A Backwards Jump Read online

  “I’ll remember,” Gideon said, and nodded and smiled, hoping that he had done enough to make sure that William Smith worked by regulation and not impulse. At least he was alive to the flood of petty crimes, now growing large enough to be important. There were many indications that children were being used.

  Then Gideon saw his Kate coming towards him, tall and upright, and for once wearing a flowered dress, red on black, not the spotless white blouse and the dark skirt which had been almost a uniform for years. He’d heard much talk about this dress, but hadn’t seen it before. It suited her, giving a touch of flamboyance. She was a fine-looking woman with a good figure, she walked well, and her face lit up when she saw him. That did a lot to take Gideon’s mind off gloomier thoughts. They were not a demonstrative couple, but they touched hands and then fell into step.

  “Sorry I’m late, George.”

  “Hardly a minute,” Gideon said.

  “I just missed a bus,” Kate told him, and Gideon found himself looking at her handsome profile, the way the sun seemed to make her eyes gleam and her teeth glisten as she spoke, and the way it picked out the deep reds and unsuspected dark blues in the dress. “Are you finished at the office?”

  “Yes, provided nothing new turns up,” said Gideon. “I thought we’d go to Quag’s for lunch.”

  “Oh, no, George! It’s too expensive, we can easily go to the Corner House—”

  “The Corner House, in that creation? We want somewhere to fit the dress!” Gideon said, and knew that he had pleased her. She didn’t protest again, and so as to put the finishing touch to the day’s celebration, Gideon waved a taxi down. Kate was laughing as she settled into the corner.

  During lunch, he told her about the woman and the child, and she was much quicker on the uptake than the policeman had been.

  “Do you think she might be training him as a pickpocket?”

  “Could be. You’re smart today.”

  “George,” Kate said, “you’ve several unsolved murders on the books, and if you had a choice between solving them or finding out if this child crime is organised or not, you’d forget the murders.”

  Gideon nodded, and asked: “Like to know something, Kate?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to know the answer to the increase in child crime this month, if I have to put every man at the Yard on to it.”

  “It’ll be one thing finding out,” Kate said, “quite another stopping it.”

  2

  THE FIRST MONDAY

  Gideon went into his office a little before nine o’clock, next morning, in exactly the same way as he went in most mornings. He approached with slow and deliberate tread, knowing that his door was ajar, so that the two men inside could hear him coming; and he knew also that the Duty Sergeant in the hall had telephoned them to say he was on his way. He felt rather like a schoolmaster at a senior school, dealing with men who were intellectually on a par with him, but who were acutely conscious that he was boss. The fact that the two men inside, Lemaitre and Bodwin, had prepared a report on the week-end’s events and were ready to be cross-examined on it, if need be, amused him mildly. It also pleased his vanity, which wasn’t excessive.

  Lemaitre, who had been on night duty for nearly a year and back on days as Gideon’s chief aide only for a few weeks, looked up with a grin, and greeted him: “’Morning, George.”

  “Hallo, Lem. ‘Morning, Bodwin.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “What’s in this morning?” asked Gideon.

  “As a matter of fact I think the weather must have softened everybody’s heart, quietest week-end we’ve had for a long time,” said Lemaitre. He was a tall, thin, rather bony man, who grinned rather than smiled, was the ideal second-in-command and more than content to leave the real responsibility to Gideon and the senior Superintendents. “Usual crop of burglaries, bit of trouble out at Kempton Park on Saturday, some dips and a knifing, that’s about all. Several reports from outside the area, though, I expect we’ll be asked to send at least three chaps into the provinces, but that’s not unusual.”

  Gideon was sitting down, at a big desk. He eased his collar without unfastening his tie.

  “Hmm,” he said, looking through the report, part of which was typewritten and part of which was in Lemaitre’s almost copperplate handwriting. He ran his gaze down the pages and flipped them over. There were a number of arrest reports, none of them on major offences, a few reports on the week-end crimes, with no particular stress on child crime, notes about the provincial jobs where the Yard was likely to be called in, all of them murders.

  “Anything fresh about the juvenile stuff?”

  “No, sir, nothing that isn’t down there.”

  “All right, you carry on.” Bodwin went out, a middle-aged and grey-haired Sergeant with a bald patch, and the door closed silently behind him. Lemaitre went over to his own, smaller desk at the other side of the long, narrow room, with its three windows which overlooked the Embankment and the Thames. The weather on the Monday was as good as Sunday’s, and the scene looked at its best.

  “Good week-end, George?”

  “So-so,” said Gideon. “Spent yesterday morning here over the Riddall extradition job. I think the Spanish will play all right. How’d you get on?”

  “I’m okay now,” said Lemaitre quietly. “I’m cured.”

  He gave a grin which was more taut than usual, and almost belied his words. Lemaitre’s wife had left him, nearly a year ago; the divorce was almost at the decree absolute stage. Now and again something Lemaitre did or said proved that he had not really recovered from this, although he knew as well as Gideon that he was much better off without his wife. Now, he went off the subject almost too quickly. “I didn’t put this in the report, George, it only came in twenty minutes ago, but you remember that old boy who died in the fire on Friday?”

  Gideon looked up sharply.

  “Henderson? Yes.”

  “He didn’t die of suffocation in a fire.”

  “Well, well,” said Gideon. “What was it?”

  “Strangulation.”

  “We positive?”

  “Clinton did the P.M. and checked with Grey.”

  “Clear case?”

  “Pretty clear,” said Lemaitre, “and a funny one, if you ask me.” He sat on the corner of his desk and lit a cigarette – he was smoking much less than he had during the period of greatest strain, but still smoked plenty. “The old boy is left to look after himself for a couple of nights, his housekeeper goes to visit a sick friend, he gets strangled and someone tries to make it look as if he was suffocated by the smoke. That’s a job for Syd Warr, I’d say.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gideon thoughtfully. “I’ll call the Division and fix it.”

  “If you ask me, all you’ve got to do is to bust that housekeeper’s alibi wide open, and there you are,” said Lemaitre. “She probably got tired of waiting for the eighty-year-old to die, and helped him on.”

  Gideon didn’t comment.

  “I know, I know,” grinned Lemaitre, “here’s this idiot Lemmy jumping to conclusions again. The truth is, George, I can’t help it, it’s part of my metabolism or what-have-you. I also know it’s why I’ll never rise higher than a C.I., but who cares?”

  Gideon said half-seriously: “I care.” He lifted the telephone. “Get me AI Division, please,” he said to the operator, and rang off. “Now, we want the alibi checked, and the house searched again, Warr’d better go over right away and see what the Divisional reports about the outside of the house were like. There were rumours that Henderson kept hundreds of pounds under his mattress and we can’t find ‘em – better make sure those rumours are checked too.”

  Then the telephone bell rang and Gideon spoke to the Superintendent at AI.

  This was Gideon, at work.
/>   Lemaitre had watched and listened to him on and off for ten years, and could still be absorbed. Gideon had a faculty of absolute concentration on the job in hand; and a gift, which had made him Commander, of being able to finish with one job and start the next almost without pausing to think. The years had trained him to keep every case in its own little pigeon-hole of his mind, a hole to be opened or closed at will. To the man standing by, it was fascinating, for Gideon now talked as if the murder of eighty-year-old Henderson was the only job which mattered; at that moment, it was.

  He rang off, loosened his tie and let the ends hang over his chest, and then telephoned again.

  “Hold it,” Lemaitre interrupted, “there’s another little prize-packet which I didn’t put in the report, either.”

  “Anything much?”

  Lemaitre paused, as if to relish the full flavour of the coming revelation.

  “You may think so. You know Frisky Lee married a young popsie, and they have just become proud parents?”

  Gideon went very still.

  “Well?”

  “Mother and child doing well,” Lemaitre announced, “so well that Frisky’s emigrating to Australia.”

  Gideon exploded: “What?”

  “Thought that would touch you on the raw,” Lemaitre said, grinning. “It’s a fact. Hemmy told me himself. There’s the biggest crook we’ve never been able to put inside going to the other side of the world to spend his ill-gotten gains. Good riddance, I say.”

  “When’s he going?” Gideon asked, in a quiet voice.

  “The end of the month,” Lemaitre answered. “He’s got his passage booked by sea, everything going to be sold up. Lyon is looking after his interests here.” Lemaitre paused. “Dammit, George, it’s not the whole world.”

  “If Frisky Lee gets out of England with a clean record, I’ll hand in my resignation.” Gideon sounded bleak enough to mean it.

  “I knew you’d be shaken, but I didn’t think you’d take it this way,” Lemaitre said uneasily. “Why, Frisky’s been on the level for years.”

  “You think he has.”

  “You’ve got Frisky on the brain,” Lemaitre declared irritably. “Hemmy’s more relieved than sorry, I know that much. Let Australia have him, that’s what Hemmy says.”

  “No one’s going to get Lee if I can keep him in England,” Gideon said, and pulled up a telephone and talked to Hemmingway, of the NE Division, where Frisky lived in a house near Petticoat Lane.

  Lemaitre, in a different mood, studied him closely. Gideon worrying a problem like the kid thieves was impressive if fatherly. Gideon seeking vengeance against such a man as Frisky Lee was uncompromising and almost frightening; a man who could hate.

  Ten years ago, Frisky had been known as the biggest fence and cruellest man in London, utterly unscrupulous and utterly bad. He and Gideon had clashed a dozen times, and Lee might be said to represent Gideon’s one great failure. Since the last clash, Lee had apparently run straight. He owned a chain of shops, mostly in London’s East End, and much land, also. In Gideon’s view, he was still financing the smaller fences, was still London’s worst criminal.

  Gideon said into the telephone: “That’s it, Hemmy, get everything you can on Lee – —past and present. Check his wife’s past, too. I’ll get everything possible done here . . . What’s that? . . . Well, if he’s due to leave at the end of the month, we’ve little enough time, how about digging for a week? Then I’ll come and see you.”

  Apparently Hemmingway agreed.

  Gideon rang off, to find Lemaitre apparently preoccupied with reports. For the first time since being told of Lee’s plans, Gideon’s expression eased into a smile, and he lifted the telephone again.

  “Ask Superintendent Warr to come and see me, will you?” he asked the operator.

  “Here we go,” said Lemaitre, forgetting the reports. He stood up as another telephone on Gideon’s desk rang; in all there were three. “Like me to take that, George?”

  “No, I’ll take it,” Gideon said. “Little job for you. Check with AB, will you? They’ve a copper named William Smith, number 27532, who was on duty in Hyde Park yesterday. See if he put in a special report,”

  “What about?”

  “A woman and a child.” The door began to open: this would be Warr, who had a funny trick of opening doors slowly, as if he wanted to hear what was being said, and was afraid that it would not be to his credit. Few people really liked Warr, except elderly women, and they doted on him; more defrauding housekeepers owed their prison sentences to Warr than any other single factor in London. “Just ask Percy to let me know if Smith did put in a report,” Gideon added.

  “Okay.” Lemaitre picked up a telephone, and belatedly Gideon picked up his. Warr came in. He was a biggish, plumpish, pale man, with pink cheeks and blue eyes, a kind of unctuous look. One could imagine him with a religious tract in his hand, saying gentle things to soothe his congregation; or imagine him as a country solicitor, or a minor municipal official, always giving the soft answer to turn away wrath. Above all, he could be pictured as a doctor with a bedside manner to beat them all.

  “Hallo, Syd,” Gideon greeted, “have a look at that.” He pushed over the notes he had made, then spoke briskly into the telephone: “Gideon here, sorry to keep you.” He picked up a pencil and began to write: “Yes, I got that . . . Yes. I’ll come in as soon as I’m through with the job I’ve got on now, the Henderson business . . . well, I should think they could wait a day or two down at Dover, we can always send someone down in a hurry if needs be, but the other jobs ought to be dealt with right away . . . Yes, I’ll come in a minute.” He rang off, finished his notes, and looked up at Warr, who stood there in his suit of clerical grey, reading, lips pursed. “Which would you rather do, Syd? Tackle this job, or have a few days in Chester?”

  “The body in the barrel job?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay home.”

  “Right. Know anything about the Henderson business?”

  “You may not believe it,” said Warr in his soft voice, “but I had a premonition that you’d want me to look into that, when I heard that Henderson was strangled. Any special instructions?”

  “Just get stuck into it.”

  “Right you are,” said Warr, and tore the note off Gideon’s pad. “May I take this?”

  “Help yourself!”

  Warr smiled, Lemaitre scowled as he put down the receiver and Warr went out almost as stealthily as he had come in. The door closed. Gideon stood up, and began to fiddle with the ends of his tie. The Assistant Commissioner wanted him, and while he could look as homely as he wished at his own desk, one tied one’s tie for the A.C. and the passages.

  “Percy tell you anything?” Gideon asked. “Make a note for me, the Old Man—”

  “No, no special report,” said Lemaitre. “That Warr! How did he know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Don’t be dumb, George. How did he know that Henderson had been strangled?”

  “He keeps his ears open.”

  “Sly devil,” Lemaitre said, in an almost grumbling tone. “If he can get in by the back door, he will. Good job he’s not a crook. What’s the Old Man want? Out-of-town jobs?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell you what, George,” Lemaitre said, as Gideon finished knotting his tie, and stepped to the door,” if we’re not careful, we’ll be in a jam. We’ve already got two chaps out in the country, and if the Old Man wants another three, we’ll be too short-handed for safety. Why don’t you try to put a couple of them off?”

  Gideon said easily: “The day we tell the provincial chaps that we can’t spare two or three men to help them out, we’ll begin to put up the shutters. But I know what you mean – whenever we get short-handed, something big always crop
s up. Such as working on Lee before he goes to Australia.”

  “You want to know what I think?” demanded Lemaitre, as Gideon opened the door.

  Gideon grinned. “You think I’m crazy to worry about Lee, and it’s a hangover from the day he fingered his nose at me. You think I’m soft about those kids. And you’re damned sure these so-and-so country coppers could do the job perfectly well themselves, they only call us in because it looks like being long and tedious, or else someone’s going to get a kick in the pants and better us than them. And you want to know why we don’t let them handle their own jobs more, and stew in their own juice. Every time we send ‘em a man, it looks as if they’ve got us on the end of a string. I’ll be seeing you.”

  He went out and closed the door.

  “George,” said Lemaitre weakly to its panels, “one of these days someone’s going to kick you up the pants.” He turned to his desk, and as he did so, a telephone bell rang on Gideon’s. Lemaitre swung towards that, and a bell on his own desk rang. “Here we go,” he said resignedly.

  “Four ears and four eyes wouldn’t be enough in this office. Which one shall I answer first?”

  He answered Gideon’s.

  “Lemaitre speaking.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Lemaitre,” said the Hall Sergeant in his unmistakable voice, “do you think Mr. Gideon’s particularly busy this morning?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, there’s an old woman—there’s a lady here, asking to see him. She says she wants to see him in person, and no one else will do. I’ve tried to fob her off, but I can’t do a thing. Says something about her daughter being missing, and she looks as if she’s in a bad way. I thought if Mr. Gideon wasn’t up to his neck in it—” The Sergeant paused, hopefully.

  “I expect he’ll see her,” Lemaitre prophesied. “Tell her it might be an hour, though, he’s at a conference.”

  “I don’t think she’ll mind waiting,” the hall Sergeant said. “Thanks a lot, sir.”

  Lemaitre banged the receiver down while his own bell was still ringing, and let it ring long enough to make a shorthand note; then he lifted the receiver and cut off the sound.