No Escape (12 page)

“Probably. The point is there is no slit going through the stalk of this spool. Why?”

Jane took it from him. Tim was right. This end of the spool could not be used with a new film. So what use
did
it have?

Tim said, sharply, “Without a slit through the middle it could be a container, couldn't it?”

“Yes.” She looked at him, her lingering disgust showing in her face. “We'll have to hand it over with the film to the police, won't we? I felt there was something queer, nasty, about the man she worked for and more still about his partner.”

“Have you met them, then?”

She told him about the party, about her conversation with Gerry and the photographers. She told him about the emotional beatnik and her two odd encounters with him.

Tim let her run on. It was good for her to let off steam, he thought; hard luck on a girl to be let in for this sort of thing, common as it was and probably always had been in some form or other. Only just now it was made more obvious by fashionable publicity and the crazy idea that this sort of minority activity was more ‘real' than the ordinary life of the majority.

When Jane had finished he said, thoughtfully, “' D'you know, I think it'd be only fair to let Dr Milton in on this. After all, we've used his department for private sleuthing, haven't we?”

“But Sheila's dead! The police—”

“I know. I know. Wouldn't it be better all round if Dr Milton had all the gen and was behind you when you have to make a statement.”

“
Me
make a statement!”

“Naturally. How you got hold of the film. Why you didn't give it back to Sheila. Why you didn't burn it at once, undeveloped. They'll think up some more questions than those, I expect.”

“You're right.” Jane had gone very pale. She realised she had been very stupid. If she had given up the film at once to the police they might have prevented Sheila leaving the hospital. A very grim thought came to her.

“If I'd given it back to her she might not have been killed,” she exclaimed.

“You mean deliberately killed?”

Jane nodded. It was horrible, but very likely.

“I think so, too. I didn't want to suggest it to you.”

Jane began to cry. She was still standing near Tim, the spool in her hand. He took it from her and put an arm across her shoulders.

“You mustn't,” he said gruffly. “Look, I'll see Dr Milton first thing tomorrow morning. He's a good chap. He'll know what to do. I expect we'll have to have a positive of the film to identify the characters definitely—”

“I'm sure it's Sheila,” Jane said in a muffled voice.

“O.K. but if it is I can identify her myself. You needn't come into it again, except to say where you got hold of it.”

Jane nodded, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

“Now,” Tim said, rather enjoying his role of chivalrous male consoler, “how about my driving you home?”

“Thank you,” she said, entirely subdued. “I'll just get my things.”

She did so, leaving her white coat in the cubicle. She had to wait in the front hall for Tim while he collected a coat himself. His small car was in the Staff park; they walked there together.

At the flat Mary came into the hall directly they opened the door.

“At last!” she exclaimed, then seeing Tim, stopped.

“Mr Long drove me home,” Jane said, introducing him.

“You look as if you needed that,” Mary said. She turned to Tim. “Can we give you a drink?”

He smiled. It was a nice change to be with two friendly girls—well, one friendly and one distressed, but open to common sense—after the two chilly nurses he had been trying to cultivate.

They all went into the sitting-room. Jane sank into a chair, feeling desperately tired. Mary got out glasses and bottles.

“That man's been here asking for you,” she said, handing Jane her drink. “Twice, actually.”

“What man?” Jane guessed, but before Tim she wanted to pretend surprise.

“Gerry something. He apparently turned up this morning, quite early.”

“How—? Oh, of course, it was Mrs Baker's day.”

“Our twice weekly daily,” Mary explained to Tim, who was listening with interest and watching with amusement Jane's growing confusion.

“Exactly,” Mary went on. “He asked when you'd be in and when I saw her at lunch-time she said she'd told him about five. I was back about five myself and found him on the doorstep. He wanted to come in with me but I said as you hadn't answered the bell to him you must be out. I said I had to do a bit of shopping and might as well do it before I went in.”

“You mean you went away again and left him standing there?”

“Yes. I wasn't going to have foot-in-the-door trouble and he looked capable of it.”

“Good for you,” said Tim, laughing. “He'd gone when you got back, had he?”

“I didn't go far. Only to the shops round the corner. I saw his car go past, so I came home.”

Jane got up with a jerk.

“He'll come back!” she said. “I know he will. To talk about Sheila. I don't want to see him. I don't trust him! I think he's horrible! I—”

She was out of the room and they heard her own room door open and shut.

“Poor kid!” said Tim softly. “I'd better be getting along, I suppose.”

“No,” Mary said. “Don't go. At least— Well, I think that man will come back and Jane is in no state to talk to anyone. We've got rather a dull meal coming up, but if you'd stay and share it—”

“I'll go one better,” Tim said. “You fetch Jane and tell her we're all going out to find a meal. Then bloody Gerry can ring his fingers off but he won't get an answer.”

Mary smiled.

“Take Jane out,” she said. “It's just what she needs. But I've got umpteen things I must sort out at home. I'll put the hall light out and I won't answer the bell.”

She went off and came back with Jane a few minutes later. The latter was looking very much better and had taken some trouble with her hair and face. On the way down to the main door of the flats she kept just behind Tim and when they heard footsteps on the path outside she gasped and moved closer still. Tim held her hand as the door opened, but it was only the tenant of the flat below the girls'. He nodded a greeting and passed them. Jane's hand was still in Tim's when they reached the car.

An hour later they were back in the flat, chatting happily, warmed by food and wine. But Tim stayed only long enough to see that Mary was all right and had not been frightened.

“He came again,” she said, holding out a small card to Jane. “He rang and rang and then there was a pause and then he dropped this in the letter box and went away.”

“How d'you know all that?” Jane said, taking the card.

“I crept into the hall in the dark and listened.”

Tim laughed.

“I don't know what you do,” he said, “but you'd be a god-send to Scotland Yard.”

“She's an economist,” Jane explained, but Mary was looking at her sternly and she went no further.

“What's on the card?” Mary demanded. “Read it out.”

“It says he must see me and I must ring the number on the card. It's a business card of some sort.”

“Will you?”

“I'm damned if I do,” she said violently, tearing the card in two.

“That's the spirit,” said Tim. He stooped, collected the pieces of card and put them in his pocket. “Back to the treadmill,” he said, moving towards the door.

Jane saw him out of the flat. At the door she thanked him, fervently, with a little catch in her voice, but no hysteria.

“Pleasure,” said Tim He meant it. He felt on top of the world. “See you tomorrow. With Dr Milton present, of course.”

She made a face at him and shut the door. Tim ran down to his car, chuckling to himself. Before he drove off he looked at the card Jane had torn up. ‘Gerald Stone, director,' it had on it, with an address in Chelsea. The same address, Tim wondered. Below that studio flat? An office, a cover-business, or the place of work of an innocent man, a friend of Sheila Burgess, deceased?

If Dr Milton was shocked by the film he did not show it, unless his very evident anger was a sign of outrage. He sat for several minutes quite still and silent, very pale, his mouth drawn in, his eyes blazing. Tim stood beside him, waiting for a rush of words that never came. All that did come from Dr Milton was a heavy sigh as he touched the buzzer on his desk and then spoke to his secretary in the next room.

“Get me Scotland Yard,” he said. “Say you want the Vice Squad.”

The secretary's gasp was clearly audible. Tim nodded, to save himself from laughing, but Dr Milton paid no attention to him. When the call came through he simply asked that someone should be sent immediately to his department to receive information relating to the death of a former patient, Miss Sheila Burgess.

“Yes,” he repeated, “Sheila Burgess. No, I don't want the divisional C.I.D. My information almost certainly concerns your outfit. If you don't want to handle it, I shall go straight to M.I.5. I think it's for you, but it might conceivably be for them. It's international, anyway, I should think.”

Tim looked at the radiologist with admiration and Dr Milton smiled.

“They bought that” he said. “I'll call you when they arrive. I expect you have work to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

At the door Tim paused.

“Would you really be able to get in touch with M.I.5, sir? Just like that? Or do you know someone?”

“Of course not. Neither. I haven't a clue. But it worked, which is what matters. And I don't expect they'll be disappointed when they see that spool. I'd like to open it myself but I think that might be a little rash.”

Tim went up to the wards and was soon totally absorbed in his cases. The morning passed without any call for him from the X-ray Department. But going to lunch at one he met Dr Milton in a ground-floor corridor.

“Oh, Long,” he said. “Those chaps came and took the thing away. Only stayed five minutes. Collected Miss Burgess's notes, Miss Wheelan's name and home address, your name—I couldn't give them your address other than the hospital—and pushed off. There was no point in getting you down. They'd better play it their own way.”

“Yes,” said Tim. He felt deflated, but knew he had no right to be. It really was none of his business, except that it did concern Jane Wheelan closely and perhaps, in a small way, she had become his business. Or not? He thought of the very pleasant meal they had had together the evening before. She ought to know what had happened. He determined to find her after lunch and give her the news.

But when, after some trouble, he found her in the records room, looking out some files for Miss Gleaning, he learned that Dr Milton had already spoken to her.

“I suppose we had to give him the film,” she said, unhappily. “For Sheila's sake I'd have liked to drop it in the incinerator straight off.”

“That would have been very dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Well, I gather Scotland Yard latched on to it with enthusiasm and took all our names and addresses.”

She wrinkled up her face.

“They've done more than that. I have to go to Scotland Yard after I leave here today. To make a statement on something. As if I hadn't done that already.”

“It was the local copper who came here after Sheila's body was found. The film is a very different cup of tea.”

It certainly was. The detective-inspector who had gone to the West Kensington to see Dr Milton had on his return to the Yard gone straight to Detective-Superintendent Garrod.

“I think we've got a break at last,” he said, producing the film and the spool. “Blue film, sequence of stills and in the spool blue micro-film of the same—er—incident, with a sound track, numerals, some kind of code, apparently.”

“Where'd it come from?”

The inspector told him. Garrod looked grave.

“Better have the girl along, Bob,” he said. “In the meantime turn this over to the lab boys. They may have ideas. There must be more than meets the eye. You remember that charred bit of spool we got in that dump at Fulham?”

“The Indian student who took a load of dope and set his room on fire? He was charred, too, if I remember.”

“Nasty case—yes. But the spool—you remember?”

“I do. It had a small length of micro-film stuck in the unburned end. I believe that was numerals, too. They never broke the cipher, did they?”

“No. Too little of it. But that Indian lad was connected for a time with the Bream lot. So this fine, unspoiled reel of filth may tie up quite a lot of loose ends. Get cracking, Bob.”

The detective-inspector withdrew and Garrod got on the phone. He was quite excited. For months he had been knocking his head against a wall, flaking off a fragment here and there. Now at last a brick, a whole brick, had fallen into his hand, dropped there by an outside and entirely unforeseen agent. A girl of irreproachable standing and character. A girl—

He frowned as his call came through.

“John Marsden,” the voice at the other end said quietly.

“Garrod here, sir. Can you come along? It's urgent.”

“How urgent?”

“May I tell you when I see you?”

“Well, if it's like that—I've nothing special on my plate, but I'll check.”

Twenty minutes later John Marsden, retired professor of oriental languages, sat opposite Superintendent Garrod, listening to the story of Sheila Burgess.

“So I think if you could manage to be here when the Wheelan girl comes in this evening—”

“I'd like to be. What about the lad who pulled Burgess out of the river?”

“Not together, do you think?”

“No. But this radiologist, Milton, is it? He seems to say that young Long brought the film to him after the girl developed it and it was Long who pointed out the unusual spool.”