by Jack Higgins
He grinned, the old wicked grin that used to put her on her back in five seconds flat. “Come on then, darling, I’m freezing to death out here.”
So complete was the surprise, so great the shock of seeing him that she unhooked the chain in a kind of dazed wonder and backed slowly into the room. As the Gunner moved in after her and closed the door the sailor skipped out of bed and pulled on his underpants.
“Here, what’s the bloody game?” he demanded.
The Gunner ignored him, concentrating completely on Doreen whose ample charms were prominently displayed for the girdle of her kimono, loosely fastened, had come undone.
“By God, but you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said, sincere admiration in his voice.
Having had time to take in the Gunner’s bedraggled appearance, the sailor’s alarm had subsided and there was an edge of belligerency in his voice when he spoke again, “I don’t know who the hell you are, mate, but you’ll bloody well get out of it fast if you know what’s good for you.”
The Gunner looked him over and grinned amiably. “Why don’t you shut up, sonny?”
The sailor was young, active and muscular and fancied himself as a fighting man. He came round the end of the bed with a rush, intending to throw this rash intruder out on his ear and made the biggest mistake of his life. The Gunner’s left foot slipped forward, knee turned slightly in. The sailor flung the sort of punch that he had seen used frequently and with great success on the films. The Gunner swayed a couple of inches and the punch slid across his shoulder. His left fist screwed into the sailor’s solar plexus, his right connected with the edge of the jaw, slamming him back against the far wall from which he rebounded to fall on his face unconscious.
The Gunner turned, untying the cord of his dressing-gown. “How’ve you been keeping them, darlin?’ he demanded cheerfully.
“But Gunner—what happened?” she said.
“They had me in the infirmary for a check-up. One of the screws got a bit dozy so I took my chance and hopped it. Got any clothes?”
She opened a drawer, took out a clean towel and gave it to him, an expression of wonder still on her face. “No—nothing that would do for you.”
“Never mind—I’ll take this bloke’s uniform.” He turned her round and slapped her backside. “Find me something to drink, there’s a girl. It was no joke out there in this rig-out on a night like this.”
She went into the kitchen and he could hear her opening cupboards as he stripped and scrubbed himself dry. He had the sailor’s trousers and shirt on and was trying to squeeze his feet into the shoes when she returned.
He tossed them into the corner in disgust. “No bloody good. Two sizes too small. What have you got there?”
“Sherry,” she said. “It’s all I could find. I was never much of a drinker—remember?”
The bottle was about half-full and he uncorked it and took a long swallow. He wiped a hand across his mouth with a sigh of pleasure as the wine burned its way into his stomach.
“Yes, I remember all right.” He emptied the bottle and dropped it on the floor. “I remember lots of things.”
He opened her kimono gently, and his sigh seemed to echo into forever. Still sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled her close to him, burying his face in her breasts.
She ran her fingers through his hair and said urgently, “Look, Gunner, you’ve got to get moving.”
“There’s always time for this,” he said and looked up at her, his eyes full of grey smoke. “All the time in the world.”
He fell back across the bed, pulling her down on top of him and there was a knock on the door.
Doreen jumped up, pulling her kimono about her and demanded loudly. “Who is it?”
The voice that replied was high and clear. “Mrs. Goldberg, dear. I’d like a word with you.”
“My landlady,” Doreen whispered and raised her voice. “Can’t it wait?”
“I’m afraid not, dear. It really is most urgent.”
“What am I going to do?” Doreen demanded desperately. “She’s a funny old bird. She could make a lot of trouble for me.”
“Does she know you’re on the game?” the Gunner demanded.
“At fifteen quid a week for this rat-trap? What do you think?”
“Fair enough.” The Gunner rolled the unconscious sailor under the bed, lay on it quickly, head propped up against a pillow and helped himself to a cigarette from a packet on the bedside locker. “Go on, let her in now. I’m just another client.”
Mrs. Goldberg called out again impatiently and started to knock as Doreen crossed to the door and opened it on the chain. The Gunner heard the old woman say, “I must see you, my dear. It’s very, very urgent.”
Doreen shrugged and unfastened the chain. She gave a cry of dismay as the door was pushed back sending her staggering across the room to sprawl across the Gunner on the bed.
Nick Miller moved in, Brady at his side, the local patrolman behind them, resplendent in black crash helmet and foul-weather gear.
“All right then, Gunner,” Miller said cheerfully. “Let’s be having you.”
The Gunner laughed out loud. “Another five minutes and I’d have come quietly, Mr. Miller, but to hell with this for a game of soldiers.”
He gave the unfortunate Doreen a sudden, violent push that sent her staggering into Miller’s arms, sprang from the bed and was into the kitchen before anyone could make a move. The door slammed in Brady’s face as he reached it and the bolt clicked home. He turned and nodded to the young patrolman, a professional rugby player with the local team, who tucked his head into his shoulder and charged as if he was carving his way through a pack of Welsh forwards.
In the kitchen, the Gunner tugged ineffectually at the window, then grabbed a chair and smashed an exit. A second later, the door caved in behind him as the patrolman blasted through and sprawled on his face.
There was a fallpipe about five feet to one side. Without hesitation, the Gunner reached for the rotting gutter above his head, swung out into the rain and grabbed at the pipe as the gutter sagged and gave way.
He hung there for a moment, turned and grinned at Miller who leaned out of the window, arm outstretched and three feet too short.
“No hard feelings, Mr. Miller. See you in church.”
He went down the pipe like a monkey and disappeared into the darkness and rain below. Miller turned and grinned at Brady. “Still in his bare feet, did you notice? He always was good for a laugh.”
They returned to the bedroom to find Doreen weeping passionately. She flung herself into Brady’s arms the moment he appeared. “Oh, help me, Mr. Brady. As God’s my judge I didn’t know that divil was coming here this night.”
Her accent had thickened appreciably and Brady patted her bottom and shoved her away. “You needn’t put that professional Irish act on with me, Doreen Monaghan. It won’t work. I’m a Cork man meself.”
There was a muffled groan from under the bed. Brady leaned down and grabbed a foot, hauling the sailor into plain view, naked except for his underpants.
“Now I’d say that just about rounds the night off,” Miller said to the big Irishman and they both started to laugh.
Mrs. Goldberg, seventy and looking every year of it with her long jet earrings and a patina of make-up that gave her a distinct resemblance to a death mask, peered round the door and viewed the splintered door with horror.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “The damage. Who’s going to pay for the damage?”
The young patrolman appeared behind her, looking white and shaken. Miller moved forward, ignoring Mrs. Goldberg for the moment. “What happened to you?”
“Thought I’d better get a general call out for Doyle as soon as possible, Sergeant, so I went straight down to my bike.”
“Good lad,” Brady said. “That’s using your nut.”
“They’ve been trying to get in touch with Sergeant Miller for the last ten minutes or so.”
“Oh, yes,” Miller sai
d. “Anything important?”
“Chief Superintendent Mallory wants you to meet him at Dob Court, Sergeant. That’s off Gascoigne Street on the north side of Jubilee Park. The beat man found a woman there about twenty minutes ago.” Suddenly he looked sick. “Looks like another Rainlover killing.”
There were at least a dozen patrol cars in Gascoigne Street when Miller and Brady arrived in the Mini-Cooper and the Studio, the Forensic Department’s travelling laboratory, was just drawing up as they got out and moved along the wet pavement to Dob Court.
As they approached, two men emerged and stood talking. One was Detective Inspector Henry Wade, Head of Forensic, a fat balding man who wore horn-rimmed spectacles and a heavy overcoat. He usually smiled a lot, but now he looked grim and serious as he wiped rain from his glasses with a handkerchief and listened to what Detective Chief Superintendent George Mallory of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad was saying to him.
He nodded and moved away and Mallory turned to Miller. “Where were you?”
He was forty-five years of age, crisp, intelligent, the complete professional. The provincials he had to work with usually didn’t like him, which suited him down to the ground because he detested inefficiency in any form and had come across too much of it for comfort on his forays outside London.
He thoroughly approved of Miller with his sharp intelligence and his law degree, because it was in such men that the salvation of the country’s outdated police system lay. Under no circumstances would he have dreamt of making his approval apparent.
“Brady and I had a lead on Doyle.”
“The prisoner who escaped from the infirmary? What happened?”
Miller told him briefly and Mallory nodded. “Never mind that now. Come and have a look at this.”
The body lay a little way inside the alley covered with a coat against the heavy rain until the Studio boys could get a tarpaulin rigged. The constable who stood beside it held his torch close as Mallory lifted the raincoat.
“From the looks of it her neck is broken just like the others,” Mallory said, “but the first thing we’ve got to do is find out who she is. Typical of a lot of these girls these days there isn’t any kind of identification whatsoever in her handbag.”
Miller looked down at the waxen face turned sideways awkwardly, the eyes staring into eternity. When he spoke, it was with difficulty.
“I think I can help you there, sir.”
“You know her?”
“Her name is Packard, sir,” Miller said hoarsely. “Grace Packard.”
6
The Gunner went through the back gate of the yard at the rear of Doreen’s house and ran like a hare, turning from one street into another without hesitation, completely forgetting his bare feet in the excitement of the moment.
When he paused in a doorway for a breather, his heart was pounding like a trip-hammer, but not because he was afraid. On the contrary, he found himself in the grip of a strange exhilaration. A psychologist might have found a reason in the sudden release from confinement after two and a half years in a prison cell. The Gunner only knew that he was free and he lifted his face up to the rain and laughed out loud. The chase was on. He would lose it in the end, he knew that, but he’d give them a run for their money.
He moved towards the end of the street and paused. A woman’s voice said clearly, “Able-fox-victor come in please. I have a 952 for you.”
He peered round the corner and saw a police car parked, window open as a beat constable in helmet and cape leaned down to speak to the driver. The Gunner retreated hastily and trotted towards the far end of the street. He was no more than half-way along when a police motor cyclist turned the corner and came towards him. The man saw him at once and came on with a sudden burst of speed, engine roaring. The Gunner ran across the street and ducked into a narrow entry between two houses.
He found himself in a small courtyard faced by a stone wall a good fifteen feet high and in one corner was an old wash-house of the type common to late Victorian houses. He pulled himself up on to the sloping roof as the patrolman pounded into the entry blowing his whistle, and reached for the top of the wall, sliding over silently as the policeman arrived.
The sound of the whistle faded as he worked his way through a network of backyards and alleys that stretched towards the south side of Jubilee Park. He stopped once as a police car’s siren sounded close by and then another lifted on the night air in the middle distance. He started to run again. The bastards were certainly doing him proud.
Ten minutes later he had almost reached the park when another siren not too far in front of him made him pause. It was standard police procedure on this sort of chase, he knew that, intended to confuse and bewilder the quarry until he did something stupid.
But the Gunner was too old a fox for that one. The park was out. What he needed now was somewhere to lie up for a few hours until the original excitement had died down.
He retraced his steps and turned into the first side street. It was flanked by high walls and on the left, a massive wooden gate carried the sign Henry Crowther and Sons—Transport. It seemed just the sort of place he was looking for and for once his luck was in. There was the usual small judas with a yale lock set in the main gate. Someone had left it on the latch for it opened to his touch.
He found four trucks parked close together in a cobbled yard. There was a house at the other end and light streamed between the curtains of a ground floor window.
When he peered inside he saw a white-haired old woman sitting in front of a bright coal fire watching television. She had a cigarette in one hand and what looked like a glass of whisky in the other. He envied her both and was conscious of his feet for the first time since leaving Doreen’s flat. They were cold and raw and hurt like hell. He hobbled across the yard towards a building on the right of the house and went in through doors which stood open. It had been a stable in years gone by, but from the looks of things was now used as a workshop or garage.
Wooden stairs went up through a board floor to what had obviously been the hayloft. It was in almost total darkness and seemed to be full of drums of oil and assorted junk. A half-open wooden door creaked uneasily and rain drifted in on the wind. A small wooden platform jutted out ten feet above the cobbles and a block and tackle hung from a loading hook.
He had a good view of the house and the yard, which was important, and sank down on an old tarpaulin and started to massage his feet vigorously. They hadn’t felt like this since Korea and he shuddered as old memories of frostbite and comrades who had lost toes and even feet in that terrible retreat south during the first winter campaign came back to him.
The gate clicked in the darkness below and he straightened and peered out. Someone hurried across the yard and opened the front door. As light streamed out, he saw that it was a young woman in a raincoat with a scarf bound around her head, peasant-fashion. She looked pretty wet and the Gunner smiled as she went inside and closed the door.
He leaned against the wall and stared into the rain, hunger gnawing at his stomach. Not that there was anything he could do about that. Later, perhaps, when all the lights had gone out in the house he might see if he had lost any of his old skill. Shoes and something to eat and maybe an old raincoat—that’s all he needed. If he could make it as far as the Ring Road there were any one of half a dozen transport cafés where long-distance lorry drivers pulled up for rest and a meal. All he had to do was get himself into the back of a truck and he could be two hundred miles away by breakfast.
He flinched, dazzled by light that poured from one of the second floor windows. When he looked across he could see the girl standing in the doorway of what was obviously her bedroom. The wind lifted, driving rain before it and the judas gate creaked. The Gunner peered cautiously into the darkness, imagining for a moment that someone else had arrived, then turned his attention to the bedroom again.
The girl didn’t bother to draw the curtains, secure in the knowledge that she was cut off from the street by
the high wall and started to undress, obviously soaked to the skin.
The Gunner watched with frank and open admiration. Two and a half years in the nick and the only female company a monthly visit from his Aunty Mary, a seventy-year-old Irish woman with a heart of corn whose visits with their acid asides on authority, the peelers as she still insisted on calling them, and life in general, always kept him laughing for at least a week afterwards. But this? Now this was different.
The young woman dried off with a large white towel, then examined herself critically in the mirror. Strange how few women looked their best in the altogether, but she was more than passable. The black hair almost reached the pointed breasts and a narrow waist swelled into hips that were perhaps a trifle too large for some tastes, but suited the Gunner down to the ground.
When she dressed again, she didn’t bother with a suspender belt. Simply pulled on a pair of hold-up stockings, black pants and bra, then took a dress from the wardrobe. He’d heard they were wearing them short since he’d gone down, but this was ridiculous. Not only was it half-way up her thighs, but crocheted into the bargain so you could see through it like the tablecloth Aunty Mary had kept in the parlour when he was a kid.
She stood at the dressing table and started to brush her hair, perhaps the most womanly of all actions, and the Gunner felt strangely sad. He’d started off by fancying a bit of the usual and why not? He’d almost forgotten what it tasted like and the business with Doreen had certainly put him in the mood. But now, lying there in the loft with the rain falling, he felt like some snotty-nosed kid with his arse out of his pants, looking in at what he could never have and no one to blame but himself.
She tied her hair back with a velvet ribbon, crossed to the door and went out, switching off the light. The Gunner sighed and eased back slightly and below in the yard there was the scrape of a foot on stone.