During that second day of push he had some luck, though at first he was very frightened when the lorry pulled up a little ahead of him and the driver leaned out as the pram went past.
“Want a lift, mate? There’s room and plenty for the pram.”
Another Englishman, what luck! Hughes-Jones asked politely, “Where are you going, then?”
“Abergavenny. Then Gloucester.”
“By the Forest of Dean, is that?”
“Right. Any good?”
“It’ll do me well,” Hughes-Jones said. “Thank you very much.”
The driver got down and helped him shove the pram in the load-carrying section, currently empty. Or almost empty; there was a pile of sacking and empty cartons and other odds and ends. The pram with its carpeted remains was nicely secured with a length of rope to a ring-bolt by the lorry’s tail board and away they went. The driver, a talkative man, was glad of the company, he said, and they shared his sandwiches of cheese and tomato and ham. Very good they were; Hughes-Jones felt a lot better. He was so intent upon the enjoyment of his food that at first he didn’t hear what the lorry driver had said.
“Pardon?” he said, lips moving busily.
“In the papers. Bloke hopped the twig out of Russia.”
“Bloke, what bloke, then?”
“Dunno. Kolo something.”
“Really. He is in Britain, this person, is he?”
“Seems like. Here.” The driver reached by his right side and produced a newspaper. “Read for yourself, mate.”
In some agitation, Hughes-Jones read. And read his own name! Duw, that was a shock. A nasty one considering. The police might read it too. The paper said he was believed to be in Wales. He read on, wide-eyed: Kolotechin needed to get in touch with him though the paper didn’t say why. Hughes-Jones read right through the sensational news, no mention of Megan but front page stuff it was; he read every word and paid no attention to the driver, who talked on. In Abergavenny the lorry pulled into the yard of a warehouse to load some cased goods, and that was a very worrying time, but in the end all was well. Hughes-Jones was too panicky to get out and watch the pram, he mustn’t look too anxious about it, but after the loading the driver said it was all right and they drove on, bound now for Gloucester by way of Monmouth. Before Monmouth, still in Wales, Hughes-Jones asked to be set down; he didn’t want to risk the border, and he needed more trees and soft ground. It was a pity the Forest of Dean proper was in England, but he would find somewhere else that was safe. He said he could get the pram down himself; the sandwiches had made him stronger.
He went round to the back and released the tailboard with something of a crash, but no matter. Then he clambered in. Damn, the pram had been upset! Hughes-Jones, in a real panic now, scrabbled about. He must not be too long or the driver would get down. The carpet with its contents was nipped at one corner beneath a crate of something or other and, sweating, Hughes-Jones dragged it clear and got the pram out onto the road, then climbed up again and seized the carpet and re-loaded it into the pram. He was shaking like a jelly, but all was well. He called out to the driver.
“I am off now, and thank you very much indeed.”
There was a wave from the driver’s window. “That’s all right, mate. Bon voyage.”
“Thank you, thank you, and the same to you!”
“Ta-ta, then.” The driver let in his gears and was away down the road. Thank goodness, he had suspected nothing, had not even commented on the fact of Wales being mentioned in the newspaper report. Probably he hadn’t really read it all the way through, the headline perhaps had just caught his eye before he turned to the nude figure of the daily girl and then the sports pages. Lucky that he had been English! Still sweating, Hughes-Jones pushed on with the pram and soon came to the trees, into which he went. As before, he penetrated deep and when he was deep enough he sat down and rested for a short while before unpacking the carpet. Then he buried a leg; with each burial his heart lightened a little. Now there was only an arm and a leg to go and he would be free of his dangerous burden. Only there wasn’t. A check showed that only an arm remained. Hughes-Jones felt faint, and staggered against a tree, then slumped to the ground in a great state. Damn, the leg must be in the lorry and was on its way into England!
Now what?
He couldn’t get away with it now.
*
Urgently next day Shard was recalled to Whitehall: Hedge seemed to be under strain and needed his support. Shard took the Inter-City out of Cardiff. Reaching the Foreign Office he found a very haunted Hedge indeed, pale and shaking behind his desk.
“It hasn’t worked out, has it,” Hedge said. “If it was going to, Hughes-Jones would have come forward by now.”
“Perhaps, perhaps not.”
“What do you mean by that, Shard?”
“He may need time to think it through.”
“You think there’s still hope?”
“Yes, I do. He may not have caught up with his reading yet.”
“Suppose he doesn’t even read the papers?”
“Then it won’t work, obviously. But any intelligent man on the run would do his best to keep a check on the news, even if it means showing himself from time to time.”
“Then the newsagents —”
“Done already, Hedge. Local police have warned all newsagents personally, throughout Wales. But he could pick it up in other ways, slower ways. Avoiding the newsagents and relying on waste bins, cafés, you know the sort of thing. Park benches.” Shard paused. “In any case, I’m afraid the result’s still nil.”
Hedge waved his arms. “But he can’t just vanish!”
“On the contrary, he has.”
“I suppose you realise what all this is doing to me,” Hedge said savagely. “I’ve had the lot on my back. Foreign Secretary, Prime Minister … it was the Head who gave the order for the Press leak after due consultation, but I know I’m to be the scapegoat —”
“For what, in particular?”
“For queering the pitch for Kolotechin! The man’s quite beside himself and of course one’s bound to sympathise. He defects in all sincerity and look what happens! He’s been badly let down to say the least. Moscow will know all about it by now, obviously.”
“No reaction yet?”
Hedge shook his head. “None. Of course, our Embassy is watching closely, ears to the ground and all that. There may be a report at any time, I suppose. We have to remember our guarantee to Kolotechin.”
“Your guarantee. Not mine.”
“Mine with full backing and authority,” Hedge snapped back. “The word of the British Government. We’ll have to start negotiations the moment Moscow reacts.”
“You mean —”
“I mean offer them Hughes-Jones, a straight exchange for Kolotechin’s family.”
“I like the word straight,” Shard said.
“Never mind the word, Shard. If we haven’t yet found Hughes-Jones, we’ll have to stall them, that’s all. If he’s found dead in the meantime, God knows what’s going to happen. And I’m beginning to think that’s only too likely.”
“Then don’t make the offer yet.”
Once again Hedge flapped his arms. “It won’t be made until Moscow makes noises, obviously, but the moment they do, we have to co-operate.”
Shard asked, “Isn’t there another snag, Hedge?”
“Oh, dear! What?”
“If Hughes-Jones has committed murder, is the government likely to sanction his being returned to Russia, expediency or not? I suggest there’d be a public outcry in any case, frankly.” Shard paused. “Or is this to be done under one of our cloaks of utter secrecy?”
“Of course it is,” Hedge answered wearily, and then his security telephone burred on his desk. He took up the handset and listened. Expressions of pleasure and hope and surprise crossed his face. Putting his hand over the mouthpiece he spoke to Shard. “Back to Cardiff,” he said. “Hughes-Jones has just walked into police headquarters.”
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17
Hughes-Jones had seen nothing else for it: a leg in a lorry was certain to be found before long and the Cardiff medics, the forensic ones, would soon identify it as female and the lorry driver would be questioned and would remember the Welshman with the pram. Two and two would be put together and then the hunt would really be on in no uncertain fashion. He could not go on for ever dwelling in the Welsh forests and as, almost automatically by now, he made a hole some distance from the last one and buried the remaining arm, and concealed the now unwanted pram though why he bothered, goodness only knew, he came to his decision. He must face the music like a man and at the same time see what he could do for Kolotechin who had been his friend in Russia, a very good friend in fact. Something might be done if he came forward and confessed what he had done to Megan and once again Kolotechin might possibly help. If Kolotechin wanted something of him, then there was a basis for bargaining, though the British authorities might not take too much notice of a Russian — on the other hand they might if they, too, wanted something done for them. It was a risk but it now had to be taken. One thing: Evan Evans was not going to come well out of this, his name could scarcely be kept hidden and he would be cast from his seat among the Rotarians like the fiend he was and it served him right. There was always a silver lining …
Hughes-Jones emerged without the pram from the depth of the trees and walked along the road towards Monmouth, not so very far away. Once again cars passed, and lorries, but this time no lifts were offered. In Monmouth itself he saw policemen but they didn’t take any particular notice of him and, on a sudden impulse, he decided to spend his last remaining cash on the bus to Cardiff. Cardiff was where he had preached many times and in Cardiff people would remember him and even the police might be friendly, more or less. So Cardiff it would be, but when he got there unremarked and walked right into the police station he came up against an unexpected development. Of course, when he said who he was, they made it very plain he was not going to walk out again because he was required in London, and they made all sorts of notes about him and looked askance at his dirty clothing and sent for a Chief Superintendent who made a lot more notes; they were at him so much that he had no chance to tell them about Megan; but when he was able to get in a non-Kolotechin word as it were, and said, humbly and with diffidence, “There will have been a leg,” the Chief Superintendent stared.
“A leg, Mr Hughes-Jones? I don’t follow.”
Hughes-Jones, amazed as he was, thought fast. Anything, come to think of it, could have happened: the lorry could have caught fire even … more likely the leg had got stuck in one of the empty crates that had been in the lorry and might have been pulverised as waste or something. Whatever it was, the leg had evidently not turned up and this gave him another chance. So he said, “Not a leg, Chief Superintendent. A lag, I meant to say. A time lag, you see, since Kolotechin came.”
“Yes. A pity you didn’t come in earlier, Mr Hughes-Jones, a great pity. Still, better late than never.” The Chief Superintendent said that Mr Shard would reach Cardiff soon to assist him back to London. Then he went on to ask about Hughes-Jones’s wife, and Hughes-Jones said with truth that she was still in Wales and he had seen her in Pontymadaw and then she had gone away. The Chief Superintendent didn’t seem all that interested in Megan really and after that he became quite friendly and talked about rugby. Cardiff had been as good a choice as he had thought it would be.
*
“He’s all yours,” the Chief Superintendent said to Shard a few hours later, “though he may not remain so, I have to add. I’m not satisfied about the wife, who still hasn’t turned up. I’ve not pressed him on it, however. In the special circumstances, I thought, something might emerge when he talks to you — and for the present, this Kolotechin seems to have priority.”
“Right,” Shard said, “he very much has. I reckon my Chiefs sanity has been saved in the nick of time — or I hope it will have been. We’re not out of the wood yet.” Taking no chances this time with trains, Shard organised an unmarked police car to drive him, with Hughes-Jones, direct into Whitehall. During the drive along the M4 he questioned Hughes-Jones, casually, about his wife. He hoped she was well.
“Yes, indeed,” Hughes-Jones said.
“I understand you happened to meet her at where was it —”
“Pontymadaw.”
“Yes. Was there a reconciliation?”
“No reconciliation,” Hughes-Jones answered sadly.
“I’m sorry. You didn’t see Evan Evans, I suppose?”
“No. He is a wicked man. I did not wish to see Evan Evans. You have still not told me, Mr Shard, why it is that Kolotechin wants me.”
“That’ll have to wait till we reach London, I’m afraid.” Shard went back to the missing wife. “Did you spend long with her?”
“Oh no,” Hughes-Jones said distantly. “Not what you would call long.”
“But she left with you?”
Now for the first untruth. Hughes-Jones said, “Oh no, not with me. She would have left by herself, I suppose. I left her in Pontymadaw when she said she would not come back to me, you see.”
“Uh-huh.” It would have to wait. The truth would come out sooner or later; it always did. Shard turned to another tack, one that might cross the last one. “What did you do, in Wales? You were missing for quite a while, weren’t you?”
“Yes, I was. I wished to see the old places, you know, the preaching circuit and that. And I had committed a crime, and did not wish to be found out.” While Shard waited, Hughes-Jones paused and then went on, “I took Evan Evan’s motorbicycle, you see, stole it. It was there outside the chapel, and my car had two flat tyres from broken beer bottles. So I took it … partly I think now in revenge, partly because I needed it, you see.”
“For a wife, a motor-cycle …”
“Yes, you could say that in a sense, I suppose.”
“But not both together?”
“Pardon?” Hughes-Jones said.
“The wife on the motor-cycle?”
“Oh no, no.”
It failed to ring true; Hughes-Jones was far from being a practised liar and the denial had come too swiftly and with too much emphasis. Shard said musingly, “She’s still missing. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“No, not now. She would not come back to me so that was that. Why do you not ask Evan Evans where she is, Mr Shard?”
“The Welsh police have done that. He doesn’t know.”
“Or will not say. He would not like the truth to come out, Evan Evans wouldn’t. He is as white as the driven snow, is Evan Evans.”
There were more questions and answers but Hughes-Jones kept his end up and made no incririfinating admissions; after a while Shard let it rest. Cardiff police would be digging and could be relied upon to turn something up. If they didn’t then the grill would be turned on Hughes-Jones before he left — if leave he did — for Russia. A nasty shock awaited him in Whitehall; that shock might jolt him into revealing a little more about his wife. The last twenty or so miles of the M4 were taken in silence, and in silence mostly they completed the journey through London to the Foreign Office, where Hedge waited, a satisfied spider sitting plumply in his web. And on arrival in Hedge’s room it was Hughes-Jones who broached the subject.
“Now will someone tell me, please,” he said, “how I can be of assistance to Kolotechin?”
Hedge leaned back in his chair and fixed his gaze on the ceiling. “Kolotechin,” he began, “has a wife and son in Moscow.”
“Yes, he has.”
“You knew this, Mr Hughes-Jones?”
“Yes. He spoke of them to me, often.”
“I see. Well, I’m afraid they’re in danger now he’s defected.”
“Yes, they would be.”
“Ah. I see you understand.” Hedge coughed. “There are other matters, I’m sorry to say. It appears the Russians have further charges to lay against you. Are you aware of what these might be?”
Hughes-Jone
s shook his head. “No. And it does not really matter, does it, seeing as I am here in Britain?”
There was a pause, a long one. Even Hedge shrank from dealing the blow. He continued staring up at the ceiling as though he had never seen it before. Shard found himself examining his finger-nails, avoiding Hughes-Jones’s eye. Only Hughes-Jones himself seemed at ease, sure in his mind of his position. The Russians could do what they liked; they were a long way off. Then Hedge said, “Shard.”
“Yes, Hedge?”
“Tell him. You brought him out … you tell him.”
Shard’s face hardened: what a bastard Hedge was! No guts at all, a moral coward. Shard had half a mind to get up and walk out, but knew that a scene would not help Hughes-Jones. In an emotionless voice he stated what appeared to be the now decided facts. He said, “For Kolotechin’s sake you’re to be sent back to Russia to face charges. That safeguards his wife and son. A simultaneous frontier exchange is to be arranged as soon as possible.”
There was a silence; it lasted for almost half a minute and then Hughes-Jones broke it. “Oh no,” he said softly. “No, I shall not go back to Russia and prison. I refuse absolutely, do you hear?”
Hedge said, “The wife and son —”
“Yes. I am sorry about them, deeply sorry, but Kolotechin must find another way. I cannot go back to Russia and you cannot send me against my will in any case.”
Shard Calls the Tune Page 18