by John Creasey
He had seen the driver open the double doors at the back of the van; and seen him drag another man out, a man whose hands were tied behind his back.
“If you try any tricks,” the driver had snarled, “I’ll bash your head in.”
Lennie Sappo, terrified, had crept back through the shrubbery, and made his way slowly, fearfully, back to Notting Hill.
He told no one.
In the crowded house and the crowded streets where he lived, one minded one’s own business, and one did not get involved with the police.
Chapter Seven
ATTACK
Unlike Gideon, Alec Hobbs had no early memories of London pea-soupers; smokeless zones were already common in his boyhood. In any case, what time he had between school and university he preferred to spend at his parent’s country home, and rarely visited their house in Mayfair. So, a thick London fog was not only an experience but a kind of adventure for him.
But he knew the problems it created for the Yard’s Traffic Division, and the problems it might cause the C.I.D. The forecast was so bad that on the previous day he had decided to make a round of divisions where cases were pending. This would cost only his time, instead of that of half a dozen senior men; it would give him a chance to look in at the divisions and so familiarise himself with their districts. He had told Gideon what he proposed to do, and Gideon had simply said: “Don’t get lost in the fog.”
It was a possibility, and Hobbs intended to be back at the Yard by half-past four at the latest. If he got the information he expected, he would talk to Gideon for the first time about “Elsie”. The whole “Elsie” affair had seemed so ridiculous at first that he had taken little notice of it, and but for Hilda Jessop he might not have probed very deeply – if indeed “deeply” was the word.
He simply asked about the Ecology of London Committee in passing. Most of the Superintendents and Chief Inspectors he talked to knew of it as a bee-in-the-bonnet group who wanted to clean up London’s parks. Few knew very much. One or two laughed and asked: “What’s Elsie been up to now?” No one took it seriously; a few shrubs cut back or uprooted in some of the smaller parks; a few badly printed signs. That was about the limit of it, or it would have been but for Hilda.
He had known Hilda Jessop much of his life, but lost touch with her in the last few years. He believed she had taken a post abroad. She was well-off, he knew, the only daughter of parents who had died young.
As a teenager she had spent some holidays with his family, but he, being ten years older, had not had much to do with her. Beyond wondering vaguely over the years why she had not married, he had virtually forgotten her until about two months ago.
She had called him at his flat in Eaton Square one evening.
“Why, Hilda! How nice to hear you.”
“I do hope you mean that, Alec.”
“Of course I mean it. Why shouldn’t I?”
“I’ve been hearing so much about you,” she had said. “You are a great policeman now, aren’t you?”
“Well, a policeman.”
“Alec the modest as always! And I’m told you’re going to get married again.”
“Yes,” he had said, with quiet firmness. “Later this year.”
After a pause she said: “I’m so happy for you! I—I didn’t know Helen had—had died.”
“Some years ago,” he had told her.
“I am so very sorry.” She paused again, and then spoke with a heartiness which he had been quite sure was forced. “Alec, you will never guess why I called you.”
“I hoped it was for old times’ sake.”
“That of course, and something else.”
There was no point in making a wild guess, so he had simply said: “Do tell me, Hilda.”
“I want your help as a policeman.”
“Good lord!”
“May I come and see you?” she had asked, almost pleadingly. “It’s not a thing I can chat about over the telephone.”
“I don’t quite understand,” he had replied.
It had been late; well, latish, but there were strong ties of family and friendship with Hilda which he could hardly ignore. Nevertheless, he had felt doubtful, perhaps a little uneasy.
She had always been an intense person, and hadn’t changed. She had always come straight to the point, too, and had that night. She was working, voluntarily, for an organisation which was helping unmarried mothers, she said. The Society was bitterly opposed to abortion; it provided facilities for young women to go abroad and have their babies; helped with money, and was entirely confidential. The members then found homes with good families for the unwanted infants. At this stage, Hobbs had wondered how he could be expected to help – unless some of the girls were being blackmailed, which would not be surprising.
Then, she had said: “I have been told that if I do not stop this work, I will be killed.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Alec Hobbs had said.
She had sat, staring at him, for a long time, and he had gone on awkwardly: “I mean, no one in their senses would threaten to kill you for doing work like that.”
“Yet I have been threatened,” she insisted.
“You have actually been warned to stop?”
“Yes.”
“How? By letter? By telephone? Do you know who it was?”
“It has always been by telephone,” she had replied. “No, Alec. I do not know by whom. That is what I hope you will find out for me.”
He could picture her, shivering suddenly; see the change in her expression, the hardness in her eyes.
“Is that too much to ask of an old friend?”
“No,” he had said, and repeated emphatically: “No.” Then a thought had flashed into his mind. “There’s something you can do for me in return.”
“Must I repay you?”
“Not for me personally,” Alec Hobbs had said, “but the police. Do you know a group called Ecology of London Committee?”
She had not hesitated: “Yes.”
“I want to find out whether it is responsible for the present state of vandalism in the parks,” Hobbs had told her, “uprooted bushes and so on. Finding that out isn’t the easiest thing to do.” Before she could interrupt he went on: “We could put a policewoman spy among them but we don’t particularly want to do that. Do you think you could help us?”
“I will try,” Hilda had said.
“Now I need to know more about the Society you work for, and whom you’ve been helping and when the threats began.”
Even as she had told him he had begun to wonder whether she was suffering from a persecution complex. Ever since he could remember he had felt that the world had treated her badly; and in a way it had. She had been an only child, for instance, and lonely; there had been the blow of losing her parents; an engagement in her late teens had been broken off. Had she gradually come to see enemies in the shadows? Could she possibly want to draw attention to herself? The Society she had joined was a nebulous one, a group of people, mostly Roman Catholics, working together but without a tight organisation.
He hadn’t known much about it on that first night.
He did not know very much about it now, two months later. True, he knew the names of some of the other members and of some of the girls who had been helped, but that was all. And he had found nothing to prove that Hilda was under threat, or that any of the other members of the Society had been threatened. And Hilda had brought him no information about Elsie.
He had asked her to come to see him at the office for what he meant to be a showdown.
Tomorrow morning?
Was this the day of that crash; of the women who had run not to rescue but to attack him?
He had been at the wheel of his own car, a white M.G., chosen because it was more easily visible in darkness and in f
og. He had made his last visit to the Hampstead district, where they knew all about Elsie and were highly amused by her; or had been at first, although now the local authorities had begun to get worried. If, in fact, the damage to the shrubberies and bushes was not the work of individual vandals, as they had at first supposed, and Elsie or any organised group were behind it, then it had to be stopped, quickly and ruthlessly.
By then darkness had fallen and the fog was very thick.
Hobbs cautiously turned a blind corner which he knew well; and then, without a moment’s warning, a black van seemed to shoot straight at him. He had practically stood on the brake; but the crash had come. At least he had lessened the force of impact, and had been braced to take the shock. He was shaken but not hurt.
Then, from the back of the van, three women had come running, and behind them, two more.
My God!
One of them had wrenched open his car door. He had thought she had come to help, or see if he were hurt, but instead she had pushed up the sleeve of his jacket, and another woman, coming from behind her, had jabbed a hypodermic needle into his arm.
This was a kidnapping!
But before he could do more than cry out in protest, unconsciousness had swept him with oblivion. He did not know how long the oblivion had lasted. He did remember the half-waking, that came and went. But only now did he begin to remember what had happened; to reason that this had been no accident but a deliberately engineered plot. It was no use asking why, he had to accept the fact, but—
How long had he been here?
And where was he?
For the first time he began to move; that was when he realised that his wrists were tied to the side of the bed on which he was lying. He moved his fingers, felt the metal on both sides.
It was pitch dark and silent; and whether he liked to admit it or not, he was frightened, for he did not know what to do.
Gideon reached the canteen to find the Commander of Traffic and a Deputy Commander from Uniform sitting at a table. They gave him a friendly greeting, and he joined them, carrying a bowl of soup and some onion bread on his tray, together with all the cutlery he would need. The Deputy Commander pushed a chair back for him while Rivers, of Traffic, asked straightfaced: “Seen any old jam jars lately, George?”
He laughed. “At the moment I’m more interested in Elsie.”
“Who?” Traffic asked, obviously puzzled.
“Elsie—” began the other man. “Oh, I get you! Last night was just the night for the lady,” he went on.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Traffic said. He was a still, thin man with a lantern jaw, and heavily-lidded eyes which could flash with surprising penetration. “Who’s Elsie?”
“The Ecology of London Committee,” said the Deputy Commander calmly. “Sometimes known as the Enemies of Loving Couples.”
“Oh, that bunch.” Traffic looked down his nose. “They’re a bloody nuisance, always holding meetings at park gates during rush-hour. Nearly as bad as the Women’s Lib crowd.” A promise of a smile showed in his green eyes. “Don’t quote me, my wife’s all in favour of them! But this Enemies of Loving Couples—” He broke off, stared at the Deputy Commander, and then grinned so widely he seemed to split his long face in two. “Now I’ve got it. E-L-C! Elsie. Well I’m beggared! I wonder who thought that one up. But what a bunch! They can tack an ‘anti’ on practically anything worth doing, these days.”
“They’ll see the light in time,” declared the Deputy, piously. “By the way, Commander—” he looked at Gideon —”Alec Hobbs was coming to see me this morning. Any idea why he hasn’t turned up?”
“No,” Gideon said, “but as soon as I’m back in my office, I’m going to find out.”
“No one like him at any of the hospital casualty wards,” the Information inspector said. “I’m quite sure, sir.”
“Well, we’ve got to find him,” Gideon declared. “He made a round of Divisional Headquarters yesterday. Find out the time he visited them and let me know at once.”
“Right, sir,” promised the Inspector. “I know one thing, sir—he went in his own car, that M.G. He told Superintendent Wilberforce at A.B. Division it showed up better at night and on dull days.”
“Know the number?” demanded Gideon. “Yes, sir. KLG—”
“Then get a call out for it at once,” Gideon interrupted.
“Right, sir!”
Gideon put back the receiver heavily, and sat quite still, acutely aware of the thumping of his heart. He was becoming seriously alarmed for Hobbs. And the measure of his fear told him as nothing else could have done how much the other mar had come to mean to him.
Some of his concern was for Penny, of course, but that did not lessen his personal concern. He was trying to convince himself that there was a simple explanation when his inter-office telephone rang. He snatched off the receiver and said: “Gideon,” almost on the same instant.
“Superintendent Bruce here, Commander!” Bruce had never sounded more smug. “I’ve a report on the soil found adhering to the wash-leather bag. I wonder—”
“What is it?” barked Gideon.
“I wonder whether it would be possible for you to spare me and my brother a few minutes. I took the specimen to him, in person, and persuaded him to come back with me to make a statement.”
Gideon hesitated, then thought with a rush of self-annoyance that he couldn’t be rude to a man because he was a brother of Nathaniel Bruce; moreover, the Controller of Parks might be a good man to see. It flashed into his mind that Bruce might have brought his brother over for that very reason rather than the one he had stated, and he tried to infuse some warmth into his voice as he said: “By all means! Bring him along.”
“At once!” breathed Spruce Bruce. “At once, Commander.”
The brother could move as fast as the Yard man, for they were at the door in less than sixty seconds, but there the resemblance ended, except perhaps in height. The brother was inches broader, a thickset man with a weathered face and thick, curly, sand-coloured hair. He wore tweeds, and ankle boots of dark brown leather. His hands were work-roughened, his grip firm.
“And can you identify the soil on the bag?” asked Gideon.
“I can say this,” said the other confidently, “it’s not from Hyde Park. Most likely from North London, Tottenham say, or Edmonton. Could be the man who was caught merely picked it up.”
“Sylvester, that is a police matter,” his brother protested.
The other Bruce, probably five or six years the elder, gave a derisory kind of grin.
“Isn’t it all a police matter! Don’t tell me you didn’t bring me to the Commander for more than a bag of diamonds.” He shrugged. “Aren’t you more interested in all these goings on in the parks, Commander?”
“Let’s say I’m as interested,” conceded Gideon, who took to this man as much as he was antagonistic to his brother.
“Fair enough,” said Sylvester Bruce. “Well—I’ve instructed all our park-keepers to co-operate with the police, but I’ll admit I’ve a soft spot for these clean-up-our-parks people. The parks are the loveliest part of London. I defy any city in the world to have such displays of flowers. Nor is there anything more beautiful than our flowering shrubs and trees. Don’t you love the parks, Commander?”
Quietly, Gideon said: “Very much. But they aren’t only places of beauty, to look at. They are places of rest and recreation.”
“And procreation?” Sylvester’s smile was broad but his voice was sharp.
“Where there have been bushes there have been young lovers ever since I can remember,” Gideon said, “and I would hate to see all the bushes destroyed.”
“So would I. But if you had the job of cleaning up, you wouldn’t be so liberal minded. Every kind of filth and litter—” Sylvester was beginning to go r
ed in the face. “My God! If I had my way I’d—”
“Sylvester, please!”
Sylvester turned on his brother and for a moment Gideon thought that his anger, so slow to boil but so furious now, would turn to violence. But he saw a strange thing. Spruce Bruce stood very still, eyeing his brother with great intentness, until slowly the rage began to die down, and after a while Sylvester gave an explosive little laugh and turned back to Gideon.
“I’m sorry, Commander. I still hope you’ll help to clean up the parks.”
“You know,” Gideon said, “my children played in them and their children play in them today. Yes. Once we have dealt with the vigilante activities of these ladies, I will do what I can. I’m not sure that the first move shouldn’t be with the Parks Department concerned, but I’ll have some special kind of surveillance and if my men’s reports bear out what you say, I’ll send a comprehensive report where it should do some good.”
After a pause, Spruce Bruce said: “You are very good, Commander.”
“Very good,” echoed his brother. “I didn’t think you would live up to Nat’s high opinion of you, but you do.”
“Now if you’ll live up to his opinion of you and help us with these ladies,” Gideon said, and all three laughed; it was one of the best moments of Gideon’s day.
When the brothers had gone, he began to wonder whether the situation was as bad as the older Bruce made out.
Chapter Eight
THE CAR
That morning, the story of Gideon and his jam jar had spread through the Yard, as it were, on wings.
But just as a laugh or a joke could travel quickly, so also could alarm.
