“They teach us to keep our noses out of the sun,” said McHarg.
“You know what?” said Elkin. “You hard bastards only manage your little ego-trips because the rest of us work at keeping the peace. Think about it, pussycat.”
He strode away, leaving McHarg alone with the woman in the wheelchair.
“What are you staring at?” demanded McHarg.
“That’s usually my line,” she replied equably. “Have you had too much of that stuff or not enough?”
“Not enough.”
“What’s made you so angry?”
“Who’s angry? I’m just—what? irritated. London irritates me. Parties irritate me. Jumped-up shits like that irritate me.”
He made a gesture which comprehended Younger, Elkin and every other semi-famous face present.
“I was once going to marry that particular jumped-up shit,” said Betty Woodstock.
“Younger, you mean? Then you must have had a stroke of luck.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” she said. “I fell out of a window and landed in this chair.”
“Oh Christ,” said McHarg. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“You should have done. You’re a detective. Or is that all done via the wallet rather than the brain these days?”
He finished his drink. “I’ll be on my way,” he said.
“Why? Touched a nerve, did I?” she mocked.
He looked at her with distaste. “I’m not touchy,” he said. “The thing is, while I don’t take bribes, I’m not above a bit of police brutality. Only I haven’t brought my special club for beating sitting women.”
“Oh, but I think you have, Inspector,” she replied.
He would have left her then but the New Vision group centered on Mrs le Queux and Lord Hunsingore ingested them, amoeba-like, as it drifted past. Hymie Small caught McHarg’s eye and smiled, but the smile soon faded in face of the Scot’s expression of implacable disgust.
“Betty, how are you?” asked the ex-prostitute, a quietly elegant woman in late middle age.
“Bearing up, Rosie,” she replied. “And you?”
“Bearing down,” smiled Mrs le Queux. “But not very often these days. I gather you know Willie?”
Hunsingore, a tall, spindly-limbed man with a narrow aristocratic head rimmed with fluffy grey hair, flapped a hand loosely in a gesture which might have invited a handshake. The invitation was refused.
“I know who Lord Hunsingore is, of course,” said Betty Woodstock. “But I don’t think we’ve met…”
“Am I so forgettable?” he asked in a voice which was high without being shrill. “You interviewed me once.”
“It depends when it was,” said the woman. “There’s a gap of about six months in my life when I can’t remember anything. I fell on my head.”
“Oh, my dear!” Hunsingore’s eyes seemed to take in the wheelchair for the first time. “I’m sorry, so sorry. Be brave. Never forget, faith really can heal, you know.” He looked at McHarg as though for support.
McHarg laughed harshly. “Faith makes guid sermons but gey watery broth,” he said.
“Really? You think so, Mr…er?”
“McHarg. Detective-Inspector McHarg.”
The hand was fluttered again, rejected again.
“A policeman. Have you been concerned with the programme, perhaps?”
“No,” said McHarg emphatically. “I’ve never considered crime to be part of the entertainment business.”
“No?” Hunsingore regarded him with something which might have been amusement. “I see you are in good company, Miss Woodstock. The Inspector is a serious man. I’m sure he will not allow you to come to harm.”
“He’s a little late,” said Betty Woodstock acidly.
“Further harm, then. Nice to have met you both.”
He moved away. The others followed, Rose le Queux last. “Take care,” she said.
“You too,” said Betty Woodstock.
“Streak of owl-shit,” muttered McHarg when Hunsingore was just about out of earshot.
“What was all that about broth?”
“My mother. What was all that about memory?”
She looked at him sharply. “When I fell, I didn’t just break my body. I cracked some connecting link in my mind and a bit of my life fell off.”
She said it challengingly, but he was losing interest in her and the whole meaningless assembly.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked abruptly.
“You mean, can you get yourself one, don’t you? You’ve been playing with that empty glass like it was a hand grenade.”
“OK. Can I get myself a bloody drink?” he said rudely.
She was looking at him closely again. He got the feeling she was making up her mind about something.
“How about getting it at my place?” she said finally.
He hadn’t been expecting this and his surprise must have shown in his eyes for she laughed again.
“Yes, it’s a proposition,” she said. “Or half a one. I’ve got to look out for myself these days. You’d be surprised, even Hunsingore would, at how much good old British decency there’s still around. Which is all right in its place, but it does tend to stop the decent chaps from trying to touch up a cripple. So I lead the way. But if you’re going on to a police ball or something, just say.”
He thought of just saying it, changed his mind, and again, and yet again.
“OK,” he said. “Why not?”
“I’d hate to sell you a used car!” she said. “I’ll just tidy up. Let’s be discreet. I’ll meet you in the foyer.”
He bumped into Elkin as he made for the door.
“Off already, McHarg?”
“I think so. So thanks to whoever you say thanks to.”
“I’ll do that. Straight home now, pussycat. You country boys need your eight hours, don’t you?”
“As much as we can get,” said McHarg equably.
He felt Elkin’s eyes on him as he left the room. The little Cockney’s advice was probably good, thought McHarg.
He took the lift to the foyer.
CHAPTER 12
When Mr Flint came on duty at nine o’clock, the girl he relieved was already sitting in a car with her boyfriend ready to go. He shook his head as they roared off into the night. Then he wandered round the forecourt, tidying up. Jobs, like baths, should be left as you hoped to find them. Next, he did the same in the kiosk, checking the stock of cigarettes, sweets and accessories, totalling the cash in the till and dusting the keys.
Satisfied, he took his electric kettle out to the tap in the washroom and filled it. As he plugged it in, a black Mini heading towards Sanderton turned into the filling station. It halted right in front of the kiosk rather than by the pumps. Probably wanted fags or a pee, guessed Mr Flint as he concentrated on putting a precisely level teaspoonful of instant coffee in his pot mug.
The door opened and the driver came in. Mr Flint recognized him at once. Even without McHarg’s visit he would have recognized him, but much more casually. Not that it mattered. The Tyler had not stopped here this evening just to test his response.
He leaned over the counter and gripped the old man’s shoulders tightly, pressing his thumbs into the nerve at the base of the neck.
Mr Flint’s resistance could hardly be called a struggle. Within seconds he was unconscious.
At his feet the kettle began to boil.
The Tyler went round the counter and regarded the jetting steam with interest. He leaned Mr Flint’s body down towards the kettle as if the old man were bending to pick it up. Then he let him go.
His head struck the angle of one of the counter legs as he fell, splitting the skin on his forehead.
The Tyler examined the selection of sweets on the display rack on the wall, helped himself to a packet of large mint humbugs and took one out with his gloved fingers.
Opening Mr Flint’s mouth, he dropped the humbug into his throat, forced the tongue back afte
r it and closed the jaws again, holding them shut with pressure on the chin from his left hand while with the right he pressed down on the head and pinched the nostrils.
Mr Flint moved convulsively once, opened his bright, inquisitive eyes, fixed their accusing gaze on the Tyler, then shut them again forever.
The black Mini drew away from the filling station and continued its journey towards Sanderton. The whole business had not taken more than a minute. The Tyler felt that things were going smoothly. But last time he had been in this area, he had also felt that things had gone smoothly. He frowned. The Preceptor didn’t care for loose ends. So far nothing had been said, but it would all be noted.
So this time, it had to be right. Two more calls; at least one more death; that should do it.
That should tie things up very nicely. That would leave nothing but a blank wall for nosey bastards like McHarg to hit up against.
And if he kept on hitting, then something would have to be arranged for him. Something rather more subtle and special than a mint humbug.
Meanwhile he was at a good safe distance. Tonight the Tyler had the freedom of Sanderton.
He saw the town sign ahead and lifted his foot off the accelerator.
There was, after all, no point in attracting the attention of the law.
CHAPTER 13
McHarg lay on Betty Woodstock’s bed and wished he’d taken Elkin’s advice and gone straight home. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Think nothing of it,” said the woman. “All that booze, I knew it wasn’t doing you any good.”
McHarg shook his head. “It wasn’t the booze,” he said.
“Don’t go honest on me,” she answered sharply, turning her head away. “Believe me, it’s not the best policy. Not now. Not here.”
It had started badly. As they entered the small hallway of her flat, he had noticed a skean-dhu, a Highland dress dagger, mounted on the wall above the door that led to the living-room.
“You have the blood?” he enquired, nodding at it.
“No. Pure sassenach. A gift from a grateful admirer when I was researching a programme on Culloden.”
“What did you do? Tell him Prince Charlie won?”
He must have sounded bitter though there was no reason.
He didn’t give a damn about the past.
“You’re not going to be that kind of Scot, I hope,” she said. “Drunken and aggressive all the time?”
There had followed coffee and brandy. They had chatted desultorily, not being able to find a wavelength. Finally bed had come, more at the woman’s initiating than his own, as though she might here find a way to say whatever it was he felt she wanted to say to him.
But nothing had happened and he found himself giving way to strong internal urgings to break his usually adamantine rule—never explain, never apologize.
“What I meant was, it’s not you. Or at least not the way you think. You’re a fine-looking woman, you must know that.”
“As far as I go, you mean,” she said, running her hands over her firm well-shaped breasts and round stomach down to her upper thighs. There had probably been some muscle wastage, but not yet enough to bother the casual eye.
“No, I mean, it’s not you that’s put me off.”
McHarg stood up and searched for cigarettes in his jacket pocket.
“My wife, she was ill. Cancer. It went on for years. You want one of these?”
“Thanks,” she said. “Look, no explanations please. We’ll just forget it. I’ve got troubles enough of my own.” He passed her a lit cigarette.
“In the last year or so,” he continued as if she’d never spoken, “sex became a matter of…indifference to her. Pain even, sometimes, I suspect. But for my sake she tried …she’d offer herself. But in the end, I couldn’t. Even though I wanted, I couldn’t. Do you follow that? And tonight…”
“And that’s your explanation?”
She pushed herself up on her elbows and looked angrily at him.
“I didn’t know your wife, McHarg. She was probably a very nice woman, but I didn’t know her and I can’t care about her. Whatever she did or tried to do, it sounds like she was doing it for your sake, so’s you wouldn’t miss out on your precious rights. But that’s not what’s happening here tonight, whatever your so sensitive balls may tell you. This was for my sake, McHarg; no charity run for the frustrated fuzz, but my choice for my sake! So take your sad memories and your heartbreaking apologies and stick them all up your big pointed hat and go home and have a cry over the family album!”
The anger he had felt at the reception, temporarily abated as he’d supped Betty’s coffee and brandy, now came flooding back. He dressed quickly and in silence, fearful of what he might say. There were monstrously offensive words and phrases pressing at his lips and he wanted to get out of her sight before they came bursting through.
His anger carried him down the stairs and out into the dark service road in front of the flats, blinding him to the significance of the heavily steamed-up windows in the car parked by the kerbside. As he passed, the driver’s window was wound down.
“Excuse me,” said a man’s voice.
“Yes?” said McHarg, half stooping, his mind still back in the flat.
Their timing was bad. One of the rear doors began to open a split second before the driver pressed the button on his aerosol can. McHarg heard the internal alarms through his anger and was jerking backwards as the fine spray hit his face. He smelt the ammoniac stench and closed his left eye in agony as some of the liquid hit the naked ball. But the right was hardly affected and he kicked out with great force and accuracy, ramming the driver’s door back against the man trying to get out.
At the same time the man from the back seat drove a knuckle-dustered fist deep into his kidneys. His thick topcoat absorbed much but not all of the blow and he doubled up in agony. A third man had got out of the far side of the car. That seemed to be all of them, thank God. But three felt as if it would be quite enough.
The driver was out now. McHarg glimpsed a square face with a slightly twisted nose which he tried to straighten with a flailing left, missed by a mile and felt his arm seized. At the same time the third man had grabbed his right arm and between them he was being stretched out for the attentions of the knuckle-duster. He took one blow hard in the belly.
Then as the fist went back for seconds, McHarg used the two holding his arms as a pivot and swung both feet together against the kneecap of the man in front of him. There was a crack like dead wood in a quiet forest and the man went down, shrieking.
McHarg too was down, pulled out of the supporting holds by his own weight. Keep on your feet was the first law of street fighting but beggars couldn’t be choosers. The driver was swinging vicious expertly directed kicks into his belly. Fortunately the third man had let himself be diverted by Knuckle-duster’s fate and was stooping over his injured fellow.
McHarg grappled with the driver’s legs and unbalanced him, forcing him back against the car.
“For fuck’s sake, give us a hand!” the man yelled.
“Sorry, Phil,” said the third man. His voice was shrill, his tone placatory. Phil. McHarg stored the name away. It meant something but significance wasn’t important here, only survival. The third man was kicking at his spine and swearing obscenely in rhythm with his kicks. He sounded almost hysterical. Better still, he was loud. Best of all, he seemed to be wearing very soft suedes, unlike the man called Phil whose shoes were tipped with fashionable brass caps which made them formidable weapons.
McHarg tried to rise but Phil was having none of that and smashed his fist down against the top of his head.
Hit me there all night, though McHarg with grim and untimely humour. With a bit of luck the man would have broken his hand.
Somewhere above a window opened and a voice cried angrily, “What’s going on down there?”
Wish I knew, thought McHarg. Ring the police, you stupid bastard!
As if his thought had soared u
pwards, “I’ve rung the police!” cried the voice.
“Phil, let’s go!” cried the third man urgently.
The thug with the cracked kneecap was already dragging himself into the back of the car. The reluctant man ran round to the passenger side. Only Phil delayed, partly because he was clearly unsatisfied with his performance so far, partly because McHarg was still clutching one of his legs. He brought his knee up hard beneath McHarg’s chin, forcing him to let go and rock backwards. Then came a farewell kick.
McHarg didn’t, couldn’t, avoid it. Instead he gathered the foot to his body like a rugby player fielding a hard-driven grub kick. Cursing wildly, Phil wrenched himself free and fell backwards into the car. It took him several seconds to untangle himself and get the car started but McHarg was in no state to carry the battle after the enemy. He slumped on to the pavement, dragging in huge breaths of air like a man beached by a stormy sea.
He was still there when the police car arrived five minutes later.
CHAPTER 14
For the second morning in succession, McHarg was at the Yard bright and early. Everybody—doctor, nurses, policemen—had insisted that he spend the night in hospital, which he’d finally agreed to, but only because his internal logic told him he was in no fit state to resist a second onslaught.
However, as soon as the dawn chorus of clangs, bangs, buzzers and groans began to fill the ward, he had got up, dressed with difficulty because he’d somehow managed to sprain both thumbs, and discharged himself.
He talked himself into the Criminal Records Office and stated his requirements.
“I want to look at some likelies. Man called Phil. Five ten; twelve, thirteen stone, I didn’t see much of his face, comes from south of the river, I think.”
Commander Grossmith found him there.
“Doug, I knew you’d be here. I rang the hospital when I heard, and they told me you’d discharged yourself. What are you playing at? You look terrible!”
“There were three of them,” said McHarg, wishing it didn’t sound like an excuse.
Grossmith just smiled slightly, perhaps pityingly. McHarg couldn’t blame him. He must look a sorry sight. And so there’d been three of them. Only a few years before, he’d have broken their backs, one by one. But age, alcohol, the torpor of grief, they’d all taken their toll. It was getting near time to give something up. But what?
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