A Gun for Sale (19 page)

‘Search
me
for a meaning,’ Anne said.

‘I just wanted to tell it you.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Like he did look.’ Hastily he added, ‘Like I’ve seen in the photographs.’ He brooded over his memories with a low passionate urge towards confession. There had never in his life been anyone he could trust till now. He said, ‘You don’t mind hearing these things?’ and listened with a curious deep happiness to her reply, ‘We are friends.’ He said, ‘This is the best night I’ve ever had.’ But there were things he still couldn’t tell her. His happiness was incomplete till she knew everything, till he had shown his trust completely. He didn’t want to shock or pain her; he led slowly towards the central revelation. He said, ‘I’ve had other dreams of being a kid. I’ve dreamed I opened a door, a kitchen door, and there was my mother – she’d cut her throat – she looked ugly – her head nearly off – she sawn at it – with a bread knife –’

Anne said, ‘That wasn’t a dream.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re right, that wasn’t a dream.’ He waited. He could feel her sympathy move silently towards him in the dark. He said, ‘That was ugly, wasn’t it? You’d think you couldn’t beat that for ugliness, wouldn’t you? She hadn’t even thought enough of me to lock the door so as I shouldn’t see. And after that, there was a Home. You know all about that. You’d say that was ugly too, but it wasn’t as ugly as
that
was
. And they educated me too properly so as I could understand the things I read in the papers. Like this psicko business. And write a good hand and speak the King’s English. I got beaten a lot at the start, solitary confinement, bread and water, all the rest of the homey stuff. But that didn’t go on when they’d educated me. I was too clever for them after that. They could never put a thing on me. They suspected all right, but they never had the proof. Once the chaplain tried to frame me. They were right when they told us the day we left about it was like life. Jim and me and a bunch of soft kids.’ He said bitterly, ‘This is the first time they’ve had anything on me and I’m innocent.’

‘You’ll get away,’ Anne said. ‘We’ll think up something together.’

‘It sounds good your saying “together” like that, but they’ve got me this time. I wouldn’t mind if I could get that Chol-mon-deley and his boss first.’ He said with a kind of nervous pride, ‘Would you be surprised if I’d told you I’d killed a man?’ It was like the first fence; if he cleared that, he would have confidence …

‘Who?’

‘Did you ever hear of Battling Kite?’

‘No.’

He laughed with a sacred pleasure. ‘I’m trusting you with my life now. If you’d told me twenty-four hours ago that I’d trust my life to … but of course I haven’t given you any
proof
. I was doing the races then. Kite had a rival gang. There wasn’t anything else to do. He’d tried to bump my boss off on the course. Half of us took a fast car back to town. He thought we were on the train with him. But we were on the platform, see, when the train came in. We got round him directly he got outside the carriage. I cut his throat and the others held him up till we were all through the barrier in a bunch. Then we dropped him by the bookstall and did a bolt.’ He said, ‘You see it was his lot or our lot. They’d had razors out on the course. It was war.’

After a while Anne said, ‘Yes. I can see that. He had his chance.’

‘It sounds ugly,’ Raven said, ‘Funny thing is, it wasn’t ugly. It was natural.’

‘Did you stick to that game?’

‘No. It wasn’t good enough. You couldn’t trust the others. They either went soft or else they got reckless. They didn’t use their brains.’ He said, ‘I wanted to tell you about Kite. I’m not sorry. I haven’t got religion. Only you said about being friendly and I don’t want you to get any wrong ideas. It was that mix-up with Kite brought me up against Chol-mon-deley. I can see now, he was only in the racing game so as he could meet people. I thought he was a mug.’

‘We’ve got a long way from dreams.’

‘I was coming back to them,’ Raven said. ‘I suppose killing Kite like that made me nervous.’ His voice trembled very slightly from fear and hope, hope because she had accepted one killing so quietly and might, after all, take back what she had said: (‘Well done’, ‘I wouldn’t raise a finger’); fear because he didn’t really believe that you could put such perfect trust in another and not be deceived. But it’d be fine, he thought, to be able to tell everything, to know that another person knew and didn’t care; it would be like going to sleep for a long while. He said, ‘That spell of sleep I had just now was the first for two – three – I don’t know how many nights. It looks as if I’m not tough enough after all.’

‘You seem tough enough to me,’ Anne said. ‘Don’t let’s hear any more about Kite.’

‘No one will hear any more about Kite. But if I was to tell you –’ he ran away from the revelation. ‘I’ve been dreaming a lot lately it was an old woman I killed, not Kite. I heard her calling out through a door and I tried to open the door, but she held the handle. I shot at her through the wood, but she held the handle tight, I had to kill her to open the door. Then I dreamed she was still alive and I shot her through the eyes. But even that – it wasn’t
ugly
.’

‘You are tough enough in your dreams,’ Anne said.

‘I killed an old man too in that dream. Behind his desk. I had a silencer. He fell behind it. I didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t mean anything to me. I pumped him full. Then I put
a
bit of paper in his hand. I didn’t have to take anything.’

‘What do you mean – you didn’t have to take?’

Raven said, ‘They hadn’t paid me to take anything. Chol-mon-deley and his boss.’

‘It wasn’t a dream.’

‘No. It wasn’t a dream.’ The silence frightened him. He began to talk rapidly to fill it. ‘I didn’t know the old fellow was one of us. I wouldn’t have touched him if I’d known he was like that. All this talk of war. It doesn’t mean a thing to me. Why should I care if there’s a war? There’s always been a war for me. You talk a lot about the kids. Can’t you have a bit of pity for the men? It was me or him. Two hundred pounds when I got back and fifty pounds down. It’s a lot of money. It was only Kite over again. It was just as easy as it was with Kite.’ He said, ‘Are you going to leave me now?’ and in silence Anne could hear his rasping anxious breath. She said at last, ‘No. I’m not going to leave you.’

He said, ‘That’s good. Oh, that’s good,’ putting out his hand, feeling hers cold as ice on the sacking. He put it for a moment against his unshaven cheek; he wouldn’t touch it with his malformed lip. He said, ‘It feels good to trust someone with everything.’

2

Anne waited for a long time before she spoke again. She wanted her voice to sound right, not to show her repulsion. Then she tried it on him, but all she could think of to say was again, ‘I’m not going to leave you.’ She remembered very clearly in the dark all she had read of the crime: the old woman secretary shot through the eyes lying in the passage, the brutally smashed skull of the old Socialist. The papers had called it the worst political murder since the day when the King and Queen of Serbia were thrown through the windows of their palace to ensure the succession of the war-time hero king.

Raven said again, ‘It’s good to be able to trust someone like this,’ and suddenly his mouth which had never before struck her as particularly ugly came to mind and she could
have
retched at the memory. Nevertheless, she thought, I must go on with this, I mustn’t let him know, he must find Cholmondeley and Cholmondeley’s boss and then … She shrank from him into the dark.

He said, ‘They are out there waiting now. They’ve got cops down from London.’

‘From London?’

‘It was all in the papers,’ he said with pride. ‘Detective-Sergeant Mather from the Yard.’

She could hardly restrain a cry of desolation and horror. ‘Here?’

‘He may be outside now.’

‘Why doesn’t he come in?’

‘They’d never get me in the dark. And they’ll know by now that
you
are here. They wouldn’t be able to shoot.’

‘And you – you would?’

‘There’s no one
I
mind hurting,’ Raven said.

‘How are you going to get out when it’s daylight?’

‘I shan’t wait till then. I only want just light enough to see my way. And see to shoot.
They
won’t be able to fire first; they won’t be able to shoot to kill. That’s what gives me a break. I only want a few clear hours. If I get away, they’ll never guess where to find me. Only you’ll know I’m at Midland Steel.’

She felt a desperate hatred. ‘You’ll just shoot like that in cold blood?’

‘You said you were on my side, didn’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said warily, ‘yes,’ trying to think. It was getting too much to have to save the world –
and
Jimmy. If it came to a show-down the world would have to take second place. And what, she wondered, is Jimmy thinking? She knew his heavy humourless rectitude; it would take more than Raven’s head on a platter to make him understand why she had acted as she had with Raven and Cholmondeley. It sounded weak and fanciful even to herself to say that she wanted to stop a war.

‘Let’s sleep now,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a long, long day ahead.’

‘I think I could sleep now,’ Raven said. ‘You don’t know how good it seems …’ It was Anne now who could not sleep. She had too much to think about. It occurred to her that she might steal his pistol before he woke and call the police in. That would save Jimmy from danger, but what was the use? They’d never believe her story; they had no proof that he had killed the old man. And even then he might escape. She needed time and there was no time. She could hear very faintly droning up from the south, where the military aerodrome was, a flight of planes. They passed very high on special patrol, guarding the Nottwich mines and the key industry of Midland Steel, tiny specks of light the size of fireflies travelling fast in formation, over the railway, over the goods yard, over the shed where Anne and Raven lay, over Saunders beating his arms for warmth behind a truck out of the wind’s way, over Acky dreaming that he was in the pulpit of St Luke’s, over Sir Marcus sleepless beside the tape machine.

Raven slept heavily for the first time for nearly a week, holding the automatic in his lap. He dreamed that he was building a great bonfire on Guy Fawkes day. He threw in everything he could find: a saw-edged knife, a lot of racing cards, the leg of a table. It burnt warmly, deeply, beautifully. A lot of fireworks were going off all round him and again the old War Minister appeared on the other side of the fire. He said, ‘It’s a good fire,’ stepping into it himself. Raven ran to the fire to pull him out, but the old man said, ‘Let me be. It’s warm here,’ and then he sagged like a Guy Fawkes in the flames.

A clock struck. Anne counted the strokes, as she had counted them all through the night; it must be nearly day and she had no plan. She coughed; her throat was stinging; and suddenly she realized with joy that there was fog outside: not one of the black upper fogs, but a cold damp yellow fog from the river, through which it would be easy, if it was thick enough, for a man to escape. She put out her hand unwillingly, because he was now so repulsive to her, and touched Raven. He woke at once. She said, ‘There’s a fog coming up.’

‘What a break!’ he said, ‘what a break!’ laughing softly.

‘It makes you believe in Providence, doesn’t it?’ They could just see each other in the pale earliest light. He was shivering now that he was awake. He said, ‘I dreamed of a big fire’. She saw that he had no sacks to cover him, but she felt no pity at all. He was just a wild animal who had to be dealt with carefully and then destroyed. ‘Let him freeze,’ she thought. He was examining the automatic; she saw him put down the safety catch. He said, ‘What about you? You’ve been straight with me. I don’t want you to get into any trouble. I don’t want them to think,’ he hesitated and went on with questioning humility, ‘to know that we are in this together.’

‘I’ll think up something,’ Anne said.

‘I ought to knock you out. They wouldn’t know then. But I’ve gone soft. I wouldn’t hurt you not if I was paid.’

She couldn’t resist saying, ‘Not for two hundred and fifty pounds?’

‘He was a stranger,’ Raven said. ‘It’s not the same. I thought he was one of the high and mighties. You’re –’ he hesitated again, glowering dumbly down at the automatic, ‘a friend.’

‘You needn’t be afraid,’ Anne said. ‘I’ll have a tale to tell.’

He said with admiration, ‘You’re clever.’ He watched the fog coming in under the badly fitting door, filling the small shed with its freezing coils. ‘It’ll be nearly thick enough now to take a chance.’ He held the automatic in his left hand and flexed the fingers of the right. He laughed to keep his courage up. ‘They’ll never get me now in this fog.’

‘You’ll shoot?’

‘Of course I’ll shoot.’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Anne said. ‘We don’t want to take any risks. Give me your overcoat and hat. I’ll put them on and slip out first and give them a run for their money. In this fog they’ll never notice till they’ve caught me. Directly you hear the whistles blow count five slowly and make a bolt. I’ll run to the right. You run to the left.’

‘You’ve got nerve,’ Raven said. He shook his head. ‘No. They might shoot.’

‘You said yourself they wouldn’t shoot first.’

‘That’s right. But you’ll get a couple of years for this.’

‘Oh,’ Anne said, ‘I’ll tell them a tale. I’ll say you forced me.’ She said with a trace of bitterness, ‘This’ll give me a lift out of the chorus. I’ll have a speaking part.’

Raven said shyly, ‘If you made out you were my girl, they wouldn’t pin it on you. I’ll say that for them. They’d give a man’s girl a break.’

‘Got a knife?’

‘Yes.’ He felt in all his pockets; it wasn’t there; he must have left it on the floor of Acky’s best guest-chamber.

Anne said, ‘I wanted to cut up my skirt. I’d be able to run easier.’

‘I’ll try and tear it,’ Raven said, kneeling in front of her, taking a grip, but it wouldn’t tear. Looking down she was astonished at the smallness of his wrists; his hands had no more strength or substance than a delicate boy’s. The whole of his strength lay in the mechanical instrument at his feet. She thought of Mather and felt contempt now as well as repulsion for the thin ugly body kneeling at her feet.