Ring of Terror (22 page)

There was a cold and uncomfortable feeling in the air, a contraction of the scalp, a tingling in the fingers.

He noticed that a number of Russians – mostly young and in his view dangerous – seemed to be the only people still using the Solomon building. They looked confident and aggressive. It was the way the Cossacks had looked before they sealed a Jewish enclave and signalled the start of the massacre; the look of hounds who have been shown the fox.

He was selfish enough to hope that the trouble would be confined to the commercial quarter and that his beloved synagogue would not suffer; and courageous enough to suffer himself provided the synagogue was spared.

He was not the only man who was distressed that morning.

Shortly after breakfast Jacob Katz had received a visit from Luke. He had welcomed him as effusively as ever, but his friendliness had not been returned. That morning Luke was more policeman than friend.

He said, ‘Being yourself a printer and photographer I imagine that you will know everyone in this part of London who is in the same line of business.’

Jacob admitted that he knew the names of most of his rivals.

‘Let me have a list of them,’ said Luke. ‘The fullest list possible.’

Jacob promised to do his best. When Luke had gone he sat down at his desk with a local directory and set to work. Wanting something from the desk, he took his ring of keys and inserted one of them in the lock. It went in halfway and then stopped. There was something in the lock, jamming it. When he looked closely he could see that it was the broken end of a key. After five minutes of fruitless efforts to fiddle it out he gave up and started to think. And the more he thought about it the less he liked it.

It was clear that someone had been tampering with his desk. It was possible that they had not succeeded in opening it and had broken their key in the attempt. On the other hand, they might have opened the desk, taken what they were looking for and have been unable to extract their key, which must be a roughly made duplicate and a bad fit.

Anna, who came in at this moment, stared at her father in alarm. His face was as white as paper and his hands were shaking. She went up to him, threw her arms round him and hugged him.

After a few moments he disengaged himself gently and said, ‘I must have help. The only person I can think of is Molacoff Weil.’

‘That animal!’

‘Animal he may be. But I am sure he can open that desk. And when we find out what has been taken he will know what to do. Can you get hold of him?’

None of this made much sense to Anna, but she could see that her father was on the verge of collapsing. She said, ‘Yes. Yes. I know how to find him. I’ll go right away.’

When Weil arrived Jacob was still sitting at his desk. He had made one or two futile attempts to extract the broken key. Weil wasted no time. He selected a heavy poker from the hearth and used it to smash through the lid of the desk. Then he put his hand in and wrenched away the broken pieces.

The desk was empty.

The possibility that Jacob had feared had now become a probability, a hideous probability. He was unable to utter a word.

Weil looked at him curiously. He supposed that Jacob was thinking of himself. If the contents of his desk had got into the wrong hands it could be bad for him. Might even land him in gaol. But what of that? There were worse places than gaol. He had been in one or two himself.

He said, ‘You did a lot of work for us, yes?’

Jacob nodded.

‘Tickets, programmes, notices. Things like that?’

Another nod.

‘And other—more private things.’

Jacob had recovered enough to croak out, ‘Yes. Many private things. There were lists I was compiling—’

‘Lists of possible supporters.’

‘Yes.’

‘Unfortunate. But not fatal.’ When Jacob said nothing Weil jumped forward. It was a tiger’s leap. He picked the old man up by his forearms and shook him. He said, ‘So. So there
was
something more. What was it? Speak up.’

He threw Jacob back into his chair. This eruption of violence seemed to have shaken off some of the paralysis which had gripped the old man. He said, ‘Those two men who robbed the jeweller’s.’

‘Katakin and Heilmann. Yes? You did some work for them, so I was told. Photographs and printing. Very private and very satisfactory. What of it?’

Speaking very slowly, almost as though he was forming the words singly, Jacob said, ‘I had rough copies. Proofs of the work I was doing.’

‘In your desk?’

‘I meant to destroy them.’

‘Then the man who has them will be able to reconstruct what you were doing.’

‘I fear so. Yes.’

It was now clear to Weil that he could not handle the matter alone. But there was one immediate step he could take. He said, ‘You know as well as I do who the robber must have been. Dmitry, your so-called son.’

‘That seems probable.’

‘Probable?’ Weil’s voice rose. ‘Probable? Inevitable. Who else had ready access to this room?’

‘Only my wife and my daughter.’

‘You suspect them?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Speak sense then. It was Dmitry and Dmitry alone who could have got your desk key copied. I know plenty of men who would have done the work. An enquiry among them would no doubt produce the truth. But we have no time for that. We must know
now.
And Dmitry shall tell us. Where is the boy?’

‘I’m not sure. He went out early this morning.’

‘Where?’

‘Around and about. He is looking for a new job. There are a number of people he might be visiting.’

‘A new job? Yes, of course. He had been working for Ikey Solomon, had he not?’

‘For more than a year.’

‘And when Solomon was forced to shut his two rooms, he was told there was no more work for him?’

‘For the time being.’

The answer seemed to amuse Weil, who repeated ‘for the time being’, with curious satisfaction. He said, ‘And what about compensation? In Russia, no doubt, the men could have been thrown into the street without ceremony. But not in this country. Where you are so protective of your workmen.’

‘Solomon did tell them that when the market revived, he would open up again and they would have their jobs back. Some of the men were not satisfied. They wanted stand-off pay. The difficulty was that none of them had a contract.’

There was a long pause while Weil considered the position carefully. Then he delivered judgement.

‘The men must be compensated. Happily, I have some influence with Solomon. I will speak to him at once. I am sure he will co-operate with me.’

Jacob was equally sure. Anyone asked to co-operate with Weil would be likely to do so.

‘When the boy comes back tell him that he is to go round, early this evening, to Solomon’s workshop. Not a deputation. That would aggravate Solomon. Let him go by himself. He will be paid two weeks’ salary, for himself and for the other men in the room. That I promise.’

Jacob hesitated. He placed no reliance on Weil’s promises and had a shrewd suspicion of what he was planning to do. He had to think carefully and quickly, weighing advantages and disadvantages. If the papers fell into the hands of the police – and if they understood their significance – the result would be disastrous for him, and through him for his wife and daughter. That was in one scale. In the other scale was the welfare of his adopted son.

A savage glint in Weil’s eyes made up his mind for him.

‘I’ll tell him,’ he said.

Dmitry when he understood what was proposed, had no hesitation at all. If he had understood that the offer came through Weil he might have jibbed, but Jacob had put it to him as a message received directly from Solomon. The thought of not only getting his money, but of acting as paymaster for the others was a most agreeable one and when he set out at six o’ clock that evening he was in high spirits.

It was a clear night with a near full moon. He was too engrossed with his thoughts to take much notice of what was going on around him, but when he turned out of Stratford Road into Brownsong Passage it did seem that the place was unusually quiet. He passed only one man, lounging at the corner, who ignored him.

The front door of Solomon’s spread was ajar. He pushed it open and walked through the hallway and into the workroom on the left, in which he had spent so many hours of toil. It was empty and in darkness, but there was a light in the other workshop and he could hear the sounds of movement. Going across, he called out, ‘Mr Solomon! Dmitry Katz here. I got your message.’

A voice from the inner room, which he did not recognise, said, ‘Splendid. Don’t hang about out there, boy. Come along in.’

Dmitry opened the inner door and peered through.

As he stood for a moment, in shocked disbelief of what he saw, he heard the sound of the street door being closed behind him.

Weil’s instructions were clear.

He was only to make personal contact with Silistreau in a case of grave emergency. That such a case had now arisen, he had no doubt. The story which Dmitry had sobbed out had made a bad situation worse.

If a visit became imperative, his approach route had been mapped out for him.

It started from a small public house called the Collingwood Arms in East Ham High Street. Here he ordered a glass of beer and settled down to drink it. He disliked beer, but to order anything else in that place might have drawn attention to him.

A careful observer, watching him slouched in his chair, would have recognised his strength. He was a muscular machine, powerfully engined, but not clumsy. The observer might have made the mistake of thinking him stupid. If Weil had been stupid he would not have survived to reach such eminence as he had. He was clear-headed enough to appreciate that Janis Silistreau was his superior as a planner and a tactician. He knew, too, that Silistreau and Treschau were close to the people in Russia who mattered; people who were their paymasters.

He knew all this and resented it.

If, however, as had been promised, the success of the Lockett robbery, combined with their present project, realised enough money to make them independent of Moscow, why then a new régime might be established, a triumvirate in which he, Molacoff Weil, was an equal with Silistreau and Treschau.

Hurry on that day!

Receiving the agreed signal from the landlord, he strolled to the far end of the bar, went out through a side door into the maze of small dark alleys that lay between East Ham High Street and the recreation ground, and set off across the grass to the far corner where, as instructed, he paused for a full minute to look and listen. Then he climbed out into Gooseley Lane and was soon at ease in front of a cheerful fire, with a glass of schnapps in his hand.

‘Better than English beer,’ suggested Treschau with a smile.

‘Much better.’

Silistreau, who was not smiling, said, ‘The reason for this visit, please.’

‘My reason is that a difficult situation may have arisen. I was informed of it this morning.’

He repeated what Jacob Katz had told him and the steps he had taken.

‘Let us deal with this in proper sequence,’ said Silistreau. ‘The first question is, exactly
what
papers were in that desk?’

‘I can only tell you what Katz told me. If he was speaking the truth, much of it was publicity material. There were also some lists.’

‘Lists?’

Treschau said, ‘I had asked him for the names and addresses and any personal information he could gather about his friends and compatriots who might be inclined to help us.’

‘It will not help us that those lists should be in the hands of the police. But it hardly seems a reason to warrant the concern you have shown.’

‘If that had been all,’ said Weil, ‘I would not have troubled you. But the worst came last. It seems he had been stupid enough to retain rough drafts of certain private documents he had been asked to manufacture.’

This produced a long silence. His two listeners looked at each other. Treschau seemed about to say something, but changed his mind at the last moment. Silistreau said, ‘Be more precise.’

‘I understand – though I had not been consulted in the matter’—Weil tried to keep the pique out of his voice—’that Katz had been involved in producing Danish passports for our two comrades. Was I right?’

Silistreau nodded.

‘I could see that if drafts of these productions came into the hands of the police and if they understood their significance—’

‘Which they most certainly would,’ said Treschau.

‘—this would be unfortunate for Katz. Must, indeed, lead to criminal charges against him. If, to save himself, he involved you, it might be equally unfortunate for you.’

‘Certainly,’ said Silistreau. He did not appear to be unduly alarmed. Indeed, his chief reaction to this turn in the conversation seemed to be relief.

Weil said, ‘It seemed to me that the only people not affected were the holders of those passports, since they have reached sanctuary.’

Silistreau said, ‘When you speak like that, I can see that you do not appreciate the position in which this discovery places our two comrades. Previously, the most that the British Government could say was that it
suspected
that their papers might be false. Papers which their own authorities had inspected carefully and passed. A subsequent
suspicion
would not be sufficient to activate another government. Now, however, with the actual drafts in their hands the position is different. They would have clear proof that the papers
are
forgeries.’

‘But surely, by now—’

‘You knew, I take it, that the
Viborg
was not bound for Esbjerg.’

Weil shook his head. He knew nothing about the
Viborg
and thought this was typical of the way he was treated.

‘She is taking the long route, round the northern point of Denmark, then down through the Kattegat to Helsingfors and Copenhagen. You understand what this means?’

‘You mean that they will not yet have arrived?’

‘Depending on the length of their stay at Helsingfors, the
Viborg
will dock on Saturday or Sunday. Picture to yourself the sort of reception they will receive if a message has already reached the Danish authorities that there is clear proof that their papers are forgeries.’