John Creasey - Gideon’s Sport

There was a sound at the door, and it banged open. Roy Roche stood on the threshold, Kenneth Noble and one of the others just behind him. Roche’s face, with its straggly beard and full, rather wet lips, made Juanita shudder. He strode across to her, picked a corner of the adhesive-plaster free with his forefinger, and then ripped it off. The pain was so sudden and fierce that she cried out.

“Now, you bitch, let’s have the truth!” he rasped. “The whole bloody Committee’s being picked up! Did you give the police our names? Are you the stinking little stool-pigeon? Come on, talk!” He raised his voice and at the same time took a knife from his pocket — a knife with a short, thick, razor-sharp blade, which he now held close to her face.

“Roy — !” Kenneth Noble began.

But the only man who mattered here, Juanita knew instinctively, was this beast with the knife.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Beast

“Did you give them our names?” Roche almost hissed the words. “Come on, you little bitch — did you?” He bent over her and the blade glinted in front of her eyes, the point very close to her cheek. “Come on, damn you — tell me! Did you give the cops our names?”

When she didn’t answer, he made a quick, slashing motion with the knife and she caught her breath as she felt the sharp pain, the slow-coming warmth. He had slashed her cheek.

“Did you? Tell me — or I’ll fix you so your own mother won’t bloody know you!”

She was quite sure that he meant what he said; and in truth, there was no real need for silence, now. But if she admitted what she had done, what would it help her? She saw in Roche what she had not seen in the others: a capacity for evil. It showed in his eyes, in the way his lips were drawn back over his small teeth. He was not simply outraged because of the discovery: he was doing what came naturally to him-hating her, perhaps hating humanity, enjoying his ascendancy; a bullying, cold-blooded sadist, finding pleasure in inflicting pain. And if she told him -

“For God’s sake, tell him!” gasped Ken Noble, at his shoulder. There was sweat on his forehead and fear, not hatred, in his eyes.

“If she doesn’t, I’ll —”

“Yes,” Juanita made herself say. “I told them. I am a—”

“I ought to cut your tongue out.” Roche rasped, and he looked bestial enough to do exactly that. “My God, I will!”

He slashed at her lips, and she screamed. The blade cut, there was surging terror in her, yet her eyes were wide open and she saw all that happened. She saw the knife above her face, blood-dripping, then Ken Noble’s hand close over Roche’s wrist. Roche turned, as if astounded. Noble clenched his fist and drove it into Roche’s face, throwing him off-balance. At that same moment, there was a shout from the room beyond: “Look out! Police!”

And a police-whistle shrilled out; harsh, urgent.

Roche recovered his balance, but he was no longer looking at Juanita. He stood, knife in hand, in front of Ken Noble, who was shielding Juanita with his body as he gasped a near incoherent: “Roy — let’s get out! Let’s —”

Roche drove the knife into his chest.

One moment, Noble was speaking, his fear vivid on his face. The next, he was silent; staring as if stupidly at the man who had plunged the knife into him, leaving only the handle protruding. There was a moment of silence, an awful moment in which everything seemed to stand still, even the breath in Juanita’s body. Then police-whistles and the thumping of feet on stairs let sudden bedlam loose-while very slowly, Kenneth Noble crumpled to the floor in a lifeless heap.

Then, Roche turned to Juanita.

She was still fastened at the waist, but her arms were free. Thank God, her arms were free! And he had nothing in his hands now; his knife was deep in Noble’s body. It was impossible to judge what was passing through his mind: whether he realised that he had committed murder and that she had seen the killing. It was impossible to know, from those glittering eyes, whether he was even thinking of her. She was in stark terror, and aware not of pain, but the warmth of oozing blood.

Then, the door across the room behind Roche was flung back.

She did not see the policeman, but she heard his voice and was sure he was one.

“Come on, pack it in! You’ll only make more trouble for yourselves. Don’t —”

Then he stopped. He must have seen the body on the floor, even if he could not see her there, on the bed. And in that moment, Roche moved — from absolute stillness to galvanic action. But he moved, thank God, away from her. There was a gasp from the policeman as Roche crashed into him bodily. She could not see what happened next; but there was another thud followed by the pounding of footsteps.

Roche disappeared.

The policeman, his helmet dangling awry, was leaning against the door, looking away from her, obviously too dazed even to shout. But he turned his head at last towards the inner room and the man on the floor, and for the first time, saw Juanita and the blood which hid so much of her face.

Gideon was in the back of his own car, being driven by a middle-aged detective-sergeant, when a call came over the radio-telephone fixed beside the driver’s seat, so that it could be picked up quickly from front or back. The familiar: “Information calling Commander Gideon, Information calling Commander Gideon,” came clearly into the car. He picked it up-

‘This is Commander Gideon.”

“There’s a message from AB Division, sir.”

“I’m in the Division now,” Gideon replied.

‘ ”Superintendent Henry is in Highway Lane,” the Information speaker said. “He’ll be glad to see you there, sir-he won’t be at his office.”

Gideon thought, trouble, and hung up. “Highway Lane,” he ordered, and as the driver murmured acknowledgement, settled back in his seat.

Highway Lane, he knew, housed the headquarters of the Action Committee. Perhaps he had been too precipitate in thinking ‘trouble’ and perhaps Henry had caught the lot of them together, plotting. He saw the brick wall of Lords and as they passed, heard a flutter of applause. For a boundary? A catch? A wicket some other way?

As two uniformed policemen, talking together near one gate, noticed his car, recognised him, and promptly drew up almost to attention, Gideon hid a smile. He glanced around as they passed the masses of new apartment-blocks, some of them high-rise; and remembering the one which had collapsed a few months ago, reflected wryly that such disasters seldom seemed to overtake the luxury-blocks built for the very rich. They went through the narrow High Street of Hampstead itself, still called and in a way still in fact a village, and turned into narrow, winding Highway Lane.

He saw the white ambulance, the crowd, the dozen or more police — and the Black Maria, further along: back doors open, men being hustled in. He thought: Not that girl! Then saw the bearers coming out with the stretcher, and the girl on it. A sheet covered the lower half of her face like a yashmak, leaving her eyes and the top of her head free, and it was bloodstained about where her lips would be. Her eyes were open, but she did not look in any particular direction; just stared towards the clear sky. A youngish man in a smock came out as they pushed the stretcher into the ambulance, and immediately following him came Henry.

Gideon, by then, was getting out of his car. Henry saw him and raised his arms in a gesture of resignation which filled Gideon with alarm. The young doctor climbed into the ambulance; the stretcher-bearers went to the driving-cabin.

“How is she?” Gideon demanded.

“Scarred for life.” Henry almost choked.

“Scarred?”

Henry said: “Her face has been cut about. It’ll scar her for life, I tell you!”

“No other injury?” asked Gideon.

“No. That is —” Henry was obviously shaken; as obviously, he made an effort to pull himself together. “Cuts on the face and mouth, sir, but no body injuries.”

“So it could have been worse,” Gideon made himself say.

“I  —  I suppose so, sir. The man who slashed her seems to have killed a man. I don’t know the story, yet — probably only Constable Conception can tell it — but we know the name of the killer. And he attacked one of our chaps in his getaway.”

Gideon hesitated only a few seconds before asking: “Is a general call out?”

“Yes, with full description. The man we’re after is an Australian named Roche: Roy Roche, one of the ringleaders of the group. He’s twenty-two. Juanita — Detective-Constable Conception  —  always said he was the most likely to be dangerous. The dead man is another of the leaders — a Kenneth Noble.” Henry was getting back to normal, his voice becoming less strained. “The raid as a whole has been reasonably successful, sir. There were fifteen Committee members named and we’ve caught eleven. Roche we know about. The other three weren’t at home or at their places of business when our men called on them. The eleven we’ve got will be at the station in about fifteen minutes.”

“Can they all be considered accessories to the murder?” Gideon asked, heavily.

“It is possible, sir. Certainly any one of them might have been a witness.”

“And might help you to find Roche.” As he spoke, Gideon was trying to decide the best thing for him to do. The complexion of this case had changed instantly. It was first a murder investigation, only secondly a problem of preventing a violent demonstration.

He saw two men turn into Highway Lane and recognised them as from Fleet Street; and suddenly he was aware of the urgent need to decide what to tell the Press. Henry saw the men at the same moment, and swore under his breath.

“Chas, you handle this,” Gideon said. “Treat the men we’ve picked up as possible witnesses to the murder. Don’t work on the demonstration angle, yet. Tell the Press everything, though — why you rounded them up, all you can about the murder. Let them know about Constable Conception’s injuries. Just give them all the information, holding nothing back: let diem decide how to use it. Let them know this is going to be one of the biggest man-hunts ever, too.” The two men were now close, and he added: “No reason why I shouldn’t tell them that.”

He faced the newspapermen, grimly: “I’m going back to the Yard to start one of the biggest man-hunts in years, gentlemen. A police officer has been savagely attacked, a man whose identity we don’t yet know has been murdered. Superintendent Henry will give you all the information you need.”

He turned, heard cameras clicking, saw more cars stopping at the far end of Highway Lane and a photographer jump out of one, as he got back into his own. As he was driven off, amid more photograph-taking, he could picture the bright face of Juanita Conception before she had been slashed.

“I hope to heaven she isn’t badly disfigured,” he said aloud.

As he was heading back for the heart of London, he passed a shop above which three members of the Action Central Committee were meeting; shaken, not yet fully aware of the size of the disaster.

One, an Australian from Sydney, was saying: “It doesn’t matter what happened, I tell you! The Cause is more important. Maybe Roy Roche was a murderous bastard, maybe he was only in it for kicks — but I’m not! I’m in it to do a job and that job is to fight every kind of race prejudice, wherever I see it. We don’t have any that matters, in Australia, because we keep out any poor devil who isn’t white-but one day they’ll come in floods. And when they do, we’ll have a hell of a lot of trouble — and I’ll go. straight back home and fight it there.”

He glared around him.

“Right now, I’m fighting it here, and what’s happened today doesn’t matter a light. We go on, mates-we see this thing through!”

The call came clearly over the court as Barnaby Rudge went to the net and shook hands with his opponent. He was feeling very content and even more confident.

“Game, set and match to Rudge,” the umpire said, and there was a little flurry of applause. The two players shook hands with the umpire, put on their sweaters, and walked off together, as ball-boys and linesmen strolled off the court, and most of the standing crowd moved away, in quest of tea or ice-cream, or hot-dogs. Barnaby had not once been tempted to use his fireball service — and was particularly pleased, because he had been fairly hard-pressed in the third set and had been sorely tempted. But he had overcome the temptation and won in straight sets.

He saw Willison in the stands, giving him the thumbs-up sign.

He saw, too, but did not recognise, Archibald Smith, who had sat with the tall, bony inquiry agent throughout the match.

“And that’s your world-beater?” Smith sneered, as they drove back to London in his Jaguar.

“Mr. Smith, I tell you he’s got a service that will blast the best off the court!”

“He was nearly blasted off the court himself, today! I didn’t see anything special about his service.”

“He didn’t use it, Mr. Smith.”

“Now come on! He’s human, isn’t he? He could easily have lost that third set — if he had a killer-service, he’d have used it then. Come off it, Sidey. What’s your game?”

Sidey looked at the bookmaker sourly.

He had been both disappointed and surprised, for Smith had promised to double his money if he was satisfied with his information; but no one would have been satisfied on today’s showing. He did not know what to say. He knew Smith had a reputation for being tight-fisted, and it was possible that this was what he was being now — that he was only pretending to disbelieve him, as an excuse to lower the value of the information. Sidey’s indignation at this possibility was deepened by his awareness of the man’s wealth-as epitomised right there, in the big Jaguar, with its telephone built into the dashboard, and even an extension for use from the back seat.

“I’ve got photos that’ll show you he’s got a fireball service!” he said at last. And when Smith laughed, almost scornfully, he went on in an angry tone: “I tell you, Mr. Smith- if you’ve got any sense, you won’t take any bets on Rudge. You’ll lose every penny. What you ought to do is put a packet on him to win — and put a thou on for me tool”

“A thousand for you? Have you gone mad?”

“I’m telling you, and I’ve always been fair to you. Put me on a thou  —  “

“How much of your own money are you risking?” demanded Smith.

“All I can afford.”

“Don’t hedge! How much?”

“Two hundred quid,” Sidey answered, sulkily.

“You haven’t put it on with me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong!” replied Sidey, with more spirit. “I done it at eight different shops, all yours, so’s no one can guess I’ve got inside knowledge. And I wouldn’t risk that amount of money if I wasn’t sure — you ought to know that.”

“I’ll need a lot more proof,” Smith growled. “But you’ve earned your money; I’ll say that for you. I won’t take Willison’s stake-just in case miracles happen.” He opened his tight-fitting jacket and took out a packet of one-pound notes. “There’s your hundred. And if I were you, I’d keep it in my pocket; I wouldn’t put it on a man or on a horse.”