But who the hell was he? Whatever else he was, Occleshaw was a British cop and, as far as she knew, British cops didn’t carry guns. Come to think of it, she’d never met any cop who could shoot that well. Then again, maybe Special Branch was ‘special’ that way, too. Not that it mattered; somebody was firing a goddamn great big gun at her with the clear intention of blowing her head off and it was the gun, not its owner’s identity, that concerned her right now. Whoever he was though, he was smart, lying in wait the way he had; more like a hunter than a cop. She found herself thinking of John Bone, and for a brief, superstitious instant wondered if his ghost had come back to haunt her, but she cast off the idea like the bad dream it was; ghosts haunted with moans and rattling chains, not .45 automatics.
She eased forward an inch or two, just enough to see around the beam and up to what she thought was the shooter’s position. If he was firing from there his aim would become more difficult the closer Jane came to the end of the bridge, more and more crossbeams getting in the way of his line of fire. The real problem, though, was the inescapable fact of the gathering daylight; another few minutes and there’d be enough to pick her off with ease – he was coming close enough as it was.
Edging outward she tried to draw his fire, once and for all establishing his position, but nothing happened. Above her head the train had moved almost entirely past and there were no signs of any flashlights from above. Maybe he’d moved but Jane didn’t think so. Clenching her teeth and trying to keep down the rising bile of fear in her throat, she forced herself to look down. The arc of the bridge’s construction had taken her within a hundred feet of the water. She could now just see the brownish inshore currents swirling around the massive cut-stone footings of the bridge.
No way out, even if she was going to try to duck out of view by going to the girder below, simply because there wasn’t one; in crossing to this side of the bridge she’d moved steadily downward until there were no more support beams. The only way open to her was down the next three or four horizontal girders to one of the two massive end beams sunk into the footings, and onto one of the metal ladders she could see attached to both of them. From the ladders she could climb down to the base of the bridge with relative ease and then make her way along beside the water, hidden from above by the screening line of willows and old beech trees at the river’s edge.
Her only chance was surprise. Taking a deep breath and bending low, she came out from behind the protective ironwork in a rush, ignoring the open air beneath her feet, fixing her gaze on the next beam.
She was within a few feet of it when the first shot rang out, the bullet plucking at the hem of her coat with a sound like an angry bee. She never heard the second explosion. Toppling off the downward arcing girder, she twisted and turned in the empty air as she fell towards the dark, roiling water below.
The man crouching in the well of the inspection ladder a hundred feet away peered into the dark, massive fretwork of girders and beams, trying to see if he’d hit his target. He rarely missed but this hadn’t been the easiest of positions to shoot from. He smiled wanly to himself. He must be getting old; next he’d start blaming his eyesight or his quivering, arthritic fingers. He waited but there was no further movement, although he was fairly sure he’d seen someone fall. It didn’t really matter; one way or another his work here was done. As long as that fool Occleshaw didn’t capture her he was happy.
He slipped his flat black pistol back into its holster. The wind had tossed his necktie back over his shoulder and he flipped it down again with an irritated movement of his small, long-fingered hand. He had purchased the tie in London in the Burlington Arcade off Bond Street the day before the entire place had been bombed into perdition. He thought it was quite attractive: little black doves on a dark blue ground. He eased himself upright and began to climb the inspection ladder to the bridge and the Robbie Burns.
Chapter Seventeen
When Lucas Dundee woke for the second time, the rope from the cramped locker of MV Bagby Park had been replaced by a thick, down-filled mattress and the smell of hops by the faint scent of lavender. Opening his eyes he saw that he was covered by a heavy quilt done in rag squares and his head was resting on a plump pillow covered in crisp, starched linen. The words ‘AKERGILL SANITORIUM’ were stamped across it in faded blue.
Dundee sat up and blearily looked around. He was in a small room, no more than twelve feet on a side, the roof over his head sloping down to an eave. The dormer window was covered by blackout curtains but not so well that he couldn’t see a faint line of weak dawn light between them. An attic room under the roof, then. In the distance he thought he could hear the boom of the sea against rock but he wasn’t completely sure.
He swung his legs out of bed and discovered that his feet were bare and he was dressed in green striped pyjamas. There was a pair of plaid, well-used slippers on the bare wood floor and he slipped them on. Directly in front of him was a mirror-topped chest of drawers. On it he could see a porcelain sachet like the ones his mother had kept in every bedroom of their estate; the source of the lavender smell.
The only other furniture in the room was a plain wooden chair with a well-worn seat placed under the window. Over the back of the chair was a set of clothes suited to the country: corduroy trousers, a heavy cotton shirt and a tweed jacket. On the seat of the chair a pair of heavy lace-up ankle boots, scuffed but sturdy looking, waited side by side. There was no sign of his uniform. To the left, a few feet from the bed, was a wooden door, its top lintel cut at an angle to accommodate the slope of the roof. All very homey. He stood up and headed for the door. He’d only gone a step or two from the bed when he had to stop, one hand shooting out to grip the dresser for support. His knees almost gave out on him and he stood there, breathing deeply for a moment, head swimming and the room doing a slow dance around him. There was a dull ache in the back of his head and a sharper pain behind his eyes, a fierce headache that pounded beneath his forehead and even across his cheeks and jaw. His throat was raw and he could still smell the rich, sweet chemical reek of the ether Russell had drugged him with a second time.
The room stopped moving and Dundee managed to move away from the dresser and reached the door without falling down. There was no lock, only an old-fashioned latch and bar. He pressed down on the handle, the bar lifted and he pushed open the door. It led into a second, larger area at the top of a narrow flight of stairs.
A man in a white jacket with ‘Akergill Sanitarium’ stitched on the pocket was leaning back in the mated pair of the chair under his window. He was wearing white trousers to match the jacket and a white collarless shirt. On his feet he was wearing heavy-soled black shoes of the kind a policeman might have. He was reading Rogue Male, a penny dreadful with a garish cover by someone named Geoffrey Household.
At first glance he looked like a hospital orderly, except for the bulkiness of his shoulders and neck and the visible leather strap of a holster harness under his jacket. There was a small, plain table beside the man’s chair with a blank-faced telephone on it. Seeing Dundee peering out the door, the man calmly put his book upside down in his lap, then leaned over and picked up the telephone receiver. He waited calmly then spoke softly into the phone for a moment before hanging up. He looked at Dundee and smiled. ‘The doctor will be up shortly,’ said the man. The accent was flat, bland and Midwestern.
‘Where am I?’ asked Dundee
The man stared at him with an absolute lack of interest. ‘In a hospital, of course. You had a bad fall, don’t you remember? You banged your head.’ He picked up his book again, wetting the end of his thumb and flipping the page.
‘Like hell!’ Dundee was starting to feel nauseated. His head hurt worse than ever and all he wanted to do was lie down again. ‘A guy named Russell knocked me out with ether. Twice.’
The man in the white jacket looked up from his book. ‘Sure he did,’ he said and went back to his reading. Dundee looked at him fiercely, his frustration rising. His head continue
d to pound and there was a faint ringing in his ears. He slammed the door with as much energy as he could muster, then turned around and staggered back to the comforting embrace of the down mattress and the crisp white pillow.
His eyes closed but he didn’t sleep. Comfortably outfitted or not, it was definitely enemy territory. Surely Charlie hadn’t gone to all this trouble just for him? It was too fantastic. But the whole charade of a convalescent hospital, complete with attendants in white jackets and attending physicians, couldn’t have any other, more specifically criminal, purpose. Leaving West Point and trying to avoid both his father and his father’s sometimes questionable business enterprises had seemed like a good idea. Above all, Lucas Alexander Decimus Dundee saw the civilised world as a structure based on logic and truth. His father had spent a lifetime bending both to his own pursuits so bending them back seemed like a reasonable alternative. Now he wasn’t so sure. With the exception of the regular and boringly obvious crimes of passion, every wrongdoing he’d ever investigated or prosecuted had its own rationale, at least to the perpetrator; find that rationale and follow it and everything would inevitably fall into place – method, motive and eventually the gonif who’d done the deed. The elegant simplicity had attracted Lucas right from the start. He liked rules and putting away people who broke them.
Except this seemed to be doing nothing but breaking them, with no rhyme or reason. Dundee listed them again, dragging them through his tortured, ether-addled brain, kicking and screaming, trying to put squares pegs into round holes once again: Why steal something you couldn’t sell? Why make expensive duplicates of jewelled objects you didn’t intend to use? Why make your trail so easy to follow? Why use ether when a bullet would have been simpler? Why go to all the trouble of a phoney hospital to convince an old schoolmate of… what?
‘Mr Portal?’
Dundee’s eye fluttered open. There was a man in a knee-length white coat sitting on the edge of the bed. He was young, no more than thirty or so, with thinning red-brown hair and a plain, roundish face with intelligent eyes and a boyish scattering of freckles across his nose. Like a lot of red-haired people he had virtually no visible eyelashes or eyebrows, giving him a chronic look of surprise. He had a stethoscope hanging from around the collar of his finely striped white shirt. A doctor. He paused and reached into the breast pocket of his white coat and brought out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. He put them on, fitting them over his pink ears. They made him look a little less boyish but not much. Dundee looked past him at the window. The pale line of light between the blackout curtains didn’t seem any brighter; if he’d slept it hadn’t been for long.
‘My name is Dundee. I am an officer in the American Army. The Judge Advocate General’s office.’
‘Not according to the identity papers you were found with. Apparently your name is David Portal. You’re a Canadian in the Merchant Marine. From what we can tell you had an accident while you were on leave. You wound up here.’ Dundee stared blankly at the man. He was in the loony bin and this guy was one of the inmates.
‘Where is Charlie Danby? I want to talk to him right now.’
‘Who?’
‘Charles Danby, Colonel Charles Danby, the man who runs this place.’ Dundee’s earlier feeling of panic was returning; he struggled to sit up.
‘Mr Portal, please try to calm down. The director of this facility is not named Danby, it’s Sir John Gadsby and he is neither American nor is he a colonel. He’s a doctor. So am I. My name is McNab.’ The man in the white coat put a hand on Dundee’s shoulder. He struggled to get hold of himself; if he kept on this way they’d put him in a straitjacket and throw him into a padded room.
‘Then I want to see this Gadsby guy,’ he said, settling back against the pillow.
‘In due time,’ said McNab. ‘At present we have your health to think of.’ McNab fell silent and got about his business, listening to his patient’s heart and taking his pulse. Dundee let him, his mind racing; there was no need to antagonise him before he knew what in God’s name was going on. If Charlie wanted to continue with his elaborate charade, then let him; he’d play along for the moment. After five minutes McNab sat back and smiled down at Dundee.
‘Well, Mr Portal, you seem fit enough for someone who took a serious blow to the head.’
‘Where exactly am I?’ asked Dundee.
‘Akergill Hall,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s a sanitarium.’
‘Private?’ asked Dundee. It would have to be for Charlie’s purposes.
‘It was at one time,’ McNab answered, ‘but that was before the war, of course.’ He sighed and took off his spectacles, folding them and putting them back into his breast pocket. Dundee watched him carefully as he did so then smiled to himself. McNab went on. ‘Most of our patients come from His Majesty’s Government now. Air Force in the main.’
Dundee sat up in bed and buttoned his pyjama top. ‘Oh?’
‘We specialise in burns and reconstructive surgery mostly. I believe you Americans call it “plastic” surgery. We also specialise in injuries to the brain. Amnesia.’
‘I thought you said I was Canadian.’
McNab smiled easily. ‘By definition a Canadian is an American, in the largest sense, since they occupy a somewhat greater portion of the North American continent than the United States.’ He patted Dundee’s knee under the quilt. ‘You seem to be quite well, at least superficially. When you feel up to it you can come down to the dining hall and have some breakfast.’ He smiled. ‘I’d stay away from the kippers if I was you. Too salty for a man in your condition.’ His smile broadened. ‘Although I must say, Cook is inordinately proud of them.’
The young man clapped him on the knee again and stood up. A moment later he was gone, closing the door softly behind, the latch bar clicking into place. Dundee remained where he was for a second. His headache was still there but somehow he felt a little better for whatever small shred of sleep he’d just had. For a while there he’d thought he was going crazy – maybe he was a merchant seaman from Canada with some kind of head injury. That was no more crazy than chasing after the stolen crown jewels. He smiled grimly to himself, then flung aside the quilt and climbed out of bed again, crossing over to the chair.
He unbuttoned the pyjama top and slipped off the bottoms, then suddenly stopped. It was the glasses. People wear them either because they’re near- or far-sighted or perhaps just for reading and when put on or taken off the wearer’s eyes change, the pupils either dilating or contracting. When McNab had taken his spectacles off a few moments ago his eyes hadn’t changed at all. Naked and shivering in the early morning cold, Dundee began to put on the unfamiliar clothes.
Set dressing, just like they did at Metro. During the Thelma Todd investigation they tracked a potential lead to her killer to the set of the actress’s last film, a Laurel and Hardy comedy called The Bohemian Girl. He’d been transfixed when Stan Laurel, once Charlie Chaplin’s understudy, demonstrated his craft by transforming himself into a perfect evocation of the Little Tramp simply by changing his expression and walking with his feet splayed out. As Oliver Hardy, Laurel’s fat partner, said at the time, ‘It’s the little things that do it.’ This time it was a little thing that tipped off Dundee. McNab’s spectacles had plain glass lenses; they were phonies. The red-haired man might know something about medicine but Dundee was willing to bet he wasn’t a doctor.
He finished dressing, lacing on the heavy boots, then made for the door. He swung it open, ducking low, and stepped into the tiny attic vestibule. There was no sign of the guard but his book was lying beside the telephone. Dundee picked it up. Something about a British big game hunter stalking Hitler and getting more than he bargained for.
‘Wishful thinking,’ Dundee muttered under his breath. He headed down the narrow stairs.
Chapter Eighteen
Jane Todd hit the rushing surface of the Tweed River feet first; had she been unlucky enough to strike the water with any other part of her body she would almost cert
ainly have been killed instantly. As it was, the force of her impact took her down almost to the bottom of the fast-flowing river, knocking the wind out of her and filling her mouth and eyes with waterborne silt, thick as mud, which quickly began to choke her. It was that and not the bullet that was now threatening to end her life, the bullet having done nothing more than singe the back of her extended right hand, startling her and sending her on her headlong fall from the bridge girder to the water below.
She struggled to the surface, tearing at the sodden wool coat, which was now dragging her under. She finally managed to peel it off, all the while being tossed and turned beneath the surface, tumbling along in the surging, invisible currents created by the underwater caissons for the immense bridge overhead. Fighting free of the coat, she pushed herself upward, lungs on fire as she stroked to the surface, blinded by the grit in the water and her own terror.
She knew that if she didn’t reach the surface in the next few seconds she would almost surely drown.
And then she broke free, the dark, rushing embrace of the deadly water replaced by the cold dawn air. Coughing and retching, taking in deep, gagging breaths, she raised her bleeding hand and wiped the silt from her eyes, all the while being thrown steadily downstream, away from the bridge and her searching adversaries. She finally regained her senses enough to be able to look around. She instinctively began swimming towards the closest bank of the river, letting the current take her and not trying to fight. By the time she reached the water’s edge and managed to drag herself up on the narrow bank she was freezing cold and exhausted. Unknown to him, the man who’d shot her on the bridge had almost made his kill after all.
She rolled over, her back against the stony ground, gasping for breath and staring up into the dawn sky. She gathered her strength and sat up, looking around. In the dim light she could see that she’d been carried a good mile along the river, a great sweeping bend putting her almost out of sight of the bridge. Silhouetted against the brightening sky she could see the last sweeping stone arch and the black shape of the train on top of it, smoke puffing from its locomotive as it pushed the train off the bridge. It wouldn’t take long for them to reach Selkirk and begin to organise a proper search. Occleshaw was an idiot but he was stubborn; he wouldn’t take it for granted that she’d been killed until he saw her cold, dead body.
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