Killer in the Shade (7 page)

Tom Moore, continuing to masticate a mouthful of steak and kidney pie, kept his eyes on his plate. Somehow he managed to let his knife slip to the floor as he reached for the mustard pot. To recover it he twisted round in his chair and as he stooped to pick up the knife he shot a glance at the end table.

He straightened, made a show of wiping his knife on his paper napkin, and as he gathered another forkful of food, said quietly, ‘That's him. If his fingerprints don't lie,' he added with a touch of cynicism Rollo had come to expect from him.

It was at that moment, when what he had so far done seemed justified, that Rollo was overtaken by his first serious doubt. He had been acting on the assumption that if Peel was alive, then where he was Carol might not be far away. Which was all very well provided Carol wanted to be found.

But suppose she didn't. In that case, what was he doing to her? Tying her in with a crook, a man who could be involved in God knows what kind of
mayhem and — murder.

He hesitated before admitting the last word in any catalogue of crimes, but he realized that was what he was afraid of and had been afraid of ever since he had felt apprehensive soon after he had woken up that morning.

He seemed to struggle out of a trance state when he heard the man eating steak and kidney pie say through a mouthful of food, ‘For God's sake don't look like you've been petrified. Get stuck into your pork chop.'

Rollo made the effort to comply although his appetite had gone and the food in his mouth now tasted like indiarubber he could chew but not swallow.

He drank some more of his beer and it nearly choked him. Moore said, ‘You're pretty damned keen on her, aren't you?'

Rollo lifted his gaze and looked at the other, who nodded and said, ‘You don't have to answer. It's written all over your face, and that's the wrong place right this minute. Scrub it off. You're facing Peel, and for all I know those dark glasses of
his could be telescopes.'

Rollo grinned. ‘Binoculars might fit better.' His grin vanished as he reported, ‘Those ears — I can't be mistaken, and red-grey hair — '

‘Vince?'

‘He's joined Peel at the end table, and a waitress is crossing to them with a bottle, glasses, and a siphon.'

‘Sounds like a business session.' Moore cleared his plate and sat back. ‘Something else I ought to tell you now. Peel was Vince's tenant.' When Rollo was about to ask a question Moore shook his head and said, ‘I know. Do I mean Vince is the landlord of those flats in Cotswold Crescent? I do. Now the hare seems to be running I think you should know.'

‘Anything else, while you think of it?'

Moore eased a shred of meat from between two teeth with a fingernail and was in time to tell the waitress who approached that he would like apple pie with custard, not cream.

‘Same for me,' Rollo added, ‘but with cream.'

‘Coffees?' she asked.

‘Two — white,' said Moore.

‘One black,' Rollo corrected.

The waitress moved away and Moore said, ‘I wasn't holding out on you, just not telling you a detail that could have had no importance, but suddenly seems to have. Anyway, you're not a client. Or are you?' he asked, widening his eyes.

‘I'll take up that with Mr Temple, I think,' Rollo said cautiously, fighting down freshly rising anger.

‘You don't think a hell of a lot of me, do you?' Moore grinned.

‘I'm having lunch with you.'

‘True. Well, I'll tell you something, Mr Hackley. I was wrong not to come by car. My guess is we'll need one. So as soon as the grub's cleared, you sneak out and collect a cab. Hold it till I join you.'

Rollo didn't ask questions he knew could be resented. After all, Moore had made a concession by admitting he had been wrong. Rollo didn't want to press his luck with the other. The waitress arrived with their orders for apple pie
and coffee, and four minutes later Rollo slid out of his seat, started to walk away, only to turn back.

‘I'll settle the bill. You get a taxi,' Moore grunted.

Ten minutes later Moore joined him in the taxi he had flagged down and was now parked on the far side of the Burroughs Hotel, where the car-park could be observed.

‘Peel's leaving,' the ex-Yard man said as he dropped down on the seat beside Rollo and stretched his legs. ‘Here he comes.'

The figure with a face half covered with hair and hippie-style dark glasses left the hotel and crossed to a blue Escort. Watching the man walk, Rollo had the impression that Humphrey Peel was trying to look younger than his age, but his mind wasn't concentrating on the man's possible disguise. He was turning over the situation created when it was discovered that a dead man's fingerprint had been found at the scene of a murder. That and the implications for the girl he loved.

The taxi followed the Escort south and then west.

‘Where the devil is he making for?' Rollo asked his frowning companion.

‘I'm not sure, but we'll soon be in the Paddington area,' said Moore.

Five minutes later he said, ‘Damn me — Little Venice. He's making for Little Venice.'

Rollo had heard of that section of the Grand Union Canal that had a colony of houseboats, but he had never been to the district. What if Carol were kept prisoner on one of them? Even as the question took shape in his mind he asked himself why should she be a prisoner? Could it be that she knew something that spelled danger for the hippie-looking man driving the blue Escort? He was suddenly anxious to confront Peel and make the man talk. He glanced sideways and saw that Moore was watching him.

‘Don't get in a sweat, Mr Hackley,' advised the man with a hard grey gaze. ‘Keep your cool. So far as I know Peel isn't a boat lover.'

It was not far from the canal that
the taxi stopped when the blue Escort was seen parked at the kerb outside a warehouse, set back from the street by a low wall with open gates. The place looked deserted. Some of the grime-covered windows were broken and there was a cement way leading to another building, as derelict and deserted-looking as the first, which gave on to the canal. Between this building and another brick wall, Rollo caught a glimpse of a boat with washing hanging on a line. The boat was moored on the far side of the canal.

Rollo paid off the taxi, and as it turned back the way they had come Moore said, ‘It'll be a problem getting another in this neighbourhood.'

‘We may not want one,' Rollo told him. ‘We could make sure this doesn't start.'

He pointed to the Escort, but Moore shook his head. ‘Dick wouldn't like me to break an agency rule — never to break the law.' He grinned sardonically. ‘Besides, we may want to borrow it, as the car thieves say in court. Come on. Following
Peel can't be called trespassing. The place is empty.'

As there was no ready place of entry to the building on the road, they followed the littered cement apron to the second overlooking the canal. When they turned an angle of the wall they saw an open door.

‘He's making it almost too damned easy. I don't like it,' Moore grunted. ‘He could have spotted our taxi tailing him.' He broke off, rubbing his chin. ‘I'll go first. You keep back, sort of cover me.'

In this fashion they entered through the open door and moved towards a gloomy area of dust and dirt on the canal side of the building. The windows were so covered with grime it was impossible to see clearly the old crates and barrels left in a place where apparently produce brought in canal barges had formerly been stored.

Moore produced his lighter, and was examining a door at the far end. He moved a hinged bar and something metallic clattered to the stone floor. Rollo heard the detective's muttered
imprecation as he stooped and picked up the open padlock. Before he could straighten the door opened. It must have been well-oiled, for its hinges did not squeak. Too late, Moore tried to come upright and move away at the same time.

He fell when something heavy beat against his head.

Rollo could not see who wielded the weapon, for the man was shielded by the open door. He sprang forward, shouting, reached the door, and found no one there. He turned quickly, but tripped over Moore's prone bulk. He was on his hands and knees, his head lifting, when a heavy blow knocked him unconscious.

Rollo came awake with a bright light burning over his face. When he tried to rise he found his limbs were tied. He sank back and said to whoever was behind the glare, ‘What's the point of tying me up?' He closed his eyes. ‘Take that damned glare away.'

‘When I know who you are and why you've followed me,' said a voice with a distinct Midlands accent.

Rollo felt he could only lose by playing a cat-and-mouse game. Shock tactics, on the other hand, just might work.

‘I'm a reporter and I want to know how a dead man can leave a fingerprint at the scene of a murder.'

He heard the man holding the torch steady catch his breath. It was the only sound, followed by silence until the other spoke.

‘A dead man can't be convicted of murder,' was the quiet reply, which was unsettling.

Rollo raised himself as high as he could and snapped, ‘Where is Carol? You're her uncle, Peel, and you know why she's disappeared.'

‘I was about to ask you that question, Hackley,' came the quiet and still more unsettling rejoinder.

‘You mean you don't know where she is?' Rollo's voice was thick with incredulity and disbelief. ‘Why, damn it, you're the reason she broke off our
engagement.' He stopped, eyes widening, so that he winced against the glare, and fell back prone. ‘How do you know my name?'

‘I've searched your pockets.'

‘Carol's told you about me. After all, she would have told her aunt.'

The light went out, and darkness wrapped Rollo's head like a thick, cool bandage. He wondered how it could be so dark on an autumn afternoon and decided he might have been brought to a cellar. But where was Moore? He listened, trying to catch sound of the other's breathing, but could not even hear the breathing of the man who had doused the torch.

The smooth voice said out of the darkness, ‘You can't see me, Hackley, but I can see you clearly.'

Rollo tried to laugh. It didn't sound a very good effort.

‘You some sort of cat that can see in the dark?' he gibed.

‘I can see in the dark — yes. Darkness is my noon. I live in the shade other men shun.'

On the point of laughing again at this
preposterous notion, Rollo lay silent and tense, aware of memory tilting pieces of a kaleidoscope in his mind — the blue Escort making no real speed, as though the driver had to be careful as he avoided fast traffic, a jewel thief who vanished during the power cuts as though he could drive without lights, a killer who had escaped from a house leaving lights blazing as though he could not stand their brightness. The memory bits shook again, and Rollo's mental kaleidoscope revealed a girl running away because she had learned a truth that she couldn't live with. The girl, when she turned, had Carol's scared face and there were tears in her eyes that dropped on to a sheet of paper on which she had been writing.

The pictures in his mind were grotesque, but they were strung together like parts of a film from which they had been cut and put together in the wrong sequence.

He felt himself shivering though he was aware that there was moisture on his face and between his shoulders and on the backs of his hands.

The voice in the dark spoke again.
‘Have you heard of nyctalopia?'

That word smashed the kaleidoscope. Nyctalopia — day blindness. Otherwise night sight! The man who had bound him was a nyctalops!

‘I can see by the look on your face that you have. So you believe you understand now something that was a mystery to you. About Humphrey Peel?'

‘Or someone that has stepped into Humphrey Peel's shoes,' Rollo said thickly.

‘I think you'd better continue,' said the voice in the dark.