by John Creasey
Appleby saw his expression change, and knew that this news hurt him.
It hurt badly.
“They’ve just found a second baby,” Whittaker said to Gideon. “Suffocated, like the first one, in the garden of an empty house near its home.”
“Whereabouts?” Gideon demanded sharply.
“Quinn Street, Chelsea. ‘Bout half a mile from the place they found the other one. That’s …”
“I know where it is,” said Gideon, and went on in the same sharp voice. “One was found about half a mile west of Hurdle Street, the other half a mile east. Close a cordon round the whole area.”
“Right,” said Whittaker.
Gideon rang off, and Appleby said gruffly, “The Harris kid hasn’t much chance now, I bet.”
8 Tricks
“Of course he’ll be all right, May,” said Lucy Fraser. “No one would do any harm to a little baby. You needn’t worry; he’ll be all right. I’ll bet I know what it is, too. Someone has lost a baby and they’ve stolen yours to try to make up for it. I’m sure you needn’t worry. They’ll look after it as if it was their own, and the police will soon find them, and everything will be all right.”
May Harris looked up at her blankly.
The two husbands were in the front room, talking to one of the policemen; most of the police had gone now, but two were on duty outside, and there were several people in the street, although it was well after midnight, and just here the fog was as thick as it had been at anytime during the night.
“I should never have left him” May said drearily. “It was ever so good of you and Jim to want us to see the program, but one of us ought to have stayed behind; if we had, this wouldn’t have happened. I’ll never forgive myself.”
“But he’ll be all right, May!”
“If he’ll be all right, why haven’t they found him?” Mrs. Harris asked in a lifeless voice. “It’s nearly three hours now, and you’d think every policeman in London was here from the crowd outside.”
“Mum,” said Jacqueline Harris, who was sitting by her sister’s side on the sofa in the kitchen, “I’m sure Mrs. Fraser’s right, too; no one would hurt Baby.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” Millicent said in a scared voice.
They were fifteen-year-old twins, who had come home just before ten o’clock to find the street crowded and to discover with horror that disaster had struck their home. Millicent was fair and fluffy and rather plump. Jacqueline was dark and thin and very much like her mother, although much tidier in appearance. Each wore gym tunics of navy blue, white blouses and long black stockings, and they sat very close together, looking as helpless as they felt, and watching their mother in her blank distress.
For a few moments there was silence. Then Mrs. Harris said sharply:
“What are they in the front room so long for?” She jumped up. “They’ve been there a long time. What are they saying to Fred?’ She rushed into the narrow passage, with Mrs. Fraser after her and the two girls standing up and staring as if they had no idea what to do next; they were pale, they were tired, their eyes were glassy with anxiety and fatigue. This was the first serious emergency in their lives, and they felt so utterly useless.
“If we don’t get Baby back, what will Mum do?” Jacqueline asked in a whisper.
“Don’t even talk about it,” Millicent said.
Then they heard their mother burst out as she entered the front room. “What’s going on here, what are you so long for? I don’t want you to keep anything from me, even if it’s the worst.” She glanced round at the four men - her husband, Fraser, Willy Smith, the Divisional Night Superintendent, and a sergeant.
Harris looked less stupefied now, as if he was beginning to feel again. There was a little colour in his lips and a spark in his eyes as he moved toward his wife.
“They don’t want anything, May, they’ve just been asking me a few questions. They …”
“Why aren’t they out looking for my child?”
“May, they’ve got to work their own way, and they’re trying all they can to help us,” said Harris with gentle patience. “It’s no use worrying them too much. Did the girls make you that cup of tea?”
“I don’t want any tea! I want …”
“You’ve got to have a cup, and two of those tablets that the doctor …”
“I’m not going to have any tablets from any doctor,” his wife shouted at him. “What do you think I am, Fred Harris? Do you think I want to be drugged to sleep while anything might be happening to my own flesh and blood? I don’t care if I never go to sleep again, I’ll never rest until we’ve found him, and if we don’t …”
“Now come on, Mother,” Harris said, in a voice that was suddenly sharp and authoritative. “It’s no use carrying on like this; it’s time you pulled yourself together. It’s all very well behaving like this with me, but what about the girls? Now stop shouting, and come and have a couple of aspirins even if you won’t have the sleeping tablets.” He took his wife’s arm firmly and forced her out of the front room toward the passage, and, as if startled by his firmness, she went without any further protest.
“He’ll be all right now he’s got on top of himself,” Fraser said to Willy Smith.
The Divisional Superintendent looked pale and flabby, even a little vague, and his smile seemed pointless. He watched the husband and wife go out of the room, and was fully aware that the neighbour, Fraser, looked at him impatiently, as if he couldn’t understand the lack of results.
“How well do you know this baby?” Smith asked in a very quiet voice which could not be heard outside the room.
Fraser said, “Well enough to know that if they don’t get him back …”
“I mean, to look at,” Smith said, in the same soft voice, and his eyes were very hard.
Fraser caught his breath. “Have you found …”
“We found a baby wrapped in a blue shawl in Quinn Street, not very far from here.”
“Not - dead?”
“Mr. Fraser, do you know the Harrises’ child well enough to be able to identify it?” asked Smith. “I don’t want to have to make one of them do it. If you don’t, then, will your wife …”
“I’ll know the child,” Fraser said abruptly.
“Then will you make an excuse to come with us for ten minutes?”
“No more?”
“We’ve got it in the car in the next street.”
“Aye, I’ll come,” said Fraser. “No one will miss me. If anyone does you can tell them I’ve popped next door for five minutes.”
“All right. See to that, sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come on, Mr. Fraser,” Willy Smith said.
In a good light outside a police car, the child lay wrapped in its shawl, obviously still with death, yet not outwardly harmed, and with no outer evidence of violence. It had a very thin mat of fair hair, and Fraser looked at it only for a moment before he said hoarsely:
“It’s not the Harrises’ bairn.”
“Sure?”
“The Harris bairn had black hair.”
“Well, I suppose that’s something,” Smith said, and didn’t add that, while it gave the Harrises a kind of reprieve, it was the sentence of grief on a newly married couple, who had been so happy in their love and with their first-born a few hours ago.
Willy Smith left Fraser outside the door of 27 Hurdle Street, and then drove off. The child’s body was on the way to the morgue, and Smith was glad that he didn’t have to take the news to the parents. After a few minutes he told his driver to slow down, and then picked up the radio telephone. He called the Yard, and was asked to hold on; Gideon was on the telephone. Smith sat waiting as his driver edged slowly through the fog, and there was rather an empty look on his face.
Then Gideon came on. “Hello, Willy.”
“Hello, George. Thought you’d want to know that the baby found in Quinn Street wasn’t the Harrises’, so it’s the one from Wragg’s Division. I’ve left it
to you to tell Wragg.”
“All right.”
“I’m going back to the Registrar’s office now,” said Smith. “Nothing likely at Fulham, but two men are still at the Chelsea office; they might get a line. It’s worth calling on all parents who’ve lost a child lately. I’ll call you from Chelsea.”
“Thanks,” said Gideon.
“Didn’t realize until tonight how many people get born and how many die in a few weeks,” said Smith. “I had a twelve months’ coverage done on the job; thought that if the loss of a baby had turned someone’s mind it might have taken more than a few days.”
“Could do, too,” said Gideon. “Fine, thanks.”
“Having a nice night?”
“Short of good coppers, that’s all,” said Gideon, and rang off.
Smith chuckled as he put back his receiver, and then switched off. His driver glanced at him but Smith didn’t make any comment. Soon, they pulled up outside the office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths, where a uniformed policeman was on duty, as if those inside needed protection. Smith bustled out of his car and past the man, nodding, and then into the offices. Alight shone from the first-floor landing, and Willy Smith went up, not too quickly, for he was a man who lost his breath very easily. He saw moving shadows, and, as he reached the doorway, the elderly, grey-haired Registrar and one of the Divisional men looked up.
“How you doing?” asked Smith.
“Fifteen infants died here last month,” said his sergeant. “There was a nasty gastroenteritis epidemic.” Smith remembered that as the man spoke. “Nineteen for the rest of the year ending this month.”
“Thirty-four in all,” Smith said, almost to himself. “Thirty-four.” He felt the gaze of the other two men on him as he spoke, but he made no further comment except to thank the Registrar, and ask his man, “Got the list?”
“Yes.”
“Good, let’s go.” Going downstairs was a different matter from walking upstairs, and he hurried and was only slightly out of breath when he reached his car. He slid into his seat and called the Yard again, asked for Gideon, and was put through at once. Gideon’s voice was deep and it sounded unflurried, like that of a man whom nothing could really disturb. That was perhaps Gideon’s greatest strength, the confidence which he could put into other men.
“What have you got now, Willy?”
“Thirty-four babies within the age group we’re after, and that’s a hell of a lot to try to tackle tonight,” Smith said. “I’d been banking on three or four at the most.”
Gideon said, “Hmm.”
“Want me to go ahead?”
“Willy,” said Gideon quietly, “have another go at the Registrar, and blame me for it. Each death certificate will have the certifying doctor’s name, and we’d better check the doctors. Find out from them if they know of any of the bereaved mothers - or fathers, if it comes to that - who went a bit queer. That might give you a lead to two or three names, without making it a major job.”
“Good idea,” said Smith. “Why don’t I get one myself sometimes? Got the Prowler yet?”
“No,” said Gideon.
“How’s that girl he bashed about?”
“Touch and go,” said Gideon.
It was certainly touch and go, and Whittaker had been too optimistic.
Jennifer Lewis was on the operating table at a London hospital, with the night staff and the night-duty surgeon ready to operate, for X-ray photographs had shown a splinter of skull so dangerously lodged that unless it was quickly removed it would almost certainly pierce the brain.
At the hospital, her mother and father and brother waited.
At bridges, stations, bus terminals and other vantage points the police still watched and waited, too, but now the traffic had dwindled to a trickle; there was not work enough for so many men. They could go back to their own Divisions, and some could be sent to Hemmingway; Gideon had only to say the word. He didn’t. He told himself that he would wait until half past one before giving up hope of catching the Prowler.
He went up to the laboratory, as much to see what else was going on as to check on the hair and fingernail scrapings. Up here, in the big, airy laboratory, it seemed a different world. Things might be in a hurry, yet everyone moved slowly and almost casually. Two Bunsen burners hissed, one of them with a small white crucible over it. A burette seemed to be blowing bubbles. Gibb, the night chief, was a tall, spindly individual with a pointed chin and rather sour look which experience of him belied. He was peering at a slide on a microscope, and as Gideon came up, he said:
“These are the nail scrapings.”
“Anything?”
“Blood.”
Gibb laughed. “You guess! Ill tell you as soon as I can. The hair’s dark chestnut brown, very healthy, naturally as straight as mine - she probably waves it herself.”
“Thanks. So she scratched him for certain.”
“I’m talking to the Commander, aren’t I?” asked Gibb dryly. “Not a rookie. She could have scratched a pimple off the end of her nose. Okay, okay, probably she didn’t.”
“Corrected.” Gideon said. “What are you cooking?”
“Sudden death by some gastric trouble this afternoon; we’re testing for arsenic. Got the body of the woman taken out of the Thames coming up; that’ll keep us busy. That arm they fished out of the Thames last week had been in the water three weeks, I would say. There was some green paint sent up, from the shoe of the woman run down in Wandsworth. We’ve analyzed it but I wouldn’t like to name the manufacturer until there’ve been some further tests. Okay?”
“Let me know when you’ve finished; I’ll send some work up,” said Gideon.
He kept a straight face as he left.
In a smaller room nearby, two men were busy making duplicates of a plaster cast which had already arrived from Middleton Street. Piper worked as if he moved on wheels. Gideon inspected the imprint of the heel and the clear indentation of the broken heel protector, and felt a curious tension, a sense of excitement, a feeling that at last the Prowler’s days were numbered.
He went down to Records, where the little man with Pince-nez was standing at a desk with fingerprint sheets in his hand.
“Hello, Syd,” Gideon said. “Any luck with those prints that Piper sent in?”
“We haven’t got ‘em on the file, so he’s a brand-new criminal for you,” said the Records man, as if absently. “I can give you all the dope in ten minutes. It’s a tented arch pattern, with a double …”
“Thanks,” Gideon said, five minutes later, and went down to his office, where Appleby gave the impression that he had just finished the greatest clowning act of his career, he was grinning so broadly. He didn’t pass on his joke, and Gideon went to sit down.
It was nearly one when the telephone rang again, and with an automatic movement Gideon lifted it off its cradle and gave his name. Appleby, wreathed in cigarette smoke, was working at one of his minute-by-minute lists.
“Ridgway here,” said the AB Divisional man. “Sorry I’m late with this. I thought it had been passed on. The Penn woman. She lives at Horley Street with her mother, but hasn’t been home this evening - that’s unusual. I checked the house where she lived with her husband. Mrs. Penn left the flat the early part of last month, a few weeks after the husband vanished. Hadn’t paid her rent, so she was thrown out. The landlord’s a so-and-so. My chap probed a bit, but didn’t get anywhere. Can it wait until morning?”
“Oh, God,” Gideon groaned. “If she hasn’t been home, she might have decided to throw herself into the river, or …” He paused, knowing that he was being unduly gloomy and that, with all the bridges manned, there was a closer watch than usual on the river. Why did he want to dramatize Mrs. Penn, anyhow? “Yes, leave it,” he said. “Thanks. Much doing your way?”
“Bit quieter than usual if it weren’t for the two main jobs. Before you go,” went on Ridgway, “I forgot to tell you earlier that Bigamy Bill’s back in town.”
Gideon said
sharply, “Sure?’
“One of my chaps was at the Roxy Hotel - it’s his son’s twenty-first birthday tonight - and he called up and said B.B. was there.”
“Alone?”
“With a blonde.”
“Young?”
“His usual style, bit bosomy but easy on the eye,” said Ridgway. “It would be a kindly thing to whisper a word of warning in her ear.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Gideon. “Thanks.”
“Pleasure,” Ridgway said, and rang off.
9 Hope
In the background at the Roxy there was soft music, and, about the room, soft lights. Only a dozen couples were left in the night club, which was in a basement of the hotel, and three of these were elderly tourists, sitting it out on the edge of the tiny dance floor. The decor was African, with futuristic drawings of animals and Africans, assegais and tom-toms, and the music, though soft, had a tom-tom-like rhythm given by a dreamy-looking coloured man who was playing the drums.
Two of the people on the dance floor were dancing cheek to cheek, the girl in her early twenties with fine, wavy, fair hair and a fair complexion, flushed just then with too much to drink. Her eyes had a glazed look, but she had complete control of her movements, and danced rhythmically. She was plump but nicely built. The man was half a head taller, dark, with receding hair and very fine features. He held her tightly and danced dreamily, and the music seemed never to stop.
But it stopped at last.
The man slid out of the girl’s embrace, then twined his arm round her waist again, and they walked together to a table in the corner.
“… years,” the man said in a whispering voice. “Been waiting years for you, Florence, that’s the sober truth. I’ve been waiting for years.”
“Oh, Bill,” she said.
“Know what I want to do?” Bill asked, nuzzling her white shoulder. “I want to get married. Soon. Tomorrow.”
“… Bill,” she sighed.
“Can’t get married tomorrow,” Bill said in a sad voice, “but in a day or two we can.” He covered her right hand with his, and the hard surface of a beautiful diamond ring scratched the soft skin of his fingers. “Can’t do without you,” he went on, “just can’t wait.”
