by John Creasey
The echoes of it had not died away when there was a deafening knocking on the front door.
And the knocking itself was still continuing when there were sounds from upstairs: Karen screaming, “Mummy!” and starting to run out of her bedroom across the landing.
That cured Charlotte of her hysteria in a second. Karen could trip and fall downstairs …
Forgetting everything except the possible danger to her daughter, Charlotte rushed for the door. But a hand gripped her from behind and a gun was pressed into the back of her neck. It was the gun that had just been fired; the muzzle scorched her flesh.
One of the boys reached the door instead of her, and switched on the light in the hall. The knocking on the front door continued; it was even louder now. There were stumbling footsteps on the stairs, and Karen appeared in her nightgown, a curly-haired, freckle-faced little girl whose eyes became wide with horror at the sight of the boy in the stocking mask. She was too frightened to scream; to do anything except give a little moan as he seized her, and pressed a revolver against her head.
“Whoever you are out there,” the boy shouted towards the front door, “get this. Unless you are back outside the garden gate by the time I’ve counted five, there will be a very dead little girl in this family. If you don’t believe me, take a squint through the letter box …”
And he held Karen so that she – and the gun at her head – was in full view of the front door. Karen moaned softly once again. She was shivering, and her face was almost blue …
“Put down that child, and wrap something warm round her,” roared the voice of George Gideon from the doorstep. “Then let me hear from Mr. Hopkins, so that I can be sure he’s still alive. That’s the only way you’ll persuade me to do as you say.”
The boy hesitated; then slowly put Karen down. He took a coat that was hanging on a hook by the front door and wrapped it round her. Then he called at Gerard, with sneering politeness, “Talk to the policeman, will you please, Mr. Hopkins?”
Hopkins came out of the dining-room, and stood for a moment blinking in the light of the hall.
“Daddy!” Karen said, and ran to him.
“There, there,” Hopkins told her. “You mustn’t worry, pet. These are quite nice boys, really. They’re only playing games.” He called out in the direction of the door. “There’s no need for you to worry, Mr. Gideon. I am sure these boys mean no real harm. It was very foolish of my wife to scream like that…”
Back in the darkness of the dining-room, Charlotte felt more helpless than she had ever been in her life. Her neck was still being blistered by the heated muzzle of the gun. The boy who was holding it, excited by her fear, had grabbed her hair with his left hand and was pulling it with cruel strength.
And now she could hear Gideon’s footsteps going away down to the front gate, which meant that she was alone with four murderous, sadistic youths, a terrified five-year-old daughter, and a husband who had lost all touch with reality.
She gritted her teeth because she feared that, at any moment, she might be foolish enough to scream again.
When a grim-faced Gideon came out through the front gate of No. 14, he found himself in a crowded street. All four of the area cars had now arrived, in answer to his walkie-talkie summons. An ambulance had arrived, too; Stanhope was being carried into it on a stretcher. The Irish milkman, who had been nicked by a bullet in the arm, was also being attended to by ambulance men, and so was Mrs. Thompson, who seemed to be suffering from shock. The rest of Gideon’s patrol had joined up with Riddell’s, and they were all waiting beside the gate for his instructions, with Riddell himself at their head. Riddell had already given orders for the uniformed men from the area cars to surround the Hopkins’ house.
“We’ve got six men in the garden,” he said briefly. “They’re to remain hidden, and not to approach within two yards of the house without further orders – unless, of course, there’s an escape bid by one of the boys. Was that right, sir?”
“Quite right,” Gideon said; and try as he would, he couldn’t keep a certain note of bitterness out of his voice. It looked as though Tom had been absolutely right at every stage of the case, and he, Gideon, had been absolutely wrong. Far from stemming the violence, the Gideon’s Force project seemed to have escalated it. And he couldn’t deny that the civilian patrols had faced a risk – a far more serious one than he had envisaged. Only a miracle had saved the six members of his patrol from a massacre.
It was too dark to be sure, but he thought he detected an “I-told-you-so” gleam in Riddell’s eyes. He forced himself to admit that it had every right to be there.
Aloud, he said, brusquely, “We’re facing a clear siege situation … and I needn’t tell you what that means.”
So many terrorists across Europe had extracted so much from governments by means of sieges that Scotland Yard had made a special study of the subject, and after consultation with the Home Office, Interpol and a panel of psychiatric experts, had laid down a set pattern of procedure to be followed.
As soon as a siege situation was established, the premises had to be surrounded; after that, there had to be an hour’s “cooling-off” period, with the besiegers left alone with their victims. The theory was that human contacts developed which would lessen the risk of violence. The “cooling-off” period also allowed time for special equipment to be brought to the scene: loud-hailers for talking to the terrorists, bugging devices for monitoring their whispered conversations with each other, and so on. Special personnel were often brought in at this stage, too – from consultant psychiatrists to engineers with specialised knowledge. It was also not unusual for the case to be taken over by Sir Reginald Scott-Marie in person.
In other words, thought Gideon, he was in all probability about to see one of the trickiest cases of his career taken clean out of his hands.
He had no choice, though, but to implement the set procedure.
He walked up to the nearest area car, and used its radio to put himself in direct contact with the Yard. A moment later, he was barking instructions that special siege equipment and personnel should be sent to 14 Naughton Avenue.
As an afterthought, he said, “Is Deputy Commander Hobbs there, by any chance?”
He knew that Alec was working late at the Yard, but it would be a wonder if he was still there as late as this. Luck proved to be on his side. Alec was in his office, and the Yard radio room switched him through.
Gideon briefly outlined the situation, and ended, “Someone ought to ring Scott-Marie, give him the facts, and ask him if he wants to intervene personally. Can you handle that?”
“Will do, George. It might take a minute or two to track him down; I’ve an idea he’s attending a dinner somewhere tonight.
But I’ll get to him as fast as I can. After that – would you like me to come down to the Wellesley Estate myself?”
Gideon was tempted; but then he remembered that Alec had had a heavy enough day of his own.
“That won’t be necessary tonight. Tomorrow, perhaps, if this turns out to be a long-drawn out affair – and I’m still in charge,” he said.
“Do you think it will drag on?” Alec asked.
“I don’t see how it can,” Gideon said. “Two out of the four boys have bullet wounds badly needing attention. Ordinarily. I’d say that the gang must give in – perhaps even before the ‘cooling-off’ hour’s up. By – ”
He paused for so long that Alec must have thought they’d been cut off.
“But what?” he prompted.
Grimly, Gideon said, “Alec, Tom Riddell has warned me repeatedly not to underestimate the enemy in this case. At last the penny’s dropped, and I’ve realised how right he was. So I’m making no predictions about the outcome. Anything could still happen – including murder.”
He switched off the radio and stepped back from the area car. The rain was now falling heavily. It matched his spirits, which were heavy with a combination of weariness, anxiety and a sickening sense of failure. He
walked back to the stretch of pavement outside No. 14 where Riddell was talking to Harold Neame.
Riddell was obviously reasserting his favourite theme.
“After months of gruelling inquiries,” he was saying, “we are not one inch nearer to knowing who – or what – we’re really up against.”
From the direction of No. 14 came the sound of Karen crying. Gideon started talking, partly to drown the sound, partly to fight down his frustration at the thought that there was nothing he could do.
“I think I can tell you something about what we’re up against,” he said. “I believe we’re looking for a man who meets the following conditions. One. He is an active member of a terrorist group – how else would he be able to obtain and distribute revolvers so easily? Two. He is in daily contact with a large number of children, particularly boys between thirteen and fifteen, whom he dominates completely and makes the ‘hit men’ of his gang. Three. He is a well-known resident of the Estate, able to move very freely around it without arousing suspicion. From this it follows – four – that he is very clever at hiding his fanaticism from everyone except his schoolboy dupes. We shall probably find that his closest colleagues – even his wife, if he has one – have no idea what he is really like.”
Gideon stopped there, surprised himself at how far his musing had taken him. Harold Neame was staring at him owlishly through the rain.
“It almost sounds as if you suspected – ”
There were suddenly more shrieks from the house. Gideon was on the point of ignoring the “cooling-off” regulations, and charging up to the front door, when a uniformed constable came up to him.
“There’s a message for you on the radio, sir. Car A4.”
Would this be Scott-Marie, wanting to take personal charge?
Gideon walked stiffly to the car – and received one of the biggest surprises of the night. It was the Wellesley sub-station calling, with the news that Kate had telephoned from the hospital, and wanted to speak to him urgently.
“Mrs. Gideon is on the line now, sir. I’ll – er – try to connect you,” the Wellesley sergeant said. He probably meant that he was going to hold the telephone receiver close to the microphone.
There were a lot of background crackles, and Kate’s voice was faint, but her actual words came through plainly enough.
“George,” she began with a rush. “I was finally allowed into the intensive care unit here, and I’ve been with Marjorie and Eric all this time.”
“How is Eric? Is he out of the coma?”
“Yes, but he’s mostly delirious, and it’s hard to catch what he says. But – George.” Despite the crackles, there was no mistaking the sudden urgency in Kate’s voice. “One thing got through which struck me as being so odd, that I thought you ought to know about it straight away. Don’t forget he’s delirious, probably doesn’t know or mean what he’s saying, but – ”
Gideon’s own voice began to catch Kate’s urgency.
“Go ahead, love. Just tell me what the boy said,” he told her breathlessly.
“All right.” Kate’s voice was suddenly loud and clear and unhesitating. “Eric sat bolt upright in bed, and screamed, ‘I tell you, I couldn’t help Gideon coming to my house. You can’t let them kill me for it – Mr. Hopkins.’ ”
21
Gideon’s Force
Riddell’s jaw dropped when Gideon told him what Kate had said.
“Hopkins? But that’s crazy – ”
“Is it, Tom?”
Gideon’s face, in the light from the front doorway of No. 14, Hopkins’ own home, was almost ferocious with the intensity of his suppressed excitement.
“Think what we know about Hopkins. First – he’s form master to Eric Beresford and a lot of the other boys in Eric’s gang. Secondly – he was viciously attacked last night by that same gang … which rather skilfully managed to slash his suit and shirt to pieces without harming an inch of his skin. Certainly, he was coshed – but a tap would have been enough to make a convincing bruise, and the rest could have been faked. Thirdly – when we try to elicit from him some clues as to the identity of his attackers, he immediately throws a faint.”
“Yes, but George,” said Riddell. “Eric’s knifing took place only about twenty minutes after you and I got to that vigilante meeting. Just before that meeting, we’d left Hopkins at the police station, apparently unconscious. So how could he possibly have been involved in what happened to Eric?”
“Very easily,” Gideon said grimly. “We know that he recovered rapidly from his faint, and was driven home in a police car within a few minutes. When he got home, he upset his wife by refusing to go to bed. He then apparently went out and started roaming the Estate.
“That could mean that he immediately went to a callbox – one of the few not vandalised – and contacted the headquarters of the gang. Eric, we can take it, was already there – he’d been part of the mob who staged the phoney attack on Hopkins half an hour earlier, and was probably still hanging around with the boys. But the boys were already worried about him; the news had come in from one of their spies that I had been seen coming and going from Eric’s home.
“When this was reported to Hopkins, he must have realised that his whole operation was in danger. Eric was a policeman’s son; his mother was friendly with the head of the C.I.D. Under the combined pressure of his mother and me, the boy might well have broken down and told everything.
“So my guess is that Hopkins had Eric called to the telephone, and questioned him. And that as a result of those questions, he gave orders for Eric to be ‘taken for a ride’, murdered in fact, and dumped outside his own home.”
Harold Neame was so aghast that he could barely speak.
“You’re telling me that boys of thirteen, fourteen, fifteen – Eric’s schoolmates – tried to kill him in cold blood and then dumped his body from a car!”
“They may have got an older boy to drive them,” Gideon said. “But I’m afraid they weren’t too young to have done the rest. Haven’t we just seen four boys in that age-group cold-bloodedly trying to mow down a whole patrol? If they can contemplate that, what’s the knifing of an old school chum?”
Harold Neame said nothing. He just stared, blankly, despairingly, into the darkness and the streaming rain.
Riddell said: “But all this evidence is highly circumstantial, and based on a boy’s ravings in delirium …”
“So far,” said Gideon relentlessly. “But let’s take the rest of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ known doings last night. Until as late as two a.m., he was out and about on the Estate, visiting boys and their parents. We assumed that he was inquiring into who had attacked him, and trying to spread peace and brotherhood. But supposing that was just an act – to make the parents think what an unworldly, forgiving man he was? And supposing his real purpose was something quite different? By that time, the vigilante meeting was long over, and the first Gideon’s Force patrols were on the streets. Hopkins could have been observing the routes the patrols took; laying plans to ambush one of the patrols next day, and, under cover of his ‘friendly’ visits, actually issuing instructions to the ambushers … Tom!”
Gideon’s voice, icily controlled, held the relentless pressure of one about to recognise, to arrest at last, the creeping evil which had held them all in thrall.
“You told me this morning that you had a list of the houses Hopkins was seen visiting. You’d checked with Mr. Neame, you said, and found that a boy from Wellesley High School lived in every one … Do you happen to have that list on you now?”
“If he hasn’t, it doesn’t matter,” Harold Neame said quietly. “I happen to possess a tolerably retentive memory, Mr. Gideon, though I imagine few headmasters would readily forget the names of their boys who were under police suspicion … I can guess what it is you want to know, and I can tell you straight away that the answer is in the affirmative. Douglas Keating, Roger Wheatland, Clive Matthews and Richard Barratt – the charming quartet who are now in No. 14 – were the v
ery boys whose homes Hopkins visited last night.”
There was a long pause.
“Then that settles it,” Riddell breathed.
“It settles it all right,” said Gideon grimly. “It also puts rather a strange light on this siege. Hopkins obviously ordered the boys to use his garage roof for their ambush. Presumably he wanted to keep a personal eye on such a major operation. And probably he told them that in the very last extremity – if everything went wrong, and they were cornered by the police – they could come into the house and ‘capture’ him, with his wife and daughter.” Karen’s screaming had started again; Gideon listened to it now with a dry, humourless smile. “From the sounds they’ve made and are making, I rather doubt if his wife and daughter are in the plot.”
Neame ran a hand through his straggly hair, sodden and bedraggled with the pouring rain.
“We can take it, though, that none of that family are in any real danger.”
“None,” agreed Gideon. “Unless, of course, a gun goes off accidentally, or one of those boys runs amok. Turn a fifteen year-old into a brutal fanatic, and you could easily have made yourself a Frankenstein monster.”
Disturbing sounds were coming from the house now: N crashes and bangs and screams in a woman’s voice, while Karen’s shrieking went on and on.
This ‘cooling-off’ period, Gideon decided, was getting altogether out of hand. It was definitely time to take action – and suddenly he knew exactly what action to take.
At that moment, the police constable from Car A4 came up and told Gideon that there was another radio message for him.
This time it was Scott-Marie. The Commissioner was ringing direct from his house, to which he had just returned from a dinner-party. His voice was far from faint, and there was no crackling; he was coming through via the Radio Room at the Yard, which had equipment for linking telephone calls directly with the transmitter.
Gideon explained what had happened tersely but clearly. He ended: “So you see, it’s an extraordinary situation … and with your permission, I’d like to handle it in an extraordinary way. I want to move in immediately – not with the police, but with a Gideon’s Force patrol.”
