Free They Never Looked Inside by Michael Gilbert

man.
    Had he gone upstairs? Was his destination, perhaps, the rooms over the shop and not the shop itself?
    “Anything else I can get you, sir?”
    “Half a dozen razor blades, and a small bottle of aspirin, please.”
    He wished he knew more about the interior arrangement of such buildings. In this shop, for instance, there was no visible means of access to the upper storey at all. Presumably the stairs ran from the back room behind the counter; or they might connect directly with the private-looking front door on the right of the shop door.
    “Anything else, sir?”
    “Yes,” said McCann, suddenly making up his mind. “I want a bed-sitting-room.”
    “Who doesn’t?” said the chemist, unmoved.
    “I mean,” the Major ploughed on, “do you suppose that any of the upper stories here might be to let? Coming past that newsagent’s on the corner of this block I happened to notice that there were no curtains in the top floor windows. Perhaps you might know of something to let there.”
    The silence that greeted this remark lasted so long that McCann looked up in sudden anticipation. The chemist was smiling at him.
    “I fancy, sir,” he said, “that we have something upstairs that might interest you. Step this way.”
    Out of the corner of his eye the Major saw the figures of two men coming through the shop door.

 
5
An Accomplished Young Man
     
    At about the same time as the events recorded at the close of the last chapter, Inspector Hazlerigg was sitting in his office.
    Indeed, he seemed scarcely to have moved, or even changed his position, since his interview with Major McCann.
    Standing beside the desk, examining a large-scale map of the West End, was Detective Inspector Pickup, a quiet, sandy-haired, inconspicuous North Countryman. He was, by a head and shoulders, the best detective inspector in the Yard and soon to win recognition and a Chief Inspectorship, when he broke the Harrogate child murder case and apprehended Captain Throat (whose unpleasant habit, as the public will remember, was to strangle girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen).
    “Magnus” Marr, the oldest of the Murder Squad, used to say: “When I get Pickup given to me I know it’s going to be a difficult job.”
    “Go over that last bit again,” said Hazlerigg.
    “It amounts to no more than this, sir,” said Pickup. “Out of a dozen lines we’ve been covering in the last months, five have gone to ground in the Berkeley Square, Shepherd’s Market area. More exactly, in an area bounded by Piccadilly on the south, Park Lane on the west, Bond Street on the east, and Bruton Street-Mount Street on the north.”
    He ran a stubby forefinger round the map.
    “It’s a big area.”
    Pickup accepted the implied rebuke calmly.
    “We ought to have done better,” he agreed. “Even as it is, we’ve got nothing very definite. There was the pedlar we were following – you remember – who gave us the slip in the Curzon Cinema. The stolen car we found in Charles Street. That business with the drunk Italian girl on Hay Hill – I thought that might be promising at the time, but it came to nothing.”
    Hazlerigg nodded. Pickup rarely spoke at random; he knew something more was coming.
    “That man you saw the other day, sir: Major McCann. Sergeant Crabbe followed him for a bit, but you ordered him off. Crabbe mentioned the ‘Dresden Shepherdess’ in his report – that’s a Shepherd’s Market pub. But that’s not all—”
    “Yes?” said Hazlerigg.
    “I didn’t feel too happy about him,” said Pickup apologetically, “so I followed him myself. The next day. Several days after, in fact. It wasn’t difficult. He always went to the same place. It was a flat in a newish block, on the corner of Flaxman Street and Berkeley Square. Nine o’clock sharp he’d arrive, every morning. And left at six o’clock in the evening – or later. Of course, I couldn’t watch the house the whole time, but I didn’t see anyone go in or out of