Murder Somewhere in This City Read online

  Then Starling really made the headlines by turning toward Martineau—who had given the details of his record—and coldly stating that he would certainly kill him at the first opportunity. Martineau politely smothered a yawn as he appeared not to hear the threat. It was all pie for the reporters.

  Starling was sent to the Island, where he had never been before. There he found that he was among characters as tough as himself. He was sufficiently daunted to keep quiet and obey orders until he was familiar with prisoners, prison officers and prison routine. When he had served some six months of his sentence he became aware that a big break-out was being planned. He also guessed that the prison authorities would hear about it, because some of the would-be escapers were too talkative. He declined to have any connection with the matter.

  In due time the conspirators were sought out by prison officers. They were punished and separated. Then someone—probably the real informer—started a rumor that Starling was the man who had “come copper.” One day he happened to be alone in a prison workshop and four fellow prisoners quietly entered and attacked him. He took a bad beating, but true to his code he did not complain. He waited, with the intention of taking his revenge in his own good time.

  A senior prison officer noticed his condition, and questioned him about it. He refused to say who had attacked him, but admitted that he was suspected of having been an informer. The officer, who knew more about prison life than any old lag, took a serious view of the affair. His concern resulted in Starling’s transfer to Pontfield Prison in Yorkshire.

  The move pleased Starling. Life was easier at Pontfield than Parkhurst. It was also an easier place to escape from. And it was less than fifty miles from Granchester.

  So Starling remained a model prisoner. He did as he was bidden, spoke civilly to one and all, and bided his time. He had no trade of his own, and he was put to work as a laborer on a building job: some new baths and showers for the prisoners. When the baths were completed, the gang started to lay the foundations of a big new office building quite near to the perimeter wall.

  There is usually no great hurry in prison work: all the men—including the officers—have time on their hands. As the office building went up, Starling spent his second winter in prison without seeing an opportunity to escape. It was not merely a matter of getting out; he had to get away. It did not occur to him to get into contact with friends who would try to help him. When he escaped, he would do it alone. He would be beholden to no man.

  From the second story of the new building, the prisoners could see the trains go by on the London-to-Leeds line. One of Starling’s workmates, a convicted mail thief who fretted about his wife, was disturbed by the trains.

  “That bloody engine driver’ll be able to wave to my Missis,” he said once. “My ’ouse is right at the side o’ t’line, not five mile from ’ere.”

  “Which way?” Starling asked casually.

  “That way,” said the man, pointing. “Nearly due north. Five mile, an’ the wife can only find time to come an’ see me once every Flood.”

  “Well, who wants to come to this place any more than they’re forced?”

  “I’m ’er ’usband, aren’t I? She should want to see me. Heck! If I could get outer ’ere I could be ’ome in less nor an hour. Me own fireside, an’ a nice wife waitin’. Eeh!”

  “They’d have you before you’d gone a mile, or else you’d lose your way,” said Starling, with just the right touch of derision.

  “They wouldn’t,” snapped the mail thief. “An’ ’ow could I get lost, follerin’ t’line? I could walk ’ome in a fog.”

  Starling carefully concealed his interest, but he was ready to listen whenever the man wanted to talk about his home and his wife. By adroit, seemingly uninterested questions he learned how he could literally find the little house in a fog. The first house in the first estate of council houses on the left of the line! Only five miles! A friend’s house, with a young woman living alone! The thought of it was an intoxicant. He was almost smothered by the pleasure of it.

  “An’ I can get in wi’out wakin’ t’ neighbor’ood,” the mail thief boasted one day. “I’ve got a key ’id. I allus keep one ’id, just in case.”

  “You’ll get your house broke into,” said Starling. “Sneak-inmen know just where to look for keys. On a string inside the letter box, under a stone near the door, on a ledge above the door, hanging on a nail somewhere inside the shed…”

  He stopped, smiling inwardly. The sudden look of guarded anxiety on the mail thief’s face told him that one of his guesses had not been far from the truth. The key would not be hard to find.

  5

  The year wore on, the office building approached completion. In August some men from Outside began to put on the roofing slates. Toward the end of the month the mail thief complained that his wife had gone to Blackpool for a fortnight’s holiday. He was afraid of whom she would meet at Blackpool. “She’ll be danglin’ it off th’ end o’ t’ pier, tryin’ to catch a feller,” he predicted gloomily.

  The news made Starling impatient. Now there was an empty house to walk into, and a man’s suit in the wardrobe. The mail thief was about the same size as himself, being flabby where he was muscular.

  When his chance came, it was one of the simplest escapes that had ever been made from Pontfield. He had his eye on a ladder. At the end of every working day the ladders were taken away and carefully locked up, and brought out again in the morning. He had made himself useful in helping to put them up. It had become one of his jobs. He always put a long one around the corner of the building at the side nearest the perimeter wall, whether it was needed there or not. The men working on the building became used to that ladder in that position, and they seldom moved it. Often it stood there all day, unused and unnoticed.

  With the ladder in mind Starling longed for a day of thick fog. Fog in August? What a hope!

  The weather favored him. There was no fog, but a morning of dull heat after a wet night. Distant thunder rolled, coming nearer and nearer like the growl of a moving battle. The earth steamed, making a faint mist. After the midday break, the storm reached Pontfield. Black laden clouds brought twilight in early afternoon, and torrential rain began to fall with a swishing roar.

  The Outside men came down from the roof and gathered with the prison working party on the upper floor of a roofed section of the building. There was some camaraderie, and giving of cigarettes in the gloom. The two prison officers in charge pretended not to see the illegal gifts of “snout.” The untimely darkness made them uneasy, and they did not want any sort of trouble.

  Starling did not join in the talk and the cadging of cigarettes. He remained still and quiet, leaning against the door frame of a toilet cubicle as if he were tired. He watched the prison officers. They kept looking through a window opening toward the C.P.O.’s office, as if they were expecting an order to take their prisoners to a safer place.

  When both the officers’ backs were turned for a moment, Starling slipped through the doorway into the toilet cubicle. There was no plumbing in the cubicle yet, nor any glass in the window. He climbed through the window frame, hung by his hands for a moment, and took the long drop to the ground. Nobody saw him go.

  He ran round the building and got his ladder. Trailing the ladder, he hurried to the perimeter wall. He was concerned simply with the speed of his departure, and not with silence or concealment. The storm was noisy, and he did not expect to be seen in semidarkness through steamed-up windows and pouring rain.

  He reared the ladder against the wall, and climbed it. When he was straddling the top of the wall he pulled up the heavy ladder. It was so wet that it tended to slip in his wet hands. But he got it up and over, and reared against the outer side. He climbed down, and so great was his haste that he slid the last few feet to the ground.

  “Good-by,” he said to the prison wall. “You can try and catch me now.”

  He took the ladder with him, and dropped it in long grass near the r
ailway embankment, hoping that the absence of a visible means of escape would add a few minutes to the start he had gained. He climbed the embankment and, head down in the pouring rain, he began to run northward along the line.

  He settled down to a steady jogtrot. “I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” he exulted to the beat of his own footsteps. His brown eyes peered watchfully from beneath heavy wet brows. His clothes were soaked, but he did not mind. He had a place to go: an unoccupied house with a key hidden somewhere around. There would be a clean, dry shirt and a decent civvy suit, and a raincoat maybe.

  “There won’t be any money, but there’ll be something I can flog for bus fares,” he reflected. “A nice portable radio, happen.”

  6

  In spite of the decent civvy suit and the raincoat, it was a perilous homeward journey for Don Starling. He was a man who never underrated himself, and he was fully aware of his own importance as an escaped fourteen-year prisoner whose main crime had been the shooting of a police officer. He knew that every policeman within a hundred miles would be given his description and later his photograph.

  In the mail thief’s house he found twenty-two shillings—rent money, probably—in a small toby jug, and for “flogging” purposes he selected an excellent little hand sewing machine. After an anxious five-mile bus journey into Leeds (he alighted before the bus reached the terminus) he was able to pawn the sewing machine for five pounds. It amused him to give the mail thief’s name and address to the pawnbroker.

  With six pounds in his pocket, he decided how he would travel. Cross-country buses were too dangerous, he thought. He would go by train.

  He studied a railway map which was pasted on a board outside one of the big stations. On the same long board there were half-a-dozen sheet timetables. He knew that this city of Leeds, so near to Pontfield, would soon be too hot for him, and he had to find an early train. He saw that there was one due to leave for Carlisle in fifteen minutes. He glanced at the map again, then walked boldly into the station.

  In the station entrance he paused to buy an evening paper. He carried it folded. Near the ticket windows he saw a railway policeman and an obvious plainclothesman. Slapping the paper against his leg he walked briskly to the nearest window. He asked for a third-class return ticket to Hellifield, counted his change, and walked on into the station. By a great effort of will he did not so much as turn his head to see if the policemen were watching him.

  The train was waiting. There were not many people on it. He chose an empty compartment and sat with his back to the engine, so that he could look toward the platform barrier. It was as well for him that he did so, because just before the train started two more plainclothesmen walked along the platform looking into every compartment. Starling did not hesitate. He dropped to the floor and squeezed under the seat.

  He did not feel safe until he got out of the train at Hellifield. At that quiet country junction there was not even a railway policeman in sight. After a further study of train schedules, he left the station and returned in time to catch a train to Preston. He booked single to Preston, and at Preston he booked single to Wigan. In Wigan he caught a bus, and approached Granchester from the west, instead of from the east as might have been expected.

  When he reached Granchester it was dark, and still raining a little. He dropped off the bus as it turned a corner into Lacy Street—the less prosperous end of Lacy Street—and walked six yards to a darkened shop doorway. From the doorway he watched another doorway across the road. There was a shabby sign over it:

  BILLIARDS. SNOOKER.

  12 TABLES 12

  He had once been very familiar with that little Mecca of misspent youth. He knew that it would be exactly ten o’clock when the single light above the sign was switched off. The place always closed at that time.

  In a little while the light went out, and he nodded with grim satisfaction. He had timed it well: no hanging about at the risk of being seen.

  A few minutes later he heard the thud of feet on wooden stairs, and half-a-dozen youths emerged from the billiard hall. Their attire ranged from nearly ragged to shoddy-smart. They parted noisily into two groups, and went their ways. Starling waited. Somebody always called at the toilet.

  A minute later the expected lingerer emerged, still buttoning his flies, and hastened after his friends. Starling waited until there was no wayfarer near enough to recognize him, then he crossed the street and went through the doorway under the sign.

  He climbed the wooden stairs carefully. There were three flights, because the billiard saloon was on the top floor of the building. He peered through a glass-paned door, and saw old Bert Darwin, who ran the place, busily pulling sheets over the tables.

  He chuckled “Good old Bert,” pushed the door gently, and slipped sideways through the opening. He flitted unseen to the open door of Bert’s office, and entered. There was a chair and a roll-top desk. He sat down, and lit the cigarettes he had bought in Leeds.

  Bert finished covering the tables. He came into the office, whistling softly. He stopped whistling and his mouth fell open when he saw Starling. Starling grinned at him.

  “’Lo, Bert,” he said.

  “Er, hello, Don. I never saw you come in.”

  “Neither did anybody else. I shall be staying here till morning.”

  “Nay, Don, you can’t do that. Suppose—”

  “Suppose nothing. You lock the place up safe, see? I’ll stay here as quiet as a mouse. You’ll leave me a key, and I’ll let myself out in the morning. Nobody’ll ever know I’ve been here. You won’t know yourself if you choose to forget it.”

  “I can’t let you stay here. The police—”

  Starling was on his feet. “You can and you will,” he said.

  “All right, Don, all right. But for God’s sake be careful.”

  “I’ll be careful. By the time the bogies get the rumor I’m here, I’ll have been in five other places, all different. You mind you lock up safe, that’s all.”

  “I’ll lock up, all right. H-here’s my spare key.”

  “Thanks,” said Starling, pocketing the key. He threw a florin on the desk. “You used to sell a few sweets. I’m hungry. Give me four bars of plain chocolate.”

  With fumbling fingers Bert unlocked a drawer and took out the chocolate.

  “Right. That’ll be all,” said Starling. “Good night, Bert.”

  “Eh? Oh sure. Good night, Don.”

  Bert was at the office door when Starling spoke again. “Oh, and, Bert,” he said quietly. “Don’t get any fancy ideas in connection with coppers, will you?”

  Bert was shocked, and hurt. “Nay, Don!” he reproached. “I’ll admit I don’t like having you here, but that don’t mean I’ll go running to the bogies. What do you think I am?”

  “I don’t think anything, I just want you to remember what’s good for you. If the law finds me here tonight, you’ll be looked after. My friends’ll look after you. They’ll bash your crown in.”

  Bert went without further speech, and Starling quietly followed him down to the door to make sure it was locked. He tried the fire door too, and found it secure. Presently he would lie on the upholstered bench which ran around the walls of the big room, but at the moment he was content to sit in the dark and make plans.

  The thing to do was to get some ready money—it never occurred to Starling that this was almost a universal problem—and then go after the stolen jewelry which he had hidden two years before. He had various schemes for raising money: he had had time to think about that. For what he had in mind he would need some mates. Arrangements would have to be made. Well, there was the telephone.

  “In the morning, Don,” he said to himself. “In the morning, just before you skip out of here.”

  7

  The billiard saloon was opened at ten o’clock every weekday morning. Having made a telephone call, Don Starling quitted the place at five minutes to nine, when the streets were thronged with hurrying city workers. He was keenly alert for the quick st
are of sudden recognition, because today his picture was in the papers, but nobody noticed him as he made his way to Pasture Park. It was a fine, warm morning after yesterday’s thunderstorm, and he sat in the sunshine on a bench in a secluded corner of the park. Life was good. He read about himself in a newspaper, but his hard glance was often raised to look above the paper. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

  At half past eleven, when the pubs opened, he sought surroundings better suited to his temperament. But by an exercise of his considerable will power he did not drink much, and the taverns he patronized were small places where neither he nor his friends had ever been customers.

  During his solitary watchful drinking he considered his plans. His phone call had set the ball rolling. He had contacted the man he wanted and set him to work. Tomorrow he would meet the man, and in the meantime he would have to avoid the police. He had no illusions about the police: they would be very, very busy looking for him. That bastard Martineau would be running around like a scalded cat. Well, there were a number of possible hiding places. The thing was, could he avoid boredom? Boredom made a man careless.

  He needed companionship, and he needed a woman. “For two years I’ve been like a parrot in a cage,” he reflected. He glanced around the small bar lounge where he was sitting. It was not the place to look for his sort of woman.

  The haunts of loose and lively women were the haunts of people who knew Don Starling. And they were the places where the police would be looking for him. Would he take the risk? A faint smile flitted across his face when he imagined the awed glances, the nudges and whispers, which his presence would cause. Maybe he would be able to pick up a little chicken who wanted some second-hand notoriety. Maybe he would find himself consorting with a red-hot young love-weed smoker. The thought stirred him.

  He remembered some of the women he knew. Lucky Lusk would still be at the Lacy Arms. But he had never gone very far with Lucky, and now she would want to keep half the length of Lacy Street away from him. There were others with whom he had been more successful. Among them Chloe Barber, Gus Hawkins’ wife. A wicked little piece, Chloe. It might be a good thing to get in touch with her. He would have to think about it.