“Check with me first,” Gideon told him. “I’d like to see you but there may be too many briefings. Call about ten o’clock.”
“Right. Oh, by the way, George — what day was summer last year?”
Gideon put down the receiver, pretending not to hear. He felt a flash of exasperation; that kind of facetious humour was Lemaitre’s speciality and, in the right mood, it could be funny, but Gideon wasn’t in the right mood. He had just been glowing at the thought of London’s loveliness; just been recalling the glorious summers of his boyhood. He smiled wryly to himself. Did one always remember the good and forget the bad, in one’s past?
The question answered itself even as he asked it, bringing to mind in successive flashbacks two schoolday incidents. One, an occasion when he had been caned and humiliated for writing ‘dirty’ words on a wash-room door — and two of the words he had never even heard of! He had been absolutely guilt-free. The boy who had been guilty had let him suffer the punishment; and afterwards, in the playground, he had jeered: “Bloody fool, that’s what you are! If you knew it was me, why the hell didn’t you say so?”
To this day, in such a mood as he was now, the old injustice still had the power to hurt; well, perhaps not really hurt, but certainly it still brought a feeling of heavy-hearted-ness, a sense of dismay at the existence of unrightable wrongs.
The other memory, something quite different, was of the one and only time he had been selected to play for the school First Eleven — and the cricket match had been rained off. He had never forgotten how unutterably miserable he had been. Such things had at least enabled him to share the hurts and disappointments and frustrations of his children, but he could still feel some of that old, aching awareness that he had been robbed of a chance which had never come again.
Suddenly, he gave a snort of laughter.
“What the devil am I sentimentalising about?” he demanded, of the empty office. “I ought to be checking Lem’s story!” He sat down at his desk again, and made a note about Jackie Spratt’s runner and the doping of Derby horses.
Jackie Spratt’s was the name of a large book-making firm, started by a long-dead father and now operated by three brothers. Each of the brothers was a public school product; each in his own way was clever. The firm had become a vast concern, with hundreds of betting shops throughout the country, but its headquarters were still in the East End.
Gideon, who was not a gambling man but would have an occasional flutter, had no strong opinions on the rights and wrongs of betting; his job was to maintain the law. Since the new Gaming Act, with licensed betting-shops everywhere, there had been few problems with street runners, but many more — and usually serious — problems with the smart new casinos, while the slot machines, too, had their ‘protectors’ and their rackets.
These were general issues, but Jackie Spratt’s was a problem on its own. There was no proof but good reason to believe that the three brothers were behind a great deal of fixing’ and corruption, particularly involving horse-racing and boxing. No doping case had ever been traced back to them; no boxer who had thrown a fight led back to them. Yet everybody “knew’ the truth. They were a parasitic growth on the body of sport.
One day, Gideon and the Yard persuaded themselves, Jackie Spratt’s would go too far-and it was conceivable mat day would come with this year’s Derby. Lemaitre, however, was notably possessed of a facile optimism which discouraged Gideon from setting too much store by such a hope. For the moment, he pushed it to the back of his mind.
He looked through the file, with great deliberation. Even sitting there, he was perspiring. The day was not only airless but very humid. His handkerchief became a damp ball; fee could almost have wrung it out. Tossing it aside, he shrugged himself out of his jacket-a medium-weight one •which felt winter-heavy at this temperature.
“It must be ninety!” he grumbled, almost indignantly.
He felt a little cooler in his shirt-sleeves, but his braces in the middle of his back. The telephone rang several times, each call about some trifle, and his palm soon grew sticky with handling the receiver. He loosened his tie, and almost as his collar sagged, the door opened with a perfunctory tap and the Commissioner came in.
The Commissioner at Scotland Yard was like royalty, and Gideon was immediately and acutely conscious of being in his shirt and braces, and so sticky that sweat actually rolled down his cheeks. He pushed his chair back and rose as the door closed. The Commissioner, in a pale grey over-check suit, looked as cool as if he had stepped out of an ice-box, as immaculate as if he had come straight from his tailor.
It was months since he had been near Gideon’s office.
“Good afternoon, Commander.”
“Good afternoon, sir.” Gideon pushed back his thick iron-grey hair and rounded the desk to move an armchair forward. Its casters stuck in a threadbare patch of carpet and he had to fight back the impulse to use brute strength. He eased it clear and pushed it into position.
“Thanks.” Scott-Marie sat down and draped one long leg over the other. “Have you had time to study the belated programme of outdoor events in London for June?”
“Not to study it, sir,” Gideon said. “I was looking through it as you came in.” He sat down, wretchedly conscious of his bright green braces and the dampness at his neck and arms. But to put on his coat would not only reveal his embarrassment: it would be difficult, being so damp, to slip it on easily. He tried to forget that it was hanging on the back of his chair.
He had a great respect and regard for Sir Reginald Scott-Marie, and they were on good terms. Yet the fact remained that the only time Gideon really felt at ease with him, was when he was at the Commissioner’s home.
“I’ve just looked through it, too,” Scott-Marie told him, as he was wondering whether to mention Lemaitre’s tip about the Derby situation, and deciding not to; it was best only to tell Scott-Marie of facts, — or at least fully-substantiated evidence.
“Does anything in particular worry you?”
Gideon frowned. He looked slow-thinking, almost bull-like, but in fact the headings of the listed events were chasing one another rapidly and accurately through his mind. Golf at Richmond . . . the South African cricket team here on tour . . . Wimbledon, even more of a crowd-puller now that it was open to professionals as well as amateurs . . . racing at Ascot and a dozen other places near London, quite apart from Derby week at Epsom. The air display at Farnborough, in Surrey, too, would mean crowds at the London stations . . . other tennis fixtures . . . polo . . . at least two major athletics meetings . . . a Commonwealth tournament at the White City, and a European one at Wembley. There was also dog-racing, speedway and motor racing, in or near London. But none of these gave him any slightest inkling of what Scott-Marie meant.
“No,” he answered at last. “Not in particular, sir.” Then a thought flashed into his mind. “Unless the South Africans, at Lords—?”
Scott-Marie’s expression lost its severity. Gideon noticed this and also noticed a beading of sweat on the Commissioner’s own forehead, particularly where the hair grew back to make a sharp widow’s peak.
“That’s it.” Scott-Marie stood up and took off his coat, draping it over the back of an upright chair. He didn’t wear braces, and his crocodile skin belt was firmly drawn about a waist which probably hadn’t expanded two inches in twenty years. “I hadn’t given it more than a passing thought, but the Home Secretary has just telephoned to say that he wants special precautions taken.”
“Do you think he has any particular reason?” asked Gideon.
“He gave me no intimation that he had, and I imagine there is some kind of political motivation. He may simply want to be absolutely sure there is no political demonstration — at least,” Scott-Marie gave his dry smile: “none that gets out of control — during his last few months in office.”