Fear to Tread Read online

  In the distance a woman began to scream.

  It was this screaming that Mr. Wetherall noticed first. Then the warm salty taste of blood in his mouth and behind his nose. Then sickness. Then the hurt in his hand. Then the hurt in his side and back.

  The woman had stopped screaming and was bending over him.

  He had lost his glasses. He must find his glasses. He was helpless without them.

  “Here they are,” said the woman. “What a smell. You bin drinking?”

  One of the lenses was cracked across, but the glass was all there. It was whilst he was putting them on that he first became aware of the state of his face. His right ear was numb, but felt enormous.

  “I saw them,” said the woman. “The brutes.” Mr. Wetherall blinked up at her. She had a fat, good-natured, sketchily painted face.

  “You ought to get home, you know,” she went on. “You let a copper take one sniff at you and he’ll run you in just as quick as he’ll swear your character away next morning.”

  Mr. Wetherall had not associated the smell of spirits with himself. He had imagined it came from the woman. Now he noticed his sodden reeking shirt front.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “Oh, dear. What shall I do?”

  “You ought to get a taxi and go off home.”

  “Yes. That’s right.” Home seemed infinitely desirable. “Would you be so kind—I wonder if you could find me one?”

  “Oh, I’ll find you one all right,” said the woman. “Have you got any money to pay for it, that’s the thing.”

  It was then that he discovered that his wallet was gone. The loss suddenly unnerved him completely. He started to shiver.

  “Money gone too,” said the woman. “Well, that’s a fix and no mistake.”

  He forced his undamaged hand into his trouser pocket.

  There were a few coppers and some silver. He could hardly hold them for the shaking. “That won’t get you far. Have you got a friend who could lend you some?”

  Mr. Wetherall took hold of himself with an effort.

  “Yes,” he said. “If you can find me a taxi I shall be all right. Just as far as Fleet Street. Then I can borrow some more money.”

  “All right,” said the woman. “I won’t be a minute. There’s always a cab behind the Casino.” She looked at him doubtfully. Mr. Wetherall had begun to shiver again.

  “Hold on to yourself,” she said. “I won’t be a jiffy.”

  6

  NIGHT OVER FLEET STREET

  Alastair todd was playing cards with two friends. He was in his office on the first floor of the chocolate-box building towards the south-east corner of Fleet Street that houses that great and justly celebrated daily newspaper, the Kite.

  He was a round, cheerful person with a fringe of brown curly hair lying like a halo of camel’s wool above a chubby face. He looked a little younger than he really was. How he had attained to the responsible office of a sub-editor on the Kite was a bit of a mystery to his friends.

  He had come to journalism by curious by-paths; as do most members of that exciting, disorganised profession. At the age of twenty he had been ranked as the second best squash player in England and (in the opinion of many) the greatest racquets player in the world. He had a small allowance, dispensed to him by a guardian, and no desire to do anything other than play those two particular games. It was the tiresome recurrence of summer which had defeated his programme. Finding that his keenest opponents fell off as the temperature rose into the eighties, he had started to fill in the lengthening intervals between matches by writing about them; and he had very soon been signed up by the Morning Toast, which specialised, as you will remember, in accurate and informed accounts of all gentlemanly sports.

  On the decease of that paper he had joined the Kite, and its editor (a man from Newcastle who believed in no game but football) had suggested that he turn his attention to crime. He could, if he wished, said the editor, continue to write a short, seasonable column about squash and racquets, but crime, as he pointed out, had the advantage of being an all-weather activity. So Todd turned placidly to crime and employing some of the finesse which had kept his opponents guessing on the court, had turned out to be a moderately successful reporter.

  After the war, which he spent in the Air Force, he had been welcomed back to the paper by the new editor (a Yorkshireman who believed in no game but cricket) and had been put as assistant to the man in charge of the feature page. On the retirement of this hero shortly afterwards, with peptic ulcers and delusions, he had stepped quietly into his place.

  His companions that night were the chief crime reporter on the Kite, a man called Jones, whose nickname was “Mattress” – a name which no one could understand until they met him, when they realised that it was the only name possible – and a crime reporter from the Kite’s companion paper, the Balloon, a very serious young Irishman called Hoggarty.

  Todd was waiting up, principally for a notice, from the dramatic critic, on the current first night. He expected this to be in his hands well before midnight since Duncan, like most of the critics employed by the Kite, wrote his reviews in outline before he got to the theatre and filled in his conclusions during the first interval.

  There was a knock.

  “This’ll be it,” said Todd. “We shall have to call it a day. That’s two and six you owe me, Mattress. Give me two bob and sixpence to Hog and we’re square.”

  It was a messenger.

  “Two men for you, Mr. Todd.”

  “Two men?”

  “One’s a cabby, and the other – well, he’s in a bit of a mess.”

  “Sounds just right for the feature page,” said Jones.

  “It’ll be Duncan,” said Hoggarty. “I expect the leading lady’s got hold of him. You ought to have seen what he wrote about her last piece—”

  “Bring ‘em up,” said Todd. “You two had better fade.”

  A few minutes later he was staring, in speechless astonishment, at Mr. Wetherall.

  “I’m very sorry to bother you,” croaked Mr. Wetherall, “but could you oblige me with the loan of ten shillings? I haven’t enough on me to pay my fare?”

  “Your fare,” echoed Todd faintly. “Were you thinking of going somewhere?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “Yes. Of course. But look here, old boy, are you sure you want to go home in that state—your wife—do sit down.”

  This was just in time. Mr. Wetherall’s legs had hinged under him.

  “What’s the bill so far?”

  “Three and ninepence,” said the taximan, “and demmage to me upholstery.”

  “I expect it’ll wash off,” said Todd. “It’s only blood.”

  “Suppose it will,” said the taxi driver. He was plainly divided between a desire to make some money out of the situation and fear of offending such a power for good and evil as a sub-editor of the Kite.

  “Here’s five bob,” said Todd. “That should cover it. Put your name and licence number down on that bit of paper, and if there’s a story in it, I’ll see you get a mention.”

  The taximan retired, and Todd got on to the house-telephone and asked for Mrs. Weaver.

  “Could you bring some hot water and lint and sticking plaster and that sort of thing,” he said. “No – not exactly a street accident, but something pretty like it. Yes, shock too, I should think.”

  The Kite was apparently used to tackling emergency first aid. Mrs. Weaver, a brisk woman, who had patched and bandaged her way through the blitz, dressed Mr. Wetherall’s multiple injuries. It was his right hand that caused her most concern.

  “There’s bones broken,” she said. “He’ll have to see a doctor over that.”

  “All right. But he’s not dying?”

  She sniffed disapprovingly.

  “He ought to be in bed.”

  “It’s no good sniffing,” said Mr. Wetherall, with an irritability which showed that he was recovering. “I didn’t drink that whisky. It was upset over me.” />
  “If you say so,” said Mrs. Weaver, gathering her first aid kit together.

  “Come in,” said Todd. “Oh, here’s the tea. Thank you, Brice. Just the thing for shock. Hot, weak, and sweet. I’m not sure I won’t have a cup myself. Here you are.”

  Mr. Wetherall accepted it gratefully.

  “Now,” said Todd. He moved across and casually turned the key in the lock. “Now. Don’t you think you had better tell me something about it?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I really think I’d better do that.”

  It was such a difficult story to tell. It had an end but no beginning. Or rather, when looked at closely, it had too many beginnings. Important things like Crowdy, the Donovan family, Jock’s Pull-In for Carmen. Unimportant things too, like Luigi and the missing food parcel. It was interrupted, once by the arrival of the expected first-night report and twice by queries from the compositors’ room, but in the end it was done.

  When he had heard it through, Todd went over to the cupboard and got out a special bottle of liqueur whisky, and out of it he poured, in silence, two careful tots, and handed one of them to Mr. Wetherall.

  “Charge your glass,” he said, “the toast is the small boy who thought it such fun fiddling with the detonator of the ten- thousand-pound bomb.”

  “It’s as bad as that, is it?”

  “Have you got the faintest idea what you’re doing? No. I thought not. Well, how can I begin to explain. You’re touching the edges – you’re playing round the fringes – of almost the only really organised piece of nonsense in England. It’s so big that it seems to be invisible to the naked eye. It hasn’t even got a real name. In this street, where we know about most things a jump ahead of the British public, we just call it the food game. It’s a growth. It’s also an organisation. It’s big business. It’s so big it’s almost respectable.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Wetherall. He was holding his glass in his left hand, swirling the tacky liquid slowly round.

  “I can’t even tell you how it works. It’s like the British constitution. It’s got no rules. You can only tell it’s there by results. And those you run into every day of your life. Have you ever wondered why the restaurant where you have your supper can serve you three rashers – three walloping thick rashers – of bacon, whilst your wife and you shared a thin rasher between you for breakfast? Or why there’s a full sugar bowl on the table? To say nothing of the rows of expensive cakes and pastries in the window, all made of butter and sugar and eggs. Or where your favourite Soho restaurant gets the ingredients for that lovely Steak Toreador? Or why, when you’ve finished eating the steak, you can buy a hundred of your favourite cigarettes from the head-waiter? Or why, when your wine merchant, who’s a man and a friend, and whom you’ve been patronising for years, can’t get you more than half a bottle of scotch at Christmas (and that’s a favour) you can drink a good scotch, to your heart’s content, in the X Club and the Y Club and the Z Club?”

  “I’m not a great club-goer,” said Mr. Wetherall. “But – yes, I did wonder once about the bacon.”

  “The answer is so simple that I can give it to you in one word. Redistribution. It used to be called black market, but that’s a word that was misused so much in the first five or six years after the war that it lost most of its meaning – and anyway, this is more specialised. Redistribution. It’s so simple. Think of a lorry hurtling down the Great North Road, with a dozen sides of bacon swinging in the back. That’s about nine thousand bacon rations. If it gets to its destination, which is some absolutely reputable wholesaler, it will be split up amongst the retailers who will sell it to you and your wife and nine thousand other citizens and no one will make more than about a farthing a pound profit, because that’s the way it’s meant to work. But what actually happens? The driver stops for a snack. He and his mate get out. No doubt they remove the ignition key, or lock the cab, or take other sensible precautions. But what’s all this? Before they are through their second cup of tea, Wirra! Wirra! Goblins about! The lorry has started up and driven itself away.”

  Todd broke off, then added in an unexpectedly serious voice: “You know, the thing I find really unpleasant about that bit is that although a lot of drivers who are robbed are innocent and unsuspecting victims, in other cases the lorry may have stopped at that particular time and place because a little envelope reached the driver at an accommodation address that morning with ten crisp pound notes and a few simple instructions inside. However that may be, the result is the same. Instead of coming into the shops, the bacon is sold at its real price to half a dozen restaurant and club owners, who may themselves be essentially honest men, but have got their customers to satisfy and can’t afford to have bacon off their menu if the next-door chap has got it on his. Then you and your wife and other citizens go in and have a jolly good plateful of bacon at three or four shillings a helping and glad to get it. See?”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “Multiply that instance by a few thousand, and you see how redistribution works.”

  Todd helped himself to another cup of tea, long since cold.

  “There’s nothing particularly novel about it. The only new tiling is that the idea is getting around in informed circles that the old business has come under some sort of central management. Just after the war it was fairly haphazard. That’s why I called it a growth. In those days, if you were lucky enough to steal a dozen sides of bacon and get away with them, your troubles were only beginning. You had to find somewhere to store them – you couldn’t keep them under the bed; and you had to look round for people to sell them to, with the risk that one of your customers might be a fool with more conscience than sense who would go to the police; and you had to get the right price for the stuff, and see that the money was really paid to you, as promised. Well, redistribution deals with all that. Guaranteed markets, guaranteed prices. You sell to them. They deal with the Luigis of this world.”

  “They deal with the Luigis all right,” said Mr. Wetherall absently.

  “This isn’t only generalisation,” said Todd. “It’s got a moral as far as you’re concerned.”

  “I’m glad it’s got a moral.” As long as he sat quite still his aches were just bearable.

  “I can explain it most easily by asking you a question. Why did what happened to you tonight have to happen at all?”

  “It seemed perfectly simple to me,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “That’s because you’ve got a simple mind. It isn’t really straightforward. If you were bothering this crowd at the circumference, I refuse to believe that their methods would have been so direct or so drastic. They get lots of that sort of bother. Restaurant proprietor A complains that ditto B is getting stuff off the ration. A goes to the nearest policeman or food official and screams ‘Black Market’. The authorities, if they take A seriously, have B watched. Maybe they can’t prove anything. Then A notices that his own custom is mysteriously beginning to fall off. If he’s a wise man he takes the hint and drops his complaints against B. Or perhaps there’s a retailer, C, who gets caught handling stolen food. That’s easier still. C is cut out of the system altogether. He’s no good to them. He’s been found out. He can whistle for the stuff. But – and here’s the point – A, B and C don’t get beaten up in backstreets. That sort of treatment is reserved for people who get rather nearer the centre.”

  “Then I must have been right on the hub,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “Don’t you believe it,” said Todd cheerfully. “If they’d really wanted to see you off you wouldn’t be sitting in front of this fire drinking whisky. You’d be in the casualty ward of the Middlesex Hospital with screens round you. All the same – you may have hit on something. It might be something to do with that boy – Crowdy. They seem to have slipped up over that. I suppose they’ll be down at Woking watching him like hawks from now on—”

  “They might,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Always supposing they knew where he was.”

  “But I thought�
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  “I told them the first thing that came into my head. I don’t suppose there is a St. Christopher’s Home at Woking. I made it all up.”

  Todd whistled softly. “The de’il you did.” He said: “Well, that’s quite a point, isn’t it. You had them on the wrong foot there, all right.” He got up, picked up the ruler from the desk, and with it shaped a very delicate back-hand drop-shot up the left-hand wall of the room.

  “But then again – supposing that Crowdy business was just a blind. Something they said to take your mind off the real object of the exercise. Supposing you went somewhere or saw someone or heard something tonight that you weren’t ever intended to. Supposing you got behind the scenes and saw the strings moving—”

  “Do you think it could have been that Scotsman?”

  “Might have been. I should have thought it was more likely someone in that pub. After all, that was the name you were working on. Or that club. Or just one of the basement doors you happened to knock on. You seem to have thrashed around a good deal.”

  As well as he was able to for an aching head Mr. Wetherall reflected.

  “I don’t think I was actually followed to Soho. I don’t know. It’s difficult to be sure—”

  “There’s no certainty about it. You’ll have to wait until the police pull in those two toughs. That may tell us something.”

  “Until—”

  “If you give the police as good a description as you’ve just given me,” said Todd, “it shouldn’t be too difficult. There are only a limited number of professional bullies in London and most of them are on the books.”

  “You think I ought to go the police?”

  “Not tonight,” agreed Todd. “But very first thing tomorrow morning, of course you must. You’ll be putting yourself hopelessly in the wrong if you don’t. You’ve got nothing to hide, have you? You’re a law-abiding citizen. You’ve been assaulted. You inform the police, and sit back and wait for your assailants to be lined up for you to identify.”

  “All right. But if by ‘sit back’ you mean that I’m to stay out of this thing from now on, I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong. I certainly couldn’t drop it now. To start with I don’t approve of physical violence—”