A Glimpse of Death (David Mallin Detective series Book 7) Page 6

  “And you’ve got some information for me? I might pay well, if it’s of interest.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t come to tell you anything. I came to ask.”

  “About what?” His eyes seemed unfocussed, but they were firmly on me.

  “About the drugs that were stolen about the same time.”

  The silence was so intense that I could hear a gentle burble from the stomach of the one by the door. As Sarturo allowed the pause to continue, I looked round at the opposition. The one nearest to me and slightly to my right had long ago suffered a hammering that had dispersed any intelligence. He was not much more than a makeweight. The other two were heavy enough, but they’d got it all in the wrong places. They were not pretty, but Sarturo couldn’t have used them for much more than decoration. But three guns nestled smellily beneath three hairy armpits. I smiled and turned back to Sarturo, who was delicately sipping his drink.

  “I thought you might be able to help me.”

  “Help you?” Then he gave a ghastly titter. “Help you to what?”

  “Get them back.”

  The titter had been a mistake and had lodged spittle on his chin. He dabbed it away with a handkerchief, delicately so as not to crack the parchment. “You haven’t told us your name.”

  “It’s Coe. George Coe.”

  He looked round. Makeweight nodded and frowned. The others murmured my name. “George Coe. George Coe.” Fixing me, in case they had to order a headstone.

  “I remember you,” said Sarturo. “A policeman. A sergeant.” He twisted his mouth with distaste. “Well then, George Coe, I suggest you speak with more respect.”

  “I’m supposed to respect a haul of drugs?”

  “Respect…a death.”

  “He was a killer. You can buy another.”

  He murmured. The words became confused as he seemed to drool. Then he shifted impatiently, annoyed at his lack of clarity. “I can’t buy another son.”

  “Son?” I stared, then saw that it could be so. Possibly Sarturo had once held himself neat and tight and trim, like Saturn, slimly poised. But it had withered, starved of any sort of compassion or humanity.

  “He saw fit to change his name,” he said bitterly “By deed poll.” The fact that it had been done legally still shocked him.

  “Not proud,” I suggested, “of his noble Sicilian heritage?”

  “You’re insolent,” he observed dispassionately. “He is still Enrico Sarturo to me.”

  “The late Enrico Sarturo.”

  “He wished to take the name of Satan, but they wouldn’t allow it.”

  “The angels?”

  “The lawyers. He chose the closest he could get.”

  “His badge,” I said. “His pride.”

  “He was a proud boy.”

  “Proud of his father?”

  “Again you are insolent. When you’ve told me all you know, I think we will kill you.”

  There was a slight sigh throughout the room. Blood at last, and how long they’d had to wait!

  “Then you’d better kill me now, because I don’t know anything.”

  “You know he’s dead and how he died. You must have been there.”

  “Not at the time,” I assured him.

  “Afterwards. He died…quietly?”

  “Instantly.”

  He nodded, pleased. There were so many ways a man might go. “It is not the dying that matters, it is the manner of death.”

  “If it doesn’t matter, why’re you troubling…”

  “He was my son,” he said simply.

  “Ah, a matter of pride. You’ve got a reputation, is that it? Somebody has killed Emilio Sarturo’s son, and there must be revenge. You make me sick, you and your Sicilian honour. Who the hell d’you think you’re frightening? Look at you — look at this room, and your two-a-penny thugs. You’re nothing, Sarturo. You’re living in the past, like an ancient gangster film, all noise and show-off. But we both know that you’re failing. Even the drug scene isn’t what it was. They all go to the clinics now for their shots, and there’s only the leavings left for you. Big-shot Sarturo, crying to the moon for his revenge! Why don’t you stick to your organ, and maybe one day somebody’ll say: Sarturo counts for something. Why don’t you drop out, before they remember you as nothing?”

  That he’d let me go on meant very little. He was probably calculating the manner of my death. He seized on the one basic fact — his beloved organ. “It doesn’t pay, that’s why.”

  “You’re determined to continue in a life of luxury, is that it? Drift from hide-out to hide-out, in second-class hotels, with a broken-down old car.”

  “But it will be different.”

  “When you get your hands on the drugs? I’ve seen the list.”

  His ancient eyes sparked. “You have?”

  “No heroin, though.”

  “Methadone?”

  “You hooked? Lord, that’d be a laugh.”

  He looked beyond me. I expected a blow on the back of the neck any second. Then he shook his head and I relaxed.

  “You haven’t told me how he died,” he said softly, insistently.

  “One bullet, through the heart. He was in his flat. He was unarmed.”

  “Naturally.” The tapered fingers spanned a chord on the chair arm. The other hand clutched the glass. “Or he would not have died. One shot?”

  “A small calibre pistol,” I said. “A 7.65 mm or something…”

  I reached up and unzipped my parka. Three hands streaked for holsters, and three guns appeared in eager hands.

  “…like those,” I completed.

  The guns were all alike, and appeared small in their huge fists. I recognised the muzzles and the cut-away to the barrels of the Mauser M1914 or Ml934 7.65 mm pocket pistols. As the only visible difference between the two models is the shape of the handgrip, I had no way of deciding which they were.

  They were ridiculously small weapons for so-called gunmen. I laughed. “What’d you do? Get a job-lot at a discount?”

  Sarturo was coming slowly to his feet. He reached sideways, placing his drink on a low table. The levelled pistols slowly wilted as his eyes ran round their circle. “It would not be possible,” he whispered, “that one of these — ”

  “But he welcomed someone,” I told him, “as a friend.”

  “He had no friends,” he said with fierce pride.

  “Someone, at least, that he knew.”

  “They would gain nothing by killing him. Is there one fit to stand in his shoes?”

  He viewed them with contempt. He was not aware that he was, himself, confirming my impression of him by denigrating his hired help.

  “You haven’t got much left, have you?” I asked with sympathy. “Back out, Sarturo. You’re finished.”

  His chin lifted and drew the loose skin beneath it into a trail of runnels. “What did you say you are, Mr George Coe? A night guard?”

  “Ex — after what happened.”

  “Not even that? How pitiful. And you speak to me of being on the way out.”

  The three thugs shuffled uncomfortably, uncertain of what to do with their guns. I shuffled with a similar discomfort, ashamed that I’d forgotten my poverty. “I’m an enquiry agent,” I claimed.

  “You enquire?”

  “I was hired by your son.”

  “To do what?”

  “You know damn well…”

  “What did he wish you to do?”

  “To watch his wife. But it was a trick, as you well know.”

  “That bitch! And what did you see?”

  “That,” I said with dignity, “is something I can only report to my client.”

  “Who is dead. But now you have another client. What are you worth, George Coe?”

  “I can’t speak to you about Berenice…”

  “Ah, Christian names.”

  “…not even if you pay me.”

  “I don’t wish to hear about her. It would sicken me. But I am now your client i
n another matter. I will pay you to discover who killed my son.”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t care who killed him.”

  “I care.”

  “They did a service to humanity.”

  “I will pay you,” he decided, “by allowing you to remain alive.”

  I was pleased to hear that. The last time I’d seen a victim of Sarturo’s anger, the identification had rested on his after-shave.

  “No money?” I said, mocking, then I qualified it with an angry gesture.

  “No, thank you. Let the police do your work.”

  He stared. He licked his lips. The prospect must have been appalling. The standard lamp was behind him, rimming his snow-white hair with silver.

  “Yes,” I said, inspired. “You go to the police and you claim him as your son. They’ll treat you as an honoured visitor. They might even allow you to rest in one of their higher-class cells. Then you’d reach the peak of your career.”

  He lifted his lip. I’d touched him at last.

  “You will do this for me…before you die.”

  “Go to hell. Yes, go to the police, because that’s your hell, and claim his body. Bury him deep, Sarturo, under a stone marked: Henry Saturn, who wished to be known as Satan.”

  I was hamming it up a bit, because I wanted to provoke a bit of action. He plainly wasn’t going to allow me to walk out of there calmly and with dignity.

  He spat an order. The pistols came up. Every muscle in my body creaked as I tensed. Then suddenly he raised his hands above his head and screamed: “Stop!”

  Like a tableau we stopped, each poised in frozen movement.

  “My contact lens,” he complained pitifully. “I’ve dropped it.”

  Clearly it had happened before, and was of the gravest concern. Three pistols disappeared into holsters, and three weights fell thump onto their knees. I could have walked out of there, might even have got as far as the door…

  I thrust them aside. “Let me,” I offered.

  They scrambled back. I dipped the rubber end of my stick in Sarturo’s whisky and held it under his nose. “The principle,” I said, “of the rubber sucker.” Then I proceeded to dab, dab at the carpet, from time to time glancing at the result. At last…

  “Ah,” I said. “Success.” The tiny disc gleamed against the black rubber. I held it out, and Sarturo plucked it off, his face expressionless.

  Looking round, I beamed, and saw that once more three small black holes were peering at me. But now they were unwavering. My success had not endeared me. In view of the fact that the wrong end of the stick was upwards, I allowed it to slide through my fingers until the rubber tip reached my palm. The hooked handle slipped beneath the power plug in the skirting, and I jerked. The light went out.

  At that precise moment Sarturo was standing with his contact lens poised between finger and thumb. He did not dare replace it, not covered with whisky and dust, and in the dark he could not be certain of his grip on it.

  “Be still!” he howled. “Watch your big feet.”

  Which limited their mobility — but not mine. I’d kept a sharp picture in my mind of paperweight’s position and the location of his gun. I reversed the stick and brought it slashing down on his wrist, thrust my right foot forward to break the gun’s fall, and kicked it against the skirting board. Then I dived at the sound, and it came to my fingers.

  By that time I was on hands and knees behind Sarturo’s chair. I made no comment on the pain that fought its way up and down my left leg. Nobody was going to be sympathetic. But I did raise my voice, and maybe the pain gave it emphasis.

  “I’ve now got one of your guns. You — you with the busted wrist — get over to that door and put on the lights. And,” I added, “round the edge of the room. The big man might drop his eyesight again. And stop moaning.”

  There were soft rustling sounds. A hand fumbled, and the light came on. I was then standing, the gun behind Sarturo’s right ear, my stick again in my left hand. My right thumb was on the safety catch.

  “Now will you other two please put your guns down on that table. And slowly.”

  They did. Sarturo unwisely turned his head, so that the foresight went into his earhole. I saw that one eye was golden, one green.

  “You will be sorry for this,” he said simply.

  I nodded. With the stick I swept the two guns from the table into a far comer. Then, limping with dignity, backwards, I left.

  As close to running as I could make it I scrambled down the stairs, the lift being unpractical. The lobby was busy. I felt safer. Outside it was cool and clear, and the night was calm.

  The little blue sports car stood just to one side of the main entrance, partly in shadow. Carol hadn’t given up. I moved towards it, then saw that she was not there. I bent over it, checking that the same jumble existed in the pocket on the door, that in fact it was the same car. It was because I was bent in this attitude that I fell forwards, thus assisting them in getting my clumsy bulk over the side, after the single blow behind the ear.

  But I like to think that it was still a problem to lever me into that puny driver’s seat, as though I’d actually been driving at the time.

  CHAPTER VI

  I was aware of a pain in my chest, and sat and thought about it for a while. My last memory had been of intense agony in the back of my head. I couldn’t understand what was causing the chest pain. Certainly it hadn’t transferred, because the first one was still dancing away behind my ear. Flashing lights obscured my vision. A tracery moved against the sky, and a long way away a voice kept saying, “he’s coming round, he’s coming round now.”

  Clutched in my hands was a large wedding ring. I was fighting to withdraw it from a thick finger, which was prodding me in the chest. The flashing lights were blue. The piercing whine in my ears was an ambulance siren.

  “Get his hands off that wheel.”

  A maniac clawed at my fingers. I protested feebly, and two eyes looked into mine. A white light blinded me. A voice said:

  “Let go the wheel, you bloody fool.”

  I was gripping a ridiculously tiny steering wheel and staring through tree branches at a dark sky. The car was half way up the trunk, and there were grinding sounds as it was dragged back to level. I looked round.

  “All right. All right. Gimme a hand outa here.”

  “He sounds fine,” said somebody, disappointed.

  What they like to do is pack you off to hospital with all their intense drama, the traffic parting like a zipper, so that they can paw over you and tuck you away for observation. But this wasn’t so much an attempted murder as a faked accident. The car had been perched half up the tree, not driven there, and my primary injury was the blow to the head. Of course, they’d have loved to pronounce on concussion, but I’d got things to do.

  Hadn’t Sarturo said something about concentrating on the murder? That was why I’d got to plunge right back into the robbery.

  “Get me out of here,” I howled, but they nearly had to cut the steering wheel off to prise it out of my belly.

  “What’s going on here?” said a voice.

  A friendly voice! I turned as Grace approached. “Will you please tell these idiots that I’m fine, and all I want to do — ”

  “Who says you’re fine?”

  “I feel great.”

  “You look terrible. Now shut up and let the doctor get a look at you.”

  The doctor seemed to be the same one who’d been in Saturn’s flat. They took me into the ambulance and he stripped me of my parka and the jacket so that he could peer into my eyes with his little torch. Grace held the jacket over one arm, the parka over the other. He looked round. “I think he’ll do,” he said. “You can have him, Grace.”

  It wasn’t in my programme to be had by anybody. She took my elbow, and supported my weight as I lowered myself down to the ground.

  “My stick.”

  “It’s in the car. They’ll bring it along. Now don’t make trouble for me, George.”r />
  “Trouble?”

  We got into the back of her car. “Let’s get to the station, Peter,” she said, and I said, “Grace, I’ve got things to do.”

  “Haven’t we all! Now be a dear, and shut up.”

  They had a nice, new station. Last time I’d been there I hadn’t really appreciated it, being somewhat thoughtful when we’d entered, and very annoyed when I’d left. But now everything was more leisurely. It was quite late — eleven or so, I’d say — and the night was peaceful. Relaxed coppers drifted aimlessly along the pristine corridors, tapped delicately at new electric typewriters, and waited disinterestedly for the reports from their shining radio link.

  Grace said: “Come along, George.” She raised her voice. “Where’s Sergeant Gregg?”

  Nobody knew. Sergeant Gregg did not appear.

  The first disconcerting fact was that we did not go to her office; we entered an interrogation room. They had it lined with glazed tiles, to resist the graffiti, and had the formica-topped table screwed to the floor. Grace crossed to it. She tossed my parka onto it with a thump. The thump reminded me.

  “Empty your pockets, George.”

  “Should we be alone?”

  “We shan’t be. Your pockets.”

  From my trousers I produced forty-eight pence and a handkerchief. I gestured. She gestured back in invitation. Legally it had to be I who emptied all the pockets. I did so. The jacket had a comb and ballpoint, my wallet and a worn street map, and half a packet of fruit gums. The parka had one empty pocket and one that contained a pistol.

  “This,” I said, carrying it off rather well I thought, “is a Mauser pistol, model 1934. You see the shape of the handgrip? That’s what tells you it’s not a 1914 model.” I slipped out the magazine, and it was full. I retracted the slide, and there was no cartridge in the breech. That was strange. “It’s a 7.65 mm.”

  “The same…”

  “As you’re looking for,” I agreed. “But I took this off a gunman this evening…”

  “Oh, George,” she said wearily.

  “Have you got a magnifier?” I asked.

  “What?”

  But I was stripping it down, had the barrel off, and was manipulating the magazine, as necessary, in order to remove the slide. There was something about this gun…She thrust a twin-lensed magnifier into my hand. I examined all the parts carefully.