Blow the House Down

by John Blackburn

  14

  ‘A curse on a wicked earl, and a dragon that blows down buildings.’ Paul had nodded when Janet finished. ‘Yes, that’s exactly the kind of guff Baylis would have swallowed, and it could explain his meanderings about a divine wind. Have you told Dealer this?’

  ‘Not yet.’ They were sitting in Janet’s office with the vellum-­bound book and a survey map of the district laid out on her desk. ‘I wanted to talk to you first, Paul. You see, I’ve started to believe that the story may be true.’

  ‘Then you must be barmy, my sweet.’ Paul scowled around the gloomy room. Before she telephoned him they had had an arrangement to meet at the Crown, and a discussion on folklore in the municipal building was not at all his idea of a convivial evening. ‘The story’s only a myth, a fairy tale, if you like.’

  ‘Maybe, but aren’t a lot of myths based on reality – King Arthur, and the Minotaur, and so forth? I think that the Skulda may be, and after phoning you I went down to the Records Office and took a few notes. The data only goes back two hundred years, but there does seem to be evidence that some violent meteorological disturbance strikes the area from time to time. Have a look for yourself.’

  ‘If I must.’ He put on his glasses to read the sheet of typescript. ‘In seventeen ninety-­one, farm buildings were demolished by an exceptional storm. So what?

  ‘Eighteen hundred and four, and a man called Warwick built a folly; a pillar supporting a Winged Victory, which promptly crashed to the ground. Alas poor Warwick! Eighteen thirteen, and we have the collapse of a colliery chimney near Billon Tor. That’s not remarkable. They used sand and lime mortar in those days and chimneys of the period were notoriously unsafe. The later Victorians demolished them by the hundred. You must have seen photographs in the old Strand Magazine: “The felling of the Great Stack at Sweathaven.” Piles of rubble surrounded by a lot of grinning chaps with thick moustaches and bowler hats.

  ‘Eighteen fifty-­two: a new house and barn went for a Burton. Nineteen hundred and one: a Methodist chapel had its roof blown off; most probably the builders used green timber and the joists had contracted. Nineteen twelve . . .’ He laid down the sheet.

  ‘Honestly, darling, you’ve been wasting your time. Any insurance agent can tell you that exceptionally strong winds occur now and again and buildings are damaged and destroyed.’

  ‘Not always in the same area, though. Not because the buildings were in line.’ Janet lifted her pencil and drew a series of crosses on the map. ‘Here was the chapel. Here was Warwick’s folly. The colliery was over here. Here was a row of cottages which collapsed in nineteen twenty-­six; subsidence was given as the reason, but I don’t believe it.’ She joined the crosses together to form an almost straight line.

  ‘All these disasters and, as far as I can gather, most of the earlier ones mentioned in the Skulda legend, took place on a path stretching from Billon Tor, north of the city, to Pontop Pike in the south.’

  ‘Surely that’s understandable?’ Paul frowned at the map and shook his head. ‘The Pike and Billon Tor are the highest points in the area and dominate the Randel Valley. They are bound to receive the maximum wind pressure and any insecure buildings on them would obviously be in some danger.

  ‘All the same, Mallory Heights is right in the path and slightly higher than Billon Tor itself.’ He was beginning to lose some of his scepticism. ‘If local turbulence does occur, those towers would get quite a bashing.

  ‘But again, so what? The figures were checked by computers and that captive balloon was tethered over the site. Strand had all the data necessary and planned accordingly. The Heights can laugh at anything nature is likely to do.’

  ‘The balloon was only there for six months, Paul.’ Janet had been glancing at the telephone while they talked. ‘But the dates imply that this wind, the Skulda, occurs at infrequent intervals; every five or ten years, or so. If that’s true, Strand might not have received the information he needed.’

  ‘Sounds a pretty rum sort of wind.’ Though Paul smiled, his earlier anxieties were returning, and he remembered how, during the search for the bomb, he had kept looking at the opposite tower, wondering why its shape worried him. ‘I don’t really believe that such a phenomenon could occur.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but don’t you remember what Lansberg said? That something had disturbed him in South America?’

  ‘Of course I do. That’s what put a lot of groundless suspicions into my mind in the first place. Let’s forget Lansberg, Janet. The blighter’s dead and he can’t tell us a thing.’

  ‘But his assistant, a man called Schultz, who was with him on the South American tour, might know something, Paul. I checked with the East Berlin university and I’ve got a call booked to him at six: it’s almost that now. I’m certain Schultz will either put my mind at rest, or send me rushing to George Strand in a hurry. I just hope he can speak English. My German is lousy, to say the least. While we’re waiting for the call, I want you to look at this.’ She unrolled the poster and spread it out beside the map. ‘Does it mean anything to you?’

  ‘Only that it was issued by Union-­Supreme Airways to advertise their flights to La Libertad; the capital of Nuevo Leon. What else should it mean to me, Janet?’

  ‘Just keep looking hard and you may find out. And that should be my call to Berlin.’ The telephone had rung and she hurried to answer it.

  ‘34.58673. Janet Fane speaking.’ The operator told her to wait, there was a series of sharp clicks and then she heard a man’s voice.

  ‘Hullo, is that Dr Schultz? Do you speak English, Doctor?’ Paul saw her frown. ‘Ja, ich kann ein wenig deutsch, aber langsam sprechen, bitte.’

  ‘VISIT LA LIBERTAD, THE WHITE CITY OF FREEDOM.’ Paul had no German and he resumed his study of the poster. The artist had made the sea and the sky a vivid blue, the tropical vegetation a brilliant green, and the buildings startlingly white. But he had not managed to conceal the fact that La Libertad was an unattractive town. It lay in the steep and narrow valley of the Selva river, and the houses of the old quarter that sprawled up the southern slopes and were dominated by a large baroque cathedral, clearly contained some pretty squalid slums.

  ‘Der Santa Annaturm, Herr Doktor. Ja, ich verstehe.’ Janet was obviously asking Schultz a series of questions and noting his answers on her shorthand pad.

  ‘Langsam, bitte, Herr Doktor. Im Rathaus, der Herr Professor sagte . . . ?’ It was also obvious that she was having some trouble in following him.

  On the north side of the Selva valley stood the modern city of La Libertad. A residential quarter on the upper slopes, a business and shopping centre of new concrete blocks, factories and dockyards spread along the river, lines of beaches in the background, painted a glaring yellow. The poster meant nothing at all to Paul and he lit a cigarette, and waited for Janet to finish.

  ‘Was is das? Ja, ja. Zwei und zwanzig meter.’ She nodded and made a final note. ‘Vielen Dank, Herr Doktor. Auf wiederhören.’ She replaced the phone and stood frowning at her notes.

  ‘That was pretty difficult, Paul, but I think I got the gist of what he said. Lansberg may have had a very good reason to doubt the stability of the Heights.’ She sat down still frowning.

  ‘When they were in La Libertad, Lansberg and Schultz were shown over a block of government offices of rather similar design to Strand’s: three towers set at an angle and joined by ferro-­concrete bridges under stress. I think this might be the one.’ She pointed at the poster with her pencil.

  ‘After the visit, Lansberg asked to see the detailed plans, and also a record of the area’s climatic conditions. He then seems to have behaved in much the same way as he did here. Schultz was pretty guarded, but I gather he got drunk and told the Mayor of La Libertad that the building was a public danger.’

  ‘The devil he did.’ Paul craned over the poster. ‘He could be right too. That looks a pretty tall structure, and Nuevo Leon is on the fringe of the hurricane belt. Did they kick him out with a flea in his ear
?’

  ‘No, Paul, they did not. The Leonese authorities took Lansberg seriously. On his advice the towers were reduced in height by twenty-­two metres and extra bracing was built into the bridges.

  ‘This is the important point, though. Lansberg was not merely concerned with hurricanes. He claimed that the geography of La Libertad itself was the danger: that the Selva valley was a natural wind tunnel which could create extreme turbulence from even a moderate gale.’

  ‘The shape of the actual valley?’ Paul stiffened and he looked from the poster to the map, and then back to the poster, understanding its significance at last. Two valleys that were half the world apart and at first glance quite different. One had blue seas and skies, the other had grey. La Libertad was surrounded by bright tropical vegetation, Randel­wyck by grassy hills and drab moorland.

  But, if one ignored the colours and the cities; if one could imagine that the buildings and the bridges and the roads and all man-­made things did not exist, it was clear that the valleys of the Selva and the river Randel were almost identical. With that realization came another.

  ‘Billon Tor,’ Paul said, giving the words a slightly foreign accentuation. ‘I’ve always thought that was an odd name to be found in this part of the country. You told me that “Tor” is a corruption of “Tower”, but you could be wrong, Janet. If one changes the order of the words and goes back to an archaic spelling, something pretty sinister emerges.’ He took her pencil and scrawled another name across the map.

  ‘Tourbillon is Norman French for “Whirlwind”.’

  ‘Well, I must say that in spite of statements made earlier by the press, and even by some persons in authority, this has been one of the most orderly and peaceful demonstrations I have ever witnessed.’ The television reporter stood with his back against a dry-­stone wall behind which stretched a wide expanse of moorland. Once again the weather was overcast, though a slight breeze remained and was rippling his hair.

  ‘The marchers left Randel­wyck city centre on schedule, and covered the journey here in just over an hour and a half.’ The camera moved to show the cheerless, functional buildings of Fentor Park and a section of the vast crowd standing before the wire fence with their heads bowed.

  ‘Before starting out, the demonstrators were addressed by three of their leaders: Mr Oliver Trench, Mr Mahomet N’genza, and Miss Silvia Jessop. They each stated that their united aims were to prove the powers of peaceful persuasion and non-­violence as taught by Mahatma Gandhi.’

  ‘It’s all too damn peaceful, Inspector Renton.’ The Chief Constable stood staring bleakly at the screen. ‘There must be thirty thousand of them at a conservative estimate, and they’re all just standing there doing nothing. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.’

  ‘Nor I, sir.’ The Inspector nodded as the camera swung over the silent crowd to the line of police stationed between it and the fence. ‘Most of them are just a lot of misguided young fools, but there’s a hard core of right villains too; junkies and nuts and fanatics, and we know that Trench, and N’genza, and the Jessop woman are professional agitators on Communist payrolls. Bastards like that aren’t going to leave the district without a spot of hell-­raising.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more. There’s going to be trouble before the day’s out or my name’s not Roger Rawlinson.’ He shook his head as the camera moved slowly back over the massed demonstrators. ‘More than thirty thousand of ’em, and if the wolves can somehow persuade the sheep to join them, our lads are going to have their hands full.

  ‘That’s why they’re playing it quiet, Inspector. They hope to lull us into a sense of security and at some point create an incident that’ll start the ball rolling. If only we had a few water cannon standing by. This feeble-­minded government makes me sick. In Chicago they know how to deal with scum like Messrs Trench, N’genza, and . . .’ The reporter had resumed his commentary and Rawlinson broke off.

  ‘So far the only exhibition of violence came from the Reverend Martin Judson’s “Britain for Britishers” supporters: an unpleasant incident which almost appeared to be condoned by the Randel­wyck police.’ Both officials flushed at the statement.

  ‘While the “Black Lion” group was leaving Main Street, a number of men brandishing pickaxe handles moved into the roadway and attempted to halt the march. I timed the incident, and though the police were there in great force, it was a full six minutes before they made any move to clear the street and allow the demonstrators to pass.’

  ‘Is the bastard blind or just plain irresponsible?’ Rawlinson’s fists were clenched and his steel foot stamped on the floor. ‘The Super reasoned with Judson and got him to move his louts out of the way. If the slightest force had been used, we could have had a pitched battle then and there.’

  ‘No, I can’t say that the police have appeared in a good light today, and here is Mr John Forest of the Daily Globe to give you his impressions.’ The view of the crowd and the police cordon faded and Forest’s bloated features appeared on the screen.

  ‘I must agree with all that Allan Philpotts has said.’ Forest spoke slowly and gravely like an elder statesman with a crisis on his hands. ‘Though no incidents, except the one mentioned, have taken place so far, I have an uneasy feeling that we may be witnessing the calm before the storm. I can sense an atmosphere of tension and violence in the air that is extremely disturbing. If violence does erupt, the Randel­wyck police and their Chief Constable, Commander Rawlinson, will have much to answer for.’

  ‘Fat, mischief-­making swine.’ Rawlinson clanked over to a cupboard and produced a bottle of whisky and two glasses.

  ‘During similar demonstrations in London and elsewhere the police showed a tolerant and even friendly attitude towards the demonstrators, providing they behaved themselves. But here today, the demeanour of the Randel­wyck police has reminded me more of the Spanish Civil Guard than a British Constabulary, and I have not seen one man who did not look as though he would welcome an excuse to use his truncheon.’

  ‘How I would like to take a truncheon to you, Mr Forest.’ Rawlinson poured out a couple of stiff whiskies. ‘Come on and have one, Inspector Renton. We may be on duty, but we need a drink after listening to that filth. Cheers, and to hell with bloody John Forest.’

  ‘Amen to that, sir.’ Renton raised his glass towards the screen. The announcer had taken over again and another picture of the crowd appeared.

  ‘The demonstrators are starting to move away now. Thirty thousand young men and women who have registered their protest in silence and with great dignity, and I have just been told that the procession will return to Randel­wyck in three separate contingents, so that no suggestion of massed force will be given. Over there to the right you can see Oliver Trench leading his “British Maoists” towards the main road.’

  ‘Look at their faces, sir. Like you said, they’re too quiet, too well organized and we know that a fair percentage of that lot are on dope. Only a promise of future violence could discipline a mob like that.’ Renton studied a close-­up of the returning marchers and took another pull at the whisky. ‘There’s going to be trouble before nightfall, but just when and where?’

  ‘Not out on the moors, where there’s nothing to damage, that’s for sure. I’m dead worried about our own people too, and we’ve only got a token force in the city. I was expecting the disturbances to start at Fentor Park. Get through to the Super, Renton. Tell him to load all the men he can into the trucks and bring them back here right away.’ Rawlinson took a final look at the television and turned down the volume.

  If only the weather would break, he thought. If only there were some heavy rain. Cold water was an efficient means of damping human ardour, and a really good storm might do the trick. While the Inspector issued his orders on the telephone, he tapped a barometer which registered ‘Change’, and moved to the window. The sky looked sullen, but not threatening and the forecast had predicted mild showers. With no hope at all, he crossed to a second phone and dialled
the local weather service.

  ‘Well, well, well, Inspector Renton. This calls for another drink.’ Rawlinson replaced the instrument and rubbed his hands together. ‘We wanted water cannon, and with a bit of luck we may get the next best thing.

  ‘A deep depression has started to move down the Irish Sea and it might save our bacon.’ He raised his glass and toasted the evening sky above Mallory Heights.

  ‘Heavy rain and winds approaching gale force are expected to reach the Randel­wyck area before nightfall.’

  15

  This would be his last interview. If it bore no fruit he intended to write off Baylis as a solitary lunatic, forget his fears of a conspiracy against Mallory Heights by the ‘True Sailormen’, and go back to London. Major Dealer sat in his room, which was three doors away from the Chief Constable’s, and studied the man before him. Allan Trevor; aged thirty-­five, unmarried, employed as a junior sales representative by a local firm of furniture manufacturers. A small man with a small job and very small brown eyes set rather close together beneath his narrow forehead.

  A completely unimportant man, apart from two things. The first was that he appeared to be one of the few people with whom Baylis had been on terms of any intimacy; the second, that Dealer did not trust him.

  But then Stephen Dealer trusted so few people. After all, he was an intelligence officer, and he had been trained to suspect almost everybody. Also he had a naturally untrusting nature, and something like a sixth sense told him that Allan Trevor had lied during their first talk.

  ‘What did you discuss while taking those walks on the moors, sir?’ He studied his visitor’s tie as he asked the question. It was pale blue with red and yellow stripes and clashed with Trevor’s dark business suit. The pattern was familiar and obviously denoted membership of some organization. ‘Did Dr Baylis talk about his fanatical political beliefs from time to time?’