by John Creasey
Copyright & Information
Gideon’s Fire
First published in 1961
Copyright: John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1961-2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
EAN ISBN Edition
0755114043 9780755114047 Print
0755126297 9780755126293 Pdf
0755118642 9780755118649 Mobi/Kindle
0755126327 9780755126323 Epub
This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.
Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.
Creasy wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the ‘C’ section in stores. They included:
Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.
Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.
He also founded the British Crime Writers’ Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey’s stories are as compelling today as ever.
1 THE FIRST FIRE
London lay sleeping.
Here and there a car sped along the grey, deserted streets, the darkness broken by the faint misty light of a sliver of moon, or by the dimmed headlights of the car. The main streets were gilded by the brightness of street lamps, here and there neon colours struck garish against the glow. Over to the west a faint red tinged the sky above Piccadilly Circus, but in the East End only a few lights were on. It was silent, dull, dismal except near the docks, where a white radiance showed the ships being worked to catch the morning tide.
Policemen plodded, a few thieves judged the moments to sidle safely past the law to their snug homes. Most of the night’s crimes and most of the night’s arrests had been made, the cells of the Divisional police stations had their quotas of men under charge, for being drunk, for being found on enclosed premises, for burglary, theft, hold-up, violence, for the thousand and one offences which made up the police calendar. There had been one brutal murder, of a fourteen-year-old girl, but this was not yet discovered, no one knew that she was dead and not asleep in her narrow bed.
The tired prostitutes were home and sleeping, mostly alone; the hotels were like morgues, and any sound seemed loud.
Police Constable Jarvis, of the QR Division, which was south of the Thames and famous in song with its Lambeth Walk and its Old Kent Road, was probably one of the most unremarkable policemen in the Metropolitan Police Force. He was thirty-five, married, with three children nicely staggered at the ages of ten, seven and four, an arrangement controlled, although Jarvis did not realise it, by his busy and competent wife. Jarvis knew Police Regulations off by heart and knew his job inside out, but although he had spent ten years in this Division, one of the toughest in London, he had never once encountered serious trouble, and it did not occur to him even remotely that he might run into any tonight.
He had been called to the bodies of murdered people, but long after the crime had been committed. Street fights outside the pubs on Saturday nights somehow always happened on another man’s beat. He had attended his share of accidents and rendered first aid several times, but this was part of the routine of his job. He had made a few arrests, but never of any criminal of note, and he had no desire to improve on this record. He was a satisfied man who took nearly everything for granted, who was ‘good’ in the sense that he was almost oblivious of temptation. For the first few years of his marriage his wife had worked; soon after their first child Jarvis had won a substantial dividend on the football pools. All this was safely invested, and the interest nearly doubled his wages.
Only twice in his police career had he been compelled to use his truncheon, and only five times had he used his whistle. Yet it never occurred to him to think that life was dull.
He turned out of the Old Kent Road towards a short, narrow street where there were several shops, including a fried fish shop, a newsagent’s, a grocer and provision merchant, a television, radio and cycle shop and a shoe repairer. This was a kind of oasis of trade in a drab sea of little houses, with a few old tenement buildings near them, looking rather like the rotted hulks of ships long derelict. There would have been more of these tenement buildings but for the bombing years ago - so long ago in fact that a whole generation had been brought up where bombs had fallen, without the slightest knowledge of the fear that the holocaust could bring. There were great plans, becoming sear and dusty in the Town Hall and in the Ministry of Housing, for a big building project to wipe out all of this slum area and replace it with bright new flats with television aerials built in. These plans had lain fallow for so long that even their creators had almost forgotten to hope for their realisation. The Minister, when reminded, would say with justification that not everything could be done at once.
In this area of slum buildings there lived a few sneak thieves, and twice in the past two weeks one of the shops had been broken into, and a few poundsworth of goods stolen - mostly cigarettes, chocolates and radio spares. This was the kind of petty crime which often came Jarvis’s way, and he believed he knew who the burglar was. If he were right, it was an Italian waiter who worked at one of the West End’s cheaper night clubs and usually reached home about half past three. It was now three-fifteen, and Jarvis proposed to take up a position from which he could watch the shops when this waiter came home. He had everything worked out, because he knew the waiter’s habits thoroughly; he knew the habits of most of the people on his beat because it was his job.
Behind the shops were ten tall tenement buildings, each with five stories, each with outside staircases, each with ten apartments, so each housed ten families. Over five hundred people lived in that tiny area, and most of these were sleeping. The doorway of the one nearest the shops would make an ideal hiding place, and Jarvis plodded over to it, took up his position, glanced at the illuminated dial of his watch and saw that it was twenty minutes past three; he had time for an unhurried drag.
He took out a cigarette, cupped a match, lit it without much of the flame showing, drew
deeply, and flicked the match away when sure that it was out. The April night was chilly without being cold. The moon had dropped behind the roof of the house opposite. A hum of sound from the docks across the river became more audible, now - and then Jarvis heard the click-click-click of a cycle with a broken spoke, and was sure that his man was approaching.
The cyclist came into sight, his face shown up pale and thin by a street lamp. The machine clicked past, and Jarvis left his hiding place to watch. As he did so, a dark figure appeared from the doorway of one of the other tenement buildings, a few yards away. Jarvis was surprised to see this, but not startled, and his first thought was that this newcomer might be the thief after all. The red glow of the cyclist’s rear lamp looked very bright until it was hidden by the man from the tenement, who turned his back on Jarvis without knowing he was there, and began to walk hurriedly towards the corner and the shops. Jarvis intended to catch the thief red-handed, and felt now that he had a double chance of success. There was no hurry. All he had to do was to watch the shops after allowing the thief to break in. He drew surreptitiously at his cigarette before nipping it out, and was not really surprised nor as disappointed as he might have been when the cyclist passed the shops. The white front and the red rear lights reflected on the grocery store’s windows. The other man was still on foot, a rather slim, dark figure, wearing a loose fitting macintosh or raincoat which flapped a little as he walked; no cloth coat would do that.
This man crossed the road towards the shops.
‘Got him,’ Jarvis murmured aloud, and wondered whether the thief would force the front door, or go round the back. He was so sure that he had the man cornered that he was astounded when he saw him move away from the newspaper shop, with its valuable stock of cigarettes. He was now wheeling a bicycle, which had been leaning against some bill boards. Jarvis remembered that he had seen that bicycle before without realising that it was there. Had he actually passed it and given himself time to reflect, he might have realised that it could mean that the thief was already at work; he had been so sure of the waiter and the success of his own straightforward plan. Now, the second man swung into the saddle of his machine, and began to pedal away.
He had no lights on the machine.
The waiter had gone; this man obviously wasn’t going to burgle a shop here; and Jarvis was thrown off his mental balance. But he quickly recovered it, for the man on the bicycle was committing a breach of the law by cycling without lights. Jarvis raised his voice:
‘You there! Lights!’
It was a clear, carrying voice, and there was no doubt that it reached the cyclist, but it did not have the effect which Jarvis anticipated. The cyclist seemed to crouch down and put on speed. No lights appeared. The cycle hummed like a dart towards a corner and swung round as if the man was on a racing track, not on the narrow south London streets.
‘Bloody fool,’ Jarvis muttered, now really disgruntled, but he did not read any particular significance into what had happened. A lot of people rode without lights, and if this chap’s lamps were not in working order he would be anxious to get as far away as possible so that he couldn’t be stopped. Jarvis now began to speculate on his identity. He had come out of Number17 - the third remaining tenement building, the middle one of the five in this battered terrace. Standing on the kerb and looking at the now deserted street, Jarvis began to go systematically through the people who lived there. The fourth floor left flat was empty - the new people were due to move in next week. Certain families could be ruled out, certain men lodgers, too, for only three men who lived in that apartment had the same kind of figure as the man who had hurried away.
‘I’ll get him one of these days,’ Jarvis boasted to the quiet night. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting it was Miller. Can’t think why he’d be going out at half past three, though. Could have had a quarrel with his missus, I suppose.’
Miller was a man in the middle twenties who had married a woman fifteen years his senior, for her money. There were two children by her first marriage and three, all under five, of this marriage; it was well known that they lived like cat and dog. ‘Miller isn’t up to anything, is he?’ Jarvis asked the silent street. ‘If she’s keeping him short again, he might . . .’
Jarvis broke off, and sniffed.
London smog and London smoke did little to help any native’s sense of smell, but there was no mistaking the stench of burning which came from the stairway behind him - the stairway from which the thin man had come. Jarvis turned towards it. He knew the tenement buildings inside out. The staircase had one flight to each floor in the open air, one flight to each floor under cover. There were front doors on either side at street level and at each landing level. When he reached the first landing, the stench was even stronger, and in and out of the beam of his torch crept wisps of smoke.
‘Dunno that I like this,’ said Jarvis to himself, and sprinted up another flight of stairs. As he turned the corner, the bright beam caught a swirling grey patch, and there was no longer any doubt that this was a fire which had got a quick hold. He took out his whistle, and blew a long, earsplitting blast which screeched up and down the narrow staircase. Then he tucked the whistle away, and bellowed: ‘Fire! Show a leg - fire!’ As he shouted, he ran up to the next landing, and saw thick smoke above it; the fire seemed to be coming from the fourth floor, and he thought that he could hear the crackling of flames. He grabbed the iron knocker of the door nearest him, thundered on it, and kept shouting: ‘Fire!’ until he pulled out his handkerchief and held it in front of his face as he charged up the next flight of stairs.
It did not occur to him that he was being brave.
He reached the landing, and saw the red glow beneath the door of Apartment 8 - the Millers’ apartment, with Miller’s wife and five kids in it. He hesitated for an agonising moment, trying to recall exactly what the book said, remembering that he must do nothing to create too much of a draught.
‘To hell with a draught,’ he muttered. ‘If I don’t get that door down they’ll burn to a cinder.’ He drew back and flung himself at the door, his right shoulder towards it. The door sagged. He saw a scared-looking man above him, the elderly tenant of one of the higher flats. ‘Get everyone out of there,’ Jarvis ordered wheezily and began to choke as the smoke caught his breath. He was not worried about the people above or below, they could get out; but the Miller family would have had it if they didn’t get out quick. He shouldered the door again, felt it give, but knew it might be a long time before he could get it down. A man in stark white pyjamas came hurrying up the stairs towards him, a woman in a billowing nightdress gaping at the bosom, was standing below.
‘Send for the fire service,’ Jarvis called. ‘Then get a ladder up to the Millers’ window.’
‘Okay!’ The man spun round. ‘Look out, Elsie!’ he shouted, and sounded more excited than Jarvis, who drew back with massive deliberation, and flung all his weight at the door.
It gave way.
A roar of flame and a blast of oven-hot air swept out at him, and nearly choked him. He thought he heard a scream. He saw flames filling a small passage, saw the door of one room in a red-hot, blistering mass. The roaring died away now that the draught had slackened, and he heard the screaming of a child inside the room.
He did not really feel afraid. It was as much an impulse and a reflex action as anything which made him cover his face with his bent left arm, and thrust his way into the room. He felt the agonising heat at the back of his hand, felt pain at his forehead and the back of his neck. He tried to see beneath his arm. He glimpsed a child with her nightdress blazing, standing on a bed - a screaming torch. He felt a floor board crack beneath him. He lowered his head, struggled to take off his tunic and wrap it round the child as she stood there, but he felt a sickening sense of hopelessness, despair and fear. He felt a crackling sound above, and realised that his hair was burning beneath the rim of his helmet - the child’s hair had set his alight. There was agonising pain at his eyes. There was the roaring
of the fire, the fury of crackling, the groaning boards; only the screaming had stopped. He staggered towards the window, preparing to break it with his elbow. He hugged the child tightly to him with one hand and bent his elbow and cracked it against the big pane. As the glass shattered, he heard the ringing of a fire-engine bell. He saw a crowd in the street. He thought he heard someone cry: ‘Jump!’ He still held the child. This window was three stories high, and there were only the people below, some of them holding a blanket.
‘Jump!’ they screamed.
He lifted the silent child up and down in his arms, not knowing whether she was dead or alive. He could not call down to the people, for his tongue seemed paralysed, but the silence which suddenly fell upon them told him that they knew what he held.
He tossed the child out, saw her fall, saw her caught in the blanket. His head was swimming. His head was burning. His trousers, his shirt, his shoes were on fire. The noise of the fire-engine grew louder, but he did not see it swing into the street. He felt darkness coming over him, tinged with red, he felt himself swaying backwards and knew that he was losing consciousness. Then he realised that someone else was here with him: a man. In his last fading moment of consciousness he realised that it was Miller, wrapped in a burning coat, hugging another blazing torch, another child.
Then Police Constable Jarvis collapsed.
2 GIDEON HEARS
George Gideon, the Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department at New Scotland Yard, gave his wife a rather perfunctory kiss the morning after the fire, said: ‘I’ll try not to be late, Kate,’ and went off only vaguely aware that she was standing at the porch of their house in Hurlingham, smiling until he was out of sight.
