Gently With the Painters (16 page)

‘What was to stop him from buying one in Chelmsford?’

Gently shrugged. ‘They’re an obsolete pattern, so he couldn’t have chanced buying one down there. It was the nub of the plot, that other knife, and he must have had it before he did the letter. Thus he must have had it before he skipped, or why did he take the piece of paper with him?’

‘He’s a bright lad, you can’t get away from it.’

‘He’s a genius – or somebody is.’

The tracing of the knife was already in hand but was being frustrated, like other inquiry, by the fact that it was Sunday. The owner of the shop which carried a stock of the knives had been reported as having taken his family on a picnic.

Gently rang through to the Yard, and by luck caught Pagram. ‘I want a watch at all airports, just in case he lands somewhere. And his description to Interpol, with details of the flight …

‘And by the way – congratulations on getting Peachfield tied up.’

Hansom smoked three cheroots in rapid succession, his expression becoming more embittered the more he brooded over Johnson’s escape. He glared tigerishly through the smoke at the now brilliant afternoon, and snapped at the constable who brought them up a tray of coffee. He was, Gently could feel, blaming the Yard man for all this – wouldn’t a policeman with correct principles have arrested Johnson on Friday night? There was the clearest of cases against him, a case to rejoice the public prosecutor, and the passage of time had only strengthened it further …

‘Aren’t you going to tell your playmate that he’s wasting his time?’

Gently grinned distantly at his disgruntled colleague. On the face of it, perhaps … but the face of it was deceptive! It had been so on Friday night, and it was no less so on Sunday. And it was on Mallows, not Johnson, that Gently’s mind ceaselessly dwelt, remembering, checking and
persistently
setting in balance. The time was surely coming when they must try their strengths together, and as an experienced antagonist, he was weighing up his opponent. In the academician he could recognize a champion among mental fencers.

‘This time you’re going to charge him, I suppose?’

From the depths of his gloom Hansom dredged the sarcasm.

‘I want to talk to him – badly. He’s got the answer to a vital question.’

‘You talked to him before – and now he’s in France!’

What was the use of taking offence? One was obliged to sympathize with Hansom. At his best he was a jealous and surly kind of man. Twice before, once unofficially, Gently had taken a case away from him, and now, without rhyme or reason, he had let Hansom’s ‘chummie’ slide through his fingers …

‘Don’t take it to heart … we’ll get him in the end.’ To Stephens he had used almost the selfsame words.

‘I can see us doing that now he’s got across the Channel! Don’t forget he isn’t a rabbit – he’s the original cobber from Colditz.’

‘All the same, he’ll be up against it. He doesn’t have professional contacts.’

They were interrupted by the inexorable phone, bringing, this time, a report on Lavery. It was negative; but before Hansom could vent his disgust the instrument clicked and began buzzing again. Gently saw a change come over Hansom’s face. From antagonism it slid into blank perplexity. After a number of surprised-sounding monosyllables he concluded:

‘Yeah – we’ll have them sent straight away up!’

A minute later, during which time Hansom had said nothing, a detective constable entered carrying an official envelope. He had the complacent expression which Dutt sometimes wore, the expression of a man who had pulled off something good.

‘Shake them out on the desk.’ Hansom sounded suspicious, and his eye all the while rested pointedly on
Gently. The man opened the envelope and slid the contents out cautiously: they comprised one mutilated
Times
– and a third steel paper knife!

‘Tell the Superintendent where you found them!’

Now there could be no doubting it. Hansom’s tone, like his look, was eloquent of what he was thinking.

‘At Mr Mallows’s, sir – and we very nearly missed them. They were hidden under the matting outside his front porch.’

If Hansom was unconvinced that Gently hadn’t foreseen this find there were adequate reasons for it in the latter’s sparse reactions. Though Gently, on occasion, had been known to show emotion, the present did not seem to be one of those times.

‘Get your print man on to them.’ His steady blankness was impervious – after a moment’s inspection of the exhibits, he seemed to have exhausted his interest. Still poker-faced, he knocked out his pipe and refilled it, and then quietly sat down at the side of the desk. Hansom, looking uncertain, waved a hand to the detective
constable
, then he too resumed his seat at the desk.

‘Well … that certainly gives the thing a different look!’

‘Hmm.’ Gently’s grunt was an archetype of neutrality.

‘If I’d guessed about that’ – Hansom stared hard across the desk – ‘I wouldn’t have been too worried about Johnson, either …’

The cue was plainly Gently’s, but just as plainly, he wasn’t taking it, and instead his eyes had lapsed into that distant, absent expression. Those like Dutt who knew him well could have suggested what this meant, but to Hansom it merely suggested that Gently wasn’t quite with him.

‘Let’s see where it gets us.’ Hansom grew tired of waiting. If Gently wouldn’t play, he was going to press on without him. ‘Mallows was stuck on Mrs Johnson, and he was the last person to see her alive. Her picture was painted on a special paper and Mallows has got some of that special paper. The letter was also on that paper, and it referred to another knife: and the knife, plus a mutilated
Times
, is found concealed at Mallows’s house.

‘So what is a policeman going to think when he’s being a common, ornery policeman? He’s going to think that we should pull in Mallows and have a cosy, comfortable chat with him!’

Gently blew him a puff of smoke by way of reward for this performance. ‘Don’t ever rush a fence like Mallows … you’re liable to wind up in the ditch.’

‘Does that paper and knife look like we’re rushing something?’

‘At least we can wait to check them for prints. And it might be wise to compare the
Times
with the letter, just in case someone has tried to work a ringer.’

‘And who in the blue blazes would do that?’

‘I don’t know … think it over for yourself. But in either case we’ll need to check the prints, to find if Mallows’s are actually on
The Times
.’

‘They won’t be. Chummie doesn’t leave his prints.’

‘Then surely you can see the implication? Mallows would hardly have been so careful as to handle the paper with gloves – nor would anyone else, except for a very special purpose.’

‘You mean’ – Hansom struggled to grasp this knotty point – ‘unless chummie was expecting us to find the paper?’

‘Just so – in the normal way, you’d expect the paper to be destroyed. It would be much easier to do that than to cut out small capitals while wearing gloves.’

‘Yeah!’ Hansom paused to let the idea sink in. But only a moment or so was necessary to deduce the grateful consequence:

‘So like that, Johnson may have planted it!’

‘I don’t see why not.’

‘Sneaked in after he did the job, and popped the evidence under the boyo’s doormat! Because he knew darned well that there’d be a search – there’d have to be, after Farrer showed us the letter; and if he knew where his missus had got the gash paper – bingo! Mallows was sitting right in the target area.’

Gently blew some more smoke at this promising pupil. ‘We can assume, I dare say, that Johnson knew about his wife and Mallows …’

‘Hell yes! It stands out. There’s revenge in this too – he may have plotted it from the beginning to throw suspicion on Mallows. Or maybe just to drag him in, to roll his character in the mud: and this is the crafty way he’s done it – killing a couple of birds at once.’

‘He’s a bright lad, as you were saying.’

‘Yeah – only not so bright as he thinks!’

In common with the group members, Mallows had had his prints taken, so there was the briefest of delays in checking the fresh evidence. As Gently had surmised, the artist’s prints were not on the
Times
; it showed only the detective constable’s and a pair of others, not on record. A comparison with the letter disposed of the other point – this was the veritable
Times
which had supplied the
characters. The knife, needless to say, was bright and unsmirched, and identical in pattern with its two
predecessors
.

They had tea, like lunch, sitting at Hansom’s special table, and the local man was too absorbed to notice Gently’s continued abstraction. He was busy devising plans for the further and decisive trapping of Johnson, and was now triumphant, now subdued, according to the aspect that came uppermost.

‘We’ll get Chelmsford to identify those spare sets of prints – they’re bound to find them at one of the newsagents. Then an identity parade, as soon as we lay hold of Johnson … it’s the devil, that chummie being able to fly!

‘And then there’s the knives. Of course, you’re right about them being bought here. The whole thing was planned, not done on the spur of the moment. Johnson hated the Palette Group because his wife ran around with it, he’s got the natural motive for wanting to slash those pictures …

‘So we’ll get on to the supplier, who probably recognized Johnson anyway … if not, it’s only a question of another identity parade. There’s this to be said for that chummie, he isn’t difficult to pick out – once seen, never forgotten, not unless he’s lost his moustache …

‘Where do you reckon he headed for – was it Orly, or somewhere quieter?’

While they were eating another report was brought in, but now Hansom had no use for these tedious messages. The events of the day, though occasionally teasing, had all finally supported his dogged contention. He could see only
Johnson, fenced in by every circumstance. Whatever line you chose took you straight to the estate agent. Like a spider he was sitting in the middle of a web of facts, and though at times they spiralled round him, their connection was never severed.

It was Johnson who was Hansom’s chummie – however far he meant to roam!

‘A message from Inspector Stephens, sir …’

Hansom deafened his ears to this fresh invasion of privacy. At the moment there was only one message he wanted to hear about, and that must come via the Yard, from the Quai des Orfèvres. By a stretch of imagination he could picture the desired event, he could see two sombre figures waiting to greet the taxiing Proctor … ‘M. Johnson, I believe? You must accompany us, monsieur’ – followed by a call from the nearest phone box, and a quick relaying of the news …

Irritably, he noticed that Gently was speaking to him:

‘We’ll take your car, then, and get on the road …’

‘Take my car where?’

‘Why! After Stephens, naturally.’

‘What the blazes for – hasn’t he got a car of his own?’

He was aware that Gently was looking at him oddly, and then of the slow smile that spread over the
Superintendent
’s
face.

‘Didn’t you hear the message he sent? Miss Butters has vamoosed in her sister’s Jaguar, and Stephens is busy tailing her, in a westerly direction …’

‘Miss Butters …
on her own
?’

‘Yes, driving fairly fast. And I don’t think she’s gone after a breath of fresh air …’

They were mobile in minutes, with Hansom taking the wheel; Gently barely had time to retrieve his pipe from the office. Two of the minutes, however, had been judiciously spent: they were occupied in the signing out of a
police-issue
Webley.

B
Y THE TIME
they had got clear of the city streets, Gently was beginning to feel sorry that he had let Hansom drive. The Chief Inspector, with all due
allowance
for his eagerness, was not a model of the correct and approved police driver. His deficiencies were the more apparent because they were meeting a flow of traffic. The spasmodic efflux of Saturday had become the steady influx of Sunday. It might have been worse, it was true: they were on the Fosterham Road; towards Starmouth, the traffic would now be packed in nose to tail. But there was plenty enough here to produce some breathtaking moments, and what was worse to suggest that such were commonplaces of Hansom’s style.

Over his knees Gently had spread the three-inch map from the car’s pocket, and on this, with pencilled crosses, he was plotting their progress. They were in constant radio contact with the pursuing Stephens, who was conscientious in reporting every location he passed.

‘Hallo car ex-two … we’ve just come to a village … get you the name if I can … yes … Saxham King’s Head!’

On a more southerly route they were catching up with the other two, whose progress was governed by the whims of Miss Butters. She was making straight across country with all the confidence of local knowledge, never
hesitating
to use a side road where its line was the most direct.

‘Hallo car ex-two … she’s just stopped for petrol … I had to go past her … don’t think she noticed … am waiting in side road, Braningham one mile.’

‘Hallo car ex-seven … don’t follow her so closely!’

‘Hallo car ex-two … message understood.’

Gently held up the map so that Hansom could glance at it, the pencilled crosses now strung out in purposeful direction. ‘Does it suggest anything to you?’

‘Yeah – she’s heading for Fosterham. They’ve got a flying club there, but surely he wouldn’t have the nerve …’

‘I’ll call back to HQ.’ Gently flicked the switch across. To him too it seemed unlikely that Johnson would use an operational airfield. But, for all the estate agent knew, his latest ploy was undetected, and he might be unwarily sitting in the club house at Fosterham.

‘Car ex-two calling ex-ex-ex … I’d like you to get in touch with the County at Fosterham. Johnson may be at the flying club … tell them to send a couple of men. And remind them that he’s armed … repeat that: armed!’

‘Ex-ex-ex replying to car ex-two … message received and understood, and I have one for you … Lady Stradsett reports the loss of a grey Jaguar convertible, believed to have been taken from Lordham Grange at around seventeen-thirty hours … do you want any independent action on this?’

‘Hallo ex-ex-ex … no independent action.’

The Wolseley drummed along at an unsteady sixty, with Hansom juggling rhapsodically with his brakes and throttle. It was in fact a good lick for that contorted country road, on which the stream of homing traffic was unceasing though irregular. On either side there was country which was typical of upland Northshire. It proceeded in gentle undulations with shaggy hedges and wistful trees. It had the muted and subdued charm of an unlistened-to sonata which, some day, one suddenly noticed had made a haunting and fixed impression. It was difficult to pin it down to any single feature. The villages, for example, had little truck with the picturesque. Like the landscape they were stern, but with an unaffected nobility, and one sensed a majestic strength which lay beneath the austere surface.

Farther on the contours were higher but the astringent flavour remained; only here one could see more into it, more deeply probe the secret amalgam. There were glimpses of square flint towers, of ranked plantations, like armies marching; of farmhouses glowing in rusty brick, and monstrous barns with huge, peaked roofs. And the fields were seen quilted with colour, the yellow of mustard, the green of beet; and everywhere, dashed with poppies, the tawny wheat and paler acres of barley.

Even from a Hansom-driven Wolseley one was
compelled
to observe and admire, and Gently, to whom the road was fresh, made a mental note to return in his Riley …

‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two … passing through a small town … it’s Fosterham, I think.’

Gently jabbed to transmit: ‘Hallo ex-seven … watch carefully here … she may turn off to the flying field.’

But half a minute later Stephens came through again:

‘We’re out at the other side … still driving in the same direction …’

So Fosterham was out. It wasn’t as simple as that. The wary ex-RAF pilot was doing nothing that might betray himself …

‘Any more suggestions?’ Gently tilted the map again, having just scrawled a cross on the far side of Fosterham. They too were approaching the town and would soon be hard on Stephens’s tail; there could not now be more than a few miles separating them.

‘If it was a question of boats, I’d say she was heading for the coast … as it is …’ Hansom frowned, giving a flickering look at the map. ‘The trouble is there’s two … no, three … old air-force dromes out that way, and they’re all in roughish country – just left to rot there, after the war.’

‘They sound a better prospect.’

‘Yeah … but it may not be so easy. It’s heathy country, you can see for miles – and chummie’ll have that angle covered.’

It went without saying. Johnson didn’t miss his tricks. If there was an advantage to be gained he could be relied upon to take it. Gently brooded for a few moments over the advisability of calling on help, but under the
circumstances
there seemed little open to them that would give them a better chance. In the first place, they didn’t yet know for certain where they were going …

‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two … we’re turning off south about five miles from Fosterham. Signpost says By-road and there’s a straw stack beside it … half a dozen tar barrels parked on the verge.’

Gently referred to the map, but they were in a country of by-roads; narrow parallels, some dotted, straying out into blank spaces.

‘Calling car ex-seven … drop back as far as you can … you’re going into open country, you’ll be able to see her well ahead.’

Then they were in Fosterham, making the townspeople stare – Hansom wasn’t in a mood to defer to country towns. Gently received a snapshot impression of a street of plastered house fronts, a sleepy market square and a hovering flint tower. A pleasant place, probably – but the Wolseley whisked him past it. Beyond it, almost directly, they entered a sparser-looking tract of country.

Here the trees which had graced every hedgerow were become few and mean in appearance, and the fields, snowed with chalk-backed flints, supported thin and starve-acre crops. The hedges likewise had shrunk to mere scrub, soon to be choked and replaced by bracken; one saw far distances of brackened slopes scarred by gravel and by droves of sand.

‘Now you can see what I mean.’ Hansom made an embracing motion with his hand. ‘It goes on like this for miles, and farther down it’s a battle area. But I’d say she was making for Rawton, that’s what it sounds like, turning down there.’

‘Is there anything else in that direction?’

‘Yeah … she might find a way to Morsingdon.’

They identified the turning by Stephens’s description and found themselves on a road with a surface that made Hansom swear. It had patently been neglected for a number of years – in all probability, since the end of the
war. A rusted service sign confirmed this conjecture. Farther on, they passed a dump of disintegrating barbed wire. On both sides of the road stretched the god-forgotten heathland, relieved only at long intervals by ragged and wind-sculptured firs.

‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two … she’s going very slowly … not sure of the way. There’s practically no road … just a track of broken concrete … I’ve stopped behind a pill box … we’ll have to let her get ahead …’

‘Calling car ex-seven … do we just keep straight on?’

‘Calling car ex-two … slow down where you see a gun emplacement.’

Hansom was still bumping along at a stubborn forty-five, though the Wolseley was taking a hammering from potholes and sunken surfaces. Now, however, the metalled surface petered out entirely, giving way to a stony track which looked as aboriginal as the heath. In front of them it stretched away into a hollow or valley where the bracken-covered slopes shouldered closely to each other; it was deep enough to take a shadow from the westering sun, and was guarded by two tattered firs standing one to either side.

As they approached it they saw evident signs of a former occupation. A picket hut stood ruinous to one side of the track. Beside it lay a fallen gate and a
W.D
. property notice and, a little higher up, the gun emplacement referred to by Stephens.

‘They must have loved being stationed here …!’ Hansom clashed to a lower gear. The Wolseley slithered and yawed a little as it scrambled over some crumbling concrete. Almost immediately they were turning a corner, and then the need for caution was plain: they were coming
out on the brow of a slope, from which they must be visible for at least a mile. Hansom jammed on the brakes abruptly.

‘If he was anywhere near her, she would have seen him …’

Gently nodded, puckering his eyes as he searched the sweep of country before them. The heath here was very level and without a lot of cover, though leftwards, to the south, it slowly rose into a shallow ridge. Down the track, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, one could make out a pair of battered pill boxes.

He flicked the radio to transmit:

‘Calling car ex-seven … report your movements.’

After a minute, when there was no reply, he repeated the call with greater urgency.

Still there was no response from Stephens. Hansom met Gently’s eye as he tried again.

‘What do you make of that … would he have gone off on a recce?’

‘I don’t know. But I warned him to keep clear of trouble …’

It was at that instant that they heard the sound of a shot, coming distant but distinct from behind the southerly slope. A second later it was repeated by a second and a third, each producing a ringing echo from the stony little hollow.

‘Brother … let’s go!’ Hansom jerked in the clutch. The Wolseley went bumbling forward over the outrageous concrete track. Foot down, Hansom lashed the tortured vehicle into the fifties, making it bound and bucket like a goaded stallion. The track bore to the left through an area of scrubby bushes, but some distance beyond the pill boxes
it apparently vanished into the naked heath. Swearing viciously, Hansom blazed on along the line it had been taking, the sheer power of his anger seeming to keep the car going.

‘Over there – keep left!’

The track was coming to light again. Making a sudden turn to the left, it dived into an unexpected grove of firs. A pearl-grey Jaguar leapt into sight and Hansom dragged on the wheel like a madman; the Wolseley twisted from stem to stern, wiped past a tree, then straightened again. And then they were out on the southern side of the ridge, with the abandoned airfield stretching ahead of them: and there, developing at a speed which defied interference, was the drama which Stephens’s silence had portended.

Johnson’s Proctor had commenced its take-off from the adjacent end of a runway – a runway which, one could see, was badly damaged by cracks and sinkings. Its tail was already rising, its engine rolling at full throttle, it had the bit between its teeth and it was irresistibly tearing forwards. Irresistibly – except for one thing. The other Wolseley was racing towards it. Stephens must have driven down the runway ahead of it, and now, circling round, was dead in its path.

Something caught in Gently’s throat as he took in the spectacle, for what must happen was well-nigh inevitable. It was impossible to apply the brakes to the Proctor, and the Wolseley showed no intention of budging.

‘The prop – the engine – they’ll sheer him in halves—!’ He watched it in the grip of a ghastly compulsion; the searing experience of those few seconds seemed to suspend and to expand into several hours. But at the moment of
impact, the unforeseen happened. The Proctor flew up like a great catherine wheel. Digging its nose into the ground, it spun crashingly over and over, hurling fragments in all directions across the heath-covered soil. And Stephens, he rumbled on up the runway unharmed, his tyres a-shriek as he stamped on his brakes. He brought the Wolseley X-7 to a jerking halt: he didn’t seem even to have scratched her paintwork.

Seeing that Stephens was unharmed, Hansom drove on towards the aircraft, which had finally come to rest lying flat on its belly. One wing was wrenched off and the other was badly damaged, while the propeller had been twisted into savage, unnatural shapes. The undercarriage, sheered away, had flown to various parts of the compass, and the port side of the tail assembly hung in raw-looking ribbons. Of the occupants, Miss Butters was lying slumped against the control panel, while Johnson was feebly trying to force back the perspex hood.

In emergencies of this kind, Hansom was a good man to have around. He wasted no time in words or panicky actions. He was out of the Wolseley almost before it had stopped, and leaping up on the wing root, had begun to work on the jammed hood.

‘Get us out of this, cocker … we’re swimming in petrol …!’

It was true, the stuff was pouring from a fractured pipe in the wing root. In addition the engine was simmering, sounding like a sinister boiler, giving every now and then little popping and cracking noises.

‘This bastard thing’s twisted … to hell, it’s twisted!’

‘Is there an axe in the car?’

‘Yeah – get it, for Christ’s sake!’

Gently dropped down from the wing and ran to the boot of the Wolseley. He found a fireman’s axe and a jemmy in the tool kit it contained.

Stephens, meanwhile, came bumping up in the second Wolseley, and trembling and pale added his efforts to theirs.

‘He … he did that deliberately …’

‘Turned off, you mean?’

‘Yes … oh God … we’ve got to get them out of there!’

‘What about those shots?’

‘He was shooting at my tyres … let me have something … let me! … we’ve got to get them out!’