Night of Triumph (17 page)

‘But, didn’t he say we weren’t to go up there? That the whole building might come down?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake. Just fucking get on with it. Would I do this if it wasn’t safe? Would I? Of course not! Come on.’

Gingerly, Elizabeth placed a foot upon the first stair, and then the next upon the second. Minutely, but distinctly, the whole staircase began to creak, and seemed to list about a sixteenth of
an inch to the left. A fine spray of dust, as if from a bottle of sal volatile, floated down from somewhere up above and settled on her hair and forehead.

‘Oh my God,’ gasped Elizabeth, starting to feel faint, ‘we can’t do this. Please. We mustn’t do this. It’s all going to collapse.’

‘Come on. Get on with it.’

Very slowly, and as if traversing a narrow, swaying rope bridge, Elizabeth and Mr Ware climbed the stairs, which stayed steady. A fine, powdery dust continued to fall. At the top, they found
themselves on a narrow landing, which was dimly illuminated by the dawn light through the window. The beam of Mr Ware’s torch swung round and picked out the handle of the door on their left.
He twisted it; the door opened easily and they were in.

The window had been blown out and there was broken glass and rubbish in a mound over a double bed. Mr Ware gave Elizabeth the torch.

‘Hold this. Point it at the bed.’

Greedily, hastily, and apparently all but forgetting that Elizabeth was there, Mr Ware scrabbled away at what covered the bed. Within a minute, he had disclosed an eiderdown, under which were
two dead bodies: that of a man and a woman. The man was in pyjamas, the woman in a nightgown. Their heads, and the pillows on which they rested, had turned black. The sweetish smell that Elizabeth
could sense on the lower floor of the house intensified almost unbearably.

Mr Ware scrambled round to the woman’s side of the bed, gesturing brusquely to Elizabeth to keep the torch trained on him; numbly, she complied. He wrenched back the eiderdown and the
sheet and tried to pull out the woman’s hand. This was not easy. Rigor mortis had set in: it was like pulling at the arm of a statue. But he was able to get a grip on it, and Elizabeth could
see that there were rings on almost every finger except the thumb. One had what looked like a diamond. Mr Ware scrabbled in his bag and produced a pot of Vaseline. Frantically, he rubbed at the
dead, stiff fingers and, with practised skill, removed every ring and carefully stowed them in the pouch of a wallet which he took from his pocket.

‘Beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘I knew it. Beautiful. Now, then. Let’s have a look at the other hand.’

But there were no rings on that one. Mr Ware shrugged, and went round to the other side of the bed, and quickly took possession of the dead man’s gold signet ring, using the Vaseline pot,
as before.

‘Right,’ he said simply, and then began systematically to open the drawers of a bedside cabinet, starting with the one at the bottom, so he wouldn’t have to waste time closing
each one. When it came to the top-most drawer, he gasped, while removing a small case from what looked like a sweater.

‘Oh Jesus, Lil. Oh Jesus.’

He opened up the case and took out what appeared in the blackness to be a cord.

‘Keep that bloody light steady on me, girl!’

She did so, and the beam picked out a gorgeous dazzle. Mr Ware bunched the necklace in his fist and stuffed it back inside the case, so roughly that, at first, the lid would not shut properly.
Elizabeth then saw him grow strangely still. He appeared to be thinking about something.

‘Put the torch beam on my mouth,’ he said quietly.

‘What?’

‘Just do it.’

Elizabeth shone the torch onto his mouth, and Mr Ware grinned, pulling his lips back, like a skull.

‘Look!’ he said brightly. ‘All my baby teeth. All of them. Never dropped out when I was a kid. All of them. All my baby teeth.’

For a few seconds, Mr Ware did his death’s-head grin in the darkness. Then he snapped out of it. ‘All right, let’s go,’ he said curtly. ‘We’ve got to go.
We’ve got to quit while we’re ahead. Can’t risk staying here any longer. Let’s go. Down the stairs, and out. Come on.’

He pushed Elizabeth ahead of him. She stepped forward, around the bed, and back out of the door, with her captor following. They stepped down the swaying stairs, and again a fine cloud of dust
sprayed down on them in the darkness, dislodged by their disturbance to the house’s damaged spinal column. Now there was an ominous groaning and creaking to the staircase as it tilted.
Elizabeth was light-headed and dizzy as they reached the ground. They had to get out of there. But Mr Ware was reluctant to leave, perhaps suspecting there might be more treasure to be had, or else
simply savouring the scene of his great triumph.

‘You know, it’s funny,’ he mused. ‘It’s funny what Katharine was saying about you looking like – well, you know. What a joke. I almost believed it myself at
first!’

Elizabeth said nothing. She just edged towards the door.

‘How funny. How funny.’ The thin shaft of daylight showed Mr Ware to be smiling delightedly, lost in thought.

‘Shouldn’t we go now?’ Elizabeth asked.

‘What? Oh. Oh, yes.’

They were about to make a move towards the door, when Elizabeth stopped. She could hear a faint whining sound, like a small animal in distress.

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘Can you hear that?’

Mr Ware frowned at her, suspecting a trick. But then he heard it too. A tiny, all but inaudible moan. It seemed to be coming from the kitchen area behind them, the area buried in detritus. Mr
Ware turned to look in the direction of the noise, then back to Elizabeth. He took out his gun again, and pointed it at her.

‘Don’t you try anything,’ he snapped, and went around the detritus mound from where the noise appeared to be coming, squatted down on his haunches, removed his bag, placed it
on the ground, and then placed his gun on top of that. He looked sharply up at Elizabeth, picked up the gun, made an ostentatious click on its safety catch and placed it down again, close by. Then
he began to scoop the debris away with both hands, scoop, scoop, scoop. The noise got louder, and still louder. Scoop, scoop.

And then they saw it: what looked like a boy of eighteen or perhaps nineteen, half-buried in the dust, his face caked in white, the blackened rills of blood running along the side of his head, a
fragment of what looked like toast pressed on his cheek, and placed in his slack lips, the spout of a big, unbroken teapot. Did the impact interrupt him as he carried tea and toast? Somehow, Mr
Ware had overlooked this other occupant of the house, presumably the son of the couple upstairs. He was still alive. Again, the tiny, thin moan.

‘Fetch me one of those cushions,’ snapped Mr Ware. ‘Fetch the bloody thing!’ he repeated, as Elizabeth stood there dumbly. Pulling herself together, she stumbled over to
where cushions were scattered on the floor, took one, brought it back and tremblingly gave it to him.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘perhaps if you put it under his head.’

Mr Ware knelt down beside the boy with the cushion in his hand, looking almost tender.

‘You can make him comfortable, yes, but it would be far better to get him out of the rubble, before you get the cushion under his—’

Mr Ware gripped the cushion in both hands and pushed it down hard onto the boy’s face. The soft low whining noise was replaced by an infinitesimally increased note of pain.

‘No! You can’t! You mustn’t!’

Very quickly, there was silence. Mr Ware said, ‘There.’

Elizabeth had now ceased to tremble. She turned white with rage. The whole night’s disgust boiled up inside her, and
exploded.

‘You beast,’ she said to him. ‘You beast. You shameful, disgusting, unutterable beast.’

Mr Ware sneered and shrugged.

‘Come on,’ he said, and made to grab her. But Elizabeth ducked out of his grip, stumbled back to where the broken rocking chair was to be found, and picked up one of the wooden
strut-poles, brandishing it at him.

‘Put that down, Lil. Come on.’

‘You beast. You horrible beast.’

‘Put it down.’

The pole was heavier than she thought, more like a beam. The two of them squared warily up to each other. Elizabeth glanced at where he had left the gun on top of his kitbag.

‘Get away from me.’

‘Come on. Don’t be a stupid girl. Come on.’

Suddenly, Elizabeth changed her grip on the beam, holding it at its end, as if she were tossing a caber, and shoved so that it shot outwards, as straight as a torpedo, straight into Mr
Ware’s face.

There was a crack, and a yelp of pain. Elizabeth dropped the pole. Mr Ware held both hands up to his mouth, from which blood was pouring. He put his hands down, and she could see that four of
his teeth, two from the top and two from the bottom, had gone.

‘Bissh,’ he slobbered. ‘Fughg bissh.’

Lunging forward, he made a move to grab her, but was too dazed to do this with any firmness or accuracy. It was a brief grapple as Elizabeth slithered past him, and desperately grabbed for the
gun.

‘Bisssh. Nogh.’

‘Stay back. Stay back. I’m warning you.’

Elizabeth had picked up the Luger, and now, pale and defiant, was holding it with both hands, arms outstretched, pointing the gun straight at him.

‘Stay back or I shall have to shoot you,’ she said. ‘I mean it. Stay back.’

Mr Ware stayed where he was, swaying. His mouth was drawn back in a bloody, broken grimace and it was difficult to tell if he was sneering at her or not.

‘Bissh. You.’

His mouth was now a broad, smudged oblong of blood.

Then, having apparently decided on something, he turned round and looked for something on the ground. He picked it up: the wooden pole that Elizabeth had just hit him with. Mr Ware held the end
with two fists, one on top of each other, with the pole angled up high behind his head, like a baseball player.

‘Stop. Get back. Stop,’ said Elizabeth. The gun was now beginning to tremble.

‘You. You. You.’

Mr Ware brought his bunched fists up over the crown of his head, and his weapon disappeared briefly behind his back; he was clearly preparing to smash it down onto Elizabeth’s skull with
all his might. He stepped forward, and Elizabeth took one pace back.

His face was now a mask of blood.

With a groan, he made to bring his club down on Elizabeth. She flinched, shut her eyes and fired three times.

Elizabeth dropped the gun clatteringly onto the floor, her wrists in agony from the recoil.

Mr Ware continued to advance on her, swaying, but now sneering and gurgling and gloating in triumph, still with the club raised. He appeared to be shifting its position in his hands, waggling
it, to get a better aim at his defenceless victim. He kept shuffling forward, and Elizabeth retreated, now utterly without hope. She sank down on her knees, her palms pressed on top of her
head.

‘You. You.’

But there was something odd about the way Mr Ware’s body now twisted and jerked to the side, and the movement of his legs had a shuffling, uncoordinated manner, as if his pelvis were
locked. This was because, though the first of Elizabeth’s bullets had hit the wall behind him, the second had pierced his right forearm just above the elbow, and the third had entered his
head three inches above his left eyebrow.

Mr Ware was quite still, but then lurched away, flailing blindly with outstretched, stiffened arms, like a swimmer, and crashed into the bottom of the staircase, tried vainly to heave himself
up, and crashed down again. Instantly, there was a groaning and cracking from somewhere up above. The spray of dust from the upper storey had become a downpour. The ceiling bowed terrifyingly and a
crack travelled down the wall.

Elizabeth stood up. Her knee-joints felt as though they were made of honey. She scrabbled out of the front door, past the tarpaulin, through the wooden door-hole. She got out into the street and
scrambled and staggered away.

Behind her, she could hear the deafening, rending crash of the house collapsing in a shower of dirt and dust, motes of which were now beginning to circle round in front of her.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out.

The sound took quite a while to die away.

Elizabeth did not look round. She blinked, found her eyelashes had gummed together and prised them back open with her fingertips. Then she pushed her hair back from her forehead and smoothed
down her skirts which had changed to the colour of dust.

She looked at her shoes: these too were very dirty.

Elizabeth realised that this was the first time she had ever stayed up all night.

She began to walk, listening to the birdsong. Should she take a cab? Should she take a bus? She heard traffic. There must be cabs.

Elizabeth would have liked somewhere to sit down, but there was no bench, or low wall. She pushed out her left hand and bent her elbow round, meaning to check the time. The watch-dial loomed
blankly.

Her wrists both hurt a great deal and she realised that her ears were ringing. A brief, trembly movement with her right hand confirmed that she still had her purse.

She turned a corner, then hesitated, and looked back round to where she had come from.

She peered to the end of the street, which was still hazy with unsettled dust, like smoke from a bonfire. That policeman seemed to have vanished. No. There he was. Talking to a group of people
in uniform, and pointing to her. Now they were walking quickly in her direction – running, actually.

She could see London’s streets: houses, curtained windows. She could still hear distant merrymakers, who were still out in these streets. All those people, people drinking, people
laughing, people fighting, people talking, all those people she had seen from the Palace balcony last night: all the same people. People everywhere.

Elizabeth coughed; her side hurt, she put her hand to the pain, bent over a little, and again found herself unable to check the movement. She was sinking back down to her knees, but found the
strength to straighten when the men got close to her.