Ring of Terror (17 page)

The awkward silence which followed was broken by Joe. He said, ‘Maybe I’m being dumb. Not an unusual occurrence. But there’s two things I can’t understand. What’s it Jacob can do for them that’s so important? He takes lovely wedding photographs and he did print some tickets for one of their meetings, but that was in the line of business. Doesn’t seem to me anything to get excited about. And what’s even more of a puzzler is why he’s so keen on no one going near Ikey Solomon’s sweat-shop?’

‘Which we hear, anyway, is closing down,’ said Luke.

Dmitry said, ‘I wonder if the answer to both those questions might not be in the same place.’

They waited for him to explain what he meant. When he seemed reluctant to go on, Joe poured him out another drink and Luke said, ‘You can’t leave us guessing. Come on. Cough it up.’

‘I mean,’ said Dmitry, with obvious reluctance, ‘that both answers may be in my uncle’s desk. Lately he’s been so secretive about his work. If anyone comes in – even his wife or daughter – he covers it up. And it’s locked away each night.’

‘Do you think you might manage to get a quick look at it?’

‘I might, perhaps, do that. But it doesn’t mean that I should have any idea what it’s all about. How am I going to know what’s significant? If it concerns Weil and the men who are behind him – I don’t even know who they are.’

‘Janis Silistreau and Casimir Treschau,’ said Luke. ‘Or so we think.’

‘There it is. You know about them. You’d be able to guess what they’re planning. Hints, which would mean nothing to me, might tell you the whole story.’

The forlorn tones in which he said this reminded Luke that they were dealing with a sixteen-year-old boy who needed sympathy more than prodding. Before he could say anything, Joe, smiling in pleasurable anticipation, said, ‘Looks like we’ll have to do a bit of housebreaking, dunnit?’

‘No need for housebreaking.’ Dmitry took a purse from his pocket and extracted from it three keys which he laid on the table. ‘These are copies. I have been able to take impressions without exciting my uncle’s suspicions and one of my friends who works in an ironmonger’s shop made these for me. They are not elegant, but they work. This is the key of the desk. That was the most difficult to get. This is the door of my uncle’s workroom, which is kept locked at night. This is the back door. The family all sleep upstairs and on the far side of the house.’

‘Money for old rope,’ said Joe.

‘No,’ said Luke.

He said it so firmly that the others stared at him. ‘Come to your senses, Joe. You and I are members of the police force. Are you seriously suggesting that we commit a burglary?’

Joe, who had been about to suggest just that, opened his mouth and shut it again.

Luke said, ‘The most we can ask you to do, Dmitry, is to try to get a look at the papers your uncle’s working on. You could make a note of anything that seems significant – names, places, dates, that sort of thing – and pass the information on to us.’

He put the keys back in the purse and handed it to Dmitry. He said, ‘There is another way you could help. There’s a piece of information that I’d value. If things come to a head it may be of great importance. It’s simply this. Just how deeply is Anna committed? You say that she’s carried messages and done other small jobs. Would she be prepared to take on something more important?’

‘I can tell you one thing about Anna,’ said Dmitry. ‘And that is that she’s a very close-mouthed girl and very unlikely to confide in me.’

‘Understood. All we can really ask you for is your opinion.’

‘Very well,’ said Dmitry slowly. ‘I think that if her father put it to her that Peter’s safety was at stake, she’d do whatever she was asked to do.’

‘However dangerous.’

‘In such a case, danger would not be considered.’

‘I see,’ said Luke. ‘Well, thank you. You’d better be getting back before you’re missed.’

‘I’ll see him out,’ said Joe, jumping to his feet. ‘I can give Bill back what’s left of his bottle at the same time.’

He ushered Dmitry to the door and went through, shutting it behind them. Luke heard their footsteps clattering downstairs, after which there was an interval in which he heard their voices but could not pick up any of the words. They seemed to have a lot to say to each other.

Then the front door slammed.

Next morning Luke and Joe, having thrown on their clothes, were preparing to go out. Their immediate destination was the Seaman’s Cafe at Tidal Basin. Here they planned to take a leisurely breakfast, after which they would move along, not too fast, to Leman Street to see whether Joscelyne or Wensley had thought up any plans for them.

This programme was destined to be altered.

‘Take a look,’ said Joe, who was at the window pushing a comb through his unruly hair. ‘Isn’t that our friend at the end of the street?’

Luke joined him at the window. Even at a distance he had no difficulty in recognising the dragging, limping gait that had once haunted his dreams.

‘It’s Treschau, all right. Another shopping expedition, do you think? Wait for it. Yes. He’s going into the butcher’s shop.’

They made for the door, picking up the binoculars which stood ready on the table. Once outside they wasted no time. They slipped across into Garvary Road, scudded down it, crossed Freemasons Road and Prince Regent’s Lane and took the centre of the three dead-end streets which led to the marsh.

Joe had already marked down a useful observation post.

The last house in that particular road was empty, and, judging from the state of the garden, had been empty for some time. There was an apology for a summer house at the foot of the garden. Openings in its walls commanded the ends of all three of the approach roads.

‘Bound to see him,’ said Joe, ‘whichever way he comes.’

‘Always supposing we’ve guessed right,’ said Luke. ‘Did it never occur to you that he mightn’t have come this way at all?’

‘If he didn’t come this way, which way did he go?’

‘He might have been visiting one of the houses in Prince Regent’s Lane with a parcel of meat for one of his starving compatriots.’

‘No,’ said Joe. ‘He came this way.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Instinct.’

Luke had nothing to say to this. He had known Joe predict the movements of birds and beasts with unfailing accuracy, so why not human beings, too?

A very slow quarter of an hour crept by. Then they saw Treschau. He was climbing through the fence at the end of the next road along. They focused their glasses on him. He seemed to be following a track which led straight out into the marshes. It ran up to the embanked side of one of the many dykes and they could see that it continued beyond it. No doubt there was some sort of bridge across the dyke, hidden by the bank.

They waited, but Treschau did not reappear.

‘Gone to ground,’ said Joe. ‘Yes. I can see him now. The crafty bastard. He’s lying up, under the edge of the bank. You see him? Just to the left of that old willow stump.’

Luke said, ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Joe, though Luke was loath to admit it, had better eyes than him.

After about five minutes they saw Treschau again. Apparently satisfied that he wasn’t being followed he had crossed the dyke and was hobbling forward, clasping his brown paper parcel under one arm. Luke said, ‘Off we go. You lead.’

Their plan was to make a circle to the left where the lie of the land would keep them out of sight for most of the way, stopping when they reached a spot from which they could mark their quarry.

Treschau seemed easy and unsuspicious. He went on his way for about half a mile. At this point a rise in the ground took him out of their sight. Fearful of losing him they raced forward across the tussocky ground and climbed the far end of the ridge.

‘Heads down now,’ said Joe. They went on hands and knees until they reached a clump of bushes on top of the rise. Peering through it they found they were looking both at their quarry and at what was clearly his destination.

They were on the edge of a valley, shut in on two sides, open at both ends. A fair-sized stream ran down the middle of it, widening as it joined the mouth of the River Roding, known in its lower stretches as Barking Creek.

Here a substantial landing-stage had been constructed, large enough to accommodate quite a sizeable boat. There were signs that dredging had taken place to provide the necessary depth of water. At the moment it was occupied only by a two-oared dinghy, attached to a post and bobbing in the current.

But this was not what held their attention.

Above the dock and joined to it by a covered flight of steps, stood a single-storey building, inside a palisade. On each of its two separate wings a chimney was smoking. As they watched they saw the heads of two or three men who were moving about inside the palisade, busy at some job which was hidden from them. Treschau had walked straight in, as though expected.

They settled down to watch.

It was all of two hours before Treschau reappeared. He came out of a gate at the far side of the left-hand building, followed by one of the workmen down the steps to the jetty and climbed into the dinghy. The man loosed the rope, holding it in one hand to steady the boat, then stepped in, unshipped the oars and allowed the current to carry the boat out into the creek. Once there he used the oars only to turn the head of the boat downstream and, with an occasional corrective pull, was soon out on the dimpled grey waters of the Thames. He carried out all these manoeuvres with the unfussed ease of a seaman.

‘Tide’s starting to make,’ said Joe. ‘Timed it nicely. A quarter of an hour and he’ll be up to Gallions Steps. No sweat.’

‘If it’s as easy as that, I wonder he didn’t come that way.’

‘Well, he had to pick up the meat, didn’t he? And the tide would have been against him.’

‘I suppose that’s right,’ said Luke. He was trying to make sense out of what he had seen.

The building must be some sort of factory. Tucked away in its little valley it would be hidden from boats passing on the Thames, visible only to one coming down the last stretch of Barking Creek. By approaching it overland, carrying that mysterious parcel, Treschau could keep out of sight pretty well altogether. Once he had disposed of the parcel apparently it mattered less if he was seen and by using the tide he could drift back, comfortably and fairly inconspicuously, to the area of the docks.

This made some sense, but there were still questions to be answered. First, what was the factory making? And if it was a genuine commercial enterprise how could it depend, for any part of its function, on casual parcels of meat scraps?

One thing was clear. They would get no answers unless they succeeded in getting a closer view of what was going on inside that palisade. And they would have to do this without being seen.

Luke put the problem to Joe, who screwed his face up to show that he was working on it. Then he said, ‘I might do it. I don’t think as you could.’

‘All right, Buffalo Bill. Let’s have a demonstration. But remember. Everything you see will have to go back to Fred. Every detail. A written report.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll do the looking. You do the writing.’

This was their normal arrangement. Writing reports was not Joe’s strong point.

After a careful survey of the lie of the land he launched himself, flat on his face, down what must have been a tiny tributary, now dry, of the stream in the valley. Its course was marked by clumps of rushes. He moved along it steadily, but very carefully. Twenty yards from the palisade he left the bed of the stream and crawled out into the open.

Luke wondered what he was up to. He had abandoned his cover and if anyone happened to look out from the palisade he must be spotted. Then he realised that Joe was making for a line of stunted willows, the only sort of trees that grew in that corner of the marshes.

Arrived at the trees he wriggled up the largest of them, steadied himself and parted the thin mask of boughs at the top. The streamlet cannot have been wholly dry, because when Joe turned for a moment to grin at Luke, his teeth showed white in a mask of mud.

Good camouflage, thought Luke. Joe had turned back and resumed observation.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Then a door in the palisade, which he had not noticed before, opened and a man came out. He was carrying in each hand a heavy bucket made of some dark material and he seemed to be making directly for Joe’s tree. He stopped just short of it, emptied the buckets and went back the way he had come.

But Joe had evidently had enough. No sooner had the door shut behind the man than he was down the tree and back into the shelter of the streamlet. When Joe reached him, Luke had his notebook out and pencil poised.

‘Let’s have it,’ he said. ‘Whilst it’s fresh. We can polish it up later.’

‘First thing is, I know what they’re up to.’

Luke put down his pencil and stared at Joe. ‘How can you possibly know?’

‘Simple. It was writ up. On a board over the gate that man came out of. The South London Soap Company.’

‘Soap. You’re sure it said soap, not soup?’

‘I can read, can’t I? And what’s more I seen them doing it.
If
I might be permitted to tell you about it.’

‘Carry on,’ said Luke. He saw that Joe was about to develop one of his rare fits of offended dignity. ‘All the details, please.’

‘Well, like you saw, there’s two huts. Log sides, shingle roofs. Both wide open at the end, so you can see right into them. The one on the right’s got this very big iron thingummy in it, open at the top and steaming.’

‘A cauldron?’

‘That sort of thing. I expect that’s what they make the soap in. Boiling up the fat what Treschau brought along for them. Isn’t that how they make soap?’

‘I think they call it a soap kettle. Yes. What else was there?’

‘A smaller kettle. Which wasn’t steaming. And a row of lockers, but they were shut and I couldn’t see inside them; more supplies of fuel, perhaps. Outside the hut there was a tank. V-shaped at the top, flat at the bottom. It was connected with the big boiler inside the hut. There was a pipe running into it at the top, and another one leading into a tank outside the left-hand hut.’