Passion in the Peak

by John Buxton Hilton

  And now the mad buggers had stuck one of their own female officers up against the wall, and they were going to drive a police car at her. What the hell did they think that was going to tell them?

  Another thing that they did not know about was Alfie’s friendship with Miss Mommsen. Nothing sexy, of course, but there had been something about the Jewish girl that appealed to Alf. Her family had suffered at the hands of the Nazis—and Alfie had fought the Nazis, albeit a hundred miles behind the lines, laying railway metals. Several times in Alfie’s life he had taken some young woman under his protection. Snakeweed had been one of them.

  Ricarda Mommsen had been stood up by Wayne Larner, so he had thought it a good idea to recruit her as an ally in some of the tricks that Jimmy Lindop and company were playing. And Ricarda Mommsen had not discouraged him. She had not promised her support in any of the capers—but she had listened. She was a good listener, and perhaps Alf Tandy had let fall from time to time more than he had meant to. Because he felt sorry for Miss Mommsen in more ways than one. She fascinated him. Maybe in spite of the gaps and differences he was even a little in love with her—in Tandy fashion.

  He wondered now, thinking it over, whether she had talked to him, listened to him, because she was using him, pumping him, trying to get him to give secrets away. Like on that Saturday night, when they had come back from Buxton together on the last bus, and she had tried to wheedle out of him what it was he had in his banjo-case. Because he had let it be known that he had something in there— something that he was going to play the biggest trick of all on Larner with. He had not told her that it was iron spikes. But he had told her that Larner was out in his sports car—and was going to regret it. That was all of the secret that he had given away, but perhaps Ricarda Mommsen had somehow put two and two together. Perhaps she had thought that it was high explosive that he meant to put down on the road. So she had not gone home to the Hall. She had come back and lain in wait to warn Larner.

  And now the crazy buggers were trying to do the same thing with one of their own kind. Tandy saw the woman, pale-faced and obedient, standing where Ricarda had stood waving. And then he also saw that everyone was concentrating so fiercely on this act that they had forgotten him.

  Behind him was a belt of trees, and behind the trees hills and fields—country into which he had not penetrated, had had no wish to penetrate. He moved a step or two away from where they had told him to stand: nobody noticed. He marked out a potential dash from cover to cover: behind that tree, then sideways behind that one, then down into the dip, then round the end of that clump of bushes.

  Tandy was no master of fieldcraft, though he considered himself a crafty man—a man would have to get up very early in the morning to put one’ over on Alf Tandy. Boiled down to their basics, Tandy’s talents were two: he could never forget any simple lesson whose wisdom had initially appealed to him; and he was obstinate. And as far as movement about hostile country was concerned, he remembered what he had been taught in his army recruit days about keeping his head down.

  He could see that the hinterland of Brackdale was hostile country. His only possible plan was to make his way to some relatively habited place from which he could find transport back to London. Only in London could he see any hope of concealing himself. To get back to civilization he could not avoid crossing hills with skylines. He had to risk being pounced on by some farmer for trespassing. He had to watch that he did not snap brittle twigs under foot or rustle long grasses. And every time he did break a twig or swish against a clump of grass, he halted and looked furtively all round him. It was not long before he was in a sorry state of nerves.

  He had a poor sense of direction, and when he passed a decrepit stone barn for the second time, he was forced to admit that he was wearing himself out to no purpose. In front of him loomed a steep hill from the top of which, he told himself, he would be able to see the lie of the land all round, so that he could find a village or perhaps a small town. And then he knew that his troubles would be only starting, because they would be on the watch for him. Yet he started climbing that hill, concluded after five breathless minutes that he was exposing himself too dangerously, decided to go down again and follow the line of a wall up a kinder gradient. He had followed that wall for more than fifty yards when a human figure leaped at him from a rocky hollow. Tandy did not know the man’s name, but he remembered him as one of the less amenable ones who had taken over the questioning when Gleed was not there.

  At the beginning of the exercise, Gleed had told Nall more home truths in three minutes than the sergeant had heard about himself in the last ten years. It was a long time since anyone had shaken Nall, especially with words.

  ‘Perhaps your memory goes back further than mine does, Sergeant Nall. There must have been some time in your history when you were doing a decent job of work. There must be something in your record to justify three stripes. I’ll tell you this, my friend—it’s only because I’m short of hands and feet that I’m employing you at all this afternoon. If you fall down this time, I shall have your stripes. And if you ask me if I’m threatening you, the answer is I’m doing my damnedest to make myself clear. Am I coming anywhere near doing so?’

  Nall resented it. There was too much truth in it—as sound a reason for resentment as any. It had all started when that idle bastard Fewter got the division. What could that make anybody, but a cynic? Nall also knew that he could not afford to fall down this afternoon. Which was why, he told himself, he was being a bigger bloody idiot than ever by playing his hunch and leaping out at Tandy.

  Well, hell—when you were on the ground, you had to play things the way they turned out. You had to use some bloody initiative. That was why they’d given you three stripes in the first place. Not that there’d be much future in saying any of this to Gleed if the thing turned sour on him now.

  But you couldn’t go on stalking this dithering sodding imbecile, wandering in frigging circles till nightfall. You’d wear your sodding self out, plus there was every chance of losing the daft bugger, which would have you deeper up Shit Creek than you were already.

  ‘All right, mate. You’re nicked.’

  Wholly outside instructions—but play it as it came. Before Nall got Tandy back to HQ, he was going to get out of him all they needed to know. Failure now was unthinkable. Shit or bust.

  It was shit or bust for Tandy, too. The little Cockney turned and ran—or turned and tried to run. He cut a ridiculous figure making the effort, stumbling over his own feet. Nall brought him down with a rugger tackle, though there was no need for such extravagance. He could have followed Tandy at a walk and held him by his sleeve.

  ‘You don’t want resisting arrest on your sheet, too, do you, mate?’

  ‘Why can’t you buggers leave me alone?’

  There were tears not far behind Tandy’s voice, tears not very far behind his solemn, idiotic eyes.

  ‘Because you’re a bloody lard-head, that’s why, Tandy. Because you crack on you know something, and then you won’t bloody tell us.’

  Nall saw Tandy’s jaw tighten. The little man was remembering his principles.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve a good mind to do, Tandy. I’ve a good mind to let you go again. I’ve not set eyes on you this afternoon, that’s what I haven’t. Because I’m supposed to be here for your bloody benefit, that’s what I’m supposed to be here for.’

  Tandy looked at him with owl-like lack of understanding.

  ‘I suppose you think that was a clever bit of escapology, up in Brackdale? It didn’t cross your hen-piss brain that a lot of people were going to a lot of trouble to give you the chance to get away?’

  Tandy continued to look at him with mournful stupidity.

  ‘Why do you think they were so keen to let you go, Tandy?’

  Tandy looked as if he was not going to reply, but he spoke at last.

  ‘Because they’d no right bloody holding me, that’s why.’

  ‘No right? Who the hell’s bot
hered by what’s right? You’ve been let go, Tandy, to draw somebody’s fire. Because the word’s gone round in no time that you’re at large—just when you were on the verge of coughing. So you can bet there’s somebody else roaming the countryside this afternoon who means to get you. Somebody who’s not going to give you a second chance to tell us his name. And I’m supposed to be your bodyguard, piss-hooking about like a Boy Scout in the undergrowth. I should bloody cocoa. I haven’t seen you, Tandy. Piss off! Scapa! Go up the hill. Go down the hill. See if you can find a way out through those trees. You were in the army, weren’t you? You know the feeling, don’t you—that you never hear the one that gets you? Ta-ta for now, Tandy. Why should I wear myself to a frazzle, trying to save your skin for you?’

  Nall turned and walked briskly away.

  ‘Mr What’s-your-name—Copper!—don’t go! I can’t take any more of this.’

  The lump in Tandy’s throat was beginning to choke him. ‘No—bugger you!’

  Nall put the mouthpiece of his transmitter to his lips.

  ‘I have it, sir. What Tandy saw when Larner got out of his Lotus and started walking the rest of the way to the Hall was another car coming down. He doesn’t know whose car it was, but he saw who was in it: Dyer, Cantrell and Furnival. They stopped and made Larner get in with them.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘I said I wanted to be able to see to shave in the bottom of this boiler, lad. I couldn’t see to find my arse-hole with a sheet of bumf.’

  What a Musical Director or Co-ordinating Producer could get away with in the way of personal relationships was as nothing compared with the tolerance of a chef de cuisine for his most newly recruited dogsbody.

  ‘You may think you’ve got all bloody morning, lad. The rest of us haven’t. Some bugger will be wanting to eat at midday.’

  Admittedly the kitchen was working under pressure. Lord Furnival insisted that they cater for vegans, gastric ulcers and cholesterol-dodgers, as well as for gastronomes at one end and bangers-in-tomato-ketchup addicts at the other.

  Peak Low, getting the news early (it would not break in the nationals until tomorrow) had erupted with indignation when they heard what the disciplinary board had done to Freddy Kershaw. Only there were so many versions of it that they could not all have been correct. Kershaw had been dismissed with loss of pension rights; he had been offered a clerical job as civilian attached to the Force—which he had refused outright. He had been sent back to the beat in the least salubrious corner of the county, with two years’ extended probation. This he was also said to have declined, thus throwing himself on the labour market.

  It had been Kenworthy’s idea to ask if there was a vacancy on Cantrell’s security staff.

  ‘There’s no harm in asking, Freddy. They may jump at you in the hope of your indiscretions.’

  But Furnival had not even taken time to consider it. His wisdom of the world was on top and on tap.

  ‘I’m sure we’d be glad of you. By now you probably know more about our weak spots than the Colonel does. But it wouldn’t do. They’d all think you were a spy. Go and see Personnel. They’ll be able to fix you up with something. Tell them I’ve said they’ve got to.’

  They had fixed him up at once. Kitchen assistant had been mentioned first as a joke. Kershaw had leaped at it so eagerly that it was a wonder that that alone had not made him suspect.

  ‘I’ve often wanted to learn top people’s cookery,’ he said quickly.

  ‘I don’t know about top people. You’ll find out what goes on at rock bottom. Come back if you can’t stand it. We shall be taking on extra box-office staff in another week or two.’

  Kitchens were good places to be, not for perks or prime cuts—they watched their shelves with eyes like hawks—but if you wanted to know what was going on. What was being talked about everywhere else had been talked about here first. And there was a constant stream of people in and out from the outside world. This was strictly forbidden—but a determined free-loader of mugs of tea at odd hours is not easily foiled. The kitchen had contemporary equipment, but the premises were old and labyrinthine. There was a very little-used glory-hole that looked as if it had become an alternative unofficial HQ for the drivers of delivery vehicles, construction-site foremen and security patrols between rounds. It was remarkable how little time some of them actually seemed to spend doing rounds. Kershaw knew that if he kept his eyes and ears open, he might well be lucky. He kept himself within earshot of this No. 4 Store.

  It was not always easy to be sure that all he heard and saw meant what it seemed to. Towards the middle of his first afternoon there was quite obviously a distribution of funds going on in the glory-hole, with security precautions extraordinary, including lookout men. He thought at first that this was what Kenworthy had told him to be on the watch for, but a furtively close ear—risking draconian reprisals from the chef—informed him it was no more than the daily visit from a bookie’s runner with yesterday’s settlements. The key revelation, when it finally came, was casual, accidental, a passing non-event.

  It was about half past three in the afternoon, and most of the labour force was off duty. He heard someone go into the glory-hole and then, finding no one there, come out into the main kitchen, deserted except for Kershaw, who was at that moment bent over the potato-peeling machine, which had been playing him up since he had been introduced to it that morning. It was perpetually getting itself clogged with scrapings, had constantly to be stopped and partially dismantled. This was what Kershaw was doing at this instant, so he had his back to the newcomer, and since he was in kitchen overalls, the man mistook him for someone else.

  ‘The clots have left it too late. Too much bloody talking.’

  Kershaw had the presence of mind to reply with a grunt that could not be recognized as anybody’s voice.

  ‘We could only put the frighteners on him, get cracking before he had time to think. Now it looks as if the fuzz are moving in now, so that’s where I get off. Is there any char going?’

  Kershaw wondered how much longer he could keep himself bent over the machine. But the point was academic. The man had come closer, and without seeing Kershaw’s face realized that he had made a mistake.

  ‘Sorry, mate. Thought you were Dave. Who the hell are you, anyway?’

  Kershaw stood up. The man was one of Cantrell’s guards. He did not know Kershaw.

  ‘Can’t help you, I’m sorry,’ Kershaw said. ‘I’m new here. Not up with the gossip yet. There’s char in the urn.’

  So what? The frighteners? On whom? Someone on whom they had to get him worried before he had the chance to think. It had to be Cantrell. Blackmail: a conspiracy—some of Cantrell’s men, and maybe others in the know. They could only scare Cantrell, could only bluff: Kershaw was not up to date about events: it was only this morning that strange goings-on between Cantrell and his men had been reported. They couldn’t act now, it seemed. They’d left it too late. Because the fuzz were moving in. And some of them, at least, didn’t want to be involved with the fuzz. Kershaw did not understand it, but he knew that it was an item that had to be got back to HQ as rapidly as possible. And since he was banned from any kind of communication with Gleed, that meant Kenworthy.

  The guard helped himself to tea and talked on, grumbling about conditions of work in this place—no doubt a displacement activity to try to cover up his gaffe. As soon as he had gone, Kershaw left the potato-peeler dismantled and walked out into the grounds, wondering where to find Kenworthy.

  Kenworthy was nowhere in sight. Why should he be? But up against the balustrade of a folly terrace on the west side of the Hall, Kershaw did see someone he knew. And it was a shock to him.

  Sitting together on a bench, as if they were close friends, were Joan Culver and Julian Harper—Joan looking her usual health-poster self—and actually smiling. And Harpur was smiling too—not broadly, but not his normal, surly, private-world introvert self.

  Yet it was only a day or two ago that he had hid
den on the stage-set with the sole purpose of scaring the daylight out of Joan.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gleed sat at his desk and wished that tangential aggro would stop coming for just ten minutes.

  First there had been Nall. It was irrelevant for Nall to argue that he had delivered the goods. It was reasonable to concede that he had, but that was not the point. Nall had branched out independently, in the face of the strongest, least equivocal briefing Gleed had ever given. He could easily have compromised an exercise in which every available erg of manpower had been drawn in, depleting duty-rosters county-wide.

  Was there any validity in the argument that but for Nall’s initiative they still wouldn’t have the key information that Dyer, Cantrell and Furnival had picked up Larner in the middle of the night? Where did that get them, anyway? Picking up a man who had just wrecked his car? Driving him home on a filthy night? That was a far cry to a working suspicion of murder. Of course, Gleed would be interviewing the trio, would play one off against the other. But without something meatier than Tandy’s claim to have seen them, he couldn’t hope for a breakthrough.

  He had let Tandy out—and set the top sleuths of the county on the heels of each of the principals—and what had the principals done? Got together in conference. Probably to rewrite The Road to Emmaus.

  Gleed needed a round of golf, a country walk, an hour for fallow thought. But within a minute his phone rang. Detective-Constable Kershaw.

  Oh, Christ! Did nobody do as he was told?

  ‘Now look, Kershaw—I made it plain that you were not to contact this office. Anything to pass, you’re to do it through Kenworthy—’

  Because it was vital that Kershaw’s cover should not be blown, Gleed had done some hard grafting behind the scenes, laying his own reputation on the line to plead for Kershaw to get off with a severe rep—and to have him back here in the undercover role they had contrived for him.