The Hard Detective
Page 19
Frowning, she walked towards him.
Rob, as if guessing, even fearing, what she might be going to say, came forward.
‘Ma’am. Ma’am, I thought it might be a good idea to let Dr Scholl know. I mean, I thought his advice …’
‘You did quite right, Inspector,’ Dr Smellyfeet said, loudly and clearly.
Harriet stopped.
‘I dare say you could be useful, Peter. But just at the moment I’m more concerned with making sure that woman doesn’t get out of the house. If she hasn’t found where I hide the back-door key, or contrived to unlock a window.’
DI Coleman had responded to Rob’s call, and Harriet went over to him and, brushing aside his enquiries about the deep weal across her forehead, began making arrangements for a siege. She had hardly been talking for five minutes when one of the constables Coleman had sent to the back of the house came trotting up.
‘She’s in there all right, sir. We’ve seen her shadow through the blind in what looks like the kitchen.’
‘Yes,’ Harriet said. ‘She could well be there.’
‘Well then, ma’am,’ Coleman asked. ‘Now we know we’ve got her nicely bottled up, what are we going to do?’
‘Leave her for a bit, DI. See if she makes any sort of move. Don’t hesitate to let the chaps show themselves. We want to put as much pressure on as possible. With any luck, she’ll try to make a break for it. Unless she has managed to get hold of my husband’s shotgun, she isn’t armed. Except for that whip. So we shouldn’t have too much trouble making an arrest. Or she may want to talk, and then we’ll coax or trick her to where we can get her.’
‘Do I stand down the firearms boys, then?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. If the worst comes to the worst and one of our side’s in danger, a shot might finish things nicely.’
From the darkness outside the glaring lights, by now showing up every brick, every piece of woodwork of the house, a voice came.
Dr Smellyfeet’s.
‘Harriet. Miss Martens, can I have a word? Urgently.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so. You happy, DI?’
‘Ma’am.’
‘Right then, Doctor, what is it?’
Dr Scholl kept his voice down.
‘Listen, Harriet, I heard that. You aren’t going to arrange to have Grace shot?’
Harriet looked at him.
‘If I have to, I will. I carry the rank to order firearms officers to use their weapons if a suspect has a gun.’
‘No, I asked if what you were going to do was to arrange one of those incidents that have happened in the past.’
‘No. No, I suppose I’m not. I don’t want an interminable inquiry afterwards. And the possibility of it going against me. So, no, Peter, I’m not going to play dirty. But if one of my team is in danger … And let me remind you the woman in the house there has not hesitated to kill police officers. If another of them is in real danger now, I’ll happily take full responsibility for anything that happens.’
‘Full responsibility for the death of a human being? A human being who’s beyond knowing what she’s doing?’
‘A human being, as I’ve just pointed out to you, who has killed six other human beings. Who’s broken the law at its most serious. No, Peter, I happen to think she deserves to die. But I know, too, it’s not my duty to see her killed. But it is my duty to arrest her, and that’s what I’m going—’
An upper window in the house was thrust open with such force that every single person’s attention switched to it like the clicked points of a rail line. And to the gaunt figure just inside.
‘You know what, Peter?’ Harriet murmured. ‘I’d like to take one single shot at her now.’
‘Harriet, she’s a hopeless, disoriented person. Have some compassion, for God’s sake.’
Any reply she might have made was cut short by a screeching voice from above.
‘You police devils. Killing my babby. Killing the poor mite unborn. Police. Police. But I’ve had my way. I’ve done what was to be done. I’ve taken a life for a life. I’ve taken an eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Hand for hand. Foot for foot. Burning for burning. Wound for wound. I’ve killed them all. And now I’ve killed the last of them. The Top Cop. Thought she’d hidden herself away from me. But I traced her. I tracked her. I heard her true name. I went to the big Post Office and looked in the phone book. I found where Mrs Piddock lived. And stripe for stripe I’ve killed her. So I’m going now. Going to the blessed land. Going where there’s peace. Peace.’
And then Harriet stepped forward into the ring of light round the house.
‘No, Grace Brown,’ she shouted up.
A violent throb of pain ran down her face from the muscular movement she had made in calling out.
She ignored it.
‘No, Grace Brown, I’m still alive. Your trick wasn’t good enough. I’m alive, Grace Brown, and I’m coming to take you in.’
She turned and went over to the wall between her house and the next at a spot just where the almond tree grew. She stooped, scraped away the rain-sticky earth in the narrow flower-bed there, came up with an old Ovaltine tin, prised off its top and poured into her outstretched palm the spare set of keys to the house.
‘Harriet,’ Peter Scholl said, as he saw what she had got. ‘Harriet, let her do it. Let her use that shotgun and end her life. Get the peace she craves.’
‘No, Peter. A murderer is there inside. I am going to effect an arrest. No criminal is going to get away unpunished so long as I have anything to do with it.’
She went over to the house door and opened it. DI Coleman and one of the armed officers came up close behind her. Quickly she went over to the stairs and quietly went up them, neither delaying nor hurrying.
At the top she went straight across the landing. The door of the front bedroom was just open. She pushed it wide.
Grace Brown had turned away from the window. For a moment Harriet’s eyes went to the long black snaking whip lying on the bedspread.
Then she spoke.
‘Grace Brown, I am arresting you on suspicion of murdering Police Constable Titmuss, Woman Police Constable Syed, Detective Superintendent Froggott, Police Cadet Chatterton, former Police Constable Studley, and Police Constable Strachan. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
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