Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm

by Gil North

  She was there again. She had a shotgun in one hand, a box of cartridges in the other. She broke the gun. She pulled the lid from the box and took out a cartridge. She inserted it slowly and deliberately into one of the barrels. She loaded the second barrel and snapped the gun closed. She left the safety-catch back and cocked both hammers.

  She slashed with a knife at the rope binding his ankles. He rolled into a sitting position on the shelf, his legs touching the floor. His blood forced itself into his feet. He gnawed his lips so as not to cry out. He winced and the pain was intolerable.

  She waited, savouring his agony.

  “I’m walking behind you,” she said. “I’ll pull both triggers at the first wrong move you make.”

  “Why not now?” he asked.

  “If you want it that way,” she threatened. “Make it easier for yourself and for me.”

  The gun bored into his back, out of reach of his bound hands. She prodded him out of the front door. He paused on the flagged walk and she let him stand there.

  “Take a good look,” she said. “It’s the last you’ll see of it.”

  The countryside spread before him. The fields were Ghyll End fields. The moor was Ghyll End moor. The lane led nowhere except to Ghyll End.

  “No one will come,” she said. “I told Symes enough this morning to last him for the rest of the day.”

  He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with clean air. He blinked to clear his eyes of a mist that was forming over them.

  The gun jerked him on.

  “Into the barn,” she commanded.

  He smelt it as soon as he entered. The atmosphere was heavy with the odour of paraffin. He glanced quickly round in an attempt to trace its source. The floor was dry and he couldn’t find out where the smell was coming from.

  “Alf!” she shouted, in a toneless voice.

  Wright came in through the smaller door on the other side of the barn, from the hillside where he had been posted to watch the lane. He closed the door behind him. He was as pale as death. His knees shook and his body trembled. He could hardly stand and he looked as if he was going to collapse at any moment.

  They stood, all three of them, between the two mows of hay. A ladder leaned against that nearest to the loose-boxes.

  She looked at Wright questioningly. He stammered, “Everything’s quiet. I didn’t see anyone.”

  She said, “He can’t climb the ladder with his hands tied. Go up first and wait for him at the top.”

  “Give me the gun,” Wright pleaded.

  She said roughly, “You couldn’t hit him if you tried. I shan’t miss from down here.”

  Wright gripped the ladder, his knuckles white. He put one foot despairingly on the bottom rung.

  “The lantern,” she told him urgently.

  Wright stared at her as if he could not understand.

  “By the bins,” she said, through clenched teeth.

  He went obediently, but it was hard for him. He slipped his wrist through the handle of the lantern. He mounted slowly, hugging himself to the ladder. The sound of his quick breathing came down to Cluff and the woman. Halfway up he stopped. He looked down and shook his head, suddenly giddy.

  “Go on! Go on!” Jinny Cricklethwaite shouted.

  Wright compelled himself upwards. He threw himself prone on the top of the mow. Only his calves and his feet, in their narrow shoes, were visible from the barn floor.

  “Light the lantern,” she ordered.

  Cluff looked at the hay. It was dry and brittle, three months old. He cringed as a match scraped. A patch of light shone in the darkness between the beams overhead.

  “On the hook,” she said.

  Wright was so close on the hay to the rafters that he did not have to reach up. He hung the lantern to a beam. He twisted round, crouching on his knees, peering between the uprights at the end of the ladder.

  “Be quick,” Wright mumbled. “Be quick, for God’s sake!”

  She tugged left-handedly at Cluff’s wrists behind his back, whispering warnings, wrenching at the knots. The rope came away. The blood dammed in his arms flowed through veins that had shrunk from lack of it. He flexed his fingers.

  She drove him up the ladder, climbing after him. They mounted into a dimness above the shaft of light coming through the main doors of the barn. They emerged into a soft, yellow glow cast by the lantern.

  A flat expanse of hay stretched in front of them. It merged level with the flagged floor of a balks that was ceiling to the loose-boxes underneath it. The space beyond the hay was narrow, low. It was strewn with junk, oddments and relics of past methods of farming, their outlines too vague for their nature to be distinguished.

  Cluff stepped off the ladder. She pushed him away from the edge with the gun, jumping too quickly on to the hay for him to turn on her.

  The hay gave a little under his weight. The smell of paraffin was very strong. Two tins, their tops narrowing into cones, lay where they had been thrown heedlessly. In from the edges the hay was wet in places, its paleness blackened and soaked.

  She flung the length of rope she had brought at Wright.

  “Tie his hands again,” she said.

  Cluff knew what they were going to do. He knew that they were going to set the hay alight and leave him on the hay. He knew that there would be nothing left of him to prove that he had ever existed after the holocaust they planned.

  Wright stumbled to Cluff. He fumbled behind the Sergeant. The Sergeant flung himself suddenly forward, hurling himself to burrow where the hay joined the balks.

  Wright, off-balance, fell flat on his face. He floundered in the soft top-covering of hay.

  Jinny Cricklethwaite lifted the gun. She laughed soundlessly. Wright groaned and the woman looked at Wright, not at Cluff.

  She did not fire. She tapped the barrels of her gun against the hanging lantern. Its glass cracked. Pieces of glass fell on to the hay. The hay where they rested gave off a faint, blue smoke.

  Wright succeeded in gaining his feet. He plunged for Jinny Cricklethwaite, ignoring Cluff. She had the lantern in her hand now. Its flame was naked above the remnants of its globe. The gun she had dropped thudded on the floor below her.

  She stepped nimbly on to the ladder. Her breasts overflowed the rungs. Her mirth was audible. She swung the lantern and its flame flickered. She let go of the lantern and it flew at Wright.

  Wright screamed. The lantern took him in the chest. Cluff crawled for the stone balks as fast as he could. Wright’s terror filled the confined space under the barn roof. A wall of fire leapt up from the hay. It steadied and spread rapidly like water poured from a bucket.

  Cluff looked round. He held his hands in front of his face. He took one step towards Wright. Wright was a flaring torch. His screams were uninterrupted, their high-pitched note continuous.

  The heat seared Cluff. The ladder he could not reach crashed as the woman knocked it away from the stack. The barn doors creaked and slammed. He knew she had gone.

  The fire drove him from the hay to the balks. It was too late to jump. He could not reach the edges of the mow. If he jumped, the twenty feet to hard stone, the least he could expect would be a leg broken. The channel of paraffin that Wright had poured on the hay while Cluff lay in the pantry erupted. It lapped greedily.

  Wright stopped screaming. Wright was a black, charred, motionless log, lit by red and yellow and white.

  Cluff crouched in the farthest corner, where the flags above the loose-boxes met the angle of the roof joining the rear wall of the barn.

  His eyes streamed with the smoke. His lungs were at bursting point. He could hardly see and he could hardly breathe.

  He had accomplished what he set out to do. He had exacted from Wright the price of Amy’s death.

  The cost was high. It included himself.

  Chapter XXII
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  The school Joan Cluff attended was three miles from Cluff’s Head.

  The bus stopped where the lane from Cluff’s Head joined the main road up the dale. John Cluff saw his daughter on to it and waved her off.

  He walked quickly back to the farm, as large as his brother, dressed, like his brother, in rough tweed, an identical shapeless, weather-stained hat on his head. He went into his barn. One of his men turned the handle of a turnip-chopping machine steadily. The turnip chips fell clean and orange-coloured on to a sack spread under the machine’s mouth. The wheel geared to the revolving blades did not stop. The man continued to turn stolidly.

  John Cluff wandered aimlessly about the farm, at this task and that.

  Finally, he went into the kitchen. He said to his wife, “I’m off up the moor.”

  Alice nodded. She finished filling the pan with which she was working. She set it on the fire. She went outside. John was climbing the home pastures. She watched him until he was a thin pencil against the grey sky. He vanished below the horizon. Alice stood for a long time, thinking.

  John loped easily over the moor, through his own territory. He did not give a glance at the sheep which raised their heads as he passed. He got on to Ghyll End land. He saw something moving on the moor ahead of him. It was coming in a straight, purposeful line, aware of his presence long before he noticed it.

  He bent on to one knee and the dog rushed at him. It avoided his grip when he tried to catch it.

  “Clive, boy,” John said. “Where’s Caleb? Where’s Caleb, Clive?”

  Clive barked frantically. He ran off a little way and stood. He ran back to John and away again.

  “Aye, lad. Aye,” John said.

  He was running himself. He had been a noted fell-racer in his youth. He fixed his eyes on the ground a little in advance of his pounding feet, choosing the places automatically that would not let him down. His coat lay discarded in a heap a long way back. His hat had gone. Clive kept in front of him, adjusting his pace by the sound of John’s progress.

  They came to the moor edge. The valley spread below them. Ghyll End clung to the slope they were descending. Smoke wreathed through the slates of the Ghyll End barn and through the gaps in the walls under the eaves, like arrow slits, put there for ventilation.

  It was not climbing the moors that hindered a man in a hurry, but coming down from them. John leapt from tuft to tuft of coarse grass. He swayed his body to this side and that round the boulders. He jumped to avoid the snaky tendrils of the heather. He landed squarely on the bracken that reached to trip him. He took not the direct course, but the fastest and the safest, exercising all his skill and knowledge.

  Clive hardly touched the wall bounding the moor. John went over it too fast for the topstones he brought down behind him to hit him. They skimmed the pastures, the going smooth compared with the moor. They were in the croft at Ghyll End. Hens and geese scattered in panic.

  Clive led the way through the wash-kitchen and the dairy. Clive scratched in distraction at the closed doors of the barn, his nose to the gap between their bottom edges and the ground. The flames inside crackled fiercely. They could smell the fire. Smoke blew about them. The air was warm. In the loose-boxes the horse neighed and calves bawled. The cows in the shippon kicked their stalls, skating on the floor slippery with their droppings, calling loudly.

  She came up the steps from the shed housing the Land Rover. She jumped on John from the back. Clive went for her, tearing her skirt. She paid no attention to the dog. She clung to John’s shoulders, pulling at him, trying to get her fingers on to his neck. He smelt her excitement above the smell of the smoke.

  He shrugged his great body, breaking her grip as if she was a child. She fell and slid on the rough surface of the drive along which wagons came to the barn. Her clothes rode high about her thighs. Her stockings gave at the knees, showing calloused skin. Drops of blood began to ooze where the gravel had scraped her flesh. Clive stood over her, forelegs planted on her breasts, snarling. His mouth dripped saliva. His hair lifted in a ridge along his spine. His tail was as stiff as a rod.

  John got one leaf of the door open. Flame spurted at him.

  She spat, “You’re too late, John Cluff. They’re in there, both of them.”

  For a second she thought he was going to kill her. He jumped down the steps. The Land Rover was out of its shed, its nose pointed towards Thorshall. He dashed through the bottom yard. He turned up the slope on the other side of the barn.

  The horse appeared suddenly from its loose-box, witless. It went galloping off, over the wall into the lane, along the lane.

  The strength went out of John. He staggered.

  “Thank God! Thank God!” John muttered.

  His brother followed the horse into the open air.

  “Caleb! Caleb!” John shouted.

  The Sergeant’s face was black. His clothes were in tatters. His hair was singed and his fingertips scrabbled raw.

  John’s voice broke. Clive flashed past him. The dog threw himself on Cluff. The Sergeant fell, rolling, clutching the dog.

  “The stock, John,” Cluff said.

  John wound his handkerchief over his mouth. He fought through the smoke into the end box, where the horse had been. A hole in the ceiling gaped redly. The rafters above the balks were vaguely visible through the hole. The smoke floated against them, ricochetting down. The bedding in the box was piled to one side where Cluff had stumbled as he landed. There were new scratches made by Cluff’s boots on the floor. An iron crowbar, rusty, lay where it had fallen after he had prised free his escape route.

  The cries of the calves stilled. There was only the roar of the flames. John could do nothing.

  Cluff was coming to his feet. John bent to help him. Clive shot away for the bottom of the slope. Cluff’s voice halted him. The dog froze, straight-legged, glaring.

  Her hair blew in wisps in the wind. Her features were distorted, mottled. Ugly red patches splotched the white background of her face. Her nostrils were distended, her lips drawn back to show her teeth. Her eyes were bloodshot, pin-pointed with hate.

  The last button of her grime-matted cardigan parted as she clawed at her throat. She tore at her blouse, stifled, and her breasts were half-naked.

  She screamed at them. Her words were a mixture of threats and curses and regrets. Her voice outblasted the noise of the fire. They quailed at the obscenity of her language. She accused Cluff of crimes more than she had committed. She blamed Cluff for the ruin of her hopes, the overthrow of her schemes. She included his brother in her recriminations. She bemoaned the wasted years of her life with Cricklethwaite, the snatching away of the reward she had counted on.

  She fled. The engine of the Land Rover whirred into life. The Land Rover burst into the bottom yard. It swerved. Its front wheels slashed into the pile of manure in the open midden. It scraped the gatepost as it drove furiously into the lane. The two men running down the slope saw her crouched over the wheel, with set face and staring eyes.

  “God help anyone who gets in her way,” John Cluff said.

  The roof of the barn fell in. Flames darted into the sky. The smoke was a pall, too thick and heavy for the wind to shift it. A light drizzle had no effect on the fire.

  Cluff sat on a wall. He watched the farm burn.

  He said, “I had to leave Wright. But he was dead already, before I opened the hole in the balks’ floor.”

  John could not remember who Wright was. He said, “I thought I was too late. I knew you were in trouble. I wasted time making up my mind.”

  “She’s saved us the job of bringing Wright to trial,” Cluff said. “I saw his face after she’d flung the lantern. He couldn’t believe what she was, and he had to believe it.”

  The windows of the house cracked with sharp, rifle-like reports.

  “Let it all go,” Cluff said. “She’ll never come
back to it.”

  They set off for the village.

  The fire-engine from Gunnarshaw forced them into the ditch, its bell ringing wildly.

  They met Symes, sweating like a pig as he pedalled on his bicycle after the engine.

  Symes listened to them. Symes said wonderingly, “I didn’t know she was as bad as that.”

  “Go on up there,” Cluff instructed. “You’ll have to tell them what to look for. Not that there’ll be anything of him left.”

  Symes said, “She was driving like the devil when she passed me.”

  Chapter XXIII

  Cluff used the telephone at the “Black Bull.” He put through a call to Gunnarshaw. He spoke to Mole. Before he rang off Constable Barker interrupted, “You’re busier on leave, Sergeant, than ever you were on duty.”

  He had no car with him and there was nothing to be hired in Thorshall. He cleaned himself up as well as he could. George, the landlord, taped his fingers and the cuts on his head. He sat with his brother by the bar fire in the inn, waiting to hear on the phone what had become of Jinny Cricklethwaite.

  George brought large brandies, sugared and topped with water almost at boiling point. Cluff put his hand in his pocket for money to pay for them.

  “Damn it, Caleb,” George said. “What are you trying to do? Have me up for selling out of hours?”

  The rain outside was heavier. A rising wind spattered it on the window panes. George sat down with them and they drew closer to the fire. The winter dusk was earlier because of the heavily clouded sky. Shadows lengthened in the room.

  John stirred.

  John said, “I’ll give Cluff’s Head a ring. They’ll wonder what’s become of us.”

  He came back into the bar. Cluff looked at his face.

  “What’s up, John?” Cluff asked.

  John lowered himself on to the settle. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Joan hasn’t got back from school yet. Likely she missed the bus.”

  “I’ll try Gunnarshaw,” Cluff said. “They ought to have been in touch before now.”

  Barker said, over the phone, “Sergeant. The Super wants to speak to you. I’m putting you through.”