by John Creasey
God dammit, it wasn’t possible that the police …
Wasn’t it? he kept asking himself tensely. Was he trying to fool himself – the man who boasted that no one could fool him? Would any man in authority at Scotland Yard talk as Gideon had for the sake of it? What should he do if the police were trying to build up a charge?
Ought he to consult his lawyers? Wouldn’t it be better if they could brief him now, advising him exactly what to do and say if the police did act? Should he tell them about Jane Kennett, and ask for their legal guidance?
Could he blame Jane, if the police did suspect?
He reached the Madeleine, stood at the foot of the wide stone steps topped by the great columns, then went up them slowly, and into the shadowy depths of the church; but he found no peace, because he could not make up his mind what he ought to do.
Reggie Cole’s mother could not make up her mind what to do, either.
She knew that something was badly wrong with her son, though she had no idea what, and whenever she broached the subject he would get up and go out, or turn on the television loudly, or tell her that it was none of her business, that he was backing the winners. He was often out later at night than ever before, too, he was completely unpredictable, and he no longer pretended that he was going to see a film.
It was now half past five, and he would be home at any time. Almost at that moment she heard him at the front door, and was in the kitchen when he entered the passage. He moved softly, as if anxious that she should not know that he was there; he often did that these days. He had come to put on his best suit, of course; he dressed up most evenings. She heard him creep along to his small room and, a few minutes later, heard the bathroom door click to.
Mrs Cole slipped out of the kitchen and went into Reggie’s room. His working clothes were hanging over a chair, the trousers in a heap, but she ignored the familiar untidiness and picked up his coat. His wallet wasn’t in it. She looked round, and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror; she was a small, thin-featured woman, rather flat-breasted, and – with a harassed expression; and just now she was more harassed than ever. She felt under the pillow of Reggie’s bed but his wallet wasn’t there, looked into the two drawers of a small, whitewood dressing-table, stood for a moment in doubt and misgivings, and then lifted up the foot of the mattress.
There was the wallet; fat with notes.
She snatched it up, took the notes out, and counted them hurriedly, muttering each numeral under her breath. There were three five-pound and a lot of one-pound notes.
“… thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,” she breathed.
So he had thirty-three pounds which he was trying to hide from her, yet he earned only six pounds a week; here were six weeks’ wages! Moreover, he was spending money freely, on cigarettes, on new shirts and socks and ties.
“I’ve got to have it out with him,” she told herself, but she was almost frightened because of the way he had behaved of late, and because she did not want to drive him away from her. If she quarrelled with him, he might never confide in her again; and the day might come when he would need her help desperately. That was why she had said nothing to his father, who would insist on ‘having it out’.
She heard the bathroom door open and hesitated, in great distress of mind. She could put the wallet back and pretend she had come in for some trifle, or she could stand and face her son. All her life she had been putting off unpleasant duties, and all her life she had suffered for her lack of resolution.
She set her teeth, and stood with the bulky wallet in her hand. Reggie came in, hurrying, wearing only his pants and a vest. He pulled up short, and for a moment he seemed horrified at sight of her; he was the small boy of a few years ago, the baby of loved memory. In that moment, his mother thought that she might be able to reach him with understanding, and she tried to make her voice sound gentle, without knowing that in fact she sounded ingratiating.
“Reggie, dear, isn’t this rather a lot of money?”
“Mother, dear” he said, after a kind of gasp. “That’s a hell of a lot of money, and it happens to be mine.” He came forward and snatched the wallet away. “What do you mean by coming in here and sneaking about my room?”
Desperately his mother went on trying: “Reggie, I’m worried about you, dear. When you’re young you don’t always understand the dangers of bad company and-and betting, and—”
“I understand that I can live my own life, and I’ve every right to,” Reggie said roughly. “If I can’t call this room my own and be sure you won’t go prying about it, I can find plenty of bigger and better rooms. You’d better make up your mind whether you want me at home or not.”
She felt as if her head would burst. “Reggie, I—I’m only trying to help you. You’re my own flesh and blood, and—”
“Your own flesh and blood’s got a date, and he’s going to keep it,” Reggie said, and he sounded almost vicious. She was more fearful than ever that if she insisted on an explanation she would be driving him from his own home. She could never do it; she would have,to be patient, and await her chance. She would really have to talk it over with his father soon …
Chapter Ten
Arrest
“Who’s going to make the arrest?” Bell asked.
He knew that there was nothing that Gideon would rather do, but that the actual duty of charging Borgman had to be delegated. That was one of the disadvantages of being Commander. Gideon did not reply immediately, for he was looking through the final report which had just been returned by the Public Prosecutor’s office with a laconic: ‘Recommendation agreed.’ There was no doubt that the finding of the hidden store of morphine solution had been the deciding factor. Add that to the autopsy report, and there was no possible doubt that they had a case. Gideon was thinking that his original plan, to concentrate on the accident method and then to switch to the morphine, would have to be dropped. In the desk at Borgman’s office there was everything needed to clinch a straightforward charge of murdering his wife by poisoning. If only that nurse …
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Who’s going to make the arrest?” Bell repeated.
“Freddy, of course, and Carmichael will be with him,” Gideon answered. “Might be a good idea to have Jim Appleby there, too, while the office is being searched.” He turned back to his own report and recommendations, trying to make sure that he had not slipped up; and a telephone bell rang. Automatically, he lifted it. “Gideon … Right, thanks.” He rang off, and his voice was very strong. “Borgman’s on his way from London Airport. He’ll be at his office in three-quarters of an hour.”
“Why don’t you go yourself? A big man is involved.”
“Forget it.” Gideon lifted a telephone, and said: “Give me Mr Lee.” He held on. Lee answered almost at once, and Gideon gave the instructions.
“Okay, it will be a pleasure,” Lee said, and obviously his satisfaction remained, so nothing had yet affected his new-found confidence. “There’s something queer about that bottle of morphine at the back of my mind,” he added.
“You’ve had it checked by the manufacturers, haven’t you?”
“Oh, yes. No doubt what it is. I can’t find out how Borgman got it, though. I’d be happier if I could.”
“Tried all the chemists he used to know?”
“All I can trace,” Lee said, and then went on briskly: “I’ll keep at it—might as well get as many nails for his coffin as we can.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Gideon said. “Right, Fred.” He rang off, and immediately called Appleby, and told him to be with Lee. Now that the moment had come, he was edgy, worried that in spite of the final evidence, there might be a snag which he had not seen. No one else seemed to have noticed one; Lee’s wasn’t really a snag. He forced himself to think of other jobs, and studied a report fr
om the laboratory about the Japanese gloves found in a garage in New King’s Road, Fulham. “I’m going up to see Sammy,” he announced, and went out, letting the door swing to behind him. Five minutes later he was in the long, narrow room where most of the forensic work of the Yard was done. There were five white-smocked assistants at the long bench, and he recognised two blood tests being made, under microscopes, saw the remains of a human hand lying on a sheet of blotting paper, some tufts of hair torn out of a woman’s head in a fight with a drunk, and several other exhibits which he did not recognise. Sammy, or Dr Samuel Griddle, the country’s leading pathologist, was a short man standing by a stool which had the odd effect of making him seem very small, poking at something on a sheet of white paper. He had very thick-lensed glasses.
“What’s that you’ve got there?” Gideon asked.
“Hallo, George. Can’t you see?”
“Hairs,” Gideon said, knowing that was exactly what Sammy wanted him to say.
Sammy stopped poking at the curly hairs, looked up at him, and echoed: “Hairs. How you can stand there and say it, I don’t know. What kind of hair? Human? Dog’s? Horse’s? Pig’s? If human, what sex? If male, from what part? Head? Nape of neck? Ears? Nostrils? Armpits? Arms, hands, legs—”
“Masculine pubic hairs,” Gideon said, straight-faced.
“Glad you haven’t lost all sense of observation,” said Sammy, and gave a smirk of a grin. “You’re right for once. Not that it’s funny, though. Male pubic hairs which we’re trying to match up with that assault on Mary Cunliffe.”
Mary Cunliffe was a seven-year-old child.
Gideon said: “Oh, God. Why do they?” For a few moments thought of Borgman was driven from his mind, and he saw the picture which lay behind this slip of white paper and these few greying hairs. A family in despair; wife, mother, father and three older children. A seven-year-old, assaulted and strangled. The wife of an old man prostrate with horror lest it be proved that her husband had committed this hideous crime.
Sammy said: “You always did take these things badly, George, didn’t you. What have you come for?”
“That Japanese cotton glove.”
“Over here,” said Sammy, and moved towards another spot on the long bench beneath a wide window. There were the gloves, each in a separate plastic container, and the strands which had led to their discovery. Attached to them all was a typewritten report, which was the evidence that Sammy, or one of his assistants, would give in court when the time came, proving beyond doubt that these particular strands had come from that particular glove. The blood group—‘A’—was the same, and there was a magnified photograph showing how strands of cotton had been cut by the glass and the jagged edge; multiplied a hundred times it showed the fracture clearly.
“Satisfied?” Sammy asked.
“Nearly. Did you have Larkin’s clothes up here?”
“Yes.”
“Nail scraping?”
“Yes.”
“Photographs?”
“Yes,” said Sammy, and pulled open a drawer, in which were a man’s clothes, all neatly folded, each one with a ticket attached and a report typewritten inside a plastic envelope. There was a pair of rubber-soled brown shoes, a pair of red and blue socks, a handkerchief. “Haven’t finished the analysis of the dust taken from the clothes yet—no hurry with this one, is there?”
Gideon was studying the photograph.
“I should think so. Bandaged right hand—and we’ve a blood-stained right-hand cotton glove.”
“Well, I’m damned,” said Sammy, and took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. “You seen this before?”
“Read a report from QR Division that this chap had been found battered to death, and that he had a bandaged right hand,” said Gideon, “and I just wanted to make sure.”
Sammy called across to one of the white-clad assistants: “Walter! Got the dust analysis on the new corpus yet?”
“Coming up.”
“Done the shoes?” asked Gideon.
“Yes, sir. Traces of heavy grease of the kind used for greasing nipples and chassis parts of motor cars, particles of oily dust likely to have come from a garage. Fingernails normal.”
“Where’s the body?” asked Gideon.
“In the morgue at QR.”
“Will you send someone over to check that hand wound; you might find a strand of this Jap cotton in it,” Gideon said. “If this is the chap who stole that car and ran down the man and the youngster, we’re really up against something.”
“I never did like the kill-to-keep-’em-quiet cases,” Sammy remarked, and rubbed his eyes again, looking troubled. “Walter, you can go over to QR, can’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, don’t hang about.” Sammy looked up at Gideon and asked: “Think you’ve really got Borgman?”
“Wouldn’t pull him in if I didn’t,” Gideon answered, and he was aware that all the assistants were glancing at him, and that Sammy was more intent than usual. Borgman had this effect. Gideon had seldom said anything about it, but practically everyone at the Yard knew what he thought about Borgman, and knew how much he wanted to make the murder charge stick. They were not yet convinced that the charge would stick. Here in the laboratory everything had to be checked and double-checked ; they dare not risk being confuted by experts, and chemical facts were chemical facts. Gideon had little unassailable evidence. The whole Yard knew what he had got, and while there was a sense of jubilation in many, there was also an edge of doubt. Borgman was big: Borgman would fight back: there would be another battle royal with Percy Richmond.
Gideon felt almost as if he himself were to be put on trial.
He sensed it as he walked down the stairs, preferring to do that rather than take the lift. He had been in the laboratory for half an hour, so Borgman would be at his office, and might by now be under arrest; might be on his way here. Gideon reached his own floor level, and went slowly and deliberately to the door; but for once he hesitated before he opened it. One ugly question was in his mind; could he really be sure about Borgman? Not that he had murdered his wife, but that the crime could be proved against him. Had Fred Lee’s memory teased him because of subconscious doubt? Was there any way to prove that Borgman had obtained that morphine himself? Why couldn’t they find that nurse?
As he went in, two telephone bells rang at once. He strode to his desk for one while Bell lifted the other. He heard Bell say: “Commander Gideon’s office,” and then heard the operator say: “Mr Appleby on the line, sir.”
“Put him on.”
There was a longer pause than he had expected; the kind of pause which might come if Appleby had bad news. What could have gone wrong? Why hadn’t he cut red tape and gone over himself?
“George?”
“How’d it go?”
“Easy as kiss your hand,” Appleby said. “Ever heard the old story of the man who went white to the lips?” Appleby’s chuckle had an almost cruel note. “Green and white, Borgman went. Fred’s bringing him over now; he’ll be with you in twenty minutes.”
“Find the morphine?” Gideon fought against being too jubilant.
“You’d never believe, it was hidden in a secret compartment in his desk! Mr Borgman says that he’d never seen it before; isn’t that a funny story? Okay, George, thought I’d put you out of your misery.”
“Thanks,” said Gideon.
Well, he had got his way. He felt a little flushed as he rounded his desk and sat down. He had been after Borgman for so long and it was hard to believe that he had him. He had a swift mental preview of the next few weeks, perhaps the next few months. The magistrate’s court tomorrow, and the formal charge and request for a remand; that would be almost automatic. The court would be jammed with newspapermen, and half of social May-fair would want to get into the tiny public ga
llery. Outside there would be hundreds of people, all gawpers, waiting to gloat over the mighty fallen. Then there would be the eight furious days while Borgman was in Brixton, spending most of the time with his solicitors and Richmond – he was bound to brief Richmond, wasn’t he? – while Gideon, Fred Lee and Carmichael were getting a cast-iron case ready for the second hearing.
“I want him sent for trial by then,” Gideon said to himself. “If we miss, we might wait until after Christmas.”
The door opened, and Rogerson looked in.
“Got him?”
“Yes.”
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Rogerson said.
The truth was that no one felt really confident, in spite of the weight of the evidence; there would be that edge of doubt until the jury had returned their verdict. There was just one witness who might take away that doubt. Gideon flipped over the file on the Borgman case, and saw a new report, put there since he had last opened it. He could hardly believe the terse teleprinted message.
‘Nurse Jane Kennett married Piet Hoorn Fremantle Western Australia February 16th 1957 stop Hoorn died December 1959 natural causes stop Widow known to have flown London January 7th this year Qantas Airways stop Delaney Criminal Investigation Bureau Perth Western Australia.’
“My God!” Gideon breathed, and snatched at a telephone, then saw a pencilled slip which had fallen from the file. Joe Bell had written: ‘Am checking Qantas passenger list January 7th. It’s all under way.’
Gideon said: “Well, well, well. She’s been in England.”
Then he wondered if she had seen Borgman, but before he could develop that train of thought, a telephone bell rang. It was Colby, of AB Division.
“Hallo, George. You asked me to tell you who it was found those gloves at Bennett’s Garage.”
“Yes.”
“It was Detective Sergeant Willerby.”