“Does it do you any good do you think?”
She wrinkled her forehead and drew a deep, slow breath; she was treating the question as if it contained a mint fresh idea she’d never heard before.
“I thought it did at the time,” she said, “now I’m not so sure. No, that’s not true, now I don’t think it did. On and on about safes and things…”
“Safes? Brave asked you about safes?”
“I think so, yes. But I don’t know anything about safes. He said they were symbolic, the womb and all that. I couldn’t ever seem to satisfy him about it.”
She was getting tired and all this forced recall was making her edgy. She still looked a lot better than she had when Brave was doing his Svengali bit all over her though. I told her to get into bed and she did it.
“There’ll be a nurse here soon. You might as well spend the night. Then in the morning, if you feel up to it, I think you should check yourself out and go see a good doctor. Get the diabetes straightened out. Will you?”
She sniffed and wrinkled her nose before answering me.
“What’s that smell?” she said.
I lifted my hands. “Cordite, I’ve just fired a shotgun.”
“Did you kill him, the man with the bandaged face?”
“Yeah.”
“He looked blind.”
“He was meant to, he wasn’t though.”
She nodded, then glanced across at the dressing table, on it was a white plastic case, about four inches tall, with a screw top, and a roll of cotton wool. She gave the kit a look I’d seen before — it was her lifeline and her cross.
“Do you inject yourself?” I asked.
“Mostly, not in here though. Do you know anything about diabetes?”
“Not much. My mother was one, but she was a drinker. When she was on a binge it used to go all wrong and she’d get in a bad way.”
“I’m not a drinker,” she snapped.
“No, but you’ve got a problem with your condition just the same. Will you see another doctor?”
She lifted the sides of her hair up and let her fingers slip through the soft waves. She still looked tired, older than she should, but there was some shine in her eyes that could just possibly be hope.
“I don’t know why I should let you tell me what to do,” she said. “But yes, I will. I’m still interested in your investigations. Will you let me know how they proceed?” I said I would. “And I’d like to see Ailsa in hospital,” she went on, “if I can be of any help I will.”
I had some red Codrals from the night before in my pocket and I offered them to her as a sedative. I thought she might need them to get to sleep in a building where a man had died the hard way. She took them.
“Thank you, Mr Hardy. Dr Brave would never allow any kind of sedative. I’d lie here for hours some nights. Thank you.”
“Good night Miss Gutteridge.” She swallowed the tablets with some water and let herself slide down the bank of pillows. “Susan,” she said. “Goodnight, Mr Hardy.”
I’d been dimly conscious of some car noise and other flak from outside while I’d been talking to Susan, so I wasn’t surprised when I found only Tickener’s FB and one other car outside the building. There were lights flashing at the end of the drive and a certain amount of shouting and hurrying about. I started towards the gate and had covered about half the distance when a figure loomed up in front of me and pointed a pistol at my hairline which is low and just in front of some pretty vital parts of my brain.
“Put your hands on your head slowly,” the shadow said. He took a flashlight from his pocket and shone it in my face.
I raised my hands. “I killed Cock Robin,” I said, “take me to your leader.” The flashlight beam wavered and the gun muzzle looked a fraction less eager.
“You Hardy?” he growled.
“Yeah. Is Grant Evans still around and can I put my hands down?”
“You can. Have to be very careful, Mr Hardy. One of the heavies who was with Costello is still loose, we got the other one.”
“Dead?”
“No, my partner winged him and he’s talking a blue streak already.”
“Good,” I said. “What about the other two?”
“They got away. There’s another way out around the back. We reckon they lay low while the shooting was going on, then hopped in one of the cars at the front and scooted out. They went over garden beds and all. We had other men coming and they reported a car moving fast on the road but they didn’t know the score and let it go. Bad luck. Anyway, Inspector Evans is down there.”
He jerked his chin at the gate and went off to shut the stable door a bit tighter. I was thinking that it was partly my fault, I hadn’t noticed another exit. I reached the gate where Evans was in a huddle with some cops in uniform and some men in plain clothes. Tickener was looking serious and about ten years older. Jones was photographing two white-overalled men sliding a long, white-wrapped bundle into the back of an ambulance. Bruno was lying on a stretcher which had little fold-out legs to keep it up off the ground. I jolted it a bit as I came up.
“Careful,” he groaned and turned his head to look at me. I grinned down at him. His elegant flared trousers had been slit to the crotch and there was a large dressing around his knee. He didn’t look happy.
“How’s it going Rocky?” I said. “I bet the police surgeon’ll do a great job on that knee. You’ll be back kicking old ladies to death in no time.”
“Get fucked,” he snarled.
I tut-tutted him and walked over to Evans.
“Back exit, Cliff,” he said, “it’d never have done for Malaya.”
“True,” I said. “What car did they take?”
“Fiat, sports model.”
“That’d be right,” I said wearily.
“How’s that?”
“Never mind, Grant. What’s the drill now? Headquarters, statements and such?” He nodded. “OK,” I said, “see you there.”
I trudged over to the Falcon, climbed in and turned the key. The engine leapt into life as if it had thrived on the action.
15
I was at police HQ for over four hours. It would have been longer and tougher if Grant Evans hadn’t been on side. I made statements about my earlier call on Brave. Evans allowed me to leave the Gutteridges with a very low profile in the whole thing. The Costello affair was what he was interested in and what Tickener’s readers were interested in as well. They were both happy for me and my involvements to take a back seat. I told Grant that I might have something soon on the Giles killing and he said that would be nice in an uninterested way. I read on a message sheet on his desk that “attempts to contact Senior Detective Charles Jackson and Dr William Clyde had been unsuccessful”. Bulletins were out on them. In a break from the recording and questioning, I got on a phone and called Bryn Gutteridge’s number. There was no answer. The same ten cents bought me a call to St Bede’s hospital and the information that Miss Sleeman had responded well to transfusions and a saline drip and was sleeping peacefully. When I gave my name the desk attendant said that the police were anxious to contact me in connection with Miss Gutteridge’s injuries. I told her where I was calling from and she seemed satisfied. I hadn’t heard anything about it at headquarters and I didn’t want to if I wasn’t going to be there until mid-day.
Brave, Bruno and the thug who’d been picked up in the grounds were securely booked. The third man had sung like a bird and there was a bulletin out on his mate, a long-time hood with an impressive record and a history of association with Rory Costello. Nobody put pressure on me to identify the two men who’d escaped in the Fiat and
