Chapter Nineteen

Amends

 

Although no one had harassed her about it, Detective Sergeant Bella Dawson of the C.I.D. felt very badly indeed about her failure to keep track of Jim Stone. It had seemed such an easy assignment, and she was acutely aware that her own carelessness had been partly responsible for what had happened. Consequently, she spent much of her off-duty hours trying to find out where Stone was. Obviously Brasher’s Row and Mrs. Endicott’s little house were possibilities, and she spent some time near Brasher’s Row, explaining her presence to local shop-keepers and the landlords of two public-houses as she had explained it to Stone.

She was a journalist, looking for sob stories.

Although she caught sight of the man Simpson several times, at the wheel of his van or inside his shop, it was not for some days that she learned he had only just bought the business. That made her very curious, and she was anxious to get a good look at the man, but three days after she had first visited Brasher’s Row she was sent to an urgent job in Wimbledon. There two young girls had been assaulted, and women police were particularly required. She did not tell Chief Inspector Ethel Winstanley about her suspicions of Simpson; she meant to be absolutely sure of her ground before she told anyone. A second mistake would be hard to live down.

The first chance she had of going back was the second morning after Owen alias Orde had spent the night with Ruth Endicott. Bella Dawson knew nothing of that, of course, and her main interest was in the grocer from the corner shop. She did not want him to see and recognise her, so she sat behind the windshield of a motor-scooter, wearing a pale blue crash helmet and a pair of dark-lensed goggles, as well as a pair of tight jeans. Girl scooterists like her were two a penny all over London. She watched when the grocer took his van out, followed him, and saw when he pulled up outside Number 37.

She watched him get down from the van, and that was the moment when she felt jubilant. Something about the way he moved gave him away; she was quite sure that it was Stone.

What was he doing with Endicott’s widow?

Bella Dawson waited until the man had gone inside, and then drove round the block so that she could see the house from the other side and a different corner; she was less likely to be noticed that way. The van was still there when she stopped again. She pushed her crash helmet back and dabbed her forehead, for it was very warm, and she wondered how shiny her snub nose was. In fact, she looked oddly attractive as she sat astride the machine, studying a book as if planning a list of houses on which to call.

She saw a car turn into the road. A plumpish man got out, and strolled along on the side opposite Ruth Endicott’s. At first she took little notice of this individual; it was no longer remarkable that people who lived in this kind of slum district owned cars. A man was left at the wheel of the car, and she began to wonder what they were doing. Then she noticed that the plump man kept looking towards the grocer’s van; he walked up and down with the van as the centre of his peregrinations.

By now, Bella was very alert indeed.

She wrote quickly in the loose-leaf book she was using, tore the page out, folded it, and tucked it into the top of her belt. Simpson-Stone was still in the little house, and she began to wonder why; was Endicott’s widow going on the loose? Bella wasn’t very interested about the other woman’s morals, but felt sure that she was on to something; the presence of the plump man and the car made her feel even more sure. She started the engine of the scooter, and drove along Brasher’s Row and past the van, past the plump man, who took no notice of her, and the driver of the blue Austin. The driver whisded as she went by, and she tossed her head. She turned the corner, slowed down, waited until a lorry came from the docks so that she could switch off her engine without the silence being noticeable, and parked at the side of the road, just round by the shop. Book in hand, she went to the corner.

As she reached it, Simpson-Stone came out of Mrs. Endicott’s house.

One thing was certain at the first glance; the man wasn’t very happy. Bella was some distance away, but had seldom seen a man look more dejected. She heard the door slam, and Simpson-Stone paused for a few seconds by the side of his van, looking more dejected than ever. As if with a physical effort, he climbed back into his van, and started off. As soon as he had gone, the plump man raised a hand, obviously in signal to the driver of the car.

Was Simpson to be followed?

The driver started his engine, and drove slowly towards 37, Brasher’s Row. For a few moments, Bella Dawson thought that the men were going inside, but the plump man went to the car and got in, and the car moved off.

This was bewildering; they hadn’t followed the grocer and weren’t going into the little house. Why were they so interested? A tinge of disappointment took the edge off the detective sergeant’s excitement, but she could use a little time. She started the engine, scooted along to the Whitechapel Road, and saw a policeman standing on a corner looking with resigned interest at a massive traffic block. Huge diesel lorries, engines still clanking, waspish little cars, enormous buses growling and crawling. The air was blue with fumes which hazed the rooftops, the stench was sickening and the hot sun made it all intolerable.

Bella wheeled the machine close to the policeman, and without getting off she said:

“Take this note and telephone it to Scotland Yard, will you? To Mr. West or Miss Winstanley. Better do it through the Information Room.”

She handed the surprised constable the written message and drove off, approaching Brasher’s Row from yet another direction. As she drew near it, she saw the Austin car drawn up close to the corner; beyond it, a woman was walking. She recognised Mrs. Endicott, who disappeared into the Whitechapel Road just beyond a builder’s yard where stores of sand, gravel, cement and timber were kept. As she vanished, the two men got out of the Austin car and walked into Brasher’s Row.

Three minutes later, Bella Dawson saw them go into number 37; she wasn’t sure, but believed that they used a key. She went back and took up a position just inside the builder’s yard.

She could see number 37, and be sure when anyone came out. Her excitement and anxiety had reached its height, and as she had sent a message to the Yard, the obvious thing was to wait and see what happened next.

The plump man who had driven the car before came out of Mrs. Endicott’s place, walked to the car, and drove it back into Brasher’s Row. Bella had an impression that everything he did was carefully calculated; like the shop robberies. Now and again she left her hiding place and looked up and down the several streets, half expecting to see plain-clothes men, but no one came, and she felt no sense of urgency. It would probably be wiser for the Yard to have these men followed, not tackled when they were here. The builder’s yard was a godsend.

She bobbed down behind the brieze block fence when she saw Ruth Endicott coming along, waited until the woman had turned the corner into Brasher’s Row, went to the corner and watched her go indoors.

She was going to have a shock.

Bella said uneasily: “I don’t know whether I ought to leave her or not. She might be in bad trouble.”

The policewoman was out of her depth, partly because of her awareness of the first failure. Quite suddenly she decided that she must not leave the Endicott woman alone any longer. The men involved in this case were ruthless killers. If they murdered Ruth Endicott, it would be on her, Bella Dawson’s, conscience for a long time. She made up her mind what to do; tell the first man or woman who came along to telephone the police for urgent help, and then go to Number 37.

She stepped out of the entrance of the builder’s yard, and saw a man coming from the Whitechapel Road; she didn’t greatly like the look of him, but he would have to do. She didn’t need to give him a message; all he had to do was make sure that the Division sent men round to 37 Brasher’s Row.

“Will you please—?” she began.

It was something in the man’s eyes which warned her of impending trouble, and on that instant she was ready for it – but she wasn’t ready for the man who came vaulting over the builder’s yard wall behind her. She snatched at her whistle, tucked inside the waistband of her tight pants, but before she could get it out, the man behind hooked her legs from under her and the man in front struck her on the side of the head with a piece of iron bar. The side of the helmet saved her, but she felt herself picked up, one man carrying her arms, the other her ankles, sensed that she was being taken deep into the yard. She tried to cry out for help, but her throat seemed to close on itself. She felt herself being swung to and fro, as if she were the third person in an acrobatic trio. One man holding her ankles, the other her wrists, they swung her higher and higher.

Her breath seemed to be trapped in her throat. She was gasping, fighting, choking for breath. There was nothing she could do to stop this or to save herself. She had the awful fear that at any moment they would let her go, and send her crashing on to the ground or against the wall.

She heard a man say: “On three.”

“Okay.”

No, no, no!

“One” the first man said, and now she felt herself being swung even higher, and it seemed as if the men were making the final effort to hurl her as far as they could.

“Two.”

The pressure was agonising at her throat, her head was whirling, her ears throbbing. She just heard: “Three!”

Then they let her go. She felt the relaxation of the pressure at her wrists and ankles, felt herself sailing through the air, dreaded the thought of crashing into brick or cement, so that her whole body would be crushed. Then she thudded against something which hurt, and yet did not crush or break her. She didn’t know what it was until something small and gritty got into her mouth, and she realised drat they had flung her against a heap of sand. She lay spread-eagled, head stabbing with pain, ears throbbing, heart pounding, body twitching spasmodically.

Then she felt a single heavy blow on the back of her neck, and lost consciousness.

 

She did not know what followed; did not know that the two men were shovelling the sand, and burying her in it.

 

The police constable who had taken the message from the motor-cyclist wasn’t altogether surprised, for he knew there was a lot of plain-clothes activity in the neighbourhood. But he soon had other problems. Two private cars and a lorry, all driven by impatient drivers, got into a tangle. Two front wings and some headlamps were smashed, and the accident put the traffic into a greater tangle than ever. The constable spent fifteen minutes helping to son it out, but took the first opportunity to go to his nearest police box and telephone the Division.

“All right, Cartwright,” said the sergeant he talked to. “I’ll pass it on. It’s for Superintendent West or that woman Winstanley, you say?”

“That’s what the girl on the scooter said, sir.”

“Right. Now, what’s the message?”

The police constable read the message slowly and with great deliberation:

 

Message from D. S. Dawson, C.I.D. S.Yrd. Reason to believe grocer Simpson corner Brasher’s Row and Liberty Street is James Stone of Clapham. Also reason to believe two men very interested in Endicott widow. Do not recognise either men but one is the type involved in shop raids. Earlier today I saw both men in Cockell’s Stores, Whitechapel Road, in assistants’ white jackets. They were last seen in dark blue 1959 Austin Cambridge saloon registration number 21JB35.

 

Roger West was not in his office when the message arrived, and his sergeant had been sent out on an urgent job. Chief Inspector Winstanley was having a late lunch. The Inspector in charge of the Information Room pondered on the best thing to do; he knew West too well to do nothing, but was anxious not to take precipitate action.

“I know what I’ll do,” he decided, and wrote out an instruction, then handed it to one of the teletype operators. It read:

 

Watch for and report position of dark blue Austin Cambridge 1959 model. Registration number 21JB35.