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By the time they had got clear of the city streets, Gently was beginning to feel sorry that he had let Hansom drive. The Chief Inspector, with all due allowance for his eagerness, was not a model of the correct and approved police driver. His deficiencies were the more apparent because they were meeting a flow of traffic. The spasmodic efflux of Saturday had become the steady influx of Sunday. It might have been worse, it was true: they were on the Fosterham Road; towards Starmouth, the traffic would now be packed in nose to tail. But there was plenty enough here to produce some breathtaking moments, and what was worse to suggest that such were commonplaces of Hansom’s style.
Over his knees Gently had spread the three-inch map from the car’s pocket, and on this, with pencilled crosses, he was plotting their progress. They were in constant radio contact with the pursuing Stephens, who was conscientious in reporting every location he passed.
‘Hallo car ex-two… we’ve just come to a village… get you the name if I can… yes… Saxham King’s Head!’
On a more southerly route they were catching up with the other two, whose progress was governed by the whims of Miss Butters. She was making straight across country with all the confidence of local knowledge, never hesitating to use a side road where its line was the most direct.
‘Hallo car ex-two… she’s just stopped for petrol… I had to go past her… don’t think she noticed… am waiting in side road, Braningham one mile.’
‘Hallo car ex-seven… don’t follow her so closely!’
‘Hallo car ex-two… message understood.’
Gently held up the map so that Hansom could glance at it, the pencilled crosses now strung out in purposeful direction. ‘Does it suggest anything to you?’
‘Yeah — she’s heading for Fosterham. They’ve got a flying club there, but surely he wouldn’t have the nerve…’
‘I’ll call back to HQ.’ Gently flicked the switch across. To him too it seemed unlikely that Johnson would use an operational airfield. But, for all the estate agent knew, his latest ploy was undetected, and he might be unwarily sitting in the club house at Fosterham.
‘Car ex-two calling ex-ex-ex… I’d like you to get in touch with the County at Fosterham. Johnson may be at the flying club… tell them to send a couple of men. And remind them that he’s armed… repeat that: armed!’
‘Ex-ex-ex replying to car ex-two… message received and understood, and I have one for you… Lady Stradsett reports the loss of a grey Jaguar convertible, believed to have been taken from Lordham Grange at around seventeen-thirty hours… do you want any independent action on this?’
‘Hallo ex-ex-ex… no independent action.’
The Wolseley drummed along at an unsteady sixty, with Hansom juggling rhapsodically with his brakes and throttle. It was in fact a good lick for that contorted country road, on which the stream of homing traffic was unceasing though irregular. On either side there was country which was typical of upland Northshire. It proceeded in gentle undulations with shaggy hedges and wistful trees. It had the muted and subdued charm of an unlistened-to sonata which, some day, one suddenly noticed had made a haunting and fixed impression. It was difficult to pin it down to any single feature. The villages, for example, had little truck with the picturesque. Like the landscape they were stern, but with an unaffected nobility, and one sensed a majestic strength which lay beneath the austere surface.
Farther on the contours were higher but the astringent flavour remained; only here one could see more into it, more deeply probe the secret amalgam. There were glimpses of square flint towers, of ranked plantations, like armies marching; of farmhouses glowing in rusty brick, and monstrous barns with huge, peaked roofs. And the fields were seen quilted with colour, the yellow of mustard, the green of beet; and everywhere, dashed with poppies, the tawny wheat and paler acres of barley.
Even from a Hansom-driven Wolseley one was compelled to observe and admire, and Gently, to whom the road was fresh, made a mental note to return in his Riley…
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two… passing through a small town… it’s Fosterham, I think.’
Gently jabbed to transmit: ‘Hallo ex-seven… watch carefully here
… she may turn off to the flying field.’
But half a minute later Stephens came through again:
‘We’re out at the other side… still driving in the same direction …’
So Fosterham was out. It wasn’t as simple as that. The wary ex-RAF pilot was doing nothing that might betray himself…
‘Any more suggestions?’ Gently tilted the map again, having just scrawled a cross on the far side of Fosterham. They too were approaching the town and would soon be hard on Stephens’s tail; there could not now be more than a few miles separating them.
‘If it was a question of boats, I’d say she was heading for the coast… as it is…’ Hansom frowned, giving a flickering look at the map. ‘The trouble is there’s two… no, three… old air-force dromes out that way, and they’re all in roughish country — just left to rot there, after the war.’
‘They sound a better prospect.’
‘Yeah… but it may not be so easy. It’s heathy country, you can see for miles — and chummie’ll have that angle covered.’
It went without saying. Johnson didn’t miss his tricks. If there was an advantage to be gained he could be relied upon to take it. Gently brooded for a few moments over the advisability of calling on help, but under the circumstances there seemed little open to them that would give them a better chance. In the first place, they didn’t yet know for certain where they were going…
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two… we’re turning off south about five miles from Fosterham. Signpost says By-road and there’s a straw stack beside it… half a dozen tar barrels parked on the verge.’
Gently referred to the map, but they were in a country of by-roads; narrow parallels, some dotted, straying out into blank spaces.
‘Calling car ex-seven… drop back as far as you can… you’re going into open country, you’ll be able to see her well ahead.’
Then they were in Fosterham, making the townspeople stare — Hansom wasn’t in a mood to defer to country towns. Gently received a snapshot impression of a street of plastered house fronts, a sleepy market square and a hovering flint tower. A pleasant place, probably — but the Wolseley whisked him past it. Beyond it, almost directly, they entered a sparser-looking tract of country.
Here the trees which had graced every hedgerow were become few and mean in appearance, and the fields, snowed with chalk-backed flints, supported thin and starve-acre crops. The hedges likewise had shrunk to mere scrub, soon to be choked and replaced by bracken; one saw far distances of brackened slopes scarred by gravel and by droves of sand.
‘Now you can see what I mean.’ Hansom made an embracing motion with his hand. ‘It goes on like this for miles, and farther down it’s a battle area. But I’d say she was making for Rawton, that’s what it sounds like, turning down there.’
‘Is there anything else in that direction?’
‘Yeah… she might find a way to Morsingdon.’
They identified the turning by Stephens’s description and found themselves on a road with a surface that made Hansom swear. It had patently been neglected for a number of years — in all probability, since the end of the war. A rusted service sign confirmed this conjecture. Farther on, they passed a dump of disintegrating barbed wire. On both sides of the road stretched the god-forgotten heathland, relieved only at long intervals by ragged and wind-sculptured firs.
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two… she’s going very slowly… not sure of the way. There’s practically no road… just a track of broken concrete… I’ve stopped behind a pill box… we’ll have to let her get ahead…’
‘Calling car ex-seven… do we just keep straight on?’
‘Calling car ex-two… slow down where you see a gun emplacement.’
Hansom was still bumping along at a stubborn forty-five, though the Wolseley was taking a hammering from potholes and sunken surfaces. Now, however, the metalled surface petered out entirely, giving way to a stony track which looked as aboriginal as the heath. In front of them it stretched away into a hollow or valley where the bracken-covered slopes shouldered closely to each other; it was deep enough to take a shadow from the westering sun, and was guarded by two tattered firs standing one to either side.
As they approached it they saw evident signs of a former occupation. A picket hut stood ruinous to one side of the track. Beside it lay a fallen gate and a W.D. property notice and, a little higher up, the gun emplacement referred to by Stephens.
‘They must have loved being stationed here…!’ Hansom clashed to a lower gear. The Wolseley slithered and yawed a little as it scrambled over some crumbling concrete. Almost immediately they were turning a corner, and then the need for caution was plain: they were coming out on the brow of a slope, from which they must be visible for at least a mile. Hansom jammed on the brakes abruptly.
‘If he was anywhere near her, she would have seen him…’
Gently nodded, puckering his eyes as he searched the sweep of country before them. The heath here was very level and without a lot of cover, though leftwards, to the south, it slowly rose into a shallow ridge. Down the track, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, one could make out a pair of battered pill boxes.
He flicked the radio to transmit:
‘Calling car ex-seven… report your movements.’
After a minute, when there was no reply, he repeated the call with greater urgency.
Still there was no response from Stephens. Hansom met Gently’s eye as he tried again.
‘What do you make of that… would he have gone off on a recce?’
‘I don’t know. But I warned him to keep clear of trouble…’
It was at that instant that they heard the sound of a shot, coming distant but distinct from behind the southerly slope. A second later it was repeated by a second and a third, each producing a ringing echo from the stony little hollow.
‘Brother… let’s go!’ Hansom jerked in the clutch. The Wolseley went bumbling forward over the outrageous concrete track. Foot down, Hansom lashed the tortured vehicle into the fifties, making it bound and bucket like a goaded stallion. The track bore to the left through an area of scrubby bushes, but some distance beyond the pill boxes it apparently vanished into the naked heath. Swearing viciously, Hansom blazed on along the line it had been taking, the sheer power of his anger seeming to keep the car going.
‘Over there — keep left!’
The track was coming to light again. Making a sudden turn to the left, it dived into an unexpected grove of firs. A pearl-grey Jaguar leapt into sight and Hansom dragged on the wheel like a madman; the Wolseley twisted from stem to stern, wiped past a tree, then straightened again. And then they were out on the southern side of the ridge, with the abandoned airfield stretching ahead of them: and there, developing at a speed which defied interference, was the drama which Stephens’s silence had portended.
Johnson’s Proctor had commenced its take-off from the adjacent end of a runway — a runway which, one could see, was badly damaged by cracks and sinkings. Its tail was already rising, its engine rolling at full throttle, it had the bit between its teeth and it was irresistibly tearing forwards. Irresistibly — except for one thing. The other Wolseley was racing towards it. Stephens must have driven down the runway ahead of it, and now, circling round, was dead in its path.
Something caught in Gently’s throat as he took in the spectacle, for what must happen was well-nigh inevitable. It was impossible to apply the brakes to the Proctor, and the Wolseley showed no intention of budging.
‘The prop — the engine — they’ll sheer him in halves-!’ He watched it in the grip of a ghastly compulsion; the searing experience of those few seconds seemed to suspend and to expand into several hours. But at the moment of impact, the unforeseen happened. The Proctor flew up like a great catherine wheel. Digging its nose into the ground, it spun crashingly over and over, hurling fragments in all directions across the heath-covered soil. And Stephens, he rumbled on up the runway unharmed, his tyres a-shriek as he stamped on his brakes. He brought the Wolseley X-7 to a jerking halt: he didn’t seem even to have scratched her paintwork.
Seeing that Stephens was unharmed, Hansom drove on towards the aircraft, which had finally come to rest lying flat on its belly. One wing was wrenched off and the other was badly damaged, while the propeller had been twisted into savage, unnatural shapes. The undercarriage, sheered away, had flown to various parts of the compass, and the port side of the tail assembly hung in raw-looking ribbons. Of the occupants, Miss Butters was lying slumped against the control panel, while Johnson was feebly trying to force back the perspex hood.
In emergencies of this kind, Hansom was a good man to have around. He wasted no time in words or panicky actions. He was out of the Wolseley almost before it had stopped, and leaping up on the wing root, had begun to work on the jammed hood.
‘Get us out of this, cocker… we’re swimming in petrol…!’
It was true, the stuff was pouring from a fractured pipe in the wing root. In addition the engine was simmering, sounding like a sinister boiler, giving every now and then little popping and cracking noises.
‘This bastard thing’s twisted… to hell, it’s twisted!’
‘Is there an axe in the car?’
‘Yeah — get it, for Christ’s sake!’
Gently dropped down from the wing and ran to the boot of the Wolseley. He found a fireman’s axe and a jemmy in the tool kit it contained.
Stephens, meanwhile, came bumping up in the second Wolseley, and trembling and pale added his efforts to theirs.
‘He… he did that deliberately…’
‘Turned off, you mean?’
‘Yes… oh God… we’ve got to get them out of there!’
‘What about those shots?’
‘He was shooting at my tyres… let me have something… let me!.. we’ve got to get them out!’
He seized the jemmy from Gently’s hand and began furiously levering with it, Hansom at the same time delivering crashing blows with the axe. Johnson had sunk down into his seat and appeared to have lost consciousness. Anne Butters didn’t stir from her prone position.
At last the hood was freed and by brute force torn off, and the admission of fresh air seemed to revive Johnson a little.
‘Jesus… take it easy! My leg’s buggered up…’ Trying to move, he went suddenly white, then his head dropped forward again.
Gently and Stephens got him out — it was not an easy business then; his fractured leg, sticky with blood, had become entangled with the controls. He was fortunate perhaps to remain unconscious during the process, and he continued in that state while they carried him behind the cars. Hansom took care of Anne Butters on his own. Apart from being out, she showed no sign of any injury. For fear of internal injury he was nevertheless cautious, and handled her with a gentleness that one would not have suspected of him.
‘I’ll strap up the boyo’s leg… I’m a first-aid wizard.’
‘First we must get them away from here — and likewise the cars.’
‘We didn’t ought to shift them…’
‘Suppose that wreck goes up!’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean… right. We’ll use that chunk of wing for a stretcher.’
At a safer distance of seventy yards they parked the two Wolseleys to make a screen, and behind it, assisted by a drooping Stephens, Hansom strapped and bandaged Johnson ’s leg. Before commencing he gave the estate agent a jab from a morphia ampoule, taking care to find the label and to tie it to his patient. It was really a revelation to watch the Chief Inspector at work — he was displaying a side of his surly nature which had rarely come uppermost.
‘That’ll fix you, sonny, till we can get you to a hospital.’
Johnson managed to grin at him from under his immense moustache.
‘But Anne… what about…?’ His eyes flickered glazedly to the limp figure.
‘Don’t worry about her. She was only knocked out cold.’
Just then, when they had given up expecting it to happen; a sudden woof of flame sprang up from the wreckage; in moments it had turned into a roaring, wolfish pillar, and a great jet of black smoke puffed into the sky above it. There was nothing they could do — their car extinguishers were futile. One might as well have tackled it with a glass of water. Stephens, back in his car, was trying to raise Fosterham, their own control being now out of range.
Miss Butters stirred and her eyes fell open, vacantly; then, at the snarling sound of the flames, they jumped wide in fear. Johnson’s lids were closed and he was murmuring thickly to himself:
‘… Christ… Christ… I wasn’t meant to die that way…’
Stephens eventually contacted the control at Lynton, but they phoned through to Fosterham as being the nearest to Rawton Aerodrome. Some half an hour later quite a cavalcade appeared, its component vehicles rocking and pitching as they negotiated the frightful surface. First came two mounted police, who had been acting as pathfinders, and now fanned out impatiently as they came to the scene of the crash. They were followed by a police car and a bobbing white ambulance, and finally by an RAF fire tender, hastily summoned from the nearest camp.
The latter drove across to the wreck and began to engulf it in white foam, though there was little now left of it except the engine and bearers. From the ambulance jumped down a pair of overalled attendants. They carried a rolled-up stretcher which they silently unbuckled.
‘Inspector Vincent, County Police… pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.’
All of a sudden the place seemed to be alive with awkward policemen. They had really nothing to do except to stand about watching — only the ambulancemen and the fire tender had jobs to keep them busy.
Anne Butters, though pale and shaken, seemed little the worse for her experience. She drank coffee from somebody ’s flask but didn’t stray far from Johnson’s side.
‘He’ll be all right… his leg is all right…?’
She was putting a brave, a correct ‘county’ face on it; one could almost imagine that this was a hunting mishap, and that the Master would shortly ride up to make inquiries. With Gently she would have nothing whatever to do. She ignored him with the ferocious disdain of ‘county’ protocol. Hansom, too, was cold-shouldered, though oddly enough, not Stephens; in reality she was near a breakdown, and would have burst into tears if they had turned their backs.
‘That’s a nasty bump on your forehead, miss…’
‘It’s all right, I tell you! They’ve put some stuff on it.’
‘Well, we’ll give you a run over when we get you to the hospital …’
‘No, I’m all right! It’s Derek… it’s Derek…’
Here she had to break off and bite her lips together, but immediately she turned fiercely on the hovering Stephens:
‘Now, I suppose, they’re going to charge Derek with something or other!’
Stephens blushed and mumbled confusedly, but she didn’t wait to hear his reply.
Gently rapidly explained the situation to Vincent; he didn’t want to be delayed when the ambulance set off. In the name of mercy he had refrained from stopping Hansom using the morphia, but there were crucial questions of which he wanted the answers from Johnson. He grabbed one of the attendants.
‘They’re not to dope him before I’ve talked to him… you’ve seen that label — he shouldn’t need any more for a bit.’
The attendant shrugged. ‘I can’t promise you anything, sir. You’ll have to come to the hospital and talk to them there.’
This time he drove himself, in Stephens’s Wolseley. Hansom, who hadn’t been saying much, followed erratically in their rear. Stephens was also rather quiet, but there was nothing surprising in that: his exploit in stopping Johnson must have given him plenty to think about.
‘That was a damn silly thing to do…!’
‘Yes, sir.’ Stephens drooped his head. Gently had no need to specify the subject of his remark.
‘There’ll be times enough to play the hero without your cooking any up — suppose the fellow had got away, how far do you think he could have gone?’
‘Well, sir, considering his known abilities-’
‘Considering my foot! He might have got to the Continent, or perhaps to Eire. He’s without professional contacts, and he was tagging a woman along with him — and we could have followed him with radar — maybe chivvied him down with fighters.
‘Yet you go and risk your neck in a bit of Dick Barton foolery — risked the life of the girl, too, not to mention the ratepayers’ property!’
‘I didn’t mean to smash him, sir.’
‘What the devil else could you have done?’
‘I just wanted to block his take-off… then… well, it all happened so fast.’
‘Huh!’ Gently’s grunt was in the Hansom tradition, but he could easily visualize what had taken place. Petrified by the oncoming plane, Stephens had simply hung on and prayed: his reflexes had been paralysed by the speed of what had happened. With his foot hard down he had rushed fascinated towards disaster…
‘You’re lucky that Johnson didn’t lose his head, too.’
‘Yes, sir, I realize that. I think he was expecting me to pull out.’
‘And those shots were at your tyres?’
‘Yes, sir. They weren’t at me. He must have guessed what I intended to do, and tried to put my car out of action.’
From the way his young colleague spoke it was apparent that Johnson had won an admirer. The estate agent was no longer a middle-aged curio, a fossilized relic of some pre-atomic war. He had displayed his ‘known abilities’ in a way that was unforgettable, and Stephens, who had found himself wanting, was a little guiltily impressed.
‘Anyway, it took guts…’ Gently purposely left that vague; but he noticed that Stephens tilted his chin up and stole a glance towards his senior.
‘Car ex-two calling car ex-seven…’
In his driving mirror he could see Hansom, the microphone in his hand.
‘What do you know about Johnson… are we going to make the pinch?’
Coming from Hansom, this surely had to be admiration too!
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two… considering all the circumstances, what do you recommend?’
‘Calling car ex-seven… you’d better pinch him, I suppose, though if the evidence wasn’t so one-track… damnation, you’ve got to pinch him!’
Even Hansom had his moments of intuition, it seemed, when the hard grain of logic met the steel edge of conviction. They were few and they were tardy, but he was not completely without them: against his settled inclination, he occasionally had a hunch…
‘Calling car ex-seven… he pulled that kite over deliberately. I had a look at the runway — it’s got a good surface just there.’
‘Calling car ex-two… he’d be dead if he hadn’t.’
‘Calling car ex-seven… yeah, I see your point.’
Gently turned his head, concealing his smile from Stephens. The two of them were ganging up in their desire to whitewash Johnson! And in both cases it seemed to be his cool head that impressed them, though logically it was a factor which should stand in his disfavour. What was the process by which the logical suddenly collapsed and committed suicide — what was the mechanism of secret judgement which could destroy the pretensions of thought?
He paused, seeming once again on the threshold of revelation, for wasn’t it thus that he always proceeded, checking logic by that inner judgement? It was the product, he suddenly saw, of his continuous stream of observation, a perpetual record of fact too huge and complete to be fully conscious. And so, detached from that stream, he had found his desk-work intolerable, he had been set to make bricks with only the vestiges of straw. For he was not a thinking man, but an artist pursuing a truth: in a way Mallows had been right. Gently was a sham as a policeman.
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two…’
What had he been going to say to Hansom? It had gone clean out of his head…
They were in Fosterham by nine, travelling this time less sensationally. The ambulance clanged them through the town and into the yard of the red-brick hospital. Gently was out of the Wolseley directly, pushing through the swing doors labelled RECEPTION. Beyond them he found an aseptic-looking hall in which were mingled the smells of ether and floor polish.
‘Superintendent Gently, CID… I’d like to speak to the doctor in charge of Casualties.’
‘The doctor is busy just now, I’m afraid. If you’ll wait in the office I’ll tell him you’re here.’
She was a hard-eyed ward sister who quizzed Gently with disapproval; she went, nevertheless, to execute the errand. Gently stood in the doorway of the office and watched the attendants unload Johnson — he was conscious, though drowsy, and tried to wink as he was carried past. Anne Butters had been crying, but was not crying now. She walked with one hand on the stretcher, very erect, her chin in the air.
As they approached the door to Casualties they met the doctor coming out — a tall, youngish-looking man, who gave an exclamation of surprise.
‘Anne! Well, I’m blowed! What on earth are you doing here?’
Quickly she tugged on his arm, jerking her head towards Gently. It was all over in a moment: with a significant nod, he hustled them through. Gently, racing to push in after them, found his passage barred by the ward sister.
‘I’m sorry, Superintendent, but you can’t come in here.’
‘It’s extremely important that I speak to the doctor!’
‘He knows you are here and he will see you in a minute. As usual on Sundays, we are having a busy time.’
Short of brushing her aside physically, there was nothing that he could do about it. He stood glaring impotently at the door which even policemen couldn’t open. In a couple of minutes the doctor came out again, but those minutes had done the damage; his gaunt young face was earnestly determined, and he put finality into his tone:
‘There is very little use in your waiting, Superintendent. I cannot permit the patient Johnson to be seen again today.’
‘Are his injuries so serious?’
‘That we’ll know when we’ve seen the X-ray. I assure you there’s no point in your waiting any longer.’
‘And that applies to Miss Butters?’
‘She is suffering from delayed shock.’
‘Couldn’t it be delayed a little longer?’
‘I will not take that suggestion seriously…’
Looking indignant, the doctor turned to go back into Casualties, but he was prevented by a hand placed firmly on his arm.
‘Into the office, my lad! This isn’t as simple as you seem to think. There’s a little more hangs to it than your playing the Sir Galahad…’
Colouring, the doctor allowed himself to be conducted into the office. Gently closed the glass-panelled door, and finding no bolt, set his shoulder against it.
‘Now! This is a case of murder, if you’re slow at cottoning on.’
‘I am perfectly aware of that-’
‘Good. I’ll try to enlighten you a bit further.
‘You realize what has happened when a man commits homicide? In the first place, to do it, he’s crossed the border of normality. Then, having done it, he’s in arms against society — all other criminals have their friends, but the murderer stands alone.
‘He’s in arms against society! There’s nothing still remaining sacred. He will kill again, or destroy, doing whatever seems to give him an advantage. And the murderer we are dealing with has begun his career of violence — with him, the murder was a point of departure, not a culminating act.
‘He’s more than the average killer — he’s a man in the throes of a primary breakdown; still able to counterfeit normality, but in a state of moral collapse. And if my surmise is correct then Johnson can help me to identify him — tonight, in all probability, before he has a chance to do more damage.
‘So now you know where you stand. I’m putting the responsibility on you. Either you let me talk to Johnson, or what may happen will rest on your shoulders.’
The doctor, listening sullenly at first, became by degrees more thoughtful; then he gave Gently a curious, half wondering look.
‘How long will it take?’
‘At the outside, five minutes.’
‘Come on then. We thought you were going to shove handcuffs on the bloke.’
Johnson was lying on a couch and he still appeared drowsy, but he was mumbling something to Anne Butters, who sat holding his hand. Seeing Gently with the doctor she rose angrily to her feet, but the latter made her a sign and then whispered:
‘It’s all right!’
Unwillingly she stood back and permitted Gently to take the chair. Johnson turned his head slightly, his eyes questioning Gently.
‘How are you feeling now, Johnson?’
‘Doped… and damned glad of it! Couldn’t you wait a bit, cocker… let them set this bastard?’
‘There’s some questions I have to ask you.’
‘Whacko!.. I knew it…’
‘I want to know what you did after you sold your car last night.’
Johnson frowned, though whether from pain it wasn’t easy to decide. There were deep creases about his eyes and a square set to his mouth.
‘What do you want to know… about that?’
‘Everything. All you can remember.’
‘I tried to get Anne on the phone… twice… wanted to tell her where to find me.’
‘Did you get through to her?’
‘No… this morning… when they went to church… reckoned that would be the time.’
‘What else did you do?’
‘I can’t remember… went to the flicks.’
‘Where was that?’
‘Damn! High Street… Cary Grant in a horse opera.’
‘And after that?’
‘I went to bed.’
‘Where? Where did you spend the night?’
‘What does it matter? I don’t know!.. Bed and brekker in Church Street…’
‘What was the name of the people?’
‘Blast it, cocker… have a heart! Got a knocker like a horseshoe… remember that, it’s why I went there…’
He was frowning more and more, and the doctor shook his head at Gently. Anne Butters, as though taking a cue, began decorously to weep. Gently shrugged and rose to his feet:
‘I’d like to use your phone, if I may…’
‘You’ll find one in the office — now, I must really get him to Radiology.’
Gently’s first call was to Headquarters where he made an unexpected connection — Superintendent Walker, who had heard news of Johnson’s capture. The city police chief had driven in from his house on the outskirts, and was now waiting impatiently to learn the sensational details.
‘Have you pinned the charge on him?’
‘No — not yet! There’s one or two more things which need tying up. I’ll be back in about an hour and we’ll talk it over then… in the meantime, will you post a man outside Mallows’s house?’
‘Mallows! Has he got something to do with this?’
‘I think he can help us…’ Gently made a face. ‘I’ll want him for questioning as soon as I get back. But don’t waste any time about putting a man on him.’
His second call was to Chelmsford, to Inspector Horrocks, to whom he gave the details he had learnt from Johnson.
‘It’s urgent to have them checked with the least possible delay. Ring me back at City Headquarters — I’ll be available all night.’
All night… or as long as it took Mallows to crack. He went in search of Stephens and Hansom, and took them off for a cup of coffee.