“Do you know,” said Blackett, “you’ve got a selective visual memory. Tell me, can you remember what sort of folder he was carrying?”
“As a matter of fact, I can,” said Gerald. “It was an Oxford blue folder. I remember being slightly surprised, because it’s a type of folder we use for confidential papers, and they are usually kept by partners in a locked filing cabinet.”
“But Moule, being Mantegna’s number-one boy, would have had a key of his cabinet.”
“I expect he would have done. Why?”
“It’s an extraordinary thing,” said Blackett. He had picked up his own glass and was staring into its red depths. “What you’ve been describing happened eight—nearly nine—years ago. A lot of interesting and exciting things must have happened to you since then, but I doubt whether you can remember them with anything like the same particularity.”
“That’s true,” said Gerald. He was beginning to feel very sleepy. “I suppose it was the shock of hearing about the accident that printed it in my mind. Three deaths—”
“People sometimes overrate the importance of death,” said Blackett. “Did you know that I spent some years in a Japanese prison camp?”
Gerald nodded. It was easier than speaking.
“We thought a lot about death in that camp. One of the things we had managed to smuggle in and conceal were a few cyanide pills. They had been issued to men who worked behind the Japanese lines and might have been caught and tortured. If one of our people was taken out to be flogged, he would take one of the pills, hidden in his mouth. We were paraded to watch the punishment. It wasn’t normally designed to kill, but it was very severe. Yet I never knew a man bite into that pill. They hung there by their hands, in the hot sun, with the flesh stripped off their backs, but they wouldn’t do the one thing which would have given them instant relief. They were a lot braver than I was, or perhaps more stupid. I shouldn’t have hesitated. My dear fellow, I do apologise. I’m talking too much. I’ve been boring you.”
“Not bored,” said Gerald. “Just sleepy. I’ll go up now.”
“Would you like Harald to give you a hand? He’s somewhere about.”
“No, I can manage. Goo’ night.”
“Good night. Sleep well,” said Blackett.
After Gerald had gone, he sat for a few minutes in front of the dying fire. He said to himself, “The photographic room. Extraordinary! I ought to have thought of that.” He got up and touched the bell. When Harald appeared he said, “Did my guest reach his bedroom?”
“He accomplished it,” said Harald. “It was a brave effort.”
“Sit down for a moment and listen. Tomorrow you will see Mr Trombo, taking the usual precautions, and this is what you will say to him.”
Blackett spoke slowly and when he had finished, Harald repeated, word for word, exactly what Blackett had said.
“Good. And remember, this is so important to me that it is not to be delegated. I insist that he handles it personally.”
“It is so important,” repeated Harald, “that Mr Trombo must handle it personally.”
“I hope you had a pleasant evening,” said Lyon.
“Very nice,” said Gerald. “And I agree with you about the port.”
“I thought the Burgundy was worth drinking, too.”
“Perhaps,” said Gerald judgematically. “But one has to remember that Burgundy making is only a matter of technique. The production of vintage port is an art known only to the Portuguese.”
“I can see that you enjoyed yourself,” said Lyon with a smile.
Viewing it by daylight, David decided that he had hardly ever seen a more dangerous and more unpleasant spot than the one he had landed in.
It was not the smell. He had got used to that. It was the danger inherent in the setup. The room was full of the most combustible material, occupied by an unstable group of men, and it had one narrow exit through a square hole in the floor and down a flight of wooden steps.
“Rats’ Castle,” he said. “And if anyone came after us, we’d be rats, no mistake, and if someone dropped a match in this stuff, we’d be roast rats. You’ve got to find a way out, boyo. And if you can’t find it, you’ve got to get busy and make it. No choice.”
He was able to survey the unhappy prospect at leisure, because the loft was, as far as he knew, empty. With the first light of dawn the dozen regular lodgers disappeared, slipping out quietly and vanishing like ghosts who have heard the crowing of the cock. David had gone with them, but had managed to slip away and hide, in the half-darkness, behind a pile of machinery. When the last of its night-time occupants had gone, he had climbed back into the dormitory and viewed it, in all its horror, by the light which seeped through the single tiny
barred and filthy window at the far end.
“It’s a dump,” he said. “A bloody awful, stinking, dangerous dump.”
The only part of it which offered any hope at all was the far corner, where he had spent his first night in the place. It seemed that, when Messrs. Hendrixsons had been in occupation, some operation had been carried out in the loft which demanded heat, and there were signs that a stove had been installed. The stove itself had disappeared, but the iron backing sheet was still there, with a circular hole in it through which the stove chimney had been passed.
David descended the steps to the ground floor and found, as he had hoped, that there was a fireplace underneath and in line with the stove in the loft. This argued the existence of some sort of chimney built into the thickness of the brickwork with shafts connecting the two fireplaces; the fireplace on ground-floor level was heavy and firmly fixed, but the iron sheet in the loft was a temporary job, and it took David only a few minutes’ work with his clasp knife to hinge it back.
The shaft behind sloped upwards at a steep angle. It was lined with corroded soot and an overlay of loose, grey dust. By pressing his back against one side and his feet against the other, in the manner of a climber in a rock chimney, he found that he was able to squeeze himself upwards without too much difficulty. The disadvantage of this method was that it brought down both soot and dust in choking clouds.
Ten feet up the shaft, David reached the point when his tributary met the main chimney. There was light above his head, dim but sufficient for him to assess the position.
It was not encouraging.
Above him he could see that the chimney narrowed until it reached the single pot through which he caught a glimpse of the sky. The difficulty was that, even if he could discover some method of shifting the pot and the solid pediment on which it rested, the last section of the chimney was clearly too narrow to admit even his agile body.
As he was thinking about this the light through the pot was blocked. A starling had poked its head through to look at him. He could see now that there was a nest of ragged sticks on a ledge just below the stack.
“If I was a bloody starling,” he said, “I wouldn’t be standing here with cramp in my legs and a mouth full of shit. I’d fly out of that bloody chimney, wouldn’t I just?”
The starling put its head on one side, as if considering the pronouncement, and then flew off with a clatter of its wings.
“So what now?” said David. “No good just standing here like bloody Father Christmas.”
If he managed to lower himself down the main chimney, he could, no doubt, reach the point where the shaft from the downstairs room came in and could descend that. But even if he could shift the fireplace which blocked that outlet, this merely got him back to the ground floor, which was not where he wanted to be.
“Only one thing for it,” said David. “Have to go through.” He considered the plan of the building. The loft, which was about eight foot high, had a ceiling of planks. Above this was a sloping roof. If this sort of construction continued all the way round, there must be an open space, two or three feet high, between the ceiling joists and the roof.
This would provide a perfect back door.
If
he could break into it.
“Only one way,” said David, looking with distaste at the blackened brickwork of the chimney on a level with his eyes. “Get some of those bricks out. And you’re not going to do it with your clasp knife. You’ll need a cold chisel and a hammer and plenty of time.”
Having reached this conclusion, he slid back down the shaft, swung the sheet iron into position, brushed himself down as best he could and made his way out. He knew of only one place where he could get what he needed, and it would not be safe to approach it before dusk. Also, he wanted a further word with Moule.
Moule found him. He came up to David, who was killing time sitting on a seat in a secluded corner of the small Rotherhithe Park and Recreation Ground, sat down beside him and grabbed his arm with surprising strength.
David said, “So it’s you. What do you want?”
“You know what I want.”
“Suppose I do.”
“You promised.”
The grip on his arm tightened.
“All right,” said David. “Lay off the judo. So I promised.”
“I told you I had enough for twenty days. I used the last one last night. I’ve got no more left.” The whine had become almost a snarl. “You said you’d get some for me.”
“Let go of my arm,” said David, with sudden ferocity.
Moule stared at him for a moment, then let go of his arm.
“That’s better. Now listen to me. How many of your friends know you’re on hard stuff?”
“Some of them.”
“And do they know you’re short of supplies?”
“They might. I’m not sure.”
“Don’t arse around,” said David sharply.
“Who have you told?”
“I told Mick. I thought he might be able to get me some.”
“Just as I thought. So if they see you’re stocked up, they’ll know you got it from me. And they’ll know I’ve got a source. And that puts
me
on the spot.”
“Mick won’t talk,” said Moule. The whine was back in his voice.
“Maybe, maybe not. But we’ve got to be careful. I can only stock up in the evening. And I can’t get more than two or three tablets at a time. I’ll need the money in advance.”
Without a word, Moule put his hand into the inside pocket of his overcoat, pulled out a handkerchief, unknotted it and pushed across a wad of screwed up and filthy pound notes. “There’s twenty pounds there,” he said. “Take the lot.”
“You don’t listen, do you?” David unpeeled five of the notes and handed the rest back. He spoke slowly, as though to a child. “I can get you two or three tablets this evening. Because that’s the way my supplier works. And maybe another two or three tomorrow evening. And so on. I’ll pass them to you, but it’s got to be done so that it doesn’t attract attention. I’m moving my bed into the far corner, by the old fireplace. You shift yours up alongside. That gives us a bit of privacy, see?”
“Yes,” said Moule. “I’ll do that. Only you won’t let me down.”
“I’m promising nothing,” said David. “You’ll have to wait and see what turns up, won’t you? And don’t tag round after me, or you’ll get nothing but a boot on the arse. Understand?”
His slave said, very humbly, that he understood.
Trombo was able, whenever he wanted it, to have the exclusive use of a room on the first floor of the Lord Mornington public house—which was hardly surprising, since he owned the place. To it, that same morning, came the representatives of the three most powerful criminal armies in South-East London. The Friary Lane lot, led by Ginger Williams and his chief lieutenant, McVee; the Bravos from the Elephant and Castle, who operated under Birnie Samuels; and the newly formed Dock Rats, deserters from foreign ships, shunned by the locals and tolerated only on account of their single-minded ferocity. It was not an easy alliance and one which only Trombo could have put together.
When they understood what was wanted, Williams protested. He said, “Don’t like it. It’s stupid. What does it get us?”
Trombo recognised Williams as the strongest man there, indeed a possible successor to his own empire. He said, coldly, “What it gets you is what you always get when you work for me. Money, as promised, paid on the nail.”
There was a murmur of agreement.
“I’m not objecting to the money,” said Williams. “It’s just that—well—who wants to go chasing round after a lot of stinking old toe-rags? Myself, I wouldn’t want to get within a yard of one. Leave alone talk to him.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to do it yourself. You must have plenty of boys who aren’t so particular.”
“Besides which, if you do ask them a question you get nothing out of them but a load of old cock. And once the word gets round you want to know something, they’ll clam up, just to be bloody-minded. I’m telling you. They’re dirt.”
“It might help,” said Nicholas the Pole, leader of the Dock Rats, in his careful English, “if you could explain why you want this done.”
“I can’t explain,” said Trombo, “but the terms are as stated. I want this man found. There’s a hundred-pound bonus for the man who locates him. Then I want to know where he sleeps. Probably not at a regular spike, but in some hole and corner. There’s a further hundred for the man who does that. That’s in addition to the regular rate for the job.”
“It’ll be like raking through a heap of shit with your bare hands,” said Williams. He still seemed to resent the whole thing as a personal affront. “What a way to spend a working week.”
“I can’t give you a week,” said Trombo shortly. “The job’s got to be done as quickly as possible. A day or two at the most. And there’s one other thing. We’re not the only people after him. There’s a Welshman called Morgan. If you locate him, like as not he’ll lead you to the other chap. In fact, that may be the best way of working it.”
“It’d be easier,” said McVee, “if we had a photograph, or some sort of description.”
“You won’t need a photograph of Morgan. You’ve met him. You remember the man who worked for Rayhome?”
McVee said, “Yes.” It came out, from his squashed face, as a noise which sounded like “Uss.”
“What, that bastard?” said Williams.
“That bastard,” agreed Trombo pleasantly. “Find him, and you find the other chap. That’s the first and most difficult part of the job.”