Ring of Terror (5 page)

‘I don’t know what you boys was quarrelling about, but whatever it was, you must make it up and try to be friends.’ They had promised to try and when the sergeant had departed had lain on their beds almost ill with suppressed laughter.

From that point life had started again.

They had managed to get posted to the same patrol and had quartered the streets of Clapham, Brixton, Camberwell and Peckham looking for some excitement in those depressingly unexciting parts of London.

It had arrived unexpectedly.

One morning the sergeant who was briefing them had told them to keep a particular eye on a meeting at the Brixton Town Hall. ‘It’s them wimmin,’ he said, speaking the bi-syllable as though it was synonymous with ‘vermin’. ‘I expect you’ve read about ‘em in the papers. Suffrajetters they call themselves.’

Recently Luke had picked up a paper which had intrigued him by its slashing cover picture. This showed a young lady equipped with a sword called ‘Equity’ and a shield labelled ‘Purity’. She had need of both of them, since she was being pounced on by a dragon with scaly wings and long claws identified as ‘The Press’. He noted that it was the official organ of the Woman’s Social and Political Union, which had achieved notoriety as the militant branch of a more decorous body, the National Suffrage Union. It was the WSPU, it seemed, who were organising this particular meeting. The brainchild of the Pankhurst family from Manchester, their battle-cry proclaimed their aims: ‘Women, speak out. No pulling of punches. Fight. Suffer if you must, but never, never keep quiet.’

‘I dunno what they call themselves now,’ said the sergeant. ‘They keep changing their names. But I can tell you what I call ‘em. I call ‘em trouble. This meeting’s to raise money. What for? Why, so’s they can make more trouble. Watch ‘em close. If you see a breach of the peace, you know what to do.’ What exactly this was he had left unexplained.

Luke and Joe had rearranged their beats so that they met behind the Town Hall, a gaunt yellow building overlooking the railway on one side and a canal on the other. The noise inside the building reminded Luke of a hive of bees getting ready to swarm. As he was thinking this, the noise increased, in tempo and in pitch. Not bees. Hornets.

‘Something’s happening round the side,’ said Joe. They doubled back the way they had come. As they turned the corner, a door burst open and a man staggered out. His shirt was torn open at the neck and his face was running with blood. As he hesitated, undecided which way to turn, the furies on his heels caught him.

The young lady who was leading the pack dived for his ankles like an expert rugby footballer. The two who were following her piled on top of him, clawing and scratching.

Breach of the peace, thought Luke. What do we do now? The idea of attacking a well-dressed and clearly upper-class young woman was unappealing. By the time he reached the point of action, half a dozen more had come out and formed a circle round the trio on the ground. Some were shouting, others were offering advice. They were divided between a suggestion that the man be thrown on to the railway line or, alternatively, into the canal.

‘Must stop this,’ said Luke. He caught hold of one of the women in a half-hearted way, and tried to pull her off her prey. She was unexpectedly strong. While she was resisting, two of her friends had grabbed him, one by the collar, the other by the hair. He felt that in a short time, he would be on the ground himself.

The situation was saved by Joe. He was a great deal less inhibited than Luke. He hit one of the women who was attacking him with an upper-cut which felled her, and he dealt with the two on top of the man by banging their heads together hard. Then he advanced on the crowd of supporters, kicking them on the shins and stamping on their feet. This was more effective than punching.

Luke, meanwhile, had helped the victim to his feet. Reinforcements were pouring out of the door. A tactical withdrawal was indicated.

He and Joe each grabbed one of the man’s arms and they ran for it – down the side alley, through an open gate and along the canal bank. Joe paused once, to knock the closest of their pursuers into the canal, a move which conferred a double benefit on them, since the rest of the pack halted to rescue their friend and the pursuit slackened.

They crossed the canal via a bridge, dived down an alley and emerged into a side road.

‘Pub here,’ said Joe.

He thundered on the door, which opened after a clanking of bolts and was shut and bolted behind them. It was a middle-aged lady who had let them in. Luke supposed that Joe knew her, since when he put one arm round her waist and kissed her, she offered no objection to this treatment, but clucked with concern when she saw the state of the victim’s face and bustled off for hot water and sponges. By the time she got back he seemed to be better.

‘I’ll have that jacket,’ the lady said. ‘Sooner we get the blood off it the better. And put some of this on them scratches.’ It was a bottle of yellow stuff labelled ‘Poison’. When Luke looked at it doubtfully she said, ‘I keep it in the bar to use on my customers. Not killed one of them yet.’

She made off with the jacket and the man submitted to having his face dabbed.

‘If it stings,’ said Luke, who had been brought up on this well-known medical theory, ‘it’s a sign that it’s doing you good.’

‘Looks like a Red Indian, dunnee,’ said Joe critically. ‘A new sort. A Yellow Indian. He could do with a bit more on the chin.’

By the time they had finished painting, the landlady was back with the coat, which she had roughly sponged and pressed, a bottle of brandy and four glasses.

The man said, ‘It wasn’t only the scratches.’ He felt the back of his head. ‘I got quite a bump there when I went down.’

‘If you were concussed,’ said Luke, ‘I don’t think you ought to drink alcohol.’

‘That’s a fallacy,’ said Joe. ‘I’ve been concussed more times than you’ve had hot dinners and brandy’s the only thing that done it any good.’

While the man was sipping his brandy cautiously, with pauses to make sure that it wasn’t doing him any harm, Luke said, ‘We ought to introduce ourselves. We’re the latest thing in recruits. I’m Probationary Constable Pagan and this is Probationary Constable Narrabone. Both of “L” Division. We haven’t been here long enough to know everyone by sight. You’d be in the Detective Branch, of course.’

‘The aristocrats,’ said Joe, ‘compared with us poor foot sloggers, that is.’

‘Actually,’ said the man, ‘I’m not in “L” Division.’ He paused for a moment as though deliberating whether to go on, then he added, ‘As a matter of fact, I’m not a policeman. I’m working at the Home Office. I was sent to report on this meeting. I thought I was safely tucked away in a dark corner of the gallery, but those women must have spotted me.’

‘Eyes like cats’,’ agreed Joe.

‘I’m everlastingly grateful to you for what you did,’ said the man. He had hoisted himself to his feet and found that he was tolerably steady on his legs. ‘I’ve got to get back as quickly as I can. Could I ask you a favour? When you make your report, could you leave me out of it as much as possible? Describe me as an innocent member of the public, set on for no reason by those women. Something like that.’

‘Do what we can,’ said Luke. ‘And I’m sure that this lady—’

‘I’m not one to blab,’ said the landlady. ‘And if you must go, though I think you’d be wiser to sit still for a bit, I’ll show you a back way out, in case those creatures are still prowling round.’

While she was gone the two probationary constables sat warming their feet at the fire, sipping their brandy and wondering how long they could make this useful diversion last. ‘One thing I did think a bit odd—’ said Joe.

Hold it. Two men at the window now. Two shadows quite clear on the curtain. They seemed to be looking out. And were they signalling to someone? And if so, who to? Luke felt a trickle of apprehension at the thought. The alley-way was a dead end running up to the railway. No one had gone past him since he arrived, so whoever it was, was either up on the railway or, more probably and more disturbingly, had got there before him and had been standing as still as he had been.

It was some minutes before he could detach his thoughts from this unpleasant possibility and bring them back to the story that he was telling himself. It was worth the effort, because he remembered that Joe had said something important.

‘One thing I do think a bit odd,’ he had said. ‘We told him our names, didn’t we? OK. So why didn’t he tell us his?’

‘Perhaps he’s in the Secret Service.’

‘He wouldn’t be in no service at all if we hadn’t been there to lend him a hand.’

The landlady, who was back by now, having seen her guest safely away through the cellar-flap, said, ‘Did I understand that you was wanting to know something about him? Well, I can tell you this much. His name’s Hubert Daines and he lives at 173B Cromwell Road.’

‘How on earth—?’

‘Couldn’t resist taking a peep in his jacket pocket. Found two or three letters addressed to him.’

Luke made a careful note of both the name and the address. In view of what they had promised, they could not use them when they made their report, but he had a feeling that they might come in handy sooner or later.

The landlady waved aside Luke’s offer to pay for the drinks. ‘He paid for them,’ she said. ‘Paid up handsome.’ They finished their own drinks quickly. Although they had an excellent excuse for having left their beats they felt they might have stretched it a bit far.

‘Have to talk fast,’ said Joe, ‘to talk ourselves out of this.’

He was right.

They had missed two points and were reported, reluctantly, by Sergeant Hamble. Their account of an unnamed bystander whom they had rescued from the hands of the suffragettes, had been received with cynicism. It appeared that, after the ejection of the spy, the meeting had closed with a number of resolutions advocating varying degrees of violence and had then dispersed peacefully. The organisers denied all knowledge of intrusion by a spy.

Luke and Joe were warned that they would face a disciplinary board, at Area level, which, since they were still only probationers, might mean dismissal from the Force.

At this point, when things looked black for the two young constables, a letter had arrived. Addressed to Superintendent Garforth, it was typed on a double sheet of handsomely embossed Home Office notepaper and signed by no less a person than an Under-secretary of State. It congratulated the Superintendent on the measures he had taken to keep a potentially dangerous meeting under observation and control. It applauded the vigorous steps taken by his officers in protecting a member of the Home Office staff from assault and damage and said that the whole episode reflected great credit on Garforth and on the organisation at his division. The Under-secretary would be sending a copy of his letter to the Home Secretary.

Luke and Joe were now wheeled up for a second helping. The letter was read out to them and they were told that, in all the circumstances, their offence of missing two consecutive points could be overlooked – provided that it did not occur again.

Luke had derived two impressions from all this: that Hubert Daines must have an unexpected pull with the senior ranks in the Home Office; and that he was a very shrewd man.

A second episode was imprinted on Luke’s memory, as much for the uneasiness which it had caused him at the time as for its unexpected outcome. It had occurred eighteen months after his and Joe’s brush with the suffragettes.

Their probationary period was long past and they were by then established members of the rank and file of ‘L’ Division. Luke, in spite of a tendency to use words of more than two syllables and to read works of literature in preference to the penny press, was tolerated by his fellow constables on account of his unfailing good nature and generosity. Joe was popular. His skill in evading the consequences of his more outrageous manoeuvres commanded respect among his friends and suspicion among his superiors.

Both of them had acquired a number of commendations and the tiny pecuniary awards which occasionally went with them – money which disappeared immediately in a round of celebratory drinks.

Superintendent Garforth’s view of them was ambivalent. Both were unquestionably good at their jobs and would come up, in due course, for promotion to sergeant. This was a step which neither of them would have viewed with unmixed pleasure. They knew that the real way up was through the ranks of the CID.

Transfer from the uniformed to the plain-clothes branch did not normally occur until after three or four years of service, but in exceptional cases it could be expedited and take place after one complete year. DDI Cridland had early spotted their CID potential and shortly after the conclusion of their first year’s service had approached Superintendent Garforth with the prospect of their transfer. Garforth had immediately, and inevitably, opposed any such move.

It was at this juncture, that the second episode occurred, which Luke remembered, not only for its unpleasant beginning, but for the important results which finally stemmed from it.

One of the local attractions was a courtyard at the bottom of Brixton Hill. It had been taken over by a group of enterprising businessmen who had set up stalls selling all manner of portable property, from costume jewellery and watches to fruit and vegetables. It was usually crowded. The arrangement of ‘Shoppers’ Paradise’, as they had named it, was that you selected your purchases and carried them over to a cashier’s desk in a central booth. The openness of the transaction would have made shoplifting difficult, but the police had been instructed to keep an eye on it.

One morning Luke, who was on duty, observed a young man who seemed to be behaving oddly. He would push through the crowd towards the cashier’s desk, pause there for a moment then, seeming to change his mind, make his way back towards the entrance. He showed no interest in the goods displayed in the stalls and Luke began to wonder what he was up to. The next time he moved into the crowd he followed him cautiously, keeping a few yards from him and a screen of shoppers between them.