John Creasey - Gideon’s Sport

Willison was now installed for the summer; and behind the shrubs and trees, Barnaby Rudge could practise unseen to his heart’s content. The court had needed cutting but there was not much the matter with it, especially for the kind of practice Barnaby wanted.

Just after half-past eleven, Barnaby followed Willison into the grounds. He was astride a motor-scooter which looked absurdly small for him but was inexpensive and safe. Willison did not want anything to suggest that Barnaby had wealthy backing: it was much better to feel that he had come on his own or been sponsored by a few friends in a syndicate. He pulled up behind the car and joined Willison at a side door.

Willison was a surprising plump man, pink-complexioned, blue-eyed; a kind of grown-up cherub. He had a cupid’s bow mouth and a pleasant smile.

“Good morning, Barnaby.”

“Mr. Willison!” Barnaby positively glowed with health.

“Ready to go?”

“All ready, sir.” Barnaby simply stepped out of grey flannel pants and took a pair of white shoes off the back of the motor-scooter. Willison, in sweater and flannels, took two racquets and a dozen tennis balls out of the Jaguar, and they went on the court. For five minutes they warmed up and Willison put in some shots which were unexpectedly good, while Barnaby simply flexed his muscles and his body.

“Okay, let’s go.” Willison said at last.

Something happened to Barnaby Rudge. It showed in his expression, the sudden cold glint in his eyes, the cat-like way in which he moved. He took up his stance for serving, sent a few shots over the net which Willison just managed to return, and then began to unleash the ‘fireball’. And each time the ball seemed to leave the racquet with the velocity of a bullet, each time it whipped off the court in low trajectory. Willison did all he was there for; pick up the balls and pat them back to Barnaby, who served again and again. Every service came with such perfect co-ordination of muscles and reflexes that he had the same ‘impossible’ speed of movement as Cassius Clay had in the ring.

It was little short of miraculous.

He kept it up without stopping for twenty minutes and only twice did his serve go outside the serving area. At the end he was perspiring much less than Willison, who was gasping for breath and trying not to show too much elation. Barnaby looked very, very, content as he went to the back of the house for a shower.

As he went off, on his motor-scooter, a tall, gangling man with a cigarette dangling from his lips, watched from the other side of the road, and then walked without haste towards a telephone kiosk.

Soon, he was talking on a private line to Archibald Smith, who liked to do some of his bookmaking business in privacy, too.

CHAPTER FIVE

Quick Decision

Lemaitre’s eyes had a wild yet tired look; obviously, he was under great strain. It flashed into Gideon’s mind, as they shook hands, that he could not be far short of sixty: that the day of his retirement was not far off. Then Lemaitre dropped into a chair. The flat, black brief-case held under his arm slipped, and he stooped to retrieve it. His hair had always been sparse but Gideon hadn’t realised how pale and big his bald patch was.

“Hell of a bloody business!” he muttered, now. “I could Hang myself up by me —”

“Take it easy,” interrupted Gideon. “You don’t know that it was your fault.”

“Don’t kid yourself! He was coming to see me and he got bumped off. If I’d done it all by telephone no one would have been any the wiser, but I had to meet him in public.”

“But you often do, don’t you?”

“Oh, we have a pint together, sometimes. But that’s not the point.” Lemaitre was determinedly troubled and disconsolate. He took out a packet of cigarettes and put one to his lips, then went still, obviously recalling that Gideon very seldom smoked these days, and that whenever he did, it was a pipe. He took the cigarette from his lips.

Gideon pushed an ashtray towards him, and with visible relief, Lemaitre lit up.

“Ta.”

“Have we anything else — anything about the actual murder?” asked Gideon.

“Not much-not enough,” answered Lemaitre, through a cloud of smoke. “I’ve seen his Missus, poor little bitch. I didn’t realise how much Charlie mattered to her. You can never tell, can you? The moment his back was turned she was an easy lay, but she’s absolutely prostrate now he’s gone. Bit of guilt involved, maybe, she —”

“Guilt?” interjected Gideon sharply.

“Oh, not guilt about this flicking murder. I meant about the boy-friends. Anyway, George, he left at eight o’clock last night for the Old Steps. Hadn’t told her he was coming to see me, she didn’t have any idea. I’d give a lot to find out who did know! He was going to walk-used to be a long-distance walker, did you know? That was the last wifey saw of him. He was seen by a couple of our chaps walking towards Wapping High Street, and that’s the last anyone saw of him, too. Except for one funny thing, George.”

“Yes?” prompted Gideon.

“He was seen by a truck driver — chap who’s often at the Old Steps-on one side of the road. High Street, I mean. He noticed a taxi, drawn up about half a mile from the park, and Charlie talking to the cabby, and when the taxi moved off, Charlie’d gone. He could have turned down a side street, or taken the cab. Mind you, might be nothing in it,” Lemaitre went on, warily, “I don’t want to take anything for granted. But I’m following it up. If Charlie was going to walk, he was going to walk, he wasn’t going to take any cab.”

“Have you traced the cab?”

“Started work on it just before I left H.Q. The truck-driver didn’t notice its number, but it was a black Austin with a mottled top, 1958 or 1959. Not too many of those still about-and those there are, are mostly owner-driven, these days.” Lemaitre paused just long enough to stub out one cigarette and to fight another before going on: “Got the autopsy report, that’s one thing.” He opened the briefcase. “Manual strangulation. No water in the lungs, nothing in the way of bruises or scratches. He was standing or sitting in front of someone who just put his hands round his throat and choked the life out of him.” Lemaitre drew very hard at his cigarette, but Gideon did not interrupt. Then Lemaitre” pushed a photograph of a thumb print, very much enlarged, and for the first time spoke on a note of elation. “When we get the bastard, that will fix him! On a patch of ointment he had on his neck. He used the ointment regularly, because he often had this rash in hot weather,” Lemaitre went on. “Bit of luck, that.”

“Checked Records?” asked Gideon.

“Blimey, yes!”

“Want any help tracing that taxi?”

“I’ve given it to Info, for a general call.”

Gideon smiled appreciatively. “Still on the ball, eh, Lem?” He gave Lemaitre time enough to savour that rare compliment, and then went on: “Exactly what did Charlie Blake tell you?”

“Not much,” admitted Lemaitre. “But in a way, it was plenty. He travelled first-class on the QE2, his once a season trip. Worked his passage with his cards, but he never was a card-sharp. Couple of men were talking in a corner of the smoking-room, and he was sitting with his back to them — they didn’t notice a little squirt like Charlie. Yanks, they were. They talked about the way they and someone in London were going to fix the Derby. Some new drug which couldn’t be traced once it was absorbed in the system. A slow—’em-down drug, which they’d give all the runners, except the one they were backing to win. The winner couldn’t possibly be involved — he would just be doing his best, not drugged at all.” Lemaitre stubbed out his second cigarette but did not light a third. “Charlie said they mentioned a couple of names and he was going to check on them.”

“Did he name these two Americans?” asked Gideon.

“Not to me,” Lemaitre said.

“Do you know if anyone else heard the conversation?”

“No, George. You know the problem; face to face with a man, you can pick up a lot you can’t on the telephone. That’s why I arranged to meet him. You know what a din there is over at the Old Steps-you can’t hear yourself speak unless you’re used to it and get in a huddle. When you’re talking, no one else can hear you because of the racket. You should have heard them last night —” He broke off, seeing Gideon’s expression, and changed the subject hastily. “Obviously the smoking-room stewards on the QE2 might have heard something. Mines of information, those chaps are.”

Gideon stared at him, but his thoughts had flown to the smoking-room of the S.S. Fifty States when he had sailed to New York a few years earlier. The stewards were indeed mines of information, maintaining a sphinx-like exterior whatever their secret knowledge. And they may well have heard the one particular and other relevant conversations. He noticed that Lemaitre had fallen silent, as if he felt this hard stare was of disapproval, as he asked: “Where’s the QE2, now?”

“Two days out of London heading west,” Lemaitre answered promptly. “I thought of that, too.”

“Have you talked to Cunard?”

“Er — no, George. Only to find out where the ship is. It’s going to be pretty late when she gets back to Southampton. Three days more on this trip, two days in New York for the turn round, then five days back here — the Derby will be on top of us.”

“Yes. Lem, talk to the Cunard people in Haymarket. Go and see them, if it will help. Find out whether the smoking-room stewards who were on board on the last trip from New York are on board now. If they are, we know what to do. If they’re having a trip off, find out where they are and when we can talk to them.”

Lemaitre’s mouth was wide open, his eyes brighter than they had been since he had entered the office. He began to get up, immediately.

“I’m on my way. But George, if they’re on board—”

“We’ll have someone fly out to New York — be there when the ship arrives. One man will do for the job. He can telephone his report then fly back, he needn’t be away for more than three or four days. Look slippy, Lem!”

Lemaitre’s eyes were glowing; he needed no telling that he would be the ‘someone’ to fly to New York.

“George,” Lemaitre said on the telephone, an hour later.

“Yes?”

“Four smoking-room stewards are on board the QE2 at the moment, and I’ve a list of the passengers on the last trip, it shouldn’t be difficult to identify and trace the two Yanks Charlie was talking about. Four days should do it.” There was a pause, then an anxious: “George, you did mean me to go, didn’t you? There’s a one p.m. flight tomorrow, B.O.A.C. —”

“Get your ticket,” Gideon ordered.

That was about the time when Sir Arthur Filby was in Archibald Smith’s private suite above his offices in Chelsea. It was a high-rise building, overlooking Chelsea Embankment, the river, and the great pile that was the Battersea Power Station, on the south bank. The sky was a vivid blue, and the four stacks gave off a kind of shimmer but no actual smoke. Smith turned from a cocktail cabinet and handed Filby a drink; his more usual whisky and soda. Filby surveyed the glass with his habitual suspicion.

“So what?” he asked, now.

“This Barnaby Rudge is practising in a secluded garden at Wimbledon, Arthur.”

“Top-rank players often practise in private.”

“This one is like a hermit’s hide-out-and Willison is tenant of the house.”

Filby sniffed, drank, and put his glass down. He was such a distinguished-looking man, and so absurdly handsome in profile, that even Smith watched him, fascinated, for several seconds. Then Filby looked up and asked bluntly: “What’s on your mind, Archie?”