Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  Feenie was upright and moving forward, no longer the pathetic broken geriatric of a moment ago, but with something predatory in her pace and on her features.

  Little Ajax’s attention was even more focused on Wendy’s scoldings, but something in the atmosphere, or in someone’s eyes, gave him warning.

  He began to turn.

  And Wendy Woolley pounced, leaping forward to drive her knee into his crotch (my move! thought Ellie), at the same time grabbing his gun hand at the wrist and forcing it sideways.

  Little Ajax’s finger squeezed reflexively on the trigger. A stream of bullets lashed against the window. The glass crazed where they hit but didn’t break. Someone screamed. Ellie wouldn’t have taken bets it wasn’t her. Then she realized it could have been Wendy. Blood was bubbling from her thigh. She must have been hit by a ricochet. She hung on gamely but Little Ajax seized the chance of her distraction to hurl her from him. She crashed to the floor beneath the window. Still crouching under the pain to his balls, he brought the gun round to bear on her head. Ellie was still in that it-all-happened-so-quickly state which in the past she’d sometimes mocked as a good excuse for doing nothing. But even if her body had obeyed instantly her commands to get up off its arse and give assistance, she couldn’t have got anywhere near the action in time to influence the outcome.

  But Feenie could. And did.

  It was neat and undramatic and final.

  Her left arm went round Little Ajax’s bull neck, her right hand rested against his jaw, she made a sharp twisting movement, there was a click, and when she moved away, the body folded slackly and crashed down on the rickety chair, reducing it to kindling.

  ‘Oh my,’ said Daphne, round-eyed. ‘And I argued with her about money.’

  Ellie was on her feet now, hurrying forward to give what help she could to Wendy Woolley. But her reaction was in its own way just as astonishing as Feenie’s intervention. Instead of lying there, gritting her teeth against the pain till somebody did something to her bleeding thigh, she had crawled forward, grabbed the gun which had fallen from Little Ajax’s hand, and was now expertly removing the ammunition clip and checking it out. She didn’t look happy with what she found, and began searching through the dead man’s clothing.

  As Ellie knew from personal experience, kneeing a guy in the balls required no special training, but this smelt strongly of expertise.

  Feenie thought so too.

  ‘I was beginning to wonder about you, my dear,’ she said. ‘What are you? A security plant?’

  ‘I suggest we discuss it later,’ said Wendy. ‘Shit. This idiot didn’t carry any reserve ammo. And this clip has got only one round left in it. Sounds like a good recipe for poker.’

  ‘Bezique is more my game, dear. Mrs Aldermann, would you care to listen at the door and yell out if you hear anything? I don’t think we need worry too much that we’ve attracted attention. If we can’t hear what our friend Jorge is up to, then he certainly won’t be able to hear us. Let’s have a look at that leg, Mrs Woolley. Ellie, fetch the medicine box, will you?’

  She cut the woman’s skirt to reveal the wound, which she examined critically for a moment then said, ‘More buttock than thigh, fortunately. I can see some metal in there. Best to get it out. There should be some tweezers in the box, Ellie. Thank you. Would you mind putting that gun down, Mrs Woolley? I should hate to be shot dead with our one remaining bullet, and this might hurt a little.’

  It must have hurt a lot if the sweat pouring down Wendy’s face was any indication, but apart from one gasp, she bore the pain in silence.

  Finally Feenie applied Achilles’s salve and bound up the wound, saying cheerfully, ‘We’re going to need another batch of your ointment, Mrs Stonelady, if things go on like this.’

  The old countrywoman had been studying the recumbent Little Ajax with some interest.

  ‘This here’s a dead ’un,’ she opined finally. ‘You’ve done for him, missus.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Feenie. ‘In my prime, I could have just laid him out, but age reduces the options, I’m afraid. Now it’s all or nothing, and in the circumstances, it had to be all.’

  From the doorway, Daphne said, ‘That German officer, the one who interrupted you when you were… you never told us how that turned out.’

  Feenie smiled.

  ‘Much the same, my dear. As this one here did with age, poor Fritz confused nakedness with harmlessness. But this is no time for trips down memory lane. Mrs Woolley, or whatever your name really is, how close are your people?’

  Wendy didn’t prevaricate.

  ‘Close,’ she said. ‘They’ve been watching the house.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Only three.’

  ‘Marvellous. First time in my life I’ve wanted to be haunted by spooks in droves and we’re down to three,’ said Feenie. ‘What are they likely to be doing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted the woman. ‘Hoping to hear from me, for a start.’

  ‘And how might they do that?’ said Feenie hopefully.

  ‘They can’t. They could have done if you’d let me bring my handbag, which contains both my radio and my gun.’

  ‘My fault, is it? I’m sorry but I’m not psychic. What was the last thing you told them?’

  ‘I told them I’d heard you talking about the Command Post. They’d been speculating what CP stood for.’

  ‘So they’ve probably got a pretty good idea of the situation here and could have rustled up some extra help?’

  Wendy Woolley shook her head.

  ‘My boss isn’t a man to involve more people than he feels absolutely necessary,’ she said. ‘And if he thinks he can get what he wants by simply sitting and waiting, that’s what he’ll do.’

  ‘And what does he want, this boss?’

  Wendy hesitated.

  Ellie thought, she’s screwing him! Which means she knows exactly how he ticks but still feels she owes him some loyalty.

  She said, ‘Showtime, Wendy. If we can’t tell the truth here, when the hell can we tell it?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘You’re right. Above all, Gaw wants, in fact he needs, a successful operation. Which in this case means securing the arms, the cocaine, Popeye Ducannon and Fidel Chiquillo. The survival of the rest of us would be a bonus but he can live without it.’

  ‘He’s that cold-blooded?’

  ‘Well, yes, but he is genuinely convinced most of you have stepped over the line anyway,’ said Wendy defensively.

  ‘What line?’ asked Ellie.

  ‘The line between the good of the state and common humanity,’ said Feenie savagely. ‘In the eyes of security, there are no degrees of guilt. So, ladies, it doesn’t look like the US cavalry will be attending on this occasion. We must do what we can for ourselves.’

  And what is that precisely? wondered Ellie.

  Simplest would be to sit and wait till the door opened and hope to take one of the men out with their single bullet and bluff the other into submission with the empty gun. Even if you said it quickly it didn’t sound good, plus it would mean leaving Kelly to her fate. Also, if they hung around too long, the odds against them would double when Popeye and Luis came back with the truck. However sympathetic the Irishman might be, he’d made it clear his first priority was to retrieve his pension-fund cocaine.

  No, they had to take the initiative.

  She consulted her feelings and found to her surprise that the prospect quite invigorated her. The news that there were other security people in the offing had cheered her up greatly. Not that it sounded as if they’d be much help in the short term, but with luck, Rosie would have found her way back to them and be in their safe-keeping. And with Peter at least sixty miles away, that meant that she had no one to worry about but herself.

  Which is what that selfish little corner of her being which she’d hoped to sublimate into the creation of fiction had wanted, wasn’t it?

  Well, now she’d got it. Now was the chance
to see just how creative she really was.

  ‘I’ve got a plan,’ she said.

  xviii

  the US cavalry

  In prospect, driving the truck to the pavilion had seemed to Peter Pascoe an easy matter with the real problems starting once they arrived.

  After five minutes, if they arrived seemed a better way of putting it.

  Presumably somewhere there was a proper service track dating from the days when the pavilion had been Mungo Macallum’s hospitality suite from which his house-guests could watch the elements at their most dramatic whilst feasting off the fat of the land.

  Now those same elements had turned the air into a whirling mulch of debris and rain which absorbed the headlights’ amber beam like a pub champion downing a yard of ale, so that even if he knew where the track had been, he doubted if he could have followed it. The only directional aid he had was to head straight into the storm’s blast which from time to time was so strong it threatened to push the truck backwards. The screen was a river in flood across which the wipers spasmed slowly like dying eels, and the ground beneath the wheels had become so saturated that the vehicle’s weight was trying to dig its own grave.

  To stop could be fatal. Slowly, blindly, Pascoe sent the truck inching forward, lurching over unseen and unidentifiable obstacles with a series of jolts that tossed him all over the cab. Pascoe almost pitied the security trio behind him. Bouncing around in a small space with Andy Dalziel was probably as dangerous as being trapped below decks on an old sailing ship with a loose cannon sliding around.

  The only real navigational aid he had was the occasional flash of lightning which momentarily lit up the sky before leaving it even darker than before. He could only hope that such a moment of illumination would occur a few yards before they reached the edge of the cliff their present course must inevitably bring them to.

  This is England, he kept on reminding himself. This is Yorkshire. But whatever his mind told him, his senses and his imagination knew that he was in some land of myths and monsters, light years away from all the certainties and securities of home.

  I am Theseus sailing to slay the Minotaur, I am Perseus speeding on the talaria to rescue Andromeda from the dragon, I am Flash Gordon with a lot less than fourteen hours to save the universe…

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he said.

  He was Childe Roland too.

  The lightning had flashed up the world again and there right ahead, crouching blank-eyed and ominous as the Dark Tower, was the Pavilion by the Sea.

  What now?

  He didn’t doubt that those in the back would all have their own notions on how to proceed. Well, he didn’t need them. This was his show. What did Childe Roland do when he finally came to the Dark Tower?

  Dauntless his slug horn to his lips he set, and blew.

  Good thinking. Get those within to come out where he would have them dazzled in the headlights’ beam.

  And then, what?

  Would he be able to use the gun Sempernel had reluctantly given him and shoot a man down like a lamped deer?

  Yes, he assured himself. No problem. Choose between Ellie and my precious conscience? No competition!

  Yet, pile these self-assurances high as he could, he still felt deep down beneath them a pea of doubt.

  One way to find out.

  He leaned all his weight on the horn and blew.

  It made a pretty satisfactory noise even in these conditions but it evoked no response from the pavilion.

  He tried it again and again he waited.

  This time he thought he saw a movement through the small window in the door facing him, but no one came out.

  He blew the horn a third time.

  Nothing.

  He sat a little longer. Where were they? And almost as puzzling, where were those buggers in the back? He couldn’t believe that either Fat Andy or Gawain Sempernel would sit for long waiting for an insubordinate subordinate to give them permission to alight. He hoped their rough ride hadn’t left them too bruised to move!

  He opened the door with difficulty, fighting against the wind which was a heavyweight puncher even here in the lee of the pavilion. Out of the truck, it became a wrestler who seized him gleefully and sent him spinning round to the rear and would probably have spun him all the way back to the house if he hadn’t grabbed at the tailgate.

  Which was down.

  For God’s sake, surely they hadn’t already got out and gone blundering off into the storm?

  He leaned against the tailgate and peered in. The lightning flashed. No, they were all still there, sitting upright, looking towards him.

  But not moving. And not talking.

  The next flash told him why.

  They were all neatly trussed and gagged, like meat rolled and dressed for the oven.

  He prepared to vault in and release them but there was something cold and hard pressing against his neck. He could feel it all the way through to his brain and to the pit of his stomach.

  ‘You are welcome, good master,’ said a soft voice. ‘Will you not step inside?’

  xix

  I shall wound every man

  As creative plans went, Ellie’s wasn’t Pulitzer standard, though weird enough to win the Booker in one of its dafter years.

  ‘We’ve got to stop Jorge and Big Ajax doing whatever they’re doing to Kelly and get them back in here,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’ said Daphne.

  ‘Big Ajax,’ said Ellie, recalling that her nicknames existed only in her head. ‘That’s Little Ajax on the floor. And when they come in, they’ve got to be distracted enough for us to take them out.’

  ‘Take them out?’ said Daphne. ‘As in NATO bombers taking out an anti-aircraft battery?’

  ‘That sort of thing. Now here’s what I suggest. Wendy, you get up against the wall there next to Shirley…’

  She flashed a smile at Novello who was looking so pale she was almost translucent but whose eyes were bright and taking everything in.

  ‘… and look terrified. You’ll have the gun. Put your arm around Shirley and keep it hidden behind her. How good a shot are you?’

  ‘In normal circumstances, excellent.’

  ‘Don’t overdo the false modesty,’ said Ellie. ‘Your job will be to deal with Big Ajax, OK?’

  ‘I’d have said that Jorge was the more dangerous,’ objected Wendy.

  ‘Possibly. But Big Ajax has got a neck like an elephant’s leg and I’m not sure if Feenie can pull the same trick with him that she managed on Little Ajax here.’

  Feenie, who’d been listening with close attention said, ‘You’re right, my dear. I was just about at my limit with this one. But I reckon that, given a firm standing, I could lever that little runt Jorge’s head right off his shoulders.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ said Daphne. ‘I’ve eaten too much lobster and am having a weird nightmare.’

  ‘You ain’t heard nothing yet,’ said Ellie, now really fired up. ‘This bit you’re going to love. Daphne, I want you to pull your knickers round your ankles, your skirt up round your bum and lie on the floor just about here.’

  ‘You what? You realize you’re talking to the President Elect of our local WI? If you feel pulsating pudenda is the best bet for distracting horrible Jorge, why don’t you flash yours?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be doing my bit,’ said Ellie, tearing at her T-shirt and ripping down her bra. ‘And if it’s your modesty you’re worried about, it’s OK. He won’t be able to see a thing because you’ll have Little Ajax here on top of you. There we go. Do I look like a woman wronged?’

  She stood before them, her breasts spilling out of the ruins of her T-shirt.

  ‘No, you just look like Cher at an awards ceremony. What was that you said about him being on top of me?’

  ‘I think,’ said Feenie, ‘that what Ellie is suggesting is a scenario in which Little Ajax has run berserk, sexually speaking. Attacked her, shot Mrs Woolley, and is now ravishing you. Jorge wil
l certainly not be pleased. May I suggest, my dear, that we can both add to his displeasure and also add a little verisimilitude to Little Ajax’s extraordinary behaviour thus?’

  As she spoke, she went to the grip, opened it, took out one of the plastic bags, ripped it open and scattered the white powder on the floor.

  ‘There. Now, Mrs Aldermann, if you don’t mind, time is of the essence. I could render you unconscious if that would make things easier for you, but I think in the circumstances at least one of you ought to be moving.’

  It was hard to tell how serious Feenie was. Absolutely, was Ellie’s guess. And Daphne’s too, for she now let herself be arranged in the proposed tableau, her resistance reduced to repeating over and over, ‘I do not believe this… I do not believe this…’ as they eased Little Ajax’s body on top of her.

  ‘His trousers need to be down,’ said Ellie.

  ‘Yes, of course. At my age you forget such details,’ said Feenie as together they dragged the dead man’s trousers down over his buttocks.

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Ellie. ‘Daphne, dear, could you writhe about a bit and shriek? Give the impression that Little Ajax is having a good time and you’re not?’

  ‘You’ve got that half right,’ said Daphne. ‘Oh God. How’s this?’

  One thing you had to give these public-school girls, once you persuaded them to take part, they didn’t hold back.

  ‘Excellent. But don’t tire yourself out. Relax till the curtain goes up. So here’s the scenario, ladies. I shall rush out of the door, sobbing and sighing and crying rape. My guess is they’re down in the cellar. I’m going to make a lot of noise because I want them to hear me coming so they don’t start blasting away out of sheer surprise. If all goes well, Jorge and Big Ajax will come rushing in here to see what the hell’s going on. The picture they’ll get is that Little Ajax has been snorting coke and has got ambitious to screw us all. Jorge will rush across to him to beat him senseless, Big Ajax will remain standing at the door. Wendy will blow his head off and Feenie will break Jorge’s neck. Any questions?’