No doubt if there hadn’t been a slump in the housing market, he wouldn’t have had time to see us. But you could tell he hadn’t been doing anything. The chrome balls of his executive toy were still moving, infinitesimally.
A tall, well-built man in his forties; blond hair bleached by the sun, very tanned. Not a tan acquired in England.
There were several bits of golfing memorabilia on his desk. Maybe he took golfing holidays in Mallorca. My heart sank. I never met a golfer yet with a big heart. Or a big brain. Still, he fancied Hermione well enough to get to his feet and shake hands.
‘Abbeywalk?’ he said. ‘An interesting property. In a sought-after district.’
‘You’ve seen it?’ asked Hermione.
‘Only photographs. I don’t keep dogs and bark myself.’
His small dark eyes priced us up and down. ‘You don’t give the impression of needing a cheap bed-sitter . . .’
‘We’re interested in buying the house,’ said Hermione. ‘Or could be.’
‘On whose behalf?’
‘I’m not empowered to say at the moment.’
‘I hope they’ve got a big bank account.’ He said it very offensively. ‘In any case, it’s not for sale. Not at any price. My client was absolutely adamant about that. Rent, yes, welcome. Sale, no. There is considerable development potential, when the market picks up again. Besides, my client has no need of the money. He passes most of the time travelling the world, spending it. I wish I had his loose change . . .’
‘Who is your client?’
‘I am not empowered to divulge his name. He has no wish to be bothered. He made that quite clear when he handed the house over to us, last year.’
‘So some other agent had it before you?’
‘Some other agent, yes. Again, I am not empowered to divulge the name . . .’
‘Everyone seems very cagey. Have there been complaints?’
‘Not that I know of.’ But his blink-rate went up quite markedly. ‘May I ask just who you are representing, madam?’
‘I am not empowered to divulge his name,’ snapped Hermione.
‘Then I think I will wish you good day. Miss Hereford will show you out.’ He pressed a buzzer on his desk.
Miss Hereford was a big girl; and there was an even bigger man standing behind her, craning his head to get a look at us.
There was nothing to do but go.
As we regained the street, Hermione said, ‘That’s all you need for a black hole to survive in our society. Somebody who couldn’t care less. Providing he’s paid well enough. I think he thought we were TV people. There has been trouble.’
I stared sadly at the passing buses and taxis. They were trying to persuade me that life was OK and quite normal.
They weren’t making a very good job of it.
‘Do you think the present owner knows?’ I said. ‘He’s getting all that money from somewhere. And I’ll bet it’s not by renting bed-sitters.’
Chapter 13
We were still drinking our first coffee and smoking our first cigarettes next morning, in our dressing-gowns, when there came a heavy knocking at the door. A peremptory knocking, a knocking of authority that made the front door seem very thin.
‘Fuzz?’ asked Hermione wearily.
‘Sergeant Crittenden rides again. I’ll let him in.’ I went down, fearing what he might have to tell us.
But it wasn’t the fuzz. It was my employee, James. Except that he didn’t look like my employee; he gave me a look of grand contempt and said, ‘Mr Morgan, may we come in?’ There were three others, gloomy large men in long dark overcoats in spite of the sunny morning. They looked like they never took them off. They made the police look like boy scouts in bob-a-job week.
They settled on to Hermione’s graceful little chairs, and turned her cosy lounge into a court of law. Worse than a court of law.
Mr Maidment. Mr Crombie. Mr Shaftesbury. I fixed it in my mind that Mr Maidment was quite old, with a nearly entirely bald head when he finally took his dark trilby hat off. Just a few dark strands combed across, like seaweed on an empty beach. Mr Crombie was the youngest, not much over forty. Mr Shaftesbury was the one who was neither Mr Maidment nor Mr Crombie. They had not offered to shake hands. They put down their hats as if fearing pollution wherever they put them. They looked at the room, at the little untidinesses, and turned it into a brothel. They looked at Hermione and turned her into a tart. They looked at me and turned me into a fallen sinner.
Mr Maidment looked at me harder still.
‘Tell us, Mr Morgan, what has happened since James left you?’
I tried asking myself who the hell he thought he was, but it was no use. Their authority, their certainty, their righteousness was a wall you could hammer against till your fists bled, and it wouldn’t do any good. I had not felt so small since the last time my headmaster summoned me to his study, back in 1958.
So I began to tell them all that had happened. It seemed the easiest way to get rid of them. I was looking for paths of least resistance by that time. They were good listeners, I’ll say that for them. And they expressed no surprise at anything I told them. Just nodded occasionally, in a grave way, as if their worst fears were being confirmed. Just once, Mr Shaftesbury muttered something to Mr Maidment that sounded like Latin. ‘Malleus malificorum’, I think. Mr Maidment gave him a look that silenced him immediately.
They heard me out to the finish. At the same time, they seemed to regard Hermione as a creature of no importance, as if only men were worth listening to, however sinful they might be.
At the end, Mr Maidment said, ‘Was it your impression that the seat of the creature was in the cellars?’
‘Yes,’ said Hermione. He gave her a look as if he was surprised she was there at all, and disgusted that she should dare to speak. When he had stared at her enough for his purpose, he returned his gaze to me. And asked me the question all over again.
I wanted to say, ‘Why can’t you take Hermione’s word for it?’ But all that came out was a weak ‘Yes’.
‘Has the creature any force outside the house?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. Only . . . through the mud from the Pond. Or the things we took out of the Pond.’
They all three nodded. ‘A binding prayer,’ said Mr Crombie, with a little flicker of excitement in his dark sombre eyes.
He got the same treatment as Mr Shaftesbury had got. This Maidment creature, did he think he was God?
‘In the cellars, was there . . . stonework? Old stonework?’
I wanted to say, ‘Ask Hermione, she was in front.’ But it died on my lips. So I said, ‘I caught a brief glimpse of some old rough stonework.’
‘Have there been any instances of people snatched from their beds? Unexplained pools of blood or pieces of flesh in the open air?’
‘Not that I’ve heard of. The only people we know have vanished have been those who lived in that house.’
He nodded, and seemed relieved. If such a face could show relief.
‘So it holds. But for how long? If the house was to be demolished . . . the only solution is fire. Fire to the foundations. Fire beneath the foundations.’
The other two nodded. They got to their feet. They looked down at poor James, who tried to raise his eyes to them, like a beaten spaniel, in a way that made me sick.
‘James will see to it. When you are ready, James, let us know. We will be there.’
And then without a word, without a thank you or a nod, they left.
When the front door had closed, I exploded.
‘Bloody nerve. Who the hell do they think they are?’
‘They’re the ones who understand,’ said James. ‘They’re the ones who know what to do. What must be done.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘They’re very good at giving orders. Just burn that house down, James. You could get ten years in prison for that. But we’ll come and watch, James. It’s just that we don’t want to get our own hands dirty.’
‘You don’t understand, Mr Morgan. I know it’s been bad for you, but if that thing broke out of the binding prayer the monks must have put on it . . .’
‘How do they know the monks put a binding prayer on it?’
James looked at me long. ‘I’ll only ask you one thing, Mr Morgan. Would you ever set foot in that house again?’
I collapsed like a house of cards.
‘But as to how I do it,’ said James grimly. ‘Just a fire won’t do, you see. Not ordinary fire . . . they’d just redevelop the site and it could start all over again. And if the excavations loosen the binding prayer . . . then . . .’
Hermione stirred in the corner. She said, almost dreamily, ‘You would need something like the Greek fire the Byzantines used. Something that would creep and drip and cling and go on burning . . .’
I said, ‘You mean like napalm? How the hell would we get napalm? Ring up the USAF at Mildenhall and ask them if they’ve got any second-hand napalm going cheap?’
‘The stuff they made Greek fire with is quite common – still in industrial use. Burning pitch . . . phosphorous . . .’
‘How do we get that?’ asked James.
‘Mossy might have contacts . . .’ said Hermione.
‘And who’s going to pay Mossy?’
‘Stop being so trivial and childish, Morgan . . .’
‘And how do we get it inside? It’s not going to just sit there and let us . . .’
‘We’ll just have to work it out, Morgan. Won’t we?’
‘Tomorrow night,’ said Mossy down the phone. ‘I’m sorry, but my bloke says it’ll be ten thousand quid, Mr Morgan. Five thousand for the Landrover – the number-plates will slip off easily, and the engine and chassis numbers will be filed off. It won’t be traceable. And he’s shown me how to use the electronic timer. The Semtex cost a bit – it’s getting very dodgy, Semtex, thanks to our friends across the Irish Sea.’
‘Ten thousand quid?’ I squealed.
‘That’s delivered to the site at a time of your choice. He’s taking the risks. And he wants cash – tens and twenties, used notes. Right?’
‘Right,’ I said wearily. Anything to get out of this hideous fairyland. Anything to get back to bodging up antiques and cheating the good old British public again.
Chapter 14
Why did everything go wrong that night? Was it just that we hadn’t planned properly, hadn’t reconnoitred thoroughly enough, not wanting to go near the place till it was time? Or was the creature reaching out to us, through the very flecks of mud engrained in our skin?
We crept into that accursed garden in good enough time; too early, perhaps, through nervousness: having left the cars parked not too far away for a quick get-away. Hermione, me, Mossy, James. We crept round the back of the house, and shone discreet torches on the great French window that was the only possible way in. It was as we remembered it: plenty of space to admit a Landrover, provided it smashed its way in through two slender carved columns of stone that looked like the grey leg-bones of a giant.
But we had forgotten the steep two-foot step leading up to the window. Which even a Landrover in bottom gear might find impossible to climb.
We stood, utterly dismayed, until Mossy said. ‘We’ll have to build a ramp.’
‘With what?’ My heart was in my boots.
His torch flicked round. ‘Plenty of stones in the old rockery. Branches. And the suitcases in the outhouse. Some of them look solid enough.’
So we slaved, sweated in the warm night. The suitcases, pulled into the open air, looked like the pathetic possessions that doomed Jews left, at the entrances to the death-camps. But I felt a certain grim irony in the fact that the dead too were having their revenge.
We finished the ramp at five to midnight. Stood back and waited.
‘Here he comes,’ said Mossy. Far off, up Belvoir Road, the rattle of the Landrover’s old diesel engine rose clear of the sound of background traffic, which in London never stops all night.
‘Got the money ready, Mr Morgan?’ whispered Mossy. ‘He’ll want to get away quick, once he’s delivered. He’s the nervous sort. And it is the right amount, isn’t it? It doesn’t do to shortchange that lot – you could get kneecapped.’
‘Counted four times, Mossy.’
‘Good.’ He breathed a deep sigh of relief.
The Landrover hesitated outside the gate, then doused its lights and came silently bumping down the side of the house. The hand-brake went on. A little man got out, handed Mossy the keys, and held out his hand for the briefcase of money. My hard-earned savings were going God knew where, to serve God knew what cause. I badly wanted to see the face of the man I was giving it to. All I could see was a white ferret nose, sticking out between a turned-up collar and a pulled-down cap.
But he felt my eyes on him. Turned and looked at me very hard, as if trying to memorize my face, as if to say, well, you wanted to see one of us, and now you’ve seen one of us. The eyes glinted like the eyes of a rat, caught in the torch-beam. Only the eyes of a rat that was very sure of itself; a rat that knew it could bite and kill. I dearly wished I hadn’t looked at him; I dearly wished he hadn’t seen my face . . .
Then he was gone, taking his number-plates with him. We looked inside the Landrover. It was an old one: long wheelbase, hard top. All the stuff was there, the yellow chemical drums, the glass carboys of phosphorous in their metal baskets. And the small glowing figures on the electronic timer by the rear door. It reminded me of the black boxes that Ross and Makepeace still made . . .
‘Better get moving,’ said Mossy. ‘He’s set it. Ten minutes.’
He got into the driver’s seat, restarted the engine, fiddled with the levers of the triple gearbox . . .
‘She lined up right?’
We whispered soft instructions as he backed and turned the Landrover, lining it up with the French window.
‘OK, now?’
He had leapt from the driver’s seat, before the Landrover began moving. It edged so slowly up to the ramp, in its very bottom gear. Began to climb. The front bumper touched the stone pillars. The pillars began to grate and creak. In one second, this purely mechanical creature, that knew nothing of the things of the spirit, that was impervious to both good and evil, would have entered the body of its host, like a poison pill . . .
And then everything flew apart. With a crash and a crunch and a cascade of personal belongings, the ramp gave way. I saw, with despairing eyes, babies bootees spilling on to the old gravel. The Landrover humped up and fell, and humped up again, as it tried to climb the obstacle and failed. There was a whining within it, a smell of burning. The clutch was starting to burn out, as the sagging right front wheel turned slowly, pointlessly . . .
I was ready to run. I saw it all, the whole disaster. The bomb would go off, outside the house. The phosphorous would spray everywhere, on the house walls, on the trees, on us . . . we would die, horribly. And the creature inside would live. And if the house did burn, it would only burn to the cellars, and be demolished, and the binding prayer would be broken and . . .
Somebody knocked me aside, so I fell flat on my face. I saw a figure scrambling into the driver’s seat; heard the Landrover go into reverse, saw it roll back down among the trees.
And then the gears crashed again, and the engine roared like a wild beast, and the Landrover came back towards me at a terrible pace. I just wriggled aside in time, and it flew up the remains of the ramp and crashed into the stonework, and stopped dead.
Then again it reversed, steam pouring from its fractured radiator, and the gears crunched again, and now, screaming with the noise of tortured metal, its bonnet-lid forced vertical by the collision, its tyres screeching and giving off black smoke, it plunged at the window again.
There was a great tinkling of glass; the stone pillars bent inwards and snapped, and, with the heavy-treaded rear tyres still scrabbling and spewing massacred personal possessions, picture-frames and shoes
and even a gaudy china vase, the Landrover lifted itself over the sill like a great weary beast, and bumped across the floor inside.
Until the floor gave way with a great splintering of wood, and the vehicle crashed down into the cellars and out of sight.
And, as if to seal its fate, the wall of the house, weakened by the loss of the pillars, cracked and crashed down, filling the air with fine white powder.
Inside, the engine howled and died, and there was a great silence.
I heard, somewhere in the billowing dust, Mossy yelling, ‘Who was it? Who was it?’
Somehow I knew utterly, fatally, that it had been Hermione.
Until she called out weakly from further down the garden.
‘That bloke of yours,’ shouted Mossy. ‘I don’t know his name.’
James. James, entombed, alone with the beast.
In fear and trembling we climbed up the rubble and peered through the vast hole where the wall should be. Small stuff – single bricks, and slates – were raining down from the roof above.
‘James,’ we shouted. ‘James.’
It was when we had quite lost hope that we heard the voice; a strong voice, a singing voice, from out of the depths:
‘Oh, my God, make them like a wheel
As the stubble before the wind
As the fire burneth a wood
And as the flame setteth the mountains on fire . . .’
‘It’s him,’ whispered Hermione. ‘It’s James. He must be trapped in the driver’s seat. C’mon, we must get him out.’
She started down; but Mossy grabbed her. ‘Not time,’ he shouted. ‘Fifty seconds to go.’
So, like cowards, we left him, and ran, scrambled, to save ourselves.
And not a moment too soon. From the depths of the earth came a short sharp crump and a small red flash, and a tremble under our feet. A shower of white stuff sailed out of the hole the Landrover had made, and splattered down among the trees. The smell was chemical, and hurt our noses.
And then, it was as if it was instant autumn. A yellow flame blossomed among the heavy ornamental foliage overhead. And another, and another. Now there were dozens. And the flames began to drip downwards. Whole trees catching fire. A piece fell at my feet, and the long-dead damp leaves began to smoke.
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