Young Petrella (28 page)

A fortnight later – that was, in the last week of May – the officer on the monitored telephone in the basement at New Scotland Yard received a call. The call came at six o’clock in the evening, precisely, and the caller announced himself as Magnus.

The officer said, “Count five slowly, please. Then start talking.” He put out his hand and pressed down the switch. The tape recorder whirred softly as the man at the other end spoke. Later that evening Romer came down to the Yard and listened to the playback. The voice came, thin and resonant, but clear.

“Magnus here. This is my first report. I’ve settled into my new job. I feel little real doubt that what we suspect is correct but it’s difficult to see just how the trick is pulled.

“The
Clarissa
meets all incoming
Consorts
.
She takes out miscellaneous stores, and usually fetches back a load of gear for the Mission. It must be the best-equipped outfit in London. The customs experts give the stuff the magic-eye treatment before it’s put on the
Clarissa,
and I’ve managed to look through most of it myself. Once it’s in the Mission it’s handed straight over to the boys, so it’s a bit difficult to see how it could be used as a hiding place.

“Cocaine’s not bulky, I know, but I gather the quantities we’re looking for are quite considerable. I have a feeling this line in sports goods might be a big red herring. Something to take our eye off the real job.

“Carter, the mate of the
Clarissa,
is, I think, an ex-convict. His real name is Coster, and he’s been down a number of times for larceny and aggravated assault. He carries a gun. Nothing known about the crew.

“Captain Cree” – here the tape gave a rasping scratch – “Sorry. That was me clearing my throat. As I was saying, Captain Cree’s a smart operator. I should think he makes a good bit on the side out of his chandlering, but not nearly enough to account for the style he lives in. You’d imagine a man like him would keep a little woman tucked away somewhere, wouldn’t you? But I never heard any whisper about the fair sex. A pity. We might get a woman to talk. That’s all for now.”

The weather was hot and dry that summer, and through July and August increasing supplies of illicit cocaine continued to dribble into London as water through a rotten sluice-gate; and the casualty figures and the crime graphs climbed, hand in hand with the mercury in the thermometer. Superintendent Costorphine’s face grew so long and so bleak that Romer took to avoiding him. For all the comfort he could give him was that things would probably get worse before they got better.

At Sark Lane Mr. Freebone was working an eighteen-hour day. Added to his other preoccupations was an outbreak of skin disease. The boys could not be prevented from bathing in the filthy reaches and inlets of the Thames below Tower Bridge.

When he could spare a minute from his routine work he seemed to cultivate the company of the crew of the
Clarissa
.
Carter was surly and unapproachable, but the boys were pleasant enough. Ron Blanden was a burly, fair-haired young man of twenty. He had ideas beyond the river, and talked of leaving the
Clarissa
and joining the Merchant Navy.

David, the young black-haired one, seemed to be a natural idler, with few ideas beyond taking life easy, picking up as much money as he could, and dressing in his smartest clothes on his evenings off. He once told Mr. Freebone that he came from Scotland, but his eyes and hair suggested something more Mediterranean in origin. There was a theory that he had been in bad trouble once, in his early youth, and was now living it down.

Mr. Freebone had no difficulty, in time, in extracting the whole of the candid Ron Blanden’s life story, but David, though friendly, kept his distance. All he would say – and this was a matter of record – was that he had made one trip on the
Albert Consort
that April, and had then been offered a job by Captain Cree which he had accepted.

“I don’t like that David,” said Batchelor one evening.

“Oh, why?” said Mr. Freebone.

“He’s a bad sort of boy,” said Batchelor. “I’ve caught him snooping round this place once or twice lately. Fiddling round with the sports kit. I soon sent him packing.”

“Hmm,” said Mr. Freebone. He changed the subject somewhat abruptly. “By the way, Batchelor, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. How much do we pay you?”

“Four pounds a week, and keep.”

“And what does Captain Cree add to that?”

The old man stirred in his chair, and blinked. “Who said he added anything?”

“I heard it.”

“He pays me a pound or two, now and then. Nothing regular. I do jobs for him. Anything wrong with that?”

Magnus had fallen into the routine of reporting at the appointed hour on every second Wednesday. Towards the end of September his message was brief, and contained a request. “Could you check up on the old boy who acts as caretaker at the Mission? He calls himself Batchelor and claims to be ex-RN. I don’t believe that’s his real name and I don’t believe he was ever in the Navy. Let me know through the usual channels and urgently.”

Costorphine said to Romer, “Something’s brewing down there. My contacts all tell me the same story. The suppliers are expecting a big autumn run.”

Romer made a small, helpless gesture. “And are we going to be able to stop it?” he asked.

“We can always hope,” said Costorphine. “I’ll find out about that man Batchelor. Jacobson will know something about him. He took him on, I believe. . .”

It was a week later that Humphrey said to Mr. Freebone, apropos of nothing that had gone before, “He’s a character, that David, all right.”

“What’s he up to now?” said Mr. Freebone, between gasps, for he was busy blowing up a batch of new footballs.

“Wanted to cut me in on a snide racket.”

Mr. Freebone stopped what he was doing, put the football down, and said, “Come on. Let’s have it.”

“David told me he can get hold of plenty of fivers. Good-looking jobs, he said. The
Clarissa
picks ’em up from the Dutch and German boats. He had some story they were a lot the Gestapo had printed during the war. Is that right?”

“I believe they did,” said Mr. Freebone. “But they’d be the old white sort.”

“That’s right. That’s why he wanted help passing ’em. If he turned up with a lot of ’em, it’d look suspicious. But if some of us boys helped him. . .”

In a rage, Mr. Freebone sought out Captain Cree, who listened to him with surprising patience.

“Half those lads are crooks,” he said, when the Missioner had finished. “You can’t stop it.”

“I’m not going to have your crew corrupting my boys,” said Mr. Freebone. “And I look to you to help me stop it.”

“What do you want me to do? Sack David?”

Mr. Freebone said, “I don’t know that that’d do a lot of good. But he’s not to come near the Mission.”

“I’ll sort him out,” said the Captain. He added, “You know, what you want’s a holiday. You’ve had a basinful of us since you came, and you haven’t had a day off in six months that I can see.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Freebone, “I was thinking of taking a long weekend soon.”

“You do that,” said the Captain. “Tell me when you’re going, and I’ll keep an eye on the place for you myself.”

He sounded almost paternal. . .

“This is report number thirteen,” said the tape-recorded voice of Magnus. “I hope that doesn’t make it unlucky. I had a narrow escape the other day, but managed to ride the Captain off. I’m bound to say that, in my view, things are coming to a head. Just how it’s going to break I don’t know, but some sort of job is being planned for next weekend. Cree and Carter have been thick as thieves about it.

“Talking about thieves, I was glad to hear that my hunch about Batchelor was correct, and that he had been inside. There’s something about an old lag that never washes off. It was interesting, too, that he worked at one time in a chemist’s shop, and had done a bit of dispensing in his youth. All he dispenses openly now are cups of vile tea. That’s all for now. I hope to be on the air again in a fortnight’s time with some real news for you.”

Costorphine said, “That ties in with what I’ve heard. A big consignment, quite soon.”

“We’d better put the cover plan into operation,” said Romer.

“You’ve got two police boats on call. Whistle them up now.”

“A police launch would be a bit out-gunned by
Clarissa
.
I’ve arranged a tie-up with the Navy. There’s a launch standing by at Greenwich. We can have her up when we want her. Only we can’t keep her hanging about for long – she’s too conspicuous.”

“I’ve got an uneasy feeling about this,” said Romer. “They’re not fools, the people we’re dealing with. They wouldn’t walk into anything obvious.”

“Do you think Petrella—”

“You’ve got to admit he’s been lucky,” said Romer. “It was luck that the job was going, and luck that we managed to get it for him. And he’s done very well, too. But luck can’t last forever. It only needs one person to recognise him – one criminal he’s ever had to deal with, and he must have had hundreds through his hands in the last few years.”

“He’ll be all right,” said Costorphine. “He’s a smart lad.”

“I’m superstitious,” said Romer. “I don’t mean about things like black cats and ladders. I mean about making bargains with fortune. You remember when we were talking about this thing in here, way back in March, I said something about a single life not being important. It might be true; but I wish I hadn’t said it, all the same.”

Costorphine confided to his wife, that night, “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen the old man jumpy. Things must be bad. Perhaps the politicians are after him.”

That Saturday night there were about two dozen boys in the club room of the Mission; and it says a lot for the enthusiasm engendered by Mr. Freebone that there was anyone there at all, for if ever there was a night for fireside and television this was it. The wind had started to get up with the dusk, and was now blowing in great angry gusts, driving the rain in front of it.

At half past four Captain Cree, faithful to his promise, had come up to keep an eye on things in the Missioner’s absence. There had been nothing much for him to do, and he had departed for the dock where
Clarissa
lay. Now, through the dark and the rain, he drove his big station wagon carefully back, once more, through the empty streets, and manoeuvred it into the unlighted cul-de-sac beside the Mission Hall.

Carter, a big, unlovely lump of a man, was sitting beside him, smoking one of an endless chain of cigarettes. This time Captain Cree did not trouble with the front entrance. There was a small side door, which gave on to a dark lobby. Out of the lobby, bare wooden stairs ran up to Mr. Freebone’s bedroom; on the far side a door opened through to Batchelor’s sanctum.

Captain Cree stood in the dark, empty lobby, his head bent. He was listening. Anyone glimpsing his good-natured red face at that particular moment might have been shocked by the expression on it.

At the end of a full minute he relaxed, went back to the street door, and signalled to Carter. The back of the station wagon was opened, and the first of four big bales was lifted out and humped indoors. The bolt of the outer door was shot.

Batchelor was waiting for them. Everything about him showed that he, too, knew that some crisis was impending.

“You locked the door?” said Captain Cree. He jerked his head at the door which led into the Mission Hall.

“Of course I locked it,” said Batchelor. “We don’t want a crowd of boys in here. How many have you got, for Chrissake?”

“Four,” said Carter. He was the coolest of the three.

“We’ll do ’em all now,” said Captain Cree. “It’ll take a bit of time, but we won’t get a better chance than this. When’s
he
coming back?” An upward jerk of his head indicated that he was talking about the occupant of the back attic.

“Sunday midday, he said. Unless he changed his mind.”

“He’d better not change it,” said Carter.

He helped Batchelor to strip the thick brown-paper wrapping from one of the bales. As the covering came away the contents could be seen to be woollens, half a gross of thick woollen vests. In the second there was half a gross of long pants. Grey socks in the third. Gloves and balaclava helmets and scarves in the fourth.

Carter waddled across to the enormous gas-operated copper in the corner, and lifted the lid. A fire had been lit under it earlier in the afternoon, and was now glowing red; the copper was full of clean hot water.

What followed would have interested Superintendent Costorphine intensely. He would have realised how it is possible to bring cocaine into the country under the noses of the smartest customs officials; and he would have appreciated just why those samples might contain minute traces of copper.

The three men worked as a team, with the skill born of long practice. Carter dumped the woollens by handfuls in the copper. Captain Cree took them out, and wrung each one carefully into a curious contraption which Batchelor had pulled from a cupboard. Basically this was a funnel, with a drip tray underneath. But between funnel and tray was a fine linen gauze filter. And as the moisture was wrung from each garment, a greyish sediment formed on the filter.

When the filter was so full that it was in danger of becoming clogged the Captain called a halt. From a suitcase he extracted an outsize vacuum flask, and into it, with the greatest possible care, he deposited the grey sediment.

It took them over an hour to go through the first three packages. During this time the water in the copper had itself been emptied and filtered, and the copper refilled. Twice, during this time, a boy had rattled on the door that led into the hall, and Batchelor had shouted back that he was busy.

“Tip the last lot in,” said the Captain, “and be quick about it.” They were all three sweating. “We don’t want anyone bursting in on us now.”

He had never handled such a quantity before. The third flask was in use. Two were already full. He had his back to the door leading to the lobby, and they none of them heard or saw it open.