Ransom Town

by Roderic Jeffries

  Fusil remembered the sick humour of the ransom notes and he knew with a violent, exciting certainty that to such men nothing would be funnier than torching a building in which the police were giving a lecture on road safety to the public.

  *

  He parked outside Race’s house, but did not immediately get out. How to avoid the inevitable? If they took Race in for questioning, he’d outlast them. Probably before that his disappearance would alarm the mob. In either case they must, inevitably, change the target.

  Did the four million they were demanding really count when placed against the lives of an unknown number of innocent people? How far was his own pride involved. . . . He hoped not at all, but surely no man could ever be certain what motives truly moved him? Shouldn’t he report to Menton and admit defeat?

  An oncoming vehicle on dipped headlights passed, momentarily illuminating the interior of his car. His attention was caught by something white, seen from the corners of his eyes, and he turned to look at the back shelf. It was a newspaper, thrown there three days before and then forgotten even though it contained an article he’d particularly wanted to read.

  A newspaper! he suddenly thought.

  Menton would be furious – and afraid. But once things were moving no one would be able to stop them, not if the mob reacted as he was certain they would, provided only that the fire lit under their tails was hot enough. . . .

  He climbed out of the car, crossed to the front door of the house, and rang the bell. A P.C. let him in. He went straight into the dining-room.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ shouted Connie, ‘what’s going on? I’ve been stuck in . . .’

  ‘Shut up and listen hard,’ he said.

  She looked nervously at him, then moved her chair fractionally closer to the W.P.C.

  He sat and brought tobacco pouch and pipe from his pocket and slowly filled the pipe, repeatedly tamping the tobacco with his forefinger.

  ‘Well, ain’t you ever going to say anything?’ she demanded, her voice very shrill.

  ‘We’ve nailed ’em,’ he said. He saw the surprised look on the W.P.C.’s face. ‘For bank robbery, arson, and murder. And d’you know what finally helped us to nail ’em? Something you told me.’

  ‘Me? But I ain’t . . .’

  ‘I told Angel you’d helped us. Made him shout.’ He shook his head. ‘Never thought it’d take him like that.’

  ‘Jesus!’ she whispered, in anguished prayer.

  ‘We’ve no cause to hold you any longer, so you’re free to go.’ He looked up. ‘Know what I’d do if I were you, Connie?’ She stared at him, quite terrified. ‘I’d get on the first main line train out of Fortrow Central and I’d keep travelling until I reached the last stop and then I’d hide until it’s all over and they’re safely inside for the next thirty years.’

  After a while, she said: ‘I never told you nothing, you know that.’ She began to cry.

  Fusil spoke to the W.P.C. ‘See her on to a train.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the W.P.C., not understanding what was happening, not quite managing to hide her contempt for what Fusil had done.

  He didn’t watch them leave, but stared into space. After a while, he realized his pipe had gone out and he relit it. Fernley Green would do, he finally decided: a country town, small, where the magistrates were old school and went out of their way to support the police. They’d hold Race there for as long as they dared and then they’d bring him up before the magistrates and ask for a week’s remand in custody, quoting evidence which couldn’t be successfully challenged immediately. . . .

  *

  Fusil parked in front of Harvey’s house. He walked along the crazy-paving path to the front door and rang the bell. A woman’s voice called out: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Mary, it’s Bob. Bob Fusil.’

  He heard a bolt being withdrawn and then the door opened and light spilled over him. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Bob, but these days we don’t open the door at night until we know who’s the other side.’ Mrs Harvey was plump and one of the warmest characters he knew.

  ‘I’m sorry to butt in this late, but it is very urgent. Is Fred in?’

  ‘He’s watching the telly fast asleep, as always! I keep saying, why not go to bed, but you know Fred, grandfather to a mule.’

  Harvey woke up as they entered the over-warm sitting-room and, blinking blearily, wriggled into an upright position.

  ‘It’s Bob,’ his wife said loudly.

  ‘I can see that: so now I’m wondering what in the hell he wants.’

  ‘I’m after a favour,’ said Fusil.

  ‘Not a chance in hell.’

  ‘Sit down, Bob,’ said Mrs Harvey, ‘and I’ll go into the kitchen and make a pot of tea.’ She saw that he was about to refuse. ‘It’ll be no trouble. I always have a cup last thing. It helps me to sleep through his snoring.’ She left.

  Fusil sat. He said: ‘First off, I’ll give you the story so far, right off the record.’ Briefly, he told Harvey what had happened.

  ‘Goddamn it, Bob,’ snapped Harvey, ‘why come here in the middle of the night and wake me up from a wonderful dream which included two blondes if it’s only to tell me something I can’t print?’

  ‘I had to explain why you’re going to do me a favour. Has the paper been put to bed yet?’

  Harvey looked at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. ‘If the night editor hasn’t died, it’s just about there now.’

  ‘Then phone him up and tell him to hold things because there’s a last-minute change. You’ve a report from a police spokesman which says quite categorically that there will be no dealings whatsoever with the ransom mob, no matter what threats are made. You’ve learned that this hard attitude is because considerable progress in the investigations has been made. According to a reliable source, vital information has been received from an informer which will lead to the identification of the men behind the ransom threat. The police have refused to confirm or deny this.

  ‘You also want a photo printed of a crashed Ford Granada whose number plate doesn’t show and a short paragraph saying the car was involved in a crash early on tonight. The two occupants suffered very serious injuries and the driver, Adam Race, was found to be dead on arrival in hospital. His companion, Miss Connie Smith, is in an intensive care unit.’

  Harvey swore with bemused admiration.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A chair creaked. ‘Can’t you sit still?’ Fusil whispered angrily.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said one of the P.C.s. Almost immediately that chair, or another, creaked yet again.

  None of them could keep still, thought Fusil: movement somehow helped to lessen the tension. And it was worse for the others in the children’s section of the library because they could see nothing except, very dimly, the rows of books on the walls. Probably they were imagining the torchers slipping through unnoticed, a blast of explosion and fire, and themselves trapped, surrounded by Robert Louis Stevenson, A. A. Milne, and Enid Blyton.

  He recalled Menton’s disbelief and fury of three days ago. ‘You’ve what? Have you gone crazy? Don’t you bloody understand . . .’ And then he’d stopped because it was so obvious that Fusil didn’t understand. When he’d spoken again he’d regained some self-control and in cutting terms he’d made it perfectly clear that if things didn’t work out he’d personally see that Fusil suffered the full consequences of his own stupidity.

  By the grace of God, lies, and magistrates who would prefer to believe a uniform inspector rather than St Peter, they’d managed to keep Race out of circulation so far, but the strain was really telling. One more day was probably the limit.

  Through the small hole bored in the solid wooden door – how much, he wondered irrationally, would the library service claim for that? – he saw four people come through the main doorway of the building and into the foyer. W.P.C. Tuckett, dressed in a smart green frock, offered them one of her pamphlets. The two women shook their heads, one man made a remark at which he laughe
d, the other man hurried past with the half-defiant, half-apologetic expression of an Englishman who was determined not to suffer proselytization.

  He felt sweat trickle down from his armpits. How many years was it now since he had last sweated from tension?

  There were three exits from the lecture hall which was up on the first floor. The main one was reached from the head of the stairs leading up from the foyer: the two smaller, emergency ones were on the east and west sides of the hall and there were one-way doors giving access to outside stairs. Three explosive fire bombs, he judged. The uniform sergeant who was tonight lecturing on ‘Common faults in the family car’ had no idea that his fellow policemen believed the hall was to be bombed. As someone had said, had he known this he might have become a bit distraught and confused the brakes with the accelerator, with dire results.

  The bomb expert, waiting in one of the parked cars, had estimated that each bomb would call for a carrying capacity of about one cubic foot. So look for a man with a large brief-case, a small suitcase, or a medium-sized parcel. Everyone in the building, police and civilians, knowingly or unknowingly, was relying on the watchers outside picking out in time the men who were carrying the bombs. . . .

  Was P.C. Chase, sitting close to Fusil but no more than a dark shadow, fingering the Webley he was carrying? Fusil had watched him draw the revolver from the divisional armoury. A quiet, rather dull man, careful of movement, showing no feelings at being called on to arm and perhaps to shoot to kill. Aim at the belly, Fusil remembered once being told on the range: there’s more to hit there, especially if he’s a beer drinker.

  Two men, very deep in conversation, reached the outside doorway. One of them carried a brown paper parcel, but this was no more than six inches long, three deep, and three wide. W.P.C. Tuckett offered them a pamphlet and each took one, still talking and careless of what it was they had just accepted. As they reached the foot of the stairs, they went out of Fusil’s sight.

  He looked at his watch and the luminous hands showed one minute after the half hour. The uniform sergeant would be standing by the rostrum in the lecture hall, waiting to start. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the basic rule of all vehicle maintenance is, check tyre pressures, oil, water, and battery levels, at least once a week . . .’

  ‘George,’ came the murmur from the transceiver, whose volume had been turned down to minimum, which had been put on the small desk. ‘Stand by. Six out.’ The sergeant and the P.C.s stood.

  As Fusil stared through the small hole in the door, he thought: Shock the man so thoroughly that his reactions are frozen long enough to get out and surround him and make him realize that he can’t set off the bomb without blowing himself up as well. Hopefully, being a villain, he wouldn’t be made of the stuff of martyrs. . . .

  ‘George. Relax. Six out.’ The sergeant and the P.C.s sat.

  He discovered that the muscles in his arms and legs had been so tensed that now they were shaking.

  A P.C. coughed. Another P.C. moved and his chair creaked. ‘Go out and tell ’em you’re waiting here, instead of just hinting,’ whispered the sergeant furiously.

  The lecture was scheduled to last an hour and there was a further half-hour for discussion. An hour and a half during which the mob would make their play – if they were going to. They might not believe the Gazette: they might have had the house in Astrid Road under surveillance: they might have learned from neighbours that a number of men visited it the evening on which poor Mr Race had had his terrible accident. Right this moment they might be torching a restaurant and laughing at the stupidity of the police.

  ‘George. Stand by. Six out.’ The sergeant and the P.C.s stood.

  If it’s another false alarm I’ll have you pounding the beat on late turn for a month, Fusil thought. Goddam it, don’t you understand what it’s like being cooped up in here? We’re looking for three men with packages, brief-cases, or suitcases . . .

  ‘George. Promising, but not developing yet. Six out.’

  He gripped the handle of the door, turned it back, then released it. He judged from the message that a car had stopped in a strategic position and although several men were in it, none of them had so far climbed out. Businessmen on their way to an expense-account dinner? Members of a rugger club on a night out, wondering which of the city’s four strip clubs offered the hottest menu?

  ‘George. Three with parcels, moving off. Six out.’ Even through the tinniness of the transceiver, the tones of excitement were obvious.

  He gripped the door handle again, but this time did not turn it. The bomb expert had said: ‘The timing mechanism will be a simple one, easily activated on the site to allow the bomber to cope with any unforeseen difficulties on his way to the plant. It may be a clockwork or electrical switch started by pressure from the outside with a short lag, or it may be an acid container and when the parcel is upended the acid works on a very thin rubber cap, eating through this to ignite a chemical mixture which sets off the detonator. I prefer the former, but don’t forget to watch for an attempt either briefly to press down on the container or to upend it.’ Forget? None of them would be thinking about anything else.

  ‘George one. Three separating. Six out.’

  It surely had to be the bombers. Three of them, peeling off to their target areas, the three exits to the lecture hall.

  As the transceiver said, ‘George one, now. George two, approaching,’ Fusil saw a man come into view as he approached the doorway. Dressed with just a hint of flamboyance: the litheness of someone in good physical trim: apparently at ease, but with the giveaway which so often identified both villain and policeman, too interested in everything about him.

  The man climbed the steps, parcel in his right hand.

  Fusil flung open the door, deliberately letting it crash back to make a sudden noise. ‘We’re police officers and some of us are armed. Stand quite still and do not try to put that parcel down on the ground.’

  The man turned his head and looked at Fusil and his expression was of shock and of hatred.

  *

  It was nearly three in the morning before Fusil arrived home. He left the car in the drive because the garage doors squeaked and entered the house with all the traditional care of a late reveller trying to evade discovery. He was half-way to the stairs when the sitting-room door opened and Josephine hurried out. ‘God, Bob, why in the hell didn’t you phone me? I’ve been going out of my mind with worry, imagining the most terrible things.’

  He held her tightly to himself. ‘You can stop imagining,’ he said softly. ‘We landed the bombers earlier tonight, but it’s taken until now to sweep up afterwards.’ No more, he thought, with deep, loving thankfulness: no more will I have to imagine you caught in a fire, writhing in agony. . . .

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