by John Creasey
Scott-Marie’s eyes looked ice cold.
“How much of this have you told Mr. Donaldson in the past?”
“Everything, except my doubts after seeing Riddell last night,” Gideon answered. “He’s not in this morning, so I’ve not been able to tell him about this.”
“He won’t be in for several days,” Scott-Marie told Gideon, and then added right out of the blue: “George, you should be the Assistant Commissioner for Crime. You must know that.”
He left the words hanging, as it were, in mid-air; a kind of challenge and the very last thing Gideon wanted to cope with this morning. But this was Scott-Marie, who did not say anything out of the blue unless he had already given it a great deal of thought. Slowly Scott-Made relaxed. A grim smile played about his mouth, and he went on: “Ponder what I’ve said in the knowledge that Mr. Donaldson will be leaving at the end of the year. He told me so last night.”
That, in its way, was an even greater surprise; and all Gideon could find to say was: “I’ll ponder, sir.” He held the file out, and Scott-Marie’s fingers gripped the other end so that for a moment both of them were holding it. “This is the file on the situation which led to the Notting Hill Gate disaster and could lead to others.”
“The racial situation, you mean?”
“Yes.”
Scott-Marie now held the file. The ice seemed back in his eyes, the momentary warmth of that “George” was gone. One thing was absolutely certain about this man: the Yard, his job, came remorselessly first.
“It doesn’t seem very full.”
“It isn’t full enough,” Gideon said. “I’ve been inclined to let it slide.”
Scott-Marie did not even glance away from Gideon, who was increasingly and sickeningly aware of the fact that he should have given much more attention to the dangers in the immigration situation; not simply dealt with the actual crimes which had emerged from it, but gone to the heart of it. He shouldn’t have left Riddell in charge for so long, and he should have taken the opportunity to put in a powerful team during Riddell’s holiday, instead of keeping the investigation ticking over. It passed through his mind that this report had been on the Assistant Commissioner’s desk several times but Donaldson had made only one comment on each occasion: “Keep me informed.” But Gideon could and should have pushed; instead he had waited for a catastrophe to shock him into action.
“Well, we can’t let it slide any longer,” Scott-Marie observed at last. “Come and see me as soon as you’re back.”
“Right,” said Gideon. And as Scott-Marie turned toward the door, the folder under his arm, Gideon said almost casually: “One other thing while you’re here, sir.”
Scott-Marie could pivot about like a youth; he did so now.
“Yes?”
“The Entwhistle case,” Gideon said, and paused.
“The man you think might have been wrongly imprisoned – yes.” Scott-Marie waited. He could have heard of this only twice, and each time briefly, over the past year but Gideon was sure that he had the details at his fingertips.
“I’d like to reopen the case, sir. We’ve found a man who knew Entwhistle’s wife, and was undoubtedly her lover. There are a lot of details we haven’t discovered yet but I think the time has come to start asking the man a few questions. And also to ask Entwhistle some questions, which will raise his hopes. Once we do either, of course, the fact that we’re reconsidering the case will come out. And it will be sensational. He’s been in prison for three years already.”
Scott-Marie considered before asking quietly: “Who is on the case?”
“Honiwell. The last man in the world to make a report unless he was absolutely sure of himself.”
“Yes,” Scott-Marie said. “Yes. You’d better handle it as you think fit. Let me know how it goes, but don’t leave it hanging fire any longer.”
“Thank you, sir,” Gideon said.
This time Scott-Marie went out, the door opening and closing on footsteps just outside. After allowing his chief time to reach the lifts to his office, Gideon went out too. Honiwell and Saxby must be wondering what had happened to delay him. But those ten minutes or so with Scott-Marie had covered a great deal of ground and they showed more vividly than ever the Commissioner’s belief in him.
Too vividly? wondered Gideon.
The question of the Assistant Commissionership had been raised before. He had rejected the offer, convinced that he was in the right job, and would stay there for the rest of his police service. But he felt sure that this time Scott-Marie would push much harder to make him accept. There had been a succession of Assistant Commissioners in recent years, none of them really satisfactory, but Donaldson was by far the worst.
Gideon went down the stone steps in a hurry, to find Honiwell at the bottom near an ear with a peak-capped driver by the open door.
“In you get,” said Gideon; and in a few seconds they were turning out of the gates on the Embankment side, heading for Notting Hill.
6
Rescue Effort
The man who seemed to have been standing behind Riddell and the others for hours, saying “Heave!” at regular intervals, had not spoken for at least a minute. Now he said: “Hold it.” Riddell, sweat pouring down his face and his back, stood still; the weight seemed greater and he felt that he must give way.
One child was whimpering – and therefore alive.
Riddell swivelled his gaze toward the left and saw what was happening; two men were pushing a steel rod beneath the beam, to take the weight, while the little man who had been squeezing through was now on the other side, moving bricks with a curiously disciplined speed and precision.
The man behind said: “Slow down, Jimmy.”
The little man growled: “What the hell!”
“You don’t want the floor to go, do you?”
God, thought Riddell, there is even danger of that.
Some rubble fell. He held his breath, and his heart began to pound. The men pushing the rod paused; and so did Jimmy. In the following hush they could hear only the sound of their breathing. The falling stopped, and the man out of sight spoke again.
“They’re shoring the floor up, but take it easy.” There was a pause. “Now try again – you chaps keep still.”
The rod was pushed slowly, agonisingly slowly, beneath the beam. Jimmy moved more bricks. The whimpering seemed to become more shrill – angry. Riddell felt an easing of the pressure on his shoulders as the beam was raised. It was as if all the blood and strength had drained out of his body. A hand rested on his shoulder, a voice sounded in his ear.
“Squeeze out, sir – I’ll take over.”
Slowly, agonisingly slowly, every muscle in his body groaning, Riddell backed away and another, fresh-looking man, a fireman, slid into his place. It looked as if the beam was being held by the rod. Three men were clearing away the rubble with surprising speed but nevertheless great deliberation. Riddell, the weight gone, staggered and thought he would fall; he was terrified of what would follow if he thudded down. Suddenly he felt strong arms around his waist.
“Take it easy, sir. I’ll keep you on your feet.” There was a pause. “Now back a little, not too much at a time.” Step by step Riddell was led out of the chamber. Dazedly he became aware of the staircase, still standing but open to the skies. He saw the crowd of policemen, firemen, newspaper photographers and reporters, all of them covered with dust, all staring.
He went down a step. A board groaned.
“It’s all right,” his helper said. “The staircase is supported.”
Riddell went down another step as a man in the street said as if with anger: “The whole bloody lot could cave in; you can’t support that ruin.” It wasn’t frightening to Riddell anymore, for he was only a few feet away from the top of a pile of rubbish: if it came to that point he could jump.
The man behind him said: “All right, sir.” A uniformed constable came, treading on bricks and plaster and stirring up little clouds of dust. He put out a steadying arm.
“This way, sir. There’s a first-aid post over here.”
Why should he need a first-aid post?
“It’s Riddell,” a newspaperman exclaimed excitedly.
“Hold it!” cried a photographer.
“Superintendent Riddell,” called out another newspaperman.
“Just one more, sir.” Flash went his camera; flash, flash, flash.
“Is it true there are some children buried in there?”
“Any signs of life?”
“How many workers up there, sir?”
Questions, questions, questions; and Riddell, usually very publicity conscious, did not answer any. He ached abominably, he was parched, he was sweating, he could hardly hear. A path opened in the crowd, the cameras ceased clicking and flashing. He was led into one of the houses opposite. A door was open on the right. Inside were some nurses, a policeman, two women wearing greenish uniforms and badges of the Women’s Voluntary Services who were at a table with an array of white cups and saucers, plates of sandwiches, two big bright urns, presumably one of tea and one of coffee.
And there were chairs.
There was a mirror, too. He saw a big scratch across his forehead, where dust had dried on oozing blood, and other scratches; he looked at death’s door. The thought made him give a fierce grin, and a woman asked: “Tea or coffee?”
“Tea,” he said.
Tea, more tea, his forehead bathed, his face washed with tenderness, his jacket shaken nearly clean – in twenty minutes he felt a new man.
And three others were brought across, the last one the little fellow who had crawled beneath the beam. He had curly hair covered with chips of brick and plaster, and merry blue eyes. And he was smiling.
Riddell asked hoarsely: “Get those kids?”
“Yes – and all alive, too. They—”
Suddenly there was a roar of cheering from the street; nearly everyone in this room moved swiftly forward towards the window. Two men were coming down the staircase which was now bare to the sky, each carrying a child. A moment later a third man appeared, a child held high on his chest, a curly-haired Pakistani boy with huge eyes.
The cheering went on and on.
Ambulances moved up slowly and the children were placed in them; there was more cheering as it moved off. The curly-haired man, coffee in one dirty hand and a sandwich in the other, turned around and looked at Riddell.
“Bloody good job you did.”
“I did!” gasped Riddell.
“Couldn’t have got under that beam if there hadn’t been a team of Atlases to hold it up,” the man declared. “I wonder what my wife will say when she learns she’s married to a bloody hero.” He held out his cup for more coffee, and Riddell’s thoughts switched, for the first time since he had arrived, to his wife and to the emptiness of his home life.
Other men came in, all looking as if they had been covered by rubble, then some newspaper reporters and cameramen arrived in a bunch; flash, click, question; flash, click, question. Riddell was jolted out of himself again. There was excitement in this, in the fact that all the rescue team was here together, being photographed. He hadn’t dreamed of anything like this when he had come. And there was the deep satisfaction of having helped save those children.
A middle-aged reporter approached.
“Congratulations, Superintendent.”
Riddell just waved his hand.
“I know you’ve had all you can take this morning, but if you could answer a few questions we’d all be grateful.” In the skilful and anonymous way of newspapermen they had made a circle about him, cutting him off from the others in the rescue team. “You were the only C.I.D. man up there, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Riddell said.
“Any special reason for you being on the spot?”
“Yes,” Riddell said.
“What?”
“There’s been a lot of petty larceny and some major larcenies here, as a result of the overcrowding; some drug taking, too. I was checking.”
“On your own, Superintendent?”
“The divisional people were also involved.”
“Mr. Riddell,” a man called out, “how long has the Yard been enquiring into conditions in this area?”
“Not the conditions as such, but the consequences of them,” Riddell corrected.
“Where does the dividing line come, sir?”
“That’s a matter of official policy; you’ll have to ask someone senior to me,” Riddell replied. At least the ordeal hadn’t addled his mind.
“Superintendent,” called the man who had started to ask the questions, “did you know that a young Pakistani girl died in one of the houses in Long Street a few weeks ago?”
Riddell drew in a deep breath, and said sharply: “Yes.”
“Is the Yard inquiring into her death, by any chance?”
Riddell knew that he was in a spot; that he shouldn’t have started answering the questions so freely, should have drawn the line earlier. He could and should push this onto a superior. He had to answer but the answer had to be phrased in such a way that it did not give too much away.
At last he said: “Yes. We found she died from malnutrition, and we wanted to find out how she came to be here and what led to the malnutrition, how it came about that anyone could die in such circumstances in the middle of London. In one way it’s a matter for society and the social services but we want to make sure there is no direct criminal cause.”
“Such as landlord profiteering?”
“That’s not an offence, and you know it. And don’t put words into my mouth,” Riddell rebuked. “My job is simply to make sure there is no cause for a criminal charge.”
A uniformed man appeared at the doorway and boomed across the words, which reverberated, making everyone look around, charging everyone with a new sense of urgency.
“Clear the house!” came the cry. “Clear the house! The houses on the other side are tottering.”
There was a concerted movement toward the speaker and the doorway. He disappeared. Two men picked up the urns, the W.V.S. women began to pack the cups and saucers into a big wicker basket. Several men grabbed sandwiches and began to eat as they went out. Two photographers rushed outside and climbed on walls to get better pictures. The uniformed man at the doorway called: “Leave those cups and saucers, and hurry.” The hamper was full, and the two women carried it between them into the street. By sheer chance, Riddell was at the back of the crowd; and he stood aside for the women to pass.
There was a curious groaning sound.
Someone called out in a piercing whisper: “Hurry!”
The two W.V.S. women began to run, the crockery rattling in the basket. The men with the urns and those ahead of them also began to run. The groaning sound became an ear-splitting roar. A bulge appeared in the wall of a house next to the one already in ruins; another great bulge in the wall on the other side.
“My God!” breathed Riddell. “I’ve had it.”
He couldn’t leap forward because the women were in the way. He couldn’t go back; there wasn’t time. Suddenly the sky went dark. He caught a glimpse of a mass of brick and rubble, mortar and stone, overhead like a huge, smoking ceiling. He heard a roar like the thunder of a speeding express train. He covered his head with his arms and went down on his knees, huddled up to protect himself as much as he could. One moment it was as if he were suspended; the next, as if the “ceiling” fell on top of him. It came like a wall of solid rock, absolutely flattening him. All the breath was knocked out of his body in a whining gust.
Gideon sat in silence for a few minutes as the driver coped with traffic which w
as packed sardine tight. Honiwell looked at the traffic, the pedestrians, Parliament Square, anywhere but at Gideon. At last Gideon stirred out of a reverie that mostly concerned Scott-Marie’s clear statement about the Assistant Commissionership.
“Larry,” he said to the driver, “tell Information to help keep me informed of any major new developments at Notting Hill, but nothing else.”
“Very good, sir,” the driver replied.
“Now, Matt,” Gideon said to Honiwell, “we may not have time to make a job of it before we reach the trouble spot but we’ll finish this afternoon, if we have to. I’ve a feeling that you think the Entwhistle case is coming to a boil.”
“You couldn’t be more right,” Honiwell agreed.
“The question is, are you?” retorted Gideon.
Honiwell gave a faint smile. He had always been a calm man, and one of rare compassion. There were Superintendents, like Rollo, who simply saw their job as a puzzle; people were often ciphers to such men. There were others, like Piluski, who probed deep into the technicalities of a problem, almost as if they plunged into their work to escape. There were fewer, perhaps, like Honiwell, whose compassion – love – for their fellow human beings spread to criminals as well as victims, yet who had a greater ruthlessness in hunting down criminals because they also had a keenly developed sense of right and wrong, as distinct from guilty and not guilty.
“Well, Commander,” Honiwell said after a long pause, “I think – I know – that I’ve taken the Entwhistle case as far as it will go without talking to the new suspect, and to Entwhistle himself and – possibly the worst – to his children.”
They sat unspeaking for a few seconds, with the throbbing of a bus engine on one side and the throbbing of a lorry engine on the other, cars and taxis a solid phalanx in front”Why the children?” asked Gideon.
“The man I now suspect may have visited the Entwhistle house while their father was away,” Honiwell said.
“Have you any reason to suspect he did?” asked Gideon.
“No, sir. Except that it is now established that this man Greenwood was Mrs. Entwhistle’s escort at intervals over a period of more than two years. In that time it is obviously possible that Greenwood went there once or twice. The oldest child, Clive, might well have remembered.” When Gideon didn’t answer, Honiwell went on patiently: “I know there’s no certainty, but if the boy did see him and does remember, then we would have evidence that Greenwood was at the house at least once. We could do with a witness, sir. So far all we’ve got is circumstantial evidence.”