Straight. Part 38

I took the last opportunity to get my hands on something . . . anything . . . got my fingers on a crutch.

'I won't let you,' Nicholas Loder frantically persisted.

'You mustn't!'

Rollo shook him off and swung his gun back to me.

'No.' Loder was terribly disturbed. Shocked. Almost frenzied. 'It's wrong. I won't let you.' He put his body against Rollway's, trying to push him away.

Rollway shrugged him off, all bull-muscle and undeterrable.

Then, very fast, he pointed the gun straight at Nicholas Loder's chest and without pausing pulled the trigger. Pulled it twice.

I heard the rapid phut, phut. Saw Nicholas Loder fall, saw the blankness on his face, the absolute astonishment.

There was no time to waste on terror, though I felt it.

I gripped the crutch I'd reached and swung the heavier end of it at Rollway's right hand, and landed a blow fierce enough to make him drop the gun.

It fell out of my reach.

I stretched for it and rolled and scrambled but he was upright and much faster, and he bent down and took it into his hand again with a tight look of fury as hot as my -' own.

.He began to lift his arm again in my direction and again I whipped at him with the crutch and again hit him. He didn't drop the gun that time but transferred it to his left hand and shook out the fingers of his right hand as if they hurt, which I hoped to G.o.d they did.

I slashed at his legs. Another hit. He retreated a couple of paces and with his left hand began to take aim. I slashed at him. The gun barrel wavered. When he pulled the trigger, the flame spat out and the bullet missed me.

He was still between me and the door.

Ankle or not, I thought, once I was on my feet I'd smash him down and out of the way and run, run . . . run into the street . . .

I had to get up. Got as far as my knees. Stood up on my right foot. Put down the left. It wasn't a matter of pain. I didn't feel it. It just buckled. It needed the crutch'

s help . . . and I needed the crutch to fight against his gun, to hop and shuffle forward and hack at him, to put off the inevitable moment, to fight until I was dead. l A figure appeared abruptly in the doorway, seen per- l ipherally in my vision. l Clarissa.

I'd forgotten she was coming.

'Run,' I shouted agonizedly. 'Run. Get away.'

It startled Rollway. I'd made so little noise. He seemed to think the instructions were for himself.

He sneered. I kept my eyes on his gun and lunged at it, making his aim swing wide again at a crucial second. He pulled the trigger. Flame. Phut. The bullet zipped over my shoulder and hit the wall.

'Run,' I yelled again with fearful urgency. 'Quick.

Oh, be quick.'

Why didn't she run? He'd see her if he turned.

He would kill her.

Clarissa didn't run. She brought her hand out of her raincoat pocket holding a thing like a black cigar and she swung her arm in a powerful arc like an avenging fury. Out of the black tube sprang the fearsome telescopic silvery springs with a k.n.o.b on the end, and the kiyoga smashed against the side of Rollway's skull He fell without a sound. Fell forward, cannoning into me, knocking me backwards. I ended on the floor, sitting, his inert form stomach-down over my s.h.i.+ns.

Clarissa came down on her knees beside me, trembling violently, very close to pa.s.sing out. I was breathless, shattered, trembling like her. It seemed ages before either of us was able to speak. When she could, it was a whisper, low and distressed.

'Derek . . .'

'Thanks,' I said jerkily, 'for saving my life.'

'Is he dead?' She was looking with fear at Rollway's head, strain in her eyes, in her neck, in her voice.

'I don't care if he is,' I said truthfully.

'But I . . . I hit him.'

'I'll say I did it. Don't worry. I'll say I hit him with the crutch.'

She said waveringly, 'You can't.'

'Of course I can. I meant to, if I could.'

I glanced over at Nicholas Loder, and Clarissa seemed to see him for the first time. He was on his back, unmoving.

'Dear G.o.d,' she said faintly, her face even paler.

'Who's that?'

I introduced her posthumously to Nicholas Loder, racehorse trainer, and then to Thomas Rollway, drug baron. They'd squirted cocaine into Dozen Roses, I said, struggling for lightness I'd found them out. Rollway wanted me dead rather than giving evidence against him. He'd said so.

Neither of the men contested the charges, though Rollway at least was alive, I thought. I could feel his breathing on my legs. A pity, on the whole. I told Clarissa which made her feel a shade happier.

Clarissa still held the kiyoga. I touched her hand, brus.h.i.+ng my fingers over hers, grateful beyond expression for her courage. Greville had given her the kiyoga. He couldn't have known it would keep me alive.

I took it geatly out of her grasp and let it lie on the carpet.

'Phone my car,' I said. 'If Brad hasn't gone too far, he'll come back.'

'But . . .'

'He'll take you safely back to the Selfridge. Phone quickly.'

'I can't just . . . Ieave you.'

'How would you explain being here, to the police?'

She looked at me in dismay and obstinacy. 'I can't . . .'

'You must,' I said. 'What do you think Greville would want?'

'Oh...' It was a long sigh of grief, both for my brother and, I thought, for the evening together that she and I were not now going to have.

'Do you remember the number?' I said.

'Derek . . .'

'Go and do it, my dear love.'

She got blindly to her feet and went over to the telephone. I told her the number, which she'd forgotten.

When the impersonal voice of the radio-phone operator said as usual after six or seven rings that there was no reply, I asked her to dial the number again, and yet again. With luck, Brad would reckon three calls spelled emergency.

'When we got here,' Clarissa said, sounding stronger, 'Brad told me there was a grey Volvo parked not far from your gate. He was worried, I think. He asked me to tell you. Is it important?'

G.o.d in heaven . . .

'Will that phone stretch over here?' I said. 'See if it will. Push the table over. Pull the phone over here. If I ring the police from here, and they find me here, they'll take the scene for granted.'

She tipped the table on its side, letting the answering machine fall to the floor, and pulled the phone to the end of its cord. I still couldn't quite reach it, and edged round a little in order to do so, and it hurt, which she saw.

'Derek!'

'Never mind.' I smiled at her, twistedly, making a joke of it. 'It's better than death.'

'I can't leave you.' Her eyes were still strained and she was still visibly trembling, but her composure was on the way back.

'You d.a.m.ned well can,' I said. 'You have to. Go out to the gate. If Brad comes, get him to toot the horn, then I'll know you're away and I'll phone the police. If he doesn't come... give him five minutes, then walk...

walk and get a taxi . . . Promise?'

I picked up the kiyoga and fumbled with it, trying to concertina it shut. She took it out of my hands, twisted it, banged the k.n.o.b on the carpet and expertly returned it closed to her pocket.

'I'll think of you, and thank you,' I said, 'every day that I live.'

'At four-twenty,' she said as if automatically, and then paused and looked at me searchingly. 'It was the time I met Grevilld?

'Four-twenty,' I said, and nodded. 'Every day.'

She knelt down again beside me and kissed me, but it wasn't pa.s.sion. More like farewell.

'Go on,' I said. 'Time to go.'

She rose reluctantly and went to the doorway, pausing there and looking back. Lady Knightwood, I thought, a valiant deliverer with not a hair out of place.

'Phone me,' I said, 'one day soon?'

'Yes.'

She went quietly down the pa.s.sage but wasn't gone long. Brad himself came bursting into the room with Clarissa behind him like a shadow.

Brad almost skidded to a halt, the prospect before him enough to shock even the garrulous to silence.

'Streuth,' he said economically.

'As you say,' I replied.

Rollway had dropped his gun when he fell but it still lay not far from his left hand. I asked Brad to move it further away in case the drug man woke up.

'Don't touch it,' I said sharply as he automatically reached out a hand, bending down. 'Your prints would be an embarra.s.sment.'

He made a small grunt of acknowledgement and Clarissa wordlessly held out a tissue with which Brad gingerly took hold of the silencer and slid the gun across the room to the window.

'What if he does wake up?' he said, pointing to Rollway.

'I give him another clout with the crutch.'

He nodded as if that were normal behaviour.

'Thanks for coming back,' I said.

'Didn't go far. You've got a Volvo . . .'

I nodded.

'Is it the one?'

'Sure to be,' I said.

'Streuth.'

'Take my friend back to the Selfridge,' I said. 'Forget she was here. Forget you were here. Go home.'

'Can't leave you,' he said. 'I'll come back.'

'The police will be here.'

As ever, the thought of policemen made him uneasy.

'Go on home,' I said. 'The dangers are over.'

He considered it. Then he said hopefully, 'Same time tomorrow?'

I moved my head in amused a.s.sent and said wryly, 'Why not?'

He seemed satisfied in a profound way, and he and Clarissa went over to the doorway, pausing there and looking back, as she had before. I gave them a brief wave, and they waved back before going. They were both, incredibly, smiling.

'Brad!' I yelled after him.

He came back fast, full of instant alarm.