by John Creasey
And with the movement, there was a metamorphosis; it was as if the years rolled away and as he stood here, balanced precariously against a chimney stack and the slates, he was the other self that he had been long, long ago.
He was the Baron.
He was the man of his youth, daring, dazzling; taking risks which would have cowed most men; sometimes giving chase to criminals, as he was now, sometimes on the run from the police who had often been close on his heels. Then he had been jewel-thief extraordinary, cracksman, and also a kind of Robin Hood, robbing the rich to help the poor. Further back, long years further back, he had been a thief both for the thrill and for the gain, robbing only the wealthy and yet on the wrong side of the law and for a few brief years, making his living from his daring thefts.
It was like a vivid series of flashbacks. The excitement and the danger had brought them to him; if he slipped he would roll down the roof and crash, breaking bones even if he did not kill himself.
All these flashes took only swift moments of time; and while the cloak of the past spread over him, he scanned the roof – and caught sight of the man who had so nearly hanged him. The man was peering behind a chimney stack amid that forest of small red chimneys, two or three sending smoke drifting lazily towards the cloudless sky. The roofs of this row of houses were continuous, and there was a flat ridge running across the top, broken by chimney stacks each of which obviously served two houses. He was breathing easily now and felt completely poised and confident, in spite of soreness of his fingers, grazed where the man had stamped on them. He walked along one section of the ledge to the next chimney stack, actually pulling the splinter out of his finger. He reached the stack and peered round, then saw something dark hurtling towards him, twisting and turning.
It was a slate off the roof. If it struck him, it could lay his cheek open to the bone.
He ducked.
It passed a few inches above his head, and crashed on to the roof behind him. He made a swift movement towards the next chimney stack but when he was halfway between the two, another slate came skimming through the air, about chin high. He could not go either right or left, all he could do was bend his knees and crouch down.
The slate missed; he did not know by how much.
He heard it crash with deafening noise, and almost immediately heard someone shouting down in the street.
“Look out!”
“Careful!”
A woman screamed: “Mind, Georgey!”
Another slate came hurtling while others, loosened, began to slither down.
Mannering, crouching, reached the next chimney stack, heart in mouth. No more slates were in the air, but how could he tell when another might come? There were more cries from below but nothing to suggest that anyone had been hurt. It was surprising how clearly the voices sounded.
“There’s someone up there.”
“Bloody lunatic.”
“We ought to send for the police.”
“That’s right – police!”
Mannering held his breath as he ventured on the ledge towards the next stack, and as he did so, caught a glimpse of the stockinged face. His assailant was several houses along, lowering himself over the edge to a back garden.
So there would be no more danger from slates, and Mannering quickened his pace, watching the other all the time.
The head disappeared, but he was still holding on to the guttering by his hands. Mannering tried to quicken his pace, but a slate moved under his feet, slowed him down. Turning his back on the spot where the man had disappeared, he spread-eagled himself face downwards, and, clutching the rough edges of the slates, lowered himself until his feet lodged against the guttering. This was the spot where the man had gone over, if there were a chance to catch him it was by dropping over the edge.
A woman shouted from the back garden.
A child cried out: “Look, Mummy!”
Then the guttering gave way under Mannering’s weight, and he went hurtling down.
For the first moment, he thought he would go all the way to the ground, and could not avoid injury, but suddenly his feet jolted against a hard, unyielding drain pipe and his ankles and knees were shot with pain. Next moment he was on his hands and knees on top of a pebbly roof, the blood rushing to his head.
The child was screaming: “Mummy, Mummy!”
A woman shouted: “Benny! Benny, come here!” Mannering got unsteadily to his knees, and it placed him so that he could see into the back garden. The fugitive was opening a small gate which led into an alleyway between two rows of garden walls. A child of four or five years was standing and shouting, red apple of a face glistening. A woman in her thirties was running towards him, and as the gate slammed she snatched him to her.
“It’s all right, Benny, it’s all right!” she gasped, as footsteps sounded in the alley.
Mannering eased his position until he was sitting down, and then began to feel his knees, hands and elbows gingerly. There was a graze on the ball of his left thumb, his fingers were sore and his knees were tender, and one of his ankles was painful, but he did not think any bones were broken. The sound of footsteps faded, and he knew that his assailant had escaped.
But someone might have stopped him at the end of the alley.
He peered along, seeing no one and no sign of movement until suddenly the small boy pointed and said again: “Look, Mummy!”
The woman stared up, aghast.
“I’m really not a thief,” Mannering assured her, in his most pleasant voice. “I was chasing a bad man. Sorry if I scared you.” He waited for a few moments, seeing suspicion and doubt chase each other in the woman’s eyes, and curiosity shine in the child’s. The woman had an untidy mop of gingerish hair, and was more wholesome than beautiful to look at, but there was something attractive in her parted lips and very white teeth. Mannering managed to smile, and go on: “May I come down?”
“Who—” the woman began, and her hold tightened on her son, who announced: “Man.”
“Quite a nice man, really,” Mannering tried to reassure the woman.
“You—you stay up there until I’m in the house,” she ordered. “Benny, come with me.” She gave the child no choice but hoisted him up in her arms and first backed, then turned and scurried away.
Mannering waited until she had disappeared before letting his legs dangle over the edge of the flat roof. He saw now that there were such outbuildings attached to all the houses, he was probably sitting over a kitchen or scullery. A rainwater tub stood a few feet along to the left. He edged towards it and lowered himself feet first. His left ankle took the strain without any twinges, of pain, his right was slightly painful. But soon he stood upright by the barrel, testing his ankle and deciding that he wasn’t really hurt. When he walked towards the gate through which his assailant had passed, he felt quite comfortable.
He looked up and down the alley which had once been paved with macadam now broken into patches. There were ruts, big holes, some rubble which had been rolled into some of the holes, a dispiriting prospect altogether. He turned left, towards the nearer end, and when he reached the street beyond turned left and left again. Each one was very like Riston Street.
Mannering turned into Riston Street at last.
A crowd of fifty or sixty people had gathered near Number 17. In the middle, it seemed, was a policeman’s helmet, and as Mannering appeared at one end a police car appeared at the other. The old man was at the gate. On the other side of the road Doris Paget stood holding her baby, surrounded by neighbours, and Clive Paget was on the fringe of the crowd outside Number 17. As Mannering drew nearer he saw through the bobbing heads that Julie was talking to the policeman.
Mannering’s station wagon was close by.
It would be easy to get into this and drive off but that would only postpone the time of questioning. It might worry Julie, too, for she would wonder what had happened to him. And it might also imply that he did not want it to be known that he was involved. So he passed the
wagon, as Doris Paget pointed at him, excitedly. Paget was now in the thick of the crowd and as Mannering reached the fringe, the other man called out: “What’s up, Julie? Did Mannering give you trouble?” His voice was loud and blustering. “If he did—”
Julie stated simply: “Someone tried to kill him.”
“Kill Mannering?”
“Yes. He—”
“Now, miss,” interpolated the constable, a youthful-looking man. “I shouldn’t talk too much if I were you.”
“Did you see who it was?” demanded Paget.
“Now, sir—” began the policeman. Then he saw that his reinforcements had arrived, and he placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “We’d better get inside, miss.” His voice took on a stern note. “Clear a path, please, clear a path.” Men from the car pushed their way through and the crowd began to make way for Julie and the policeman, but as Julie turned she caught sight of Mannering, spun round and out of the policeman’s grasp and ran to Mannering, arms outstretched.
“Oh, you’re safe,” she cried. “Thank God, you’re safe!”
Next moment she was huddled against him, arms bent between them; and she began to cry. Even as he stood with his arms about her, protectively, and with every eye now turned towards him, Mannering was acutely aware that she had turned to him as a girl might turn to her lover.
Not her brother, not her father, not simply a friend; but as if he meant everything in the world to her.
And he could feel her sobbing.
Chapter Six
Suicide or Not?
At least a hundred people were gathered about them on that instant, and except to turn and look at him, none moved: not even the two policemen from the car. The grey-haired, bent old man was glaring, Clive Paget looked astounded, and from the gate of Number 20 came a voice which Mannering felt sure was Doris Paget’s.
“Look! She knows him.”
The policeman from whom Julie had broken loose was frowning, as if anxious to establish his authority but not sure how to. The scene was set like a tableau for no more than thirty seconds and perhaps only ten or fifteen; but it was etched like a chiselled sculpture on the back of Mannering’s mind.
Without a moment’s warning he lifted Julie in his arms, and stepped forward. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and closed behind him as he reached the gate. The bent old man, a liver-spotted hand on the iron bar, pulled it open; it was still creaking as Mannering swept past; or did the creaks come from those dry bones? Mannering stepped into the now familiar passage and up the now familiar stairs, his shoulder pressed against the wall, Julie’s head resting in the crook of his arm and her hair falling over the banisters. Her eyes were open and tears were in them. He carried her past the open bathroom door, and caught a glimpse of the hanging noose. Then he went into the front room, and for a moment stood and contemplated the unconscious man on the bed.
Tom Forrester hadn’t stirred; he still lay on his back with his pointed chin, his arched nose, making him look like one of the devil’s angels.
Mannering bent down and placed Julie gently on to the bed, then backed away.
He felt a few twinges of pain in his right shoulder and the slightest of pain in his right ankle, but otherwise was little the worse for wear. But he felt very tired. He cleared one of the upright chairs of oddments, a bra and two pairs of panty-hose, a slip and some folded shirts, and sat down as the youthful-looking policeman who was faintly reminiscent of James Stewart and had the same kind of figure, appeared at the doorway. Immediately and earnestly, he asked: “You are Mr. John Mannering, sir, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Mannering.
“Of Quinns?” The young man meant to be in no doubt at all.
“Of Quinns,” Mannering confirmed, seeing another policeman turn the head of the stairs and glance to his right – into the bathroom. He stopped on the instant and exclaimed: “What the—” and then his voice tailed off.
“Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?” the earnest young man asked, with a half-glance at Julie, so still on the bed.
“I came to see Mr. Forrester’s paintings,” Mannering replied.
“Jack,” called the policeman by the bathroom, “have you seen this?”
“Mr. Forrester’s paintings, sir?”
“Yes. This flat is full of them. I—”
“Jack,” called the policeman behind the policeman, “come and take a look at this.”
A querulous voice sounded from downstairs: “They’re all the same, them hippies. Kill you as lief as look at you, they would.”
“Jack—”
The earnest police constable said, on the turn, “You won’t go away, sir, will you?” as if Mannering would leave by the window the moment his back was turned. Without waiting for reassurance he joined his colleague in the tiny hall, and looked into the bathroom. Immediately he exclaimed as if what he now saw drove thought of everything else out of his mind.
“Good God!”
“The quicker we tell H.Q. about this affair the better,” said the policeman from the car, and he pulled his walkie-talkie radio from his breast pocket. Whatever he said was on a low key, and although Mannering knew he was talking, he had no idea what was being said.
He himself looked long and thoughtfully at Julie, and eventually he asked: “How are you feeling?”
“Awful,” she replied.
“I can believe it. Did you get a good look at the man?”
“I hardly saw him at all, I just knew he was there, trying to—” she broke off, with a shudder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Did the man get away?”
“Over the roofs, yes.”
“You—you might have broken your neck,” Julie said, reproach quite apparent in her voice.
“Or I might have been hanged by it,” he retorted.
“Oh, please!” She drew in her breath, hissingly.
“Julie, did you know anyone was up there?”
“Good gracious, no!”
“All right,” he said, hoping against hope that that was true. “Now answer this. Why did you and Tom really come to see me? Was it because of the paintings, his art for art’s sake—” he could not keep the contempt out of his voice—“or was it because he was in fear of his life, in fear of being murdered? Did he come hoping for help because of that?”
She was looking at him as if horrified, but did not answer, and Mannering went on in a very harsh but low-pitched voice: “Did he really try to commit suicide, Julie? Or did someone try to murder him? Did you know his life was in danger? Let’s have the whole truth now. What are the pair of you up to?”
And as he put that question, he could picture her in his mind’s eye as she flung herself into his arms as into the arms of a lover.
Julie did not answer immediately. Mannering had a feeling that she was taken completely by surprise, and badly shocked. She looked older, but perhaps that was because she was exhausted. Yet did that elfin face have a cunning expression? And was she surprised because he had penetrated a wall of pretence which she and Tom had built? Had they visited him because he was in danger and had he felt this was a coward’s way out and been so arrogant and resentful because she had persuaded him against his inclination and his own better judgement?
The policeman finished on his walkie-talkie. The door of this bedroom was open but there was no way of telling what the foot patrol policeman had overheard. The pair of them exchanged glances as the one with the radio moved forward.
“The C.I.D. is on its way, Mr. Mannering.”
“That’s just as well,” Mannering approved.
“What did happen, sir?”
He could demur, saying that there was no point in telling his story twice, but these men would want to make their own reports as zesty as they could. It was always wise to have the goodwill of the men on the local beat, so he said, simply: “I came to see the paintings, and when I got here, it looked as if Mr. Forrester had tried to hang himself. The
young lady had managed to get him down, and save his life. When I went to look round a man in the attic dropped the noose over my head. I managed to slip out of it, and he ran away over the roofs.” Mannering paused, smiling wryly. “He was younger and sprightlier than I, and got away.”
The men’s eyes were generous in obvious admiration. Mannering sensed their impulse to ask more questions, but they mastered it. Soon, there were the sounds of a car outside, doors slammed, a man called out: “Make way, please make way.” Almost at once footsteps sounded on the porch and in the passage and on the stairs. The two uniformed men turned to the men from the Criminal Investigation Department, and this gave Mannering and the girl a few moments’ respite.
“I want the answer, Julie – did you come to me to get help because Tom was under threat? Or was it really for help with the pictures? I need to know and the police may have to, soon.”
She eased herself up, leaning on one elbow, and stretched a hand towards him in obvious appeal.
“Please,” she breathed. “Don’t tell the police.”
“Why did you come to me?” insisted Mannering. “Hurry, or they’ll have to know.”
“For both reasons,” she burst out, her strength of feeling making it difficult to keep her voice low. “I’ll tell you everything when we have the chance, but please don’t tell the police.” Now she got to her knees and stretched out both arms, again as to a lover. And she repeated, pleadingly: “Please don’t tell the police.”
Her voice faded away as two men in plain clothes moved across the tiny, crowded landing and into this room. Both were in their early thirties, Mannering judged. One was tall and fair-haired and fresh complexioned, with the look of a man from the countryside; the other was leaner and severe-looking, dark-haired, thin-faced and sharp-featured but not at all like Tom Forrester despite the colouring and the aquiline nose and chin.
He came into the room first.
“I am Detective Sergeant Joslin, sir, of the Criminal Investigation Department, from the Hammersmith Divisional Headquarters.” He glanced at Julie, and then more protractedly at Forrester. “Is anyone here in need of medical attention?”