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  Sport, Heat and Scotland Yard

  (Gideon's Sport)

  First published in 1970

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1970-2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creaseyto be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2013 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755126254 9780755126255 Print

  075513401X 9780755134014 Mobi

  0755134427 9780755134427 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasy wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the 'C' section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers' Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey's stories are as compelling today as ever.

  Acknowledgment

  I am most grateful to Major A. D. Mills, Secretary and Treasurer of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, who not only showed me round the famous ‘Wimbledon’, but also read the manuscript of this book and put me right on many details.

  John Creasey

  Introduction

  “Tell me what you know?” the man rasped.

  “I haven’t got anything to tell.” Blake looked into the cruel eyes. “Oh, God, let me go!”

  “So you weren’t going to see Lemaitre at the Old Steps ?”

  “No – I swear I wasn’t! I was just going for a drink – a drink on the terrace – I love the river, and—”

  “So you love the river?” The man’s dark eyes glinted with a strange kind of merriment. “Okay, Charlie Blake, I’ll see you get plenty of river!”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hot Day

  George Gideon, Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police in London, pushed back the chair in his office overlooking the River Thames, wiped his neck and dabbed his forehead with a big handkerchief, and stepped to the window. It was one of those windless, airless days, outside as well as in, when no window seemed large enough and certainly none opened half as far as it should. A very big man, massive of neck and shoulder, with a belly like a board and a torso of exceptional thickness and strength, he felt the heat more than most, and was as exasperated by it as anyone. Yet as he stood at the window and looked across the bright, sunlit surface of the water, his mood mellowed.

  What a wonderful place London was!

  The moment a heatwave struck, the city became through its river a home of pageantry. Launches, offering trips as far up as Hampton Court and Richmond and way down beyond London Bridge, looked as if their owners had been furiously busy overnight, dabbing bright paint and hanging gay little flags. Launches, sculls, rowing-boats, even two or three colourful sails, changed the workaday river to a pleasure playground for tens of thousands: every boat in sight was crammed. The little flags fluttering in the boat-made breeze above the great stretch of water gave an illusion of coolness.

  This weather had lasted, now, for five days and it was still only May: that alone would be memorable, in London. In recent years, even June had seldom flamed and temperatures had regularly fallen lower and rain more heavily than either ever should.

  London in the summer had its special problems, too, and the police as well as criminals known, unknown, or in the making, old lags and first offenders, were all affected. For the moment, Gideon was not thinking of those problems. But there was a file on his desk marked Outdoor Events – June and he had already glanced through it and would again before discussing it next morning with officers of the C.I.D. as well as other branches, mostly from the Civil Department. As tomorrow was the first of June, this session was at least a week late, largely because all departments had been forced to concentrate, in mid-May, on a State Visit.

  Now, he was thinking just of his beloved London.

  A telephone rang – one which came through the Yard’s switchboard. He turned reluctantly, to pick it up. His movements were slow and deliberate, distinctly affected by the heat.

  “Gideon.”

  “Mr. Lemaitre would like a word with you, sir.”

  “Put him through,” said Gideon.

  His reaction to a call from Lemaitre, now the Superintendent in charge of one of the East End divisions – perhaps London’s toughest – was different from his reaction to a call from any other officer. Lemaitre had once shared this room; acting as his deputy, sitting at a desk now pushed into a corner and used for files and a set of Police Gazettes from the first number, in 1786, when it had been called Hue and Cry. And whatever his shortcomings, which most certainly existed, Lemaitre was a warm personality; shrewd and loyal almost to a fault. There were times when Gideon missed him, and this was one of those times.

  “George?”

  “What is it, Lem?”

  “Gotta bitta news for you,” stated Lemaitre, in happy certainty.

  “I hope it’s good,” said Gideon, cautiously.

  “Good-and hot!” Lemaitre assured him. “George, there’s going to be wholesale doping of Derby runners. And I mean wholesale!” He laughed on a raucous note. “Be really something, wouldn’t it, if one, two and three were all disqualified?”

  Two things were already ringing warning bells in Gideon’s mind. One, that Lemaitre was almost excited, which probably meant that he had only just heard this ‘news’ and hadn’t checked it yet. Two, that any such widespread doping was highly improbable.

  “It certainly would be a sensation,” he conceded. “Might just as well not run the race at all.” He was already checking the actual date. At one time, the Derby had been run on the first Wednesday in June, come what may; now, it varied from ye
ar to year. Ah, there it was: Saturday, June 23rd, just over three weeks ahead. “Where’d you hear the rumour?” he asked.

  “A runner for Jackie Spratt’s. No need to worry, George, it’s hot. He was coming over from New York on the QE2 – landed two days ago. He picked it up on board. All absolutely certain, corroborated, the McCoy! I’m seeing the runner myself, tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “The Old Steps, Limehouse.”

  Gideon was tempted to utter a word of warning, but checked himself. There were a lot of things that senior C.I.D. men would be wiser not to do, but the urge to be on the look-out for a job to handle oneself was sometimes irresistible. He had learned this to his cost, and Lemaitre wasn’t a young beginner: he knew what he was doing.

  “Get chapter and verse, Lem,” he allowed himself to urge.

  “Trust me!” said Lemaitre, with almost cocky confidence. “Like me to come along and report, in the morning?”

  “Check with me first,” Gideon told him. “I’d like to see you but there may be too many briefings. Call about ten o’clock.”

  “Right. Oh, by the way, George – what day was summer last year?”

  Gideon put down the receiver, pretending not to hear. He felt a flash of exasperation; that kind of facetious humour was Lemaitre’s speciality and, in the right mood, it could be funny, but Gideon wasn’t in the right mood. He had just been glowing at the thought of London’s loveliness; just been recalling the glorious summers of his boyhood. He smiled wryly to himself. Did one always remember the good and forget the bad, in one’s past?

  The question answered itself even as he asked it, bringing to mind in successive flashbacks two school-day incidents. One, an occasion when he had been caned and humiliated for writing ‘dirty’ words on a wash-room door – and two of the words he had never even heard of! He had been absolutely guilt-free. The boy who had been guilty had let him suffer the punishment; and afterwards, in the playground, he had jeered: “Bloody fool, that’s what you are! If you knew it was me, why the hell didn’t you say so?”

  To this day, in such a mood as he was now, the old injustice still had the power to hurt; well, perhaps not really hurt, but certainly it still brought a feeling of heavy-heartedness, a sense of dismay at the existence of unrightable wrongs.

  The other memory, something quite different, was of the one and only time he had been selected to play for the school First Eleven – and the cricket match had been rained off. He had never forgotten how unutterably miserable he had been. Such things had at least enabled him to share the hurts and disappointments and frustrations of his children, but he could still feel some of that old, aching awareness that he had been robbed of a chance which had never come again.

  Suddenly, he gave a snort of laughter.

  “What the devil am I sentimentalising about?” he demanded of the empty office. “I ought to be checking Lem’s story!” He sat down at his desk again, and made a note about Jackie Spratt’s runner and the doping of Derby horses.

  Jackie Spratt’s was the name of a large bookmaking firm, started by a long-dead father and now operated by three brothers. Each of the brothers was a public school product; each in his own way was clever. The firm had become a vast concern, with hundreds of betting shops throughout the country, but its headquarters were still in the East End.

  Gideon, who was not a gambling man but would have an occasional flutter, had no strong opinions on the rights and wrongs of betting; his job was to maintain the law. Since the new Gaming Act, with licensed betting shops everywhere, there had been few problems with street runners, but many more – and usually serious – problems with the smart new casinos, while the slot machines, too, had their ‘protectors’ and their rackets.

  These were general issues, but Jackie Spratt’s was a problem on its own. There was no proof but good reason to believe that the three brothers were behind a great deal of ‘fixing’ and corruption, particularly involving horse racing and boxing. No doping case had ever been traced back to them; no boxer who had thrown a fight led back to them. Yet everybody ‘knew’ the truth. They were a parasitic growth on the body of sport.

  One day, Gideon and the Yard persuaded themselves, Jackie Spratt’s would go too far – and it was conceivable that day would come with this year’s Derby. Lemaitre, however, was notably possessed of a facile optimism which discouraged Gideon from setting too much store by such a hope. For the moment, he pushed it to the back of his mind.

  He looked through the file, with great deliberation. Even sitting there, he was perspiring. The day was not only airless but very humid. His handkerchief became a damp ball; he could almost have wrung it out. Tossing it aside, he shrugged himself out of his jacket – a medium-weight one which felt winter-heavy at this temperature.

  “It must be ninety!” he grumbled, almost indignantly.

  He felt a little cooler in his shirt-sleeves, but his braces were heavy over his shoulders and made a hot, damp spot in the middle of his back. The telephone rang several times, each call about some trifle, and his palm soon grew sticky with handling the receiver. He loosened his tie, and almost as his collar sagged, the door opened with a perfunctory tap and the Commissioner came in.

  The Commissioner at Scotland Yard was like royalty, and Gideon was immediately and acutely conscious of being in his shirt and braces, and so sticky that sweat actually rolled down his cheeks. He pushed his chair back and rose as the door closed. The Commissioner, in a pale grey over-check suit, looked as cool as if he had stepped out of an ice-box, as immaculate as if he had come straight from his tailor.

  It was months since he had been near Gideon’s office.

  “Good afternoon, Commander.”

  “Good afternoon, sir.” Gideon pushed back his thick iron-grey hair and rounded the desk to move an armchair forward. Its casters stuck in a threadbare patch of carpet and he had to fight back the impulse to use brute strength. He eased it clear and pushed it into position.

  “Thanks.” Scott-Marie sat down and draped one long leg over the other. “Have you had time to study the belated programme of outdoor events in London for June?”

  “Not to study it, sir,” Gideon said. “I was looking through it as you came in.” He sat down, wretchedly conscious of his bright green braces and the dampness at his neck and arms. But to put on his coat would not only reveal his embarrassment: it would be difficult, being so damp, to slip it on easily. He tried to forget that it was hanging on the back of his chair.

  He had a great respect and regard for Sir Reginald Scott-Marie, and they were on good terms. Yet the fact remained that the only time Gideon really felt at ease with him, was when he was at the Commissioner’s home.

  “I’ve just looked through it, too,” Scott-Marie told him, as he was wondering whether to mention Lemaitre’s tip about the Derby situation, and deciding not to; it was best only to tell Scott-Marie of facts – or at least fully-substantiated evidence.

  “Does anything in particular worry you?”

  Gideon frowned. He looked slow-thinking, almost bull-like, but in fact the headings of the listed events were chasing one another rapidly and accurately through his mind. Golf at Richmond . . . the South African cricket team here on tour . . . Wimbledon, even more of a crowd-puller now that it was open to professionals as well as amateurs . . . racing at Ascot and a dozen other places near London, quite apart from Derby week at Epsom. The air display at Farnborough, in Surrey, too, would mean crowds at the London stations . . . other tennis fixtures . . . polo . . . at least two major athletics meetings . . . a Commonwealth tournament at the White City, and a European one at Wembley. There was also dog-racing, speedway and motor racing, in or near London. But none of these gave him any slightest inkling of what Scott-Marie meant.

  “No,” he answered at last. “Not in particular, sir.” Then a thought flashed into his mind. “Unless the South
Africans, at Lord’s—?”

  Scott-Marie’s expression lost its severity. Gideon noticed this and also noticed a beading of sweat on the Commissioner’s own forehead, particularly where the hair grew back to make a sharp widow’s peak.

  “That’s it.” Scott-Marie stood up and took off his coat, draping it over the back of an upright chair. He didn’t wear braces, and his crocodile skin belt was firmly drawn about a waist which probably hadn’t expanded two inches in twenty years. “I hadn’t given it more than a passing thought, but the Home Secretary has just telephoned to say that he wants special precautions taken.”

  “Do you think he has any particular reason?” asked Gideon.

  “He gave me no intimation that he had, and I imagine there is some kind of political motivation. He may simply want to be absolutely sure there is no political demonstration – at least,” Scott-Marie gave his dry smile, “none that gets out of control – during his last few months in office.”

  “We haven’t done too badly by him yet.” Gideon smiled just as drily.

  “We’ve done very well, which, of course, is no reason why we shouldn’t try to do even better.” Scott-Marie took out his handkerchief, shook it free of its folds, and dabbed his forehead. “You’ve heard no rumours of trouble at Lord’s?”

  Gideon shook his head.

  “No. But I’ll send out an instruction for all divisions to report any talk there may be. And I’ll brief the AB Division to take special precautions. Just one thing, sir,” he added, thoughtfully.

  “What’s that?”

  “If the Home Secretary has been given a tip, we should be told what it’s about.”

  “I’ll try to make sure that we are,” promised Scott-Marie. “Are you taking special precautions about any of the other events?”