The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel Page 7

  I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I wasn’t staying anywhere near that car, which might be a hearse for Joe P. Heggy. True, I had friends only a few yards away from that car, but I couldn’t depend on them, and I wasn’t going to risk being snatched right from under their noses.

  So I ran for it. My head was spinning, and there was blood running down from my face where the Heggy nose bled. There was a kind of square in front of Achmet’s, and on the other side were tall, black, warehouse-like buildings, designed on the Victorian English style. I got across that moonlit square, and I heard the roar of the sedan as it started up and came curving round to head me off.

  The sonofabitch tried to run me down again, but my head was clearing and I was faster on my feet now. I jumped for it at the last moment, but his wing caught my foot and tipped me in a long roll, smack up against a warehouse wall. I was taking a lot of punishment that night, but just then I didn’t seem to be noticing it. I guess that always happens when there’s something mighty important at stake—your life.

  I picked myself up and I didn’t stop to count the bruises. I saw four hulking apes racing across that moonlit square towards me, and I had time to notice that even then their faces still retained that curiously impassive expression I had noticed when first they entered Achmet’s.

  I wheeled and went plunging down an alley too narrow for that sedan to follow. But the apes could, and I heard the smack of their shoes upon the cobbled way.

  I didn’t hear Marty or the other boys’ voices after that. I guessed that distance and the alcoholic load they were carrying must have been a handicap.

  I was on my own.

  I went down that alley like a man trying to make the home base. I’d no doubts in my mind as to the intentions of those apes behind me. Someone had tried to rub me out only a few hours before, and I guessed these birds had similar intentions. I couldn’t understand why—not altogether—because being witness to an abduction didn’t seem to warrant such drastic measures.

  But I kept running. That alley gave out onto another alley, and that gave out onto yet another alley. It was the commercial quarter of Istanbul, with offices and warehouses leading down to the wharves. At this time of night it was deserted, and there wasn’t a light in any of the buildings, and I ran along shadowy, cobbled ways with four silent killers racing to catch up with me.

  The moon glowed brilliantly white and clear, so that I ran alternately in the deepest of shadow and then into the whiteness of near daylight.

  Then I got a bit of luck. I dodged right, down yet another alley, and then turned suddenly left through a gateway and ran down an open passageway which led between two buildings. I heard the apes go padding swiftly past the entrance to that passage.

  Though they must have discovered their mistake within seconds and come back and found that open doorway. But this gave me the start I needed.

  I made the most of it. I ran more carefully now, because I didn’t have any more wind left, and I moved silently from shadow to shadow, and tried to steal away from my enemies in that manner.

  I could hear them behind me, and then I heard someone running down an alleyway parallel to the one I was in, and I guessed they had split up and were looking for me. And then I got an idea that someone was right at the end of this moonlit alley, this canyon between high, dark, warehouse buildings.

  I halted in the deepest of shadows and watched.

  Someone came into view right at the end of the alley. It was no use going that way any more.

  Then I saw a movement from an alleyway almost opposite me, and it put an end to thoughts of escape down that side turning.

  A sound from behind brought my head swivelling round. The other two apes had planted themselves across the alley behind me. I was trapped. Then the apes began to walk towards me, all except the rube in the side turning almost abreast of me.

  I saw those big hulking shapes move slowly down towards each other, watching, and crouching in the manner of men who expect sudden action. They weren’t taking any chances, and there wasn’t a shadow in a doorway or behind any of the piles of junk which littered the alleyway left unexamined.

  They were coming nearer, and I caught a glimpse of metal in the hand of the ape coming from my right. I was in a worse position than if I’d stopped to fight it out by the entrance to Achmet’s. Here were no friends. Here they could do what they wanted to me.

  And I knew what they wanted.

  There was a shutter near my right hand. It was over a window, and I had a suspicion there wouldn’t be any glass at the back of it, because they don’t run to a lot of glass in the warehouses alongside the waterfront.

  So I put my fingers between a crack where two shutters joined. I reckon those shutters were dry and warped from long years in the brilliant Turkish sunshine, and when I threw all my weight into tugging at them, they came apart with astonishing ease.

  But they made an almighty noise.

  At the sound of tearing wood, all four apes came leaping towards me. One of the shutters came apart from its hinges and I felt its weight in my hands. I turned and tossed it right into the face of the rube streaking towards me from the turning opposite. And then I pulled myself into that dark void of a window, thanking heaven there were no bars in position, as so often is the case.

  I found myself standing in a blackness that was profound after the brilliant moonlight out in the alley. I kept moving, though, because I knew those apes were jumping towards the window, and I didn’t want to be an experiment for that knife in one of their hands. I walked away, but then gathered speed as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. Some light was coming in from unshuttered windows high above me. I was in some sort of chemical factory, among rows of silent vats, huge wooden tubs, each of which would hold a couple of thousand gallons of liquid. There were shafts and pulleys and cross-beltings and all the paraphernalia of a chemical factory.

  There was also the stink of flat, sour acid—the odour of chemicals left exposed in those vats and in the iron tanks, which I began to see rearing in the distance.

  I began to run, and I found the floor slippery with slime, and I went over and ruined another good suit that night. I didn’t count the cost, though, and went hell-for-leather down among those vats. Back of me I heard grunts as the big men levered themselves through the narrow space of that broken-shuttered window.

  Someone took a bang at me with a gun, then, and I went skittering away under the platform, which supported the vats. Joe P. Heggy didn’t want a verdict of ‘Death by lead poisoning’.

  Right then I could have done with a police shadow. But there was no one inside that chemical factory to help me except Joe P. Heggy.

  For about five minutes we played a grim game of hide and seek. They seemed prepared to use their guns, here inside that big dark cavernous chemical factory, and once or twice I saw red flame in the darkness and lead came spinning towards me.

  I kept clambering over slimy, rusty pipes underneath vats, which dripped unpleasantly upon me. I ducked between tanks that stank of acid, and raced silently along metal catwalks where big egg-shaped pressure vessels were arranged.

  I didn’t know where I was going; all I knew was that those four apes were systematically searching through that factory for me and I was intent on keeping one jump ahead of them.

  It was a long building, and there were stairs that led upwards, but I didn’t dare take to them for fear of being trapped. I kept on the ground level and I tried to make progress in a straight line, so that I wouldn’t get lost and run into any of those murderous monkeys in the dark.

  All at once I found myself staring at the head of a long, sloping, covered passageway, which was moonlit where beams strayed in through cracks in the corrugated metal structure. I got the stink of water then—the smell you get whenever you come near to docks and wharves. I went down that sloping passageway, because in any event I had nowhere else to go. The apes were right behind me, and were rapidly closing in on me.

  I
ran like the wind down that long straight corridor, and all the time I expected to feel something go thunk into my body—then I’d feel pain and go sprawling and I’d hear the follow-up sound of a revolver firing. And then Joe P. Heggy would be up among the angels...maybe.

  I must have got the Heggy legs working overtime because I got almost to the end of that shadowy passageway before a hoarse shout from behind told me that I had been sighted. Someone did blast off at me then, but it was probably difficult to see me among the shadows and the bullet hit a metal wall and seemed to scream in reproach past my left ear.

  Then I came out of that passageway and into the full light of the moon, just as I heard the heavy thud of those apes racing after me. I went on running. The moonlight was so bright after the half-light of the last five minutes that it seemed almost to hurt.

  I could see everything. I could see the rising mountainside upon which the newer, fashionable residential quarter of Istanbul is built. There were lights everywhere, and neons glowed colourfully, and headlights of cars came sweeping round the bending roads and gave movement to the scene. At the foot of the hill was mostly shadows, because there began the commercial sector of the north bank of the Horn. And between me and that shadowy shore was the bright glistening wave-dappled waters of the fabulous Golden Horn.

  I kept running towards the water, across a wide concrete wharf, which ended abruptly by the water’s edge—as wharves have a habit of doing. I didn’t turn left and I didn’t right, because there didn’t seem any sense in turning, because there seemed no way of escape that way. On either side of me were ranged rows of steel drums, mighty things weighing nearly half a ton each when filled, as I knew from my work with Gissenheim’s. They flanked it, and were effective barriers to escape along the wharf to the right and left of me. And in effect they channelled me towards the front of the wharf.

  I didn’t like it, legging it like fury across that moonlit staging, but again I had no alternative. I kept running and I expected yet again to get a bullet in my back.

  I heard the apes come running out onto the wharf, but they didn’t open fire.

  Then the thought occurred to me that they wouldn’t want to fire a gun out here in the open where it could attract attention. Inside the factory had been different.

  It gave me courage—a little, but nevertheless some courage.

  I even stopped running and I walked the last few yards to the edge of the wharf. If I had to jump into the water and swim for it I’d need more breath than came from running at full tilt.

  I had a bit of a sickener when I came to the edge of the wharf and looked down. That moonlight was good enough to let me see what lay below.

  There wasn’t any water.

  Below, for a few feet out from the encrusted piles of the wharf was a sea of mud.

  I didn’t see myself jumping into that slime and being able to struggle across into water deep enough to permit me to swim away. In fact there seemed no way of escape from that very high wharf.

  I turned, standing in the moonlight between those twin rows of drums, and silently awaited my attackers.

  The moonlight was full on their faces and they walked in advance of their squat shadows. They looked even bigger, even more hulking—even more threatening in that light. The stark white light of the moon seemed to give hollows to their eyes and under their broad cheekbones, and there was the shadow of their noses across their mouths so that they had the appearance of skulls as they came towards me.

  Their pace slowed as they neared me, until they were moving at less than walking pace. They had strung out, as far as those rows of drums would permit, and they were closing in a flanking movement, which threatened me on all sides except my rear. And there was the biggest threat of all, of course—the drop into the glutinous mud below the wharf.

  I was crouching, my fists bunched and swinging threateningly, and as they came near I growled the most savage threats I could lay tongue to. And it didn’t stop them a bit. They came slowly, stealthily towards me, so that I didn’t know from which side the attack would come first. I could hear their heavy breathing, because they too had felt the effects of that long chase in the darkness.

  And I could see their eyes now, the little glints where moonlight reflected upon their hard, staring orbs. There was no mercy in them; only calculation.

  And murder....

  The ape on my right jumped in suddenly, swinging a massive fist at me. I slugged him, and I put every ounce of viciousness into that blow. He hit me and he hurt me, but my God he didn’t hurt me half as much as I hurt him. I got him just where his ribs joined together under his chest—they call it the solar plexus—and it seemed that I went right up to my elbow into his guts, and he went down writhing, agony distorting that face as it reeled back away from me.

  I swung round to face the others, and I was shouting:

  “You s.o.b.s., I’ll do that to the lot of you!”

  But I didn’t. They did it to me. They were too big and too many, and they came in all at once, their fists chopping, their feet kicking, and I didn’t stand a chance at all. I fought back for a second or two, teetering on the edge of that wharf. It must have looked quite a sight, if there had been anyone there to see me fighting for my life in the bright moonlight on this south bank of the Horn.

  Then their weight swept me into space. Or maybe I deliberately took a step over the edge to get away from those thumping fists and painful shoes that hacked at me.

  I remember one of them gave me a final crashing blow on the right ear as I went into space, and it sent me whirling round and round in mid-air like a Catherine wheel.

  It dazed me, too, but an instinct from my old days of combat training with airborne troops started my legs running, and it had the effect of bringing me fairly well upright, so that when I did land I came down on my feet.

  I came down in a way that was more painful than I can describe. That wharf was a good fifty feet above the level of this mud bank upon which it was built. I landed soft but from that height it hurt all the same and it took what was left of the breath out of my body.

  I felt the resistance as my legs dove into mud. Then the angle of my fall threw me face forward along the mud bank, and every bit of breath was squeezed out in that moment. I fought for air and it was agony as it came back into my tortured, suddenly-emptied lungs.

  I was lying on the mud and almost completely submerged in it, looking down the rows of cross-braced supports of the landing stage. I was resting on my elbows with my forearms already buried in the mud. In fact that mud was nearly up to my shoulders and only my head was clear of its surface. Even at that my face had smacked into it and I could hardly see for the slime, which now dripped from my nose and chin and covered my face.

  I got my breath back and I got my senses into some sort of order. But it did me no good. Because I realized I was stuck fast there and I couldn’t move. More, I had the sense to know that if I did try to move, my struggles, for certain, would slowly drag me under that mud and I would be suffocated.

  Panting, I got my face round so that I could look upwards. I saw the edge of the wharf bright in the moonlight against the dark, velvety blue of a star-studded night sky. I saw four round things like nuts protruding over the edge of the wharf and I knew them to be the heads of the apes. As I looked I caught the quick murmur of their voices, as if they were in consultation with each other. And then all four heads vanished—and it brought me no reassurance.

  I lay there, my cheek resting on the mud, still gasping and suffering from what I’d just gone through. Joe P. Heggy certainly had had a night!

  And then my lassitude left me and I became frantic again in my desperation to escape. For I could hear sounds above—the sound of clanking metal—and I knew what it betokened.

  Those boys were going to make sure of me. The boys were going to roll one of those massive drums over the edge of the wharf on top of me!

  I groaned, and started to struggle, and got one arm out of the mud, but that o
nly sent the rest of me a little deeper. So I stopped struggling and looked through the grime on my face, up towards the edge of the wharf again.

  I saw a head appear and I thought: “That’s the sonovabitch who’s directing operations. He’s going to tell them where to drop the drum.” And I could hear that drum being trundled, with a low rumbling sound, across the wharf above me.

  I didn’t seem to have a chance. I was held in a strait-jacket of mud, a sitting duck for those marksmen with drums weighing eight hundred pounds apiece.

  I gave in then. There wasn’t anything else I could do. I recounted my past life and tried to think of all the good things I had done to my fellow men since I was a man myself. That seemed to take less than half a second, and then I began to contemplate my sins.

  I’d only just begun when I saw something monstrous move before me.

  I’d fallen almost at the foot of one of the mighty wooden supports to that wharf. It was encrusted with shells and barnacles, and just at this point there was a diagonal strut joined on to it—one of the cross-bracings that kept the staging rigid. My despairing eyes caught a movement in the cleft where brace joined support. Something was moving there, something of curious and yet familiar shape. It was within inches of my face, but I couldn’t draw away from it.

  And then my hand, the one that had been raised out of the mud, was gripped, and I have never known a force so powerful, certainly not in human agency.

  I found myself being plucked out of that sucking mud-bath, and I suddenly realized that that monstrous thing I had seen was a foot of gigantic proportions. This arm with the giant’s strength heaved and I came sliding out from that clinging mess, and it seemed that my arm was being torn from its socket in the process. I didn’t complain.

  For as I felt myself coming out of the mud something smacked down into it just where I had been, and a wave of mud came up my back and washed over my head.