Young Petrella (8 page)

“A lot of it’s their fault,” agreed Haxtell. “But we shan’t make ourselves any more popular by saying so. Our job’s to catch him. You can take one man – Petrella I suggest – off all outside duty and tell him to concentrate on it. He knows a bit about locks. It’s just up his street.”

So it caused trouble for Detective Constable Petrella, too. Following a sharp attack of flu, the result of an all-night watch in damp clothes, he had been on the point of asking for a holiday, his first in almost two years. He was going to visit his father, in Barcelona. After that, his plans were vague.

He listened sadly to what Gwilliam had to say, cancelled some tentative reservations, and sat down to serious study of the Nipper.

It was “Square” Peggs, the proprietor of the All-Night Café in Exeter Street who had first christened him “Nipper”. “He nips in, nips what he wants, and nips out again.”

In the last six months, since his work had become identifiable, the Nipper had visited Solly Moss, the turf accountant; Mungo Farnes, the pawnbroker; Mr. Turner, who kept the big greengrocer’s shop on the corner of the High Street; and Mr. Lowson’s garage and repair shop.

He had taken nothing but money. How much he had taken from each was part of the mystery; but the police, scaling down the estimate of the outraged proprietors in the light of experience, came to the conclusion that it was not less than fifteen thousand pounds in all.

“If he keeps it up for a year,” said Peggs, “he’ll make himself twenty thousand nicker. Then maybe he’ll retire.”

Petrella was fond of Peggs. He liked him for his cynicism, his philosophy and his lack of conventional morality. Also, he had found out a long time ago that nothing much happened in Highside without Peggs knowing about it.

“He’ll be after your stocking next,” he suggested.

“If he knew where I kept it,” agreed Peggs.

“Which is an admission,” said Petrella, “that you do keep your spare cash somewhere round the place. Why the devil don’t you bank it?”

“Might just as well give it away – to the tax collector,” said Peggs. It was, as Petrella knew, a widely held idea.

“What you want to do,” said Peggs, “is catch him, and put him away for a long stretch.”

“Tell me who he is, and we’ll tab him fast enough.”

“If I knew,” said Peggs, frankly, “I’d tell you. No honour among thieves here. He’s a perishing little menace.”

So Petrella took a bulky folder home with him, that night and many nights. And studied, in every possible light and from every possible angle, the depredations of the Nipper.

His methods, in outline, had the simplicity of genius. He had visited Solly Moss’s office at half past one, when Solly and his two clerks were out at lunch. He had picked, with speed and efficiency, the mortice lock on the office door, looked into all the desk drawers until he found the safe key, opened the safe, removed the cash, closed the safe, replaced the key, relocked the outer door and departed. Estimated time, ten minutes. The loss was not discovered until Solly visited his safe that evening to bank the results of a highly successful afternoon at Hurst Park. Mungo Farnes, the pawnbroker, and Mr. Turner were both evening jobs. They were bachelors and both lived over their premises, but took an occasional evening out. In each case the Nipper had selected the correct evening, picked the lock of the outer door and, in the case of Farnes, who was a careful man, of the inner door also; gone straight to the place where the money was kept (in one case a desk, in the other a wall cupboard); picked the lock of this, and departed with the contents. At Lowson’s garage it had been easier still, since Mr. Lowson did not sleep on the premises, but entrusted his cash to a large, old-fashioned safe, the key of which he concealed, with great originality, by hanging it on a nail behind the door.

“Any leads?” asked Sergeant Gwilliam. Two years had taught him a reluctant respect for Petrella’s flair.

“Nothing definite,” said Petrella, and stopped himself yawning. He was desperately tired and had been needing that holiday more than he knew. “Just two thoughts. The first is that he hasn’t done anything very complicated yet in the way of lock-picking. He hasn’t tackled a safe – he either opens them with a key or leaves ’em alone. He hasn’t even tried his hand on a Yale lock. It’s just been simple three or four-lever locks which he’s opened with a couple of picks.”

“Why do a thing the hard way if you can do it soft?”

“Surely,” agreed Petrella. “All I meant was this. If he could open a really difficult lock, that would make him one sort of person. A professional. And we could get at him through Criminal Records. What I’m afraid of is that he’s an amateur. Suppose he’s a man who’s worked in some place they cut keys – or some little workshop where they make and repair ordinary locks. He’d know just enough about locks to open the simple sort with a bit of practice.”

“He’s been getting plenty of practice lately,” agreed Gwilliam, sourly. “What’s your other bright idea?”

“I just thought that if I’m right, the only way of catching him is to find the common denominator of Solly Moss, Mungo Farnes, Mr. Turner and Mr. Lowson.”

“They’re all in a good way of business. And they’re all so damned silly they keep their cash on the premises.”

“I didn’t quite mean that. I meant that if the Nipper is an amateur, he must have had some easy way of finding out all about these four people – and their money – and what they did with it, and what their habits were, and so on. A professional could buy information like that. An amateur would have to get it for himself.”

“It’s a thought,” said Sergeant Gwilliam, doubtfully, “but it doesn’t seem to get us much closer to pulling him in, does it?”

Petrella went out to have another word with Peggs.

“Can you,” he said, “think of any sort of link between these four people? They’re all men, and they all run businesses. But I mean something more than that. Suppose they all belonged to the same club – or supported the same football team – or had their hair cut by the same barber—”

“Solly hasn’t got any hair.”

“Just an example.”

“Yes. I take your point.” Peggs reached down for a small bottle, popped two white tablets out of it into a glass of water and swallowed them absent-mindedly. “Blown up like a balloon. It’s all that greasy stuff I serve. Supposing they all had the same postman?”

“Would you talk to a postman about your private affairs? What about an insurance agent?”

“Except that none of ’em wasn’t insured. That’s what they were beefing about.” Peggs swilled down the last white drop and said, “What about a Lodge?”

“I don’t know much about Lodges,” admitted Petrella.

“I don’t go for them myself,” said Peggs. “Lot of grown-up kids. But I know Solly, Mungo and old Turner belong to one – Sons of Enterprise. Highside Lodge – and come to think of it, I believe Alf Lowson joined ’em lately.”

“What do they do?”

“They have outings. Hire a coach and drink their way to Southend and back. And a party at Christmas. Men only.”

Petrella extracted the address of the Lodge secretary and went thoughtfully back to Crown Road Police Station. He was aware that he was treading on very dangerous ground. When a lot of grown men got together and called each other brother and elected officers and wore strange emblems, they were apt to be touchy about their privacy.

As it turned out, this was one possible piece of trouble which did not eventuate. At the station he found a message waiting for him. The Nipper had moved in again. Mrs. Porter, owner of a large confectioners in Milton Road, had locked her shop up on the previous evening and gone to visit her sister in hospital. On her return she had noticed nothing amiss. It was not until after lunch next day that she had occasion to go to the cash box in the bedroom cupboard.

“
Mrs
.
Porter,” said Petrella. “Has she got a husband?”

“A widow,” said Sergeant Gwilliam. “Runs the shop herself. It’s her life savings, so far as I could make out.”

Petrella acquitted the all-male Sons of Enterprise of his unworthy suspicions and began his thinking again. He was aware that time was running against him. By the first post that morning Chief Inspector Haxtell had received a letter which had caused him to go red in the face and beat the desk with his fist.

It was from Councillor Hayes, a notorious local busybody, and it suggested (Councillor Hayes rarely stated anything, but he was a master of suggestion) that the police were applying the rule of “one law for the rich, another for the poor”. “I and my fellow councillors notice with regret,” it concluded, “that whilst the police are only too active in arresting and persecuting” (this word had been thinly crossed out and “prosecuting” written over the top) “members of the working class who are guilty of the smallest infringement, they do not show the same activity in arresting a man who constitutes a serious threat to the livelihood and savings of the small shopkeeper.”

“I wouldn’t call Solly a small shopkeeper,” said Sergeant Gwilliam, when the letter was read to him. “Anyway, that’s only old Hayes blowing his top. He’s been wanting to get back at us because we never caught the man who did
his
house. Between you and me I always wondered if he didn’t do it himself for the insurance.”

Haxtell ignored this slanderous statement.

“How’s Petrella getting on?”

Sergeant Gwilliam had to admit that he didn’t know. For all his placidity, he too was worried. He knew the power of local politics.

In fact Petrella was back where he had started. He was talking to Peggs.

“Poor old Ma Porter,” said Peggs. “How many times I told her it was asking for trouble keeping all her money in the bottom of the wardrobe. Silly old cow.”

“She a friend of yours?”

“We use the same pub – when I get a night off. Which isn’t often. I knew her old man. He was the only man I ever saw drink a quart of stout without stopping. Stout, not beer. Solly gave him ten to one in dollars he couldn’t do it. It’s the only time I ever seen Solly pay up cheerful.”

Petrella agreed that it was a considerable feat, at any odds, and took his departure. He must have been tired at the time, because he was halfway home before he realised the significance of what Peggs had told him.

It seemed so important, that he didn’t waste time going back, but dived into the nearest telephone box and rang back.

“You know what you were saying about Mr. Porter—”

“The one who drunk—?”

“Yes. What pub were you talking about?”

“The Bull, of course. Everyone goes to the Bull.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Petrella. “Did you ever see Farnes there?”

“Old Mungo? Yes. Once or twice.”

“And Lowson? And Turner?”

“Lowson’s a regular. I dunno about Turner. I expect so. They all use it. What’s the idea? You thinking of organising a stag party?”

“That’s just exactly what I am going to do,” said Petrella. “All the losers shall drown their losses in quarts of porter,” and he rang off.

“Barmy,” said Peggs. None the less there was a glint in his small black eyes. He had just begun to realise what Petrella was talking about.

That was Thursday. Two nights later, at about half past nine, the Saloon Bar of the Bull was full, as it usually was on Saturday night, of bright folk, bright lights, smoke and the steady pulling of beer engines and clanking of glasses.

Holding the middle of the floor, gorgeous in a black suit which had first seen the light of day at his wife’s funeral, was Mr. Peggs. Facing him, and talking almost as loud, was Mungo Farnes. Behind his left elbow appeared the red face and porcelain smile of Solly Moss.

“What I say is,” repeated Peggs, “if you keep your lolly in a safe, you’re asking for trouble. What is a safe?”

He paused for breath, and let in Mungo, who told him what a safe was, in language which caused even the barmaid to open her doll-like eyes.

“I’ll tell you what a safe is,” said Peggs. “It’s an advertisement. It says, in letters a yard high, ‘Come on, here’s where the money is.’ Right?”

The company agreed that he was right.

“It’s all right criticising,” said Solly. “Where d’you keep your stocking, Peggs, my boy?”

“Ah,” said Peggs. “One or two people might like to know that. I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t keep it in the safe. And I don’t keep it in the shop. And I don’t keep it under my bed.”

Petrella, from his post of vantage in the passageway behind the bar, thought that Peggs was doing it very nicely. Not too obvious. Just indiscreet enough to sound natural.

He cast an eye round the bar. Many of them were regulars, and he acquitted them at a glance. Nor did he think the Nipper was a woman. In theory there was nothing to prevent a woman taking to burglary, but as yet it didn’t seem to be one of the fields in which they had started seeking equality with men.

There was a youth with red hair and large hands, vaguely attached to a girl, whom he might have brought with him or might have picked up. There was an old man with a white beard, nursing a single half pint of mild in the corner. (Was he as old as he looked? The hand which raised the glass was very steady.) And a clerkly person, sipping a lager, whose eyes flashed round keenly behind a pair of rimless glasses. Nothing to choose between them really.

“Did I do all right?” asked Peggs an hour later. He was mixing himself a powerful sedative.

“Bang on,” said Petrella. “If the Nipper was there he’ll be after
your
life’s savings next.”

“You think he’ll work it out?”

“Bound to. Not in the shop, not in a safe, not in your bedroom. Really speaking that only leaves the living room.” He cast his eye round the homely apartment. “And it won’t be too difficult for him to get in. There’s a side door in Exeter Street. Easy lock. Then straight up the stairs. Then he’s got a choice. Could be this room, or the room opposite.”

“That’s the bathroom. Wouldn’t keep money in the bathroom.”

“Agreed. Now, whereabouts in this room? I’d say the sideboard was the obvious place. Strong doors. And a nice lock. That’s the place all right.”

“All right,” said Peggs. “So that’s where I keep my money. Now what? I’m willing to help, but I’m not going to spend three weeks hiding behind a curtain waiting for a little perisher to come and help himself to it.”