I looked at him doubtfully. So full of eager confidence, now, and it seemed a pity to puncture it.
“But the other guards didn’t realise they’d been doped, Ian. This is the third time I’ve seen a guard asleep, and they didn’t know what was happening to them, otherwise they’d have reported it.”
“Let’s assume he did realise it,” he said severely.
“And yet ... ” I looked away from his anxious eyes. “ ... and yet, it was all so vague, if it happened as you’ve suggested. How would they know how much of the dope the guard would take, or even whether he’d make himself a cup of coffee at all?”
“Elsa, I shouldn’t worry about it.”
“But I do. I can’t help it. After all, poison’s a woman’s weapon, and this is much the same sort of thing.”
“You’re out of date, Elsa,” he said kindly. “Our young ladies these days use knives and guns, and they’re quite prepared to put the boot in, if the opportunity presents itself.”
He was laughing at me. I was a bit short with him. “And so would this lot. It just doesn’t sound right, drugging the sugar, when all they’d need to do was knock him on the head.”
“You don’t have to concern yourself about it,” he said irritably. His ears were cocked to the distant wail of an ambulance siren.
“And in the end it was just luck,” I persisted. “The guard who died happened to take sugar. The guard who should have been on, didn’t. He took beer, I understand, but not sugar. And he would have been on, if he hadn’t got himself run down by a car.”
He stared at me for a moment, then turned away to the door.
“Where’s that bloody ambulance?” he demanded.
And he could hear, as well as I could, where it was.
8
There had been a double railway line along the cutting before they slaughtered British Rail. There had also been sleepers supporting the rails. But now both the rails and the sleepers were gone, and what was left, in the steady downpour, was a wide, long stretch of glistening mud.
Halfway along there was a lonely old signal box. It had become a haunt for larking children in the daytime and courting couples at night. No couples that night, though. It looked gaunt and cold in the dim light, with no windows left to reflect the distant and drab streetlamps.
Two streets, a quarter of a mile apart, crossed the cutting. We sat, Ian and I, in his Datsun, just below the prow of one of the bridges, and looked along the cutting. A row of terraced houses was silent and dark on our left. They’d be long asleep. The seething rain on the car roof was the only sound. I found Ian’s headrests to be too high, and uncomfortable. We had been waiting twenty minutes, because he had insisted on coming early. Silently I cursed him. It is a terrible thing to wait.
It was ten minutes to midnight.
“I was hoping,” said Ian, “that you could ... perhaps ... have a word with Frances.”
“I know you were, Ian. But it’s not my place.”
“I will not have her marry that Peter.”
“Can’t we smoke? Is there a rule against it?”
“Of course not. Smoke if you wish.” Perhaps he was trying to give them up. “He’ll never be any good for her. She won’t know where she is with him.”
Smoke rolled back at me from the windscreen. “She knows exactly where she is. Do stop worrying, Ian.”
“I can’t trust him. Look what he’s doing now ... acting as their go-between. It’s an insult. He’s laughing at me. He wants to make a public exhibition of me.”
“No, Ian. Simply, I think, he wants to keep you alive for the wedding.”
“He’ll be lucky to live that long himself.”
“I mean it, Ian. Don’t you feel ... Ian, you’ve known him for years. You’ve matched wits with him, and I think he’s enjoyed it. Perhaps he wouldn’t have gone on with it, if he hadn’t had you to work with.”
“With!”
“Against, then. And Ian, don’t you feel that he now considers you with just a touch of affection?”
“The cheeky young puppy!”
“Well all right. For Frances’s sake, then. If that suits you better. For her sake, he wants to keep you alive.”
He gave an angry snort. “There’s no danger.”
“You’re a stubborn fool.”
“Why should Rimlock be interested in me?”
“I’m tired of this self-deprecating nonsense. Isn’t it time for me to go?”
“For me to go,” he corrected. “No, don’t argue — I’m going myself.”
“It was arranged — ”
“I’m not tied to Peter’s arrangements.”
“Haven’t you always been absolutely straight with Peter? Isn’t that what it’s always been about? And now you’re mistrusting him.”
He moved angrily. “It’s so dark. He wouldn’t know who it is until we’re face to face.”
“Ian, don’t be stubborn. It has to be me. Do you want to jeopardise everything? If it was you he met, can’t you imagine Peter’s reaction! He’d laugh in your face.”
“And I’d break his neck.”
“Oh yes, and very helpful that’d be. It’s time, Ian. I’m going.”
“But what if you’re right about Rimlock, and he’s lurking somewhere out there?” And yet I knew he was teasing me.
I laughed to indicate I understood his mood. “But you’re so sure he’s not after you.”
“I’d be willing to concede — assuming he is getting old and off it — willing to concede he might be.” There was just a hint of wistfulness in his voice. He was staring directly ahead through the windscreen.
“Then we must disappoint him.”
He turned quickly to me. “I don’t want you to do it. If there’s the slightest hint of danger ... ”
“I am meeting Peter,” I said. “Not Rimlock. And I’m not looking remotely like you, Ian.”
They had equipped me with a policeman’s cape and a floppy plastic hat that came down over my ears and eyes, and I was wearing a pair of gumboots too large for me. There was, of course, no question of an umbrella, because both hands were going to be busy with those damned cases. Each was as big as my overnight bag, and each weighted 25 lbs. The electronic wizards had not been wrong.
I slid them out onto the ground.
Ian was a fraction late. “Here, let me help you.” It was a tense voice, because he didn’t wish the concession to imply that he approved of what I was doing. But they were on the ground, and I slammed the car door quickly on any last reservation he might have.
“I’ll watch,” he said. “Raise one hand, and I’ll be there.”
Along with half the district’s police, I reckoned. Although he hadn’t said so, I knew he must have them in every dark shadow, completely surrounding the area.
“Don’t worry.”
I picked up the bags. This was the first time I had tried them together, and it was at once clear that I was not going to do any galloping around. My shoulders creaked, and it felt as though my arms would pull clear out of their sockets. But I had begun it; I would have to continue with it.
The first obstacle was the fence. This was plain wire, and guarded the two yards or so between the end of the bridge parapet and the nearest hedge. One of Ian’s minions had helpfully cut the wire earlier on, but all the same I had to climb over the lowest run, which he’d left because it was only six inches off the ground. But six inches in gumboots in the dark is not easy to calculate. Add the weight of a fairsized teenager, and you’ll understand why it began to go wrong from that moment.
Now, I’ll concede that Ian was worried, but there was no conceivable reason why he should not have helped me over that obstacle. Admitted that there was now a dark car parked on the bridge the other end of the cutting, but we both knew it was Peter, and he’d hardly object if Ian climbed out and put a hand to my elbow, particularly because there was ten feet of slippy bank to climb down the other side. I had wondered how I’d manage that bank, but when it came to
it I didn’t have any trouble at all. I simply waited until I came to a halt at the bottom.
Fortunately, when I found them by groping around on my knees, I discovered that neither of the bags had burst open. I said something about my pleasure at this happy chance. My slacks were ruined. I fumbled around for my left gumboot, and slipped it on. I stood up, located the direction in which the signal box lay, and began to trudge towards it. It was at the box we were to meet.
Because of a combination of circumstances — a stream I could hear trickling away, the downpour being coursed down into the cutting, and the fact that a multitude of children’s feet had pounded the surface — the mud was deeper than I had anticipated. My feet sank in it with every step, until the cases actually slid along the surface. This at least took some of the weight. When I raised my head the signal box did not seem to be getting nearer. But I was not sure. The hat had slid over one eye, and I dared not release one of the cases in case it sank beyond recall into the mud.
Either the gumboots or the cape was too short. Water cascaded from the one into the other. My arms ached with a burning pain, and now I dared not rest them. The socks had worked themselves into hard little balls in the toes of the boots.
I lifted my head, tilting it to see from one eye. The rain increased its attack. Peter was ten yards away, leaning forward as though to gauge my distance. He seemed about to leap forward.
“Stay where you are!”
I don’t think I eased the pressure that was clamping my teeth together, but it came out satisfactorily. It expressed my mood. Peter was still. I dug in my chin. One foot after the other. One, two. One, two. Then I saw his feet. I put down the cases and raised my head.
“This,” I said, “is bloody stupid.”
“It’s always done, Elsa,” he said softly, persuasively. “A quiet place, a meeting alone and secret.”
“We could ... ” I had to stop, I was panting so much. I drew air in deeply through my nostrils. “We could have done it at Ian’s place, comfortably ... In the warm and the dry. Like civilised people. The money was there. You saw the cases in the hall. But there had to be some blasted pretence — ”
“You do go on,” he said.
In the half light I saw that he was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a belted military raincoat, trying to look like Bogart trying to look like Philip Marlowe. With a slight warmth of pleasure I saw that he had not thought of gumboots, and his shoes had quite disappeared beneath the mud’s surface
“Well ... get on with it,” I said impatiently. “What do you do now, give me a piece of paper ... ”
“No. Not really.”
“Then simply tell me where we can find our steel.”
“Now Elsa ... ”
“What is it?”
“You know that in all the best kidnappings it’s not done in that way.”
It was probable, I thought, that I’d lose my feet. Or at least my toes. They’d go white, then green ...
“Then how is it done?”
“The ransom is paid, and then, some time later, you receive a telephone call.”
“Do you think I’m that gullible?”
“It really is the only way. Just think of it. Is it logical that you’d get your information before the money’s been checked? Ask yourself. And if you think I’m going to count £20,000 in the dark in all this mud ... ”
“You’ve brought me here for nothing!” I shouted.
“Keep your voice down, Elsa. There’re people in bed.”
“I could kill you.”
“It isn’t my fault. It’s what I was told to say.”
“Told! Told? You said you worked for yourself. Now you’re being told.”
“I’m only an agent in this. I meant that I was told on the phone. All my contact has been by phone.”
My picture of him was what he had said himself. He had seemed large and confident, his own man and proud of it, the all-knowing and self-sufficient knight errant. Now, in the pitiless rain, ankle-deep in mud, he shrank in significance.
“An errand-runner,” I said with contempt.
“I shall no doubt get a fee.” He nodded with weak pride.
“But not for this job,” I told him. “Don’t imagine I’d part with this money for vague promises.”
“I could take it from you, Elsa.” His eyes gleamed in a stray reflection of light. His voice was again confident and mocking.
“Would you care to try?”
He laughed. “And have Ian on my neck?”
“And have me on your neck.” I looked round and flapped my arms to my sides beneath the cape. “Well, that’s it, then.”
“You’re willing to go back and say you’ve failed?”
“Unlike you, Peter, I’m a little more than a messenger. I’ve got a share in this money, and responsibility for it. Unlike you, I’m in a position to make decisions.”
His voice became grave. “Are you in a position to take a message?”
“I told you, I’m not a messenger.”
“Save another phone call,” he suggested.
I detected his change of mood. “What is it?”
“It wasn’t intended that this should be the handover. Otherwise I’d have insisted on being told where the steel is, and I’d have passed on the information. But it didn’t arise. You see, Elsa, there’s been news getting around.”
“Now look, Peter. I’m very cold and I’m very tired, and I want to get to a chair by a fire. Say it.”
“They’ve heard that Lord Rosen is in town.”
I had heard it too, though I had not attached much importance to the announcement on the radio. Lord Rosen was Chairman of British Heavy Vehicles. Yes, he had arrived, because the situation was serious to his corporation. They couldn’t send six hundred wagons to Iran with no rear axles.
“What of it?”
“The price has gone up.”
“Again!”
“The thought is that BHV will chip in. It’s a big order for them. After all, when you’re talking in millions, the odd hundred thousand is neither here nor there.”
Very carefully, so that the hiss of the rain would not lead to an error in communication, I said: “Did I hear a hundred thousand?”
“That was the figure mentioned to me.”
“Pounds?”
“In ones.”
“They must be mad. Completely insane.”
“The law of supply and demand, Elsa.”
Then I knew, chillingly — the feeling quite separate from the dreary impact of the rain — that this was certainly not madness. It was a most cunningly contrived use of psychology, and a subtle use of opportunity. This, then, had been the original intention, but to have put it at the beginning would have been to have it dismissed with scorn. But the background had been built up, and the circumstances manipulated, until, in bleak fact, it was conceivable.
I felt completely beaten. “I’ll tell them,” I whispered.
“But of course, I could take what you’ve brought with you, as a kind of deposit. On account.”
“You will not!”
“Save you carrying it back.”
“Touch those cases, Peter, and I will kill you. I’m taking them back.”
He shrugged. Rainwater poured from his hat brim. “Then at least let me help you with them. I’m sure they’re heavy.”
I laughed, I admit a trifle hysterically.
“All right then,” he said huffily. “Be independent. See if I care.”
“Go back to your masters and tell them you’ve delivered your message, and that we will consider it.”
“We don’t have to part like this,” he protested.
“What do we do then — salute?”
“Have a drink with me,” he offered.
“Go away, Peter, please.”
“Later perhaps. I’ll be at the club.”
“Later,” I said. “I shall probably be in bed with pneumonia.”
He lifted his chin and spoke with distant pride. “W
ell anyway, it isn’t money you’ve brought with you. I got a look in the cases, while they were in Ian’s hall. Goodliffe must’ve switched them. These are full of old computer print-outs.”
Then he turned away and trudged back. One of his shoes left in the mud, but pride prevented him from returning for it. Because of this, I think, I allowed him to reach his car before I did anything. Perhaps I would not have been able to, anyway, but I told myself that the tears were for him.
Then at last I recovered. I raised my head.
“Dav ... id!” I screamed, quite forgetting for the moment.
And to hell with the people placidly sleeping around me.
9
I was surprised to see that Frances was at home.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Leave her alone,” said Ian. “She’s upset.”
“I am not upset,” I shouted.
“A hot bath,” he said soothingly. “Frances, run a bath. And a hot-water bottle, I think.”
“I shall not need the bottle,” I told him. “The bath certainly, but then I’m going out.”
“At this time?”
“For a drink. He owes me one.”
We had dumped the external clothing at the police station, and two of McIntyre’s guards had taken away the cases of computer print-outs. McIntyre had obviously been concerned about Goodliffe’s welfare — when he found him.
Ian had seemed uneasy, perhaps disappointed. Had he hoped that Rimlock would appear, I wondered.
“I shall speak severely to Peter,” Ian had said with quiet relish.
I went and wallowed in pine-scented foam. To tell the truth, I felt no sign of a chill, and there was no feeling of stiffness. I was exhilarated, pleased that I’d surmounted the difficulties. But I was no less angry at Peter. I soaped a leg and considered what I would say to him.
There was a knock at the door. Goodliffe said softly: “Are you there, Mrs. Mallin?”
A Dip Into Murder (David Mallin Detective series Book 10) Page 8