Thugs and Economies (Gideon of Scotland Yard) Read online

  He bent down and picked it up.

  Gideon said: “You’re the only chance she’s got, Micky. Give her a break.”

  Micky was breathing noisily through his mouth. His big hand was tight about the beer bottle, but he still stared at the ceiling. Then came Rose’s voice, very distantly, and the direction of Micky’s gaze changed swiftly; he watched the door.

  She must be just outside.

  “Micky,” she called, “it’s no use trying any more, it won’t do any good, honestly.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Micky,” she called again, and he could tell that she was much nearer; there was a break in her voice. “It’s all UP, don’t you understand? I did my best, but they got me. They’ll make me swing; they hang you for killing a copper even today.”

  Again she stopped.

  Micky the Slob held the bottle even more tightly, raised it, and yet continued to stare at the closed door. He heard nothing for what seemed a long time, and then the voice of Gideon came through the doorway; so he had left the bridge house and was just outside.

  “All right, Rose,” he said. “You’ve done your best. Just stand over there.”

  Rose gasped: “Micky!”

  “He won’t let you down,” Gideon said. “I’m sure of that. Micky, be careful with that nitro-glycerine, it’s nasty stuff to handle. We’re coming in now. Just move aside, Rose, you’re in the way.”

  “Micky, don’t blow us up!” Rose pleaded; and then there came three smashing blows on the wooden door, the steel of an axe glinted, disappeared, glinted twice again; then a gaping hole appeared in the wood, and a man was visible behind it. This man thrust his hand through the hole and groped for the key on the lock. He touched it. He was all Micky could see, just a big hand, thumb and forefinger on the key now; turning. The bottle seemed to be slipping from Micky’s fingers. Saliva dropped.

  “Keep back, Rose!” Gideon said sharply. “I don’t want you—”

  He drew his hand back through the hole, and a moment later the door swung open. Micky did not even move, and Gideon, with two men just behind him, stretched out his hand and took the bottle; he did not wrench at it, or show any violence, just drew it away easily.

  He said in a strange, quiet voice: “Okay, Micky, don’t let’s have any fuss, and we’ll do all we can for your Rose.”

  Micky the Slob did not speak. A man behind Gideon, tall, young, good-looking, slipped handcuffs on the prisoner, chaining him to his own wrist. Other men came hurrying. There was no sign of Rose Lemman outside the cabin, but she was at the top, staring down at him, crying.

  When Micky reached the top of the companion-way, with men all round him, he looked at Rose’s eyes, and said: “You don’t have to worry, they’ll see you right. Won’t you, Gideon?”

  “We’ll see her right,” Gideon said.

  Micky the Slob smiled.

  When he had gone, when the crew were coming back on board, and when the police were questioning the master and others about the fact that the Slob had hidden here, Gideon was driving back to Scotland Yard. He felt rather tired, but very satisfied. By his side was the small tape recorder, on which Rose had recorded everything that Micky the Slob had heard her say. Young Archer, of the NE Division, had suggested it.

  The ruse had worked, and that was the only thing that mattered.

  When Gideon got back to his office, the first thing he asked the middle-aged sergeant on duty was: “Anything from Bournsea?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Thought we might have two strokes of luck at the same time.”

  “If you can call it luck,” the sergeant said. “Certainly lucky you weren’t blown to smithereens, sir. It was nitro, wasn’t it?”

  “It looked like nitro, it was packed like nitro, and it terrified me the same as nitro would,” said Gideon. “It’s upstairs in the lab, being tested. If you hear an explosion, you’ll know it was the real stuff. Anything in?”

  “They got the killer at Scarborough.”

  Gideon’s eyes lit up.

  “The child killer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “The father.”

  “Oh, God,” breathed Gideon.

  “What people do,” the sergeant said, flatly. “They picked up Sammy Lees for the fur job the other night, forget when it was. A1 Division reports a six-year-old child missing, and they want half the blooming Force to go and help them; you’ve only got to mention a missing child and they blow. Nasty job out at Portobello Road, knife fight. A white man and a Jamaican are in hospital; the blackie might die. The white chap started it, out of jealousy. Picked up Teddy the Loop over in CD. Copped him with the sparklers lifted from Samson’s of Piccadilly the other day, so they’ve started a search of his house. Looks as if he’s got plenty tucked away under the floorboards. Couple of small holdups, one in Putney, one in Tottenham. I don’t know how you like it done but I’ve scrawled everything down, date, time and all details as far as I know. Need four cars and four pairs of hands on this job.”

  Gideon was looking at him very straightly.

  “How long have you been here, Jim?”

  “Five years longer than you, George!”

  Gideon began to smile.

  “You’ve done me a world of good,” he said. “Thanks. Chief Inspector Bell will be moving in here for a while, and you’ll have to nurse him. You’ve got the right approach to this job.”

  The other man’s eyes showed real alarm, and he raised his right hand to his almost bald head.

  “You leaving? Oh, I get it, you’ve been made Assistant Commissioner! Well, no one ever deserved—”

  “Take it easy,” Gideon said. “I’m not likely to get an AC’s job, whether I want it or not. I’m going to concentrate on building up a case to convince the Home Office and the Treasury that we need half a million quid, and that’ll keep me busy for a while.”

  “Always did believe in miracles, didn’t you?” the sergeant said.

  Gideon grinned.

  He looked up, a little after six o’clock, and was surprised to see Rogerson coming in. The Assistant Commissioner had two evening newspapers in his hand, and he was smiling dryly as he asked: “Seen these, George?”

  “No. What’s in ‘em?”

  “Glutton for publicity, that’s your trouble.” Rogerson gibed. And there was Gideon looking up at himself again from each front page. There was young Archer, too, and of course Rose Lemman. “No one who knows you is surprised, but if you stick your neck out again while I’m in charge of this Department, I’ll reprimand you in public.” Rogerson’s smile had an edge to it. “And I’m not resigning, I’m applying for six months’ sick leave instead. You’ll have to do your own job and mine from now until Christmas.”

  Gideon took a chance.

  “Carrying on as usual,” he said.

  Rogerson chuckled.

  George Arthur Smith read the evening newspaper, and all about the search for himself.

  Micky the Slob was allowed to see one paper, in the cell at Cannon Row.

  Sergeant Maybell read the front page just before going off duty.

  “That Gideon must have joined the Force the same month as I did,” he confided to a sergeant who was taking over for the night. “Never looked back, he hasn’t.”

  Dave Archer read the story while with his fiancée, who was very pleasant to look at, who dressed well, and who knew exactly what she wanted. Just then she was a little scared.

  “Don’t be too much of a hero, Dave, will you?” she asked.

  All the Gideon family read it, and Kate’s anxiety was almost overshadowed by the great pride of the children.

  Millions of people read the story . . .

  Keith Ryman was one of them, and he stood staring at the photograph of Gideon, while his Helen, in bra and panties, peered at the reflection of her pretty, pert face in the mirror.

  “Now there’s a man to get,” Ryman muttered. “That would draw them off all right.”
r />   “Say something, pet?” called Helen.

  “Nothing that matters,” Ryman called back, still staring at the photograph.

  Gideon went to the Yard next morning with only one real regret in his mind: that the Bournsea job was going cold on him. He had already talked to Hill, by telephone, and Hill had reported another night without any results at all.

  “We’ve talked to ninety-eight per cent of the licensed dog owners,” he had said. “There’s always the odd few who don’t take out a licence, but they’re going to be much more difficult to get at. There’s been plenty of time for the swine to kill his dog, of course, so we’re well on the way to checking dogs which have disappeared. At least we’ve a fairly good description.”

  “Something will turn up,” Gideon said, unhelpfully.

  “I hope to God we don’t get another kid murdered.” Hill could not have sounded more concerned if he had been talking of his own children. “You’re keeping your end up, anyhow, but don’t go and get yourself hurt, we need you for a bit longer.”

  “You’d forget me inside a week,” Gideon said.

  But the remark cheered him up very much.

  The first job he did at the Yard was to study all the circumstances of the Bournsea murders, hoping to discern some factor which had been missed, but he saw none. It looked like a model operation of its kind, with the Yard and the County Borough and the County Police all dovetailing well. Twenty thousand inquiries had been made in three days. The peak had been passed, of course; men wanted for their normal duties would go back to them today. At least Hill was as good a man as they had for it.

  He hadn’t mentioned Riddell.

  The sergeant had prepared all the reports and had them on his desk as efficiently as Gideon’s absent Chief Assistant could have done.

  “I’ll have him here with Bell,” Gideon decided, and his thoughts were lured off the problems in front of him for several minutes, while he contemplated the difficulties in presenting the case for the Home Secretary. It was an unpalatable fact that the pressure of the two main inquiries, at Bournsea and at the London Docks, had made it impossible for him to do more than skim the surface of the ‘case’. Even now, he had to put consideration of it aside, and call in the officers dealing with the diverse cases on his desk.

  He got through this quickly.

  “I’ll spend the afternoon drawing up a kind of brief,” he consoled himself, and forgot the ‘case’ as he thought again of Bournsea.

  It was a beautiful afternoon at Bournsea, and there was no outward sign of alarm on the beaches. Yet parents kept a closer watch on their children and every dog, from peke to labrador, was watched warily. In the hot back streets of the town, police and detectives worked patiently. Hill had a brainwave, and consulted the post office and the main delivery trades, the milk and the bread. All postmen and roundsmen were asked to take special note of any dog answering the description of the handsome mongrel, and particularly to report if any such dog appeared to be missing. As postmen did a daily coverage, they might produce a quick result.

  George Arthur Smith looked cool and neat in his short white jacket as he served the customers who drifted in. The afternoon was never a busy period for the grocer’s shop, and he had plenty of time to look out of the window and the doorway. The small shop served a neighbourhood where there were many young families in small new houses, and he saw the children as they passed on their way home from school.

  It was a little after four o’clock.

  Two or three children always came in, for a small bar of chocolate, a few sweets, a packet of chewing gum; and some of the older boys came to try to buy some cigarettes. All of these goods were kept handy, near the doorway, and Smith watched the children approaching. Here, they took different roads, and most of them looked each way, most carefully. A small group of boys and girls, all very young, reached the shop and stood looking in at the window.

  Smith saw one girl with fair hair tied in a bright pink ribbon, her face aglow with eagerness, her eyes cornflower blue. By comparison, the other children were pale and uninteresting. Smith watched this eager child, saw her forefinger stubbed against the window, and began to gulp; he could never understand the effect that golden-haired children had over him. Most children left him cold, but any girl with golden hair made his blood race. He wanted to be alone with them, to hold and caress them, to make them still and silent. He did not consciously remember the neighbour’s child and his own ‘sweetheart’, only knew that his heart beat so fast that it seemed as if he would suffocate. And whenever a girl was still and silent, he had a terrible headache.

  All three children moved quickly, and came into the shop, the fair-haired one showing a sixpence in her hot palm.

  Smith moistened his lips; and then smiled.

  “Hullo, and how are you?”

  She looked straight at the sweets counter, pointed, and said:

  “I want one of those and one of those.”

  “Little girls should say please,” chided Smith.

  “Please.”

  He selected the wrapped sweets and handed them to her one at a time; each time his fingers slid over her chubby little hand, lingeringly; she did not seem to notice. She handed him the sixpence. He hesitated, then decided it would not be wise to refuse, so he squeezed her hand tightly, took the coin and said:

  “Come and see me again, soon.”

  She stared at him as if he puzzled her, and then danced out, with the others waiting to share the sweets. Smith wiped his forehead and stood very still. He watched the sun shining on that fair hair as, dipping into one of the bags, the child passed the window.

  He went to the door and looked along at her until she turned the corner.

  A postman on his way home cycled past, nodded to him, but did not look back. Smith went into the shop, and then into the little back parlour. His mother was in the garden, pulling up a few weeds, and he saw her standing still for a moment, looking at the kennel. Soon afterwards she came in, and her first words were:

  “It’s a funny thing that dog hasn’t come back, I’ve never known him away for so long before.”

  “I’m worried in case he’s met with an accident.” Smith said, glibly. “He was always difficult crossing the road.”

  “Well, it’s a funny thing,” his mother repeated.

  Smith stared at her.

  She looked up at him with rather watery eyes, which did not serve her well, and he could not be sure what she was thinking about; certainly she stared at him much longer than she usually did. She could not read the newspapers, and he usually read her the headlines, and any spicy paragraphs; but she listened regularly to the news broadcasts.

  Had she heard about the search for a dog?

  If she had—

  She said: “Well, if you’re going down for your dip today, you’d better get off, Georgie, I’ll look after the shop until you’re back.”

  He hated her calling him ‘Georgie’.

  “Thanks, Mum.” He had already decided that he must not go to the beach for a long time, in case anyone recognised him: but he did not want to say so, for he had made a habit of a daily swim for years. “I’ll get my towel and trunks.” He went upstairs in the little house, came down with the roll of swimming clothes, went to the garden and stuffed them in his saddle-bag, then cycled off. The sight of his dog trotting alongside him on the cycle was quite common in the neighbourhood; the kind of sight that people saw so often that it was hardly noticed.

  He cycled along a street of small new bungalows and bright new gardens. Just in front of one house a group of children were playing, among them the fair-haired child.

  She did not notice him.

  He wondered if she lived at this house, and noted the number: 51.

  He cycled on, but kept away from the beach, although he missed the gaiety and the life, the splashing water and the children who were for ever playing. He could not rid his mind of the fact that the police were swarming over the beach, and questioning ever
ybody. He kept thinking of the detective who had questioned him, and the fact that he had given a false name and address.

  He was frightened.

  Later, when he had gone out to the cinema, his mother found the towel and the swimming-trunks, all quite dry. She felt the clothes with her skinny fingers, time and time again. Then she went out and looked at the kennel, where their dog had been for several weeks, since they had bought him. She had prayed that the company of a dog would help George, who seemed so lonely and was undoubtedly a little peculiar.

  When they had first had the dog, they had not been sure whether to keep it, so they had not taken out a licence. That didn’t matter now, but she was remembering a conversation she had had, late on Sunday evening, with the wife of a local police constable. It had been about the murdered children.

  The police were looking for a man who often went swimming at the beach, with his dog.

  “Georgie,” Mrs Smith said, in a hoarse voice: “Oh, Georgie.”

  And, soon:

  “What shall I do?”

  “It can’t be him, it can’t be!”

  That evening, Dave Archer was much more intent on watching his Drusilla as she prepared to serve, than on returning her service. She looked good, although in fact she was not beautiful. He preferred women who were tall and slim to the buxom kind. She had long, beautiful legs, no one could deny that.

  She aced him.

  “Game and set,” he called, and went to meet her at the net. “Jolly good game you played.”

  “You weren’t concentrating; I think you were thinking about that man Gideon.”

  Archer burst out laughing.

  “Didn’t enter my head,” he said, “but a little later I’ll tell you what I was thinking about.” He slid his arm round her waist, and squeezed.

  “Careful,” she said hastily. “Everyone’s staring at us.”