Three men darted out of the car. One, he thought, was Reiger. They ran for cover. Fenner got the middle man in his gun-sight and squeezed the trigger. The man staggered, tried to keep his balance, then fell on his face in the road. By that time the other two had darted into doorways. They began firing at the mouth of the alley, one with an automatic and the other with a Thompson. Fenner didn’t bother about the man with the automatic, but the Thompson bothered him a lot. The bullets chipped away the brickwork of the wall, and he had to crawl away from the opening as splinters of concrete made things dangerous.
Remembering the night on the boat, Fenner crawled further away. He wasn’t risking having a bomb tossed at him.
Someone called, “You better duck in here.”
He saw a door on his left open and a figure standing in the doorway. “Shut that door and get under cover,” he shouted. “Look lively.”
It was a woman who spoke. She said unemotionally, “Shall I ring for the cops?”
Fenner slid over to her. “Beat it, sister,” he said. “This is a private row. You stay indoors; you’re likely to get hurt standing there.” Just as he finished speaking a blinding flash and a violent explosion came in the mouth of the alley. A sudden rush of wind flung Fenner forward and he and the woman went over with a crash into the narrow passage of the house.
Fenner rolled over and kicked the front door shut. He said, “Wow! These guys’ve got bombs.”
The woman said with a quaver in her voice, “This joint won’t stand another like that. It’ll fall down.”
Fenner got unsteadily to his feet. “Let me into a front room,” he said quickly. He moved in the darkness where he thought a room ought to be, and stumbled over the woman, who was still sitting on the floor. She wound her arms round his legs and held him.
“Forget it,” she said shortly. “You start firing from my window and they’ll throw another bomb at you.”