SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments (7 page)

'You just act very quiet and reasonable, my man,' said Verity breathlessly, 'if you know what's good for you!' And he brought a little more pressure to bear. Charley Wag gave a desperate gurgle and a rasping scream. His body seemed to slacken and crumple. Verity tried to hold him, half sensing what was coming, but Charley was on his knees and then, in a mere second, a red-hot pain streaked across Verity's right shoulder. All strength and leverage in the arm had gone, and the Wag was dancing free, fencing with the knife which he had retrieved from the floor.

Even the towel had gone, and it was now Verity who was held at bay. With every lunge of the blade, every withdrawal or evasion on his own part, the minutes were passing until the rear door would be broken in and the bullies of the Wag's flash-house must overpower their master's assailant. Twice Verity tried to close on the toga'd and muscular Wag. The first time Charley attempted the belly-cut but Verity swerved away with such improbable speed that he felt only the brush of the slicing blade, like the sting of a nettle. The second time he made the mistake of turning away too slowly, exposing his flank for an instant and allowing the dancing blade to flash diagonally across his rib-cage, laying open the flesh as though it had been soft butter and bringing a flow of blood over his hip. And then he began to despair. There was no way that he could fight the Wag without being cut to pieces, but unless he fought and won in the next few minutes he would be cut to pieces anyway, more leisurely but just as certainly. He was not fool enough to suppose that Charley would allow a spy to escape him.

With despair rising in his throat, Verity dodged the knife and managed to close on Charley in a last attack. The two heavily-built men gasped and sobbed for breath as they clutched at one another and the marble wall resounded to the slap of wet, blubbered flesh falling against it. Verity was almost driven back by the weaving blade. There was so much blood smeared on his body now that he could hardly tell how many times he had been cut under all the slipperiness. He held tight to the Wag's toga and smashed a blow to the jaw, with such effect that the man went spinning backwards, the toga unwinding as he tottered away and fetched up with a naked thump against the opposite wall.

But the knife was still there and the brawny body, now stripped of all covering, looked like the frame of a gladiator with its tensed muscles and olive colouring. Charley saw that the fat, pale sergeant was almost done for, his wind gone and his breath drawn in deep snorts. It was time to finish the matter. The Wag caressed the handle of the stiletto and took a step forward.

Just at that moment, behind Charley Wag, there was a scamper, a whimper and a splash. The shabbily-dressed man who had sat against the wall, covering his face with the back of his hand, had drawn a small package from the breast pocket of the battered green coat. As though coming to a sudden decision in the matter, he pulled himself to the edge of the oval finishing bath, ripped open the package and allowed a score of loose papers to flutter into the water. The ink upon them began to spread in pale blue drifts.

Verity bit back the exclamation that was on his tongue, catching the uncertainty in Charley's eyes. The Wag could not see what was happening behind him and had to know the origin of the sounds.

'Mario?' he called questioningly, but there was no reply. 'Mario? Alfredo?' Still receiving no answer and fearing an attack from behind him, he kept his knife blade angled to hold Verity and for an instant his face turned slightly towards the sounds and his eyes flicked to and fro. In that second Verity was upon him again, fighting with the desperation of a man who has been given an unexpected last chance. A savage blow to the Wag's wrist sent the knife clattering from the open hand even before the curse of pain was uttered. With unexpected agility, Verity shot out his foot and the knife spun, slithered across the marble and dropped into the oval bath with a plop. Now, he thought, it was all Cornish style.

'Mario!
' Charley Wag drew back, confusion clouding his dark eyes. 'Alfredo! Simona!' He was no longer asking but calling the assistance of anyone within hearing. Whatever the Wag's bullies might do to him later, Verity knew that he could win now. He slammed into his tall, burly antagonist. A massive blow with the right Fist directly above the Wag's heart stopped him and bowed him forward. A short upward jab took him on the jaw and lifted him as though he had risen in the saddle. But his footing had gone, his feet skated on the wet floor, his heels rose and he went down with a crack which Verity found deeply satisfying. At last, Charley Wag lay face down at the edge of the oval bath, quite senseless, his right arm trailing in the water.

'He ain't too bad,' said Verity for his own information. 'Why, he ain't bleeding half what I am. You over there! What was them papers you threw in the water?'

The florid-faced man, despite his shabby appearance, assumed a well-bred indignation.

'I don't know who the devil you may be, sir,' he said breathlessly, his composure returning, 'but it's none of your affair.'

'I'm a police officer," said Verity, closing on the man, 'and there ain't a caper you could name that ain't my affair!'

He looked at the pulpy drifts of paper in the pool. The leaves had been thin and had disintegrated quickly, the writing washed away almost as soon as the water swirled over the ink. A thin gruel of pulp a
nd water was all that remained of
the
evidence in the great
blackmail investigation. With that evidence intact, the case against Charley Wag and his accomplices would have been irrefutable. With the evidence in its present, ruined state, the Wag could not even be brought into court and the chances of a Private-Clothes man getting near him again were nil. For this, the men of the detail had worked since the previous year. Two of them had been beaten unconscious in a rear court of Beak Street by several of Charley's swells, whose delight in muzzling a peeler had led them also to garrot a young sergeant so severely that he never walked a beat again. The shabby military man, who now cowered before Verity, had brought it all to nothing. There was no mistaking the intention in Verity's eyes.

'Keep off me!' said the red-faced man. 'Keep off, damn you!'

Verity had him by the collar, shaking him frenziedly.

'Help me!
Help me!' gabbled the man. 'Police! Police!'

'I'm the police,' said Verity quietly, and he hit the shabby military man with his big, bunched fist, so that the red face jerked back like a puppet's head on a wire. The breath was driven from the body as the man hit the wall, and then slid to the floor with a front tooth protruding at an absurd angle from his gaping mouth.

'And what I want you to remember,' said Verity, as though continuing an amicable conversation, 'is that you ain't got half what you deserve. You destroyed evidence what three good men nearly died to get, all to save your foul rotten carcase. Decayed you may be, but you got the manner of a gentleman, the look of having been a soldier, and you ain't no business to be a coward. And if you left some poor little wife to sit at home and weep for your debaucheries, and if there was some lady mother whose grey hairs you brought in sorrow to the grave, you done worse than turn your back to the enemy. All things considered, my man, I let you down light.'

At the door which led to the more public baths, there was a sudden hammering, though the lock could only be opened from Verity's side. It sounded from the hum of voices as though there must be a crowd of considerable size in the corridor beyond. A loud and familiar bellow drowned the rest.

'Open this door at once, in the name of 'er Majesty! Open it up!'

For good measure a heavy boot crashed unavailingly against the stout panelling. Verity picked up the towel, wet and blood-smeared, and wrapped it round his middle. The blood on his bare flesh had thinned to a pale red with the water and perspiration as he walked majestically to the door. He opened it and stood before a score of men and women who had forced their way this far into the sanctum of Charley Wag. The whiskered face of Sergeant Albert Samson, red mutton-chopped, peered forward from the crowd.

'Dear Gawd, Mr Verity. You had it a bit 'eavy, aincher?'

'Have the kindness to come in and keep them out, Mr Samson,' said Verity faintly, nodding at the crowd of onlookers. 'And I ain't particular to 'ave to listen to your profanities neither, on top of other trials.'

Samson, whose beat covered the area of the Oriental and Turkish Baths, shouldered his way past the door and looked about him.

"ere, Mr Verity! You ain't 'alf set the cocks a-going! I never saw so much blood since that slap-bang thro at-slitting down in Lambeth! Cor, you must a-fought like a brick!' Samson's blue eyes widened and his sandy features expanded in a broad grin at the thought of it. 'And 'oo might these two coves be?'

"That's a gentleman as was in a spot of bother,' said Verity indicating the red-faced man who was picking himself up unsteadily and fingering his mouth.

'Ransome,' muttered the man. 'Captain John Ransome, late Her Majesty's 73rd Foot.' In identifying himself he found it hard to conceal the self-justifying tone of the professional beggar.

"e'll want to be on his way, I expect,' said Samson pointedly. 'And this?' He joggled the Wag's ribs with the toe of his boot.

"That's 'im 'imself,' said Verity proudly. 'That's Charley
Wag,
alias
Ramiro,
alias
Carlo Aldino. That's who that is.'

Samson squatted down beside the motionless figure and turned him over on his back. The Wag's head flopped backwards as Samson struggled with the inert muscular body. And then Samson listened very carefully and got to his feet.

'That's who he
was,'
he said, correcting his colleague gently. 'That's who he was, before he went to his last long home.'

Verity's eyes bulged with indignation.

'Whatcher mean? I 'ardly touched him! There's not the blood on himl I've seen a Michaelmas goose bleed more 'n that!'

'Coves don't bleed
a lot when they've snuffed it,’
said Samson patiently, 'Being dead, the flow stops. I'm surprised you was never given to understand that, Mr Verity.' He tested the Wag's pulse and heart again, then shook his head.

'But I never did half to him what he did to me!' Verity seemed distraught with the unfairness of it all.

'It ain't what you did, my son,' said Samson, 'it's what the marble coping of that pool did when he fell. You ought to com
e and see this side of his 'ead!
Skull and all broke open like split fruit! Might a-been no stronger than a pumpkin the way it's bust. You get that sometimes with these heavy-looking coves," Samson concluded conversationally.

Verity stood, fat and dejected, in the bloodstained towel.

'I never thought he'd go that heavy,' he said gloomily.

Samson stood up again.

'Chance medley,' he said with a flourish, 'that's all it was. A slice o' chance medley with no blame attaching to you whatsoever. I'd say you ain't got a thing to answer for. Except to Mr Croaker, in the line of duty.'

'It was Mr Croaker's ideal'

Samson looked about him at the blotches of watery blood on marble walls and floor, the body of Charley Wag, its eyes rolled back to show little more than the whites, the soggy pulp of evidence floating in the bath, where the recently departed Ransome had thrown it.

'Not this,' said Samson quietly, 'not this wasn't Mr
Croaker's idea. And I can't say it was mine. When you was covering yourself with glory in Injer, me and Ziegler and Meiklejohn was walking our feet off to catch Charley at his game. Months of it. And then you was asked in to listen to a simple conversation relating to blackmail. Half an hour later the evidence is destroyed, the only witness is sent packing, and Mr Croaker's pet and only sus
pect is gone to a 'appier place!
There ain't one bloody thing that leads anywhere any more!'

Verity felt dizzy, whether as a reaction from the exertion of the fight, or loss of blood, or the sight and smell of blood all about him, he could not tell. He leant heavily against the wall.

'It ain't fair,' he said feebly.

'No,' said Samson unsympathetic ally, 'there's a lot ain't fair in this world. I daresay me and Meiklejohn and Ziegler is goin
g to feel it ain't fair either.’

'Mr Samson, you got it wrong, all of you. It ain't blackmail. It can't be. Charley Wag isn't - wasn't - so stoopid that he'd try to blackmail a broken down old captain like Jack Ransome with no money to his name.'

'No?' said Samson unimpressed.

'No, Mr Samson. Captain Jack ain't held a commission in five years and was last known of going the round of fairs and race meetings doing the old three-thimbles-and-a-pea trick,'

'You let them as have worked on the case be judges of that,' said Samson wisely. 'You done enough.'

'I never killed a man before, not fighting face to face, Mr Samson. And I wouldn't a-done now, but it was him
or me.’