Gideon's risk

by J. J Marric

  "Thanks," said Gideon, and studied the figures. "Shouldn't think you'd missed anything," he went on, and picked up a telephone from the sergeant's desk, and called Information. When the Chief Inspector then in charge answered, he said in an even voice, "Gideon here. . . . I want up-to-the-minute statistics on car thefts over the whole Metropolitan and City area—comparative figures for the past twelve months and for the past three years. Make a thorough job of it, will you? Type of car, color, the lot."

  "Right," the Chief Inspector said. "You heard about the one an hour ago?"

  "Yes."

  "Another man died."

  "Got the driver yet?"

  "No."

  Gideon said, "It will be in all the headlines tonight—tell the back room to give the newspapers everything we can on it. Tell them I'm going to have a look at the scene myself, too. Don't give them the slightest excuse for saying that we aren't taking it seriously. Say that—"

  "Someone been prodding you?" interrupted the man at Information.

  The comment annoyed Gideon, but he did not show it. Instead, he said, "No. I'm prodding you," and rang off without finishing what he had intended to say. He nodded to the sergeant and went out of the brightly lighted room and up the stairs toward the main hall, nodding to everyone who passed and spoke or raised a hand to him. The second fatality made this a case which was going to be sensational, and now his mind was almost free from the Borgman uncertainty; he had to present the Yard in the best light he could, and try to make sure that no newspaper would start one of the periodic "pep-up-the-Yard" campaigns.

  There would be parking problems if he took his car. If he had his own way he would have walked, but he did not want to be out of the office for too long, so he crossed Parliament Street, and then took a bus which dropped him at Piccadilly Circus. During the slow ride, he tried to set the Borgman business in its proper perspective. Was it really conceivable that if Borgman knew about the danger from the nurse's belated statement he would have acted so highhandedly with Appleby? Appleby had described a man who was absolutely sure of himself.

  Was it a mistake to keep at Borgman "on principle"—because the man obsessed him? God knew that there was plenty doing to keep the Yard busy. That wasn't the point, he told himself, almost portentously; the point was that no one who had committed a crime must ever feel free from the possibility of being found out; and a five-year-old crime could have far worse repercussions on the mind of a criminal than one that had happened four or five minutes ago. He could not see himself arguing that point with the politicians, and told himself that obviously there had been some talk in the lobbies of the House of Commons. Whenever a directive came from the Home Secretary it was because he was being pushed—and probably a lot of Members of Parliament were restive about the increasing incidence of crime.

  Gideon got off the bus, and said, "Damned fool." Of course, the Home Office had seen the latest figures before he had.

  He walked along Shaftesbury Avenue. There was a crowd of people at one corner, being moved on by several policemen, some of whom were obviously out of patience because of the crowd's insistence. Gideon was tall enough to look over the heads of most people present. He saw a squad of his own men busy, measuring, marking the roadway and the pavement. The ambulances had gone, but the grisly tale of what had happened remained; there were patches of sawdust, some of them showing the damp of blood; and there were two small pools of blood which someone had missed; on one there was the imprint of a foot. A plate-glass window had been smashed, and the killer car had been nosed inside the shop, one wing badly crumpled but otherwise hardly damaged. It was a Morris, the kind of medium-powered car easiest to steal and get away with.

  Police were trying to keep the crowd back far enough for them to work in comfort, and three uniformed men came out of a shop doorway, carrying some boxes, to use as a temporary barricade. Gideon took all this in, and saw several Fleet Street men also taking in the scene; one of them was standing on a box and taking a photograph; another photographer was at a window on the first floor of the shop. Gideon knew that it was only a matter of time before a reporter came up and asked him questions; it was better to be questioned than to volunteer information.

  He began to push his way through the crowd.

  The photographer on the box called out, "Commander!" in a loud voice, and Gideon turned toward him. A small man with the photographer came across and said earnestly:

  "Investigating this in person, Mr. Gideon?"

  "Just having a look," Gideon said. "Had too many car thefts lately, and we're giving it priority."

  "How long have you been doing that?"

  "Two or three weeks."

  "As long as that?"

  "What do you think? That we like car thefts?" asked Gideon, as if irritably. "We can't do much without the co-operation of the public, you know that as well as I do. I'll bet that car wasn't locked."

  "It wasn't, sir." A Yard man had come up, smaller than most, wearing a well-cut brown suit, hair brushed very neatly, and with an immaculate air about him. "I've talked to the owner. He forgot to lock it after lunch today."

  Gideon nodded and went to the car. A Divisional man was in it, brushing it over for fingerprints, but if this had been stolen by an expert, then the thief would have worn gloves, and there would be no hope of finding prints.

  "The only thing we've got is a description of what he looked like from behind," the brown-clad man said. "One of our men saw him."

  "Is he here?"

  "The tall constable—yes."

  Gideon went across, knowing that he had been identified by every policeman and newspaperman here, and by many of the crowd. He spent only a minute with the tall constable, enough to make the man glow, and then checked everything that had been done. Every shopkeeper and every front office was being visited, in the hope that someone had seen the face of the car thief, nearby shops, offices, and restaurants were being visited in the same quest. Harrison, the brown-clad man, had missed nothing; his was a temperament that thrived on praise, and Gideon said:

  "Keep it up and you'll get the chap all right. Be bad luck if you don't."

  "We'll get him," Harrison said.

  Gideon nodded.

  This was "his" London; the "manor" which he had walked as a constable, and later as a sergeant; the district he had come to know inside out as a detective officer and a detective sergeant; and his first major job at the Yard had been that which Harrison had now. It was less that he loved the Square Mile than that it seemed natural for him to be here; the little shops in Soho, the delicatessens, the murky doorways, the laundries, the discreetly shrouded restaurants, the chatter in foreign languages, the streaming traffic, the noise, the bustling vitality, the quiet squares, the graceful Mayfair houses, to Gideon all this was the true heart of London. It never failed to restore his sense of balance. He could think more clearly and with less bias here than anywhere else, even in his own office and his own home. In a strange way he could be alone here, in spite of the throng who jostled as they passed.

  He visited twenty-one places from which cars had been stolen in the past few weeks, and saw how cleverly the cars had been selected to give the greatest possible chance of a getaway, and he came firmly to the conclusion that many of these thefts were the work of one gang. If that were so, then almost certainly there were several nearby garages to which each stolen car could be driven, the number plate whipped off and replaced by a false one; there would be other garages, probably on the perimeter of the West End or even in the outer suburbs, where cars could be recellulosed and their appearance changed completely.

  He was at the end of Shaftesbury Avenue when a plain-clothes man came up, a little diffidently, and said:

  "Commander Gideon?"

  "Yes."

  "There's a message from your office, sir. It says that a Mr. B. will be there at half-past five."

  Gideon said, "Good, thanks," and immediately his spirits rose; he realized how much he wanted to see Borgman, and ho
w glad he was that Borgman had decided to accept the invitation. It was already nearly five o'clock; the quicker he got back the better. He waved to a taxi, and as it slowed down he said to the plain-clothes man:

  "Call the office back, and ask them to have Superintendent Lee there for me in ten minutes, will you?"

  "Very good, sir."

  "Thanks, Osborn," Gideon said, and could see the astonishment in the man's eyes at being recognized. Gideon got into the taxi, sat back, and began to fondle the bowl of his pipe.

  First Fred Lee; then Borgman; then the decision about the exhumation; and before he went home he must prepare an outline of what he wanted done about the car thefts, and have a word with Bell about the best man to put in charge.

  He was almost buoyant when he strode into his office, where gray-haired, round-shouldered Fred Lee waited, on his own.

  7. Borgman

  "Joe had to nip out," Lee said. "He won't be five minutes. He tells me you've got a special for me."

  "And what a special," Gideon said. He rounded his desk and sat down. "Take a pew, Fred." He was a little overhearty, and that was only partly due to his mood. Lee needed pushing; needed to feel at least for the time being that he was not really on his own, and that the strength and the confidence of Gideon and the Yard were behind him. In fact he was a man whom one success could make into a new man, and another serious failure destroy utterly, as a policeman. "Joe say what it was?"

  "Borgman."

  "That's right. An old cashier . . ." Gideon outlined the situation without wasting words, and saw the intentness with which Lee followed every point. This was undoubtedly the right job for Lee, who could make a column of figures live, and could read account books as another might read a simple report, and also had the gift of making what he discovered clear to those who had no head for figures. He had followed through three big cases of income-tax fraud brilliantly, and nothing had seemed likely to stop his progress at the Yard until, a year ago, he had been given the Rambaldi case. This had been an involved case of income-tax fraud in a series of companies of which Rambaldi had been the leading light—another Borgman, in a way. There had been no question of the tax evasion, simply doubt as to whether Rambaldi had taken any part in them, or whether the onus had lain entirely with the parent company's secretary and accountants. Each of these men had accepted the responsibility, and denied that Rambaldi had known about the frauds. Lee had been sure—in the way that Gideon was now sure about Borgman—that Rambaldi had been the main architect, and that the other men were taking the rap because their wives and families were being well looked after and because each would come out of jail to a small fortune.

  At one time it had looked as if the prosecution would win easily; until Percy Richmond had started the cross-examination of Fred Lee.

  It had not been good to see a man made to look a fool. In the witness box, Lee had gradually broken down under the remorseless questioning, and two other witnesses on whom he had been relying had contradicted themselves so often under Richmond's questions that Rambaldi had been found not guilty. Only Lee and a few Yard officers had believed that the acquitted man had been as guilty as either of the others.

  The first break in Lee's testimony had come when he had forgotten some figures, under Richmond's cross-examination, and become momentarily confused. Then Richmond had attacked him on his greatest strength—his memory. If he could "forget" one thing, couldn't he get others wrong? The jury had been duly persuaded that Lee's memory was unreliable, and his reasoning consequently faulty.

  There had been a number of contributory factors to Lee's subsequent breakdown. For one thing, he had worked for three years without a real holiday; for another, the eldest of his three children had been stricken with polio, and was still badly crippled; and, for a third, two other, lesser cases had gone sour on him. He had been given six months' sick leave, there had been talk of an early retirement, and it was because he hated the thought of retiring under a cloud that he had come back. But something had happened to him. His head for figures was the same, his shrewdness unmatched, but he found himself doubting the soundness of his own memory. In short, he had lost his confidence. Gideon had soon realized that he would not get it back until he had a big success.

  ". . . and of course what we really want is as much about Borgman as we can get," Gideon said. "Now that this cashier is dead, we've got a bigger reason than ever to probe. Borgman called us in, and we can go ahead and check back for years."

  "Want to make him edgy?"

  "Let him wonder what we're really after, yes."

  "How long have I got?"

  "Within reason, as long as you like."

  "Supposing it's just a cut and dried job, which I can clear up in a couple of days?"

  Gideon grinned. "Just get bogged down in it, Fred."

  Lee hesitated, looking intently at the bigger man. He had rather worried gray eyes, which had lost much of their sharpness. His features were clear-cut, his nose long and pointed, like his chin. He had a curiously shaped mouth, drooping at the corners but, in the old days, giving him a droll look. Now it was anxious. He was a tall thin man, and had always been round-shouldered.

  "Not taking too much of a chance, George, are you?" he asked. "I know how badly you want Borgman. If I muck this one up—"

  "Won't do me any harm if I have to back down," Gideon said, "and between you and me it looks as if I'll have to. You can't do any real damage, but you might dig up enough to give me a chance to go for Borgman in a big way. I don't know of anyone else who can."

  Lee smiled, more brightly.

  "If I can get anything on him, I will all right. Want me to be here when he comes?"

  "Yes."

  "Thanks," said Lee, and then glanced at the telephone as it rang, and as the door opened to admit Bell, who had obviously washed and brushed his thin gray hair and looked fresh and boyish.

  "Gideon here," said Gideon. "Ah, yes. Bring him up, will you?"

  He rang off.

  "Joe, you sit at your desk as if you're minding your own business, but keep glancing at him now and again, and make a lot of notes," Gideon said. "We won't be able to do much tonight, but we might start a crack. Fred, you stand with your back to the window. Push that armchair round a bit, so that it faces the window—that's right. He can't turn the chair round if he has to look at you as well as me, and we'll find out what color his eyes are!" He was smiling and trying to hide his tension. He felt an unfamiliar, sick kind of excitement, almost a dread of this going wrong. It was a long, long time since he had first wanted Borgman here.

  One of Gideon's telephones rang, and he lifted the receiver quickly, while he said to Lee:

  "Tell the switchboard not to put any more calls through."

  Into the telephone he said, "Gideon. What? . . . Oh, good." He rang off and made a note, saying, "They've found some strands of bloodstained cotton on a splinter of glass from that Morris. Looks as if the driver wore cotton gloves and cut himself."

  He finished the note as there came a tap at the door; and a moment later Borgman came in.

  He wasn't quite so tall as Gideon had expected, nor quite so broad. He was rather thickset, all the same, compact and extremely well dressed in a dark-gray suit with a narrow pin stripe, a light gray tie, light gray socks, a light gray handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket. He wore a small pearl tiepin, and somehow that added to the impression he made of being very smooth.

  Gideon stood up, rather clumsily.

  "Evening, Mr. Borgman. Good of you to come."

  "Good evening," Borgman said.

  "Sit down," Gideon invited, and sounded as ill at ease as Borgman was sure of himself. He studied the man closely; the black hair, just a little too long, obviously because he wanted it that way; the rough-looking olive skin; the dark brown eyes; the rather heavy features except for the short nose and the short upper lip. He needed to shave twice a day, and the shadow of stubble on his face was very noticeable.

  He frowned agains
t the light, but there was Fred Lee, with his back to the window.

  "I'm Gideon," Gideon announced, "and this is Superintendent Lee, who will be in charge of the investigation at your office, Mr. Borgman."

  "I hardly see why a lengthy investigation is needed," Borgman said. He had a good voice, not too cultured or put on, but there was an edge to it. He was very wary, and gave the impression that he did not quite know why he was here. Gideon took his time studying him, still highly gratified that he had the man in front of him, still thinking far beyond the implications of this case, the nurse forgotten.

  He said, almost apologetically, "We certainly don't want to cause unnecessary inconvenience, Mr. Borgman, but we have to make sure that we know everything behind these defalcations."

  "A man holding a position of trust has been robbing me. There are the books to prove it. Isn't that sufficient?"

  "But he can no longer speak for himself," Gideon said.

  "He admitted his guilt to me, he admitted it to your man, and when he killed himself and his wife he proved it to my satisfaction," Borgman said coldly. "If he were alive, I would hold him up as an example, but you can't prosecute a dead man."

  Gideon didn't speak.

  "Unless you have found a way," Borgman said.

  That was nearly a sneer, but obviously he did not like it here, and did not like the way that Gideon was appraising him, or the way Bell kept glancing up at him. The atmosphere was exactly as Gideon had wanted it from the beginning, and Borgman had helped to create it.

  He looked as if he were about to speak again, when Gideon said:

  "No, Mr. Borgman, we haven't yet found a way of making the dead talk. I only wish we could." That came out quite flatly, and he was watching the other man intently all the time. He thought he saw a flash of annoyance in the dark eyes; it was easy to imagine that he actually saw a glint of fear. He paused again for what seemed a long time in a portentous way, and then went to: "Yes, I only wish we could, we would hear some strange stories from the dead. As it is, we can only try to make sure that the living are protected and that the guilty don't go unpunished."