Gideon's Day Read online

  “That’s the squeaker on Chang and Foster, sir.” Here, if ever, was a time for formality. “I’m paying him twenty-five pounds, and it’s cheap at the price. Two men are over at Foster’s place now; I hope to have some kind of a report before I go off tonight.” He sniffed. “Birdy says that there’s a call out for him, and he wants to get away.” Suddenly the two men, broadside and rapier in contrast, were standing upright and looking squarely at each other; each with genuine respect. “I don’t like it, Foster was probably run down deliberately, because once we found out what he was up to, he might have squealed.”

  “But Chang—”

  “Don’t want to make it worse than it is,” said Gideon, “but why assume that Chang was the only one he was taking bribes from? I don’t say he wasn’t, yet I can’t see Chang paying out a fortune, and somehow Foster’s cashed in pretty big money. Did you know that the tyre mark near Foster’s body might match up with the one at Battersea – the car from which they threw those mail bags into the river?”

  The A.C. said, “No, I didn’t.”

  “Come’n have a look.” They pored over the photographs, Gideon’s flat but well-shaped and clearly marked forefinger pointing at similarities. “And that settles it,” he said. “See what’s embedded in the tyre – comes out in the cast and in the photograph clearly under magnification. Look.” He thrust a round magnifying glass into the A.C’s hand.

  The A.C. pursed his lips.

  “… mmm. I see what you mean. Well, I’ll finish off where I came in – find that tyre!”

  He went out.

  Gideon wrote out a chit for twenty-five pounds. He charged it to the Information Account, rang for a plain-clothes officer, and sent him along to cash it. When the man came back, Gideon was staring at the ceiling, and actually smoking; he owed himself an extra pipe, had only had one that morning.

  “Thanks. Green, do you know Birdy Merrick?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Sure?”

  “Little chap with a chirruping voice and a little beak of a nose that’s always red. Been inside—”

  “That’s the chap. Take this over to him – he’ll be near the telephone kiosks at Aldgate Station by the time you get there. Don’t let him put his hands on it until you’ve got his signature on the receipt. I like Birdy, but you can guess how far I’d trust him.”

  Green, delighted at a chance to go out, chuckled with more than polite amusement.

  When he’d gone, Gideon sat and pulled at his pipe and looked at a spot on the ceiling. It had been there for five years and he still didn’t know how it had got there: a pale brownish spot about the size of a half crown. In it, he had seen many things and many faces. Leaning back in the swivel chair with the strong spring back at just the right angle, he could see it with complete comfort. He’d trained himself to lean back like this, a form of relaxation that was almost complete. In a minute, he would treat himself to a double whisky; then he would be set for a few hours.

  He thought of Kate.

  He thought of Foster’s sister.

  He had his whisky.

  He thought of Lucy Saparelli. Those kids. Sayer. A little old woman with a battered head.

  This was one of the bad days, but the newspapers would look much the same as usual next morning; half the headlines in the popular daily press were about major crimes. No one would be surprised. Now and again there was an outcry about unsolved crimes, and so there should be. Only one crime in two, not even as many as that some years, were ever solved. The miracle was that the Yard got so many results. Give them a 10 per cent increase in staff—

  The door opened, and Lemaitre came in, brand-new trilby on, slightly at the back of his head, perky of feature and expression, grinning rather smugly.

  “Hi!” he greeted.

  “When you’re going to leave the office empty again, make sure that the Old Man isn’t coming in, will you?” Gideon said flatly.

  Lemaitre’s perkiness vanished; he positively sagged. . “You don’t mean to say—”

  “I do mean to say, and why you ask for trouble like that I don’t know. Rule Number 1 – always have someone in the office. If we both have to be out, fetch in a sergeant.” Gideon grinned. “But it’s up to the Old Man to discipline you, you rebellious old so-and-so. Got anything from Waterloo?”

  Lemaitre began to look less disconsolate. He took his hat off and twirled it round his forefinger, formed his mouth into a soundless whistle, and then said: “Yes.”

  That thumping started again at Gideon’s chest.

  “What?”

  “Tyre track, believe it or not. Patch of oil on the approach to the station, just where the van was held up. A lorry had a puncture there a few nights ago, and dripped a lot of engine oil. The rain had smoothed it out. One track as clear as a cucumber, unmistakable, too – but if I hadn’t gone there it wouldn’t have been noticed. All the photographs they took before I arrived were of the mail van. Five minutes more and they’d have trampled all over the oil patch. Now tell the Old Man—”

  “No one said you shouldn’t go out on a job sometimes; just be your age and make sure someone’s here,” said Gideon. He had the patience of a schoolmaster with Lemaitre, who had one thing which no one else at the Yard had quite so well developed: a “natural” sense of observation. Lemaitre’s eyes did most of his work for him; he’d miss nothing out, and he could check another man’s case brilliantly. If he could only restrain his impetuosity, he’d be a genius. “So, what have we got?” Gideon asked.

  “Three Michelin tyre tracks,” Lemaitre said. “One near Chang’s – one at Battersea – the third at Waterloo. I know, I know, three different cars could—”

  “They probably didn’t. Anything else?”

  “It was an Austin 10 with false number plates. The driver had black hair, and his cap was pulled low over his eyes, showing his hair from the crown downward. And,” went on Lemaitre, voice rising in triumph, “one of those post-office johnnies kept his eyes open although he admits he was scared stiff. The black hair had a white mark in it – scar of some kind, starting just level with the right ear. Now we can look for the car, the tyre and the driver, and oh, boy—”

  He broke off, because a telephone bell rang on Gideon’s desk.

  “Yes,” said Gideon into it, and then repeated, although looking puzzled: “Yes, put him through.” He glanced up at Lemaitre. “It’s Green, chap I sent to pay Birdy his blood money. Move your big head, I can’t see the clock.” Lemaitre moved quickly. “H’m. Five and twenty past six. Been gone twenty minutes.” He waited, with the receiver at his ear. Then: “Yes, Green?”

  He listened.

  He began to look very grim indeed.

  “All right,” he said at last, “stay there another twenty minutes, and if he hasn’t turned up then, come back. Bye.”

  Gideon rang off, scowled, looked at Lemaitre steadily, and said flatly: “Someone sent a kid to tell Green we wouldn’t be able to pay Birdy off tonight or any night. I don’t like that at all.” He lifted the telephone, a mechanical action. “Give me G5 Headquarters,” he said, and added for Lemaitre’s benefit, although he sounded as if he were talking to himself: “Better get the Division to keep an eye open for him.”

  “We can’t afford to lose Birdy,” Lemaitre said, and meant it.

  11. Birdy

  “Birdy,” Birdy’s wife said, “they’re after you.”

  “Wife” was not strictly true, in the legal sense, but in all others it was. She was a small, faded woman, who had never been pretty, was balloon-breasted now, but still had small if work-torn hands – the fingers of her right hand were especially rough, for she was a seamstress. She also had beautifully shaped legs and feet. In spite of her weight and her top-heavy look, she moved very easily.

  She had caught up with Birdy at the telephone boxes in the approach to Aldgate Station. The traffic in the wide main road was a hurtling, hooting mass, choking the glorious evening. Barrow boys with fruit stalls magnificently a
rranged shouted whether customers were near or not; newsboys droned. This great mouth of London’s East End and the suburbia beyond throbbed with a vitality which it saw only once each day, always between half-past five and half-past six. All London seemed on the move. Policemen walked: plodding, watchful, patient.

  Thieves watched for their chances.

  Pickpockets made theirs.

  It isn’t even remotely true that everyone in the East End, from Wapping to Rotherhithe, or from Bethnal Green to Whitechapel, is a criminal, or even criminally inclined. But ask any London policeman where crime and criminals flourish most, and he will unhesitatingly point to this part of the city. A few might say that at times there was a greater concentration of vice in the West End Square Mile, but very few are sure.

  Most of this East End trouble area came within the jurisdiction of G5 Division. The Division had picked officers and picked men, and knew its job inside out. Like every other section of the London police it was understaffed, but it was more generously treated than most.

  Every policeman in the Division knew Birdy, and most of them knew Birdy’s “wife.” An odd thing about Birdy was that he looked small, mean, sneaky and nasty altogether, yet he wasn’t. He had a kind of morality. He had a kind of courage. He acted upon a kind of code. Take Birdy and his “wife” – her name was Ethel – out of the slums where they lived and worked, out of the tiny, smelly hovel with its front door opening onto the pavement, put them in one of the clean sweet-smelling suburbs, and Birdy might be heard to say that his wife was the best woman in the world, and Ethel would certainly be heard to say that they didn’t come any better than her Birdy.

  He had a slightly hunched back, and was sparrow-thin, but very bright with a Cockney’s twang and a Cockney’s swift repartee.

  Now he looked into Ethel’s scared eyes.

  “’Ow’d you know?” he asked and caught his breath.

  “Murphy’s been around,” she said. “Someone told me at Shippy’s, so I went ‘ome. ‘E come to see me, wanted to know where to find you.”

  “Murphy,” echoed Birdy, and licked his lips.

  “Syd’s at one corner, Hicky at another,” Ethel went on, “waiting for you.”

  “Syd,” echoed Birdy, “and—” He didn’t repeat “Hicky.”

  “Any—any of the kids in?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Look here,” said Birdy, and licked his lips again, “we got to make sure they don’t ‘urt the kids. You better go rahnd to the Pie Shop, or git Dais to go, or telephone, see?”

  “Okay, but what about you?”

  Birdy said: “I’ll be okay.” He twisted his lips into a smile that called for a lot of courage, and did nothing to betray the suffocating fear which made his heart beat with a kind of sluggish reluctance. “I’ll lie low fer a bit, don’-chew worry.”

  “But, Birdy—” Ethel looked, felt and sounded anguished.

  “You look arter yourself,” Birdy urged, “and leave me to look arter myself, Ethel. Scram, ducky.” He gave her a slap, then turned away from the surging, growling traffic toward the bowels of the earth and the Underground that swallowed London’s millions, gestated, and then spewed them up. A train was roaring down below. It stopped. A great surge of people, all eyes blinking, came up the wide stairs toward the welcoming light. Birdy was pressed against the wall, close to a colourful tobacco kiosk, where a bright-haired woman began to serve as fast as she could.

  Then the crowd passed, and for a moment there was calm.

  Birdy had only one idea: to get away from here. There was no safety in the East End. There was little safety anywhere, once “they” came after him, or after anyone. He knew, because he had been on the run once before, and it had lasted for several weeks – until the police had cleaned up the gang that had come for him.

  He fingered the scar beneath his right eye: a vitriol scar. He still didn’t know what had saved him from being blinded.

  He reached the top of the stairs. A man wearing a purple muffler, a light-weight, American-style coat with big stains on the wide lapels was at the foot, grinning up at him. In the distance, another train rumbled.

  Birdy missed a step when he saw the man. He did not reason, because panic came too close. The only sound he could hear now was the banging of his heart: painful, frightening. This meant that “they” were out in strength. The Murphy gang was the strongest in London at the moment, twenty or thirty strong. Like all the successful gangs, and those which flourished at all, it restricted its activities, worked mostly within the G5 boundary, and operated mostly against rival crooks. It had cannibal instincts. Its members were brutish, sadistic and utterly without scruple. It wasn’t a gang in the sense that it had headquarters or acted in concert, but only in that it accepted Murphy’s leadership. He got the jobs, paid the men off, gave them protection; he would hide them, get them alibis, do anything that was necessary to keep them safe from the law—and he would get his man. Now he had been given a job, and Birdy thought he knew who had given it to him.

  Chang.

  The job was simply to “get” Birdy.

  Birdy didn’t know any more than that. It might mean to kill him; it might mean to maim him; it might mean to torture him. There was no end to what it might mean, and that was one of the worst fears: the uncertainty. Only two weeks ago, “they’d” gone after that poor little cove, Charlie Lin. Lin, half Chinese, half Cockney, was runner for a fence, and had kept more than his share of payment for a job. He had probably been cheated for years and driven to desperation, running the risks of taking money to the thief and the hot goods to the fence. He’d kept back a fiver, and the fence had hired Murphy.

  One part of Birdy’s mind told him that the fence wouldn’t have done that if a fiver had been the only thing at stake. More likely, the fence was frightened in case Lin squealed.

  Lin was in hospital, being well looked after. At least he wasn’t frightened any more. They’d amputated his right leg and the fingers of his left hand, and there was some doubt whether he would ever be able to see again. He’d been found in a battered heap in a rubber warehouse, and there was no trace of the brutes who had done it, although the East End – including G5 Division – knew that it had been a Murphy job.

  Murphy hadn’t laid a hand on him.

  No one knew who had – for Murphy would have given the order to four or five of the boys, who wouldn’t talk except among themselves. One might have a drink too many and say what he shouldn’t, but that didn’t happen very often. Usually orders were given at a cafe in the Mile End Road – a place called Shippy’s, after its owner, whose name was Shipham,

  “Shippy’s” was a byword.

  Well, there was Lin …

  There was the swaggering man with the broad grin at the foot of the steps.

  Birdy turned away as a train rumbled in, another one from the West End. This would disgorge its hundreds, too. He hurried, to get out of the station first, and then saw Ali.

  Ali was a lascar.

  No one knew when Ali had last been aboard ship; and it didn’t matter. He was a little Indian who spoke broken English, had smooth, dark skin, beautiful black eyes and beautiful, shiny black hair: a model for any painter. No one quite knew what went on in his mind, no one quite knew what he did with his days, but they knew him for a remarkably able knife artist. Ali could carve patterns on cheek or belly, arm or breast. He was lounging against the telephone kiosk, with his right hand in his pocket.

  He was right-handed.

  Birdy missed a step.

  A policeman, big and genial, and hot in thick serge, came along, saw Ali, and lost his smile. Ali had never been inside, and had never had his prints taken, and it was the oath of every man on the beat in the Division to get him. Ali stared back at the policeman. He didn’t smile, either, but looked with an unmistakable impudence which could make a level-headed policeman lose his temper. The temptation to break Ali’s neck was sometimes overpowering.

  The train roared into the station.
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br />   Birdy waited. The policeman walked on, but took up a position as if Ali’s expression warned him of impending trouble, and he meant to stop it. Then the crowd surged up the steps, caught up with Birdy and swept him out of the wide open mouth and past Ali. He caught a glimpse of Ali trying to breast the tide of humanity and keep level, but pilgrims bathing in the holy water of the Ganges could not have kept him away more successfully.

  Birdy nipped across the road.

  No member of Murphy’s gang was in sight, as far as he could judge, but he didn’t know all of Murphy’s gang; no one did. That was another of the factors which made it unspeakable horror to be hunted by the gang. Birdy could go to the police and ask for protection, and he would get it for a while; only for a while. Once he did that, he would cut off all hope of the future. The whole of the fraternity would turn against him, against Ethel and against the kids. They knew he squeaked sometimes, but they also knew that he squeaked only about dope, and that his daughter, by his first and real wife, had been an addict. They didn’t blame Birdy for what he did, but if he stepped outside that one form of squeaking, they’d turn on him.

  If he couldn’t look after himself, they’d have no time for him either.

  He was in this on his own, and the heat was on. His hope was to get somewhere to lie low until it was off. The police might get Chang, and if Chang couldn’t pay Murphy, Murphy wouldn’t be interested. It was a matter of time.

  Birdy turned down a narrow street leading toward Tower Hill. The East End was too hot for him, his best chance was down in the city, in one of the warehouses. One could live there for days, for weeks, without being seen, emerging only after dark, feeding at one of the little coffee stalls at Billingsgate. It would be dark in an hour and a half; if he could keep safe until after dark he would be all right.

  There was one other serious worry: Ethel.

  Birdy was sweating.

  Murphy would know that he wouldn’t tell Ethel where he was going, wouldn’t he? Murphy was bad, Murphy’s gang didn’t care whether they worked on a man or a woman, but they didn’t waste their time. They’d be sure that he, Birdy, hadn’t confided in Ethel—