Seven Days to Death

by John Creasey

  At the closed door, Ruby turned to face Gideon, and there was a different expression in her eyes.

  “Listen,” she said quietly, “if it hadn’t been for the man Abbott, Art would have got it full in the face. I know, I saw it happen. So don’t blame Abbott, see.”

  Gideon couldn’t find a word to say.

  All the hostility which young Syd had shown toward Gideon a few days before revealed itself again. The boy stood with his face to the kitchen window, so that Gideon could see every feature, every line. He was struck, as everyone else must have been, by the likeness between father and son, even to the set of the jaw and the tightness of the lips; and the defiance. Gideon had the uneasiest of feelings: not only that whatever the boy said couldn’t be relied on, but that something had happened within him. It might be something that he had experienced while he was in hiding; it might be simply the effect of the television show and what was happening to him now. And his hatred, his resentment, viciousness, because of his frustrated love for his father, might be centered on Gideon.

  “I just went to Charlie’s,” he insisted flatly.

  “Why?”

  “Knew he’d let me stay.”

  “Been there before?”

  “Done jobs for him.”

  “How did you get there?”

  “Hid in a van?”

  “What van?”

  “Builder’s van,” Syd almost sneered. “It was in the yard.”

  “Anyone know you were there?”

  “Course not It stopped down Mile End Road, and I got out and went to Charlie’s.”

  “See anyone else there?”

  “You try staying at Charlie’s without seeing plenty.”

  “See your father?” Gideon asked, in the same flat voice.

  There was a pause; just a startled moment of hesitation, when the expression in young Syd’s face might have been taken two ways: that he had seen his father, or else that he was astounded at the possibility that anyone should have thought he had.

  Then: “No!” he burst out. “Course not!”

  “Syd,” said Gideon very firmly, “that’s a lie.”

  Young Syd said, “You cops, you can’t tell a lie from the other thing. You took him away from me, and now you’re hunting him like a dog, that’s what you’re doing. Don’t you talk to me!”

  “Syd, where did you see your father?”

  Young Syd’s eyes blazed, his lips quivered, his hands were clenched and raised. “I didn’t see him, think I don’t know what you’re trying to do? Trying to frame me, the same way as you framed him, that’s what. You dirty rotten beast, don’t you talk to me!”

  “Think he has seen him?” Gideon asked Ruby Benson a few minutes later.

  She didn’t answer at once.

  Her eyes were like glass, and the rims were so red that they looked painful. Gideon doubted whether she had had a good night’s sleep since Benson had escaped; or would have one until he was caught. He could tell simply by looking at her that she had a splitting headache; the crisis of the past few minutes had made it far worse. She put a hand to her forehead and pressed, as if to relieve the pain, and then said: “I don’t know; that’s God’s truth, I don’t know.”

  “Is there anyone who might be able to get the truth out of him?”

  “If he doesn’t want to tell you, wild horses wouldn’t drag it out of him,” Ruby said; “he’s just like his father in that respect. Just like Syd.”

  The simple boy, Simon, sitting in a comfortable chair at the Divisional H.Q., with a cup of milk and some chocolate biscuits beside him, stared at Gideon without smiling; blankly. Chocolate smeared his lips - lips which were never really dry. His small eyes were pale and weak, and the puffy eyelids were scabby. He had hardly any eyelashes, just a few fair hairs. His fat, flabby face looked as if the flesh was unhealthy, as well as the poor mind.

  With him was a short, grey-haired man wearing a brown Harris tweed suit with the cuffs and elbows patched with leather - a master from the special school where this boy went. The master had told the Divisional Superintendent, who in turn had told Gideon, that sometimes Simon could talk so that almost anyone could understand him, but that under any kind of pressure his precarious control of his mind deserted him, and he could do little more than make grunting sounds.

  “How long do you think it will be before he’ll talk intelligibly again?” Gideon asked, but he felt hopeless.

  “There’s no way of telling,” said the schoolmaster. “I know what I’d do, but you can’t possibly do it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d let him go home, that’s all. He lives with his mother, who’s out charring mornings and afternoons, to keep the two going. If he were settled in familiar surroundings, and allowed to go to school again, I think he’d be all right in a day or two. Normal surroundings help him - like the company of normal children. That’s why he and two or three other afflicted boys are allowed in the playground of the big school. They don’t feel so lonely, then. If Simon is kept here, or anywhere unfamiliar - well, this mental blankness might go on for days or weeks. It’s a kind of paralysis due to shock; in some ways he’s much more sensitive than the average person.”

  The schoolmaster seemed to plead.

  Gideon said reluctantly, “Well, the best we can possibly do is have him looked after - can’t let someone who’s been tossing acid about run loose. He might do it again, might do anything.”

  “I know.”

  “Who’d be most likely to know where he got the stuff from?” Gideon asked.

  “I don’t know,” said the schoolmaster. “He was at the special school this morning, so I should think that someone gave it to him when he was going out for lunch. He had sandwiches. I questioned all the school this afternoon, but no one seemed to have noticed him talking to anyone; all we know is that he was down by the docks. He often is - he loves to see the ships go out and come in. No one stops him, it’s remarkable how kindly people are to someone like him.”

  “I suppose so,” said Gideon. “Well, we’ll be guided by what the doctors say; the one thing you can be sure about is that he won’t be ill-treated.”

  “Oh, I know that,” said the schoolmaster. They turned and walked away from Si, who blinked after them, and then picked up his cup of milk with a limp hand; he spilt a little onto his trousers and dribbled some down his chin, but he didn’t seem to notice. A police nurse, behind him, just sat and watched.

  In the next room, Gideon asked the schoolmaster, “Do you know anything about young Syd Benson?”

  “Oh, yes, I teach special subjects at his school, and I’ve taught him for several years.”

  “What’s he like?”

  The schoolmaster answered very slowly, “He’s got a good mind, as sharp as anyone’s at the school. If he likes a subject, he’s way out in front. If he doesn’t, he makes no effort at all.”

  “What’s his general character like?”

  “Tenacious.”

  “Honest?”

  The schoolmaster said painfully/’That’s a very difficult question to answer, Commander. What is honesty in a boy like that? What is loyalty? To his mother or his father? I don’t know. If you mean, does he actually steal from his classmates - no. If you mean does he fight to get what he wants, and force weaker children to give in to him - yes. We’ve a dozen children at the school who have a father - sometimes father and mother - who aren’t strangers to prison. Some of their children are good, some pretty hopeless. The simple truth is that with such a background they acquire different standards of normal behaviour - of right and wrong, if you like. No child will ever believe that something his mother or his father does habitually is wicked. The child just assumes that his father is right, and the rest of the world is wrong. That’s how you get generation after generation of cr
iminals. Commander - they’re bred less by conditions than by the attitude of mind of their parents. As for young Syd - well, I didn’t know him much before his father went to prison. I know he was sullen for twelve months afterward, and then seemed to start getting on top of himself. But it was a common thing to hear him talk about ‘when my Dad comes out’ - and could I, could any of the teaching staff, discourage him?”

  Gideon said gruffly, “I know the problem.”

  “I’m sure you do,” said the schoolmaster. “I only wish I could help you now. The woman I feel so sorry for is Mrs. Benson; now she has had a raw deal. The way she’s brought those two children up - well, young Liz is a model example. Sometimes I think this talk of environment and the attitude of the parents is all poppycock, even though I dish it out myself! I begin to wonder whether some children are born with a kink, and others with a natural goodness. There couldn’t be two more different children than the Bensons. How is Mrs. Benson?”

  “Looking as if she’ll crack up if we don’t catch Benson soon,” said Gideon, “but I think we will, Mr. Thomas. Thanks very much for all you’ve, told me.”

  After Gideon had gone, after supper, during the evening, Ruby Benson sensed that her son’s eyes were on her all the time, watching her, lynx-like, as if he wanted to know what she was going to do next.

  And three times he asked her how her headache was.

  She kept saying, “I’ve had worse,” but that was hardly true. Soon, she would get the children to bed and then go herself, although she knew it would be impossible to sleep. When she lay down, she would have some more aspirins.

  Unless her head got worse, then she would have them sooner.

  20. Night

  By half past seven, it was pitch dark. Except in the main roads, the East End of London is not well lit.

  Patches of bright lights glowing in the sky from the docks, where ships were being worked under arc lights, showed up clearly. The coloured lights from cinemas showed up, too, red or blue, green or yellow, bright against the grey darkness of the sky.

  It was a cloudy night.

  In the little streets, so drab and mean, there was an uneasy quiet, a stillness which wasn’t normal. Every now and again there was such a night as this, when the police of the Division had been reinforced by hundreds of men from outside, and the whole of the district was combed. The people knew why. Not more than one hundred had ever committed a felony or committed a crime of any kind - but one in five, perhaps even a greater proportion, knew someone who had: a friend, a relation, a husband, wife or daughter, brother or child.

  The whole district, knew the story of Benson and his wife, of Arthur Small, the missing boy and his return. None of them took Benson’s part - except, perhaps, one or two like Charlie Mulliver, who knew which side their bread was buttered on. Benson’s record had been widely known long before his trial; most people knew that he had been lucky not to be sentenced to death. The story of the murder of Taffy Jones in the car park had gone through the East End - as through much of the rest of the country - carrying with it a shiver of horror. Everyone knew, now, that Benson would kill rather than be taken, and there was a full realization among the people of the East End that he would almost certainly make an attempt to kill his wife.

  The police came from other Divisions and from Scotland Yard, not in petty numbers but’ in their hundreds. They, arrived by car, on bicycles, by bus, in Black Marias. They were watched, at certain focal points, by quiet crowds, and the temper of the district was best shown by the fact that there were few catcalls, little derision.

  Under instruction from Divisional offices who knew the district inside out, the great search began.

  There were private homes by the hundreds where Benson might be hiding, but Gideon and the Divisional people doubted if he were in such a place; someone was likely to squeal, someone would be glad of the few pounds blood money that he would earn. Benson wasn’t likely to trust himself to any man unless he could rely on him absolutely - and those on whom he could rely, as far as Gideon knew, were being watched; that night, their homes would be searched first.

  Quietly, the police went about their business.

  As quietly, there was an exodus from the East End; not so big and not so noticeable, but quite as purposeful. For if this Division was being strengthened by reinforcements, then the neighbouring Divisions were being correspondingly weakened, which made a heaven-sent opportunity for burglary. Every man who could force a window or open a door was on the move that night. Next day, the results of all this would show in the report placed before Gideon. And he knew exactly what was happening, but could do nothing about it.

  If Benson was in London, he had to be caught tonight.

  They searched Charlie Mulliver’s place again; there was no result, nothing to suggest that Benson and Tisdale had been there.

  They searched every room occupied by known friends of Benson; with no result.

  They searched the docks; the warehouses; ships, small boats which were covered up in the backwaters; barges; lighters; dock instalments; factories, empty houses and big warehouses away from the river.

  They had a master plan to each part of the district, which spread over the whole of a great wall in the basement of G5 Headquarters; and here Gideon and the Divisional Superintendent, Simpson, with Chief Inspector Trabert who had been with them the previous night, watched quietly, saying little, seeing how the police were closing in. It wasn’t the first such raid and it wouldn’t be the last, but from each one, the police learned something. This time, they had started on the perimeter of the district - the river on one side, and the main roads on the other, and went through it methodically. A second cordon was placed round this whole area on a wider radius - on the other side of the river, for instance, where anyone who sneaked across in an unlighted boat was bound to be noticed. But the river police were not patrolling openly; that was in the hope of luring Benson to the river if he was driven out of his hiding place.

  No one could be sure whether Benson knew about the search or not; but even if he didn’t know, he might guess.

  As it happened, the old warehouse now used for temporary storage of petrol and other oils in drums was almost in the centre of the area being searched, and the police were-gradually closing in on it. As reports came in by telephone, radio, and messengers, so flags of different colours were moved on the maps; and the precision of the raid was such that it looked like a continually narrowing circle.

  Gideon was smoking his big pipe. For once, this chase was the only job on his mind; obsessional. Deep down, he had the glum feeling that he might have made a mistake, that Benson might not be here. It was even possible that young Syd’s disappearance and the attack on Small had been to fool him - Benson might be somewhere else, out on the outskirts of London perhaps, or at one of the ports, laughing his head off.

  Only, Benson seldom laughed.

  Three reports came in, in quick succession from a Squad numbered, for the occasion, as South 21. They were coming up from the river, working their way through warehouses, and reporting each warehouse or large building that they had checked. Gideon, standing by the map, watched the Superintendent move a green flag from one warehouse to a line which showed another.

  “That’s near Rum Corner, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Gideon nodded, and drew at his pipe. Rum Corner was plumb in the centre of the area being searched.

  In London, not far away, Mary Rose was lying awake, tears stinging her eyes. Her brother lay asleep in the remand cell at Brixton Prison. Her mother lay, also asleep, in the next room.

  A mile or two away, Mrs. Edmundsun, so newly widowed, was looking at travel brochures, and every now and again at the scintillations from a pair of diamond earring which had come to her only that afternoon. Detective- Sergeant Cummings, a bachelor who lived with a widowed mother, sat in his bedroom-
cum-office at home, and smoked, and concentrated on everything he knew about Elliott, Edmundsun’s manager. In another direction, Abbott lay, awake, feeling viciously angry with himself but a little easier in his mind now, because a message had come in - via Gideon, although he didn’t know it - that Mrs. Benson had seen the attack, and had sent a message thanking him for helping to save her Arthur’s sight. Arthur Small himself lay unconscious, under drugs, with a bandage round his head covering one eye. The two men who had broken into Kelly’s Bank earlier that week, were together in a room with some floorboards up, where a fortune in notes was hidden; they took some out and then replaced the floorboards - for the first time they were beginning to feel safe. Only half a mile away from them, Chief Inspector Lemaitre was looking at his blond wife, and listening to her strident complaints. He was nearer revolt against her perpetual nagging than he had ever been; and one of the reasons for that was that he wanted to be on duty with Gideon.

  In their different prisons, the other seven men who had escaped from Millways were sleeping; and the only one who would wake with a reasonably light heart was Matt Owens, who knew that when Gideon said he would made things easy, he would made them easy.

  At the Yard, the Information Room was a constant buzz of noise as reports of burglaries started to come in; Squad cars were hurtling round London, the Divisions were up to their eyes in work, and Sergeant Jefferson was quietly making notes, ready for the report that Gideon would want to see next morning. In his house, Superintendent Wrexall was very pleased with himself; for he was to go out to Guildford next day, about the accountant who had died an “accidental” death which might prove to be suicide. Wrexall had real cause for satisfaction, for one of the dead man’s clerks had said that he thought that the accountant had been blackmailed; which proved that Wrexall’s nose for blackmail was as good as ever. At Hurlingham, Kate Gideon was still up, and kept looking at the clock. It was a new, or at least a long absent feeling, to be worried about her husband; but after his narrow escape last night, she would be worried until they had caught Benson; and she knew how much the capture mattered to George.