“You won’t get Sloan’s address from me.” Keep calm. “If you want to get yourself hanged, send one of your thugs to find out where he lives—they can follow him home. Do the job your own way, and don’t blame me.”
Kennedy looked at the amber liquid in his glass.
“Supposing Sloan were to disappear?” he said. “It would have a different effect, wouldn’t it? Sloan was such a good friend of yours. Sloan disappearing would seem almost a natural consequence. And if it happened together with the disappearance of confidential documents, your other friends there would add two and two. Sloan took the papers. Banister would remain at the Yard, able to serve us again. Do you like the build-up. West?”
Roger knew that “West” wasn’t a slip.
“You might get away with it,” he said.
“That’s condescending of you. I’d have two of the brightest men at the Yard under my wing, and the Home Office would begin to worry. Corruption at Scotland Yard is a bad thing, isn’t it? Afterwards, we might get one or two others to join us. I can imagine this doing a lot of damage at the Yard, but never mind that for now—just concentrate on getting hold of Sloan. There’s one simple way of doing it: speaking to him in your natural voice. He’d come running, wouldn’t he?”
Roger said slowly: “Yes.”
“I want him,” said Kennedy.
“When?” The word was dragged out of Roger.
“To-night. Well—to-morrow at the latest.”
“Where?”
“At your office. That will——”
“He suspects me as Rayner. He’d smell a rat if he had the address. What’s the matter with bringing him here?”
“All right, bring him here,” said Kennedy. “Number 15 Balling Mansions, Wild Street.” He made the decision quickly. “When you’ve got him, Percy will inform me.
No tricks. West. And when it’s done——” he paused, looked round. “Nice flat, isn’t it?”
“It’s all right.”
“Yours. With everything that’s in it. Everything you want, anyhow.” Kennedy laughed: that hateful laugh. “Stay and think it over. I’ll see you later. Don’t put that picture in your pocket by mistake, will you?”
He had propped the photograph up against a book-end; the two boys smiled gaily, and the dark-haired woman looked across at him sombrely.
* * * *
Kennedy was clever; Kennedy knew that this was a crisis, and wasn’t sure which way the cat would jump. So he had increased the pressure. He had also increased Roger’s determination to find out what lay behind it all— to guess at that “big future”. Get one thing straight, thought Roger; Kennedy was in big crime and mostly unsuspected crime. It had something to do with those short-supply goods; with the forgery racket which Kyle had helped to run; with the currency smuggling. One could spend a lifetime at Scotland Yard and scoff at stories of master crooks, but such men existed—and most of them worked without the police knowing. Kennedy—as Hemmingway—had kept himself completely free from suspicion. But in a show like this, you had to have records, you couldn’t keep them all in your mind. So Kennedy had records, and there was an even chance that they were at 27 Mountjoy Square.
Roger could spend a lot of time thinking of that and beg the most urgent issue—how to handle Sloan, or the situation which Kennedy had created with Sloan. One thing stuck out a mile: if Sloan disappeared, then everyone at the Yard would assume that he had been in a racket with Roger, and had gone to join him. Beyond all this there was the vague hint from Kennedy that the Yard could be split from top to bottom with corruption. It had happened before; not recently, but not so long ago that it didn’t make old Yard men sore whenever it was mentioned. If a man could control a large number of officers at the Yard, he would be in a perfect position to handle any crime, any racket that he wanted. The Yard’s tentacles spread far and wide—but he was letting his thoughts run away with him. He had to get down to earth; decide what to do about Bill Sloan.
He heard the door open.
A woman came in.
* * * *
She came in and closed the door softly, smiling at him as she approached. Hex movements were easy and smooth. She was tall, and no one would ever complain about her figure. She wore an afternoon dress, obviously a model, of dark green and pale yellow. Her hair was auburn, and she had fine, grey-green eyes. Her voice, unlike Mrs. Delaney’s, was husky and pleasing.
“May I have a drink?”
He took a grip on himself. “What will it be?”
“Gin and vermouth, please.”
He mixed the drinks. Her fingers were long and slender, pale, with pink nails; she wore a single diamond ring on her right hand, but no other jewellery.
“You look thoughtful, Charles,” she said.
“There’s plenty to think about.”
“Too much. Here’s success!” She sipped. “And everything you want. It is a pleasant flat.”
“So you’ve heard about that.”
“He told me. It’s my flat. I go with it.”
