Bottled Spider

by John Gardner

  Concentrating on attacks from the rear, Abelard taught her how to use swivel techniques, to turn inwards on the aggressor and deal with him by using pressure points of vulnerable areas, like the carotid artery and the nose, then the chin, the eyes and throat. Later Billy Mulligan turned up and, together they went through mental exercises aimed at making her more alert, aware and more intuitive. ‘You got to hone your intuition,’ Billy kept saying.

  Then Suzie learned the secret holds, the places where she could inflict maximum pain with minimum pressure: and so the lesson continued.

  Should Golly not be caught, he would certainly come at Suzie from behind and out of the metaphorical sun one of these bright days.

  They showered, changed and went up to the canteen for a light lunch. By now Suzie was talking amicably with Molly, learning a great deal about the girl’s past. At sixteen she had worked as a waitress on one of Cunard’s big liners. Travelled all over for a couple of years. One dark night in Hong Kong she’d been jumped by some foreign sailors, beaten, raped and left for dead. Cunard brought her home in the ship’s hospital and when she was fully recovered she concentrated on getting fit and able to fight back. Come to that, able to fight anything. It became a reason for living, an obsession.

  ‘That was quite a time ago,’ she said, nibbling a sardine sandwich. ‘I got fighting fit and joined the Met.’

  ‘What she really means,’ Billy Mulligan said, ‘is that she’s a Judo Master and a Karate Black Belt.’

  Abelard waved a hand, laterally across her face, as if to say he was exaggerating.

  ‘No, Molly, Suzie’s working with you. She ought to know,’ Billy continued. ‘Molly is dangerous. She also did a weapons training course under the aegis of the Royal Marines, and I’ve heard all the stories. Bootnecks snickered at her when she arrived, but not for long. She beat every man jack of them with rifle and pistol. Got the highest score ever recorded on their range down in Devon.’

  Suzie said nothing, but decided she’d rather have Abelard on her side, so they went back to the gym and worked solidly until just after five. ‘That’s about all I can teach you in the time,’ Abelard told Suzie. ‘Concentrate on watching your own back. That’s the important thing. Look, over the next few days I’ll try to sneak up behind you and touch your shoulder. Keep a look out.’

  Billy Mulligan had also brought her a short baton, much shorter than the standard issue truncheon, and easier to carry hidden when in plainclothes. ‘Very effective,’ he said, and Molly showed her some nice moves with it. ‘Keep it by you,’ she advised.

  ‘The Chief wants to see you, Skip,’ one of the lads told her when she got back to the Reserve Squad office and she found Dandy Tom sitting at his desk looking reflective. He motioned for her to close the door.

  ‘I haven’t told anyone else yet, heart, but there are fears that we’ve lost Golly. For a man who’s got a few of his pages stuck together he’s proving ingenious. Thought we had him lunchtime, but he’s gone again. I only hope, heart, that Abelard’s managed to give you some of her physical wisdom. As from now she’ll be hard on your tail, together with a couple of other people.’ There was a bleakness in his eye that she could only read as fear.

  She brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. ‘Tommy,’ she said softly, ‘stop tapping your teeth with that blasted pen.’

  *

  Flight Lieutenant Casimir Szlapka, Royal Air Force, looked to left and right as he flew the Lysander directly over the church at Old Basing, then turned slightly to follow the secondary road south-east. Szlapka wasn’t his real name, but an anglicized version. As was Casimir, for the RAF had put his real Christian name, Kazimierz, into their ‘Too Difficult’ file.

  Casimir Szlapka had only recently done a conversion course on to the Westland Lysander. Until this morning he’d been cursing himself for being foolish enough to volunteer for what had been described as ‘special duties’. So far he’d had a distinguished war, escaping from Poland last year, making his way to the West, joining the RAF, fighting with great credit through the Battle of Britain. Then, in a moment of anticlimax, going for what he thought would be a new thrill.

  As soon as he volunteered he found himself taken off flying his beloved Hurricane and dropped into the long cockpit of the clumsy, slow Lysander. When he complained, the Wing Commander only laughed and said, ‘Shouldn’t have joined, old boy. They not teach you that in Poland?’

  But this morning was different. ‘Good experience for you, Cas, this one,’ the wing co told him. They had told him, and the other pilot — ‘Porky’ Piecroft — that they were about to do an aerial search for a wanted criminal. It was real action again with a real target. ‘A mad, vicious bloody killer,’ they’d said.

  The Lysander was an odd-looking kite: high-winged monoplane, long strange-shaped wings, with a fixed undercart, ‘spats’ on the wheels and a big radial air-cooled Bristol Mercury XX engine under the cowling. It could fly wonderfully slowly, while the pilot had an unprecedented view from the high ‘greenhouse’ cockpit.

  Szlapka and Piecroft were in fact being trained to land in occupied France to drop or pick up agents operating in Nazi-held Europe.

  Cas Szlapka saw something now as he flew up the side of the secondary road a mile or two on from Old Basing. He had been aware of ‘Porky’ Piecroft’s aircraft several miles away on his port side as he approached the road, then he glanced back to starboard, which was when he glimpsed the irregularity. He lifted the Lysander’s nose because the ground sloped upwards towards a copse of pine and fir covering the top of the rise. Gaining a little height, he began a low sweeping turn to port, bringing the aircraft round a full 360 degrees.

  Throttling back, he scanned the road and saw it was bordered by a tall thick hedge with a shallow ditch running along the field side of the road. The ground was deep white in a hard frost that even the sun had not begun to shift by this time of late morning. It was bitter and beautiful to see from the air, but something had walked purposefully up the ditch. Not an animal, but someone blundering along. Footprints on the pure white of the field and running up the ditch. Clear as day. At the top, they veered off — undoubtedly human footprints, tracking their way into the copse.

  He turned the aircraft again — the slow circle — watching the sun glint harmlessly off the blinding carpet, taking a second look as he came level with the road.

  Casimir Szlapka lazily buttoned the strap of his oxygen mask, and clicked down the radio switches. He repeated his call sign three times into the mask, ‘Spartan One. Spartan One. Spartan One.’ Waited, then heard a voice in his headphones from the ground around eight or nine miles distant. Casimir spoke a terse message, saying that Interloper — the code name for their quarry — was possibly in the copse below him, and repeating a map reference three times. The distant voice acknowledged, and Casimir put some pressure on his starboard rudder pedal, setting a course towards the point where the troops should, at this moment, be tumbling into a fifteen-hundredweight truck ready to drive back and clear the copse for a second time.

  *

  Golly heard the snarl in his head and woke, suddenly, didn’t know where he was, couldn’t place the sound. It came again, and this time he knew what it was, and where he was. He rolled off the bench inside the hide and flushed open the hinged slit that gaped wide, so that he could see out and look down the side of the hedge and the frosted ground sweeping below and away. He had come up along the hedge in the early hours; slept in the ditch; woke; came up here, he remembered, recalling the terrible cold, realizing that he was still numbed by it.

  Now he saw the noise, coming as a huge bird hopping above the hedge and sweeping over the trees. He heard the rasp of its engine again and knew it was still close, so close that he crouched down, fearing that it would bring fire on him. Golly did not like fire: didn’t know which was worse, the fire or the cold.

  It went over again, the flying beast, and this time the sound of the engine began to decrease as it moved away. But it had sho
wn interest: too much interest. Go, he heard the voice in his head. Go now. Get away.

  He struggled from the hide, out into the copse, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the sun on the frost, pushing himself towards the hedge, then over and down the deep bank on to the road. On the road he looked around and waited.

  Across the road there were more trees and a narrow lane with an archway of pine and fir above it. Golly made the decision and crossed to the lane and as he did so a figure stepped from the trees.

  ‘Well done, Golly. I was just coming for you if you didn’t come to me,’ and he recognized the voice and the man in front of him, dressed in a smart beige coloured coat and with a flat cap cocked on his head at a jaunty angle.

  It was the Mark. The Mark who had helped him with Manny Spellthorne. The Mark who knew his secrets. The Mark who’d been kind to him.

  Maybe I’ll get a pretty lady to come and whisper in your ear.

  ‘Come on, Golly, run. Trot. I’ve a car down the lane. Five minutes and we’ll be out of here. It’s all right; you’re safe now. Safe for the time being.’

  Twenty-Five

  It was a black Riley saloon car that the Mark had tucked away, covered with branches. He’d slung a blanket over the bonnet together with a patent cover designed to keep the engine warm in a bad frost, such as this. ‘Been watching you all the way, Golly,’ he said as he got him into the back of the car. ‘There’s a blanket in there as well. Get down on the floor and cover yourself with the blanket. Get yourself warm.’ He began to tear the boughs from the car.

  ‘Cold,’ Golly said, his whole body shivering, like an animal in shock.

  ‘There’s a heater in the car. Soon as I start her up you’ll begin to get warm again.’ The Mark climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. ‘You keep down, Golly, just in case they’re stopping cars again. They were stopping cars yesterday, last night. But don’t worry, I’m here and I’ve always helped you, Golly. And I will again.’

  The car moved, backed into the lane, then slowly began rolling forward, bumped a few times on the rough, rutted ground, then slowed and made a turn. In five minutes they were purring along the road, heading away from the searchers in the general direction of Basingstoke.

  In the back Golly groaned.

  ‘I’m going the long way round, to London,’ the Mark said, but Golly, feeling the warmth, was drifting off to sleep in a euphoric state, almost hypothermic. In his head there was a blue sky, it wasn’t cold any more, and yielding young women embraced him, sucking him into the quicksands of sleep.

  He slept for four hours, only waking when the Mark shouted at him, clapping his hands, ‘Golly! Wake up! Wakey-wakey!’

  Finally Golly grunted, startled, then asked if there was anything wrong.

  ‘Nothing wrong, Goll. Nothing wrong, but I want to talk to you.’

  They weren’t driving any more, and Golly pulled himself up in the back of the car, looking out to find they were in some kind of parking place off the road, among trees with the light fading. ‘Where?’ he asked. ‘Where are we, Mark?’

  The Mark chuckled. ‘We’re between the dark and the daylight, Golly. Waiting for the night to lower, a few miles out of London. I don’t want to drive in until it’s really dark. Don’t want to be stopped now we’ve come so far. The Law’s after you, Golly. They’re steamed up about you, searching for you.’

  ‘Why?’ he said, trying to get his brain around the events of the past days. ‘What I done, Mark?’

  ‘Come on, Golly, you know what you’ve done.’

  ‘Overchurch. That’s it, isn’t it? The lady policeman?’

  ‘But it wasn’t the lady policeman, Golly. You did the wrong one. I think the lovely lady of the night told you who you had to destroy.’

  ‘Miss Baccus, yes. Told me. The lady policeman.’

  ‘Well, they’re looking for you because of that. And because of your mum, Golly.’

  ‘What you mean, my mum? What you mean?’ Disbelief.

  ‘You know, Golly.’

  ‘Mark, tell me what you mean. No, I don’t know. My mum?’

  ‘Golly, someone did her. Someone killed your mum. It must’ve been you. You starting to forget what you’re up to, Goll?’

  ‘I never. I never. I never did nothing to my mum, Mark. Not my mum. No I never.’

  ‘We’ll see, Golly, never mind. They are looking for you. The lady policeman’s looking for you, and more besides. They’ve got people watching Lavender’s flat. They’re out the front, all day and all night. Lucky we found the other way in and out, when you did for Manny Spellthorne.’

  Put him on the rubbish tip.

  ‘I never did nothing to my mum. Give her a kiss before I went. Nothing else.’

  ‘Maybe that was it, Golly. Maybe the kiss did it.’

  ‘No ... no ... no ...’ Golly moaned and rocked in the back of the Riley.

  ‘Come on, Golly. There are things you need to know.’

  He continued his keening until the Mark shouted at him. ‘Now listen!’ He told Golly he’d been into Lavender’s flat, had left everything clear so they could get Golly into her bedroom, up through the cupboard. He’d moved the little chest of drawers and everything.

  ‘Isn’t she there, then? Isn’t Lavender there, Mark?’

  ‘No, she’s still on her Christmas holiday. Coming back in the New Year, Goll. It’s all empty in her flat and we can get in.’

  ‘Not my mum —’

  ‘Shut up about your mum, Golly. Shut up and listen to me. You’re going into Lavender’s flat and you’ll have to be quiet.’

  ‘They’ll see the lights if they’re waiting.’

  ‘No they won’t. I put the blackouts up before I left. They didn’t see me. You can switch the lights on and nobody’ll be any the wiser. And listen, Golly, I’ve got food in there, in the little kitchen. There’s tea, sugar, bread, cheese, milk and a chocolate cake. Plenty of cheese and a bottle of coffee. You’ll like that.’

  So the Mark turned around and drove into London right on into Piccadilly and round the Circus, then off to the back streets and almost into Rupert Street, turning into the entry for the garage that was their secret. The Mark got out and levered up the metal roller blind across the entrance and drove in. He had the key to the passageway as well and he took Golly all the way back into Lavender’s bedroom.

  ‘And look,’ he said after he’d shown Golly the food, ‘I bought these for you as well. Easier than getting out of bed and blundering around for the light switch.’ The Mark had brought a box of nightlights, and a small box of Bryant & May matches. Golly put one nightlight by the bed. He agreed this was better than switching on the electric light.

  The Mark told him he mustn’t answer the telephone, or go out on the landing. The front door was locked. ‘I’ve two keys to the door into the garage. If there’s an air raid or anything you’ll be able to get out, and I’ll be able to get in.’ Now, he said that he had to go back to his work, but he’d be up to see Golly tomorrow. Saturday.

  Golly stretched out on Lavender’s bed, had a rest then got himself some bread and cheese. The Mark had left a jar of home-made pickled onions as well, it said so on the label in ink — ‘Mrs Harkness Quality Home Pickles, Monks Risborough, Bucks.’ He ate six pickled onions and a big hunk of cheese with four slices of crusty bread. After that he belched and farted loudly, giggled, of course, told himself not to make so much noise and giggled again. Then he found the bottle of Camp Coffee and made himself a cup, drank it and curled up on Lavender’s bed: for the first time since before Christmas, he felt safe. He could smell Lavender’s scent, on the pillow. Nothing could touch him now.

  Golly allowed sleep to creep in on him. He had meant to get undressed, properly, but — even after the four hours of rest — his state of exhaustion was complete. Both his mind and body were depleted and drained. So he fell deeply into a state of unknowing, and as he slept, so someone broke through the thin wall that divides consciousness and slumber.


  *

  When Dandy Tom came to Suzie’s flat in Upper St Martin’s Lane on that Friday evening he came on a little wave of irritation. She left the office just after six without seeing Tommy, because he had been called down to see the Commander (Crime), who was anxious to hear his report on the sequence of this morning’s events, when they had lost Golly Goldfinch in Hampshire.

  Suzie wanted to get back to St Martin’s Lane because her mother was going to ring, as she usually did on a Friday evening, and because she intended to spill the beans about Tommy’s proposal, and the fact that she loved him like nobody’s business. So she could do without Tommy’s physical presence in the flat, because he was distracting at the best of times and she wasn’t certain how he would be while she broke the news to her mum.

  To cover all eventualities she left a message with Shirley, who was still maundering on about Big Toe Harvey and the Balvak brothers being arrested on a trumped-up charge. Her message was straightforward. ‘Tell the Guv’nor I’ve had to go home. If he’s got anything else for me he should ring because I’ll be in all night. Got it Shirl?’

  ‘Yes. No problem.’

  ‘Just make sure he gets it — that I’ve gone home and he’s to ring —’

  ‘If he needs you, right?’

  ‘If he has anything else for me to do. Right?’

  As she left the Yard, Suzie was aware of the car. Then she looked at the two Spear Carriers, whom she recognized as watchdogs — one driving and one riding shotgun — in the car crawling after her bus. She usually walked, but tonight she felt like a rest. She’d had a shower after the long physical day with Molly Abelard, but she really needed a hot bath. Nothing she liked better than a long soak in a hot bath — well almost nothing. She thought to herself that she was preparing for a long physical night with Dandy Tom, and almost blushed as she sat there on the bus, surrounded by civil servants heading for Charing Cross, all of them looking shagged out after a day back at the salt mines of Whitehall. What a difference. She had nothing real to measure fantasies against until last night. Now — Oh, wowee!