“Why did you try to run away from me, then?” he asked. On something like that, he had hope of a straight answer.
O’Flynn looked at him as if he’d just come out of the - what did they call the local bedlam house? - the Yellow Brick, that was the name. “Wouldn’t you?” the miner demanded.
“Not if I hadn’t done anything,” Bushell replied.
“The more fool you,” O’Flynn said. “You should see poor Percy McGaffigan after Chief Lassiter and his bully boys got done pounding on him. He’s lost four teeth, the sorry devil, and he’s limping still. I’ve got a family, too, I do. I didn’t want to go home to ‘em all crippled up.”
“Who’s this Lassiter?” Lieutenant Hammond asked, and then let out a huge yawn.
“Charleroi constabulary chief,” Bushell told him. He shook his head, not just tired but also frustrated. O’Flynn was answering too well. No matter how well he answered, though, he was in too deep to be believable. Bushell swung back to him. “You’re telling me you happened to know Joseph Kilbride, and you happened to know Phineas Stanage - “
“I never told you I knew Phineas Stanage,” O’Flynn shot back. “I told you my cousin works for him, and he does.”
“And you just happened to be there with Stanage, and on the day Stanage went over to talk with another damned Son?” Bushell shook his head. “It won’t wash, O’Flynn. Not a jury in the world would buy it, even for a minute.”
“Then they’ll put the broad arrow on me, but not for anything you can prove I deserve,” Michael O’Flynn replied. Like Hammond, he yawned. “Can you let me go back to my cell now? I was asleep when your Cossacks came and got me.”
“He talks like a Son,” Sam Stanley observed.
“So he does,” Bushell said. “He’s had more sleep then either one of us, too.” As he had with Stanage, he hammered away at O’Flynn. The coal miner projected an air of stubborn ignorance. Without getting rough, Bushell had no hope of penetrating it. Finally, when the noisy wall clock showed it was nearly six, he gave up and sent O’Flynn away.
He walked into the hallway himself. Kathleen Flannery sat dozing in a chair. Ted Kittridge was sitting, too, working on a cheap cigarillo and yet another cup of coffee. No matter how strong and black Bushell drank it, he could feel it wasn’t helping him hold his eyes open any more. If he didn’t sleep a little now, he’d collapse soon. Stanley looked to be in the same straits.
Bushell sat down next to Kathleen. He started to close his eyes, then jerked them open again. “Turn on a wireless, somewhere where the Sons can’t listen to it,” he told Lieutenant Hammond. “If word comes that The Two Georges is ransomed, we’ll - hell, I don’t have the faintest idea what we’ll do, but I want to know.” Hammond nodded. Bushell’s eyes did close.
Next thing he knew, someone was shaking him. He jerked in startlement and almost fell off the chair.
“I’m sorry,” Kathleen Flannery said. “Here. Try some of this.” She held a mug full of coffee under his nose.
The rich, earthy smell filled his nostrils. “An angel of mercy, only slightly disguised,” he said, taking the mug. “No wonder I love you.” Even in the dim light of the hallway, he saw Kathleen flush. He gulped down half the mug. It was as bad as constabulary-station coffee usually is, but it was hot and strong, which also counted. He finished it in another couple of long swallows, then said, “What time is it, anyhow?”
“A little past ten,” Kathleen said.
Bushell got up. An ache in the small of his back said he’d been sleeping in that awkward position for a while. He rubbed at his eyes. If Kathleen hadn’t wakened him, he might have gone on sleeping quite a while longer. “Any word of anything?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “No news of a ransom on the wireless, no reports from Major Manchester, nothing.”
“I’d better ring him,” Bushell said, and went off to use the telephone in Lieutenant Hammond’s office.
“I was just going to phone you,” Manchester said when the connection went through. “We had to be awfully persuasive” - Bushell suspected he wouldn’t have cared to find himself on the receiving end of that persuasion - “but we’ve had a break. One of the lads I dragged in says The Two Georges was in a storage cubicle, somewhere not far from here. No matter how persuasive we got, though” - yes, that was a euphemism - “he didn’t know where, and neither do any of the other buggers we have here.”
“And there are only about ten thousand of those bloody cubicles around - if the painting is still in one, which it’s liable not to be,” Bushell said, resolutely refusing to be optimistic. “Still, it’s something. We’ll see what we can get out of the dear lads we have here.” He glanced up at the clock in Hammond’s office: half past ten now, a few minutes later, actually. “The Ides of March have come, but they have not yet gone,” he muttered.
Micah Williams had been interrogating Cameron Moffett. He came out of the chamber looking depressed, so Bushell had a go at the Independence Party man. Moffett, who was large and beefy and looked like one of Morton Johnston’s distant cousins, proved to be the sort who did not easily yield ground.
He shook a well-manicured forefinger in Bushell’s face. “This is character assassination you’re engaged in, sir, nothing else but - character assassination and interference in the affairs of a legitimate political party, to say nothing of illegal and amoral suppression of dissent.”
“I thought you said it was nothing but character assassination,” Bushell answered. Moffett stared at him.
“Never mind,” he growled. “I didn’t come in here to waste my time listening to your drivel. If they don’t hang you, you’ll spend the rest of your natural life in gaol. Sir David Clarke has told us everything he knows, and he knows plenty.”
“That toffee-nosed little weasel?” Moffett jeered. “Past getting the unmentionables off half the women in this town, he couldn’t tell manure from mayonnaise.” That was also Bushell’s judgment, but he did not find it reassuring to have a Son agree with him.
Bushell turned away so Moffett wouldn’t see him scowl. He’d tried that gambit or the one with Sir Horace Bragg on every prisoner he’d questioned, and every man had been convincing in his rejection of it. The Sons were getting information and protection from somewhere high up, though. Past Sir David and Sir Horace, Bushell couldn’t imagine any other one man well enough positioned to give them both. Sir Martin Luther King? The notion was absurd. Sir Devereaux Jones? No, he didn’t have enough clout to know of upcoming searches in time to warn the Sons of Liberty about them. Besides, any Negro who backed the Sons belonged in the Yellow Brick.
Medium-ranking RAMs might have heard of the searches and passed the word to the Sons, as had happened in Richmond. But medium-ranking RAMs wouldn’t have known of Charles Ill’s impending visit soon enough to get that word to the Sons in time for them to steal The Two Georges and demand its ransom. It all added up to - nothing that made any sense.
If you believed Cameron Moffett, he didn’t know anything, he’d never known anything, and he wouldn’t know anything if he lived to be a hundred and twelve. Bushell didn’t believe him, but couldn’t shake him, either.
It was nearly four when he gave up and sent Moffett back to his cell. At some time in there, someone had gone out for more fish and chips. They’d saved him a portion. It was long since cold, and greasy enough to lubricate a steamer’s differential. He ate it anyhow.