Gideon Combats Influence Read online

  Gideon stepped on to the pavement by the shop, and between a huge red for sale sign and another which said bargains – must close, he saw Moss at a counter, another policeman with him; Moss was standing back and studying what he had drawn.

  Then a stone smacked against the window, making it boom; and as Gideon and Christy swung round, another stone flew at head-height towards them. Gideon ducked. The stone smacked him on the forehead, just above the eye. He caught a glimpse of a man with his arm drawn back holding another stone ready to throw. Then a bigger stone came from one side and struck the top of Christy’s hat and sent it flying. A man laughed; a girl giggled. Any moment the crowd would really start laughing, and the fact that blood was trickling down Gideon’s forehead and into his eyes would make no difference. This had been laid on to make the police look silly, of course; and so to strengthen feeling for the Carters among the many people who seldom paused to think.

  Gideon said: “Hold it, Hugh,” and thrust himself into the crowd, carrying several people back by sheer weight, and making others sway out of the way. He could see the man who had been about to hurl the next stone, turning away from him now and trying to mix with the crowd. There was a hush, as everyone watched Gideon. He swung his left arm and brushed two youths out of his path, then reached a clear spot and ran ten yards, putting on a surprising burst of speed, rather like a charging rhino. The man he was after glanced over his shoulder, and missed a step. Before he could recover his balance Gideon had him by the shoulder. He spun the man round, saw a little, narrow, frightened face, then shifted his grip to the man’s big ear.

  “We’ll go and have a little talk,” Gideon said, and he held the man by his ear, thrusting him forwards towards the shop. The giggling started again, but it was no longer at him and Christy, and there was a different note about it. Gideon reached the pavement again as young Moss came out, pencil in hand.

  “Here’s the chap who threw the stones,” Gideon said, and brushed blood off his forehead. “Know him?”

  “I don’t know him, but I recognise him,” answered Moss, with complete certainty. “He threw one of the smoke bombs at the Black Maria.”

  Gideon barked: “So he did.” He let the man go, pushed him into the shop, spun him round, and said: “Where are the Carters? If you tell us now you might get away with it. If you don’t, you’ll get seven years for helping to hold up that van. Where are they?”

  “I—I don’t know,” the little man muttered. “It’s no use asking me; I don’t know. I was given a fiver to throw that smoke bomb. I didn’t know what it was all about.” It would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that he was lying, and Gideon sensed that he was up against a brick wall. “I was given an extra quid to throw stones at you coppers, too, but I never meant to hurt anyone. I was only trying to put the wind up you.”

  “Who paid you?” Gideon demanded.

  “I dunno who it was,” the man said mechanically, in his whining voice. “I’d never seen ’im before, I swear.”

  Gideon said: “We’ll see about that.” He turned to Christy, and said: “Will you fix him?”

  “I’m longing for the chance,” Christy said, and called a plainclothes man from the doorway. “Take this chap along and charge him with causing serious bodily harm to a police officer.”

  “I only just nicked him, look,” the man protested, but there was little spirit in his voice, and he did not try to struggle when the police took him away.

  Gideon was already studying the sketch plan which Moss had prepared of the district and, as he did so, he kept dabbing a handkerchief on the cut on his forehead. It was bleeding quite freely, but there was hardly any pain. Moss was certainly good: another Wills in the making. The diagram showed all the points of incident, and there were captions explaining exactly what had happened, routes to and from the spot, all details which would enable the police to cover the whole area thoroughly. But the best item of all was a note on a separate sheet of paper, naming all the known criminals who had been in the vicinity. Moss had seen some himself; and others had been named by different policemen. In that comparatively small area, eleven ex-convicts had been gathered; someone had made sure that feeling against the police would be worked up.

  Christy came back.

  “What do you think, George?” he asked. “Have all of these chaps pulled in for questioning?”

  “Yes,” Gideon said. “They’ll probably all say they were paid to be there by someone they didn’t know, but they knew all right, and one of them might crack. Who’ll you put in charge?”

  Moss stood quite straight-faced, but his eyes were pleading, and Christy said, with a plum in his cheek: “I’m a bit short of men, George—Moss might as well carry on with it. Eh?” That was a parade-ground bark.

  “Should think so,” said Gideon, and saw the glow of satisfaction in Moss’s eyes. “The quicker each one of these chaps is questioned the better I’ll like it.” He turned to the door. “How’s that Gully girl?”

  “Much better, sir, thank you,” Moss answered. “As a matter of fact she’s staying at my place in Clapham. We’ve a big house with plenty of room, and my mother likes a paying guest or so. I’d like to prevent her from coining back to this part of London if I can.”

  “Good idea,” Gideon said. “Get those jobs done quickly.” He went out, with Christy on his heels, and as the door closed behind them Christy said: “He’s your slave for life; I see how you do it now. Catch ’em young. Anything else on your mind, George?”

  “I’m going to step up the pace on the inquiries about the car thefts,” Gideon said. “You’d call it a hunch, but it’s worth playing.” He paused for a moment to look at the crowd. It was bigger than ever, and at the back men and women were jostling and pushing forward. What a sweaty, sticky, ill-dressed, ill-featured mob a crowd could look on a warm day. Most of the police work was finished and traffic would be able to start flowing soon, but the stone-throwing incident had brought more people here. Gideon recognised at least eight men who had been inside.

  A lot had been going on under his nose, a lot more under Christy’s nose, more still under the nose of Superintendent Hopkinson of the AB Division, which covered Fulham and neighbouring districts. Hopkinson, with his touchiness, might not be so good as he ought to be. Getting the right men in the Divisions was one of the Force’s grave problems, and the time was probably coming when he should lay on a check of all Divisional C.I.D. branches. Slackness or inefficiency would do inestimable damage.

  As he drove back to the Yard through the crowded narrow streets of the City, where Borgman had operated for so long, he wondered what agitation the Borgman arrest had caused. The City, so eminently respectable, so correct, so reliable, contained as many if not more criminals per head of population as the East End, but they were criminals in a different way. How many tax frauds were being planned at this moment? How many company directors were chiselling on accounts? How many little thefts were there, like that old man’s, Borgman’s cashier? Most of these were thefts which would be found out and dealt with without referring to the police; some might start another Samuel on the downward slide. Good out of evil? If it hadn’t been for Samuel, the impetus to go ahead with the charge against Borgman might not have been so strong.

  Gideon was held up in a traffic block opposite a narrow street where a sign reading: Secure Safe Deposit swung gently in the wind. A few years ago there had been a raid on that very place, a night watchman had been killed, Gideon himself had been injured. A few doors along was an office building with a dozen brass plates in the entrance ; and in a second floor office one of the cleverest company frauds in his time had been carried out; he had actually made the arrest there, ten years ago. The trial had lasted for seven weeks. They were the days! He realised that he had enjoyed being out in Christy’s manor – but when he became Assistant Commissioner, if ever he did, that kind of sortie would be denied him.
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  He was passing the Guildhall when he saw a Rolls-Royce draw up, a man in livery open the door and, a moment later, the top-hatted figure of the Home Secretary get out and go towards the main doors; there was a Lord Mayor’s Banquet for some special civic occasion today, and the Home Secretary was the chief speaker. He would not have the slightest idea of what was happening at the Yard, but he could make or mar Gideon’s future.

  Gideon drove on.

  He got caught between two monster red buses, and the noisy engine of one of them was getting on his nerves; the fumes from the exhaust were worse than on most, too. But there was no way to edge himself out. He saw three people go up to cars parked in a side street and open the driving door without using a key; two go up and turn the key before the door opened. When were people going to realise the extent of their own culpability?

  “Never, I suppose,” Gideon said to himself, and then the traffic moved off. There was a gap on the other side of the road, giving him just room and time to nip past the bus that was nearly suffocating him with its fumes. He pulled out, and roared past; and two taxis, coming towards him, had to pull over sharply. As he passed one, the driver leaned out and bellowed: “Ought to be in dock, that’s where you ought to be!” The second driver simply called: “Bloody fool.”

  “Right, too,” Gideon admitted aloud. Then he saw a City policeman watching him, saw the man’s expression change on recognition, and knew that all thought of a charge of dangerous driving had flown from the policeman’s mind. Then a man rather like Moss passed; with that prominent Adam’s apple and looking a little simple. Moss would soon overcome that physiognomic disadvantage. It looked as if it were a case between him and the Gully girl. Good out of evil?

  “I think I’ll go out for a walk, Mrs Moss,” said Rachel Gully, about the time that Gideon was turning into the Yard that day. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

  “You could pop into the grocer’s for a packet of custard powder,” said Mrs Moss. “Cyril does like a lot of thick custard, and I’ve run short, will you?”

  “Oh, I won’t be as long as that,” Rachel assured her.

  She put on a green lightweight coat, tossed back her hair, and went into the street of terraced houses which was now becoming familiar; but it was like a new world for her. These houses were all three storeys high, and four times as large as the hovel where she lived with her mother. Every one was neat and tidy; each had a small front garden, most were freshly painted, all the windows shone, curtains were spotlessly clean, even the lamp-posts had been newly painted. The sun was shining almost directly above the rooftops, bringing out the colours in the late antirrhinums, the dahlias and the asters. The wind was gentle, and refreshing, and it gave her a strange feeling of contentment. She had never known such comfort or such kindliness as she had met with from Mrs Moss, and it was hard to believe that only a mile or so away her own mother was probably drinking gin, or leaning on a broom and talking to a neighbour, or waddling to the shops and trying to get groceries or meat on credit.

  She would have to go and see her mother soon, of course; but she would never go back home to live.

  She turned the corner. Just beyond was a short street of the same fine houses and, beyond, the High Street, with buses passing, traffic crowding, people thronging. Even the shops seemed bigger and brighter and crammed with more stock.

  She saw a small car parked near the High Street, facing her; saw a man leaning against the wall of a house and reading a newspaper, as a great number of men did in her own neighbourhood. She had seen this man before, although she could not place him; and he did not appear to be taking any notice of her.

  But he was.

  He looked at her over the top of the newspaper, until she had turned the corner, and then he put the paper down and stepped into the kiosk. He dropped in his pennies, dialled, and waited, the cigarette drooping from his mouth like a little brown parasite. He listened for the dialling sound until, eventually, a man answered.

  “That you, Alfy?” he asked, and the browned cigarette bobbed up and down. “It’s Jake here … Yes, she’s out … All okay for me to do the job?”

  The man Alfy hesitated for what seemed a long time, then said: “Hold on, and I’ll tell you,” and put the receiver down in the little niche provided for it on the wall of the garage office. It was a small one, neatly kept, and although many of the papers on the little desk were marked with oily fingers, there was no dust or dirt anywhere. Most of the papers were held down by sparking plugs, spanners, piston rings and washers. On another, even smaller, table, stood a typewriter with a chair pushed back from it, and a girl’s hand-knitted red cardigan draped over the back.

  Alfy stepped into the repair shop behind the office.

  There were a dozen cars in various stages of overhaul and, in the next archway marked Paint Shop, were five more, two of them being completely resprayed, one being touched up after an accident. Working with spray guns and wearing masks to keep their lungs clear of the sickly cellulose were three men – two of them a little taller than average. One of these wore a skull cap pulled right down over his head, so that not a vestige of hair showed; but he had a freckly skin of the kind that often went with red-haired men.

  Alfy went to him. The other, taller man stopped using his gun, and the only hissing now was in the far corner, where a younger man was working.

  “Red,” Alfy said, “it’s Jake.”

  “So what?” Red Carter asked.

  “He wants to know if it’s okay to do the job on Rachel Gully?”

  “Boy,” Red said, in a very soft voice, “you can tell him he can make any kind of mess of her he likes. Sure, it’s okay. If it wasn’t for little Raichy we wouldn’t be out on a limb like this, if it wasn’t for—” He stopped speaking, as if the words were choking him, and there was a glint of rage in his pale, greeny-grey eyes. His right eye was swollen, where he had banged it while righting the detectives in the Black Maria. He had been here for two and a half hours, and still felt edgy, still hated the slightest movement at the doors. His brother seemed to be taking things more calmly: he always had.

  “Okay, if that’s the way you want it,” Alfy said.

  “Hold it,” interrupted Syd. “I don’t know that—”

  “Stow it,” Red said viciously. “That girl’s a witness against me, the only witness. Get that? If she takes the stand she can put me away for a long time, but if she’s in her box they won’t have a real witness, and I can get away with mistaken identity on the murder rap. So don’t try to hold anything up. The quicker it’s done the better I’ll like it. Go tell Jake, Alfy.”

  Alfy looked at Syd, as if for confirmation. Syd shrugged, and turned away. He wore a cloth cap and overalls which looked as if he had been getting more paint on them than on the car. As Alfy disappeared into the repair shop, he said: “Why don’t you stop worrying? They aren’t going to catch up with us. We’ve a dozen places to go to, and there isn’t anything to stop us now.”

  “That so?” asked Red, and put back his mask and picked up the spray gun again.

  Alfy said into the telephone: “Okay, Jake, go ahead.”

  ‘Yes,’ thought Rachel Gully, ‘it’s a different world.’ She actually used the words to herself as she came out of a small grocer’s shop, where an elderly man with a grey beard had treated her with old-world courtesy. The shop was old-fashioned, newly painted, and rich with fresh-ground coffee. Next to it was a dress shop, rather like the one where she worked, and she found herself comparing prices; they were ten per cent or so more here, so it might be a good idea to shop nearer her own home. She passed a policeman, who glanced at her but appeared to take no special notice, and her heart missed a beat. As she went by, she smiled to herself, not knowing how her face lit up, for she had no need to be nervous of policemen, although all her life she had been taught to be.

  She went to a zebra crossin
g, and remembered the man leaning against the wall near the telephone kiosk. He wasn’t there. She had never been so near real happiness. A motorist stopped to wave her over the crossing, and she reached the other side. As she passed one of several parked cars, she heard an engine start up, but she did not give the driver a thought. It was nearly four o’clock, and Cyril’s mother liked her cup of tea at four. So she hurried.

  As she neared the corner, she heard a car coming behind her, but there was nothing alarming in that. She reached the corner and hesitated, looking round before she crossed this road. The car was on the other side and looked as if it were going straight on. Out of the corner of her eye she saw another man walking after her, and with a flare of alarm she recognised him as one of the Carters’ men.

  She stepped into the road hurriedly – and heard the engine roar.

  She looked round, to see the car swinging towards her, and she felt sure what was going to happen. She sprang forward in a desperate, despairing effort to save herself. The roar of the engine seemed deafening, she could almost feel the thud of the car against her body. She heard different sounds, as of a man shouting, a thudding, a shrill, high-pitched noise, a police whistle. Then she kicked against the kerb, tripped up, and sprawled headlong in the road, with the car almost on her.