The parrot cage, p.30
The Parrot Cage, page 30
‘How well do the people you think might be here know you?’
‘Not at all, I imagine. I’ve met some of his friends, but … why?’
‘Because I look pretty much like you, particularly at night, particularly in hysterics.’
‘Would you risk it, Gerry?’ asked Flixe carefully.
‘Yes,’ she said with no heroics.
‘And if Jean-Pierre himself turns up?’
‘That doesn’t sound very likely – frankly none of it sounds very likely – but I’ll just have to take my chance. He would know the difference I take it?’
Flixe turned to look at her sister and her expression was enough to make Gerry blush and Johnny start suddenly.
‘In some ways it’s a pity there’s such a good moon tonight,’ said Flixe, looking up at the dark, starry sky. ‘But it’ll help us, Johnny, get across the bombed bits.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘You and I approach the functioning bit of this warehouse – we’d better go in from different points at the old entrance – make our way in, beat up anyone who gets in our way and just search everywhere in case they’ve got Ming. We’re going to look pretty silly if there’s no sign of her.’
‘And probably end up in gaol,’ added Gerry quite crisply.
‘Just so,’ agreed Flixe, adding silently to herself that she would also be throwing away any possibility of happiness with Jean-Pierre if that were the case. ‘There’d be the hell of a stink. Oh, God, am I mad to have dragged you both here? There’s really nothing to go on. Ming’s probably just been held up and is in Charles Street by now. Should we …?’
‘Don’t torment yourself so, Flixe,’ said Johnny, suddenly interrupting her. ‘We can reconnoitre carefully and find out if there is any evidence that Ming is there. If there is, then we can withdraw, find a telephone, try your boss and if he’s still not there get the police.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Flixe slowly.
‘Come on, Flixe,’ said Johnny, ‘you know that even after Sergeant Plummer’s course we are just not equipped to take on a bunch of thugs, who – if you’re right about them – are probably-armed and certainly violent.’
‘It makes sense, Flixe, you must see that,’ said Gerry. ‘But we’d better start our reconnoitring by finding a telephone box – it would be ghastly if –’
‘There was one, a couple of streets back,’ said Flixe, her mind slotting into gear once again. ‘We’d better check that it’s working.’
She reconnected the distributor leads and they got back into the jeep to retreat to where she thought she had seen a red telephone kiosk. Gerry got out, tested the telephone and gave them the thumbs-up. Johnny drove back to the old pub.
‘All right,’ said Flixe as they parted, ‘Gerry, spin out your hysterics as long as you can. We’ll need time.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘Good,’ Flixe said, more in control again. ‘Now, according to the map you go down this street, turn first left and then about fifty yards further on, I think, should be a way in, probably with a bell or knocker or something. Give us …’ she broke off, looked at her watch and then said: ‘ten minutes from now and then lean on the bell and do your stuff. We’ll meet back at this corner. OK?’
‘All right. Good luck.’ She caught sight of Flixe’s face in the blue light from the full moon and said gently: ‘If she is in here, we’ll get her out somehow.’ She turned away and left them.
‘Coming, Johnny?’ said Flixe, touching his arm. He nodded and followed her, padding silently on the wet, grimy road. Together they turned the corner and she nodded at the remains of a vast, pompously pedimented entrance. He gripped her hand to show that he understood and sprinted for it.
Flixe followed more slowly, as anguished for Ming as she knew Gerry was, but desperately worried, too, about what she might discover about Jean-Pierre. She wished that they could have found Suvarov before launching this probably ill-judged rescue attempt. She brushed some hair out of her eyes and her mouth stiffened. Too bad. If some thugs had really kidnapped little Ming, something must be done to get her back. She reached the door and peered round. In the distance she could make out Johnny picking his way across the rubble and around the dangerous pits and craters of the vast warehouse.
The moonlight showed her how the wild flowers had already established themselves amid the wreckage, pale-pink ragged robins and yellow ragwort bending in the damp wind. Rainwater still dripped off the bedraggled flowers into the pools that filled ditches and craters all over the site. The moon was reflected by the rippling water and added to the sinister effect of the patchwork of man-made chaos and reviving nature.
Her distracted mind thought that there must be some lesson somewhere in the story of the flowers’seeding, growing and survival in the bizarrely beautiful ruins of London, but it was not one she could think of at that moment. Taking care where she put her feet, she followed the right-hand wall round towards the dark mass of the still-standing offices. She had expected to see no lights, but had hoped for some indication of activity. She stopped to listen. But the only sound was the faint crunch as Johnny’s boots trod on the debris of glass and beams and masonry.
Checking her watch, Flixe realised that she had only two minutes left before Gerry started her diversion and she hurried towards the building. In her haste she tripped over the bent and twisted remains of an iron girder and fell headlong into a small depression that was filled with cold, muddy rainwater.
As the cold seeped through her clothes and the pain in her barked shins intensified, all that Flixe could think about was the noise. She lay still, her face lifted an inch or so above the scummy surface of the improvised pool, listening for any sounds of alert. There was nothing. She gave it at least one more minute and then, as silently as possible, raised herself up.
The wind bit through her wet clothes and she could have cursed herself for being so stupid. But she had wasted enough time already. Gerry must already be involved with someone at the door and Johnny would presumably have found his way into the warehouse by now. Flixe limped forward, taking care now that it was too late, and reached the huddled mass of the office without further mishap.
She felt all round the nearest window she came to, but the boards that secured it were nailed tight. Wincing with cold and frustration and fear for Ming, she moved slowly to her left, pushing at any piece of wood she came to in case it would give. Actually breaking in would defeat her object. At last she came to a pair of iron doors that lay flat on the ground, the kind she had often seen outside pubs for the brewers to use when they delivered beer barrels straight to the cellar. Clenching her teeth at the rusty creaking sound, she hauled up one side of the door and wedged it with a thick, charred piece of timber. Then with infinite care she lowered herself over the edge, feeling around with her rubber-shod feet for a foothold.
Her ankles were grabbed by two strong hands. For a moment she was so afraid that she stopped breathing. Then a familiar voice whispered.
‘OK, I’ve got you. Drop now.’
Obediently, she released her grip on the iron edge and dropped into Johnny’s arms. She could not afford the luxury of wasting enough time to chastise him for almost killing her with terror. Instead she hissed:
‘What have you got?’
‘There’s someone here anyway.’ Then he gestured to a narrow stone staircase to Flixe’s right and led the way towards it. Flixe tugged at his sleeve.
‘Yes, but where?’
‘Almost exactly above us, judging by the noise.’
This time she let him lead her to the stairs and up to the ground floor. As they inched silently along the main corridor, they heard a man with a French accent saying with ill-tempered patience:
‘But mademoiselle, I have told you: Monsieur West-Grandison is not here. He never comes to this place nowadays. If it is so urgent that you find him, you must call at his house. If he is such a friend of yours, you must have the address.’ Then came Gerry’s voice, so pathetically tearful that Flixe almost grinned.
‘Of course I have it. Jean-Pierre gave it to me years ago. But there’s no answer there, and I must see him. Monsieur, I beg of you. I am in such a terrible situation.’
‘I cannot help you, mademoiselle. For the last time: he is not here and we do not expect him.’
‘We?’ Gerry repeated after him. ‘You mean that there is someone else here? A colleague? Perhaps he might know better where I could find Jean-Pierre?’
‘A manner of speaking,’ came the retort and Flixe could imagine how the man’s teeth were clenched as he spat out the words. ‘And now if you will forgive me, I am very busy.’
‘Oh, please don’t shut me out. I have come all this way. If he isn’t here, may I just write him a note? You must have some kind of messenger service. I mean, it is his warehouse, isn’t it? Even if it is mostly disused now. He told me it was. I know it is.’
Gerry obviously had him well pinned down and so Flixe and Johnny walked carefully on down the passage towards a faint band of light. As they reached it they could hear Gerry’s voice whining on, although they could not make out the actual words she was using. Flixe put her ear to the crack between the door and its frame, where the thin string of light glowed in the darkness.
There was the sound of flesh slapping against flesh and a half-choked short scream that worried her more than a full-blown shriek would have done. She looked up at Johnny. He made a thumbs-up sign and mouthed something at her that she could not understand. Standing back from the door, she leaned towards him. He whispered into her ear:
‘Is that Ming?’
‘I don’t know. But, Johnny, if it is …’
‘Hold on, Flixe. Whoever it is, we’ve some justification now in intervening. We must get out and get to that telephone. Come on before Gerry loses her hold on the one at the door. Come on.’
Flixe obeyed and five minutes later she found herself explaining to an apparently limping but resolute Gerry what they had heard.
‘Well there’s no choice then. We must get the police,’ said Gerry and led the way back to the jeep. Flixe’s hands were shaking so badly when she tried to telephone that she could hardly jam her pennies in the slot, but she got them there, tried Suvarov’s number only to be answered by the endless ringing tone, and then in despair got the operator and said urgently: ‘Nine, nine, nine, police, please.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
The three amateur conspirators stood at the corner outside the warehouse waiting in a mixture of anxiety and embarrassment for the arrival of the police. The first of the black cars did not stop, despite Flixe’s waving arm and yelling, but the second pulled up beside her and an angry-looking man wearing a civilian mackintosh and a dark felt hat wound down his window to call out:
‘Was it you who telephoned?’
‘Yes. We think our young sister’s in there with some … some traitors.’
‘Oh, spies I suppose,’ he said, his voice losing its hard, dramatic edge and his eyebrows climbing almost to the sleek hairline above his low, pale forehead. ‘Well, I suppose we’ll have to investigate. But I do wish you ladies wouldn’t call on hard-pressed emergency services just because you think you’ve caught a German spy.’
At his tone of patronising patience, Gerry’s face hardened, but there was obviously no point in protesting and so she just urged him on and, with Flixe and Johnny, following painfully in the car’s wake, smelling the hot, sickening pungency of its exhaust. As they reached the front door they could hear the young uniformed constable thumping on the locked door and calling out in his rich London accent:
‘Open up. Police’ere. Open up.’
There was no answer, and Gerry suppressed her instinct to order them to break the door down. Whether or not Ming was in the building, some victim certainly was, and was probably in danger.
In the chancy light of the half-clouded moon that flashed sometimes off the silver buttons of the dark-blue tunics, Flixe and Gerry could see the young man turn to one of his superiors. The senior officer nodded and three burly young men put their shoulders to the door.
It took four charges, during which Gerry winced for their bruised shoulders, before the wood began to creak and splinter. Then the constable kicked it once, twice, and the door at last caved in. He and his colleagues rushed forward. The Alderbrooks made to follow, but the plain-clothes officer who had first spoken to them grabbed Flixe by the shoulder. His fingers were hard and she flinched, but he did not let go. Gerry was relieved to see that Johnny had not even waited for police permission and had followed the constables into the building.
‘Wait,’ the policeman began and then stopped as they all heard shouting from inside the building. The officer let Flixe go and she rubbed her shoulder with a cold and shaking hand, while he ran up the steps two at a time. More slowly she followed, now dreading what she might find.
The first sight that met her eyes was Johnny Blenkarne carrying Ming in his arms. Her mind flashed back to Gerry’s harrowing description of the Eaton Gate bomb and she climbed the steps to meet him.
‘There’s no time to wait for an ambulance,’ he said before she could speak. ‘The police are going to drive her to the nearest hospital.’
‘Ming?’ she whispered as she looked down into her little sister’s face, mottled black in that light and with horribly crusted blood on the thickened, distorted lips that had once looked so delicately pretty.
‘So we were right after all. What …?’ She could not bring herself to say anything else, but he seemed to understand.
‘We don’t know. It seems to be superficial though no doubt it’ll be painful when she comes round. But we must get her checked out by a doctor.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Now, sir,’ came an official-sounding voice. ‘If you’ll just put the young lady on the back seat, we’ll get her to hospital.’
Gerry moved forward as though to join the group, but Johnny turned, still carrying Ming in his arms.
‘I’ll take care of her, Gerry. They’ll want to talk to Flixe and you ought to try to get hold of that boss of yours,’ he said with such determination that she obeyed.
‘All right, but stay with her till we can come,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry, Gerry. I will,’ he answered and turned away to lay Ming in the first of the black cars. Gerry watched them drive off and then turned to go into the building with her sister. There was no mistaking the direction they had to follow, for there was a commotion of French and English swearing and expostulation that echoed down the darkened passages and bounced off the stone floors and hard, cream-painted walls.
They followed the noise and turned into the office from which it came, to be confronted by the sight of three men in handcuffs, arguing with the plain-clothes officer. At the sound of their arrival he turned and said:
‘I’d like to talk to you two. Come into the passage.’
Outside, standing in the cold of the depressing corridor, Gerry left Flixe to explain what had led them to the warehouse. The policeman listened in gathering disbelief.
‘It’s a ludicrous story, miss. You must see that.’
‘Never mind,’ said Gerry crisply. ‘If you speak to someone in authority you will discover that my chief has been on to your people all afternoon about my sister. And they may know where he is. But till they find him you will hold these thugs, won’t you? You saw what they did to my sister.’
‘We saw what had been done to her – we didn’t see them do it.’
Gerry opened her mouth to protest but then let Flixe take over again.
‘Please try to find Major Suvarov,’ said Flixe as calmly as she could. ‘We can none of us do anything until you do. We’ll stay here and wait for him, if you like.’
She despised herself for not being able to look at the policeman as she spoke, but after a moment, she heard him walk across to the telephone and ask for a number. As he was waiting for the call to be put through Flixe had time to notice the horrible smell that filtered from the room in which Ming had been held. It seemed to be a mixture of bitterly acrid cigarette smoke, alcohol of some kind, sick and blood. She turned to Gerry.
‘Let’s go and sit on that bench over there. It’s foul here.’
‘OK,’ said Gerry and followed her slowly. There was a hard wooden bench a few feet beyond the doorway and they sat down on that. Flixe got her cigarette case out of her pocket and offered it to Gerry.
They were still sitting there, smoking in silence, when Suvarov arrived three-quarters of an hour later. His British warm was flapping unbuttoned over his khaki uniform, and his face was set. Gerry thought that she had never seen him look so angry. He ignored them both and stood in the doorway into the room. His voice, when he spoke to the inspector, was as hard and sharp as breaking glass.
‘I want to talk to you outside.’ Then he turned back to the Alderbrooks and Flixe’s breath stopped for a moment at the expression on his face. His voice was no warmer or softer when he addressed them.
‘Wait here. I’ll come back to you.’
They waited in silence until he came back. Then Gerry immediately stubbed out her cigarette and stood up, while Flixe went on smoking where she was.
‘I hope you two are proud of yourselves,’ he said in a voice colder if possible than that with which he had spoken to the policemen. ‘You realise that you may have ruined an operation that has taken months to prepare, cost God-knows-what to your sister, and involved enormous risks to vast numbers of people.’
Gerry was so angry that she could not get out any recognisable words, but Felicity had had two years’self-training in hiding and controlling her emotions.
‘Since you had put Ming into appalling danger and then lost her, I don’t think it is we who can be said to have ruined the operation.’
He did not speak for a moment; then he said in a slightly milder tone of voice:
