No Escape

by Josephine Bell

  So much for Hill’s paper. The one found in the film was an order. Presumably the order, hidden in an exported batch of undeveloped, but exposed film, would reach the supplier and be made up accordingly.

  “So young Hill was a messenger,” Marsden said. “Probably a distributor, too. An addict?”

  “Oh yes, undoubtedly. But he had enough of a conscience left to worry about Sheila. Perhaps when he saw Miss Wheelan and realised how far down the hill he had slipped—”

  “A very sentimental conclusion,” the professor said, drily, “which don’t find at all convincing. Much more likely he was scared for his own safety and thought he might make a garbled confession through Miss Wheelan in the hope of getting in right with you chaps.”

  “I still think his main concern was Sheila Burgess and her fate.”

  “Have it your own way,” Marsden said. “The poor lad’s dead, after all. Where d’you go from here?”

  Garrod looked at him apologetically.

  “Can’t say, sir.”

  “You mean the expert’s done his bit and won’t be needed again.”

  “I didn’t say so.”

  “You said the nearest thing to it. All right. Time I gave some attention to my real work. Incidentally our eastern friend is up for his finals next week. He regarded our jaunt as a welcome relief from swotting. If he’s through he goes home at the end of the month, which might be convenient from several points of view.”

  When Garrod was alone he took out a file marked ‘Gerald Stone’. He had recognised the sports car from its number. Inquiries begun before had been pressed since the event in the café. The result was interesting.

  Gerald Stone—it seemed to be his real name—had worked as a very young man for a firm of exporters that had been wrecked by Suez and its aftermath. With their assets sequestrated, the goodwill gone, no compensation in the near offing, the firm had first sent out Stone to gather details, then had gone into liquidation. It showed how hopeless they were that they sent out such a very junior executive, clever though he had undoubtedly proved himself. Stone was in Egypt for three months. He discovered a great many interesting facts, it seemed, and at the same time avoided being thrown into prison for alleged spying. When he got back to England he reported to his firm and gave in his notice. He found a job with another firm that made and distributed cameras. He was still with this firm. Hence his connection with professional photography, and possibly his introduction to the Bream outfit. The camera firm was above suspicion, according to Garrod’s information. The question now was had Stone, with contacts made in Egypt, set up a drug importing organisation on his own. If so, how large an organisation was it? How wide were the vice interests and of what kind besides these films and drugs, and was Stone at the head of the ring or merely the useful head of a local branch?

  At present Superintendent Garrod was not prepared to lay any bets. But the English market for drugs was comparatively small. The set-up in many ways was amateurish, careless, even muddled. Time would show. Perhaps Miss Wheelan would help on the process, now that her contact with Stone had been re-established.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jane changed her clothes the following evening with feelings that rocked back and forth between excited bravado and sheer terror. In the event she was merely bored.

  Gerry called for her punctually. He had the sports car in the road.

  “Local or further out?” he asked.

  “Local what?”

  “Eating place. Local restaurant, road house, country pub?’

  Jane’s first thought was to accept the country pub, but she remembered country lanes and said, “Local if that’s all right by you? I’ve been dashing around all day. I’d rather not do much travelling now.”

  “As modom wishes,” Gerry said. “Only there’s nothing quite close in this god-forsaken part of the town, is there? Chelsea do you?”

  “Of course.”

  Her heart sank. Chelsea was now permanently stained in her mind with the memory of Tom and his hard-faced wife and particularly with a vision of long hair and a wild unkempt beard and dirty clothes whose owner, Garrod had told her that morning, had been brutally murdered. Perhaps by the man at her side.

  “Cold?” Gerry asked. “Pull up the window if you are.”

  “Not really. I often feel shivery at the end of the day, when I have time to relax.”

  “You’re grossly overworked. I could see that when I was in your department.”

  “How is the wrist?” Jane asked, belatedly. She had forgotten to ask about it because there was nothing much wrong with it. But Gerry was not to know that.

  “The plaster was stopping the circulation in my hand,” he answered. “Besides hurting like hell. So I went to my own chap—my own doctor, I mean. Had him cut it off. The plaster of course. Not the hand.”

  Jane forced herself to laugh at the feeble joke. Certainly he had got over any bruising and restricted movement. He was using the unplastered hand at the wheel, sometimes alone.

  “Your head dragon was off the beam,” Gerry said, a few seconds later. “I don’t believe there was any sign of a fracture at all, was there?”

  “I’m never much good at scaphoids,” Jane answered.

  She did not intend to enlarge on the subject. It was the last thing she wanted. After a day spent in teaching and soothing anxious, uncomprehending men and women, she had no wish to begin another lecture now.

  Nor did Gerry pursue the subject. He, too, seemed to pay little attention to the injured wrist. After completing the short drive in silence, he parked the car in a side road and took Jane through a series of small streets to a turning off the King’s Road and a very respectable Italian restaurant with shaded candles on the tables and respectful waiters in white jackets.

  The food was good, the conversation increasingly boring. Gerry continued to ask questions about her job, about the detail of the work, the monotony, the uncertain hours.

  “But I like it,” she said, more than once. “I like never knowing what’ll turn up next. I like working out the best way to get the right photograph. It isn’t all hones by any means, you know. There are terribly complicated investigations, whole series of films—”

  “Don’t go on,” Gerry said, laughing. “Don’t find another batch of examples, or I won’t be able to finish my dinner. I accept the fact that you’d rather be a radiographer than the Queen of Sheba.”

  “Much rather.” Jane said. “She had hairy legs, didn’t she?”

  “I believe she did.” Gerry was giving her a very speculative look now. She regretted her careless talk. “You wouldn’t have hairy legs, would you?”

  “It makes her sound like a spider,” Jane said, wildly, staring at the fat straw-dressed bottle between them. A perfectly ordinary chianti, she thought indignantly. Or had he done something to it, to make her so silly? It must be time to end this meal.

  She sighed.

  “Tired?” asked Gerry, in the soft voice that had attracted her the first time she met him.

  “A bit.”

  “You work too hard.”

  “We’ve been into that.”

  “You could use your skill in pleasanter ways.”

  “Such as?”

  Her voice was a challenge, far too obvious a challenge. He rejected it—far too easily.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  But he did know and she knew and he knew that she knew and she knew that he—

  Jane pulled herself together. His hand had found her knee under the table. For a moment it rested there then he took it away and signalled to the waiter for coffee.

  At the door of the flat he kissed her, firmly but without passion. Then, before leaving, he invited her to a party on the following evening.

  “A party?” Jane repeated, not taking it in. She was feeling very sleepy, very stupid.

  “Yes. Some of the people you met before. Not all. I’ve been asked to bring a girl. There’s no girl I’d like to take as much as you, Jane.” />
  For a second she wondered if all her suspicion, her dislike, her distrust, were mere prejudice. Garrod had said, several times, that they had nothing on Stone. Could he really be another victim? Another, like Sheila, deceived into collaborating with criminals? An honest man, trying to extricate himself?

  She felt unequal to the effort of dealing with such a question. But her natural inclination to help the oppressed, whether it was illness or misfortune that assailed them, made her reach up to kiss Gerry very gently and agree to go with him.

  His final embrace was crushing. Jane felt his sense of triumph, of savage victory sweep over her in a scorching wave from which she recoiled in utter revulsion. She fought to control her sudden panic and just succeeded. But she was trembling and shaken and thanked him in a weak voice and having closed the door, leaned against it for a second or two with her eyes shut, her heart racing.

  It was not the physical effect of her contact with Gerry that so disturbed her. It was her sudden realisation of him as a totally predatory animal, a self-centred, self-absorbed destroyer, ruthless in his aims and exulting in his power to deceive and conquer.

  Well, he had not conquered her and she knew now why he could never succeed. For in the middle of that last kiss, when his lips were bruising hers and his tongue violated her unwilling mouth she had thought suddenly of Tim, seeing his plain, clever face, his strong body and large fine hands, appealing in her heart to him for help, for rescue.

  She heaved herself away from the door and went to her room, passing the telephone in the hall of the flat. She subdued her instant wish to ring up Tim. She had been in love several times but never quite like this. Tim was far more than a romantic idea, a sop to vanity, an excuse to boast to herself, or a purely physical attraction. She thought and hoped fervently that they had more in common than this squalid piece of police work. But so far he had made none of the usual advances. He seemed to take her for granted as part of his interest in and feeling of responsibility for, Sheila’s fate. Besides, the hospital gossip still linked him with the rather beautiful Nurse Cooper, who had been stringing him along for months, they all said.

  So, in her new knowledge of herself, Jane did not ring up Tim that evening, but merely reported to Superintendent Garrod that she had spent a totally unproductive evening with Gerry, who had done no more than attempt to shake her loyalty to the hospital, but had invited her to another party on the following Saturday evening. She did not know where this was to be held, but Gerry was to pick her up at the flat at nine o’clock in the evening. It was to be a wine and cheese party. He had not invited her to dinner beforehand.

  Tim, spending a quiet evening in his own flat, found his reading less than peaceful and almost worthless. Knowing that Jane was spending these hours, or some of them, with Stone, got between him and any assimilation of the facts in the various medical papers he was trying to absorb. When she failed to ring him up he became at first anxious, then definitely worried, finally depressed. Perhaps even Jane, who now so often got between him and his work, was leading him up the garden.

  After feeling furious with her for half an hour and resisting for another ten minutes a strong wish to ring her up himself, he decided to have it out with her at the hospital the next day. She must stop seeing Stone. She must stop being Garrod’s stooge. It was far too dangerous

  But the next day proved more and more frustrating. Tim’s work kept him totally occupied all through the working hours. He could make only one attempt to find Jane in the X-ray Department and she was not there at that time. But he managed to get away from the hospital just after six and after going home rang her up and found her in. Not only in but very anxious to talk to him.

  “Why didn’t you call me last night, then?”

  “I—well, I was—it was rather late.”

  She sounded confused—upset. The thing was getting her down, Tim decided.

  “Look, have you fed yet? No, you can’t have. Come out to dinner.”

  “I’d love to, only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Well, I’ve got to go to a wretched party—”

  “Go on.”

  “Tim, I don’t really want to go, but I must. Garrod knows and he’ll be keeping watch and—”

  Tim exploded.

  “God damn it, don’t say this Stone wants you out again? Two days running!”

  “I’m terribly sorry—”

  Her voice broke: to Tim’s horror she seemed to be crying.

  “Listen,” he said, speaking in a slow gentle voice, as he did in the children’s ward. “Tell me when and where this party is, then we can arrange something. Right?”

  She told him. Gerry had left a message with Mary that morning to say she must bring a warm coat because the party was going to be on a houseboat on the Thames. He hadn’t said where the houseboat was. She had told Superintendent Garrod and he had said she was to carry on. Everyone would know, including the River Police.

  “Damn Garrod!” said Tim fiercely. “O.K. Well have dinner at that little place round the corner from you. Meet me there in half an hour.”

  Jane agreed and rang off. She was pleased to remember that she had not suggested this restaurant the night before to Gerry. It would have been contaminated now if she had done so. As it was it remained and she hoped would always remain a special property of hers and Tim’s.

  When Jane had rung off. Tim got on to Garrod, was told to mind his own business, but managed to discover, aided by his previous intuition, that the houseboat party was expected to take place on Giles Winter’s boat near Hammersmith Bridge.

  So, after a warm, encouraging, delightful meal with Jane, who looked quite lovely that evening, he thought, much prettier than the Cooper girl could ever hope to be, with her cold, set face and manner, Tim set off in his own car for Hammersmith Bridge. He parked it in a side turning off the approach road and went on foot to the tow path. In the car he had exchanged his jacket for an old wind-cheater over a sweater. His appearance was now quite unremarkable, a slightly scruffy young man among hundreds who looked just the same.

  Meanwhile Jane, feeling comforted and protected and more than ever in love with Tim, walked home quickly to wait for Gerry. He came punctually at a quarter to nine and they drove off together.

  Though the party seemed to he composed of much the same type of person she had met before and had no particular wish to meet again, Jane lost most of her misgivings in the interest and excitement of boarding a boat on the river.

  The party was still assembling when Gerry led her down to the towpath, having parked his car in the same side road where Tim had put his. In fact, as the two appeared together at the river wall Tim, standing back in the shadows, saw them arrive and was pleased to find his reasoning had been correct.

  Two dinghies were plying back and forth between the cabin-cruiser and the landing steps. Jane and Gerry had to wait in an informal queue until those in front of them had been taken off.

  There was a good deal of wind. Jane was glad she had brought a scarf. She tied it over her hair while they waked.

  Then it was their turn, Jane was handed into the small rocking boat and sat down. Gerry followed. A long-haired boy, whom Jane had not seen before, pushed off and took them across. They were welcomed on board and led below. Jane found herself being greeted effusively by Ronald Bream and his wife. Tom and Toni came up, the former carrying two glasses of wine. Jane answered the greetings politely and while Gerry started a brisk conversation with his friends, stood back and looked about her.

  The saloon of the launch was tightly packed with visitors. There must have been quite thirty there, she thought, realising that the boat was much larger than she had imagined and very pleasantly roomy below.

  “What d’you think of her?” asked Giles Winter at her elbow.

  She turned with a start to face him. The same thin face and strange cold eyes. Remembering Sheila, Jane felt renewed dislike and revulsion.

  “She’s quite big, isn’t she?” she
said, feeling confused and stupid. “How many of you live here?”

  “Only me. Only at weekends. But I have a crew, of course, when I go to sea.”

  “Oh!” Gerry had spoken of a houseboat, not an active craft. “I thought it was a houseboat,” she added, to explain her surprise.

  “So she is, most of the time. But I take her out occasionally.”

  “Is that why we had to come on board in a dinghy? I wondered. The other boats seem to be joined together and to the wall.”

  Giles laughed.

  “Yes, I’m on a mooring. Observant girl, aren’t you? The noticing kind.”

  Jane flushed. There was a barely hidden antagonism behind his speech, a contemptuous dislike that the voice did not conceal.

  “How many crew do you take?” she asked, determined to hold her own with him.

  “I have berths for four. Two in here and two in the cabin up forward. Like to see?”

  She gave a rather artificial laugh.

  “Not a hope, is there? With all this crowd.”

  Tom was at her side with a bottle, filling her glass. Toni handed a plate of cheese bits on sticks and another of olives. Gerry, behind them, said, “Why don’t we all go on deck? No air down here.”

  Very slowly they pushed through the crowd to the foot of the companion-way and up it into the night air. There were fewer people here, mostly younger than those below, Jane noticed several flushed faces and blank eyes; she heard blurred speech and silly phrases. The drink had been circulating very freely up here in the dark, she thought; the drink or the dope? Probably both, and highly dangerous at that.

  Gerry took her arm, edging her along towards the bows. Here among the various tackle on the deck some of the couples had bestowed themselves for further enjoyment. Gerry moved inboard to put himself between Jane and the dark humped forms, squeezing her to the rail.

  They were on the river side of the launch, the windward side, but Jane welcomed the cold stream of air against her face. She looked down at the dark water. The tide, which had been full and slack when they came off to the launch, had now turned. The water ran past in rippling circles, chuckling as it ran off the curve of the hull. She remembered Sheila again and shivered. The wine had loosened her thoughts and her tongue.