I’d been dimly conscious of some car noise and other flak from outside while I’d been talking to Susan, so I wasn’t surprised when I found only Tickener’s FB and one other car outside the building. There were lights flashing at the end of the drive and a certain amount of shouting and hurrying about. I started towards the gate and had covered about half the distance when a figure loomed up in front of me and pointed a pistol at my hairline which is low and just in front of some pretty vital parts of my brain.
“Put your hands on your head slowly,” the shadow said. He took a flashlight from his pocket and shone it in my face.
I raised my hands. “I killed Cock Robin,” I said, “take me to your leader.” The flashlight beam wavered and the gun muzzle looked a fraction less eager.
“You Hardy?” he growled.
“Yeah. Is Grant Evans still around and can I put my hands down?”
“You can. Have to be very careful, Mr Hardy. One of the heavies who was with Costello is still loose, we got the other one.”
“Dead?”
“No, my partner winged him and he’s talking a blue streak already.”
“Good,” I said. “What about the other two?”
“They got away. There’s another way out around the back. We reckon they lay low while the shooting was going on, then hopped in one of the cars at the front and scooted out. They went over garden beds and all. We had other men coming and they reported a car moving fast on the road but they didn’t know the score and let it go. Bad luck. Anyway, Inspector Evans is down there.”
He jerked his chin at the gate and went off to shut the stable door a bit tighter. I was thinking that it was partly my fault, I hadn’t noticed another exit. I reached the gate where Evans was in a huddle with some cops in uniform and some men in plain clothes. Tickener was looking serious and about ten years older. Jones was photographing two white-overalled men sliding a long, white-wrapped bundle into the back of an ambulance. Bruno was lying on a stretcher which had little fold-out legs to keep it up off the ground. I jolted it a bit as I came up.
“Careful,” he groaned and turned his head to look at me. I grinned down at him. His elegant flared trousers had been slit to the crotch and there was a large dressing around his knee. He didn’t look happy.
“How’s it going Rocky?” I said. “I bet the police surgeon’ll do a great job on that knee. You’ll be back kicking old ladies to death in no time.”
“Get fucked,” he snarled.
I tut-tutted him and walked over to Evans.
“Back exit, Cliff,” he said, “it’d never have done for Malaya.”
“True,” I said. “What car did they take?”
“Fiat, sports model.”
“That’d be right,” I said wearily.
“How’s that?”
“Never mind, Grant. What’s the drill now? Headquarters, statements and such?” He nodded. “OK,” I said, “see you there.”
I trudged over to the Falcon, climbed in and turned the key. The engine leapt into life as if it had thrived on the action.
15
I was at police HQ for over four hours. It would have been longer and tougher if Grant Evans hadn’t been on side. I made statements about my earlier call on Brave. Evans allowed me to leave the Gutteridges with a very low profile in the whole thing. The Costello affair was what he was interested in and what Tickener’s readers were interested in as well. They were both happy for me and my involvements to take a back seat. I told Grant that I might have something soon on the Giles killing and he said that would be nice in an uninterested way. I read on a message sheet on his desk that “attempts to contact Senior Detective Charles Jackson and Dr William Clyde had been unsuccessful”. Bulletins were out on them. In a break from the recording and questioning, I got on a phone and called Bryn Gutteridge’s number. There was no answer. The same ten cents bought me a call to St Bede’s hospital and the information that Miss Sleeman had responded well to transfusions and a saline drip and was sleeping peacefully. When I gave my name the desk attendant said that the police were anxious to contact me in connection with Miss Gutteridge’s injuries. I told her where I was calling from and she seemed satisfied. I hadn’t heard anything about it at headquarters and I didn’t want to if I wasn’t going to be there until mid-day.
Brave, Bruno and the thug who’d been picked up in the grounds were securely booked. The third man had sung like a bird and there was a bulletin out on his mate, a long-time hood with an impressive record and a history of association with Rory Costello. Nobody put pressure on me to identify the two men who’d escaped in the Fiat and I kept quiet about it. Evans prepared a statement for the press and went into a huddle with Tickener and Jones about their respective rights to the glamour and gore of the evening. They sorted it out and the pressmen, looking pretty pleased with themselves, came over to shake my hand before leaving.
“Lucky I followed you, Hardy,” said Tickener. “Instinct, eh?”
We shook. “I guess so,” I said. He hadn’t handled himself too badly and he’d be well clear of the sports page and Joe Barrett’s errands now. Also, he now owed me something and it’s handy in my game to have a pressman in your debt. Colin Jones looked like he needed some sleep, but if he was going to get his pictures into the morning editions he probably wouldn’t get it. He let go my hand and slapped one of his cameras.
“Miles to go before I sleep,” he said.
“You’re the only educated cameraman in the west, Colin.”
“Yeah, it gets in the way. Thanks for letting me in, Cliff, it made a change.” They wandered off to put the final touches on the thrills in store for their readers over the yoghurt and crispies.
I’d exhausted my packet of Drum and drunk all the autovend coffee I could stand. It was 2 a.m. and I felt like I needed a new skin, a new throat and quite a few other accessories. I had an Irish thirst and the image of the wine in my refrigerator beckoned me like the damasked arm of the lady in the lake. Evans started slipping papers into folders and his telephone had finally stopped ringing hot. I was sitting across from his self-satisfied look. He reached into a drawer of the scarred and battered pine desk and fished out two cigars in cellophane wrappers. He offered me one.
“Keeping ‘em since Jenny was born. Thought it might be a son. This is the next best thing, have one?”
I shook my head. “Wouldn’t have a cold beer would you?”
He smiled, lit his cigar and leaned back blowing a thin stream of the rich, creamy smoke at the ceiling. “Piss artist,” he said indulgently. “Case closed, Cliff?”
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine is like a fish’s arsehole. I mean yours.”
“I don’t know yet.” I was lying, I suspected it was just beginning and that there were many little corners of it still unexplored and a great highway of truth still to put through the lives of the people concerned.
“Well, anything I can do, just let me know.” He looked at his watch and I took the point. We shook hands and I trudged down the corridor and took yet another chance on the lift. We made a nice couple as we wheezed down to ground level and I closed its wire grille gently; with care and kind treatment we might both just last out the decade.
I picked up my car which was looking sheepish and barely roadworthy among the powder blues in the police parking lot, and drove home through the back streets and quietest roads. I tried to think of Ailsa battling with her pain in hospital, and Susan Gutteridge coming out of a long slide, and Bryn cruising and cruel like a harbour shark, but all the pictures blurred and the people receded far off into the distance. A truck backfired when I was within fifty yards of home, and as I sidled the Falcon into the yard my ears were ringing with the noise and I could smell the smoke and feel the shotgun heavy and deadly in my hands. I went into the house, drank a long glass of wine and made coffee, but I went to sleep in a chair while waiting for the cup I’d poured to cool. I swilled it down cold and went to bed.