Give a Man a Gun Read online

  The jury was out for only fifteen minutes; and the judge put on the black cap before he passed sentence.

  Young Neil Harrock didn’t flinch.

  Roger West left the Old Bailey soon after the trial, and wasn’t surprised when several newspapermen approached him. Brammer, actually an investigator attached to the Courier, was among them, still giving an apology of a smile, sardonic, almost overbearing. He stayed behind when all the others had gone.

  Strictly speaking, Brammer wasn’t a journalist. For years he had run a private inquiry agency, venturing far beyond the usual divorce and civil inquiries. A year before, the Courier – which had a three million circulation – had hired him to track down a missing scientist. He had found the man in Italy.

  Still a ‘private eye’, Brammer now worked exclusively for the Courier, and his office was in the same Fleet Street building as the newspaper. Twice in the past year he had carried out ‘private investigations’ into the causes of crimes with violence. In a way, Brammer was a kind of Crusader against crime – a spearhead for many Courier thrusts against what it called laggard authority. The Courier took its duty to the public very seriously.

  Brammer had never set out to annoy or run counter to the police.

  “Another feather in your cap, Handsome,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Roger said; “you tell the Courier’s bloodthirsty readers that I get a sadistic satisfaction out of sending kids to the condemned cell. They’ll believe it.”

  “Troubled about this case?” asked Brammer. “Don’t you think he did it?”

  “I know he did it.”

  Brammer grinned crookedly.

  “So you’re worried about the chief witness, are you? I suppose you know that she hates the sight of you.”

  West said: “Do you mean that—of me?”

  “Only as typifying all policemen.”

  “I tried to make her see sense.” Roger offered cigarettes. They were in Ludgate Hill on their own, and he led the way to the Circus and then into a cafe. He could have done with a drink, but it was too early. The cafe was almost deserted in the middle of the afternoon. “What do you know about her, Bram?”

  “She just hates all policemen.”

  “Do you know why she should?” Roger was drawing very hard at his cigarette. “She doesn’t seem to have any reason except that her uncle spent so much time in gaol. I can’t find out that she’s got any personal motive.”

  “You haven’t gone back far enough in her history,” Brammer said. “I’m making a present of this to you, Handsome, because I can see she worries you. She’d be a nice girl if it weren’t for this! She’s the daughter of a man who was hanged for murder. Her mother committed suicide after the hanging. Old Benny adopted her, so to speak. Her real name is Lindermann, and you’ll find everything in the records of fifteen years ago.”

  “How did you get hold of this?” asked Roger slowly.

  “It was one of the first cases I ever covered for a newspaper,” Brammer said. “I was very enthusiastic then, and after the human interest angle—the child was all of that. You weren’t out of the puppy stage, were you?” He gave his slow, sly grin. “Have another cuppa.”

  “Thanks,” said Roger. “I’ll check that story.”

  “It’s gospel truth,” Brammer assured him. “Would I lie?”

  At the Yard, it took Roger twenty minutes to turn up the case history of the Lindermann trial. Everything that Brammer had said was there, except that no one was named as adopting the child.

  There was other background information too. The Lindermanns were Germans who had come to England as refugees. They hadn’t been in London long before Lindermann had killed a woman, afterwards proved to have been his mistress – an unpleasant, sordid business.

  Brammer had been prominent in it; there were press cuttings about stories he’d written up for a Sunday newspaper. He had been a freelance journalist in those days.

  Roger telephoned the Division; several hours afterwards Division called him back to say that one of the sergeants, near retiring age, remembered that Old Benny Kramer, a distant relative of the Lindermanns’, had taken the girl in after the Lindermann case. There could now be no reasonable doubt as to the cause of Ruth’s bitterness.

  Yet West was still uneasy, and not sure that he knew all the truth about what had happened when Old Benny had been murdered. But he wouldn’t listen when Peel suggested that perhaps the girl had killed the old man, and Neil Harrock was taking the rap.

  “She may have put him up to it, and then ratted on him, but I can’t see why,” Roger said. “There’s no evidence that they knew each other before. Oh, let’s forget it.”

  He couldn’t forget.

  He twice saw Neil Harrock in the condemned cell; but the youth wouldn’t talk of the case, seemed indifferent to the coming hanging, and said nothing to suggest that Roger did not know everything that had taken place in the shop in the Mile End Road.

  Plenty happened to keep Roger’s mind occupied. The graph of crimes of violence showed a sudden upward slant. A wave of coshing, knifing and shooting swept upon London. At one time Roger found himself with three murders and two attempted murders going through his hands at the same time – all involving youths in the late teens or early twenties. The Press, led by the Courier, raised the familiar cry of ‘flog the brutes’, and a wave of agitation for more severe penalties swept over the country after a policeman was shot and badly wounded in North London.

  Yet day in and day out Roger found himself thinking about Ruth Linder and her bitterness.

  When he was in the Mile End Division he learned what was happening at her shop, which she ran with the help of a youthful assistant, Sol Klein.

  There was nothing to suggest that she was receiving. The shop’s legitimate trade seemed to be flourishing – perhaps because of Old Benny’s death and sympathy for Ruth. She had inherited over fifty thousand pounds as well as the business. Soon she began to dress much more stylishly than she had ever done before. She had no regular boy friend, but was often out with different young men. She spent more and more evenings in the West End.

  “All the fellows she goes with are youngsters,” Roger’s informant told him – “about the same age as young Harrock.”

  “She isn’t exactly an old hag herself, is she?”

  “Twenty-six,” he was told.

  Obviously the different boy friends could be thieves; Ruth could be carrying on the dead man’s business away from the shop; but there was no evidence to say so.

  The first time Roger saw her, after the day in court, was by accident. She was getting out of a luxurious car at the Majestic Hotel, and he had been in about a light-fingered waiter. A remarkably handsome, youthful man was helping Ruth out. Roger knew the man by sight, but couldn’t place him.

  Roger stood in the hall, and watched.

  Ruth didn’t notice him until she was almost level with him. Then he saw her lips tighten, and she tossed her head as she went by. She didn’t look round.

  Her escort was obviously staying at the hotel, for he led the way to the lift and they were taken upstairs.

  West went across to the reception desk.

  “Who was that man? Do you know?”

  “That was Sir Neville Hann-Gorlay,” the clerk told him, “Member of Parliament for the Trend Division.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. And the girl?”

  “Just a friend, I presume.” The clerk smiled slightly.

  As he drove away from the hotel, Roger kept seeing Ruth’s face in his mind’s eye. The curious thing was the emptiness. Beauty was there, her colouring was superb, her eyes were lovely; but he had the impression which she’d given him once before – of being without vitality; as if it had been drained away from her.

  Roger made a few inquiries into Hann-Gorlay’s background. In his early thirties, the MP was well known for championing lost causes. His independent attitude often brought him headlines and a clash with his Party leaders. He was known to be
extremely wealthy, was popular with everyone who knew him and had a brilliant military record.

  He lived at the Majestic when in London, and had a country house in Sussex, where he spent his weekends.

  Once or twice he had advocated much harsher measures with criminals who used violence.

  In the next few weeks Hann-Gorlay was often seen with Ruth in the West End. She spent a weekend in Sussex. Soon afterwards she moved out of the flat above the shop in the Mile End Road, into a luxurious apartment in a block of flats near Park Lane.

  Sol Klein was now in sole charge of the East End shop, but Ruth remained the owner.

  The next thing which made Roger think of Old Benny’s niece happened a month later. It was some time before he realised that it might involve her. During those hours the Yard reached a new high pitch of feverish energy. It was already at tension, for in the past four weeks several policemen had been attacked, sometimes for no apparent reason. There was a reason this time.

  PC Allenby of H Division was walking along Putney High Street, watching the dawn. His thoughts were hardly poetic, although it was a beautiful dawn: cirrus clouds in miraculous array were gilded by the rising sun, and the sky was a strangely glowing blue. It was very cold and very late; on any weekday morning Putney would have been awake. This being Sunday, few people were about – only the milkmen, the newspaper-boys and the police, like PC Allenby.

  He was on his way to his station and breakfast, and was so hungry that he almost forgot that he was also very tired.

  Glancing up because he saw a movement which subconsciously caught his attention, he saw a man on the roof of a bank.

  It happened just like that. One moment there was the beautiful sky, empty rooftops and drab buildings; the next the man’s figure appeared angled against the sky.

  PC Allenby stared.

  The youth – he looked very young – disappeared.

  Allenby snatched his whistle out of his pocket, blew vigorously, and rushed across the road. He knew the bank and the fire escape which led to the back of it. He knew that the man on the roof would only escape easily that way. His feet thudded on the pavement. His whistle shrilled out again, and two newspaper-boys and a busman, all cycling, pedalled more furiously towards him.

  He swung round the corner, and saw the man, half way down the fire escape.

  Already rather breathless, he didn’t blow the whistle again, but raised his fists, and called: “Stop there!”

  None of the three cyclists had reached the corner. The man was rushing down the staircase, which clattered and boomed. Allenby reached the foot of it.

  “Take it easy, now.” He was gasping for breath. “Don’t you try—”

  Then he stopped; and he knew what terror was.

  The youth – he was very young – drew a gun.

  Allenby put the whistle to his lips again and blew, but didn’t give ground. He thought he heard one of the cyclists turn the corner. He certainly heard a shout.

  “Put that gun away,” he said breathlessly, “and—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish.

  The youth shot him, and the bullet caught him between the eyes.

  The youth jumped to the pavement. A cyclist shouted. The youth turned round and fired at the cyclist. It was sheer luck that he caught the narrow tyre. The cyclist felt the handlebars twist out of his hand, and went flying over them. The youth turned and ran along the street. Seeing what had happened to the first, the other cyclists slowed down.

  They could see blood flowing sluggishly from PC Allenby’s face.

  It gave them a strange, creepy feeling, and was touched with unreality. They knew Allenby; they had never seen him lying down before.

  The killer youth reached the corner and was round it before one of the newspaper-boys made a queer noise in his throat, and said: “We ought—we ought to chase—”

  Then a car turned into the street, and slowed down. A policeman appeared, running. Confusion, bad from the start, became worse with every second. The killer escaped. The local police station was advised, and soon the news reached Scotland Yard.

  It was Roger West’s weekend on duty.

  He felt the sudden tension as the Yard geared itself to a tremendous effort.

  Chapter Three

  High Pressure

  Roger was at the Putney bank within forty minutes of the shooting. A crowd watched him walk with Detective Sergeant Peel towards the foot of the fire escape. Peel was big and boyish-looking, with a red, scrubbed face and fair hair. He moved his powerful body with superb ease. Roger, slightly shorter, although a full six feet, had features which justified his nickname – Handsome. He was brisk-moving and alert, and his grey trilby hat was tipped to the side of his head.

  Putney detectives were waiting for him at the top of the fire escape.

  “Can’t find a thing,” the Inspector in charge said. He was a heavy-featured, bright-eyed man dressed in brown. “The swine got in through the roof light. Went down two flights of stairs, then came up against the steel door of the bank. He blew that, and—”

  “Blew it?” asked West, sharply.

  “Used something pretty powerful, too,” the Putney man said. “After that, he blew the strong-room. Must have been crazy; he doesn’t seem to have taken much.”

  “Who said so?” asked Roger.

  “The manager’s down there now,” the Putney man told him. “He lives only a few doors along.”

  They went down through the roof light, then into the offices of a firm of accountants and next the offices of an estate agency. On the next staircase was a rubble of dust and debris.

  “It must have made a lot of noise,” Roger said.

  “There aren’t many people living near here,” the Putney man said.

  Everything was as Roger had been told.

  A powerful explosive, probably nitro-glycerine, had been used to blow the door of the bank and of the strong room. There was plenty of debris, and Putney police were going through it. Two safes had also been blown. The manager and a clerk, who lived near by, were checking the contents of these. The manager, grey-haired and slow moving, looked as if he would let nothing make him hurry.

  “Glad to meet you, Chief Inspector.” He gave a tired smile. “Not exactly what I like to do on Sunday morning!”

  “No. Are you sure there isn’t much missing?”

  “Perhaps a thousand pounds.”

  “So you call that chicken feed?”

  The old man looked mildly into Roger’s eyes.

  “He could have taken fifty thousand. He took only the old notes, which can’t be traced, Chief Inspector.”

  “No fool, then,” Roger said. “How long will it take you to prepare a complete list of what’s missing?”

  “It shouldn’t take more than two or three hours,” the bank manager said. His eyes twinkled. “That’s if we don’t have too many interruptions.”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Roger said.

  The other police were already busy with routine. Roger watched, moving around and saying very little. Footprints in the dust promised a clue, but there was no trace of fingerprints on top of the dust which the explosions had caused, so the solitary thief had used gloves or had plaster on his fingertips.

  Then West saw several red, shiny spots in a corner, behind one of the strong room safes. He knelt beside it; the surface was coating over slightly, and the red was turning brown.

  Others hurried across to him.

  “The thief hurt himself badly,” Roger said, pointing to smears on the cement floor. “See where he trod on the blood, while he stood here?” Closer, and shining a torch on to the floor, Roger could see the tacky coating of blood. “He bled freely, too. Now we can move—your book ready, Peel?”

  “Ready, sir!”

  “Get this call out to all London Divisions and Home Counties, special attention for neighbouring districts to Putney. Man with badly wounded hand—”

  “Hand?” Peel questioned.

  “I ca
n’t see that any other part of him would bleed enough to drip like this—his clothes would soak the blood up,” West explained. “Still, amend to ‘probably hand’. Sole of boots or shoes, probably of rubber, may have traces of dried blood. Edges of the soles and heels ditto. Man probably under twenty-five, dark-haired—but you’ve got the description,” West added. “Rush it, Jim.”

  “I’ll radio at once,” Peel said, and hurried into the street.

  “Now we’ve got something,” said the bulky Putney chief. “There weren’t many people about this morning, I may get some word in from a patrol or from inquiries. I didn’t lose much time.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” Roger said. He was staring at one of the open safes. “No sign of blood on that—anything on the other?”

  They looked.

  “No.”

  “So he bandaged himself up, or I’m wrong about the hand,” Roger said. “Mind taking me along the road where the killer went?”

  “Glad to.”

  “Mr West,” called the manager, unexpectedly.

  “Hallo?”

  “This makes it look as if you were right about the hand.”

  The manager held up two account books; the edges of the leaves were smeared with blood, and there was a tacky mess on the wine-red cover of one.

  “Fine,” Roger said, after examining it. “You took the wrong job!” The bank manager’s twinkle grew more pronounced. “Thanks very much—test for prints right away,” he added to a Yard man nearby, and then led the way out into the street.

  It was warm now; there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The crowd had grown to a hundred strong, and people were sauntering from each end of the road to increase it.

  Policemen had roped off the spot where PC Allenby had fallen, but his body had been moved.

  “According to the cyclists who saw it happen, he went up this way,” the Putney man said.

  “Been along here yourself yet?” Roger asked.

  “Not yet; I couldn’t see any need to.”

  “No,” said Roger, absently. He moved towards Peel, who was sitting in a police car with a radio-telephone in his hand. Peel kept on talking into it. “Which side of the road?” asked Roger.