Colin Forbes - This United state

Only her head and shoulders were visible. Her hands clawed desperately at the edges, digging into the soil. She screamed again.

'Help me! Help me! HELP…'

The earth she was clutching at with both hands crumbled. Blonde hair vanished. There was a hellish scream, which faded quickly. Like a dying echo. Huge quantities of earth gave way, plunged downwards.

'Any chance she's alive?' Tweed asked.

'No chance at all,' Marler replied. 'It's an eighty-foot drop down those old ventilation shafts. And the builders sealed all of them up at the bottom with two feet of concrete.'

'Plus all that earth going down. There must have been over a ton of it.'

'At least.'

'Bob,' Tweed requested, 'take that Beretta from Denise. Clean off her fingerprints, then throw it down the hole. The Magnum went with her.'

'There are spare new steel gratings in the workshop,' Marler said. 'Alf will help me to cover up that hole. It's dangerous.'

'And, Bob,' Tweed went on as Newman, holding the Beretta with a handkerchief, tossed it down, 'maybe you'd take Denise to see a doctor.'

'Won't be necessary,' Denise intervened, standing up straight. 'I just pretended my leg was twisted. Easier for me to get, my hands on the Beretta. I brought it to kill her, but she was driving so fast.'

'Then maybe you'd take her back to her Belgravia flat, Bob.' Tweed turned to Denise. 'This never happened. You've never been here. You went straight home on your own from the Embassy.'

It was early morning in London. Some time after dawn the sky was once more a cloudless blue. Very little traffic at that early hour. This time Marler, with Butler and Nield, had taken the lead car, had gone on ahead.

Newman, behind the wheel, slowed to a crawl as he approached the entrance to Park Crescent. Tweed was beside him, with Paula in the back. Newman turned the corner into Park Crescent, driving at no miles per hour. He continued crawling forward. The left-hand side of the windscreen was blurred with mist. The shot pierced the glass, the windscreen crackled. The passenger by his side slumped.

Stopping the car, Newman jumped out. A second rifle shot rang out. Paula, crouched down a few seconds earlier, had left the car, followed by the man who had crouched beside her. They were just in time to see the figure perched on the roof above their entrance rear up, as though subjected to a high-voltage electric charge. Then the figure plunged down vertically, landing on the steps leading up.

'Not on my doorstep,' said Tweed, running forward with Paula.

Newman had got there first. He waited for them. The body of a man wearing a balaclava lay very still. Newman bent down, checked the neck pulse, shook his head. He then took hold of the balaclava, gently pulled it back to reveal the face.

Rupert Strangeways stared up at them, the eyes open, the mouth twisted. Paula had the grisly impression he was sneering at them. Newman stepped back as Marler, who had raced round the Crescent, arrived.

'And I thought it was Basil,' said Paula. 'The Phantom.'

'Good shot,' said Newman.

Marler's bullet, fired from his Armalite, had made a smudged red hole in Rupert's forehead. George, their doorkeeper and guard, came out of the front door. He stared down.

'My Gawd, who is that?'

'A phantom,' said Tweed. 'Cover it with a sheet. We don't want passers-by gawking.' He ran upstairs, with Paula at his heels. 'I must phone Roy Buchanan at once, ask him to send an ambulance.'

Inside his office he stared at the empty desk on his left. The cover was still on Monica's computer, her chair pushed under her desk.

'Where is Monica?'

Paula picked up a hastily scribbled note. It was an apology from Monica. Despite her allergy to shellfish, she'd indulged in a shrimp cocktail for supper. It had upset her and she wouldn't be in for the day.

'I'll call Buchanan, explain the position,' she said. 'And I'll sit at Monica's desk, look after the phone today.'

A few minutes later Newman and Marler came in. Newman sat down while he explained.

'Marler and I think it best to leave the car you travelled up in where it is until Buchanan arrives. Then he can see the dummy Tweed for himself. Rupert's bullet would have hit you in your head – if you'd been sitting beside me. The bullet penetrated the dummy and is lodged in the padded head rest I reinforced.'

They had created the dummy to look like Tweed before leaving the Bunker. Mrs C. had helped – supplying pillows to pad out a jacket she had borrowed from one of the staff. The upper part of the top pillow had been squeezed into the size of a head. Marler had provided a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with plain lenses he'd used in the past for disguise. Mrs C. had used safety pins to attach the glasses to where Tweed's eyes would have been. As a final precaution, Newman had carried Mrs C.'s hair spray. He had stopped the car a short distance before they reached Park Crescent, had used the hair spray on the dummy's side of the windscreen to blur the image.

'Well, it worked,' said Marler. 'And we were right in thinking the Phantom would be waiting for Tweed's arrival here. Now, I'm going up to my office.'

'Now, I'll make us all some coffee,' said Paula.

Buchanan, with Sergeant Warden, his wooden-faced assistant, was standing in Tweed's office fifteen minutes later. Looking out of the window, Paula saw two men carrying a stretcher with the body covered with a sheet. They hoisted it inside an ambulance.

Buchanan listened without interruption while Tweed and Newman explained what had happened. They kept their statements terse and made no reference to either Sharon or Denise.

'Marler is waiting in his office upstairs,' Tweed went on, 'so you can take a statement from him.'

'I prefer it that way,' Buchanan agreed. 'Having a separate interview with him. I have only one question. Who fired first?'

'Rupert Strangeways did,' Newman confirmed. 'Marler will tell you he was crouched with his Armalite behind his parked car. It was only when he saw the muzzle flash from Strangeways' shot that he located where he was.'

'Glad you left the Tweed dummy in the other car,' Buchanan said. 'Before we go and have a word with Marler we'll take a look at that, then leave a couple of policemen on guard. We'll get moving.' He paused by the door before opening it. 'Tweed, you'd like to know, I'm sure, that bullet I sent by courier to Rene Lasalle not only matches the bullet which killed our late PM, it also matches the bullet which killed that German, Heinz Keller. Otto Kuhlmann, your friend and the police chief from Wiesbaden, happened to be visiting Lasalle. He brought the Keller bullet. That also matches. Rupert Strangeways was not only a hired. hit man – he was also a mass-murderer.'

'It's dreadful,' Paula said when the policeman had gone, 'when we realize Rupert also murdered his own father in Freiburg.'

'As cold and greedy as they come,' replied Tweed. 'Doubtless he hoped to inherit his father's fortune. I have a feeling he would have done no such thing when the will is read. Changing the subject, I think Denise will keep quiet.'

'She promised me she would off her own bat when we left her at that flat in Belgravia,' said Paula.

She was referring to the fact that they had driven back from the Bunker in three cars. Wearing gloves – to avoid fingerprints – Newman had driven the stretch limo, with Denise by his side. In the car following him, Tweed was behind the wheel with Paula and Newman as passengers. Behind them, Marler had driven the third car, which contained Butler and Nield.

There had been no one about when Newman dropped off Denise at her Belgravia flat. He had then driven the limo to Mayfair and, unseen, had parked it in a mews. He had then transferred to the car with the dummy while Tweed and Paula had crouched low in the rear.