In less than an hour he had reached the crest of the hill, where the lane met the main road. A strong wind was blowing here, driving a thick mist of snow across the road, through which he presently discovered lights. A number of long-distance lorries were drawn up in the bay outside the café, and several private cars, their number plates caked with snow. A blast of heat and juke-box music came out at him as he opened the door.
‘Another orphan of the storm,’ someone called out cheerfully. The tables were occupied by groups of lorry-drivers. In a corner two children sucked Coca-Cola through straws while their harassed-looking parents talked to each other in undertones. Wragby went over to the counter and ordered coffee and sandwiches. Through the din of the juke-box the proprietor shouted, ‘Nearly run out of grub, sir. Road’s blocked again too—half a mile to the west. You from London?’
Wragby nodded, started looking around him as he sipped his coffee. The café was thick with smoke. He could feel the atmosphere, compounded of resignation, exhilaration and unwonted matiness, with which the British—the working-class in particular—greet any communal crisis. At a table by the door he noticed three toughs sitting, unshaven and glum, a sinister little enclave amongst the smoke and noise. One of them now rose to put a coin in the juke-box; a second went unobtrusively outside, to return after a minute and nod at a large, bear-like man in cloth cap and long overcoat who sat alone at a table not far from the counter. This man, catching Wragby’s eye, beckoned to him. Wragby went over to the table, sat down.
‘Good evening, Professor—’ It was the voice Wragby had heard over the telephone—’I was expecting you. Come by car?’
‘On foot.’
‘Splendid! Wise fellow. I take it you’ve informed nobody of this little expedition?’
‘Nobody. What’s your name?’
‘You can call me Petrov. I should make it quite clear to you at the start, Professor, that if you have attempted to lay another trap for us, we shall shoot you, then shoot our way out and be on our way to liquidate your pretty little daughter.’
‘You wouldn’t get far. The road west is blocked again.’
‘So? But that will be temporary. The snow-ploughs—’ Petrov broke off, his eyes hooding over. ‘That is of no interest to me. So long as the London road is open—’ whatever else he said was obliterated by a fortissimo blast from the juke-box. Wragby inwardly exulted: Petrov’s slip indicated that Lucy, as Nigel had guessed, was not in London but somewhere to the west, perhaps not far away.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘snowing like it is, the London road too will be blocked again before long. Nature seems to be fighting against you, Petrov. It’s an ironic situation, when you come to think of it—kidnappers and police all sitting around, immobilised. A stalemate.’
‘You are a strange man, Professor, to be discussing such literary ideas at a time like this.’
Wragby shrugged. He scrutinised the man at his side. Immensely powerful body, sloping shoulders carrying a roundish head, the eyes small, the wrists thick and hairy. A formidable opponent, leaving aside the thugs he had brought with him. Wragby itched to drive his fingers into the fat neck, kick this ape into a jelly. But that would have to wait. He said, ‘Why don’t you take your overcoat off? It’s hot as hell in here.’
‘My dear sir,’ the rumbling voice replied, ‘I have a revolver in the pocket, that’s why.’
The family party brushed past their table, one of the children whining. ‘Have to go back towards London—see if we can get a bed in the next town,’ the paterfamilias explained to all and sundry.
‘Good luck, mate!’ a lorry-driver called. ‘We’ll come and dig you out—just send us a message by carrier pigeon.’
‘What the hell’s he doing, taking kids around in weather like this?’
‘Come to sunny Torquay!’
A cold draught shuddered the smoke as the door opened and shut.
‘Well, to business,’ said Petrov. ‘Here’s paper and pencil. Write it down, Professor.’
Wragby made no move. Petrov’s eyes narrowed.
‘What’s this? Changed your mind? Come on, you’ve wasted enough of our time. I don’t want to be here all night. Are you going to give me the information or not?’
‘Yes,’ said Wragby, ‘but not yet.’
‘You’re giving it to me now, or your dear little daughter will die a most unpleasant death.’
Wragby’s head was in his hands, his voice broken. ‘You’ve killed her already. I know it.’
My baby’s just the bestest baby rock, rock, rock, olly, olly, hoo, hi! bawled the voice from the juke-box.
‘That is not true.’
Wragby’s head came up and he stared bleakly into Petrov’s eyes.
‘Prove it.’
‘Prove it? But, my dear sir——’
‘It’s quite simple. Take me to where you are keeping her, let the child go free, and I will then give you the information.’
‘That is out of the question. It is not for you to make conditions—not now, my friend.’
‘I have made my conditions. You can accept them or reject them.’
‘And if I reject?’
‘You fail to get what you’re after—and your people don’t forgive failures.’
‘So now you are threatening me?’ Petrov gave a jovial laugh. ‘So, I get no information. And I hand little Lucy over to my friends there.’ He jerked his head towards the group by the door. ‘They are very rough men. Uncultured. The older one, with the white face—he was in prison for sawing the nipples off his girl-friend, with a fret-saw. Another time, for violating a child of five. The other two will do anything for money, you know, but he will do it for—er—love. You get me?’
‘Oh, pack up this bogy-man line of talk. If Lucy were alive, it might serve a purpose, but——’
‘But I tell you, she is alive. You heard her voice on the telephone.’
‘That was two days ago. And anyway, it was off a tape-recorder.’
Petrov pursed his mouth, frowning. Wragby, pursuing an advantage, went on. ‘That was just a trick to make us think you were holding her in London. Not a very subtle one, either. The inference is that she’s somewhere not far from here, alive or dead. As the police have searched every house in a radius of twenty-five miles or so, the presumption is that she’s dead, and buried. It’s up to you to prove the reverse.’ The café proprietor came to their table and gave it a perfunctory swabbing with a cloth.
‘Two more cups of coffee, please.’
‘Right you are, sir. Funny, you two gentlemen meeting in an out-of-the-way place like this. Coincidence, you might say.’
‘You might.’
‘Two friends from London meeting by chance at the back of beyond,’ the proprietor amplified with relish. ‘Well, it’s a small world.’
The man padded off, to return with two slopping cups, then retire again.
‘How did you get here, by the way?’ Wragby asked.
‘My friends drove the truck. I followed them in my automobile.’
There was a silence between the two. Presently the café door opened again to let in a flurry of snow and the family party: the whining child was now bawling, ‘I want to go home!’
‘Don’t we all?’ cried a joker at a nearby table. ‘Roll on, summer!’
The paterfamilias announced that a drift had formed across the road to London, only a hundred yards from the café, and his car had been unable to get through it.
Wragby leant towards his companion. ‘What did I tell you? Stalemate. You can’t get out, the police can’t get in. May last for days. I’m told that death by starvation is extremely disagreeable. You realise that this place will shortly run out of food?’
‘God, what a filthy country!’ growled Petrov. ‘Haven’t they got a telephone?’
‘You can’t send food over a telephone. Which reminds me.’ Wragby got up and moved smartly through a door at the side of the counter. Petrov was after him, light on his feet as a great tomcat.
In the passage beyond, he caught him up. ‘If you touch that telephone, I’ll shoot you.’
‘I’m looking for the lavatory, not the telephone. Don’t be so excitable.’ The massive Petrov glared at him suspiciously. ‘And if you suppose I’m going to climb through the window and run away, you’re even less intelligent than I’d thought you,’ Wragby went on. ‘I’m relying on you to take me to Lucy.’
A fantastic euphoria had invaded Alfred Wragby. The love of action, the boyish streak which years of arduous intellectual labour had not eradicated, the knowledge that he had got his vile and formidable opponent guessing—all combined to create a mood of buoyancy.
‘You’ll agree to my conditions?’ he asked, when they were seated at the little table again.
Petrov’s eyes were clear as ice. ‘I will take you to your daughter, when we get out of this rotten dump.’
‘And release her?’
‘When you have given me the information.’
‘Before I give it.’
‘Now, now, Professor, that would never do. I let her go, and you then refuse your side of the bargain.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. How could I refuse, once those filthy- looking friends of yours got to work on me?’
‘My dear sir, if we’d thought that physical persuasion would work with you, we’d have kidnapped you, not your daughter.’
‘Where is she?’
Petrov laughed genially. ‘I am not a child to be duped. I shall take you to her.’ He paused. ‘You may not be able to recognise her at first …’
Gradually the conversation in the café petered out. The juke-box was silent at last. On benches, chairs or floor men tried to sleep. One electric bulb was left burning over the counter, revealing the nude pin-ups on the partition behind it. Snoring, grunting, restless shifting: the air growing fouler. Wragby, awake on his hard chair, felt the dark hours pass, slow as a glacier’s movement. Petrov’s last sentence kept recurring to his mind, and every time it was as if the blood ran out of him, leaving him faint and cold. If Lucy had been disfigured, he was responsible for it through his first refusal to co-operate with the kidnappers: he tortured himself, imagining tortures the child had suffered. Petrov was asleep beside him. Wragby could draw the revolver from the big man’s pocket and shoot him—shoot his way past the thugs at the door; but it would be self-indulgence, for Petrov was the only road that could lead him to Lucy …
As light began to strengthen through the uncurtained windows, there was a stir in the café. Presently a few drivers went out to warm up their engines. The white-faced psychopath put a coin in the juke-box, baring his teeth and jerking his limbs at the music that issued. The proprietor was boiling kettles for those who wished to wash. There was a smell of bodies and stale coffee. Petrov’s other two thugs began to demand food from the proprietor, refusing to believe he had not got some hoarded away: it could have turned ugly, but Petrov moved to the proprietor’s side and, without any sign of recognising the men, made them retreat.
After a quarter of an hour the drivers stamped in again, blowing on their hands. The road was still blocked to the east, but a snow-plough was at work on the drift half a mile to the west. At this news, one of Petrov’s men went out to run the engine of his truck: the rest of those in the café, who had looked like a bunch of refugees, dirty and dispirited, took on an air of activity.
‘We’ll be able to get off soon,’ said Wragby. ‘Hadn’t you better start your engine running?’
‘Patience, my dear sir.’ Petrov gave him a comradely slap on the back.
Wragby could think of nothing but seeing Lucy again, comforting her.
And then, everything went wrong. It must have been half an hour later, though to Wragby it felt like half a lifetime, when voices were heard outside, the door was flung open, and a file of soldiers trooped in, some with spades, some carrying cartons of food. At their heels entered a policeman.
Wragby, in the bustle of welcome, dived under the flap of the counter and locked himself in the lavatory. He knew that the police would have been notified of his disappearance, and every policeman have a description of him. If he was found now, he would lose the chance of getting to Lucy: there would be long-drawn-out explanations, in the course of which Petrov would either be arrested or escape, and if he were arrested he would certainly not talk.
Petrov, for his part, believed that a trap had been sprung on him. Soldiers, police, and the Professor darting away, his job done, before Petrov could silence him. He jerked his head towards the three thugs by the door, who looked at a loss, standing in a tight little group, like sheep with a sheepdog prowling round them. They did not know what Petrov had hired them to do: but it was unlikely to be a legal activity, and their instinct was to withdraw from the vicinity of any copper. They pushed sharply out of the door, colliding with the corporal in charge of the military detachment, who began cursing at them.
This was enough for the white-faced thug. Whipping out a razor, he slashed the corporal from temple to jaw. Several of his men, hearing the altercation, rushed out. They saw their corporal writhing on the ground, his blood turning the snow scarlet, and three men running away. The soldiers dashed after them, dragged them away from the truck they were climbing into, and finding themselves attacked with a razor, a cosh and a bicycle chain, fought back with spades, fists and boots. Other soldiers streamed out to help them. The policeman carried the wounded corporal into the café and gave him first-aid. Under cover of all this, Petrov had slipped into the back part of the café, searching for Wragby.
Since the Professor could not be carried off, he must be silenced here and now. It would be unwise to use a revolver—the man must be strangled, as silently as possible. Petrov, moving lightly, peered into the sleazy kitchen and scullery: they were empty. He looked out from the back door: no footsteps led away from it. Petrov turned back, smiling, and rattled the knob of the lavatory door. ‘It’s me, Petrov, we can get away now. Hurry.’
Wragby emerged, to find his throat gripped by two tremendously powerful hands.
Violence, as so often, had a farcical air about it. Two big men heaving, bumping and straining in a narrow passage, hopelessly at cross-purposes, the one convinced that his enemy had led him into a trap from which he could escape only by murder, the other knowing that everything depended upon not killing his enemy and thus keeping the road to Lucy open.
Wragby had been taken utterly by surprise and he had underestimated his opponent’s strength. If he could get those fingers off his throat, he’d have breath, maybe, to explain. He clasped his hands above his head and smashed them down hard on the hairy wrists. It had no effect. He brought up his knee, but Petrov had turned a little sideways to him. With a last convulsive effort, he threw himself backwards, sending Petrov in a somersault over his head. The fingers were loosened now and Wragby could whoop for breath. But before he could speak, Petrov was at him again in the narrow passage, moving smooth and irresistible like a piston in its cylinder.
And now Wragby forgot his intention, forgot the spanner in his pocket, even forgot Lucy, flooded by pure hatred for this man. He uppercut him, jolting the round head back: he slammed a right into Petrov’s fat belly, low down—it was like hitting the bag of an octopus. The man reeled away, knocking open the unlatched back door behind him.
Now they were in the open, no longer constricted by the passage walls, Wragby knew himself at less of a disadvantage. But, with that, his brain grew cooler and the blood lust ceased to possess him completely. It caused an instant’s hesitation, which was fatal. He opened his mouth to explain; but Petrov was up from the snowy yard, and the fingers clamped on Wragby’s throat again.
When the body was limp at last, Petrov dragged it into the lavatory, and was about to assure himself that his victim was dead when he heard distant footsteps approaching from the bar. He slipped out of the lavatory, walked through the back door, and in full view of a soldier—to whom he genially waved—got into his car and drove off.
As he
carefully negotiated the icy one-track way which the snow-plough had cut, Petrov worked out the report he should give to his superiors. They had approved, indeed enforced upon him, the plan of contacting the Professor personally. He had carried it out with skill and daring. It was no fault of his that the Professor should have been so stubbornly foolish as to have a second trap laid on. No fault, but of course a failure; and his superiors did not tolerate failure.
And only at this point did Petrov, who had himself been sufficiently battered during the struggle, find his brain working properly again. Was it a trap, after all? If it had been, surely the soldiers would not have allowed anyone just to walk out of the café and drive away? The soldiers, he now realised, had been armed with nothing more militant than shovels and cartons of food.
Petrov would certainly have to edit his report drastically. He would still put it that he had escaped from a trap, and in the course of his escape found it necessary to remove the Professor from his path: too bad that the stubborn fellow should later have died of it. The hired gangsters would not be in a position to contradict his version of the events, and in any case they did not know his identity.
To discover the late Professor’s secret, they would now have to start again. A pity, but in this kind of work setbacks were bound to occur. If Petrov was to remain useful to his superiors, though, he must cover his traces—a process which would clearly demand, among other expedients, the liquidation of the child, Lucy …
At this moment, the proprietor of the Bellevue Café, entering the lavatory, found the body of one of the London gentlemen there. He called for help. The policeman had already left, but two soldiers assisted in carrying out the body. Professor Alfred Wragby—they got his name from his driving licence—was unconscious but not, it turned out, dead. If he had underestimated Petrov’s strength, Petrov had underestimated Wragby’s grip on life. They did what they could for him, while the proprietor telephoned for an ambulance. Half an hour later, having a slow brain, he realised that the unconscious man had been in the news lately, and rang the Belcaster police.
The Sad Variety Page 14