‘We got what we know we can deal with,’ said his mentor sharply. ‘Doesn’t pay to take risks out of your depth. Come on, let’s get out of here.’
A hand grasped the outer knob of the door. The girl gripped its fellow on her side with both hands and all her strength, and struggled to prevent it from turning. It seemed that his touch had been no more than tentative, and for a moment she managed to hold it fast. But that was her undoing, for at once he said, with rising interest: ‘Locked! Let’s have a go, then!’ and she heard him lay his shotgun aside, leaning it against the jamb of the door to have both hands free. The next moment the knob turned, jerking her hands away, his shoulder thudded heavily against the wood, and the door flew open so violently that he shot half across the room, and let out a yell, suddenly thrown off-balance. The door, flung back hard against the girl’s body, rebounded again with a dull sound that should have covered the gasp the blow fetched out of her, but did not quite cover it. The professional of these two had acute hearing. In his business he needed it.
‘Hi up! What’s here?’ He was inside with them in an instant, the shotgun braced under his right arm, the torch in his left, sweeping the room. He kicked the door shut, and spread both feet firmly to bring the barrel of the gun to bear on the intruder. There was one instant when the girl gave herself up for lost, and as instantly recovered when the alarm point passed and nothing happened. All over in about half a second. Thank God it was the professional, not the lout, who held the gun, and his nerves were considerably stouter than his colleague’s, and his wits quicker. The beam of the torch swept the girl from head to foot, and the most dangerous moment was past. Not that she could reckon on that as the end of danger, but at least it hadn’t wiped her out on sight.
‘Well, well!’ said the expert, slowly lowering the barrel of the gun, but holding her pinned in the ray of the torch. ‘Look what we’ve found!’
His mate was certainly looking, dumbstruck and plainly in a state of panic which would have been her death if he had been holding the gun. ‘My Gawd!’ he babbled, still breathless and splayed against the wall. ‘How come she’s here? You said they was gone for hours. What we goin’ to do with ’er now? She ’as to go, or we’re goners. What you waitin’ for? We got to … ’
‘Shut up!’ said the elder shortly. And to the girl, standing mute and still and very wary in the beam of the torch: ‘Who the hell are you?’
She had a vague view of them both now, at least their bulk and shape, even glimpses of features in the diffused light. The older man was stocky and square and shaggy, in what seemed to be overalls and a donkey jacket, middle-aged and composed, even respectable-looking, like an honest transport driver working late, a good appearance for a professional burglar. The other one was young, large, unshaven and lumpish, with a general bearing between a cringe and a swagger. Hard to account for why so competent a pro should tolerate so perilous and probably unreliable an aide. Perhaps they were father and son, and there wasn’t much choice, or perhaps the lout had his own peculiar skills, like breaking open doors, or battering people to death if they got in the way. Anyhow, there they were, and she was stuck with them.
‘Well, I’m not the missus, here,’ she said, venturing close to sounding tart, ‘that’s for sure. Nor the parlour maid, neither.’
‘No, you for sure ain’t,’ allowed the interrogator. ‘So what are you doing here?’
‘Same as you, if I’d had the chance,’ she said resignedly. ‘If you hadn’t come butting in I’d have been off a long time ago. You’re one of a kind yourself, it seems, you should know another when you see one. What else you think I’d be doing here?’
‘You reckon?’ He was not impressed, but he was willing to think about it. ‘You got a name?’
‘Not one you’d want to know, no more than I want to know yours. What’s the use of names, anyway, wouldn’t mean nothing to you. I told you what you asked me.’
‘What you wasting time for?’ demanded the younger man feverishly, and laid a hand on the stock of the gun, but his companion held on to it and elbowed him off. ‘Get rid of her and let’s get out of here. What else can we do with her now? She’s nothing but trouble, whoever she is.’
‘Shut up!’ repeated his elder, and kept his eyes unwaveringly upon the girl. ‘Two of a kind, are we?’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘How’d you get in here, then? Go on, show me!’
‘Through a back window, round by the kitchen. Go on, have a look for yourself. I left it open, ready to get out again quick. Bent me nail-file, levering up the latch. Go on, see for yourself if you don’t believe me. I left my duffle bag under the bushes, outside there. Go on, send him to have a look! I’m not telling you lies. Why should I? I got nothing against you. I know nothing, I seen nothing, and sure as hell I’m saying nothing.’
The elder man hesitated for a long minute, and then abruptly jerked head and gun in the direction of the stairs. ‘Come on down, and go softly on the way, I’ll be right behind. I dunno yet. Go on round the back, Stan, and see. How big is this window, then? I never spotted none we could use.’
‘I got through it, didn’t I? Show you, if you like.’ She was feeling her way down stair by stair ahead of him, only too conscious of the shotgun close behind, and devoutly grateful that it was not in the younger man’s hands. ‘He’s too big to get through, though. Pays to be a little person, on these capers.’
‘You done many?’ He was sceptical but open-minded.
‘None round here before. Never strike twice in the same place. Like lightning!’ she said, testing the water a little deeper.
‘Come from round here?’
‘Not me! I came in from Brum, tonight. Came up here by the bus, and I aim to go back by the bus. He comes back down the valley about half past nine.’
The young man Stan, however suspicious and uneasy, had done as his chief instructed, and made off ahead across the hall, out through the window they had forced and round to the rear of the house. She felt somewhat reassured in his absence, however brief it might be. This one at least was a professional, and elderly, and professionals who have survived to reach middle age have normally done so by avoiding unnecessary complications like murder.
‘How long were you in here ahead of us?’ he asked suddenly. They had reached the foot of the stairs, and could hear Stan’s steps faintly crisping the gravel outside.
‘About a couple of minutes. Frightened me to death when I heard you driving in. I thought the folks were coming home too soon.’
‘Get what you come for?’
‘Bits and pieces,’ she said, after a momentary hesitation. Whatever she said would be a gamble.
‘Down the neck of your jumper?’ And when she was silent: ‘What’s your preference, then?’
‘You got what you come for,’ she said, reluctant and aggrieved. ‘You wouldn’t grudge me a ring or two, would you? I don’t trespass on your patch, you might as well leave me mine. What you got to lose? We’re both bound to keep our mouths shut, we’re in the same boat. I never been inside, and don’t intend to go, but you could shop me just as easy as I could you.’
Stan was coming back, sliding in through the open window to dump her duffle bag in front of his leader. ‘It was there, sure enough, slung under the bushes. The window, an’ all. That’s how she got in. So what? You can’t trust women.’
‘Why not?’ she said indignantly. ‘We are in the same boat. I can’t grass on you or anybody without putting my own head on the chopping-block. I broke in, as well as you.’
‘It takes some thinking about,’ said the elder, ‘except we don’t have time. Sooner we’re out of here, the better.’
‘Then that’s it,’ she agreed firmly. ‘So let’s get going. And you can give me a lift out to the main road, where the bus stops. Wherever you’re heading, you’ve got to go that far to get started.’
‘I say make sure,’ insisted Stan. ‘If her mouth was shut for good we’d know where we were.’
‘Yes, up the creek withou
t a paddle,’ said his leader with decision. ‘What, with a body to get rid of? I’m driving nowhere with that in the van. Leave it here? It wouldn’t be silence you’d be making sure of. If you’re ambitious to be a lifer, I’m not. Come on, let’s get the van away while we’re safe. Pick up your bag, kid, and hop in the cab. Might as well drop you off. Sooner you was in Brum than hanging around these parts.’
In the cab of the van she was glad to see that Stan did not mind taking the wheel. That was a relief. He couldn’t very well commit murder while he was driving, and she had the elder man in between.
The first few house lights of the village came into view. At the crossroads she would get down and walk away, still in one piece, still with the soft roll of leather and its contents snugly tucked away inside her sweater.
‘Where will you be slipping a catch next?’ the man beside her asked, as civilly and normally as if they had just picked up a young hitch-hiker out of the kindness of their hearts, and felt it only courteous to take an interest in her prospects.
‘A hundred miles away, for preference,’ said the girl. ‘I’m going to enjoy my Christmas first. Never work at Christmas. This’ll do, drop me off here.’
It was under the light, just opposite the Sitting Duck. She dropped her bag out first, and jumped down after it, lifted a hand in ambiguous acknowledgement and stood a moment to watch which way the van turned into the main valley road. Uphill, towards the border and the watershed. That made sense, small chance of being intercepted on that road on most winter nights.
The van, hitherto just a shape in the dark, took on form as it drew away along the road. The rear number plate was muddy, but perfectly legible.
The girl watched it for only a few seconds. Then she crossed the road and went into the Sitting Duck.
The bus which would presently set off on its last trip of the evening, down the valley and back to Comerbourne, was parked at this hour just aside from the minute open space which was the centre of the village of Abbot’s Bale, leaving the green free for an assembled crowd surprisingly large for so apparently modest a community. At this hour of the evening most of the shepherds and hands from all the surrounding farms would in any case have been congregated here in the Gun Dog, but on this evening they had brought wives and families with them, for the church choir was carol-singing for charity on the green, and there was warmth, welcome and the harvest of a dozen farm kitchens to be found in the church hall, on sale at nominal prices for the same good cause that was stretching the lungs of all the local choirboys, and filling the night air with a silver mist of frosty breath. The driver of the bus was sitting in a corner settle in the bar over a pie, along with Sergeant Moon, who was the law in Middlehope, rather than merely representing it, and without whom no function could be a complete success. The driver, a conscientious man, was making his single pint last as long as possible. Or if, for once, he had exceeded it, no one was counting. Sergeant Moon was on his second when the landlord called him to the telephone.
He came back in a few moments to haul the driver out with him into the night, and shortly thereafter the driver was seen to climb into his bus and move it several yards lower down the valley road, clear of the full-throated assembly presently delivering ‘The Farewell of the Shepherds’ to the listening night, and there to stow it face-forward up the considerable slope of the hedge-bank and abandon it, tail looming over the empty road. At the same time Sergeant Moon was seen to emerge from the yard of the Gun Dog with a red and white traffic cone in either hand, and place them judiciously in the fairway, a few yards below the point where the bus’s rear loomed out of the hedge. A third such cone, brought out to join the first pair, completed a sufficient barrier on this narrow road.
The next thing that happened was that a word in the ear of the Reverend Stephen and his choirmaster unaccountably shifted the singers to a position in the middle of the road, instead of neatly grouped on the triangle of green, and effectively blocked the way to all traffic. Their horn lantern, reared on a long pole, stood out like a battle standard in the midst.
They were in the middle of ‘Good King Wenceslas’, with the leading bass cast as the king and the star treble as the page, when the sound of a motor climbing the slope was heard, and Sergeant Moon, hands benevolently clasped behind his back, and legs braced apart, took his stand in the middle of the road, and turned about at the last moment to confront the battered van with a large hand and a benign smile, as it baulked, hooted and stopped. His pace as he approached it and leaned to the window was leisured, and his smile amiable.
‘A happy Christmas to you, too, sir, I’m sure! Sorry to hold you up, but you see how it is. This is for the Salvation Army. They’ll be finished pretty soon now, I’m sure you won’t mind waiting.’
‘Well, we need to get on, officer,’ said the elderly man in the passenger seat. ‘Got a long way to go yet. You sure they won’t be long? You couldn’t clear a way through for us?’
The tension within the cab, which had smelled strongly of panic as soon as the window was rolled down, seemed to ease very slightly at the seasonal greeting. The barrier seemed to have nothing to do with anything more menacing than some village choir collecting for charity. Sergeant Moon radiated placid reassurance.
‘They can’t keep the kids out too late. They’ll soon wind it up now. The bus has to leave on time, some of ’em will be travelling down the valley a piece. Soon be on your way now.’
The Sergeant had already located the shotgun, laid along the seat behind the driver and his passenger, and covered from sight with a rug, but the shape of the stock showed through. It would not be simple to produce and level it quickly from that position. All the same, the driver was getting distinctly more jumpy with every second, drumming his fingers on the wheel and twitching his shoulders ominously. The older one was tough enough to sit it out, but he was getting worried about his mate’s liability to blow up at any moment. The Sergeant was glad to observe the three or four solid villagers emerge from the yard of the inn and amble innocently into position a few yards down the road. If anyone abandoned ship and ran, it would be in that direction, since there must be some fifty or more people deployed in the road ahead.
‘God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay …’
sang the choir imperturbably, embattled round their lantern banner.
The bus driver had climbed into his cab, and was watching with vague, detached interest. The man at the wheel of the van stared ahead, and had begun to sweat and blink, and curse wordlessly, his lips contorting. The older man kicked at him sidewise, and precipitated what he was trying to avoid.
It all happened in a second. The young man loosed the wheel, uttered a howling oath, shoved his mate sideways and grabbed for the shotgun. At the same instant Sergeant Moon waved a hand, and the service bus, brakes released, rolled ponderously but rapidly down the slope of grass, and careered backwards directly towards the front of the van.
A shriller yell followed the first, cutting through the carol with a note of utter hysteria. The shotgun, hurled aside as suddenly as it had been seized, and still somewhat tangled in the rug, went off with a tremendous bang, fortunately spattering nothing more vulnerable than the roof of the van, as Stan fought his gears and tried to back off in a hurry, and failing, stalled his engine, flung open his door and hurtled out and down the road, to be engulfed in the arms of a six-foot shepherd from one of the hill farms, ably supported by the cellarman from the Gun Dog.
‘God rest you merry’ was never finished. The choir broke ranks with a view halloo, and piled into the affray with enthusiasm, in case the van should yet serve to extricate its remaining occupant, by some feat of trick driving. But the professional knew when he was beaten, and had sense enough not to aggravate matters when they were past mending. The bus had braked to a halt at least a foot short of his right front wing, but still he sat motionless in his place, staring bitterly before him into the unexpected revelry, and cursing with monotonous, resig
ned fluency under his breath.
Sergeant Moon reached in unresisted, and appropriated the shotgun. Large, interested locals leaned on either door, grinning. The Sergeant moved round to the back of the van, and opened the rear doors.
‘Well, well!’ he said, gratified. ‘Aladdin’s cave! Won’t the Harrisons be pleased when Father Christmas comes!’
The girl in black silk evening trousers and bat-winged, sequinned top sat, cross-legged, in front of the fire she had kindled in the living room before her uncle and aunt had returned from their dinner party, and recounted the events of the evening for them with relish as she roasted chestnuts. It was no bad start to a Christmas vacation to be able to take her elders’ breath away, first with shock and dismay, then with relief and admiration.
‘So you see, it’s all right, you’ll get everything back safely. I did rescue your jewellery, I was determined they shouldn’t have that, but all the rest will be back soon. Sergeant Moon has been on the phone already. I knew he’d manage everything, somehow, and I did warn him they had a gun. But isn’t it lucky for you that I decided to come down a day early, after all? I did ring you, but you were out already. And anyhow, I knew how I could get in. Now who was it said I’d never make it as an actress?’
‘But, for God’s sake, girl,’ protested her uncle, not yet recovered from multiple shock, ‘you might have got yourself killed.’
‘Well, that’s what I was trying to avoid! I was there, and they found me, I didn’t have much choice. When you’re cornered, no use coming apart at the seams. You have to use what you’ve got – same as Sergeant Moon had to do. And I had broken in, and I suppose I did look every inch the part. Anyhow, they believed it. Finally!’ she added, somewhat more sombrely. ‘I admit there were moments …’
‘But you’re taking it all so coolly,’ her aunt wondered faintly. ‘Weren’t you even afraid?’
‘Terrified!’ said the girl complacently, and fielded a chestnut which had shot out upon the rug. ‘But I tell you what – as soon as my folks get back from Canada I’m going to put it to them they should let me switch to drama school. I always said that was my natural home.’
Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season Page 3