The Flowers of the Forest

by Joseph Hone

  Finally she turned, her face untroubled, full of adult calm, no longer a child waiting for a story at all, but a woman who’d heard most stories in the world. She looked at me doubtfully for a moment – fully dressed the other side of the compartment, wondering where to put the rubbish-filled shopping bag. Then she smiled – a smile no longer hidden behind her formal nose, but the full smile of someone perfectly content in all her admissions at last.

  ‘We can love each other in our separate ways, then, can’t we?’ she said.

  And we did.

  *

  Morning came, after we’d left Glasgow and crossed into the Scottish country, an early mist beginning to clear, giving way to a pale blue sky, but the day without any heat in it yet, as we climbed away into the highlands of Perthshire, up through the dewy green fields dotted with cows, lying down or standing quite still in the fresh light, producing a first cud, like black-and-white models in a child’s farm.

  Rachel had woken during an early stop, at some station before Glasgow, below me in her own bunk then, and had said something I couldn’t hear, so that I’d leaned over and looked down on her.

  ‘What?’

  She looked up at me, half-asleep, hair spilled over the pillow, just her hands peeking out above the sheet.

  ‘It’s cold.’ She pulled the sheet up further, to just beneath her nose, so that only her eyes smiled, the first fruits of them that slept …

  ‘It’s the frozen north,’ I said. Temperature drops out of sight in these parts. Very few people ever live to tell the tale.’ We need to tease each other more than we know, and love may come to depend on it.

  I’d climbed down then and held her for a minute, that sweet warmth smelling of plums with me again, the sense of other mornings alive once more as a porter clattered a trolley in the half light beyond our curtained windows: the world in balance, time stopped, held between day and night for a moment, between travel and conclusion, briefly spellbound.

  ‘Do you remember the story?’ Rachel said. ‘I forget the name of it, we used to have it as children, about the dragon that went into a big wood to look for the stars – or was it the source of a river? – to find something important anyway – and came to an extraordinary country the other side of the forest, full of crystal lakes that you could see right down to the bottom of, and valleys made of great shafts of glittering marble, full of unbelievable trees and flowers, where it was always moonlight and there was no sun and the dragon used his fiery breath as a torch to guide him when he came to caves, even more strange, with stalactites and stalagmites, going down into the earth. Do you remember?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘You must. Susan read it to us – next the old wireless in the drawing room and we had to stop because of the news and “the Allies have taken Rome”, we heard.’

  ‘It sounds like part of Journey to the Centre of the Earth to me.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. I can’t even remember the name of it – and I’ve never seen the book at home again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I wondered if I’d dreamt it.’

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘No. As a child– a dream so strong I’ve remembered it as a book.’

  ‘Perhaps. But why?’

  ‘Because in the book, or the dream, there were never any other animals or people. The dragon was always alone, all fiery and upset.’

  ‘He doesn’t find what he’s looking for?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. That’s why he’s upset, I suppose.’

  ‘Hardly a child’s book, then. They always end happily. More like a child’s dream. Your dream.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Rachel’s eyes were nearly closed: she was dropping off to sleep again.

  ‘I suppose you felt alone as a child. I was a little older; Patrick’s age, after all. I played with him. That was why I’d been brought to Glenalyth. And you? You have a date for your dream: the Allies taking Rome, June 1944. Your father must have been there – a little before Patrick died.’

  ‘Yes. I was seven or eight. But Aunt Susan was there. Perhaps it was some other story she was reading us, because Mummy came into the room just then – I can see that absolutely clearly – one arm on the mantlepiece, the other leaning across Aunt Susan’s face, switching on the radio. And then: “The Allies have taken Rome”.’

  She had dozed off then, her face cradled in my hand; a door slammed and the clatter of trolleys stopped outside the window. Time would start again, I knew now. Any moment the wheels would creak and roll once more.

  Our carriage moved forward a fraction – imperceptibly, with out any noise – before the engine took up the slack with a soft roar and we were off again.

  Later, after some long gulps of the fresh orange juice and a look at the misty land – when I had gone out into the empty corridor and seen the damply glazed fields and model cows – I went on for a wash and brush up in the gents’ WC – the train rocketing through long curves and small defiles now as we eased our way up into the hills. I washed my teeth and shaved cautiously, looking in the swaying mirror of the small cubicle, the carriages lurching about on this older track like some juvenile mechanism at a fun-fair: the rattle of other homecomings in this way years before, a small ache of expectation in the pit of my stomach, the certainty of a warm day in the hills by a lake ahead of me: a return in an hour, even without Henty and the green car, to a house I had been happy in. I put my shaving things away and unlocked the door.

  A man was waiting outside, blocking my path, right in front of me.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I was carrying my wash-bag in one hand, and I was surprised when he didn’t move but simply put his own hand out, as if to take the sponge-bag from me.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I tried to edge round him.

  ‘Let’s have a dekko then,’ he said. He had his hand on the bag now, looking at it intently. I thought he must be mad. He had that arrogant yet mystified look of the insane: a curly-headed, boyish fellow, thick-set with a body and a Cockney accent like a builder’s labourer. Yet he might have been Irish or lowland Scots originally, with his neat blue suit and coarse features sticking out of his open collar like a healthy vegetable. Perhaps, with his handler, he was on his way to some institution far north, out of harm’s way.

  ‘Give us a look then,’ he said again. But I wasn’t in the mood to humour him and held on to my bag.

  ‘Excuse me, I don’t think –’

  In a flash he’d moved his thick stubby fingers from the bag onto my wrist, and before I could do anything about it had grasped it viciously and twisted my arm round, up behind into the small of my back, where he held it like a vice.

  ‘Come on, my old cock,’ he murmured into my ear. ‘You were bloody long enough coming for a leak. Bin waiting for you all morning. We’ve not got a lot of time. Move!’

  He jerked my arm and propelled me towards the swaying carriage couplings beyond the lavatory which led into the parcels van next the engine. Once through the interconnecting doors he gave me a great shove so that I fell several yards away from him, into a great pile of Sunday newspaper colour supplements stacked up in the middle of the van. By the time I got to my feet he had closed the door and pushed a large box against it, below the level of the small window which I noticed was already covered over with a sheet of cardboard. Now he was facing me: with a gun.

  ‘Just get back where you were. On the floor–that’s right, right down.’

  I sat down again while he moved over to the big double loading doors of the van and started to unlock the triple bolts, top and bottom and the long safety bar across the middle. The pleasant ache in the pit of my stomach of a moment before had turned to one of ulcerous fear. But a fear which made me think furiously, too, after the first numbness had worn off.

  He must be one of Marcus’s hit men, I thought, caught up with me when I had least expected it, for I had never taken Marcus’s threats seriously. If this were so, then he was unlikely to shoot me: the plan would obviously be
to make it seem an accident – a man with too much wine and a woman, who had fallen out of the train in the early morning, hungover, making for the gents.

  My assailant had gloves on now – and the top and bottom bolts were free. But he was having trouble with the larger safety bar in the middle: it was stuck. I looked round the van, thinking I might edge towards him and push him out the door with my feet when he had it open. An unlikely ploy, I decided. And then I saw the beehives – half a dozen wooden hives on the other side of the van, not new but well seasoned, the bees obviously being moved up to some summer heather field in the Highlands for a gathering of that specially rich waxy white honey.

  The lout had the doors open now, swinging them wide. For a moment I didn’t realise what was intended: a huge, colourful hole had simply opened in the side of the van – an inconceivable error in railway management: then I realised this hole was for me. The fresh morning air rushed in, the wheels clattered far more loudly now and I saw the countryside beyond, a blurred vision of blue and summer green, with the sun just getting up properly, the mist all gone and the Highlands rising up on the horizon beyond like a travel brochure.

  I decided, in order to gain time and move back towards the hives, to play the coward – getting to my feet, cringing, yelping as I retreated, and indeed the rôle didn’t take much acting.

  ‘No! No!’ I squealed as he came towards me.

  ‘Come on, my old love. I got a job to do,’ the youth said offhandedly. He was a professional.

  The train suddenly went into a cutting – granite rocks rearing up outside the open doors. I hated the idea of being cut open at speed on their razor edges. A surge of hatred, a feeling of gut survival rose in me, lending all the more force to my sudden kick at the first beehive on my right. The man was about two yards in front of me and, as I thought, he didn’t shoot but rushed me instead, pinning both my arms in a bear hug – but not before I got another successful kick, taking the roof off a second hive.

  The lids were off both of them now, one hive completely on its side, with the honey frames in the whole top section spewed out over the floor. And the bees, stunned for a moment, were crawling about in great furry brown blobs as we struggled.

  And struggle we did, closer to the open doors.

  Luckily the first bee to strike chose my assailant – a vicious jab in some most tender place, for he relaxed his grip on me for a second with a shriek of pain. Our sweat and the smell of fear must have been an added infuriation to the already furious insects, for when they really started to sting it was with a voracious rapidity and energy and soon the two of us were well apart, oblivious of each other, slapping our faces and necks and ears and scalps in hideous pain.

  His gun had dropped to the floor behind the colour supplements but neither of us had a mind for it now, intent only on saving ourselves from the marauding bees. A man can die of bee stings, I remembered – and two open hives of them, well enraged, attacking in a confined space is a likely death sentence. I had to get out of the van as quickly as possible. I picked up a big bundle of Observer supplements and threw them at the lout – and then another bundle, in his face, the wire ties cutting his cheek. He was down on the floor now, stunned, and I was able to get back to the interconnecting doors and move the packing case while he lay there.

  Then the man crawled for his gun. But he never got to it. The bees must have got down his open collar and into his shirt by then, for before he could get a hand to it he started to writhe about in agony on the floor, twisting and turning in a frenzy, like a rank amateur on a bed of nails, a man with too few hands and too much skin to save himself

  Saving myself, there was no time to do anything but leave him there. I had the packing case aside now, pulling off the cardboard screen on the window, before moving into the next carriage, and closing the door behind me. I looked back at him. He was like a human firecracker, exploding repeatedly as he jerked his body, still vainly swatting the bees – standing up now, swaying towards the open loading doors. There was no escape towards the engine and he had quite forgotten his gun. He could have pulled the communication cord, of course, but the thought didn’t have time to cross his mind, I suppose; for the bees had found their stride with him at that point, clustering round his head in a huge impenetrable cloud.

  Then, suddenly, he disappeared and the van was empty. I didn’t see him go.

  I just heard a faint thunderous buzzing sound through the glass and saw the dense shadows of bees circling the van, some of them beginning to swarm over the glass of the connecting door, like insects in a zoo. But otherwise the space inside was empty. Some great hand had come down from somewhere again and plucked the man away. I pulled the communication cord myself then and the train came to a halt eventually in a long squeal of brakes. The next thing Rachel was with me in the corridor, I remember – and behind her, running up, the guard from the other end of the train.

  ‘I’ve had a little trouble with some bees,’ I told him, my face already puffing up in excruciating pain. But not as bad as his trouble or his pain, I thought, the moment before I fainted.

  BOOK TWO

  The Evidence

  1

  ‘Oh, the house?’ I said. ‘Yes. I’ve not been there for twenty years, I suppose.’ My face was still like a burnt pumpkin. It was painful to talk, difficult even to think.

  ‘It’s a beautiful place,’ the detective-inspector said soothingly, the two of us driving out alone that afternoon, up the lovely roads towards Glenalyth.

  Though Rachel – and Madeleine who’d been at the station to meet us – had come to the hospital in Perth with me, they had gone on home after a while, leaving me there for a few hours ‘under observation’. And when I’d recovered the Inspector had come to see me, talking to me in a private room: Detective-Inspector Carse, the contact Fielding had given me in Scotland, head of the Perthshire County CID who had been in charge of the original investigation into Lindsay’s disappearance. I’d told him at once of the confidential nature of my visit to Glenalyth and he’d confirmed that he had been asked to cooperate with me in what he took to be simply another, if more clandestine, attempt to discover what had happened to the laird of Glenalyth.

  ‘I knew him, you see,’ I’d told Carse. ‘I used to stay with the family.’

  ‘Work in the same line of country, then?’ he’d said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’ll be an inquest, of course, on that fellow.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t push him out of the train.’

  ‘All the same, I don’t see how I’ll be able to keep you out of it.’

  ‘You may have to. We’ll see what they say in London.’

  Carse was a genial Scotsman, a big broad man with a veined, weather-beaten face, more like a Highland farmer than a detective, the canny, friendly sort who would nose out local crime through long country intuitions and connections rather than through any police manual. He was obviously ill at ease in these distant, dangerous matters of espionage and national security. He looked unhappy now, fingering a lip thoughtfully as he drove with one hand up a long straight hill which led past the famous hundred-foot tall beech hedge just south of Blairgowrie – a well-remembered sign for me, in all the old years, that I was but minutes away from the small, granite-faced market town that lay beneath the moors and the winding single-track road that led up from there to the first of the white gates on the long drive into Glenalyth.

  ‘Who was the fellow?’ I asked. ‘Any idea?’

  ‘Not yet. I’d say he was just a gangland hit man by the look of him. London address on his driving licence, somewhere in the East End. But the Yard have confirmed that it’s just a squat. No one there now. The whole street is coming down. You were lucky.’

  ‘Yes. He was … tougher.’

  ‘I thought most of you people carried guns.’ Carse smiled wanly. ‘You’re going to need some protection if you’re staying up here. I’ll see what I can do.’

  And then Carse had pointed out the obvious
to me. ‘Whoever it was, they knew you were going to be on that train. When did you know you were getting it? Who did you tell?’

  ‘Only yesterday morning. And I told nobody. Only the girl, Rachel, knew.’

  ‘So he must have been following you, then. All yesterday at the least.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I remembered the man in the Marylebone pub that Rachel had said she’d seen twice before that day. We had been followed – we must have been, she had been right – ever since my meeting with David Marcus in that deserted apartment off the Edgware Road. So it must have been him who had put the contract out on me. But why? Because I’d said clearly I intended going on looking for Lindsay. And it followed, therefore, that if Marcus was prepared to go to such extravagant lengths to prevent my finding him, he feared the discovery of Lindsay for some other reason than the rather tame one he had given me – about Lindsay’s involvement in an already aborted right-wing SIS plot to unseat the Prime Minister. In any case, you didn’t bump off outsiders on trains just to keep some inter-office strife tidily under the carpet in London; you didn’t widen the potential retributive evidence against yourself in this way just for the sake of keeping your bureaucratic image clean. You employed hit men in Intelligence only as a very last resort, when your own skin was in jeopardy, or when not to do so would be to put a whole vital and elaborate operation at risk.

  It was clear, too, that if Marcus was prepared to take these great risks it was only because he thought I could find Lindsay and therefore he, at least, thought – or knew – that he was still alive somewhere. In all, my finding Lindsay would either compromise Marcus himself in some fatal manner, or else would do the same for some operation that Marcus had set up with him, a scheme so clandestine, so important that it justified the appallingly cruel deceit which Lindsay had imposed on his family by disappearing without a word one fine afternoon. I found it very difficult to believe that of Lindsay. Much more Marcus was the fly in the ointment: he was with the KGB, for instance. But then it struck me that both of them could have been with Moscow. It didn’t make easy sense. But it was possible. And if so, here was reason enough for getting rid of me, for if I discovered what had happened to Lindsay this might lead me to the evidence of their joint betrayal, that Lindsay and Marcus had been thieves together for a long time in the Citadel, for longer than Philby and the others and more important than they. If this were so, then the hire of any number of hit men would be justified to prevent such explosive intelligence coming to light. I suddenly didn’t care for my future.