The Extortioners Read online

  He thought she really would strike him, but he did not move even to raise a band to protect himself. Her lips were drawn back over her teeth, the one gold cap glittered; he could see the tip of her tongue, he could see her breasts rising and falling, her nostrils quivering; he had never seen her in such a rage.

  “Go on!” she cried. ‘Deny it!”

  “I can’t deny it,” he replied at last, and obviously his words so surprised her, although they should not, that she backed away a pace, and lowered her clenched fists.

  “I wish I could,” he went on.

  “Well, you can’t. It’s too late now.”

  “Is it?” he asked. “Is it really?”

  She frowned, the peak of her anger past. He did not move or do anything to bring back the rage. An expression which might have been of compassion touched her face for a moment; he could not see his own, the degree of his distress.

  “What—what do you mean?” she demanded.

  “We must find him,” Clayton said. “I must find him. And then—”

  “Acknowledge him?”

  “I—must.” How inevitable it was. “But now so much time has passed—”

  “I must,” Clayton repeated, almost roughly. “I wish to God I had, years ago.”

  She said: “But—Rosamund.”

  He did not need reminding about Rosamund. He did not doubt that it would hurt her unbearably, bring her whole life crashing down on her, but the penalty of the long silence was too great. The blackmail – and now Kevin. Either was really enough on its own, together they were too powerful to ignore. Ida was looking at him as if she could not really believe what he was saying, and a kind of wonder appeared in her eyes, but suddenly bitterness flowed back.

  “Even if you meant it,” she said, “it would be too late.”

  “We’ll get him back,” he said.

  “You didn’t see how he behaved last night, or you wouldn’t say that.”

  “Darling,” he said. “I know it’s useless to say I’m sorry but I am – terribly, terribly sorry about last night, about the years. I shall tell Rosamund. And then I’ll help to look for Kevin. He’s bound to keep in touch with some of his friends. We’ll tell them what I’ve done, that—that there’ll be no more rejection of him, no more of this ‘uncle’ nonsense, and he’ll come back.” He spoke with great confidence and in that moment he felt quite sure of himself, although at the back of his mind there was awareness of and apprehension about the inevitable consequences.

  It must be soon. Now that the decision was made, he must not leave it long.

  “Oliver,” she said, chokily.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “Are you sure Rosamund will want a divorce?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “After—so many years, it seems so bloody awful.”

  “Don’t try to dissuade me,” he said. “I’ve been long enough coming to the decision, for God’s sake don’t try to discourage me now.”

  “Would you—”

  “I shall tell her.”

  “Would you like to sleep on it?” she insisted, almost timidly.

  “I shall tell her tonight.”

  “Oliver,” she said, a soft and different creature from the termagant she had been a few moments before, “you don’t have to, for me.”

  “I have to, at long last, for me—”

  “That’s the only reason why you should,” she said, heavily. “Not for me and not to try to win Kevin’s affection.”

  He was startled. “Not for Kevin?”

  “If you did, if you broke up your home for Kevin, you might learn to hate him. And what good would it do if you hated each other?” She almost laughed. “Darling, it’s not like you to be impetuous. You mustn’t be, now. You must give yourself time to think about it.” When he didn’t answer, just raised and dropped his hands, she went on: “I’m sorry I behaved like that just now.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said. “I am unscathed!”

  “You nearly weren’t.”

  “I know,” he said, wryly.

  They stared at each other for what seemed a long time, and then both laughed; not deeply and not for long, but enough to draw the rest of the tension out of them. He slid his arm about her waist and they kissed lightly, then went into the kitchen where she put the kettle on for tea. He leaned against the draining-board, watching her as she busied herself and the kettle began to sing. Suddenly, she asked: “Where will you have dinner?”

  “I’d thought, at the club.”

  “Where are you supposed to be?”

  “In the museum, admitted by the night watchman at the side door!”

  They laughed again, and then Ida asked: “Would you like a steak, cully? I’ve one in the freezer. Or some bacon and eggs? Or—”

  He stopped her, by saying: “Will you mind being alone for an hour or two?”

  “No,” she said. “No, not now.”

  “Then I will go to the club,” he said. “I need—” He hesitated.

  “A rehearsal?”

  “In a way, yes.”

  “Oliver,” she said, picking up the laden tea tray, “I would rather you slept on it. I know it must have been awful when I lost my cool like that, but I’m over the top now. I shall be all right. And Kevin might come back and – and even see reason, especially if you talk to him. I don’t think you should do anything with Rosamund on impulse, I really don’t.”

  When they were back in the living-room he realised that he was at another crossroads. She believed his one reason for deciding to face Rosamund was Kevin, and he wanted to believe that the boy would have been enough, but was not sure. Kevin and the blackmail together – and now, Ida had to be told about the blackmail, or, when she found out, she would know that he had at least half-lied to her. He waited for her to pour out tea, which was very strong, before he began to tell her. In the telling, he wondered whether she would turn on him again; whether she would think he had been planning to tell Rosamund even before he had arrived here; and he feared what her reaction would be if she came to that conclusion.

  He read alarm in her eyes; and then, concern; and before he had finished she had put her tea on the table and was on her knees in front of him, clasping his hands.

  “Oh my darling,” she said. “My poor darling. You had that to contend with even before I telephoned you. Oh, Oliver, I couldn’t be more sorry, I really couldn’t, but – this needn’t make you tell Rosamund, either.”

  He was puzzled by her train of thought but had no doubt it was clear and direct to her; as everything was clear and direct.

  “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Darling, you must go to the police,” said Ida, as if there was no possible doubt. “They’ll help and they’ll find the blackmailer, but they’ll keep it secret. They never disclose the victim’s name in a blackmail case. And—and if I could find Kevin and tell him this he might feel very differently.” Still clasping his hands, she looked anxiously up at him.

  “Don’t tell Rosamund anything yet, darling,” she pleaded. “Go and see the police.”

  Now that she had talked of the police, there was no other possible course; it was obviously the thing to do. The only thing to do.

  Roger West put down the telephone, after talking to Janet his wife and telling her he would be home in about half an hour. Their son Richard and his girlfriend Lindy were at home, so Janet was not lonely; she was probably telling the youngsters some of the highlights of their trips through the big game parks, and showing some of the coloured transparencies on a small hand-viewer. It was ironic that he should have so little to do all day and yet not be able to spend the evening at home; before they had gone away, Janet had hated the lonely evenings so much that there had been periods of acute emotional tension between them.

  A shadowy thought hovered: that if he were under too much working pressure, the tension might come back. He pushed the idea aside; the holiday had done Janet at least as much good as it had done him.


  He pulled the papers about the three suspected suicides towards him.

  Coppell had no doubt sent for him late in the day because of Fellowes’s suicide. Could there be any significance in the way that he had used of dispatching himself? So far Roger had no idea whether the fear of cancer had been justified; he did not even know whether Fellowes had been seriously ill and under a doctor. He would have to make up his mind when to visit and question the family. In fact he had to make up his mind about a great number of things: and he mustn’t take too long.

  First: were these ‘suicides’ – unless Akers had died in an accident?

  Second: if all three were suicides, as two inquests had decided, could there be any common motivation? At first sight, no: a civil servant of great distinction, a man equally distinguished in aeronautics, a third involved in commercial banking. Clearly, money could be a common factor; so could blackmail; but he was a long, long way from having any reason to think there was a connection between the deaths.

  His telephone bell rang.

  It surprised him, because few knew that he was working late, and fewer – hardly any – knew that he was involved in this inquiry. It might be someone who simply wanted to welcome him back.

  “Superintendent West,” he said into the telephone.

  “I wasn’t sure whether you were still there,” a man replied. The familiar voice was that of Chief Inspector Miller, of Information. “I’ve had a call from a V.I.P., sir, who says he wants to talk in confidence to a senior officer here, and there are no senior officers free. I wondered if you would have a word with him.”

  “Where is he?” asked Roger. “On the telephone?”

  “No, sir,” replied Miller. “He simply said he was on his way, and would be here in about twenty minutes. He’s Professor Oliver Clayton, the anthropologist. I asked him if it couldn’t wait until the morning, but he said he has to be at a conference of anthropologists – the one they hold annually, sir – from ten o’clock onwards, and this business won’t wait.”

  Not dreaming that there could be a connection between this and the files on his desk, Roger said readily enough: “I’ll see him. Ask the receptionist to advise me when he’s arrived, will you, and then bring him right up.”

  “I’ll do that, sir!” Miller sounded grateful.

  Roger rang off, looked through the files again, and was uneasily aware that a lot of time had passed since the deaths of Akers and Godden, and only by talking to their business associates, friends and families could he hope to learn more than there was in these scanty reports. He was so absorbed in what he was doing that the telephone bell startled him when it rang; twenty minutes had positively raced away.

  “This is reception, sir. A Professor Oliver Clayton—”

  “Send him up,” Roger repeated. “I’ll meet him at the lift.”

  He rang off on the man’s ‘thank you’ and got up immediately, walking out of the still-unfamiliar office to the still unfamiliar passages of the fourth floor of the new building which housed Scotland Yard. He was at the lifts a minute or two before one opened, and a taller, lantern-jawed, impressively distinguished man stepped out.

  Roger had no doubt at all, after a glance at his expression, that this man was in grave trouble.

  Chapter Five

  West Listens

  “The first thing I must ask,” said Oliver Clayton, even before he sat down by the side of Roger’s desk, “is that for the time being at least this matter be treated in strict confidence.”

  “If it’s possible, it will be,” Roger replied.

  “It must be!” Clayton insisted, tensely.

  What he had to do, reflected Roger, was to ease the man’s tension. The glitter in the eyes, grip of hands, even the posture of the body, all betrayed the fact that his visitor’s nerves were at screaming point. He pushed an armchair so that it was easy for the other to drop into it, and sat in the swivel chair at his desk, which was set cornerwise so that he had the light from the window by day, and always faced the door. The office was reasonably spacious; sparsely furnished with modern furniture.

  “You know, sir,” he said with a smile, “if you were to tell me you’d just committed murder, I couldn’t treat it in confidence.”

  “Oh, don’t be absurd!” Clayton barked.

  “If it’s something which I can keep in confidence, I will,” Roger promised.

  “I don’t mean you,” said Clayton. “Not personally. I mean the police force.”

  “Try us, sir.”

  “I am being blackmailed!” Clayton blurted out.

  Yes, thought Roger; blackmail had been a safe bet from the moment he had set eyes on this man. Professor Oliver Clayton, aged fifty-five, Fellow of the Royal Society, one of the three most famous anthropologists in the country, the six most famous in the world, known colloquially as one of the ‘Old Fossils’. The essentials he had found in Who’s Who in Science and Who’s Who since Miller had given him the caller’s name, the ‘Old Fossils’ stuck from some newspaper recollection. What had such a man done, in the past, to be blackmailed? The idle question was absurd.

  “If you are being blackmailed,” Roger said, “be absolutely sure we shall conduct all inquiries in strict confidence and even if it came to a trial your name would not be mentioned unless quite exceptional circumstances demanded it.”

  Clayton said, in a husky voice: “Thank you. Thank you indeed.”

  “When did the blackmailing begin?” asked Roger. “This—this afternoon.”

  “So recently?” Roger warmed to this man. “It isn’t often we get notice so quickly. Did someone come to see you?” He would have to draw the story out, in the beginning, but before long it would probably become a flood, unprompted.

  “No. A man telephoned.”

  “And demanded money for his silence?”

  “Yes,” Clayton said, leaning back in his chair. “He demanded twenty thousand pounds. I had no idea at all that anyone knew—knew my secret, but since the man made his demand I’ve realised that dozens probably know it. I—I have a son. I—”

  The flood began slowly, and ran off from time to time in a dozen different streams, some floods in themselves. Roger listened intently but made no notes and asked no questions; one or the other could distract a man in Clayton’s mood and make the flood dry up. Later, he could ask whatever he needed and get the story in full perspective and in proper order. In fact he was able to do that as the other talked. The twenty-year-old liaison, the illegitimate son, the patient ‘other woman’ and the sudden, devastating realisation that someone else knew and was prepared to tell his wife.

  Clayton thought it was a unique story, but he, Roger, had heard a dozen, perhaps twenty or thirty, similar in outline, different only in detail. But still he said nothing.

  “I went to see Ida this evening,” Clayton said, “because her—” He broke off, moistened his lips and then corrected: “Because our son had run away from her. It transpired that he had realised I was his father …”

  This part of the story was touching and sad, but still not unique; all the frailties of human beings passed across the desks of the officers at Scotland Yard sooner or later; all the varieties and the vagaries of human behaviour, too. But it was easier to understand what had driven Clayton here so soon; Roger breathed a silent blessing on the head of the woman Ida, who had driven him to come here tonight.

  At last Clayton stopped, and drew out a handkerchief to wipe his forehead. Roger opened a cupboard on the far side of his desk as he asked: “Is that everything, Professor?”

  “Apart possibly from details, yes. And—” He broke off. “And what, sir?”

  “Well—it is hardly relevant in some ways but extremely important in others. I have to make a speech which I regard as of exceptional significance to the International Anthropological Conference. The ‘Old Fossils’ themselves. I need to spend all my energies on checking and preparing the presentation of that. It was terribly tempting to buy time, Superintendent.”

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nbsp; “You will be much easier in your mind now, sir, and able to concentrate.” Roger wondered fleetingly what could seem of such importance to the anthropologist in this man, but that was not likely to be a fruitful line of inquiry. He took out a bottle of whisky, two bottles of soda water and two glasses. “I am extremely glad you’ve come to us so quickly. We can do two things at once. Keep an eye open for Kevin, without making it official, of course – Miss Spray will be easier m her mind when she knows where he is, won’t she?”

  “Very much easier,” said Clayton, gratefully. “She has been known for many years as Mrs. Spray.”

  “I’ll enter her as Mrs. Spray on the records,” Roger promised. “Will you have a whisky and soda?”

  Clayton looked at the bottle almost longingly, but shook his head.

  “I really shouldn’t,” he said. “I had no dinner and it would go straight to my head. Superintendent, what do you think are the chances of finding this man?”

  “In the circumstances, good,” Roger replied promptly. “Do you think I should get the money and—” Clayton broke off, and raised his hands to his forehead. “Really, I hardly know what I’m doing or saying or thinking,” he went on in a hopeless-sounding tone. “One moment I am quite sure that I must tell all of this to my wife – and if I do, then the fellow will have no grounds for blackmail. The next, I’m desperately afraid of her finding out.” He drew his hands from his forehead, and as he looked at Roger, his eyes seemed to burn. Almost as an incantation, he went on: “What am I to do? What am I to do?”

  It was an appeal from one human being to another; not from a blackmail victim to a police officer. And Roger both sensed and responded to the appeal. He put the whisky aside, and said quite briskly: “First, you’re going to have a meal, sir. Would you care to come up to our canteen with me? We could talk as we eat—”

  “Haven’t you eaten?”

  “Not since lunch,” Roger answered. “We can have a table where we won’t be overheard.” He was anxious for Clayton to accept this invitation; over a meal they could become much better acquainted, formality would be almost gone, and this man would probably tell him many things which, at present, were hidden in the corners of his mind. He could clarify his own thoughts, too. If he were to catch this blackmailer then it would have to be red-handed; either while he was demanding money or accepting it. What chance was there of this if Clayton did immediately tell his wife the truth?