Gunner Kelly Page 10

  IV

  THE BURNITURE REMOVAL van lurched abruptly left and then right in quick succession, following the driver’s scripted indecision, and then suddenly juddered to a stop.

  Benedikt stood up in the darkness and applied his eye to the narrow opening which had been left for him in the little sliding hatch in the partition which separated the cargo space from the driver’s cab. The headlights blazed ahead undipped, out across the darkly rippling water of the ford, illuminating the road ahead, and the telephone box, and the overhanging trees.

  “You there?” The driver didn’t turn round.

  “Yes.” He divided the gap between eye and ear.

  “We’re at the water’s edge. I’m going to switch on the cab light so I can look at the map. Then I’ll get the torch, and get out and look for a signpost. Okay?”

  “Yes.” The repetition of orders was unnecessary, but it was reassuringly exact. It wasn’t Checkpoint Charlie they were going through, but there was still no room for error.

  He ducked down into his own darkness again, and looked at his watch. It was 2242 exactly—three minutes to the police car.

  The engine noise ceased suddenly, and a thin bar of yellow light filled the gap. For a few moments the map rustled on the other side of the partition, and then the light went out.

  “There’s someone out there—” The driver hissed the words “—I can see a torch … I’m getting out.”

  The cabin-door clicked, and there was a scrape of boots on metal as the driver swung himself out. The van shuddered slightly.

  “Aw—fuck!” exclaimed the driver angrily.

  Benedikt raised his ear to the edge of the gap, and was rewarded with the sound of a splash. The driver swore again. Cautiously Benedikt turned his head, just in time to catch the lancing beam of a torch directed from the other side of the water towards the side of the van.

  “Are you arl-roight there?” The question came across the water from the source of the torch-beam, in a rich peasant accent.

  “No, I’m fucking not, mate!” The driver answered irritably, in his own townsman’s accent. “I’m up to my fucking knees in fucking water—that’s what I am!”

  “Arrr … You didn’t ought to ‘ave stopped there.” The voice was unsympathetic. “You want to get out of there—you’re in the water there, you are.”

  The driver didn’t swear in answer to that, but emitted a throaty sound of exasperation. There came another splashing sound, and then a stamping of boots on tarmac.

  “Where you goin‘, then?” the voice challenged.

  The stamping stopped. “Where the fuck am I, mate?”

  “Where d’you want to be?”

  The driver swore. “Not bloody ‘ere, I don’t think. ’Old on mo‘, an’ I’ll tell yer … Norton somethin‘ … ’old on … Norton Down—The Old Vicarage, Norton Down—name of Winterbotham … Major E. H. Winterbotham, The Old Vicarage, Norton Down.”

  “Norton Down?” The voice echoed the name incredulously.

  “Yeah. Major Winterbotham—you know ‘im?”

  “This aren’t the way to Norton Down.” Scorn had replaced incredulity.

  Benedikt looked at his watch again. The police were due any second.

  “Fourth turning, they told me. Down the hill till the road forks, an‘ it’s signposted there, to the right.” There was a pause. “Left goes to Cucklesford St Mary an’ right to Norton Down— bloody stupid names!” Another pause. “But I can’t see any bloody sign!”

  “Arr … nor you can! Because there ain’t none.” The peasant belittled the townsman. “You took the wrong road— that’s what you don. Cucklesford St Mary an‘ Norton Down’s on t’other side.”

  The driver grunted helplessly. “Can I get through from ‘ere? Where am I?”

  “Na … If I was goin‘ to Norton Down from wherever you come from I wouldn’t start from ’ere. What you want t’do is to turn round an‘ go back where you come from … an’ then—”

  The fierce headlights of the police car and the sound of its engine arrived almost simultaneously, to cut off these extraordinary directions in mid-flow. They must have coasted down the ridge from the main road to arrive so silently, with the kink in the final approach, and the trees themselves, cutting off the warning of their arrival until the final bend.

  But now the speaker on the other side of the water, who had been hidden behind his own torch-beam outside the van’s headlights, was suddenly caught in the glare as the police car pulled alongside the van, outside Benedikt’s vision.

  He heard a car door slam.

  “What’s this, then?” It was strange how the official voice was the same the world over—confidently suspicious and suspiciously confident. “Is that you over there, Blackie Nabb? What are you doing here?”

  “Arr … Mr Russell?” The voice parried the question. “Is that Mr Russell?”

  “You know me, Blackie. Why aren’t you in the Eight Bells?”

  “The Eight Bells?”

  Now, there was a difference, from the world over, thought Benedikt: there might be suspicion both ways here, between Mr Russell and the man over the water … but there was no fear in either of them—and—what was a greater difference—there was no hatred either!

  “The Eight Bells, Mr Russell?” False incomprehension filled the question. “But it’s gone closing time—an‘ I’ve been over to my sister’s, at Cassell’s, anyway… So what would I be doin’ at the Bells, then?”

  The other police-car door slammed.

  “What’s this, Russell?” A senior-officer voice, not so much confident as super-confident, and alien for that reason, cut in. “Who is this?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Mr Russell answered his officer evenly, also without fear. “But that’s Mr Nabb over there, who runs the taxi-service in the village.”

  “Oh, yes?” The senior officer sounded as though he had heard of ‘Mr Nabb’. “And where’s his taxi?”

  No answer came from over the water, and Benedikt began at last to understand the dimensions of the drama to which he was a witness, which Chief Inspector Andrew had enlisted to serve Colonel Butler’s purpose.

  “I don’t think he’s on duty tonight, sir. It looks like he’s visiting his sister, Mrs Tanner… She’s married to Mr Tanner, who’s manager at Cassell’s Farm, sir.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  Benedikt’s dislike of the officer voice—the inspector voice— blossomed with his understanding: it had suited Colonel Butler’s plan that the local police were busy in this part of Dorset, leaning on after-hours drinking in public houses, which was in contravention of Britain’s archaic licensing laws—it had suited him that the Eight Bells in Duntisbury Royal, although not a primary target, had been one of the subsidiary targets to which Chief Inspector Andrew with his special contacts could divert one particular attack at short notice.

  What he had not understood until now was that, while the inspector wanted to catch the Eight Bells regulars drinking happily after hours, the local constable—Mr Russell—had no such ambition … Because Mr Russell, at the very first opportunity, had warned Mr Nabb what he was about, and close to a convenient phone-box.

  “Oh, yes?” The Inspector had made some of those same connections, if not all of them, by the sound of his voice. “And who are you, then?”

  He had come back to the van-driver, realised Benedikt.

  “Eh?” The van-driver sounded not one bit abashed by the question. “What the fuck is that meant to mean—who am I?”

  He had to adjust, thought Benedikt: the Inspector must know what he was doing, and this was all for Mr Nabb’s benefit—‘Blackie’ Nabb’s benefit—if he was on duty at the ford, as they had expected someone to be on duty here, as the first trip-wire in Duntisbury Chase’s defence system.

  But the corollary of that was that the Inspector must behave as he would have behaved in real life—so that ‘Blackie’ Nabb should react in the same way, to warn the Chase of the arrival of the police within that same
defence system.

  But … in the meantime … the van-driver had to react also—and this was England—rural England in the 1980s—and that in itself was educational.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Doing?” The van-driver echoed the verb insolently. “I wish to fuck I knew, mate!”

  “There’s no need to use that sort of language with me—not if you want to stay out of a cell tonight.” The Inspector remained coolly unmoved by the insolence, he merely pitched his voice so that it could be heard on the other side of the water. “I’ve got a warrant-card in my pocket… and we’ve had enough burglaries round here for me to inquire what you’re doing in these parts at this hour of the night. So you can argue the toss with me, and I can put the constable here behind the wheel of your vehicle and take you back to the nearest police station—if you like … And we can sort you out there.” Pause. “Or you can answer the question. Take your pick.”

  Two seconds—five seconds—

  “Well?”

  One second—

  “All right, guv‘!”

  “Well?” The repetition was lazy with dominance.

  “Worsdale, guv—Jack Worsdale … Easy Removals—you can ring my gaffer, Mr Page, if you don’t believe me—straight up!” This pause, thought Benedikt, covered a pointing finger at the phone-box, to support the surrender. “Takin‘ an upright grand—a grand pianer—to Major Sidebotham—Winterbotham … at Norton—Norton Down—The Old Vicarage, Norton Down.”

  “At this hour of night?”

  “There was an ‘old-up on the M3—on the Alton junction— wiv’ a tail-back …”

  Pause.

  “There was a crash on the M3, sir. Junction 5,” said Constable Russell, almost apologetically. “Early this evening. The road was blocked for nearly two hours.”

  “An‘ I ’ad a blow-out near Stockbridge.” The van-driver achieved a genuine whine. “Took me another hour—and they gave me the wrong direction then—”

  “All right!” The Inspector cut short the explanation. “Is the back locked?”

  “Locked, guv‘? Naow. There’s only the pianer in there—”

  “Russell. Go round the back and have a look inside … You stay here, where I can see you … and you over there—Mr Nabb, is it?—you stay where I can see you, too! I have business in Duntisbury Royal when I’ve dealt with this man and his vehicle.”

  Benedikt started to move.

  “What are you doing?” shouted the Inspector.

  Benedikt continued to move, past the blanket-covered, lashed-down object in the centre of the cargo-space.

  “Keep yer ‘air on—I ain’t goin’ anywhere. I’m jest goin‘ to phone the missus to tell ’er I’ll be late ‘ome.”

  Benedikt smiled to himself in the darkness. Whether he was on guard duty or not, Blackie Nabb had put two and two together satisfactorily, and was about to warn the Eight Bells of the impending after-hours raid.

  But meanwhile, the business of the night was beginning at last, because from outside, at the back of the van, there came the sound of the scrape and clunk of the locking-bar which secured the doors. He sank on to one knee beside the piano—it probably was a piano, and maybe Jack Worsdale was a van-driver, and the police really had intended to raid Duntisbury Royal to catch after-hours drinkers.

  His finger touched and ran along the rough bark—it felt like genuine tree-bark—which covered the Special Air Service’s cylinder, past the false branches—genuine plastic—until they felt the cord at the end, with its wrist-loop.

  One of the doors banged open and a bright torch-beam transfixed him.

  “Nothing in here, sir,” called the policeman. “Just the piano, it looks like—like he said. It’s all clear.”

  The policeman moved away, leaving the door open, sweeping the bushes with his torch.

  Now it had to be done quickly. It was all clear, and the policeman would have scouted round with his torch to make sure of that, in so far as it was possible. And Blackie Nabb was in the phone-box, and it was unlikely that they’d have more than one guard this far from the village.

  The cylinder was unnaturally heavy—heavy not because of its contents, but because it had to float correctly and unobtrusively, like a water-logged tree-trunk. But he was ready for its weight, and the van’s position—front wheels already in the water, within a metre of the footbridge alongside it—cut the distance he had to move to a minimum. Half a dozen noiseless steps took him into the water, and if he made any splash it was covered by the extra banging the policeman made as he closed up the van. Even before that had finished he had ducked down under the footbridge into the darkness and deeper water downstream, cradling the cylinder in his arms.

  The immediate need was to put distance between himself and the vicinity of the ford, in case Mr Nabb strayed round to the footbridge, for the reflected light from the headlights of the furniture van illuminated the pool that was scoured below the bridge by the flow from off the hard surface of the ford. But the action wasn’t as easy as the thought, for though the water took the weight of the cylinder from him, the thick mud of the river-bed sucked down his feet, holding him back.

  River—R. Addle—River Addle—the map had called the blue line which straggled along the margin of Duntisbury Chase. But a river it was not; perhaps in mid-winter, or when the spring floods rose, it might aspire to that description; but here, even in this deeper pool in the middle of a damp English summer, its mud and water between them could only submerge him to chest-height.

  His feet came free at last, and he was able to push forward, half-swimming, half-walking, in the wake of the cylinder, which had already begun to drift away on the sluggish current.

  At least the distances were miniature, though: a dozen noiseless strokes and trailing branches brushed his head as he reached the exit from the pool; and then, as utter darkness closed around him, he could already see a paler area ahead of him, like the night outside a tunnel, which marked the end of the woods surrounding the ford, and the beginning of the open fields through which the River Addle flowed, with only occasional willow-trees on its banks, until it reached the trees of the Roman villa site on the edge of the village.

  River, indeed! thought Benedikt contemptuously, as his feet sank into another shallow part of the bed of the ‘river’, and one of his hands touched the SAS cylinder, which had snagged on a tree-root—

  What am I doing here, encased in a wet-suit, crawling up a muddy English ditch like this towards an English village, for all the world as though I’m penetrating a high-risk Comecon installation, somewhere east of the line? It’s ridiculous!

  He pushed the cylinder aside and waded out into the open, beyond the last straggle of undergrowth. An image of the air photograph Colonel Butler had shown him reproduced itself in his brain: from this point he had perhaps a mile of river to negotiate, little more, along the valley bottom, although the road he had travelled a few hours before—the rolling English drunkard’s road—had meandered for twice that distance.

  What am I doing here?

  Herzner’s voice answered him: Whatever it is he wants you to do, within reason—do it. This has the smell of one of their domestic scandals, so it may be tricky … But Colonel Butler is a man of honour, as well as influence in high places. If we assist him he will not forget it …And Audley … Audley will either go to the very top or into the outer darkness—perhaps Audley and Butler together … one more Intelligence failure over here, and they are well-placed to pick up the pieces and take over. So you are in the nature of an investment, Schneider—a professional and political investment—

  Benedikt did not much like being an investment, the more so if there were politics involved, and most of all when someone as equivocal as Dr David Audley was involved in them. It would be better—or, at least, it would be simpler—to see himself as a loyal ally of an ancient comrade-in-arms … in the mud of the Addle stream now, but once in the mud of the Lasne, where the road to the field of Waterloo crossed it
, straining to get von Billow’s guns across to save Wellington’s army, with old Blücher’s challenge in his ears: Come on, lads! Would you have me break my word!

  Treading mud, he could see just above the banks of the Addle, across the fields on each side.

  Well, at least there was one thing he could do, which had nothing to do with being a loyal ally, even: he could see— literally see—how good the British image intensifiers were, courtesy of the SAS, as supplied to the Falklands reconnaissance groups!

  Well … they were good—they were really quite good, and almost as good as those on which he had trained—

  Good enough, anyway, to observe the herd of cows munching peacefully far away across the field to his right … and no hazards or obstacles in prospect except those designed to give the fox-hunters good practice, with not one yard of barbed-wire, which the riders hated as much as any infantryman.

  He pushed forward, keeping to the deepest centre of the stream, where he could almost swim. After a few strokes, the cord on his wrist tugged at his stroke, but a second tug freed the cylinder—that was how the plastic branches were designed: to look real, but to bend and give way as soon as extra pressure was exerted on them, to allow the ersatz tree-trunk to follow its master—

  It was easy. With the weak current behind him, and the water holding him up and taking the weight of the cylinder, he could make something like walking pace, with his head below the bank. At intervals, he stood up—always between the clumps of willows to which any inexperienced sentry would inevitably gravitate—but each sweep identified only animals … first cows, which took no notice of him, and later sheep, which bleated weakly and uneasily, as though they couldn’t quite remember the nights when the wolves had hunted their remote ancestors, but nevertheless hadn’t lost some dim frightening memory of long-extinct enemies, from which their loving guardians, the good shepherds, protected them all the way to the slaughter-house. But their warning protests were quickly silenced when he sank down into the stream and let himself drift by their wallows, careful only not to sample any of the fouled water.

  The River Addle—