A Gun for Sale (20 page)

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll do the best I can. Give me the coat.’

He shivered, taking it off, and seemed to lose some of his sour assurance without the tight black tube which had hidden a very old, very flamboyant check suit in holes at both the elbows. It hung on him uneasily. He looked under-nourished. He wouldn’t have impressed anyone as dangerous now. He pressed his arms to his sides to hide the holes. ‘And your hat,’ Anne said. He picked it up from the sacks and gave it her. He looked humiliated, and he had never accepted humiliation before without rage. ‘Now,’ Anne said, ‘remember. Wait for the whistles and then count.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Raven said. He tried hopelessly to express the deep pain it gave him to see her go; it felt too much like the end of everything. He said, ‘I’ll see you again – some time,’ and when she mechanically reassured him, ‘Yes,’ he laughed with his aching despair, ‘Not likely, after I’ve killed –’ but he didn’t even know the man’s name.

Chapter 6

1

SAUNDERS HAD HALF
fallen asleep; a voice at his side woke him. ‘The fog’s getting thick, sir.’

It was already dense, with the first light touching it with dusty yellow, and he would have sworn at the policeman for not waking him earlier if his stammer had not made him chary of wasting words. He said, ‘Pass the word round to move in.’

‘Are we going to rush the place, sir?’

‘No. There’s a girl there. We can’t have any sh-sh-shooting. Wait till he comes out.’

But the policeman hadn’t left his side when he noticed, ‘The door’s opening.’ Saunders put his whistle in his mouth and lowered his safety catch. The light was bad and the fog deceptive; but he recognized the dark coat as it slipped to the right into the shelter of the coal trucks. He blew his whistle and was after it. The black coat had half a minute’s start and was moving quickly into the fog. It was impossible to see at all more than twenty feet ahead. But Saunders kept doggedly just in sight blowing his whistle continuously. As he hoped, a whistle blew in front; it confused the fugitive; he hesitated for a moment and Saunders gained on him. They had him cornered, and this Saunders knew was the dangerous moment. He blew his whistle urgently three times into the fog to bring the police round in a complete circle and the whistle was taken up in the yellow obscurity, passing in a wide invisible circle.

But he had lost pace, the fugitive spurted forward and was lost. Saunders blew two blasts: ‘Advance slowly and keep in touch.’ To the right and in front a single long whistle announced that the man had been seen, and the police converged on the sound. Each kept in touch with a policeman on either hand. It was impossible as long as the circle was kept closed for the man to escape. But the circle drew in and there was no
sign
of him; the short single exploratory blasts sounded petulant and lost. At last Saunders gazing ahead saw the faint form of a policeman come out of the fog a dozen yards away. He halted them all with a whistled signal : the fugitive must be somewhere just ahead in the tangle of trucks in the centre. Revolver in hand Saunders advanced and a policeman took his place and closed the circle.

Suddenly Saunders spied his man. He had taken up a strategic position where a pile of coal and an empty truck at his back made a wedge which guarded him from surprise. He was invisible to the police behind him, and he had turned sideways like a duellist and presented only a shoulder to Saunders, while a pile of old sleepers hid him to the knees. It seemed to Saunders that it meant only one thing, that he was going to shoot it out; the man must be mad and desperate. The hat was pulled down over the face; the coat hung in an odd loose way; the hands were in the pockets. Saunders called at him through the yellow coils of fog, ‘You’d better come quietly.’ He raised his pistol and advanced, his finger ready on the trigger. But the immobility of the figure scared him. It was in shadow half hidden in the swirl of fog. It was he who was exposed, with the east, and the pale penetration of early light, behind him. It was like waiting for execution, for he could not fire first. But all the same, knowing what Mather felt, knowing that this man was mixed up with Mather’s girl, he did not want much excuse to fire. Mather would stand by him. A movement would be enough. He said sharply without a stammer, ‘Put up your hands!’ The figure didn’t move. He told himself again with a kindling hatred for the man who had injured Mather: I’ll plug him if he doesn’t obey: they’ll all stand by me: one more chance. ‘Put up your hands!’ and when the figure stayed as it was with its hands hidden, a hardly discernible menace, he fired.

But as he pressed the trigger a whistle blew, a long urgent blast which panted and gave out like a rubber animal, from the direction of the wall and the road. There could be no doubt whatever what that meant, and suddenly he saw it all – he had shot at Mather’s girl ; she’d drawn them off. He screamed
at
the men behind him, ‘Back to the gate!’ and ran forward. He had seen her waver at his shot. He said, ‘Are you hurt?’ and knocked the hat off her head to see her better.

‘You’re the third person who’s tried to kill me,’ Anne said weakly, leaning hard against the truck. ‘Come to sunny Nottwich. Well, I’ve got six lives left.’

Saunders’s stammer came back: ‘W-w-w-w.’

‘This is where you hit,’ Anne said, ‘if that’s what you want to know,’ showing the long yellow sliver on the edge of the truck. ‘It’s only an outer. You don’t even get a box of chocolates.’

Saunders said, ‘You’ll have to c-c-come along with me.’

‘It’ll be a pleasure. Do you mind if I take off this coat? I feel kind of silly.’

At the gate four policeman stood round something on the ground. One of them said, ‘We’ve sent for an ambulance.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Not yet. He’s shot in the stomach. He must have gone on whistling –’

Saunders had a moment of vicious rage. ‘Stand aside, boys,’ he said, ‘and let the lady see.’ They drew back in an embarrassed unwilling way as if they’d been hiding a dirty chalk picture on the wall and showed the white drained face which looked as if it had never been alive, never known the warm circulation of blood. You couldn’t call the expression peaceful; it was just nothing at all. The blood was all over the trousers the men had loosened, was caked on the charcoal of the path. Saunders said, ‘Two of you take this lady to the station. I’ll stay here till the ambulance comes.’

2

Mather said, ‘If you want to make a statement I must warn you. Anything you say may be used in evidence.’

‘I haven’t got a statement to make,’ Anne said. ‘I want to talk to you, Jimmy.’

Mather said, ‘If the superintendent had been here, I should have asked him to take the case. I want you to understand
that
I’m not letting personal – that my not having charged you doesn’t mean –’

‘You might give a girl a cup of coffee,’ Anne said. ‘It’s nearly breakfast time.’

Mather struck the table furiously. ‘Where was he going?’

‘Give me time,’ Anne said, ‘I’ve got plenty to tell. But you won’t believe it.’

‘You saw the man he shot,’ Mather said. ‘He’s got a wife and two children. They’ve rung up from the hospital. He’s bleeding internally.’

‘What’s the time?’ Anne said.

‘Eight o’clock. It won’t make any difference your keeping quiet. He can’t escape us now. In an hour the air raid signals go. There won’t be a soul on the streets without a mask. He’ll be spotted at once. What’s he wearing?’

‘If you’d give me something to eat. I haven’t had a thing for twenty-four hours. I could think then.’

Mather said, ‘There’s only one chance you won’t be charged with complicity. If you make a statement.’

‘Is this the third degree?’ Anne said.

‘Why do you want to shelter him? Why keep your word to him when you don’t –?’

‘Go on,’ Anne said. ‘Be personal. No one can blame you. I don’t. But I don’t want you to think I’d keep my word to him. He killed the old man. He told me so.’

‘What old man?’

‘The War Minister.’

‘You’ve got to think up something better than that,’ Mather said.

‘But it’s true. He never stole those notes. They double-crossed him. It was what they’d paid him to do the job.’

‘He spun you a fancy yarn,’ Mather said. ‘But
I
know where those notes came from.’

‘So do I.I can guess. From somewhere in this town.’

‘He told you wrong. They came from United Rail Makers in Victoria Street.’

Anne shook her head. ‘They didn’t start from there. They came from Midland Steel.’

‘So that’s where he’s going, to Midland Steel – in the Tanneries?’

‘Yes,’ Anne said. There was a sound of finality about the word which daunted her. She hated Raven now, the policeman she had seen bleeding on the ground called at her heart for Raven’s death, but she couldn’t help remembering the hut, the cold, the pile of sacks, his complete and hopeless trust. She sat with bowed head while Mather lifted the receiver and gave his orders. ‘We’ll wait for him there,’ he said. ‘Who is it he wants to see?’

‘He doesn’t know.’

‘There might be something in it,’ Mather said. ‘Some connection between the two. He’s probably been double-crossed by some clerk.’

‘It wasn’t a clerk who paid him all that money, who tried to kill me just because I knew –’

Mather said, ‘Your fairy tale can wait.’ He rang a bell and told the constable who came, ‘Hold this girl for further inquiries. You can give her a sandwich and a cup of coffee now.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To bring in your boy friend,’ Mather said.

‘He’ll shoot. He’s quicker than you are. Why can’t you let the others –?’ She implored him, ‘I’ll make a full statement. How he killed a man called Kite too.’

‘Take it,’ Mather said to the constable. He put on his coat. ‘The fog’s clearing.’

She said, ‘Don’t you see that if it’s true – only give him time to find his man and there won’t be – war.’

‘He was telling you a fairy story.’

‘He was telling me the truth – but, of course, you weren’t there – you didn’t hear him. It sounds differently to you. I thought I was saving – everyone.’

‘All you did,’ Mather said brutally, ‘was get a man killed.’

‘The whole thing sounds so differently in here. Kind of fantastic. But he believed. Maybe,’ she said hopelessly, ‘he was mad.’

Mather opened the door. She suddenly cried to him, ‘Jimmy, he wasn’t mad. They tried to kill
me
.’

He said, ‘I’ll read your statement when I get back,’ and closed the door.

Chapter 7

1

THEY WERE ALL
having the hell of a time at the hospital. It was the biggest rag they’d had since the day of the street collection when they kidnapped old Piker and ran him to the edge of the Weevil and threatened to duck him if he didn’t pay a ransom. Good old Fergusson, good old Buddy, was organizing it all. They had three ambulances out in the courtyard and one had a death’s-head banner on it for the dead ones. Somebody shrieked that Mike was taking out the petrol with a nasal syringe, so they began to pelt him with flour and soot; they had it ready in great buckets. It was the unofficial part of the programme: all the casualties were going to be rubbed with it, except the dead ones the death’s-head ambulance picked up.
They
were going to be put in the cellar where the refrigerating plant kept the corpses for dissection fresh.

One of the senior surgeons passed rapidly and nervously across a corner of the courtyard. He was on the way to a Caesarian operation, but he had no confidence whatever that the students wouldn’t pelt him or duck him; only five years ago there had been a scandal and an inquiry because a woman had died on the day of a rag. The surgeon attending her had been kidnapped and carried all over town dressed as Guy Fawkes. Luckily she wasn’t a paying patient, and, though her husband had been hysterical at the inquest, the coroner had decided that one must make allowance for youth. The coroner had been a student himself once and remembered with pleasure the day when they had pelted the Vice-Chancellor of the University with soot.

The senior surgeon had been present that day too. Once safely inside the glass corridor he could smile at the memory. The Vice-Chancellor had been unpopular; he had been a classic which wasn’t very suitable for a provincial university. He had translated Lucan’s
Pharsalia
into some complicated
metre
of his own invention. The senior surgeon remembered something vaguely about stresses. He could still see the little wizened frightened Liberal face trying to smile when his pince-nez broke, trying to be a good sportsman. But anyone could tell that he wasn’t really a good sportsman. That was why they pelted him so hard.

The senior surgeon, quite safe now, smiled tenderly down at the rabble in the courtyard. Their white coats were already black with soot. Somebody had got hold of a stomach pump. Very soon they’d be raiding the shop in the High Street and seizing their mascot, the stuffed and rather moth-eaten tiger. Youth, youth, he thought, laughing gently when he saw Colson, the treasurer, scuttle from door to door with a scared expression: perhaps they’ll catch him: no, they’ve let him by: what a joke it all was, ‘trailing clouds of glory’, ‘turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping’.

Buddy was having the hell of a time. Everyone was scampering to obey his orders. He was the leader. They’d duck or pelt anyone he told them to. He had an enormous sense of power; it more than atoned for unsatisfactory examination results, for surgeons’ sarcasms. Even a surgeon wasn’t safe today if
he
gave an order. The soot and water and flour were his idea; the whole gas practice would have been a dull sober official piece of routine if he hadn’t thought of making it a ‘rag’. The very word ‘rag’ was powerful; it conferred complete freedom from control. He’d called a meeting of the brighter students and explained. ‘If anyone’s on the streets without a gas-mask he’s a conchie. There are people who want to crab the practice. So when we get ’em back to the hospital we’ll give ’em hell.’

They boiled round him. ‘Good old Buddy.’ ‘Look out with that pump.’ ‘Who’s the bastard who’s pinched my stethoscope?’ ‘What about Tiger Tim?’ They surged round Buddy Fergusson, waiting for orders, and he stood superbly above them on the step of an ambulance, his white coat apart, his fingers in the pockets of his double-breasted waistcoat, his square squat figure swelling with pride, while they shouted, ‘Tiger Tim! Tiger Tim! Tiger Tim!’