‘It was in the days of the Mandate. Your father had command of one of the Brigades in the occupation force. I was, of course, only a boy at the time. I had a very small part in the blowing up of his car.’
Sir Charles McMurtrie and his son dined together in candle-lit luxury at the Bon-Pastor Hotel. With the coffee Sir Charles ordered a large glass of port for himself and a small one for his son and said, ‘Were you surprised to see me?’
‘Seeing it’s only the second time in six years that you’ve been down,’ said Alastair. ‘Yes.’
‘You haven’t asked me why I’ve come.’
‘I thought it was to watch me play cricket.’
‘Partly,’ said his father. ‘But only partly. Actually I’ve come to give you some instructions. They are the sort of instructions which had to be given personally. I thought I’d keep them until after dinner. I didn’t want to risk spoiling your appetite.’
‘Thank you,’ said Alastair faintly.
‘The first thing I have to tell you is to stop whatever enquiries you think you’re making about Mr Manifold.’
The candle-light spared Alastair’s blushes. He said, ‘I suppose Miss Lindsay told you.’
‘Miss Lindsay is well aware of who Mr Manifold is, and what he is doing. And that brings me to my second point. Sometime – I can’t tell you when, but before the end of term – he may give you an order. It might happen at any time. And it will be a simple order, like, “Get up” or “Sit quite still” or possibly, “Fall down”. Something like that.’
‘Would it just be me?’
‘It might be you, or Peter Joscelyne, but more probably Jared. So pass it on to them. But no one else. You’re to be on the alert, all three of you. Because when you get that order, wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, you’re to obey it at once.’
12
Andrew Pickering, the Chief Constable of West Sussex, was not a retired soldier or sailor. He was a policeman, who had climbed every rung on the ladder to reach his present position. This made him both more and less difficult for a visiting Chief Superintendent like Jock Anderson to deal with.
More difficult, because he was unlikely to be bluffed. Easier because the two men spoke the same language.
Pickering said, ‘Superintendent Oldham has passed up to me the record of the Disciplinary Board on Sergeant Callaghan. On the main count, there’s no question that he was in the wrong. He neglected to take the proper procedures laid down on receipt of the order “Huntsman”. He should have telephoned you at once, himself. The procedures had been explained to him. He understood them. He failed to carry them out, even when his own Superintendent had given him the word.’
‘He’s not a young man. And it was an awkward time of night.’
‘Those are reasons. Not excuses. Some penalty will have to be imposed. But my real point is a different one. If we make an example of Callaghan the object of the exercise, as I see it, will be to make sure that this particular lapse doesn’t occur again. Right?’
‘I don’t want Sergeant Callaghan crucified,’ said Anderson. ‘It was just that, by luck, we did have a real chance of catching this man. It may never happen just like that again.’
‘That’s the point I wanted to be clear about,’ said Pickering. ‘You think that if you’d been alerted soon after half past eleven, instead of some hours later, you really would have been able to put your hand on this man. He’d have had more than an hour’s start. A car can go a long way in an hour.’
‘Agreed. But I don’t think he’d have got clear of the net I should have been able to spread.’ He took a map out of his brief case and unfolded it on the table. He said, ‘I started organizing this in a small way after the first case and elaborated it after the second one. Each of those blue crosses is a watcher or a potential watcher.’
Pickering said, ‘I didn’t know we had that number of resident policemen.’
‘They’re not policemen. Although some of them are retired policemen. They are AA and RAC scouts, railway linesmen and level crossing keepers, night watchmen, midwives, gamekeepers, retired people who don’t go to bed too early and insomniacs who don’t go to bed at all. One of the most reliable is an amateur astronomer. Another is a radio ham who finds he gets his best transmissions between midnight and three in the morning. They are all on the telephone, or can be reached very quickly by a telephone call. Within five minutes of being alerted I can have a hundred people on watch.’
‘And they have authority to stop cars?’
‘Certainly not. Their job is simply to note the make and number of any car which passes. A lot of them, as you see, live on cross-roads. When their reports have been collated I doubt if a single car would move, by night, across that particular area without my being able to say, within a quarter of a mile, where it came from and where it went to. I had a trial run last month.’
‘Successful?’
‘Most successful. I think that one High Court Judge would be very embarrassed if we were to publish our conclusions on where he went that night.’
Pickering was studying the map with fascination. He said, ‘Did you know that I lived in this area?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What night did you run this trial?’
‘It was May 22nd. Just three weeks before the Lister case.’
The Chief Constable seemed to be making a calculation. Then he said, ‘No. It’s all right. I was in Blackpool at a Chief Constables’ Conference.’
Both men laughed.
‘Seriously, though,’ said Pickering, ‘you think this would have picked him up? Suppose he lived outside the area.’
‘I don’t think he does. But if he had run off the edge we should have extended the network in the direction and tracked him to earth next time. After all, even without using this method, we succeeded in tracing the car a fair distance. You’ve seen my report.’
‘Yes,’ said Pickering. ‘Fred showed it to me.’ He was still fascinated by the little crosses on the map. ‘Did you invent this yourself?’
‘I read about it,’ said Anderson. ‘It’s the method the French used during the war to keep track of the movements of Gestapo officers and collaborators and other undesirable characters. They called it Le Réseau des Yeux. The Network of Eyes. It was very effective.’
Jock Anderson had another meeting that aftemoon. It was a repeat of the conference on the previous Monday with the representatives of the four County Forces. Reports from the hundreds of men involved had been carefully tabulated. The fact that the results, so far, were negative, did not disturb them. They knew that, in the mathematics of police work, a thousand negatives might add up to one positive.
‘We ran a check,’ said Anderson, ‘with the motor licensing authorities and compiled a list of all cars from addresses in the search area of this particular type which had their licences renewed during the past twelve months. And we have visited all the owners. In every case we were able to eliminate the cars concerned.’
‘And your conclusions?’ said Colonel Brabazon.
‘It confirms what I had thought all along, sir. This man has two cars. One he goes about his business in. The other he keeps under cover somewhere and uses only when he’s out on the prowl.’
‘Might be one he’s stolen,’ said Woolmer.
‘Could be,’ said Anderson. ‘But on balance I think not. He’s not a professional car thief.’
‘I agree,’ said the Colonel. ‘Most likely it will turn out to be an old car. One he hoped to sell when he bought a new one and then he couldn’t dispose of it. He tucked it away somewhere, but hadn’t bothered to license it.’
‘Something like that, I think,’ said Anderson. They were all silent for a moment. They had thought about that car a lot. Anderson sometimes dreamed about it. He was walking through a thick wood and came on a clearing. In the clearing was a hut. And in the hut was an old dark grey car. He usually woke up before he could write the number down.
‘Those shaded areas, on the l
arge-scale map,’ he said, ‘are the ones we’ve gone over thoroughly.’ The shading, they could see, formed a wide crescent, moving towards Chichester, spreading its wings twenty-five miles in either direction.
‘We’ve alerted every garage and motor dealer in the south-east. If anyone gets a tyre changed or asks for a re-spray we hear about it at once.’
‘He wouldn’t be so daft,’ said Lowry.
‘What would you do, Fred, if it was your car?’
‘No use trying to burn it,’ said Woolmer. ‘We’d hear about that, too.’
‘Even if you took off the plates, burning wouldn’t destroy the engine number and gearbox number.’
‘You’re asking me what I’d do,’ said Lowry. ‘So I’ll tell you. You say I’ve got two cars. One I use, and the other I’ve got under cover. And if the second car’s found it could be traced back to me. Right?’
‘That’s the assumption we’re working on,’ said Anderson.
‘Then I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d take the second car to pieces, nut by nut and bolt by bolt. And I’d put the pieces in my other car and I’d run out by night and dump them in the deepest, loneliest gullies I could find. Not all in the same place. A headlight here, a wheel there. Finding one or two bits wouldn’t help you. You’d need to put the car together again to prove it was mine.’
‘It’d take you some time,’ said Anderson.
‘You’d need more than time,’ said Woolmer. ‘You’d need a complete workshop. A car doesn’t take to pieces like a clockwork toy. You’d have to saw up the panelling. It’d be a hell of a job.’
‘It would be a noisy job,’ said Colonel Brabazon. ‘And that brings us to the main point we have to decide. Do we broadcast or not? It’s a close decision. What we’re trying to do is to panic this man, make him do something silly. We haven’t succeeded yet. If he’d made any obvious efforts to dispose of the car or disguise it, I’m sure we should have heard of it. That means that wherever the car’s hidden, he’s satisfied that it’s reasonably safe. He’s kept his nerve.’
‘So far,’ said Anderson.
‘I agree. He’s probably getting close to breaking point. He knows we’re closing in on him. If we broadcast a full description of the car, with an explanation of why we’re looking for it, that won’t tell him anything he doesn’t know already. But it will alert his neighbours. One of them well remembers. Didn’t so-and-so have an old car? He was going to sell it, but he never did. Funny thing, we haven’t seen it about lately.’
‘If he hears a lot of hammering by night,’ said Woolmer.
‘I think the arguments in favour are stronger than those against,’ said the Colonel. He looked round the table. There was no dissent. He said, ‘It will take a little arranging. And I want to complete the preliminary search. We’ll ask the BBC to put it out after the news next Monday, and repeat it every night during the week.’
Old Mr Moritz, Rosie’s grandfather, had reached an age when he moved slowly and thought slowly. His life ran on comfortable lines. He rose late, looked through the daily paper which his daughter-in-law bought for him, and which had more pictures in it than print, which suited Mr Moritz, who had never been a great reader. He usually had a sleep in the afternoon, listened to the six o’clock news and enjoyed his tea, which was the main meal of his day. After tea, when the weather was fine, he pottered down the half mile of road which separated No 2 Jubilee Cottages from the village of Brading and the Three Horseshoes, which was his objective.
When he passed the entrance to Farmer Laycock’s field he used to think about that night, now nearly a month in the past, and of the things which had happened. He thought about Rosie, who seemed to have gone off Des Maybury. Old Mr Moritz was no fool. He knew right enough what they’d been up to in that field. Five minutes more, and Des would have had what he wanted from her. When he was a youngster an escapade like that would have meant marriage. Now she was probably on the pill, the little slut.
He thought about the boy. The one they’d found in the field. He’d forgotten his name, but he remembered the details of what had been done to him. Horrible things, but somehow exciting, too. And he remembered his own part in it. He’d been interviewed a lot by the police and the press. After all, he’d been the one who had seen the car come out and driving away.
Driving away.
For the hundredth time, a recollection flickered through old Mr Moritz’s brain. It was as faint and as fleeting as the flicker of light on a radar screen; no sooner seen than gone. But coming back again and again with irritating persistence.
He was certain that he had noticed something. Something which might be of great importance. Something which he certainly ought to report, if only he could remember what it was. It was something he had noticed when the car was going away from him. Not when it was coming out, and had nearly knocked him down, but when it was driving away down the road.
It had been dusk, the dusk of a fine day near to midsummer. That was how he was able to see something of the car when it came rushing out seeming to come straight for him, then going into a skidding turn at the last moment and accelerating off up the darkening road towards the village. If it had been properly dark, he wouldn’t have been able to see anything at all. He wouldn’t have been able to give the police all those details about the colour and the shape of the car.
Not that they had been grateful. They seemed to think that he ought to have noticed the make and the number. As if anyone, at a moment like that, would have been likely to notice the number. And, anyway, it would have been too dark to see it.
The thoughts in Mr Moritz’s head were apt to go round in a circle. It was getting dark, so the car lights should have been on. But the head lights and side lights weren’t on. That was the first thing he’d noticed about the car. Silly fool, driving without lights on. And yet, he had a feeling that the rear lights had been on. No difficulty about that. The man might have switched them on as he drove away. So what was worrying him?
Mr Moritz shook his head angrily, and stumped off down the road, one vital piece of information which the police would have given their right hands to possess, still locked in his muddled old brain.
13
The car had come by a roundabout route along small roads to the west of Tinmans Common. As it approached the side gate of Trenchard House, the driver turned off all the lights and killed the engine and the car slid through the darkness and came to rest a few yards past the gate.
After that, for a long time, nothing happened.
There were two men in the car besides the driver. All sat quite still. When the clock of Boxwood Church chimed out the hour of two it seemed to act as some sort of signal. The man beside the driver opened the car door and stepped out. He could now be seen to be very tall and to be carrying a pair of metal shears, with stubby blades and long handles.
The chain which circled the gate post and the nearest upright of the gate was fastened by a padlock. The man took two lengths of black cord from his pocket and with them lashed the chain firmly to both gate post and gate. Then he centred the blades of the shears on the small length of chain between the cords and exerted his full strength and leverage on the handles.
There was a single sharp snap as the metal jaws bit home. The man laid the shears down, undid the right-hand cord, and slipped the severed end of the chain through the now useless padlock. Then he opened the gate, lifting it clear of the ground so that it made no noise. Whilst this had been going on the second man had been watching towards the main road.
Both men now went round to the rear of the car and pushed it, in reverse, through the gate with the third man steering. They stationed it under the shadow of the cedar tree, took out two army blankets, and covered the whole radiator and windscreen. When this had been done, the tall man shut the gate, slipped the padlock back into position and retied the loose end of the chain. Anyone passing down the road would have needed to examine the chain carefully to notice that there was anything amiss; and he would have n
eeded night-sight as good as that of the owl, who was observing these manoeuvres with interest, to have spotted the car under the deep shadow of the tree.
The quarter sounded from the church clock.
The tall man and his companion set off, making a circuit of the lawn, keeping in the shadow of the trees, until they reached the end of the west wing of the house. The third window which they tried was unlatched. They lifted the sash and climbed through. The eye of a torch, lighting on the blackboard, showed them that they were in a classroom. They opened the door softly and stepped out into the passage.
At the end of the passage the tall man used his torch again. First he unbolted and unlocked the side door. Then he set off up the staircase which led to the floors above. He moved with the certainty of a man who knew exactly where he was going and what he was going to do.
Alastair McMurtrie sat up in bed. Something had jerked him out of a shallow, dream-haunted sleep. It took him two seconds to realize what had woken him. The creak of the board at the end of the passage outside.
His watch was on the table beside his bed. He rolled over and saw that it was nearly half past two. Could the masters have resumed their sentry-go? If so, why? And which of them was it? These thoughts were in his head when the door opened and the two men came in.
A torch shone straight at him. From behind the light the tall man said, quite pleasantly, ‘So you’re awake, are you, boy? Then you can do something for me. Get out of bed, very quietly, and wake up young Sacher.’
‘Why–’
‘Do what you’re told, and maybe you won’t get hurt.’
The torch had been switched off, and in the moonlight he could see the men quite clearly. A recollection of what his father had said came back to him. He climbed out of bed and went across to Sacher. As soon as he got there he could see that he, too, was awake. He bent over and made a show of shaking his arm.
Jared sat up and said, ‘What’s up? What is it?’
‘These men say you’ve got to get up.’
Night of the Twelfth Page 12