Strike a Match 3

by Frank Tayell

  A house had stood on the spot, but had collapsed. Over the years since, bricks and guttering, pipework and joists had been salvaged to repair the neighbourhood buildings. Those materials not yet needed had been neatly stacked behind a crude but sturdy fence.

  “This will do,” Isaac said. “Keep watch.”

  “Why?”

  Isaac smiled, and took a tablet out of his pocket. He tapped at the screen, then held it up to the side of his face. Ruth frowned, and was again about to ask Isaac what he was doing, when Isaac spoke.

  “Henry, I’m with Ruth. No, she’s fine. I am too, by the way. Yes, yes, all right. No, it is urgent. She says you’re looking for a man with a limp. The barman from The White Hart fits the bill. Yes, she thinks the man had a limp. Do you know where he lived? Right. No, of course not. Of course. Henry, I promised to keep her safe. You worry too much. It’s not—” He stopped speaking and lowered the tablet from his ear. “He hung up,” he said.

  “That’s a phone!” Ruth said. “You made a phone call!”

  “No need to shout it so loud,” Isaac said.

  “When you said Mrs Zhang called you, that’s what you meant, right?”

  “The barman lives on Somerset Road,” Isaac said, evading her question. “Henry’s still at the courthouse. I don’t think he’ll have any trouble getting a judge to sign off on a warrant. He’ll round up some police and go and pay the barman a visit.”

  “How do you have a working phone?” Ruth asked. “I mean… I mean… well, how?”

  “The simple answer is the radio antenna,” Isaac said. “I use that as a mast. It’s why I was so keen for it to be built. As more radio antennas are built, I’ll be able to co-opt them into my network, and so get coverage nationwide and then across the world. There’s a little cafe near the church two streets from here. They do a wonderful line in pancakes. Why don’t we go and have breakfast, and I can give you the longer answer?”

  “Why haven’t you handed this over to the government?”

  “Because a man needs a hobby,” Isaac said with a grin that was intended to be disarming, but only succeeded in riling Ruth more.

  “Somerset Road. Fine.” She turned her back on him and stormed out of the alley.

  “No, hang on, wait,” Isaac called, hurrying to keep up. “Henry’s taking care of it. He’s organising a posse.”

  Ruth ignored him. There had been too many secrets and lies, too many questions. It was time she had some answers.

  Somerset Road was a mixture of grand homes split into flats long before the Blackout and semi-detached houses converted into apartments in the years since. Potholes in the road’s surface had been repaired, but with a shoddy mix of cement and gravel. The gutters had been cleared, but the roofs hadn’t been cleaned. There were electric streetlights at the junction, but the only illumination further down the road was from windows belonging to the earliest of risers. From the flickering, most of those lights were candles or stoves. A few of the front gardens had been dug over. Some of the others had sheds, and a few even had benches. Judging by the profusion of As and Bs on the front doors, most homes were subdivided into flats, but there were very few Cs or Ds. The street wasn’t home to the affluent, but at the same time, the denizens weren’t poor.

  “Which one?” Ruth asked.

  “Henry said to wait,” Isaac said.

  “Since when have you ever done what he told you to?” Ruth asked. “Tell me.”

  “Well, now you really do remind me of him,” Isaac said.

  Ruth drew her truncheon. “Tell me or I’ll arrest you,” she said. “I’ll cuff you, march you to Police House, and charge you with responsibility for the end of the world. I’ll tell everyone what you did.”

  Isaac weighed that up. “No,” he said, “you won’t. But since you’re that determined, it’s 19B. Are you sure about this?”

  Ruth didn’t reply, but walked along the street, marking off the houses until she came to number nineteen.

  There were two padlocked sheds in the front garden, one for each of the two flats. Ruth tried the front door. It was locked. She turned around. Isaac was smiling.

  Ruth stepped aside. “I bet you know how to pick a lock,” she whispered.

  “Henry really isn’t going to be happy,” Isaac said. He pulled a small leather case out of his pocket and extracted two oddly shaped needles. He bent over the lock. It clicked.

  Ruth pushed past him, and into the house. There were two doors in the hallway, 19A and 19B. She let Isaac pick the lock. Beyond the door were stairs. She put her foot on the first. It creaked.

  For a moment, she wondered what she was doing. Then she wondered precisely why she was doing it. And then she heard a louder creak from upstairs. The barman was awake. All doubt fled from her mind and she bounded up the stairs. There were three doorways at the top. The one immediately in front of the stairs led into a compact kitchen with a potbellied stove whose chimney exited through the wall next to the open window. The next door led into a small sitting room. Ruth had time to think that it was a spacious flat for a man who had to be earning less than she was when a figure appeared in the third doorway. The figure was male, dressed in black, but it wasn’t the barman, because who would cover their face with a mask in their own home?

  “Stop!” she roared, raising her hand.

  Before she could bring her pistol to bear, Isaac dived into Ruth, knocking her into the living room. There was a roar of gunfire, and a bullet whined through the air, thudding into the hallway’s wall. Isaac moved to the living room doorway. He drew a monstrous handgun from a holster under his arm.

  “Sorry to trouble you,” Isaac called out. “I think we’ve got the wrong house.” He was about to swing around the doorframe when there was another shot. A bullet thudded into wooden bannister surrounding the stairs. Ruth drew her revolver.

  “Get out of the way,” she hissed.

  Isaac ignored her. Instead of pointing his gun around the door and out into the hallway, he pressed it against the wall, just underneath the old light switch now covered in a dozen coats of paint. He fired. The entire wall shuddered as the bullet was propelled through the thin plaster. Even above the roar from the monstrous hand-cannon, Ruth heard the masked man swear. Ruth hoped it was in pain.

  “Sorry about that,” Isaac yelled, as he took a hurried step to the right. There were three shots from the masked man, all in quick succession. One hit the living room door’s frame, one the wooden bannister, the third something metallic in the kitchen. Whoever the masked man was, he was a terrible shot.

  Isaac pointed to the window at the back of the room and made a circling motion with his hands. Ruth thought he meant she should climb out the window and make her way around to the front of the house so as to pin the man down. Instead she bounded into the hall. There was another roar from Isaac’s gun, followed by the sound of wood splitting as the partially deflected shot hit something inside the room. In the hallway, there was no sign of the masked man. Ruth dived into the bedroom, rolled across the floor, brought her gun up and around, but the man was gone. The window was open. She ran to it. The masked man had dropped down to the street. Ruth bounded back into the hall, jumping down the stairs two at a time.

  “Get back! Get Inside!” she yelled at the dishevelled couple standing in the doorway to the ground floor flat.

  Outside, she saw the masked man kick down the wooden gate that marked the alley between a pair of large semi-detacheds. Gun raised, ignoring the onlookers gathering in doorways and at windows, she followed.

  The alley led to a rear garden covered in an obstacle course of foot-high beanpoles and fine netting that had slowed the masked man’s progress. He was only halfway across.

  “Police! Stop!” she yelled.

  The man half turned around, and fired. The bullet went wide. Ruth raised her revolver, but the man dived forward as Ruth pulled the trigger. A fraction of a second after her bullet hit the fence, so did the man. Wood cracked as his weight knocked the panels do
wn. He tumbled through, down a shallow embankment on the other side, and disappeared from sight.

  Ruth trampled her way through the netting. When she reached the gap in the now-broken fence, she saw the man jogging across a patch of partially cleared rubble that was turning to scrub. From the piles of bricks, it had been buildings once. Ahead was a factory that looked as if it had once been a school. Beyond that was the railway line. Ruth raised the revolver, but hesitated. The man was bobbing and weaving, but he was heading for the factory’s brick wall. She launched herself down the embankment, skidding to the bottom of the slope in a spray of dirt and stones.

  By the time she reached flat ground, the man was at the factory’s wall, two hundred yards away from her. He’d stopped. He had his gun raised in his right hand. He lowered his weapon, and rubbed his shoulder. Was he surrendering?

  Ruth took a step towards him. The man stuck his weapon into his belt, and took a step towards her. Ruth frowned. She took another step, and so did he. He raised his hands, not above his head, but stretched out in front. Ruth took another cautious step, a sense of foreboding washing over her. She glanced around, left, right, then over her shoulder, and when she turned back to face the masked man, he’d turned around and was running for the wall.

  “Stop!” Ruth yelled, uncertain whether she should fire. Before she’d made up her mind, he’d launched himself at the wall. He kicked his feet against the brick, reached up, grabbed the lip of the wall, hauled himself over, and dropped down into the factory beyond.

  Ruth sprinted at the wall. Pumping her arms, she picked up speed. When she was three feet away, she launched herself at the wall. She pressed the toes of her boot against the brick, pushing herself upward. She stretched, reaching for the top of the wall, but her hand came up two inches too short. The rest of Ruth hit the wall. She slid to the ground, winded.

  She picked herself up, and, with a slight limp, ran on, searching for a gate. She found it at the front of the factory. It was unlocked, and guarded by a sleeping sentry. She pushed her way through. Gun raised, she searched for the masked man. Twenty frantic, fruitless minutes later, she accepted that he’d escaped.

  When she got back to Somerset Road, Ruth found that Isaac had vanished. Captain Mitchell stood outside 19B. A mixed squad of Marines, warders, and police officers were sealing off the street.

  “He got away,” Ruth said.

  “Isaac said,” Mitchell replied. “That’s one more dead.”

  “No,” Ruth said. “I mean the man escaped. I chased him, but he got away.”

  “The killer escaped,” Mitchell said. “The victim is upstairs. Didn’t you notice?” He led her back inside and upstairs. In the bedroom, lying in the bed, was a corpse. His throat had been slit. His thick black beard was now matted with blood.

  “He didn’t have a limp,” Ruth said, only then realising. “The man I chased didn’t have a limp.”

  “I think the victim is Mr Squires,” Mitchell said. He glanced at the door, then took his tablet out of his pocket. He took a photograph of the victim’s face. “I’ll show this to Mrs Foster, see if she can make a positive I.D. Since he’s lying in the bed, I think it’s safe to assume he lived here. In which case, he’s the barman from The White Hart. Do you recognise him?”

  “I... I’m not sure.”

  “His name is Grenville Makepeace, according to Weaver. She was the one who interviewed him after your abduction.”

  “Then who did I chase?” Ruth asked, her eyes on the dead man’s face.

  “A good question,” Mitchell said. “Search this place. See if you can find me an answer, or at least an answer as to why Mr Makepeace died tonight. Oh, and remember that you fired two shots in here.”

  “I don’t think I did,” Ruth said.

  “Isaac was never here,” Mitchell said. “It’s simpler if his name stays out of the report. You came in alone, understand?” There was something in his tone, something she’d not heard before: disappointment.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  She was glad when he’d left, and she could focus her mind on collecting evidence.

  Mr Makepeace was well off. He had a three-room apartment on a nice street, ostensibly paid for on a barman’s wage. Certainly, there was no immediately obvious clue that he had a second job. His rooms weren’t particularly large, but they were well furnished, and the furnishings matched. Even in the small flat above the Dover police house, the furniture and crockery were all odd pieces, each salvaged individually from house-clearances and the National Store.

  In the kitchen, she lifted the chair out from under the table, and then the other. Then she moved the table. She took out her tablet, turned on the light, and examined the polished floorboards. They were slightly discoloured underneath where the table leg stood, showing the table hadn’t been moved in years. Owning furniture of a similar style was another sign of affluence, and the discolouration showed Makepeace had had that wealth for some time.

  The living room contained a lot of books. At least two hundred by Ruth’s quick count. They were mostly paperbacks, but they were there to be read rather than admired. The spines were cracked, and the tops had been dusted. All had a theme of war.

  The room had a small two-seater sofa, but it was the chair by the window that was clearly used the most. She went into the kitchen to confirm her hunch. The man had a matching set of crockery, with enough plates and glasses to cater for four, but only the top-most plate looked well used. Similarly, the legs of one chair had marks on it that might have been caused by occasional knocking against a man’s boots when he sat down. The other chair had no such marks, and the seat’s padding felt less worn.

  She ran a finger across the highest shelf she could reach, and then along the lip under the table. There was no dust. The man kept a clean home. He was solitary, though, and unused to having visitors. That didn’t help reveal the identity of the masked man, nor why Makepeace had died.

  The cupboards were well stocked, with enough food for at least two weeks, though the contents were unvaried. Tinned potatoes, peas, and cans of vitamin-enriched stewed apple that was primarily advertised as a supplement for children. There was half a loaf of bread, about two days old. Half a tin of unsweetened coffee, but no tea. A cold-box had been fitted to the exterior wall, but it was empty. She went back into the bedroom.

  Perhaps Makepeace had been a go-between. The killer had hired Makepeace to rent the cottage, to collect the telegraph messages, and, presumably, a hundred and one other tasks. That way, the killer didn’t care who could identify the barman since the killer always planned to murder him.

  That theory lasted until she found the gun-case. It was concealed beneath a false panel at the bottom of the wardrobe. The case contained a dismantled rifle, an unloaded magazine, and four cartridges. There was a gap where a fifth was missing. They would have to do a ballistics test to confirm it, but it wasn’t a great leap to assume this was the weapon with which Yanuck had been shot. That left two possibilities. Either the masked man was the sniper and Makepeace was storing his weapon. If so, then Makepeace was meant to take the fall for Yanuck’s murder, and that was why he had died. Makepeace would be identified as Mr Squires, and they would stop looking for anyone else. The real killer would get away.

  Ruth looked at the corpse. There was one colossal flaw in that theory. Makepeace’s neck had been slit almost from ear to ear. There was no way anyone would think that was suicide or an accident. No, it was more likely that Makepeace was the sniper who’d killed Yanuck. In which case, who had killed Makepeace?

  Chapter 17 - A Parting Gift

  Twynham

  Two hours later, Ruth regretted not having stopped for breakfast. She stepped out of Makepeace’s bedroom and into the living room so the coroner’s assistants could ease the stretcher around the landing and down the narrow stairs. Alone once more, Ruth sat on the small sofa.

  The coroner had fingerprinted Makepeace’s hand, and Ruth had compared that to the rifle’s stock. It was
a match. Of course, if Makepeace was being framed, then she would expect his prints to be on the weapon, but she was nearly certain that Makepeace was the sniper. The rifle would go into evidence, and someone else could dismantle it, searching for prints on the inside of the weapon.

  Realising that sitting on the sofa, contaminating the crime scene, wasn’t a good place to be found, she went back into the bedroom and collected the evidence bags. She was about to bring them downstairs, and then to Police House, when she heard footsteps that sounded as weary as her own. It was Captain Mitchell.

  “Find anything?” he asked.

  “A rifle,” Ruth said, gesturing to the case.

  “A Dragunov sniper rifle,” Mitchell said as he pulled on his gloves. He picked up one of the cartridges. “That’s the same calibre as the bullet that killed Yanuck. Different from the rifle Emmitt used, though.”

  “Dragunov? That sounds Russian.”

  “Only by original design,” Mitchell said. “You could find a model similar to this in the armouries of Turkey, India, Ukraine, and a dozen other countries before the Blackout. Someone from the Naval Office will be able to give a more accurate assessment of which variant this weapon is. They think the ammunition we found when we arrested Adamovitch originally came from Bulgaria. I wouldn’t be surprised if this came from the same stash, or one not a million miles from there. Hmmm. Yanuck was a smuggler, but his interest was in smuggling people into Britain and then blackmailing them while they were here. I’d assumed that the ammo had come from one of the groups now in Calais. What if it didn’t? What if the motivation behind the attacks in Calais is to clear the continent of bandits? Get those thugs to charge westward, throwing themselves at our defences, destroying themselves and weakening us in the process?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said, “but I think Makepeace was the sniper. His prints are on the weapon’s stock. They could have been planted, but I don’t think they were. I don’t think his killer had the time.”