“Five or six miles, sir. It’s pretty twisty. Maybe ten minutes if he kept his foot down and took chances all the way. The road is full of blind corners.”
“Do you think you could get there in ten minutes?” Hardanger asked the driver.
“I don’t know, sir.” He hesitated. “I don’t know the road.”
“I do,” the sergeant said confidently. “Hell make it.”
He made it. The rain was sluicing vertically down, me roads were slippery, straight stretches were at a premium and I think we all added a few more grey hairs to our quota that night, but he made it. He made it with time to spare. From the constant stream of reports pouring in from police cars pursuing Oregon it was quite evident that the man at the wheel was anything but a skilful driver.
Our car braked to a halt, parked broadside on across the Flemington road, completely blocking the exit on to the main London road. We all climbed quickly out of the car while the sergeant trained the powerful roof spotlight up foe side road in the direction from which Oregon’s stolen Humber would appear. We took up position in the pouring rain behind the Jaguar and, as a precaution, about ten feet back from it.
In that blinding rain a misted windscreen or ineffective wipers could prevent the driver of a car travelling at high speed from seeing the Jaguar until it was too late. Especially if the driver was as incompetent as claimed,
I took a good look around me. Dick Turpin couldn’t have chosen a better spot for an ambush. The top and one side of the right-angle T junction were completely covered in dense beech woods. The third side of the T, illuminated by the still blazing headlights of the Jaguar, was open pastureland with a tree-lined farmhouse about two hundred yards away, and at less than half that distance, a barn and scattered farm-buildings. I could just make out a light from one of the windows in the farmhouse, blurred and misty through the heavy rain.
There was a deep ditch on one side of the Remington road and I considered hiding myself there about the point where Oregon’s car would be forced to pull up, then rising and heaving a heavy rock through the driver’s window thereby eliminating fifty per cent of the opposition before they could even start anything. The only trouble was that I might also eliminate Mary — the fact that she hadn’t been in the front seat when Gregori had passed through Alfringham was no guarantee that she wasn’t there now. I decided to stay where I was.
Over the sound of the rain hissing whitely on the tarmac and drumming heavily on the roof of the car, we could suddenly hear the steadily rising note of an engine being revved up furiously and far from skilfully through the gears. Seconds later we caught sight of the first white wash of its headlights, the barred beams shining eerily through the boles of the beeches and the pale rods of rain. We dropped to our knees behind the shelter of the police Jaguar and I eased out the Hanyatti, slipping the safety catch.
Then all at once, to the accompaniment of a high-pitched grating of gears and mad revving of the engine what wouldn’t have got its driver very far at Le Mans, the car was round the last corner and heading straight for us. We could hear it accelerating as it came out of the corner, just over a hundred and fifty yards away: then came the abrupt cessation of engine noise succeeded almost immediately by the unmistakable tearing hissing sound of locked wheels sliding on a wet road. I could see the headlight beams of the approaching car swing wildly from one side to the other as the driver fought to retain control and I instinctively tensed waiting for the crash and the shock as the car ploughed into the side of the Jaguar blocking its path.
But the crash and the shock did not come. Owing everything to good luck and nothing whatsoever to good management, the driver managed to pull up less than five feet from the Jaguar, in the middle of the road and slewed only very slightly to the left. I straightened and walked up to the side of the police Jaguar, my eye screwed almost shut against the glare of the Humber’s headlights. Sharply outlined though I was in that blinding wash of light, I doubted whether the occupants of the car could see me — the spotlight on the roof of the Jaguar was a powerful one and shining directly into Oregon’s windscreen.
I’m no Annie Oakley with a gun but at a distance of ten feet and a target the size of a soup-plate I can hold my own with the worst. Two quick shots and the headlights of the Humber shattered and died. I walked round the front of the Jaguar, the others following, as a second car — the pursuing police car — pulled up behind Oregon’s. I was still rounding the nose of the Jaguar when the two right hand doors of the stolen car were flung wide and two men scrambled quickly out. For one second and one second only I had the game in my hands, I could have gunned them both down where they stood and the fact that I would have had to shoot one of them through the back wouldn’t have worried me at all, but like a fool I hesitated and was slow in bringing up my gun and then the second was gone and so was my last chance, for Mary was out of the car now, jerked out with a brutal violence that made her gasp in pain, and was held in front of Gregori while his gun pointed at me directly over her right shoulder. The other man was a squat broad-shouldered and very tough-looking Latin type with a pistol the size of a sawn-off cannon held in his hairy left hand. His left hand, I noticed. It had been a left-handed man who had used the wire-cutters to break out of Mordon. Here, probably, was the killer of both Baxter and Clandon. Nor had I any doubt but that he was the killer, when you’ve seen enough of them you recognise one instantly. They may look as normal, as happily innocuous, as the next man, but always, far back in the eyes, lies the glint of empty madness. It’s not something they have, it’s something they don’t have. This was such a man. And Gregori? Another? He was the same Gregori as I’d ever known, tall, swarthy, with grizzled hair and a quizzical expression on his face but at the same time a completely different man. He no longer wore his glasses.
“Cavell.” His voice was soft, colourless, conversational almost. “I had the chance to kill you weeks ago. I should have taken it. Negligence. I have known of you for a long time. I was warned of you. I didn’t listen.”
“The boy friend,” I said. My own gun was hanging by my side and I stared at the barrel in that hairy left hand: it pointed straight at my left eye. “Left-handed. The killer of Baxter and Clandon.”
“Indeed.” Gregori tightened his grip round Mary. Her fair hair was wildly dishevelled, her face streaked with mud and there was the beginning of an unpleasant bruise above her right eye — she must have tried a breakaway on the walk between abandoned car and garage — -but she wasn’t scared much or if she was she was hiding it. “I was rightly warned. Henriques, my — as — lieutenant. He is also responsible for some other slight accidents, aren’t you, Henriques? Including the slight damage to yourself, Cavell.”
I nodded. It made sense. Henriques the hatchet-man. I looked at the hard bitter face and the empty eyes and I knew Gregori was telling the truth. Not that that made Gregori any more innocent. It just made him more understandable; master criminals of Gregori’s class almost never touched the physical side of their business.
Gregori glanced quickly at the two policemen who had come out of the pursuing car and gave Henriques a quick jerk of the head. Henriques swung his gun and lined it up on the two policemen. They stopped. I lifted my own gun and took a pace nearer Gregori.
“Don’t do it, Cavell,” Gregori said evenly. He pressed the muzzle of his gun into Mary’s side with such violence that she moaned with the pain of it. “I won’t hesitate to kill.”
I took another step forward. Four feet separated us. I said, “You won’t harm her. If you do, I’ll kill you. You know that. God only knows what it is that you have at stake, but it’s something almighty big to justify all the work and planning you’ve put in, the killing you’ve done. Whatever that is, you haven’t achieved it yet. You wouldn’t throw it all away just by shooting my wife, would you, Gregori?”