Look Three Ways At Murder

by John Creasey

  Copyright & Information

  Look Three Ways At Murder

  First published in 1964

  © John Creasey Literary Management Ltd.; House of Stratus 1964-2014

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Creasey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  ISBN EAN Edition

  0755135954 9780755135950 Print

  0755139291 9780755139293 Kindle

  0755137620 9780755137626 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Creasey – Master Storyteller - was born in Surrey, England in 1908 into a poor family in which there were nine children, John Creasey grew up to be a true master story teller and international sensation. His more than 600 crime, mystery and thriller titles have now sold 80 million copies in 25 languages. These include many popular series such as Gideon of Scotland Yard, The Toff, Dr Palfrey and The Baron.

  Creasey wrote under many pseudonyms, explaining that booksellers had complained he totally dominated the 'C' section in stores. They included:

  Gordon Ashe, M E Cooke, Norman Deane, Robert Caine Frazer, Patrick Gill, Michael Halliday, Charles Hogarth, Brian Hope, Colin Hughes, Kyle Hunt, Abel Mann, Peter Manton, J J Marric, Richard Martin, Rodney Mattheson, Anthony Morton and Jeremy York.

  Never one to sit still, Creasey had a strong social conscience, and stood for Parliament several times, along with founding the One Party Alliance which promoted the idea of government by a coalition of the best minds from across the political spectrum.

  He also founded the British Crime Writers' Association, which to this day celebrates outstanding crime writing. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed upon him the Edgar Award for best novel and then in 1969 the ultimate Grand Master Award. John Creasey's stories are as compelling today as ever.

  Chapter One

  The First Look

  For Paul Bennison, it was a normal morning.

  A normal morning, for him, was very good. He was a contentedly married man, with three children – a girl aged seventeen, and sons aged twelve and eight. His wife was equally happy. They were not a particularly demonstrative couple, but had a oneness, an identity of outlook on life, which helped them to see many things in much the same way.

  If a joke was funny to Paul, it was likely to amuse Isobel. If some incident seemed tragic or sad or beastly to one, it was likely to seem much the same to the other. They were not alike in taste, Paul liking the symphonies, Isobel preferring light orchestral music; Paul would bury himself in books which attempted to be serious, Isobel, when she read at all, preferred the romantic novel. In films and plays their tastes differed, too, but they shared antipathy to farce, Shaw and Anouilh.

  It was a normal morning, even to the moment of waking. Paul practically always woke first. Today he was aware of the daylight, the sound of birds in the London suburban street, footsteps of the early-to-workers, the distant hum of cars. Soon he was aware of blurred vision, and realised that it was Isobel’s fair, fluffy hair between him and the window. She had slept without a sleeping net, and would have to battle with her hair much more than usual this morning.

  He smiled, snug in the warmth which seemed to glow from their naked bodies.

  There was only one reason for Isobel dropping off to sleep without a hairnet; one reason equally precious to them both. In their eighteen years together, that essential oneness had always revealed itself in moments like last night’s. No words, no preparation, until the moment of desire and decision; probably no thought until a few minutes before.

  Soon, exhaustion.

  Later, the kind of after-glow which curved Paul’s lips and made Isobel’s hair fluffy against the window. He resisted the temptation to turn round and cuddle her, lay on his back until he was fully awake, then heard the clock downstairs strike.

  “… five, six, seven.”

  “Just about right,” he murmured, and permitted himself a few more minutes of warmth and comfort, before pushing the bedclothes back carefully. There was no need to wake Isobel yet. He could wash and shave and call the kids. These nearing middle-age days, when he was uneasily conscious of his waistline and the fact that he was at least twenty pounds overweight, he had only toast and coffee for breakfast, so it didn’t matter whether Isobel was up to get it or not. She would want to be up in time to cook the children’s breakfast.

  Dressing-gown on, he closed the door softly, and went along to Rose’s room. She was asleep. But whispering came from the room shared by the two boys, black-haired Paul the Second, fair-haired Michael. Paul Bennison senior opened the door and looked in, to find Michael on his back in bed, wearing only his pyjama trousers, Paul sitting by the window, telling a story. It was difficult to be sure who enjoyed it most – the teller of the tale or the listener.

  “Ten minutes, chaps,” Paul said.

  “Okay, Dad,” That was Michael.

  “Okay,” Paul said.

  Yes, it was a normal morning, with no sense of impending disaster …

  “You should have called me earlier,” Isobel protested, sitting up when he went in with the tea. The sheet slipped from her shoulder and uncovered her breast, and at the same time Michael called: “Can I come in, Mum?”

  “Get washed first,” Isobel called.

  “I am washed.”

  The sheet was soon safely in position.

  Breakfast was normal, too. Paul ate while sitting in the window seat and looking out on to a pleasant rather narrow stretch of lawn, with a herbaceous border on one side, against the fence with the Pendletons, next door on the right. There had been very little rain this summer, but there was vivid colour from antirrhinum, aster, daisy and marigold, and the dahlias were beginning to open, although they were not likely to be big blooms this year.

  As Paul ate his toast, Isobel cooked the children’s breakfast, hair still a little untidy, and legs bare – which meant that she hadn’t stayed long enough to pull on a belt. She could do without a belt quite well. Her figure was a little thicker but not so very different from the days when they had first met; Paul doubted whether she would ever get what she most dreaded – middle-aged spread. Yet her dieting was spasmodic. Her legs were full, with firm, strong-looking calves, tapering away to nice ankles. Her feet poked into heel-less rope slippers bought last year when they had taken the first family holiday abroad; on the Costa Brava.

  Paul thought, as he had a hundred times about that holiday: And everybody told me it would be cheap!

  He smiled to himself; it had been worth it.

  The rush of the children to see him off as he started out for the station was normal. So was Isobel, appearing at the last moment, waving. He thought how fresh she looked this mo
rning; it was hard to believe that she had a daughter of Rose’s age.

  He met the usual neighbours on the way to the station.

  He caught the usual train.

  It was a Friday; pay-day; the day when he would make up the salaries of the thirty-one members of the staff who were paid weekly. He would draw the usual five hundred pounds, and that would leave enough petty cash for the rest of the week. He had collected five hundred pounds on a Friday so often and without the slightest trouble, that he gave it very little thought.

  Five hundred pounds, these days, wasn’t a sum large enough to attract the wage snatchers; they went in for the really big money. He had only a hundred yards to walk from the office, a hundred yards crowded with people. It did not really occur to him that there was danger, although after every big wages snatch, Isobel would worry and ask him if he took the proper precautions. Kent, the ageing office manager, would fuss a little and have one man go ahead of him and one man follow, to reduce the risks to an absolute minimum.

  Bennison was lucky to get a seat on the train.

  The office was only fifteen minutes’ walk from Waterloo Station – a brisk walk over the new Waterloo Bridge, which gave the best panoramic view of any of the London bridges, whenever he thought to look, or whenever he took visiting relatives on a quick tour.

  It was a calm, slightly misty, sunny morning; not yet too warm even for August. The river was almost like glass. No craft yet stirred on it. The big office building on the south bank near the Festival Hall was almost finished – in fact some of the offices were occupied; nothing really went on for ever, not even building.

  His office was on the fringe of Covent Garden. It was in a little block of old buildings, really three houses knocked into one. The company, Revel & Son, made all kinds of cartons and packing-cases, containers and wrapping. For years there had been talk of building a small factory somewhere out of London, but the Covent Garden property was freehold, and the problem of delivery very simple from here. Much of their business was in urgent, special orders – there was no real mass production in anything they did.

  Paul Bennison preferred being here, and hoped that the factory would never be more than a dream in old Revel’s mind.

  Kent, very grey, short, thick-set, with wispy eyebrows and a continually harassed manner, was already in his office. The office staff worked on the top floor, and could overlook part of the market.

  “Good morning, Paul.”

  “Hallo, George.”

  “I’m a bit worried this morning,” Kent said.

  “What’s on your mind?” Bennison unlocked his desk, and went to the safe in the corner where all the wages books were kept. Little dockets, envelopes, everything was ready. On the outside of each envelope was the amount that had to be put inside. It also showed deductions for P.A.Y.E. tax, health insurance, voluntary deductions for charities, deductions for those who were in the company’s pension scheme. The real work was always done on Thursday.

  Bennison took out the wages book and the box of dockets.

  “Harry Myers won’t be in,” Kent announced.

  “We’ll manage,” said Bennison. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “His wife says he’s got a bit of a temperature, and she thinks he ought to stay in bed during the week-end,” replied Kent. “I know we can manage, but I don’t like you going to the bank with only one escort.”

  Bennison looked at him, and checked a laugh; it wasn’t a laughing matter for George Kent, who was an old fusspot – but as nice a chap as one could hope to find behind a managerial desk.

  Bennison himself, tall, still nearly as dark as his younger son but with a few flecks of grey showing, was as distinguished-looking, even handsome, as Kent was ordinary.

  “We haven’t had any trouble in ten years,” he remarked. “I don’t see why we should start this morning. Charley can come along behind, as usual.”

  “I would come myself, but Mr Revel will be in sometime during the morning, and you know what he’s like if I’m not here.”

  “You worry too much,” Bennison said lightly.

  He did not worry at all; he did not give a serious thought to the possibility of trouble.

  Charley was the messenger and odd-job man, an old merchant seaman with a good record, in his sixties, not so physically powerful as he had once been, but alert, conscientious and absolutely loyal. As he and Bennison started to go through the offices, just after ten o’clock, he was behind Bennison. He whispered: “Proper old worry-guts, Mr Kent is.”

  “He’ll never change now,” said Bennison.

  He went ahead; Charley followed, three or four yards behind. Charley wore a bowler hat and a light grey suit, Bennison wore his usual lightweight grey; he got very hot in ordinary weight clothes.

  Everything was normal. Market vans and lorries were moving along the narrow street; at one end big piles of wooden crates laden with fruit and vegetables were stacked up, waiting for collection. The faintly sickly smell of stale vegetables was wafted towards them on a light wind. A man pushed a barrow laden to over-flowing with bright yellow oranges marked Outspan. Another followed, with boxes of apples marked: Australian Granny Smiths. A small van had some boxes of bananas: West Indies Produce, ran the legend.

  Bennison thought then as he so often did, of the curious kind of romance of the market, the ironical fact that the rough, tough, hoarse, coarse, powerful men who worked in it were virtually rubbing shoulders with people all over the world, dark-skinned, light-skinned, men and women, some working for a good wage, some for just enough to stay alive. Although he had a reasonable knowledge of the economics of the trade, he always marvelled that fruit could come so far and keep so well and be so cheap – although its cheapness was a thing about which Isobel disagreed.

  He smiled at the thought of Isobel.

  He saw the two men standing by the side of a partly loaded van – with some onions threatening to break a sack of red string, boxed cabbages, some sacks of potatoes. He did not pay any particular attention to them as he turned into the bank.

  He went to his usual cashier, whom he had known for ten years – and yet did not really know.

  “Good morning.”

  “Everything as usual, Mr Bennison?”

  “No major changes.”

  “I won’t keep you long.”

  He kept Bennison for seven minutes, during which time Charley lounged on one side, near the door. If there was a tense moment, it was when Bennison walked out with the five hundred pounds in the old leather bag, with the one pound notes, the ten shilling notes, the silver and the copper. The bag was quite heavy. He had it chained to his wrist – virtually, he was handcuffed to it; not that he ever admitted thinking that there might be the slightest need to take such a precaution.

  He nodded to Charley.

  He went outside.

  He noticed that the van with the two men was still pulled into the kerb. Had they tyre trouble or engine trouble? Or were they waiting for more goods? Bennison thought of that idly, as he drew level with the van, and the first thing which scared him was a low whistle which came from one of the men.

  Then, Charley shouted: “Mr Ben—look out! Look—”

  Bennison half turned. A man, just behind him, was bringing something down – a weapon, something which in that split second looked like an iron bar. Bennison kicked out, but before he felt his foot land anywhere, a blow smashed on his head, and his skull seemed to split.

  Behind him, Charley made a desperate effort to catch up, but a man closed in on him from a doorway. Charley saw the man’s face, recognised it, saw a momentary spasm of alarm in the man’s eyes. Then he caught a glimpse of the knife in the other’s hand. Before he could cry out, he felt a strange, frightening, white-hot pain in his chest.

  Chapter Two

  The Second Look

>   The two men who had been standing by the side of the half empty van moved with calculated speed, knowing exactly what they had to do. They glanced fleetingly at their accomplice who had been standing in a doorway and was now attacking the guard. Luck was on their side, for only a few people were really close to the scene, and in that instant no one seemed to have any idea what was happening.

  Win Marriott, the man wielding the iron bar, smashed it down on the head of the man with the money as matter-of-factly as he would use a hammer on a nail. He saw the terror in the man’s grey eyes, saw them roll as unconsciousness came. Before the man fell, Marriott bent down and grabbed his legs. Mo Dorris caught the victim’s shoulders at the same time. They had rehearsed this a dozen times, and timed it to perfection. Blood was already spattering Dorris, but it did not make him stop. They held the victim, Bennison, between them, swung him twice, and pitched him over the top of the crates of fruit and vegetables. They let him go. He crashed against the floor of the van, which had been left empty in the middle. At the same moment the engine roared, and the fourth member of the gang started to drive off. The two attackers swung on to the tail board and over. By that time a man was shouting: “Thief! Stop thief!”

  A woman’s screams were like a wail.

  “Pol-leeece,” she cried. “Pol-leeece!”

  A youth who looked as if he had been a Teddy Boy too long, with black shiny, oily hair and narrow trousers, made a flying leap for the truck, clutched the tail-board for a moment, and began to climb over.

  Marriott smashed the iron bar on to his knuckles and he dropped off, gasping.

  A man pushing a barrow of oranges, those which Bennison had seen, swung round, realised what was happening, saw the glitter in the eyes of the van driver – and pushed his cart, oranges and all, in its path. The driver wrenched his wheel. The offside wing caught the handle of the truck, and sent it careering to one side, boxes of oranges falling off, bursting the frail wood which held them in, the fruit rolling all over the road, some squashed by the wheels of the van and squirting rich juice. The man who had pushed the truck trod on one and skidded helplessly.