by John Creasey
Gideon nodded.
“Right, Bligh. Take which one you prefer for your own use, and get someone else in the second room quickly.” Gideon studied the other’s face; a very intelligent, alert face, in which the blue eyes gave an indication of suppressed excitement. “This is an innovation, of course, but it could well become permanent. We need co-ordination of crowd control, larceny prevention, demonstrations handling, and the like. They’re usually regarded as separable, but we may find it will pay to regard each game and each playing-field or arena as part of an entity.”
Bligh was so eager to go that his hand was at the door.
“I do understand, Commander!” he assented. And as Gideon nodded, he strode out.
This was one of the moments when Gideon most liked Hobbs: found him much warmer, and more human than he often allowed himself to appear. They both watched Bligh disappear, both smiled, both chuckled. They were very close.
Then, in a strange, baffling way, Gideon seemed to find the other man drawing away from him; as if a kind of barrier were being deliberately erected between them. Hobbs’ face took on a woodenness which half-suggested that he regretted showing his feelings; that he was aware of a great gulf between himself and Gideon.
And suddenly, almost stiffly, he asked: “Can you spare ten minutes for a — personal matter, George?”
What the devil’s this? wondered Gideon, and said promptly:
“Of course!” He was acutely aware that Hobbs’ personal life had been savagely disrupted when his deeply-loved wife had died; and although that had been two years ago, it still seemed to explain the reserve, almost the aloofness of this man. “Like to sit down?”
“No, thanks,” said Hobbs. But he waited for Gideon to sit, and seemed to draw a deep breath. “George — you will probably say this is nothing to do with me. Please believe it is said with the best possible — ah — intentions.” He paused, bewildering Gideon still more, then almost blurted out. “Kate isn’t well — I’m worried about her. Penelope is very worried indeed. We both feel that you should know.”
CHAPTER TEN
Shock
For a long moment, Gideon simply sat there, Buddha-like in his huge chair, staring up at Hobbs. And-almost warily, hardly perceptibly — Hobbs moved until he was directly opposite him, so that they were like antagonists in confrontation.
Gideon was first aware of the shock — savage, painful, frightening. But his was a trained mind, and the shock did not make him miss the other significant thing Hobbs had said:
“Penelope is very worried indeed. We both feel that you should know.”
Slowly he picked up a telephone and as an operator came on the line, said in a clipped voice: “Get my wife!” Then he put the receiver down, over-carefully. He had to be extremely careful and slow-moving, the last thing he must do was to act impulsively. In a very calm voice, through lips which hardly moved, he asked: “And how long have you known about this?”
“That Kate wasn’t too well? Two months, I suppose.”
“Two months!” Gideon breathed.
“She promised—” Hobbs broke off, gulped, then went on: “She promised to see a doctor, and to tell you as soon as she knew what the trouble was. She didn’t — doesn’t — think it is serious.”
Again, Gideon could only stare at him,, without speaking. The telephone bell jarred through the silence, and he picked it up.
“Kate?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no answer from Mrs. Gideon.”
“Oh.” Gideon’s mouth was suddenly dry: he had to force himself to speak naturally. “Keep the call in — every ten minutes, without fail, until she answers.”
“Very good, sir.”
Gideon put the receiver down in the same, careful way as before. But now, for the first time, he eased his position a little and putting his left hand to his pocket, drew out a pipe with a very big, very shiny bowl. He seldom smoked it; but he always kept it in that pocket and in moments of stress, would rub it between thumb and forefinger or simply nurse it in his palm. He did that now, hand on the desk. Not once did he look away from Hobbs.
“So you’ve known for two months?” he said, flatly.
“Yes, George. I —”
“I’d like to find out what’s going on in my own way,” Gideon interrupted, less tensely but very gruffly. “How did you come to know?”
“Penny — told me. In the beginning.”
“So, Penny confided in you?” A streak of near-physical pain stabbed through Gideon. Confided in Alec, he thought, not in me.
“Yes.”
“In what circumstances?”
“George,” Alec Hobbs said, quietly. “You’re making very heavy weather of this.”
Gideon paused, considering that; gripping the pipe until it strained his sinews and his knuckles, hurtfully. He was silent for a long time.
“Yes,” he conceded at last. “I think perhaps I am. But I’ll do it my way, all the same. What were the circumstances in which Penny confided in you about Kate’s health?”
“We-Penny and I have seen quite a lot of each other, lately.”
“I see,” said Gideon. “You and Penny, close friends.”
Hobbs drew in his breath. He looked a little baffled, and on the defensive: his expression was very set, his eyes wide open, rounded, intent.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Quite — quite a while.”
“I see.” Gideon pushed back his chair and thrust his way towards the window, staring out over the summery brightness, the colour, the bridge with its ceaseless flow of traffic, the masses of people. His beloved London. He had stood at this window and concentrated on some of the major problems of his professional life, but never before had he stood there thinking with such fierce intensity of personal, emotional family matters.
Slowly, a subconscious voice began to whisper: “Don’t let this get out of perspective, George. Take it calmly, take it calmly. You’ve had a shock remember!” And then his consciousness took over. My God-he’s forty-odd! Penny’s not much more than half his age . . . And behind my back . . . My God-Alec Hobbs!”
He did not look round.
“How long, Alec?” Thank heavens that came out quite naturally.
“It really began at the River Pageant last year,” said Hobbs, flatly. “I was with Penny, remember.”
“I remember.”
“I asked you if you would mind if I took her out to dinner.”
“I remember that, too.” Gideon could see Penny’s eager eyes, her obvious delight in the thought of going to a West End restaurant with such an escort. It had been, for her and for Kate, a golden, glorious evening. But he had never dreamed . . .
“We drifted into the habit,” Hobbs said now, and when Gideon made no comment, went on: “Especially after late rehearsals, or a late performance. I would meet her and we would go to a place in Fulham or Chelsea, or — to my flat,”
“Ah!” Gideon turned round sharply.
They stared at each other very tensely.
Again Gideon’s warning inner voice sounded: “This is today. We’re not living in yesterday — and she tent twenty-one: she’s twenty-five. She’s a young woman.” Then his conscious self reasserted itself: Hobbs and Penny! But she had a young man — she was always having different young men: there was only one with whom she had been serious. Had she told him nothing?
“This is today, remember!”
“George,” Alec Hobbs said, in a very calm voice. “I am in love with Penny. Very deeply in love. But I have — you must know that I would behave as if she were my own daughter. I am not at all sure how she feels about me.”
Gideon was stung to retort: “As a father, no doubt!”
He glared. Hobbs glared. Then quite suddenly, Hobbs’ expression changed and a smile hovered. As the younger man relaxed, Gideon too saw the funny side of it, and realised how overwrought he could soon become. The very realisation made him relax and chuckle.
“Shall we settle for uncle?” Hobbs suggested.
“I don’t care what we settle for,” Gideon said. Hobbs wouldn’t lie to him, Hobbs hadn’t been sleeping with the child, Hobbs — whatever his feelings, his being in love — had controlled himself. He could exert his self-control much more firmly than any man Gideon knew.
Thank God he, Gideon, had pulled himself together! He moved back to his desk — and the telephone shrilled. He started, and this time, snatched it up.
“Yes?”
“There’s still no answer from Mrs. Gideon, sir.”
“Keep trying,” Gideon ordered, and put the receiver down. “It looks as if she’s out shopping,” he remarked to Hobbs. He wasn’t worried, yet. He wasn’t even aware that he had been so astonished — so shocked — by the revelation about Hobbs and Penelope, that he had not given Kate a thought in the past ten minutes. “How often do you see each other?” he asked, then added mildly: “I just want to get the picture clearly, Alec.”
“Of course.” Hobbs took out a flat, gold cigarette case. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“No. I — but what we need is a drink!” Gideon put down his pipe, opened a cupboard and took out a bottle of Black and White whisky, two glasses, and a half-full syphon. Then poured the drinks, glad to have something to do, and pushed a glass over. “Cheers!”
“Cheers!” Hobbs sounded almost fervent.
They drank, Gideon the more sleepily; and as they did so, the bell of Big Ben, so close to the window out of sight, chimed one o’clock.
“We see each other at least once a week,” Hobbs told him. “Even during her — I nearly said, her ‘affaires’.”
“I quite thought she was going to marry a young man named Peter,” Gideon confessed.
“Yes,” said Hobbs. “It looked that way, for a while. But she has had a succession of boy-friends for some time now, and often brings them round to see me.”
“Good God!”
Hobbs drank again and smiled wryly.
“You see — she does tend to see me as ‘Uncle Alec’.”
There was silence. During it, Gideon remembered one phrase he had let pass, and realised how true it must be: “I am in love with Penny. Very deeply in love.” And yet she fell in love or at least was attracted by young man after young man and paraded them before Alec, for approval or in happiness. How hurtful that must be! He imagined he could see the measure of the hurt in the other man’s eyes.
“I see.” Gideon shook his head. “Yes, I think I’m beginning to see a lot. Alec — why did you keep it from me?”
“There was nothing else to do.”
“But surely—” Gideon hesitated, and Hobbs’ wry smile came again.
“You know, George, you would have disapproved very much. You would have been very calm and understanding, had I come to tell you, but you would have taken it for granted that it was calf-love from Penelope — and for me, a delayed rebound after Helen’s death. And you would have taken every chance you could to separate us. Or at least, keep us apart. It would have become an issue between you and me, and might have interfered with our work here, and—” Hobbs broke off as if not certain whether to go on. Then he finished very simply: “With our friendship, George.”
After a pause, Gideon asked: “And it won’t, now?”
“I hope not,” Hobbs told him. “I don’t think it either will or need. Had anything developed before, then you would have had to be told. But if, as was more likely, Penelope met a young man, really fell in love, and married, our association would have faded and you need never have known. I think I was right not to tell you.”
Gideon grunted, non-committally, finished his drink, and demanded: “Does Kate know? Is that how you’ve come to realise she isn’t well?”
“Yes.”
Gideon almost groaned: Kate had been in this conspiracy, too — Kate, letting it go on behind his back! He picked up the big pipe again and began to squeeze the bowl.
“But only recently,” Hobbs added, almost hastily.
“Oh, How recently?”
“Precisely three weeks. Penelope wasn’t happy about keeping it-us-from her. She didn’t like the secrecy, yet she felt sure it was the only thing to do. Three weeks ago, when you were in Paris for the Euro-Police Conference, remember? I spent Sunday at your home. We told Kate how often Penny and I were meeting, and asked her advice.”
“On whether to tell me?” Gideon growled.
“Yes.”
And Kate, his Kate, whom he knew with such intimacy -for whom he had such love — had advised: no! She had preferred to share their secret, alone, had thought it better kept from him. What had she expected? That he would go berserk? Rave? Act the outraged father? Kate! Inwardly, he groaned.
“She said she would like to talk to you about it,” Hobbs went on. “She was afraid it would upset you — not the friendship, but the fact that we’d kept it from you for so long.” Bless Kate! “She said she would think about it herself; she wasn’t really sure how she felt.” Hobbs sounded deliberately matter-of-fact, but Gideon thought most of his tension really had gone completely.
“When she took so long to tell you, Penny asked her why. She said she wasn’t feeling well enough to cope; that if you were upset by it, she wanted to be at her best. At her strongest. Penny told me this, so I looked in to see Kate, yesterday.”
“Oh,” said Gideon, and Hobbs hesitated again, then told him, quietly: “She isn’t well, George. She’s getting stabbing pains in her chest. She’s terribly afraid of cancer.”
Gideon opened his mouth but did not speak: tensed his hand about the pipe till it hurt, but did not relax his grip. The noise of the traffic, the brightness of the day, the files on his desk-even Alec Hobbs-all seemed to vanish in one vast blur as he felt this awful shock go through him.
Kate — cancer! Oh, God, no! He was gripped by an icy fear that literally would not let him move. Then, slowly, gradually, it eased; but only to leave him very, very tired. He put out his hand to the telephone: it rang, as he touched it.
“There’s still no answer from your house, Mr. Gideon,”
Gideon grunted again: “Keep trying.” Now the silence was in no way reassuring, he could imagine her-ill. Ill-and alone in the house. Ill — and unable to reach the telephone.
He snatched up the one which went straight through to the Information Room, and as it was answered, snapped: “Have a car go at once to my home and find out if Mrs. Gideon is there. Break in, if necessary!” He rang down on a startled: “Yes, sir!” and closed his eyes as a heavy, dull headache suddenly engulfed him. After a long moment, he managed: “One thing is certain, Alec, you were right to tell me. Thanks.” He could have added: “I wish to God you’d told me weeks ago!” but any hint of recrimination would do no good. Instead, he asked: “Has she seen a doctor?”
“She — she told him she had indigestion.”
“She must be terrified,” Gideon muttered. And although he had been aware of something different about Kate he had never even dreamed of this; had not even taken the trouble to talk seriously with her, to try to make her talk. How blind could a man be? As he sat there, he wondered how long it would be before a report came in from the Divisional patrol car. And then for the first time since Hobbs had asked for that private ten minutes, he thought fleetingly of the cases going through, of the hundred-and-one things that constantly preoccupied him — virtually obsessed him.
God above, it was his fault! If he had been more aware, if he had learned earlier, he would have made Kate see a doctor, gone with her, if necessary. He was the only one who could have made her.
The telephone rang, and he snatched it up. Kate?
“Superintendent Henry would like a word with you,” said the operator.
“Who? — oh.” His voice flattened. “Yes. Put him through.”
Henry, he thought. The Second Test Match, the young Jamaican woman — Conception. The risk of a mass demonstration at the Mecca of cricket. The Action Committee. Danger for the girl
. All of these things were conscious thoughts, deliberately, painfully, plucked from his memory; normally, they would simply be part of instantaneous and comprehensive knowledge of each case. At least there was a little delay on the line: time for these separate thoughts to fall into place.
“Commander?” Henry said, at last.
“Yes.”
“Commander!” Henry repeated, and his voice sounded thick, as if he were having difficulty in articulating. Normally, Gideon would have waited, knowing there must be some thing badly wrong; now, he asked sharply: “Well, what is it?”
“I’m — I’m afraid something’s happened to — to Detective-Constable Conception.” Each word sounded hoarser than the last: “She — she’s been missing for eight hours. She should report in every four hours — I’ve never known her miss, before. But she — she hasn’t called since last night. She should have reported at eight o’clock and twelve noon. I’ve checked at her apartment and she didn’t get in, last night. She reported at eight o’clock last night that there was an emergency meeting and she’d been asked to attend. And I thought — well, sir, if we question the members of the Action Committee, we may not get the truth.”
There was a pause, before Henry went on; “I — ah — I would like your guidance, Commander. I’ve come to the conclusion that you were right — she is in physical danger.”
“I will call you back in fifteen minutes,” Gideon said, very deliberately. “Presumably you’ve checked her recent movements closely?”
“As far as I can, sir.”
“Fifteen minutes,” repeated Gideon, and rang off.
Juanita Conception, bound with cord and gagged with adhesive-plaster, lay in a darkened room. She was alone, but the sharpness of fear had gone and now she half-dozed. The effort of thinking seemed to make her drowsy, as if her mind refused to cope any more: found it simpler to accept the inevitable. Faces swam in her consciousness, from time to time. The faces of the young men she had betrayed. Gideon’s face, when he had asked her with a kind of approving roughness whether she too would go to the stake for what she believed in.
She was ‘going to the stake’ now.