‘What happened here?’ one of them asked.
Dragosani thought fast. ‘We saw him stumble,’ he said. ‘I thought maybe he was drunk. Anyway, I went to help, asked if there was anything I could do. He said something about his heart. . .? I was about to take him to a hospital, but then this gentleman arrived and – ‘
Tm Arthur Banks,’ said the man in question. ‘This is Sir Keenan Gormley, my uncle. I was on my way to meet him at the station when I saw him with these two. But look, this isn’t the time or place for explanations. He has a bad heart. We have to get him to a hospital. And I mean right now!’
The policemen were galvanised into action. One of them said to Dragosani: ‘Perhaps you’ll give us a ring later, sir? Just so we can get a few more details? Thanks.’ He helped Banks get his uncle into the Porsche while his driver ran back to the patrol car and got the blue light going. Then, as Banks pulled away from the kerb and swung the Porsche around in a screeching half circle, the constable yelled: ‘Just follow us, sir. We’ll have him under care in two shakes!’
A moment later and he had joined his colleague in the patrol vehicle, by which time the siren was blaring its dee-dah, dee-dah warning to traffic. In a sort of numb disbelief Dragosani watched as the two cars moved off in tandem. He watched them out of sight, then slowly, unsteadily got into the Ford and sat there beside Batu trembling with rage. The door was still open. Finally Dragosani grabbed its handle and slammed it shut, slammed it so hard that it almost sprang from its fixings.
‘Damn!’ he snarled. ‘Damn the British, Sir Keenan Gormley, his nephew, their bloody oh-so-civilised police – everything!’
‘Things are not going well,’ Max Batu agreed.
‘And damn you, too!’ said Dragosani. ‘You and your bloody evil eye! You didn’t kill him!’
‘Allow me to know my business,’ Batu quietly answered. ‘I killed him all right. I felt it. It was like crushing a bug.’
Dragosani started the engine, pulled away. ‘I saw him looking at me, I tell you! He’ll talk . . .’
‘No,’ Batu shook his head. ‘He won’t have strength for
talking. He’s a dead man, Comrade, take my word for it At this very moment, a dead man.’
And in the Porsche, suddenly Gormley choked out a single word – ‘Dragosani!’ which meant nothing at all to his horrified nephew – and slumped down in his seat with spittle dribbling from the corner of his mouth.
Max Batu was right: he was dead on arrival.
Harry Keogh arrived at Gormley’s house in South Kensington at about 3:00 p.m. the following day. Meanwhile Arthur Banks had been a very busy man. It seemed a year but in fact it was only yesterday when he’d driven up from Chichester with his wife, Gormley’s daughter, on a flying visit. Then there had been his uncle’s heart attack, since when the entire world seemed to have gone stark, staring mad! And horribly so.
First there had been the awful business of phoning his aunt, Jacqueline Gormley, from the hospital and telling her what had happened; then her breakdown when she arrived at the hospital; and her daughter consoling her all through the long night, when she had broken her heart as she wandered to and fro through the house looking for her husband. This morning she’d stayed at the house until they brought Sir Keenan from the hospital morgue. The mortician there had done a pretty good job with him, but still the old man’s face had been twisted in a dreadful rictus. Funeral arrangements were swift – that was the way Gormley had always said he would want it: a cremation tomorrow – until when he would lie in state at his home. Jackie couldn’t stay there, however, not with him looking like that. Why, it didn’t look like him at all! So she had had to be taken to her brother’s place on the other side of London. That, too, had been Banks’ job; and finally he had driven his wife to Waterloo so that she could go back to Chichester to the children. She’d be back for the funeral. Until then he was stuck at the house