David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

The man looked at Paul quizzically and glanced over his shoulder as if expecting to find someone else standing there. When he saw there wasn’t he turned to Paul again, smiling.

‘We’re quite alone here,’ Paul called. ‘It’s Hart, isn’t it? Cumm— I mean C told me to expect you.’

Hart’s smile broadened revealing uneven teeth beneath his heavy moustache. He approached Paul and, a few paces from him, lifted the umbrella. He grasped the fabric and pulled it free of the handle. A stiletto protruded from the wooden stock.

Paul stared at the weapon. There had been a mistake. That much was obvious. Having taken two pieces of information, he had added them together and come up with the wrong answer.

He dropped the Gladstone bag. His revolver was in it but beneath his clothes and the man would be on him before he could reach it. Paul retreated a step, bumping into the dustbins. The man advanced taking two quick paces and lunged with the stiletto. Paul raised himself on his toes, turning like a bullfighter as the blade slid by his stomach. He edged along the line of bins, eyes on the weapon and holding the greatcoat in front of him. The man lunged a second time and Paul swung the coat through the air, the weight of the gold Imperials taking it out in a wide arc between them. The man tried to brush it aside but caught the blade in the cloth. As he twisted his hand free Paul rushed him, bundling the greatcoat over the man’s knife-arm. The man spat a curse in Russian, stumbling back as Paul pushed against the bundled coat. Paul swung his free arm, managing to land a fist on the man’s face. It was no more than a glancing blow but it made the man blink, giving Paul enough time to make a grab for the stiletto. The greatcoat fell to the ground and Paul leaned his weight on the man, twisting the knife back as the tip of the stiletto grazed his sleeve. The man stepped away, his feet tangling in the greatcoat. He staggered and fell, dragging Paul down with him, faces close enough for Paul to smell the Waldorf Hotel’s tea on the man’s breath. They hit the ground hard and the man’s eyes opened wide with astonishment. He gave a sharp cry and stiffened. Then he went limp.

Paul scrambled to his feet. An expression of surprise was fixed on the man’s face. The stiletto was protruding from his stomach.

Paul stood over him, breathing hard. If he wasn’t Hart, then who was he? He had said something in Russian although Paul hadn’t managed to catch the words. Was this then the agent Kell had warned about?

Paul knew he ought to get away, get to the station, catch the train and his boat, but shouldn’t he try to find out who had wanted to kill him? Cumming would want to know, surely…

Paul knelt and reached towards the man’s jacket to look for identification. But the stiletto had pinned the coat to his body. Paul took hold of the stiletto’s handle and pulled it out. The blade came free, followed by a spurt of blood. So much from so small a hole, Paul thought absently as it soaked into the man’s jacket. He was reaching into the inside pocket when it occurred to Paul that dead men don’t bleed. He had seen enough of them to know. The heart stops and the blood ceases to flow.

He looked up into the dead man’s face and saw the look of astonishment fade as if thawing. The eyes fluttered then locked onto Paul’s. The man reached up, grabbed Paul’s lapels and pulled him down until their lips were almost touching. The man began mouthing silent words. Then something gurgled in his throat and a river of blood gushed out of his mouth.

Paul pushed himself away. The man’s blood was all over him. He wiped at it ineffectually, getting it on his hands. He was reaching for a handkerchief when the door to the neighbouring building along the alley opened and a woman stepped out. She saw him, then the dead man. Then she screamed. And screamed and screamed…

Paul grabbed his bag and tugged the greatcoat free from beneath the inert body. The woman had now been joined by a second who took up screaming as well. Paul ran down the alley. He had just reached the hotel kitchen door when that, too, opened and a porter carrying a bin full of trash stepped out. Paul stopped. The porter stopped. The porter looked at Paul and at the women beyond and then finally at the body lying on the ground.

He was a stocky brute, Paul couldn’t help noticing, muscled from humping all those bins around, he supposed. Ugly too, and looking at Paul as if he were weighing up the odds.

Paul turned again. Deciding the women were a safer bet, he ran at them. They scattered, their faces filled with horror. One retreated through the door she had come from and Paul followed, into a room filled with startled seamstresses sitting at sowing machines. The screaming woman had taken to cowering in a corner and Paul ran past her, dodging down an aisle between tables. The Gladstone bag banged against them and knocked over a dressmaker’s dummy.

‘Sorry!’ he called as he went. ‘Sorry…’

Through another door and he found himself in a changing room at the rear of a shop. To his left a heavily corseted lady grabbed her clothes in panic, her mouth frozen open. He rushed past her into the shop, side-stepping mannequins in flowing Edwardian frocks. A young sales lady shuffled in front of him, one way then the other, trying to avoid him. Paul swung around her and collided with the shop counter. Then he saw the street door and a second later was outside. From somewhere he heard the shrill of a police whistle and, turning the opposite way rounded a corner before stopping to catch his breath.

Across the street he saw a gentlemen’s outfitters and he hurried over and slipped inside. Finding a secluded corner at the back of the shop, he bent his head and began examining a rack of hacking jackets. Looking sideways, he caught sight of his reflection in a mirror, a wild-eyed stranger looking like a civilian caught in no-man’s-land.

He saw the dead man’s blood had stained his jacket and had the idea of exchanging it for one on the rack. But, as he began pulling one off, remembered that his own jacket had his name sewn into the collar. His mother again. He pushed the hacking jacket back onto the hanger and pulled on the greatcoat instead, examining that for blood as a sales assistant stepped towards him. He was a thin elderly man with expectations and both eyebrows raised. Paul shook his head and sidled off towards a rack of ties, sorting through them with a bloodied hand. The assistant watched him from a few feet away, his eyebrows having descended into a perplexed furrow.

Given enough time, Paul supposed the man would eventually make a connection between a new, overdressed customer with blood on his hands and the police whistles that could be clearly heard outside on the street.

Paul forced himself to smile.

‘Not today, I think,’ he said to the assistant. ‘Thank you very much,’ and made a run for the door and Liverpool Street Station.

‘They’re good boots,’ said Pinker. ‘Warm and durable.’

‘I’m sure they are.’

‘No,’ Pinker insisted, ‘take a look.’

Paul took the boot, tweaked the leather uppers and examined the sole.

‘They look excellent quality.’

Pinker, small, moustachioed with receding hair, nodded enthusiastically.

‘Top of our line. They’re bound to sell well.’

Paul had found Pinker in his cabin, having discovered only then that he was expected to share, only why not with Hart he couldn’t imagine. Busy searching his pockets for a sixpenny tip for the sullen steward who had carried his bag, Paul hadn’t seen Pinker behind the cabin door until the steward had departed gracelessly as soon as the coin had crossed his palm. Paul, pushing the door open, had knocked Pinker against the bunks that took up one side of the cramped cabin. The other side consisted of a chair, and cantilevered table and a gimballed wash basin and water jug. Edging into the cabin he found most of the remaining space taken up by Pinker and his various bags and cases.