Apprehension, breath taking and terrible as anything in his childhood, took possession of him and he spread the sheets out with hands that trembled.
There it was, clear and irrevocable, in words which could have come from no one else.
“… the money doesn’t matter but you must tell him, dear. Make it clear how wrong and how dangerous it is, but leave me out. Once he knows I know, the mischief will be done as he’ll be afraid and keep away and there’ll be no one to keep an eye on him …”
The coarse skin on the lined forehead was damp. Gerry hardly dared to read the second letter. As he turned to it the nerves in his face contracted into a net of pain, and the blood in his heart felt icy.
“… Thank you, Matt, what a dear old sport you are. Thursday night, then. I’ll be thinking of you both. If you can just give him a good fright it may pull him right up and make him see sense. He’s all right when you know him, one of the best. Give me a ring afterwards or better still come in and see me. Love, Polly.”
The man in the trench coat sat looking at the trembling sheet. She knew. She knew of the appointment and would know therefore of everything else.
With the realisation, the odd hypothetical quality in his appreciation of events left him suddenly and gave place to stark vision, a difference as great as between sleeping and waking. For the first time he saw his two alibis for what they were, two over-elaborate sums cancelling each other out.
Gradually he became aware of a shadow and looking up saw the little waitress standing close before him.
She was spreading out her elbows in an attempt to shield him with her thin body from any chance glance from the other table. She was very young, her black dress very poor, and the little gold cross on the thin chain round her neck very small. Her circular eyes were black, too, and shyly reproachful as she looked from his face to the table before him.
Glancing down, he saw that he had forgotten the wallet. It lay wide open before him, the money exposed.
“Put it away,” she said softly, “you’re drunk, aren’t you?”
He pulled himself together at once and his charm lit up his face like a lamp.
“Bless you,” he said, quickly, gathering up the notes and thrusting them into his breast. “I’m sorry. I was reading a letter. It’s a bit of a knock-out … from a woman.”
The little face, pale-skinned and muddy, flushed with sly amusement as she attempted badinage.
“She’s found you out, has she?”
He shivered and the sudden glimpse of helplessness appearing in his face thrilled her.
“It seems so.”
“I see. Well, you’ll have to do something about her, won’t you?”
For a time he stared at her in open horror, silent as the full implication of the words sank in. Then:
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes, I shall.”
Chapter 13
SOMEONE AT HOME
“IF YOU DON’T know where the shed is I can’t show you. ’E’s got no business coming in at night at all, let alone sending down strangers. There’s a lot of valuable property standing about ’ere, though you might not think so.”
The nightwatchman at Rolf’s Dump was still a voice in the dark so far as Richard was concerned, although by now he was standing only a few feet away from him. Here in the Dump the moonlight had created a world of ink and silver with no half tones. The watchman was lost in a black wall rising up into the sky, but the dog, a white terrier, smooth-skinned and shivering, sat visible in the path, presumably at his master’s feet.
Richard took two coins silently from his pocket and let the light fall upon their broad silver faces. There was no response. The voice continued to grumble.
“I’ve ’ad plenty of trouble down ’ere already tonight,” it said. “The police ’ave been ’ere all day over on the other side of the estate. They’ve still got the key of the foot-gate in Tooley Street. Did you notice them as you came past?”
“I’m afraid I didn’t. Where would they be?”
“Over ’ere be’ind me, about three-quarters of a mile back, against the ’oarding.”
“No. I didn’t see anybody.”
“They’ve gorn then. Good job. There’s nothing more nosey than the police. As for the public, they’re interfering, gabby, can’t keep their traps shut. You would think a gang of labourers could load a ton or two of empty oil drums on to a barge without interfering with what they found be’ind them, wouldn’t you?”
“What did they find?” Richard felt in his pocket for a third coin. Again there was no movement as he displayed it, but as he placed it with the others the chink sounded and response was immediate.
“I don’t know if you can see me setting ’ere, sir.” The voice was many shades warmer. “Wait, just a minute.” There was a scuffle and a bright light appeared, revealing a little old man sitting on a kitchen chair in a sentry-box of a shelter built into the hillock which was entirely composed of old wooden wheels. He was wrapped in an assortment of coats topped by a sleeveless leather jerkin belted with a piece of cord, and from under the peak of his cap, which he wore pulled down far on his head, a pair of spectacles with the thickest of lenses peered at Richard hopefully.
The young man offered him the money and almost dropped it. The hand which came out so eagerly missed his own and there was a moment of confusion before the coins were safely transferred. The man was virtually blind and not admitting it, a discovery which explained a great deal.
“It was because the engine was all right, you see, sir.” Having stowed away his seven-and-six the old man became a friend and his tone was confidential.
“The engine,” said Richard, completely at sea.
“The engine of the ’bus, sir. It went, that’s what surprised everybody. It started up at once, although it had been there for three years they say and couldn’t nohow have been moved since last spring because of the oil drums being right in the way, you see. They were put there in the spring.”
Richard did not understand in the least. The entire statement struck him as a non sequitur. He did not say so but his silence wss expressive and, aware of his lack of success, the nightwatchman tried again.
“It was the loaders what found it out,” he said hoarsely. “They was nosin’ about yesterday after they shifted the drums and they saw that seven old ’buses had been hemmed in behind this load they was movin’. They over’auled them, seein’ what they could pinch I’ll bet, and one was perfectly all right. When they went to lunch they ’ad to talk about it in the boozer, someone ’eard them and re-ported them, and before anybody knows what’s ’appenin’ the rozzers comes sniffin’ in. That’s what democracy ’as come to. One word in a pub and down come the flippin’ police anxious not to miss anything useful. We’re a nation o’ scroungers.”
The information contained in this piece of involved thinking was of little interest to Richard who was no reader of murder cases and was unaware of any police search for a ’bus. His interest was solely in Gerry.
“Does Mr. Hawker work here?” he enquired at last.
“Only in ’is shed, private like. ’E don’t own anythin’ stored ’ere.”
“I see. He rents a workshop here?”
“That’s about it. A little workshop. ’E tunes up racin’ cars down ’ere, or limousines.” The watchman sounded admiring but vague and it occurred to Richard, who had become something of an authority on the subject, that Gerry must have been talking again. Since the nightwatchman had not the evidence of his own eyes, his information could only come from one source.
“Is he often here?” he enquired.
“On and off. Sometimes ’e works ’ere at night for a week. O’ course I’m only ’ere at night meself. I couldn’t say what ’e does in the daytime. I thought you was a friend of ’is?”
“Well, I’ve just spent the day with him.”
“Oh.” The reassurance seemed sufficient. “Well, ’e always ’as a word with me when ’e comes in late. Two years now I’ve �
�ad this job and ’e’s always been very nice when he troubles me to open up for ’im. Reelly very nice.” The coins clinked softly in his pocket, an accompaniment to praise. “Very nice indeed. ’E’s a feller you can take to, ain’t ’e? Always the same, I say, always the same.”
It became clear that this was about as far as they were going to get. Richard turned away to look down the moonlit track which wandered away through the nightmare landscape.
“Perhaps I’d better go on down to the shed. Where is it? Do you know?”
“Course I do. I seen it scores o’ times.” The nearly sightless eyes stared angrily at a point some three feet beyond the one where Richard was standing. “But I ain’t got time to take yer down there now. You’ll ’ave to go by yerself. People ’ave work to do, don’t forget.”
With a reproachful wriggle he settled himself an inch or so further back in the shelter and switched off the light.
“It ain’t far down there.” His voice, hoarse and satisfied, came out of the darkness. “It’s in a holler, he tells me. There ain’t no other building in the place that I’ve ever ’eard of. When ’e comes in I’ll tell ’im you’re there.”
Richard thanked him without deep enthusiasm and went off grateful for the moonlight. Without it the Dump, which was eerie enough in any case, must have been a place of terror. Although it was by no means a rubbish heap, it was yet not odourless and he was constantly aware of dark sliding shapes, inexpressibly evil, flickering out of his path.
He strode on doggedly, refusing to ask himself what on earth he thought he was doing and what good could possibly come of the excursion. His chin was tucked in angrily. At least he was doing something. At any rate he would find out all he possibly could about Mr. Jeremy Hawker before he next saw Annabelle.
He came on the shed unexpectedly. A gap in the row of hillocks which lined the road revealed an artificial depression which had perhaps once contained the foundations of a considerable house. A steep drive led down into this basin and at the bottom, surrounded by a scattered collection of old motor-bodies, discarded tyres, a broken carboy or two and other similar debris, there was a ruin. It was built mostly of brick and might once have been a kiln or a bakehouse or part of the cellars of the original building. There was no way of telling. Now there was nothing left but a nest of roughly roofed brick boxes, a broken chimney, and a single tall shed with a tin roof on it and wide coachhouse doors.
Richard turned down into the hollow without hesitation. It did not occur to him to query the shed. It suggested Gerry to his mind and he did not doubt for a moment that it belonged to him. There was no one around. The whole place was as silent as a churchyard. The building proved to be bigger than he had thought on first seeing it, however, and the tall doors were padlocked.
He circled it, stamping through the tall twitch grass which grew sparsely on the uneven ground. There was a great deal of rubbish about, he noticed, bricks and old cans and pipes lying in the weeds and all picked out bright and misshapen in the icy light.
It was as he approached the smaller door at the back of the shed that he experienced the first twinges of the extraordinary series of sensations which descended on him later. He knew what fear was, naturally, but he was not of a highly nervous or hypersensitive disposition. He had done his share of service overseas and was not inexperienced, yet as he approached that second door he was aware of some intangible menace which made the short hairs at the back of his neck rise and prickle. It was not a sound which had alarmed him, for the silence was oppressive. He sniffed dubiously. The whole dump reeked but here there was something else, something new to him yet so old that his disgust was instinctive. He shrugged his shoulders irritably and pressed on.
The old fashioned thumb-latch on the small door lifted readily enough but the wood was fastened lower down and from the inside. Either a bolt or another padlock secured it. On impulse he put his shoulder to the peeling painted surface and a little to his dismay, for he had hardly meant to break into the place, it gave at once. He felt the iron staples pulling out of the rotten wood.
The building he entered was in complete darkness save for a shaft of moonlight, strong and clear as a searchlight, which poured in through the single skylight high in the roof on his right. A square of light, bright and barred, rested partly on a workbench which lined the left-hand wall and partly on the pile of rubbish which had accumulated beneath it, an area never so visible in the normal way when the doors were open.
It was practically the first thing Richard saw, a collection of dusty rubbish of a kind found in most motor workshops. There were paint and oil tins there and bottles, a pail on its side, part of a pump, a ball of crumpled paper, a set of rods which might have been part of a broken deck chair, and among them, lying open, with its lining pulled out, a white plastic handbag.
Why he should have found the sight of it so sinister Richard never knew but as he stared at it his heart moved uncomfortably. It looked so fresh, so very unused, and yet so completely ravaged, lying there in the bright moonlight.
He came forward and stumbled over something lying in the fairway. He had no torch with him, but, with the help of his lighter, he was able to discover that it was a flat slab of polished marble which is still found sometimes on old wash-stands. There were two wooden wine boxes of the type which Gerry had been carrying round with him in the Lagonda, one larger and one smaller lying beside it. They each contained a quantity of ordinary bricks, a meaningless collection from Richard’s point of view.
What he found more interesting was a glimpse of an inspection lamp lying on the bench just out of the moonlight. He picked it up and followed the lead along to a plug with a switch beside it. He pressed it over without much hope but was startled by his success. Not only did the wire-caged lamp light up but a hanging bulb in the roof sprang into life. He was in a curious barn of a place, much older than he had supposed from its appearance outside. There were beams across the tops of the walls and the floor was made of stamped earth with here and there a patch of brickwork or the ringed flag marking a well-head. The walls seemed to be cluttered and were in darkness and the corners were crowded with junk of all kinds. A petrol engine, stripped and glistening with oil, stood blocked up on one side of the centre area, and inside the main doors there was a clear space just about large enough to take the Lagonda.
The handbag was hidden now, lost in the general mess under the bench. Richard squatted down to find it and drew it out at last. It had been white once but was now thick with dust, yet his first glimpse had been truthful. It was not worn and might have been new when its lining had been torn out. He put it back where he had found it and, rising to his feet, stood breathless in the oppressive atmosphere.
He was frightened. The realisation shook him still more. There was something indescribably awful about the smell of the place, something worse than dirt or vermin or the prickling stink of acid. His own weakness made him angry, but his anger induced an obstinacy which kept him ferreting round the shed, hunting for something, he did not know what. There was sweat on his forehead and damp in his clothes, but he stayed there, looking about for anything which would give him a clearer picture of its owner and a lead on what he was about.
The fact that the shed was lit up and its skylight visible across the dump did not occur to him. If it had it was improbable that he would have worried. He was not afraid of Gerry. He thought he was a crook and wanted proof of it, but it had not crossed his mind that his crimes might extend beyond theft in some small form.
Gripping the lamp he went all round the place slowly, picking his way. He found a flight of steps suddenly, all but falling down them as he thrust his way round a pile of old coats hanging against the further wall. They were wide steps, very shallow and bricked in the old way, and they led apparently into a further room which, he decided, must be one of the little nest of brick boxes which he had noticed from the roadway. There was a curtain of tarpaulin over the entrance and the draught whistling round it suggested that th
e building was almost if not quite roofless. The flex attached to the inspection lamp was only just long enough to reach the entrance and, as Richard pulled aside the waterproof curtain and shone the beam in, he caught a glimpse of red walls streaked with green and the glister of white fungus. He turned the lamp towards the far corner and stood transfixed, his skin crawling.
Two old people sitting close together, mouldering fancy dress hanging from them and their faces strangely wooden and brown, were perched on a plank between two barrels. They did not move. Only the old woman’s eyes, which were glassy and bright under a bonnet trimmed with beads, seemed to meet his own.
Richard panicked. The lamp dropped out of his hand and he ran blindly across the shed, stumbled recklessly among the pitfalls, the marble slab and the wooden boxes, and pitched himself out of the door through which he had first entered into the moonlight.
As the cleaner air enveloped him he pulled up, struggling with himself, very much aware that he must force himself to go back. He was so torn by the conflict that he did not see the two shadows bearing down upon him and the grip on his arms took him by surprise.
“Now then, now then,” the time-honoured police warning was warmly human in the nightmare.
“In there …” Richard did not recognise his own voice. “In there. In the cellar by the lamp. Two old people just sitting there.”
Hide My Eyes Page 13
