Chapter 14: Encounter With Curly Cavenagh

MARY sat down on Gold’s bed with me to survey what we had collected from our survey of the two-and-a-half floors of the flat, it really wasn’t much at all. There was an empty trunk and two suitcases in the unfurnished bedroom up in what was once the loft; they were locked but I opened them and they were indeed empty.

All we had gathered was the framed photo, of course, a diary, a pair of reading glasses and an unmarked cigarette lighter that Mary thought she recognised.

“If you think I look really young in that photo, you are right, I was only 17 and we had been engaged a matter of weeks. We had to part our separate ways, each to a different film location, so he asked me for a photograph, I had a pile of them for publicity purposes. I put that message on it and he bought the frame while — what was that?”

We could hear heavy boots coming up the steel steps outside. Mary ran quickly to the small back bedroom, that had the single bed and empty double wardrobe in it. The window there overlooked the outside door to the flat. I followed a moment or two after her.

“It’s the big man with the bald head!” she hissed, “What’ll we do?”

‘‘It’s your husband’s home, Mary,” I said, “You have every right to be here.”

“That’s all very well, Edgar, but he carries a gun, has threatened Gus with violence, and he may have had something to do with Brad’s disappearance.”

She was right of course.

I said, “You stay in this bedroom, and I will go down and confront him.”

“Do you have your gun?”

“No, I only take it when I am expecting trouble.”

“We’re in trouble now, Edgar, and I know you’re a brave man but if he shoots you, he will have to shoot me, too, as a witness.”

“All right,” I decided, “you stay here and I’ll gather the stuff from the master bedroom.”

“No, Edgar,” she put a hand on my arm, “I’m lighter on my feet and quicker. I think he is only here to collect his rent from the barber and to make a cup of tea. He may not come up here and has no reason to enter this unused bedroom.”

Then she was gone.

Within a minute she was back with the diary, lighter and eye glasses and we stood behind the door, listening. The bedroom was close to the stairs, the walls quite thin, so if you were quiet you could hear the man, who we assumed was Curly Cavenagh, banging about in the kitchen.

“He’s filling a kettle with water,” in a low whisper, Mary kept up a running commentary of Cavenagh’s movements and actions. “Now he’s turned on the gas and struck a match. The gas is lit and that ‘clunk’ was the kettle being put on the hob.”

She turned and looked at me. “While you were up here, I looked in the pantry, as you suggested, but there was nothing in there. I don’t think Brad ever cooked anything while he was here, he always preferred eating out to home cooking.” She smiled at that. “Even when he was living with his parents they dined in style because they always had one of the two chefs they employed on hand in the house who cooked everything. They never even had to put the kettle on for tea! Anyway, the sink had two teacups in it, and two spoons, no saucers. I expect Cavenagh will make his usual cup of tea, and leave. I doubt that he will even wash up, as there are six cups in that set.”

“I think he uses the bathroom, too,” I whispered, remembering the grubby hand towel, “l think we can find out who he is and his criminal history from the fingerprints on a cup, especially if we have several cups, we are bound to find one good print from them.”

She grinned, “So all we need do is hide, whether he has a gun or not, and we’ll get him anyway, without putting ourselves in danger.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me.”

While we stood there, quietly behind the third bedroom door, Mary flicked through her husband’s diary.

“He never uses it as a diary as such,” she whispered, “but as a calendar of future appointments, film schedules, etc. it was useful as a reminder so he wouldn’t miss anything important ... it looks like he ticks things off when done, or crosses appointments out when they are cancelled or rescheduled. Wait —”

She paused, and we listened, as we heard Cavenagh come up the stairs, we presumed, heading for the lavatory, as was his presumed habit.

But he stopped outside, between both the bathroom and the small bedroom doors.

Without warning, there was a crash as he kicked our door in, which flew inward towards me.

Mary behind me screamed.

The door flew open and hit my artificial foot. The door seemed to bounce back off my solid foot and almost slammed shut again, as I saw a right hand coming through the door opening with a revolver gripped in it.

I threw my whole weight behind the closing door and it caught the outstretched hand between door and door jamb with a bone-crushing crack!

This time it was Cavenagh that screamed, and there was a loud report as the revolver went off with a mighty bang!

I wrenched the door open, to see the smoking gun fall from the attacker’s senseless fingers, the hand hanging sickeningly unnatural at what was certainly a broken or dislocated wrist, Cavenagh reeling back against the toilet door.

“I caution you to stand still, Cavenagh.” I warned him as I stepped forward, “I am arresting you in connection with the disappearance of the owner-occupier of this flat, Mr Bradford Gold, late Flight Lieutenant in the RAF...”

Before I could continue with the rest of the caution, about him saying anything that might be taken down and used in evidence, he retaliated by swinging his left hand in an arc towards my head.

I could hear the mechanism of the spring-loaded flick knife, and my eyes saw the six-inch blade unwind, that he venomously intended to hack at me, yelling a frightening bellow from his snarling lips, as the blade swept towards me.

I tried to halt my forward momentum and roll back on my heels to avoid the wicked steel from slicing through my throat, and barely managed to evade enough of his lunge so that only the tip nicked the edge of my chin.

Suddenly, Cavenagh’s face disappeared, his forehead exploding like a soft-boiled egg hit overzealously by a careless heavy teaspoon. Blood and brains fountained from a neat hole as near dead centre of his forehead as made no difference, his eyes changing from a look of total fury to abject shock, and then to utter resignation as the power of sight, thought, and the ability to even stand up any longer abandoned him.

Almost immediately after this chain of events registered with me, the deafening thunderclap roar of the gun exploded next to my left ear, and the rest of the scene played out like I imagined one of Brad Gold’s early silent movies would.

Just as the lifeless body slumped to the floor, I twisted my head to see Mary, gripping Cavenagh’s own discarded revolver in both her tiny hands at the end of her outstretched arms, her left eye closed as her right eye sighted along the barrel to the point on the bathroom door, now covered in blood, brains and skull bone fragments from the back of what had once been Cavenagh’s head.

She opened her left eye and calmly lowered the revolver, using a thumb to gently ease the hammer back in place safely without discharging the weapon for an unnecessary second firing.

I lip-read, “Sorry,” she said, without remorse or any discernible passion, “I know you wanted to question him, but Daddy taught me to always shoot snakes in the head.”

I didn’t hear the policeman’s whistle, summoned by one of the barber’s customers, who ran up and down Denmark Hill Road until he saw a constable on patrol on his bike. Nor did I hear Mary call out to them, “Upstairs!”, or hear them charge up the stairs in their heavy hob-nailed boots.

All I could hear was the deafening ringing in my ears.

I saw the policeman burst into the flat’s master bedroom, where we had moved for comfort’s sake immediately after the shooting, no doubt after he’d stepped over the grisly corpse in the hallway, truncheon at the ready, and Gus the barber following him close behind. Both were confronted by the scene of Mary and I sitting calmly on the edge of the double bed.