When his Number Two came in, Latymer told him the score. He added, “So far as the people on the spot can say, there’s no positive ground for interfering with the firm or any of its employees. On the surface anyway, it’s a perfectly respectable import business.” He took a cigarette from a silver box and jabbed irritably at the desk lighter. “I’m convinced Shaw and Pelly are somewhere on those premises, all the same, and probably the girl’s still there too. Thompson and Archer were watching the place all the time. Even the call-box Thompson rang from had a clear view of the entrance. Nothing came out. Not a lorry, not a man. They’ve got to be there, Carberry.”
“Might be more than two ways in and out, sir.”
Latymer shook his head. “Don’t be elementary. That’s been checked. Matter of fact there’s only the one, as Archer quickly discovered. That’s in Calcutta Street. And the whole place has a high wall right round it. Granted there may be some concealed exit, but if there is our people haven’t found it, and I’ve no reason to suppose they haven’t been thorough.” He drew deeply on his cigarette. His face looked old and lined, Carberry thought, as though he’d aged ten years during the morning. “Somehow I don’t care for the sound of the man whatsisname — Verity — who appears to be in charge in the absence of his boss, a Mr Canasset. Incidentally, I’ve had a quick check made on Canasset and he’s a respected figure in the City — any amount of directorships. . and a good many of his firms have interests in West Africa.”
“Think there’s a connexion, sir?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out,” Latymer said tersely. “Meanwhile, he left the warehouse early on a visit to the West Country and a call to his home backs that up. We’ll haul him in, of course, as soon as we can locate him. But I was talking about Verity; our chaps say he’s a shifty-looking basket, but we can’t do a thing about him till there’s more to go on, particularly as we’re treading on the thinnest of legal ice by entering the premises at all without police backing. His story stands up — to every one but us. He says the only visitors to the office all morning were two men from a subsidiary in Southampton, whose visit is corroborated by the Southampton people themselves. If it’s a faked-up alibi we can’t crack it. Verity’s boxing clever by calling in the Yard, no doubt trying to call our bluff. I’ve an idea he may have been just a little too clever, though. Now Scotland Yard’s in on this, we may as well make full use of ’em— what?”
“How, exactly?”
Latymer snapped, “The obvious way, my dear Carberry.” His eyes glittering with devilment he reached out for the intercom and flicked the switch. “Miss Larkin — get me the Commissioner of Police. Personal. At once. Yes.” He flicked the box off and looked up at Carberry. He was grinning tightly now, the skin grafts on his face adding to the appearance of devilishness. He said, “I’m going to take the P.M.’s name in vain and make the Commissioner take out a search warrant right away so that we’ve got a good basis on which to pull that joint apart inch by inch without breaking the ruddy law. They’ll hang me for it in the end, of course, but I’ll get away with it for quite long enough to ensure they don’t waste time hectoring our lads down at the warehouse. And we’re going along ourselves, Carberry, you and I.”
Bit by bit strength had come back into Shaw’s body, a strength given him partly by his realization that he just had to pull himself up from the clinging ooze, clear of the water as it rose to new danger levels. Had to — if he was to live.
The first thing he’d done had been to grope around for Pelly; and after a while his blindly searching hands had touched that hump, face downward in the slime. He dragged him up as well as he could, using every ounce of his willpower, and felt for the heart. But all the time he knew quite well what he would find; he’d had too much contact with death not to recognize it instantly. There was just nothing he could do for Pelly.
And what about the girl herself?
Gillian Ross was the sort of girl who could probably look after herself very much more effectively than most girls of her age and class — in the normal run of hazards which a young girl alone in London had to face. But this was entirely different. She would be out of her depth and utterly helpless. So much for his promise that she wouldn’t come to any harm…
He struggled back to the silted ledge where so far he could hold himself clear of the water. When he got there he stood and groped with desperate fingers for a handhold in the brickwork of the walls. But they were slime-covered, smooth, wet, and greasy with nameless filth, and he was weak, too weak, as he soon realized, to haul his body up by the tenuous grip of fingertips thrust into the gaps. As the water deepened inexorably he was forced right back into that one corner where the silt lay piled, the silt into which his feet now began slowly to sink. In time, that water came breast high, and higher… lapped against his chin, sending its stink more foully into his nostrils and its filthy, sick-making taste into his mouth as it came through the crannies and the gullies which channelled it to the pit.
As he stood there, back to the wall now, something brushed past his face…
A moment later it seemed to press into him.
He shuddered, held himself stiffly away, scalp tingling.
Then, reluctantly, he reached out a hand, felt something soft and slimy with a hardness under it like scales, something which yielded pulpily, morbidly. It moved very slowly past. It had the feel, the clammy touch, of some great fish, an eel perhaps, which had made its silent way from some muddy backwater into this Stygian place, and was now seeking a way out to the freedom of the clean river again. And then, as the thing floated on slowly past his face, Shaw realized what it was and he gave a sharp cry of horror.
What he had touched was a human leg, and the thing was a dead body.
And — it wasn’t Pelly’s body, because Pelly had been fully clothed. This poor object was stark naked, and it felt as though it was already decomposing. The sweet, sickly smell of death reeked into his nostrils; his head dropped as thick, frizzed hair moved past his face and he started retching again, horribly, cruelly, into the flood.
Gradually then the rising tide took him in its grip until his feet no longer touched bottom. He floated. The only hope now was that the deepening water would lift him high enough to enable him to reach out for the crumbling edge of the hole in the floor above, the hole which Wiley had been going to make to give his death that authentic touch of accident. He couldn’t see that hole, and he had no means of knowing how high above his head the floor was anyway.
The radio link from Scotland Yard crackled out its urgent message to four patrol cars in London’s East End.
From the East India Dock Road, from Wapping, from the Blackwall Tunnel, and from Spitalfields the fast black cars started to converge on Canning Town. A squad under a Detective Chief Inspector left the Yard itself, bound east. In another car with a motor-cycle escort and wailing sirens the Assistant Commissioner, “C” Department, himself sat back against thick cushions and swore briefly under his breath at the easy way his Chief had been talked into this by some one at the Admiralty who’d got some pull in high circles.
The car from the East India Dock Road reached Emco’s yard first and turned to seal the gateway; a little later it was joined by the one which had been passing through the Blackwall Tunnel. By this time a sergeant had found the Inquiry Office and the clerk. He said, “Police. No one’s to leave the premises.”