by James White
Nick paused. Had that been footsteps behind him? He shuffled against a nearby wall, ears straining, but he could hear nothing. Up ahead, Conway Street began. He strode to the street’s entrance, grinding his heels into the hard tarmac, then he abruptly stopped and craned his head, mouth slightly open to improve his hearing, but he could hear nothing except the rushing of blood in his head. Hugging the side of the road nearest the odd-numbered buildings, he paused at fifteen then as silently as he could, he slinked onwards where the road opened out into the faded grandeur of Fitzroy Square, where if anything, the fog had congealed in an even thicker cloud around the small central garden. A dark shape flitted through the fog ahead. Nick stopped. He could now see or hear nothing, but a cold sweat had begun to prickle at the back of his neck. The German was armed, if it was him, if it was anyone.
Nick squatted against the cold steel railings to reduce his silhouette and strained his eyes into the dark swirling murk until he had to blink to ease the watery burning in his eyes. Nothing. He slowly turned to look back at the street; it lay as quiet as if under a blanket of snow. Nick waited. He suddenly craved a cigarette, but resisted. If there was anyone out there, he didn’t want to be lighting up. He huddled against the railing for a measured fifteen-minute stretch that felt longer. Much longer. He could feel the wet had penetrated his coat and his trousers were sticky against his legs; as he stood, his leg muscles protested with jolts of fire through the fibres. He’d seen and heard nothing.
Stretching to reduce the cramping, Nick hobbled back towards the corner of the building and fished in his trouser pocket for the skeleton picks he kept there. He cursed silently as his numb fingers at first ineffectually scrabbled at the cold metal then he found his grip and slowly inserted them into the front door lock. It sprung open without a sound. Nick had already notice the line of doorbells on the right of the door showing the house had been converted to flats. Clicking the door shut behind him, he peered around the small dark lobby. A piece of threadbare carpet that had seen better days lined the floor, some stairs led up to the higher level flats. There was no post lying around and the place at least looked clean.
Nick pinged the flat’s front door open and stealthily moved inside. He entered a small entrance room with a table and two chairs, and not a lot else. Moving cautiously through the dark flat, it became apparent that as he’d suspected, someone else had already been there. The cupboards in the kitchen hung open, pots, pans and plates scattered over the floor. Nick’s shoes crunched on the broken crockery as he padded from the kitchen and bathroom into the single, large, main room.
The room was dominated by a huge double bed. Nick felt slightly queasy as he imagined the Brigadier and Ramona lying in it. A large, dark wood wardrobe hung open, the few clothes from within scattered on the floor alongside other garments scattered from the battered chest of drawers. There was a large bureau with a wireless set and gramophone on top. Nick could see that the drawers had been forced. If anything had been in there, it was gone now. The only other item in the room was a small wooden bar, now lying sadly on its side in a pool of abandoned liquor. Nick shook his head and nudged his foot through the mess. Smiling he bent over to retrieve an unbroken bottle of Scotch. Uncorking it, he took a long slug. Closing his eyes for a minute, he delighted in the warmth spreading through him. He took another hefty swig and looked around the room again. The furniture was mid-range tasteful and he guessed perfect for an evening’s tryst rather than a place for a couple to live full-time.
The carpet looked new. It was certainly thick and expensive. There had been some tasteful watercolours on the wall but they too lay smashed on the floor. A silk gown hung on the back of the door. Nick looked at the expensive silk undergarments lying around the floor. No wonder Ramona had needed money, unless the brigadier had provided it all. Having met him, Nick didn’t think that was likely. He idly wondered if Ramona had entertained anyone else in the flat, but pushed the thought away distastefully.
Nick sat on the edge of the bed and scanned the room again, his mind working. The mattress had been flipped; the carpet was awry at the edges. Whoever had searched the place had done a good job. But how good? He took a good slug of the whisky and was tempted for a moment to flop back on the mattress and embrace the warmth flowing through him, then his eye was drawn back the bureau. Nick leapt up and crossed to the wireless set. The back had been pulled off. He turned to the gramophone set. Someone had obviously looked inside it but… He gently lifted the trumpet and felt inside the neck. His heart skipped a beat as his fingers touched rolled up paper. He started to tease it out with his finger then froze. A key rattled in the outer door’s lock. Nick looked around desperately as the door slammed and a key slotted into the flat’s front door. He was trapped.
Nick gripped the bottle of Scotch in his hand and moved behind the bedroom door as the front door shut. To his surprise, whoever it was flicked the lights on. Footsteps moved through the flat, a long shadow filled the door frame. There was a click as the lights were thrown in the bedroom. Nick held his breath. A figure entered the room.
“What the…?” Nick’s breath blew out like a deflating balloon and he lowered the bottle as Lucia whirled at the sound of his voice, stepping back at the same time in shock. Her right hand dived at her small clutch bag, but she hesitated as she saw it was Nick. She quickly managed to replace the flicker of fear with a cold smile.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” She looked at the mess scattered around the jumbled room. “You do this?”
“No.” Nick stepped out from behind the door and advanced a pace towards her. She quickly backed up, banging against the bureau and this time her hand went in her clutch.
“Don’t come any nearer,” she warned, the smile gone. Her eyes were hard.
“Or what? You going to stab me?” Nick unplugged his Scotch and took another pull, watching her all the while.
“Maybe I’ll shoot you.”
“Maybe you will. But you’ll need a gun first and that bag’s not big enough for one. Not unless you’ve got a tiny twenty-two, but then you’d have to hit me right in the head first time to stop me. Besides, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I’m so glad you’ve put my mind at rest. Who says it’ll be you that does the hurting?” She pulled her empty hand free of the bag and clicked it shut emphatically. “Why’d you wreck the joint?”
“I already told you, I didn’t.” Nick moved and sat on the bed. Lucia leaned back against the bureau and regarded him through narrow eyes. She reached for the bag, making Nick flinch. She regarded him with something like amusement and held a cigarette up with a smile.
“Usually, when I find a drunk man in a wrecked flat, it’s odds on he’s wrecked it.”
“I’m not drunk,” he replied, as she exhaled a cloud of smoke and slipped the lighter back into her bag.
“No. You’re just having fun. What are you doing here Mr…?”
“Valentine. Nick Valentine. I might ask you the same thing. Why are you skulking about a dead girl’s flat in the middle of the night? And how come you let yourself in with a set of keys, Miss…?”
“Navarro. Lucia Navarro. At least I have keys, Mr Valentine. I’m sure if I were to call the police they’d take a dim view of your breaking and entering. You know, I don’t believe you work for the War Office at all. Shall we see what the police say?” Her hand caressed the telephone receiver on the desk.
Nick smiled. “We both know you’re not going to do that. I’m sure you’d have too many questions of your own to answer.”
Annoyance flashed across her face. “You know, your act wasn’t very convincing back at the club.”
“Which one?”
“The infatuated clerk trying to chat up the woman. Mind you, your dancing was lousy, too.”
“Well thanks. So we going to dance around each other all night or are we going to level with each other?”
She looked at him, eyes narrowed behind a veil of smoke as if weighing him up. “Y
ou got any of that Scotch left?”
“Sure.” Nick held the bottle out and she crossed the room, all swaying hips beneath the long fur coat. She took a long swig and cast her eyes around the room again.
“Okay. I heard Ramona was dead. I wasn’t surprised; she’d been acting strange, kind of scared the last few days. I knew about her and this officer and she’d told me about this place.” Lucia gestured around the room with one hand. “Experience has taught me it’s better to be prepared, so I lifted her keys one day and got a set cut. Just in case.”
“How very convenient. Who else’s keys have you got?”
She smiled. “A few people’s. You never know when you might need a bolt hole, or a place to lift some valuables from. Like I said, experience is a wonderful teacher.”
Nick had a sudden thought, about his own apartment, but he kept quiet.
“After you scared the Brigadier off, I thought I’d swing by here for a look, to see if I could pick anything up. Guess I was too late.”
“I guess you were.”
“Now…” She came and stood in front of him, proffering the bottle. “How about you?”
“Someone hired me to look into Ramona’s death,” he lied. “The Brigadier told me about this place, so I thought I’d come take a look.”
“Someone?”
Nick handed the bottle back and shrugged. “A concerned party. I can’t tell you who – client confidentiality and all that – but I would say, perhaps, another acquaintance of hers.” Nick looked at her without guile and could tell she wasn’t swallowing it. Then he didn’t believe her either.
“And what have you found out?”
“Not much. Ramona was having an affair with the Brigadier. I don’t think he did it. Maybe another jealous lover?”
“Why did you tell the Brigadier to leave the club?”
Because I didn’t want him to get caught up in this. He has a family and a reputation to uphold.”
She gave a snort. “I see. That is very gallant. So why did you try and stop those men following him?”
Nick gave a shrug, “They didn’t look very nice.”
“Hmm!” She paced the room and crossed to the heavy wooden shutters that barred the window. “You know, Nick. I don’t think you’re being very honest with me at all.” She opened the shutter and gazed out into the night then turned to face him. “I don’t think you’re being honest at all.”
Nick heard the front door open again and he shot a look of alarm at Lucia, shooting to his feet. She didn’t move.
“I didn’t lock it,” she smiled.
Nick cursed and leapt for the door, her laughter ringing in his ears. He ran straight into the business end of a Luger pistol held by the blonde German man. The German shook a finger at him and pushed him back with the pistol.
“Going so soon? Have a seat,” he snarled, shoving Nick heavily back onto the bed.
Nick flicked his eyes from the gun barrel over to the window. If looks could kill, Lucia would already be on the floor and dying. She gave an apologetic shrug and turned to close the shutter.
“So, who is he?” the German asked, looking at Nick.
“We’ve been through all that. Just get him to tell us what he was doing here and what he knows. What he told me I don’t believe for a minute.” She glided across the room to stand next to the man, looking bored already.
“Okay, you heard her. Or am I going to have to start shooting?”
“I already told her; I was hired by a friend of Ramona’s to look into her death. They didn’t think the police would take it so seriously, Ramona being the kind of girl she was.”
“And what kind of girl was that, Mr Valentine?” asked Lucia.
Nick gestured around the room. “The kind with a married lover and a love nest. Look, I don’t know who you people are or what your connection is, but I’m guessing that you killed her. Why?”
The man smiled. It was a cruel twisting of the mouth and Nick noticed his thin lips. “We didn’t kill her, but like you we are anxious to know who did. Ramona had something of value, something that she’d taken from us and we’d very much like it back.”
Nick let his surprise show while his mind raced. “And I thought you were the light-fingered lady,” he said to Lucia.
She ignored him.
“What did she take?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a man with a gun pointed at him.”
“It might be my last chance,” smiled Nick. He held out his hand. “May I?” He nodded at the bottle. Lucia passed it to him with a despairing shake of the head.
“Why did you scare the Brigadier away like that?” the German asked.
“I figure he didn’t kill her and I didn’t want him mixed up in it. Like I said, I’ve just been asked to find out what happened.”
“And have you found out?”
“No, but I’m getting a good idea. She was playing the Brigadier, she stole something from you.” He shrugged. “Maybe she had form and she stole something from someone that didn’t like it who got to her before you did. Either way, I know enough to know that I’m out of this. I like my life and I don’t want to end up as the next body.” He took a swig from the bottle, subtly sliding his thighs closer to the end of the bed as he did so.
The man looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You didn’t find anything here?”
“Like what?”
“Anything!” barked the man.
“No, no I didn’t.”
“Stand up!”
Nick wearily got to his feet.
“Search him.”
Lucia looked surprised at the man’s command and with a resigned sigh, moved to Nick and started rummaging through his pockets and patting him down. The scent from her hair was driving him crazy, the proximity of her body, those hands on him.
“I kind of like this,” he quipped.
She stepped back and gave him a slap hard across the face.
“Nothing.” She petulantly folded her arms and glared at him. “Are you going to kill him?”
Nick held his breath.
“No, murders are too inconvenient.”
Nick silently thanked God for German efficiency.
“He is unimportant.” The man lowered the gun. “You can leave, only on the understanding that you leave this case now and that I do not see you again. Do we have an understanding?”
Nick slowly shuffled round the man and was about to answer but saw the man’s gaze flick past him to the bureau, and to the wireless and gramophone, the only undamaged items on the room. Lucia was just off to his right side. In the blink of an eye, he whipped the bottle up and smashed it against the German man’s head, sending him crashing to the floor. The gun flew out the man’s hand and onto the bed, with Lucia diving in quick pursuit. As her fingers closed around it, Nick lunged forward and delivered a crashing punch to the back of her head with his now-empty right hand and she was out like a light. He stood back. The German lay motionless on the floor in a growing pool of blood, Lucia was sprawled across the bed, both of them out cold. Nick retrieved the Luger from her fingers and pocketed it. He patted down the man and found a wallet; the man’s name was Jurgen Platt, as Nick had suspected. Inside Lucia’s clutch bag was some more dough and a small knife. No gun. He smiled to himself and threw the bag onto the bed beside her.
“No deal,” he said out loud. Crossing quickly to the gramophone, he retrieved the papers and set it back how it had been. They’d suspect, but they wouldn’t be sure. On a whim, he retrieved the flat keys from Lucia’s bag, turned off the light and left. Jurgen would be all right, but he’d have a headache; they both would.
Nick stepped carefully back out into the fog of the night. He wondered where the Italian was. As silently as he could, he paced away from the flat, across the square, then doubled back along the next street up and stopped. There were no sounds of pursuit. He carried on home as quickly as he could, stopping frequently in alley mouths to check for any sign he was being followed. There we
re none. He was about to enter his flat, when on a whim he decided to take a detour. It wouldn’t take them long to find him and when they did, his flat would be the first place they searched.
Nick only had one friend, one person he truly trusted. It was time to pay Stephen a visit.
CHAPTER 5
“You look terrible. When’s the last time you slept? And do you know what time it is?”
“Nice to see you, too, Stephen.” Nick leaned on the doorpost and looked at the grizzled old man in front of him. A thick, bushy, grey beard merged into a shock of unruly grey hair, and a small pair of glasses balanced precariously on the end of the man’s nose. His visible skin was lined like ancient parchment and he stood stooped like a gnarled tree that had weathered countless storms. He shuffled aside.
“I suppose you’d better come in.”
Nick stepped in and minutes later they were sat in Stephen’s small front room. The old man removed the fireguard and stoked up the fire, throwing some more coal on.
“There’s brandy on the side there. I suppose you’ll be wanting a drink.” Stephen motioned at a decanter on the sideboard and Nick poured them both a drink. They sat in silence for some moments then Nick fished in his pocket.
“I need you to have a look at this.” He handed the papers from the gramophone to Stephen and waited patiently as the old man adjusted his glasses and peered over them. There were four pieces of paper, two of them folded, the other two photographic prints, all carefully rolled up.
