No Escape (23 page)

So now Jane would have told her story, described her recent peril. But whatever she had revealed, whatever plan his enemies had cooked up in the endless minutes since he found himself baulked of his prey, the power cut must have upset them, too. While they were re-organising, he must grope his way out of this total blackness into what he supposed would be a partial light from the windows of the receiving room and in the corridors. Staff would he absorbed in finding substitute lighting. He must slip past and through the Casualty door out of the hospital while the place was still disorganised.

Very slowly, very carefully, he got to his feet and feeling his way with both hands moved along the black passage to the outer room. As he had thought, though the glass of the windows there were frosted, the London night sky shone in dimly. He could see a table, filing cabinets beyond, doors in three of the wails.

With an effort of memory he forced himself to locate the door that led out of the department. Surely it had raced the windows? He began to move towards it and at that moment the light came on again, white, blinding, with the shock of a sudden blow.

Gerry bolted back into the dark room. He was unnerved, shaken, fumbling for the gun in the holster below his armpit.

Facing the passage entrance, gun levelled, he retreated silently until a sharp impact behind his thighs sent him reeling backwards. He thrust out his free hand to fend off what had struck him, felt the edge of the sink slip past his wrist, the wrist weakened in his death fight with young Hill, and as his hand and arm plunged into the water, knew, just before he screamed, that the leads were still resting there, that the fate he had planned for Jane had overtaken himself. The scream, his last indignant protest, was cut off abruptly as final darkness overwhelmed him.

Garrod, with the other officers, the door flung open, looked into the empty receiving room. Dr Milton, from behind the group, said. “That didn't flush him, after all, did it?”

“He yelled,” said Garrod. “Phoney, d'you think? To get us in there?”

He pointed with his own weapon at the entrance of the darkroom passage.

“I wouldn't have said it was phoney, by the sound of it,” Dr Milton said. “From what Miss Wheelan told us I'd suppose his electrical arrangements went wrong in some way.”

Garrod gave the radiologist a startled look. But the latter had left the room and almost immediately came back, pulling on rubber gloves. He strode over to the dark room entrance.

“No, sir,” Garrod said, moving quickly in front of him. “We'll deal with this.”

“Don't touch anything, then,” Dr Milton said. “Whatever you find. I'll come in behind you.”

They found Gerry slumped across the sink, one arm and shoulder deep in the water, his head twisted against the wall behind, his legs buckled under him, his body held by a stool he had pushed out when he emerged from under the tank.

“Don't touch him,” Dr Milton warned again as Garrod sprang forward. The latter checked. He had taken in the situation at once and now saw the leads trailing over the edge of the sink.

Motioning the others to keep back, he followed the flexes to the wall. But Dr Milton was before him. He had moved at once to the switch, thrown it, pulled out the leads, and leaving them on the floor, went to the sink. He took hold of Gerry's shoulders with his gloved hands and lifting the limp body away laid him down on the floor, where he made a brief examination.

“Dead,” he said, looking up at Garrod. “Do you chaps want him or shall I arrange for the post-mortem here, since he died in this hospital?”

His cold efficiency both shocked and restored the police officers. Garrod met it with his own shrewd energy.

“Perhaps you would discuss that with the coroner's officer, sir,” he said. “Here or your local public mortuary, as he directs. I'll leave Sergeant Phillips with you to see to the arrangements and take statements. I have a lot to attend to now, as you will appreciate.”

“Like hell I do,” said Dr Milton, with surprising warmth. “I hope you get the lot of them.”

“With any luck we may,” Garrod said.

The round-up had already begun. From the moment the river patrol had recognised Jane on the cabin cruiser's deck, the word, radioed back to Scotland Yard, had gone out to car patrols, district headquarters, ports and airports. The small-fry were pulled in for questioning. Mrs Coates, the Camden Town café staff, the friends of the dead youth, Hill, and others.

Tom and Toni were picked up in their car in Huntingdon, heading north. Ronald Bream and his wife were stopped at London Airport.

But Giles Winter had disappeared. It was nearly a year later before he was recognised in Cairo. Extradition was refused, but as Garrod told Dr Milton, who passed it on, word for word, to Jane and Tim, “We didn't mind much. He was only a rather nasty cog in a big wheel. Stone wasn't the head of the organisation; the real brass are abroad. Winter ran to them for help, but he didn't get any. He'd be much better off, more comfortable, in the nick here in England than living the way he is, there, now. Fifth-rate night club, half-starved by the look of him, or ill, more likely, poor devil.”

“I'm not in the very least bit sorry for him,” Jane said, repeating Dr Milton's words. “Devil, if you like, but poor devil, no. He deserves all he gets. I hope it kills him.”

“Vindictive, aren't you?” Tim said, fondly.

“With good cause. I shall never forget Sheila. She didn't have a chance with that crowd. Not the ghost of a chance.”

“You'll forget all this when we're married,” he told her. “At least I hope so. I don't want a wife that broods on disasters.”

“And I don't want a husband who's continually falling fully clothed into the Thames,” Jane answered.

“You won't have. I'm going to find a job in the provinces far from this urban cesspit. A place where my patients present nice, straightforward surgical problems with no sinister, twisted dramas in the background.”

“Just looking at the Burgess family you wouldn't have guessed they'd have a sinister, twisted, dramatic background, would you?”

“You would not.”

“It makes you think doesn't it? I mean, how many dull homes have—”

“That's enough,” Tim said, kissing her. “Let's go and find dinner at our little restaurant. No social problems there. Just damned good food, and I like food.”

“Bless you, darling, so do I,” Jane told him.

First published in 1965 by Hodder & Stoughton

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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Copyright © Josephine Bell, 1965

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