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  Roller Coaster

  First published in 1993

  © Estate of Michael Gilbert; House of Stratus 1993-2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755105389 9780755105380 Print

  0755132416 9780755132416 Kindle

  0755132416 9780755132416 Epub

  0755146816 9780755146819 Epdf

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

  After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

  HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime andmystery books ever published. “The plot,” wrote Keating, “is inevery way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatlydovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and asfull of cunningly-suggested red herrings.” It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series wasbuilt around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted)who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Othermemorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless andprepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for theiryounger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically uponreceiving a bank statement containing a code.

  Muchof Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home tohis office in London: “I always take a latish train to work,” heexplained in 1980, “and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble inwriting because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.”. After retirementfrom the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘TheDaily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

  Gilbertwas appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen ofthe British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the BritishCrime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by theMystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievementaward at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

  MichaelGilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and theirtwo sons and five daughters.

  Chapter One

  “I declare the court to be in session,” said the judge. He settled himself comfortably in his chair and lit a cigar. “Bring in the prisoner.”

  “Right away, Farmer.”

  “Really, Goat. You’re forgetting your manners. When addressing me in this tribunal you call me Your Honour.”

  “Beg pardon, I’m sure,” said Goat. He showed his yellow teeth in an apologetic smirk. His wizened face and tuft of beard made it clear how he had acquired his name. “Lend us a hand, Buller.”

  Buller the Bull heaved up from his chair the bulk which had been admired in many an all-in wrestling ring and padded behind Goat to the door which led into an ante-room.

  The court was the ground floor of the Packstone Building, a defunct chandlery enterprise in Cubitt Town. When its owners departed it had been tightly locked and bolted; but not too tightly for the Farm Boys who had found a way in through a goods hatch in Packstone Passage. This had given them access to the big central room on the ground floor. Such light as reached it was filtered through the dirt-encrusted windows, set high enough in the walls to be out of reach of the boys, who would otherwise have enjoyed poking sticks through the bars to break the glass.

  Considered as a courtroom, it had a certain dignity. It rose to the full height of the building and was topped by an overhead lantern. Galleries on the north and east sides served the doors of a number of upstairs rooms.

  Up from the cellar came Buller the Bull and Dog Henty. They represented the muscle of the quintet. They were carrying the prisoner, who certainly could not have made the ascent under his own power. His top half had been forced into a canvas strait-jacket of the type used in lunatic asylums. His ankles had been strapped and his legs roped together. His mouth had been covered with a broad strip of sticking plaster, wound twice round his head, leaving his eyes and ears clear. It was fouled at the back by the blood, now dark brown, which had run from a slash in his scalp.

  Only the eyes of this bundle were alive.

  “Put him where we can see him,” said the judge genially. “Learned counsel for the prosecution, pray open your case.”

  Since no one accepted the invitation the judge said, “That means you, Dog. Wake up.”

  “Oh, is that me? OK. Pleased, I’m sure.” The opening of his mouth exposed the over-developed canine teeth which had earned him his name. “Shouldn’t I have a wig, Farmer?”

  “We’ve only got one. You’ll have to share it with counsel for the defence. Hand it over, Piggy.”

  The wig, which was white and fluffy, had formed part of a Father Christmas outfit. Dog adjusted it over his oiled black hair and said, “Well, Your Honour, this lump of shit which we see in front of us—”

  “Hold it. It would be more in accordance with the dignity of the proceedings if counsel were to use the word excrement.”

  “If that’s what you want, Your Honour, I’m willing to oblige. Well, this lump of ex-cement had wormed his way into our confederation by claiming to be one of the boys and wanting a share of the action.”

  “Well put,” said Piggy. He was fat and white and had a thick projecting nose not unlike the snout of a boar. “I think that was well expressed, don’t you, Your Honour?”

  “In view of the fact,” said the judge coldly, “that you are charged with the prisoner’s defence, it might be as well if you cut out your compliments to counsel on the other side.”

  “So I am,” said Piggy. “In the heat of the moment I’d quite forgotten.” He was the only one of the five who was showing any open excitement. “I withdraw the last statement. What I intended to say was that I object to the foul insinuations of my learned friend.” His voice demonstrated that he was an educated man.

  “Objection overruled,” said
the judge. “Carry on, counsel.”

  “Well, what I’ve got to say is that this lump of ex-cement, called Ernie Flower, didn’t turn out to be no sweet-smelling flower, but a lump of dirty grass. He took part in our operations and was beginning to be a trusted member of our community when, by chance—”

  Anyone looking down might have seen the eyes of the man on the floor flicker, with the first sign of animation he had shown.

  “—quite by chance we discovered that he was in communication with the Old Bill and was receiving regular payments from them. He had become, in other words, a tool of that arch lump of ex-cement called Morrissey.”

  The mention of the redoubtable gang-buster and thief-taker caused a momentary drop in the temperature.

  The judge said, “Morrissey may have planted him, but he won’t be getting no more fruit off this particular tree, however hard he shakes it.”

  This earned a murmur of approval from the court.

  “If that concludes the case for the prosecution,” said the judge, “I will now call on counsel for the defence.”

  “Well, really and truly, there isn’t much I can say, in the circumstances.”

  “What about the prisoner’s background?”

  “Oh, his background. Yes, of course. The court must give consideration to the prisoner’s background. We understand that he came originally from Newcastle, a part of the country where children are notoriously subject to abuse. He is also the product of a broken home, deprived of the benefit of a two-parent family and therefore only too easily led into bad ways.”

  This produced a round of applause from the members of the court, suppressed by the judge, who added, “Has the prisoner anything to say in his defence?”

  Not surprisingly the prisoner had nothing to say.

  “Then it only remains for me to pass sentence. Prisoner at the bar—”

  “Hold it,” said Dog. “When you pass sentence, shouldn’t the prisoner be standing up? They always made me stand up when they did it.”

  “Must do the thing properly,” agreed the judge. “Stand him up.”

  Bull and Goat heaved the bundle onto its feet and held it swaying there.

  “Prisoner at the bar,” the judge resumed, “after a full and fair hearing you have been found guilty of the foul crime of treason. Treason to your fellows. For such an offence there is only one possible sentence.” He took a black silk handkerchief out of his pocket and spread it over his bald and sunburnt head. “The sentence is death. It only remains to decide how you shall depart this life. I am open to suggestions from the court.”

  “Really, we ought to hang him,” said Dog. “We’ve got plenty of rope.”

  “Hanging’s for murder,” said Buller. “This is treason. The proper thing for treason is he should be hung, drawn and quartered. I could fetch a cleaver and a saw from the shop”—Bull was a part-time butcher—“and we’d have his guts out and chop him into four bits in no time at all.”

  “Too messy,” said the judge.

  “Nothing we couldn’t clear up.”

  “I think,” said Piggy, “that both those ways are what you might call crude. I think it should be something that takes longer. Give him time to think over his evil ways.”

  Goat said, “There was a piece I read in the papers about the French soldiers in Algiers—”

  “I didn’t know you could read, Goat.”

  “Silence,” said the judge. “This is a serious discussion. Proceed, Goat.”

  “Well, when they caught one of the rebels, they used to hang him up by his heels and leave him there.”

  “And how long did that take to kill him?”

  “Sometimes twenty-four hours, or more.”

  “We can’t have him hanging round here for days,” said the judge.

  “It’s got to be quicker than that.”

  “Then might I make a suggestion,” said Piggy. “I can get a compressed air cylinder from our garage. If we attached it to the prisoner’s exhaust pipe we could blow him up so tight he’d float up to the ceiling. Of course, it’d kill him too, but not as quickly as cutting his head off or hanging him.”

  During this discussion no one had been looking at the prisoner. He called attention to himself by giving an energetic wriggle and a heave, which turned him over onto his face where he lay, jack-knifing like a fresh-landed salmon. A further frenzied movement brought him over again onto his back and they saw that his face, as much of it as was visible behind the plaster gag, was dark red and purpling and that his eyes were almost starting from his head.

  They watched him curiously as his struggles grew even more frantic and he rolled, with a final convulsive effort, onto one side. Then he lay still.

  “Seems to be trying to escape,” said Dog.

  “I’m not sure,” said Piggy. He bent down to look, then stood up slowly. “Do you know, I think he’s done the job for us.”

  He took out a lighter, clicked it on and held the flame against the prisoner’s wide-open eye. There was no reaction. He took hold of one end of the adhesive tape and jerked it clear.

  “What I thought,” he said, standing back to avoid the mess that came with the tape. “He was trying to be sick and he couldn’t and it choked him. That stopped his heart. Drunks often go that way.”

  “Well,” said Dog with a sigh, “that’s it, isn’t it? What do we do now, Farmer?”

  The judge inhaled generously on his cigar and then loosed the smoke in a series of neat circles. He was collecting his thoughts.

  “We get rid of him,” he said.

  There was no dispute about that.

  “How?” said Goat.

  “In the river, of course, stupid,” said Bull.

  That was the natural destination; the river Thames, depository of so many embarrassing secrets. It ran not twenty yards from where they were sitting.

  “Got to be careful, though,” said Farmer. “I’ve known too many things what was put in come out again. You brought that stuff I told you, Goat?”

  Goat went out into the lobby and came back, first with a roll of sacking and some cord, then with a battered suitcase which, from the way he handled it, was clearly heavy. When it was tipped up a number of iron objects and large flint stones tumbled out onto the floor.

  “Right,” said Farmer. He spoke as a man who knew what had to be done and had made his preparations for doing it. “First we strip him naked. Put his clothes and shoes in that suitcase. They’ll go into my furnace tonight. Right? Now we roll him up in this sacking.”

  It had been carefully cut. It was long enough to swathe the body, with an open pocket at each end.

  “That’s where the heavy stuff goes, Goat. Fasten them with that cord. Twice round and knot it good. Don’t want the weights slipping out. Now, Piggy, did you bring those pliers with you?”

  “Bloody hell, I went and forgot all about them.”

  “Being certain you would forget, I brought a pair of my own. There you are, Piggy. Out with his gnashers, every one of them.”

  Whilst this grisly extraction was going on Dog was looking at the sack-enshrouded body of Ernie Flower.

  “Something worrying you?” said Farmer.

  “What I was thinking was, even without his teeth, if he did happen to surface – I’m not saying he will, but bodies do, however careful you are—”

  “It’s possible,” agreed Farmer. “When he gets really blown up. So what?”

  “Well, mightn’t he be identified by his face or his prints? To be quite safe, shouldn’t we get Buller to take off his head and his hands?”

  “Thus making an unnecessary mess,” said Farmer. “Which has been the ruin of many a promising career. What really excites the Old Bill? I’ll tell you. Blood. That’s what gets them and their scientific pals worked into a lather. A drop of blood. That’s all they need. Even a stain on the floor. Difficult to get out, however hard you scrub.”

  Piggy looked up from his dentistry for a moment and said, “Scotsman called Macbeth had th
e same idea.”

  “Get on with it and less backchat,” said Farmer. “I understand what you’re getting at, Dog. But there’s a better way. That’s why we’ve left those holes in the sack. Little doorways, you might say, to allow the fish to get in. Particularly the eels. Wonderful eaters, the Thames eels. In three or four days, or maybe even less, there won’t be anything on his face or his fingers to identify him.

  “I’ll bear that in mind,” said Bull thoughtfully, “next time I’m offered a dish of stoodles. When he’s all packed up, what do we do with him?”

  “We put him in my van. Two of you go out first to see there’s no one in the passage. Then stand at either end, to give the all-clear. Can you manage him, Bull?”

  “With one hand,” said Bull.

  “You clear up in here, Goat.”

  Goat sniffed. It seemed to him that he did most of the dirty work.

  “What are you planning to do with these?” said Piggy. The teeth he had extracted had gone into a plastic shopping bag.

  “You’re going to get rid of them. They can go down the storm drains in the street. Take them out tonight. One tooth down each drain.”

  Piggy grinned. It seemed an odd thing to do, but dropping tooth after tooth down different drain holes was somehow a satisfactory way of rounding out the day’s work.

  “And what about him?” said Bull, indicating the bundle which he had slung over one shoulder.

  “I’ll get rid of him tonight. Best place will be the jetty at the south end of Barking Creek. You can come with me. There’s a track down past the sewage works. Won’t be anyone around. Not at night. OK?”

  “OK,” said Bull. Like the others he had great confidence in Farmer.

  When the last of the men had gone silence descended on the place. At first a complete silence. Then a silence broken by a scuffling noise, as though of some small creature in the woodwork.

  The maker of this noise was a boy called Arnold. He was in the north gallery which overlooked the central room and was squeezing himself into as inconspicuous a bundle as possible. He was appalled by what he had seen and heard and had moved neither hand nor foot as it went on. He had scarcely even dared to breathe. His overriding idea now was to get out; but he realised that, for absolute safety, it would be better to wait until dark and by an effort of will, remarkable in such a young boy, he stayed where he was, only moving backwards into a more natural position to ease his aching limbs.