Redhead (Department Z Book 2)

by John Creasey

  ‘I’ve sent it through to your office. But don’t think because we don’t know much about Redhead that he’s a myth. He isn’t. I’d rather call him the Devil!’

  Sir William eyed him uncertainly. There was a grimness about Craigie’s manner which carried conviction.

  ‘Well – you’re looking after it, aren’t you?’

  Craigie heaved a sigh and refilled his pipe. Then:

  ‘I don’t want to, Divot, but I’m going to unburden myself. It’s all in the report, but it’ll probably hit you harder if I talk about it. Now listen. Redhead is in England. I don’t think there’s a shadow of doubt about that. But we haven’t found out what it is that he’s after. There seems to be a connection between him and this series of outrages, but there’s an important point to remember. None of the attacks has ended fatally. The hold-ups have always fallen short of murder, and Redhead is a killer if he’s nothing else.’

  ‘A man with any intelligence,’ deposed Sir William portentiously, ‘would appreciate and allow for the difference between American and English laws.’

  ‘Tell that to Aunt Sally!’ snorted Craigie. ‘Divot, if Redhead reaches the stage he’s reached in America we’ll have a hell of a time before we get rid of him! I know you don’t like strong language, but you don’t know Redhead. He’s foul, and he’s a killer. He’s after something big in England and when he gets going properly nothing short of a heavy armed force will deter him, and then we’ll be lucky if we can strike before he’s got what he wants and gone! You don’t believe it? Well, slip down to the American Embassy and ask what they think of him there!’

  Much to the relief of his chauffeur Sir William did not slip down to the American Embassy, but he spent ten minutes at Number 10, Downing Street before Perret was able to keep his date with the little girl at the Clarion.

  Meanwhile Gordon Craigie, still ruffled after his rare outburst, was speaking to three keen-eyed, capable-looking young men. The young men were members of the little-known ‘Z’ Department. There were times when they would drop out for a week, a month or two, reappearing without warning or explanation; that was the bright side of the Department. The black side concerned those who went but never returned, and there were many disappearances which had no explanation outside the walls of Craigie’s office.

  When death calls to those in the Secret Service it leaves no obituary.

  None of the three men in his office was addressed by name during the interview; it was exceptional that Craigie saw them at once. Oft times agents, in their off periods, would drink from the same bottles at the same night clubs without knowing that their opposite numbers were members of the Department. The one Masonic sign was used only in extreme emergency.

  ‘Number Seven,’ said Craigie thoughtfully, ‘you pick up young Wenlock. I’m not at all sure that he is the dutiful son of his father that he’s made out to be. Pick him up at the Clarion, where Number Ten’s keeping an eye on him until you get there. Don’t let him out of your sight – better take your Frazer-Nash with you in case he moves suddenly. All right?’

  Craigie pressed the button and the sliding door opened and closed before he spoke again.

  ‘Number Eight – you’ve lost Zoeman, haven’t you?’

  ‘’Fraid so,’ admitted Number Eight ruefully. He had been put on the trail of a possible key man in the bandit game, and had lost him.

  Number Eight was a lively looking worthy who could spin a cricket ball better than any man on earth. He had turned down a trip to the Antipodes for ‘business reasons’.

  ‘You can take it from me,’ he said emphatically, ‘that Zoeman’s in it up to the neck. I don’t know where he’s working from but the organisation’s perfect. I’d say he was working with old hands from the other side if he wasn’t so careful not to shoot to kill.’

  ‘I’m keeping that in mind,’ admitted Craigie. ‘He worked for Wenlock Oils up to a year ago. Maybe there’s a line there. I’ve heard rumours about young Wenlock. Anyhow, I’m sending two men to the Éclat lounge. You’ll follow them. Work Zoeman’s trail as well as you can and try to find a connection between him and Wenlock. Maybe it’s a question of American brains working through an English agent.’ Craigie stopped for a moment before shooting out his query: ‘Ralph Wenlock is red-haired, isn’t he?’

  ‘Flamin’,’ Number Eight assured him. ‘Think he might be the Bad Man, Chief? With Zoeman his English agent?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ vouchsafed Craigie, guardedly.

  He watched Number Eight disappear through the sliding door before turning to the remaining agent.

  ‘Well, Number Twelve. Glad to see you back.’

  ‘Glad to be back,’ smiled Number Twelve.

  ‘You handled that Muranian job well,’ said Craigie with rare praise. ‘Redhead’s a bigger job, though. Learn anything on the voyage?’

  ‘Enough to make me mighty curious,’ said Number Twelve. ‘You’ve got my report.’

  ‘Hump,’ muttered Craigie. ‘Well, there’s some talk of Zoeman being in the Ledsholm village area, twelve miles from Lewes. You’ll find a man named Cripps, Benjamin Cripps, at the local pub, and from all accounts he’s talkative.’

  He stood up, his aspect that of a man of great determination and courage.

  ‘Redhead’s in the country,’ he said, the words dropping from his thin lips like pieces of ice. ‘We’ve got to get him, and we’ve got to get Zoeman. Call for any help you want, and don’t hang fire with even half a chance. All right?’

  ‘So far,’ grinned Number Twelve, gripping his Chief’s extended hand. ‘See you sometime.’

  Craigie watched his sturdy figure slip through the sliding doorway and as he turned round to the empty room his hatchet face was grim and hard.

  Number Twelve had followed Wenlock from America, and in his report was the story of Storm and Grimm. Letty Granville’s friendship for Wenlock was also there, and the supposedly unnoticed shooting episode after the bandit hold-up on the quay.

  Craigie discounted the tussle on the sports deck as being too trivial to cause attempted murder. What fool game had those idiots, Storm and Grimm, been up to?

  Of course, they had fallen foul of Redhead over that boxing interview with the Press. Which suggested that Wenlock and Redhead were one and the same.

  Craigie was not prepared to admit that they were, on the scanty evidence that he had; but things certainly pointed that way.

  He grinned wryly as he refilled his meerschaum. What would the venerable leader of the Wenlock Oil Corporation say if he knew that his son was suspected of being the foulest product of the foulest era of crime in the annals of the world?

  Craigie felt sorry for the old man. But he felt sorrier for Redhead’s victims, and as his thoughts ran along those channels he came to the man Zoeman and his part in the English operations.

  Zoeman was clever; he had escaped from one of the Department’s best agents, but Craigie had an idea that he would be clever once too often.

  Chapter 5

  Our Friend the Enemy

  Martin Storm left Grimm in the fond embraces of a crowd of relations gathered to greet him at the Philmore Crescent house of his father, Sir Joseph Grimm.

  Storm himself pleaded other things and winged his way alone to a certain modest little building in Whitehall.

  He and his cousin had both decided that Redhead and Wenlock were one and the same, but there had been many things brought up in their talk which needed explanation and seemed unlikely to get it. One thing and one thing only needed no further discussion and was heartily endorsed by both.

  They had a large and outsize bone to pick with Wenlock. It mattered nothing at all whether he was or was not the gangster overlord who had struck fear into the heart of New York and was now trying to do the same thing to London. Their personal feud was one which, providing they lived long enough, could be settled only by themselves.

  Nevertheless they had information which would be criminal to withhold from the authoritie
s. Storm’s visit to a gunsmith in Bond Street who knew him well and supplied him gladly with two automatics and a plentiful supply of ammunition, was followed by one to Whitehall.

  He told a stiff, austere-looking autocrat that he wanted to see Sir William Divot.

  ‘You have an appointment, of course?’

  ‘I intend to see Sir William,’ snapped Storm. ‘Take my card in.’

  The autocrat accepted the card with a stiff bow. Three minutes later his manner had considerably thawed.

  ‘Sir William will see you, Mr Storm. This way please.’

  Storm followed, smiling pleasantly as he saw the dapper little figure of Sir William Divot.

  ‘Well, Mr Storm?’

  ‘Not very,’ said Storm, with a regrettable lapse into clownishness. ‘As a matter of fact it’s mere chance that I’m not a great deal worse. Look at that.’

  He twirled his hat, exposing a circular hole in the crown.

  Sir William stared incredulously.

  ‘You – you – you mean that you’ve been fired at? You’ve been shot at?’

  ‘I mean just that,’ said Storm gravely. ‘So was Grimm. And I can tell you, Sir William, that the boy with the gun was a man calling himself Wenlock, travelling on the Hoveric and supposed to be something in oil. What’s more’ – his face grew hard as he went on – ‘Mr Wenlock, so-called, is ginger-headed!’

  The Assistant Secretary’s usually austere face expressed rather more than consternation.

  ‘But – but it’s outrageous! New York assured us that the man was certainly not on the Hoveric. They were positive! And our agents here agreed.’

  ‘A personal opinion of the New York police,’ said Storm, thinking grimly of O’Halloran, ‘is that they’re much more negative than positive.’ He grinned. ‘Of course, I’m not saying that Redhead and Wenlock are the same. But why should he pot us? The little business on deck was enough to annoy, but not enough to call for murder. And’ – his face grew hard – ‘how did it happen that the crowd on the quay was stampeded by a hold-up at the same time as the shooting? Was it coincidence? Or were the two jobs connected?’

  The Assistant Secretary spoke with a rare candour.

  ‘I’ve been informed of that. To be frank, I wondered.’

  Storm proffered cigarettes and lit up.

  ‘Well, Sir William, I’m afraid that’s all I can do to help you, although there’s one little thing –’ He puffed carefully, preparing the coming lie with the necessary gravity of feature. ‘I’ve been having a talk with Grimm, and we’ve decided that the best thing we can do is to fade away to some unknown spot in the wilds of Scotland, and forget things until the fuss has blown over.’

  Sir William beamed.

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it, Mr Storm. We are – er – naturally anxious to – er – handle this matter with the least possible trouble and – er – at no time is it our wish to interfere with the – er – liberties of a citizen.’

  ‘That’s exactly what Grimm and I thought,’ said Storm affably. ‘We’ll buzz out of town early tomorrow.’

  Sir William shook hands fervently. Seldom, he thought, had he come across a man whose ideas were so admirably suited to his own.

  What his thoughts would have been if he had seen the automatics carefully concealed in Storm’s pockets was never, fortunately, revealed.

  Storm, with the Granvilles well in his mind, spent a brief but interesting period in the Audley Street library, finding a comprehensive directory of Sussex and, to his complete satisfaction, a survey of the history of Ledsholm Grange. The Granville couple, with Letty a good first, interested him largely.

  Ledsholm Grange, he gathered, had been in the hands of the Granville family for two hundred years. Once fortified, it possessed, according to the directory, its own chapel, and something approaching fifty rooms. With deepening interest Storm read on:

  The large moat encircling the one-time impregnable fortress and supported by a now crumbling wall is no longer used, although the great drawbridge makes an impressive entry to the drive through the extensive grounds even to this day.

  Probably the most striking landmark is the great Black Rock, standing opposite the drawbridge. Carried there by some colossal feat of olden-day engineering, it towers two hundred feet into the air, and its surface is as smooth as satin.

  ‘Ta-rump!’ hummed Storm. ‘Jolly kind of place, but it must be hellish lonely. Four miles from Ledsholm village, and not a building nearer than three miles! Twenty square miles of private land surrounding it, with only a couple of third class roads running through. Lonely’s the word all right.’

  A taxi bore him to the flat which he rented in Audley Street – this after a brief shopping expedition and a bite to eat – and he opened the front door with the inward sense of satisfaction which even bachelors experience when returning to the fold. The silence within told him that his manservant, Marcus Horrobin, was still on vacation.

  Horrobin was a character. Since entering Storm’s service five years before he had often confided that fifteen years as a butler in the house of a Very Great Man made him hate the sight, thought and smell of a title.

  ‘Not, sir, that I would gainsay the claims which any such persons have to quality but one gets, if I may put it so, somewhat restive. Moreover to me, a non-smoker, the odour of Lord Mallerby’s cigars were overpowering. Since coming into your service, Mr Storm, I can honestly say that in spite of some loss of caste in the eyes of my fellow servitors I –’

  ‘Horrors,’ interrupted Storm on the occasion of that particular little outburst, all delivered with incredible fluency and without a change of expression. ‘Is my suit laid out?’

  ‘Undoubtedly, sir,’ replied Horrors imperturbably. ‘Pearl grey socks or maroon?’

  ‘It beats me,’ grinned Storm, ‘how anybody ever stuck you for fifteen years, you humbug! Maroon.’

  In spite of which they managed, in the words of Horrobin, ‘to work together admirably and with the least possible wastage of energy’.

  The servant had been given a month’s leave of absence from the start of the U.S.A. trip and as the ‘famous boxers’ were home three days before their official time Horrors was excusably missing. Storm grinned as he saw the perfect order of every room; Horrors was a sound fellow.

  Then he sniffed and for a moment the grin left his face. Very faintly but very definitely he caught the smell of violet hair oil.

  Storm took his automatic from his overcoat pocket. Like a cat he went forward, his ruggedly handsome face set grimly. Without a sound he twisted the handle of the door, flinging it open.

  Then he grinned.

  It was empty.

  ‘Martin,’ he told himself gently, ‘you’re getting jumpy. There’s no-one – tch! Damn you!’

  The curse rasped from his lips as something hard struck against his right wrist, sending his gun clattering and a bullet spitting harmlessly into the wall. Feeling angrier than at any time since the attack on Long Island he found himself looking into the cool, mocking eyes of a man whose age, he judged, was on the fifty mark but whose hand, lean and brown, was as steady as a rock round the handle of a threatening automatic.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ he said quietly, and behind his words was a steely inflexibility. His expression, faintly mocking, was that of a man who holds the whip hand, knows it and is fully capable of using it. ‘I’ve been here for an hour, Storm, waiting for you. And if you’ll take the hint, always look behind curtains when searching for intruders.’

  Storm managed a grin.

  After the first shock of surprise he felt more normal. The very mockery in the other’s steely grey eyes forbade panic. With a sudden move he slipped his hand into his pocket, expecting a staccato ‘put your hands up!’ from the other but without getting it.

  ‘Don’t mind if I smoke?’ he murmured. ‘Splendid. Have one? No? Pity.’ Very delicately he sniffed the air. ‘Now we know,’ he said guilefully, ‘where the smell came from. Funny, but I never did like men
who used scent.’

  The other’s smile tightened. He was obviously touchy about the scent accusation, and Storm grinned to himself. From past experience he knew that the surest chink in a man’s armour was vanity.

  The gunman said stiffly: ‘Allow me to congratulate you on a keen sense of smell.’

  Storm waved his hand airily.

  ‘Nothing – nothing at all. May I – without impertinence of course – ask you why – ?’

  The stranger’s mocking grin grew broader. As he pulled a chair nearer, Storm took a full and comprehensive scrutiny. He saw no reason to go back on his earlier estimate of the other’s age – the greying hair and the lined face bespoke a man on the wrong side of fifty – but he was impressed by the quiet air of authority. Slight, almost fragile and possessing no remarkable facial characteristic he carried his body well, and from the clean cut of his square chin Storm gathered that he would easily risk the lives or deaths of others, and perhaps his own.

  ‘Well?’ murmured Storm encouragingly.

  ‘Well, Mr Storm. To be brief, you have come into contact with an organisation of which I am the English agent.’

  ‘Meaning Redhead?’ queried Storm.

  ‘Meaning Redhead,’ acknowledged the stranger. He stared hard at Storm and his piercing grey eyes seemed to bore through the other’s set expression of cynical amusement. ‘I don’t know how you came to get in his way, Storm, but it doesn’t really matter. Fortunately for you I’m acting off my own bat and am warning you. Redhead is out for blood – your blood. He has an idea that you know more than he wants you to know.’

  ‘Meaning?’ queried Storm softly.

  The middle-aged gunman pursed his lips, and his words came out slowly but full of meaning.

  ‘He thinks, and I’m not so sure that he’s wrong, that you belong to the little organisation called “Z” Department.’

  Storm’s brows went up.

  ‘What’s that? Sounds like a rousing story for the fourth form.’

  The other laughed grimly, not wholly satisfied by the response.