Young Petrella (21 page)

Time stood still.

Then Petrella was in the passenger lift, the sweat pouring off him in a steady stream. First floor, second floor. And he was pelting down the passage. He placed a finger on the bell and kept it there.

After an eternity the door opened and Judge Vereker looked out.

“Why, Sergeant—”

“Have you lifted them out?” croaked Petrella.

“Lifted what?”

“I’m sorry.” Petrella recovered his breath and his heart stopped pounding. “The stuff that was coming up in your service lift?”

“As a matter of fact, I’d just opened it when you rang.”

“But you hadn’t touched anything?”

“No. It looked all right to me, though.”

“The stuffs all right,” said Petrella. “I examined it myself. It’s the lift. They tampered with it last night.”

As he spoke they were walking into the tiny, spotless kitchen. The doors of the service lift stood open, and the cardboard box of groceries lay where the milkman had placed it.

Petrella said, “Have you got a torch?”

The Judge hobbled off to his bedroom. When he came back with the torch Petrella said, “It’s right, isn’t it, that no one else can use this lift while your doors are open?”

“Quite right,” said the Judge. “That tiresome woman in the flat underneath once went away for the weekend and left hers open. What’s the catch?”

Petrella was on one knee, shining the torch through the tiny gap between the bottom of the lift box and the top of the boarding.

“There’s something there,” he said. “I’m going to get help on this. If we leave the doors open and the lift where it is, it can’t hurt us.”

He went into the Judge’s sitting room, and dialled a number which is not in the telephone book. A bored voice said, “Heath Hill Mansions. No. 27. All right. We’ll send a car round straight away.”

Five minutes later a man in a raincoat, carrying a heavy bag of tools, and looking like a superior plumber, had arrived and introduced himself as Sergeant Oliphant.

“Is it safe to watch?” said the Judge. “Or do you want us to clear out?”

“Safe enough now you’ve spotted it,” said Oliphant. “Neat, though. Very neat.” He got a long steel rod with a tiny lightbulb at the end of it out of his bag, and inserted it under the lift.

“Care to look?” he said.

Petrella saw that three solid-looking blocks of some dark toffee-like substance had been clamped to the underside of the box. Oliphant took a thin pair of pliers, slid them in, and snipped twice.

“Clever, really,” he said.

He lifted off the box of groceries, and as he did so the whole floor of the lift rose for a fraction of an inch then checked.

“They’ve slipped in a double floor. See? The sort of thing you get in a passenger lift. Spring loaded. The weight of those groceries would be quite enough to keep it down. That makes an electrical contact. When you lifted the box off, you’d touch off the stuff underneath. About six pounds of gelignite, I should say. Do you no good at all. By the way, how did they know your man’d be the first to use it?”

“He had a special early delivery,” said Petrella. “Every morning.”

“Great mistake,” said Oliphant, “if you don’t mind me saying so. Never do things the same every day. Not with these types. It’s playing into their hands. I’ll get up the steamer from the car and disinfect this lot.”

Petrella stood for a moment, listening to Oliphant’s footsteps disappearing down the passage. He felt both breathless and deflated. Then he was aware that the Judge was speaking. “I notice,” he said, “that our friend has left his tool bag behind. I think we’d better get moving.”

Petrella stared.

The Judge gripped his arm. “There’s really no time to waste,” he said urgently. “Come on!” The next minute they, too, were out in the passage, and running.

“Down the stairs,” said the Judge. “This’ll do. You won’t catch him now.”

Together they flopped down on the stairs. Two floors below them a door slammed and they heard a car start. Then all sounds were blotted out in the solid roar from the flat they had just left.

Petrella raised his nose from the stair carpet. His ears were singing. Fragments of plaster were still dropping from the ceiling and the air was full of dancing dust.

“How did you know that that man was a fake?” said Petrella.

“It was Antar,” said the Judge. “I recognised him as soon as he came in. He’s very like his brother.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He had a gun. Neither of us had. It seemed safer to let him think he’d got away with it.”

“The tool bag was full of explosive.”

“With a very short time fuse, yes.”

“How did he know—” Petrella started. And then stopped. He was asking himself questions to which he knew the answer: “Of course. They had the telephone line tapped. It was a double precaution, in case we spotted the lift.”

“They’re very persistent people,” said the Judge. “I expect they’ll get me in the end. You’d better go and comfort our lady journalist. By the sound of it, she’s having hysterics.”

The late-afternoon sun, shining through the barred skylight, striped the bodies of the four boys sprawled on the floor. Nearby, the Sunday traffic went panting down the Wandsworth High Street, but in this quiet, upper back room the loudest noise was the buzzing of a bluebottle. The warm, imprisoned air smelt of copperas and leather and gun oil.

The oldest and tallest of the boys was sitting up, with his back propped against the wall. In one hand he held a piece of cloth, something that might once have been a handkerchief, and he was using it to polish and re-polish a powerful-looking air-pistol.

“They’re beauties, ent they, Rob?” said the fat boy. He and the red-haired boy both had guns like their leader’s. The smallest boy had nothing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the shining beauties.

“Made in Belgium,” said Rob. “See that gadget?” He put the tip of his finger on the telltale at the end of the compression chamber. “You don’t just open it and shut it, like a cheap air-gun. You pump this one up slowly. That gadget shows you when the pressure’s right. It’s accurate up to fifty yards.”

“
It
may be accurate,” said the fat boy. “What about us? I’ve never had a gun before.”

“We’ll have to practise. Practise till we can hit a penny across the room.”

“Why don’t we start right now, Rob?” said the red-haired boy. “These things don’t make any noise. Not to notice. We could chalk up a target on the wall—”

“Yes?” said Rob. “And when the geezer who owns this shop comes up here tomorrow morning, or next week, or whenever he does happen to come up here, and he finds his wall full of air-gun pellets, he’s going to start thinking, isn’t he? He’s going to check over his spare stock, and find three guns missing. Right?”

“That’s right,” said the fat boy. “Rob’s got it figured out. We put everything else back like we found it, it may be months before he knows what’s been took. He mayn’t even know anyone’s broke in.”

The leader turned to the smallest of his followers. “That’s why you can’t have one, Winkle,” he said. “There’s plenty of guns in the front of the shop, but we touch one of them, he’ll miss it.”

“That’s all right, Rob,” said Winkle. But he couldn’t keep the longing out of his voice. To own a big, bright gun! A gun that went phtt softly, like an angry snake, and your enemy fifty yards away crumpled to the ground, not knowing what had hit him!

“What about Les?” said the red-haired boy.

“What about him?”

“He’ll want a gun when he sees ours.”

“He’ll have to go on wanting. If he’s not keen enough to come with us on a job like this.”

“’Tisn’t that he’s not keen,” said the fat boy. “It’s his old man. He’s pretty strict. He locks his bedroom door now. Where are we going to practise, Rob?”

“I’ve got an idea about that,” said the tall boy. “You know the old sports pavilion? The Home Guard used it in the war, but it’s been shut up since.”

The boys nodded.

“I found a way in at the back, from the railway. I’ll show you. There’s a sort of cellar with lockers in it. That’ll do us fine. We’ll have our first meeting there tomorrow. Right?”

“Right,” they all said. The red-haired boy added, “How did you know about this place, Rob?”

“My family used to live round here,” said the tall boy. “Before my Ma died, when we moved up to Highside. As a matter of fact, I was at school about a quarter of a mile from here.”

The fat boy said, “I bet I get a strapping from my old man when I get home. He don’t like me being away all day.”

“You’re all right,” said Winkle. “You’re fat. It don’t hurt so much when you’re fat.” He looked down with disgust at his own slender limbs.

It was nine o’clock at night nearly a month after that talk and in quite another part of London, that Fishy Codlin was closing what he called his Antique shop. This was a dark and rambling suite of rooms, full of dirt, woodworm, and the household junk of a quarter of a century. Codlin was in the front room, locking away the day’s take, when the two boys came in.

“You’re too late,” he growled. “I’m shut.”

He noticed that the smaller of the boys stayed by the door, while the older came towards him with a curiously purposeful tread. He had a prevision of trouble, and his hand reached out for the light switch.

“Leave it alone,” said the boy. He was a half-seen figure in the dusk. All the light seemed to concentrate on the bright steel weapon in his hand. “Slip the bolt, Will,” he added, but without taking his eyes off Codlin. “Now you stand away from the counter.”

Codlin stood away. He thought for a moment of refusing, for there was nearly twenty-five pounds in the box, the fruits of a full week’s trading. But he was a coward as well as a bully and the gun looked real. He watched the notes disappearing in the boy’s pocket. There was no hurry. When one of the notes slipped to the floor the boy bent down and picked it up, but without ever removing his steady gaze from the old man.

When he had finished, he backed away to the door. “Stay put,” he said. “And keep quiet for five minutes, or you’ll get hurt.”

Then he was gone. Codlin breathed out an obscenity and jumped for the telephone. As he picked it up, “I warned you,” said a gentle voice from the door. There was a noise like a small tyre bursting and the telephone twisted round and clattered to the floor.

Codlin stood, staring stupidly at his hand. Splinters of vulcanite had grooved it, and the blood was beginning to drip. He cursed, foully and automatically. Footsteps were pattering away along the road outside. He let them get to the corner before he moved. He was taking no further chances. Then he lumbered across to the door, threw it open and started bellowing.

Three streets away Detective Sergeant Petrella, homeward bound, heard two things at once. Distant shouts of outrage, and, much closer at hand, light feet pattering on the pavement. He drew into the shadow at the side of the road and waited.

The two boys came round the corner, running easily, and laughing. When Petrella stepped out, the laughter ceased. Then the boys spun around, and started to run the other way.

Petrella ran after them. He saw at once that he could not catch both, and concentrated on the younger and slower boy. After a hundred yards he judged himself to be in distance, and jumped forward in a tackle. It was high by the standards of Twickenham, but it was effective, and they went down, the boy underneath. As they fell, something dropped from the boy’s pocket and slid, ringing and spinning, across the pavement.

“Of course you’ve got to charge him,” said Haxtell later that night. “It’s true Codlin can’t really identify him, but the boy had a gun on him, and he was running away from the scene of the crime. Who is he, by the way?”

“His name’s Christopher Connolly. His father’s a shunter at the goods depot. I’ve left them together for a bit, to see if the old man can talk some sense into him.”

“Good idea,” said Haxtell. “Can we get anything on the gun?”

“It’s an air-pistol. Therefore no registration number. And foreign. Newish. And a pretty high-powered job. If it’s been stolen we might have it on the lists.”

“Check it,” said Haxtell. “What about his pockets?”

“Nothing except this.” Petrella pushed across a scrap of paper. It had pencilled on it, in capital letters:

WILL. BE AT USUAL PLACE 8 TONIGHT.

“What do you make of it?” said Haxtell.

“It depends,” said Petrella cautiously, “if you think the dot after the first word is a full stop or just an accident.”

Haxtell tried it both ways. “You mean it could be a plain statement: ‘I will be at the usual place at eight o’clock tonight.’ Or it could be an order, addressed to someone called Will.”

“Yes. And Codlin did say that he thought he heard the bigger boy address the smaller one as Will.”

“Is Connolly’s name William?”

“No, sir. It’s Christopher George. Known to his friends as Chris.”

“What does he say about the paper?”

“Says I planted it on him. And the gun, of course.”

“I often wonder,” said Haxtell, “where the police keep all the guns they’re supposed to plant on criminals. What about the other boy?”

“He says there was no other boy. He says he was alone, and had been alone, all the evening.”

“I see.” Haxtell stared thoughtfully out of the window. He had a sharp nose for trouble.

“One bright spot,” he said at last. “Codlin always marked his notes. Ever since he caught an assistant trying to dip into his till. He puts a letter C in indelible pencil on the back.”

“That might be a help if we can catch the other boy,” agreed Petrella. He added, “Haven’t I heard that name Codlin before? Something about a dog.”

“He tied his dog up,” said Haxtell. “A nice old spaniel. And beat him with a golf club. Fined forty shillings. It was before your time.”

“I must have read about it somewhere,” said Petrella.

“And if you think,” blared Haxtell, “that that’s any reason for not catching these – these young bandits – then I dare you to say it.”

“Why, certainly not,” said Petrella hastily.