Die Rich Die Happy c-2

by James Munro

  Schiebel had been to see her once, had offered her the drug, and she had refused. Christ, it had been like tearing your heart out to see the stuff, white and clinically pure in his hand, and then say "No." And it was stupid too. Because he'd be back, and next time she couldn't say no—she loved Harry, he was all she had, but she couldn't refuse heroin twice. And the second time, Schiebel had warned her, there would be conditions before she got the drug. There always were. But this time it would be Harry who would be humiliated, degraded, as well as she herself. She wanted to die, but hadn't the strength to kill herself, and anyway, he would be there to stop her.

  Schiebel said: "Mrs. Naxos," and she opened her eyes at once. He was bending over her and she was wide awake, but the horses were still there, rearing among the golden trees. She opened her mouth to scream and Schiebel struck her. The blow gave no pain, no meaning, but her head whirled, and when it cleared the horses became a picture of a carousel on the wall. "I've brought your medicine," Schiebel said. "Would you like it now?"

  And there was the white, essential packet in his hands, and she tried to say "go away," but the words would not come. Instead, her head nodded feebly.

  "I want an answer," said Schiebel.

  "Yes," said Flip. 'Tlease. Yes."

  "I see," Schiebel said. "Good. First you must sign a receipt."

  "Don't torture me," she whispered.

  Schiebel put the packet down, took a notebook and pen from his pocket.

  "You are torturing yourself," he said. "All your sickness is in your mind, Mrs. Naxos. Master it and I can never hurt you again—in that way. Take these." He put pen and paper in her hands. "Now write."

  "I can't," she said. "My hand is shaking too much."

  "Master it," said Schiebel. "Control it. It is your hand. Make it obey you."

  But her hand would not obey.

  "Give me the stuff first. It'll help me."

  "Afterward," said Schiebel. "You always get your medicine afterward. Don't you know that yet?"

  And at last her hand began to obey, and she wrote what he dictated.

  Harry, my darling,

  I am with Schiebel, and everything is fine. Don't worry about me. Nothing will happen so long as you don't sign the agreement. If you do, you will destroy me.

  I love you Harry. Please help me.

  She wrote it all. Her handwriting was a mess, but she wrote it. Only she couldn't sign it. Whenever the pen touched the paper to write Fhp, her hand shook uncontrollably, and at last she could understand why. The knowledge was terrible to her, but she accepted it, crumpled the paper, threw it away.

  Schiebel shrugged.

  "Very well," he said. "Ill give you the medicine myself in a little while. You'll soon need more, once you've had the first dose."

  Then he began to hurt her.

  » Chapter 23 *

  Further extract from "O Level Edward" 's autobiographical fragment.

  Mr. Candlish sends word he wants to see us and we go—we always act respectful to Mr. Candlish—and anyway, all I miss is four hours' hard labor in the supermarket where I am gainfully employed at the time, unloading the bargains so the nits can get threepence off. And when I get there, Harry is present, and Jigger and Lonesome, and Mr. Candlish drinking rum out of a tin mug and looking pleased.

  "I got two gentlemen coming to see you lot," he says. "They got a job for you and it pays good money—so no hp from you."

  We agree, and if we had forelocks we would tug them, because this old bastard scares the hell out of us, and then the gentlemen come in and there will be no hp from me, because one of the gentlemen sorted out three wogs with his hands and feet the night before, and the other one held a gun on us while he did it, and almost fell asleep. The hard one says: "Those Arabs that attacked you last night—they had friends. Those friends have

  been picking on you. Messing up your bikes, knocking you about. That's not right," he says. "You ought to do something about it."

  "You want us to duff up some wogs?" asks Lonesome.

  "Good God no," says the sleepy one. "We want you to organize a protest, present some petitions—that sort of thing."

  "Where to?" I ask. "The Zaarb Embassy?"

  "Something like that," the sleepy one says. "Their trading offices anyway. We've got four petitions all ready for you as a matter of fact," he says. "But there ought to be more of you. I always think the more the merrier with petitions, don't you? You'll need some people to watch the back entrance too. It would be too bad if the people you wanted to speak to got away."

  "How many you want?" Harry asks.

  "All you can get'" says the hard one. "Fifty at least. I want you to take your bikes and leave them in the way."

  "Way of what?" Harry asks. He's a very careful leader, Harry.

  "Anybody, anything that tries to leave," says the hard

  one.

  "All damage will be liberally paid for," says the sleepy one, and I can see old Candlish doesn't like that "liberally," but he says nothing, just sits there, and I realize again how bad these two must be.

  Then the hard one gets down to details, and we believe everything he says, even when he tells us the police won't bother us, because this one knows what he's doing. And he draws a map for us, and tells us how to divide our forces, and where to congregate, then he says: "The Zaarb lot won't be too keen to let you in. Remember that. If you want to present those petitions, you'll have to get them inside the best way you can." This we understand, and are happy about in the extreme. Breaking doors and windows in a good cause appeals to simple, unspoiled natures like ours. Then the sleepy one pulls open his briefcase and hands Harry the petitions, which are typewritten, and have a lot of room for signatures. And he explains why we must handle them with care. Then he says: "Everyone who signs and turns up will be paid a fiver. You, of course, will receive much more." And this is music, too. Harry looks at the petitions, then looks at the sleepy one.

  "Who are you, mister?" he asks.

  "Didn't I tell you?" the sleepy one says. "We're your fairy godmothers."

  0*0

  They had brought Selina to the house in Queen Anne's Gate, where she told Craig and Grierson all she knew of AZ Enterprises, its staff, its layout, over and over, remembering every detail of the curve on the stairs, the position of the fortified room, the way out to the back of the house. When she had done, the two men went down to the armory in the basement, where each man sought out and tested a pair of Smith and Wesson .357 Magnums, firing them until each was as familiar to them as the hand that held them. Craig insisted, too, that they use metal-piercing ammunition. Grierson had protested at having to master a new gun, but Craig had insisted.

  "What we're going to do is street fighting," he said. "That means stopping everything with the first shot. And that means a Magnum. A feller once killed a bear with one of these." They were satisfied at last, and Craig went to search among what is perhaps the most comprehensive collection of small arms in Great Britain. He came back with two weapons that made Grierson raise his eyebrows. One was an Armalite .22 long rifle, a semiautomatic with a fiber glass stock recessed to hold the barrel and magazine.

  "Lease-lend," he said. "It won't knock any elephants over, but it'll stop anybody you hit in the right place." He looked at the other one. "This is lease-lend, too," he said. "Riot gun." He handed over what looked like a twenty-gauge pump-action shotgun with a sawn-off barrel. "Twenty gauge is illegal for a riot gun," he said. "Whoever made this doesn't seem to have heard the news." He looked at the magazine. "Seven-shot," he said. "If you get close enough you could knock over an elephant with this one."

  "How close is close?" asked Grierson.

  "Six feet," said Craig. Grierson winced.

  "I'd better get in some practice," he said.

  Craig left the armory and went back upstairs, remembering the last man he had seen with a gun like that.

  He'd been an American Ranger, a tall, easy man from Montana, and they had made one raid together, on
the company headquarters of an S.S. panzer group. Their orders had been to bring back a prisoner, and they had brought back one, and only one. The Ranger had hated Germans; his mother and father were Polish Jews. To the end of his life Craig was to remember the effect of that gun. He went back to where Sehna was waiting. If he failed, her country would take a terrible mauling. The People's Republic of Zaarb had a lot of old scores to settle with the Haram.

  "You will go there today?" she said. Craig nodded. "Maybe I should go with you. I know the way."

  "No," Craig said. "We can't risk you twice."

  "You risk yourself many times."

  "I'm expendable," said Craig. "Ask Loomis."

  "The fat man gives you the hardest work because he honors you most," Selina said.

  "He honors nobody and nothing," Craig said. "He uses me because I can do what he wants. No other reason."

  Because I can kill, he thought. He sought me out, sobered me up, showed me a girl to worry about—and all because someone has to die, and I'm the one who can kill him.

  Jaunty in fresh tweeds and bang on cue, Loomis waddled massively in. Under his arm was a great roll of blueprints. He looked at Selina, looked at the door, then raised his eyebrows inquiringly. She walked out slowly, head up, with a superb and arrogant sexuality.

  "Don't you know any ugly girls?" Loomis asked.

  "I haven't time," said Craig.

  "Been doing me homework," Loomis said. "Found these plans. Fifty years old, but they should give us some idea. Fifty years ago the Zaarb Embassy was a gendeman's town house. Ah, well. That's progress for you." He opened out the blue linen paper, and it crackled dryly. As they pored over it, Grierson came in, the guns under his arm.

  "Christ," said Loomis, "what you going to do—depopulate China?"

  "We can get in easily enough," Craig said. "We'd like to get out as well."

  "So long as you bring Mrs. Naxos with you, you can have a squadron of tanks," Loomis said.

  "No," Craig said. "People might talk. All we need now is a fire engine."

  « « «

  The crowd outside the Zaarb Embassy had an average age of nineteen, a standard uniform of black leather and a high-rating skill in the handling of motorbikes. From the topmost window of the office building across the road, Grierson looked down on them, riding round and round the block in an unending stream, like Indians round a covered wagon. Up the main road round the corner, across the mews, back to the side street and along the main road again. It was impossible to get a vehicle in or out of any building in that block—and there wasn't a policeman in sight. Grierson thought of how they had got into the office. He'd worn a dapper pinstripe suit and carried a briefcase, and Craig had shuffled behind him, all dungarees and an enormous tool bag. Grierson had been very sorry, but a suspected gas leak was a very dangerous affair, and in their own interests he must insist that all the staff go home. A tall, bony, harassed sort of man had locked up the safe and been far more worried about what Mr. Benson would say when he got back from Birmingham than about the threat of coal-gas poisoning. And the typists had made an occasion of it, and gone out to tea before they caught their buses home. One of them had been pretty. Very pretty. They had giggled when the Thames Gas Board van had arrived with a tool chest, and two sweating workmen had humped it in. Grierson had nearly forgotten his role then, and lit a cigarette.

  They'd waited until the typists had gone, the pnetty one, the very pretty one, last, and looking so hopefully at Grierson, then they'd opened the chest and tool bag, taken out the walkie-talkie, the firemen's helmets and uniforms, and the weapons they'd brought. Grierson assembled the Armalite, while opposite him Craig sat absorbed, patiently checking his Smith and Wessons, aware of nothing now but the task he had to do, and the tools he must use to do it.

  There were two Craigs, Grierson thought. There was the genial extrovert, strong, secure in his own strength, witty, gentle with women, cautious not to hurt—that was Jekyll Craig. Then there was the killer. Hyde Craig. The massive physical power, the fury of nervous energy, all concentrated into a terrible patience, ready for the moment to destroy. Good with guns, good with a knife, terrifyingly good with hands and feet. Grierson remembered what Craig had said about karate. "You've got to believe it'll do what you want it to do. You have to know that everything is inevitable. It has to happen in your head first. When my hands were right I could break bricks with them—because I never doubted. If I had, even for a minute, I'd have ended up with a broken hand."

  That was the way Craig felt now. Loomis had given them an edge, and Craig believed he must win, with the same terrifying certainty as when they'd gone to France and killed a renegade colonel. The killer Craig never doubted, and if he ever did, he'd lose. Grierson thought how clever Loomis was to harness all that lethal certainty, and use it so sparingly, and to such effect, then he took off the pinstripe suit, folded it carefully, and put on the fireman's uniform, rammed his feet into the boots, slid the riot gun down one of them. Craig put a Smith and Wesson into each of his side pockets, picked up a smoke mask, then grinned at Grierson.

  "Make sure the safety catch is on. You might do yourself a mischief," he said.

  He had an ax in a sling at his side, a knife in the top of one boot. On him, Grierson thought, a fireman's helmet looked like a gladiator's. He wished he wasn't so fond of Craig.

  "Time for phase two," he said.

  A group of policemen came up. None of them appeared to rank higher than sergeant, but they were Special Branch men, led by Detective Inspector Linton. Loomis had briefed them personally. They tried, without much enthusiasm, to regulate the stream of traffic. The rockers used them as an extra hazard, and zigzagged happily round them. Craig watched with the same terrible patience as the motorbikes stopped at last in a circle round the block of houses, and Lonesome, Jigger, and "O Level Edward" lined up behind Harry, and marched up to the door, each carrying a petition. Jigger leaned on the bell, Lonesome swung the door knocker like a hammer, and no one answered. Grierson murmured into the walkie-talkie, then slowly, reluctantly, a scuffle evolved as the police moved in closer.

  "I'd better get down there," said Craig. Grierson

  nodded. The two men looked at each other for a moment, then Craig was gone. Grierson watched Harry yell through the letterbox, then, as he pushed his petition through, Grierson opened the window, lowered the Venetian blind, and waited for action.

  Inside the petition were incendiary leaves of a kind first used in World War II, but these had a triggering device Loomis's scientific staff had had fun with. Grierson hoped Harry had remembered to press on the sealing wax before he posted it. The police were moving in more closely now, and one of them had drawn a truncheon. He wore a constable's uniform, but it was Linton. He aimed a clumsy blow at Jigger, missed, and with the follow-through he smashed a window. Jigger dropped another petition through the hole he'd made, and almost at once a steel grille slammed down. Farther up the road, Lonesome threw a brick, and another window smashed, broken glass splashed out. But there the steel shutters were already in place. "O Level Edward" laid his petition on the window ledge. There was movement at the top of the house. Grierson picked up the Armalite and waited. He noticed, appalled, that his hands were shaking, and that he had to struggle to control them. A puff of smoke appeared from the letterbox, then from Jigger's window. Then Edward's window ledge glowed, crackled, roared into fire. Grierson turned to the walkie-talkie again.

  "Now," he said.

  Almost at once he heard the clatter of a fire-engine bell, and a fleet of apphances roared up, manned by Special Branch men. Two vast tenders blocked off both ends of the street, a fire escape swung into position near Grierson's office, another appliance swung round by the AZ offices, reversed, and crashed into the blazing window, smashing the grille, scattering flame, then pulled forward again as a masked fireman dashed from the office block to the shelter of the fire engine. Grierson saw a flutter of curtains from a window opposite, then picked up the Armalite, aimed
, and waited. The fireman, now with a gun in his hand, darted for the gaping hole the engine had made, and the curtains parted. Grierson fired three quick shots, and the dark bulk at the window pitched forward and was still. Then he raised the Venetian blinds as the ladder extended slowly toward his window. His hands were shaking once more, but at least Craig was inside. The next part was up to him.

  Craig went in in a smacking dive, feeling the heat sigh like wind as he moved, and even in the spht second of contact, singeing his eyebrows, pulling his skin tight. He was in a conference room with a long, heavy table and leather chairs. The carpet and one of the chairs were burning. Craig went to the door and opened it from the wrong side, hugging the shelter of the wall. At once someone fired a shot into the empty space he should have filled. Craig took a smoke bomb from one pocket and lobbed it into the corridor. It dissolved on impact into a greasy cloud of lung-choking, gaseous ooze. Craig counted three, swerved into the corridor, and dropped flat. From the shelter of the stairs, an Arab with a machine pistol tried to stop coughing and aim at him. Craig fired, hit him in the arm and the Arab pulled the trigger, squirting bullets in a flailing circle as the smoke made him cough and weep. Craig fired again and killed him.

  He raced up the corridor then, but the other rooms facing the street were empty. He went past the staircase to the back of the house—empty storerooms, butler's pantry, stairs leading to the cellars. He hesitated, but there was another ground-floor room. He jammed a metal table against the cellar door, then approached the last ground-floor room, kicked its door open, and swung back against the wall. Cooking knives thrashed like hail through the air. The room was the main kitchen and in it were two very angry chefs. From the window behind them Craig had caught a glimpse of another fire engine, its vast, scarlet bulk sealing off the mews. He lobbed another smoke bomb into the kitchen, locked it, and raced back to the stairs. The cellar would have to wait. Fhp would almost certainly be in the cell-like room Sehna had described to him. As he reached the foot of the stairs he heard the sound of water under pressure smashing into the conference room. The fire would be well under control by now, but the bombs he had thrown created more smoke than ever.