Murder, London--South Africa

by John Creasey

  And Joshua Bradshaw – what would he do?

  Roger wanted above everything else to go forward, into the house, to find out what was going on. The five of them must now be together: Faith, Nightingale, Bradshaw, and the two who might be the Italians Severini and Galli. What had brought them all here with such urgency? Did they know that they were surrounded? Once they found out, what would they do?

  The cars pulled up in the shadow of a huge slag heap, a man-made mountain of drab grey, with rough sides covered here and there with dark green, except where it was in the sunlight, where the green seemed as vivid as lichen. Roger and the others got out. Sergeant Hombi moved away, keeping under cover with a skill which told Roger how right Lukas was about the standard of training.

  Now there was time to study the position of the house. It stood on a table of land which jutted out from a massive wall of rock, so that it could be approached from two sides and the front, but not from the back. Between the table and the mine workings there ran a narrow ridge of rock, which seemed to cross a wide ravine, an ugly, jagged mass. Beyond the mines were some long, low roofed, stone-built buildings, the compound for the mine-workers.

  The huge slag heap was fed by a narrow gauge railway with several tracks which were still and silent.

  Whether by design or not, the house was in a fine defensive position, and to reach the table of land on which it stood the two patrols had had to climb up on two sides of the rocky slopes. The actual edges of the table were broken by cracks or fissures, some only a foot wide, some several feet.

  Roger was still studying the terrain and realising how difficult the climb had been for the Bantu constables, when Sergeant Hombi came back.

  “They are in position and will move in on the signal,” Hombi reported to Lukas.

  “Superintendent,” Lukas said to Roger, “I hope you will wait here until we have completed the raid. As you yourself have said these men are dangerous, and they are armed. It is possible there will be shooting. I would be in serious trouble with my superiors if you were to be hurt. Please stay here.”

  Roger thought almost angrily, ‘I’ve flown all this way, I’ve taken these chances, they’re here because I begged them to come, and they don’t want me to be in at the kill.’ As the thoughts ran through his mind, he looked into Lukas’s brown eyes, and saw Hombi, who was so like Jameson, also staring at him. There was no doubt that they were pleading with him to agree, and not to take risks. They would not plead if they could compel him to stay behind.

  Everything in his being urged him to reject the pleas, to go to the house with them. He could see their point of view and understand their anxiety; he felt a sense of gratitude, and satisfaction, too, that they should be so anxious and treat him with such solicitude, but – my God, did they think he was made of cotton-wool?

  Suddenly, the decision was made for him.

  There was a shot from the house; a shout; another shot, followed by a reverberating thud. The front door opened and Nightingale appeared, with Faith just behind him. Nightingale was holding her wrist, as if he were dragging her, but she was running as fast. He turned towards the side of the house, weaving this way and that, and as he did so two men appeared in the doorway – two small men. One of them had a gun poised, and fired twice: there was no way of telling whether either of the fugitives had been hit.

  Hombi, Lukas, and the other two Europeans had snatched their revolvers out; there was a fierce rattle of bullets, the two small men seemed to crumple up. As they did so, Nightingale released Faith’s hand and staggered forward, knees bending; he had been hit. The girl ran on, skirt riding halfway up her legs, running blindly as if driven only by terror.

  Roger bellowed, “Faith! It’s all right! Faith!”

  But as he shouted there was a crackle of shooting from the other side of the house, someone must have tried to get away there, and one of the police patrols was in action. It strengthened terror and it added wings to the girl, who was still running blindly.

  Roger was already moving towards her, calling as loudly as he could, “Faith! It’s all right. You’re safe, safe!”

  The word ‘safe’ seemed to echo about the rocks and the valleys, about the slag heap and the house itself. S-A-A-A-A-FE. He thought she heard him. She glanced round. She must have seen some of the armed policemen, Bantus, and they frightened her. She ran straight on, wildly, all control gone. Roger saw which way she was heading, saw that if she wasn’t cut off she would fall over the edge of the ravine. He did not pause to reason that the Bantus would be more able than he to save her.

  There was a short cut, where the ground was rough, but none of the Bantus was taking it; they were probably worried about the men inside the house. So Roger took it. He thought he heard his name called in a stentorian voice, heard two more shots – and then plunged into a patch of stony ground. Quite suddenly the earth seemed to open up beneath him. As he toppled downwards, he realised with awful certainty what he had done. Here was a jagged tear in the rock, a fissure which ran almost at right angles to the main crevice, and he was falling into it.

  Beneath him there was nothing but small stones and jagged rocks and the bottom of the crevice hundreds of feet below. He actually thought, ‘Hundreds, thousands.’ He hunched his body and tried to protect his head with his hands; he felt the pain of blow after blow, against his ribs, his legs, his thighs, his arms, his neck, his head, his hands, his feet. It was as if every part of his body was being assaulted by the rocks, as if they were striking at him viciously, sadistically.

  He did not lose consciousness altogether.

  He was aware of the pain, and of sounds which happened inside him, as if his bones were breaking. He felt numbness as well as pain. He felt heat. The pain seemed to be drawn from the rest of his body into his head, for his head ached as he had never known it, and was hot, hot, terribly hot, burning hot.

  He felt sick, but it was not an intolerable nausea; even his stomach was going numb. But not his head. That was burning. Flaming. He could not move; he could do nothing to cool it.

  It so happened that he had fallen where the sun still struck savagely, and where there was no shade.

  25

  EBB AND FLOW

  Roger was aware of sounds.

  They were vague sounds. He could not distinguish them. They were accompanied by shadowy movements. Now and again they were accompanied by sharp stabbing pains in his arm – always in his arm. He did not know what caused these. He became aware of a light touch on his forehead, and of something hard in his mouth – they were holding his mouth open, the fools. He did not realise that when he first thought ‘the fools,’ it was the beginning of real consciousness. After that, he knew more about what was going on, although no one spoke to him. It was as if his own mind was slightly below the surface, aware of what was happening but indifferent and uninterested.

  Before long, the shapes became less shadowy, and he knew what was happening. He was in hospital. They were doctors and nurses. They were taking his temperature. They were cooling his forehead. They were giving him injections. After every injection he slept for a while, and when he came round from one of them he saw a face. He had seen it before. It was a black face. He thought of Lieutenant Jameson, in London – it was his face. Or was it that sergeant’s, whom he had met out on the rocks. Whoever it was smiled, and it was a warming and reassuring smile.

  A gentle voice said, “You will soon be well.”

  Of course he would . . . wouldn’t he?

  He had a sense that life as well as consciousness was ebbing and flowing. Gradually, the times when it flowed seemed to be longer and the flood-tide stronger. He began to remember things. Suddenly he became anxious for Faith Soames, and soon after he came round again he was even more anxious. And he did not even know what had happened at Van der Lunn’s place. Why didn’t someone come and tell him?

  His a
nxiety, his curiosity, and his interest ebbed; again nothing mattered. He dozed, and woke, and on waking his mind seemed to be much more its usual self, he saw everything clearly, and when he had lain on his back staring at the Venetian blinds at the window, he looked round for a bell. His right arm was stiff, but he could move it. He knew there was something holding his waist and his left leg firmly, but he did not think much about that. He found a bell-push, and pressed, and very soon footsteps sounded, and the door opened and a middle-aged nurse came in, anxious at first, but then beaming all over her pleasant face.

  “You’re awake!” she cried. “You’ll be all right now.”

  She spoke as if to reassure herself as much as to reassure him.

  “I will fetch the doctor. Don’t move, just wait.” She went out bustling, and Roger lay and looked at tiny slats of light which crept through the blinds, and made him remember the fierce heat of the sun.

  Two men, white-smocked, came in . . .

  He had been in the main hospital in Johannesburg for five days, he learned at intervals. He had nothing to worry about now, but for a day or two the doctors had been anxious about him. They said so very clearly, so that he should not be tempted to try to overdo it, and so have a relapse. He had fractured his left leg below the knee, a clean break quickly mended, and had cracked some ribs and dislocated his left shoulder, hence all the strapping and the plaster round his leg. His chief danger had been from the effect of the sun; heatstroke. It was unusual for a man to be affected so quickly; had he been run down, or working at too high a pressure? In the quietness of his own mind Roger knew that he had been working at too high a pressure, and so he had been more vulnerable than he should have been.

  What about Nightingale? And the girl? And . . .

  Some time afterwards, Captain Standish appeared at the bedside, instead of the doctors. He looked as sardonic and as cynical as ever, but the grip of his hand on Roger’s uninjured right hand gave the lie to much of that.

  “Just like the Yard,” he said. “You couldn’t leave it to anyone else. Did anyone take the trouble to tell you that the young woman saw you fall? That made her stop, or she would have gone down herself.”

  “It’s a charitable thought,” said Roger. “Really?”

  “Cross my heart.” Standish almost leered. “Nightingale was shot in the back, but the bullet is out and he’ll be all right, which a lot of people think is more than he deserves.”

  “Do I deserve to be told whether he’s made a statement?” asked Roger.

  “Yes, he has, and so has the young woman,” Standish said. “Nightingale was sure that the Bradshaws were involved. He believed that Faith Soames had been kidnapped, so that the kidnappers could blackmail him and prevent him from telling the police what he knew of the Bradshaws – and he went to save her. He was not so reckless as you might think, though. He had sent a coded cable to old Soames’ private address, giving all the details of his case against the Bradshaws – both the brothers, not one. He went to the mine prepared to say that if the girl was freed Soames would not publish the story – he was sure that Soames would back him up. That’s why he felt that he could safely tackle the people at the mine. We now know that David Bradshaw had bribed porters at most airports. There was one at the Jan Smuts, a man who also worked for the brother, and put the diamonds into Nightingale’s luggage. Now, what’s next? Ah, yes. Faith Soames had a telephone call from a man who said that he was The Globe’s reporter in Johannesburg, so she went to meet him. I suppose she can’t be blamed for that. She arranged to meet the car in Kempton Park, but drove past it to see who was at the wheel, and realised that it wasn’t The Globe man at all. So she tried to get away, but they shot at her car and punctured a tyre. She reached the telephone kiosk and made that call to you, after distracting them by driving the car up a side street. They chased after it. She slipped back to the telephone, but they caught up with her too soon. When Nightingale heard that she was a prisoner he went to try to do a deal at Van der Lunn’s place. He told them that the story about Van der Lunn was already in London, but they didn’t seem to care.”

  Standish’s lip twisted. “Guess why.”

  Roger said quietly, “Because Van der Lunn wasn’t involved.”

  “You never were convinced of that, were you?”

  “No,” said Roger. “I was mistaken about the Bradshaws, but not about Van der Lunn. The thefts and the smuggling seemed big, but not big enough for a man of his reputation to risk losing it, or for a patriotic South African to cheat his Government.”

  “I know how you get results,” said Standish. “You make a wild guess and then justify it by logic. Feel like guessing what was really going on?”

  Roger said, “You tell me.”

  “Like to sleep on it, and guess tomorrow?”

  “I’ll sleep on it when you’ve told me what it was,” said Roger. When Standish didn’t respond, he went on, “If you must play your little game, it’s now obvious that both the Bradshaws were involved, and that when we arrested David Bradshaw, either the accomplices or Joshua Bradshaw believed he would tell us the whole truth, so they killed him.”

  “Cain and Abel?”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes,” said Standish. “He had more reason than you might think, though. David’s wife didn’t know that Joshua was involved, but she believed her husband was under pressure. She meant to make him talk – the one thing Joshua feared. But Joshua swears he didn’t order the killing in the police station – the Italians planned that themselves, convinced that David would give them away.”

  Standish pushed his chair back and stood up, as if he did not intend to tell Roger any more yet, but all he did was to call out, “Come in, Lieutenant.”

  The door opened and Jameson came in, smiling and obviously contented; so it was his, not Hombi’s face Roger had seen in his half-conscious state. Jameson came across, shook hands, and stood back from the bed. Standish remained on his feet, too.

  “I am very glad you are not worse,” said Jameson, as if that mattered more than anything else. “And I congratulate you, Superintendent. I have been told that but for your bravery – much more harm might have been done. However, I am here to report what happened in England. First I bring you a message from your wife, whom I saw two days ago. Her love. Next, I bring you the regards of the Assistant Commissioner”—he paused—“Chief Inspectors Klemm and McKay, and Detective Sergeant Gorlay. All of them are very gratified by the result. The others who worked with the team also send their best wishes, Superintendent.”

  “This teamwork,” interpolated Standish.

  “That was the strongest impression made on me by Scotland Yard – the close integration of all the departments and all the ranks,” said Jameson. “Since the arrest of Joshua Bradshaw, who was not hurt but was caught when hiding from the police, Rebecca Bradshaw and Elizabeth Bradshaw have made full statements. They did not know what was afoot, but were afraid it was criminal, and tried to stop their husbands going on with it. They were going to leave the hotel very soon. Each woman trusted and loved her husband, there’s no doubt about that.”

  “And Joshua?”

  “Joshua has confessed to everything except a part in his brother’s murder. The Bradshaws worked with the two Italians who spent much time at the Seven Seas Club in Soho. That was the place of contact, an unofficial headquarters. Common View Hotel was kept simply as a cover. All arrangements were made by telephone and by word of mouth. The story which David Bradshaw told us was untrue, of course – he and his brother were the organisers of the smuggling – and they used the Italians to go to the industrial users and steal the diamonds back. Apart from porters at each airport, men who once persuaded to commit a crime could thereafter be blackmailed into doing whatever they were told, no one else was involved.” Jameson glanced at Standish. “Have you informed Mr West of the Van der Lunn aspect of the situation,
Captain?”

  “No,” said Standish promptly. “I was hoping he would guess. I think it would be good for his ego. Going to have a shot, Handsome?”

  It was the first time he had used the nickname.

  Roger said almost musingly, “Van der Lunn wasn’t guilty, but suddenly he became a danger to them. So, he must have found out what was going on. However, he couldn’t have found out until he was on the aircraft or he would have telephoned the police. He must have seen something at the Jan Smuts, and faced David Bradshaw with it. Bradshaw took immediate action, putting drugs in his drinks – morphine kept on the plane for emergencies in flight. How am I doing?”

  Standish said, “Too well!”

  “There is more,” Jameson said.

  “There must be much more,” Roger agreed. “Well, let’s see.”

  He was beginning to feel tired, and rather edgy. It would be interesting to find out how far he could interpret the events in the light of what information he now had. He leaned back on his pillows, closing his eyes, letting thoughts and the new facts drift through his mind rather than making any effort at logical thought; this was the way he worked whenever there was a case without an obvious solution.

  At last he went on, “So Van der Lunn found out and had to be silenced, but David Bradshaw didn’t want him dead. David was not prepared to commit murder. Actually, he saved Van der Lunn’s life at the hotel, and the Italians knew this – another reason for the daring murder. They had needed his mine, and all the facilities which only a mine could offer.”

  Jameson was beaming, Standish smiling wryly.

  “Just a little more,” Jameson urged. “You are so very near. May I give him a hint, Captain?”

  “A very little one.”

  “A little hint,” Jameson said. “Yes.”

  He paused, and then added, “Traffic moves in two directions, Superintendent.”

  Standish chuckled.

  “That’s good,” he said. “And that’s all. How about it, Handsome?”