by J. J Marric
His wife was so vital, her complexion so good, and vivacity showed in every movement she made, even in the turn of her head. Scott-Marie was rather dried-up. He was tall, too thin, almost hollow-cheeked, with a touch of tan which gave the impression that he was suffering from jaundice. His hair was cut very close to a somewhat narrow head, and suddenly he was a personality and not remote at all.
He did not open his mouth much when he spoke, nor even when he smiled.
"What's it like to have a husband in all the headlines, Mrs. Gideon?" His tone could almost be called bantering.
Gideon thought: "Thank God, he's out with it," and immediately felt acutely anxious for Kate, so tempering his own relief.
"Darling, let them have a drink first," Lady Scott-Marie protested.
Damn nice woman; she saw that Kate was on the spot.
Kate was smiling at the Old Man.
"It's the first time it's happened since I've known him," she said. "It's rather a thrill." Her smile was spontaneous, and Gideon, who knew the sign, felt a moment of panic; she hadn't finished yet and there was going to be a barb in what she added: "Now it has happened, I hope that someone's going to sit up and take notice."
Gideon had never heard the Commissioner laugh before. He actually opened his mouth wide.
It was an excellent meal; Gideon had never tasted duck and green peas cooked to such perfection, and there was a creamy sweet, a confection which reminded him of something he'd had in Switzerland, years ago; finally there were coffee and cigars, and Gideon found himself in a small first-floor study, overlooking the back garden, where Kate was going round with Lady Scott-Marie; Kate was the Gideon gardener.
They had touched only lightly on Yard affairs, and the only thing Gideon could feel sure about was that his boss was not going to be on his dignity, or vengeful about the newspaper story. Now he sat down, pulling at the cigar as if it were a pipe; Scott-Marie stood with his back to the window.
"Why don't you throw that away and fill your pipe?" Scott-Marie said. "I'm sure you'd prefer it." Gideon did. "Now I'd like to have your considered view of the staff situation," Scott-Marie went on, "without any need to fight or argue with the other departmental needs. You know as well as I do that there'll always be some feeling between the various departments, and the C.I.D. certainly gets the plums in publicity. Did the Taylor business make you talk to the press?"
That was as safe an explanation as any; and being partly true, it helped.
"A newspaperman caught me just after I'd heard," Gideon said, "and I was so mad . . ." He talked a little more; and then found himself rationalizing his approach. Syd Taylor was only one factor. "We're stretched far too thin, that's the truth of it, and have been for years. There aren't even enough allowances made for sickness and holidays. Hill, on the Bournsea child murder case, has actually taken his wife there so that she can get a weekend's holiday, and . . ." He quoted a dozen cases, and also explained what he had done on Friday in the divisions. "I think that probably stamped on anything planned for the weekend, but sooner or later one of us is going to miss something he would see if he weren't so busy."
"Do you mean someone will organize a wave of crime?"
"I don't think any of the old hands will try to organize anything on a big scale. We'd have had a lot of squeaks by now," Gideon answered. "But most of these people we deal with are imitative. We get a crop of smash-and-grabs, a crop of fine-art thefts, a crop of holdups, an outbreak of shoplifting—it seems to go in waves." Gideon was really warming up. "Micky the Slob's killed Taylor, it's all over the newspapers—and you can take it from me that before the week's out two or three more policemen or detectives will be attacked, because some swine will argue that if Micky can get away with it, so can they."
Scott-Marie said, "Won't today's newspapers encourage them still more?"
Was that a criticism?
"Probably," Gideon answered.
"Then there's a risk that the stories do more harm than good."
"Of course there is," Gideon agreed. "The newspapers are telling them today what Micky the Slob told them yesterday, but that'll only have a short-term effect. We can go after them with all we've got, and smack 'em down for a few weeks. It's the long-term situation that worries me. We don't have enough men even to send to the provinces, and Hill and his two chaps ought never to have come back from Bournsea. I haven't laid it on too thickly, Commissioner, take my word for that."
"I do," the Commissioner answered him. "Rogerson agrees with you absolutely, and so do two or three of the other department heads. But all of them need extra money and more men, especially the uniformed branch, even if the most urgent need is in your department. I'm now practically convinced, but—"
Gideon interrupted, warmly: "You don't know what a relief it is to hear that."
"I hope I'm not misleading you," said Scott-Marie, and Gideon sensed something which hadn't yet been said. "You may have convinced me, but that's a very different thing from convincing the Home Office and the Treasury. I had two calls from the Home Secretary this morning. He's not at all happy about the newspaper stories, which he says look like a deliberate attempt to force the hand of the government."
Gideon realized how justified that was the moment it was said, and felt suddenly, badly, shaken.
Scott-Marie hadn't finished.
"Other people will probably resent it, too," he went on. "Every department and all the services are being axed, and in my view the best you'll get is status quo. Even that won't be easy."
"If you're with us, we've surely a chance of getting a bit extra," Gideon said, trying to ward off depression.
"It may be worth trying," the Commissioner conceded. "I want you to concentrate on this problem for a few weeks. Delegate as much of your normal work as you can and find the evidence that I can take to the Minister, with reasonable hope of making the case unanswerable. I'll arrange for Popple to give you all the help he can. I needn't advise you not to overdo the press interview business row," Scott-Marie went on, "but Popple can probably slant a lot of stories your way to show the situation as you've presented it. I'll arrange for one of our legal department to work with you, too, as well as someone from the secretary's office. If I take this case to the Minister, I've got to convince him. If I can do that, he'll fight for us. Even then it'll be a toss-up whether he or the Chancellor of the Exchequer wins. What we need is an unanswerable case."
He stopped.
Gideon said, very gruffly, "You'll get it, sir."
"Good!" Scott-Marie tapped the end off his cigar at last, and stood up, to glance out the window. Kate and Lady Scott-Marie were swinging gently in the garden seat. "Do you go in much for gardening?"
"My wife—" Gideon began, a little awkwardly because of the deliberate change of subject. He was glad when the telephone bell rang.
"Sorry," said Scott-Marie, and lifted the receiver. "Scott-Marie here . . . Yes, he's with me at the moment, hold on." He handed the instrument to Gideon, who was astonished; only the family knew where to find him, and this would make it look as if he had spread the invitation news around, would make it look as if he couldn't keep his mouth shut. "Who's that?" he asked, abruptly.
"Daddy, it's Penny," said his second daughter, a little breathlessly. "I know you said no one was to ring, but Superintendent Hill rang up. He said he'd tried to get you at the Yard, and must speak to you. I asked him where he was, and he said Bournsea Police Headquarters. I promised to tell you as soon as I could, but I was right not to give him the number, wasn't I?"
"Absolutely right, Penny." Gideon was delighted and yet anxious at the same time. "I'll call him right away. See you soon." He rang off, looked at Scott-Marie, and said: "That was my daughter. I don't much like the sound of this; Hill wants to talk to me urgently. May I call him at Bournsea?"
"Let me put the call in for you," Scott-Marie said, and, to Gideon's surprise, was able to give the Bournsea number from memory. "Yes, ring me as soon as you get Superintendent Hill on the line." He put down the rec
eiver and added to Gideon: "I hope this isn't another child murder."
"George," said Hippo Hill, "we've found another seven-year-old girl, same circumstances as the other job down here. Can you get Evans and Peto down from Scarborough, and let me have a team? With all these holiday-makers here we're going to have a hell of a lot of trouble."
"I'll send you a team," Gideon promised, "and I'll get it down to you tonight."
"There's a pal."
"Anything to go on?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, one queer thing," said Hill. "You remember the first case, there were some marks on the girl's clothes that looked as if they'd been made by a dog's paws, and there was some dog's spittle on her right hand? Same traces of spittle and of a toffee on this child's. Wouldn't like to let that news out yet, but we're going to start looking for a man with a dog. . . . Hell of a case in its way; the mother goes out to work, and we've lost a day because everyone thought it was missing by drowning until a couple going for a cuddle on the grass found the kid. . . . Yes, and strangled."
Gideon said, "Pull out all the stops, Hippo. We've got to get that swine quick."
He rang off.
Scott-Marie was watching intently.
"We could do with two hundred and fifty men extra down there," said Gideon, and that did not sound extravagant as he said it. "If that was the only job they did for a month, it would be worth it to make sure the swine doesn't get a third victim."
"You've already convinced me that you're right," the Commissioner said quietly. "Why don't you go over to the Yard at once? I'll run your wife home—or my wife will—and I'll have a word with the chief constable at Bournsea."
"Thanks very much," said Gideon.
Keith Ryman first heard about the Bournsea crime on the television that afternoon. A photograph of the dead child was flashed on the screen, with a police request for anyone who had seen a man with her to inform the nearest police station.
". . . over a hundred policemen are engaged in the hunt for clues," the announcer said.
Ryman snapped his fingers.
"What's the matter, honey?" Helen asked.
"Just thinking," Ryman replied. "Just had an idea."
Chapter 8
MASS ATTACK
Gideon did his share of the investigation from his desk, but he knew exactly what was happening in Bournsea.
It was as if a great animal had wakened, shrugged himself, and begun to prowl. In Bournsea itself, and in the county surrounding it, messages went out to all police, uniformed or the plain-clothes branch, on duty or off. As it was Sunday, the weekend traffic going away from the seaside resort was very heavy, but except at key points the uniformed police were taken off traffic control, and special constables and A.A. and R.A.C. scouts took over.
It was a fine day, with the temperature about seventy degrees, although as usual the sea temperature was ten degrees or more lower. The beaches were crowded. There were masses of weekenders and more day-trippers, but if the police drive was left until tomorrow, when the crowds would be smaller, then anyone who had been here last evening might be gone and almost impossible to trace; people were notoriously reluctant to come forward in response to police requests.
Everyone on the beach had to be questioned.
Had they been there between five and seven o'clock yesterday?
Had they seen the four children? The one child, at the sea's edge? A dog? A man?
The police worked from the main pier toward the wooded land where the child's body had been found buried under clumps of bush and bracken. That area was now cordoned off, yet almost besieged by holiday-makers, girls in briefs and youths in loincloths, the very young, the middle-aged and the elderly. All went to gape. A party of police, thirty strong, was going over the two-acre patch of woodland very closely, for the girl's hair ribbon had come off somewhere between the beach and the murder spot. They looked for anything else that might be a clue: for footprints, for the pawprints of the dog, and for any apparently trifling thing which might help them to build up the case.
Of course there were the newspapermen, including a dozen photographers.
Hill was in immediate charge of the search, and a tall, lantern-jawed Bournsea superintendent named Appleton was constantly with him.
The General Post Office had been opened and emergency staff brought in to check and list everyone who had a dog license. The records were kept alphabetically; they had to be divided into districts, then lists had to be drawn up and attached to ward maps; very soon the search was likely to narrow down to a specific dog. Then, with luck, someone who had seen the man and the dog would be able to give the police a recognizable description.
On the telephone to Hill, who had arranged with the G.P.O. engineers to rig him up a kind of field telephone on the spot, Gideon said:
"Don't forget to tell your chaps to look out for dead dogs—drowned or buried or burned. If this chap gets to know we're looking for a dog, he isn't likely to be very sentimental. Might be easier in the long run to trace a man who had a dog that disappeared than to do it the hard way."
"I won't forget," Hill said.
"How are things down there?"
"Appleton's having kittens; he's afraid that if there's much more of a scare it might frighten families away from the place for their holidays. His Watch Committee's on his tail, and the local publicity officer seems to think that all will be ruination. The local hotel association is putting on the pressure, too."
"Anything else we can do for you from here?"
"Can't say there is," Hill answered reluctantly. "It can't go on for long, but we've all the men we can use today. If we pick the chap up by tonight, we can pat ourselves on the back."
"Any ideas at all?" Gideon urged.
"There are forty-seven thousand residents in Bournsea and there were an estimated twenty-five thousand holiday-makers on Saturday, and I haven't a clue of any kind," said Hill very deliberately. "No one's come forward, no one's been found to admit seeing the man, the child and the dog. But it's early, not quite five o'clock."
"I'll be at home if you want me," Gideon said.
"Some people have the luck," quipped Hill, and then actually chuckled. "There's one thing, my wife's decided to stay down here for the next week at least."
"Tell her to enjoy herself," Gideon made himself say.
He rang off, spent ten minutes going through all the cases in hand, then left the office and walked through the nearly deserted building down to his car. So far, everything else was quiet; the crop of arrests and warnings given by the divisions was still paying off.
Would it for long?
"I can understand the holiday town's feelings," said Kate when he got home, complaining. "I wouldn't like to be down on the beach with the children young again. It's bad enough wondering if they're going to drown. To feel that you'd have to watch them on the sand and promenade as well—it would spoil the holiday for me, and for any mother, I should think."
"That's what they're afraid of," Gideon said. "Did the Old Man tell you anything about his attitude to the staff problem after I'd left?"
"He didn't say anything in so many words, but he let me know it was all right with him." Kate was sitting comfortably in an easy chair, her feet up on a pouf; it was nearly six o'clock. From the front room came the music of piano and violin; Prudence was a violinist in the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra, and Penelope hoped to become a professional pianist. "I couldn't believe you really had anything to worry about, George. He was quite human, wasn't he?"
"Very."
"She was charming, too," said Kate, and her eyes reminiscently lit up.
That luncheon visit was going to linger in her mind for a long time to come, but Gideon gave it very little thought; his mind was grappling with the main problem, with the need to appoint someone who could stand in for him, with anxiety for word from Bournsea, and with that other more vague anxiety which he could not really name but which was there: that the Yard had reached danger point on the matter of
manpower, and that if there was a crop of major crimes it would be very difficult to cope. He kept telling himself that he might be overanxious, that it was an inverted kind of wishful thinking; but at heart he was sure that he had been anxious about the situation for a much longer time than he had realized; the last few days had simply brought it out.
If Hill could finish down in Bournsea in a day or two, it would help.
Gideon had a bad moment, then. His main thought was for Hill and the investigation and its effect on the Yard generally, not for the murdered child's mother or for the general anxiety that so many others felt. This was a factor he hardly realized existed: the domination of the importance of the job as a job, the organization for its own sake, over the human factors. Once human understanding and sympathy were blunted, one stopped being a good policeman.
Another George, George Arthur Smith, was on the crowded beach at Bournsea, without his dog; the dog was behind the small corner shop where he lived with his widowed mother, a very frail old lady who just managed to keep shop and home going. He was not thinking of his mother or the dog as he saw the policemen in uniform and the big men in plain clothes going from person to person, threading their way over buckets and spades, past deck chairs, sand castles, little rivers of water running down to the sea, past beach huts, bathing attendants, the whole colorful variety of the seaside.
George Arthur Smith was rather a small man, very tanned because he spent a great deal of his time on the beach. He saw the crowd at the approach to the woodland, but did not go near it. He saw a big, ugly man approaching him, and felt a tremor of anxiety, but it did not go very deep.
"Sorry to bother you, sir," the man greeted. "I'm from the police. Are you a local resident?"
"Yes," answered Smith.
"Were you on the beach yesterday, about half past four onward?"
"No," said Smith. "I was here a little earlier than that, but not at half past four."
