John Creasey - Gideon’s Sport

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.