“No need to leave on my account, Captain,” Great Aunt Sylvia said, gracing me with a wrinkled smile.
“Crime doesn’t wait,” I said, giving her a wink to see how she’d react.
“I think it can wait a very long time, Captain Boyle. Good luck to you.”
I strolled outside looking for Kaz and David. Three disconcerting women so early in the morning made the grey misty sky seem inviting. I shivered as I sat in the jeep, the mist turning to raindrops that splattered and popped on the canvas top. My shoulder holster dug into my side; I hadn’t worn it when the tailor measured me for my Eisenhower jacket, and now I was paying the price for clean lines.
By the time Kaz and David dashed from the house, the rain was lashing, and they had to clutch their caps to their heads. They piled into the jeep and brushed the water from their coats, dripping like wet dogs. By the time we arrived at the police station, the rain lessened, drops splashing intermittently into puddles.
“Need a tour guide, do you?” Constable Quick said as he climbed into the rear of the jeep. Kaz introduced David to Quick, who seemed cheerful enough, not missing a beat at the sight of David’s burn-scarred face.
“We’re going to speak to Charles Sabini,” I told Quick. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have the law along.”
“Actually, it well might,” Quick said. “What makes you think he’ll talk to you?”
“Flight Lieutenant Martindale knew his son in North Africa. He was killed there. That’s our entree.”
“His son’s death is common knowledge, as is Sabini’s temper and hatred of the government. Quite a coincidence,” Quick said, glancing at David, “you finding a chap who knew Michael Sabini.”
“Listen, all we need to do is have a word with Sabini. We’re not here to arrest anyone, or even gather evidence. I want to confirm, even if it’s off the record, the information I’ve been given about the body on the beach.”
“I’m game,” David said. “I know all sorts of dead chaps. It won’t be hard to convince this fellow.”
“So you didn’t know him?” Quick said.
“I was far more likely to shoot down a Sabini than to know this poor sod,” David said. I was beginning to like this guy.
“We thought it might be best for you and me to wait outside,” Kaz said. “To back up Billy and David, and to avoid antagonizing Mr. Sabini.”
“All right,” Quick said. Then to David, “Spitfire pilot, I’d guess.”
“Hurricanes first, then Spits in North Africa. How did you know?” David asked.
“Your attitude says you’re a fighter pilot. Your burns say Spitfire. I was on a Lancaster until we got shot up. One of the gunners had his legs badly burned. They sent him to a special hospital up in Sussex.”
“That’s where I was,” David said, and they fell to talking about flying, aircraft, friends alive and dead, as easily as if they were old pals. David was a different man away from Ashcroft. And Tom Quick had forgotten about his limp; I’d noticed when we picked him up.
Tom’s directions got us to Newton Abbot in half an hour. We passed a medieval tower stuck in the middle of the road at the town center, then crossed the River Teign and drove to the racecourse. The place was deserted except for a few automobiles, the stands empty, and the track itself quiet. A solitary horse was being taken through his paces, kicking up clods of mud as he passed.
David and I walked ahead, looking for some sign of life. Kaz and the constable trailed behind, keeping tabs on us from a distance. Stables and outbuildings stretched on beyond the track, the faint whinny of a horse echoing between them. The ground was muddy and wet, and the lingering rain fell lightly on our shoulders.
“Where is everyone?” I said, whispering in spite of myself.
“Look,” David said, pointing to an open door at one end of a row of stables. A sign above it read SABINI ENTERPRISES. A line of footprints in the mud led inside. None came out. I held David back with one arm and motioned the others forward with my other.
“This doesn’t look right,” I whispered. “Kaz, you stay here with David.” David was the only one of us who wasn’t armed. Quick had traded his rifle for a revolver which he un-holstered as I drew my.38 Police Special. While Kaz is deadly with his Webley, I wanted a cop at my back. An open door in a rainstorm and one-way footprints are not a good combination. And if whoever left the door wide open had gone out the back, Kaz would be ready.
We went in.
I smelled it before I saw it. The metallic scent of blood and death.
Pools of congealed red gore.
Two men sprawled on the floor, gunshot wounds to the chest. More than enough.
One man seated at his desk, his head hanging backward, a gaping slash at his neck. Spurts of blood decorated the wall, where it had gushed from the carotid artery before the heart stopped pumping. Flies buzzed around all the men’s wounds. A feast.
I pointed to another open door, leading into the stables.
“I’ll check,” Quick said. “But these men have been dead for some time. The blood’s coagulated, and the flies didn’t just show up.”
“Yeah,” I said. I went to the doorway and told Kaz and David what we’d found, retracing my steps and being careful not to step in the blood. A quick glance told me the killers had been pros. Two of them, I figured, imagining how it could have been done quickly. They walk in, shoot the bodyguards, and the first guy holds a gun on Sabini. The second guy walks behind Sabini and lifts his chin. Sabini sees the first guy step aside, perhaps understanding it’s to avoid the spray of blood. Then lights out.
Revenge.
“It looks like someone succeeded this time,” Kaz said.
“Yeah, they smartened up and sent at least two guys,” I said, watching for Quick to reappear.
“Could this have anything to do with the man you saw yesterday?” Kaz asked, still keeping Fraser’s name mum.
“No. They’ve been dead since yesterday, I’d guess. Somebody planned this in revenge for Sabini slitting his competitor’s throat.”
“Which tells us that the theory of the hit man being our corpse on the beach holds water,” Kaz said.
“Like a cast-iron pot,” I said. “Where’s Quick?”
“I thought he was with you,” David said.
“He went through the stables,” I said. “You two go around front. I’ll circle around back, and we’ll meet up.” I wasn’t worried about the killers still being there, but Tom should have been back by now. I moved around the building, keeping close to the wall, my revolver held by my side. I got to the corner and took a quick peek. The rear of the stables faced a road with a row of houses on the far side-or what had once been homes. Piles of brick lined the street, and except for a few soot-covered walls, everything else had been cleared away. Two craters stood between the remaining buildings, marking the spot where German bombs had hit and taken out six brick row houses.
Tom Quick stood at the lip of one crater, his revolver limp in his hand. I went up to him and looked in the crater, wondering if he’d found something. A body or a clue to the killing. But it was filled with rainwater, and the edges of the blackened soil crumbled beneath our feet.
“Tom?” I said, as Kaz and David came up behind me. “Tom, is there something here?”
“No, there’s nothing,” he said. “You drop a five-hundred-pound bomb on a house, and there’s nothing left. As you can see.”
“It looks like this happened a while ago,” I said, trying to edge around him and see his face. His eyes were unfocused, seeing nothing, remembering everything.
“A lifetime ago,” Tom answered. “So many lives ago.”
I slowly curled my fingers around his revolver and took it from him. He didn’t notice.
“We usually dropped thousand-pound bombs, fourteen at a time,” he said. “Can you imagine?”
“No,” I said, trying to comprehend the devastation the moment these bombs hit.
“Blockbuster bombs too,” Tom said, his voice rising in pitch. “A four-thousand-pound bomb. Do you know why they call them blockbusters? Do you?”