by John Creasey
“I see what you mean,” Roger said.
“Take it from me, it’s Ruth.”
“Give me anything I can use as evidence, and I’ll act.”
“I spend half my time looking for it,” Brammer confessed. “Ruth sleeps late in the mornings and stays up half the night. So I look half dead.” He drew deeply on his cigarette. “How do you feel about it?”
“Oh, I enjoy it,” Roger said dryly.
“Sooner or later she’s going to turn the heat on you,” Brammer said. “You put her uncle inside the last time. But she’ll get a kick out of seeing you dancing about like a cat on hot bricks first. Any ideas?” he asked abruptly.
“I told you,” said Roger. “No.”
Brammer shrugged.
“What worried you so much about Pauline Weston?” Roger asked mildly.
“I just don’t trust Ruth as far as I can see her,” Brammer said. “She hates—and she’d gloat over seeing Pauline in trouble.” He grinned. “I had quite a lot of bother with Pauline, after telling Ruth to lay off.”
“Why?”
“Pauline thinks it would be a good idea if she kept friendly with Charles Mortimer and got to know other boyfriends Ruth amuses herself with.”
“You keep Pauline out of trouble,” Roger advised.
“You’ll have to try.” Brammer showed a kind of sardonic amusement. “She wants to help. It isn’t all her fault, either. She knows a man who really feels badly about the crime wave—a lawyer named Matthewson. Have you heard of him?”
“Vaguely—”
“You’ll be hearing more,” Brammer said. “Matthewson’s a mild-mannered middle-aged man, but he’s dynamite. Hann-Gorlay’s a forceful personality with plenty of money. They’ll form a kind of vigilante organization, still calling it the Citizens’ League, and—”
Roger said sharply: “That’s only talk.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Brammer seemed to leer. “Vigilantes will relieve the police of a lot of work, won’t they?”
“It’s crazy. They’ll make the crooks worse—make ’em more daring.”
“Not on your life.”
Roger said: “I tell you it’s madness.”
“Well, try to stop it,” Brammer said.
Roger didn’t speak.
“You know you can’t,” Brammer went on, “unless you can put an end to the campaign. Which brings me to Ruth again. She’s even thicker than she used to be with Hann-Gorlay—and getting a bigger laugh. Take it from me, she’s behind this. But I wouldn’t like the job of telling Hann-Gorlay so.”
Roger wished he could be sure why Brammer declared himself so certain that Ruth was behind it. He put two men on to finding out whether Brammer had any particular association with the girl, or with her uncle. The only association he knew about was that Brammer had been a cub reporter at the trial of her father.
He put Detective Sergeant Peel on to probing further into that case.
“Dig everything out, Jim. Find if her father had any other relatives—how old he was when he died—were there any other children. I still can’t believe that this is a vendetta, but we may as well find out what we can.”
“I’ll drop everything else,” Peel said. “Are you going to keep a man watching Ruth all the time?”
“Yes—and he has to be armed,” Roger said. “How do you feel about things?”
“I’m just angry,” Peel said, quietly. “From the time I wake up till the time I go to bed, I’m bloody angry. That’s how a lot of the fellows are feeling. But this swine’s clever. He’s got us by the short hairs, in a way.”
“What way?”
“Well, look,” said Peel. “First of all these letters go round. Every division gets at least one. So everyone’s keyed up. Then Jackson gets killed. Then—nothing. Everyone just waits. And a lot of the chaps don’t find it all honey when they get home, either. The newspapers make their wives pretty touchy. I’ve never known anything like it. It would be better if we could keep the papers quiet for a bit.”
“They’ll calm down,” Roger said.
Peel shrugged.
The suspense of waiting to see what happened after the delivery of the letters reached its peak forty-eight hours after he had first seen one. Except for Jackson’s murder, nothing had happened. There was a general relaxing, a feeling that it had been bluff …
Police Sergeant Hennaford of the Brixton Police Station had been in the Force for twenty-five years, and could have retired on a pension and probably helped that out with a soft job. He was a bachelor, and had no desire to retire. He was a sergeant by persistence rather than through any special qualifications – a good, solid officer, who could be relied on and who had not once touched brilliance in those twenty-five years.
He was on duty outside his station, talking to a young police constable who was to start on his first beat on his own. There was nothing imaginative or highly-strung about Sergeant Hennaford. It did not occur to him that there was any reason at all why the new recruit should be thoughtful about going off on his own.
“And every time you see anything that doesn’t look right, report. Don’t go making a perishing hero out of yourself.”
“Okay, sergeant.”
“Off you go.”
The new recruit walked off.
Sergeant Hennaford stood outside the station for a few minutes. It was a bright morning, the air was crisp, it was good to be alive.
He saw the youth cycling along the street on a racing bicycle, head down, not looking where he was going. Henna-ford disapproved, but didn’t call out.
The constable reached the corner.
The cyclist jammed on his brakes. They squealed. Henna-ford looked up sharply. He saw the gun which the cyclist snatched out of his pocket, and he had just time to shout.
“Here!”
He touched the chain of his whistle with his right hand, too, but that was all. A bullet caught him in the temple and another in the chest. He heard the reports and saw the first flash.
He died as he fell.
The cyclist was round the next corner before anyone realised what had happened.
POLICE STATION MURDER
TERROR STRIKES AGAIN
DEMAND FOR GUNS FOR POLICE INCREASES
“I know,” Sloan said heavily, “the screech is getting worse, and it’ll get louder yet. There’s hardly a newspaper which hasn’t joined in. Why the hell should anyone try to force the police to take up arms? That’s what it looks like, but it just doesn’t make sense.”
“Whoever’s behind it is probably pretty sure the Home Office would never issue the order. And Parliament wouldn’t approve, anyhow.” Roger was brisk. “Someone means to scare the lights out of us, and the idiotic thing is that they’re succeeding. If you’re not safe outside the doors of a police station, where are you safe? Do you know what the Chief ’s done today?”
Sloan said: “No.”
“All security inside the Yard is tightened up. All passes have to be countersigned. No stranger is allowed in the Yard, whatever his introduction, without a severe screening. Chatworth’s trying to make sure we don’t get a smack in the eye from the inside. I—”
His telephone rang.
He listened, said: “Yes, all right,” and rang off. “That was Brammer of the Courier” he said. “He says he’s got something at his office he’d like me to see. I’m going straight along.”
“Going alone?”
“Don’t you start,” said Roger.
Yet on the way he found himself looking round cautiously; watching cars which drew close to him, watching youths on racing cycles and men on motor-cycles. The tension was in him, as it was in everyone.
The entrance to the editorial offices of the Courier were in a side street which led off Fleet Street. There was room to park his car. He pulled up, switched off, and started to open the door.
Two men appeared, one on either side of the car. One slammed the door on Roger, the other got in beside him.
�
�Don’t say a word, don’t make any trouble,” the man said, and the other got in the back. “We’re armed. Drive on, go down to the Embankment, then over Blackfriars Bridge. Not too fast. No tricks, mind.”
Roger sat quite still – and felt something hard press into his ribs.
Chapter Eleven
Long Chance
Roger still sat motionless. If he struggled, they would probably shoot him. The pressure against his ribs grew harder and more painful. It might not be a gun. He couldn’t be sure. A new pain stabbed at his neck – not severe but unmistakable; the cut of a knife.
He winced.
“Just drive on, West.”
The voice in his ear was from the man behind him. The touch of the knife came again, a sharp, searing cut; a moment later there was a curious warmth – blood flowing.
Roger switched on the ignition.
The moments of shocked horror had passed, and its paralysis with it. He could think. If they had intended to kill, surely they would have killed without taking this chance?
Why think that? Why not remember Jackson, with bullet-holes in his head, lying in an upstairs room in a little empty house, his body stiff with rigor mortis? Something like this must have happened to Jackson.
A crack of his elbow against one man’s ribs, a jolt of his head against the other, and he would have a chance. He only needed time to fling the door open and get out.
He started the engine.
“West,” said the man by his side, “see that little car behind—the red Morris?”
It was close behind Roger’s Rover, in the mirror.
“If you try any tricks,” the man said, “it will run you down. Don’t make any mistake at all, just drive to the end of the street and then left on the Embankment, and then across Blackfriars Bridge. You needn’t hurry and you needn’t dawdle.”
He had a cultured speaking voice; and he was young.
Roger put the car in gear, and eased off the clutch. The car moved forward slowly. The man behind him had moved back a few inches, and was out of reach of his head if he jolted it back. So the odds were heavier than they had been. He’d missed his chance. At least, he had missed one chance, but there was another – that the pair wouldn’t kill.
The longer he was with them, the better his chance of finding out more about them.
He nosed the car into a stream of traffic behind a huge lorry loaded with massive rolls of newsprint. They crawled along the street, past the tall buildings of two of Britain’s biggest newspapers. He saw three people whom he knew, newspapermen who would have taken wild risks to rescue him; even to get this story.
They passed.
“So Brammer is in this racket,” he said.
“Shut up, and just drive.”
“Are you the men who killed Prescott?”
“I told you to shut up.” That was the man by his side, pressing the gun.
Roger said swiftly, furiously: “Who the hell do you think I am? I can smack us into the back of that lorry or into traffic on the Embankment or even into the Thames, and you two wouldn’t have a chance in hell to stop it.”
Neither of them spoke, for fully a minute.
They passed the newspaper buildings and reached the Embankment. Traffic lights were against them.
“Well, why don’t you?” asked the man in the back.
“I can’t stop you guessing,” Roger growled.
They were puzzled and less sure of themselves.
He turned left, and then swung right on to Blackfriars Bridge. It was crowded with traffic, all moving fast. Soon they were driving along the wide road beyond the bridge, past small warehouses and large ones, small shops and cafes and side streets. The little red car followed. There was a lot of heavy, slow-moving traffic.
Roger had a dozen chances to draw up alongside policemen or to crash and give himself a chance. He took none of them.
If he stopped, they would shoot – and he wouldn’t be the only victim. He might live, and others might die. That was one but not the chief reason for doing what they told him. There was a long chance that they didn’t intend to kill – yet; that they had some other reason for this hold-up.
The traffic thinned, and speeded up.
“See that yellow van,” said the man by his side abruptly.
“Yes.”
“Turn right just beyond it.”
Roger slowed down. Traffic was coming the other way, and he had to stop. He put his arm out of the window to signal as the red car also stopped. He felt the pressure at his ribs and the sharp cut against his neck again. They were keyed up – and men in such a mood would be trigger-happy.
He turned into the side street, which was deserted except for one or two vans parked without their drivers.
“Slow down.”
Roger eased off the accelerator.
Then he sensed the change in their mood, in the tempo of the moment. Fear burned through him like a white-hot flame. He had no time to move or act. He felt a hand brush against his head, his hat was tipped over his eyes, a blow was smashed on the back of his head. The man at his side leaned over and grabbed the wheel.
A second blow crashed on him, and he was swallowed up in blackness.
Bill Sloan looked at the clock in the big office which he shared with other Detective Inspectors. He scowled. His big fresh-coloured face and startlingly blue eyes were unfamiliar because he was worried. He lit his pipe and looked at the clock again.
The door opened and Peel came in.
“Any news?” Peel asked.
“Not a squeak.”
“Two hours and a half,” Peel said, and left it at that.
“I wouldn’t mind the two hours plus,” Sloan said, “but he hasn’t been to the Courier, and Brammer hasn’t been in the office all the morning. I’ve had a call out for Roger for an hour, and not a squeak. I’ll have to tell Chatworth, soon.”
“This is how it happened to Jackson,” Peel said. “Why the hell does Roger always have to stick his neck out?”
“It looked normal enough,” Sloan argued. “He was sure it was Brammer. He’s seen a lot of Brammer over this business. Have you learned anything more about him?”
“Not much. He’s a Birmingham man, graduated on a Birmingham weekly paper, came down here and free-lanced on the Street twenty years ago. He did a good write-up job on the murder case where Ruth Linder’s father was convicted, became a private eye, and hasn’t looked back. Now he works exclusively for the Courier. Have you tried his home?”
“Yes,” Sloan said. “I’ve tried everywhere and anything I can short of raising the alarm. I don’t want to do that yet, for a lot of reasons. Janet West isn’t the least of them. I—”
The door was flung open, and Chatworth strode in; ‘stormed’ suited his entry better. He was massive, burly and furiously angry. His face was red and his eyes glittered.
“Where’s Chief Inspector West?” At his worst, Chatworth was always formal. “I’ve been trying to get him for the past hour.” His small, bright eyes bored into Sloan’s. “No one seems to know where he is.”
Sloan, already on his feet, drew a deep breath.
“No one does know,” he said, and fear touched them all.
During the night, Roger’s car was found in a car park in the City; there were only Roger’s fingerprints on it, and no clues.
It was ten o’clock, and Bell Street was quiet.
Janet stood between the boys’ beds. Both boys were fast asleep. She could just make out their faces and their heads against the pillows, for light came in at the window from the street lamps. Martin was making queer little puffing noises, Richard slept with hardly a sound.
Janet gritted her teeth, fought back tears, and went out and downstairs.
Bill Sloan was in the living room, standing with a whisky-and-soda in his hand, like a big, self-conscious schoolboy with a scowl on his large face. Even when Janet came in, he couldn’t get rid of the scowl and pretend that there was no real need to worry.
&nb
sp; “Only thing I can say,” he muttered, “is that it’s happened before. The trouble is that Roger’s always hitting the headlines. The devils make a bee-line for him if they want to cause a sensation.”
“As if I didn’t know,” Janet said. She was very pale, anguished, bitter as she went on: “Night after night I wonder if he’ll come back. I sit here waiting. I hear cars coming along the street, and feel like screaming when I hear them go past. I can’t help it, Bill, I hate it. Just now it – it’s ten times worse than ever, but it’s been going on for years.”
Sloan pulled at his pipe.
“He’s always pulled through.”
Janet closed her eyes, then stiffened. A car turned into Bell Street and they could hear the engine as it drew nearer. Both stared towards the window, both waited tensely for any softening in the sound of the engine, any sign that it was slowing down.
It went past.
Janet moved across to Roger’s chair, and took a cigarette from a box. Sloan hurried to light it. Janet blew smoke out, and forced a smile.
“I’ll be all right, Bill. I’m sorry I feel so bad about it. It’s this beastly campaign. It’s always pretty nerve-racking—well, it’s liable to be at any time, and a thing like this makes it worse. Mary must be feeling almost as bad as I am. Most of the wives, too. But it’s all right, you know; we realise that you’ve got to find out who’s doing it, you can’t all resign!” Her voice became a little shrill. “Don’t worry about me, Bill.”
“Just in case it makes you feel easier,” Sloan said gruffly, “we’ve put a couple of men in the street and a couple at the back. Not that I think there’s going to be any trouble here” he added, and turned almost beetroot red. “It’s just that we thought you might feel happier.”
Janet gave a funny little laugh.
“Yes, Bill. Thank you,” she said. “Oughtn’t you to go home?”
“When we’ve found Roger,” Sloan said, “I’ll go home.”
Sloan looked at the clock on the wall of the office. His eyes were red-rimmed and glassy – they hardly looked like the eyes of a real man. His big face was lined with strain. There were lines at the corners of his lips, too, and whenever he spoke his voice was harsh; grating.
It was twenty-four hours after he had seen Janet.
