Part 1 (2/2)

”How long ago?”

”Thirty seconds, perhaps.”

”Right!” said Dalroi. ”You can go home if you want to. I shall probably be late.”

He broke the connection hastily. He knew n.o.body named Dutt. The message was a prearranged code.

DUTT ... Don't Use The Telephone. It meant that the personal-privacy meter in the office had detected a wire-tap on the line. His interest in Failway had somebody worried, and that somebody was going to a great deal of trouble to keep informed of his movements. Things were beginning to warm up.

He left the phone, nodded to Mortimer, then changed his mind about going out of the front entrance and went through the kitchens at the back. Turning uptown he ignored two ground-cabs and selected a third.

Thus it was he was just re-pa.s.sing Mortimer's bar in time to see the front blown out by a bomb which exploded within.

He halted the cab, half inclined to plough into the wreckage to look for Mortimer and the boy, but the angle of the beams told him the floor had collapsed into the cellar. That made it a job for the fire-service rescue squad and the police - especially the police. Mortimer's hobby was printing, and the presses lived in the cellar - so did the plates which produced such highly accurate counterfeit banknotes.

With a sick heart he ordered the cab to drive on. He had no doubt that the bomb had been intended forhimself. Obviously he had been followed from Failway by someone who was not only a master of his trade but was also prepared to kill and was not particular as to how he did it. That triple qualification narrowed the field quite a bit. He could not recall more than half a dozen men in the country who could fit the post - and they were all very expensive.

He began to sense the power and complexity of the web stretched out across the city. Somebody at Failway was displeased or frightened or both, and Failway never stopped at niceties to remove a thorn beneath the flesh. It had always been the same - the vast concentration of power scaled down to the fine operating edge of the professional killer; the knife in the dark, the body in the river - nice inconspicuous deaths with no witnesses, no convictions and nothing to connect them with Failway save the tenuous threads of suspicion.

Failway tolerated no opposition. It was ruthless, thorough and invariably fatal to its opponents. Why not, when it was prepared to spend a million pounds to ensure a man was dead?

Cronstadt himself had chosen Dalroi for the job; 'Iron-fist' Cronstadt, the Steel and Paper Baron, a man of fierce ambitions and bitter, uncompromising drives. Around him he had drawn a committee of helpers as bizarre and unorthodox as himself: Presley, head of the United Churches Militant Action Group; Hildebrand, psychologist and intellectual; and the fantastic Doctor Gormalu, whose scientific genius had first made Failway possible. Also backing Cronstadt was the government-appointed fact-finding group whose disappearance had given Dalroi his first operating part in the game.

Three streets from the office Dalroi dismissed the cab on a swift impulse. It occurred to him that the bomb in Mortimer's bar had left him with an unsought advantage. For a few hours at least Failway would be unable to tell if their murder bid had been successful. That gave him a few hours to locate the killer who had followed him, and to extract a little vengeance.

He dived into the nearest hotel, went straight through into the cloakroom and locked himself in. Then he pulled out his utility-wallet and did a hasty make-up job on himself. Under the brush and powder his hair turned darker and streaked with grey. His face tanned chestnut with the lotion and the supple skin tautened as the resins dried and contracted. Contact lenses masked the colour of his eyes, and within twenty minutes the face of Ivan Dalroi aged by thirty years.

He now turned his attention to his clothes. The trousers and shoes were nondescript but his jacket was obtrusively his own. Not far from the hotel was a third-rate tailor who made his fortune out of the sartorial necessities of underpaid office workers. Dalroi left his own jacket in a hotel locker, and by the time he stepped on to the bus he was certain that no one could have recognised the peevish, frustrated clerk as the grim-eyed private investigator who had so narrowly escaped death at Mortimer's.

He chose the bus-stop before the ruined bar, and walked on to where the knot of spectators pressed the police cordon. He pushed his way forward until he was jammed against the arm of a policeman attempting to control the crowd.

”Keep back behind there!”

”What happened?” said Dalroi.

”Explosion,” said the policeman. ”Now keep moving along there.”

”Any survivors?” Dalroi asked.

”No, not a hope. They've got stretchers in there now but the ambulance is a waste of time. Now move along, if you please!”Dalroi worked his way slowly through the crowd. There were the usual groups of people who a.s.sembled on such occasions: the housewives complete with shopping, s.h.i.+ft workers homing for a late lunch, the elderly and retired who had no more congenial occupation than to p.r.o.nounce judgement at an accident or a hole in the road. Mentally he catalogued the a.s.sembly one by one, looking for someone who did not quite fit. He was certain in his own mind that the bomb-thrower was still on the scene waiting for confirmation that Dalroi was dead. Finding no positive suspects he moved back to the beginning of the crowd.

”They say there's three dead bodies in there,” Dalroi confided to a fellow onlooker.

”That so? Still, there might have been a lot more in a bar at this time of day.”

Dalroi moved on. ”They say there's three heads in there,” he said to another, ”but only two bodies.”

”Three?” The man looked up sharply. ”How do you know?”

”I was speaking to the fire-chief. He said two waiters and a big blond fellow.”

”I wonder why they don't fetch them out?”

”Can't,” said Dalroi. ”The floor dropped in.”

He moved on, spreading an occasional lie, and reckoning on inference and hearsay to spread the false rumour of his own demise. Then he saw his man. The face was disguised and unfamiliar, but the set of the shoulders and the soft cat-tread walk struck a chord in his memory. The a.s.sa.s.sin had turned from the crowd and was leaving, as though bored with the inactivity of the scene.

Dalroi followed him silently. They turned off the high-street, through the arcade, then right and on to the Black-water bridge. Halfway across the bridge the a.s.sa.s.sin paused to light a cigarette. Dalroi paused also to slip the catch on his automatic pistol. Then the two fell into step.

”Nice try, Michael Neasden,” said Dalroi casually.

The other was startled. ”What the h.e.l.l?”

”Keep walking,” said Dalroi. ”I've got a gun on your spine. This is one funeral you aren't going to miss.”

The other considered this in silence for a moment. ”What makes you think I'm Michael Neasden?”

”Simple,” said Dalroi. ”I followed your backside for two years, exercising round a b.l.o.o.d.y prison yard.”

Despite the gun the other faltered in his stride. ”Dalroi! But I thought ... ”

” ... I was dead. And you thought that because you were just on your way to Failway to collect the fee for having murdered me. That's one mistake more than you're allowed.”

Neasden shot him an agonised glance, then lunged. His fist took Dalroi in the stomach as he sprang for the parapet, then he vaulted the concrete rail and dived for the river below. A barge pa.s.sing beneath saved Dalroi having to fire at a target moving in the water. It saved Dalroi having to fire at all.

TWO.

Dalroi had no doubt his office was being watched. Any of a hundred windows in the area could be used to overlook the door to the office block. Fortunately the doorway was common to thirty offices, and hewas confident his disguise would stand up to all but the most prolonged scrutiny.

He entered the building and went straight up the stairs, suddenly aware that the light in his office was still burning although the hour was late. Through the reeded-gla.s.s panel in the corridor he could see the outline of Zdenka sitting at her desk. A darker figure stood near the door. The atmosphere held the sweet smell of trouble. He ignored his key and fingered the office doorbell. A moment's hesitation, then the door was opened by a tall stranger in a black tunic s.h.i.+rt.

”Mr. Dalroi?” asked Dalroi, playing again the frustrated clerk.

”At this time of night? Try again tomorrow.”

”But I must see him. You see, my wife has ... ”

”Good luck!” said the man. ”You're probably better off without her.”

But Dalroi pressed into the office, fussily insistent. One look at the half-formed hope on Zdenka's face told him all he needed to know. The stranger found his revolver, only to watch it spin from his fingers as a deft blow from Dalroi paralysed his arm. Before the amazement could register Dalroi hit him again and he fell as though pole-axed.

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