by John Creasey
“Right,” he said. “Make sure you keep a sharp eye on all these walkers, sergeant. I have a strong suspicion that somewhere amongst them you’ll find a disorderly element – teenage toughs under instructions to try and break up the meeting.”
“Don’t you worry, sir,” the sergeant said comfortably. “If we find any such people about, we’ll apprehend them immediately.”
“No,” said Gideon.
“I – beg your pardon, sir?”
“No apprehending, sergeant. Just keep an eye on them, and – if possible – get your observer in amongst them. I’m out to stop trouble, of course. But finding out who’s causing it is by far the most important. And by infiltration there’s always a chance your man might pick up a scrap of conversation that could tell us a lot.”
“I understand, sir,” the sergeant said, a trifle gruffly.
Gideon turned his attention to the young man in the back of the car. On closer inspection, he looked far from being the lout he represented. His eyes were keen and alert as he flashed Gideon what was almost a mischievous grin. Gideon took an instant liking to him. A cool customer, he told himself, and obviously bright. Ought to go far in the Force, unless he became restless at the discipline, as so many of that type did. Incidentally, there was something familiar about this face …
“What’s your name, son?”
“Detective Constable Rowlandes, sir, 563.”
“I’d sooner have your Christian name than your number.”
“In that case, sir, it’s John.”
“H’m. You’re not the son of Malcolm Rowlandes, by any chance?”
The young man’s grin vanished. In its place was a look of surprise, mixed with a certain degree of awe.
“My father’s name is Malcolm, sir, yes.”
Gideon smiled.
“One of the best Detective Inspectors this division ever had. I was always sorry he left the Force so young. He’s security officer for Omega Insurance now, isn’t he?”
Rowlandes looked back with a growing respect. His father had retired all of eight years before. That the great Commander Gideon should not only remember him, but where he was working now –
“That’s quite correct, sir.”
“Give him my regards,” Gideon said. “And good luck tonight, Rowlandes. If you do succeed in getting in amongst the enemy, it could be crucial to this case. But leave that walkie-talkie behind when you get out of the car. If it were spotted, it could be your death warrant. Is that quite clear?”
“Very clear indeed, sir.”
“Then off you go.”
The sergeant in front saluted again; the area car drove off. Gideon had one last quick glimpse of John Rowlandes’ face staring back at him out of a rear side window. The boy was grinning again, not mischievously now, but more like a child who’d been handed a surprise Christmas present by a Santa Claus in the street. No doubt he was preening himself on having been picked for a dangerous special assignment by the Commander of the whole C.I.D. Gideon hoped it wouldn’t go to his head.
“Excuse me, sir.”
Gideon looked round. A sergeant had come hurrying out of the station to speak to him – a fat, fiftyish sergeant, obviously in bad condition: even this tiny sprint had made him short of breath.
“Mrs. Gideon,” he panted. “On the … on the phone, sir. Wants to speak to you… very urgently. Suddenly thought… she might reach you … here – ”
But Gideon had long since started striding towards the station entrance. Within five seconds, he was inside talking to Kate, and hearing the whole of Marjorie Beresford’s story.
When he came out, he walked straight up to Riddell, and outlined all that he had heard.
Riddell had rarely seen him look so cock-a-hoop.
“I think this is the breakthrough, Tom. The wall of silence you’ve been facing has had a brick blasted right out of its centre. And from now onwards, the answers to your questions should be coming thick and fast.”
Riddell stared.
“Because a poor wretched woman suspects her son of being a mugger?”
“No. Because she’s had the courage – or the hysteria, I don’t know which you’d call it – to come straight to the police about it. Don’t you see? That’s just what far too many other people on the Estate haven’t done.”
“You mean – ”
“Work it out for yourself, Tom. Here we have an area afflicted by an overwhelming outbreak of highly-organised juvenile crime. At the same time we find dozens of families refusing to talk; obstructing the police in every way they can.
Put the two things together in the light of what’s happened to Marjorie Beresford – and the situation is all too clear.
“We’re up against an organisation that has found a way of getting children into its clutches at an extraordinarily young and tender age. And it doesn’t play games with these children. Perhaps as a matter of deliberate policy, it plunges them into deep trouble – quick. In that way, it reduces parents to a state of moral paralysis. If they come near the police, they’re faced with the unbearable prospect of their own boys, who were perfectly normal, good lads until a few weeks ago, being snatched away from them and sent to Borstal for the rest of their teens, if not longer.
“That’s what we’re fighting, Tom: the perfectly natural desire of loving parents to protect their children from the unthinkable. And behind that, there’s a gang – or a movement, or an individual – with a frightening power to get decent kids to behave in such a way that the parents’ hands are tied.
“But now we are in a position to act. Or rather – “ Gideon corrected himself gruffly, “I am. I’m sorry about this, Tom: this is your inquiry, and you should be conducting the investigation. But since Marjorie Beresford came to Kate and me – ”
“You feel you’re the person who ought to go and see them,” Riddell said evenly. “And you’re right, of course, George. I’ll keep your place at the meeting.” His tension began to show again as he added nervously: “Please don’t be too late coming to it.”
“I won’t,” Gideon promised. “Oh – and if Neame starts speaking before I’m there, could you take a few notes? I’d like to answer him point by point.”
Riddell promised to do this, and Gideon walked back to the Rover. With one finger on the door handle, he stopped and turned.
“Marjorie Beresford’s house is in Wellington Road. Would that be far?”
“No, it’s just on the left past the shopping precinct. Two hundred yards at the most.”
“Then I might as well copy the locals – and walk,” Gideon grunted. “See you later, Tom.”
And he was off along the High Street, striding away from the Community Centre as purposefully as everyone else was walking towards it. Not that this gave rise to any difficulties. When Gideon made up his mind to go somewhere, people instinctively stepped out of his way.
Gideon found Marjorie Beresford’s road without difficulty, and turned into it. At exactly that moment, in another road turning off the High Street, the police area patrol car spotted a group of ten or twelve youths walking in the direction of the Community Centre.
There was no hint of rowdiness in their behaviour. Their progress was slow, measured, almost sedate, as if they were under orders to behave quietly and look respectable. Their clothes were above reproach; almost incongruously so. As far as the sergeant could see in the gloom, they were all wearing smart, two-piece suits. They might have been going to a wedding rather than a meeting.
That settled it, as far as the sergeant was concerned.
When a gang of Wellesley Estate yobs got dressed up like that, there had to be something brewing. And that slow, calculated walk of theirs was beginning to look as menacing as a mock funeral march.
“This is it, Rowlandes,” the sergeant said. “We’ll slow down at the corner, and out you go.”
In the back of the car, D.C. John Rowlandes tensed, and got ready to open the rear door.
“Sorry you’ve got to leave y
our walkie-talkie” the sergeant said. “But we’ll stay within earshot as far as we can.”
“That’s right, lad,” the driver said helpfully. “Just give one ‘orrible scream, and we’ll be along in no time to pull the knife out of your back, and mop up your blood from the pavement.”
Rowlandes grinned – just a little uneasily.
“That’ll be enough of that, Hodgson,” the sergeant barked at the driver.
It had to be enough; there was no time for anything more to be said at all. The car had swept well past the youths, and was already at the corner of the street. This part of the Estate – like so many other parts – had been left poorly-lighted because of vandal-wrecked lamp standards. Rowlandes jumped out into a deep pool of shadow, and felt sure that, even if one of the youths had been glancing back, his leap couldn’t have been seen.
He straightened up, aware that his heart was beating faster than usual as he hurried along the pavement in the wake of the youths. At the sound of his footsteps behind them, several turned.
“You with us, mate?”
The question told Rowlandes that this wasn’t one of those intimate gangs, in which every member was known to the rest by sight. He decided to take a chance.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry I’m late.”
“You’re not only late, you’ve got the wrong gear on. Didn’t you get the order? No jeans – no denims. We’re going to a pig meeting, aren’t we? Gotta dress like pigs and straights.”
Suddenly – as though suspicion was blazing up in all their minds simultaneously – the gang stopped walking. So did Rowlandes. It is hard to make progress, even at a funeral march pace, when one’s arms are pinioned behind one’s back and a flick-knife is held to one’s face.
“How come you didn’t know those orders – if you’re one of us?”
Rowlandes found to his surprise that the lump in his throat had vanished. It was as though nature realised that he’d be lost if he showed fear, and was giving him the chance to speak clearly. Rowlandes made the most of it. His voice rose in a snarl of aggression.
“I know the orders a bloody sight better than you do, matie. We were told not to arouse suspicion, weren’t we? Do you call this not arousing suspicion?”
The gang tensed.
“Keep your voice down, you fool,” the brandisher of the flick-knife said.
Rowlandes lowered his tone only slightly.
“Then put that thing away. Save it for the pig meeting. It’s proper use is for carving pork.”
That line had been an inspiration. It was greeted by guffaws on all sides. Suspicion, like the flick-knife, vanished as though it had never been. Rowlandes’ arms were released, and a moment later he found himself turning into the High Street almost in the vanguard of the gang.
Halfway along the High Street the area patrol car came out of a side turning and shot past them. Rowlandes’ heart jumped. The nits, he thought; they’d promised to keep in earshot, not in sight. Already he could sense some members of the gang eyeing him thoughtfully, perhaps beginning to put two and two together –
Suddenly an idea occurred to him – an idea he considered worthy of a detective on a special mission from Commander Gideon himself.
He waved derisively at the area patrol car, and bellowed after it: “Up the vigilantes!”
To the others, he murmured coolly: “Now the bloody fuzz will be sure we’re bleeding pigs!”
Inside the area patrol car, the startled sergeant pushed his cap to the back of his head.
“Either Rowlandes will finish up the night with a police medal,” he told his driver, “or your guess will turn out right. We will be pulling a knife out of his back and mopping up the blood.”
“I suppose it couldn’t be animals’ blood, Mr. Gideon?”
Gideon turned Eric Beresford’s shirt over in his hands, and found it hard to meet Marjorie’s pleading eyes.
“It’s possible,” he said shortly. “But I think we’d both be fooling ourselves if we didn’t admit that the odds are heavily against it.”
Marjorie Beresford nodded. She was perfectly calm now; rather too calm for Gideon’s liking. Her small, plain face – on which the lines of her tragic life showed all too plainly – was chalk-white, except for a doll-like spot of colour on each cheek.
“Does this mean you’ll be putting Eric under arrest?”
Gideon was a long, long time replying; and during the pause, he had even greater difficulty in meeting Marjorie’s eyes.
They were dead now, rather than pleading. Obviously she was asking herself over and over again how she could have done this thing to her own son. And Gideon couldn’t help asking himself what action he would have taken if one of his own boys at the age of thirteen had been thus embroiled. It was unthinkable, of course, that any of the three – now long since grown-up and launched on successful careers – would ever have taken part in violence of this sort. But then he, Gideon, hadn’t been killed when they were only five or six. And they had never been exposed to the mysterious evil that was spreading its tentacles over the Wellesley Estate …
All around him, here in Eric’s bedroom, was evidence that the boy was basically a normal child. School exercise books were scattered untidily about, as they were in thousands of other schoolboys’ bedrooms. One of them – an English book – was lying open. Eric, seemingly, had scored only two out of ten for an essay on What I Did During the Summer Holidays. There was a note in red ink from an outraged English master:
DISGRACEFUL WORK. SEE ME. G.M.H.
From the cover of the book, Gideon noted that Eric was in Form IIIB of Wellesley High School, a school in which Harold Neame was head …
He glanced round at the rest of the room: at the pop posters on the walls; at a pile of model-aeroplane kits; at the row of beautifully-made Spitfires and Hurricanes on the mantelpiece. Not just a normal child, he thought, but a talented one, English essays apart. Gideon had always admired people who were good with their hands …
From all this normality, he turned back to nightmare: that menacing hole in the floorboards from which the flick-knife, the stocking mask, the shirt had come.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Marjorie said tonelessly. “Will Eric be arrested?”
Gideon decided that bluntness would be, in the end, the kindest course. He was talking to a policeman’s widow. She wouldn’t be fooled by prevarication.
“I certainly can’t promise anything,” he said. “All I can tell you is that a great many children on this Estate are as deeply involved in this nightmare as he is. And a great many parents are sharing your agony. The only difference being, that they haven’t had the guts to do what you did. Don’t ever think it’s going to go worse for Eric because you came to me. On the contrary, if he answers our questions fully and honestly, I will do all I can to help him. He could be the instrument for ending this whole evil business. And if he is, that won’t be forgotten – whatever he’s done.”
Marjorie looked slightly – but only very slightly – reassured. The high points of feverish colour spread out across her cheeks, lessening her pallor, giving her an almost school-girlish flush. Womanlike, she seized on the last line of Gideon’s speech, and twisted it.
“That means you’re sure he’s done something terrible.”
Gideon took a deep breath.
“How can anyone say what he’s done until we’ve got him here, and talked to him? In the meantime, if you’d mind answering a few questions …”
He asked her about Eric’s friends, habits, daily routine. He discovered what he might have suspected: that Eric had his doting mother firmly under his thumb. He rarely mentioned his friends, hardly ever brought them home to the house. If he wanted to go out in the evening, out he went, and not all Marjorie’s pleadings about mobs and muggers had availed at all. He had been out with “the gang”, as he called them, between eight and eleven on most nights in the past month, and had never vouchsafed any information about where they’d been. Marjorie had been
too thankful to see him home again safe and sound to question him closely.
“It never occurred to me that the reason he and his friends were safe was because – ”
“They were the mobsters and muggers?” suggested Gideon gently.
Suddenly she was back where she’d been most of the day – on the very edge of hysteria.
“It’s too horrible to think of … and the worst of it is, he’s out with them now. At this very moment, they could be – lying in wait for someone, attacking him even – ”
“Steady,” said Gideon. “There’s no point in torturing yourself – ”
He broke off as the telephone rang.
Marjorie went downstairs to answer it; and a moment later, was calling out, “Mr. Gideon! It’s for you.”
Gideon started. How could it be? Only Riddell knew he was here, and he had gone on to the meeting.
But it was Riddell. A tense, bitter Riddell who had been called back to the police station within a minute of leaving Gideon.
“It’s the old, old Wellesley story. A man started off for the meeting in one of the quieter roads on the edge of the Estate. A hundred yards from his own doorstep, six youths wearing stocking masks jumped out from the shadows and attacked him. They coshed him, took his wallet and just for kicks, made deep razor slashes all over his clothes. It’s a miracle they didn’t open up his chest or stomach. A patrol car found him lying in the gutter.”
“How is he now?”
“Shaken up, slightly concussed perhaps, but otherwise okay. He’s here at the station; I’ve been talking to him. A quieter, more inoffensive member of the public you couldn’t imagine. As a matter of fact, he’s a master at Wellesley High School. Got an absurdly grand name, because his parents called him after a poet: Gerard Manley Hopkins …”
Gideon started. The scrawl on an exercise book flashed across his mind, every dot and curl of the writing standing out as clearly as if it lay before him. “Disgraceful work. See me. G.M.H.”
He had thought that message funny when he had first seen it: a welcome touch of the cosily normal. But here on the Wellesley Estate, even the cosily normal could have frighteningly abnormal consequences.
