By Death Possessed

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Two minutes,’ I promised. ‘Once I’ve found what I want.’

  I said that because the gallery was confusing. What I’d expected was a large room with paintings hung on the walls, but that would have been too conventional for Renfrew Coombe. What he had was alcoves and corners and bits tucked away. He also had mirrors. For such a physically unattractive man, he had a strange addiction to mirrors, though perhaps he considered himself an example of homo perfectus. Whatever the reason, mirrors he had, and the impression was that he owned twice as many paintings as in fact he did.

  ‘Cor strike!’ said Aleric, wandering around.

  It was no use asking for his help, because it was I who knew what the Frederick Ashe paintings looked like. Fervently, I hoped Coombe had them hung in one batch. I walked through quickly, my eyes darting around. There was a sense of urgency.

  The collection appeared to be all Impressionist and later. Some I wouldn’t have given hanging space to. The mirrors confused me. Walking round what I took to be a corner, I banged straight into one.

  Aleric said: ‘Did they get paid for this? I could do better myself.’

  ‘They usually starved,’ I told him absently. ‘The people who make the money are the investors. I’m looking for ... ah, there they are!’

  They were, as I’d hoped, all in one line, six of them with the familiar overlapped A and F, and conveniently at my eye level. There were some more paintings farther along, and also in an alcove behind my shoulder, but I hadn’t time for browsing. Behind me was a wall of mirrors, in which the six were reflected reversed, and there were more mirrors each side of them.

  ‘Come and give me a hand,’ I said. ‘I’ll want you to hold the flashgun. Point it at each painting from a spot just above my left shoulder. Get it?’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  I plugged in the lead, switched on the flashgun, and told him to watch for the little red light after each flash, and tell me when it came on. ‘That’s when it’s charged.’

  I got a near-full frame at a metre, and they were all the same size: twenty by sixteen. It meant I’d have to use fl6 and guess distance, as there was no rangefinder or focusing screen on the little Ricoh. But I’m used to guessing distance. I steadied the picture in the viewfinder and the flash operated.

  ‘Little red light,’ he said. I took the next.

  The charging time was around ten seconds. We had all six on film in three minutes, so I did them again for luck. Or rather, I started to do them again, but at the second one Aleric suddenly said, ‘Psst!’ just as I was taking the shot.

  My nerves were so stretched that I jerked the camera as the flash operated. ‘What the hell!’

  ‘I thought I heard something. Just a sec.’ He ran softly back to the door.

  Ten seconds later he was back. ‘He’s stirring. Making groaning noises.’

  ‘I’ll finish this.’

  ‘Then hurry it, Pop, for Chrissake.’

  I completed the second run, dismantled the flash, and slid it all into my anorak pocket. ‘Let’s go.’

  We stood at the door and extinguished the lights, then opened it and peered out. The guard was grumbling to himself and trying to lift his head. We slipped out and stood beside him as Aleric quietly closed the door, giving the key its three turns, then buried it in the sand again.

  We ran, our feet silent because they barely had time to brush the floor. Aleric’s memory was immaculate. We burst into the sun room, and stopped. This guard was groaning, too, but the light was to dim for us to see him.

  ‘Quick!’ said Aleric.

  ‘You’re coming—’

  ‘No, Pa. No. The guards’ll keep quiet, even if they guess they were doped, and nobody’ll spot the alarm wire’s cut. Unless somebody breaks in, I’m in the clear.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Y’ know I’ve gotta stay with Ma, now don’tcher! Get going, Dad, please.’

  He had the plate-glass door open. Behind him, a shadow stirred in the dimness. A voice said: ‘You’re going nowhere.’

  The green light was ghastly, but as he stepped forward I could see enough to recognize Paul Mace. There was also sufficient light to catch a glint of green from something he held in his hand. Surely, I thought in panic, that couldn’t be a pistol!

  Aleric took a step towards him. Somewhere beyond Mace, from the direction of the great hall, I heard shouts.

  ‘Go, Dad, go!’ Aleric shouted.

  I hesitated. The pistol moved, and one of the monkeys jumped down on to Mace’s shoulders. Aleric seemed to skip, his foot shot out and upwards, and Mace cried out. The pistol cracked sharply, but more weakly than I would have expected, and a pane of glass shattered in the roof, shards tinkling down.

  ‘Get going!’ howled Aleric as the door burst open behind Mace and white light thrust in blindingly. He seized the doubled Mace and hurled him at the group pushing their way in. ‘I’ll hold ’em!’

  I turned and ran, across the terrace and the croquet lawn, my torch on because of the hoops, and plunged over the end, rolling down the slope and into the trees.

  I stood, caught a glimpse of the moon just before I entered the trees, and placed it in my mind. Upwards, I had to move upwards, but I would find the slope only if I could hold a line. There was now no chance of using the torch. I prodded it into my pocket and stumbled forward, hands outstretched and with every nerve standing out, reaching for clues as to my surroundings.

  There were shouts behind me. I heard a booming voice call: ‘Spread out. Don’t let him get away.’ Distantly, somebody was screaming. I had to assume it was Evelyn.

  They could use torches. I saw them flickering through the trees behind and to the sides. Only the boles of the trees hid me from their sight, but my guardian angel, the moon, was hidden behind the massed young growth of the leaves above.

  From time to time I stopped, panting, my legs shaking. By moving my head sideways I could catch an occasional glimpse of the moon. It indicated that I could not simply run away from the torches. They were trying to head me off, and must have realized where I wanted to go. But I had to be true to the moon. A clear night—was it a clear night? I wondered—and I might survive. If it clouded over, I was done. They would be carrying not only torches but weapons.

  The flickering torches now arced widely to my right. My intention was to head left, but in that direction they were closer together. I forced myself to trust the moon, caught one more weak gleam from it, and staggered in the indicated direction. Surely, I prayed, I would feel the slope under my feet soon. But the torches were closer. They were even closing in on me from both sides.

  Branches lashed my face and I tasted blood on my lips. I tripped constantly, recovering from reaction, my reasoning now becoming confused. There were no more shouts. The torches seemed to be one blurred mass. For a moment I paused, my shoulders against the bole of what must have been an oak, my head back, gulping in great lungfuls of air. A man walked through a brake of shrubs thirty feet from me. I backed round the tree, my heart leaping about wildly.

  In the split-second I’d seen him, his torch searching, I had noticed we were on opposite sides of a clearing. He entered it, and stood, his head turning, cocked, listening. Somebody shouted: ‘Over here.’ He moved to his left, which was towards me. I flattened myself against the tree. He walked past me, his torch and his attention focused ahead. Then he broke into a trot and crashed his way towards the shout.

  I walked out into the clearing, because there was a chance that here the trees didn’t meet overhead. It was a correct guess. I got a good look at the moon just before the clouds rolled in front of it, and forced myself to stand and calculate. Keep it over my right shoulder, I told myself, and go straight ahead. The difficulty was that most of the torchlight was in that direction. But it was, I realized, slightly at a higher level.

  They had reached the slope.

  Resolutely, I marched towards the lighter area. Then I had an idea. I drew out my torch, switched it on, and left it
on. I yelled: ‘Over on the right!’

  And then I ran. I had become one of the hunters. They thinned. What had seemed a solid mass of torches, closer to was scattered. I came to within a hundred yards of the nearest, then I put off my torch, and found I could steer my way between the individual lights. But it was slower going. I tripped more often, now more from exhaustion than obstructions. Yet I detected a rise, and in the direction I wanted to go. As the searchers progressed farther, they had of necessity to spread out. I slipped and scrambled between two of them, and the trees were thinning ahead of me, the slope was becoming more pronounced, and abruptly, before I could calculate the danger, I was standing on the steepening grass slope.

  But now I was in the open, and it needed only the swept beam of a torch to locate me. On that slope, I would be an open target. Yet the moon, my saviour, had now hidden itself away behind a heavy bank of cloud, otherwise I would have been as visible as a fly crawling up a wall.

  I moved stealthily, my eyes turning over each shoulder in turn to see whether torches were coming my way. Occasionally light shone through the upper bank of trees, but nobody shone in my direction. Perhaps they thought they’d cut me off. I moved stealthily because I could barely move at all. I ached all over and my chest seemed to be congested. All I knew was that I was progressing slowly upwards, my arms and hands doing most of the work now. Eventually I would come out on the upper road, hopefully in sight of the car.

  But hopefully would not do, I realized. If I could not see my car, and didn’t dare to use the torch, I would not know in which direction to walk. In one of the clefts the sheep had been using, I sat and thought about it. Far below me in the valley there was now no visible activity. The possibility was that I’d been spotted, and they were advancing silently, no longer needing their torches. Definitely, I would need to head directly to the Fiesta. I stood, and stared upwards. The moon, behind cloud that was now breaking up, supplied a slightly lighter backdrop for the brow of the hill. It seemed smooth, apart from one indefinite shape, far over to one side. I had to risk it, and struck out on a diagonal line, rising and to my right.

  Almost at once I was in gorse again. At least it meant I was progressing. But the drag on my ankles, which had been only a nuisance on my way down, now became close to disabling. I moved slower and slower. The shape on the horizon grew in size and took on form. It was the protruding nose of the car. I was now below it, with only two hundred yards to go. Straight up. My brain, robbed of oxygen, was swimming. I wanted to lie down. With my eyes firmly on the objective, the Fiesta. I felt it was growing larger than my progress justified. I stopped, waiting for my eyes to clear.

  I discovered that although I was now still, the nose and bonnet were still growing larger. It was moving towards the edge, towards me. Then the front wheels were over the edge, and the acceleration became definite. The nose tilted, and it was charging down the hillside towards me.

  There was nowhere I could go. I was directly in its path. For one moment I forced myself to my feet, and stood swaying, and watched it coming, rustling the undergrowth, bucking and bouncing. Then I threw myself face down in the gorse. Yet still I could not cover my face with my arms. It fascinated me, robbed me of all conscious thought. There was nothing but terror. The bouncing increased. The nose dug in. Its tail came up, and the whole car left the surface, plunged down again, nose in, pitched right over, and the terrible crashing sound preceded it as the hammered metal protested. It bounced on its roof. A door flew clear. It leapt again, and it was on me. I wrapped my arms round my head. I think I was screaming, but I could not have been heard.

  The bonnet pitched in only ten feet from me. The din flattened me. It arched over my back and as it landed behind me a wheel flew off, and the tailgate hung by one hinge.

  I twisted, and watched it down into the darkness of the trees, the noise decreasing as its bulk grew less and as it distanced itself from me, until eventually it was taken by the trees and cushioned by them into silence.

  There was no fire, because the ignition wasn’t switched on.

  I lay, panting and gasping, lay for a full five minutes before I could force myself to my feet again. It didn’t matter any more at what point I reached the road. All that I could think about was that I’d have quite a difficulty with my report to the hire firm. I couldn’t get my mind from that, but when I did I realized that, inside the car, there had been my set of prints of the eighty-one loft pictures.

  I crawled up to the road and began to plod along it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I reached the coast road about equidistant between Lynmouth and Porlock just as dawn was breaking. On the bank of tight moor grass at the verge I sat and tried to recover. There were decisions to be made and plans to be drafted, but my brain would not operate. There was a light emptiness to me. I saw clearly, but could not associate image with fact.

  When I’d recovered my breathing, I lit my pipe. Usually it helps. This time it made my head swim. Which way should I go? That was the first decision to be made. Porlock was nearer home, if there was a home to go to, but in Lynmouth or Lynton I’d be more likely to find a car-hire firm. But would my credit card now carry any financial weight? Unlikely. Worry about that later. Worry right now about the fact that Coombe’s men might come looking for me, and there was nowhere I could hide.

  On this open road, high above the Bristol Channel, there was very little cover. The naked moors spread in both directions, steeply downhill inland. I could only sit and wait, and pray that they were still searching for my body on the slope. They would assume I had reached the Fiesta, and stupidly engaged forward gear instead of reverse. Or would they? Perhaps not. The car hadn’t pushed itself over the edge. No, they would probably know I had not reached the car. In any event, they would need to locate what was left of me.

  Pleased, now, that my brain was working again, I tested out my other senses. Sight and hearing. Out there in the open, engine and tyre sounds give prior warning. I heard a vehicle coming from the Porlock direction, and prepared to scramble over the meagre bank behind me. But the multiple curves revealed it long before the driver could have seen me. It was a white van.

  I stood in the roadway, too weary to raise a thumb. He stopped. It was a newspaper delivery van. The driver got out.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked. ‘You look terrible.’

  ‘Car accident,’ I told him. ‘Can you get me into Lynton? I’m about done.’

  ‘Sure. Hope in. Hey, you look awful!’

  Hopping in was out of the question. He helped me up. It was seven o’clock. He asked no questions, but I thought he deserved answers.

  ‘The inland roads are tricky at night. I missed a turn.’

  ‘Nasty. You ought to see a doctor.’

  ‘It’s only,’ I lied, ‘superficial.’

  He took me into Lynmouth, where I sat in the cab as he dumped his parcels of papers. Emptily, I watched him. He drove me up to Lynton, told me where I might hire a car, and dropped me outside an early-opening café. It was just after eight. I thanked him.

  ‘I can’t tell you how much—’

  ‘Do the same for me some day,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Drive the next one more careful, like.’

  I used the men’s room while they prepared me a pot of tea and bacon and eggs and chips. Truly, I did look terrible, my face black and my hair tangled, bits of gorse stuck in it and all over me, my clothes torn and slimy with green, the left knee out of my jeans. I was bang in fashion. I tidied up as best I could, but it would be a fool who’d let me step inside a hire car.

  I ate voraciously, and downed two pots of tea. The pipe tasted better, and my head remained where it was. I was ready for the next step.

  The car-hire firm was dubious, but computers never lie, and this one confirmed that I had a balance sufficient to pay for a week’s hire plus insurance, in advance. Perhaps, this early in the morning, the computer was half asleep. I drove away in a blue Metro with a fault in its silencer.

  Thr
ee and a half hours later it was making a loud noise in my home town. I had decided on a sequence of procedure. First: park, walk round to my photo-lab, and observe it to check whether it was under surveillance. I saw nothing suspicious. Second: nip inside quickly and dial Margaret’s number. This I did. It rang and rang, but there was no reply. That meant two things: one, that I had nowhere to go, which in turn probably meant I’d have to sleep rough at the lab—dangerous because Coombe probably knew by then where it was located. And two, that I had comparison shots of Coombe’s six paintings, and nothing to compare them with, my set of eighty-one prints having been in the crashed Fiesta. So ... I would have to run off another set of the whole eighty-one, or at least go through them until I found six that would match.

  But before that, I wanted to try out a slim chance. Aleric had been very subtle in suggesting how I could enter the Coombe residence, so there was a possibility he’d been doubly subtle. Wanting to try this out, I deferred the photographic work, and was just pulling shut the outside door when I heard the phone ring.

  I dashed back inside and grabbed it up. It was Margaret.

  ‘Tony! Where have you been?’

  ‘You know damn well. Coombe’s place.’

  She didn’t ask if I’d had any luck. ‘Listen, I’ve got some news. Not good, I’m afraid.’

  Her voice was brisk and businesslike.

  ‘I’m getting used to that. Say on.’

  ‘I didn’t take them to Sotheby’s—’

  ‘Didn’t?’

  ‘I took them to a friend of mine, who’s got a gallery just off Bond Street.’

  ‘I thought we agreed—’

  ‘And he’s a bit of an expert on the Impressionists.’

  ‘I thought you were the expert.’

  A slight tang entered her voice. ‘There are others.’

  ‘You said you didn’t want a second opinion,’ I insisted, a little needled that I’d expended so much effort in obtaining evidence, and all it had needed, for Margaret, was a consultation with a friend. Also a little needled, to tell you the truth, that there was a friend she could run to.