Corridors of the Night (23 page)

‘I can do that,’ Scuff said immediately.

‘No, you can’t,’ Monk told him grimly. ‘You’re getting too big. At a distance he’ll take you for a man. We have to let Worm do it again. Your job will be to attract his attention later.’ He bent and drew a rough diagram in the dust at the side of the road. ‘I will be here, Squeaky there. Hooper will come this way and when Worm gets to here, Scuff will go this way and get Worm out of there. Do you understand? We must give him too many targets to be certain which way to shoot. Hooper, when he turns this way, please God before he can shoot me, hit him as hard as you can with the pitch fork.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Hooper already had the fork from the hay in his hands.

‘Right,’ Monk accepted. ‘Nothing to wait for. Everyone clear?’

They agreed as one. Hooper set off to the right, Squeaky to the left with Scuff on his heels.

Worm set off down the middle of the track again with Monk close to the hedges, moving then stopping, keeping ten yards behind at least. He felt guilty for using Worm, even more because of the child’s eagerness to please and to belong, even at this risk. He had racked his brains for another way, and found nothing. Now he needed to think, to watch, to be ready for anything.

He saw the gardener before Worm did. He was standing half concealed by a dense bush, watching the boy.

Worm walked on. From what Monk could see, he had no idea that the gardener was only feet away from him, and still with that gun. It was a shotgun. He could hardly miss with it.

Should Monk shout? It would distract the gardener for a moment, but it would also distract Worm, perhaps long enough for the man to level the gun and fire it. Or even to lunge out from behind the bush and seize Worm, even kill him accidentally with his sheer weight.

Monk bent, and picked up the largest stone he could find and hurled it at the gardener. He did not believe he could hit him, but he could certainly distract him long enough to give Worm a head start. Please heaven he ran back towards Monk, or sideways towards Hooper! Squeaky was out to the left, but he was an old man and unfit, used to forging papers and deceiving tax men, not physical fights.

The stone struck the bush, shaking the branches and landing heavily.

The gardener swung round, fearing attack.

Worm took to his heels, running this way and that, like an eel through river weed.

The gardener ran after him, waving the gun. His legs were far longer, his stride three of Worm’s, but the gun hampered him and he was slow at changing direction. Nevertheless, he was gaining ground. The distance between them closed.

Then suddenly the gardener hurtled through the air and crashed face down on the earth, arms thrashing, legs jerking and twisting as if tied together.

Squeaky bent and picked up the fallen gun. Holding it by the barrel, he swung it back and crashed it into the gardener’s head. The man went utterly limp, as if he were dead.

Monk sprinted down the slight incline towards them and arrived just as Squeaky patted Worm on the head. ‘Well done, boy,’ he said calmly. ‘Got yer wits about you.’

Worm’s eyes were full of tears, but he refused to cry.

Monk looked down at the gardener, at the blood on the side of his head, at his chest heaving as he struggled to breathe, and at his legs, which were loosely tied together with a length of very thin rope, one end of which was knotted around a heavy spanner.

Squeaky shrugged. ‘Pity to waste a good length o’ rope,’ he said with a very slight smile. ‘Most folk chasing don’t look so careful where they put their feet.’

‘You threw it out around him?’ Monk said incredulously. ‘Where did you learn that?’

‘Timing,’ Squeaky answered, his smile wide, showing his crooked teeth. ‘Good thing, timing.’

‘I’ll take the gun.’ Monk held out his hand and Squeaky passed it over.

Hooper appeared, glancing at the gun in Monk’s hand and the gardener on the ground. Then he saw Squeaky’s face, and Worm, who was still very pale, and worked out what must have happened. He picked up the length of rope and tested its strength. He moved to tie the man’s hands together.

‘Before you do that,’ Monk said quickly. ‘Take his jacket off. His hat’s over there. I’ll put them on and go in. Hooper, take the gun and go around the front, in case Rand tries to escape that way. Squeaky, you stand guard over the gardener, when we’ve finished tying him up. Hit him again if you have to. There’s a good strong stake in the ground over there, holding that young tree up. Lash him to that. Scuff?’

‘Yes?’ Scuff stepped forward eagerly.

‘Go and fetch the horse and wagon. Drive it down here carefully and wait. We’ll need it close by if we’ve got sick people to carry out. Squeaky’ll help you turn it around so we can go straight out, maybe in a hurry.’ He glanced at Hooper busy tying up the gardener, who was beginning to stir into consciousness again. ‘Don’t use more rope than you have to,’ he warned. ‘We may have more people needing it. Rand won’t come easily. Maybe Miss Radnor won’t either.’

‘Got plenty, sir,’ Hooper said cheerfully, giving the end of the rope a hard jerk to tighten the knot. That brought the gardener back to full consciousness, and he started to howl in pain.

‘Quiet!’ Hooper told him sharply.

The gardener glared at him, met his eyes, and was silent.

Hooper checked the gun to make certain it was loaded and the action smooth. Then he moved slowly towards the side of the house and the front door.

Scuff and Worm went reluctantly up the lane towards the horse and wagon.

Squeaky glared at the gardener then gave Monk a nod, almost a salute, as he moved quickly and quietly towards the back of the house and the kitchen door.

Worm had said he had seen two women in the kitchen, and he was almost sure that one of them was Hester, which meant that the other would be Adrienne Radnor. Had they become friends, or deeper enemies? What was Monk about to walk into?

One mistake now and it could still end in tragedy. If Adrienne had a kitchen knife in her hand and panicked, she might do anything.

He pulled the gardener’s cap further forward over his face. Did the gardener usually knock before he went in? Was he an ally of Rand’s? An employee? A servant? A debtor over some past help? Even a relative? Or another experiment?

He had shown a streak of violence when he had seen Worm a second time. What kind of man goes after a seven-year-old child with a loaded shotgun?

A frightened one, with something very dangerous to hide.

Monk knocked on the door and immediately opened it. He was in the back entrance to a large, farmhouse kitchen. Across the stone-paved floor, about ten feet away in the middle of the room, Adrienne Radnor was standing with a large-bladed vegetable knife in her hand, chopping carrots on a wooden board. For an instant she took no notice of Monk. Then she realised he was not the gardener and her eyes widened. Her hands clenched the handle of the knife and she came towards him, eyes narrowed and the blade held at the ready, low, as if she would jab with it.

Monk moved over towards the huge, black cooking range. It was hot. There were pans on it with stew coming to the boil, and a bubbling pot in another of the sort in which you cook puddings. There was enough food to satisfy eight or ten people.

The rack on which the empty pans stood was a foot away from his right hand.

She was moving forwards, closer to him with the knife blade pointing at his stomach.

He seized one of the smaller, copper saucepans and hit her on the arm with it as hard as he could. He felt it jar on bone, and the knife clattered to the floor. Adrienne gasped with pain and the blood drained from her face. She sank to her knees on the floor, her arm hanging uselessly.

For a moment there was silence.

She drew in her breath to scream.

Monk picked another of the saucepans. ‘Don’t,’ he said quietly. ‘That arm won’t mend if I hit it again. Sit down on that chair and stay there. I don’t want to have to tie you, but I can’t leave you loose.’

He kicked the knife out of the way, far enough so she could not reach it, then helped her up and on to the chair. There was enough strong kitchen twine to lash her to it beyond her ability to get free. He was surprised how many nautical knots came to him from some recesses of his memory.

Monk left her there and went silently through the door into the hall, listening for any sound of human presence. It was several moments before he was able to hear the murmur of voices.

He tiptoed to the door and listened again. He heard a man’s voice, then another different male voice, then finally a woman’s. He could not make out the words but he knew Hester’s tone, the music of it, whatever she said.

He put his fingers around the handle and turned. It gave at his touch, and he threw it open.

Inside the room was a large bed. Propped upon pillows lay an elderly man, his face gaunt as with illness, but powerful, vividly alive. His arm was strapped around the upper part and a needle held into his skin, piercing it, attached to a glass tube filled with red. It could only be blood. The tube led to a bottle, which was suspended from a metal, wire and cord contraption next to the bed.

Hester stood to the left of it, still dressed in her blue-grey nurse’s working clothes. They were crumpled and soiled with blood, as if she had worn them for days. But the joy that flooded her face when she saw Monk made her as beautiful as any woman alive.

Rand, white with fury, his eyes glittering, was just beyond her. Quick as a cat he seized a scalpel from an instrument case and reached out to take her by the shoulder.

In a sickening instant Monk knew what he intended to do. He would cut her throat if Monk did not retreat. She was, above all, what she had always been to Rand: a hostage to be used.

Hester reached forward as if to plead with Monk. Then she yanked her arm back again, hard, driving her elbow into Rand’s stomach, in exactly the vulnerable place at the curve where his ribs met.

He gasped and bent over, retching. She hit him again, this time in the face, on his top lip just under the nose, which spurted blood.

Monk grasped Rand’s arm and twisted it so that the scalpel fell, just as Hooper came into the room from the hallway.

Thirty minutes later it was almost over. Scuff had brought the horse and wagon closer and made soft beds in the hay for Charlie, Maggie and Mike. Radnor, protesting bitterly, was helped up to lie on the other side of the hay. Adrienne was still bound although Hester did what she could to set her broken arm and support it in a sling.

They were ready to begin the long ride home. They left the gardener where the local police would set him free, and lock up the house until the investigation could be completed. Hooper remained with him to see that everything was done legally and in order.

Squeaky drove the wagon home with Scuff to relieve him every so often. Worm sat beside them on the box, watching everything.

Hester and Monk sat side by side in the hay, occasionally ministering to the angry, hurt and reluctant prisoners. Largely they ignored them, even Radnor, who appeared to be the least disconcerted of them all.

OLIVER RATHBONE arrived home in London with an intense degree of pleasure, although he had enjoyed his stay in Edinburgh. It was a handsome and cultured city, but Scottish law was different from English, and always had been, and he found testifying – albeit as an expert witness on an old case – to be somewhat testing of both his skill and his memory.

He had taken a short holiday afterwards in the beautiful Trossach hills, and perhaps that was what had really troubled him. Their wild, almost haunting loveliness had increased his awareness of being alone. He had longed to turn to someone and say, ‘Isn’t that exquisite? How the light falls on the water! How the trees crowd together against the sky with such grace.’ And there was no one. No degree of kindness from strangers made up for the understanding of a friend; nothing at all for the absence of love.

He did not miss Margaret, the wife who had left him after his disbarment. No, that was not true; she had left in heart long before that. It was simply the excuse that exonerated her and made it easy. He missed what he had believed they had, what he had hoped that with time it could become.

He had telegraphed ahead the hour he expected to be home, and his manservant, Dover, met him at the door before he could turn his key.

‘Good evening, Sir Oliver,’ he said, bowing very slightly, satisfaction in his voice. ‘It is very nice to have you home again, sir. Very much has occurred in your absence, which I am sure you will wish to know. May I bring you a light supper, sir? A cold beef sandwich, perhaps, and a glass of claret?’

Rathbone felt a warmth of familiarity wrap around him. This was a new apartment since his separation from Margaret. There had been no purpose in keeping the house. It was too large, but above all, it was the empty shell of a dream that had died. This place was elegant and almost sparse in its furnishings, and quite large enough to cater for all that really pleased him. There was no ostentation, only quality. And Dover made it seem like home. His loyalty was proven, his opinion given only when asked for.

‘That would be perfect,’ Oliver replied, walking ahead into the sitting room with its familiar extremely comfortable chairs. It was pleasantly warm without a fire, and there were late roses in the vase on the side table.

‘Yes, sir,’ Dover said quietly. ‘Would you like the newspaper, sir? I have kept
The Times
from while you were away, and there is rather a large stack of them.’ He frowned, as if that fact displeased him. ‘It might not be the pleasantest way for you to learn the news, sir, if I may say so.’

His tone warned Rathbone that he had missed something important. He felt a chill, even in the warm room. He turned to look at the man.

‘What is it that I will so dislike reading? Perhaps you had better tell me.’

‘I will fetch the sandwich, Sir Oliver, and the claret.’

‘No, Dover, you will tell me now!’ Rathbone felt the sharpness of anxiety rich inside him.

‘It is a long story, sir, and somewhat complicated. But I assure you the end is satisfactory, at least so far. What the final result will be, of course I cannot say.’