September Song (32 page)

For someone who doesn't have so much as a flutter on the Derby, I was spending a lot of time calculating odds that grim Monday afternoon.

I tried to look away as Ricky swaggered over to Miss Summers, but Dave Mountjoy noticed, placed a big, nicotine-stained finger along one side of my jaw and his thumb along the other and yanked my head around.

Miss Summers moved as far away from Ricky as was possible, her body pressed right against the wall, but he just leaned right up to her, trapping her. She beat at him ineffectually with both hands until he grasped both her wrists in one large fist. Then he placed the flat of the blade against her face, much as I'd seen him do with Viv Laurence, and lovingly stroked her cheek with the cold steel a few times.

Then he stepped back and, instead of threatening to cut her, chopped off the top button of her jacket. He turned and leered at the rest of us before chopping off the second button. Her jacket swung open. He turned back towards us again.

‘I think we should search her properly, don't you? Make sure she isn't hiding anything,' he said.

I wondered how far to let it go before giving it my one shot. Not very far, I decided.

‘She isn't hiding anything,' I managed to squeeze out, in spite of Dave's hand being clamped to my jaw.

‘Then she's got nothing to be afraid of. Have you, darling?' Ricky said, turning back to Jeannie.

He lifted the razor and ran it from her breasts to her waist, slitting open the white nylon slip she was wearing under the jacket. He took a step back again, presumably to get a good look, and grinned at the sight of the thin line of exposed white flesh.

She looked at him evenly and spat in his eye.

He started back, surprised, and let go of her wrists to rub her spittle off his face. She took full advantage of his surprise and shoved him hard towards the window.

He banged against it, and then all hell broke loose.

Steve ran over to help him, bashing his hip painfully into the desk on the way. Just as he got there, the window exploded inwards, showering the pair of them with shards of glass, and a half-brick landed on the back of Ricky's head.

I briefly glimpsed a dark face that I recognized as Clive's before a Tizer bottle smacked into the wooden filing cabinet next to Ricky's unconscious body and exploded with a loud ‘whumpf', filling the office with petrol fumes.

In France, we'd heard about the improvised bombs the Finns had used against the Russians during the Winter War, but I'd never seen one used before.

They must have been effective.

Within seconds, the piles of paper and the filing cabinets were all ablaze and the place was alive with darting tongues of flame and dark roiling smoke. George, Brian and Dave all let go of me and just stood and gaped, presumably in some kind of shock.

‘Out,' I yelled. ‘Everyone get out.'

I pushed past George and Brian and stumbled through the already thick smoke to Jeannie Summers, who looked as shocked as the men. I took her arm and steered her towards the door, barging George that way as well. Steve, Brian and Dave Mountjoy had snapped out of shock and moved into full-scale panic-stricken flight, struggling with each other to get out of the door first.

The smoke was already catching at the back of my throat and making me cough, and I was aware of the heat at my back, but I tried not to add to the problems by rushing at the only exit – which was not easy – and waited while they all sorted themselves out and tumbled through the door in an untidy heap. George lumbered along after them, and then I ushered Miss Summers out as well and, with some relief, staggered down the step and on to muddy earth.

Out in what passes for fresh air in London, I doubled up and gasped and so did Miss Summers. I retched and coughed for what seemed like an age but was probably only a few seconds. I tried to spit out the taste of petrol and smoke, but it was useless.

Then, when I looked up, I saw that there was definitely a cliché involving frying pans and fires waiting to be coined because Nelson Smith and three of his mates, including Clive, were standing in a semicircle, looking at us. And they were all holding firearms of some sort.

Dave Mountjoy was wailing incoherently, and it was only when Nelson Smith shouted that I realized what Dave was saying.

‘That's a warning for Ricky,' Nelson yelled. ‘Tell him to stay out of my business or there'll be worse.' And Nelson and his boys backed away, still pointing their guns in our general direction.

I didn't wait to see what would happen next. I stripped off my jacket and ran back through the doorway into the office, holding the coat in front of me. Someone – I think it must have been Charlie Lomax speaking about his experience in the fire service during the war – told me that you should keep low when entering a blazing building. It was something to do with the way the smoke rose, I seemed to recall. So, I dutifully crouched down and waddled forward, my jacket, for the time being, keeping the worst of the heat away from me. I'd forgotten just how much noise a fire makes when sucking in air. I couldn't hear anything above the roar and the crackle from the burning wood. And I couldn't see anything through the thick, black smoke edged with darting orange flames that lashed the ceiling.

‘Ricky,' I yelled, but there was no response.

I edged further forward and found myself next to the desk. Inconsequentially, I found myself thinking of the unfinished letter in the typewriter. Suddenly, Bix Beiderbecke was playing in my head. I don't know if Bix was trying to tell me something, but he was tootling the chorus of ‘There Ain't No Sweet Man That's Worth the Salt of My Tears' for all he was worth.

I pushed feebly at the desk and moved it a few inches out of the way, crawled a bit further and reached out with my right hand. The heat was really intense. I was sweating like I hadn't sweated before and felt my skin scorching even behind the pathetic protection afforded by my jacket. I reached out with my hand again and felt around. It brushed against some fabric. It felt like Ricky Mountjoy's pretty blue suit. I grabbed the collar and hauled.

He didn't move.

I braced myself and pulled again. This time he slithered a couple of inches. I moved backwards, braced myself again and pulled. I felt like my arm was going to come out of its socket but he slid another six inches.

Painfully slowly, long darts of flame flicking out towards us all the way, my eyes stinging unbearably, I dragged him towards the door, inch by muscle-straining inch. I tried not to think about the fact that the fire was probably travelling faster than we were. And I tried not to notice when the desk started to smoke and then burst into flame with a great crack as we came alongside it. I concentrated on other things. No one would, after all, have to clean Ricky's spat blood from the floor. Ricky wasn't going to stripe me or Jeannie Summers with his razor. And the great Bix was still belting away in my head.

You're right, Bix, I thought, but this is no sweet man, and I ain't crying for him, though, God knows, I am sweating.

If there's a world record for covering eighteen feet in the slowest possible time, I reckon I must have broken it. But, somehow, I made it, and we popped out of that doorway followed by a billowing pillar of thick black and grey choking smoke and the odd lick of flame.

George and Brian were standing just by the door, and they took Ricky from me and carried him ten feet away from the office and laid him down by Dave. I wondered if he was dead.

My sore and stinging eyes hurt so much that I could scarcely see, and the smoke felt like lumps of suet pudding in my lungs. I sat down and heaved and coughed and heaved and coughed some more. And then I heaved and coughed again.

Jeannie Summers suddenly materialized next to me and stroked my sweaty forehead. ‘You could have been killed,' she said. ‘Why did you do that for that animal?'

I couldn't speak so I didn't say, ‘Don't ask me, I don't know,' but that's all I could have replied.

She leaned down and kissed my grimy, smoke-streaked, scorched cheek. I could feel that the skin was scorched, and I knew it must be smoke-streaked and grimy because hers was. I tried to smile at her, but I suspect it came out more as a grimace.

And then I laid down and passed out to the distant sound of clanging bells. Some observant railwayman from the shunting yards must have called the fire brigade.

I couldn't have been out for long because the emergency vehicles hadn't arrived when I sat up – though, judging by the noise the bells were making, they weren't far away. Funnily enough, I already felt better. There was a nasty taste in my mouth, and I thought I'd probably be coughing for a month, but, aside from the burgeoning bump on the back of my head from George's gun barrel and some nasty-looking blisters on the back of my right hand, I wasn't in bad shape.

Miss Summers was still sitting next to me, holding her jacket together in front of her breasts.

‘Right,' I croaked – not everything was in full working order – ‘let's retrieve your handbag from the car before the fire engine and the police arrive.'

She looked warily around, but Nelson and his boys had long since departed and Dave and the others were huddled around Ricky's prone body.

‘How's he?' I managed to rasp out.

‘Still breathing,' she said. ‘And not too badly charred. More's the pity.' She looked down at me. ‘You knew all along, didn't you? Where I'd put the drugs.'

‘I guessed,' I said. ‘Why?'

She sighed. ‘Lee thought we could sell them. He reckoned there might be a few hundred dollars' worth. It would pay the solicitor.'

I coughed and tasted smoke. ‘No,' I said. ‘Bad guys want 'em back. I have to be straight with them. I can find some money for the brief. Silks are another matter, but we'll see.'

I struggled up and realized that my knees were creaking more than a bit. All that crouching and hauling had taken its toll. We both slowly walked, unnoticed, to the Consul. I reached in, pulled out the handbag and gave it to her just as the fire engine rattled around the corner and bumped through the entrance, across the muddy forecourt and slewed to a halt by the car.

The office was burning fiercely, and there wasn't much the firemen could do to save it. It would be a burnt-out shell before too long. But they rolled out their hoses, anyway. And they were all bustling activity and reassuring competence.

The second fire engine clanged to a halt behind the other one. It took about three seconds for the second crew to recognize they weren't needed. They hung about for a few minutes and then announced they were off.

I begged a lift from them for me and Miss Summers, and they happily agreed to drop us off outside the Gaumont. One of them did ask if I shouldn't wait for the ambulance that had been summoned for little Ricky and be given the once-over by the quacks at Whipps Cross, but I said I'd be as right as ninepence after a rest, a wash, an aspirin and a change of clothes. He didn't look entirely convinced but shrugged and helped me up into the cab.

The truth was that I wasn't entirely convincing because I thought that I probably did need a bandage or two for the hand, but I really didn't want to hang around and have to explain anything to the police should they turn up.

And, anyway, I'd wanted to ride in a fire engine since I was four.

If I was good, and I asked very nicely, one of the blokes might even let me wear his helmet.

I didn't bother to say goodbye to Dave Mountjoy and his boys.

It turned out that I'd overestimated my powers of self-repair and I felt more like a snide thruppence than nine bright pennies.

The wash helped a bit. And a couple of aspirin dulled some of the aches and pains. But my right hand felt like it was still in the fire, and the lump on the back of my head (lumps, if you counted the one from the coshing the other night) pounded away like the Light Brigade charging into the Valley of Death. Someone had blundered all right, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was me.

And the change of clothes didn't help one bit.

I'd run out of suits, and I had to resort to the old brown demob number that I hadn't worn for eight years. It still fitted as well as it ever had, which is to say not at all, and I was definitely not at my dapper best. Maman would have tutted loudly, rolled her eyes and sent me back to my room to change. Papa would have rolled his eyes too, but that would have been at Maman. He would have been laughing at me.

I was also out of clean shirts and had to borrow two from Jerry. Miss Summers looked well enough in hers, but mine threatened to split across the back every time I laughed. Fortunately, I wasn't feeling all that jocular. I've always been a traditionalist, much preferring white shirts to grey.

Jerry made a big pot of tea, broke open a fresh packet of custard creams and listened with some attention as Miss Summers told him what had happened. I was still croaking too much for any extended conversation, and every time I coughed – which was often – I tasted smoke.

When she'd finished, Jerry asked a lot of questions she couldn't answer. They both looked at me from time to time, but I just pointed helplessly to my throat. So Jerry settled for shaking his head a lot, muttering something about mad buggers and asking me, I suspect rhetorically, what I thought I was playing at.

I told him it wasn't my fault. These things just sort of happened. He then asked me why it had just sort of happened that I'd dashed into a burning building to rescue some little toerag who'd shown a strong inclination to damage me badly. I told him I would take full responsibility for that, although Bix had something to do with the successful outcome.

He shook his head again and then smeared something cooling and greasy on the back of my hand and wrapped a bandage around it.

When I asked him, he found a recording of Bix Beiderbecke playing ‘Mississippi Mud' and that worked its magic and bucked me up no end.