‘He’s got fingers in every pie!’ complained Keedy.
‘And they’ll be freshly baked pies. Donohoe would never eat anything out of a tin. Nor, for that matter, would Sprake.’
‘I almost got to like him.’
‘Oh, I liked him as well,’ said Marmion. ‘I just wouldn’t trust him an inch. His partner went out searching for new properties to buy but I bet that Sprake was the one who negotiated most of the deals. He was so fiendishly plausible.’
‘I wonder why he wouldn’t talk about the Donohoe family.’
‘Force of habit – his kind always keep their cards close to their chest. We were supposed to be there to gather information but I fancy that he learnt far more about us in the process. That takes skill and cunning.’
‘Why didn’t you tell him the truth about Donohoe?’
‘The man was murdered. That’s all he needs to know.’
‘The killer sliced off his tongue.’
‘So?’
‘Sprake might have been interested in that detail. It could, possibly, have contained a message for him.’
‘His partner was silenced. That’s enough of a message, isn’t it?’
Keedy patted his notebook. ‘He gave us lots of names but he wouldn’t say if any of them were potential suspects. Why was that, do you think?’
‘He might have been taking out life insurance,’ said Marmion, cynically. ‘I fancy that there were names he was careful not to mention. If he’d pointed one of them out, and if we’d descended on that person, there might have been repercussions.’
‘He didn’t look like a man who scares easily.’
‘We’re all frightened if our lives are in danger, Joe. He’s just better at hiding it than the rest of us. Don’t forget that, if you or I were attacked, we could defend ourselves. Sprake can’t do that. He’s reminded of it every time he tries to get up out of his chair.’
‘What about that book he was reading?’
‘Treasure Island?’
‘It was written for children. Our teacher used to read bits out of it.’
‘It’s a classic adventure story, Joe, and it’s got elements that most pupils are too young to understand properly.’
‘What sort of elements?’
‘Greed, deception, revenge, trust, camaraderie – they’re all there below the surface. All that most kids want is the excitement.’
‘My chief memory is of Ben Gunn, marooned on the island for years and dreaming of eating cheese again.’ He sat up abruptly. ‘Hey, I’ve just realised. Sprake reminded me of him somehow.’
‘I saw no resemblance at all. Ben Gunn is poor, ignorant and pathetic. Sprake is none of those things, especially being poor. In fact, he’s going to become even wealthier. You heard what he told us. Adrian Donohoe has no link whatsoever with the property company. At his father’s death,’ said Marmion, ‘the whole thing is bequeathed to Norris Sprake. He’s the outright winner here.’
‘So?’
‘Put two and two together, Joe.’
Keedy gaped. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that he was party to the murder?’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.’
Clifford Burge hated interviews. He never shone in them and his Cockney vowels usually worked against him. He preferred to be judged on his deeds rather than his words. As a result, he was hoping that Chatfield had spoken up for him in the report he’d given to the panel. Three of them were up for interview but he didn’t know either of his rivals. One of them was even more nervous than Burge but the other had an air of brash confidence about him. It was the nervous candidate who was first called in. Burge tried to chat to the other detective but all that the latter did was to boast about the successes in his career.
‘Do you know Stepney?’ asked Burge.
‘It’s a real shithole. What else is there to know?’
‘Lots of good, decent families live there.’
‘And so do bloodthirsty gangs that’ll stop at nothing.’
‘Done this kind of work before?’
‘No,’ said the other, ‘but I’ll soon get the hang of it.’
Burge made no comment. White-faced and dithering, the first candidate came out after less than five minutes. Defeat was written all over him. Without saying a word, he dashed out of the room. Burge’s companion grinned.
‘It looks like it’s between me and you,’ he said.
‘Good luck!’
‘I won’t need it.’
He was the next person to be summoned, leaving Burge to wait alone in the anteroom. He was already resigned to rejection. The other man looked smarter and sounded more intelligent. Of the three of them, he would definitely be the best candidate. When ten minutes had passed, Burge abandoned all hope of getting the assignment and rued the fact that he’d told both his brother and Everitt White about his nomination. He was not looking forward to admitting to them that he’d failed. Still bristling with confidence, the other candidate came out and pointed to the door.
‘They asked me to send you in.’
‘Oh,’ said Burge, rising from his seat.
The man curled his upper lip. ‘Not that there’s much point.’
Doing his best to ignore the sneer, Burge went into the room to be met by the sight of four people seated behind a table. In response to a gesture from Sir Edward Henry, he sat down on the chair in front of them, feeling isolated and defenceless. The panel consisted of two superintendents and a chief inspector but the only person who mattered to Burge was the commissioner. As chairman, he had the privilege of asking the opening question.
‘What appeals to you about this post, Constable?’
‘Problem needs sorting out, Sir Edward.’
‘You know the East End well, I gather.’
‘Born and brought up in Lime’ouse. Bruvver still lives there. Leslie’s in the river police.’
‘So you belong to a family of law enforcers. That’s good to hear. Juvenile crime is getting out of hand, Burge. You know that as well as us. In fact, you probably have more anecdotal evidence.’
‘My bruvver’s always on about it, Sir Edward.’
‘How should we tackle it?’
‘Well …’
‘Come on – we’re listening. What are your suggestions?’
It was the question he’d anticipated and he’d already rehearsed his answer but somehow it refused to come out in the way he’d planned. Burge was halting and confused. He could see that his Cockney vowels were grating on the ears of some of the panel but he pressed on regardless. Slowly, he became more coherent and the frowns behind the table began to disappear. Eventually, he hit his stride, talking with real passion about an area he knew and – with all its faults – loved. When he’d finished, questions were fired at him from all four of them in turn but he fielded them without the slightest difficulty. The commissioner looked at his fellow members of the panel and gauged their reaction. It was uniformly favourable. He turned to Burge.
‘What did your father do?’
‘Dock labour’r, Sir Edward.’
‘And his father?’
‘Worked in a ware’ouse.’
‘So you’ve had a straitened upbringing.’
Burge smiled fondly. ‘Didn’t seem like it at the time.’
‘The East End, as you know, is one of London’s largest industrial suburbs with a population upwards of three hundred thousand. To make things more difficult, it’s the most cosmopolitan borough in the city. The only way to tackle the problem we face is with someone who knows the area intimately. In an ideal world, that person should have a large team at his disposal but manpower is at full stretch coping with the effects of this terrible war. In short, Burge,’ he went on, ‘you’ll be on your own, feeding information back to the unit we’ve set up here. There’ll be support from uniformed officers, of course, but this will be largely a solo venture.’
‘Suits me, Sir Edward.’
‘There are vicious gangs everywhere. One of them,
for instance, has a distinctive trademark. They snip off the pigtails of unwary girls and run away laughing. Mind you,’ continued Sir Edward, ‘they did overstep the mark recently. One of them tried to cut the pigtail off someone from a Chinese laundry and got a hiding for his pains.’
‘Serves him right,’ said the chief inspector.
‘The worst gangs are the Evil Spirits and the Stepney Warriors. They have pitched battles with each other. The Spirits are the nastier of the two, I’m told. One of their tricks is to steal people’s hats – and that includes policemen’s helmets. They’re also guilty of random violence, burglary, causing an affray and large scale vandalism.’
Burge recoiled from the news about the hats and hoped his blushes didn’t show.
‘It’s only fair that you know the size of the problem and the dangers involved. These gangs don’t take prisoners. Are you willing to tackle them?’ There was a long pause as Burge took time to realise that he was the chosen candidate. ‘We’d like an answer.’
‘When do I start?’ he asked.
Marmion’s life followed its familiar pattern. Getting home long after his wife had gone to bed, he left early the next morning. Though he was pleased to see his daughter, he barely had time to exchange more than a few words with her. His priority was to get to Scotland Yard in order to prepare his report of the previous day’s events. Having done so, he delivered it to the superintendent and awaited his response. Seated behind his desk, Claude Chatfield skimmed through it with a searching eye before looking up at his visitor.
‘I find this very hard to believe,’ he said, tapping the final page. ‘Sprake and Donohoe have been partners for ten years yet the former has no idea where the latter goes when he slips away from the Devonian Hotel.’
‘It may be that he doesn’t want to know, sir.’
‘Do you mean he’s deliberately turning a blind eye?’
‘What links the two men is a mutual desire to enlarge their property empire. There’s very little socialising involved. They lead separate lives.’
‘Sprake’s is separate from Donohoe’s and Donohoe’s sounds to me as if it’s very separate from his wife.’
‘That’s one possibility,’ agreed Marmion.
‘It’s an avenue that must be explored.’
They went on to discuss other theories about the murder victim’s occasional disappearances during his stays in the capital. All were feasible but none, as yet, had any hard evidence to back it up. When they’d exhausted the possibilities, Chatfield remembered that he had something to show the inspector. He handed him some sheets of paper and sat back in his chair.
‘That’s the post-mortem report.’
‘Thank you, sir – any surprises?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said the other as Marmion read the report. ‘Donohoe was garrotted. Someone attacked him from behind. There’s a large bruise in the middle of his back to suggest that the killer put his knee against it to exert more power. That means he must have had him on the ground.’
‘This tells us how he was murdered but not where.’
‘I doubt if it was far from the Thames. He was very heavy. His weight is given on the last page. Nobody would want to lug the corpse very far.’
‘There might have been an accomplice.’
‘There might indeed, Inspector.’
When Marmion had finished reading it, he handed it back. ‘How much of that detail have you released to the press, sir?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been very selective and, of course, I’ve made the usual appeal for help from the public. Somebody must know what he was doing when he sneaked away now and again from his hotel. The trouble is that they may be too frightened to come forward, terrified that the same thing could happen to them.’
‘You never know, sir – we could get lucky.’
‘It’s foolish to trust to luck, Inspector. We have to dig out the truth.’
‘I accept that. It’s the reason I’ve arranged to call on Mr Sprake at his office. It was shared by his partner so Donohoe will have left his imprint there.’
‘What about the sergeant?’
‘He’s on his way to the Devonian Hotel, sir. Adrian Donohoe spent the night there. Sergeant Keedy is going to ask him about his father’s movements when he was in London. In addition to that,’ said Marmion, ‘I’d value the sergeant’s opinion of Mr Armitage, the manager.’
‘In your report, you describe him as evasive.’
‘I was tempted to use another adjective.’
‘What was it?’
‘Obstructive.’
They might have had breakfast together, but Alice Marmion had no hope of raising the subject that was causing her so much heartache. Her father was too preoccupied with his latest case and was, in any case, unlikely to offer an opinion on the letter she’d written. All she could do was settle for asking him to pass on her love to Keedy. Then he was gone. On the bus journey into central London, she took one last look at what she’d written before thrusting the letter back into her handbag. Alice was still brooding on the problem when she joined her colleagues for the daily briefing. It was given by Inspector Gale in her usual brusque manner, her eagle eye checking the uniforms of everyone there to make sure that all her officers were presentable before being sent out into the streets.
Lost in thought about her personal problems, Alice hadn’t even noticed that Iris Goodliffe wasn’t there. She soon became aware of the fact because the door was suddenly flung open and Iris came in, issuing a stream of abject apologies. They were swept contemptuously aside by the inspector. Unleashing a series of stinging rebukes, she showed why her nickname was Gale Force. In the face of such a hurricane, any of them would have buckled but Iris stood there without flinching. She even dared to smile at one point, earning a secondary blast of vituperation. When she was ordered to sit down, Iris did so but there was no sign of contrition. It was almost as if she’d gloried in being dressed down in front of everyone else. Alice was baffled.
It was only when the two of them left the building to go on patrol that she had a chance to question her partner.
‘What kept you, Iris?’ she asked. ‘You must have known that Gale Force would bite your head off. She’s a stickler for punctuality.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ said Iris, grinning excitedly.
‘Why?’
‘Somebody was waiting for me when I got here. He kept me talking.’
‘Who was it?’
‘PC Beckett.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He wanted me. He’s asked me to go out with him.’
Alice was startled. ‘PC Beckett? He’s years older than you, Iris.’
‘So what – he’s a man. And he likes me.’
As they walked off side by side, Iris was bubbling with sheer joy. Someone had finally taken notice of her. Their conversation had made her late but she didn’t mind in the least. She’d been happy to withstand the inspector’s tirade because she was armoured against it. Alice should have felt pleased on her friend’s behalf, not least because a romance of her own would distract Iris from poking obsessively into Alice’s private life, but that was not the case. Iris’s delight only served to depress her colleague. For the whole of the day, Alice knew, Iris would engage in fevered speculation about her relationship with the man who’d asked her out. Being forced to listen to it would be an ordeal. Alice felt her heart sink.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Joe Keedy always revelled in his position as the smartest detective at Scotland Yard. When he walked into the Devonian Hotel, however, he realised that he was outclassed in every sense. He saw that every male guest was wearing a suit that made his own look cheap and poorly cut. Sartorially, he was reduced to insignificance. Gliding across to him, the manager sized him up and guessed who he might be.
‘Good morning, sir – Sergeant Keedy, I believe?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ said the other, hands clasped behind his ba
ck. ‘I’m Patrick Armitage, the manager, and I’m sure you’ve heard all about me from the inspector. He did say he might send you here to have a word with Mr Donohoe – Mr Adrian Donohoe, that is.’
‘Is he still here?’
‘He’s enjoying his breakfast. Like his father, he has a healthy appetite.’
Keedy could see at a glance why the manager was so attractive to women. He had almost flashy good looks and exuded a sense of authority. Keedy decided that he could probably have his pick of the female staff. In spite of himself, he felt a slight twinge of envy.
‘Everybody here has been saddened by the news,’ said Armitage, gravely. ‘Mr Donohoe was a very popular guest. What’s happened is a terrible shock. It’s frightening that he should end his life in such a gruesome way.’
‘It was not by choice.’
‘That goes without saying. Have you made any progress yet?’
‘We believe that we have,’ said Keedy, ‘but there’s still a very long way to go. We had a lot of help from Mr Sprake. I daresay you saw him here, now and then?’
‘As a matter of fact, we didn’t. I know who you mean, of course. Mr Sprake was Mr Donohoe’s partner. In all the time I’ve been here, I can’t recall Mr Sprake gracing us with his presence more than – what – two or three times at most.’
‘I expected partners to be joined together like Siamese twins.’
‘Obviously, they were not.’
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