‘Yes, I see,’ said Anderson.
He said it absently. The long run-up was finished. His mind was groping ahead, planning the final stage of the campaign; the last and most difficult stage when you knew who the criminal was; when you knew that you would have to stand up, months later, in court, and prove it; a stage where every step you took and every word you said would be subject to cross-examination, and where a single mistake might wipe out all the gains you had made.
He was still thinking when the telephone rang.
Constable Toft lifted the receiver, listened for a moment, and said to Manifold, ‘It’s for you, sir. From the school.’
22
‘One of the kids,’ said Sacher, ‘was listening on the transistor, when he ought to have been doing his prep. He said that there was a police notice about that boy.’
‘Which boy?’ said McMurtrie lazily. The three of them were sitting in their customary places on the edge of Joscelyne’s bed watching another July evening fade into dusk.
‘The one who was tortured and killed.’
‘Lister,’ said Joscelyne. ‘I remember the name.’
‘What did it say?’
‘The police are looking for a dark grey BMC four-door saloon, about ten-years-old, with a plug in the near-side rear tyre. The search is being concentrated in an area north-east of Chichester.’
‘We’re north-east of Chichester,’ said McMurtrie thoughtfully.
‘So are a billion other places,’ said Joscelyne.
‘What are you thinking about?’ said Sacher.
‘I was wondering about our Mr Manifold. You know when you heard Brab telling TEF that Manifold was nothing to do with keeping an eye on you. Why should he have said that? He knew jolly well that Manifold was a policeman.’
‘He didn’t want TEF to get into a flap.’
‘Possibly. But suppose that Manifold came here on a different line altogether. Something he didn’t want to tell TEF about.’
‘You mean,’ said Sacher slowly, ‘that one of the staff here might be the man the police are after for that job.’
‘Why not? It happened at half-term. They haven’t got an alibi between them.’
The three boys thought, though not very seriously, about the possibility of one of their masters being a torturer and a killer.
‘If I had to pick one of them,’ said Sacher, ‘it’d be GG.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s obviously up to something. Slipping out every night after dark.’
‘He hasn’t got a BMC with a plug in its tyre.’
‘He might have a spare car,’ said Sacher. ‘Somewhere out on the common.’
‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me,’ said Joscelyne.
Outside the owl hooted twice, as if in agreement.
McMurtrie said, ‘Only ten days more. Are you sorry?’
‘Not a scrap,’ said Sacher.
‘I am, a bit,’ said Joscelyne with a sigh. ‘We’ve got pretty well dug in here. I don’t much want to move.’
‘I can’t make my mind up,’ said McMurtrie. ‘I’ve enjoyed it here. This term particularly. But I’ve got a feeling it’s time to move on.’
‘You’ll be a beastly little fag,’ said Sacher. ‘Cleaning out the prefects’ porridge saucepans and blacking their boots. You ought to come out to Israel with me. They take education seriously there. They don’t pretend it’s something out of the Boys’ Own Paper.’
‘Won’t you be scared? Someone else might take a shot at you.’
Jared considered the matter. He said, ‘I don’t think being killed unexpectedly is a thing to be frightened about. You don’t know anything about it until it happens and after it’s happened you don’t know anything about it either. Suppose, for instance, you were going to be killed tonight.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No, I mean it. It could happen. A branch from an elm tree could fall on your head. Or a poacher, out after rabbits, could blaze off not knowing you were the other side of the hedge, or a car travelling without lights could knock you down as you were nipping across the road–’
‘If you don’t shut up,’ said McMurtrie, ‘I shan’t go at all. Cars. Elm trees. Poachers.’
‘Well you won’t get caught by the staff anyway,’ said Joscelyne. ‘Our Mr Manifold has buzzed off somewhere on his motorbike. GG’s in Guildford having a tooth out, or so he says, probably at a pub. Connie’s boozing with the Warlock crowd. Nigel’s down in the village with his girlfriend. And it’s TEF’s night for bridge with the vicar. The only one left is old Dip, and he’s deep in The Times crossword puzzle.’
‘I don’t know what our parents pay fees for,’ said Sacher. ‘Fifty boys and only old Dip to look after them. What would happen if a fire broke out?’
McMurtrie had pulled on trousers and a sweater over his pyjamas, and was now lacing up his gym-shoes. He said, ‘I’ll be back in about a quarter of an hour.’
After he had gone Sacher sat for so long in silence that Joscelyne said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s silly,’ said Sacher. ‘But I suddenly thought, suppose what I said was right. I mean, about him being killed. I wish I hadn’t said it.’
McMurtrie had planned a route which would keep him out of trouble. To cross in front of the house was dangerous. Too many hostile windows. He would use the side door, cross the lawn and make a circuit through the kitchen garden and orchard. This was to deal with the possibility that Mr Diplock would be in the staff common-room. If he was there, he was unlikely to be looking out of the window, but old Dip was unpredictable. From the orchard he could make his way back into the park; from that point he would be on his day-time route.
His hand was actually on the handle of the side door when he heard the car. It came racing down the drive, swung round the corner and stopped with a squealing of brakes. The headlights showed for a moment under the door. Then the car ground its gears, backed and came forward again on a different track. So. It was being put away in the staff garage.
McMurtrie opened the nearest door, which led into a classroom, and closed it leaving a crack to see through. A minute later the side door opened with a crash and the Commander surged into the passage. He was humming to himself and walking with a more than nautical roll.
‘Pissed as a newt,’ said McMurtrie, as he watched him tack down the passage and disappear round the corner. He tiptoed out, through the side door, which the Commander had left wide open, across the path, and on to the lawn. Here he took to his heels and ran, pausing only when he had reached the tangled safety of the sunken garden.
It was a perfect night. A dying moon hung in the sky. The stars were beginning to show, and a light breeze, which was hardly a wind, more a movement of the air over the cooling earth, brought with it the mixed smells of summer. What a night, thought McMurtrie. What a night to be out in the open and on the move. What a night to be alive in.
Following his chosen path, he crossed the kitchen garden, circled back into the park and squeezed out through the railings on to the side road. He was crouching in the ditch when he heard a great rattling noise. Two bicycles came belting down the road within inches of his nose. Neither was carrying any sort of light. The first was ridden by a girl. The second, in pursuit, by a boy. The girl gave a shriek as she went past. The boy screamed back. McMurtrie grinned to himself. Being cut down by amorous bicyclists was one fate which Sacher had left out of his catalogue of deaths.
When he walked into Mr Bishop’s wood-yard, he found Mr Bishop sitting on a chair in front of his own door and smoking a pipe.
‘Fancied you might have had second thoughts, young Mac,’ he said.
‘Certainly not, your right reverence. And I’ve got the money. One pound eighty for the vodka and sixteen pence for the two bottles of bitter lemon you let us have on Saturday.’
‘Bang on the nail,’ said Mr Bishop. Bottle and money changed hands. ‘You want to go steady with this stuff. It’s strong medicine.’
McMurtrie said,
‘If we all got stinking, we should only be following the example of our pastors and masters.’ He told him about his encounter with the Commander.
‘Shocking,’ said Mr Bishop. ‘You’d better be getting back before someone misses you.’
It was as he said this, that they heard more than one set of footsteps coming down the lane, and recognized a well-known voice.
Mr Fairfax had not been able to give more than half his mind to his bridge. His opponents, who were the vicar and his wife, and his partner, who was Dr Baines, were all serious players. When Mr Fairfax had first called out of turn and then revoked twice, in consecutive hands, he apologized and threw up the sponge.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to call it a day. I’ve had to leave the school almost unattended. Mr Diplock’s meant to be on duty, but he’s perfectly capable of forgetting all about it and pottering off down to the village.’
‘Once he’d got his nose down in one of those photographic magazines of his,’ said Dr Baines, ‘old Dip wouldn’t notice if a bomb went off.’
‘Please don’t talk about bombs,’ said the vicar’s wife faintly.
‘In the ordinary way, I wouldn’t mind,’ said Mr Fairfax. ‘But in the light of some of the things that have happened this term–’
‘We quite understand,’ said the vicar.
‘In any event,’ said Dr Baines, ‘if you had revoked a third time I should have been forced to ask you to pay my losses. I have a letter to post. I’ll walk with you as far as the main road.’
When McMurtrie heard his headmaster’s voice he acted quickly. The half bottle of vodka was thrust back into Mr Bishop’s hand, and he was across the yard in a flash. There was an open penthouse on the far side, full of baulks of timber, which would, he reckoned, give him cover. He stepped back into its shadow.
The footsteps came to a halt. Mr Fairfax said, ‘Why, it’s Mr Bishop. Enjoying this lovely evening, I expect. Lucky I saw you. I was meaning to have a word with you.’
McMurtrie looked round. His hiding place would have served well enough if TEF had simply been passing down the road. If, blast the man, he was going to settle down in the yard for a long natter, something more permanent would have to be found. He edged his way in, stepping over the clutter on the floor, towards the shed at the back.
The first thing he saw was a ladder, leading up to a trap door in the roof. Excellent. He would climb it.
‘–Wednesday will be all right,’ he heard Mr Fairfax say. ‘But we may have to cancel Saturday. Most of your regulars are involved in the play and will be rehearsing.’
The trap door led to a loft. McMurtrie squeezed through and sat down. Now that he was safe he was ready to enjoy the situation. Below him, the talk droned on. There was a third voice, which he recognized as belonging to the school doctor. At last it came to an end, and he heard two pairs of footsteps tip-tapping away up the road. Give them five minutes, he thought. Then nip back quick.
He felt in his right-hand trouser pocket for the pencil torch which he always carried there, and clicked it on. He was in a sort of tunnel, floored with stacked planks and roofed with tiles. The far end was a triangle of darkness. He crawled along to investigate.
When he got there he saw that the shed he was in and the one next to it must originally have been a single structure. A wall had been run up to cut it into two, but it had not been thought worth while to carry it up to the roof. The triangle at the end was an opening, leading into the other section.
He peered through.
Immediately below him, its curved top reflecting the light of his torch, stood a dark grey four-door saloon car. He put the torch back in his pocket, turned over on to his stomach, and propelled himself backwards. The opening was not large, but it was large enough. His feet touched the top of the car, which cracked in protest under his weight. He stepped down from it on to the bonnet, and then on to the floor.
It was whilst he was fumbling for his torch that the full meaning of what he had done struck him for the first time. Suppose that the fantasy they had been discussing in dormitory less than half an hour before was true. Suppose this was the very car the police were looking for. Suppose the doors leading out to the road were locked. He had got in. Was he going to get out again? If he shouted, could Mr Bishop hear him?
He had the torch in his hand now, and clicked it on. The plug in the near-side rear tyre was chillingly plain.
At that moment his heart gave a jump and seemed to turn right over. Someone was coming up the road. Someone who was walking softly, but quickly. Someone who had now stopped outside the door.
McMurtrie had one thought only and that was to hide. He squeezed himself between the side of the car and the wall.
A key grated in the lock, and one of the double doors swung open. Someone was coming into the shed. Were they going to turn the light on? No. The footsteps came round the side of the car where McMurtrie was crouching. Then the opening of the nearside door turned on the light inside the car.
McMurtrie heard a gasp of surprise, and knew that he had been spotted. As he started to get up, a soft arm whipped round his throat from behind. He struggled furiously against it, but his body and legs were trapped.
The pressure increased.
A soft voice said, ‘Well, well. A little spy.’
McMurtrie tried to shout, but the merciless pressure on his windpipe prevented him.
‘Only one possible sentence for spies,’ said the voice. ‘Death.’
Death was the last word he heard.
Mr Bishop also had decided to give Mr Fairfax five minutes to get away. His conscience in the matter of the vodka was far from clear. At the end of this time he went across to the shed and called the boy’s name softly.
When he got no answer it occurred to him that McMurtrie must have wriggled out of the window at the far end of the shed and be already on his way back to the school. He smiled at the memory of the tense moment when they had heard Mr Fairfax’s voice, and the smile was still on his lips when he went indoors and saw the half bottle of vodka standing on the table where he had put it down.
Odd! Surely the boy would not have gone away and left it behind?
Mr Bishop walked out again into the yard. He was puzzled and uneasy. At this moment he heard a car start up in the garage next door.
He stepped out into the road.
The car was backing out of the garage. To make the turn, it had to swing left handed, and this brought its rear windows directly into Mr Bishop’s view.
There was a bundle on the back seat, covered by a rug. From one corner of the bundle what looked like a gym-shoe was sticking out. The car finished reversing and moved off down the lane.
Mr Bishop stood for a moment, staring after it. Then he went back into his house, fetched a big torch, trotted across with it to the shed and started to search. His first idea, that McMurtrie might have escaped by the window, was soon proved wrong. The only window was tightly shut and laced with old spiders’ webs.
The other possibility was the ladder. Mr Bishop climbed it and squeezed his head and shoulders through the trap door. Marks in the dust showed him that he was on the right track. He hoisted himself through the opening and crawled to the triangle of darkness at the end. The strong beam of his torch showed him that the garage was empty.
It showed him something else.
Lying on the floor, beside the door, was a silver pencil torch which he recognized.
It took him a minute to extract himself from the loft and less than a minute to reach the call box on the corner. It was Lucy Fairfax who answered the telephone. She said, ‘Yes. My husband’s just got back.’
Mr Bishop said, ‘Please Mrs Fairfax. Fetch him. Quickly, please. It’s urgent.’
It says something for the events through which they had lived that term that Lucy did not stop to argue. Mr Fairfax was at the telephone in less than a minute. Mr Bishop poured out his story, speculation and fact tripping over each other in his haste.
As Lucy was going she remembered something. She said, ‘A man telephoned for Ken Manifold earlier this evening. I think he was a policeman. He gave me this number.’
By the time she came running back with the news that McMurtrie’s bed was empty, Mr Fairfax was speaking to the police headquarters at Haydock Wood.
23
As soon as Manifold grasped what was being said, he made a sign to Constable Toft, who switched the call on to re-transmit. Then they could all hear Mr Fairfax’s voice. The horror in it was magnified by the transmission and filled the room.
‘Timings,’ said Anderson. ‘We must have timings.’
Manifold put the question. They could sense Mr Fairfax trying to pull himself together and consider the matter calmly. He said, ‘It wasn’t more than five minutes ago when Bishop telephoned me. And from what he told me, it might have taken him ten minutes to realize the boy was gone and get to the call box.’
‘Good enough,’ said Anderson. He had moved over to the table-map. ‘That girl went to the garage to fetch the car. Then she drove it round to the house to pick up Ware. They were planning to dump it.’
He sat in a chair at the head of the table and pressed one of the three selector switches.
‘That’s right,’ said Manifold. ‘They heard the six o’clock announcement, and it bolted them.’
‘But they weren’t expecting the boy. That must have held them up for a minute or two.’ He started to dial numbers. ‘They can’t be more than ten minutes gone. Probably less.’ Then, into his handset, ‘Control. Alert all watchers. This is the car we described to you last week. It’s moving north-east from map square 2496, repeat, 2496. It will now be from three to six miles from its starting place. Acknowledge.’
Night of the Twelfth Page 21