Death Has Deep Roots by Michael Gilbert Read Free Book Online Page B

living room of crime, the West End. His staple occupation was the insertion of lumps of putty into the return-coin slots of public telephones—lumps which he would later remove with a piece of wire bringing down sometimes as much as a shilling in coppers, a shilling which should by rights have gone to previous pressers of Button B. Between times he ran errands for almost anyone who would employ him.
    McCann had not seen Mousey for a long time. He had no further business that night; all other lines having petered out he thought that Mousey might lead him somewhere. He followed him discreetly.
    The little man was clearly up to no good. He sidled along, with his chin on his shoulder, a picture of felonious intent. The appearance of a policeman drove him to take a deep interest in a shop window – a window which contained, as McCann saw when he passed it himself, a large Bible open at the appropriate text of Jeremiah 18:11: “… Return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.”
    Halfway down Long Acre, Mousey disappeared.
    McCann was puzzled for a moment, then he saw the dark entrance to the side turning – it was no more than a passageway – and, halfway down it, throwing a fan of light into the gloom, the open door of the King of Norway.
    McCann followed circumspectly. He did not at once go in. He first tried a glance through the window but was baffled by the display of stained glass.
    He hesitated for a moment. One or two of the Covent Garden pubs, as he knew, had recently been getting a borderline reputation. Also he was out of his own territory.
    Finally he went in.
    It was a small, quiet bar. Mousey had got his pint and was sitting at one of the tables by the wall talking to a youth with red hair and pimples. Four men were playing nap at another table. Two old ladies dressed in tight black were perched like a brace of crows on the bench by the door, nodding over their Guinnesses.
    “Half pint of bitter,” said McCann. “Quiet tonight.”
    “We’re always quiet in here,” said the landlord.
    “It’s nice to be quiet,” said McCann.
    “That’s what I always say,” said the landlord.
    As he said this he smiled. It wasn’t a particularly nice smile.
    McCann had picked up his glass when he realised that two men had come in without making any noise. One of them, a tall thin man with a bent nose, was standing just beside him. The other was at the door.
    “Were you asking after Mrs. Roper?” said the thin man softly.
    Quite suddenly McCann realised that he had been every sort of fool.
    He realised that he had been led by the nose to the place where things happened. He knew this from the way the two women had already disappeared, and from the way the landlord kept his eye on the doorway through which he was preparing to disappear (and from a telephone behind which he would, no doubt, in due course, and when it was too late, summon the police). He knew it from the painstaking way in which the card players went on with their game without lifting their eyes.
    Meanwhile there was a question to be answered.
    “No,” he said. “It wasn’t me. Perhaps you were thinking of someone else.”
    Considering that this was a flat lie, he managed to work a good deal of conviction into it.
    “Like hell I was thinking of someone else,” said the thin man.
    “I expect it was the other man,” suggested McCann.
    “What other man?”
    “The one who went out just now,” said McCann.
    “Like hell someone went out just now,” said the thin man.
    It seemed to be a deadlock.
    McCann saw what was coming – he saw the ugly bulk in the man’s coat pocket. He decided to take the initiative. He shifted his weight on to his left foot and kicked the thin man hard, on the edge of his Achilles tendon.
    The thin man gave a scream and lifted his right foot to clutch at the injured member. This was exactly as McCann had planned. The thin man was wearing a pair of those very wide-bottomed trousers.