Kill Her If You Can Read online

  Maybe most folks don’t know it, but to a reporter it’s commonplace. Whenever anything happens it’s always terribly difficult to find out exactly what has happened.

  There were dozens of folks around, cops, firemen, and residents. All of them, even the cops, were anxious to be helpful. I had more than a dozen around me, volunteering information, keeping an hopeful eye on Sid Walker and hoping I’d be lining them up to take their photos as ‘eye witness of the explosion.’

  Yeah, there were a coupla dozen of them eager and anxious to give me information. The trouble was, none of them knew anything beyond that there’d been a ‘big bang.’ Any minor detailed information they gave was contradicted among themselves.

  Being a reporter, you get used to that kinda thing. When there’s a road accident, one guy says the injured party ran across in front of the truck, a second guy says the truck swerved into the kerb and hit the injured party, while a third guy saw a private car (which no-one else saw) cause the truck to swerve onto the wrong side of the road, and a fourth guy says nothing of the kind happened, that the injured party tripped and fell and the truck driver never touched him.

  It’s no use the reporter going to work on the truck driver. He’s usually a bundle of nerves, scared out of his life he’s killed someone, worried sick what will happen to his wife and kids if he gets jail, and worriedly thinking the best he can hope for is the sack.

  The injured party isn’t going to give you much assistance either. Because if by this time he isn’t injected with morphia or too dazed with pain to be asked questions, he’ll have his lawyer squatting beside him.

  There are lawyers known as accident vultures. They’re like desert vultures, can scent an accident almost before it’s happened, are drawn to the scene of the accident by some strange sixth sense, which leads them unerringly to their prey. Almost before a crowd has begun to gather and the harness cop on the street corner has begun his ponderous, loping stride towards the accident, the lawyer vulture is cradling the injured party’s head on his knee, while he unscrews his fountain pen and produces a form giving the lawyer power of attorney to negotiate and obtain damages on behalf of the injured man.

  When the injured party has one of those legal eagles sitting beside him, you can’t get a word out of him. The legal bandit won’t let you get a word out of him. Anything whatsoever that is said may be produced as evidence. The lawyer isn’t willing any evidence shall be produced until every link in the testimony has been carefully tested for its strength and ability to produce extensive damages, of which – needless to say – the injured person may obtain a little after paying the expenses of the lawyer.

  There weren’t any lawyers around that apartment, for a reason that I discovered later. But the lawyers’ absence didn’t help me any. I still wasn’t getting any worthwhile facts.

  I caught Sid Walker’s eye, nodded my head towards the door and managed to tear myself away from the voluble eye-witnesses who’d seen nothing and wanted to tell me all about it. I took Sid on one side, lit a cigarette, said thoughtfully: ‘Better make this a picture spread, Sid. There’s a story somewhere, but it’s deep down. Get back to the office quick, get those shots printed and spread them on the front page. Tell the Chief to label it “Mystery Explosion”.‘

  ‘Aren’t you coming back, Hank?’

  ‘I’ll stick around,’ I said. ‘I’ll dig down a little, find out how deep this goes.’

  I stuck around.

  So did twelve other reporters. It didn’t do us any good. Plenty of folk were willing to tell us about the loud explosion, the windows splintering into fragments, the trembling floor and the vibration of it as plaster was cracking and splitting from walls and ceilings.

  But there wasn’t one guy who could tell me what caused the explosion!

  There wasn’t one guy who could tell me who, if anyone, had been in that apartment when the explosion took place!

  It was the dust in the air that gave me my thirst. I quit after an hour, found myself a bar with bright red, leather-covered high-stools, twined my legs around the long, chromium-plated tubular legs as I gratefully moistened my dry mouth with ice-cold lager.

  The bartender eyed my suit, which was soiled from plaster and dust, asked inquisitively: ‘Were you anywhere near the explosion on 47th?’

  ‘I arrived later,’ I told him.

  ‘Yeah!’ He suddenly wasn’t so affable, was suddenly cold and distant.

  I put down my empty glass, gestured for a refill. As he gave me my change, he said knowingly: ‘Cop, huh?’

  ‘Way off mark,’ I replied. ‘Reporter.’

  He lost his distant, cold aloofness, thawed visibly, rested his elbows on the counter.

  ‘One helluva explosion,’ he told me. ‘Rattled the glasses on my shelves.’ He leaned farther forward across the counter, lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘You figure it really was them fellas? Seems like there’s nothing they won’t do.’

  ‘What fellas?’ I asked sharply.

  ‘Them Kremlin guys,’ he said. ‘They say as how they’ve got cells all over, a vast spy ring. Not proper Russians either. Just ordinary fellas like you and me, just plain ordinary Americans who’ve been fed a lotta propaganda. I’ve heard they’re gonna blow up all the public statues, and city halls. There’s a fifth column in Chicago big enough to be a sixth, seventh and eighth column as well.’

  ‘You’ve got it all figured, Bud,’ I said. ‘I can tell right off you’re a clear-thinking, logical, American citizen.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ he said with pleasure. ‘Plain as the nose on your face. This is the start of it. Pretty soon they’ll blow up the power houses and the arms depots. Then where shall we be?’

  ‘You tell me,’ I suggested.

  ‘Right in the thick of it,’ he said, leaning over the counter towards me, jaw jutting and eyes glowing. ‘Why from what I hear, there ain’t nothing those guys won’t do.’

  I took another deep draft of beer. ‘I once heard,’ I informed him, ‘that when they’re short of grub in Russia, they round up the new-born babies, share them among the starving peasants to ward off the famine. They say there’s parts of Russia where the peasants have never eaten any other kind of meat.’

  There was the faintest gleam of doubt in his eyes. ‘It ain’t likely that would happen here. Not with Americans.’

  ‘You never can tell,’ I said solemnly, and finished my beer.

  He thought it over. He said slowly, like he was still chewing over what I’d said and was finding it a tasty morsel of news, ‘Why d’you figure they use babies? Why not the bigger kids.’

  I stared at him solemnly. ‘Can’t you figure that for yourself?’

  He was leaning right across the counter now, jaw jutting and eyes glowing fanatically.

  ‘Seems to me like the big kids might go around farther.’

  ‘But the bigger children can be worked,’ I explained. ‘They can be harnessed to ploughs, lashed ‘til they drop from exhaustion. Besides...’ I paused dramatically, and his eyes glowed hungrily, his fanatical mind eager for a fresh tit-bit.

  ‘Besides ...,’ I said, ‘... the flesh of a baby is more... tender!’

  This is the middle of the 20th Century. This is the age of the word. Not the word of brotherly love, as advocated two thousand years ago by a simple fisherman, but the age of the printed and spoken word.

  Never before in history have the words of prominent men been so forced upon simple peoples of the world. Spoken words are hurled through the ether, hammered again and again at peace-loving folk who want nothing other than to go on being peace loving.

  The ordinary guy can’t get away from those words. The crackling radio news voice follows him to the ends of the world, the printed page carries its large quota of politicians’ statements, and the ordinary man sitting at home in his stockinged feet, relaxing after a hard day’s work, is shocked and worried, made to feel he is living on the knife-edge of atomic destruction as the battle of the ether is waged unceasi
ngly and emerges from his loudspeaker in the form of news broadcasts.

  Politicians consider themselves pretty important guys. Maybe they get that way on account of talking so much about themselves, while talking themselves into the House of Representatives.

  But no matter how important they think themselves, they know they can’t run wars without help. They need the help of the ordinary folk to wage war.

  Hitler once needed the help of ordinary folk. He set a new fashion in politics. He discovered the way to ensure obtaining the help of the ordinary folk was, to use his own words: ‘The printed word and the broadcast word. The lie. The thumping big lie, repeated again and again, hammered at the nation by the radio and the press, repeated ceaselessly until a whole nation believes the unbelievable.’

  Yeah, Hitler set a new fashion for politicians, and he chose the eve of the discovery of the atom bomb to make his offering to the Gods of Mars. The lie, the half-lie and the half-truth as well as the truth can and are now used unceasingly to keep the ordinary folk of all the world dangling in suspense. All of them! All the quiet, ordinary folk of all the countries of the world are lectured and instructed, warned and persuaded, worked on by propaganda in every manner known to radio and printing.

  While all they want is to live in peace!

  It’s a tremendous snowball of words. The fear of war is spread, military service becomes compulsory. Home guards are enrolled, blood donors are registered, pilots are trained, chemists and scientists are working overtime and the quiet, ordinary folk of all countries are on the threshold of disaster, about to plunge into the final struggle between nations, knowing full well that in this atomic age the forces of destruction, once unleashed, will be too powerful for anyone to control.

  Knowing full well that when that war ends, there will be nothing but lifeless devastation.

  Knowing this is universal suicide!

  Being a reporter gives you an objective view on life. You get used to being apart from the crowd and watching folk working, thinking and throbbing with life.

  Maybe I’ve got the wrong angle. Maybe the quiet, ordinary folk don’t feel the way I think they do. Maybe they ain’t so quiet, maybe they wanna be talked into war.

  If so. I’m wrong.

  But this jutting-jawed bartender with glowing, fanatical eyes symbolized my impressions. This is the middle of the 20th Century, the atomic age when religious organisations have finally agreed that their followers are not obliged to believe in Hell, when even fanciful folk no longer believe in ghosts, and when the law no longer recognises evidence proving a woman is a witch.

  Yet here was a guy whose mind had been conditioned by the radio and the press to believe almost anything bad said or written about a certain country.

  I believe there’s a whole lotta things wrong in Russia. I believe there’s a whole lotta things wrong in the whole of this topsy-turvy world.

  But the real hope for civilisation is that ordinary folk, the quiet, ordinary folk, won’t be herded beyond the limits of reasonableness by the ferocity of printed and broadcast propaganda when the pressure is put on and is intended to whip the peoples of the world into red-hot, suicidal war fervour.

  I pushed my glass across the counter, stood up, lit a cigarette.

  ‘I figure there’s nothing them bastards wouldn’t do,’ he said, eyes glowing angrily.

  ‘Listen, pal,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t know what kinda cereals you take for breakfast, but you oughta take more salt with them.’

  There was that glint of suspicion in his eyes again. ‘Say,’ he rasped. ‘Who’s side you on anyway?’

  ‘The only side that matters,’ I told him. ‘The side of you and me and the rest of humanity.’

  The suspicion in his eyes heightened, his lips curled in a sneer. ‘That’s just the way it’s done,’ he mouthed. ‘It’s just the way you Reds do it, worm yourself into a guy’s confidence, suck him dry and pass on the information to an agent so it goes back to Moscow.’

  ‘Thanks for the tip about the explosion,’ I told him. ‘It’s useful to know who really did it.’

  ‘You! A reporter!’ he sneered disbelievingly. ‘You’re a fifth columnist. Maybe I ought to call the cops now.’

  ‘There’s one thing you oughta do for sure,’ I told him.

  The glowing eyes were suspicious but curious. ‘Yeah? What’s that?’

  ‘Stop reading the papers,’ I told him.

  I went back to the apartment block. It was still cordoned off, still overrun by uniforms. I used different tactics this time, ignored the dicks and the Army brass examining the ruins for evidence of sabotage, and finally ran to earth the manager of the block, who lived in the penthouse on the roof.

  He was a podgy guy with fat hands, bald head, watery blue eyes and a habit of putting his fist against his mouth to cover the discreet little cough that prefaced everything he said.

  He opened up the door of his snug little flat, eyed me with an air of resignation. Then he coughed against his fist, said wearily: ‘More questions, I suppose?’

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been mistaken for a cop. I let it ride. ‘Just a few more,’ I said.

  He opened the door bleakly, invited me into a midget-sized lounge. I didn’t take the seat he offered, instead stood with feet astride, rocking back on my heels and eyeing him piercingly. ‘What’s the name of the party who rents that flat?’

  He coughed against his fist. ‘How many more times?’ he sighed. ‘I musta told it a dozen times.’ He sighed again. ‘Beryl Pinder.’

  ‘Did she live alone?’

  He nodded. ‘Sure. New tenant. Been here about a month.’

  ‘Where was she when it happened?’

  He looked up at me sharply, coughed against his hand. ‘Say, you fellas must be disorganzied. You’ve got her down at headquarters. You oughta know better than me.’

  ‘Just answer the questions,’ I said grimly. ‘Where was she when it happened?’

  He shrugged his shoulders, coughed. ‘All I know is what she told me. She was just entering the building when it happened.’

  ‘How long had she been out?’

  There was a sharp suspicion in his watery eyes. ‘I’ve only got her word for it,’ he said. ‘The same as she told you people. Three or four hours.’

  ‘Can you confirm that?’

  The discreet cough. ‘I’ve told you guys again and again. All I know is that an hour before the explosion, a registered parcel arrived for her. The postman couldn’t deliver it, couldn’t get a reply, so he brought it down to the commissionaire. The commissionaire signed for it, took it up to her apartment, left it on her table, using the master key. She wasn’t in the apartment then. That’s all I can tell you.’

  ‘Where’s the commissionaire?’ I said, ‘I wanna talk with him.’

  The suspicion in his eyes was strong now. This time he didn’t cough against the back of his hand. ‘Now wait a minute,’ he said slowly. ‘Just what kinda cop are you anyway? You’ve had my commissionaire down at headquarters for more than an hour. Now you’re here asking me where he is. I’m getting kinda sick of all this. On top of it, I’ve got dozens of tenants on my heels, asking when the repairs are gonna be done, asking me for this and ...’

  ‘Cut it,’ I snarled. ‘I don’t wanna hear about your worries. Who were the eye-witnesses near enough to see what happened?’

  He took a deep breath, sighed with delicate impatience, gestured expressively with his podgy hands. ‘Say, fella. Why don’t you go back down headquarters. Seems like everyone you wanna talk to is right there.’

  I glared at him.

  He glared back.

  I took a deep breath, thrust my hands deep into my pockets. ‘Okay,’ I growled sullenly. ‘I guess that’s all.’ He stood at the door of his apartment and watched me as I made my way downstairs. There was bewilderment as well as suspicion in his watery blue eyes.

  2

  To be a good reporter, you have to be in well with the cops. And as in
all other walks of life, there are good cops and bad cops. That’s why I’m not such a good reporter as I might be. I don’t get on so well with the bad cops.

  But I was in luck. I made enquiries at headquarters, learned that Inspector Blunt was in charge of the case. That was fine and dandy, because Blunt’s a good cop, an honest cop, and by way of being a friend of mine.

  I spoke to cop Sergeants, argued with their superior officers and finally made them obtain telephone permission from Blunt for me to join him in the sweat room.

  The sweat room’s where the cops get most of their information. And that’s the place where you can tell the difference between good cops and bad cops.

  The good cop uses psychology on the suspect being cross-examined under the strong, white arc lamps.

  The bad cop locks himself in with the suspect and two broad-shouldered dicks, and none of them emerges until the suspect has volunteered information. During the course of such an interview, it frequently occurs that the suspect accidentally falls off his chair. That’s supposed to explain how he gets the blue welts that bruise his flesh from his neck to the base of the spine and cause him to arch with pain. That’s supposed to explain the blood on the floor, the pulped nose, the discoloured eye and puffed lips.

  It doesn’t, of course. But then, who worries about a guy who is caught red-handed and is a known criminal? And, anyway, by the time he comes up for trial, bruises will have disappeared.

  Blunt was a good cop. The sweat room door wasn’t locked! I sidled inside unobtrusively, leaned against the shadowed, whitewashed wall and peered through the cigarette smoke at the dame sitting on the solitary chair centered beneath the strong, white, burning glare of a naked, high-voltage electric bulb.

  Blunt was standing facing her just outside the circle of fierce white light projected downwards by the lamp. His face was shadowy, his figure a dark silhouette. Other hard-faced, shadowy figures stood around staring at the dame intently.

  She was a proud dame. I could see that right away. At the same time, I saw lots of other things. She wasn’t scared. Not one tiny bit! On the contrary, she was hopping mad, Infuriated and dangerously angry, but clever enough to keep herself under control.