“What are you trying to say, George?” she asked, her voice hollow. “Are you trying to blame me?”
“No,” I said. “Not blaming you.”
She drew a deep, shuddering breath, then was silent. The rain fell steadily and the silence extended until it became miserable. I writhed noiselessly beside her, wondering if the ambulance would never come. I couldn’t handle her distress, not along with my own. I couldn’t handle the silence.
“But at least you got the drugs,” I said mournfully.
She stirred in the shadows. Somewhere in the distance a siren was cutting through the hiss of the rain.
“We haven’t got them. The van was empty.”
It swept into the quarry, followed by two squad cars. Grace reached for the door.
“Leave it for the sergeant, Grace.”
I might as well not have spoken. “I shall be busy, George. I’ll have to speak to you later.”
Then she got out of the car. Her trust in me was now implicit, and I was aware, with a hollow despair, that it was also misplaced. I wasn’t certain that I’d be around to speak to.
I stood and watched for a while, because I had no way of getting away from there. After the preliminaries, Larry’s body was slid into the ambulance.
“A lift back to town?” I asked.
The driver glanced at Grace and she nodded. I got in the front with the driver.
“Where’ll I drop you?”
“Any bloody where,” I said savagely, and he glanced at me with a grimace.
He dropped me half a mile from the flat. God knows what time it was. This district was so quiet that I heard the retreating ambulance way off into the night, and I plodded on through the rain to see Berenice. There was only one thing I had left to use, and I’d got to use it before it went sour on me and the bile choked me.
I rang at her door. Then I pounded on it with the handle of my stick. My anger, by the time she opened it, was choking me.
“What is it? What is it?” she cried.
She was drawing a wrap over her pyjamas. I thrust my way past her, well into the room, then turned so that I commanded the floor area.
“Larry’s dead.”
The wrap fell open when she clutched at her face. Her eyes were huge. She seemed to be drawing in her breath for so long that I thought she’d pass out.
“I want you to take me to Sarturo,” I said. My voice sounded dead.
“Larry…what…”
“He was shot down. By Sarturo’s men. He’d come to meet me — ” And then she screamed. All that accumulated air was behind it, and all the tension of the past few days. I let it go on for two or three seconds, then I slapped her into silence. So much I can stand, but already my head was splitting.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said angrily. “How he died doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” she whispered.
“There isn’t much time. I want to see Sarturo.”
“How did it happen?”
“I want to see him, and I think tonight’s my last chance.”
“How did it happen?”
“Oh Lord!” I sneered. “Now we’re the poor, broken mistress. Don’t tell me you care if he lived or died.”
“How did it happen?” she screamed.
“Move, woman, move. Let’s have some action.”
She collapsed slowly onto a chair arm, hugging herself, whimpering. “You won’t tell me anything.”
“All right!” I snapped. “If it’ll shift you. There was going to be a handover — to me, that is — a handover of the drugs. I went there…” I stopped. She was staring at me with loathing. “You’re a liar,” she said flatly.
“Now why should you say that? Why d’you have to argue…”
“Your voice. The way you said it.” Some sort of expectant wonder came into her voice. “There’s something else.”
“I lost the drugs,” I said heavily. “I believe Sarturo’s arranged his own handover tonight. Then he’ll be gone. I’ve got to reach him…”
“For the drugs?” she demanded. “You come here tonight, and all you’re thinking about is the stinking drugs! And you stood there — on that very spot — and said filthy things about Henry…You…animal! Larry’s dead, and you can talk about drugs…” She began to crumple. “Oh dear God, Larry…Larry…”
I shook her back to the present, the crack in my voice jerking her upright.
“To hell with the drugs. I want to see him.”
“You know damn well where he is,” she flared at me.
“I do not. He’ll have gone from there. But you’ll know. You’ve got to know,” I said, agonised at the possibility that she might not.
She shook her head, staring through her fingers.
“Do you know?” I shouted.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“Then get dressed. Take me to him. And pull yourself together.”
“If it’s not the drugs…” She withdrew her hands. Her voice was stronger.
I spoke carelessly, tossing it at her, adding negligent brutality by looking round the room, anywhere but at her.
“There’s a young woman. What’s it matter to you? She’s too young to finish with her life — put it like that. He has her, and he said he’d hand her over when I produced his son’s killer. And Larry didn’t have an alibi. Time was running on, until there wasn’t any left. I thought to myself: why the hell was I worrying. Sarturo wanted his man.” I shrugged. “So I gave him one.”
She made a tiny, keening sound. I ignored it.
“The gang set it up,” I went on. “An old quarry. I said send somebody I’d recognise. Any idiot’d know who that’d be. Then I phoned Sarturo. I said I’d got his man, his son’s killer, and all he’d got to do was send somebody to the quarry. He did. He sent all of them. He’s thorough, you’ve got to give him that. They cut Larry down. So now…I want to go and collect the girl.”
She threw herself at me. She came up from that chair and hurled herself through the air like a tigress, her nails reaching for my eyes and her lips drawn back from her teeth. She was hissing her hatred. Her eyes were glazed with hysteria.
Normally, I could have handled it, but one hand was on the stick and my leg was near to collapse beneath me, so that when I reached up both hands in defence I was unbalanced. We went over together. She was streaming obscenities together into one string, pounding at me, scratching for me, her teeth reaching for anything attached to me that came into her vision. She was kneeling on my bad leg. I freed my right arm and brought my fist up sharply, catching her on the point of that delicate chin.
When she came round I had her in an easy chair, standing over her, sourly waiting for her eyes to open.
“Don’t try that again.” My voice was harsh. There was difficulty in controlling it, because pain was raging in my hip.
“You’re insane,” she whispered.
“Perhaps. I’ve run out of patience. Now get dressed.”
“You didn’t even know…”
I laughed. It came through as a snarl. “You think I cared? I’d hammered at both of you, but I got nowhere. So I had to make a decision.”
“Even your brain’s warped,” she said, levering herself up and staring at me in wonder. “You said Larry came — from the gang. Then that proved what he was. Didn’t it? Proved he never killed Henry.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She gasped. “You say it doesn’t…”
“As long as Sarturo thinks he did — I should worry.”
“You’re inhuman.”
“Are you going to get dressed, or are you coming like that?” I demanded. “I’ve gone too far with this, and now I don’t care what I’ve got to do. So move. And stop arguing.”
“You don’t know…”
“Move!”
She dragged herself from the chair. She moved towards the bedroom. I staggered when I turned to follow. She looked round.
“Don’t imagine I’ll pass out,” I said. “Keep m
oving.”
She attempted to shut the door in my face, but I pushed it open.
“I want to get dressed.”
“You’ll not be the first I’ve watched,” I told her, and I leaned my back against the door.
Angrily, with disdain for my presence, she dressed. The room swam before me, but I clung to my reason. It was late, so very late. By this time Sarturo could have sealed it all up and gone on his way. I didn’t know what he’d do with Carol. I ached with impatience. “Hurry!”
“My face…”
“To hell with your face.”
She snatched up her handbag in fury. Her face was still shiny with nightcream. I gripped her shoulder and threw her towards the outer door.
“Oh, but you’re strong!” she said with furious sarcasm.
She dug her Morris Minor out of the row of garages round the back and got in behind the wheel. She was staring stolidly ahead, not interested in the agony I suffered getting in the other side.
“He won’t be pleased,” she said acidly.
“Don’t let it worry you. Drive.”
“It’s a long way.”
“Then drive faster.”
I sat back, trying to relax. For a moment I closed my eyes, but almost instantly images of Larry’s death swam in front of me, and I opened them again quickly.
“I’m not sure how to get there,” she said as we came out onto the main road.
“Of course you are. You’d have to keep in touch. The funeral. Have they buried Henry, yet?”
“You bastard.”
I tried to laugh, but she jerked the clutch in harshly, and pain dragged through me.
She drove right through the town. When we got out into the suburbs she seemed to be uncertain, slowing at turnoffs and examining the road signs.
“I’m not sure…”
“Stop stalling,” I said quietly.
“I’ll kill you!” she said, her teeth clamping on it. “So help me, I’ll kill you.”
The houses fell away each side of us and became more sparse. We were out in the country, with now only our own lights for company. I was beginning to wonder whether she was in fact stalling, or had genuinely lost her way. Then I realised that she was driving more confidently. A painted sign danced through the headlights. Eavesmoor Farm. She slowed. I automatically began looking for the entrance to the farm house, but when it appeared she simply drove past. I glanced at her. She was biting her lip, her eyes darting nervously.
She drew to a halt. We were standing in one block of complete darkness. Beside us there was a five-barred gate.
“Here?”
“Yes.” She nodded sideways.
Fifty yards from the road I could just detect a pale blue square of dim light. I got out of the car, and suddenly could see more clearly. A shadow crouched beside the dividing hedge between two fields. Beside it was a lower shadow. As I stared they separated themselves into the shapes of a long, dark car, and a caravan.
“The caravan?”
She stood beside me. She whispered, as though the very proximity of Sarturo terrified her. “Yes.”
I felt a deep misery in my guts. This was the once-powerful Sarturo, the scourge of the underworld, reduced to hiring a caravan in a farmer’s field. In that tight confinement was his complete gang, and suddenly the very compactness into which they were compressed made them seem ridiculous. I was sick with the realisation that this pathetic crew had killed Larry so blindly.
I said: “Come on!” and jerked at her arm. “Open the gate.”
But she could not. She fumbled at a length of electric cable that held the gate to the nearest tree, and in the dark, the rain still drifting, she could not release it. I felt my temper rising at the idiocy of it. “Open the bloody thing.”
“I can’t. Do it yourself…” And like a hurt child she was suddenly whimpering, fluttering her hands in nervous despair. “We’ll have to climb over.”
For her it was nothing. I tottered and grappled. My leg cried out. “Help me, blast you,” I said, gasping. She seized my arm in exasperation. “Watch it!” I howled in despair.
I fell to the grass and then gathered myself together. We approached the caravan, passing the stinking outhouse where their elsan crouched.
I stood at the foot of the steps and reached up with my stick to tap on the door. There was a muffled oath inside and a sound of falling. The door opened and a voice behind me said, “Don’t move in a hurry.”
The light streamed down on us. I did not turn. I could smell gun oil.
“What is it?” demanded Sarturo in an impatient voice from somewhere inside.
A bandaged hand was gripping a gun and pointing it down between my eyes. I raised my voice. “It’s George Coe.”
“Come in, come in,” he said tetchily. I could barely lift my left leg.
“Give us a hand,” I said to Berenice, and she put her hand uselessly beneath my elbow. I got a good grip on her shoulder and she nearly went down as I went up. We made it together, just inside the door. My head swam and I clung to her.
“I’ve come for the girl, Sarturo,” I said. “You promised me.”
“So I did.” He’d got on the same dressing gown over the same pyjamas. His hair was standing on end.
“Bring his murderer, you said, with my hand on her shoulder.”
I looked sideways at her, and saw at last she had realised why we had come there. Horror swam in her eyes, seemed to climb clear to the roots of her hair, then gently, from beneath my fingers, she fainted away.
CHAPTER XII
This wasn’t one of your trailer residential one, which meant that only half of it folded away to become something else. It probably had a small bedroom at the far end, where Sarturo had obviously been resting if not actually asleep. Two folding bunks were tumbled with blankets, and beside them two of his larger acolytes were now standing, grasping their no-longer-virgin artillery. That made four, counting the outside guard, who’d now followed us in and had closed the door. He dripped mournfully.
Sarturo sat in the comer of a bench-type settee that ran around two angled sides, behind a round table that stood like a mushroom on a tubular steel leg. It kept the table between us. Carol was sitting, slumping rather, in a folding aluminium camp chair. She was still wearing the clothes I’d last seen her in, and they were showing signs that they’d not been off her in the interval. She was listless, her eyes shadowed and deep set, and couldn’t keep her hands still. She watched me without interest, and didn’t give Berenice one glance.
This worried me. She was between shots, was probably close to the time for her next one, and the symptoms were dangerously like the onset of withdrawal. I looked away from her. My fury, now, would be misplaced.
“Isn’t anybody going to pick her up?” I asked, gesturing towards Berenice.
The small one reached down his operable hand and struggled with her. Berenice was recovering. She groaned, then seemed to realise what was happening to her and thrust his hand aside. She sat down at the far end of the bench seat from Sarturo, clutching her handbag to her lap. When she managed to raise them, her eyes were on me.
“I’ve produced her,” I said to Sarturo. “Now let me take the girl.”
“He’s insane,” Berenice said flatly. “You can’t believe a word he says.”
It was clear that Sarturo was certainly not going to, without a considerable amount of pressure. His expression was bleak. “I’m tired, and there isn’t much time.” His impatient gesture was for Berenice, when she made a protesting sound. “Sit down, Coe, and talk fast.”
I didn’t want to sit. Although I could barely think from the hell that my leg was inflicting, I didn’t believe I could sit in his presence. It would be too close to accepting his hospitality. But there was no hospitable gesture in the way of a drink, which I could really have used, so I assured myself that my hatred would not be undermined, and I sat. I was on the bench seat across from him. This meant, because some sort of cupboard was behind me, that I was
only five feet from his evil face. The cushion collapsed beneath me to an eighth of an inch layer, and I squirmed.
“I want,” I said…cleared my throat…tried again. “I want to explain that when you killed Larry, you didn’t kill your son’s murderer.”
“I?” he said, touching his lips because his dentures had moved. “I wasn’t there.”
“Of course not. But your heroes were. Yours Sarturo, under your orders.”
“You saw it?” He asked with interest. “Did they do well?”
I swallowed. “They performed magnificently. It must take great courage.” I waited. There was no sound of movement. Sarturo watched me, a thin smile on his moist lips. “But it was the wrong person.”
“My information was — ”
“That Larry would be there to meet me,” I said sharply. “And you’d been told that I was certain he was the one. That was your information.”
He inclined his head. “In so many words.”
“But I was not certain,” I said. “I wasn’t certain of anything until tonight, when I heard that Larry was in that room at the time Berenice arrived. I was told that, and I remembered the shadows across the curtain, right up until the time I saw her approaching the house.” I paused. “You know about the arrangement?”
I had myself in hand. My voice was as calm and unemotional as if I’d been giving evidence in a witness box. In effect, I was. This creature was judge and jury. And executioner. I tried not to look at Berenice. She did not speak, but from time to time I’d heard her make little grunting sounds of derision.
Sarturo also ignored her. “I was aware that some diversion was being planned involving the young man called Larry.” His eyes were very steady on mine.
I nodded. “But you can’t know about the lighting arrangements in there, so you’ll have to take it from me that I can prove — ”
“He can prove nothing,” cut in Berenice with a tight, sharp voice.
“Prove,” I insisted, “that the way the lights were operated — ”
“He can say what he likes,” she said bitterly. “It doesn’t mean a thing.” Sarturo slowly turned to face her. His eyes were hooded. He nodded, and there was a sudden slashing slap of flesh. I turned as she drew her breath in. One of the toughs stood beside her. She had a hand to her cheek, her eyes bright, her teeth showing.
A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7) Page 13