Criminal Imports

by John Creasey

  “Go on,” said Gideon.

  “Second, a milk roundsman in Gulliver Street, Chelsea, thought he heard a scream coming from an art shop yesterday morning, about the time Schumacher and Nina left the Tate. He told a divisional uniformed man, who put it in his report. I have been very busy following that up - we found the milkman and an elderly man through that copper.

  "“Third, I have talked to the elderly man who also thought he heard the scream, which was uttered a few minutes after they saw a man and a girl enter the shop. The old fellow and the milkman had a word or two about it, and decided it was a woman who’d been calling out to attract the milkman’s attention. And they both describe a man who was going into the shop just about then, and they think there was a girl just ahead of him and he measures up reasonably well to the description we have of Schumacher - grey-haired, benevolent-looking.

  "“Fourth, one of the constables on traffic duty outside the Tate saw Schumacher and Nina leaving there on foot and walking toward Chelsea, twenty minutes before the man and girl entered the shop.

  "“Fifth, that art shop is now covered back and front.”

  “I’ll be in Gulliver Street in fifteen minutes,” Gideon said. “Wait for me.”

  Gulliver Street was well lit, but there were many dark doorways, many alleys leading off, many cars behind which the police could hide. Gideon pulled in near a car in which two men were sitting, and as he got out one of the men left the car and came to him.

  “Mr. Hobbs is in a shop across the road from the art shop, sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Shall I take you round the back way?”

  “Yes.”

  Three minutes later he was with Hobbs in a small tobacconist’s shop, the owner of which was an ex-policeman. Two other plainclothes men were there.

  Gideon always had a curious sense of surprise when he saw Hobbs for the first time for several days. Hobbs was a compact man whose close-fitting clothes detracted from his height, and he was only five feet eight, six inches shorter than Gideon and inches shorter than most C.I.D. officers. There was about him a kind of controlled elegance; sometimes he spoke and behaved as if he had a distaste for his job, but nothing could have been further from the truth. He had an unmistakable air of command and control, and within earshot of other ranks, as now, his formality seemed proper for him.

  “Glad to see you, Commander.”

  “Hallo,” said Gideon. Then: “Any movement across the road?”

  “Not a sign of movement yet.”

  The art shop was in darkness, like the flat above it; it was halfway between two street lamps, so that the doorway was full of shadows.

  “What’s it like at the back?” asked Gideon.

  “There is an approach from a service alley. Four men are within fifty yards of it. And the man seen there this morning was undoubtedly Schumacher, almost certainly with the Pallon girl. I’ve talked to the milkman too. His description fits too closely for there to be much doubt.”

  “Right,” said Gideon. “I’m going over.”

  “I think you should let me go,” said Hobbs.

  “Not this time.” If that girl was there, if anyone else tried to rescue her and failed, it would be forever on Gideon’s mind that he might have succeeded. He had to do this himself. “Cover me, Alec. Send men round to the back to tell the men there to move in five minutes from now, precisely. Watches checked?”

  “Yes,” said Hobbs. He had lodged his protest, and now accepted the inevitable. He gave orders to a man who glanced at his wristwatch and hurried off.

  Only Hobbs was within earshot.

  “George,” he said, “the time is coming when you must stop taking so much on yourself. Only you would blame yourself if anything went wrong here tonight.”

  After a pause, Gideon said, “Have you met the Hendersons?”

  “I met Henderson this afternoon.”

  Gideon surprised himself by saying, “You must meet his wire.” He was staring down at Hobbs, seeing the grim smile playing at his tips. Hobbs hadn’t meant: “Stop stealing my thunder.” He had recognized the compulsion that worked in Gideon, and also the causes behind the compulsion.

  He felt a curious kind of affinity with this man, and the vividness of the feeling astonished him. He wondered what Hobbs would say, and almost chuckled when Hobbs used the kind of retort most likely to come from Lemaitre.

  “Well, don’t box it up, will you?”

  “Not if I can help it.” There was still a minute to go. “Kate thinks Hong Kong is quite a place.”

  “So does Helen. Those group meetings are exactly what she needs.” Hobbs spoke with quiet emphasis.

  “Yes.” Gideon’s thought had flashed to Kate and Prudence and their anxiety, and suddenly he frowned. Hobbs was bound to wonder what caused the frown, so he went on gruffly, “Good thing it wasn’t tonight. Kate’s over at Epsom, some kind of scare over our first grandchild-to-be.”

  Hobbs said almost angrily, “Why do we have to live with that kind of anxiety?”

  “God knows,” grunted Gideon. After a pause, he went on, “Time I was moving.”

  He left the shop and walked fifty yards up the street before crossing the road. As he walked, he was aware of a metamorphosis which he had known occasionally in the past. Depression and anxiety lifted. He felt the kind of excitement which he had known when he had first seen action and, in these later years, when he had played an active part in a big case. Here was his chance to act, not simply to think and to direct.

  It passed swiftly through his mind that as assistant commissioner he could never play a part like this.

  Then he reached the doorway of the art shop.

  17: Early in the Morning

  The shop was still in darkness and no sound came from inside. Gideon stood at the front door, a hand in front of him, until precisely one minute before the men from the back would move in. Then he turned the handle, pushed stolidly but without force, and felt bolts resisting top and bottom. He drew back two feet, then thudded his great weight against the door, shoulder foremost - two hundred and fifty pounds of tough bone and muscle. There was a sharp, explosive crack above his head. He drew back and hurled himself forward for a second time. The door gave way at both bolts. A shove, and he was through.

  He flashed his light round, seeing grotesque figures of all shapes and sizes round the walls, paintings framed and unframed. In a far corner was another door, open. He strode toward it, and snapped on several light switches. The shop, the back room and a narrow staircase were all lit up.

  He heard no sound but that of his own making.

  Even then, before he had started to search, he felt the first pang of disappointment. Anyone here must have heard the noise and would be moving in alarm - or lying still in fear?

  Sounds came, from the yard.

  The back door wasn’t bolted, but was secured by a Yale lock. He spared time to snap it open and call, “Gideon here,” then swung round and headed for the stairs. Each tread creaked. The boards were as bare as Gideon’s hopes. It was like shadow boxing.

  There were three doorways leading off the landing, but no light. Each door was open, Gideon had a moment of dread that Nina might be there, already dead. He switched on lights to show dilapidated rooms lumbered with old canvases, old frames, a few new paintings ready to hang, and in the corner of one room an easel by a table smothered with wrinkled half-empty tubes of oil paint, a jar of brushes, all a painter’s stock in trade. Most of the paintings were unpleasant, a few positively obscene.

  There was no sign of Nina.

  Apart from the artist’s studio there was no sign of occupation except in what had once been a kitchen, downstairs. This was now a washhouse-cum-box-room-cum-rubbish dump. Here were cracked cups and saucers, tea, coffee, condensed milk, a tin of biscuits, a tin kettle, a brown earthenware teapot. Gideon felt almost sick with disappointment when Hobbs came in.

  “So they’ve flown.”

  “Yes,” said Gideon. “Did yo
u get a set of Nina Pallon’s fingerprints?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can check for them, anyhow.” Gideon made the best of it. “Schumacher’s too!” Hobbs had been just as thorough as Gideon had expected.

  He was contemplating Gideon very straightly, and gave a curious impression: that he was growing in physical stature. For a moment Gideon suspected that some comment had been on the tip of his tongue, but he had kept it back.

  It came out.

  “You got away with this one. Why don’t you call it a day and get a night’s sleep?”

  Gideon felt only slightly annoyed, whereas another man saying the same thing might have made him angry.

  “We’ll have a look round first,” he said, and actually swivelled his gaze as one of the men who had come in after Hobbs bent down to pick something up. Gideon saw it glisten. The man examined it, then turned to Gideon and Hobbs.

  “What’ve you found?” Hobbs asked quietly.

  “Looks like a used ampoule,” the man said. He was young, fair-haired, diffident. He raised the glistening thing closer to his eyes. That’s right, sir. Morphine for injection, half a grain.”

  Hobbs said with quiet satisfaction: “It looks as if they doped her, Commander.” He raised his voice. “Don’t handle that as if it were a beer bottle - there will be prints on it.”

  Fingerprint men from the division were already moving in.

  Another man called, “Here’s something else, sir.”

  Gideon had to force himself to allow Hobbs to go up the stairs first. The caller was standing on the landing, holding a pair of black sandal-type shoes. They looked tiny in his big hands.

  “They’re marked Italia Shoes, New York, sir.”

  “Size?” demanded Hobbs.

  “Three and a half C.”

  “Nina Pallon wears size three and a half,” Hobbs stated flatly. There was a long pause before he went on: “Would you like me to tell Henderson?”

  “I’d like you to work on this end, all night. If you have to, wake the whole neighbourhood. We want the time they left, transport, descriptions–”

  Hobbs was giving that amused smile of his. Gideon stopped in mid-flow, and gave a bark of a laugh.

  “The lot,” he said. “I’ll see Henderson.”

  A few people were still sitting about the Bingham Hotel, including a Yard man, who did not show any sign of recognition, which told Gideon that Schumacher was in his room. Gideon went up to the seventh floor, unannounced, and tapped on the main door of the Henderson suite. Almost at once Henderson opened it.

  He had a gift for covering his feelings.

  “Come in.” Only his eyes showed the light of hope and that soon faded. He glanced at the plastic bag in Gideon’s hand, then back into Gideon’s eyes. Bleak faced, he asked, “Have you bad news?”

  “Not good, not bad,” Gideon said. “Would you recognize Nina’s shoes if you saw them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure?” Gideon had expected some hesitation.

  “Only yesterday morning I told her that I thought she was wearing the worst possible shoes for a day at galleries and museums,” replied Henderson. “May I?” He took the bag, opened it, and took out the shoes; each now had smears of grey powder, to bring up prints.

  Gideon could almost feel the other man’s agony as he said, “Yes. They’re Nina’s.”

  “Then we’ve found the place where she was kidnapped,” Gideon said. “We will know a lot more before the night’s out. There were fingerprints, but none of Schumacher’s, although we have plenty of witnesses that he was seen to go into the place with her.”

  Henderson hardly seemed to hear all this.

  “Nina?” he asked. “Not good-not bad news.”

  “We think she was drugged,” Gideon told him. “We found a half-grain ampoule which had contained morphine, and if she was given the whole dose it would keep her unconscious for at least twelve hours.” To help ease Henderson’s burden, he reasoned: “They would hardly put her out for so long if they intended to kill her, which is on the credit side. So is the fact that from the moment the drug took effect she would know nothing - no pain, no fear.”

  Surely that must help this man.

  “What time was she kidnapped?” Henderson asked.

  “About eleven o’clock this morning.”

  Henderson said very quietly, “If she was drugged then, she is just about able to feel both pain and fear again.”

  She felt no pain; a little discomfort, that was all, especially at her wrists and ankles, where she was bound.

  But her fear was a hideous thing, because of the black darkness, the now less frequent roaring and the throbbing which never seemed to stop.

  “I feel very bad because I cannot really feel grateful to you,” Henderson said. “I will later. I realize that it’s almost a miracle that you’ve found out so much already.” He raised his hands, and gave a taut little smile. “I needn’t ask, but I have to. You’re keeping at this every minute, aren’t you?”

  “Every single minute,” Gideon assured him. “And I needn’t ask this but I have to: you won’t make a deal without letting me know, will you?”

  “You have my word on that.”

  “Thank you,” said Gideon. Then he asked, “Shall I take the shoes?”

  “Do you need them?”

  “We will later, but not now.”

  “I think I ought to show them to my wife when she wakes,” Henderson said.

  Gideon went home to his empty house, and was not disturbed during the night. He expected to sleep badly, but in fact slept soundly. In a peculiar way he felt that this was partly due to Hobbs, who had handled himself, the investigation and his relationship with Gideon so well.

  Superintendent Alec Hobbs did not even think of sleep.

  It took an hour and a half to find out that the art shop was owned by a Sydney Jackman, who lived in a small house in Fulham, and owned a great deal of dilapidated property in Southwest London. He was a little man with straggly grey hair and a forlorn appearance, particularly when called out of bed in the early hours of the morning and taken by a police car to the Gulliver Street shop. By then twenty households within sight of the shop had been disturbed, but nothing useful had been discovered.

  “It isn’t my fault if the shop is misused by the tenants,” Jackman complained. “They pay their rent, and if they behave themselves that is all I care about.”

  Hobbs said, “Come with me, Mr. Jackman.” He took the owner for a quick tour of the premises, including the nastiest of the pictures. “You could be in trouble for allowing this kind of filth to be displayed to the public. You know that.”

  “But I didn’t know they were here!”

  “Some people might believe you,” said Hobbs, as if sceptical. “Who is the present tenant?”

  “A Mr. Smith!”

  “Smith,” echoed Hobbs. “How long has he been here?”

  “He took it for a month. He said he had an American client coming to see some special paintings. He paid in advance, I hadn’t got anything to complain about.”

  “You hadn’t then,” said Hobbs coldly. “You might have now. Who was he, Jackman?”

  “I tell you his name was Smith. That’s all I know.”

  “Had you ever seen him before?”

  “No, never!”

  Hobbs said harshly, “If you’re lying, you will be in serious trouble. I’m not concerned about dirty paintings either. A girl was kidnapped and drugged here today. Anyone aiding and abetting the criminal would be an accessory. Do you want to think again?”

  “I don’t know anything,” insisted Jackman hoarsely. “I swear I don’t know. I can tell you what the man looked like, I’ll do everything I can to help you, but I can’t tell you things I don’t know.”

  “I had a feeling he was telling the truth,” Hobbs phoned to Gideon at seven o’clock next morning. “Leslie Scott has everything in hand. A dozen men are checking on artists. Did I tell you there was some yellow o
chre oil paint, Reed and Ward’s first quality, in two of the fingerprints on the ampoule?”

  Gideon, sitting by the side of the bed, unshaved, pyjamas rumpled said, “No.” His eyes brightened for the first time since Hobbs’s call had waked him.

  “There was. And one of the more obscene paintings had been touched up very recently with yellow ochre which was still wet - probably done yesterday morning. The prints aren’t Schumacher’s, so there was another man in that shop yesterday morning.”

  “Keep looking for an artist,” Gideon said.

  “It’s all in hand. Sorry if I woke you,” Hobbs went on. “I’ll take a few hours off and be in about noon, if that’s all right with you?”

  “Come in when you’re ready,” Gideon agreed. “I’ll see that everything ticks over.”

  “Thanks,” said Hobbs, and the word stretched into a yawn. “Sorry.”

  Gideon put the receiver down and got moving. Had Kate been present she would have seen the man of twenty-five years ago, who simply could not wait to get on the job. He shaved and showered in ten minutes, made tea, dressed and drank the tea in five, and was in his car and heading for the Yard at twenty-five past seven. The night duty men at the gates, the desks and Information seldom saw him before they left at eight o’clock, and all snapped to attention. All of them had the slightly dazed look of the tired; it was early in Gideon’s morning but late in their afternoon.

  “Didn’t expect to see you,” said the Information inspector. “It’s been a hell of a night.”

  “Anything big?”

  “Nothing to bring you in early, just the mixture as before.”

  Gideon asked, “Do you know whom Superintendent Hobbs has briefed?”

  “All the names are on your desk.”

  “Thanks.” Gideon went up to his office, and was half exasperated to find Lemaitre not there already, although he wasn’t due until nine o’clock. Gideon glanced through reports on his desk, including the names of the dozen detectives who were checking the movements of artists. There was a description of the man sometimes seen at the shop, Jackman’s “Smith”. He drew up an instruction sheet to be sent to all London divisions by teletype; this would reach the divisions shortly after eight o’clock, and all the police in London would be on the lookout.