Hostage (21 page)

It had to be. Under the circumstances conscience apparently approves of murder. We have managed to hide the body from Gammel but I don’t know what to do with it. If we are here long, not all the scents of Araby will perfume this little room. Can I put it down – accurately – to a dead rat?

Sir Frederick was mercifully out establishing an identity among the dregs and in his absence I had written up yesterday’s entry in the diary when Mick tumbled down the stairs into our basement, panting that they were after him.

‘How many?’

‘Just one.’

‘Did he see you come in here?’

‘I don’t think so. But he’ll know it was somewhere this side of the street.’

I asked him to tell me quickly what had happened without details.

‘A bloke called Jim offered us both a lift. Kevin knew him and said he was O.K. He dropped Kevin off in Whitechapel to take the Underground to Kilburn Park and then he started up and dam’ near hit a lamp post. So he mops his face and asks me if I can drive him home because he’s feeling a bit off. I drove him home to Carrington Street, put the car away in his garage and told him I had an easy bus ride home. “Well then you needn’t clear off yet,” he said. “We’ll go upstairs and have another for luck.” I was on to something, Gil, and I wanted more. …’

I interrupted him. His news could wait. The man in the street was an urgent problem.

‘Well, Jim pulled down the garage shutter and we went up a couple of steps through a door into the flat. He slumped on to a sofa and said he’d be all right in a minute. Now, I’ve argued with enough blokes in bars to know when a man’s drunk and all the ways it can take him. I just felt there was something wrong. Couldn’t say what exactly. So I watched him when he got up to pour us a couple and I didn’t miss that there was a little something in the bottom of my glass when he took it out of the cupboard. “Do you mind if I have a pee?” I asked and he showed me where. I tried the front door. Locked on the inside. So I sneaked down into the garage and began to lift the shutter. It was out of plumb and you never heard such a racket. Down he came. Told me to stand still or he’d fire. He did too. But I ducked under the jammed shutter and he missed me.

‘I ran. So did he. Not more than twenty yards between us. Then we both broke into a walk, for people were about and staring. You can’t run in these days without the public taking a hand. I couldn’t shake him off. He was too close. And I didn’t want to call in the police.’

I said that he could have turned into a pub or any shop that was open.

‘I did, and then so did he. Once we were face to face and all the time his hand was in his pocket. He got on my nerves, I tell you! I kept to where there were people and made for you here. No quiet back alleys for me. When I got to the street at the bottom I ran round the corner like hell and slipped down before he could see me.’

Mick was not trained to violence. He was an inspired and reliable agitator. Among militant shop stewards he was more decisive and logical than any of them and a red-hot orator if he had to appeal directly to the men, always convincing in putting across what he didn’t believe for the sake of what he did. But one could not expect him to know the tricks of an urban guerrilla.

‘Silencer on his gun?’ I asked.

‘Well, it had a thick thing and made a bloody noise in the garage anyway. Christ, he could have killed me in the flat whenever he liked! I don’t see why he didn’t.’

‘Because you’re wanted for questioning.’

‘He’ll set the lot of them on us if he finds me.’

‘Has he had time to telephone since he started following you?’

‘No. No, he always kept me in sight.’

We went out and peered over the edge of the pavement. There was still plenty of movement – squatters sitting in the porches, groups strolling around in twos and threes. The man had not actually entered our street, and remained a shadowy figure at the corner. Things were no longer easy for him. He could not know whether Mick had gone home or taken refuge with a friend, and he did not want to draw attention to himself by asking questions.

I asked Mick if the fellow would know his real name. Mick confirmed that he did.

‘And when he was with you in the pub or wherever it was did he leave you to telephone?’

‘Yes.’

Of course it was then that Jim got his orders. The Group Commander or whoever was in charge of the hunt would know that the name was Mick’s. What orders? First, to find out where he lived in case I was there too. He must have given that up as impossible when Mick refused to be driven home. Second, to kill him rather than lose track of him.

He had run his quarry to earth, but he had to be careful. If Mick’s body were found, as it eventually must be, people in the street could identify the probable murderer. And this Kevin with his mates could give evidence that he had driven Mick home.

Would he risk that? I thought he might be tempted. He must have been assured that nobody would make any inquiries if Mick simply disappeared. And so the chances were that he would go down after Mick once he knew in which rabbit hole he was, and play the rest by ear. That suited me, for the only place to deal with him was the privacy of our basement. We could not let him slip off for a moment to reach a telephone.

I told Mick to go into the foul back room that had been half kitchen, half lavatory, and come out only when I called. Then I went up the steps and into the street when the watcher was looking away. I could not carry any weapon under my tee shirt, so I hid my knife and Clotilde’s .32 in the dark corner between steps and pavement ready to hand when I returned.

Movement in the street was thinning as the squatters and their visitors retired to bed. I, too, would appear to be on my way home – a long-haired lay-about of no conceivable danger to anyone. I passed the watcher and said good-evening. He was not a foreigner as I expected, but a nondescript sort of chap with short hair and short beard whom I would have taken for a skilled hand earning good money. There were cells under the direct control of the Committee for special assignments and it seemed more likely that he was a member of one of those rather than a hired killer.

He stopped me, as I intended he should, and asked me if I knew a Geordie named F. … It is unnecessary for me to give Mick’s real name.

‘Yes. Lives in a basement down under No. 6.’

‘Shares a room, does he?’

‘No, all alone. But you won’t find him there. He’s been away on a job.’

He thanked me and I walked on. As soon as he had turned into the squattery I stalked him in the shadow of the porches and saw him walk straight down the steps into our basement. I gave him a minute’s grace – dangerous for Mick but the fellow might be watching to see if he was followed – and then went softly after him recovering Clotilde’s present on the way. I would have preferred the silent knife but doubted if he would let me get near enough to use it.

He heard me opening the door – a noisy proceeding for it was half rotten – and had time to sit down and look like a casual caller. When he saw who it was and realised that he had been trapped he raised the gun which he was half sitting on. I was a trifle quicker, and the bullet took him at the base of the neck full front. I had hoped to give him a chance to talk. Thank God he didn’t let me, for I should have had to execute him in cold blood at the end.

I called to Mick to come out and help me carry the body into the lavatory in case someone recognised the shot for what it was in spite of the muffling walls below ground level. Before we had time somebody did, knocking on the door to ask if we were all right.

‘O.K., mate,’ Mick replied, putting his head round the door. ‘Bloody cupboard fell in the sink. Christ, what a home sweet home!’

‘God Almighty, you must have been fast!’ he said to me, staring at the arm and gun stretched out on the floor.

I replied that I was not, that his late friend was inexperienced and that I’d like to know whether I had really acted for the sake of this worthless city.

‘I think you did.’

‘Well, tell me later! Gammel may be back any minute. We must clean up somehow.’

There was no doubt what to do because there was no other solution. The floor boards were rotten. We levered three of them up, put him inside and nailed them back again. I left his gun with him. I had no use for a second and it could be awkward evidence. Then we set to work to scrub and mop the whole floor – cleanliness being next to godliness – and shifted my sleeping bag and suitcase to cover the worst of the stain.

While we were on hands and knees, Mick gave me the missing details of his story. Sure enough he had found among the men leaving the Hoxton site a former friend from the north-east named Kevin. They went off to the nearest pub where the second pint got Kevin started on the saga of his life and strikes. Like Mick, he had had enough of International Marxists and was left with no creed at all except a determination to raise hell for whatever boss employed him. A bricklayer by trade, it pleased him when working on office blocks to use every trick he knew to weaken a wall and deceive the gaffer. He swore he wouldn’t dream of it on a housing estate for honest wage slaves. A practical anarchist with his own standards of revolt.

Mick asked him if he had had any trouble with the police when they were looking for bombs among the drain pipes. No, he hadn’t, though he had planted in one of them a primitive device of sugar and chlorate and let it off with a bit of toy fuse. It was a fair giggle, Kevin had said, with all the bastards flat on their faces.

Were there ever any bombs? Kevin replied that he wouldn’t know whether there were or not. But it was funny. The pickets had allowed a truck to drive in and drop its load of pipes. Two days later it returned and picked them up again.

‘Did the police check up on why the pickets let them through?’ Mick asked.

‘You bet they did! We said we didn’t mind stuff being delivered. It only mucked up the site.’

I knew all about that. My own cell had taken real trouble to see that everything was dumped at the most inconvenient site possible.

What about letting the pipes out again, Mick wanted to know. Well, when the truck called back and the driver and his mate said there had been a mistake, they were allowed to load and clear off. Kevin could not remember who gave them leave, if anybody did. There had been a lot of joking and back-chat and no particular reason to stop them.

‘Did Kevin remember the name on the lorry?’

‘Just what you’d expect, Gil. Groads’ Construction Company. Kevin had never heard of them. Nor had anybody else, including the police. But he thought he recognised the driver though he’d had bushy whiskers and moustache before and was clean-shaven now. That was over a year ago.’

Kevin told him how a party of building labourers, mostly Irish, had been working late on a school to be opened next day by the Mayor. They weren’t finishing it, he said, but just camouflaging what wasn’t finished so that His Bloody Worship would not notice. Around midnight they had a few drinks at the expense of the grateful contractors and then a lot more at their own – police being squared by the contractors not to notice the noise from the pub’s back room. When they finally tumbled out on to the pavement, there was this truck to take them home.

They were all pissed and pie-eyed. The Irish had stopped singing and were about to start a fight to keep up the old tradition when the driver said he had lost his way to Kilburn and could anybody tell him? Of course they all looked out or got out but didn’t agree on anything except that the driver was going south not north. It was a narrow street of little shops and houses, windows all dark, and just behind them, across the road, was some kind of Bible-punching church set back on a level with the pavement.

They all yelled at him that he had to turn round, so what does the driver do with all those drunks dancing round the bonnet but reverse smartly into the church, knocking down a great chunk of the front. They piled in quick and got out of there, laughing their heads off at such a fine way to start the morning. Most of them were Catholic and the rest, who favoured the Workers’ Socialist Republic, were all for knocking down any church on principle.

Mick had at once seen the trademark of Magma on this episode. Undoubtedly one or more of our partisans had been encouraging the Irish who somehow were to be saddled with the blame if things went wrong. The reason why the Action Committee wanted to damage a non-conformist chapel was, he suspected, in order to have the repairing of it. Informants in the building trade might have suggested half a dozen possible schemes before this, the pick of the lot, turned up.

He asked Kevin where the church was. That was his undoing. Kevin, whose voice anyway was far louder than was safe for a serious militant, shouted across to a man standing at the bar:

‘Hey, Jim, a pal of mine wants to know where the church was we knocked a hole in! Somewhere in Islington wasn’t it?’

The late Jim came over and Kevin introduced Mick, saying that he had known him for years and could guarantee he wasn’t a nark for the fuzz.

Jim replied that he thought it was in Islington but couldn’t remember much except that it was a good party. After joining them at their table for enough time to treat them with double whiskies he went out on the excuse of telephoning his bird to say he would be late.

‘And the rest you know,’ Mick said.

When Sir Frederick came home he immediately spotted the atmosphere of tension. I explained it as excitement, telling him that, thanks to Mick, we were on the track of vital information. He was pleased with what we had done to the floor and assured us that next day he would have a go himself at the peeling wallpaper and flaking plaster.

‘You can’t, Fred. Take it all off and the walls would fall down,’ Mick warned him. ‘Besides, there’s a job for you.’

Certainly he was the best man to find that church, though myself I hesitated to suggest it. I have never been happy with his impersonation of an ancient down-and-out; he answers too closely the description of him so far as height and features go. It must be his confidence which carries him through. There’s nothing furtive about him, only an air, accepted and exploited, of moral and physical degeneration.