Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15)

by Philip McCutchan

  Wonderful, I thought, bloody wonderful, at least I was alive yet and able to breathe. I felt around and found the ledge was quite a wide one. Walkable, if there was anywhere to walk to.

  I heaved myself out and for a while lay flat and gasping like a salmon. When I was rested I began walking, taking it with immense care, arms outstretched ahead. I took the wrong direction first time, and touched solid, blocking rock. I turned round. After more walking I touched rock again but this time I was able to outflank it, following my feet around the ledge.

  I moved on, slow but sure. It was very slow, in fact. On and on again, with rests. Time passed. The tension didn’t. I had to drag myself along; I was wearing crêpe-soled shoes and they gave me a good grip but they didn’t prevent aching feet. On and on. At last I virtually collapsed and put my head in my hands, aghast at the time I’d been down under the earth as revealed by my waterproof wrist-watch: something like five hours. I was bloody well lost and there was no blinking that hard fact. I was no doubt in a maze of underground passages, of lakes, of rivers formed by rainwater millions of years old that through the ages had seeped and dripped down to this God-forsaken place in earth’s heart. It was all too possible I would never again see the light of day. Altera long rest I got up and moved on notwithstanding; it was all I could do. More time passed. About a couple of hours later I banged smack into a stalagmite and cursed it viciously, and my voice echoed back at me a hundred times, from which I estimated myself to be in a cavern of very vast proportions. And then, as the echoes died away, I caught another sound and wished I hadn’t sworn at that bloody stalagmite: footsteps, faint and distant as yet, but beginning to echo. I was not alone. The hunt was up. I might never be able to get out, but the blood bearers were taking no chances on it, and that meant that a way out existed somewhere. If I could find it before they found me; and only luck would tell.

  I stopped moving, and thereafter kept very still and silent, on my feet with my back against cold rock. Then I remembered: I had only recently rounded a corner, had in fact almost gone over an edge into God knew what — water, or a precipice. Cautiously I moved back closer to this corner, stopped again, kept quiet, pressed myself against the rock and waited for what was approaching from behind. I could still hear the footsteps, but spasmodically now, as though the pursuit was uncertain of its own sense of direction, from the sound-pattern of the footsteps when they got on the move, I judged there to be two men after me, but I couldn’t be sure because the echoes might be confusing the pattern. Sensibly enough, considering I was unarmed, they were using torches: I could see the ends of the beams after a while, losing themselves in an immensity of space overhead. They flickered everywhere, searching and probing. The men probably expected to find me a corpse in the water.

  They were on track, anyway: they were coming closer, though they still had a long way to go. Time passed: the torch beams swept nearer ahead of their holders. Soon I heard voices — tired, angry, thoroughly fed-up. There was a quarrel in the air, and the term bastard was used frequently, more often than not adorned with eff. I wondered if one of them was the Reverend Clay Petersen in person or whether he was closeted with his congregation in evensong, for which it was now just about time if the Flood Fearers followed the precepts of the Church of England, which they probably did considering the conservative nature of the clientele. Petersen or no, on they came, and began to approach my corner. In the light of the torches as they dipped from time to time. I was able to see what I had nearly fallen into: a long way down there was hard and jagged rock, or perhaps the jags were stalagmites. Anyway, they were sharp.

  On came the Flood Fearers, plod plod. I braced myself: someone was going to go over that sheer drop and it wasn’t going to be me. Now I could hear the heavy breathing of weary, disconsolate men. They were only feet away. One said, “Jesus.” I didn’t recognise the voice. They came round that corner very circumspectly indeed, watching w here they put their feet. One slip and they would have had it. This, they would know. One of them, the leading one, was not in fact conscious of it tor very long, because as he came round the corner he caught a glimpse of something me and the sudden start on an unpropitious piece of ground threw him literally off balance and over he went, screaming. to death by impalement. In the meantime the other man had opened tire. Bullets zinged off the rock face and chips flew: the firing was far from accurate. The man was badly rattled and the screams from below didn’t help: his mate hadn’t died yet and was busily sending out a propagandic warning note. I had to get the man, get him alive and make him lead me out, always assuming there was a way out to freedom. I didn’t wait to think too long. Thanks to the torch I could see the way, and I saw that just here the ledge was reasonably wide. I kept close to the rock and I charged, like the Light Brigade, straight into the gun. Explosions echoed like an artillery barrage and more rock flew, but I still didn’t get hit, it was all much too wild. As the man turned away to get the corner between himself and me, I crammed on more speed and then jumped him and brought him flat and winded to the rock ledge, with me laid along his back. The rubber-protected torch flew and fetched up between the rock face and the villain, still switched on.

  The man was snarling like a wounded tiger and was obviously just as dangerous. I lifted his head by the ears and slammed it into the rock, hard, face first. I said, “The gun, friend. Bring it out and pass it over.”

  He had it in his hand still, and the hand was twisted up beneath his weight and mine. I eased up enough for him to bring out his hand, then I seized the automatic from it. The slide was empty, which was no doubt why he’d turned to run. I ferreted about in his pockets and found his ammo store and reloaded, then I got up, grabbing the torch on the way.

  “On your feet,” I said.

  He clambered up and I kept both gun and torch on him. He looked Spanish, probably a disorientated Franco man who didn’t like the way things had gone since the death of El Caudillo. Sartorially, he was simplicity itself: dark-coloured shorts, bare and hairy chest, with the cord of his religion tied about his waist and the ends dangling down his flies. The face was as dark as the shorts and was contorted with rage and anxiety. I stared at him in silence; the screams from the rock jags had stopped now. I asked. “You speak English?”

  “Si … yes.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now listen well, friend. You’re going to lead me out of here and you’re not going to make any mistakes on purpose, right? Because I’m going to kill you the very first time you do anything, repeat anything, I don’t much like. So watch it. For a start, take off that cord and hand it over.”

  He obeyed. I took the cord and told him to turn round with his wrists crossed behind him. I lodged the torch on a recess in the rock wall and, one-handed, looped the cord round his wrists and hauled taut. I put the automatic between my thighs and held it safe while I finished the roping in good seamanlike fashion, and when we were ready I gave the order to move out and repeated my warning once again. Back we went towards my ambush corner with me holding the end of the cord and I saw my guide turn and look down briefly then jerk his head away. He kept very close to the wall. We plunged on into the torch-lit gloom. We hadn’t gone more than, at a guess, a hundred yards when rising sound was heard from the distance ahead of us. At first I couldn’t make it out, then I realised it was water, rushing fast from God knew where with its destination equally uncertain, though for my money it would be ultimately to fill the pit down which I’d come originally. I could only hope it wouldn’t rise too far: we were high up currently on our ledge and in that, perhaps, lay safety. I shone the torch down into the valley that had become a watercourse already, the underground river that I had suspected, and I shone it at a very particular moment: past me at a rapid speed went both Ogmanfillers, much worn now but still close together in death as they had been in life.

  SEVEN

  I couldn’t make it out, and my guide was no help. I believe the awful sight of the Ogmanfillers had been the last straw. Even if he’d changed his
religion for political purposes to Flood Fearer, he must have been a Catholic at heart and there was something about the journeys of the Ogmanfillers that shook even me. But now the Flood seemed to be upon us and we had no Noah. I made a few assumptions, based upon a sketchy knowledge of cave systems and the weird vagaries of underground water channels. Since that rushing river was scarcely likely to have its origins in the fresh air, at any rate not at this time of year in parched Spain — though it would need to have a high water-table — I decided its origins were perhaps in some local mountain where there was some vast age-old pool in which the millions of years’ worth of drippings had collected. From that pool its course ran towards my erstwhile pit, possibly backed by subterranean springs which could help to push it willy-nilly along the tunnel. Why it alternately rose and fell away again I knew not, nor did I know if there was any discernible pattern in that rise and fall. Perhaps there were underground upheavals from time to time, movements and surges that didn’t reach the surface; perhaps there was a spasmodic waterfall somewhere around that responded to overfill and exerted pressures when it was in action, and when it was not the tide receded again. Meanwhile it was still rising, as my torch showed. An hour later it was only a matter of inches below the ledge, though, since we were now going very slightly down hill, this could be due to the dip of the ledge itself rather than to a rise in the water-level; I hoped so. I was thankful when we veered away, going sharp left into a narrow and climbing tunnel where the waters were not. In the tunnel it was very dry, as though there had never been water at all, and after another half-hour’s progress I saw the loom of something lighter in the distance, a round patch of moonlight, and I knew we had all but made it.

  *

  We stumbled out, dead weary now. I switched off the torch; we were in bright moonlight, with the terrain standing out sharply. There was no sign of the Flood Fearers’ establishment, not even the radio steeple. Away westward there were mountains, closer to us there were hills, and all was peace and quiet. Distantly I picked out a white ribbon of roadway, or track.

  I asked, “Where does the road lead, amigo?”

  “From Seville to Granada.”

  “And in between?”

  “Estepa, Antequera. Loja.”

  “And the nearest?”

  “Estepa.” The man was very monosyllabic: he couldn’t be sure of his future, but if ever he re-joined the Flood Fearers he wouldn’t want to be accused of volunteering anything. I pondered on Estepa; there would be a presence of the guardia civil, but in Spain there’s a touch of the yokels in the backwoods, and anyway, the Flood Fearers, if they didn’t assume I had died back in the cave system, might opt for the nearest town as being my destination. On balance, I fancied either Seville or Granada and, making a fast estimate that took vaguely into account our underground travels in a frankly unknown direction, I decided that, whichever direction we’d gone in, Granada was most likely the nearer. Even so, it could be all of eighty to a hundred miles. But with luck we could pick up some transport, even it was only donkeys nicked during the night from some handy field.

  I shoved the automatic into my Spaniard’s backbone. “Walk,” I said. “Where I tell you, and keep quiet, like a mouse.”

  “You do not need me now, seńor! I have brought you from the cave — ”

  “Don’t teach me my job,” I said, and pressed the gun in again. The man shrugged, waved his arms I’d untied him now since I didn’t want too many raised eyebrows if we were spotted started another protest, saw it was useless and shut his mouth. We headed towards the roadway. The going was pretty rough, but the moon and stars, the latter hanging like lanterns and seeming extraordinarily close, gave good light. There was no pursuit, no wild bandits on the watch so far as I could see. In fact it was a fair bet that we had all been written off as caught by the inrush of the waters, and if they checked they would find one dead body at any rate on the jags, and that might help them to mould their views. I reckoned that at the very least we would have a nice start. When we hit the road I propelled the hombre on fast: Miss Mandrake would be depending on my speed. I didn’t care to speculate on what she might be going through. The Reverend Clay Petersen had had a mean and vicious look about him. In the event we reached the old city of Granada in good time, because we came upon a farm lorry outside a small white-washed cottage with another hombre in the cab, preparing to set off before the dawn for market. The automatic persuaded him to head with us at once for Granada, and, keeping my hombre between myself and the driver, and the gun on them both, we drove off with a mountainous load of melons.

  *

  Granada’s chief of police, called out from bed. was co-operative after I’d established my identity and connections, or rather after he had satisfied himself that I was Commander Shaw by a batch of time consuming telephone calls that he insisted upon making between himself, the British Embassy in Madrid, and Focal House in London, plus another call, this time made by myself, to 6D2 Spain in Madrid. I knew Seńor de Panata, Spain’s Max, personally; he promised all assistance and said he’d already been contacted by London. All this done. I set out with a posse, back again to the village of Carena and beyond to the church premises. It was all very well planned and the guardia civil, backed by a company of infantry, went in as tourists with guns concealed beneath luridly patterned shirts and linen jackets, and they even travelled in a coach — four coaches indeed — commandeered tor the purpose from a British touring company that happened to be doing Granada and the Alhambra. We went into action under the divisional insignia and standards of Wallace Arnold and very comfortable it was. The police and troops disembarked in as disorderly a tourist rabble as was possible for disciplined men, and I, for obvious reasons, remained in the background. A casual sort of advance was made upon the church and the building that housed the Ark. The result was anti-climax and a nasty sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. All was in first-class order in the church and Noah was still there, overseeing the plastic Ark and the nautical pews, but no one else was. At the seagoing Ark’s slipway, all was equally in order, but still there was no one about and I knew, now, that when the prison was opened up there would be no Miss Mandrake. Of course I was right: the cell stood empty. An exhaustive search was made and in a sector of the slipway building, separate from the shipyard, was found the domestic quarter of the Flood Fearer pastorate, kitchen, bedrooms, vestry and all; and all deserted, totally. The control-room that I’d been in with the man in purple stood in purest innocence, stripped of radio desk and wall map. I could have imagined the whole thing, and the police chief looked as though he believed I had. What had been CORPSE’S control chamber for the demise of democratic Britain now showed evidence of being a do-it-yourself brewery. Wort was fermenting away in plastic containers bearing the stamp of Boots and there were tins, some empty, some still unused, of Tom Caxton’s Best Bitter extract, hopped and all ready to be mixed with the boiled water and then pitched with the yeast. There were containers of finings and citric acid. The very smell said it had all been there for years. Upon examination, the church steeple could have been an aerial, or could not: all connections gone. We went back to Granada: we hadn’t even seen a bandit to question. Four ‘tourists’ were left behind incognito in Carena. to pick up what they could. I couldn’t wait to get at a telephone.

  *

  Back in Granada, Madrid called me before I made any outward call: I was wanted at 6D2 HQ, Spain not Britain in the first instance. I passed urgent messages for onward transmission to Max, then the police chief made a helicopter available for the Bight to the capital. By mid-morning I was closeted with de Panata. Like Max, he smoked cigars, but blacker and nastier ones. He heard my full report in attentive silence, then said all stops had already been pulled out to find Miss Mandrake. He was confident that at least she couldn’t be got out of the country, but I was far from certain on that: like Britain, Spain has a long coast-line and not every foot can be watched, and Polecat Brennan had very nearly got me out from the Wash a matter
of days earlier. However, there seemed nothing else for it but to hope and pray until a lead emerged from somewhere, and in the meantime there was the reason I’d been wanted and that reason was most urgent. Max had been in touch personally with Seńor de Panata. I was to return forthwith to London unless there were vital operational reasons to keep me in Spain.

  “Any change in those orders since Max got word about Miss Mandrake?” I asked.

  “No change, none. You are required, and must go.”

  “Miss Mandrake’s disappearance in dangerous circumstances is not an operational reason?”

  De Panata gave me a sympathetic look, and shrugged. “You have been long enough in 6D2, I think, to understand that a man’s emotions are not — ”

  “Okay,” I snapped. “Point taken and I don’t need the standard lecture. What’s biting Max?”

  Quite a lot was. A coaster had entered the Thames from Cherbourg, taking a mud pilot off Gravesend. This vessel had proceeded up river, beneath Tower Bridge with her mast laid flat so the bridge hadn’t to be lifted. She had been in the Thames often enough previously and was now moored in mid-stream off the Houses of Parliament, just up river from Westminster Bridge. At low water she rested on the mud. She would answer no signals and she was believed to be deserted; a boat had gone inshore before anyone had ticked over. A few hours after she had berthed the body of the mud pilot had been found Boating down on the outgoing tide, and CORPSE had been branded below the right nipple. The river police were under orders to keep well clear until further notice, and the government was considering the viability of a local evacuation.