Killer in the Shade Page 7

  He kept telling himself he had to think of Carol.

  This crazy bandit in dark glasses who looked like a hippie someone had created out of the body of a near-blind forger, was a night creature, who lived by preference in darkness, when no one saw his face unmasked.

  A new-style invisible man, one concealed in a false body. In daylight he used those glasses, hippie clothes and hairstyle, a character few looked at once, much less twice. At night he could discard those glasses because in darkness he saw things as other men did in daytime.

  He had no idea of how long the car had been travelling, but he knew when it had left behind the London suburbs and was passing through a countryside of trees and open fields. The air was different as it blew through the open window beside the driver. Occasionally a man said something in a low-pitched voice, when someone else would grunt an unintelligible answer. Conversation didn’t flourish and it certainly wasn’t encouraged. At times a cigarette would be lit and the interior of the car would reek of the exhaled smoke until the air from the window beside the driver shredded the fug. Later the window was closed as rain beat down, but after the shower it was opened again. The car did not stop.

  Not until shortly after the wheels churned across gravel. Then Rollo was hauled, full of cramps, from his doubled-up position and, with a man on each side propping him up, forced to walk up the steps of a porch. He was taken into a room in a house and dumped on a settee. The men went out and more time passed before he heard the door open again, close, and the sound of an electric fire being plugged into a wall socket. Next his limbs were untied and then the taped blindfold was removed from his face.

  He lolled against the settee in darkness save for the glow of the electric fire, which was behind the settee, so that its shadow was large on the wall facing him.

  From behind him the voice he hated asked, ‘How long have you known Carol Wilson?’

  His answer surprised himself. ‘Long enough to fall in love with her.’

  ‘Your bad luck, Hackley. Had you not done so you wouldn’t be here now. I’ve no alternative but to kill you before tomorrow.’

  The killer in the shade.

  The phrase echoed in Rollo’s angry and bemused mind like a mocking promise, but he struggled to find understanding. Even a madman had reasons. Mad reasons.

  He asked, ‘Why the hell did you have to drag me here?’

  ‘I’m going to give you a chance to make a real scoop. You won’t see it in print, but it will carry your name. You’ll be famous for a few hours. That’s more fame than most people manage in a lifetime.’

  Mad, Rollo repeated to himself, but he was wanting the other to continue with this incredible folly. The speaker went on, quite unperturbed at the lack of response in his audience.

  ‘You know I am practically blind by normal standards, but I have night sight. What you don’t know is that I am as clever with a pen as Humphrey Peel, who is dead. Dead,’ the speaker insisted. There was a pause in which Rollo sat listening to the other’s ragged breathing, as though the man was struggling under some emotional stress and trying to control his feelings.

  ‘Humphrey Peel was released from jail after being sentenced to five years on perjured evidence. He left prison determined to collect compensation. Oh, the cops kept tabs on him, but within a few months Humphrey Peel was dead. In his place there was a criminal many times more able to baffle the police. That new personality was made in prison, Hackley. You’re going to have the chance to tell the truth.’

  ‘No one will believe it,’ Rollo said.

  ‘That is an immaterial side issue,’ said the man he couldn’t see. ‘Few believe the Bible today, but it is still the world’s biggest best-seller. To get back to my story. There are persons I can trust and some I can’t. Those I can’t trust will be removed.’

  ‘Like Vince Pallard?’

  Again his own reaction surprised Rollo. He expected a display of anger, but instead received a reasoned reply.

  ‘Vince was a fool. He didn’t know when loyalty was required. Maybe because he had never learned what it was. No one will miss him unless it is that Tucker woman who poses as his housekeeper.’

  When the speaker paused Rollo had his next question lined up. ‘How will finding my fingerprints on the gun that killed him help you?’

  The man laughed on a jarring note. ‘You sound bitter, but I can make allowances. You should remember that most criminals who are caught overlook at least one important detail. I shall avoid that mistake. Always, when I do something that will be investigated by the police, there will be a clue pointing in another direction.’ There was a pause before the speaker said in a lower voice, ‘You see, a crime that points in no direction can be a mistake. It usually ends up pointing to a prison cell. No matter what the police suspect, your fingerprints will be on the murder weapon. The police will not be able to ignore that basic fact. Nor will they be able to get past it.’

  Rollo’s cramps and body pains had largely subsided. He started to lift on to his feet, wishing to turn and confront his strange inquisitor in the fire-glow, but the man said sharply, ‘Sit down and remain facing the wall, you fool. I have you covered with a gun. Get it into your damned head that you can do nothing — nothing, except what I tell you.’

  The words were uttered as though the speaker hated him. Rollo pressed against the back of the settee, his mind dizzy. Then the angry voice changed back to that slurring, almost introspective sound.

  ‘But I’m going to tell you something else. Tomorrow a branch of the National City Bank will be raided if there is a power cut, and there will be. Those strikers have got the bit between their teeth. Only one thing will take them back to work — cash. Well, their obstinacy is my opportunity.’

  ‘Robbing a bank is very different from lifting jewels from a private house or even a closed West End shop,’ Rollo insisted, hoping to rile the other.

  He didn’t succeed.

  ‘Of course, but that is allowed for. Just as I have allowed for never using the same cover twice.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The warehouse to which you followed me is by now a fire-gutted ruin.’

  Rollo shivered. ‘What about Moore?’

  ‘Your companion? I think he recovered, tried to get away, and fell from a window into the canal and was drowned.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ muttered Rollo, appalled by this news.

  ‘If he were alive he would probably think you perished in the flames.’

  ‘Like Humphrey Peel in the flat in Cotswold Crescent.’

  ‘Precisely. I used that flat once, and then it was destroyed. I refused to make the mistake of using it twice. Now you are shocked by what you consider my ruthlessness. Am I right?’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Don’t be tedious. It’s the worst fault in any writer.’

  ‘Then prove you’re sane.’

  ‘Ah! Clever of you. But I can do just that simply because you are to die, in order to complicate things for the very persistent Superintendent Frank Drury.’ The man behind Rollo made sounds that suggested he was laughing at a private joke. ‘I’m sane, Hackley, because I’m able to tell you that the remains found in the upstairs flat at Cotswold Crescent, and formally identified as those of Humphrey Peel, belonged to a certain Anthony Arbuthnot.’

  ‘The missing plastic surgeon!’

  ‘Of course you would know of his disappearance, you’re a journalist. But in that case you must understand why I am sane.’

  Rollo shut his eyes, tired of that large black shadow on the nearby wall, and silently allowed the other full marks for a scheme he must have spent those years in prison perfecting. He had had his face changed from the police mug shots. Not enough to make him look suspiciously different, but the differences would show in close-ups and they would be important. The dark sunglasses and the restyled hair, especially over the face, would make recognition difficult. He remembered how he had seen the man enter the dining-room at the Burroughs Hotel and jumped t
o the conclusion it was Peel because he had allowed for the differences hair-style and appearance made from the photo Tom Moore had shown him. It was Humphrey Peel with his hair and whiskers made to look like the man behind him. Remove the hair and whiskers and change the clothing and the differences created in the face by Anthony Arbuthnot would become important.

  Also, the man who had created those differences was dead.

  As Rollo Hackley would be now that he had been told too much to allow him to remain alive.

  ‘No questions?’ mocked the other’s voice, a sharp-edged intrusion in a growing silence.

  ‘When do I get to write what I know?’

  ‘Soon. I’ve a typewriter waiting in another room.’

  ‘The point, though. I don’t get it.’

  ‘Drury will. It’ll read like someone on LSD or a killer who has shot a man trying to throw the suspicion on someone else, a last desperate expedient.’

  The reasoning behind that struck Rollo as possibly faulty. The trouble was he couldn’t find the fault.

  ‘All right, then, suppose I refuse?’

  ‘Refusal could hurt Carol Wilson.’

  The reminder was as crushing as a physical blow. Rollo made the effort to rally.

  ‘I seem to remember, at the warehouse, there was some question as to where she is. Have you had time since then to find out?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me, Hackley.’

  There was menace in the voice, but something else — the speaker was rattled. For the first time. Which meant Carol’s whereabouts remained unknown and the fact was worrying this incredible uncle of hers.

  ‘Murder and kidnapping isn’t my idea of a game,’ Rollo staid, standing up. ‘If you’re going to shoot me in any case, I might as well see you at close hand.’

  ‘Sit down, damn you!’ The words were screamed at him in a voice throbbing with panic.

  Rollo continued rising, and turning. He had time to see the large glow-etched shadow of a hand holding a gun and then the door opened and light swam across the room behind the man with the gun, who spun around, his arms rising to shield his eyes from the light.

  For one moment Rollo saw the face of a virtual stranger, now the man was not wearing the large sunglasses.

  That was all Rollo had time to take in before the other figure in the doorway turned sideways and Carol’s voice called, ‘Rollo — quick! Now!’

  Rollo sprang over the settee, aiming a blow at the man with the gun which caused him to lurch away. The younger man was almost thrown off balance, but recovered himself and reached the doorway.

  His arms folded around the girl he loved.

  As they did so the man with the gun fired.

  Chapter 6

  Only the effort Rollo made to throw himself and the girl he clutched sideways saved them. A second shot followed the first, but they were running down a hall, and the sound of bullets striking plastered walls was lost as the girl said urgently, ‘Don’t ask questions, Rollo. No time now. The others will soon be here.’

  A door on their left opened, and a big man with a squat gun filling his right fist stood for a lost moment gaping at them. The surprised man’s fleshy mouth was parting when the light in the hall and the light in the room beyond the big man went out.

  ‘Power cut,’ breathed Carol. ‘Now.’

  The man, who had recovered from his surprise too late, fired into the darkness, and the bullet smashed into woodwork with a wrenching sound before farther up the hall a man who could see in the dark called, ‘Stay out of the way.’

  Rollo was pulled by the girl through a door beyond a staircase, and he blundered into a chair and a table in what he supposed was a kitchen. While he stood cursing Carol opened another door and night chill poured over him. Then he was running with her in the lead through a damp darkness under trees. He almost ran into a stone garden ornament, but was saved by Carol pulling him aside.

  ‘This way.’

  She led him over grass and between tall shrubs, some of which had lost their leaves, which rustled under his hurrying feet. From behind came the sound of excited voices and a man cursing, his tone shriller than the others’.

  ‘Your uncle’s got a swine of a temper,’ Rollo said between gasps of choked-off breath.

  Carol did not reply. She swung right, and they were on a stretch of gravel which narrowed and ended at a gate, through which they passed into a lane. Fifty yards down this lane was a car parked close into a hedge.

  They climbed in and Carol started the engine. She switched on the lights and they roared up the lane and round a bend, where a man’s shape detached itself from a wider gate. He raised a hand.

  ‘He’s going to shoot, Carol!’ Rollo warned.

  Instead of instinctively turning away, the girl, who had already effected a nervy rescue, turned on the car’s main beam, blinding the man. She kept straight at him, and he had to jump aside. Immediately she switched off the lights and let the car take the next fifty yards in the dark, while from behind three wild shots screamed into the night.

  Then Carol switched on the lights again as her foot came down heavily on the accelerator. The car seemed to gather rear legs under itself and spring forward.

  Rollo was trying to control his breathing. When he was able to speak without choking he said, ‘I’ve seen that face before — somewhere.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said the amazingly cool girl at his side, who was handling the car expertly. ‘Until two months ago it was in Walton Jail, Liverpool.’

  ‘Micky Hanlon,’ said Rollo. ‘For a month his arrest was imminent.’ He grinned at the reflection of the headlights on the road. ‘But Fleet Street’s interest in him died when the report proved to be very insubstantial.’

  Carol wasn’t listening. She was turning her head every few seconds, as though expecting to catch the sound of a pursuing car.

  Rollo asked, ‘He’s collected a desperate gang if Hanlon’s a sample.’

  ‘That’s what has driven me wellnigh crazy,’ she said. ‘Suddenly he’s completely changed from a clever crook with a pen, who had stopped being caught with the police having proof which incriminated him. He is sentenced on a piece of perjured evidence, and next he comes out of prison a different man, one with a scheme that attracts men who are desperate.’

  Rollo refrained from asking questions that churned in his brain. Carol had enough on her mind to try to elude a man bent on preventing their escape.

  It was not long before he had lost all sense of direction. At times she drove with only sidelights on, at other times she risked driving with all lights extinguished, and then she drove with dipped headlights. Her average speed was about forty, maintained by some really expert handling of a car that seemed to be part of her.

  Once she spoke, as though the words were an extension of thoughts forcing themselves to surface from her subconscious.

  ‘I’ll never feel safe while he’s alive.’

  Rollo looked at her.

  ‘Carol,’ he said.

  ‘Not now, Rollo,’ she told him tensely.

  Nearly twenty minutes later they were easing their way through traffic approaching Epsom when a police car drew alongside in the darkness of the street, its lights blazing and siren churning a hoarse wail.

  ‘Pull over to the kerb,’ ordered the uniformed man leaning from the open window.

  ‘What the hell,’ Carol muttered, obeying.

  She braked and waited for the policeman to come from the car that had pulled ahead. He had a torch in his hand and was inspecting the car when he was joined by the other man, who had been driving.

  The one with the torch held a brief consultation with the police driver before both came up to where Carol was tapping her foot impatiently on a floorboard.

  ‘Is this your car, ma’am?’ asked the policeman with the torch.

  Rollo guessed what was coming and bit off a groan. Of all the filthy luck!

  ‘No, it belongs to a relative and it’s miss, not ma’am,’ snapped Carol, una
ble to do better with a temper that was growing threadbare.

  ‘Where does this relative live? Miss,’ the constable added sarcastically.

  ‘Thaxstead High Barn. Shipley. South of Horsham in Sussex.’

  The address was spaced out as the constable wrote the words in a notebook he had produced. The driver held the torch.

  ‘And the relative’s name, miss?’

  Carol did not reply. She sat looking at the waiting constable.

  ‘His name, please,’ the constable repeated shortly.

  ‘One moment,’ Carol said. ‘Do you mind telling me what this is all about?’

  Rollo tried sliding down in his seat to avoid the searching ray of the torch suddenly directed at him.

  ‘No, I don’t mind, not at all, miss,’ said the constable, adopting a fine edge of sarcasm. ‘This car you’re driving, and which you say belongs to a relative of yours, was reported stolen a week ago. I’m surprised it’s still got the same number-plates. But then, it’s difficult to think of everything, isn’t it, miss?’

  It was an hour and twenty minutes later that Bill Hazard braked outside the police station at Epsom and followed Frank Drury inside, where a uniformed duty inspector showed them to the room where Rollo Hackley and Carol Wilson were sitting, empty tea-cups on the table in front of them and cake crumbs on the pair of canteen plates.

  Rollo had insisted on ringing Drury, and at first his request was considered a crude bluff until he proved that he was a reporter on the staff of the Morning Gazette. After that the temperature had gone down appreciably, some basic refreshments had been produced, and everyone had waited to learn if Drury would take the trouble.

  When he did there was a fresh rise in the temperature, especially for a sarcastic member of a police-car crew, who was glad to be left to Bill Hazard’s questioning, which was limited to about twenty seconds.