by John Creasey
She had looked near death. Even like that she had been light enough for him to carry up the ladder without too much difficulty.
Now she lay in a little cubicle, too small to be called a room, partitioned off from the main section of the studio. It was in a corner, without a window and without a light. She lay on an old camp bed, wearing only bra, girdle, panties and stockings, covered with an old grey army blanket. She was still unconscious, and yet was beginning to become aware of outside influences.
One was a roar which seemed to make her whole body quiver until it faded, but it was never silent for long. It was the roar of the trains overhead; they followed one another very quickly, especially at rush-hour periods.
Facey had a bed in another corner, against the far wall of the partition. By the side of this bed was a telephone, the one on which he had talked to Abel Schumacher the previous night. It was not unusual for him to spend a night at the studio, working late; as far as he could tell there was no danger at all.
Yet Facey was ill at ease, almost afraid.
The unconscious girl was the chief cause of his fear, for if she was ever questioned by the police she could describe him, perhaps even name him. A corpse was so much easier to hide than a living person.
Maria Lucci was also thinking of a dead body: her husband’s.
It was in a fine new mausoleum now, one he had had erected a few years ago. The bones of his mother and his father, two brothers and an aunt had been interred there, and their photographs, expensively framed, were outside for passers-by to see and perhaps to remember. In all the cemetery no one was better known, today, than Benito. The newspaper photographers had been here, and the reporters, asking question after question. There was one and only one good thing: it was rumoured but not yet proved that Benito had killed himself, and the church did not refuse to bury one of its faithful because of rumour.
She, Maria, dry-eyed until the last awful moment, had held Antonio’s cold hand tightly and had comforted her daughters too. Behind the crowd of black-clad relatives, far more of them than she had ever seen during Benito’s lifetime, there had been Giovanni, arrived only just in time for the funeral. Among the mass of wreaths and crosses had been an enormous cross from Percival White. She had been surprised to notice the English detective, who had been at the hotel in Soho, studying the cross. By his side was a younger man, an Italian.
Maria made a detour among the graves and the carved headstones and the caskets and the burial places which looked like marble ovens.
“They lied, I tell you,” she said as she reached Parsons. “My Benito was good, he did not do these awful things.”
Parsons, taken aback, said awkwardly, “If he didn’t, we will prove it, ma’am.”
Maria went past without another word, watched by Parsons and his companion, a tall, dark-haired, sharp-featured detective named Nocci.
“You are not sure he did, are you?” asked Nocci.
“I’m here to try to find out if those managers lied,” answered Parsons.
“I think you are here because Lucci’s wife has persuaded you that she is right,” said Nocci. “But Lucci would not be the first man to have deceived his wife.”
“Florrie sweetheart, where would you like to go this morning?” Frank Mayhew asked next day.
The “sweetheart” seemed to be uttered from the core of his being.
“Anywhere,” Florence Foster said gaily. “I don’t mind at all.” She almost added, “So long as it’s with you,” but that would be throwing herself at his head, and all her upbringing made her shy away from such boldness.
“London city or London parks?” he asked. “Honestly, I don’t mind.”
“Why don’t we go out of town to one of the parks, say. Hampton Court, or Windsor Great Park, or Richmond? I’ve been reading all about them.” Then Frank’s face fell. “Perhaps you know them already.”
“No, I don’t,” Florrie said hastily. “I’m not a Londoner, remember. I’ve always wanted to see Windsor Castle and the park, too. I’m told they’re wonderful.”
Mayhew leaned across the breakfast table. “You’re wonderful,” he said in a vibrant voice.
It did not matter what he said, only that she should not be too forward. If she was, she might lose him, and already he seemed part of her life.
She seemed part of the background of his life too; like the trees of the woods and the parks and the rustling which kept them company there.
The cashier at Kismet’s was in his office, with a man whom Michael Dunn had seen out for an evening stroll; a young, pleasant-looking man wearing a well-cut suit, dark grey in colour. Dunn wished the cashier, whom he knew well, was alone, but as it happened that made no difference.
“Ah, Mr. Dunn.” The cashier was fussy and middle-aged. “I promised you a cheque this morning, and it’s ready and waiting.” He had the cheque clipped to the little sheaf of bills. “If you’ll just sign the receipt . . . My goodness, though, you haven’t met Mr. Pommeroy from our parent company, have you? Mr. Pommeroy, this is Mr. Dunn, who does all our emergency printing for us, and a lot of other things. I don’t know where we would be without him.”
“Glad to know you, Mr. Dunn,” said Pommeroy.
“How are you?” asked Dunn formally. “I hope you’re enjoying this country.”
“I haven’t had much chance to get around but I like what I’ve seen very much.”
Nothing was said about his purpose here, and Dunn had no reason to feel any presentiment of trouble. He went straight to his bank and deposited a cheque for £874,3s - £250 more than it should have been. Then he hurried to the shop and sent a cheque in advance to the small private hotel at Bournemouth where Cynthia was going.
Cynthia, in the kitchen of the upstairs flat, was actually humming to herself; not coughing.
Jerry Klein stretched up for a box of mixed pendants in his shop and banged his injured hand. He winced. As he was holding his hand tight, to hold back the pain, the door opened. Klein caught his breath; even the opening of the shop door scared him these days.
A youth and a girl came in.
“I’d like to see one of those Rite-Time watches, like the one you sold to a friend of mine,” the man said.
“I want to buy my fiancé a birthday present,” explained the girl, “and he liked the Rite-Time watch ever so.”
Nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to allow him to forget Darkie Jackson, Klein thought miserably. These accursed watches had brought him nothing but trouble. He forced an apologetic smile as he said: “I’m sorry, but we’re out of them. There were just a few exported, that was all. Now, I’ve a very good Italian watch, much the same in appearance . . .”
For Gideon, that Wednesday started as if it were going to be one of those days. He woke with a very rare thing for him: a headache. It wasn’t unbearable, but it took the edge off the morning. The postman brought two letters from their children, and as Kate scanned the one from Prudence he saw the narrowing of her eyes. Soon she looked up.
“Pru’s having some trouble with her blood pressure. The doctor says she mustn’t overexert herself before the baby comes.”
Gideon grunted. “Meaning you ought to go to her.”
There was one good thing: Kate was so preoccupied about their daughter that she did not notice the ungraciousness of his tone.
“I think I should, George, don’t you?”
He hesitated.
“At least I ought to go over today and see how she is,” Kate went on. Prudence now lived at Epsom, about an hour’s journey by bus. “Knowing I’m able to go whenever it’s necessary will ease her mind, if nothing more.”
“Suit yourself,” Gideon said. “Don’t spoil her, though.”
“If either of us ever spoiled Prudence, you did,” Kate declared.
“Only one of the family I ever spoiled was you,” Gideon retorted. “Don’t worry about me, but phone the office if you’re not going to be home tonight.”
“Oh, I’ll be back!” Kate ass
ured him.
There wasn’t a hope, thought Gideon, but at least he saved himself from sounding surly. He was edgy, hoping the telephone would bring news of Nina Pallon, but it did not. His goodbye kiss to Kate was more perfunctory than it should have been, but she seemed still too preoccupied to notice it. It was a pleasant morning, the sort the Meteorological Office was fond of describing as “sunny intervals with occasional showers”. He pressed the self-starter of his car, and didn’t much like the response: it grated too much. It was five minutes before the car started, and on the first mile it stalled three times. He told a constable to report the trouble to the vehicle maintenance department, and went on.
Lemaitre almost jumped when he thrust the office door open.
“George–”
“Anything in about the Pallon girl?” Gideon demanded.
“Not a thing, George–”
“I want Hobbs to drop whatever he’s doing, and to go to see Schumacher, get a written statement, and then go in person to each of the art galleries and the Victoria and Albert Museum to check the story.” It was then that Gideon faced a fact which he had rejected before: there was an outside chance that Schumacher was telling the truth, and the girl had been kidnapped by someone else. “I want to hear from Hobbs by four o’clock at the latest.”
“I’ll fix it, but, George–”
“Fix it first, then talk afterwards.”
Lemaitre looked as if he would snap an angry retort, but instead he stretched out for his internal telephone, speaking to Gideon as he did so.
“The Commissioner wants to see you. There’s some kind of brouhaha going on. I cancelled all your briefings, just told everyone to carry on.”
Gideon sat back in his chair. Lemaitre dialled, and half-grinned, half-smirked across. Gideon forced a smile and said, “Okay, Lem,” and hoped it sounded conciliatory enough. He glanced through the reports on his desk and discovered that very little of importance had happened since his visit to Information late last night; the criminal liked his sleep as much as the next man.
Lemaitre finished talking to Hobbs, and rang off.
“He’s on his way.”
“No squeaks of any kind in?”
“Give it a chance,” protested Lemaitre. “Most of the chaps haven’t got the sleep out of their eyes yet.”
“Time they had,” grumbled Gideon. “Don’t mind me, Lem. Know anything more about the Old Man’s problem?”
“Nope. I do know Rogerson’s had a relapse, though.”
“Oh,” said Gideon heavily. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Ask the Old Man’s secretary to interrupt us if you get any word about Nina Pallon or Mayhew.”
“Right,” said Lemaitre. Almost at once two telephones rang on Gideon’s desk. “You go, George. If either of these is important I’ll catch you before you go in to the Great White Chief.”
13: Prize within Reach
He was genuinely sorry about the relapse suffered by the Assistant Commissioner for Crime, Gideon told himself, but deep down his first thought had been: how will this affect me? If he had a load of administrative work to do as double for the A.C. he would be able to concentrate less on the two urgent jobs on hand. It was no use jumping his fences before he reached them but he was prepared for the worst as he stepped into the Commissioner’s secretary’s office. The Commissioner, head of the Metropolitan Police, was in a different building from the C.I.D.; somehow the atmosphere was different too.
“Morning,” Gideon said to the middle-aged secretary, neat in grey with neat grey hair and silver-rimmed pince-nez.
“Good morning, Mr. Gideon. The Commissioner would like you to go straight in.” As Gideon moved towards the door, she added, “Mr. Lemaitre asked me to tell you that the two calls were routine.”
Thanks.” Gideon felt some of the gloom lift: at times Lem was maddeningly exasperating, but he was the old reliable. Gideon tapped perfunctorily on the door and went in as the Commissioner called: “Come in.”
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Reginald Scott-Marie was alone in the severely furnished office. That was right for him. An ex-military man, he had a look, some thought a habit, of severity, even of aloofness. There were men at the Yard who had known him for years and yet did not feel they ever got near him. Gideon had once felt that way, and been ill at ease in the presence of this tall, lean, grey-haired man, ill at ease unless he was on his own ground, dealing with some specific case of which he had positive knowledge against the Commissioner’s opinion. Once or twice they had clashed when Gideon had held stubbornly to the rightness of a course of action; once Scott-Marie had conceded the point, once he had insisted on a change of approach to a case, afterward admitting he had been wrong. Out of these things had grown a mutual trust and respect and the years were turning this into liking.
Had anyone else been present, Scott-Marie would have been formal. “Commander” or, at best, “Gideon”. Now he motioned to a chair in front of his large, flat-topped mahogany desk.
“Sit down, George. I gather you’ve plenty on your hands without extracurricular matters, so to speak.”
“I’ve two bad ones,” Gideon said, sitting; and he was reminded of the way Henderson had kept silent when his wife had accepted the responsibility for trusting Schumacher. “Lemaitre tells me that Rogerson’s had a setback.”
“A bad one,” Scott-Marie confirmed.
“Oh.” It was almost superfluous to add “I’m sorry.” Scott-Marie was looking at him intently, almost embarrassingly. “How bad?” he asked.
“I think we can be sure he won’t return to the Yard,” declared Scott-Marie.
Gideon said, shocked, “As bad as that?” Now his own emotions and his thoughts were in turmoil, because of what this could mean. “What’s happened, sir?”
“He collapsed on Monday morning, was rushed to hospital, and operated on at once. They found that in addition to cardiac trouble there is the cancer, which has spread very rapidly. They give him between six weeks and six months.”
Every word had the impact of a blow delivered with a hammer and chisel; cold, unrelenting, shocking. Even when Scott-Marie’s dry, almost unemotional voice stopped, what he had said was hard to believe. Rogerson had been ill on and off for years; it had been easy to think he would die of old age. He was two years younger than Gideon.
“What a damnable thing,” Gideon said at last.
“It is indeed.” Scott-Marie was still looking at him with that probing intentness. “We have two things to face up to, George - long-term and short-term policy. I think the short-term speaks for itself. I’ll do all I can on the administrative side to help, but you’ll deputize for the time being.”
Gideon knew that this wasn’t meant as an order, it was simply the acceptance of the inevitable. It would mean extra work, extra hours, extra responsibility - perhaps it was a good thing that Kate was needed at Pru’s, it would be easier to spend more time at the Yard.
He nodded.
“And we can no longer leave the long-term problem in abeyance. While there was a chance that Rogerson would be coming back there wasn’t such a problem. Now there is - the question of appointing his successor,”
“Yes,” Gideon said. “I know.”
“This is what I want to know from you as soon as you can make up your mind, George,” said Scott-Marie almost brusquely. “Do you want the appointment or not?”
Now that the question had been put into words, Gideon realized that he had expected it; yet, like the grim news of Rogerson, the question came as a real shock. He was aware that Scott-Marie was watching him intently, no doubt trying to judge his reaction. Scott-Marie knew as well as anyone that to become assistant commissioner for crime was to reach the zenith of hopes and ambition in the C.I.D. In a way, Gideon felt, the Commissioner knew that Gideon’s whole life in the Force, from humble police constable to commander, seemed to flash in front of his eyes.
Scott-Marie let his question stand, and did not prompt Gideon by word or gesture.
At las
t Gideon said, “When do you have to know, sir?”
“Within a week, say. Ten days at the outside. The Home Secretary wants to make the appointment within the next month.” Gideon pondered before asking: “If I say I would like it, what are my chances?”
For the first time this morning Scott-Marie smiled.
“If you would like the appointment I would recommend you, and I don’t think a recommendation of mine in this context would be passed over. There would be some objections, of course, but only formal. The day has come when the man, not his social background, is the deciding factor. I am sure that would be accepted.”
“I see,” said Gideon; and then he realized that he wasn’t exactly bursting with enthusiasm or appreciation, and smiled rather wryly. “Thank you very much. May I ask another question?”
“As many as you want.”
“Do you want me to take the job?”
Quickly, decisively, Scott-Marie said: “Yes, if I have your assurance that you heart would be in it. Don’t misunderstand me.” He spoke more hurriedly than usual. “I know what the executive aspect of the work means to you. I know you are not the most tolerant or patient of men where administration is concerned. You like to cut red tape, and at assistant commissioner level it can’t always be cut. On the other hand, you’re now near the middle fifties. You may feel the time has come when you could hand over the day-to-day supervision of the detective force. If you’ve reached that stage, I want no other assistant commissioner. If you think you would always be hankering after more active work, I would rather you declined. You would be of ten times more value to the Yard, and incidentally to me, if you stayed where you are.”
Gideon was smiling more freely.
“You couldn’t be more frank, and I appreciate it. I’ve often wondered how I would feel if this situation ever arose, and now it’s here I don’t quite know how I feel. Is there likely to be another chance?”
