Gideon's Day Read online

  The Snide was a knife artist, too.

  Lefty was a broken-bottle artist.

  Down at the foot of the steps at Aldgate Station there had been a razor artist. So Birdy had a good idea what to expect. They were going to cut him up. Chang had given the word because he had squealed, and now Murphy’s gang were going to cut him up.

  It would be better to kill himself.

  He heard a soft, swift footfall.

  His hands went up to his breast, clenched fearfully; his ears strained the quiet; his eyes tried to probe the darkness beyond the clear glow of the gas lamp.

  It came again – stealthy, nearer.

  A voice whispered: “Come on, Birdy, we’ve got you cornered.”

  That was the Snide. The Snide had once been an artist in making lead coins, sludge, snide, call it what you liked; but now he preferred that knife. He wasn’t so good as Ali, but he was good.

  The sneering, mocking whisper came again: “We’ve got you cornered.”

  Everything Birdy knew, everything he sensed, worked in him for his own protection now. Thirty years of East End slum life, most of it with one of the gangs or another – not a fighting member, just a hanger-on – had told him plenty. He knew London and Londoners and Ali and the Snide. That whisper was to work on his nerves, to lure him out of his doorway, to make him run away from the sound; and if he did that, he would run into Ali. There might be others, too; he had been crouching here for ten minutes, plenty of time for reinforcements to creep up.

  “Give it up, Birdy.”

  “What part of you shall we send home to Ethel, Birdy?”

  The Snide always tormented like this; he’d had an education, and liked to demonstrate it.

  “Come on, Birdy—”

  Birdy fingered a sardine tin in his coat pocket; he’d picked it up from the curb, at dusk, and it was a weapon of sorts: not of attack, but of defence by ruse. He nicked his finger on the torn edge. He didn’t wince, but flinched.

  The Snide was very near.

  Ali… ?

  In a moment or two, they would rush him.

  Birdy raised the sardine tin, moving it round in his fingers until he found a smooth section which he could grip. He made a few silent swinging motions with his arm, and then tossed the can into the air. It made a funny little twittering noise; the others must wonder what it was. Then there was a hush; then the tin clanged upon the road on the other side of the street.

  Birdy darted out of his cover.

  In that split second, the Snide would be distracted at least he ought to be. He would look toward the sound, and Ali would probably do the same thing. That would be Birdy’s chance, his only one. He darted out of the doorway, and was revealed for a moment in the white glow.

  He saw the Snide, a thin face turned toward the sardine tin. He did not see Ali, but guessed that Ali was behind him.

  He leaped forward.

  The Snide swung round, the knife glittered. Birdy was very close. He felt the knife cut through his shoulder, and then he drove his knee into the pit of the Snide’s stomach with sickening force, and with the accuracy of an expert. He heard the Snide give a groan that was torturing in its anguish, in its tale of dreadful pain. The Snide slid away from him, and Birdy raced on toward the corner, the docks, the ships where he hoped to find refuge.

  He heard Ali.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw the dark shape of the lascar, and his long shadow cast by the gaslight.

  Then he saw a man in front of him.

  Lefty … ?

  Birdy’s heart seemed to stop.

  Lefty.

  He swerved to one side. Lefty moved toward him with the extra speed of twenty-one to forty-one. Birdy was sure, then, that he hadn’t a chance. He ran on blindly. He felt Lefty’s outstretched hand pluck at his sleeve, but tore himself free. Now all he could do was to run until he fell in his tracks. There was no hope, but he had to go on until they fell upon him and carved him up – or tore him to pieces. Hounds after a fox. Hounds—

  He became aware of a different, moving light, coming toward him, bright beams sweeping the street. A blue light showed at the top of the car, with the word Police. Birdy could just make out the shapes of the two men in the car.

  He heard nothing behind him, but he knew that Lefty and Ali had turned away, in alarm. They might help the Snide or they might leave the Snide to be picked up.

  Birdy waited until the car had passed him, and then began to hurry toward the docks. He could get into a crane, or sneak aboard one of the ships; he might even swim across to the other side of the Thames. He’d done it before.

  That was, unless a Murphy man was watching him now; or waiting for him in the shadows ahead.

  Gideon, his tie knotted loosely, coat on, shirt cuffs undone, bloodshot eyes, obviously very tired, and hat on the back of his head, looked at the sergeant who had just come in. He had nothing against the sergeant; nothing against sergeants as a general rule. But you got a fool sometimes, and he had had two or three bright specimens that day: this seemed to be his moment of misfortune.

  “Yes, put every message on paper,” he said, “and make sure that anything that different sections ought to have reaches them quickly.”

  The two-haired sergeant, who was old enough to know better, said timidly: “What kind of things, sir?”

  Gideon managed not to swear, tried to phrase what he meant simply, and was almost relieved that the telephone bell rang. He turned back to the desk to pick up the receiver, knowing that he ought to leave this call to the sergeant. Lemaitre and the others were downstairs with the prisoner with the scarred head: a man named Mazzioni. In a fury of checking, the Yard knew that Mazzioni had no record in London, and copies of his prints were being made to send to the provinces. The A.C. was downstairs, waiting for Gideon, and a blockhead of a sergeant—

  “Gideon… . Oh, Hallo, Fred.” This was the one call he was glad he’d taken, after all; and he was surprised that he felt really on edge. “Anything?”

  “Yes and no,” said the G5 Superintendent. “One of my patrols picked up the Snide. He had a couple of knives in his pocket, with traces of blood on one—’

  Gideon winced.

  “—but Birdy got away,” the Superintendent went on. “Our chaps saw him as he headed for the docks. He’s as slippery as they come, and as frightened as hell.”

  “I’d be frightened, in his shoes,” said Gideon heavily.

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Well, thanks, Fred,” Gideon said. “We picked up a chap in connection with the Waterloo job, by the way, and may have some luck.”

  “Here’s to it,” the other man said.

  Gideon put the receiver down, and looked up at the sergeant, forgetting to glare; the man was at Lemaitre’s desk, with a telephone in his hand.

  Gideon found himself chuckling.

  He nodded, and went out. Halfway along the passage, he remembered that the sergeant seemed to be confident enough now, scribbling something in so fast that it must have been in shorthand. A job in hand was a fine nerve tonic.

  Now for Mazzioni.

  Mazzioni looked tough.

  You could pick them out, and it was obvious from Lemaitre’s manner that he had picked Mazzioni out, quickly enough. For the man was handcuffed with his hands in front of him. He was hatless, and swarthy – no, olive-skinned; not one of the good-looking Italians. He was either Italian or of Italian extraction, Gideon knew, and when Italians came bad they were often very, very bad.

  Mazzioni was shorter than medium height, and not particularly broad; really, a small man, but very upright. It was obvious that he was physically fit; his poise somehow made that clear. He had a broad, flattened nose, obviously broken many years before, fine eyes, thick, jet-black hair and jet-black eyebrows, He needed a shave. His lips were parted, and showed a glimpse of white teeth; he had that caged, criminal-at-bay look which the really vicious criminals had, and Gideon thought he had something else: the look of a dopey.

&nbs
p; There was a nasty graze, bleeding a little, on his right temple.

  Lemaitre said: “He made a fight of it; that’s where he got marked. Plenty of witnesses.”

  Lemaitre no longer sounded cock-a-hoop; it was as if he knew that Mazzioni wasn’t going to be a lot of help. There was the kind who would talk under pressure and the kind who wouldn’t, and it was usually easy to pick these out, too. In Lemaitre’s words as well as his manner there was a hint of frustration, and a thing which everyone at the Yard or on the Force anywhere suffered from: fear that he would be accused of exceeding his duty. A prisoner with a bruised face was a prisoner with an angry, vengeful counsel. Once convince a jury that a man had been ill-treated, and the odds against a conviction—

  Gideon checked himself.

  The A.C. wasn’t here after all.

  “When’s the Old Man coming?” he asked.

  “Just rang, won’t be a minute,” Lemaitre answered.

  Gideon nodded.

  Mazzioni looked from him to Lemaitre and back again. He wasn’t sure what to make of this or what they would make of him. He would be happier if either of them talked: this silence, this cold appraisal from the newcomer, were unsettling, disturbing things. And Gideon, looking like a great bear and glowering as if the bear were angry, didn’t mind how much he worked on the prisoner’s nerves.

  Was he a dopey?

  There was a tap at the door. A uniformed constable looked in.

  “All okay, sir.”

  “Thanks,” said Gideon.

  That meant that the A.C. was in position, able to listen to what was being said, and looking into the room through a window which appeared to be opaque from the inside. They were ready to start.

  But as he looked at Mazzioni, with his first question on his lips, Gideon felt suddenly hopeless, although it was hard to say why. It was partly because he was tired; not flogged out, as he was sometimes, but flagging badly; the day had caught up with him. It was partly because of the ugly look in Mazzioni’s eyes, too, the certainty that this was a tough nut.

  This interrogation was going to last a long time.

  Lemaitre had his notebook out. Lemaitre, after his burst of triumph, felt much the same as Gideon; catching your man was only the beginning, and in this case it didn’t look like the promising beginning they had hoped for.

  Lemaitre had been going to take his Fifi out.

  He’d be lucky if he were home by midnight. So would Gideon.

  The hell of it was that this was just another day.

  Mazzioni didn’t talk, but two things made Gideon very thoughtful. A police surgeon said that he was certainly addicted to cocaine, and at Mazzioni’s rooms in Bethnal Green the Divisional police found a packet of reefers and a small packet of cocaine.

  15. Worried Men

  Chang was worried.

  He was in his office, with ledgers open in front of him, for his best love was to work over the figures of his businesses. Then the news of Mazzioni’s capture reached him by telephone. It was a whispered statement, briefly made, as if the speaker were eager to get the message delivered and be off. He put the receiver down stealthily, and there was silence on the line and in Chang’s office.

  Chang now wore a dinner jacket, beautifully cut, a white shirt and a purple bow tie. His sparse black hair glistened with brilliantine. The light in the ceiling cast soft shadows of his prominent eyebrows and his nose over his face, giving him an oddly sinister look. His lips were parted but not visible to anyone who happened to look at him. He sat quite still, a faintly yellow hand resting on the open pages of the ledger, in which he was keeping records of restaurant trade: or so the ledger’s legend said. For tea, Chang read reefers; for deliveries of tea he read marijuana or hashish, whichever was available. Occasionally it was dagga from Africa, and the effect of this was much the same, with dagga perhaps more harsh than the others.

  Coffee and cocaine were synonymous.

  All this afforded Chang deep amusement most of the time, for he could safely allow the police to study these records. Until that morning, at all events, he had felt sure that there was no risk. With Foster at Scotland Yard, biddable under the twin pressures of greed and fear, with several key men in banks and post offices throughout London, and with his own carefully conceived plan to block every line of inquiry which might lead to him, he had felt that nothing could go wrong.

  He was less sure now. Foster’s telephone call, his sister’s prying visit, Gideon’s call and then a hysterical outburst from the dancer, Estelle, had combined to give him a very bad day. It was Estelle who had betrayed the fact that Birdy had found out, and squealed. Now Birdy was on the run, and so was the dancer.

  Murphy was after them both. Chang did not think Birdy could be dangerous, and knew that it had been a mistake to set Murphy onto the squealer. The police knew about it by now; and Murphy’s contact men were unable to concentrate on the search for Estelle, whose knowledge could be deadly; could, in fact, hang him. Chang had not realized that Estelle was in love with Foster.

  Chang sat quite motionless in the small, warm office. No sound came from the cafe, although a radiogram was playing soft, rhythmic music in there, and occasionally a crooner sang. No reefers were being sold, the soft drinks were not pepped up, yet any Yard man who came in, any doctor who knew the signs, and any victim of the dream drugs would know that half of the people here were dopies. From their bright eyes, they would have known that they had recently had a drag or a shot.

  Chang did not think of these things.

  Chang, in his way, was very like Gideon. He had the same kind of mind, the same tight grasp of situations and circumstances, the same unfailing memory and the same intentness. For Gideon there was the reward of doing his job, for Chang the reward of making a fortune; but to each the actual task was the very pulse of life. In Gideon the chief thing was the task of seeking the criminal and hunting him down, of making sure that he could never strike again to hurt, to rob, to frighten or to maim. In Chang, the attraction was the plotting against the police, the moves in a game as in a game of chess or mah-jongg – wits against wits, and the amassing of a fortune.

  The police had become his natural enemy.

  They had suspected him for a long time, but with Foster in his pocket he had known that he was temporarily secure. Others were also in his pocket. He was ringed round with men, a few of whom knew that they served him, most of whom did not know that their instructions came from him. “Instructions” was too often the wrong word. Hints, tip-offs, suggestions, help in emergency – all of these came through Chang, and for reward he received a share of whatever profit was made. His share was passed onto him. Sometimes it was handed over, in cash, at the cafe; or to other, smaller cafes where he had contacts in the East and West Ends, in Chelsea, in Bloomsbury.

  There was Chang with supplies for his cafes, all legitimate business on the surface. Here was Chang, deeply worried. Estelle was anxiety enough, but he had trained himself to concentrate on one thing at a time, and the greatest anxiety was the captured Italian.

  Chang knew Mazzioni personally, and Mazzioni knew him; so he could betray him to the police. The Italian’s record was good, because Chang had saved him from a charge several times, but reputation went for nothing once the police were working on you. Mazzioni might crack and talk, to save himself.

  Never trust anyone, Chang believed, unless you could compel him to serve faithfully.

  Mazzioni was out of his reach.

  Mazzioni’s wife wasn’t.

  How should he deal with the Italian? Could he find a way of warning him of the consequences of failure?

  No, Chang decided, not that: not yet. Mazzioni was tough and he would hold out for some time; he might hold out for a long time. He took an occasional sniff of snow, but could get along without it. The way to make sure of Mazzioni’s loyalty was to promise him help. Help, for instance, for his pretty young wife; then help with the police.

  Chang did not know how the Italian had been picked
up. He knew that he had done the job at Waterloo, and that most of the money had already been safely salted away; but Mazzioni might have been caught with some of the money on him. The police might find indisputable evidence of his complicity, but they might be taking a chance. If Mazzioni had an alibi, it could make all the difference to the way the case went.

  Chang lifted the telephone, dialled a number, and waited. He had to wait for a long time. Brrr-brrr, brrr-brrr. It was too long. Possessed of all the calm of his unknown ancestors, he began to bare his teeth; but then the call was answered; a man said breathlessly:

  “Mayfair 29451.”

  “Mr. Ledbetter,” Chang said softly, “it is urgent that I should see you.”

  “Who—”

  “An old friend, Mr. Ledbetter.”

  There was a moment’s silence; then the man spoke again, in a voice less breathless but quite empty of pleasure.

  “Oh, I know. Look, can’t it wait? I have some friends here. In the morning—”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Ledbetter, it is urgent. Meet me in Room 217 at the Occident Hotel, please.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “It is very urgent, Mr. Ledbetter,” Chang said.

  Ledbetter answered gruffly: “Oh, all right.”

  Chang rang off without another word. He lifted the receiver again, almost at once. His movement was quick yet graceful, very different from Gideon’s grab; and his hand was half the size of Gideon’s.

  A woman answered.

  “Mary,” Chang greeted, “this afternoon, between two o’clock and four o’clock, where were you?”

  “Hallo, Chin,” said the woman, in a deep, throaty voice. “I was at Kingston. Didn’t anyone tell you, I’m at Kingston every afternoon? It’s one of the places where I work.” There was laziness and laughter in her voice; one would picture a big, hearty, fleshy woman, sensuous, good-hearted, quick-witted.