O'Brien turned on a flash-light and swung the big beam around the room.
'Bit more to your left.'
Conrad turned on the lights and walked into the luxuriously furnished room. Facing him were the shower cabinets, each equipped with a fitted wardrobe, a chair and a shower. In one of these cabinets, he thought, Frances had hidden and had watched Maurer wash his blood-stained hands.
Mallory, a police photographer, came in and set up his camera. He looked inquiringly at O'Brien who was examining the floor.
'This must be it, Paul,' O'Brien said, and pointed to a brass grill that covered a six-inch-square hole in the floor.
Conrad joined him, and O'Brien directed the beam of his flash-light down into the drain. The light picked out a mass of dry leaves that lay at the bottom of the drain.
'I wonder where they came from?' Conrad said. 'Must have been washed in from an outside vent. Doesn't look as if any water's passed through the drain for some time. If the pencil is down there, it should be dry, and the blood won't have been washed off.'
O'Brien examined the grill covering the drain.
'Cemented in. No wonder Maurer couldn't retrieve his pencil. Did you bring the tools, Mallory?'
'I dumped them just outside. I'll get them.'
Conrad sat back on his heels and lit a cigarette.
'If the pencil's down there, we've got him,' he said quietly. 'I can't believe it. I've been after that thug for years.'
'You haven't got him yet,' O'Brien reminded him. 'Don't be too hopeful.'
'Sergeant . . .!'
The sharp note in Mallory's voice made both men straighten up.
'There's someone outside.'
Mallory was standing in the doorway of the changing room, silhouetted against the light. Even as he spoke there came a crash of gunfire and he staggered back, holding his arm.
With a muttered oath O'Brien jumped forward and flicked up the light switch, plunging the changing room into darkness.
'You hurt?' he asked, pulling Mallory away from the door.
'Got it in the arm,' Mallory said, and sat down abruptly on the floor.
Conrad had gone over to the door, and keeping well back, he peered into the darkness. He couldn't see any tiling.
O'Brien joined him.
'Maurer's mob,' Conrad said, and groped in his hip pocket for his gun. 'There's a telephone somewhere around, Tom. Better get some boys up here.'
O'Brien grunted and closed the door.
'Watch out how you use the light,' Conrad went on. 'I think I spotted the telephone standing on a table to your left.'
O'Brien snapped on his flash-light and located the telephone. Out in the darkness a riot gun started up. The black of the night was split by yellow flashes. Lead smashed a window and scattered a shower of glass that whizzed over Conrad's and O'Brien's ducking heads. Plaster came down from the opposite wall, filling the room with dust.
'Hell!' O'Brien muttered, flattened out and began a slow crawl across the room to the telephone.
Conrad aimed at where the flashes had come from and fired a probing shot into the darkness.
Automatics cracked; pencil points of flame appeared in a semicircle, bullets hummed through the smashed window and thudded into the opposite walls.
'There's quite a bunch of them out there,' Conrad said. 'Get moving, Tom!'
O'Brien had got the telephone down on the floor. Conrad could hear him dialling.
'It'll take them the best part of a quarter of an hour to get out here unless there's a prowl car near by. If these punks rush us . . .'
Conrad crawled over to where Mallory was sitting.
'You bleeding?'
'A little. It's okay. Just nicked me. I wish I had a gun.'
Conrad caught a movement at the window. He swivelled round, his arm coming up. He fired as a shadowy figure moved away. He heard the
'Well, that's one of them,' he said grimly.
The still night was made hideous by machine-gun fire. Plaster came down on top of him as he hurriedly flattened out on the ground. Slugs sprayed against the opposite wall: glass and wood splinters joined company with ricochetting bullets.
'Like Tunisia all over again,' Mallory muttered as he flattened out beside Conrad. He never let a chance go by
