Read Online Young Petrella by Michael Gilbert - Free Book Online Page A

you along the hot water pipes, in the evening.”
    Petrella said, “Look here—” but he might as well have tried to stop a gramophone by talking against it. The light was coming up fast, and the little, cold morning wind blew into his face.
    His fingers touched something small and hard. It was the extension switch of his torch. The torch itself was somewhere behind his back slung to the belt of his raincoat. He started to joggle the switch. Three short. Three long. Three short. Someone must be looking from their window by now.
    Time went by.
    “You’re young,” said Cole suddenly. “Too young to understand what it is to hate. A man can live on hate. Did you know that?”
    “It’s a poor food,” said Petrella. His fingers kept working.
    “It can be meat and strong drink, and a fire to warm you through the long winter nights, when the heating isn’t working in the cell, and you’ve nothing but one blanket over you. It was easy. He knew I was coming. He lived with fear. I lived with hate. It’s a good bargain, boy.”
    “It’s a foul bargain,” said Petrella. He was suddenly quite cool, for he had heard the sounds he was waiting for. A car, coming fast, up the hill. Its lights went out and it stopped at the corner.
    “There’s one thing you didn’t know,” he said. “The grape vine must have missed out on it. Ginny Lewis never killed your daughter. Neither killed her nor let her die.”
    “Why do you trouble to tell such lies, boy?”
    “I’m not lying, and you know it.”
    Look at him. Talk at him. Keep his attention. Big Gwilliam was over the wall behind Cole, and coming with the fast, controlled rush which had once sent him across the line at Twickenham with half the English pack on his back.
    The gun in Cole’s hand shifted slightly. It gave a small, sad crack, and he folded on to the ground under an avalanche of bodies. But he was dead before they touched him.
    That took a little time to sort out too. And it was the uncomfortable hour of six when Petrella and Sergeant Gwilliam turned their back on Highside Cemetery, and the body that still lay there.
    “Funny,” said Gwilliam, “that he should have gone without knowing that Ginny Lewis, whatever his sins, had no part in Annie’s death. The prison grape vine told him that Annie had died, and been buried by public funds. It forgot to tell him that Lewis was inside as well. On a two-year stretch for receiving.”
    They both looked at the dead man, flat on the grass, like a doll with the stuffing out.
    Petrella thought of Ginny Lewis. Two men, both empty. One empty with fear, the other empty with hate. He looked at his watch. It was too late to think of going to bed. If he hurried, he would just be in time to catch Mr. Gosport.

Cash in Hand
     
    You do not mention the Nipper in Highside police circles except with a smile. For in his brief and exciting career he managed to cause quite an extraordinary amount of unpleasantness and ill feeling.
    It started with Chief Inspector Haxtell being summoned to an interview with his Divisional superior, Superintendent Barstow. (“There’s a little matter I’d like to discuss with you, Haxtell.”) Barstow was big, red and almost permanently angry. In this case, no doubt, there were excuses. He himself had received a rocket from the District Chief Superintendent, and his interpretation of discipline was that if you got a rocket, you passed it on, without delay and at compound interest, to your own immediate subordinates.
    Haxtell came back to Highside Police Station, kicked the wastepaper basket, and sent for Detective Sergeant Gwilliam.
    “They’re getting worried higher up,” he said, “about the Nipper.”
    “Yes,” said the Sergeant, cautiously. He was an expert weather prophet.
    “Apparently the local Chamber of Commerce has taken the matter up. I’m afraid the Superintendent and the Mayor haven’t been seeing eye to eye since that row they had over the last civic function. Most unfortunate.