Look Three Ways At Murder

by John Creasey

She wore a dark raincoat pressed against her body by the wind which cut off the river, and a small hat framing her oval face. She was pretty enough, and to him she looked quite beautiful. Her eyes were huge. The moment she saw him, she began to run, high heels slipping on the cobbles so that once she almost fell. Christie broke into a run. They met in the middle of the Cut, flinging their arms round each other, kissing wildly, hugging, saying incoherent things. When at last they finished they were breathless and gasping. Millie was a little giggly.

  They linked arms, but had to press very close together in order to walk along. Christie’s left elbow scraped painfully along the brick wall of the warehouse, but he did not care, nothing mattered but the fact that Millie had come rushing here the moment she knew the Tropics was tied up. Christie was staring into her eyes, she was staring into his, and there was no one else in the world – when they reached the end of the Cut.

  There was a scuffle of movement.

  Christie jerked his head round. “What—” he began.

  He saw two men, with scarves over their faces, and knew in a flash what they were after. He and Millie were still in the mouth of the Cut, and he had no freedom of action. Quick as a flash, he pushed her behind him. As he did so, a man raised his right hand; there was a bar of iron in it – angle iron. Millie screamed. Christie thrust out his right foot, and rammed it towards the attacker’s stomach, but the man was prepared for that, changed the direction of his blow, and smashed the iron down on to Christie’s knee. Agonising pain shot through the sailor’s leg, and he pitched downwards.

  “Let him alone!” Millie screamed. “Let him alone!”

  She flung herself forward.

  One of the men went down on his knees and started rooting in Christie’s pockets. The other jumped at Millie. She did not back away, but struck out wildly. Her fingers caught the scarf which covered the lower part of his face. It twisted round, and dropped down. She saw his ugly battered face, saw his fist coming at her like a great bony ball. She tried to dodge, but the blow caught her high on the breast and sent her staggering backwards. As she gasped, she heard one of the men say: “I got it. Come on!”

  She pitched backwards, hit her head on the cobbles, and lay dazed for several minutes until, half sobbing, she tried to scramble to her feet. By then people were hurrying towards the spot. She saw them a long way off, but all she really saw was her Arthur, lying huddled in front of her, his head turned to one side, his lips parted, his eyes closed – and a trickle of blood coming from the wound in his head, blood which already matted his hair.

  Chapter Ten

  Identification

  Roger got out of his car opposite the Sporting World’s offices, left the driver to park where he could and hurried inside. This was one of the older buildings of Fleet Street, and compared with the pallid-faced modern masses of concrete, glass and pseudo marble, looked an anachronism; there was nothing attractive about the Victorian frosted glass, the wooden hand-rails, the narrow dark passages and staircases. The lift was just big enough for three, at a squeeze. A man and a woman were already in it when Roger arrived, and looked apprehensively as he stepped in, massive and heavy compared with them. The lift crawled.

  “I think perhaps the load’s a bit heavy,” the woman said, timidly.

  “They really ought to get a new one.”

  “I did hear that they were going to pull this down next year and put a twenty storey building in its place. I don’t know what London’s coming to. These big square box-like buildings are ruining the city.”

  To their obvious relief, Roger got out at the second floor. A nice-looking young girl wearing a white blouse comfortably filled and with her hair unexpectedly prim and Edwardian style, smiled at him with commercial television brightness.

  “Superintendent West?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr Medway is expecting you. Come this way, please.”

  As they walked along, shoulders touching, she glanced up at him once or twice. Then she opened a door marked Assistant Editor.

  Medway, short, tubby, always dressed in loud clothes, a bit horsey and a bit sporty as a cunning aide to his profession, had the roundest, baldest, pinkest head of any Roger knew. It bobbed out from behind the ungainly figure of the Covent Garden porter, Galwin. With Calwin was another man, dressed in a pair of thick serge trousers and wearing a thick navy type jersey of faded blue. This stranger had a craggy face and very shaggy eyebrows, with eyes which sparkled deep in little pits of sockets.

  “Hallo, Handsome.” Medway held out his hand.

  “Didn’t expect me, did you?” Calwin grinned. He looked uglier every time Roger saw him. “Meet my pal, Joey Lark.”

  “Lark,” echoed Medway, closing his eyes.

  “Twenty years ago he was the best light-weight in the business, wasn’t he, Mr Medway?”

  Medway said hurriedly: “One of the very best.” His expression seemed to ask: “Why did you wish this lot on to me, Handsome?”

  Roger managed to say hello, grin at Calwin, and hold out his hand to Joey Lark at one and the same time. Lark’s craggy face had a familiar look. There was something forthright and honest about his gaze, too, something foursquare about his stocky figure. His hair, iron grey, was curly and rather long.

  “Please to meet you, Superintendent,” Lark said. His hand grip was almost fervent.

  “So you think you can help us,” Roger remarked.

  “Wouldn’t be here if we didn’t,” said Calwin. “I took those pretty pictures of yourn round to the boxing boys, like you told me, and Joey picked out the boxer. Said he was sure he’s seen ’im before, but couldn’t remember his name.”

  “What we would like to do, Med,” Roger said to the assistant editor, “is go through your Boxers’ Gallery, so that Mr Lark can pick out the man he thinks the drawing represents. It might take a long time, but would be well worth doing.”

  “The gallery’s yours,” said Medway.

  “Don’t forget it’s overtime rates,” put in Calwin.

  “Dry up, Cal,” Lark said, in his rather quiet voice. “If I can help the police I don’t want paying for it.”

  “More fool you,” retorted Calwin. “Overtime and expenses I want!” He gave a vast grin. “Lead on, McDuff.”

  Medway rolled his eyes.

  In a long, narrow room, like a section of Records at the Yard, were shelves upon shelves of files, each filled with photographs. It was bewildering to think that so many boxing hopes actually got as far as getting their photographs taken for newspaper use. At one end of the room was a long desk, which sloped downwards, with several stools at it. Roger waited until Calwin was settled at one, Lark at another, and one of the Sporting World’s junior librarians ready to feed them with photographs.

  “It might take half the night as well as the rest of the day,” Medway said. “If we get anything we’ll call you, Handsome.”

  “Thanks,” said Roger, and added in an undertone: “See that they get anything they want, won’t you?”

  “It’ll be on the house,” Medway assured him. “I can see the headlines. Killer traced through Sporting World. I can show you one photo that may surprise you, too.” He went to a shelf and took down a file while Lark and Calwin began turning photographs over, and scrutinising the faces. Medway flipped several to one side, and held one out to Roger. It was of a tall, powerful-looking man in an old fashioned boxing stance. He was wearing trunks and slippers and gloves, just as if he was about to enter the ring. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

  He turned it over.

  Charley Blake, Navy Middleweight Champion, at the time he turned professional.

  There were a lot of other details about Blake – height, weight, amateur fights, but the significant thing was his name. This was the man whom Roger had seen only once, on a mortuary slab; the man knifed in
that sudden, merciless attack outside the bank in Covent Garden.

  “Wonder if it means anything,” Medway said. “You’re looking for a pug, and Blake was one in his young days.”

  “Worth thinking about,” Roger agreed. He remembered that Blake had been ex-Navy and ex-Merchant Navy, turned it over in his mind as he went out with Medway at his side. As they approached the assistant editor’s door, the nice-looking girl came out.

  “Your office would like to speak to you, Mr West.”

  “Oh. Thanks.”

  It was Cope.

  “Been a job over at the docks I thought you ought to know about,” said Cope, without preamble. “Sailor just come off a ship smacked over the head, and robbed of all the cash he’d brought home with him – two hundred quid. His fiansey had gone to meet him, and she was knocked about too – but she saw one of the assailants.”

  Cope paused, significantly.

  “Well?”

  “The way she described him he could fit in with one of the four we’re looking for on the Covent Garden job,” said Cope. “The bruiser with the cauliflower ear.”

  “I’ll go and see her at once,” Roger said quickly. “How’s the injured man?”

  “Dunno,” said Cope.

  “Where is he?”

  “Mile End Hospital.”

  “Ask someone from the Division to meet me there,” said Roger. “Send the girl there too, if she can get about.”

  “Right-i-ho.” Cope hung up, while Medway looked curiously at Roger, who felt a growing excitement and tension, although outwardly that showed only in a tightening of his lips and a narrowing of his eyes; at moments like these he looked as if he were staring into distant places. This looked like the luck he had been praying for; two breaks at the same time.

  “Anything important?” asked Medway.

  “Could be,” said Roger. “Thanks a lot for your help, Med. I’ll keep you out of prison one day.”

  Medway was laughing when they shook hands.

  Twenty minutes later Roger stepped into the main entrance of the Mile End Hospital, that oasis of healing and repair work in the heart of the East End. A rather short, very thickset man, Golloway of the East End Division, was talking to three younger men – obviously newspaper men. He saw Roger and seemed to shrug the others aside, came forward walking with a kind of rhinoceros gait, and held out a thick, brick-red hand.

  “How’s your invalid?” Roger inquired.

  “He’ll do,” said Golloway. “It could have been a lot worse – he’ll be up and about inside a week. But I’ve got what you asked for.” He lowered his voice. “Spare a minute for the Press, first?”

  “Yes.” Roger turned and put on his newspaper smile, answered a few not very intelligent questions, then went out of the hall with Golloway, into a small room where a middle-aged woman in a blue gown and white head-dress was waiting.

  “Sister Lee,” Golloway introduced, “Superintendent West.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr West.” Her hand was as cool as her voice and her appearance, and her manner was just on the thawing side of reserved. “Here are the two X-ray plates, for you to examine.”

  The photographs were on a stand with a lamp behind it, and she switched on. The two fractures – Bennison’s and the one on the sailor whose name he did not yet know – showed up like the ghosts of skeletons. Roger knew enough about skull fractures to see the similarity, although the sailor had been lucky – the blow had been less savage, although vicious enough. As he compared them, the door opened and Simister came in. Roger saw the Sister’s manner change and become subtly less assertive. Simister seemed very young in a close cut suit, and his hair made him look rather like the popular image of a musician.

  He gave Sister Lee a quick, pleasant smile.

  “Nice to see you again, Sister. Ah, there are the plates.” He glanced at Roger and Golloway. “Good afternoon.” He studied the plates intently, then took out a magnifying glass and held it in front of his right eye. When he drew back, he said without a moment’s hesitation: “The wounds were caused with the same kind of weapon, probably a ridged piece of iron. Angle iron, possibly. I can’t pretend to guess whether it was the same piece or whether it was struck by the same hand, of course.”

  “You’ve told us all we could hope for,” Roger said. “Thanks. Golly, we want those two men more than we’ve wanted anyone for a long time. How much help do you need?”

  “Can you find me a dozen chaps?”

  “I’ll get ’em over to you,” Roger said, sure that Campbell would do anything to speed up results. “Who’s over at the place where it happened?”

  “Little—best man we’ve got for that area.”

  “Let’s go and see him,” said Roger, and then snapped his fingers at his own forgetfulness. “How about the girl? Is she badly hurt?”

  “She was bruised on the chest, and on the back of the head where she struck the ground, but not seriously,” Sister Lee told him. “She is in a waiting room near her fiancé.”

  “Has she seen one of those composite pictures?” Roger asked.

  “Not yet,” Golloway replied.

  “Better show her one, now. Will you tell us where to go, Sister?”

  “I will come with you,” Sister Lee offered. “Mr Simister, while you are here I wonder if you would have a word with Dr Abrahams and Dr Moss. They are rather worried by the two victims of that bus and lorry accident this morning. There is some doubt as to whether the lorry driver died as a result of the accident or before it. If it was a heart spasm—”

  “I’ll see Dr Abrahams.”

  “Thank you.”

  Simister nodded to Roger and Golloway, who looked down his nose but said nothing. As they went up two flights of stairs, seeing a big lift carrying two stretchers and four nurses, Roger felt eagerness which eased tension in one way, and increased it in another. The feeling that they were on to one of the men was increasing all the time; and things were beginning to drop into place.

  “If we don’t get this chap soon, no telling what damage he might do,” said Golloway. “Anyone who’ll do this kind of job for a couple of hundred quid—” he glanced at Sister Lee, who was staring straight ahead. She had a fine, aquiline profile, and her cheeks were almost devoid of colour. “It’s one thing to jump a man and rob him, but to go around with angle iron—”

  “I know what you mean,” Roger said. “Think things are worse or better than they used to be, Sister?”

  She smiled with unexpected charm.

  “In some ways worse, but in others a great deal better,” she said. “I think we have more injuries to deal with because of crimes of violence, but I also think that the general attitude of people towards crime is different—more and more people are shocked by what is happening.”

  It was a shrewd summing up of the modern trend, Roger thought; the long hard battle against crime was gradually being won.

  That was little consolation to the latest victims.

  “Yes, that’s like him,” the girl said to Roger. She stared hard-eyed at the photograph of the composite picture. “It’s very like him, especially that big swollen ear. And I’m sure there was a hole in it. Every time I close my eyes like Mr Golloway tells me, and try to picture the man’s face, I see that little hole. I’m sure I’m right.” She turned as eagerly to Sister Lee. “Sister, my fiancé will be all right, won’t he?”

  “He will be perfectly all right.”

  “Do you think he might be able to come out for Saturday?”

  “Why? Is there anything special planned for Saturday?”

  “Well, yes, there is, rather. You see, we were going to get married …”

  “Now we’re moving,” Roger said with brittle satisfaction. The call for Moses Dorris had already gone out, every policeman in this part of London was already on
the look out for him. Four men had gone to the house where he lived with his old parents and a brother, in the hope that he would simply walk into their arms. All his known haunts, clubs, cafes, friends, were being checked. In its quiet way, this was one of the most thorough searches made in London for a long time. Roger had a sense that everyone in the Division was on his toes, and desperate for results; everyone on the Force seemed to sense that this was an unusual challenge.

  “Shouldn’t be long before we get him,” Golloway said. He was a little pleased with himself, understandably. “Glad I recognised him from that girl’s description.”

  “Damned good piece of work,” Roger approved warmly. He was mildly amused by Golloway’s obvious self-satisfaction.

  They were in Golloway’s office, at the East End Divisional Headquarters near Mile End Road. A tray of tea, with buns, cakes and sandwiches, was in front of them. He put a cup to his lips – and one of the telephones rang.

  “Cope,” said Golloway, and handed the receiver over.

  “Yes, Jack?” Roger inquired.

  “Here’s a surprise for you,” Cope said, sardonically. “Medway rang up, nearly as excited as Calwin. They’ve identified the man they were looking for. Name of Dorris.”

  “Did you tell them they were late?”

  “Want me to?”

  “No,” said Roger. “Let ’em bask in their glory. And make sure a chit for a fiver goes to each.”

  “Needn’t worry about depleting the public funds for them,” said Cope. “Medway’s paying ’em fifty quid each for an interview over this job.”

  “Then try depleting the public funds by a fiver to …” Roger gave the name of the injured sailor, laughed when Cope said that the cashier would never stand it, and went on: “If he won’t, we’ll club together, Jack—just you and me. This pair deserves a wedding present. Anything else in?”

  Cope said: “Well, in a way.”

  There was something about the way he said that which warned Roger that the news wasn’t good. In a brighter mood because of the sudden change of fortune, he did not want gloomy tidings, but whatever it was he had to take it. The quicker the better.