4
Lawley was the first person to wake up when the noise of the engine shattered the silence. He heaved out of bed, heavy with sleep, and went along to Wharton.
“Hear that, Chief? Someone’s made off with one of the old lorries.”
Wharton sat up and stretched. “We shall have to chase him. I’ll get my car out, it’s faster than any of the lorries.”
“No go, Chief. If you catch up in a car, he’ll be able to smash you off the road, whoever he is. A car can’t argue with a lorry. I’ll get the new lorry started up, that’s faster than the old ones. One thing, there’s only the one road, it’ll simply be a matter of tailing him until we reach a main road or a telephone.”
“All right, Lawley, I’ll be with you in a brace of shakes. Better get some clothes on, it’s pretty nippy. Who the hell do you think has played us this trick?”
“None of our chaps. More likely something to do with the High Garth story. Well, the only thing to do is to chase him, and ram him when we catch up. I’ll get Weldon to come along with us. O.K., I’ll just get the new Bedford started up.”
Chapter Eleven
MACDONALD DROVE to Leverstone early the next morning, leaving the investigation in Lunesdale to be pursued by Bord and his men from Camton. At the C.I.D. headquarters in Leverstone (a gloomy building in a gloomy industrial city), Macdonald was welcomed by Chief Inspector Tring, an experienced investigator of forty-five, whose eyes were lively and youthful, despite his greying hair.
“I’m right glad to see you, Super,” said Tring. “You’re one of the chaps I’ve long wanted to meet. As it happened, when you’ve been on the job in this country before, your cases had no connection with our city and so we didn’t happen to meet. This time, the reverse is true. The man whose body you found (in a derelict farmhouse, I understand) was a criminal we’ve been trying to trace for months. The pathologists sent his fingerprints along, and though circumstances didn’t permit of first-rate impressions, the dabs and the general description of physical traits leave no room for doubt. Your man was known to us as Wally Millstone, a chap with a lifetime of thieving behind him, who’s been ‘inside’ time after time.”
“Millstone,” echoed Macdonald, and Tring rejoined:
“You wouldn’t remember his name. He never hit the headlines, he was just one of those tiresome fools who never learnt by experience. But maybe you heard of the theft at Raine’s Wharf, a furrier’s warehouse down by the canal, when a night watchman was coshed.”
“Yes. I remember that You caught one of the thieves and he was sent to Dartmoor, because he was given a long sentence.”
“Ten years,” agreed Tring. “He was lucky—the night watchman didn’t die, or he might have hung for it. It was a dastardly business.”
“And the man who was sent to Dartmoor was named Rory Macshane,” went on Macdonald, “and he broke prison last month and got clear away, but where does Millstone come into the story?”
“There were three men associated in that warehouse theft,” said Tring. “We knew there were three, they were seen on the canal bank before they broke in. Three, but we only caught one—Macshane, and he took the rap. We found a set of fingerprints on a door handle, those were Millstone’s —your bloke. I always reckoned he made those fingerprints when he was getting away. The doorknob was stiff and he couldn’t turn it with gloves on, couldn’t get a grip, or that’s how I thought it was. He’d got gloves all right, we found the one he dropped. It looked to me as though he was in a panic and all he could think of was getting away; same with the second chap, whose identity we don’t know. They dropped their loot and got out on to the towing path, because we found their footsteps. As I see it, they realised that our chaps were at the front and sides of the warehouse, so two of them, Millstone and another, beat it by the back and got on to the towing path. They dropped their loot, because they’d coshed the night watchman, one of them, and they didn’t fancy being caught for that job. The only one who stood his ground was Rory Macshane, and we picked him up, just as the others made their getaway. Rory acted as cover to the others in a manner of speaking. I didn’t feel all that happy about it, Super. We had no proof that Rory had done the coshing, but he was there, with the night watchman at his feet, when our chaps got in—and that was that. He wasn’t easy to take either, they said he fought like a wild thing, which didn’t do him any good.”
“What did Macshane say? Didn’t he give you a lead about the other two?”
“He did not. He said he didn’t know them, and that’s all he ever did say. We advised him to turn
