‘What wasn’t?’ said Troy.
‘Switching the car. It’s too obvious.’
‘It was scratched, so it had to go.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
Troy was being affable, like offering me the best meal he could, just before the end. ‘Traded it in,’ he said smoothly.
I had a brief impression of streets crowding us. We were going through a town. There were lights beyond the windows.
‘Nothing funny,’ Troy said softly.
And just what, in the funny line, could I have done?
Then we were out of there and climbing. The box was dropping all the time into third, then into second when tight corners began to slow us.
‘Here?’ said the driver suddenly, and I felt my muscles bunch.
Troy peered ahead and behind. I could see now that the wipers were working. There wasn’t anything but darkness out there.
‘It’ll do.’
I did what I could, but the space was confined. They didn’t stop the car to give me more room, but did it on the move. Aniseed-breath mainly held me. Once or twice he cursed and added his fist when I managed to get in the odd blow; but that was at first. Then Troy justified my faith in him and got in a few short-arm jabs, so I was nearly unconscious when he started in with the gun.
He smashed my left hand with it, while his mate held it hard on the top edge of the front seat. It took him three hefty swings. Then at last, satisfied, they opened the nearside door and pitched me out.
We were doing around forty at the time, but fortunately we were close in, so that I hit grass. Wet grass. For a distance I slid along head first, then managed to scramble round for what I was sure to be going to hit, and went through the low, white fence with my feet. Then I went straight on, pitching and twisting down the slope beyond. Small gorse bushes slowed me. I stopped with my head beside a racing brook, with a rustling movement around me, and lay breathless under the sweet and gentle rain.
After a couple of minutes the car came past along the road in the opposite direction. I could just see the top, and the lights kicking into the rain. They did not stop to see if there was anything left of me to push around.
After a while I managed to force myself on to hands and knees. Steaming shapes moved around me in the darkness and one of them coughed gently. The sheep had come to see who was visiting.
I could not tell what had happened to my left hand, but it felt bad enough and looking at it wouldn’t have helped. I didn’t know the time. My watch is—was—luminous but while he was at it Troy had smashed that too.
I decided to try the slope. On the way down it had seemed steep enough. On the way up it was near vertical. With only one hand and arm to drag myself with, and the short grass slimy with rain, I had difficulty making any progress at all. The gorse bushes helped, those I hadn’t torn out on the way down. Every now and then I lay with a heel wedged against the stubble of bush, and rested. Then I had another go at it.
I reached the white fence. It occurred to me that somebody’s sheep were going to be wandering out of the hole I’d made, but you can’t have expected I’d stop and mend it, surely. As it was, it took me all my time to crawl through the hole.
Then I sat and waited on the grass verge. I got out a cigarette but couldn’t light it in the wind. What had been blustering at The Beeches was a half gale there.
In all directions I could see nothing but darkness. The sweat I’d worked up was now helping the wind on its way to my tender skin, and it soon became obvious that I couldn’t sit there and wait. I stood up. As it was dark I’d got no line of reference, so it was difficult to stand vertical. Then I started moving, downhill because I couldn’t have done otherwise.
I could barely see the road. The rain was steadily soaking through my suit and running down into my eyes, and very soon I found myself walking in a limping, crab-like way, in order to keep the wind from my face. There was almost complete darkness, just the tarmac surface faintly grey ahead of me, and here and there the low, curved parapet of a bridge, where I could hear water rushing beneath the road. No trees, at any rate none I saw. Where there were boundaries to the fields, they were stone walls. I don’t know what sort of stone, except that it was hard. I walked into it several times.
But there was no traffic.
There comes a time when movement seems apparently to have ceased. All that existed for me was that grey area in front of my feet, never becoming absorbed by my progress. I did not dare to stop; I would never have got going again. At one point I thought: God, a man could die out here. I could feel my body temperature gradually sliding away. They said you dozed, exposure cases, dozed away gently into eternal darkness. I walked in my sleep, numbed and confused, concentrating on the complex business of getting one foot to move in front of the other.
I became aware that a line of stonework on my left was becoming visible. Shadows moved sideways in the screen of rain, consolidated, and became light. Then I saw my own shadow go streaking ahead of me on the tarmac. I turned. Headlights were bearing down on me.
There is no recognised way of stopping a speeding vehicle at night. I did not dare stand aside, or he might have driven past. I faced him, raised my arms, and I think I shouted. The tyres screamed. It reared up in front of me. Somehow, blinded by the headlamps, I fumbled round to the cab door, but I couldn’t manage the step. It was some huge vehicle with a high cab. He got down in the rain.
‘An accident,’ I mumbled.
‘Christ, mate,’ he said.
He got me in there and slammed the doors. It was hot inside, oh Lord how wonderfully hot! I sat in sodden exhaustion and looked at the streaming window.
‘Here,’ he said. I looked at him. A fat chap with a moustache and the top off a thermos in his hand. It steamed. It was coffee. Sweet and strong.
‘Light me a fag?’ I asked.
He gave me one of his own. I drew it in, gasped it out. ‘Walked for miles,’ I told him.
‘Pretty quiet here.’ He paused. ‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘Went through the fence,’ I explained.
‘Why didn’t you phone?’
‘I didn’t see a box.’
‘There’s one a mile back. No lights in it, though.’ He thought about it. ‘Vandals, I suppose.’
I said a quiet prayer for vandals, wherever they might be.
‘All right now?’ he asked.
I said I was fine. The inside of the screen was steaming up when he got into gear and let out the clutch. I think I went to sleep.
He nudged life into me. My first realisation was of the pain in my left hand. I looked at it. There was no blood, but things were pointing in unconventional directions.
He said: ‘This do you?’
This was a low, softly-lit building down a short drive. ‘What is it?’
‘Hospital,’ he explained. ‘You’ll need some looking at. You can do some phoning from there.’
It didn’t seem a bad idea. He got me down on to the ground. ‘Help you in there,’ he said.
‘Nonsense,’ I protested, and promptly went down on my hands and knees. So he helped me in there, into the comfortable lobby smelling faintly of ether and sterilised nurses. I turned to thank him, but he had gone.
It may have been a maternity hospital, for all I could tell. There was a grey-haired nurse behind the reception desk. She looked at me and reached for the phone, said a few quick words, then came round to help me into a chair.
‘An accident,’ I explained.
‘So I see.’ She did not approve of accidents.
Then somebody in a white jacket was taking my pulse and two others were helping me along a corridor, through a door, and on to an examination table.
‘Better get your clothes off.’
‘I’ll need them.’
‘Not tonight.’
‘Tonight,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘You can have them back. And dry.’ I let them take my clothes away. The right hand jacket pocket was torn aw
ay, the one where I always keep my change. I said: ‘A sec.’ They paused. ‘My wallet.’ They looked as though I’d accused them of something. ‘Thought of something,’ I explained, and they relaxed. It was just as I’d suddenly remembered. I’d spent my last three quid on petrol for that batting up and down the M6.
They took them away to be dried.
The man said it would have to come off. It turned out to be a joke. He’d shot my hand full of something and it was beautifully numb. Only one finger was broken, number three, and my middle finger was dislocated.
‘Lucky, really,’ he said, grinning.
I agreed how lucky it was.
‘This didn’t come from any car accident.’
‘No. It happened in a car, though.’
‘I ought to phone the police.’
‘A gun butt,’ I told him. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
He put a plaster and bandages on it until it was heavier than the rest of my arm. He made a neat job of everything, all the cuts and abrasions.
‘Where’s my clothes?’ I said.
‘You ought to stay the night.’
‘Business to attend to,’ I told him.
He shrugged and went to get my clothes. They’d tumble-dried them, and some kind lady in the far reaches had stitched on the pocket again. But too late to save my small change.
He helped me dress. ‘Thanks a lot,’ I said. ‘Send me a bill, will you. I’m right out of cash.’
‘On the house,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Any time. Come again, it’s been a pleasant change.’
He left me in the lobby. I sat down for a minute because my legs seemed to prefer it. Then I asked the old dear in reception if I could use her phone.
‘What was it you wanted?’
‘A taxi.’
‘You’re not to do any driving,’ she said warningly.
I promised not to do any driving. Certainly not a taxi.
‘And you mustn’t think of going to work tomorrow.’
I said I wouldn’t give it a thought. Tonight for me.
So she rang her nephew or some such relation and asked him to come round. I sat in the lobby and waited. The clock over the dear lady’s head said it was ten to eleven.
So all right—I was beginning to worry Finn. Investigating his car, tipping Freer about Busoni—if he’d realized. He’d be annoyed. Then why hadn’t he had me killed? Was there still something I could do for him better alive than dead?
Though of course, it could have been a little private party of Troy’s, the dear exuberant boy keeping his eye in. After all, he had been bored, and I couldn’t offer him a game of chess.
My driver was a cheerful little wiry individual, who came bursting in and said, ‘somebody want driving home?’ as though the lobby was full of us.
‘You know The Beeches?’ I asked.
‘No. Where is it?’
‘About twenty miles from Shrewsbury.’
‘Man,’ he said, ‘you’re in Merioneth.’
I sighed. ‘So I’m in Merioneth. Will you take me?’
He looked doubtful. I didn’t exude any aura of wealth. ‘Pick up my Porsche there,’ I said.
‘It’ll cost.’ He cocked his head. ‘Twenty-five quid?’
‘Right.’ What else could I have said?
I sat in the front with him because I hoped he’d keep me awake. Through the drooping night I heard all about his wife’s difficulty with her brother, who was a policeman. I agreed you can’t easily live that down.
‘You want to stop for a coffee?’ he said.
I wanted, I think, more than anything to stop for a coffee, and one of those plates of everything that’ll fry that they have at transport cafés, but I was right out of the necessary. I said so.
‘My treat,’ said my friend, who didn’t seem to be worrying about his twenty-five quid.
Which made it a little difficult, and it looked like I’d have to make do with a bacon sandwich, only I must have been salivating or something because he grinned and said go ahead. It is difficult to eat chips and everything with one hand. I managed quite well, thank you very much.
Then we drove on. The stuff they’d pumped into me was working off by now. I had my left hand on my knee, where I could watch it throbbing.
‘This is Shrewsbury,’ he told me, seeing I was concentrating hard on not noticing the pain.
‘Take the by-pass. Turn right for Much Wenlock at one of the islands. I can’t remember which.’
It was about two when we reached The Beeches. I told him to drive round to the car park. ‘I’ll have to get you the money.’ But I wasn’t sure how or where. I got him to park just inside, and walked on from there. It had stopped raining. The floodlights were doing a good job, and I could see the Rover parked a little to one side of the Porsche. Troy was standing with his back to me, contemplating my car, his feet slightly straddled. I moved towards him with the confident stride of a man about to collect his car. I knew that stance of his.
He swung round, on the ball of his right foot, practising his right-handed draw this time. His left leg was splayed out, his left arm swung back. My own left arm was useless, and my right fist wouldn’t have reached him. But my right foot did. The muzzle came up to my eyes as I contacted. He’d got his legs spread and I got him clear in the crotch. His mouth came open to howl and the gun fell from his hand. I kept going on in, and scooped up the gun in my right before it hit the tarmac. This one wasn’t plastic. I lashed the barrel back-handed across his mouth in time to cut the howl down to a hiss. He swayed, half bent, teeth showing through the gap in his upper lip, and fell down on one knee.
The safety catch was off. I slid it on, because they can be dangerous things, guns. Then I slid it off again because I’d heard the soft snick of a car’s door being opened carefully. I turned. The Rover’s door was open. A large man was coming at me fast with the hard light behind him, preceded by a smell of aniseed. There was a shape in his hand, so I fired. Not that I expected to hit anything, but I think I got his knee cap and he went down writhing and screaming. Then it died to a whimper.
I turned back to Troy, who was getting the breath back into his lungs. I said: ‘Get your friend into the car. And don’t try to be clever. I’m feeling nervous.’
He got his friend into the Rover. Blood was dripping from his mouth. He shut the door and turned back to me. His face was blank and a greenish colour.
‘Reach inside your breast pocket,’ I told him. ‘Very gently. No tricks.’
‘There’s nothing in there,’ he managed to say.
‘Your wallet.’
He stared. He reached, and produced his wallet. ‘Six fivers,’ I said.
His eyebrows shot up. ‘It’s armed robbery.’
‘So it is. Six fivers.’
He got out six fivers. I told him to start walking, and we went over to the taxi.
I said: ‘Hand ‘em over.’
My driver hadn’t missed a thing. He took the money. He wasn’t too shaken to count it. ‘There’s thirty here.’
‘I owe you for a meal. And a tip. Take my advice and get out of here.’
He grinned. ‘Better than the tele it’s been.’
We went back to my car. I stood back, and handed the keys to Troy.
‘Open the door, wind down the window, and get in.’
I was hoping to give him the impression I was a dead shot with a gun, expecting to be able to pick him off through the window. But I’ve hardly ever handled one, and there’s not many people can hit a barn at twenty paces, if you want to know the truth. I stood to one side, so’s not to be in his line if he thought of running me down.
‘Start the engine.’
He started it. Nothing else happened, only the gentle clitter of the cold tappets. Of course, they wouldn’t have been so stupid as to booby-trap it, but I’d been watching some tele too. I got him out of there. Any second, somebody was going to come running, and I wanted to get away.
I got in, and only then realized I wasn’
t going to be able to work the gear shift with my left hand. Dave Mallin can be awful slow. I got out again.
All this time Troy had been moving as though his brain had gone sour. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling so good.
‘Inside again,’ I told him.
‘Eh?’
‘We’re going for a run. Get behind the wheel.’
By that time I’m certain he’d realized I wouldn’t fire the thing. But he knew I’d hit him with it again if he gave me half an excuse. Troy might have been good at handing it out, but taking it didn’t improve his enthusiasm at all. All he did was open his mouth to make a protest, then he got in. Three people were coming down the entrance steps. I slid into the passenger seat.
Perhaps Troy was one hell of a driver in an automatic, but with a gear box to handle he was murder. I suffered. I’m not sure which was the greater pain, my left hand or his driving.
‘Birmingham,’ I said. ‘And use the clutch, you big oaf. The clutch!’
After ten miles he was getting used to it. All the way there he snuffled, but I hadn’t got any tissues for him. I didn’t speak to him in case I blunted his concentration. It was very late when I guided him into the crescent where I live, and got him to climb out. I locked it up.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Off.’
‘But how’d I get back?’ he whined.
‘Walk!’ I felt like snarling, so I snarled. ‘Bloody walk, for all I care.’ I turned away. ‘Here.’ I turned back and thrust the gun at him. ‘Take this thing with you.’
I left him standing in the street with the gun in his hand at three twenty-two in the morning, and he didn’t send one shot after me.
It occurred to me that some time in the day I should have rung Elsa. Come to think of it, I should have rung my brother too. I dragged myself up the steps into the hall and decided that the morning would be a good time to start.
Beside the phone in the hall there were two messages for me. ‘Mrs Forbes rang 7.30.’ That was Elsa. And: ‘Mrs Forbes rang—11.00’ So I’d have to call her, however late it was. Only this was a pay phone, and I was out of change. I got up to my dump and hunted for change, but there was nothing the right shape. I went down again and asked exchange to see if Mrs Forbes would accept the call. Mallin this end. You remember, the chap you’re due to marry tomorrow.
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