Gideon's staff

by J. J Marric

  He did not look round to see his mother in the shop doorway.

  He turned the corner and saw Grace opening the gate that led to the bungalow.

  His mother saw him turn the corner.

  She closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands and stood there for several seconds. Then she turned round. The telephone was in a corner, a black, shiny, futuristic beetle. She went to it slowly, and her footsteps seemed to drag. She touched it. There were tears in her eyes and trickling down her cheeks, and she hated doing what she knew she must do.

  She said, as if praying: "If it isn't Georgie, it won't hurt him, and if it is . . ."

  "It can't be my Georgie!"

  She clutched the telephone, lifted it, and then with a misshapen forefinger began to dial 999. She did not know what she would say to the police, but she had to tell them about the dog and about her fear.

  They would only put Georgie away for a few years, whatever he had done.

  She must not take the chance that he might have time to harm another child.

  That was when she realized that she was positive of the truth about her son.

  Grace knew that the back door of the bungalow was always unlocked, so that she could go in and get a drink or help herself to some biscuits and a slice of cake. She was swinging her arms and her shoulders, rather more bored than usual because she was alone. The children who usually walked home with her had been kept late. It had been fun coming home at first, and she had been warned and had solemnly observed her curb drill, but it was dull now.

  She went into the kitchen, drank some milk, spilled a little and wiped it up, then went into her small bedroom, where she kept her dolls; whenever she was lonely, she went to her dolls. She picked up a black pickaninny, with a big, shiny face and eyes which opened and closed, and a small, battered rag doll. She began to talk to both, gradually warming up to a kind of enthusiasm.

  She heard a sound, looked round, and saw the man from the corner shop looking at her. She did not notice the strange gleam in his eyes, but did see that his hand was held out toward her, and that there were sweets in it.

  "I haven't got any money," she announced.

  "That—that doesn't matter."

  "Oo!" Her eyes lit up, she sprang toward him, and then remembered that he had corrected her yesterday, and hurriedly she said: "Thank you very much, please." She took a toffee, felt his hand, and then felt him touch her hair. People often smoothed down her hair, and called her "Goldilocks."

  The man's hand was pressing heavily on the back of her head, and he was drawing her to him. She looked at him, not really afraid, but puzzled.

  "I'm going to take you for a long bus ride," he said thickly. "I'm going to take you—"

  This was a dream come true! A dream, a golden dream, everything he wanted, everything—

  A shadow darkened the doorway of the room, and a big man entered. Behind him was another man, almost as massive. Smith jumped away from the girl child and backed into a corner, while terror was born in his eyes.

  "I just came for a weekly order," he gabbled, "I came for the weekly order that's all, I'm the grocer, I came for the weekly order!"

  "We'll have a talk about it, shall we?" asked the first big man. "I'm Detective Sergeant Whaley, of the Criminal Investigation Department." Whaley smiled at the child, and then the neighbor came, hurrying because she had been summoned without being told why.

  "Is she all right?"

  "She's perfectly all right," the C.I.D. man assured her. "She won't even know what it's all about. Take her away now, will you? There's no need for her to see us take this man off."

  "I came to collect the order," gabbled Smith. "I forgot Mrs. Harrison would be out, I just forgot, all I came for was the order."

  "What order did you go to the beach for on Saturday?" Whaley asked in a hard voice.

  "When it did break, everything broke at once," Hill said to Gideon on the telephone. "But Riddell's idea was the one that really did the trick. We got onto this Harrison child through her school, like we did fifty or sixty others, but then things began to tie up. There'd been a change of postmen on this route, and we had a word with the chap who was on it last week; he described that dog to a T. It was Smith's. Several neighbors said they hadn't seen the dog since Saturday, once we asked them the specific question. It added up even better when we found out that Smith often goes to the beach, and spends a lot of time there, and is always giving sweets to children. We knew we had him all right," went on Hill, for once very nearly garrulous, "but it was nearly one of those jobs that other people solve for us. Smith's mother had suspicions; she was actually calling us when Smith was being taken away from the bungalow. No more harm done, thank God, and that's lifted the shadow off Bournsea."

  "Couldn't be better news," said Gideon. "How about spending a few days down there tidying the job up? That's if your wife won't mind."

  Hill chuckled.

  "And keep Riddell there for a day or so, but send the other chaps back," Gideon said. "Thanks, Hippo."

  "Okay, Gee-Gee," Hill said. "It's a load off my mind all right."

  Gideon put the receiver down, pushed his chair back, and went across to the window. It could hardly be a more pleasant scene, for the sun was rippling on the smooth water of the Thames, gaily covered river boats were sailing in each direction, even the London County Hall looked more beautiful. Just out of sight were the Houses of Parliament, with the Home Secretary's Office. . . . After a few minutes he sighed, scratched his head, and returned to the desk, where dozens of letters waited for signing.

  "If you ask me, Miss Sharp could run this office as well as any A.C.," Gideon said, and then grinned. "Better not tell Rogerson that!"

  He sat down and began to sign.

  Mrs. Mountbaron, of whom Gideon had read several times in the national press, for she was wealthy enough to be news, had last been in the newspapers when the baby had been born. She lived in a modest nine-room apartment in a big new building overlooking Park Lane and Hyde Park. Only three hundred yards away was the small apartment, looking over the same green pleasance, where Ryman lived.

  She had never heard of Ryman.

  She was looking at her only child, who was sitting in a low chair which could be wheeled across the room, beating the tray in front of her with pudgy hands, eyes gleaming and cheeks aglow. If anything, Clarissa was too fat, but the doctors and the experts ridiculed any such suggestion, saying that once she began to crawl and walk the puppy fat would melt away. Certainly she could not look healthier and happier.

  It was a long, gracious room, with a wide window and a small balcony. The nanny was on the balcony, collecting some baby clothes which had been spread out in the sun; she came in while pressing a woolen coatee against her cheeks.

  "They're so dry they'll hardly need airing, but I'd better put them in the cupboard, I suppose. Will you be all right with her for ten minutes, ma'am?"

  "I think I can manage," Mrs. Mountbaron said dryly.

  It seemed a shame to pick the child up and perhaps disrupt this spell of bliss. In two minutes or in ten Clarissa would get a little fractious, and she would want to pick her up, while Nanny would fight to prevent her; Nanny was undoubtedly right, but it seemed a pity that a child couldn't do exactly what it felt like doing for the first year or so of its life.

  The mother leaned back on a couch, her legs up, a dark-haired, most attractive, olive-skinned woman. Close to her side was a small table, and on this a photograph of her husband, with her and the child; the perfect family group. Mrs. Mountbaron did not consciously think this as she glanced at the photograph, but she was basking in a kind of happiness which had seemed dreamlike years ago. Two years married, and hardly a ripple had marred contentment.

  She almost purred.

  Clarissa suddenly gave a sharp, urgent cry, for no reason at all except that this mood of bliss was passing.

  "Nanny says you must learn to stay put even when you don't want to," the mother said, and didn't sti
r. "Let's see how long I can let you."

  Five minutes later, when Clarissa was red in the face with crying, she could stand it no longer, and jumped up from the couch, bent down, and lifted her child. She had crossed to her as tears were streaming down her face, but Clarissa was quiet now that she was cradled in eager arms. The mother took her to the window to have a look at the park, pointed with one hand, and said:

  "You see the trees down there, and that patch of grass, my precious? That's where Nanny will take you again in the morning, and I'll wave to you."

  Nanny came in.

  "Really, Mrs. Mountbaron," she protested, "you'll never teach Clarissa to have self-control if you insist on picking her up the moment she cries. I would be doing less than my duty if I didn't keep reminding you."

  "You do your duty wonderfully," Mrs. Mountbaron said. "Why don't you go and get her bath ready? I'll bring her in ten minutes."

  The nanny gave up trying to look severe.

  "Now over there," said Mrs. Mountbaron to the heedless child, "is Buckingham Palace, where the Queen and Prince Philip live, with Princess Margaret and the Duke of Cornwall, sometimes known as Prince Charles. You can't see the palace from here, silly. Up there is Marble Arch. . . ."

  Chapter 15

  THURSDAY

  "I don't see how anything can go wrong," Keith Ryman said. "We've got it all laid on, Rabbie, with a minimum of people involved. Just you and me, Archy, Si Mitchell and Helen. I've been over every little point a dozen times, and I don't see what can go wrong. Do you?"

  "Looks okay to me," Rab agreed, "except—"

  He broke off.

  "Now's the time to say if you've got doubts or if you can see any weakness," Ryman said very sharply. "It's Wednesday, and we go into action tomorrow, copping the cops. We take the Mountbaron kid first, half past ten in the morning. You distract the nurse's attention in Hadden Street, got that clear? I'll take the kid, Archy will be at the wheel, and Helen will be waiting down at the cottage to look after things. It'll go like clock work. Any complaint about that?"

  "There's always a chance that someone will be passing, but it should be okay," Stone conceded. His shiny face and polished hair made his head look rather smaller than it was, and although he smiled, he could not remove the uncertainty from his eyes.

  "Then what's the worry?"

  "It's doing the four jobs in a row."

  "That's the very idea; what's got into you?"

  "It isn't anything in particular," Stone said hesitantly, "it's just—"

  "You don't like the idea of killing Maybell. That it?" Ryman was hard-voiced.

  "I don't give a damn about rubbing him out if it will do any good, but—"

  "You've been in on this from the beginning," Ryman said. "There isn't an angle we haven't discussed. It's too late to start making objections now, and don't forget it. You don't seem to have it straight. I'll be waiting for Maybell when he turns the corner of his street at ten-fifteen tonight. He's doing a two-till-ten turn. It'll be dark where I'll be. I'll just let him have it. And Charlie Daw will be doing a job close by at the identical time; that's laid on, isn't it?"

  "Yes, that's okay."

  "And you'll go to Archer's house at the same time—as it's five miles away, that's no problem. He'll answer the door himself, and you'll give it to him before he can ask who you are. Thursday's the right night; he's always on his own—his fiancée spends Thursdays home with her mother. What can go wrong with that?"

  "Nothing, I suppose."

  "Worried about the holdup?" Ryman demanded. "We'll have that van away from the city and over the river in ten minutes, and we'll have it unloaded and dumped ten minutes after that. We know just where to plant the money; we've got five different places ready. The police will be so busy with the Mountbaron kid and the two copper killings that we'll catch them right on the wrong foot. We've checked every point and every detail; we even know how it will go minute by minute. Let's hear your argument against it, Rab, and if it isn't pretty good, forget it."

  Stone shrugged.

  "Well, let's have it, don't stand there like a goon."

  "It's just—" Stone waved his hands helplessly. "It's just that we seem to be tempting fate, Keith. We want four different jobs to go right. I could go all the way if it was one or even two, but the chance of something going wrong in four different jobs is four times greater than it is in one. That's logical, isn't it?"

  "It's logical," agreed Ryman. "It's true, too. But four times none are none, aren't they?"

  Stone said, "I suppose you're right."

  "What is it?" Ryman demanded in a cold voice. "Want to cry off?"

  "That's the last thing I'd do. The snatch and the van job, they're fine, but the police jobs—"

  "You don't get the point," said Ryman. "It seems to me that you never have got the point. It's the police and the child jobs that get them by the short hairs. Look what's happened in these past ten days. They cut down on everything else and concentrated on Micky the Slob. Why was that? Micky's a small-time crook, isn't he? He was never really dangerous. Usually they'd put him on the list and wait for him. They detailed one man—one man, Rab—to look after him, that's how important it was to them; then he killed that police sergeant, and they put hundreds of men on the job. They neglected everything else and concentrated on Micky the Slob. You know it as well as I do. The police can't be in two places at the same time, so all the little crooks came out and did what they wanted for a day or so. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but the principle's right. You take it from me, with three major jobs all in different parts of London, the rest of the city will look like Trafalgar Square early on a Sunday morning as far as the police are concerned. Even big-mouth Gideon will be out on the search. They'll just keep a skeleton staff for routine, and they won't have any idea about the bank-van job. Got that? They wouldn't have in any case—but on Friday they won't even have time to remember that there are such things as holdups."

  Ryman paused.

  Then he asked, "How about it, Rab? Convinced? Or will you drop out and let me get someone else?"

  "I'm with you," Rab Stone said. "I'm just a bit nervy, that's all. It's a damned big conception, Keith; it's difficult for me to grasp it."

  "You'll grasp it when the cash comes," Ryman assured him.

  Gideon was walking about the A.C.'s office, one hand in his pocket, the other grasping his empty pipe and waving in the air or stabbing to emphasize a point. Miss Sharp sat silent, and her pencil moved with the rapidity of the quickest male stenographers at the Yard.

  ". . . another aspect of this situation, emphasizing its gravity, is the consequence of a mass-scale search. Take, for instance, the facts relating to the concentration of forces on the docks in the NE Division only last week. Men were drafted in from all neighboring divisions and from the Central Office. The Central Division and neighboring divisions were denuded of staff. Normally they work at about 65 per cent of full complement, but when a large number of men was temporarily transferred to special duty, the actual complement on normal duty was lowered to 50 per cent or less.

  "Paragraph.

  "The rest of the men were concentrating on the docks.

  "Moreover, 70 per cent of the River Division's craft and operative men were also concentrated on the docks.

  "The immediate result appeared to be satisfactory; the wanted man was apprehended, without serious damage to the ship on which he had taken refuge, no one was injured, and the necessary arrests were made. However, much damage and possibly serious injury would have been done but for the voluntary information lodged by the woman Rose Lemman.

  "Paragraph.

  "Before the situation in the divisions concerned was restored to normal, that is to 65 per cent of full complement, the incidence of crime in the affected divisions increased by 49 per cent over normal. Many forms of indictable crime showed a sharp increase during that period only. Housebreaking, pilfering from other sections of the docks, shoplifting, dipping—"

  Mis
s Sharp looked up.

  "Dipping?"

  "Pickpocketing," said Gideon, and hesitated. "No, that's not right. Dipping. Picking of pockets." He scowled. "Cut out dipping, and put it this way: Shoplifting, bag snatching and similar crimes increased in such a way due entirely to the fact that it was impossible to cope with the emergency requirement for a large force of officers in one place, and to control the rest of the divisions properly. Most members of the criminal fraternity are very quick witted, and don't miss many chances.

  "A similar phenomenon—" Gideon paused, considered Miss Sharp's bowed graying head, and then went on: "Yes, that's right, a similar phenomenon was evident at Bournsea during the weekend in which a concentration of officers was required. Housebreaking and burglary increased by 41 per cent over the average for the previous weekend, and 38 per cent over the number for the corresponding weekend in each of the previous three years. There are indications that some of the Bournsea crimes were committed by London Criminals who realized what would happen, and made a special trip to Bournsea.

  "These and other indications make it, in my view, beyond all doubt that while the staffing of the C.I.D.—spell that out—and the uniformed branches remains at its present unsatisfactory level, very grave consequences may follow whenever a large concentration of men is required. A survey of the concentrations so needed in the Metropolitan Police area alone in the past twelve months has been—

  "I'll fill in that figure later," Gideon decided, after a moment's pause, and then looked at his watch; it was five minutes to eleven. "We deserve a break after that lot, Miss Sharp. I've never dictated so much in my life!" He paused again. "Do you have any difficulty in taking it down?"

  "No more than usual," said Miss Sharp politely. "Would you like tea or coffee this morning?"

  "Tea," answered Gideon, and grinned at her departing back.

  After tea he went into his own office and found Bell on one telephone, Culverson on a second, a third ringing, a chief inspector waiting for Bell, a pile of papers six inches high on Bell's desk, awaiting attention, and indications that Bell was finding the pressure too hard. Culverson had a harassed look, too.