by John Creasey
Two sergeants and two C.I.s looked up at West and secretly grinned, for they saw the way he glanced at his desk and Turnbull. But Turnbull didn’t notice. In spite of the open window, the smell of Turkish tobacco smoke was very strong. There was a look of anticipation among the four: this was where West would tear a strip off a subordinate who used his chair, read reports which were on his desk, and polluted the very air.
West, a broad six feet, dressed in a light-brown suit, with fair curly hair and good features justifying the Yard’s nickname of ‘Handsome,’ let his blue eyes flicker over the four, and then walked towards Turnbull. His smile of greeting died, he became poker-faced.
He reached the desk, casting a shadow. Turnbull glanced up and started with surprise, even appeared to feel a moment of discomfiture.
“Waiting for me?” asked West.
“Er—yes. Yes, brought this.” Turnbull stood up, slowly, and picked up the report. “Job out at Telham. Nineteen-year-old girl murdered. Strangled.” The moment of discomfiture past, Turnbull became just a detective with a Yard man’s dispassionate attitude towards facts and evidence. “Not a sex job, they say. She scratched the murderer—hands or face. According to the three different descriptions given by three different people out at MK, she was something to look at. A local Beauty Queen.”
“Oh,” said West.
Turnbull, while talking, had moved out of the way of West’s chair. West sat down. The other four, very busy about their own business, all showed disappointment in varying degrees. One could never tell how West would take a thing, but he shouldn’t let Turnbull put anything over him; it would make the Detective Inspector even more insufferable.
“Sir Guy wants you to go over to Telham,” Turnbull reported; “he’s been on the telephone for you several times.”
“I’ve just seen him,” West said, briefly. “You’re to come on this job with me.”
Turnbull’s eyes glistened.
“Oh, good. I—”
“It’ll be an exercise in logic and deduction, no doubt,” West said, “but don’t forget that people are involved, will you? Go easy on the parents.”
“Oh, to hell with the parents,” Turnbull said carelessly. “It’s the boy friend I’m interested in, a Harold Millsom.”
“Are you?” West looked at him levelly. “I hope he doesn’t disappoint you. Telephone MK and say we’re on our way. Then go and see if my car’s ready, will you? I had a bit of pump trouble on the way here. If the mechanics haven’t finished, we’ll use anything they can spare. Shouldn’t think we’ll need anything fast”
“We can use mine,” Turnbull offered eagerly. He had a high-powered Jaguar.
“No, thanks,” West said.
Turnbull obviously didn’t like that, but shrugged and turned away. The door closed behind him. West waved a hand in front of his face, dispersing smoke, glanced at the windows, lit a Virginia cigarette, and then began to look at the reports. He was reading them ten minutes later, when the telephone rang.
“Hallo? … Yes, Turnbull … I’ll be right down.”
He rang off.
“Handsome,” said the Chief Inspector with the rugged profile, “why the hell didn’t you tear a strip off him? He wants keeping down, or he’ll get unbearable.”
“Now could I keep a good man down?” asked West. His smile didn’t suggest that he had any kindly feeling towards Turnbull, but that was his only comment, “I’ll be seeing you. Urgent messages to MK.”
“O-kay,” the Rugged Profile grinned.
“Tell you what you can do for me,” West said, belatedly. “Turn up the files on murdered girls—unsolved jobs—in the past three months or so, will you? Lock ’em away from Mr. Turnbull!”
He went out.
He whistled softly as he walked along the wide, cold passages of the Yard, was taken down in the big lift, and walked down the stone steps into the courtyard. Turnbull was standing by the side of his, West’s, green Morris.
“Oh, good,” said West. “Hop in.”
The girl lay upon a stone slab in the cold, dimly lit morgue attached to the MK Divisional Headquarters. Outside, traffic bustled, but the sound hardly disturbed the stillness. The morgue keeper, with the indifference of long experience, switched on a second light over the girl’s face. “See better?” he asked West.
West and Turnbull stared at Betty Gelibrand.
“My,” said Turnbull, “someone’s going to lose some happy days and nights, she’s quite something.”
West looked at him sharply; then studied the bruises beneath the girl’s chin, some light, some dark, all evidence of the savagery which had been part of the murder. He moved Betty’s head and saw where the hair had been torn out, after catching in the bushes as she had been dragged under cover. He looked at the marks of ringers round the neat ankles.
“See that,” Turnbull said. “Two or three runs, but no torn threads. Know what that means?”
“What do you think it means?”
“Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face. Smooth hands, office worker—not manual, anyhow.” Turnbull was just the machine again. “Probably got the nails trimmed very close, might even be a nail biter. I mean, you try grabbing the girl round the ankles.” He pushed past West, grabbed, and demonstrated; the body might have been a plaster model. “Difficult to keep your nails off the stockings, and when you pull, you kind of drag so that the nails would almost certainly break the nylon and leave a lot of frayed ends. But they didn’t. She’s all of ten stone, meaty little filly, but—”
“He could have worn gloves,” West said, without any change of expression.
“Gloves and a grip like that?” Turnbull pointed to the bruises on the throat. “You don’t think so any more than I do.” He sniffed. “It was a warm night, too. Well, not much more we can do here, is there?”
There wasn’t.
They spent another half-hour in the office upstairs, looking at photographs, hearing about the girl’s parents, her crowning as the Beauty Queen of South London, her hopes and plans, her boy friend Harold Millsom, and a few other odds and ends which the Divisional people thought important and Turnbull obviously didn’t. Then they drove to the Common, which was small, little more than a park without gates and fences.
It was fresh and green, for there had been a lot of rain that May, and this was early June. The trees were in full leaf. Several clumps of rhododendron glowed pink, purple, and bright red in the warm sun. A crowd surged about the bushes and the nearer trees, and the police had roped off a semicircle which included the flowering shrubs. Six uniformed policemen stood guard, and a hundred people, several of them women with young children, gaped at the plainclothes police who were near the lovely flowers which had hidden death.
About all this, the birds sang and flitted; and there was the hum of insects, the unflustered seeking of bees.
West stepped over the rope; Turnbull followed. They saw where the body had been left – where the girl might have stayed for hours, even days, but for a frisky dog and an elderly man who had wondered where the dog had found a handkerchief …
They saw the tracks made when she had been dragged along; and hair was clinging to thorny brambles and small hawthorn bushes.
“If you don’t mind me saying so,” Turnbull said with ill-concealed impatience, “I think it’s time we talked to this boy friend, Millsom. She’d won this Beauty Queen title, small wonder when you think of her face and figure, and she wouldn’t have much time for a plodding Harold after that, would she?”
“She might not,” West temporised.
Turnbull obviously had to fight to keep calm.
“We don’t want the chap to do a flit, do we?”
“Don’t we?” For the first time, West’s eyes smiled faintly. “Wouldn’t that point the accusing finger?”
“You k
now what I mean,” said Turnbull. “The killer’s a dangerous type; if it is this Millsom, it would be better to know where he is.”
“We’ll go and see him, soon,” West agreed. “In fact—”
He broke off, as one of the policemen at the cordon moved away from a man who had been talking and gesticulating wildly, and came towards him. “Forget it,” West added, and went to meet the policeman.
He looked past him towards the man who had been talking and waving his arms about. He was young, and really something to see. A badly swollen mouth, one eye closed up, a cut over the other eye, and a swollen ear, all told their story. Beneath it all was a lean neck and a busy Adam’s apple.
The constable saluted.
“Excuse me, sir, there’s a man here says that he can give you some information.”
“Do you know him?”
“Well, I do and I don’t,” said the constable; “He’s a chap named Carter. Tick Carter.” The constable didn’t actually sneer, but went very close, and so managed to create exactly the impression he wanted to. “He’s been around here for years, sir. He says—”
Tick Carter suddenly vaulted over the rope, and hurried towards them at an ungainly gait.
“I tell you I know who it was!” he shouted, as if he were calling through a reed pipe. “It was that swine Millsom! They had a hell of a row here last night. One hell of a row and—and he nearly killed me, too. Look at my face. Look—”
“Take it easy, take it easy,” boomed the constable, and stemmed the flow of words long enough to give Turnbull a chance to say: “What did I tell you? I can smell ’em!”
“If I were you, I’d keep my voice down a bit,” West said to the gangling Tick Carter. “Now, tell us all about it.”
Turnbull already had a notebook and pencil out; his pencil sped, keeping pace with the rush of words, and his face held a look of almost gloating satisfaction.
Ten minutes later, West, Turnbull, and an MK man left for the shop where Millsom worked, in Telham High Street. Ten minutes later still, they discovered that he hadn’t shown up that morning.
He had lodgings near by, and his landlady was worried because he hadn’t been home all night.
Chapter Three
Second Sight?
“Oh, we’ll soon get Mr. Harold Millsom,” Turnbull said confidently. “We’ll turn on the heat, he won’t have a chance.” The Detective Inspector grinned at Roger West. “I was pretty sure from the beginning, wasn’t I?”
“Second sight?” inquired West, mildly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it as strong as that,” said Turnbull, almost offhandedly, “but you know what it is, don’t you? You can almost smell ’em.”
He sat next to Roger in the car, grinning. They were in a rush-hour traffic jam, and cars, buses, and lorries were jolting along a few yards at a time, while people on the pavements walked briskly by. The smell of exhaust fumes and of petrol made the warm afternoon unpleasant; and the sun shone down on the massed traffic and walking people. The Yard men were on the inside, because Roger wanted to take the next left turn, and get out of the jam.
Turnbull was an impressive beggar, he reflected – the type who would be a huge success with women. If he weren’t so cocksure, he would probably also be a success with men. His hair was auburn, and had a natural wave. He had a fair complexion, and obviously spent a lot of time sun-bathing; he had the bronze skin of an addict. He smiled often, showing big, glistening teeth. There was some kind of story that he was the son of a wealthy Australian who had chosen to make a career for himself at the Yard and was heading for the top as fast as he could go. Roger didn’t know whose son he was and didn’t greatly care. He knew that Turnbull ran the high-powered Jaguar, a much flashier car than anyone below the rank of Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard could afford.
The bus in front moved slowly.
“Phweee-oooo!” Turnbull whistled, and made Roger look up sharply; and looking, he stalled the engine.
He started it again, quickly, as he caught a glimpse of a girl turning the corner – and knew that Turnbull was looking at her. She meant to be looked at. She wore a vivid blue cotton dress with a wide white belt, a big floppy white hat, and she carried a huge white bag. She had a figure that any model would have envied, and knew quite well that practically every man stared at her.
“They don’t come like that very often,” Turnbull said, turning to watch her go past “But I bet that kid could have given her a run for her money.”
“What kid?”
“Little Betty Gelibrand.”
West bit his tongue, saw the traffic moving, and slipped through a gap. They didn’t speak again until they reached the Yard. Turnbull was humming a tune which Roger didn’t know.
Outside the Yard, a newsboy was calling, “Man wanted, paper! Real all abaht the latest murder, paper!” and grinned broadly at the Yard men.
“Insolent swine,” Turnbull growled. “I’ll clip his ear if he comes it too much.”
“Assault is assault,” West said, “even if it’s by a policeman. Go and write up a report, will you?”
“Can’t we do it together?” Turnbull looked affronted.
“No,” Roger said shortly. “I’ll leave it to you.”
Turnbull went off when they reached Roger’s floor, in something not far from a huff. Roger smiled bleakly. He went to his office and phoned the Assistant Commissioner, but Chatworth wasn’t in. He opened a brown-paper parcel he’d brought up, and looked at the photographs; of Betty as she had posed after being crowned the Beauty Queen of South London; of Betty with all the competitors; of Betty with her mother and father. She was an only child. There were also two photographs of Harold Millsom, and several people who knew him swore that each was a good likeness, judging from that, Millsom was a pleasant-looking man in the late twenties, with a broken nose and untidy hair.
It was dark hair, his friends said; and his eyes were brown, his complexion rather on the swarthy side; well, olive. People seemed to like him; or at least, respect him. He was a leather goods buyer at Telham’s one small department store. Roger let his mind roam over the dozens of people they had seen: Millsom’s employer, his fellow workers, his juniors; his landlady. The woman had been close on tears.
Then there were the Gelibrands, stricken, shaken, and shaky, the man almost speechless, the woman feverishly garrulous. They’d a lot on their minds. Before Betty had gone out the previous night they’d quarrelled – at least, both her mother and father had been sharply critical; if they hadn’t been so, she might never have gone out. And if she hadn’t gone out …
So they reproached themselves with vain bitterness.
Interviewing them, Turnbull had been impatient again. All Turnbull wanted was news of Harold Millsom. He was quick-witted, alert, shrewd, persistent; oh, he was smart. If he made a mistake, it was in assuming that Millsom was the only possible suspect. True, no others had shown up, but it was early yet.
Roger West studied the photographs again.
Betty had been really beautiful; more beautiful than many competition winners, although the one she had won was important. It was run by Conway’s, a big soap and soap-powder firm. There were twelve heats, four in London, five others in the rest of England, one each in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The finals’ winner would really go places.
Yes, Betty had been beautiful enough to have made Millsom bitter and angry. Tick Carter – known as Tick since schooldays, Roger now knew, for even then Carter had been regarded as a ‘nasty little tick’ – had been angry too, but truthful. There had been other witnesses, including three youths who had seen Millsom’s onslaught on Carter.
Sometimes the easy job came along; sometimes the finger pointed at the only possible suspect. Turnbull thought it did this time. Roger wasn’t convinced, but realised that he might be doubtful simply because
Turnbull was so cocksure. He did not like Detective Inspector Turnbull, hoped that he would not have to work with him much, but was determined not to allow his dislike to affect his judgment. Turnbull might be too intense, too dogmatic, and cursed with a single-track mind, but he was good and quick. He’d needed only half a word to get to the telephone and set the Yard moving after Millsom; and he had checked everything in the local hunt for the man swiftly and accurately. The chances were that he was right about Millsom, too.
The door opened. The Rugged Profile came in.
“’Lo, Handsome, had a nice day?”
“So-so.”
“Just seen His Lordship Sir Ruddy Warren Turnbull,” said the Rugged Profile. “He’s complaining that you’re making him write out the report, and afterward you’ll sign it and claim that it was all your own work. You ought to jump on him with both feet. I’m going to, the first chance I get.”
“Mind you don’t hurt your feet,” Roger grinned. “Get anything for me?”
“What about?”
“Murdered girls.”
“Oh, lor’, yes,” said the Rugged Profile, and dropped to his chair and rummaged through papers on his desk. “Nine jobs in the past three months, up and down the country. Here you are.” He leaned across with a sheaf of reports. “Not that it will tell you much. Three knifed, one drowned, two coshed, three strangled. If there wasn’t such a thing as sex,” added the Rugged Profile, only half in jest, “it would be a happier world.”
“All sex?”
“’Cept a couple.”
Roger read through reports on the cases, sorting them out. Some he remembered, others he’d heard of vaguely. One was very much the same as the murder of Betty Gelibrand, a pretty girl of similar social standard had been strangled; but there had been no apparent motive and only common assault, no violence except the strangling.
