Bluebolt One (8 page)

He went into his bedroom, came back with the telephone directory, and thumbed through it. He murmured, “There’s quite an assortment of Mrs Taits. I suppose we’ll have to try them all.”

Debonnair said, “I’ll do it. May as well finish what I’ve begun.”

“Right, thanks.” He added warningly, “Be careful, though. Talk around the point when you get the right Mrs Tait. I don’t want the girl to know anyone’s on to her, just in case she decides to run.”

“Okay.” Debonnair went out of the room. She wasn’t away very long, and when she came back she said, “I followed a hunch and tried Chelsea first. . . just a wrong guess or two and then I got her. She lives in Oakley Street Mrs T. sounds rather an old dear, incidentally, but I didn’t get any fresh information except that Gillian’s not actually in bed.”

“I didn’t think you would, and I’m glad she’s not in bed, because we’re going round there.”

“Are we indeed? D’you really mean ‘we’?”

Shaw nodded. “Moral support—for me! She’s bound to be upset.”

“True enough. Well—when do we start?”

“Right now.” Shaw looked at his watch. “We’ll eat afterwards, somewhere in Chelsea.”

They rang one of the bells at the top of the steps in the Oakley Street house, the bell with a small white card alongside it with the name:
Miss G. Ross
. After a second ring, they heard footsteps, and the door was opened by *a tall, dark-haired girl of little more than twenty, dressed in a tightly moulded sweater and tartan trews whose folds left very little to the imagination. She was undoubtedly, as Jiddle had said, a ‘good-looker’; but she was showing the strain of recent events and she was pale and nervy-looking, with large dark rings under her eyes. Shaw introduced himself.

She was suspicious and wary at first, but when Shaw mentioned Patrick MacNamara and the fact that he had been on that train with him, she seemed to soften a little—she would, Shaw knew, have read all the papers. Glancing at Debonnair, she said, “Oh, all right then, come along up. The room’s a bit untidy.”

She turned away. An attractive perfume wafted back as they followed her in and up the stairs which rose steeply from the end of the hall. The long, trousered legs went up quickly, past the first landing and up to the next, beyond that again to the very top of the building, to where the stairs were even steeper and narrower and covered with lino instead of carpeting. She led them into a tiny, jazzily furnished apartment with a sloping, garret-like ceiling and an unmade divan bed in one corner. A door led off into a poky kitchen, like a cupboard. Gillian Ross jerked the door of the kitchen shut with her foot and then jabbed at some cushions in the chairs, pushing them straight.

She said abruptly, “Sit down, won’t you. I think I need a drink. What about you?”

Debonnair shook her head and Shaw said, “Not just now, thanks, but don’t let us stop you.”

“All right.” She picked up a bottle and splashed gin into a glass. Shaw watched her curiously. She was young to be starting this sort of carry-on, he thought, and she looked as though she had a decent background somewhere. She had an almost patrician air, with her straight brows and firm, determined chin, and this didn’t quite fit with the jazzy room, and the gin, with the whole untidy, slack bachelor-girl existence which, by first appearance anyhow, seemed to be her life.

When she’d poured the gin she lit a tipped cigarette, took a deep lungful of smoke, and said, “Well? You’d better explain, hadn’t you? How did you know my address—and how did you know about Pat and me, anyway?”

Shaw dodged those two direct questions, but apart from that he explained as fully as he could. He said, “I happen to be a—Government agent, Miss Ross, though nothing whatever to do with the police. We have reason to believe that MacNamara may be able to help us quite a lot in certain inquiries which we’re making. In turn, I’m quite sure we can help him. You see, I was a witness to some of what happened in the train.”

“D’you think he did it—that murder?” The girl’s voice was higher, brittle, and Shaw noted the way her fingers tightened round her glass.

He said, “For what my opinion’s worth—no, I don’t. That’s one of the reasons I want to help, to find out more than I know already. Only MacNamara can tell me anything.”

She nodded, seeming to consider what he had said. Then she asked, “Is Pat in danger? I mean, will some one try to get at him?”

Shaw studied her set, drawn face obliquely. “Not necessarily. It could be that he’s simply being hidden by some one. On the other hand—yes, he might be in danger. Can you tell me where I can find him?”

“No,” she said. “No, I can’t. I swear that. I just don’t know. . . I’ve not heard a word from him since—since that happened. You . . . don’t think something could have happened to him already?”

“That’s something I can’t possibly answer,” he said gravely. “Miss Ross—why do you think some one may try to get at him, anyway?”

She didn’t answer at first; then, hesitantly, she said, “I don’t really know. Only he’d got into a bad set, and there were things. . . .” Her voice trailed away and she began to tremble a little. “I don’t know anything really, honestly I don’t.”

Shaw’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head slowly. He said seriously, “If you do, I hope you’ll trust me enough to tell me. I promise I’ll do all I can to help, but we don’t want to be too late.” Her head jerked a little at that and he went on, “I can tell you this—we believe that something very big is behind the killing the other night, and there are people who’ll go to any lengths to see that their plans aren’t messed up. It seems clear that MacNamara must have been pretty deeply involved himself, but it could be that he’s only an innocent dupe, just some one they’re making use of. I want to find him and talk to him—and I want to get to him before anyone else does ... anyone who might think it advisable to prevent him giving away information if he’s arrested. Do you see?”

“Yes,” she said, “I see that. I
^!
ve been half expecting the police to come along and say something like that, but they haven’t been, I don’t know why, unless they just don’t know about me. We never met each other’s friends, so there wouldn’t be anybody to know really. That’s why I was so surprised you knew.” She stopped then, and seemed to break down completely. Her face went down into her hands and her shoulders heaved. Debonnair flashed a glance at Shaw, frowned warningly, went across and sat by the girl. For several minutes she talked to her in a low, comforting voice, and the racking sobs began to subside. After a while Gillian Ross looked up, her face tear-stained and blotchy. She said, “I’m awfully sorry. Things have got me down a bit.”

“Of course they have,” Shaw agreed sympathetically. “It’s time you had someone to talk to and take some of the load.” He paused, looking at the girl closely. “I’m going to take a chance and put you in the picture, Miss Ross, and remember, if ever you’ve kept a secret in your life, and I’m sure you have, this is the one time above all others that you’ve got to give me your word you’ll never reveal what I’m going to tell you, not to anyone. I dare say you’ve heard of the Official Secrets Act. Well now, that applies to all I’m going to say, and I’m warning you—officially, and in the name of Her Majesty’s Government. Do you really understand?”

She said wearily, flicking ash off her cigarette, “Of course. I did go to school, you know.”

He smiled. “Fine! Now listen carefully. I’m attached to Naval Intelligence at the Admiralty, and I have certain facts at my disposal, facts which at the moment mustn’t be released even to the police. Remember, I’ve told you I don’t believe MacNamara did kill the man in the Tube—he hadn’t got that sort of reaction. By running away he’s behaving perfectly naturally, if rather stupidly. That’s all. I’m genuinely out to help. And if I can find out who did that killing—well, MacNamara’s in the clear, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh.” She lit a fresh cigarette, discarding more than half the old one, and he noticed the shake in her fingers as she did so. “Yes, I suppose he is. But what I said was the truth. If I’d known where Pat was, I’d have gone to him myself.”

“You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?” he asked gently.

She didn’t answer right away. She drew deeply on her cigarette and drank some gin, then, frowning a little, she said, “I wasn’t in love with him, if that’s what you mean. Not exactly that. I was attracted, I suppose. I. . . respected him and I felt terribly sorry for him. I’ve always been able to tell about people.” After that she looked at him sardonically, her lip curling a little. “You think it’s all pretty odd, don’t you?”

He shook his head. “Not necessarily. Would it help at all if you were to tell me about it, Miss Ross?”

She gave a tired sort of smile and said, “What you mean is, you want to know. All right then—I’ll tell you.” She took another mouthful of gin, spilling some on her lap. “I did what girls like me aren’t generally supposed to do. I went to a public hop, all by myself. You know the kind of thing I mean—the Palais. . . ."

It was rather a sad little story really, as the girl told it, abruptly and unsentimentally. She had lost both her parents in a flying accident when she was a baby, and she had no memory of them whatever. She’d been brought up by a bachelor uncle who’d kept what sounded like a very rackety establishment down in the West Country, with drink flowing regularly and girl friends constantly appearing and being replaced by new ones. She’d been pushed around a lot, and the kind of life that she’d had to lead had sickened her and she’d become something of an anti-social recluse, not wanting to meet any of her uncle’s friends or, indeed, anybody else. In the end, soon after leaving school, she’d had an almighty row with the gay uncle, who’d made semi-drunken advances to her one night. He had washed his hands of her, and she’d come to London, alone and utterly friendless, though at first she’d scarcely been conscious of this, and with just one skill to offer, a skill which she’d developed in the long, lonely hours in Devon—an ability to design dresses. This had led her to a small job in a well-known London fashion house, but she’d been unable to get along with her workmates and so, later on, she’d got this job at Helene’s. She’d first come to London four years before, and for a time she’d lived in a young women’s club; there she’d been, after a while, desperately lonely because somehow or other she’d felt she had quite lost the ability to make friends, and she used to sit night after night in the club lounge, all by herself, pretending to read a book, until she went off early to bed. And after a time, she’d begun to change.

London was all around her, and all the girls she knew at work had boy friends, and she felt the lack, felt the awful, grinding loneliness of her position; but she herself never had any opportunity of meeting any men at all. The club had a moral tone so high, she said, that it hit you like a bomb and she almost wished herself back in Devon; but under no circumstances would she crawl to the uncle now. No men were allowed in that club, and most of the young women were of the severe, blue-stocking type; while at work the only men who came into the shop were heavily attached, and all they could do was to make eyes at her and wonder how she would compare in bed with their own wives or mistresses. As to the other girls, she simply could not, as she had said, get along with them, and they had no out-of-hours contact at all. She was, she admitted frankly, becoming a misfit.

In time she had begun to earn more money from her work, especially after moving to Helene’s, and she’d found this flatlet going for a rental which was reasonably within her resources, though it didn’t leave a lot over, and she’d taken it thankfully. It had, however, proved a mistake and she was lonelier than ever.

She explained quite honestly that her position was the worst a girl could be in, bar one. She was by this time frankly avid for male company, but because of her mental conflicts and her deep-seated inhibitions (which, Shaw guessed, had by this time assumed the proportions of a complex), she just couldn’t see any way of getting it except by a pickup. So she’d gone one night to the Palais and she’d seen Patrick MacNamara, sitting all by himself—because, as she suspected, of his colour. That, she said, made two outcasts, two people against the world, and she’d thought to herself, well, what the hell, may as well make myself cheap as be a wallflower. So, when he’d given her a half-defiant grin, she’d started to eye him properly. And that was how it had all begun. She told Shaw now quite openly and without shame that she wasn’t a virgin any more, but she knew how to take care of herself, thanks to early example; and she repeated that she wasn’t in love with Patrick MacNamara, but she had grown, as she’d said earlier, to respect him as a decent boy who was fighting a losing battle against colour prejudice and bad luck and to that extent, and partly because of her own deep loneliness, she said, perhaps she did love him without being in love, if Shaw could understand the difference . . . they were, she said, almost two of a type apart from the colour of their skins.

“What else do you want to know?” The question was abrupt, as though she felt she had already talked too much and was ashamed after all at having let her hair down so far.

Shaw said, “I’m interested in his friends, Miss Ross. That bad set you mentioned earlier.”

“D’you mean Sam Wiley and his crowd? They were Africans too. Do you mean them?”

“Perhaps. At any rate, I’d be glad if you’d tell me more.” Suddenly, something came into his mind, an association of names, an alliteration, and he thought: Sam... that rings a bell, or does it? Then he remembered reading that morning about Esamba. . .
Esamba—Sam?
He gave an involuntary start, saw Debonnair looking at him curiously, and then realized Gillian Ross was talking.

He said, “I’m sorry, Miss Ross, I didn’t catch what you were saying?”

“I said, I can’t help you an awful lot. I didn’t know Sam or what Pat called ‘the boys’ myself, you see. I never even saw them. But Pat used to talk about Sam—at least, he did just once, after—after something happened. . . .”

Shaw prompted, “And that was?”

A far-away look came into her eyes. “Once when I was in his room in Notting Hill some one came to see him, his landlord it was, and he went away for about ten minutes. While he was away, I looked round—it was the first time I’d been there, actually, and just in case you want to know, it wasn’t the last, though I never went to his new place because we couldn’t be alone there, he hadn’t got a room of his own. Well, as I say, I looked round. I wasn’t prying. I was just—well, getting to know his things, the way he lived, the things he liked to have by him. Looking at his books and so on—you know. He never said very much about himself and I was interested. Anyway, there was a piece of paper on the floor, down between the bed and a table where he kept his books. I picked it up, and I saw it was a note. It was from this man Sam Wiley.”