rest of you?’
He ran his tongue around his lips and made a helpless little gesture with his left hand. I saw him watching me furtively, still not sure of me. For all he knew, I too could be one of the hirelings of the Underworld bosses, probing into everything he knew before killing him. He seemed like a rat running around in a box, not knowing which way to turn, trapped with his back to the wall. Perhaps he’d had second thoughts on how much he was going to tell me. He may even have had me figured as somebody in league with the cops, but I didn’t think so.
Then his gaze flicked sharply to something over my shoulder and I knew instinctively that something was about to break. I half thrust against him, to hurl him to the ground, but I was seconds too late. He went down, sagging to his knees, falling heavily against me, but he was dead before he hit the floor. There was a black circular hole between his eyes, and a vacant look on his thin, pinched features.
Somewhere down in the street, I heard a car start. Anger, such as I had scarcely ever known before, took me by the collar and shook me hard. Dimly, from the window, I caught a glimpse of the car disappearing around the far corner. It was a big black Cadillac, like those which the Organisation used whenever their hirelings carried out their orders. No point in trying to catch up with them, or even to tail them. They would have vanished into the maze of traffic long before I got to the street.
I went back to the body of Sid Torrens lay slumped against the wall. He wasn’t going to tell me anything he knew. There was a sharp taste in my mouth. I had an idea now of how I had been used. They had intended to kill this guy Torrens no matter how it was done, but they had carefully chosen me as their killer and unwittingly, I had almost fallen into the trap. I swore savagely. I wanted to kill them for the trick they had played on me.
Of course, Vitelli had been in on it all the time. It had been a play on his part, pretending to be scared, to want out of the Organisation. He had been briefed well for his part. He had me fooled all the way along the line. The bigshot, acting scared, thinking all the time what a big, trusting fool Johnny Merak was; the guy that Grenville had chosen for this job because he knew all of the mobs’ methods.
I moved a little to one side to take another look at the dead man’s face, then shook my head and stood up. What was the point in standing there looking at him? I didn’t want to look at a man I had seen killed.
I got out fast. Unless I missed my guess, the cops would have been tipped off about the murder within seconds of it having been committed, and they’d be on their way already, sirens wailing, ready to pick up Johnny Merak on suspicion of murder. I’d have a tough job talking my way out of that one. They’d be able to bring forward plenty of evidence to show that I’d been seen talking to Tony Vitelli, a well-known killer, and the barman in the Golden Horseshoe would willingly testify to the fact that he had heard Vitelli give me the address where I might find Torrens.
Sirens were wailing a dismal dirge as I swung the Merc around the corner and headed back to the Office. I needed time in which to think. Events were happening a little too fast for me. Two murders in as many days, one of them in front of my eyes. I felt urged into activity by a new anxiety. Torrens, before he had died, had said that there was one man who hated Caroline Lomer, himself, and the rest enough to kill them.
What did that mean? It seemed highly likely that he had been killed because of what he might have told me. They hadn’t trusted me once Vitelli had given me the address where I might locate Torrens. Wanting him out of the way, playing me for a sucker, they had sent me to kill him. But they had to be sure, and it was possible that here they had overplayed their hand. They had killed him using a silenced weapon, possibly the same weapon as that used to kill Caroline Lomer.
That wouldn’t be difficult to check. But of one thing I felt reasonably sure, Vitelli wasn’t the killer. That dark, shadowy figure still remained in the background. The nearest I had got to him yet was the faint plop of a silenced weapon and a car heading away into the distance.
The Office was empty when I arrived. Dawn was nowhere around. I poured myself a stiff drink and drank it slowly. There were a lot of things which still did not add up, but there was a faint pattern beginning to show among the apparently disconnected facts. The biggest piece of the jigsaw, the most important piece on which the final picture was based, was still missing, still out there somewhere in the city.
A killer on the loose. A dangerous man who had not yet finished killing.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
