by Rennie Airth
Ash staggered against the door jamb, but did not fall. Instead, snarling through his burned lips, he dropped his head and charged at Madden, butting him in the chest and knocking him off balance. As his feet slipped beneath him on the wet floor, Madden grabbed at the table for support, but missed his hold, falling heavily on his back. Before he could rise he saw Ash bend to pick up the pistol at his feet.
Panting, he came over to where Madden lay. His face had turned scarlet and with his glaring eyes and snorting breath he seemed only half human. Swaying on his feet, he raised the gun and took aim.
The sound of the shot was deafening and it was followed by a shower of broken glass that fell on Madden’s upturned face like acid rain, leaving pinpoints of pain. The gun in Ash’s hand wavered. He took an unsteady step back. His heavy coat was unbuttoned and Madden saw a bloodstain appear on the khaki jacket beneath. As it spread like a flower opening its petals, another shot sounded, this one even louder in his ears. No longer able to control his limbs, Ash began to stagger backwards, the gun falling from his nerveless grip, and as he landed up against the wall a third shot took him full in the throat and Madden saw the blood leap and spatter on the plaster behind him.
Ash fell where he was, collapsing like a rag doll, ending in a heap on the floor.
Half-stunned and still struggling to comprehend what had just occurred, Madden lay still. He was panting heavily – without realizing it he had been holding his breath – and his limbs felt leaden. Finally, with what seemed like a great effort, he brushed the shards of glass from his face and hoisted himself up on one elbow to look behind him. There were lights in the yard outside: someone was hammering at the door and he heard his name being shouted. It was Billy, calling to him.
Only then did he notice the figure at the window and the unmistakable shape of the heavy Webley revolver that was pointing through the shattered glass. The man outside leaned forward, striving for a better view, and as his face came into the light, Madden recognized the lean, pockmarked features.
‘Got you!’ Joe Grace hissed, his tone gleeful as he peered at the crumpled figure on the floor. ‘Got you, you bastard.’
Madden started at the ring of the telephone – he’d been dozing in an armchair in front of the fire – and he looked at his watch. It was after seven. The phone had been quickly answered: he heard the murmur of Billy Styles’s voice, but not what he was saying.
He glanced across at the settee where Bess was lying on her back wrapped in two blankets and with her head bandaged. She seemed to be asleep. The wound to her temple was slight – the shot through the door had done no more than graze her scalp – but Ash’s second bullet had struck her in the side and she had lost a great deal of blood, most of it on the kitchen floor, before Madden, with Billy’s help, had stemmed the flow with a dressing made from a clean towel that was later replaced with one taken from Mary Spencer’s first-aid box.
Fully conscious all the time, Bess had been scornful of their fussing.
‘I was only winged. It’s a flesh wound, for goodness sake. Don’t carry on so.’
This last had been directed at Mary Spencer, who had been fetched from the Hodges’ cottage by Leonard. On the Liphook bobby’s advice she had left her son in the care of the elderly couple and hurried back with him, and though appalled to discover what had happened in her absence had rallied quickly, first helping to carry Bess into the sittingroom, then going in search of blankets. Left on his own to build up the fire, which by now was little more than embers, Madden had taken the opportunity while he was alone with Bess to speak firmly to her.
‘You know as well as I do how dangerous bullet wounds are. Whether you like it or not, you’re suffering from shock. You must lie quietly, and wait for the ambulance to arrive.’
She had smiled at him then.
‘That’s how I used to talk to the boys I picked up,’ she recalled. ‘During the war. They were all so young. They used to call me ma’am though I wasn’t much older than they were.’
He had sat beside her on the settee holding her hand, waiting until she dropped off to sleep before moving to the armchair.
‘I haven’t thanked you for saving my life,’ he had said. In truth he had been too busy saving hers as he’d knelt in the mingled blood and wine beside her body on the kitchen floor.
‘I thought I’d better.’ She’d responded with a smile. ‘I could hardly have faced Helen otherwise. Imagine having to tell her after all this time that I’d somehow mislaid her husband.’
For his own part, Madden had wanted nothing more than to talk to his wife: after his desperate fight with Ash and the explosion of violence that followed, the sound of her voice was what he craved above all. But he had refused both Billy’s offer and one made a little later by Sinclair to get a call put through to Highfield.
‘I don’t want to speak to Helen on the phone,’ he had told the chief inspector after contact had been re-established between them. She’ll only worry when she hears my croaking. Better I tell her about this in person.’
Unaware of the drama that had been played out while he was sitting helpless in his office in London, Sinclair had listened in shocked silence to Madden’s terse account of his life-and-death struggle with the killer. Most upsetting to the chief inspector had been the hoarse rasp which was all his old friend could manage by way of speech from his still tender throat.
‘I plan on spending Christmas in dignified silence,’ he had joked.
He had made no mention of his throbbing hand where the wire had left a welt on his palm painful to the touch. Urged by Billy to rest while he and Grace took care of things, he had settled in his chair and then sat for some time gazing at the mark. The agonized minutes when he had grappled with Ash were still raw in his memory: though wounded several times in the war, he had never come so close to death, and recalling the moment when he had lain stunned on the kitchen floor and seen the pistol pointing at him, a mask of scalded flesh behind it, he wondered if the image would ever leave him.
The body of Raymond Ash had been left to lie where it had fallen on the kitchen floor, covered by a dust sheet which Joe Grace had found in one of the rooms downstairs and which he’d tossed without ceremony over the killer’s corpse. While Madden and Billy had attended to Bess, he had taken it on himself to see to Eva, who, forgotten by all, had managed to drag herself up from the floor during the last terrifying seconds in the kitchen, but had then sat slumped at the table with her mouth hanging open, seemingly unaware of what was going on around her. Glancing up from his urgent task for a moment, Madden had been reminded of scenes he had witnessed in the past: of men in the aftermath of battle reduced to mere sleepwalkers; shadows of themselves.
It was Joe finally who had taken the girl by the elbow and lifted her to her feet. Surprisingly gentle in his manner, he had coaxed her towards the door.
‘You don’t want to stay here, Miss,’ he had murmured to her, softening his usual grating tone. ‘You go somewhere and lie down. We’ll bring you a cup of tea in a moment.’
As they’d moved slowly towards the door across the littered floor, one of Eva’s trailing feet had caught in the dust sheet, and without realizing it she had tugged the cover off Ash’s body, exposing his blistered face with the lips drawn back in a snarl. The sight brought a cry from her and she had turned away sharply. But Grace had steadied her, slipping an arm about her shoulders.
‘Now don’t you fret, Miss,’ he had said as her eyes welled up. ‘And don’t go shedding any tears either, not for him. Dirt’s what he was. No better than scum. And that’s God’s truth.’
EPILOGUE
‘SO MUCH FOR Raymond Ash, then. We can close the book on him. There’s nothing more outstanding. We have the diamonds and the money he stole from Silverman. I dare say Sobel’s heirs will claim the stones, if they can prove ownership, but that’s a problem for the French to handle. We’ve done our part.’
The chief inspector stretched luxuriously. He was enjoying the way the spri
ng sunshine in Bennett’s office made the windows sparkle: windows which for almost five years had been scored by the crisscross lines of anti-blast tape but which now provided an uninterrupted view of the blue sky outside and the glittering river beneath it. Germany’s surrender had been announced three weeks earlier and the two men had shared in the joy felt by the whole nation.
‘I talked to Duval on the phone yesterday after we’d opened the safe-deposit box. They’re definitely Sobel’s diamonds: they match the stones on the list.’
‘And how much money was there?’ Bennett was curious.
‘Fifteen thousand pounds exactly. Of course the stones are worth a good deal more, but as an asking price it was just the sort of sum that was guaranteed to get Solly down to Wapping as fast his legs would carry him and no questions asked. He’d seen the list of diamonds that Alfie Meeks had shown him and he must have thought he was on to a good thing. Shrewd of Ash to think of that.’
The cache of money and jewels had been slow in coming to light. Although every bank in London had been asked to check its records for a Raymond Ash or a Henry Pratt, none had been found holding a safe-deposit box in either name. It had been a chance sighting of Ash more than a year earlier by a fellow salesman employed by the same city firm he had worked for that had provided the vital clue. Like others who had known him, the man had been questioned on several occasions, and over a period of months, as the police had cast their nets wider and wider in the search for leads, and he’d suddenly recalled seeing Ash entering a branch of Barclays bank in Cannon Street one day. The only reason the memory had stuck with him, however unreliably, was because he had heard at the office that same morning that his colleague had called in sick and realized he must be malingering. Contacted by Scotland Yard, the bank manager had tentatively identified Ash from a photograph as one of his customers, Charles Porter by name. Porter had kept a small account at the bank along with a safe-deposit box.
‘He opened the account in ’40 soon after he got here, using a false identity card.’ Details of the discovery had been given to Sinclair that morning by Billy Styles, who was still in charge of the investigation. They were easy to come by then, and he was the sort of man who would always need a safe place to hide what he didn’t want seen by others. Apart from the stones and the money, there were two sets of false Dutch papers in the box and an American passport which seems genuine and was probably stolen. He may have been planning to use it after the war.’
The chief inspector reflected.
‘Duval was pleased to hear about the jewels. It means they can close their investigation as well. But he still wishes we’d laid hands on Ash. Even though we might have had problems making a murder case stick, that wouldn’t have been the case with them. Not once they had Eva Belka’s statement. The French wanted his head, and given what he did at Fontainebleau I can’t say I blame them.’
He sat musing for a moment.
‘After more than forty years in this business I thought there was nothing in the way of human nature that could surprise me any longer,’ he went on. But Ash proved me wrong. What was it like to live inside his skin? I wish I knew the answer: if only for curiosity’s sake. But I’m afraid the question will go begging now.’
Bennett grunted.
‘By the way, I’ve some news you’ll be pleased to hear yourself. That report we sent to the commissioner regarding the work Poole did here and my recommendation that she be transferred to the CID has borne fruit.’ He slid a piece of paper across his blotter to Sinclair. ‘As you see, I’ve been authorized to inform the station commander at Bow Street that the transfer will take effect from next month. I’ve decided to bring her to the Yard to start her training. What a pity you won’t be here to oversee it.’
He sighed audibly.
‘But there it is. All good things come to an end. And speaking of which, this is a moment that should be recorded. Angus Sinclair’s last case. I feel we should pause for a minute’s silence. Those of us who still have to labour on.’
The assistant commissioner had formally accepted his old colleague’s resignation only a fortnight earlier, confident that his own would likewise be approved now that the war was over, only to learn to his chagrin that his services would be required for a further six months. Since then his sniping had been relentless.
‘Just think, in less than a fortnight you’ll be a man of leisure.’ Bennett pondered his words gloomily. Though I must say I never thought I’d live to see the day …’
‘What day would that be, sir?’
Determined not to rise to the bait, the chief inspector continued to scan the letter his superior had passed him.
‘Why, the day when you would abandon me, Angus. And after all these years we’ve worked together. Surely a few more months won’t make any difference?’
‘Alas, I’ve already made my arrangements, sir. My bags, as the saying goes, are packed.’
He handed the letter to Bennett.
‘And what better note on which to end my time here. Lily Poole will make a capital detective.’
He assembled his papers and prepared to leave. Bennett regarded him sourly.
‘So your heart’s in the Highlands, is it?’
‘Sir … ?’ Sinclair looked up.
‘You’re off to Scotland, aren’t you? You always said you planned to retire there.’
‘So I did …’ Sinclair gnawed his lip. ‘But, do you know, I’ve had a change of heart. Scotland seems a long way off. There’s really nothing to draw me back there any more.’
‘Well, I’m glad to hear it.’ Sir Wilfred’s face brightened. ‘I’ll be retiring myself to our place in Hampshire. It would nice to think we might meet now and again to chew over old times. Are you planning to settle anywhere near there?’
‘Near enough.’ The chief inspector rose to his feet with a smile. ‘In Surrey, as it happens. A mere hop and a skip away. We’ll be practically neighbours.’
‘It’ll need some repairs, Angus. So long as the roof didn’t leak old Granny Meacham wasn’t bothered by anything else. And the bathroom will have to be rebuilt. But you can stay with us while the work’s being done.’
Arms folded, head cocked judiciously to one side, Helen Madden surveyed the slate-roofed cottage from the rickety garden gate. It was hanging only by a hinge, and her husband had opened it with care before the three of them went in.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s lovely, my dear.’ Sinclair didn’t hesitate. ‘And I can’t thank you both enough for finding it for me.’
The chief inspector looked about him: to one side of the cottage was an apple orchard just coming into bud, on the other an open field dotted with the first wild flowers of spring. Behind them, on the path they had taken along the stream from the Maddens’ own house, he had seen daffodils clinging to the banks, and as he looked back now he spotted the blue blur of a kingfisher as it sped upstream.
‘You won’t be too cold? It loses the sun early in winter. When there is any sun.’
‘I shall build large fires and live like a badger in a burrow.’
‘You can always come over to us, you know. For a meal, or just to talk. It’s only ten minutes by the path.’
It had been Helen herself who had first broached the idea of him coming to join them in Highfield, and once made, the suggestion that he should spend his retirement close to his friends had seemed so logical, inevitable even, that the chief inspector wondered why he had ever thought otherwise.
‘You can’t possibly go traipsing off to Scotland,’ she had declared in her usual forthright manner two months earlier when he had been down on one of his weekend visits. ‘What on earth will you do there?’
The chief inspector had replied, tentatively, that he had been thinking of taking up fishing.
‘There are plenty of fish in England. The rivers teem with them. In fact, it would be wonderful if you got John interested. He needs a hobby. With George Burrows in charge, the farm almost runs it
self. I can see you both setting off in the morning with rods over your shoulders. Do think about it. We’d love to have you here.’
Later, during a walk he had taken in the woods with Madden himself, he had learned from his old friend’s lips that he and his wife had had the idea for some time and only been waiting for the right moment to put it to him. Before the day was out he had made up his mind, and lying in bed that same evening, in the room he had slept in so often he had come to think of it as his own, he had felt the burden of his years – for so they sometimes seemed to him now – lift at a stroke.
‘Come along, Angus.’
Leaving Madden at the gate – he was still fiddling with the hinge – Helen took Sinclair’s arm and they walked up the short path together. Somewhat overgrown with weeds since the death of the previous owner, it was bordered by flowerbeds that only awaited new plantings and by a patch of unmown lawn on either side.
‘We had Bess Brigstock to stay last weekend – did John tell you? She’s become a real friend. I wish we hadn’t lost touch for all those years. Her wound set her back for a while and she gave up delivering the post at Liphook. But she’s the sort of person who can’t sit idle, particularly if she thinks she’s needed, and she’s talking of working for the Red Cross again. Now that the war’s over there’ll be a huge problem with refugees and displaced persons. It’s the sort of challenge Bess can’t resist.’