He lowered his voice confidentially.
‘… to study Oliver Cromwell. He’s a man of great knowledge, as no doubt you know. He’s after spending weeks and weeks studying Oliver Cromwell, the dear knows why.’
‘I wasn’t sure that I’d find him here at all,’ Roger said. ‘I didn’t know whether this was still his address or not.’
‘Ah, it is and it wasn’t. The colonel’s been back home these six months now, but before that the house was let out rented and myself along with it.’
‘Oh, I see. But the colonel’s back now?’
‘He is so.’
‘And has he owned the house long then?’
‘He has, and his father before him, the old colonel that was. A terrible tradition of service in the British Army the family has.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘Indeed, yes. We thought the colonel himself might not come back here at all now we’re a republic, But he’s settled in wonderful well considering, and now he has Oliver Cromwell.’
‘And you say he’s in Dublin at this moment?’
‘He is surely. At what they call the School of Further Studies, though what a fine man like the colonel would want to be going to school for I don’t know.’
‘Do you know, I think I might head back that way and see if I can meet him. Is there any transport that would get me there reasonably quickly?’
‘You’d pick up a bus in Baltinglass all right. The colonel has the car or I could run you there myself.’
‘No, no. It’s only a mile or two, isn’t it?’
‘It is. You turn left when you come out of the drive and keep going straight ahead.’
‘Well, I’ll be off then. Thank you for all your help.’
Roger produced half a crown.
‘Thank you, sir.’
The mild eyes which had got brighter and brighter during their conversation blazed to a point where they could almost be said to shine.
‘Ah,’ the man said, ‘it’s great to be having the colonel back home again, great, great.’
‘I’m sure it must be,’ Roger said.
He began to go down the fan-shaped flight of steps.
‘When he went back over to Yorkshire just as soon as he’d arrived we thought it would be all travelling and gadding. But thanks be to God it was the only time he spent a night out of the house at all.’
Roger stopped on the fourth step down.
‘Yorkshire?’ he said.
‘Yes. I well remember him coming in from Dublin one day just about the week after he’d arrived here and saying he was hopping across to England, to Yorkshire he said.’
‘You don’t recall whereabouts in Yorkshire, I suppose?’
‘Ah, I disremember if he said at all.’
‘It wasn’t Leeds, was it?’
The big, mild eyes shone with a pure effulgence.
‘Ah I dare say it would have been Leeds. Leeds is in Yorkshire now?’
Roger was thinking.
‘Yes, yes,’ he answered absently, ‘it is.’
‘Then that’s where the master was going,’ the man said. ‘To Leeds.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘I am entirely.’
‘Well, thank you again.’
Roger quickly walked down the rest of the steps and turned into the shrub-shrouded stony drive.
At the last turn before it came to the road Collins and the docker pounced.
The docker’s huge, flat palm fastened across the lower half of Roger’s face. With his other hand he grasped Roger’s arm at the elbow like a clamp. Collins hung on to the other arm twisting it viciously with the whole of his few stones of weight.
Caught.
Stupidly and easily caught. Even after a lucky escape still to treat the pursuers as if they were somehow impotent.
The rage of shame.
To set out so blithely to square the account for Eric’s death, to unearth the Bosun’s agent and to see that they were made powerless – and to end within a few hours being frogmarched off by a couple of thugs.
Suddenly Roger flung himself round, sending the lightweight Collins sprawling. Before he had time to recover Roger ducked sharply down with the object of sending the broad-shouldered docker over his head. But he failed to lift him off his feet by so much as an inch. Instead the docker’s knee came sickeningly into the small of his back, jerking him upright again.
Collins was on his feet now and came darting in, a savage look in his beady eyes. Roger lashed out with his feet, but the docker changed his grip, catching him by the armpits. He lifted him clear of the rutted drive and shook and shook.
His helpless limbs. A rag doll. His slack jaw sending his lower teeth chopping on to his upper lip. The gasps for mere breath.
At last the docker put him down. He could hardly stand and all the fight had gone out of him once and for all. He scarcely noticed what was happening as the docker and Collins dragged him out of the cover of the overgrown shrubs and bundled him into the back of the white Mark X Jaguar.
In less than a minute the docker was sitting holding him in a kneeling position in the well between the back and front seats of the car. Collins slipped into the driving seat and they headed back towards Dublin with the speedometer teasing the 100 m.p.h. mark.
After ten minutes the pain in Roger’s thigh muscles became more than he could bear.
‘I won’t get out,’ he sobbed, ‘but let me up.’
‘What for?’ said Collins across the back of the driver’s seat.
‘You’re hurting me.’
No comment.
‘Listen,’ Roger said, ‘when I tell the Guards there’ll be hell to pay.’
‘The Guards?’ said the docker.
Dismay.
‘Yes,’ Roger grunted out. ‘You don’t think I’d let you do this to me and not tell the Guards?’
‘Should I let him up?’ the docker said.
A plaintive child.
‘Ah, let him up then,’ said Collins.
The docker took his weight off Roger. He quickly transferred the grip of both hands to his left arm and jerked him on to the seat. The white car leapt forward even faster. Roger was able to see the speedometer, 103 m.p.h. He looked out at the road beside him. An indistinct blur.
He sank back against the seat. The docker concentrated on holding his arm.
‘How much are you getting paid for this?’ Roger said.
‘He’s a decent man,’ the docker said.
Collins said nothing.
‘Ten quid?’ Roger asked.
A tiny bubble of hope.
‘I wouldn’t do a crazy thing like this for ten quid only,’ said the docker.
‘Is it twenty?’
‘It might be.’
‘And the same for you?’ Roger said into Collins’s ear.
‘Why would we be paid any different?’ said Collins.
He did not take his eyes off the road.
‘I’ll give you as much again to forget all about it,’ Roger said.
The moment of trial. Had the Bosun been speaking the truth when he had said the docker thought the whole thing was a joke? It was possible. It was the Bosun’s way of going about things. And a joke could be called off. If the right inducement was offered.
‘Forty quid?’ said the docker.
Collins said nothing.
‘Well?’ Roger said.
The silence as the road went spinning away.
‘We could do it,’ said the docker to Collins. ‘Sure, it’s only a joke the boss is playing. Forty quid.’
Roger leant forward a little.
Collins half turned in his seat. The speedometer needle dropped to the ninety mark.
‘I know what class of a joke it is,’ Collins said to Roger. ‘I don’t have to be fed all that stuff. I know what happened to your friend Eric Smith.’
Roger flopped back in the seat.
The sleek low-slung white car sped on towards Dublin.
After a wh
ile Roger tried another question. He spoke to Collins.
‘Where are we going?’
No answer.
‘Oh, all right,’ Roger said. ‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to. But you don’t really think I’ll get away, do you? Not now you mean business?’
He was talking to Collins’s head which came up just to the top of the seat back. Black and shiny.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘have you thought where all this is leading you? It’s all very fine to take the money – how much is it? More than forty quid anyway – but sooner or later all this is going to catch up with you.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ said Collins.
‘About the money?’ Roger said.
He avoided looking at the docker. He kept his eyes fixed on Collins’s shiny black slicked down hair.
‘No, you’re not wrong about that. You’re wrong about afterwards.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘Look, you don’t think I’m the class of eejit who’d start all this without knowing what it was about, do you?’
‘No,’ said Roger. ‘No, I don’t’
Paying a compliment. Reduced to gross flattery.
The speedometer needle, which he could see in glimpses over the smooth black round of Collins’s head, flicked up to ninety-eight.
Roger glanced at the narrow wedge-shaped face of the docker hammered into place between the vast shoulders. He was looking at Collins with dull eyes flicking to and fro as if there was an actual physical maze to be followed. Had he already taken too many wrong turnings?
It was a last hope. A poor hope.
Collins’s black head tilted back a little more comfortably.
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘it’s all fixed. We hold you until the boss persuades you to go back with him. He’s waiting now till he gets some information he wants from you-know-who, and then –’
‘I don’t know who,’ Roger said. ‘Who do you mean?’
Collins’s head moved forward sharply. The speedometer needle dropped to below ninety.
‘If you don’t know, never mind,’ he said.
‘But I must know.’
‘Ask the boss then – if he’s not too busy dealing with you.’
‘We’re going to him then?’
‘We’re picking him up in Dublin. And then a few days while he persuades you to see things his way and while he makes sure he gets the information he wants, and off you go to England. And after that who’ll call the Guards?’
Roger looked with hatred at the shiny black greased hair slicked so hard down to the round skull.
Silence.
The white Jaguar’s speed crept up again.
The outskirts of Dublin.
Speed slackening. Traffic lights ahead. The needle of the speedometer dropping rapidly. Fifty, forty, thirty, twenty.
They came to a stop.
The docker leant forward. His barrel body was across Roger pinning him like a girder.
Suddenly his thick Dublin voice came into Roger’s ear. But his words were intended not for Roger but for Collins.
‘So it was more than twenty quid, was it? You bastard. And telling me it was all a cod. Well, we’ll see who’s codding now?’
The docker took his hand off Roger’s arm and leant forward and caught Collins by the throat.
Roger heaved himself to the side and felt for the door handle.
The door opened easily.
He stepped out. He was standing in the middle of the road among all the cars stopped at the lights.
The driver of a little red Volkswagen looked up at him curiously.
Roger felt for his wallet. He opened it. There were still seven or eight pound notes in it. He took them out and pushed them into the docker’s pocket. Then he walked quickly round the back of the white Jaguar, leaving the door still gaping wide.
There were plenty of people on the pavement. He threaded his way through them.
The lights changed to green. He heard the furious hooting caused by the stopped Jaguar.
He turned down a side road. Uncontrollable trembling.
Roger armed with Cuchulain. The slack-muscled lecturer in linguistics and the shaggy prowling wolfhound. Waiting that evening outside the School of Further Studies. Waiting for Etain Bloom.
Roger thinking about the Infiltraitor, reviewing the five possibilities. If only Collins had not availed himself of that mystery-making circumlocution. If only it had been not you-know-who, but a name.
Which name? Which of the five? Etain herself? At least he was in a position to investigate more deeply there. Colonel Myles? The pros and cons neatly and equally stacked in the two round dishes of the scales. The truth he had told about his background. The visit to Leeds, and the family tradition of loyalty to Britain.
Miss Hogan? A blank wall. Neatly arranged bricks in row upon row. Not a chink, not a crevice.
Austin Boycott? Transparent dishonesty. The open contrast between the nut-sweet man and the voluminous acidity of his opinions. And transparency could deceive perhaps better than opaqueness. Which part of him was really to be believed? Or was there even a third layer, safely protected by the openness of the two above it?
And finally George Wyndham. The one Professor O Nuallain could not speak for. Therefore the most likely one. Something must be done urgently about George Wyndham.
Etain appeared at the door of the School outlined against the warm light. She stood for a moment tugging at her coat sleeve where it had got caught back.
Roger hurried forward, hauling Cuchulain behind him.
‘Hello there,’ he said.
‘Why, hello. What are you doing here? Can I pat the dog at all?’
‘Certainly you can. He only looks fierce. We were waiting for you as a matter of fact. I wanted to avoid the jealous eye of Miss Hogan.’
Etain patted Cuchulain on the head. With caution.
‘You’re right there,’ she said. ‘She certainly gets me down. You’d need to have the resistance of a rubber ball to take her all the time.’
‘I’m sorry if I got you into more trouble this morning,’ Roger said.
‘Oh, sure, that was nothing. Something like that’s always happening. Especially now Professor O Nuallain’s not there.’
‘Yes. I can’t see him allowing even Miss Hogan to tyrannize anybody.’
Cuchulain put out a long tongue like a pink shaving strop and licked at Etain’s gloved hand.
‘Well,’ Roger added, ‘at least you’ve got some consolation when you get back to your gramophone.’
‘You’re right there. Two minutes of Rinaldo and I’ve forgotten all about the office.’
Roger smiled.
‘And when am I to have my two minutes of Rinaldo?’ he said.
‘Any time at all. Tonight if you like.’
‘All right. Are you on your way home now?’
‘I am. Let me just nip into a shop and get a tin or two and you can have supper with me.’
She looked down at the enormous shape of Cuchulain.
‘The only thing is I haven’t got anything for him.’
‘That’s all right,’ Roger said. ‘He often doesn’t eat till last thing at night. He’s a bit of a bohemian. But are you sure I’m not thrusting myself on you?’
‘So long as you don’t mind eating out of tins.’
‘I seldom eat out of anything else. But at least let me dive in somewhere and get something to wash it down. A bottle of wine does wonders for the least likely tin.’
‘That’d be wonderful.’
Etain turned her attention from the dog to the master.
‘I think we’d better not make it spaghetti or anything,’ she said. ‘The waistline looks as if it had taken a hammering.’
Roger drew himself sharply in.
Etain laughed.
‘Sure, you won’t be able to keep that up all evening,’ she said. ‘But relax. I’ll get a nice tin of some sort of meat and I’ll let you have a very little rice with it.’
‘No potatoes? Don’t you make potato cakes?’
‘I do. And I’m not going to. From this out you’re on the bandwagon for potatoes.’
‘I’m beginning to wonder if Handel is worth it,’ Roger said as they headed for the shops.
In the bus, once Cuchulain was settled, Roger brought the conversation round to Miss Hogan again.
‘Oh, don’t let’s talk about her,’ Etain said, ‘I’m sure she’s a very good woman and all that, but wherever she and I are there’s bound to be some bone of dissension.’
‘No,’ Roger said, ‘tell me about her all the same.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. She was in the Civil Service when the School began and she happened to get seconded to it as a secretary and there she’s been ever since. Of course, she was mad when Professor O Nuallain’s personal assistant left and instead of giving her the job they just brought me in as an extra secretary.’
‘Well, and what about her life outside the office?’
‘Sure, I don’t believe she has any at all.’
‘Oh, go on. She must have something.’
‘Well, she lives in digs somewhere on the south side. She goes to Mass on Sundays and confession once a month. I think she does the English football pools, but she keeps it very dark. And, oh yes, she takes her two weeks’ annual holiday at Donaghadee.’
‘You make it sound wildly exciting.’
‘Oh, she gets all her excitement from the office. I’ve only to slip half a sheet of paper into the wrong file and she’s off denouncing me thirteen to the dozen.’
‘Tell me,’ said Roger, ‘have you noticed any change in her just recently?’
Etain frowned. A blonde hair straying across the suddenly severe lines of her forehead.
‘Change? What sort of change?’
‘Well, does she seem to have come into money at all? Has she booked herself a holiday in the south of France instead of Donaghadee, that sort of thing?’
‘Not so far as I’ve noticed.’
She looked at him. A quizzical expression from the butterfly glasses.
‘What on earth do you want to know that for?’
Roger pondered for a moment.
‘I was just wondering if she’s had a sudden increase in wealth,’ he said.
‘But why, for heaven’s sake?’
‘I think I’ll tell you,’ he said.
Slowly. Weighing up. About to venture.
The Dog It Was That Died Page 11