Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  ‘You got it,’ said Kelly. ‘And I assure you that the law’s got more chance of finding Lord Lucan than they have of tracing that money back to Nortrust.’

  She and Daphne were smiling at each other like old chums now and Ellie, feeling an irrational urge to interpose her own body, said rather sourly, ‘If you’d got things tied up so neatly, why were you doing a runner when my husband caught you?’

  ‘Your husband? Of course. You’re the policeman’s wife. And in answer to your policeman’s question, something came up. Nothing to do with Nortrust. I needed to get somewhere safe with people I knew who would help sort it out.’

  She glanced shamefacedly at her grandmother, who said, ‘I think these good people who have been led into peril by your irresponsible behaviour deserve the whole story, don’t you? A story which, incidentally, I knew nothing about until this afternoon.’

  Kelly grimaced like a child finally obliged to confront an unpleasant task she has been putting off. She was one of those rare women whose beauty survives the expression of no matter what emotion, thought Ellie enviously. I bet that red-eyed and snivelly she’d still get the fellows horny.

  ‘Gran, I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘Like I told you, I wouldn’t have done it but it was an emergency. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Would you please stop being sorry and start being clear?’ exploded Daphne. ‘I thought all this Nortrust stuff was leading up to an explanation of why we’re sitting here at the mercy of these lunatics. You mean there’s something else? Something worse?’

  Simply and directly, Kelly told them about PAL and Fidel Chiquillo and Popeye’s arms cache and the deal with the Cojos and the shoot out in Kielder. Rapt though she was by the narrative, Ellie had time to observe the rapid dissolution of the brief rapport between Kelly and Daphne, who believed that terrorists in general and Irish terrorists in particular should be hung by their balls till their scrotums snapped.

  ‘Fidel suspected the Cojos might try a double-cross,’ concluded Kelly. ‘So we had a contingency plan. I knew no one ever came close to this place any more, and Feenie was out of the country, and I thought we could get things turned around long before she came back. But Fidel was wounded, so that was going to take a little time, and then…’

  She glanced uncertainly at Feenie, who replied with a glower which defied her to be reticent, then went on,’ … and I got this warning message, don’t know where from, telling me it was time to go, and when I told Fidel, he said no point in hanging about to see what happened, I should make a run for it, head back to South America where in any case I could be useful contacting his friends to make new arrangements for receipt of the arms shipment. But unfortunately…’

  ‘You met my husband on the Snake,’ said Ellie. ‘How unlucky for both of you.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I must admit I was really knocked over when I found he was a cop, though. He’s such a dish.’

  She flashed a smile, congratulatory, almost conspiratorial. From another woman it might have stirred jealous resentment, but somehow Ellie felt simply complimented.

  She smiled back, then Daphne threw in some cold water by saying, ‘So what you’re saying is we’re up to our necks in trouble because this terrorist friend of yours brought a truckload of IRA arms here and you hid them in some cellar beneath our feet?’

  ‘That’s right. But don’t be frightened,’ said Kelly, brightly reassuring. ‘They won’t go off unless someone’s smoking down there.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Daphne, stung by the accusation of fear into what Ellie thought of as her brisk Girl Guide Commissioner manner. ‘In fact, I was just wondering how you and your wounded friend managed to unload the arms. Must have been an effort even for someone as wirily built as yourself.’

  It took real expertise to find something down-putting to say about Kelly’s figure. Perhaps, thought Ellie, for whom this was turning into something of an apostatizing experience, there was something to be said for private education after all.

  ‘I had help. Mrs Stonelady’s Donald.’

  The old countrywoman had been sitting still as a stone on a mountainside and scarcely more noticeable since their arrival. Now all eyes, except for Novello’s, which were once more firmly closed, turned to her.

  Feenie said, slightly accusing, ‘Mrs Stonelady?’

  ‘I does what’s asked and says nowt,’ declared the woman. ‘If they didn’t turn off my bread-and-butter, it’ll be ruined.’

  This seemed a pretty fair assertion of both philosophy and priorities, thought Ellie. Oh for such certainties!

  Wendy Woolley, as though in a classroom, half raised her hand and said, ‘Please, I have a question.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What happened to the cocaine? And your friend, Fidel?’

  Before Kelly could reply, there was a noise from the doorway and the three men returned from the cellar. Luis was carrying a bulky leather grip.

  The two Cojos were as usual engaged in animated conversation. They spoke too low for Ellie to catch what they were saying, and in any case they were rattling away at a speed which would have made it impossible for someone at her level of colloquial Spanish to understand more than the occasional very basic phrase.

  Popeye seemed to be in the same or perhaps an even less seaworthy boat. He looked from one of the Colombians to the other, shook his head as if in puzzlement that such a cacophony could actually make sense, took a swig from a bottle of water he was holding, then came wandering across to the women.

  ‘How are you doing, ladies?’ he asked. ‘Anyone like a drink?’

  He offered the bottle. Ellie took it, wiped the top, and drank, then passed it on to Feenie.

  She took a pull, then said, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You’d need to be a United Nations interpreter to know that,’ said Popeye. ‘But in any case I don’t think it’s anything you need to be bothering your old grey head with, lady.’

  The old grey head gave him a coldly assessing stare which chilled Ellie, but the Irishman’s eyes had already slid from the grandmother to the granddaughter.

  ‘I see you found the left luggage,’ said Kelly pertly.

  ‘That’s all I’m here for, darling. Getting what’s rightly mine. You’ll not dispute that, will you?’

  ‘I won’t. But you don’t imagine those two are going to let you keep it, do you?’

  ‘Now why shouldn’t they? It’s mine, they know that. Whose the weapons are is between Jorge and your friend, what’s-his-name? Chiquilla, is it?’

  ‘Chiquillo,’ said Kelly precisely.

  ‘Of course. Sorry, darling, I was never very good at the old linguistics, hard enough coping with English,’ said Popeye, giving her a broad smile which she didn’t return. ‘But while we’re on the subject of Chiquilla, sorry, o, I ought to warn you. Those two are seriously pissed off because your friend wasn’t here to greet them. Sooner or later they’re going to start asking you where he might be. If you know, I would seriously advise you to tell them, sooner rather than later, which might be too late. I’ll do what I can for you. Blood’s thicker than water, they say. But that works against you too, you see. One of those two goons your guy killed was Jorge’s brother.’

  Kelly said, ‘And the two men he killed were your friends. For God’s sake, Uncle Paddy, how can you stomach working with these people when they killed your friends?’

  ‘Now I don’t know that, do I? All I heard were a lot of shots and when I opened my eyes and decided I wasn’t in heaven, there were bodies everywhere and the only person officially alive was our unpronounceable friend, which has to mean something. Jorge told me that it was him that must have planned the double-cross, and then he went all the way and killed his own people too. Makes sense.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, and you know it,’ said Kelly forcibly. ‘Tell me this. Did you find Jorge or did he come looking for you?’

  ‘Bit of both,’ said Popeye, smiling slyly. ‘He thinks he found me, but I wanted to be found. When you�
��ve been nearly killed and totally ripped off, you’ve got to be ready to deal with anyone who can help you get your pension fund back, wouldn’t you agree? As a businesswoman, that is.’

  ‘Maybe. But as a businesswoman, I’d be very careful about my long-term investments.’

  ‘Is that right? I’ll remember that. Getting back to your own long term, me darling Kansas, when Jorge starts asking, I’d have my story ready. Tell him the plain truth. That’s what I did. Told him everything I saw and heard as I lay there pretending to be dead because I didn’t know what your friend would do if he knew I wasn’t dead.’

  ‘And what did you see and hear, Uncle Paddy?’

  ‘Well, I heard him ringing someone, you, I expect it was, and talk about hiding the stuff in the CP, which is here. And I saw him take his shirt off. Oh God, even in my condition that was a shocking sight to see, truly shocking.’

  ‘Why?’ said Kelly urgently, her eyes riveted on Popeye’s face. ‘And what did you tell Jorge?’

  Popeye met her gaze blankly for a moment then smiled a slow sly smile.

  ‘Why? It was such a terrible wound the poor creature had, a killing wound, I reckoned. I could hardly bear to look at it. That’s what I told Jorge, that if your friend made it here, it must have been on willpower, and I couldn’t see how he’d survive the trip. My bet is he died after he got here, and you wrapped the body in a blanket and weighted it down with rocks and tipped it into that sea out there. That’s what I told Jorge. But he’ll need to be persuaded. Think you can manage that, Kansas?’

  Now it was Kelly’s turn to peer into the Irishman’s face as if in search of something she wasn’t certain of finding.

  Then she nodded and said gently, ‘Thanks, Uncle Paddy. I think I can manage that. You take care of yourself now.’

  It was like being at a play, Cymbeline, say, which was constructed like a wildebeest, no part matching any other, and you’d no idea of the plot, and you’d missed the first two acts, and you had a seat behind a pillar, and the people around you were coughing and eating popcorn noisily.

  What the hell was going on here? wondered Ellie.

  ‘Don’t fret over me,’ laughed Popeye. ‘Harder to kill than a crab louse on a baboon’s ballocks, that’s what they say about me in the Vatican. Hello, looks like it’s showtime.’

  The two Cojos seemed to have reached a decision, and Jorge was beckoning Popeye imperiously to join them.

  As he moved away, Daphne whispered to Kelly, ‘Is he really your uncle?’

  ‘Strictly speaking, no. But when one Irishman meets another he’s going to do business with, first thing they do is try to establish a family connection. When my dada met Paddy years back, they worked out that their great-grandmothers had been second cousins or some such thing, and after that he became Uncle Paddy to me.’

  ‘So no relation of yours, Miss Macallum?’

  Feenie looked at her like a Fundamentalist confronted by Darwinism.

  ‘Not many of my relatives have given me cause for pride,’ she said sourly. ‘But at least I can boast that I do not count Mr Ducannon amongst them.’

  ‘Come on, Gran, he’s not that bad,’ said Kelly spiritedly.

  ‘Then how come he’s so chummy with those monsters?’

  ‘Doesn’t look all that chummy to me.’

  She was right.

  Popeye was making some point very forcibly, with Jorge and Luis looking pretty unconvinced.

  They made some attempt to keep their voices down but as tempers rose, so did the sound level. Soon it became clear that Popeye had asserted his moral right to be identified as the owner of the coke and his legal right as one who has met his share of a bargain to move on out.

  Wise move, thought Ellie. In the little red book of law-breaking, it said that before a crime, time was your friend, but after a crime, time was your enemy. Or, more simply, plan very carefully, run very fast.

  Hard to run fast when you had a lot of heavy crates to lug out of a cellar and load into a truck. Much easier when all you had to carry was a case full of coke.

  Luis was objecting on the grounds that Popeye would need transport and their vehicles weren’t going anywhere till they’d got the arms loaded.

  Popeye responded that there were at least three cars parked around the house and he was quite capable of helping himself to one of these, thank you.

  Then Jorge said, ‘No. It’s better that we stick together. We need you to help us with the crates. Then we all leave together.’

  Not much of rational argument here, but something about the way he spoke gave the message that beyond this, words would not be the medium of debate, and Popeye, with the wisdom of long survival, shrugged and smiled and said, ‘OK. No sweat.’

  ‘Bueno!’ said Jorge, suddenly very friendly. ‘We are all partners here, agreed? Now, why don’t you and Luis go to fetch the truck as close as you can get? I will start these two strong men bringing the crates up from below.’

  ‘Doesn’t need two to bring the truck,’ objected Popeye.

  ‘Not to drive, but this ground is not too safe and the weather is making things worse. It may need one to walk ahead making sure. To get bogged down now would be disastrous, no?’

  ‘Good point,’ capitulated Popeye. ‘So let’s be off then, Luis.’

  The two men went out.

  As if to signal their departure, a tremendous jag of lightning cracked the eastern sky and the window seemed to dissolve as the onshore wind hurled the first cataract of rain at the flexing glass.

  Jorge went and stood against it, looking out, like some mad scientist in one of the old horror movies, trying to draw strength directly from the elements. When he turned, his gaze ran over the huddling women, then settled into a focused stare. Ellie had no difficulty pinpointing its object, and even less reading his mind.

  Kelly Cornelius.

  He’d got Popeye out of the way. Maybe he’d even fixed with Luis to get the Irishman permanently out of the way.

  Now he was going to go to work on Kelly to discover the whereabouts of the elusive Chiquillo. And in the intensity of his gaze, Ellie saw that it wasn’t just desire of revenge that was going to inform his questioning. There was desire of another sort there too. So far, God be thanked, in all the shifting mass of menace which had rolled across the terrace from the moment of the shot, there had been no sexual element. But that, she saw, from the shine of his eyes and the swelling of his crotch, was over.

  For an irrational moment she felt a huge resentment directed at Kelly. Why the hell did she have to be so fucking attractive? Everything about their demeanour had said that these were men in a hurry, keen to get their loot loaded and be far away from this remote and frightening neck of the woods. To them Axness must look like a trap ready to close. Would Jorge’s keenness to locate Chiquillo have kept him here long? Possibly not. Chiquillo, if still alive, would keep. But for Jorge, interrogating Kelly was going to be an absolute pleasure, not just a means to an end. Kelly would resist… he would want her to resist. She recalled the easy unthinking way he’d dealt with Daphne and Novello. When he’d finished with Kelly, chances were she’d be dead.

  And once he’d killed one of them, what were the others but dangerous witnesses?

  ‘You,’ said Jorge to Little Ajax. ‘Watch them. If they move, shoot.’

  And to Big Ajax he said, pointing at Kelly, ‘You, bring her.’

  He set off to the door, confident in his commands being obeyed.

  Big Ajax moved forward.

  Ellie scrambled to her feet. Images were jumbling in her brain. Horatius jumping onto the bridge. Spartacus attacking the head of gladiator school, Lytton Strachey telling the tribunal that if he saw a horrid Hun about to ravish his sister, he’d try to interpose his own body.

  Why did men get all the best stories?

  She said, ‘No.’

  She didn’t know what she expected, except of course support. Horatius got his two chums, Spartacus got an army of revolting slaves, even Strac
hey probably got a quickly suppressed laugh.

  All she got was a headmistressly rebuke from Feenie.

  ‘Ellie, don’t be silly. Sit down!’

  True, Daphne made a token effort to rise but when Feenie’s hand pressed down on her shoulder, she subsided without much resistance. Woolly Wendy kept her head and eyes as low as a grazing sheep, Mrs Stonelady didn’t even register that anything out of the ordinary was passing. Only Kelly stood up, looked at her grandmother, smiled, and said, ‘It’s OK, Ellie. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Fine? No! We can’t let this happen!’ cried Ellie.

  And as Big Ajax reached his arm forward to grasp Kelly, Ellie seized it, bent her head, and sank her teeth into the ball of his thumb.

  She had some recollection from the sensational literature of her childhood that this caused such a distracting pain that a nimble heroine could usually find time to make her escape.

  Big Ajax must have read other books. He dragged his hand out of her mouth and swung it at her face with a force that sent her crashing against the window. Then he took Kelly’s arm and pulled her, unresisting, through the doorway.

  Ellie removed her face from the glass. The storm outside seemed to be raging in her head. The now almost continual lightning flashes lit up the window with such intensity that the rain streaming down the glass looked red as blood.

  Then as her head cleared a little she realized it was blood, hers, on the inside.

  She put her hand to her nose, which hurt like hell, and turned to face her cowardly companions, expecting to see their faces dark with guilt.

  ‘Now we’re a matching pair,’ said Daphne, not without satisfaction. ‘Perhaps at last I’ll get a little sympathy.’

  xvi

  a palomino pony

  Uncle Paddy…

  Popeye…

  the Pop-Up Man…

  Patrick Ducannon didn’t mind what people called him, so long as they stayed a long pace short of the truth of him.

  He was a great survivor, that was certainly part of the truth, but his famous hair’s-breadth escapes from death were only a part of that part. It was good to be lucky, but early on in his career as a Volunteer, he’d decided that a man who relied on luck alone in this line of work was very soon going to be dead lucky. However, it didn’t harm at all to let the world at large think that this indeed was what he relied upon, as it distracted their minds from other possibilities.