by John Creasey
“Morning, George, Got a little thing I think you ought to know about.” Prosser was too old in C.I.D. service to trouble Gideon with trifles. “We’ve got a man and a girl missing from the Rosemount Hotel in Kensington Gate. They booked in separately and on different days, but they’ve been around a lot together.”
“Well?” Gideon saw the door open an inch and a hand appear. He watched it as Prosser went on: “The girl’s about five feet two, very good figure, and the man . . .” He paused, as if for effect, and Gideon saw Oliver’s face at the door. He beckoned Oliver, who looked as if he had just come from a funeral. “If he weren’t an Australian,” Prosser said, and stopped on a note of triumph.
“Sorry, I didn’t quite get that,” said Gideon.
“You didn’t– “Prosser’s voice registered his disgust. “I’ll say it again, slowly. The man who is missing answers the description of Frank Mayhew, except that he’s an Australian.”
Gideon didn’t speak.
“George, what’s the matter with you today?” demanded Prosser.
“How close is the description?”
“Nearly as close as the initials F.M. When I showed the photograph of Mayhew to the porter and to the maid who does the man’s room, they identified him pronto. But they’re sure he doesn’t talk like an American, and the porter says he can tell an Australian any day.”
“Prints?” demanded Gideon,
“Not yet. It’s no crime for a man to stay away from his hotel all night, or to have a floosie with him.”
“Check the room for prints, and search it,” Gideon said briskly. “If it’s definitely Mayhew - What name is he using?”
“Mason - Frank Mason. That’s what I mean - F.M.”
“If he’s Mayhew, we want a general call out at once,” Gideon said. “Ring me back, Jack. And thanks.”
“Right.” Prosser rang off, and Gideon stared not at Oliver but out the window, wondering why a man of Prosser’s age and police experience felt it necessary to get approval before taking positive action. Gideon pushed the question out of his mind and turned to Oliver, who had an unlit cigarette between his lips. Gideon tossed him a box of matches, and Oliver caught them. The head offices of the joint stock banks and of the major foreign travel agencies with banking facilities should have some figures about the West German marks by now. Oliver lit his cigarette and tossed the matches back. He was overdoing the poker-faced gloom so much that Gideon expected big news.
“How many million?” he demanded.
Oliver’s face seemed to fall apart. Gideon, pleased with himself, was almost free from major preoccupations for the first time that day.
“You’re a crafty old so-and-so,” said Oliver. “Really thought I’d shake you this time. Two and a half.”
Gideon ejaculated, “Million?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve shaken me,” Gideon said. After a pause he went on: “How wide are they spread?”
“Very wide indeed,” Oliver answered. “All the big cities have some, so have most of the smaller towns. Can’t get a clear picture yet, but it looks to me as if they’ve been distributed during the past few months. All the big branches of the banks and the travel offices with bureaux de change have a few thousand at this time of the year, and smaller places usually carry a few. It looks as if there was one big consignment through the London Clearing House, accepted as genuine. You know what’s worrying me, don’t you?”
There was one obvious answer, but Oliver had been deflated enough for one session.
“What?”
Oliver took the cigarette from his lips, rested it carefully on an ashtray, and pressed the tips of his fingers together,
“This isn’t a widespread passing of forged notes by a few dozen crooks who hand it in over the counter. This is big business, the distribution must have started in a big way too. None of our main banks suspected the genuineness of the notes, and they must have received them from sources they regarded as unimpeachable.” Solemnly, Oliver asked, “Do you agree?”
“Yes.”
“In other words, George, these reached London through the official channels of one or more big German banks.”
“Yes.”
“So one or more of the big German banks was either (a) deceived by the forgeries or (b) connived at the forgeries.”
Gideon’s exchange telephone rang. He lifted the receiver, and said, “Hold on.” Then he covered the mouthpiece with his great hand.
“Well?”
“It seems to me I ought to concentrate on finding how they got into the country and have a complete picture of that before we take any action about calling in the notes,” said Oliver. “Someone is going to be left holding the baby over this, George. Either the Bank of England or whichever of the Joint Stock Banks brought the marks in - or the suppliers from Germany. If we handle it clumsily, we could land our own people in the soup. If I get a dud pound note I’m liable to be landed with it unless I know where I got it from. Even if I can get it replaced it can take a long time. Against that,” Oliver went on, “if we don’t call in all the forged notes, the banks might continue to deal in them. This is a headache whichever way you look at it.”
Gideon said: “Go over to the Bank of England and see Sir George Richmond. He’s in charge of foreign exchange. He knows what we’ve been doing and he’s right on top of his job. Tell him exactly what we’ve found, and ask him how he would like the job to be handled now.” Gideon put the telephone mouthpiece to his lips, said, “Won’t be a jiffy,” covered it again and went on to Oliver. “We’ve got to know before the close of banking business today, or there will be chaos.”
“And this way we won’t burn our fingers.” Oliver smiled with ungrudging admiration. “I say, don’t ever leave us chaps to manage on our own, will you?”
In the few seconds that followed, everything faded from Gideon’s mind except that remark and the implication behind it. Oliver had meant it as a joke, yet he had also meant it seriously. “Don’t ever leave us chaps to manage on our own, will you?” As assistant commissioner he would have to.
Suddenly he thought angrily, “How bigheaded can I get?” He snatched up the telephone, and growled, “Gideon.”
It was Prosser.
“George,” said Prosser, “the man missing from the Rosemount Hotel is Frank S. Mayhew. Three separate witnesses have identified his photograph.”
Gideon was already lifting the internal telephone as he said, “Haven’t a photograph of the girl, have you?”
“Yes. It’s on the way to you. She’s a Florence Foster—”
There followed one of the great ironies of the Yard’s work; an irony which was part and parcel of everything Gideon and the Yard had to do, unavoidable because it was done in ignorance as well as in hope, but so time-wasting, so prodigal with the Yard’s resources, which were already stretched nearly to their limit, that they carried much bitterness with them.
That morning the Yard began the search for Florence Foster. A thousand photographs were printed and distributed, twenty thousand men in the Force began the search for the girl as well as for Mayhew alias Mason, every station and substation was involved. The newspapers were brought in, television and radio were called in to help, tens of thousands of man-hours were spent on the search for the girl who lay buried under the leaves and bracken, beneath the fleecy white clouds and the patches of dark-blue sky in Windsor Great Park.
It was a Windsor policeman who started the final phase in the hunt for Florrie. He remembered seeing her getting into a Mini-Minor in Windsor High Street,
“Not often they come that size and shape,” he told a C.I.D. officer at the police station. “Breasts like balloons, and they’re more noticeable when they’re short, too. That’s the girl all right, poor little basket. And that’s the chap - he was standing by the car holding the door open, proper polite. The car went toward the park and Ascot, sir.”
“Sure?”
“Dead sure.”
The C.I.D. ma
n set everyone he could spare on to tracing the movements of the car, and a red Mini-Minor was not yet common enough to escape notice. He sat at the telephone, directing operations, not realizing that in his way he was doing what Gideon did from the Yard.
A woodcutter who had been sawing some of the branches pruned in a thicket the previous autumn recalled a Mini-Minor parked sixty yards away from where he was working. He well remembered the man and girl going into another thicket.
“None of my business what they get up to so long as they’re out of sight,” he said. “Did you see them come out?”
“Well, no, I only saw the car driven off. I’m not sure they were both in it, I took it for granted.”
Half an hour later he stared down at Florence Foster’s body, now cleared of leaves and bracken, and he was almost sick.
“She’s dead, George,” the Windsor superintendent told Gideon.
“How?”
“Just he way you’d expect. Raped and strangled.”
“She fight?”
“Must have, desperately.”
“Any trace of the man?”
“His prints were on her handbag.”
“Right.” Gideon rang off, and immediately sent for three superintendents and three chief inspectors. He told them that no one must rest, no one must relax, until Frank S. Mayhew was under arrest. All divisions were to be put under pressure, all airports, bus stations, seaports and railway termini were to be under twenty-four-hour surveillance, every hotel and boarding house was to be warned to look out for the man whom it was so easy to like and to trust. Even during this briefing Gideon kept thinking about the other missing girl, Nina. So far there was no word about her, and the stations now alerted for Mayhew were already alerted for her.
Why did no one seem to recognize those other background noises?
Alice Clay saw Mayhew’s photograph on the television screen later that day.
“He’s a devil,” she said to herself. “An absolute devil.” Then she jumped up. “But I mustn’t sit here watching TV, I’ll be late for the club.”
The Reverend Ronald Stephens would have been a very happy man had he seen the way she reacted.
Before that, just before Gideon briefed the six men, Felisa Henderson talked to the manager of Carter’s, one of the jewellers from whom she bought gems of fabulous beauty and fabulous worth.
“It is a temporary matter,” she told him. “I need thirty-five thousand pounds in cash by one o’clock, and my husband is out of town until this evening. If you require a security, then the Bondi necklace and–“
“Mrs. Henderson, I shall be only too happy to help you,” the manager replied. “Perhaps you will permit one safeguard.”
“What safeguard?”
“That you collect the money in person or permit me to bring it to you.”
“If you will bring it to me I will be very grateful,” Felisa said. “When may I expect you?”
“I will be at your hotel in half an hour.”
There was nothing unusual in visitors from famous salons calling on wealthy women, even though this one stayed only a few minutes, to hand over the money and to obtain a receipt. His call was noted by the detective on duty and reported, but no special action was considered necessary at the Yard, and Gideon wasn’t told.
Ten minutes after the Carter manager had gone, Schumacher entered Felisa’s room. Even when he saw the money in a small briefcase which lay open on the bed, his eyes did not flicker.
“So you succeeded,” he said huskily. “I only wish it were not necessary.”
“Do you know where you have to take it?”
“Yes, surely.”
“Where?”
“Mrs. Henderson,” said Schumacher earnestly, “I am quite sure it is better for you not to know. You can trust me implicitly.”
Felisa thought bitterly, I can’t, I feel sure I can’t; but I have to.
Aloud she said, “When are you to give it to them?”
“This afternoon, at a time not yet decided.”
“When you hand it over,” Felisa said, “you must make one thing absolutely clear.”
“And what is that?” inquired Schumacher.
“They will get nothing more until I have seen Nina, and know she is not hurt.”
“Be sure I will make that very clear to them,” Schumacher promised.
When he closed the door, Felisa stood watching it, half afraid now that she had done the wrong thing. What would Elliott say? Supposing Schumacher just went off with the money, or “they” went off with it? Quite suddenly her calmness was ripped to shreds and she whirled into a panic of her own making.
She swung round to the telephone to call Elliott.
21: Rush
Abel Schumacher walked down the fire-escape stairs to his own room, carrying the briefcase in his left hand. There was spring in his step, buoyancy in his mood. He unlocked the door, stepped inside, closed it softly, and then tossed the bag into the air with a muted cry: Bonanza! He all but did a jig to the bed, taking off his jacket as he went. He picked up the briefcase, squeezed it, hugged it. Then he turned his back on it, went to the wardrobe, and took out another suit of clothes, baggy and in need of pressing, and much too big for him. The lining was several layers thick, and these layers were divided, rather like the sections of a money belt or a billfold. He carried the trousers to the bed, and took out one of the wads of £5 notes. He counted this; there were twenty - £100 in all. He put one wad in the first lining layer close to the waist, one in a second, one in a third, then filled the next three sections. In all, he filled fifteen lots of three, so £4,500 was in the waistband of the trousers. The jacket was fitted with deep inside pockets, and when he had filled these over £20,000 was hidden in his clothes, more than half of the full amount.
He spread two pages of a copy of the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune on the bed, and spread the rest of the notes on it, then folded it across. It made a bulky newspaper but it was still a newspaper. He sealed it with Scotch tape, then folded it inside two more sheets, lucked under his arm, this did not look too conspicuous.
He was at the door when the telephone bell rang. The sound made him jump violently, and he twisted round. It was a call through the hotel exchange. He swallowed hard. The bell rang again, and he went toward the instrument, clenching his teeth. He lifted the receiver.
“Hallo.”
“Abe?” It was Lucy Green.
“I told you not to–”
“Abe, the shop was raided last night.”
He felt as if an electric shock had run through him.
“Did you hear?” Lucy almost sobbed.
“Yes. Was he– “Schumacher couldn’t finish.
“It was empty,” Lucy said. “Abe, when can I see you? I’m ever so scared.”
“Tonight at six o’clock,” he said quickly. “Piccadilly Circus Station, North Regent Street subway.” Before Lucy could speak again, he put down the receiver. When he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand it was wet. He went into the bathroom and dried off with a towel. Five minutes later he went along to the staircase. At every landing there was a service lift, but he did not press for the car.
So far he had got away with it, but this was the danger period, and he was acutely aware of it. If he were seen he would be followed, and even if he shook a trailer off, the airport and all traffic termini would be alerted.
What he did not know was that one of the detectives now detailed to watch the back of the hotel saw a man who looked like Mayhew enter a cafe close by. The detective took time out to telephone his division, and was delayed by a busy line. He was away from his post for those crucial minutes during which Schumacher was making his escape.
Schumacher walked through the storerooms for meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, nearly every food the hotel needed day by day. Three warehousemen were pushing hand trucks toward the hoist to the kitchens, another was wheeling a truck from the street loading platform, which was on a lower street lev
el than the front of the hotel. Schumacher waited in an alcove which smelt earthily of potatoes until the man had passed, then climbed into the van. It was nearly empty, and dozens of Hessian sacks were piled up at the far end. He moved some of these, then sat on the floor behind them. A dozen more sacks were tossed in, one actually draping over his shoulder. Men shouted words he hardly understood before one slammed the doors at the back; he heard an iron bar dropped into a slot. The van swayed as the driver climbed to the wheel, quivered as the engine started.
Twenty minutes later the van stopped near Covent Garden market. The driver opened the back doors, and clambered in for some of the sacks. As he staggered off with an armful, Schumacher followed him, stepped out of the van on to another loading platform, and walked towards an intersection. A man near the van called out:
“Hey, Harry! Who’s yer mate?”
‘Mate?’ another man echoed, but before the driver realized what had happened, Schumacher had turned the nearest corner. He did not even hear the driver of the van say, “Well he couldn’tve took anything, except a few old sacks.”
The fourth taxi that approached Schumacher was free.
“London Airport, in a hurry,” he ordered as he climbed in. “I’ve missed the terminal bus.”
As the taxi moved across central London toward Victoria, it passed within two hundred yards of Lucy Green, who was sitting in a tiny shop with a Hawaiian decor, drinking espresso coffee served by a coloured waiter from Jamaica. Twelve minutes later it passed within a hundred and fifty yards of the arches where Nina Pallon lay helpless and afraid.
Schumacher did not intend to see Nina, Lucy Green or Facey again.
He intended to fly to Paris on the first available plane, using a false name and a false passport, then to fly from Paris to Buenos Aires, via Dakar. In the Argentine $100,000 would last a long, long time.
The tape recording of the brief conversation between Schumacher and the girl Lucy reached the Yard five minutes after Gideon had left to see Sir Arthur Fielding of the Faculty of British Industries. Lemaitre listened to it, and almost smirked with satisfaction.
