No Relaxation At Scotland Yard

by John Creasey

  The music stopped.

  “Thank you,” she said. “That was quite lovely.”

  The odd thing was that he thought she really meant that; was sure she had enjoyed their dancing with some special savour.

  And so had he.

  2

  Morning

  “Well,” Gideon asked Kate, “wasn’t that the best of them all?”

  “I really think it was,” she agreed.

  “And Penny seemed to be in a seventh heaven.”

  “So did Alec,” Kate replied thoughtfully. “I wonder how things will work out between them.”

  Gideon didn’t speak at once.

  They were in the back of a Yard car, being driven to their home in Fulham. Alec and Penny had gone off, perhaps to a nightclub, perhaps to join a group from the ball. It had finished at one o’clock, with “God Save the Queen,” and then the Gideons, the Scott-Maries, the Donaldsons, and the Mayor were in the middle of great circles of people holding hands and swaying to and fro to the strains of “Auld Lang Syne.” The official party had broken up quickly, the hall had emptied smoothly, and tired-eyed cleaners and waiters began the task of clearing up.

  Where had Sabrina Sale gone? Off with Hugh Rollo? Was her association with him as innocent as she had made it seem? Innocent? What was the matter with Gideon, to use such a word in connection with a woman of her maturity and a man whom half of Scotland Yard called Don Juan? He shrugged the thought away.

  Kate’s hand was in his, cool but limp; she must be very tired indeed, and he hoped she hadn’t overdone it. Scott-Marie had danced with her in the Gay Gordons and they had appeared to love its breathless abandon. Honiwell had danced with her several times. Honiwell, with his tall eagle of a woman, and Riddell with his little sparrow. Riddell, once almost a competitor socially with Rollo, had danced very little. He had become a harassed, worried man and Gideon could now understand that he was unlikely to get help from his wife.

  Gideon knew much of what was on Riddell’s mind; and much that was on Honiwell’s, too.

  Two investigation problems were building up at the Yard, two which could not be more different in nature or in range, and Riddell and Honiwell were involved – with many others in addition.

  Riddell had begun to investigate a number of crimes arising out of Britain’s new social problem: of race and colour. Honiwell had started to work on an investigation into a case once thought to be over and done with: the murder of a woman in a London suburb. A murder for which the wrong man might have been found guilty.

  In the first place, these were problems within problems, and if a thing was wrong in a community, it was always likely to become police business sooner or later. Overcrowding in houses, for instance, led to frayed tempers, anger, fights, often to murder or manslaughter; discrimination in a factory could lead to conflict between groups, strikes, picketing, and so to crimes or at least crowd control. Very little which happened in London was certain to remain outside the orbit of the police.

  These two cases were very much within that orbit; the first especially so.

  In several parts of London, overcrowding was so rife among Jamaican, Indian, and Pakistani immigrants that crimes arising from these conditions were far too frequent. And there were indications that certain groups of white fanatics were aggravating the difficulties of integration in every way they could. Riddell had been assigned to this months ago, and had proved at first to be pathologically prejudiced against non-whites. The prejudice had never shown itself before this investigation, as far as Gideon knew, but when assigning a man to such a delicate investigation he should have made quite sure. So to some degree, anything that went wrong would be Gideon’s fault.

  Of course if he carried that argument to a logical conclusion, then all investigating failures were due to his seconding the wrong man, and this was nonsense. On the other hand he should have taken extra care where this problem was concerned. To complicate and in one way to make it worse, Riddell had found a Pakistani girl dead of neglect and starvation in a hole beneath the staircase of a rotting house in an overcrowded district of Notting Hill. It had given him a severe attack of conscience. He had been on holiday for several weeks since then and was only just back on duty. When they had last met, he had wanted Gideon to take him off the case. Would he still want that?

  Honiwell, already deeply involved in the other case, had been standing in for Riddell; Gideon had to see him in the morning. Or rather, this morning! It was already two o’clock.

  They turned into Harrington Street and the driver pulled up smoothly outside one of the tall, terraced buildings of red brick, with white-painted eaves and woodwork showing clearly in the light of street lamps. The light was good enough to show the neat patch of grass, the precisely trimmed box hedge. The driver jumped out and opened the car door for Kate, and Gideon got out on the offside and joined her.

  “Good night, Castle.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  “Were you at the ball?”

  “And my wife, sir. She had a wonderful time.” Castle, who often drove Gideon, seldom made any comment. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, these functions have been much better since you became Commander.”

  “Really?” remarked Gideon, startled.

  “Why?” asked Kate, mischief in her eyes.

  “Well, Mrs. Gideon, there’s a kind of family atmosphere; the Commander’s a kind of—er—a kind of father figure. I hope I’m not speaking out of place?”

  “Perfectly all right,” Gideon replied gruffly. “Flattering, in fact. I’m glad your wife enjoyed it. Good night again.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  The quiet purr of the car’s engine was still sounding when Gideon closed the hall door, while Kate put on the passage and the landing lights. Penelope had a key, so he could close but not bolt the door. Kate was at the foot of the stairs.

  “How does it feel to be a father figure, darling?”

  “Oh, nonsense,” he retorted.

  “There’s no nonsense about it,” Kate said. “It’s exactly what you are to the C.I.D.! Love, do you mind if I go straight up?”

  “Of course not. Like some tea? Or Ovaltine? Or anything?”

  “Just a little warm milk would be lovely.”

  When he went upstairs, the milk on a tray, with a glass of cold milk for himself, Kate was ready for sleep, wearing a loose-fitting flannelette nightdress, her hair, freshly done for the occasion, now in a hairnet, which somehow proved becoming. She sat up on the pillows on their big, old-fashioned double bed, while he undressed, sipping the cold milk as he shed his clothes. He looked enormous when wearing only pyjama trousers, barrel-chested, a little too heavy about the stomach but not truly fat, with less hair on his torso than might have been expected.

  “What did you think of Honiwell’s girlfriend?” asked Gideon.

  “Striking,” answered Kate, “and lively and intelligent.”

  “Think they’ll marry?” asked Gideon.

  “I can tell you that for the time being they can’t,” confided Kate. “Her husband won’t give her a divorce although they’ve been separated for ten years.”

  “Are they anticipating the marriage bonds?” asked Gideon.

  “Would it matter if they were?”

  Gideon pursed his lips.

  “No,” he pronounced, but with an edge of doubt in his voice. “Unless it wore him down and became an obsession so that he couldn’t concentrate on his work properly. No need to look for trouble, though.” Gideon drank down the rest of his milk. “How was Hugh Rollo?”

  “The perfect gentleman!”

  “Trust Rollo,” Gideon remarked dryly.

  He was busy with thoughts in preparation for the morning when he got into bed. Honiwell, Riddell, and Rollo. Honiwell was too involved in the old case to be able
to concentrate on the racial one, and Rollo might be exactly the man to take over from him, with two or three other Superintendents; one of them would have to be in charge but others would be needed, and at least six divisions were deeply concerned. It was a major operation.

  “Deep thoughts?” asked Kate.

  “Very. About tomorrow’s briefing.”

  “George,” said Kate, snuggling her back against him. He was pleasantly aware of her body, her warmth, her familiarity.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Do you know Sabrina Sale well?”

  He was startled into sudden stillness, almost a tension through his whole body, and one Kate would be instantly aware of. He thought for a moment that Kate might have been very conscious of his dancing with Sabrina, then rejected it as unlikely: so he relaxed.

  “Fairly well,” he answered. “She’s my favourite stenographer from the shorthand-typing pool. Why?”

  “It’s none of my business, I know,” said Kate, “but she wouldn’t be right for Hugh Rollo, would she? And he wouldn’t be right for her, would he?”

  Gideon went still again, then gave a deep chuckle, partly due to relief.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “They might get along very well, she tolerant of his peccadilloes and he glad of warm slippers and a good meal when he gets home. Did you see much of her?”

  “Not much,” Kate answered, and yawned. “She’s a very attractive woman in her way, with a beautiful figure. If it wasn’t obvious from her face that she’s in the fifties, I would put her down in the mid-thirties. I hope she doesn’t throw herself away on Hugh.”

  “I could put him on night duty,” Gideon remarked.

  It was Kate’s turn to chuckle.

  In the few minutes between settling down and dropping off to sleep, Gideon considered the problem of someone to take over from Riddell, but gave more thought to the domestic aspect of the diverse Yard men, which had been thrown into prominence tonight. It was surprising how many of them had been widowed or divorced; how many changes of wives there had been over ten years. And if far more couples had stayed together than had parted, some of those still married obviously lived a pretty difficult home life. Riddell, for instance, and his little birdlike wife. One thing that functions like tonight’s ball achieved was a broadening of one’s attitude; a deeper realisation of the casualty rate among marriages, showing presumably that the work of a policeman put more stresses on marriage than most jobs.

  Or was that just his imagination?

  It would be interesting to get some figures . . .

  Quite suddenly, he fell asleep.

  Nearly a hundred and fifty miles away, in Dartmoor Prison, a man named Entwhistle lay on his narrow bed in his narrow cell, thinking; going over the facts of his life time and time again, until it seemed as if he would drive himself mad. The main burden of his thoughts was that he was here, serving a life sentence after being convicted of the murder of his wife; but he had not killed her. He was shut up here, the very life being drained out of him, while his children were with relatives and the actual murderer was living somewhere, scot-free.

  God! How he hated the truth!

  A year ago a prison chaplain had raised some hopes that the investigation would be reopened, but now the padré had gone overseas and it was months since Entwhistle had had the faintest grounds for hope.

  He tossed and turned, tossed and turned, until at last he drifted off to sleep.

  In London, much closer to Gideon, another man slept very soundly, as if his conscience were as clear as any man’s. His name was Eric Greenwood and he was the murderer of Entwhistle’s wife. That had been over three years ago. He had almost forgotten it; only occasionally did he even remember that another man was in prison for the crime he had committed. He did not dream, sleeping or waking, that the police were going over all the evidence in the case and that Honiwell was following a clue which had not been unearthed during the trial: that Margaret Entwhistle had had a lover while her husband had been overseas on a big bridge-building contract.

  Honiwell, whose mind was as sharp as his appearance was cuddly, lay thinking about two things: the investigation he was making into the Entwhistle case, and his relationship with Netta Jameson.

  They were lovers.

  It wasn’t, as in the case of Entwhistle’s wife, because her husband was out of the country and she had been desperately lonely. It was simply because she had not been able to go on living with her husband, and had been legally separated for ten years – five years longer than Honiwell had been widowed. Her husband was an alcoholic but in his sober periods a very moralistic puritanical man. He was, moreover, undersexed, and in their marriage, sex had played very little part. Honiwell could remember vividly after one of their furious, passionate embraces, when it had seemed as if they would exhaust themselves, that Netta had lain gasping in his arms, and yet managed to say:

  “I thought I was frigid. Oh, Matt! I really did.”

  He had soothed her, touching her soft skin with his lips, fondling her body.

  “Well, that’s a mistake you’ll never make again.”

  Frigid! My God!

  Now she was asleep in the bed next to him; at her flat, not his. He still had his home, and his married daughter and her husband shared it, so he could not take Netta there overnight; well, not very easily, not without creating an anomalous situation with the family. So he spent as much time as he could here, consoling himself that it was probably just as well; it was never wise for a member of the C.I.D. to allow himself to reveal that he was involved in an irregular relationship. No one would mind, officially, but if anything went wrong with a case, the Entwhistle case, for instance, this relationship might be blamed; it might conceivably be regarded as the cause of lack of concentration.

  The worry on Honiwell’s mind was: should he tell Gideon?

  If Gideon knew, then there would be a load off his own conscience, but there might be an added one on Gideon’s. There really wasn’t any reason to believe that he, Honiwell, would do his job any worse; in fact his heightened emotional awareness might make him do it better.

  Well, he would see how he felt in the morning. Meanwhile, one thing gave him unexpected pleasure: Kate Gideon had obviously taken to Netta, and Netta to her. At the same time, that could become a cause for anxiety: would Kate Gideon have been so warmly disposed had she known the true nature of their relationship? That was the rub. They might live in a permissive society, but my God, when they broke the outmoded conventions, what a mess it could be.

  Only a mile away from Netta Jameson’s flat, in a tiny apartment in Victoria, not far from the B.O.A.C. terminal in Buckingham Palace Road, Sabrina Sale lay sleeping.

  Alone.

  3

  First Capture—First Crime

  It was a night for crime.

  No policeman ever knew why but every week or two there seemed to be an aura, a kind of moon madness, which set old lags out on the rampage, doomed hitherto non-criminals to a life of wrongdoing, and – often it seemed coincidentally – made ordinary people commit crimes. Lovers, for instance, embittered by their loves; husbands and wives, hating their spouses; men – mostly men – driven to the wall by debt, tempted to steal from employer or from friend. And there were the parents, goaded out of their minds by crying, fretting babies, who struck the hapless victims time and time again; battering them, sometimes to death.

  There was no end to the variety of crime in London; no list could be complete.

  Early that night, during the hours when the police ball, glittering and bespangled, reached its crescendo, the old lags were about. It was not, of course, entirely unexpected, for the man who was a kind of stepbrother to the policeman, the habitual criminal, knew that many top policemen were at the ball. Whenever this was so, there was a change in atmosphere among the police of London, as if the festivit
ies stretched out and touched every man in uniform or in plainclothes. Perhaps there was an added factor: a certain relaxation of discipline seldom evident in any particular case but nevertheless pervasive. Whatever the cause, the old pros chanced their arm more, often quite impudent in their crimes, and many reached home to boast to sleepy wives and demand a wifely reward.

  There were, of course, those new criminals. That night several committed crimes for the first time in their lives. And there were, of course, the new policemen. One of these was P.C. Oswald, of the Ealing Division, out on his own for the first time. He had been through two years’ training, had spent several weeks out on the beat with another, experienced police constable, but tonight Percival Oswald was on his own. It was a brisk, starlit night, a night for a twenty-four-year-old man to revel in.

  He was patrolling along a long, narrow street off Ealing Broadway, past some small shops. The street was in one of the older parts of Ealing, which had become one of London’s high-class inner suburbs. On the other side of the road Oswald saw a shadow on the wall of a shop with an ANTIQUES sign above the door.

  As Oswald watched, the shadow moved; and Oswald’s heart lurched.

  He did not cross the road. Do nothing at first to alarm the suspect had become a rule of thumb. The shadow kept moving until Oswald was sure it was made by a person. He walked on toward a service alley and turned down it. This might be the stage when he should use his walkie-talkie to call assistance, but he didn’t want to bring a patrol car unless he was sure of the need.

  He counted the number of arch-shaped roofs as he walked quietly along the path, came to the sixth building – and tried the back gate. It was unlocked. Heart beating faster, he walked along a path with a big shed on one side, glass sides reflecting the light in the sky; it might be a greenhouse. The house was typical of its period, with a single-storey kitchen and scullery jutting out from the main building; the back door would be near the corner made by the two walls. No light showed as he neared the door and for the first time he shone his torch, the modern equivalent of the bull’s-eye.