“Looks like an organized gang, doesn’t it, sir?” Harry said. Don pulled up outside No. 25a.
“That’s what it looks like.” He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was twenty minutes past one. “Okay, Hany, put her away and go to bed. We may be busy tomorrow.”
He unlocked the front door and walked into the lounge. Some chicken sandwiches with a bottle of whisky, ice water and glasses stood on the table by the fire.
He poured himself a stiff drink and sat down. He sat for ten minutes or so, staring into the fire, thinking of Julia. It was hard to believe that Guido was dead. The whole nightmare thing was impossible to believe.
The sound of the telephone bell startled him. He picked up the receiver.
“Is that you, Mr Micklem?” Horrocks’s voice boomed over the line. “Bad news: he got away.”
“Got away!” Don exclaimed, starting to his feet.
“Yes. We broke in and found a tunnel in the cellar. It led to a builder’s dump in Dean Street. He must have sneaked out that way.”
“For the love of mike!’” Don exploded. “That’s not very bright, is it? So now both of them have got away.”
“They won’t get far,” Horrocks said. “Every port, airport and station is being watched. We’ve got a good description of them. They won’t get far.”
“Like to bet on that?” Don said and slammed down the receiver.
A girl came across the hall of Polsen’s hotel, hesitant and unsure of herself. Dale jerked himself out of a doze, looked at his watch and saw the time was fourteen minutes past four a.m. He got to his feet and leaning on the counter of the desk stared ill-temp eredly at the girl as she came up to,him.
Good grief! he thought. Where in the world has she come from?
The girl was dark and stupid-looking. She had buck teeth and she wore horn-rimmed spectacles. She had on a red and green tartan cloth coat that was slightly too large for her and her lank black hair was caught up in a pale blue silk scarf.
“If you want a room, it’ll cost you a couple of pounds,” Dale said, “and I want it in advance.”
“Yes, I want a room,” the girl said, opening her purse. “I lost the last train home.”
“If you haven’t any luggage, the charge is three pounds. That’s the rule of the hotel,” Dale said. “Take it or leave it.” At that moment Grantor came in and up to the desk. “Gimme my key,” he said curtly. The girl looked at him.
“Excuse me,” she said, “he’s charging me three pounds for a room because I haven’t any luggage. Is that right?”
“Look, ugly,” Dale snarled, “you heard what I said. Get out and stay out if you don’t want to pay.”
“Give her a room,” Crantor said, picking up his key. “The charge is a pound.” He looked at the girl. “Give him a pound.”
Dale took a key off the rack and slid it across the counter. His thin, rat-like face was expressionless.
“Room 24,” he said and took the pound note the girl gave him. “I’m on the same floor,” Crantor said, looking at the girl out of the corner of his eye. She was drab and dull, but he was used to the ugly ones. “I’ll show you the way.”
The girl followed him obediently up the stairs. When they had rounded the bend and were out of sight of the desk, she said, “Have you heard from Shapiro?”
Crantor started, turned swiftly to stare at her. It was only when she slipped out the buck teeth that he recognized her.
“Lorelli! Well, I’ll be damned!”
“I asked if you had heard from Shapiro?” “I’ve heard from him,” Crantor said. He paused outside his door, pushed in the key, unlocked the door and opened it. “You’d better come in.”
She followed him into the room and went over to the mirror above the fireplace. He shut the door and turned the key.
“The police nearly nabbed him,” he said, taking off his damp overcoat and dropping it on the chair. “He’s in a hell of a state.
Something must have gone wrong. He slipped up somewhere, but he wouldn’t say where.”
“The fool was followed,” Lorelli said. “The police nearly caught me.” She took a packet of cigarettes from her purse, lit one and blew smoke towards Crantor. “When I left Athens Street I was followed by a tall, powerfully built man. He wasn’t a policeman. I’m sure of that. I couldn’t shake him off. I went back to the room I had rented in Market Mews. I saw him go to a call box. I changed into this rig-out and got away over the roofs. The police came a few minutes later.
Have you any idea who he could be?”
Crantor shook his head.
“Shapiro killed a cop. He’s yelling for his money. It’s going to be tricky getting him out of the country.”
Lorelli came over to the table and sat down.
“Where is he?”
“He has holed up in his girl’s flat. Maybe you remember her: Gina Pasero? Didn’t she do a job for the old man in Rome some years ago?”
Lorelli nodded.
“I remember her. She’s unreliable. I didn’t know she was Shapiro’s girl.”
“What do you mean — unreliable?” Crantor asked sharply.
“If the police connect her with Shapiro, she’ll talk. Has Shapiro told her anything about you?”
Crantor stiffened.
“I don’t know. He might have.”
Lorelli opened her purse and took out a slip of pink paper. She pushed it across the table.
“I left my bag at Euston station,” she said. “There are two things in it that will interest you. One of them is a thousand pounds in five-pound notes. I was instructed to give that sum to the man who killed Ferenci… a man, you understand, not any particular man.”
Crantor stared at her. “What’s the other thing then?”
“A replica of the knife you gave Shapiro.”
Crantor took the slip of paper, folded it carefully and put it in his wallet.
“The police have a description of Shapiro,” Lorelli went on. “He can’t get away. When he is caught, he will tell them about you.”
“Yes,” Crantor said.
“I don’t think Shapiro is much use to us,” Lorelli went on, looking at Crantor. “Do you?”
“Not now,” Crantor said and picked up his overcoat. He put it on. “You’d better get some sleep. Your room is across the way.”
“I’ll wait here until you come back,” Lorelli said. “We shall have to do something about Gina Pasero too. It won’t take the police long to connect her with Shapiro. Do you know where she lives?”
“No, but I will find out,” Crantor said, moving to the door. He paused with his hand on the door knob. “What shall I do with the money?”
Lorelli shrugged her shoulders.
“It belongs to Shapiro,” she.said.
Crantor’s mutilated face lit up with a wolfish smile.
“Perhaps I’ll persuade him to leave it to me in his will,” he said and went out, closing the door behind him.
Chapter IV
GINA
A little after twelve o’clock the following morning, Marian came into Don’s study to announce that Chief Superintendent Dicks of the Special Branch was waiting to see him.
“Dicks? What’s he want?” Don asked, signing the last letter of a number that lay before him.
“He didn’t confide in me, but he did say it was urgent.”
“I have half a mind not to see him,” Don said, pushing back his chair. “I’m fed up with the police. They had those two just where they wanted them and they calmly let them get away.” He reached for a cigarette. “Any news of Julia? Have you phoned the Clinic yet?”
“Yes, just now. She is doing as well as can be expected, but she is still very ill. I’ll go down after lunch and see if I can’t get something less vague.”
“I wish you would. I can’t get her out of my mind.”
“The Superintendent is waiting,” Marian reminded him.
“All right, I’ll see him now.”
Chief Superintendent D
icks, a red-faced, jovial-looking man, was sitting comfortably in an armchair before the fire in the lounge. He was puffing placidly at his pipe; his shrewd eyes were half-closed as Don walked in. He and Don had known each other over a number of years and were old friends.
“There you are,” Dicks said, looking up. “I bet you’re hating the entire police force this morning.”
“You’re right, I am,” Don said, sitting on the arm of a chair that faced the fire. “I have every reason to. The way your people let those two slip through their hands sticks in my gullet.”
Dicks lifted his broad shoulders.
“We’ll find them,” he said. “At the moment they are lying low, but sooner or later they’ll have to make a move into the open. They can’t get away.”
“I don’t believe it,” Don said irritably. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they weren’t already in France or Italy, laughing at you. What’s the good of watching the ports and airports? You don’t imagine they will go that way, do you? They’ve probably gone by fast motor-boat. It’s easy enough and you know it.”
“Fortunately for me,” Dicks said, “catching them isn’t my pigeon.”
Don wasn’t in a patient mood. He stared hard at Dicks. “Well, I can’t imagine you’re here to chit-chat about the weather, Super,” he said. “I suppose something is your pigeon. What is it you wanted to see me about? I’m a little pressed for time.”
Dicks lifted his heavy eyebrows.
“Sounds as if you’re a little testy this morning, Mr Micklem,” he said. “Can’t say I blame you. This has been a foul-up.
We should have had them by now. The Commissioner is raising all kinds of hell. Yes, I have a reason for seeing you. I thought you would like some information about the Tortoise.”
Don looked at him, his angry expression fading. “What do you know about the Tortoise? What’s he to do with your department?”
“I don’t know much about him, and I’m afraid he is going to have a lot to do with my department,” Dicks returned, settling himself more comfortably in his chair.
Don got up and as a gesture of peace went to the liquor cabinet, fixed two big whiskies and water and gave Dicks oxig of them. Dicks took it dubiously, sniffed at it and sighed with approval. “It’s a bit early for me, but perhaps it won’t do any harm. Thanks, Mr Micklem.”
“Tell me about the Tortoise,” Don said, sitting down. “I’d give a lot to get my hands on him.”
“So would we, so would the French, Italian and American police. I know our people didn’t come out of this business too well,” Dicks said, “but you have to shoulder some of the blame. You see, Horrocks had never heard of the Tortoise while I had. If you had told me we might have had a very different story to tell.”
“I did try to tell you,” Don said shortly. “You happened to be out. I know it was careless of me not to try again, but I just couldn’t take it seriously.”
“I’m not saying we could have saved Mr Ferenci if we had known what was happening, but at least we would have had a good try. You aren’t the only one who has looked on the Tortoise as a joke. The Paris police thought he was a harmless lunatic and Renaldo Busoni lost his life.”
“Busoni? Wasn’t he the Italian attache?” “That’s right. He was fished out of the Seine after receiving threatening letters from the Tortoise. I got the report with a hint that Italian officials over here might be threatened in the same way.”
“Who is the Tortoise?” Don demanded.
“He is a very dangerous and ruthless extortioner: a man who will stop at nothing.”
“So Ferenci isn’t his first victim?”
“Oh no; there have been nine others over a period of fourteen months,” Dicks said. “Two of them were murdered in the States, three in France and four in Italy. Mr Ferenci is the first to be murdered in this country. The trouble is we have no idea who paid the Tortoise’s demands. We feel pretty sure there must be a great number of men and women in Europe and in the States who are paying up and saying nothing. If you had told me Ferenci had been threatened by the Tortoise I would have advised him to pay up.”
“You’re not serious, are you? That’s odd advice from a police officer.”
“It happens to be good advice,” Dicks said quietly. “His wife wouldn’t be in the London Clinic now if he had paid up and he would be alive.”
“But that’s not the point. You are admitting the police would have been helpless to protect him.”
“That’s what I am admitting. Let’s face it. We haven’t enough policemen to shadow any but the V.I.P.s day in and day out. The Tortoise is patient. Sooner or later he gets his man. Mr Ferenci wouldn’t have rated a day and night bodyguard.
We would have to do something about the Italian ambassador’s staff if one of them was threatened, but Mr Ferenci was an ordinary individual. We couldn’t have looked after him for weeks on end. You’ve seen how the Tortoise works. You, Mason and Dixon were guarding Ferenci. That didn’t save him, did it?” Dicks tapped out his pipe, blew noisily down it and began to fill it again. “The Tortoise knows that if he fails to make good his threat a crack will start in the racket he has built up. Pay up or die is his slogan. People are paying up because they believe they haven’t a chance to survive if they don’t.”
“But Ferenci didn’t know that,” Don said sharply. “The Tortoise meant nothing to him.”
“That’s true. The Tortoise is starting his racket over here. No one knew about him before Ferenci died, but they know about him now. After the way the newspapers handled the murder, no one can fail to know about him. The next rich man who gets a threatening note from the Tortoise will know it isn’t a joke. I think Ferenci was deliberately killed to advertise the arrival in this countiy of the Tortoise.”
“It’s up to your people to catch him,” Don said grimly. “That’s what you are here for.”
“It’s not going to be easy. We have no lead on him. If we do catch up with the killer, he isn’t the Tortoise. If we catch this redheaded woman, she isn’t the Tortoise either. The French police did manage to catch one of the Tortoise’s dagger-men and persuaded him to talk, but he didn’t tell them anything of any use. He said he was hired by a man who made an appointment with him on a dark road. This man — he may or may not have been the Tortoise — arrived by car and stayed in the car. The dagger-man didn’t see his face. He took his orders and did the job. So you see the Tortoise is quite a headache. The American, French and Italian police have been wrestling with the problem for the past fourteen months. Now it’s our turn.”
“You don’t sound veiy confident that you’ll catch him,” Don said.
“I know how you feel, Mr Micklem,” Dicks returned. “You have just lost a good friend, but we can’t work miracles. You can be sure everything will be done that can be done. It is an international job, of course. It’s my guess he operates from Italy.”
“Why Italy?”
“Two reasons: every one of the Tortoise’s victims have been Italians and this…”
He took from his pocket a flat box, opened it and produced a broad-bladed knife with an ornate wooden handle. “Take a look at this. It is the knife that killed Mr Ferenci. Make anything of it?”
Don took the knife and examined it.
“I don’t pretend to be an expert,” he said after he had turned the knife over, “but I’d say this is a copy of an Italian throwing knife of the medieval period: say about the thirteenth century. If I remember rightly I’ve seen something like it in the Bargello in Florence.”
“That’s correct,” Dicks said, nodding. “Between them, the police in the States, France and Italy have nine such knives.
They have all been taken from the bodies of the Tortoise’s victims. Every effort has been made to trace the knives without success.”
“The red-headed girl, Lorelli, is an Italian,” Don said. “Her accent was unmistakable.”
“That’s another pointer.”
“Well, surely we are getting somewhere,”
Don said. “Why does he only attack Italians? Is it possible there’s a political hookup? I know Ferenci was a rabid anti-Fascist. Know anything about the other victims’ politics?”
“They are a mixed bag: nothing to go on. Some.were anti-Fascists, some Christian-Democrats, some Fascists. I’ve worked along that line but it gets me nowhere.”
“Have you asked yourself why he calls himself the Tortoise?” Don asked. “It’s not a name to strike fear into anyone — a most unimaginative name for an extortioner. Why the Tortoise? There must be a reason. A tortoise is slow and harmless: the exact opposite to this killer. There must be a reason.”
“I wondered about that myself, but I haven’t any bright ideas. It might be a deliberate smoke screen.”
“I don’t think so. And another thing — why go to the trouble of manufacturing a copy of a medieval knife? Why not use a knife without the elaborately carved handle? I have a hunch that the tortoise and the knife are something this killer has adopted as a trademark for a very positive reason. We might get somewhere if we found out that reason.”
“It’s possible, but I don’t see how we do it.”
Don tossed his cigarette into the fire.
“It’s a thinking point.2 don’t want to hurry you. Super, but I have a lot of work to do. I take it you didn’t come here just to give me information?”
Dicks rubbed the side of his nose with his pipe.
“Well, I did and I didn’t,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for your talents. You did a fine job on that Tregarth business last year. Ferenci’s a friend of yours. thought I’d put you in the picture in case you wanted to take a hand in2 finding the Tortoise. If we are going to catch him we will only do so by underground information. I know you have a number of contacts in Italy and over here. Every scrap of information we can get will be useful.’
“All right,” Don said. “I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not very hopeful. I know a couple of birds in Rome who might have some ideas. I’ll have a talk with Uccelli. I don’t know if you’ve run into him. He owns the Torcolotti restaurant in Soho. He is a smart old scoundrel. I’ve known him for years. What he doesn’t know about the Italian colony here isn’t worth knowing.”
Mission to Siena Page 5