Fear to Tread (22 page)

“Actually,” said Mr. Wetherall, “I think they are part of a consignment stolen from a London railway terminus.”

“Well, that’s romantic too, isn’t it?”

“Molly talks a lot of nonsense,” said Mr. Ap-Lloyd. “But, joking apart, Crowdy’s an extremely promising draughtsman. Really, he’s more than promising. He’s got a very mature technique and a sort of eye for line which you can be born with, but you can never learn.”

“You really think he’s good.”

“More than good. With a bit of practice and encouragement he might be great. But that’s all in the future. At the moment, he’s extremely useful to me. Assistants are almost impossible to get hold of. I’d like to take him on with a proper contract. I can pay him a living wage whilst he’s completing his training. It’s no kindness. He’ll be worth a lot more soon. Can you fix it with his family. I promise I won’t exploit him.”

“I’m sure you won’t,” said Mr. Wetherall. “The only trouble is he hasn’t got much family. However, I shouldn’t let that worry you. He’s old enough to make his mind up. Can I have a word with him now?”

“He’s in the studio. Go along, you know the way.”

It took a moment for Mr. Wetherall to recognise Peter Crowdy. If the interval had been ten months instead of ten days he could not have been more surprised.

“That’s a lovely beard, Peter.”

Crowdy smiled. “It’s part of the uniform,” he said. “All artists have beards when they’re young. Glad to see you, Mr. Wetherall.”

“You won’t be when I’ve done with you.” Mr. Wetherall backed the words with a smile, but he saw the boy stiffen up.

“Come on,” he said. “Sit down and get it over. Just imagine you’re having a tooth out. Three hard pulls and away it comes.”

“O.K.,” said Crowdy. They both sat down on the window seat, under the big window, and looked at each other.

“If I tell you,” said Crowdy. “Does it mean I shan’t have to tell it all over again – to the police?”

Mr. Wetherall nearly said “yes,” but the northern light was too uncompromising.

“You know I can’t bind the police,” he said. “But I promise you I’ll do what I can. And I’ll tell you one thing. It won’t just be the local coppers. I’m going right up to the top with it, if I have to. If what I tell them helps them to get their hands on the people they want, I don’t imagine they’ll be too fussy about the early stages, especially now that—”

“Now that Dad’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“It wasn’t an accident, was it? He was killed.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that at all.”

“All right,” said Crowdy. “Here it is. You know Dad had a job in the Forwarding Office at Crossways goods station. I don’t know if you know how a Forwarding Office works. Say you’re sending a sewing machine from the country to somewhere in London. You hand it over to your local railway station. It gets entered up in a book and you get a receipt. They send it to Crossways, with particulars. One of the forwarding clerks at Crossways labels it the correct way – ‘Carriage Forward’ or ‘Cash on Delivery’ or ‘Carriage Paid’ or whatever it might be and arrange for it to be put on the proper lorry or van or whatever it may be going out to that district – O.K.?”

Mr. Wetherall nodded. It seemed reasonably clear.

“Well, that’s how it worked.”

“How what worked?”

“The racket. There was Dad and three or four others in it. More, by the end. It got a bit out of hand. It was too easy. They had labels ready with their own addresses on them – or, anyway, addresses they could use. They just slapped these on to promising-looking parcels, with a ‘Carriage Paid’ label, and the carriers delivered them. The carriers weren’t in it, see. They just followed the labels and notices. Easy as falling off a log.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Cases of spirits, tea, wireless sets, cartons of cigarettes, sewing machines, lawnmowers. Anything takes your fancy.”

“I see.” Mr. Wetherall pondered for a moment. “I suppose the person who had dispatched the goods sooner or later produced his receipt and made a fuss and the railway had to pay up.”

“That’s right.” Crowdy giggled. “Do you know, one chap who was in on it – he sold typewriters – used to tip us off whenever he sent one by rail to a customer and we simply
labelled it back to him.
Dad said he got to recognise one machine. It came round six times.”

“Hmp!” said Mr. Wetherall. “What did they all do with the stuff?”

“That was the crazy part,” said Peter. “A lot of it they didn’t really want at all. It was stealing for the sake of stealing. I know one man had four wireless sets buried in his allotment. Of course, if it was food or drink or smokes they sold them—sold them to—sold them to a local.”

“I know all about Jock’s Pull-In,” said Mr. Wetherall. “How did you come into this?”

“It was on account of the labels. The only way the railways had of checking at Crossways was the number of forwarding labels – ‘Out’ labels they called them – that each clerk used. They had to tally with his record book – like a bus conductor and his tickets. Of course, they couldn’t enter the phoney deliveries, and if they’d used official labels on them they’d have been short in their tally at the end of the day. So Dad got me to make some up for them. I drew the originals, and one of the gang had them photographed on special paper.”

Light dawned.

“That’s what you were doing that evening.”

“That’s right. You didn’t half give us a fright.”

“Hmph!” said Mr. Wetherall again. It was clearly the moment when he ought to tackle the moral side of the business. He felt at a loss. Perhaps robbing a railway didn’t seem as immoral as robbing a person. It had cost Peter’s father his life, and Peter was talking about it as if it was some sort of game.

Mr. Wetherall gave it up.

“Behave yourself,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to London. I’ve got a job to do.”

He did quite a lot of thinking in the slow train which took him back.

There was a chemical simplicity about the way things were falling out. He was the catalyst. He provoked reactions in others.

Luigi, Sergeant Donovan, Mr. Crowdy and Peter; even Mr. Pride and Mr. Bertram the lawyer. All had spun for him their single strands. All had their parts preordained in the matter. All had played them for his benefit. Now he could see the pattern. Not all of it, but enough to see that it was a pattern; enough to be certain that something ought to be done about it; enough to realise that it was too big for him alone.

He needed professional help, and he thought he knew where he could look for it.

As the train crawled towards London, he outlined his plans to himself. Soon the heaviness of the afternoon and the movement of the train subdued him. He fell asleep, and into the grip of such a sharp and hideous nightmare that he woke with a scream, to find an elderly lady, who must have got into the carriage at Basingstoke, regarding him anxiously.

“Such a horrid look on your face,” she said. “I nearly pulled the cord.”

“Indigestion,” said Mr. Wetherall hastily.

“Those train meals,” she agreed sympathetically.

It was not until after tea that he could get away from the school. He reached the
Kite
office at about half-past five, when the great machine was beginning to hum into first gear. Once there, it took him another half-hour to get as far as Todd.

“I’m sorry,” said Todd, “but I’ve been dealing with a lunatic. You get lots of lunatics in newspaper offices. When this particular one gets past the desk-sergeant I have to deal with him. Now, what’s on your mind?”

Mr. Wetherall explained. It took time, as always in that office, but Todd was soon interested enough to disconnect the telephone and lock the door.

“I see,” he said at the end. “That’s quite a comprehensive picture, isn’t it? There’s not a great deal of what you might call concrete proof, but add it to what I’ve got, and it sounds like sense. The thing is, what are we going to do about it?”

“I thought I might have a word with that editor of yours,” he said, “and see if he’d get the paper on to it.”

“You thought what?” said Todd faintly.

“I thought—”

“Yes. I heard. And how did you imagine, just as a matter of interest, that you are going to set about it. If a cabinet minister wants to see him, he gives him a week’s notice and hopes for the best.”

“
You
must be able to see him.”

“If he wants to see me – and if I can persuade him that I have got anything to say worth his listening to – and if I’m prepared to risk getting the sack if I was wrong about it.”

“Go along,” said Mr. Wetherall. “It can’t be as difficult as all that.”

“I can see you’ve never worked in a newspaper office,” said Todd, giving him a dirty look. “All right. I’ll do it. If you hear a dull crash it’ll be me bouncing.”

He went reluctantly out, and Mr. Wetherall was left to his own thoughts.

About half an hour later the house-telephone rang. Mr. Wetherall removed the receiver, gingerly.

“You still there?” said Todd’s voice. “Well, hold on a bit longer. I’m not there yet, but I’m advancing.”

Half an hour later the telephone rang again.

“Go and get yourself something to eat,” said Todd. “You remember that cafe I took you to. Go there. It’ll be a bit more crowded at this time of night, but if they try to give you the ‘House Full’ ask Joe for the
Kite
table. There’s always room for one more.”

Mr. Wetherall had been sitting at the
Kite
table for nearly two hours before Todd turned up. He had had some sort of meal and had then started ordering and drinking cups of coffee. This had caused no comment. The table was full of a succession of customers, some of whom came to eat, some to drink coffee, and some just to talk. Nobody took any notice of anybody else. Even men who were being talked to usually went on reading their late editions of the evening paper.

When Todd arrived, the rush had slackened so they had a corner more or less to themselves.

“He won’t do it,” said Todd.

“No help at all?” Mr. Wetherall fought down a sinking feeling.

“He’s sympathetic. In fact, he was very nice about it. But there was no shifting him. You can’t argue with the old man any more than you can argue with Table Mountain. It’s a question of watching his moods and getting under cover when it rains. What he said was, he isn’t going to start a crusade. It isn’t his line of country. It’s pure crime – better dealt with by the police. If there’s some point the police can’t get at, for legal or social or some other phoney reason, then a newspaper can sometimes go for it and clear it up. He says, as far as he can see, there’s nothing here the police can’t deal with.”

“I see,” said Mr. Wetherall.

“Cheer up,” said Todd. “We’re still with you. Something may happen yet, you never know. If you get knocked off you’ll get a wonderful obituary. I’ll have sausages, Joe, sausages and bacon. Two rashers. Don’t talk to me about rationing. We all know where your stuff comes from.”

Joe grinned and withdrew. Mr. Wetherall finished his fourth cup of coffee thoughtfully.

The fine autumn weather had broken and Mr. Wetherall approached Scotland Yard from the river entrance in a downpour of rain. Apart from the three impassive policemen at the gate, the rain cascading sleekly off their black capes, there was nothing to distinguish the building on the embankment from any other office block.

Mr. Wetherall wiped his feet on the mat, furled his umbrella, and handed himself over to a hall porter.

“You have an appointment?”

Yes. Yes. He had an appointment with Chief Superintendent Hazlerigg.

“Fill in the book please.”

Mr. Wetherall wrote down the date, getting it wrong first time, and having to do it again, and then his full name. Under the column headed “Object of Visit” he put “Interview.” He wondered (as he had wondered before on such occasions) exactly what purpose was being served. Supposing his name had been Popski and he had come with a bomb in his brief-case to blow up the building, he could scarcely have been expected to have entered these particulars in the book.

“This way, please.”

He followed a young policeman. They walked along three or four miles of corridor, up some steps, over a sort of enclosed bridge and down some steps and stopped at a dark brown door with a number on it.

The room was no different from any other government office except that it was neater than most; almost severe in its rectitude.

The man who got up from behind the desk was unmistakably a policeman, although he could also have been a farmer. He was thick set and had a red-brown face and grizzled hair. He had the tolerant look of one who has spent a lifetime coping with the unpredictable climate of England. Perhaps the only remarkable thing about him was his eyes. They were that shallow grey which, like the grey of the North Sea, can change without warning from friendliness to bleak wrath.

At the moment they looked friendly.

“Sit down Mr. Wetherall.” He indicated the easy chair opposite the desk. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I heard about you from Huth and I hoped I should be seeing you sooner or later. He tells me you’re the head of South Borough Secondary School. And you were at Battersea? I expect you remember Cusins.”

“Franky Cusins, or his brother Lefty? I remember both. The finest boxers we ever had. Franky had a foot shot off in Sicily. Were you—?”

“No, no,” said the inspector. “All the schooling I had I picked up at a little village school at Sendelsham – that’s in Norfolk. Closed down now, I hear. Most of the old village schools are going. More’s the pity. Still, I suppose you don’t agree with that. You’re probably in favour of big schools. You’ve got one of the biggest in London.”

“In reason.”

“Centralisation. That’s the cry nowadays. Centralise everything.”

“Even crime,” suggested Mr. Wetherall, just to see what would happen.

“Even crime,” agreed Hazlerigg impassively. “You know that’s one of my jobs. Organised crime.”