The soft movement of her hands on his body roused him to an urgent need, and his fingers closed strongly on her thigh, the soft curve of her belly as she stripped him. Now he could forget his loneliness and fear in the eager, skillful love she offered him. But even then he realized the danger he brought her, might perhaps have drawn back, if her mouth had not found his, her hps and tongue
CHAPTER 7
In a room in Queen Anne's Gate, three men sat drinking coffee. One of them, Linton, was the inspector of the Special Branch who had visited Marshall's chief constable. Next to him was Grierson, an operator in a special department of Intelligence. Facing them across a desk was Loomis, a gross, sloppily dressed man, the head of Grier-son's section. It was known as Department K, a small, highly selective unit, and it was very secret indeed. Department K handled the jobs that were too dangerous to be handled by anyone else. The men who worked for it were skilled men, technicians; and utterly ruthless. They had to be, if they were to survive.
'We should have found Craig sooner,' Loomis said angrily. 'He could have been a big help to us. I could have used him. Of course the French would have been annoyed.'
'Those madmen from Algeria fixed that,' said Grierson.
Loomis said, 'Craig, Baumer, and Rutter were the only ones in this country who went in for this kind of nonsense. Now Craig's dead, and they got Rutter in Geneva. Baumer's disappeared. He won't try it again even if he survives, so that's all right. This isn't a good time to have a row with the French. All the same, you should have found him before you did, Linton. I wanted to see him. You should have allowed for that.'
Linton coughed warily. Loomis's nature was anything but forgiving. 'It could be he isn't dead, sir,' he said.
Loomis swiveled around in his chair to face him. An enormous man, hair splashed with white, like snow on a wheatfield, and light, manic eyes. 'There's no need to be
willed him to take her. Their love was fierce yet tender, demanding yet compassionate, exhausting his body and mind of everything but his need for her. Even so, his sleep was wary.
frightened,' he said. 'I've just about decided to forgive you.'
Linton said, 'I'm serious, sir. I went up north again yesterday. Had a chat with Detective Inspector Marshall. His chief constable kept him on the case, sir, even after I'd told him you were against it.'
Loomis stirred vastly, and Linton hurried on. 'Marshall's a pretty bright chap, I think. He's had his medical experts working on what's left of the body. It was the wrong shape for Craig, sir. Too heavy. Then there's the brother-in-law's motor scooter. It's been found, sir. Or what's left of it. It was destroyed just outside York.'
'Destroyed?'
'Petrol tank blown up, sir. He was lucky to get the chassis number.' Loomis grunted.
'Marshall thinks the brother-in-law was killed in the car. Craig sometimes gave him his old clothes, which could account for the identification. He thinks Craig drove the scooter to York and took a train from there.'
'Where to?' Loomis asked.
'Could be London, sir.'
'Could be Timbuktu,' said Loomis. 'Why London?'
'Last night a man called Lishman was beaten up near Tottenham Court Road,' Linton said. 'He's in the Queen Alexandra Hospital-he'll be there for quite a while. He'll be lucky if he's ever a father again.'
'Gangster obscenities,' said Loomis. 'Sunday-newspaper stuff.'
'Lishman's tough,' said Linton. 'He had two other men to help him. They left with a fourth man and a girl from the club. The fourth man beat them stupid. It took him about five blows and thirty seconds. Then he left with the girl.'
'Sensible feller,' said Loomis.
'The general description we got could be Craig,' said Linton.
Loomis said, 'Why? Because he beat up three men? You could do that. Even Grierson could. And as far as general description goes, you both look like Craig. It'll probably turn out to be Grierson having a randy night out and too shy to tell us about it.'
'Sir,' said Linton. 'I couldn't beat up those three. Not on my own. They were professionals. Good ones. Maybe Grierson could do it-'
'Very decent of you,' said Grierson.
'But they'd have made a mess of him first. This lad doesn't seem to have been marked. And they're scared of him. Lishman doesn't scare easily.'
'How did he do it?' Grierson asked.
'Judo mostly,' said Linton.
'And Craig's a black belt,' Grierson said.
'All right,' said Loomis. 'See if you can find the girl and have a word with her. And if it should be Craig, for God's sake go easy. I don't want him upset.'
'Don't you want us to bring him in, sir?' Linton asked.
'I want you to ask him to come in,' said Loomis. 'I want you to ask him nicely. Just as well for you, really. It would look bad if he started knocking you about. People like to believe we're supermen.' He looked at them with withering scorn. 'All right. Get on with it.'
Philip Grierson was thirty-seven years old, with black hair, blue eyes, and a laziness of disposition that could awake sometimes into eruptive violence, all of which made him remarkably attractive to women. He was an ex- Marine Commando captain, an excellent pistol shot, and a man of quick and resourceful wit. He had also a deep and passionate belief in the importance and necessity of his job, which he did well enough to persuade Loomis to treat him with a grudging respect. Moreover, he had always, so far, delivered the goods, and had killed three men in doing so. Loomis, to his horror, found that he was beginning to rely on him.
Linton knew very lhtle about Grierson, least of all that he had killed. It was Loomis's business to see that such things weren't known, and he conducted his business admirably, which was why he had ruled that very special department for nine years without so much as a question being asked in the House of Commons. Linton, like everyone else in the Special Branch, knew that the word
'Special' covered a wide area of extraordinary activity. Somewhere in a bookcase in his house in Pimlico, between Stone's Justices' Manual and Moriarty's Police Law, Linton had a dictionary that defined 'special' as, among other things: particular, peculiar, chief in excellence; person or thing specially appointed. Linton understood very well that Grierson was all those things but he knew also that he was easy to work with, and unlikely to fuss.
They went to the club Craig had visited, the Lucky Seven, in Grierson's car, an elderly Lagonda whose gasoline consumption caused unending arguments with Grierson's accounts department, and occasional salutes from the more conservative type of policeman. The battlefield was calm and devoid of sightseers and the club had opened for its afternoon session when they arrived. Linton showed his warrant to a bored barmaid whose boredom vanished immediately with the realization that she had found another audience for her saga.
Linton and Grierson listened with the stolid good manners of professionals, and heard how the man called Reynolds had looked and dressed, and had drunk a lot of whisky, then had tried to sober up on coffee. When they asked her to provide a description, the barmaid said he was a smashing-looking feller, and when asked to be more specific, said he looked a bit like Grierson, only not so dark. Grierson was pleased, as always, by a tribute to his good looks; Linton assumed that the man had been menacing all along, but had masked it well, as Grierson did.
After Linton had threatened and Grierson had sympathized, the barmaid, very reluctantly, told them where Tessa lived. Then the manager appeared, took them to his office, poured out whisky, and talked at length of the pacific and law-abiding nature of bis members, pointing out that it was a guest, an unknown, who had run amok to such effect. The window from which he had watched the conflict was to the right of his desk; the telephone which he had not used to call the police, immediately before him. Linton remarked on this, and the manager insisted that he was as pacific as his members, and so upset by the sight of the conflict as to lose all ability to communicate, had had a blackout, in fact. The manager had two parallel razor slashes on his right cheek. Grierson and Linton drank more of his whisky, then went to call on Tessa Harling.
