TRAP

SPIDER

An absolutely gripping classic British thriller full of twists

KENNETH ROYCE

Spider Scott Thrillers Book 5

Revised edition 2024

Joffe Books, London

www.joffebooks.com

First published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd in 1974

© Kenneth Royce 1974, 2024

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Kenneth Royce to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. In accordance with Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790, Joffe Books expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception.

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Cover art by Nebojša Zorić

ISBN: 978-1-83526-508-6

CONTENTS

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Editor’s Note

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

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Editor’s Note

At the time of first publication in 1974, it was thought necessary to explain certain underworld slang terms in footnotes. A more streetwise contemporary readership is unlikely to need such explanations.

Also, the British domestic security service (MI5) was briefly better known as DI5 (Defence Intelligence, Section 5).

Please note this book was published in the 1970s, when social attitudes were very different.

Chapter One

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The alarm hammered out strident and toneless and somehow different. I tried to rouse myself, wondering what was wrong with it. Still half asleep I rolled over, thumped it into silence, and then I knew. It had never pealed out that long before. Usually I’d quelled it in the first second; often I was awake before it sounded. I thought about it as I slowly came to. I felt half drugged. I swung my legs out of bed and gazed blearily at the clock. I’d have to change it; anything to produce another sound to break the monotony.

I sat on the edge of the bed for some time. With Maggie on a round-the-world cruise with her parents I’d have to get my own tea. Her absence created a vacuum, but usually, during the rare times she was away, I managed to get myself involved in some dodgy capers. Well, she didn’t have to worry now; my life was as respectable as any other office-going businessman. I should have been pleased. I rubbed my chest to get some life into it and slid to the floor.

Twenty press-ups later I wondered what the hell I was trying to keep fit for. I couldn’t get worked up about the fact that I was late already; I had no feeling of expectancy about the rest of the day. Business was all right. In fact it had been looking up; a couple of new accounts had bloomed from nowhere in the last few weeks. I wandered into the bathroom with the speed of a derelict being made to wash after he’d given up the idea of ever doing so again. And that wasn’t at all like me. One of the pleasures of the day was my early morning shower.

The bathroom mirror was uninformative except for showing my stubble and my puffy eyes, as if I’d had a thick night. Was I looking my age? There was a touch of grey in my sideboards. I hadn’t troubled to look for it before and now I was sorry I had. As I showered I came a little more to life and considered the absence of Maggie and my own respectability. Was I missing the old life? My conscience didn’t let me face the possibility too squarely; I veered away from it.

A little brighter, I shaved, donned a dressing-gown and plugged in the coffee percolator. While waiting, I finger-gripped the front door architrave above my head and almost listlessly pulled myself up a few times. As I was doing it the morning paper slid under my feet. I picked it up and went back to the kitchen where I poured out some coffee and tipped some corn flakes into a soup plate; Maggie wouldn’t have let me get away with that.

I stood at the breakfast bar riffling one-handedly through the paper as I sipped my coffee. Same old stuff, until an article on mercenaries caught my eye; it wasn’t my scene but at least they were doing something more than commuting. The violence I read about disturbed me but in the wrong way; it made me restless, not that it was my style at all.

After bunging the used crockery into the dishwasher I dressed. As I took a suit from the wardrobe I stopped. My old track suit hung like a worn skin from a too small hanger. I gazed at it for some time, full of emotion; my old creeper’s outfit. We’d done some gigs together, my word we had. The number of pipes we’d shinned; the number of burglaries. For the first time since getting up I was stirred, staring at the well-used track suit with great affection. Was that what was wrong with me? Missing the action? Finding it dull to go straight. I left the flat whistling, lifted by past memories.

Half an hour at my office desk lowered my spirits again. I owned the place but they didn’t really need me here. I went through the mail putting aside a letter addressed to me personally. Most letters addressed personally to me at the office weren’t personal at all; they came from people who wanted me to handle their particular problem, to feel that they were dealing at the top. So it was a short while before I opened it. As I did Lulu brought the coffee and I glanced at the signature at the bottom of the letter.

The name rang a faint bell. Very faint. And it did nothing to stir pleasant memories. The only feeling thinking about it gave me, was one of mild distaste and a suggestion of warning. There was no logical reason for this; it was merely a reaction to the letter I still held in my hand. The content was pleasant enough; an invitation to lunch. It was the name that bugged me. I felt I should know it, that it should mean something to me. Maxwell Palmer. I stirred my coffee and thought hard. In the end I got nowhere so I did the obvious thing and rang the number on the letterhead.

A butler answered the phone in a voice as smooth as honey. There aren’t so many around now but you can always tell. In fairness my observation was aided by the Mayfair address. Mr. Palmer was at his office; would I leave my number so that a message could be passed on to him? When I asked for his office number I was politely sidestepped. I could have stuck at it but thought what the hell and gave the butler my ex-switchboard number.

As the letter had been addressed to me at the XYY Travel Agency and marked personal, it suggested that matey didn’t know my home address. It was handwritten with tight, neat writing and I assumed that it was nothing to do with business, or he’d have got his secretary to type it. As I thought about it I could see young Charlie Hewitt’s shadow against the opaque glass partition: voices filtered through. Lulu and her assistant were both clacking away at typewriters to my right; Lulu had dyed her hair to a deep burnished copper which didn’t diminish her make-up. But she had a heart of gold which fortunately didn’t show against the rest of her colour scheme.

The return call came through in a matter of minutes. An operator the other end told me I was through to Mr. Palmer as if it was my call and I was being favoured.

“Scott?” a brusque, no-nonsense voice.

It needled me. I don’t mind being called Spider or Willie or even Mr. Scott. But I don’t like the feeling of still being in the army with an officer talking down at me. It’s a complex, but it’s there. I swallowed my pride and grunted an affirmative.

“I wonder if we could meet today? At my house; say at one?”

It was half an instruction; he didn’t expect me to refuse, yet at the same time I felt that he was trying to tone down, as if to pacify me. In that case I’d hate to see him at full blast.

“What’s it about?” I asked reasonably.

“I’d rather not discuss it on the telephone. It’s a personal matter.” He hesitated and then the words came reluctantly as if he was amazed at having to admit something to me. “I think you can help me. We can discuss terms at the same time. I am not ungenerous.”

Terms? What did he think I was? About to get shirty I back-pedalled and told him I’d be there. Why not? I was bored silly.

“Good man,” he said, as if he’d invited an ‘other rank’ to the officers’ mess for a special treat, and put down the phone. I was still niggled but I would have gone anyway. It intrigued me. I couldn’t lose anything by going. So I told myself, without really believing it. The warning flashers may have been flickering feebly but curiosity is a powerful motive; I’ve always been a sucker for a carrot. Suddenly I felt livelier.

I waded through some ticketing until half twelve, then told Charlie I didn’t know what time I’d be back. He always gave me the impression he was relieved if I intended to be absent from the office. The office never seemed to have problems in my absence, unless they were merely kept for my return.

It was a big white corner house in one of those small, curved Regency streets to the west of Bond Street. The top crust; refined and exclusive. I wished I could afford to live somewhere like it, and just hoped its quiet beauty would last out my lifetime before the bulldozers flattened it and modern architects shoved up their concrete and glass with a spiel on progress. I mounted the wide steps. There was no name: just bold black figures, 34, on each magnificent column. I hammered the lion-head knocker because houses like these shouldn’t have electric bells.

The butler opened the door: old starch-face. He was very good, not twitching a muscle in surprise when he saw and heard me announce myself. At this stage I was still operating in low key, finding humour in the situation and quietly enjoying myself. It’s a sort of reflex action I produce when my alter ego is really disturbed, acting against all natural instincts.

I was taken through a large hall to a library. What there was in the way of furnishing was good, as you would expect, but there wasn’t a lot of it. The bookshelves were built-in, with the exception of one wall which was largely covered by a massive Chippendale bookcase worth my year’s income. I was looking at this superb piece when matey came in. He showed no surprise at my preoccupation, consoled, no doubt, by the fact that I couldn’t have got the bookcase in my pocket even if I had wanted to nick it; which I did.

“It’s good of you to come, Scott.” He held out a strong hand that squeezed mine firmly but the flesh was soft, had never done physical work. “Sherry?” He moved to a small chiffonier in one corner, obviously unaware that I don’t usually drink. I took the easy way out and accepted the sherry, fino, as if nobody could possibly want anything else. It was too dry but I stuck at it, waiting for Maxwell Palmer to open up.

He was short, stocky and deep-chested. A Savile Row tailor had cut his barathea suit to hide an encroaching paunch. There was something uncompromising about the craggy features set with agate eyes and my memory stirred sluggishly. In spite of the lack of proportion he was a neat figure, with what remained of his still dark hair brushed straight back. I could now see that his military approach over the telephone had maligned him. He was still talking brusquely as we raised glasses, banalities, words volleyed out as if he didn’t know what to do with them but had to give the impression that he knew what he was at.

Maxwell Palmer was a very worried man. It showed in the rigidity of the fleshy face, in the tightly curled hands, in the pugnacious stance and in each aggressive step from those short, but seemingly powerful legs. Above all it showed in restless eyes that tried to avoid me and to escape the fact that he had to state his reason for wanting me here. He was fencing with himself, knowing what he had to do and making every excuse not to do it. I didn’t push him. A lot can be learned from a man in his state.

With the affluence around him it was clearly not a money problem. I spotted another year’s income in the solitaire tie pin. If the stone hadn’t been so fine it would have been vulgar, but it was possibly the only harsh note in an otherwise immaculate man. I didn’t know whether I liked him or not on first impression. There was something agreeable about his bull-terrier-like approach, yet something pathetic in the bluff slowly emerging from behind the façade. With a man as perturbed as he was it was difficult to detect the real person.

“Will you accept a cold lunch, Mr. Scott?”

Mr? He was faltering. “I’m not a great lunch-eater; a dinner man, really. Something cold will be fine.”

“Supposing I get a trolley brought in here? We could help ourselves. Would you object to that? The dining room is rather big and lonely.”

I told him that would be fine and he rang for starch-face and gave him orders. I had the feeling, though, that he wanted to stay here because he didn’t want to shift his ground. And perhaps the room, with its tiers of heavy books, was more soundproof. He replenished both glasses and waved me to a chair with one of those sharp forceful motions that could so easily be misunderstood. He sat in the only other chair in the room. But they were red leather Bergères in fine condition, and marvellously comfortable.

“You must wonder why I want to see you after all these years?”

“After all these years? We’ve met before?”

He gazed across at me in surprise, his small feet barely touching the Persian carpet beneath them. “You don’t remember?”

“I feel I should. But, no, I don’t.”

He smiled nervously, sipping his drink. Somehow he gained confidence from my admission; he noticeably relaxed, the fingers of his free hand uncurling, his eyes more willing to settle. He had been stealing himself and now, for some obscure reason, found no necessity.

“Dartmoor,” he said almost triumphantly.

Dartmoor! Maxwell Palmer? Inside? Doing porridge? I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t remember him as a con. “What were you in for?” I asked in disbelief and to give myself time.

He stared, screwed up again, and then he laughed, not humorously but with a strange relief. He spilled some of his sherry, put the glass down and wiped his lapel with a blue silk handkerchief pulled from his breast pocket. “Either your memory’s bad or I’ve changed more than I think I have.”

There’s nothing wrong with my memory but I waited for him to continue.

“I was on the parole board. Perhaps I had a little more hair then; a little less weight.”

Now I knew him. It was certainly going back a bit. I only vaguely remembered him; a face amongst others while I did my bit to give reasons for considering myself to be fit for parole. How had he voted? I hadn’t got parole then and I could still recall my deep disappointment.

He anticipated me. “I would like to have done more for you but there was strong feeling against recividists. I did what I could.”

Which hadn’t been very effective. I never got parole at any time, always serving full sentence less remission. So what could matey possibly want from me now? Perhaps he was being blackmailed and wanted me to nick back some letters. Before I could ask and before he could tell me the trolley was wheeled in after a discreet knock on the door.

Cold turkey and honey-roast ham; cranberry sauce and French mustard: fresh salad and French dressing with a follow-up of biscuits, Pumpernickel or French bread with a small, port-fed Stilton. The cutlery was mid-Georgian Queen’s pattern, the napkins Chinese linen. Very nice. I could wait a bit for Palmer’s explanation. I don’t normally like wine but there was a cool white German Rhine wine that was marvellous with the French bread and cheese. Maybe I drank it with the wrong course but I wasn’t complaining, and matey knew it was noticeably better than the stuff I used to get in nick. When I’d finished I did my best to brush the crumbs on to my Wedgwood plate but the odd one finished on the carpet, which, over the years must have seen far worse. The trolley was wheeled out and coffee wheeled in, and it was over this that Palmer raised his problem. It was a strange one. But they usually are when they come to me.

He had sunk back into himself again; not too much, having established his advantage over me, but he was uncomfortable and I think it was because of me, which was puzzling.

“It’s my son,” he said at last. By now he was pouring generous cognacs so I thought I’d make an exception and go all the way with him. I was holding the goblet in cupped hands when he enlarged. “He’s keeping bad company and I want him to stop it.”

Well, that was reasonable, but it was nothing to do with me. So I waited and when nothing else was added he finally exploded, “I want you to help me.”

This seemed a let-down. I stared blank-faced at him, not really understanding. “I don’t see what I can do.”

“Let me explain.” He was back to volleying words, each one a mini-explosion. “I’m an honest man; I’ve played the game all my life. All I ask of my son is that he does the same. No more. I’m wealthy; I have many successful business interests which he will inherit one day. Meanwhile I make him a fair allowance and try to teach him the value of money. I also want to ease him into one of the businesses as a start. I can get no reaction from him, not of the right kind at any rate.”

Why tell me? “Perhaps he’s simply not interested in money or business.”

“If it was as simple as that I’d know what to do. He’s interested in money. He doesn’t want to work for it.”

“He’s only got to sit back . . .”

“I’m only fifty-three. I have some way to go, I hope; too far for James to hold out.”

“He’s said this, has he?”

“We’ve had our moments of truth.”

I could feel Palmer’s embarrassment and frankly I wasn’t too comfortable myself. “I really don’t think this is anything to do with me.”

“No, it’s not. But if you’re to understand what you can do for me you must hear me out.”

He hadn’t intended to be brusque but he was rattled. “For some reason he’s openly defiant. It is almost as if he enjoys rebuffing me. Even making allowance for modern youth, permissiveness and all that bunk, there’s something unnatural about it.”

“Has he always been like this?”

“For the last year or so; since he left Cambridge.” Palmer sipped his coffee agitatedly. “That’s what’s so annoying; the lad is clever, he has ability. He is well able to earn his way. I have many uses for him.” He saw my glance and waved an impatient hand at me. “Don’t misunderstand. I’m not trying to bulldoze him into the business. If he had an aptitude for the arts or anything else that was honest, I’d back him to the hilt. But this is different: much more sinister.”

I let him breathe fire for a moment, his barrel chest heaving, then I asked, “Is there a Mrs. Palmer?” In one sense I mistimed my question. His anger became directed at me in a piercing stare that contained cold rage. He quickly recovered and passed a stubby hand over his eyes. The action seemed to switch him off, for when he next gazed across he was almost listless.

“No. Not now. You think he needs a mother’s touch; that I’m too heavy-handed?”

“Kids are apt to revolt against parents these days.”

“He’s not a kid, Scott. And he has a completely free hand provided he plays the game. Frankly, the company he’s keeping now frightens me to death.”

Honesty was clearly important to him. “Have you met them?”

“No. I’ve had a private investigator check on them.”

“What made you do that?” This worried me.

“Why should I pry on my own son? Perhaps some parents should do it a little more and avoid some nasty surprises. But I didn’t do it lightly. His refusal to work, erratic hours, sometimes away all night without explanation; the deterioration in his appearance, which was never tidy at the best of times; his worsening attitude and open contempt, his language. What was I supposed to do? Pretend he wasn’t degenerating?”

“I’m no judge, Mr. Palmer. Who’s he mixing with?”

He finished his drink wearily.

“That’s rather more difficult to answer. As far as I can judge there are two men whom he sees most. Both are late twenties or early thirties. One has a slight Midland accent, perhaps Birmingham, the other is more cosmopolitan. The only names I have are Phil and Laurie.”

“No surnames?”

“The agent maintains he operated at some risk to obtain what he did. He referred to them as ‘right villains’.”

I was nonplussed by all this. “What exactly did you want me to do?”

“To get him away from these men.”

“I can’t be wet nurse to your son. All I can do is sympathise; this is nothing to do with me.”

“I’m willing to pay a high figure for your help.”

“But why me?”

His face hardened.

“These men are criminals, Scott, and, from what we can gather, of an extremely unpleasant kind. You’ve been in prison; you know the type of men I’m talking about. Evil men. Now, from all accounts, you’ve reformed; the business you run is successful and respectable.

“You know what it’s all about, Scott. James won’t listen to me or anyone like me. There is a chance that with your experience you can make him realise his stupidity, tell him how it was with you.”

“You’re suggesting that he might listen to me only because I was a villain.”

“You had quite a reputation. It was one of the points that went against you at the parole board.”

“If I talk to him, that’s all I can do. I probably won’t succeed.”

“You’re sincere; that’s something he’ll understand.”

“Sincerity doesn’t seem to be what he’s looking for.”

“Scott, please. I have no other direction to turn.”

It was from the heart; a desperate plea from an anxious father. He had to be desperate to ask me. But it wasn’t my cup of tea. I took stock of this squat, powerful man and could understand, to some extent, his son’s revolt. The round jutting chin and the way he so precisely ejected his words more than suggested an unyielding attitude to any problem. The direct way he had approached me was probably typical of him; nor had he beaten about the bush once he’d raised his problem. To have done this to a complete stranger who was also an ex-con had taken some courage and not a little swallowing of pride. And illustrated his concern for his son. But these days offspring need compromise, the legacy of the heavy Victorian hand disastrous. Was Palmer capable of compromise? In one respect I felt sure that he was not.

I was inclined to opt out simply because I didn’t want to get involved in a family squabble and particularly a family I didn’t even know and was well removed from socially. Then I detected the tremendous uncertainty behind Palmer’s pugnacious outlines and felt sorry for him. For a man who took honesty so seriously he must have wrestled with himself before writing to me, particularly having seen me in prison garb behind Dartmoor’s forbidding walls. From his viewpoint he was scraping the bottom of the barrel to save his son. The analogy didn’t upset me: I was beginning to understand his reasoning. Yet I was still unhappy about it. That face of mine gave something away and Palmer detected my doubt.

“I really do need help, Mr. Scott. I have only my son’s interest at heart.”

“I would have liked his start in life.” It came out like acid before I could stop myself. I don’t know why I said it; it’s not like me to be bitter. Yet here was a Cambridge graduate apparently needing a sharp lesson in morals from an ex-creeper, and not so ex, here and there.

Palmer unbent enough to give a small, sympathetic smile.

“I understand your feelings. Yet you must also see the compliment attached to my asking for your help. The fact that you didn’t start life with his opportunities yet eventually found your way to a position of trust and with a reputation for integrity speaks volumes for your character.”

Here we go again, I thought; everyone telling me how honest I am. If only they knew; if only they had the barest experience of the pangs I suffered and the urges I had to fight, not always to win. I let it pass. I’d never get used to the inaccuracies of this sort of assertion invariably made by people who needed my help one way or another. But I did accept that he meant it, that he was not soft-soaping. Yet I still wasn’t sure. I was edgy for action but I didn’t see this as the right kind.

He must have anticipated me for his voice changed and he seemed more sure of himself when he said, “Y’know, I’ve always had a conscience about that parole board. I always felt that I could have pushed your case harder than perhaps I did. Yours was one of the few cases that remain with me. It’s only recently that I’ve made some amends.”

I had the uneasy feeling that he was about to spring something and he did.

“Over the last few weeks I’ve persuaded two of my smaller companies to try your travel service. I gather they’re well pleased. Perhaps it’s time to put the rest through you. And that is a very considerable amount.”

The crafty blighter. “Which companies are booking?”

He told me; they were the ones Charlie Hewitt had told me had come from nowhere. “You should have let me know your connection. I could at least have thanked you.”

“There’s no need. And it was too trivial an act to reveal myself; that’s the job of subordinates.”

“You own these companies?”

“I hold sway.” He left it just there.

His nicely timed pressure redirected the urge to break out from the slackness that had begun to stifle me over the last few days. A little action would do me good and Phil and Laurie didn’t sound too difficult, if they rated at all I’d have heard of them. “Where do I find him?”

His relief had the strange effect of stiffening his features even more. He stared at me rigidly and then suddenly relaxed and smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

“All I’m promising to do is to talk to him.”

“Of course. I’m not certain where he is; he’s moved more than once, but the detective agency will give you the details. I’ll telephone them while you’re on your way.”

This was too bustling for me, but when he told me how much he was willing to pay if I succeeded in knocking sense into his darling son I didn’t argue. If he was as generous to his son as he was being to me then James must be an absolute idiot to antagonise his old man like this.

I could understand him using a detective agency, for all they had to do was to keep an eye on his son. But to bare his soul to someone like me was something again; he had to be really desperate to do this, which suggested he was holding something back. I was curious and intrigued.

But the main reason that hooked me was the deep feeling of restlessness. From time to time I have these strong urges to break out, to go back to creeping, but this one was different; it was pushing me in another direction, as if I suddenly wanted to take somebody on to prove I was equal to it. It was a new feeling for me; I didn’t resist it. I think Maxwell Palmer’s little problem had cropped up at the right time. But I’d be a hypocrite to pretend to overlook the enormous amount of business at stake. If it meant little to him it meant a hell of a lot to me and my staff.

* * *

It wasn’t a bucket shop agency nor was it a ‘Pinkertons’. The Brooklyn Investigation Bureau occupied most of one floor in a block of offices just behind Oxford Street. It was to be a day of faintly ringing bells for the agency name made the second tinkle of the day. When I was shown into Jack Brooklyn’s office, I remembered rather more quickly than when trying to recall Palmer. It was not surprising; he was an ex-copper.

He froze halfway out of his chair; a big man with a full head of hair and still looking every inch a copper though his suit was much better tailored than in the days when I knew him. His smile of greeting was suspended on his face as his secretary closed the door behind me, then he shrugged his heavy shoulders and continued to come round the desk, a big hand extended.

As he pumped my hand his sharp eyes were probing over me and he said, “When I was told to expect a Mr. Scott, it never occurred to me it would be you, Spider. Long time no see. How have you got caught up in this?”

I told him, looking over the modern comfort of his fair-sized office, not missing his own healthy look of affluence. “Looks as though you’re off the beer and sandwiches at last. Doing well?”

He laughed; he still had all his own teeth. “I’ve less to worry me since I stopped chasing buggers like you. Oddly enough I was talking about you only the other day to Tom Moody. He likes you, though I can’t think why.”

“He never had to chase me.” I have a deep affection for Tom.

“I hear you’re off the game now.” It was really a probing question accompanied by the penetrating stare I remembered so well. Jack wasn’t too happy about my being there.

“If you’re in doubt,” I said pointedly, “ring Maxwell Palmer back as a double check.”

He did just that. When he put down the phone he looked at me curiously. “Nothing personal, Spider, but this is an odd case. A dangerous one.”

Jack Brooklyn was not the overstating kind; nor was there much he was afraid of. So I didn’t question his assertion. He lifted a slim, manilla file from his desk, waved it, then let it drop. “In here is what you need to know. There’s very little.”

“A few words with whoever was assigned to it would save me wading through.”

He continued to eye me oddly as if searching for something; he still wasn’t sure of me. I couldn’t blame him. The habits of a Detective Superintendent die hard. “That’s not possible,” he said.

“Why not?” I was aware now that he was deliberately withholding something.

“He’s in dock.”

“Well, unless he’s incapable of speech I’m willing to see him in hospital.”

“He is incapable of speech.”

I leaned forward, suddenly annoyed. “Are you trying to trap me?”

We stared each other out, then he broke off. “Yes, I was,” he admitted. “It looks like I’m up the wrong tree. But I’m making no apologies. I want to get hold of the bastards who beat up Brian Page. He was the investigator largely on the case. He was in the Force with me.”

“Beaten up? Palmer said nothing about this.”

“He doesn’t know. Brian was found on a rubbish tip early this morning. He was rushed to Charing Cross Hospital. They used boots, bars and acid. He’s in a bad way, Spider; it’s touch and go.”

“Christ! You suspected me?”

“I suspect everyone. It’s strange, you being brought in like this.”

“I think it’s strange, too. But I’ve had more time to think about it. When you get round to it, you’ll realise it figures.”

“I’m beginning to see it. But Brian’s still unconscious.”

“You think it’s tied up with watching Palmer’s son?”

“How can I know? He was on the case when he was hit. But until he can talk, and that looks doubtful, we won’t know for sure. Even if he recovers, the chances are that he won’t know who beat him. The other possibility is that he accidentally stumbled on to something else.”

“You put some of your boys on to it?”

“I’m not messing about with this, Spider. I’ve been on to the Yard. It’s their caper now. This may finish up as murder.”

I pointed to the file. “Phil and Laurie. Is that all you’ve got?”

“In the way of names. There’s not much else, though.”

“Do they mean anything to you?”

“Nothing. I’ve checked the names and descriptions with the Yard. As far as I can make out, they have no form. But names are meaningless, and descriptions can overlap.”

“No photographs?”

“On what started out as a minor case, a straight job of surveillance, there was no need. No one saw this happening. Brian thought they were a dodgy bunch, but our brief was merely to report the ‘type’ of company young James Palmer kept and where he went. They looked a rough crowd; he only learned their first names by getting within earshot on odd occasions. Asking around got him nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

Jack Brooklyn shrugged heavily. “All right, so it might have cost him his life.”

He was not being nearly so callous as he sounded. My day was occupied by meeting men with secret fears.

“May I use your phone?”

He waved a hand towards it. I rang Charlie Hewitt and told him I wouldn’t be in for at least two days; as usual he hid his relief well and told me they’d manage to cope.

I took the file home to my flat; the police had already lifted what they wanted from it. Jack Brooklyn was right, it didn’t amount to much. It started off promisingly enough, tracing James Palmer to a pad in Fulham and establishing some sort of night life, clubs, bars and so on, and later Phil and Laurie came on the scene, to be frequently in his company. It was a little after this that the reports became vaguer, too many gaps. James disappeared from his Fulham pad and must have done a moonlight flit because there was no sign of his moving. To Brian Page’s credit, and as a sign of his persistence, he traced James to a maisonette in north Kensington a few days later. Again, there was a move and this time a successful one for no further thread was produced. James Palmer had opted out. It was clear from the latter part of the report that James, probably informed by Phil and Laurie, knew that he was being watched; there were too many blanks, too many times when Brian Page lost him before he moved for the last time. If I was reading it right, he had finally found him yet again. Was it important enough to James Palmer to have a man nearly killed just to avoid his father knowing his whereabouts? There had to be another reason.

In the file was a photograph of James. I took a good look at it expecting to see a weak face. It wasn’t weak. His curling fair hair was long and unkempt even by modern standards. There was a direct stare about the light eyes that might have been due to camera work. He was in fact a good-looking boy. Firm brows, nose, jawline, the only visible discordant note being a certain petulance about the mouth. It’s difficult to judge from photographs, particularly studio shots as this one was. They didn’t portray movement; the way lips and eyes moved; or the sound of a voice, its whine or its assertiveness. Certainly, at first look there didn’t seem to be much wrong with him. He had none of his father’s features and I wondered if he resembled his mother. There had been no portrait of her in the library at Palmer’s house but there might have been one elsewhere. I wasn’t sure whether this had anything to do with it, except that Palmer had suffered a strange reaction at the mention of his wife. Was she dead or divorced?

As I sat there with the file, I suddenly smiled grimly. I was acting like a jack, and playing detective wasn’t exactly my game. Maggie would have been amused but she’d be away for some time yet. Which was another reason why I had itchy feet and felt like kicking someone in the teeth.

I took myself off to the new Charing Cross Hospital which was like a complex of Hilton hotels. It was so vast that if you went in with a headache you were likely to qualify for the geriatric ward before finding your way out. I made noises at reception and told them that I was Brian Page’s brother-in-law. It was some time before I was told that he couldn’t be visited. So I made more noises until a doctor came down to tell me that he was seriously ill and only immediate family could see him and then only for a moment. After insisting that a brother-in-law was immediate family I was allowed up.

He was in a private ward with a copper by his bedside with an open notebook which showed a blank page. I’d been prepared for Brian Page being bad but not for what I saw. What turned my stomach were the bandages across his eyes. Some of his hair showed, so presumably the top of his head hadn’t been battered. But it seemed that everything else had been. I could see nothing of his face, which was completely covered apart for airholes at mouth and nose. One leg was suspended, one arm in a splint. I didn’t like to think what they had done to his body. Boots, bars and acid, Jack Brooklyn had said.

The copper was a fresh-faced youngster and I felt him gazing at me. The way my face shows my feelings I wonder why I ever went into crime. He saw my horror. “Nasty business, sir.”

“Is he blind?”

“You’ll have to ask the doctor, sir. He certainly is at the moment.”

There was a drip feed and a blood drip suspended either side of him, popping periodically as though ticking away his lifestream. Surely this couldn’t have happened because the recalcitrant James had been watched? They must have been savages.

“Has he said anything?”

The copper flipped his notebook. “No. And I don’t expect him to. All we can hope is that he’ll mumble something in delirium. They tell me the worst is under the sheets; he’s been kicked about a bit.”

I left feeling that Jack Brooklyn had played it down. Yet I was glad that I’d called at the hospital. The warning was large and clear. When I telephoned Maxwell Palmer he was shuttered off back at the office and I told his butler I would call round again that evening after dinner, which I did. But not before Jack Brooklyn rang me at home. Brian Page had died. It was now murder and a particularly vicious, unreal, seemingly senseless one. For one man, an initially routine surveillance had ended his life painfully. And that was glossing over it.

I was tempted to drop out but although I hadn’t known him, I was boiling with emotion over Brian Page: a man who had served a full and varied police career without damage and had finished up on a rubbish tip like a squashed vegetable.

We went into Palmer’s library, and I noticed his already shocked state before I told him anything. He stood in the middle of the room, pale and restless, fingers stretched out in his jacket pockets making wings of his short arms. Then he glared at me. “If you’ve called to tell me the investigator is dead, I already know. The police have been here.”

“About James?”

“They wanted to know his whereabouts as Page was on his case. But he was also on other cases.”

I could see what was coming. “You don’t think the murder and your son are linked?”

“Of course I don’t. James couldn’t kill a rabbit. The police don’t think so either.”

“What about the men he’s associating with?”

“I can’t speak for them. They’re bad all right, but why on earth should they kill a man because he was trying to trace James?”

“A good question. Why should James keep on the move?”

He shrugged uneasily. “There’s a vast difference between the two things.”

“What do the police think?”

“They seemed to think that Page might have encountered old enemies. As a police detective he was responsible for many men going to prison.”

“How did you explain to the police why you were having your son located?”

“I told them the truth.”

“But not as much of it as you told me?”

He didn’t reply at first. Then he eyed me evenly and said, “I told them what was relevant. For instance, I didn’t tell them I’d been in touch with you.”

About to pour me a drink he suddenly changed his mind and stalked pensively up and down between the two Bergères, each pace a challenge. I stood watching him. Then he stopped and turned to me, and with his jacket now open I noticed the bulge over his waistline. “This is becoming ridiculous. How can anyone say that Page was killed because of my boy?”

“Because he was assigned to watch your son. Because he was on duty at the time he was beaten up.”

“That’s hardly a case.”

“Circumstantial, I agree. But it’s a queer bunch your son is mixing with.”

“Has anyone established who they are?”

“No.”

“Then how can anyone really know?”

“It was Page’s considered opinion. It was a very experienced opinion.”

“The police will no doubt interview them.”

“If they can find them. And when they do, I don’t suppose they’ll get far.”

He stood still, thinking it out. Finally he poured the drinks but neither of us sat down; neither wanted to. After seeing Brian Page, I needed the drink. Then he said:

“Where do you stand now, Scott?”

He was back to his army style, but it was a defence; he thought he knew the answer to his own question.

“How do you mean?”

“I suppose you intend to use this event to pressure more out of me.”

I almost threw the drink at him. “If I do that then your own judgment is open to question. You called me in.”

He nodded, then shrugged awkwardly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But the question is still valid.”

“My inclination,” I said, “is to run a mile. I don’t like any part of this and I’d be much happier out of it as from now.”

He gave me a quick look of concern and I could see that he was conjuring up a persuasive argument, so I saved him the trouble.

“But I told you that I’d speak to your son and I’m landed with it.” I also had in mind what I would lose.

He didn’t say anything, afraid now that I might change my mind.

“I’ve seen the photograph of your son; a good-looking untidy kid. Does he take after his mother?”

I was watching him closely, but he was better prepared this time, his features already set. Nevertheless, his tenseness was such that it spread an aura I couldn’t escape. There was something explosive at the mere mention of her.

“He looks more like her, I suppose. That’s as far as it goes.”

Conceding the likeness was totally grudging, and the qualification clearly appertained to character, I wondered what I’d touched on.

“That sort of knowledge won’t help you, Scott.”

He had turned to look me straight in the eye; he was gripping his glass as if trying to break it.

“It could do. If he was fond of her, mention of her might help.”

“I assure you that it won’t.”

“Is she still alive?”

He considered the question carefully, drained his glass and put it down deliberately. “Frankly, I’ve no idea.”

And I knew that the subject was closed.

Chapter Two

All I could do was to carry on from where Brian Page had left off. It was a decision that invited deadly implications. I began to hope that Maxwell Palmer was right, that Page’s death had no connection with James. But I wasn’t kidding myself.

I tried the Fulham address just in case he’d doubled back to it, then the north Kensington pad. He hadn’t returned to either. Doing it this way was to expose myself to trouble. I had to approach other tenants, which meant bandying his name around. This could well reach the wrong ears. There were no forwarding addresses. I wondered how Brian Page had tackled it but the secret had died with him.

Two clubs and a pub were mentioned on the file. The police would have tried them already. I tried all three that night. As I had already consumed my week’s quota of booze from Palmer that day, I wasn’t too welcome at any of these places. What particularly annoyed me was forking out heavy membership fees to clubs I was unlikely to visit again. Consoling myself with the belief that Palmer would pay, I ordered lager. Both clubs were West End and pricey, so James Palmer had to be getting money from somewhere. I hung around each in turn, staving off the hostesses and simply sitting alone. But it was too early for them to have warmed up so after about half an hour in each I took myself off to the pub near Finchley Road before it closed.

Many pubs have changed. In some of them the quiet drink has gone. This one was packed with a brash trio, trumpet, sax and bass thumping out discordantly in a corner while two bare-breasted teenagers wiggled and whirled in a Go-Go dance on top of two tables pushed together. If you enjoy watching that sort of young energy belting out at full steam, then I had to admit they gave full value. But I failed to see the attraction in men ogling and sweating over-made-up young girls substituting lack of talent with crude suggestiveness.

There were advantages. The distraction of the girls helped me avoid buying a drink and enabled me to fringe the crowd to seek out young James Palmer. Even through the wafting turbulence of foul cigarette smoke I could see that he wasn’t there. The music stopped, the girls stood panting with heaving young breasts, at last appearing to be the vulnerable youngsters they were; an illusion shattered as soon as they allowed, with smiles, the many questing hands reaching up under the pretext of helping the willing girls down. Finding it all very sad I went out into the street for a slice of fresh air, not too evident even then.

There was still plenty of time to return to the clubs, so I caught a Tube to Piccadilly. From there I walked past the lights of a crowded Shaftesbury Avenue. The night life was just emerging, the theatregoers on their way home. It was that amorphous time of night when two sections of society, almost diametrically opposed, overlap. It was a temporary confusion of moods and age groups which the next few minutes would resolve and London would be left to the kids, the queers, the brasses, the villains and the fuzz. Take it or leave it, that’s what was happening when I got there.

Shaftsbury Avenue borders Chinatown but I veered away from that into Frith Street and Soho proper towards Rex Reisen’s place in strip and clubland. And the best food in London. The busty nude glossies still reclined behind glass panels at the entrance to his club, and although the glass was kept clean, I noticed that he hadn’t changed the glossies for a long time. Someone ought to tell him. But not me. I rang the bell at the side entrance and waited for the crackle of the voicebox. I pushed the door and went up.

Two of his hoods, as usual, waited on the first landing, recognised me, grinned and gave me a perfunctory frisk; they knew I never carried arms. They ushered me into the plush waiting room I remembered so well. He always kept the two Canterburies filled with magazines and newspapers and I was amused to find that he still took The Times and Financial Times. Rex hadn’t changed his habits.

But he had changed his secretary. I’d heard that Penny Burns had returned to Scotland, which wasn’t surprising as I’d almost been topped through her. The new one was nothing to complain about and I noticed that Rex was still picking brunettes. His secretaries always appeared incredibly groomed and cultured. She took me into that huge office of his, three rooms knocked into one, and there was the little man himself, lost in the middle distance behind that massive desk. I trod the nightmarish, mauve-patterned carpet towards the two arms that were outstretched to me.

It’s a strange experience being hugged by the biggest mobster in London. As he gripped me and as I patted his back, I noticed that his bald head still went under the ultra violet and that he was tinting his side hair black. He wasn’t much bigger than a jockey; dark brows, restless brown eyes that could laugh but become steel-hard without warning. At the moment he reminded me of my first impression of him: a benevolent fox. He may have been a gangster but he had a twisted, deep sense of patriotism; I had once conned him into believing that I was in the British Secret Service, and so, on occasion, he did his best to help me and country. God help me if he ever found out. We hadn’t always been friends.

“Sit down, Spider. Take a pew, boy.”

He still hadn’t taken elocution lessons and his voice was grated cockney. He produced one of his huge havanas, ridiculous in those small, nimble fingers, and as he lighted it I noticed that his shirt cuffs were too long as usual, coming halfway over his hands. With his money you’d have thought he’d have had them better tailored, but he probably thought he was smart and gimmicky.

He got himself half hidden behind a pall of smoke and beamed at me. It was impossible to believe that not long ago he had been within a second of killing me, an act he could perform with the same pleasure as he now displayed. So you can see why I’m always on edge with him.

“What can I do for you, my old mate? Same business?”

He meant secret business. I could just see the Union Jack on its chrome stand by the window behind his head.

“Not this time, Rex.” He was disappointed, so I added, “It could turn out to be,” which brightened him, but I was playing with fire. “There are a couple of jokers who seem to have moved down here from up north. The only names I have are Phil and Laurie. No surnames.”

His face became impassive. “What’s their line?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know.”

“You seem to know bugger all, old mate.”

“A private investigator by the name of Brian Page was topped this morning. Found on a tip. Hammered to death. Heard about it?”

Reisen stiffened, his eyes still and hard. “You think these two did it?”

“It could be.”

“You working for Old Bill?” His friendliness had gone. You’re always on a hairline with Reisen. I’d once likened him to an old .38 with the barrel worn, the rachet on the cylinder gone and the trigger pressure far too light: highly unpredictable and deadly; it still stood.

“You must be joking. I’m involved with a third party who’s caught up with these jokers. I’m not looking for Page’s murderers.” Not in the sense that Reisen understood it, at any rate.

“Then what are you looking for?” Rex had gone cagey on me.

There was never really a light moment with him, no matter how friendly. I always had to watch every word because he was adept, with his unstable sharpness, at twisting them the way he wanted.

“I’m not really looking for them at all. But by locating them I hope to find my other party; someone’s son in need of care.”

“You’re talking like a bloody Jack.”

I grinned with an effort. “I’m trying to do someone a favour. No one gets hurt.”

He looked at me long and hard, the cigar half-obscuring his face, his eyes stone hard. The subject hadn’t pleased him; nor had my evasiveness.

“I can’t help you, Spider, old cocker. The names don’t mean a thing.”

But he’d taken far too long to reply. I needed my head examined for doing it but I tried to provoke him. “I heard a rumour they were padding around your manor.’ There was a half truth in that; the clubs were certainly in Reisen’s manor, although they didn’t belong to him. I received my answer from his complete lack of reaction except his frightening stare. I make no excuses for being afraid of him; violence is his business. But at least I think I kept it hidden.

“Sorry, matey,” he said evenly. “If I hear a whisper, I’ll let you know.”

This was the first time since he’d tried to top me that he’d held back from me. Up to now he’d fallen over himself trying to put right what he had seen as a terrible injustice. When I left, I just hoped I hadn’t put my big foot in it; that there was no connection between Reisen and Phil and Laurie.

* * *

There was still no sign of James Palmer at the two clubs when I returned to them. I wondered if the fuzz had them staked out. I poddled around aimlessly, wandering into other clubs, meeting up with the odd old contact. The last club I called at was the Freak Inn which was small and hadn’t been open too long. It was only round the corner from Reisen’s place, but I was pretty certain that it wasn’t one of his chain. By now there were too many youngsters there for my liking; it had become an open invitation for police raids organised to pick up kids in need of care and attention. It was the usual scene, dim lights to hide the colour of watered-down drinks and the poor skins of some of the hostesses; low ceilings to trap the smoke which swirled round the table lights like fog round streetlamps. Tables and chairs were close together, yet everyone seemed to be having a ball, their laughter and high-volumed talk rumbling round the ceiling like muted thunder amongst the rolling smoke clouds. Ironically the ceiling was painted deep blue, with twinkling electric stars forming most of the major constellations in the one hemisphere; that was something for their money. At one end was the usual rostrum for the strip and stage show which at the moment housed the only quality in the place: a black sextet producing a velvet touch of Chicago mainstream that nobody really listened to.

I had no trouble getting in but the bouncer hadn’t warned me that I’d be lucky to find a seat. I fought my way to a small, half-moon bar and just managed not to wince when the barman gave me my change for a small beer. I gazed round at animated, lost faces waiting for the next weak joke and the next stage show. I felt I was definitely getting old; I experienced nothing but pathos. At the same time, almost immediately, I spotted James Palmer.

I suppose I’d have seen him eventually, but it was luck that it happened so quickly. He was on the far side of the room near the stage and he was facing me. There were three others with him, a girl with long fair hair and a pretty, coarse face, sitting sideways to him so that I saw her in profile, a man seated with his back to me, and another girl largely obscured by him. It was hardly the time to trot across to tell him that I wanted a word about his father and the company he was keeping. Whatever the company was, young James was enjoying it with a lecherous leer as he fondled the blonde quite openly.

I detested him on sight. His photograph was flattering by omission. The looks were there, youth covering encroaching debauchery which even at this distance was beginning to show, but the photo had been misleading about the mouth and eyes which were rarely still and ever crude in their questing over the girl’s body. He obviously made some remark, for he laughed, and her hands flew to her breasts in mock modesty. But nobody was fooling anybody. His mouth was loose when he talked, and he seemed to be doing a lot of that. His fair hair was longer, even more unkempt, than on the print and he’d grown a wispy beard that was barely visible from where I was standing.

There was little chance of getting closer without being obvious, and I couldn’t really see the point — except perhaps to see the face of the other man. They looked set for the night. Now that I’d found him I had no intention of losing him, so it looked as if I’d have to sweat it out. After a while someone vacated a bar stool and I was able to sit down, relieved at least that I’d found him so quickly.

To be so openly on display in a place like this, he and the other fellow had to be in the clear over Brian Page. That didn’t mean they weren’t involved; merely that if they were they knew they could beat the rap. They wouldn’t be stuck here recklessly.

It was a long tedious wait that became more difficult as night became morning and the club thinned out. Hostesses, finding themselves free, latched on to me as fair game. In the end I was soaked by two of them, having now moved to a vacated table in order to appear part of the scene. I’d never known my wallet empty so quickly and leave me so sober at the end of it. The band was getting tired and playing less frequently; the stage shows, for want of a better description, had finished a couple of hours ago. As the atmosphere thinned and vision become better, those members left were taking more interest in each other. With my presence becoming more noticeable I left just before the hostesses, who, sensing that they’d rolled me for all I had, were about to desert me.

I’d kept enough back for a cab and spent some minutes in the chill night air waiting for a prowler. When I flagged him I asked him to wait round the corner from the club, promising to pay for his time. He didn’t like it, telling me he was getting mixed up in nothing funny, so I waved a credit card at him quickly in the bad light hoping he might think it was a police identity card. It’s not so much what you show but how you do it that convinces people. The pound note I gave him probably convinced him more. I waited at the corner so that I could see who left the club, while the cab hung back. It was such a long, cold, boring wait that the cabbie joined me, moaning loudly until I gave him another quid to keep him quiet.

James Palmer and his crowd were probably the last to leave. They stood outside the club, still the four who had been sitting together, swearing and laughing and all wearing light topcoats, which was more than I was. Their noise amplified in the otherwise empty street. I kept flat to the wall, hardly peering round it. A car purred somewhere behind me and I averted my face as it passed the cab and turned the corner, stopping outside the club. Palmer and his friends climbed in. I swore, wondering if the driver had seen me. I went back to the cab. Its sidelights were on, which was a giveaway, but there were other vehicles parked in line along the street, bedded down for the night. When I heard the other car pull  I told the driver to follow the XJ12 and to keep a safe distance.

At four o’clock in the morning it’s not easy to keep a safe distance without the help of other traffic; at that time, even in central London, there’s precious little. A good many advertising signs were helpfully now off but you’d have had to have straw in your eyes not to notice a car in such well lighted streets, even driving on sidelights. Consequently I made the cabbie hang back perhaps more than was wise. It was all a question of where the real risks lay and I couldn’t forget Brian Page so soon.

We turned left along Shaftesbury Avenue towards Holborn. The XJ12 was some distance ahead but when they were held up by traffic lights I made the cabbie turn off; the last thing I wanted was to draw up behind them. As they hadn’t switched on a blinker there was a fair chance they were going straight on. When we got back on to the main road there was no sign of them. The streets were empty, vision good: London had been turned upside down and had shaken out its contents. But for the lights it was an uncanny, dead world: slightly menacing in its quiet.

The driver wanted to pack up, so I drew out the reserve tenner I keep in the waistband of my slacks and waved it through the partition so that he could see it in his mirror. Where would they go in this general direction? Finsbury? Shoreditch? Islington? It was a three to one shot and I told him to head for Islington and to speed it up. Normally a cab couldn’t hope to outspeed most private cars, let alone an XJ12, but I had noticed at the time we were behind them that we hadn’t exceeded thirty. Real villains don’t like sticking their necks out for minor infringements, it brings unwelcome notice from the fuzz. As if to endorse my reasoning a patrol car went past slowly in the opposite direction. As soon as its rear lights had disappeared I cajoled the cabbie into greater speed.

We sighted them at the junction of Pentonville Road and Upper Street. At first we couldn’t be sure it was them; there were just tail lights, but the shape was right and as we got nearer so was the colour, a light grey. We could have crept closer to view the registration number but it was dicey. There was still the odd car about; another couple of hours and the streets would be transformed. They turned off Upper Street on to a badly lighted side road and we had no option other than to follow. The streets were like a maze and we had difficulty keeping contact as they made three more turns.

The streetlamps were poor here, which helped, so I tried to induce the cabbie to switch off his sidelights, but he wouldn’t. It didn’t help. There was little risk of being nicked in these back streets, but he wouldn’t have it. Most of the smaller streets had cars parked both sides, the terraced dwellings not permitting garage space, so we were virtually going up the centre of the street. Suddenly the car ahead pulled up. The cabbie braked and I swore at him so vehemently that at last he switched off his lights. We sat there in the dark watching.

Two people alighted, a man and a woman. Still a reasonable distance from them, I found it impossible to judge who they were but I simply had to take another chance. I waved the ten-pound note. “I want change,” I said. The cabbie swore he hadn’t got any, that he’d changed to large-denomination notes and was just going home when I’d flagged him. He was lying his head off, but he knew that I had little time to argue. Retrieving the two pounds I’d given him earlier I had to be content with that. I asked him to do the decent thing and wait a while before using his lights but once I was out, he switched them on, did a quick reverse and headed back as fast as he could. Fortunately, the other car had gone on.

The houses were railinged off, with sub-basements and three floors above. I stood in the line of parked cars, not wanting to show myself, and could just discern the verging figures of the man and woman. I hoped it was James. They were fumbling at a gate and I ran lightly up the inside line of the cars to get sight of the house. I should have been listening as well as looking and normally I would have been, but I suffer periodic lapses by not staying on the game; you never lose the art but sometimes, momentarily, overlook the finer touches. When I heard the soft whine of tyres on tarmac, I thought it was too late.

Diving into a gap between cars I swung round. The XJ12 was cruising up, a squashed shadow without lights and no engine noise; it was nicely positioned to block off the space between the parked cars. I crouched down, peering through a misted car windscreen, but if I hadn’t been seen they wouldn’t be there. It stopped and two men tumbled out. I wasn’t too worried because I’m fast on my feet despite my size. The car accelerated quietly and shot past the gap where I was crouched. It stopped a little farther on and the driver climbed out; there must have been two men in it already when they’d picked up James Palmer’s crowd at the club. That left a girl still in the car.

My best bet was to get to the car but that meant getting past matey in front. They were in no hurry, preserving their wind for when they reached me. I peered behind to see the two spaced figures coming up slowly; by the strange position of their right hands I guessed they had knives. Suddenly I wasn’t so confident. Matey, ahead, was coming towards me, arms outstretched like a gorilla; they’d have picked a good bone-breaker to be on his own. The possibility of the car left my mind. I noticed, too, that James Palmer had left his girl to play his part as he came forward behind the gorilla. So now there were four of them, with the car as a silent sentinel blocking off valuable space.

Ducking back through the line of cars I placed myself against the railings with nowhere to go. These boys didn’t want idle chat; they didn’t like being pried on, as Brian Page had discovered. My mouth dried as I helplessly watched them approach from both sides. A few yards from me, as if by a signal, they stopped. I was right about the knives. The gorilla was fitting something over his knuckles and I didn’t need to see what.

“I’m a police officer,” I said. “Put those knives away.”

One of them laughed. “You’d better blow your little whistle then.”

It crossed my mind to shout my head off but if I did they’d be on me like wild dogs and away before a window opened. They were waiting for me to make a move, a dash for it, so that I’d be in a worse position to defend myself. I felt the railings digging at my back. Still in my police role I said, “You haven’t done anything wrong yet, lads. Why spoil it?”

“Who sent you?” someone said. So they didn’t believe the police bit anyway. But it was an interesting question. I couldn’t really distinguish them in the dark. I could make out James Palmer because I’d concentrated on him in the club; his hair mass was identifiable. But they were all in shadow and I’d never be able to put a finger on them at an I.D. parade. Not that there was a chance of that happening; they were about to spring, I felt it. I was desperately groping along the railings behind me. As I moved a few inches towards the pair with the knives I said, “All I want to do is to have a few words with James.”

That could be taken so many ways that I couldn’t see it helping me. It also revealed that I knew at least one of them. And they wouldn’t like that at all. I was playing for seconds. Palmer gave me a couple more. “Did my old man send you?”

They were all edging closer.

“He wants me to have a quiet talk with you. That’s all there is to it.” For some reason this didn’t please any of them, least of all Palmer. There was an aura of evil about them that scared me silly. They weren’t going to let me go. I sensed it and tasted dread. There was no discussion and their understanding of each other seemed complete. There would be no more questions. As I waited for them to spring I located the catch on the iron gate and depressed it.

Whether they heard it I’ll never know but they sprang at me at that moment. I hurled myself through the gate, rushed up the short flight of steps to the porch, mounted the low wall encompassing it and jumped across the dark, dustbin strewn valley of the basement to land on the sill of the big ground-floor window. They were close behind me but hesitated at the jump.

They were wise. I had trouble with it, almost falling back into the basement and suctioning the walls either side of the window just in time. I hung there, crouched in a difficult position while they stood on the porch watching me; two of them ran back to the street. They probably thought I was cornered and were just waiting for me to tire. Then one of them thought that I’d try to get through the window, for he raised his knife and warned me not to move.

I had to move. It was a calculated risk and I hoped that matey’s aim would be impaired by the bad light; this particular joker was one of those who had returned to the street, so he had me in full view. As I didn’t fancy a knife in my back I jumped as he spoke.

The water pipe was too far away for me to lean over and grab it. It was a suicidal move but so was staying on the sill. I grabbed the pipe with both hands as the knife sliced the top of my shoulder, hit the brickwork with a spark, and clattered down on to the dustbin in the basement. What saved me was sliding down the pipe as I tried to get purchase; the knife had been aimed to get me as I reached the stack. The flesh was burning off my hands as I tried to check my fall, gripping the pipe as tightly as I could thereby setting up more friction, and digging my toecaps into the brickwork.

The two jokers on the porch rushed down to the basement to grab me as I landed. It was the sort of incentive that works wonders when the fear of God is in you. If I couldn’t check my fall, they’d get me. Gritting my teeth against the pain of searing flesh, I put everything into it and at last managed to halt the slide. But it wasn’t enough. My feet were within grabbing distance of the two in the basement who were scrabbling round the bins to get at me. Better-positioned now, I started to climb, and as I lifted myself beyond their reach, I found the pain more tolerable. One of them mounted a dustbin to get extra height and managed to grasp my foot but I kicked his hand against the wall and he fell off the bin with a muted oath.

I don’t know why they didn’t throw the other knife; unless the character I’d kicked had been the second knife-man. As I climbed higher there was less chance of them risking it anyway. To fall from that height on to the bins would make a hell of a noise and they’d already made too much. I heard one of them say. “He’s a bloody creeper,” which pegged him as a villain anyway and once and for all destroyed the myth of my being a policeman. But I wasn’t out of it yet. They were still there, and I was halfway to nowhere.

I kept climbing until I reached the guttering, hooked myself over, a dangerous move at any time as it has to be done horizontally with little to cling to and a fatal drop below, and squatted on the slope of the roof. Four pale blobs peered up at me. They were a long way down. I couldn’t stay there and any movement I made could be seen by them. All they had to do was wait. I suctioned myself up the tiles, feet and behind forming gripping pads and hands helping balance and direction. Reaching the angle, I straddled the roof and noticed that they had now crossed the road to keep me in sight. I eased my way down the other side and out of their vision.

It was now a matter of patience and strategy. There were short, fenced gardens on this side backing on to the gardens of houses in the parallel street. If young Palmer was really billeted farther along, there was nothing to stop him diving into his own back garden and shining a torch along the roof. I considered this. The houses were old and big and probably divided into maisonettes or flats. There was a reasonable chance that each garden belonged only to one flat, possibly the ground-floor tenant who had access to it. It was surmise, but it was all I had. Using my rooftop shuffle I edged towards the point where I had seen Palmer and the girl at the gate, mainly because they would expect me to go hell for leather in the opposite direction.

When I stopped, I had no means of knowing whether I was near the point or not. But I was certainly nearer than I had been. On this side of the houses all was total darkness. It was still only half past four. I edged down to the guttering, my feet resting lightly on it and noticed a vague glow to my left. Easing along the roof until I found a downpipe, I climbed over the edge on to it, held on with my feet against the wall and leaned out as far as I dared. This put a great strain on the pipe and my arms. There were two lighted windows and I could make a fair assumption that the girl had entered the house or someone was up early.

I climbed back on to the roof, giving rusted muscles an overdose of work and edged to the next down pipe, where I climbed over again. By this time I was feeling the strain but had only to remember the four waiting for me below to keep me going. My judgment was right and I was next to one of the lighted windows; the smaller one I knew to be the bathroom from the pipe leading out below. I eased one foot on to the sill to take the strain and waited.

Only seconds later the bathroom light went out. I barely hesitated before stepping across. Using my jackknife I had the window open at once and was in. The door was ajar and I could hear someone moving about in the adjacent room. I trod cautiously, testing for creaking boards, and crept on to the landing. A door was partly open and I saw a reflection of a girl in a cheval mirror. It was as good a time as any, as she was half naked, admiring herself in simpering poses. She hadn’t a bad figure; a bit thin in the thighs but good from the knees down and waist up. I stepped straight in and closed the door behind me.

She whirled round in fear, her mouth wide open to scream.

Chapter Three

“One peep and I strangle you,” I said evenly. It was as good as a hard slap across the face.

The scream stayed unreleased in her throat but her mouth remained open and her sky-blue eyes were wide, a good margin of white around the iris. Her trembling hands had flown to her mouth, leaving her small breasts exposed, which evidently held no priority in her present fear. She had cleaned her face of make-up to reveal the wide pores of a badly treated skin. I grabbed a flimsy negligée from the bed and threw it at her. This seemed to reassure her as it was meant to do. Her mouth closed but her wide lips were still slightly parted in fear.

“I’m not here to hurt you but I will if you’re stupid. Sit down.”

She sat on the bed; her legs looked better crossed. She clung to the negligée as if it could protect her.

“What’s your name?” I demanded.

“Kathy.” Her voice shook. “What do you want?”

“Relax. I want a word with James.”

Kathy stared at me, still scared but subdued. Without the paintwork even her youth didn’t help her much. Her long blonde hair was natural, her best feature. “Are you the man who followed us?”

“They’re out looking for me now. Will James come up here?”

She nodded slowly. “Jimmy will be up. You’d better go quick.”

I laughed shortly. “He doesn’t scare me like the others. Will they be up?”

Kathy looked aggrieved and shook her head.

“Then I’ll have to wait for him,” I said. “Is there a phone here?”

“In the next room.”

“Show me.” I was trying to use a tone that would keep her wondering and toeing the line. It seemed to work. She got up nervously and I stood back from the door. We entered a shadowy living room with some sort of carpet. The telephone was on the window ledge. The room faced the street and I didn’t let her put the light on with the curtains drawn back. The only reason I could see the phone was because Kathy had pointed to it and it was white. I made her come to the window with me; I didn’t want her running out and bolting doors.

“I don’t intend to hurt Jimmy,” I reassured her. “I just want to talk to him.” Reaching the phone, I found the wire, followed it back to the wall and pulled it from its casing; I could still feel that knife nicking my shoulder. My hands were sore and I’d taken a layer of skin off in two patches. Keeping one eye on Kathy I peered obliquely through the window but all I could see at street level was the odd dull reflection on car tops. There was no sign of the four, nor could I locate the XJ12. Yet they had to be down there somewhere. We returned to the bedroom.

Closing the door, I waited behind it while Kathy moved over to a whitewood dressing-table, picked up a hefty hairbrush and stood there watching me uncertainly. Her fear for herself had largely gone; by the look of her she’d had a fair amount of roughing up in her young life, but she was still nervous, perhaps now for Jimmy.

“You’re not thinking of trying to hit me with that thing, are you?”

She smiled uncertainly and started to brush her long hair, her gaze on me, not the mirror.

I looked round the room; untidy, cheap, the unmade bed with its crumpled sheets tossed back. If Kathy had started her adult life in such rooms, what standard would she set as she grew older? I guessed she was not yet twenty, but it was based on insight; she looked twenty-six or -seven.

“Is this the best you can do?”

She stopped grooming herself and dangled the brush listlessly between her legs, her bright eyes spoiled only by the bruised smudges under them. “It won’t always be like this.” She spoke quite well, but with a commonness that suggested she had acquired the accent. She was well on the way down and it mystified me.

“Do you love him?”

The question startled her as if she had never considered it and she probably hadn’t. Anyway, she didn’t answer.

“Ever been inside?” I continued conversationally. I’ve never been adept at small talk and didn’t seem to be getting anywhere this time either. But she bridled indignantly, her back straightening and for a moment I saw an image of a young girl as yet untainted; it was shattered as she retorted, “No, but you look as if you have.”

“We carry it around with us,” I said easily. “You continue the way you are and you’ll know what I’m talking about.” I was sorry then. I can never stand people preaching to me, trying to straighten me out, and here I was doing it to Kathy. Of the two of us at that moment I was the more embarrassed. But my main concern was for myself.

I heard the footsteps on the stairs well in advance. I took out the knife, hating myself for it and dismayed at the return of fear in Kathy’s face. She hadn’t heard Jimmy’s approach and thought she was being threatened.

“It’s not for you,” I said quickly. “And it’s not for him either if you behave. Sit on the stool and face the mirror. Brush your hair.”

I think she heard him then, for she did as I instructed, watching me through the mirror, but curiously rather than nervously, while I listened at the door. He wasn’t being ultra cautious in his tread but he was quiet as if his main concern was not to wake the other tenants. Footsteps can tell a lot, enough in this instance to inform me that he didn’t know I was here. There was no hesitation on the landing. He came straight up to the bedroom door, opened it, his eyes on Kathy, and closed it behind him without looking round.

“We lost the bastard,” he said angrily. “God, I’m shagged out.” He went up behind her, took the brush from her hands and started to stroke her hair. He may have felt my presence or interpreted something from the girl, he swung round quickly, half crouched, surprise and fear intermingled. I was leaning against the wall, the knife still in my hand. He showed much more fear than the girl had done, his eyes darting all over the place, his loose lips working, his tongue trying to restore their colour.

“Not so brave on your own, Jimmy?” He couldn’t know I abhorred violence and, being over six feet and big with it, couldn’t have reassured him in any way. Mental confrontation was different; in a way I was enjoying myself, happy to see him squirm and hating his guts for it.

“What do you want?”

I was hoping that Kathy was picking up new points from her hero’s timidity.

“I told you in the street. I want to talk.”

“Then put the knife away.” He couldn’t keep the tremor from his voice. Close to I couldn’t imagine how I ever considered him good-looking; there was no real character in his face but plenty of evidence of a lack of it. Maxwell Palmer must have paid a mint to the photographer who had taken the studio shot. His eyes weren’t clear at all: they were muddy grey and at the moment bloodshot. His tie was loose, his shirt open. From this range the wisp of beard looked dirty and ridiculous.

“I’ll put the knife away when I know you’ll listen.”

“I don’t mind listening.”

“You’ve changed your mind since we were outside. You wanted me topped then at the very mention of it.”

“Oh, rubbish!” He tried to laugh. “It was just a giggle.”

“Just a giggle too was it for Brian Page to be left on a rubbish tip — dead.”

He went deathly white. “Brian Page?”

“You probably didn’t know him by name but I can see you know who I mean. Didn’t they mention they’d topped him when they told you there was no more need to worry about being watched?”

Kathy had spun round on the stool and was staring up at him. She, too, had lost colour.

“I don’t know what you’re on about.” Jimmy had sunk to the edge of the dressing table.

“Do you always lose your guts when you hear something you don’t know about? You’re scared silly.”

He ran a hand over his mouth, his eyes still roving but now wild with unease. “We can talk in here. Kathy can wait in the front room.” Kathy rose and he gripped her by the arms, swinging towards her as he tried to convey a desperate message.

“Tell him that the phone’s ripped out, Kathy,” I said. “Tell him you can’t call the cavalry while we’re talking in here.”

“You bastard,” he flung out at me. Kathy sat down again.

“Which is much better than being spineless. Jimmy, I’ve been a villain most of my life. I know more about villains and villainy than you’ll ever know. I’m not a poor sod of a private eye who’s been done for no other reason than he located you for your father. So don’t try any funny business with me, kid: I can conjure up enough muscle to put the fear of God in the lot of you. You come into the next room with me like a good boy and let Kathy go to bed.”

I opened the door and stepped into the small hall. Jimmy followed sullenly, wanting to have a go at me but lacking the guts. Each insight into him filled me with more contempt. He preceded me into the front room, and I made him pull across the curtains while I stood by the light switch at the door. When I flicked it on he was gazing at the broken end of the telephone wire.

“You needn’t have done that.” He was too late for bravado. I grabbed a wooden-backed chair, placed it behind the door, and sat. I wanted to be within listening range of Kathy in case she sneaked downstairs to call up the reserves. Somehow, I didn’t think she would. I motioned Jimmy to sit in a brown, shabby armchair facing me. He glared, perhaps beginning to sense my soft centre, but not willing to back his judgment. Anyway, he could be wrong if I was pushed too far. When it comes to the crunch we all protect our own.

“This shouldn’t take long, for two reasons,” I said amiably. “The first is that I think I’m wasting my time, the second that I can’t stand the sight of you. I promised your father that I’d talk to you and I like to keep my promises.”

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, easier now that the physical danger had passed. He sneered, “Have your say and push off.” It was loud enough for Kathy, listening at the door, to hear; he was trying to re-establish his image with her.

“Well,” I said “your old man seems to think you’re keeping bad company; after tonight he’ll realise just how much he’s playing it down. You’re in above your head, Jimmy boy. I don’t know who your friends are but the way they played it tonight you’re going to finish up with a life stretch in a top security before long. No one can make you go home but why top a bloke for reporting your whereabouts to your father? What possible difference can it make?”

I’d unsettled him again but this time he was prepared. “Do you always jump to conclusions? That’s a dreadful thing to say.”

“It was a dreadful thing to happen.”

“It’s nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know the man. If he was the one following me then his death is sheer coincidence.” His gaze roved the worn patterns of the carpet as he struggled for emphasis. “For God’s sake, your commonsense must tell you that no one would kill a person for that reason.”

I nodded carefully. “That’s right. And that’s what worries me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t topped for following you but for what he found out, or was about to find out about your association with these erks Phil and Laurie. And that means you’re up to something pretty evil to have to take such a step. Why do they protect you so zealously, Jimmy?”

“To keep interfering fools like you off my back. I’m fed up with my old man and his bloody pestering.” He sat there bridling, then suddenly became more conciliatory. “Look — I don’t know your name . . . ?”

“I don’t have one. It’s usually a number, but carry on.”

“I don’t know anything about Page except that he was following me — as you’ve been doing. How the blazes would you like it day after day? The company I keep is my business, good or bad.”

“If you’d been through my spells in nick that wouldn’t have come off your tongue so easily.”

“It’s not like that, and it’s still my business.”

“True,” I said. “It is. But you can’t stop your old man’s concern for you. He’s straight and he sees you going bent and he wonders why.” I waved my arm round the room. “I don’t understand you. You could live in luxury. If it’s Kathy you’re worried about, the old boy would put her on the payroll just to get you back. He’d set up a pad for you both. Instead, you choose to live in a pigsty like this and mix in with villains of the worst kind.”

As I watched him, he transformed. His face tightened, his eyes steadied and with the hate that so visibly gripped him I got ready for him to have a go at me. Then I realised that his hate wasn’t directed at me. In a fierce, tight voice he said:

“He can stick his bloody money. I don’t want it. And don’t come this crap about him being straight. God, I could laugh.”

I watched him for some time; his feeling wasn’t simulated but real and deep. “What happened between you two?”

His gaze snapped back to me. In this mood he worried me; like this he had no fear of me or anyone. “Did he tell you that his concern was only for me to lead an honest life?”

I nodded.

“Then ask him about his honest life.”

“All right, I will. Would you like to know his answer?” It was an excuse to come back to him if I needed to.

“I know his answer. He’ll say he’s never done a dishonest act in his life.”

Well, I thought, I’ve done what I promised. I wasn’t going to get any further with this; there was too much I didn’t know, and I couldn’t see either of them telling me. “What about your mother?” I asked. “Do you ever see her?” It was a shot in the dark and brought about another change in him. The hate merged with a kind of childish bewilderment. His voice softened as if he’d suddenly wearied of the whole thing.

“Ask him that too. Ask him what happened to my mother.”

“Don’t you know? I mean, is she alive or dead?”

His emotions had almost turned full circle and he was glaring at me balefully again. “I’ve never met her. I don’t know the answer to your question. She doesn’t exist for the old man, not even her memory. I’ve never been able to find out from him.”

I knew the feeling. “He must have his reasons.”

“Sure.” He waved an arm wildly. “But no one knows them.”

“If she’s alive it should be possible to find her. Is that what you want?”

Suddenly he sat upright, his mind on the present. “I think you’ve exceeded your brief. You wanted to talk about the company I keep; well, you’ve talked. And I’ve listened. I think that’s an end of it, don’t you?”

I had to agree. I rose, flipped the knife blade back and dropped it in my pocket. “I still don’t understand you,” I said. “You’re a Cambridge graduate. How can you sink so low? What I wouldn’t have given for your advantages in life! It makes me sick to think about it.”

“You seem to have done all right,” he said drily: then with a sneer, “The old man must have the greatest confidence in you, or he wouldn’t have used you. I’ll bet you’ve retired from the game; I can’t imagine him using a real live crook, not father.”

“I’ll report back,” I said, “that it’s no dice. You really hate his guts, don’t you?”

He climbed from his chair, his confidence back, pleased with the way he’d handled me, and smiled briefly. “It must show,” he said derisively.

I left him to it, opening the door quickly, just catching sight of Kathy scampering back to the bedroom. By the time I reached the street dawn was breaking, shedding pink reflections into the dark cavities of aged buildings. My only problem now was to pray for an unlikely cab or hope that the Tubes had started up. I felt as if I’d just emerged from a dank cellar of dust and cobwebs.

* * *

I saw Maxwell Palmer at lunchtime after three hours’ sleep. I wanted to get it out of the way once and for all, sorry that I’d ever agreed to help. He provided the usual lunch but it didn’t taste the same, my mood was too sombre. I told him Jimmy’s reaction to my call, omitting, at this stage, the problem I’d had in seeing him at all. If he was worried before, he was certainly more than that now. He paced the room on his short, purposeful legs, glass in hand, so distracted that it was clear he had temporarily forgotten I was there. The only thing in common the Palmers had was positive reaction to the mention of the other. I suspected that was the only common denominator. When he stopped in his tracks I knew that something was coming.

“You’ll have to see him again,” he snapped, then, realising his tone, added, “You did well, Scott, at least you spoke to him.”

It was time to fill him in. “I was nearly killed. Three others tried to stop me.”

“Oh, nonsense; they wouldn’t have gone so far.”

“Brian Page,” I reminded him.

“There’s no evidence and you know it.”

So, I’d found a second denominator. “Like your son, you’re a great one for burying your head in the sand. He didn’t believe it either. The truth is neither of you want to. Anyway, I’m through. I did what you wanted.”

“I’ll double your fee.” He was desperate again.

“I don’t want a fee. It’s no use to me dead. And nor is your business. You can have what I’ve done on the house. All I want is my expenses.” I produced a sheet of quarto on which I’d jotted down everything I could remember spending; but you always lose out, there are always things you forget.

“I’ll treble it. The next time you might be more successful.”

“No,” I said emphatically. “I’ve had enough of your son and you. Neither of you has told the truth; you’ve both held back.”

“Just what do you mean?” His chest puffed out indignantly, his fleshy face trembled.

“There’s something going on between you and Jimmy that you’re both playing close to the chest for your separate reasons. I’ve no intention of finishing up as dead paté between the two layers of crust. I’m not sandwich filling for your little games.”

“You’d better explain yourself.” He wanted to say more but he was still misguided enough to imagine he could retain my help.

“Jimmy asked me to put two questions to you. One, he seemed to cast a slur on your honesty: two, he wants to know where his mother is.”

Losing colour was evidently a family trait but Maxwell was made of much stronger stuff than his son. It was true that he went white, but he lost no dignity in doing so. With a self-control I had to admire, he slowly drained his glass, replenished it and suggested in a firm, strong voice that I might like another myself. It had taken a lot of doing. What worried me was that I hadn’t separated my questions; I didn’t know which one had hit him hardest. I refused the drink and waited for him to speak.

He looked me straight in the eye and I detected nothing to dislike or make me suspicious. “Mr. Scott, I am as honest, I think, as it is humanly possible to be; even in business and often to my detriment. I believe in honesty and uphold it. I believe myself to be incapable of doing someone a dirty deed. If that sounds melodramatic and antiquated, I can make no apology. Honesty to me is all-important. If my son has some views on the subject then he should voice them, not hide behind malicious innuendoes, for there is nothing more damaging or easy to do than the planting of suspicion.” He clearly believed what he was saying.

“Yet you weren’t honest with me over your wife when I mentioned her.”

He waved a hand impatiently. “You must understand the word. A reluctance to discuss my former wife is not dishonest. If it had anything to do with what I want you to do, I would tell you, however distasteful.”

“I believe it has some bearing,” I said quietly, “or Jimmy wouldn’t have raised it.”

He frowned. It seemed to me that Maxwell Palmer was incapable of tackling any emotional problem without remaining on his feet, as though he found some reassurance in movement or the feeling of standing four-square.

“I don’t agree with you. James never met his mother; she could have had no influence on him one way or the other.”

“Perhaps he missed having a mother.”

“I’m sure he did. But not that woman. She was evil; she left me soon after his birth. The divorce came through three years later, the statutory period for desertion at that time.”

“He must wonder about her. If you refuse to discuss her, he might hold it against you.”

“He possibly does. But what can I tell him? I should have told him she was dead, for all I know she might be, but that would have been a lie. However, this cannot have any real bearing on what he is now doing. If he feels so strongly about her there’s nothing to stop him trying to trace her. No, it’s an excuse to hide a weakness of purpose, a reluctance, like so many young men today, to conform. All the same, I do believe that he is under some evil influence; and it’s this that I want to stop.”

If he wasn’t under their influence, he was certainly part of them and I wouldn’t have called evil too strong a word. “It’s something that he’ll have to sort out for himself. Personally, I don’t think he’s worth worrying about.”

I expected him to spring to his son’s defence but instead he shrugged in acquiescence. “I must still try,” he murmured. “Everyone is worth some effort.”

I moved over to the door. “You can send the cheque on, if you will.”

He snapped out of his reverie and quickly produced his cheque book.

“I’m sorry.” He glanced at my account and scribbled out a cheque, using the chiffonier as a desktop. I caught sight of the figures as he handed it to me.

“This is far too much.”

“It’s not; you might change your mind. Let me know if you do.”

I opened the door, sorry for him, as I’d been from the outset. I felt a heel but rescuing delinquents wasn’t my scene. From the open doorway I said, “Why don’t you see him yourself?”

He smiled bitterly, the first trace I’d really seen in him. “I did so many times before he left. Each time he derided and ridiculed me. I don’t know what he expects from me. Whatever it is I can’t change now. I am what I am. How would you rate my chances if I went to him now?”

I closed the door quietly while old starch-face hustled forward to show me out.

* * *

It was some time before I realised I was being followed. I’d left Palmer’s house deep in thought and unhappy that he couldn’t resolve his problems, otherwise I’d have picked up my tail much earlier. For one reason or another I’ve been followed often enough in my time; on foot, by cab, car, bicycle, even over rooftops. From Mayfair I walked to Baker Street Underground station, which is a good haul on foot. I was actually on the train before I caught this joker watching me by pretending to read the adverts over my head. It was then that the old brainbox produced odd flashbacks I’d subconsciously recorded along the route.

I took a sudden and direct interest in matey that almost slayed him; he didn’t know where to look. He was standing near the doors with his hand on the rail. There were vacant seats and I myself was seated, but he obviously wanted to be in a position to move quickly. I had to be certain so at the next stop I got off and got back on again. And so did he, but farther up the coach this time. I’d made it easy for him, not cutting it too fine. I strap-pulled myself along to the end of the coach where he was studiously reading an advert for secretarial courses.

“Taking up typing?” I asked him politely. I thought he was one of the three men of the early hours, but I couldn’t be sure. He was wearing tight dungarees and a loose jacket. His face was pinched and unhealthy with eyes that had the vacant look of a hood, and cruel, thin lips. I wondered if he kept a knife in the studded belt around his narrow waist. He ignored me, pretending that he hadn’t heard. So, I nudged him not too gently and gave him a big grin.

“Your late nights are showing,” I said. “You ought to sleep more.”

I’ve never known it fail with this sort of character. To be approached in public like this throws them completely; they belong to dark alleys and back-stabbing at night. So matey was flummoxed, not knowing what to do and unwilling to be threatening in front of a trainload of people. Nor was I taking much chance in making a mistake. Only Jimmy Palmer’s crowd knew that I’d been acting for his father. It was logical that they could pick up my trail from Maxwell Palmer’s pad.

“Who are you?” he demanded unpleasantly, trying to keep his voice down.

“That’s what you’re trying to find out, isn’t it? Who and where? You go back and tell Phil and Laurie that you’re no good at it.”

“I don’t know what you’re on about, mate. You a nut or something?”

Midland accent. Under thirty. A face I didn’t know but wouldn’t forget. I left the train three stops before the one I needed and shook him off fairly easily before returning to the station and going home. But why should I be followed at all? I constituted no danger to them. Or did they think I knew something that I didn’t?

* * *

I was missing Maggie terribly. I’d had a letter from her and it was clear, unbelievably to me, that she was missing me too. But she didn’t see her parents often, both of whom took a dim view of me, although we’d never met, and once in a while she spent a holiday with them. On my own like this I usually got round to thoughts of marriage. I reckoned I was going straight enough to take the plunge. It was only when she was near me, when I could see her innocent clear face, the complete trust of me in her, that I back-pedalled, not wanting to lumber her. I was watching the box when the doorbell rang. When I answered it Maxwell Palmer was standing there.

At first, I found him pathetically moving. He was wearing a polo-neck with a loose cardigan over it. He looked out of place on the doorstep, so I let him in.

I motioned him to one of my new chairs. He was trying to build up an approach.

I gave him a scotch and water and put the coffee percolator on. I switched off the television, cutting across his apology, assuring him I was glad of the interruption. In return he assured me that he hadn’t called to badger me into changing my mind but about another matter.

The cardigan didn’t hide his middle like his suits but he was fairly relaxed as he eyed me cautiously over his glass. “Cheers.” He sipped while I drank my slimline. “Two men called on me this evening; obnoxious creatures; they showed me these.” He pulled out some slips of paper from his cardigan jacket and passed them across.

They were I.O.U.s, all for hefty sums, all signed by his son.

“Tot them up,” he suggested.

I did and whistled. “Fifteen thousand pounds. That’s a lot of bread.”

“Gambling debts,” he said.

I gave him an old-fashioned look but he was playing it straight.

“They’ve threatened to do Jimmy over unless you pay up, right?”

“Yes.”

“Describe them to me.” He did, most carefully and in some detail.

“One of them, the one that sounds like a gorilla, was amongst those who were trying to top me last night. They are the villains that Jimmy’s knocking around with. It’s a con.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Believe me,” I assured him. “Jimmy’s in cahoots with them.”

“The chits could be genuine. James has signed them, after all.”

“Nuts,” I asserted. “Jimmy’s probably part of it; extortion.”

“You don’t think much of him.”

“I don’t think anything of him. For some reason he’s trying to get at you. Just don’t pay. Tell the police.”

He sighed wearily. “The last thing I want to do is to involve my son with the police.”

“But he deserves it; it might be the lesson he needs.”

“Possibly. Nevertheless, I can’t do it. Nor do I want to involve myself with them. It’s publicity I can do without.”

“Then you should see your lawyer; let him advise you. Don’t you know any top brass in the police who could help you on the side?”

“The type of uncomplicated life I lead doesn’t bring me into contact with them.” There was the barest kind of distaste in his tone as if coppers were way below him. Yet he wasn’t a snob or he wouldn’t be sitting with me.

“Then why tell me?”

“You’re the only . . .” he floundered, so I cut in with a grin, “Villain.”

“Yes. You’re the only one I know with whom I can discuss this. You know the form. And I’m sincere when I say I like and trust you.”

“But you won’t listen to me. Call their bluff. Tell them to get stuffed. They won’t do anything.”

“They could beat up James. I wouldn’t want that. From what one reads they maim people for life.”

Well, that was true. It also occurred to me that if they were using Jimmy solely for this little racket and it went sour, unless they found another use for him, they might well write him off. He might hang around with them but he would never really be one of them. I could now see why Kathy and he were willing to endure near squalor; they didn’t expect it to last for long. How much would Jimmy’s cut be?

“I can’t see your point in calling, Mr. Palmer. You don’t want my advice but merely to tell me about it.”

“Precisely. There’s no one else I can tell who would remotely understand. If this seems strange to you, you must accept that the friends and business acquaintances I have are rather old-fashioned; they wouldn’t understand the world we are now discussing. To them the issue would be clear-cut — the police and nothing less. But you know only too well the type of person my son is involved with. It helps just to talk.”

More to the point, he simply didn’t want his friends to know. I could understand that. Scandal rubs off. Friends talk to each other. It was a natural thing to do.

The coffee was popping away so I got up to make it. As I went through the door I flung over my shoulder, “You’ve certainly picked a strange mentor.”

“Perhaps I know more about you than you think.”

I didn’t follow that up; you never know what might come out.

I was pouring the coffee when reality hit me. I was so shocked that I left the cups and went back into the lounge to stand over him. The gambling chits were on an occasional table where I’d put them.

“Just what are you doing with these?” I asked him. “How did you get them?”

He smiled faintly up at me. “I wondered when the penny would drop. For a quick-witted man you were slow to grasp.”

“You’ve paid them fifteen grand?” I could only stare down at him, dumbfounded.

“James would have had it in any event over the course of time. I can well afford it.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “You’re mad,” I said angrily. “They’ll bleed you to death.”

Chapter Four

Why I got so worked up I don’t know. It was none of my business that Maxwell Palmer was handling his son’s affairs so badly, but I was getting to like the old buffer and he was way out of his depth with these jokers. He saw fifteen thousand as a write-off but it wasn’t as simple as that. He was encouraging them to ask for more and while Phil and Laurie had Jimmy they’d make sure that he paid.

When we’d finished our  I went down in the lift with him. He might feel better for having unloaded on me but it didn’t make me feel good. Outside, I viewed the line of cars, spotted the Rolls and headed towards it without any advice from him. Anyone who can sling away fifteen thousand had to travel by Rolls. We shook hands at the car and he said quietly, “I know you think I’m a fool. Believe me, I had no other course.” He climbed in and powered down the window, his polo-neck multiplying his chins as he leaned forward. “Don’t forget. If you change your mind, ring me.”

It was the first time he’d broached it this evening. I just nodded noncommittally. He wasn’t a bad old boy at all, not even old when I considered it. Jimmy needed his head squeezing; I wondered where he’d moved to now. I went back up in the lift wishing that I could help Maxwell Palmer and knowing that I couldn’t. Why could he be so straight and his son so bent? It was worth thinking about. And I was still thinking about it when I reached my pad.

I pushed open the door and immediately collapsed. My reflex action almost certainly saved my life. As soon as I stepped into the room I smelled danger. I never argue with these feelings, particularly when they’re as strong as this one was. I simply let my knees go, to crumple forward on the carpet. The sap that had been meant for my head missed and lost some of its impetus before whacking me between the shoulder blades. But it was bad enough, knocking the wind from me and seemingly driving a blunt wedge through my chest.

Having evaded the full force of the first blow I’d put myself in an awkward position for dealing with the others. Almost in one movement I rolled as my body hit the deck and was rewarded by seeing three pairs of legs closing in. One foot swung back to kick me and again somehow I managed to change position whilst grabbing at the other leg to pull him off balance. I partially succeeded and he toppled against one of his mates. I wanted to shout out; there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned cry for help, but my lungs were burning from the first blow and I was rasping to get breath with every move I made.

At first all I could do was roll around the floor as fast as I could but I couldn’t avoid all their blows, and boots were crashing in from all angles; the more it happened the less breath I had to spare. This was for real; they weren’t going to stop until I was dead. I pivoted on my hands to swing my legs round and knocked one of them over; he crashed into something but the other two were still at me.

I was fighting for my life and was losing. I couldn’t get up but must try to. It was only by keeping constantly on the move, rolling my head all the time, with my arms covering it, that enabled me to hang on so long. All the time I was trying to muster sufficient breath to let out an almighty yell, but they were crowding me too much, giving me no chance to do anything but move and cover up as best I could.

Someone landed a cosh on my shoulder and my left arm became paralysed, the pain excruciating. In spite of it I managed to climb up on one knee and charged from that position. Someone laughed as they backed off and I finished up in the middle of the room glowering like a bull. They had fanned out and the terrible thing was that I couldn’t really distinguish them. My sight was impaired and blood from a cut was running into my eyes. Apart from that, two of them kept behind me and, as I turned, moved position. Right now they were playing with me. It didn’t feel like it, but they were. That was when I knew that I was finished. My left arm was hanging down uselessly and my body felt like a body should having been kicked all over. I was in so much pain, so dazed, that I doubt if I could have raised a yell then anyway. All I wanted to do was to take one of them with me.

I could just make out a shape in front of me. He said something I couldn’t understand, my ears were ringing like alarms, but I recognised the taunt in the tone. I hurled myself at him, smashing out wildly with my right hand. Something cracked. My fist felt as if I’d hit a wall but I was fighting wildly and almost blindly. Someone hit me on the back of my head and I felt myself going, vaguely aware that I was on my knees again. They hit me again and my head burst. All I could see were red explosions, each one bringing acute, unbearable pain. Then my whole body was searing agony that increased until I could stand no more and mercifully it gradually subsided until eventually I could hear the throbbing of it rather than feel it. After a time even the throbbing subsided until there was no feeling, no sound, nothing. Absolutely nothing but darkness which soon disappeared with the rest.

* * *

When I opened my eyes I was in a side ward of a hospital with a copper sitting by my bedside. It was perhaps the strangest experience of my life. I was alive and had difficulty in believing it. I still suffered pain in great areas, it was more subdued than before. I felt really drained and at death’s door. I turned my head to look at the copper and he got quite interested as I moved. In no time he’d produced his notebook and pencil, eager pink face peering down at me, young eyes alert to my every blink.

“Is there anything you can tell us, sir? Any descriptions?”

Christ. It was all I needed. I wasn’t even certain I could speak. “Later, sonny. Get the doctor.” It didn’t sound like me at all; the voice was thin and detached as if it was coming from outside the room. He looked disappointed and rang the bell over my head. A nurse came, took one look at me and pushed off again. I began to explore slowly, every movement a separate agony. My left arm was operating again, which was something: they must have struck a nerve at the time. My head was bandaged, so was my chest and right hand. I couldn’t reach down to my legs without half killing myself, so I decided to explore there later. I wasn’t dead because they were unlikely to have coppers where I was destined to finish up. And that puzzled me very much.

A doctor came bustling in all white coat and smiles. “Good to see you conscious. How do you feel?”

What a bloody stupid question! “Great,” I said. “Never felt better.”

He grinned at me. “You’ll do. Anyone who can keep his sense of humour the way you have is on the mend.”

“How long have I been here, Doc?”

“Two days. We’ve been waiting for this moment.”

“What’s the damage?” It was hurting me to speak.

“Contusions mainly. All over the body and legs. You’re black and blue and beginning to develop a rich egg yellow around the fringes of the bruises.”

The chuckle was stilled in my throat as an excruciating pain shot through my chest. Seeing me grimace, the doctor added, “Two cracked ribs which we’ve strapped up may play you up for a while. Your head was split open in two places but your skull wasn’t cracked. We’ve stitched you up. The knuckles on your right hand are badly bruised and the flesh is lacerated. That’s about all I think.”

“You sound disappointed.”

He scratched an ear, evidently enjoying himself. “On the contrary. It’s seldom such a specimen comes my way. I don’t know what your head is made of, Mr. Scott. I can’t imagine it to be ordinary bone or by rights you should be dead. I wonder if you would like to donate it to us before you die: it should be quite an interesting specimen.”

Very funny. Then more seriously he continued, “You were lucky not to have received internal injuries. You have an exceptionally thick muscular wall which saved you, and this is why you’re in pain.”

“Who found me? How did I get here?”

“You’d better ask the police constable. I’ll come back this afternoon to examine you. Meanwhile, the bell, should you want anything, is by your left hand. In the circumstances you seem to be doing fine.”

If he was happy, I wasn’t. He didn’t have to lie here. But I guessed that I was lucky and spoke to the constable. It turned out that Maxwell Palmer had come back to the flat and surprised my attackers. Why they didn’t set about him as well needed answering and I’d have to see him. I learned that he had, in fact, called at the hospital both evenings and I hoped that he’d call again. Meanwhile the young copper tried to get some descriptions from me but if I’d known them I wouldn’t have obliged. I gave him details of their boots, socks and trousers which was all I really saw of them; for the time I’d been on my feet I’d seen only misty outlines. I was pretty certain who they were, of course, but my certainties didn’t constitute evidence. Later in the day a detective sergeant called but I gave him no more than I’d given the constable. He didn’t believe me: they never do, but as it was obvious that they would get no more from me they took off, which left me on my own with time to think.

Maxwell Palmer called that evening. He was still dressed casually, this time in an open-necked shirt with a silk scarf tucked into it; he probably saw it as some form of disguise. He looked pale and strained but was immensely relieved to see me propped up and conscious. He’d brought a huge basket of mixed fruit, which I found rather touching. He pulled up a chair and we got stuck into the grapes.

“So you frightened them off?” I prodded.

“Hardly. I had actually reversed the car when I remembered the betting slips; I’d left them at your place. I went up in the lift and heard the noise at your front door which was still on the latch. Three men were kicking you and one was about to stove your head in with what looked like a piece of lead piping. They saw me standing there; at the time I was rooted to the spot with shock. Then they rushed at me, holding arms over their faces, knocked me over, and fled in the lift. When I regained my feet my immediate concern was for you. I telephoned for an ambulance. You looked dreadful.” His words were falling out like bad dictation, hesitant and staccato.

“Did you call the fuzz?”

He frowned, still appalled by what happened. “The police? No. It never occurred to me. Once here the hospital staff insisted that the police should know; they called them.”

Was honest Maxwell Palmer being evasive for once? It was difficult to believe that he hadn’t even considered calling Old Bill.

“Did you see any of them?”

“To identify, you mean? It’s difficult. It was all so quick and I was trying to see how you were. When they rushed me I must admit I was very frightened; terrified even. You don’t remember faces very well in that condition. I told the police what I could.”

“Which wasn’t much?” I was getting used to the pain of speaking.

“I’m afraid so.”

“But you know who they are?”

He stared at me, worried and rigid. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That these are some of the jokers tied up with your son.”

“It occurred to me. But I wouldn’t know them.”

“But you were sufficiently convinced to get me here and pay for this ward and private medical care.” I’d learned this earlier from the doctor.

“It was the least I could do.”

“Did you tell the fuzz who you thought they might be?”

He hesitated and wrenched his gaze from mine. “No.”

“Would you have if they’d killed me?”

“That’s hypothetical.”

I let it ride for a while, puzzled. “You’re going to great lengths to protect Jimmy. It could backfire on you. And they might have another go at me; finish the job.”

“Why should they want to kill you?”

I kept asking myself the same question but swung it round on him. “Why didn’t they do you, when they had the chance?”

“I don’t know. There’s no sense in any of it.”

“There is to them. They wanted me and they found me by watching you.”

Maxwell Palmer was startled; it hadn’t occurred to him.

“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful. I’m afraid I’m out of my depth with this sort of thing.”

I let it ride, tired now, the pain increasing as the drugs wore off. He looked down at me, not knowing what to do or to say. At last he said, “I should never have involved you. I wouldn’t have done so if I’d known there was a risk of this happening. I’m deeply sorry. Naturally I shall settle all expenses and compensate you for loss of earnings. And you can continue to handle the travel.”

I gazed up at him wearily, noting his confused sadness. Probably for the first time in his life he was floundering. “You can’t solve all your problems with money, Mr. Palmer. Face up to reality. Your son’s a bad lot. Leave him to it and let the law sort it out. There’s nothing he’ll accept from you.”

“I must try. But I’ll have to do it alone. There’s really no excuse for giving up.”

That was his cross; he wasn’t the type to give up. He would go on until what? When I saw the pain in his eyes, I wondered whether he was grieving over his villainous son or his own failing. He was acting like a man with a conscience. I couldn’t satisfy myself whether it was because his son was what he was or because he believed himself, in some way, to be the cause of it. When he left he regained his poise with an effort. Whatever bugged him had eaten into him, was part of his daily life and he was beginning to show the resignation of disillusion and the acceptance that he was landed with it for life. Even strong men eventually crack under strain. He was so basically straight that he was punishing himself; and as he continued to fail to reach his son his agony would increase until something snapped.

When he’d gone I was sorry I hadn’t lifted a little of his burden. I could have told him I had no intention of accepting the sort of doing over I’d taken without doing something about it. He’d kept his word about passing on his travel accounts and no longer used it as a pressure. But that apart, my motives weren’t his; my interest was in who had ordered my beating and why, not his son, who in my eyes didn’t rate an effort. Yet I was touched by his generosity and his conscience; I might have shown a little compassion. If I learned anything useful to him, I’d let him know.

It was three weeks before I was out; my ribs were still quite sore and most of my body was still a peculiar pale ochre. My head bandages were off and the stitches long removed from my scalp, where my hair was beginning to grow again. Meanwhile, with male vanity, I combed my hair across to hide the patches that had been shaved away. My face was almost intact with only a strip of plaster over the bridge of my nose. It could be argued by my enemies that any damage to my face could only improve it. My knuckles were no longer swollen and the gashes had healed, leaving only scars and discoloration. I didn’t feel fit but I was mobile. The only good thing about being in hospital was that it had given me plenty of time to think and to write more fully to Maggie telling her how dull life was without her.

I checked with the office, which seemed to be doing much better without me, then settled down to a long line of inquiry that took me to several old haunts where I met a lot of old friends. But I kept away from Rex Reisen’s crowd. I covered a lot of ground in the London area. I visited the seedy, dust-covered shop that Balls Up Balfour ran near Wormwood Scrubs. He only shaved weekly and hadn’t reached that day when I called on him. His grey head looked as if it had been pulled from a bucket on the end of a stick. He had given up forging notes for the time being and was doing a line in passports which involved him trotting round the graveyards and Somerset House to obtain copy birth certificates of long dead people. But he was still the finest craftsman in the business, with a fastidious style impossible to equate with his own personal habits.

I took in Bluie Palmer as well, who was still mincing around the many cables of his photographic studios, wasting his considerable talents on shooting blue films. But his legitimate business didn’t make enough money to pander his numerous boyfriends. I called on many others. Men I’d done time with, hung around the cafés with in the old days, some who, at one time or another, had been good friends. They were all recidivists and always would be but there was not one mobster among them. They say birds of a feather . . . well, it’s true. These boys would be in and out of nick all their lives, they knew no other way and they didn’t complain, but without exception they were craftsmen; a dying breed: what the coppers call honest villains. They were scattered and it took time. With the generosity of Maxwell Palmer’s settlement, I could afford to take it.

Yet in spite of the fact that I knew, or had known, all these characters well, the results were frustrating. Nobody knew of or wanted to know Phil and Laurie. It was clear that in some cases they simply didn’t want to get involved, that the names meant trouble. Violence was out of their line of business, which could not be said of Phil and Laurie. Others simply had never heard of them. It was altogether a peculiar reaction. You can’t operate in the underworld, not when topping is involved, without the word getting round.

After a while plodding round my old contacts became boring and unrevealing like routine inquiries to a copper. The analogy was right although no copper could have called on such a wide variety of villains in so short a time. It took a few days and I got nowhere except to pick up emanations.

Because I’d been calling at all the old haunts, I saw many new faces. I had to be discreet; I had enough problems without word of my inquiry reaching Reisen. As I’d already approached him, with his uncertain temperament he would have taken no chances and viewed it as a personal insult. But I did run into an old creeper friend called Joe Fuller who used to operate in the Midlands and who was with me for some time in Dartmoor. He was getting beyond creeping; in his late forties climbing was becoming difficult. His periods outside nick were becoming shorter and in fact he’d only been out a few months when I ran into him. We sat down to have a coffee in a café off Greek Street and I couldn’t help but notice his down-at-heel condition. This is what could have happened to me. Could still happen if I was stupid. We chatted about old times; it brought a sparkle to his worried eyes. Then I asked him what I’d been asking all the others.

His reaction was positive but hesitant. “I dunno any Phils except Phil Limon and ’e’s back inside. I met a Laurie once. Think ’is name was Yates. Silly bugger gave me a packet for some papers I nicked.”

As I knew that Joe was going to tell me anyway, I let him ramble on, only half listening. About three months ago he’d given up operating in the Midlands because he was too well-known and he was tired of raising his hat every time he passed the law courts. He moved south and screwed around the green belt where there were some good pickings. He was screwing a drum on the London outskirts and was downstairs in the study, having hoisted what tom there was upstairs. He’d opened an eighteenth-century bureau and had sprung the two secret drawers that any self-respecting creeper should know about when the family returned, the car’s headlights sweeping up the drive. Having already filled a small case which he’d nicked from a bedroom with a fair amount of silver and jewellery he quickly snatched the papers from the secret drawers, stuffed them in the case, closed the drawers and the bureau and nipped out the back door to wait until the family were inside the house.

He fenced the tom without trouble but didn’t know what to do with the papers. Normally, having decided on their uselessness, he would have burned them but instead he hung on to them, perhaps with a screwman’s intuition that what came out of a secret drawer might one day be valuable. It was a story he’d obviously told many times before telling me and his loquaciousness was probably one of the reasons he was always doing porridge. It was certainly the reason for what happened next.

He was approached by someone, whom he later came to know as Laurie Yates, who had heard that he had some papers to sell, could he look at them? The assertion wasn’t quite accurate but Joe had no objections to Laurie having a squint. I was finishing my coffee as Joe warmed to his subject, the old eagerness I used to know back on his sorry face.

“Then wadderyer think ’appened?” he challenged me.

“He offered you a ton for them,” I said to please him.

I’d unwittingly stolen some of his thunder but not all of it. Joe stared bleakly, then leaned forward with a knowing wink. “Two ton,” he corrected me. “Two ’undred bleeding quid.”

Joe was the only man I knew who could talk cockney with a Brummie accent. But my ears pricked up. “Well, what were these papers?”

“Nothing special. They looked like accounts.”

“Didn’t you know? They might have been worth much more.”

“Not to me, Spider. I couldn’t understand them. ’E could.”

I think the only reason I asked the next question was because someone called Laurie was involved. “Whose accounts were they?”

“Christ, I can’t remember that.”

“You mean you sat on them without looking at them? Don’t give me that, Joe. Think.”

He sat thinking, his slack features gradually losing their animation now that his story was told. “Something and Palmer. Or Palmer and something.”

My ears burned. “Can you get closer?”

He tried but he couldn’t.

Since I’d started the XYY Agency I’d had to learn a little about accounts. “Can you remember whose signatures were on them? The last page down at the bottom where there are spaces for directors and the company secretary to sign.”

“I think one lot was signed. I can’t remember who by. What’s all this leading up to?”

“I’m trying to see if you were diddled. Were they copies?”

“Ah! I seem to remember Laurie whatsit saying they were photo-something.”

“Photostats?”

“Yeh. Why? Do you think I should’ve ’ad more?”

“It’s difficult to say. Whose drum was it you screwed?”

“Bloody ’ell, I don’t know. I’d been watching it for a bit. It was out at Moor Park. Big place. Good manor that.”

“Tell me exactly where it is.”

But Joe was becoming crafty. “You want to know for a reason. Maybe to screw it yourself.”

“I’m retired.”

“You still ’ave a reason, mate. What’s it worth?”

“A bloody great thump round the ear if you go on like this. I have a reason but there’s nothing in it for me. Nor for you. If you can’t tell me for old times’ sake, I’ll push off.”

He told me. Joe had long since reached a stage where he needed what friends he could get. The way he was going he was set for a lonely old age.

I went up to Bush House, paid my fee and went through the Registrations of the Palmer group of companies, making notes as I went. There was one company called Palmer & Cooper and it seemed to be the original, the one that had resulted in the rest. I didn’t really know what I was looking for or why but was merely following my nose, a habit that had paid dividends or scared me silly in the past. I then went to Baker Street and caught an afternoon train to Moor Park in Hertfordshire. I knew the area vaguely but I had difficulty in locating the house Joe had screwed. In the end I went back to the station and got a cab to drop me near the house.

It lay in a wide road with high, matured hedges, mainly laurel, either side, successfully hiding the dwellings behind them. Driving past, it would be difficult to know just how many residences there were in this semi-rural area. Walking, I could count them; they were exceptionally well-spaced, all different and all lying very well back. The name of the house was Deshaw. His and hers halved and put together I guessed. It lay in grounds rather than gardens, a big sweeping drive escaping between an avenue of sentinel cypresses at the end of which a green shuttered house held itself proudly. A rich man’s house. It still had to discover the owner’s name.

I called at the house next door and rang the bell. A well-groomed middle-aged woman answered and eyed me shrewdly. I asked if I might speak to Mr. Collins.

“I’m afraid you have the wrong house. There is no Mr. Collins here.”

I was playing it very politely, well aware, as she was, that this was burglar territory. “I’m sorry,” I said, pulling a piece of paper from my pocket and studying it. “He must be next door.” I indicated in the direction of Deshaw. I took a chance and moved away with a smile of thanks.

“There is no Collins next door. They are Barrets that side and Taylor-Johnsons the other.” She was trying to be helpful — and she was much more than she knew.

“I’m in a mess,” I said. “This is Nightingale Crescent?”

“I don’t know a Nightingale Crescent but it is Nightingale Lane.”

I smiled again apologetically, peering at my piece of paper. “I think someone’s slipped up. I’m so sorry but thank you very much.”

Barret. Desmond Barret. The Des in Deshaw. It clicked. He was company secretary of Palmer & Cooper, one of the smaller Palmer companies. He had a big house. How big was his job? I did a long-distance casing from the front gates and decided I needed to get closer. I ambled slowly down the tarmac drive, feeling as if the long rows of cypresses were forming a splendid guard of honour with sword blades of sun thrusting through their compact foliage. It was like being watched all the way. The house was fairly modern but well built, possessing a dignity unusual today. The lawns were cratered by a series of fish pools starting from high ground and interlinked by artificial waterways trickling in streams over well-planned rock beds. From somewhere behind the house came the muted thud of a pump which probably kept the water flowing. Someone had landscaped the grounds beautifully and Capability Brown, had he been alive, would have approved. Desmond Barret had taste as well as money. I mounted the wide porch and rang the bell, standing directly under a blown glass and wrought-iron lantern. If someone answered, I’d ask for Mr. Taylor-Johnson.

After the third ring and still with no reply I saw it as an open invitation to do a better job of casing. I trundled slowly round the house to find more sweeping lawns with rose beds and a fair-sized swimming pool, harsh blue against the Cumberland turf. High laurels formed the side boundaries and, in the distance, at the rear, beeches and conifers. There was no one in sight. Nor were any windows open or doors unlocked. In addition to this basic security all the windows were double-glazed, which added to the difficulties of those outside the law; more importantly, they were all wired, which meant the doors were sure to be.

It was difficult to judge whether the upper windows enjoyed the same security but there was one basic deterrent in any event. Overhanging tiles came halfway down the house, forming an apron over the lower skirt of rustic bricks. This meant that all waste pipes passed through the bottom of the overhang to make it a very difficult climb for any creeper. I wondered how Joe Fuller, who was not the most skilled of operators, had managed. This led me to believe that the stable door had been closed after the horse had gone. After Joe’s screwing, the insurance boys might have insisted on the alarms. I couldn’t see Joe coping with this lot. As well as alarms there were security locks just to make it more difficult for the unsuspecting before he set the alarms off. In the old days I wouldn’t have screwed a drum like this unless I was absolutely sure of what I was nicking.

A peep through the windows, avoiding treading on the shallow beds of primroses, revealed a modern interior. For once I found myself approving contemporary furniture but I retained reservations; it wasn’t my taste but it was good, even if it was new.

I came round the back of the house towards the double garages which were open and empty, twin oil patches sat like black oases in the concrete floors. I heard the car turn into the drive and kept my head. The fury of the redhead at the wheel of the Jensen was impossible to miss. She came up so fast that I thought she was aiming at me. And then I realised that she was.

Chapter Five

I was playing it cool until then. The Jensen came tearing up the drive and I didn’t know whether to run or jump. Finally I did neither, partly rooted by the sheer surprise of her action and partly numbed by shock. I could clearly see the venom of her taut, harsh features through the tinted glass of the windscreen as she focused on a point about my middle. It was the season for smashing up Spiders. She had to stop, I told myself, hypnotised by the fawn-coloured car’s meteoric approach. I got ready to jump as I lost faith in my own message. I’d dropped my gaze from the furious eyes and was watching the front of the car, wondering which way she’d swerve if she did at all. I really thought I’d had it when she slammed on the brakes, the wheels locked and blue smoke streaked up from the tyres. The smell of burning rubber reached me before the car. Her momentum carried her forward and I had to jump back a couple of feet and even then the car was only inches from me as it rocked on its springs in the death throes of a violent halt.

The redhead sat there gripping the wheel, long red nails clawing out from curled fingers, glaring at me. Something passed over her face and I could feel her tension from where I stood. I didn’t move. I hadn’t the nerve. We were both static, visually locked as if we’d been enemies for years. And then she climbed out and I could now see that her expertly short-cut hair was dyed copper.

She was late thirties or early forties, beautifully dressed in an expensive clover-coloured trouser suit that showed she had kept her figure. Her lids were silver blue, carefully chosen to enhance eyes that, even wild as they now were, attracted more than a second look. She had been very beautiful; she still would be but for an obvious iron hardness that had crept through, detectable in her gaze, her rigid well-shaped lips and in the unrelenting yet still attractive jawline. She looked a handful to me. I felt sudden pity for Desmond Barret.

“Just what do you think you’re doing here?” Her lips barely moved, so tensed was she. She held on to the car door as if she dared not trust herself to stand.

“Ma’am, I don’t know what the performance is for. Are you Mrs. Taylor-Johnson?”

The question made her hesitate. Her expression changed subtly as if she suddenly realised that she could be wrong but before it did, I saw fear mingled with her anger and it was real and deep. But she was not diverted. “I asked you what you are doing here. You tell me now or I call the police.”

The threat, too, arose from fear; it was stupid with me standing between her and the house.

“I called to see Mrs. Taylor-Johnson. My head office sent me down. I can’t understand your attitude, madam. I’ve done nothing to annoy you.”

Long-fingered hands kneaded her brow, gently, carefully, so as not to disturb the hair. She was trying to work it out. “I saw you coming round the side of the house.”

“Oh, that.” I tried a friendly grin but couldn’t cope with her brand of hauteur. “I rang the bell several times. When there was no answer I went round the back, thinking someone might be in the garden.”

She stood watching me uncertainly, beginning to believe she’d made a mistake. But she wasn’t the type to apologise. “We’ve had burglaries; several around here. It worried me to see a stranger come from the back of the house.” Her breathing was tight, breasts moving against the tailored jacket.

“Do they burgle round here in broad daylight?” I had many times.

She now started to worry about the impression she had made on me, fine hands that had never washed up fluttering like the two bluetits streaming out of a tree behind her. “I suppose I’ve made a fool of myself.”

“Only if you hadn’t stopped the car in time. I still don’t know if you are Mrs. Taylor-Johnson.”

“No, I’m not. She lives two houses up.” Elegant fingers gave a vague indication and she was recovering fast, assertiveness replacing her fear. “The next time you call on someone and they’re out, don’t go round the back.”

“No, ma’am. I’m sorry. It was a thoughtless thing to do.”

Perhaps I’d replied in an offhand manner for she looked at me suspiciously but shrunk against the car as I passed her.

“Goodbye, ma’am; sorry to spoil your day. Next time you might be lucky enough to hit me.”

As I walked up the drive I could feel the considerable penetration of her gaze all the way to the gates. What rankled most was not the incident but what had happened to the eighteenth-century bureau Joe had taken the papers from? Had Desmond Barret changed his house style after the burglary? I mean, where can you hide documents in modern furniture?

It was a long hike back to the small township and it was warm. Prowling taxis are rare in this sort of area but I still had time to call at the local newspaper office before it closed. I obtained eleven days of back numbers, five each side of the date Joe Fuller had thought he had done the job. Even then I was lucky as it was in the very first number. There wasn’t much because burglaries weren’t new around Moor Park. I read about it on the half-hour journey back to Baker Street. The jewellery and silver were mentioned and the estimated value of them, which must have given Joe stomach cramp when he fenced them to receive a fraction of their insurance value. But there was absolutely no mention of missing papers. If they weren’t worth mentioning by Desmond Barret, it was strange that Laurie Yates had paid two ton for them. Which could only mean that Desmond Barret didn’t want to mention them for one reason or another.

At this stage I began to wonder whether I was getting diverted. Yet on reflection I thought not. Desmond Barret worked for Maxwell Palmer whose son was knocking around with Phil and Laurie. It would seem that Laurie had something Joe had nicked from Barret and if he’d paid Joe two hundred pounds for it then it was worth one hell of a lot more. Barret and Laurie formed some sort of bridge; was Maxwell Palmer standing under or on top of it? When I got back to town I had an early dinner, then called on him.

He was surprised but he seemed pleased to see me. He had reverted to town suits and was quite formally dressed, neat and businesslike. I can’t pretend that he was glad to see me socially for he guessed it would be to do with his son, but apart from this he was a lonely man. When I was shown into the library he was seated in one of the Bergères with papers and files all around him.

“Excuse me not getting up but I must wade through this lot before morning and get them in some sort of order.”

I hesitated near the door. “Perhaps I should have phoned first. Look . . .”

“Sit down, for God’s sake.” He waved a hand over the papers, his tone friendly. “How are you feeling?”

“Almost new. I won’t keep you.” I paused. “Who knows besides yourself and me that Jimmy’s knocking around with Phil and Laurie?”

He was immediately attentive. “I thought you’d given up. Why do you ask?”

“I’m poking around odd corners. I may have a lead to these two jokers. You haven’t answered my question.”

“I answered it long before you asked it. You forget why I asked to see you in the first place. It’s not the sort of problem I want to discuss with my friends.”

“And business acquaintances?”

“Even less so. It wouldn’t be good for business if the word got around. This is purely personal and private. You have a reason for asking.”

“I’m not sure I have.” It was strange seeing him sitting instead of strutting round the room; it made his paunch more evident. “I’m simply accumulating information. It’s possible that the man called Laurie might be Laurie Yates. Have you connections that could discreetly find out whether this man is or has been an accountant?”

Palmer stared at me solidly, his gaze surprisingly penetrating. He lifted the papers from his lap and dropped them to the floor, then stood up. “What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know — and that’s the truth. I’m trying to get some background to this man. He may not be the one; it’s a long shot.”

He started his short pacing, hands behind his back, gaze on the floor. “I can only trace him if he’s a qualified accountant. It would be impossible to check on every non-qualified man.”

“Can you do it without involving any of your own staff?”

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“No,” I lied. “Your easiest way would be to ask one of your own accountants or your company secretary to check with the Chartered Institute or whatever. It might start speculation and gossip. If this bloke is the right one I don’t want any risk of word getting back to him, however remote a chance. I can’t forget Brian Page, and my own ribs still twinge occasionally. Your best bet is Jack Brooklyn of Brooklyn Investigations. He knows how to keep his mouth shut and besides, he’s got good cause to work at it.”

“I can do better than that,” he said shortly. “Much better.”

He probably had direct access. “How long will it take?”

“I’ll put it in hand first thing tomorrow.”

“If you do trace him any extra information will be helpful.”

“I’ll do what I can.” He ran a business empire; he was well used to evasiveness and soft-soaping. Sitting on a parole board must also have opened his eyes a few times, so I wasn’t kidding myself that I was fooling him. He knew that I knew something else and that I hadn’t told him all of it. He wasn’t too pleased about it but he didn’t push me.

As there wasn’t much else I could do until he rang me I filled the next day in at the office but my mind wasn’t on my work. Playing investigator in this way wasn’t my scene at all: not all this surreptitious stuff. I don’t mind breaking and entering for information; that’s straightforward; this was exercising unused parts of my brain.

Maxwell Palmer rang me that morning and asked me to go round to his place. For my benefit he’d gone all casual again, open-necked shirt with a blue silk kerchief softening his chins. We took up our usual chairs and he produced some notes. “Laurence David Yates,” he read, “qualified as a Chartered Accountant in nineteen sixty-two. He was working for a public company when he was disbarred from the Institute two years ago. The hearsay behind this is that he either accepted the position or criminal proceedings would be brought against him. So he was never prosecuted; he doesn’t have a record.”

“But he must have been on the fiddle.”

“Obviously. Sometimes companies don’t like prosecuting their staff because of the adverse publicity. I don’t subscribe to that view. We must protect others.”

He could have told me this over the phone but he wanted to test my reaction, to see if I would give something away. I didn’t. Then he probed:

“Does this help you?”

“It brings one of the two to light. That’s all. We now know Jimmys knocking around with a bent accountant. It’s something. We still don’t know who Phil is.”

He was bursting to ask me a question, his features strained, his eyes worried, but something stopped him. Maybe he thought he’d give away more in the asking than he’d receive in the reply. I wasn’t misled by the way he pulled himself down to my level; behind the mild benevolence a computer mind was working hard. He played it as most businessmen do; everything’s a matter of timing: never succumb to emotional expression if the other chap could gain from it. So, he sat on whatever it was and looked miserable. I was very tempted to ask him what was worrying him but every time I ran into a tycoon, and he wasn’t the first, a little of his ways rubbed off on me; I just hoped I didn’t meet too many. His attitude revealed something, however, apart from his evident concern. Whether he was prepared to admit it or not, he was willing to compromise with his basic honesty for the sake of manoeuvre. All right, nearly everyone does, but not everybody was as vehement about right and wrong as he was.

I went back to my pad to ring Rex Reisen, I didn’t want to face him again. “Do you remember those jokers I asked you about a few weeks ago?” He said he didn’t, in that flat warning voice of his, but I pushed on. “I’ve a bit more information for you. Laurie is Laurence David Yates. Does that get you anywhere?” He thought about it; not whether he knew him or not but about what he should tell me. No man I know can put more into a silence. I started to be sorry I’d rung him.

“What’s your interest?” he asked at last.

He’d asked me before but now we were getting down to the nitty gritty it was no time for bluffing. Was Rex connected with Phil and Laurie? I got no better answer this time than last. I couldn’t think of another reason why he should be so cagey. “I’m trying to syphon off an innocent party. Like I said before I’m not after the bloke or his partner.”

Rex gave it more thought and then I was certain I shouldn’t have rung. I was tempted to hang up but that could be just as bad. “Let me put it this way,” he said at last. “I don’t know this joker at all. I wouldn’t mix with bent figure men.” And he put down the phone.

I was sweating slightly. His contradiction had been deliberate. He wanted me to know that he knew more but that I’d better lay off and stop my line of enquiry. I knew how much I was holding out on Maxwell Palmer; with Rex Heisen I didn’t know where I was.

I hadn’t the first idea what to do next. I felt like dropping the whole thing. After all, what was in it for me except revenge? I sat watching television and waded through another play without an ending. The late news was on when the bell rang. I’d been so preoccupied and feeling so lonely without Maggie that I jumped. Who rings bells after eleven at night? Slipping the chain on I opened the front door so that it came only so far. The wire-wool face indented with a grin could only belong to Knocker Roberts.

“Friendly or not?” I asked him.

“Cut the crap, whack. It’s always friendly with you.”

He was Rex Reisen’s chief strong-arm, a pathological killer who had a soft spot for me because I’d helped him one time when we’d been inside together. It was almost a dog-like devotion, yet he’d still tear my throat out if his master ordered it. In fairness, I’d have to say he’d knock me off with a good deal of regret. I had a sideways liking for him but an enormous wariness. Only medium height, he was immensely powerful and preferred the use of his bare hands but was competent with gun or knife. The vapid flicker that frightened me so much was missing from his thick-browed eyes, so I let him in.

He hadn’t changed his flashy dressing habits, bell bottoms and high-necked jacket, somehow getting the combination wrong and already looking dated. No one was going to tell him, that’s for sure. He’d once been in a fight that had resulted in a skin graft on one side of his face which had left a crinkled foil effect, leaving an eye slightly exposed so that it was glassy and staring. I reckoned he was about the ugliest man I knew, yet his brown eyes could be soft, which they weren’t at the moment, and he could be amusing. In the game of survival, he had no rivals, his reflexes animal sharp. Like Reisen, his moods could change instantly if he smelled any form of danger.

Knocker sat down and so did I. He leaned back and crossed his legs, while I sat upright, waiting. In spite of his repose I knew that he could be out of his chair before me and I’m not slow. I’m almost teetotal but he is completely. I offered him a coffee and when he refused I knew, if I hadn’t before, that the call wasn’t social. I knew, too, that he wouldn’t beat about the bush. And he didn’t.

“Rex sent me,” he said in his gravel voice. He’d screwed his face up again so that it was difficult to read the expression in his eyes. “He was afraid you might not have got the message, whack.”

“Oh, I got it, Knock. Clear as clear.”

“So you keep out of the way, right?”

“Why?”

“Never mind bleeding why. Just do it.”

I had no intention of bucking Knocker to prove I was a man. He wasn’t here for reasoned argument, but I couldn’t leave it like that either. “For old times’ sake,” I coaxed, “tell me something. I’m not operating against you or Rex, so why the warning? Are these jokers friends of yours?”

His jawline knotted and what I could detect of his gaze hardened like stone slivers behind the visor-like lids. It was impossible to pick up any message other than the one he’d delivered. He said nothing and at this point I really couldn’t see why I should get myself topped even if my interest was building up. All the same I’ve never enjoyed being warned off.

“Tell him not to worry,” I said.

“Right, whack.” Knocker rose, eyeing me dispassionately. “But I know you, my old mate. You ’ave an itchy nose an’ you don’t like being pushed around. So treat it as a favour to Rex. He’s done you favours, now you do one for ’im. We like you, Spider. You know that. We don’t want to come to your funeral too soon.”

It was true; in their way they liked me. Just then the phone rang, as if everyone was intent on keeping me from bed. It was Maxwell Palmer, apologetic for ringing so late and wanting to take me on the payroll again as I seemed to be working at the moment for nothing. With Knocker listening, the last thing I needed was a discussion with Palmer. Unable to warn him of the position, I resorted to evasiveness and cut it short, keeping my voice low and hanging up quickly. When I turned back to Knocker he was all ears but I don’t think he could have gleaned anything. A big mistake then would have been to try to get rid of him, so I offered him coffee again and this time he accepted.

It was a silly situation; I wanted him to go and dared not push him; he wanted to go but was curious over my handling of the phone call, making it clear to him that I didn’t want him to get the gist of it. So we each did the opposite to what we wanted.

“Funny time for someone to ring up,” he said, joining me in the kitchen to get the percolator going.

“Happens all the time in the travel business. Clients on the move twenty-four hours a day. They think I don’t sleep.”

“Queer bloody way to speak to a client; you couldn’t get rid of ’im fast enough, whack.”

“This one’s a nutter. Thinks London to Belfast is a long-distance hop. Booked to Frankfurt once; rang me daily for a week and cancelled on the day of the flight.” But I knew he wasn’t satisfied. It was just bad luck that Palmer had telephoned at that time. I almost told him the truth then but I’m strong on loyalty and Maxwell Palmer had enough problems over his son. There was also the fact that Knocker would have put his own interpretation on what I told him. This way he could think what he liked without anyone being hurt, which turned out to be one of the biggest miscalculations I’d ever made.

He left, still uncertainly suspicious, and repeated his message at the door. It was easy for me at this stage to assure him I’d retired from the operation. I meant it. If Knocker and his boys got at me, an interruption from Maxwell Palmer would only have added to his enjoyment.

I didn’t sleep well, though. Knocker and Rex don’t issue empty threats. Unless I kept out I was in real danger; the realisation kept me turning in my bed.

I heard sounds at the front door at about two in the morning. I sat up sharply, my head full of doped wool and switched on the bedroom light. Someone was making far too much noise trying to turn the lock. Groping for my slippers, I went into the lounge, then switched on every light in the flat and made deliberate noises of movement. This should be enough to scare away any night prowler. True enough the scratching stopped, then there was complete silence outside.

My head was clearing slowly and I was congratulating myself when a tap on the door jerked me round. Another tap and another: insistent. I put my mouth to the wood but kept my body angled away from it. “Who’s that?”

A whisper came back, gruff and direct, so close to my ear that I jumped. “Open up, Spider. Rex wants you.”

“At this time? You’re mad.”

“Open up or we’ll come in anyway.”

“Push off or I’ll call Old Bill.”

The laugh was soft and unpleasant. “Not you, Spider. And if you do they’ll have to reach you before we do.”

Silence. They could get in all right. When it comes to self-preservation I’m as concerned as the next man. But I never carry a weapon. I hadn’t fired a gun since leaving the army and I abhor knives. “What exactly do you want?” I whispered.

“Rex wants to talk to you. That’s all. No rough stuff.”

Something had gone wrong for a call at this hour. “Then you won’t mind if I ring him?”

“He’s not at the office. Ring if you like. You’ll get no reply. While you’re on the phone we’ll come in.”

What the hell. I backed my hunches, released the chain and opened the door. There were three of them; one I had reason to remember only too well for when he’d slipped my feet into wet concrete and stood by waiting for it to harden. He didn’t like me a bit. It was clear that he hadn’t forgotten I’d broken his nose.

But they didn’t try anything. They came in quietly and looked around as if they’d love an opportunity to wreck the place.

“I’d better get some clothes on.”

“Yeah. You do that. But don’t keep Rex waiting; you know how ’e is.”

I knew. Within five minutes we were all going down in the lift.

“Why three of you?” I asked them reasonably.

“Thought you might give trouble.”

It didn’t sound like a compliment. I didn’t ask why they thought I might give trouble, they wouldn’t have told me. It was unlikely they knew anything beyond their orders to bring me in. What had gone wrong?

They didn’t crowd me in the car and they didn’t break the speed limit. It was obviously true Reisen wasn’t in his office; they didn’t head for the West End but eventually swung on to the South Circular. There was hardly a car about so they stuck to the main roads and we were stopped by a prowl car just north of the river. Four men in a car at that time in the morning was bound to attract Old Bill. As we were all dead sober and said we’d been to a non-alcoholic party, after breathalyser tests there wasn’t much they could do. They made us turn out our pockets, which were virgin clean of weapons, and they noted the number of the car. They guessed we were bent and we must have looked it, but after searching the car there was damn all the fuzz could do. I was sticking to my hunch that Rex only wanted to talk in spite of the escort. Let’s face it, they could have topped me long since.

It was when we went south of the river that I began to have real qualms. It was all too reminiscent. The bloke who didn’t like me was smiling savagely as if he guessed what was on my mind and that he too was remembering. When we entered the badly lit area of Victorian shabbiness I was near the shakes. I knew this place; I’d never forget it. What nightmares I suffered were usually centred round it. We pulled up at the derelict house and now I was really frightened, memory too strong of the terror I’d suffered here. I’d long since lost faith in my hunch.

When we got out of the car they crowded me and I knew there was no escape. One of them opened the iron gate and we tramped down the worn steps to the tightly shuttered sub-basement to the sound-proofed door. The correct knock and we were in Reisen’s torture chamber and the smell of stale air and sweat, blood and terror. And don’t tell me you can’t smell terror. I can. I did then. Probably my own.

The place hadn’t changed. A couple of Tilley lamps gave uncertain illumination in the dank, worn spaciousness of the cellar, darkening the corners as if hiding instruments of torture, and there were sufficient visible to believe in others that were not. It was a terrible experience for me to re-enter this place. The psychological effect on me was immediate. The chair with its straps where I’d been secured was still there; the only thing missing was the metal tray into which they’d poured concrete over my feet. At least there was light. The last time I’d been in total darkness.

The long rough table was still there and a few wooden chairs. The object of the place had never been comfort. The brick floor was worn, uneven and damp, difficult to cross without tripping. Rex Reisen sat firmly on the table, hands between his knees, cigar smoke spiralling up like a corkscrew in the stale air.

“You set Knocker up, you bastard.” Rex didn’t waste any time coming to the point, but I couldn’t grasp it. I stared uncomprehendingly, watching the shadows distort under his cheekbones as he moved his head, and tried to pierce the deep cavities of his eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Strap ’im to the chair.”

Oh Christ no, not again. Non-violence, like everything else, has its price. I wasn’t going back to that chair for anyone or anything. I didn’t wait for them to come at me, I waded in. Terror gave me speed and added strength. I broke the jaw of the nearest man almost before he could move and that left two of them and Rex. I don’t remember much about the fight, you don’t when it’s all go, and the strange thing is that action somehow makes you impervious to pain. I was so intent on lashing out and keeping moving that while I was aware of blows they didn’t seem to hurt me, my one concern to keep going and to keep out of that chair. The only pain that did seep through at that time was from my fists. They felt smashed and were certainly bleeding. One of the two had got hold of a cosh and I kept moving my head and hunching my shoulders to take some of the sting out.

I fought like a madman and through the muted sound of movement in that air-deprived, sound-proofed place came swearing and then a terrible groan as my knee managed what my fist had failed to do. The one who now faced me held the cosh. I didn’t know where Reisen was and anyway I was too busy just then to think about it. Matey was afraid. The fear was flicking in his close-set eyes, his tongue running dangerously over his lips. It was a change for me to be the other end of fear in a situation like this.

He had the advantage with the cosh but I’d put out two of his mates, one of whom we could both hear groaning in agony, and his confidence had gone. He made a swipe but I’m light on my feet and what confidence he’d lost I’d gained. He didn’t want to come at me, for I had height and reach advantage, but with Reisen still around I couldn’t hang about. I went after him and he backed off. I couldn’t afford to be reckless but I had to end it quick before he caught me. I rushed in and pulled up as he swung at me again, desperation and savagery distorting his face. I caught his wrist, turned it so that his elbow was down, then turned my body and had him over in a flying mare. His own weight broke his arm at the elbow as he went over my shoulder; the dreadful crack of bone loud in my ear made me feel sick. His scream was muffled by the soft bricks of the cellar but started while he was still airborne and tapered to whimpers as he hit the deck with a dreadful judder. He was groping for his broken limb, his face full of agony as I wheeled to prepare for Reisen.

He was still sitting on the table but now his hands were separated, one still holding the cigar, the other a gun that made me wonder whether it had all been worth it.

Chapter Six

“I didn’t think you ’ad it in you, Spider, old mate.” His tone was easy but his ferret eyes were sharpened by the light. I knew the look; it could go either way in a second.

“Neither did I,” I admitted ruefully. “It was something the army taught me.” My reference to the army was calculated. I was trying to get through to his fanatical patriotism before he pulled the trigger.

“You’ve put four of my men out, Spider. That’s gonner leave me short. So whaddyer think I should do?”

“Four?” I gazed round them. One was flat on his back making terrible throat noises, his jaw swollen and already discoloured. He’d be out for at least three weeks while they wired him up. The second was still bent as if in prayer, gasping as he turned his head to gaze up at me in pure hatred. The third was trying to nurse an arm that appeared as if the elbow joint had been fixed the wrong side of it. Even in the indifferent light I could see his dreadful pallor. “Where’s the fourth?”

Reisen stared hard at me for some seconds. “You can act, too,” he acknowledged.

I turned to him imploringly. “Rex, I don’t know what you’re on about. I’m not acting, for Christ’s sake.” I could see he was undecided but I knew him well enough to know he’d come down on the side of caution; he wouldn’t give me the benefit of the doubt. I had to think fast if I was to save myself. “Look,” I blurted. “You were wrong about me once before and damn nearly topped me. A few minutes won’t make a difference.”

The man with the groin injury was climbing slowly to his feet with rasping breath. It wouldn’t be long before he had another go at me. Reisen didn’t notice him, his gaze still disturbingly on me, his expression grim.

“For old times’ sake,” I pleaded. “I’m entitled to a hearing. What am I supposed to have done?”

“You set up Knocker, you bastard.”

“Knocker?” It got through to me eventually and I couldn’t believe it. “You mean Knocker’s been done? Topped?” Nobody could do Knocker.

“As if you didn’t know.”

“How could I? I haven’t left the flat.”

“You knew it was on the line. You fixed it.”

“For God’s sake, how could I? I’ve been in all evening.”

“You did it by phone. And you pay the hard way, Spider.”

“I didn’t even know he was calling round. It’s impossible.”

“You took a very cagey phone call while he was there, one you didn’t want ’im to hear. That’s when you let someone know that ’e was there. They were waiting for him outside.”

“Only he could have told you that. He can’t be dead then.” I must have sounded relieved for Reisen’s expression changed marginally. “So they beat him up?”

“You tell me,” said Reisen icily.

“They would have to use armour to tackle Knocker. What the hell would I set him up for?”

The bloke who had risen was hanging on to the table at the side of Reisen, who still took no notice. “Who was the call from?”

I gave him the whole story. I didn’t want to but my reasons were infinitely more valid than those for holding back. To give Reisen his due he listened carefully and when I finished up by telling him I’d spent three weeks in hospital having suffered at the same hands as those who had presumably tackled Knocker, I could see that, at last, I was getting through. I still didn’t know what his relationship with Phil and Laurie was and had held back the little I’d learned of Laurie just in case it ignited him again. The gun drooped and he looked dispassionately around at his men. Then he said, “You’ve come in on a private war. The two jokers who ’ave daddy’s little boy are making noises and doing things I don’t like. But they’re bleeding difficult to nail down. I didn’t want your big feet traipsing over the place and generally getting in the way.”

Reisen gave me another long, hard look and I noticed that he hadn’t put the gun away, indicating that he still had doubts, then added, “You might ’ave been doing a little homework for them.”

“Spying on you for Phil and Laurie? I don’t even know them.”

“Do you know what they’re up to?”

“I was beginning to find out when you rough-rode me.” I could have bitten my tongue out as soon as I said it. But I wasn’t yet off the hook; I still had to convince him. His gaze sharpened, fastening on a spot somewhere between us. It was a trick of his I’d learned to interpret with grave misgivings. His devious mind was poking in dark, evil corners. Being caught in the middle of a gang war was bad enough, but I could feel much worse coming. Just then matey with the groin decided to have another go at me while I wasn’t looking. He lunged away from the table, arms flailing, and Reisen put a leg out to trip him. He fell on his knees, cursing.

“Get up, you silly bugger, and sit down somewhere.” Reisen turned his attention back to me. “’E was trying to impress me that he’s worth ’is money. The fact is, my old cocker, that, even if I believe you, because of you four of my boys ’ave been put out.” He glanced contemptuously at the bloke now dragging himself off to a chair. “I could have said three, couldn’t I? For he’s no bloody good. ’E’ll have to go.”

“It’s not my fault. You drew the wrong conclusions.”

Reisen gazed bleakly. “If you’d given me the full griff when you first came round to see me none of this would’ve happened. I didn’t know they ’ad their mockers on you or Knocker would’ve been prepared. You owe me, Spider. I’m four men short at a time I need them.”

“I’ll do you a favour sometime.” I was nowhere as flippant as I sounded. He wanted something.

“You’ll do it now.”

I kept silent, as he intended I should. I had the strong, unshakeable feeling that I was about to jump from one crisis to another. I hoped it would be better than the chair.

“You keep on as if you’re working for this character Palmer. If you can touch ’im for a bit then you’re lucky. But you’ll be working for me, old mate. You’ll report to me everything you learn about them. O.K.?”

“I’d rather keep out of the whole sorry mess. I don’t want to get involved in gang warfare.”

“Warfare? No one’s been hurt yet except Knocker, and God help ’em when he’s about again. Anyway, you should’ve thought of that before. Four men, Spider. Your bloody fault. Now you pay, mate.”

It was no use telling him that he hadn’t wanted my intervention before. He’d changed his mind, suddenly seeing the advantages of using me. “It’s not going to be easy. They’re still watching me.”

“So, you’ve got problems. You’ll find a way.”

I didn’t like the trap I’d fallen into, nor the reason Reisen wanted me to act as his eyes. It meant I was taking all the risks while he sat back until he was ready to shed blood. And whatever Phil and Laurie were they’d already proved that murder meant nothing to them and that they weren’t in awe of people like Knocker Roberts, which meant they were either ignorant or very sure of themselves. From the way they had operated so far it had to be the latter. I looked across at the jockey-like figure of Reisen with the remnants of his cigar and his sunlamp tan. He didn’t hold a gangland empire together by being weak and he’d ruled the roost for a long time. He was by no means over the top; the back end of forty, I’d guess, but he’d kept himself fit and his mind was razor-sharp. Yet in spite of this, in spite of the stark ruthlessness he now aimed at me without histrionics or effort, it crossed my mind that he could finish up on the losing side of this one.

At first it seemed a preposterous thought; I’d known him, and of his exploits, for so long. He was feared by everyone except Knocker, and with good cause. His reputation had not been built on myth but ruthless action and ability. Yet I had this feeling that he was really up against it, that Phil and Laurie, who clearly had their own set-up, were not only willing to take him on but fully expected to win. In the shadowy way they were operating this suddenly seemed very possible. There was too little known about them, their resources were incredibly well hidden. The fact that they weren’t widely known was indicative of inactivity or a new style of operating which kept them largely out of the limelight. And the sort of limelight they did attract seemed to be deliberately provoked: Brian Page; me; Knocker Roberts. Intimidation and murder in a very short space of time. Rex Reisen was up against it.

He showed no sign of it but Knocker being caught off guard must have shaken him rigid. The word would get round the underworld and Reisen’s crown would slip. I didn’t ask him in what areas Phil and Laurie were encroaching; I was already balancing on an egg.

“I’ll have to speak to Knocker,” I said. “To get descriptions, see if they fit what I already know. Which hospital is he in?”

Reisen looked at me as if I’d gone mad. “Hospital?” He dropped the stub of his cigar and ground it out with a neat, calf shoe. “He’s not in dock. He topped one of them and busted another. Two others lit out. Only someone with Knocker’s guts could’ve made it back the way he did. But it meant leaving one stiff and one broken body in a side street not far from your flat. He’s lying low in a safe place with a bent quack. You can’t see him.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “You say nobody’s been hurt and he’s just killed someone and half killed another.”

“He had to. Self-defence. Anyway, that’s two of them. They don’t count.”

Reisen’s crown had straightened again, even if it was precariously balanced, and Knocker was still laid up. But it didn’t change my opinion. It seemed to me that Phil and Laurie held the initiative at the moment. I didn’t like the way it was building up or the way I’d become sandwich filling. I hoped they’d be easy with the ketchup, but there was no real chance of that. The blood was already flowing and it was early days.

* * *

I half expected the fuzz to call round to ask if Knocker had dropped in the night before. The two men had been found, one with body injuries and a broken neck, the other with a smashed face and staved-in ribs from a boot. He was still unconscious, but he’d live. The police asked people around the area if they’d heard anything but I wasn’t one of them, which was just as well with my bandaged hands and lacerations. If ever I missed Maggie’s steadying influence it was then. This was a measure of violence that was new to me and I cursed Maxwell Palmer for involving me. Yet neither of us could have foreseen this development.

I didn’t like the idea of being watched, more so without knowing fully why; unless they thought I was one of Reisen’s men or was Reisen’s eyes against them, an observation now brought up to date. I didn’t fancy my chances either way. It was clear that someone had seen Knocker visit the block; recognised him and called up reinforcements while he was still with me.

I telephoned Maxwell Palmer that evening and gave him a limited version of what had happened to me and what a bloody menace Jimmy was turning out to be. I saw no reason to protect his feelings; it was because of his reluctance to face the truth about his son that any of this had happened. I let him know I was in a spot. I wanted him to know in case something nasty happened to me. To give him his due he was obviously very concerned and wanted me to go round but I was having none of that. He offered to underwrite my expenses, which needed doing as Reisen certainly wouldn’t.

There was no way out of the trap. I could fob off Maxwell Palmer or simply refuse to help as I’d done before, but Reisen was quite a different proposition. He’d listened to the best liars around over the years and I was never in that category. Reisen would want results and if they weren’t forthcoming, he’d release his safety valve and assume I was double-crossing him. That’s his way; infallible, really. Either with him or against him; no ‘don’t knows’ in his private polls.

I then rang Desmond Barret at his home in Moor Park. The copperhead answered the phone, steel all through. “Yes?” She put a lot into that one word under the ice. It was rude, arrogant, demanding, uppish and imperative. So she didn’t have to see suspects round the house to get her juices flowing.

“May I speak to Mr. Barret, please?”

“Who are you?”

“Is that Mrs. Barret?”

“Who is that? Didn’t you hear me?” A favourite approach of hers.

“This is Scotland Yard, ma’am. I’m sorry to disturb you but I only want a minute of his time.” I thought it would silence her and it did. From the way the phone went dead I knew that she’d clapped her red-tipped fingers over the mouthpiece. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the urgent cross-talk that ensued between them. He came on eventually, a cultured voice, cold, businesslike, but at least reasonably polite.

“Barret. Was my wife right in saying you are Scotland Yard?” He gave no sign of nervousness but his very coolness could be a cover.

“Yes, sir. Detective Sergeant Ross. It’s nothing serious but you may be able to help us. I wondered if I could come and see you, or perhaps we could meet in town tomorrow.”

“What about?”

“It might be wasted time, sir, but we have to follow these things up. It’s about a burglary you had some time ago. We have a possible lead.”

He thought round that one then said, “But that was handled by the local police. How is Scotland Yard involved?”

“These things sometimes overlap. Something we’re pursuing interlocks with something the local boys are following. And vice versa, sir.” Which is true. So my brother Dick, a detective in the Met, had told me. I’d been nicked once because of overlapping enquiries myself.

“Well — can’t you tell me more?” Edginess was at last creeping down the wire.

“I’d rather not discuss it on the telephone, sir. It doesn’t amount to much and there’s certainly no need for you to be worried at all. Would you prefer me to call down in the morning?”

“I’m not worried, sergeant. I’m curious.” He was now aware that he’d let his slip show. “There’s no need to come out here. I’m in town daily—”

Before he could continue I shot in, “Fine, then I’ll call at your office. What time . . .”

But it was his turn for interruption. “No. Not the office.” It was another giveaway, but he recovered quickly. “What about coffee at the Bertoli in Regent Street? Say about ten. It gets rather full later.”

“Fine, sir, fine. How do I identify you?”

He hadn’t thought about it. “I’ll be in a charcoal grey suit, with a plain red tie. I’m tall and in my forties. I’ll try to get there first.”

“Great, sir. I’ll be on the lookout for you.” I gave a little laugh to show him what a wag I am and then killed it by adding, “That’ll be much better than me running round a high-class restaurant flashing my warrant card to identify myself.” I didn’t get his reply. It may have been a cough.

I’d deliberately rung the night before so that he had plenty of time to sweat over it and that’s how I wanted him, uncertain, and, if my hunch about him turned out to be right, worried. The only risk was that he might phone the Yard to check on me but it was a very slim risk indeed. At the moment I’d given him no cause. I went to bed a shade lighter of heart thinking that I might have made a good copper; if not good then successful.

* * *

If the wide banana-curve of Regent Street could be representative of all London, then foreigners would leave with the impression of how neat, clean and display-conscious we are if not also reasonably affluent. Alas, some of its winding, narrow tributaries supply an easily accessible lie to the illusion. But I enjoyed walking up its wide avenue in bright sunshine from Piccadilly Underground. Its windows were bright and it was not yet too crowded, apart from the traffic.

Bertoli’s was on the outer curve, in the shade at this time, but it was warm and I was walking briskly, a little behind schedule. The restaurant interior was dark, relieved only by low-wattage table lamps behind deep red shades. If it was meant to be romantic then it was the wrong end of day, but, because of its prices, it was really a dinner restaurant, when the lights played their part all round. I stood in the small lobby casting my gaze down the rows of pink-covered tables like neatly laid-out lollipops. It was too doll-like for me but I reserved my judgment on the pink-checked mini-skirted waitresses with their little halo caps. It was odds-on that Barret had selected the darkest corner, so I sauntered down the aisle.

I’d dressed soberly, not expensively — which had been no problem — and carried a light raincoat over my arm. Most of the tables were empty on account of the fact that the coffee cost twice as much as anywhere else. He was at the end table, his sparsely covered head rose-tinted beside the table lamp. I could just make out his charcoal grey suit but one of his long-fingered hands covered his tie as he toyed nervously with it. It was unmistakably Desmond Barret. He was on the lookout, watching my approach with an apprehension he endeavoured to hide. As I halted beside his table his tongue touched his lips and twin lampshades were mirrored in deep-set, restless brown eyes.

“Mr. Barret?”

He nodded without enthusiasm and indicated the opposite chair.

“Good morning, sir,” I said as I pulled out the chair and carefully folded my raincoat across the one next to it, thus discouraging anyone from sitting there should the place fill. As I fiddled with the chair I noticed the sharpness of Barret’s tapering features, grooves like callipers converging at the chin. He was thin, his sparse hair brushed neatly back at an angle. Thin lips and long, angled nose completed an alert, intelligent face, and the general impression was of a well-groomed businessman very sharp on the uptake. When he took his bony hand away from his tie I noticed the matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket.

“Coffee, sergeant?” The two words were uttered in totally different volume as if he suddenly remembered that he wanted no one to hear the ‘sergeant’.

I nodded and he called a waitress. He wasn’t good-looking and didn’t give me the impression of being henpecked and I wondered how he had landed his beautiful but bitchy wife. Money? Did company secretaries command the sort of income necessary to run the kind of home he did? Jensens and swimming pools? I supposed that a few of them did.

He was waiting for me to start but much to his annoyance I chatted about the weather and the cost of living, as if it affected him, until the coffee came; when it did it was good. Finally he tapped his spoon impatiently against his saucer and said, “I have work to do. Will you please come to the point?”

“Sorry, sir,” I said contritely. “It’s not often I can sit down in comfort on my job. I got carried away. The coffee’s good.” I sipped it and he was ready to slay me, his eyes stabbing out of the gloom, dark and watchful. If I irritated him too much it could backfire but I’d got sufficiently under his skin for what I wanted. I put down the cup slowly.

“Amongst the stuff that was stolen from your house was a ring of two three-carat diamonds set at an angle across the shank.” I’d got this information from Joe Fuller.

Barret nodded, very attentive and holding his cup too tightly.

“It’s not an original design, of course, but it’s possible that we may have located it with some stuff fenced from another haul.”

“How did you associate this particular ring with a local burglary?”

“We’re not sure that it is the ring, sir. You’ll have to identify it later but if you can hang on it’s possible that we may soon have more for you to look at. We have a man helping us with our enquiries. He could well be the man who broke into your house. For reasons I can’t reveal we believe that he is the man but we need a little more co-operation from him.” I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket and briefly studied it. “We’ve been in touch with the local police and obtained a list of your stolen articles.” I glanced at the paper again. “There are two more items that may be yours but I think we’ll know for sure during the next couple of days and what happened to the rest of it. Then perhaps you’d be good enough to have a look, sir.”

Barret was frowning heavily, not at all satisfied and justifiably puzzled. “Wouldn’t it have been better to approach me when you have more conclusive evidence? None of this means much as it stands.”

“That’s true, sir. We could have left it for a bit but there’s something else.” I deliberately raised my cup again and saw him stiffen. The fingers of one of his hands stretched out on the tabletop like a cat’s claws. He had tensed. “While we have a list of the stolen goods our informant indicates that the list is not complete. If he’s to be believed there were some papers stolen along with the rest.”

It got the reaction I wanted. Better than I could have hoped for. Barret sat like a soldier at attention. I don’t think he could have moved then. It was as if he was using both hands on the table to keep himself up after I’d thumped him under the belt. His face looked hollowed in the lamplight, his stare transfixed. Yet he kept his head. “Who gave you this information?”

“I’m on difficult ground, sir. The man has to be charged. But we think we have the bloke who broke into your house. We are going through the delicate stages of doing a deal. He has other information we want and at the moment he’s helping us to compile other jobs to be taken into consideration. Yours, if you will forgive me, sir, is one of the lesser jobs. To make it look good for himself he’s going through the stage of being over-helpful; trying to kid us a bit on stuff that doesn’t matter. Did he take some papers, sir? It will help us evaluate his statement.”

Barret suddenly puffed out his cheeks and exhaled filling out his facial creases. He had no time to think and he knew it. And in that split second of time he didn’t know how much I knew, what I might be holding back. He played safe, as I hoped he would.

“Yes. There were some papers taken.”

“They weren’t on the list, sir.”

“I didn’t know they were missing until some time later. They were of no consequence.”

“But if my information is correct they were taken from secret drawers in a bureau. Would you hide unimportant papers in such a way, sir?”

He gestured irritably. “They weren’t hidden; merely put away and forgotten.”

“In secret drawers, sir?”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to suggest, sergeant. Secret drawers are only secret drawers if no one knows they are there. In that type of period bureau there are invariably so-called secret drawers. They may have been significant at the time they were made but are no safe hiding place these days.”

“But the man in the street wouldn’t know about them; only people who know something of antiques?” I wondered if I’d gone too far as I noticed his suspicion.

“Presumably it was a professional who burgled me, not an average man in the street. What possible interest can the police have in all this?”

“We’re merely trying to check out this bloke’s story, sir. He says the papers were accounts of some kind and that he sold them to someone else.” His loss of colour was noticeable even in the dull, reddish light; it took his mind off me and refocused it on himself.

“And you believe him?” He’d gained a few seconds.

“With a villain like that who knows what to believe, sir? He’ll tell us anything he thinks we want to know. That’s why I had to see you.” I’d left the trap-door open for him.

“I’m beginning to understand. I believe there were some old accounts mixed up with some other papers.”

“It was important to check, sir. He might have stolen letters, tried to blackmail you.” I opened the door a little wider.

He sat back, partly relieved. “Nothing like that. In any event, the papers were returned to me and are now destroyed.”

He’d walked right in and thrown away the key. “Returned to you, sir?”

“They were posted back to me shortly after the burglary.”

“Did you tell the local police, sir?”

“There was no point. I hadn’t reported them missing in the first place and they were of no importance. I imagined your burglar had a wry sense of humour in keeping the valuables and returning the rubbish.”

“But we might have learned something from the envelope — the writing—”

“It was a plain manilla envelope, typewritten and posted from Charing Cross; it wouldn’t have helped you.”

“You should’ve reported it, sir. Forensic might have come up with some interesting points.”

“I’m sorry; perhaps you’re right. It didn’t occur to me at the time. I went through the papers then burned them, which is what I should’ve done years ago.”

He was getting ready to go, having considered that he’d wrapped things up very nicely. So I pinned him back in his chair and took the smugness from his face. “Do you know of a man called Laurie Yates, sir?”

The timing couldn’t have been better. He was just rising, and he sat down sharply, caught completely unawares with a silly, stunned look on his face. It was all the reply I needed but he had to answer for his own sake although he must have been aware that he’d given the game away.

“Who did you say?” But it was too late. We played out the charade of him trying to mull over the name and of me trying to help him, but he was confused, aware that he’d given something away and not knowing how to cover his tracks. In some way not yet clear I’d tied him in with Laurie Yates but it wasn’t a straightforward issue or he wouldn’t have slipped up so easily.

Belatedly he got round to wondering why I’d asked the question. It was unfortunate because I was just about to follow up my advantage. He was still slightly red in the face after his quick bluster and was bringing himself under control, reading something in me that hadn’t been there before. Perhaps I’d shown a trace of over-confidence or subdued elation; he was sharp and he seized on it with a wild stab in the dark that landed on target.

“Sergeant, I’d like to see your warrant card.”

Chapter Seven

At a time when I was considering myself a better jack than the real thing his demand did my ego no good at all. But I’d had much more practice at covering up than he. I gave him a wide, affable smile. “I’ve left it in my other suit.” I didn’t trouble with the ‘sir’, not really rating him as deserving of it in the first place. Barret was bent in some way but I didn’t see him as a regular. I picked up my raincoat and draped it over my arm.

His bluster disappeared quickly. The grooves in his face deepened as his dark eyes probed mine in sudden fear. “Who are you?”

I started to rise but he reached across the table to restrain me.

“You’re not a policeman.”

“And you’re not the innocent you’d have me believe.”

His fingers dug into my arm, so I prised them loose.

“You’re about to create a scene in a public place,” I warned him. “It won’t be good for your image.”

He suddenly realised that people were looking and he sat down, fingering his tie, staring up balefully at me.

“Besides,” I said, “you haven’t paid the bill.” I left him ruffled, worried and wondering what I’d stumbled on. I was wondering myself.

I took a leisurely lunch in Dean Street and arrived back at my pad about mid-afternoon not quite certain of what to do next. I heard the telephone ringing from outside the door; it was still at it by the time I got inside.

“Mr. Scott? Spider?” A girl.

“Who’s that?” I was cautious, still trying to place the voice.

“Kathy. Is that you?”

“Kathy? Jimmy’s Kathy?”

“Yes. I’ve got to see you.”

I recognised her voice now; only just, for we hadn’t exchanged many words when we’d met. She was edgy and suspicious, as if she was afraid someone would interrupt her call. I had my own suspicions.

“How do you know my name and telephone number?”

“Can’t I tell you that when we meet? I’ve got to hurry.”

“Why can’t you speak to me now?”

“Please. Don’t do this to me. Where can I see you?”

The long note of anguish sounded genuine. If the block was still being watched I must not see her here. But where?

“Spider, please.” She sounded terrified.

I gave her Maggie’s address. She said she could make it in a couple of hours. I stressed the importance of making sure she wasn’t followed, but I think she was well aware of the dangers. Afterwards I was sorry I’d suggested Maggie’s place but it had been done on the spur of the moment and Kathy had been in a hurry. I was well aware that I could be laying myself open but it was a chance I had to take. I considered asking Rex Reisen to stake out Maggie’s, then decided against it. On balance it was better that I took my own risks.

I went early, going through the normal routine of shaking off a tail and adding a few embellishments of my own. By the time I got there I knew there was nobody with me. I let myself in and, as always happened when I was alone there, was very aware of her and what she meant to me. Poor Maggie! It was while I was waiting for Kathy that I decided to get a spyhole installed into the front door. I could have done with one right then.

Kathy was due to arrive at five thirty; by a quarter to six it began to look like a fix and I was thinking that I’d better get out while it was still daylight. Yet I stayed because I’m the curious kind and sometimes a mug. I kept my ears flapping, occasionally listening at the door. I made a pot of tea and a crispbread sandwich and when the bell rang at half six it almost took me by surprise. I stood well to one side of the door.

“Who is it?”

“Kathy.” Her tone was urgent.

I opened the door and she was pushing past me as if someone was standing right behind her trying to knock her off. Putting the chain on the door I followed her into the lounge. She wore faded dungarees that had seen better days and some sort of cheap, fluffy fur coat that looked as if the moths were still in it. How she could stick it on a hot day beat me. Bare toes with chipped, painted nails pushed out from old sandals. But her long fair hair was clean and I suspected that once she neglected that she would have gone all the way over the hill; it was the only real physical asset she had to cling to. She was in such a nervous state that my old suspicions were rekindled.

“You sure you weren’t followed here?”

“Quite sure.”

“Then what are you so nervous about?”

She grimaced, flapping her arms like an animated scarecrow. “Everything. But I wasn’t followed.”

“Take your coat off.” I made the mistake of helping her: the pelts smelt as if they were rotting. I hung it on a hook in the lobby, then made her sit down, hoping Maggie would forgive me if she ever found out.

“First things first,” I said, sitting opposite her. “How did you find out my name?”

She pushed her hair back over her shoulders with a delicate, very feminine movement that I found attractive. But she was agitated, trying to still her nerves. “They all know who you are. When you broke into Jimmy’s place they took steps to find out. Anyway, it was easy for them.”

“Because they were watching Jimmy’s old man?”

She didn’t reply. Her trembling fingers groped in a pocket of her dungarees and she produced a crumpled packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She didn’t offer me one but as soon as she had her own going I told her to put it out. My nostrils twitched in annoyance. Ignoring me, she took a deep drag with obvious satisfaction. Leaning across I whipped it from her fingers and crushed it in my hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” She sprang across at me but I pushed her back. “They cost money,” she wailed.

“I know they do. But I’m not having the stink of pot in this place.”

“God, I need one—”

“Try lighting another and I’ll sling the lot out of the window. You disappoint me; I thought you had more sense.”

She sat there intertwining her fingers and while I felt sorry for her, I wouldn’t relent, not in Maggie’s place.

“You sound just like my old man,” she whined. “You straights are all the same.”

“I know — we don’t understand you. While I’m trying to do just that you can tell me why you’re so late.”

Kathy fingered a tin medallion that hung round her neck on a cheap, plated chain. She sat silently as if she was holding a rosary and in her peculiar way, I supposed that she was; the piece of junk she held represented a way of life.

“It wasn’t easy to get away. I needed the right reasons.”

“So you’re a prisoner?”

“Sort of. It’s getting that way since . . .”

“Since? Let’s get down to it,” I said. “Why do you want to see me?”

“Jimmy’s in trouble.” She continued to finger the medallion, gazing at me sullenly as if she expected a rebuke.

I didn’t disappoint her. “I took some risk to find and tell him that. Now you think it necessary to confirm it back to me?”

“It’s a different sort of trouble. Real trouble.”

“It was real before, Kathy. You’re wasting my time.”

She was alarmed by my tone. “Look, I promised him I’d see you. He’s afraid to come himself; he needs help.”

I stared at her. She didn’t like being here; she was uncomfortable but so far as I could judge her emotions were genuine. She had come for Jimmy’s sake, which was much more than he deserved. I kept my tone soft.

“I can’t help him, love. I was hired to pass on a message from his old man and to try to talk sense into him. You may as well know that I don’t like him. If I were you I’d split; go back to mum and dad. If he wants help his father’s only too willing to give it.”

Kathy wriggled in her chair, unused to asking favours and unwilling to; her independence had cost her dearly and belatedly she was realising her freedom was a myth. Yet the moves had to come from her if she was to retain a vestige of self-respect. So I waited, not too patiently; Jimmy Palmer was not my favourite subject.

“He won’t go back to his father for the same reason that I won’t go back to mine.”

“You mean you can’t admit your mistake?”

“Rubbish. We’re doing our own thing. If it goes bad on us we won’t squeal.”

“But you are, Kathy. Jimmy needs help.”

She closed her eyes so that they looked like dark bruises against her paleness; she had used quantities of powder to try to hide her bad skin. “This is different,” she complained. “This has happened since you called.”

I waited. She said nothing more. I stood up. “Out,” I snapped. “I’m not sitting here while you play with your conscience.”

“You’re a bastard,” she said. “You’re trying to make me squirm.” She made no effort to rise.

“Either get on with it or get out,” I yelled, furious at her reticence.

“They’ve diddled him,” she blurted out. “Done him out of money.”

I sat down again and sighed. “Fancy that. Surprise, surprise.”

The jibe at least brought her to life. She glared at me and held her head back defiantly. I preferred her this way; it made a woman of her. “You just don’t want to understand, do you?—”

What sympathy I had for her dissipated. I wagged a finger under her nose and raised my tone. “I’m sick to death of being told by you in one form or another that I don’t understand. There’s damn all to understand; you haven’t told me a thing. But you expect me to respond to your simpering cry for help for a shower who’s landed himself on the scrap heap and now wants out — provided someone else takes the risks. For scum like Jimmy, I wouldn’t lift a finger to help.”

I’d made it easier for her, she was angry now and I could see her latent hate welling up. She had seen me as a do-gooder, which was one hell of a joke, and she and her kind couldn’t tolerate do-gooders. Jimmy must have exercised a lot of pressure to get her to call.

“I think he’s crazy, but he respects you,” she said, the words nearly choking her.

I didn’t know what to say to that, not sure whether it was an insult or a compliment from him. What I think she really meant was that since they had double-crossed him, he needed someone to turn to, someone who might understand something of his problem and could help or advise. As he’d closed all other doors, I could at least see his act of putting feelers out to me as one of pure desperation. He was in trouble and couldn’t cope with it. It might be worse than that. I gazed wearily at Kathy who was now nibbling one end of the medallion. I wasn’t going to get any help from her; she was torn between doing what Jimmy had demanded and finally admitting to being directly involved in crime. It was a pity she couldn’t face up to it; admission might have helped her, and I saw her reluctance as sitting on a fence from which she was more than likely to topple into darkness rather than light. So I plunged in.

“Let’s see if I can get it right,” I suggested. “Phil and Laurie have conned Maxwell Palmer into parting with fifteen grand against fictitious betting slips that honest Jim was only too willing to sign. Now they’ve refused to give our Jim his cut but want to keep him on the payroll in case they repeat the act. Right?”

Kathy avoided my gaze. “They promised him half.”

“So how much did he get?”

She toyed with the medallion for inspiration. “They increased his — pocket money.”

I almost laughed. They had him on a chain. “Why doesn’t he cut his losses and blow?”

About to hedge again she caught my glance and decided against it. “They’ve threatened him. He’s afraid to leave.”

There was something in the way she spoke that implied she was leaving a good deal out, as if she had underplayed the threat.

“Daddy will protect him,” I suggested again.

Kathy shook her head. Her brand of idealism had vanished with my opening up the subject. “He can’t do that. He won’t.”

“Because his father knows that he’s been done by his own son?”

She shrugged with a dignity rooted in her past. “Possibly. But mainly because he’s in danger.”

“What sort of danger?”

“If he tries to go back to his father, or anywhere they don’t approve of, they’ll kill him.”

“If he’s a risk why don’t they do that now?” It was brutal but I had to keep her facing reality.

“They still need him.”

A sinister note had crept in between us which neither of us tried to exaggerate. I knew Phil and Laurie to be killers and they would surely top Jimmy once they had finished using him; he was much too big a risk. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t string him along, give him his money, if they had a further use for him. It seemed that these two jokers weren’t troubled by pretence, that they were so ruthless they had no need of it.

“Why doesn’t he go to the police?”

“It wouldn’t save him. He’d finish up inside and they’d get at him there.”

Kathy was forgetting her prejudices and as she did, she was more herself. She was speaking as I guessed she had been taught to speak. She was facing matters, however unpleasant, because she had been diverted and was worried sick over Jimmy.

“Even if I was willing, what could I do?” I protested.

“He was very impressed by the way you evaded them the other night.”

“That’s no answer. Does he know that I spent three weeks in hospital after being beaten up by them?”

One look was enough to warn me that at least she didn’t know. Kathy was startled. “I’m sorry.” It was out before she could stop herself.

“Cut out, Kathy. Don’t go back. There’s nothing I can do for him.”

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” She was falling back within herself again, approaching listlessness.

“What did you expect? You heard what he said to me when you were listening at the door.”

She stood up slowly, flicking her hair back again as it fell forward. She appeared lost and defeated and unsure of herself. When she wasn’t in night clubs or in bed with Jimmy the rest of her life must be represented by the image she now created.

“Is he so important to you?” I rose with her. She looked a frail wisp of a girl by my side.

She grimaced, avoiding my gaze. “He’s all I’ve got.”

I was about to say that she could do better for herself but seeing her like this I wasn’t at all sure. If she was willing to change her habits, make more of herself, she could certainly find a better male partner than Jimmy Palmer. But it was no guarantee of greater happiness, so I held my tongue. Anyway, it wasn’t my business. So, I said, “I know someone who might put you up for a spell until you can sort yourself out.” I was thinking of Sheila Watts whose husband was still serving time; Sheila had helped me when Old Bill had been after me.

“No thanks.”

“Where do they live, Kathy, Laurie and Phil?”

It was the nearest she’d got to a smile but it was bitter.

“If I told you that they’d kill me.”

“If you told me I might be able to help Jimmy.” It was a belated, crafty notion.

She looked up at me and all I could see were her blue eyes with the surrounding hair. It was a good trick for it cut out the worst of her features.

“I thought you wouldn’t lift a finger to help him?”

“If I can fix Phil and Laurie I’d be helping him whether I liked it or not, but it wouldn’t be my primary objective.”

I left her to think it over while I went to fetch her coat. She was still undecided when I returned. What I couldn’t miss, however, was her fear. She had considered it and was terrified.

“There’s no easy way, Kathy; for you or anyone. The only way to remove the danger of Phil and Laurie is to destroy them one way or another. If you want my help, I can’t work blindfolded.”

She wanted to tell me but was scared of the consequences.

“The offer to get you put up still holds.”

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “If I don’t go back they’ll think the worst. And they’ll take it out on Jimmy.”

I didn’t want to trade on terror. I helped her on with her coat and noticed her shiver. I opened the door for her.

“It was just a thought,” I said. “I understand your fears.”

“Will it really help Jimmy?” She pushed the door to as if afraid that someone might be listening.

If I was placing her in danger, then my answer had to be honest. “If we can tuck away Phil and Laurie, it must help him. What he’s got to do is to make sure that he’s not tucked away with them. I can only promise that I’ll be gunning for them, not for him.”

Kathy chewed her lower lip until it reddened. “Can you win against them?”

“I don’t know. Jimmy’ll be no worse off than he is now if I don’t. The situation can only improve.”

She told me then, quickly, as if she didn’t want to hear herself giving the information. I jotted it down and asked her if she would telephone me with any titbits of information given the opportunity without endangering herself. She said she would, and I suppose she took the view that she might as well stick her neck out all the way, having once committed herself. When she left, she smiled as if relieved of a burden; it was quite a pleasant sight.

I decided against going back to my own flat. I had a few clothes and shaving gear at Maggie’s that would keep me going. My association with Maggie was well known in the underworld, a fact that would have distressed her if she’d known how much, but she was away and therefore in no danger. It would take them a day or two to find out I was here but when they did they’d find this block far more difficult to watch than mine. It was bigger, with at least half-a-dozen widely spread entrances; they couldn’t watch them all. Also, it was a better illuminated area, loiterers were much more obvious. So by and large I saw it as a change for the better. The telephone number I’d impressed on Kathy was Maggie’s. I hadn’t let her write it down, making her repeat it until she remembered it. If she later forgot, it was too bad. Similarly, I memorised the two addresses she had given me and then burned the slip of paper they were written on.

Maggie always keeps a good store of tinned and frozen foods, so I dished myself up duckling à l’orange with petits pois and used up some of her fine-blended coffee. After dinner I changed into dark slacks, cardigan and rubber-soled shoes and waited for sundown, filling in the time by trying to sort out Jimmy’s problem. The only place to run was to his father. As his life was now threatened, his motive had to be extremely powerful to stop him doing that. I still thought it was somehow tied in with his mother; I should have raised it with Kathy while she was here. It’s easy to self-recriminate afterwards but the truth was I’d been too bogged down with the real issues at the time. Why he couldn’t go back to his father was, for the moment, incidental. Phil and Laurie clearly didn’t give him enough money to skip, and they probably paid for all his entertainment so that he didn’t actually handle the cash. So where else could he go without funds? It was obvious, too, that they’d put the fear of God into him. He must have swallowed a lot to have asked Kathy to approach me; it kept it in the family. It was strange how people who wouldn’t normally give me the time of day suddenly found qualities that might lift them from the fence they had approached too near and which, it seemed, I was destined to straddle for life. I only became respectable in their eyes when they became less so. I don’t see it as any form of compliment, yet I always respond. I suppose the truth is it gives me an excuse to do almost legitimately, or at least for some form of cause, those things I enjoyed doing when I was bent. Anyway, that’s my excuse.

Laurie Yates was my target. I didn’t rate him any less dangerous than the shadowy Phil but I reckoned he was most likely to have what I wanted. I had the idea that Laurie was the brains and Phil implemented the ideas. It was a guess, no more, supported by the merest thread of knowledge.

I called directory enquiries to check Laurie’s telephone number. They told me he wasn’t listed. I didn’t believe he wasn’t on the telephone, so he had to be listed under another name. It was a blow because it deprived me of the chance of checking when the flat might be empty. I rang Bluie Palmer to ask him if he had a miniature camera to photograph documents indoors. He hadn’t; he only went in for the bigger stuff. Maybe it was just as well, for I’m not a photographer, not that sort anyway.

Normally on the kind of job I was considering I’d watch the place for days but I reckoned Laurie Yates was the type to notice, if not personally then through hirelings. I was also convinced that time wasn’t on my side. I knew the area well enough, one of the old squares off the Portobello Road, not too far from Wormwood Scrubs. From Laurie’s point of view the area was right. It was cosmopolitan: old houses turned largely into overcrowded flats. He hadn’t made the mistake of going big; living expensively and fashionably and thereby isolating himself. He’d have plenty of local help. I’d lived a long time in such an area; no one was really out of place whatever their colour or dress, which was one of its attractions. In a true creeping sense, it was easy. There wasn’t a house around there that I couldn’t break into almost one-handed. It was the approach that was the problem: knowing who your enemies are. As it wasn’t a job for nicking a car, I caught a bus and walked the rest.

I came down the Portobello, past the blank-eyed shops and shuttered antique markets, finding its whole character changed without the street traders, the stalls and the masses of bargain hunters. A cat was sniffing in the gutter where a fish stall had been. The long, narrow street had been cleaned, dustbins jammed for the morning collection, their lids rakish like a broken line of crouching, steel-helmeted soldiers waiting in the dark. A group of youths ran and shouted ahead of me, kicking a tin can, unaware of the police prowl car hunched up behind others. The coppers, after bigger game, didn’t stir. I passed them with a clear conscience and then worried about not being worried.

I turned west past some small shops on one side and the start of the squares on the other. The squares were big, once very fashionable with a railinged green in their middle, a communal garden for the surrounding tenants. The fronts of the houses didn’t face each other from opposite sides of the square. Those that faced front on the one side looked out on to the backs of those on the other, which had small gardens verging the communal green.

When I approached the square where Laurie Yates lived, I crossed to the far side of the street. It was only nine o’clock. There were plenty of people about; it was the sort of district that attracted movement, the inhabitants having such diverse interests. It could be helpful provided I wasn’ recognised. I slowed my pace. A Pakistani restaurant had sprung up since I’d moved. It was well lighted and crowded out, a marvellous smell of curry creeping from the constantly opening door.

The entrance to Laurie’s place was in the street behind the square; a peculiar arrangement, as it was really the rear of the house with all the ugliness of pipes facing the street. It made my job more difficult, restricting my use to gutter-pipes only. The buildings weren’t dissimilar to the one that Jimmy Palmer lived in, London was crowded with them, but this layout was different.

As I had to take the step sometime, I turned into the stretch where Laurie lived. Many of the front doors were open, showing stone stairs leading up to the apartments. Some porches displayed a list of tenants and flat numbers. I didn’t waste my time looking for Laurie’s name. A few men hung around in the street. A West Indian sat on a porch strumming a guitar and murmuring a calypso; he eyed me no less inquisitively than the rest. I was a stranger; I could only be visiting or nosing and they wanted to know which. I spotted the faded street number on a cracked pillar and passed by. I had to find out which floor Laurie was on.

I crossed the road still observed behind a smokescreen of gossip, saw an open door, an empty lobby and went in without hesitation. It was musty inside and when I tried the switch the upper landing light didn’t work. A dusty, forty-watt bulb supplied the only illumination in the hall. The floor was of cracked tiles and, at the back of the hall, incredibly, an old open fire grate filled with rubbish. The stone stairs were worn and dirty when I mounted them. There was just sufficient light to see the single numeral on the first-landing door. One. Well, that was logical except for numbering the basement flat. I continued up the stairs in increasing darkness, for once not having to worry about creaking boards, my rubbers making no noise on the stone. My pencil torch confirmed Flat Two on the next floor so I started upwards again.

There were four flats from ground level. The top one had a spring lock that could easily be opened with the mica strip I carried, and I was willing to gamble that it was probably occupied by a woman, or girls sharing; most of them have no idea of locks. I rang the bell and put my ear to the door. There was a shuffling well to my right and an annoyed tutting. The shuffling stopped at the door. “Who is it?”

I’d won my bet with myself: a girl’s voice. “I’m looking for Charles Spencer.” I kept the name low so that she would have difficulty in hearing it.

“Who?”

“Look, I’m awfully sorry, I think I’ve come to the wrong flat. There’s no light out here.” I didn’t repeat the name but made sure I sounded harmless. She put the chain on, then opened the door as far as the chain permitted. The light came flooding out and I smiled at her. She was in a bathrobe with a towel wound like a turban round her head. I saw the end of one curler in her damp hair. Fresh-faced and young she stared out at me curiously. “Charles Spencer,” I repeated. “I’m beginning to think I’ve got the wrong house.”

“I don’t know the name; not around here; not in this house.”

“I’ve probably got the wrong street as well.” I grinned. “Sorry to disturb you, you look as if you were about to dry your hair.”

She smiled sheepishly. “I was. I hope you find him.”

When she had closed the door I turned back to it and heard her take the chain off. You have to read the signs right. These were quite big flats. She’d worn no wedding ring and although that might not mean too much these days she’d struck me as the type of girl who would prefer to. I was willing to follow up my first bet with another that she shared with at least one other girl. Removing the chain explained quite a lot. Her flatmate was out and wouldn’t be home until this one had already gone to bed; so that when she did come home she wouldn’t have to arouse her partner in order to get in.

I leaned against the wall in the darkness, weighing the alternatives. I didn’t want to break in and scare the girl. Nor did I want to go from house to house until I found an empty flat while the idle loiterers were still waiting outside. Whispers would race round this square and I could be trapped before I left it. The streets were too active for me to climb stacks from street level. I squatted against the wall and waited, the decision having been made for me.

It was a good listening post. Someone came into the lower hall and clattered up the stairs. A man who had no reason to use the caution I had. His steps were assured, quick; he lived here. I rose to my feet but my reasoning was correct. He stopped on the landing below and fumbled with his keys, cursing loudly about the lack of light and kids who broke or stole light bulbs. His door closed with a crash.

I gave it half an hour in all. Time for her to fiddle with more curlers if she needed to and time to get the dryer going, which to me was as valuable as plugging her ears. The first stage of opening a lock with mica is silent enough but when the catch is finally pushed back it can make quite a loud click. I peered through the letterbox, noticing that the light came from well to my right, then let myself in, having to use my shoulder and making more noise than usual. I stood there with the door partly open waiting for a reaction.

While I stood in the gap I took stock. Opposite me was a closed door. A narrow corridor went away to my right with two more doors opening off on the opposite wall and, as far as I could see by leaning forward, two more on my side with a tributary passage running off near the end. The light was coming from the smaller passage. None of the doors were open. I waited a little longer, then finally committed myself by stepping into the corridor and closing the door behind me.

I put my ear to the nearest door, listened, then opened it and stepped through. It was a bedroom. Crossing to the window I opened it and peered out. Small gardens, almost yards, were just visible below, and beyond them the green. There was a down pipe near enough for me to reach it from the sill, which saved me trying the next room.

I climbed out, leaned across and tested the pipe strength as far as I was able, then, satisfied, closed the window, stood up and swung out. There wasn’t far to go but there was a long, fatal drop below me if I made a hash of it. The guttering was old and sagging but was reluctant to give up so that it held long enough for me to climb on to the tiles. I went up the roof and peered down from the top. I could see Laurie’s place opposite but the angle was too steep for me to see the street. So I had to go down the other side.

I rolled over, then squatted in my patented method of negotiating roofs. I eased my way down until I could see the entrance to Laurie’s place. The West Indian was still quietly strumming and from where I was it floated up as a rather beautiful sound. Those I had seen gossiping were still at it and had been joined by one or two others. I had as good an observation post as any. It was better than being on the street. Unless anyone had reason to look up I was safe. And I was at home up here.

I settled down to a wait, hoping that I could finish the job that night and banking on Laurie being a nocturnal animal. After a while it seemed to me that those still chatting down below had lost all interest in me. At first they were casting odd glances at the doorway I’d entered but as time passed they drew the wrong conclusions and gave up looking. Although I’ve always hated the waiting game, I’ve never made the mistake of moving too soon. Years ago, I developed a system of half-blanketing my mind so that while I saw what was going on it was done without concentration. It helped pass the time and stopped me clock-watching. I suppose it was a crude form of Yoga or self-hypnosis, but it worked for me.

Cars and people came and went, the calypso player was joined by another, the gossiping groups broke up, regrouped and then gradually diminished. The street was not clear at any time. My only bad moment was when an aircraft flew quite low overhead, its lights winking, and a couple of men below looked up at the sky. I lowered my head between my knees to hide the blob of my face.

A car pulled up outside Laurie’s after an hour or so of waiting. It was the same colour as the XJ12 I’d followed to Jimmy’s place but I was too high up and it was too dark for me to read its registration number. A man climbed out and went into the house. He was too fast for me to identify and the angle of vision was all wrong. Twenty minutes later a light went out on the top floor and within seconds the man reappeared with another man and a girl. They stood on the pavement quietly talking for a few seconds and I was able to get a better look. The newcomer and the girl were new to me. The driver looked vaguely familiar. I hoped that the man from the flats was Laurie Yates. From this distance it looked as if both he and the girl were dressed for going out; her three-quarter-length fur hung expensively. They drove off and I continued to wait for a few minutes more. The calypso singers were now talking and there was only one other group of three men.

I went up the roof carefully, made sure that no one was looking up, then slid over the apex and worked my way down to the gutter. There was no need to go through the girl’s flat again. It was later and darker with fewer people about so I took the pipe all the way down to the small garden. There were window lights on all about me but no midnight gardeners. I climbed the fence to land on the central green, crossed to the nearest railings lining the street, waited for a couple taking their dog for a walk to pass, then climbed over and walked back to the top of Laurie’s street. Keeping my head averted, I went past the end of the building until I came to a similar arrangement to the one I’d just left; gardens and green.

I went to the darkest part of the square before climbing over into the communal green; the gates were locked. I crossed the green, counting the houses as I went. The top floor of Laurie’s house was in darkness. When I’d climbed into the garden, unkempt and overgrown, I rested. I’d been using a lot of muscle that hadn’t been exercised for some time. Coming down a stack was not as arduous as climbing up one and I had four widely spaced floors confronting me. I also wanted to be certain that the square was deserted before I started.

I suppose I waited a good half-hour seated on an old fungus-covered stone. The damp crept through to me but it was better than standing. Things were quietening down; there were now more lights off than on. It was time to move and the qualms I felt had nothing to do with breaking and entering; that was easy. It was what I’d find once in that suddenly ruffled my nerves. I’d been over it all but it didn’t help now. These men were killers. Given a chance they wouldn’t slip up a second time. And I was giving them that chance on a plate. I started up like a mouse.

Chapter Eight

It was my night for bedrooms. I pulled the curtains but it was too risky to switch on the light so I had to be content with my torch and even then used it sparingly. Of one thing I was certain; this was Laurie’s drum all right. It was luxurious; a palace concealed by an environment of encroaching dilapidation. Laurie was doing well for himself. The fitted wardrobes were white and gilt; the bedroom chairs French, the bedcover heavy silk brocade, the pale rose carpet ankle-deep. The quality of the furnishing destroyed any suggestion of flashiness. It was all good pricey stuff carefully chosen. And mugs like Maxwell Palmer had paid for it.

As I went through the drawers and cupboards it became clear that I was dealing with a tidy, methodical mind that could not tolerate sloppiness. The place was spotless. A daily help would account for it only up to the time she left. It was clear that a woman lived with him; there were no powder marks and cosmetics were neatly arranged. Either she enjoyed the same degree of neatness, or he was intolerant of untidiness to a stage that forced her to comply. It could be the girl’s influence, but I didn’t think so.

It made it more difficult for me, of course. Clothes had to be folded back in precisely the way they had been before I disturbed them and that was difficult. I went through the flat to make sure it was empty. The rooms were big, the corniced ceilings at least thirteen feet high; the kitchen was straight from a woman’s magazine. I could tell, too, from the way shoes were cleaned, clothes hung up, toiletries laid out, that Laurie was meticulous in every way.

The one harsh note was a study looking too much like an office; too many cabinets, shelves with files, little all-round character except for a bureau that was completely out of place in this room. If I was to find anything at all I guessed that it would be here. Laurie might have been drummed out of the Institute of Chartered Accountants but he still received their literature and the earlier copies had been bound. Reference books on company law, taxation, and accounting abounded and when I had a quick look at some of them they were well-thumbed. Laurie evidently did his homework.

The cabinets revealed nothing that wasn’t routine, old stuff generally, but one file was interesting. Press cuttings of embezzlement cases, fraud, companies under suspicion, anything relating to industry and commerce that was not quite right. Some cabinet drawers were locked. I started on the bureau. Surprisingly, all the drawers were unlocked and when I examined them I understood why: blank stationery, carbons, blotting paper, all neatly stacked. Two drawers were empty. The bureau itself was locked. I sat on a desk chair and studied it. I never throw away old keys; I stockpile; suitcase, drawer, door, desk keys, I keep the lot and now produced them on a big ring. These old bureau locks aren’t very secure and I turned it at the seventh attempt. I pulled out the supports and lowered the flap.

It was a genuine piece all right; eighteenth century; a central cavity with a door, small drawers each side with open pigeonholes above them. I don’t know what induced the idea but I was suddenly alerted at the possibility: could this be Barret’s old bureau? Part of the price of blackmail? Or even a deal? And could fate be so damned ironical? The secret drawers were either side of the central cavity, appearing like innocuous partitions.

I groped in the cavity, found the springs and pressed. The two secret drawers shot out like overgrown cigar cases, slender and deep. A cursory glance at their contents revealed what I wanted. I almost laughed. They were photostats, so if Laurie still had the originals then they were in a safer place than this, probably a deposit box.

This was no time to study them in detail but I saw enough to realise that I needed copies; it was imperative. There was far too much to sit down and copy now; it would take hours. I checked the time; half twelve. I could do it.

I detached the right key from the ring, closed and locked the bureau, carefully placed the balance sheets under my cardigan so that they would not crease, then left the flat, leaving the bedroom window closed but unlatched to save time on my return. I shinned down the pipe and over the double barrier of railings and searched for a cab. It was the wrong area and the wrong time so I did the next best thing and nicked a car.

The journey from North Kensington to Trafalgar Square took me twenty minutes without breaking speed limits. At this time of night there was plenty of parking space in the side streets around the square. I let myself into the XYY Agency and switched on the light in the back office. At the side of Lulu’s desk was a photostating machine, not one of the best for we hadn’t all that call for one; it was slow and temperamental but it worked. As it was some time since I’d used it myself I made a hash of the first two or three copies and had to start again. There were half-a-dozen sheets of each set of accounts. By the time I was satisfied with the results I’d been longer than I’d intended. Folding my own photostats I stuffed them in my hip pocket.

There was a copper waiting for me at the door just as I was about to leave. My heart sank as I imagined he had called about the car I’d nicked. It was more complicated. He wanted to know what I was doing there. It was unusual for a travel agency to be open in the early hours of the morning. I explained that I was the proprietor doing a spot of urgent work and he asked me to prove my identity. I was up against it. I never carry any form of identity while on a job. He asked me how I’d got there. Taxi. How would I get back. Taxi. If I couldn’t find one I could go back and ring for one. He asked me to turn my pockets out and I told him to get stuffed. I had to with four sets of accounts on me; he’d wonder what the hell they were and would follow it up, which was the last thing I wanted. He was keen on taking me in and I wasn’t having that either.

Then I remembered a photograph that had been taken on an airline travel agents’ trip which Lulu had cut out of the Travel Trade Gazette and pasted on to the wall. I took the copper to the back office and there it was over the photocopying machine. I was with a group at the foot of a Boeing 747: We were all identified; and there was I at the back; Mr. W. Scott, Managing Director, XYY Agency. This satisfied the copper to a large degree but it was obvious that he still found my manner and general repartee very un-managing-director-like. He compromised by taking my name and address, and watched while I locked up.

I then had to pretend to look for a cab. The Square was empty. Matey tried to be helpful with suggestions but just then he was like a ball and chain. I told him I’d go down to Charing Cross Station where there was bound to be one sooner or later. Fortunately his beat took him the other way. It was the first time I’d almost been nicked for screwing my own offices, but that’s the way it goes. I’d lost far too much time.

I found the car and it was an effort to resist speeding back to Laurie’s place but I had to cool it and took the statutory twenty minutes. I parked the car in the slot I’d nicked it from. The whole area was virtually dead. Everyone had turned in long since and the square was left to the cats and the skittish eddies of a breeze that played tag with odd scraps of paper from the gutters. Walking on empty dark streets at the dead of night is an experience everyone should try some time. It’s a different world and the air is almost pollution-free. Each sound carries and distorts and defies direction.

There was still no light on in Laurie’s. To make absolutely certain I went round to the front of the house. No lights there either. I was relieved. Two forty-five. If he had gone to a club, I was all right. I hastened back to the square.

I’m not sure why I didn’t hear the sound; perhaps because I was unusually tensed, aware that the time factor was against me and that I was really acting against my better judgment. I would normally have heard it as a reflex action, routine procedure. But I wanted to get those papers back to where I’d found them as quickly as I could. The fact was that I had one leg through the open window before I heard their breathing. I doubt that I ever froze so quickly in my life. I just sat there straddling the window-ledge wondering what to do.

They were asleep, their breathing shallow. I could just see their faces, hers turned towards his, her dark hair spreading over the white of the pillow. Instinct told me to duck out quick; that was short-term safety; long-term dictated that I returned the balance sheets, that Laurie must not know they’d been seen.

These thoughts were quick and desperate. I’d negotiated rooms before where people were sleeping without turning a hair, but they’d been innocent victims and Laurie was hardly that. As I sat on the sill they didn’t move. It seemed that even in sleep they had neat habits; their mouths weren’t gaping nor were their postures ungainly. If I scarpered Laurie would eventually miss the papers and the way of their going would point to my dubious talents, so what the hell.

I climbed in all the way, grateful at least that in opening the window I had taken all my normal precautions. I took them again as I closed it. The temptation to leave it open for a quick escape was enormous but the breeze or a change in temperature could awaken them. I crouched below the sill, listening for any change in their quiet breathing and trying to remember if there’d been any creaking boards between here and the door. This time Laurie’s fastidiousness operated for me; he was not the type to tolerate a loose board. I crossed the room like a ghost, holding my breath all the way. I turned the doorknob as if it contained gelignite, all the time watching the pale smear of Laurie’s face. It was too dark for detail and not the time to register it. Opening the door I went through and closed it behind me again, resisting the temptation to leave it open.

I felt a bit better then; for a second or two I leaned against the wall while I sorted out my breathing, then went to the study. When I’d returned the balance sheets, the signed ones in the correct secret drawer, a point that Laurie wouldn’t miss, I locked the bureau. In the darkness I wasn’t enamoured of the idea of returning to the bedroom. I left the study, then crept along the narrow hall to the front door. My pencil torch picked out two big bolts and a mortice lock. Even if I could have managed the lock I couldn’t have slid the bolts back after my departure and Laurie was too careful not to notice. The same applied to the window catch. There was a way to close the latch from outside but not without the risk of noise. But a window latch left off was a more debatable point than two big bolts on a door, particularly if nothing was missing. I had to go back the way I’d come and I wasn’t happy about it.

I listened at the bedroom door. Their breathing was as regular as before. Turning the handle took an eternity but I eased open the door, stood still, listened again, stepped in and closed the door behind me. Neither of them had changed position. Perhaps they took sleeping pills for the sort of life they led. I crept to the window in absolute silence and once again crouched below the sill. The window was easy running and I had no need to stand in order to raise it; good old Laurie kept his hinges and pulleys well oiled. I am certain that there was no noise as the window went up. There was a sudden gust of cool air which might have done it.

With a speed that had me rooted, Laurie flung back the bedclothes and dived at me. He couldn’t have seen much for I was still crouched, just about to ease a leg over the sill. But if his reaction was quick, mine was only fractionally slower and I smothered his flailing arms as he came in. I was already against the wall so had nowhere to fall but was at a disadvantage at being on my haunches. Strangely, at such a time, my main fear was that the girl would suddenly start screaming and rouse the neighbourhood.

Laurie was fighting like a woman, nails trying to rake my face. Then he tried using his knees but I knew all about that and was in the wrong position for him. I managed to get in a short hook to his head that gave me time and space to half rise to my feet. There wasn’t much weight to him and I wondered why he’d tried it unless being crouched as I had been had completely deceived him about my size; as he speeded up his action I guessed that he had belatedly realised this. But he was a vicious, quick-moving fighter with no scruples.

As I warded him off the girl sprang up on the bed, the sheet held up in front of her, her breathing now heavy and erratic and about to rise to a scream. I dropped my qualms and got stuck in, desperate now with too much to lose. I swung one at Laurie that sent him hurtling across the room to smack against the door. I dived straight for the girl and got my hand over her mouth just as the scream started. Laurie was heaving away from the door. He came to the other side of the bed, glowering and panting, eyes wild, while I struggled to hold the girl from behind. When he turned away I thought he was going for help but maybe he realised that while he was doing that I’d be off. He opened a drawer and when he faced me again held a knife.

“You use that and I’ll throttle her.” I kept one arm round her squirming, pyjama-topped body and dropped my other hand to her throat. The warning was for them both. In a crazy moment I reflected that I was getting reckless with my threats to women on this caper. The girl was frightened but had sense. She stopped struggling but still gasped for breath. My fingers were lightly on her throat but she knew that I could nip a scream off almost before it started.

“Laurie, don’t come near. He’ll do it.” She barely whispered the words but they contained real terror. Thank God she believed me. But we both underestimated Laurie. He dived forward across the bed and slashed at my hand round her throat. I pulled back, removing my hand quickly. The knife cut down her throat and she slumped in my arms.

For a second I was numbed, unable to believe it, then pushed the girl at Laurie who was about to make a plunge over her, and grabbed a pillow. But I was trapped between the wall and the bed as Laurie came at me, murder in his little eyes. I threw the pillow at the knife, jumped on to the bed and over to the other side grabbing another pillow as I went. By the time I’d swung round he’d removed the knife from the pillow which he’d instinctively slashed at, and feathers were floating like snowflakes.

I waited crouched at the side of the bed and wondered what he’d do. He came round it, cutting me off from the window, cornering me near the door. As he came I kicked hard at the bed and it careered on well oiled casters, the edge cracking his shins. He gasped out but didn’t drop the knife. Reaching behind me I grabbed a pot of cream from the dressing table and hurled it at his head. He ducked but was too late for the second one which hit him without doing damage. While he momentarily cowered to protect his head I up ended the bed on to him.

If I was to get out alive I had to get the knife. If I jumped for the window while he was smothered he’d still have time to throw the knife while I was shinning down the stack. So I jumped on the up-ended bed to make it more difficult for him to get out. The girl was under there too, but there were no niceties in any of this. I was fighting for my life against a maniac. As soon as he’d got the knife in his hands there had been a difference in him, his complete disregard for the girl had proved it.

Then, incredibly, he was beating against the mattress with what I thought was his fist until I realised that he was stabbing crazily hoping to penetrate both mattress and me. And he was mumbling incoherently. Fortunately the mattress was good and thick and the knife blade not long enough. But it didn’t do my nerves any good.

I needed a weapon and saw one in the dressing-table stool. It was solid, four wooden legs and a frame with a well-padded seat. With a spark of inspiration I jumped off the bed, dived for the window, rattled it, and dived back behind the overturned bed again. Laurie came out like a bullet, springing for the window thinking I’d got out. I kicked him in the back as he reached it. He flew forward and I thought he was going to dive out head first.

With the stool in one hand, I grabbed a fistful of pyjama jacket with the other just as he was going through. If I’d had his lack of scruples I would have let him go. As it was I pulled him back and raised the stool to crown him with it as his head came level. He twisted round and I found myself with an empty jacket. In the split second it took me to realise this he plunged his knife upwards at my guts.

What reflex action caused me to sweep down the stool between us at that moment I’ll never know. The knife slashed into the padding and came out the other side. I was holding the stool by one leg; the force of the blow drove all four legs into me but it was more bearable than the knife would have been. The sight of him wasn’t pretty as our gaze locked, only inches separating us. Even as he realised that he’d missed he was trying to prise the knife loose.

I grabbed another leg of the stool and rammed him with it not now caring whether he went through the window or not. His pale eyes changed expression as if a switch had been flicked and he was returning to normal. It was too late for him. His head crashed against the bottom frame of the open window, his eyes glazed over with pain. I dropped the stool and thumped him with all I had on the side of the jaw. It would be some time before he troubled me again. My knuckles felt as if I’d cracked them.

My inclination was to get out at once but I had to see to the girl. I pulled the curtains, switched on the lights and took stock. What his reaction would be when Laurie came to and saw this shambles I would have liked to witness. I pulled back the bed. The girl was flat on her back, her legs bent awkwardly, her pyjama jacket surprisingly unruffled as if her state of indignity was enough and modesty was all she had left. A thin trickle of blood ran down her throat but I was relieved to hear her breathing. She would live. My reflex action of pulling back when Laurie had slashed at my hand had inadvertently saved her life. The cut was just under the skin, caught by the knife tip. Another eighth of an inch would have killed her.

She was out in a dead faint and I couldn’t blame her. If I roused her she might start screaming, which had been my worry all along. Her head was down, the blood would return to it, nature would look after itself. Maybe she didn’t want to wake up yet. One thing was certain; she wouldn’t sleep in this pad tomorrow night. Laurie had lost his bed mate. He wouldn’t forgive me for that nor for the catastrophic upheaval.

I turned to him. His mouth was open now all right. It was the first good look at him I’d had and all it did was to turn me cold. Ostensibly he was characterless with one of those tapering pale faces that was neither feminine nor masculine. Thin, spiteful lips stretched widely under an aquiline nose. Hair and brows were fair and sparse. A man without warmth except when roused. The last conclusion was made after I’d lifted one of his lids to see a pale grey eye.

I tore up a sheet and tied his hands behind his back. The girl started murmuring as I finished. I went over to her, lifted her to a sitting position and rammed her head down between her knees. She had nice legs which I’d no doubt Laurie had paid for along with the rest of her. She came round quickly as fear gripped her again. White as a sheet her head came up, resisting the pressure of my hands on the nape of her neck; her eyes widened as she saw me and she was back to square one, trembling and frightened.

“It’s all right,” I murmured, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her hand flew to her throat and when it came away blooded, I thought she was going to flake out again. Self-preservation kept her conscious and she looked round frantically for Laurie. When she saw him, open-mouthed and bruised, her shakes eased a little.

“You’re only nicked. Flesh wound,” I explained. “Laurie can’t hurt you, I’ve tied him up.”

She gazed in horror at Laurie as if she couldn’t believe that the man she’d been living with could have become so bestial, had almost killed her. I helped her to her feet and at last she became aware that she was wearing only a pyjama top. She hadn’t spoken a word and even now could only retreat to the wall, casting furtive glances between Laurie and myself. Then quite suddenly she went to the wardrobe and started pulling her things out, piling them on to the bed before stacking them into a suitcase. I didn’t think I had any more need to worry about her.

I went to Laurie’s office in search of a phone and rang Jimmy Palmer. When I’d ripped out his leads I’d made a mental note of his number from habit but it was several weeks ago now and I might be wrong. The number rang out for some time. I held on because I knew the phone was in his other room and he’d probably be asleep, or out. When he answered he was in a vile temper and he’d been drinking. I was too relieved to have got the right number to take offence. I cut right across him.

“This is Spider Scott. You want my help, now listen and shut up. I must see you now. Leave your front door open and I’ll make my own way up.”

He started to argue, create difficulties, because he wondered what he was letting himself in for, but I was in no mood for his tantrums. I told him to get on with it and hung up.

Then I rang Maxwell Palmer. Again I had to hang on for some time but eventually old starch-face, his butler managed a bleep and I told him to rouse his master damned quick. In fairness, when Maxwell Palmer reached the phone, he was full of concern; he knew I wouldn’t ring at three thirty in the morning unless it was urgent.

I said, “I’m up to my ears in it. I’m at Laurie’s place right now and he’s not looking too good. The fact is that once I step out of here, within a matter of hours his boys are going to turn London inside out looking for me. I need a safe pad for a while, one the underworld don’t know about.”

It wasn’t what he’d expected. “It would be unwise to stay here.” He really meant he didn’t want me there.

“I know that. They’ve got an eye on you anyway. Have you any influence with a small, exclusive hotel?”

He thought round that one wondering whether he could attach his name to someone like me when I pitched up at reception.

“Look,” I rasped. “If you want me to help your bloody son, then you’d better help me. He’s been in touch with me; I’m going over to see him now.”

“Now?”

“I’m working overtime. It’s a turn for the better, so let’s get me a bed somewhere first.”

He was dying to ask me about Jimmy, but my tone had warned him that he wouldn’t get anywhere. “There’s the Columbine just off Grosvenor Square. I use it sometimes for visiting American businessmen. Very exclusive. One of the best in London. No one would think of finding you there.”

I think he meant that I wasn’t the type expected to be found there but I let it pass. “Can you fix me a room as from now? And will you pick up the tab?” I couldn’t afford the sort of prices the Columbine would charge.

He reluctantly agreed to do both and I told him I wouldn’t let him down, that I’d wear a tie and sound my aitches, and hung up. I ripped out the wires to delay Laurie calling the cavalry and went back to the bedroom.

The girl had dressed into a plain brown skirt and a cardigan. She’d whipped on a little make-up, quickly combed her hair and was doing the last bit of packing. She glanced up at me as I came in but didn’t stop what she was doing. There was a grimness about her that aged her. If you live with dangerous people you must expect, sometime, strange happenings. This one had really hit her. I indicated Laurie, who was still out cold.

“Where does he keep his car?”

She couldn’t pack fast enough and didn’t look up this time.

“He doesn’t drive.” It explained why a car came to pick him up. Even so, it surprised me. I stared over at him as if expecting him to enlighten me.

“Have you got a car?”

The question jolted her; she stopped folding garments and then carried on without answering.

“Will you give me a lift? Not far.”

She hesitated again but she wasn’t having any.

“I saved your life,” I said untruthfully.

She glared at me, no longer afraid. “You damned nearly lost it for me. If it wasn’t for you I’d still be in bed . . .” She tailed off, anger overcoming her.

“That’s right,” I agreed. “Sleeping under a time bomb.”

She stared sullenly, pressing down the lid of the case. As she couldn’t manage it, I put my weight on it and she flipped down the catches. More quietly she said, “Where do you want to go?”

We went out by the front door.

* * *

We didn’t speak in the car, both having enough on our minds. I didn’t ask her what she was going to do with herself, having learned my lesson with Kathy. I didn’t even ask her name. She handled the Austin Allegro very well so I let her get on with it while I thought.

I attached a good deal of importance to whether Laurie got round to thinking that he’d stopped me as I’d just entered or was just leaving. As I’d taken nothing he might conclude that he’d at least stopped me from searching. He might. He wouldn’t know about my first entry so I was hoping he’d think I hadn’t seen the balance sheets. Even if he eventually found the girl she could only confirm that she’d heard me on the telephone. I’d made certain that she had for that very reason and for the same reason had equally ensured that she didn’t know who I’d called or had heard anything I’d said.

Laurie wouldn’t be a good loser. He’d been used to carrying the day and now he’d had a setback with a swollen jaw to remind him. He would look for self-justification, convinced that he’d prevented me from getting whatever it was I was after. That wouldn’t let me off the hook, not with someone as vicious as he was, but it might allay him on the main issue. I had to hope so. I was sick at the way things were going. I couldn’t recall anything so violent as this affair, not even the times I’d been involved with Rex Reisen. There was no way to back out, not now. I couldn’t trot back and say “Let’s call it a day.” They’d have to do me to restore their own image. Image was important. I toyed with the idea of rousting Rex Reisen to rustle up a little protection but I knew that if I did there’d be a blood bath. I’d play it my way as long as I could.

She dropped me off when I told her to. There was no communication between us. No word passed, not even thank you or goodbye. I never saw her again, yet sometimes I still wonder what happened to her; it’s not usually a happy ending with girls who strap-hang with rats like Laurie Yates.

I had a fair distance to walk for I couldn’t risk her drawing the right conclusions. And I couldn’t leave a visit to Jimmy until daylight. The walk did me good. It temporarily cleared my mind of the paradox that was Laurie Yates: a man of extreme tidiness who, nevertheless, enjoyed the fug-laden atmosphere of nightclubs and their often untidy ensembles. Maybe that was the split in his personality, a good accountant, methodical, yet inexorably pushed towards the darker corners of his profession by the strange forces in him. Between the two demands his violence was squeezed out. It was a thought.

I reached Jimmy’s place at four thirty. I couldn’t give it long; it was light soon after five and I didn’t want to be seen here. For safety’s sake I walked in the middle of the road between the two lines of cars. As I no longer trusted anyone in this particular game I stopped outside the house and took a long, long look in both directions of the narrow, dark and secluded street. I was glad then that I had no stack to climb; my muscles were tired and aching.

I climbed the steps, paused at the top, pushed the door which creaked open to reveal a black hole of a hall. I went in slowly, pinning the door back to the wall.

Chapter Nine

After being caught by Laurie I was sensitive to any sound at all, but if there was anyone there, they were good at holding their breath. There was no light on anywhere upstairs. The house was old, full of creaking timber. By the time I reached Jimmy’s front door I was sweating. I couldn’t find a bell so I knocked softly. He must have been the other side, for the door flew open and he was hustling me into the small dimly lit hall. Kathy was peeping through the bedroom door. I gave her a brief acknowledgement and Jimmy, unshaven and in an old pair of slacks and a once-white vest, showed me into the front room.

“You took your time,” he said accusingly. Like his father, he wanted my help without having me on the doorstep.

I was too weary to explain. Anyway, it would have scared the life out of him. He ran his fingers nervously through his hair and accidentally tidied it. How the blazes he and Laurie ever saw eye to eye in the first place puzzled me. Perhaps they never had.

I sank into a shabby armchair, the first time I’d sat down in hours. Even the depleted padding and the harsh springs failed to erase the illusion of comfort. I was whacked, could barely keep awake. But if the chair couldn’t stop me from sleeping Jimmy could. He wasn’t sullen like he’d been before but highly agitated, his bare feet pacing over the threadbare carpet, a parody of his father.

“For God’s sake get on with it,” he whined at me, stabbing a finger at the floorboards and keeping his voice low. “Do you realise that they’ve moved one of Phil’s men in under here? The next flat down.”

I didn’t know. It explained why he’d been afraid to put any lights on in the hall. “What do you know about your father’s business?” I asked him.

He stopped pacing and stared at me. “You got me up for that?”

“It’s important. I don’t give up a night’s sleep to ask stupid questions. Do you know any shady business he might have done?”

“My old man?” At last he sat down, still fidgeting.

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You told me to ask him how straight he was.”

He waved a hand, then ran it over the ridiculous wisp of beard, fingering it as if for comfort. “That was just talk; hitting out.”

“You must have had a reason for saying it, even if it was only a subconscious one.”

“Are you a psychiatrist now?” The sneer was deliberate.

I was too tired to argue so I climbed to my feet. “You’ve got a big mouth for someone who needs help. Sort it out for yourself.” I moved to the door and he scrabbled after me.

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . it was . . .” He floundered helplessly.

“Unexpected?” I suggested as I opened the door.

“Yes — no — sit down, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t mean it like that.” It seemed that only fear could produce contrition in him. “It was an absurd remark to make,” he finished lamely.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt and sat down again. Anyway, I wanted the information. He padded over to his own chair, aware that he’d better not needle me again.

“You’re right,” he said at last. “There must’ve been a reason. I can only suppose it’s because the old man is too straight. No one can be that honest. Can they?”

“I’m the last person to ask. But you could be right. Do you know anything about him, anything he might have done?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never been interested. What’s all this about?”

“I’m trying to work out why Phil and Laurie need you.”

“They wanted me to swindle the old man out of fifteen grand. It worked but they didn’t give me my cut.”

“And that’s all they need you for?”

“They could try it again. That sort of money is petty cash to him. He’s loaded even by a rich man’s standards.”

“And you could have the lot by going back.”

His face clouded. “Don’t start that again. I’ll get it anyway when he pegs out but I’m not doing a nine-to-five and wearing a blasted tie while I’m waiting.”

I knew that was only part of the price, so I dropped it.

“What about this man Barret?”

“Desmond Barret? The secretary of the old company? Been with the old man for years.”

“Does he get on with your father?”

“All this sounds bloody silly at this time of night.” He held up placating hands. “All right. Let me think. You must remember that I’ve never been interested in any of it. I remember in the old days Barret used to come over with the old man’s partner, Cooper. I was only a kid at the time. The three of them really got it going.”

“What happened to Cooper?”

“He died some years ago. He was the technician of the three. Bright old bird, as I understand it.”

“So they stopped their little threesome after Cooper died?”

“Before that, I think. Some time before. I don’t think I’ve seen Barrett since those days.”

“So you don’t think your father’s bent in any way?”

Jimmy suddenly grinned. He couldn’t get used to the idea.

“It would make him more human, wouldn’t it?”

“Is that what you want?”

He shrugged heavily. “The old man and I will never see eye to eye.” He considered my question again. “I just can’t see the old boy being bent. He’s too pious. I’ve told you why they’re hanging on to me.”

I stood up again and Jimmy rose with me.

“Kathy says you’re afraid for your life, yet you won’t go home. That’s something I just don’t understand.”

“They’d winkle me out easily enough. Particularly from home; that’s one place they’ve warned me not to go.”

“So you’re willing to hang on until they’ve finished with you?”

Jimmy looked scared. “They’ve given me a better deal since Kathy called on you. I panicked before.”

There was another reason but holding something in hand seemed to be a family trait.

“Just one more thing,” I said. “What’s your opinion of Laurie Yates?”

“He’s got the fastidiousness of a queer but isn’t one. From what I hear he was a brilliant accountant who could have made a stack by staying legit. But he couldn’t wait. He had to get there before his time. And he did. He’s got plenty salted away. A cold fish.”

“And Phil?”

“He’s the one to watch. A nutter. Dangerous.” Jimmy’s eyes clouded. I didn’t enlighten him that Laurie had his moments.

“What’s his other name? Nobody seems to know.”

“Nobody does. That’s all he’s ever called.”

I opened the door. Jimmy grabbed my arm. “Look,” he said, “if you do get anything on these characters that’ll put them away for God’s sake leave my name out of it.”

I eyed him coldly. “That shouldn’t be difficult. You’ve told me damn all.” I poked my head into the bedroom to say good night to Kathy; she was sitting up in bed waiting for us to finish. Then I descended to the pitch-black hall. I was glad to get out of the building. I headed north to the Tube station.

I went back to my flat to collect some clothes. Phil and Laurie’s mob would know that I’d already left but I took all the necessary precautions just in case they still had a beady eye on it. It was a long journey, involving a wait at the Underground station and another when I had to change for a connection. The milk floats were already humming and rattling around by the time I arrived. I had no intention of staying long.

I saw the jemmy marks on my door before I reached it. The door was swinging freely. There was no sound from inside and I pushed the door with my fingers. It swung open, trailing a mangled lock and splintered wood. I stepped into the biggest mess I’d ever seen. They hadn’t been searching. Laurie’s vindictiveness had dictated that everything I had should be destroyed, including myself if here. They’d smashed everything in sight. I stepped over a pile of shredded curtains, clothes, upholstery and crunched my way through shattered china, porcelain and glass. They had slashed and broken everything they could find, everything I possessed.

I don’t put much store on material things; Maggie meant more than all of it. But there were items that involved her, had been part of both of us. The odd small objets d’art had been smashed. A Chinese ivory Muscovy duck, beautifully coloured and appealing had been crushed. I don’t suppose it was worth more than fifty quid but it couldn’t be replaced. A seventeenth-century portrait of a boy with a parrot on his shoulder had been cut to ribbons; the artist was unknown and it wasn’t worth a great deal but both Maggie and I had loved it. And for the record I hadn’t nicked it but paid cash with money honestly earned. That hurt.

There was destruction everywhere. Nothing had been overlooked. To avoid noise they’d used steel cutters on things like kettle handles and spouts, even utensils. Heavy-hearted, I traipsed through my small flat, sickened by the wanton destruction caused by a diseased mind. Even the walls had been daubed with paint, chair legs sawn off, books ripped apart. There must have been a team of them. My clothes had been slashed and when time had obviously run out, they had saved it by dipping articles like socks into the paint then thrown them on the carpet. In the bathroom pipes had been wrenched or speared and residue water lay in pools. They had gone through the place with far more devastation than a tornado. I had nothing left but the spoiled walls.

The windows hadn’t been smashed only because the breaking glass would have attracted attention. Other breakables had been ground into the carpets. As I looked at the mess of protruding springs from what had once been a fine mattress I felt like weeping. Laurie had had his revenge, yet this was only part of it. For him the best was to come when he laid his hands on me. Catching sight of myself in the dressing-chest mirror, again untouched because of noise, I hardly recognised myself.

I wanted to sit down to reflect but there was nowhere to sit. Thank God Maggie had been spared seeing this. If this was Laurie’s work, then what would Phil’s have been like — the one to watch? The dangerous one? I couldn’t cope with the possibility. I was sorry now I hadn’t pushed Laurie through the window. I’d never felt so murderously about anyone.

I was reasoning very coldly, very logically just then and much too clearly to head straight back to Laurie. I had the sudden, dreadful fear that they’d do the same thing to Maggie’s place. I grabbed the phone and found myself with a handpiece and a cut wire. Well, I couldn’t complain about that. I left the flat to search for a phone booth. When I found one there was no reply from Rex Reisen’s office.

Although early enough for commuters to be on their way to shops and offices it was too soon for the stores to be open. I was caught at an awkward time. I had some money on me but my wallet, with some other personal things like my driving licence, had been taken from the flat. I joined the city-suited umbrella boys and the platform-soled dollies on a Tube train to Piccadilly. I was still in my own dark working clothes and, unshaven, attracted curious stares. At Piccadilly I walked up Coventry Street to Lyons Corner House and had a hot breakfast with a pot of coffee, taking my time, collecting my thoughts, slowly submerging my anger but not losing it, and deciding on my next move.

After a shave in a barber’s shop I caught a cab to the Columbine hotel. I’d been tempted to walk up to Rex Reisen’s place from Piccadilly in the hope of finding someone there, but I wanted to avoid an actual confrontation.

The lobby of the Columbine was fairly free, but I was glad I’d had the shave. I searched for the desk, trying to look like a millionaire who was slumming it and was relieved to find that Maxwell Palmer had booked me in. Telling the receptionist my luggage would follow I went up to my room. Once there I ordered more coffee to keep me awake, and when it had been served, took off my jacket and shoes, sat in an armchair overlooking the square, gazing briefly at the activities of that other world I somehow never quite managed to join, then, tired as I was, produced the photostats of the accounts I’d borrowed from Laurie. I went through them carefully with the coffee at my elbow. I’m no expert at accounts but since going into the travel business I’d found the need to learn something about them in order to protect me from my own accountant, a man I liked who’d also done time. I had to fight against sleep all the way.

The two sets of balance sheets were fifteen years old, both appertaining to the same year. In many ways they were identical. The gross income was the same on both. The profits were noticeably different. So were expenses. Which was correct? The set with the considerably lower profit margin contained the signatures of Maxwell Palmer, his partner Cooper and Desmond Barret. One set was obviously false and it had to be those that were signed. That made Desmond Barret a villain. But did the other two know? Were they all in it or was it just Barret syphoning off? He certainly had evidence of wealth, which didn’t prove that he had come by it crookedly. However, I now knew why Maxwell Palmer had been spared the day he’d caught them duffing me up. And I saw part of the reason for Phil and Laurie intimidating Jimmy.

I rang Rex Reisen again and still got no answer. I then did what I should have done in the first place but was afraid to face up to. I caught a cab to Maggie’s place and rode up in the lift, very nervous indeed. But I was spared the shock I’d received at my drum. Either they hadn’t caught on to her or they were biding their time. Whichever it was I thanked God for it. I picked up a suit, shirt, underwear and shaving gear and borrowed a small grip to pack them in. I left the block by a different exit and went back to the hotel.

This time I managed to raise someone in Rex Reisen’s office and told him to ask Rex to use two of his boys to stake out Maggie’s place for a couple of days. I hung up before he could ask me where I was. I put the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door, lay on the bed fully clothed and passed out.

I awoke six hours later feeling grim and worried. I changed my slacks and shirt and went down to the lounge for tea and some wafer-thin sandwiches. I wasn’t really certain how to play my next move. My cheque book was at the office so I rang Charlie Hewitt to draw some cash for me and leave it with the Italian proprietor of a café I knew just off Trafalgar Square. I arranged to collect it the next day as the banks were already closed.

There was nothing else I could do until evening so I hung around the hotel, had a superb early dinner on Maxwell Palmer, then rang Desmond Barret and hung up the second the receiver was lifted the other end. I wanted to be sure that someone was there. I caught the Tube to Baker Street and the Metropolitan line to Moor Park. The cab dropped me outside the double gates of Deshaw.

I went up the curving drive thinking that I’d been stupid to sell my car. I’d have to get another in order to keep down my crime figures. I stood under the discreet light of the porch lantern and rang the bell. The door was opened by the copper-haloed Mrs. Barret who gave me a smile of enquiry before she recognised me. She wore a loose red blouse over tailored slacks and looked frostily attractive.

“You’re the man I caught — who called the other day.”

The door was halfway to closing but I smiled sweetly and held my ground. I admitted that I was and asked to see her husband.

“Who are you?”

“Detective Sergeant Ross, Ma’am.”

That shook her. “Why didn’t you say so the other day? What were you doing here?”

“Your husband will understand, ma’am, if you’ll be good enough to tell him.”

She was shrewder than her husband. She wasn’t certain of me, not sure whether to take the ice from her eyes and soft-soap me or to tell me to buzz off. She clearly didn’t believe I was a copper but she was worried about actually accusing me. With guarded politeness she said she’d tell him, then closed the door in my face as a safe compromise. It was opened again in a matter of seconds and Barret stood glaring angrily.

“Get off these premises or I’ll call the police.” His wife was hovering at the back of the hall.

“Go ahead and call them,” I said equably.

It knocked some of the steam from him. His long fingers stretched nervously to toy with a green cravat tucked into an open-necked shirt. It was a bad, giveaway habit he had when he wasn’t sure of himself. His next step was predictable; after his bluster had failed, he was about to slam the door on me, so I produced my ace. Pulling out two sets of balance sheets I dangled them under his nose. His tapering face lost its tan and he staggered backwards a couple of steps. His wife came up behind him but he waved her away.

“Where did you get those?” He almost choked on his words.

“Can we talk about it?”

He stood aside and I walked past him into the hall. His wife tried to kill me with a chilling stare, then stalked off to a room on the left, slamming the door behind her. I waited for Barret to show me the way into an obvious study-cum-library and I sat in one of the many contemporary chairs. By the time he sat opposite, his eyes warned me of the frantic overtime going on behind them. His fingers were still busy with the cravat so he hadn’t resolved his problem.

“Where did you get those?” he demanded again.

“Laurie gave them to me.” I lied easily, knowing that he wouldn’t believe me.

“That’s a ridiculous assertion.”

“It’s the only one you’ll get. I find it interesting that you suddenly know about him. The other day you denied all knowledge. Now tell me about them.”

“Just who are you? You’re not the law. You’re not working for Laurie.”

“Both facts should make you happy.” I waved the balance sheets. “How about these?”

His finger movement was easing off, his eyes slowing down, becoming more furtive than nervous. “What makes you think I need answer?”

I shrugged, annoyed at his partial recovery. “I can’t make you answer. The police can.”

“Then you’d better trot off to them.”

If he was bluffing he was suddenly doing it very well. His hand came away from the cravat and I guessed that he’d decided on a line of action.

“Don’t kid yourself that I won’t.” I folded up the sheets and carefully put them in my pocket. “You know without looking what’s on them and I’ve no doubt that you have your own sets. You’re in trouble, Mr. Barret. You could do a long stretch of porridge for what these prove.”

“And what do they prove?”

“That you’re bent for a start. You cooked the books. You could do time and be struck off, finished.”

“But you don’t intend to handle it that way?”

He’d read me too well. “That’s a risky assumption. At the moment you’re in no danger from me. All I want is information. What do these conflicting balance sheets really mean? Who’s involved? Who had the bread? No comebacks. None at all.”

He smiled at me, much more relaxed in the knowledge that I wasn’t a copper and aware that, if necessary, he could raise protection.

“I’ll make a bargain with you,” he said. “You tell me why you want this information and I’ll consider giving it to you.”

I’d tackled it badly, slipped up. All he had to do was to sit on it. I couldn’t tell him I was trying to fix Phil and Laurie because he was involved with them, even if reluctantly. He would reason that they created a bigger threat by far than I did so he’d plump for safety.

“That’s a good shot,” I admitted. “So you think I won’t go to the police?”

“You’d have gone before if your interest was legal. I’ll confess you had me worried the other day. You played your cards much better then than now.”

“Yet you have no idea why I want to know. Doesn’t it worry you?”

“Puzzles me, rather. The price of pandering to my curiosity is too high. There’s nothing I’ll tell you.” He made no move to kick me out so I supposed he was hoping to extract something from me.

“I could blackmail you.”

He winced but didn’t waver. “I have the impression that your interest isn’t monetary.”

“There are other forms of blackmail. I could tell your wife, for instance. All I want is information.”

He almost chuckled, knowing he had me on the run. He didn’t warrant that threat a reply so she must know about it already.

“Well, you have me,” I admitted. “I won’t physically force you and I suppose you’re being bled enough already.”

It took the smile from his face, and I gazed insolently round the room. “Pity Laurie took all the good stuff from you. The bureau is a beauty. Much better than that thing.” I pointed to a desk at the end of the room.

He didn’t like that. It reminded him too much of his present obligations. His gaze hardened and he rose briskly.

“There’s one thing I can do.” I said as I rose. “Sell the stuff to the opposition. You’ve not been very clever, Mr. Barret. You’re right in assuming that I won’t go to the law. I haven’t tried to extract money from you so you’d do well to wonder why. In certain circumstances I will go to the law but as things stand I’d rather hand the information to a gang who can take Phil and Laurie apart. And that means you too. Think about it.”

Trying to frighten him was all I had left, and it worked. But not enough. He was back to his cravat-fingering but he’d come down on the side of the devil he knew rather than the one he didn’t. The only satisfaction I had when I left the house was to see the two of them exchange uncomfortable glances at the front door. It was obvious that his wife was more than willing to enjoy his ill-gotten gains. I’d learned something but unknowingly I’d also made a wrong assumption; the source of his wealth, or at least the real reason for it. Being blackmailed didn’t seem to worry him overmuch.

I tried to figure it out all the way back to Baker Street. The Met line had become my think tank. I should have started off by being tough with him but it was too late now. I changed platforms. The rush-hour crowds were long since over and the late-laters had not yet begun so the trains were fairly empty. At Piccadilly I went up the two escalators, watching the ads while I mulled things over. Outside it was warm and cloudless, a comparative trickle of people window-shopping. With nothing immediately to fill my time I started to walk along Piccadilly to Grosvenor Square. It was then that I knew I had a tail.

This wasn’t one I could take lightly. Now they’d found me they’d try to kill me. With offices and shops closed my options were limited. I gave no indication that I knew but I was distressed that they’d got on to me so soon. It was unlikely to be by chance so it had to be Desmond Barret. He must have phoned Phil or Laurie and told them what train I was likely to be on. They’d probably picked me up at Baker Street and kept their distance since. They still did. I wasn’t absolutely certain I had a tail. But I was convinced. That was good enough for me.

There are times when you know you’re in control of a situation, and I’ve been tailed so often for one reason or another that I’ve usually been unworried, but there’s the odd occasion when you feel that everything’s against you; this was one of them. Blind animal instinct warned me that this was a tail I couldn’t lose easily. From their point of view they had to make this one stick.

They’d had plenty of time while I was on the train, which meant there’d certainly be more than one man and very definitely a mobile unit close by. It could be I was so deeply enmeshed that these conclusions arose from fear rather than experience. I don’t ignore fears. Right then, perhaps inexplicably and unreasonably, I was really scared. It was as if they’d communicated to me that they’d got me exactly as they wanted me. Yet on this bright, still-light evening along the expanse of Piccadilly no scene could have appeared more normal. And that’s the way I had to keep it.

I had to be cautious about checking the strength of the opposition; I didn’t want them closing gaps, yet I had to get some idea of what I was up against. And I couldn’t go back to the hotel. I used all the tricks in the trade along that wide stretch of West End street and located two possibilities; one was a man and girl team, arms linked, the girl provided the man with every excuse he needed for sudden stops and window-gazing. It was a good touch; and it reminded me how serious they were.

I had to shake them off. I couldn’t change my pace so meandered along and turned up Bond Street. At the moment I had no intention of leaving the main streets. I wanted people around me, witnesses if anything happened. I’d have been happier if I’d been walking in the opposite direction, towards the Circus, Soho, Reisen’s territory, cinemas, clubs, bars. As it was I was heading for the park, the big hotels and the wealthy residential area. There would come a time when they’d decide that I’d rumbled them by the direction and length of my walk; I couldn’t keep it up for ever.

I stopped at a news-stand and bought an Evening Standard, opening its pages as I stood there. I didn’t attempt to use the paper as a shield for viewing but turned to the entertainments page, folding the paper back so that it was more obvious what I was doing. I glanced at my watch and referred back to the paper. With sudden resolve I retreated my steps and walked more briskly back the way I’d come, looking straight ahead. When I reached the Paramount cinema the other side of the Circus I checked the time of the programmes on the board, then studied the framed stills in the foyer, pulling out some cash at the same time. The couple had dropped from the scene and so had the chummy who’d been on his own.

To pretend that I’d shaken them off was to enter a fool’s paradise. How many were there? I paid at the kiosk, went to the entrance for the stalls, told the usherette I wanted to stand at the rear for a bit and stood with my back to the wall, unable to see a thing except the wide screen and the illuminated exit doors. If someone was right behind me I couldn’t head for any of them for they’d see a single shape my size going out and would act on it. The door opened and the brief splash of mellowed light revealed a man blinking into the interior, swivelling his head to locate the exits. An usherette came up like an erratic firefly and he reluctantly showed her his ticket. He followed her slowly down the aisle, his head turning from side to side as he tried to sweep up any movement that might be me.

My sight, at this stage, must have been fractionally more adjusted than his. I timed my move just as he was insisting on a gangway seat not too far down. If he’d slipped up at all then it was during his haste in buying a cheaper ticket that precluded a back seat. I squeezed through the door just as he was sitting down, my sight trying to readjust once more as I crossed the vestibule and almost bumped into the young couple. I had to sidestep to miss them and during that critical visual encounter my gaze swept theirs and there was a three-cornered connection that none of us could fully subjugate during the brief period it lasted. We all knew at the same time. There could be no more pretence. It was open war. So open that I noticed the fellow leave the girl behind as he chased after me.

Chapter Ten

What followed was routine at a killing pace. I used every device, every aid, every form of transport available. I’m quick, in my old profession I had to be, but I’ve never been quicker. Events didn’t help. Buses weren’t convenient in their timing, Tube trains seemed to be delayed, there was the general problem of lack of activity, it being the wrong time for crowds. It there’d been office buildings open I’d have gone inside and then taken to the London roofs. There weren’t. The whole time factor was stacked against me and it was now becoming dark. After a while I didn’t attempt to judge whether or not I was successful, I just kept going, covering an incredibly erratic route around inner London that threw up places, alleys, streets I never knew existed.

There had to come a time when I took stock but I just pushed myself to the limit. When I did, it was openly. I was near Oxford Street, not too far from where it had all started but I couldn’t have told you how I got there. I had little money left after hastily paying off taxis, leaving my change behind.

I was free, certain of it. Yet once more I called a cab and the driver grinned as he lowered his flag. “What! You again, guv?” I climbed in wondering how much he’d made out of me but still ultra-vigilant. I decided against being driven all the way to the hotel. Taxi drivers knew a lot of people. I got him to drop me at Marble Arch, a gateway for a number of directions, and started to walk back. I was positive that I wasn’t followed, too keyed-up not to be sure.

I went down Park Lane, its traffic still thin, then out through Green Street, heading towards North Audley Street and Grosvenor Square. It was like stepping from light into shadow. Immediately it was quieter, refined, much more secluded at this time of night. There was no one behind me. I had my sensitive ear probes out and would have heard anyone even if they’d been wearing slippers. There’s nothing like danger to hone the senses.

I turned into North Audley Street heading south. The hotel was in a small street just below the square. The traffic ran in both directions but was sparse before the theatres turned out. I kept looking back quite openly and spotted a red Ford Cortina I’d seen before. There are plenty of red Ford Cortinas about and I wasn’t making prodigious claims of remembering registration numbers. But this one had thick layers of dirt on its windscreen in two eyebrow curves at the limit of the wipers’ swing. It was noticeable even in a darkened street. And it was moving at walking pace just a little way behind me. I broke into a run.

The car followed easily, keeping close in to allow other vehicles to pass it. Grosvenor Square lay ahead but it wasn’t going to do me much good. The car was keeping so close behind that it was impossible for me to cross to the other side of the road. Running full out I heard it keep pace. There were very few people about and what there were couldn’t help me. Glancing over my shoulder I saw the rear window come down and didn’t need a textbook to interpret the meaning.

It’s no reassurance, at such a time, that there might be witnesses to my being gunned down. I was trying to reach the square so that I could dive behind some of the parked cars on the meter slots but I wasn’t going to make it. The only thing I knew for certain was that they’d get me before I reached the corner. I ran at full speed to make it difficult for them and listened for an increase in revs. When it came it was almost covered by the sound of a car overtaking them.

I grabbed a handful of loose change from my pocket, took a quick look, judged the moment and as the car almost reached me, flung the coins at the opened window, at the same time flinging myself down. The explosion wasn’t loud but I caught the edge of the blast and my back felt as if someone had flogged it with metal-tipped thongs.

I hit the deck with a crash, my momentum making it worse than it might have been and used the flat of my hands as buffers. As soon as I was down I rolled towards the car as fast as I could to destroy the gunman’s angle. The second barrel went off as they drew level with me and then they accelerated. I lay absolutely still; someone would be peering out of the rear window.

The shots had raised interest. There were no screams. An old boy in a dinner jacket ran towards me and I let him help me up once the car was out of sight. I was breathing hard, my knees and hands were sore, but I was alive and grateful for the best bit of timing on this eventful night. My back was on fire but if I hadn’t spoiled his aim I’d be dead.

The old boy was trying to brush me down with his hands.

“Good God! Are you all right?” Another man had joined him and they were trying to tidy my clothes. I told them I was O.K. but the old boy was a solid citizen and insisted that I needed attention. My jacket, floating as I fell, had been shredded, and my back burned. I had to do something before the fuzz arrived. The old boy was already insisting that someone should call the police and a doctor. I dived in with both feet and said I was a police officer and had probably been shot at by gangsters. Half of it was true and it made their day. I convinced them that I wasn’t injured, that I’d get back to the Yard unaided and thanked them very much. The younger of the two insisted on driving me there but I explained that I’d been on a job and a patrol car was rendezvousing with me in Grosvenor Square in ten minutes. Both insisted on giving me their cards so that they could be called on as witnesses and I made great play of gratification, telling them that I was Detective Sergeant Ross. I was getting to like the name. I left them with firm handshakes all round and strode towards the square just as I spotted a patrol car.

Before entering the hotel I slipped off my jacket and craftily draped it over my shoulder so that the tears were hidden and, I hoped, any damage to my shirt. When I got to my room I was shocked to see what damage there was. The old boy hadn’t been exaggerating; there was almost a complete hole in the back of the jacket, tendrils of cloth hung like streamers. My shirt wasn’t actually torn; it was pock-marked and blooded. I took it off and looked at my back. It was a mess but I’d been very lucky. The wounds were superficial, the pellets just under the skin. They’d have to come out but there weren’t more than a dozen; they’d been the strays on the very edge of the blast. Just half a second would have made the difference between life and death.

I didn’t give myself time for the shakes to set in. If I had I wouldn’t have gone on. So I got back on the horse and bathed the blood away awkwardly with a sponge. The shallow wounds were tender to touch but I’d be all right so long as I didn’t lean back. My slacks were all right after a good brushing. I put on a clean shirt and a light cardigan; I couldn’t stand the weight of a jacket, but I was rapidly running out of clothes. I now had to bank on Phil and Laurie thinking me dead. Along with the old boy, they would be disillusioned in the morning.

I went back to Moor Park, taking with me an airline cabin bag, sitting forward on the edge of the train seat. If it continued like this I’d buy a season ticket. When I reached the house there were more lights on than when I’d left it although it was now quite late. I rang the bell, keeping my finger on it and ready to stand no nonsense. Mrs. Barret opened the door again but at once I noticed a difference in her. In the few hours separating my calls she had taken a lot of worry. She was drawn and her splendid hair was in disarray. Stranger still was her attitude towards me. She wasn’t friendly, she was clearly too worried for that, but the hostility had gone.

She stood in the open doorway as if half dazed. The condition made her appear more human, vulnerable cutting through the ice. It set me back a little, having expected trouble. Opening the door wider she said, “You’d better come in.”

As I went past her, heading for the study-cum-library I wondered what had happened to change her in so short a time. Dropping my bag on to one of the chairs I pulled back the zip and took out my blooded shirt and damaged jacket. I held them screwed up as she came in behind me. “He’d better see these,” I said, turning. “He’s now accessory to attempted murder.”

“He’s not here,” she said listlessly. She glanced at the garments but they didn’t seem to register with her.

“Then I’ll wait,” I said uncertainly. “This time I want information and I won’t leave without it.”

“I’m not sure he’s coming back.”

The way she said it made me uneasy. She sat down on the arm of a chair not really looking at me.

“What do you mean?”

She concentrated a little more, fluttered her hands nervously but made no reply.

“Look at these,” I demanded, forcing her attention to the clothes. “Your husband telephoned someone after I left earlier and they were waiting for me. My back is peppered with shot. Do you want to see it?” I was deliberately being brutal in order to gain her wandering attention.

“He was a fool to do it. I warned him not to.” She said it as a matter of regret, not as an accusation. Whatever they were or had become they must have had something going for them. Her concern was for him. The penny dropped and I knew what she must be feeling.

“They sent for him?”

She shrugged. “After he called them they rang back to say they must see him at once.”

“And he went? Just like that?”

“It wasn’t as simple as I’ve made it sound. Things had to be sorted out.” She was so distracted that I began to think her previous coldness had been born of necessity, a cover for anguish. It could account for her anger at seeing me prowling the grounds during my first visit. On the other hand, she’d still gone along with her bent husband.

“Tell me the story behind the balance sheets and I’ll get out of your way,” I promised.

She hand-combed her hair and a big chunk fell across her face, the room lights highlighting the rich copper. Why must people ruin their lives for greed? She gazed speculatively at me and said, “I don’t know you or anything about you. I can’t think of any reason why I should help you.”

I could see she was angling for something. “You know I’m not with Phil and Laurie and you know I’m not the fuzz. You trusted me enough to let me in; you must have a reason.”

“I need your help. Someone’s. Anyone’s. In the mess we’re in, there’s a limit to who I can ask.”

That was the story of this whole sorry business. I was everyone’s last hope; the bloke in no man’s land. “Why should I give it?”

“Because I’ll tell you all you need to know if you do.”

I crammed my clothes into the cabin bag. “What is it?” I asked wearily.

“Save my husband. I think they’ll kill him.”

“They might rough him up, frighten him, but why should they kill him?”

“There’s no time,” she said, ignoring my question. “He had to meet them at a house in Surrey.”

“Surrey? The south side of the Thames. When did they ring?”

“About an hour ago.”

At a time when they already thought me dead. It made sense. “What do you want me to do?”

“To go out there. See that he comes to no harm.”

“Even if I could do that he has an hour start. I could never make up the time.”

Her lips trembled. “You could try. He’s not a good driver, there might be delays.”

It was a waste of time however bad a driver he might be.

She understood my indecision. “I promise you I’ll tell you everything,” she pleaded.

“Can I use the Jensen?”

She left the room in a hurry and returned with the keys. By now she was almost imploring me, everything leading to this. Then I had a sudden thought. “If you’re right about this they’ll be after you. Don’t answer the door like you did to me.”

“If anything happens to Des it doesn’t matter what happens to me. Anyway, he’s always kept me out of it so far as this business is concerned. They can’t be sure I know.”

“They won’t take chances,” I warned as I headed for the door.

Her emotions were really flowing now that she’d got my help. She had been holding herself in because I was an unknown factor; she took a chance on me simply because I wasn’t one of them.

The Jensen Interceptor was sweet-running and well-cared-for and at any other time I would have relaxed and enjoyed the drive. The house lay on the outskirts of a village the other side of Epsom and was awkwardly placed from this corner of Hertfordshire. The roads were quiet but I didn’t want to be stopped for speeding. In a car like this you couldn’t help breaking the town speed limit even with the merest brush of the accelerator.

I had to cross part of London, which was unfortunate, but the only stoppages I had were at traffic lights. It wasn’t until I got beyond Croydon on the south side that I started picking up insects on the windscreen and down the beams of my lights. I opened up a little more, keeping an eye on my mirror. A traffic cop once told me that he never nicked a man for speeding but for ‘driving without due care and attention’. In other words, he took the view that you should always spot a patrol car if you’re driving properly; to ignore one is like holding your wrists out for the ‘cuffs’. Which is a very reasonable attitude if you see it from a copper’s point of view. And they get bored at night and look for a little sport.

The car was practically driving itself. All I had to do was to point it in the right direction with fingertip control. On this cross-country route there were no motorways so my average speed was severely restricted. I wondered if I would ever get the so-vital information that had formed a deadlock on this unhappy affair. Somehow the story of the balance sheets struck me as being the reason for everything that had happened since my involvement; at least, that part of the business that affected me. The only reason I was on the road now, sitting slightly forward, bearing the pain across my shoulders, was to obtain this link of information. I had no real interest in finding or saving Desmond Barret. I certainly wouldn’t stick my neck out for him; I just hoped that his wife would keep her word.

Suburbia was less evident now and frequently I had the satisfaction of being the only driver on the road once I’d turned off on to the more winding lanes. I passed through Epsom, then mentally ran through the directions Mrs. Barret had given me. Apparently the two of them had worked out the route before he’d set off, which had cut down his lead on me by fifteen minutes. I still didn’t think it would help.

I was just in time to spot a signpost that was mostly hidden by the overhang of a tree and turned left on to a narrow B road like an erratic tunnel with hedgerows high on each side, pale-washed by my approaching headlamps. The insects multiplied in suicidal droves until I had to use the washer and wipers. As it became more difficult to lean forward as I drove my back was on the verge of the unbearable. Each time I touched the seat it rubbed the pellets further into my skin. I came to a T-junction and had to get out to read the sign. From this point on I watched out for every path and reduced speed to a crawl. The lane was so narrow that cutaways had been created at intervals to enable cars to pass. But I had the place to myself, for it must have been near one in the morning. It was always a mystery to me where these lanes led.

I passed a farm, then later, incredibly, a pub, but it was another mile or so before I saw the great white stones denoting an entrance to a drive. Passing beyond them, I pulled in as far as possible, switched off my lights and walked back down the lane. The stones were widely spaced, forward of two brick pillars with wrought-iron gates. I peered through and could dimly see the mass of the house against a thickening skyline and a ragged cluster of trees. There were no lights anywhere and it was very dark out here in the sticks. I shone my pencil torch and found the house name on both pillars: ‘Conifers’. Not original but at least applicable. They weren’t short of a tree or two around here and an owl derisively endorsed my opinion. I opened the gates, stepped across the drive and on to the lawn.

It was so quiet that I thought the place might be empty but the lawns and flower beds were well tended. I followed the course of the drive and reached the front of the house. The windows stared back without complaint as if knowing that I wasn’t really on the creep. The house looked bigger in the dark than it probably was. It conveyed nothing to me except an air of innocence and a need to be screwed.

I couldn’t believe that Desmond Barret was here and I doubted he ever had been. I don’t know why: it was an impression, no more. But I had to be reasonably sure, or his wife wouldn’t cough. I went round the house, being very careful about crossing the drive, and heard a dog growling from a room at the back. It probably hadn’t heard me but it might have smelled or sensed me. I was glad it didn’t bark; at least it indicated that the place was occupied.

Because of the dog I could only use my torch at the front. It seemed to me to be a doddle for a break-in, but I had no intention of going that far for Mrs. Barret. There was a double garage, at the side of which was an unlocked wooden door. Security was sloppy. I switched on the light inside, reckoning it safe enough. There was a Range Rover and an Austin station wagon. According to his wife Barret’s own car was a Mercedes 220 and it was certainly not here. There was an old barn farther back from the house but when I checked that I found only a motor mower and gardening equipment. I considered my promise kept so far as the house was concerned.

Back at the car I was all set to go but my own conscience was nagging me. I walked back past the gates, shining my torch in the vain hope of finding any clue to Desmond Barret having stopped near the house. But a pencil torch has its limitations. Trying to pick out wheel indentations in the soft earth at the side of the lane was hopeless so I returned to the car.

I was still reluctant to give up, not for the cause but because I’m stubborn; awkward, some people call it. I drove in the direction the car was pointing, slowly, looking either side of me under the self-delusion that I was seeking a place to turn. I could have turned outside the gates but I kept going. After a while the hedgerow on my nearside gave way to fairly dense woodland, but there was no way through except on foot. The lane squirmed along the edge of the trees as if afraid to go through them. I had to admit that the way my lights moved the shadows it appeared eerie enough, as if furtive observers were flitting from tree to tree.

I must have gone on for another couple of miles before there was woodland both sides, although on my side there was a ten-foot bank before it started, roots curling out like old clutching fingers. During this time I’d seen a couple of footpaths slipping through but nothing I could get the car along. I still hadn’t found a turnabout point and was considering reversing back to the house when I noticed a semi-circle of clearing, quite wide and deep. I swung on to it, listening to the crunch of tortured bracken and feeling the soft carpet of leaves formed over the years. I pulled up and climbed out, leaving the headlights on dimmed.

I stood by the car listening to the nocturnal movement of small creatures and caught sight of one pair of enquiring eyes on the fringe of my beams. As I moved, they hastily withdrew. A hedgehog. There were a few pieces of litter, an empty bottle, showing that someone had picnicked here, but it was not an obvious beauty spot and the width of the lane did not encourage hordes. A cart track led from the edge of the clearing and disappeared through the trees. I moved the car so that the lights shone obliquely towards the track in order that my own shadow did not obscure my vision too much. I started off up the track, torch in hand.

The track changed direction constantly. When I turned to locate the car’s position I found it surprisingly on my right instead of behind and the headlamps were reduced to a suffused yellow glow escaping in small broken patches. I’d travelled farther than I’d realised. The woods whispered and crackled and sighed sadly as I continued through them. When I thought I heard a different sound I stopped and listened. Somewhere ahead was a small pump, almost inaudible like an occasional faint popping. I continued, stopping now and then, satisfied that I was nearing the sound, which changed emphasis as I changed direction. Now it was like the faint murmur of a refined engine. I listened carefully, then hurried on.

When I could hear it as I moved I trod more cautiously. There was so much leaf and bracken that it was impossible to move silently; I simply trod as lightly as I could. The nearer I got the more regular the murmur to which it had settled down. I couldn’t see a thing. With so many trees in so much space, the rustle of leaves and the sigh of an intermittent breeze, locating direction was difficult. All I could do was to keep walking and this I did until I realised that the murmur was fading and was now behind me. Either it had moved or I had gone past it.

I went back, sweeping my torch from side to side but its maximum beam width was no bigger than a football and its range on the small batteries ridiculous. I’d long since lost any benefit from the car lights and could no longer locate them. I kept stopping until certain of heading the right way and looked for big gaps in the tree line. When I did find one I switched off the torch immediately. At last I knew what I was looking for. A car engine was idling. I risked the torch again and noticed where the bracken had been crushed in the path of the car. All I had to do was to follow the line of damage but I wasn’t keen, having the feeling of walking into a trap. It was so dark, the torch so ineffective. Finally, I switched off the light and homed in on the car, half crouched and ready to flee.

It seemed to me that the woods went suddenly quiet as if all the little creatures were waiting breathlessly for what I might do, and all I could hear was the hum of the engine and my own furtive advance. A disturbed bird fluttered its wings and it was like an explosion, sending my heart racing. Much more of this and I’d be neurotic. When I judged myself to be within a few feet of the car I stopped.

The trees towered over me, blotting out the sky, and ahead was the sweet sound of a good engine ticking over. Crouched low, I strained to dissect every sound. I switched on the torch and the beam picked out the reflectors of the car. It had never occurred to me before that reflectors could be beautiful but in this unexpected place, isolated and lonely, the twin red glow among the trees was hypnotic and slightly menacing.

I crept forward to the rear of the car and saw that it was a Mercedes 220. Why had he left it here with the engine running? And then I saw why. It wasn’t immediately evident because of its position. A thin plastic hose curled from the exhaust round the nearside and disappeared from sight. I dived for the driver’s door and wrenched it open. The fumes were almost overpowering as they belched out in an invisible, poisonous cloud. I held my breath, leaned in, grabbed a fistful of jacket and yanked hard.

The body toppled out on to the bracken and lay still among the leaves like a figure S. I switched off the engine, leaving the door open for the fumes to clear. My little pencil torch shed pale light over Barret’s dead face as I knelt beside him. I pulled him farther from the car, felt his pulse, put my ear to his chest, opened his mouth and put a penknife blade into it; there was no trace of breath mist. I straightened him out, pulled his head right back, straddled him and started to give him the kiss of life, managing to push at his chest at the same time. It was not pleasant but once started I kept at it until convinced that I was wasting my time.

Now what? I sat on my haunches across his dead body and reflected that Brian Page and Desmond Barret had lacked my experience of being on the run and had missed the advantage of a reflex action born of the sheer necessity for survival and honed over the years. Evading danger in one form or another had become part of my life pattern. I didn’t fancy my chances once Phil and Laurie found out they’d missed me.

I stared down at Barret’s relaxed face and switched off the torch. At least he hadn’t suffered. While I’d been trying to revive him I’d smelled chloroform, so they’d doped him first then left him in the car. I wondered what the pathologist would make of it all. There would be evidence of chloroform, carbon monoxide, and now I’d introduced air into his lungs. Maybe a police doctor would be satisfied on sight and issue a death certificate after a routine examination. These were confused thoughts passing through my head, but they had a purpose.

There’s no weight like a dead weight. I had trouble getting Barret up and when I did I carried him to the car, laid him face down across the bonnet, then brushed all trace of leaves and twigs from him; anything that would suggest he’d been taken from the car. I used the torch to examine him, then got him back in the car with some difficulty. I wiped the ignition key and the steering wheel with my handkerchief and then switched on, and closed the door, wiping the chrome handle and the paintwork around it. It was as far as I could go; a headache for the lab boys if they ever got hold of it.

I took a very circuitous route back to Moor Park. A Jensen is too easily identifiable. The last thing I wanted was to be seen heading north of the Thames from this direction. I kept very much to the B roads, using my instinct in locating them. I had to return the car and I had to tell Mrs. Barret her husband was dead. Like me, she wouldn’t believe for one moment that he’d committed suicide. It might be better for everyone else if they thought that he had. And during her grief, would she keep her promise to me? It might have been a hard, selfish thought but it was what it was all about. Once across the Thames I breathed more freely. Half an hour after that I was in Moor Park. My back was really playing up now and I’d have to get it seen to soon.

I knew something was wrong when I found the gates to Deshaw closed and the house in total darkness. She’d been in no condition to turn out the lights and go to sleep.

Chapter Eleven

I closed the gates behind me once I was through, then continued on up to the house and parked outside. I rang the bell without hope, convinced they’d tidied up the loose ends and that Mrs. Barret had joined her husband, wherever that might be. There was no answer so I gave it another go, she might have taken a sleeping pill. There was no response at all.

It was my night for circling country houses. At least I didn’t have to be stealthy this time, knowing there were no animals. I had to get in to find out what had happened unless they’d somehow lured her away from the house. But I wasn’t equipped for screwing a drum as alarmed up as this one. Every window was closed as if they’d gone away. One of them had. Then I remembered the garage.

It was a huge affair adjoining the house with one enormous door. The door had been left exactly as when I’d lowered it after backing out the Jensen; not quite closed. I lifted it up and went inside. There were three concrete steps leading up to a door that opened into the kitchen. Mounting the steps, I depressed the door handle ready to flee if the alarms sounded. I pushed.

The door opened and nothing happened. And that told me quite a lot. Mrs. Barret had switched off the alarms before I’d taken out the Jensen. It seemed that she hadn’t switched them on again, knowing that I was returning. But that presupposed she’d wait up for me. Alarms can be a nuisance if there’s a lot of activity. She could have forgotten or been beyond caring. I switched on the lights as I went through the rooms. There was no sign of her. I went upstairs and found her dead in bed.

She looked as peaceful as her husband had done and both had died painlessly. An empty bottle of sleeping pills was on the bedside table with a tumbler half full of water. There was no sign of struggle.

I looked down at her, anxiety and anger at last removed, and considered the turn in her life that had made her wealthy and unhappy. Her worries were over now. Mine weren’t.

This was a neater suicide than her husband’s but no more convincing to me. She would at least have waited until my return. She’d been strong stuff, unmoved by her husband’s crooked affluence and willing to enjoy the proceeds. She had been concerned only when she considered him to be in danger, giving little thought to herself. Her whole hostility might well have been a protective shield for him but I’d never know now. She wouldn’t have killed herself before knowing what had happened to him.

I bent close to her face without touching her. At the side of one nostril was a tiny scratch with inflammation around it. There was the faintest inflammation the other side but it could easily be missed unless particularly sought. I know how these things work. She had been held and her nostrils pinched while the pills had been forced down her throat. With the mouth open for air they could be pushed down quite easily. Then they would have secured her and waited. Her mental agony as death approached must have been terrifying.

It might have been imagination but I thought I could detect a bruise where her wrists had been held or bound. When I searched around I found a lot of loose hair on the floor and more than the number one would expect from her comb on the dressing table. One of the first things I’d noticed about her was the neatness of her hair; it hadn’t been sleek when I’d left her. She’d probably put up a fight and they’d tidied her up once she was unconscious. The more I searched around the more convinced I became. She may not have gone to Laurie’s extremes of tidiness but she was far from being a sloth. It was indicative that her hairbrush had only a few strands in it. It would take a man’s mind to use a comb instead of a brush. I was quite satisfied that they’d both been murdered.

A suicide in Surrey and another, the same night, in Hertfordshire. No notes. No apparent motive. A feast for the newspapers: speculation for their readers. The house hadn’t been broken into, so God knows how they’d tricked her into opening up. But they had and she’d paid the price. I gave her a little nod. I hadn’t liked her and she’d taken her knowledge with her but I didn’t think she deserved anything like this.

I switched off all the lights, went out and drove the Jensen into the garage. There was still a little darkness left as I went looking for a car to nick. I’d started the evening seeking information and had finished up with nothing but two dead bodies and a back full of pellets. I couldn’t remember such a night.

When I finally got back to the hotel it was about the same time as when I’d checked in the morning before. The concierge gave me a veiled look of enquiry, wondering why I needed to pay for a bed I apparently didn’t use. I must have looked worn out, but he was too well trained to give me the old-fashioned look.

I tried to sleep on my stomach but it was no use and in the end I rang for breakfast. My mind was too full for sleep, anyway. I couldn’t raise Rex Reisen and when I finally got an answer it was the fellow who’d answered me the day before. I told him I wanted a bent doctor and he said fine, he’d ask Rex and ring me back, but I wasn’t falling for that. I told him I’d ring back in half an hour and see Rex when I’d lowered the risk of lead poisoning. While I was waiting, I took another look at the balance sheets.

The fact that they’d been with Barret automatically implicated him. He’d been company secretary, had prepared the accounts for the auditors. Could he have fooled the other two? If they were all in it, was the difference worth a three-way split? I didn’t think it was, not considering the risks they were taking. Barret could have finished up worse than Laurie Yates, barred for life and jailed. Both Maxwell Palmer and his partner Cooper could have been banged away for signing accounts knowing them to be falsified. I could only think that the two sets I held in my hands were the tip of an ugly iceberg.

I rang Rex’s office back and was given an address to go to; no side issues, no further request for the telephone number of where I was staying. Knowing what that meant I set off. I didn’t expect him to be in Harley Street but he was only just round the corner. A small, squat man with huge horn-rimmed spectacles, he eyed me with distaste and greeted me with a grunt. He didn’t care for what he had to do but made no complaint either. I hadn’t realised that Rex Reisen’s influence extended so far and wondered what the eminent doctor had done so severely wrong as to place himself in such a precarious position. At least he didn’t release his feelings through me. The man was a top surgeon; it would be impossible for him deliberately to do a shoddy job.

It was painful, for all that. He probed delicately but it hurt and when he’d removed the last pellet my back was sore. He dressed it, asking no questions and told me to return only if there were complications. When I left, I shook off Reisen’s boys and returned to the hotel. Rex was going to get mad at me soon. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I was holding out, but my interest in this affair was quite different from his. I didn’t want to involve Maxwell Palmer any more than he already was; after all, he was paying my bills and my allegiance was to him.

I slept for a couple of hours and awoke woolly-headed but went to Trafalgar Square to collect the envelope Charlie Hewitt had left with the café owner. I now had some money. The early editions of the evening papers carried the double suicide story; as yet they hadn’t considered it worth playing up, which was as well. Because there was little I could do in daylight, this whole business operated after sundown, I returned to the hotel to get some rest.

Rex Reisen was sitting easily in my room and Knocker Roberts closed the door behind me so that I was sandwiched between the two of them. Rex’s ferret eyes were drilling away at me as if computerising every thought. I turned to eye Knocker who was leaning against the door, blank-faced but with the light in his eye that I so seldom saw but had learned to dread. His head was a mass of bandages and one hand was bandaged. As I’d had to use my key to open the door they must have been let in or nobbled the spare keys.

“I thought I’d slipped your boys after leaving the quack’s,” I said, taking my jacket off and throwing it on the bed.

“You did, old cocker. I thought you would ’cause you’re a crafty devil. But I have influence with hall porters. They’re a mine of information.”

“How did you get past the door?” I was pushing it a bit but was almost too weary to care.

“There are other ways into a hotel, my old mate.” Reisen chuckled. “You should know. ’Ow often do you use a front door?”

I sat on the bed. “You think I’ve been avoiding you?”

“Running away, more like. Even double-crossing.”

Knocker wasn’t in a talkative mood. He simply wanted to kill someone, preferably whoever had escaped after ill-advisedly trying to top him, but anyone, meanwhile, who would temporarily relieve his spleen. I took off my shirt and showed them my bandages.

“Does that look like a double-cross to you? Phil and Laurie’s boys tried to top me. You can check the damage with your tame quack. Thanks, by the way; he’s first class.”

Reisen grinned evilly. “From hall porters to top cut men. All part of the service.” He studied the bandages. “I’d say they ’ad something to hide doing that to you. So whatavyer got to tell me?”

I could see Reisen putting both feet in before I’d learned what I wanted to know. I told him I’d tracked down Laurie Yates and he was all for going in and finishing him but I talked him out of it. I didn’t tell him I’d located Phil because I could never have stopped him then. But Reisen was shrewd.

“They wouldn’t try to top you for locating one of their drums.”

“I screwed his place, Rex. He caught me at it. They’re up to their necks in extortion and blackmail, but not protection, at least not in the normal way.”

He screened his expression and became interested. Extortion was close to his heart. So far as I knew he’d never used blackmail as a money-making means but after visiting the ‘quack’ it was obvious that he used it for services.

“What then?”

I had to tell him something. “Businessmen. They get something on them and squeeze.” I stretched a point. “The son of the bloke I’m trying to help was coerced by them into signing betting slips. They did quite well out of it.”

“You think they’re in a new line, then?”

“Partly. Give me more time and I’ll wrap it up for you. Then it’ll be up to you.”

He thought this over. “How come you couldn’t tell me this much before?”

“It’s only part of the story. I have the feeling these boys are well protected. I think they’ve brought men down with them from the North and Midlands. That and the fact that they seem to be operating outside the normal rackets is why information is so difficult to pick up. And they’re willing to top anyone on the way.”

“Meaning that I’m not?” Reisen’s eyes had narrowed.

“You know that I know different. But you’re living on a longer reputation; you haven’t needed to do it for some time.”

“Maybe I should knock off a few just to remind them.”

He wasn’t joking. I tried to laugh it off. “You don’t have to. They know about you already. Phil and Laurie are trying to make the grade, have to make themselves felt. Anyway, when I’ve got the bits and pieces I’ll let you know. What you do then is up to you.”

“That’s true.” It was a promise. He stood up. “Don’t play it too clever, Spider, my old mate. I don’t know what you’re up to but you’re cooking something.”

“You’ve got nothing to worry about from me.”

“That’s true, too. In fact it never crossed my mind. If my reputation needs a bolster, I can always start with you.”

Before he reached the door I said, “Rex, don’t let my whereabouts go beyond you and Knocker or you’ll not get a bloody thing from me. These new boys seem to have a lot of troops but they’re still in the process of setting up contacts. If they find out I’m here I’m dead.”

“You’re hitting the button every time tonight, Spider, old cock. Don’t worry. We need you — for the moment.”

Their visit hadn’t done my confidence any good, but it had gone better than I could have expected. I suspected that Rex Reisen might also be up to something on his own account. He knew I had scruples; it had always worried him.

I rang Maxwell Palmer after dinner and his butler told me he was out. As I didn’t believe him, I went round to his Mayfair pad and rung on the bell. Starch-face answered and tried to close the door on me but I pushed past him and told him to rustle up Maxwell. The poor old boy was put out, but he did a great job of loyalty in almost convincing me that his master really was out. It was resolved in the end by the appearance of the great man himself. I was appalled at the sight of him.

Maxwell Palmer had put on years since I’d last seen him. Incredibly, his tie was loose at his throat, his jacket was off and he was showing his braces. He was ashen, his normally chubby features unhealthy and drawn under the ample cheekbones. He looked ill and he’d been drinking. When he saw me he waved me into the library with an exaggerated sweep of arm that was meant to be anything but humorous. There was something pathetic about him; it made me want to put my arm round his shoulders and tell him that it wasn’t as bad as all that. But it would have been an empty reassurance.

I followed him into the room and noticed the half-charged tumbler with the decanter by its side.

“You must forgive Jackson,” he burbled. “He was acting on my orders. I really don’t want to see anybody.” He sank into his chair like a deflating football and picked up his glass. His speech was only slightly slurred but his eyes were glassy and I suspected that he’d downed quite a lot. Before I could reply, he went on; “I’ve had a great shock. I’ve just learned that one of my partners has died. Committed suicide. A dreadful business.”

“Desmond Barret,” I said.

The glass broke in his hand. He must have exerted a tremendous involuntary pressure on the rim for that to happen and he sat gazing down at the blood dripping from his fingers.

“Here, wrap this round it.” I stood over him and held out a handkerchief.

He took it dazedly, abstractedly winding it round his hand.

“Mind there are no bits in the cut.”

“Eh? Oh! No, it’s all right. It feels fine. How did you know?”

He pushed himself up, his vitality gone, and fetched two tumblers from the corner. He poured out neat scotch into each of them and held one out to me. I took it and, sat down wondering why the death had affected him so much.

“I was there too late,” I said. “He didn’t commit suicide. He was knocked off. So was his wife.”

I thought he was going to repeat his glass-breaking act. Then I thought he fainted as he slumped forward and I rushed over to find that he was still conscious but had knotted his fist into his chest. He was obviously in pain. I was on the point of getting Jackson to call the doctor when Maxwell Palmer rallied, pushing my hand away. He was sweating.

“God, that was nasty,” he gasped at last. “My heart. It was like a hammer.”

“You should get it seen to.” I stood back so as not to crowd him.

He looked up at me and wiped his covered hand across his forehead, soaking up the moisture. “It’s never happened before. I don’t want that again.”

When I was certain he was all right I returned to my chair and waited. He took another swig at his drink, but the sudden attack had sobered him. “What was that again?” he demanded, peering as if he only just recognised me.

I didn’t know whether to repeat it. I didn’t want to give him another attack. Yet he’d heard all right; holding out could worry him more. I told him exactly what had happened and he listened, stunned into immobility as if he was hearing some grotesque fairy story.

“But why should they do that?” he asked, astounded.

I watched him carefully. There was nothing to suggest that his reaction was other than genuine. I knew what I should do but I was afraid to do it. He really did look sick.

“The Barrets knew, or could have guessed, what Phil and Laurie were up to.”

He stared at me as if I’d lost my mind. “What on earth had the Barrets to do with those evil men?”

It was a good question. I changed direction. “Did the police tell you about their deaths?”

“They called on me because we were colleagues. They wanted to know if I could throw some light.”

“Did they say it was suicide?”

He hesitated. “They implied it. It was obvious that they thought so. But I want an answer from you, Scott.”

“Barret had something Phil and Laurie wanted. They got it by accident and Barret was no embarrassment until I came along stirring it up. When I did that Barret became a danger.”

“A danger to what, for God’s sake?”

“I’m not absolutely sure. A form of blackmail I should think, but I don’t really know how the arm would be twisted.”

Palmer gave me a disbelieving look. He appeared a little better. “I know you, Scott. You’re holding out on me. Dammit, where do you expect to get if you do that?”

“You’re not very fit. I . . .”

He gave a feeble smile. “Stop being considerate, you old devil, and get on with it.”

It was on his own head. I pulled out the accounts and passed them over to him. He glanced at the head of each one to establish what he was looking at. His hands trembled violently but his gaze was quite firm as he flicked the pages of one, then the other. He carefully laid them down at the side of his chair, rose, crossed to a drawer and took out a pair of spectacles. This puzzled me; he hadn’t needed spectacles to read the close typescript and the many papers he’d been studying during my previous visit to him. He returned to his seat without a word and without seeming to be aware of me, put the spectacles on, leaned forward to retrieve the papers and toppled forward in a sort of slow motion that made the fall last an eternity. His head hit the carpet, the spectacles flew off, and he rolled over on to his side.

He was so still I thought he’d joined the Barrets. I jumped from my chair. He was in a dead faint. I called out for Jackson and together we carried him to the drawing room and laid him on a chaise-longue. Jackson went off for some smelling salts while I tried a revival job. One more shock like that could kill him.

When we’d revived him, I didn’t see how I could keep on with the questioning. I was ready to leave but he stopped me, waving a weak hand from the chaise-longue. With Jackson’s help he sat up and looked a very sorry sight: unrecognisable from the man I’d first met.

“That’s the first time I’ve done that in my life,” he said weakly. “Don’t go, Scott, I want to talk to you.” He asked Jackson to bring our drinks from the library and when we were alone again said, “I’ve had quite a few shocks today.”

I knew he had. I was still trying to reconcile his reaction to them. Would Barret’s death really have upset him so much? According to Jimmy they’d stopped seeing each other socially years ago. And why should he faint at the sight of the balance sheets? They hadn’t worried Barret all that much.

“I wouldn’t have shown them to you if you hadn’t insisted.”

“It’s not your fault. It was clear as soon as I saw them that one set is false. It was one thing after another. Too much for me, I’m afraid.” He was sipping his drink carefully now, his speech completely back to normal but his flesh pasty and moist, his eyes feverishly bright. Then he added quietly, “I don’t really see all the connotations. Why should Desmond Barret die because of them?”

“Phil and Laurie saw a use for them. They took them from him and I found out. They tried to kill me but they were more successful with the Barrets. By now they must know that they failed with me.”

Maxwell Palmer held his drink in a shaking hand. He was rocking slightly from side to side as if listening to a hidden beat. “But they could only be of value as an instrument for blackmail. Who could they blackmail? Barret, certainly; if the accounts mean anything at all he would know, but they’ve killed him.”

“They’d blackmail you.”

That raised his head but he was functioning at half speed. “I don’t understand. Without examining them in detail I don’t know what they mean. The one I’ve signed was clearly accepted as the right one. What, then, does the other set mean? Are they false or correct?”

“The signed ones have to be false or they have no extortion value. You signed false accounts.”

He mulled over this, a shaken, crumbled figure, and said, “But I didn’t know. Barret prepared them.”

“You know that your partner and you are responsible for them.”

He was silent for a while. “May I see them again?” I’d picked them up in the other room and pocketed them. I handed them over. The papers rustled in his hands.

“They’re too old. Even assuming that Barret had falsified the accounts and had secretly kept a correct set they couldn’t blackmail me over these. The tax people go back six years. I’d need to check but I don’t think they can expect us to keep records for longer.”

That stymied me. I’d missed something somewhere. Maxwell Palmer was going through both sets, comparing figures. I don’t know how much of it was going in, he seemed to be mumbling. If he went on like this he’d really crack up. When he spoke again it was more firmly, with authority.

“I think you’ve been carried away, Scott. The Barrets wouldn’t have been killed for these. I think the police are right to suggest suicide.” He waved the accounts at me. “If he’s had these on his mind all this time it might have been too much for him. Perhaps there are others. He might have been swindling the company for years.”

“He didn’t strike me as a man much worried by conscience.”

“You can’t tell about people. I’m surprised to learn that you met him at all. You should have told me.”

There was no point in arguing. A few theories had been squashed.

“It’s dreadful to learn that a man one has worked with for so many years has died and then to discover that he’s been cheating. Really, what do any of us know about each other? I don’t know what to say or think. I just don’t know.”

Taking the balance sheets from him I folded and put them in my pocket, no longer certain of their value.

Maxwell Palmer was gazing into his soul and was unsure of what he saw.

“I don’t understand anything anymore,” he asserted slowly. “Murder, suicide; what a dreadful business. I want you to leave things as they are, Scott. I shall have to find some other way of saving James from himself and from those men. I’ll ensure an adequate settlement with you. I’m very grateful for what you’ve tried to do.”

Even now he hadn’t grasped the rudiments of mobsterism.

“I can’t back out,” I explained. “I can’t go up to these men or write a letter saying ‘You don’t have to worry about me anymore, I’ve retired from the affair.’ They think I know something, and it’s important enough to them to have the Barrets and me knocked off. There’s no way out of this for me except feet first or by fixing them.”

To my surprise he pushed himself up from the chaise-longue, drink still in hand and started his short-paced striding. He was a little unsteady, but I let him get on with it because it seemed to do him good. He was obviously giving the matter some boardroom consideration. “They’ll understand,” he pronounced eventually. “A cash inducement, perhaps. Is there any way that I can speak to them?”

He was living in a different world, he had been from the outset. A chat and a bonus and a pat on the head and it would be all over, settled like gentlemen. He couldn’t grasp that he was dealing with the scum of the earth. And then I realised that he was really trying to extricate me in any way that he could. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that it really was in my interest and not his. We traipsed back to the library where he shakily made out a cheque, placed it in an envelope which he sealed and handed to me. He held out his hand and when I took it the firmness of his grip had gone and his palm was wet.

“I’m sorry it has to end this way, Scott. You’ve done your best; you’ve taken risks beyond the call of our arrangement.”

I thought he was going to pin a medal on me, he was so emotional, but at the end he ran out of words and energy and waved me to the door where Jackson took over to show me out. Snapping from a trance of speculation I entered into an evasive routine, knowing that this pad was one place where I might be expected to appear to those who were interested.

At the hotel I slipped off my jacket and shoes and lay on top of the bed. Maxwell Palmer was expecting me to leave this place by tomorrow but if I stayed a night or two longer I was convinced he wouldn’t query the bill. He wasn’t in much state to query anything. Stretching out for my jacket I pulled out the envelope, tore it open and whistled loudly when I saw the cheque. I wasn’t used to my services being valued highly; it was more like a buy-off. If cash had been the only criterion I’d have done what he wanted and signed off. But apart from Phil and Laurie being most unlikely to let me, there was much more to it. I could never let so many questions remain unanswered and still sleep at night.

I rang Jimmy Palmer and was on the point of hanging up when he answered. “Anything to report?” I asked him.

“I’ve been trying to contact you at your pad. What the hell’s happening, man?” He sounded scared, but it was a permanent condition with him. Basically I think he was scared of life.

“I’ve been busy,” I said. “I’d like another word with you.”

“I want to see you, too. I’ve got something to tell you. It might help.”

“About what?”

“About my old man. I can’t tell you over the phone. I’ve had to mute the bell so they can’t hear it downstairs.”

“Same time, place and method?”

“No, I’m not sure. There’s someone at the door, where can I ring you?” They were all trying it.

“Are you clubbing tonight?”

“No. For God’s sake give me a number.”

“I’ll ring you in two hours,” I said. “That’ll give you plenty of time and it’ll be darker and quieter then.” I gave him a chance to protest but all I got was silence, so I hung up. I dozed for the next couple of hours. As it was impossible to get a full night’s sleep, I could only take it as opportunity occurred.

It was nearly midnight when I rang him back and there was a difference in him. I’d got used to his frightened whine, although he certainly had something to be frightened about, but there was something else. When I asked him what the matter was his voice dropped to a whisper as if he was afraid that someone else might be listening. “Something’s happened,” he said. “Something red hot. Come in the way you did last time. Not before one.”

“Why not before one?” I was suspicious.

“Because the fellow downstairs doesn’t turn in until late but when he does you can hear his snoring from up here.”

There was no easy way to play it. Either I stuck my neck out or tried to enjoy Maxwell Palmer’s pension fund. I had to go. I don’t think even Maggie could have talked me out of it and she was the one person who could talk sense to me with a guarantee of my listening. I fixed up a radio cab for one o’clock and padded out the time.

* * *

The cab dropped me a ten-minute walk from Jimmy’s place. To break habit, I came in the other end of the street, keeping close to the railings and as silent as the foraging moggies. My hackles had risen and I didn’t know why. I stood opposite Jimmy’s for a good ten minutes without stirring. The double row of cars gave me protection and across their tops I could see that the front door was ajar. I didn’t fancy stepping into that pitch-black hall tonight. I hadn’t wanted to last time, but this was different. I ran my gaze slowly over the windows. A streetlight reflected in some of them. They were all darkened. I located Jimmy’s front room at the top. There was no light on, which was understandable. There was something about the glass that was different, something behind it.

I shifted position cautiously to obtain an oblique view, then finally walked a few paces down the street, moving my head to vary the dull reflection on the glass. Occasional vague glimpses and a little guesswork gave me the answer. At first I thought it was a grid but then reckoned that bars had been fixed across the windows. Had they made Jimmy a prisoner? If they had, who had opened the door? I decided then that I wasn’t going in the front way.

It took longer but I was much happier climbing up to the roof and over the other side. And I knew the way. I climbed through the same window, leaving it open, ghosted to the door and opened it a fraction, my heart pumping hard. I couldn’t see. I used my other senses. The place stank of mould and dust, but it was silent out there. I opened the door wide enough for me to slip through and stood with my back to the wall, leaving the door open.

I was standing in the tiny hall keyed up for anything. There was a barely discernible light from under the front-room door. Why hadn’t I seen it from outside? It was so dim that it provided no form of illumination, but at the same time it could hardly be missed. I felt my way past the bedroom door, put my ear to it, heard one person breathing, seemingly asleep. Kathy? I then gripped the handle of the front room and swung the door back ready to dive for the open window behind me.

Jimmy Maxwell was sitting near the open door simply waiting and my unexpected and brash appearance almost frightened him to death. He half rose, terror stricken, then his legs gave way and he collapsed on to his chair, mouth open, eyes wide, chest heaving under the greasy T-shirt. I went in and closed the door. “Sorry,” I said. “It didn’t feel right.”

His loose mouth was working and he was ashen.

“You bloody fool,” he cried, still rasping for breath. “What did you do that for? Why didn’t you knock?”

While he was ranting, I was casing. The reason the light hadn’t penetrated outside was twofold; the lamp was behind the door, heavy-shaded and forty-watt so that the light barely reached the far corners of the room; thick curtains were drawn across. Ignoring him I crossed to them, pulled one corner aside and looked through. I was right about the bars; they had been crudely stapled to the woodwork but were no less effective for that.

“Why the bars?”

He had managed to get his legs to hold him. He hitched his dirty dungarees and I noticed the badly scuffed suede shoes. He was still protesting loudly so I cut across him with a warning.

“What about matey downstairs? Your watchdog?”

It stopped his noise but didn’t change his expression. I don’t think he’d washed. How did such a scruff get through university? “Why the bars?” I repeated.

“They’re locking me in.”

“How were you going to open the door to me, then?” I was moving back to it as I spoke, not at all satisfied.

“I’ve got a spare key they don’t know about.”

“And Kathy? She’s a prisoner too?”

“Whatever happens to me happens to her.”

None of this sounded right. “Let her go. The front door’s open.”

“She won’t leave me. We’re stuck with each other.”

He was uneasy. All the time he was talking he was listening for something.

“What’s this about your father?” I asked, reaching the door.

“Why are you restless, man? Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

I didn’t reply immediately as I was listening intently by the door. “And the hot news?”

“Sit down,” he yelled. “For Christ’s sake, sit down!”

I knew the worst then. I grabbed the door handle and yanked it open. The dark caverns of a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun aimed at my chest. The man holding it didn’t look strong enough, but it was steady and in spite of his pint size I could see that he knew how to use it. His eyes glittered like black frost in the sad glow from the lamp. Enough bad light spilled out to show two dark shapes behind him in the hall.

Chapter Twelve

“It’s all right, Jimmy,” the small fellow said equably. “We heard you the first time. We thought the bastard might come in by the tradesmen’s entrance. Now back off and face the wall with your hands up against it.” There was only the suspicion of a Midlands accent; his voice was toneless, one-keyed.

I did as he ordered, just catching sight of Laurie Yates as I turned to the wall. Over my shoulder I said to Jimmy Palmer, “You’re thick yellow right through. What’ve they done? Conned you once again?” I caught a glimpse of him licking his lips as I turned my head. Someone searched me, found no weapon but inevitably produced the balance sheets which I’d intended to show to Jimmy in case he’d heard something about them. I now knew why the bars had been hastily fixed to the window.

“Turn round. Sit down like Jimmy said.”

I didn’t argue. Laurie Yates was holding the balance sheets and was just dying to take me apart. His eyes were blazing for what I’d done to him, for losing his bed mate, and for how I’d fooled him. The way he stared from me to the accounts told its own story of total disbelief and raging anger. The only things that stopped him coming at me were the knowledge that he’d have to get the wrong side of the shotgun and a certain awe for the man who held it so assuredly. But Laurie’s turn would come; it was written all over him. There was another man, a typical moronic hood, by the door, and Jimmy had slunk back to a hole in the opposite corner. I shot him a venomous look but it’s effective only on people with sufficient sensitivity to have a conscience. Jimmy had no thought outside himself.

“You’ve led us a dance.” The small man hooked a foot on to the seat of one of the dilapidated armchairs but the gun still managed to point in the right direction. Was this almost diminutive figure Phil? He was smaller than Reisen, although I’m always apt to judge height in relation to my own. I’d only seen the peculiar light in his eyes in one other man and that was Knocker Roberts. I didn’t have to be told I was facing a pathological killer; he had a slightly insane air that was wholly evil. But he wouldn’t succumb to Laurie’s type of spite. I don’t suppose there was spite or feeling in him. I couldn’t see anyone opposing his decisions. He had small feet and tiny ears and I realised I was trying to divert my own attention from the trap I’d so easily entered, by recording trivia.

Phil was eyeing me dispassionately, trying to decide what to do with me; not about knocking me off, that had been decided long since, but when and where.

“You’ll wake the neighbours if you do it here,” I pointed out, playing for any time I could squeeze.

“I know.” He didn’t raise his voice or show particular interest. He wasn’t a great one for words or histrionics. His was a strange face; had there been more life in it he could have been good-looking. With the exception of his eyes, which were kindled from some dark force to a sharp brightness, he possessed the general vapidity of his breed. But that was an illusion, there was nothing vapid about him; the life he led had blanked out expression merely as a measure of self-defence and it had stayed with him until its purpose had subtly changed as his core had hardened. There were good physical features about him, his hands were small and well-cared-for, with manicured nails. His suit was well cut and dark brown, its style dated. Phil was not a flashy man in appearance or thought. He wasn’t worked up about catching me. If there was a measure of relief, there was no sign of it. Unlike Laurie, he had no motive of revenge.

I might have been wrong about all this. It was a quick assessment under harrowing conditions but I’d long since learned to try to know my enemies. As far as I could see his only concession to vanity was dark, curling hair brushed forward to form a fringe over straight brows as if he had a thin patch on top that he wanted to hide.

Then he said softly, “We could use a knife.” He clamped his lips, as if irritated that he’d troubled to use unnecessary words on me.

But his quiet observation chilled me. Could I ever talk my way out of this? I had to try. “If anything happens to me you’ve all had it. I’ve taken precautions.”

“I know,” he said. “You’ve left a letter with your bank manager telling him who topped you, their names, addresses and their crimes. You’ve also left one for the coroner. The one thing I know about you, chummy, is that you’re a loner. You’re out of fashion as a villain. Obsolete. So you’re going to the knacker’s yard.”

It was a long speech, after which he immediately lost interest. I created a small temporary problem which he’d sort out but which he’d now put back in perspective.

“I was thinking of Rex Reisen,” I said.

He wasn’t moved. “I don’t rate him,” he answered convincingly. Taking his foot off the chair he handed the shotgun to the hood at the door and said simply, “Laurie and me want a quiet word. If he steps out of line blow his head off. Jimmy can always say the gas cooker blew out.” He looked at Jimmy without rancour but Jimmy visibly cringed.

Phil and Laurie went to the door. Phil spoke to the hood again.

“We won’t be long. We’ll shift him before dawn.” They went out and locked the door.

I didn’t know what the hood’s idea was of stepping out of line. I did know that the threat had the effect of pinning me to my chair as if I was bound. The trap had been hastily prepared, the bars at the window, the guard, but it was effective until they decided where to dump me or to prepare my suicide. If they decided there were too many suicides then I’d simply disappear, but it called for a little preparation. There was a veneer of truth to my bluff. Maxwell Palmer knew I’d been chasing these men and the detective agency knew I was involved. So they had to be reasonably careful. That wouldn’t stop them knocking me off and keeping me here until they decided where to dump me.

“What happens to me happens to you and Kathy,” I pointed out to Jimmy.

“Oh, stow it, man.” He raised a shaking finger towards the hood. “Don’t get Charlie worked up or he’ll do you.”

“Then you’d better explain to him what constitutes stepping out of line. I can’t escape from here and you know it.” I looked Charlie in the eye. There wasn’t much to see in the weathered, young-old face except disaster. Somewhere along the line he’d drop out for good, either dead or imprisoned. I said to him steadily, “I’m going to stand up. I won’t come near you and the window is barred.”

His finger tightened round the first trigger, but I had to try it out. I rose slowly, eased my legs, and took short steps up and down in front of the chair. The gun barrels followed my direction. I had to get out but I couldn’t see how. I guessed that Phil and Laurie had gone to the flat below to chew things over.

Jimmy sat uneasily on the arm of a chair and watched me as closely as Charlie. I couldn’t see any help coming from him. He was so ravaged with fear, had stepped so far out of his depth, that all he could do from minute to minute was whatever he thought would keep him alive for the next sixty seconds. I believe he’d reached a stage where he’d even run home to daddy but the opportunity was no longer there.

“You’ll be accessory to murder.”

He licked his lips. He knew it was true, but what was serving time compared with facing Phil? And he didn’t believe it would come to that. All I was doing was reminding him of where his chief fears lay, and they always came back to Phil and Laurie. He still deluded himself that he could survive with them if he toed the line. They must have worked on him between our meetings. I gave up.

I kept pacing, keeping a good distance from Charlie. One step too near and he’d give me both barrels. Even if I managed to tackle him it would make so much noise that the others would come rushing up from below. I sat down again just to prove that I could without sending Charlie round the bend. He didn’t look as if he was getting tired; he was doing a job he was well used to and probably the only one he was fit for. Jimmy sat casting his frightened glances between the two of us, guessing what was passing through my mind and realising I was as trapped as he was.

I looked at my watch and was nearly blown to pieces for moving too quickly. Charlie leaned back against the door again and his finger pressure eased off. It had been close; I’d have to make my movements more deliberate if I was to survive until Phil and Laurie came back. When they did, I knew that would be it. They would have made up their minds how to get rid of me.

I sat there brooding about this. There wasn’t much time. I couldn’t get anywhere near Charlie. And there was nothing to throw at him. I tried staring him out, putting the mockers on him but he was too dim to know what I was trying to do, so psychological warfare was out. I was worried sick just sitting there, waiting to die and unable to do a thing about it. The only thing left was for me to rush him and get it over quickly. But I held on to life as far as it would stretch just as Jimmy hopefully clung to his. And he had less to live for; afraid to live and afraid to die. As time passed and I came up with no bright ideas hope became a dead weight under my ribcage.

I formed the back end of a dicey plan, but I was still confronted with Charlie when it came down to brass tacks, and Charlie was no amateur. I tried to strike up a dialogue with Jimmy, but he was too nervous to talk; he seemed to be afraid that Charlie might report back.

I looked at my watch again, slowly this time. Two o’clock. I shook my wrist and tutted. Pretending to wind the watch I pulled out the winder which stopped the hands from rotating. I switched back half an hour, leaving the winder out. “What’s the time?” I asked Jimmy.

He glanced down irritably. “It won’t help you. Just after two.”

I undid my strap and shook the watch at my ear. “A hundred and fifty quid,” I complained, “and it’s stopped.” I stood up carefully, dangling the watch in front of me. “Have a look at it for me,” I said to Jimmy.

He postured in annoyance. “For Christ’s sake what are you up to? I don’t know anything about watches.”

“Look,” I blazed at him. “I’m being topped in a minute. Even a bloody murderer gets a last request I’m trying to occupy my mind. How d’you think I feel sitting here waiting? Look at the bloody thing, it’ll pass the time.” I might have been disgusted at my own pun if I hadn’t been trying to put on such an act. I didn’t give him a chance to refuse again. Making it clear to Charlie what I was doing I tossed the watch to Jimmy without moving a step out of place. Jimmy caught it and scowled; he’d rather keep his mind on his fears than be distracted.

It was a good automatic watch and I knew that he’d at least look at it. He turned it over and over. As he fingered it he must have reflected that when he’d first joined Phil and Laurie he would have worn such a watch. He must have wondered where it all started to go wrong.

I could have predicted his next move, anyone would have done the same. He put it to his ear and, unable to hear it ticking, gave it a little shake. He dropped it into the palm of his hand again and turned the winder. The hands went round, which surprised him, then he had an inkling of what was wrong. He pressed the winder down and the watch started to tick and the second hand moved round. He looked across at me and gave a little smile as if he’d worked a miracle. For a few seconds he had been absorbed by what he was doing. I’d been watching him closely and Charlie had been watching me.

As big a louse as Jimmy was I was still banking on the fact that most people had a subconscious respect for other people’s possessions unless they deliberately set out to destroy. I was gambling on him not throwing it back. However, he wasn’t the type actually to get up and hand it to me, which would have helped. He moved forward on the arm of the chair and stretched out with the watch. “It’s too good for you,” he said.

I had to move forward to retrieve it. I looked towards Charlie mutely to explain but as the couple of steps I had to take took me away from him he had no cause for complaint. “You can take it off my corpse. I bequeath it to you,” I said to Jimmy.

The bizarre joke froze him, locked the smile on his face and for a moment he was stationary. I reached for the watch, grabbed his wrist and pulled him towards me doing a half turn to meet him. As I twisted his body between Charlie and myself, I pushed him forward hard. It was all too quick for him and he was too gutless to do much about it. The whole manoeuvre couldn’t have taken more than a second or two but in that time the shotgun blasted off, the noise muffled by the body, and I resisted the terrible pressure as Jimmy, firmly against the barrels, stopped the lot. I felt sick from shock.

His dead weight took an effort to hold but I rammed him against Charlie who had nowhere to go except through the door. Charlie’s face over Jimmy’s shoulder had gone white as he realised he had shot the wrong man. The gun had been pushed against his body by Jimmy’s weight and he was trying to use it as a lever to push Jimmy back. Suddenly I backed off, pushing Jimmy to one side and Charlie shot forward under his own momentum as I went in to meet him with my knee, grabbing the shotgun as he doubled up. I reached back, grabbed a straight-backed chair and rammed it under the doorknob. The door itself was old and solid but the chair would hold it only for a limited time. I’d no sooner turned back to Charlie when I heard Phil and Laurie enter the hall.

Charlie was still writhing in agony. Fear forced my next move as I heard them unlock the door and push. I closed my eyes and swung the gun butt at Charlie’s head. When I looked again he was out cold; there was no blood and he was still breathing but I hadn’t enjoyed the sound of the crack of wood on bone. Jimmy lay near the door, an ugly hole in his chest and his fears at last over. Outside they were trying the door but with limited effort as they didn’t want to add to the noise level. Kathy was crying out, no doubt awakened by the gun blast. Someone slapped her hard, my guess was Laurie, and she simmered to a whimper. A door banged and I guessed they’d locked her in the bedroom.

I looked around wildly. Phil and Laurie were softly calling through the wood to Charlie who wouldn’t be answering for a while. It was best to mystify them. By getting no answers at all they must have wondered what the hell had happened. They knew that I couldn’t get out through the window and that I hadn’t passed beyond the door. So I was in here. Whatever else had happened they would be satisfied about that. They would stay where they were until they’d figured out a way to open the door without too much noise. I didn’t have much time though.

I tore back the carpet to make a quick study of the floorboards. They were old and solid with some nails missing. I turned to see that the chair was still holding the door but pressure was increasing against it, so bundled the carpet at the foot of the door to make it more difficult for them.

I needed a jemmy and found a compromise in the form of a throwing knife in a sheath down Charlie’s waistband. Now I knew who’d nicked my shoulder. He was very grey and there was a tennis-ball lump on the back of his head that had somehow not split open. I started to prise up one of the boards. The knife wasn’t really right for the job and the blade snapped. Meanwhile the chair hooked under the doorknob began to creak ominously as Phil and Laurie applied their combined weight.

The broken knife was actually better now it was shorter and firmer. I struggled away, cursing the lack of proper tools, and raised the end of the board. I pulled it back feverishly to peer into the dark space below. I needed light. I switched on the main light and peered down. Plaster and lathes. In a house of this age I should have expected it but I wasn’t complaining. I tore at the next board with my bare hands, putting every bit of strength behind it, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before the door crashed open. I was helped by the constant usage that had gradually worked the nails loose but I was sweating by the time I raised it. I still had to pull up a third one and by now my efforts were frenzied.

Even then there was barely enough room between the joists. I didn’t wait any longer. I jumped into the cavity. My feet went straight through the plaster and lathes and I got caught up about waist high, my feet flailing about through downstairs’ ceiling. I pushed hard, breaking the wood and plaster until I dropped like a stone, landing on a desk, scattering everything on it before rolling off on to a thick carpet.

Almost the first thing I saw was the balance sheets which had fallen from the desk. Stuffing them in my pocket I scanned the room quickly.

I wanted somewhere to hide; there’d never be another opportunity like this for listening in. The door crashed open in Jimmy’s flat and I backed to the wall to avoid being seen if they looked down through the hole. I slid along the wall until I reached the door. Opening it, I was about to flee, having given up the idea of staying as too dangerous, when I heard them on the stairs. I’d left it too late.

Desperately I took stock; there was only one place to go. I crossed to the desk, climbed on to it and sprang for the hole in the ceiling. Fear gave me strength and speed. I pulled myself through almost in one movement. Crouching over the hole I had trouble with my breathing and tried to control it while I laid flat beside the hole. I’d only just managed it in time. From below me Phil said, “We didn’t leave this door open; downstairs, quick.” They clattered off while I took deep gulps of air.

Jimmy still lay a huddled, bloody mess and Charlie was stretched out like myself, his breathing much shallower. The shotgun had gone. The door was wide open. I got up and went on to the landing. I tried Kathy’s door very carefully; locked. I opened the toilet door to find the window still raised; fine, I might need it again. I went back to Jimmy’s room and crouched by the hole again, waiting for Phil and Laurie to return. As they hadn’t seemed too worried by the noise level, I didn’t see why I should be. These old houses had very thick walls; for all I knew they had been sound-proofed; and the shotgun had been largely muted by Jimmy’s own body. It was a fact too, that people roused from sleep weren’t always clear about what had wakened them. They might look out of the window but were unlikely to ring for the police unless they heard something else to be suspicious of. It was clear that Phil and Laurie didn’t rate the risk highly, so they must have had their reasons.

I stiffened. They were back. Laurie said, “Christ! what a mess.” They foraged around, papers rustled, then he exclaimed, “He’s nicked those bloody accounts again.”

“Then we’d better get to him before he tries to use them.” Phil, as practical as ever. It was interesting to learn that they expected me to gain from them. I could hear them searching around in case I’d been stupid enough to hide there, and I’d almost been, then the sounds changed and I guessed they were tidying up and sorting out the stuff I’d scattered on landing. Then Laurie said, “What do we do about Jimmy? And Charlie must still be flat out or he’d be down here.”

“Jimmy was due for the chop. He’s doing no harm where he is. We’ll shift him tomorrow night. Charlie asked for what he got. The berk deserves a thick head.” There was a pause, then, “You’d better go up and top the girl.”

Laurie wasn’t keen on doing it himself. “Don’t you think we’re topping too many? We’re stringing them around a bit.”

There was a touch of irritation in Phil’s reply. “You going the same way as the rest? Look, you stick to your know-how and I’ll stick to mine. That’s the trouble with these Londoners; they’re too soft. If they knocked off a few more they’d get nicked less often. They back off and haggle when they should close another mouth.”

The cold-bloodedness of it froze me and it didn’t do much good for Laurie. He said, “She’s too scared to talk.”

“Don’t be bloody stupid. Three stiffs too much for you for one night? She’s got to go, Laurie. For God’s sake, no one will miss her.”

The sheer realism of the man was chilling. If Laurie came up to kill Kathy I’d have to try to stop him. I wished I’d kept the shotgun.

Laurie still wasn’t happy. The pace had got too hot for him and he was probably worried about me being loose, mainly because he didn’t know what I’d do. “Look,” he said nervously, “I’ll make her take a couple of sleeping pills to keep her under for a few hours. That’ll give us time to decide the best way to do it.”

Phil offered his version of a laugh. It was short and totally derisive.

“What’s it matter how you do it? Have it your way, but whatever you do now she’s dumped with Jimmy tonight. While you’re up there see how Charlie is.”

It was like a signal. Charlie groaned and before I could move he was scrambling to his knees. It was too sudden, although he’d probably been reviving while I was listening. His back was to me but if he turned his head he couldn’t miss me. He clasped both hands to the back of his head and swayed uncertainly as he tried to straighten. I crab-crawled silently towards the armchair I’d used earlier and sank down behind it. Charlie staggered about a bit, cursed profanely, then stumbled against the door. Apart from his subdued moaning there was silence for a while and I wondered if he was looking round the room. Then he was heading for the stairs. He staggered into the room below before Laurie left it.

“You blew it, you bloody fool.” Phil, full of sympathy. “Go and sleep it off. Take a couple of pills.”

By this time I was back at the hole. I took a chance and looked down through it but as the desk was immediately underneath, I couldn’t see too much. I heard, rather than saw, Laurie leave the room after another vicious verbal dig from Phil and this time I hid behind the door. I had the feeling that Laurie wouldn’t come in here with Jimmy still messing up the place. He unlocked Kathy’s door and went in. Kathy started a yell that only reached a whimper as Laurie hit her hard. The blow was quite distinct from where I stood. There wasn’t another sound until Kathy began to cry and that gradually died away. Laurie was in there some time and I was keeping half an ear for sounds of Phil. Eventually Laurie locked the door again and went downstairs.

Phil said, “Charlie’s had it for tonight. He can clean up upstairs when he’s slept it off.”

“What do we do about old man Palmer?”

“We move in fast before Scott does.”

They started talking then. It wasn’t for long but it made my risk worthwhile, provided I still got out alive. When they finally finished they left the flat and went downstairs, presumably to return to their own pads. I gave it a little time, then descended to the lower flat the easy way — by the stairs. I could only hope that Charlie really was sleeping it off; it would make his day to get hold of me.

Chapter Thirteen

Surprisingly the door was unlocked, not that it would have made any difference. As the lights had been switched off I had to use my pencil torch and I did so sparingly. Phil and Laurie had left their presence, I could feel them everywhere; it was no time to get careless. I trod quietly towards the door I assumed to belong to the bedroom, flicked off the torch, opened the door a fraction and waited. It was dark inside; the only sound was Charlie’s breathing. I pushed the door farther and risked the torch, moving it slowly over the bed as I became more satisfied.

Charlie was curled up on top of the bed, still clothed, with a blue lump pushing through the back of his untidy hair. He wasn’t as grey as when I’d last seen him but he still looked bad. He was safe enough to leave like that.

Seeing two keys on a ring on the bedside table I guessed what they were, took them and went upstairs. I unlocked the bedroom door. Kathy was stretched out inelegantly, and, like Charlie, was on top of the bed. I always seemed to catch her in her most revealing postures in this room. I went to the dilapidated kitchenette, filled the kettle with cold water, went back and poured it over her face. She stirred but didn’t wake. I did it again, this time slapping her cheeks very hard.

The third kettle got her mascara and eyebrow pencil running and, coupled with her wet hair, she looked a wreck. Her blue eyes opened and stared vacantly so I clouted her again. When fear touched them, I knew she was in the land of the living.

“Get up,” I said, “or they’ll kill you.”

At first she cringed, then focused and, as always with me, first considered her long-lost modesty with fluttering hands. It was all too late, had been for a long time with Kathy.

“Where’s Jimmy?” she asked drowsily. She was still in the grip of the sleeping pills.

“Jimmy’s dead and so will you be if you don’t get out of here damned quick.” I wasn’t being deliberately cruel but trying to save her life. The news struck her like a bullet. She was awake now all right; terror stricken, fumbling and half whimpering. But she was fumbling in the right direction, cramming any clothes in sight into a shabby grip.

“He’s dead?” she queried without stopping. Tears were flowing down her face.

“Dead,” I repeated. “Don’t mourn too much, Kathy. It was only a matter of time.” I was also trying to convince myself.

I wouldn’t allow her to make-up, barely time to run a brush through her hair; so she wiped off what make-up she’d left on and it revealed an anachronistic innocence that almost fooled me for a second or two. Before we left I tore up the sheets, made a rope, tied it to the door behind us.

She was still quietly crying as I led her downstairs but I made her tread lightly which wasn’t easy in her ridiculous platformed shoes. I didn’t want Charlie roused at the last moment. I returned the keys to his room and we continued on down. At least she was beyond falling asleep on my hands. We reached the front door and I helped her down the steps.

Taking her arm I led her up the street towards the Tube station. Her wedged, clacking heels made too much noise for my peace of mind; the place was still pretty dead but there were some signs of movement.

“Where are you going?” I asked her as we hurried along.

She shook her head in despair, wiping at her tears with the flat of her hand. “I don’t know.”

“What about home to mum and dad?”

She didn’t reply, which was a good sign for before she’d have rejected it out of hand.

“Any money?” I was keeping her moving, my hand on her arm while she ferreted in her handbag.

“A bit,” she replied.

I took out two tens. “Here,” I said. “Don’t thank me, someone else is paying it. That should get you anywhere in the British Isles.”

She gave me a pathetic smile of thanks and I’d seldom felt so sorry for anyone. The walk had helped shake off the effects of the sleeping pills. We went into the station as night was fading and a pre-dawn, dirty grey filtered the streets, making it drab all round. This was the second girl I’d prised from this bunch of hoods but I think there was a shade more hope for her than the last one. I couldn’t help reflecting that the present dusky light represented the colour of her life. I could only hope that it would lighten for her and that she used her experience the right way. A few shadowy figures joined us and we all silently waited for the first train. It was not the hour for chit-chat, even the light bulbs seemed on half power, but maybe it was my sombre mood.

Kathy was still wet-eyed when I left her at Piccadilly. I strode up Shaftesbury Avenue, the combination of a pale rose dawn and streetlamps casting an unreal air about the place, and rang the bell of Rex Reisen’s club. He’d changed the photographs in the showcases. They looked the same, but the angles were different and perhaps the models had changed their wigs; they had nothing else to change. I was lucky, depending on which way you looked at it: Rex had stayed over late. He saw me because he knew I wouldn’t be hanging round his door at this time without good reason.

In his office I collapsed into one of his easy chairs and managed to stay awake. He looked tired and irritable, his foxy eyes imploring me to get on with it while he loosened his tie. I fingered the stubble on my chin and prepared to choose my words carefully. On the way here I’d given a lot of thought to what I would say. If the fuzz had been able to help, I think I might well have broken my own golden rule and gone to them instead. But they were powerless without evidence; I could really give them nothing with which to avenge the Barrets and Brian Page except a motive. That wouldn’t be enough for the Phils and Lauries and Rex Reisens who always covered their tracks so well. The only real evidence was my eye-witness testimony of the accidental shooting of young Jimmy Palmer. For it was an accident; the shot had been meant for me. There was also the permanent problem of the fact that I’m a thrice-convicted villain. A good defence lawyer — and these boys could afford the best — would make capital out of that standing on his head and my testimony would be discredited.

Meanwhile, a conscience-stricken middle-aged man was going to be mercilessly blackmailed for something he would never be allowed to forget. And he wouldn’t be the only one. But it would be bad enough for him when he found out what had happened to his son. So, the action I now sought, wrong under any law, at least to me, had a ring of rough justice; it was the only course that could stave off further tragedy for at least one person who’d had enough.

“If we sit here much longer, old cocker, I’ll ’ave to open the club again. Get on with it.” Rex ran a hand over his head and I spotted where he’d touched up his hair line.

“Phil and Laurie will be at Phil’s drum in Streatham tonight. They have quite a bit to sort out.”

“What time?”

“They’re eating out together but they’ll be there from about nine thirty.”

Rex didn’t leap from his chair with joy. Instead he said, “I’m sort of losing interest in these two jokers. I’m coming round to thinking that their capers don’t cut across mine.”

Rex going chicken? All I could see in him was weariness after a long night’s work counting his takings. He wasn’t getting away with it that easy. I’d walked so many knife edges that night, what was one more?

“These two jokers,” I explained, “are blackmailing businessmen for any misdemeanours and fiddles that have come to light via the back door or by the right kind of pressure on company servants. It’s a very lucrative field that can produce vast steady incomes. And it’s safe.”

“I found out something like that myself, old mate. As long as they stick to that and don’t encroach on my patch, I’m satisfied. They did try to muscle in at first, but I think they’ve backed off.”

I didn’t know how much of this was true or whether he was just pushing for anything I might be holding back. I couldn’t take that sort of risk so took a far more dangerous one. My gaze drifted over his shoulder to the window-box outside. The geraniums were craning their necks to reach out for the rising sun.

“They were considering nicking the spare sets of figures you keep in the false bottom of your window-box; they reckon you’d cough quite a lot to keep those from the tax man.”

To give Rex his due he didn’t bat an eyelid but he communicated something to me that I couldn’t mistake. He hadn’t known that I knew. “How long?” he demanded quietly.

“Since you caught me casing this place that time you fitted my boots.”

“So ’ow do I know you haven’t coughed to them?”

“Because I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you.”

“O.K. We’ll do them tonight.”

I convinced myself that the mob was already in existence before I came on the scene. I don’t think I’d even given it a push apart from furnishing Phil and Laurie’s whereabouts. I realised that Rex had been goading me, that he’d had no intention of leaving his rivals alone. If I was kidding myself, I was also trying to save others.

“I’ll go and get some sleep.” I climbed to my feet feeling dead beat.

“No, you don’t,” said Rex evenly. “You’re in on this. I want you there as accessory to make sure you keep your mouth shut. Good insurance, Spider.”

“You know damn fine I don’t grass.”

“You might talk in your sleep, mate. Besides, I want you to case the Streatham drum. You’ve got to get us in there. We’ll wait for them to arrive.”

I knew better than to argue. His fatigue had disappeared and he’d produced one of his enormous cigars.

“I’m dead tired,” I complained. “I haven’t slept for three nights.”

“I know the feeling, cocker. Terrible, ain’t it? Be here at four this afternoon and we’ll decide what happens next.”

* * *

The night porter kept the smile off his face as I wandered in, a little later than my usual time. “It’s killing me,” I said as I passed him. He grinned and continued to draw the wrong conclusion but very happy for me and perhaps envious. He should have known the truth; in my shoes he’d have got himself a job abroad.

In the bath I saw no way out. I’d gambled and achieved what I’d wanted, unprepared as I’d been for Rex’s bonus. I’d intended to call on Maxwell Palmer but there was no time for that now.

* * *

The house lay on the fringes of Streatham and Tooting, a once-smart pre-war suburb now mouldy at the edges. Detached and ordinary, with a small, hedged front garden, it squatted on a corner site. I viewed it from a car I’d made Rex Reisen provide. A ridiculous frame of mind had insisted on my not nicking a car in daylight yet the casing I was doing was the lead to murder. Rex saw it as judgment and execution; once you play this game there’s no road back. I was full of regret, not because Phil and Laurie were about to be exterminated, because I couldn’t get worked up about it, if it should have worried me then I’m lacking, but because I’d set it up. That worried me a lot.

It seemed that I was happy to see them go as long as someone else did it. And that attitude revealed something of myself I didn’t care for. It reminded me of Maggie, who had accepted what I did without never having seen me do it. When she finally did watch me it almost busted us up. But it wasn’t Maggie I was confronted with now. Yet when I thought of what Phil and Laurie had done to others and of what they were about to do I felt like pulling the trigger myself. And that was the crux of my heart-searching. I should do the job myself. At least I would be motivated by conviction.

There was nothing to the house; no break-in worries. Phil ostensibly led a thoroughly normal life in a thoroughly suburban environment. He had no need of security, for he would hide nothing here. The front door faced a fenced garden belonging to the house opposite whose own door was round the corner, so it wasn’t directly overlooked.

I had lunch at the hotel, a two-hour sleep afterwards, then reported to Reisen. I gave him the layout. We’d need a getaway car and it would have to be nicked. He insisted on my staying with him from then on. I dozed in one of his armchairs while he rustled up men for the job and Knocker came back on the scene. He’d removed the bandages from his head but still had the one on his hand.

Reisen had some food brought in from the club at six. I must admit it was good but I really had no appetite for it. Afterwards he handed me an old Smith & Wesson and passed over a silencer.

“For God’s sake,” I yelled. “I wouldn’t know how to use it.”

“Don’t give me that crap,” he said viciously. “You were in the forces. And you want them knocked off.”

We left at seven in an old Wolseley 6/60. I didn’t know where it had come from and I didn’t want to know. Knocker sat beside me and for once I had the smooth side of his face. Two of Reisen’s boys were in the back. Half an hour later we were going through Streatham.

Parking was the problem, getting as near to Phil’s house as I could for a getaway. If the job went well we could drive off nice and easy, if not I had to get them to Norbury, a few minutes’ drive, where Knocker had arranged for a second car to wait for a quick change-over. I wasn’t surprised that Rex Reisen wasn’t with us; he’d stopped doing his own dirty work a long time ago. I walked quite openly to Phil’s house and rang the bell.

I went round the back to the standard-sized garden, made certain that nobody was leaning out of back windows to watch me, cracked the glass and raised the latch of the kitchen windows. There was no need for refinement. The gun in my waistband felt like an anchor, weighing me down and getting in the way as I swung through. I climbed over the sink unit and went to the front door, taking a quick look into two reception rooms on the way to make sure they were empty. I opened the front door and let Knocker in who had timed it nicely. For the moment my part was over. I left him to let the other two in at short intervals and returned to the car.

These quiet suburban streets seem to carry masses of parked cars yet little moving traffic, but there were plenty of people. About a half-hour of daylight was left and it was crazy operating like this. Yet Reisen had argued that seeing movement amongst movement attracted no one and he had a point.

I didn’t like the idea of sitting in the car all the time because that could attract attention so I ambled around but never too close to Phil’s place. Darkness edged in from eight o’clock onwards so that just before nine, when Phil and Laurie might be expected back, it was as dark as it was going to get. This gave me the confidence to sidle closer to the scene of action. Being a loner, I don’t mind waiting on my own account but having to rely on others has never been my scene. I tucked myself behind a holly bush in someone’s front garden from where I could obliquely see Phil’s front door.

The house was still unlit so that Phil and Laurie clearly had not returned. Inside Knocker and the other two would be waiting in key positions. By a quarter past nine unease mounted unease. The old familiar feeling that had acted as my guideline for so long was back. Something wasn’t right. No one had gone in; no one had come out. The house was exactly as I had left it. So if there was something wrong now, then it had been wrong all along. I began to have doubts.

Had Phil and Laurie discovered that I’d returned to Charlie’s flat? Getting Kathy out had been done hastily; I might have left a clue. If they’d tumbled to me then they’d assume I heard everything they’d said.

If my reasoning wasn’t fanciful, they might consider it worth while to wait in the house for two or three nights on the off chance. In which case Knocker and his pals were already dead or prisoners. Phil and Laurie must have been disappointed that I hadn’t stayed with the others, but they’d now know my role as getaway man. They knew enough about me by now to guess that I’d go back if I was suspicious. And they were right. I couldn’t leave Knocker in a trap. Apart from matters of my own conscience, Rex Reisen would take the view that I’d set the whole thing up against him. For the first time that night I felt strange comfort in the gun digging into my stomach and stretching my waistband, but it was a wholly foreign sensation and one I could do without.

I settled down to a long wait because I had to be sure and because if I was right, I reckoned I was far more seasoned at the waiting game than Phil and Laurie might be. As far as I could see it was the only advantage I had. I spent the time speculating on how they might set a trap for me.

I waited another hour and a half and now I knew for certain that something was wrong. Knocker would have given up by now or at least sent someone out to contact me. I moved to the house next door, went up its short path and climbed over its fence into Phil’s garden. While I crouched, summing up the back of the house, I pulled out the gun and with unsteady fingers fitted the silencer to it. I had never gone armed on any job and wouldn’t now but for Rex Reisen’s insistence on my total involvement. The feel of the gun was wholly disturbing, yet without it, I doubt that I’d have continued.

The easiest way in was through the kitchen again but they might expect that. I shone my torch through the window and it was exactly as I’d left it. If they were waiting for me, it wasn’t there. I’d been over this time and again, producing mental visions of every type of drum I’d ever screwed. None had been so small as this. My choice — and theirs — was limited. I lifted a big, plastic dustbin on to a coal bunker and climbed upon to it. From this doubled height I could peer through a bedroom window and stayed listening before shining my torch through. There was a big wardrobe to my left and I couldn’t see beyond it. I opened the window and climbed through, sidling against the wall.

I crept up to the wardrobe and put my ear to it. If there was anyone inside, they were dead. Because of the thick skirting the wardrobe stood an inch or so away from the wall. I shone my torch along the back, finding no shadows the other side. Pulling out the gun which I should have been holding at the outset, I stepped round the wardrobe and was met by a blank wall. The only other place was under the bed. When satisfied the room was empty, I switched off the torch.

The door gave the barest creak when I opened it but even so I passed through quickly and took up a wall position. The further into the house I went the harder it would be to get out. This is what they would want but if I was to get anywhere at all this is what I had to do. But I wasn’t rushing it.

I slunk against the wall knowing that my next move could be my last. I knew from my appraisal when downstairs that a short corridor led straight to the stairs which went down to the tiny hall. From this point on I couldn’t use my torch; I’d have to rely entirely on my senses. There must be rooms either side of me. They could be waiting for me to pass them before closing in.

I sunk to my hands and knees not for silence but to form as small a target as possible. My outstretched fingers acted as feelers, locating carpeting and wood. On reaching a door I always stopped, explored to make certain it was closed, then put my ear to it. My nerves were screaming danger and I knew I was close to it. They were waiting for me to reach or to get down the stairs. Once on the stairs they could block me off both ends.

There were four doors upstairs. One room I knew to be empty. Still keeping to my hands and knees I opened the other three in turn, went in, waited, soaked up the complete silence that pervaded the whole house, then used my torch. I searched thoroughly and silently and found nobody. Yet the more I searched, the less I found, the nearer to danger I felt. From the last room I crawled back onto the landing and kept still. If they were to block off my rear — and the necessity was elementary — there was only one other place.

I had my head in the noose but they’d be sure it was around my throat before they pulled it tight. Creeping forward I located the edge of the top stair and flattened. There was someone near me. I couldn’t see or hear him but he was within feet of me. The gun in my hand was like a lead weight but it was a lifeline. There should be another solution; but until they discovered a pill to do the trick there never would be with villains like Phil and Laurie.

Somewhere down the stairs they were waiting for me. That was the other end of the trap. What scared me right then was the open end I knew I was lying in. I rose very slowly until I was upright on the edge of the landing. It was so quiet I could hear my own breathing. I wondered if anyone else could. I stood listening and stretching out my arms to judge the distance of the walls either side of me. I heard a sound so faint I could have been wrong. My hackles were up as I pushed the gun into my waistband. Very deliberately I reached out a foot and gently scraped it along the skirting, not too loud but sufficient for anyone listening to pick up and pinpoint me. Then I stepped back two short paces and strained my ears.

I fancied I detected a deeper patch with a lighter centre above me. I jumped as high as I could with both arms stretched up. The second my hands touched something my fingers closed like claws and while still in mid-air knew I’d grabbed a sleeve and some hair. Someone tried to yell but it was choked as I yanked while landing back on the carpet and only a desperate gurgle emerged. As I’d jumped and pulled in one motion, I had him out of the attic before he knew what had happened. As he hurtled out I couldn’t check his fall but he crashed somewhere in front of me and I tried to hold him as I fumbled for the gun. If I could get my arm round his neck and a gun to his head, he’d be my security.

Not surprisingly he had fallen awkwardly on his head. Before I could control him, he was somersaulting down the stairs, breaking the terrible silence with a loud clumping as he crashed against each stair. Then there were flashes from below but no sound above the falling body. I dropped flat on my face and before I realised what I was doing I was pumping away at the flashes with my own gun, almost blinded by the sudden streaks of light. The shooting continued briefly after the body had finally stopped rolling and it was as if someone was pulling corks from bottles at a crazy party. When my gun was empty, I still lay prone, my thoughts wild and ranging while I tried to pick up sound of movement. All I could hear was a dreadful gurgling as if an asthmatic was trying to smoke a hubble-bubble.

Rolling over to the wall I held my torch out sideways at arm’s length and switched it on to see if it would attract any shots. When it didn’t I switched off and stood up shakily. I backed away from the stairhead, used the torch again, located the light switch and depressed it. The light was cruel on the eyes as I moved forward to the stairhead, gun in hand as if it could still protect me.

Laurie lay bundled at the foot of the stairs as if someone had tried to cram him into a suitcase that was far too small. Even from where I was, I could see that his neck was broken. Someone’s legs were poking out beyond the banisters but I had to go down several stairs before I could identify Charlie, gun still in hand and dead, blood covering his face, his back propped against the wall, his head lolling. He’d had a rough twenty hours but he’d have no more.

The wheezing directed me to Phil. He’d tried to get back down the hall to one of the rooms, but he hadn’t made it. A blood trail showed his progress. He was half squatting, half kneeling, leaning sideways against the wall, his back to me. I went round to face him and almost heaved. He was frothing at the mouth, air bubbles bursting through pale blood. He’d been hit in the lung. As his eyes came up to meet mine, they were filled with terror. He knew he was dying, and he couldn’t believe it. This happened to his victims not to him, but his thoughts, as they had always been, were for himself. There was nothing I or anyone could do to save him and I walked back to Laurie, surprised at my own unexpected callousness; it wasn’t easy to become emotional over men like Phil and I’m not a hypocrite.

Only an autopsy would show what had killed Laurie. His neck was certainly broken but there were also five bullet holes in him fired by Phil and Charlie as he’d stumbled down the stairs while they had thought he was me. As I gazed around, at the three bodies, at a shot of mine that had cratered the plaster, at another that had gone straight through the front door mercifully at a downward angle, my nerves reacted and the shakes started. I managed to cram the gun down my trousers as I raced for the bathroom.

Some time later I looked for Knocker and his friends and found them in the front room tied up with mouths taped and awaiting execution after I’d been caught. It was their lucky night. They were the only ones to get a kick from the rest of the evening. Phil was dead before we left the house, his expression of terror erased by one of eternal disbelief.

I got back to the hotel at one o’clock. An early night for me. But I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t think I ever would again.

* * *

I had to reach Maxwell Palmer before the radio or press news did. The battle had been too late for the morning papers but the early editions of the ‘evenings’ would get it and I didn’t know how early he tuned in to radio or television. Nor did I know what had happened to Jimmy Palmer’s body. With the escape of Kathy, Phil and Laurie may have taken some urgent action. I couldn’t see them letting him remain in the room with Kathy loose. As the day unfolded the news of the suburban massacre would come out; I’d have to wait for it with the rest.

The night’s action had killed all humour in me. A cold shower and a shave refreshed me, but I felt like an old man who’d been too long on the bottle and whose trembling hands were fumbling to open another. The gun had gone back to Rex Reisen via Knocker Roberts who now held me in new esteem. He saw it as a compliment, and from his poor, warped mind I suppose it was. All it did to me was to remind me of what I’d done, and to put me off my food. The only good thing about it was a lack of need to reach for the bottle. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t consider it. I was in a sombre mood by the time I arrived at Maxwell Palmer’s. It was barely eight a.m.

He answered the door himself and at once I could guess why. He’d had trouble with sleep, too. But he was shaved and dressed and although wan and obviously tired out, he had regained his self-respect in his appearance. What shook me considerably was the whisky on his breath as I went past him into the hall. At this time in the morning?

We went into the library and at once I spotted the bottle and glass on his side table.

“That won’t cure anything.” I hadn’t meant to sound smug when I’d felt like doing it myself.

“No, it won’t. But it can deaden the memory. And that can be a relief.”

I sat down opposite. “It can also bring remorse.”

“That hasn’t happened yet. Remorse is outside the bottle, sobriety, a clear head that allows one to think.”

There wasn’t an answer to that. He had to lay his own ghosts.

“I’ve learned quite a lot in the last thirty-six hours,” I said. “What made you do it?”

He raised his glass, his hand quite steady. But it was easy to imagine an image of his gradual deterioration as the day wore on, of the ruffled hair and loosened tie, of the increasingly vacant look about the now bright eyes.

“How much do you know?” he replied quite calmly.

“I know you swindled your partner.”

He winced, looked inward, then snapped out of it. “Then it’s better you should know it all before you pass judgment.”

“I’m the last person to judge anyone. People in glass houses—”

“You underrate yourself, Scott, you are what you are. You don’t give a damn what people think. What people think means a great deal to me, although there’s more to it than that.” He raised his glass again, was about to swallow then stopped. For several seconds he studied the liquid as if transfixed. He rose, still holding the glass, reached out for the bottle and returned both to the chiffonier behind him. He sat down again. He’d made a decision; he looked the better for it.

“What I’m about to tell you nobody has heard before. Barret knew of it because he was involved, but even he didn’t know the real motivation. My wife was a money-grabbing bitch, but I loved her to a point of near insanity. I believe I still do. She was very beautiful and vital; she was fun if she got what she wanted. And as far as I knew she was faithful. With her looks I was always amazed that she chose me, but I like to believe that at first she had genuine feeling for me. That was, until she developed a taste for money and what it could buy.

“The early days of the business were frugal, but we all joined in. Tom Cooper was my dearest friend. But my love for Annette was a crazy force stronger than anything I knew or will ever know again. I’m not a weak man, Scott, but for her I’d do anything. At first, I resisted her demands for more money, but as time went on I realised I’d lose her unless I did something. I fought against it, I really did, but there’s no reasoning with the kind of madness such a woman can provoke in a man. Whether it was a latent evil that emerged with maturity I shall never know. I only know that she gradually became another person from the young girl I married and that, paradoxically, instead of reviling me her magnetism grew stronger and she learned how to exercise it to perfection. When I was with her it didn’t matter what I did. I might even have killed for her, I was so unbalanced.”

He tailed off; the memory obviously tortured him. I made a mental note never to preach again to anyone who turned to the bottle.

“So you engaged in a little embezzlement with Barret’s connivance, and he naturally wanted a percentage.”

“You’ve seen the one set of balance sheets. The sums weren’t large because the money simply wasn’t there. It made life difficult for Tom Cooper and his wife, but at that time I couldn’t even consider him.” He rubbed his eyes as if to wipe away the memory, but he’d never do that. “Ironically, it never kept her. She went rotten all the way until even I, demented though I was, began to be afraid of her. She finally left me when I couldn’t raise any more money. If she’d waited two or three years she could have had as much as she wanted.”

“Would you have hung on to her knowing that, knowing what she was?”

He didn’t avoid my gaze. “Yes, I would. Perhaps I still would. It’s a dreadful sickness; personally, I’ve found no cure for it. I don’t know who she went off with or what poor devil she’s plaguing now or even if she’s alive. After the statutory period for desertion, I obtained a divorce in an effort to get her out of my system. And I had young James on my hands.

“My partner died before we struck it really rich, it’s played on my mind heavily ever since. After Annette left me and I’d regained a little sanity I intended to pay him back every penny, even tell him what I’d done. But life isn’t so tidy. I still send his widow a regular pension anonymously. She won’t want for the rest of her days. I give generously and anonymously to charities, but it’s no good, Scott. I know what I’ve done; it can never change.”

“I can see that for such a thing to happen to a man who was basically honourable it would live with him forever.”

“Oh, I’ve learned to live with it, but it’s always there. I can never forgive myself.”

“Were you blackmailed by Barret?”

He looked surprised. “He didn’t need to blackmail me. As we progressed, he was treated handsomely, much better than he could normally have expected. He was on to a good thing.”

“But it must have been in his mind to have kept the one set of balance sheets.”

“I suppose he saw it as security, that one day he might need to put pressure on me if matters deteriorated between us. But I’m not like that. He mightn’t have needed much corrupting, but the fact remains that I corrupted him. My guess is that he’d long since forgotten that he had them. And then they were stolen, and this dreadful business started.”

He was oversimplifying but it no longer mattered.

“So, it was your conscience that kept you straight.”

“Well, let’s say that conscience reconstituted honesty in me, perhaps to a too-rigid degree.”

“Too rigid for Jimmy.” I had to say it.

He didn’t answer directly. “I saw his mother coming out in him. It worried me sick. God, it was a nightmare returning, reviving it all. And then he joined those men. There was nothing I could do about her but there’s plenty I can try to do for him. It’s just that I don’t know how to reach out, how to communicate.”

I watched him mentally writhe over Jimmy. He hadn’t given up. I wondered what the outcome would have been if Jimmy had lived. Unsure of which way to tackle it, I suspended telling him, knowing there were still gaps to be filled and that he would be beyond it once he knew. “When the balance sheets came into Phil and Laurie’s hands they saw their value. It was easy for them to blackmail Barret into giving what information he had; he certainly had sufficient for them. They would probably have threatened to tell Cooper’s widow what really happened, or alternatively the police or your co-directors or the lot. They would have received an enormous annuity from you for the rest of their lives.”

“I would have paid it willingly to get Jimmy back, to save him from following the path of his mother. Whatever he is, he’s part of me.”

I plodded on. “They forced him into helping them. First, they gave him the sort of life he thought he wanted. Then they put pressure on him over the betting slips and once he’d signed those he was committed. He wasn’t the sort of lad who would have enjoyed prison, but his main fear was their threats. They wanted a hold on him as extra insurance for extortion against you.”

The penny dropped. Maxwell Palmer gave me a curious stare and I think he realised then. “You’re talking as if it’s over.”

“It is. They are dead. All three of them.”

He took it better than I expected. But for an odd twitching about his lips he didn’t stir, as though he’d been expecting it. But I couldn’t see what it was doing inside him. His hands were steady but gripping each other fiercely. “They killed him?”

“Accidentally. He died saving my life.” I wasn’t being self-effacing because I think he would have understood if I’d told him the truth. But he’d suffered enough. He still had to live with the years ahead and memories in loneliness. And he wanted to believe what I told him.

I went on. “I was talking to him when we were both caught. The detail can wait for some other time. But for him I wouldn’t be here.” That was true, anyway. There was a great sadness in his eyes but his general expression lightened as I continued. “He wouldn’t come home because they’d threatened to harm you if he did. This was something he’d found difficult to express. I think he’d realised his mistake in joining up with them in the first place.”

“He told you that?” Maxwell Palmer rose and started his short pacing. “Is that what he said?”

“Before he died. What he did saved both you and me. I thought you should know. I didn’t like him, not even at the end, but I had to admire his courage and his protection of you.”

His pace became purposeful, then he stopped to scrutinise me as he’d done when we’d first met. “Thank you, Mr. Scott. Thank you.”

I hesitated. “The police may not locate Jimmy. You understand? But I give you my word that he died painlessly.”

He was afraid to press for detail. Perhaps some other time he might raise it. Right now, all he wanted was to know that his faith in his son had been justified. He took my hand loosely. “Will you forgive me if I throw you out? I want a little solitude, time to think things over. I know what you’ve tried to do, and I’ll always be grateful. I won’t embarrass you by asking who destroyed these men, but I can’t be sorry that they’ve gone.”

“I understand. Get some rest.” I swung back halfway to the door. “The police will come,” I said. “They’ll dig deeper into Jimmy’s association with Phil and Laurie.”

He spread his hands. “There’s nothing I can tell them. I know only what you’ve told me.”

“That’s what worries me. If—”

He held up a hand to stop me. “To involve you is to involve myself. You already know that I’m rather good at holding my tongue.”

I smiled at him. He smiled back sadly.

Outside it was warm and sunny and I strode out into the petrol-filled air. I was quite pleased at having been upgraded to Mr. Scott. It was a sign of respect. What a pity I couldn’t tell Maggie: to tell her that was to tell her the lot and I could never do that. I hurried back to the hotel to pick up my few belongings before returning to my flat. For once I didn’t have to look over my shoulder.

THE END

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Also by Kenneth Royce

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THE CRYPTO MAN

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When an inmate is found dead in his cell, everyone says he took his own life. But his grieving father suspects murder and asks the police to help.

DS Bulman takes on the case and asks Spider to help him get to the bottom of this potential homicide. Bulman previously tried to pin a spate of burglaries on Spider, but they must put their differences aside and work together.

Spider soon finds himself in grave danger after he stumbles upon a dark secret, spanning forty years, that could topple the British government.

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Glossary of English Usage for US Readers

A & E: accident and emergency department in a hospital

Aggro: violent behaviour, aggression

Air raid: attack in which bombs are dropped from aircraft on ground targets

Allotment: a plot of land rented by an individual for growing fruit, vegetables or flowers

Anorak: nerd (it also means a waterproof jacket)

Artex: textured plaster finish for walls and ceilings

A levels: exams taken between 16 and 18

Auld Reekie: Edinburgh

Au pair: live-in childcare helper, often a young woman

Barm: bread roll

Barney: argument

Beaker: glass or cup for holding liquids

Beemer: BMW car or motorcycle

Benefits: social security

Bent: corrupt

Bin: wastebasket (noun), or throw in rubbish (verb)

Biscuit: cookie

Blackpool Lights: gaudy illuminations in a seaside town

Bloke: guy

Blow: cocaine

Blower: telephone

Blues and twos: emergency vehicles

Bob: money, e.g. ‘That must have cost a few bob.’

Bobby: policeman

Broadsheet: quality newspaper (New York Times would be a US example)

Brown bread: rhyming slang for dead

Bun: small cake

Bunk: escape, e.g. ‘do a bunk’

Burger bar: hamburger fast-food restaurant

Buy-to-let: buying a house/apartment to rent it out for profit

Charity shop: thrift store

Carrier bag: plastic bag from supermarket

Care home: an institution where old people are cared for

Car park: parking lot

CBeebies: kids’ TV

Chat-up: flirt, trying to pick up someone with witty banter or compliments

Chemist: pharmacy

Chinwag: conversation

Chippie: fast-food place selling chips, battered fish and other fried food

Chips: French fries but thicker

CID: Criminal Investigation Department

Civvy Street: civilian life (as opposed to army)

Clock: punch (in an altercation) or register

Cock-up: mess up, make a mistake

Cockney: a native of East London

Common: an area of park land or lower class

Comprehensive school (comp.): a public (re state-run) high school

Cop hold of: grab

Copper: police officer

Coverall: coveralls, or boiler suit

CPS: Crown Prosecution Service, who decide whether police cases go forward

Childminder: someone paid to look after children

Council: local government

Dan Dare: hero from Eagle comic

DC: detective constable

Deck: one of the landings on a floor of a tower block

Deck: hit (verb)

Desperate Dan: very strong comic book character

DI: detective inspector

Digestive biscuit: plain cookie

Digs: student lodgings

Do a runner: disappear

Do one: go away

Doc Martens: heavy boots with an air-cushioned sole, also DMs, Docs

Donkey’s years: long time

Drum: house

DS: detective sergeant

ED: emergency department of a hospital

Eagle: children’s comic, marketed at boys

Early dart: to leave work early

Eggy soldiers: strips of toast with a boiled, runny egg

Enforcer: police battering ram

Estate: public/social housing estate (similar to housing projects)

Estate agent: realtor

Falklands War: war between Britain and Argentina in 1982

Fag: cigarette

Father Christmas: Santa Claus

Filth: police (insulting)

Forces: army, navy and air force

FMO: force medical officer

Fried slice: fried bread

Fuzz: police

Garda: Irish police

GCSEs: exams taken between age 14 and 16, replaced O levels in 1988

Gendarmerie: French national police force

Geordie: from Newcastle

Garden centre: a business where plants and gardening equipment are sold

Gob: mouth, can also mean phlegm or spit

GP: general practitioner, a doctor based in the community

Graft: hard work

Gran: grandmother

Hancock: Tony Hancock, English comedian popular in 1950s

Hard nut: tough person

HGV: heavy goods vehicle, truck

HOLMES: UK police computer system used during investigation of major incidents

Home: care home for elderly or sick people

Hoover: vacuum cleaner

I’ll be blowed: expression of surprise

In care: refers to a child taken away from their family by the social services

Inne: isn’t he

Interpol: international police organisation

Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, applied to any strong woman

ITU: intensive therapy unit in hospital

Jane/John Doe: a person whose identity is unknown/anonymous

JCB: a manufacturer of construction machinery, like mechanical excavators

Jerry-built: badly made

Jungle: nickname given to migrant camp near Calais

Lad: young man

Lass: young woman

Lift: elevator

Lord Lucan: famous British aristocrat who allegedly killed his children’s nanny and disappeared in 1974 and was never found

Lorry: truck

Lovely jubbly: said when someone is pleased

Luftwaffe: German air force

M&S: Marks and Spencer, a food and clothes shop

Miss Marple: detective in a series of books by Agatha Christie, often used to imply a busybody, especially of older women

MOD: Ministry of Defence

Mobile phone: cell phone

MP: Member of Parliament, politician representing an area

MRSA: A strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Myra Hindley: famous British serial killer

Naff: tacky/corny, not cool

Naff all: none

National Service: compulsory military service, in the UK ended in 60s

Net curtains: a type of semi-transparent lace curtain

NHS: National Health Service, public health service of the UK

Nick: police station (as verb: to arrest)

Nowt: nothing

Nutter: insane person, can be used affectionately

Nursery: a place which grows plants, shrubs and trees for sale (often wholesale)

O levels: exams taken between age 14 and 16 until 1988 (replaced by GCSEs)

Old bag: old woman (insulting)

Old Bill: police

OTT: over the top

Owt: anything

Pants: noun: underwear, adjective: bad/rubbish/terrible

Para: paratrooper

Pay-as-you-go: a cell phone on which you pay for calls in advance

PC: police constable

Pear-shaped: gone wrong

Petrol: gasoline

Pictures: movie

Pillbox: a concrete building, partly underground, used as an outpost defence

Pillock: fool

Pips: police insignia indicating rank

Piss off: an exclamation meaning go away (rude), can also mean annoy

Pissing down: raining

Playing field: sports field

Pleb: ordinary person (often insulting)

Portakabin: portable building used as temporary office etc.

Post: mail

Planning Department: the local authority department that issues licences to build and develop property

PNC: police national computer

PSNI: Police Service of Northern Ireland

Prat: idiot, can be used affectionately

Premier League: top English soccer division

Proms: annual concerts held at the Albert Hall

Public analyst: scientists who perform chemical analysis for public protection purposes

RAF: Royal Air Force

Rag: newspaper

Ram-raiding: robbery where a vehicle is rammed through a shop window

Randy: horny

Recce: reconnaissance

Red Adair: famous oil well firefighter

Resus: resuscitation room

Right state: messy

Ring: telephone (verb)

Roadworks: repairs done to roads

Rozzers: police

RSPB: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

RTC: road traffic collision

RV: rendezvous point

Royal Engineers: British army corps dealing with military engineering, etc.

Rugger: rugby (posh American football)

Sarge: sergeant

SCO19: Specialist Crime and Operations Specialist Firearms Command

Scrote: low life

Section: to have someone committed to a mental hospital under UK mental health laws

Semi: semi-detached house, a house with another house joined to it on one side only

Shedload: a large amount

Shop: store

Shout the odds: talk in a loud bossy way

Sickie: day off work pretending to be ill

Sixth-form college: where students study A levels

SIO: senior investigating officer

Skell: a homeless person, aka ‘tramp’ (insulting)

Skip: a large open container used for building waste

Slapper: used to label somebody as overtly sexual, typically a younger woman, aka ‘skank’ (insulting)

Smackhead: heroin addict (insulting)

Snout: police informer

SOCO: scene-of-crime officer

Sod: an annoying person

Sort: to do or make

Solicitor: lawyer

Sparky: electrician

Spook: spy

Spuds: potatoes

Squaddie: a soldier of low rank

Stunner: beautiful woman

Super: superintendent (police rank)

Surveyor: someone who examines land and buildings professionally

Sweeting: endearment, like sweetheart

Tabloid: newspaper, typically known for a sensationalist style of journalism

Tea: dinner (Northern English)

Tea towel: drying cloth

Till: cash register

Tip: a mess, e.g. ‘This room is a tip’, or a local garbage dump

Tipsy: a bit drunk

Top oneself: commit suicide

Torch: flashlight

Tutor: university teacher

Tower block: tall building containing apartments (usually social housing)

Twoc: steal a car, often just for joyriding (taking without owner’s consent)

Upmarket: affluent or fancy

Wacky baccy: cannabis

Wally: silly person (can be used affectionately)

War Cry: Salvation Army magazine

Wash: the washing machine

Water board: company supplying water to an area

White van man: typical working-class man who drives a small truck

WI: Women’s Institute, organization of women in the UK for social/cultural activity

Widow’s weeds: black clothes worn by a widow in mourning

Wilco: will comply, i.e. ‘yes’

Wrinklies: old people

Yellowbelly: native of Lincolnshire (not to be confused with yellow-belly, meaning a coward)

Yob: a rude or aggressive youth or person

Yorkie: type of chocolate bar