But almost immediately, the sheer speed of the taxi gave them a problem. To stay behind the cab, they had to crawl conspicuously, being passed by every other motor vehicle. So Ranklin told the driver to overtake and wait on the far side of Waterloo Bridge. There the traffic thickened and they could follow invisibly around the empty building site of Aldwych and into Kingsway. There they had to speed up and overtake again, stopping once more at the junction with High Holborn. The cab clopped past, keeping to the right for a turn ahead.
Ranklin was just thinking that this game of leapfrog couldn’t go on much longer, when he realised what that turn implied: “Clerkenwell. They’re heading for Little Italy.”
“Where they’d be having plenty of friends?” O’Gilroy suggested. “I think I’ll be taking yer pistol now, Captain.”
Ranklin hesitated. But if the situation were going to need a pistol, it would also need O’Gilroy’s rapid decisiveness. He passed it over, then leant forward to direct the driver. And decided to be – fairly – frank: “Where would you say the Italian quarter begins?”
“Yer mean past the police station?”
“Is there one?”
“Corner o’ Gray’s Inn. The wops live a bit furver, past Rosebery Avenue, but I’m not going dahn them hills.”
“No-” the police station was tempting, but perhaps for later; “-no, just put us down past the Avenue.”
They had time to pay off the taxi and cross to the “wrong” side of the road, to be less conspicuous. But the Clerkenwell Road was a main thoroughfare and tram route, where nobody looked out of place, something that would change a few yards into one of the side streets.
The two in the cab obviously hadn’t given an exact address, just stopped the cab at the opposite pavement and stood chatting and glancing around until it had gone. Then they strolled, unhurried in the evening sun, further along the road before turning off down a narrow, steep side street.
Ranklin and O’Gilroy crossed the road again and, with Ranklin at least feeling that he was walking into a spotlight, passed the invisible frontier into Back Hill Street. It was some help that the two they were following, dressed to be inconspicuous at Brooklands, also showed up well in the grubbily colourful crowd that bustled around them. But they walked with confidence while Ranklin felt he was lurking. Then they vanished into an alley.
O’Gilroy took several sudden strides before Ranklin, less familiar with such terraced houses, had worked out that the alley must lead to a tiny courtyard and the back doors to houses on both sides. But which one? How O’Gilroy managed a glance into the alley while still looking straight ahead, Ranklin couldn’t tell, but he had seen which way the men turned at the far end.
“The first house,” he murmured, when Ranklin caught up. “On the right. Will we be grabbing them?”
But Ranklin was having doubts; they had pushed their luck a long way already. “We haven’t really got grounds even for a citizen’s arrest.”
O’Gilroy glared. “If it makes ye happier, I’ll swear I saw the little one stick the knife in. If’n we get them now, they’ll be loaded wid evidence, tickets for Brooklands and the like.”
“No. Let the police do it. We can have them round here in five minutes.”
O’Gilroy’s expression was pure exasperation, but when Ranklin turned back, he followed.
The police station stood isolated on the corner of Gray’s Inn gardens, a red-brick fortress of law and order four storeys high with a semi-basement – probably the cells – beneath. They were shown into a small room, anonymous if that word included shiny, bilious green paintwork, while the desk sergeant called a uniformed inspector.
Ranklin presented his (genuine) calling card and began: “There was an attempted murder – it may be a murder by now – at Brooklands aerodrome this afternoon. I know that’s for the Surrey police-” the Inspectors beefy face had begun to look resigned; “-but we’ve followed two men, suspects, from there to a house in Back Hill Street.”
Now the expression was wariness. “Which house is that, sir?”
Ranklin gave the number and knew that the Inspector recognised it. He looked at the floor, the walls and the window, then said: “I’d best telephone to Surrey about this, sir. When you say ‘suspects’, you mean you didn’t see them commit the act?”
“Saw it wid me own two eyes,” O’Gilroy lied flatly.
“Did you, sir? I don’t think I got your name . . .”
“Tom Gorman.”
“Yes, well, that’s certainly a help, sir. But I’d best confirm exactly what happened. It shouldn’t take long.”
Ranklin demanded: “Couldn’t you at least put a guard on the house, send men to watch it, or-?”
“If they’re in that house, they’re not going anywhere else, sir. It’s what you might call the end of the line. And – between us, sir – if they’re what you think they are, what they’re doing now is concocting an alibi with a dozen witnesses to say they’ve been there all day, nowhere near Brooklands.”
Telepathically, Ranklin heard O’Gilroy saying “I told you so.” But aloud, it was: “Ah, then I’ll jest be stepping out for a smoke.” And his voice was so understanding and reasonable that Ranklin looked at him sharply.
The Inspector frowned. “We’ll need a statement from you, sir.”
“But only when yez sure there’s something to state about, isn’t that right? I’ll be back in a tick or so.”
“That gentleman,” the inspector nodded at the closing door, “would be a colleague of yours, sir?”
Ranklin managed to get his imagination onto a new tack. “He’s an engineer – working on our aeronautical side. Very competent chap,” he added, afraid that he was about to be proved right.
Ten minutes later the Inspector was saying: “. . .they’ve got the Senator to a hospital in Kingston, and he’s still breathing, so . . . And no other eye-witnesses so far. It seems that everybody was busy staring at the aeroplanes – as perhaps you were yourself, sir.”
“It’s what we were there for. But by now, if what you said is correct, those two we followed will have a cast-iron alibi.”
“These Italians do stick together. And we’d just be stirring up trouble if we went barging in . . .”
And let the Surrey police worry about their own unsolved cases, Ranklin realised.
O’Gilroy walked in. His dark hair stuck out untidily from under his cap, but he spoke quite calmly. “I think ye’ve reason enough for going in there now, Inspector. Feller took a shot at me.” He laid an unfamiliar pistol on the table. “So I took a shot at him – ye know how one thing leads to t’other? Yer revolver, Captain.”
“What happened to him?” the Inspector demanded.
“Ye’d best go see. He’ll be waiting.”
The Inspector grabbed the revolver, sniffed its barrel, then shook out the cartridges. Three were empty shells. He goggled at O’Gilroy. “Are you confessing to a murder?”
19
The police station had been ransacked for chairs, none of them comfortable, to crowd the little ‘interview’ room. O’Gilroy sat behind the small table, flanked by the Inspector, with Sir Basil Thomson on the opposite side and Ranklin, Dagner and Major Kell fitting in wherever they could. The rest of the space was taken up with tobacco smoke since even the Inspector, with direct permission from Sir Basil, had his pipe smouldering tentatively.
Exactly what Kell was doing there, nobody had said, but perhaps he saw himself as a bridge between the worlds of officialdom and secrecy. Which was fine unless those worlds started pulling apart.
Sir Basil was there because he was Scotland Yard’s Assistant Commissioner for the Criminal Investigation Division and Special Branch. If this impressed O’Gilroy, there was no sign of it.
“I would appreciate it, Sir Basil,” Dagner said, “that if Gorman makes any statement or answers any questions, it should be clearly understood that it is quite off any record.” His voice was polite but firm – and with no hint that he knew ‘Gorman’ by any other name.