by John Creasey
“Yes,” said Gideon. “Vividly.”
“I lied to you,” said Riddell, and his eyes burned.
“Did you?” asked Gideon. He tried to sound casual and as if this really wasn’t worth making a fuss about, but he was disturbed not only by the admission but also by Riddell’s state of mind. “Why?”
“It wasn’t a man; it was a girl.”
Gideon said, almost blankly: “Oh.”
“That’s about the right reaction ‘Oh,’ with your heart falling into your boots,” said Riddell bitterly. “Yes, a girl. She was only a kid.” Was, thought Gideon “Even though she was thin as a lath, all skin and bone, she was beautiful. Never seen such eyes. They did something to me, George. Imagine that! A hard-bitten, anti-black copper took one look into a pair of brown eyes and—Oh, I needn’t spell it out. It made me seethe. She was a Pakistani, very dark-skinned, and she represented everything I didn’t believe in. She belonged back home in Karachi or Lahore or wherever she came from; she should never have been brought here. I still think that,” he went on fiercely. “But she got under my skin. She made me see what happens to a lot of them when they’re over here. She was nothing but a frightened kid, and she didn’t really have a chance.”
Again Riddell paused.
“Go on, Tom,” Gideon said gently.
“Well, I got the welfare people on to her, had her taken to hospital. She died early this morning. I telephoned the hospital and was told about it. No one’s claimed her body. She was living in that rat hole, and the people who live in the house - I’ve found sixteen, so far - say they didn’t know her. She told me that she’d been smuggled in and was told to hide in that cupboard until someone brought her some documents. She stayed there, and hardly ever went out. The others gave her scraps for food. She was there for nearly two months, but the documents never came.”
Riddell pressed both hands against his forehead and brushed them over his greying hair. Gideon, watching, felt a kind of distress and anxiety and alarm, for if such a thing as this were repeated often, it would be - it was - not only a scandal but a crime against humanity. He had another feeling, too, of disquiet, because he did not know whether any of this was in Riddell’s written assessment of the case. He guessed that it wasn’t, because it burst out of the man as if it were something he had been holding back for a long time but which had become too much.
“How many instances are there like this?” asked Gideon.
“A bloody sight too many, that’s for sure.”
“Do you know who smuggled this girl in?” Gideon asked, then went on quickly, “I didn’t know women were smuggled; I thought they were all men.”
“Most of them are,” answered Riddell. “Only girl I’ve heard of, in fact. The men come in, and after a while they get work and permits and then they begin to send for their relatives, wives by the dozen, they—”
“All right,” Gideon interrupted. “I know how you feel now. You still need a lot more evidence before making a charge, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still feel certain you want to be taken off the case?”
“I don’t know what I feel,” Riddell acknowledged, “except—well, I’d like to see the business cleared up once and for all.”
“What about leave?” asked Gideon. “How much have you due?”
“Three weeks.”
“Then take it,” said Gideon, “and I’ll assign Honiwell in charge while you’re away, on a temporary basis. When you’ve had a break, we can take another hard look at the situation. If you want to get back into it, you can.”
After a long pause, Riddell leaned back more relaxed then he had yet been, and said warmly: “The judgment of Gideon! It’s a good idea. Thanks, George.” After another pause, he went on, “If ever the right man was in the right job, you are.” He stood up, hesitated, and then asked: “When would you like me to go?”
“Any time. This” - Gideon tapped the report - “is more than a start for Honiwell or anyone who stands in for you. Any reason why you shouldn’t begin your holiday right away?”
“No,” answered Riddell. “My wife will jump for joy.”
“Right!” said Gideon. “I’ll send a chit through.” He stood up, big and towering, and put out his hand. “Have as good a time as you can.”
Riddell shook hands, nodded, and went out; the door closed very firmly. Gideon moved across to the window and looked over a now sunlit river and London at its loveliest. He stood very still for a long time, not absolutely sure that he had done the right thing, but greatly moved by Riddell’s story.
How easy it was to misjudge a man; how easy for a man to misjudge himself.
He hardly knew how long he had been standing there when his telephone buzzed, and he was glad to have to move.
“Gideon,” he announced.
“Alec here,” Hobbs said. “Are you free for a few minutes?”
“Yes. Come in.”
“Right away,” Hobbs said. His voice seemed hardly to have died away when the communicating door opened and he appeared. He had a sheaf of papers with him and Gideon saw the name “ENTWHISTLE” on the outside of a folder. Hobbs sat down, still holding the papers.
“How did it go with Riddell?” he asked, and Gideon told him.
Hobbs smiled.
“The judgment of Solomon,” he observed, and then went on without a change of tone: “Honiwell seems to have done all he can so far on the Entwhistle case, and it will probably have to sweat for a few weeks. He could fit as locum for Riddell very well.” When Gideon simply nodded, he said, “Thwaites has finished at the National Gallery but he would like two of our men to stay there on the Security Force, and Morcom’s quite agreeable.”
“So am I,” said Gideon.
“Thanks.” Hobbs paused for a moment and then asked in a harder voice, “Have you time to talk about Entwhistle?”
“Yes,” said Gideon, and he thought - as he often did - of the man in Dartmoor who might be innocent of the crime for which he had been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Entwhistle was out on the moor, breaking rocks.
When he had been leading his ordinary life, he had not seriously believed that prisoners still broke rocks with sledge hammers, but he had discovered that they did. The rocks could be used for road building and wall building; there was a kind of rhythm to the actual work and once one was used to it, it was no great strain. Entwhistle, tall and gaunt, had always been a strong man.
Now, lifting the long-handled sledgehammer ready for the downward swing, he saw the great expanse of the moor on this lovely autumn day, and the never-ending rocks themselves, more rocks than ten thousand convicts could break in a hundred years. He saw the rugged beauty and the green of distant trees and grass, the other men working, some naked to the waist, browned skin exposed to the sun and glistening from sweat. It was like a symphony of movement and a symphony of harsh and cacophonous sound. Chips of granite flew, big rocks split; now and again a man swore with desultory indifference or in sharp pain where a rock had cut him. Entwhistle, used to the heat of the tropics, an engineer who had helped build huge bridges across untamed rivers and great valleys, felt an awful sense of helplessness, of frustration. It was madness that he should be doing this, and it was driving him mad.
This was one of his bad days.
It was a day when he could not get his children out of his mind - the children he had not seen since he had been imprisoned, over three years before.
Three years for a crime he had not committed.
Three years in Dartmoor - for quarrelling with his wife, going home, and finding her dead.
Three years, while her killer was free, living life to the full, not conscience-stricken or he would have confessed or at least made some attempt to help him, Geoffrey Entwhistle.
Three years.
One for Carol, who was now seven, fair, and pretty.
One for Clive, who was now fourteen, tall, and eager.
One for Jennifer, who was n
ow eleven and, so they told him, clever.
He could picture them not as they were but as they had been, so young and vital and overjoyed to see him on his return home, because he had been away for so much of their lives.
He could see their faces in the rocks.
Sometimes, when he brought that sledgehammer crashing down, it was as if he were crushing one of his beloved children; and in an awful way, by his very existence in this place, he was in fact crushing them. Prison, the law, the policeman who had sent him here, the judge and every bloody juror, the man who had actually killed his wife - each one had been a blow against his children’s happiness; his children condemned to live under the brand of Cain, staying with relations, snubbed and sneered at and derided because of a crime their father had not committed.
Now and again, he glimpsed a kind of hope.
A prison-visiting parson named Wilkinson had once brought him much hope, saying that the police, through Commander George Gideon, had promised to review the evidence, but that was nearly a year ago, and since then he had heard nothing at all but platitudes. Eventually Wilkinson had been appointed to a living overseas, and now it seemed that he had turned his back on this heart-breaking problem: and that no one cared.
Today, Entwhistle was vividly aware of each child, each hammer blow now seeming to crack and split their future, each blow robbing him of a little more hope, and each driving him a little more mad.
He would go mad if he didn’t get out of this soul-destroying place.
He must escape.
Not tonight, but one day soon.
Better to be on the run, better to be shot while
running, than to exist like this.
Better to be dead.
The thought came to him, not for the first time, that death would be the answer, putting an end not only to his own daily despair but to that of his children. No longer would they be burdened by the knowledge that he was in prison paying for the crime they believed he had committed, making some kind of amends for murdering their mother.
Oh, God, he could not stand it!
He whirled the hammer round and round as if it were a weight in an athlete’s hand, went round and round with it, felt his head swimming, felt dizzy, felt as if he were going mad, mad, mad!
He let the hammer go.
It crashed thirty yards away and smacked against a boulder, letting out a dull metallic ring. He stood, swaying, staring. He was aware of a guard approaching, rifle cocked. His blood thundered through his ears and the refrain would not stop. He was going mad, mad,.
mad....
“Did it slip?” asked the warder.
Slip?
“Eh?”
“Did it slip?” the warder asked again. Slip?
“It—yes. Yes, it slipped.”
“Well, go and get it and be more careful,” the warder ordered.
In his report to the Governor, the warder told a different story.
“I advise keeping Entwhistle within the precincts for some time, sir. He undoubtedly hurled his hammer, and nearly lost his self-control. I gave him to understand that I thought the hammer slipped - thought it might calm him down a bit.”
“We’ll have him back in the library,” the Governor said.
In his tiny office which overlooked the Thames and a corner of Billingsgate Market, Eric Greenwood, the man who had been the lover of Geoffrey Entwhistle’s wife, and who had killed her, was looking through samples of carpets shipped from India, from Pakistan, from Persia, and from Morocco. They were all beautifully hand-woven with a rich variety of colours particularly attractive in the afternoon light.
He was deciding whether to order or whether to wait for a week or two when the shipper’s prices might come down.
He did not give a moment’s thought to the past and to what he had done, and he felt absolutely secure in his sheltered bachelor life.
Gideon, sitting in his office, listened to Hobbs and, after ten minutes, sent for Chief Superintendent Honiwell, the man who was checking the evidence against Geoffrey Entwhistle. Gideon knew, as Honiwell did, that the threads were tenuous and the case tortuous, and before it could possibly be reopened, proof must be found that there had been a miscarriage of justice. Nothing less could justify a full reopening of the case.
Honiwell was a mild man, quiet-voiced, thorough, and painstaking, and above all humane.
Gideon contrasted the calmness of his demeanour with the tensions there were in Riddell. Honiwell gave the impression that nothing could ever shake his composure or make him speak quickly or out of turn. He came in quietly, took the chair Gideon indicated, settled comfortably, and waited.
“So you think you’ve found the man we’re looking for,” Gideon said.
“I think so, sir. Once we established the fact that Mrs. Entwhistle had a lover, it was simply a question of time. If I’m right, sir, he’s a man named Greenwood, works at a firm of importers and exporters who handle mostly Oriental goods - carpets, cloth, carvings, spices, a fairly general range. It’s been a long job to locate him, as we didn’t want the press to get wind of it, but he’s been identified by at least seven people, mostly waiters, as having been with Mrs. Entwhistle a great deal while Entwhistle was abroad. We could make a good circumstantial case against him, but I don’t think the time’s ripe for that yet.”
One thing was certain, Gideon thought when the others had left, Honiwell could not be taken off this case. Someone who was less involved in a case would have to take over from Riddell. He must talk to Hobbs again. Meanwhile, he needed to look through the Entwhistle file. Soon he found himself wondering bleakly what a man would feel like if he were in prison for a crime he had not committed. The more he pondered, the more urgent the case became.
His interoffice telephone rang, and he lifted it. It was Chamberlain.
“Ah, Gideon. Several of those who should be present can’t make it on Monday, so make a change in your diary, will you? Same place; same time, Tuesday.”
“Very good, sir,” Gideon said. Then he replaced the receiver and said through his teeth. “We’ll have that damned Velazquez back before the conference if I have to find it myself!”
A few seconds later, two senior Yard men, passing the door, heard Gideon burst out into a deep, hearty laugh. One of them remarked, “He’s pleased with life, that’s something.”
“Perhaps they’ve found the Velazquez,” the other said.
Hobbs, alone in the next office, lifted his head and listened, half expecting the door to open and Gideon to share the joke. But he realized, knowing Gideon, that a laugh like that was Gideon laughing at himself.
At the time that Gideon’s mood changed so abruptly to laughter because Chamberlain had had to alter his plans, Chief Thwaites was in the Tate Gallery. Over a year before, Hogarth’s “Boot Boy” had been stolen from the Tate, and had never been recovered. He, Thwaites, had not been in charge of the investigation, but now he wanted to learn exactly how the robbery had been achieved. The Assistant Director, Adam Charles, told him precisely, and Thwaites made mental notes to be written later in his reports.
No one at the gallery, except Charles, knew he was a policeman.
Leaving the Tate, Thwaites drove direct to the Victoria and Albert Museum, from which a Turner and two Constables had been stolen just two years before. Here, the Deputy Director was equally cooperative but could not help much. Thwaites made his notes and went back to the Yard, where he added them to the others already made, then tried to find a common factor in all the thefts. He failed, yet was feeling quite hopeful when- he left the Yard again, to go to Judd’s place at Hampstead.
13: The Whispering Well
“Lance,” Christine Falconer said, “are you absolutely sure you can trust Robin?”
“Christine, my love, I am absolutely sure I can trust Robin to do what he says he’ll do, and so can you,” Lancelot Judd answered. “I wish you weren’t so doubtful. He hasn’t done anything to upset you, has he?”
“No,” answ
ered Christine. “He always makes me feel uneasy, that’s all. Tell me more about him.”
“There isn’t all that interesting to tell,” said Lancelot. “We were at school together; we failed to get into the same university, but we met during vacations. We had thought of going into business together, since we both love antiques, but I stayed in England. Robin went to Canada and America to look for antique markets; he’s always been interested in the subject. His father owned a wonderful collection of Japanese paintings and jade. I declared war on war, as you well know.”
Christine half laughed.
“Did you really believe you could do any good, darling?”
“I believed it then,” answered Lancelot rather ruefully. “But I don’t really know what to make of things now. If you’re in any doubt, I’m still as anti-war as ever; if there were a war tomorrow, I would be a conscientious objector, and if I thought it would do any good, I’d throw myself off a cliff crying Outlaw war!’ “He shifted his position slightly and slipped his right am firmly round her shoulders. It was Sunday morning; she was sitting on his knee in a huge armchair in his one-room studio flat above the Hampstead shop. “When did I last tell you that I loved you?”
“Too long ago,” Christine answered.
He kissed her—
He kissed her in a way she had never known before, fiercely, demandingly, holding her tighter and still tighter. She felt the wild stirring of desire.
When, at last, he drew his head back, he was breathing very hard.
“I love you,” he said. “I would love you whether you were a baker’s daughter or a merchant banker’s.” He sounded both hoarse and urgent. “You know that, don’t you?”
