‘Watch yourself now, Mr Grey.’ The landlord refilled his glass. ‘That kind of talk can get you into trouble these days.’
‘Who cares about the law? No decent white jury would convict an Englishman for saying what they all know to be the truth.’ Grey flushed and returned to the paper.
‘ “If this bomb exists, it must be found and found quickly before tension reaches breaking point. The city of Randelwyck contains some of the most squalid housing conditions in the country and families like the Virgils cannot be expected to suffer silently for much longer.”
‘That sounds like a threat to me, landlord. Just let the black apes start anything and see what they get. Of course there’s squalor and who causes it?’ Grey raised his voice to make sure Commin would hear him. ‘They come pouring over here in their thousands, just down from the trees, and make slums of every building they occupy.
‘Aye, that’s the truth and you know it.’ Once again the landlord had interposed and Grey banged his money on the counter. Henry Commin gripped his glass of stout. He had had several drinks at lunch-time as well and eaten nothing with them. Nothing could describe his life, he thought savagely: no job, no family, nothing at the labour exchange, nothing to look forward to.
‘Turned out of our little shop, me and the missus was, and after fourteen years and never a month late with the rent. Bloody black bastards.’ Grey spoke too loudly to be ignored any longer and Commin put down his glass and stood up.
‘There’s only one politician with any guts today and that’s Martin Judson. Good luck to him.’ Grey took a deep pull at his beer. ‘Drive the pigs back to their mud huts, is what I say, and I don’t care who knows it.’
‘I care, white man.’ Commin was quite literally seeing red. The lights above the bar had begun to glow with a strange scarlet tinge, Grey’s face was mottled with red flecks and the glass in his hand might have contained blood. ‘Just you take back what you said. You apologize, now, or I’m going to hurt you.’ He swayed to steady himself, his hand came against something on the wall and he clutched it. ‘Say you’re sorry, white man.’
‘Let go of that, you fool.’ The landlord had reached for a bottle, a woman screamed, two men were on their feet. Commin knew that they were all personal enemies of himself and his race and he pulled the thing from the wall.
‘Come on now. You apologize, or I’ll mash you.’ The landlord’s bottle struck his shoulder and crashed on to the table, the two men were moving in and Commin raised his arm.
‘I’ll hurt you real bad.’ Grey stood staring at him unable to move and with his mouth wide open, and the flecks on his face had changed to a deep purple. Commin’s arm shot forward.
The assegai was one of a popular line manufactured in Coventry and sold by the dozen to catering firms throughout the world. Its mild steel tip penetrated Grey’s rib cage and reappeared through the small of his back. His heart had stopped before he reached the floor.
The second tragedy also occurred that evening, but racial hatred had nothing to do with it. A noisy group of Fentor Park demonstrators were seated in a coffee bar when a local youth, who had been looking at Forest’s first photograph, shouted to some friends that such scum would be improved if not only their hair, but an intimate part of their anatomies was also cropped. In the brawl that followed a third-year history student from Cambridge lost his right eye.
Three miles from the White Swan, less than half a mile from the coffee bar, two young men and a girl were bent over a table in a bed-sitting room.
‘That is agreed, then. For the time being we are united in our aims. We shall work together and show authority that it no longer exists, that old men are impotent, and the law is a joke.’ Mr Mahomet N’genza, international leader of the Black Lions, stood between Oliver Trench, representing the British Maoists, and Silvia Jessop of the Youth Power group. ‘At first everything must be quiet, and very, very orderly. We will assemble in Market Square and start the march at five o’clock sharp. At all times the procession will maintain rigid discipline and obey police orders.
‘When we reach Fentor Park there will still be no disturbance.’ A map was spread out on the table and N’genza’s blue-black finger traced the route of the march. ‘Though the research station is supposed to be the target, our followers must be restrained from any violence against it.’
‘That’s going to be difficult, Mo’.’ Miss Jessop had had a fix an hour earlier, and her eyes were very bright behind their steel-rimmed glasses. ‘My lot are just waiting for the balloon to go up.’
‘Then they’ll have to keep on waiting. There’ll be no violence during the return journey either, Silvia.’ Oliver Trench had recently returned from a visit to China and he was deeply tanned. ‘Nine-tenths of the people who march with us are fools; liberal-minded weaklings who believe that the purpose of the demonstration is to register a peaceful protest. They have no idea that our real aim is to demonstrate our powers, and unless we drive them like sheep they will never help us. What we have to do is create an atmosphere of complete security and trust and then provoke an incident to set them off.’ He pulled a sheet of typescript from his pocket and pushed it across the table. ‘This is the kind of thing I have in mind.’
‘Good, Ollie. Yes, very good indeed.’ N’genza licked his lips while he studied the notes. ‘If the police also believe that we mean no trouble, this should start the ball rolling.’ He handed the paper to Silvia Jessop and smiled.
‘We march back from Fentor Park all peaceful and quiet. We reassemble in the square in an orderly manner and sing “We shall overcome”. They will wait for us to disperse and then, my dear comrades . . .’ His smile widened to show teeth which were as white and sharp as an animal’s. ‘Then we supply the sheep with provocation and lead them to our true targets.’
12
There were two days to go before the Fentor Park march, and even after Grey’s murder and a case of mayhem, the city somehow managed to remain quiet. The demonstrators – of whom the Chief Constable estimated that over seven thousand had already arrived in the area – restricted their activities to picketing Mr Judson’s frequent meetings, while the black and white populations kept themselves to themselves, as far as possible. Most people believed that the weather was saving the situation. A westerly breeze had sprung up, dispersing the grey cloud which had blanketed the valley and bringing clear sunny skies. But Commander Rawlinson fancied he knew better. Hard-core demonstrators and Judsonites, fanatical whites and coloureds, respectable citizens out to defend their rights and hooligans out for any kind of trouble, they were all conserving their energies and waiting for provocation.
Rawlinson was pretty certain that the Fentor Park march would spark off the flames, and the reports of police informers in public houses and cafés and working men’s clubs confirmed his anxieties. Twice a day he held conferences with his senior officers, and not an hour passed without him cursing a government which would not allow him the use of water cannons. Even more frequently he cursed the two white towers dominating the horizon, and John Forest, who had hit upon the phrase Strand had suggested to Mallory and re-named them ‘The Heights of Folly.’ While those flats remained empty the local population’s suspicion and unrest were bound to increase. It was one thing dealing with outside demonstrators, but the possibility of riots among his fellow citizens worried him deeply.
But Rawlinson was wrong on one point. Even in the cramped hostels, that sudden influx of clean air had acted as a tranquillizer, and on the previous evening identical thoughts had run through the minds of Jack Baxter and Luke Virgil.
‘I hate your guts. I would like to smash your face. But we are both big men and both of us would be hurt. At least it is cool, so for the sake of peace, I’ll try to tolerate you.’ They had glanced at each other and then turned away quickly, but with a certain resignation in their faces.
‘And you are sure there is nothing else you can tell me about Dr Baylis? His friends, his habits, his political be
liefs; the smallest thing might be of use.’ Once again Stephen Dealer repeated the questions and added another cigarette stub to his overflowing ash-tray.
‘Thank you. That is all for the present, but I may have to talk to you again.’ He watched Jones escort their enforced visitor to the door and leaned back waiting for the next. All of them had appeared clean so far. Apparently Baylis had not possessed a single close friend, though he had acquaintances in plenty. Colleagues at Fentor Park, his landlady and her daily help, the vicar and congregation of the Anglican church where he had worshipped, a man named Trevor who had accompanied him on country walks now and then, the waiters at a restaurant he patronized, a bookseller in whose shop he had often browsed. So many people to interview and not one of them claimed to have known Baylis well.
One of them had to be lying, though. He or she must have been more than a mere social and business acquaintance. Dealer took a small bottle of blue-grey tablets from his pocket and swallowed two of them. He had been keeping himself going on drinamyl and his mouth tasted foul and dry. In the briefcase at his side lay a syringe and another chemical substance which he had no right to possess. They had been taken from a Soviet agent last month and he had often wondered why he had not turned them in. A dumb protest towards a service which denied its minions realistic means of interrogation, perhaps. A sense of power from holding a weapon which he would never dare to use.
If only he could begin to suspect one person. The world’s security services and Interpol knew little about the ‘Sailormen’, but the files, though so incomplete, had given him a personal loathing of the organization. Maniacs who could plan and act together with such horrible efficiency. Somehow he knew that Baylis had not worked on his own, and that a group existed in Randelwyck. Perhaps his next visitor might betray himself: by a nautical symbol, maybe, or a nervous tic, or a manner of speaking that revealed his mania.
Dealer lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. Jones always gave him five minutes to prepare his thoughts between each interview, but all he could think about was his own weariness and the certainty that the threat existed.
Perhaps not a present threat either. Paul Gordon who had volunteered to supervise the search of the building had drawn a blank so far. When the canister was recovered from the river he was quite certain they would find it contained all the Terradyte Baylis had stolen. But fanatics are not deterred by single set-backs. ‘God’s True Sailormen’ would regard Baylis’s failure as the loss of a battle, not a war. Unless he could discover who they were, the Heights remained in danger.
Who was the next visitor? Footsteps were approaching down the corridor and Dealer looked at his list. Alec Howard, Baylis’s doctor; a most unlikely suspect. He pulled himself more upright and prepared his mind for the endless, repetitive and so far unsuccessful questioning.
‘Is that all you can tell us, Dr Howard? Please think carefully, please try to remember. Anything might help us – anything – anything at all.’
‘See that you get the rod well behind the bearing joists, Crawford. They’re carried on brackets and there’s a six-inch gap at each terminal.’ Paul watched the workman mount the exposed girder and insert the tip of his electric magnet into the space he had indicated.
‘You don’t need to remind us of that, sir. This is the forty-third floor we’ve checked.’ The foreman was supervising two men who were removing a plate set against the lift shaft. ‘I’m beginning to think we’ve been had on, Mr Gordon.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right.’ As on the earlier, almost perfunctory search for Baylis himself, the men’s attitude had altered as each floor was declared safe. At ground level the tension had been extreme. Before entering the building every face had looked up at the enormous bulk towering over them and the same images had filled each imagination. A little cylinder tucked away beside a weight-bearing beam, a clockwork motor ticking busily away, acid eating through wire, an electric time switch moving towards the point of contact. A sudden flash, the roar of an explosion and Mallory Heights crumbling and breaking like a wave above them. If only they had known what they were looking for it would not have been so bad, but Fenwick, the ballistics expert, had repeated that any container able to sustain a moderate pressure would suffice. A small thing too; Janet considered that the cylinder she had handled might have been a domestic vacuum flask. Four pounds sounded a lot, but Terradyte was a plastic substance of intense molecular density and far heavier than lead. The whole amount would not fill a pint pot.
But, unless Baylis had been stupid as well as mad, it appeared likely that he would have planted his bomb in one of the lower levels of the towers. Once the central storey had been searched, the tension had dwindled, and now ill humour and cynicism dominated the proceedings. The older men grumbled while the young were treating the whole business as a ‘bit of a lark’ for which they were being well paid. Paul could hear one of the boys whose job it was to inspect the lavatory bowls and cisterns noisily singing a Negro spiritual. ‘Joshua fit de battle ob Jericho, Jericho, Jericho . . .’
‘Let’s hope we’re both right, sir.’ The foreman had turned and was looking out through a corridor window. On the river below two police launches were moving upstream with the hawser supporting their grapple lines and magnetic drags taut against the current. ‘I’ll never volunteer for anything like this again. First time I’ve worked right round the bloody clock and it’s going to be the last.’
‘You’re getting double pay, Mr Mossop, remember.’ This was the second shift and Paul had also supervised the first. Apart from finding the bomb, if one existed, his sole ambitions consisted of drinking a large Scotch, a very large Scotch indeed, and falling into bed. ‘There’ll be a danger money bonus to be picked up as well.’
‘There’d better be, Mr Gordon. What the unions’ll have to say about this I just don’t know.’
‘Plenty, I don’t doubt.’ Paul joined him at the window. Once again the launches had reached the limit of their sweep, and were hauling in the lines. So far they had collected a wealth of scrap metal: anchor chains, tin cans, fragments of rusting machinery, oil drums. If the cylinder was alloy or glass or plastic it might never be recovered without the help of divers. The fall proved the stability of the explosive, but if a timing device was in place both launch crews could die at any moment.
‘Joshua fit de battle ob Jericho, and de walls came a-tumbling down.’
‘Stop that damned racket, Jimmy Palmer, or you’ll get a thick ear.’ The singer had emerged from the flat and made a slightly obscene gesture to prove that the lavatory contained nothing amiss. Mossop rounded on him in irritation. ‘The walls come tumbling down, indeed. That’s a bloody fool thing to sing when we’re looking for a bomb that could blow us to bleeding bits.
‘And you two hurry yourselves up.’ He frowned at the lift-shaft plate which was still in position. ‘I know you’re tired; aren’t we all? But the sooner we’re through, the sooner we can get a bit of shut-eye.’
You can say that again, Paul thought. Far below he could see that the nearer launch had recovered its grapple and her crew was examining what slime-covered treasure had been drawn from the bed of the Randel. He pulled out his cigarettes and offered one to Mossop.
God’s True Sailormen. Those pictures Dealer had shown them had been gruesome in the extreme, and before the search started, Paul had told the men not only to work carefully, but to leave nothing to chance. Every possible hiding-place had been checked and re-checked by separate units while Fenwick stood by anxiously, but as time passed, as floor after floor and girder after girder were pronounced clean, Dealer’s story began to appear more and more unlikely. The world contained plenty of religious maniacs, some of them might believe that mixed breeding could taint the human species and band themselves together, a few might carry insignia to identify each other, a very few have an inclination towards sabotage. But that they could have welded themselves into a highly organized body which would make a second attempt on the
building was surely impossible. Baylis had worked alone, and when the canister was recovered from the river, or a second charge was found, the crisis would be over.
‘North Tower receiving you loud and clear, P.L.2.’ A police sergeant with a two-way radio was stationed at the end of the corridor. He looked bored while he waited for another report that the drag had proved fruitless, and then suddenly snatched off the headphones as though they had stung him. From them came a screaming whooping noise and Paul leaned out of the window. Both launches had their sirens at full blast and the crews were capering and waving on their decks.
‘Inspector Renton? Ah, that’s better, I can just hear you now, sir.’ The sirens had ceased, but Paul could still make out shouts and cheers while the sergeant held the phones to his ear. ‘That’s marvellous, Inspector, ruddy marvellous. Please accept our congratulations, sir.’ He switched off the set and beamed at Paul.
‘Well, that’s that, Mr Gordon. They’ve got the bloody thing.’ His face was a study of relief and triumph. ‘A vacuum flask, like the young lady said, and the weight’s right. The four full pounds of . . .’ The sentence was drowned by the jubilation of his listeners. The lavatory examiner had started to leap up and down and bawl out the spiritual again, the men by the lift-shaft were banging their spanners against the panel, Mossop was waving his cap and even the anxious Dr Fenwick had raised a cheer. Only Paul could do nothing except smile.
‘Come on, lads, let’s get along home,’ he said when the racket finally subsided. ‘We’ve all got a lot of lost sleep to make up for.’ He gave a final look towards the opposite tower while they gathered up their tools. The sun was very bright, and the spire shimmered in its light, while the jutting balconies gave an effect of motion. To his tired mind they resembled the vanes of a windmill or the sails of a ship; a ship that had reached port at last. He shrugged at the inept similes and followed the men into the lift.
Blow the House Down Page 11