Criminal Imports

by John Creasey

  3: The First Wife

  Gideon read the implication in that bitter remark but did not comment immediately. The decision could be important. In fact two decisions were involved, the one which Parsons wanted him to make and a consequent one: whether to give Parsons carte blanche to go ahead with an investigation which might be costly in time and manpower, and might also be ill-timed. Percival White and whoever worked with him would be on their guard by now; in vice investigations it was usually better to catch the suspects by surprise.

  Parsons waited patiently.

  “What are the indications of murder?” Gideon asked at last.

  “A few scratches on a bathroom window opening onto an airshaft show that someone’s been in that shaft lately and could have escaped by the shaft, leaving the door locked. There’s a peek-a-boo window in the ceiling, and I had a look through it. Fresh cigarette ash shows that someone’s been up there in the past few hours, though the hotel staff say the room’s not been used for a week.”

  “I think I’d soft-pedal, Vic,” Gideon decided. “Dig as deep as you can into Lucci’s past. Ask Milan to help. Let the newspapers take suicide for granted if they will, and encourage them toward it if they don’t go of their own accord. Take a couple of days on the job - nothing else on your desk, is there?”

  “Nothing I can’t pass on to someone else.”

  “Pass it, then. Concentrate on this, and we’ll have a session together over a noggin soon.”

  After a long pause, Parsons said with feeling, “Thanks, George.”

  Gideon put down his receiver slowly, feeling very thoughtful, and in a way nostalgic. Parsons was now working in his, Gideon’s, square mile, that part of the West End which was probably the gayest, the brightest, the ugliest, and the most sordid part of London. In Soho he had cut his teeth as an officer on the beat, and later as a plainclothes C.I.D. man. It hadn’t changed much. Some new anti-vice laws had created some ingenious variations in the selling of sex and vice, that was all. Here the pimps and the prostitutes met the wide-eyed youth and the round-eyed country folk, and it was surprising how little of the corruption rubbed off on to the simpletons. Every now and again some natural leader took over the vice racket, organizing the girls, controlling the premises, going too far with strip shows, and it seemed to Gideon, with his thirty years on the Force, that it would always be so. Behind the conventional side of the vice, however, there was always the danger of drug trafficking, and drugs could do such shocking things. In any case the innocent had to be protected as far as the law could protect him.

  If there was any indication of traffic in drugs, Parsons would soon find out.

  If there wasn’t, and if Lucci had been murdered, it was probably a bid on Percival White’s part to take over his partner’s share of the legitimate and the illegal business.

  At one time Gideon would have been shocked by much of his own dispassionate analysis of the situation; now he felt a kind of unease, a vague reminder that it ought to affect him as a human being as well as a policeman.

  It was almost a relief when Lemaitre came in, perky as ever. Seeing Gideon’s preoccupation he went straight to his desk, but before he had settled down Gideon’s expression changed, he squared his shoulders as if preparing a physical attack on the day’s problems.

  “How’s the Clay girl?” he asked.

  “Still in Marylebone Hospital, getting over it.”

  “No serious harm?”

  “Only worse than death.”

  “Know anything about her yet?”

  “Had a bitta luck.” Lemaitre rubbed his hands together. “She’s got a bachelor flat in Marylebone Street, and often goes to the Park. One of the A.B. chaps knows her by sight. Bit of a tramp but nothing nasty. Inherited about thirty thousand quid from Ma, four years ago. Some people have the luck.”

  “Has she made a statement yet?”

  “Says the chap was an American who called himself Frank Mason. F. M., George. She’s known him about a week. This was the first time he tried anything, she says. The chap who saved her life - Hislop, remember? - got a good look at Mason, and the description fits Mayhew to a T. We shouldn’t be long picking him up.”

  This was Lemaitre, the perennial optimist who always jumped to conclusions - his one restricting weakness as a detective.

  “I hope you’re right,” Gideon said.

  “Oh, I will be. George, I’ll tell you what, I’ll take these papers home tonight and give ‘em the once-over there. Can’t concentrate in this atmosphere.” He was referring to the North Country post office murder. “I’d better send those reports to New York, and get a report on this rape job. I haven’t talked to the Bingham Hotel or the Cunard Line yet, either. Cunard offices will be shut if I don’t get a move on.” He pushed the post office murder file away from him, and picked up his telephone.

  Gideon looked through his own Pending tray.

  The call from York Minster hadn’t come although he had expected it hours ago; it looked as if there was no new development in the sabotage case. He had two requests for information from Interpol, which he had to supply to the Assistant Commissioner in the morning. One was about some forged West German marks being distributed in England (and the rest of Europe) and the second was an inquiry from Australia about a small private banking company in London; he had everything ready for that, too.

  Lemaitre was taking down names over the telephone. When he had finished he looked up and said briskly: “Three couples are booked in at the Bingham off the Q.E., George. Lord and Lady Melroy, and they’ll only stay overnight. Mr. and Mrs. Albert Henderson from Atlanta, Georgia, and Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter, from Winnipeg. Like me to have a talk to the Q.E. by radiotelephone?”

  “To say what?”

  “Ask our contact man to find out whom Schumacher’s been softening up.”

  “No need to hurry,” Gideon said, and immediately saw the disappointment in Lemaitre’s eyes; then suddenly he became sharply aware of something that had been simmering in his mind for some time. Lem was tired. He had not had a holiday of more than a few days at a time in the past year, and badly needed one. Meanwhile, a day out of the office would do him a lot of good. On impulse, Gideon added, “Why don’t you go down to Southampton to meet the ship tomorrow? You can go aboard with the Immigration chaps, and have a talk with our man. Give Schumacher the once-over, too.”

  Lemaitre leaned back in his chair, pulled slowly at the ends of his tie and said: “I could take my wife down for the run, couldn’t I?”

  “It would be silly to leave her behind.”

  “Do just one more thing for me,” pleaded Lemaitre. “Pray for a nice warm day.”

  Gideon grinned - and his Number 2 telephone bell rang. This time there were no deafening noises from the Embankment, and he heard the operator say clearly:

  “Mr. Ormeroyd from York, sir.”

  At last.

  “Put him through.” There was a click on the line. “Hallo, Jake,” Gideon said. “Thought they’d taken you lambing on Ilkley Moor.”

  “No such luck,” Superintendent Ormeroyd retorted. He made “luck” sound almost like the word “look” with long vowels; a kind of drawn-out “Luke.” Thirty years in London had not changed his accent or his dialect. “Eh, George, it’s a bad business up here.”

  “How bad?”

  “It’s sabotage, there’s no doubt of it.”

  “I half-expected that,” said Gideon.

  “That’s right, you did, but you didn’t expect me to find out that it fits in nicely with that machine trouble they’re having in Birmingham, did you? Same method - same corrosive acid - same knowledge of machinery. When you come to think, George, it’s much the same as the trouble they had in Northamptonshire in the shoe factory, or in Macclesfield over the silk. Take it from me it’s a countrywide job. What I’d like to do if you’ve no objection is go up to Glasgow, where they had some damage in the biscuit factory, and then visit Macclesfield, Birmingham and Northampton on the way home. Allow a
week or ten days, say. Will that be all right with you?”

  “Try and finish it this week,” Gideon urged. “If you’re right we ought to get cracking.”

  When Ormeroyd rang off, Gideon reflected almost subconsciously that if there was a connection among crimes committed in these different parts of England and Scotland, the first thing to look for must be a connecting motive. He jotted down the names of the cities concerned, and added: Expect to hear by Monday. He put this into the Pending tray.

  As he did so he became aware of a mood almost of apprehension. He was not unfamiliar with it, for he had known it all of his working life but had never really analyzed it to his own satisfaction.

  It was an oppressive, at times almost intolerable, sense of responsibility. Crimes of which he knew nothing were being committed every minute of the day - and some would be serious enough for him to be consulted. He could do absolutely nothing to prevent them and yet he felt he should. If the man Mayhew killed again, then he, Gideon, would have a share of the blame because the Yard had failed to catch the man.

  He knew that this was utterly wrong, yet could not overcome that all-pervading sense of guilt. The feeling would go, of course, but sooner or later it would come back. Today the burden of it was very heavy. There was the combined weight of disquiet about Schumacher, Mayhew, Snider in New York, and added to these the sickening realization that if Mayhew struck again, his victim would probably be unknown to him at this moment - a happy girl who did not dream of her impending fate. There were so many unsuspecting victims of all manner of crime.

  There were so many criminals - Americans and Englishmen, Italians and French, people of every nationality - that to Gideon it sometimes seemed that London was a clearinghouse for them all.

  He could understand Lemaitre’s resentment about imported criminals, but it was difficult to explain to Lemaitre about the way he was feeling.

  It was a strange fact that he, George Gideon, Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department of the best-known police force in the world, who had had so much experience in fighting and preventing crime, felt a need that was almost hunger to talk about these things with another man. The only one who might even begin to feel as he did was Vic Parsons, whom Lemaitre had recently dubbed “Old Dog’s Collar” - partly because of his name, partly because if he were to turn his collar around no man could pass more easily for a cleric.

  The internal telephone rang, and drove these preoccupations out of Gideon’s mind.

  Michael Dunn was a man hovering on the brink of crime.

  He was in his shop, checking on supplies of typewriter ribbons, when he heard his wife cough. It was a terrible cough which made her catch her breath and then retch as if she could not breathe at all. It had been going on for months, on and off for years. It made him feel as sick as it made Cynthia.

  “Get her away,” the doctors urged.

  But where could he take her?

  “Get her more help in the house,” they said.

  How could he afford to pay for help with his debts piling up and the threat of bankruptcy drawing nearer day by day?

  “There’s no way of curing these bronchial troubles while she’s in London.”

  Cynthia had been away once, spending three months in Bournemouth. That period had been the beginning of Dunn’s financial worries. She had hated being at the seaside alone but had been much better for it; there had actually been colour in her cheeks when she came back. Then after a few weeks the cough had started again, and now it was as bad as ever.

  But, “It’s no use talking, Mike. I won’t go away without you,” she would insist.

  She didn’t know, because he dared not tell her, that he could not send her away again; that he rushed to get the post in the morning to make sure she should not come upon a peremptory demand from his bank or from some pressing creditor. He had to protect her, yet he could not. The situation was ten times worse because it was his own fault; he had bought the business from the widow of the owner after working as compositor for ten years, and had believed he knew it inside out.

  Now he owed nearly £3,000, which was for him an enormous sum.

  He heard Cynthia coughing on and on. Suddenly she stumbled and he thought he heard her fall. He rushed into the little living room between the shop and the printing works. She was standing by the side of a chair, gripping the back, face drained of colour, mouth open as she fought for breath. It made her look so awful, so near death.

  She gave a strange grating whine of sound; the paroxysm was passing; but for an hour afterward she would be limp and exhausted on the couch.

  She looked at him with anguish in her eyes.

  “I’ll have to go away again, Mike,” she said hoarsely. “I’ll have to.”

  She would have to, and he could not afford to send her unless he committed the crime he had been contemplating for months. He had been restrained by conscience, by his religion, by all the principles he had ever been taught and still believed in.

  “It’s no use,” he said to himself when Cynthia was quiet. “I’ll have to do it. I’ll have to.”

  It looked so easy.

  In this small stationery and printing business in Brentford, not far from the Great West Road, he had one big customer, the only profitable one on his books - Kismet Cosmetics of the Great West Road, the English subsidiary of an American firm. He printed labels for boxes and bottles, supplied office stationery, typewriters, even some packing material for them. His was only a tithe of Kismet’s business, of course; he was their local printer who got them out of difficulties when stocks ran unexpectedly low or main suppliers were late.

  In the past two months Dunn had made a significant discovery; there was a flaw in Kismet’s accounting methods. They had paid him twice for the same goods. On checking this with the assistant accountant he had realized that there was only a nominal check between the buying office, which placed the orders, the warehouse where goods were delivered, and the accounts department, which paid the bills. Moreover, they had allowed him to see the way the buying office and the warehouse passed an account for payment; a small rubber stamp was marked “O.K. to Pay” and initialled in both office and warehouse.

  He had actually ordered the rubber stamps for each department, without realizing their significance. He had a facsimile of the stamp in his own books, in case another supply was needed. He printed some of the official order forms for the firm. He repaired typewriters for them. He could overprint some order forms, have a rubber stamp cut, type out false orders, and initial “O.K. to Pay” impressions. Even the initialling caused no problem, because he was familiar with it on notes from the Kismet Company.

  He could easily put in fake invoices, and be virtually sure the account would be paid. If he added £300 a month to the amount really due he would be out of immediate trouble and would be able to do everything needed to help Cynthia back to health. All he required was the courage to make the decision.

  Barney Barnett had a different problem and a different kind of decision to make: when to do the job in hand. He had the place in mind, and the bricks ready. Maggie was as nippy at the wheel as any driver in London, and the police seldom thought of suspecting a woman driving a runaway car. Barney knew the habits and the timing of the police patrols in Soho, and a few hours earlier he had discussed the job with Maggie - his wife.

  She was as good a cook as she was a driver, and that day it was roast leg of lamb, with rich thick gravy, roast potatoes, done to a crisp golden brown, and cauliflower.

  “You’ll have to get me some cash, Barney, if you want to eat tomorrow,” she said.

  “Like that is it?” Barney was a wizened-looking man in the late forties. “Can’t you get something on tick?”

  “Never have, never mean to. Cash and carry, that’s my motto. What’s the matter with you these days? Gone lazy or just soft in the head? You haven’t brought me home a decent pay packet for a month.”

  Barney ate in silence for a while, and Maggie, a well pres
erved, well-rounded forty without a grey hair, kept pace with him.

  “I know a place,” he announced suddenly.

  “Where?”

  “Soho - in Frisk Street.”

  “I know the one,” Maggie reflected. “On the corner by that shoe shop.”

  “That’s right - Klein’s place. It’s one-way traffic into the Avenue, and you can lose the whole bloody Flying Squad at Cambridge Circus. How about it?”

  “Suits me,” Maggie approved. “After I’ve done the washing up and had a nap, then. Okay?”

  “Okay,” agreed Barney. He grinned, leaned across and dipped his finger down the V of her dress. “Do a dinner and a show tonight, eh? Some place where they can cook.”

  She slapped his hand away.

  4: The Second Wife

  Barney strolled along Frisk Street, cheerfully aware that two policemen who did not know him had passed him at the corner opposite the Grandi Hotel. He looked as he always did when he was on a job - a man just up from the country; all he needed to complete the illusion was a hay stalk in his green porkpie hat. There was even dried mud on the soles of his brown leather boots, the uppers of which shone like mirrors. What he did not know was that two plainclothes policemen were now outside the Grandi Hotel and that the police with Superintendent Parsons in charge had taken over Benito Lucci’s front suite.

  Barney reached the corner where a jeweller’s shop was next to a long narrow shoe-shop. Round the corner, parked only three cars along, Maggie sat in an old Austin taxi with a cloth covering its “For Hire” sign. Except for those in a hurry, no one ever took any notice of a parked taxi; and Maggie was so mannishly dressed that one had to scrutinize her to see that she was a woman.

  Only two cars were coming along the street where Maggie was parked, and only one in the intersecting street, where a right turn was permitted. Barney took a cloth-covered brick out of his capacious left-hand pocket and hurled it at the window. Before anyone within sight realized what had caused the crash of sound, he took a second cloth-covered brick and broke off three long splinters of glass, to make a gaping, danger-free hole. He grabbed two trays of rings and one of watches, skilfully slid them into his pocket, and then yelled: