He gripped it, noticed he’d opened the cut on his palm again, and then rocked the plank back and forth against the nails that held it in place. It creaked and groaned, and Rossett looked back to the door, stopping to see if anyone had heard it from outside.
Nobody stirred, but as a precaution, Rossett took out the pocketknife and opened the blade. If anyone came in to stop him, he would kill him or die trying.
He pulled on the board again, this time concentrating with one hand at one end. The nails gave, a quarter of an inch, then a little more with each twist. Once he freed one end, he eased the board back and it gave way at the other end, the leverage making the task easier.
He held the plank, about four feet long by six inches wide, in his hand and crouched down to look through the dirty window. He still couldn’t see anything outside, and set to work on the next one after placing the first at his feet.
This time the board came easily. Gripping tightly with both hands, in no time he’d removed four boards and exposed the lock of the sash window.
It was painted shut, and Rossett cursed under his breath as he jabbed and scraped at the old paint with the pocketknife. His fingers ached as he pulled at the iron lock until at last it gave, and he set to work on the paint-fastened frame. Picking and scraping seemed to take an age, and each rattle of the window frame sounded like cannon shell landing in the small room.
His heart raced, and, as time passed, he became more and more certain someone was going to enter the room to relieve his now drained and very dead guard.
Rossett decided that if he was disturbed, he would just jump through the window. Regardless of what lay on the other side, whatever it was, it had to be better than Leigh and the handcuffs.
Once again, not much of a plan, but the best he could come up with.
He finished chipping the paint and then, with all his remaining strength, he pushed, until finally the window gave in and moved. The swollen wood had the resistance of a glacier as inch by inch it unevenly made its way up in the frame.
When he had exposed a gap big enough for his head, Rossett smiled as he felt the cold night air on his face, but his smile faded when he saw the hard concrete quayside four stories below.
“Fuck,” he said to the pigeon-shit-stained windowsill before pulling his head back in again.
He stood back from the window and completed a half turn, looking around the room, almost hoping that it had changed in the moment he’d had his head outside.
It had to have been just five minutes since he’d killed the guard, but it felt like five hours, and he suddenly felt exhausted. He leaned his hands against the window frame and bowed his head.
He took a deep breath and sighed. There was no giving up, there was never any giving up, it wasn’t allowed.
He gripped the frame, and instead of pushing, he rested his face against the remaining boards and pulled. The window rose slowly, inch by inch, side-to-side applied pressure walking it up the frame until there was a gap big enough for him to fit through.
Rossett didn’t bother looking out this time. It didn’t matter what he saw, he was going through it.
He crossed the room and dragged the guard to behind the door, gently resting the body where it would block the door from opening. He placed the chair and table quietly in a similar manner and then put the guard’s belongings, plus the handcuffs and key, in his pockets.
His ribs were starting to ache again as the adrenaline of the fight wore off. He rubbed his side and arched his back, and, body aching, he crossed back to the window.
At the window, Rossett bent over and stuck his head and shoulders out before completing a half turn, so that he was sitting, legs still in the room, upper torso in the cold night air, on the window ledge.
There was no going back as he shuffled out of the window, looking up into the gloom like a rock climber seeking a crevice to hold.
He grabbed the top of the sash window he’d just opened and lifted his right foot up and out onto the ledge. He left leg was still hooked inside, and he used this as a brace to allow him to lean back farther, looking up and then left and right.
To his right, there were more windows, the same size and shape as the one he had climbed out of. The brickwork was old and the building seemed to stretch as far as sixty feet till it reached the corner.
To his left, there was only one more window before the corner of the building. Between the windows was a gap of about five feet: too far to jump.
He leaned back, using the window frame as a brace, and looked up, trying to ignore the pain from his ribs. Maybe two feet above his window was what appeared to be a brick ledge that jutted out about twelve inches. Rossett guessed it was the gulley for the roof, but from his position, he couldn’t be sure. For all he knew, if he reached the ledge it might not be the roof at all; it might just lead to more smooth brick, and he’d be stuck.
He looked down, never the best option for someone as nervous about heights as he now found he was.
Beneath him were the warehouse walls, which seemed to go on forever until they reached another window, possibly ten feet below. Rossett imagined himself dropping to the window and trying to hold on with his fingertips, then realized that would be suicide and dismissed the thought.
He looked around again and caught sight of a broken drainpipe that was snaking around from the overhang like a bent straw. Rossett wondered whether he could reach the pipe if he stood on the window ledge.
The pipe looked as if it was pinned to the building by a cast-iron bracket that had a small bush growing out of it, not exactly the securest anchor in a storm but an anchor all the same.
Rossett looked at the window ledge again and tried to weigh the odds of survival.
Somewhere out on the Thames, a foghorn sounded, and Rossett rested his face against the window and closed his eyes. The glass was cold, so cold it hurt his cheek, and the cold soaked through to his teeth, setting them on edge.
He nodded to himself. Now was as good a time to die as any; at least this way it would be quick.
Another foghorn answered the first, and Rossett took his cue and pulled his leg out of the room. He half crouched as his whole body finally made it outside. The window wasn’t tall enough for him to fully stand up in, so he had to use his right hand to brace against the upper wall that surrounded the frame. He looked down again and tried to guess if he could jump the width of the quay and make it into the oil-slick-black water that was lazily slapping the dock wall below. He couldn’t. It was too far, even for a running jump, let alone a crouching one from a window ledge.
The quay was designed for wagons to unload directly onto ships; it must have been thirty feet wide. It looked like a canyon in the misty gloom and briefly mesmerized Rossett, who had to force himself to look away and back up toward his only chance of salvation.
Come on, Rossett, move, he directed himself, as he started to gingerly shuffle his way along the brick ledge. He glanced at his feet a few times and finally settled with his left foot half on and half off the ledge, his right pushed tight next to it, calves aching.
Gripping the bottom of the upper brickwork as tightly as he could with his right hand, he slowly straightened himself into a position as close to standing as he could manage.
With his left hand he reached toward the drainpipe, only to find that he fell short by an inch or two.
“Fuck,” he muttered through gritted teeth as he tried to adjust his right hand on the bricks as best as he could without actually letting go.
He paused and took a breath, looking around him for something else to hold on to. For a moment, he considered climbing back into the room, and then decided that even if he wanted to, he probably couldn’t. It would mean leaning out and letting his braced right arm come free. There would be only one winner in that eventuality, gravity, so he decided against it and looked up again at the drainpipe.
; “The fucking thing doesn’t look like it’ll take my weight anyway,” he said out loud, as he reached once more with his left arm, every tendon stretched so tight that his ears sang with the strain.
Just a little more . . .
His fingers caught hold of the three-inch pipe.
It felt cold and rough in his hand as he tugged it to test its strength. Surprisingly, it didn’t budge. He guessed that where it extended around the ledge it was secured by more pipework and brackets. Maybe things were looking up.
He stretched as far up the pipe as he could manage, letting his fingers walk up bit by bit, before taking a deep breath and stepping off the ledge.
It seemed to take an age before he managed to grip the pipe with his right hand, and his whole body tensed as the pain in his ribs stabbed at him. His desperate right hand caught just below his left, and he hung like a bell ringer frozen in time for a second or two as he waited for the pipe to give . . .
It didn’t.
He gritted his teeth and grunted through them, and the pain, as he flexed his biceps and managed to lift his body an inch or two higher before releasing his right hand and quickly lifting it over his left, his toecaps scuffing on the bricks as they tried to find a hold. He flexed again, managing to get left over right.
He was moving in the right direction.
This continued four or five times, rhythmically, flex grunt grab, flex grunt grab, as he made his way inch by inch up the pipe.
He could feel the blood pumping through his upper body and his sinews stretching.
He’d climbed plenty of ropes in the army, but never with broken ribs, and never with a wet pipe that was too wide to be gripped easily. His hands ached as they’d never ached before. Little by little he made his way up until finally, his groan was interrupted by an answering groan from the pipe.
Rossett froze as the pipe shifted. From above, some flakes of old metal and grit fell, landing on his upturned face and forcing him to blink his eyes. He hung, not moving, not wanting to stress the old brackets more than they already were. He felt the pipe move again, and he risked ducking his head under his arm to see if he could reach the ledge again.
He couldn’t.
He was maybe twenty inches from the bend in the pipe, and he felt like his arms were going to pop out of their sockets.
As he flexed and pulled, the pipe jerked and more dirt fell down, this time going into his eyes. He felt his feet scrabbling against the bricks again, even though he didn’t think his brain had told them to.
Maybe they didn’t want to die, either?
He didn’t dare move, but the pipe did, a few inches this time. He twisted his head from side to side, looking for a handhold in the brickwork, but there was none to be had. The pipe moved again and suddenly everything seemed quiet as he watched the pipe snake over the ledge, a rigid rope emerging from a cliff face out into the dark.
Rossett thought about Windsor and Leigh. He thought about his wife and young John Henry, and how he missed them. He thought about Jews and Germans and the choices he’d made; he thought about all the dead men, those he’d killed, those he’d helped kill, and those he had held in his hands, comforting them as they went. He thought about Mrs. Ward and a lonely beach, he thought about diamonds and death, and then, finally, he thought about Jacob and how he’d let the little boy down again.
Somewhere on the river another foghorn sounded.
Then John Henry Rossett fell.
Chapter 29
ROSSETT SLAMMED THROUGH the wooden cargo doors and into the cellar like a bomb. The rotten wood seemed to explode around him when he hit, and the three-foot-square cotton bales below felt tougher than the wood that had been above.
He landed on his back and the air concussed out of his lungs as he sank into the bales that had broken his fall. He stared through the broken wooden cellar doors and up into the night sky where he had just been. He tried to reinflate his lungs, but they felt as flat as pancakes, and all he managed was a whistling wheeze.
His whole body seemed numb for a moment, and he wondered if he’d broken his back. Slowly he managed to turn his head to look around the dark space in which he’d landed. Then he focused on his right hand, watching as it rose off the cotton bale and slowly flexed.
He tried to breathe again, and this time a tiny gasp of air made it into his lungs. In the back of his mind, he thanked God for not being so cruel as to let him survive the fall only to die of asphyxiation, as he rolled onto his side and started to cough life back into his battered body.
He lay gasping for a moment before rolling back to look up at the broken hatch doors once again, marveling at his luck. The doors were maybe eight feet square; he’d barely fit through them, let alone noticed them when he’d looked down from the window. The overhang of the window ledge plus the night’s shadows had hidden them from his view. He was glad they had, because if he’d tried to aim for them, he doubted he would have managed to hit them. He realized that the doors were there to allow the unloading of carts into the dock cellars. He remembered them from better times, dotted at intervals around all the warehouses in the area.
The doors were well out of reach above him. If he was going to get out, that wasn’t the way he was going.
Slowly Rossett eased himself off the bales and onto his feet, climbing down three or four of the stacked bales to reach the floor, his body aching from the effort. Halfway down the pyramid of cotton he found the length of drainpipe he’d been clinging onto before the fall. He picked it up and hefted it. It was an unwieldy weapon, but a weapon all the same.
At the bottom of the stack he bent forward and rested his hands on his knees, breathing deeply before looking back up to the shattered doors above and shaking his head. He stood up straight, brushed off the dust that he’d disturbed when he’d landed on the bales, flexed his back, and started to look for a way out.
It struck him that he was out of the interrogation room but still stuck in the building, and he wondered if anyone had heard him fall.
He reached the wall and found it damp to the touch, familiar stone in the darkness. Rossett took out the box of matches he’d taken from the guard and struck one. Holding it up to light his way, he saw a sliding cast-iron door set into the wall opposite him and made his way across to it.
He dropped the match and carried on forward in darkness before finally reaching the doorway. He gripped the edge of the door and was relieved to feel it slide. The heavy fire door moved on its well-greased rollers almost silently. He opened it just far enough to pop his head out and found an empty corridor that seemed to run the length of the building.
The corridor was lit by a yellowing glass lamp set into the far wall. It was half covered in moss and barely lit the entry to another passage that turned off to the left.
Farther under the building.
If he was going to get out, he was going to have to go into the lion’s den first.
Rossett squeezed through the doorway and walked toward the light, straining to hear if anyone was coming as he made his way along the damp corridor. He guessed that it wouldn’t be long before someone found the dead guard upstairs, and it would take them even less time to figure out which way he’d left the room. They’d search high and low for him, literally. He didn’t have long to get out.
He reached the corner and stopped. Leaning against the wall and crouching slightly, he eased half of his head around the corner to peek into the next tunnel. On a chair fifteen feet away sat a docker, snoozing, arms folded, chin resting on his chest. Rossett could just hear the man’s even breathing.
If it weren’t for the old Webley pistol the man cradled in one hand, half tucked into a warm armpit, he would have been just like the tens of other watchmen who were dotted around the docks that night.
Rossett looked at the door the guard was sitting outside. It looked like the one he and Chivers had been behind, ex
cept on this side there was a handle.
Without thinking, he raised the cast-iron pipe and charged across the fifteen feet as quietly as he could. When he was a few feet short of his target, some deep-seated instinct caused the guard to open his eyes and look up at the onrushing Rossett.
Rossett looked back into the guard’s disbelieving eyes. The man tried to unfold his arms and raise them in time to protect himself and free the Webley, but the pipe came down with a dull whack, hard on the top of his head.
Rossett raised the pipe to hit him again, but the guard merely slid off the chair, either unconscious or dead. The pistol clattered onto the floor, and Rossett picked it up, eyes on the fallen man. He shook the pistol next to his ear and then opened the breech to find four rounds and two empty chambers. Rossett nudged the guard with his toe, then stepped over him and carried on down the corridor before stopping and staring back at the door. He sighed, shook his head, then put the pipe carefully on the floor, returned to the guard, searched through his pockets. A few coins, an empty wallet, and a set of keys on a chain. Rossett reached around the guard, the age-old trick of the policeman’s search, checking the small of the back, where he found a long thin knife in a leather sheath stuck under the guard’s thick leather belt. Rossett pulled the knife and the sheaf free and then half drew the knife. It was finely balanced and glistened in the gloom of the hallway. It seemed to give off its own light as he turned it in his hands, and he slipped it into his own waistband, feeling the man’s warmth against his back from the blade.
He stared at the man for a second, then flicked through the keys on the chain looking for one to open the door. He got lucky first time, turned the key in the heavy door, and pushed it open.
“Chivers?” he called softly into the darkness. “Chivers? You there?”
“ ’Oo’s asking?”
The Darkest Hour: A Novel Page 20