Red Christmas

by Reginald Hill

  ‘True,’ he said, ‘but he’ll spot our tracks anyway.’

  ‘Not so easily. And I did my best to sweep the snow in over them as we came.’

  ‘Did you now? Clever old you.’

  He meant it. But he meant the irony too. It seemed desirable to establish firmly who was the leader of this expedition. No, that was absurd. Survival was all that mattered in their present circumstances. But the question of dominance in their relationship was clearly one which had to be resolved. Though perhaps the relationship would end with the circumstances which had caused it.

  Perhaps all their relationships would end then if he didn’t keep his mind on the job in hand. He crouched lower and increased his pace along the ditch.

  They reached the ruined cottage without further incident. The door screeched nerve-rackingly on its warped hinges, but it was good to know that the entry of other visitors would be just as noisily announced.

  It was a small place, one up, one down, with a kitchen. Dilapidated but not too dusty, as if someone felt it worth while to keep it tidy. This reminded Boswell of his hopes that the gamekeepers might have left some gear here for ease of access. He didn’t have to look far. Indeed there wasn’t far he could look. A large oak cupboard, which with a chair, a stool and a sadly listing table provided the total downstairs furnishing, opened to reveal a treasure-trove. A pair of wellingtons, a pair of ancient but serviceable leather boots, an ex-army groundsheet cape, and greatcoat. And a short- handled spade.

  ‘Clever old you,’ said Arabella in her turn. ‘God, I’m freezing!’

  It was only now they had stopped moving that Boswell realised how cold he was. The snow had melted and soaked its way through every inch of his clothing. But starting a fire was far too dangerous. The smoke would be spotted a mile off.

  Arabella had disappeared, he realised. He heard her footsteps on the wooden stairs.

  ‘Careful!’ he called, concerned about the state of the woodwork generally.

  A creak overhead told him she had reached the first floor and he set off after her, keeping as close to the wall as possible.

  The bedroom still seemed to have its uses too. An old iron bedstead held pride of place there and, miracle of miracles, a couple of threadbare blankets were draped over it. A useful place for the keepers to snatch an hour’s rest in the long watches of the night.

  ‘Undo the hooks, will you?’ said Arabella, turning her back to him.

  He performed the task without really grasping her purpose, though briefly there crossed his mind the fluttering fancy that his masculine presence had driven her mad with desire. He was quickly disenchanted even as she stepped out of her dress.

  ‘Modesty’s not going to make me freeze to death,’ she said. ‘But one step in the wrong direction could be painful for you.’

  ‘This looks like a step in the right direction,’ he said admiringly, as the rest of her clothes fell to the ground and she began towelling her goose-pimpled body with one of the blankets.

  It seemed like a good idea and quickly he followed suit. It was exhilarating to feel the blood begin to circulate once more as he rubbed the rough cloth violently against his flesh, contorting himself in his efforts to reach the centre of his back.

  ‘Swops,’ said Arabella, who was having the same problem.

  ‘Ahh!’ he said, as she sent the warming strokes running up and down his spine.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said, and began the same process on her long, brown beautifully moulded back. It was a mistake, he knew instantly. Without help, he was not capable of this kind of restraint. Not even cold and wet with an armed man hunting for him outside. The slap in the face was what he needed to set things back on an even keel. So, let her slap.

  Resigned to his fate, he took her shoulders and turned her slowly towards him. She looked up at him steadily, her gaze again holding his, which wanted to be running wildly over the hills and valleys of her body. Slowly still, he pulled her towards him. Still she did nothing. Their bodies met.

  ‘It’s just for the heat,’ she said calmly. Then they kissed.

  And downstairs the door screeched. Someone had just entered the cottage.

  14

  Then you are not dead! Oh, say you are not dead!

  MISS RACHAEL

  Arabella was not certain what she had intended next. Boswell, she was certain, had reached the point where he would be guided by her. If, without breaking, off their kiss, she had wrapped the blankets round them and pulled him down with her on to the bed, there would have been no resistance. She herself was not far off that delicious dream state in which nothing exists outside one’s own sensuality. But she still had choice.

  Till the door screeched open below. Then there was no longer a choice.

  She was pushed gently away by Boswell, who knelt quietly down beside his discarded clothing. She admired the long, lean length of his body and retrospectively decided what she would have done. Now his movements became less certain, however, and she knelt beside him.

  ‘What?’ she mouthed.

  ‘The gun. Where?’ He looked desperately around once more, then squatted on his haunches in complete dejection.

  ‘When I came over the hedge, I must have … I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  Arabella shook her head at him and strained her ears. There it was again, unmistakable. a foot placed softly, furtively, on the stairs.

  Boswell heard it too and stood up, moving protectively between her and the door. It was amazing how a little bit of sex could bring out the old chivalrous hangover in some men. Very touching really, but hardly helpful in their present circumstances.

  The window offered nothing. It was small, square and looked unopenable. In any case, nudity was far from being the best state for running through the snow.

  She remembered one of her Uncle Sam’s maxims when he used to take her on hunting trips in South Africa.

  Every disadvantage must be someone’s advantage. It can be yours if you only look at it right.

  It made sense. What he said usually did. Swiftly she gesticulated at Boswell to position himself behind the door. He did so, reluctantly, obviously feeling that the dangers of a sub-machine gun being fired indiscriminately in such a small place were far too great. He was right. Unless the bearer of the gun was too distracted to get a shot in.

  The stairs creaked again. She flung a blanket on the bed and stretched her magnificent body on it full length. Boswell stared at her in amazement. She winked at him, then closed her eyes. A faint smile played on her lips.

  Now he saw her plan. A tethered goat. Distraction for the predator. It could work. Christ, it was certainly distracting him!

  The door creaked open. Arabella forced herself to breathe deeply, rhythmically, as though in a sound sleep. She sensed the amazed eyes on her, heard the intaken breath, the two hesitant steps forward. Boswell must be poised for attack. She sighed deeply and rolled over on her side to create maximum attention—holding effect. Still no sound of violent movement. Only another couple of paces forward. She had a sense now of the man standing poised over her, staring down, lust growing in his gut as his eyes caressed the flesh offered up so freely to him. Perhaps Boswell had … had what? Fainted? For Godsake! A finger touched her gently, almost reluctantly, on the shoulder. She opened her eyes.

  Above her hung a leonine face, a ginger mane like a sunburst framing a pair of bright blue but very puzzled eyes. She opened her mouth to scream.

  ‘Hello, Jimmy,’ said Boswell pleasantly.

  The man spun round in alarm, looked even more surprised at finding a naked man than a naked woman. Then his body relaxed and a yellow-toothed smile broke out beneath his tangled beard.

  ‘Good day to you, Mr. Boswell,’ he said, touching the brim of the old straw hat he wore, a gesture more derisive than servile. ‘Sorry to interrupt, I’m sure. Very sorry, madam.’

  He leered complacently down at Arabella.

  ‘Thought Santa Claus had brought me what I wanted at last,’ he c
hortled. ‘Without the wrapping.’

  ‘What are you going here, Jimmy?’ asked Boswell.

  ‘Needn’t ask you that, eh, sir?’ said Jimmy. Arabella climbed off the bed and wrapped a blanket round her. The veiling of her charms seemed to be enough to switch off the old man’s lecherous familiarity.

  ‘Not doing any harm,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d try my luck up at the Dell last night, it being Christmas Eve. But the snow was coming down so thick, when I reached here, I thought I’d better stick. I was round the back when you must have come.

  ‘Just greed,’ he added philosophically to Arabella. ‘I got myself given a nice pheasant and a couple of rabbits yesterday, by a Yankee gent, so I was comfortably fixed. But I flogged ’em in the village and thought I’d get me Christmas dinner in the kitchen at the Dell.’

  ‘A Yankee gent?’ asked Boswell, glancing at Arabella.

  ‘That’s right. Nice chap. Found him in the old waiting room at the station—that’s one of my spots now they don’t use it no more—sprucing himself up a bit, he were. I thought he was going to turn nasty at first, but he changed his tune in the end when he saw I meant no harm. Went off on one of your coaches, Mr. Boswell.’

  You don’t know how lucky you were, thought Boswell. Tarantyev must have very seriously considered killing the old tramp. But this confirmed it was that Russian who had shot the man on the hillside also. It had been a puzzle that he had apparently arrived on the afternoon train.

  ‘Any chance of a bite to eat at the Dell, it being Christmas Day and all?’ said Jimmy, bent on making the most of the situation, even to the extent of a mild hint of blackmail. ‘Can I say you sent me, Mr. Boswell?’

  ‘I doubt if it would do you much good at the moment.’

  Boswell shivered and Arabella handed him the other blanket. He started slightly, as though just noticing his own nakedness, and grinned ruefully at her.

  ‘Can you hang on downstairs a moment, Jimmy?’ he said. Obligingly the tramp left, after a series of knowing nods and winks.

  ‘Who is that?’ demanded Arabella.

  ‘A local gent of the road,’ said Boswell. ‘Harmless enough. He could be useful.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For getting to the village. If anyone can make it, he can. Sawyer’s boy is after us, isn’t he? Almost certainly once he lost us, he’ll have covered the route to the village. If we let ourselves be seen—distantly and safely, of course—we can draw him away and leave the road clear for Jimmy to get through.’

  Arabella was doubtful.

  ‘Can we trust him?’

  Boswell laughed.

  ‘If you mean, is he likely to turn out to be a lieutenantgeneral in the KGB, the answer’s an emphatic “no”!’

  ‘Nice to be so certain,’ murmured Arabella. ‘OΚ. But is he reliable to deliver a message to someone who will help?’

  ‘I think so. Jimmy’s well known to the village bobby. Harmless and sometimes helpful.’

  ‘Which?’

  ‘Both, I suppose,’ grinned Boswell. ‘But bright enough to take notice.’

  Arabella was no longer listening. Her attention was centred on the door.

  ‘Funny,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t hear the stairs creak as he went down.’

  Boswell whipped the door open in one smooth movement. Grinning unrepentantly, Jimmy stepped back inside.

  ‘I should have known,’ said Boswell. ‘Right, Jim lad. You heard. We’re in a spot of bother. Will you carry a message to the village?’

  ‘I could do, Mr. Boswell. If I was going that way.’

  ‘And what other way would you be going?’

  ‘To the Dell. For my dinner.’

  Arabella rolled her eyes in exasperation.

  ‘The old fool!’ she muttered.

  Boswell calmed her with an amused glance.

  ‘Don’t you recognise bargaining when you hear it? All right, Jimmy. Sunday dinner in the kitchen at Dingley Dell for the next six months?’

  ‘Done!’ said the old tramp happily. He got another month out of Boswell on the strength of an old pencil-stub he produced, this being the only writing implement they had between them. And he threw in a piece of advice gratis when he saw Boswell glumly contemplating putting on his damp clothes once more.

  ‘Tear up the blankets,’ he said, nodding with enthusiasm for his own expertise. ‘Tie the strips round your limbs. Best thing out for keeping you warm!’

  Arabella would have preferred a large Scotch and a redhot bath, but she had to agree there was something in the old man’s advice when she tried it—after he had withdrawn from the room even more reluctantly than before.

  Downstairs they divided their booty, while Jimmy watched with bright eyes, inwardly ruminating on his own past refusal to take anything from the cottage on the grounds of preserving it as a safe resting place. Clearly his scruples were not shared by all.

  Arabella got the wellingtons (which were slightly smaller than the boots) and the groundsheet. Boswell wore the rest.

  ‘Right, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘Give us ten minutes or so before you set out. Be sure of that, eh? How long do you reckon it will take you?’

  ‘Long time, if I can do it at all,’ said Jimmy. ‘The lane’s likely filled with snow like a hole in the ground.’

  ‘You’d better take the shovel,’ said Boswell, chucking him the implement.

  ‘Ta,’ said Jimmy, delighted to be going away with something—especially something legitimately given in the presence of a witness. Nothing had been said about returning it.

  Boswell felt some qualms as he and Arabella slipped out once more into the snow.

  ‘I hope he’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ asked the girl surprised. ‘What’s worrying you?’

  ‘If this didn’t work,’ said Boswell carefully, ‘if someone decided to shoot old Jimmy just to be on the safe side, well, it would be my fault. For involving him, I mean.’

  ‘You’re the funniest spy I’ve ever met,’ she answered.

  ‘You’ve met a few, then?’ he asked casually.

  She wagged an admonishing finger at him.

  ‘Still not trusting your faithful companion, are you? Lead on, Lone Ranger. Tonto will bring up the rear.’

  ‘Hi-yo, Silver,’ he said. Suddenly the clouds above parted and a wintry sun spilt pale light through the chasm on to the wooded ridge which rose sharply to the right of Dingley Dell and ran away more gently south towards the snow-hidden line of the road. Arabella felt strangely excited, as if they were setting out on some perilous but inevitably safe-ending quest at the completion of which all the bonhommie, piety and honest, sentimental merriment of the Dickensian Christmas-myth would be waiting for them. Beside this vision the selfindulgent play-acting of Dingley Dell Enterprises Ltd. seemed tawdry, kitsch, almost offensive. She could laugh at herself, as she had laughed during her African trip when, alone by her camp-fire in the evening, Rider Haggard notions of her journey had thronged in on her. But the laughter did not dispel, rather was absorbed into, the imaginings.

  Boswell was looking at her quizzically, affectionately.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ll head up the ridge. We’ll stick to cover till we’re three-quarters of the way up, then show ourselves. If he’s down there by the road, he’s bound to see us moving against the snow.’

  ‘So he is. Him with his little pop-gun. And us with our snowballs.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I said I was sorry about losing it. Still perhaps we’re better off without it. It’s no use against those choppers, and I might have shot Jimmy the second he stepped through the door. We’re better off with our sticks.’

  Both of them had helped themselves to a four-foot-long oaken-stave, formerly part of the fencing which had once surrounded the cottage. If nothing else, they would be useful for probing the depth of the snow as they made their way over the frequently uneven terrain.

  Cautiously they set off, moving back along the line of the drive ag
ain to start with, using the colonnade of trees as cover. The snow was never less than knee deep, but the old tramp’s advice on lagging their legs at the top of their boots seemed to work and their feet remained dry. It was hard work, however, and even harder once they left the flat drive to follow a line of rhododendron bushes which ran obliquely up the rising terrain towards the distant ridge. The dark glossy green of the bushes’ leaves showed triumphantly through and beneath the snow which weighed them down. It was like an earnest of survival. A robin appeared from the middle of one bush to investigate them and piped querulously in their direction. Arabella wished she had had a biscuit or anything edible to give it. The thought of food made her recall her own interrupted dinner. All that superb goose must now be lying neglected and cold, Not that there was anything wrong with cold goose. Indeed no. A cottage loaf, freshly buttered. A mound of stuffing. A glass of beer. And a leg of goose in her hand before a roaring fire.

  She was awoken from her reverie by a sharp poke from Boswell’s stick. Her mental wanderings had been accompanied by physical wanderings and she was up to her breast in snow. Exploration with her own stick revealed that she was in some kind of hollow and another couple of steps would have brought the level up to her head.

  They were both damp now, but it was dampness from the sweat of exertion rather than snow. They had both almost forgotten their diversionary function and merely reaching the crest of the ridge had become end enough in itself. It seemed to get no nearer and Arabella began to doubt very seriously whether she could make it.

  Then Boswell stopped and pointed down the slope.

  ‘Look,’ he said.

  From the double row of hedge-tops which marked the line of the road, a solitary figure was floundering through the snow towards them. It was obviously very deep down there. But if there had been any doubts about who it was, they would have been dispelled by the weapon he held one-handed above his head for protection, like a man wading across a river.

  ‘It’s worked,’ said Arabella.

  ‘I hope so. Though if Jimmy makes as poor time as we’ve been doing, it’s hardly worth while.’