Fear to Tread (17 page)

“What has all this got to do with not being able to go out?”

“The boys’d do him if he went out, Mr. Wetherall.”

“Then why don’t they come in and get him?”

“They couldn’t do that. There’s a lot of Irish in our street and they like Patsy, see.”

“I see,” said Mr. Wetherall. He tried to think dispassionately. “What do you want me to do?”

“Patsy wants you to come and see him.”

Mr. Wetherall hesitated.

“It’s quite safe,” added Sammy tactlessly. “I’ll show you the way.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that,” said Mr. Wetherall. “If the truth were known I expect there’s nothing to prevent us walking up to the front door – or Patsy walking out, for that matter.”

“He tried it yesterday. Got fed up with sitting in the house and slipped out for a drink. There was three of them waiting for him at the end of the road.”

“What did he do?”

“He ran,” said Sammy, with a gap-toothed grin. “Patsy don’t often run, but he did this time.”

“All right,” said Mr. Wetherall. “If he really wants me, I’ll come.”

It was a curious journey. Immediately after crossing the Walworth Road they turned into the forecourt of a big block of council flats, and walked across it, to the blind end, where one of the iron railings was missing. After squeezing through, they crossed what looked like a builder’s yard, climbed a low wall, crossed another yard and came up against a further row of spiked railings. Again, one of these proved to be loose. Mr. Wetherall got the impression that he was moving along a well-used highway.

The next obstacle was a line of back garden walls which ran up to, but did not quite meet, a higher blank wall behind them.

“We gotter squeeze here,” whispered Sammy apologetically.

They squeezed for about fifty yards. The gap grew narrower and narrower. Mr. Wetherall was about to protest when he found himself out in the open again.

“We gotter climb here.”

The first step was a dustbin top, the next a ledge, and then the guttering along the top of a row of garages. Mr. Wetherall was beyond caring.

They creaked across a flat garage roof, lowered themselves onto the corresponding ledge on the other side, and dropped to earth.

“Our back garden,” said Sammy. “Mind the chrysanthemums.”

In the kitchen the Donovans were assembled.

Mrs. Donovan was a smaller, plumper version of Peggy. Her hair was grey, but she had the same steady eyes. When she spoke Mr. Wetherall realised that, like all the best families, the Donovan family was a matriarchy. And whilst the younger Donovans spoke pure cockney, there still lingered, at the rear of Mrs. Donovan’s speech, a faint, lilting tone. It was nothing that could be expressed in phonetics. It was as indefinite as an echo and it was a reminder that she had not always belonged to those dark streets, but had been born within sound of the surf on the west coast of Ireland.

“I’m pleased to see you, Mr. Wetherall,” she said. “I hope the boy has not been too rough with you. Go and brush your trousers, now, Sammy.” Sammy muttered but obeyed. “It was my idea you should come here. I told Patsy he ought to speak before anything happens.”

“Before anything
else
happens,” said Peggy.

The person who had not spoken so far was Sergeant Dcnovan. He was sitting at the head of the table, in the same disquieting attitude of repose. Now he looked up and said: “You heard I got into trouble.”

“Sam started to tell me.”

“It was Maunder. He gave me some back-talk, see. Mentioned Doris. Then I hit him.”

“Did you hurt him?”

“Yes.” Sergeant Donovan looked surprised. “Yes. I hurt the little bastard right enough.”

“Tell Mr. Wetherall what he said to you afterwards.”

“When I’d finished with him he started talking. He hadn’t got no more tick left in him than a busted clock. So he told me things – about his end of the racket. He didn’t know a lot, but he told me all he did know.”

“And have you passed it on.”

“No one’s asked me yet. Next thing I know old Clark was round here, telling me I’d been suspended. You could’ve knocked me down.”

It was the speed of the thing that had surprised Mr. Wetherall too. He was not surprised that Patsy should have got into trouble. Sooner or later, in any police force, a policeman who bounced suspects on their heads would be likely to be looking for another job. It was the speed with which Sergeant Donovan’s mouth had been shut that he found astonishing. Then, remembering the letter to the newspaper he began to have a faint idea of how it had been handled.

“Tell Mr. Wetherall what Pop told you,” commanded Mrs. Donovan.

“You know he runs a cafe, Mr. Wetherall, for rail men and transport drivers.”

“Yes. I’ve been there.”

“There’s a yard at the back for parking lorries. You seen that? All right. Now say you’re a railway worker who’s got a van load of hot stuff. Two or three cases of tinned butter or ham, or a crate of poultry, or whatever you like. You drive into Pop’s parking place – better, perhaps, to wait till it’s dark, but you could do it by day if you had to – and you park your lorry with its back up against Pop’s back door, and you go in and sit down at one of the tables Pop serves himself. When he comes to take your order you tell him what you got for sale and fix a price. Two cases of butter, say, at five pounds a case. No one’s to tell what’s happening. You might be arguing over the prices on the menu or the result of the three-thirty. And that’s all there is to it.”

“That’s all?”

“When the driver goes out to pick up his lorry two cases of butter are gone from the back and there’s ten pounds in notes under the driver’s seat.”

“I see,” said Mr. Wetherall. It seemed simple and fairly foolproof. He thought back to his visit to Pop’s cafe. It could have been going on all round him. He would have been no wiser.

“Where does the stuff go then?”

“Into Pop’s storeroom for a day or two. Then the boys come and collect it.”

“Red, and Sailor and Guardsman and the rest?”

“That’s right. Your boy friends. They run two or three lorries of their own. Quite legitimate. My guess – it’s only a guess – they run the stuff up Central somewhere and store it.”

“You don’t think Pop’s is the only place of its kind.”

Sergeant Donovan leaned back in his chair. “I’m damned sure it isn’t,” he said. “And I’ll tell you something else, Mr. Wetherall. As soon as you shut one, they’ll open another. The word gets round—”

“Then as I see it, the people who are essential to the running of the thing are Red and his crew.”

“They’re just a heap of muck,” said Sergeant Donovan. “If you got rid of them tomorrow there’d be another lot doing it the next day. There’s no shortage of muck in this town, if you’re prepared to pay the rates for dirt.”

“Yes. But this happens to be the particular heap of muck who are doing the work at the moment.”

“That’s right.”

“Who are they working for?”

“If I knew that,” said Sergeant Donovan, and the gust of his anger blew him to his feet, “if I knew that I shouldn’t be arsing round here wasting—” He caught a look from his mother.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “It’s got me down.”

“That’s all right. I really wanted to know. Is there any sort of lead up from this crowd to the man above them. If I follow what you said, these men collect the stuff and dump it somewhere, and distribute it to the Luigis and others. And they collect the money from them, and get tough with them when it’s necessary. But unless they’re the people actually running it—”

“Not them. They haven’t got enough brains to run a fried fish shop.”

“Then they must pass the money on – less their cut – to someone else. Perhaps they don’t all know who it is, but
someone
must know what the arrangements are.”

“They may know. They won’t talk.”

“Guardsman might talk,” suggested Mrs. Donovan softly.

There was silence in the little kitchen. A draught from the window was swinging the unshaded electric light bulb and chasing the shadows across Sergeant Donovan’s scarred face.

“He’s had a two-stretch,” went on the old lady. “He’ll collect a handful next time.”

“Something in that,” said Sergeant Donovan. He sat down as abruptly as he had got up. “Mother means that if Guardsman was actually took, on the job, he might talk to save his skin. He’s had a full prison sentence already. It’d be five years penal servitude next time he was caught.”

“Caught doing what?”

Sergeant Donovan thought seriously about this.

“Assaulting the police,” he suggested at last with a smile.

Ten minutes later Mr. Wetherall was back in the Walworth Road. Sammy who had escorted him, brushed him down, and said: “If you want any help, Mr. Wetherall, don’t forget me.”

“All right,” said Mr. Wetherall, and he meant it. It had gradually become plain to him that he was involved in a business where a bald head full of brains might be less use than courage and red hair.

On the following morning Mr. Wetherall paid two visits in the Fleet Street area.

The first was to a twenty-four-hour cafe in St. Columbus Street much used by newspaper men. At two in the morning it was usually crowded, but was emptyish at more conventional times. Here, at a scrubbed wooden table in the corner, he found Todd.

Five minutes’ talk brought Todd up to date. Mr. Wetherall poured it all out, in no sort of sequence – the failure of the identity parade, the row in committee, the conversation with his solicitor, the trouble over Sergeant Donovan – and Todd sat, stirring his coffee, his head tilted, his eyes bright.

For no particular reason it was one of the pictures which was to remain in Mr. Wetherall’s mind when more significant matters had faded.

When he had finished, Todd drank the last dregs of his coffee, spooned out about an inch of damp sugar, and said: “Down in the forest something stirred. Could be a tiger, could be a bird. Or could be a red herring. Plenty of life in this jungle.”

“You think it all hangs together?”

“Of course it does. It’s the technique. If you’d listened you’d have heard me telling you about it the other night.”

“Even my troubles in committee?”

“Certainly.”

“I refuse to believe that Miss Toup is a member of a gang.”

“I doubt if she realises it herself,” said Todd. “And the fact that you can say that, shows what a darned clever crowd you’re up against. Or else it’s just because your ideas are so old-fashioned that you’re incapable of grasping what’s happening. These boys don’t sit around in cellars, in hoods. They’re big business. They know how to use friends and influence people. Look here – I’ve no more idea than you have how it was worked, but suppose – just for the sake of supposing – that someone, some influential person who was vaguely ‘something in the City’ approached your Miss Toup and said that he happened to be a trustee of a large fund which could only be used for educational purposes. He himself had heard of the South Borough Secondary School – and the good work which Miss Toup was doing on the committee – and would like to make a handsome donation to the school. There was only one snag. His fellow trustee was a very staunch Tory. He wouldn’t countenance giving a penny to a school where the headmaster’s politics were suspect. They had heard that Mr. Wetherall – it was doubtless only a rumour – was actually a member of the Communist Party. Could she find out the truth of the matter? Perhaps if she raised it in committee – etc., etc. – you see what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall slowly. “I should think that she’d be very susceptible to an approach like that. She’s got a hide like a hippopotamus and about as much brain as a bee. What about Sergeant Donovan? The same technique?”

“I’m not sure. They may have played off the wrong foot there. They had to move very quickly. And when you move too quickly you’re apt to put yourself out of position for the return shot.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, it was awkward. They so much prefer to play this game at business-man level. Influence and blarney and threats and bluff. Sergeant Donovan went and spoilt all that. He waded in and used his fists. And what’s more, he turned up some real information. There was only one thing to do. They had to put him on the spot. Raise a public stink, so that whatever he’d found out no one would dare to use it. A normal citizen would have gone to the Commissioner and lodged a complaint. They couldn’t do that. Too risky, and too slow. So they go to their patent poison-pen man and get him to write to the Press. That blows it up all right. The police were bound to act on that. Only thing is, as I said, in their anxiety to move quickly they may have moved too quickly.”

Todd did not develop this. He tilted his chair until he was balanced crazily on the back legs. His mind seemed suddenly to have moved two squares forward.

Mr. Wetherall was on the point of asking for further explanations when another thought distracted him.

“Any luck with Annie?”

“Annie?” Todd moved back to the present with an effort. “Why, yes. I think I’ve solved Annie.”

“For goodness’ sake—!”

“It was an exercise in empirical logic. Like a crossword puzzle. Your first three answers are guesses. The fourth fits them all, and locks the thing together. First a fact about which there’s no doubt. All ‘the boys’ use the private bar at the Double Four. It’s a sort of thugs clubhouse. I’ve seen them all now. Last night I spotted little ‘Pretty,’ the Jamaican, a sweet boy with the nicest smile. I imagine he used to smile just that way when he sat on his mammy’s knee, disembowelling the cat, or whatever kids do before bedtime in Jamaica. Second thing is this. You remember me saying I didn’t think it’d be a good place for handling stolen food and drink. Correct conclusion, wrong premise. They don’t handle food. All they hand over to Annie is money. She’s cashier and paymaster.”

Mr. Wetherall nodded. Since he had had his talk with Sergeant Donovan he had been working the thing out for himself, and that was how he saw it must go.

“I take it they’ve got a central warehouse of some sort,” he said. “They take the food and drink there by lorry from the collection points – places like Jock’s Cafe, I mean – and they distribute it from there to the restaurants. That’s right, isn’t it?”