Hostage

by Geoffrey Household

  I left Roke’s Tining in a rush, thankful to pass the police posts without any further inquiry about my non-existent car broken down on the Evesham road. When I returned the hired car it appeared that the garage had in fact received an inquiry. I told them that my own car had been towed away earlier than I expected, without mentioning by whom. There was no reason why the police should start a long and exhaustive inquiry to find out whether that was true or not.

  In the evening I took a bus and got off it on the Northleach road. I was intensely relieved to be on foot again: a mere nameless, numberless dot on the rolling Cotswold upland. Approach to Roke’s Tining had to be from the east. The west side of its valley would be ruled out at once by the most amateur of trespassers, for after negotiating a slope of dense, second-growth woodland – a difficult and noisy job – one would arrive in the lane opposite a long stretch of high garden wall. Then access to the house had to be through the front gate or the courtyard.

  The east side was far more hopeful, where beech woods ran down to a narrow strip of pasture separated from the garden only by a stream. Keeping well away from the upper line of beeches I explored the long fields above the valley and came across a desolate knot of newspaper reporters who had tried to get at least a view of Roke’s Tining and failed. I could have told them that even if one of them obtained an accurate story it would only be filed on unexplained instructions from the proprietor or editor-in-chief.

  They cleared off at dusk. I had passed two or three of their cars scattered about the lanes and assumed at the time that plain clothes police had left them there. The presence of the press complicated my approach. I could not tell if any, more enterprising than the rest, had drifted into the woods unseen by me. I did not want to find myself stalking a newspaperman and ignoring genuine danger. One can calculate purposeful movement but random movement is muddling.

  In the last of the light I slipped over the dry-stone wall which separated fields from woodland and found that I was up to my knees in beech leaves which the south-west winds of many winters had piled nearly to the top of the wall. Leaves and leaf mould were underfoot. Silently I moved down through the bare Egyptian pillars of the beeches until I was somewhere above the outlet from the millpond and then followed the edge of the wood to a point opposite the house.

  Gammel looking out from a lit window might have thought everything was dark. Far from it! Flood lights were at both ends of the road. Ground floor windows were uncurtained and there was a glow over the courtyard. The strip of open pasture and the stream, both of which I had to cross, were damnably naked under the moon and a clear sky. I could clearly see two police patrolling my side of the stream over which was a footbridge mercilessly lit up. At the northern end of their beat they were very close, and at the southern near enough to spot me crossing the open.

  I tried to follow the edge of the wood and reach a point beyond their regular beat, but there the thick growth of ash and hazel which I had easily managed in daylight could no longer be tackled soundlessly. The police were right not to bother with it. So I had to stay among the more open beeches where at least I was invisible. Settled into a cradle of roots I timed and watched the movements of the patrol. Half an hour’s patience produced no solution. I should have no trouble in escaping if seen in the open, but to try to reach Gammel’s study window was asking for trouble.

  It seemed to me that I now heard a second patrol coming down obliquely from the wall. Listening to faint and distant shufflings I concluded that there was only one man; he might be one of the news hawks hoping for a scoop but whatever he was I had to be sure.

  I waited just off the line of the cautious footsteps, glimpsing first a moving darkness and then getting a clearer view of the man as he slipped across a moonlit clearing instead of going round it. Dear Mick, he still had a lot to learn!

  Of course they had chosen him because we had worked so long together in the cell which he had taken over from me; he would recognise me anywhere and in any light. I let him go on until he came to the thicker undergrowth which would stop him and meanwhile gave some thought to a situation which I had considered very unlikely though taking reasonable precautions.

  It had never occurred to them that Herbert Johnson had driven boldly in, risking awkward questions and identification as Julian Despard; they reckoned that if I intended to stick my nose into Roke’s Tining I would arrive from the east in some such way as I had. However, that was only an intelligent deduction from my known tastes and training, quite insufficient to launch the operation against me unless I was actually seen. I must have been. It could be that Rex had a partisan posted among those roving reporters or in an apparently empty car which I had approached too carelessly. Also it was probable that, once I had crossed the wall, someone would be posted to stop me breaking out if I scented danger. I was bound to leave the wood at the top rather than risk the lights and the police in the valley.

  Why they believed I would come to Roke’s Tining at all was uncertain. Gammel could tell me nothing which I did not already know. Or could he? Or did they think I had something of vital importance to tell the police? But in that case I would surely report at some secret interview in London, not here.

  For the moment answers to those questions could wait. The essential was to guess what Mick’s orders were. I doubted whether he would ever agree to kill me even if assured that his Group Commander had defected and was dangerous. That suggested that there must be someone else with him to do the job which had to be finished crisply without firing a shot or giving me time to yell. A professional was needed. He could hardly get near enough for the thuggery which killed Shallope or the syringe. Arrow loosed at short range? Blow pipe? All the methods expounded during training, even the use of the long spear from cover, ran through my mind. But before any action Mick must identify me and report. If I allowed him to do so he could lead me to his companion.

  To judge from their behaviour neither of them realised that they might become the hunted rather than the hunters, confident that I would not attract police by a shot, confident too that I was unarmed if running true to form. My cell knew that on principle I never carried a gun and were divided between admiration and disapproval; but I had never let any of them detect that a soft-sheathed gaucho knife was under my left shoulder on all occasions when it might be needed. My choice of weapon is deliberate. I cherish it and sometimes test the blade by shaving with it. It makes aggression at a distance impossible and yet assures efficient personal defence if attacked or too casually arrested.

  I sat down on the edge of the moonlit clearing to wait for Mick’s return from the impossible bit of thicket and to allow him a clear view of me, backing my hunch that he must have been ordered not to disturb the silence and that he would not be chosen as the actual assassin. A third comforting thought was that anyway he was a lousy shot. But I admit that I did not enjoy sitting there and offering him a sight of my head.

  As soon as he was sure he turned away from the clearing and up the hill, now very slowly and taking the utmost care. I doubt if his footsteps would have been audible if I had not been expecting them. I followed him at a safe distance, stopping when he stopped, until the bank of leaves which shrouded the wall was faintly in sight.

  Mick disappeared behind a group of three smooth boles, too far away from me to hear if there was whispering, but everything pointed to it. After half a minute he returned cautiously over the leaf mould more or less on the route by which he had come. I waited for his companion. He slipped out an angle and I could only see that he was a big, heavy man with a belly who moved as lightly as a boxer – a far more formidable opponent than Mick.

  Padding down on a parallel course I caught sight of him at frequent intervals. When he was above and close to the clearing I saw him stop, take from his pocket a corked phial, pick out a dart with a pair of tweezers and load an air pistol. Paralyse or kill? Whichever it was, the effect of the dart had to be nearly instantaneous, working so fast when it pierced the skin that the victi
m keeled over while still wondering whether the prick was caused by thorn or insect.

  Somewhere he had had more training than that of an urban guerrilla. He waited near the edge of the long strip of pasture in the valley bottom, summing up for himself the lights, the patrol and the general activity. He must have seen, as I had, that the only hope of reaching Roke’s Tining was to wait and wait for a chance opportunity. Waiting, therefore, was what I was doing when Mick spotted me.

  He took up his position some ten yards back from the open. I couldn’t see him since he had a tree trunk behind him, but I knew which tree. Escape never occurred to me. I was obsessed by the necessity of keeping my appointment with Gammel and gorged with an absolute loathing of this murderer without any creed, public or personal.

  Everything about him – expression, build, method – cried out that he was not one of our partisans but a hired assassin killing for money, a spiritual monstrosity. Attack the State, yes. Accept loss of life if it cannot be avoided, yes. And yes, exposure and execution of the infiltrator. But it fouled Magma to recruit a butcher from the terror bank as if we were drug runners or a crooked industrial Mafia. Looking back on that night I detect some hypocrisy in my indignation but it was real enough at the time.

  I wanted my more honest Mick to be well away, but had now no idea where he was. He might be more or less in line with us and advancing just inside the trees to drive me towards his companion, or above me hoping to close in if I were seen or heard climbing up the wood. All was dead silent, so I decided that the dog should be allowed to look at the rabbit again. I left the killer to go on contemplating nothing, reached the lower end of the clearing and deliberately tripped. That brought Mick out of hiding at once and fixed him on the spot.

  Then downhill once more. I was aiming for the last rank of the trees rather beyond the point where my enemy was, and too confident. I overlooked the fact that all this time I had been guided by their movements rather than by remembering small details of the ground. There were few. I could see the limit of the wood from quite a distance inside it because of the lights in the valley. I could feel the angle of slope and be sure where the clearing was, but to recognise a pattern of tree trunks in darkness irregularly stippled by patches and stripes of moonlight was difficult.

  I chose the wrong clump and my mistake was made still more deadly by one of those long, low beech branches searching for light. Instead of going round it I ducked under it. When I raised my head he was close enough to spot the movement of the pale face. I hurled myself sideways and heard the phut of the pistol and the tap of the dart as it hit the branch. Then he was on me and I went down under his weight. My only chance was the old, possum trick of limpness. My right hand was already on the hilt and I had the sense to cross the other arm over it as I fell, as if hugging myself in a position of utter terror. He never bothered to see what either helpless hand was doing and picked up the wretched bundle by the collar about to strangle it or deliver a knockout blow which would give him time to reload at leisure.

  I couldn’t breathe and held what breath I had while I smoothly, almost lovingly, inserted the knife till I felt the muscular resistance of the heart, then cut downwards to the tight waistband which reminded me that I might have to pick up and dispose of what it let loose. A savage reaction, panting with fear, pain and fury. I could understand those Moslem primitives who stuff the victim’s mouth with his penis.

  He had only time to utter a high-pitched, half-voiced gasp. The police patrol heard it, turned round but made no move. They may have taken it for the strangled hoot of that owl with his mouth full, or any of the tremulous mealtime comments of fox or badger to which they no longer paid attention. There was no noise at all as I lowered his body to the leaves.

  I stood back until the beat of my heart had slowed and the animal was again relaxed. I found unfathomable Mick on the far side of the moonlit glade, anxiously listening either for me or for a repetition of the curious sound he had heard. From the cover of two overlapping trunks behind him I asked.

  ‘Your orders are to kill me, Mick?’

  He swung round. The voice was very close but he could see nothing.

  I told him to go forward into the clearing and drop his gun. He obeyed without a word, still not knowing where I was. To my surprise he was not armed.

  ‘Who was the man with you?’

  ‘He’s foreign. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Was foreign, Mick. Go down and look and keep just as silent as you have. You did as well as could be expected without more training.’

  He started down while I kept behind him and directed him to the body.

  ‘You devil!’ he whispered.

  ‘I’ve heard you say that before. Yet I’d never killed anyone then.’

  ‘Did you have to do that?’

  ‘Unless I wanted to be killed myself. What were your orders?’

  ‘Committee orders. Direct. They said you had buggered off and might be dangerous. Nervous strain, like. We were to find you and bring you in quietly.’

  That at least is the gist of what he told me at greater length and incoherently.

  So as to stun him with still more surprise, I asked him if he knew who I really was.

  ‘Herbert Johnson.’

  ‘I am Julian Despard. Is it likely he would become a police informer? And from all you know of Gil would he betray his cell or his Group?’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you. But we must get rid of this. What were you going to do with me?’

  ‘Carry you away. I didn’t know exactly. This one did, and the two up there.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In a car about a mile away.’

  ‘And you were going to carry an unconscious man through this wood, over the wall and a mile across country without being seen or heard?’

  ‘This place – what is it? I didn’t know it would be crawling with cops.’

  ‘Well, now you do. They led you up the garden path, Mick. My body was to be left here.’

  ‘But it would be found.’

  ‘I doubt if that would matter. A dead Despard adds to mystery and fear. But I don’t want to leave this one. Put that stuff back, take off his coat and button it round him lower down!’

  He did what he was told. When the patrol was at the far end of its beat we carried the body up to the bank of leaves and buried it deep. It’s unlikely to be found for a week or two and by then, unless I can alter the future, courts and police will be only a turbulence. God, how desirable! But not at that atrocious and intolerable cost.

  Mick looked me over with his untidy half-grin and said he couldn’t see much sign of the nervous strain.

  ‘I might play your game with you if you’d tell me the rules,’ he added.

  ‘Sit down and I will. It starts from Blackmoor Gate. I didn’t know any more then than you do now.’

  He only interrupted when I came to my interview with Shallope.

  ‘So you didn’t kill him?’ he asked.

  ‘No. He was killed next day. It was well calculated – the best way of convincing the Government that the bomb existed and we had it.’

  Mick’s reaction was very like my own. The objective for which we had suffered and fought and dreamed and destroyed was in sight, but should come in its own time.

  ‘It’s too … well, too sudden for me,’ he said. ‘I can’t accept this weapon but I can’t argue why not. I don’t know what you mean by your Purpose. Arrangement in blue and olive by Gil and bloody God! There’s no object whatever in life beyond what we pack into it and you know it. It’s a nasty chemical accident. But whatever the hell you did mean, this is my revolt – your voice, the night and all the poor devils lost in night like that Grainger you’ve reminded me of. You split this bastard up for yourself, Gil, but I know you well enough to be sure you killed him for our beliefs, yours and mine. What’ll I tell them when I go back?’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘Hung around with t
he newspaper blokes.’

  ‘Then just say that you did see someone enter the wood and followed. But you never saw him again and couldn’t find out whether he was Gil or not.’

  ‘And the late Guts?’

  ‘You lost touch in the dark and waited but never heard a thing. So you cleared off before it was light and couldn’t find the car.’

  ‘It’s a fact I couldn’t, alone.’

  ‘Bad organisation and you can say so.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to tell them I heard him cry for help?’

  ‘Too hard to explain. Let it stay a mystery till the police find the body if they ever do. But you can cry for help yourself now.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To draw off the patrol and give me a chance to reach Sir Frederick.’

  He thought that over and came up with a far better suggestion.

  ‘I’ve got a torch on me. Suppose I start flashing it on the ground near enough for the patrol to see the fairy lights. That’ll bring ’em into the wood after me.’

  ‘Are you sure you can get clear?’

  ‘How much noise did I make?’

  ‘Almost none except when you were in the leaves here.’

  ‘Well then! Where shall I find you, Gil?’

  ‘I’m taking no chances. But I’ll be in London and I know where to find you.’

  When the patrol had reached the mill pond and turned back on their beat Mick slipped away ahead of them. From where I was I could not see the pool of light flickering over the ground in and among the tree roots, but, its effect on the police was immediate. As soon as I heard them charging after the will-o’-the-wisp uphill I raced across the grass and into the pitch-dark stream under the poplars. There I dipped coat and right sleeve into the water to wash out or at least disguise the bloodstains.

  Gammel had merely said ‘up the hedge’ without specifying which side of it. It had to be the near side. To reach the far side I must pass across a semicircle of lawn at the foot of the hedge shining in a naked light over the footbridge. It was a high wall of yew, shadowed from the moon, along which I crawled and walked without fear of detection, but it was thick enough to stop a charging bull – so facing me with an awkward problem, for it ended not at any rose bed or herbaceous border but slap up against a balustraded terrace: yards and yards of gleaming white flag-stones flooded with light from two open french windows.