Finding my way back to the neighbouring tenement close, I crept along the porcelain-tiled passageway towards its opening onto the street. I pressed my back to the tiles as I grew close to the passage’s mouth, easing my head around to check out the street. I pulled back quickly: there was a copper about ten feet from me, guarding the next close which led to Frank’s tenement. It had only been the briefest glance, but I had also been able to make out a large red Bedford fire engine parked out front, its crew talking and smoking. I’d also caught sight of a row of black police Wolseleys parked at the street end.
So that was that. The murder McNab had been called to was that of either Frank or Paul Downey. Fantastic. I wondered how long it would take Jock to make the connection. After that, whichever of the couple had survived could tell the police that I had slapped them both around and threatened to come back with my pals for a real party. And, if they took my fingerprints, they would find a veritable constellation of matching dabs in the flat.
Just half an hour before, McNab had been taking me into his confidence, something that was generally as conceivable as Dwight and Nikita having a slumber party together, and now it would be a matter of a day or so before he took me into custody. Nice going, Lennox.
What confused me was the presence of the fire brigade and the tossed-out furniture. The good news was that if there had been a fire in the flat, then there was a chance that my fingerprints would not be recoverable.
I heard voices as someone came out of the other tenement passage; I recognized one of them as belonging to McNab. He was talking to his subordinate about various arrangements, none of which gave me any insight as to which of my pals was now deceased or how he met his demise. I decided to get out of the area before I added another circumstance to the circumstantial case against me. I moved quickly and silently along the passage and into the back court again. This time I headed straight across, wanting to distance myself from the murder scene as quickly as possible. The fog seemed to have thickened on the way back and I found I’d lost my bearings. Halfway across, I could no longer see either wall of tenements, but pressed on, reckoning that if I kept on going straight, I must eventually manage to reach the opposite side.
What I did manage was to walk straight into a collection of trashcans, knocking one over, its lid rattling on the cobbles. The noise echoed in the court, but not as loudly as I would have expected, muffled as it was by the blanket of smog. I stood still and silent for a moment. No voices, no dogs barking, no police whistles. I again set blind course through the fog and eventually washed up against the sooty sandstone shore of the tenements opposite. I couldn’t see a passageway out onto the street again, but knew that if I moved along the tenements in either direction, I’d find one soon enough. The only problem was that I had to edge past the windows of the lower flats of the tenement until I reached the passage. Again I moved as quietly as I could, crouching as I passed an illuminated window.
It was the window that wasn’t lit up that was my undoing.
I heard the sounds of a struggle: someone gasping for breath and grunting. For a moment I couldn’t place where it was coming from, then I realized the sounds were issuing through a hole in the cracked window. I stood up and looked through the grimy glass, into the gloom inside. It was the usual tenement kitchen-cum-living room and the only light was the glow from the open door of the range, used for heating and cooking. The glow picked out the edges of a huge woman stretched over the rough kitchen table, leaning her elbows on it. She was hugely overweight and naked to the waist, the huge pale moons of her breasts swinging and the fat on her arms quivering with every lunge of the small, thin man behind her. He was balding, with strands of black hair pasted over his pale pate, and a Groucho Marx rectangle of moustache twitched beneath his thin nose with each impassioned thrust.
It was the same sort of thing as when you inadvertently see some unfortunate take ill in public and vomit in the street. You don’t want to see it, but no matter how much it repulses you, once you’ve looked, you can’t tear your eyes away. I froze.
Jack Spratt and his wife were clearly trying to keep as quiet as possible, probably because there were kids sleeping in the tenement flat’s only other room, but the fat woman moaned:
‘Lover boy… oh lover boy …’
I rammed a fist into my mouth and bit down hard, but still my shoulders shook uncontrollably.
‘Oh Rab … you’re my lover boy …’
Move, Lennox, I told myself. For God’s sake move.
Then, in a moment of heightened passion, the skinny little man gave forth:
‘Senga! Oh … Senga!’
Despite the danger of my situation, something over-rode my survival instinct and the fist stuffed in my mouth, and the laughter I’d been trying to contain threatened to explode. Something high-pitched and strangled sounded in my throat.
It was loud enough for the fat woman to hear. Looking up, she saw me at the window, let go a shrill scream and clutched her arms to her massive bosoms in a ludicrously inadequate effort to conceal her nakedness. The small man saw me too and, disengaging himself, charged towards the window, thankfully pulling his braces back up over his shoulders.
‘Pervert!’ he shouted in a high, shrill voice. ‘You fucking pervert! Peeping Tom! Peeping Tom!’
I made a run for it, along the wall, hoping I would find the passageway out. Meanwhile, lover boy had swung open the window and was screaming for the police at the top of his voice.
Well done, Lennox.
I heard shouts and a whistle; the sound of more trashcans being toppled and I could see, somewhere at the other side of the court, torch beams stabbing the fog ineffectually. I ran on, hoping I didn’t trip over anything else in the fog. I was not too concerned about the stumbling coppers behind me, but I knew that if someone actually had the brains to think it through, a car sent around the block, even at smog-driving pace, could catch me when I came out of the passage and onto the street.
I found the passage and sprinted along it and out onto the street. I reckoned at this time of night and in this fog, there would be few cars around and I ran straight out onto the road. I found the tramlines and ran, concentrating only on the small pool of awareness I had in the fog and keeping in the centre of the tramlines. I reached a curve and a TRAM PINCH warning sign, just discernible on the periphery of my vision, told me I was now out of the side street and on the main drag. Still no ringing bells of a pursuing police Wolseley. And now it would be useless in the fog.
I ran on for a hundred yards more, then slowed to a trot, then a walk, then stopped, leaning over to catch my breath, my hands braced on my knees. When I had recovered enough, I straightened up and stood silent in the smog and listened. Nothing.
The only problem I had was that I now had no idea where I was. Suddenly, a vast shape loomed at me out of the smog, a monster with two burning embers for eyes, rattling towards me. I leapt to the side, lost my footing and fell, rolling on my side and out of the way of the tram that trundled past, the driver shouting some obscenity through the window, but not applying the brake to check that I was all right.
The tram was swallowed up again in the smog. I stood up, dusted myself off and picked up my bashed trilby.
‘Bollocks,’ I muttered. Then, as I found my way back to the pavement, I suddenly thought about Senga and Lover Boy, and burst into laughter.