Craig Russell - Dead men and broken hearts

I fumbled in my duffle coat pocket and found the penlight. Shining it around me, I could see that this was no attic but simply an access crawlspace too low for me to stand up in. It was obviously intended for use by maintenance workers, electricians, plumbers and the like, just as Franks had said, and although the roof void wasn’t floored, there was a crawl-way, like a gangplank, leading from the hatch to the skylight.

I moved as quickly as I could towards the skylight, crouched over and trying to make as little sound as possible. There was a screw catch holding it in place, but only finger-tight, so I was able to release it and slowly push the skylight up and over, allowing me to squeeze through onto the flat roof of the apartment block. Franks was a smart cookie, all right.

I eased the skylight shut behind me. The temperature had taken an even deeper dip and I felt the raw night bite through my clothes. I crossed to the edge of the roof, staying on my hands and knees. The car was still there, parked behind the Cresta. I went over to the other side of the roof, still keeping low, and confirmed for myself that the camel-coated watcher between the streetlamps was also still in position.

There was no sound of police cars approaching with bells ringing and I was beginning to worry about having left Franks alone in his apartment, so I hung off starting my journey across all three blocks and coming down the other side.

I went back to the front edge and again looked down to where the cars were parked. Right enough, two heavy-set men slipped out of the back seat of the car behind the Cresta and, after exchanging a few words with the driver through his window, started to make their way towards the apartment block’s main entrance.

This was it. No coppers yet and Franks was on his own, so I pushed away from the edge and prepared to cross back to the skylight. I was halted by the sound of a car pulling up. Then a second.

I scrambled to the roof’s edge once more and was enormously relieved to see two police Wolseleys pulled up at angles to block in the goons’ car. Unfortunately, one of the patrol cars had blocked the Cresta as well. Four big coppers got out, two from each patrol car, and they closed in on the two heavies, who didn’t put up any resistance.

Time for me to go. Satisfied that Franks would be okay, and already chilled by the night, I ran crouching across the connected flat roofs of the horseshoe of apartment blocks. The roofs were covered in some kind of pitch that muffled my footsteps, but all the same I tried not to think what they must have sounded like in the apartment bedrooms beneath me.

I made it to the third block and tried to ease up the skylight. When it didn’t budge, I cursed inwardly at my stupidity. Of course it wouldn’t open. The skylights were engineered to be unlatched only from below. In my haste to get up onto the roof, I hadn’t thought through the fact that I’d had to unscrew the fastening from inside the void to release the first skylight. Muttering obscenities at myself, I indulged in a moment of panic, lost as to what to do next. I threw a forced calm over the panic like a fire-blanket and made myself think through options. There were only two.

The first was that I take off my duffle coat and drape it over the skylight to muffle the sound as I broke the glass with the muzzle of the automatic. Yeah, Lennox, I thought, brilliant thinking — smashing my way into an apartment block in the dead quiet of night, with a deadly weapon, while there were already four coppers on the scene looking for burglars.

The alternative was to go back the way I came and drop down into the stairwell of the first building. It was my only option, but blocked for the foreseeable by the presence of the police, who would no doubt pay Franks a visit to reassure his good citizenly concerns.

In the meantime, I had to stay put. I tugged the duffle coat collar tighter around my throat and pulled the hood over my head, trying not to think about the cold that was penetrating my flesh like an x-ray. It made sense to stay on the roof: no one was going to look for me up here and I decided to remain exactly where I was, not yet crossing back to my original escape hatch on the first roof for fear of alerting residents to my presence.

I crawled to the edge and looked over. The coppers were still talking to the two heavies. Then the driver stepped out. He was a tall man in a dark coat and hat, and he moved with a quiet, unhurried authority. As he unfolded from the car, he reached into his pocket and held something up for the coppers to see. And with that, the whole dynamic of the conversation below changed. The uniformed policemen moved back from the heavies and the driver of the car did all of the talking. He pointed up to Franks’s apartment. By this time it was obvious he was exerting some kind of authority over the constables.

‘Don’t believe him…’ I muttered, trying to will some intelligence into the coppers’ thick Highlander skulls. ‘Don’t believe him… the warrant card’s a fake…’

My telepathic skills were clearly not up to scratch. There was a little more chat, then the driver of the car headed towards the entrance to the flats, flanked by one of his own heavies and a uniformed copper.

Again my mind raced through options. Even if I could do the hundred-yards dash faster than Lindy Remigino, I wouldn’t be able to get across the roof, through the crawlspace and down to Franks before they got to him. And, even if I did, they had gotten a copper to tag along; and coppers were decidedly sniffy about people waving ordnance in their direction.

Undecided what to do, I simply froze, in all senses of the word. All I could do was wait to see what happened.

They came back out after a couple of minutes. They had Larry Franks with them, hatless but with an overcoat pulled over his tieless shirt. He was steered out by the boss man-driver and his heavy, each of whom had a proprietorial hold of one of his elbows; the uniformed cop just tagged along. When they got to where they were parked, the uniforms began to get back into their cars, leaving their fake colleagues in charge of Franks. And that was something I couldn’t allow. If they took him away, the least that would happen to Franks is that he would be tortured to tell them where I was. And I had seen what these bastards had done to Andrew Ellis.

I pulled the Hungarian automatic from my pocket and snapped back the carriage, putting a round in the chamber. I didn’t have much of a plan, other than to get their attention and try to convince the uniformed coppers that their new chums were phoneys. It was desperate and dangerous and more than likely stupid, but it was all I had.

Then Franks solved the problem for me. He’d obviously been thinking the same and began to remonstrate loudly with the uniforms, clearly trying to persuade them to take him in. The driver of the other car said something to them and the policemen again started for their patrol cars, leaving Franks to the mercies of the heavies and their boss.

It was perfectly done. Little Franks’s right arm arced hard and so fast that the big uniformed policeman took the punch square on the side of his jaw. The copper didn’t even twitch or stagger: Franks had switched his lights off and he was felled like a big, dumb Hebridean tree. I grinned. It was a very impressive punch. The other three uniforms laid into Franks, but nothing he couldn’t handle, then they handcuffed his hands behind his back and bundled him into the back of a police Wolseley, which was exactly what Franks had wanted them to do when he hit the copper. Again the driver of the other car protested and tried to exert authority over the uniforms, but one of their own had been clobbered and they were having none of it.

Franks was in for a rough time, all right, but he’d survived worse, much worse, and avoiding being taken by the bogus detectives had probably saved his life. Yep, Larry Franks was a smart cookie, all right. And I owed him a drink or two.