The Darkest Hour (28 page)
C
HIVERS PULLED THE
Mercedes up outside a timber yard surrounded by a high brick wall. Peacoat jumped out, unlocked the gates, pushed the far one open, and dragged the near one out of the way as the Mercedes drove into the yard, out of sight of the road.
Rossett got out and checked his surroundings, reaching for Jacob’s hand as he did so. The yard was surrounded on three sides by bomb sites and derelict warehouses. It looked as though before the war the yard had been a loading bay for the warehouses, but now it was all that was left of whatever businesses had been here.
Peacoat was pulling the gates closed and locking them again, and Rossett realized they had chosen the spot well, as it provided excellent cover for any sort of clandestine operation. There was little passing traffic, and he imagined few people would ever need to visit the area unless they were there to do business with the yard.
He glanced around. The yard was filled with reclaimed timber, stacked according to size in long rows, some of which were almost ten feet high and sixty feet long. Chivers had parked the car between two of these rows, and at the end of it, Rossett could see a brick-walled office that backed onto one of the outer walls.
Dracula got out of the other side of the car and smiled at Rossett.
“Once a policeman always a policeman, Sergeant Rossett?”
“Just having a look around.”
Dracula smiled and beckoned Rossett to follow him toward the office. Chivers got out of the car, winked at Rossett, and waited for him to walk ahead.
The clear evening was rapidly becoming a cold one, and when Chivers coughed again the old man’s breath condensed in the air and the cloud extended a long way before it disappeared into the sky. Rossett shivered in the thin woolen coat and squeezed Jacob’s hand as he walked behind Dracula.
“Are you cold?”
“No,” the boy replied, but Rossett didn’t believe him.
Dracula stopped at the office door and produced some keys; he looked back at Rossett as he unlocked the door and smiled again.
“Would you be so kind to give my associate your gun, Sergeant?”
“No,” Rossett replied, unthreatening but unflinching.
“It’s merely to set my mind at rest. I know you are a man of considerable talents when it comes to violence.”
Rossett glanced at Chivers, who shrugged back at him.
“Give me the gun.” Peacoat stepped forward and Rossett looked at the Browning that the other man was holding less than twelve inches from his damaged ribs.
Rossett half turned to Peacoat.
“Here.” Rossett lifted his left hand, showing he intended to reach into his pocket slowly and carefully. “Just mind that Browning in my busted ribs.”
Peacoat smiled, and Rossett looked down at his pocket to get the gun. His left hand moved slowly and deliberately, and his right, like a conjurer’s, whipped back and across the Browning, pushing it away. Peacoat twitched in surprise and looked down at the rattlesnake right that was now holding the Browning and twisting it down from his grasp.
It was then, just as Peacoat’s head turned, that Rossett punched him in the throat.
Peacoat’s legs collapsed under him and he crumpled to the ground, blindly grasping at his throat as he tried to find his breath.
Rossett turned to Dracula, who stared at Peacoat and then at the Browning in Rossett’s hand.
“As I said, you have considerable talents.” Dracula spoke slowly.
Rossett put the Browning into his right pocket and nodded to the office door.
“Shall we?”
“Why not?” Dracula smiled in return and walked into the office as Rossett took hold of Jacob’s hand again and followed him.
Dracula flicked the light switch and walked around the wooden desk that sat in the middle of the room. He gestured to the chair on the other side of the desk, but Rossett chose to stand by the window that looked out onto the yard. He nodded to the chair and Jacob reluctantly let go of his hand and took the seat instead while Rossett stared out the window, watching Chivers help Peacoat into a sitting position outside.
“Don’t worry about him, Sergeant, he’ll be okay.”
“I’m not,” Rossett replied, still watching outside.
“Can I offer you a drink?”
Rossett turned to look at Dracula, who had removed his coat and was standing by a filing cabinet in the corner. He shook his head and watched, one hand on the Webley in his pocket, as the other man opened the top drawer and took out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses, then closed the drawer and took a seat behind the desk.
Rossett kept his hand in his pocket and looked back outside, to where Peacoat was now on his feet. The big man was still holding his throat and in visible discomfort, but Rossett could see he was fuming from the way he kept pointing to the office and shaking his head.
Rossett wondered if he should just kill him, then wondered when even thinking such a thing had become normal for him.
“Mr. Chivers told me that you need our help.”
“I need a car.” Still looking out the window.
“And?”
“Maybe some money. I don’t have any.”
“Maybe?”
Rossett didn’t like the way this was going.
“What’s your name?” Rossett asked.
“My name isn’t important.”
“You know mine.”
“Everyone in our line of business knows your name, Sergeant.”
“Timber merchant?”
Dracula shrugged and smiled at Rossett, and then glanced to the door as Chivers walked in.
“You’ve upset him outside.” Chivers said to Rossett as he tapped Jacob on the shoulder and moved the boy off the chair to take his place.
“Would you like a drink, George?”
“Cor, not ’arf.” Chivers rubbed his hands together in anticipation and Dracula poured him a drink. He picked it up and drank half of it in one gulp, grimacing and twisting his head as the Scotch went down and clenching a fist to his chest.
“The sergeant was telling me what he needs, George.”
“Can we sort him out?” Chivers’s voice was raw from the whiskey.
“I’m sure we can come to an arrangement of some sort.”
Rossett had been waiting for this. Communists or not, these men were the same as everyone else: they wanted some of the diamonds, if not all of them.
“I would have thought I’d earned a car, at least. If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be rotting in that cellar.”
“Yes, well . . .” Dracula half nodded and swirled the Scotch in his glass, then leaned back in his seat. Rossett glanced out the window and saw that Peacoat had gone. He moved away from the window into the corner opposite the door. If the big man had found another weapon, Rossett didn’t want to present himself as a target through a window. He decided that if the man came through the door with a gun, he was going to kill him before he had a chance to use it.
“Sergeant Rossett, I’ll make you a deal. You can have a car, plus forty pounds right now. In return, I ask for half the diamonds and gold you find. You will take Mr. Flynn with you as security on the deal, pending settlement,” Dracula said, looking out the window himself.
“Mr. Flynn?”
“My associate outside.”
“No. I go with Chivers, nobody else.”
Chivers looked up at Rossett and then back to Dracula, nodding in agreement at the suggestion.
“I’ll go with ’im; it’ll be better all round that way.”
“No, George, I’m afraid not.” Dracula leaned forward and pulled open a drawer on his desk. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
Rossett almost felt the Browning coming out of the desk before he saw it. He watched as Dracula drew back the hammer on the automatic before it was clear of the drawer. Rossett fired his Webley through his coat pocket, hitting Dracula in the center of his chest and knocking him over backward before the other man had a chance to level the gun at Chivers. Dracula fell out of sight onto the floor behind the desk.
Rossett’s ears were ringing after the boom of the Webley, and he pulled the gun out of his pocket and looked first out the window and then around the other side of the desk where Dracula was lying on his back, still half in his chair where it had fallen back under him, his arms spread like a fallen angel, dead eyes staring up.
Chivers was silently moving his mouth in shock, unable to believe what had just happened. Jacob was crouching, covering his face, in the corner.
“Chivers!” Rossett shouted, and the old man raised his head. “Get Jacob.”
Chivers looked back to where Dracula had been, then slowly his eyes found Jacob in the corner.
Rossett looked out to the rapidly darkening yard. Somewhere outside, Flynn would be wondering what was going on.
“There’ll be some money in the cabinet,” Chivers said from the corner of the room, where he was holding Jacob, shielding the boy’s eyes from the spreading pool of blood that was creeping under the desk toward them.
Rossett crossed the room quickly, pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet, and found a small cashbox.
The box wasn’t locked. He found about three pounds in change, pocketed the money, and dropped the box onto the floor.
“What about a car? Do they have transport here?”
“A van, they’ve got a van. The keys will be in the desk.”
Rossett ripped open the desk drawers, glancing up and out the window as he did so and then back to the drawer. He found some keys and put them in his pocket. Kneeling next to Dracula, he went through his coat and found a wallet, which he stuffed in his pocket, then took the man’s wristwatch and slipped it on.
It fleetingly crossed Rossett’s mind that stealing from the dead was becoming the norm, but he forced the thought from his mind so that he could concentrate on the matter in hand.
He ejected the magazine from the Browning in the dead man’s hand and pocketed it, then stood up and crossed to the door, switching off the light.
He looked out across the yard, but couldn’t see Flynn or the van.
“Where do they keep the van?”
“Parked down one of the lanes between the timber.”
“Which one?”
“How the bleedin’ ’ell do I know? I’ve not been ’ere for weeks.”
Rossett looked out into the yard again and then back at Chivers. “I’ll go get the van. Wait here.”
“Be careful. He’ll have a gun by now, and it’ll be a big one.”
“A machine gun?” Rossett asked.
“At least. This is where they hide ’em, in the stacks of timber; ’e’ll ’ave been diggin’ one out while we was talkin’.”
Rossett nodded and looked outside again.
“Stay here.”
Rossett crouched as he ran outside. Head down, he made for the nearest stack of wood and slammed into it, gasping as he jarred his ribs. He swept the lines of timber high and low opposite him with the Webley, but could see no sign of Flynn. He checked that the keys in his pocket were there and then started to move along the aisle toward the center of the yard.
The timber aisles were about eight feet wide. Rossett guessed they were that way to allow the van to reverse into any of them from the cleared square at the center of the yard. It would make unloading the van easier, plus it would save carrying the timber farther than was necessary. He decided that from the center square, he’d be able to see along most of the lanes at once, and from there he’d find the van.
Then it occurred to him that Flynn would be thinking the same thing, and he adapted his plan accordingly.
He wouldn’t be hunted by Flynn.
He would hunt Flynn.
And then he would kill him.
Rossett looked up at the stacks around him. Selecting one that was made up of thick, dark, square, solid roof joists, he started to climb the twelve feet to the top.
After a few seconds, he was high enough to look over the yard. By now evening had crossed that blurred line into night, and the sky was nearly completely dark. In the little light that was left, he saw Flynn, some fifty feet away, about three aisles over, crouching on top of another pile of timber like a dangerous gargoyle.
The big man was looking down into the center of the yard, his head twitching this way and that. Rossett lowered himself from the stack quietly and looked back toward the office. He couldn’t see Chivers or Jacob, but he gave them a thumbs-up anyway before creeping along the aisle to allow himself a closer shot at Flynn.
Near the end of the lane, he guessed he was about thirty feet away, close enough to take the big man down with the Webley, and still behind him so as to guarantee surprise. Rossett reached up to the top of an eight-foot pile of relatively new wood and slowly pulled himself up to look over.
Flynn was staring back. The look of surprise on his face was almost as expressive as the one Rossett could feel on his own.
Rossett dropped down immediately, just as Flynn let rip with a short burst from the machine gun he was holding and the timber above Rossett’s head rained splinters. Rossett ran along the line of timber back toward the office as the yard fell silent. Chivers appeared at the office door.
“Give me a gun. I can help,” Chivers whispered.
Rossett ignored him and dodged down the side of the office to the yard wall. He looked up at the top, which was ten feet above him and crested with some rusted and dangling barbed wire. Rossett took out the Browning and stuffed it into his waistband. He threw the wallet to Chivers with the van keys, removed his coat and hung it over his shoulder, then started to climb up onto the office roof via the window ledge.
Before he reached the roof he looked back to check that he was below the height of the timber, then threw the coat up onto the black tar that covered the flat roof. He waited a moment, took a deep breath, and followed the coat. Lying flat, he spun quickly to face out onto the yard, the Webley scanning it carefully. At ten feet, the roof height was almost the same as most of the lines of timber he could see before him, and he squinted through the dusk for sight of Flynn.
“Stay down low, below the window.”
“Where the bleedin’ ’ell are you goin’?” Rossett heard Chivers hiss from inside the shed.
“I’m going to skirt the yard around the outside to come back in behind him,” Rossett hissed back. He threw the coat over the barbed wire and dropped over the wall into the street outside.