by George Sims
Racing round a large lorry into the goods-yard, Balfour was surprised for a moment to see that there was no one in the usually busy forecourt, but then he remembered it was Saturday afternoon. On his right hand there were the shallow steps down to the tunnel leading to Chalk Farm Road and the labyrinthine network of underground passageways like a giant honeycomb. After a moment’s hesitation he sped down the steps past the ancient notice proclaiming ALL HORSES MUST BE LED THROUGH THIS TUNNEL. Running into the gloom from bright sunlight he felt practically blinded—the tunnel was lit only by one very inadequate electric bulb and a small amount of daylight seeping down through a few dust-laden circular grilles.
He found a place in the darkest part of the tunnel, then flattened himself against the wall. The sound of pounding footsteps became louder as his pursuer did not stop at the beginning of the tunnel but ran along it pell-mell. Balfour hit him with a very short punch, using the youth’s momentum to provide the power. As the young man stumbled on helplessly Balfour punched him again, this time solidly with a right upper-cut which snapped his jaw shut with an unpleasant hollow noise.
Balfour stepped over the inert body, retraced his steps for a way along the tunnel, then climbed over a single plank barring the entrance to one of the small passageways leading off to his right. It was damp and smelled faintly of urine. The only sound was the continual drip of water. Blundering along in the dark Balfour crashed into a brick pier so that his right arm was seared with pain, then felt numb. After going only a short distance he turned off right, ducking under a half-lowered iron portcullis gateway into another, parallel, passageway. He looked along it, and then walked back towards the main tunnel as he could just make out that its entrance was blocked with planks of wood so that he would be invisible to his pursuers even when they passed a few feet from him. The chances of their finding him were remote. It was too dark and there were too many passages for them to hope to make a successful search.
When he got to the end of the passage and stood with his left hand on the rough planks, Balfour had a brief sensation of claustrophobia, a moment’s panic when the supply of air seemed insufficient. It was also foul to breathe and seemed to be impregnated with soot. He kept swallowing and licking his lips. The silence about him was somehow more intimidating than the noise of the chase had been.
Straining with his head right against the planks he could hear the youth groaning then retching, with faint sinister echoes. He had little feeling of compunction but it was still a relief to hear footsteps in the tunnel and then Victor Maddox’s loud angry voice: ‘Someone’s here. Christ, it’s Pete! He’s right out. Sit him up. O.K. then Don, that Balfour’s for a proper marking. Definitely. I don’t intend to get my collar felt for that git. I’ll really stop him this time.’
Whoever replied to Maddox spoke so quietly that Balfour could not pick up what was said. Then Maddox said in a very serious threatening voice: ‘And I say he’ll have to be stopped.’ This seemed to arouse some argument from the quiet voice but Maddox cut in again quickly. ‘Don’t tell me your troubles, I’ve got my own. I’ll tell you what’s going to be done.’
There were some more subdued phrases which Balfour did not catch but he could hear Maddox’s enraged retort and it hit him like an unexpected blow in the face. ‘Oliver Gerrard? All right you see your “friend” Mr Gerrard. But just make quite sure he understands the position. I tell you straight that if this nosey ——er Balfour isn’t stopped right now we shall all end up doing some porridge.’ On hearing Gerrard’s name Balfour experienced a sick feeling of shock, as if he were going to be physically ill.
Holding on tight to the grimy planks he heard the other voice properly for the first time—it was shaky and raised on a note of nervous tension: ‘Now for God’s sake, Vic—think! Don’t do anything drastic—just wait a bit. I must see Gerrard first and I don’t know where to find him. Saturday afternoon, he won’t be at work.’
‘Find him?’ Maddox snarled and Balfour could visualize colourless flat lips stretched over the big uneven teeth, and the narrowed plucked nostrils. ‘I don’t give a tuppenny —— how you find him. Go round to all your special clubs. Hammer on the door of his fancy house in Seymour Street. You find him, Don, you’re responsible. Look, your “friend” Gerrard, he got us into this, right? We did the job for him, right? He said put the Jew boy out of the window and scare him silly, right? So now I’m saying we’ve got to protect ourselves. Right?’
Chapter XIX
‘Feeling all right?’ Balfour looked up, slightly dazed, at the small Italian waitress, not sure whether she was being sympathetic or sarcastic because he had taken so long over his small cup of black coffee. Then he saw her gaze was directed at his right hand. The knuckles were badly grazed but dry—a little blood oozed from a gash in the fleshy part of his thumb, one of several small cuts self-inflicted during the tunnel chase that he couldn’t really account for.
‘Yes, thanks. I’m quite O.K.’ He picked up the big menu in a reflex, defensive action but could hardly take in the violet copperplate words, let alone find anything he would enjoy eating, even though he knew the food was supposed to be good in this Italian-style café. The seat at the pavement table was ideal for watching Gerrard’s house and all he wanted to do was sit on a little longer undisturbed. ‘Can I have another coffee, please? Cappuccino this time.’
When the waitress had gone and he looked again down Wigmore Street to the French-grey painted door of Gerrard’s house, Balfour realized he was being regarded with curiosity by another, older woman standing just inside the café doorway. It was possible that they thought he had been knocked down in a street accident and needed assistance. Most of the three hours which had dragged by since he had emerged from the tunnel into Chalk Farm Road had been taken up with watching the Seymour Street door after ringing the bell there without any response, but he had spent a few minutes in the Oxford Circus tube station having a wash and ineffectually trying to brush his suit. The right sleeve was slit and he had been able to remove only a little of the tar-like grime. His shirt cuffs were stained with blood and dust. He met the older woman’s eyes until she turned away. He did not care much for sitting around looking and feeling like a tramp but he had already killed over an hour walking up and down Seymour Street, re-reading the memorial plaque on Edward Lear’s house until he knew it by heart, looking at his watch a dozen times, pretending to be intrigued by certain aspects of Portman Square.
He had found that he could not bend his arm properly and was wondering if the elbow was damaged—it throbbed continually. But it was not this pain which had induced the insidious sensations of nausea and weakness in his legs. He could remember his first boxing instructor at school telling him that there was nothing to be frightened of in being ‘hurt a bit. After a moment you don’t feel much. A little blood and snot. Nothing.’ Balfour had proved this for himself in some fights during his army service and knew he could stand up to physical pain reasonably well. It was the knowledge that Oliver Gerrard had instigated Sammy Weiss’s murder that had made him feel sick and weak.
A red Mini-Cooper was pulling up at Gerrard’s house. Someone got out and stood by the grey door for a moment slightly bent down, waving as the car drove off. Balfour put two half-crowns on the table and walked off quickly, taking in some deep breaths. Striding along he was not conscious of his painful arm and his mind was strangely blank as if he did not know where he was going.
Standing by Gerrard’s house Balfour hesitated a while, rubbing the back of his left hand across his mouth. What would he do if he was convinced that Gerrard had arranged for Sammy to be killed? He touched the circular stainless steel number plaque with his right hand and his fingers felt numb as though he would be able to smash them against the charcoal-coloured briquettes without feeling anything. When he pushed the bell there was a kind of mechanical groan close to his ear and then: ‘Yep. Gerrard here. Who is it?’ The voice came over an Entryphone—slightly
distorted by the speaker, it sounded bored and mocking.
Balfour took a deep breath before speaking. He had to excise all feeling from his voice, as if he were trying to think himself into a stage character. ‘Hello. It’s Ned, er, Balfour. I—can you see me for a moment?’ The contrived casualness sounded hopelessly false in his own ears but not apparently to Gerrard as he replied in a more cheerful voice which combined hints of mystification and amusement. ‘Well! What a surprise! By all means—enter. The door openeth by magic. I’ll be down in a sec.’
Balfour found himself in a long narrow hall at the end of which stood a life-size bronze reproduction of Donatello’s David bathed in strong light. On a small table there was a silver bowl filled with freesias. From a room above he could hear a record of Sinatra singing ‘Strangers in the Night.’
When Gerrard appeared on the amber-coloured stairs he was cradling a Siamese cat in one arm. Instead of his usual dark grey suit he wore bleached jeans, white canvas shoes and a dark v-necked pullover without a shirt. With his free hand he straightened the edge of his pullover and said in a deprecatory tone: ‘Imagine—I’ve been boating on the river! Boulter’s Lock. Most unusual for me, but rather enjoyable. An Edwardian interlude.’ His face was composed but his heavy-lidded eyes were wary. When Balfour said nothing in reply, Gerrard smiled steadily and advanced along the hall with all the confidence of a skater expert on thin ice.
After keying himself up for this moment, Balfour suddenly felt terribly weary as though he would be unable to go through with it. He was aware of a dichotomy in his thinking—one force was urging him on to probe deeper into the mystery but another shunned and obscured the suspicion that was growing ever stronger. His silence in response to Gerrard’s banter went unnoticed as there was a moment’s diversion while the cat held in Gerrard’s arms struggled violently, wrestled itself free and bolted back upstairs. Gerrard shot Balfour a puzzled look, said, ‘That’s odd. You don’t loathe ’em, do you?’ then shrugged.
Apart from the golden glow enveloping the Donatello bronze the hall lighting was subdued, coming from oblong panels of blue glass in the ceiling, and Balfour was standing in the shadow, turned away so that his torn sleeve was hidden. Gerrard pointed through a small passageway off to his right: ‘Let’s have a drink. Myself, I could quaff about half a bucket of Campari Soda. How’s that for you?’
There was another bronze in the passage, a reproduction of Cellini’s Perseus holding a decapitated head on high in his left hand and a short sword in his right. As he passed the statue Gerrard’s hand dropped caressingly on to the sword-arm and said, ‘Ware this barbarity.’ There was again a small commotion as another Siamese cat shot out of the dining room. Gerrard nervously raised both hands in protest and grimaced unhappily.
The dining table was a slab of hammered glass about six feet long supported on a frame-work of white wrought iron with matching chairs. A horse’s skull carved from old ivory stood on the table as a centre-piece. A steel and glass trolley was loaded with bottles. A nervous-sounding little French gilt clock ticked away noisily on the Adam mantelpiece. There was an eighteenth-century Venetian Veduta painting; a sea-green Turkish rug on the oak parquet floor.
Balfour said quietly: ‘I spent part of the morning with one of your friends.’
The innocuous-sounding sentence somehow ended up full of menace. Gerrard hesitated before replying, and a false provocative smile became affixed to his face. He pretended to busy himself with the paraphernalia of the drinks-trolley, but was obviously giving himself time to think. Then he straightened up: ‘Oh, who was that?’ He made his inquiry more casual by adding, ‘And now, what to drink?’
Suddenly a picture of Sammy Weiss being forced out of the high window by Maddox and his hooligans blotted out the aesthete’s room in Balfour’s view. He lunged forward and pushed Gerrard, catching him off balance so that he crashed into the trolley and then fell to the ground, sliding along helplessly on the polished wood floor. When Gerrard turned his face was so transformed as to be hardly recognizable—the usual polite, slightly superior, mask had been replaced by a contortion of hatred and malice. He crouched warily, looking as if he might spring forward like one of his cats. But his words showed that he realized the futility of physical combat with Balfour. ‘You bloody madman! What was that in aid of? Cretin. You absolute-stupid idiot! You’ll get out! Now!’ The ring of defiance in his voice was strained, but Balfour had the impression that Gerrard was experienced in the matter of awkward scenes, hysterical ‘tiffs’ which turned violent.
‘I’ll answer your other question first,’ Balfour said in an unemotional voice. Now the messy business had actually started he was feeling calm and able to deal with it. ‘Your friend that I met was “Don”. And his friend Victor Maddox.’ He moved his stiff right arm forward slightly. ‘I got this escaping from them. But I overheard Maddox saying that you arranged that Sammy Weiss should be killed.’ He held out his left fist threateningly. ‘Now I’ll tell you something else. Before I leave here I’m going to find out why.’
Gerrard propelled himself forward in a desperate dash for the door, but Balfour got hold of him by the neck and slung him back as easily as if he was disposing of a cushion. Balfour shook his head sadly: ‘That was the wrong answer. And by God I hoped that you had the right one.’
Gerrard advanced slowly, holding the white-painted wrought-iron standard lamp like a shield in front of him, and then pushed it forward. Balfour sprang aside but the tip of one of the glass candles caught his cheek, scoring it lightly as though he had been cut by a blade of grass. He pointed to the ivory-handled knife on the trolley and said: ‘You’ll have to do more than that. Get the knife. You’ll need it. Maddox said he was going to “stop” me. But now you’ve got to do it. You must stop me or talk.’
Balfour leaned forward and negligently hit Gerrard with a left jab in the chest. It was a pulled punch—the superimposed image of Weiss’s killing had faded and he was not enjoying baiting Gerrard. The fight was too one-sided and was like the bullying he had undergone at Maddox’s hands in Hyde Park Place. He licked his lips. He was loath to hit Gerrard again. Then he realized that Gerrard was collapsing, slowly sliding down the wall, rubbing his chest distractedly. Sitting on his haunches against the wall Gerrard gave a long-drawn-out groan and said: ‘It was an accident. Not murder! Of course they didn’t mean to kill him. We just wanted them to frighten him—that’s all. To scare him—to stop him talking.’
‘Who’s we?’ It was the question and answer that Balfour had subconsciously feared. ‘You and Maddox?’
‘It was Max.’ The three words were like the crucial movement on a telescope lens that turns a blur into a clear focus. In a sharp moment of recognition the shadowy suspicions that had lurked in Balfour’s mind all afternoon were confirmed and he saw a cinema of past events: Phyl Weber’s dramatically changed appearance and her nervous greeting when he had returned from Calvi; Max’s curious expression and the exaggeration of the story about the customer’s adulterous wife; Max’s eyes when he had said: ‘Such things can happen quickly. They boil up—get out of control.’
‘Max! But why? Why should he want to stop Sammy talking? About what?’
Gerrard waved a hand as if appealing for a truce. ‘Just remember it was an accident. They put him out on the ledge all right—to scare him. But then he moved along out of their reach. They were trying to get him back when he fell. God! What are we going to do now?’ He put his hands over his ears and rocked to and fro, swearing in a monotonous unbalanced voice.
Balfour pulled his hands away. ‘What was Sammy going to talk about?’
Gerrard said despairingly, ‘Oh God.’ Then he looked up. ‘He’d found out—oh—old stuff about Max’s past. Apparently he came across some drawings at a sale that were linked up with Leonard Cato. Weiss knew they had originally been taken from a Jewish collection. So then he went on and on digging. He appointed himself a one-man investigating
team—discovered that Max owned shares in Toller, Cato and learned Cato was a partner in Max Weber Ltd. And eventually he found out…Max wasn’t in a concentration camp…He—worked for the Nazis during the war, for Rosenberg, on his special staff collecting works of art. In April 1945 Max went to earth with a convoy of looted material. In a mountain village, near Freisach in Austria. Just after the war was over, at the end of May, Leonard Cato, who was in some special army unit, dug him out. When Cato heard about the barns full of loot he came to an arrangement with Max. Max was smuggled out of the country into Switzerland and they became partners. Max had been wounded in the face and he had some plastic surgery. Cato fixed him up with false papers to show he’d served a short sentence in Buchenwald as a Catholic protestor against the Nazis.’
‘But how did Sammy find this out?’
‘By probing and probing into Cato’s background. He went to the Registrar of Companies and found out that Cato owned fifty per cent of the shares in Max’s business. Then he came across a man called Peter Bailey who had a grudge against Cato and thought there had been some dodgy business in ’45. And he turned up people who had been in Buchenwald…From the way he persisted you would have thought he was on the trail of someone in charge of an extermination camp instead of selecting pictures. Then he threatened to expose Max and Cato. They offered him money—said they’d make reparations of any reasonable kind. But he wouldn’t listen. What good would it have done, really, for Max and Cato to be ruined?’
