Blood on the Line irc-8 Page 16

  ‘I hoped that he might be mistaken for you, Inspector.’

  ‘That was very unfair of you,’ said Leeming, hotly. ‘It was like painting a target on the constable’s back.’ He reined in his anger. ‘I don’t mean to be disrespectful, sir, but, in the short time I knew him, I grew to admire Constable Peebles. I feel that you let him down.’

  Tallis nodded soulfully. ‘I feel it myself, Leeming.’

  Seething with fury, Colbeck took pains not to show it. He’d been shocked at the loss of their new recruit and blamed Tallis for the death. At the same time – and it was something he’d never expected to do – he felt sorry for the superintendent. Whatever reproaches Colbeck might make paled beside the torture to which Tallis was clearly subjecting himself. They were looking at a man in agony.

  ‘We’ve spoken to the cabman who drove them away from the scene,’ said Colbeck, ‘so we know what happened after the shooting. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell us what happened before.’

  There was a long silence and Colbeck wondered if Tallis had even heard him. Eventually, however, the superintendent roused himself and sat upright like a man facing his accusers in the dock.

  ‘This is what occurred,’ he began.

  Slowly and with great precision, Tallis reconstructed the events. He offered no defence for his actions and sought no sympathy. It was a clear, unvarnished and completely honest account. When he spoke of Peebles, he did so with the kind of affection they’d never seen him exhibit before. He explained how he’d felt it was his bounden duty to break the bad news in a letter to the parents who lived in Edinburgh. But the real trial for him had been to inform and commiserate with the young woman to whom Peebles was engaged. It had been one of the most painful and difficult things he’d ever had to do, and it had obviously left him jangled.

  ‘There you have it, gentlemen,’ he said, extending his arms. ‘I sit before you as a man who made an almighty blunder and who must suffer the consequences. In the short term, Inspector Colbeck will take full control of this investigation.’

  ‘What about you, sir?’ said Leeming.

  ‘I will do the only thing I can do as a man of honour, Sergeant, and that is to tender my resignation. I wish it to take immediate effect.’

  They knew. The second they entered the house, Oxley and Irene realised that their hosts had read about them in the newspaper. The Youngers knew that they’d been offering hospitality to killers steeped in the blood of two Wolverhampton policemen. Gordon and Susanna looked at them through different eyes now. While Irene quailed, Oxley flashed a smile at them.

  ‘First of all,’ he said, smoothly, ‘let me apologise for our sudden departure this morning. Irene and I felt that we were imposing on you too much, so we decided to stay out of your way for a while. It was a decision we made on the spur of the moment, so it may have looked like appalling rudeness to you. We’re very sorry, aren’t we, Irene?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, ‘we are.’

  ‘That’s no longer the point at issue,’ said Younger, bristling with ire. ‘Since you took my newspaper with you, I borrowed one from a neighbour. I was horrified by what I read.’

  ‘Calm down, Gordon,’ warned his wife, seeing that he was about to lose his temper. ‘We don’t want this to get out of hand.’

  ‘Be quiet, Susanna.’

  ‘But I thought that we agreed to—’

  ‘You heard what I said.’

  The unaccustomed sharpness in his voice upset her. He’d always treated her with courtesy before. Accepting that her husband would pay no heed to her comments, she fell silent and took a few steps back. Younger stared at Oxley, then at Irene. When his eyes moved back to Oxley, they glinted with a mixture of hostility and contempt. Irene felt profoundly uncomfortable but Oxley was at ease. He ventured a smile of appeasement.

  ‘I thought that we were friends,’ he began.

  ‘There are limits to even the closest friendship,’ said Younger.

  ‘Would you rather that we’d told you?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t come anywhere near us, Jerry.’

  ‘You should have felt honoured that I’d chosen you,’ said Oxley. ‘At a moment of extreme danger, a man turns to the people he can rely on most and that’s why I came to you.’

  ‘You came under false pretences.’

  ‘That’s no more than you and Susanna did,’ riposted the other. ‘Your neighbours don’t even know your real names, let alone what you did when you were a respected member of the medical profession in Bradford.’

  ‘I knew that you’d throw that in our faces.’

  ‘We’re brothers in arms, Gordon.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ cried Younger. ‘We’re not murderers!’

  ‘There’s no need to shout,’ said Susanna in alarm. ‘Look, why don’t we all sit down instead of standing here like this?’

  ‘What a good idea,’ agreed Oxley, lowering himself onto a sofa and patting the place beside him. ‘Come on, Irene,’ he urged. ‘Make yourself at home.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure that we should stay, Jerry.’

  ‘They can hardly throw us out.’

  The challenge was all the more effective for being made so casually. Younger knew that he was no match for Oxley. He had neither the strength nor means to eject him from the property. As a last resort, he tried to summon up moral authority.

  ‘Susanna and I would like you to leave at once,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not what we agreed,’ corrected his wife. ‘We said that they could stay another night.’ She was hurt by the fierce look that her husband shot her. ‘That was what we agreed, Gordon. We discussed it.’

  ‘But you didn’t discuss it with us, did you?’ said Oxley.

  ‘This is our home,’ declared Younger.

  ‘It was bought in names that you invented for the purpose.’

  ‘That was an unfortunate necessity.’ He walked across to stand over Oxley. ‘Please get out of here now.’

  It was more of a request than a command and his voice cracked when he spoke. Susanna was apprehensive and Irene was unsettled but Oxley merely adjusted his position on the sofa. He flashed another smile. ‘Why don’t we talk about this in the morning?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Susanna, relaxing, ‘why don’t we?’

  ‘It’s because it’s too dangerous,’ argued Younger, abandoning assertiveness and falling back on reason. ‘Listen, Jerry, what you and Irene have done is, strictly speaking, none of our business.’

  ‘I’m glad that you realise that,’ said Oxley.

  ‘But we have to think of our own position. As long as you’re here, then we are imperilled. The manhunt is being led by detectives at Scotland Yard. What happens if they trace you here?’

  ‘How could they possibly do that?’

  ‘Some of our neighbours read the newspapers, you know.’

  ‘Have any of them been banging on your door?’

  ‘Well, no … they haven’t.’

  ‘Have any of them accosted you in the road and demanded to know why you’re hiding two desperate fugitives? No, of course they haven’t,’ said Oxley. ‘It would never occur to any of them to do so because they couldn’t conceive of the idea that such pillars of the community as Gordon and Susanna Younger would entertain vile criminals. Nobody who spots us here will take any notice. We’re your guests – that absolves us of any suspicion.’

  ‘I suppose that there’s some truth in that,’ conceded Younger.

  ‘If we’d thought we’d be endangering you, we’d never have come here. Would we, Irene?’

  ‘No, no,’ Irene chimed in.

  ‘Have we been such a terrible nuisance to you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Susanna.

  ‘Then where is the problem?’ He looked quizzically up at Younger who’d been staring at Oxley’s waistcoat. ‘Well, Gordon?’

  ‘What’s that stain?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing to bother about.’

  ‘It looks lik
e blood.’

  ‘No,’ said Oxley, easily, ‘it’s a sauce that a butter-fingered waiter spilt over me. The restaurant has reimbursed me and we didn’t have to pay for the meal. However,’ he added, ‘you didn’t answer my question, Gordon. Where is the problem?’

  About to speak, Younger swallowed his words. His guests were going to stay and he was powerless to stop them. By way of reply, he flapped his hands.

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said Oxley with satisfaction. ‘It’s getting late. Why don’t you get out that excellent malt whisky of yours, then we can have a nightcap? We’ll all feel better after that.’

  Cyril Hythe was fast asleep when his landlady shook him by the shoulder. He came awake with a start. When she told him that a detective wished to speak to him, he thought at first that it was a practical joke. It took a long time to coax him out of bed. Yawning all the way, Hythe came downstairs to be met by a man who introduced himself as Sergeant Leeming. Fearing that he’d done something wrong, Hythe came fully awake. He was a small, stick-thin stooping man in his thirties who worked as a clerk in the ticket office at Euston. Asked to identify a customer, he laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘I served hundreds of them in the course of the day,’ he said. ‘How can I remember one man out of a multitude?’

  ‘This person is very singular,’ explained Leeming. ‘He’s wanted for murder, so I’m asking you to think very carefully. I can give you a fairly precise time when you would have served him.’

  ‘I wasn’t the only clerk on duty today, Sergeant.’

  ‘The others are being interviewed by my colleagues at this moment. That will tell you how keen we are to catch this man.’

  Leeming told him about the murders on the train and about the more recent killing of Constable Peebles. He gave a full description of the two suspects. From the evidence of the cab driver, he was able to give the clerk an approximate time at which Oxley would have purchased two tickets. Shaking his head, Hythe was unable to help him until a last detail was supplied.

  ‘When the constable was shot,’ said Leeming, ‘he fell against his killer. Our superintendent saw it happen. The likelihood is that blood could well have got onto Oxley’s coat.’

  Hythe perked up. ‘It wasn’t his coat, sir, it was his waistcoat.’

  ‘You remember him?’

  ‘I do – he had this dark-red stain on a very expensive waistcoat. I couldn’t have missed that. He was with a young woman who looked much as you describe.’

  ‘I don’t suppose that you can recall what tickets they bought?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ said Hythe. ‘That bloodstain made it stick in my mind. They bought two singles to Willesden.’

  Gordon and Susanna talked long into the night before they fell asleep. Forced to offer shelter to Oxley and Irene, they both prayed that the pair would leave soon and dispel the dark cloud that hung over the house. They were aroused not long after dawn by the sound of two traps rumbling along the road and were surprised when the clattering hooves stopped directly outside. Gordon went to the window and saw a tall, elegant figure getting out of the first trap. Two large uniformed policemen were descending from the second.

  Putting on his dressing gown, he went downstairs in great alarm and opened the door. Colbeck introduced himself then sent one of the policemen to the rear of the property. The other remained at the gate to block any attempt at a sudden departure.

  ‘I believe that you have two guests staying with you, sir,’ said Colbeck, glancing into the house.

  ‘I’m afraid that you’re mistaken, Inspector,’ replied Younger, wishing that his heart would stop pounding so hard. ‘There’s only my wife and I here.’

  ‘That’s not what we’ve been led to believe, sir. According to the stationmaster at Willesden, you and Mrs Younger paid a visit to London recently with two people whom we are very anxious to apprehend. Not to beat about the bush,’ said Colbeck, ‘they are wanted for a series of murders.’

  Younger gulped. If he and his wife were caught harbouring fugitives, they would face the full rigour of the law. What he could not understand was how the police knew where to find Oxley and Irene. Seeing his amazement, Colbeck enlightened him.

  ‘Yesterday evening,’ he said, ‘Jeremy Oxley shot dead one of our detectives. We have established that he then took a train to Willesden. When I spoke to the stationmaster there a while ago, he remembered two people getting off a train and recognised them as the people he’d seen with you and Mrs Younger the previous day.’

  ‘It’s a case of mistaken identity,’ blustered Younger.

  ‘No man would mistake a woman like Irene Adnam, sir. I’m told that she’s very striking. There was something striking about Oxley as well. The stationmaster said there were bloodstains on his waistcoat.’ He stepped in close. ‘Do you deny you went to London two days ago?’

  Younger attempted some bluff. ‘No, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I don’t. I had a chat with Betson – he’s the stationmaster at Willesden. And yes, there were two people with us but they’re not our guests. We met them for the first time on the way to the station.’

  ‘Yet you came back with them as well. Betson saw you.’

  ‘That was pure coincidence.’

  ‘Stand aside, sir,’ said Colbeck, tiring of the prevarication. ‘You are deliberately interfering with a murder enquiry.’

  ‘What’s going on, Gordon?’ asked Susanna, appearing at the door. ‘Why is that policeman standing at our gate?’

  ‘Your husband will explain, Mrs Younger,’ said Colbeck. ‘Now will you please let me in or I’ll have to resort to force.’

  She froze in horror. ‘You can’t come in here,’ she bleated.

  ‘It’s hopeless,’ Younger told his wife. ‘They know.’

  ‘Where are they?’ demanded Colbeck.

  ‘In the guest bedroom at the rear,’ admitted Younger, ‘but be careful, Inspector. He has a gun.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, sir. I came prepared.’

  Taking out a pistol, Colbeck went into the house and took a quick inventory of the ground floor. He then crept slowly up the stairs with the weapon at the ready. When he got to the landing, he could see four separate rooms. A circular staircase led to the attic where, he surmised, any servants would sleep. Through the open door of one room, he could see rumpled bedclothes and decided it was the bedroom used by the Youngers. A second door that was ajar disclosed an empty room. He tiptoed to the door opposite, took hold of the knob, twisted it and pushed hard, only to discover that he was not in a bedroom at all. Lined with bookshelves, it had been converted into a study. Before withdrawing, he noted some of the objects on the desk.

  Only one room was left. Since it was at the rear of the house, its occupants might not have heard the sound of the horses arriving. With luck, Oxley and Irene would be slumbering quietly. It was time to wake them. Finger on the trigger of the gun, Colbeck used the other hand to grasp the doorknob. On the other side of the door, he told himself, was the man who’d shot Ian Peebles and strangled Helen Millington. He deserved no quarter. If Oxley so much as reached for his weapon, Colbeck resolved to disable him with a bullet before arresting him. He was determined that the man would stay alive to pay for his crimes on the gallows.

  With a sudden movement, Colbeck flung open the door and stepped into the room. He pointed his gun at the bed and got ready to shout out a command. It died in his throat. The bed was empty. There was no sign at all of Oxley and Irene.

  Whenever he made a decision, Irene had learnt to obey it without argument. There would be time enough later for explanations. Though she was unhappy to slip out of the house in the middle of the night, she trusted Oxley’s instincts. She was also given cause to admire his daring. They’d noticed the farm on their walk to the station. Oxley took her back there in the dark and, leaving her with their luggage, crept off towards the stables. Left alone in an isolated spot, Irene was prey to all sorts of fears but they proved ill-founded. Oxley eventually came out of
the gloom, leading a horse to which he’d harnessed a small cart. It was not the most comfortable mode of transport but it served their purposes and got them to their destination. When the cart was abandoned, the horse cropped the grass outside the station.

  When they were on the train, they could at last have a proper conversation. At that time of the morning, they had a compartment to themselves. Glad of the privacy and comfort, Irene nestled against the padded seat in first class.

  ‘Why did we come all the way to Harrow station?’ she asked. ‘Willesden was much closer.’

  ‘Yes,’ he explained, ‘but this early train doesn’t stop there. To be sure of catching it, we had to go further up the line.’

  ‘Couldn’t we have caught a later one?’

  ‘No, Irene.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Call it what you will – I sensed danger.’

  ‘Gordon and Susanna wouldn’t have hurt us.’

  ‘Yes, they would,’ he said. ‘You saw the state they were in last night. Our friendship was near breaking point. It was only a matter of time before they unwittingly gave us away. It was a mistake to stay another night. I only did so because I wasn’t going to let him turf us out like that so I dug in my heels. It was a matter of principle.’

  ‘Yesterday,’ she recalled, ‘you told me that we were completely safe now. What changed your mind?’

  ‘I told you – I had this feeling.’

  ‘But the police would never have found us there, especially without Inspector Colbeck to lead the hunt. It’s very upsetting to be roused like that in the middle of the night, Jerry. I like to know what’s going on.’

  ‘We’re making a precautionary move,’ he told her. ‘Gordon and Susanna won’t report us. They’ll just be relieved that we’ve gone.’

  ‘They’re bound to wonder.’

  ‘Let them – I’m never going back there again.’

  She clung to his arm. ‘Will we ever be really safe?’

  ‘We already are, Irene.’

  ‘Sneaking off in the dark and stealing a horse and cart – that doesn’t feel like safety to me. It scares me.’