Gideon Combats Influence

by John Creasey

  “The killer car job?”

  “Yes. The lab’s examined half a dozen pairs of gloves made of the same material—I told you they were Japanese—and they say these strands came from the thumb,” said Gideon. “They’ve got some photo enlargements, showing the curvature of the fabric, how it’s stretched, and—”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Thanks. If the driver who wore these went to a garage, one of the first things he would do is to take off the glove and have the cut seen to,” Gideon said. “If it were badly blood-stained, he might throw the glove away. The lab says that these strands are soaked in one spot and there must have been considerable bleeding.”

  “So you want to have all garages visited.”

  Gideon nodded.

  “Why ask me?” inquired Rogerson. “You don’t often show such consideration, George.”

  “Got to get back into your good books somehow!”

  “Right.” Rogerson also stood up and walked with him to the door. “Not a bad week, all-in-all. The Carters committed for trial, Borgman right under the microscope, Carslake in the bag, Baldy Lock, too—keep it up!”

  Gideon said: “Make sure the Old Man doesn’t let the politicians talk him out of Borgman, won’t you?”

  “They can’t, now,” Rogerson said confidently. “But there is one thing, George—I’m not sure you’re wise to have him watched wherever he goes.”

  Gideon stood solid and massive by the door, fingers on the handle, too experienced a man to reject that comment out of hand, and ready to hear why Rogerson had made it. He himself felt reasonably satisfied with the way things were going, but there was that strangely personal feeling about Borgman, the desire to get the man at all costs; and he knew that it was possible that it disturbed his judgment.

  “Not often you don’t jump to it,” Rogerson said, and spread his hands. “I may be wrong, but if you’re having the offices covered, if you let news of the exhumation get out, if you have him questioned at the airport when he gets back tomorrow, then aren’t you taking a risk that he’ll try to get out of the country? We’ve a good case for home consumption, but I wouldn’t like to say we could get extradition on it.”

  Gideon said heavily: “I didn’t even think of that.”

  “You would have.”

  “Too late, probably,” Gideon said. “I’ll take the men off him anyhow, and I won’t push Fleet Street. But because we don’t want them to do a thing, they’ll probably do it. I hope that girl won’t warn him.”

  “The blonde?”

  “Yes,” said Gideon, and shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t really see Borgman staying out of the country until it all blows over, though. If he stayed away he would be making a kind of confession. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

  ‘Unless,’ thought Gideon, uneasily, as he walked along the wide, bare passage to his own office, ‘I’ve scared him too much already.’ There was just a possibility. He pictured Borgman sitting in his, Gideon’s, office, the film of sweat at his forehead and his upper lip. He reminded himself that Borgman was both clever and thorough, and that he had agencies and branches in many parts of the world; and funds, too. And there had been that striking change in his manner. If the obsession had made him spring the trap too soon, Gideon thought gloomily, he had only himself to blame. The Home Office was probably already sore about the exhumation, and would want cast-iron proof of Borgman’s guilt before they tried to get him from abroad. Only Nurse Kennett seemed to offer that. Where the hell was she? Inquiries about her had been made in all Commonwealth countries, and many others, and there was still no news at all.

  Was Rogerson simply being bloody-minded? Was there really any likelihood that Borgman would stay out of the country? Wasn’t Rogerson’s reasoning a kind of justification for his earlier attitude?

  Bell was in the office, on the telephone. He rang off as Gideon sat down, glanced up, and said: “Rogerson still a bit sore?”

  “No,” said Gideon. “No. That blonde of Borgman’s back yet?”

  “Arrived at London airport half an hour ago.”

  “Something,” said Gideon. He sat back in his chair, knowing that Bell was puzzled, and then lifted the internal telephone and said: “Ask Mr Appleby to come in.” He waited, and Bell’s telephone went again: this was one of the mornings when everything was non-stop. Bell took a message, made notes, and rang off, and the door opened and Appleby arrived.

  “Jim, your French is better than anyone’s here,” said Gideon. “Call one of your Paris pals, will you—LeClerc if you can get him—and ask him to have a quick check on Borgman. Borgman’s at the Vido Hotel. Find out if he’s been to his bank, or if there’s any indication that he might have been planning a long flight.”

  “Gawd!” Appleby breathed. “Okay, I’ll fix it.”

  Word came in, twenty minutes later, that Borgman’s movements were quite unsuspicious. All the weekend a blonde young woman had occupied a room on the same floor as Borgman’s at the Vido, which was near the Champs Elysées, and Borgman had had several meals in his room; obviously he was being as discreet as ever. Gideon felt easier in his mind, laid on the calls on all garages in the search for the Japanese cotton glove, checked through more reports, and sent for sandwiches from the canteen. Bell went out to lunch, and Gideon was there alone when the door opened and Fred Lee came in.

  “Hallo,” Gideon greeted. “Didn’t expect you yet. Any trouble?”

  “Wouldn’t say it’s trouble,” Lee said, and obviously he was feeling quite pleased with himself. “I haven’t been able to dig very deep yet, but Samuel was small time. I doubt if the total defalcations are more than three thousand pounds over the whole period he was at the job. Everything else is in apple-pie order—I should be surprised if you could find anything that would help to fix Borgman from the accounts. They’ve a good chief accountant, even if he was fooled by Samuel.”

  “And you don’t think that’s trouble,” Gideon remarked.

  “Not really, George.” Lee sat on a corner of Gideon’s desk, hugging his knees, and there was a little colour in his cheeks, a glint in his eye which told Gideon that he was feeling more himself – and if Lee thought that he had discovered something to help put Borgman away, it really would be a tonic. “Borgman has a slap-up office, panelled walls, desk to match, Old Masters—the millionaire’s dream. The desk’s full of trick drawers, sliding panels, you-know-what.”

  Gideon went very still.

  “Lucky thing I had Carmichael with me,” Lee went on serenely. “Good chap, Carmy. As Borgman and the blonde were away, I got him to take that desk apart. In one of the secret compartments were some powdered morphine and a morphine solution, as well as a hypodermic syringe.”

  Gideon thumped his desk with a great surge of excitement.

  “Then we’ve got him!”

  “Can’t imagine he’ll ever get away with this,” Lee agreed smugly. “Got a little problem though, George. Can’t let anyone think we’d do such a thing as that without a search warrant, can we?”

  “I’ll get a warrant for tomorrow morning, and search the desk while Borgman’s there,” Gideon said. “This is one time when I can’t wait.”

  Reggie Cole was telling himself that he couldn’t wait for the next job; any tiling which earned him fifty pounds as easily as that was something to pray for. After the first few minutes, he had not really been scared; and he had not had one moment’s compunction, no feeling of shame or guilt. Any job which won him the kind of reward he wanted from Ethel was worth ten times as great a risk, anyhow. He was happier than he had ever been driving his delivery van, and he called – as usual – at the garage where he had first met Ethel, to get the tank filled up and the oil checked. He always hoped that he might see Ethel there again, and on one occasion he had.

  Ethel wasn’t there this morning.

 
There seemed to be trouble of some kind. Two men were inside the littered office, talking to Bennett, the manager, a square-shouldered, stocky man whom he did not greatly like. A youth came up to serve Reggie, and he asked: “What’s on?”

  “Cops,” the youth said laconically.

  Reggie’s heart began to thump. “What’s it about?”

  “They’re looking for a glove.”

  “For a what?”

  “A glove,” the boy repeated, “and Bennett told them they were wasting their time, but he didn’t like it when they said they was going to look. Funny, if you ask me.”

  “Yeh,” Reggie agreed. “Five gallons and check the levels.” He went towards the door of the showroom, seeing the two men moving about the small office and Bennett watching them, scowling. He saw them pick up the wicker wastepaper basket and place it on the desk, then begin to remove all the oddments from it. Then he saw one of the men jerk his head up, and say: “Look.”

  He was holding something that looked like a rag. Reggie got closer, and saw the man holding it up by one finger: it was a grey glove, obviously very dirty. Then he picked out another. The man handled them with great care, put them into a cellophane bag, and then sealed the bag while the other man said to Bennett: “Whose gloves are these?”

  “How should I know?” Bennett demanded.

  “It’s your office, isn’t it?”

  “I get a lot of visitors.”

  “Don’t be funny, Bennett. Whose gloves are they?”

  “I tell you I dunno,” Bennett insisted. “I tell you I’ve never seen them before. They aren’t my gloves, I never wear them.” He spread out his stubby hands, with the flat, bitten nails, ingrained with black oil; revolting. “I’m not here all the time, either; they might have been put there at night, or when I was out on a job.”

  The detective turned round, and called: “Here, you, boy.” The youngster who was holding the nozzle of the petrol hose in the van’s filler jumped so much that a little petrol spilled out.

  “Careful!” shouted Bennett. He came over to the van and Reggie saw that he was looking at him intently, but could not understand why. “I’ll finish that,” Bennett said to the boy; “the gentlemen want to talk to you.” He took the hose while the boy moved towards the two detectives, stared at the ground and said: “Listen, Cole, there’s a quick quid for you if you deliver a message for me pronto.”

  “Where to?”

  “Butterby’s Garage, Fulham Road. Tell the manager that Larkin is for it, the cops are after him. Got that?”

  “Larkin is for it,” Reggie echoed.

  “Make it slippy,” Bennett urged, and the automatic pump stopped and he took the nozzle out. “Never mind paying me, pay yourself; that’ll be nearer two quid.”

  “I’ll go right away,” Reggie promised. He gave the detectives a last curious glance, nervously excited, and then drove off, clashing his gears a little when he was turning into the High Street. Fulham Road was only a ten-minute drive away, and he knew Butterby’s Garage, although he seldom called there. He pulled up as a tall, lanky man came sauntering towards him.

  “You the manager?” Reggie asked.

  “Supposing I am.”

  “I’ve got a message from Mr Bennett,” Reggie said, and saw the other’s eyes narrow, as if this wasn’t good news. “He says that the cops are after Larkin.”

  “Larkin?” the lanky man exclaimed.

  “That’s what Mr Bennett said.”

  “Okay, okay,” said the manager, and turned towards the big repair shop, with its collection of tools, old tyres, machines, oil and old rags. One man was in the oil well, beneath a tiny Austin; another was whistling as he turned a lathe and made sparks fly from a wheel nut. “Just keep your mouth shut,” the manager called to Reggie, “and you won’t regret it. It could be worth more to you than the job last night.”

  Reggie was a mile down the road before he realised that the manager, a complete stranger, knew about the job of the previous night.

  The sense of power that the wheel of a car always gave him was much stronger. He passed two cars and cut in each time, then saw a policeman stare at him. He slowed down; it would be crazy to run into trouble because of speeding. From that moment onwards, he was a little uneasy. He wondered who the man Larkin was, and wondered when he would be able to call at Bennett’s Garage again to find out what had happened.

  The man Larkin was lying back in an easy chair, his injured right hand bandaged and the thumb looking massive, and listening to radio music from a set; tuned low. He was alone in a small house which overlooked a big biscuit factory, with two tall chimneys, one billowing dark smoke. The noise of machinery came clearly across the road, merging with the swing from the radio. Larkin was humming to himself, and his eyes were closed.

  The music and the clattering noise drowned the sounds inside the little house. Yet there were sounds. Larkin was oblivious of them until there was a noise at the door, and he opened his eyes and stared at the handle. It was turning. He pushed the radio aside and jumped up from the chair as the door opened.

  A small man appeared.

  “Cor blimey, Charley, want to frighten me to death?” Larkin demanded. “I never heard you come up the stairs.”

  “You wouldn’t hear if someone was to blow a copper’s whistle under your sniffer,” the newcomer sneered. “Looked out in the street lately?”

  “Whatjer mean?”

  “Go and see,” advised the small man. “Keep to the side, you clot, you don’t want them to see you.” He watched Larkin turn and go towards the window, keeping well to one side, and he followed. He took his right hand from beneath his coat as he drew nearer Larkin’s back, and he said: “See?”

  Larkin was trying to squint down into the street.

  “No, I can’t see anything. Charley, what—”

  Some sixth sense seemed to warn him of danger. He turned his head, and saw a spanner smashing down towards him. He thrust up a hand and squealed with pain. The spanner had smacked on the side of his head enough to knock him to one side, but the unflung arm took part of the blow. Staggering, he tried to shout but could not, and there was frothy saliva at the corners of his mouth.

  “Don’t—don’t—don’t—” he tried to say.

  The small man pushed his hands aside and struck three times again.

  Borgman was alone, at about that time.

  The day before, at that hour, Clare had been with him, Clare who looked so cool, almost cold, and yet could reach the heights of physical passion, could even exhaust him. Yesterday. It was a strange fact that until she had left for the airport he had not felt the true weight of fear. With her, he had felt a kind of sanctuary, as if she were part of a new, safe world. Soon after she had gone, everything that had been said at Scotland Yard flooded his mind; as if Clare had held the sluice gates of fear together, and her going had opened them. He had known for a long time that he wanted more than a liaison, but it was only now that he began to realise how desperately he needed her.

  He was sitting outside the Hotel de Paris, in the warm afternoon sunshine, surrounded by American and English tourists, by Germans and Italians, and here and there a Frenchman. He had a Dubonnet in front of him, and four cigarette stubs were squashed out in his ash-tray. He was lighting a fifth cigarette when the waiter came up, took away the dirty ash-tray and left a clean one. Borgman hardly noticed that. He was staring at two men who were walking along the pavement with slow, ponderous tread, like the tread of the English policeman. He had seen half a dozen men of this stamp and build at Scotland Yard. He watched them while trying to pretend that he had not noticed them. He felt fear pounding away inside him. Were they coming to see him? Could they really know –

  He wiped his forehead.

  The men passed, without even glancing at him, and he heard one of them speak in a guttur
al voice which was certainly not English. He wiped his forehead again, sipped his drink, and paid his check. Then he stepped out beneath the shade of the trees, one of the thousands walking towards the Madeleine. He could sit still no longer; he could not think clearly, could only keep telling himself that Gideon was a pompous fool. There could not have been any real knowledge, not even suspicions, in the Yard man’s mind when he had talked about murderers being punished, about old crimes catching up with a man.

  Borgman knew one thing that he had not known on Friday; his first wife was not really driven from his mind. He had not thought seriously about her, certainly not thought about the mechanics of murdering her, for a long time. Not since Jane Kennett had gone off as if satisfied with her thousand pounds, but swearing that she would always love him.

  He had heard from her a year later, saying she was in Australia, married to a doctor, or living with one, it didn’t much matter.

  She was the only person living who knew that he had murdered Leah.

  He had approached the idea of murdering Charlotte as if Leah’s murder had been one he had read about, not actually committed. But the visit to Gideon and the Yard had brought his first wife vividly to life.

  She had never realised that he had caused the accident; she had been so pathetically glad to see him, had told him exactly what had happened, had rejoiced in his failure to kill her off. He remembered the doctor saying that she might have a sudden relapse, it wouldn’t surprise him; he remembered asking Jane Kennett to get the morphia from the dispensary – and how she had. Now he could only think of Gideon and his innuendo which might mean nothing at all, and might mean that the police were after him for the five-year-old crime, and he kept wondering where Jane was. If the police ever found and questioned her, what would she do?

  He could no longer even contemplate Charlotte’s murder, yet he was in desperate need of Clare.