by John Creasey
“Nice chap?” asked Kemp. “He is a very satisfactory guest.”
“I know one thing, these Americans can afford a lot more on cameras than I ever could,” said Kemp. “How many’s he got? Two or three?” He made a joke of it.
“As far as I know, he has only one, a cine camera,” replied Mrs. Lambett.
Without pressing too hard, Kemp could not learn more from her, but he did find out that Hann was coming in for a midday meal. So he made it his business to watch the street and saw Hann turn from the corner of High Street without knowing for sure who he was; but he did see a likeness, if a vague one, to the photograph. He also saw the camera and thought it looked big enough for a sixteen millimetre.
At the station, Kemp checked on the details of O’Hara’s description; height and weight were about right, but this man’s hair was jet black, not pale-brown turning grey. The possibility that it was dyed made him suspicious.
He reported to the C.I.D. branch of the division, but the sergeant who took the report said disparagingly: “That’s five we’ve had from here alone. The Yard must be flooded out.”
“That’s up to them,” said Kemp. “I’ve done my bit.”
17: Killer Camera
Gideon stood in the doorway of the information room watching, listening to men’s quiet voices, the tap-tap-tap of the teleprint machines, the subdued buzzing of bells. Nowhere was the ceaseless activity of the Yard more evident than here. At the long desks with the conveyor belt running between them, carrying urgent messages so unhurriedly, uniformed men sat with casual-seeming intentness.
No one seemed to hurry, but the pace was always steady, and much faster than it seemed. A man was saying: “Two youths, age about nineteen, robbed a grocery shop in Whitechapel at two thirty-one P.M. and got away with seventeen pounds, one shilling. No description available.”
Another was taking a different message: “Two private cars were in collision at the north end of Lambeth Bridge at two thirty-two P.M., both cars badly damaged, one driver dead, the other injured. Traffic has been reduced to single line . . .”
A third message came over the teleprinter as Gideon watched the tape ticking through.
“Attempted bank robbery at Lloyds Bank, Richmond, Surrey, at two-thirty P.M., two men and a girl involved. A bank clerk raised the alarm. The girl and one man have been held, the other man escaped with a bag containing about £2,300 in used treasury notes. . .”
The messages were distributed to the departments concerned without comment. Within a few minutes Bell would be checking with the division about the bank raid; it looked as if that had failed, so luck was holding.
Another message came through on the machine: “Message from CD. Division.” That was from Kensington and Cromwell Road area. “Police Constable A. E. Kemp reports an American who might fit the description of the man O’Hara. He says that this suspect’s hair is jet black and appears to him to be recently dyed. The man is staying at the Lambett Guest House under the name of Hann.”
The chief inspector in charge of information came up and said: “Another O’Hara false alarm.”
“One of them’s going to be the real McCoy sooner or later,” replied Gideon. “That gone up to Donnelly and Webron”
“It’s on its way.”
“Thanks,” said Gideon. “I can see I’m not needed down here.”
In fact, the entire Yard was fairly quiet because of the lull in major crime, and the day-to-day commonplaces could almost look after themselves. It was just the right afternoon for a jaunt, and it would do no harm to go out with Donnelly and Webron. They would be able to report back to Washington that the Commander in person was concentrating on O’Hara. Smiling at his own humbug, Gideon went-upstairs to the Americans’ office, and found it empty. A sergeant, passing by said: “The two Yanks have just gone out, sir.”
“Oh,” said Gideon. He didn’t like “Yanks” but one could overdo punctiliousness. He thought ruefully that the pair hadn’t lost a moment; that was probably a measure of their anxiety.
He lifted a telephone, called Bell, and said: “Joe, I’m going out for a stretch - over to take a look at that latest O’Hara.”
“Enjoy yourself,” said Bell.
Gideon went downstairs, to find a chauffeur at the foot of the steps; Bell had uncanny ability in arranging that. Gideon told the driver where to go and sat beside him watching the traffic, studying the quick reactions, knowing that at one time this man had been a star driver of the Flying Squad; he was now nearing sixty.
“In a hurry, sir?” he asked.
“We needn’t break our necks,” Gideon said. He was glad to be out’, no matter what the excuse, and quite expected to find two disappointed Americans when he reached the division.
Little more than half an hour after P.C. Kemp had made his report, Donnelly and Webron reached the corner of the street where the Lambett Hotel was, Webron at the wheel of a grey Austin Cambridge. They waited for twelve minutes, before a larger car turned into the street and, as it passed, Webron exclaimed in surprise: “There’s the great Gideon.”
“I don’t believe it,” Donnelly scoffed.
“You’ll believe it,” Webron said. “Does he know anything more?” He opened the door of the car and got out as Gideon’s car stopped.
Gideon glanced up at the newly painted private building, with ‘LAMBETT HOTEL’ painted shiny black on big white columns, then glanced along and saw Webron. He waved, and strolled towards him, looking huge against the stocky American, whose dark hair was ruffled by a strong wind, and who looked up with a half-grin.
“Special information?” he inquired.
“No. I just thought that dyed hair worth looking at,” explained Gideon. “Do you know if Hann’s in?”
“He’s in,” said Webron. “Your divisional man has been watching and he told us; he’s put two men at each corner.”
“We don’t want anything to happen to our guests,” Gideon said dryly. He watched his car moving along and strolled after it, content to feel the pavement solid beneath his feet. It carried him back twenty-nine years, to that time he had first pounded a beat, and there was a positive nostalgia about it.
He heard a soft toot on a car horn and glanced around.
A man was turning away from the Lambett Hotel. He was of medium height with jet-black hair, and had a camera slung over his shoulder. Webron was only a few yards in front of him. Donnelly was getting out of the car into the road, and a small van, coming along fast, honked its horn wildly. Donnelly dodged back. Gideon swung around and began to stride towards the stranger and, as he did so, he saw Webron’s expression change and saw horror on Donnelly’s face as he rounded the car. Although the suspect had his back turned to him, Gideon saw the swift movement of the camera strap and the position of his arms; the man was levelling the camera at Webron, so Webron might be face to face with death.
Gideon opened his mouth and yelled: “Police!” He saw the suspect start; he saw Donnelly leap forward, trip on the curb and fall headlong. The man with the camera jumped away from him, and Webron dived forward. In that moment of furious confusion, Gideon was still twenty yards away. He saw the suspect rush towards the steps of the hotel; somehow, Webron flung himself sideways to stop him. Then the man with the camera jumped towards the steps which led down to the hotel’s sub-basement and managed to slam the waist-high iron gate behind him. He was on one side of the gate, and Donnelly was helpless on the other. Webron was going forward with cold-blooded determination.
The “camera” was trained on them both. “Get away,” Hann said, gaspingly. “Get away from me. Let me go or I’ll kill you.”
“Stop the talk,” Webron said. The edge on his voice told Gideon how tense he was; and how afraid. He took a step nearer. “You’ve had your day, O’Hara. Just drop that . . .”
“Get away from me or I’ll shoot you both.”
“Mr. O’Hara,” Gideon called in a level voice. He was only a few yards away, approaching with long, deceptively leisur
ely strides. Donnelly, picking himself up, glanced at him as if in astonishment, and Webron moved forward again. “It’s one thing to assassinate your President, if you believe he is betraying your country,” Gideon went on conversationally, “but it’s another to commit cold-blooded murder. These men are just doing their job. You might injure them, or even kill them, but you can’t get away. The hotel is surrounded, and I can have armed men here in a few minutes.” He put a hand to his pocket, calmly, took out his wallet, and extracted a card. “I am Commander Gideon of the Criminal Investigation Department.” He held the card forward and saw O’Hara staring at him, lips already beginning to work, strength and purpose failing.
The camera dropped before Gideon touched the man.
“Commander, I just want to tell you that was the coolest nerve I’ve ever seen in a man,” declared Donnelly.
“Amen to that,” Webron said.
Gideon sat back in his chair behind his desk, looked from one man to the other, and said: “That was the biggest slice of luck I’ve had in years. I couldn’t let it slip through my fingers. O’Hara isn’t a killer as such. I didn’t see how the appeal could fail.” He meant exactly what he said. It seemed to him that the day had changed the whole outlook of the Visit; everything had started to go right, and he was positively light-hearted.
Later, when he talked to Kate about the newspaper account of this, he would say honestly that it had not occurred to him that there was really any danger, and she would believe him. Now he went on: “It’s our biggest headache over, anyhow.” He thought: I’m a blurry fool; I ought to have told them they had all the guts in the world, too. But that would be an anticlimax now. “O’Hara’s downstairs, praying. We’ll charge him with being in possession of a firearm without a licence and that will keep him on remand in custody for eight days. By then we should have an extradition warrant ready. That what you two want?”
“Commander, that’s exactly what we want,” Webron replied. “Is there anything we can do for you?”
“Yes,” said Gideon. “Go out to Kensington, and have a word with Constable Kemp.”
“We’ll be glad to,” said Webron. “Is there any rule against taking him out to dinner?”
“Make it a good dinner,” Gideon said.
On that same evening, Matthew Smith turned into the gateway of his house, went around the side as he usually did, hesitated at the back door, and then went towards the workshop. He did not even glance towards the heap of soil which he had dug up from beneath the workshop, and did not yet know that it had been examined; his neighbours were not likely to tell him. He did not notice that the woman next door was watching him through her kitchen window.
He unlocked the workshop door, stepped inside, glanced at the spot where his dead wife lay and quickly looked away. Thought of her vanished from his mind as he stared at the hiding place where he kept the bomb. His heart began to pound and blood throbbed through his ears. It was so very near, now; the great moment was almost in his grasp. He could not wait to take the bomb and hurl it at the hated creature in the gilded coach. He could not wait to hear the roar of the explosion, to see the horses rear up, to see a devil being blown to pieces.
Saturday was the first day London was to be flooded with visitors, and the first day to be prepared for a mass attack by Sonnley’s men. Sonnley had not whistled very much in the past few days. He was worried, although there were some reasons for thinking that the worst of his worries might be over. The police were taking comparatively, little notice of him, and he knew that they were stretched very thin. Probably the watching earlier in the week had been in an effort to scare, him and Klein.
He did not know what to make of Klein. After the news of the “accident” to Whittaker, Klein seemed to have become obsessed with the idea of finding out who had smeared those handle bars, but he had failed. No other burnt fingers had been reported, and as far as Sonnley’s scouts in the big provincial cities knew, there was no movement towards London. Klein seemed to have paid them to stay out of the Big Smoke, as instructed, and that was just as Sonnley wanted it.
But how far could he trust Klein?
He told himself that Klein was reliable at least until he had been paid off, but would have to be watched very carefully afterwards.” Meanwhile, Sonnley double checked his own arrangements for the Visit.
He meant to have an alibi which no one could possibly break. He had to make sure that the money was collected and paid into the bank quickly, and that the stolen goods were moved quickly, too. He also wanted to distribute Lumati’s money - he had collected it days ago, and it was stored in the cellar of one of his shops - but for a reason which he could not explain to himself, he held that back. He had collected it and it was safely stacked away. There was no hurry with the money, and the police might be on the lookout for forged notes.
At the back of Sonnley’s mind, there was one way in which he could use the slush, but his immediate concern was to see that his own plans worked smoothly.
On Saturday morning, he gave Rosie a peck of a kiss and went outside. It was bright and sunny, and by the time he reached the garage at the back of the flats he was whistling cheerfully; good weather was just what his “artists” wanted. He slid into the driver’s seat, switched on the ignition and took the wheel. Immediately he felt something sticky and wet that for a moment puzzled him. Then, only seconds before the acid began to burn, he realized what it was.
He snatched his hands away, and sat absolutely still, eyes glaring, hands crooked, the burning getting worse with every passing second. Soon he made choking noises in his throat, as if he were fighting for breath.
That day, the day which should have been Sonny Boy Sonnley’s greatest harvest, his “artists” left home for the West End of London, each of them very careful with the handle bars of bicycles, scooters and motorcycles; none of them used cars, because of the need for quick getaways. All of them went among the crowds for the first of their jobs. The weather was so lovely that it made the people happy and careless, and pockets and handbags were easy game. In all, fourteen of the men made good first pickings, and then hurried back to their machines.
Exactly the same thing happened in each case. Each man gripped the handle bars, and started off; after a few seconds, each man pulled into the curb, snatched his hands from the bars and looked down. Each saw hands and fingers which were already red and blistering, and which were beginning to cause agony. Man after man jumped off his machine, bystanders staring at them as they waved their hands about wildly.
The police were soon alerted.
Superintendent Lemaitre pulled up in his blue Humber outside Gideon’s front door, early that afternoon, and Gideon saw him from the bedroom where he was mending a spring blind. Kate was out shopping. Gideon was on call and, judging from Lemaitre’s expression, this was an urgent one. He smiled to himself as Lemaitre disappeared along the path, seeing in his mind the tall, thin, rather gawkish man, with spotted red-and-white bow tie, grey overcheck suit which somehow contrived to be loud, and narrow-brimmed trilby set at a jaunty angle on the side of his head.
The bell rang twice before Gideon could get to the door.
“In a hurry, Lem?” he asked mildly.
“In a blurry hurry,” Lemaitre cracked, and there was excitement but not anxiety in his eyes. “Gottabitta news for you.” He came in, almost as familiar with the house as Gideon, and went on boisterously: “Remember old Dicky Whittaker? Poor old Dicky with the blistered fingers?”
“Well?”
“We’ve had nine cases of blistered fingers reported this afternoon,” Lemaitre announced, joyfully. “Every one of them a Klein and Sonny Boy man! How about that, George?” Without giving Gideon a chance to respond, Lemaitre careered on, taking a slip of paper from his pocket. “Every one of the baskets was caught with his pockets stuffed with loot, George. Every one’s a dead cert for three years inside, after hospital treatment. Some of their hands - you should see! Raw isn’t the word. But the thing is, George, I know
what’s on.” Gideon said cautiously: “Do you?”
“That’s right, that’s right; tell me I’m jumping to conclusions again. This time I’m bang on the ball.” Lemaitre waved the slip of paper in front of Gideon’s nose. “Now listen to me, George. Here is a list of the boys who’ve been burnt. They can’t work, understand? One might have been an accident, but nine makes a campaign, and there may be more to come. So as soon as I heard there were several of them, I checked round with the provincial cities. You want to know something?”
“Try me.”
“Jock Gorra’s boys left Glasgow last night and this morning. Some by train, some by road. And remember, Klein was up there, with Gorra and they behaved like dear old pals. You can take it from me, the Glasgow Blacks are coming to take over from Sonnley, and all we’ve got to do is pick ‘em up as they arrive, and have ‘em sent back to Glasgow. Now wait a minute, wait a minute!” pleaded Lemaitre, as Gideon tried to get a word in. “I’ve telephoned Glasgow. They’ve put out an official request for all of Gorra’s gang to be sent back for questioning. It’s only a matter of finding them. They won’t be likely to come by road, not all the way, it’s a hell of a drive. I think those who started out by road will catch a train farther south, maybe in Carlisle, and we ought to be able to pick them up at Euston.”
“Got the stations watched yet?” demanded Gideon.
“Attaboy,” said Lemaitre, and his grin seemed to split his face in two. “I’ve done better - action, that’s me. We got seven of the so-and-so’s off the Flying Scott, and nine more at the Victoria coach station. Don’t they hate London!”
Gideon joined in his laugh, and felt a deep satisfaction.
His hands bandaged and free from pain, Sonnley was sitting at the window of his apartment, staring down into the street. Now and again he muttered harshly: “I’ll get the swine. I’ll get him.”