Roller Coaster Read online

  He was a solitary boy and a known thief. He had unusual ability in two fields. The first was a photographic memory, which enabled him to remember useful things, like lock-combination numbers, and also to remember and repeat, verbatim, things which people said about other people. This was not always a popular performance. His other talent was an extraordinary ability to insert himself into rooms which were, apparently, securely fastened.

  No part of his neighbours’ possessions was safe from his agile fingers. He was only saved from massacre by the fact that his older brother was a formidable bruiser. He organised the sale of Arnold’s plunder and kept most of the proceeds for himself.

  At long last, when dusk had deepened into night, Arnold slipped out through a gap where the bars on the basement air tunnel were slightly bent apart; an opening which no one who was not as thin and as agile as he was would have dared to attempt.

  Packstone Passage seemed to be clear, but he was taking no chances. He slipped along, under the shadow of the wall, a shadow among shadows. As he went he was making up his mind. It had been a tremendous event, but he dared not tell anyone about it. No one, that was, except his best friend, Winston, a West Indian boy. And him only under the most rigid vows of silence. The thought of what those men would do to him if he talked about them and they heard about it, sent cold shivers down from his stomach and into his thin legs.

  Chapter Two

  “Glad to have you back, Skipper,” said Chief Inspector Gwilliam.

  “Glad to be back,” said Petrella. He was deeply tanned and thin and stringy as a bunch of seaweed.

  “Do I hear you went out looking for trouble again?”

  An edited version of Petrella’s doings during the last five months had evidently reached East London. In the early spring of that year he had completed an assignment for Deputy Commissioner Lovell which had left him with a cracked skull, a collar-bone broken in two places and a badly damaged left hand. Lovell, visiting him in hospital, had cheered him by telling him of his pending promotion to superintendent and then dampened his spirits by repeating the verdict of the doctors. ‘Three months off duty, relax and try not to do anything stupid.’

  Petrella had taken himself, his wife Jane and their two children to Morocco where his father, Colonel of Police Gregorio Petrella, now retired, was running his own fruit farm on the Oum er Rbia river, inland from El Jadida. Here he had lain about in the sun for ten weeks, lending a hand with the bookkeeping side of what was clearly becoming a highly profitable business. Then, feeling fully recovered and disregarding Lovell’s injunction, he had taken a Land-Rover, with some spare cans of petrol and water, and had driven through Marrakesh, over the High Atlas and the Lesser Atlas and out into the desert. He was making for Chenachèn, of which he had heard an enthusiastic account from an archaeologist friend of his father’s.

  He had got there all right, had lost his way coming back and had finished the last of his water and petrol in the middle of the Hamada Tounassine, where he would have finished his life as well if he had not been sensible enough to tell his father where he was going.

  The colonel had sent a flight of army helicopters to look for him. One of them had picked him up, three-quarters dead of hunger, thirst and general dehydration. This had added two months to his enforced leave and it was early in August before he surfaced at Maplin Road.

  No question he was glad to be back and to start exploring the marches of his new kingdom. As a superintendent he was now the lord of No. 2 Area East, the old H Division bounded on the south by the Thames, on the east by the river Lea, on the north by a line running along the south edge of Victoria Park – but exclusive, he was glad to note, of that notorious trouble spot – and on the west by the underground line from Shoreditch Station southwards; an area full of tough people and criminal possibilities.

  Since Maplin Road was both the head station of HA and his own headquarters he was forced, like an admiral, to reside in a battleship under command of a captain and might have been uncomfortable if he had not known Gwilliam since Highside days when Taffy had been a sergeant and he had been the newest thing in detective constables; young, inexperienced and happy. The reversal of their positions had caused neither of them any embarrassment.

  It was very hot. The start of an August which was to break records.

  “Sergeant Blencowe,” said Petrella, “used to maintain that crime was seasonal. In summer, arson, wife-beating and indecent exposure. At Christmas, shop-lifting and cruelty to children.”

  “We’ve certainly had two fires that didn’t look like accidents. Big insurance on both. You’d better have a look at the reports.”

  Petrella eyed his in-tray without enthusiasm. There was a mound of letters and dockets in it. Some of them looked like official bumph from Area and from Scotland Yard. The weight of administrative responsibility on top of routine was already beginning to make itself felt.

  “And shop-lifting’s not just at Christmas,” said Gwilliam, “it’s an all-the-year-round growth industry now. And there’s another thing.” He indicated a file in a dark blue cover with a red star in the corner. Petrella had already noted the title: ‘Drug-Related Offences’.

  “It’s the kids mostly. They get high on glue and do the daftest things. Kill themselves sometimes. And other people too. Boy on a motor-bike the other day – it was much too powerful for him anyway – ran straight into a bus queue and sat on the pavement with a stupid grin on his face, like as if he’d done something clever. What he had done was kill a nice old lady, break a man’s arm and a small girl’s leg. I’d better leave you to do some reading. A quiet morning and you could get through most of it.”

  When he had gone Petrella looked again at his in-tray. A morning might enable him to read it, but whether he could do anything useful about it was another question.

  His hand was on the dark blue docket when the intercom sounded. It was the efficient Inspector Ambrose. As a sergeant he had practically run Petrella’s previous station. Now promoted to inspector he ran the present one even more efficiently. If you wanted to see the man in charge you had to see Ambrose first and often you got no further.

  He said, “It’s Sergeant Kortwright, sir. From the Docks Road Station. He’s been landed with the job of West Indian community officer—” He didn’t say, ‘Poor chap’, but it was clear from his tone of voice that that was what he meant.

  “Can you deal with it?”

  “I’ve been trying for ten minutes to do just that. But he says the complaints he wants to discuss with you are an inter-divisional problem and he’ll have to see you.”

  “All right. Send him up,” said Petrella.

  Sergeant Kortwright had a pale face which contrasted with his jet black hair. He was not a cheerful man. His gloom stemmed equally from resentment at not achieving promotion and apprehension over the additional responsibilities if he did achieve it. Petrella offered him a chair, on which he perched, and a cigarette which he refused.

  “Well, now,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

  “It’s not easy,” said Kortwright. “Not at all easy. I’m sure you’ll appreciate that, sir. One policeman being put into a position where he has to complain about another.”

  “I understand that. But I assure you that nothing you say here will go outside this room.”

  “It’s not what you might say, sir. It’s what you might feel bound to do. Then people will guess—”

  “If I’m forced to act,” said Petrella, “you may be sure I shall do it on my own initiative. It won’t appear as the result of anything anyone else has told me. OK?”

  Kortwright looked a little relieved, but not much, squared his shoulders and started to talk. It was a story which was not uncommon at that time, but it had lurid highlights of its own.

  The heart of the problem was a group of West Indians who lodged in four blocks of flats in Limehouse Fields.

  “If they were only on the other side of Commercial Road,” said Kortwright, “they’d be in D. Muc
h better if they were.”

  “Oh, why’s that?” said Petrella. He had spent some time memorising the sub-divisional boundaries. “Why should it be better if they came under Trench, at D, rather than”—the name had escaped him for a moment—“rather than the head of C?”

  “It isn’t Chief Inspector Ramsbottom I’m worried about, sir—”

  Ramsbottom. Of course. He had already heard rumours about him. Some favourable, some not. Kortwright was evidently one of his admirers.

  “I’m not worried about him. Not in the least. A very nice man, easy to work with. It’s that sergeant of his. Sergeant Stark.”

  “Dod Stark?” Recollections of something he had heard came back to him. “Didn’t he come to us from the army?”

  “From the SAS. That lot. A core of the ayleet, they call themselves.”

  “I’ve heard them called less polite things than that,” said Petrella. “Tell me. Do you happen to know why he left them?”

  “He was a bit quick on the draw on one of their jobs. In Northern Ireland, that was. Shot an IRA man. At least he thought he was, only it turned out that he wasn’t. He was behaving suspiciously, but he wasn’t armed.”

  “Yes, I remember now. I read about it.”

  A court of enquiry had exonerated Stark, but it had clearly been thought prudent to get him out of Ireland and to organise a change of jobs for him.

  “It’s unusual, you see,” said Kortwright. “Because mostly it’s the youngsters, just out of Hendon, who act antagonistic. And even with them it’s mostly verbal. They call them coons and sambos and such. There’s not much physical action. With Stark, it’s different. Nine-tenths of the time he’s dead normal. Rather quiet, really. But one piece of backchat and he hits out.”

  “Hits? What with?”

  “His fist, mostly. He knocked more than one man out cold. Now he doesn’t have much occasion for that sort of thing. When they see him coming, they get out of his way. Any trouble he has now is with the kids. They hang around the streets and rubbish him. He can’t chase after them. Lowering to his dignity.”

  “I don’t suppose he’d catch them if he did.”

  “That’s right. Little monkeys. Plenty of bolt-holes.”

  “Don’t they go to school?”

  “When the schools can catch ’em. After school hours they sometimes go to one of the clubs.”

  “Clubs?”

  “Church clubs, mission clubs. There’s a big one in Commercial Road. The Athletic, they call it. Father Freeling from St Barnabas Church, Cable Street, runs it.”

  Father Freeling. Note him as someone to look up.

  “Right,” he said. “That’s the general picture. Now, which particular lot are people complaining about?”

  “It’s not people complaining about other people. It’s complaints about the police. That’s nothing new. Just normal grousing. But lately it seems to be, well, a sort of campaign.”

  “So who are the campaigners?”

  “It was the newspapers started it. A man from the Sentinel. Name of Carver. He started to hang round asking questions. Stark threw a scare into him and the paper called him off and put in another man, name of Poston-Pirrie.”

  “Come again.”

  “It’s hyphened, Poston-Pirrie. I believe he’s quite well-known. Signs his own articles. There’ve been a couple in the Sentinel lately, sort of aimed at this part of the world.”

  “Naming names?”

  “Not yet. But not far off it. ‘A certain detective sergeant well-known for his brutality.’ That sort of thing and it wasn’t just articles. When Stark chased their man Carver off they really got busy. First they talked to the community council. Then to our local MP. He must have said something to the Home Secretary, who got onto Central and through them it came down – gathering speed as you might say – to Area. And then a lot of the shit landed on me.”

  If it hadn’t been so serious Petrella might have been tempted to laugh at this Heath Robinson conception of a long pipe with numerous bends and junctions, starting in a lavatory somewhere and finally emptying its contents on the unhappy Kortwright. Instead of laughing, he said, “All right, Sergeant. I’ll look into it. And in future see that all complaints come to me.”

  Kortwright departed, looking not much happier than he had when he came in, and Petrella’s hand had hardly closed on the top document in his in-tray when the telephone rang again. This time it was Gwilliam.

  “Sorry to disturb your reading,” he said. “But I’ve got Detective Hoyland here. He’s brought in an odd story and I think you ought to hear it.”

  “And so I will,” said Petrella. “But come up yourself first and tell me about Hoyland. Is he the long streak, badly in need of a hair-cut, that I spotted in the detectives’ room? Looks about fifteen years old.”

  “That’s him.”

  “He can come up here in five minutes. That should give you time to tell me about him.”

  Gwilliam was not surprised at the suggestion. Petrella had always seemed to be more interested in people than in things.

  When Gwilliam arrived he said, “I’ve got his CV here. Gives you all the details.” Petrella waved the document away. He said, “Come on, Taffy. One of your well-known character sketches.”

  “Well,” said Gwilliam, “if you want it in shorthand I’d put it this way—” Then he stopped, clearly embarrassed.

  “Go on,” said Petrella.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” said Gwilliam. “I realise what I was going to say would have been out of place.”

  “Never change your mind. First impressions are always best.” He had an idea of what was coming.

  “Right, then. What I was going to say was he’s a lot like you were when you first turned up at Highside. Only not so crafty.”

  Petrella laughed. “He hadn’t the good fortune to have my early upbringing. I was a street boy in three different countries before I was a schoolboy.”

  “Well, Hoyland’s just a big schoolboy. Lots of brains. You’re a bit surprised he isn’t wearing a big pair of glasses on the end of his nose. Not that there’s anything wrong with his eyesight. Nor his guts. He proved that more than once on the beat. But, just like you, his mind somehow seems to be somewhere different from where his body is. If you follow me.”

  “I follow you exactly. An excellent thumb-nail sketch. And here he is. Stick around, Taffy.”

  Gwilliam parked himself in the corner. He seemed to be subduing a grin. There were two chairs in front of the desk. Petrella waved the newcomer to sit down. Hoyland picked his way across the room with the care of a soldier entering a minefield; knocked over one of the chairs, picked it up with an apologetic smile and parked himself on the other one.

  “All right,” said Petrella, “let’s have it.”

  “We were driving along Roman Road, sir. In one of our Pandas. We saw two men fighting on the pavement. The bigger one had got the smaller one down and seemed to be trying to bang his head on the pavement. I got out and pulled him off. I said, ‘Stop that. You’ll damage him.’ The bigger man said, ‘That’s what he wants. Damaging. In fact he ought to be pulled in and charged and if the police were doing their duty he would be.’ There were a few swear words mixed in, but that was the gist of it.”

  Educated voice. Straightforward statement. Petrella was glad to note that he had been driving along Roman Road. Not proceeding along it. He said, “All right. Leave out the four-letter words. Did you gather what it was all about?”

  “The small man was a newsagent, a Mr Chipping. We were just outside his shop. The big man’s name was Jackson. I’ve got his address and particulars if they’re needed. He’d gone round, he said, to teach Chipping a lesson. It seems Jackson’s son had been in the shop the day before to get a copy of his usual comic. When he got it home and started to read it, he found, stuck in the middle of it, a page of what his father called ‘filthy muck’. It seems to have been photographs of naked girls and young boys.”

  “Doing what?” said Pe
trella.

  Hoyland hesitated and suddenly looked even younger. He said, “They were performing.”

  “No call for paraphrase,” said Petrella. “Let’s see the exhibit.”

  “Exhibit, sir?”

  “The page of dirty pictures.”

  This produced an uncomfortable silence. Then Hoyland said, “It didn’t occur to me that you’d want to see that.”

  “Listen, son. If you want to be a success in the detective branch you’d better remember two things. The first is, never leave a job half done. The second is, don’t leave important exhibits behind when you come in to report.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then go and get it. And bring it back here. As quick as you can.”

  When Hoyland had departed, looking as though he was glad to get out of the room, Petrella said to Gwilliam, “Well, what do you think?”

  “It was stupid of him not to latch onto that page of pictures, but I think he was embarrassed by the whole business and lost his head. He’ll improve.”

  “You mean we all have to live and learn.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like I did.”

  “That’s right,” said Gwilliam again, without the glimmer of a smile.

  After he had gone Petrella looked, with no enthusiasm, at his piled in-tray. The act of putting his hand out towards it seemed to be an unfailing cue for the telephone to ring.

  This time it was Ambrose. He said, “Sorry to interrupt you, but I’ve got a Mr Pirrie here. He wants to have a word with you. It’s important, he says.”

  “Pirrie? Oh, you mean Poston-Pirrie. That newspaper man.”

  “That’s right, sir. A reporter on the Sentinel. He’s the one who got Hood into trouble. I expect you remember that.”