The Victory Snapshot (A Chris Tyroll Mystery Book 1)

by Barrie Roberts

  ‘We’ve got a lot of damn silly laws,’ I said, ‘but we haven’t got one that stupid.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to do it with clients?’ she said.

  ‘You’re not a client,’ I said. ‘Have I asked you for money?’

  ‘Well, if I’m just a friend, you can do me a favour and fetch the ciggies from the verandah.’

  I slipped out of bed and stepped out on to the verandah. The moon had risen and the lake was a sheet of silver under the black silhouette of the mountain opposite. I was turning back from the table with the cigarettes in my hand when something caught the edge of my vision.

  Away across the moonlit lake the lights of vehicles were following the road by which we came. I turned back and watched them, puzzled and growing worried.

  The flashing of the headlights through the lakeside bushes confused me, but once they turned on to the dam I could see there were two cars, still travelling in convoy.

  ‘Chris,’ Sheila called.

  ‘Get dressed, quickly!’ I said. ‘I think we’ve got trouble.’

  I dived back into the bedroom and dragged on a sweater and jeans while Sheila did the same.

  ‘What’s the panic?’ she said.

  ‘Stuff the holdalls!’ I said. ‘I think we’ve got visitors.’

  I doused the lamp and slid back on to the verandah. I was right — the cars were turning off the dam in our direction and they weren’t calling on a farmer at this time of night.

  Back in the bedroom I grabbed Sheila by the arm. ‘Out the back!’ I said. ‘I’ll be right with you.’

  We grabbed our overnight bags and Sheila dived out of the back door while I locked the front door and followed her, locking the rear door as I left.

  Behind the bungalow was a small garden, fenced off from a wood that climbed across the upper slopes of the hill. By the time the two vehicles drew up in the lane we were into the fringe of the wood, sprawling in the bracken.

  They parked just downhill of the bungalow and four men got out. Two of them were wearing some kind of dark uniform, but even at a distance and in the moonlight I didn’t think they were police. The front car was a dark saloon and its occupants were both civilians. One was tall and wore a sports jacket and the other was slight with a black leather jacket.

  They held some kind of conference in front of the second car, turning frequently to gesture at the bungalow. They must have been muttering for, despite the still night, not a sound of speech reached us. Then the four of them strolled slowly towards the house.

  They stopped again, right in front of the house, and I waited for them to walk up and knock on the door with that middle-of-the-night knock that these people specialise in. I was disappointed.

  Instead of knocking, the tall civilian pointed to each of the front windows and stepped back. His uniformed companions each swung their right arm and there was a loud sound of glass shattering in both windows. Seconds later Jayne’s bungalow disappeared in a huge ball of orange flame that scorched our faces where we lay.

  15

  They knew! The bastards knew, or they thought they knew, that we were asleep in that bungalow, and they torched it as easy as swatting a fly. Sheila huddled in my arms and shook with shock and I held her closely, not just to comfort her but because I was shaking just as badly. It was like watching yourself being murdered.

  Whatever the bombers had used was very efficient. After that first huge double explosion of flame the bungalow had caved in on itself and burned fiercely. Already the fire was dying down and it was possible to see that there was precious little left of Jayne’s inheritance.

  I peered past the flames, looking for the vehicles, but they had already disappeared and I spotted their lights flickering on the far side of the lake.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ I said.

  ‘What are they going to do?’ Sheila whispered.

  ‘Go home and celebrate, I imagine,’ I said. ‘They think they’ve just cremated us both.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Camp out till daylight, then take the car.’

  ‘Can’t we go now?’

  ‘I don’t fancy going the way they’ve gone and I don’t think we can find our way through these lanes in the dark. We’d better leave it till the morning.’

  ‘Then where’ll we go?’

  ‘Good question,’ I said, and I hadn’t the least idea of an answer.

  Time was when the idea of a summer night in a ferny wood with a beautiful woman would have sent my pulse racing. Not any more. It was chilly and we were already cold with shock. God invented bracken for badgers to sleep on, not people. We just lay, cold, frightened and uncomfortable and mostly un-sleeping until the sky beyond the trees turned grey. Much of the time I was thinking about Sheila’s last question.

  As twilight comes early between the hills, so dawn comes late. Chilled and damp by the time the birds began to sing, we still had to wait for the sun to rise over the mountains.

  ‘Morning,’ I said, when I was sure that Sheila was awake. ‘You haven’t, by any chance, got any food in your wonder bag? The odd freeze-dried wombat or a fistful of witchetty grubs would go down very nicely just now.’

  She stretched herself and winced. ‘There’s some choc bars in my holdall,’ she said, and began looking for them. ‘I could do with a brew-up though.’

  ‘No such luck,’ I said, ‘but there’s a flask of whisky in the front pocket of my bag.’

  We breakfasted, Sheila gagging after a swallow from the flask.

  ‘You really know how to give a girl a good time, Chris. A romantic night under the stars and a first-class malt for breakfast. What’s next?’

  ‘Trying to find somewhere to hole up without getting killed, I suppose.’

  I slipped the flask into my pocket and we picked up the bags and began to make our way down to the lane. The sun was up and the air was warming. Mist was rising off the lake.

  I hobbled across Jayne’s garden. The uncomfortable night had not done my grazed leg any good. We came along the side of the wreckage, now smoking silently, and stepped on to the road. I could see our car, still where we had left it, seemingly unharmed. Its bright colour and mechanical ordinariness were welcome signs of sanity in a world that had gone crazy.

  Then two bullets hummed past us and a silenced pistol plopped twice. I dropped my bag, spun round and cannoned into Sheila. As we stumbled together another bullet sang past.

  ‘Get back!’ I snapped. ‘There’s one of them in our car!’

  Sheila sprinted and I hobbled as fast as I could back across the garden and into the trees. Breathlessly we fell back into our old lair.

  We could see both sides of the bungalow and no one seemed to be following us, but, as we recovered our breath, we heard the crackle of a shortwave radio.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ I told Sheila. ‘He’s calling reinforcements.’

  ‘Where to?’ she asked.

  I tried to recall the map and journeys made on previous visits to Jayne’s bungalow.

  ‘If we go on up the slope,’ I said, ‘we can drop down the other side of the hill. There’s a road there.’

  ‘Can’t we head along to this farm you talked about?’

  I shook my head. ‘They’ll come after us anywhere and I don’t want to lead them to anyone else. God knows what they’d do to the farm after what they did last night.’

  We stuffed our pockets with what we could from the holdalls and set out up through the wood. It was hard going. Once past the edge of the trees the undergrowth was thick and some of it was thorny. When, eventually, we reached the far edge, we paused to gasp, sweat and listen for any sound of pursuit. We couldn’t hear anything.

  ‘He’s not following,’ said Sheila, hopefully.

  ‘He doesn’t have to. He can sit and wait for his back-up. But he knows we haven’t gone down on to the dam road so we’re either in the woods or making for the next valley. They’ll try and cut us off.’

  After anot
her quick slug from the flask we began the next stage, a scramble across steep grassy slopes, patched with tumbles of boulders. I had stopped noticing whether my left leg still hurt. All the rest of me did now.

  The sun was now well up and we were drenched in sweat by the time we reached the summit. Making our way to the far side we collapsed against a large boulder and scanned the landscape below. There was no tree cover on this side of the hill and we could see all the way down to a narrow road running along the valley bottom.

  The sun flashed on something beside the road and my eyes picked out two vehicles parked beside the stream. We were too late. One of the vehicles was a dark-green transit van and even as we watched it began to disgorge a group of men in dark uniforms.

  There was nothing to say. We dropped out of sight behind the rocks and lay, each of us silently cursing. At last Sheila lit a cigarette and passed me one.

  She rolled over and peered down between the boulders.

  ‘They’ve spread out,’ she reported. ‘They’re moving up in a line across.’

  ‘Then we’re sunk,’ I said. ‘We’re surrounded.’

  ‘There’s only one bloke behind us,’ she said.

  ‘How do we know? There was only one this morning, but he’s the bloke who called up the big battalions. What’s the betting he’s got reinforcements by now?’

  We smoked in silence. At last she threw away her cigarette end and said, ‘Well, we can’t go down that way. It’s all open and they’d see us a mile off. We’ll just have to go back.’

  ‘Where we know there’s at least one bloke with a gun and maybe half a dozen more? What’s the point?’

  ‘The point,’ she said, ‘is that there are trees behind us. If we stay here they just herd us in like sheep. If we go back we’ve got a bit of cover, right down to the road by the dam. If we can give them the slip in the woods they’ll all be up here when we hit the road,’ and she looked at me expectantly.

  I was tired and sore and depressed. It was only because I was also frightened of being killed that I didn’t just lie there till they came for us.

  ‘OK,’ I said, reluctantly. ‘Let’s give it a try.’

  So we scrambled back down towards the tree-line, every moment expecting the uniforms to emerge from the woods and trap us in the open, but we made the trees unmolested. There we halted to listen.

  They cheat in the movies. When people slink about in jungles and forests there’s no soundtrack so it’s all creepy and silent. In real life it’s extremely difficult to move silently in thick woodland. The noise of movement was going to be our worst enemy, but there was an up side. If they could hear our movements, we could hear theirs. We listened hard and heard nothing, so we began a stealthy attempt to slip through those wretched tangled thickets in silence.

  We had made about a hundred yards when I pulled Sheila down and dropped beside her.

  ‘Listen!’ I hissed. ‘There’s a swishing noise.’

  We strained our ears again. I was right. From at least two places, right and left ahead of us, came a rhythmic swishing noise.

  ‘Nice of them,’ whispered Sheila. ‘They’re beating the bush for us. Blowing a bugle would have been better, but at least we know where they are.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘They’re too bloody close together. We’ll never get between them without them hearing.’ An idea occurred to me. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if we stay here until they’re closer, then I’ll run at the left-hand one, very noisily. The right-hand one will join in if I make enough fuss.’

  ‘And what do I do?’ she hissed.

  ‘As soon as I’ve drawn them off, you slip away through the gap to the right and keep going to the road.’

  ‘No way,’ she said. ‘You’ll get shot the minute they hear you and I’ll end up raped and shot in a Welsh jungle. No thank you, counsellor.’

  ‘Got any better ideas?’

  ‘Didn’t we jump a stream on the way up?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit ahead of us. They must still be the other side. What are you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s a barrier and it’ll make the going easier.’

  She got up cautiously and I followed her as she began moving forward again. In another twenty yards we came to the stream, a narrow trickle between shallow banks. Sheila was right, by walking in the water we could make better speed with no more noise, but as we moved away to the right I wondered how many men were between us and the road.

  Following the stream downhill we paused every few minutes to listen. The swishing was growing nearer and there were more than two beaters, but the banks of the stream were growing higher and might provide more cover.

  The fifth or sixth time we stopped to listen the sound of beating was very close and we could hear the occasional snap of a twig under the beater’s foot.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘They’re almost on top of us and there’s still nowhere to hide. We’d better climb up on the bank and try my idea.’

  ‘No way,’ she said again and, as she did so, a hand fell on my shoulder.

  16

  I didn’t cry out, but only because my heart was blocking my throat as I spun round.

  Ankle-deep in the stream stood a boy of about fourteen, with grubby suntanned features under ill-kempt brown hair. He was dressed in well-worn brown denims and gumboots. At first I didn’t recognise him.

  ‘Mr Tyroll,’ he said, speaking fast and low. ‘They’re almost here. Come with me now,’ and he started away down the stream as soon as he had finished speaking, pulling me after him by the arm.

  He led us confidently and silently, always stepping where there was sand rather than gravel under water and never making a splash as he walked. He led us round a sharp bend in the stream and as we turned the corner we heard the noise of rushing water.

  The boy turned back to us. ‘There’s a waterfall,’ he said, pointing ahead. ‘There’s a pool underneath it. Drop into the pool and there’s a big slab where the water splashes. If you climb out on that you’ll see a hole at the back of the waterfall. They’ll never see you if you’re in there.’

  ‘What’ll you do?’ I said. ‘They’re killers.’

  ‘I’ll be OK,’ he said, nonchalantly. ‘Nobody’ll see me in the woods. Stay in the hole and I’ll come for you when they’ve gone,’ and he sprang up the bank and vanished into the undergrowth.

  There was no time to lose. At the brink of the fall we could see that it dropped about fifteen feet. Clasping hands we dropped into the pool.

  The water was chest-deep, enough to cushion our fall, but I slid on the sloping bottom of the pool and went right under. When I surfaced I found Sheila standing beside me, dragging me to my feet with one hand while the other held her indispensable shoulder bag clear of the water.

  ‘If you’ve had your swim,’ she said, ‘there’s the hidey-hole,’ and she pointed to a large, flat slab that formed a splashboard at the base of the waterfall.

  Quickly we scrambled on to it. Close to the fall we could see a shadow behind it and, when we plunged through the watery screen, we found a deep vertical slit in the rock. Slipping inside we found that it was just big enough for two people to perch on outcrops in its sides.

  ‘Could have been made for two,’ observed Sheila.

  ‘Maybe it was,’ I said, pointing to old cigarette butts on the moist floor.

  ‘Good-oh,’ she said. ‘I’m glad smoking’s permitted. I could just do with a smoke.’

  She delved into her repository and produced cigarettes and a lighter, which reminded me of the flask in my pocket. Nicotine and alcohol brought our pulses back to normal and restored our flagging energy. I looked at my companion. She had been firebombed, shot at, chased up and down a mountain and had jumped down a waterfall and there she sat, dripping water, flushed and tousled, but every inch as desirable as when she first walked into my office.

  She intercepted my gaze. ‘No time for that,’ she said.

  ‘We’ve nothing else to do.’ I
grinned. ‘Not till Martin gets back, anyway.’

  She pulled me across to her and kissed me, long and hard. ‘That’ll have to do for now,’ she said as we disengaged. ‘Now come clean. Who’s the kid and how does he know you?’ ‘He’s the son of an old client of mine, but I’d no idea he was hereabouts.’

  ‘Thank your stars he was,’ she said. ‘We weren’t going to get out of that mess in a hurry.’

  Above the rush of falling water I heard a voice calling, ‘Mr Tyroll, Mr Tyroll.’ Sheila grabbed her bag and we plunged back through the fall.

  Our guide was outside, squatting at the side of the slab, his impish brown features lit with a wide grin.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ he reported. ‘They’re way up the slope now. How d’you like the little hidey-hole?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘but where have you been?’

  ‘I just went up a tree, sir. They was looking in the bushes and all about them all the time. They never thought to look up.’

  He looked around him. ‘We’d better be going, sir. They’ll soon find out they’ve missed you.’

  ‘Lead on,’ I said, ‘but where are we going?’

  ‘Me daddy said to bring you to him,’ he said and jumped down to the side of the stream.

  He set off down water and we followed. From the pool below the little fall the stream ran on between high banks. Soon we were in a deep, narrow cleft, completely overhung by trees. When our path swung left I began to realise where we were. I recalled the little bridge on the mountain road and a stream that flowed into the reservoir above the dam.

  Sure enough, in a moment Martin left the stream’s course and clambered agilely up the side of the cleft to our right, waiting at the top for us to follow.

  He struck off through the trees and soon we were at the fence dividing the wood from open meadows. We trotted after him down the narrow margin between the trees and the fence. At the bottom of the field the fence met a dry-stone wall that flanked the road. Here there was a gate in the wall and leaning on the gate was a figure in amorphous tweeds with a shapeless tweed hat. As we clambered through the fence and emerged into the field the figure raised its hat and called out.