by Alan Hunter
‘Over there – keep left!’
The track was coming to light again. Making a sudden turn to the left, it dived into an unexpected grove of firs. A pearl-grey Jaguar leapt into sight and Hansom dragged on the wheel like a madman; the Wolseley twisted from stem to stern, wiped past a tree, then straightened again. And then they were out on the southern side of the ridge, with the abandoned airfield stretching ahead of them: and there, developing at a speed which defied interference, was the drama which Stephens’s silence had portended.
Johnson’s Proctor had commenced its take-off from the adjacent end of a runway – a runway which, one could see, was badly damaged by cracks and sinkings. Its tail was already rising, its engine rolling at full throttle, it had the bit between its teeth and it was irresistibly tearing forwards. Irresistibly – except for one thing. The other Wolseley was racing towards it. Stephens must have driven down the runway ahead of it, and now, circling round, was dead in its path.
Something caught in Gently’s throat as he took in the spectacle, for what must happen was well-nigh inevitable. It was impossible to apply the brakes to the Proctor, and the Wolseley showed no intention of budging.
‘The prop – the engine – they’ll sheer him in halves—!’ He watched it in the grip of a ghastly compulsion; the searing experience of those few seconds seemed to suspend and to expand into several hours. But at the moment of impact, the unforeseen happened. The Proctor flew up like a great catherine wheel. Digging its nose into the ground, it spun crashingly over and over, hurling fragments in all directions across the heath-covered soil. And Stephens, he rumbled on up the runway unharmed, his tyres a-shriek as he stamped on his brakes. He brought the Wolseley X-7 to a jerking halt: he didn’t seem even to have scratched her paintwork.
Seeing that Stephens was unharmed, Hansom drove on towards the aircraft, which had finally come to rest lying flat on its belly. One wing was wrenched off and the other was badly damaged, while the propeller had been twisted into savage, unnatural shapes. The undercarriage, sheered away, had flown to various parts of the compass, and the port side of the tail assembly hung in raw-looking ribbons. Of the occupants, Miss Butters was lying slumped against the control panel, while Johnson was feebly trying to force back the perspex hood.
In emergencies of this kind, Hansom was a good man to have around. He wasted no time in words or panicky actions. He was out of the Wolseley almost before it had stopped, and leaping up on the wing root, had begun to work on the jammed hood.
‘Get us out of this, cocker … we’re swimming in petrol …!’
It was true, the stuff was pouring from a fractured pipe in the wing root. In addition the engine was simmering, sounding like a sinister boiler, giving every now and then little popping and cracking noises.
‘This bastard thing’s twisted … to hell, it’s twisted!’
‘Is there an axe in the car?’
‘Yeah – get it, for Christ’s sake!’
Gently dropped down from the wing and ran to the boot of the Wolseley. He found a fireman’s axe and a jemmy in the tool kit it contained.
Stephens, meanwhile, came bumping up in the second Wolseley, and trembling and pale added his efforts to theirs.
‘He … he did that deliberately …’
‘Turned off, you mean?’
‘Yes … oh God … we’ve got to get them out of there!’
‘What about those shots?’
‘He was shooting at my tyres … let me have something … let me! … we’ve got to get them out!’
He seized the jemmy from Gently’s hand and began furiously levering with it, Hansom at the same time delivering crashing blows with the axe. Johnson had sunk down into his seat and appeared to have lost consciousness. Anne Butters didn’t stir from her prone position.
At last the hood was freed and by brute force torn off, and the admission of fresh air seemed to revive Johnson a little.
‘Jesus … take it easy! My leg’s buggered up …’ Trying to move, he went suddenly white, then his head dropped forward again.
Gently and Stephens got him out – it was not an easy business then; his fractured leg, sticky with blood, had become entangled with the controls. He was fortunate perhaps to remain unconscious during the process, and he continued in that state while they carried him behind the cars. Hansom took care of Anne Butters on his own. Apart from being out, she showed no sign of any injury. For fear of internal injury he was nevertheless cautious, and handled her with a gentleness that one would not have suspected of him.
‘I’ll strap up the boyo’s leg … I’m a first-aid wizard.’
‘First we must get them away from here – and likewise the cars.’
‘We didn’t ought to shift them …’
‘Suppose that wreck goes up!’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean … right. We’ll use that chunk of wing for a stretcher.’
At a safer distance of seventy yards they parked the two Wolseleys to make a screen, and behind it, assisted by a drooping Stephens, Hansom strapped and bandaged Johnson’s leg. Before commencing he gave the estate agent a jab from a morphia ampoule, taking care to find the label and to tie it to his patient. It was really a revelation to watch the Chief Inspector at work – he was displaying a side of his surly nature which had rarely come uppermost.
‘That’ll fix you, sonny, till we can get you to a hospital.’
Johnson managed to grin at him from under his immense moustache.
‘But Anne … what about …?’ His eyes flickered glazedly to the limp figure.
‘Don’t worry about her. She was only knocked out cold.’
Just then, when they had given up expecting it to happen; a sudden woof of flame sprang up from the wreckage; in moments it had turned into a roaring, wolfish pillar, and a great jet of black smoke puffed into the sky above it. There was nothing they could do – their car extinguishers were futile. One might as well have tackled it with a glass of water. Stephens, back in his car, was trying to raise Fosterham, their own control being now out of range.
Miss Butters stirred and her eyes fell open, vacantly; then, at the snarling sound of the flames, they jumped wide in fear. Johnson’s lids were closed and he was murmuring thickly to himself:
‘… Christ … Christ … I wasn’t meant to die that way …’
Stephens eventually contacted the control at Lynton, but they phoned through to Fosterham as being the nearest to Rawton Aerodrome. Some half an hour later quite a cavalcade appeared, its component vehicles rocking and pitching as they negotiated the frightful surface. First came two mounted police, who had been acting as pathfinders, and now fanned out impatiently as they came to the scene of the crash. They were followed by a police car and a bobbing white ambulance, and finally by an RAF fire tender, hastily summoned from the nearest camp.
The latter drove across to the wreck and began to engulf it in white foam, though there was little now left of it except the engine and bearers. From the ambulance jumped down a pair of overalled attendants. They carried a rolled-up stretcher which they silently unbuckled.
‘Inspector Vincent, County Police … pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.’
All of a sudden the place seemed to be alive with awkward policemen. They had really nothing to do except to stand about watching – only the ambulancemen and the fire tender had jobs to keep them busy.
Anne Butters, though pale and shaken, seemed little the worse for her experience. She drank coffee from somebody’s flask but didn’t stray far from Johnson’s side.
‘He’ll be all right … his leg is all right …?’
She was putting a brave, a correct ‘county’ face on it; one could almost imagine that this was a hunting mishap, and that the Master would shortly ride up to make inquiries. With Gently she would have nothing whatever to do. She ignored him with the ferocious disdain of ‘county’ protocol. Hansom, too, was cold-shouldered, though oddly enough, not Stephens; in reality she was near a breakdown, and woul
d have burst into tears if they had turned their backs.
‘That’s a nasty bump on your forehead, miss …’
‘It’s all right, I tell you! They’ve put some stuff on it.’
‘Well, we’ll give you a run over when we get you to the hospital …’
‘No, I’m all right! It’s Derek … it’s Derek …’
Here she had to break off and bite her lips together, but immediately she turned fiercely on the hovering Stephens:
‘Now, I suppose, they’re going to charge Derek with something or other!’
Stephens blushed and mumbled confusedly, but she didn’t wait to hear his reply.
Gently rapidly explained the situation to Vincent; he didn’t want to be delayed when the ambulance set off. In the name of mercy he had refrained from stopping Hansom using the morphia, but there were crucial questions of which he wanted the answers from Johnson. He grabbed one of the attendants.
‘They’re not to dope him before I’ve talked to him … you’ve seen that label – he shouldn’t need any more for a bit.’
The attendant shrugged. ‘I can’t promise you anything, sir. You’ll have to come to the hospital and talk to them there.’
This time he drove himself, in Stephens’s Wolseley. Hansom, who hadn’t been saying much, followed erratically in their rear. Stephens was also rather quiet, but there was nothing surprising in that: his exploit in stopping Johnson must have given him plenty to think about.
‘That was a damn silly thing to do …!’
‘Yes, sir.’ Stephens drooped his head. Gently had no need to specify the subject of his remark.
‘There’ll be times enough to play the hero without your cooking any up – suppose the fellow had got away, how far do you think he could have gone?’
‘Well, sir, considering his known abilities—’
‘Considering my foot! He might have got to the Continent, or perhaps to Eire. He’s without professional contacts, and he was tagging a woman along with him – and we could have followed him with radar – maybe chivvied him down with fighters.
‘Yet you go and risk your neck in a bit of Dick Barton foolery – risked the life of the girl, too, not to mention the ratepayers’ property!’
‘I didn’t mean to smash him, sir.’
‘What the devil else could you have done?’
‘I just wanted to block his take-off … then … well, it all happened so fast.’
‘Huh!’ Gently’s grunt was in the Hansom tradition, but he could easily visualize what had taken place. Petrified by the oncoming plane, Stephens had simply hung on and prayed: his reflexes had been paralysed by the speed of what had happened. With his foot hard down he had rushed fascinated towards disaster …
‘You’re lucky that Johnson didn’t lose his head, too.’
‘Yes, sir, I realize that. I think he was expecting me to pull out.’
‘And those shots were at your tyres?’
‘Yes, sir. They weren’t at me. He must have guessed what I intended to do, and tried to put my car out of action.’
From the way his young colleague spoke it was apparent that Johnson had won an admirer. The estate agent was no longer a middle-aged curio, a fossilized relic of some pre-atomic war. He had displayed his ‘known abilities’ in a way that was unforgettable, and Stephens, who had found himself wanting, was a little guiltily impressed.
‘Anyway, it took guts …’ Gently purposely left that vague; but he noticed that Stephens tilted his chin up and stole a glance towards his senior.
‘Car ex-two calling car ex-seven …’
In his driving mirror he could see Hansom, the microphone in his hand.
‘What do you know about Johnson … are we going to make the pinch?’
Coming from Hansom, this surely had to be admiration too!
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two … considering all the circumstances, what do you recommend?’
‘Calling car ex-seven … you’d better pinch him, I suppose, though if the evidence wasn’t so one-track … damnation, you’ve got to pinch him!’
Even Hansom had his moments of intuition, it seemed, when the hard grain of logic met the steel edge of conviction. They were few and they were tardy, but he was not completely without them: against his settled inclination, he occasionally had a hunch …
‘Calling car ex-seven … he pulled that kite over deliberately. I had a look at the runway – it’s got a good surface just there.’
‘Calling car ex-two … he’d be dead if he hadn’t.’
‘Calling car ex-seven … yeah, I see your point.’
Gently turned his head, concealing his smile from Stephens. The two of them were ganging up in their desire to whitewash Johnson! And in both cases it seemed to be his cool head that impressed them, though logically it was a factor which should stand in his disfavour. What was the process by which the logical suddenly collapsed and committed suicide – what was the mechanism of secret judgement which could destroy the pretensions of thought?
He paused, seeming once again on the threshold of revelation, for wasn’t it thus that he always proceeded, checking logic by that inner judgement? It was the product, he suddenly saw, of his continuous stream of observation, a perpetual record of fact too huge and complete to be fully conscious. And so, detached from that stream, he had found his desk-work intolerable, he had been set to make bricks with only the vestiges of straw. For he was not a thinking man, but an artist pursuing a truth: in a way Mallows had been right. Gently was a sham as a policeman.
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two …’
What had he been going to say to Hansom? It had gone clean out of his head …
They were in Fosterham by nine, travelling this time less sensationally. The ambulance clanged them through the town and into the yard of the red-brick hospital. Gently was out of the Wolseley directly, pushing through the swing doors labelled RECEPTION. Beyond them he found an aseptic-looking hall in which were mingled the smells of ether and floor polish.
‘Superintendent Gently, CID … I’d like to speak to the doctor in charge of Casualties.’
‘The doctor is busy just now, I’m afraid. If you’ll wait in the office I’ll tell him you’re here.’
She was a hard-eyed ward sister who quizzed Gently with disapproval; she went, nevertheless, to execute the errand. Gently stood in the doorway of the office and watched the attendants unload Johnson – he was conscious, though drowsy, and tried to wink as he was carried past. Anne Butters had been crying, but was not crying now. She walked with one hand on the stretcher, very erect, her chin in the air.
As they approached the door to Casualties they met the doctor coming out – a tall, youngish-looking man, who gave an exclamation of surprise.
‘Anne! Well, I’m blowed! What on earth are you doing here?’
Quickly she tugged on his arm, jerking her head towards Gently. It was all over in a moment: with a significant nod, he hustled them through. Gently, racing to push in after them, found his passage barred by the ward sister.
‘I’m sorry, Superintendent, but you can’t come in here.’
‘It’s extremely important that I speak to the doctor!’
‘He knows you are here and he will see you in a minute. As usual on Sundays, we are having a busy time.’
Short of brushing her aside physically, there was nothing that he could do about it. He stood glaring impotently at the door which even policemen couldn’t open. In a couple of minutes the doctor came out again, but those minutes had done the damage; his gaunt young face was earnestly determined, and he put finality into his tone:
‘There is very little use in your waiting, Superintendent. I cannot permit the patient Johnson to be seen again today.’
‘Are his injuries so serious?’
‘That we’ll know when we’ve seen the X-ray. I assure you there’s no point in your waiting any longer.’
‘And that applies to Miss Butters?’
‘She is suffe
ring from delayed shock.’
‘Couldn’t it be delayed a little longer?’
‘I will not take that suggestion seriously …’
Looking indignant, the doctor turned to go back into Casualties, but he was prevented by a hand placed firmly on his arm.
‘Into the office, my lad! This isn’t as simple as you seem to think. There’s a little more hangs to it than your playing the Sir Galahad …’
Colouring, the doctor allowed himself to be conducted into the office. Gently closed the glass-panelled door, and finding no bolt, set his shoulder against it.
‘Now! This is a case of murder, if you’re slow at cottoning on.’
‘I am perfectly aware of that—’
‘Good. I’ll try to enlighten you a bit further.
‘You realize what has happened when a man commits homicide? In the first place, to do it, he’s crossed the border of normality. Then, having done it, he’s in arms against society – all other criminals have their friends, but the murderer stands alone.
‘He’s in arms against society! There’s nothing still remaining sacred. He will kill again, or destroy, doing whatever seems to give him an advantage. And the murderer we are dealing with has begun his career of violence – with him, the murder was a point of departure, not a culminating act.
‘He’s more than the average killer – he’s a man in the throes of a primary breakdown; still able to counterfeit normality, but in a state of moral collapse. And if my surmise is correct then Johnson can help me to identify him – tonight, in all probability, before he has a chance to do more damage.
‘So now you know where you stand. I’m putting the responsibility on you. Either you let me talk to Johnson, or what may happen will rest on your shoulders.’
The doctor, listening sullenly at first, became by degrees more thoughtful; then he gave Gently a curious, half wondering look.