Chapter 17: In Who Can We Trust?

RAWLINGS the driver was waiting outside for us. I did hesitate, because he had made a couple of mistakes already today, to my detriment, but he attempted to disarm us with an uncertain smile as he opened the rear door for Mary. Probably the smile he wore was more for Mary than for me. I supposed that I could hardly blame him for that.

I ordered Rawlings to drive us directly to New Scotland Yard.

We drove away from the Hospital and down through Smithfields, now empty of butchers and customers as it was getting so late in the afternoon. But instead of steering the police car right at the Barbican and westward towards Westminster and New Scotland Yard, he turned left and drove eastwards towards Tower Hamlets.

Mary was unconcerned, not knowing London at all and was still talking directly to me about the Smithfield Market, which apparently even mid-west ranchers had heard legend of.

Because I was concentrating on her lips, I didn’t notice until we drove past St Paul’s, down New Change and turned into Cannon Street, that I realised we were traveling east instead of west.

“Hey, Rawlings,” I leaned forward and said over the shoulder of the driver, “I wanted to go on to the Yard,” and leaned over further to try and see his lips move in reply.

“Inspector Cummings ain’t back at the Yard, Guv. He told us earlier. He said I wus to bring you to where he would be, as soon as you an’ Miss la Mare wus ready to go, that is.”

“I am not sure I want to see Cummings, I would rather go to New Scotland Yard and speak to Cummings’ boss.”

“That ain’t a good idea, Guv, after all, it’s a Sat’day, an’ there won’t be none o’ the senior officers there today.”

“Well, that’s where I want to go, Rawlings, so please turn the car around at the next turning. Look, we’re just coming up to Queen Victoria Street.”

“I got me orders, Guv, so I’m takin’ yer both ter see me boss.”

“Well, Rawlings, I told you that I don’t want to see Cummings right now, so I’m giving you a counter order, take us to New Scotland Yard now, man.”

“Bugger that fer a game o’ soldiers,” he said, accelerating up Cheapside, “I’m followin’ the orders wot I got, see!”

“Rawlings, I may be retired, but I still outrank Cummings by a considerable degree, and the likelihood is that he will be suspended over this and you won’t want to be suspended along with him, will you?”

“I ain’t stoppin’ mate, you can’t order me about, you’re nothin’ but a washed up old gimp.”

“So, you won’t stop by my orders, is that correct?”

“Yeah, you got it, mate, I won’t stop and that’s about that.”

I tried to grab both of his ears, but he managed to twist away and I lost the slight hold that I had managed on his right one, but I was able to keep a grip on one of his ears, the left, and I viciously twisted it up in a clockwise direction.

“Ow! You bastard!” he cried, adding what assumed were expletives, Mary told me later the gist of what he said that I couldn’t hear.

Then, as I pulled his head up, and I could make him out to say something

“I’ll flamin’ well get you fer this, I will!”

He shook me off and hunched himself over the steering wheel trying to get as far away from me, reaching over the back of his seat, as he could.

“You stop and get out and I’ll stop twisting your ear.” I retorted.

“No! Let me go or we’ll surely crash!” he snarled words to that effect.

I twisted his left ear harder, forcing his chin up and head back, then grabbed his right ear too and twisted that one vigorously anti clockwise, forcing his head up so he couldn’t see where he was going any more, forcing him slow down.

“Fuck!” he shouted, “Le’go, or you’ll be for it, I’ll bloody well do fer you!” he threatened.

Then tried to nut me in the face with the back of his head, but I moved back and pulled him further back into his driver’s seat.

“You wait an’ see,” he shouted, “I’ll see you tortured until you’re good’n’dead and as fer the lady, I am gonna have fun with her after she’s nice an’ compliant once she’s been done a few times by me boss. If she’s good, maybe we’ll spare ‘er ‘ide, an’ use ‘er as a workin’ girl.”

This rant I got off Mary later.

His head came up even more and then I found I could get an arm round his throat and haul him back, but he held onto the steering wheel and pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator, the car careening down the street, narrowly missing oncoming cars in the gloom of twilight.

Then I changed tactic. I pushed him forward until we both hovered over the steering wheel.

Then, still with an arm locked around his throat, I threw myself onto the back seat with as much force as I could muster.

Our combined mass, concentrated on his neck, meant he had to release his hands on the wheel or surely suffer a broken neck, meaning paralysis or death.

Once he had let go of the wheel, I was able to drag him over the back of the seat. I dropped him onto the floor in the back of the moving car and furiously hit him with both my fists until he was unconscious.

Meanwhile, Mary leapt over into the passenger seat, slid across into the now vacant driver’s seat and stopped the car. Miraculously, we didn’t hit anything head on, but we did scrape a couple of parked cars along the way, slowing us down considerably. Fortunately, the streets were deserted of pedestrians by now, the shops having long sold out of their meagre stocks of wartime rations this late on a Saturday afternoon.

Then I hauled the unconscious Rawlings out of the car and opened up the tiny boot. I untied and took off his necktie and started to tie up his hands with it. As I did so, he suddenly woke up, leaped at me and we tussled again on the ground. He was soon free of the tie and discarded it to leave his fists free to thump mw with.

Calmly, Mary took up the tie from the ground and, out of the corner of my eye as we wrestled for supremacy, I could see her tie a loop in the end.

“Do you mind, Edgar?” she asked sweetly, as she tapped me on the shoulder, and I think she said something like, “but I think I’ve got this one covered.”

It was the reverse of a ‘Gentleman’s Excuse Me’ that you get at a dance hall. It felt such an odd request, but then the lady had surprised me at every other turn so far since we met, so I didn’t immediately reject the notion out of hand.

“Really?” I asked, as Rawlings and I had appeared to reach an impasse. We were grappling each other without either of us getting a firm enough grip to dominate the other. Mary nodded that she was really sure.

“All right,” I said and quickly let him go, while I rolled away.

Without hesitation, Mary fell on him, with the loop of the tie in her mouth. She sat on his hip with one knee pressed into his back and the other tight up behind his thighs, so he couldn’t exert any leverage to break free. Somehow, she managed to grab his right wrist and put the loop of the tie over and pulled it tight, before using her weight to press the limb to the ground.

I think Rawlings was as shocked by the way the turn of events was going as I was observing it. At the same time she pressed his wrist to the ground, she grabbed the calf of his left leg, which was closest to the ground, and pulled it up to cross the right wrist, taking his right ankle with it, then wrapped the tie around both ankles once and wrist and ankles again with her right hand, freeing up her left hand, to pull the tie through the loop and hold the three limbs tightly tied together.

Then she leaned into him, so he possibly couldn’t move an inch, pulled up the left wrist where his arm was uselessly pinned by their combined weight to the ground, and looped the tie round one last time, pulled the end through the loop and held it tight. His four limbs were completely hog-tied. And all it took was a couple of seconds. All her movements had been calm, measured and inexorable, almost effortless.

“Remarkable!” I said, and I really meant it. I had never seen anything like it.

“Yeah, I had to learn how to do that before they even let me go to school. The ranch work always came first in our family. But woe-betide if’n once I started my schoolin’, that I ever fell behind in my studies!”

Together we picked the driver up and threw him into the small boot of the car as if he was light as a feather and I slammed the lid down on him. We both moved around the opposite sides of the vehicle, me towards the driving seat, and she towards the normal American driving side. We both sat in together at the same time.

“Are you able to drive?” she asked, “because I can drive if you wish.”

“No, I’ll drive,” I smiled, “I’m not sure how you would cope driving on our side of the road, if right from the start you’ve automatically chosen the wrong driver’s side!”

“I know,” she giggled, “As the principle film star on set I generally get driven around everywhere, except home on the ranch, where we have a jeep and a couple of trucks to pick up supplies and don’t encounter any traffic on the way to town and back. Mostly we rely on the horses to get around the ranch. So, do you often drive around London?”

“Never, to be honest. I first learned to drive in the Army Reserve, almost eighteen years ago, but had forgotten most of it by the time I had a refresher course about nine or ten years ago. The police went into vehicles in a big way at the time, and the detectives all had to learn how to drive. I never found my artificial foot any problem, once I had mastered hill starts using the clutch with my left foot.”

“Well, where are we going now? New Scotland Yard?”