by John Creasey
On they went.
Something came between them and the lights and the dark Channel. Trees, or a hill, or even a house cut the view off. There was now no light at all, but the men seemed to know the spot well and they didn’t slacken their pace. She was half-dragged along, her ankles kept turning over – and then she trod on a hump and her shoe came off.
She resisted their pressure.
“I’ve lost my shoe!”
“Never mind your—”
“My shoe!”
They wouldn’t stop and go back for it, so she hobbled along, her stockinged foot on the grass which felt very cold. The other shoe came off when they had gone another hundred yards or so, and she was able to walk more evenly.
As soon as they had passed through a gate, she trod on gravel. Sharp, pointed pieces cut her feet; it was agony to walk and yet she wasn’t allowed to slow down. Soon she saw another open gate, and was dragged through it towards a building – house or barn, she couldn’t be sure which. A torch flashed and showed a car inside an open shed.
The man with the torch called out: “Where’s Lessing?”
“He ducked.”
The man waiting near the car said: “He won’t like that.”
“I don’t give a damn what he’ll like,” said her captor. “We didn’t do so badly to get her.” At last they released her.
It was agony to stand, but there was nowhere to sit except on the running-board of the car, and the way to that was blocked.
“She talked?” the waiting man asked. “I don’t think she’ll give much trouble. Take her over to a box and let her sit down. We’ll be back.”
Only one man was left with Sybil.
Once she was sitting on an upturned box, the relief was exquisite. There was something rather hard but not painful beneath her feet; it rustled a little, and she realised that it was hay or straw. The torch went out. How long she stayed there, she had no idea. An hour? More? She was both dazed and frightened. Now and again she heard a man move, and knew she was being watched all the time. Then the others came back. One of the men was doing something which took him some time. The others lit cigarettes. Soon a lamp gave a mellow flame; it was a hurricane lamp, and the man who had lit it hung it on a long nail which jutted out from the whitewashed wall. The lamp spread a cosy glow about the corner of the barn, showing the bonnet of the car, a pile of straw, a square block of tightly compressed hay, and some farm implements including a scythe with the blade wrapped in hessian.
The three men stood in front of her, in a half circle.
The spokesman stood in the middle. He was the tallest of the three, and his eyes glinted. His face was blacked now, so that he could not be recognised. He drew on his cigarette and made the tip glow, then suddenly he shot out his hand, buried his fingers in her hair, and thrust her head back. At the same time, he brought the edge of his other hand down sharply on her taut throat. The blow made her gulp, the air seemed to be drawn out of her lungs, she couldn’t breathe. It was all over in a moment, and when she was able to see again, he was standing in the middle of the trio, as if he had not moved.
He said: “Listen, Sybil, I’m going to ask a lot of questions, and you’re going to answer every one of them. If you don’t, then …” He shrugged his shoulders. “We could do a lot of things to you, things you wouldn’t care to remember.”
She nodded.
“Why did you go around with Lessing?”
“He … was friendly.”
“So he was friendly,” sneered her questioner. “You knew he was a pal of West’s. Why—”
“I didn’t!” she burst out. “It isn’t true!”
“Mark Lessing is an old buddy of the great Roger West,” said the man. “You’re saying that you didn’t know?”
“Of course I didn’t!”
“I’m not so sure I believe you,” said the man, and he moved his hand forward slowly. She shrank away. He didn’t touch her this time, but went on: “Did you know Lessing followed you to Fulham this afternoon?”
“No!”
“Well, he did,” said the man. “So you went to Fulham and made the contacts we told you to make, and Lessing watched you. That ground was lousy with policemen this afternoon, it’s a cinch that you were seen. Even if you weren’t, Lessing will have told his buddy by now where you went. That means they’re on to us at Fulham. That’s very bad, Sybil. Did you tell them in the first place that we sometimes met on the ground?”
“No!”
“Oh no,” sneered the man. “Now, think about what you’ve said to Lessing. You knew who he was all right. He was down here to make you talk because West didn’t believe you’d told everything. West thought that a smooth guy like Lessing could get the rest out of you. How much did you tell him?”
“Nothing! I didn’t know who he was!”
The man glanced first at one companion and then at another. In that interval, Sybil’s fear grew into terror – it was as if she could read the thoughts in their minds, the things they were prepared to do to make her tell the ‘truth.’ Then the man stretched forward, pulled open her coat, thrust it back so that her arms were forced behind her and her chest was thrust forward. One of the others slipped behind her, and fiddled with the coat; he fastened it in some way, so that her arms were pinioned and she couldn’t move them. She sat precariously on the box, staring at her captors.
“How much did you tell Lessing?” the man asked.
“Nothing!”
“Now, be sensible, Sybil,” the man said. “We don’t want to hurt you for the sake of it, but we’ve got to have the truth, and we’re going to get it.”
One of the others stepped to the wall, and she saw him touch the handle of the wrapped scythe. He bent down, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. He took out a small knife which glittered, and then he cut the hessian, ripping it so that the bare, cruel blade of the scythe showed.
The spokesman stepped forward again and touched her neck – then laid his forearm across her, his hand touching one shoulder, his elbow near the other. He moved his arm sideways in a quick slicing movement, and said: “Now, if that was the scythe instead of my arm, a lot of what you’ve got now wouldn’t be there, Sybil. Afterwards you wouldn’t be such a catch. How much did you tell Lessing?”
“I didn’t tell him a thing.”
The man said: “He went to see the store – Perriman’s. He hung about there a lot. Why?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t know he did!”
His arm was pressing against her again, and the man with the scythe made sweeping motions through the air, sideways and downwards – as if he were practising.
“You told him that he might learn plenty from that shop,” the man insisted in his harsh, hateful voice.
“It’s not true!”
Silence again.
One of the others said slowly: “She won’t talk until she feels what that blade’s like. Better—”
The other man raised the scythe.
Sybil stared at it, her eyes rounded pools of dread – and then she screamed. The man leapt forward again and pressed his hand tightly over her mouth, one finger poking her in the eye. She bit at his palm, but her teeth slid over it. He put his other hand to her hair and gripped and began to twist.
He let her go, and spoke in a quiet, evil voice. “Now you know what to expect, Sybil, and we’ll give you just one more chance to tell us what you told Lessing.”
She gasped: “I didn’t—tell him—anything!”
The man said sharply: “Okay, let her have it.”
She opened her mouth to scream again, but before she uttered a sound, he thrust a screwed-up handkerchief between her teeth. It made her choke and gasp. She wriggled, but her arms were still locked by the coat and there was nothing she could do. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw the glittering scythe.
And then a powerful light shone out, illuminating the scythe, and three men, and Sybil. The men swung round in startled silence. A shot rang out. The scythe
clattered to the ground.
The men began to run.
They didn’t get far.
A cordon of police had been flung round the barn, and among them were Roger and Mark Lessing.
Sybil was sitting in an easy chair in the hotel. Her feet had been bathed; they would be sore for a few days, but there was nothing much the matter with them or with her.
Mark sat astride an upright chair near her, leaning on the back and looking at her intently. Roger stood by the fireplace in the big bedroom. By the girl’s side were coffee and sandwiches, the men had beer in tankards.
It was about two hours since they had returned from the barn. Roger hadn’t pressed Sybil with questions, but had let Mark tell her what had happened after the kidnapping.
It was simple enough. Radio calls for immediate help had been sent, and had reached the Brighton Police-Station just as Roger had arrived – Mark, of course, had learned there that the CI was on his way to Brighton. The car in which Sybil had been taken away had been seen near the narrow turning by a patrol car. Police had followed the three men and Sybil.
They had heard the questions and Sybil’s answers. There was something surprising in Roger West’s informality. So far, Roger hadn’t asked a single question. And now Mark began to speak.
“Look here, Sybil, you know enough about these beggars now to be sure they’ll give you a hell of a time if they catch you again – and that whatever they’re doing has to be stopped. They killed Guy Randall. They killed Relf, Kirby, and others – and there’s no telling where they’ll stop if they’re allowed to go on. They scared you into keeping something back from Roger – you’ve got to tell us everything now.”
Sybil moistened her lips.
“We all know you’re scared, and that’s why you didn’t tell the whole truth,” Mark went on. “But this time – well, if you won’t come across, Roger won’t have any alternative, you’ll have to be charged with conspiracy.”
She didn’t comment.
“Make a start with this,” Roger advised. “Why did you keep something back from us after you’d told us so much? Was it just that you were frightened of what they would do to you if you talked?”
“Yes,” said Sybil at last. “I thought—they might—let me alone if I didn’t tell you everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Main Road
Sybil Lennox told the rest of her story between one and two o’clock.
Then Roger left her at the hotel, with a cordon of Brighton police surrounding it, and went with Peel to his car and headed for London.
The wounded prisoner, the most important of the three, was in hospital with a damaged thigh-bone; so far he had refused to talk. The other two had been taken ahead, to London, and would be at Cannon Row long before Roger.
While at the wheel, Roger thought a lot about the girl’s story. He had been disposed to believe her at first, now he was extremely doubtful. She had known that the Fulham ground was used by the gang, and that some of Perriman’s shops were also used. She said she only knew of the Brighton one, and she didn’t know to what use it was put. Nor did she know whether the ground at Craven Cottage was used for anything else than a meeting-place during matches.
For the first day at Brighton she had been unmolested. Afterwards she had received a telephone call and been told to call at Perriman’s branch, where she had seen the manager, a man named Kortright. He had simply told her she was still under observation by ‘them,’ and warned her not to tell the police more than she had already told them.
On the Saturday morning Kortright had called her again and told her to go to Fulham and give notes – sealed notes – to men who would accost her and show her a programme with the corners all torn off; she had done so.
Kortright lived over the shop, which the Brighton police were watching. Roger had decided not to raid the shop yet.
Mark was staying at the hotel; Roger had a good idea how the land lay there. His friend was unimportant, but why had they used the girl again?
They realised he was on the track of the football ground and the Brighton Perriman’s. They might have sent her to the match and let her give the notes to men with torn programmes, knowing that sooner or later she would tell him about that and – he reasoned – convince him that the secret of the Craven Cottage programmes was in the torn corners. But why the kidnapping? And why had her tormentor kept asking exactly what she had told Mark or the police?
Roger’s thoughts faded when a lorry approached and passed, without dipping its headlights.
Peel sat by his side, dozing.
Here and there a car passed them, coming from the opposite direction; nothing overtook them. There was a thrill to be got out of speed.
There was a set smile on his lips as his foot pressed down – eighty-nine – eighty-nine point five – ninety!
Then he glanced up, and saw in the driving-mirror the headlights of the other car behind him.
They gave him a shock, because he hadn’t passed anything for the last quarter of an hour. This car must have turned out of a side-road, and would soon fall behind. The needle was down to eighty-five now.
He was still travelling at more than eighty miles an hour, and yet the other car was gaining.
He glanced at Peel, who was snoring slightly, and then into the driving-mirror again. No doubt about it, he was being overtaken – and with some ease. Powerful bus, undoubtedly – interesting to see what it was when it passed.
Whoooooosh!
It was past.
Involuntarily, he had slowed down to the middle seventies, but the other car had left him standing; it must be doing nearly a hundred. He hadn’t had time to be certain what it was, but the glimpse had made him guess at a Rolls-Royce.
The Perriman brothers had arrived at Fulham in a Rolls-Royce, but he couldn’t imagine Mr Emanuel or, for that matter, the dyspeptic Mr Samuel, driving a car at nearly a hundred miles an hour on any road or in any circumstances.
The Rolls was well ahead now, but not so far as he might have expected – it had slowed down a little. The number-plate was obscured. Roger frowned. A car was coming in the opposite direction, and its headlamps created a blaze of light. Then the Rolls driver dipped his, so did the approaching car. Roger followed suit, and for a few seconds he couldn’t see far ahead.
Peel grunted and stirred.
The Rolls-Royce was out of sight, round a corner; he probably wouldn’t see it again.
Slower round the corner.
“I’ve been asleep,” muttered Peel.
“Not really,” said Roger sarcastically.
“Just dropped off,” said Peel apologetically, and yawned. “Not so fresh as I was. I think I need a break, sir.”
“Put in for one when this show is over,” said Roger, turning the corner. “I—”
“Look out!” gasped Peel in a screech.
Roger needed no telling.
A man lay in the road ahead of him, an inert figure, lying on his face. He’d been knocked down, that Rolls-Royce – damn the Rolls! There was a little space, which should be just sufficient for Roger to squeeze through without touching the man. Was this a trick? He had just time to glance right and left, to massed trees which grew close to the side of the road. Men could be hiding in there. If he slowed down, it was possible that he would be attacked or fired at.
The man in the road hadn’t moved, and now Roger could see that there was a pool of blood near his head. Roger swung across to the near-side and felt the wheels bumping over the grass verge as he passed the victim. That red splotch wasn’t imagination, and meant only one thing – the man had been run down; there was nothing faked about this. He must stop, although – he couldn’t help wondering … Still, he had no choice. He pulled up on the verge, and found himself sweating freely.
Peel had already opened the car door, but Roger called out: “Wait a minute.”
“Why?”
“Not too happy about the situation,” Roger said quietly, and looked at th
e dark mass of brooding trees.
“That’s no decoy!” Peel declared.
They got out, and went to the body. There was no doubt at all that the man was dead.
“Here’s another car,” said Roger sharply.
It was some way off, just a blaze of headlights coming from Brighton. The light lent more mystery to the night and more horror to that still figure and the scarlet splash. It grew brighter as the car approached. By now the driver must have seen the body. He swerved to one side and flashed past. The driver didn’t glance at them. They caught a glimpse of him, from their own headlights. As soon as he had passed, Peel said sharply: “See him?”
“Yes, I saw him,” said Roger slowly. “You wouldn’t expect Tommy Clayton to worry about a roadside corpse if he were on a job, would you?” asked Roger, and he gave an odd little laugh. “I didn’t think Clayton would be on the job again so quickly, did you?”
“He ought to be—”
“Never mind what ought to happen to him,” said Roger. “I suppose it was Clayton.”
“You couldn’t mistake him,” said Peel. “I wouldn’t mind betting that the Echo has the whole story of the girl’s kidnapping in the morning. Do you know, sir, I’ve never—”
Peel broke off and coughed.
“Go on,” said Roger.
“I’ve never liked Clayton,” said Peel, rather defiantly. “I wondered almost from the beginning whether that attack on him at the warehouse was faked. After all—” He broke off again and laughed rather uncertainly. “Afraid I’m letting my imagination run riot, and we should have a look at the corpse.”
“Never mind, imagine some more.”
“Well – Clayton could easily have told us how much he knew. We should have been at the job a lot earlier if he’d done that. And then there’s the way he was kidnapped – not very convincing, when you think of it, was it?” Peel waited for no answer, but went on: “And when he escaped, or appeared to, in that warehouse, it struck me that they didn’t try very hard to kill him, or they’d have succeeded. When we picked him up, he wasn’t badly hurt. We’ve never had a really satisfactory explanation of why he was left alive, have we? That’s one of the mysteries which we haven’t been able to answer. And why did they dress the man Maidment up in his clothes, to make it look as if Clayton were dead. If you ask me, Clayton was going to disappear and turn up again under another name, but something went wrong, he was needed as Clayton, so they ‘let’ him go. What I’m really saying is,” Peel went on, again defiantly, “that Clayton might be one of them, sir. But if I told anyone else that I thought he was, I’d be laughed out of court.”
