“What did you do?” Brady said.
She shrugged. “What could I do? I’m an old woman and I was listening to a daughter who had become a stranger to me. He told her there was a way out, that all they needed was a scapegoat to satisfy the police. They didn’t need to look far with the Embankment at the bottom of the street. The first drunk on the first bench would do.”
“And that happened to be me,” Brady said bitterly.
A slight breeze touched the back of his neck and the door creaked. He turned slowly, his hand sliding into his raincoat pocket and a familiar voice said, “Please to stand very still, Mr. Brady.”
Haras moved into the room, the lamplight glinting on his spectacles. Brady raised his arms slowly and the Hungarian removed the Mauser and slipped it into his pocket.
“Now you may put down your arms.”
He was holding the .38 and there was a confident smile on his face. “Sorry I’ve been delayed, but I was caught in a traffic jam in Oxford Street and missed you. I was waiting outside Carley Mansions, by the way. It was quite depressing to see you scuttle out ahead of the police, but somehow, I thought you might be coming here. You’ve really done quite well, Brady.”
“For the first drunk on the first bench,” Brady said bitterly.
“So, the old goat has been opening her mouth, has she?” The Hungarian smiled genially. “We’ll have to do something about that.”
He was standing well back from the table, a confident smile on his face. Madame Rose glared up at him fixedly. “You filthy swine,” she said and started to get to her feet.
“Stay where you are!” Haras ordered.
As the Hungarian’s eyes flickered to the old woman, Brady seized the lamp and pulled it from its socket, plunging the room into darkness.
Haras fired twice and the old woman screamed and crumpled to the floor. She lay in the patch of light thrown out by the electric fire and blood poured over her face from a gaping wound in the forehead.
Brady crouched for a moment at the side of a large wing-backed chair and then started to crawl round the back of the old-fashioned horse-hair sofa, making for the door.
Haras was still standing by the table and Brady could see the dark bulk of him in the slight glow of the electric fire.
“You can’t get away, Brady,” he said. “You don’t stand a chance. I’ve got both the guns.”
Brady remembered there had been four rounds in the .38 and Haras had fired two of them. He crouched between a chair and the wall a couple of yards from the door and carefully lifted a small china cat from a coffee-table beside him.
“I’m running out of patience, Brady,” Haras said and there was an edge of anger in his voice.
Brady lobbed the cat across the room into the far corner. As it smashed against the wall, the Hungarian turned and fired twice in rapid succession. Brady jumped for the door, wrenched it open and darted along the corridor to the rear of the house.
Behind him there was a cry of rage. He ran into a large kitchen and made straight for the door at the far end. It was locked and as he fumbled desperately with the key, he heard the peculiar muffled cough of the silenced Mauser and a bullet scattered splinters of wood above his head.
He got the door open and went down a flight of steps two at a time into the garden. Ahead of him loomed the high wall and beyond it was the churchyard.
When he paused at the little wicker gate, Haras was already halfway along the path. Brady raised his foot and stamped twice at the gate, splintering the flimsy wood around the lock. As the Mauser coughed again, he was through and crouching as he ran between the gravestones.
Light still drifted out through the great windows, staining the thickening fog in vivid colours and he dodged behind a high tomb and listened. There was no sound and after a moment or two, he moved between the gravestones, keeping his head down, skirted the base of the tower, and paused.
The organ was playing again, muted and far away. Brady could feel the sweat on his face. The drive stretched before him, the gate to the street stood open. He moved forward and Haras stepped out from behind a flying buttress ten yards away, the lamplight glinting on his spectacles.
The Hungarian had obviously circled the church from the other side. As he raised the Mauser, Brady stepped back into the darkness at the base of the tower and started to climb the network of steel scaffolding.
Within a few moments, the fog had swallowed him and he made good progress, swinging expertly from pole to pole. Within a couple of minutes, he heaved himself up on to a narrow catwalk and realized there was no farther to go.
He stood there, ears strained for the slightest sound. There was a long silence and a cold wind lifted through the fog, chilling him so that he shivered despite himself.
He started to work his way along the catwalk and then suddenly, a board creaked and Haras said softly, “I know you’re there, Brady.”
The Mauser coughed, the bullet whispering away into the night and Brady moved back carefully, removing his raincoat at the same time.
As he got the coat off, his foot caught against a length of iron piping which rolled across the catwalk and disappeared over the edge.
Haras moved forward quickly, arm outstretched. He fired once, the bullet ricocheting from a steel stanchion, and Brady tossed the raincoat into his face. The Hungarian gave a muffled cry of alarm, staggered back, and stepped off the end of the catwalk into space. For one frozen second he seemed suspended in mid-air and then the fog swallowed him up.
Brady’s hands were shaking and his shirt was damp with his sweat, but without hesitating, he went over the edge of the catwalk and started to climb down.
Haras lay on his back in the path, a good fifteen or twenty yards from the base of the tower and the old priest knelt beside him. He looked up as Brady approached.
“Is he dead?” Brady said.
The old man nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
The Hungarian’s eyeballs had retracted and he stared sightlessly up at Brady, blood on his mouth. “He killed a woman a few minutes ago,” Brady said. “Back there in what used to be the sexton’s old house.”
The old priest got to his feet slowly. “You mean Mrs. Gordon? But why?” He moved closer and stared up into Brady’s face and something clicked. “You’re Matthew Brady, aren’t you? You’re the man the police are looking for. I saw your picture in the paper tonight.”
Brady turned and walked away quickly. Once in the street, he started to run.
A few moments later, he was driving away.
(10)
Miklos Davos lived in Mayfair, he got that much from the directory of the first phone booth he came to. When he went back to the car, his hands were still trembling and he lit a cigarette before driving away.
By now the old priest would have got in touch with the police and they would know that he was on the loose in London. Once they had connected the deaths of Jane Gordon, her mother, and Haras, the hunt would be up with a vengeance.
He had only one chance. To get to Davos, to squeeze the truth out of him, because he was the only person left on earth who knew the real facts.
As he took the car expertly through the heavy traffic, he tried to remember what he knew about Davos. It wasn’t very much.
He was of Hungarian extraction, which explained the link-up with Haras. A strange enigmatic figure, he shunned publicity like the plague. It was said that he virtually controlled the oil-supply of the Western world. A ruthless man, an empire-builder who crushed all opposition mercilessly.
Brady’s jaw tightened as he turned the car into a quiet street off Park Lane. Perhaps it was time someone cut Mr. Davos down to size.