The Scene of the Crime

by John Creasey

  He was pushing when he was struck savagely on the back of the head by a man he did not even see.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Fear

  Payne struck the little man twice, each time savagely, heard him gasp, and saw him falling. He stopped him, took his weight, and dragged him farther into the garage. A car passed with its headlights on and dipped, but no one else appeared. He went to the door and pulled it to again, then put on the light. It shone on the ugly man’s face, the thick slack lips. There was a trickle of blood on his right temple. Payne knelt down beside him and felt his pulse; it seemed quite steady. Payne himself was breathing very heavily. He lit a cigarette, and fought against the temptation to go indoors and get himself a drink.

  He had realised that he was being followed for the past few days, and had seen men going in and out of the garden of the empty house across the road, as well as following him in a car now and again. He had known real fear almost for the first time, and one thing had been vital: to find out who the men were. One was a little, ugly chap, surely too small to be a policeman. That was Payne’s chief hope.

  Payne had arranged to take Gwen and the children to a picture palace, and leave them there. He had stayed away from the house long enough to allow the man to go snooping, and the tactics had worked perfectly. But now that he had the man at his feet, he did not know what to do.

  He spread the coat wide, dipped into the inside pocket, found a shiny leather wallet, and took it out. He was almost too frightened to open it, for fear of what he might find; he had never felt like this before. His teeth were clamped together when he opened the wallet, took out some cards including a driving licence, saw that the man had several five pound notes with him—and then found a card which looked very different from the rest. He gulped, and carried it close to the light.

  There it was: Detective Sergeant Charles Fox, Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard, S.W.1.

  Payne moaned, sotto voce: “Oh, God, oh God.” At least there was only one of them – he had never seen two together, just one at a time.

  There was still hope.

  The man on the floor did not stir. The trickle of blood was much thicker. Payne stood up, unlocked the workshop door and switched on the bright light, then came back and lifted the man up; he was unexpectedly heavy. Payne stretched him out on an old bench, used for the garden in the summer, and filled a jug with water, hesitated, and then let it fall slowly on to the man’s face. Almost at once there was a reaction; the eyes screwed up, the nose and lips twitched. Payne poured more freely, and Fox gasped.

  He opened his eyes.

  Payne said: “Don’t move and don’t shout. This place is soundproof.”

  Small bright eyes in the monkey like face were staring at him intently. He wanted to strike the man just for the sake of hurting, but kept his hands by his side, and fought to breathe evenly. He saw that the water had mixed with the blood, thinning it, so that now the whole of one side of the man’s face was tinged pink.

  “Who else knows you’re on to me?” he demanded.

  He thought: If I’m wrong about the other man, I’ll be all right. If he’s doing this off his own bat, I can put him away, and there’ll be nothing to worry about. He seemed to hear his own voice in the thoughts, and deep down within him he knew that he was deceiving himself.

  He gripped the man’s shoulder, and shook vigorously.

  “Come on, tell me who else knows you’re on to me?”

  The man’s lips moved, and he said very huskily: “Everyone at the Yard.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  “What makes you think I would lie to you?” the man asked weakly. What was his name? Fox, yes, that was right, Fox. “The whole Department’s after you, Payne. You’ll only make it worse for yourself if you don’t let me go”

  Payne said, savagely: “That’s a lie and you know it. You’ve come snooping by yourself, haven’t you? Policemen don’t hunt in ones, they hunt in pairs. You’re just following a hunch, you’re in this by yourself. Come on, admit it.”

  “If I don’t report back by twelve o’clock, they’ll send a Squad car here.” Fox’s voice was a little stronger.

  Payne said, thinly: “We’ll see about that, we’ll wait until twelve o’clock.”

  There was no way to be sure, but he believed that the other was lying; he thought he saw the fear in his eyes. He himself felt better. He raised the man’s head and pressed roughly, felt him wince, but satisfied himself that the skull wasn’t seriously damaged. He let the head fall, quite gently, picked up an old raincoat – the one he had used for the Anderson raid, and which he used when working in here if it were cold – and bundled it up into a rough pillow.

  “Make a sound, and I’ll gum your lips up,” he threatened. “Just answer my questions. Who put you on to me?”

  Fox spoke in the stronger, husky voice. “There are hundreds of detectives at the Yard. Hundreds of them. When we want a killer, we put every man we’ve got on to hunting for him. We question everyone who might be able to help. We spend weeks, even months concentrating on the job, and sooner or later something cracks. You were seen at Alice Murray’s place the night you killed her—and seen coming out of that estate agent’s yesterday. That’s how we got on to you.”

  Payne thought: God! Because of that bloody house!

  Then he thought: What will Gwen say?

  The question terrified him, driving him near to a frenzy of panic. He had left her so happy – the children, too. He had hidden his private fears from them, he was sure that none of them had the slightest idea that he had been watched and followed.

  They must never know.

  Fox said, in his husky, matter-of-fact way: “You’ll only make it worse for yourself if you don’t give yourself up, Payne. Let me take you in, and I’ll make it as easy as I can for you.” When Payne didn’t answer, he went on: “If you’re co-operative it can make a lot of difference, but if you leave me here and go on the run, you’ll be hunted down like a beast. Ever thought what that would be like? You’d be afraid of being, seen anywhere, and you’d always be on the move. You’d be hungry and thirsty all the time.”

  Payne still didn’t speak.

  “Every newspaper would have your photograph and they’d build it up,” Fox went on. “You know that, Payne. You’d get ten times as much newspaper space if you run for it, especially if you injure me.”

  He did not seem in any way frightened, but watched Payne closely. Payne followed everything he said while his own thoughts were darting to and fro.

  “It will be far worse for your wife and family,” Fox continued. “I’ve seen quite a lot of them in the past few days. They’re nice people. Imagine what it would be like if every time they opened a newspaper they saw your photograph—probably saw pictures of the bloodhounds after you. What do you think it would do to them, Payne? It would be bad enough if they come back tonight and found you’d been taken to the Yard, but Superintendent West would be here, he’d break it to them. He’d make it just as easy as he could, and he would for you, too. But if you don’t let me take you along, it will be hell for them. You’re not going to send them to hell, are you, Payne?”

  Payne lashed out, striking him three times in the face, each a savage, agonising blow. Fox gasped with pain, and drew in a shuddering breath, his whole body hunched up as if to help fend off another attack.

  Standing over him, glaring, Payne said thickly: “Don’t talk about my family again. Understand that? Don’t talk about them. They’re not going to know. They’ll never know.”

  Fox felt blood trickling into his mouth from his nose, and his jaw felt as if it were broken, but the way Payne spoke and the significance of what he said slashed through the pain.

  “What the devil—” he began.

  “I told you to shut up!” Payne rasped, and struck him aga
in, a cruel blow on the mouth. “They’re never going to know.” He began to look about him, and was breathing hissingly through parted lips. “I can’t do that to them, I can’t let them down,” he said. “They’re never going to know.”

  “Listen, Payne,” Fox made himself say. He found it almost impossible to get words out, his mouth was so painful, and his lips were already swelling. “You don’t know what you’re saying. The Yard will catch up with you whatever you do to me. They’ll have to know.”

  “They’re never going to know,” Payne breathed. “And you’re not going to get me. I wasn’t born to be hanged.” He took in a shuddering breath, then looked about him wildly, snatched up some of the wadding in which jewellery was wrapped, and stuffed a wadge into Fox’s mouth. Fox tried to spit it out, and on the instant it was stained with blood, but Payne rammed it in. Fox began to cough and choke. Payne was muttering to himself all the time – while he snatched up a piece of rope and bound the other’s ankles, found a smaller piece and bound his wrists. Fox edged himself desperately to one side, still choking and coughing, trying desperately to breathe through his nostrils. He could see only a moving blur, and knew what Payne was doing but he could not help himself.

  Payne stood back from him.

  “I hope you rot,” he said, savagely, and then he raised his hands and stared at the little gas burner beneath the furnace for melting down the silver and gold. He began to grin, a slashing, evil grin, and there was actually laughter in his eyes. “You’ll rot all right. You’ve done all the harm you’ll ever do!” He stretched across Fox, and turned on the gas tap; the gas began to hiss. “Hear that? That’s gas, that’ll kill you, you won’t last for half an hour. The workshop’s almost sealed up, see, I made sure that no one could sneak up on me.” He thrust his face forward in an animal gloating, and then he backed towards the door. He saw Fox raise his head, saw the glint in the man’s eyes, and knew that he understood.

  He went out, slammed the door, and locked it. He did not think twice about the killing, murder seemed part of his life; he had wanted to kill Fox.

  Across the road, Martin called Scoopy and Richard called Richard West, were standing just in sight of the garage and the small semi-detached house. They had arrived nearly half an hour before, parked their cycles some distance away, and gone into the garden of the empty house after Fox had left for Payne’s garage. They had seen a little, but were not sure exactly what had happened. When Fox – the man whom Martin had recognised from the Yard – had gone into the garage, they had felt a thrill of excitement tinged on Martin’s side with a kind of despair; everything seemed to be so obvious now, and the man Payne was a crook.

  Martin kept seeing the daughter in his mind’s eye.

  He had never felt like this about a girl before. He had noticed the prettier ones, and gone into slightly sheepish or over hilarious detail about vital statistics with other boys, and felt an occasional stirring of interest, but never had a girl made such an impression on him as Hilda Payne. It had happened almost the first moment he had set eyes on her, when she had got out of the little Austin, stood up, and looked straight at him. His heart had begun to beat very fast with a most unfamiliar excitement, and that had continued. He felt as if he were transported out of his every day world to a new one which promised fresh understanding and delights.

  For the first time in his sixteen years, he had gone to bed obsessed by a girl, had lain awake for an hour or more thinking of her, and had woken with the thought of her vivid on his mind. It had not faded, as he knew that his mother hoped and his father thought it would. He found himself making excuses to watch Cornerways, in case Hilda – he had learned the name from Mrs. Montifiore – called again. He kept reminding himself that Mrs. Montifiore had told him that the Paynes hoped to move in during the Spring – say, in a month’s time. He already knew the girl, so there would be no need to waste time scraping an acquaintance. In fact the very next time she came, he had decided, he would go across and speak to her. He could tell that she liked him; and he had never seen anyone with that kind of half smile before – rather as if she were inviting him to come and talk to her.

  Then, he had recognised Fox.

  When he had realised the truth, it had almost frightened him.

  He did not care at all about Payne, no one who had met the man took to him, but Hilda – what would happen to her if her father was proved to be a crook? What chance had he, the son of a C.I.D. superintendent, of becoming friendly with the daughter of a man who was in prison? It was all very well thinking that the girl wasn’t responsible for her father, but – what would people say? What would the neighbours of Bell Street do, for instance?

  Even if Hilda and her mother and brother came, it would be impossible for them to settle in a new neighbourhood when everyone knew the truth. He, Martin West, wouldn’t care what people said, wouldn’t care what his own mother or father said, but – how many others would be helpful and understanding?

  He felt that he had to find out the truth, and Richard had not hesitated to say ‘yes’ when he had suggested coming here to see if Fox or other men from Scotland Yard were watching Payne’s house. If they were, it implied that they believed Payne guilty of a serious crime.

  After Fox had gone into the garage, Payne had driven up in his Austin, and gone past the approach to the garage, then walked back. That in itself had been surprising; why hadn’t he pulled up right outside his own house even if he didn’t want to drive in? The boys had seen him approach the garage on foot, but were too far away to notice anything, or see what happened, but they saw the garage doors close.

  Richard said: “What are we going to do, Scoop?”

  “I don’t know,” Martin had to admit.

  “Do you think that Yard chap is all right?”

  “He can look after himself, take it from me,” Martin said. “All of these chaps are thoroughly well trained in judo and all kinds of tricks. I expect he’s questioning Payne.”

  “I suppose so,” Richard conceded, and then he added more brightly: “Yes, I bet that’s it! Scoop, I bet I see exactly what’s happened! I’ll bet Payne knew the Yard man was coming to question him, and didn’t want his wife or the family to hear so he arranged to meet the Yard man here when they’d gone out. That all adds up, doesn’t it?”

  Martin said, slowly: “Yes, I suppose it does.”

  “Well, it was your idea!” Richard spoke with urgent eagerness. “I only elaborated it, but when you come to think, it makes sense. I mean, look how often Dad goes and talks to people when he simply wants to get information from them. He says that a quiet chat, when no one else can overhear and the man you’re questioning isn’t worried about what his friends or his family will think, often does a world of good. And he says it’s surprising how often a suspect isn’t the crook.”

  Martin said, more brightly: “Yes, so he does.”

  “If you ask me, this man from the Yard is having it out with Payne,” went on Richard. “They may be there for a long time yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t go into the house, soon. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t one of those cases where the wrong man is being suspected. After all, Dad didn’t seem to know anything about it, and if it were a big case, he would know something.”

  “I thought he snapped a bit,” Martin observed, thoughtfully, “as if he didn’t want us to know what he knew. But I daresay you’re right. It’s dark enough now, let’s go a bit closer. You game?”

  “You just try to keep me away!”

  They moved their bicycles to the garden of the empty house, and walked towards Payne’s place on the opposite side of the road. As they drew level, they heard a door slam, and two men say something. Then a glow of light which appeared to come from the back of the garage was shut out. Soon there were footsteps, and another door slammed.

  “There you are!” Richard said triumphantly. “They’ve gone
into the house.”

  “I only heard one pair of footsteps,” Martin objected.

  “Oh, you’re just being difficult. How could you be sure? It’s only a step, and the door made a hell of a lot of noise, anyhow. Look! A light’s gone on. I wouldn’t mind betting they’ve gone over there to have a drink, they’re probably the best of friends by now. Scoop, don’t you think we ought to go back? If we get to the club late, no one will ask us any questions, but if we don’t go at all we can’t lie to Mum and Dad.”

  Martin didn’t answer.

  “Scoop, don’t stand there like a stuffed dummy! We ought to put in an appearance, if nothing else. It must be well after eight o’clock, and—”

  “Tell you what,” Scoopy interrupted, with an elder brother’s authority, “you go to the club and give my apologies, and then go home at the usual time. If I’m not there, tell Dad where I am. Then I’ll be able to hang about and see Hilda—Hilda Payne.” In the dim street light, he looked at his brother appealingly, as if he were pleading not to be called crazy. They stood quietly for what seemed a long time, with a few cars passing, and two buses thundering along in this straight stretch of road.

  Then Richard said abruptly: “All right, Scoop.”

  “Thanks, old chap!”

  “I can imagine what it’s like if you feel like that about a girl,” Richard said, with earnest understanding. “I hope everything works out all right, Scoop.” He seemed a little overcome, and turned and strode away; two minutes later, Martin saw him wheeling his bicycle out of the garden, saw the lights go on, and watched the red lamp fading in the distance.

  Good old Fish!

  Now, Martin crossed the road, and went cautiously into Payne’s garage.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Like Father Like Son