Chapter Ten

Second Disappearance

 

On the Monday morning, after a long evening at the Applebys’ in which Janet West and Dot Appleby seemed likely to become good friends, Roger found a pencilled note on his desk: “Please call Supt. Bellew.” He didn’t put the call in at once, but studied the result of the week-end’s work by men assigned with him on the shop robberies job. Each Division had been asked to give the location, name, turnover and opening times of the small neighbourhood shops in the Division, and already three Divisions, who must have worked overtime, had turned in fairly comprehensive statements. He did not like what he saw on these; on one list there were a hundred and twenty-three shops. He telephoned the Map Room, and the Inspector in charge said:

“I got your chit, Handsome—I’ll use red-headed pins with a white dot for your shops.”

“I’ll send some stuff down right away,” Roger added. “When will you be ready for me to have a look?”

“Give me two hours.”

“That’ll do fine,” said Roger, and rang off. He checked that there was no further news in about Adam Gantry, and compared notes on this case with notes on Endicott; it was surprising how little the people who had known him seemed to know about his activities. He was looking for cross-references all the time, but found none.

He put in the call to Bellew.

“Morning, Handsome,” Bellew said. “No use calling you much before nine, is it? I thought you had a conscience.” He did not wait for comment, but went on: “Stone’s disappeared again—for five days, this time.”

“Without saying where?”

“Without saying a word to anyone,” Bellew assured him. “I had a talk with Mrs. Klein on the telephone. She says that he’s gone surly with her and everyone else, and some of the customers are complaining. It looks to me as if the death of his wife turned his head a bit.”

Roger said: “It could be.”

“I don’t know how much of it is our business,” Bellew went on. “There’s no reason why a man shouldn’t go off for a few days. If he was still married I’d say that he probably goes off for a few nights on the tiles. Could be that, I suppose—may miss his wife, and have a tart tucked away.”

“There was no suggestion of another woman while his wife was alive, was there?”

“Nope.”

“Well, he doesn’t seem to be the type to be able to fix an affair easily,” Roger said. “He may just like getting up and going off on his own. Let me know when he comes back, will you?”

“Yep. Before you go, Handsome—”

“Hmm-hmm?”

“I never knew we had so many little shops in the Division—tucked away on their own, I mean.”

“How many?”

“Seventy-eight, mostly general stores, but a few fish and chip shops.”

“You’re practically free of ’em,” Roger declared. “Fulham and Chelsea have a hundred and nine each. You’ll draw up your suggestions for keeping yours under surveillance, won’t you?”

“Yep,” said Bellew, less decisively, and he gave Roger the impression that he was thinking of something else—as if he were sticking pins into a map. “There’s one thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“We can’t do it.”

“Can’t do what?”

“Watch all those shops properly and do our usual job.”

“You think of a way,” urged Roger and forced a laugh as he rang off; but he knew that Bellew was right. Every Division had been asked to draw up such a plan of surveillance and most of them would come back with the same comment: “Impossible”.

It was half past nine. He put in a call to Appleby’s flat, and Appleby was soon on the line.

“Morning, Dan,” Roger said. “Are you good at psychiatry, too?”

“Becoming schizophrenic?” inquired Appleby. “What’s the problem?”

Roger said: “The man Stone has disappeared again, this time for five days. Old Mrs. Klein, who works there with the girl, says that when he’s home he has long periods of brooding silence, that he’s getting sour and short tempered, and upsetting some of the customers. She says he won’t have much to do with his mother—she didn’t have any time for his wife, thought he’d married beneath him, and Stone hasn’t forgotten that. Is this delayed shock effect?”

“Stone’s a doer,” Appleby said, without any hesitation. “He’s not a sit-and-thinker. He probably blames himself for leaving his wife alone in the shop, and is brooding over revenge. When he goes off he’s probably planning to hit back somehow.”

Roger said: “But what can he do?”

“Why don’t you find a good copper who can follow Stone next time he goes and find out what he’s up to?” suggested Appleby. “There must be someone on the Force who can follow without being shaken off.”

“Might be a good idea,” Roger agreed, thoughtfully. “He knows the Division is watching him, and can dodge their chaps. We’d need someone he doesn’t know and wouldn’t suspect.”

“That’s it.”

Roger rang off, and sat back in his chair, fiddling with a pencil. Appleby’s suggestion was worth trying and he needed a man who didn’t look like a policeman, who really knew his way about London, and was keen as mustard on what might prove a dull job. He went over all the men who might fit into this at the Yard, and rejected one after another for a variety of reasons. Then he remembered Detective Constable Owen, who had boobed about the report of Adam Gantry’s death. Owen didn’t look like the popular conception of a policeman, he was supposed to be mustard keen, and was said to know London and the East End well. Roger put in a call to the Chelsea Headquarters, and the Superintendent in charge said: “Oh, yes, young Owen’s bright enough, and he’d jump at the chance of being attached to the Yard even temporarily. But it would be a mistake to smack him down too hard, Handsome.”

“You chaps stick together, don’t you?”

“If he slips up—”

“I’ll send him over to you for reprimand,” Roger said. He rang off a few minutes later, after arranging for Owen to come to the Yard during the afternoon.

It was less than two hours since the Chief Inspector in the Map Room had spoken to him, but when he went down there, Roger saw at once that the Division so far covered by reports had been marked up on the big detailed maps on the walls. Several big mobile screens had a map on each side. The red pins with white dots were mixed with pins of all colours, covering accidents, household burglaries, house-breakings, ordinary shop-breaking – all of London’s regular forms of crime.

“Going to have a hell of a job to watch all that lot,” the Chief Inspector said. He was a tall, thin-faced, black-moustached man with keen eyes and an inventive mind. He had thought up a little tool, rather like a cross between a stapler and a brace and bit, with which to jab the strong shell pins into the maps; at some spots, where pins were grouped together in thick forests, this was a job difficult to do without knocking other pins out.

“I know,” Roger said. “As the lists come in from the Divisions, will you keep ’em recorded?”

“Yes.”

“And what have you got to show the shops which have been robbed?” asked Roger.

The D.I. grinned.

“I’m ready for that one! Red-headed pin with a black dot instead of a white.”

“Thanks,” said Roger. “When we catch the beggar behind all this, I’ll let you stick some pins into him.” He went out to the accompaniment of broad grins from subordinates of the Map Room, and felt less gloomy. Violet Marsh might not realise it, but she had really been the turning point. He went to his office, checked by telephone that her condition was unchanged, and then talked to Charlie Baker, of Whitechapel.

“Handsome, the Endicott widow hasn’t done a thing or seen anyone to make us open our eyes,” Baker assured him. “She goes out to the pictures three times a week, and last week she went with some girls to a dance at the Mile End Palais de Danse. I had a chap there. No one on your list danced with her, no one talked to her furtively. If she knows anything or anyone, she’s being very smart about it.”

“Keep watching,” Roger said.

“The trouble with you is you forget there are other jobs as well as the one you’re working on,” grumbled Baker. “Tell you what—you ought to find her a nice new boy friend, someone from one of the other Divisions who wouldn’t be recognised round these parts. How’s that for a smart idea?”

“Good old Charlie,” said Roger, and heard Baker’s grunt of satisfaction. “Very smart indeed. I’ve got the man coming to see me this afternoon.”

For that was the moment when he realised that Owen would be wasted on Stone but might be invaluable with Endicott’s widow. And almost at the same time he realised how best to shadow Stone.