The taxi was bumping along a cobbled road, which told Charlie that they were among the docks and warehouses, probably near the Old Steps. Now and again another car passed, but there was little sound; few people came along here in the evening. The rumble of the bumping drowned other sounds and in any case Charlie Blake was in such a state of mortal terror that the words he uttered were little more than hoarse whispers. But there was a tiny segment of his mind not frozen by the terror, and all his thoughts passed through this.
Who had told this man? Who was he? Why had they been watching him? How did he know about Lemaitre?
“Come on,” the man snapped. “Let’s have it! Who’s going to dope the horses?”
Charlie was gasping.
Then, with his other hand, the man in the corner gripped his vitals and squeezed, bringing a terrible pain. The sweat on Charlie’s forehead rolled down; into his eyes, his mouth, under his chin, and the pain spread all over his body, making anguish in his thighs, his legs, his stomach, his shoulders.
“Tell me what you know!” the man rasped.
“Let go!” Charlie choked out the words. “Let go! I’ll tell you! It-it’s Jackie Spratt’s, the whole company -they’ve got a fix ready-they can make a million. But I wasn’t going to tell Lemaitre! I was just going to make a packet for myself-Lemaitre’s a joke. Oh, God,” he pleaded. “Let me go!”
The man released him, and he doubled up on the floor.
As he did so, the driver turned in his seat and spoke through the glass partition.
“He’s there.”
‘He’ meant Lemaitre; ‘there’ meant the Old Steps.
“Sure?”
“I saw him go in.”
“Okay,” said the man in the corner. “You know what to do.”
“Sure, I know. Don’t do anything in my cab, though.”
“Nothing that will show,” the other promised.
Charlie was now leaning against the edge of the seat for support. His expression was one of piteous entreaty as for the first time, he saw the face of the man who was tormenting him. It was a hard, handsome face, with deep-set eyes, a deep groove between the heavy black brows and a deep cleft in the chin. In new and abject terror, he realised that it was John Spratt, one of the three brothers who owned the vast betting-shop network that was Jackie Spratt’s Limited.
“So you weren’t going to see Lemaitre at the Old Steps?” John Spratt said heavily.
“No — I swear I wasn’t! I was just going for a drink — a drink on the terrace — I love the river, and —”
“So you love the river?” John Spratt’s dark eyes glinted with a strange kind of merriment. “Okay, Charlie Blake, I’ll see you get plenty of river!”
Then he laughed. And his laughter sent a terrible chill through the man whom Lemaitre was waiting to see in the pub overlooking the Thames.
Gideon slept fitfully that night, as far away from Kate, his wife, as he could get in their big double bed. The merest touch of body against body created oven-heat. With every window and door wide open, there was still not a breath of air.
Lemaitre, moody and troubled because his informant had let him down, and not looking forward to making his report to Gideon tomorrow, was restless, too. But his wife in her bed, the clothes thrown off, lay outstretched and beautifully naked. There was enough light from a street lamp for Lemaitre to be acutely aware of her body, especially at certain moments; and he kept turning on his back. He would love to be with her, but it was too hot, everything would be spoiled. And it was a pity to wake her.
By God, she was lovely! Beautiful.
His thoughts slipped back to an earlier marriage; a beautiful bitch of a woman who had nearly driven him out of his mind. Chloe always, always, eased his mind. If he could talk to her at this very moment, he would feel better. But he mustn’t disturb her; it wasn’t fair.
He turned away from her again.
“Lem,” she asked, in a far from drowsy voice. “Can’t you sleep?”
His heart leapt as he turned towards her.
In the pleasant house in Wimbledon where he boarded, P.C. Bob Donaldson could not sleep either, and for some peculiar reason he kept thinking about Martha Triggett. Not deeply, not resentfully, not even suspiciously; he was simply aware of her and the month he had spent learning hair-dressing with her, and the Charm School of which he knew and yet to which he had never been admitted. Between these odd moments of thinking of her he kept tossing and turning, shifting his pillow to try to find a spot which was not damp. His hair needed cutting, and was almost soaking wet . . . that was why he kept thinking of old Aunty! Pleased with this understanding, he turned over and dropped off into a sound sleep.
Another man was sleeping very soundly, a few miles away from P.C. Donaldson; a man who was not at all troubled by the sticky heat. He was Barnaby Rudge, whose childhood — in fact, most of his twenty-three years — had been spent in summer heat and humidity much greater than this, in a small but spotlessly clean, cross- ventilated house near Montgomery in Alabama.
Rudge slept on his back. Just outside the window of this small house in Southfields, Surrey, was a street lamp which shone directly in on him. The light showed up the shiny darkness of his face and the stark whiteness of his pillow and the single sheet which covered him to his chest. One arm-his right arm, the arm with which he served -was outside the sheet, lying parallel with his body. His expression was absolutely peaceful; it would be easy to imagine that he was dreaming happily. In fact, he was not dreaming.
