by John Creasey
“Let ‘em stare,” said Archer, and he looked gay, handsome and strong. “Let’s give ‘em something to stare at, too.” He swung her round and kissed her; she was laughing when he let her go.
“Bert,” said Mrs Maybell, “there’s something I’ve been, meaning to ask you for some time.”
“Is there, dear? What’s that?”
“Do you think you could avoid night duty, in future?”
“Well, I could put in an application,” said Maybell, “but I don’t think I’d have much luck. Not worried at being at home alone at night, are you, after all these years?”
“I’m not worried about me,” his wife said. She was a pleasant, plump, grey-haired woman, with rosy cheeks, a small nose, and calm eyes. They were alone in their bedroom, getting ready for bed. “I’m worried about you, I don’t think it’s good for you to be on nights so often.”
“Been doing my share for thirty-one years,” Maybell reminded her.
“Well, it’s time someone else did it, for a change.” Her husband grinned at her, and gave her a quick, almost impersonal hug.
“Wanting a bit more company in bed, that’s your trouble,” he said. “I can’t say I’m not with you, but joking apart, Liz, I’d never get off nights, couldn’t do the job properly if I didn’t take my turn. Don’t you worry about me, I’m good for another twenty years, most of it with a pension. When I’m home all day you’ll wish to goodness you could shove me back on to the beat.”
“If I haven’t seen too much of you in thirty years, I don’t see why I should see too much in the future,” his wife said. “Oh, don’t be daft!” She slapped his hand away from the V of her nightdress. But she was smiling.
12
GIDEON PREPARES
Bell was one of the few men at the Yard who would not need briefing to stand in for Gideon. On the Tuesday morning he was at the office at eight-thirty, and so was Culverson, the grey-haired sergeant. When Gideon arrived, just before nine, they had the morning reports in perfect order, and a few notes added for Gideon’s especial interest. It had been a quiet night, and a goodish day the day before. Gideon looked through the reports, made one or two comments, and then said to Bell:
“You’ll see all the chaps, Joe.”
“Yes. What shall I tell them you’re doing? Having another photograph taken?”
“Tell ‘em that I’m preparing the case for the prosecution,” Gideon said, and smiled grimly. “The AC is taking some sick leave, so I’m going to use his office. I won’t be far away. Let me know if there’s anything fresh on the Bournsea job, won’t you?”
“We won’t keep anything big away from you,” Bell promised.
Gideon went along to Rogerson’s office, a larger one than his own, with a single big desk. It was a better-than-average room, with a thick piled carpet, a few filing cabinets and some easy chairs; a kind of conference-room-cum-lounge. He went to the window and looked out on the same pleasant river view that he had from his own office, and then opened the door which led to a smaller room, where Rogerson’s Secretary was sitting at a typewriter.
She was fifty, birdlike, brisk.
“Good morning, Commander. Would you like me to come in now?”
“Soon,” said Gideon. “You know what we’re going to concentrate on, don’t you?”
“Yes, and not before it’s time,” she said. So even Miss Sharp approved.
Gideon went back to the desk, loosened his collar and tie, took out his big pipe and stuck it, unlit, between his teeth. He began to write, in a slow and deliberate hand, making a list which began:
The Yard.
The Divisions. Make out separate sheet for each Division.
Make out separate sheet for each Department at the Yard, Fingerprints, Records, Photographs, Ballistics, Laboratory, etc. etc.
Talk to each Department head and each Divisional Superintendent, telling them exactly what I want.
Get angle from Popple and the Solicitor’s office. (Ask the OM if I can have Keen.)
See other Commanders and get their angle.
He put this sheet aside, after studying it, and then without haste started working on another, heading it:
Details Required
Actual number of staff now attached.
Break this down into (a) CID, (b) Uniformed, (c) Civilian.
Get comparative figures, year by year, since 1939.
Get statistics of crimes in each Division and break down to (a) indictable and non-indictable.
Prepare graphs for each Division and the Yard, comparing (a) crime statistics and (i) staff figures.
Prepare a comparative graph for the whole of the Department. Purpose of all this, to show how crimes increased as staff decreased. Necessary to bring in the uniformed figures – better butter up the U chaps a bit, need many more men on the beat, etc.
He studied this for ten minutes or more, altering a word here, and a word there. He could just hear the typewriter going in the next office; Miss Sharp was clearing up everything that Rogerson had left her to do. There had been no single telephone call in half an hour, no opening door, none of the continual rush and tear of his own office. He wondered how Bell and the sergeant were getting on; damned funny about Culverson, he had been wasting his time doing odds and ends, little more than a messenger because of his sprained ankle, and he could make a real job of assistant to the Commander. He was too old for promotion, that was the trouble; unless he, Gideon, could persuade the next conference that an exception should be made. Or why not suggest that Culverson be transferred from the CID to the civilian branch, and turned into a Secretary? That way he could get a couple of hundred a year more, and a better pension.
Gideon turned back to his list, and started a new one, after marking the others ‘A’ and ‘B’. He headed the one marked ‘C’:
CID Only Yard and Divisions
Request from each Division and Department details of overtime worked.
Ditto, holidays outstanding.
Average hours worked per man, per week.
Number of cases where shortage of staff specifically impedes necessary action. NB. These cases must each be substantiated by details, eg the Taylor case.
Estimated number of active CID men from Detective Officers upwards needed to give absolute coverage. (Break this down by rank.)
Office space, etc. Additional space required.
Age of buildings, floor space available, etc. etc.
Gideon put his pencil down, took his pipe out of his mouth, and said with a one-sided grin: “I’m getting tired, or I wouldn’t write crap like that.” He read through each of the sheets again, then pulled a fourth towards him, headed it ‘D’ and wrote:
In addition to lists A, B, and C, get confidential reports from all senior officers on the quality of their staff and on members of the staff ill, or less than 100% effective because of overwork. Get reports on general attitude of all staff, eg Riddell. Find comparative incomes for different grades in the following:
Armed Services
Post Office
Civil Service
Industry
Commerce
in endeavour to show that men are making positive sacrifice at the moment.
Suggest rates of pay needed to stimulate (a) men already on the Force and (i) recruitment.
He put this aside, glanced at his watch, and was surprised to find that it was half past eleven. He got up and stretched, trying to remember the last occasion when an hour and a half had passed without a single interruption; it seldom happened. But he was beginning to miss the constant flow of news.
There was a tap at the communicating door.
“Come in.”
Miss Sharp appeared.
“The Assistant Commissioner usually has a cup of tea or coffee at eleven-fifteen, Commander. Would you like to make that a general rule, too?”
Gideon rubbed his chin.
“Good idea,” he said. “Do we get that stuff from the canteen?”
“I make it
myself, sir.”
“Fine, I don’t mind which. White coffee with a little sugar, or tea without sugar but a little milk.”
“I shall bring you a pot, sir, and the milk and sugar separately,” said Miss Sharp, in a tone of mild reproof. “I’m afraid it will be a little late this morning.” She went out, closing the door silently behind her. Gideon was grinning at it when the telephone bell rang, startlingly loud in the otherwise silent room. He strode to the desk and lifted the receiver.
“This is the Commissioner’s Secretary speaking, sir,” said a woman, briskly. “There will be a brief meeting of Assistant Commissioners – not of departmental heads – this afternoon at four o’clock, and Sir Reginald hopes you will be free to attend.”
Gideon said: “I’ll be there, unless something unexpected turns up.”
“Thank you, sir.”
As he rang off, Gideon raised his eyebrows, and soberly considered what he had just said: that something might crop up to prevent him from doing the Commissioner’s bidding. There were perks in the AC’s job, but he had never been sure that it would really attract him. The next six months would show, and meanwhile it was time he was very careful of what he said to the Commissioner.
Then Miss Sharp came in with a small tray, a spotless white cloth on it, a china coffee pot, hot milk, brown sugar crystals, and some wholemeal biscuits.
Gideon spent an hour in his own office before going to the conference; Bell and Culverson had everything under control. Only one serious job had come in: a request from Norfolk for help to investigate a haystack fires mystery, in which a man had been burnt to death.
“Who’ve we got to send?” asked Gideon.
“Mickle got back from France this morning. He’s done all he can on that forged franc job, says that the Frenchies aren’t much farther ahead with it,” answered Bell. “I wanted to give him a couple of days off.”
“What about Bert Challis?”
“He’d be about as much use in the country as a barrow boy!”
“I dunno,” Gideon said. “Try him, Joe.”
“Right,” said Bell.
“If I’m wanted, I’m with the Old Man.”
Gideon walked off to the conference, decided that he would have to study the lists he had prepared, draw them up into a kind of schedule of memoranda, and then distribute copies to anyone who was going to help. He ought to have at least ten copies. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take his rough notes home tonight and let Kate have a look at them. He reached the Commissioner’s office two minutes ahead of time and found the other AC’s and the Deputy Commissioner already there. He was chaffed by two of these and solemnly congratulated on the dockside job by two others, and then sat down to a discussion on a subject he seldom thought about: road accidents.
The latest monthly figures were in, and were on the whole five per cent worse than the corresponding month of the previous year; the figures were undoubtedly worsening all the time. It was not specifically a matter for the Metropolitan Police, but for years the traffic and uniformed branches had studied the problem and made recommendations, few of which had been carried out. Gideon made no comment at all during the meeting, but answered one or two specific questions and, when he was on his way back to his office, found himself forced to consider the accident rate and compare it with the indictable crime rate. It was alarming. Nearly six hundred deaths and seventeen thousand serious injuries in one month. Compare those figures with the deaths by murder; twenty-seven in the month. Even allowing for the difference in intent, this was an illuminating disproportion: killed with intent, twenty-seven; killed by accident or carelessness, five-hundred and seventy-four.
It was easy to understand a man like Prendergast, the Assistant Commissioner for Traffic, thinking that he really had a man-size problem.
Gideon had a very thoughtful, rather uneasy half an hour afterwards. It was undoubtedly true that he had been so obsessed by his own Department and its problems that he had not thought seriously enough about the others. The danger now might be that he would widen his perspective at the expense of his effectiveness with the CID.
“Not if I know it,” he said to himself, and entered the AC’s office. His desk was very tidy, obviously Miss Sharp had been in here, and there was a note: “Can you call Mr Bell?” and several memos from the various departments; but there was no sign of his pencilled notes. He dived for the waste-paper basket: they weren’t there. He strode to the door; if that damned woman had destroyed those papers in an excess of orderliness, he’d just about let her know it.
She was typing very fast; one of those typists whose fingers moved but whose hands seemed only to hover over the keys. She glanced up, eyes bright and alert behind pince-nez.
“I left some notes on my desk,” Gideon said, peremptorily.
“Yes, Commander, and I knew you would not need them for at least an hour so I typed them in triplicate. I thought you might find that helpful.”
Gideon felt completely deflated; and as he looked down at the woman, was sure that her eyes were twinkling behind those lenses; she was not the sobersides she appeared to be. She had straight, greying hair drawn back from her forehead with a comb and tied at the back with a black ribbon; it gave her a slightly Grecian look, with her white shirt blouse and grey skirt.
“That’s fine,” he said, at last. “Thanks. Do you believe in working overtime?”
“Whenever it’s necessary, of course, but the Assistant Commissioner always arranged not to keep me late on Wednesday, when I go to my art classes.”
“Art classes,” Gideon echoed, and rubbed his chin in a way which had become a habit which he did not know about. “I’ll remember that. I thought you might like to take a copy of these notes home, study them, and let me know what you think about them in the morning. What I want is the angle of people who aren’t as prejudiced as I am.”
“I’ll gladly do that,” Miss Sharp agreed. “In fact, I’d like to, sir, but I think I’m just as prejudiced as you.”
On his way home, in a better humour than he had been for a long time, a humour marred only by the failure at Bournsea – that job was the more exasperating because they were probably within an ace of getting the right man – Gideon saw a rakish-looking sports car following him in his driving mirror. He had never noticed the car before. The fair-haired driver had a nice-looking blonde beside him and she was sitting a little too close for safety and freedom of movement. His mind spurred by the afternoon conference, Gideon found himself wondering what could be done to lessen accidents at their source: the driver. This chap, for instance.
This chap swung out near some traffic lights, put on a burst of speed, and roared past Gideon’s black Wolseley. It would not be true to say that he was driving carelessly; just over-confidently.
The blonde had stared at Gideon as they had passed.
“Know who that was?” asked Keith Ryman.
“He looked like a heavyweight champion,” said Helen facetiously.
“That’s Gideon of the Yard,” Ryman informed her, smiling as he stared ahead. “He’s hit the headlines lately, and given me one or two ideas. But he’s just a thickhead, like the rest of these cops. Something nasty will happen to him one day. Now, pet, about this nursemaid job. I know you won’t like it, but you’ll have to lump it. The thing is, do you know how to handle kids well enough to seem genuine?”
“Keith, darling,” cooed Helen, “I’ve three sisters and a brother, all younger than me. It wasn’t until I got away from home last year that I stopped being a real little mother. I can look after kids all right. How long do you think I’ll have to do it, though?”
“Perhaps a week.”
“Oh, I can stand a week. How old is the kid?”
“About a year.”
“Not even house-trained,” Helen complained. “Well, provided it really means a big cut, darling, I’m in. The only thing is, what will happen if the job falls through? “
“I’ll make sure you’re not involved, all you have t
o do is look after the kid,” Ryman told her. “The important thing is for you to have a kid about the same age at the cottage for a few days before this one comes – the police will only be on the lookout for women with kids who’ve just popped up from somewhere.”
Helen looked at him, head back and eyes narrowed, lashes sweeping to her cheeks.
“Clever boy,” she murmured. “My sister Amy will be glad to have a rest from hers, but I’ll be loaded for nearly two weeks. Don’t forget I’ll be earning that big cut.”
“You’ll get it,” Ryman promised her.
That was as they crossed Hammersmith Broadway, in a stream of traffic. On the kerb of the Underground Station were a constable, young and spruce in a new uniform, and an elderly sergeant. Ryman saw the sergeant, but it did not occur to him that it was Maybell.
But he thought of Maybell.
He was sufficiently far ahead in his plans to believe that he could go ahead with all of them in ten days or so.
They were heading for a little bungalow which he owned on the riverside, just above Richmond.
“When am I going to know who the kid is?” asked Helen, as they drove over Barnes Bridge.
“I’ll tell you in good time,” Ryman answered.
“Don’t you trust me?”
“I’m trusting you, aren’t I?” He took a hand off the wheel and squeezed her leg, then appeared to give all of his attention to his driving. But he was not doing so. He was thinking of the child he planned to kidnap, and also thinking that the important thing with that job, as with everything else, was to cause a distraction. There was a kind of parade ground for perambulators in Hyde Park, where nurses foregather and other children played and the babes in the prams stared at the fascinating colour and movement of their fingers. One, who was regularly in the parade, was Richard Mountbaron, the only child of the extremely wealthy Richard Mountbaron Senior. This parent had inherited both a fortune and the ability to make more money buying and selling real estate; and he had an equally wealthy wife, an American named Charlotte. Ryman had decided not to take a child old enough to talk or run about; a babe in arms could be hidden more easily, would create less fuss, and would create just as much sensation. Every policeman in the country would be on the alert, and if one or two false clues were laid, dozens – perhaps hundreds – could be lured away from the places where he was planning to strike.
