‘I was just looking for someone,’ said James. ‘A boy. He’s bigger than me, a little older. He was by himself.’
‘I know who you mean,’ said the waitress. ‘A stutterer, poor lad.’
‘That’s him.’
‘He left about ten minutes ago, I think.’
‘Thank you,’ said James. ‘Maybe I’ll wait for him. Could you bring me a cup of black coffee?’
‘Course I can, love,’ said the woman and she waddled over to the counter.
James found an empty table and sat down. He put a hand into his coat pocket to check his money and felt the letter he’d taken from Peterson’s study.
He suddenly felt scared again. As if everyone was watching him. Why had he taken the letter? It was stupid and reckless.
He knew why. If he hadn’t taken it then the killer would have. It might be a clue to what was going on. As might the piece of paper with the code on it.
The photograph of Peterson and his college friends was in his other coat pocket. He slipped it out and studied it in his lap, hidden below the edge of the table.
Seeing Peterson’s smiling face he felt desperately sad. The young man in the picture had been so full of life, without a care in the world, and now he was dead.
James turned the photograph over. There was something written on the back in a flamboyant scrawl.
Ivar. I thought you might like this picture of the three of us from the May Ball. The terrible trio! Peterson, Charnage and Fairburn. Or should I say, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Lancelot and Hopalong Cassidy! I have kept a copy for myself. It will be a fine way to remember you and John. I hope, though, that we shall always be friends.
Alexis
John?
James put the photograph away and slipped the letter out of his pocket. It was addressed to John. Could it be the same John from the photograph?
He glanced up to see an old woman staring at him. He smiled at her, then quickly read what Peterson had written before he’d died.
Dear John,
I have heard nothing from either you or Alexis since I came to see you in Berkeley Square the other day. I know you told me not to panic. I know you assured me that Alexis would be all right and that we needn’t involve the police, but I am very worried about him. I think the time has come to…
The next few words were obscured by blood, and there was nothing after that.
James put the letter back in his pocket and took out the piece of paper with the code on it. It was written by hand, but in the smallest, neatest handwriting James had ever seen. Row after row of ones and zeros in blocks, separated by little black dots.
He kicked off one of his shoes. There was a secret compartment in the heel, which came in useful when he needed to hide things, and always held a small penknife. Under cover of the table he carefully folded the coded paper and squeezed it into the hollow heel, before putting the shoe back on.
He knew he couldn’t fit anything else in, so he took one last look at the letter to memorise it and put it back in his pocket with the photograph.
He felt safer now and when the waitress brought over his coffee he sipped it gratefully. Its bitter taste shocked him into alertness and its heat soaked into him. He drank it slowly, hoping that Perry would return, but by the time he had finished there was still no sign of his friend. So he paid and went back out into the night.
The brief warmth of the cafe had only served to point up how cold and wet it was outside. Praying that Perry had gone back to the car, James headed towards where they’d parked, turning his collar up against the sleet. When he got there, though, he could find no sign of his friend and the car was standing, bedraggled, in a big puddle, the seats soaked.
He looked in all directions and called out Perry’s name, but the sound was swallowed up by the tall buildings and the sleet-filled air.
Now what?
Maybe Perry had gone to Trinity to look for him?
James badly needed someone to talk to. He didn’t know what to do next. He was utterly alone. The sleet was falling on him. He was shivering. He was cold and wet and miserable and frightened.
He kicked the front wheel of the Bamford and Martin and swore.
He wiped away tears of frustration and, as his vision cleared, he saw the young man he had bumped into earlier, approaching cautiously in a slight crouch, his arms spread wide in front of him.
Then James heard the soft ticking of an engine and the street was flooded with white light from a car’s headlamps. The young man shielded his eyes from the glare. James twisted round. It was the Daimler.
What a fool he’d been.
The skull-faced man wasn’t working alone.
There were two of them.
James didn’t think twice. He sprang over the side of his car, pressed the electric starter and wrenched it into reverse gear. As the engine exploded into life the young man stopped briefly, then broke into a run.
James released the handbrake and the car leapt backwards, seeming to tear at the ground in its eagerness to be off. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and headed straight for the young man, who jumped aside, slipping and sliding into the gutter.
James stamped on the brake and the car slid to a halt. Quick as he could he pressed the clutch and jostled the gear lever into first. The young man was back on his feet, though, and he made a grab for the car, just managing to get a grip on the top of the doorframe with his fingertips.
James accelerated and as the car pulled forward the man yelped and let go.
James didn’t stay to watch. He careered down the street and pulled left on to the main road, the back of the car slewing round into a skid. He steered into it and goosed the accelerator just enough to regain control. Once he had straightened up he changed gear and roared off, a line of startled cyclists pulling over to the side to let him pass, the rasping scream of his engine echoing off the shop fronts.
He headed south, hoping to get away from Cambridge and hide out somewhere until it was safe to return and look for Perry.
He was soon on the outskirts of town and was feeling quite pleased with himself when he saw the dark bulk of a car pulling up alongside. He turned his head quickly.
It was the Daimler, with the skull-faced man at the wheel, and the younger man at his side.
Hell. It wasn’t over yet…
9
The Smith Brothers
James dropped into a lower gear and stamped the pedal right down to the floorboards. The engine complained but the Bamford and Martin sped up. After a second, with the revs almost off the dial, he changed up, then up again. The car was flat out now, going more than sixty miles an hour. He overtook two cars then pulled back over to the left of the road, spraying muddy water over a line of people who were waiting at a bus stop.
He kept his speed up, the sleet slamming relentlessly into his face, blinding him. He wiped his face and saw that the buildings had dropped away and he was in open countryside. Out of town there were no streetlights and all he could see clearly was the small patch of brightness that his headlamps carved out in front him.
James was gripped by a mixture of panic, fear and excitement. He had never driven this fast before. He could feel the body of the car shaking and rattling. Every tiny bump in the road felt like he was hitting a great boulder. His face was frozen, his lips forced back from his aching teeth. He fought to keep the car under control as it bounced over the road, but his hands were numb on the slippery wheel.
He didn’t know if he could outrun the Daimler. It was larger and heavier than the Bamford and Martin, but it was more powerful and its driver more experienced. Plus, the skull-faced man had the advantage of being able to follow James’s rear lights. James had nothing.
He was on the point of looking round to see how far behind the Daimler was when he felt a mighty jolt and heard a bang.
They had rammed him. He swerved across the road and narrowly avoided a car going the other way, shrouded in a cocoon of spray. He fought the Bamford and
Martin back under control and coaxed a little more speed out of her. She was still handling all right, so the collision hadn’t caused any serious damage, but if they rammed him again he might not be so lucky.
There were lights up ahead and they thundered into a village. James was aware of a brief blur of buildings and a howling racket and then darkness again.
This was fenland, flat and featureless for miles around. There was nowhere to hide out here. It was totally exposed. The wind cut across it, flat and hard. James wasn’t sure how long he could keep this up. He was driving on instinct, the thinking part of his brain was shut down. His eyes were stinging, and no matter how often he blinked them he could barely see anything. Then he remembered that his goggles were in the glovebox. He leant over and fumbled for them, steering with one hand. His fingers closed around the strap and he yanked them out. He tried to pull them over his face. For a moment he was completely blinded, but then they were on. Almost immediately they were plastered with sleet and he had to wipe them clean, but it was still a small improvement.
Once again the Daimler rammed him and his head jerked painfully back. If they kept up this crazy chase they would eventually either run out of road or crash. Either way James was done for.
In the next village they came to, James suddenly took a right fork and left the London road. Then he took a series of wild turns and switchbacks in an effort to shake off the Daimler, at one point even crashing through a hedge and crossing someone’s garden to reach a road on the other side. But at every turn the Daimler kept up with him. Twice it pulled alongside and tried to nudge him off the road and it was only by wrenching the wheel and manoeuvring the car with all his strength that James held the tarmac.
At last, in the small town of Fulford, he saw his chance.
The road was blocked by a broken-down lorry.
There was a gap just wide enough to squeeze the Bamford and Martin through, but there was no way the Daimler could follow.
Barely slowing down, James threw the car into the opening. There was a hideous scraping and screeching as he ground against the lorry. Sparks flew up into the air. Then he was out the other side like a cork from a bottle. He glanced back. The lorry driver was chasing after him, waving his fist, but there was no sign of the Daimler. He shouted in triumph and slowed down to a sensible speed.
He’d made it.
Just.
He was exhausted, completely drenched and cold to his very core. He was driving in a daze now, not sure where he was going or what he should do. The shock of finding the dead man and then driving at full speed for all that time had drained him. He struggled to keep his eyes open and focused. When he thought about what he’d just done he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He had been too close to death. If anything had gone wrong he would have been smashed to pieces…
He wiped his goggles for the hundredth time and the blood turned to ice in his veins.
He would recognise the pattern of those twin beams anywhere. They were burnt into his brain. It was the Daimler. It was stopped in the middle of the road, blocking the way. Somehow they had got round him and ahead. Maybe on a faster road. They probably had the benefit of a road map.
Now James definitely felt like weeping. This wasn’t fair after all he’d been through.
Well, damn them. Damn them to hell. He wasn’t done yet.
He pushed the accelerator down as far as it would go and aimed straight for them.
He wasn’t thinking about anything, he was just staring at the lights as they got bigger and bigger. He would drive straight between them if necessary. Drive straight through and carry on going.
He cackled.
It had finally happened. He’d gone crazy.
Just so long as they thought the same.
The gap narrowed, the Daimler got closer, its big bonnet glistening.
He saw the panicked faces of the two men.
‘Come on,’ said James, through clenched teeth. ‘Are you going to get out of the way, or are you going to die?’
At the last moment the skull-faced man decided that he was going to get out of the way.
In a mad scramble he shunted the engine into first, released the clutch, twisted the wheel round and juddered off the road into a ditch. James shot past him, whooping in triumph, but then his eyes stretched wide in horror. The Daimler had been blocking his view of the road ahead. There was a dip and a huge puddle of half-frozen water. The Bamford and Martin ploughed into it and the wheels lost contact with the road. A great spray of water exploded and he was skimming across the surface like a boat. On the other side of the puddle the road curved slightly and climbed up to a narrow bridge with thick stone walls. The front of the car crunched as it bottomed into the slope and James was thrown forward, smashing his face against the steering wheel. The car hurtled on. It clipped one wall of the bridge, bounced across to the other side and crashed through the stonework.
Still holding the wheel, James was flying through space. The nose of the car dropped and it performed a lazy somersault. He was aware of the ground rushing up and flipping over, then he was thrown clear, not knowing which way was up or down. He soon found out, though, as he thudded into a bed of weeds at the river’s edge.
He was jarred and winded and for a split second he blacked out. But then he felt a great thump as the car hit the ground some twenty feet further on.
He struggled woozily to his feet and hauled himself up the bank, his feet sinking into the thick wet sludge. The car had gouged out a long muddy furrow and was resting upside down. Befuddled and confused, James staggered towards it, with the hazy idea of somehow righting it and driving away. He had not gone three steps, however, when he was flung backwards as the petrol in the car’s tank exploded.
He was unconscious before he hit the icy water of the river.
Their names were Wolfgang and Ludwig Smith, and they were brothers. Ludwig was the older of the two and all his life he had looked like a skeleton. He was so pale and thin when he was born, and his skin clung so tightly to his bones, that the midwife had gasped in horror, fearing that his mother had given birth to a corpse.
‘Don’t worry,’ his father had said, ‘he’ll soon fill out.’ But he never did. No matter how much he ate, he stayed gaunt and skeletal. His giant head had almost killed his mother when he was born, and his back was bent out of shape by its great weight. He was plagued by headaches that made him irritable and bad-tempered. In contrast, Wolfgang had always looked perfectly normal. Boringly normal, in fact, so that people often questioned whether the two of them were really brothers at all.
Their parents had been musicians who played largely in the music halls. The father a violinist, the mother a pianist. They had named the two boys after their favourite composers, Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in the hope that they would follow in their footsteps.
They hadn’t. They had followed a very different path from their parents.
Maybe it was because of their names. Growing up in Hackney, in the East End of London, was tough for any kid. It was a hundred times tougher if your parents had given you a funny name. Particularly if your names sounded German and your country decided to go to war against Germany.
It was always a source of great amusement to other boys that someone with such an exotic name as Wolfgang should look so ordinary, and Wolfgang had learnt very early in his life that the best way to stop people from laughing at you was with your fists.
Skull-faced Ludwig was picked on for his name and his looks, but he was as quick with his fists as his brother.
They gradually gained a reputation for being the toughest kids in the area, and the names Ludwig and Wolfgang Smith, instead of inspiring laughter, inspired fear. They found that their reputations made it easy for them to get money and favours from weaker boys.
Their parents tried to discipline them, but they were rarely around. They mostly worked at night and were often away for days on end playing in far-flung concert halls and theatres.
> Neither brother was in any way musical, and even if they had been, they had no desire to follow their parents into a life of hard work and near poverty. They turned instead to crime, with its promise of quick, easy money.
They joined London’s most feared and powerful gang, the Sabinis, under their boss Darby Sabini, where they very soon established themselves as ruthless and heartless thugs. After killing two men in a street brawl, however, they had to flee to Paris to hide out. They stayed in France for two years, living the same life they had lived in London. It was while they were there that Ludwig heard about the infamous Apache gangs from the turn of the century. Fascinated by their evil and ingenious weapon of choice, he had had two of them made for himself.
When it was safe the brothers returned to England where they found themselves in great demand. If anyone wanted a rival bumped off they would call on the Smith brothers. If there was a dead body to be disposed of, a wealthy shop keeper to be threatened, a building to be torched, or a loose mouth to be silenced, then the Smith brothers were the men for the job.
Up until tonight they had been enjoying their new job immensely, but it was no longer going according to plan. Each blamed the other and they had been arguing about it all the way from Cambridge.
Like all brothers they argued constantly.
They were arguing now as they stood in the rain on the edge of the ruined bridge and stared across to where the Bamford and Martin lay blazing in the field.
‘He’s dead, Wolfgang,’ said Ludwig, picking one of his rotten teeth with a long, dirty fingernail.
‘We should check,’ said Wolfgang. ‘You don’t know he’s dead for certain.’
‘How could he not be dead?’ said Ludwig scornfully. ‘Look at that bonfire.’
‘We should check,’ said Wolfgang.
‘We’ll get muddy,’ said Ludwig. ‘I don’t fancy getting muddy. I’m wet already. To add mud into the mix would be adding insult to injury.’
‘But we need to make sure,’ said Wolfgang.
‘Well, why don’t you go and look, then?’ said Ludwig. ‘You get muddy, Wolfgang. I’m wearing my best shoes.’
Double or Die Page 9