Jankovic growled to himself and asked: “What happened here last night?”
“Ah-” the Padrone was on surer ground here; “-first, the police arrested the man who broke into my house here and murdered Silvio’s cousin. Then, in the night, a gang broke into the police station and rescued him. That is quite unheard-of. The police are most angry, yet they have not raided everywhere and arrested everyone, as one would expect. And there is also talk of the Irish. I think the house-breaker, and murderer, was Irish.”
“Irish?” Jankovic was baffled. But it added another layer of bafflement for others, too, and he shrugged it off. “Take me to him, then.”
The Padrone’s dignity was already ruffled by the night’s events, but expediency warned him not to get indignant at this brusqueness. Anyway, it would be wasted on a Slav. He led the way upstairs.
Silvio sat hunched on the unmade bed, red-eyed and fiddling with a pistol. The drink – mixed marsala and grappa, according to the empty bottles – was oozing out of him and he smelt like a pig farm.
Jankovic looked down and said: “You didn’t kill him.”
“Of course we killed him!” Silvio tried to spring up and got half way before toppling back.
“He’s in hospital,” Jankovic went on. “The nearest hospital to the flying field under an assumed but Italian name, so he hasn’t learnt anything even from having your cousin scratch his back.”
“Bozan killed him,” Silvio insisted, waving the pistol. The Padrone moved a little more behind Jankovic, who didn’t seem to care.
“I was there this morning. Also, Signora Falcone is coming, probably to take him home. What are you going to do about it?”
Silvio calmed down, or at least pointed the gun at the floor. “Go to the hospital and kill him.”
“And his police guard?” Jankovic sneered. “We knew you came from a circus, but we thought we’d hired the lions, not the clowns.”
“It was you who fouled things up in Brussels!” Silvio yelled. “We could have stabbed or shot him there easily. Bozan could. Oh, Mother of God.” He began weeping and wiped his nose, mostly with the pistol. “I’m going to kill that Irish bravo, too. It was he who murdered poor Bozan.”
“All right,” Jankovic said, suddenly reasonable. “All right. If Falcone goes back to Italy, the bravo will probably go with him. So I’ll tell you what we’ll do: we’ll go to Italy, too, and you can kill them both there. Yes, I know we aren’t supposed to kill Falcone in Italy-” as Silvio’s sodden memory churned up an objection; “-but it that’s the only place left to us . . .
“And,” he added sharply, “it would help if you were sober by then so you don’t mistake your own arse for the Senator and shoot that instead.”
Too tense to light a pipe, Ranklin puffed a cigarette as he paced the worn turf – baked almost to concrete by the long summer – outside the shed. It was past noon, and even hotter than yesterday, with a gently swirling crowd murmuring like a distant waterfall. He let his hand brush against his empty side pocket and felt a pang of anxiety as he remembered the police had kept his revolver as ‘evidence’. He had to remind himself that crowds did not breed assassins as a natural process. But not feeling really safe in the sunny English countryside without a pistol in his pocket was, he thought gloomily, yet another milestone on his personal road.
He trod out his cigarette and, with nothing better to do, almost immediately lit another. He daren’t get distracted by starting a conversation with anyone, he just had to wait and watch. And convince himself that O’Gilroy was merely caught up in the mob on the road and not . . .
Then, unmistakable above the heads of the crowd, came the black box-shape of the Sherring Daimler – and an unfamiliar man in a dark suit standing on the running-board and waving some official card. Ranklin first assumed that Corinna had borrowed a Club official to clear their path, but there was something too solemn about the man’s face and demeanour. He didn’t belong.
Corinna shot out of the car without waiting for anyone to open the door, and scurried across. “I don’t know what in hell’s going on,” she muttered, “but we collected a policeman at the hospital who-”
Then the solemn man arrived at a fast lope, hand outstretched aggressively to clasp Ranklin’s. “Captain Ranklin? I’m Inspector Jeffries, Surrey Police. Thank you, madam.” He tipped his bowler hat at Corinna in a gesture one step short of saying “Scram”.
Behind him, Ranklin was vaguely aware of a woman in a tweed suit stepping from the car and walking confidently towards the shed, as if she knew aerodromes. Corinna gave Inspector Jeffries a sharp look, then followed. Ranklin hadn’t dared mention last night’s shenanigans on the telephone, but she certainly knew something was going on.
“Glad to meet you, Inspector,” Ranklin said, casually looking him over. He had prominent dark eyes in a thin face but the solemnity came mostly from the downturned moustache, and he held his head cocked forward in a deferential gesture that Ranklin didn’t believe. A man content to dress so anonymously might be good at his job.
“I believe,” Jeffries said, “you were a witness to the assault on Senator Falcone – or Mr Vascotti, as he seems to prefer at the moment – yesterday afternoon, sir.”
“A sort of witness. But I made a statement to . . . in London.”
“Yes, sir. Your name was sent to us by the Metropolitan Police. By Sir Basil Thomson of Scotland Yard.”
“Really.”
“May I ask what you’re doing here today, sir?”
“War Office business.”
“Of what nature is that, sir?”
“Just the usual confidential War Office business.”
Jeffries seemed to hesitate. Perhaps he’d expected Ranklin to plead the secrecy of the Bureau, not put up the whole Army as an earlier line of defence.
He tried to outflank it with a confiding smile. “That wouldn’t be, would it, sir, just an alias to hide your real job?”
Ranklin looked him quietly up and down, but Jeffries was used to that look from people who thought the police should use the servants’ entrance. However, Ranklin then said: “You don’t seem to have the current Army List on you – it’s a bulky volume, I agree. So you can’t look me up. In that case, all I can offer is my card, my driving licence, and what else would I have . . . ?”
“That’s quite all right, sir, no need at all.” Then casually but swiftly: “Where’s Gorman?”
The frontal attack almost flustered Ranklin, but then he remembered the connection was undeniable, and that the more he concentrated on the name Gorman, the better for O’Gilroy. “I’m sorry, I really have no idea.”
That became a lie as he said it. The motor-bike sputtered out of the crowd behind Jeffries’ back, stopped beside the shed, and O’Gilroy began leisurely unstrapping a travelling bag from the pillion seat.
“Not even where he lives?”
“I’m afraid not. Inspector-” Ranklin had to say something to hold Jeffries’ attention on himself; “-my connection with Gorman is entirely professional. Again, your best bet is to ask the War Office. No, I suppose the Yard will already have done that. Let me see, what else can I suggest . . . ?” He looked around as if seeking inspiration and saw that O’Gilroy had vanished into the shed. Would Corinna have the chance – and the sense – to warn him who Jeffries was?
Then she was walking quickly towards them, setting off a flare of a smile towards Jeffries and saying: “Hope I’m not interrupting, but the Signora’s given the go-ahead and Andrew wants to be off right away.”
Ranklin tried to make his smile meaningless. “Fine. Ah – is he going alone?”
“No, he’s taking some new mechanic, one who’s learning to fly.”