Bagley, Desmond - The Freedom Trap

by The Freedom Trap

  Nothing did, so with a sigh of relief I lowered him to the floor. The first thing I did was to go for his gun. It was a neat flat automatic with nine rounds in the magazine but nothing in the chamber. I had been right; the man was an amateur, after all! To carry a gun with nothing up the spout is to carry a piece of junk metal. What's the use of a gun which can't be fired at a split second's notice?

  I put back the magazine, worked the action to jump a round into the breech, saw the gun was on safety, and put it into my pocket. And all the time I was talking aloud. The guard outside must not hear dead silence.

  I stripped off Fatface's jacket and took off the shoulder holster he wore. Then I trussed him like a fowl, using the strips of sheeting I had prepared, and not forgetting to stuff his mouth with a gag. He was breathing heavily through his mouth and I wondered for a moment if the gag would suffocate him, but he began to breathe through his nose rather noisily and I knew I hadn't hit him too hard. Apart from the moral aspect of murder I wanted him alive. I had a use for him.

  Swiftly, I went through the pockets of his jacket. There was a wallet, which, when flicked open briefly, displayed the edges of many bank notes. That was very good -- I'd need money. I didn't investigate it further, but stowed it away, together with a small notebook I found, and got on with the search. I found a handful of loose change which went into my pocket and a couple of spare magazines for the pistol, also well worth confiscating. Everything else I left, except for a penknife and a fountain pen, both of which could prove handy to have.

  Then I went about the next part of the plan. I tossed the mattress on to the floor just by the door and ripped open the ticking, using Fatface's useful penknife. There was a lot of beautifully inflammable cotton wadding which I piled in a heap ready for the conflagration, and I set the bottles of brandy and Drambuie close to hand.

  Then I turned my attention to Fatface who was just coming round. He stirred -- a little and a heavy snoring noise came from his nose which would have been a groan if he hadn't been gagged. I went into the bathroom, filled the tooth glass with cold water, went back and dumped the lot on his face. He snorted again and his eyes flickered open.

  It must have been quite a shock for him to see the muzzle of his own gun held not a foot from his head. I waited until full comprehension came to him, then said casually, 'If you think there isn't one up the spout, you're wrong. If I want to blow your brains out all I have to do is pull the trigger.'

  He flinched and arched his neck, trying to pull his head away, while muffled noises came from behind the gag. 'Take it easy,' I counselled. 'That way you won't get hurt." I could see the muscles of his arms working as he tested the bindings on his wrists which were pinioned behind his back. When he had finished struggling, I said, 'I'm going out of here -- and you are going to help me. You can help voluntarily or involuntarily; take your pick. I have to warn you that one mistaken move on your part might mean your death. You'll be in the middle and if any shooting starts you'll probably stop a bullet.'

  I didn't wait to see his reaction to that -- it didn't really matter -- but took the raincoat and hat and put them on, and checked the pockets to see if I had everything. Then I doused the mattress wadding with the spirits, pouring liberally until the room smelled like a distillery.

  I returned to Fatface and cut his ankles free. 'Get up -slowly!'

  He staggered to his feet, hampered by the bonds on his arms. He stood quite passively just looking at me, and I could read no expression in his eyes. I jerked the gun. 'Walk forward to the door and stop a yard in front of it. I wouldn't kick it, though; that could be fatal.'

  He shuffled forward obediently, and I took his jacket and draped it across his shoulders so that the empty sleeves hung loose. Apart from the gag and the lack of hands he looked quite normal -- normal enough to give me a fraction of a second's advantage when that door opened. The trick is to keep the opposition off balance, and the guard would have other things to do with his eyes just at that moment.

  I struck a match and dropped it on the pile of wadding, and blue flames ran over the surface. It wasn't much of a fire but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I kept an eye on it until the first yellow flames appeared, then pressed the bell-push -- the signal that Fatface wanted to be let out.

  When the lock snapped I was right behind him, prodding him with the pistol to make sure he understood the spot he was in. The door swung open and I pushed him forward, the flat of my hand in the middle of his back, and yelled at the top of my voice. 'Fire!'

  I followed up fast as he staggered into the corridor and, over his shoulder, saw the startled face of the guard who was slow in reacting. He had some kind of a weapon in his hand, but he dithered as he saw Fatface lurch towards him and the flickering glow of the flames from the room. With the opening of the door a draught had swept into the bedroom and the fire really got going. I don't think the guard saw me at all.

  I gave Fatface another mighty push so that he collided heavily with the guard and they both went down in a tangled heap. A gun went off and someone screamed; it must have been the guard because Fatface had a gag in his mouth.

  I jumped over the sprawl of wriggling bodies and ran down the corridor, the pistol in my hand with the safety catch off. The corridor was wood-panelled with doors on either side which I ignored. At the end was a stair landing with stairs going both up and down. I went up. I had made my decision on that one the previous evening. It's a curious thing, but people escaping from a house always try to get immediately to the ground floor -- which is why they're usually caught. I suppose it's an instinctive reaction, but the department that trained me worked hard to eradicate it.

  The floor above was not so fancy -- no wood-panelled walls -- so I figured I was in the servants' quarters, which meant I had to look out for Taafe, if he was that kind of servant, which I doubted. I moved fast, trying to make no noise, and heard an increasing uproar from downstairs. It was becoming too dangerous to stay in the corridors so I ducked into the nearest room-gun first.

  It was empty of occupants, thank God, and I'd done it just in time because someone ran down the corridor with a heavy thumping tread. I shot the bolt and crossed to the window and found I was on the other side of the house away from the courtyard. For the first time I could see the surrounding country and it was very pleasant to view-rolling fields and areas of woodland with blue-green mountains beyond. About half a mile away a car sped along a road. There lay freedom.

  For over a year and a half I had seen nothing but stone walls and my eyes had focused on nothing further away than a few yards. This glimpse of countryside caused a sudden lump to come to my throat and my heart thumped in my chest. It didn't matter that dark clouds were lowering and that a sudden shift of wind sent a spatter of raindrops against the window. Out there I would be free and nobody was going to stop me.

  I returned to the door and listened. There was a slice of chaos downstairs and it seemed that the fire I had started had got out of hand. I unbolted the door and opened it a crack, to hear Fat face shout, 'To hell with the fire -- I want Rearden. Taafe, get downstairs to the front door; Dillon, you take the back door. The rest of us will search the house.'

  A deep voice said, 'He's not upstairs. I've just come down.'

  'All right,' said Fatface impatiently. "That leaves just this floor. Taafe was at the bottom of the stairs and didn't see him. Get moving.'

  Someone else said, 'Mother of God, will you look at it! It'll burn the house down.'

  'Let it burn. We're done for here, anyway, if Rearden escapes.'

  I stepped out into the corridor and hastened away from the staircase and, turning a corner, came upon the back stairs. I trotted down quickly, depending on speed to get to the ground floor before the searchers spread out. And I made it, too, only to find the back door wide open and a man standing before it. That would be Dillon.

  Fortunately, he was not looking in my direction as I came down the back stairs, but was staring up the wide passa
ge which led to the front of the house. I oozed my way into a side passage and out of his line of sight and then let out my breath inaudibly. No doubt I could have overcome Dillon, but not without noise, and noise would have brought the lot on top of me.

  The first door I opened led into a broom closet -- useless because it had no window. But the second door led into a well-stocked larder and there was a sash window. I closed the door gently and tackled the window which evidently hadn't been opened for years because it was very tight. As I forced it open it groaned and rattled alarmingly and I stopped to see if Dillon had heard it. But there was no sound apart from a few heavy thumps upstairs.

  I attacked the window again and got it open at last, a mere nine inches or so, but enough to take me. I went through head first and landed in a bed of nettles, but fortunately screened from the back door by a large water-butt. As I rubbed my stinging hands I looked about and felt a bit depressed as I noted the high stone wall which seemed to encircle the house. The only gate within view was directly opposite the open back door and if I tried to leave that way Dillon would certainly spot me.

  A trickle of water ran down my neck. It was beginning to rain really hard, which was in my favour. The wind was strong and blowing sheets of rain across the kitchen garden. If I could get into the open countryside I stood a chance of getting clean away because the low visibility was in my favour. But it wasn't as low as that -- Dillon could certainly see from the back door to the garden gate.

  The water-butt wasn't going to collect much rain; it was rotten and useless, and a stave had come away from the hoops. I picked it up and hefted it thoughtfully. No one, least of all Dillon, would expect me to go back into the house, and one of the major arts of warfare is the attack from the unexpected direction. I grasped the stave in both hands, sidled up to the back door, and then stepped through boldly.

  Dillon heard me coming and must have noticed the dimming of the light as I blocked the entrance. But he was very slow in turning his head. 'Found him?' he asked, and then his eyes widened as he saw who it was. He didn't have time to do much about it because I swung the stave at him and caught him on the side of the head. His head was harder than the stave which, rotten as it was, splintered in two -- but it was hard enough to lay Dillon out.

  Even as he fell I turned and ran for the gate, dropping the remnant of the stave as I went. The gate wasn't locked and within seconds I was through and walking in a dampish country lane. That wasn't good enough because it was too open, so I ran to the left until I found a gate leading into a field, over which I jumped and then sheltered in the lee of a hedgerow.

  Rain dripped on to my face from the brim of my hat as I looked across the field, trying to remember the layout of the land as I had seen it from that upstairs window. If I went across that field I would come to a wood beyond which was the road I had seen. I set off at a brisk pace and didn't look back.

  Only when I was sheltered in the wood did I stop to check on my tracks. There was no sign of pursuit and, over the house, I thought I saw an eddying streamer of black smoke, although I could have been wrong because of the wind-driven rain.

  I reached the other side of the wood and left by a gate and came out on to the road. But before I got to the gate I heard again the light clip-clip of hooves, together with a clinking sound and that pleasant fluting whistle. I opened the gate and looked up the road. A flat cart was just passing, drawn by a donkey, and a man was sitting holding the reins and whistling like a blackbird. A couple of cans which might have held milk clinked behind him on the cart.

  I watched it go and tried to figure out which country I was in. The donkey cart looked as though it could be Spanish but, surely to God, it never rained like this in Spain except, maybe, in the plain. I watched the cart recede into the distance and found I couldn't even tell which side of the road he was supposed to be on because he drove dead centre.

  I turned and looked up the road the other way. In the distance I could see an approaching bus and, on the other side, a man was waiting by a bus stop. I noted that the bus was coming up on the left of the road so it was pretty certain I was still in England. I was surer of it still when I crossed the road and the man turned a shining red countryman's face towards me, and said,' Tis a grand, soft morning.'

  I nodded, and the rain dripped from the brim of my hat. 'Yes.'

  Then my self-confidence received a sudden jolt because when I looked up at the sign above my head I found it was written in two languages, English and another, and the second wasn't even in Roman script but in some weird characters I had never seen before, although they were vaguely familiar.

  The bus was coming along the road very slowly. From where I was standing I could see the roof and the top story of the house, from which a column of black smoke was rising. I switched my gaze back to the bus and wished the bloody thing would get a move on. I felt terribly vulnerable.

  On impulse I put my hand into my pocket and fished out some of the loose change I had looted from Fatface. The first coin I examined was apparently a penny, but certainly not an English one. It depicted a hen and chickens and underneath was a single word in that odd script -- a word I couldn't even read. I turned the coin over in my fingers and nearly dropped it in surprise.

  On this side was a harp and the inscription in the strange script, but this time it was readable. It said: 'Eke-1964".

  My God, I was in Ireland.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The bus drew up and because I was now screened from the house, some of the tension left me. However, so preoccupied had I been with my discovery, I had neglected to look at the destination board of the bus. Damn silly omissions of that kind can be the death of one, and I felt a bit of a fool as I sat down. I took Fatface's wallet from my breast pocket and riffled through the bank notes. Most of them were British Bank of England fivers but there were some Irish pound notes, so I took one of those as I didn't know if British currency was acceptable in Ireland.

  The conductor came up and I held out a pound note. 'All the way,' I said casually.

  'Right you are,' he said. 'That'll be two-and-tuppence.' He gave me the ticket and counted the change into my hand. I hung on to it until he had moved away and then examined it. It was interesting to see that half the coinage was British, go it seemed as though all the currency in Fatface's wallet would be readily negotiable.

  So here I was, going 'all the way' and with not a notion in my head about where I was going. It was bloody ridiculous! I looked at the passing scene and found nothing to tell me where the devil I was. Ireland! What did I know about Ireland?

  The answer came without much thought -- practically nothing •! Ireland was a page in the atlas I hadn't bothered to study, and Irishmen were comic characters given to fighting. There were also vague ideas of revolution and civil war -- the Black and Tans and armed insurrection -- but that had been a long time ago, although I had read of recent trouble in Northern Ireland.

  The bus stopped to take on passengers and before it started again a fire engine went by with a clanging bell, going the other way at a hell of a clip. Necks were craned to follow its passage and I smiled. During my getaway a gun had gone off and someone had screamed, so there was probably someone in the house with a gunshot wound, a circumstance which Fatface might have difficulty in explaining away.

  The bus trundled on, going God knows where. We passed a place called Cratloe which didn't sound particularly Irish, but there was a sign pointing the other way to Bunratty, which did. A big jet came over -- a commercial air liner, not a military job -- and circled widely, losing altitude and obviously intending to land somewhere nearby. From nowhere a name clicked in my mind -- Shannon Airport. That was the Irish international airport, but I hadn't a clue where in Ireland it was.

  I mentally added an item to the list of things urgently required -- maps.

  We pressed on and the sun came out, shining through the rain to make a rainbow. There were more houses here, and a racecourse -- and then a magic word -- Limerick.
So that's where I was! It didn't make a great deal of difference; all I knew of Limerick was the one about the girl from Khartoum. But it was a big, busy city and that was something to be thankful for; I could get lost in a town of this size.

  I got off the bus before it reached the centre of town and the conductor looked at me in a puzzled way -- but that might have been my imagination. The reason I dropped off was that I had seen a biggish bookshop which could give me what I wanted most of all -- information. I walked back the hundred yards to the shop and went inside, drifting casually from counter to counter until I found what I wanted.

  It was there in plenty. There were a score of guidebooks to choose from, and any number of maps from folded sheets to bound volumes. I disregarded, the antiquarian and literary guides and settled for a closely printed compendium of information. I also bought a single sheet motoring map which would fold for the pocket, a writing pad, a packet of envelopes and a newspaper, paying with one of Fatface's fivers. I took this booty into a tea-shop next door and settled to examine it over a pot of weak tea and a few stale buns -- it was that kind of tea-shop.

  The map told me that Limerick was at the head of the Shannon estuary and, as I had suspected, not very far from Shannon Airport. The house from which I had escaped was to the north of Limerick, somewhere between Sixmilebridge and Cratloe, very handily placed for Fatface and his crew, a mere fifteen minutes' drive from the airport.

  I poured another cup of lukewarm tea and opened the newspaper to find that Slade and Rearden were still very much in the news and even on the front page, but that might have been because Detective-Inspector Brunskill had arrived in Dublin, which would make for local interest. There was a photograph showing him getting off the aircraft and when questioned about what he expected to find, he said, tight-lipped, 'No comment.' Detective-Inspector Forbes was just back in London from Brussels where he reported, 'No joy!'

  Of course, Slade made the running in the newspaper much more than I did; a spy has more glamour than a jewel thief. But, from the way Brunskill and Forbes were running around, I wasn't being neglected. Those two had been picked because they could identify me by sight, and it seemed they had a lot of travelling still to do because Rearden had been seen in the Isle of Man, Jersey, the Cote d'Azure, Ostend, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Regent Street, Bergen and Middle Wallop. I wondered if Detective-Sergeant Jervis was just as busy.