John Creasey - Inspector West At Home

Roger had a curious sensation; he felt sorry for the AG! Of all the men whom he had imagined able to stand alone Chatworth was the strongest. Now he was confessing that the situation had got beyond him.

Roger smiled. “You know, sir, we aren’t doing too badly! Malone and his mob under arrest, the Society racket is uncovered, most of the agents, guilty and innocent, known to us. At another time we’d be congratulating ourselves. Within forty-eight hours we should know whether Mrs Cartier is the brains behind the scheme, or whether it’s Oliphant or someone whom we don’t yet know.”

“Yes,” said Chatworth, relaxing into a smile. “Comforting common sense, West. Do you think it possible that whoever is giving information from here is the real leader?”

“Vaguely,” Roger said. “Are you having any individuals in the force watched ?”

“Difficult to set the police to catch the police,” Chatworth said, “especially after our one failure. I shall leave it to you.”

“With full authority?” Roger asked, quietly.

“With full authority to act. You must tell no one here what you are doing. If you want anyone followed without his knowledge, whoever you use must believe that there is some danger for his quarry and that he’s acting as a bodyguard — you can arrange that, of course?”

“Of course, sir,” echoed Roger.

Ten minutes later he was sitting at his desk. The office was empty but for himself and he was grinning much as he had done in the taxi.

The quick changes of mood which he had felt that day were natural enough.

The telephone rang. “Mrs West is on the line, sir,” the operator told him.

“Put her through,” Roger said. “Hallo, Jan ! Are you all right?”

“I would like to wring Malone’s neck !” said Janet. “But I’m told that Bill Tennant didn’t do a bad job! Darling, I wanted to tell you not to worry about the lounge. They have left us some furniture, and well, it doesn’t really matter all that much. How are things going?”

“Not badly,” said Roger. “How could it, with a wife like you? Ask Mark and Tennant to meet me at the Green Cat — Mark knows it — at half past two, will you? Unless they’re both too tired, that is. I think I can find something for them to do.”

“Mark’s here,” said Janet.

Mark’s voice sounded on the line almost at once. He confirmed the arrangement to meet at the Green Cat, and rang off. He was smiling widely when the door opened and Eddie Day bustled in.

“Now what’s the matter with you, Handsome?” demanded Eddie. “Strike me, you look as if you’d lost a tanner and found half a crown! Been promoted?” he added, almost fearfully.

Roger laughed. “No, Eddie, I won’t be able to go any higher until I’m in the middle forties, if at all, so cast the green mote out of your eye !”

Eddie looked relieved.

“Things going all right, then?” he asked.

“Not badly at all,” said Roger. “You haven’t seen Abbott, have you ?”

“Just come from him,” replied Eddie. “Cold fish all right, he tried to tick me off. Me ! He doesn’t look as if he’s come into a fortune, if you ask me he looks as if he’s got something on his mind.”

“Does he ?” asked Roger, innocently.

He made one or two phone calls, wishing Cornish were at the Yard. But the fair-haired Inspector was working in AZ — his old Division — which he knew thoroughly, trying to find out more about Malone and keeping an eye open for Pickerell. Pickerell, Mrs Cartier and Oliphant, Roger thought, might give him the answer to the major problem, that of the renegade policeman.

“Seen Sloan ?” asked Eddie Day, looking up from his desk.

“Sloan ? No!” Roger was eager. “Is he back ?”

“I saw him coming in, half an hour ago,” Eddie said. “Looks as if he’s been in a place where the sun shone.”

Detective-Inspector William Sloan, until recently Sergeant Sloan and Roger’s chief aide , was a tall, not bad-looking man, with mousy hair and a rather speculative expression in his brown eyes. Roger sent for him. He said that he had come back early because he had heard a rumour of Roger’s trouble.

“Oh, it passed,” Roger said, as Eddie Day bustled out. “But the AC feels pretty sure that there is a leakage here.” He looked at Sloan steadily. The other did not answer, except with a nod.

“What I want to do,” said Roger, “is to make sure that no one has a crack at Abbott or Martin.” He paused, thinking that Sloan was probably the only man at the Yard, Cornish possibly excepted, who would be able to read between his words. “They’ve been up to the neck in this business and they might be in danger even though Malone’s finished. But then, you don’t know what’s been happening?”

“I’ve heard all about it,” said Sloan. “I’ve been in the canteen.”

“Good ! Take a couple of reliable men, and guard Abbott and Martin with their lives!” Roger smiled. “Don’t let Abbott know what you’re doing, or he might get annoyed. Phone me if there’s anything urgent. Oliphant is Suspect Number I at the moment — had you heard of that?”

“Everyone here seems to have heard,” Sloan told him.

“Nice work,” Roger said.

But he believed that it was a mistake and was glad it was Chatworth’s responsibility, not his. If Oliphant were warned, anyone at the Yard might be responsible.

In the next hour, several reports were telephoned to him. The men watching Oliphant had nothing to report. The solicitor had not left his house but had been seen at the front window. He had had no callers. Mrs Cartier was at her flat, but her husband had gone to the City and had last been seen entering the building which housed the head offices of the Cartier Food Product Company. There was no trace of Pickerell, but Cornish, telephoning personally, said that several more of Malone’s men had been located and there were rumours that a man answering Pickerell’s description had been seen in the East End the previous evening.

“Good man. Go to it!” Roger said.

“Ought I to have a word with Abbott?” Cornish asked.

“Why not?” asked Roger, putting Cornish through.

He telephoned the letting office at Bonnock House, talked for some time, and at half past twelve, went down to the canteen, had a snack, then left for Pep Morgan’s office. He had telephoned to say that he would be there about one o’clock and asked for Pep’s chief operatives to be present. Maude greeted him with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. She told him that she had been to see Pep that morning and that he was making a good recovery.

“That’s fine,” said Roger. “Where are the men ?”

Maude cocked her thumb over her shoulder towards Pep’s private office.

Lanky Sam was propping himself up against the window. A stolid, chunky individual — the man who had been at Bell Street and who had left soon after dawn that day — was sitting on Morgan’s desk. He swore that he had heard nothing of the taxi-driver’s arrival in the garage; Dixon had been put there before Pep’s man had arrived on duty. The other men, middle-aged with jaundiced looks in their eyes and the world-weariness which comes to men whose life is bound up with the sordid business of domestic disruption, were sitting on upright chairs. All of them eyed Roger hopefully.

“Okay, Boss,” Sam said. “Shoot.”

Roger smiled. “I’m no longer the bad boy of the Yard, but I still want some help.”

“So you really admit there are detectives outside the Yard?” Sam said, admiringly. “You learn quick, Handsome !”

“I hope you will,” Roger said. “Listen.”

He told them exactly what he wanted.