The Gropes

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘Dynamite? Where did you get dynamite?’

  ‘Found it. Must have been left over from when they first began to dig for coal. They had to use it because it wasn’t possible to get a railway track through the rock. I’ve kept it dry far away from the Hall where no one would find it.’

  ‘But isn’t it dangerous?’

  ‘I reckon not. I sealed it in a watertight container. Anyway, we’ll see if it’s still good. Now you fetch the stepladder first – you aren’t tall enough to reach up there – and then drill two holes in the roof.’

  Esmond did as he was told and presently was busy with a drill.

  ‘What’s next?’ he asked when he’d made the holes Old Samuel wanted.

  Old Samuel had fetched a big china basin and was sitting on a box outside ladling gunpowder from the basin into a couple of twelve-bore cartridges from which a thin copper wire protruded. The wire came from a drum and when he had measured fifty yards he knotted the wire together. After that he fetched the sticks of dynamite and with the aid of the ladder put them up in the holes in the roof with the cartridge cases wedged underneath them.

  ‘That ought to do the trick,’ he said as they went out into the yard. ‘I don’t see that rock staying up there much longer. Now stop lurking around the place and go and bring the old Ford down here.’

  Esmond was fascinated. He’d always wanted to blow something up. He went back to the barn and fetched the old Ford. It fitted easily into the tunnel and while Old Samuel’s back was turned Esmond climbed onto the bonnet and carefully checked that the cases were fully pressed up into the holes he’d drilled. In fact, they fitted exactly and only one of the two needed extra wedging with a sliver of wood. Meanwhile, Old Samuel had fetched an electric generator and was waiting for Esmond, whom he called Joe or Mr Grope, to help him bring down some bales of barbed wire.

  ‘Not that we’ll need it but it’s best to be on the safe side. We’ll explode the roof first to make sure the powder works as it should do. After that we may have to get an iron gate. That will deter people coming in, not that anyone’s likely to. Those black bulls keep them away from the house in any case. Oh no, Grope Hall is known for being a place to avoid. From what I’ve heard in the kitchen you’re safe here. Mind you, no man has ever got away from here unless they want him to, “they” being them in the kitchen.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Esmond, surprising himself with the sudden realisation. He’d always had a hankering for blowing things up and he’d discovered how much he enjoyed looking after the pigs. Above all he felt free. The thought of going back to the house in Croydon sickened him. Out here, wherever ‘here’ was, he felt he could be himself instead of having his mother suffocating him and calling him her darling, never mind his father attacking him with a carving knife. Looking back over his life he was conscious that he had never for a moment really known who he was. Here in this wild countryside he felt he finally did. Even if he wasn’t entirely certain quite what he was called.

  ‘Might as well see if the cartridges work,’ said Old Samuel and attached the main copper wire to the electric generator. ‘Stand by, I’m going to start it now.’

  He turned the generator on, and a dull rumble came from the side shaft along with a cloud of powdered earth. When it had cleared they went in and peered at the result of this improvised explosion. There was no sign of the old Ford.

  ‘Better get the flashlight, Joe. It looks as if the whole roof is down. Mind you, that will save us using the barbed wire.’

  All the same Old Samuel was taking no chances. That night he painted a large warning notice which read ‘DANGER. BEWARE FURTHER ROOF FALLS’ and fixed it to a post beside the entrance.

  ‘That ought to do the trick,’ he said.

  And so for the first time since his arrival, Esmond was given no sleeping pill and slept happily.

  Chapter 30

  The same couldn’t be said of Vera. By the time the superintendent returned to the hospital she was, to put it mildly, distraught but had recovered sufficiently to ask questions and to try to answer some. The inspector, on the other hand, was determined to get his own back for her assault on him and for having ten stitches in his head.

  ‘Keep her in the private room if she’s got to stay in hospital and isn’t malingering,’ he told the doctor. ‘She needs to be as far away from the other patients as possible and you need to make sure she can’t get out of bed.’

  When the doctor asked why this was necessary the superintendent replied, ‘She’s a suspect in what appears to be a multiple murder case. Certainly a case in which she has to be thoroughly interrogated.’

  ‘Gawd! Multiple murder!’ said the doctor, horrified at what he was hearing. ‘Who is she supposed to have killed?’

  ‘I’m not in a position to say. Anyway, it’s only supposition but the evidence looks like she could have some connection with a serious crime. Oh, and while you’re at it, can you give her something to keep her calm?’

  The doctor looked at him in bewilderment.

  ‘Something to keep her calm? The woman’s … God knows what she is. Most of the time she’s completely hysterical unless she’s wholly sedated.’

  ‘I don’t want her to be fully sedated. Give her something that will lessen her anxiety and become relatively reasonable. I don’t want any more stitches in my head.’

  ‘Five drops of Rivotril in her tea should do the trick.’

  ‘What the devil’s that?’

  ‘It’s a benzodiazepine. On the other hand if I give her more right now she could fall asleep. Better leave her alone for half an hour.’

  The superintendent kept out of sight in the public waiting area to give her time to settle down before going in to question her.

  ‘Mrs Wiley, I don’t want to upset you,’ he lied sympathetically, ‘but I do want to find out where your son has gone. Perhaps you can help me. Have you any ideas that you haven’t mentioned to me?’

  Vera stared at him. This was a very different detective to the one she had hurled to the floor. On the other hand his scalp was still bandaged so it must be the same one.

  ‘But I’ve told you already I don’t know what’s happening,’ she replied. ‘That’s why I brought him up here to my brother.’

  ‘Because …?’ the superintendent began.

  ‘Because my husband tried to kill him and I told you that last time too. Why are you asking me the same questions again?’

  ‘We have to make sure you haven’t left anything out accidentally, Mrs Wiley.’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. What sort of things would I leave out?’

  The superintendent sighed. The bloody woman seemed to have all her wits about her. He began to wish the doctor had given her a strong sedative after all.

  ‘All right, I’ll ask you a different question. We’ve been to your house in Selhurst Road and your husband isn’t there. Can you tell me where he might be?’

  ‘In a pub,’ snapped Vera, secretly shocked to think she’d forgotten all about Horace still locked in his room and desperately trying to remember when she’d last fed him. ‘Anyway, how do you know he’s not at home? He may still be in bed.’

  ‘I can assure you he’s not.’

  ‘You’re telling me you broke in? You had no right to do that,’ Vera spat at him. ‘You’re policemen, you’re supposed to be keeping the law not breaking it.’

  The chief detective sighed again.

  ‘We did nothing of the kind. The back door hadn’t been locked. We simply walked in.’

  ‘You’re lying. I always lock up before going out,’ protested Vera, forgetting that in fact she had rushed straight out back to her brother’s that morning when the phone wasn’t answered, fearing the worst and indeed finding it when she got there.

  ‘But perhaps Mr Wiley doesn’t.’

  ‘He does. He’s a bank manager and he’s always been very particular. He’s particular about everything in life, including locking all the doors.’

  ‘Not ab
out his clothes he isn’t. Two jackets and a suit were lying on the floor. So were some socks. All in all he’d emptied the wardrobe and dumped everything in it on the unmade bed. The inside of the safe at his bank was in the same mess.’

  The superintendent paused to let Vera reflect on what this description implied. It was a risky thing to have told her given that it was only partly true but it might provoke her to explain what sort of marriage the Wileys had. He was pretty sure it was a distinctly unsatisfactory one.

  Chapter 31

  ‘That’ll teach her,’ the superintendent said to the sergeant who was hovering nearby when Vera’s response to his description of the house and the bank was to go into hysterics for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Make some extremely strong coffee – and I mean extremely strong – so that the bitch doesn’t get a wink of sleep tonight. I’m having that carving knife her husband tried to kill his son with brought up from Croydon and I want you to make sure there’s plenty of blood on the blade. I intend to get the domestic side of this massacre out of the way before the anti-terrorist squad get onto it.’

  ‘Any reason why they shouldn’t, sir? Their forensic specialists are already working on the blood samples from the bungalow and the slaughterhouse.’

  ‘And not getting anywhere. I want to show them that local police can do just as well or better because we know the area and the crooks better than they do.’

  In the ward a little while later, Vera was living up to the promise of that extremely strong coffee and making such a din that the patients on nearby wards were shouting complaints too.

  ‘Better get the woman down to the station,’ said the superintendent, ‘I’ll question her there. And make sure she’s handcuffed – I don’t want any more stitches in my scalp.’

  ‘Where are you taking me now?’ Vera yelled as four burly policemen lifted her off the bed.

  ‘To a nice quiet place where you’re going to tell us just where your murderous husband is.’

  ‘In hell I hope. That’s where he ought to be.’

  Then Vera paused before admitting, ‘He should be in bed. That’s where I left him.’

  ‘Dead or alive, Mrs Wiley?’

  ‘Dead is what he would be if I had my way. Alive of course, you idiot! What on earth are you doing arresting me when my darling boy might be in a ditch or worse?’

  At this thought Vera started to wail and beat her head against the cell wall until after an hour she collapsed into a stupor.

  ‘She’s going to have heart failure if you go on like this, I warn you,’ the doctor who had accompanied Vera to the police station said.

  ‘Best thing for her,’ growled the superintendent, who was in favour of hanging. ‘Here I am sitting up all damned night and not getting a straight answer out of the wretched woman. I still haven’t a clue where her husband’s got to.’

  ‘He’s probably as far away from her as possible. I know I would in his place. Imagine living with a wife like her,’ said the chief inspector.

  ‘I prefer not to. You’ve checked with the bank of course. Apart from the mess was there any money missing?’

  The chief inspector shook his head.

  ‘Not a cent. Whatever the blighter’s up to he’s been honest there.’

  ‘Have you tried the ports?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘Of course we have. He hasn’t crossed the Channel, that’s for sure. In any case, apparently he doesn’t like travelling and he certainly won’t fly. Said to be scared of it because he’s got a phobia about heights.’

  The chief inspector looked at his notes.

  ‘But she said he proposed to her at the top of Beachy Head. Seems a damned odd place to go if you’re terrified of heights.’

  ‘Best place when you intend to commit suicide, which after twenty years with that woman would be the natural thing to do.’

  ‘True. So, if she’s telling anything like the truth, he proposed to her at the top of a 529-foot cliff – from which people frequently jump to their deaths. And this is a bloke who’s said to have a phobia about high places. No way. Someone’s lying. Could be either of them or both, though my bet’s on her. All that nonsense about the “three hims”. I suppose you could interpret that as “hymns”, although apparently they’ve never been near a church on Sunday. But we’re straying from the main issue which is where that Mrs Ponson and the lad have disappeared too.’

  The superintendent gave a bitter laugh before replying. ‘I’d say that bloody abattoir and a mincing machine. Ponson didn’t build that beastly slaughterhouse for nothing. He’d had a vile purpose for it from the beginning. And it wasn’t simply to help smalltime local breeders either.’

  ‘I’m with you on that one,’ said the chief inspector. ‘He’s made a bit of money flogging second-hand cars. Or stolen ones. What I don’t know is why we haven’t found out what he’s really been up to.’

  ‘Because the bastard didn’t sell stolen cars in his second-hand yard. And I’m certain he didn’t nick them himself either. Got other thieves to do that for him and undoubtedly had legitimate deals too. Of course the nicked cars wouldn’t be in his own name either and the so-called owner would get his cut of the profits. And a lot less than Ponson you may be sure.’ The superintendent turned to the doctor. ‘Don’t think we didn’t try to nail the bugger before now because we did, but he was too fly for us. But thank God we’ve got the sod now.’

  ‘Of course, al-Qaeda could have recruited him years ago and put up money too,’ added the chief inspector.

  ‘What I want to know is where that husband of hers has got to,’ said the doctor, who’d found the discussion not only fascinating but also that it helped to keep him awake. ‘I’d like to know why he tried to kill his own son too. He sounds as mad as she is.’

  Just at that moment a detective who hadn’t heard the previous conversation came in.

  ‘We’ve found a weapon at the Wileys’ house, sir. And from the traces of blood on it there’s no doubt that someone tried to kill someone else with it,’ he said, brandishing a plastic bag with a carving knife inside it.

  ‘Well, at least Mrs Wiley was partly telling the truth,’ said the superintendent. He looked at the doctor before saying, ‘I’m with you though. I just wonder where her psychopath of a husband has got to.’

  Chapter 32

  Horace shared his bewilderment. He’d crossed so many frontiers and bought so many maps in languages he couldn’t read that he had no idea where he was.

  From Germany he’d crossed into Poland, then over the mountains into Slovenia and through the Czech Republic and Austria before getting lost in Trieste. Then from Italy he’d headed towards France, always staying in the most modest hotels and giving a false name. Several times in his effort to stay away from main roads he’d chosen narrow country ones which turned out to have no hotels on them, which meant frequently having to sleep rough. In fact, he was often unable to sleep at all because he seemed to be surrounded by large animals, or at least he imagined he might be, which was just as bad.

  Finally, looking like a hobo (he wished to hell he had brought more clothes and an electric razor with a plug that fitted European sockets), he crossed into France. At that point he gave up trying to shave and grew a beard.

  About his only consolation through all this was that anyone trying to follow him was going to find it impossible. But that didn’t offer much comfort when having walked for days and days across what he thought was probably Italy, Horace found his route blocked by an impossibly wide river. Since he couldn’t swim and there was no way he was going to turn round and retrace his steps, he had to walk miles further to find a bridge. His relief at the sight of one was short-lived when he realised that the bridge had a policeman apparently guarding it.

  Horace wasn’t going to risk a confrontation with the police so that meant waiting on the riverbank until the policeman, whose main duty seemed to be to stop speeding cars and to prevent traffic jams building up on the narrow bridge, was distracted. He wait
ed a good hour until a particularly bad jam involving two large trucks gave him his opportunity and he sauntered past them and across the bridge.

  Safely on the far side of the river, still in France, he kept on travelling. One morning, bleary-eyed and tired, he waited for a bus and finally stopped one with a Spanish number plate and climbed aboard. Once seated Horace struck up a conversation with the man beside him and found to his relief that he spoke quite good English.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the man asked once they’d exchanged names.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ admitted Horace. ‘But what I’d like to know is what people are speaking around us. I can recognise Spanish but this is different.’

  ‘We’re in Catalunya and the people here speak Catalan. It’s a mixture of French and Spanish and quite often people use Castilian or Madrid Spanish. Of course, each area has its own accent and that makes it all the more difficult to understand. Under Franco no one was allowed to talk Catalan but of course when they were at home they did. Mind you, the pure Spaniards can’t understand a word of it.’

  By now Horace felt thoroughly confused and rather than have to continue holding such a bewildering conversation spent the rest of the journey pretending to be asleep.

  But his travelling companion was correct. They were in Catalunya and even Horace couldn’t fail to recognise the distinctive architecture of Barcelona. By the time they got there, Horace had come to a decision. From what he had seen of the landscape and from what he’d heard before he feigned sleep about how non-violent the Catalans were from the man in the next seat, this might be a good place to pause his journey. He could hire a car and explore the area if they would accept his passport in place of a driving licence. But even if they wouldn’t, he was well used to trains and buses and travelling on foot.

  Horace booked into the first hotel he came to after leaving the bus, bought some new shoes and yet another map together with a guidebook in English and spent the afternoon in his room planning a sightseeing route.