No Hearts, No Roses

by Colin Murray

  I opened the back door of the car, and there was Miss Beaumont, sitting in the space behind the front passenger seat. Her hands were tied in front of her, and she was gagged, but she’d managed to loosen the rope around her ankles. I noted that at least they’d had the decency to allow her to dress in the same chic suit that I’d first seen her in. It was more crumpled and less chic than it had been then.

  I decided not to waste time and picked her up and draped her across my shoulder. She was surprisingly light.

  I crossed the road quickly to the field that invitingly offered itself there. It looked like the mirror image of the one I’d just been in, but I suppose there must have been differences. I lowered Miss Beaumont over the fence as carefully as I could and then climbed over myself. Crouched there, I managed to untie her and pull the gag, which was a man’s tie, out of her mouth.

  She threw her arms around my neck and leaned her soft cheek against mine. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed into my ear.

  Her intoxicating perfume was absent, but she was, if anything, even more fragrant.

  ‘Don’t thank me yet,’ I whispered. ‘We’re not out of the woods yet.’

  She lifted her head, looked up at the tree we were sat under and laughed quietly. ‘Yes, we are,’ she said. ‘If one swallow doesn’t make a summer, then I’m fairly sure that one tree doesn’t make a wood.’

  I smiled at her. I don’t think I’d heard her crack a joke – even a laboured one – before. Perhaps she wasn’t made of porcelain after all. And I’d been expecting her to be all sobs.

  ‘I think you know what I mean,’ I said.

  I risked lifting my head for a quick shufti over the hedge. Amazingly, there was still no one by the car. Charlie and Emile must have been doing a great job, but I couldn’t see Charlie lasting much longer. On the other hand, if all they were up against was Don the driver then they might well come charging back over the hills at any minute. He wasn’t a match for either of them. Then I heard a thin wail, a wan call for help. It was coming from the wood on the opposite side of the road. Ray must have managed to spit out his disgusting snot rag.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s find some cover before they notice you’re missing.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Incidentally,’ I said, ‘when we’re mentioning people in despatches and handing out the gongs, don’t forget Charlie. He’s risking heart failure, leading them off in the wrong direction.’

  ‘Charlie?’ she said.

  ‘Charlie Lomax,’ I said. ‘Les’s driver.’

  Clearly, she didn’t know who I was talking about. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘let’s go.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I can’t run in these.’

  She slipped off her white, high-heeled sandals and then hitched up her skirt, unfastened her stockings and slipped them off. As the soft fabric slid slowly down her smooth, white skin, I couldn’t help noticing that she had a great pair of pins, slim and shapely. She caught me looking and gave me a narrow-eyed look.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said and turned away in embarrassment.

  She patted me affectionately on the shoulder, like I was a pet dog who’d just done something naughty but endearing. ‘Ready,’ she said. ‘And were you?’

  ‘Was I what?’ I said.

  ‘Mentioned in despatches?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘What does it mean?’ she said.

  ‘They give you a chunk of bronze cast as an oak leaf,’ I said.

  ‘No, what does it mean? What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing that hundreds of others didn’t do better and more often.’

  It suddenly occurred to me that when Jenkins and Alfred noticed that she was missing, which must be any minute, they’d probably reckon that she would have run away from them, down the road in the direction they’d been travelling, and not risk passing them at the gate. I decided that we’d do just what they thought we wouldn’t.

  TWENTY-THREE

  It was just like old times.

  Except that Beverley Beaumont wasn’t Ghislaine; this wasn’t a French apple orchard, damp with morning dew; Big Luc wasn’t running a fuse from explosives packed under a railway line; Jenkins and Alfred weren’t enemy soldiers in Feldgrau; and I wasn’t twenty-one any more. You can’t have everything.

  The immortal Bix Beiderbecke was building up a head of steam with ‘Tiger Rag’ in my head as, hugging the hedge, we swiftly – well, as swiftly as you can when walking in a crouch and one of you is barefoot, carrying her stockings and shoes – headed in the direction of the Rolls, the gate and the men we were trying to elude.

  If I’d had a cigar in one hand and if Beverley Beaumont had been much larger and in front of me and if I’d painted a black moustache on my upper lip I would have been a dead spit of Groucho Marx stalking Margaret Dumont.

  I could still just about hear Ray plaintively seeking help. His thin, reedy pleas carried on the warm, evening breeze. If I could hear him, it was a racing certainty that Jenkins could. With a bit of luck, Alfred would have gone to his aid. With a bit more luck, both of them would be ministering to him even now, gently rubbing his wrists to encourage the circulation of blood back into his hands. Not that I’d tied him that tightly.

  The Rolls was visible through the hedge, the last rays of the setting sun gleaming on its flanks. I couldn’t see beyond it into the field, so I didn’t know what was going on, but an absence of shouting, shooting or scuffling suggested nothing much.

  Waiting around to find out didn’t seem like the best plan, but I wanted to know. I moved five yards to my left and stood up, but I couldn’t see around the Rolls. Still, the dear old thing protected us from any prying eyes in the field. However, while I watched, animated voices drifted across the road, and I crouched down next to Beverley Beaumont.

  ‘You know, this is just like The 39 Steps,’ she whispered.

  I suddenly remembered the story that Les had told me about Hitchcock and Madeleine Carroll and smiled. I had a sneaking suspicion that Beverley Beaumont’s eyes wouldn’t register even mild surprise if the great man gave her an organ recital. She’d probably yawn, peer at him short-sightedly for a few seconds before rummaging in her handbag for her spectacles.

  ‘Just a bit,’ I whispered back.

  The lively conversation of just a few seconds before had turned into something else, and angry raised voices drifted across the road. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but the sound grew steadily louder. I heard what sounded like Bert’s bass rumble and Jenkins’ imperious, aristocratic bark. It seemed that Jenkins’ party was leaving the field. In a minute or so they’d probably discover Jan and then that Miss Beaumont was missing.

  I hoped that Charlie and Emile had got away.

  I looked around for some cover. There wasn’t much. The field sloped very gently down for about two hundred yards to what looked like a small stream – although it could just have been a drainage ditch – and then rose again to a slight rise where, more than a quarter of a mile away, a few trees straggled. Further on, there was a church spire thrusting up towards the darkening sky. However, as the sun set and colour leached slowly out of the landscape, if we stayed where we were, hunched up against the hedge, we might pass as a large bump in the ground, or the stump of a felled tree.

  I took the unfamiliar gun out of my pocket and examined it cursorily. Not that I had any real intention of using it. Accidentally shooting one man in the foot and seeing two others wounded was more than enough gun action for one week.

  Big Luc had always used a Luger. He’d taken it as a trophy off some German staff officer whose fate I’d never asked about. He’d tried to explain the toggle mechanism to me one quiet evening and just how the recoil worked but my grasp of technical French hadn’t been up to it. Or perhaps it had been his that had been deficient.

  As I thought of Big Luc, I remembered the oak leaf that lay, not quite forgotten, with other, more mundane, service medals – my Africa Star, the one I received for managing to wea
r a uniform for twenty-eight days, and another star just for setting foot in France – under my few shirts and socks. It was a guilty reminder.

  It should, of course, have been Luc’s, and Robert’s, and Ghislaine’s, and the others’. But I was the British soldier – the junior officer (promoted way beyond his competence) – who tagged along as they knocked out fortified cottages and German machine-gun emplacements during the bitter fighting south of Caen, around Tilly and May-sur-Orne in July 1944. And mine was the only name the battered Canadian and British troops we came across remembered and passed on. But it was Big Luc who was shot in the gut. And it was the two young brothers barely out of school, Maurice and Albert, who caught the shell the Panzer tank lobbed at them.

  Suddenly, there was some spirited shouting, an unpleasant oath or two and the sound of running feet from the other side of the road. I assumed that Miss Beaumont’s absence had been noted. Then the sound of running receded. The runner was heading away from us. So far the ploy of doubling back seemed to have worked.

  A car drove past, the daffodil-coloured light from its headlamps penetrating the hedge and sweeping over us as it drifted around the bend in the road. Miss Beaumont’s pale, intense face peered at me briefly out of the gloom.

  ‘Shouldn’t we be trying to find a policeman?’ she whispered.

  ‘Probably,’ I said.

  ‘What are we waiting for, then?’ she said, sounding just a little impatient and much more than a little imperious.

  I made allowances for her. After all, a number of men had tied her up and abducted her from her flat. She’d spent an uncomfortable hour or two in a car. She must have been worried sick. Of course she was anxious and afraid. All the same, her manner rubbed me up the wrong way. I couldn’t help feeling that maybe she wasn’t sufficiently grateful for being rescued.

  ‘Well,’ I said as patiently and as patronizingly as I could manage, just to put her in her place, ‘if you see one cycle past, be sure to let me know. Anyway, I’m not altogether sure that it’s in your interests to go to the police. Or that Hoxton Films would be overjoyed about the publicity that resulted.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ she said. ‘Hoxton would love it. A real kidnapping! It’s better than anything the publicity department could dream up.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Why do you think they kidnapped you?’

  ‘Money,’ she said. ‘A ransom, of course.’

  ‘Well, they are after something. But it’s something they think Jon has. Although I suppose it’s possible they might just have settled for a ransom demand to cut their losses. But Jon’s involvement makes it a bit more complicated. And I’m not sure that “Film star’s drug-dealer boyfriend” is the kind of headline Hoxton wants.’

  There was another silence.

  Well, it wasn’t a silent silence. There were plenty of strange noises – rustlings in the trees and the hedge, scufflings, creakings, coughs and barks – and some not so strange – another vehicle rumbled noisily past, and there were sharp exclamations, low murmurs and the raw sound of someone retching – probably Jan – coming from across the road. No, it wasn’t silent at all. All I mean is that Beverley Beaumont didn’t speak for a while.

  ‘He isn’t a drug-dealer,’ she finally said. ‘He runs errands for people. That’s all.’ She paused. I looked at her. Her delicate little chin was pointed out defiantly. ‘Anyway, if they are drug-dealers, they’re not going to incriminate themselves, are they?’

  She had a point.

  It was my turn to reflect in silence for a few seconds.

  She definitely had a point. Jenkins was hardly going to cough to smuggling in his little cache of illicit diamonds. In fact, I rather doubted that he’d cough to anything, and I was willing to put ready money on him having a devious, assiduous and probably bent brief who’d ensure that he walked away without, as they say in all the best newspapers, a stain on his character.

  Eventually, I nodded. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go find a cop shop, or a telephone to call one.’

  She put her hand on my arm. ‘He isn’t a drug dealer,’ she said. ‘He really isn’t.’

  I said nothing, but handed her the gun, hoping that she wouldn’t use it on me.

  ‘Here,’ I said, ‘hang on to this. Just in case.’

  She held it at arm’s length and looked at it for a few seconds. ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ she said.

  ‘Keep it hidden,’ I said. ‘Hand it to me if we get into trouble.’

  ‘Why don’t you hold on to it?’ she said, not unreasonably.

  ‘No one’s going to search you,’ I said.

  She sniffed dismissively, thought about debating the point, but then seemed to accept that there was some merit in my argument and slipped the gun under her jacket and tucked it into the waistband of her skirt.

  I lifted myself up on my haunches, turned, cautiously raised my head above the hedge and peered over.

  I was expecting to see a little knot of men milling around by the Rolls, smoking, talking quietly together and managing to look bored and alert at the same time. I was wrong, and it seemed that I would have lost any money I’d been prepared to put on them outwaiting us.

  In the huge, black shadows thrown by the giant conker trees, I could just about make out the bulky figure of Bert supporting what looked like Jan the Belgian and half carrying him towards the Humber. Ahead of them, a couple of other figures were already climbing into the car. In the increasing darkness, it was difficult to be sure of the exact number, but it certainly looked as if they were beating a strategic retreat. It occurred to me that Jan might have been as badly injured as I suspected. It was possible that Ray could do with some treatment as well. I couldn’t resist a slight sense of smug satisfaction at the thought that they were heading off to lick their wounds.

  I sank back down behind the hedge again.

  Beverley Beaumont leaned towards me. For some reason she ran her hand down my cheek. My stubble rasped under the light touch of her soft fingers. I felt again the strange intimacy of shared danger.

  ‘You need a shave,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘It suits you,’ she said. ‘The rugged, tousled hero. Dirk Bogarde in The Sea Shall Not Have Them.’

  I hoped it was too dark for her to notice the blush spreading up from my neck.

  Then there was the distant sound of a powerful engine sparking into life, slipping into gear and pulling smoothly away, the tyres spitting gravel.

  I sat up a little, and Beverley Beaumont’s hand slipped from my face and rested on my shoulder.

  And I experienced once more the feeling of shared relief when danger passed.

  We sat quietly for a few seconds, listening to that country silence.

  ‘Do you think they’ve gone?’ she said. Her voice had an eager edge to it, and I caught again that deep, sensual, Joan Greenwood timbre I’d heard in my office.

  ‘Stay here,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and see.’ I stood up and then added, ‘If there’s any kind of problem, wait here quietly for a few minutes and then head off to the nearest house. There must be one back along the road.’

  She nodded, and I leaned down, smiled and awkwardly patted her shoulder.

  Night was coming in surprisingly quickly. The big, old Rolls Phantom must have been named for times like these. It was a silent, sleek shadow, eerily insubstantial and otherworldly, and the field beyond it was lost in darkness. I could just about make out the white-painted gate, but it was as if a thick blackout curtain hung behind it, with one single, thin line of fiery orange-red glaring through where the very last of the sun just touched the horizon.

  Ten quick, quiet strides took me across the road to the side of the ghostly Rolls. My eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness, but I couldn’t see any movement in the field, and I couldn’t hear any unnatural sounds, apart from some distant farm vehicle coughing and hiccuping its noisy way back to the bar
n. Even the squabbling and brawling birds were quiet now.

  I relaxed a little and walked to the gate. There was the faint smell of cigarettes hanging there, but that was explained by the half-dozen fag-ends littering the ground.

  I imagined a crouching figure in every shadow, but no one leapt out at me and no one worked the mechanism on an automatic pistol and slid a bullet into the chamber.

  The opening clarinet glissando, as Jerry had once told me it was called, from ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ wailed into my head.

  Then there was the slightest sound behind me, and I briefly thought that Miss Beaumont had ignored my instruction to stay put until something like the shoulder of a prop forward smashed into the small of my back and knocked me to the ground.

  Before I even registered what had happened, a foot pinned my left arm to the cool, dry grass, a knee savagely hit the small of my back and my right arm was forced up my back in a half-nelson. Then someone growled softly in my ear.

  ‘My, my, isn’t it amazing what crawls out of the woodwork if you’re patient enough?’

  He’d been in the Rolls, of course. And, yes, of course, I should have checked.

  I lay there and remembered the tale that Mrs Wilson had read to us when I was eight: a wily Greek, a false retreat and a wooden horse stuffed with soldiers. Les would have been mortified to think of his beloved Rolls compared to a wooden horse, but there were a few obvious resonances.

  ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts,’ I managed to force out in a pathetic and rather absurd attempt to sound relaxed and comfortable.

  His knee ground into my back painfully. ‘You’re a smart Alec,’ he said. ‘And I don’t like smart Alecs.’ He wrenched my arm up my back. Any further and something would tear or break. He growled into my face again, breathing stale cigarette smoke and sour beer all over me, ‘I told you I’d be back and that you owed me a new suit.’

  He leaned back slightly, slackening his grip on my arm. For a moment, I was able to breathe more freely and I thought he was going to let me up. Then I felt cold metal against the left side of my head and he tapped me, very hard, with the barrel of his gun.