The Doomsday Carrier

by Victor Canning

  As he turned off the main road a police car came up fast behind, passed him and drew in ahead, signalling him to stop.

  A police constable got out of the car and came to him.

  The constable said, “Mr Sparrow?”

  “That’s right. What’s the matter? I wasn’t doing more than forty —”

  “Nothing’s the matter, sir. Not about speeding, anyway. But I must ask you to drive on to your place and when you get there just sit in the van. We’ll be right behind you.”

  “I think I have a right to know what all this is about.”

  “So you have, sir. And we’ll let you know as soon as you get to Westacott Bottom. Just follow us, sir, if you don’t mind.”

  Duncan Sparrow did not mind. He knew that he was in no position to mind. Nobody had to wave a red flag for him to know that the firing had started. Somehow the police had got wind of Charlie. Damn. Well, that was that. There went Brighton and Bournemouth and all the delights of a man temporarily monied and looking for a not-too-nice girl to spend some of his cash on. As for himself. . . well, they couldn’t touch him. He’d only done what anyone else could have done. Poor old Charlie, drenched to the skin. Took him home, dried him down, fed and bedded him. Damn it, we were all God’s creatures and any other decent sort would have done the same. Why hadn’t he reported his good deed? Well, he wasn’t on the telephone at the cottage and he was a busy man. Going to do it this morning in the village when he’d finished his round. Yes, that was all right. Couldn’t touch him. Still, hard luck, Dunky, old boy . . . no cuddling in some sunny cove with an unbashful maiden.

  Whistling thinly through his teeth he drove into the yard and the police car pulled up alongside him. The constable came back to him and gave him a pleasant smile, saying, “Had time to think it over?”

  “Charlie?”

  “That’s the size of it.”

  “Someone saw me give the poor little blighter a lift?”

  “Yes. Reported it last night like a good citizen. Green Ford van. A. Wrench, baker and confectioner.” He nodded to the battered side of the van.

  “I’ve been meaning to paint it out for months, ever since I bought it in Oxford.”

  “Wouldn’t have made any difference. One of our blokes coming on duty first thing this morning read the log and knew you at once. Regular habits like breakfasting in a lay-by, regular routes on a paper round delivery to shops. Regular face, regular van. People remember—especially our kind.”

  “Makes me sound like a regular fellow. So what now?”

  “Just sit. Where’s the chimp—in the barn?”

  “Yes. Nice chap, too. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to have a little freedom? I get the feeling from the papers that there’s a bit of a mystery about him.”

  “No mystery. You live alone here?”

  “Mostly, and at the moment.”

  “Nice place, could be.”

  “You can have it for fifteen thousand, lock, stock and barrel.”

  “I’ll think it over.” The constable went back to the police car. The driver said, “They’re on their way. Ten minutes.” He tipped his head back towards the van. “What’s he like?”

  “A little ray of artificial sunlight. Old school tie. No money and work-shy. Look at this place. It’s a damned disgrace. You could take a crop of hay off the cottage thatch.”

  Ten minutes later Rimster, with Jean at his side, drove into the yard. Behind them came a truck with boarded sides and roof and an iron-grilled back with a small doorway in its centre, and two other vehicles, one an army R/T truck and the other an army command car, chauffeured by a sergeant, while in the back sat the Colonel in charge of the operations centre.

  Rimster, Jean and the Colonel got out of their cars and walked across to Duncan. The Colonel, long and lanky, wearing a thin sandy moustache looked a wet, he thought. The woman was all right, dark-haired, good looking, a bit prim, not his type . . . nice figure, though. One look at the man, however, and he knew that here was someone who outranked the Colonel on any point you liked to mention. Chipped from granite. If there was going to be trouble it would come from him. And all this high-powered police and army stuff? What was Charlie? A Russian spy in disguise?

  Rimster, though he had had a briefing of a kind from the police, could have placed Duncan Sparrow at once. He had gone to school with people like him and even now had friends like him. They were all men who took things lightly even when things weren’t going their way. He decided to handle him easily as a matter of policy because Charlie had to attract no undue importance and also because it would bring the right response from Sparrow.

  He said easily, “Mr Sparrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry to come down on you like a three-ring circus.”

  “That’s all right. I like circuses.”

  “Where’s Charlie?”

  “In the barn. I picked him up yesterday morning, drenched to the skin. Settled him down in the barn. Thought he ranked a day’s rest and feeding up before I turned him in. Here’s the key. There’s a light switch inside on the right of the door. He won’t give any trouble. Happy chap. He belong to you?”

  “I’m his owner’s agent.”

  Duncan eyeing two helicopters which had appeared and were circling high overhead said innocently, “He must be someone who carries a lot of weight. Police, troops, helicopters? Just for nice old Charlie boy?”

  “He could be dangerous if upset—particularly to a small child.”

  Rimster turned to Jean.

  “He’s in the barn. Take a couple of bananas and go and have a look at him. If you think he’s going to be awkward we can go in and net him.”

  The Colonel said gallantly, “Perhaps I should go in with Miss Blackwell?”

  Rimster shook his head. “There’s no need. Charlie knows her. You might disturb him.”

  Without thinking Rimster took her by the arm and walked towards the barn with her. Feeling the light grip of his hand on her elbow Jean realized that this was how George had so often steered her through a crowd, his big, warm hand controlling her . . . hands which at more intimate moments so easily woke passion in her. What would this man’s be like? She shook the thought from her, wondering what it was about him that awoke such curiosity in her. Well, thank goodness, she wouldn’t have to wonder much longer. With the bait of a banana Charlie would follow her like a dog and once he was in the truck she would be free to go her own and new way.

  Rimster turned the key in the lock and pulled one of the double doors open just enough to let Jean slip in. He shut the door on her saying, “The light switch is on the right just inside.”

  He stood outside and waited. The helicopters droned high overhead. Some loose hens scratched at the worn turf of a paddock beyond the yard. From the oak trees that lined the field at the top of the holding a pigeon sailed out lazily, clapped its wings, and slanted away on the light morning breeze. Tonight, tomorrow at the latest, he thought, he would be back in London, the brief pastoral excursion over . . . And then what? Never again any real job which would give him the hard, callous satisfaction and lift which had become like a drug to him over the years. Grandison had already decreed the drying-out process.

  The barn door opened and from inside Jean said, “Come and have a look.”

  Before he moved he knew from the tone of her voice that things had gone wrong. He went in. Naked bulbs on the cross rafters lit the place. It was littered and untidy with old machinery, crates and loose hay and straw. Jean pointed to the far roof comer of the barn above the wooden stall.

  “He’s gone.”

  Sunlight streamed through a gap where the heavy slates and their battens had been pushed and broken away. It was easy to see how Charlie had reached the roof. An upright timber post from the comer of the stall ran upwards to a cross rafter.

  Jean said flatly, “Once he wanted to get out it was easy for him. He’s nothing like adult yet, but he’s very strong. I’ve looked around, he’s nowhere in the barn.
”

  “Right. Well that’s that.” Rimster looked at his wristwatch. It was half-past nine. “Let’s go.”

  He left Jean at the car and went across to the Colonel and told him what had happened, finishing, “He’s probably had at the most somewhere around four hours’ start. I’ll check with our friend Sparrow in a moment, but you’d better let the chopper boys know. He could be six to eight miles from here by now.”

  “Right. What are you going to do about this damned fellow Sparrow?”

  “I’ll deal with him.”

  He walked over to Sparrow knowing that there was nothing that could be done about him. He had done nothing wrong. Taken Charlie in, lodged and fed him, and had been going to inform the police—nobody could touch him. Any fuss or police action meant publicity—and that was out.

  Sparrow spoke before he did. “Don’t tell me he’s gone?”

  Without feeling Rimster said, “Yes. He pushed a hole in the roof at the back of the barn. What time did you leave here this morning?”

  “About half-past four, maybe a bit later. Gave him some grub. He was quite settled then. So what happens now?”

  “Nothing so far as you are concerned. You had him and while you were making up your mind to let us know you lost him.” His voice hardened. “Now answer me one question—and I want the truth.”

  “Fire ahead. And truly, I’m sorry about all this.”

  “Spare me that. All I want to know is whether you told anyone else that you had him here? Did you?”

  “No I didn’t.” The lie came easily out of self-protection and fast thinking. By the time the press arrived these people would be away. There would be no story for them, no photographs. Charlie had gone. Anyway he didn’t like the look of this man—there was something odd going on about Charlie. He sensed it. If there should be trouble then the longer he put off meeting it the stronger might be his position.

  Rimster said quietly, “I don’t believe you.”

  Duncan Sparrow smiled. “You can believe what you like. And I’d like to make an interesting little point of my own. I don’t know you from Adam. If I’ve done anything wrong—” he nodded to the police car, “—those boys over there are the ones to tell me. What’s more if I should have happened to phone my mother or girl friend and told them about Charlie I’d like to know what law I was breaking? But don’t worry—” he was enjoying himself now, sensing that, for whatever hidden reason, this man couldn’t touch him, “—my mother’s dead and I’m in the market for a new girl friend. Charlie’s gone. That’s the end of the business so far as I’m concerned—except it seems I have to do some roof repairs. That’s what comes of being kind to animals.”

  Rimster said quietly, “Right. Well, thank you for your co-operation, Mr Sparrow.”

  He went back to his car, wishing he were free to come down hard on Sparrow, but that was the last thing he could do. Keep it all in low profile. Orders. Charlie was an ordinary chimpanzee on the loose. Keep it that way. His own guess was that Sparrow might easily have already got in touch with the press. Well, that was Grandison’s end of the affair when he let him know how things had gone at Westacott Bottom.

  * * * *

  From fifteen hundred feet Captain Stevens could see the cars in the yard of Westacott Bottom and the movement of people. He was flying in a great circle with two more helicopters.

  His observer said, “Looks like old Charlie’s lodged up in that barn.”

  “Not is. Was.”

  The man and the woman who had gone into the barn had come out a little while ago and had left the door open. At this moment fresh orders came over the radio for the helicopters, dropping them to six hundred feet and laying out a new search pattern.

  “Was—yes,” said the observer. “Here we go again.”

  And all very monotonous it was becoming too, thought Stevens, and—seen from up here—not half as efficient as the operations centre people might think it was. Again and again he had watched a strung-out patrol line of soldiers move up a valley, or across a downland bowl, the search line, evenly spaced at first, soon becoming ragged and gapped because the men adapted their going to the easier contours and ground. Probably did it without knowing they were doing it. Six men across a half-a-mile front had to miss ground. Just as from up here his own observer couldn’t keep everything under survey. The high crops, the summer-dry tall grasses, and shrub and tree shadows offered all sorts of easy camouflage to Charlie if he happened not to be moving. Add to that that most people now were getting bored with the whole thing, losing their first fine sharp-eyed rapture. The odds were swinging Charlie’s way. The chaps who had drawn double figure numbers in the mess sweepstake for the capture of Charlie were beginning to rub their hands. Including himself. Into the seventh day now. Keep it up, Charlie boy. He’d drawn day fourteen. A big bunch of bananas if you make it, Charlie boy. There was a big kitty to be picked up.

  The observer said, “Hear that?”

  Captain Stevens nodded. The call had gone out for a pair of handlers and their dogs to report to Westacott Bottom. Bloody great Alsatians or German police dogs. Well, if they picked up a line Charlie would have to do some quick thinking. Stick it Charlie, he thought, sympathy for the animal as much as the thought of his own gain moving him. Stick it, lad. Use your loaf. Give ’em a good run until day fourteen. Thirty-five quid in the kitty.

  They moved slowly northwards and he watched the ground and the shadow of the helicopter racing ahead of him along the dried-up bed of a small stream, one of the bourns which flowed only in the winter. A handful of grazing horses moved away at a gallop as the machine passed over, their manes flaring as they dipped and swung their long necks, great scuds of turf kicked up by their hooves. They raced across the field to a hedge against which was a long concrete drinking trough, then wheeled abruptly and went down the slope to clatter across the dry gravel and stones of the stream bed. Stevens watched them, enjoying the sight, imagining himself, if he won the kitty, riding one of them . . . not here though. Along some golden stretch of sand with a golden-haired girl on another horse alongside him . . . sunshine, salt breeze in their faces and a whole long, luxurious loving weekend before them.

  If he had paid more attention to the hedge and the water trough he might just have caught a glimpse of Charlie sitting in the hedge shadow after drinking from the trough. He was grooming himself and hooing gently through pouting lips. After a while he got up and going to the trough rubbed his back against it as he watched, far to his right, a helicopter move across the sky. He watched it until it disappeared and then turned and climbed through the hedge into the next field.

  The ground in the field was cut, furrowed and grubbed up from the rooting of pigs. A hundred yards away an old sow was feeding while six piglets moved around her. Erect, his long arms swinging, Charlie moved out into the field. He was almost up to the sow before she saw him. She lifted her head and grunted warningly at him. Charlie dropped to all fours and began to lope quickly around her. As he did so the piglets, squealing in noisy panic, broke away from the sow in all directions. Suddenly excited by their movement and squeals Charlie ran after one of them and caught it by a hind leg. The sow charged at him. Charlie moved away quickly, loping on his legs and one arm, dragging the screaming piglet with him. He reached a wooden fence on the far side of the field and climbed over it. Then he turned and screamed at the sow on the other side as he swung the piglet above his head and smashed it to the hard ground, breaking its neck and killing it. Maybe as he did so there was some memory in him of his far-off African days when, crouched against his mother, he had watched some adult chimpanzee male so catch and kill a young bushpig or baby baboon. He screamed and chattered at the sow for a moment or two and then turned away, moving erect and holding the dead piglet trailing from one hand along the ground.

  Twenty yards away was the fringe of a large oak wood, an outlying spur of the old forest of Chute. When he came to the first tree he climbed it and began to make his way into the wood throu
gh the upper branches of the densely packed trees. Behind him the noise of the sow and her piglets died away.

  Holding the piglet sometimes in his mouth or one hand Charlie swung and leaped his way through the treetops. It was the first time since his escape that he had been in a large wood and could travel fast high above ground. When he was well into the middle of the oak wood he found a wide crotch between branch and trunk of a tree and settled himself down. He ate half the piglet and then dropped the remainder of the carcass to the ground where it was found that night by a scavenging but not hungry fox who carried it away and buried it in a field beneath a large pat of cow dung to leave it until it should be high enough for eating.

  Charlie slept for an hour and then moved through the treetops deeper into the wood, heading for its northern boundaries.

  Almost three hours after Charlie had entered the wood the two handlers with their dogs and another soldier carrying an R/T pack arrived at the edge of the forest at the point where Charlie had entered. The dogs had taken Charlie’s scent from the straw of his barn bedding and had picked it up at the back of the barn where he had dropped to the ground. There was little wind and the scent had held true along a haphazard line which had taken them generally in a northerly direction.

  Now, at the wood’s edge, the dogs stood balked at the foot of the tree which Charlie had climbed with the dead piglet. The handlers made them cast around, but they persisted in coming back to the tree.

  Consulting their map the soldiers decided to split up and move left and right-handed respectively around the perimeter of the wood in the hope that, if Charlie had left the place, one or other of them would pick up his scent again. The fact that the total distance around the perimeter was something like ten miles gave them no pleasure at all. A toss of a coin decided that the signaller should go with the left-handed perimeter dog handler. Before moving off he reported their situation back to the operations room and from there two helicopters were ordered to move to the wood and cover it. In addition five patrols were detailed into the area to beat through the wood from different points so that the whole of it would be searched.