Simon Clark - The Fall

He nearly lied and told her he was, then thought better of it. To explain why an American was serving in the British police would become just too convoluted. ‘I was told about this in a bar.’ He shot her a look. ‘I’m just trying to be a good citizen, that’s all… Now… shh… here they come again.’

A tiny amount of light was thrown back from the searchlights by the clouds. It revealed a bulky figure stepping furtively through the door. It carried a holdall of some sorts. Sam heard the clink of glass. The robber was obviously clearing as much as he could carry from the house.

But where were the occupants?

A cold sensation slipped through his stomach. They weren’t making a fuss about being robbed.

That was far from a good sign.

The cold sensation intensified as Sam ran lightly across the street and peered through the hedge between the front garden and the pavement.

Hell, this didn’t look good at all. A man lay slumped through the front doorway. Even in this light he could see that the man wore a grey cardigan. A curved pipe that he must have been smoking when he answered the knock on the door lay on the lawn beside a flower border. A pool of something dark and sticky stretched out around the man’s head on the concrete path.

Sam, peering through the hedge, saw the bulky figure appear again. It didn’t step over the fallen man. Instead the figure stood on the centre of his back as if he was a stepping stone and came out into the garden carrying a large brass bowl.

Sam ducked back as the figure approached the hedge from the other side. He heard the clink of the bowl being carefully eased into the sack to rest among glassware.

But there was another sound too. Sam cocked his head to one side, puzzled.

There was the sound of sizzling. Almost like bacon gently frying in a pan. No, not quite. More like sand being drizzled onto paper. The faint sizzling was continuous. And it was certainly coming from the bulky figure on the far side of the hedge.

Sam glanced back at the crouching WAAF, her eyes bright in the darkness.

She shook her head, as if she’d heard the sound, too, and didn’t know what to make of it.

When the figure had returned to ransacking the house, Sam whispered back. ‘Ruth. Go and wait for me in the car.’

‘Why? You’ll need help here.’

‘No, go back and wait there. If I don’t come out by, let’s see… four minutes from now, sound the horn; it’s the big round button in the centre of the steering wheel. That should bring people out of their houses.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure. Didn’t you hear the air-raid sirens? Everyone’s going to be tucked up in their Anderson shelters.’

‘Well, shout, yell. Do anything to bring the people out.’

‘Call the police, Sam, you can’t—’

‘There’s no time. As I said, I might be too late already. Now, go.’

He waited until she ran crouching back to the car.

Then, crouching himself, he slipped in through the garden gate, up the path, past the prone body of the man (Sam’s shoes made sticky kissing sounds as he stepped in the pool of blood) before he was through into the hallway of the house.

These were big houses.

The staircase curved upwards into the darkness above.

Silence.

Nothing to tell him where the robber would be.

And dark, oh, so dark. It was gloomy enough outside, but here he could see nothing at all.

He turned until his back was against the wall. There he stood for a moment, his heart hammering like a runaway motor.

Where was the robber now? He could be standing there in the darkness, watching Sam while easing a knife from his pocket.

Sam raised one hand to his throat to protect it from any slashing attack from the darkness.

He eased sideways, deeper into the house, his back still to the wall.

Oddly, a smell of wet wool hung on the air. Underpinning that was a sharper tang of body odour. It was far from pleasant and certainly seemed out of place in this upmarket residence.

He worked his way carefully round a table, feeling the boxy shape of a Bakelite telephone and the plaited strands of the fabric-covered handset cable. Then he touched cold metal.

Again it was a boxy shape, with what appeared to be a funnel attached to one side. Like a blind man he allowed his fingers to slide over the object, sensing its metallic smoothness. Then his finger bumped against a lump at one end. A switch… electrical equipment…

Bicycle lamp.

The words flashed through his mind.

Thank God for that, he thought with relief. He gripped the lamp in one hand, then moved forward, muscles tense, ears straining for the smallest sound.

The intruder must be in here , Sam told himself as he inched forward along the hallway. He must be in one of the rooms, plundering more loot.

He licked his dry lips.

The fallen man in the doorway must have been the father. He might already be dead. That left the mother and eight-year-old daughter. Now where were they?

By touch alone he moved deeper into the house.

Ahead lay the greyish tombstone shape of an open doorway.

Cautiously he moved through it, expecting at any moment to hear a yell as the robber saw him.

He found himself holding his breath; his chest ached, and it seemed his heartbeat went thumping through his ribs to echo with horrifying loudness throughout the house.

His eyes adjusted to a little light coming through an uncurtained window-pane.

It took only a moment for him to realise that the glass was set in a door. Strict wartime blackout regulations would have stipulated that every window should be heavily curtained to prevent any interior lights being seen by enemy aircrews, so why was this uncurtained?

Then he saw that the curtain had been torn down and lay in a dark mound on the kitchen floor.

He breathed in at last – and recoiled at the sharp smell of vinegar in the air.

As his eyes adapted to the dim light being admitted by the glass (again covered with a diamond pattern of sticky tape) he saw what looked like flour spilt on the tiled floor. A glass jar lay broken in the centre of a pool of watery liquid: that was probably where the smell of vinegar was coming from. There were newspapers, too. He could just make out a page of The Times with the headline: ALLIED FORCES LAND AT ANZIO .

From the newspaper ran a trail of liquid. It looked black in this meagre light, but he knew instinctively it was blood. As if someone had used a broad decorator’s brush, the dark streak ran across the floor tiles.

Sam’s gaze followed it. He saw a pair of women’s feet; they were bare. He saw trousered legs; then a dark sweater…

He swallowed.

The body of the woman lay face down. Her throat had been cut.

Blood spread out at each side of her head on the floor like inky butterfly wings.

The poor devil had been trying to escape when someone had pounced and slashed her throat. Sam’s eyes had begun to ache from staring into near-darkness and he was tempted to use the bicycle lamp. But a burst of its light would be a sure giveaway to the robber lurking in some other part of the house.

Hearing a sound, he looked up.

There was a rumbling, like distant thunder. He could even hear the faint cracking sound of the air being torn apart.

He knew that this was no thunder. The air raid had begun.

Through the glass he could see distant points of light moving up into the night sky like stars on the run.

That must be anti-aircraft fire. The troops manning the ack-ack guns around the town were firing at the advancing Nazi bombers.

A flicker of light lit the kitchen like lightning. Then came a rumble that rattled the cups on the draining board.