No Relaxation At Scotland Yard

by John Creasey

  Ah, ha! thought Bessie, he’s breaking it off again.

  “Shall I check the flights, Mr. Greenwood?”

  “Flights and ships,” he said. “I might combine the trip with a holiday. It’s ages since I had more than a few days off.”

  “Yes, Mr. Greenwood,” said Bessie. “I’ll have some flights and sailings by this time tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.” He nodded as he looked at the thick pile of letters by her typewriter. He did not marvel that she had done so much; simply took for granted her prodigious capacity for work. “Is the draft contract ready for Lin Goh of Singapore?”

  Even for her that was half a day’s work, and he hadn’t given her his pencilled draft until midmorning.

  “No,” she said. “But I’ll have it by tomorrow.”

  He nodded without saying another word, picked up the pile of letters and drafts, and took them into his own office for signing. She did not start typing immediately but stared at the closed door. He was a nice-looking man, five feet ten or so, lean, always well-dressed, perhaps a little too well-groomed, but none of these things concerned Bessie, who had long since come to terms with her personal and sex life. Much more important, Eric Greenwood was very good at his job, and no one bought at a sharper price. But these days he didn’t keep his mind on his job as much as he should. The older he got, the shorter his affaires seemed to become.

  Aloud she said: “I wonder who the poor little bitch is this time,” and then began to pound afresh on her typewriter.

  Over the years she had acquired a quite remarkable facility to type accurately and even think intelligently about her job, and also to daydream in a special sort of way. She wove romances, seldom physical, about men she met at the pub where she had a counter lunch every day and a Guinness every evening after work. She knew the fantasies were ridiculous but nevertheless enjoyed them.

  Just now as she typed she dreamed of Sam Benbow.

  He had come to work at Billingsgate, he said, and by gee he smelled like it! He was easy to talk to, a sympathetic listener, and very interested in her job and what she could tell him of the Oriental places Cox and Shieling brought their goods from. She didn’t quite remember when he had started talking about sheiks and harems and Muslims and their four wives or however many it was. Nor did she remember when she had retorted that a lot of Englishmen had as much you-know-what as any old sheikh, with none of the responsibilities. Certainly she had not the faintest idea how much, at odd times and in odd phrases, she had told Sam about Eric Greenwood and his mistresses.

  But Detective Sergeant Benbow of the C.I.D. had it all carefully recorded and precisely phrased in a report now ready for Chief Detective Superintendent Honiwell.

  Eric Greenwood’s latest affaire was with a very pretty and vivacious young woman, who he knew was going to cause him trouble. Some of his mistresses were venomous and vicious when he broke off, some were tearful and pleading, now and again one accepted the congé without any outward show of emotion. Usually he chose married women, preferably those losing their freshness. He found more sexual satisfaction and excitement with them than with an inexperienced and possibly timid girl, and when he tired of their looks he simply dropped them. He always began when their husbands were away for a few months (as with Entwhistle’s wife, some three years ago), because no matter what their feelings, few actually wanted to break up their marriage. Greenwood had long since come to regard the difficulties and unpleasantries of breaking off an affaire as the price, virtually the only price, he had to pay for his pleasures. From the beginning he had always been extremely careful, making sure no mistress visited him at work, having early rendezvous at small hotels before taking his lights o’ love to his small, anonymous bachelor flat in Camberwell; and never the same hotel twice. There were problems in this, of course, but he prepared his conquests with great precision and often enjoyed the planning as much as the conquest itself.

  Only once before this had he been faced with any problem. Margaret Entwhistle had wanted to tell her husband, get a divorce, and marry Eric.

  He had killed her . . .

  For a while, just a few short hours, he had felt a terrible sense of guilt and remorse; he had actually gone to St. Ludd’s Cathedral to confess silently, in a kind of plea for forgiveness; and that had coincided with an attempt to steal some of the plate from the altar, a sacrilege he had been able to prevent.

  So he had considered himself forgiven in the eyes of the Lord.

  What he did not know was that he was a schizophrenic; that he could commit a crime, do evil, and then put it out of his mind, feeling no sense of guilt. He did not think himself right to kill; only right to save himself. It was not that he could not tell right from wrong; it was that when the wrong had been committed he virtually forgot it.

  As he had “forgotten” murdering Margaret Entwhistle.

  As he had “forgotten” allowing her husband to stand trial and be sentenced to imprisonment for life for Greenwood’s crime.

  Now he was remembering . . .

  For Jennifer Goodenough, whom he had known for only three months, was proving very difficult indeed.

  She was younger than some of his mistresses, in her early thirties, and a very attractive blonde. There was no doubt at all that she intended to maintain the association although her husband was due home, in a very few days, from a three-month voyage on a merchant vessel bringing to London a cargo of carpets, tapestries, silks, and cottons for the West End salesrooms of Cox and Shieling. That was how Greenwood and Jennifer had met; he had gone with some last-minute bills of lading for European goods being supplied to the Orient, and Jennifer had been there to see her husband off for his long voyage. When the ship, the Orianda, registered at London, had cast off, while her husband was still waving to her, Greenwood had said:

  “Will you come and have some lunch? . . .”

  She was a remarkable woman; that night they had shared his bed.

  She had not shown her clinging propensity at first, only when the Orianda had left the West African port of Dakar, its last port of call on the homeward run. He had begun his usual “I hate it but we must part” gambit, and she had simply laughed it off.

  “No, darling, this arrangement suits me very well,” she had retorted. “A husband at sea and a lover at home. And you shouldn’t grumble; he’s always away a lot more than he’s at home.”

  Greenwood had realised his folly then; she knew where he worked, could come and visit him, did in fact telephone him but, thank God, on his personal line. She could make a great deal of trouble with the company, which was small enough for scandal to be ruinous. And the Orianda was one of several cargo vessels owned by the company through an associate firm. Once he realised all the implications, and so the danger, he had tried to force the issue.

  “It’s one thing to have a passionate affaire for a few weeks, sweetheart, another to be permanently attached. You should realise that I don’t like permanent arrangements. If I did, I’d have been married years ago.”

  “Darling,” she had said only this morning, “we are permanent. If you care to go off and have your peccadilloes when Simon’s home I won’t complain, but when he’s gone we are together. Or Cox and Shieling might be very disappointed with one of their managers.”

  “Jennifer,” he had said, “don’t threaten me.”

  “Eric,” she had retorted, “if Cox and Shieling knew that their trusted manager for carpets and fabrics had stolen the wife of their trusted first mate on the good ship Orianda, do you think they would stand for it?”

  The truth was he couldn’t be sure; in fact he didn’t think they would.

  And he was frightened of both Simon Goodenough and Jennifer.

  She was caging him; was far too possessive. In the past two months she had acted much more like a demanding wife than an acquiescent mistress. He must free himself from her, b
ut he did not think she would give him that freedom easily.

  Margaret Entwhistle had threatened it, too.

  Greenwood finished signing the letters and left them on his desk, went out a little after five o’clock with a casual “Good night” to Bessie, and walked down the rickety wooden stairs, then along the cobbled lane which led to Cannon Street and his bus. He bought a newspaper from his usual newsstand, within the shadow of the threefold steeple of St. James Garlickhythe, and close to the now closed and shuttered doors of Billingsgate Market. As he unfolded the newspaper he glanced fondly at the ancient stone church, which he had helped to protect once from Nazi fire bombs and another time from a fanatic’s sabotage; then he looked at the headlines.

  GIRL SUFFOCATED

  London Hunt for Killer

  He read the story with deepening interest as he walked along to his bus stop and while he was on the bus. Without bidding, thoughts crowded his mind. There was a murderer at large. The victim lived in Ealing. Jennifer lived in Acton, which was very close by. Murders often ran in pairs, in series. Already this newspaper was talking about the possibility of the killer being psychopathic. If there were another, similar murder soon, there would be much more talk of a psychopathic killer; it ought to work out very well.

  After all, it had once.

  He had a week in which to plan.

  That was the very moment when the Yard’s exchange telephone rang on Gideon’s desk, and as he lifted it a man cried with excitement, even joy: “Riddell’s been pulled out, George. He’s alive!”

  That had been by far the best moment of the day for Gideon.

  The day had been as topsy-turvy as any he had known, and even the ever reliable Honiwell had called to ask to postpone the meeting about Entwhistle until the next day.

  “The man Benbow, who’s doing a very good job on the case, is hopeful of results tonight,” Honiwell had said. “So if it’s all right with you, Commander, I’ll come in the morning.”

  “Come round to my place tonight and we’ll eat and talk,” Gideon said. “I may be up to my eyes in the immigrant business in the morning. Say nine o’clock.”

  Honiwell said: “I’ll be there.”

  As a result Gideon had been able to give more time and thought to the Ealing murder, had a private report on his desk about P.C. Oswald as well as cuttings from all the newspapers; he hoped these would not go to the young officer’s head. He had thought more about the request from Mayhew: obviously the Yard or the City Police or both should plant a man in the firm, which was probably the victim of serious embezzlement; as obviously he would have to see Mayhew, and whenever he thought of that he was ruefully aware of the “threat” of the Assistant Commissionership.

  How many men in his position would dream of calling it a threat?

  All afternoon there had been the anxiety about Riddell; now the blessed relief that he was alive made everything else seem of little importance.

  11

  Despair and Joy

  According to the rescue workers, it was a miracle that Riddell had not died. He had been protected by a beam in the wall which had broken and made a kind of arch under which he had been trapped. He was badly cut and bruised and there were fractured ribs and the danger of severe injury both to his head and to his pelvis, but he was not only alive, he actually came around after he had been placed in the ambulance.

  Gideon received this report from Saxby, who sounded exhausted, but Gideon forbore to advise him to stop work for the day.

  “I keep thinking, shouldn’t we let Riddell’s wife know,” Saxby suggested.

  “That’s being looked after.”

  “I should have known,” Saxby said in a lighter tone, but soon he was sounding troubled and over glum again. One of the W.V.S. women and a freelance reporter were dead and seven people, all Pakistanis, six of them women, were in hospital in a serious condition. Over twenty others had received treatment at the same hospital. “None of the fire service, civil defence, or our chaps were hurt, except Riddell,” went on Saxby. And then added abruptly: “Commander, I’m as worried as hell. May I come and talk to you?”

  Obviously he felt in great need to unburden himself, and it would be cruel as well as possibly damaging, to say no.

  “Come right away,” Gideon invited, more glad than ever that Honiwell had postponed his visit.

  “Give me about half an hour,” begged Saxby, and rang off.

  Gideon picked up his direct line telephone and dialled his home number; as the brrr-brrr-brrr sounded, the Yard’s exchange bell rang. He picked the receiver up and put it to his other ear, saying:

  “Gideon.”

  “Commander, Mrs. Riddell is on the telephone; I’ve got her at last.”

  “Ah,” said Gideon. “Put her through.” At the same moment Kate answered on the other telephone, and he covered the exchange mouthpiece with his hand and said quietly: “Kate, love, I’ll be at least an hour late. Don’t wait dinner for me.”

  “George,” she began, “is Tom—”

  “Out and alive,” Gideon told her. “I’ve Mrs. Riddell on the line now. ‘Bye.” He put the one receiver down and spoke into the other mouthpiece in much the same tone of voice, suddenly and embarrassedly aware that he didn’t know Mrs. Riddell’s first name. “Mrs. Riddell,” he said. “I’ve both bad and good news for you, about Tom.”

  He didn’t know whether she had heard anything over the radio or seen anything of the Long Street disaster on television. He saw a mental picture of her at the ball, with her feathered dress and feathered cap and wrinkled face and little pinched beak of a nose and point of a chin.

  “Please tell me the good first,” she pleaded in her high-pitched voice.

  What was her Christian name? It was on the tip of his tongue but wouldn’t come.

  “He’s been dug out from a pile of rubble which collapsed on top of him, he’s alive, and he’s on his way to St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, if he isn’t there already. He’ll receive immediate examination, not a minute will be lost, and as far as I’ve yet been told there’s no serious injury.”

  He stopped; and in that second he remembered: her name was Violet, called Vi. She seemed to be breathing very evenly; hissingly, as if she had some slight obstruction in her nostrils.

  Quietly she asked: “Will it help if I go straight to the hospital?”

  “I doubt it,” Gideon said. “It would be better if you could stay near your telephone, Vi, or near one with friends,” he added hastily.

  “I would prefer to stay here, Mr. Gideon,” she replied in the same high-pitched but calm voice. “I’m sure I can rely on you to let me know if there is any more news.”

  “You can rely on that absolutely,” Gideon promised.

  “Thank you,” replied Riddell’s wife. “You are very kind.”

  When she rang off, Gideon had a suspicion that she had a sob in her voice, but he could not be certain. He was sure that someone ought to go and see whether she needed help, but was far from knowing who would be best. He was deliberating when two things happened at once: the door from Hobbs’s room opened on a tap and Hobbs looked in, and the direct line telephone on his desk rang. Very few people knew that number; he used it almost exclusively for outgoing calls he did not want overheard. He motioned Hobbs in, and said gruffly: “Gideon.”

  “George,” Kate said. “I’d like to go and see Violet Riddell. Can you give me her address?”

  Gideon hesitated only for a moment before saying: “Yes, Kate, I can. She lives at Wembley—” He looked up at Hobbs, standing by the desk, and Hobbs formed “Riddell?” with his lips. Gideon nodded and Hobbs went on clearly as Gideon held the telephone out to him: “fourteen—one-four—Anderson Drive, repeat. Anderson Drive, Wembley. I believe it’s near the Stadium.”

  “Did you get that?” Gideon asked, drawing the telephone clo
se.

  “Yes,” Kate said. “If I’m not back when you get home, Penny will have something ready for supper.” She paused before going on with a tremor in her voice: “Be careful, George.”

  “I’m all right.” He tried to sound bluff. “See you later, love.”

  He rang off and waved to a chair. Hobbs sat down and leaned back, crossing his legs at the ankles. He was so poised and confident and there was something in his manner which Gideon had always found hard to identify. Perhaps it was inborn authority. And although he wasn’t a dandy, he was always so well-dressed; just enough of white cuff showing at each wrist, his collar invariably looking as if he had just put it on. Gideon did not speak although the period of silent reflection was long-drawn-out. Then he took a large-bowled pipe from his left-hand pocket and smoothed the shiny wood; he seldom smoked this (or anything else) these days, but fondled it at periods of tension or emotional stress, especially when the day had been hard. He laid this pipe on the desk and opened a cupboard in the desk, taking out a bottle of Scotch whisky and some glasses and bottles of soda water.

  “Alec?”

  “Just a finger, and fill the glass up, will you?”

  Gideon mixed two drinks of about the same strength, handed one to Hobbs, and raised his own.

  “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.”

  “Quite a day.”

  “Which could have turned out to be a lot worse,” Hobbs remarked.

  “Yes.” Gideon sipped again. “We make quite a team.”

  Hobbs seemed to stiffen, very slightly.

  “You and me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quite a team,” Hobbs agreed, and put his glass to his lips. “Here’s to its future.”

  They drank, while many thoughts passed through Gideon’s mind, the most vivid perhaps that Hobbs was in love with Gideon’s Penny. How were they getting on? Had their happiness at the ball been an indication? What did Penny really think as she stormed, as it were, through boyfriend after boyfriend, always returning to Alec? “Uncle” Alec? No, there was something more in her feeling for Hobbs than that. This could be the moment to ask, but something warned him not to. So he said: