He was relieved to see the black outline of the cottage. As he bumped the Land-Rover up the kerb, the windows threw back the headlight beam for a second before he switched off. And there was another flicker from an upstairs window, just for the briefest of moments and so quick he might have been mistaken. But if someone with a shaded torch, suddenly disturbed by the light from the vehicle, had turned quickly and switched off the torch too late, it might have looked like that.
Goldsmith jumped out of the Land-Rover and rushed to his front door. His key was in the hole and turned with the speed and accuracy of years. But the door didn’t budge. Someone had slid the bolts home inside.
He stooped to the letter box and pushed it open. A shadowy figure was moving with haste but without panic down the passage into the kitchen. Goldsmith remembered the broken window which he had merely patched with a piece of cardboard. This was one burglar who had had things easy.
There was no direct way round the side of the cottage. Presumably the intruder had worked this out too. Goldsmith ran back to the Land-Rover, clambered on the bonnet, stepped from here to the roof of the single-story wash-house and store-room which blocked off access at the right-hand side of the cottage and scrambled along the sloping slippery tiles. He went as fast as he could with little concern for his own safety or the state of repair of the roof. But there was no way to be fast enough, and when he reached a point from which he could see into the back garden, it was empty. Then through the apple trees, his straining eyes saw a movement on top of the wall which separated his property from the sloping field beyond. Someone had just passed over it, and even at this distance and in this darkness the impression Goldsmith got once more was one of careful, unflurried movement.
Goldsmith was more enraged by this than by the idea of the break-in itself. Pursuit was useless. The man had too great a start and all directions to choose from. The logical thing was to get into the house, inspect the damage, ring the police. No; not from here anyway. This fellow would almost certainly have disconnected the phone. He moved as if he knew all the answers. Only Goldsmith’s unforecastably early return had caught him unawares.
He scrambled back along the wash-house roof panting from his exertions, his brain working coldly, calculatingly. His visitor was not alone in being able to forecast reactions. He had to have a car and it must be close. The most likely place was in the lane which ran over the ridge, across the ford to the farm-house at the other side of the valley. From here all he would have had to do was clamber over the stone wall and make his way across the field behind the cottage.
A hypothesis is nothing unless it’s tested, thought Goldsmith as he climbed into the Land-Rover, switched on and reversed into the road at a speed which did not allow for the possibility of other traffic. The vehicle’s acceleration was not one of its selling points and he was still far from top speed when he had to start slowing down to take the corner into the lane. He almost didn’t make it, slipping sideways in the beginnings of a four-wheel skid on the wet tarmac, but this was something the Land-Rover was well equipped to deal with; and the tractor-etched ruts of the lane’s surface, which the rain was rapidly turning into twin rivers, offered no problems at all.
His headlights were on full beam—there was no point in attempting a stealthy approach – and by the time he had travelled three hundred yards, he began to suspect he was wrong. The lane ran arrow straight to the crest of the ridge and clearly no car was parked on this side of it. There was no reason he could think of for his burglar to have left his car farther than this. He would have needed some light to manoeuvre the vehicle round and would not have wanted to risk attracting attention from the farm-house.
Goldsmith slowed down, swearing softly. The line between hypothesis and credo was always very narrow and easily crossed unawares. It was difficult to rethink the situation, and probably it was far too late. Ahead on his right was a gateway through the wall where he would be able to turn. He pulled the wheel round and ran the bonnet up against the gate, prior to getting out and opening it. Then he noticed that the cast-iron hoop by which the gate was fastened to the wall-end was not in place. Even as his mind worked out the possible implications of this, his hand thrust the gear lever forward, his foot stamped down on the accelerator and the Land-Rover’s bumper hit the bottom bar of the gate and sent it swinging madly open. A figure started from behind the wall. A few yards away up the hill and parked snugly out of sight against the wall was a Mini. The man, anonymously bulky in a plastic raincoat, gum boots and broad-rimmed hat, instinctively headed for the car.
If he gets into it, I’ve got him, thought Goldsmith triumphantly as he put the gears into four-wheel drive and swung the wheel hard over. There was no way in which a Mini could get away from a Land-Rover in these conditions.
But his burglar was a thinker. Hiding the car in the field in case anyone legitimately using the farm-track should notice it, had been the work of a thoughtful man. Now he turned from the Mini to face the oncoming Land-Rover, raising his hands to his face as he did so.
A gesture of surrender? wondered Goldsmith. Or just concealment? He wants to conceal his identity which could mean I know him and which must mean he still hopes to get away!
The man broke and ran straight at the Land-Rover, side-stepping left at the last moment and heading straight down the hill. It took a few seconds for Goldsmith to reverse and by the time he had done so, his burglar had a thirty-yard start. Angrily he stamped hard on the accelerator and rapidly bore down on the fleeing figure. The fool had no hope of reaching the bottom of the field before he was overtaken. He glanced over his shoulder; in panic, thought Goldsmith. But there was no panic in the way in which he stopped, turned again and flung himself sideways out of the line of the fast-moving Land-Rover. Even that vehicle’s versatility provided no quick way of stopping at fifty mph, on a soft, sodden grassy slope.
In fact, thought Goldsmith, his anger suddenly gone, it might not prove too difficult to turn the thing over if you really put your mind to it and tried to turn and decelerate at the same time.
By the time he had arranged his movements in a non-fatal order, the burglar was back at his Mini. If it had started first time, that would have been an end of the matter. But the rain or perhaps some untypical hastiness on the driver’s part interfered. The starter roared, the engine turned, almost caught, then wheezed to silence. And again. And again.
It was at the seventh or eighth try that it started. Even then this was almost soon enough. The Mini bounded forward, swung out slightly to make room for the turn through the gateway and almost made it as the Land-Rover arrived. The best Goldsmith could do was drive hard at the little car’s side. He caught it just above the rear wheel. It was only a glancing blow but strong enough to shatter the Land-Rover’s left headlamp and push the Mini’s back end round so that the turning circle became too tight and there was no way through the solid stone wall.
The driver did not hesitate. He grasped the situation at a glance, opened his door and scrambled out.
They were only three yards apart at this point. Goldsmith thought of getting out of the Land-Rover and meeting the man on equal terms, but the thought was only a passing one. Anyone who gave up an advantage such as he had was a fool. The other might be ten years younger, an experienced and expert brawler. The only struggle he, Goldsmith, had taken part in during the past twenty years had been that farcical, tragic last waltz with Housman which had caused all this trouble. That there was a connection between that business and this he took for granted, though what it could be was at present a total mystery. Time to think of that later. At the moment his job was to keep track of the man in the plastic mac. He hoped that he would try to repeat his previous downhill manoeuvre.
But the other had also learned from his failure. He set off running once more, but this time up the ridge. Goldsmith followed cautiously, trying to work out tactics. In the first heat of pursuit, it had seemed quite reasonable just to run the man down. Clearly that was out of the quest
ion. The sensible thing to do was to concentrate on the car, immobilize it and contact the police. They would soon track the intruder down, probably that same night. The trouble then would be that he would not see the man till his case came up in court, and he wanted desperately to find out the reason for the break-in. There was always the possibility that it was in fact a policeman he was chasing. Vickers struck him as a man not above taking short-cuts. But in that case what did Vickers imagine he was going to find in the cottage? Or anyone, for that matter?
No, the thing to do was just drive this poor fellow round and round till he dropped from exhaustion, then have a heart-to-heart with him.
The ‘poor fellow’, he suddenly realized, was far from abandoning the game yet. The single headlight was adequate for keeping him in view, but it was also picking out the rocky outcrops and small boulders which became more and more frequent as you approached the top of the ridge. The running man was selecting a route which took him across and through as many of these obstacles as possible and Goldsmith realized his quarry was drawing away as the Land-Rover twisted and turned to avoid the stones.
He tried to speed up; one of the front wheels bucked violently and he heard the bottom of the vehicle rasp along some unyielding obstruction. He swore anxiously and slowed down again. Ahead the man had reached the crest and was disappearing behind one of the three lightning-struck trees which tonight were in their Gothic element. A short while later he brought the Land-Rover to a halt beneath their skeletal shade. Below, at the foot of the lightly wooded slope which fell away more sharply on this side, he could just make out a line of more polished darkness which he knew was the little river. The farm-house beyond was almost invisible against the uncontrasting background and no lights showed. They kept early hours here still.
And nowhere on the slope below him could he see anything which vaguely resembled a man.
One thing he could not afford to do was sit and wait. His burglar might be sitting behind a tree watching him. Or he might be heading down the hill, planning to by-pass the farmhouse and cut across country to the main road five miles to the north. A good way of getting himself killed, thought Goldsmith, not without satisfaction. But this fellow had not so far struck him as being ready to get himself killed. No, his idea would still be to get back to the Mini. Even with a dent in its side, it would still be drivable, and he would know that Goldsmith had not paused to immobilize it.
That’s what I should do now, thought Goldsmith. Back down the ridge, pull the innards out of that car, then go for the police.
Instead he moved the Land-Rover forward till it was on the down slope of the valley, applied the footbrake, studied the ground ahead, then switched off the engine and surviving headlight. Immediately, without waiting for the night-sight to develop, he released the footbrake and freewheeled down the slope for twenty or thirty feet. Here he applied the brake again and waited till shapes and movement began to make themselves felt through the darkness. Below him to his left was a small clump of elders. He waited till an extra gust of wind shook their thin branches, then released the brake once more and slid gently down behind their shifting protection.
With luck, his burglar would now have as little idea where his pursuer was as he had of the other’s position. For a while the man would lie low, then begin moving cautiously back towards the crest of the ridge. That was part of the hypothesis. The other part was that the man would be farther down the slope than the Land-Rover was and somewhere between it and the wall. Indeed for all he knew the man had scrambled over the wall and was now walking back down the lane at his leisure. But the hypothesis did not cater for that possibility and Goldsmith put it out of his mind firmly.
He glanced down at the luminous dial of his watch. Five minutes, he had decided. The other was a careful man, would wait at least that long.
The night was as wild as ever. The three dead trees which commanded the ridge groaned and protested as the wind tore at their carbonized limbs. Always in stormy weather they suffered some diminution of stature and the morning would find them with some new grotesquerie of outline and their disjointed members lying in the grass across their surface roots.
The five minutes were up. He counted another sixty seconds then switched on the engine and his one remaining headlight at the same time.
For a moment he thought he had failed. Driving rain, swaying trees, unyielding rocks: there was nothing else to see in the white cone which lay athwart the slope.
Slowly he sent the Land-Rover moving forward. Then only a few yards ahead the man rose up from the ground and stood full in the beam.
‘Now, you bastard,’ murmured Goldsmith, and increased his speed slightly. The man took two or three uncertain steps backwards, slipped and sank to the ground again, Goldsmith, triumphant, ran the Land-Rover towards him. His plan was to halt alongside the recumbent figure and urbanely invite him aboard for a conversation. But as the bonnet of the slowing vehicle passed the man, he pushed himself upright. In his hand was a large round rock. He swung it hard against the surviving headlight and darkness fell again.
His recent scruples forgotten, Goldsmith accelerated and swung the wheel hard over. His sole thought was to get the man and if that involved cracking a bone or two, he did not for the moment care. The Land-Rover rushed blindly forward, there may or may not have been a slight bump against the side, but almost immediately the bonnet struck something head on which was far too solid to be a man. Goldsmith felt himself pitched forward and upward, his brow struck the windscreen, his chest the upper rim of the steering wheel and he fell sideways across the front seat.
He had no sense of losing consciousness. He felt that he had pushed himself upright almost immediately. For a moment rain, trees and broken cloud seemed to lie flat and still against the window pane. Suddenly they jerked back into perspective and motion, and when he looked at his watch more than half an hour had passed since he had sprung his ambush.
His chest ached and his forehead had a large bump on it, but nothing seemed broken. He opened the door and halftumbled out of the Land-Rover. The wind and rain were welcome revivers and after a moment he was able to inspect the damage. He had hit a hefty sapling, bending it back so that the green and white fibres bulged through the bark like varicose veins. He had been lucky. If it had been a rock, the impact might have been much more serious, for himself as well as the vehicle. As it was, both still seemed able to function, but he had no intention of trying to get the Land-Rover back up the hill without lights.
He removed the keys, locked the door and wearily set off up the ridge towards the Gothic trees. He glanced towards the gateway in the wall as he descended on the other side and noted without surprise that the Mini had gone. It didn’t matter, he told himself as he entered his cottage by the burglar’s route. The man’s escape was only temporary. When he had caught him in the headlight beam for the last time he had got a clear view of his face. And he knew where to start looking for him.
He did not pause to inspect the cottage for theft or damage but downed a stiff whisky, pulled off his wet clothes, fell on his bed and went to sleep.
CHAPTER XIII
HE WAS AWOKEN by a thunderous knocking at the front door. Feeling dreadful, he went down the stairs and opened it.
‘My God!’ said Liz. ‘You look awful.’
She came in uninvited and led him into the living-room.
‘What’s happened to you?’
‘I had a bit of an accident.’
‘I’ve noticed. Let’s clean you up a bit.’
It was rather pleasant to relax and admit her expert ministrations. She told him she had tried to ring the previous night but had not been able to get through. Similarly this morning, and she’d decided to catch him before he set off for work.
‘Last night’s row was stupid,’ she said. ‘I should have realized you wanted to relax, not listen to Jeff rattling on. Mind you, you were a bit rough on him. On all of us.’
‘I’ll apologize,’ he said. He had let he
r believe he’d had a few drinks after leaving her house, been involved in a slight accident and decided to abandon the Land-Rover in the interests of safety. He had been examining the living-room as he spoke, and though there were signs of a search – drawers and doors pulled open, books disturbed – there was nothing not attributable to alcoholic disorderliness. Even the telephone cord might have been pulled accidentally out of its socket.
He began to feel better after coffee, aspirin and a substantial breakfast. His chest was badly bruised and he had to promise Liz he would consult a doctor before she would let him go to collect the Land-Rover. He had been deliberately vague about its whereabouts, saying it was ‘up the road a bit’ and this seemed to satisfy her. He also expected more opposition to his declaration that he was going to work, but Liz merely nodded, said that as she had a bit of time coming, she thought she’d take the morning off and, unless he had any great objection, start putting his house to rights.
It was an opportunity she had been long awaiting, he knew, and it would have taken more churlishness than he had the strength for that morning to refuse. Her concern for him was flattering and he wondered as he had often done recently whether it was just her mother’s propinquity that made it seem threatening also. He found himself comparing mother and daughter. It was not difficult, even though it might be unjust, to detect the lineaments of the older woman in the younger. He found himself considering as a foil to them both the cool, ordered, self-containment of Jennifer Housman. Even her appearance with its unobtrusively elegant grooming contrasted with the conscious flamboyance of Mrs Sewell and with Liz’s laissez faire.
A Very Good Hater Page 11