Vigilantes & Biscuits Read online

  “In that case, Mr. Honiwell, it is a mystery why you bothered to come.”

  Of all things in life, Matt hated an icy withdrawal. Years of police work in rough areas had taught him how to shield his sympathetic nature against all degrees of aggression. Against hard men, no one at the Yard could be harder. But withering disinterest or contempt seldom failed to get under his skin.

  Flushing, he pushed back his chair, and hardly realising what he was doing, started pacing Brodnik’s consulting-room. That in itself was an odd experience. The room was quite literally half-furnished. One end held three comfortable, if battered, easy chairs, a fire, a desk and a standard lamp. But the light from the lamp, the room’s only illumination, reached just about as far as the chairs, and so did the warmth from the fire. At the point where the light and warmth petered out, so did the carpeting. Matt’s pacing took him into this bare part of the room, and he found himself immediately in an uncannily different world. His footsteps rang hollowly on bare boards. The gloom rapidly became darkness. The temperature became not only cold, but dank: and suddenly he realised why. The windows at this end contained no glass and were boarded up. He touched one of the boards, and shivered. The wood was covered with a thin film of mould, and appeared to be crumbling with dry rot.

  He glanced back, and saw that Brodnik was staring at him curiously. Good, thought Matt. Curiosity was better than coldness.

  “You’ve asked me to lay my cards on the table, Mr. Brodnik,” he said, his voice echoing eerily amidst all this bareness. “All right, I will. For the past hour I haven’t just been hedging. I’ve been trying desperately – and failing – to get some information out of you about the contents of this E.S.P. signal that you say you have received. If there is anything about that signal which corresponds with the facts of the case as we know them – particularly with some fact that you yourself couldn’t have known – then I would have a powerful argument for getting my superior to reverse his decision. He’d do it, at the drop of a hat, if I could give him the slightest piece of tangible evidence to suggest that the signal was, so to speak, on the beam.”

  Slowly, wearily, Brodnik shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Honiwell, But E.S.P. is not a ‘positive proof business. And no E.S.P. man can function with a police organisation that takes up an attitude of suspicion, scepticism, total disbelief. I think it would be better to terminate this consultation now. I shall not, of course, be charging any fee.”

  There was a terrible silence, but still more terrible was the expression on Gordon Cargill’s face. He got up from his chair, and looked wildly, despairingly, from Brodnik to Honiwell, and then back to Brodnik. As he turned his head, his face was one moment in the light, the next in darkness, grimly symbolic of the hopes that had blazed up in him so short a while before, and were now being brutally doused.

  “For God’s sake, Matt,” he cried bitterly, “why did you make me go through with this thing? I was all ready to turn round and drive home when you – ”

  “What’s that?” Brodnik asked suddenly. “Do I understand you to say that it was Mr. Honiwell who insisted you came in to see me?”

  Gordon nodded. “He told me that I – I would never forgive myself if I didn’t do everything possible to find Barbara. He almost forced me through your front door.”

  “Did he indeed?” Brodnik’s expression had lightened. “That was distinctly odd behaviour for a sceptical, hard-headed policeman. It seems that I may have misjudged you, Mr. Honiwell. You are more open-minded than I thought. You may even be, subconsciously, a believer. And when a policeman in a position of high authority is consciously or subconsciously – a believer, there is always the possibility that he may convince others. This changes the situation entirely. I shall be most happy to tell you all that I know.”

  Gordon slumped back in his chair, his relief suddenly overwhelming. Matt, moving away from darkness to light, found himself breathing a silent prayer.

  Once having decided, Brodnik was as good as his word, and described in detail the “signal”, as he called it, that he had received.

  “First of all, I must explain, very cursorily, the technique that I use. For a long period – often an hour or more – I concentrate my entire consciousness on the missing person. I consider this to be the psychic equivalent of sending out a radio transmission. Next, it is necessary to try and switch the apparatus, so to speak, from transmission to reception. I concentrate on nothing. I clear the mind absolutely so that it is able to detect the slightest thought or feeling coming into it from outside.

  “Now, always it is a feeling that I receive first; if adverse, it is a cold, dark feeling, which from long experience I recognise as a signal that my subject is dead. After that come the images: vivid, highly-coloured glimpses, bright as the brightest real life scene, of how the subject died and where the corpse may be found. I might, for example, see a churning weir, and the next moment a red-brick farmhouse. I call on the police. They give me a squad of men. We visit twenty, maybe thirty weirs. Finally we find one that is near a red-brick farmhouse. We drag the weir, we search the farmhouse and dig the grounds. Sooner or later the corpse comes to light. I am simplifying, of course, but basically, that is my method. It has not often failed.”

  Matt nodded. He had done his homework, and knew that Brodnik had a genuinely astonishing record of successes … with corpses. There was no record that he had seen of his ever having led the police to a live victim.

  Gordon leant forward.

  “But this time the ‘death’ feeling didn’t come?”

  “No, Mr. Cargill. In its place, I had a definite sense of life… a faint, flickering life fighting a desperate battle against death. It was so poignant, this feeling, that although I know little of your wife, I had no doubt that I was receiving the resonances, the echoes, of a brave woman’s last struggle to survive. A struggle lasting not longer than twenty-four hours.”

  “What made you give her twenty-four hours?” asked Matt.

  “That was a guess, no more.”

  “Based on what?”

  Brodnik shrugged.

  “The figure came into my head of its own accord. I cannot explain it. Discount it if you like. What cannot be discounted is the fact that this woman is nearing the limit of her ability – though not her will – to live.”

  For Gordon’s sake, Matt abruptly changed his tack.

  “There was something more?”

  “Yes. There was – a vision.”

  “Just one?”

  “Yes. And it was unlike any vision I have received before. Normally, as I told you, they are vivid – sharp-etched and highly coloured. This was vague and blurred. It swam in front of me almost as though I was in a delirium. But the outline was clear enough. I was staring at a country cottage, a romantic – how would you put it – ‘picture-book’ country cottage. It had a flower-filled garden, a thatched roof, lattice windows – almost too much old-world charm to be true. It was situated halfway up a hill. Outside its front gate was what looked like a main village street, and there was a signpost indicating that a place beginning with the letters S W was a mile and a half away. Further up the street, beyond the cottage, was a church with an oddly crooked steeple; or perhaps it was the waves of delirium that made it look crooked. I cannot be sure. Near it, the land sloped down to the sea. I glimpsed rocks, waves, wheeling seagulls. I could draw you a sketch of the place; in fact, I’ll do so now.” Brodnik turned to the desk, opened a drawer, and took out a sheet of paper. He drew a spidery impression of what he had described.

  Matt’s heart sank. It wasn’t that Brodnik was a bad sketcher; but the result bore a painful resemblance to a chocolate-box artist’s idea of an Olde English country scene. The hard-bitten, police-trained side of his mind told him that the whole thing looked as if it had emanated from a second rate imagination. It just wasn’t remotely likely that kidnappers would have kept a girl prisoner for six long weeks in such a setting. A barn – a disused farmhouse – a tumbledown s
hed or shack; that was the kind of hiding place they would have chosen, not a pretty-pretty cottage fronting on to a busy village street…

  Brodnik himself seemed dissatisfied with the sketch. He shook his head over it, and looked up at Matt a little ruefully.

  “You feel there is something unreal about this? So do I. And I will tell you something even stranger: nothing moved in this scene. The waves of the sea, the wheeling seagulls in the air – they were motionless, frozen, all the time that I stared at them. It was almost as though I was looking at a photograph, and even I, versed as I am in E.S.P. phenomena, can only wonder why. But this much I can tell you.” Brodnik’s manner became more positive, all the inner authority returning to his voice as he went on, “Beyond all doubt that vision, and that feeling of flickering, struggling life emanated from the same source. Find that cottage – and you will find Barbara Cargill. Reach it in time – and you will find her alive.”

  Suddenly he was staring at Matt, and seemed to be peering straight into the Yard man’s soul.

  “You must believe me, Mr. Honiwell. And you must make this superior of yours believe. Otherwise, as I need hardly tell you, she will have no chance at all.”

  10

  “No, Matt”

  All through the twenty-minute drive back to London, Matt Honiwell struggled to persuade Gordon that that last remark of Brodnik’s had been a total exaggeration.

  “Of course Barbara will have a chance, whether or not the Yard is able to help. For Heaven’s sake, you and your father aren’t exactly short of the ready, are you. You can employ inquiry agents by the dozen, and any competent private eye should be able to locate this spot Brodnik has described in no time at all.” Matt was aware that he was talking with a forced heartiness; he was battling to conceal his own doubts, his feeling that even if this place was found, it was highly unlikely to turn out to be a kidnapper’s hideout. To cover his confusion, he produced a notebook and started scribbling out addresses. “Look, here are the names of London’s three top agents. The first two run a twenty-four-hour service. You can call them and start them working the moment you get back to your flat.”

  “But supposing the kidnappers take fright and move . Barbara before we can track down this place? And even if we do track it down, if we don’t have the police or the Yard’s backing, who’s going to break in and get Barbara out? Me – and a private army?”

  “It might have to be that,” Matt grunted, and was at a loss to think of anything else to say.

  It was getting harder and harder to deny that if Brodnik’s insight was true, the only thing that could save Barbara was a massive police operation: an operation conducted with speed and secrecy, aimed at locating that house and making a lightning raid before the kidnapping gang had the remotest idea that anyone was on their tail.

  But no such operation could be mounted without Gideon’s approval. And there was no getting away from the fact that Gideon simply wasn’t going to give it.

  Considering the improbability of Brodnik’s “vision”, or whatever he called it, Matt couldn’t see how he could even ask Gideon to give it.

  But suddenly he knew that he was going to try.

  They had arrived outside the Cargills’ London home. Since the kidnapping, Gordon had moved in with his father. The two of them shared a flat in a newly-built luxury block in St. John’s Wood. Gordon drove the Bentley into a multi-door private garage built exclusively for the residents of the block. Here Matt’s own car – a battered Ford, as homely-looking as Honiwell himself – stood waiting. It seemed absurdly out of place, cheek-by-jowl with some of the costliest cars in London.

  Declining Gordon’s invitation to join him and his father for a drink, Matt climbed out of the Bentley and walked towards his Ford. Gordon climbed out too, and accompanied him across the garage.

  “Thanks for coming along as adviser, and thanks for your advice,” he said. “I only wish – ”

  “You only wish the Yard could help you more,” Matt finished for him, and nearly added, “So do I, mate. So do I.”

  He stopped himself, just in time. The policeman side of him remembered that the Force must give a show of solidarity to outsiders. Instead, he said, “Here is the list of private investigators. Go ahead and ring them straight away. As for me – ”

  Hope flared up in Gordon’s eyes.

  “As for you? Does that mean the Yard might be taking action after all?”

  “It only means that I shall be taking action,” Matt said. “I’m going home to think things out, and then I’ll ring Commander Gideon. Don’t hope for too much. You’d be wise not to hope for anything. But what I can do, I will.”

  Gordon held out his hand.

  “Thanks.”

  His voice was shaky with emotion, which wasn’t surprising,

  Matt thought; few men could have been so torn with mental conflict as Gordon had been that night.

  Feeling almost as desperately mixed-up himself, Matt climbed into the Ford and drove off swiftly. Half an hour later, he was home in the little Bayswater flat where he lived with Netta Honiwell, a woman who could not be his wife (her husband had long refused a divorce) but who had done the next best thing and taken his name. In this tricky domestic situation – especially awkward for a senior Yard man because of the risk of bad publicity or blackmail – no one had given him and Netta greater support and understanding than George Gideon.

  Netta, a tall, striking-looking woman who had often put Gideon in mind of Kate, listened gravely while Matt poured out his problem. Then: “Ring George,” she said quietly. “Don’t wait to think out what to say. Just ring him and let him know the whole position. He’ll have the answer, if anyone does.”

  “He’ll have it all right,” Matt said sharply. Perhaps he was a little jealous of Netta’s belief in the all-knowing George. “And I’m bloody certain what it will be.”

  Netta shrugged.

  “Whatever it is, you’ll feel better when you’ve confided in him. That’s if you can reach him,” she added suddenly. “He’s involved in some business down on the Wellesley Estate. The last T.V. news showed a film of him making a speech about vigilantes.” She smiled fleetingly. “He didn’t only make a speech. In one shot, he was actually having a punch-up with some agitator.”

  Matt’s misgivings deepened. He knew about the Wellesley situation, of course; the thought of that Estate – and the total breakdown of law and order there – was a shadow lurking at the back of almost every policeman’s mind. If Gideon had been heavily involved in that, he’d be dead tired by now, and this was the last moment to approach him. But if time was as short as Brodnik said –

  Netta probably sensed his doubts. But if she did, womanlike, she airily dismissed them.

  “While you’re ringing George, I’ll get you something to eat and a cup of tea. I bet you haven’t eaten or drunk anything all day.”

  She walked into their bright little kitchenette, the door banging behind her as Matt started dialling Gideon’s home number.

  Penny came on the line. Her father and mother were both out, she reported. Kate was with a friend who had been taken to hospital, and George was at Wellesley police station, taking personal charge of an inquiry. In an emergency he could be reached there, she said; and she passed on the number.

  Matt dialled it in a state of greater uncertainty than ever, but somehow he managed to infuse authority into his voice when a sergeant answered.

  “This is Chief Detective Superintendent Honiwell. I would like to speak to Commander Gideon on a matter of extreme urgency.”

  “Just one moment, sir.”

  A moment was all it was before Gideon came on the line.

  “Hullo, Matt. I had an idea you’d be ringing before the night was out. What did your seer see?”

  It was entirely typical of Gideon that the moment Matt’s name had been mentioned, everything else that had happened that evening dropped out of his mind, leaving him free to concentrate on the Cargill case alone. He sounded very tired,
but that was the only sign that he had had a single other thing to worry about that night.

  Encouraged, Matt embarked on a crisp, but detailed, description of all that Brodnik had said, and the quandary in which he himself had been placed.

  “The point is this, George,” he ended breathlessly, “Since Barbara Cargill was kidnapped, we have several times pulled out all the stops – used literally thousands of men – following the faintest, feeblest leads. Now we’ve got a positive assertion from a man whose powers are highly respected by the police of three countries. I know it’s unsupported E.S.P. testimony – I have private doubts myself about its likelihood of being true – but surely to God we don’t have to let Gordon carry the whole brunt of following it up?”

  There was a pause. Then Gideon said slowly: “What are you really asking me to do, Matt? Do you want me to authorise you to go to town on this, just as though it was a normal lead?”

  “I suppose that’s what it amounts to – yes.”

  Gideon’s tone sharpened.

  “You mean you want thousands of men – the two hundred Brodnik asked for won’t be enough – to drop all their other duties, however urgent, and start searching for a dream cottage halfway up a hill? And what do they do when they find it? What grounds would they have for applying for a search warrant? You haven’t a shred of solid evidence to back all this up – and you yourself admit that the whole idea of kidnappers using a place like that as a base is beyond all feasibility! You’d be sending a vast body of policemen on an indefinite trip to Cloud Cuckoo Land. I can’t take the responsibility for that. And I can’t allow you to.”

  “But, George – ”

  “No buts’, please, Matt. You’ve put Gordon Cargill on to the best private inquiry men in London. If they come up with anything concrete – the slightest hint, for example, that such a place really exists, and that some questions really need asking about the behaviour of its occupants – then I’ll agree to the whole situation being reviewed. But until or unless that happens there’s only one answer I can give. No, Matt. N-O.”