Riptide

§ 83

‘I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock you up.’ Cal relished the contrast. The first bobbies on the scene had burst in, truncheons up, yelling ‘Nobody move!’

Kitty was binding up the wound on Stahl’s head with strips she’d torn from her petticoat, like the solitary female in a John Ford western when the wagons have circled. She’d already licked her handkerchief and washed his face like a mother cat. Cal had never felt his wagons more circled.

‘Nobody is moving, you berk,’ she’d said. ‘Get on yer wireless and call an ambulance.’

Then they’d noticed the bloody heap that had been Reininger.

One dashed back to the squad car. The other stood and said ‘Jesus Christ’ over and over again, until Kitty said, ‘You don’t know what to do, do you?’

The ambulance arrived only minutes before a second squad car. They were loading Stahl onto a stretcher when two more cops walked in, a man in his late thirties and a younger one, younger even than Troy, who ran to the stairs and vomited at the sight of Reininger. Over the sound of his retching, the older man said, ‘Miss Stilton, isn’t it? Inspector Henrey, Murder Squad’-and turning to Cal-‘And you are?’

Cal told him, made the briefest of explanations, then Henrey said, ‘I’m awfully sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock you up.’