Bluebolt One Read Free Page A

If he’d hopped it, as you say. . . well, he’d have been seen coming off the line at Gloucester Road, surely?”
    The man with the bowler hat shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not. If ’e wasn’t actually seen leaving the tunnel, no questions would have bin asked, not necessarily. Nothing unusual in staff going off duty, you know, leaving by the proper exit.” He scratched his head.
    Shaw suggested, “He could have panicked. He was very upset. That’s why I thought he may have passed out, and I think—”
    “I doubt ’e’d panic—or pass out. Wouldn’t be like Jackson, that wouldn’t. Jackson was on this train, see... that’s what makes it so queer. Solid as they come, Jacko is. Known him for years. One of the old sort.”
    “Old sort?” Shaw looked sharply at the official. “How many years had you known him? He didn’t look to me much more than twenty-five or thereabouts, and not long in this country, either, I’d say.”
    “Eh?” The man peered suspiciously at Shaw. “Jackson’s never been out of this country. Been a Londoner all ’is life—born and bred.”
    “You’ve got it wrong, then. This man was a coloured immigrant.”
    The man’s mouth opened. “Blimey. You sure of that?”
    “I couldn’t very well make that kind of mistake.”
    The official said grimly, his moustache seeming to bristle at Shaw, “Something does begin to smell a bit fishy, then. Jackson’s as white as your ’and—and I happen to know he was due for this train.”
    “Couldn’t there have been a last-minute substitution?”
    The man rubbed his jaw and tilted his head sideways to scratch below his chin. “I s’pose there must ’ave bin, but there’d ’ave to be a really good reason, if there was. . . look, sir, I reckon you’d best come on back with us and make a statement to the police, when we’ve picked up what’s left of that bloke. I’ll send one of my men along the other way in case the guard is still on the line.”

    Shaw made a long statement, was himself cleared by the word of the elderly man who had been in his compartment; but it was a couple of hours before he could get away from the station and make his way home to the Gliddon Road flat in West Kensington. Dead tired and with a splitting head, he let himself in with his latchkey, walked into his sitting-room, and poured himself a stiff whisky. After that, he undressed and got into bed, but he didn’t sleep very well. He kept seeing that broken body on the track. He was beginning to think that perhaps it wasn’t so clear-cut after all, that the coloured guard, who had certainly ‘hopped it’ all right, hadn’t panicked in quite the way he’d thought at the time. And yet he would have sworn that lad was genuine. He’d been an educated man, far from being a mobster, in fact he’d seemed rather above the job he was doing really. And he hadn’t looked the sort to murder anyone.
    Anyway, that was for the police to worry about now.
    It seemed to Shaw that he’d been asleep no time at all when the telephone bell jangled out into the quiet flat. It made Shaw’s heart leap and he was wide awake on the instant. He reached out for the handset of the closed line to the Admiralty. As he did so, he glanced at his watch and saw that he’d overslept and it was ten o’clock already.
CHAPTER THREE
    Since he’d joined the Outfit Shaw had developed some instinct which, deep inside him, always told him unmistakably when the ring of a telephone meant trouble; and this time he knew right away that there was something new lined up for him.
    The closed circuit from Room 12 brought the prim, precise tones of Miss Larkin, Latymer’s confidential secretary.
    “Good morning, Commander Shaw. Mr Latymer wishes to see you.” She gave a genteel cough. “May we expect you here as soon as possible, Commander?”
    “Yes, Clarice, you may.”
    There was a slight click of disapproval and Miss Larkin said, “Thank you very much, Commander Shaw.” Then the line went