Mistress Murder

by Bernard Knight

  They nosed into a side turning and saw the cranes and warehouses of the Pool a few yards ahead. It was now twenty-past-five. The offices were turning out and the pavements were crowded with people hurrying to buses and tubes.

  Benbow and Bray got out into the dusk and walked to the quayside. They stood under a crane and looked out at the mass of lights that was the Pool and the opposite bank of the river. There were three ships moored out in midstream, lit like Christmas trees, and many more lined the banks of the river.

  Benbow glared in frustration at the confusing array of vessels.

  ‘This is bleeding useless … let’s get back to the radio and stir the Yard up – they should have contacted the P.L.A. by now.’

  They hurried back to the car and the driver contacted the Information Room again. They stood grouped around the nearside window waiting for a reply. Passers-by gave them curious stares and a couple of inevitable busybodies loafed around waiting for something to happen.

  The other patrol car glided up and parked behind them, the mobile men in their soft hats and leggings coming up to join their group at the window. In a few moments, the message came crackling through the static.

  ‘Green-Alpha-Four … re your message of seventeen twenty-seven. Port of London Authority contacted as requested … advised motor vessel Rudolf Haider sailed from Pool at sixteen forty-five … repeat sixteen forty-five.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘A quarter to bloody five … she just couldn’t have!’

  Benbow stood on the kerb and roared into the car, to the alarm of two young office girls passing at arm’s length.

  ‘Well she has,’ answered Bray unhelpfully. He opened the door of the car and hopped in after the furious Benbow. The driver started the engine with a roar and then waited to be told where to go. The Admiral was pounding his thighs with bunched fists in sheer rage.

  ‘An hour ago,’ he snarled. ‘If that Jacobs gets away this time, I’ll hand in my cards, God help me if I don’t. Driver, get going – down to Wapping River station. Use your gong, flasher, and flaming truncheon if it’ll get you there any faster, but make it snappy.’

  They all rolled back as the man let in his clutch with a jerk and accelerated into Lower Thames Street. Benbow clung on to the back of the seat and grabbed the microphone again.

  ‘Information Room – Green-Alpha-Two – Chief Inspector Benbow. This is most urgent. Please contact Wapping – Thames Division – and ask them to have a boat standing by to take me down river. The Rudolf Haider must be stopped and boarded – murder suspect believed aboard. We should arrive at Wapping –’ He broke off to look out desperately at the traffic. ‘Some time today!’

  Even with the best will in the world, a police car can never make good time through the City of London at twenty to six of an evening. It was ten minutes before they reached Tower Hill, lurching and swearing as the car swerved through the traffic, now up on the pavement, sometimes careering along the wrong side of the street. Five more minutes went by before they reached the River Police Station.

  The back of the peculiar building was a long landing stage, at which bobbed several little black launches flying the police pennant. The station inspector was waiting for them and Benbow explained the situation as they hurried down to a boat. The scene was lit by powerful floodlights and the dirty water looked an oily black by contrast. The night was not a cold one for mid-December, but there was a slight mist rolling up from the lower reaches of the river.

  They clambered down into a launch, with Bray and the two detective constables close behind. A second launch was already swinging its bow downstream in front of them. With a roar of exhausts, their craft lifted up onto its bow wave and circled round to follow the other boat out into the dark, wide, river.

  ‘I can’t see how she got away so soon,’ said Benbow. ‘The tide wasn’t full till six thirty.’

  The River Inspector shouted above the noise of a ship’s siren close by.

  ‘I saw her going down an hour ago – she was very high in the water – she must only have had a part-cargo and ballast. Only drawing a few feet, I reckon, so she’d no need to wait for full flood to get out of the Pool – the tides are high this week.’

  They had moved under the shelter of the open cockpit roof to avoid the cold spray thrown back as the little launch tore through the choppy water of mid-channel.

  It was pitch dark now, just after six o’clock, but the river was a mass of lights. The south channel was full of ships preparing to run down to the sea and the other lane was jammed with strings of tugs and their barges taking advantage of the flood tide to get upstream.

  ‘How far will she have got downriver,’ shouted Benbow.

  Inspector Price considered for a moment. ‘What d’you think, Clark?’ He spoke to the coxswain, a leathery sergeant with sailor written all over him.

  ‘Hour and a quarter? With all this traffic about, she’ll not do more than five knots – that’d put her somewhere past Greenwich.’

  ‘Where will we catch her?’

  ‘Cracking on Woolwich way, I should say, sir.’

  They were overtaking a noisy tug and Price bent closer to speak to Benbow.

  ‘Do you want us to radio Blackwall or Erith and get them to intercept her lower down? It’ll take us all of half an hour to catch her in this boat?’

  Benbow shook his head emphatically.

  ‘No, there’s nowhere else he can run to now – I hope!’

  While the two little police launches forged on through the galaxy of lights on the misty river, the Rudolf Haider churned sedately ahead of them at quarter speed. Her radar spun around and picked out the innumerable hazards of the Thames ahead. In spite of the thin mist, visibility was good enough to see both banks.

  From the high bridge, Otto Herzog and his Chief Officer stood with the pilot, watching the Thames unfold in front of them. They were following the stem lights of a Russian vessel, which was going too slowly for Herzog’s taste.

  The pilot, incongruously dressed in a City overcoat and a bowler hat, seemed quite happy with their progress and as they passed the Royal Naval College at Greenwich, Herzog walked to the north wing of the bridge to look at the opposite bank.

  As he glanced astern, he noticed his passenger leaning over the rail of the boat deck. Jacobs – or Schulman as the captain knew him – was also looking astern at the receding lights of Central London. Herzog called down to him.

  ‘Want to come up a bit higher?’

  Jacobs climbed the ladder and joined the captain on the wing of the bridge.

  ‘Glad to be seeing the last of it?’ joked Herzog.

  ‘I’ll be happier when it’s right down below the horizon,’ said Jacobs with a touch of bitterness. ‘And a damn sight happier still when I’m sitting in a Bremen taxi.’

  He looked over his shoulder at a sudden noise, but it was only the second officer slamming the chartroom door.

  ‘You’ll be looking over your shoulder a lot from now on,’ observed Otto, without much sympathy.

  ‘I’ll manage, once I’m back in the old country,’ replied Paul.

  He paused then a thought struck him.

  ‘What’s the idea of your radio operator acting as a temporary steward? I thought you liked a bit of style on your ships, Otto.’

  The captain stared at him. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  His passenger explained. ‘So when I saw him this afternoon in his smart uniform, I wondered what the devil he had been up to … pretending to be an assistant steward.’

  Herzog frowned. ‘Are you sure Busch did that?’

  Paul nodded. ‘Yes, he must be crazy.’

  The ship’s master shook his head sadly.

  ‘And I thought he was supposed to be getting better, not worse … I’ll have to keep my eye on him – poor chap.’

  Paul looked curious. ‘Why is he a poor chap?’

  ‘He had a hard time in the war – broke him up for years. He’s always been a bag of
nerves, but never actually done anything as mad as this before … still, we can’t blame him, I suppose. He was mixed up in some terrible affair with the SS once. He had to give evidence in the Nuremburg trials … never been the same since.’

  An icy hand reached into Jacobs’ chest and seized his heart. Suddenly, clearly, he remembered Busch. And with the memory, he knew why the man had tricked his way into his cabin. Safety, that elusive thing, slipped once more from Paul’s grasp. He made one last effort to get a grip on it.

  ‘It’s cold, I think I’ll go below,’ he said abruptly and turned to clatter away down the ladder, leaving Herzog to stare after him from the bridge.

  Jacobs hurried to the door of the radio room, which was next to the captain’s quarters at the forward end of the boat deck accommodation. He stood outside for a moment and heard the crackle and bleep of radio apparatus which told him that Busch was inside. As he stood in the open cross-corridor, his mind raced, seeking an answer, like a cold, calculating computer.

  Busch knew who he was – knew that he was the Schrempp wanted in Frankfurt for trial. A twenty-year-old phantom had caught up with him, one which was more dreadful than his recent crimes … one which still carried the threat of the rope.

  Busch could not have betrayed him yet, or else he would not be sailing down the river with him to the open sea. But Busch was the radio man – at any time in the next two days, he could turn a dial, touch a knob and tell Nord-Deutsche Marine Radio that the Rudolf Haider was bringing Paul Schrempp back to Germany.

  Jacobs’ brain ticked furiously, arranging facts like a computer. Busch, the queer silent one, the schizophrenic – the man tortured by memories so bad that he might be driven to take his own life.

  It was dark and the Thames was deep and flowing fast. Jacobs slowly turned the door handle and pushed it open. He knew what must be done, and knew that it must be done quickly.

  Busch was sitting with his back to the door, headphones clamped over his ears. His attention was fixed on the grey radio cabinets arrayed in front of him. Red lights glowed and needles jumped. On his left, a monitor from the bridge radar swept round and round, green streaks flaring up at every revolution to mark the position of nearby ships.

  Jacobs walked softly to the back of the man’s chair, his footsteps deadened by the headphones. He held his hands outstretched towards Busch’s neck, ready to stifle the first cry.

  Just before he reached him, the door slammed with a sudden gust of wind.

  Busch started and turned around. His face froze in the most abject terror that Jacobs had ever seen. He half rose from his seat and his headphones fell off as Paul desperately dug his fingers into the man’s throat. With the strength of sheer panic, Busch tore them away and promptly tripped over his chair. He fell flying back, landing flat on the floor. He made no sound, his mouth clamped tight by the fear.

  Jacobs stood menacingly over him as he lay on the deck. Busch held a hand up partly in supplication, partly for protection. His attacker, briefly in the grip of an emotion as strong as the other’s terror, forced himself to be calm.

  ‘Who am I, Busch?’ he hissed.

  The haggard radio operator, intent on his own destruction, whispered, ‘Schrempp,’ then gave a piercing feminine scream.

  Jacobs leapt at him. He lifted his shoulders and then swung the man’s head back against the deck with a sickening crunch. Busch groaned and lay with his eyes staring, a dribble coming from the comer of his mouth.

  There was a clatter of feet on the bridge ladder outside. Paul Jacobs flung himself to the door and slipped the lock across. A split second later, there was a hammering on the door and shouts in brusque German.

  ‘Busch, Busch! What the devil is going on in there, Busch?’

  Jacobs forced calmness on himself, willing his thudding heart to slow and his trembling muscles to keep still. He kept immobile behind the door while the shouts were repeated. After a few ineffectual rattlings at the door handle, he heard the feet hurrying back up the ladder.

  He acted quickly, his ruthlessness coming to the rescue once more, especially now that his very life depended on it. Grabbing the inert body from the floor, he dragged it to the door and hoisted Busch over the threshold. As he strained with the dead weight, he calculated that if he could push the man overboard now, there was nothing to prove that Busch had not committed suicide. All the crew knew that the radio man was queer and over the last day or so, he had been acting even more oddly than usual. A splash in the dark and it would all be solved.

  The radio room was directly astern of the captain’s quarters, on the comer of the cross-arm of the T-shaped companionway. He was just going out of the radio room when he heard more loud gabbling from the bridge above.

  Cursing, he lugged the radio operator’s body around the comer and waited in the shadows. Immediately there was a clattering of several pairs of feet on the bridge ladder and he recognised the voices of the second officer and the captain.

  Like a flash, he dragged Busch into the companionway, swung him up into his arms and fled around the comer into the central passageway. He reached the door of his own cabin and bundled the radio operator inside. There was nowhere else to go, so he leant against the inside of the door, panting and listening at the thick panels for sounds of pursuit.

  As he waited, he suddenly felt the ship’s engines begin to pulse. He had not noticed them stop; they were certainly going when he had come down from the bridge a few minutes previously. He was in no state to be interested in the ship’s navigation and he turned back to his own troubles, which were now coming thick and fast.

  His eye caught a movement from the deck outside his porthole. The cabin was in darkness and the boat deck was lit quite well at that point by a bulkhead lantern. The movement crystallised into a group of men passing the porthole. As they moved through the yellow cone of light, Jacobs was horrified to see the wide stripes of a police sergeant’s uniform on the nearest man.

  Even worse, he recognised the fair young fellow in plain clothes as the man who had brought him the teapot in the Cardiff shop. These and several other purposeful-looking figures passed across his field of vision as they headed for the bridge.

  The significance of the stopping of the engines now dawned on him, as he realised that the Rudolf Haider must have stopped to take the police aboard from a launch.

  Blind panic possessed him for the first time in his life. The pressure of events had been too rapid and too harsh over the last few minutes. He tore open the cabin door and began to race up the companionway, intending to use the other side of the cross-passage and get onto the starboard side of the boat deck.

  As he neared the junction, the sound of voices pulled him up short and shocked some sort of sense back into his brain. The words came all too clearly down the empty companionway … indignant German mixed with the calm demands of the British police.

  ‘… reason to believe that … Paul Schrempp … radio officer … which cabin?’

  The snatches of words wrought desperation in Paul Jacobs. He was cornered and knew that he was within seconds of arrest, with imprisonment and perhaps execution to follow. He twisted back down the central corridor to the extreme after end, where the narrow door lead onto the strip of deck looking over Number Three hatch.

  As he fumbled with the handle, there was a bellow from behind. The Thames sergeant came around the comer and saw him from the far end of the passage. With the terror of pounding feet spurring him on, Jacobs got the door open and raced round to the starboard side beneath the boats.

  He had no clear idea of what he was trying to achieve, but this was soon decided for him. From the cross-passage ahead of him erupted the figures of Benbow, Bray, and a river policeman. They headed for him and simultaneously he heard the approach of the sergeant from behind.

  With the police only a few feet in front and behind he did the only possible thing. Running to the rail between the nearest lifeboat davits, he leapt up onto the wooden top and plunged feet first int
o the blackness of the Thames.

  The iciness of the water was like an electric shock and Jacobs almost died there and then. But the wave of coldness passed into a numbing ache as the water closed over his head. With a suddenly clear and almost jubilant mind, he kicked himself back to the surface and began to swim.

  For a moment he was too confused by the lights to know which way he was headed, but the steady gleam of the shore soon became clear and he struck out towards it in a powerful crawl. The cold passed off as his muscles drove his body into a fever of effort, but within a minute he had fresh troubles.

  There was a double roar of engines as two police boats tore back around the stem of the Rudolf Haider. Directed by shouts from the ship’s rail, they sped in a tight circle over her wake to the starboard side, combing the dark water with their searchlights.

  One beam passed right over Jacobs in the first sweep, wavered and came back to fix in a glaring brilliancy. He dived and spluttered to the surface a few yards away. The light found him again and once more he had to go under. When he surfaced, the beam missed him but he saw that it would be only seconds before the two lights caught him again.

  Desperate now, he struck out for the bank, still a hundred yards away. It was then that he saw the tug bearing down on him, towing a string of barges which shone dully in the wildly swinging searchlight beams.

  The little vessel was almost level with him, going at a good speed down river with her long tow-rope just visible. She was very close and getting closer. As Paul swam towards shore the tug churned past, the wash from her propeller splashing over him as he thrashed through the cold water.

  Already he had grasped the slight chance that the new arrival had offered. Putting on a spurt he lashed past her stern, right into the froth of the wake, trying to get between the tug and the first barge. Once on the other side, he would have a couple of minutes grace from the police launches, which were still in midstream.

  Summoning up every last bit of strength, he tore in an Olympic-standard crawl to beat the approaching barge. The blunt nose loomed enormously over him in a matter of seconds and the bow wave actually caught him and threw him away from the rusty plates of the ugly vessel.