Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

  'At the village church; you can't miss it. Will you come up to the house afterwards?'

  Til be there.'

  You bet I would. By now I was very curious to meet Mrs Lois Linda Fenwick. There has to be a reason why a man spends a quarter of his income, money he must be hungry to use to build up his career at Lloyd's, just to make sure that, if anything happens to him, his son will be financially independent of his own mother.

  Ten

  I moved back into my flat that night. The story had dropped out of the day's papers, and I scouted the place three times and found nobody watching, so by half past nine I was home, unpacked, and drinking at a price I could afford.

  The phone rang. Oh, hell – that could be tricky. I thought about letting it ring, then decided not. I was going to have to come back to life sometime.

  But just in case, I tried to disguise my voice. Scots; it comes easiest. Well, at least I could say, 'Aye?'

  The other voice was distant, female, and also stage Scots. 'Would it be posseeble to speak to Meester Card?'

  'Who is it wanting him?'

  A moment of confused mumbling, then, 'It is Mrs Card.'

  'Mother? What the hell are you doing with that accent?'

  'It's Jamie? Are you at the flat? I thought you were on the run. I didn't want to give myself away in case the police were there.'

  'Ah, it isn't as bad as that. I…'

  'It's exciting, isn't it? I'm so glad your job isn't turning out too dull. Security advice sounds sodreary. Your father would have loved this.'

  Ummm. Maybe.

  She rushed on, T just wanted to make sure you didn't want anything, dear. Like money or a place to hide out.'

  'No, it's fine. I just-'

  'Well, I mustn't keep you. I expect you're after the men who did it, aren't you? And I won't say any more because they're sure to be tapping this line.'

  'No, I don't think-'

  'Look after yourself, dear, and don't put anything in writing. Tell me all about it someday. Goodbye, now.'

  I put the phone down and slumped. Mother's phone calls always took it out of me. Had I really joined I Corps of my own free will? Had father really chosen to spend the 1930s playing Lawrence of Arabia when he could have stuck to straight regimental soldiering? Or had we both been pushed just a bit?

  I spent the rest of the evening tidying up the mess the Mockby boys had left, poured myself a final Scotch, and was ready for bed at about eleven.

  So then the doorbell rang. I grabbed up the little Mauser and called,'Who is it?'

  A calm voice said, 'Police, sir. Will you open the door please?'

  Just like those bastards to come around and start their just-a-few-simple-questions when you've had a long day. Intentional, of course.

  I looked around for a place to park the gun, but finally just shoved it in a pocket. No reason for them to have search warrants. I opened the door.

  They came in quickly and the first one hit me in the stomach. As I folded over I just had time to see there were at least two, with the flattened faces of men with stocking masks on. Then my hands were grabbed and wrenched behind me and fingers started working on my neck – exploring, then pressing skilfully. The room seemed to fill with mist.

  A voice said, 'He's going.'

  I tried to choke, but darkness beat me to it.

  'My name is James Card. My rank is major. My number is two-five-three-oh-five-one-oh.'

  I knew him, didn't I? Must have been in the Army with me.

  'Come on, now, old friend – where have you got it?'

  'My name is James Card. My rank is major. My number is two-five-three-oh-five-one-oh.'

  I knew that voice, too.

  'Give hiroa bit more.'

  'You've got to be careful with this stuff.'

  'Give him more.'

  Part of me was floating gently, drowsily. But there was pain, stiffness, felt only distantly, as if telepathically from another body. It surged and then fell away in the drowsiness…

  'Now come on, old friend-where do you keep the book?'

  'My name is James Card… my rank is major… my number is two-five-three-oh-five-one-oh.'

  'Where is it? Just tell me, then you can sleep.'

  'My name is James… Card… m'rank is… major… number…'

  'A bit more… Now where is it? Where did you put it?'

  'My name… Bertie Bear… Major Bertie… Bear…'

  'What the hell's he babbling about?… Now where's the book?'

  'Bertie Bear… is in the… bank.'

  'Jesus Christ – have you sent him crazy?'

  'You can't be sure about how this works."

  'Well, give him some more.'

  'He may have too much already… maybe he'll get better.'

  'Bertie Bear… in the bank…'

  'Great galloping Jesus…'

  The drowsiness ebbed, the pain rushed in, giving me a moment of vicious clarity. I knew who I was; I knew I was tied up and blindfolded; there was a steady pain in my left arm…

  'Give him more.'

  'I told you-'

  'And I'm telling you!'

  A little movement of the pain. I suddenly clenched every muscle and jerked and twisted as hard as I could. I felt a needle grate on my elbow bones and a wild extra stab of agony…

  'God, he's broken the needle.'

  'You clumsy bastard.'

  'He did it!'

  'Get another one in, then.'

  'I haven't got another…'

  'Jesus, I've got a right moron here.'

  'We can't go on. What do we do with him?'

  'Leave him. Just cut him loose.'

  'I haven't got a knife…'

  'You haven't got a future, mate!'

  Hands jerked me, sending more pains through my stomach and neck. Then I felt my body loosen.

  'He'll do for a while. Come on.'

  Noises, feet on thin boards. A voice fading away plaintively. 'I just don't understand why it didn't…'

  Then just silence, darkness, loneliness, and time not passing. Am I dying? Not alone, not in the dark? I want voices! I want that lovely drowsiness, the non-pain, the sleep… No. The drowsiness is dying. The pain is living. And God, am I living.

  I moved carefully, then reached and pulled loose the rag around my eyes. It made no difference; the darkness around me was close and solid and windless. The inside of my left elbow was a steady ache laced with sudden pain. I sent my right hand exploring.

  I was lying on a metal camp bed, just that, on the raw thin springs. Useful frame for lashing a man out on, when you come to think of it. But where was here? I reached around and touched canvas. Below it, a low wooden wall. And along it, an upright metal pole. So?

  Very carefully, I pulled myself upright, clinging to the pole. The invisible world spun around me, the floor shifted slightly under me, creaking. Then I knew I was in the back of a lorry.

  It took me time, I don't know how much time, to feel my way to the tailgate and slide, carefully, carefully, down to the ground. Rough concrete below. And no sky above.

  But a faint dim square in the darkness far off. I shuffled towards it. Hit something. A car. Another. Then I was trudging up a slope into the air and the cold blue street lights. So then I had to be sick.

  Maybe it cleared my head a bit. I sat on a low wall and stared around at the empty bright street, the parked cars, the trees at the corner, black and bright green in the lamp-light. I'd been in an underground car park beneath a new block of flats over near Primrose Hill. Less than half a mile from home. And no farther to a doctor's house, or maybe even the moon. I started to get started.

  Eleven

  He sat on the foot of my bed – his spare bed, to be accurate -and said, 'Do you remember much of last night?'

  'It hurt like hell, you butcher.'

  'Aye.' He'd been twenty-five years south of Scotland but a flavour of the accent remained. 'You've told me yourself you'd been shot full of Pentathol. I couldn't risk giving yo
u anything else while I dug out that needle. Did they teach you to break off needles in your own arm in Intelligence? '

  'They suggested it. You didn't give me a whisky either, you old Scrooge.'

  'Same reason,' he said calmly. He leaned forward and looked into my eyes professionally. 'Aye – you're clear by now.' He handed me a glass of brownish stuff. 'I don't doubt you breakfast off it usually, though it's lunchtime for the law-abiding classes.'

  I sniffed the drink suspiciously, but it was real Scotch. 'Thanks, Alec. Cheers.'

  I swallowed and nearly unswallowed immediately. It hurt.

  He nodded. 'Yes, you've had a bump in the stomach; it'll hurt for a while and there's nothing I can do about it. And your neck, too.'

  I sipped cautiously.

  'And now,' he said, 'we'll talk about the police.'

  'Did you report me? '

  'No, not yet. There's no law against breaking off a needle in your own arm, though it's quite a trick. And there's nothing to stop a man falling against something and bruising his stomach. But it's the neck, man, the neck. Anybody who could put that much pressure on his own carotid with his own hands could likely bugger himself as well and we'd have fewer problems with roving queers.'

  I grinned – and even that reminded me of the neck. 'Alec -I'd report it myself if it would do any good. But these lads were professionals; nobody would know where to start looking.' Then a thought struck me. 'The one using the needle – did he know his stuff?'

  He considered. 'There's nothing to finding the vein in your arm – it sticks out at you. But knowing how to use Pentathol, drip-feeding it in and keeping you just on the edge of consciousness – well, maybe that took some training.' He stood up. 'If it was a doctor I'd want to see him struck off.'

  'If he was a doctor I'll bet he has been.'

  He nodded. 'Well, come back tomorrow and I'll change the dressing. It'll ache for a while, but you can buy yourself a fancy black silk sling and collect a lot of misplaced sympathy.'

  He turned to go, then turned back and gave me the Scotch bottle. 'One more – just one, mind, and Laura'll bring you up some soup. I've got patients who don't even go looking for trouble.'

  I walked around to my flat, feeling naked and vulnerable without a gun. Outside my own front door, I suddenly wished I'd had somebody walk with me: there was no reason why the Pentathol squad shouldn't be waiting inside for a second crack. The thumbscrews this time, maybe. – But they weren't.

  They'd turn the place over again, of course. Hastily, but just efficiently enough to make sure I wasn't hiding anything of Bertie Bear size. And they'd left Bertie himself – the second copy – lying there only half hidden in a pile of books. Well, that settled that, anyway: nobody loved Bertie for himself alone, which was a relief.

  I searched only well enough to make sure they hadn't left my Mauser HSC lying around, and they hadn't, of course. All this was getting a bit awkward: I was running out of small, easily concealed guns. All the stuff in my deposit box was long-barrelled target -22s or serious -38 revolvers and nine-millimetre automatics – including Mockby's Walther. I did a little telephoning around among friends more or less in the gun business, and by the time I was back home watching a frozen pizza defrost, I'd done a trade. If Mockby had ever thought he'd get his gun back again it was too late now.

  What I'd got wasn't ideal, but it was a help: a four-inch-long Italian copy of the old Remington derringer, which itself had been a near-copy of the gamblers' sleeve gun designed by Derringer. This had two superposed barrels in -38 Special calibre, which gave it the punch of the normal American police revolver but was small and flat enough to hide on a spring clip up my left sleeve. The nameless friend threw in the clip holster as well; he should never have had the gun – even the Ministry won't licence that sort of weapon, let alone the cops – and I think he was getting tired of the risk. There was at least a chance of getting the Walther on his licence (you pretend a relative died and left it to you: they don't believe you, but it saves face all round).

  When I'd finished the pizza I spent an hour watching TV and practising a fast draw whenever a bad guy appeared. In fact, you can't really be fast with a sleeve gun unless your hands are close together already, as when praying or shaking hands with yourself, both of which look a bit odd in a tense situation. But you're as fast sitting down as standing up, so it's a good gun to watch TV with, at any rate.

  Twelve

  Friday morning was misty, with a touch of frost underneath. I got up slowly, feeling stiff just about everywhere, started the electric percolator, then busted my last egg trying to boil it. The only letter was a formal invitation to the Kingscutt funeral – posted in Harrow. I still didn't like the idea, but I was still going to have to do it. I spent most of the morning typing up a report I was doing for a chemicals firm: 'Dear Sirs, I have examined your offices, laboratories, and manufacturing plant with regard to the security aspects, and must say that I am impressed by the measures you have taken to render them espionage-proof [Always flatter the bastards first; they'll tell others that you're a bright, observant type]. However, there are a few areas in which I feel security might be improved…' And you end up, 'I suggest you keep this letter in a safe place and do NOT have it copied since it would be a useful guide to any industrial spy trying to penetrate your organisation…' That always impresses them.

  Actually, the worst danger they had was the managing director, the sort who wouldn't tell you his first name during the working day and boasts about his new inventions in the golf club. How the hell d'you putthat in a formal letter?

  About the time I was wondering if I'd got a stamp, and if so, where, the phone rang. I skipped the Scots accent this time, but still I only said, 'Yes?'

  'Major?' A familiar voice. 'Dave Tanner.'

  A private detective I'd first met when he was a military-police officer. A tough one, though if you're breeding a tough army you're going to need tough military coppers, and if you're not breeding a tough army you may as well give up wars and where's the fun in that?

  Anyway, Dave had got out earlier than me and gone further; he now ran quite a sizeable agency, and I'd worked for him for nearly the first year after I got out – though my guess was still that some of his boys specialised in the sort of thing I was busy guarding against.

  I asked, 'What can I do for you? You've got a case that's baffling the keenest brains in your mighty organisation?'

  He chuckled. 'Could be, could be. How're you keeping?'

  'Don't you read the papers?'

  'Thought you'd done a pretty good job of staying out of them. Feel like a pint of lunch?'

  'Maybe. Where?'

  'The Lamb in Lamb's Conduit Street? '

  'Okay. What's it all about, Dave?'

  'Half past twelve. I'll tell you then.'

  So that was that. I decided to take the car – I probably wouldn't have too much trouble parking there, and I wanted to know how my left arm would stand up to it. So I stopped off at the Regent's Park Road post office to send my report, and then it seemed easier to keep on that road and cross Camden Town through Parkway.

  I got suspicious at the lights just before Parkway itself: a dark-green Morris 1300 didn't pull up beside me where there was room for him. Instead, he slowed and dawdled up behind me. And he stayed there for the next mile. Mind, so did several others: this was a main route towards King's Cross and the City. But there was something in his pattern of driving that looked as if it were based on what I did.

  Any other time, I'd have been happy to make his acquaintance; we could have run up a quiet dead end and had a nice cosy chat about who and why and related topics. But right now I had a date, so he'd have to go in the deep freeze. Lose him but make it look pure chance.

  For that, you can't do anything fancy – no doubling back or such like. Just stick on a logical route and use the traffic opportunities. I put a big Ford in between us at the turn into St Paneras Road, added a post office van at the Huston Road lights, and a couple
of taxis at Guilford Street. After that, it was just a matter of time before he got chopped off by a red light. It happened at the Gray's Inn Road, and I was clear to circle back.

  I hadn't given anybody a lesson in road manners, but it hadn't been any worse than you expect from people who drive small, slightly hotted-up cars. Nothing to make him suspicious; he'd be back.

  Dave was waiting for me well back in the bar and getting started on a plate of sandwiches and a pint of bitter. I bought myself the same – so much for an invitation to lunch – and sat down.

  With the blue suit, the neat, short grey hair, and the well-fed build, you'd have placed him in the Stock Exchange or maybe on the floor of Lloyd's. Except for the face. The face had that shapeless, slightly lopsided look of a small-time pro boxer. Dave had never boxed and I'd never asked him what else had happened; with a military cop you don't need to ask. Some soldier with a grudge had gone for a route march on that face one dark, lonely night. It's never the same after they use the boot.

  He grinned at me, then saw the marks on my neck. "You been having fun and games, Major?'

  'No, somebody else has. How's business?"

  He took a vast bite of a cheese and tomato sandwich,"showing a bunch of teeth that hadn't been improved by that dark night, and spoke around it. 'Full house; we're up to our ears. And that bastard Laurie's leaving me to set up on his own. Do you want to work from an office again?'

  Laurie was his security specialist; it wasn't good news for me, either, because he'd be reaching for work in my field. Still, I liked being on my own. 'No thanks, Dave. But I'll lend you a good book about security.'

  'Get knotted, Major. D'you feel like doing a little sub-contract work, then?"

  That was more like it. It might even be like picking up a new client or two. Firms that go security-conscious usually stay that way and come back to you when they're making some change. I might persuade them to come back to me. not Tanner.

  I waved a friendly sandwich, 'Any time.'

  Til let you know – could be soon. Keep in touch, hey?'

  'Will do.' I took a mouthful of beer and wondered why I hadn't ordered Scotch on that cold morning. 'You might do something for me, Dave. D'you know what enquiry firms Randall, Tripp, Gilbert usually use?'