Look Three Ways At Murder

by John Creasey

  “I wonder,” said Roger.

  They did not talk much more, and soon dropped off to sleep, Roger’s last thought being of his absurd feeling that Isobel Bennison had been Janet. That had faded when he woke next morning, late enough to be in a hurry.

  He reached the office before nine o’clock, hoping that there would be news, and found Cope on the telephone, talking eagerly, his eyes lighting up when Roger went in. Cope cocked a thumb. Roger said: “Have we got ’em?” and felt like snatching the receiver away from his assistant.

  “… yes, he’s here right now. I’ll tell him.” Cope banged down the receiver, pushed his chair back and bumped his head against the wall, but took no notice of it. “Handsome, they’ve got Dorris’s and Marriott’s bodies ! They were found in the Thames near Greenwich an hour ago. It looks as if …”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Plot

  Simister looked up from the grisly objects on the bench, adjusted his glasses, and wrinkled his nose. It was in the middle of the afternoon.

  “There is no sign of injury or any bruising, no sign at all that they were held under water. The water in the lungs is identical in all respects to the water from that stretch of the Thames – I’ve had the analysis checked and double-checked. There is a little oil, a little faeces as usual from the ships, a few specks of sawdust, some …”

  “It looks to me as if they fixed up a passage on one of the ships, probably the Glambia, and couldn’t make it,” Cope said later. “Too greedy – if they hadn’t clipped that gold inside their clothes they might have got ashore. The boat was picked up at low tide. It was an old leaky dinghy which was stolen from Hill’s Wharf. There was a hole in it, which could be plugged with cork.”

  “Any hope of getting hold of that cork?” asked Roger.

  “Shouldn’t think so,” Cope said.

  Roger was scraping the surface of one of the “gold” belts, with his pen-knife, and as he spoke, the bright shimmer of gold showed through the dull grey of lead. Cope jumped up.

  “That’s phoney!” he exclaimed. “Lead with a thin layer of gold. See that?”

  “I see it,” Roger said grimly. “It’s an old, popular racket—lascars get caught by it time and time again. The question is, did Dorris and Marriott know it was lead?”

  “Or were they sold a pup? If so, who did it?”

  “One more thing to find out,” Roger reasoned. “We’d better try to trace where these came from.”

  He knew that the task would be nearly impossible, but it had to be attempted.

  The Press splashed the news next morning, taking it for granted that Dorris and Marriott had died while trying to escape from the police net.

  The inquest verdict was “Accidental Death”.

  No one else seemed to have the slightest suspicion of foul play, and Roger kept his own suspicion to himself.

  Campbell, now back to the normal place of second-in-command, for the Commander was home from his holiday, still served as liaison between the executive and the administrative branches. After Roger had got back from the inquest, he came breezing into the office, a tall, rangy, fair-haired man who moved rather as if he were double-jointed.

  “The Old Man’s a bit sour,” he reported. “Especially as he’s going off for three weeks to Italy—he wanted a clear mind for his holiday. The Home Secretary’s got to go to Geneva too. The pressure’s off, Handsome.”

  Roger didn’t speak.

  “Any line on the two men who are still missing?” inquired Campbell.

  “No,” Roger said.

  Until he found them, he would not have a moment’s real peace – and although one pressure was eased, others were tight about him. Bennison had regained consciousness on the day that the bodies had been taken out of the Thames, but had not recognised his wife, and had not spoken an intelligible word. He lay there, looking vacant, almost as if he could not see. Then he relapsed into unconsciousness.

  The one real cause for relief was that young Paul seemed to be much nearer normal. He was often at Bell Street, and occasionally Roger’s boys went over to Wimbledon with him. There had been at least two family tea parties during the week, when Roger couldn’t be present.

  “I think the truth is that Isobel is refusing to admit the possibility of the worst happening,” Janet reported. “She’s closing her mind to it.”

  “Could be.” Roger was non-committal.

  “You’re still worried about the case, aren’t you?” Janet said, and when he didn’t answer, she went on quietly but with obvious certainty that she was right: “You haven’t been yourself since it happened, darling. You’ve taken it too much to heart. You ought to know by now that when Isobel asked you why you let it happen, she didn’t mean it. Not personally. She was distraught.”

  “I know,” Roger said. He thought: Haven’t I been myself? What was the difference, that Janet should notice it?

  “What really is worrying you?” Janet asked.

  He said, slowly, heavily, deliberately clouding the issue:

  “Two out of four of that gang are still at large. They might strike again. I suppose I’ll be a bit preoccupied until they’re caught.”

  “That is all, isn’t it?” asked Janet.

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

  “There isn’t anything else worrying you, at the Yard? No other case—?”

  He made himself laugh, made himself throw his arms round her, and hug her until she protested, breathlessly; and he made himself kiss her full on the lips.

  The almost unbelievable, unbearable thing was that he had to make himself.

  Afterwards, he thought: “I’ve got to get those two men. I won’t get this job out of my system until I have.” He studied all the reports on the case again, closely, and always came back to one question: why had Charley Blake been murdered with that one, swift, merciless stab?

  Blake had been a sailor; Dorris had been a docker. Was there any significance in that?

  So far, he could see none.

  Two weeks after the murders of Dorris and Marriott, Steve Stevens and Alec Gool met, as if by chance, at Stamford Bridge. The football season was now two weeks old. Chelsea had won two games in dazzling fashion, home and away, and lost another by a display of such ineptitude that the crowds on the terraces were tonight prepared to jeer. Steve had bought the tickets. They sat together in a corner of the main stand, with empty seats all around them. It was a golden evening, the sun shone out of a cloudless sky, the temperature was in the seventies, crowd as well as players were sweating. The blue jerseys and the red jerseys and the light ball made gay swift-moving patterns on grass unbelievably green after a few days of rain.

  “Nothing’s happened for this long, and nothing’s likely to,” Alec Gool said. “No reason why we shouldn’t be seen around together now, Steve.”

  “Maybe not,” said Steve. He watched the Chelsea outside right push the ball past the prancing back and dart after it. “But we’d better keep to ourselves for a bit longer.”

  “Steve,” said Alec Gool. “What’s the real reason?”

  The outside left ballooned the ball over the bar.

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s the real reason?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You have plenty of time to hang around the Hornpipe, but I’m not supposed to be there at the same time. I like that pub. I always have.”

  “One of these days you can go back there,” said Steve. He turned to look at the youth, his eyes very hard and very narrow. “Don’t start work on anything that isn’t your business, son.”

  “My business is making sure we don’t run into trouble,” Alec retorted, “and I’m going to do it. You shouldn’t spend so much time with that widow.”

  “Alec—” Steve’s
right hand fastened on the other’s knee and he gripped tightly, increasing the pressure, knowing he was causing a lot of pain. Gool took no notice, and watched the field as the ball swept towards the other end. “I’m warning you.”

  “Steve,” said Gool softly. “Maybe you’ve forgotten that you might talk in your sleep.” The pressure relaxed. “And Joyce Conway’s got a conscience – don’t make any mistake about that. She’s got what they call a social conscience. She’s the kind who always believes in telling the truth no matter how much it hurts you. Isn’t she, Steve?”

  “So,” Steve said.

  “If she ever found out—”

  “She won’t.”

  “Don’t you ever talk in your sleep?”

  “Alec,” Steve said, glancing round and making sure that no one could possibly be within earshot, “you can start thinking about other things. Take your choice, but don’t get under my skin while you’re doing it. That could get you into a lot of trouble. And remember this: one of these days one of the people who saw you driving that lorry or saw me at Covent Garden is going to see us again. It’s bound to happen.” When Alec made no comment, just watched the weaving figures on the field, hearing the occasional roar or shout of advice and the thwacking sound of boot on ball, Steve went on: “London’s no place for us now.”

  “Then where is?”

  “I could name a hundred places, but not London—not for a long time.”

  “If you’re going to run away, why haven’t you -?”

  “Alec,” said the older man, “I didn’t cut and run for one good reason. Money. It’s no use running when you’re broke. New York or Buenos Aires, Sydney or Cape Town, Paris or Moscow—you need money in them all. Plenty of money. But we couldn’t pull off another job while the police were still looking for us. We know there were good descriptions of the other two—we don’t know there aren’t any descriptions of us.”

  He stopped.

  “Now you’re making sense,” Alec Gool said. His eyes were much brighter, although he shaded them with his hand against the bright sunlight on the green. “I thought—”

  “You thought that I was staying in London because of my lady friend. That isn’t the first mistake you’ve made, and you’ll make a lot more. I stayed because it was the safest place. Once we run we are likely to be noticed. While if I lead a normal life people will take less notice of me, won’t they?”

  Alec drew in a deep breath.

  “My God,” he said, “you’re smart. You’ve been using her!”

  “That’s a way to put it,” said Steve. “Now, listen, son. We stay away from each other except after dark, or in crowds. We don’t do that because of the Covent Garden job—we do it because when we pull the next job, the big one, we don’t want anyone to be able to say that they’ve seen us together. Got that?”

  “I’ve got it. What job is it going to be?”

  “When I’m ready for it, I’ll tell you,” Steve said. “Your job is to obtain passports in different names, and get us certificates, also in different names. Pay a bit on account and the rest later—like you bought your scooter. We want to pull off one big job and be ready to flit after it. The opportunity might come next week, or it might come in a month’s time. Get those passports and papers ready.”

  “I can fix it,” Alec said.

  “Sure?”

  “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Then I won’t worry,” said Steve. “I want those papers next Monday evening—at the Fulham match. Same time—and I’ll have tickets. I’ll slip yours to you outside the E turnstile for the stands, and we’ll meet inside. That clear?”

  “I’ve got it,” Alec said. For a while they watched the game, and for a while it was worth watching – until a man in blue shot yards wide from close in, and a groan from the crowd swelled up into a howl of derision. Suddenly, Alec said: “Steve, you got any idea what it will be?”

  “Just forget it,” Steve said.

  “I’ve got a right to know.”

  “When you bring me those passports and my second mate’s certificate in a different name, you’ll have a right to know. Until then you don’t have any rights with me.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Alec, as if he were satisfied. “I’ll see you Monday.”

  It was not surprising, although it was sheer chance, that two guards who regularly escorted the wages officers of a large manufacturing company on the Great West Road, were watching the match that evening. It was not even surprising that one of the wages officers was there, too. The second wages officer was at home, at his Hounslow house; gardening.

  The more she thought about Steve, the less Joyce Conway felt that she understood him. But the more she saw of him, the greater her love for him became. Deep down, she had a sense of fear, almost of premonition, that it could not and would not last. Whenever she let herself think about this – usually after she had lulled herself into dreaming of false hopes of marriage – she put this down to the fact that he was a sailor, and that one day the sea would lure him away again. So far, he showed no sign of wanting to go.

  He did not spend every night with her.

  She was never sure when he would want to come, never sure even when he would come to the Hornpipe, but he had a remarkable gift for taking her by surprise. The night when she felt certain he would not come, it being so near closing time, would find him waiting at the corner. The night she felt sure he would come in for a drink, he did not show up. The night when she was resigned to a weary two or three hours in the pub, was the night when he would be the first to push open the door.

  He always looked the same, clean-cut, distinguished, sardonic. She knew that he was much cleverer than she was, that her simplicity amused him, but that didn’t matter. He seemed to be in love with her. Most of the time she refused to believe that this was a love that would not last.

  Sometimes, when he came home with her, he raised her to a state of quivering ecstasy which seemed to be the very purpose of life itself. He was so gentle when gentleness was needed, so masterful and possessive, yet so willing to surrender.

  Now and again, she wished he would talk more about himself, but she had the sense not to ask him. A little of his past came out at odd moments, and she began to build up a picture of a life spent travelling round the world, fighting, adventuring; there was a glow of romance about him which she built up into an even greater image.

  On the Monday after the match at Chelsea – she knew he had been there – she was leaving the pub after lunch, at about a quarter past three, when she saw Alec Gool. He was coming out of a jobbing printer’s who had a couple of presses in a shed behind the tiny shop where he sold stationery and cigarettes. Alec grinned at her, and touched his forehead – an obsequiousness which she knew was a form of derision. She had never liked him. As she walked on, she wondered why he had behaved like that, it was as if he were simply taking the mickey out of her.

  She glanced round from the corner, but he wasn’t looking back.

  As he reached the far corner, however, she saw a very attractive, long-legged girl from a hairdresser’s come out and look at him. As far as Joyce could see, Gool did not even glance at her. Most youths of his age would have stopped to have a word, or at the very least looked her up and down – and they would have looked back, too. Gool didn’t. He was queer all right.

  Joyce suddenly remembered thinking that Steve shouldn’t have much to do with him – and now the thought that Steve might be associated with a “queer” struck her as so funny that she laughed aloud.

  She let herself into the tiny home.

  It was spick and span, as always; and she had taken even more trouble since the affaire with Steve. On her small dressing-table were two bottles of expensive make-up – of a kind she had only seen advertised – which Steve had given her; he could be very generous. On the bedside table were some book
s, Penguins, by authors she had never heard of. Steve seemed to like them, but whenever she tried to read a page or two, she was bored stiff – but then, reading had never attracted her. The fact that there was a man about the house was obvious – his silver-backed hair-brush, which she had bought him, for instance. Two or three ties were rolled round to get the creases out, and on the dressing-table, not in a drawer; she liked to see them about. In the kitchen the tea tray was always set with two cups and saucers these days, one of them a breakfast cup – whether tea or coffee, he liked a man’s quantity.

  She wished she had a photograph of him, but had never suggested it. Deep down, there was a fear of what would happen if she did.

  She had left home before looking at the newspapers, which usually arrived about half-past nine. Steve had been here, and hadn’t left until just before she had. She had had a pork pie and a shandy at the pub, part of her perquisites. Now she put her legs up on the bed, switched on the radio for music and picked up the newspapers. She thumbed the Mirror through idly, and soon came to an inside page which had pictures – not photographs – of two men on it, and two smaller photographs below. The heading was:

  DO YOU KNOW THESE MEN?

  These are composite pictures of two men wanted for questioning by the police about the murder of Charley Blake, a wages guard, in Covent Garden last month.

  The bodies of two men known to have taken part in the raid were found in the Thames two weeks ago, as the Mirror reported at the time. The two men shown here were probably in the company of the two drowned men, whose photographs are below, at the time of the murder.

  The photograph of Win Marriott was a very good one; she had known but never liked him. Even as a schoolboy, he had been big-headed and big-mouthed. She hardly knew the boxer, Dorris, although she had heard of him, and had seen him occasionally.

  She had a feeling that she had seen one of the men in the composite pictures before – one who looked young. She pondered this for a few minutes, glancing out of the window and trying to call him to mind. Soon she gave up. It was none of her business, and even if she did remember anything, and told the police, it would lead to a lot of trouble and bother – it wasn’t as if she would be able to say for sure who he was.