Gideon Combats Influence Read online

  Then he looked sourly at the newspapers again. One had an article listing Borgman’s many interests, his gifts to charities, and the general excellence of his character.

  When Gideon got home, the same newspaper was folded at the same article.

  “Did you read that, Kate?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Kate said.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “No one seems to want to believe he’s guilty,” Kate said quietly. “George, dear—” She broke off.

  “Hm-hm?”

  “What is there about Borgman? I even hear people in the shops and on buses saying that they don’t believe he did it.”

  “I think it’s the result of a clever whispering campaign,” Gideon answered thoughtfully. “It started in the newspapers and it’s being spread everywhere—on ships, trains, buses—the lot.” He poked his fingers through his hair. “It’s pretty rife at the Yard, too. If you ask me whether I think he did it, I’ll walk out on you.”

  “What does Fred Lee think?”

  Gideon said: “I’m not too happy about Fred. I fancy he’s afraid that he’ll be on the losing side next week. I wish—hallo, wasn’t that the front door?”

  “I’ll go,” Kate said.

  “You stay there.” Kate was ironing, while sitting at a large ironing board, and Gideon heaved himself out of his chair and went to open the door. It might be someone for one of the children: the girls were in their room upstairs, reading a play for some local dramatic society; he could hear the murmur of their voices. He opened the door, and the light shone on Fred Lee’s pale face.

  “Talk of the devil,” Gideon said, and stood aside. “Come in, Fred. Working overtime?”

  “That’s about it,” said Lee, “and I’d like pounds for the hours I’ve put in on this job for the past week. Your youngsters home, George?”

  “Come in the back, they won’t hear us there.” Gideon led the way, Lee came in and shook hands with Kate, who moved the ironing board so that she could push up a chair for the caller. Gideon went into the kitchen and came back with two bottles of beer and two glasses. He saw that Kate was assessing Fred Lee, and anyone could see the anxiety and the misgivings in the other’s eyes. Gideon poured out, giving his own a bigger head than Lee’s, and said: “Here’s health, Fred. What’s worrying you?”

  “The whole blasted case is worrying me,” blurted out Lee, “and I can’t get it out of my head that things run in threes, George. I’ve had two flops, and now I’m ready for the third. You seen tonight’s Globe?”

  “No.”

  “Take a look, then,” Lee said, and took a folded newspaper out of his pocket and handed it to Gideon. There was a paragraph heavily marked in ball-point ink. Kate stood up, to read it over Gideon’s shoulder, while Lee sipped his beer gloomily.

  The Gideons read: ‘The late Lord Alston was known to have a passionate liking for secret drawers and hidden passages, and he took many of his secrets with him to the grave.’

  “Well, what does it mean?” asked Kate.

  After a long pause, Gideon said softly: “It may mean that we can probably get him all right after all, Fred.” He saw surprise spring into Lee’s eyes, and puzzlement in his wife’s. “It might not do what it’s meant to do,” he went on. “It’s meant to imply that Borgman could have bought the desk without knowing about the secret compartment. If they could establish that, they’d have us on the wrong foot.”

  “I’m on the wrong foot already,” Lee said.

  “Shake out of it,” Gideon said. “You got all the depositions in your case?”

  “Yes—I’ve read ’em all until I’m sick.”

  “Get out those you got from Sammy after he’d had the desk gone over for prints,” said Gideon.

  “George, there were no fingerprints on the bottle, on the hypodermic syringes, or—” Lee stopped abruptly, and his eyes rounded comically. “Gawd!” he breathed. Kate looked sharply from him to Gideon, while Lee opened the middle section of his brief case, thumbed through some documents which were pinned together, and then pulled one out. “Here we are.” He nipped over the pages. “Morphine bottle, two hypodermic syringes and the packets of morphia—negative. Compartment in which these items found—two sets of prints, neither identified. No way of saying how long they had been there; in a sealed compartment they could last for years. George,” Lee said in a choky voice, “I must be going senile.”

  “You’re worrying too much,” Gideon said very tensely. “The desk still sealed up?”

  “Yes, they’re not going to take it to the court unless the magistrate asks for it.”

  “Nip over there, and get one of the Fingerprint chaps to go through all those compartments. Just one of Borgman’s prints in one compartment will do. That’ll be another hole sealed up.” His eyes were bright and his voice as eager as a boy’s, and Lee looked years younger. “Have another beer for luck.”

  “Haven’t got time,” said Lee.

  When Gideon came back from seeing him off, he was humming; and Kate, looking towards the door and smiling, reminded herself that he hadn’t hummed light-heartedly like that for a long time. She could still picture the delight with which he had spotted the flaw. She marvelled, as she always had and always would, at George’s grasp of details and speed of thought, as well as his astonishing memory for trivial facts; or facts which did not seem to matter. He came in, said: “Why don’t you put that ironing away and do it when I’m not home?” and immediately switched on the television. “All I want now is the news that Red Garter’s been caught,” he went on, as the set began to warm up. “Funny how often cases go in parallels. There’s a kind of whispering campaign for Red and his brother, as well—started to do them a bit of good, too.”

  Kate said: “I’ll just finish this shirt, and then I’ll put it up. How do you mean?”

  “The way they got away with the Black Maria caught the public fancy,” Gideon said. The set began to whine, and he started to fiddle with it. “‘We hate their guts but you’ve got to admire their courage; hope they get a sporting chance’—that kind of attitude developed. And I was talking to Hugh Christy today. He’s having a bad patch like Fred, although I don’t think it will affect him so much. He says that there’s a lot of talk in the Division—that Tiny Bray was a crook himself, and the worst kind, a traitor. So he deserved a beating up. And Syd Carter wasn’t going to kill the Gully girl—they were going for a night out, and she changed her mind at the last moment. It won’t do the Carters any good, but it shows the way the wind’s blowing.” He stood up, the volume right on the set now; and the picture began to form. “Oh, lor’, it’s that serial. Shall I switch off?”

  “We might as well give it a trial,” Kate said. “I rather like it, and—oh, why can’t they let you alone for five minutes.”

  The telephone was ringing.

  “Might be to say that Borgman’s confessed or Red and Syd Carter are back in the cell,” remarked Gideon lightly. “I’ll take it in the hall; you look at your young lovers.” He closed the door and switched on the hall light, leaned against the wall and heard his two daughters upstairs, lifted the receiver, and announced himself: “Gideon.”

  “Hallo, George,” greeted O’Leary, and went on without preamble: “I’ve got a report here that I thought you’d like at once.”

  “Try me.”

  “The movements of Lucy Sansetti,” O’Leary told him, “checked over four nights running. She’s called for petrol and gone to the toilet while being served, at Mortimer’s Garage, the Arches, Fulham, Bennett’s Garage, New King’s Road, Chelsea, and Butterby’s Garage, Fulham Road. Tonight she’s back at Mortimer’s. Then there’s the report you had in today from Wills. Three of these four garages are known to have been on the rocks last year, and now they’re doing all right. It looks as if we’ve got something.”

  Gi
deon said: “Yes, Mike, it looks good. Have you put a ring round Mortimer’s Garage?”

  “Yes, it’s in position now. All corners and approaches covered.”

  “That’s the big place not far from the river near the football ground, isn’t it?” Gideon said. “Right on my doorstep. Have some chaps up on the roof of the warehouse overlooking it. Have a couple of launches up to cover the river. Alert the Putney boys to make sure we can close the bridge and the towpath if we need to. Don’t move in until I get there. If Lucy Sansetti comes out, let her get well away from the garage before picking her up. Right?”

  “On the nose,” O’Leary said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mortimer’s

  Mortimer’s Garage was a new one built on the site of an old, almost derelict place which had been there since the beginning of motor-cars. It had eight petrol pumps, each of them glowing with illumination at the top, each bright and shiny in red and yellow. Well-made drive-ins were on either side. There was a large showroom which stretched right across the pump line, with a drive-way to the repair shop and the paint shop behind. In a fenced-off area next to the garage there were forty or fifty new and second-hand cars, several of them marked: ‘One Owner Only’ or ‘3,000 Miles—a Snip.’ These were exactly the kind of cars which might have been stolen and repainted and, if they were, then the owners of Mortimer’s Garage were bloated with their own self-confidence.

  Gideon pulled up at a pump marked ‘Mixture’ and a smart-looking girl in a white smock came from the showroom, where the cash desk was in a corner. A little Ford, Lucy Sansetti’s car, was pulled up by the air installation, and a man was bending over the engine, as if looking for some trouble. Gideon knew that a dozen Yard and Divisional men were close by. Three of them were in a lorry which had parked outside a truck cafe a few yards along. One was parked opposite. The men on the nearby warehouse roof were out of sight, but ready to act at the first sign of action.

  “Five, please,” said Gideon, and opened his door and got out. “Check my oil and the battery, will you?” As the girl said, “yes,” brightly, he strolled towards the doorway at one side of the saleroom, marked ‘Toilet’. He saw Wills appear from the lines of cars for sale, with a sleek-looking motor salesman by his side, talking freely. Wills nodded. Gideon walked past the toilet door, towards the repair shop. He heard a man tapping, as if with a light hammer, and heard the hum of a battery charger and of a dynamo. A man appeared from the office just in front of Gideon, and asked pleasantly enough: “You got a car in here, sir?”

  “No, I—”

  “The shop’s reserved for customers with cars here only, sir.”

  “I daresay,” said Gideon, and then Wills and another man jumped the fence which divided the drive-in from the parked cars. The little salesman gaped, and looked ready to shout. The man in front of Gideon was obviously scared. “What—” he began, and then Gideon shouldered him to one side, and another Yard man slipped into- the office to make sure that no one could use the telephone.

  In the repair shop there were half a dozen cars; a man was bending over an engine of one, like the mechanic outside. He gaped at Gideon and the other massive detective who strode in, and Gideon saw a youngster with a streak of oil across his forehead, wearing a pair of blue jeans.

  “Go and warn them!” screamed the man whom Gideon had pushed aside.

  A Yard man clapped his hand over this man’s mouth. Gideon, Wills and two others rushed at the youngster, but suddenly he swung round, and dived towards the repair shop. As he reached it, Wills said reassuringly: “They’ll walk right into our chaps at the back.” The youth disappeared, shouting, and the door of the paint shop slammed as Wills reached it. He flung his weight against it, and forced it open a few inches. The others reached him in a stride, the weight of three big men was hurled against the door, and it began to sag open – until there was the sharp sound of a shot.

  Wills drew in a hissing breath, and his body slumped. The other men, startled, took off their pressure, and the door was slammed. Gideon heard bolts being pushed home. And on the oily ground, eyes rounded and with a startled expression, Wills lay with blood oozing from a wound in his neck.

  Reggie Cole had been enjoying himself that night, partly because of his love of engines and partly because Ethel would be here later. He now knew exactly what he was doing, and still had no compunction or regrets. He had stolen three cars, he had a hundred pounds tucked away, and he had been able to take Ethel to the places she deserved. She had a slap-up little flat, too, and her mother had gone away to the country. So far as Reggie Cole was concerned, everything was exactly right. The fact that there was some risk really gave an added zest to the situation, but he did not think seriously about risk. The day when he gave his mother a second thought was past, he told himself. He was on duty tonight, and had been told that at a sign from the man in the office he was to go quietly into the repair shop and raise the alarm.

  Two men were busy in there, and he believed that they were simply doing overtime on cellulosing the stolen cars.

  He had seen Lucy Sansetti go into the repair shop, and watched her for a moment. She was really something to look at, as dark as Ethel was fair, and with a heavier figure than Ethel’s, but there was no doubt that she had the real statistics. She glanced round as she went inside, but he did not think she noticed him. When she had gone, he saw the paint shop door closed slowly on its hinges. It had not occurred to him to find out what was happening in the paint shop, or to wonder what the girl was doing there.

  Then he had heard men approach, looked round, and seen the cashier in the arms of a big man while others hurried towards him: then the cashier had screamed: “Go and warn them!”

  That was when Reggie realised that the big men were police.

  He flung himself towards the paint shop, the door of which was ajar, and almost fell inside. One man was close to the door, without his mask. The other man, also without his mask, was standing with his arms round the girl, whose dress was off her shoulders and whose flesh looked startingly white. Outside, men came rushing, and the man nearer Reggie rasped:

  “Close that door!” He sprang forward and pushed his weight against it, and Reggie did the same. There was heavy pressure, and the door seemed to give way; with a heave, he and his companion closed it again. The girl was backing away from the red-haired man, but Reggie hardly noticed that.

  Then he heard the sound of the shot. He saw a man’s hand appear near the ground, and disappear. The weight pressing against him eased. His companion said: “Now we’ve got it,” and they banged the door home. The man dropped a bar into a slot, securing it, and then backed away.

  Reggie had turned to look at the other. That was the first time he had seen the red-haired man without his mask, and he recognised him on the instant: this was Red Carter, who had stolen the Black Maria, and whose name had been all over the newspapers. Red had a pistol in his right hand, and there was a queer, twisted smile at his lips.

  “So you had to shoot him,” the other man said.

  “That door was nearly open, we wouldn’t have had a chance,” Red Carter declared. “Okay, Lucy, over to the side door. Syd, you got the gun ready?”

  “Yes,” said Syd Carter. “How about our little pal here?” He was looking at Reggie, who still stood by the door staring at them. There was a thudding sound at the door, as if a battering ram were being used, but even that did not muffle the sound of his own pounding heart. He knew that death was waiting for him: that these men would kill him without compunction if they thought that it would help them. Red was already backing towards the door, and the girl had reached it. Were they crazy? Didn’t they realise that the police would be outside that door, too? The garage was bound to be surrounded.

  “You for or against us, kid?” asked Syd Carter.

  Reggie fought for words.

  “I—I warned you, didn’t
I?”

  “That’s right, you warned us,” Syd said. “Okay, you’re for us. You’d better be. Go and open that side door.”

  “B-b-but the cops—”

  “Never mind the conversation, just go and open it,” Syd said. He was picking up a curious-looking machine, rather like a very fat rifle which had been sawn off close to the stock; he held it like a gun, too, one end against his shoulder. “Open it, and tell them you’ll give yourself up, see? Just let ’em in.”

  The thudding on the big door was heavier and louder, but there was no sound at the side; it was as if the police wanted them to go out that way. Reggie felt an awful constriction at his throat as he went towards the door. Red was standing with his arm round the girl, who was shivering as if it were bitterly cold. Syd was pointing the fat ‘gun’ towards the door. Reggie reached the door, his mind working fast despite his fears, and the sound of the shot echoing in his ears. Red still held the automatic; if he had shot one man, he would certainly be prepared to shoot others.

  Red said softly: “Okay, kid. There are two cars outside, with one driver. You go for the black Austin, see, and Syd will come with you. I’ll go for the Morris. You’re a driver—all you’ve got to do is to drive Syd away and shake the cops off. We’ve plenty of places to hide.” Reggie gasped: “But they’ll be outside!”

  “And they’ll come in. Like to know what will happen—”

  “Shut up!” Syd ordered sharply.

  Reggie saw the men exchange swift glances. He saw the gun in Red’s hand rise. He saw it pointing towards him, and his breath was almost choking him when he gasped: “All right, all right, I’ll open it!” He threw himself at the door. It was bolted top and bottom, and there was a heavy iron bar dropped across it, to make it almost impossible to break it down. He pulled at one bolt; it slid easily. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the gun still pointing at him; and he saw Syd’s, too; he had seen drawings of weapons like it, and suddenly he realised what it was: a flame gun.