They Never Looked Inside (12 page)

You are therefore most strongly advised to telephone the police
before
investigating any suspected activity.

Mr. McDowall, who was a hefty, if corpulent, Scotsman, had been rather scornful of this well-meant advice when he received it over his solitary breakfast table. Now, however, at two o’clock in the morning, he inclined to give it more consideration. He was a light sleeper, and he was absolutely certain that the noise which had just woken him was not due to any innocent cause. He was alone in the house and the house itself, as explained, was isolated. Slipping quietly from his bed he pulled on the sweater and trousers and plimsolls which old blitz habits had caused him to leave handy by his bed. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he pulled the telephone towards him and started to dial.

It was Curly who had made the noise which awakened Mr. McDowall. Careless as ever, he had forgotten to locate the loose furniture in the crowded back room of the pawnbroker’s shop, and had kicked over a chair.

Rod cursed silently.

The entry had been easy enough. In fact, it had been effected for them by Busty, who was a kingpin on outside locks. He was one of the curious specialists who flourish on the fringe of the kingdom of crime; he was infinitely patient at “casing” a job and infinitely crafty at finding or making a way in, whether it was an office, a warehouse, or a private dwelling. Yet he never set foot in one of these premises himself. He sold his knowledge and his special skill to the best buyer. Wisely, too, he insisted on cash payment in advance.

Rod and Curly knew from Busty that the only person in the house was “that old — McDowall”; that he was a crusty customer, but could probably be relied on to sleep soundly if they didn’t start throwing furniture about; that he had no dog.

Rod, since his experience in Stumpi’s Café, had always felt nervous until he had a line of retreat mapped out. This time it wasn’t difficult. The back room in which they were working led into a kitchen. This in turn had two doors. The old one leading out into the court, and a second, a makeshift affair, which the owner had put into the blitzed wall. Rod twisted off the staple of the padlock with the poker and found himself in a sort of no-man’s-land of rubble and timber. The low wall, on the far side, looked climbable. He moved up two heavy pieces of masonry to form a step, and pulled off the single strand of barbed wire which adorned the top. Then he made his way back. Curly was working on the lock of the big press, and as he paused to straighten his back Rod told him briefly what he had done.

“Good,” said Curly, “and now watch the staircase door. We don’t want the old — creeping down on us.” It was whilst he was turning back to get on with the job that he had kicked the chair over.

The noise seemed to hang in the heavy silence.

“Christ,” breathed Rod, “that’s torn it.”

“Torn nothing,” said Curly – unnecessarily loud, Rod thought. “It’ll take more than that to wake him. And if it does, you know what to do, don’t you?”

“Okay,” said Rod. He felt for the handle of his cosh.

The mistake which McDowall made, as he realised afterwards, was in not waiting quite long enough. As soon as he heard the police car turn the corner he started downstairs. In his hand he held a serviceable pick-helve.

Rod heard him coming at exactly the same instant as he heard the police car stop, and without hesitating for an instant he dived towards the door. As his fingers touched the handle he heard the first thunderous tattoo on the shop door and out of the corner of his eye he saw the staircase door open to admit the figure of the outraged householder. At that moment the unspeakable thing happened.

A hand grasped his collar and pulled him backwards, off-balance. As he fell he saw Curly deliberately slam the kitchen door.

He lay where he had fallen, quite still and quiet. Mr. McDowall, standing over him with his pick-helve at the ready, thought from a glimpse at the white face that he had fainted. He was wrong. Rod was motionless and speechless, bereft of power and reason, by cold fury. The whole thing had been deliberate beyond possibility of mistake. Curly – to whom he, Rod, had shown the way of escape – Curly had first pulled him back in a callous effort to get away first, and had then slammed the door in his face – offering Rod as a morsel of sacrifice to delay the pursuit.

He almost blacked-out in sheer, overmastering rage. Without interest he noticed that there were now three squad men in the room looking down at him.

“There’s one away,” said Mr. McDowall, “I heard him go.” He pointed to the kitchen door.

Without a word two of the policemen disappeared. The other, an enormous red-haired sergeant, bent down, twisted one hand in Rod’s collar and lifted him easily to his feet.

“He’s just a bairn,” said McDowall, who was a kindly man at heart.

“He’s a (shocking) juvenile delinquent,” said the Sergeant, running an expert hand over Rod’s unresisting person. “Brought his toys with him, too,” he added, fishing out the leather cosh.

At this juncture the other two members of his party returned to report failure.

“He got straight out at the back. Sergeant,” said the spokesman, “must have nipped over the wall. He’s well away by now. Left some of his trousies on the wire, though.”

“All right,” said the Sergeant. “Look after this young desperado.” He transferred Rod and strode out. A minute later his voice came faintly. He was apparently speaking on the wireless and exhorting an unknown number of people to “watch out for a man in the neighbourhood of Pentonville Road and Kings Cross, medium height, trousers torn—”

Having passed the buck in this satisfactory way the Sergeant re-entered the shop and accepted a “strong tot” for himself and his assistants. In the general end-of-term atmosphere now prevailing Mr. McDowall even went so far as to offer Rod a quick nip. Rod merely shook his head. He had not uttered a word since his capture – had, indeed, scarcely moved.

He maintained this inflexible, white-faced silence during the drive back to Scotland Yard and the process of his handing over to the Duty Inspector. The Sergeant, who was a man of considerable experience and by no means lacking in intelligence, was puzzled. He had seen plenty of prisoners voluble and not a few prisoners both talkative and unrepentant, he had watched prisoners bluster, and he had heard them swear; he had even seen them cry.

Whilst Rod was being re-searched he watched him thoughtfully; now, as he knew, during the period of reaction was the time when prisoners were apt to open their mouths too wide, the time when they committed howling indiscretions which were so often the cause of so much pain and grief to their friends still at liberty.

Their friends still at liberty!

For the first time that evening the Sergeant
really
started to use his brain. He remembered Rod lying on the floor. He hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but it came back to him now that McDowall had denied knocking him down. He said he’d found him like that. And the kitchen door had been shut.

The Sergeant looked again at Rod, out of the corner of his eye, and noted the tell-tale tightness of the skin round the jaw. As he watched he saw him shaken with a convulsive shudder.

The Sergeant got to his feet and went quietly out.

Woken at the uncomfortable hour of four-thirty a.m., Chief Inspector Hazlerigg showed neither discomfort nor displeasure. Sitting on the edge of his camp bed he listened to Sergeant Instone and finally said: “Well done. I think you may have got something there.” And he thought for a moment, swinging his legs.

“When the Inspector’s finished with him, take him along to one of the interview rooms. Give him a large, strong cup of tea – station brew – and it wouldn’t do any harm to put a drop of something in it.”

“I think I can get some nice S.R.D. (N), sir.”
[1]

“Just the thing,” said Hazlerigg. “Treat him kindly – lush him up a bit – but he’s got to drink it. Two cups of it, if he’ll take it. Drink some yourself, too.”

The Sergeant grinned and departed. Hazlerigg started to dress.

Ten minutes later he was sitting opposite Rod in the room once occupied by Major McCann and Gunner Andrews. Both of them were drinking large mugs of tea in a fairly companionable sort of way. There was no one else (visibly) present. Hazlerigg said: “I’m not going to ask you for any breaches of confidence, son, about the crowd you work for, I mean; for one thing we know a good deal about them already and I don’t suppose there’s much you could add, from your own knowledge, and even if you could, you wouldn’t—and I’d go so far as to say that we’d respect you less if you did.”

Hazlerigg took another sip of tea and swivelled round in his chair so that he was not looking directly at the boy at all.

“There’s one thing, though,” he went on. “That chap who was with you—” In the mirror he saw Rod jerk.

“So far as I can gather from what the Sergeant told me about tonight’s doings, that bloke served you rather a bad turn. In fact, not to put too strong a point on it, he landed you up the creek, so that he could get clear himself. And,” said Hazlerigg ruefully, “he
has
got clear. We haven’t even a description of him and, between you and me, I don’t see much chance of catching him. In fact, he’s probably having a good laugh at us right now.”

Rod half opened his mouth, but Hazlerigg was still talking in the same easy way.

“Now we thought, son, that if you’re not much stuck on this chap – and we can’t honestly see any reason why you should be – I mean, he’s forfeited any claim he may have had to your protection – we thought that if you’d like to give us some information, just about this chap – nothing else, you understand, but just enough for us to put this lad where he belongs.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know about him—anything,” said Rod with a savagery which surprised even the Inspector.

“That’s the boy,” said Hazlerigg. “Supposing we start with his present address.”

The time was now nine o’clock. Hazlerigg, having shaved and breakfasted, was in conference with the Assistant Commissioner, Inspector Pickup making a third.

“So that’s that,” said Hazlerigg. “We know enough about Curly to pick him up for five jobs. We know where he lives, and we know his two latest hideouts. We can pull him in when we want to. The point is, sir, do we want to?”

The Assistant Commissioner, who knew Hazlerigg, smiled. “No, no,” he said. “I’m not buying that one. You’ve got a plan in that tortuous head of yours; let’s have it.”

“All right, sir. Well, this is how I see it. Curly’s place in this mob is a peculiar one. He’s an operative, of course; one of their ex-army boys, like Andrews – incidentally, as I think I mentioned, sir, he was a very close friend of Andrews, in the same regiment, and so on. But the two men are really poles apart. To start with, Curly’s got a pre-war record. Blew identified him easily in our Art Gallery. We had him in twice for petty larceny in 1937 and 1938. Called himself Anderson then. Now I suggest that Curly wasn’t
only
an operative. I think he was trusted a little higher up. This is only guess-work, but I think he was one of the few people who knew something about the central control. We know that he was at headquarters once, and we know that he carried messages to headquarters.”

“You mean,” said the Assistant Commissioner, “that our best plan would be to locate him and have him followed.”

“No, sir, I don’t. For three reasons. First, it’s been tried before—you remember Major McCann’s effort? Second, he’ll be as nervous as a scalded kitten after what happened last night. Third, I don’t suppose the Big Boys will let him go near them again. I shouldn’t if I were in their shoes.”

“All right,” said the Assistant Commissioner good-humouredly. “You tell me.”

“I shall need your support, sir,” said Hazlerigg frankly. “Because what I propose to do isn’t straightforward police work; not by a long, long chalk. However, the way I see it is this. Some weeks ago Curly blotted his copybook pretty badly. He went straight from Goffstein’s office in Flaxman Street to H.Q. in Kensington. Worse, he allowed himself to be followed. As I suggested to Inspector Pickup at the time, this can’t have made him very popular with the bosses. It seems, though, that they must have forgiven him. Anyway, he was given another job. Now young Blew has told us a good deal about this new job. Apparently Curly has to attend on Tuesdays and Fridays at a restaurant-café in Greek Street – a stage-door place – one of Goffstein’s subsidiaries. He goes there to get what our young friend described as ‘casual goods’, odd stones and brooches and necklaces and watches, which have stuck to people’s fingers from time to time and which they are scared of peddling through the normal channels. Apparently it’s pretty widely known among the boys that you can get ‘a fair price for fancy goods’ at this café. That’s one thing. The other is about Blew himself. He doesn’t know it, but we’ve identified
him
. You may remember, sir, that when Andrews was pulled in after the Oxford Street job we got the tip from one of our informers, ‘Stiffy’ Hoyle. Well, we had Stiffy up here this morning and he gave us a positive identification. Blew was the young chap concerned with Andrews on that job.”

Hazlerigg paused for a moment to allow this miscellaneous item of information to sink in, then he said:

“Suppose we play it like this, sir—”

He talked for half an hour.

At about tea-time on Monday two large men, wearing dark blue overcoats and bowler hats, visited a house in Camden Town. The car which had brought them was left in the next street, but by inexcusable carelessness it was so parked that its radiator was just visible round the corner. If any of the local inhabitants had any doubts as to the authorship of this visitation, they had only to stroll as far as this corner where they might observe that the driver of the car was an impassive gentleman in the uniform of the Metropolitan Police.