by John Creasey
“What do your reports from the divisions say?” asked Scott- Marie.
“That there is a great deal of restlessness and resentment,” said Gideon, “and some indication that extreme anti-immigrationists are ready to move in.”
“Move in?” echoed Bartlett sharply.
“As they moved in where the rent collector was concerned. None of our men was present but we’ve had full reports. That began as an incident between immigrants – a tenant and a rent collector. We’ve made no arrests, although the tenant appears to have started the trouble. White youths went in and made it far worse. They obviously want to create a serious disturbance. They want the trouble to appear to be inherent in immigration. All we can do where that is concerned is watch, protect, and investigate. Instructions have gone out to the divisions to this effect, gentlemen. And I’ve assigned two senior officers, Superintendents Rollo and Piluski, to the case and have given them authority to use as many junior officers as they need. I’ve talked to Uniform and I’ve sent a teletype message to the divisions calling for this investigation to be given priority.”
Scott-Marie said: “Good.”
“Do you have enough men to do this properly?” asked Bartlett.
“In the short term, yes. In the long term, no.”
“I have no doubt that the Commander will shortly point out that this is another job we can’t do properly because we’re under strength,” Scott-Marie commented.
“I will most certainly make it known to those in authority,” promised Bartlett. “Has your team discovered anything that hasn’t been reported, Commander?”
Gideon said: “No. They have had very little time since the disaster. However—” He paused, and both men showed immediate interest; waited on his words. “There is one possibility we need help with, sir – fire service help, perhaps the bomb disposal people, and also construction engineers.”
“What are you driving at?” demanded Scott-Marie.
“That collapse was remarkably uniform,” Gideon pointed out, giving thanks that he had thought of this in time. “They are old Victorian houses which were very solidly built, yet they collapsed almost like a pack of cards. It may have been because the main support walls and pillars had been weakened to make sleeping alcoves, but it’s conceivable that the foundations were deliberately weakened by fanatical anti-blacks, so that once a collapse started, the whole block would have to come down. This would not only kill a lot of immigrants, but draw attention to the overcrowding, the takeover of whole districts, as the fanatics say.”
He saw the alarm on the faces of the other men – on men well-trained not to show their emotions. They had been hanging on his words before but now additional tension had come into this room.
And it came to him, and he was suddenly fearful and afraid.
Just as he had realised what was missing soon after Hobbs had drawn attention to the fact that something was, now that he had been talking the full logical consequence of this possibility struck him. He sensed that it had already begun to occur to the others as he went on:
“And if it was sabotage, it might not be confined to the one place. Other blocks might already have been weakened – it would be easy enough, a few bricks at a time. Other collapses might well come.” He went on in a grim voice, as if he had been deliberately leading up to this harsh climax. “And Black Power extremists might conceivably create such a situation so as to draw attention to the shocking conditions.” He paused for a moment before going on: “The certain thing is, gentlemen, that we mustn’t take any chances. We have to find out, now. We have to have every block of overcrowded houses inspected for sabotage in a matter of days. In fact if I had my way it would be done today.”
17
Search in London
There was utter silence in the office when Gideon finished; silence which seemed to last a long time although in fact it was less than a minute. Gideon felt the gaze from each of the others, wondered for a few moments whether they thought him exaggerating, and then saw Bartlett shift in his seat.
“How many such places are there, Commander?”
“Certainly not less than thirty,” Gideon answered.
“Can you provide a list quickly? Without going through the local authorities, I mean.”
“Yes,” Gideon said. “We can supply that thirty and get the other places checked for attention after the thirty have been done.”
Bartlett glanced at Scott-Marie.
“Can you make arrangements with bomb disposal?”
“Yes. At once.”
“Then I will start things moving with the mining engineers,” said Bartlett. “Do you have any ideas yet as to how to set about it, Commander?”
“Yes.” Gideon nodded. “I’ll have divisional men at all the suspect places within a quarter of an hour. If you’ll have the engineers contact me, I’ll tell them where to go. And I’ll have our Map Room prepare a map for a report centre. We can use Information at a pinch but I’d rather Rollo and Piluski kept their finger on the situation.”
“I will proceed at once,” Bartlett promised. Then he paused and looked at Scott-Marie with a faint smile, hesitated for a few moments, and added: “The other matter can wait, Commissioner, but I think I shall agree with you. If you will excuse me—
Quick as he was, Scott-Marie beat him to the door, obviously wanting Gideon to stay. Sabrina Sale was talking on the telephone in a polite but insistent way. The door shut out her voice and cut Bartlett off from sight. Scott-Marie stood by Gideon, leaning against his desk.
“Do you have any evidence of sabotage to go on, George?”
“No,” Gideon said. “I only glimpsed the possibility just before I told you.”
Scott-Marie replied dryly: “You saw the other possibility, no doubt.”
“That this way we can check on all the cases of overcrowding quickly,” Gideon agreed. “And without creating a lot of problems.” He grinned broadly. “If people think their house might fall down on them, they’ll co-operate! We should be able to get a report for the Home Office in forty-eight hours instead of taking a couple of months.” The more he saw of the consequences of that discovery of the “missing” factors, the more it pleased him. “I must get moving, sir.”
“Yes. George—”
“Sir?”
“I am more than ever sure that you should be the Assistant Commissioner,” said Scott-Marie. “That was what Sir Thomas and I were going to discuss with you. We had agreed over lunch that whatever you say, you are our man. And Donaldson isn’t coming back at all,” Scott-Marie added. “The appointment has to be made soon, and it is absurd for you to be doing the job and doubling it with that of Commander. You do see that, don’t you?”
Gideon said heavily: “Yes, sir, I see it.”
He saw other things, too. First that he must concentrate on the raids; second, that his reaction to this Assistant Commissionership was unchanged; he did not want the job, and certainly he did not want to be pushed into it. Scott-Marie didn’t force the issue any further but opened the door for him. Sabrina had a sheet of paper in her typewriter and was typing fast. Gideon glanced at her and she smiled up, obviously preoccupied. He went out and strode along the passages, along comparatively unfamiliar passages, for the Commissioner was housed in a different part of the building. There was a shortcut, using a back lift, to Riddell’s old office, and he reached it as Piluski was arriving from the other direction. Piluski opened the door.
Inside, one wall was already covered with a map of the Greater London area, an enlargement of the one in Riddell’s file. Three detective officers, including a sergeant from the Map Room, were filling in the concentrated areas with red-headed pins. Four other men were seated at a long trestle table, each with a telephone in front of him. Two engineers were fitting in a teletype machine. In the middle of all this, Rollo was sitting at a desk
which was much too small for him, brooding over some reports, while a man nearby was banging away on a typewriter, as if utterly oblivious of what was going on about him.
“Hugh,” Piluski said, and Rollo put his left hand up, palm outward, while he read a page of a report. Then he glanced up, saw Gideon, started back, and sprang to his feet.
“Sorry, sir.”
“All right,” Gideon said. “We’ve got that reason for getting into every place which might be overcrowded. The reason: yesterday’s collapse could have been due partly to sabotage. I want to talk to the Royal Ordnance Corps, and you’ll find out what we have to do as I talk.”
The R.O.C. was at first startled, then almost instantly understanding and eager to co-operate with a team to help search the houses.
As he finished and the full possibilities struck home, Rollo said: “My God!” and Piluski placed the tips of his fingers together, rather as Rataudi had done, as if he were praying for guidance.
Gideon went on, sharply and to the point, until all of them here knew what they were expected to do, and he finished: “You’re halfway on with the job already.”
“Intelligent anticipation,” Rollo said. “We’ll co-operate with everyone, don’t worry, sir. We’ll have a man to liaise with the engineers.”
“That I shall look after,” Piluski said happily.
Gideon, completely satisfied by the way these two men were tackling their job, went out at once. He walked straight into Hobbs’s office, where Hobbs stood up from his desk, set slantwise across a corner so that he could get the best light from the window. As Gideon told him what he had arranged, snow fell very heavily outside, and he reflected that there was going to be a bad night in which to operate. Now and again Hobbs nodded; once he shook his head as if in bewilderment.
“And you haven’t been away an hour,” he observed.
“Your ‘something missing’ was the clue,” Gideon said.
He relaxed for the first time since he had started from here for Scott-Marie’s office, with a glow of well-being and a hint of physical reaction. He was tired. There was truth in Scott-Marie’s argument that he couldn’t continue to do both jobs, but his reaction was still the same. His job was that of Commander. He wanted to be in constant touch with the men out in the field. He did not want to be an administrator. And he could serve the Yard much more effectively as Commander than as Assistant Commissioner. Take today, for instance: who else could have had the background knowledge of the men available? Who else could have known instinctively that Piluski was the right man to work with Rollo, and have the satisfaction of knowing, so quickly, that no one at the Yard was better equipped than Piluski to liaise with the engineers and the bomb disposal units they would send along?
As these thoughts were passing through his mind, Hobbs was watching him. Hobbs. There was the man for Scott-Marie. Hobbs! The possibility had been in and out of his mind several times. Hobbs was exactly the right man. Young enough to serve ten or even fifteen years as Assistant Commissioner. Young enough to serve as A.C. until Scott-Marie was ready to retire, and then to take over even that job. As these thoughts ran through his mind he was more sure than ever that he was right.
Hobbs’s expression suggested that he knew that some fresh and invigorating idea was passing through Gideon’s mind, but caution warned Gideon: no matter how sure he felt now he had to sleep on it, had to check from every angle. And there was already more than enough to do today.
It was half-past four, and the whole of the campaign was under way. It was like a military operation, with the field Headquarters in Riddell’s office. There was irony in the fact that Riddell lay in his hospital bed, his wife sitting by his side, while the work he had started had flared into tremendous activity. When Gideon’s telephone bell rang he plucked it up, almost exasperated because it would break his train of thought.
“Commander.” It was Honiwell, and all irritation faded. “I thought you should know this at once. The child Carol Entwhistle didn’t go to school today: she played truant. I’ve only just heard from her aunt, who is terrified in case Carol’s gone to Dartmoor to try to see her father.”
Carol was only a little over ten years old.
In some ways she looked older than her years, but it was still only by chance that no one questioned her when she left the train at Exeter and went to catch the bus to Dartmoor. By the time she reached the village near the prison, at four o’clock, it was already dark and misty, and there were few lights and few people about.
She began to feel scared, but the urgent and irresistible desire to see her father kept her going. She sensed that if she asked for the prison she would be asked why she wanted to go there; she had to find the gates by herself. The great high walls, the tops actually hidden by the fog, seemed harsh and bleak, but somewhere behind them was her father.
“Entwhistle,” a warder said, in the library.
“What is it?” Entwhistle asked.
“Have you seen Welbeck this afternoon?”
“No, sir,” Entwhistle said. The “sir” demanded a great effort, and his body went tense, his fingers crooked. How he hated these men!
The warder had a harsh voice and a hard manner. He stood close to Entwhistle; only a few other prisoners were in the library, selecting books. The warder spoke softly, so his voice would not carry; he had the sense to realise how close to revolt this prisoner was.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
Somehow Entwhistle maintained his self-control. He had to, he had to, but how he would like to choke the life out of this man! All the calmness of despair which had once soothed him had gone.
“Why the hell should I?” His voice rose.
“Be careful how you talk to me,” the warder warned. Then he asked a question which made Entwhistle understand something of what was driving him. Welbeck, a trustee who acted as messenger between warders and did odds and ends of jobs including cleaning the library, was in for life because of a now ten-year-old murder. Like all trustees, he was taken for granted, and not noticed until he was wanted. “Are you sure you haven’t seen him since luncheon?”
Entwhistle asked sharply: “What’s the matter? Has he escaped?”
“Keep your voice low,” the warder whispered savagely. “If you see him, report to me at once.”
Entwhistle no longer had any doubt that Welbeck was missing. What a night to be out on the moor! The few glimpses he could get of the yard, from the library windows, showed how thick and eerie the fog was inside four walls. Outside the whole village must be shrouded, and not far from the prison walls there were the quarries and the open moorland, the wet grass and moss and peat, the patches of marshland, here and there the patches of bog. It was a night when the chances of being caught were negligible, but the chances of getting far from the prison were even smaller.
Entwhistle, with sudden revulsion of feeling, was overcome with savage envy.
If only he could summon up the courage to escape . . .
One day, of course, he would; and he wouldn’t be caught and allow himself to come back here; he would kill himself first. There was no hope of help from the police; that bloody parson had raised his hopes only to dash them, and that plaster saint Gideon didn’t care a damn. Entwhistle would never see his children again until they were grown up; strangers. Better never to see them than through the prison grille.
As these things coursed searingly through his mind, the warder who had spoken to him reported to the chief warder on the block. He did this matter-of-factly, so as not to raise unnecessary alarm, for Welbeck might be somewhere in the prison, hiding; or even dozing. Word was sent to the Assistant Governor, then to the Governor himself. A search of the prison was undertaken during the evening meal, but there was no sign of the trustee, and at last the message was flashed to the prison authorities and to the police not only of Dartmoor and Devon, but e
verywhere in England.
And the alarm siren finally went, high-pitched and frightening, in the fog-laden night. Searchlights were turned on, but the fog only reflected the glare and the light did no good at all.
Carol’s heart leaped wildly when she first heard the wail of the siren; and as it rose, the fog about her seemed to become bright, as if an unearthly light had appeared from the hidden skies. The light on the swirling grey fog almost blinded her. She was close to a low brick wall, ankle deep in wet grass.
Her whole body shook and her heart seemed to lift in her chest and choke her.
The wailing went on and on and on; and the light seemed to grow brighter.
Suddenly she heard voices.
Then she heard the panting breath of a dog or man.
Some way off she saw a tiny circle of misted light, like a halo held at a man’s waist. It moved and waved about in little circles. The voices, close by for a few moments, went farther away. She could still hear the panting of the creature, but not so close.
She tried to shout, but could not. The awful lump in her throat hurt terribly and kept every sound back. She gasped for breath. The halo of light disappeared, and the noises faded. She realised, as her terror subsided, that the wailing had stopped. Slowly, very slowly, the pounding of her heart diminished, but now she began to shiver. Head to foot, arms and legs, the shivering possessed her. She was not old enough to know that it was reaction from the fright; and the cold made it worse.
The fog so enshrouded her that she could not see the squares of light at a row of cottages less than fifty yards away. There was no way of telling that the stone wall against which she huddled surrounded a cottage garden, that safety and warmth were so close to her.
