Petrella at 'Q' by Michael Gilbert

German automatic which his father had brought home as a souvenir on one of his leaves from North Africa.
    Woolcombe Park is not in Q Division, and Petrella only learned about it when he read it in the paper the following morning. Hard on the heels of the report came Mrs. Oldenshaw. She was so upset that it was a few minutes before Petrella could gather what she was trying to tell him.
    She said, “What shall I do with it? The money, I mean. They say I shall have it all now. I don’t want it.”
    “You’d better consult the solicitors,” said Petrella. “They’ll tell you what to do.”
    “Oh, them. They just say it’s mine, and I’ve got to have it. I wouldn’t have said ‘no’ to a little bit. That’s what Mrs. Key meant me to have. She didn’t mean me to have it all.”
    “If you really want to get rid of some of it,” said Petrella, “why don’t you give it to Father Amberline, at St. Marks.”
    His mind was on a very different sort of problem. In front of him on the table was a telex message. “Important. Repeated to all Stations in Q Division and for information to all other Divisions. Arthur Lamson’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal at three o’clock this afternoon.”

Why Tarry the Wheels of his Chariot?
     
    That morning, because his wife and small son were away at the seaside, Detective Inspector Patrick Petrella cooked his own breakfast. He should have been with them, but his stand-in had broken his wrist in an argument with an Irish lorry-driver and his second-in-command had mumps.
    As he walked through the sun-baked streets, from his flat in Passmore Gardens to the Divisional Sub-Station in Patton Street, there was an ache at the back of his neck and a buzzing in his ears, and his tongue felt a size too large for his mouth. Any competent doctor would have diagnosed strain from over-work and packed him straight off on holiday.
    The morning was taken up with a new outbreak of shoplifting. In the middle of the afternoon the telex message was brought into his room.
    “Important. Repeated to all Stations in Q Division and for information to all other Divisions. Arthur Lamson’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Criminal Appeal at three o’clock this afternoon.”
    Petrella was still trying to work through all the unpleasant possibilities of this message when Chief Superintendent Watterson arrived.
    He said, “I see you’ve had the news, Patrick. It was that ass Downing who did it.”
    He referred, in this disrespectful manner, to Lord Justice Downing, one of the more unpredictable of Her Majesty’s judges.
    “I was afraid it might happen,” said Petrella.
    He spoke so flatly that Watterson looked at him and said, “You ought to be on leave. Are you feeling all right?”
    “It’s the heat. A decent thunderstorm would clear the air.”
    “What we want,” said Watterson, “isn’t a decent thunderstorm. It’s a decent bench of judges. Not a crowd of nitpicking old women. I wonder if they’ve got the remotest idea of how much damage a man like Lamson can do.”
    “There’ll be no holding him now,” said Petrella.
    Arthur Lamson was once described by the papers as the unofficial mayor of Grendel Street. He ran a gymnasium and sporting club, was a big donor to all local charities and had a cheerful word and a pat on the head for any child, or a pinch of the bottom for any pretty girl. He was also a criminal, who specialised in protection rackets, employing the youths who hung around his gymnasium to break up the premises – and occasionally the persons – of anyone who refused him payment.
    Since he took no part in these acts of violence himself he had been a difficult man to peg. Indeed, he might have continued untouched by the law for a very long time if he had not fallen out with Bruno.
    Bruno was a fair-haired boy, with a deceptively open face and a smile which showed every one of the thirty-two teeth in his mouth. He was a great favourite with the