The Snow Tiger / Night of Error (35 page)

He might have got away then but once again I tackled him rugby-fashion so that I floored him just short of the fire escape. The fall knocked the breath out of me and he improved the shining hour by kicking me in the face. Then, as I was shaking my head in dizziness, he tossed Mark’s case into the darkness.

By the time I regained my feet I was between him and the metal staircase and he was facing me with his right hand, now unencumbered, darting to his pocket. I saw the gun as he drew it and knew the meaning of real fear. I jumped for him and he side-stepped frantically trying to clear the gun from his pocket – but the foresight must have caught on the lining.

Then I hit him hard on the jaw and he teetered on the top step of the fire escape. I hit him again and slammed him against the railing and, to my horror, he jackknifed over. He didn’t make a sound as he fell the three floors into the alley and it seemed a long time before I heard the dull thump as he hit the ground.

I looked down into the darkness and saw nothing. I was conscious of the trembling of my hands as they gripped the steel rail. There was a scurry of footsteps and I turned to see Geordie darting down the stairs. ‘Leave them,’ I shouted. ‘They’re armed!’

But he didn’t stop and all I heard was the thud of his feet as he raced down the staircase.

The tall thin man who lived in the next flat came out in a dressing gown. ‘Now, what’s all this?’ he asked querulously. ‘A chap can’t listen to the radio with all this racket going on.’

I said, ‘Phone the police. There’s been an attempted murder.’

His face went white and he looked at my arm. I looked down and saw blood staining the edges of a slit in the sleeve of my jacket. I couldn’t remember being knifed and I felt nothing.

I looked back up at him. ‘Well, hurry,’ I yelled at him.

A gunshot echoed up the stairwell and we both started.

‘Christ!’

I clattered down the stairs at top speed, all three flights, and came across Geordie in the foyer. He was sitting on the floor staring at his fingers in amazement – they were red with welling blood.

‘The bastard shot me!’ he said incredulously.

‘Where are you hit, for God’s sake?’

‘In the hand, I think. I don’t feel anything anywhere else, and he only fired one shot.’

I looked at his hand. Blood was spurting from the end of his little finger. I began to laugh, an hysterical sound not far from crying, and went on until Geordie slapped my face with his unwounded hand. ‘Pull yourself together, Mike,’ he said firmly. I became aware of doors slamming and voices upstairs but as yet nobody had ventured down into the foyer itself, and I sobered suddenly.

‘I think I killed one of them,’ I said emptily.

‘Don’t be daft. How could you kill a man with your fist?’

‘I knocked him off the fire escape. He fell from the third floor.’

Geordie looked at me closely. ‘We’d better go and have a look at that.’

‘Are you all right?’ We were both bleeding freely now.

He was wrapping his finger in a handkerchief which promptly turned bright red. ‘I’m okay. You can’t call this a mortal wound,’ he said dryly. We went out into the street and walked quickly round to the alley into which the fire escape led. As we turned the corner there was a sudden glare of light and the roar of an engine, together with the slamming of a car door.

‘Look out!’ yelled Geordie and flung himself sideways.

I saw the two great eyes of headlamps rushing at me from the darkness of the alley and I frantically flattened myself against the wall. The car roared past and I felt the wind of it brush my trousers, and then with a squeal of hard-used tyres it turned the corner and was gone.

I listened to the noise of the engine die away and eased myself from the wall, taking a deep shaky breath. In the light of the street lamp on the corner I saw Geordie pick himself up. ‘Christ!’ I said. ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen next.’

‘This lot aren’t ordinary burglars,’ said Geordie, brushing himself down. ‘They’re too bloody persistent. Where’s this fire escape?’

‘A bit further along,’ I said.

We walked slowly up the alley and Geordie fell over the man I had knocked over the edge. We bent down to examine him and, in the faint light, we could see his head. It was twisted at an impossible angle and there was a deep bloody depression in the skull.

Geordie said, ‘No need to look any further. He’s dead.’

‘And you say they were speaking Spanish,’ said the Inspector.

I nodded wearily. ‘As soon as we went into the flat someone shouted, “Look out!” and then I was in the middle of a fight. A bit later on another man shouted, “Get out of here; don’t shoot – use your knives.” I think it was the man I knocked off the fire escape.’

The Inspector looked at me thoughtfully. ‘But you say he was going to shoot you.’

‘He’d lost his knife by then, and I was going for him.’

‘How good is your Spanish, Mr Trevelyan?’

‘Pretty good,’ I said. ‘I did a lot of work off south-west Europe about four years ago and I was based in Spain. I took the trouble to learn the language – I have a flair for them.’

The doctor tied a neat knot in the bandage round my arm and said, ‘That’ll hold it, but try not to use the arm for a while.’ He packed his bag and went out.

I sat up and looked about the flat – it was like a field dressing station in a blitzed area. I was stripped to the waist with a bandaged arm and Geordie sported a natty bandage on his little finger. He was drinking tea and he held out his finger like a charlady at a garden party.

The flat was a wreck. What hadn’t been broken by the burglars had been smashed during the fight. A chair with no legs lay in the corner and broken glass from the front of my bookcase littered the carpet. A couple of uniformed constables stood stolidly in the corners and a plain clothes man was blowing powder about the place with an insufflator.

The Inspector said, ‘Once again – how many of them were there?

Geordie said, ‘I had two on my hands at one time.’

‘I had a go at two,’ I said. ‘But I think that one of them had a bash at Geordie first. It’s difficult to say – it happened so fast.’

‘This man you heard – did he say “knife” or “knives”?’

I thought about that. ‘He said “knives”.’

The Inspector said, ‘Then there were more than two of them.’

Geordie said unexpectedly, ‘There were four.’

The Inspector looked at him with raised eyebrows.

‘I saw three men in the car that passed us. One driving and two getting in in a hurry. With one dead in the alley – that makes four.’

‘Ah yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘They would have one man in the car. Tell me, how did you come to get shot?’

A smile touched Geordie’s lips. ‘How does anyone get shot? With a gun.’ The Inspector recognized a touch of overexcitement and said dryly, ‘I mean, what were the circumstances?’

‘Well, I chased the little bastard down the stairs and damn nearly caught him in the foyer. He saw he was going to be copped so he turned and let me have it. I hadn’t reached him yet. I was so surprised I sat down – then I saw all the blood.’

‘You say he was little?’

‘That he was. A little squirt of not more than five foot four.’

‘So two men went down the stairs, there was one in the car – and one went over the fire escape,’ the Inspector summarized. He had a blunt, square face with watchful grey eyes which he suddenly turned on me like gimlets. ‘You say this man threw a suitcase into the alley.’

‘That’s right.’

‘We haven’t found it, Mr Trevelyan.’

I said, ‘The others must have picked it up. That’s when they nearly ran us down.’

He said softly, ‘How did they know it was there?’

‘I don’t know. They may have seen it coming over. I guess the car was parked in the alley waiting for the others to come down that way.’

He nodded. ‘What was in the suitcase – do you know?’

I glanced across at Geordie who looked back at me expressionlessly. I said, ‘Some stuff belonging to my brother.’

‘What kind of – er – stuff?’

‘Clothing, books – geological samples.’

The Inspector sighed. ‘Anything important or valuable?’

I shook my head. ‘I doubt it.’

‘What about the samples?’

I said, ‘I only saw the specimens briefly. They appeared to be manganese nodules of the type which is often to be found on the ocean bed. They’re very common, you know.’

‘And valuable?’ he persisted.

‘I don’t think that anyone with knowledge of them would regard them as valuable,’ I said. ‘I suppose they might be if they were generally accessible, but it’s too hard to get at them through two or three miles of water.’

The Inspector seemed at a loss. ‘How do you think your brother will regard the loss of those specimens, and his other things?’

‘He’s dead,’ I said.

The Inspector sharpened his attention. ‘Oh? When did he die?’

‘About four months ago – in the Pacific.’

He looked at me closely and I went on, ‘My brother, Mark, was an oceanographer like myself. He died of appendicitis a few months ago and I’ve just received his effects today. As for the specimens I would say they were souvenirs of the IGY survey in which he was engaged. As a scientist he would naturally be interested in them.’

‘Um,’ said the Inspector. ‘Is there anything else missing, Mr Trevelyan?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Geordie clattered his cup. ‘I think we were too quick for them,’ he said. ‘They thought they were on to a good thing, but we didn’t give them enough time. So one of
them grabbed the first thing he saw and tried to make a getaway.’

I carefully didn’t mention that the case had been hidden under my bed.

The Inspector looked at Geordie with something approaching contempt. ‘This isn’t an ordinary burglary,’ he said. ‘Your explanation doesn’t account for the fact that they went to a lot of trouble to retrieve the suitcase, or why they used so many weapons.’ He turned to me. ‘Have you any enemies in Spain?’

I shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

He pursed his lips. ‘All right, Mr Trevelyan, let’s go back to the beginning again. Let’s start when you say you first saw the light on in your flat …’

It was after three a.m. before we got rid of the police, and they were back again next morning, to recheck the premises and to hear the whole tale yet again. The Inspector wasn’t satisfied but neither he nor any of his colleagues could pin down what was wrong. Come to that – neither could I! It was a great way to start my leave. His last word to me that morning was, ‘There’s been a fatality here, Mr Trevelyan, and that’s a very serious matter. I shall expect both of you to hold yourselves in readiness for the inquest. You are not under arrest,’ he added in such a way as to make me feel that I was. He strode out of the flat with his myrmidons trailing behind.

‘In other words – don’t leave town,’ I said. ‘There goes a very unhappy policeman.’

Geordie said, ‘He’ll be burning up the wires looking for an expert on manganese nodules. He thinks there’s something fishy there.’

‘By God, so do I! But he won’t find much. He’ll phone the Institute of course, and speak to Jarvis or some other big noise and get exactly the same story I told him.’

I got up, went into the kitchen and got a couple of bottles of beer from the refrigerator and took them back into the living room. Geordie eyed them and said, ‘You have some good ideas, sometimes. Tell me, these nodules – are they really valueless?’

‘I told the coppers the plain truth,’ I said. ‘But Mark seemed to have some curious ideas about nodule formation – still, the notebooks are gone and I can’t check up on his theories without them.’

Then suddenly I remembered something. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said and went into the bedroom. Sure enough, there it was – the little leather-bound diary, still lying on my dressing-table. The police would have had no reason to think it wasn’t mine, and hadn’t touched it.

I went back and tossed it to Geordie. ‘They didn’t get that. I meant to tell you – I found it in a pocket of one of Mark’s suits. What do you make of it?’

He opened the book with interest but I watched the enthusiasm seep out of him as he scanned the pages. ‘What the hell!’

‘That’s Mark’s patent Pitman variation,’ I said. ‘I doubt if old Isaac himself could make anything of it.’

‘What are all the drawings?’

‘Mark was an inveterate doodler,’ I said. ‘You’d have to apply psychological theory to make anything of those.’

I sat mulling over the events of the previous day, trying to piece them together.

‘Geordie, listen to this,’ I said. ‘Mark dies, and Norgaard, his colleague, disappears. Jarvis keeps his ear close to the ground and knows all the gossip of the profession, and if he says he hasn’t heard anything of Norgaard then it’s unlikely that anyone else has either.’ I held up a finger. ‘That’s one thing.’

‘Do you know anything about Norgaard?’

‘Only that he’s one of us oceanographers. He’s a Swede, but he was on an American survey ship during the IGY. I
lost sight of him after that; a lot of comradeship went for a bust when the operation closed down.’