The Executioners

by John Creasey

  Copyright & Information

  The Executioners

  First published in 1967

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1967-2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755135601 9780755135608 Print

  0755138937 9780755138937 Kindle

  0755137272 9780755137275 Epub

  0755154886 9780755154883 Epdf

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.

  Chapter One

  Freedom

  “Well, Chayter,” the Governor said, “you’ll find things very different from what they were twenty years ago.”

  Chayter said stiffly: “Yes, sir.”

  “Relax, man,” urged the Governor. “I want to help you if I can.”

  “You’re very good, sir,” said Chayter. There was no sign of relaxation in his manner; his tall, lean body, hardened by his twenty years of prison life, its rigorous exercise and discipline, did not move an inch. He stood to attention, like a man before his commanding officer. His eyes, pale grey, were clear and direct as he returned Governor Wardle’s gaze; whatever else prison had done, it had not made him furtive.

  Wardle, a broad, fleshy, austere-looking man who had joined the prison service thirty years earlier, pursed his rather flat lips, obviously in disapproval, perhaps with some puzzlement.

  “You’ve asked not to go to a training hostel, as you have independent means and I have had Home Office authority to allow you to go straight out.”

  “I appreciate that, sir.”

  “When you leave here, you’ll need friends and relations, and you won’t find prejudices formed years ago much good to you,” the Governor said. “This is a time for bygones to be bygones.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, sir.” Chayter had a clear, pleasing voice, that of a cultured man; prison may have hardened his body and roughened his hands, but it had not affected his voice. There was not even the tendency to speak out of the side of his mouth, a habit acquired by practically all long-term prisoners. Perhaps his years in the prison library explained that.

  What had happened to his mind? the Governor wondered, a little resentful that he was being given no inkling of it.

  “Your brother would like to see you,” he declared. “You know that.” He himself had seen the letter to Chayter from his brother; it had been given the usual formal reading, the fate of all letters to prisoners, and been sent to the Governor as of special interest because it was to a long-term prisoner soon to be released. “I spoke to him on the telephone, and I’ve no doubt about his sincerity.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Chayter’s voice was sharper; disapproving. “You’ll be well advised to go straight to him,” the Governor continued; after all there was no one else. But there was a flagging in his manner, as if he were beginning to realise that he could not make any impression on this man who was so aloof. “There’s a room for you with him, for as long as you wish.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  Sharply, Wardle asked: “Where will you go?”

  “I’ll decide when I’m out of here, sir.”

  “You don’t want an empty mind when you leave, Chayter. You need to have your decisions made easy for a few weeks, at least. The readjustment is bound to take time.”

  “Naturally, sir.”

  Wardle, nettled, sat back, well filling his swivel chair.

  They stared at each other for several seconds, each face expressionless. Chayter was already dressed in a loose-fitting suit of good quality. At forty-five, his hair was still more black than grey. His features were good, and though a little too angular, this angularity gave him a youthful appearance that was belied only by the expression in his eyes.

  “Is there anything you would like to ask me?” suggested Wardle, at last. “I will do anything within my power.”

  “There is one thing, sir.”

  “What is that?”

  “Make sure I don’t have to meet newspapermen when I leave, sir,”

  “I’ll see to it,” promised Wardle. “You’ll be released a day before the official time, and if you wish, you can be taken out by one of the staff cars. You may find the Press at the station or the bus depot, of course. I can’t do anything to help you once you’ve actually left—unless you’d like to be taken to another town, near by. We could arrange that. Men from here are always recognised in Manchester.”

  “I can imagine that, sir,” said Chayter. “Could you manage Stockport?”

  “Why Stockport?”

  “It’s on the way south,” Chayter answered. That was the first time he had omitted ‘sir’ from any sentence, and now a hint of impatience crept into his manner. “It’s entirely up to you, sir.”

  “You’ll get your instructions in the morning,” Wardle said, curtly. He nodded a brief dismissal.

  Chayter turned on his heel with military precision. Ever since those massive iron gates had closed behind him he had been a model prisoner, every movement, every response, every word precise and in complete conformation with the rules. It was as if he had regarded his sentence as one he could endure best if he forced his body to accept without question the prison’s discipline – his mind was another matter.

  He reached the door.

  “You know, Chayter, you would be well advised to go to your brother,” Wardle repeated, unable quite to accept failure with decency and reserve. “He assured me – as he assured you – that his wife is perfectly willing to make a h
ome for you as long as you need one. I’ve every reason to believe that.”

  “I’m sure you have, sir. Thank you. Is that all?”

  Wardle almost barked: “Yes. That’s all.”

  Chayter went out, the warder on duty stretching forward to shut the door behind him. Chayter walked smartly along the corridor, to his cell. The only noise was the sharp click-click of heels on the stone floors, and the rap of keys on metal, but these seemed to accentuate the quiet stillness.

  The warders whom he passed looked at him with a kind of resigned curiosity. He showed no acknowledgment of their existence. He never had. There had been no need to reprimand him, no need of a legitimate word of complaint, yet no member of the staff, no one amongst his fellow prisoners, had come near enough to him mentally or spiritually to like or dislike him.

  Now he sat on his hard bed, his for most of the past twenty years, and picked up a newspaper, one of the privileges for prisoners soon to be released; newspapers and television helped a man adjust himself to the almost unbearable transition from the monastic loneliness of prison to the bustle and speed of life outside.

  Superintendent Roger West of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard sat at the wheel of his car in a traffic block in Piccadilly, irritated by the delay, by the suffocating smell of exhaust fumes, the noise, the movement along the pavements, the endless flow of traffic. A minute’s standstill at the lights seemed interminable. His desk at the Yard was crammed with papers needing urgent attention, he had just come from an abortive inquiry about a bank raid; it was one of those days. It was mid-May, but the sky was so overcast that the lights at the Circus showed up brightly; any moment rain was going to smash down in a torrential shower. There were times when Roger longed to get away from this madhouse of noise, stench, and hustle. Thought of some pleasant quiet place filled him with longing.

  The line of traffic began to move. The driver of a red M.G. in front stalled his engine. Damned fool, thought Roger crossly, if a man couldn’t drive, he shouldn’t inflict himself on London’s crowded thoroughfares. New traffic flowed past him on either side, increasing his exasperation. At last the M.G. lurched forward, then suddenly its brake lights glowed and Roger, already on the move, was forced to stop with a jarring suddenness. What the hell—?

  The traffic lights had turned red again.

  “Of all the—” began Roger.

  A car drew up alongside, so close that even an old hand at London’s traffic almost winced. Bloody fool of a driver. An attractive woman with a flamboyant hat was at the wheel, and as she stopped she glanced at him, half-apologetic, half-nervous, conscious of his scowl. Roger noted that she had large blue eyes, generously pencilled. For some reason they amused him.

  His expression cleared, and he raised his hand. She gave a grateful smile and waved back – then started off ahead of him, while a car behind tooted a warning that the lights had turned green.

  The woman’s car, a Hillman Minx, cut across the bows of a taxi too sharply, Roger saw the smile the woman gave the driver, and laughed. Suddenly, his mood had changed, and his luck with it. He had an almost clear run down Haymarket, an easy one around Trafalgar Square, and all lights were green for him. The Square was almost deserted except for the masses of pigeons, disconsolate in rain that was already coming down in heavy drops. He swung into Whitehall, going too fast, and had a sudden spasm of fear, for a young couple, hand in hand, were racing across towards the Horse Guards. Alarm showed on their faces as they realised how fast the car was travelling. Roger braked, swerved, missed them by a couple of feet; had his reaction been a split second slower, he would have run them down. Very sober, he kept to a steady thirty miles an hour. Past the Cenotaph where the dead of two wars were remembered in stone but, just then, by no man or woman; all were in too much hurry to escape the rain. He passed the great Ministry Buildings, and the end of Downing Street, and reached the little turning, Parliament Street, which led to New Scotland Yard.

  A policeman on duty at the gates, rain making his black cape as shiny as burnished ebony, saluted. Roger nodded, parked in a narrow space carefully and precisely, and walked up the tall flight of stone steps leading to the main hall. He was still a little subdued; rueful about his impatience and his attitudes. What went on in a man with so much to be thankful for, to make him burn with impatience as he had done in the car? Why should a woman he had never seen before and would almost certainly never see again, change his mood so completely? He had the job he wanted, in fact he loved; detection and the suppression of crime were his vocations. He had a wife who was attractive, a married life no one could hope to excel, two strapping sons of whom he was both fond and proud. If it came to that, he couldn’t complain about himself. He was as powerful and fit in the late forties as he had ever been, his flaxen hair barely touched by time. His nickname ‘Handsome’ was still – on sunny days – applicable.

  He laughed aloud at the touch of vanity that could recall these facts with such pleasure, and hurried on, his stride long, his eager movement slightly aggressive; he could never really wait to find out what needed doing next.

  Reaching his office, he saw three men approaching; the Secretary of the Metropolitan Police, the Chief Maintenance Officer, and a construction engineer from the firm now building the new ‘Scotland Yard’, some way down the river. It was hard to believe that this building, about which he and other old-timers were always complaining, would soon be turned over to someone else. The Criminal Investigation Department would never be the same.

  “Nonsense,” he said as he opened the door.

  “What’s that, sir?” a man at another door asked,

  This was Detective-Sergeant Frisby, for the time being Roger’s chief assistant, at once the mildest-natured and the most persistent and diligent man imaginable. He was also efficient. His appearance, slightly mouselike and drained of colour, was against him. He should have been an expert in, say, fingerprints or ballistics or photography, thought Roger, when this slight oddity of appearance would not have impeded his chances of promotion. As it was, he was a detectivesergeant at forty-nine, and likely to remain so until retirement. Roger had known him vaguely for over twenty-five years, more closely in the past few months when he had been stand-in for Cope, Roger’s regular aide. Yet apart from learning more about his patience and his even temper, Roger felt no nearer understanding the man. Everything about Frisby was neutral – or appeared to be so. Now he wore a midgrey suit, well pressed, well brushed, well cut; but locking as if it had been made for someone else.

  “Talking to myself,” Roger said, gruffly; and because of the slightly pathetic way Frisby looked at him, he went on jocularly: “First sign of senility, don’t they say?”

  “Something like that,” agreed Frisby. “Chayter’s out, sir.”

  “Chayter?” Roger echoed. The name did not mean anything to him at that moment, and he rounded his desk and sat down. Placed carefully beneath an old brass two-ounce weight was a single sheet of paper, on which was typed:

  Cecil Rochester Chayter was released from Strangeways at three o’clock this afternoon. A.F.

  Chayter!

  Roger darted a look at the detective-sergeant, and as his thoughts raced back over the years he remembered that Frisby had been with him on this investigation – an inquiry into the murder of an attractive young woman. There was no doubt that Chayter had killed her. He claimed that he had thought she was his fiancée. Finding her in bed with another man he had killed her in a fit of passionate rage, and nearly killed the man she was with. Only after she was dead had he discovered her to be the co-tenant of his fiancée’s flat, and a complete stranger to him. That was the story he told, and no one knew whether it was true. Probably no one ever would. But there had been extenuating circumstances, which was why, many people believed, his sentence of death was later commuted.

  His fiancée had neither been to visit him before or after his trial for the murder of a girl he had not known. Roger and Frisby had been Detective Off
icers at the time; now Roger had come up through every stage, Sergeant, Inspector, Chief Inspector, Superintendent, Chief Detective Superintendent; they must be about the same age.

  “I remember,” he said quietly.

  “I thought you would.”

  “You were never convinced of his guilt, were you?”

  “I was never sure he had a fair trial,” amended Frisby.

  “There was a hate campaign against him, remember.” He paused, then muttered: “Twenty-one years.”

  “It must be.”

  “He’s been inside for nearly twenty.”

  “Poor devil,” Roger said, mechanically.

  “As he killed the girl, I suppose he’s lucky to be alive,” said Frisby reminiscently, seeing again Captain Cecil Chayter, R.A., D.S.O., M.C., when being charged; stiff as a ramrod he had stood – both at his trial and his sentence.

  “I suppose so,” Roger said. “Well, he wasn’t one of the wild ones who threatened to have our necks for putting him inside.” He sat down heavily. “Who told us?”

  “The usual Home Office letter.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “We don’t know yet,” said Frisby. He could have added: “That was a silly question.”

  Roger said: “Well, we’ll have to find out, and keep an eye on him for a while.” After a pause, he went on: “He’s not the type to cause us any trouble, is he?”

  “Odd you should say that.”

  “What’s odd about it?”

  “Still waters run deep,” Frisby said. “I never thought I knew what was going through that chap’s mind. You said the same thing, at the time.” Frisby caught his breath, and stood upright, and his tone changed. “Not that you’d remember, sir.”

  There was no need for that change of manner; it showed the ingrained habit of respect, outward respect at least, for Roger’s rank, and was tantamount to an apology for presuming on old acquaintance. The fact that Frisby thought it necessary, in these circumstances, proved that he did not know Roger very well. They must have a chat over a pint, Roger reflected, and he could try to break Frisby down.