I am sure, be aware of the unfortunate impression that would be created—not least in the minds of vigilant husbands—if your solicitude were to be observed in turn.”
“What he means,” whispered Detective Pook to the stolid constable at his side, “is that you’re to keep your eyes off the cheesecake in the bathrooms, mate.”
The seven policemen took their final swigs of cocoa, nodded respectful farewells to the inspector, and filed out into the night. Their duty was to end at two o’clock in the morning, which Purbright and Love had decided between them to be a reasonable upper limit to the libidinous potentialities of even the Crab.
For the next four hours, each officer was to stroll as quietly as he was able up and down the streets of his allotted area, linger here and there in whatever concealed vantage points offered, traverse back lanes, peer into gardens and yards, avoid encounters, resist the lure of carelessly curtained windows, and stave off sleep.
It was not the most congenial assignment he could have wished.
Nor, in any instance, did it achieve its object.
The night’s only excitement fell to the lot of Constable Burke.
He had been given surveillance over a group of five interconnecting streets that formed the southern half of the Burton Lane council estate. The area was popularly, if now unjustly, known as ‘Bottle Hill’. This name had been bestowed in days when the place was garrisoned by families of quite remarkably bibulous and quarrelsome tendencies, but no more than three or four of these households had survived the twin ravages of feud and eviction order, and a comparatively conformist type of tenant was now in the majority.
Constable Burke was aware, nevertheless, that the Cutlocks, the O’Shaunessys and the Trings still maintained some of the traditions of a more colourful era. He was not surprised, on passing the home of Grandma Tring and her brood, to hear shrieks suggestive of multiple disembowellings. Nor, when he drew near the scarred homestead known in probation circles as ‘Cutlock Castle’, was he unduly alarmed by the sight of two women trying to pull a third into a bonfire that blazed amidst the weeds of the front garden. It was a little after midnight. The constable strolled on. The prevention of cremations was not in his brief.
What did surprise him very much was the appearance of the O’Shaunessy residence, two hundred yards farther on. With the exception of a single illuminated window on the upper floor, it was in darkness.
Constable Burke halted and ruminated.
He had never before seen the house at any hour of the night otherwise than lit up like a gin palace. This, one supposed, was to facilitate the drift from floor to floor and room to room of the almost perpetual parties and fights that constituted O’Shaunessy hospitality.
Yet tonight the entire galaxy had been snuffed, but for that one lamp upstairs. More strangely still, the place was silent.
For a moment, Constable Burke felt like the first visitor to Glencoe after the departure of the Campbells. Massacre—or perhaps plague—seemed the only possible explanation of the peace that now cloaked the neighbourhood.
Then he glimpsed movement in the one lighted room. There was still life in the house, apparently. He crossed the road and moved slowly towards it.
He was extremely puzzled. Were it not for the survival of that bedroom lamp, the reasonable inference would have been that the family had been obliged to fall back on its reserves by robbing the electricity meter. But the power clearly was still on. In any case, the O’Shaunessys were great improvisers: they would have set light to the staircase sooner than sit drinking in the dark.
Constable Burke was by now just outside the house, close by the front gate. And, perhaps because he was so puzzled, he committed the very error against which the inspector had carefully given warning.
He stared up at the lighted window.
What he saw would have immobilized much less susceptible men.
Just beyond the undraped glass, yet as splendidly indifferent as if it had been solid brick, a young woman was hurriedly removing her clothes.
The constable did not call out. He did not blow his whistle. He made no preparations to note down a name and address with a view to proceedings being taken. He did not even try and think of what Section of what Act was being contravened. He simply froze into grateful contemplation.
Time, for him, ceased to exist, save perhaps as a season between jumper and skirt, an interval of hair- rumpling, a span from suspender to suspender. Minutes or years could have been going by, for all he could tell. Certainly the girl was in no haste; a less enraptured observer might have suspected that she had in mind a limit to her performance, that she was following some sort of schedule.
No such misgivings clouded the trance of Constable Burke. He continued to stand motionless, deaf, blind to all but the occupant of the shining rectangle in the black sky.
Her remaining garments were now at the count of two. Which next? Oh, delicious speculation. She was facing into the room. Her hand was behind her. It strayed to a point in the middle of her back. No, down now. It lingered at her waist. Ah...
“Right! NOW!”
The sound was like that of an exploding boiler.
Immediately in front of Constable Burke there rose up what seemed to his confused senses to be a great column of black smoke shot with scarlet flame.
“I’ve got him, lads!” boomed the smoke. It swooped and engulfed him with a smell of fish and whiskey. Other shapes crowded in from each side. He was on the ground, flat on his back. Objects of great weight and excruciating hardness bore down his arms and legs, apparently with the purpose of embedding them permanently in the pavement. On to his stomach descended a monument.
The voice again roared out in command. This time, it was directed upward.
“Right y’are, Bernadine—ye’d best be gettin’ yerself daicent now and downstairs wid ye!”
