Killer in the Shade (10 page)

‘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.

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, unable 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.

Afterwards Hazard was in time to join his chief in the room where the pair who had been picked up in a stolen car waited to give their explanations, and to hear Drury say, ‘What were you doing in Croft Avenue the night of the murder, Miss Wilson?'

Carol choked and her eyes grew large, and Rollo did his best to gain a little time for her.

‘Look, Superintendent,' he began, ‘I phoned you. Remember that? If you're in a hurry — '

‘Hurry!' snapped Drury, biting the word through. ‘Half the damned West London Salvage Corps has been searching the debris of a gutted warehouse for your remains. They didn't find them, and for a thundering good reason. You're running around the countryside in a stolen car with a young woman we're very anxious to interview. Damn it, you wouldn't have rung me if the local police hadn't caught you in that car.'

‘That's not fair,' Rollo protested.

‘It isn't? I'll tell you how fair it is. Your fingerprints have been taken from the passenger's seat of that stolen car while you've been waiting. They match prints found on a gun in Western Avenue earlier today beside the body of a man who had been shot.'

‘Vince Pallard.'

‘Naturally, you would know who it is, wouldn't you?'

‘Not because I saw him and not because I killed him.'

Drury pulled his chin back on to the knot of his tie. He regarded Rollo archly.

‘All right,' he said. ‘We'll all make ourselves comfortable and then we'll hear the story Mr Hackley has to tell us.'

No one was smiling. Not even Bill Hazard.

Rollo said, ‘There's something I'd like to know first.'

‘I can guess,' Drury growled, leaning back in the chair he had selected. ‘What happened to Moore?' Rollo merely stared at him. ‘He did all right. Drop Tom Moore down a sewer and he'll come up smelling of Chanel No. 5, none of your sweet violet stuff. He jumped into the Grand Union, frightened the hell out of a woman on a houseboat, who gave him tea and toast while he dried his clothes. If she gave him anything else Moore didn't say, but any man without his clothes on a houseboat would have a hard time convincing any normal husband about why he was there.'

Bill Hazard was grinning again. He had made a note to be sure to tell Tom
Moore. Drury caught his interest again when he said with his former snap, ‘I'm not forgetting you in Croft Avenue, Miss Wilson, but let's have Mr Hackley's story first. Okay, I'm listening,' he nodded to Rollo.

Beginning at the beginning, the young journalist told the Yard man all he knew. He knew this was the only chance he would be given for levelling with Drury and getting off a very uncomfortable hook. If later Drury found he had held out on any important detail the Superintendent wouldn't be friendly, and at the moment Carol had too many avowed enemies.

Drury interrupted the account with an occasional question to show that he was fitting what he was being told to what he already knew, but for the most part Rollo was heard in a rather glowering silence.

When he finished Drury said sharply, ‘That the lot?'

‘The lot, Superintendent. Now you've got the chance to round up the gang at Thaxstead Hill Barn. That'll stop a
break-in at some branch of the National City Bank.'

‘So you tell me,' Drury said. From his tone it was anyone's guess whether he believed what he had just been told or held some very pertinent reservations. The Yard man turned to Carol. ‘So according to Mr Hackley, you haven't been having a secret rest cure, Miss Wilson. Perhaps now you're ready to tell me just what you have been doing.'

Carol's face puckered, and Rollo thought she was on the point of bursting into tears, but the grimace changed into a look of twisted anger that surprised him, as did the vehemence of her first words.

‘Very readily, Superintendent Drury. But first let me tell you how much I loathe this strange and frightening man who married my Aunt Peggy, my mother's sister. Neither of my parents are living now. They were killed in a plane crash on a charter flight to Majorca. My mother had some money of her own, and in her will she left two thousand pounds to her sister Margaret, who had married
a Humphrey Peel. It was the first time I'd heard her husband's full name. The few times I'd seen my aunt had been with my parents and they'd always talked of her as being married to someone who was out of the country a great deal. It would have been more truthful if they'd said in the country, for I know now that this uncle of mine by marriage had been in and out of jail regularly. My parents lived in Chester and until I was eighteen I was away at school and was only at home during the holidays.'