by John Creasey
“What way?” he asked.
“I had a talk with Semple-Smith—he wanted to talk to you,” reported Cope. “They can’t save Bennison’s right leg. He’ll lose it above the knee. And they think he’ll have permanent shoulder trouble, too—the right shoulder. Won’t be able to move his arm much. He’s in a mess, that poor devil is.”
“And don’t I know it?” Roger rang off slowly, stared out of the window, then went on to Golloway: “Bennison’s going to lose a leg. Well! I mustn’t spend any more time here. The moment you get your hands on Moses Dorris, give me a buzz, won’t you? I’d like to be here when you start questioning him. You don’t need telling that we want the names of the others. You can make him think he’ll get a better deal if he names them quickly.”
“Now, Handsome,” said Golloway, grinning. “Is that ethical?”
“Anything that will help us get these swine is ethical for my money,” Roger said.
It was an easy, even trite remark, but he found himself thinking about it as he was driven back to Scotland Yard. He would have preferred to stay in the East End, but it might be hours before Dorris was found, and if the man had the slightest warning, he might run to earth; if he did, it might take days to find him.
But he no longer felt that the case was turning sour.
Mrs Bennison would …
As he passed Aldgate East Station, he saw two Divisional and one Yard man mixing with the crowds which were already swelling to rush-hour magnitude, and he knew that they were looking for Moses, known as Mo Dorris. Would the luck hold? Would they get him quickly?
He saw another man, tall, rather distinguished in his way; head and shoulders physically and metaphorically above most of the people near him, he looked intelligent too. By this man’s side was a youth, who might well be his son – slighter in build, very neatly dressed, with well groomed hair and a hint of superciliousness in his expression which somehow spoiled the impression he gave. The couple registered on Roger’s mind although he saw them only for a few seconds, while the car was held by the traffic.
Soon, he forgot them.
Chapter Eleven
Kill
“Don’t look now,” Alec Gool said, “but there’s that copper, West. In the black Rover.”
He glanced up at Stevens’s face, and saw the taller man’s eyes swivel round, but he did not turn his head until they were a few yards on. Then he bought a newspaper, and took the opportunity to stare along the rows of traffic. Buses were rumbling, there was a crawling line of diesel lorries and trucks stretching for a hundred yards, cyclists and motor-scooterists were threading their way through the crowd, workers were already thronging into and out of the station.
“See him?” asked Alec.
“Saw the back of his head. Are you sure?”
“I’m sure all right,” said Gool. “Wonder what he’s doing out here.”
“It needn’t worry us,” Stevens said. They crossed the narrow end of Middlesex Street, where there was not a single stall to remind anyone that it became Petticoat Lane on Sunday. As they did so, a small boy came up to them, curly-haired, grubby-looking, with wide, innocent eyes.
Alec caught Steve’s arm, with unexpected tightness.
“That’s Marriott’s kid,” he said hurriedly.
“My Dad says he wants to see you two,” the boy said, in a piping voice. “He says, will you go to the Chink’s place.”
“Okay, son,” said Steve. He dipped his hand into his pocket, produced a shilling, and tossed it into the air; Marriott’s son snatched it expertly, and without saying a word, turned and lost himself in the crowd.
“Now what’s on?” Alec asked.
“We’ll find out,” said Steve. “You ask around, I’ll go and see Marriott.”
Alec said: “I don’t like it.”
“What don’t you like?”
“The Chink’s place,” he said. “You know it’s—”
“I know it’s a Chinese restaurant where they serve lousy American-Chinese food.”
“You don’t know about the cellar,” Alec said. “It’s a hide-out. I don’t like it, I tell you. If you ask me, I ought to go to the Chink’s place, you ought to keep away.”
“I’m going,” Steve insisted.
The Chink’s place was in the middle of a small row of shops in a side street leading off the Mile End Road. It had yellow lace curtains in the window, Chinese lettering and signs in gold paint, fly-spotted menus stuck by drying Scotch tape in the windows. Steve had to duck in order to get in. There were twenty or so tables, several of them occupied, mostly by Chinese and Indian sailors, who could get a semblance of the food they preferred in this place. Three diminutive Chinese men were waiting for more custom. The oldest of them came forward, a little podge in a pale grey suit and with a very shiny face. His eye-lids were puffy, and almost hid his eyes.
“You come in plivate dining room,” he said. “I got velly spleshul eats for you.” He gave a slight bow, and pushed a curtain aside. Behind was a small room, with three tables laid, but no one was in it. Steve had not been in here before, and, but for Alec’s warning, he would have been taken completely by surprise. The Chinese took him out by another door, and pushed open a third. A dim light shone on steep cellar steps.
Steve thought: “That kid’s got the right kind of nose.”
He went downstairs, bending low, because the ceiling was almost head height. The lights were subdued, but the atmosphere was quite fresh. Ching stayed behind him, but as he reached the foot of the stone steps, Marriott bobbed out of a doorway on the right.
Marriott looked small and scared.
“Where the hell have you been?” he muttered. “I thought you were never coming.”
“Don’t you talk to me—” Steve began, and then checked himself. He could deal with this man when he knew what it was all about, there was no point in starting a shouting match at this stage. The impulse died. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. “Trouble?”
Marriott said: “The cops are looking for Mo and me.”
Steve didn’t speak.
“You gone deaf?”
He was scared, Steve knew, so scared that he was almost beside himself. This was so bad that it could hardly be worse. Steve had to bite on his words as he pushed forward into the main cellar. Mo Dorris was standing by a dim electric light, which had no shade. Above him was a thick glass hatch, and footsteps sounded over his head. This cellar was jutting out into the street.
“I can hear,” Steve said. “So they’re on to you.”
“We’ve got to get away,” Dorris said hoarsely. “You’ve got to find us somewhere to hide until we can get a boat. You flicking swine.”
Steve stared at him.
“If you hadn’t killed that guard—” Dorris began, and then swallowed his words.
“So I killed the guard,” Steve said, thinly. “And you nearly killed the other man, don’t forget that. You’re in it as deep as I am.” The words were empty and wasted; Dorris knew just how deep he was in this – so far as the police were concerned. Perhaps he also suspected what was going through his, Steve’s mind; possibly he had realised what Steve would think, that might explain the coldness of his fear. “How bad is it?” Steve made himself sound calm and co-operative.
“Couldn’t be worse,” Marriott answered. “The cops are waiting at Mo’s place—and at mine. I sent my kids to look out for you and Alec. If you hadn’t been away—”
“We went to the Oval,” Steve said. “When I have to ask your permission to go and watch a cricket match, that will be the day. Where else are the police?”
“They’re at …” – Marriott answered, and named all the places which they frequented; the cafe with the three bouncy waitresses, the Hornpipe, the club, half a dozen other haunts. As he talked, the picture became more viv
id. The police were spreading the net so wide that Dorris couldn’t escape it, and there was no doubt that it was for the Covent Garden job. Dorris was known to be an associate of Marriott, so Marriott’s friends, his wife, his children, were being questioned, too. A friend – one of the waitresses at the cafe – had tipped them off.
“So we came here,” Marriott said. “Steve, we’ve got to get a ship.”
“The two of you?”
“It stands to reason !”
“We’ve got to get out of England until it’s all blown over,” Marriott said. He licked his lips. “They’ve got photographs, God knows how.” He gulped. “Listen, Steve, we need some dough. If we can get some dough we’ll be okay.”
“The two hundred won’t be enough,” Dorris said, and Marriott looked at him sharply.
Steve stood very still, top of his head almost touching the ceiling, eyes narrowed as his gaze switched from one man to the other. Footsteps were going more quickly: tap-tap-tap-tap-thump-thump-thump. A car roared.
“What two hundred?” Steve asked, flatly.
“We – we still got a couple of hundred between us,” Marriott said, almost desperately. “All we need is—”
“What two hundred? You were almost spent out yesterday. Mo tried to borrow five nicker from Alec. What—”
“We—we—we did a job. It was easy, we didn’t have any trouble, if it hadn’t been for the girl …”
As Dorris was gasping out the explanation, his fear of Steve at least as great as his fear of the police at that moment, Steve Stevens came to the positive knowledge of what he must do. It wasn’t impulse; it was cold, calculated decision.
He had to make sure that these two men could not talk. They had to be killed.
“You know what they did?” Alec asked. They were together in the saloon bar of a pub in the Whitechapel Road, not far from the Chink’s place. “They did a sailor off the Tropics. Got away with two hundred quid. The sailor’s girl went to meet him, and she clawed the scarf off Dorris’s face. A girl did that. So she identified him. Who wouldn’t? He’s dangerous, Steve. They’re both dangerous. If the cops get them they’ll bring us in, and the cops will catch up with them sooner or later. They’re too well known. As it is, we’ve been seen with them too often already.”
Steve said: “I know.”
“They’ve got to go, Steve.”
“They’re on their way,” Steve said. He tossed down a whisky. “How safe is the Chink?”
“He’s okay for tonight,” Alec said. “You know where that cellar leads to, don’t you?”
“Tell me.”
“One of the old sewers which used to empty themselves in the Thames.”
“Well?”
“At low tide, that’ll be around eleven o’clock tonight, you can walk along these sewers, and be picked up by a boat,” said Alec. “It’s easy. The Chink makes his money that way—he gets a hundred every time he helps someone out. They’ve got to lay on the ship.” Alec drank light ale, as if he were enjoying the bouquet. “There’s a Liberian freighter going out tonight—the Glambia. Its first port of call is Freetown, on the West African coast.”
Steve said: “Do you want to pay their passage money?”
“You get me wrong,” said Alec. “Our boys know the ship’s due out, they know the captain will take on deckhands without asking too many questions. If we tell them they’re going on the Glambia, they’ll buy it. We can make sure they don’t reach the ship.”
Steve was smiling a tense, thin-lipped smile, and he caught sight of his reflection in a decorated mirror, very like the one in which he often saw Joyce. He thought of Joyce; he wanted to see Joyce now.
“Okay?” asked Alec.
“So far. What are the weak points?”
“We’ve got to fool Marriott into thinking he can see his wife before he goes on board, otherwise he’ll try to go and see her at home, and the cops will pick him up. Dorris won’t care if he never sees his Ma and Pa again. They won’t care if they don’t see him, either. Okay?”
“Could be,” said Steve.
“What’s on your mind?”
“If they are picked up dead, the police will know someone killed them.”
“Not the way I’ve got it worked out,” said Alec. His lips twisted first into a smirk of satisfaction then in a smile of delight. He had shaved since getting back from the Oval, and his hair was almost femininely groomed, while the hand which closed about the glass was white and delicate-looking. “We fix it with the captain of the Glambia. He gets fifty quid for the job of taking them away if they reach the ship. They start out in a dinghy, but they don’t get far. That dinghy’s got a hole in it, plugged with cork which will burst soon after they start off. We’ll fix a hole in it. I happen to know a lot about that pair,” Alec went on. He smiled like an angel into Steve’s face. “I happen to know they can’t swim, for instance. It’s a long way from the river bank to the Glambia—she’s tied up at Nix’s, the Thames is very wide there. It’s a deserted part of the river where this sewer goes out, too. They won’t ever make it.”
“If a ship’s passing, or a police launch—”
“Steve,” said Alec, with the manner of a man twice the other’s age, “we can’t expect a hundred per cent certainty. This one’s ninety-nine per cent.”
Steve stared at the mirror. After a long while, he asked:
“What’s heavy that the master of the Glambia would like to have? Something our boys could carry in their shoes, or in their clothes?”
“No good,” said Alec. “The cops would find—”
“Would that matter? The cops know they’re planning to go out of the country, they won’t be surprised at what they have in their pockets—or what they’re trying to smuggle out of the country. Lead would do the trick, but it’s not valuable enough.”
“I know where I can lay my hands on some ‘gold’—or something that looks like gold,” Alec broke in softly. “Lead with gold leaf round it, made like a body bet. It clips round the small of the back.” He demonstrated. “It was brought in by some lascars who’d paid real money for it in Beira—thought it was genuine. Our boys will fall for it, but can we get the dough?”
“I can get enough for this job,” Steve said. “I don’t spend my last penny.”
At eleven o’clock that night the telephone bell rang in the Wests’ home. Martin, the elder boy, was reading in the kitchen. He looked up, obviously hoping that one of the others would answer the telephone. His father was in the front room, Richard and his mother were upstairs, Richard trying on a shirt which wanted the sleeves shortening. He could hear his mother calling out:
“Don’t, Richard! Stand still.”
Richard was in one of his giggly moods, then.
The telephone bell kept ringing. At last, Martin, called Scoop, a broad-shouldered, physically strong and very fit lad, put his book down reluctantly, and got up. As he did so, he heard his father answer.
“Roger West speaking.”
Martin went to the door, the tone of voice intriguing him. He saw his father standing in the hallway, where a telephone was easily accessible to all parts of the ground floor. He saw from his father’s expression that this was something which really mattered to him. They had seen very little of each other lately, and although Martin knew about the Bennison job, he had no idea how deeply it mattered.
“Oh, well,” his father said. “Tomorrow’s another day. No sign at all, you say.” He held on for a moment, then straightened up, and said: “Goodnight. Thanks.” He put down the receiver and stared straight ahead for a few seconds, as if he did not notice his son.
Then Scoop heard his mother shout from the top of the stairs:
“Any luck, dear?”
“They haven’t got either of them yet,” Roger replied. “I’m beginning to think they might
have been tipped off.”
“Is it anything important?” Martin inquired.
“Pretty important,” his father said. “When you hear the telephone ring, don’t wait for an hour before answering it.”
“Sorry, Dad,” Martin said guiltily.
“I can tell you’re worried, Dad,” Richard put in. He had come down to distract attention from his brother. “Is it this Bennison job?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Roger said.
Suddenly he began to talk, as he would sometimes to the family, about Bennison, young Paul Bennison, that family, the day’s hope that they were on the right track, and now the failure to pick up the boxer, Dorris, or his close friend, Marriott. Richard, taller than Scoop, with thick dark hair, and intent manner, listened enthralled.
Talking was doing Roger good, Janet persuaded herself.
As Roger talked, the Glambia sailed slowly downstream, with the pilot on board, all her lights on, new paint glistening beneath these lights.
And as he talked, Mo Dorris and Win Marriott climbed into the little boat which was to take them across to the Glambia. There would be no difficulty about getting aboard, they believed – a rope ladder would be trailing from the stern, and the vessel did not stand high out of the water now she was fully loaded.
Marriott was sulking because his wife hadn’t come, as Steve had promised. He kept looking up at the river bank.
Two bands of “gold” clipped round his middle, made him feel heavy and cumbersome, but also made him feel as if he was worth a fortune, even shared with the Glambia’s skipper. That Steve was a close one, to have the money available. Marriott saw the red glow of a cigarette not far away, and went rigid with fear.
“See that?” he whispered.
“Shurrup,” muttered Dorris. “I’ve got to start rowing.” He took the sculls as he settled in the thwarts. “Lot of water in her.” Water was in fact swirling about their feet. He judged the distance to the Glambia. “Stop moving around,” he said testily. “We’ve got to make it.”