Gideon's Day

by John Creasey

  Gideon wiped his forehead.

  “Not now,” he said. “But we’ll want him at the Yard. Better get him there at once, and have a doctor to him.” He looked at Arthur Sayer with eyes which had the hardness of diamonds. “Don’t stand any nonsense from him.”

  “Take it from me we won’t, sir!”

  “All right,” said Gideon. He watched them squeezing into a police car, but hardly saw Sayer; he pictured two small girls, and two mothers and two fathers, some sisters and brothers. He trumpeted into his handkerchief, then turned to the sergeant whom he had scared. “Do you know Micklem Street, Clapham, Sergeant?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, near the common.”

  “We’ll go there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And this time,” said Gideon, without conceding a smile, “I’ll drive according to the Highway Code; you needn’t hold on so tight.” He got in, and shot a sideways glance at the embarrassed sergeant. “Get the Yard on that radio, will you, and find out if there’s anything in for me.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Gideon drove as a benevolent bus driver might, with far, far more than average care. He heard the sergeant asking questions. He felt a sense of satisfaction from which anxiety wasn’t altogether erased. They’d got Sayer, and with luck they’d hang him. The blurry psychological quacks would try to prove that he was insane, though; Gideon could see the shape of their case for the defence already.

  He ought to have told that man what doctor to send for.

  ‘’Sergeant, tell them that Sayer is on his way—”

  “I have, sir.”—

  “And will they keep all doctors away from him and hold off questioning until Dr. Page-Henderson or Dr. Julian Forsyth can examine him. Ask them to pass that request through to the Old—to the A.C.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The sergeant obeyed, and then listened to the radio reports.

  “Anything for me?” asked Gideon.

  “They’ve got that tyre and footprint cast ready at B2 Division,” said the sergeant. “Superintendent Gillick asked whether you’d happen to be passing, so that you could pop in and have a word for him.”

  Gideon stifled a groan, and then said:

  “I’ll see.”

  The sergeant directed him to the street where Lucy Saparelli lived. Judging from the crowds at either end, the throngs on the pavement, the cars parked in or near the street, more people were drawn here than by a street accident, and that was saying something. In spite of police help when they recognized him, Gideon couldn’t drive right up to the house. When he squeezed out of the shiny car, a battery of newspapermen, many with cameras, came toward him like a moving phalanx. It was almost automatic ask questions, take photographs with flashlights which brightened even the bright day, and then hurl more questions.

  “All right,” Gideon said, “we’ve got Sayer; you can go home and write your story.”

  They flung more questions… .

  After two minutes, Gideon pushed his way through toward the front door of Lucy Saparelli’s house. He had some idea of what he would find behind the door now closed and guarded by a policeman in uniform. He was not duty-bound to see the mother of the murdered child, yet something urged him to; as it had from the moment of seeing Sayer captured.

  The constable had a key.

  Gideon went in.

  Two women were with Mrs. Saparelli. There were teapots and kettles and cups and saucers everywhere untidy as a child’s toys. People spoke to Gideon but he wasn’t interested until he saw the mother. He stood, a giant in the small room, and looked at her, remembering. It was an old story and a long one and it still hurt. Kate had asked him not to go on duty, but to telephone an excuse, because their second child was ill. He’d brushed the suggestion off, and told her to pull herself together.

  The child had died during the night. One of seven, so six were left; but the gap was still there.

  A mother, bereaved, looked like a woman robbed of hope. Kate had; Lucy Saparelli did.

  “I just came to tell you,” Gideon said, looking into those strange lacklustre eyes, “that we’ve caught him.”

  “Have you?” Her voice was strained; empty.

  “Yes, Mrs. Saparelli. We made quite sure of that. Is there anything we can do to help? Your husband—”

  “No,” she said, “you’ve been ever so good, all of you police have, and Jim’s on his way.” She didn’t look at Gideon as she spoke. “Ever so good,” she repeated, “but there’s nothing anyone can do, now, nothing anyone can do.”

  Gideon knew that she wasn’t going to cry. He knew that it was going to be much worse with her than with many women. Kate hadn’t cried. He didn’t know why, but he sensed a measure of self-reproach, of self-blame, in Mrs. Saparelli. He made a mental note to tell a police surgeon to have a word with the woman’s doctor about that, as he said good-bye.

  It hadn’t taken long but he was glad that he had been there, even though it made him feel more vicious. It wasn’t only the crime; the actual offense for which a man might hang or serve a long term of imprisonment was not the really deadly thing. That, a living evil, was the effect on those who suffered. Mrs. Saparelli, with the long years of self-reproach ahead, was now living in the shadow of death, and thinking: “If only I’d done this …”

  It was always the same; there was so much suffering; that was why he hated killers. The sergeant was at the side of his car, speaking into the walkie-talkie.

  “Anything fresh?” asked Gideon flatly.

  “Old woman’s been attacked, Islington way,” said the sergeant. He might have been reporting a case of shoplifting, judging from his voice. “Alone in a shop – till robbed, she was battered to death.”

  “Death?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, hell,” breathed Gideon. “Hell.” It was almost a groan.

  “There was an attempted mail-van robbery at Cannon Row Station twenty minutes ago,” the sergeant went on in exactly the same voice. “No one’s been caught but there’s a description of the driver of a van, and the car’s been held.”

  Gideon straightened his back. Something happened to him – something quite wonderful – as if he’d taken a tonic, which had instantaneous effect. His dull eyes brightened.

  “Where? Cannon Row?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, well,” said Gideon. “Two of the devils stopped in one day, eh? That’s not so bad, not bad at all, we’re improving.” The dark shadows vanished completely from his eyes; there was eager brightness in them as he rounded the nose of the car and took the wheel. “Might get those beggars soon, after all.”

  He was looking ahead: to Gillick, to the tyre and footprint casts, and to the time when he would be able to include in his report one murderer caught and two mail-van robberies averted.

  Behind him, there was grief.

  About him, there were the crimes being plotted and the criminals preparing: the good and the bad.

  He did not always realize how wearying it was to be occupied almost exclusively with the bad.

  Two young men whom Gideon did not know, and of whom he had never heard, were preparing to play a part in his life at the time that he left the Yard to visit Superintendent Gillick. Neither knew that they would cross Gideon’s path, although one realized that there was a serious risk that he would run into trouble with the police.

  The name of the first was Alec Fitzroy. He was twenty-seven years old, had a small West End flat, and a private income of about five hundred pounds a year, which wasn’t anything like enough for his expensive tastes or his gambling debts. For a long time he had pondered on ways and means of making a fortune quickly, and had come to the conclusion that the most likely way was by theft.

  He had two cronies, whose names don’t matter.

  The name of the second man was Julian Small. He too was twenty-seven years old, lived in two small rooms close to the church near the river, and not far from Shipham’s cafe, and also had a private incom
e of about five hundred pounds a year. The stipend from his curacy at St. Mary’s brought in an additional two hundred pounds a year. Of his total income, he spent one-half on his personal needs, and the rest on the needs of the church and the needy of the parish, especially on the Youth Club. He had only been in the parish for a few months. The vicar was venerable and frail, known to everyone in the district rather as a piece of furniture is known in a home. No one ever took any notice of him.

  A great many people took notice of Julian Small. He was unhappily possessed of a long, thin nose which was always red. He looked weedy, too, and he took little trouble with his clothes. After the first few weeks, the boys with whom he had tried to cope had discovered that he was not gifted with the necessary authority. He was full of high hopes and good intentions, but was so easily guyed.

  Many were cruel, and guyed him.

  Julian Small had one thing in common with Alec Fitzroy: education. They had, in fact, been educated at the same school, and had left in the same year. Their background was as nearly identical as a background could be. One had a widowed mother, the other a widower-father.

  In every other way they were almost unbelievably different; but they did have similar thoughts that day although the one was heavy-hearted and bitterly resigned, the other was vicious and determined at all costs to get the money he needed.

  Julian Small, walking from his flat to the church, turned into the tiny churchyard and the headstones grimed by London’s sooty atmosphere, and kicked against a piece of string tied to headstones and stretching across the path. He crashed down. He tried to save his nose, but couldn’t; the blow on it was so painful that tears of pain sprang to his eyes. They were not only of pain as he picked himself up and walked blindly along the path toward the church doors. Shrill, cruel laughter followed him, and brought shame and despair to quicken the tears. He was a failure; nothing could ever alter the fact. There were times when he felt that he almost hated the people in the district; the children.

  “Suffer the little children …”

  Some of these were devils!”

  They shouted obscenities after him, and roared with laughter until the heavy door closed on him. They might go away. They might raid the churchyard. They might throw stones through the windows; the stained glass had long since been moved, for it wasn’t safe. There was no end to the sacrileges that the children would commit and which many of their parents would condone.

  Julian Small was probably the unhappiest man in the East End of London that morning, and when he looked into a small mirror and saw the blood welling up at the end of his nose, he raised clenched fists and shook them at the reflection that he hated as much as he hated the children.

  Or some of them …

  Alec Fitzroy wept no tears of pain or vexation. At the time when Small was pitching forward onto the asphalt of the churchyard path, Fitzroy was in the upper safe deposit of the Mid-Union Safe Deposit Company, in Wattle Street, E.C.3. He had rented a deed box there a few months ago, when the plan he was expecting to put into operation tonight had first taken shape in his mind.

  He had met a youngster, now one of his cronies, who had been fired by the Mid-Union for drinking when on night duty; and the idea had been born then.

  Since that night Fitzroy had learned all he could about the safe deposit, the upper room and the main vaults; and he had studied the system by which it was staffed and run at night. His crony had given him a great deal of help.

  Fitzroy believed that his plot was almost fool proof. All it needed was a strong nerve. He had that; so had his two accomplices, one of them a man whom Fitzroy had met in the air force and who lived in much the same way as Fitzroy: lazily, lustfully, greedily.

  Fitzroy telephoned each man to tell him that this was to be the night, and to lay everything on. That was the first direct move in the collision which was coming with Gideon.

  Gideon was on his way across the river, to see Gillick.

  8. Tyre Print

  Gillick was a big block of a man with a heavy, thrusting jaw and a peculiarly small mouth with a short upper lip. When he talked, he appeared to be chewing, and to his cost Gideon knew that Gillick talked a lot. There was no better man on detail in the whole of London, including the Yard, and his failing was his touchiness. When annoyed, and it was easy to annoy him, he could and often would fall back on working strictly to regulation, and on no job in the world were go-slow tactics more exasperating. The days when the Yard asked for urgent information by open postcard had gone at last, but Gillick knew every regulation that he could use so as to be unhelpful.

  His big, pedestal desk was so tidy that it didn’t seem real. He stood up from it, navy-blue reefer coat open and square corners brushing a single file of papers, a thick red hand held out.

  “Hallo, Gee-Gee, haven’t seen you for years! Well, months! Nice day. Must say you’re looking well. Got that child killer, I hear; quick work, good job we have a bit of luck sometimes. Pity about Foster, nasty job when a man like Foster gets knocked over. What was he doing – making an arrest, d’you think?”

  Gillick paused; and his little brown eyes probed; obviously he thought he was onto something.

  “Not been suggested, old man,” Gideon said comfortably, “I’ll have another look at the reports, though. You might have something there.”

  “Never know,” said Gillick warningly. “Fresh mind often helps.” He went off again, each sentence short and the pause after each one barely noticeable. Any other man would have sounded breathless, but not Gillick. “Two mail-van jobs stopped today, I see, don’t say we’re really near at last. Talking about that these prints. Footprints not much good. Look.”

  Some white plaster-of-Paris casts stood on a trestle table against one wall. On each was a card, neatly typewritten, giving the details. There were seven casts of footprints, but only one of a complete toe, another of a complete heel. The card near the toe read:

  Footprint, man’s right toe, found in mud on South Bank of River Thames, Battersea, spot identifiable as three hundred and fifty (350) yards from the main loading jetty of the Battersea Power Station.

  Note indentation showing sole sprigged (nailed) on, not sewn. Note smooth edge suggesting plenty of wear.

  Gideon studied all these, well aware that Gillick was keeping the most important until the last.

  “By the way, old man,” said Gillick, “Like a spot? Not too late? Oh, well, cuppa tea? Good, I’ll send for it.” He picked up a telephone and gave orders as a martinet would. “Won’t be long.” He broke off, and turned to the trestle. “Tyre print’s better now. See?” He picked up a large glossy print, showing the tyre track, the footprints, other signs of activity on the river bank; it was an excellent photograph, and showed where a car or light van had driven over a soft patch of sandy soil; the mark of the tyre couldn’t have been made more clearly in plaster of Paris itself. “Michelin make, and that’s something; they don’t make a lot of small tires; this was a 5.50 x 16. Almost new, too – see how sharp that impression is?”

  He now turned to the prize exhibit – the moulded cast of the tyre. It was beautifully made, quite an artist’s job.

  “You’ve got a good chap on this stuff,” Gideon said.

  “Training, my boy, that’s the answer – training! Beat hell out of them every time they turn in a rough job, and they soon stop. It’s really something, this is. Any other make of tyre and it would be a needle in haystack, but a Michelin of this size—eh?”

  Gideon felt his pulse quickening, in spite of almost instinctive disagreement with anything that Gillick said.

  “You’re right, Gil,” he said. “This may really be something. It doesn’t square up with the other track we got, that was a Dunlop, but we can get a search made for this.” If there were a job in the calendar which really made him feel deeply at any given moment, it was the mail-van job. Hope of results could always excite. “How many photographs have you got?”

  “Dozen. Twelve. To spare, I mean.”

>   “Casts?”

  “Three. Two each for you, one for my own Black Museum.” Gillick grinned; his little mouth didn’t stretch very widely.

  There was a tap at the door.

  “There’s the tea,” Gillick said. “Well, hope this bit of work gets us somewhere. Can’t say we lost any time …”

  Twenty minutes later, Gideon left the B2 Headquarters, with Gillick purring, and the casts loaded into the boot of Gideon’s Wolseley. He had spoken to Lemaitre by telephone, and details of the Michelin tyre were being teleprinted for attention by all London and Home Counties Stations; the quiet, methodical, thorough search for it would begin before dark and go on all tomorrow and for days on end; the eyes of every policeman would be cast down, and every Michelin tyre would be suspect. It wasn’t really much; but the owners of cars with 5.50 x 16 Michelins could be watched, and their movements checked; and if a thousand, if ten thousand discreet inquiries proved fruitless and futile, there might be one which helped.

  The Yard sergeant came hurrying out of the station, wiping his hand across the back of his mouth; there were two or three cake crumbs on his sleeve.

  “You had any lunch?” Gideon asked abruptly.

  “Just managed a bite, sir; I’m all right.”

  “Hmm. Well, I’m going to look in at home for twenty minutes; hardly recognize the place when I do get there.”

  The sergeant smiled dutifully.

  “So you drive back to the Yard, get this stuff unloaded, tell the boys to be careful with it, and then come back for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They drove over Battersea Bridge, then turned left instead of right – which they would take for the Yard, Gideon took off his hat and enjoyed the cold wind stinging his forehead. He felt too hot in his serge coat and waistcoat; now he came to think, it had been getting hotter since midday and must be near the seventies.