Below the Thunder

by Robin Duval

  For a while nothing whatever happened. The street remained as sleepy and as suburban as before. The occasional car cruised past. Onlookers became bored and wandered away. New ones drifted over and attached themselves briefly to the group.

  He was close to calling it a day when a man and a woman emerged from the house. They were carrying small suitcases and were both dressed in a baggy white garment covering the body from head to toe, along with tight-fitting white latex gloves, a white face mask and white paper overshoes.

  ‘Scene of Crime Officers,’ said the single policeman laconically, to no one in particular. ‘Nothing very interesting there for you.’

  The couple pulled off their masks and gloves and climbed into a white van and drove away.

  A few minutes later, a young man drew up in a sports car.

  ‘NUJ,’ he said to the policeman, briskly flashing a small photo card. ‘Do you mind if I go through?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the policeman. And for greater clarification: ‘I do mind.’

  ‘I’m a journalist,’ said the other. ‘I’m covering this story.’

  ‘I dare say,’ said the policeman.

  The young man pondered his situation.

  ‘So you won’t let me through?’

  ‘I’m not letting anyone through. Sir.’

  A woman in the crowd asked the journalist if he knew anything about the murder. The young man – with an eye fixed on the unmovable policeman – explained that, according to his sources, the late professor had been visited that morning by two people claiming to be students. The professor’s suspicions must have been aroused because he rang the university and discovered they were no such thing. He had subsequently called the police saying he thought they were terrorists; and the police were actually on their way to interview him when he was killed.

  A saloon drew up opposite the house. The journalist broke off his narrative and craned for a glimpse of the occupants. Bryn edged alongside him and tugged his sleeve.

  ‘Have the police caught anyone?’

  ‘Oh sure. There were two men in the house when the cops arrived. They’re in custody now. I’m sorry – that’s all I can tell you.’

  A business-like man in a three-piece suit climbed from the car, ignoring the journalist’s feeble attempt to intercept him, and strode on into the house. It was David Burton. Bryn shrank back into the crowd and slipped away.

  As he walked back through Soho towards the hotel, a woman hissed at him from a doorway. He increased his pace and she hissed again. He heard footsteps running after him.

  ‘Bryn!!’

  He turned and saw Agnete. She stepped immediately into another doorway and disappeared. A hand emerged, as in a mime show, beckoning him urgently. He looked around him. The street, so far as he could tell, was full of the normal Soho mix of young people going about their various media businesses. No one and nothing to cause alarm. He strolled back to Agnete’s hiding place.

  She had his rucksack on her back and was carrying a hold-all.

  ‘Bryn, we have to leave.’

  ‘Why?’

  She looked away towards the hotel and took a few sharp breaths.

  ‘When I got back there was a policeman in reception. Asking for me.’

  ‘Did he see you?’

  ‘No. No one saw me. I beat a retreat and hid in the Costa Coffee shop on the other side of the road until he’d gone. Then I went back into the hotel and the receptionist told me he’d been asking about a car rental and she had a phone number for me to call him. You know what this means?’

  ‘It may not mean much at all.’

  She snorted with exasperation.

  ‘Bryn. They’ve found the car I hired from Inverness. I left it at the house by the bay and they’ll have got my name from the rental company. That means the body’s been found. Otherwise they wouldn’t be chasing me up.’

  ‘That’s possible of course.’

  He was trying hard to be cool and forensic. He was shaken though by the revelation that checking into a London hotel could make their names and location so instantly available to the authorities. At least he had still been Hathrill.

  ‘OK. It could mean a few things. For instance, somebody might have reported the car abandoned. The police would have had to find out what happened to you in case you’d… walked into the sea, or, you know – ’

  ‘That’s rubbish, Bryn.’

  ‘Or… let’s say they are following up leads because they’ve found the body. It doesn’t mean they believe any particular lead is significant.’

  ‘Alright.’

  She began to speak more calmly.

  ‘I don’t think we should chance it. I told the reception lady I would call the police from my room but I gathered all the rest of our stuff, and got out. I think we need to move away from here, now.’

  He took the rucksack from her – she was pretty strong to carry that and the hold-all – and set off down the street. A squad car screamed past and they ducked behind some ornamental trees outside a pavement café. The vehicle swerved to a halt in front of the hotel, followed immediately by two other cars. Doors were flung open and policemen raced inside. As all heads on the street turned to gaze, the two fugitives escaped up a side alleyway, retrieved the car from its overnight park and took off towards Piccadilly and the west.

  The sky had darkened and it was beginning to rain. Not a regular, steady, depressing London rain but a monsoon – the kind of downpour visited on the capital not more than two or three times a year and which – for its duration – almost invariably overwhelmed public services, transport, drains, even the city’s communication systems.

  Traffic was already backing up from a set of failed lights on the Brompton Road, and Bryn turned away into South Kensington. At double-speed, the windscreen wipers could barely cope; everything around them had slowed to a crawl. They turned off into a side street and pulled up by a small gastro-pub; and dashed in to shelter from the torrent until it eased.

  Chapter 24

  A television was on in the corner. Pictures of an ash cloud rising from a volcano. Talking heads speculating on what would happen next.

  Agnete was not hungry. She toyed with a salade niçoise while he attempted to summarise the options available to them. There did not seem to be many. A bed-and-breakfast, perhaps, where they might expect a lower level of police vigilance – registering as ‘Mr and Mrs Hathrill’ as an additional precaution. Unless of course the Hathrill name had become compromised through association with hers. Even using the credit card to draw cash could give their location away. It felt to Bryn as if a noose was closing on them.

  Agnete said very little. At one point she laid a hand on his lips – with a gesture he’d seen before – to prevent him talking further. When she had eaten enough, she took herself off to the ladies’ and left Bryn alone in a dark corner of the underlit room, watching the images of the smoking volcano on the television and scouring his thoughts for some proposal that might commend itself to her.

  They had deliberately chosen a table where they could keep an eye on the parked car. The rucksack with its package was stowed in the boot and he was as anxious about it as a mother with a wandering toddler. Rain was falling but not in quite such a deluge as before and pedestrians had begun again to scurry through it.

  Two men with black umbrellas stopped outside the pub. One of them walked out into the road and paced around the car in a wide, deliberate circle. They chatted together, folded their umbrellas and came into the pub.

  Between Bryn’s corner table and the bar, a rowdy office party was in full flow – a young woman was leaving for a new job and celebrating with her soon-to-be ex-colleagues. As they stood to drink her health for the umpteenth time, he could see the two men beyond them, interrogating the barman. They were young, well-built, in smartly cut two-piece dark suits. He thought he could detect American accents. The barman waved towards Bryn’s table and the men started to turn in his direction.

  With a niggling sense of d�
�jà-vu, he stole away down the short corridor to the ladies’ and opened the door. Agnete was not alone. Two young women were adjusting their make-up at the mirror and a third was emerging from a cubicle with her skirt hoisted round her thighs. They all stared at him in puzzled bemusement.

  ‘Do you come here often, darlin’?’ said one. The others cackled.

  But Agnete caught his mood at once and took him by the hand back into the corridor.

  ‘Two men,’ he said. It was all she needed to know.

  The way out was through the main bar. The rowdy office party was still on its feet and Bryn slid in behind them. The two dark-suited men were standing now by the corner table, talking on their mobile phones. Agnete clung to him, and they ghosted through the crowds and through the darkest parts of the room, and out to the street.

  They hauled the rucksack and hold-all from the car boot. And fled through the rain. Down Gloucester Road to the Underground station. And down again to the Piccadilly Line – and straight onto a waiting train bound for Heathrow, with no other plan than to put distance between themselves and their latest pursuers. They huddled in a corner surrounded by young people with massive backpacks, shouting in Spanish, German and East European. The carriage rapidly filled up until it was standing room only.

  They had not intended to go to Heathrow. Any other destination would have done. But now that they were within forty minutes of the airport, Bryn set about trying to persuade Agnete to take a plane out alone. There was no possibility – this time – of smuggling the isotope through. But could she not get a flight to Copenhagen or Germany, somewhere safely beyond reach? He could take his chances by himself, find a way of disposing of the burden, meet up with her later.

  She was as stubborn as a mule. He suspected that at base she did not yet trust him; and she may have been right. He could not pretend to her level of commitment. A major part of him was inclined simply to call up David Burton and sort it all out on the phone. The prospect of the isotope falling into the hands of Her Majesty’s Government worried him less and less as time went by.

  They were still whispering vehemently when they arrived at Terminal 5. They flowed through with the crowd to the main departures concourse, arguing constantly. For him all British Airways’ options were open – providing he had Agnete’s acquiescence – Copenhagen, Berlin, Chicago, New York…

  Agnete had come up with a counter proposal. Bryn should be the one to fly to safety and she would stay on to deal with the package. The argument ran to and fro. He suggested the task was too dangerous for a woman; and she responded with unreserved contempt. When she asserted that a flight was in any case impossible for her because her name would now be on Heathrow’s computers, he retorted that ‘Hathrill’ would be equally compromised. They had arrived at an impasse.

  At the height of their dispute, the crowd broke into such a frenzied hubbub that neither for a while could hear the other speak. The departure screens seemed to be in meltdown. Whole sequences of flights began to disappear without explanation. Uniformed British Airways staff moved through the concourse, talking to small groups. One was briefing a line of passengers queuing nearby for JFK New York.

  Apparently, the Americans were closing down most of their international airports. There had been a volcanic eruption in California, and a huge cloud of ash and debris thrown across the airways, moving inexorably eastwards. Flights to Europe were also being cancelled, though there was hope they might be restored when better information was available.

  ‘Everything is under control,’ said the official several times. ‘There’s nothing to do for the moment but wait.’

  ‘I do not think so,’ said Agnete and grabbed Bryn again by the hand. ‘We need to move fast before everybody else does.’

  As they left, armed policemen were coming on to the floor and moving through the throng. Some of them talking into radio telephones.

  They followed the signs to the car hire counters. The Hathrill credit card and driving licence were both effective and they rented a small saloon. The paperwork was hardly finished before a mob of like-minded travellers filled up the hall behind them. There was no point in checking the car and they left immediately. As they filtered off the ramp into the rain and turned towards the M25, they passed four police cars racing through towards the airport, all lights blazing.

  Traffic going south had ground to a standstill. So they drove as fast as they could towards the less congested north. Agnete was the first to speak.

  ‘Do you have a plan?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Bryn wondered how long it would be before their latest registration number had been distributed to the police. How close behind them their other pursuers might be. Whoever they were.

  ‘I have a plan, Bryn.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it involves handing the package over to the proper authorities.’

  He could see her on the back seat frowning in the mirror. They were like a well-married couple, locked in argument and tied indissolubly together. Rapidly going nowhere.

  ‘Tell me your plan,’ he said, more quietly. ‘It has to be better than any of mine.’

  ‘We go to Germany. By boat.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘I know what I’m talking about, Bryn. When I was a student, I had a little VW. I used to drive it to Tilbury and take the freight ship home. Cheaper than the ferries or Eurostar and more direct and they always had room for a car or two. Nobody uses them except lorry drivers so there won’t be any police watching out for us. It’s probably not even listed on their computers.’

  ‘What about customs? Passport control?’

  ‘They never did security checks. A quick look at your passport perhaps but they’re not interested. No one will bother with our bags. Once we’re on the continent there aren’t any more border checks anyway. Not in the Common Market. It’s the answer, Bryn.’

  ‘How long ago were you a student in London?’

  ‘It won’t have changed, Bryn. It’ll still be lorry drivers.’

  Shortly after they crossed the M1 they turned south and east, dog-legging their way towards Essex and the Thames. The rain relaxed, and began to resolve into a clear sky. Bryn had conceded that they could at least find out if a ship was available; and make a decision then. Agnete’s confident plan was for them to work their way from the port of arrival, across Germany, to the city of Dresden. She had a godmother in Dresden, living on the outskirts of the city. If they were lucky they could be with her by tomorrow afternoon. It was the perfect place to lie low until they were ready to drive to the Schacht Asse pit.

  Bryn now had the flimsiest idea where he was. He had been following Agnete’s directions through the alien streets of northeast London for some time when she instructed him to pull up. At first he assumed she needed to check their location. He waited while she went to knock at the door of a detached house. A woman – about Agnete’s age, blonde and possibly Scandinavian also – came out and embraced her. The pair disappeared indoors and re-emerged five minutes later from a small garage on the side of the building. Agnete returned to the car. She was exceptionally pleased with herself.

  ‘I’ve got my old VW,’ she said. ‘I’ll drive it and you follow me.’

  He watched her back the Volkswagen out of the garage. Old it certainly was. It had been in a few scrapes in its twenty years or so and bore its original Danish number plates. Agnete drove off at a brisk pace and he fell into position behind her.

  Their route took them surprisingly quickly into open country and cropped cornfields, and past empty gas holders and new housing estates, until within thirty minutes they were running parallel with the main railway line from London towards the coast.

  Like most West Londoners, he’d never been to this part of England in his life. He knew two historical facts about Tilbury. One was that it was here that Queen Elizabeth the First gave her famous speech to the army awaiting the Spanish Armada: ‘I
know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman: but I have the heart and stomach of a king.’ His other snippet was that the only prisoner-of-war in both World Wars ever to escape from England back to Germany did so by boarding a freight ship – from this very port. Both precedents seemed encouraging.

  There were no other vehicles in sight. They were on a long, straight road with a fence of coarse grey concrete planks to one side and an overgrown rose bay willow herb wilderness on the other. Agnete’s brake lights came on and she waved at him to stop. He waited while she climbed out and clambered up the low bank and peered across the wasteland. She glanced both ways up the road and returned.

  ‘We need to get rid of your car.’

  ‘Rid of a hire car?’

  ‘It will give us away.’

  ‘What about your VW?’

  ‘We’ll use that from here on. It’s perfect. I gave it to Anne-Grete and so it’s in her name. Nobody will pay any attention to it.’

  He cruised along till he found a break in the banking where a couple of concrete blocks had been dumped – presumably to prevent what he now intended. There was more than enough room though to squeeze past and on into the jungle. He emptied the luggage from the boot and bounced the car down through tangles of brambles and ivy and half-grown ash trees until it came up behind an old Ford Cortina long-forgotten in its own private forest of weeds, rusting on its wheel hubs. He dragged some brushwood and ivy across his bonnet, and climbed back to the road. Neither the Cortina nor the hire car were visible.

  A heavily built man with a bulldog was coming down the road.

  ‘Caught short wuz ya, guv’nor?’ he chortled as he passed.

  The dog sniffed suspiciously at Bryn’s legs until (‘Hey! Chesney!’) it turned aside and trotted after its master.

  The terminal was a mile further on. Apart from a couple of container lorries trundling through, the road continued empty and silent. Not till they approached the terminal gate did they begin to hear a clangour of unloading cargo, and the feral growls of manoeuvring vehicles. The concrete fence had now given way to linked galvanised stakes with viciously splayed points to discourage trespassers. Beyond the stakes stood row upon row of neatly parked lorries, so closely packed together there was barely space for a driver to open a cabin door. On the other side of the road were piled-up red containers, labelled HANJIN or MOL or HAMBURG SÜD, as big as prefabricated bungalows.