The Tiger In the Smoke (23 page)

‘He saw you more often than that.' Havoc's weariness was beginning to show in him like a boxer half-way through a prize fight. His eyes were beginning to burn and his face was growing dark with exhaustion. But he had great reserves. ‘Duds was busy, working for me as a matter of fact. I told you I got all the news from him, indirectly of course, but I heard all about Tiddy Doll here and Tom's bit of trouble.'

The small regular teeth appeared in a smile.

‘You've all been looking for me, I hear. “Living like a lord”.'

Their amazed consternation delighted him. He sat laughing at it, the amusement breaking through the agony in his face.

‘You always talked too much, Roly. Sometimes people listen.'

‘'Oo give us away?' Tiddy Doll's bewilderment was destroying his caution, and there was a trace of his old bluster in his demand.

The man who sat in his place at the head of the table considered him thoughtfully.

‘Your name is Doll and you come from a two-house Suffolk town called Tiddington,' he remarked pleasantly. ‘After being rejected on medical grounds from every regimental depot in the east country, you attached yourself in the middle of the war to the two-stroke-four-oh-oh-nine transit camp at Hintlesham as temporary unpaid hanger-on. After some time your willingness, cleanliness, and talent for organization got you – God alone knows how – on to the strength, and you even got a stripe. When the war, ended you were slung out pronto before anyone noticed you, and you pestered the life out of the officers of your old company until you were reported to the civilian police and were forbidden the district. Do you want to hear any more?'

Doll could not speak. He stood gaping. In Tiddington witchcraft is still spoken of as a commonplace, and the last public burning for the offence took place there something less than one hundred and forty years ago – not a very long time by local standards.

Havoc turned his head away and returned to the others.

‘You poor silly blokes,' he said, ‘stamping up and down the streets making a god-awful row. Do you think no one sees you? Every wide boy in the town knows everything there is to know about you. You're no mystery.'

The company was startled but on the whole pleased. It may be disconcerting to find that the pool in which one is lurking is under a microscope, but at least it lends one a certain importance. The Tiddington man was shaken but his pride found some solace. There was one rather important and recent thing about him that this omniscient being did not know. His dark glasses saved him, or Havoc would have seen him wink at Roly.

His momentary superiority gave him dangerous courage.

‘There's a slop up 'ere outside the door,' he remarked recklessly.

The bright blue eyes rested on him once more. ‘So what?'

Doll quailed. ‘'E 'as a drag up there when 'e ought to be on duty, that's all,' he said.

‘I know. I gave him a light. I wasn't sure what your arrangements with him were, so I came round the alley and through the letter-box.'

Doll said nothing but he licked his lips. Roly was more im pressed. His thin face was flushed and he looked younger, more the soldier he once had been.

‘You ain't reelly forgot us then, Gaffer?' he said proudly. ‘We thought you 'ad, me and Bill and Tom. Tom's very funny,' he added as a confidential afterthought. ‘Tom's a little bit don't understand. I don't reckon 'e knows you.'

The tall boy who was still lying on his bed raised his head.

‘I ain't forgot 'im,' he said. ‘I know you, Gaffer. I know the state you're in. You're like you were that night when you came back to the boat, you know, after you'd done them that time.'

The directness of the statement and its simple inference brought the whole terrifying situation into key, as if a casement had swung wide of them. Havoc himself caught the full glare of it. He glanced down at the paper where the headlines were still visible through the grease, and blinked and looked up again.

‘Poor old Tom,' he said hastily, but the mischief had been done. They were looking at him with daylit eyes. The enormity of his crime was rising slowly through the glamour and reaching fearful proportions as its bright rags fell away. A moment more and he must lose them.

Doll grasped his chance. He sat down at the table and put his elbows on it.

‘Listen, Gaffer,' he said, ‘I reckon you didn't come 'ere to find Duds at all. I reckon you come 'ere because you figured we wouldn't see the paper until the morning, and you wanted a quiet lie-down. You've seen your wide boys and you've found that they knew about you, since seemingly they know everything, and you've found out they wouldn't touch you. You've come ‘ere because you ain't got nowhere else to go. We ain't much but we've got cover. You've found you made a big mistake when you come out. You didn't know the fighting was over, did you, not really, shut up in there? Things 'ave changed since the war. It's bin a shock to you to see that. You're on the run.'

The ruthless broadside was annihilating and the ring of truth in it so clear that the most stupid among them could not help but recognize it.

Slowly and gracefully Havoc leant back in his chair. No one saw any other movement, but as their glances travelled down from his face to the table they saw that a knife had appeared in his hand. It had come there as if by magic, or as if it had grown there, springing from his bony fingertips. It was a combat weapon, sword-bladed and serviceable, with nothing remarkable about it save that it did not look new.

‘And again,' he said softly, ‘so what?'

This time there was no power cut, no faltering. He was on top of himself and them, almost joyous. His excellent physique, so different from their own, became flaunting and magnificent, and all trace of weariness banished and gone.

‘Who moves first? You, Whitey?'

No one stirred an eyelid. There is an odour about genuine violence, real menace, which tingles in the nostrils with a pepper which histrionics can never match. There was no question that the man meant what he said; he was so happy.

‘Perhaps you'd like me to give you a demonstration?'

‘No, Gaffer, no, no!' Roly was frantic. ‘No, we've seen your demonstration. Put it up. Tiddy don't understand, 'e didn't know. 'E don't mean nothing, Tiddy don't. We're with you, Gaffer, of course we are. Besides, we've got reasons of our own to think of.'

The fatal admission was out before he could stop it. Havoc's full flat eyes stayed their roving glance and came to rest on him while the hands grew quiet.

‘Oh. Which reasons are those?'

Roly appealed helplessly to Tiddy Doll, expressionless behind his shrouded glasses. The man from Tiddington made his best effort. He sat solid and still.

‘We've got private affairs, like other people,' he said at last. ‘We don't want the police round here just now, not on any account, and that's straight, mister.'

There was enough conviction to carry. The man at the end of the table was impressed. He regarded the albino curiously, holding his head a little to one side as Luke himself might have done, his mouth faintly amused.

‘Not one of you has got a real record, they tell me,' he remarked at last, ‘and you don't want to spoil it, eh?'

‘It's not a question of records, no, nor of prisons,' said Tiddy presently. ‘I picked my men and I picked chaps 'oo weren't going to be a nuisance to me. But just lately, only a day or two ago, we 'ad a little accident, so we ain't doing nothing out of the ordinary, not for a week or two.' He hesitated and no one knew if his red eyes behind the dark glasses were peering at the little weapon on the table. ‘We're keeping quiet and keeping ourselves to ourselves like we always do.'

Havoc glanced round him with casual arrogance.

‘They told me that you were clean in your habits and I hand it you, Corporal. I don't know how you do it.'

The inconsequential piece of flattery was an inspiration and the countryman was sidetracked.

‘The Queen could eat orf the floor,' he said with more enthusiasm than would perhaps have impressed royalty. ‘We got our rules, and we obey 'em. We got comfort too, and good grub.'

The tired, hag-ridden tiger in the good clothes allowed his glance to stray towards an empty cot next to Tom, but he remained a tiger. Doll was feeling his way.

‘I ain't chatty, but I'm not funky,' he began cautiously. ‘But I'm not saying we're all quite so strong upstairs.' He tapped his forehead significantly. ‘No names, no pack-drill. But you can see for yourself, Gaffer, there's plenty of us to make mistakes.'

There was so much truth in what he said that his motive was not obvious. Never had the band looked less reliable or even less human. They were both cowed and excited, and sat round watching the two men as if they were at a show.

There were noises from the market now and, if no actual daylight for the fog had persisted, the archway leading to the drain was several degrees less black, and there was a faint fluorescent glow on the wall round the ‘letter-box'. The city was awake and stretching itself. Very soon now, round warm breakfast tables, families would read the newspapers and from every surrounding police district more and more men, patient and knowledgeable, would come on duty.

Doll sat looking at the table. The knife had gone again. The Gaffer's hands were resting there, his fingers drumming very lightly on the board. Doll did not dare to glance behind him at the bed in the far corner, but he raised his head when Roly's eyes flickered towards it and back again. The idea playing round the cunning country brain was tantalizing and the situation, of course, was no less desperate than ever it had been.

Presently he wagged his head towards the stairs.

‘That's the only way out.'

Jack Havoc watched him with interest. ‘I know. They told me that. Two ways in, one way out.'

Tiddy Doll leant his chin on his hands, probably to prevent himself from clenching them. Far back in the years, in the sunlit church school at Tiddington, where the great twelve-hole privy in the garden and banks of mignonette had fought together to provide the dominant atmosphere, there had been a gaunt old pedagogue who had been as full of sayings as any man Tiddy could remember. One of them in particular had never escaped him:

Who sups with the devil must use a long spoon
.

He could see that spoon now in his mind's eye, or one very like it. Iron, it was, hanging up by the brick oven in his great-uncle's cottage. He took a long breath.

‘I was thinking, Gaffer, there's enough of us for a bloke to hide among, even in the street, supposing he wanted to get from place to place.'

‘Your mind works.' Havoc was condescending but friendly. ‘I like that.'

‘But it would be wonderfully risky, supposing we didn't know what we was doing.' The Suffolk accent, soft and broad, was like an apology. There was no more bargaining. Both men were feeling the strain and each understood the other remarkably well.

Havoc stretched himself and when he spoke it was in conscious imitation of the British junior officer in the field.

‘I rather think we should have a conference, Corporal, don't you?'

Tiddy Doll sighed and played his masterstroke.

‘Pick your orficers, Captain,' he said.

—

AT FIRST GEOFFREY
was the only person to notice Tiddy Doll's peculiar manoeuvre with the conference table. The albino made the arrangement of orange crates with a great deal of ostentatious care, designed, apparently, to ensure that the conspirators would be well away from the rank and file whilst retaining command of the staircase. Yet in fact he seemed to be arranging for the talk to take place so close to the prisoner's bed that the gagged and helpless man must be able to overhear perfectly. It was such an extraordinary mistake for one usually so cautious that Geoffrey was astounded until the diabolical explanation occurred to him. Doll might entertain qualms at the prospect of removing an unwanted witness in cold blood, but Havoc would have none.

The newcomer still sat at the head of the main table, colourful and lonely in the pool of light from the single swinging bulb. From the way they were all treating him he might have been a genuine wild animal sitting up there, fascinating and uncertain. Whenever he forgot them and withdrew into his own agonizing thoughts they breathed more comfortably, but for the most part he was irritably aware of every movement, and the strain of having him there was unbearable.

He watched the fussy preparations with growing annoyance and, as usual, it was Roly who precipitated matters. Having noticed what he thought was a serious mistake, he made frantic signals. Havoc caught him and at once the whole interest of the gathering was centred on the bed in the far corner.

‘What have you got over there, Corporal?' The languor in the careful voice deceived no one. Doll was ready for it. He had known it must come but had hoped for matters to go a little further first. He made a subservient gesture, bent over the bed to pull the blanket higher, and then bustled the full length of the room. He came round the table so that he stood with his back to the main company, and, setting both palms firmly on the board, leant down to speak confidentially. His dark glasses hid any sign of nervousness and his white head moved close to the dark and stricken face. Only Roly and Bill cared to come up behind him.

‘That's our bit of private trouble, Gaffer,' he said, lowering his voice to a murmur. ‘Our little accident I was telling you about. He's spark out, only just breathin'. Bin like that two days and a night now.'

The lie brought tremendous comfort to the two men lurking in the background because of the slight mixture of truth which it contained. It seemed to put them in the clear with the Gaffer whilst effectively skating over the delicate matter of Duds. Their admiration for Tiddy became almost affectionate.