Chapter One

THE PARK

 

To George Gideon, Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department of London’s Metropolitan Police, the parks of London were the city’s lungs. Take them away, and the eight million or more men, women and children who lived in the heart and environs of the sprawling metropolis would slowly suffocate. At one time, when the myriad of houses in the central boroughs and inner suburbs burned coal, suffocation had threatened in another way. Then, the word “pollution” had been little known. But as the small coal brought from the deep mines of South Wales, and even from Scotland, had smouldered and burned, so its choking fumes had risen up the narrow chimneys to fill the air with particles of soot and corroding acids.

Not all the smoke had come from tiny houses and small grates; much had come from the larger, more prosperous houses in the heart of the city; in Mayfair and Knightsbridge, Kensington and Victoria. In their huge fireplaces coal had blazed up chimneys once swept – and not so very long ago – by tiny boys driven up into the hot soot-lined tunnels. Their sweeping brushes had dispersed fumes, which, invisible and unsuspected in fine weather, descended like a blight on the windless days when moisture thickened the atmosphere. The result was a pea-souper which silenced and stilled the city.

And killed many by choking the life out of them.

Not to be outdone, the factories added to the toll. For in those days there had been only coal to burn; electricity was newfangled and suspect, while the gas which came from coal added a new menace: carbon monoxide inside the homes as well as in the air above. So, the factories, great and small, burned the coal; and power stations, creating the new form of power, burned coal and belched the fumes into the sky.

George Gideon, on a damp evening in November, was aware of many of these things in his subconscious mind, but the two which were on the surface of his consciousness were simply that it was going to be a foggy night, and that fact – although fogs were no longer what they used to be – could be either a very bad, or a very good, one for the police. If conditions stayed like this, it would be bad; there would be light enough to allow burglars and pick-pockets, bag-snatchers and smash-and-grab practitioners to do their worst and escape in the misty gloom. If the fog thickened, then thieves and honest men alike would stay at home and the main trouble for the police would be stopping idiot motorists from reckless driving.

Gideon was a big man, massive in every way; and in Gideon, perhaps as in all men, lurked a small boy.

He thought back as he drove along King’s Road to the days of his boyhood. The road gave a little jag, and suddenly he was opposite the Eelbrook Common.

Nothing here appeared to have changed in the forty years he could remember.

On one side the three-and-four-storey houses – many of them turned into offices – formed a terrace. On the other side was the “Common”, only a small open space but one of the city’s “lungs”. Tall trees, leafless after a bitter frost of two nights ago, seemed to be drawn away by the fog, which was swallowing them. Those trees close to the road were solid enough at the base but even their higher, skeletal branches were fading into nowhere. And the fog was thickening. Office workers walking from Fulham Broadway were already wraithlike figures, some holding torches, the beams pointing downwards.

Suddenly Gideon saw what he had never expected to see again; and he could not resist the impulse to pull into the kerb, and stop and watch, with a huge grin on his strong-looking face, and his mind spanning forty-odd years in a flash of time.

A small figure appeared from behind a tree which merged into the fog, carrying before him a candle inside a jam jar suspended by a piece of string tied round the rim. He stood near the tree until another figure loomed out of the darkness, moving slowly and uncertainly. Both stopped; talking; the next moment the small figure turned and, with the other’s hand on his shoulder, led the way.

Gideon could almost feel that hand.

There, in that very place, he had often waited on nights as bad or worse than this, fingers warmed by the gentle heat rising from the candle, waiting until an elderly person, or one uncertain of the way, came along, then approaching him.

“Can I help you, sir?”

The response was nearly always querulous. “What, boy? What?”

“Can I lead you where you want to go, sir?”

There would be muttering and grumbling and nearly always a grudging: “You may as well. Don’t go too fast, mind you.”

“No, sir.”

Gideon would turn and a hand would descend on his shoulder and he would lead the way over kerbs, and pavements, past the gnarled trunks of trees, to the stranger’s front door. A penny, and sometimes tuppence, had been his reward.

“Thank you, boy.”

“Thank you, sir. Good-night.”

Gideon would turn and hurry off, perhaps to the same spot, or else to the nearest bus stop where some people were bound to alight. Many, seeing the bus lumbering away, were terrified at being left alone, for one false step would take them into the road, at the mercy of any passing vehicle. With luck, he might get six or seven customers in one evening, and be wealthy for the rest of the week.

A dozen other lads of his age would do the same thing; enjoying the adventure, the sense of superiority over an adult, the sense of earning money. The fogs really had been fogs in those days!

All these reflections took only a few seconds of time.

Gideon’s smile faded as he prepared to move off. He had called Kate, his wife, to say he was on the way, and if he were not home soon she would begin to worry.

The car was actually moving when he saw the small figure reappear.

He thought: “That was quick.” The boy couldn’t have been gone for more than two minutes, so his patron must have been virtually on his own doorstep. The figure and the candle disappeared behind the tree, and Gideon frowned.

Why should the guide hide from prospective customers?

Men and women, young and middle-aged, some of them mere girls, passed the tree briskly. Then a shadowy figure appeared, hesitated, and stood still. Almost at once the small figure moved forward and there was a further consultation before both moved off and disappeared.

The fog was closing in.

There was the stink of smog in the air, too. Cars which had moved at a fair pace were now crawling, giving off their killer fumes. More people were walking in groups, one in each group holding a torch and shining the beam round, from walls to kerb and trees. Five buses passed, close behind one another, and on the rear platform conductors stood peering to the side, where visibility was better.

A car radio sounded very loud.

“… and that is the end of the six o’clock news, but before we continue with our advertised programme, here is a message from the Meteorological Office and the Metropolitan Police about tonight’s weather conditions. The worst fog of the winter is already causing traffic delays in forty-three counties, and is particularly dense in the Greater London area and London’s outer suburbs. Visibility in some places is down to ten feet. All flights in and out of London Heathrow airport have been cancelled and arriving flights are being diverted to Manchester; Prestwick, Scotland and in a few cases to Shannon, Eire …”

The voice faded, as if the fog were strangling the speaker.

The ghostly figures on the Eelbrook Common, even those with torches, were moving much more slowly, and the candle bearer and his customer were still out of sight.

No they weren’t! The smaller figure reappeared, still carrying the candle. This time he had probably been gone for four minutes; certainly no longer. Gideon now had little doubt what was happening. About a hundred yards farther along a pale red glow showed where the neon signs of a garage burned and spread about the fog. He moved forward slowly until a petrol sign loomed ahead. He pulled into the approach yard of the garage, as a boy in once-white overalls came hurrying.

“Can I leave my car here?” Gideon asked.

“Got no more room tonight, mate! Full up to the brim.”

“It won’t be here long,” Gideon said. “I am—”

“Can’t ‘elp it if you’re the King of England, mate – you can’t stay there.”

The lad could not be much more than fifteen. His eyes had a brightness and his voice a cocksureness which proclaims the very young in authority. Oil smeared his nose and forehead and a corner of his lips.

Gideon opened his door.

“Well, let’s see what you can do for a policeman,” he said, and took out his card.

It was years since he had shown it; years since he had initiated any investigation into crime and so taken the first step. Nevertheless he kept his police card in the outside breast pocket of his jacket, where he could get at it easily.

“A cop,” breathed the youth.

“A detective, who—”

“Lemme see!”

Grubby hands stretched out for the card but Gideon held it safe, merely turning it in such a way that the other could read both the heading – Metropolitan Police – and the name of Gideon with his signature as well as the signature of the Commissioner of Police himself.

“Gideon,” the youth whispered. “Yes.”

“I—used to go to the same school that one of your sons went to.”

“And if you keep me standing here any longer you’ll prove you’re just as dumb as he is,” Gideon said, feeling very slightly disloyal to his youngest son. He gave the boy a friendly grin, and added: “I won’t be long.”

He stepped out of the range of the garage light, and was suddenly in a different world. Forty years ago this might not have worried him, but by jingo, it did now! He could hear the throb of engines, see pale orbs glowing faintly, hear some engines running fast. A woman cried out: “Help me! I’m lost!” A man called: “Stand where you are. Don’t move.”

This was a pea-souper of the bad old-fashioned kind. The stink was getting worse, the sound of footfalls seemed both near and far. The Common was blotted out. A whole blanket of fog had closed in on the area.

Gideon, putting a foot forward carefully, adjured himself: “Come on! You can’t stay there all night!”

He saw a bus and found the kerb at the same time, stepped off the pavement into the roadway and reached the back of the bus. The conductor, just visible, asked in a soft Jamaican voice: “You wish to board the bus, sir?”

“No thanks,” said Gideon. What kind of fool was he to be in the middle of the road? He walked behind the bus and peered along in the opposite direction. He could see no lights, no shapes in the roadway itself but could make out the added density of trees just beyond. He took a dozen steps, kicked lightly against the kerb, and a moment later was safely off the roadway, with the growling traffic behind him.

The fog was a little clearer here, and he could see the spot where the small candle bearer had been. Gideon went across the wet grass towards the path along which people were still walking, many with torches. He could see no one with a candle.

He walked in the opposite direction of the main stream of homecomers, keeping to the path, helped by the lamps on the Common and the beams of torches. At last, he stopped and turned about face.

“Charlie, don’t,” a girl protested.

A man giggled, out of sight.

Gideon walked on until he reached a street lamp. He put out a hand and gripped the fluted iron post, then leaned against it as if he were exhausted. Wraithlike figures passed.

A youth appeared in front of Gideon, holding up a candle in a jam jar. Gideon saw through narrowed eyes that this was no schoolboy but a youth in his late teens. A peaked cap was pulled low over his eyes, his chin was buried in the upturned collar of his coat.

“You live far, gov’ner?” he asked in a high-pitched voice.

“No,” Gideon answered, speaking agitatedly. “No, only a few streets away, in Lime Avenue, but—this fog—”

“Like me to show you home?”

“Oh, if only you would! But how can you see? What chances have you—”

“I know this place like I know the back of me hand,” the youth interrupted. “Put a hand on my shoulder, guv, and trust me. What number Lime Avenue?”

“Seventeen.”

“Have you there in a brace of shakes,” the youth assured him, and started off at a reasonable pace. He crossed the path, then walked along to the Row which faced New King’s Road where traffic moved like a trail of ghosts. Then he turned a corner to the right.

Gideon, still missing steps but very alert, saw two torches and the shadowy figures of two men, loom forward from the doorway of one of the houses; and he knew at once that these were coming to attack him. As the thought flashed into his mind the candle bearer wriggled free, while the other two men closed on Gideon. He saw the weapons in their hands, saw their arms drawn back to strike.