Flight From Honour

by Gavin Lyall

  “Naval Intelligence. Right away.”

  Dagner strode to the door, pulled it open and called: “Somebody get Captain R a taxi-cab.” He came back, muttering: “Like a bunch of . . . never mind. At least get him under cover—” he unlocked the safe against the wall and rummaged inside; “—and when you’ve done that, try and find out how Senator Falcone is. I can’t go telephoning the hospital without some explanation.” He spilled a small bag of sovereigns on to the table and began counting them swiftly.

  “I should have told you,” Ranklin said. “I talked to Mrs Finn on the telephone, earlier. He’s not too serious at all. It was just the muscles in his back. It looked . . . you know how a little blood goes a long way, and he lost a lot. Apparently what saved him was he was wearing a medical corset, plaster and so on, after he’d hurt his back in an aeroplane smash.”

  “Is he conscious? – talking?”

  “She didn’t know about that, I’m afraid.”

  “We need to know if his plan’s still going ahead. He was working with others, but we don’t know who, nor if they can carry on without him.”

  This startled Ranklin. He had assumed the whole scheme was over or indefinitely postponed, but he said nothing. He still had some leeway of deference to make up.

  “And,” Dagner said, “am I right in thinking it hasn’t been reported in the newspapers?”

  “None I’ve seen have got it. He was awake enough to give a false name at the hospital – Vascotti. I don’t know if they believe it, but as long as the bill gets paid . . . And it happened in a big crowd, at the height of the display, and most of the reporters there were aeronautical specialists. Oh, and another thing Mrs Finn told me: Signora Falcone’s coming over. She’ll be here this afternoon. She might know something.”

  “Getting here today?” Dagner wouldn’t be familiar with Continental travel, but knew Italy was further away than that.

  “Apparently she was already in Paris. Mrs Finn said she’s going down to Weybridge to see the Signora herself – she was originally an Irish lady, I believe, so there won’t be any language problem. And I expect Andrew Sherring will be anxious to know if the aeroplane deal’s still on, too.”

  Dagner pondered, and Ranklin could guess at the unanswered questions. Did Signora Falcone know of her husband’s plottings? – and if so, could they approach her instead? Or was she feeling anti-British-Government for letting her husband get stabbed? And how much of this dare they leave to Corinna to find out for them? Quite apart from Corinna’s tactlessness in being born an American, Dagner must realise she was no helpless fly in their web.

  He came to a decision: “Find out what you can from her, but don’t step outside your War Office persona. But first, get O’Gilroy somewhere safe. There’s twenty-five sovereigns here—” he dropped the gold into Ranklin’s hand; “—and those giggling schoolboys must have found you a cab by now.”

  Feeling he owed the ‘schoolboys’ some defence, Ranklin paused long enough to say: “I thought they worked very well as a team. Last night really brought them together—”

  “Captain—” the unslept hours suddenly showed in Dagner’s face; “—they’ve had years of that sort of thing in the Army. We’re supposed to be teaching them to work alone.”

  * * *

  The platform at Waterloo was surprisingly crowded, until Ranklin remembered that Pégoud was giving a second display that afternoon, puffed by ecstatic reports in the day’s papers. He had also seen a couple of uniformed police in the booking hall who hadn’t been there yesterday when they might have been some use, but more important were any plain-clothes ones that he couldn’t identify.

  It was a long, dusty trudge from Weybridge station to the aerodrome – any local taxis and cabs had been snapped up by the first off the train – and Ranklin’s mood was very different from the cheery anticipation of the crowd around him. Then he had to use bluff and his calling card to get past the Aero Club officials to reach Andrew’s shed. Frustrations apart, he was leaving a trail like an elephant stampede and could only hope the police didn’t suspect him (not especially, anyway) or were moving at their ‘proceeding’ pace.

  The sheds had no doors, just a row of shutters that could be taken down individually or, in Andrew’s case, mostly left up to give the interior an air of dim, dusty, castor-oil-tinged privacy. And sharing that privacy was, thank God, O’Gilroy. He was helping Andrew fit the metal engine cowling back on to the Oriole.

  “Hi there, Captain,” Andrew greeted him. “If you’re looking for Corrie, she’s over at the hospital, but she said she’d come by before she goes back to town.”

  Since Ranklin hadn’t remembered to think up an excuse for being there, he accepted the suitor role and propped himself against a work-bench.

  “Trouble is,” Andrew went on, juggling the flexible metal carefully, “I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to be doing now. I wanted to get off today and maybe stop off a day at Rheims getting a look at the new racers. But with the Senator getting stabbed – have the police found out who did it yet? – what it was all about?” He glanced at Ranklin, who shook his head. “So now I don’t know if I’m going at all. It’s very sad,” he added hastily, “but it’s also a damn nuisance. Ah.” The cowling had snapped into place and O’Gilroy was ready with the bolts to hold it down.

  Andrew watched for a moment, then walked to the back of the shed, wiping his hands on a rag. O’Gilroy asked softly: “What’s the news?”

  “The police have got a flyer out for Thomas Gorman, probably at all stations and ports. Major X wants you out of the country or at least hidden under some bed.”

  “Does he now? Well, I’ve me private chariot waiting—” he patted the aeroplane; “—if anyone gives the word.”

  This was a completely new thought, and Ranklin gaped at it. “Will Andrew really take you?”

  “Surely, only he don’t know it yet. He thinks he’s taking one of the fellers works here, and him having to choose between leaving his wife for a week and Mr Sherring promising him ten pounds gold, so if someone was to give him fifteen right now, it’d make up his mind something wonderful.”

  After a glance to make sure nobody was looking, Ranklin handed over fifteen sovereigns – and then the rest of the cash. “You’ll need some working capital as well.”

  “I should’ve brought me passport, I’m thinking.” Ranklin handed that over, too. “Yer a genius. So now we jest wait for Mrs Falcone to make up her mind.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Mrs Finn said she’d be meeting her at the hospital.”

  “I could try telephoning her there, say Andrew’s anxious to get moving.”

  O’Gilroy turned from the aeroplane and gave him a steady look. “And explain who ye are and why yer so concerned?”

  Ranklin chewed his lip. His near-sleepless night was blurring his judgment and sharpening his agitation. O’Gilroy, if he knew him, would have slept like a babe in his cell until they came to rescue him.

  “We’ll know soon enough.” O’Gilroy turned back to the aeroplane. “Nobody’s coming looking for me in a place like this.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Sir Basil knew ‘Gorman’ as an agent of the Bureau and probably thought Brooklands irrelevant, but Ranklin recalled saying at the police station that he was an aeronautical engineer and maybe somebody remembered that and thought it worth following up, so . . . oh, damn it! – he was worrying in useless circles. Angry and critical, he glared at O’Gilroy’s clothing. “And it you’re going abroad, you’d better change first.”

  O’Gilroy gave the cowling a final shake to make sure it was firm, then looked down at his grubby mechanic’s apron. “Glad ye reminded me. Need me proper kit from the hotel.”

  “For God’s sake, no. You’ve got to stay here until—”

  “Ye worry too much, Captain.” O’Gilroy stripped off the apron. “I’ll be borrowing Dave’s motor-bike and back before I’m gone.”

  And there was nothing Ranklin could do.
Except wonder what made O’Gilroy so confident and then realise, with sick horror, that after yesterday’s events he would certainly be carrying his own pistol today and see an unarmed policeman as no obstacle at all, at all . . .

  22

  “He has been drinking,” the Padrone said.

  “Is he drunk now?” Jankovic demanded.

  “He has been drunk.” The Padrone’s hands made delicate but imprecise movements, trying to pass the message that Silvio would be as unpredictable as an unexploded shell. He didn’t know what to make of Jankovic, who spoke a fluent if strange Italian but had a glowering low-browed face like a Slav farmer.

  Jankovic growled to himself and asked: “What happened here last night?”

  “Ah—” the Padrone was on surer ground here; “—first, the police arrested the man who broke into my house here and murdered Silvio’s cousin. Then, in the night, a gang broke into the police station and rescued him. That is quite unheard-of. The police are most angry, yet they have not raided everywhere and arrested everyone, as one would expect. And there is also talk of the Irish. I think the house-breaker, and murderer, was Irish.”

  “Irish?” Jankovic was baffled. But it added another layer of bafflement for others, too, and he shrugged it off. “Take me to him, then.”

  The Padrone’s dignity was already ruffled by the night’s events, but expediency warned him not to get indignant at this brusqueness. Anyway, it would be wasted on a Slav. He led the way upstairs.

  Silvio sat hunched on the unmade bed, red-eyed and fiddling with a pistol. The drink – mixed marsala and grappa, according to the empty bottles – was oozing out of him and he smelt like a pig farm.

  Jankovic looked down and said: “You didn’t kill him.”

  “Of course we killed him!” Silvio tried to spring up and got half way before toppling back.

  “He’s in hospital,” Jankovic went on. “The nearest hospital to the flying field under an assumed but Italian name, so he hasn’t learnt anything even from having your cousin scratch his back.”

  “Bozan killed him,” Silvio insisted, waving the pistol. The Padrone moved a little more behind Jankovic, who didn’t seem to care.

  “I was there this morning. Also, Signora Falcone is coming, probably to take him home. What are you going to do about it?”

  Silvio calmed down, or at least pointed the gun at the floor. “Go to the hospital and kill him.”

  “And his police guard?” Jankovic sneered. “We knew you came from a circus, but we thought we’d hired the lions, not the clowns.”

  “It was you who fouled things up in Brussels!” Silvio yelled. “We could have stabbed or shot him there easily. Bozan could. Oh, Mother of God.” He began weeping and wiped his nose, mostly with the pistol. “I’m going to kill that Irish bravo, too. It was he who murdered poor Bozan.”

  “All right,” Jankovic said, suddenly reasonable. “All right. If Falcone goes back to Italy, the bravo will probably go with him. So I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll go to Italy, too, and you can kill them both there. Yes, I know we aren’t supposed to kill Falcone in Italy—” as Silvio’s sodden memory churned up an objection; “—but it that’s the only place left to us . . .

  “And,” he added sharply, “it would help if you were sober by then so you don’t mistake your own arse for the Senator and shoot that instead.”

  * * *

  Too tense to light a pipe, Ranklin puffed a cigarette as he paced the worn turf – baked almost to concrete by the long summer – outside the shed. It was past noon, and even hotter than yesterday, with a gently swirling crowd murmuring like a distant waterfall. He let his hand brush against his empty side pocket and felt a pang of anxiety as he remembered the police had kept his revolver as ‘evidence’. He had to remind himself that crowds did not breed assassins as a natural process. But not feeling really safe in the sunny English countryside without a pistol in his pocket was, he thought gloomily, yet another milestone on his personal road.

  He trod out his cigarette and, with nothing better to do, almost immediately lit another. He daren’t get distracted by starting a conversation with anyone, he just had to wait and watch. And convince himself that O’Gilroy was merely caught up in the mob on the road and not . . .

  Then, unmistakable above the heads of the crowd, came the black box-shape of the Sherring Daimler – and an unfamiliar man in a dark suit standing on the running-board and waving some official card. Ranklin first assumed that Corinna had borrowed a Club official to clear their path, but there was something too solemn about the man’s face and demeanour. He didn’t belong.

  Corinna shot out of the car without waiting for anyone to open the door, and scurried across. “I don’t know what in hell’s going on,” she muttered, “but we collected a policeman at the hospital who—”

  Then the solemn man arrived at a fast lope, hand outstretched aggressively to clasp Ranklin’s. “Captain Ranklin? I’m Inspector Jeffries, Surrey Police. Thank you, madam.” He tipped his bowler hat at Corinna in a gesture one step short of saying “Scram”.

  Behind him, Ranklin was vaguely aware of a woman in a tweed suit stepping from the car and walking confidently towards the shed, as if she knew aerodromes. Corinna gave Inspector Jeffries a sharp look, then followed. Ranklin hadn’t dared mention last night’s shenanigans on the telephone, but she certainly knew something was going on.

  “Glad to meet you, Inspector,” Ranklin said, casually looking him over. He had prominent dark eyes in a thin face but the solemnity came mostly from the downturned moustache, and he held his head cocked forward in a deferential gesture that Ranklin didn’t believe. A man content to dress so anonymously might be good at his job.

  “I believe,” Jeffries said, “you were a witness to the assault on Senator Falcone – or Mr Vascotti, as he seems to prefer at the moment – yesterday afternoon, sir.”

  “A sort of witness. But I made a statement to . . . in London.”

  “Yes, sir. Your name was sent to us by the Metropolitan Police. By Sir Basil Thomson of Scotland Yard.”

  “Really.”

  “May I ask what you’re doing here today, sir?”

  “War Office business.”

  “Of what nature is that, sir?”

  “Just the usual confidential War Office business.”

  Jeffries seemed to hesitate. Perhaps he’d expected Ranklin to plead the secrecy of the Bureau, not put up the whole Army as an earlier line of defence.

  He tried to outflank it with a confiding smile. “That wouldn’t be, would it, sir, just an alias to hide your real job?”

  Ranklin looked him quietly up and down, but Jeffries was used to that look from people who thought the police should use the servants’ entrance. However, Ranklin then said: “You don’t seem to have the current Army List on you – it’s a bulky volume, I agree. So you can’t look me up. In that case, all I can offer is my card, my driving licence, and what else would I have . . . ?”

  “That’s quite all right, sir, no need at all.” Then casually but swiftly: “Where’s Gorman?”

  The frontal attack almost flustered Ranklin, but then he remembered the connection was undeniable, and that the more he concentrated on the name Gorman, the better for O’Gilroy. “I’m sorry, I really have no idea.”

  That became a lie as he said it. The motor-bike sputtered out of the crowd behind Jeffries’ back, stopped beside the shed, and O’Gilroy began leisurely unstrapping a travelling bag from the pillion seat.

  “Not even where he lives?”

  “I’m afraid not. Inspector—” Ranklin had to say something to hold Jeffries’ attention on himself; “—my connection with Gorman is entirely professional. Again, your best bet is to ask the War Office. No, I suppose the Yard will already have done that. Let me see, what else can I suggest . . . ?” He looked around as if seeking inspiration and saw that O’Gilroy had vanished into the shed. Would Corinna have the chance – and the sense – to warn him who Jeffries was?


  Then she was walking quickly towards them, setting off a flare of a smile towards Jeffries and saying: “Hope I’m not interrupting, but the Signora’s given the go-ahead and Andrew wants to be off right away.”

  Ranklin tried to make his smile meaningless. “Fine. Ah – is he going alone?”

  “No, he’s taking some new mechanic, one who’s learning to fly.”

  Ranklin thought: I love you. Well, actually I don’t know whether I do or not, but right now I love you. He said: “Perhaps the Inspector already told you, but he’s looking for a man called Gorman.”

  She knew the name as O’Gilroy’s usual alias. “Who’s he? What’s he done?” Behind her, two of Andrew’s mechanics began taking down the flimsy shutters and stacking them to one side.

  Jeffries would rather be asking than answering, but Corinna tended to have first choice in these matters. And Jeffries couldn’t turn his back on her, either. “He was in custody, madam, in London, charged with murder.”

  Corinna’s eyes widened. “Gee! Of whom?”

  “I’m not clear about that myself, madam, but the important thing is that he was in custody and he escaped. Aided by a group of men who stormed a police station in the early hours of this morning—” Jeffries turned his sombre look on Ranklin, not noticing, or perhaps caring, that the Oriole was being gently manhandled out of the shed; “—speaking in stage-Irish accents and who shot at and nearly killed a constable.”

  Suddenly Corinna was taking this seriously. “You mean really hurt him?”

  “He wasn’t actually hurt – by sheer good luck. The bullet went through his helmet.”

  The equally sudden bathos was too much for Corinna, who tried to stifle a giggle, and managed to choke out: “Yes, I guess that counts as pretty close.”

  “We don’t regard it as a laughing matter, madam.”

  “No, no, of course not. And so you’re looking for him. And for the whole gang, too, I guess?”

  Jeffries hesitated, looking at Ranklin again. “We’d like to catch the whole gang, and we have some idea of who they are. But they regard themselves as untouchable.”