“One move and you get another one!” He swung the heavy rod. “Hands on your heads.”
Stan moved towards the thugs and deftly patted them down. He relieved Gog and Magog of a brace of flick-knives, then searched their jackets and confiscated two more Berettas and a fine- looking Luger. It had the six-inch barrel preferred by the German Navy. The Wehrmacht made do with four inches. Gambatti didn’t seem to be carrying.
I crawled on to all fours then got slowly to my feet, head reeling. I found my trousers and dragged them on, then my shoes, and began to feel less like a human sacrifice. I walked over to Cyril and Stan and clapped each of them on the shoulder.
“Bloody heroes. Thanks, pals.” I swear Stan blushed.
“What do we do with this lot?” asked Midge.
“There’s enough chain. And it’s a wide river,” suggested Cyril with real enthusiasm.
“We could hang the bastards up one at a time like they did Danny and use those jemmies on them,” offered Stan.
I walked over to the four of them. I was hurting and nauseous and generally disinclined to be magnanimous. It must have shown; I could see real fear in the hard men’s eyes. I landed a good kick on two of them – not the cripple; I have standards. That made me feel better.
Gambatti looked sullen and nervous, and kept chewing on his cigar. I reached out. He flinched. I removed the stogie from his mouth and crushed it on the floor.
“Get your trousers off. Right now! All of you.”
They danced and shuffled and finally stood in their shirts and socks. It’s amazing how diminished a man looks without his trousers. “Down on the floor. Sitting. Back to back.” I ordered.
They grunted and groaned, but got down into a clumsy huddle with their legs pointing out and their backs to each other. I picked up the rope they’d tied me with and made a loop in one end, slipped it over Gambatti’s neck and pulled it nice and tight. Then I looped it round the others’ necks and gave it a couple of turns round the body, pinioning their arms.
Gambatti was looking as though he’d self-combust with anger. When one thug moved, the other two choked. Perfect. I took the Luger from Stan and ran my hands over it. It was a fine piece, better to look at than to shoot. Better than the Beretta because of its longer barrel, though even then its accuracy goes to pot over about fifteen yards. But with the muzzle against his head, Gambatti knew I couldn’t miss. Sweat dripped from his brow. And I noticed the black in his hair was beginning to run in rivulets down his neck and sideburns.
“OK, Danny, you’ve had your little joke,” he said. “A hundred quid to let us go. No hard feelings. We wasn’t really gonna do you in.” He tried a smile, sounding more Italian by the minute.
I squatted in front of him with the gun on his chest. “We’ll never know, will we, Pauli? The question is, should I be as charitable?”
“Let us go and call it quits, eh? Two hundred quid is yours.” His eyes went narrow. “What about you come work for me, Danny, eh? A handy boy like you? And your men here. I need a new team. How much you earn? I give you hundred a week guaranteed. And always bonus. All my guys make bonus. Two hundred a week!”
“Worth thinking about, Danny!” called Cyril.
For a long second I was amazed to find myself seriously considering the idea. I shook my head. “This isn’t about money. Tell me again, what happened to Eve Copeland?”
The rivers of black were melting down his face. “Nothing! On my momma’s life! I never touched her.”
I was inclined to believe anyone with a gun up his nose. “What do you know? You must have heard something on the street?”
He shook his head, looking desperate. “Look, I tell you what I do. Let me go and I find out. OK? I put the feelers out. I listen. Then I tell you.”
I held his gaze. Was it worth the risk? Knowing Gambatti’s type he’d as soon set me up as give me free information. Maybe the world would be a better place if we did drop this lovely quartet in the Thames wearing some heavy jewellery. I got to my feet. The lads were waiting. Say the word and they’d make these pigs disappear. I looked down at Gambatti. He looked pitiful with his hair dye dribbling and his thin knees knocking.
“You’ve got three days. If I don’t hear from you, with worthwhile information about Eve Copeland, I’ll come looking for you. Got that?”
He was all eagerness now. “Absolutely, Danny. Don’t worry. Pauli Gambatti is a man of honour.”
“Yeah, right. Let’s go, lads. Here…” I dug out Gambatti’s well-filled wallet and rifled through it. “Two hundred, you offered? Not enough here, Pauli. This’ll have to do.” I plucked out a dozen big white fivers. “Travel expenses.” I gave each of the boys twenty quid and threw the empty wallet on the floor. I kept the knives and the Luger.
“Let’s go. How did you boys get here?”
“Cab,” said Stan. “This’ll cover it.” He waved his fivers with glee.
I turned back to Gambatti. “We’re borrowing your car. You can pick it up at the George, Camberwell Green. Keys behind the bar. And no torching the pub, unless you want a war.”
We turned and walked out, leaving Gambatti cursing his hatchet-men for strangling him. But he didn’t seem to hold a grudge. Two days later I got a phone call.
TWELVE
That was the call that led me to the Angel pub by the river that night. I met my contact and watched him go to the bar. Then, from the filthy floor with a man on my back, I watched them slaughter him like a sacrificial goat. Like the other cowardly clientele I fled into the night to avoid explaining my presence to the boys in blue. I got home at midnight, exhausted and deflated. My one chance of finding Eve, or even learning if she was alive or dead, was gone. All I’d gleaned was that my contact had an Irish accent and one of his killers had a foreign one. It was a set-up. It told me that an organised gang was involved in her abduction. And that someone had tipped them off about my rendezvous. Gambatti, to get me out of the way?
I took my only suit to the cleaners again, the second time in a week. I sat and I fretted, walked round and round my office till even the cat got dizzy. I hung a sign on my office door telling the world – if it ever chose to beat a path to it – that Finders Keepers was on holiday, and took to walking by the Serpentine, feeding the ducks and feeling sorry for myself. I hate inaction. I’d rather be doing something meaningless than nothing at all. Even a visit from the Flying Squad to grill me over Eve’s disappearance would have been welcome. I was well enough known to her office mates, not to mention Hutcheson and her landlady. Surely they weren’t that incompetent? Why the silence? There was nothing in the papers about the murder. A man dies in a pub brawl and doesn’t even get a mention. Life is cheap in the East End, but not worthless. Had the coppers been bought off?
I needed a plan. I thought about finding Gambatti and beating his head in. But however satisfying that might be I doubted it would lead to Eve. If it had been his gang that had taken her, why go to all the trouble of setting me up? It would have been easier to bump me off than my mystery contact. And if Gambatti had put the word out about the meeting, he sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it to me, far less tell me who he’d spoken to.
It got so bad inside my head that I began to think seriously about Gambatti’s offer. My life was shit. I barely made a living. I was going nowhere. The whole world seemed bent and I was the only straight man left. What was the point? Principles, or just habit? Most of the time I worked in the gutter, and often enough it was hard to know who the bad guys were. Take my old sparring partner Detective Inspector Wilson: just as much of a thug as Gog and Magog. Worse maybe; at least those gangsters made no pretence about which side they were on. Why did I want to stay on the losing side?
But just when you think you’ll go daft with inactivity, life kicks your door in. I came back from the park and found a parcel waiting for me. It hadn’t been left by the postman. It just had my name on it. It was hatbox-sized, about a foot long on each side. Brown paper, tied with string and sealed with red
wax. I touched it gingerly with my foot. It moved easily. It didn’t look like a booby trap. But then – as any good SOE instructor tells you – that’s the whole idea. I took the risk and lifted it. It was light. Maybe there was a hat inside.
I walked in to my office and put it on my desk. I sniffed it. Nothing. I shook it gently. Something moved inside but it didn’t clunk or thud. I took out my scissors and sliced through the string and sealing wax. I opened the lid and for a moment my world dropped away. It was full of hair. Like the rich, russet mass surging from a black beret, or floating beside me on the pillow.
I lifted it out, in no doubt it was hers. I laid it tenderly on my desk and stroked it like it was alive.
There was a folded paper on the bottom of the box. I opened it up. A few words were scrawled in capitals:
NEXT TIME IT WILL BE HER HEAD. FORGET HER!!!
I checked the box outside and in. Nothing else. I walked round to my chair and sat down and touched her hair, clinging to the notion that she was still alive. Why else would have they sent the warning? Did it mean I was getting close? I picked up her curls in both hands and buried my face in it, inhaling her perfume and the faint tang of tobacco.
What the hell did I do now?
THIRTEEN
It was ten o’clock and the pubs were closing. Drinkers poured out of the bars, joshing and singing: displays of bravado before facing the wife with a schoolboy excuse for the dent in the pay-packet. I’d had a couple of pints at the King’s Head down at the Elephant, and found myself wandering down towards the river. My empty flat didn’t appeal. The pantry was bare and I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. I knew a good chippy, a van on a bomb site near London Bridge.
They had one cod left. It had my name on it, in a cone of newspaper with a mountain of chips all doused in salt and vinegar. Only a woman’s nape smells better. I walked over to the railings by the river and gazed out over the water, thinking it was time to go the police. I wolfed down the sodden batter and salt-encrusted chips, chucked the paper in the river and watched it float off downstream. I licked my fingers and began to walk back towards Borough High Street through one of the many alleyways that ran round Southwark Cathedral. My shadow ran in front of me as I dipped between rare pools of light.
That’s when I heard the steps. At first I wasn’t sure. A drunk passing, the faint echo of high heels running for the last bus, a dog on his night prowl. I slowed and listened. The streets were quiet. I stopped, listened again. Nothing. I started again, this time walking faster. I suddenly did an about turn and walked smartly back the way I’d come. No one. I turned down a side street I hadn’t intended taking, slid into a door well and waited. If he was following me he was good. I gave it five long minutes. Still nothing. I glanced down the side street and saw it led nowhere. I pulled my hat down over my face and tiptoed to the corner feeling daft. I peered round.
He was standing with his back against the wall, hands in his pockets, waiting. I didn’t recognise him at first. He was big, but his coat hung loose on his frame like he’d borrowed it from a bigger brother. I walked up to him, slowly. I still didn’t recognise him. Then he grinned, and bile choked my throat. He was the last person I wanted to meet down a dark alley, away from witnesses.
“You’ve lost weight,” I said.
“Thanks to you.”
“Any time. Why are you following me, Wilson? Revenge?”
He shook his head. “Why didn’t you leave me to die?”
The last time I’d seen Detective Inspector Herbert Wilson, he was lying on the bare floor of one of Mama Mary’s flats. I’d lured him into a confrontation with the lovely but spoiled Kate Graveney. Wilson was groaning. Hardly surprising. He was bleeding his life out from a wound in his stomach, clawing at the splintered leg of the chair on which he’d impaled himself. It seemed a fitting but unintended revenge for his bestial plundering of nameless Soho girls including Kate herself. Not to mention the pasting he’d given me in the nick. I’ve known bent coppers in my time, but Wilson’s brand of bullying sadism made them look like wide-eyed cherubs.
“It wasn’t for your sake, believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you, McRae. I believe you.”
“Is that all you wanted to know? You could have phoned me. Or ambushed me in my office like everybody else does.”
“I can do you a favour.”
I laughed. “In return for what?”
“Helping us.”
I took out my cigarettes. I didn’t offer him one. Bad for his health. I lit up and watched my smoke drift through the street lamp.
“Us? Who’s us, these days, Wilson? Thought they’d pensioned you off.”
His grin widened. Even in the poor light his teeth looked brown. “Us is the Yard. Scotland Yard. CID.”
“God help us all,” I said with feeling. “Why would the Yard want to help me?”
“Eve Copeland. She’s not who you think she is.”
Her name in his mouth was like a blasphemy. I flicked my fag away. It spiralled into the dark and kicked up sparks when it hit the pavement.
“Oh? And who might she be?”
He put his head to one side and looked at me for my reaction. “A German spy.”
Can your whole body flinch? I laughed. “You’re daft, Wilson. Off your trolley. They let you out of hospital too soon.”
His face lost the steady smile. “As I recall, you’re the one with the hole in your head, McRae. Are you going to listen?”
“Why the hell should I listen to a madman talking shit at midnight?” My mind was rotating like a whirligig. All I could see was her notebook with its encoded messages in German script and shorthand. But what did that prove? She was a linguist, OK?
“Prove it, Wilson. Bloody well prove it.”
His smile widened. He was loving this. I should have let him bleed to death.
“Meet us at her flat tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Don’t be late. You’ll miss the party.” He tipped his hat at me, turned and walked away. I could have jumped him, given him a good kicking. We were alone. Instead I stood like a dummy looking after him. Then I lit another cigarette and walked home, my brain numb.
I got to her flat at quarter to ten. A policeman was standing on the front steps. I walked up to him, my mind dragging me back to the first night she sneaked me in and up to her bed. German spy indeed!
“Sorry, sir. No one’s allowed in today.”
“I’m here to see Wilson. Detective Inspector Wilson.” The title stuck in my craw.
The bobby’s face changed. “Your name, sir?”
“McRae. Danny McRae.”
“You’re expected, sir. And it’s Superintendent Wilson now, sir.” He winked at me, turned and opened the door. “The Super and the other gentleman are with the landlady. Downstairs.”
The Super? So if you really screw up you get kicked upstairs. I walked down the hall, not on tiptoe this time. Voices drifted through the open door, and I recognised the landlady’s nagging tones.
“I knew she was up to something funny. I just knew it. All those late hours. Not right for a young woman. But who am I to say? It’s all different these days. No respect and no morals neither. And as for…”
“That’s fine, Mrs Gibson.” A man’s voice hurriedly cut in. Not Wilson’s, but familiar. It was a Kafka moment: my enemy and my friend allied against me. “I think we have all we need for the moment. We’ll just finish our search upstairs, if you don’t mind.” I heard rustling and a clatter of teacups.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell the neighbours…”
“Well, actually, nothing for the moment, if you don’t mind,” went the familiar posh tones.
I stood rooted in the hall waiting for him. He still had the moustache and the floppy hair, but now he was in civvies like the rest of us. It made him seem lesser.
“Hello, Gerry,” I said. My old boss, Major Gerald Cassells, SOE retired, had the grace to look sheepish as he emerged from the vocal clutches of Eve’s landlady.
&n
bsp; “Hello, old boy. Funny old world.”
“Hilarious, Gerry. Wilson.” I nodded to the smirking figure filling the doorway behind him.
“Shall we go upstairs, Daniel?”
“Oh, let’s. After you, Gerry.”
We trooped upstairs and straight into Eve’s room. It looked tiny and shabby in daylight without her in it. Not helped by having the contents of her drawers and wardrobe tipped on to the floor. The bed itself was pushed against the wall and the covers were in a heap. The floorboards under it had been ripped back – or rather laid back; they’d clearly been made to lift up. Between the joists sat a metal box. I recognised it. It wasn’t identical to the one I’d used in France, but radio transmitters have certain features in common, whether British or German.
I walked over to Eve’s only chair, the one she flung her clothes over before she dived under the sheets with me in hot pursuit. I sat down, took my fags out and lit one. My hand was surprisingly steady.
“Shall we take it from the top, Gerry? Assume I know nothing. Like what you’re doing here? And why you’re with Wilson? And what you think happened to Eve Copeland?”
Cassells and Wilson exchanged looks, as though having brought me here, they were suddenly unsure about what to tell me. He took a seat on the edge of the bed. Wilson leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and stared at me. I blew my smoke at him.
“It’s like this, Daniel. I’m with the Security Services now. A natural progression, I suppose. Bert, here, is our link man in the Yard.”
I couldn’t resist smiling at Wilson. Bert, was it?
I thought back to my hospital bed, after Wilson gave me a serious going over in Charing Cross nick. I could hardly speak, and moving hurt – a lot. Major Gerald Cassells, who’d summoned the coppers after finding me rifling his files in SOE HQ, was bent over me, being very solicitous. Referring to Wilson’s treatment of me as animallike. His face then was full of contempt for someone so prepared to abuse his power.
The Unquiet Heart Page 11
