A Gun for Sale (15 page)

He went back on to the landing, but something all the time pulled him back as if he were leaving a place which had been dear to him. It dragged on him as he went upstairs to the second floor and into every room in turn. There was nothing in any of them but beds and wardrobes and the stale smell of scent and toilet things and in one cupboard a broken cane. They were all of them more dusty, less tidy, more used than the room he’d left. He stood up there among the empty rooms listening; there wasn’t a sound to be heard now; Tiny and her Acky were quite silent below him waiting for him to come down. He wondered again if he had made a fool of himself and risked everything. But if they had nothing to hide, why hadn’t they tried to call the police? He had left them alone, they had
nothing
to fear while he was upstairs, but something kept them to the house just as something kept him tied to the room on the first floor.

It took him back to it. He was happier when he had closed the door behind him and stood again in the small cramped space between the big bed and the wall. The drag at his heart ceased. He was able to think again. He began to examine the room thoroughly inch by inch. He even moved the radio on the washstand. Then he heard the stairs creak and leaning his head against the door he listened to someone he supposed was Acky mounting the stairs step by step with clumsy caution; then he was crossing the landing and there he must be, just outside the door waiting and listening. It was impossible to believe that those old people had nothing to fear. Raven went along the walls, squeezing by the bed, touching the glossy flowery paper with his fingers; he had heard of people before now papering over a cavity. He reached the fireplace and unhooked the brass trap.

Propped up inside the fireplace was a woman’s body, the feet in the grate, the head out of sight in the chimney. The first thought he had was of revenge; if it’s the girl, if she’s dead, I’ll shoot them both, I’ll shoot them where it hurts most so that they die slow. Then he went down on his knees to ease the body out.

The hands and feet were roped, an old cotton vest had been tied between her teeth as a gag, the eyes were closed. He cut the gag away first; he couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead; he cursed her, ‘Wake up, you bitch, wake up.’ He leant over her, imploring her, ‘Wake up.’ He was afraid to leave her, there was no water in the ewer, he couldn’t do a thing; when he had cut away the ropes he just sat on the floor beside her with his eyes on the door and one hand on his pistol and the other on her breast. When he could feel her breathing under his hand it was like beginning life over again.

She didn’t know where she was. She said, ‘Please. The sun. It’s too strong.’ There was no sun in the room; it would soon be too dark to read. He thought: what ages have they had her buried there, and held his hand over her eyes to shield them
from
the dim winter light of early evening. She said in a tired voice, ‘I could go to sleep now. There’s air.’

‘No, no,’ Raven said, ‘we’ve got to get out of here,’ but he wasn’t prepared for her simple acquiescence. ‘Yes, where to?’

He said, ‘You don’t remember who I am. I haven’t anywhere. But I’ll leave you some place where it’s safe.’

She said, ‘I’ve been finding out things.’ He thought she meant things like fear and death, but as her voice strengthened she explained quite clearly, ‘It was the man you said. Cholmondeley.’

‘So you know me,’ Raven said. But she took no notice. It was as if all the time in the dark she had been rehearsing what she had to say when she was discovered, at once, because there was no time to waste.

‘I made a guess at somewhere where he worked. Some company. It scared him. He must work there. I don’t remember the name. I’ve got to remember.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Raven said. ‘It’ll come back. But how is it you aren’t crazy … Christ! you’ve got nerve.’

She said, ‘I remembered till just now. I heard you looking for me in the room, and then you went away and I forgot everything.’

‘Do you think you could walk now?’

‘Of course I could walk. We’ve got to hurry.’

‘Where to?’

‘I had it all planned. It’ll come back. I had plenty of time to think things out.’

‘You sound as if you weren’t scared at all.’

‘I knew I’d be found all right. I was in a hurry. We haven’t got much time. I thought about the war all the time.’

He said again admiringly, ‘You’ve got nerve.’

She began to move her hands and feet up and down quite methodically as if she were following a programme she had drawn up for herself. ‘I thought a lot about that war. I read somewhere, but I’d forgotten, about how babies can’t wear gas masks because there’s not enough air for them.’ She knelt up with her hand on his shoulder. ‘There wasn’t much air there. It made things sort of vivid. I thought, we’ve got to stop
it
. It seems silly, doesn’t it, us two, but there’s nobody else.’ She said, ‘My feet have got pins and needles bad. That means they are coming alive again.’ She tried to stand up, but it wasn’t any good.

Raven watched her. He said, ‘What else did you think?’

She said, ‘I thought about you. I wished I hadn’t had to go away like that and leave you.’

‘I thought you’d gone to the police.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’ She managed to stand up this time with her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m on your side.’

Raven said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Can you walk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then leave go of me. There’s someone outside.’ He stood by the door with his gun in his hand listening. They’d had plenty of time, those two, to think up a plan, longer than he. He pulled the door open. It was very nearly dark. He could see no one on the landing. He thought: the old devil’s at the side waiting to get a hit at me with the poker. I’ll take a run for it, and immediately tripped across the string they had tied across the doorway. He was on his knees with the gun on the floor; he couldn’t get up in time and Acky’s blow got him on the left shoulder. It staggered him, he couldn’t move, he had just time to think: it’ll be the head next time, I’ve gone soft, I ought to have thought of a string, when he heard Anne speak: ‘Drop the poker.’ He got painfully to his feet; the girl had snatched the gun as it fell and had Acky covered. He said with astonishment, ‘You’re fine.’ At the bottom of the stairs the old woman cried out, ‘Acky, where are you?’

‘Give me the gun,’ Raven said. ‘Get down the stairs, you needn’t be afraid of the old bitch.’ He backed after her, keeping Acky covered, but the old couple had shot their bolt. He said regretfully, ‘If he’d only rush I’d put a bullet in him.’

‘It wouldn’t upset
me
,’ Anne said. ‘I’d have done it myself.’

He said again, ‘You’re fine.’ He nearly forgot the detectives he had seen in the street, but with his hand on the door he remembered. He said, ‘I may have to make a bolt for it if the police are outside.’ He hardly hesitated before he trusted her. ‘I’ve found a hide-out for the night. In the goods yard. A
shed
they don’t use any longer. I’ll be waiting by the wall tonight fifty yards down from the station.’ He opened the door. Nobody moved in the street; they walked out together and down the middle of the road into a vacant dusk. Anne said, ‘Did you see a man in the doorway opposite?’

‘Yes,’ Raven said. ‘I saw him.’

‘I thought it was like – but how could it –?’

‘There was another at the end of the street. They were police all right, but they didn’t know who I was. They’d have tried to get me if they’d known.’

‘And you’d have shot?’

‘I’d have shot all right. But they didn’t know it was me.’ He laughed with the night damp in his throat. ‘I’ve fooled them properly.’ The lights went on in the city beyond the railway bridge, but where they were it was just a grey dusk and the sound of an engine shunting in the yard.

‘I can’t walk far,’ Anne said. ‘I’m sorry. I suppose I’m a bit sick after all.’

‘It’s not far now,’ Raven said. ‘There’s a loose plank. I got it all fixed up for myself early this morning. Why, there’s even sacks, lots of sacks. It’s going to be like home,’ he said.

‘Like home?’ He didn’t answer, feeling along the tarred wall of the goods yard, remembering the kitchen in the basement and the first thing very nearly he could remember, his mother bleeding across the table. She hadn’t even troubled to lock the door: that was all she cared about him. He’d done some ugly things in his time, he told himself, but he’d never been able to equal that ugliness. Some day he would. It would be like beginning life over again: to have something else to look back to when somebody spoke of death or blood or wounds or home.

‘A bit bare for a home,’ Anne said.

‘You needn’t be scared of me,’ Raven said. ‘I won’t keep you. You can sit down a bit and tell me what he did to you, what Cholmondeley did, and then you can be getting along anywhere you want.’

‘I couldn’t go any farther if you paid me.’ He had to put his hands under her shoulders and hold her up against the tarred
wood
, while he put more will into her from his own inexhaustible reserve. He said, ‘Hold on. We’re nearly there.’ He shivered in the cold, holding her with all his strength, trying in the dusk to see her face. He said, ‘You can rest in the shed. There are plenty of sacks there.’ He was like somebody describing with pride some place he lived in, that he’d bought with his own money or built with his own labour stone by stone.

2

Mather stood back in the shadow of the doorway. It was worse in a way than anything he’d feared. He put his hand on his revolver. He had only to go forward and arrest Raven – or stop a bullet in the attempt. He was a policeman; he couldn’t shoot first. At the end of the street Saunders was waiting for him to move. Behind, a uniformed constable waited on them both. But he made no move. He let them go off down the road in the belief that they were alone. Then he followed as far as the corner and picked up Saunders. Saunders said, ‘The d-d-devil.’

‘Oh no,’ Mather said, ‘it’s only Raven – and Anne.’ He struck a match and held it to the cigarette which he had been holding between his lips for the last twenty minutes. They could hardly see the man and woman going off down the dark road by the goods-yard, but beyond them another match was struck. ‘We’ve got them covered,’ Mather said. ‘They won’t be able to get out of our sight now.’

‘W-will you take them b-b-both?’

‘We can’t have shooting with a woman there,’ Mather said. ‘Can’t you see what they’d make of it in the papers if a woman got hurt? It’s not as if he was wanted for murder.’

‘We’ve got to be careful of your girl,’ Saunders brought out in a breath.

‘Get moving again,’ Mather said. ‘We don’t want to lose touch. I’m not thinking about
her
any more. I promise you that’s over. She’s led me up the garden properly. I’m just thinking of what’s best with Raven – and any accomplice he’s got in Nottwich. If we’ve got to shoot, we’ll shoot.’

Saunders said, ‘They’ve stopped.’ He had sharper eyes than Mather. Mather said, ‘Could you pick him off from here, if I rushed him?’

‘No,’ Saunders said. He began to move forward quickly. ‘He’s loosened a plank. They are getting through.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Mather said. ‘I’ll follow. Bring up three more men and post one of them at the gap where I can find him. We’ve got all the gates into the yard picketed already. Bring the rest inside. But keep it quiet.’ He could hear the slight shuffle of cinders where the two were walking; it wasn’t so easy to follow them because of the sound his own feet made. They disappeared round a stationary truck and the light failed more and more. He caught a glimpse of their moving shadows and then an engine hooted and belched a grey plume of steam round him; for a moment it was like walking in a mountain fog. A warm dirty spray settled on his face; when he was clear he had lost them. He began to realize the difficulty of finding anyone in the yard at night. There were trucks everywhere; they could slip into one and lie down. He barked his shin and swore softly; then quite distinctly he heard Anne whisper, ‘I can’t make it.’ There were only a few trucks between them; then the movements began again, heavier movements as if someone were carrying a weight. Mather climbed on to the truck and stared across a dark desolate waste of cinders and points, a tangle of lines and sheds and piles of coal and coke. It was like a No Man’s Land full of torn iron across which one soldier picked his way with a wounded companion in his arms. Mather watched them with an odd sense of shame, as if he were a spy. The thin limping shadow became a human being who knew the girl he loved. There was a kind of relationship between them. He thought: how many years will he get for that robbery? He no longer wanted to shoot. He thought: poor devil, he must be pretty driven by now, he’s probably looking for a place to sit down in, and there the place was, a small wooden workman’s shed between the lines.

Mather struck a match again and presently Saunders was below him waiting for orders. ‘They are in that shed,’ Mather said. ‘Get the men posted. If they try to get out, nab them
quick
. Otherwise wait for daylight. We don’t want any accidents.’

‘You aren’t s-staying?’

‘You’ll be easier without me,’ Mather said. ‘I’ll be at the station tonight.’ He said gently: ‘Don’t think about me. Just go ahead. And look after yourself. Got your gun?’

‘Of course.’

‘I’ll send the men along to you. It’s going to be a cold watch, I’m afraid, but it’s no good trying to rush that shed. He might shoot his way clear out.’

‘It’s t-t-t-tough on you,’ Saunders said. The dark had quite come; it healed the desolation of the yard. Inside the shed there was no sign of life, no glimmer of light; soon Saunders couldn’t have told that it existed, sitting there with his back to a truck out of the wind’s way, hearing the breathing of the policeman nearest him and saying over to himself to pass the time (his mind’s words free from any impediment) the line of a poem he had read at night-school about a dark tower: ‘He must be wicked to deserve such pain.’ It was a comforting line, he thought; those who followed his profession couldn’t be taught a better; that’s why he had remembered it.