The Bait by Lionel Black - Chapter 01

Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Spy Ladies

The 2nd book in the Emma Greaves series. The 3rd book, The Lady is a Spy, can be read over at The Official Gardner Francis Fox Library.

Beautiful agent Emma Greaves becomes the bait to catch the ringleader of a sinister spy network.

Emma's orders are to live in the apartment of a murdered agent – and wait! Curiosity would compel the master spy to emerge into the open to find out how much Emma knows.

Each person she meets is suspect; each movement she makes lures her prey closer. Suddenly Emma realizes that the iron claws of the trap are closing, not around the victim, but around Emma herself!

CHAPTER 01

Listen to the audio version of Chapter 01

The boy went running in terror up the road away from the river. On the corner, he saw a police constable. He grabbed the constable's arm, panting, almost too breathless to get the words out. "Quick. Under the sacks. There's a woman dead."

The constable, who had been walking his beat all night, looked at the boy suspiciously. But his terror—was real.

"Where?"

"Under some sacks, in a garden down by the river."

"The body of a woman?"

"She ain't got no clothes on."

The constable took his arm. There was a good chance, he thought, that the boy would faint, or vomit. He tried to steady him, spoke to him in an even voice. "Come on, son," he said. "Come on."

He took him at a walk, not letting him run. "No need to run, son," he told him.

The road led down to an easterly reach of the Thames.

The sun was just rising over the south London rooftops on the far bank and glittering on the stream running between wide stretches of grey mud. The tide was low.

A For Sale board leaned against the fence of the last house before the river. The garden was overgrown. The boy led through the gate, which stood open.

"What were you doing in there?"

"Nothing. Just looking round."

He pointed to a dirty heap of sacks in one corner, behind some unpruned rose bushes.

"You stay there," ordered the constable, approaching cautiously. The boy was glad to stay behind.

They looked like old potato sacks, or maybe sacks of fertilizer, and they had probably been in the garden some time, for they were mud-soiled and sodden. From one side of the heap protruded a naked foot. He carefully raised the sacking and stared.

The body was completely nude. She was a girl in probably her twenties, brunette must have been quite pretty, good figure, small breasts. The body lay on its back with arms stretched limply by its side, one leg bent under the other. The body was unmarked except for the fearful bruising round the neck. The tongue protruded, swollen, from the open mouth, and the eyes a little from their sockets. The face still carried make-up, which had streaked. A garden spider ran quickly across the girl's belly. The constable, who was a young man, only recently married, felt his stomach retch. He dropped the sacking.

He should, he knew, have looked carefully for evidence—for footprints, maybe, or any indications that might be seen only by an early observer. But he did nothing of the kind.

He walked hastily back to the boy.

"Come on, son," he repeated, leading him out into the street.

The constable felt better then. He glanced at the house opposite, saw that it had a telephone and, taking the boy with him, knocked on the door.

After a quick disturbance of the bedroom window curtains, an elderly man came down in a dressing gown.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but could I use your telephone? It's important."

"Yes, of course."

He took the boy in with him. Halfway up the stairs stood a woman, also in a dressing gown, with curlers in her hair.

"Sorry to disturb you, ma'am," said the constable again, "but it's urgent. It'd be a kindness if you could give this lad something, cup of tea, say. He's had a nasty shock."

The woman, also elderly, hastened down to the kitchen.

"You'll take a cup too, officer?"

"Thank you, ma'am. I could do with one," he admitted, dialing his station sergeant.

In the few minutes between the phone call and the arrival of the squad car, the constable politely but stiffly declined to tell the elderly couple anything at all. With every minute, his sense of the importance of the thing swelled inside him. He took a few sips of the tea, which was too hot, then put the cup down and went back to the garden over the road. He left the boy in the kitchen, privately asking the elderly man to keep an eye on him and see he didn't run.

Just as he got to the gate, the first car drew up. He led the inspector towards the corner where the sacks lay. The inspector motioned to the others to keep back. Only he and the constable delicately approached the sacks, lifted them, and gazed at the corpse. The constable no longer felt in the least squeamish; it was no longer a girl's body, it had become a case.

The inspector, looking keenly around on the ground, thanked him, and told him to step back to the others. Soon there were two more cars, one bringing a photographer, another a doctor. Then an ambulance. Not much later, men from the Yard were there holding soft-voiced discussions. There were already C.I.D. men calling on all the neighboring houses, making inquiries. The original constable, although now somewhat neglected, stood to one side of the garden, feeling the pure joy of it all.

By the time the first newspaper photographer got there, the body had been put into an ambulance, which was turning the corner at the end of the road. The first editions of the evening newspapers carried headlines: "Nude Murders—Another Victim."

"Nude Murders—Killer Strikes Again."

The call to Scotland Yard came on the green line, and so was put through to the Deputy Commissioner. Colonel Chase was calling. Could the Deputy Commissioner spare him a few minutes? Good. He would come along straight away.

When he hung up, the Deputy Commissioner pressed his buzzer. "A man named Colonel Chase is coming to see me," he told his P.A. "Go down to the reception and bring him up to me directly he arrives."

The Deputy Commissioner had only a vague idea of what Colonel Chase did, and in fact, had never seen him.

But he knew that he reported personally to the Prime Minister, and only to the Prime Minister.

He had expected a military figure, but the man who was shown into his room was short, thin, dim-looking—pale grey eyes behind his spectacles, straw-colored hair, a small mustache. In his very ordinary grey suit, he might have come from any of the Government offices on the other side of Whitehall, and nobody would have noticed him crossing the road.

"This girl was found murdered in Chiswick this morning,"

began Chase, "have you identified her?"

Hiding his astonishment that this was what he had come to talk about, the Deputy Commissioner shook his head.

"She doesn't come from the usual manor. As you know, there's been a series of these prostitute murders over the last four or five years. The last but one, we thought we had the man, but we were wrong. To be honest, we haven't the slightest idea who he is. But all the other women were well known around a few sleazy pubs in the Bayswater and Notting Hill area. So far, none of my chaps has been able to identify this one. Maybe she drifted in from some other part of London. But we shall soon turn her up—she's bound to have a record."

"May I see the photographs?"

"Why, certainly," said the Deputy Commissioner, puzzled.

As he reached for his buzzer, his visitor added, "And the medical report, please, if it's available."

A few minutes later the P.A. came in and put a new folder on his desk. He handed the photographs over to Chase and began to read the medical report.

"Had she been sexually assaulted?" asked Chase.

"No. That's odd. All the others .... "

He broke off. No point in going into the horrific details.

Whoever the murderer, he was sexually mad. But this latest girl, according to the medical report, had not been touched in that way.

Chase passed back the photographs.

"Her name was Violet Bridgewater. She was not a prostitute. She was a member of my department."

"Then was she posing as a prostitute in the Notting Hill district?"

"Not to my knowledge—though she had a fairly free hand. But she was not murdered for sexual reasons, as you can see from the medical report. She is not one of the series of nude murders."

Not quite understanding, the Deputy Commissioner gestured towards the photographs.

Chase hesitated for a moment, then said, "I know you'll appreciate that I can't tell you too much about this, Commissioner. In brief, there's a very dangerous spy, or a spy ring, operating in this country—probably the most dangerous since the war. He, or they, have penetrated somehow or other into the Defense departments. To match your own candor, I confess that we haven't the slightest idea who he is—or they are. We've been trying to make some sort of contact, and one of the people engaged on that was Violet Bridgewater. Last night she got on to something—we've a slight hint as to what it was, but nothing definite. But she was caught, and killed."

"And then?"

"And then the murderer had to dispose of the body.

There's been a sex murderer disposing of bodies in this town for several years by stripping them and abandoning them near one stretch of the Thames. He hasn't been caught—my dear Commissioner, that is not a criticism, believe me, I know the difficulties. But where better to hide a girl's body than in a series of famous unsolved London murders? Neat, eh?"

"But we were bound to have known. The medical report."

"Would you?" asked Chase. "You would have noted, of course, that there were odd aspects to this particular case.

But might you not have thought that the murderer had been disturbed or impeded in some way? Would you really have guessed that this was a different murderer, trying to disguise his crime among the crimes of a maniac? After all, the other cases were not absolutely identical, were they?"

The Deputy Commissioner thoughtfully shook his head.

"I think he stood a very good chance," said Chase, "of losing his victim in the nude murders series. Of course, in my department, we should have known. But he probably calculated that, for obvious reasons, we should say nothing."

The Deputy Commissioner looked at his visitor, then, rising from his desk, wandered to the window and gazed out over the Embankment to the Thames, as was his habit.

"He calculated wrong, didn't he?" he asked. "Why? Why have you come to see me this morning, Colonel? Not entirely, I imagine, from a desire to further the cause of justice."

"No, not precisely," admitted Chase with a slight smile.

"I'm not concerned with justice. My job is to uncover this spy. We're going to put up another girl, to try to lure him."

The Deputy Commissioner turned from the window.

"How?"

"In every one of the previous murders, some other prostitute has come forward to identify the victim. Right?"

The other nodded.

"This time, since Violet wasn't a prostitute, that won't happen. We're going to make it happen."

"You mean, some other girl—one of your girls—will come forward, pretending to be a prostitute, and pretending to identify Violet Bridgewater as one? Give interviews to the Press and all that? Tum up at the inquest and commit perjury?"

"That's it," said Chase.

"But why?"

"You and I, my dear Commissioner, will know that the new girl is a fake. So will the spy who murdered Violet. He will realize that she is one of our girls set up to make contact with him."

"But all he has to do is keep out of her way."

"No," said Chase. "He had to kill Violet because she knew something. There is something, which we half know about. He will be compelled to find out whether the new girl knows it too and just how much is known. Sooner or later, he must get in touch with her. We shall, of course, watch all the people who do."

The Deputy Commissioner turned again to the window, staring out uneasily.

"And you want the Yard to connive in all this? To connive at false evidence in a case of murder?"

"If you wish, Commissioner, you can regard it as an order. You will get a personal and of course top secret, a letter from the Prime Minister himself."

There was a long pause. Then the Deputy Commissioner swung slowly round from the window.

"You're going to put up a young girl, in the middle of London, as a sort of bait for your trap?"

"Precisely."

"Do you want us to put a man on to watch her?"

"No. We'll attend to all that."

"Suppose she's killed too. Is the Yard to connive in that possibility?"

"It's a risk," agreed Chase, "but you will be relieved of responsibility."

After another pause, the Deputy Commissioner asked, "Have you got a girl willing to do it?"

"Oh yes," said Chase, rising, "we've got a girl."