by Jack Higgins
a narrower path that went round the side to a cobbled yard.
Light streamed from a rear window, falling across Manton’s Jaguar, and Lazer switched off the engine. As the sound died into the night, a dog started to bark inside the house, hollow and menacing, touching something elemental inside him so that he shivered.
As he got out of the Mini-Cooper, the house door opened, a shaft of light picking him from the night.
‘Who is it?’ a hoarse voice croaked.
‘It’s Chuck Lazer, Bluey,’ the American replied. ‘I’ve been looking for Fred. Thought he might be here.’
Squires was sixty and looked older. Tousled grey hair fell across a broad forehead and he was badly in need of a shave. He carried a shotgun under his left arm and his right hand was clamped firmly around the collar of a magnificent black and silver Alsatian who strained eagerly towards Lazer, the growl rising from deep inside his throat like a volcano about to erupt.
‘He’s pretty busy,’ Squires said. ‘Is it important?’
‘You’re telling me it is,’ Lazer moved forward. ‘Are Donner and Jango here?’
The old man glared at him suspiciously. ‘You want to know a hell of a lot, don’t you?’
‘What’s all the mystery? I’ve been here before, haven’t I?’
‘All right, all right,’ the old man said. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
They entered what had obviously been the main kitchen of the house in its great days, a large, stone-flagged room with a black kitchen range and stove running along one side. It was dirty and untidy, the table in the centre cluttered with unwashed dishes, a couple of empty milk bottles, half a loaf of bread and several opened cans of food. The narrow bed in the corner was unmade.
Squires gave the Alsatian an order and it crouched in front of the fire, staring unwinkingly at the American. ‘You wait here. I’ll get Manton.’
He leaned the shotgun against the wall and went out. Lazer sat on the edge of the table. After a while, the door opened again and Manton entered, Donner behind him.
Manton had an overcoat hanging from his shoulders against the cold and he was frowning. ‘I thought you were supposed to be playing at Faulkner’s party?’
‘I left,’ Lazer said simply. ‘Some lousy copper turned up asking about Ben Garvald. CID sergeant called Miller.’
‘Ben Garvald?’ Manton said. ‘But he’s still inside.’
‘Not any more he isn’t. They released him yesterday. According to this guy Miller, he’s right here in town.’
‘What do they want him for?’
‘A routine enquiry, that’s what the man said, but I figured you should know, Fred. You and Ben having been so close in the old days. Maybe this copper will be calling on you next.’
‘You did right, Chuck. Thanks a lot.’ Manton hesitated. ‘This bloke Miller – did he mention my name?’
Lazer shook his head. ‘He went off in one hell of a rush. Seems some detective or other was on the receiving end in a hit and run earlier tonight. He’s in the Infirmary now hanging on by a thread.’
There was a stifled exclamation from Donner in the doorway and the skin seemed to stretch a little more tightly across Manton’s face. He managed a ghastly smile.
‘Sorting that little lot should keep them out of mischief till the morning. Thanks for the good word, Chuck. You did right to come.’
‘That’s all right then.’ Lazer got to his feet. ‘I’ll be making tracks. It’s time for some shut-eye.’ He moved to the door, opened it and turned with a grin. ‘See you at the club tomorrow.’
The door closed behind him and a small trapped wind raced round the room, looking for a way out and died in a corner. It was Donner who broke the silence first.
‘If Brady pulls through and talks . . .
‘Fifteen years each,’ Manton said in a whisper. ‘There isn’t a judge in the country would give less.’
‘We could be in Liverpool by morning,’ Donner said. ‘A quick passage to Spain and no questions asked. I know the right people.’
‘That kind of thing costs money.’
‘Plenty in the safe at the club. Seven maybe eight grand.’
‘Faulkner’s, not mine.’
‘We could go a long way.’
Manton made his decision and nodded. ‘There’s just one thing. What if the coppers are on to us already? They could be hanging around the club right now waiting for us to show.’
‘That’s an easy one.’ Donner shrugged, his face quite calm. ‘Send Jango. He’ll find out for us.’
‘But will he go?’
‘I don’t see why not.’ Donner grinned. ‘Especially if you don’t tell him the score.’
Manton started to chuckle and shook his head. ‘You’re a hard bastard, Donner.’
‘It’s the only way,’ Donner replied. ‘What about Garvald?’
‘No point in hanging on to him any longer. He should still be out cold. We’ll take him with us and dump him on the side of the road going over the moors.’
Squires limped into the kitchen from the passage. ‘Jango’s gone to check on the bloke upstairs, Mr Manton. How long is he going to be with us?’
Before Manton could reply, there was a high-pitched cry from somewhere deep inside the house and he swung round quickly. ‘That sounded like Jango!’
Without a word, Donner snatched up the shotgun and ran along the dark passage.
Ben Garvald drifted up from a wall of darkness and opened his eyes. The room was festooned with cobwebs – giant grey cobwebs that undulated slowly.
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, fighting the panic which rose inside him. When he opened them again, the cobwebs had almost disappeared.
He was lying on a narrow bed against one wall of a small room. A shaded light hung down from the ceiling and curtains were drawn across the window.
He swung his legs to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed for a while before trying to stand. There was a bad taste in his mouth and his tongue was dry and swollen. Whatever had gone into that tea had been good – damned good.
He got to his feet and staggered across the room, steadied himself against the wall, turned and moved back to the bed. After a while, the cobwebs disappeared completely and everything clicked back into place.
His room at the hotel, the Irish girl with her cup of tea, he remembered that. And then Donner had arrived, which could only mean one thing. The copper who’d gone down the stairs at the club had snuffed it.
An interesting situation. He got to his feet again and checked the door. It was securely fastened, a mortice deadlock from the look of things, and there was no transom. He crossed to the window and drew back the curtains. The sash lifted easily and he looked out.
He was on the top floor and the gardens lay forty feet below in the darkness. The nearest window was a good ten feet away to the left and impossible to reach.
He closed the window, moved back to the bed to consider the situation and a key rattled in the lock. For a moment he hesitated, then quickly got back on the bed and closed his eyes.
The door opened and someone walked across. Garvald waited and as a hand gripped his shirt front to shake him gently, opened his eyes and looked into the startled face of Jango. The Cypriot managed one cry of alarm before Garvald’s right fist sank into his stomach. Jango keeled over, gasping for air, and Garvald got to his feet and moved out of the room quickly, closing the door behind him.
He descended a flight of stairs to the next landing and Donner’s voice drifted up from the hall below. ‘Jango! Jango, what’s going on!’
Garvald opened the nearest door, stepped into the darkness of the room beyond and waited. There was a step on the bare floor-boards and Donner moved into view, the shotgun held at waist level. Garvald moved out into the corridor, the edge of his hand swinging down with numbing force against Donner’s right arm. Donner grunted and dropped the shotgun.
‘Watch it, Manton, Garvald’s on the loose!’ Donner called and th
rew himself at the big man, the fingers of his left hand hooking for the eyes.
From the hall below came a terrifying banshee howl as Squires released the Alsatian. Donner and Garvald swayed together for a moment and then the dog erupted into the corridor, skidding on its haunches.
With a tremendous heave, Garvald sent Donner staggering along the corridor towards the stairhead. He dropped to one knee, picked up the shotgun and thumbed back the hammer. The dog was already half-way along the corridor when he started to swing the barrel. It leapt forward and he fired, the blast catching it in mid-air.
The Alsatian gave a sort of strangled whimper and fell against the wall where it lay on the floor, kicking feebly. There was a hoarse cry of anger and Squires appeared at the other end of the passage to join Donner, Manton at his shoulder. As all three started forward, Garvald threw the shotgun at them, turned and ran back along the corridor.
A narrow service staircase dropped into darkness and he thundered down it and found himself in a stone-flagged passage at the bottom. He wrenched open the door at the far end and ran into the courtyard.
The light from the kitchen window falling across the cobbles showed him the ten-foot wall on the far side and a narrow door. He wrestled ineffectually for a moment with its rusted bolts, then turned to the place where the stable joined the wall. With the aid of a drain pipe, and using the sill of the stable window as a middle step, he pulled himself on to the sloping roof. He swung across the wall, hung by his hands for a moment and dropped into wet grass.
He got to one knee and an arm slid around his throat, a hand applied pressure savagely. As he moved, the pressure increased, completely cutting off the supply of air to his lungs.
A match flared and Chuck Lazer said: ‘Lay off, General. It’s Ben.’
Nick released his grip. Garvald stayed on one knee for a moment, shaking his head, a hand at his throat, then he got to his feet. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘At the end of the lane.’
‘Then let’s get moving.’
Nick grabbed his arm. ‘Not so fast, Garvald. We heard what sounded like a shotgun blast inside there a minute or so ago.’
‘You’re damned right you did. The old sod they have running this dump put his Alsatian on me. I had to finish it off. You going to arrest me for that?’
‘Could be. Depends on how you answer my questions. Let’s get moving.’
They hurried back along the lane to the main road. The Mini-Cooper was parked under some trees, lights out, and Nick opened the door. ‘Get in the back.’
Garvald obeyed without hesitation, his mind working furiously. He had already wasted a great deal of time and things seemed to be getting completely out of hand. Far better to pick up what he had come for and get out of town fast. But first he had to get rid of Miller and from the look of him that wouldn’t be easy.
‘How did you know where I was?’
The American turned in his seat to face him. ‘I remembered you saying you had a room at the Regent Hotel. The Irish bird who does the night shift there filled us in on the rest with a little persuasion.’
‘I’d like to fill her in, the bitch.’ Garvald lit a cigarette and leaned back. ‘What’s all this then, Chuck? You playing at being an aide to the CID or something?’
‘For God’s sake, Ben. I was trying to help you.’
‘Sounds pretty thin to me.’ Garvald turned to Nick. ‘Why the witch hunt? I’m clean as a whistle. Only got into town a few hours ago.’
‘When I started looking for you earlier tonight, Garvald, it was only to warn you to stay away from Bella.’
‘So she’s behind it?’ Garvald chuckled. ‘She’s safe enough, copper. I wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.’
‘Then you came back for the money,’ Nick said calmly. ‘Your share of the take from that Steel Amalgamated job. The best part of eight thousand quid. Nothing else fits.’
Garvald, searching desperately for a way out, played a hunch. ‘How’s Brady?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Ben, what do you know about Brady?’ Chuck Lazer cried.
Nick cut in, his voice cold and hard. ‘What about Brady, Garvald?’
‘One of your blokes, isn’t he?’ Garvald said. ‘Turned up at the Flamingo earlier looking for me. There was some kind of a row and Donner knocked him down the stairs of Manton’s private entrance.’
‘He was found lying in a street near the river,’ Nick said. ‘Looked like a hit and run.’
‘Now I call that neat.’ Garvald smiled softly. ‘That would be Manton’s idea. Takes a fine, twisted mind like his to think up a touch like that.’
‘You’re sure about this?’
‘I saw it happen, I was hiding in a linen cupboard in the same corridor.’ Garvald laughed harshly. ‘Why in the hell do you think Manton and his boys picked me up at the Regent? They killed a copper and I was the only witness. I can imagine what they intended to do with me.’
‘The irony is that Brady isn’t dead,’ Nick said. ‘He’s still unconscious, but they think he stands a fair chance of pulling through.’
‘And Manton doesn’t know that?’
‘He does now.’ Lazer turned to Nick. ‘I was making conversation with him in the kitchen, trying to be natural. I mentioned about Brady being in hospital and so on in passing. Come to think of it, he and Donner both looked pretty sick about it.’
‘They’ll have to run,’ Garvald said calmly. ‘No other choice.’
He sat back, well content, and lit a cigarette. The peelers looked after their own. From this moment on, anything else would have to take second place to the Brady affair and they wouldn’t rest till they had Manton and his friends with the cuffs on, which caused him no pain at all. Manton was a rat. He’d had something like this coming to him for years.
Nick’s problem was a more immediate one. With no radio telephone he was unable to communicate with Headquarters, and without help it would be quite impossible for him to nail Manton and his two tearaways.
The problem solved itself as Manton’s Jaguar skidded out of the lane no more than twenty yards away and drove off fast towards town. Nick didn’t hesitate. He pressed the starter and the Mini-Cooper shot away, tyres spinning slightly on the wet asphalt.
‘You’ve got a hope.’ Garvald laughed.
‘You’ve been out of circulation a long time,’ Nick said. ‘This is the original wolf in sheep’s clothing.’
The Mini-Cooper touched seventy miles an hour in exactly thirty-one seconds and the needle continued to swing, until on the dual carriageway leading to the outer ring road they almost touched ninety.
‘God in heaven, what is this thing?’ Ben Garvald shouted.
Nick grinned, concentrating all his attention on the lights of the Jaguar in front, gleaming through the heavy rain. ‘The greatest invention since the horse.’
As they emerged from the dual carriageway, he braked, then accelerated into a shallow corner and the Mini-Cooper shot round, all four wheels glued to the ground.
The Jaguar was no more than fifty yards ahead now and going well. Garvald leaned over the seat and touched Nick on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be on your own, have you thought of that, copper? Three to one and Donner’s the kind who’d sell his sister if he was short of beer money.’
Nick ignored him, concentrating wholly on the Jaguar, gauging the distance between them, timing his move in advance to the last fraction of a second. He was right on the big car’s tail now. Quite suddenly, he dropped into third, pulled out and jammed his foot hard on the accelerator. The Mini-Cooper moved alongside the Jaguar and he took the little car in close and started to brake.
As he swung the wheel, he glanced across. Only one man sat in the other car, the driver, and as he too braked hard, the Jaguar skidded, its nearside wheels cutting into the grass banking at the side of the road. As it came to a halt, Nick pulled in ahead, switched off his own engine and jumped out.
Jango was just a little slower. He scrambled out of the Jaguar and s
tarted to run. A hand grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him round and sent him crashing back against the car.
He reacted with the habitual criminal’s usual blend of outraged innocence and aggression. ‘Hey, what in the hell is this?’
A hand was clamped around his throat so viciously that he cried out in agony and swung wildly at the pale blur of the face in front of him.
For the second time that night a fist lifted into his stomach. As he lay with his face in the wet grass, his arms were jerked behind him, steel bracelets snapped into place with a cold finality and fear moved in his very bowels.
Lazer had got out of the passenger seat and stood beside the open door of the Mini-Cooper staring through the darkness towards the Jaguar. He was aware of a sudden movement inside and turned quickly. Ben Garvald was sliding behind the wheel.
He grinned as he reached for the starter. ‘I’ve got things to do, Chuck. Maybe I’ll be seeing you, but it isn’t likely. Give Miller my respects. In other circumstances, I’d have enjoyed hating him.’
As the engine roared into life he pushed hard, catching Lazer full in the face, sending him staggering backwards. As the American recovered his balance, the door slammed and the Mini-Cooper faded into the night.
Chapter 19
It was just after three and for at least twenty or thirty of the guests who refused to go home, the party was still going strong. Harry Faulkner had taken over the barman’s duties in the Long Room and half a dozen couples danced to a record player.
Bella had long since reached the stage when the gin was beginning to stick in her throat and all at once a strange thing happened. Every face she looked into seemed weak and evil and selfish and when she turned quickly to a mirror, what she saw there repelled her most of all.
Too much to drink, that’s what it was. What she needed was a good soak in a hot tub and about twelve solid hours of sleep. She crossed the hall, went into the library and locked the door.
The bathroom was in black-veined marble and gold, the bath itself half-set into the tiled floor. She turned on the water, then returned to the bedroom and undressed quickly, throwing her dress and underclothes carelessly on the bed.