Bluebolt One (16 page)

Back in the offices above the warehouse Verity, who a short while before had taken the message from Canasset below the cellar, took up the phone and asked the private exchange for an outside line. When he had got it, he asked for a Southampton number and spoke urgently to a director of a subsidiary company of the Emco group. After that he called Grays in Essex and talked for a while to Canasset’s wife. Then, mopping at his forehead, he sent down for the clerk from the inquiry office.

Shaw went down into that filthy ooze, the bottom of the pit soft and foul and muddy beneath his slack, unconscious body. He lay there where he had fallen, on a pile of silt with the stinking water lapping his face, seeping horribly into mouth and nose and ears. Imperceptibly the water deepened as the incoming tide flooded into the London River, brackish water coming up from the lower reaches by Southend and the North Foreland, sea-fresh to start with, vile as it seeped through the ancient, decayed stone and brick rubble below Canning Town, bringing with it the filthy refuse from the drains and sewers. Close to Shaw, Pelly lay with his head right under, just a black and slimy lump that had so recently been a man—walking, living, breathing.

The sudden twist of Shaw’s body as the chopping, downward-slicing piping had taken him, had deflected the full force of the blow and it hadn’t landed square. In Pelly’s case it had; and Pelly had broken his neck in the fall anyway. The slimy ooze, blocking mouth and nose completely, had quickly done the rest. Shaw’s instant reflex action, attuned to danger more than most people’s, had saved his life—so far.

As, up in the fresh, clean daylight, Canasset’s car rushed eastward, Shaw came back to semi-consciousness to find himself retching horribly, a gut-tearing upsurge of green bile that stung his throat raw, shook him, racked him, ate to the very centre of his being, a retching into seemingly solid blackness which left him as limp as a rag doll and unable to think constructively.

He moved higher up the bank of silt, dragging himself painfully, to clear his face from the muck, retching still; and when he’d brought up all he could he lay inert, shaken with a feverish trembling, his eyes stinging agonizingly even now.

He lay in a silence which was almost total, a vibrant, flesh-creeping stillness which was broken only by a low gurgle of water rising through the pores and breaks in the crumbly brickwork. He lay there motionless, his face covered with a sweat which was as icy cold as death itself.

A little later he heard sounds above his head, vague and distant sounds. Those sounds could mean that Thompson had got word through—as indeed he must have done by now—and Latymer’s boys had come along and were going through the cellars. Or it could mean that they’d been and gone while Shaw was unconscious, and now Canasset and Wiley had come back to make sure they’d done the job properly. Or it could be simply the warehousemen going about their work, the noises on the warehouse floor echoing down to him through the cellar.

In any case, if he stayed there much longer he was gone for sure. So he tried to call out, but all that came back to him was the thin echo of his own weakened voice, and he was quite unable to make anybody hear. Once a reflection of light filtered down very briefly as a torch flickered across the wall above the rotten flooring and then he knew that some one was actually in the cellar over his head; but his efforts to call out again only resulted in an indistinct murmur which was lost in the echoing clatter of footsteps, and then that light vanished and he was utterly alone again.

After that there was absolute stillness, stillness and the groping, strangling dark, and the sucking, awful gurgle of the inflow, the ever-rising oozy liquid.

The phone went once again in Latymer’s office, and the urgent voice told him, “Reporting from the warehouse, sir. We’ve been right through the place and there’s no sign of Commander Shaw or Pelly—or the girl, Miss Ross . . . by the way, sir, that Mr Verity’s just flown into a paddy and called Scotland Yard.”

“Blast him!” Latymer said savagely. “All right—thank you. Stay where you are. I’ll contact you again very shortly.” Latymer jammed the phone back and drummed his stubby fingers on the desk-top, his face tight and anxious and angry. Then he buzzed through to Miss Larkin and told her to send Captain Carberry up.

When his Number Two came in, Latymer told him the score. He added, “So far as the people on the spot can say, there’s no positive ground for interfering with the firm or any of its employees. On the surface anyway, it’s a perfectly respectable import business.” He took a cigarette from a silver box and jabbed irritably at the desk lighter. “I’m convinced Shaw and Pelly are somewhere on those premises, all the same, and probably the girl’s still there too. Thompson and Archer were watching the place all the time. Even the call-box Thompson rang from had a clear view of the entrance. Nothing came out. Not a lorry, not a man. They’ve got to be there, Carberry.”

“Might be more than two ways in and out, sir.”

Latymer shook his head. “Don’t be elementary. That’s been checked. Matter of fact there’s only the one, as Archer quickly discovered. That’s in Calcutta Street. And the whole place has a high wall right round it. Granted there may be some concealed exit, but if there is our people haven’t found it, and I’ve no reason to suppose they haven’t been thorough.” He drew deeply on his cigarette. His face looked old and lined, Carberry thought, as though he’d aged ten years during the morning. “Somehow I don’t care for the sound of the man whatsisname—Verity—who appears to be in charge in the absence of his boss, a Mr Canasset. Incidentally, I’ve had a quick check made on Canasset and he’s a respected figure in the City—any amount of directorships. .  . and a good many of his firms have interests in West Africa.”

“Think there’s a connexion, sir?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out,” Latymer said tersely. “Meanwhile, he left the warehouse early on a visit to the West Country and a call to his home backs that up. We’ll haul him in, of course, as soon as we can locate him. But I was talking about Verity; our chaps say he’s a shifty-looking basket, but we can’t do a thing about him till there’s more to go on, particularly as we’re treading on the thinnest of legal ice by entering the premises at all without police backing. His story stands up—to every one but us. He says the only visitors to the office all morning were two men from a subsidiary in Southampton, whose visit is corroborated by the Southampton people themselves. If it’s a faked-up alibi we can’t crack it. Verity’s boxing clever by calling in the Yard, no doubt trying to call our bluff. I’ve an idea he may have been just a little too clever, though. Now Scotland Yard’s in on this, we may as well make full use of ’em— what?”

“How, exactly?”

Latymer snapped, “The obvious way, my dear Carberry.” His eyes glittering with devilment he reached out for the intercom and flicked the switch. “Miss Larkin—get me the Commissioner of Police. Personal. At once. Yes.” He flicked the box off and looked up at Carberry. He was grinning tightly now, the skin grafts on his face adding to the appearance of devilishness. He said, “I’m going to take the P.M.’s name in vain and make the Commissioner take out a search warrant right away so that we’ve got a good basis on which to pull that joint apart inch by inch without breaking the ruddy law. They’ll hang me for it in the end, of course, but I’ll get away with it for quite long enough to ensure they don’t waste time hectoring our lads down at the warehouse. And we’re going along ourselves, Carberry, you and I.”

Bit by bit strength had come back into Shaw’s body, a strength given him partly by his realization that he just had to pull himself up from the clinging ooze, clear of the water as it rose to new danger levels.
Had to—if he was to live.

The first thing he’d done had been to grope around for Pelly; and after a while his blindly searching hands had touched that hump, face downward in the slime. He dragged him up as well as he could, using every ounce of his willpower, and felt for the heart. But all the time he knew quite well what he would find; he’d had too much contact with death not to recognize it instantly. There was just nothing he could do for Pelly.

And what about the girl herself?

Gillian Ross was the sort of girl who could probably look after herself very much more effectively than most girls of her age and class—in the normal run of hazards which a young girl alone in London had to face. But this was entirely different. She would be out of her depth and utterly helpless. So much for his promise that she wouldn’t come to any harm. . . .

He struggled back to the silted ledge where so far he could hold himself clear of the water. When he got there he stood and groped with desperate fingers for a handhold in the brickwork of the walls. But they were slime-covered, smooth, wet, and greasy with nameless filth, and he was weak, too weak, as he soon realized, to haul his body up by the tenuous grip of fingertips thrust into the gaps. As the water deepened inexorably he was forced right back into that one corner where the silt lay piled, the silt into which his feet now began slowly to sink. In time, that water came breast high, and higher. . . lapped against his chin, sending its stink more foully into his nostrils and its filthy, sick-making taste into his mouth as it came through the crannies and the gullies which channelled it to the pit.

As he stood there, back to the wall now, something brushed past his face. . . .

A moment later it seemed to press into him.

He shuddered, held himself stiffly away, scalp tingling.

Then, reluctantly, he reached out a hand, felt something soft and slimy with a hardness under it like scales, something which yielded pulpily, morbidly. It moved very slowly past. It had the feel, the clammy touch, of some great fish, an eel perhaps, which had made its silent way from some muddy backwater into this Stygian place, and was now seeking a way out to the freedom of the clean river again. And then, as the thing floated on slowly past his face, Shaw realized what it was and he gave a sharp cry of horror.

What he had touched was a human leg, and the thing was a dead body.

And—it wasn’t Pelly’s body, because Pelly had been fully clothed. This poor object was stark naked, and it felt as though it was already decomposing. The sweet, sickly smell of death reeked into his nostrils; his head dropped as thick, frizzed hair moved past his face and he started retching again, horribly, cruelly, into the flood.

Gradually then the rising tide took him in its grip until his feet no longer touched bottom. He floated. The only hope now was that the deepening water would lift him high enough to enable him to reach out for the crumbling edge of the hole in the floor above, the hole which Wiley had been going to make to give his death that authentic touch of accident. He couldn’t see that hole, and he had no means of knowing how high above his head the floor was anyway.

The radio link from Scotland Yard crackled out its urgent message to four patrol cars in London’s East End.

From the East India Dock Road, from Wapping, from the Blackwall Tunnel, and from Spitalfields the fast black cars started to converge on Canning Town. A squad under a Detective Chief Inspector left the Yard itself, bound east. In another car with a motor-cycle escort and wailing sirens the Assistant Commissioner, “C” Department, himself sat back against thick cushions and swore briefly under his breath at the easy way his Chief had been talked into this by some one at the Admiralty who’d got some pull in high circles.

The car from the East India Dock Road reached Emco’s yard first and turned to seal the gateway; a little later it was joined by the one which had been passing through the Blackwall Tunnel. By this time a sergeant had found the Inquiry Office and the clerk. He said, “Police. No one’s to leave the premises.”

Within minutes the rest of the cars came in, and as the Assistant Commissioner’s car and escort drew up with a flourish in the yard, Mr Canasset was already leaving his home near Grays. But now he was no longer Mr Canasset but a very much changed man whose name was Peters and who had an impeccable passport, quite recently issued, to prove it. In his pocket, as he got back into the rakish car in which he had left the Canning Town garage and which had been waiting for him, was a ticket for the next B.E.A. flight to Madrid.

Once he was inside again the car headed back westward, going fast.

Shaw knew for certain now that he hadn’t a hope of holding on for much longer, and when he heard the sounds above him again, much closer and louder this time, he had a moment of sheer nightmare when he fancied it was all over and he’d somehow passed straight into the voodoo realms of Esamba and Edo and the Dark Gods . . . and then, through the gathering mists, he realized that some one very solid, some one very much more of this world, was above him.

Summoning all his ebbing strength he managed a weak cry, and at once the footsteps above him stopped. He called out again and after that he heard the excited shout from above.

“Sir—here, sir, there’s some one down here!”

A powerful torch beamed downwards through the smashed boards, slicing into the dark.

Shaw gasped, struggled, thrashed at the water, feeling himself slipping away. That wild thrashing disturbed something.

In the broad ribbon of light from overhead Shaw caught another glimpse of the naked body that had brushed across his face earlier, the body that was now moving slowly across below the hole in the floor above as though it, too, awaited rescue. Floating there, face upward . . . and in that one moment Shaw could see it quite clearly enough to recognize the ghastly smirk, the twisted face of fear that told him the man had died in agony and terror. The body had been wickedly mutilated, mutilated to the point of slow death, and it was black, and it must be the remains of Patrick MacNamara.

Shaw looked away, hung grimly on to life. There were sounds above, and soon a man came down on the end of a rope attached to a steel bar laid across the now open trap, and then, when he felt firm hands reach his shoulders and take his weight, Shaw let go. Overcome with exhaustion and the nausea of that place, he simply passed right out.