergeant, named Miles, was feeling very hot in his brown serge suit, although he wore no waistcoat, and part of the time he carried his hat because his head became sticky with sweat. Yet over there was a man wearing a trilby pulled low over his forehead, the only man in sight wearing a raincoat, and who stared fixedly at the ground.

  Miles, wise in police work, strolled casually towards the spot where the motor-cyclist would come on his way out. He made no sign that he was interested, and took off his hat and wiped his forehead of sweat. He actually turned his back on the motor-cycle as it started up,
but swung round when it was close to him.

  The driver was staring at him.

  “That’s Carslake!” Miles exclaimed aloud, and was so astonished that he lost a moment, and so threw away the advantage of full surprise. For a moment the man on the machine and the man on foot stared at each other.

  Miles moved forward. “Just a minute!”

  Carslake opened the throttle with a jerky movement, and the motor-cycle leapt forward. There was hardly room for it to pass between Miles and the hedge. The engine roared. Miles knew that if he flung himself at the man and machine he might be seriously injured; Carslake knew that if he were caught here he would not have a chance. He wanted to strike out, he wanted to kill, he wanted to run this man down. He turned the wheel of the motor-cycle towards the man – at the precise moment that Miles pulled a whistle from his pocket, blew on it, and then jumped forward. He made a sweeping blow with his right arm, trying to fend off the motorcycle with his left. There was a split second when Miles, Carslake and the machine seemed to merge into a strange, futuristic, writhing shape; and then the motor-cycle toppled over. Carslake went with it, tried to get clear but felt the weight of it crush his left leg; he screamed with pain and felt something snap. Miles moved back, left hand cut on the mudguard of the machine, but otherwise unhurt. Men were running, two of them in police uniform, and he knew that there was no risk at all that Carslake would escape.

  Then he realised that the man was badly injured, and he went forward to help him.

  At half past four that afternoon, Gideon’s telephone bell rang, and he stopped pushing the lawnmower over the little patch of grass at the front of his house, drew his white shirt sleeve across his forehead, and went indoors. Kate was out shopping in Fulham Market; all the family were out, too. The bell kept ringing, and for once he almost resented it. He had lost himself in the gardening, but this interruption brought Borgman and the clash with Rogerson back vividly.

  “All right, all right,” he said testily, and snatched up the receiver. “Gideon.”

  “Hallo, George,” said a man in a cheerful Cockney voice. “Didn’t spoil your forty winks, I hope. Gotta bitta good for you.”

  “Time you had, Lem,” Gideon said, and immediately felt better. “What is it? Borgman confessed?”

  “That’ll be the day. No, we’ve got Carslake. He’s admitted that he killed Robson, and says that the woman knew nothing about it. We could pull her in, or we could leave her. What do you think we ought to do?”

  “Leave it to Hoppy,’’ Gideon said promptly. “No point in throwing our weight about with him. Anything else in?”

  “I went down two quid on a dead cert at Epsom,” the other man, Lemaitre, said. He had once been Gideon’s chief aide, but recently had been moved from night duty to a kind of roving commission, and was in charge at the Yard during weekends. “A 25 to 1 outsider romped home. Some people have all the luck. Tell you why I really called, though.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s that stolen car report. Info’s finished it and it’s on your desk. Like to have it at home for the weekend?”

  “Yes. Anything in about the killer motorist?”

  “I’ve been studying the reports from the people who’ve been questioned,” Lemaitre said. “Seven think they saw him, and he looked different to each one. We’re going to be lucky! Tell you what, though. I’ve seen the lab report on the cotton from that splinter of glass. Egyptian cotton, almost certainly made in Japan, and they’re selling for three-and-elevenpence in every cheap store in the country. Blood group A. The lab’s got a couple of pairs, and they’re trying to find out if the strand came out of a finger, a thumb, or the main part of the glove.”

  “Good,” said Gideon. “That the lot?”

  “No.”

  “Remember this is my afternoon off,” Gideon said, and hooked a chair near with his foot and sat down.

  “That’s why I hesitated to call you, Commander,” said Lemaitre, in a tone of highly concentrated sarcasm. “But there was one little thing I thought you’d like to know about, apart from all the jobs you left over for me to do while you were snoozing. The autopsy report’s in from the Berkshire boys on the Borgman corpus.”

  Gideon caught his breath, and it was nearly half a minute before he said: “What is it?”

  “Enough morphine to have killed a dozen people,” Lemaitre answered. “Good thing the autopsy wasn’t called off.”

  Chapter Nine

  Grounds for a Charge

  “It was a bloody silly thing to do, George,” Rogerson said, “and it’s no use telling me that you forgot; elephants don’t. But after this I suppose you’ll get your own way.” He pushed the pathologist’s report aside, and gave Gideon a quick grin. “One in the eye for the Home Office, too. Think anyone’s got the story about the exhumation?”

  “It’s not in any of the papers,” Gideon said. “It was a sleepy little village, remember, and they did it at night. No one picked the thing up for the Press so far. Borgman’s still in Paris.”

  “Alone?”

  Gideon said: “His secretary, the girl named Clare Selby, isn’t at home this weekend. Mrs Borgman is.”

  “You may be more right than you know,” conceded Rogerson, and looked very thoughtful. “George, you made me feel a heel over the exhumation.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Well, what do you think we ought to do?”

  Gideon said: “I’ve sent Freddy Lee and Carmichael to Borgman’s offices, and they’ll be started by now. Borgman isn’t due back until tomorrow, although his secretary is on her way back now—he takes the trouble to try not to make the affaire too obvious. What I would do is to let the news of the exhumation leak into the papers tomorrow, so that it will greet Borgman when he gets back—- wouldn’t be a bad idea to try to get some newspapermen to meet him off the plane, and ask him if he’s got any comment to make. When he gets to his office, our chaps will be there. He’ll be looking over his shoulder all the time, and wondering what they’re really doing—wondering whether we were ever really interested in what Samuel did, or whether we’re just after him. Meanwhile, Fred Lee can dig all day about this Clare Selby girl, and anything else on Borgman. I’ve had a good look at the first reports on Borgman’s present wife,” Gideon went on. “He used to take her everywhere, but these days he usually travels by himself. She’s worth nearly a hundred thousand pounds, too.”

  “Borgman must be worth a million.”

  “That doesn’t mean that he’s got a million of ready money,” Gideon said, dryly. “Anyway, I’ll get everything checked—and then I think we ought to leave Borgman for a couple of days, perhaps the better part of a week, but have him followed wherever he goes.”

  “We’ll try it, anyhow,” Rogerson said. “I’ll put the case up to the Old Man, and leave it to him. But after this report I don’t see how anyone could advise us not to charge him, even if we don’t find Nurse Kennett. George, you look five years younger.”

  Gideon smiled soberly.

  “I want Borgman,” he said simply. “When that man’s off my shoulder, I’ll feel better.” In his mind’s eye he seemed to see an image of the nurse who had disappeared. “Got time for the rest of the weekend stuff?”

  “I’ve twenty minutes.”

  “It’ll do. First there’s Carslake …” Gideon talked with his usual deliberation, making full use of every word, drawing a graphic picture of the weekend’s crime, including developments in the cases which had been held over the previous week. After ten minutes, he said: “There are only two left that matter. Red and Syd Carter are coming up for the second hearing on Friday. I think there’s plenty of evidence, and we ought to apply for committal for trial. No point in wasting time, and we could do with a headline or two.”

  “Go ahead,” Rogerson agreed.

  “Ta. Then there’s the car th
efts,” Gideon went on, and began to drum his fingers on Rogerson’s large desk. “There were five from Epsom on Saturday, and seventeen in all from football crowds, seven from greyhound tracks at night, and four from cinemas.”

  “This isn’t a crime, this is an industry.”

  “That’s what’s worrying me,” Gideon said. “If anything ever gets under my skin, it’s when we come across a job which has been going on for months, maybe for years, under our noses. I spent most of Sunday studying the figures—and there are nearly five hundred cars on the stolen list, covering the four-week period. Only two hundred have been recovered, and they were nearly all stripped of accessories, tyres, the usual. That leaves three hundred unaccounted for. Most mid-week thefts come from the West End, most weekend jobs from the suburbs. Let’s say that thirty or forty were just the usual fly-by-night jobs, and we’ve got die three hundred stolen cars vanishing without a trace in a month. They’re being painted all right, so there’s your industry. There must be a dozen garages, perhaps more, working on the job.”

  Rogerson looked as if he were trying to absorb the full significance of all this.

  “And some of those garages must be run by the same group,” Gideon argued. “I can see three or four unconnected garages handling stolen cars, but a dozen or more—there’s a tie-up all right. A lot of them are probably under the same management.”

  “A chain of garages,” Rogerson said heavily.

  “That’s right,” agreed Gideon. “So I’m having Todd check on all groups with six garages or more—better not start too high, and two small chains might be working together—and he should have a report in a couple of days. There’s one other thing I’d like to do, though, if we can spare the men.”

  “Don’t know that I like the sound of that,” Rogerson said. “What is it?”

  Gideon took a small plastic envelope from his pocket and laid it down in front of the Assistant Commissioner. Inside were several strands of grey cotton, and on all the strands little dark brown stains. A label stapled to the envelope read: ‘Cotton strands presumably from glove found on glass splinter in Saige Street, Soho—18.8.19—’