A Backwards Jump

by John Creasey

  Hemmingway raised his hands and shrugged.

  “You want to know,” he said, “and you’ll know. All right, George, I’ll have another try. Anything special you want me to do?”

  “Just worry it,” said Gideon, and then went on almost casually: “There’s one thing I’m going to do; put a chap from one of the other Divisions on to watching both Mrs. Lee and her mother, so that they aren’t covered by anyone who’ll be recognised as a policeman. And find out the best way to make the mother talk.”

  “She’s a bitch,” Hemmingway said, “and nothing will make her do what she doesn’t want to. If you ask me, she’s as scared as Ada is, and they’ll both keep quiet.”

  Uneasily, Gideon thought: “He’s so happy that he just wants to keep clear of trouble and please everyone.” But there was nothing more he could reasonably do, and he still hadn’t any clear-cut idea on how to get at Lee’s killer; or at the people who were frightening Mrs. Lee. It was rather like the Dennis job; he was sure of the truth but couldn’t pin it down. Queer thing, how Ratsy had died when he had, so very conveniently. Queer thing—

  My God!

  Conveniently.

  “Now what’s on your mind?” said Hemmingway, seeing his expression change, and speaking almost resignedly. “When you start getting ideas I know there’s going to be no peace for anyone.”

  “Hemmy, how closely have you checked Tod Cowan lately?”

  “Well, since you ask, I haven’t checked him, always assumed he’s on the level,” answered Hemmingway. “I’ve never had a thing against him in all my time here, except that he’s been in the Lane and when you mix with that mob, you get your hands dirty.”

  “That’s it,” Gideon said. “We’ve known him so long we take him for granted. We might have slipped up.”

  Hemmingway wasn’t impressed.

  “Well, I agree Tod’s in as good a position as anyone in London to sell stolen clothes, but we’ve checked his stock dozens of times and never found anything that shouldn’t be there. His wife makes sure he keeps on the straight and narrow, she’s twice his size, and squashes him.” Gideon had a mental picture of the fat, bulgy woman with her dyed hair in metal curlers, by the side of little Tod Cowan. “I admit that all we did on this job was to get Tod’s statement, and check it with a couple of others from people who saw Ratsy come in and then leave again,” Hemmingway went on.

  “Oh, Ratsy went into Tod’s shop, and left in a hurry,” conceded Gideon, “but what drove him out? See it this way, Hemmy: he had a flaming row with Frisky Lee, ostensibly for stealing petty cash. I can believe he’d steal, I can even believe Lee would throw him out on his ear, assuming that Ratsy didn’t pay over the money he collected direct to Frisky. We know Ratsy took refuge at Tod’s and we all tell ourselves what a reliable chap Tod is. But what forced Ratsy out again? Only overwhelming pressure would have driven him out of the shop and back into Lee’s house. It was in the early hours of the morning. Ratsy was tired. He crawled into that chair-bed. You and I know that nothing would ever make Ratsy work if he could avoid it, and after a session like that he’d be in a state of prostration. Yet something made him get up and go out again – and the only people inside the shop, or living over it, were old Cowan and his wife. Right?”

  “Right,” agreed Hemmingway, and raised his hands and looked towards the ceihng with mock piety. “Thank Gawd there’s only one George Gideon. You know what, George?”

  “What?”

  “I was only joking with Tod the other day, ‘Tod,’ I said, ‘you’re making too much profit out of those second-hand glad-rags of yours, that’s a nice mink coat you’ve got your wife.’ And he grinned at me and said: ‘Got it at trade price, Mr. Hemmingway, and Minnie’s waited thirty years for it.’ Tell you what, George. I’ll find out the value of that mink coat, and find out where she got it from, too.”

  “Let me know quick,” urged Gideon.

  He left soon afterwards, knowing now that Hemmingway was launched on the job he would move really fast, for he would want to vindicate his own prowess. Gideon drove towards the Tower and Tower Bridge, heading for the river by a short cut which would take him past the Mint, and then along Tower Hill. No one was on the hill, it was late for the lunch-hour speakers, but the car-parks were full, and it looked as if the Tower was having its daily stint of visitors. He thought he saw one of the ravens on top of a building, the sun glistening on its wings, and then drove along Eastcheap, eventually to Billingsgate where the smell of fish was very strong, round by the Monument and at last to London Bridge. He did this simply because it was London and he didn’t often get out this way. London soothed him, the centuries-old buildings, the narrow streets, the square round the Monument with the tale of the Great Fire, helping to woo him into the proper frame of mind for seeing Woodrow, the Superintendent at QR. He drove slowly over London Bridge, glancing right and left at the shipping, some of it masted, and then fell to the overpowering desire to stop the car and go and look over the parapet of the bridge into the Pool of London, the ships of all nations, the busy, bustling cranes, the tugs, the small boats, the low buildings. He had not been there for two minutes before a policeman came up, stepping out quite smartly.

  “No parking on the bridge,” the officer said, courteously enough. “Not planning to stay, sir, are you?”

  “No. Sorry. I’ll be off at once.” Gideon saw recognition dawning in the other’s eyes, and hoped the man wouldn’t apologise for doing his job. He didn’t, but touched the peak of his helmet. Gideon drove off, much calmer, cheered by the fact that that policeman had appeared so quickly, and had told him so courteously to get to hell off the bridge. The big span of the Tower Bridge began to open as Gideon drove away, and he wished he had timed his visit better.

  He felt less troubled, now. Hemmingway had done him good, helped him to get a clearer perspective. There were dozens of inquiries going on, none which was likely to yield such results as Hemmy’s job.

  If only he could put his hands on the boy Wray.

  Peter Wray’s mother stood towering over the boy, holding his right wrist tightly, twisting enough to force his arm upwards so that if he so much as moved he would be in excruciating pain. His face was pasty white, his eyes looked huge and filled with dread.

  “If a strange man ever speaks to you, what do you do?”

  In a small, lost voice, the child said: “I go away, I don’t answer him.”

  “Suppose he offers you sweets?”

  “I say no thank you.”

  “What do you say if a copper asks you why you’re not at school?”

  “I say I’ve been ill.”

  “What do you say if a copper asks you where you’ve been?”

  “I say I’ve been to the river looking at the boats.”

  “So you do,” the woman said, and her lips tightened. Then, she raised her arm very slowly, and drew his up with it, forcing him to rise on tip-toe in an effort to ease the pressure on his arm and elbow. This drove everything but the look of pain from his lips, and put despair into his eyes, and he gasped because the pain became so great.

  “What do you do if a stranger offers you sweets?”

  “I—I—I say no thank you!”

  “You little liar, you didn’t say no thank you this afternoon, you took some,” she said, and she flung his wrist free, then grabbed his shoulder so that he couldn’t get away. “Don’t lie to me. I know you’ve been eating sweets. How did you know it wasn’t a copper? Go on, tell me that, how do you know?”

  “I—I—I don’t know.”

  “If I ever catch you taking a sweet from—” she began, but he could not stand there any longer, just turned and ran into the cupboard and shut himself in.

  The woman went across, turned the key in the lock, and then went to the wall-larder, took out some ham, bread and butter, and sat down to eat. She washed the
meal down with stout.

  The door of Gideon’s office opened, a Chief Inspector looked in cautiously, saw that Lemaitre was alone, and went in, but kept a hand on the door.

  “What the devil’s the matter with Gee-Gee this morning?” he asked.

  “Didn’t know anything was the matter with him,” Lemaitre said, “unless the wet morning’s making him skid a bit.”

  “Don’t give me that,” the other grumbled. “He’s got everyone on the hop. What’s on? Had a directive from the Old Man, or—”

  “Charley,” said Lemaitre pontifically, “all he’s doing is keeping the Criminal Investigation Department on its toes, and from what I’ve seen that takes plenty of doing. You got any special grouse?”

  “No, but they say the briefing this morning was like a court-martial.”

  Lemaitre grinned.

  “He was in form, all right. I don’t know what it is, but something’s got under his skin or is pricking his conscience. Mind your step.”

  “You know what it is,” the C.I. said sourly.

  “Not this time I don’t,” asserted Lemaitre; and he meant exactly that. Then Gideon’s firm and heavy footsteps sounded along the passage, and the C.I. went out, to make sure that he wasn’t cornered. His “good morning, sir,” would have won praise from a Lieutenant-Colonel.

  Gideon came in.

  “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to know if you’d been rapped by the Old Man,” said Lemaitre, grinning. He was more relaxed than he had been for a long time. “What’s up, George?”

  “I decided that everyone was getting slack around here,” said Gideon, “and I don’t know of any exceptions. Anything doing?”

  “Hemmingway called, he’s going to call back. Arkwright looked in. Don’t know that I think you’re wise to encourage the ranks to come and see you in person, George. There was that copper Smith, of—”

  “Special circumstances,” Gideon said. “Lem, we’re going to bring this department up to scratch. I mean it. Quick Joe’s been working at this for three years. The Lane’s been used by Lee for over two years. Lee’s wife’s dead scared, and we don’t know who’s scaring her. We can’t find that kid, Wray. Some jobs are difficult, but these shouldn’t be. We’ve got slack. I’ve just seen the Assistant Commissioner, and laid on a special drive.” Gideon sat down as a telephone rang, and eased his collar while he said: “Gideon.” Lemaitre saw an intent look spring to his eyes, and he went on: “Hallo, Hemmy, what’s the news? . . . How much? . . . No doubt about it? . . . Two thousand five hundred retail, seventeen-fifty in the trade . . . Think Tod’s been making all that money legitimately?” He chuckled; the nearest to an expression of good humour that he had shown on this Wednesday morning of the third week in the month. “His wife didn’t squash him, after all. We’ll keep tabs on him, and do some checking on his recent movements and any new customers he’s had,” Gideon went on. “I’ll send someone who isn’t too well-known over there. We don’t want to make it too obvious, yet . . . Okay, Hemmy, thanks.”

  He rang off.

  “Tod Cowan’s mink coat,” he announced.

  “In the Lane?”

  “Yes.”

  “George Gideon, middle name Glue.” Lemaitre looked away hastily. “But there are other jobs. Nothing in from Warr yet, amazing where Martha S. is. You’ve got to hand it to her for cunning.” That obviously wasn’t the right subject. “You heard about the chap who was run down in the Strand this morning after trying to hold up a till, didn’t you? In hospital.”

  “I heard,” said Gideon. “Lem, this office is going to be so busy for the next week or so that you won’t know what’s hit you. I want to go over every case we’ve had through our hands without getting results, and I want to make sure we didn’t miss anything. I’m going to question every man in charge of every case, major or minor, and as many men who worked on the cases as seems necessary. I’m going to make sure that every man in the department digs deep into what he’s been doing lately. I’m going to make sure that if anyone’s slipped up or been slack, they themselves find out about it even if I don’t. In other words, I want this department right on its toes, and I’m going to keep it there.”

  Lemaitre sat very still through all of this, which was spoken with a quiet emphasis that made it doubly impressive; the massive shape of Gideon, at his desk, added to the effect.

  “Got it, Lem?”

  “I’ve got it,” sighed Lemaitre.

  After the shock of Gideon’s decision, none of the senior men showed any resentment. Gee-Gee might be a devil at times, but he was a fair devil. The extra work was keeping him far busier than any of the others. He was at the office for the rest of that week until nine and ten o’clock each night, and didn’t once go out on his daily perambulation round London’s Square Mile. He drove himself on with a single-minded intensity which compelled the admiration even of those who thought that it was a lot of fuss about nothing.

  Hour after hour, with Superintendents, C.I.S, D.I.s and Sergeants, he went over the unsolved cases of the past few months; dozens of cases ranging from shop-lifting to shop breaking, embezzlement, violence, sexual offences, begging, burglary, fraud, every kind of crime in the calendar. He had always been remarkable for picking up the details of a job at second hand, and knowing as much as the men working on the job; and this faculty seemed to have improved. He analysed every investigation, sometimes alone, as often with Lemaitre’s help; and when he had finished he called in the man in charge and suggested what new approach he should try.

  The Yard seemed to gather itself up for a great concerted effort. At the end of the week, Gideon felt that everything that could reasonably be done to clear up the back-log of unsolved cases was done. Nothing new came in about the Lee case. Tod Cowan was under observation; so was his wife, and reports were coming in of regular customers who went to Tod’s shop ostensibly to make payments for clothes bought on the never-never.

  Each regular was being watched, too.

  But that was mainly Hemmingway’s job. Gideon had plenty more – like the countrywide investigation into the victims of the missing Martha Smallwood, and Arkwright’s problem.

  He had talked to Detective-Sergeant Arkwright, who had now discovered that a Robert Carne had got married on the first Monday of the month to a girl named Marion Lane, who had inherited a small fortune from her father, but the coincidence of the initials R. C. gave even Gideon, in his present raking mood, no real excuse to probe further into the early married days of Robert Carne.

  On the Sunday, the third Sunday in the month, Gideon was at the office all day.

  On that same Sunday, only three miles away from Scotland Yard, Marion Carne sat at a small table, with several documents in front of her, and signed each one; a clerk from the service flats was a witness.

  She signed over half of her fortune to her husband as capital for the new business.

  She now stood between a man who had already murdered one wife, and fifteen thousand pounds.

  Gideon, at that very moment, was feeling a sense of grim satisfaction. The crop of arrests following the death of Frisky Lee was likely soon to be beaten, partly because of much heart-searching among his men and partly because of the suggestions he had made. But they hadn’t found Martha Smallwood; they still didn’t know the truth about Lee’s murder. Ada Lee still behaved as if she was terrified; and the Wray woman and her child were still missing. He was a long way from content.

  15

  RESULTS

  Peter Wray’s mother was cold sober that Monday morning, for news travelled fast, and she knew that many of the women who had “studied” at Quick Joe’s were under arrest. She hadn’t given Joe her real name, and the women who bought the goods from her, at the market, didn’t know it was Wray, either. She had to make sure that the police could not get hold of the boy, Peter, and question him. She wasn’t quit
e sure of the best way to handle the brat.

  There was the “home” in Stepney, a shocking place but where the principals kept within the law, and where the children, all believed to be backward, were kept clean and fed, presentable and terrified; no one there would talk to the police, and that might be the best place, but it would cost four pounds a week. She could pay for a week or two, but that might not be long enough, and Peter wasn’t really worth keeping, now; for months it would be too dangerous to use him.She sat on the bed in the small back room, dirty-looking pillows behind her, hair tidy for once, lips set tightly, hands clenched on her lap.

  If the police came for him, she could say he had gone into the country.

  She could keep him in that cupboard . . .

  She knew that if the police really became curious, they would search all cupboards, and she did not seriously think that she could shut the boy up there indefinitely, but she had to get rid of him somehow.

  Of course, she herself could go away.

  There was her sister, over in Wandsworth, where she could stay as long as she liked. She could get a job charring for a few weeks; it wasn’t what she wanted but it would pay for her keep. Her sister wouldn’t take the kid, though, that was certain.

  There was only one safe thing to do: get rid of him altogether. In the old days they just knocked the unwanted kids on the head, tied a stone round their necks, and dumped them in the river.

  She couldn’t do that.

  She could just walk out on him and disappear, leaving him locked up, and he—

  If she did that, after teaching him such a lesson that he would never dare to say a word, it might be best. This wasn’t much of a place, and she could always find some ways of picking up a living.