Night of Error

He grinned in his turn. ‘Anyone leaving in a hurry must use the stairs now. Got your key?’

I passed it to him and we walked to the door of my flat, treading softly. Through the uncurtained kitchen window I could see the flash of a torch. Geordie cautiously inserted the key into the lock. ‘We’ll go in sharpish,’ he whispered, gave the key a twist, threw open the door and plunged into the flat like an angry bull.

As I followed on his heel I heard a shout – ’Ojo!’ - and the next thing I knew was a blinding flash in my eyes and I was grappling with someone at the kitchen door. Whoever it was hit me on the side of the head, it must have been with the torch because the light went out. I felt dizzy for a moment but held on, thrusting forward and bringing my knee up sharply.

I heard a gasp of pain and above it the roar of Geordie’s voice from further in the flat – possibly the bedroom.

I let go my grip and struck out with my fist, and yelled in pain as my knuckles hit the kitchen door. My opponent squirmed out from where I had him pinned and was gone through the open door of the flat. Things were happening too fast for me. I could hear Geordie swearing at the top of his voice and the crash of furniture. A light tenor voice called, ‘Huid! Huid! No disparéis! Emplead cuchillos!’ Then suddenly someone else banged into me in the darkness and I struck out again.

I knew now that this assailant would certainly have a knife and possibly a gun and I think I went berserk – it’s wonderful what the adrenal glands will do for a man in an emergency. In the light from the corridor I caught a glimpse of an upraised knife and I chopped viciously at the wrist. There was a howl of pain and the knife clattered to the floor. I aimed a punch at where I thought a stomach was – and missed.

Something was swung at the side of my head again and I went down as a black figure jumped over me. If he hadn’t stopped to kick at my head he would have got clean away, but I squirmed to avoid his boot and caught his leg, and he went sprawling into the corridor.

I dived after him and got between him and the stairs, and he stood in a crouch looking at me, his eyes darting about, looking for escape. Then I saw what he must have swung at my head in the flat – it was Mark’s suitcase.

Suddenly he turned and ran, towards the blank end of the corridor. ‘I’ve got him now,’ I thought exultantly, and went after him at a dead run. But he had remembered what I’d forgotten – the fire escape.

He might have got away then but once again I tackled him rugby-fashion so that I floored him just short of the fire escape. The fall knocked the breath out of me and he improved the shining hour by kicking me in the face. Then, as I was shaking my head in dizziness, he tossed Mark’s case into the darkness.

By the time I regained my feet I was between him and the metal staircase and he was facing me with his right hand, now unencumbered, darting to his pocket. I saw the gun as he drew it and knew the meaning of real fear. I jumped for him and he side-stepped frantically trying to clear the gun from his pocket – but the foresight must have caught on the lining.

Then I hit him hard on the jaw and he teetered on the top step of the fire escape. I hit him again and slammed him against the railing and, to my horror, he jackknifed over. He didn’t make a sound as he fell the three floors into the alley and it seemed a long time before I heard the dull thump as he hit the ground.

I looked down into the darkness and saw nothing. I was conscious of the trembling of my hands as they gripped the steel rail. There was a scurry of footsteps and I turned to see Geordie darting down the stairs. ‘Leave them,’ I shouted. ‘They’re armed!’

But he didn’t stop and all I heard was the thud of his feet as he raced down the staircase.

The tall thin man who lived in the next flat came out in a dressing gown. ‘Now, what’s all this?’ he asked querulously. ‘A chap can’t listen to the radio with all this racket going on.’

I said, ‘Phone the police. There’s been an attempted murder.’

His face went white and he looked at my arm. I looked down and saw blood staining the edges of a slit in the sleeve of my jacket. I couldn’t remember being knifed and I felt nothing.

I looked back up at him. ‘Well, hurry,’ I yelled at him.

A gunshot echoed up the stairwell and we both started.

‘Christ!’

I clattered down the stairs at top speed, all three flights, and came across Geordie in the foyer. He was sitting on the floor staring at his fingers in amazement – they were red with welling blood.

‘The bastard shot me!’ he said incredulously.

‘Where are you hit, for God’s sake?’

‘In the hand, I think. I don’t feel anything anywhere else, and he only fired one shot.’

I looked at his hand. Blood was spurting from the end of his little finger. I began to laugh, an hysterical sound not far from crying, and went on until Geordie slapped my face with his unwounded hand. ‘Pull yourself together, Mike,’ he said firmly. I became aware of doors slamming and voices upstairs but as yet nobody had ventured down into the foyer itself, and I sobered suddenly.

‘I think I killed one of them,’ I said emptily.

‘Don’t be daft. How could you kill a man with your fist?’

‘I knocked him off the fire escape. He fell from the third floor.’

Geordie looked at me closely. ‘We’d better go and have a look at that.’

‘Are you all right?’ We were both bleeding freely now.

He was wrapping his finger in a handkerchief which promptly turned bright red. ‘I’m okay. You can’t call this a mortal wound,’ he said dryly. We went out into the street and walked quickly round to the alley into which the fire escape led. As we turned the corner there was a sudden glare of light and the roar of an engine, together with the slamming of a car door.

‘Look out!’ yelled Geordie and flung himself sideways.

I saw the two great eyes of headlamps rushing at me from the darkness of the alley and I frantically flattened myself against the wall. The car roared past and I felt the wind of it brush my trousers, and then with a squeal of hard-used tyres it turned the corner and was gone.

I listened to the noise of the engine die away and eased myself from the wall, taking a deep shaky breath. In the light of the street lamp on the corner I saw Geordie pick himself up. ‘Christ!’ I said. ‘You don’t know what’s going to happen next.’

‘This lot aren’t ordinary burglars,’ said Geordie, brushing himself down. ‘They’re too bloody persistent. Where’s this fire escape?’

‘A bit further along,’ I said.

We walked slowly up the alley and Geordie fell over the man I had knocked over the edge. We bent down to examine him and, in the faint light, we could see his head. It was twisted at an impossible angle and there was a deep bloody depression in the skull.

Geordie said, ‘No need to look any further. He’s dead.’

IV

‘And you say they were speaking Spanish,’ said the Inspector.

I nodded wearily. ‘As soon as we went into the flat someone shouted, “Look out!” and then I was in the middle of a fight. A bit later on another man shouted, “Get out of here; don’t shoot – use your knives.” I think it was the man I knocked off the fire escape.’

The Inspector looked at me thoughtfully. ‘But you say he was going to shoot you.’

‘He’d lost his knife by then, and I was going for him.’

‘How good is your Spanish, Mr Trevelyan?’

‘Pretty good,’ I said. ‘I did a lot of work off south-west Europe about four years ago and I was based in Spain. I took the trouble to learn the language – I have a flair for them.’

The doctor tied a neat knot in the bandage round my arm and said, ‘That’ll hold it, but try not to use the arm for a while.’ He packed his bag and went out.

I sat up and looked about the flat – it was like a field dressing station in a blitzed area. I was stripped to the waist with a bandaged arm and Geordie sported a natty bandage on his little finger. He was drinking tea and he held out his finger like a charlady at a garden party.

The flat was a wreck. What hadn’t been broken by the burglars had been smashed during the fight. A chair with no legs lay in the corner and broken glass from the front of my bookcase littered the carpet. A couple of uniformed constables stood stolidly in the corners and a plain clothes man was blowing powder about the place with an insufflator.

The Inspector said, ‘Once again – how many of them were there?

Geordie said, ‘I had two on my hands at one time.’