"The Conduct of Major Maxim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lyall Gavin)

Chapter 8

Maxim settled down for a gloomy evening. He daren't yet tell George – or anybody – that he was being followed. It was an Unmentionable Disease, and he'd caught it because he'd been to an Unmentionable Place and so it served him right, but that didn't make it any less sore. If they were still with him at the end of tomorrow, he could complain, but not until then.

There was nothing he wanted to see at any of the nearby cinemas, he'd be irritable company in the local pub where he was a contender in a small bar-billiards school, so there was nothing for it but to spend the time watching television with the other sinners.

The phone rang at just after seven. A youngish, roughish voice asked: "Is that Mr Maxim?"

"It is."

"Me name's Dave. Dave Tanner. Er- I heard you was looking for Ron. You know – Ron. Er- am I right?" He sounded nervous, but it could just have been his telephone manner.

"Yes. Are you the chap that has his bike?"

"Er, yes, that's right. He had me Yam."

"Thanks for calling. Can you get him to call me?-or meet me?"

"Er. Yeah. No, I mean – could you come up here? I mean we could have a talk. "

"Of course. You mean to Rotherhithe?"

"Yeah. Er- you know a pub, the Golden Hind?"

"I can find it. It shouldn't take me much more than half an hour. How will I know you?"

A pause…"Er- I'll be in the Public. I got on mejeans and DMs and me leather."

Blackleather jacket, fat Doc Marten boots and jeans. As distinctive as ninety per cent of Rotherhithe's young men, and a fair number of its girls, most likely.

"I'll ask for you at the bar," Maxim said. "Half an hour -okay?"

In practice, it was a bit more. He took the car and the warm evening seemed to have brought out hordes of motorists who Were just strolling, and he chose a zigzag route to throw off any fan club.

The Golden Hind was smaller and a lot more cheerful than the Lord Howe, a busy little place with an obvious hard core of regulars wedged into their favourite corners. Maxim stopped just inside the door to the public bar and looked around. As he'd expected, there were four young men dressed as Dave Tanner, but only one of them was interested in who might be coming in. Maxim stared at him, in a friendly way, until he slid off the bar stool and came over.

"Dave Tanner?"

"Yes. Er- it's Major Maxim, innit?"

"Harry. Can I get you a refill?"

"Er, yes."

They moved to the bar. Tanner was drinking lager, and Maxim wanted one as well, after the warm sticky cross-town journey, but he didn't want a long, bulky drink in his stomach. Dave Tanner was a bit too nervous for a man on his own territory. Well, all right, technically he was concealing information about a deserter – although nothing like the scale on which Major Maxim was doing it – but civilians don't take desertion seriously. If you can afford to walk out of your job, walk out, why not?

He ordered a single vodka with ice, no tonic.

"Were you at school with Ronnie Blagg?"

"Er, yes, that's right."

"Did you box as well?"

"Me? – never. " Tanner seemed amused. He had a long pale face, fashionably spiky fair hair and a pleasant smile. He was probably Blagg's own age – twenty-five – and he had a gold signet ring on a hand that was already worn and scarred bywork at some machinery. "I was never into boxing, but Ron, he always wanted to be fighting something. No, we just sort of hung about together. He stayed with us, sometimes, when he come on leave. He was having it off with me sister at one time. You know – just when they hadn't got nothing better going."

"Can you put me in touch with him now?"

"Er… I mean look, what I can do…" Tanner seemed even more nervous, taking a sudden gulp at his lager. Maxim took a casual look around. They werejammed in a pack at the bar, having to talk loudly at eight inches' range. They certainly couldn't be overheard, but in that crowd anybody could be watching them. "What I'll do," Tanner said again, then asked: "You haven't got no idea of where he is yourself?"

"Of course I haven't. I thought you knew."

"Yes… look, there's somebody wants to talk to you, right?"

"Somebody who knows where he is?"

"Er, could be. He just wants to talk. "

"All right. " Maxim finished his vodka and sat waiting. He was fairly certain now that he was walking into a trap, and wished he'd come armed. That way, nobody need get hurt. Now there's confidence for you, assuming that if anybody gets hurt it won't be you. No, it wasn't really that: it was being trained to get hurt, knowing he could stand it.

Tanner quickly swallowed the last of his lager and led the way. Outside, the sky was still a brilliant clear blue, but the side streets were full of long shadows. Maybe there was half an hour of daylight left.

They turned away from the main street, towards the river and the closed docks. The road was a narrow canyon turning between high walls that protected the now-derelict warehouses, and by its nature must be a dead end. Tanner walked at a hurried, unnatural pace.

"I thought you didn't go to the bike shop except on Saturday?" Maxim asked pleasantly.

"The bike shop? No, I don't. What d'you mean, the bike shop?"

"Where you got my name and phone number."

"The bike shop? Oh yeah, thebike shop. " Tanner pretended to remember. So wherehad he got the number? Maxim took off his silk scarf, wiped his brow and put the scarf in his pocket. In a fight, it could become a noose.

They passed an elderly Cortina II parked half on the pavement. There were people in it. He was several paces past when he heard the car doors open and realised just how outnumbered he was.

He hit Tanner in the stomach, a short punch to wind him, then snapped him around in a half-nelson and throat-hold. There were five others, four whites and a black, and he thought he recognised a face from the Lord Howe gym. They were the right age, anyway, and they moved like athletes.

"The first thing I do is break his arm," he announced.

"Break both," one of the fighters suggested. They came steadily on.

Tanner gasped: "You bastards," and Maxim chopped him under the ear and dropped him. He got his back to the wall as they swept over him.

Maxim tried a roundhouse kick that missed, turning with it to launch a back kick that dropped one of them. But the others were too close. He grabbed one forearm and broke it, then a blow on the forehead knocked his eyesight out of kilter, another thumped his ribs and he gave up, sliding hunched down the wall trying to keep his groin and kidneys safe. There was no point in getting hurt any more.

They tied Maxim to a wooden chair-just like the scene they'd watched a dozen times at the cinema-in the loading bay of a deserted warehouse. There was no light except hard bars of sunlight shafting almost horizontally through the broken windows, and the concrete floor gave the place a gloomy chill even on that evening.

The boy with the broken arm had fainted once; now he was sitting against a wall, crying. The black, who had stopped the back-kick, sat beside him with grey lips, holding his stomach and only semi-conscious. The other three seemed uncertain what to do next; Dave Tanner hadn't come with him, though he had been on his feet again when Maxim last saw him.

"Christ," said one of the others. "You really buggered themup-"

"Did you break his arm?" another asked.

"What do you fuckingthink?" moaned the boy most likely to know.

"It's broken," Maxim said. "Hospital job. And him, too." He nodded at the black boy, who wasn't listening.

"Now," one of them said, "we're going to talk to you. I mean you're going to talk to us. We want to know where Ron Blagg is, see?"

Another slapped Maxim across the face, but not very hard. "We can keep doing that 'til you tell us. "

Maxim goggled at them. "Bloody hell! I came down here to try and find him. If I knew where he was I wouldn't have come. I thought you were hiding him. "

"Don't give us that shit."

"If I knew where he waswhy would I come here?"

He was slapped again, still without much conviction. "You just tell us where he is. "

"I don't know. You had him at the Lord Howe, that's the last I know. I'm an Army officer and all I want to do is persuade him to go back to the Army. "

"Well, if you don't know where he is, where is he?"

Maxim stared back wearily.

"We're going to torture you, " one of them decided. "I mean like stick cigarettes in your face until you talk. "

Maxim did his best to shrug inside the ropes wrapping him to the chair. "Go ahead. It's a police job already so why not give them some solid evidence like burn marks?"

"Stuff the police."

"They're involved, from the moment you get those two to hospital. Unless you just leave us all here to die. "

The black boy suddenly keeled over and his head hit the concrete with a startling crack.

"Oh Christ," the torturer wavered. "Is he going to be all right?"

A door banged, echoing across the empty bay, and footsteps clattered towards them. The boys stepped back, looked hastily around, then just resigned themselves. Maxim tried to turn hishead to see, but Billy Dannhad already begun to talk before he came into view, with Dave Tanner limping behind.

"Jesus," he said softly. "I have seen some fuck-ups in my time, butyou lot, andthis…"

Billy Dann's office was long and narrow, almost as narrow as the desk placed across it just in front of the window, but very high because it had been partitioned out of a much bigger room. The walls were lined with old fights posters and photographs of boxers in stiff, ferocious poses, and it had a musty, faded feel to it, contrasting with the bright cleanliness of the gym just up the hall.

By now it was dark, with just two small desk lamps throwing clear-cut areas of light: one at a typist's table halfway down the room where Maxim had finally met up with a pint of cold lager, one at the desk where Dann waslistening on the telephone and sipping a small glass of neat gin. The rest of the room was lit only by the dim bluish light from a street lamp below the uncurtained window.

Dannput down the phone. "One busted forearm, one ruptured spleen. They have to remove that. They say they'll be all right. Might even fight again. It's the arm that worries me. If you remember what it felt like, broken, every time you throw a punch… I don't much like you, Major. " Maxim just nodded. "What about the police?"

"They've been there. I don't know what they asked, I didn't get to talk to the boys… maybe they'll think they filled each other in, I don't know. If nobody makes a complaint… What are you going to say?"

"Nothing if nobody else does. " Maxim had a sore forearm and. stomach, a slight headache and a torn seam in his lightweight jacket. "I'll send you the tailor's bill."

"You do that, Major,"Dannsaid heavily. "You do that."

"And I still want to know where Ronnie Blagg is."

"So do I. I'm not arsing you around, I just don't know. When we got him out of here, a couple of the boys had a cuppa with him at a caff down the road. An hour later, he rings in, he says he thinks somebody's following him. That's all. Nobody's seen him. I said something to the lads, I don't knowwhat, like your people had caught up with him… They must've got the idea from that, called Dave Tanner and got him to set you up… I mean it was stupid, just plain wet-nappy stupid. "

"D'you have any idea where he might have gone?"

"He had a mate in the country. Kent, I think. "

"I know that one. He's not there."

"Was it your people? I mean the Military Police – what's the Army call them: the Redcaps?"

"Actually the Army calls them 'those fucking MPs'. No, they wouldn't have followed him, they'd have grabbed him. He belongs to them, now. I don't know who it was. " He took a drink. "You can't think of anybody else he might go to?"

"Tanner, he'd be the only one. "

There was a silence. Dannlooked at Maxim's glass, then took a bottle of gin from a desk drawer and refilled his own. He wasn't a drinking man. At fifty-five his stomach was as flat as an ironing board. He took a big swallow and sighed.

Maxim asked carefully: "Did he see you before he went to the country, when he first came back from Germany?"

Dannconsidered. "Just a minute or two."

"Did he say anything why he deserted?"

"He said… This is unofficial? – I really mean that."

"Yes."

"Well, he said he might've killed somebody. "

"He told me he had, quite sure. "

Dannlooked relieved, then curious. "And you didn't tell nobody?"

"Not officially."

"I'm buggered if I understand that Army of yours."

"Me too. But you were never in the services yourself?"Dann wascertainly the age for National Service, if not the war itself.

He tapped his left ear. "I've got about twenty per cent hearing in this one, that's what they said last time. That happened in the ring, we didn't have head-guards in those days. When I was just seventeen. That's why I took up PE, training. Another punch and I could've lost the lot. " Could you have been a contender?"

Dannthought for a moment. "You have to say yes. You have to believe it. But how much does anybody else know about… about Ron and this business?"

"I've read the German papers and there's nothing been said, so we don't think they've made the connection. So if you see Ron, tell him if he goes back and keeps shut-up, he'll only have the AWOL to answer for. But I'd still rather talk to him myself."

Dannnodded slowly, then asked:"Who d'you mean by 'we'?"

Maxim grinned suddenly at the idea of dragging George openly into this. "Nobody's who going public on it. So if he does get in touch…" He stood up and wriggled carefully. "I'm stiffening up. I'd do better to jog home than drive."

Dannstood up, too. "You did better against those… thosetwats than I'd've expected. Some of them must be near half your age. I still don't like you much, Major, but I don't say I've liked most of the best fighters I've trained. In a way, I won't say I like Ron too much, and he could have been a contender. "

"In its small way, the Army also contends. You've still got my number in case anything comes up? It could be important. And still unofficial. "

He walked slowly towards the hall, stretching at each step like a newly awakened cat. He had an early appointment the next day.