An Uncivilised Election Read online

  “Oh, that. Order out of chaos, that’s all.” Lemaitre now stood by the window, obviously waiting, and Gideon hadn’t the heart to hold out any longer.

  “How have things been going?” he asked.

  “Not bad, not bad at all,” said Lemaitre breezily. “In fact I think you’ll be damned pleased, George. Not much new stuff in of any importance – one or two wage snatches, a post-office raid, the usual, but nothing to write home about. It’s all in the files.” He hardly allowed Gideon time to sit down before going on: “First things first. Micky Bane’s been sent for trial, but he isn’t likely to be up at the Old Bailey until after Christmas. I told Fisher he could prepare the case, and he’s been in touch with the Solicitors’ Department, don’t think there’ll be any trouble there. And you remember that skeleton down the old well in Cornwall? They’ve identified the body. Carson really did it, I think, good bit of sniffing out. It’s the body of a young woman who disappeared from Hackney five years ago. The dental work proved it. Carson’s still on the job, operating from here. Believe it or not, the Quack’s had another go—”

  “Speeding up, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing in about his identity?”

  “Nope. It was Chelsea this time. Piper’s worried, and Dowsett keeps going off the deep end. Piper’s coming in to see you later, he particularly asked for you. Parsons will be in soon too. Parsons—strewth! How that man hates these F.F.P. boys and girls.”

  Gideon sat down.

  “Hates?” he echoed.

  “That’s the word for it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “George, he’s just as dedicated to stopping them as they are to stopping the bomb, and that’s saying something. Funny thing, I didn’t think he ever felt deeply about anything, not deep down. But this job – he works day and night.”

  “Oh,” said Gideon.

  “Anything wrong?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “When you see his records and hear what he’s got to say you won’t think there’s anything wrong,” Lemaitre assured Gideon. “You know that storeroom they’re turning into an office for more inspectors, to give them some elbow room? Well, I’ve put Parsons into it. He needed room to spread, couldn’t have managed if—” Lemaitre was on the defensive now, puzzled by Gideon’s manner.

  “Good idea,” said Gideon. He thought, Hates. It was not only a surprise, it was something of a shock to discover that he had chosen the man who had become emotionally involved in the issue to take care of it; that had been one of his mistakes. Would he have made it if he hadn’t been so flat and tired?

  He tried to console himself with the reflection that he wasn’t yet sure that it had been a mistake, and shook off the misgivings. Lemaitre was so cock-a-hoop that it was difficult not to be cheered up by his enthusiasm and satisfaction.

  “Thought you’d see it that way, George. I don’t think there’s much else, and with the election only three weeks away, maybe that’s as well.”

  Gideon thought, Something else is bound to crop up. The run of comparative freedom from major crime had been a long one, and by the law of averages there was sure to be a sharp break soon. The lull might last for the next three weeks or so, though; there was no need to anticipate trouble.

  “You going to see the boys for briefing this morning?” asked Lemaitre airily.

  “I ought to go along and see the A.C.,” said Gideon. “You fix it. I’ll be back by half past eleven, for Parsons and Piper.”

  “Right!” Lemaitre wanted nothing better than to handle the morning’s briefing.

  Gideon called Rogerson’s office, said he would be along, and first went to see Records and Information. A little man wearing pince-nez, Syd Harrison, was in Records and he made the inevitable crack about Gideon’s suntan. Down in Information, where the new room had been in operation for so long that no one thought of it as new any longer, a youngish superintendent named Forbes was on duty. The teleprinters were working, the policemen at the telephones busy, the air of quiet bustle was exactly as when Gideon had last visited it – as it was day in, day out, night in, night out. The room always fascinated him. It was the nearest thing he knew to a true heart of London. Here they were taking the pulse of the nation’s crime with the accuracy of a doctor. Yet that wasn’t quite true; they were taking the pulse of crime so far as it was discernible; the worst kind of crime, the worrying crime, was that which was taking place unsuspected and unknown, the crime that would never be discovered, committed by criminals who would never be caught. That was always a sobering thought.

  He went up to Fingerprints, where King-Hadden, perhaps Gideon’s closest friend after Lemaitre, was in his shirt sleeves examining a broken beer bottle. Gideon studied him as he dusted the neck of the bottle with powder and blew on it gently; they had not yet found an automatic way of looking for fingerprints. Two men wearing khaki coats were also here. The small room was filled with a variety of goods which made it like a second hand shop and a junk dealer’s combined. There was a musty odour, and the windows were tightly closed.

  King-Hadden, his smallish eyes half buried as he screwed them up behind a magnifying glass, was as flabby and pale as Gideon was hard and brown. He was big and rather puddeny in build, and wore a shapeless suit of navy blue, the last colour he should have worn on this messy job; there were smears of fuller’s earth all over his coat. On the desk by his side was a lipstick and a powder compact.

  The thick end of the bottle he was handling was broken and jagged. One or two of the spiky pieces were bright green, with the translucent beauty of bottle glass, but the others were smeared and brown.

  He pursed his lips and blew out a long, slow breath.

  “No luck?” said Gideon.

  King-Hadden looked up with a start.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it? I thought you were still sunning yourself.” He put the bottle down on a piece of clean chamois. “You need a holiday, George, can’t have you going around looking as pale as that.” That was his kind of humour. “Anything I can do for you?”

  “What’s that?” asked Gideon, pointing.

  “A bottle which once contained Guinness.”

  “Anything on it?”

  “Smears, that’s all, apart from blood.”

  “What job is it from?”

  “Last night’s shindy at Paddington.”

  “Shindy?” echoed Gideon. Lemaitre had said nothing about a shindy.

  “There was a free fight between some of the F.F.P. people and Q Men,” explained King-Hadden. “Parsons rushed this over, and asked me for a quickie.” So Parsons knew. “Two men got hurt. One of them’s in the hospital with wounds in his chest, and a girl got some nasty cuts on her face. We want to stop that kind of lark, George.”

  Gideon said heavily, “We certainly do.” He nodded and went out, knowing that if King-Hadden had anything else of interest to report he would have said so. Outside the door Gideon paused, frowning. He was tempted to talk to Parsons right away, but decided not to jump the gun.

  Rogerson was in his office.

  “Hallo, George! Glad to see you back.” He looked rather better too, as he got up from his desk and rounded it, hand outstretched. He studied Gideon intently, and went on, “Don’t need any telling it’s done you good. Hating everything this morning?”

  “Not yet,” said Gideon. “I’m just settling in. Anything in particular worried you while I’ve been away?”

  “Life’s one long worry,” replied Rogerson, only half flippantly. “As a matter of fact, Lemaitre’s done a better job than I expected. If he can keep it up, you can name him as your deputy. I had a word with the Commissioner, who said he’d like to wait for a few weeks. No urgent need for an official deputy yet, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Seen Parsons?”

  “I’m going to, in half an hour.”

  “He seems to be doing a very sound job,” said Rogerson. “He could do with more help, though. My spies tell me th
at he often works here until the small hours. He’s out most of the day at the divisions, and comes back to do the office side of the job. Put a couple of extra men on nights with him if you think it’s necessary.”

  “I will.”

  “Good thing he’s not a married man,” remarked Rogerson. “How about lunch today?”

  “I’m going to have a sandwich in my office,” Gideon said. “Thanks all the same.”

  It was nearly half past eleven when he returned to his office, to find Piper standing by Lemaitre’s desk. Piper’s big, knuckly hands were clasped in front of him, but he unclasped them and stood almost to attention when Gideon entered.

  “Morning,” Gideon said. “Lem tells me that the Quack’s been at it again.”

  “Two days’ stint this time, at Chelsea,” Piper reported. “Didn’t do much harm; in fact, I don’t think he did any harm worth speaking of, but he’s getting bolder. If it goes on much longer we’ll really be in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “The Daily Globe is breathing down our backs, and you know what that tabloid’s like. One of the victims – that prostitute I told you about – talked to a reporter, and they’ve haunted Symes and Dowsett ever since. Dowsett thinks that it’s time we used the newspapers, anyhow. If the Daily Globe and the News of the World worked on it together, and published this, we might get places. And if we don’t give them the whole story soon, they’ll publish what they can get hold of themselves. I believe Dr. Nash had a couple of visitors from the Globe yesterday.”

  Piper handed Gideon a picture made up by the Identikit method, and apparently good. It showed a pleasant-faced, smiling man, a decent-looking type of man, with a square chin and short nose and wide-set eyes. Alongside it were some figures:

  Height: About 5’10”

  Hair: Usually dyed: known colours: very fair, yellow, brown, grey, black

  Eyes: Greeny-grey

  Build: Slender

  And there were some notes:

  This man, who gives a different name whenever he applies for a post as locum tenens at a general practitioner’s, has a very pleasant manner and is generally liked by people who meet him.

  He is brisk and businesslike with men.

  He has every woman “patient” strip on any excuse, and goes through the motions of a normal medical examination. He appears to have a reasonable knowledge of the normal examination methods.

  Gideon studied the picture, as he sat on the corner of his desk.

  “We’ve got to give the whole story to the press, or enough to keep ‘em quiet,” Piper said.

  Gideon shook his head. “There isn’t a way of keeping this quiet. If we give ‘em a little, they’ll start digging deep, and every woman who’s been examined by this chap will be rooted out and questioned. I don’t know how to handle it for the best. Might give the story to one or two papers.” He soon changed his mind. “No, if we give anyone a scoop we’ll have the others breathing down our necks.” He rounded the desk and tapped the picture with his forefinger. “Any of the patients affected very deeply, do you think?”

  “There was one girl whom it seemed to knock badly,” Piper told him. “A young woman, really, early twenties and three months gone – married, mind you, nothing wrong about it. When she knew what had happened she fainted right off. I can’t say any of the others showed anything more than a bit of embarrassment. One or two seemed almost nostalgic about it.”

  Gideon didn’t smile.

  “It’s the effect on people like this young woman that we want to watch,” he said. “Can never tell how much harm this kind of thing does. Still, we don’t have any choice. Have a word with Littleton, and ask him how he would handle it, would you?”

  Littleton was the public relations officer at the Yard, a comparatively new man, usually on the ball. Gideon had come to regard him with respect as a journalist who really knew how to get along with Fleet Street, and such liaison officers were rare birds.

  “Right,” said Piper, and went out.

  Effie Wilcox was alone in the little flat, looking through the Daily Globe in which there were more pictures than stories. There was one section of four pages devoted, every day, to “sexy” pictures, and every now and again this section was used for a genuinely sensational story. Whenever a man turned into a woman or a woman turned into a man, for instance – and judging from the Daily Globe this biological metamorphosis was by no means uncommon – the whole story was told here with plenty of pictures and hints of intimate details. From time to time, as Effie knew, a different kind of story was told – about women who dressed up as men, and got away with it for years, or men who dressed up as women and lived like women. Only recently there had been a story of a Greek family who had so wanted a boy that when their sixth girl-child was born they pretended that she was a boy. They brought her up as one, and dressed her as one – and got away with it for over twenty years!

  Effie sensed that if ever the story of the fake doctor got out, it would be exactly right for this page. The possibility frightened her. The worst of the situation was that every night she knew she should tell Fred what had happened, but every night she put it off for one reason or another. Now she couldn’t tell him, because he would wonder why she had kept it to herself for so long. Flashes of jealousy still raised him to white heat, for no reason at all.

  If he ever found this out…

  She dropped the paper, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

  By the middle of the afternoon, when she had done the shopping, the housework and the mending, a little of the worry began to recede. The vegetables were ready for the evening meal, a steak already beaten and spread with dripping was out of the refrigerator, because she did not like to put meat under the grill when it was ice-cold. The bell rang. It was a Monday, and Monday was the day when the local savings group collector called, a middle-aged woman from downstairs, Mrs. Mullery. She had a family of seven, she knew everyone in the district, and was a friend in need to every woman who was carrying her first child. Almost eagerly, Effie went to answer the door.

  Two men stood there.

  She was reminded immediately of the two policemen who had once called, and her first thought was that these were policemen too. They were smaller, but she did not realize that size might be significant. She stood with her hand on the door, the colour draining from her cheeks. One of the men was very young, the other – who carried a big leather box – was elderly and grey-haired.

  “Mrs. Wilcox?” the younger man asked pleasantly.

  She didn’t answer; she couldn’t.

  “If you can spare us a minute we’d appreciate it,” the young man said. He had very fine dark eyes, very fine eyebrows and lashes – they looked as if they had been painted black and had a sheen on them. “We can make it worth your while, too.”

  “I—I don’t know what you mean.”

  “If you will—”

  “I’ve told you everything I know!” she gasped. “Don’t keep coming here, please don’t keep coming.”

  “We haven’t been here before,” the young man assured her. The older man was taking something out of his box, and was fiddling with it, but Effie did not notice then that it was a camera. “Who has been, Mrs. Wilcox? What newspaper—?”

  “Newspaper!” she gasped. “I thought you were the police!”

  “Oh, nothing like that,” the young man assured her, and then the other man moved, with the camera levelled at her. There was a flash. “We are from the Daily Globe. Now if you will be good enough—”

  “Look out, she’s fainting,” the photographer cried in alarm. “Catch her!”

  6: The Workroom

  Gideon, unaware of all this, as he was unaware of so much going on which would eventually affect the police, or at least be connected with crime in one way or another, walked along to the office which had been allocated to Parsons for the special general election job. The few hours at the Yard had enabled him to shake off any feeling of lethargy. He felt that he was
fairly well acquainted with everything that had happened while he was away, but his absence had made little or no difference to the way things had gone.

  He was still uneasy about Parsons and that “hate” Lemaitre had talked of, but it might just be Lem, exaggerating.

  He pushed open the door.

  Parsons, in his shirt sleeves and with the ends of his spotted white-on-blue tie hanging down the front of the white shirt, looked up from a big trestle table. In fact, there were three trestles, close together, and the top was about twelve feet long; it was the width of two average trestle tops too, and filled one side of the room. On the wall behind it were huge maps, brought up from the map room. London’s metropolitan area was divided into eight sections, and these were pasted to the wall so that it made a complete area map.

  On a wall at right angles to this was another map, one of England, showing the county police forces; on a third wall were smaller maps of all the country boroughs which had their own force. Scotland and Wales were shown too, but there was nothing of Northern Ireland.

  Parsons sat with his back to the main wall, facing the door; he used the trestle tables as a desk. Two smaller desks, opposite him, were empty; each had two telephones on it, and a green metal filing cabinet behind it; one had a typewriter. To complete the furniture there were two more filing cabinets in a corner, and two rows of bookshelves with a few books on them.

  Parsons stood up.

  “You look fine,” he said. “Glad to see you back.”

  “I’m all right,” said Gideon. “How are you?” He had expected to find signs that Parsons was looking drawn and overworked, but there was nothing to suggest it. His eyes were bright and alert. He had lost a little weight, but that wouldn’t do him any harm. It sharpened his features, and gave a new kind of briskness to his manner.

  “Couldn’t be better,” Parsons said. “This job is just my cup of tea.”

  “You said it would be.” Gideon looked round the walls, and began to smile inwardly and appreciatively. There were coloured-headed pins all over the maps, sometimes in clusters, sometimes in ones and twos, and he counted five colours. The legend, typewritten on a sheet stuck in one corner, ran: