Mistress Murder Read online

  A tickle of suspicion began in Paul’s mind, as the old assistant went on, ‘I thought at first this London fellow might have stolen it but he insisted that I got you to look at it personally – he would hardly have done that if he’d pinched it.’ Ben paused and scratched his head slowly. ‘Didn’t seem like a thief anyway – thought he had more the manner of a policeman.’

  Paul Jacob had the same sensation that he had had when he walked past his flat in Ferber Street the week before – a sudden clanging of alarm bells in his brain, then a feeling of the ominous nearness of danger.

  He turned abruptly to his safe in the corner. ‘I've got to go home, Ben … just remembered some papers that I need.’

  The old man noticed him pulling out some papers and a bulky envelope which he stuffed rapidly into his briefcase. A moment later he was gone.

  About half an hour after Bray had returned to the car with the sacred teapot, two police cars swept down the long, straight stretch of Bute Street, hurtling towards the antique shop. Parry and Bray were jubilant after their recent successful session in the fingerprint section of Headquarters, but Archie Benbow was strangely worried.

  ‘Too damned easy for my liking. Find a bit of dust, then a threepenny stamp, a set of prints that match and bingo! Much too smooth, there’s got to be a catch in it somewhere.’

  There was a catch in it. When they got to the shop, their bird had flown.

  Parry made the reluctant Ben shut up the shop and go with them.

  ‘Said he was going home, did he?’

  ‘Yes, to get some papers,’ said Ben, mystified.

  ‘Passport and money most likely – how the hell did he rumble us?’

  They hurried to the cars and shot back to town, blue lights flashing and gongs going. Parry picked up the radio handset and contacted Information Room.

  ‘Get a car to Oakdene Crescent – quickly. Intercept a grey Ford Zephyr belonging to Paul Jacobs of Number Seven. I don’t know the registration number yet.’ Ben had told them the make and colour of the car but had no idea of the number.

  The two cars raced towards Llandaff, but on the way Benbow dropped Edwards at the main railway station with instructions to watch the barriers for Jacobs.

  While they sped across the city, Parry spent most of the time at the radio. He called for a rapid search at the Taxation offices for the registration number of Jacobs’ car and put out a general call to adjoining forces for them to pick the Zephyr up at sight – as soon as it could be identified.

  A third patrol car joined them as they reached Llandaff and when they screeched around the comer into Oakdene Crescent, they found yet another black Vauxhall parked outside Jacobs’ house. Benbow hopped out and ran to it. The driver, who had answered the first radio call, waved towards the house.

  ‘He’s gone, sir, the car’s not in the garage.’

  Parry, Bray, and the Admiral hurried up to the front door, leaving the other uniformed men to spread around the back of the property. Before they could ring the bell, the door flew open and an indignant woman in an apron erupted onto the porch to demand to know what was going on.

  ‘Are you Mrs Jacobs?’ asked Benbow harshly.

  A voice from inside the hallway answered over her shoulder.

  ‘No, I am! What are those men doing in the garden? Who are you?’

  Parry rapidly introduced himself and the Yard man.

  ‘Where is your husband, Mrs Jacobs? Has he been here this morning, within the last few minutes, I mean?’

  Mrs Jacobs, her usual calmness shattered, looked in consternation from one to the other. ‘He’s only been gone a few moments – what on earth do you want with him?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Jacobs, we need to question him very urgently in connection with some serious criminal charges.’ Benbow, in the middle of his urgency, found time to change his voice to a gentle tone. ‘It’s most urgent, I assure you.’

  Barbara Jacobs complicated the tense moment by dropping in a dead faint on the floor of the hall. Her daily woman, made of sterner stuff, glared at the detectives and dropped to her knees alongside the other woman.

  ‘Now see what you done!’ she hissed.

  ‘Do you know where Mr Jacobs went? Did he take the car?’ Parry rattled the questions off.

  ‘He came home about a quarter of an hour ago – took some papers from his study and drove off – said he was in a hurry – dunno where he went.’

  Parry swung round to Edwards, who had just trotted up the drive.

  ‘Stay here with the wife – take her down to the station as soon as she’s fit. Before that, whip through the house to make sure he isn’t still in there somewhere.’

  With Benbow lumbering at his heels, he ran back to the patrol car and grabbed the microphone through the window.

  ‘Information Room, got that Zephyr number yet? Hell, tell them to take their finger out. Keep that general call out, inform Monmouthshire as well – he’ll probably try to get back towards London … yes, Paul Jacobs, wanted for murder … fair hair brushed back, average height. May possibly be armed. We’re coming back to Central now.’

  Before they arrived at police headquarters in the centre of the city, a call came through to say that the registration number had been traced and broadcast to all cars.

  They had just entered the C.I.D. office, when the phone rang and Information Room told Parry that the car had been found parked and unoccupied off City Road. As they rushed back down to the waiting cars, Parry panted over his shoulder at Benbow, ‘I don’t get it – why stop in the town? I’d have laid bets on his making either for the London road or trying to get a train.’

  They clambered into the car and shot off.

  ‘This City Road – any significance in that?’ asked Benbow, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.

  Parry turned from the radio for a moment.

  ‘It’s the motor trade area of Cardiff – dozens of showrooms and second-hand places.’

  ‘What the hell can he want there – he wouldn’t have time to buy a car, surely?’

  ‘What about hiring a car – could he do that in this City Road?’ suggested Bray.

  Parry slapped his hands. ‘Of course – hiring a car – there’s umpteen of those places over there. Pay your money and drive away – no questions asked.’

  He reached for the radio again.

  ‘Relay to all cars free to join search in City Road area – check all car-hire firms for man answering description taking car in last thirty minutes – get details of vehicle if found … treat as most urgent.’

  Their own car tore across the city and reached the street in record time. They parked alongside two other patrol cars which were hemming in a grey Ford Zephyr.

  Uniformed police were already flitting in and out of the brightly-lit showrooms that lined the half-mile of City Road, enquiring about the recent renting of a car.

  ‘Could take ages – even if our theory is right,’ groaned Parry. ‘There must be a couple of dozen places that rent cars, some of them in the side streets – a lot of garages do this hiring racket.’

  Bray looked at the abandoned Ford.

  ‘A clever so-and-so like Golding might have left this thing as far as possible from his intended destination, just to fool us.’

  In fact, Jacobs had not had time to go very far, but he had hopped on to a trolley bus and gone a mile from where he had left his Zephyr before finding a car-hire firm in a quiet backstreet.

  He rented a modest black Morris Minor from the proprietor. The man had no reason to be interested in him, but to cover his tracks as much as possible, he had combed his hair to one side while in the trolley bus and pulled on a plastic raincoat and a ratting cap which he always carried in his car.

  With an assumed stoop, he looked a different man as he paid in cash for the car, signed some fictitious name and address, and drove sedately away.

  He went in the opposite direction to London, his ultimate goal. Forty minutes later, while twenty of the Cardiff pol
ice force were frantically searching the City Road motor shops, Jacobs drove into Bridgend, a country town twenty miles to the West.

  He parked his Morris in the furthest corner of a public car park and walked to the railway station, swinging a small case containing a few hundred pounds in cash and two of his false passports.

  There was a fifty minute wait at the station before the next London express came in and he had a niggling fear that the Morris might be spotted, if luck was against him. But it was an hour after the train left before Parry’s men found the place where he had hired the car and another six hours before a local constable spotted its number plate in the Bridgend car park.

  By this time, Jacobs was in London. With his usual caution, he had locked himself in the toilet when the train stopped at Cardiff and, in case Paddington was being watched, he left the train at Reading and caught a bus the rest of the way. While the detectives in South Wales were fuming over his repeated vanishing trick, he was booking in at a small hotel in Victoria.

  He had a good meal and went to bed to consider his next move. It was only too clear that this was the end of an era for him. He had lost heavily. He was down but not beaten. Drawing on his peculiar divided personality, he was able to look on the loss of his home, his wife, and a way of life with dispassionate regret. There was certainly regret. He was very fond of Barbara – it seemed unlikely that he would ever see her again. She had had no inkling of his other life and he sincerely regretted the trouble that she would be drawn into now that the truth was out.

  Yet in the middle of this disaster, the greatest since the Nazi war machine had collapsed and thrown him adrift, he was already plotting for the future. He had to get out of Britain – that was the first necessity. Once abroad, he could set about rebuilding his empire. He had thousands of pounds salted away in various banks on the continent and he knew many contacts who would help him return to the drug trade.

  Before he turned over to sleep, he comforted himself with the thought that there would be more Ritas and Elsas on the continent. There might not be another Barbara, but he’d had a good run these last fifteen years.

  Paul Jacobs, alias Golding, alias Schrempp, was far from beaten.

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘We’ve lost him for good now,’ said Benbow dejectedly. Four days after Paul Jacobs’ getaway from Cardiff, he and his sergeant sat dolefully in their office at the Yard and admitted defeat.

  ‘The swine may be sitting half a mile away this very minute,’ said Bray. ‘It’s fantastic really – we know who he is and we can’t pick him up.’

  ‘That Identikit picture you had in the papers and on the telly … how good was it?’ asked Roberts.

  Benbow looked at Bray, the only one who had ever seen Golding. He shrugged non-committally.

  ‘I don’t know. Each feature on its own was correct – nose, eyes, chin, you know. But all put together – well, it just wasn’t him. Could have been anyone, let’s face it.’

  Benbow’s hand stole towards his pencil tray. ‘If only – we’d had just one photograph,’ he said, ‘There wasn’t one bleeding snap in the whole house – he must have been canny enough to look ahead just for a situation like this.’

  There was a thoughtful silence, broken only by the splintering of timber as the Admiral made a meal of another HB.

  Bray sighed heavily. The youngest of the group, he was itching for action. He was ready to dash outside and begin taking London apart brick by brick until he found Jacobs.

  ‘Any ideas, anybody?’ said Benbow.

  ‘What d’you think he’ll do?’ asked Roberts. ‘Run for the continent or stick it out here?’

  ‘He’s got to live,’ replied Benbow. ‘He’ll probably have a stack of money on him, but he can’t get any more from his normal account under the Jacobs name. I should think he’d try to get back to the continent – he may already have done it.’

  They were interrupted by the phone. Benbow answered it and within seconds, a great smile cracked his round face. He jabbered a string of thanks down the phone and delicately dropped it back into its cradle.

  ‘That’s something to help box the swine in the country, if he’s still here – Parry, the D.I. from Cardiff, rang to say he’s found a photo of Jacobs. He’s teleprinting it up right away and sending the original by post … Bray, as soon as it comes, get it out to the Press Officer for newspapers and the telly, and get it on handbills.’

  He rubbed his hands energetically.

  ‘This’ll give Mr Bloody Jacobs something to worry about.’

  It did make Paul Jacobs worry, but it also helped him to make up his mind about his next move.

  He first saw the photograph of himself blazoned across the Saturday evening papers. A very good likeness of himself stared out of the front page, with ‘HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?’ printed in heavy capitals across the top.

  The dailies had been carrying a story on the Draper murder on and off for a few days, and when the Yard let drop the escape of their prime suspect from their trap in Cardiff, the more sensational national papers had really made a meal of it. There were articles every day speculating on the whereabouts of the man who could assist the police in their inquiries and now the gratis offer of a photograph from the Yard was like manna from Heaven to Fleet Street.

  Paul Jacobs stuffed the paper in his pocket, pulled his hat down a trifle and hurried back to his hotel. He packed quickly and left for Euston, where he used his left-luggage ticket to get out the American-style hat and coat. With these on and a pair of rimless glasses, he felt a little easier, especially as he already had his moustache well grown.

  Sitting in the refreshment room, he looked again at the offending photograph. It was a large blow-up of a group picture and he cursed the Cardiff golf club under his breath. Though he habitually shied away from the camera, he remembered that about four years before he was unable to avoid being included in a group that had won a local championship match. He lightly cursed his friend, whoever he might be, who had public-spiritedly offered the picture to the police, but then he philosophically accepted the damage that had been done.

  It decided his course of action – he must leave the country at once. The faint hope that he might fade away into London and start under a new identity was now far too risky. Any fool with the price of a newspaper might point him out to a policeman in the next week, day or even hour.

  He must get abroad – and quickly. It was get out and stay out this time.

  Jacobs left the restaurant and caught the tube to Whitechapel, then a bus to Poplar, near the India Docks. He found a small boarding house on the road to Millwall in the heart of Dockland. It was a cut above the usual seamen’s lodgings and catered mainly for the less exalted ship’s officers.

  In the sitting room, he found the current issue of Lloyd’s List and looked up the German ships expected in the Port of London. He was looking for any one of several vessels, ships that he had used for his smuggling. The paper told him that the motor vessel Rudolf Haider was due on the Monday evening.

  The master of this ship was an old friend of his, as ruthless and hard as Jacobs himself. He was well aware of Jacobs’ smuggling and had shared in the profits more than once. In fact, it was the Rudolf that had brought over the last consignment from Hamburg, concealed in tent frames.

  Paul settled down to a couple of days waiting at Millwall. He registered in the boarding house as a Swedish fourth officer waiting for his ship. It was easy to avoid any contacts with the other guests and the Scottish landlord was a dour, incurious man who left him well alone.

  He spent the weekend either in his room or at the cinema. On Monday morning, he ventured up to the City to close an account in another name, which gave him a further five hundred pounds in cash which he changed to Deutschmarks at another bank.

  Jacobs learned that the Rudolf Haider was coming into Surrey Commercial Docks with timber and was due to sail for Bremen on the Thursday morning with a cargo of machinery.

  Late in the afte
rnoon, he bought a dark hair-rinse at a chemist’s near Aldgate and went back to his lodgings. He paid his bill and left Millwall, then went to a public wash-and-brush-up establishment near the Blackwall Tunnel. Here, in the privacy of yet another of the cubicles that had seen so much of Jacobs’ double life, he quickly dyed his hair in the wash-basin and darkened his eyebrows. Putting his hat on the still damp hair, he walked out past the sleepy attendant looking even less like his photograph than ever.

  Crossing the river to Bermondsey, he found similar lodgings for the night. He kept out of sight for most of the following day but, as dusk fell, he began his final sprint towards his Fatherland and comparative freedom.

  The mid-December night fell with a chill drizzle. About six thirty, he caught a bus and got off near the main entrance to the Surrey Commercial Docks in Lower Road. The Transport Commission policeman on the gate made no effort to challenge him, but Jacobs crossed to the little lodge and enquired in Germanic broken English the way to the Rudolf Haider.

  The officer obligingly pointed down into the distant swirl of lights and fog.

  ‘Rudolf Haider … Albion Dock, berth four. Down there, mate, turn left.’ He fumbled for a German word. ‘Albion Dock – left – links, see … der schiffist in Albion Dock … er, berth fier … savvy, Fritz?’

  Paul hurried through the wet darkness, under lonely electric bulbs fixed to wooden poles, tripping over railway lines laid across the roads, until he came to the dockside. Great stacks of timber lay everywhere, and at the water’s edge, a line of immobile cranes stood like rusty giraffes.

  He stumbled on, gripping his case, until he came to a row of gaunt warehouses. On the ship moored alongside the first, he saw the name Rudolf Haider – Bremen painted across her stem.

  She was a modem tramp, not the rusty tub of pre-war adventure stories. A sleek motor-ship, she was neat and fast, equipped with all the latest devices for touting around Europe for cargoes. The cargo of pine and spruce from the Baltic had been partly unloaded and the decks stood high above the quayside. A steep gangway stretched from the deserted dockside up to her midships companionway.