Petrella at 'Q' (17 page)

There was a shattering roar of sound and a jagged hole appeared in the lower panel of the door.

The head and shoulders of Chris Mason disappeared. Sirens sounded at the end of the street.

“That sounds like reinforcements,” said Milo. “Let’s see if we can get what’s left of that door open.”

There was a trail of blood on the stairs. When they got down to the hall, the Masons and their colleague had disappeared. The open door at the other end of the hall indicated the way they had gone. The fur-coated lady was sitting on the floor with her back to the wall, recovering from a fit of hysterics. The small dog was helping her by washing her face.

“Quite a lot of blood,” said the grey-haired man. “Do you think I winged him?”

“More likely splinters from the door panel,” said Milo. “If you’d actually hit him with a bullet out of that gun, it’d have taken his leg off.”

It was the porter who had summoned the police. He now reappeared cautiously from the basement and said, “What’s going on here?” The uniformed sergeant from the leading police car said the same thing a moment later. Milo did his best to explain.

“They must have had a car parked somewhere round the back,” said Milo. “They got clean away. But I recognised two of them. We could pick them up easily enough.”

It was nine o’clock on the following morning. The storm had blown itself out in the night and a pale yellow sun was lighting, but not warming, the streets of South London.

“I expect we could,” said Petrella coldly. “And all three of them will deny it and produce convincing alibis for the whole evening. I don’t imagine Mrs. Mapledurham will be a very convincing witness, and the porter didn’t see them. It’ll be your word against theirs.”

“I suppose so,” said Milo. He was trying to suppress the father and mother of a sneeze.

“And it won’t be very good publicity, will it? A police officer being chivvied up and down stairs by a party of hooligans. Someone will have to pay for that door, too.”

Milo felt that he was being unfairly treated, but had been a policeman long enough to know that this happened. Petrella glared round at Blencowe, Ambrose and Lampier as if daring them to say something. They were all sensible enough to keep their mouths shut. He said, “I think it’s time we stopped playing cowboys and Indians and used our heads. First point, how did they pick you up so quickly?”

“I suppose Adams spotted me and telephoned for help.”

“Unlikely,” said Petrella. “And the timing’s much too quick.”

“I’d guess one of them was watching Adams,” said Blencowe. “Just to make certain he wouldn’t be followed, or to take the necessary steps if he was.”

“I think so, too,” said Petrella. “So that brings us to the next point. It must have been important to someone that Adams
wasn’t
followed. And I don’t believe that ‘someone’ lives in Basildon Mansions. Adams was using the front-door-back-door technique. He walked straight through and out at the back. Leaving you to be attended to.”

“Yesh, arashoo!” said Milo. “Sorry.”

“That leads us to a third conclusion,” said Petrella. “If they were prepared to go to those lengths to knock you off, it means that the man Mr. Adams had come to see must be living fairly close. If he’d been two miles away, Adams would simply have left you standing where you were, catching a cold, and wandered off without bothering about you. I had a look at the area this morning. There are three other blocks of flats. Ashburton Mansions, Chesterfield Court and Devonshire Court. I want a run-down on
all
the people in them. Ambrose and Lampier, you can tackle that. You’ll have to do it quietly and tactfully. The best line will be to see if the landlords will help. They must have taken references from their tenants when they moved in. Blencowe, you keep as close to Lloyd as you can. And you”—he turned round on Milo—”had better go home and put your feet in a mustard bath.”

When they were back in their own room Lampier said, “What’s eating him? I’ve never seen him like this before.”

“He feels personally involved,” said Ambrose. “It’s the hot money Lloyd palmed off on him. He’s not forgotten that.”

Milo said, “Arashoo. I think I’ll take him at his word.”

It was at ten o’clock that same morning that Mr. Adams called at Patton Street Police Station and asked for Petrella. If he knew anything about the events of the night before he showed no signs of it. He perched himself on the chair in front of Petrella’s desk, accepted the cigarette that was offered to him and said, “Mr. Lloyd sent me along to see if we could interest you in a proposition.”

Petrella said, “Yes?”

“You know a lot of people in this district. People who need flats and other premises from time to time. People who have property to dispose of. If you’d be prepared to keep your ears open and pass these people on to us – you needn’t be involved in any other way, except for just mentioning our name – we’d be prepared to pay you a retainer. It’s quite a usual arrangement.”

“What sort of sum had you in mind?”

“We thought of twenty-five pounds a week. If any business resulted from your introduction there’d be a commission on top of it.”

“It’s very kind of Mr. Lloyd,” said Petrella. “But I fear I shall have to say ‘no’.”

“Think it over.”

“I’ve done all the thinking I’m going to do.”

Mr. Adams seemed unabashed. He rose to his feet, and turned once more at the door to say, “Think about it.”

When he had left, Petrella switched off the tape recorder under his desk. He was smiling, but not agreeably.

The Peripatetic Birds

The methodical Sergeant Ambrose laid a pile of notes on Petrella’s desk and said, “I think we’ve got them all now, sir. You can read the detailed reports if you like, but in my view there really are only two possibles. Manfred and Samuel Tillotson. They have flats opposite each other. 6a and 6b on the top floor of Chesterfield Court. They’re the most expensive flats in the block. They’ve both got sun terraces. The landlord says they’ve had the partition between the two terraces removed. That means they have a private access to each other’s flats.”

“A nice example of brotherly togetherness,” said Petrella. “What do the brothers do when not sunning themselves on adjacent terraces?”

“They have a business in the City. Tillotson (Middle East) Agencies, Barnaby House, Moorgate. It’s in the London telephone directory. All quite open and above-board.”

“If so open and above-board, what makes you think they might be villains?”

Ambrose said, “I’ve seen both of them. They seemed to me”—he was picking his words with care—”to be the only people there of the calibre to be running the sort of show we have in mind.”

“In other words,” said Petrella, “you’re backing instinct. I’m not saying you’re wrong. It can be a better horse than science.”

On the following morning he took the Underground to the Bank Station and walked down Moorgate. It was nearing the lunchhour and men and girls were pouring out onto the pavements into the mild February sunlight, making the most of their sixty minutes of freedom. Barnaby House was a smallish building on the west side of the road. Petrella spent some time strolling along the opposite pavement, keeping an eye on the door. He noticed three very attractive-looking girls come out together and make off down the street. Then a couple of paunchy middle-aged men, a severe lady in glasses and a group of young men.

When it seemed clear that most of the inhabitants were out of the building he ventured into the hall. A board gave him the information he wanted. Tillotson (Middle East) Agencies occupied the first floor. The ground floor was Cranmer and Cranmer, Chartered Surveyors and the remaining floors were occupied by Benjamin Dalby and Partners, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths.

Petrella made a note of the names and took himself back to the Oval. He found Mr. Tasker in his office, lunching off sandwiches and bottled Bass.

“Dalbys,” said Mr. Tasker, picking his teeth to extract a shred of ham. “Yes. I know them. Nice little firm. Shouldn’t have said they’d touch anything crooked.”

“I wasn’t thinking of them as being crooked. It’s their neighbours I’m interested in. Do you happen to know any of the partners?”

Mr. Tasker consulted the Law List and said, “As a matter of fact I do. Young Buckle used to be an articled clerk here. Lazy young devil. I could give him a ring. Have to tell him some sort of story.”

“Tell him the truth. Say I’m interested in one of the parties who uses the building.”

Mr. Tasker looked at his watch. He said, “We won’t catch him at the office now. Never took less than two hours for his lunch when he was articled here. Probably takes three now he’s a partner. I’ll ring him this afternoon. There are plenty of good pubs in the City. Offer him lunch at one of them tomorrow.”

Young Mr. Buckle turned out to be an entertaining lunch companion. He said several disrespectful things about Mr. Tasker, but obviously admired him. When Petrella brought the conversation round to Tillotsons, Mr. Buckle said, “As soon as I heard you were interested in someone in the building I guessed it must be them. They’re a mystery outfit, they really are.”

“In what way?”

“Well, they’ve got an expensive set of offices and a super line in staff, but they never seem to have any customers. And what’s more – you can’t help noticing these things when you work in the same building – they never seem to get any mail.”

“Maybe they do all their work by telephone and telex.”

“It’s possible. But in that case, what do you suppose those lovelies do all day? Sit on their boss’s knee?”

“Would they be the three girls I saw coming out of the place yesterday?”

“If they were worth a second look, they must have been. Cranmers seem to go in for an all-male staff and we haven’t got a female in the place under forty. The idea being to keep our minds on our work I imagine.”

“Those three were certainly worth looking at,” agreed Petrella.

“And I’ll tell you another odd thing about them. They go away and come back again. Did you notice one of them, a brunette with a snub nose and a page-boy haircut?”

“Yes. She was the one in the middle. What about her?”

“She disappeared just after Christmas. Not this Christmas, the one before. Then she came back, sometime in May, and the red-head took off. She was back in October.”

Petrella listened, fascinated. He said, “Is anyone missing now?”

“I’ll say. It’s the blonde. Pick of the bunch. Shoulder-length hair and green eyes. She went off about the time the red-head came back.”

“You seem to keep a close eye on their comings and goings.”

Young Mr. Buckle said, without a blush on his downy cheeks, “I’m a devoted bird watcher.”

Petrella returned thoughtfully to Patton Street. He felt certain that he had his hand on one of the threads, one of the clues to the labyrinth, but he could not yet disentangle it. Why should two business men keep three or four attractive and presumably expensive girls in an office, doing nothing all day. Unless, of course, they had insatiable sexual appetites, but then, surely, it would be cheaper, rents in the City being what they were, to have installed them in flats. Maybe they had got a perfectly genuine tie-up with the Middle East. There was plenty of money there and a smashing girl would be a useful maker of contacts. But somehow he doubted it. Like Sergeant Ambrose, he was guided in such matters more by instinct than by reasoning.

He said to Lampier, “You’ve got one of those candid-camera arrangements. I want you to photograph three young ladies. You can probably get them all in one shot as they come out for lunch. Only for God’s sake don’t be caught doing it. Then have the three faces screened and enlarged.”

A few evenings later Samuel strolled across to talk to Manfred. He found his brother listening to the long-range weather forecast. He said, “It seems that we are to have more than the average amount of rain this month. Some high winds to start with, dying down later, with possibilities of fog. No ice.”

“It sounds just what the doctor ordered,” said Samuel. “A few fog patches on the fourteenth, but no ice on the road. It will suit us down to the ground.”

“Eight days to go.”

Samuel said, “I saw an advertisement in the Sunday papers. I’ve been making some enquiries about it. A villa in the hills to the east of Beirut. Twenty thousand pounds sterling, or the equivalent in local currency.”

“Are you thinking of buying it?”

“I’ve made an offer.”

“I see,” said Manfred. “So you have decided it is time we retired?”

“Our local contacts could organise the transfer of our funds. We should lose fifteen per cent on the transaction, but it would be worth it.”

“Is something worrying you?”

“A lot of little things. There seem to have been one or two people, with nothing to do, on the pavement outside Barnaby House lately. It could be my imagination.”

“And?”

Samuel said slowly, “I am not happy about Julie.”

“You needn’t worry about her. I have traced her family. It wasn’t difficult. They live in the Liverpool suburb of Litherland. Until Julie came to London she had spent all her life there. The envelope was obviously planted for Ma Dalby. But she’s not a police spy.”

“A greedy little girl who knows too much could be more dangerous than a police spy,” said Samuel. “Remember also, she has never actually done a job for us yet. That leaves her free to talk if she wants to.”

“What are you suggesting?” said Manfred. He was beginning to sound angry.

“Nothing drastic. I suggest we get the boys to throw a scare into her. Enough to keep her quiet until after the fourteenth. That’s all.”

Manfred thought about it. He said, “I agree that we don’t want to take any chances at this particular time. But if you do what you suggest, I think you will be making trouble where none existed before.”

“Let’s sleep on it,” said Samuel. He looked at his watch. “Adams should be ringing.”

“He’s usually very punctual,” said Manfred. “Have a drink.” He was half-way to the drink table when the telephone rang. He picked up the receiver, and conducted a one-sided conversation which consisted chiefly of grunts on his part. Finally he said, “I’ll pick you up in my car at the road junction in the middle of Blackheath at seven o’clock tomorrow.”