Four Stars For Danger

by Burke, John

  “Gone where?” she said inexorably.

  A hill rose to the moors. They gathered speed across a green and purple plateau.

  “I feel dreadful, you know,” said David. “Honest. Dreadful about you getting mixed up in this shabby business.”

  “You admit it’s shabby.”

  “Not what you said. Not those things you said over the...” He was still watching the road, but his hands tightened on the wheel and his steering became stiff and jerky. “Look,” he said, “we’re on our own now. Maybe those two were pretty scruffy. Took on more than I’d bargained for. We all make mistakes. Start again – right?”

  If she persisted he might lose control and kill them both. But again she said: “Fiona.”

  “She’s gone, I tell you.”

  “Where?”

  “How the devil should I know? Not the first time she’s marched out. No guts. No staying power. You wouldn’t be like Fiona, would you, Ellen?”

  “She’s dead,” said Ellen. “You know she’s dead.”

  The road was wide, long and clear; and there was no other traffic. She was glad of it. The truck swayed, careered for some distance along the wrong side of the road, and then plunged down another slope and up the other side. But it did not slacken speed.

  “She’s gone,” said David. “That’s good enough for me.”

  “Dead,” said Ellen.

  And you killed her, she said. But only in her head, not out loud. You killed her. She didn’t dare to hurl it straight at him.

  Heather, grass, clover, splashes of harebells and rusty rock streamed past on either side in a shimmering kaleidoscope.

  David said numbly: “Dead? She’s really dead?”

  “At the bottom of that shaft.”

  As if you didn’t know, she silently accused him. But she was not sure any longer.

  “Gone,” he said. “Dead.”

  He didn’t ask how much she knew or what she surmised. Somehow he accepted what she had told him: because he wanted it to be that way or because he was near the end of his tether and had lost all hope of making any sense out of anything?

  “The bastards,” he said; but sadly, remotely, drained of emotion. Just as he had once said “You bitch” to Fiona.

  She knew the road they were following. Landmarks that were becoming familiar showed themselves round sharp corners and across the stretches of moorland. Far off, beyond the next ridge and the ridge after that, would be the final wavy line sketched across the sky, and below that would be the sea and the smug huddle of Abermadoc.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” she said. “David, there’s no sense going this way. It won’t get you...us...anywhere.”

  “A fresh start,” he said, lulling himself with the hazy promise of it. “With what we’ve got in the back of this wagon...” He laughed loudly, smitten with a sudden manic cheerfulness.

  She wondered if Mark had telephoned the police by now, if cars were converging on them, if roadblocks were going up.

  David wouldn’t stop for a roadblock: he would drive insanely on and through it.

  “So you don’t mind inheriting from van Lynden?” she said. “You didn’t mind taking his money – his sponsors’ money – as long as it was good. Painting and decorating, living it up. Let them exploit the mine, let them sell secrets, let them hand over to other countries, other crooks. As long as someone does the dirty work, you can pretend your own money’s clean.”

  “Ellen,” he said, genuinely hurt. “You don’t understand.”

  “Fiona’s dead. You don’t really mind that, either. Not so long as somebody else did it for you. Not so long as...”

  “No!” The truck swayed horribly. They charged over a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. “It’s not what I wanted at all, any of it. Don’t you realise that?” She didn’t answer. That made it worse. “I thought we could talk,” David ranted on. “I thought when I met you...”

  “The same as you thought when you met all the others?”

  “You listened to Fiona. All the things she said about me. All the damage she did. Don’t you understand?”

  “Yes,” said Ellen.

  “If you did...if you understood...”

  “To understand all is to forgive all?” said Ellen. “No, David. No. It’s too easy that way.” Even as she said it she wanted to reach out and touch him, to soften the hurt. But when she brushed his hand, he dragged at the wheel and slewed the truck into another dangerous contortion.

  “Fiona,” he said. “It’s her own lookout. She asked for it.”

  “David...”

  “Her own fault, I tell you. If she’d been different. If she’d tried. If she’d listened. If. If, if, if.”

  Unexpectedly he slowed. There was a scattering of houses, and far away to the north there was a glint of water where the indentations of the coastline sliced inlets for the sea.

  He said: “You’re not coming, then?”

  “Coming?”

  “With me. Away from everything that’s gone wrong.”

  “No,” said Ellen gently. “I’m sorry, David. But you didn’t really think I would, did you?”

  “I thought...” He squeezed his right thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes, tightening on the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “David, please. Take it easy.”

  The truck slowed and stopped. He leaned across her to open the cab door.

  “All right. You wanted to get down. This’ll do.”

  “But...”

  “Get down now,” he said, “or come all the way.”

  Ellen climbed down. It was a long drop from the iron step. She landed on her good ankle, but flinched as the other one came inevitably down beside it.

  Above her the door slammed back into place.

  “If only you’d had the guts.” She was sure, yet could not have sworn, that this was what David shouted at her as he roared the truck off towards Abermadoc.

  She hobbled towards a moss-encrusted milestone and settled herself despondently on it.

  The moorland, colourful as it was, looked bleak and endless from here. It was unthinkable that she should limp miles along that hedgeless, fenceless, soulless road to Abermadoc.

  Somewhere over that whaleback to the north were slate quarries. To the south and west, in sheltered fissures, were bleak farmhouses and gaunt men. Here there was not a sign of life.

  Such a short time ago she had felt claustrophobic. Now she could suffer from – what was the word? – agoraphobia.

  Not that she was afraid of the open spaces in themselves. Just lost, desolate. She forced herself off the milestone and began to walk. She limped along the road for a minute; and it was a minute too much.

  Far off there was a car coming towards her from the direction of the sea. Wherever it was going she would stop it, ask for a lift, find a telephone. But it dipped below one of the mountain waves and did not reappear. There must have been a side turning.

  At last she heard the sound of a car far behind, coming fast. She looked back. There was an intermittent flash of electric blue, searing a discord against the muted moorland hues. Ellen waved madly. Fiona’s Sprite bore down on her and stopped a few feet away. Before she reached it the door was swinging open.

  Mark didn’t speak, didn’t try to touch her; just stared thankfully. He was very pale.

  She pulled the door shut and he drove the car mercilessly on. They were going a lot faster than the truck, but there was a wide gap to close. It seemed an age before they raced down through Abermadoc, ignoring the speed limit.

  The truck stood abandoned on the shore, its front wheels lapped by the ripples. Its tailboard was down, and there was nothing inside.

  A girl was staring out across the dazzling estuary, shielding her eyes with her hand. When they crossed the sand towards her, they saw that she was Myfanwy. She turned a tearstained, tragic face away from the sun; and Ellen thought, with a tired objectivity of which she ought to have b
een ashamed but wasn’t, that the poor child would be utterly broken for just long enough to appear utterly desirable to the first young man who was lucky enough to chance upon her.

  Beyond her, David’s boat was a fluttering shape on the burnished water. It was hard to make out exactly what was happening. He must have pushed away from the mooring buoy with the little sail he had managed to rush up, and now he was struggling with the rest of the canvas. The boat looked like a bird agitatedly flapping its wings, trying to raise itself from the surface. Ellen blinked into the brightness. All at once the flapping ceased, the Silhouette – literally a silhouette – leaned gracefully over, and then it was scudding out of the estuary into the westering sun.

  “Where does he think he can go?” she wondered aloud. “Ireland?”

  “He can be intercepted long before he gets that far,” said Mark.

  Myfanwy tossed her head and glared sheer hatred at them. “Can’t you leave him alone?”

  “He’s got to be stopped. Isn’t there a power boat anywhere in the harbour? Someone capable...someone in authority...”

  “No one can stop Commander Parr,” said Myfanwy adoringly. “No one. Ever.”

  Chapter Twelve

  They met and talked, in shared diffidence, in an alcove formed by a florid wrought-iron trellis. Four pots of lobelias were attached to the ironwork in a contrivedly eccentric group. The mood was different. They were back in London, and the atmosphere had changed. Mark was a stranger.

  “At least Charlotte Street isn’t subsiding,” he said.

  He was establishing a mutual point of reference, like someone met on holiday who tries to cling to the holiday ambience by reminding you of that dance, that sunset, that music, that fading excitement. She responded: “And the restaurants aren’t closed for redecoration.”

  “But the lamb won’t be Welsh – it’ll be New Zealand.”

  “And if they say the salmon’s fresh, it’s a lie.”

  Ellen had fancied the idea of chicken Marengo, but Mark said firmly that he knew this restaurant and would like her to accept his recommendations. Today he was in charge. There were no notes to be made and no criticisms to be stored up for the Lucullus Press. Meekly she nodded and left him to order. While doing so, he passed the early edition of the evening paper across the table.

  David’s boat had been found late last night, drifting twenty miles off the Old Head of Kinsale. It could have been drifting for at least two days. There was no sign of the owner.

  THE YACHT WITH A JINX? asked the headline. The report harked back to the recent loss of Dr Jude Mansell while sailing the same boat, and filed up three plump paragraphs with correspondences and contradictions. Dr Mansell had been an inexperienced sailor. Commander David Parr was skilled and knew the coast well. What had gone wrong?

  There was no mention of the two lead canisters which David had taken aboard. No hint that the reporter knew what he was really dealing with.

  Ellen eyed Mark questioningly over the top of the folded paper.

  He said: “No, the specimens weren’t on board. I rang up this morning and asked. They weren’t what you’d call mad keen on telling me. Now they’ve had our report, they’d prefer us to fade gracefully away and say no more. The professionals are in it now, and they don’t want their conclusions to be fogged by amateur opinions.”

  “You think he threw the canisters into the sea?”

  “I think...” Mark hesitated, then said without flinching and without sparing her: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he chose to go over with them. Perhaps he even weighted himself with them, to make sure he’d sink quickly.”

  The waiter brought the two glasses of Campari which Mark had ordered. Ellen did not reach for hers until she heard the ice chink in Mark’s and knew that he was raising it in her direction. “May he lie safely.” Their glasses touched, light danced around the bowls. “From all I’ve heard, he trusted the sea.”

  The aubergines were set before them. As they ate, Ellen glanced fitfully at Mark. He smiled; and she smiled back.

  Still they were ill at ease with each other. So much had happened but now it was over and London was reclaiming them. If they were going to get anywhere together, they must get away. Soon. Did he really want to get away? Did she?

  After a while he said: “You once told me you thought David Parr was sick. Perhaps he was. The only cure he craved was Fiona – but Fiona was no antidote. Fiona was an essential ingredient of the poison. He was an alcoholic of a sort, willing himself to get better on the very stuff that was killing him.”

  “Poor Fiona.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” Mark poised his fork a few inches from his mouth. “Do you suppose every marriage is doomed to ferment and go rotten like that?”

  Poor Fiona, she thought. Poor David. Poor everybody.

  When Mark saw he was not going to get an answer he said: “But David Parr might have stood a chance. In different circumstances. In another place, another time. A stroke of luck, a shift of emphasis, and he might have made a go of things. The really sick man was van Lynden.”

  Voices were different, sounds were different. Ellen heard the plopping purr of a taxi outside the restaurant, and the far-off wail of a jet plane coming in lower than it should, and the complacent buzz of man-to-man wheeling and dealing from tables beyond the ornamental trellis.

  “He may have been quite an idealist when he started out,” Mark was continuing. “He wasn’t interested in bigger and bigger nuclear weapons, bigger power stations, louder explosions. He was fascinated by the side effects of radiation, controlled and uncontrolled...and he wrestled with a lot of problems people didn’t want to admit existed.”

  “You’ve been swotting up on Who’s Who”

  “He’s not in there. And never will be, now. There are other more specialised directories.”

  The waiter removed their plates and brought the wine. He poured half an inch, and Mark tasted. Ellen endeavoured not to squint at the label.

  Mark said: “There wasn’t much scope for him in South Africa. He came to England, and was soon regarded as a reliable man – reliable, with a streak of intuitive genius. Then it hit him. He found that he, of all people, had been exposed to an excess of cobalt radiation. It has nasty symptoms, and by the time you’ve noticed the symptoms you’re too late to backtrack. It does unpleasant things to the liver. A man with hepatitis gets very depressive and resentful about a lot of things. And van Lynden soon found he’d got plenty to resent.

  “The authorities went out of their way to find a doctor who declared that this particular case of hepatitis was a germ infection. Nothing to do with van Lynden’s work near cobalt bomb radiation. Pure coincidence. So he wasn’t entitled to any compensation. He went on working; but found it harder to concentrate, I’d guess. I suppose he signed the Official Secrets Act when he joined the Research Centre, but he didn’t feel he owed any special loyalty to this country. He got more and more resentful. Absolutely ripe for a deal with someone out of sheer spite. Then he was seconded to the Foundation just to keep him quiet – given facilities in the Centre, and probably allowed a lot more leeway than others because they knew they’d done the dirty on him. We’ve a pretty good idea of what he found. And he knew from his experience back home who would pay a high price for it. He kept quiet till the team had withdrawn from Bryncroeso, and then he and McIntyre came back to amplify their own experiments.”

  “And that’s why Dr Mansell died,” said Ellen.

  The pigeon casserole arrived. Okra, courgettes and Duchesse potatoes were ladled ceremonially around the pond of rich gravy.

  “That,” Mark agreed when the waiter had gone, “is pretty certainly why Mansell was put out of the way. He must have found some discrepancies in his notes, driven back to Bryncroeso to check something, and walked straight into a situation none of them had anticipated. He was an honest man. Anything that happened under the auspices of the Foundation had to be reported to the Foundation. So he was killed before he could talk. Dumped
into his car, driven back to Abermadoc, into the dinghy, out to the boat. A few bloodstains along the boom, sail him out – David’s Rhodesian chum in charge – and overboard with the remains. Not too far out. They wanted the body to be found if possible, and the boat to drift back – drift, to all appearances – so that the story would be neat and tidy. He couldn’t just vanish off the face of the earth. Too many enquiries, then.”

  “And instead, we’ve got enquiries now. Do you think they’ll find out...dig out...”

  “The mine’s dangerous,” said Mark. “Maybe the bacterial action’s ceased. Maybe they’d already pumped enough pesticide in to obliterate every trace of what they’d been working on. But anyone who wants to burrow in there is going to have to be very careful. There could be further collapses. I’ll bet that at this moment they’re trying to reconstruct the whole experiment from outside. Reproducing conditions, checking what levels of radiation van Lynden could have used – how he applied the radiation, what control conditions were like in the mine, what speeding up there was in micro-organical generation. He was allowed the use of staff for his experimental work. He kept a record to show how much time he used for this project and that project; and how much time should be charged to the Cadwallader Foundation for the original processes and the later follow-up work. But for his eventual achievement...he left no records.”

  “I’m glad,” said Ellen. “Very glad. I...I think we’re better off without that sort of thing.”

  “You may be right. But the people behind him aren’t going to rest now. The people he tricked aren’t going to rest. Politics, big business...”

  “Speaking of business,” said Ellen, “how’s your career shaping?”

  He looked cross for a moment, hating to be interrupted in mid-flight. Then he smiled. It was the first real smile, the first truly Mark smile, today. At once things fell into place. It was as though he had turned them back, just in time, on to the road into the dangerous but enchanting valleys of Wales.

  “I’ve got my summons,” he said ruefully, tapping his breast pocket. “Commanded to appear in court a week on Monday.”