by L. P. Davies
“So you’re determined you’re going to spend the night alone with a strange woman in a strange house,” Louise observed. “Don’t you mind, Axel?”
He turned to stare at her. “Mind?”
“I meant that as a joke.” She laughed nervously. “Not a very good one. I was going to say something funny—something meant to be funny—about losing your reputation.”
Axel smiled sideways. “And then you remembered I haven’t got a reputation to lose. Not according to the way you’ve worked things out. It’s all right, Louise. I won’t forget I’m a married man. Even though my wife seems to have forgotten she’s a married woman.”
Apart from a small light over the front door, the Swan, when they reached Littledene, was in darkness, the evening customers seemingly all gone.
Axel climbed out of the car. “I’ll get the luggage and settle up with Bert. Your things are ready?”
“In my room. Bert will get them for you. I’ll open the boot.”
“I was beginning to think something must have happened to you,” Bert said, switching on the lounge light. “The lass said you’d be back before this.”
And, as Axel settled both bills with notes taken from his wallet, yet another comment about that money, another small raising of eyebrows. “My—it’s some time since I last saw one of these, Mr. Carter. Been saving them up?” Bert’s heavy-lidded wink was wisdom itself. “Doesn’t do to let the income tax know too much.” He receipted the bills. “We’re real sorry you’re both leaving us. I’ll slip up and get the young lady’s bags.”
Axel followed him into the hall. Bert went up the narrow, awkward staircase two steps at a time.
Outside, a woman screamed, loudly, shrilly. Louise’s voice —it could only be Louise.
Axel turned and ran. Darkness was momentarily blinding. Then he could see clearly enough. A large, dark-coloured saloon was drawn up in front of Louise’s car. A man stood by one of its open doors. Another man, tall like the first, dark-coated and hatted, had the girl by the arm and was trying to drag her towards the waiting car.
Axel raced towards them, the pent-up emotions of the last two days bursting inside him, exploding into blind, senseless fury. He shouted his rage aloud. The man turned, letting go of the girl’s arm. Axel swung at him with clenched fist, a wild blow that did nothing but graze a black shoulder. The man struck back as he turned to go, his blow equally wild, effective more through luck than anything else, striking Axel’s chest with enough force to knock him sideways. Reeling, he stumbled and fell to his knees. Then the big saloon was roaring away, door swinging, and it was all over.
Bert, a suitcase in each hand, brief case under his arm, was seconds too late on the scene to see anything of what had happened. Alarm had roughened his usually gentle voice.
“What the devil’s going on out here?” he demanded.
“It’s all right.” Axel came to his feet, dusting his knees.
If the girl had lost any of her self-possession during the incident, she had recovered it now.
“A storm in a tea-cup,” said she with admirable aplomb. “I looked round and there was this man. He startled me and I screamed. Axel came running. Between my scream and Axel’s shouting we scared him away. If he was a potential customer for a room. I’m sorry, Bert.”
“Axel,” the landlord said. “I thought it was Arnold.” He stowed the luggage in the boot, closed it, straightened, rubbing his hands together. “I’m not asking any questions. Whatever it is that’s going on is none of my concern. You two are all right in my book, and that’s all I’m worried about. But if you do feel you need any help—” Embarrassed, he looked down at his feet.
“Well remember that,” Louise said gravely. “Thank you, Bert.”
“Em afraid I didn’t make much of a showing,” Axel said soberly as they drove away. “At least it gives you something else to add to your list. Em not accustomed to using my fists.”
“I don’t think your opponent was either.” Louise smiled as she reached up to adjust the mirror. “You might keep your eye on this. Axel, just to make sure we’re not followed.”
“What happened?”
“That car drew up just as I was going in to have a last word with Bert. The man got out and beckoned to me. I thought he wanted to ask the way. He grabbed my arm and started tugging me towards the car. He was too strong for me, so I did what any damsel in distress would have done. I screamed blue murder.”
“What was he like?”
“I didn’t have a chance to get a really good look at him. But I think Ed know him again. The other one, the man in the car—he was just a shadow.”
Axel leaned back. “Why you?” he brooded.
“Because I was there,” she said simply, “and you weren’t.”
“No.” He kept his eyes on the mirror. “That wasn’t it. When I did show up, they turned and ran. Two of them and only one of me. If they’d wanted me, they could easily have taken me. No, it was you they were after, not me. And they were amateurs, not professionals. Otherwise, they’d have been armed.”
Louise glanced at him, delicate brows raised. “And all figured out by a man who had to have someone else to do his thinking for him.”
His mind was less hazy. Axel discovered with satisfaction; he was able to think more clearly. And that would be because the effect of the drug was at last beginning to wear off.
“They wanted you,” he said, certain that that was how it must have been. “But in God’s name, why?”
She had the answer. “To get me away from you. Because they’re afraid I might undo their handiwork, put a spoke in their nasty wheel. I’m an interfering female.” She leaned forward, narrowing her eyes to peer along the tunnel of brilliance cast by the headlights. “There’s a turning somewhere along here. Ah—”
She took the corner without reducing speed, Axel having to clutch at the door grip to save himself from being flung against her.
“They didn’t want you,” the girl continued placidly, “because you’re all right as you are. You’re doing what they want you to do. They changed your mind, altered your face and they sent you out into the world. For some reason of their own. But what?”
“I wasn’t sent out,” Axel said stonily. “I escaped.”
“No. We’ve had this before, Axel. They only want you to believe you escaped. Don’t you see, you couldn’t have escaped from a place that doesn’t exist.”
He turned his back on her to look through the window at the darkness outside.
A few minutes later the car swung off the lane onto the loose gravel of a drive. The house was a black, shapeless mass against a starry sky.
“Green Ladies,” Louise said unnecessarily, taking a key from her handbag as Axel, carrying the cases, followed her up a short flight of stone steps. She turned from unlocking the door to point. “Compton Basset is over that way, in a hollow. Two cottages, a stream and a farm. About as rural as one could get.”
And in the golden hall with a curved ceiling, two pseudomarble statues and a wide staircase: “Make yourself at home while I go and explore the nether regions.”
He went into one of the rooms on the right. A large room, he judged, by suburban standards, small compared with those to which he was accustomed. A study perhaps, or a library. He tried one of those on the other side of the hall. Rose-shaded lights; pale gold and pink walls. Thin-legged gilt chairs with tapestry backs; couches too frail and delicate to take any weight. A pink telephone stood on a cobweb-fragile table in the window alcove. He picked it up and held it to his ear.
“So this is where you are,” Louise said from the door, busy with the silken tapes of a floral chiffon apron that was more frothy frill than utilitarian coverage. “What are you doing? Oh”—as he replaced the receiver—“checking. It hasn’t been cut off?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s alive.”
About to go, she hesitated, one hand on the door, the other smoothing down her apron. “It just occurred to me, Axel. Tomorrow—ho
w do I go about finding out about that firm, Mosaic? I mean, I suppose there must be registers or directories of firms, but where will I find them?”
Axel pondered. “I’m not sure, Louise.”
She was surprised. “I would have thought a man in your position would have known all about that sort of thing.”
“A man in my position,” he retorted shortly, “has people to do that sort of thing for him.”
“I suppose so—” She met his eyes. “I’m sorry, Axel. That wasn’t intended as another attempt at undermining. It was genuine enough. I think you really are something high up in the business world. No, I really felt sure you’d be able to tell me where to look. I suppose I could think up some excuse to get inside the place itself. And once inside—”
“No!” he broke in vehemently.
“Don’t snap my head off.” She frowned. “Why shouldn’t I try my luck in Bridford?”
“I could give you a dozen reasons. One will be sufficient. Because we don’t know anything about the firm, other than that I have the feeling they may be connected in some way with what has happened to me.”
“I get it.” Her face cleared. “Instead of them having to send their strong-arm men out here again in another attempt to kidnap me, I’d be going to them and handing myself over. Is that it?”
“I can’t afford to trust anyone,” Axel said grimly.
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid I might do a Carla on you and dope your supper.”
“Do a Carla?” Then he saw that she wasn’t serious, that she was smiling. “I’ve trusted you so far,” he told her stiffly.
“So you have.” Her smile became fixed. “We’ll eat in the kitchen; it’s more cosy there.”
He followed her back into the hall. She stopped, drawn by the open door on the other side, by the sight of the bookcases within.
She went into the room. Axel watched from the door as, finger extended, she made her way slowly along the shelves.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“Atlas, gazeteer—something like that. Ah, better still.” She took out a slim yellow volume. “This year’s.” She flicked through the pages, came over to him to set the open book in his hands.
“The AA Handbook, Axel. It lists all but the very smallest places.”
He ran his eyes down the page. Grenfelle should have been between Grendon Underwood and Greta Bridge. There had to be some reason why it wasn’t. Then the answer came to him and he riffled through the pages.
“What now?” the girl asked, watching his face.
“London suburbs are listed under London.”
“London—?” she echoed incredulously. Her tone made him look up before he had found the right page.
“Axel—” She bit her lip. “Your Grenfelle—just where is it?”
“You know where it is,” he said sharply.
“No, I mean in relation to London?”
Lie was infinitely patient with her. “It’s one of the southern suburbs. It takes about fifteen minutes to drive to the city centre.”
“Where are we now?” Louise selected a direction and pointed. “Norwich lies over that way. It can’t be more than twenty miles from here. It takes me less than half an hour to drive there, taking it steady. And Norwich is north of London and must be well over a hundred miles away.”
Axel closed the handbook.
“Another piece of the puzzle,” she mused. “They picked Bridford because it bears some resemblance to Grenfelle. They brought you here, doped probably, and put you in a mock-up of your own home, waited for you to come round, then—” She broke off as another thought came to her. “But is there such a place as Grenfelle, anyway?”
Taking the volume from his unresisting fingers she found another page, checked, looked up. “No, not here.” Disappointed, she closed the book. “So that’s not it.”
Perhaps a place too small to be listed, Axel told himself, looking at the book in her hands, seeing it upside down—an emblem, the title and—
He snatched it from her, turning it right way round.
“What’s the matter?” She stared up into his face. Her voice rose. “What is it, Axel?”
The feeling of emptiness, nothingness, was back, more intense than ever before. He fought the terrifying sensation, not aware of the girl’s hand on his arm, shaking it, of her voice, vibrant with alarm and concern, shouting—
The spasm passed. He took a deep breath, became conscious of her grip, painful on his elbow. Pride helped him fight and win one more small battle with himself, enabling him to speak steadily, almost calmly.
“Not a day lost,” he said. “Not just twenty-four hours. I’ve lost more than that. When I sat at my desk to start that letter to Norville it was August eighth.” He paused. “Nineteen sixty-nine.”
He held up the handbook for her to see—not that there could be any need—to see for herself the year printed under the title. 1979.
“Not a day lost,” Axel said. “Ten years.”
7
Drifting shadows, formless shapes, voices. The empty feeling of utter impotence, of being part of some hideous charade, of being a puppet moving at the dictates of others. Whiteness that came pressing in on him, stifling, suffocating. And then the terror, the blind, senseless, screaming terror.
Axel woke from the nightmare with the sound of his own voice filling the darkened room. His shouting had been loud enough to wake Louise, bringing her from her room to his, switching on the light as she came towards the bed, eyes dew-heavy with disturbed sleep, a dark-blue dressing gown over pale-blue semi-transparency. Blue … Carla’s colour. And Carla’s voice still here, part of the nightmare memory.
He struggled up against the pillows. Louise bent over him, face drawn with concern. “Your forehead’s damp.” She used a scrap of linen taken from her dressing-gown pocket. “A nightmare?”
“The same one again.” He could smell her perfume as she bent over him.
“Tell me about it, Axel.” She put the handkerchief away.
“It was only a dream.” He didn’t want to live it again. “I’ve already told you about it.”
“Tell me again, while it’s still fresh. It could mean something. I think it does.”
It was fading fast, but there was still enough of it left for him to find details that had escaped in the other times of remembering.
“It seems to be in two parts,” he said slowly. “First, there’s a greyness and the feeling that something evil is going to happen. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s something beyond my control. I know it’s coming, but I’m powerless to prevent it. I hear a man’s voice—a strange voice—telling me that I’m going to kill. Then it says something else, the same words over and over again. I don’t know what they are. Then the gap comes. There’s no way of telling how long it lasts. In the dream it seems ages, even though I still seem to be in the same place. The greyness brightens until everything I look at is white, white walls, white ceiling. I hear Carla’s voice—I know it’s hers—asking me what I’m going to do. Then the whiteness starts pressing in on me. I shout back at Carla that I’m going to kill. That’s when I always wake up.”
“Always … You’ve had the same dream a lot of times, Axel?”
He tried to think. “Three times at least; three times that I can remember. But when it came the first time, at Barkley House, I knew what was going to happen as soon as it started. Which meant I must have had it before.”
“Or else that it had really happened,” the girl said. “A room with white walls … Perhaps some kind of laboratory. A man’s voice tells you that you are going to kill. Then it repeats something else several times …” Her expression changed. “Axel, try to remember what it was the voice kept saying. It could be very important.”
His head ached, his throat was dry, some of the nightmare fear still clung to him.
“It’s gone even before I wake up,” he told her. And: “Why should it be that important?”
“A trigger,” s
he said. “A trigger phrase. Do you know what that is, Axel?”
It seemed he had heard the expression somewhere before. It was connected with—
“We had a guest staying with us on St. Anatole,” Louise said. “A doctor, one who used hypnosis in some of his treatments. He gave us a demonstration of post-hypnotic suggestion—a music-hall act he called it. He used another of the guests as subject. He hypnotised him, then gave instructions that as soon as the subject heard the phrase—what was it?— ‘I wonder what the time is’—he would immediately go over to the clock and turn it round to face the wall. And that’s what happened. Someone, Uncle Vince, I think, used the trigger expression, oh—hours later. And the subject—who had remembered nothing of what had happened while he was under hypnosis—went and turned the clock round. And then had no idea why he’d done such a stupid thing.”
“You think that’s what has been done to me?”
“I’m only guessing, Axel, but it all fits. You were taken to some kind of laboratory and hypnotised. You were given the command to kill—we don’t know who—the moment a certain sequence of words is used in your hearing. Then, before waking you up, you were told to forget all about it. Your conscious mind obeyed. But not your subconscious, the part of your mind that causes dreams. That’s helped you remember something about the place where they took you. It’s remembered the command for you, but not the trigger phrase.”
“A murderer,” Axel said stonily. “I’ll hear someone say something and I’ll turn into a killer. Is that what you’re saying?” He lifted his hands from the counterpane. “What do I kill with—my bare hands?”
“You’re forgetting the gun,” Louise said. “Your gun, cleaned and loaded and put ready to hand. You were intended to bring it away with you. You didn’t, so, if I’m right, they’ll have to find some way of getting it, or another gun, into your hands.”