Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  Ranklin nodded absently. It was a perfectly reasonable, patriotic thing for a rich senator to be finding arms for his country (and buying the manufacturing rights to them, presumably with an eye to becoming richer). But there was neither law nor reason that said the senator had to be any good at judging those arms. God knew the British Army had been landed with some civilian-picked horrors in its time.

  At the back of the shed, Falcone and Andrew were bending over a work-bench signing documents. They straightened up, grinned at each other, and shook hands. Corinna took Andrew’s share of the paperwork and tucked it into her hand bag.

  “One thing, mind,” O’Gilroy added thoughtfully. “When I met Falcone in Brussels, he was looking at a Blériot that a Belgian feller had altered some ways by himself. I’m thinking why not go to France for a proper Blériot? Or Farman or Deperdussin? Then he comes here and still don’t go to Sopwith or Avro or Bristol, the big boys, he comes to Mr Sherring. Now he’s good,” he said loyally, “but nobody’s heard of him.”

  “Perhaps,” Ranklin said, “Falcone’s looking for a dark horse to back. Or perhaps he can get the aeroplane and rights at cut price compared with the big boys . . . The trouble is, we’re just out of our depth in these matters.”

  O’Gilroy smiled lopsidedly. “But we’re good at being suspicious.”

  Ranklin nodded. Only – were they being suspicious for good reason, or because, if Jesus Christ came back to Earth, they’d demand to see his passport?

  * * *

  Shortly before four o’clock, there was a mechnical buzz from the field, a human buzz from the crowd, and they wandered out of the shed to watch the display. Ranklin moved alongside Falcone and asked: “Have you seen any more signs of, ah, followers?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” Falcone was in a cheerful mood.

  “And did you ask the local police to—”

  Falcone waved the idea away. “Your idea to move to a new hotel was enough. I am sure I am safe here.”

  Certainly it was difficult to imagine danger among that sunny crowd, but Ranklin gave the nearest spectators a glare nonetheless. Watching the sky, they didn’t notice.

  A biplane – a Farman, O’Gilroy said – was already aloft, apparently carrying a photographer to snap the Great Event. At four o’clock Pégoud, with an upturned moustache, white sweater and leather motoring helmet (the description was Corinna’s: with her height and a manner that melted those in front like a death-ray, she had a better view), trundled out in his strengthened Blériot with heightened king-post (the description was O’Gilroy’s) and whirred into the air.

  As it spiralled upwards, Ranklin dared to ask: “What’s actually so marvellous about flying upside down?”

  Andrew gave him a condescending smile. “Just it’s never been done before – except by guys a few seconds before they got killed. If he can get into it – and hold it there and get out of it okay – it’s one hell of a big step forward. I mean really historic. For airplanes as much as pilots.”

  Knowing Ranklin’s range of knowledge better, O’Gilroy said: “How d’ye suppose a bridge would work if ye put it across a river upside down?”

  Ranklin considered. Although he’d cited bridge-building to Corinna, he hadn’t taken the thought far enough. Bridges, after all, stayed where they were put.

  The now-distant monoplane seemed to level out – “At about three thousand feet,” O’Gilroy reckoned, with a glance at Andrew – then began to spiral down. Abruptly its nose tipped down, tucked right under, and the machine levelled – more or less – upside down. There was a huge gasp from the crowd. The distant whirr of the engine stopped, but Ranklin’s artillery experience of sound and distance told him Pégoud had probably stopped it before his inversion.

  The crowd hushed as the aeroplane continued, gliding gently down. And then the nose toppled further, the machine curved down – and was flying upright and level again. The engine popped and whirred into life. The crowd roared, Andrew was cheering wildly, and around Ranklin the spectators bunched and swayed. Falcone leant on his shoulder, grunting something, then flopped forwards onto the concrete. Fantastically, the handle of a knife, thrust through a piece of paper, stuck from a dark red stain spread on his back.

  “Get a doctor!” Ranklin screamed. “Ambulance!” Uncomprehending faces turned towards him, then looked down. The immediate crowd drew back, leaving him kneeling by Falcone and trying to rip the jacket and shirt from his back, and looking – instinctively, in an emergency – for O’Gilroy. He’d vanished.

  O’Gilroy had taken a couple of steps away from Ranklin to get a clearer view of the aeroplane past a woman with a sunshade. He’d been half aware of a smaller man easing past towards Falcone’s broad back, although he hadn’t thought of it that way at the time, and then heard Ranklin’s shout. Everybody around was looking down, except one woman staring open-mouthed away to the left. Following her look, O’Gilroy caught one glimpse of a short man, in a dark grey suit and wide-brimmed hat – slipping through the crowd. He took fast strides towards him.

  He lost the man but kept to the direction, past the Aero Club and across the grass towards the cars parked along the motor track. The crowd, which had come to see a spectacle in the air, had had no need to bunch up as at a racetrack or stadium: it was scattered lumpily in groups, easy to zigzag through. He glimpsed a small man in a dark suit, but he was bare-headed, and dark suits were as common as the tweeds he wore himself.

  Then he saw the wide-brimmed foreign-looking hat, abandoned on a picnic basket. And when he again saw a dark suit going in the right direction, it was topped by a more English flat cap.

  The man was strolling now, and O’Gilroy thought Right, I move up, casual like, parallel to ye, then cut across, not catching yer eye – and I’ve got ye. He was unarmed, but had no intention of trying to grab the man or saying something stupid like: “I arrest you in the name of . . .” He would just hit him as hard as he could, one wallop out of the blue, and let things sort themselves out from there.

  Then he realised the one man had become two, and that changed things. The second, also in a dark suit but with a brown felt hat, was taller and thicker. He wasn’t going to attack two men, but two were easier to follow – unless they split up. But they were foreigners, likely to stick together and on main routes in a strange place. Staying off to one side rather than behind them, he matched their ambling, unsuspicious pace, and began to think ahead.

  Probably they were heading for the exit, the railway station and London, as most of the crowd would eventually. He could call for help to the policemen at the gate, but O’Gilroy mistrusted policemen. They expected only the normally unexpected; he’d probably just get himself arrested.

  He thought of his own appearance. The road outside would be crowded, but not many would be leaving at the height of the show, so he must assume he’d be noticed. The trick was not to be seen. He was respectably dressed – Ranklin would have taken it as a slight to Corinna if he’d worn his messing-about-with-aeroplanes clothes – and trying to vary his appearance by taking off his jacket or cap would just make him obvious. So forget looks, think of behaviour.

  If they were indeed heading for the station, he could go ahead of them; people seldom think of being followed from in front. He decided to risk that and strode out, purposeful yet unhurried, to reach the gate first.

  18

  The spectators around the front of the hangar had taken up the shout for a doctor, and it always amazed Ranklin how many doctors you could find as long as you weren’t waiting in their consulting-rooms, because they got two in as many minutes. The first was thin and elegant, a spectator taking the afternoon off from Barley Street.

  He saw the knife, and the jerk of surprise almost dislodged his topper. “Good God, man, have you called the police?”

  “I am the police – sort of,” Ranklin said, kneeling to hold the bloody rags of Falcone’s shirt around the knife that still stuck from his back.

  “Then you haven’t done a very
good job.”

  “Set me an example, then,” Ranklin snarled. But then what was probably the aerodrome doctor arrived, stout and busy, with a bulging bag ready to tackle crash victims. He said: “My God,” but got straight down to work, muttering: “At least you didn’t pull out the knife.”

  Ranklin had already ripped the piece of paper from the knife; he stood up and tried to read what it said under the dripping blood, but it was just a rough pencilled drawing.

  The crowd had formed a circle trying to see, but not too much, around the group that still included Andrew, Corinna and now the Harley Street doctor, who had decided his duty lay in comforting the best-dressed woman in sight.

  Ranklin snatched her away. “Did you see where O’Gilroy went?”

  “No, I was look—”

  “He must be following the man.” He thought for a moment. “I need the car.”

  “I told Dixon we wouldn’t want him until—”

  “Can you drive it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then let’s get moving.” He grabbed her arm, but she needed no more urging. They left the doctor saying: “I say. . .” without having to decide just what.

  A couple of policemen came trotting through the crowd as they reached the Daimler. “Head for the station first,” Ranklin ordered. “They’re probably on foot . . . Damn it! – how did they know Falcone would be here?”

  The car had an electric starter, but either it disapproved of leaving early or Corinna hadn’t mastered it, because Ranklin ended up hand-cranking the heavy engine. He climbed in beside her soggy with sweat, and found the closed interior like a furnace. His temperature wasn’t lowered by the spectators along the track, who certainly disapproved of anybody leaving at this moment, and by the time they passed through the tunnel to the exit, he reckoned O’Gilroy was well over five minutes ahead.

  And thanks to the unpaying crowd outside, they clawed nothing back on the road to the station. As they crossed the bridge that led to the London side, steam and smoke welled up from a train pulling out beneath them, on the up-line to London.

  Ranklin tried to think where on earth this line ran – then realised he knew it like his own signature since it went on down to Aldershot, home of the British Army. Next stop would be Walton – no use – then: “Esher! Turn around!”

  O’Gilroy had had an anxious few minutes waiting on Weybridge platform before the two men caught up, chatting and smiling so casually that they had to be professionals in their own line. Well, he thought, that makes three of us, and planned just where he must join the train. Assuming it was corridorless, he needed a compartment near but not next to them, and a window seat facing their way to see if they got off before Waterloo. Meanwhile, he stayed well back in the shadow of the station canopy, trying to keep his face hidden. He wished he had a newspaper – the shadower’s best friend – but most of all, he wished he had a gun.

  Corinna sent the Daimler storming through the wooded lanes with the indignity of a runaway hearse, and Ranklin would have imagined chickens fluttering out of their path if he could also imagine any chicken fast enough. He braced himself against the corner of the seat and said nothing to distract Corinna’s attention. She was angry – at events, at the man O’Gilroy was following – and for the moment all life was on a par with a chicken’s.

  Then they turned onto a long straight beside Burwood Park, she changed up a gear and sat back from her jockey-like hunch.

  “Would you mind if I smoked?” Ranklin asked shakily.

  “Burst into flames. Was Senator Falcone dead?”

  “Not then. I just don’t know how bad.” He lit a cigarette.

  “Who was it? How did it happen?”

  “Because I let it happen. I knew it could happen, but thought . . . They left a sort of note,” he remembered and took it, limp with still-tacky blood, from his pocket. “It’s just – don’t look!” as the car swerved; “—it’s just a drawing of a skull, knife, gun and bottle. Symbol of a Serbian secret society. Also known as the Black Hand, though I think that’s getting mixed up with one of the Italian criminal gangs.”

  “What have they got against Falcone?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I’m sure he could have told us more . . .” His voice trailed off, then he said bitterly: “And I had a pistol in my pocket all the time . . .” He was wishing it had been in O’Gilroy’s pocket quite as much as O’Gilroy did now.

  O’Gilroy only remembered Waterloo as a big, sprawling station with more exits than a sieve. So he was off the train and walking briskly towards the ticket barrier – the one bottleneck he could count on – before it had stopped completely. Beyond it, there was a news-stand just to his right and he had almost reached it when he recognised Ranklin already there, buying a Star and muttering from the side of his mouth: “Have you still got him in sight?”

  “Them. There’s two of them. How’d ye get here?”

  “Same train. Caught it at Esher. Got on the very front. Didn’t want them to see me waiting, they might recog—”

  “Fine.” O’Gilroy hid his surprise that Ranklin had learnt so much. “They’ve jest come through . . . waiting under the clock . . . mebbe wondrin’ what to do . . . or if they’re followed . . .”

  Ranklin opened his paper, apparently eager to see stock market prices or racing results. “I’ve got a revolver on me.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “So we could just grab them.”

  “And what proof are we having of anything? I saw nothing worth saying in court; what about yeself?”

  The stall’s proprietor was looking suspiciously at them: two men not looking at each other but muttering like two old lags in the exercise yard. Ranklin didn’t notice; he was realising how weak their situation was. He had merely been following O’Gilroy, now it seemed O’Gilroy had merely been following someone he thought was involved.

  “They’re moving,” O’Gilroy said, apparently having been watching through his right ear. “Going for a cab, I’m thinking.”

  Ranklin risked a glance and frowned. “I know that one, the taller. He was outside the Ritz last week.”

  “Will he be knowing ye?”

  “Probably.” The confrontation in the taxi had been brief but vivid.

  Still, they had to take the risk, strolling after the two towards the lines of motor-taxis and horse-drawn cabs waiting on the road that ran through the station, where the two chose a hansom. London was the most motor-conscious city in Europe, so perhaps it was not surprising that foreigners, and particularly unsophisticated ones, should feel happier behind a horse. And that left their followers with the flexibility of a far speedier motor-taxi.

  Since taking up his new trade, Ranklin had often wondered what would happen if he asked a taxi-driver to “follow that cab”. Now he learned that he got a surly up-and-down stare that made him wish his shoes were newer and less dusty. He was about to invent a complex tale about being a solicitor in a divorce case when O’Gilroy slapped a half-guinea into the drivers hand, said: “It’s got a brother waiting at t’other end,” and pushed Ranklin inside. So that was how it was done.

  But almost immediately, the sheer speed of the taxi gave them a problem. To stay behind the cab, they had to crawl conspicuously, being passed by every other motor vehicle. So Ranklin told the driver to overtake and wait on the far side of Waterloo Bridge. There the traffic thickened and they could follow invisibly around the empty building site of Aldwych and into Kingsway. There they had to speed up and overtake again, stopping once more at the junction with High Holborn. The cab clopped past, keeping to the right for a turn ahead.

  Ranklin was just thinking that this game of leapfrog couldn’t go on much longer, when he realised what that turn implied: “Clerkenwell. They’re heading for Little Italy.”

  “Where they’d be having plenty of friends?” O’Gilroy suggested. “I think I’ll be taking yer pistol now, Captain.”

  Ranklin hesitated. But if the situation were going to need a pist
ol, it would also need O’Gilroy’s rapid decisiveness. He passed it over, then leant forward to direct the driver. And decided to be – fairly – frank: “Where would you say the Italian quarter begins?”

  “Yer mean past the police station?”

  “Is there one?”

  “Corner o’ Gray’s Inn. The wops live a bit furver, past Rosebery Avenue, but I’m not going dahn them hills.”

  “No—” the police station was tempting, but perhaps for later; “—no, just put us down past the Avenue.”

  They had time to pay off the taxi and cross to the “wrong” side of the road, to be less conspicuous. But the Clerkenwell Road was a main thoroughfare and tram route, where nobody looked out of place, something that would change a few yards into one of the side streets.

  The two in the cab obviously hadn’t given an exact address, just stopped the cab at the opposite pavement and stood chatting and glancing around until it had gone. Then they strolled, unhurried in the evening sun, further along the road before turning off down a narrow, steep side street.

  Ranklin and O’Gilroy crossed the road again and, with Ranklin at least feeling that he was walking into a spotlight, passed the invisible frontier into Back Hill Street. It was some help that the two they were following, dressed to be inconspicuous at Brooklands, also showed up well in the grubbily colourful crowd that bustled around them. But they walked with confidence while Ranklin felt he was lurking. Then they vanished into an alley.

  O’Gilroy took several sudden strides before Ranklin, less familiar with such terraced houses, had worked out that the alley must lead to a tiny courtyard and the back doors to houses on both sides. But which one? How O’Gilroy managed a glance into the alley while still looking straight ahead, Ranklin couldn’t tell, but he had seen which way the men turned at the far end.

  “The first house,” he murmured, when Ranklin caught up. “On the right. Will we be grabbing them?”