The Hit-and-Run Man

by Derrick R. Bickley

  “That's rubbish. There's no question of it being too big for us. I don't know why the boss has cancelled tonight. He wanted to do business with you and I have no reason to believe that has changed.”

  Morgan got to his feet, leaning forward, his hands on the table. “Then he will have to come to me. There'll be no more meetings here. And make sure it's by tomorrow night, because that's when I'm leaving. Whether the powder goes with me or not is up to you.”

  Horace and Lenny threw enquiring glances at the Beard, silently asking if they should stop the Irishman from leaving. The Beard shook his head. There was nothing more to be said at this time. Yet the events of the evening did leave him puzzled. He did not know a contract had been put out on Tommy Morgan's life.

  Greenfield planned to wait a whole minute after the obviously angry man had left, mentally counting up the seconds. There was no need to hurry. Morgan could only go one way home. Greenfield must not arouse any suspicion that he was deliberately following. It amazed him that he could even think like this. Was it so easy to develop a criminal mind?

  On the count of sixty, he left the warmth of the public house and stepped out into the bitterly cold night.

  David Maddocks could scarcely believe his eyes. When Pauline had stormed out of his office that morning, he had truly believed he would not see her again. The thought had hung over him all day, swamping him in a cloud of despondency greater than any unhappiness he had ever known before. However infrequent their meetings had been, there was always the next one to look forward to. With her leaving she had taken away a vital part of his life, leaving a void that could never be filled.

  Now here she was, standing before him. In no mood for visitors, particularly at such a late hour, he had cursed loudly at the chimes of the doorbell, but the gloom was swept aside by a surging tide of elation at the sight of her.

  “Are you going to leave me standing out here all night, David?” she asked with a smile

  He suddenly realised he had been standing there for several seconds in a speechless state of shock, simply looking at her.

  “Of course not, come in, please. It's just a bit of a surprise, that's all. No, that's an understatement. It's a hell of a surprise. I thought you had walked out of my life for ever this morning.”

  She slipped slowly past him into the flat, looking up into his eyes as she did so. “This morning was a million years ago.”

  As David slipped the coat off her shoulders, she turned to face him, looking up into his eyes in eager search of a sign of the impact she intended her appearance, complemented by her chosen figure-hugging dress, to have. She knew she looked good and was not disappointed, certain his eyes visibly widened as they unashamedly ran down her body. Subtlety was not David's strong point, but subtlety was not what she was looking for. She wondered if Howard's blonde whore managed such an effect on him.

  Throwing her coat over the back of a chair, David said, “I would still like to say that anything I did was purely out of concern for your welfare. I was very worried about you.”

  “Leave out the crap, David,” she protested. “For two years I have watched the lust in your eyes. I've fed my ego on it. So I know exactly what your intentions were when you hired your Spanish private eye.”

  “Yet you still came here tonight.”

  “Yes I still came.”

  David ran a finger gently down the side of her face. It could be nothing else but a declaration of intent. The defences were breached. The chase was over. In the end the chase had come to him. There is always something special about the moment of awareness that something wonderful is going to take place, something wanted so much for so long. The joy of anticipation is often as sweet as the realisation.

  Kicking off her shoes, Pauline draped herself across the sofa, lying back so that her body pressed against the tight-fitting dress as it shifted up above her knees. She wanted to play games and David was content to play along. Settling in an armchair, he resolved to enjoy the preamble. Two years he had waited for this moment, so a few minutes more were easily tolerable in the knowledge that time was all that stood between him and the final surrender of Pauline's body. He had long resigned himself to the fact that only a miracle could save his passion from being forever unrequited. Now that miracle was unfolding around him, he was happy to let it run its natural course.

  Pauline giggled. “Tell me, David, do you have erotic fantasies about me?”

  He was taken aback by her directness. It was so different to the Pauline he knew, or thought he knew.

  “Very often,” he answered, “usually at the most embarrassing times. Sometimes at work even, when I'm in a meeting with my boss and suddenly find I haven't heard a word he has said.”

  “Whatever do you do then?”

  “Bend forward, cross my legs, try to look intelligent and hope he hasn't noticed.”

  Pauline laughed loudly. “I don't believe a word, but I like it. I had erotic fantasies about you this afternoon. Does that shock you?”

  “To the core, but don't let that stop you having them.”

  Curtailing her laughter, Pauline looked around.

  “Have you got a drink in this place?”

  Sure, there's a tray over there behind you on the sideboard.” David stood up. “What would you like?”

  “Whisky, vodka, whatever's going.”

  Bottles of whisky and vodka were included in the selection on the tray, but David preferred the former. As he began to fill two glasses, she came beside him, brushing her arm against his.” He felt the knot in his stomach as his body responded to the sensation of her closeness.

  “Do I have striking eyes, David?”

  “You have very beautiful eyes.”

  “Presumably that means 'no'.” Pauline looked up at him. “What is my best feature then? How would I be described in a private detective's report?”

  “Pauline, there's no need to torture yourself this way.”

  The contradiction was not lost on David even as he spoke the words. The torment Pauline was suffering was exactly what he had set out to create and it had achieved its objective, undoubtedly being the basis of the reasoning that had brought her to him tonight.

  “To pick out your outstanding features would mean listing everything about you. You're the most beautiful woman I have ever known or seen in my life. That's not just it though, there's more than that to you, an extra-special something simmering just below the surface; a warm sensuality radiating from you so that just to be in your presence fills me with a joy no other woman has ever aroused in me. If Howard no longer wants to feel that joy, the he's one hell of a bloody fool.”

  Who made the first move David could never remember, but suddenly she was in his arms, pressing her body against him, her open mouth locked on his, her tongue sliding teasingly across the tip of his. He held her to him as though his very existence depended on her clinging to him, his senses reeling at the urgency of her kisses, his hands running wildly over the body that was soon to be his. No longer was it a dream, no longer a fantasy.

  Pulling herself away, Pauline picked up her glass and swallowed a large mouthful of whisky. The alcohol went straight to her head, inducing an intoxication she found highly pleasurable. For two years she had been content to see and be aware of this man's craving for her body. It was no longer enough. Now she needed to know the reality of it. To hell with Howard and his big-eyed blonde.

  “You have a nice place here, David, I'm very impressed,” she said moving across the room, glass in hand. Pushing open a door with her foot, she added. “This, I presume, is the bedroom.”

  “You found it in one.”

  Smiling, she said, “Why don't you join me? You know I hate to drink alone.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The icy drizzle had turned to snow, large, furry flakes swirling around on the freezing wind. They settled in Greenfield's hair as he closed quickly on the figure ahead of him. No more than eight yards between them now, but it was still too much. The awesome aw
areness of the power in his hands was overwhelming. In that instant, he was God. He held the power of life or death over the man foraging through the snow ahead of him. Such thoughts could not be allowed to thwart his purpose. To preserve Greenfield's life a man must die. That was the way of it.

  He was close enough now, only a few feet. Without altering his pace, he pulled the pistol clear of his pocket, held it out in front of him and fired four times, so rapidly the reports sounded almost as one. Even in the poor light he could see the flesh ripped apart as the bullets slammed into the back of Tommy Morgan's head, pitching him forward face-down onto the snow-carpeted pavement.

  Greenfield was amazed at the thrill that rushed through his body as he squeezed the trigger. There were no feelings of horror, no revulsion, only a soaring exhilaration at the manifestation of the ultimate power of life or death over another human being. It must have been over in a second or two, yet to Greenfield it seemed an age, the bullet-ridden body arcing away from him in an unreal, dream-like, slow-motion plunge.

  It really had been easy, just as they had said it would. He knew the feelings of horror and revulsion would come, but for now the nightmare was over. He had won his freedom. Tomorrow he would be back home, with Pauline and his daughter, Diane, their troubles behind them, the start of a new life. All he had to do now was run.

  “Police! Armed Police!” The voice came from behind him. “Stay where you are!”

  It couldn't be possible. He was sure he and Morgan had been alone on the street. How could it be the police? He must be dreaming, his imagination playing wild tricks on him. This was the adrenalin rush fevering his brain. No, he had to run. That was all he had to do.

  “I repeat, this is the police and we are armed.” The voice came again out of the darkness, only closer and louder this time. “Put down your weapon and raise your hands behind your head.”

  Greenfield's brain was spinning, the inside of his head a swirling whirlpool of confusion. He could see nothing through the darkness and the thickening snowfall. The police couldn't be there. It was impossible. He had to get home to Pauline. He was suddenly filled with an overwhelming longing to be with her, feel the nearness of her, to hold her soft, warm hand in his. How much he needed her now.

  His self-control crumbled. Acting on instincts born of fear and panic, he raised the pistol once more, firing wildly in the direction from which the voice came, squeezing the trigger repeatedly, bullet following rapidly upon bullet.

  A volley of revolver fire rattled back out of the darkness. Strangely, there was no pain as the bullets smacked into Greenfield's chest, only a sensation of being dealt a rapid series of hefty blows, which sent him staggering back several paces. Desperately he tried to stay on his feet. He had to run, get away from this place. But his strength poured out of him like water gushing from a tap, his legs gave way and he dropped first to his knees before keeling over the snow-covered pavement.

  Two men appeared, shadowy forms in the night. One knelt beside Greenfield as he lay on his back gasping for breath. The other went to the man lying just a few feet away. Only the briefest of looks was necessary, no more than the open, unseeing eyes, though that didn't stop a frantic search for any trace of a pulse. With a shake of the head, the man said in despair, “Please tell me this is not happening. Mike's dead. Jesus Christ, the bastards have killed him.”

  Mike? Who was Mike? Greenfield knew nothing of anyone called Mike.

  “This one's still alive. Get on the radio, let's get some help out here.”

  “I've got a better idea. Step aside and let me put a bullet in his head. That's all the help this low-life scum should get.”

  The officer kneeling beside Greenfield stood up to face his colleague. The snow was getting heavier, the biting wind colder.

  “That's crazy talk. Step back and think about what you are saying. I can understand your rage and anger, God knows I feel it too. Mike was a friend as well as a fellow officer, but we're not executioners. That brings us down to their level. And we need answers to what's gone down here tonight. We need this guy alive.”

  Greenfield began to shiver. It was so cold. Every breath was becoming more of a struggle, a battle against the great weight seemingly bearing down on his chest, crushing his lungs. The overcoat draped over his body by one of the men failed to stop the shivering.

  “What made you do this?” The voice seemed a long way off, barely audible. “Who are you working for?”

  If he could have mustered the strength to speak, he could not have answered the questions. He knew nothing. That was how they operated.

  Greenfield only just made out the words, “Ambulances are on the way.” He was becoming remote from the activity around him, drifting away, the street and the two men fading gently into the distance.

  Someone touched his shoulder. “You hold in there. Help is not far away. Don't you dare die on us”

  But he was losing the fight. Swirling snow danced contemptuously across his face and settled on the coat covering him as he breathed in desperate gulps, frantically trying to inflate lungs that were losing the struggle to function. It couldn't end like this. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. He had done the deed, earned his freedom. Now he had to get home to Pauline.

  A sudden stab of pain deep in his chest was so vicious it forced him to cry out. And as Howard Greenfield rolled over to die in a cold, snow-swept gutter, his wife was making love with a ferocity she had never known in fifteen years of married life.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “It's a bad business.”

  Sitting in his office in New Scotland Yard, Commander James Hawkes shook his head gravely as he delivered what appeared to be a masterpiece of understatement to Detective Chief Inspector Richard Proffitt, who slumped wearily in a chair facing him.

  “Yes, you never quite get used to losing one of your own, do you?”

  “Have you seen his wife?”

  “Yes, I broke the news to her.” Proffitt rubbed his eyes, already reddened by lack of sleep. “Not a very pleasant duty, but someone had to do it.”

  “I sympathise. Telling someone of the death of someone close to them is something I've never really got used to. I don't think many of us do. Even more so when it involves people we know personally.”

  “It goes with the job, I suppose.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “Very badly, as you'd expect. Cried a lot. I left a WPC with her.” Proffitt cleared his throat, but was unable to remove the emotional quiver from his voice. “There's a child also, a son, two years old. Slept right through all the commotion, never as much as stirred. God knows what his mother is going to tell him when he wakes up. How do you tell a two-year-old boy, a few days before Christmas, that his father isn't coming home any more?”

  “What in blazes went wrong out there, Dick?”

  Proffitt sighed heavily. “It doesn't make any sense. Mike Donovan was one of our best under-cover officers. This assignment was tailor-made for him. He had an Irish father, spent most of his childhood over there. He still spoke with a slight accent even. We created an existence out there in Ireland we were sure would stand up to any enquiries that they made. Everything was covered, we were sure of it.”

  “That doesn't seem to have been the case.”

  “They must have found a chink in the armour somewhere.” Proffitt wasn't sure which he wanted more, a double whisky or simply to close his eyes and sleep. “Heaven knows how or what. Perhaps sometimes we underestimate the intelligence of the criminal classes.”

  “We shouldn't.”

  “I know, but I think we do.”

  Commander Hawkes leaned forward on his desk, looking Proffitt straight in the eye and asked, “There's no chance of a leak from inside, is there? Someone on a payroll other than our own? How many officers knew about this operation?”

  Proffitt didn't react to the Commander's stare, but was knocked back by the question.

  “Counting you and me, no more than six,” Proffitt
replied, “but I would trust my life with any of them, including your good self.”

  Proffitt had known James Hawkes throughout his police career, having served with him in the early days in uniform on the streets. Hawkes had never come over to him as a particularly outstanding officer or a particularly ambitious one, so continued to view the rise to his current position with some surprise. He wondered why he, with two commendations for bravery, one for rescuing two young children from a blazing building and more recently for grappling with and disarming an escapee from a mental institution running amok on Oxford Street with a Samurai sword, seriously injuring a number of lunch-time shoppers, seemed to have hit the buffers at Detective Inspector. Perhaps, he wondered, you just might be too useful out on the street to be promoted to a chair behind a desk.

  Commander Hawkes leaned back in his chair.

  “There's going to be a major inquiry into this whole affair and every option will be examined, including the possibility of someone on the inside giving Donovan up.”

  “Given the circumstances,” Proffitt conceded, “I would expect nothing less.”

  Hawkes was not looking forward to the scrutiny this disastrous mess would bring down on him. He was looking to move further up the career ladder and this would not look good on his CV. How he wished it was all a bad dream, from which he would soon awaken. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, a big man, over six feet tall with middle-age catching up on his body, his face growing more rounded, his hair greying and he was sure when he looked in the mirror that morning there were signs of bags appearing beneath his eyes. Pulling nervously at his white shirt collar, he began to feel very warm in his uniform and wasn't sure it was entirely due to the overworked room heating.

  “Tell me, why were two officers following Donovan? Did you order that?”