Operation Nassau by Dorothy Dunnett Page A

distractedly. ‘It’s a palmetto Western.” But he’d got the point. He ran like a hound to the door in the cliff where I’d pointed, and in a trice had it open. In a moment more, he’d turned on the water.
    The man fell I should think about twelve feet when the sheet of spray hit him: the jets sprang from above and below, and interleaved in front of the gathering fall of straight water. From a fussing hiss, the falling gush began to set up a rumble. The man scrambled to his feet and, turning, began to climb on all fours.
    Stumbling, sliding; his clothes glossed like P.V.C. with the water, he scrambled across the smothering jets. The wall was high. We saw him drop back once; then he was over, and on to the staircase. He began to race up the dark steps.
    Johnson raised his gun steadily and took aim, and Trotter knocked it out of his hand. ‘If you murder without evidence, sir, you’re asking for trouble. He can’t fire his own gun. We can easily catch him.’
    It sounded simple. I saw the icy flash of bifocals, then Johnson without speaking flung himself at the steps, and we followed. Where his gun had rolled in the darkness was not immediately obvious but I took my time and found it before I followed, now far behind. Shadowed by the sheer wall of the gorge, the stairs were in complete blackness. It was only when I got to the top, not unpleased by the ease of my breathing, that I found Johnson and Trotter casting about helplessly in the roadway.
    The waiter had vanished.
    ‘He went that way,’ said Johnson. ‘Towards the fort, I think. Or what about that bloody great tower?’ For this tall white shaft with the cotton-reel top was now just beside us, its white and green light still sweeping the town. Behind it, lights showed from a row of low houses. On the other side of the road was the squat triangular shape of the old fort, its door closed. No one moved on its walls: the bare grass round the tower was empty of people. On the path in front of the tower lay a few spots of water.
    We stood and listened. There was no sound. ‘I wonder,’ said Johnson. ‘What sort of people live in those houses?’
    ‘Dahlia lives there,’ I said. ‘Dahlia is the little girl who works the lift in the water-tower.’ A thin child with two fuzzy pig-tails and a penchant for popcorn, who had already been through out-patients’ twice for the same thing. ‘She likes seamen and waiters,” I said. ‘But she has eleven brothers and sisters.’
    Johnson swerved from the houses and turned. ‘So she wouldn’t take him home. But she might hide him.’
    The beam swept round again, and I nodded. ‘The water-tower is closed to the public at 4.30,’ I said. ‘But she’d have a key. Shall I go and find her?’
    I had imagined he might want to question her. Instead, he took my remark as a further incentive to burglary.
    ‘No need,’ said Johnson. ‘I always carry a hairpin. It keeps my hairnet out of my eyes.’ And watched by Trotter and myself, he fiddled for a moment with the water-tower door. There was a click, and it swung slowly open.
    I think we all hesitated. Sergeant Trotter said, ‘It isn’t right, you know. We should call the police.’
    ‘We’ll call them when we find him,’ Johnson said. ‘As you pointed out, after the wet, his gun can’t likely be working. And hell, he did shoot at us. What’s more, he’s got my wallet, I think.’
    Trotter stared at him. ‘You mean he went to all that trouble to steal –‘
    ‘It had two thousand dollars in it,’ said Johnson simply. ‘So if you don’t mind, I mean to go in.’ And pushing wider the door, he entered the blackness within.
    The beams swept round as he did it, and a glow of reflected light lay on the paving just inside the door. The stone was spotted and blotched with dripped water, and the trail led round the turnstiles, past the elevator door and up the twisting stone steps which led to the top of the tower. For a moment there was silence. Then Johnson,