We'd studied the layouts of similar houses, and knew that the rooms on the second floor were usually used as bedrooms. It was my job, with Nigel, to get to them as quickly as possible. That's where the action was most likely to be, but hopefully we'd catch them with their pants round their ankles. I took the stairs three at a time, but I was only halfway up the last flight when a character came round the top whirling a rice flail round his head. Unfortunately for him it was not much good in the narrowness of the staircase and it tangled round his arm.
He had a game attempt at passing me, but I just doubled up and went for his legs with my shoulders. I felt his shins connect with me, then he sailed over my head and landed at the foot of the stairs with a crash that shook the beer cans in the kitchen. I turned to look down at the wreckage.
'I'll get him,' shouted Sparky, who'd found the first floor uninhabited.
'C'mon,' I said to Nigel, and cleared the last few steps.
I kicked open the first bedroom door. The bed bore signs of being recently vacated. I slid an unwilling hand between the off-grey sheets; they were still warm. Nobody was under the bed or in the wardrobe so I tried the next room. It was filled with junk, plus a stack of interesting, unopened cardboard boxes. The other bedroom was the biggest, and had a bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers. The sheets on the bed were colour coordinated with the others. Somebody had just got out from between them, too. Sparky and a couple more came round the landing to join us.
'Find anything?' I asked, putting my finger to my lips, then pointing upwards.
'No more bodies, plenty of loot, though,' Sparky answered, his eyes following my finger.
These houses originally had cellars and attics. When the attics were no longer required for the maid, or the kids, or the deranged mother-in-law to sleep in, most people blanked them off and demolished the stairs to make the bedroom bigger. This had been done here, leaving just a trapdoor to give access to the plumbing in the attic.
The trap was above the chest of drawers, and it was open. Our second sleeping beauty was up there.
I pointed for the others to go downstairs.
'Okay! Let's go,' I shouted. There was a gap at the side of the wardrobe to leave room for the curtains to go back. I slipped into it and gestured to Sparky to leave me.
'Right, we've done all we can here, let's go,' he said.
They banged and stamped down the staircases. I moved the curtain to one side and looked out. The front door slammed, but only Nigel emerged into the road. He spoke to one of the drivers for a few seconds, then the car tore off with much revving and squealing. At the end of the street he put on his siren and I listened to it fade into the distance.
I didn't have a long wait. There was a creaking of joists above my head, moving towards the trapdoor. After a few seconds, a pair of bare legs appeared. He sat on the edge of the opening, then dropped on to the chest of drawers. The upper half of his body was still above ceiling level. There was an easy way to do this. I put my hand in my pocket, and my fingers curled round the PPK. My thumb, without being told, eased the safety catch to 'auf.' He stood, half concealed, apparently reaching for something in the loft.
Then I saw the butt of a shotgun being lowered out of the opening. I stepped out of my hiding place. 'I'm an armed police officer. Put the …'
I didn't get any further. He ducked out of the trapdoor, swept the shotgun in my direction and pulled the trigger. I instinctively jumped back behind the wardrobe as the corner of it in front of my head exploded into sawdust and the window shattered. Stinging fragments peppered my face and eyes. I did a standing leap into the middle of the room, swung in his direction and pumped the trigger of the Walther three times. The figure swimming in front of me raised his hands in a futile gesture of protection, then toppled over, crashing to the floor, the shotgun clattering down alongside him. I lowered my head and blinked most of the debris out of my eyes, then put the pistol in my pocket and moved over to the body, just as Sparky, thirty-eight held in front of him, charged round the top of the stairs.
All three shots had hit him in the chest. I pressed a finger into his neck, alongside the Adam's apple.
'Anything?' asked Sparky, quietly.
'Yes, there's a pulse,' I said. 'Let's take his vest off.'
We pulled the garment over his head and looked at the three wounds.
They were small black holes, almost innocuous-looking, but the blood dribbling out of them was flecked with foam. Nigel and one or two others had joined us. I told him to go down and let ADI Willis know what had happened, and send for the ambulance. We had one standing by.
He was back almost immediately.
'Go back and tell Mr. Willis we need the SOCO and a photographer,' said Sparky.
I sealed the holes with my fingers, while Sparky checked the pulse.
After a minute or so he said: 'We're losing him.'
We decided he was dead more or less as the paramedics arrived. Acting Detective Inspector Willis drew some marks on the floor with a fibre pen to indicate where he fell, just before they put him on their stretcher and rushed him away. I flexed my knees and wiped more bits from my eyes.
'Where were you when he fired, Charlie?' asked Tony.
I blew my nose and walked across the room. 'There,' I said, pointing to where a great chunk from the edge of the wardrobe had been blasted into infinity.
'And when you fired?'
'There.'
Tony and Sparky stood looking at me, each waiting for the other to speak. I looked from one to the other. 'C'mon,' I demanded, 'what are you telling me?'
'Have you seen his gun, boss?' asked Sparky.
'Yeah, it fell near the bed.'
I walked over and looked down at it. 'Great,' I mumbled. 'That's just what we need.'
It was an ancient, single-barrelled job. He didn't have another shot left.
Chief Inspector Colin Brabiner was appointed investigating officer, and Sam Evans, the police surgeon, was asked to come and have a word with me. The Federation representative offered to appoint a solicitor to be at my side throughout, telling me what to say and what not to, and everybody I met gave what they believed to be support. Superintendent Wood made me coffee, the real stuff, and loaned me his office while I wrote my reports. Then he went with the 10 and Sparky to view the scene of the incident.
Sam Evans looks like a well-fed, but pale, Mahatma Gandhi. Premature baldness and a grey moustache make him look much older than he is. I'd first met him about ten years earlier, when I'd hurt my back falling down a fire escape. I did him a favour and we became good friends. He came over as soon as he heard the news.
'I'm supposed to make you an appointment to see Dr. Foulkes, at the General,' he said. 'How do you feel about it?'
Foulkes was head of the psychiatry department. We used him for stress counselling. 'Unhappy, Sam. Can't you deal with it? I have mixed feelings about this psychotherapy stuff. No doubt some people need it, but I don't think I'm one of them. Leave well alone, I say.'
'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'
'Exactly.' I put my ball-pen down. I'd become aware that I was clicking the cap on and off all the time we were talking.
'How do you feel about what happened this morning, Charlie?'
I had to think about this one. The truth was, I hadn't had time to feel much about it at all. After a while I said: 'Sad. I'm sad that a young man has had a wasted life and has died. The fact that I was the person who… who shot him seems… irrelevant. He was somebody's son, though. Maybe it just hasn't hit me, yet, but at the moment it's not bothering me. It's just more hassle stopping me getting on with the job.'
Sam nodded. 'I see,' he said. 'And, of course, you were in danger yourself.'
I shrugged my shoulders. 'That's what we get underpaid for.'
'Don't you think about the danger to yourself?'
'No. There shouldn't have been any.'
There shouldn't have been any. The words jangled in my brain. An innocent question, from someone who was trying to be helpful, had signalled a train of thought that I would prefer not to follow. Was this why I was scared of seeing Dr. Foulkes?
