Hang The Little Man

by John Creasey

  Roger said: “I’ve put in a request to be assigned to this exclusively, but I haven’t had any answer. I quoted you as being in favour.”

  “I certainly am,” Appleby said. He blinked out of the window of Roger’s office. “B-b-by the way, my wife doesn’t hate you any more. She says she thinks it might be a good idea if we met socially, if you could bear it. Think you and your wife could spare an hour or so Sunday evening? Be very glad if you’d come round for a sandwich supper and a drink.”

  “We’d like that very much,” Roger said.

  Appleby gave a boyish grin.

  “Thought you would. We can get the little women nattering while we work out this he-man’s job, can’t we? If you ask me, Handsome, we’ve a hell of a lot to do. Since you found those acid smears in the telephone kiosk, we can be pretty sure that Gantry phoned from there, and the man he phoned might have come and murdered him. It looks very nasty indeed. How many shops like these in London?”

  “There’s no record,” Roger said. “But there are at least a hundred to every division, and we’ve forty-two divisions.”

  “Best hope I can see is the widow of the man Endicott,” Appleby said. “Sure she can’t tell you any more?”

  “Not sure yet,” Roger said, “but I am sure that she’s being watched by the people who killed her husband, and I wouldn’t like her to have her throat cut. As soon as we get a chance, we’ll talk to her again, though.”

  “Good,” said Appleby. “Don’t forget Sunday. Six-thirty or so, if that’s all right with you.”

  It was then Friday.

  On the Saturday morning, a brisk telephone call from the Commander, C.I.D., assigned Roger to the Shop Robberies Investigation, exclusively. From that moment onwards, he could think, talk and act only about small shops and their occupants.

  X

  SECOND DISAPPEARANCE

  ON the Monday morning, after a long evening at the Applebys’ in which Janet West and Dot Appleby seemed likely to become good friends, Roger found a pencilled note on his desk: “Please call Supt. Bellew.” He didn’t put the call in at once, but studied the result of the week-end’s work by men assigned with him on the shop robberies job. Each Division had been asked to give the location, name, turnover and opening times of the small neighbourhood shops in the Division, and already three Divisions, who must have worked overtime, had turned in fairly comprehensive statements. He did not like what he saw on these; on one list there were a hundred and twenty-three shops. He telephoned the Map Room, and the Inspector in charge said:

  “I got your chit, Handsome—I’ll use red-headed pins with a white dot for your shops.”

  “I’ll send some stuff down right away,” Roger added. “When will you be ready for me to have a look?”

  “Give me two hours.”

  “That’ll do fine,” said Roger, and rang off. He checked that there was no further news in about Adam Gantry, and compared notes on this case with notes on Endicott; it was surprising how little the people who had known him seemed to know about his activities. He was looking for cross-references all the time, but found none.

  He put in the call to Bellew.

  “Morning, Handsome,” Bellew said. “No use calling you much before nine, is it? I thought you had a conscience.” He did not wait for comment, but went on: “Stone’s disappeared again—for five days, this time.”

  “Without saying where?”

  “Without saying a word to anyone,” Bellew assured him. “I had a talk with Mrs. Klein on the telephone. She says that he’s gone surly with her and everyone else, and some of the customers are complaining. It looks to me as if the death of his wife turned his head a bit.”

  Roger said: “It could be.”

  “I don’t know how much of it is our business,” Bellew went on. “There’s no reason why a man shouldn’t go off for a few days. If he was still married I’d say that he probably goes off for a few nights on the tiles. Could be that, I suppose—may miss his wife, and have a tart tucked away.”

  “There was no suggestion of another woman while his wife was alive, was there?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, he doesn’t seem to be the type to be able to fix an affair easily,” Roger said. “He may just like getting up and going off on his own. Let me know when he comes back, will you?”

  “Yep. Before you go, Handsome—”

  “Hmm-hmm?”

  “I never knew we had so many little shops in the Division —tucked away on their own, I mean.”

  “How many?”

  “Seventy-eight, mostly general stores, but a few fish and chip shops.”

  “You’re practically free of ‘em,” Roger declared. “Fulham and Chelsea have a hundred and nine each. You’ll draw up your suggestions for keeping yours under surveillance, won’t you?”

  “Yep,” said Bellew, less decisively’, and he gave Roger the impression that he was thinking of something else—as if he were sticking pins into a map. “There’s one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We can’t do it.”

  “Can’t do what?”

  “Watch all those shops properly and do our usual job.”

  “You think of a way,” urged Roger and forced a laugh as he rang off; but he knew that Bellew was right. Every Division had been asked to draw up such a plan of surveillance and most of them would come back with the same comment: “Impossible”.

  It was half past nine. He put in a call to Appleby’s flat, and Appleby was soon on the line.

  “Morning, Dan,” Roger said. “Are you good at psychiatry, too?”

  “Becoming schizophrenic?” inquired Appleby. “What’s the problem?”

  Roger said: “The man Stone has disappeared again, this time for five days. Old Mrs. Klein, who works there with the girl, says that when he’s home he has long periods of brooding silence, that he’s getting sour and short tempered, and upsetting some of the customers. She says he won’t have much to do with his mother—she didn’t have any time for his wife, thought he’d married beneath him, and Stone hasn’t forgotten that. Is this delayed shock effect?”

  “Stone’s a doer,” Appleby said, without any hesitation. “He’s not a sit-and-thinker. He probably blames himself for leaving his wife alone in the shop, and is brooding over revenge. When he goes off he’s probably planning to hit back somehow.”

  Roger said: “But what can he do?”

  “Why don’t you find a good copper who can follow Stone next time he goes and find out what he’s up to?” suggested Appleby. “There must be someone on the Force who can follow without being shaken off.”

  “Might be a good idea,” Roger agreed, thoughtfully. “He knows the Division is watching him, and can dodge their chaps. We’d need someone he doesn’t know and wouldn’t suspect.”

  “That’s it.”

  Roger rang off, and sat back in his chair, fiddling with a pencil. Appleby’s suggestion was worth trying and he needed a man who didn’t look like a policeman, who really knew his way about London, and was keen as mustard on what might prove a dull job. He went over all the men who might fit into this at the Yard, and rejected one after another for a variety of reasons. Then he remembered Detective Constable Owen, who had boobed about the report of Adam Gantry’s death. Owen didn’t look like the popular conception of a policeman, he was supposed to be mustard keen, and was said to know

  London and the East End well. Roger put in a call to the Chelsea Headquarters, and the Superintendent in charge said:

  “Oh, yes, young Owen’s bright enough, and he’d jump at the chance of being attached to the Yard even temporarily. But it would be a mistake to smack him down too hard, Handsome.”

  “You chaps stick together, don’t you?”

  “If he slips up—”

  “I’ll send him over to you for reprimand,” Roger said. He rang off a few minutes later, after arranging for Owen to come to the Yard during the afternoon.

  It was less than two hour
s since the Chief Inspector in the Map Room had spoken to him, but when he went down there, Roger saw at once that the Division so far covered by reports had been marked up on the big detailed maps on the walls. Several big mobile screens had a map on each side. The red pins with white dots were mixed with pins of all colours, covering accidents, household burglaries, house-breakings, ordinary shop-breaking—all of London’s regular forms of crime.

  “Going to have a hell of a job to watch all that lot,” the Chief Inspector said. He was a tall, thin-faced, black-moustached man with keen eyes and an inventive mind. He had thought up a little tool, rather like a cross between a stapler and a brace and bit, with which to jab the strong shell pins into the maps; at some spots, where pins were grouped together in thick forests, this was a job difficult to do without knocking other pins out.

  “I know,” Roger said. “As the lists come in from the Divisions, will you keep ‘em recorded?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what have you got to show the shops which have been robbed?” asked Roger.

  The D.I. grinned.

  “I’m ready for that one! Red-headed pin with a black dot instead of a white.”

  “Thanks,” said Roger. “When we catch the beggar behind all this, I’ll let you stick some pins into him.” He went out to the accompaniment of broad grins from subordinates of the Map Room, and felt less gloomy. Violet Marsh might not realise it, but she had really been the turning point. He went to his office, checked by telephone that her condition was unchanged, and then talked to Charlie Baker, of Whitechapel.

  “Handsome, the Endicott widow hasn’t done a thing or seen anyone to make us open our eyes,” Baker assured him. “She goes out to the pictures three times a week, and last week she went with some girls to a dance at the Mile End Palais de Danse. I had a chap there. No one on your list danced with her, no one talked to her furtively. If she knows anything or anyone, she’s being very smart about it.”

  “Keep watching,” Roger said.

  “The trouble with you is you forget there are other jobs as well as the one you’re working on,” grumbled Baker. “Tell you what—you ought to find her a nice new boy friend, someone from one of the other Divisions who wouldn’t be recognised round these parts. How’s that for a smart idea?”

  “Good old Charlie,” said Roger, and heard Baker’s grunt of satisfaction. “Very smart indeed. I’ve got the man coming to see me this afternoon.”

  For that was the moment when he realised that Owen would be wasted on Stone but might be invaluable with Endicott’s widow. And almost at the same time he realised how best to shadow Stone.

  XI

  INTEREST IN RUTH ENDICOTT

  “MAY I say this, sir,” said Owen, after he had waited for Roger to finish on the telephone, “that I very much appreciate the chance you’ve given me, and I’ll do all I can to justify it.”

  “May I say this,” said Roger, drily, “you wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t think you had the qualifications for this particular job. And according to your Superintendent, you’ve probably got the guts, too.” Roger picked up the telephone nearer him, said: “Keep all calls away from me for ten minutes, will you?” and put the receiver down with a bang. “Sit down, Owen—Cyril Owen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You don’t have to take the job I’m offering you,” said Roger, “and I don’t want you to take it unless you feel there’s a fifty-fifty chance of pulling it off. In the first place, it’s bloody dangerous.”

  “If it’s this shop robbery job, I can see that.”

  “That’s the job,” said Roger, and looked the young man up and down. Owen was probably in the late twenties; Roger hadn’t checked that yet. He was lean, with a rather lantern jaw, and cheeks which sank in a little; his lips were full, if anything a trifle over-full, perhaps faintly Jewish. He had big, very clear, chestnut brown eyes, and reddish hair. Had he been introduced as a University don, Roger would not have been surprised; he had that kind of look about him, but his voice rather spoiled the impression, being a little rough and slightly nasal. “Now here’s a question only you can answer. How do you get on with women?”

  Owen exclaimed: “With women?”

  “Do they fall for those big eyes?”

  Owen gulped. “I—er—I see what you mean, sir. Well, I’ve never regarded myself as Don Juan, but I can’t complain at being left out in the cold.” He coloured. “As a matter of fact, on the whole I think I’m quite a success with the ladies.”

  “Good. Remember how we found the man Endicott, who murdered Mrs. Stone?”

  “Very well, sir.”

  “See any pictures of his widow?”

  “There was a whole page of them in the Weekly Revel,” Owen said. “She’s quite an eyeful. Everywhere, I should imagine!”

  “Her husband was probably murdered to stop him from talking, or to make sure he couldn’t give the game away. I’ve never been satisfied that she told me all she could about his friends. I’d like someone to try to find out, but if she knows it’s a policeman, she’ll dry right up. I’ve had some. I’ve also had authority from the Assistant Commissioner to offer you the job of getting to know her, and trying to find out what she knows. If her husband’s murderers find out what you’re doing, they might cut your throat, and they might cut hers. See what I mean by dangerous?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What do you feel about it?”

  Owen looked at Roger very steadily for what seemed a long time, then said with great deliberation:

  “Can I have a night to think about it, sir?”

  “Yes,” said Roger at once. “But you aren’t to say a word to anyone about the job or anything I’ve told you about it.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Want to know anything else?”

  “I don’t think that there’s anything else I need to know unless I’m going on with the job,” said Owen. “I hope you won’t think I’m being over-cautious . . .”

  “A chance to sleep on it is a good idea,” Roger said. “Right —I’ll see you in the morning. Go down to the Map Room meanwhile, and ask the D.I. there to let you help sticking in pins on the shop robberies and the shop robbery potential. You’ll get a clearer idea of the kind of problem we’re up against.”

  Owen was wise to take the cautious attitude, of course, but if he was over-cautious on the job, he might miss a big chance if it came. Roger shrugged the disquiet away. He went downstairs and along to that section of the Criminal Investigation Department which was devoted to women officers. Chief Inspector Ethel Winstanley was an old friend of his, and it didn’t surprise him that as soon as he entered, she rang the bell for tea; and when tea was on the desk, with two fragile bone china cups, she said:

  “Milk, no sugar, and you want someone to find out where Jim Stone goes, don’t you?”

  “Bellew been bellowing?” Roger inquired.

  “Loud enough,” answered Ethel Winstanley. She was a stocky, square-shouldered woman who had come into prominence during the Cyprus troubles when she had been out in the island to help the military police, for she had a good knowledge of Greek and of Turkish. No one knew quite what strings she had pulled to get into the Metropolitan Police, but once in, her career had been almost sensational. “I think I’ve just the girl for you, Superintendent, and I’ve been thinking about the best way for her to go about it.”

  Roger sipped his tea.

  “This gets better and better,” he said. “Did anyone happen to mention the possibility of flick knives and blunt instruments?”

  “I think the girl I have in mind should pose as a sob sister on one of the lesser-known women’s magazines,” said Ethel, without answering the question. “I can fix it with the Home Talk editor, and I’m pretty sure this man Stone will simply say no when she first asks him for a heart-throb story. But if he sees her following him about, he won’t be too surprised.”

  Roger took a long drink of his tea, put the cup down, and said:
>
  “She’s my girl, on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Her job is to watch Stone, and tell us where he disappears to, to make a complete log of his movements. Her job is not to attempt to find the murderer of Endicott or Gantry.”

  “She’s a sensible girl and she won’t want her throat cut,”

  Ethel Winstanley said. “I don’t know whether you’ve met her before. I’m thinking of Detective Sergeant Dawson.”

  “I know her,” Roger said. “The Plain Jane who helped with that gold smuggling job last year. Is she handy?”

  “I can send for her.”

  “I want to read her the riot act on what she can and can’t do,” Roger said. “But I’ll have another cup of tea, first.” He finished the tea, and a few minutes afterwards Detective Sergeant Dawson was summoned. He had called her Plain Jane, and there was a lot of justification for it; no one would ever call her attractive insofar as attractiveness meant beauty, but she had quite a figure, nice legs, very nice hands, and if her nose was a bit lumpy and her mouth too full and plummy, there was intelligence and humour in her clear blue eyes.

  Roger read his riot act.

  “I will follow your instructions closely, sir,” promised Bella Dawson. “If there is the slightest indication of physical danger, I shall send for male help.”

  Her eyes weren’t actually twinkling.

  Ethel Winstanley’s were.

  On the following morning, a little after ten o’clock, James Stone returned to the shop in Kemp Road, Clapham. He had not given Mrs. Klein or Gwen, the assistant, any warning, and Gwen was there alone, making up orders, her cluster of auburn curls quite lovely as she bent over her order book; she was a little short-sighted. She looked up quickly as the door opened, started, and said:

  “Mr. Stone!”

  “Hallo, Gwen,” Stone said. “Is Mrs. Klein in?”