moving out of here today.'
He found to his consternation that he couldn't look the man in the face. The single glance he had given him had revealed a close-cropped head and lips drawn down in a thin line. But it was the eyes. They were brown and flat and when Biggs had sought to meet them with his own, to impress his irritation and impatience on this half- dressed ruffian, he had had to look away almost at once. There was something inhuman in his gaze, Harold thought with alarm. The image of an animal came into his mind again. A carnivore. He was forced to move, to ease the cramp that all at once invaded his limbs, and without any conscious intention he walked forward, further into the shed towards the menacing figure of Grail who nevertheless, surprisingly, made way for him, moving to one side and then a little around so that Harold now stood beside the covered object and Grail was closer to the door.
'Well?'
The word sprang unbidden to Harold's lips. He spoke because he could not remain silent in the midst of the greater silence that radiated like a force from the other man.
'You're meant to be leaving here,' he repeated helplessly. 'Moving out. Don't you understand?'
Grail's only response was to move again. Harold saw with mounting panic that his way out of the shed was now blocked.
'What are you doing here, anyway?'
He didn't want to know, but he couldn't still his tongue. When he moved himself it was with an involuntary lurch, his cramped leg muscles jerking in a sudden spasm. His foot, dragging along the cement floor, caught in a fold of the dust cloth. Distractedly, he tried to work it free, kicking out in desperation, tugging at the cloth, which gradually worked loose from the object it was covering.
When he saw what was revealed beneath it Harold went deathly pale. He stared in horror at the handlebars of the motorcycle — the machine was still half covered by the cloth — and the red pointed nose of the sidecar. At that same instant he recalled, with an emotion akin to grief, the article he had read in the newspaper the previous Friday.
He looked up into the flat brown eyes. He couldn't hide his knowledge from them, he was too afraid. And now he found his own gaze held fast by the lifeless stare. A warm stream of urine ran down his leg inside his plus- fours.
Harold saw the face of his mother — she had died in the last year of the war. Other images flocked to his mind. He saw the girl he had picked up in the high street, Jimmy Pullman leaning on the bar in the Bunch of Grapes, Mr Wolverton's freckled scalp, the cat's eyes glowing at the top of the stairs… His life sped by like the frames of a hand-cranked cinematograph in a penny arcade.
And all the while he stared into Grail's eyes.
At the last, like a drowning man clutching at a spar, he put his hand in his pocket and felt for his key ring and his good-luck shilling.
It brought him no comfort in his agony. Even as he ran his thumb frantically back and forth along the milled edge, Grail moved towards him and he knew then, with the finality of death, that his luck had run out.
The chief inspector spoke: 'This is a photograph of the man in question. Amos Pike. We hope to have a better impression of him available within the next few days, but for now we'd be grateful if your newspapers would publish this picture in a prominent position. When you do so, please make it clear that he is not to be approached by any member of the public for any reason, but that the police should be informed of his whereabouts without delay.'
Sinclair paused. His gaze swept over the assembled reporters, two dozen of them, who were seated down both sides of a long table in one of the Yard's conference rooms. He was sitting at the head himself, with Madden on one side of him and Bennett on the other. Earlier, Sinclair had wryly suggested to the deputy assistant commissioner that he absent himself from the gathering. 'My head's on the block here, sir.
No need for yours to join it.'
'Do you believe this is the man we're seeking?'
'I do.'
'Then in that case I'll take the chance.' Bennett produced a wintry smile.
'I would like to add something to what I've just said. It's most unlikely Pike is living under his own name.'
'Why would that be?' The lanky figure of Ferris looked up from his notebook at the far end of the table.
Regarding the man with dislike, which he took care to conceal, Sinclair drew what satisfaction he could from the reflection that today was Saturday and Ferris's newspaper, a daily, would have to wait until Monday before coming to grips with the story. The Sundays would have the first bite of it.
'Pike was reported killed in the war. We have reason to believe he survived it.'
'What reason? Can you tell us?' 'No,' the chief inspector said bluntly, aware that he had none, that he was acting purely on supposition.
An admission he was not about to share with the likes of Reg Ferris.
The delay in summoning the press had been caused by the time it had taken the War Office to lay its hands on a photograph of the sergeant major. Thursday afternoon and Friday morning had passed without word or sign, causing Sinclair to mutter darkly about hidden hands at work within the military.
'By God, if they try to cover this up again I'll take it to the newspapers. See if I don't!'
Finally, midway through Friday afternoon, the photographs arrived. It was not the usual booted and khaki- clad courier who brought them, but Colonel Jenkins himself, full of apologies and explaining that many wartime pictures remained uncatalogued and it had taken until now to unearth Pike's.
'In fact, we have two, but one's not much use.'
He laid them on Sinclair's desk. The chief inspector groaned. 'I might have guessed…'
In one of the prints the well-known figure of Field Marshal Haig was receiving the salute of a soldier presumably Pike — who stood before him. The raised arm with the hand touching the cap covered all but a small portion of the man's face.
In the second picture the field marshal leaned forward to pin a decoration on the tunic of the soldier whose full profile had been caught by the camera. But even this was of limited value. The combination of the cap's peak, pulled down low over the eyes, and an old fashioned gravy-dipper moustache that hid the mouth, reduced Pike's identifiable features to a short nose and a prominent thrusting chin.
After his momentary disappointment, the chief inspector had swung into action. Styles was dispatched with the second print to the Yard's photographic laboratory, which had been standing by since Thursday, with instructions to reproduce copies of the photograph, shorn of the field marshal's figure, in large numbers.
Meanwhile, Sinclair commandeered a police artist and sent him, together with Hollingsworth, to see Alfred Tozer in Bethnal Green.
'I should have thought of it while he was here,' the chief inspector castigated himself. 'I put too much faith in what the War Office would produce.'
We've also got those survivors from B Company,'
Madden reminded him. 'Dawkins and Hardy. They'll remember Pike all right.'
'I'd rather stick with Tozer for the time being,'
Sinclair maintained. 'He was trained as a policeman and he's got the instincts of a copper. 'Eyes like stones.' Let's get a sketch from him first, then we can test it on those others.'
Colonel Jenkins, listening to them, asked, 'Then Pike's the man Captain Miller believed was the killer?
The one he wrote about in that lost memorandum.'
Sinclair regarded the slight, erect figure sitting ramrod-straight on a chair before him. The colonel's manner had altered since their first meeting. Gone was the edge of impatience, verging on rudeness, which he'd displayed then. Now he seemed disposed to be agreeable. It cut no ice with the chief inspector.
'Not lost. Deliberately destroyed by an officer serving on the General Staff,' he said coldly. 'We have all the facts.'
The colonel was at a loss for words.
'Don't be concerned, I'm not instituting an inquiry.
For the present,' Sinclair added.
'That should give them a few sleepless nights,' he confided to Madden after Jenkins had departed. 'Do you know? I'm beginning to understand why you felt the way you did about that lot. We might have caught up with Pike
