Читать книгу The Graveyard Shift - Jack Higgins - Страница 8

Chapter 2

And then there was the night with a cold east wind that swept in all the way from the North Sea like a knife in the back, probing the alleys of the northern city, whistling along the narrow canyons that divided the towering blocks of flats that were the new housing developments. And when the rain came, it was the cold, stinging rain of winter that rattled the windows like lead shot.

Jean Fleming sat on a hard wooden chair in the main CID office at Police Headquarters and waited. It was a little after nine and the place seemed strangely deserted, shadows crowding in from the corners, falling across the long, narrow desks, filling her with a vague, irrational unease.

Through the frosted glass door of the room on her left, she was aware of movement and the low murmur of voices. After a while, the door opened and a heavily built, greying man in his early forties beckoned to her.

‘Superintendent Grant will see you now, Miss Fleming.’

She got to her feet and went in quickly. The room was half in shadow, the only light a green shaded lamp on the desk. It was simply furnished with several filing cabinets and a map of the city on the wall, divisional boundaries marked in red.

Grant was past feeling tired in any conscious sense, but a persistent ache behind one eye and a slight involuntary shiver, which he found quite impossible to control, seemed to indicate that he was under attack from the Asian flu that had already placed something like a fifth of the entire force on the sick list.

He opened a drawer, took three aspirin tablets from a bottle and washed them down with a glass of water. As he reached for a cigarette, he glanced across at the girl on the other side of the desk.

Twenty-seven or -eight and Irish-looking, dark hair razor-cut to the skull in a way he didn’t really approve, but it certainly gave her something. The heavy sheepskin coat had cost anything up to forty pounds and the knee-length boots were real leather.

She sat down in the chair Brady brought forward and crossed her legs, giving Grant the first lift he’d had that night. She arranged her skirt carefully and smiled.

‘You don’t remember me, Mr Grant?’

‘Should I?’

He frowned. Fleming – Jean Fleming. He shook his head and his ugly face split into a smile of quite devastating charm that was one of his most useful assets. ‘I must be getting old.’

‘I’m Bella Garvald’s sister.’

As if she had said some magic word, it all dropped neatly into place. Ben Garvald and the Steel Amalgamated hoist. Eight no, nine years ago. His first big case as a Chief Inspector. His mind jumped back to the house in Khyber Street, to Bella Garvald and her young sister.

‘You’ve changed,’ he said. ‘As I remember, you were still at the Grammar School waiting to go to college. What was it you wanted to be – a school-teacher?’

‘I am,’ she said.

‘Here in the city?’

She nodded. ‘Oakdene Preparatory.’

‘Miss Van Heflin’s old school? That was on my first beat when I was a young copper. Is she still active? She must be at least seventy.’

‘She retired two years ago,’ Jean Fleming said. ‘It’s mine now.’

She was unable to keep a slight edge of pride from her voice and her northern accent became more pronounced.

‘A long way from Khyber Street,’ Grant said. ‘And how’s Bella?’

‘She divorced Ben not long after he went to prison. Married again last year.’

‘I remember now. Harry Faulkner. She did all right for herself there.’

‘That’s right,’ Jean Fleming said calmly. ‘And I don’t want anything to spoil it for her.’

‘Such as?’

‘Ben,’ she said. ‘He was released yesterday.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘With all his remission it would have been last year, but he lost time for breaking from a working party at Dartmoor some years ago.’

Grant blew smoke up to the ceiling. ‘You think he’ll make trouble?’

‘He was difficult about the divorce. That’s why he tried to break out when he did. Told Bella he’d never let her go to anyone else.’

‘Did she ever visit him again?’

Jean Fleming shook her head. ‘There wasn’t any point. I went to see him last year when she and Harry got together. I told Ben that she was remarrying, that there was no point in ever trying to contact her again.’

‘What was his reaction?’

‘He was furious. Wanted to know who it was, but I refused to tell him. He swore he’d run her down when he got out.’

‘Does Faulkner know about all this?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, but he doesn’t seem particularly bothered. He thinks Ben will never dare show his face here again.’

‘He’s probably right.’

She shook her head. ‘Bella got a letter a few days ago. More a note, really. It just said, See you soon – Ben.’

‘Has she shown it to her husband?’

Jean Fleming shook her head. ‘I know this sounds silly, but it’s his birthday and they’re throwing a party tonight. An all-night affair. Dancing, cabaret, the lot. I’m looking in myself when I leave here. Bella’s put a lot into it. She wouldn’t like Ben to spoil things.’

‘I see,’ Grant said. ‘So what do you want us to do? He’s served his time. As long as he keeps his nose clean he’s a free agent.’

‘You could have a word with him,’ she said. ‘Tell him to stay away. Surely that isn’t asking too much?’

Grant swung round in his chair, got to his feet and crossed to the window. He looked down at the lights of the city in the rain below.

‘Look at it,’ he said, turning to Jean Fleming. ‘Seventy square miles of streets, half a million people and eight hundred and twenty-one coppers and that includes the ones who sit behind a desk. By any reasonable standard we need another two hundred and fifty right now.’

‘Why can’t you get them?’

‘You’d be surprised how few men want to spend the rest of their lives working a three-shift system that only gives them one weekend in seven at home with their families. And then the money isn’t exactly marvellous, not when you consider what you have to do to earn it. If you don’t believe me, try standing outside the Exchange around eleven o’clock on a Saturday night when the pubs are turning out. A good copper earns his week’s money in an hour down there.’

‘Which is a roundabout way of telling me that you can’t help.’

‘I’ve got fifty-two detectives under me. At the present time eighteen have got flu and the rest are working an eighty-hour week. You may have noticed how quiet things are around here. That’s because Detective Constable Brady and I are the only people in the office at the moment. At the best of times we only run a token squad during the ten till six shift. Tonight, you could say things are thinner than usual.’

‘But there must be someone available.’

He laughed harshly and returned to his desk. ‘There usually is.’

She got to her feet. ‘It’ll be all right, then? You’ll see to it?’

‘We’ll check around,’ Grant said. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult to find him if he’s in town. I can’t promise much, but we’ll do what we can.’

She fumbled in her bag and took out a card. ‘I’ll be at Bella’s place in St Martin’s Wood for an hour or two. After that, I’ll be at home. I’m living in Miss Van Heflin’s old flat at the school. The number’s there.’

She turned to the door. As Brady moved to open it for her, Grant said, ‘One thing I don’t understand. Why you? Why not Bella?’

Jean Fleming turned slowly. ‘You don’t remember her very well, do you? She was never much of a one for positive action about anything. If it was left to her she’d just pretend Ben Garvald didn’t exist and hope for the best. But this time, that’s not good enough, because if anything, I stand to lose even more than she does. A scandal could ruin me, Mr Grant, destroy everything I’ve worked for. We’ve come a long way from Khyber Street, you said that yourself. Too far to be dragged back now.’

When she turned and went through the main office, she found that she was trembling. She didn’t bother with the lift, but hurried down the three flights of marble stairs to the ground floor and out through the revolving door into the portico at the front of the Town Hall.

She leaned against one of the great stone pillars that towered into the night above her and a gust of wind kicked rain into her face in an oddly menacing manner, ice-cold, like the fear that rose inside her.

‘Damn you, Ben Garvald! Damn you to hell!’ she said fiercely and plunged down the steps.

‘Quite a girl,’ Brady said.

Grant nodded. ‘And then some. She couldn’t be anything else to survive a place like Khyber Street.’

‘Do you think there’s anything in it, sir?’

‘Could be. They didn’t come much tougher than Ben Garvald in his day. I don’t think nine years of Parkhurst and the Moor will have improved him any.’

‘I never knew him personally,’ Brady said. ‘I was pounding a beat in “C” Division in those days. Had he many friends?’

‘Not really. He was always something of a lone wolf. Most people were afraid of him if anything.’

‘A real tearaway?’

Grant shook his head. ‘That was never Garvald’s style. Controlled force – violence when necessary, that was his motto. He was a commando in Korea. Invalided out in ’51 with a leg wound. Left him with a slight limp.’

‘Sounds a real hard case. Shall I get his papers?’

‘First we need someone to handle him.’ Grant pulled a file forward, opened it quickly and ran his fingers down a list. ‘Graham’s still on that rape case at Moorend. Varley went to a factory break-in Maske Lane way an hour ago. Gregory, sick. Lawrence, sick. Forbes, gone to Manchester as a witness in that fraud case coming up tomorrow.’

‘What about Garner?’

‘Still helping out in “C” Division. They haven’t got a plain clothes man capable of standing on his own two feet out there at the moment.’

‘And every man a backlog of thirty or more cases at least to work through,’ Brady said.

Grant got to his feet, walked to the window and stared down into the rain. ‘I wonder what the bloody civilians would say if they knew that tonight we’ve only got five out in the whole of Central Division.’

Brady coughed. ‘There’s always Miller, sir.’

‘Miller?’ Grant said blankly.

‘Detective Sergeant Miller, sir,’ Brady stressed the title slightly. ‘I heard he finished the course at Bramshill last week.’

There was nothing obvious in his tone and yet Grant knew what was implied. Under the new regula­tions any constable who successfully completed the one year Special Course at the Police College at Bramshill House had to be promoted substantive sergeant immediately on returning to his force, a source of much bitterness to long-serving police officers who had either come up the hard way or were still awaiting promotion.

‘I was forgetting him. He’s the bloke with the law degree, isn’t he?’ Grant said, not because he needed the information, but mainly to see what the other man’s reaction would be.

‘So they tell me,’ Brady replied, a knife edge to his voice that carried with it all the long-serving officer’s contempt for the ‘book man.’

‘I’ve only met him once. That was when I was on the interviewing panel that considered his application for Bramshill. His record seemed pretty good. Three years on the pavement in Central Division so he must have seen life. As I remember, he was first on the spot after the Leadenhall Street bank raid. It was after that the old man decided to transfer him to the CID. He did a year in “E” Division with Charlie Parker. Charlie thinks he’s got just about everything a good copper needs these days.’

‘Including a brother with enough money to see him all right for fancy cars,’ Brady said. ‘He turned up for parade once in an E-type Jag. Did you know about that?’

Grant nodded. ‘I also heard he took Big Billy McGuire into the gym and gave him the hiding of his life after Billy had let the air out of the tyres on the same car. They tell me that Billy says he can use himself and that’s praise from a master.’

‘Fancy tricks, big words,’ Brady said contemptuously. ‘Can he catch thieves, that’s the point.’

‘Charlie Parker seems to think so. He wanted him back in “E” Division.’

Brady frowned quickly. ‘Where’s he going, then?’

‘He’s joining us,’ Grant said. ‘The old man gave me the word this afternoon.’

Brady took a deep breath and swallowed back his anger. ‘Roses all the way for some people. It took me nineteen years, and at that I’m still a constable.’

‘That’s life, Jack,’ Grant said calmly. ‘Miller’s supposed to be on leave till Monday.’

‘Can I roust him out?’

‘I don’t see why not. If he’s coming to work for us, he might as well get started. His phone number’s on the file. Tell him to report in straight away. No excuses.’

A slight, acid smile burned the edges of Brady’s mouth and he turned away with his small triumph. As the door closed, Grant lit another cigarette and walked to the window.

A good man, Jack Brady. Solid, dependable. Give him an order and he’d follow it to the letter which was why he was still a Detective Constable, would be till the day he retired.

But Miller was something different. Miller and his kind were what they needed – needed desperately if they were ever to cope with a situation that got more out of hand month by month.

He went back to his chair, stubbed out his cigarette and started to work his way through the mountain of paper work that littered his desk.