Darkness and Confusion Read online

  “And you don’t think they are?”

  Gideon shifted in his chair.

  “They’re all right when dealing with their own internal problems,” Gideon said, “but they haven’t any system of working with other industries or other companies, whereas we have. But we can’t—I can’t—go to every individual firm and start from scratch. It would take too long even if they all co-operated, which they almost certainly wouldn’t do. On the other hand, if they had a recommendation from the C.B.I. – or if nationalised industry had a direction from the Minister – then we would get co-operation.”

  “Yes,” Scott-Marie said. “We might indeed.” He stood up again, went to his window and looked out over the river, then turned and faced Gideon squarely. “What is your real concern, George?”

  ‘George’ again: that was better!

  “We can’t afford to lose production,” Gideon said, quietly. “Everything else I’ve said is valid, but—well, a quarter to a third of the total industry in great Britain is centred in the Greater London area. A series of short blackouts like this can do more cumulative damage than one long one. Work stops, conveyors stop, furnaces go cold, men lose the working rhythm. I think it could become very serious on the industrial front, sir. That may be no business of mine, but catching the saboteurs is, and I’d like to have as much elbow-room as I can.”

  Scott-Marie took his chair again.

  “I’ll talk to the Home Secretary,” he promised simply. “You prepare your schedule of operations. You can take it from me that you’ll get the co-operation. One only has to threaten productivity losses and even the Ministries jump, these days. Decide exactly what kind of co-operation you think is necessary.”

  “I’ll get started at once, sir.” Gideon put his hands on the arm of his chair.

  “Hobbs is away, isn’t he?” asked Scott-Marie.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Want him back to help with this?”

  “May I have twenty-four hours to think about that?”

  “Yes. Mr. Guthrie isn’t due back until tomorrow evening, is he?”

  “No, sir.” Guthrie was the Assistant Commissioner for Crime.

  “Then come direct to me on anything which arises. I will brief him.”

  “Very good, sir.” At last Gideon understood what had happened – Guthrie hadn’t sent through a report on the sabotage, and Scott-Marie had checked in the file, to make sure. Now, Scott-Marie was instructing him to go over Guthrie’s head. Difficulties could arise from this, but he need not worry himself unduly, Guthrie wasn’t half the man Scott-Marie was. On the whole, this could not have worked out better. Gideon stood up, not sure whether to say how much this mattered to him.

  Scott-Marie stepped to the door with him, touched the handle, and said: “Did you know my daughter was expecting a child, George?”

  Gideon caught his breath.

  “I’d no idea, sir!”

  “I heard only this afternoon that mother and son are doing well,” Scott-Marie told him. “I hadn’t realised that one could get positively excited over a first grandchild.”

  “Hadn’t you, sir? I could have told you!”

  They looked at each other, eyes twinkling. In that moment all thought of crime, all anxieties were forgotten. It was a good moment. Gideon, hardly aware that they were shaking hands, found himself saying: “Congratulations, sir.”

  “Thank you,” said Scott-Marie. “Keep in close touch, George.”

  He opened the door, and Gideon went out. He walked quite slowly to his office, savouring that memorable moment until he reached the window, but this afternoon he was hardly conscious of the water, the sunlight shining from behind this building and touching the whole of Westminster Bridge and the buildings on the other side of the river with grandeur.

  Slowly, he turned, and began to rough out the few sentences he wanted for the news broadcasts. It was a pity Hobbs wasn’t here, he had a gift for the right phrase, and would do it in half the time. Finally, he was satisfied, and rang for McAlistair. At the same time there was a tap at the passage door.

  “Come in,” he called.

  Both doors opened simultaneously, and a sudden draft sent the paper flying into the face of the woman from the secretarial pool. For a split second confusion and chaos reigned. Both the woman and McAlistair stood by their respective doors, staring at Gideon.

  The woman suddenly bent down to pick up a slip of paper, and the file she was holding slipped; all the letters which he had dictated fanned out in a neat pattern between her and Gideon.

  Gideon said: “That’s the message for the B.B.C. and I.T.A., Superintendent – get it out on the teletype immediately and have Information make the usual approach to both authorities.”

  She held out the paper in her hand.

  “This one?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  McAlistair took it, and seemed to fly out of the room. Gideon bent down in a gesture to help pick up the letters, but was quietly, but unmistakably, repulsed.

  A telephone bell rang, and Gideon stepped across to it. Quite unflustered, the woman collected the letters and then placed them neatly out on the big desk. His caller was Lemaitre, but in that moment Gideon had neither time nor patience for Lemaitre.

  “What is it? Unless it’s urgent—”

  “We can’t find young Jensen,” Lemaitre said in a hollow voice, “He’s slipped our men.”

  “You bloody fool!” Gideon growled. “Send a description and all details over quick, and put out a general call.” He slammed down the receiver, in that moment furiously angry, and found himself looking into the calm eyes behind horn-rimmed spectacles.

  “Shall I come back, Commander?”

  “No,” Gideon said, gruffly. “I’ll sign them and you put them in their envelopes. Let’s make sure something goes right today.”

  Demurely, she drew up a chair.

  There were seventeen letters. He read each one carefully, without needing to make a single alteration. He signed each with his big, bold signature, watching them being slipped into their envelopes. His temper had cooled and he was in a much calmer mood.

  “I’d like you to come whenever I need help and you’re free,” Gideon said. “What’s your name?”

  “Sabrina Sale,” she answered.

  “Sab—” he checked a smile. “S-A-L-E?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Thank you, Miss Sale.”

  “Thank you, Commander.”

  She went out and closed the door.

  Chapter Eight

  George Jensen

  George Jensen paused by the front door of the house in Mill Street, not far from Whitechapel Station, and stood for a moment in the hall. It was a tiny house, one of a terrace, and a small board outside announced: Smith and Kano, Stock Exchange Brokers. Next door, two similar houses had been knocked into one, and a board announced: Jackie Spratt’s Betting Shop.

  Jensen went into the betting shop but instead of going to the counter, slipped through a side door into the broker’s office. Inside, it looked different. Outside it looked mean and badly kept, inside the walls and ceilings were freshly papered and the woodwork painted. A door on the right opened into a pleasant front room, furnished in much better style than most houses in this mean street. In the next room there was an office, and several typewriters.

  A man called: “Who’s that?”

  “It—it’s George Jensen,” the youth answered.

  Almost at once there was a scraping of chair legs, and a man appeared in the office doorway. He was medium height and lean, wore a white shirt with long sleeves and a bow tie, and a tight-fitting trousers. He also wore glasses with thick horn-rims.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jensen said: “I—I had to see you.”
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br />   “Why didn’t you telephone?”

  “I—I wasn’t near a telephone. I came in from next door, no one saw me.” “There are telephones at every other corner,” the man in shirt-sleeves said harshly. “What’s going on?”

  Jensen didn’t answer; he was quivering so much and couldn’t find words.

  The other drew nearer, and looked at him closely. Realising that he was suffering from shock, he gripped George’s shoulder firmly and took him into the office. There were three desks, two of them empty. In front of the fireplace stood an easy chair. He pushed Jensen into it, then took whisky and soda from a shelf, poured out, and put the drink into the youth’s hand.

  “Drink up, then tell me all about it,” he urged.

  Jensen sipped, slowly. His face was sticky with sweat his collar damp, his small eyes darted all over the place rather than look straight at the man, who stepped across and closed the door.

  ‘Well, what’s got under your skin?” he demanded more roughly.

  “I—I’ve been followed,” Jensen muttered.

  “What do you mean, followed?”

  “The—the cops—” Jensen began.

  “The police,” echoed the man in strident alarm. “Do you mean you’ve led the cops here? Why, you—” he sprang round to the door, opened it, and called: “Charlie!”

  Almost immediately another man called: “Want me?” There were footsteps on the stairs.

  “Find out if we’re being watched!”

  “Right away.”

  “If we are, I want to know, quick.”

  “Okay, okay!” The man named Charlie went up the stairs again, not down; but the other man turned back into the office.

  “Now tell me all about it,” he ordered in a taut voice.

  Jensen began nervously, but soon gathered confidence. He had done exactly what he had been told to do the previous night, he said, and he didn’t think he had been seen, but since the middle of the morning he had been followed – and immediately after dinner he had been followed again by two men whom he knew were from the local division. They had not questioned him but he had met a friend who had told him the police were asking a lot of questions about him.

  At last, the story and the whisky were finished, George Jensen looked flushed, and almost bold.

  “So I thought you ought to know,” he stated. “That’s why I came.”

  “I certainly had to know,” agreed the man in the white shirt “But in future you get word through by telephone – do you understand?”

  “Yes, okay, but—”

  “There aren’t any buts,” the man growled.

  Almost immediately, a telephone on his desk rang, and he answered it with a swift cat-like movement. Charlie’s voice sounded quite loud in the room, Jensen as well as the man in shirt-sleeves could hear it.

  “No one’s about,” he said. “We’re not being watched.”

  “There you are, see!” cried Jensen. “It’s okay! But I’ve got to go into hiding, you can see that, can’t you?” A cunning glint brightened his eyes. “The cops can’t catch me if they don’t know where I am, can they?”

  “You never said a truer word,” agreed the man in shirtsleeves. “I’ll fix it soon. Want another drink?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mind,” said Jensen. He was thinking that he had done exactly the right thing by coming here. He had been nervous in case this man rounded on him, but he need not have worried. That meant he was very useful to them. It was the third job he’d done, and there would be others – at fifty quid a time. Last night, after seeing the old man and afterwards the copper, he had sworn that he would never do another, they could keep their money. It was very clever, really – he did the job, and then came here to collect his dough, his ‘winnings’. He was very pleased with himself, and the second drink was just right. He was in the money, he was getting a taste for scotch, everything was fine.

  Suddenly, overwhelmingly, he felt tired.

  He went to sleep ten minutes after finishing the second whisky.

  He was dead half an hour afterwards. His body was loaded into a canvas sack and taken by van to a small chemical plant half a mile away. Among the acids manufactured here was sulphuric acid, for industrial purposes, and there was a large vat of concentrated sulphuric acid between the second and the third floor. There were also a number of plastic containers – tiny Molotov cocktails.

  Only one man was on duty, and he opened the hatch of the vat and watched phlegmatically while the sack was lowered into the acid, on ropes which were eaten away in a few seconds. For all the emotion shown by anyone present, it might have been a sack of old clothes.

  It was sheer chance that P.C. Race, out of uniform and off duty, passed along Mill Lane five minutes afterwards. He was within inches of the bicycle which he had seen on the night of the fire, without dreaming of it.

  At that very moment, Frank Morrison opened the door of his pleasant home.

  He was puzzled because Sheila usually came running, and Lillian always made a point of being here unless she had warned him in advance that they would be out. In spite of the warm evening, the front door and all the windows were closed – they were out, then.

  He walked round to the back garden.

  The swing hung idly from the iron stand which he had bought for Sheila’s last birthday. Her tricycle was on its side – how any child could always leave a three-wheeled bicycle off its wheels was beyond his understanding. He straightened it absently, more amused than vexed. A heap of wooden building bricks stood by a little sand-pit which was filled with rubber and plastic toys. Everything was normal, except the silence. Children were playing in a garden not far off, but he could not see them.

  He let himself in by the back door, which wasn’t locked, and this was even more puzzling, for Lillian was very careful about leaving the house locked up whenever she was out. He did not understand it, but perhaps it was partly his fault; he was very prompt tonight, more than five minutes early. In a few minutes he would hear Sheila, then see her running in that gazelle-like way of hers, for him to catch and hold high, tossing her up and down several times before putting her gently on her feet.

  He heard a knock at the front door.

  Had Lillian forgotten her key?

  He went to open the door, and saw a policeman standing there. He was so surprised that he backed a pace, before saying: “Good—good afternoon.”

  “Good evening, sir. Are you Mr. Morrison?”

  “Yes, I—” Morrison broke off, suddenly appalled, awfully aware that this visit must have something to do with Sheila and Lillian. Not an accident, please God, not an accident! “What is it, officer?” He made himself ask.

  “It’s probably nothing to worry about, sir,” said the policeman, and for the first time Frank noticed that he was a sergeant. “Your wife is down at the station, helping us with our inquiries.”

  Frank stared, almost stupidly.

  “Inquiries about what?”

  “Your little girl didn’t arrive home from school,” the sergeant said. “Your wife advised us as soon as she realised the child was late, and we hope to find her very soon. Would you like to come down to the station, sir? Your wife is rather—rather worked up.”

  Morrison said in a strange voice: “Are you telling me that my daughter has been—abducted?”

  “It’s much more likely she’s wandering round the shops, sir, or with friends. We’ve taken it very seriously just in case, but—”

  “My wife was supposed to meet her at school.”

  “So we understand, sir, but she was delayed. If you would care to come along with me.”

  For the first time, Morrison saw a car standing at the kerb.

  He did not speak and he did not move, just stood there. He began to feel coldness creep upon him: first his chest, then his h
ands, then his arms and legs. It was like chill which had taken hold of his heart and was spreading throughout his body. He could not move or speak. He could only stare at the big, middle-aged man in front of him.

  “I’m sure your wife needs you, sir,” the police sergeant said.

  Morrison still didn’t speak or move.

  He could picture Sheila in his mind’s eye: only Sheila. He could imagine her running along that path but could see nothing beyond her. Just her long, golden-tanned legs and waving golden-tanned arms, the spun gold of her hair and the radiance of her face.

  He felt his head going round and round.

  “Now take it easy, sir.” The sergeant touched his shoulder, to steady him. “It’ll, almost certainly be all right. If you’ll come along to the station—”

  Morrison suddenly moved and flung off the helping hand.

  “I want my daughter! Understand? I want my daughter! Every policeman in London’s got to look for my daughter.” His voice was pitched on a high key, but he did not shout. “I want my daughter.”

  “You can be absolutely sure that everything possible will be done, sir. If you’ll pardon me saying so, your wife needs you. She’s very upset. Would you care to have a drink to steady your nerves?”

  “I don’t drink,” Morrison said. “My nerves are all right. I want my daughter.”

  “I quite understand, sir.” There was a pause, and then the sergeant asked awkwardly: “Would you like us to fetch your wife?”

  “I want to know what is being done to find my daughter.”

  “Everything possible, sir. If you’ll come along to the station—”

  In the Superintendent’s office at the Richmond station, the sergeant spoke to his senior officer in a rueful voice.

  “If you ask me, sir, I think it’s knocked him off his rocker. He doesn’t seem normal to me. He’s with his wife now, but as cold as ice – seems to blame her for everything. All he keeps asking is what we’re doing to find his daughter.”