‘Why, so do I,’ I said brightly. ‘And I see my wife has taken the car. Could I beg a lift from you?’
What could the poor man say? He said nothing as he drove very hard along the track which led from the hotel to the road. It was quite a distance and I was glad I had not tried to walk it.
The village was quite full. It seemed as if the day’s allotment of visitors had descended on it all in the same hour. From the dashboard clock I saw it just on opening time and wondered if this had anything to do with it. My driver pulled up in front of the small shop and began to get out. I toyed with the idea of remaining seated and stealing his car as soon as he was in the shop. I had almost dismissed this as foolish when he reached back in and removed his keys from the ignition switch. His eyes met mine. I got out.
‘Thanks a lot,’ I said. ‘I’ll make my own way back. I can see my car up there’ (I waved vaguely) ‘so my wife must be around somewhere. See you at dinner, eh?’
He smiled with relief and locked the car.
‘Cheerio, old man,’ he said, and went into the shop.
I set off boldly down the village street luxuriating in the company of people and the noise of cars and conversation. But my boldness and my delight vaporized as I spotted a policeman’s helmet making its way on a collision course towards me. A few yards ahead, set back a little from the road, was a low whitewashed building on the front of which a weathered and peeling board proclaimed that here was the Ennerdale Arms. I increased my pace, thanking heaven for the civilizedly early opening times in this part of the world.
Something rang a warning bell in my mind as I passed between the cars parked in front of the inn. Something to do with brightness. But the policeman was too close for me to stop and work it out. I pushed open the pub door and went in.
Two things happened, apparently instantaneously, but I suppose one must have preceded the other, perhaps caused the other. I realized that what I had seen outside was a large car, not uncommon in make, but somehow familiar. With one very bright and obviously new hub-cap.
And with his back to me for the moment and his head squeezed into one of those allegedly sound-proof telephone shelters which looked incongruously modern in this ancient building, there was the bird man of Boot, Richard Ferguson, hardly a yard away.
I turned.
The policeman was leaning up against Ferguson’s car, mopping his brow.
Ferguson seemed to be speaking angrily into the phone. I suddenly knew with absolute certainty that he had rung Moira Jane’s cottage. And was probably talking to the police.
There was a sign reading ‘toilets’ and an arrow pointing down a narrow passage beyond the telephone. This sounded like a refuge. I put a handkerchief to my mouth and edged past Ferguson.
‘I don’t see what the hell good my name’ll do you!’ he snapped as I passed, and slammed the phone down. Then he turned and looked me full in the face, or at least in what he could see of my face.
Probably the handkerchief helped him to identify me. A bearded man he might have ignored. But I must have looked like an acquaintance having a sneeze.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. ‘If it isn’t the woman-terrorizer himself!’
He gripped me violently by the arm, obviously quite ready to do battle, and seemed surprised when I stood quite still. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, not now. Not with the police outside.
‘Let’s find the police,’ he said viciously, as if reading my thought.
‘You weren’t so keen just now,’ I replied with an attempt at a debonair smile.
‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘I’ve no time to talk now,’ I said. ‘Let’s find the police. Let’s tell them about Moira Jane. All about Moira Jane. Let’s tell everyone. Annie. Your wife.’
I could see he believed me at once.
He went white. I thought he was going to hit me. I wouldn’t have blamed him. I didn’t much like what I was doing either. But I went on.
‘I’ve seen the photographs as well,’ I lied urgently. ‘I reckon with a bit of ingenuity, I could get hold of copies.’
He was still uncertain, on a knife’s edge, not knowing what to do. I had to make up his mind for him.
‘We can’t just stand here,’ I said. ‘If I’m caught now, I talk. Let’s get to your car.’
Without a word he led the way out. I climbed into the passenger seat, ignoring the policeman who was still hanging around. But I didn’t stop sweating till we were a mile along the road. Then I started shaking.
He drove like a maniac along those narrow, twisty roads. Neither of us spoke. I didn’t want to risk losing the small ascendancy I had. He, I knew, would be busily debating in his mind what was best to do.
‘Did you hurt her?’ he asked finally, his voice level and controlled.
‘Who?’
‘Moira Jane.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s been looking after me. She called the police because I left. That’s all.’
‘Why were you calling?’ I asked. ‘She wasn’t expecting you. And I thought you didn’t come unless summoned.’
He didn’t reply but the furrows on his brow deepened in anger.
‘You weren’t just checking up, were you?’ I said. ‘Just to see if she was there? Of course, she should have left by now, shouldn’t she? That’s it.’ I was suddenly certain. ‘You were going to have a look, weren’t you? See what you could find! It must have been a shock when a man answered!’
I laughed, softly.
‘Bentink,’ he said. The car was doing sixty-five. ‘Bentink, did you kill those girls?’
I knew he wanted to be convinced of my innocence. It would make things easier for him. I’d no desire to help the bastard, but I had to help myself.
I told him the full story as far as I could. Details were already growing surprisingly dim in my mind. As I finished, he turned into the driveway of a large house and halted. We were somewhere on the outskirts of Cockermouth.
‘Where’s this?’ I said.
‘It’s where I’m staying,’ he replied. ‘Don’t worry. Our friends are out.’
A long silence. Then he turned to me, and smiled. I didn’t trust his smile. But I knew he’d made the only decision he could make.
‘Right, Bentink. You win. Not because of your threats, mind you, but because it seems likely to me you’re innocent.’
It’s always easy to reach a conclusion you want to reach, I thought, but kept the thought to myself.
‘What are your plans?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
He explored his beard with a thumb and made me scratch my own sympathetically. Suddenly he snapped his fore-finger out and pointed it at me, a powerful gesture.
‘Look,’ he said with the blunt sincerity which must have gone down big on the television. ‘Why don’t you give yourself up? I’ll do all I can. That man Melton struck me as being a very reasonable kind of fellow. It’s the sensible thing to do.’
From his point of view, it was the sensible thing to do. It would get me nicely off his hands. It didn’t matter whether he believed me or not. Here he was, stuck with and longing to be rid of me. Natural envy has always made me reluctant to be impressed by the famous, but Ferguson seemed to be bent on making the process more than commonly difficult.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think so. I’ll be on my way in a minute.’
I imagined his face brightened beneath its hair.
‘But before I go, fill me in on what’s happened. It’s a week now since I got away and I haven’t heard or seen a news report since.’
‘Well,’ he began, ‘you’ll be able to make a fortune I should think if you are … if you can prove yourself innocent. Some of the papers have really gone to town. Nothing direct, you know, but it doesn’t take more than a chat at the local and a salacious mind to put two and two together. I reckon the cumulative effect is libellous. They’ve dug up everything about Thorne, of course. Just the facts, his job at the University,
his time in hospital. Just the facts; at least, I assume they are facts insomuch as they dare print them. He comes out of it all as a pretty disturbed character.’
‘He is a pretty disturbed character,’ I replied. ‘Is that all?’
‘Not all,’ he said. ‘They’ve got you painted in pretty odd colours too. And your Lakeland journeys are beginning to sound like the advance of the Germans into France.’
‘What about my wife?’
‘There’s no sign of her. No one knows where she went. Another week and I reckon they’ll be hinting you left her in a box at some left-luggage office. You’ve been sighted everywhere. You even scared a couple of nurses in the gardens of Worcester Infirmary only last night.’
He chuckled. I didn’t. I was cursing the ill-fortune which had localized the search once again.
‘Where is Peter?’ I asked.
‘He’s in the hospital wing of Durham gaol. There’s not much news about him. Just reports on his past.’
‘Are there any signs that the police are still working at the case?’ I asked desperately. ‘They can’t have just given up and settled for us.’
‘Why not? You’re very good runners, both of you. You must have felt pretty certain that Melton had you cornered or you wouldn’t have made a run for it.’
‘Cornered?’ I said with a laugh. ‘He was reading the charge out.’
He looked at me keenly.
‘But you told me there were just the two of you?’
‘That’s right.’
Ferguson barked a laugh.
‘Then it was just a try-on. He wouldn’t charge you alone. I doubt if it’s legal. He must have been pushing you to see how far you’d go.’
I shrugged my shoulders with indifference. Even if it had been just a ‘try-on,’ it had had the same result as if I’d been guilty.
I looked at Ferguson and wondered if I could squeeze a few more miles out of him then decided it wasn’t worth it.
‘I’d better be off then,’ I said, and opened the car door.
‘Right,’ he said.
I got out.
‘Bentink,’ he said. ‘Look. Take these.’
He handed me from the back of the car a light coat and a Robin Hood hat. I took them with surprise and thanked him, thinking even as I did so that he probably reckoned they’d help me to get a bit further away from him before I was recaptured.
‘It’ll cover up that horrid brown suit anyway,’ he said, pointing to the coat.
I put it on, and the hat, thinking that apart from my shoes, I was not wearing a single thing that belonged to me.
‘Good luck,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ I said, and turned to go. I had only taken a couple of steps down the drive when I realized I was going to need all the good luck I could get. Coming towards me was Annie Ferguson.
I must have caused a real confusion in her mind. She stared at me in great puzzlement. She obviously half-recognized the hat and coat and half-recognized the bearded figure wearing them, but could not quite put the two together.
She stopped about two yards from me.
‘Hello, Annie,’ I said.
Recognition erupted in her eyes and she took a couple of steps to the car.
‘Father,’ she began anxiously.
Ferguson, who had seen her in the mirror, began to get out.
‘It’s all right, Annie,’ he said.
She clung on to his arm.
‘Has he hurt you?’
‘No, dear.’
‘I’ll ring the police.’
‘Wait!’
She stopped in obedience to her father’s command.
‘What’s going on, Father?’
‘I believe Mr Bentink is innocent, my dear.’
She peered closely into his face, looking, I felt, for any signs of coercement. Then, apparently satisfied, with a frightening display of faith she turned to me.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Bentink,’ she said in very formal tones.
‘For what?’
‘For whatever you have had cause to resent in my behaviour.’
I rubbed the back of my head and smiled.
‘I’m glad you’ve finally reasoned your way to the truth,’ I said.
She flushed a little but stood her ground.
‘I find you a difficult man to trust, Mr Bentink, but my father I trust implicitly.’
He put his arm round her shoulder. I raised my hands as though holding a camera and said, ‘Smile please.’
They didn’t.
‘Well, goodbye then.’
I turned once more but was stopped almost immediately by Annie’s voice, which was filled with surprising anxiety.
‘Wait! Where are you going?’
‘Just taking a stroll down the road, ma’am,’ I said.
‘You can’t do that. I saw two policemen within a couple of minutes as I walked here. You’d be picked up in no time.’
She turned to her father for support and advice and I grinned ironically at Ferguson. He had the power by a word to persuade his daughter of my innocence. Could he equally rapidly persuade her that it was best to let an innocent man stroll into the hands of the police who wished to charge him with murder?
He didn’t even try. He values his daughter’s picture of him greatly, I thought. A good job for me he does. Some old fast-fading self-image momentarily raised its eyebrows at my easy acceptance of blackmail. But the new self-image shrugged and listened in amusement to Ferguson.
‘No, you’re right, dear. You mustn’t go yet, Bentink. Are Mary and Joe home yet, Annie?’
‘I’ll see,’ she said, and set off towards the house. Mary and Joe, I deduced, were the friends they were staying with.
‘Nice girl, Annie,’ I said.
‘Don’t push your luck, Bentink,’ he said in the broadest Scots accent I had heard him use.
Annie came back very quickly.
‘No, the car’s not in the garage.’
‘Right,’ said Ferguson, climbing back into his car. ‘Let’s move.’
Five minutes later, I was sitting in a very comfortable armchair drinking a large glass of Scotch. I had been briefed to head out of the kitchen door and down to a small garden shed the second Mary and Joe’s car was heard approaching. I hoped they would take their time. I was very comfortable.
Ferguson and Annie were both more concerned about the immediate future than I could make myself be. But the only connection between their worryings was that I was their object. Any resemblance ended there. Ferguson wanted rid of me for his own sake. Annie wanted rid of me for mine (and she imagined her father felt this way too). She therefore was concerned with my next destination while her father would gladly have dropped me naked on the heights of Skiddaw.
I smiled at his dilemma and added fuel to the fire of his distraction by saying to Annie,
‘All right. Get me to Carlisle.’
This definite aim was as great a satisfaction to her as it was an additional trouble to her father.
‘It’s impossible,’ he said. ‘The place must be crawling with policemen. They’ll be stopping everything.’
I felt this was a bit of an exaggeration but was saved from saying so by Annie who said it for me.
‘There are too many back roads,’ she said. ‘With sidelights, after dark, you’ll never be noticed.’
Ferguson looked as if he would argue further, but a car was heard coming up the drive. I leapt up.
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘Lie low till I come for you. We’ll do our best.’
With what was rapidly becoming a well-practised agility, I ran lightly through the kitchen and down the garden to the shed. There, seated in a dark corner on an upturned bucket with garden implements and smells all around, I analyzed this decision of Ferguson’s with the cynicism which seemed to be affecting all my thoughts about this man and decided that I would be asked to get out of the car after a token couple of miles. I couldn’t really blame him, I thought. After all, I was nothing to him
except a potential source of trouble. My real nuisance value, of course, was that I had somehow become a symbol to Annie of her father’s love of justice, freedom and a lot of other abstractions. It was better than being a villain anyway, I reflected, and settled down to wait for the darkness to close in around the shed.
ELEVEN
If nothing else good had come out of my activities of the last seven days, at least I had learnt to enjoy sitting doing nothing, in no matter what discomfort. When the door finally creaked open three or more hours later, I was disappointed rather than pleased. A beam of light sprang from a torch (that torch again, I thought) and moved around till it found me. I smiled inanely like a comedian staring into a darkened auditorium.
‘Time to go,’ whispered a voice.
I screwed my eyes up and peered behind the torch. It wasn’t Ferguson, it was Annie.
‘Where’s your father?’
‘He’s stuck inside with an old bird-watcher friend who just turned up. He can’t get away, so I invented a visit and slipped out.’
That’d please Ferguson no end, I thought.
‘Get a move on,’ she said.
I got a move on. It was a bright clear night with only the faintest of breezes. Further down the garden in a clump of rhododendrons a bird burst into song for a moment, then was silent.
She pointed me down the drive and went to get the car. A minute later I was sitting beside her as we turned out of the gates on to the road.
‘Here we go again,’ I said.
She didn’t reply and I sat in silence beside her watching the hedgerows gliding by. We had decided I might as well sit in the front too. If we were stopped I had as much chance of bluffing it out as of remaining concealed. I still wore Ferguson’s hat and coat.
After a short distance we turned on to a minor road and then on to one more minor still till eventually we were speeding along lanes no wider it seemed than the car. She was driving on sidelights only, and clear though the night was, I felt my hands sweating every time we swung round a corner.
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