by John Creasey
She checked the date; it was this morning’s.
She saw the front page, with its pictures of the dreadful disaster in Notting Hill.
And she saw the inside page, with a photograph of a girl who had been strangled – no, suffocated, but she was never quite sure of the difference – not far away. Over the picture was the headline:
POLICE HAVE CLUE TO GIRL’S MURDER.
As she read the story, which was calculated to alarm the murderer but to give nothing away, she had an even stronger feeling that she was being watched. It made her go cold, and for a few moments she could not move, could not even turn her head. When at last she did, the policeman was staring at her over the garden fence.
She was to find out later that he was Police Constable Oswald.
She felt as if he were looking at her almost accusingly, but, something she could not have dreamed, it was in fact in admiration. The feeling of interest in her as a woman faded when he crossed to the dustbin and saw the story which had been ripped across.
The story was in every newspaper.
Wherever David Wells looked he seemed to see it. Even when he turned to give some typing to the girl behind him, there was a newspaper open at a full-page picture of the girl he had murdered.
“You’re young to be travelling alone, aren’t you?” remarked the guard on the train as he clipped Carol’s ticket.
“Yes, but you see I am going to visit my father,” Carol Entwhistle explained earnestly.
There was a noticeable change of mood in many parts of London that day. The police noticed it, of course, although there was a possibility that they were so acutely aware of the situation that they almost imagined the mood. But the press was acutely aware of it, too. It was especially apparent in areas which had become almost exclusively coloured. There was truculence among the young, while little knots of women stood talking together and, a comparatively rare thing, Pakistanis and Jamaicans talked together. There was much anger and there was a great deal of resentment.
In a part of Fulham not far from the Lots Road Power Station, a little Pakistani named Munshi, Patel Munshi, was out on his daily rounds. He was a rent collector. His employer, a wealthy Pakistani, was not in fact a bad landlord and did not overcrowd his houses, although many who rented a room or two from him sublet, and many rooms were too crowded. Munshi was, however, a loyal and painstaking employee, and whenever he saw indications of these abuses he reported them; and when essential plumbing and roof repairs were needed, he pushed for them to be done. He also pushed for the rent and was severe on anyone more than two weeks behind.
Bernard Oppenheimer Morris was now three weeks behind.
It was not his fault. A Jamaican who had been in England for three years, he was out of work. He didn’t gamble, drink too much, or spend money on women; in fact he was desperately worried about where he was going to get the money to feed his family. So when Munshi came to the door for the rent of two rooms in a house where twenty people lived, he was already nervous and worried. Had he been apologetic Munshi would doubtless have grumbled but agreed to wait for another week before reporting, but Bernard Oppenheimer Morris was affected by the general mood.
“You can go and tell your boss he can sing for his money,” he said in his deep and carrying voice by the open door.
“That is no way to talk to me; I will not permit it,” protested Munshi.
“I damn well talk to you any way I wish to.”
“I want your three weeks back rent now and if you do not pay—” began Munshi.
He saw the Jamaican’s hand spread out and felt it on his chest. He lost his balance, reeling backward, and grabbed at Morris’s wrist. He was oblivious of the crowd which had gathered in the street behind him, aware only of the big, hostile man in front of him. His skinny fingers clutched Morris’s, but Morris pulled himself free without any effort, and then pushed. Munshi went staggering backward, missed the top step of four, and fell heavily.
As he fell, a long-haired white youth kicked him in the ribs. Another white youth drove his foot into his groin. A little Jamaican stamped on his shoulder, a Pakistani cried: “Do not do that!” and the first white youth turned and kicked the protestor savagely. Instantly a dozen people were fighting, and it was impossible to see who was kicking Munshi deliberately, who was striking out at anyone in range, and who was simply trampling on the prone Pakistani.
Munshi himself certainly didn’t know; he was unconscious.
16
Short Term
At twenty minutes to two, Rollo and Piluski left Gideon’s office, where they had been for the past hour. Only Hobbs had stayed behind. The remains of a lunch sent from the canteen were on a table pushed into a corner, and the shadows of snowflakes made a shifting pattern on a silver-plated coffeepot. Now Gideon stood up and stretched, while Hobbs said: “I can make notes of that in fifteen minutes, sir.”
Gideon eyed him, without immediately speaking. Hobbs waited, obviously puzzled, and also aware that in spite of the intense concentration on the two reports from the wildly different men in charge of the investigation now on file as Long Street Incident, his chief’s attention had wandered. Gideon, in fact, had had the thought of the Commissioner hovering on his mind for some time, and now that he could relax from the actual task in hand, he had a vivid mental picture of Scott-Marie. The silence was prolonged more than he intended; long enough for Hobbs to show signs of strain.
“Alec,” Gideon said at last. “Have you ever regretted joining the police?”
Hobbs’s expression changed, almost ludicrously; and before he answered he laughed.
“Not for a moment!”
“Quite the right way to spend your life?”
“Yes,” Hobbs answered, and added shrewdly: “You must have a good reason for asking. Have I shown any sign of impatience or frustration lately?” When Gideon didn’t answer he went on: “In a way, the longer I’m in the Force, the bigger the variety of problems we touch on, the more I feel involved. Get immersed in it, I mean. What is behind the question, George?”
Gideon moved suddenly, startlingly.
“I’ll tell you later. Nothing that need disturb you, anyhow. Now you’d better get those notes down; I’ve got to be in Scott- Marie’s office in fifteen minutes.”
Hobbs went out, taking his own notebook with him, and Gideon went across to his desk and sat on the corner as he dialled Information. The moment a man answered, he said:
“Gideon. What is the latest report on the rent collector Munshi?”
“On the danger list, sir – not doing well.”
“Hmm. And on Superintendent Riddell?”
“Very satisfactory, sir.”
“Good,” Gideon said. “I shall be in the Commissioner’s office at two o’clock. If there is any further news on the man Munshi, call me there.”
“Very good, sir.”
Gideon sifted through all of his files again, only too well aware that whenever there was a case which demanded extra concentration it brought a danger of overlooking something of importance in other cases. The two which made him pause were the post office robbery and the Entwhistle investigation. All the indications in the robbery were that it had been carried out with great verve and all the daring of an “amateur” coup. Not a single fingerprint, not a single clue, had yet been discovered. He pushed this file aside, and considered the latest report from Honiwell. It was wholly to do with Eric Greenwood, and included the fact that according to his secretary, he was planning to go to India for several weeks.
Could that mean that he was beginning to realise that he was under suspicion?
And should he be allowed to go?
There was a note from Honiwell. “We might be advised to take some step before he leaves the country.” Yes, thought Gideon, we might indeed. Perhaps he needed some such prompting as this to prevent hi
m from sitting on the fence. He took a quick look at the report from Ealing on the Rosamund Lee murder. They seemed very sure of themselves and Wilson wasn’t a man to jump to conclusions. There was a note that the man under surveillance was married, with three children between two and seven. If he had killed the girl, why? The usual motive: that his wife might find out about his peccadillo?
Peccadillo, Gideon thought. Light word for what could be one of the most tragic situations in society. How many married men, at this moment, were having an affaire outside their marriage? How many were fearful of the wife finding out? How many other women were desperately unhappy, wanting the man to get a divorce? How many men were tempted to kill? “If only she would die.” What was wrong? The society and the conventions, and the religious teaching which made both men and women believe that extra-marital sex was wrong, even in this so-called permissive age? There was as much ache and pain as ever when a marriage was threatened. Or were the conventions, the Ten Commandments, right? Thou shalt not steal . . . thou shalt not kill . . . thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife . . . thou shalt not commit adultery . . . were these commandments the right injunctions to man? Was man himself too frail a creature to observe them? Or were they indeed commandments which no man could be expected to keep? What would society be like if there had never been the Ten Commandments?
There was a light tap on the communicating door and Hobbs appeared. Gideon, looking at his watch, saw that it was two minutes to two.
“Any particular problem?” he asked.
“I think the leads of several different aspects are there,” said Hobbs. “And yet—”
“Yes?”
“I’ve a sense that something’s missing,” stated Hobbs.
“Missing,” echoed Gideon. “I’ll have a look. Thanks.”
What did Hobbs mean? he asked himself. Missing, missing, missing. This was Hobbs’s strength: a kind of sixth sense which made him uneasy when he did not feel he could see everything there was to see about a case. Gideon had this same sixth sense; as if an antenna was jutting out and receiving a signal but the message wasn’t understood. As he walked along toward the lift he scanned the notes, written in a clear hand with the headings in block capitals. There was the whole story of what had happened, concisely stated. Obviously much of this had been written before Hobbs had seen Rollo and Piluski. Was there something missing? There was date, time, place, damage, injuries, dead – with all details – number of people evacuated from the block before it had collapsed: eleven hundred and three. In eleven houses . . .
What a wicked thing it was!
How much responsibility did Rataudi have?
There was a heading:
Criminal Charge Considered: Manslaughter
That was about it. There were the civil offences against local bylaws, and London County Council regulations. He read on, to the activity of the police, the number of landlords protected, the number actually attacked. Details of all the crimes were here: the attempt to break into houses, uttering menaces, and, finally, the vicious attack on the rent collector Munshi.
Gideon reached Scott-Marie’s door.
What had Hobbs meant? And was there really something missing, or was there simply a sense of frustration, that there was so little the police could do? Gideon went into the outer room where Scott-Marie’s secretary usually sat: and Sabrina Sale looked up from the secretary’s desk.
“Why, hallo,” Gideon said.
“Good afternoon, Commander,” Sabrina said primly. “The Commissioner is expecting you; please go straight in.”
“How is it you’re here?” asked Gideon.
“I don’t really know, but there’s a lot of flu about.” She gave her nice, wicked smile. “I have to keep everyone at bay while you’re with the Commissioner. But all your letters are done, Commander. I’ll have them sent to your office.”
“Good,” Gideon said appreciatively.
He didn’t exactly forget Sabrina as he tapped on the door of Scott-Marie’s office and went in; in fact he reached the point of thinking that if she impressed Scott-Marie with her efficiency as much as she did him, then she might find herself the Commissioner’s secretary; and he felt a slight, a very slight pang. Then he saw Scott-Marie behind his large pedestal desk, almost bare of papers, in the rather big and sparsely furnished room; and he saw Sir Thomas Bartlett, Permanent Undersecretary at the Home Office.
He now had not the slightest doubt of the seriousness with which the situation was regarded. Bartlett was the senior civil servant at the Home Office and was known to have a great deal of influence with a succession of Home Secretaries, who themselves had influence with the Cabinet and, indeed, the Prime Minister. He wore a well-tailored black jacket, striped trousers, and a silver-grey tie.
He stood up to shake hands.
“Nice to see you again, Commander.”
“And to see you, sir.”
“Good afternoon, Commander,” Scott-Marie said. “Sit down.”
Gideon pulled up a chair. “Thank you, sir.” As he sat down he saw Bartlett hitch his chair around and had an immediate sense that these two had been in conference for some time and had probably lunched together; and that they had agreed that the civil servant should speak first. Gideon knew Bartlett as a formal man who had a great regard for the conventions and for tradition; also as a man who always sought a precedent before taking any action: yet he could, in emergency, slash red tape. He could be unnerving, often seeming to think of something else when talking, but there was no doubt now of his degree of concentration.
“Commander,” he said, “there is grave anxiety at the highest level about what happened yesterday and its possible consequences.”
“That’s good,” said Gideon, obviously to Bartlett’s surprise.
“I don’t quite—oh, I see. You were afraid it would not be taken seriously enough.”
“I hoped it wouldn’t be considered a police matter only, sir.” As he spoke, Gideon knew that in a way he was fencing: and then quite suddenly, almost as if they had been flashed into his mind by some outside force, he saw not one but two things which neither he nor Hobbs had yet seen. First: that this was a police matter if many of the people in the collapsed houses had been illegal immigrants; and second: that it was possible that the collapse had not been due only to overcrowding and the weakening of foundations and wall supports so as to make more room. Some of the foundations might have been weakened deliberately to induce a collapse.
Inwardly he was seething at his own temporary blindness; and at the same time he was excited and overpoweringly anxious to check the second possibility. Outwardly he sat as impassive as Scott-Marie.
“These are police matters,” Bartlett said.
“Indeed they are,” said Scott-Marie.
“I think I’ve covered them all,” said Gideon, but he did not take out Hobbs’s notes; the omissions were too glaring. “But the basic cause of the trouble, the collapse, seems to be the primary concern of the Ministry of Housing and the local authority.” He still felt that in a way he was fencing: and now that his mind was open to the possibility of sabotage, it was as if floodgates had opened to allow ideas to stream in. “We can find out how many of the people who lived there were illegal immigrants, of course, and came in excess of the quota from any country concerned, but that’s going to take a long time, and might best be handled by the immigration authorities.”
“Why not the police?” demanded Bartlett.
“Because we don’t want the police to become the whipping boys,” answered Gideon. “We are going to have a great deal of investigation to do, we want the utmost co-operation from the legal and illegal immigrants, but if at the same time we are the spearhead of the attack to find out who’s been smuggled in, then a great number simply aren’t going to talk.” He shot a glance at Scott-Marie as he went on: “I’ve discussed on
e aspect of this from time to time, sir, with successive Assistant Commissioners: the need for both Jamaican and Pakistani policemen and Criminal Investigation Department officers. Often these will be able to communicate with immigrant populations more effectively than English-born-and-bred officers. A great number of immigrants are scared of us because they can’t understand us.”
Scott-Marie said: “We’ve put this to you often, Sir Thomas.”
“And I have placed it before those in authority,” Bartlett answered.
“Like nearly everything to do with this problem it’s been put off and put off,” Gideon declared, “and I’m as guilty as the next man. But we can’t – no one can – afford to procrastinate any further.”
Bartlett, who normally seemed to have rather a vague expression and features, suddenly became surprisingly forceful.
“And we most certainly will not,” he said.
“I’m very glad to hear it, sir.” When no one made further comment, Gideon went on: “But I imagine you want more from me than a declaration of principles.” He settled back in his chair. “Every practical precaution against reprisals has been taken but after the attack on the rent collector this morning the situation is even more delicate. If he should die—” He broke off.
