The Machine Gunners Read Online Free PDF

hanging overhead.
    "Made by the fighter that shot him down."
    "Wrong calibre. They're 7.62 millimetre. The RAF use .303."
    "Then the gunner shot through his own tail in a panic!"
    "The angle's impossible. Those holes were made when the machine gun was already detached from the plane. One of my beat-bobbies actually heard it happen, the night after the plane was shot down."
    "Why didn't he investigate?"
    "He didn't know what it was, and then the siren went. He thought it was part of the raid. I'm afraid he's not very bright."
    "You mean..."
    "Some bright kid's got a gun and 2000 rounds of live ammo. And that gun's no peashooter. It'll go through a brick wall at quarter of a mile."
    "Strewth!"
    "And it's some really well-organized kid, too. Finding it, going home for the saw, getting the gun home through the streets and hiding it where his parents can't find it. That takes some planning. That's not a primary kid, sir, that's a grammar-school boy."
    "You can't mean one of our boys..."
    Green gave a wry grin. "I know them, sir, and you know them. Primary-school kids can be tough and louts. But for real devilment give me a grammar-school boy gone wrong every time."
    "The Head's not going to like this."
    "He'll have to lump it. That's where you could help, sir."
    "Oh, thanks."
    "I wouldn't have asked, sir. But if they cut loose with that thing... they could kill twenty people without even knowing they'd done it."

5
    "Ey," said Cem, looking up from his potato irrigation scheme, "there was a police sergeant in to see the Head this morning. He saw Liddell, too."
    "Trouble for some," said Chas.
    "Perhaps Liddell's pawned the Alderman Bewick Chromium-Plated Cup for Effort!"
    "No such luck. Hey, do you think they're on to you-know-what?"
    "The way Boddser's shooting off his mouth, it'll be any moment now. What about you going down to Chirton Wood and having a check?"
    "Aw, it'll be all right for today."
    "That's what Julius Caesar thought on the Ides of March."
    "D'you think I ought to go and have a look, honestly?"
    "Yeah! Hey, Carrot-juice, can we borrow your bike this lunchtime?" He addressed a high-pitched scream to a very small first-year with ginger hair, across a dismal landscape of spilled water and melting, discarded peas.
    "Cost ya," said Carrot-juice, without stopping spooning in disgusting custard, his third helping.
    "Two empty cartridge cases, from a Spitfire?"
    "Betcha picked them up on the Home Guard Rifle Range."
    "No I didn't. My cousin's an RAF gun repairer. Cobber Kane gave them to him personally."
    "Cobber Kane's dead. He got shot down. Anybody knows that."
    "He gave them to my cousin the day he died."
    "Tripe, but I'll take them anyway, even if they are Home Guard."
    "Right."
    Cem pedalled off steadily on Carrot-juice's ancient Sunbeam Roadster. The saddle was so low that his knees seemed up round his ears. It felt a long, long way to Chirton Wood. When he got there he left the bike in a patch of stinging nettles, so that no one without gloves could pinch it. The wood looked deserted, but a great path had been carved in by rozzers' beetle-crushers. Cem knew he'd seen enough; knew he should go straight back to school, but he couldn't resist a peep.
    "Gotcher!" Two large hands grabbed him from behind.
    "Help, police, murder," screamed Cem, and kicked and struggled, even though he knew the voice was Fatty Hardy's. He went on screaming until two passing housewives stopped to stare, and Hardy's face grew red with embarrassment.
    "Sorry, constable, I thought you were the murderer." Fatty Hardy hated being called constable.
    "What murderer?"
    "The one who did the girl in, in these woods. The Polish fellah."
    Fatty Hardy's face betrayed a trace of doubt. "What Polish fellah?"
    "The soldier from the camp at Monkseaton, who strangled the WAAF here, Saturday night."
    "Who told you that?"
    "Woman in the chip-shop. That's why I came here, to look for clues. He done her in with her own silk stocking, didn't he? She was all blue