‘Miss?’ said Pieman, concerned now.
Without responding she turned, pulled open the door behind her and fled down the corridor. It had looked like Occleshaw was about three cars down. She tried to keep her walk slow and steady; if anyone came out of their rooms right now to investigate the reason for their unscheduled stop she wanted to be nothing but another passenger with a full bladder. There was a crashing sound from the far end of the corridor as the door burst open. Barely pausing, Jane turned, pushed down on the latch of the bedroom closest to her and let herself in, praying that the bedroom would be empty.
It wasn’t. Seated in the day chair, still dressed in the same black suit and expensive-looking silk tie with its muted pattern of tiny black doves on a field of midnight blue was the man she’d run into in the corridor much earlier in the night. He was reading what appeared to be a biography of Mendelssohn and smoking a cigarette.
‘You like music?’ he said pleasantly, as though it was the most normal thing in the world to have women burst into his bedroom at three thirty in the morning.
‘Well enough,’ she said. The closest she’d come to live music in the last few years was seeing the band singer Doris Day smooching with Cary Grant in the Brown Derby. The train lurched, heaved and lurched again. There was the strident, brain-rattling shriek of its whistle and the train began to move. Jane’s heart sank; any vague idea she’d had about sneaking back to her compartment, collecting her suitcase and somehow getting off the train undetected disappeared with the blowing of the whistle.
‘I am reading about Fingal’s Cave,’ said the man in the blue tie, as though that explained everything. He had an accent but she was damned if she could place it. ‘It’s in Scotland you see,’ he explained, seeing her confusion. ‘Mendelssohn went to Scotland, the island of Staffa in particular. He thought that the cave was a magical spot, deeply spiritual, and he created his famous overture based on his impression of the place; I tend to agree with his assessment, having been there quite often, although I do not have Mendelssohn’s belief in the supernatural.’ He paused. ‘Have you been? To Staffa I mean?’ His English was clear, precise and well enunciated, almost professorial, but she had the sense that the words were thought first in a different language entirely before he spoke.
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘That is most unfortunate.’
He took a puff on his cigarette and smiled up at her. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so you seem somewhat agitated. Are you in some sort of trouble?’
‘No,’ lied Jane. She turned from the man and cracked open the door. Directly in front of her, no more than a handspan away from the door, she could see the back of Occleshaw’s overcoat as he gave orders to one of the uniformed constables.
‘Find the man; he’ll be in a major’s uniform. Just as likely he’ll be in that damn woman’s bed. I want them both and quickly.’
‘Yes sir,’ replied the constable. He gave a quick salute and took off down the corridor. Occleshaw turned slightly, looking back the way he’d come and Jane could see every detail of his features, from the bristly white hairs growing out of his overlarge ear to the large, dirt-filled pores and broken veins on his nose. His lips thinned almost into non-existence, his jawline hardened and then he turned away, moving off in the same direction as the constable had gone, leaving a faintly sour smell behind him.
Jane turned. The man was still watching her, a faintly amused expression on his face. ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.
‘For what?’ said the man. ‘I did nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘You were awake,’ said Jane with a grin. ‘That was enough for me.’ She paused. ‘Mendelssohn was a German composer, right?’ she asked, something about the man nagging at her memory.
‘That’s right,’ said the man. ‘He’s best known for bringing Bach back into favour in the early 1800s. He conducted St Matthew’s Passion for the first time since Bach’s death, you see. Also, of course, he is famous for his Scottish Symphony; “Fingal’s Cave” being the overture.’ The man made a strange sighing noise, then frowned and stubbed out his cigarette in the chair’s ashtray. ‘Unfortunately, at least for the German people who are no longer permitted to listen to him, he was a Jew.’
‘Right,’ said Jane, feeling oddly embarrassed by the controlled venom in the man’s voice. ‘Anyway, thanks again.’ Her memory still itched but now was not the time to scratch it.
‘The pleasure was mine, believe me, miss; I’m glad I could do you the favour of my insomnia.’
Jane gave him a quick smile, turned again and opened the door a little wider. Occleshaw had disappeared and there was no sign of any of his constables; she slipped out through the half-open door, shutting it softly behind her and headed quickly back to her room, not quite sure what her next move was going to be. She was almost at her door when the train suddenly lurched again and then rolled to a stop. From all the trips she’d made with her father, and all the questions she’d asked in that half-remembered time, she was pretty sure she knew what was going on; the train had gone up the line to its watering point. Probably taking on more coal as well. They wouldn’t be here long; no more than five minutes or so at best. She’d have to hurry if she wanted to slip away in time. She turned the door latch on bedroom D and stepped inside, safe at last, at least for the moment.
The woman sitting in her chair appeared to be in her mid-thirties, dark hair done in a double-twist braid mostly hidden by a worn-looking brown felt cloche hat. She was also wearing a dark blue cardigan with one cuff unravelling, a grey blouse with a badly matched and not-very-well-fitted grey skirt that fell just below the knees, sagging off-white knee socks and an oddly youthful pair of bucko saddle shoe two-tone pumps with a low, thick heel, the kind they advertised in Life magazine as having ‘your footprint in leather.’ Over all of this she was wearing a wool overcoat thrown over her shoulder like a cape. Her left eye was wide open and misty blue; her right eye was missing, almost as though someone had jammed a pencil directly into the pupil and then stirred it around, destroying what was left of the eye. Liquid had dripped down her cheek like tears and congealed there but there was almost no blood. She was very dead.
Jane came very close to screaming. Instead, she stepped into the room, turned and closed the door, throwing the latch as she did so. She looked around the room; it had been tossed – her suitcase was overturned on the bed and her clothes had been thrown around, and the little cupboard for her shoes was hanging open in the bulkhead above the sink. Not that there was anything to find. Her mind was racing and she tried desperately to slow it down; now was no time for panic but what the hell else was she supposed to do when finding a body in her bedroom?
You’re supposed to think.
Whoever the woman was, Occleshaw would turn it around and put it on her, which you really couldn’t blame him for since she was in Jane’s room; on the other hand, it would take her out of the game entirely. God only knew how long they’d have her in custody while all this was sorted out. There was no way she was going to explain this away easily, which was probably the reason for dumping the body here in the first place. Somehow they’d gotten to Dundee and now her.
She wanted a smoke but there wasn’t time. She stared down at the dead woman slumped in the chair. Swallowing hard she stepped forward, knelt down and went through the woman’s coat pockets. Nothing to identify her and no handbag and right now she didn’t have any time left to try to figure out who she was and why she was in her bedroom.
There was only one question: cut and run or stay and face the music? If Occleshaw had ever given her cause to think that he was a reasonable human being there might have been a choice but as it was she barely hesitated. Her own shoulder bag was lying open on the bed. Grabbing it she stuffed the contents back inside and then flipped off the overhead light at the control panel above the sink and edged in behind the shadowy lump of the woman in the chair. Using both hands she caught hold of the felt window covering and pulled hard, peeling it
away from the window. She stared out into the darkness and found herself facing a low dry stone wall with a sign in front of it:
MCSEVENEY’S HALT
Behind the wall were the blank silhouettes of several small buildings huddled together. Storage sheds? Beyond that was the deeper darkness of a low hill, sweeping up and away to the right, its lower flanks thick with scrub brush and clumps of barren rock. Not very inviting.
Like the windows on most English trains, this one opened with a small push latch on its upper edge. Jane pressed it with her thumb and pulled hard, dragging the window down in the frame with an alarming squeak and letting in a blast of frigid night air. Much time wandering about in that and she’d freeze to death. She turned, swallowed hard and tugged at the coat that lay across the dead woman’s shoulders. It came off easily enough and Jane shrugged into it. Outside, in the corridor, she could hear voices approaching; she was running out of time. She swung one leg up, balancing herself for a painful moment, then swung the other up just as the train ground into motion once again. Her precarious perch jerked out from under her and she found herself pitched out into the darkness, arms outstretched in a clumsy fall. She landed hard, the wind knocked out of her for a few moments, her hands lacerated and torn by the razor-sharp clinkers and sharp stones that made up the raised roadbed for the tracks. Behind her the wheels of the sleeping coach clattered over the sleepers as the train gathered speed and pulled away. Staggering to her feet, head spinning, she tucked her pain-lashed hands into the armpits of the dead woman’s overcoat, half falling and half sliding down the side of the roadbed, making for an opening in the stone wall she could faintly see just beyond and to the right of the sign. She made her way through the opening then dropped out of sight on the far side of the wall, her back against the rough stone as she caught her breath and the train passed on and out of sight, swallowed by the night.
Chest still heaving and barely recovered from her fall, Jane clambered to her feet and looked around cautiously, listening for the slightest clue that her presence had been noticed. Ahead of her a narrow track led down to a small yard servicing the sheds she’d seen from the train. Their doors were tightly shut, large padlocks hanging from substantial iron hasps. Turning, she saw a coal chute poking out of a windowless storage container and a stumpy-looking water tower beside it. There didn’t seem to be any human habitation anywhere; apparently the train driver and his fireman did the work themselves.
Wrapping the dead woman’s coat tightly around her against the biting cold she listened again. There was nothing to hear except the moaning of the wind across the dark, distant moors. She shivered and wondered if jumping off the train had been such a good idea after all. Jane peered into the darkness beyond the little group of sheds. Beyond there was nothing but a rolling, empty landscape of scrub brush and heather stretching into the distance like an endless, frozen sea. There was no road or any sign of civilisation anywhere. Visions of Basil Rathbone and a bumbling Nigel Bruce as Watson stumbling across the fog-wreathed burns and braes of Dartmoor chasing after phosphorescent mastiffs came uneasily to mind and, more realistically, getting lost and falling into a bog and being trapped in quicksand-like ooze or simply dying of cold and hunger.
Not to mention being found by the wrong people. Occleshaw was one thing; whoever had killed the woman in her bedroom was another. Being on the open moors would be much the same as being a fly crawling across a dead-flat table. Given a good pair of binoculars, or worse, a small aeroplane, of which there were still a few around, and she’d be a sitting duck. Bird or insect didn’t matter; in the desperate dark of night the open countryside was a death trap all by itself, in broad daylight it was crazy.
Jane looked back along the railway tracks. A quarter of a mile away she could see the darker, regular shapes of Selkirk’s train station and nearby high street, flat black against a background of purple sky. Nowhere to hide there and no way in or out of town without a good chance of being seen, especially after all the excitement caused by Occleshaw and his men. No. The only way was forward, following the direction the train had taken. She buttoned the overcoat up to her neck, turned up the narrow collar and adjusted the strap of her bag, settling it more comfortably around her shoulder. Stuffing her hands into her coat pockets she climbed up the gravel roadbed, stepped onto the tracks and began to walk.
Chapter Fifteen
It was just about the oldest trick in the book and, like a fool, he’d fallen for it. Mallinson had kept him mesmerised with boredom all the way to York, apparently convinced that, because he’d been to California ten years back and had read his father’s name in the L.A. Times, they were bosom buddies or something. The white-capped MP who came into the lounge car was actually a relief, so much so that he never questioned the fact that the military policeman knew where he was on the train or what he looked like, even though they’d never seen each other before.
If he’d really had his wits about him he would have wondered how the MPs, or anyone else for that matter, knew he was on the train at all, since the only person who knew was Polly Darling, his ATS secretary back at Swan Hill, and it was doubtful she would have told anyone or that anyone would have known enough to ask, with the possible exception of Occleshaw or his own boss, at Charlton House.
The clincher had come when the MP had quietly informed him that there was a driver waiting outside the station with an urgent message from Brigadier General Hedrick. It was exactly the right thing to say; Dundee had gone along as obediently as a buck private in boot camp, never questioning the validity of any of it. The MP led him out of the station onto a blacked-out street beside the dark, hulking station. Directly in front of him on the far side of the narrow street was an ancient stone wall a good twenty feet high that was probably as old as King Arthur and off to his left there was the sound of lapping water and a faint booming as the hollow hulls of small boats or tethered barges rapped gently together in the chill breeze blowing down from the north.
The street was deserted. With the blackout in place, it was also perfectly dark. The only car in sight was a brownish green deuce-and-a-half Dodge ambulance. For the first and only time, Dundee hesitated. The ambulance was definitely wrong. He tapped the MP on the shoulder.
‘I thought you said there was a message?’
The MP smiled wearily in the darkness, one hand resting easily on the lanyarded automatic holstered on his belt. ‘Had to hitch a ride, sir. Only vehicle available.’
Which was nonsense of course; no divisional commander would let an emergency vehicle be used to relay a JAG message, no matter how high-level, and the MP would almost surely be riding a motorcycle. The MP frowned, reading the look on Dundee’s face.
‘What the hell is going on, soldier?’
Suddenly the MP was standing right beside him, the muzzle of the .45 pressing into his jacket just under the rib cage. The first of a series of questions began forming in Dundee’s head, such as, at what point did military cops start carrying .45 automatics and not the standard-issue S&W revolver?
‘Just walk over to the back of the ambulance and open the doors, sir. It’ll all be explained to you.’
‘If it’s all going to be explained, then why the pistol?’
‘Just do as you’re fucking told, sir, or I’ll put a pill in you that’ll blow your fucking balls into the wall over there, capice?’ There was the vague accent of the Bowery in the man’s voice or maybe it was Brooklyn. Dundee wasn’t sure.
‘You know what the penalty is for kidnapping?’ asked Dundee, trying hard to remember if there was such a crime on the Army books. The answer was a dig into his side with the automatic.
‘Shut the fuck up, Major, and maybe you’ll stay alive a little longer.’ The MP gripped Dundee’s elbow with his right hand and guided him towards the rear of the ambulance. He tensed as they approached the doors, realising that this was his last chance; once inside the truck his expectations of escape were zero. If all of this was Charlie Danby’s doing, his chances of gettin
g out alive were equally low.
He reached up with his right hand to grab the twist handle on the rear door of the ambulance, then turned on his heel, wrenching his elbow out of the MP’s grip, trying to dig it into the man’s side, catching him off guard. Before he was halfway through his turn he smelled something sweet and burning cover his mouth as someone came out of the darkness beside the truck and pressed an ether-sodden surgical sponge over his mouth and nose. He struggled but it was no use; his legs wobbled and gave out at the knee. As the ambulance doors swung open like the mouth of a monster waiting to swallow him up, the last conscious feeling he had was the MP’s hand between his shoulder blades pushing him forward into the black interior of the vehicle.
He woke up with smells of tar and hemp in his nostrils, his cheek pressed against damp wood and the sound of burbling water in his ear. He could feel a steady thumping vibration through the wood against his cheek. As consciousness returned he vaguely understood that he was on a boat. He sat up, cracking his forehead against an overhead strut. He stretched out his hand and immediately became aware of two things: he wasn’t bound and the space he occupied was very small and curved on both sides, with very little room between himself and the bulkhead above him. His knees were bent, feet pressing against a wall or a door, also wood and leaking a faint trace of light. From the rough feeling against his skin and the shape of the hull on either side of him, he had been stuffed into a rope locker in the forward end of the boat. One thing was sure: he wasn’t at sea. There was no sense of the ocean’s power around him; they were going quite slowly. A river or a canal seemed more likely.
He sat up slowly, moving carefully to keep from banging his head a second time. He eased himself forward, twisting himself around until his face was turned to the rope locker hatch. It was roughly made from old timber, three planks wide. He shifted around quietly until his eye was against the narrow space between two of the slabs of wood.
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