Blood on the Line (14 page)

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but they don’t know
which
train. They’ll assume that we wanted to get as far away from London as possible. In fact, we got off at a station that’s only six miles away. They’d never dream we’d be careless enough to stay so close.’

Irene was heartened. ‘I think you’re right, Jerry.’

‘Trust me. Everything will be fine.’

‘There’ll be no more shooting, will there?’

‘That’s all behind us now that Colbeck is dead.’

‘Oh, I do hope so.’ She became wistful. ‘I want us to be like Gordon and Susanna one day.’

He grinned. ‘Middle-aged and wrinkled, you mean?’

‘No, Jerry – living as decent, ordinary people in a proper house and being accepted by our neighbours. Not having to fear a knock on the door all the time. I want us to have a normal life.’

‘Then you should have chosen someone else,’ he said, half-jokingly, ‘because I’m neither decent nor ordinary. As for normal life, I think it would bore me to distraction.’

Tallis was too distressed even to reach for a cigar. He sat brooding in his chair while Colbeck and Leeming watched him. He’d not had to explain where he’d been or what had happened. One glance at his face had told them the awful
truth. After wallowing in guilt for a long time, he glanced up, saw the two detectives and fished something out of his pocket. He offered it to Colbeck.

‘You deserve to see this, Inspector,’ he said.

Colbeck took it. ‘The sergeant told me what it contains.’

‘Read it yourself and you might understand why I took such precipitate action and why …’ As he thought about Peebles, his voice faltered. ‘Just read it, please.’

Colbeck read the letter and noted some of the barbs aimed at him. Although it had been written at speed, it was no wild diatribe. There was calculation in it. There was also a cruel mention of Helen Millington to act as a spur. Had he seen it when it first arrived, Colbeck would have been sorely tempted to meet Oxley.

‘Constable Peebles had no chance,’ said Tallis, bleakly. ‘He was shot from a distance of a few feet. When I got to him, he was dead. The local ghouls came out to gawp at him, so I covered his face with my coat. I took the body to the morgue in a cab.’

‘What exactly happened, sir?’ asked Colbeck.

‘I’m ashamed to tell you, Inspector, but I think that I ought to. After all, I was acting on the contents of a letter addressed to you.’

‘It was wrong of you to open it.’

Tallis sighed. ‘Oh – if only I hadn’t done so!’

‘I did make that point, sir,’ said Leeming.

‘Yes, I know, but Colbeck wasn’t here and I felt that something important might slip through our fingers. I
had
to open it and somehow I felt impelled to respond to its demands.’

‘I can accept that,’ said Colbeck. ‘You were fully entitled to take the risks implicit in your action. What I question is your right to engage Constable Peebles in the venture. I’m sure that he was willing but he was also inexperienced.’

‘That’s not true,’ said Tallis, grasping at straws. ‘He’d been on the streets in uniform for years. When he was at Barking, he received a commendation.’

‘He was not being asked to walk the beat with you, sir. He was being confronted by a known criminal with a readiness to kill. Why, in the name of all that’s holy, did you choose him?’

Tallis ran a hand through his hair and hunched his shoulders.

‘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 like 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.