by John Creasey
Janet could only see that. The police cars, the ambulances which had arrived, the crowd which was growing thicker every moment, the neighbours – all those things meant nothing. There were two uniformed police prising open the crate – and doubled up inside the crate was Roger. She could just see that it was a man.
The big arm round her waist was very tight. She looked round desperately for Martin, and saw that the patrolman’s other arm was round the boy’s shoulder.
“Easy,” one of the policemen said.
“Mind his face.”
Nails creaked out of the soft wood.
Another man moved towards them, shorter, in plain clothes, and carrying a small bag. Janet didn’t recognise him, but someone said ‘doctor’. She held her breath. She didn’t quite realise when it happened, but suddenly Martin’s hand was in hers; then he pressed close against her. A woman from one of the nearby houses came and joined them.
The patrolman lit a cigarette, then coughed.
The two men stretched Roger out on the pavement as they would stretch out a corpse.
Martin’s fingers seemed to cut into Janet’s hand.
The doctor bent over Roger, hiding his face. Janet moved forward, very slowly. In her heart she was quite sure what had happened – that he was dead. She knew that somehow she had to steel herself into looking into Roger’s expressionless face.
The doctor straightened up.
“Get him to bed—get him warm.” He swung round. “He’s alive, Mrs West.”
Janet fainted.
“Get busy,” the Yard CI said when he reached Bell Street. “Check that crate for prints, find where it was made, search every timber yard and wood factory in London. After that—”
His voice went on and on.
Janet brushed a wisp of hair from her forehead, as she heard the telephone. She was in the kitchen, getting the boys’ tea-cum-supper ready. They weren’t yet home. A young policeman moved from the hall into the front room to answer the telephone. Janet listened. She was slightly flushed from the heat of the kitchen, but looked relaxed and rested. She had slept from eight o’clock until three – from the moment she had been assured that Roger would soon come round.
Roger had been drugged, but nothing suggested that the dose would be lethal.
He was upstairs now, sleeping almost naturally, nearly free from the drug’s hold. Except for a few hypodermic needle punctures on his arm, a surface cut on the back of his neck and a bruise or two on his head, there was nothing the matter with him.
The policeman appeared.
“It’s for you, Mrs West.”
“Oh, thanks.” Janet wiped her hands on a tea towel, and hurried into the front room. “Who is it?”
“A lady, ma’am.”
“Oh. Hallo? … This is Janet West speaking.”
“Good afternoon, Mrs West,” a woman said. She had a deep, pleasing voice. “I’m so anxious to hear how Chief Inspector West is.”
“Much better, thank you. Who is that?” The voice was just a voice to Janet, and yet she felt that it was one which she would find it easy to remember.
“This is Ruth Linder,” the woman said.
“Ruth—Under.”
The woman laughed – as if the surprise in Janet’s voice amused her.
“Yes,” she said. “You will tell the Chief Inspector that I was inquiring, won’t you? And I wonder if you will tell him that I’d like to see him as soon as he’s well enough to get about.”
“I will,” Janet said.
“I may be able to help him.”
“You’re very kind.”
“Not at all, Mrs West. I’m so glad he’s better. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” echoed Janet.
She was preoccupied when she went back to the kitchen. She knew what Roger thought about Ruth Linder; knew that he would be astonished at this show of interest. Perhaps the best thing would be to telephone Sloan, at the Yard.
Sloan and Peel had looked in, and had been absurdly like children, delighted at what had happened. Chatworth had also been here. In some odd way, it was as if until they actually saw him, none of them would believe that Roger was back.
Janet telephoned Sloan, but he wasn’t there; she left a message. Then she began to lay the table. It was a quarter past six. The boys wouldn’t be long. They would come rushing in, and burst out with a torrent of questions: that awful silence would be gone.
As soon as Roger came round, she was to telephone the Yard.
She heard a tapping on the ceiling.
She dropped everything, sending a knife clattering to the floor, and raced upstairs. The constable watched her, grinning. The bedroom door was ajar, and she thrust it wide.
Roger was sitting up in bed.
He looked pale and dazed – but not foolish. He recognised her. He saw her move towards him, and must have realised in a flash how she was feeling, what had been happening here.
Janet felt his arms go around her, and then tighten, vicelike. It was a moment of ecstasy, of exaltation.
At last, she drew back.
Roger looked up at her, with his head on one side. Then deliberately took the edge of the sheet and wiped the tears from her eyes. They didn’t speak. The silence went on, for a long time, dear and precious, until Roger said huskily: “How long have I been away?”
“Darling!”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“But—”
“I swear I don’t know,” he said.
“Nearly four days,” Janet choked.
“Four—days,” Roger echoed.
As they stared at each other, the boys rushed in at the front door, the policeman spoke to them, and they came hurrying upstairs, obviously on tiptoe, and whispering excitedly.
Within fifteen minutes the Yard was sending men to the side street off Blackfriars Bridge Road, trying to check back to the time of Roger’s disappearance. Calls went out throughout London and Home Counties areas for small, red Morris Minors.
“Check ’em all, question everyone, hold anyone who hasn’t a clear alibi,” Sloan ordered.
At Bell Street, Roger was told by the doctor that he would need two or three days to recover from the doping. But he was already beginning to fret.
Roger was up but not dressed when Sloan and Peel came to see him. He’d had a meal, and was smoking. The sight of the Yard men did him good.
He talked …
“And you just don’t remember a thing,” Sloan said.
“That’s the simple truth,” said Roger. “They knocked me out when I turned into the side street. Since then I haven’t been conscious for a minute.”
“Crazy,” said Peel.
“Don’t blame me!”
“I mean, they are. Why should they—” Peel broke off.
“Judging from the number of punctures in my arm, I’ve had a shot of morphia three times each day,” Roger said. “So they meant to keep me under. But why let me go free? Why not treat me as they have the rest?” He drew hard at his cigarette. “I know, I know; we shan’t find the answer to that until we know all the answers. I’m just a blank over the last four days, Bill—tell me what’s been happening.”
Sloan talked; Roger listened and smoked.
Six policemen had been shot, including the two on watch at Bell Street; only one – a Bell Street man – was alive. He hadn’t yet recovered consciousness, and there was real risk that he wouldn’t recover.
There had also been other shooting incidents, which hadn’t involved policemen. Robbery with violence was becoming rife all over the country, with London the worst spot.
Nothing had been learned from the packing case in which Roger had been ‘delivered’. No one yet knew where it had been made. An early morning cyclist had been found who had seen a small van turn into Bell Street, about the time of the shooting. Tyre prints on the road hadn’t helped.
There had been no more warnings.
The newspaper campaign was hotter than it had ever been, and with Bra
mmer missing, the Courier was screeching even more loudly than ever.
The Wimbledon meeting over which the solicitor Matthewson had presided and which Hann-Gorlay had addressed, had been crowded. Five hundred local residents, with only one or two dissentients, voted for arms for the police and harsh reprisals on all the violent criminals caught. There had been several other meetings in and near London, with Hann-Gorlay the chief speaker and the same Rodney Matthewson in the chair.
“Hann-Gorlay’s good, by all accounts, and Matthewson brilliant in a dry way. He’s a shrewd lawyer, and keeps well on the right side of us,” Sloan explained. “But there’s a lot of talk of corps of Vigilantes.”
“Armed?” Roger asked sharply.
“No one’s said so, but I can’t see a volunteer force like that going about without guns, or weapons of some kind.”
“The bloody fools,” Roger growled.
“Listen, Roger,” Sloan said; “are you so sure? We are short of men, and a kind of peace-time Home Guard—”
“Now look here, don’t you fall for that line of argument,” Roger said gruffly. “Give us armed Vigilantes and armed police, and every young desperado in London will get hold of a gun somehow. If you oppose violence with violence you get more violence.”
Sloan said: “Our chaps didn’t have guns. They were murdered in cold blood.” His voice was rather cool; he wasn’t seeing eye-to-eye with Roger.
Roger slid into a different subject.
“Brammer’s not back, you say?”
Sloan seemed glad to switch the conversation.
“No sign or sound.” He scratched his nose then took a long look at Peel. “As you’re still off duty, Roger, you can hear about this. Two idiots broke into Brammer’s flat a couple of nights ago. They found that he had a signed photograph of Ruth Linder—signed with her love. It was probably taken just before her present Society Beauty act. They found nothing else which might have involved Brammer in this.”
Roger said softly: “So Brammer knew Ruth pretty well. You heard about her kind inquiries after me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I think I might go and see what she wanted to see me about,” Roger said. “That’s my first job.” He lit a cigarette. “I wish to hell I could get rid of the idea that it’s all a hideous hoax. I feel as if she’s simply making a fool of me, that someone is just out to make the Yard a laughing stock. Think what fun I’ve given them. They kidnap me, then send me back like a carcase, as if to say that it wasn’t worth keeping me—or even worth killing me.”
Peel grinned.
“One way of insulting you—leaving you alive because they weren’t scared of you!”
“That’s it.”
“It’s hideous all right,” Sloan said. “But it’s no hoax. They’ve got some reason for it, and don’t tell me it’s a vendetta, I won’t buy that one either.”
They looked hard at one another; Roger knew that Sloan disagreed with him strongly about arming the police, although he’d only said so by implication. Sloan was mad at the crooks; mad enough to have his judgment warped, Roger thought. The disagreement could cause constraint between them for a long time.
The telephone bell rang, and Sloan answered. The Yard was calling. As he listened, his expression told Roger and Peel that this was news.
“Yes,” he said into the telephone, “watch ’em both.” He rang off, and turned round. “Brammer’s back,” he said. “He’s just arrived at Willington Place—to see Ruth Linder. What wouldn’t I give to be able to hear what they’re talking about!”
They saw Brammer a few hours afterwards. His story was the same as Roger’s, and he had exactly the same number of needle pricks – fourteen.
He had been propped up against the doorway of his own flat; no one had seen who had brought him home.
Chapter Fourteen
Invitation
Roger pulled his car up outside the block of flats in Willington Place. The Yard man watching had given him an almost imperceptible salute as he’d passed – and by staying where he was, at the corner of the street, made it plain that he had nothing to report.
The sun was warm.
It was nearly eleven o’clock, on Roger’s third morning back at Bell Street, and his first morning officially on duty. He didn’t feel at his brightest, but didn’t feel too bad. Unless he exerted himself too much, he would be all right.
A liftboy took him up to Ruth Linder’s flat.
He hadn’t been here before, but knew that the flats had a reputation for luxury and ostentation. The reputation was justified. There were gilt mirrors, deep-piled carpets, everything that unexacting millionaires might expect.
Roger rang the bell.
He was still puzzled by Ruth Linder, but that was only part of his worry. Four days in his life were missing; he hadn’t any idea where he had been, knew what had happened to him only by what the doctors and his own common sense could tell him. The four blank days harassed him much more than he had expected.
There was much more than that, too. There were the murders; and there was the campaign. Nothing had happened since he had come round; but he knew that in every police station in London there was an air of expectancy, almost of fearful expectancy. There wasn’t a policeman, in plain-clothes or in uniform, who could feel reasonably sure that he would get home safely that night – or the next night. There wasn’t one who shirked, and the risk was spread widely; logic told everyone that none was in personal danger and yet—
One or two might be.
Brammer’s story had been published, as well as Roger’s.
The door of the flat opened. A trim maid looked up into Roger’s face, and smiled. She was not only trim, she was pretty.
“Chief Inspector West?”
“Yes.”
“Please come in; Miss Ruth is expecting you.”
‘Miss Ruth’ – spoken as if this were a family servant. Old Benny’s adopted niece had certainly found the way to make it look as if she had been born to riches.
The apartment was not so ostentatious as the passages and the hall. It was large and spacious, quietly and pleasantly decorated, with pastel blues and greens predominating.
The maid opened a door on the right of the front door, tapped and said: “Chief Inspector West, Miss Ruth.”
Ruth stood up from a couch in the window – and Brammer stood up from an armchair in the corner.
The girl looked delightful. Roger had seen her looking beautiful and fresh, but never quite like this. Her dark hair shone, her hazel eyes glowed. It was almost as if she were younger – happier, perhaps. Certainly there was a change in her.
Roger had seen girls – women – looking like that before – with the radiance of being in love.
Brammer was different; Brammer with his dark, restless eyes and his hooked nose and thin, thrusting lips, had an almost satyrish look.
Roger glanced from him back to the girl.
“I’m very glad you’ve come,” Ruth said, as if she meant it. “As soon as I knew when you were coming, I asked Mr Brammer if he’d be present, too. But do sit down. Will you have a drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“Coffee—or tea?”
“Well—coffee.”
She pressed a bell push near the fireplace. The maid came in, and Ruth ordered coffee, while Brammer dropped back into his chair, and glowered. Here was Beauty and the Beast, new version. In Brammer’s room there was a photograph of Beauty, signed with her love.
The maid went out.
“You see,” said Ruth to Roger, “I think we should be very frank with each other, Chief Inspector. I know that Bram here has been suggesting to you that I am actually responsible for this—ah—campaign.”
She paused, smiling; her eyes seemed to suggest that the very thought was ridiculous – and also, that she was laughing at Roger.
Roger said dryly: “Are you?”
She laughed, but didn’t give a direct answer.
“And I want to tell you
that I think he is,” she said.
Roger didn’t try to find an answer to that one. The girl’s laughter put gold into her eyes. Brammer didn’t move. He was sitting back with the tips of his fingers pressed together and his long legs stretched out. He looked at Ruth without any expression, then back at Roger.
The room was very quiet.
“She’s fooling you,” Brammer said. “She hates the pair of us—you because you put her Uncle Benny inside, me because I did the story on her father before he was hanged. I guarantee that this case will prove that murder can be hereditary.” His voice had the lash of anger, although it was quiet and almost drawling. “Don’t make any mistake, Handsome—she means to make monkeys out of both of us.”
“How difficult,” murmured Ruth, “with Chief Inspector West!” Her gaze mocked Brammer. “I’ve discovered something about Bram, Chief Inspector.”
“At one time and another I’ve discovered a lot about both of you,” Roger said mildly.
Ruth laughed.
“I’m sure you have. But have you discovered that he is insane? Fanaticism is a form of insanity, isn’t it? He is, you know. It’s because he has always hated violence. I don’t quite know how it began, but I do know that the one thing that can make him violent is violence!” Her eyes did all the laughing for her. “He rages and froths at the mouth because of it. He is absolutely beside himself with rage because of the violence of all these young criminals. He doesn’t think the police can find the answer to the crime wave—as they are. He thinks that the one answer to crimes of violence is violence. You know how passionately he’s pleaded for arms for the police, don’t you? How he’s worked up this campaign. He says that it’s the newspaper’s fault, but he’s really behind it. It’s boosting circulation very well, so the management doesn’t object.”
There was a tap at the door; the maid came in with coffee. The room was very silent until she had gone out again.
“What I’m saying,” she went on softly, “is that this hatred of crime with violence has driven Bram mad. He thinks I’m responsible for some of it. In fact he is—he’s instigated this campaign to force the hand of the authorities. He thinks they’re bound to arm all the police, and to introduce much more vicious punishment. Don’t you, Bram?”
