Gideon's Fire Read online

  ‘What’s happened? Every jail opened to let ‘em all get busy at once?’

  ‘It’s the last Saturday in April, George.’

  ‘Oh, Gawd, so it is,’ said Gideon, and was annoyed with himself because he had not prepared himself for this on the way from Hurlingham. Usually he would have, but this morning he had been too preoccupied with Matthew and Helen, partly because he had bumped into Miall on the way to the garage. Miall had started the ‘I-don’t-care-what-anyone-says-George’ gambit and Gideon had lost ten minutes and nearly lost his temper. The worst of it was that he could fully, understand the distress in the other man’s mind.

  The last Saturday in every month had developed into a kind of spring cleaning day. Every pending case on the Yard’s file was looked at, as was every case coming up for remand at the Magistrate’s Court and every case being prepared for the criminal courts. Gideon made a practice of taking a bagful of files home, to look at during the week-end, so that he could decide what tactics to use, and start using them on Monday. There simply wasn’t time to do everything he had to do during the week.

  ‘Anything new?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing that matters. You heard about Mrs. Manson?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nasty business,’ Bell said. ‘Briggs will be up at North London this morning, just a formal charge and hearing. I’m leaving that to the Division.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Margetson telephoned. He still hasn’t traced that second cyclist. The fires were in places owned by different people - one by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, two by the London County Council, two privately. He sounded a bit dispirited.’

  ‘Lucky won’t, for long.’

  ‘Riddell phoned from Chichester. He says that Harrison seems to be having a serious affaire with this Chloe Duval. There’s a chance that the second body in that quarry grave can be identified through an old toe fracture, the Brighton pathologist says that she must have had hammer toes when she was young, and had an operation to break them and straighten them. If it was a Brighton job, he can find out. If not there are about a thousand operations of the same kind every year, at a rough guess.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s a Brighton job.’

  ‘Riddell’s working at it. He’s staying down over the week-end.’

  Gideon grunted. ‘Probably means he’s going to have his wife down there. Has he forgotten that this Chloe Duval might be Harrison’s next victim?’

  ‘He says they’re having too good a time for anything to happen yet. If he takes her out to that quarry or anywhere quiet - but you said that yourself.’

  ‘I know, that’s the big danger,’ conceded Gideon. He paused, and then asked: ‘Any word about Jarvis’s funeral?’

  ‘Monday, two o’clock,’ answered Bell, and went on: ‘It’s going to be at Eltham Cemetery, and the Millers will be in the next plots - all of them. Mrs. Jarvis has agreed. I think she feels it will be a kind of permanent tribute.’

  ‘Make sure I leave here by one o’clock,’ said Gideon gruffly, ‘I’ll find out if the A.C. intends to come, too. Anything much in during the night?’

  ‘Only routine stuff.’

  ‘We could do with a week of routine,’ Gideon remarked, almost wistfully, and glanced through the top files, all of new cases. There was only a limited briefing session on Saturday mornings, all but urgent work being set aside for the week-end clean up. Briefing done, he settled down to a study of the pending cases, finding very few of immediate interest. Then he came to the old-standing one of the murder of the night watchman at Bournemouth. He read this closely, then studied Cornish’s files on the bank tunnelling job and the murder of Beatrice Clapper. He looked up.

  ‘What about the response to the television appeal?’

  ‘Fair. Cornish is interviewing all the likely people over at NE,’ answered Bell. ‘He’s going to call us about eleven.’

  ‘Anything in from that solicitor, Lewisham?’

  ‘Meant to tell you, he’s over at Brixton now, with Clapper. Nice client to have.’

  Gideon grunted again, and turned back to the files. Occasionally he took out his pipe and stuck it in the corner of his mouth, but he did not fill it. Bell was sifting patiently through cases which would be referred to him before the morning was over. As often happened on Saturday, the telephones were fairly quiet - the Yard worked, but the closing of most offices in the City and West End meant that they had a quieter time. It was half past ten, and Gideon was nearly through, when there was a bang on the door, and it swung open, almost at the same instant. Lemaitre strode in, bright-eyed, perky, wearing a red and blue spotted bow tie. Lemaitre’s suit was a little too bright a blue, his shoes too gingery a brown, and as always he had something of the look of an eager boy.

  ‘George, what do you think’s turned up now? ‘

  ‘What?’ asked Gideon. ‘Ericson jumped off Waterloo Bridge?’

  ‘When I worked here, I used to keep him up to his job,’ Lemaitre complained to Bell. ‘He didn’t have time to be bloody flippant. Roscoe’s back in circulation. How about that? He spent the night before last at the Ericson’s place, now Ericson and he’ve gone to their office this morning. There’s another queer thing, too.’

  ‘What’s queer about people working?’

  ‘The office staff’s not in this morning,’ Lemaitre retorted. ‘The two bosses are there alone. The other queer thing affects Mrs. Ericson, who’s quite a doll,’ Lemaitre went on. ‘One of the long shanked, lean hipped, quiet . . .’

  ‘Thinking of dating her, so as to get the low-down on her husband?’

  ‘Now put a cork in it, Gee-Gee,’ Lemaitre protested, rising to the bait. ‘She’s done a tour of relatives and friends, that’s what she’s done.’

  ‘What kind of a tour?’ demanded Gideon.

  ‘Had a chap following her yesterday, and I’ve just seen his report,’ said Lemaitre. ‘She made seven calls yesterday, all of them on relations, and some of the relations are pretty well-heeled. Something’s up.’

  ‘What’ve you done?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything else yet, can’t be sure I’ll get the moral support of my superiors,’ Lemaitre said caustically. ‘But I can tell you what I think, George.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘What I think,’ said Lemaitre, striding closer to the desk, placing both hands on it, and thrusting his bony face towards Gideon’s, ‘is that they’re raising all the dough they can. It’s a big borrowing spree, blood-thicker-than-water kind of thing. And I think that within a day or two, possibly today or tomorrow, they’ll all get out of the country. They’re getting ready to run, George.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Gideon thoughtfully.

  ‘Goddammit, it speaks for itself!’

  ‘Does it?’ asked Gideon. He did not remark that there was only one reason why Lemaitre had been so late getting promotion to superintendency, and now had no hope of reaching the top. Lemaitre was shrewd, clever, patient, and painstaking but just a little too reckless; nothing cured him of jumping to conclusions. On at least three occasions he had been up before the Assistant Commissioner for making an arrest on insufficient evidence, and so he had learned the lesson of listening to advice; but he chafed under it.

  ‘Listen, George, be reasonable,’ he pleaded. ‘The Ericsons are broke and so is the firm. Roscoe’s been away, obviously spying out the land. They’re in the red for fifty thousand quid, and once we establish that the surveyor reports were faked and the issue a fraud, we’ve got ‘em cold. They know it, all right, but they probably know it will be some time before we can get all the evidence we want, too. At the moment we can’t stop them from going abroad, unless we charge them.’

  ‘Got proof about the surveyor’s reports being faked?’

  ‘It’s only a matter of time, George!’

  ‘I daresay,’ said Gideon.

  ‘If we lose that precious trio . . .’

  ‘Last time I read your report you said that there was no indication that Mrs.
Ericson was involved,’ Gideon told him. ‘Now she’s a chief plotter. What do you want to do?’

  ‘Go and see Roscoe this morning, and let him have it straight from the shoulder.’

  After a pause, Gideon said: ‘No. No, Lem, not yet. I daresay you’re right on the overall picture, but if you see Roscoe now and don’t get any kind of admission from him, there’s a risk that you’ll warn him off. I’ll tell you what. Detail four men to the job, and watch all three of the suspects. If they buy air or sea tickets, or if they turn up at one of the airports or the channel ports - any port for that matter - have ‘em held for questioning. If they don’t try to get away, we may have to do some more thinking.’

  ‘Well, at least you admit they might try to do a flit,’ grumbled Lemaitre, and then rubbed his hands. ‘We’ll have all three of ‘em by Monday, they’ll try to go all right. Thanks, George. See you picked up that Islington swine, Briggs.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How’s Carson?’

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Gideon. ‘I forgot to check!’ He sent an almost horrified glance at Bell, who smiled his rather fatherly smile and said:

  ‘He had a comfortable night, and if his wife tries hard enough she can get him home today. The official advice is that he should stay in the hospital over the week-end, more to rest than anything else. That’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to talk about, George.’

  ‘That’s right, let Uncle Joe look after you,’ gibed Lemaitre. ‘Talk about reminding me about old times.’

  ‘What is, Joe?’ asked Gideon.

  ‘There hasn’t been much trouble out at KL,’ said Bell, quietly. ‘It’s ticked over very smoothly. There was that policeman killing last year, when Carson did a damned good job, and since then it’s run itself.’ Gideon realised that Bell was right on the ball; he himself had not been to KL very often, not only because there was little official need, but also because he had not liked Carson very much. ‘I had the Deputy Divisional Superintendent on the blower for a long time last night,’ Bell went on. ‘He didn’t want to worry you, or rather he wanted me to worry you!’ Bell’s smile was even more fatherly, even benign. ‘He says that Carson’s been working himself to death. Won’t leave anything to juniors, if he can help it, spends far too much time at the Division by night - over-conscientious, that’s the simple word. Whenever he’s going off for a day or two, he always leaves precise instructions, and he hasn’t had a clear week off for eighteen months. I checked, and that’s right.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Gideon, heavily.

  ‘The D.D.S. says this might be a good chance to make him take a month off,’ said Joe.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Gideon. ‘I’ll fix it.’ He remembered how Carson had said, almost desperately, that his deputy was fully briefed. He remembered how Carson’s lovely wife had said that she was so used to waiting late for her husband, and that her Sydney worked too hard. And he thought of the austerity of the Divisional Superintendent, that aloofness, that withdrawness. Here was a case where he himself had been fooled by the smooth way in which the Division ran; he should have been over at KL much more often, getting to know Carson better. He would have, had there been a lot of badly-handled cases. He made a mental note to talk to Mrs. Carson, and said: ‘Thanks, Joe. What are you waiting for, Lem? I thought you wanted to make sure the Ericsons and Roscoe were watched.’

  ‘Pooh, I laid that on before I came in,’ said Lemaitre. ‘Anything much in, George? All right if I go off a bit early today? I’ve only five weeks’ leave due, I don’t really deserve an hour off, but . . .’

  ‘See you Monday, Lem.’

  ‘Ta,’ said Lemaitre, and breezed out.

  ‘I believe we can do it,’ Roscoe was saying, about that time. ‘If you’re sure that your Uncle Reggie can be relied on for ten thousand, I believe we can do it. Joan, I didn’t think you were right, you know damned well I didn’t, but by God, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’d rather clean boots or dig ditches than stand trial. I wonder if we can put it across to the police.’

  ‘If we can make quite sure of returning all the investments, they’ll believe us,’ said Ericson, rather too loudly.

  ‘I hope to God you’re right,’ Roscoe said. ‘Anyway, we’ve got to draft that letter to the customers. How we’ve found that there was an error in the reports, that there isn’t as much iron, that in the circumstances ...’

  The next morning, Sunday, ‘Mr. Brown’ had his breakfast in bed. Mrs. Tennison had made a practice of taking Sunday breakfast up to him, a little after nine o’clock, with two newspapers, the Sunday Globe and the Sunday Mail. She saw him sitting up and looking through a Bible, of which she fully approved, and he gave her a pleasant smile as he put this down, and hitched himself up in bed. She thought he seemed much better. Earlier in the week, his eyes had been red-rimmed and he had looked as if he was sickening for something - she remembered how he had been affected by the story of the fire which had killed the Millers. But he was obviously over that now.

  When he saw her close the door, he snatched the Sunday Globe and looked through it quickly. There was a huge display about the fire at Hilton Terrace, obviously inspired by the police. There were photographs of all the victims, including Jarvis, and the headline screamed:

  WHY DID FIREBUG MURDER THESE PEOPLE?

  Then he saw a footnote; see editorial. He turned over the pages hurriedly, and saw the leading article was headed:

  FIRE TRAPS

  His eyes glistened as he read a violent attack on housing conditions in some parts of London, phrases like ‘a living disgrace in a civilised community’, and ‘This must strike the conscience of every man who has a safe house of his own’.

  ‘It’s working,’ Mr. Brown gasped. ‘It’s working at last, and - it is because they died.’

  He thrust the newspaper aside, and snatched up the Sunday Mail. Here the headline ran:

  MYSTERIOUS OUTBREAK OF EAST END FIRES

  IS SAME FIRE-RAISER RESPONSIBLE?

  He moistened his lips, put this aside, then started on the bacon and eggs, which were already cold on his plate. When he had finished he said in a small, clear voice:

  If anyone murdered those people, the landlord did. I was only the instrument. The landlord murdered them, and now’ - his eyes were shining with a kind of radiance - ’and now someone is sitting up and taking notice. If people die, something will be done. At last they’re listening to me.’ What he did not admit to himself was why something of the awful pain which had racked him since his wife and daughter had died, had eased since the Miller tragedy; it was as if some terrible pressure had been lifted from his mind. Hating the owners of the slums had not helped like this; planning to destroy more helped, though, and so did lying to himself. Telling himself that if he burned more places and more people it would force the authorities to tear down the fire-traps was the only way he could rationalise what he was doing.

  He knew one thing: he had to keep on, on, on; unless he did he would know no peace within him.

  He poured himself out a cup of lukewarm tea, then picked up the Globe again. The front page story caught his attention:

  YARD CHIEF ACCUSED OF ASSAULTING PRISONER

  ‘Brown’ began to read.

  At the Gideons’ home, it was Matthew who collected the newspapers that Sunday morning, a Matthew still very subdued, and coltish in his anxiety to be as helpful as he could in running errands and doing little household chores. This morning, he had taken tea in to his parents, told them he would see to their breakfast - Kate allowed the children to get up whenever they wanted on Sunday morning, but they had to get their own meal. All of them were up, all of them had looked into the big bedroom, where Kate was sitting up against the pillows of the double bed, and Gideon was shrugging his arms into a dressing-gown.

  ‘We can’t put off another talk with the Mialls much longer,’ Gideon said.

  ‘I’m going to talk to Jane again this morning, she’s making an excuse not to go to chapel,’ Kate said. ‘I
don’t like the way Ted Miall’s behaving, but there’s another aspect Jane did point out.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Why don’t they want to get married?’ Kate said, and then raised a hand and went on hurriedly: ‘Listen, George! Is it possible that they are simply reacting against a compulsion to get married? How fond would they be of each other if it weren’t for this baby?’

  ‘If it weren’t for this baby they wouldn’t be giving a thought to marriage,’ Gideon said, ‘and if they were, I’d make sure they soon forgot it. The thing that troubles me is the fact that they might marry, and be sorry all their lives. I’m not thinking simply of the scholarship, although that’s a key point in some ways. If Matthew can’t go up to Cambridge, the time might come when he’ll blame Helen because he couldn’t take advantage of the opportunity. Once that starts . . .’

  ‘There’s another possibility you’ve overlooked, George,’ Kate said. ‘They might marry and be thoroughly happy, and we’d be young grandparents. There’s no real reason why being married should interfere with Cambridge . . .’

  ‘Here! Am I to keep the three of them now?’

  ‘We could help,’ Kate said quietly. ‘Helen would work for a few months, and work after the baby arrives if necessary. I’ve been thinking that Matt could do a lot worse for a wife, and we could do a lot worse for a daughter-in-law. What’s more, the Mialls might help out a bit. They . . .’

  ‘Hold it! I can hear Matt coming,’ Gideon interrupted.

  A moment later, Matthew appeared in the doorway, carrying the Sunday newspapers. He looked startled and rather as he had when Gideon had first seen him about Helen. Two papers were tucked underneath his arm, the other was in his hands, for reading.