Newsdeath

by Ray Connolly

  ‘Don’t shoot,’ she said, no doubt even more unnerved by the obvious inexperience in Sapper’s command. Neither of them knew which was the more frightened. But the policeman had the gun.

  The girl’s name was Patsy Peters. She was dark and pretty in a pasty, meek way. Her parents were both schoolteachers in Wimbledon and if she hadn’t made such an insane mess of her emotional life she would at that moment have been at Cambridge reading modern history. Instead she was the first person to be held (and later charged) with being a member of the terrorist organization known as PUMA. With Patsy Peters, Howlett was lucky. In his experience there was no one worse to interview than the well-educated or intelligent. They were arrogant and unhelpful and so full of smart-arsed answers that their interrogators usually got the worse of any exchange. But Patsy Peters was just that bit too young and inexperienced, and in addition she had a reason for wanting to talk; she bore a grudge. For Howlett, she was a pushover. She gave all she had to give, and when Howlett had finished with her it seemed that she almost wanted to carry on talking. In fact she talked so freely that Howlett wondered how reliable was her information, but quick cross checks seemed to support what she was saying. He already had four names; now Patsy Peters added a further three - Neil Maxwell, Derrick Shelley and Dave Wright. Still more important she gave him what were almost certainly two aliases: a woman called Eyna and a Latin American boy (probably Cuban, thought Patsy) whom Eyna had recently introduced into the group. His name was Danny.

  ‘Danny?’ Howlett was sceptical. ‘That’s not Latin American.’

  ‘That’s what Eyna calls him,’ came the reply.

  ‘Tell me about this woman you call Eyna. What’s her second name? She doesn’t sound English.’

  Patsy Peters shook her head, and Howlett noticed that her hair was hiding a boil on her neck. Sadistically, he wondered to himself how much it would have hurt if he had one of his men do her a favour and squeeze it. ‘I think she’s from an East European country. I never knew her second name.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Howlett. ‘You know the names and addresses of all of the other members of the group, but you say you don’t know the second name of this woman Eyna, and don’t know whether Danny is or is not the real name of this man from South America.’

  ‘You don’t understand … they only joined us recently. She joined first, and then she suggested that he came along, too. There was a meeting to discuss it, and they were both elected on to the committee.’

  ‘Committee?’ Howlett was scoffing. ‘You sound like the Mothers’ Union instead of a gang of killers.’

  Patsy Peters looked at Howlett for a long time before she answered. ‘You started the killing,’ she said at last. Howlett’s face screwed up into a knot of puzzlement. ‘I don’t think anyone had even considered it before you killed Nancy and Johnny. It was you who gave us the reason to fight. Eyna and Danny brought us the weapons and taught us how.’

  ‘What are you talking about saying we “started the killing”? I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ said Howlett.

  Patsy Peters shrugged. ‘I don’t expect you do,’ she said.

  Howlett considered her again. She didn’t believe what he was saying and he couldn’t understand what she was talking about. He tried again: ‘What were the names of those people … Nancy … and who?’

  The girl was now silent.

  ‘Nancy who?’

  There was no response. Never mind, he thought, he could come back to that particular part of the puzzle later. He changed the line of questioning.

  ‘How long have you known Jennifer Silas, and Martin Jenkins and Hickmore and Springfield?’

  ‘About six months.’

  ‘And this woman called Eyna?’

  ‘Maybe two months.’

  ‘Two months …?’

  She nodded.

  Howlett felt himself growing angry at his own surprise. Nothing ought to surprise him these days.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that you let a woman you’ve known for only a couple of months lead you on a spree of killing … I don’t believe you, Patsy Peters. I don’t believe you at all.’ But the trouble was Howlett did believe her. Slowly in his mind the structure that was PUMA was beginning to gel, to make some kind of mad sense. ‘And where are they all now? All the rest of your mob?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. In the country.’

  ‘You were left behind?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To tidy up the loose ends.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I was to go to Hickmore’s place today and get all their stuff and then burn it. Eyna didn’t want anything else to be found when she heard you’d raided Jenny’s place.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I was to set light to the old headquarters in Putney.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘125 Clarke’s Drive … but you’re too late.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I set it alight last night. There’s nothing left …’

  Howlett stared at the girl for a moment and then picked up his desk telephone. ‘Sergeant, check 125 Clarke’s Drive, Putney with the local lads. Let me know if they have anything that might interest us.’ He turned back to Patsy Peters. ‘You’re a regular little delinquent, aren’t you? Pity you’re not a juvenile any more or the court might have dealt more leniently with you …’ He stared hard into the girl’s dark brown eyes. ‘Tell me, why didn’t they take you with them when they went, as you say, “into the country …”? Why wasn’t somebody else chosen to do their tidying up?’

  ‘Eyna thought I didn’t have the nerve to go through with the next job. I heard her discussing me with Hickmore and Dave and Kate.’

  ‘And was she right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never found out what the next job was going to be … no one knew apart from Eyna and possibly Danny. That was the way she organized us.’

  ‘She organized you …? I thought you said she’d only been involved for a couple of months.’

  ‘She’s the military commander.’

  At that moment Howlett’s phone rang breaking off the interrogation: ‘Sir, 125 Clarke’s Drive, Putney, was burned out completely early today. The Fire Brigade were there within ten minutes, but they were too late to do more than stop the fire from spreading to the adjacent houses. The street was due for demolition, and no one was supposed to be living there.’

  ‘Any casualties?’

  ‘Nothing found, sir. The Putney police believed the house to be empty when they arrived there.’

  ‘Okay … get the best forensic men available … see if Watson’s available … and Hunter, and get down there and see if there’s anything at all you can sift out of the cinders … you never know.’

  He put the telephone down and turned back to Patsy Peters. ‘Quite a little arsonist, aren’t you … come on, tell me. What were you destroying? What was Clarke’s Drive used for?’

  Patsy Peters looked coolly into his eyes. ‘It was what you’d call a bomb factory. It was the centre of operations. No one lived there. We all had our own pads, but we’d meet and plan there. Eyna found it for us. The street was condemned so we never had anyone looking over our shoulders.’

  And where did your friend Eyna five? Where was her pad?’

  The girl shook her head again: ‘We never knew. She wouldn’t say. She always contacted us. She said that if we all knew too much about each other then security would break down.’

  ‘But you already knew quite a lot about the other members of the organization, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but that was before she joined. She was right. The less you know, the less you can tell, can’t you?’

  It was undeniably true, but Howlett had more than a suspicion that Eyna’s motives for security had not been altogether unselfish.

  ‘Now tell me about John Huckleston,’ he said.

  ‘We kidnapped him. Eyna said she thought someone l
ike that might be useful. Some of us weren’t certain. She and Danny did it, but we others helped. We kept him at Clarke’s Drive for a couple of days and then they took him off to the country when they moved out. He was unconscious. They had to carry him in and out between them …’

  There was something just too co-operative about this girl, and it confused Howlett. ‘Why are you telling me all this, Patsy?’ he asked finally.

  Patsy Peters sat on the edge of her chair, and hung her head. For a moment Howlett thought she might be about to burst into tears, but she didn’t, she just sat there biting her bottom lip and staring at her shoes:

  ‘Come on. Why are you being so helpful?’ he said again.

  Again there was a silence that burned the air between the two of them, then as though preparing herself physically to heave something off her chest, she took a huge intake of air into her lungs. ‘They left me behind. They used me when they needed me, and then left me with all the rotten jobs to do, all the clearing up, while they went off to pull the big one. They left me out … they pushed me out … I hate her …’

  ‘Who? Eyna?’ said Howlett.

  Patsy Peters nodded and then began to cry. Howlett put a sheltering arm around her.

  ‘Now Patsy, I want you to tell me everything you can about PUMA. I want to know everything: how it was started, how you became involved, who was responsible for bringing Eyna into the group, anything else you can think of. I can’t promise you anything. But the courts look kindly on people who co-operate … you might save yourself a few years.’

  For the first time Patsy Peters looked confused: ‘You don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘You haven’t understood anything. That isn’t the point at all. That isn’t why I’ve helped you. None of it matters. I don’t care about anything … I hate her … and I want to stop her … not for you … but for me … for me, that’s all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s going to die without me. She’s going to leave me behind.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  A bright light was shining in Huckle’s face. His eyes were closed, but through the stretched skin of his lids he was aware of a new and uncomfortable pinkness which made him want to turn over and bury his head deeper into the pillows. It was the first light other than the constant red glow from the fire that he had seen for days, and its brilliance disturbed his dreams. Suddenly he was afraid: frightened to open his eyes. In his dreams he was free and his mind and his eyes could wander at will; if he were to open his eyes again he might find that seeing was all a trick of his imagination. And light might bring back his night.

  It was Saturday afternoon, but he had no way of knowing that. For over a week the endless darkness had stretched time and confused his perceptions. Disorientation was total. Although he had occasionally heard music in other parts of the building he had seen no one other than Eyna. She was a strange companion, whose silent visits were now too short and left him longing for more. They had not made love again, and she had not stayed with him after that one night, but sometimes after feeding him she would sit in silence, brooding. At first he had thought it was because she wanted to be with him, but, since she seemed so loath to talk, he suspected that she just wanted a break from the other members of PUMA. It was a morally confusing time for Huckle, a time when he could feel his personality shrinking alongside that of his jailer. She would never speak of herself and his questions were always brushed aside with the reply that he would learn everything he needed to know in due course. Having drawn so much of his secret thoughts from him in their first few meetings she asked him no more questions about himself, although he would have told her anything.

  Nor did she speak of herself. When he had asked her if Eyna was her real name her reply had been mockingly uninformative. ‘Not really,’ she had said. ‘What is your real name then?’ he had asked. ‘You can call me Eyna’ had been the reply. On another occasion he had suggested that Eyna was a Scandinavian name, hoping that he might draw her into conversation, but she had shown no interest in his observation. So it was in a dream-state of constant night that he passed his days.

  ‘Come on … wake up … wake up …!’ Eyna’s voice was now brittle and hard. His eyes flickered open and immediately closed again as the intensity of the light stung them. He felt an arm on his bare shoulder. ‘Come on. Get up.’ His brain acknowledged the instruction, but the motor reactions of his body seemed momentarily paralysed.

  ‘Turn out the light,’ he said, squinting at the brilliance through slits in his lids. ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘You have to try. Come on. Stand up.’

  Very slowly he parted his lids further and found himself peering blinkingly into two shining diamonds reflected from the depths of Eyna’s eyes.

  ‘Stand up,’ she was insisting. Again his body refused to cooperate immediately with his brain’s instruction. He felt himself being roughly pulled from the bed and walked across the room, further into the brilliance. Now he was growing accustomed to the light and he saw that its source was a bulb suspended from the ceiling. He looked at Eyna. Her face was strong and stern, but as he caught her eye she threw a towelling gown across his shoulders. Suddenly aware of his nakedness he pulled it quickly around his body, glancing anxiously around at the four other people present. There were three men and a girl. All were strangers.

  Quickly the group led him out of the bedroom, down a wooden staircase and into a large old-fashioned kitchen. The light was now less bright - just the daylight of a quickly fading winter’s evening. On the far side of the kitchen was a window. He saw Eyna watching him, and as his escorts freed his arms he moved unsteadily towards it. The view must surely, he thought, give him some indication of his whereabouts.

  The room looked out over a large overgrown garden. To the right he could see some dilapidated farm buildings, empty and broken down, while at the end of the garden he could make out an area where the fence had fallen down, and what looked like open common land beyond. It seemed the remotest of places.

  ‘Now do you know where you are?’ Eyna had moved up next to him and was standing staring out at the view.

  He shook his head slowly. ‘Somewhere in Southern England?’ he said.

  ‘Turn round,’ she said. ‘You’ve been demanding to know about PUMA, so here’s your opportunity to find out.’

  For the first time Huckle’s mind swivelled back to the idea that he might still be in danger. In the bedroom all those days he had felt a sense of security. Now, once again, the feeling of dread arose within him as he turned to face the rest of the people in the room.

  His first feelings were that there were more than he had suspected, and that the room was larger than he had thought. His eyes ran around the kitchen. There were, apart from Eyna, eight people there, two of whom were women. Eyna introduced them as she would name the guests at a dinner party. Huckle stared at them and they regarded Huckle with a cold aloofness. None of them spoke as Eyna moved around the room, offering their names. Martin Jenkins, Michael Hickmore, Jenny Silas, Kate Springfield, Neil Maxwell, Derrick Shelley, Dave Wright and Danny. Dave, Shelley, Michael Hickmore and Jenny had been the ones who had helped bring him down the stairs. He saw now that both Dave and Shelley had heavy automatic pistols shoved into the belts of their trousers, giving them a cavalier appearance.

  This is PUMA, he thought, almost feeling as though he ought to pinch himself so that he might better take in the collection of individuals facing him. His eyes wandered over the room as Eyna spoke. He didn’t know what he had expected PUMA to look like, but he was surprised when he saw them. Perhaps it was the youth of the group which surprised him most of all. Or was it their slovenliness? Certainly none of them was much over twenty-five and, with the exception of Eyna and Neil Maxwell, all were pale, bedraggled and carelessly dressed. Eyna, as always, looked smart and attractive, although her suit of denim was no better than those of her compatriots. It must be the cut of her hair, thought Huckle, or the obvious expensiveness of her boots. />
  He only recognized one other person in the room and that was the man she introduced to him as Danny, the dark-haired, bearded young man, who, he was sure, had been responsible for his kidnap and the blow on the back of his head. Huckle looked at him. He noticed that Danny avoided meeting his gaze, but was, instead, playing with the catch of an automatic machine-gun, which he had cradled across his knees. Moving his eyes on he came to Neil Maxwell, a young black man, with a set of worry beads around his neck and a pair of moccasins on his feet. He looked about twenty-five but the small goatee beard added a maturity to his face and an air of casual sophistication. Of the whole group he was the only one not to be wearing some kind of blue denim, but rather was dressed in fawn corduroy trousers and jacket over a flowered cotton shirt. He regarded Huckle suspiciously through a pair of tinted glasses.