The Darkness of Death

by David Stuart Davies

  It was just less than an hour after Gina’s phone call to Vic when there was a ring at her doorbell. Snatching up Hawke’s pistol, she hurried to the door and gazed through the spy hole. There appeared to be no one there.

  Anthony had long ago learned the trick of standing to one side of such contraptions in order not to be seen.

  Tentatively Gina opened the door and gazed out into the corridor. Suddenly Anthony appeared before her, a wild manic grimace plastered on his blotchy features. ‘Surprise!’ he cried, pushing Gina back into the narrow hall and knocking her to the ground. She fell on her back winded and shocked, but with great speed she took in the situation and, sitting up, aimed the gun at her attacker. But before she was able to use it, Anthony knocked it from her grasp with a vicious kick. It skittered down the hallway, out of sight. With a cry of pain Gina scrambled to her feet and ran into the living room. Anthony hared after her and launched himself on to the girl. The pair of them crashed to the floor.

  Terror made her quick and drink made him slow. But nonetheless Anthony managed to pin her to the floor, his hands eventually reaching her throat. She struggled desperately and had he been a leaner opponent she would have probably escaped his clutches but his weight and fury were against her.

  ‘You bitch,’ he said, his voice hoarse and strained. She saw the drink-fuelled madness in his eyes and suddenly she became very frightened. It became clear to her that she was in great danger of losing her life. She tried with all her might to wriggle free, but to no avail. He had her trapped.

  Then his fingers gripped her throat.

  And pressed hard against her windpipe.

  She began to croak and spittle seeped out of the side of her mouth and dribbled down her chin.

  He pressed even harder.

  ‘No,’ she mouthed, but no sound emerged.

  Her terror only intensified his determination.

  She was shocked how quickly she had not only become a victim but a victim who was about lose the battle. God, her mind screamed, I am going to die!

  She hadn’t the energy to struggle any more. She felt her body grow limp. Suddenly Gina knew that she must let her body go limp, must give the appearance of death, but already grey clouds were sailing past her eyes, blanking out Anthony’s grotesque visage.

  *

  Vic was surprised to find the door to Gina’s flat slightly ajar. Cautiously he entered and moved stealthily down the hall towards the sitting room where a bizarre sight met his eyes. There was his brother Anthony down on his knees, looming over Gina’s inert body.

  Sensing another presence in the room, Anthony turned, his hands held before him as in an act of supplication, and gazed at his brother, a wild, triumphant gleam in his eye.

  ‘She’s dead,’ he said.

  It took Vic a moment to fully appreciate the situation. He stared at the limp body of his cousin Gina Bernstein with a mixture of horror and delight. She was corpse white and her tongue lolled from her open mouth. Well, he’d come with the intention of getting rid of the girl and now it seems that his Neanderthal brother had done the job for him.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Vic said at length.

  ‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ grinned Anthony, struggling to his feet. ‘I couldn’t tolerate the situation any longer. I had to do something.’ His tone was almost apologetic, confessional, as sobriety began to assert itself.

  ‘That’s OK. You did well,’ said Vic, his eyes darting around the room.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Anthony.

  ‘Gina rang me to say that a private detective had been here this evening. John Hawke was his name. A one-eyed chap. She said he knew all about her.’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘She told me that she’d drugged him and asked me to dispose of his body. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Well, where is he then?’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking. You look in the kitchen, I’ll check the bedroom.’

  Vic spotted the open window as soon as he entered the bedroom.

  He looked out and saw the broken drainpipe. He grimaced. ‘Damn.’

  ‘He’s not in the kitchen,’ announced Anthony entering the room.

  ‘No, he’s gone. Escaped.’

  ‘Escaped!’

  ‘Here, look.’

  Anthony stared out of the window. ‘You mean he clambered down the pipe?’

  Vic shrugged. ‘Only explanation. He’s not here. Window open, broken pipe. Bloody Houdini, ain’t he?’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘We get the hell out of here. Leave our friend Gina for some poor sod to find her. At least she’s out of our hair, but now we’ve got to find this John Hawke chappie and silence him.’

  Twenty-Seven

  I waited in the telephone box, curled up on the hard concrete floor and tried to get my head together. Whatever drug Gina had given me, it was a persistent blighter. It was still clogging my brain and making thoughts sluggish and my movements uncertain. I was cold, fed up and very tired. I wanted my bed and to sleep for a week but there were more important things to concern me.

  Remarkably David turned up with a squad car and two burly coppers in less than an hour. I led them to Parkway Mansions and we went up to Gina’s flat. On this occasion I travelled inside the building.

  David posted the two uniformed men either side of the door and then tried the handle. It opened. Gun in hand he entered the flat with me following close on his heels. The entrance was in darkness but there was a dim light from the sitting room at the end of the hall. We moved slowly towards it. The room was very much as it had been when I’d taken my drugged brandy, apart from one thing: there was the body of a woman slumped on the white rug in front of the fire.

  It was Gina.

  She was either unconscious.

  Or dead.

  ‘She looks like a gonner to me,’ David said as we both knelt down by her. I felt for her pulse. Remarkably there was one but it was just about to give up the ghost. The girl was teetering on the brink. Already reddish marks were forming around her neck. Someone had tried to strangle her and had almost succeeded. Indeed, unless she received urgent medical attention, he may well have done. While David was phoning for an ambulance, I had a quick look around Gina’s flat. I made no sensational discoveries, but my search was somewhat enlightening.

  *

  Sometime later I was sitting by the bedside of the unfortunate Gina in a private room in the Middlesex Hospital in Euston Road. Beside me was Detective Inspector David Llewellyn. Outside the room was one of the burly constables on guard under the strict instructions not to let anyone enter who was not a doctor or a nurse with the appropriate identity card. We had been told that Gina was in a bad way and it was touch and go whether she would survive. This news was no surprise. She had a severely crushed windpipe and the lack of oxygen to the brain could well have affected her mental processes. It seemed to me that whoever had tried to strangle Gina had believed that he had completed his task successfully. She certainly looked pretty dead when we found her.

  As we sat by the girl’s bedside I explained to David in more detail how I had discovered Gina’s whereabouts, my chat with her and how I had ended up shinning down a drainpipe at midnight. After I had finished, he gave a long exasperated sigh and shook his head. His expression was unusually hostile. ‘You’ve done it again, haven’t you? Seeing yourself as a one man detective force. Mr Solo out to solve the crime on his own. None of this is really your business, yet you seemed to have been determined to make it so.’

  ‘I found the girl, didn’t I?’

  ‘Oh, yes, you found the girl. But in stirring up the waters, you brought out the shark to strike. And this is the result.’ He jerked his head towards the prone figure beside us.

  ‘Are you saying I’m responsible for the attack on her? Now you’re talking out of your Welsh arse.’

  ‘Just at the moment I’d get more sense out of my Welsh arse than you.’ His face was so serious and flushed with such earnest
ness as he said this that I could not help but see the comical side of this interchange. I was tired and still a little drugged and I just laughed.

  At first David seemed indignant at my laughter and I saw his hands curl into fists, but then somehow he too saw the farcical nature of our argument—discussing the erudition of his backside—and his features softened and he gave a brief guffaw.

  ‘You’re right about the attack,’ David said at length, his temper having now evaporated. ‘It’s not your fault. You just make me mad by not telling me things, not keeping me informed.’

  I didn’t want to infuriate him again by asserting that I was not employed as a police informer so I just nodded non-committally. David was a true friend and I didn’t want to mar that friendship over technicalities. I had to admit to myself that at times I became so wrapped up in my own investigations that I tended to forget David was under as much pressure and stress as I was. He had rules and superiors to obey, rigid procedures to follow and regulations to uphold, where I was a free agent, a maverick, who could follow his own hunches and set his own rules and bend the law if necessary.

  He had a point.

  And to be honest since the moment we found Gina, I had wondered if in some way my actions had precipitated the attack on her.

  Conscience pricking, I took a small object wrapped in a handkerchief from the pocket of my overcoat. ‘I think you’d better have this.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A neat little shooter. I found it in Gina’s flat just now. She kept it in her drawer by the bed. One bullet missing.’

  David took the gun from me and gingerly unwrapped it from the folds of the handkerchief. ‘If the bullet matches the one we dug out of Paulo Ricotti’s head, we’ve got our murderer. She’ll swing for it.’

  ‘If she survives,’ I observed pithily, glancing at the white face barely visible over the white sheets. ‘There may be fingerprints on the gun, too, to strengthen the case.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘Oh, I’m a good man now. Is that your arse speaking?’

  David grinned. ‘Anything else you stumbled upon in your search?’

  ‘Not a lot but there were several wigs in her wardrobe which suggests our Gina likes to change her appearance. As you can see, she’s dark-haired, but I found blonde, auburn and brown wigs in the flat.’

  ‘Blonde?’

  ‘Indeed; remember the girl who was seen with Paulo on the night he was murdered had blonde hair and her figure—tall, slender—matches Miss Gina here.’

  ‘Another little nail in her coffin.’

  ‘Thank you. And while you’re at it, you might as well scoop up Archie Muldoon. With a bit of pressure, I’m sure you’ll get all the details of the Bernsteins’ protection racket. With his evidence, you’ll be able to move in on the family. He hangs out at Crimea Buildings.’

  ‘I know the very spot. I’ll see to that tomorrow. I’m going nowhere near Leo or the Bernstein boys for the moment. Not until we’ve got cast-iron evidence, either from this young lady here if she pulls through or from Muldoon. Now the real question is—who tried to kill this girl?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not yet.’

  ‘Not yet,’ snapped David, his temper rising once more. ‘Well, be sure to tell me if you find out!’

  Before I could respond, the door glided open quietly and a doctor in a creased white coat with a stethoscope dangling out of one of the pockets entered. His face was haggard and his eyes weary. ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ he said, and then, glancing at his watch, corrected himself, ‘or rather good morning.’

  Instinctively, I checked the time. It was 2.30 a.m.

  Without another word, the doctor checked the girl’s progress chart and then proceeded to examine her. Gazing down into her open mouth with a pen torch and shiny instrument with a small mirror on the end, he began clicking his teeth in a meditative way.

  ‘Any change? Any improvement?’ asked David.

  ‘Oh, no,’ came the dour reply. ‘It’s far too early for improvement. Her breathing is shallow and her pulse is very weak. The best we can hope for at present is for her condition to stabilize. That could take a while. If you are waiting for her to regain consciousness tonight, you’re wasting your time.’

  David and I exchanged glances.

  ‘Come back tomorrow around noon maybe. But even then I don’t hold out much hope.’

  With some reluctance David rose from his chair and I followed suit. ‘If you think that’s best, Doctor. I certainly could do with a few hours’ sleep,’ my companion said.

  The doctor nodded pointedly. You’re not the only one, he seemed to be saying.

  ‘But I will need to know the minute she regains consciousness.’

  ‘I can assure you that it will not be for a while…if at all.’

  This was not news we wanted to hear.

  ‘Be sure to let me know if there is any change in the girl’s condition.’

  The doctor nodded and we left.

  It was good to get out into cold, frosty night air, away from the stifling antiseptic atmosphere of the hospital. Those places had unpleasant memories for me, which were always resurrected whenever I found myself within their environs. David and I parted company, each of us wending our way homeward. He had offered to give me a lift back to Hawke Towers, but I declined. I thought I’d knock up Benny and beg a bed for the night. Somehow I didn’t think it was safe for me to go home just yet.

  As I expected, initially Benny caused a fuss at being dragged from his bed ‘at this unearthly time of night’—but he soon settled down and even brought me a hot-water bottle to air the sheets a little.

  As I lay in bed I ran through the events of my crowded evening in my mind and came to the conclusion that I was a little wiser but not much happier. Then I thought about Max. Her sweet face and gentle smile. What I wouldn’t give for a hug and a kiss from her right now. Then it struck me how horrified she would be if she knew how close to death I had been that night. It suddenly made me realize that I had to be a lot more careful with my life, not be so reckless with my safety from now on. It was not just my life that I could play fast and loose with any more. I was sharing it with someone else. Someone who really cared for me. With this disconcerting thought, I fell asleep.

  Twenty-Eight

  ‘Well,’ said Anthony chewing the end of his cigarette. ‘We’ve really started something now.’

  Vic glanced over at his brother and realized clearly for the first time how much he really disliked him. Disliked? No, he mused, it was stronger than that. It had always puzzled Vic that this man had emerged from the same womb as himself. Not only did they not look alike (thank God for that, thought Vic) but their temperament, intelligence and ability to cope with life were streets apart. As a child Vic had rather prided himself in looking after his young, more stupid brother, getting him out of scrapes, protecting him as one would a naughty puppy, but from adolescence to adulthood, Vic had grown to despise this bond of kinship. They were yoked together in the family business like prisoners on a chain gang and, oh, how he longed to break that chain.

  ‘To be precise, it was you who started this “something”,’ said Vic quietly. He wasn’t going to admit that he had turned up at Gina’s flat with exactly the same intentions as Anthony—to kill the girl. But then, of course, that had become essential now that Anthony had blabbed to Muldoon and it would seem Muldoon had done the same to this one-eyed detective bloke called Hawke.

  Anthony was not in the mood for arguing. ‘Yeah, OK. But now we’ve got to finish it together.’

  It was in the early hours of the morning and they were sitting in the kitchen of Vic’s flat with coffee and a whisky each.

  Vic nodded. He had to agree to that. With Gina dead, the only threat to their safety now was Archie Muldoon and Hawke. With them out of the way there was no one who could prove a connection between Gina and the Bernsteins. Vic explained the situation and his plans to his brother, slowly and in detail.

  ‘U
nderstand?’ he said at last.

  Anthony nodded. ‘Yeah, I understand. It means we’re not going to get much sleep tonight.’

  *

  Dawn was always late visiting the inhabitants of Crimea Buildings. The dingy edifice with its tiny, grimy windows was reluctant to let the light of a new day shine in and expose its dirt and decay. Most of the residents were either workshy, unemployed or creatures of the night employed in various nefarious activities and had just crawled under their sheets before the sky lightened. So it was that when someone came knocking on Archie Muldoon’s door with the sun already struggling to make its presence felt through a bank of louring grey clouds, there was no immediate response from the inmates. The tenant of Flat 333 was deep in sleep, entwined around his woman, her peroxide hair spilling upwards in a tangle across the grey pillow. It was she who first became aware of the loud knocking. It burrowed gradually into her consciousness. Slowly she raised her head and listened. Now there was no mistaking the sound.

  ‘Archie,’ she said, shaking his shoulder. ‘There’s someone at the door.’ She had to shake him again and repeat herself before she got a reaction. ‘So what,’ he mumbled grumpily, still half asleep.

  Before the woman had chance to answer there came a loud thud out in the hallway followed by crashing sound. The noise reverberated around the tiny flat and this finally roused Archie from his slumbers with a start. He had just staggered from his bed to find out ‘what the row was all about’ when the door of the bedroom burst open and the intruders entered. Archie froze in horror and surprise.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he cried. It was the last thing he ever said. There was a sharp crack of a pistol and an amorphous, crimson wound appeared on the grubby material of his vest. He gazed down in wonderment at the spreading stain of blood which seeped in a star-like shape across his chest. But then his legs gave way and he collapsed on to the floor. He was dead before the dust settled around him.

  With an hysterical sob, the woman burrowed into the bedclothes like a child believing that if she was covered she would not be seen. Her actions did not protect her. Two more shots were fired and her quivering body lay still.