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The Cold North Sea

Page 26

by The Cold North Sea (retail) (epub)


  No… I must get back to Soho.

  Something told Finch this was not Vax’s doing, that Vax would be able to help him. But if he had got something to do with… what?… Annie’s abduction…? then Finch still had him right where he wanted him and he would make his previous interrogation methods look like child’s play.

  The room grew dark. It was as if black clouds had suddenly rolled across. But it was not the weather. He heard the heavy footfalls and saw the beast – Smert – at the top of the stairwell. It was not just Annie. Now they had him too.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Finch’s hand went to the Colt revolver. He had that at least. But then he saw there was an alternative course of action. As Smert, with his ungainly gait, shambled down the steps, he grabbed the key from the wall and opened the interior door. Once on the other side of it he went to lock it, then opted not to – encouraging Smert to follow him.

  He listened to make sure that Smert had entered, then crept up the steps to the hallway, with its faded black linoleum and the smell of impermanence. Sure enough, off it was a communal WC and bathroom. A woman stood in a man’s dressing gown, cigarette between her lips, towel over her shoulder, sorting through her post at a table by the front door. He breezed past her and made a discreet exit.

  Finch began a brisk walk, heading south out of the square, hanging back on the corner of Charlotte Street, waiting to observe Smert emerge and gauge which way he might go, but the man-mountain was evidently wise to Finch’s game and had burst straight from the basement, already striding in his direction, locked on like a cheetah stalking a gazelle.

  Finch began a painful jog back down towards Soho. But going south was pointless. He was merely leading Smert to a known destination. Instead he ducked left and doubled back up Tottenham Court Road, past Euston Road Underground station.

  Smert had gone. Or had he?

  No… The man had anticipated his move and had attempted to cut him off along Warren Street. He was now a mere twenty yards behind, close enough for Finch to feel the pounding of his shoes.

  Finch increased his speed, his heart thumping wildly. But he was not in sufficient physical shape to keep up a sustained run, he knew. Ahead the pavement was crowded – people waiting to cross busy Tottenham Court Road, among them an ice cream cart being manoeuvred into position by a short Italian man in a pristine white tunic. Finch plunged amid the throng. The jostling gave him a moment of cover.

  It was a risky move. But with a sudden gap in the traffic and a surge of the waiting pedestrians, Finch feinted to go one way, then, screened by the cart and the wooden board sign above it, darted into an alley. It was a short narrow cul-de-sac, a filthy stub of a thoroughfare, a geographical accident that seemed to serve no purpose.

  He froze absolutely still as the huge figure stopped, mere feet ahead, his back to him, blocking the entrance… and the light. For a moment, Finch could examine him, like an exhibit in a zoo – though without the safety of bars – his ridiculous fat neck twisting, eyes scanning back and forth along the street, aware that Finch must have made an evasive manoeuvre. He had looked everywhere but behind him. Finch held his breath.

  The alley stank of rotting rubbish and urine. And something else. There came a low growl… an aggressive canine warning.

  Finch turned.

  A mangy mongrel, some kind of feral alley stray, its black fur patchy, filthy dirty, had emerged from the shadows. It was baring its fangs. Finch had stumbled onto its territory.

  Finch put his finger to his lips – a futile gesture, he realised. The dog looked half Alsatian, part pointy-eared savage… and entirely without reason.

  He whispered a plaintive, ‘Shhhhhh,’ but the dog’s growl grew more guttural, more menacing and lowered in tone. Saliva stringed from its jowls, its hackles were raised. It took a tentative step towards Finch – eyes wide, the whites fully visible.

  ‘Shhhhhhhhh. Good boy!’

  The dog did not respond. It moved closer… snarling louder.

  Finch touched the Colt in his pocket. If he had to…

  The bark, with an accompanied snap of teeth, resounded like a thunderclap.

  Smert spun.

  Finch lunged… and so did the dog.

  Smert’s oversized arm swung, the huge boulder of a fist arcing towards Finch’s face, but with less precision than it might. The black streak of fur threw him.

  As Finch ducked under it, the dog’s jaws clamped down on the big man’s leg, allowing Finch to tumble onto the pavement. He turned to see Smert pick the dog off, like some irritating insect, and fling it hard back into the alley where it hit the wall, yelped, slid down and whimpered. It limped off.

  Finch seized his moment. With heads turning and a stranger’s hand reaching to help him up, he bolted, as best he could, up to the east–west Euston Road, running straight across the traffic, weaving in and out of the oncoming vehicles, eliciting shouts and curses and the beep of a horn.

  Smert’s heft encumbered him and Finch kept his lead… just. An eastbound omnibus had pulled away from a bus stop, the twin horses already carrying it at a sufficient lick. Finch launched himself towards the rear platform, staggered, lost his grip on the pole, but thrust his other hand up to gain sufficient purchase. He pulled himself on board.

  The human monster ploughed on, parting the traffic like Moses and the Red Sea. He was on the pavement now, then jumping off it again, waving down oncoming vehicles. He was clipped by the wheel of a cart – hard, it looked – but it seemed to cause him no bother. He glanced at his wound with mere curiosity, then renewed his chase with purpose.

  A taxi cab pulled over and Smert climbed up. The cab driver whipped his horse and it began gaining on the bus.

  The conductor appeared, a grumpy little man with a pitted nose.

  ‘All right, mister,’ he snapped at Finch. ‘You’re only supposed to get on at the designated stops.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Heads turned.

  ‘How much to St Pancras?’ asked Finch, feigning cool.

  ‘Tuppence ha’penny.’

  Finch fumbled for change. The conductor wound the ticket machine that hung on his leather harness. Though no sooner had he cranked it than the bus slowed and Finch, using the cover of a coal wagon, had jumped off again.

  ‘Oi…!’

  The conductor rolled his eyes and got back to his business.

  Finch stepped back into a pub doorway and watched the bus carry on. Smert in his cab went sailing past, still on its tail.

  Another bus slowed and Finch stepped aboard. This time he went straight upstairs, the open upper deck affording a good vantage point, and found a seat near the front. St Pancras was not far. The neo-Gothic splendour of the Midland Grand Hotel loomed up ahead. Any sign of Smert and he would stay put, only getting off when safe.

  He looked around. There was a mother and child, a little girl in a pinafore dress, who seemed thoroughly excited at the prospect of being allowed to ‘go upstairs’. There were two men reading newspapers – one the Daily Express, the other the Daily Mirror, the gamut of opinion duly encompassed, though with war still being championed at either end of the political spectrum. An older couple sat together, the small silent husband penned in by a larger wife who was running through a breathless list of household chores for her spouse to complete once back home.

  Finch absorbed the normality and, for a moment, in the late autumn sun, relaxed.

  The bus stopped. The horses snorted, their hooves scraping while people got on and off, the conductor yelling, ‘Fares please.’ And then Finch felt it – a huge weight that made the bus tilt. He heard the creak of the stairs as the lumbering presence ascended. And there on the top floor, at the rear, blocking his exit, stood Smert.

  The little girl gasped. Her mother admonished her for staring. Slowly Smert moved up the aisle. The close-set black eyes – the dead black eyes – fixed on Finch’s.

  Finch’s pulse pounded in his ears. His mouth was dry. His hands were trembling. Y
es, he had a gun. But to start a shoot-out in public…? The little girl… Her mother…

  Possessed with a sudden urge to feign nonchalance, he took out a cigarette, concentrated hard and struck a match. He inhaled as the huge Smert, slowly, unsteadied by the motion of the vehicle, edged towards him.

  Finch looked at the little girl and thought, for a moment, of Emily, the brave child who had been rescued in the Karoo desert during his South African adventure. He smiled at her, got a faint grin in return… then winked… as he threw himself over the side.

  There was a gasp from the pavement at this sight of a man flinging himself overboard, clinging to the rail that ran atop the upper deck, then swinging his leg to gain a foothold in the open vent window of the deck below, attempting to climb down.

  It turned to a shriek as a monumental man leaned over to swipe at him, grabbing him by the collar, suspending him in mid-air, swinging Finch helplessly, legs flailing, like a man on the gallows. Finch clutched at his throat, strained for breath and felt the blood pinch off as Smert, with a single giant arm, began raising him up.

  Panicked, the horses picked up speed. The driver wrestled the reins and tried to regain control. One of them kept bucking. It was setting off the other, straining against its harness. There were screams now on board.

  A lamp-post… fast approaching… Finch writhed, contorted, threw his arms round it and hugged it for dear life, locking each palm onto the other forearm. He felt his grip slacken and himself being wrenched away… and then a rip as his collar tore off, a bemused Smert left clutching a remnant of Edward’s no doubt expensive shirt.

  Finch wrapped his legs round the lamp-post too. For a moment he was marooned, alone above the crowd like a steeplejack.

  There were hands reaching up, people helping him down.

  ‘Are you all right, mister?’

  He was, he told them, panting hard, brushing off his clothing.

  Ahead, thankfully – and for the sake of the little girl – he could see the bus had been brought back under control. Though behind him, in the distance, he also glimpsed a police helmet bustling along in his direction.

  There were enough people milling around the Euston arch for him to lose himself. He pulled his jacket collar up and buttoned it across, covering the ripped shirt. With his hand on the gun in his pocket all the while, he walked on, hurrying up the curved ramp into the entrance to the Midland Grand.

  A porter approached, asking if he was checking in, though Finch saw the man’s face change when he noticed the bandage round his head. He had long lost his hat. Amid all that had happened, Finch had forgotten. He stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Finch knew that Smert would follow him to St Pancras station. Sure enough, when Finch went through the hotel’s cavernous vaulted lobby, past the restaurant and round to the side entrance to the Midland Railway platforms, he could see him lurking there.

  Finch ducked back into the gentlemen’s toilets and, looking in the mirror, unwound the bandage. It was sopping with blood, which had soaked right through. No wonder the porter looked shocked. The stitches had held, though. Annie had done a good job.

  He kept on the small strip of gauze that covered them – far more discreet – and walked back to the exit. Smert was still out there, scanning the crowds amid all the smoke as passengers went back and forth to the trains, getting double takes from some of them.

  Finch casually walked past the heaving, clattering restaurant and nonchalantly – he was getting rather good at this – helped himself to a long gabardine raincoat hanging on the coat stand. Following the fashion of the dearly departed Superintendent Bastard Dryden, late of the Norfolk Constabulary, he also pinched someone’s fedora.

  There was a departure board inside the hotel and Finch watched for the trains to Bedford – the St Albans line – knowing that Smert would probably expect him to be catching the next one. He thought of Annie, praying that no harm had come to her, and swore, if it had, he would kill whoever had done it, even if he had to swing for it.

  An announcement for the Bedford train echoed around the station concourse and a whistle blew. He had no ticket but strolled out, mingling with the crowd, hiding in plain sight in his new guise, straight past Smert, who looked right over his head.

  Finch waited till the last moment, as the green flag was waved and the final whistle blew, before jogging up the platform to the furthest carriage and turning just enough to give Smert a view of him. It worked. Smert came striding in his direction.

  Finch nodded a polite hello to the three elderly ladies in his carriage and then shocked them all by sliding down the window on the door opposite, opening the handle from the outside and climbing straight into the carriage of an adjacent stationery train, in which he surprised the travellers there, too, with another ‘good day’, before exiting onto the opposite platform.

  The Bedford train hissed, the engine strained and the squeaking carriages started pulling away. Smert had been too late. Through the windows of the train on his side of the platform, Finch saw him standing in exasperation, framed amid a cloud of steam, watching it trundle north.

  A pair of constables appeared on the concourse. Finch made his way, sharpish, to the Underground station. He glanced back. Smert had gone. Inside, he caught the Piccadilly railway to Leicester Square, from where he hurried back up to Soho and Dean Street. The adrenalin and the shock had masked the pain, but his ribs sent sharp stabs through his chest. His knee, as ever, ached like hell.

  He studied the alleyway, knowing that Smert would most likely turn up there again, and probably very soon. Coast clear, he clanged up the steps and, to his relief, found that the door was locked, meaning that Vax was still trussed up inside. He checked his watch. He had been gone an hour and ten minutes.

  Finch inserted the brass door key and turned it. Gun raised, he kicked it open and entered. And his world went black as someone coshed him from behind…

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Finch rose slowly from the blackness. For a moment, he feared he was underwater again and willed himself to swim to the surface. He was panicking, his heart working overtime, like the rapid pounding of a pneumatic drill. His arms and legs thrashed in vain, the movement commanded by his brain not yielding any response from his useless limbs. He could hear a voice but not identify it – just a distant wah-wah of indecipherable sound. He called out to it, whoever it was, as if in waking from a nightmare. Then his own cries became real, loud…

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay… Shhhhhhhh,’ soothed the voice.

  He could see now – just a blur, but with a dark shape moving within.

  ‘Don’t worry. Shhhhhhhh.’

  It was a female voice. Slowly his eyes pulled focus. She had his head cradled in her lap, gently stroking his forehead. The light hit her hair and spread a halo around her curls.

  ‘It’s all right, sugar. You’re okay now.’

  ‘Lulu?’

  She dabbed a cold wet handkerchief at his brow.

  ‘Where… where am I…?’

  He blinked into the light. He was in Vax’s office, lying on the floor. His head… Christ, his head… He didn’t know how much more his poor skull could take.

  ‘Saw you rush up the steps. Saw someone else run down them and you not come out. Figured something wasn’t right.’

  She helped him sit up.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Finch.

  ‘Didn’t recognise you at first…’

  She nodded at his raincoat.

  ‘…but there’s just somethin’ about you, Hero.’

  She said it playfully.

  ‘Told you it’d end in tears,’ she added.

  Finch had been too eager in his movements. He wobbled, giddy. An arm buckled.

  ‘Take it easy,’ urged Lulu. ‘There’s no rush. Slowly…’

  ‘Actually there is a rush…’ he groaned. ‘Someone’s life is at stake.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  He forced himself to get sharp… to focus. He propped
himself up again.

  ‘The man who left, what did he look…?’

  ‘Don’t go worrying yourself.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Jesus, Hero. An’ I thought you was a gentleman!’

  She pulled a spectacularly theatrical pout.

  ‘I’m sorry, Lulu… Things are a little fraught.’

  ‘If you must know… Thin, narrow moustache, flower in his buttonhole.’

  She lit one of his cigarettes and put it in his mouth. He grunted his acknowledgment.

  ‘Right, you need to help me up,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He dragged hard on his cigarette and put his arm around Lulu’s neck. Her strength was impressive, he thought, for a woman, until he remembered. Despite a momentary sway of his legs, she helped ease him into the chair – the same worn, wicker-backed one he had sat in, casually interrogating Vax less than two hours before.

  ‘Lulu,’ he winced, the pain throbbing in jagged bursts through his temples.

  ‘Yes?’

  He spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘The man… which way did he go?’

  She pointed up towards Oxford Street.

  ‘That way… But don’t ask me if that’s north, south, east or west, ’cause honey, I ain’t got a clue.’

  He thought he might faint. He struggled to concentrate.

  ‘I need to get out of here.’

  The sensation caught him unawares. He bent forward and threw up on the lino – the egg and toast from earlier now swimming in alcohol.

  ‘Hey, these are new shoes,’ screeched Lulu, swinging her red velvet pumps out of the way.

  ‘Sorry… but listen… I really do need…’

  ‘Don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

  ‘Please, just fetch me some water.’

  He pointed to the glass jug. She passed it to him. He gulped it down.

  ‘Come on. Let’s go,’ he urged.

  He made to get up and placed his palms on his thighs.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere, sugar.’

 

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