by John Creasey
It would be two or three days before anyone found the kid in the locked cupboard, and by that time she would be a long way from London. Well, why not? Once she was safely away, she could telephone Ma Higgs, at the corner shop. Ma would come and let him out, and say nothing to anybody. Ma daren’t talk, because too many people knew too much about how she made her money. Ma Higgs was an ever-ready buyer of the goods which Peter stole. She didn’t pay high, but she paid cash, and if things were difficult she was always good for credit.
Peter’s mother climbed off the bed.
She would give the kid something to eat, first, and then put some bread and some water in the cupboard. It wouldn’t do if he died, because then the police would hunt until they found her; they wouldn’t worry so much about her leaving the kid shut up.
She went to the cupboard, and opened it with a slow caution foreign to her. The boy lay on the floor, asleep. There was something she didn’t recognise at first, or even understand; a sweet, sugary kind of smell coming out of the darkness. She frowned, and peered closer: then she saw the bag of sweets close to the child’s hand.
She raised her clenched fist viciously.
“If you’ve been taking sweets from strangers again, I’ll—” she began to screech, and then broke off abruptly. It wouldn’t do to wake him; sometimes he had crying fits. The little devil, though, defying her again, anyone would think he’d never learn.
She fetched half a loaf of stale bread and a big jug of water, put these in the cupboard, stared at the sweets again, and couldn’t understand it; there was at least a quarter of a pound, and he’d certainly have eaten some; he must have had them in his pocket when she had put him in here last night after the warning from Quick Joe’s envoy.
“Who’d give him sweets like that?” she wondered uneasily. “If someone’s been befriending him, it might mean real trouble.”
She didn’t wake him, though; just shut and locked the door.
Then she put on her only dress, pushed a spare pair of shoes and a few other oddments in a bag, tucked the thirty-two pounds which was her entire fortune down the neck of her blouse, and looked round to make sure that she had forgotten nothing. Not a stick of the furniture was hers, and she had paid the rent up to the week before last; that wasn’t too bad.
She went out, closing the landing door, which was never locked. She went downstairs quite boldly, not caring whether any of the other dozen people who lived here saw her or not; she would just get on a train and go off, and the Midlands was the best place. Birmingham was always good for casual work, and there were plenty of lorry drivers and labourers who liked a bit of cuddly company. She preferred Birmingham to the ports, too, she was always choosy.
She stepped into the drab street and went towards the main road, having to pass the corner shop on the way; and then she remembered that she hadn’t any cigarettes, so she turned into the shop. Ma Higgs was there alone, totting up some figures, a little grey-haired woman who must have a fortune salted away. Apart from her fencing, she did a good trade, because she allowed “tick” to anyone who wanted it, up to a certain amount; and when the limit was reached, her customers had to buy from her in order to keep her sweet. Everything she sold was fresh, she was on good terms with the police, and the shop was clean. She herself had a scrubbed look and a smile which fooled a lot of people for much of the time.
“’Morning, Ma,” the child’s mother said heartily.
“Hallo, Janey, you’re all poshed up this morning.”
“Going to look for a job in the city,” said Mrs. Wray, glibly, “the money’s better up there.”
“Well, you ought to know,” said Mrs. Higgs. “What can I do for you?”
“Twenty Diggers.”
“Here you are, dear. But you’ll soon have to divvy up some cash, or some goods, you know.”
“Won’t keep you much longer,” promised Mrs. Wray, and then remembered that she would soon want Ma Higgs to do her a favour. “As a matter of fact, I’ll pay ten bob off the slate now. Might as well get out of debt as quick as I can.” She handed over a ten-shilling note. “And I’ll soon have a few odds and ends to sell.”
“I knew you was in the money,” said Mrs. Higgs.
Peter’s mother’s expression hardened.
“I get along,” she said in a brusque voice, “and I’ll thank you to listen to no gossip.”
“Keep your hair on,” Ma Higgs retorted. “I can put two and two together, can’t I? When your Peter comes in every day for half a pound of sweets, that speaks for itself, don’t it?”
“He does what?” gasped Mrs. Wray.
“He comes in—” Ma Higgs broke off, her expression almost as comical as the other woman’s, and then suddenly she burst into deep, genuine laughter. “Strike me, Janey, didn’t you know? He’s a chip off the old block, he is, lifting enough cash to buy his own sweets because his Ma won’t give him any pocket money! You’ve got a promising young man there, my dear, but you’re slipping, you shouldn’t have let him get away with it.”
Jane Wray was too startled to speak at first. Then gradually she realised what was expected of her, and forced herself to shake her fist as if in the child’s face.
“I’ll have the skin off his back, the little beast! I’ll teach him—”
Ma Higgs was still highly amused; Jane Wray herself was shaken, and yet in a way relieved. She had been worried about the “strange men” who had given Peter sweets, and had taken it for granted that a policeman or one of the child welfare workers had been trying to win his confidence. It was a relief to know that he had bought his own, and preferred not to tell her that he had kept some of the stolen money. The little swine might have been feeding off the fat of the land, come to think of it he had been looking fatter lately.
She could break his neck!
It was half an hour later, when she was mingling with the crowd at Paddington Station, and waiting for a train to Birmingham, that her expression changed. She gave a little grin, almost of affection.
“Little devil, that’s what he is. He’ll be able to look after himself all right. He’ll never be able to say I didn’t teach him that. Live to thank me, he will. Wonder if I’ll ever see him again?”
She went for her train, quite determined to telephone Ma Higgs, or, better still, drop her a postcard from somewhere and tell her to destroy it so that no one could find out where it had come from. Ma would do that all right.
The train was crowded; Jane Wray forgot Ma, Peter, the sweets and the shock in her anxiety to find a seat.
“How’s it going, Lem?” Gideon asked Lemaitre, about the time that the train steamed out of Paddington Station.
“Not so bad,” said Lemaitre. “We’re getting our hands on those women who acted as buyers, they all say that Ma Higgs put them on to the job. It won’t be long before we pull Ma in.”
Ma Higgs was totting up some takings figures, a few hours after the Wray woman had left, when a car drew up outside; she had a number of car-owning customers, and that didn’t surprise her, but when she saw Superintendent Hemmingway himself approach, with one of his senior Inspectors, she knew that this wasn’t a courtesy visit. She dabbed some powder on to her cheeks, thrust her shoulders back, and went forward to greet them with a bright smile.
“I am honoured, to be sure, Mr. Hemmingway, with you in the news so much lately, too. Am I too late to offer my congratulations?”
“Generous of you, Ma,” said Hemmingway, with an old-fashioned smile. “Been along to Tod Cowan’s much lately?”
“No more than usual.”
“Friend of Mrs. Cowan?”
“Oh, yes, have been for years,” Ma agreed airily.
“That’s a pity,” said Hemmingway. “We’ve picked up several of Mrs. Cowan’s old friends, and they’ve all got themselves into the same kind of trouble, selling and receiving stol
en goods. You wouldn’t do such a thing, would you?”
“If you can find a single stolen item in my shop, may God strike me dead,” exclaimed Mrs. Ma Higgs, and drew herself stiffly to her full height; she even managed to look angry. “And I won’t listen to a friend of mine being insulted, either, you ought to know better.”
“Mind if we have a look round?” Hemmingway asked.
“You’ve no right—”
“Ma,” interrupted Hemmingway, “I can get a warrant in half an hour, and while I’m waiting, two men will keep you in sight. Mind if I have a look round?”
The glitter in her eyes told how much she both hated and feared him.
“. . . and they found masses of hot stuff in the shop, mostly under the counter,” Lemaitre reported to Gideon, and roared with laughter. “Got a false bottom, her counter had! Customers used to come in, hand over a wallet or a bag, and if anyone else came in she’d drop it down a kind of letter box and value it when the shop was closed. She says she acted for a woman who had a stall in the Lane, not for Frisky. ‘Mazing how they seem as anxious to protect Frisky now as they did when he was alive, isn’t it?”
“Get anything else out of her?” Gideon demanded.
“Got this – practically every woman who trained with Quick Joe was a customer of Ma’s. We’re getting nearer, George. The sooner we tackle Tod in person the quicker we’ll get results.”
“We’ll wait a bit. Does Ma Higgs know this Wray woman?”
“She says she doesn’t, and she won’t name anyone,”
Lemaitre said. “She’s not the kind we’ll break down either, there’s no point in waiting.”
“I want to see what happens when the news gets round that we’ve brought her in,” Gideon said.
“Anything in from Warr yet?”
“If Warr doesn’t pick Martha Smallwood up soon, he’ll jump in front of a bus,” Lemaitre said half-seriously. “It’s really getting him down.”
16
MISSING MONEY
Martha Smallwood had gone to the shops.
There was no way in which Percival Whitehead could tell the change in her appearance in Bognor, compared with the way she had looked in Bournemouth, Eastbourne, Weymouth and other seaside resorts. She had dark hair, which some people thought was a wig, and others said was not, and she made-up more – not exceptionally, just enough to be sure that passers-by were not likely to connect her with the woman whose photograph had been in all the newspapers for several days. It was now seldom seen, although the story of the investigation hit the headlines most days. Moreover, she had padded out her waist and her buttocks, and wore an elastic stocking on one leg, so that people noticed her leg and felt a little sorry because it was so swollen. She wore different clothes, too; dowdier.
Without studying her very closely, no one would have any reason to suspect that she was the wanted woman.
Twice a week, when the shops were crowded, she went to the nearest serve-yourself store and then on to the largest butcher’s in town. The other trades-people called regularly. So she managed to buy everything needed at the bungalow while encountering very few people. Her cooking was good, and she fed Percy Whitehead well. Her one attempt to begin poisoning him, with arsenic, had proved that he was sensitive to the slightest stomach disorder. The weed-killer poison had been taken away with the rubbish, days ago.
She was more uneasy than she had been for some time. Her composure was good, but her nerves were raw. And Percy had behaved almost as if he was beginning to suspect that all was not well. She could not stay here much longer. Two days ago, she had found a small hoard of one-pound notes in an old suitcase, and she had taken that. When Percy was asleep this afternoon, she would search for other possible hiding places. The trouble with the blind was that they slept so lightly and their hearing was so acute.
On this, the fourth Wednesday in the month of May, the knowledge that she would soon have to leave Percy Whitehead gave her a kind of false contentment.
She had learned not to look away from policemen, to ignore people who stared at her, and to walk awkwardly, as befitted a woman with one bad leg.
Inside the bungalow, Percy Whitehead began a tour of investigation while Martha was out.
He kept that money in several different hiding places in the bungalow. He had a history of resentment at the loss of money in stocks and shares, a history of childhood insecurity, and in old age he had tended to keep plenty of ready money about him; he had, for years. It was in five different places, and he had known that it was quite secure before Martha had come, for he had gone and checked it all, with his perfect sureness of touch. This morning, he waited until the door had been closed for at least ten minutes, then began his quest. It was much colder than it had been, and Martha had told him that it was raining. She had gone out wrapped up in a mackintosh and carrying an umbrella.
The first cache was under a floorboard in this little dining-room, and the loose board was hidden by the carpet. He went down slowly on his knees, reached out for the corner of the carpet, felt that it was quite flat, and did not think that it had been rolled up lately, as it would have been if Martha had touched it. That reassured him. He rolled the carpet back, fingered the loose board, raised it slowly, and groped inside for the money which was wrapped in an old pillow case. The size of the bundle seemed normal, but to satisfy himself he unwrapped it, and counted each note; there were two hundred pounds, and his first count was exactly right.
“Perhaps I’ve misjudged her,” he said hopefully.
He put everything back, and when the carpet was down again, trod on it to make sure that she would not notice that anyone had interfered with it. Then he went into the little front room, where the hiding place was exactly the same.
He found two hundred pounds there, also.
All this had taken him some time, but he knew that Martha was always out for at least an hour, and he had done the more difficult ones first; the other hiding places were quicker to get at. One was at the bottom of a mass of old papers in a suitcase; another was behind a loose brick in the chimney of his bedroom; the third was beneath a false top to his own wardrobe, one made before his sight had gone so badly. It was a matter only of minutes to check each of these, and his hearing was so acute that he would know as soon as Martha reached the garden gate. To make sure of this, he opened all of the front windows an inch or two; he could say that he had felt too warm. The radio had been playing softly, but he switched it off, so that it would not stop him from hearing Martha.
He wondered, as he touched the radio, why it was she always turned it off so that they did not hear the news.
He was more worried even than he admitted to himself about Martha.
The wardrobe money was there, the fireplace money, too; these he assessed by sense of touch, and did not count them; he could tomorrow. Finally he went to the suitcase, and unlocked it – and had his first shock when he felt a film of oily substance on the locks. His sensitive fingers picked that up in a moment. He raised them to his nose and sniffed, and there was the unmistakable smell of machine oil, the kind that one would use for a sewing-machine. He wiped his fingers on his trousers carefully, then opened the lid of the case. All the loose papers were on top, but he was trembling as he delved for the money.
It wasn’t there.
Two hundred pounds were missing.
He began to tremble, as from shock. He had half feared this, had been greatly relieved when the other hiding places had been found untouched, but this discovery affected him so much that his teeth chattered. He did not feel like closing the case and putting it away and pretending that he had noticed nothing, but he knew that it was what he ought to do. Then, next time he went out, he ought to go next door – he didn’t know his neighbours but that didn’t matter – and ask them to send for the police. Martha wasn’t going to get away with this, the hypocritical ol
d bitch.
He must lock the case again and push it under the bed.
He took his keys out of his pocket, and groped for the lock. Usually he would find it first go, but he was so upset and trembling so violently that the metal scraped on metal and he was like a drunken man trying to find the keyhole. He began to sweat as he listened for Martha; for some reason which he couldn’t understand he was frightened.
He dropped the key.
He grabbed at it, to try to save it, and knocked the case off the bed. He heard it fall, heard the papers slithering and fluttering about, and knew that all the contents of the case were strewn about the room. It would take him an age to find and put them back, and he might not be able to make sure that he had them all. His whole body trembled as he stood the case upright and grabbed at some papers, but he had only put in two handfuls when he heard the garden gate open, and Martha walk towards the bungalow.
He stopped trying to hide what he had done.
He was a frail old man, and now he was very frightened.
All he could think of was getting out of the bungalow and going for help. He left everything just as it was, and turned towards the door, his sense of direction so good that he headed straight for it. He had his stick held out a little in front of him, and swung it more wildly than usual. He touched the open door, and reached the passage. He could hear Martha coming briskly along the garden path; she was always brisk when she approached the house. He turned towards the back door. He reached the kitchen, the door of which was open, and could smell the faint odour of the bacon which had been cooked this morning, and could smell something simmering; he could even hear it, although the gas beneath a stock-pot was turned so low that the soup hardly stirred at the top. The door to the back garden was almost adjacent to the gas stove, and was closed. He put out his stick, and heard the slight sound of metal on metal; his stick’s ferrule on the enamel or iron of the stove. With agonising slowness, he slid the ferrule round so that he could judge the exact position of the stove, and therefore of the door. As he did so, an aeroplane overhead seemed to swoop low, making a hateful deafening sound. It roared and reverberated, but he dared not wait until it had gone before opening the door, he had to get out now.