by J F Straker
He put the unpleasant thought from him. If it happened it happened. He could do nothing to prevent it.
There was more than one torch. The beams danced round the curve and focused on the three figures by the door. Holding Cooper’s arm, Johnny felt him tremble. But he made no move to escape, and Johnny shifted the gun so that the newcomers could see it.
Behind him the woman said faintly, “I’ve got it.” He heard the rustle of clothing as she got to her feet.
“We have guns too, Sergeant,” a voice called from behind the torches. “Automatics. You’re on a loser there.”
Johnny frowned. That was Gislap’s voice. And with him in command a reception committee beyond the exit could be guaranteed.
“Think so?” he retorted. “To get me you’ll have to plug your fat friend first.”
The torches moved nearer. Johnny’s finger tightened on the trigger.
“You know something?” There was amusement in Gislap’s tone. “Cooper’s expendable. So where does that leave you?”
There was a cry of protest from Cooper. Johnny tightened his grip.
“Unmoved,” he said. “I can’t answer for Cooper. But start shooting, and I’ll get at least one of you before he drops.”
In the silence that followed Johnny could hear the woman swearing under her breath. No doubt her hands were as unsteady as Cooper’s had been. But how long did it take to shove a strip of cardboard into a bloody slot?
Or had Cooper fooled them? Didn’t it work that way? The possibility chilled him.
“You’ve got us wrong, Sergeant.” Gislap took a step forward, to be silhouetted against the lights. “There’ll be no shooting. We’re not killers. The guns are merely a precaution. We’re here to talk.”
“Like you talked to Wheeler and Goodwin, eh?” Johnny said. “No, thank you.”
“Accidents happen. You know that. And if it’s the well that worries you, forget it. That was Cooper’s idea, not mine. He can be very impulsive at times.” Gislap’s tone was almost wheedling. “Come on down, man. We’ll work something out.”
Before Johnny could answer there came a sibilant cry from Beryl Sinclair, instantly suppressed, and a gust of cool air ruffled the hairs at the nape of his neck. The light behind him vanished, and he realized with sudden excitement that the door was open and that the woman had gone. He was wondering how to go himself — run for it, or back out slowly, keeping Cooper as a shield — when the problem was solved for him. There was a sharp report from beyond the torches. Cooper gave a grunt that expanded into a sobbing gasp, and Johnny felt the heavy body sink on to his arm and fall away as he released him. Even before Cooper hit the ground Johnny had started to run. He did not get far. Someone caught his arm; there were lights at the exit, men hurried past him into the tunnel. And from behind the lights a familiar voice said sharply, “What the hell do you think you’re playing at, Inch? I thought I told you to keep out of it.”
4
Johnny woke to daylight and the sight of pouring rain, and with a great hunger for solid food. The daylight and the hunger were understandable; it had been close to dawn when he got to bed, and he had eaten nothing since lunch on the previous day. But the rain was unexpected. The night had been fine and cloudless.
It was Nicodemus who shook him awake. Only the Boozer’s absence had enabled Johnny to sleep late; the Boozer did not believe in pampering his subordinates. But he had left for London before breakfast, taking the Co-operative’s records with him. Once the news of the successful raid on their headquarters broke, a number of characters listed in their register would decide that the time had come to travel. The superintendent was anxious to ensure wholesale police action before that happened.
“Never get married, Johnny,” Nicodemus advised, when Johnny eventually admitted to consciousness. “You look absolutely ghastly asleep. No woman could take it.”
“I’ll bear it in mind. What’s the time?”
“Lunch-time. I’ve been over at Elmstead, taking another peep at the bargain basement. You were well out of that, my lad.” Johnny grabbed the bed clothes to prevent their being swept from him. “Bestir yourself. You have a report to write before the Boozer returns. Remember?”
Johnny remembered. He remembered too that he had unfinished business to conclude with Karen, and he dressed and went downstairs with some eagerness. But Karen was out to lunch. Denied the opportunity to forward his sex life, he joined Nicodemus in the dining-room. It would be pleasant to catch up on his hunger.
“What made the Boozer turn back last night?” he asked, his mouth full of hors-d’oeuvre. He had been too busy, and then too tired, to ask the question the night before. “He couldn’t know I was stuck down that hole.”
“Guesswork. Deductive reasoning, he calls it.”
“How come?”
“I told him one of the lads from the nick had seen a light in the copse, but that all we found when we searched it was a disused bomb shelter. That snagged him. The shelter was on Mrs Bollender’s land, but a hell of a long way from the house. So why build it there? he wanted to know. Who would use it?”
“Was that all?”
“All he said.” Nicodemus had started on an Entrecôte steak, rare and with a Béarnaise sauce. “At the time, that is. He said a lot more at the shelter, when he saw from the muck on the floor that someone had visited it recently. Footprints going in, none coming out. Why hadn’t I noticed that? he asked.” Nicodemus grinned. “Well, I had noticed it. I didn’t get the message, that’s all. I’m not so sure he did either. Not until the end wall disappeared, and a half-naked female came lolloping into our arms.” The grin broadened. “I knew at a glance it was Mrs S.”
“How?”
“That top set of hers.” Nicodemus whistled. “Formidable! Can’t think how Gislap came to miss.”
“I don’t think he aimed at anyone in particular,” Johnny said. “I think he just loosed off as a sort of involuntary expression of anger at being cornered.”
There had been only the one shot, which had lodged in Cooper’s thigh. Confronted with the police, Gislap and his men had surrendered without a fight. Sherrey had hustled them back down the tunnel, leaving Johnny and a uniformed constable to attend to Beryl Sinclair and the wounded Cooper.
While the constable went to the farm to summon an ambulance, taking the woman with him, Johnny had examined the shelter, to the accompaniment of groans and curses from Cooper. It had been well disguised. Crumbling steps led down to a floor littered with rubbish and leaves, and soil caked into mud by recent rain; moss and weeds and grass grew in the arched roof. And the end wall was in fact a sliding door, a sheet of steel with bricks and mortar cunningly affixed to the outside, built with such precision that, when closed, no hint of a gap showed between door and walls.
When the ambulance had arrived for Cooper Johnny had rejoined his colleagues. He found them busy in the guardroom, scanning the organization’s comprehensive records of crimes committed. There were also detailed and well-balanced accounts, and a register of members, listed under their various categories. Some of the names and addresses were in code, a precaution which puzzled Sherrey. Nicodemus had suggested that these might be the men at the top, the really big boys. Sherrey doubted it; too numerous, he said. Probably rank-and-filers whose names, for one reason or another, were classified as top secret.
Johnny thought they might possibly be both.
There was a hint of dawn in the sky when Sherrey had finally decided to call it a day. By then it was the younger men who were wilting. While Cole and the superintendent remained reasonably fresh, Nicodemus’s mouth was one long yawn, and even Johnny’s boundless energy had deserted him. “Stamina,” Sherrey had said, catching Nicodemus with closed eyes and drooping head, and slapping him ferociously on the back. “That’s what you youngsters lack. Stamina. Don’t you agree, Mr Cole?” And Cole had said sombrely that he supposed he did.
The Sinclairs had gone to hospital, suffering from shock. It was feared that Mark
Sinclair’s mind was deranged, perhaps permanently. He had spoken no intelligible sentence since the police had found him, slumped against the wall, staring vacantly in the direction of the well and muttering to himself. The other prisoners had been taken to the local police station, charged, and lodged in the cells for the night. On the advice of his solicitor, who had arrived at the farm while the police were busy below, Frank Gislap had declined to make answer to the charge. So had the two guards, although they had been surprisingly co-operative at their headquarters; it was from them that SIN had learned how the various controls were operated. But Mrs Bollender had haughtily protested that her presence there constituted no crime; had the police the effrontery to doubt her innocence, to question her word? When Sherrey had politely suggested that an explanation of how she came to be there might add some weight to the word she had refused to give it, and had demanded that the Chief Constable be informed immediately. It was a shrewd move. Sherrey knew the admiration the Chief Constable had for the woman. He wanted no quarrel with him and, reluctantly, he let her go. It would be only a brief freedom, he thought. Her name would be in the register. If it were in code — well, the code looked a comparatively simple one, based on numerals and no obstacle to an expert. He would have her under lock and key within hours.
Nicodemus shared his conviction that Lucinda Bollender was guilty. So, surprisingly, did Cole. Sherrey had expected tacit if not outspoken opposition from the chief inspector; it would, he thought, be consistent with their uneasy relationship. But Cole, furious at having been duped so completely by his friend Gislap, even more furious that SIN should know he had been duped, had allowed Mrs Bollender’s protests and threats to bounce off him with impunity. Sherrey suspected that, given the word, he would willingly have arrested her. Yet his angry resentment did not change his attitude towards SIN. If anything, his dislike seemed to increase.
Johnny gave no opinion. The policeman in him insisted that the woman was guilty. Why else would she have a private ingress to the gang’s subterranean headquarters, why else would she have spoken to Cooper as she did? Yet was of yeoman stock, with an inbred respect for the Upper Classes. He found it incredible that a woman of her breeding and importance could be involved in the sordid crimes committed by the Co-operative. Fraud or embezzlement, manslaughter or murder — yes, perhaps. But not burglary and safe-breaking and armed robbery.
He hinted as much to Nicodemus now, as they drank their coffee.
“A woman in her position — well, it’s right outside her sphere. I mean, how would she ever make the necessary contacts? They’d certainly never think of approaching her.”
“You know your trouble, don’t you? You’re a bloody bourgeois.” There was a hint of patronage in Nicodemus’s wide grin. “Anyone can get around to anything if there’s enough money in it. And Lucinda Bollender isn’t so high on the social ladder. She was a Vernon before her marriage. Grocery and provisions.”
“Maybe. But I still can’t understand how she managed to get involved.”
Karen returned shortly after three o’clock. Johnny, writing his report in the lounge, heard her voice in the hall and hastened to greet her.
“Well, I’m back,” he said. “Anybody miss me around here?” She nodded. He thought she looked tired.
“You had us all worried. They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“They had it in mind, but — no, they didn’t hurt me.” Eager to touch her, he took her arm. “Are you busy? I want to talk to you.”
“I’ve got to pack. I’m off to Germany on a modelling job.”
“For long?”
“A few days.” She considered him, her grey eyes thoughtful. “Give me time to bathe and change, then come up and talk while I pack. But only talk, Johnny. I’ve a train to catch.”
She had bathed but not changed when he went to her room. Seated at the dressing-table, she was making up her face. The negligee slipped as she swung round on the stool, and he stooped to kiss her bare shoulder.
She pushed him away.
“That’s enough of that, my lad. Sit over there and tell me what happened.”
He told her briefly as much as he considered permissible. Apart from a quick intake of breath when he spoke of the well, she made no comment. He was still talking when she got up from the stool, turned her back on him, and slipped out of the negligee. Against the black lace of panties and bra her skin was like pale ivory.
He went over to her and kissed the nape of her neck, his hands cupping her breasts. For a moment she was passive in his embrace. Then she caught his wrists and pulled his hands away.
“No,” she said. “Not now. Please!”
“Not now, not ever.” He had the same sinking feeling in his loins as when he looked down from a height. He moved away and sat on the bed, watching her step into a skirt and fasten it round her waist. All her movements were tantalizingly graceful. “There’s a rude word for girls like you, my love.”
She shrugged, adjusting the hang of the skirt. “I told you I was in a hurry.”
“A pity you weren’t in more of a hurry last night,” he said crossly. “If you’d stepped on it you would have caught the Boozer before he left. What kept you?”
“Nothing kept me.” She sounded equally cross. “Except that when I tried to telephone Mr Sherrey to give him your message I found I’d come out without my bag. And that was your fault. If you hadn’t been so damned mysterious I’d have remembered it.” Her voice grew muffled as she pulled a grey sweater over her head. “I hadn’t a sou. I couldn’t telephone, and I couldn’t take a bus. I had to slog home on foot. Even then I only just missed him. I ran most of the way.”
He was immediately contrite.
“I doubt if it made much difference,” he said. “The route we took, no copper was likely to spot us. Once we struck the lanes I didn’t see a soul. Anyway, he had his own private lead to Elmstead. Have they found the Hillman yet?”
“I wouldn’t know. No-one’s bothered to tell me.”
“Sorry about that.” He heaved himself off the bed. “And I’m sorry I bawled you out. I guess I was disappointed at getting the cold shoulder. I thought you dug me a little.”
“I do, Johnny. It’s just that —”
“I know, I know. You’ve a train to catch.”
He came up from behind and took her in his arms. She had picked up the heavy gold bangle she always wore; startled, she dropped it. He felt her body stiffen. Then she relaxed, and turned to him.
It was a rewarding kiss. Her arms were about his neck, her body moulded to his. When eventually they drew apart they smiled at each other.
“Nice,” he said. “Very nice. Hurry back from Germany, love.” He stooped to retrieve the bangle. “I’ll be back in Town by then, I suppose, but we —” He stopped abruptly. Then he took a deep breath. “Oh God, no! Not you!”
He was staring in horrified disbelief at the bangle. Engraved on the inside were the initials C.C.
5
She made no attempt to deny it. Noting the misery on his face, she put out a hand to touch him. Johnny mistook the gesture. He shook his head, and thrust the bangle into his pocket.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I hoped you’d never have to know.”
“I bet you did.”
“Yes.” They stared at each other, uncertain what to say or do. “Well, what happens now?”
“You know damned well what happens now.” He could not bear to look at her further, and he turned away and went to gaze out of the window. It overlooked the yard, and anger grew in him as his eyes lit on the damaged Mule, still waiting to be collected by his London garage. Karen was responsible for that. If she had not actively engaged in the wanton destruction, she must certainly have connived at it. “The same as happens to all crooks when they’re caught. And that’s what you are. A mean, dirty little crook.”
“I suppose I am.” Her tone hardened. She had expected reproach and condemnation, but not abuse. Not from Johnny. “Have you got the handcuffs w
ith you?”
“Don’t joke, damn you!” He wheeled sharply. The sight of her beauty unnerved him, and misery returned to battle with anger. “Why, Karen? What in Heaven’s name made you do it? You can’t need money that bad.”
“Everyone needs money, and it’s always that bad.” She sat down and patted her hair, peering forward into the mirror. “But it wasn’t only the money. I got a kick out of it. Or I did at first. And they didn’t want much. Just occasional scraps of information. Men talk more freely in bars. Or didn’t you know?”
Despite her attempt at levity, the short, laconic sentences betrayed her nervousness. But not to Johnny. He was too confused to read beyond the words.
“And that’s all you did? Repeat what you heard in the bar? I don’t believe it.”
“No? Well, there was also the odd spot of seduction, of course. I’m supposed to be good at that.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Too true.” His tone was bitter. “I suppose it was also for kicks that you fixed with your noisome friends to work me over on Thursday night?”
“Not for kicks. But —” She hesitated. “Yes, I fixed it.”
Johnny was stunned. Despite her guilt he had expected a denial. And this was the girl he had grown to love, who he had believed might come to love him! How blind could a man get?
He said frigidly, “Your friends must be proud of you. I suppose your name will be on their register? They couldn’t afford to neglect such a promising recruit.”
“I expect so. That’s why I decided to leave today. I preferred to be out of the country when you read it.” She managed a smile. “Not you personally, of course, but whoever reads these things. Now, shall I finish packing? I assume that even in prison one needs clothes. Incidentally, what is the exact procedure? As from now, I mean.”
“You’ll be taken to the police station and charged. After that it depends on how smart your lawyer is.”