Death by Two Hands by Peter Drax

Author:Peter Drax
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2017-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

The search continued until the light of day came greyly over the moorland, but without result.

Thompson left the inspector and got into his car. He was silent all the way up to Town. He was thinking of Mrs. Brook.

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Barney left Rivers in the top room he couldn’t make up his mind where to go. He had been present at the hold-up. A man had been killed and though it might be some time before the body was discovered it would be found sooner or later.

It wouldn’t be any good stopping with the Tibbetts down at the settlement; the rozzers wouldn’t be long in trailing him there. He had the three pounds which Rivers had given him and half a handful of coppers. He crumpled the notes in his hand as he slouched along at a swift, shambling gait.

Three pounds would take him a few hundred miles away by train, but Barney wasn’t used to trains.

He got on to a bus and took a ticket all the way. It was eleven o’clock before the bus reached its turning point on the borders of Epping Forest. There was a shelter where two or three people were waiting. He stood back in the shadows and saw them come out and board the bus. The conductor talked with the driver, smoked a cigarette and then turned out the lights in the shelter and locked the door.

Barney walked up the road. A car passed him, its swift blaze of headlights throwing the trunks of the trees and bare branches into eerie silhouettes. A lorry came rumbling along, its dim oil lights jerking and quivering. Barney stepped into the road and raised his hand. The lorry drew up. “What about a lift?”

The driver, hunched over his wheel, nodded. “Jump up.”

They jolted on into the black pit ahead. Barney felt in his pocket for George. His fingers felt in every corner. George had gone.

“Hell!”

“What’s the matter?” The driver, dozing over his wheel, gave Barney a glance and then turned his attention to the road ahead.

“Nothing,” said Barney and put his left hand in the other pocket. George wasn’t there. “Going far?” he asked the driver.

“Norfolk. Want to go all the way? You can if you like.”

Norfolk was a foreign country to Barney. He’d never been there before. No. Norfolk was no place for him. “I want to get down.”

“I’ll be stopping soon.”

Barney was cold and numb when the lorry drew up by a shed at the side of the road. It was open-fronted and there was a counter covered with American cloth; shelves with bottles of sauce, pies and cakes studded with currants and sprinkled with shredded coco-nut.

A man who was sitting on an upturned box reading a paper, got up wearily.

“Hullo, Bert.” He reached for a mug and filled it from a tin pot on an oil-burner.

Barney wanted to get away from the light cast by the hurricane lamp but hunger held him.

“Coffee and pie,” he said. “How much?”

“Fourpence ha’penny.”

Barney counted out the coppers.

The coffee was burning hot and very sweet.

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