The Case of the Innocent Victims

by John Creasey

  They rose above the level of the roof and saw Lee standing some way back, still clutching the child.

  The turntable was within six feet of the guttering; six feet which were unbridgable until they were moved towards the roof itself. He saw the man, a youngish man who was nearly bald, dressed in a dark grey suit.

  The child in his arms seemed to be asleep.

  The man’s eyes were glittering, and he was staring only at his wife. He did not move, but called out in a clear, carrying voice: “If we can’t live with you, we’re not going to live at all.”

  So that was it: Lee hoped to blackmail his wife into breaking off divorce proceedings. Sane or mad made little difference; he knew exactly what he was doing.

  “I mean it,” Harry Lee said.

  “I know you do,” responded Charlotte Lee, and she spoke more calmly than Roger had yet heard her. “You mustn’t hurt baby, though. Put him down.”

  “It isn’t any use,” retorted Lee, quite flatly. “If you won’t take me back, you can’t have Richard. You’ve got to come back with us, Charlotte. And it’s no use to lie to me; I always know when you lie.”

  There was no sense in this; no easy way out; no real hope. Whether the cause was the mother, down below, or whether it was the girl in the office, or whether there were other causes which went much deeper, Roger did not know. He recognised stalemate here. He had an impression of great stubbornness; the mother would not give way, the father would not give way, and there was no meeting-place for them.

  The turntable was swaying slightly, a little nearer the roof. Roger was judging the distance. At four feet, he would risk jumping, but he would be happier if he could have only two. He had to make a standing jump, and wasn’t sure how the turntable would react; in fact a fireman ought to be up here, to leap on to the roof and take Lee by surprise.

  The firemen were on the other turntable, two or three yards away. He knew that they were going to make a leap for it the moment it seemed safe. First concentrate the man’s attention on his wife, and then swing the second turntable nearer so that the firemen could get to him. Rescuing the baby was not the problem now; the real tragedy lay in what this would do to the parents.

  Then Mrs Lee wrenched herself free from him, and leapt towards the roof.

  She had been standing very still, trembling slightly; the calmness of her voice had seemed to declare that she knew that she must try to reason with her husband, had given no indication of what was in her mind. Now, before Roger could stop her, she jumped. He grabbed at her dress, and it slipped through his fingers.

  The turntable swayed dangerously.

  “Charlotte’.” her husband screamed. “Charlotte!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jump

  Roger felt the swaying of the turntable, and staggered to one side. He saw the woman’s outstretched hands reaching for the guttering. He knew that she hadn’t a chance of saving herself. Her feet were still on the edge of the turntable, but there was no hope that she could recover her balance. Roger tried desperately to keep himself steady. Then he saw Lee rushing forward to try to save his wife. Oh, God. They would both fall.

  Roger lurched and clutched the woman’s ankles. He checked her fall, but did not think there was a chance of saving her. He heard men shouting, but could not distinguish what they said. He heard screaming from the street. He felt the woman’s weight on his arms and shoulders; unless he let go, he would fall with her.

  The weight actually eased a little.

  Roger saw Lee, lying flat on the roof, arms outstretched, and holding his wife’s wrists. She was stretched, as a bridge, between the roof and the turntable. Lee was staring down at her, wild-eyed.

  Then a hand touched Roger’s arm.

  “Take it easy, sir,” said one of the firemen from the other turntable. “Hold her until we get a bit closer. All ok now, sir.”

  Roger saw Lee, so far over the edge that it looked as if he were bound to fall, but his wife wasn’t falling any more. There was much less strain on Roger’s arms, too, and a sense of security rather than of danger. Then one of the firemen jumped on to the roof, other men appeared on it, and more escapes were run up. It was only a matter of seconds to safety for them all.

  The baby lay still on the roof, where the father had put it. It began to cry.

  The acute danger had lasted for perhaps sixty seconds. Roger, standing on the roof, felt as if he had been through an hour-long ordeal. He seemed to be swaying, as if he could never stop. He could see the turntable some distance from the roof, and the gap was so great that it looked like death even to think about leaping it.

  The woman was lying on the roof, her husband on his knees beside her. A fireman was holding the crying baby.

  Lee was in tears, too.

  Charlotte Lee was crying.

  Roger drove from Ealing at about half-past five that evening, deliberately going slowly and carefully. He hadn’t thrown off the effect of those sixty seconds, but he had to soon, and driving would help him back to normal more quickly than anything else. He was alone, with the radio crackling, and calls going to and fro through the ether. Most of it was routine, but there were some comments about Gibson, who hadn’t been found. It was damned queer about Gibson, and Roger tried to be rational about him again. Gibson was the old reliable, wasn’t he? The last man to go haring off on his own so that he could get results in a lone wolf act. He wouldn’t stick his neck out too far.

  Roger turned into the Yard, and something in the alacrity with which a man jumped forward to open his door, and in the expression of the eyes of the sergeants on duty in the hall, told him that the story of the rooftop at Ealing had turned him into a hero again. If only they knew! He hurried along to his office, hoping against hope that there would be word of Gibson.

  Evans was at his desk, looking round.

  “Just brought my report, sir,” he said, moving from the desk; there was something in the set of his chin which told Roger that he did not share the hero-worship; Evans had only one hero. “I can’t help thinking that it’s most peculiar.”

  “About Gibson?”

  “I could swear that either Miss Webb or I would have seen him coming out of that dispatch room.”

  “But you know he wasn’t there.”

  “As a matter of fact—” began Evans, and then broke off.

  He had something on his mind, Roger knew; and probably something on his conscience – as he, Roger, felt guilty because he still hadn’t seen Maddison’s wife. Roger moved to his chair and sat down, lifted a telephone and said: “Have someone send me up some tea and sandwiches – for two.” The ‘for two’ obviously mollified Evans. “Sit down,” he said to Evans, and wished he could think of some way of postponing this session for a while. He ought to have looked in at home on the way from Ealing. He hadn’t, because Janet would know in a moment that he had been badly shaken. “Let’s have it,” he went on, and offered cigarettes.

  “I don’t smoke, thanks,” Evans said; of course he didn’t. “As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I didn’t miss something pretty serious.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Well,” Evans began, and gulped; this weighed heavy on his conscience all right, and that meant that ‘serious’ was the operative word. “I’ve been trying to think how I would hide a body.”

  Roger actually shouted. “What?”

  “I know,” said Evans, “that’s how it affected me when I first thought of it, and it really shook me. But it’s no use blinking at facts, is it? Maggie and me didn’t see Gibson come out, and we’ve got eyes at the back of our heads. The more I think of it, the more positive I am that he didn’t come out of that packing and storage department. I’ve had a long talk with Maggie, and I’ve spoken in person to every one of our chaps who was watching the doors. None of them saw Gibson. He might have slipped one or two of them, but that’s all.”

  “I see what you mean,” Roger said. He felt a tightening of the muscles at the back of his neck and at
his mouth, more tension than he had yet known. “Well, where would you put a body?”

  He could have answered without a word from Evans, who said: “Roll it up in a carpet.”

  If it took a man as long as that to reach an obvious conclusion, it was a poor show: but there was no point in telling Evans that now.

  “Gibson’s a big man,” Roger temporised. “As big as I am. The carpet would look like a barrel.”

  “Not if it was one of those fat Indians, it wouldn’t,” said Evans. “I’ve been checking – I slipped into Simms Warehouse in the Strand; I’ve got a pal along there. We rolled a couple of chairs up in a carpet, big thick Mirzapore thing, fifteen feet by eighteen. It looked fat all right, but there wasn’t much difference between the ends and the middle. Just looked like a bigger carpet than most, that’s all. And”—Evans was moistening his lips—”I remember there was a fat carpet at the bottom of a pile they’d got all ready rolled up for shipping.”

  So that was the real cause of his feeling of guilt.

  “There was time to get that carpet into a van before we started searching them,” Evans went on gloomily. “They got him out all right. We’ll find him in the river, as like as not – and Cartwright, I wouldn’t wonder.”

  “We’ll go over and have another look round,” Roger decided, partly because that was what Evans was after, and partly because a second search might catch the staff at the warehouse unawares. “Come on.”

  The silvery-haired old man was at the counter, and looked startled when the two Yard men appeared.

  “I’m afraid Mr Edward’s gone, sir, but Mr Ramsbottom, the manager, is in, as it’s our seven o’clock closing night. I’ll call him …”

  Ramsbottom was small, thin, wiry; rather like a Yorkshire terrier.

  “I don’t know what it is you suspect, Superintendent, or what you expect to find this time, but as I told your men earlier, I’ll give you all the help I can. You’ll find nothing that you shouldn’t here.”

  They still found no trace of Gibson or of Cartwright.

  Ramsbottom told the police that Joe Corrissey had left at five o’clock, with Bert May, his assistant packer; only the showrooms opened until seven o’clock. The two men usually had a lift on a van going to the garage, which was at the company’s dockside warehouse.

  “Get after them, we want to talk to them quickly,” Roger said to Evans. “I’ll have a word with the dockside police now.” He felt an increasing sense of frustration, because there was no body, and no evidence that Gibson had been killed or hidden in a carpet. Evans was obviously prepared to work all night, if needs be, and as obviously was frightened of what they might find.

  “Did anything else unusual happen today?” Roger asked Ramsbottom.

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “There was the girl who took Gibson round,” Evans put in. “A tall blonde – where is she?”

  “That would be Miss Osborn. She will have gone home,” Ramsbottom answered. “The office staff goes at five o’clock; we only have a few salesmen and late shift workers on duty until seven o’clock.”

  “I’d like Miss Osborn’s address, please.”

  It was after half-past six when Roger and Evans left Maddisons, with the feeling of frustration and disquiet deeper than ever. Roger called Ledbetter by radio; there was nothing new about the Kindle case, but Mrs Kindle was back home, with a sister staying with her. Mrs Lee was also back home, with her husband and the baby. The Maddisons were home. There was still no word about Gibson. Roger sent Evans to the dockside warehouse and to check on Corrissey and May, and went himself to the address of the blonde who had taken Gibson round the warehouse and salerooms. She lived in a small flatlet in Earl’s Court, which she shared with a short, dark-haired girl who worked in a department of a Fleet Street newspaper. She hadn’t come in yet.

  Roger arranged for her friend to telephone the Yard as soon as the Osborn girl came back, and left two men watching the flat.

  It was then seven o’clock.

  He went back to the Yard. Hardy had left, and so had the Assistant Commissioner, and only the night duty men were in; the Yard had a forlorn kind of look. Evans reported almost at once that Corrissey was not at home, and that a general call was out for him. The assistant, Herbert May, lodged at Corrissey’s home, and was there.

  “Have you talked to May?” Roger asked.

  “He simply says that Gibson went out of the department,” answered Evans. “I can’t get another word out of him. I know one thing, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Corrissey wouldn’t talk if he knew all there was to know, and I wouldn’t trust him round the corner. But May is different. We could break him down all right.”

  “Step up the search for Corrissey, and talk to May,” Roger said. “If you get anything at all, telephone me at Bell Street.”

  “I’ll do that,” promised Evans.

  Roger left the Yard a little after seven thirty. The boys would be looking forward to seeing him, and the difficulty tonight would be to behave naturally with them; the disappearance of Gibson was like a cloud hanging over his head. His radio was silent as he drove. He felt almost guilty at driving this way, instead of towards the docks or out to Esher, but Evans, the Divisional and the Surrey people between them could do far more than he, and one thing was quite certain: he needed a break. Even a couple of hours, a good meal, and Janet and the boys for company, would make a world of difference.

  He turned into Bell Street, a pleasant Chelsea thoroughfare with some detached and some semi-detached houses, all with small gardens beautifully tended, tulips and wallflowers in many of the beds, grass looking trim and neat, here and there a lawnmower clattering. As he drew near his own house, halfway along the street, he saw the car parked outside it, and recognised Spendlove’s dark green Jaguar sports car. The last thing he wanted was a talk with the newspaperman, but Spendlove wasn’t at the wheel, so Janet had asked him in, and if he thought it worth coming at all he would think it worth waiting for hours. The wise thing was to see what he wanted and get rid of him.

  Roger pulled up in front of his garage, and saw Spendlove in the front room, Scoopy standing by him, and Richard near and doubled up with laughter. The newspaperman had made a conquest there.

  But why had he come?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Uneasy Night

  “… and when he opened the envelope he found a card which said: ‘Don’t buy, beg or steal cigarettes’,” Spendlove was saying as Roger opened the door. Richard was gurgling with laughter, Scoopy was smiling. “I was just telling your youngsters about methods of stopping smoking,” Spendlove said. He looked clear-eyed and was smiling as if he had been enjoying himself.

  “If you could tell them how never to start you’d be doing something,” Roger said, and took out cigarettes. “Have one?”

  Richard almost burst with laughter.

  “Dad,” Scoopy said, “Mum’s gone across to Mrs Pearson’s. She said she wouldn’t be long, and if you were very hungry I was to go and get her.”

  “I’m ravenous,” Roger said. “You two boys go and cook me some sausages and eggs; there’s no need to disturb your mother.”

  Richard was reluctant to go. Scoopy accepted the inevitable more readily, but hesitated in the doorway and asked: “Shall we see you again, sir?”

  “If not tonight, another night,” Spendlove promised.

  “I hope we’ll see you often,” enthused Richard.

  The door closed on them, and Roger lit his own and Spendlove’s cigarettes. Spendlove’s glass was half full, and Roger poured himself out a whisky and soda, then sat back in an easy chair which was soon to be re-upholstered. The room was to be the last one decorated, and the work was being started upstairs.

  “Nice boys you have there,” Spendlove remarked. “Fit sons for a hero.”

  “Don’t you start that.”

  “Damned good show, but it seems to have taken the stuffing out of you,” the newspap
erman said. “I had my head down for a couple of hours this afternoon; pity you couldn’t have done the same. Gibson turned up yet?”

  “No.”

  “Worried?”

  “You didn’t come here to find out how I’m feeling,” Roger said. “What have you come for?”

  “You’ll probably want to throw me out.”

  “I do, anyhow.”

  Spendlove said: “Handsome, you and I have a lot in common. Believe it or not, if I hadn’t been a newspaperman I would have wanted to be a detective! One reason I didn’t was that I knew my conscience would nag me too much. Like yours. I feel as uneasy as hell.”

  “Why?”

  “In case more babies are on the list.”

  “Every Division is keeping a special watch on babies, and AS Division extra-specially,” Roger said, and drank deeply.

  “I knew I needn’t have worried, but I did,” Spendlove said. “Thanks. Now I’ll really stick my neck out. I’ve had an idea.”

  “What have I missed?” asked Roger.

  “Could Cartwright be being framed? A preparation for blackmail, perhaps?”

  Roger didn’t answer.

  “I know it sounds damned silly,” Spendlove said, “but the whole business is peculiar. The more I think of it the less I see Cartwright as a baby-killer, but I think he would have worn down Anne Kindle’s resistance sooner or later. From what the neighbours say, she has grounds in plenty for divorce; there wouldn’t be any difficulty about one. From all I’ve heard, Cartwright had no resentment against the child, simply against the fact that it stopped him and her from going out a bit. He would gladly have taken on the child.”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  “My Territorial Army friends.”

  “Go on,” said Roger, and drained his glass and stood up. Spendlove’s glass was empty, and he took it to the small table where the whisky and the soda were.

  “Why that particular baby, and why then?” asked Spendlove. “That’s what worries me. And there’s also the possible connection with the other child who was murdered last week. Then – Cartwright isn’t a fool. He may be a bit crazy over this woman, but apart from that he has his head screwed on. Why did he run away?”