Gadiel shrugged.
‘We’ll offer a negotiation,’ Dan hissed. ‘We’ll tell him that either he lets us come through and talk to him about this, rationally, in a proper spirit of debate – or… or we’ll call the police.’
‘How do we call the police?’
‘Oh, come on, Gadiel – at least try and help.’
‘I’m just wondering how we call the police, that’s all. I’m just wondering how we bargain with the man with the gun.’
Ernest called again. ‘Gentlemen, I have given you more than fair warning. Release my daughter immediately, do you hear? It’s the lowest trick. Taking a female hostage – it’s low down, despicable…’
‘What’s he talking about? He’s got to be mad.’ Dan shook his head at Gadiel, his eyes wide.
Gadiel slid from the bed and went across to the window. ‘He must think she’s here.’ He looked out as he spoke, his words directed towards the still mere. ‘He must think we’ve snatched her or lured her or—’ He turned to face his friend. ‘He’ll have missed her when she didn’t come home, and he won’t know about the van. He won’t know you’re… in love.’
Dan winced but before he could reply Ernest called out again: ‘And I should inform you, gentlemen, that I have several boxes of ammunition, a man posted at the rear and reinforcements arriving very shortly to take up weapons against you.’
Dan started at the renewed threat, dropped to his knees again, and crawled quickly towards the protection of the bed. ‘He’s bluffing. Don’t say anything.’
‘What would I say?’ Gadiel wiped the window and leaned forwards, his forehead against the glass. ‘You’re the one who’s done that to Ellie. You’re the one who should talk to him.’
Ernest began again. ‘Hand the girl over.’ He hammered on the door nearest to him. ‘Get. Out. Of. Marlford.’ He punctuated his words with the thump of his fist. ‘Get out now. Give up and go on your way. I’ve got you penned in like Christmas geese and there’s no escape.’
Gadiel stepped away from the window. He took a deep breath. ‘We don’t have Ellie,’ he called out. ‘Mr Barton, she’s not here. We can’t help you, I’m afraid. We don’t have her.’
But Ernest did not hear the words, or could not take in their meaning. There was a growl from his end of the corridor, and then the blast of the rifle again, reverberating through the fabric of the building, making Marlford tremble.
From his position at the back door, Oscar heard the shots, feeling the ricochet of their echo around the enclosed courtyard. He clicked the cartridges into the shotgun, his finger already on the trigger.
Ernest came into full view at the far end of the corridor. He stepped forward and stopped just past the bust, his feet planted, his rifle perfectly parallel to the floor. He was red in the face, but his voice was measured. There could be no doubting his absolute delight in the success of the manoeuvre.
‘Squatters?’
Gadiel poked his head around the doorframe. Dan groaned quietly.
‘There you are.’ Ernest glared at Gadiel’s exposed face. He aimed the rifle at the open doorway and lifted his chin.
Gadiel ducked back into cover. Ernest took several long strides along the corridor until he was barely a couple of feet away from them. His shoes squeaked on the floorboards, a slight, soft creak of leather that seemed suddenly terrifying.
‘You – there – in the doorway.’
There was no answer.
‘Boy!’
Gadiel leaned out just enough to be able to see Ellie’s father. ‘Mr Barton – it’s me… Gadiel. Look, about Ellie —’
Ernest swung sideways to re-adjust his aim. He paused and jiggled the rifle, perhaps playfully. ‘What have we here?’ He strung the question out, as though it were the most perplexing of problems.
‘Mr Barton—’
Ernest did not care about the answer; he knew they would not understand. ‘What we have here,’ he offered, patiently, ‘is what is known as a pincer movement. You have been outflanked. Quersley is downstairs, armed to the teeth, cutting off your exit. You have nowhere to run behind and I – as you can see – am in front of you, also very much armed and very much ready.’ He shook his head at their pitiful tactical awareness. ‘There are no alternative exits; this corridor is your only potential escape route. If I may say, it’s a poor choice of base camp – you’re rather hemmed in; it’s a death trap. You really should never have got yourselves into this situation. Now, you see, I’m going to shoot you.’
He lifted the rifle sight to his eye and his order rang out as though it had to be heard above a chaotic skirmish, the noise of close engagement, dying men: ‘Fire!’
It was a scramble, shouting and pushing, confusion. Gadiel dashed from the room and hurled himself at Ernest, falling against him with such force that they both slapped back against the wall, letting out simultaneous grunts. Ernest managed to keep hold of the rifle but it slumped to his side; winded, he could not do anything but struggle for breath.
Dan darted from cover and rushed out into the corridor, his arms flailing and his eyes wide. He barged past the struggling men, the piles of furniture and the teetering bust, which was nodding vigorous encouragement; he heard nothing but the pounding of his fear, like the uneven heartbeat of the weary manor.
Feeling himself sinking under the weight of his younger, stronger assailant, Ernest grabbed between Gadiel’s legs, squeezing ruthlessly. Gadiel yelped, the surprise of the attack making his voice come hard and high. He pushed and Ernest fell heavily, crashing onto the floor with a stifled puff, ending up half sitting against the wall, his legs splayed, the rifle finally dropping from his grasp.
For a moment, Gadiel was nauseous, reeling, but he stumbled forwards, floundering along the corridor. Behind him, Ernest was already rising to his feet, he knew that; he breathed hard, clearing his head and gathering his strength. As he finally careered down the stairs, he heard the explosion of a long, furious battle cry.
‘Quersley! Quersley, man, can you hear me? Move out – move out! Head them off.’
And then another rifle shot, screeching through the thin air.
Twenty
Dan paused at the bottom of the stairs, not knowing where to go, bewildered. There was a moment of quiet. He stared into the greedy shadows of the disused wing but there was no sign of Ernest, not the slightest shudder of noise. The building looked exactly as it had always done, its inalienable composure settling around him, calming the panicked rhythm of his breathing. The battle with Ernest, the bursts of gunfire, seemed suddenly distant, or even imagined.
But, in an instant, Gadiel spewed from the stairway, flapping his arms in hurried warning. ‘Quick, Dan – he’s coming. He’s coming after us. Run!’
Immediately, there was a clatter on the stairs. It scattered them.
Dan set off after Gadiel but took a wrong turn, and found himself alone in the stale enclosure of an old dining room. He pushed through a heavy door into an intestinal succession of small rooms, each seeming smaller than the last; all bare except for odd strips of faded wallpaper. It felt like a conjuring trick with boxes. He paused, confused, ran on, turned back but thought he heard a noise and turned again, going on. He let the manor swallow him.
Gadiel slowed, dragging his hands along the wall to guide himself in the dim light. He did not want to run. He wanted to talk to Ernest; he wanted to explain about Ellie. She was not in danger, after all, or at least not the kind of danger that Ernest imagined. She did not need this extravagant rescue. He fingered a scratch on his face and felt the rise of bruises already on his arms and shins.
Oscar heard the squeak of one of the rusty casements opening. He gripped his shotgun and looked up, trying to find the place from which the noise had come but seeing only the syncopated rhythm of frames, blocked windows, imperfect stonework.
There was a whistle, shrill and brief.
‘Quersley,’ Ernest hissed. ‘Come on, man, quick. I think I’ve got one of them. I need you to co
me through so we can flush him out.’
Oscar found the head poked from a ground-floor window. He tried to hurry over but he was stiff from the strain of perfect readiness. He swayed, hobbling finally towards Ernest’s pale face.
‘Ellie isn’t here, then?’
‘Quersley, are you listening?’
Oscar tried to concentrate. ‘Yes, yes, of course. But if I leave the back door unguarded…’
‘Stop whittering, man – a bird in the hand, Quersley, a bird in the hand.’ Ernest flung his head sharply in the direction of the interior, an invitation. ‘Come on, come through. We’ve got him. Let’s make it count.’ Ernest’s head pounded from the struggle, his left arm throbbed and he felt a dull ache across his ribs and chest. The pain was extraordinary, exhilarating; it tugged sharply in his brain, re-igniting old desires and spurring him on.
Gadiel heard voices. They seemed to grumble around him, indistinct and subterranean, the old manor regurgitating the past. He paused, listening, straining to hear through the cloying half-light. He thought he caught something of Ernest’s low, urgent tone, a brittle confidence, but the sound dissipated too quickly; he could not work out from where it had come.
He was completely lost. He seemed to have found his way into an unvisited wing of Marlford: nothing was familiar, and there was no sign of Dan. The smallest of landmarks had been eroded, leaving only identical rooms and corridors, yards and yards of dark, indistinguishable oak panels and flagstoned floors. The house seemed intent on holding him.
He heard footsteps then, sharp and suddenly close. He started and, almost immediately – sooner than seemed possible – he caught sight of Ernest emerging purposefully through a doorway, his rifle held ready, his hunter’s eyes peering through the shadows.
Gadiel chose a door to his right and pushed quickly through it into a large, plain room. Light sank through a small, square window high in the far wall, reluctantly illuminating a flight of broad wooden stairs in one corner. They went nowhere, rising only as far as the ceiling, where they were cut off by a neat cornice, a later intervention. There was nothing else, no exit; just the unmistakeable slide of Ernest’s footsteps, like a long sigh, and the thump of Gadiel’s fear, loud now in his head, apparently filling the room.
Behind the staircase there was a dark recess, a forgotten nook. It would have to do as a place to hide. He took a deep breath, tasting dust, then he ducked and slid into the gap, pushing himself back into the angle between the walls, the stairs climbing above his head. Cobwebs were sticky in his hair and across his face; something crunched under his feet, droppings or bones. There was a smell like putrid cardboard.
Ernest was perplexed by the boy’s disappearance. He had caught a glimpse of him as he closed in – a blur of uneasy colour – but he had lost sight of him for just a moment and in that time Gadiel had vanished. The rooms seemed empty, the passage quiet. He flicked his hand to signal to Oscar coming up behind.
‘The bugger’s here somewhere,’ he hissed. ‘Flush him out. I’ll go forward.’ And he hurried on, his rifle raised, grinning with delight at the way things were turning out.
Two rooms opened up from where Oscar was standing: the poky one on his left contained a small, wooden trestle and a bucket; the room to his right had an odd staircase in it. He was about to go on in pursuit of Ernest when he realized how such a bizarre architectural remnant might act as a hiding place.
He stepped into the room as quietly as he could, holding the shotgun ready, easing himself level with the staircase, then edging forwards. The slightest suggestion of mauve cotton stained the unmoving shadows. Oscar smiled, satisfied, as though he had solved a complicated equation of some kind. ‘I can see you.’
Gadiel pushed back as far as he could, scraping the skin of his shoulder against the gritty stone behind him. He was surprised by the voice; he did not recognize it. He had expected Ernest, but this was someone he did not know and could not judge. His fear was suddenly sharp, slicing cold into his guts.
‘You’d better come out,’ Oscar said.
Gadiel found he was fixed, trembling.
‘You can’t get away. There’s no means of escape,’ Oscar pointed out. ‘And if you flee, I’ll shoot you.’
Gadiel shifted heavily. He tried to push back yet further against the wall; he spoke through the shadows, his voice fragile. ‘No – wait. I’m not… I haven’t really done anything. I can explain.’
Oscar thrust the gun towards the gap under the stairs. ‘You should come out.’ He did not like talking into a void in this way, as though the conversation might be imaginary. ‘Come out. Surrender yourself to my custody and I’ll not be forced to shoot you. That would suit us both. Mr Barton can deal with you in due course – not leniently, I’m sure, but then you don’t deserve leniency. What you’ve done here at Marlford is despicable. But I’ll take you to him and you can plead your case directly.’
‘Can’t you just let me go?’
‘Let you go? Of course I can’t let you go.’ Oscar huffed. ‘Just come out and accompany me quietly. Look, I have to get on; I have to chase the other one down.’
Gadiel crept from his hiding place. ‘You can’t just shoot us.’ He had his hands in front of him, raised in surrender.
‘I have my orders.’
‘But, really, think about it. What have we done? You’re being unfair.’
Oscar flinched at the accusation. His voice stiffened. ‘Just come with me.’
‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you. I don’t trust you.’
Oscar pointed the shotgun at him for the first time. ‘I can shoot you.’ He was matter of fact.
Gadiel backed into the stairs, instinctively pulling his arms across his body for protection, stubbing his heels against the bottom step with a thud. The desperation was hard in Oscar’s eyes. This was something other than Barton’s flailing distress, something more terrible.
Gadiel steadied himself. ‘Wait! Don’t shoot – really – just wait.’ He tried to see his opponent clearly in the unsettled light. Oscar’s face had an odd sallowness to it, his lips bulged unnaturally, his hands were rigid on the gun. ‘You see, I think you’ve got it wrong about Ellie. It’s not the way you think. And even the squat – I mean, we’re not doing any harm. Not really.’ Gadiel realized he was speaking too quickly. He gulped a breath. ‘Look, you’re standing there with the gun, trying to scare me. I see that. But I won’t run off, I promise. Let’s just talk things through.’
He took a step forwards. Oscar let out some kind of noise, a strangled scream, and slung the gun anxiously towards him. Gadiel raised his hands again quickly and felt his heart bump. They examined each other’s fear.
‘Stay where you are.’ Oscar strained to keep his voice steady. ‘I want this business accomplished cleanly.’ He made his words come crisp and properly, by an act of will that drained the remains of any colour from his face. ‘Since you’ve taken Miss Barton hostage—’
‘What? No – no way!’
Oscar blinked, confused. He took a moment to reply. ‘You don’t have her?’
‘Of course we don’t have her. What do you think we are?’ Gadiel tossed an angry gesture towards the shotgun and stalked away across the room. With the extra distance between them, in the indefinite light, Oscar’s anxieties seemed less clearly etched on his face, soft-edged and deceptive.
‘I was told she’d been taken. I was told you had her held captive,’ Oscar persisted.
Gadiel shook his head. ‘Why on earth would we do that? We like Ellie. I like Ellie. You can come with me and search the squat if you like, but she’s not there – there’s just a pile of dirty underwear and some stale bread.’
‘But she’s not at home. Mr Barton is certain she’s nowhere to be found.’
Gadiel sighed quietly. He felt his fear leak away, dissipating into the gloom of the house. ‘Look, perhaps she just went away somewhere. Of her own accord,’ he suggested, as gently as he could. ‘Perhaps she wanted to try something different.�
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He was taken aback for a moment by the expression on Oscar’s face.
‘Look – really, don’t worry. Don’t worry about Ellie,’ Gadiel said. ‘Why don’t you put your gun down? Hold it away from me, right away from me, and I’ll try to help you. I promise.’
Oscar still clung to his weapon. ‘I’m not falling for that. What you’re proposing. It’s a trick, a confidence trick. Nothing more. I see that. You can’t trick me, boy.’
‘No – I’m not trying to trick you. I’m trying to help you. Come on – if you’re worried about Ellie—’
‘Miss Barton is none of your business.’ Oscar turned on him so fiercely that Gadiel jumped back. ‘She’s gone. Don’t you see that? Don’t you understand what that means? If she’s gone… if she’s thrown herself upon the world in all its viciousness…’
‘She’s only in the van,’ Gadiel said, wearily. ‘Parked in the yard. She’s fine. Or she was when I saw her.’
Oscar stared. ‘In the van? What on earth is she doing in the van?’
‘She was with Dan.’
The shotgun was already dipping away, as though its weight was too much.
‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean?’ Gadiel felt a riptide of sudden anger, at Oscar Quersley with his ridiculous gun; at Dan, at the whole grubby seduction – it seemed to tug him from his feet. ‘What do you think? Do I have to spell it out for you? Come on, I’ve told you – she was with Dan. With him.’
Oscar slumped; the gun finally fell to the floor. Gadiel saw that he understood.
‘But I agreed to help him,’ Oscar was saying. ‘It was a mutual bargain, honourably sealed. There are ties that cannot be broken, old loyalties… you wouldn’t understand. I can’t go back on my word.’
Gadiel was surprised by the unstudied passion of the words. He found he could not answer them.
He looked at Oscar, unsure for a moment, then he kicked hard at the shotgun so that it slid over the floor, away from both of them, and fled. He had a sense of Oscar crouching behind him, his head in his hands.
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