Going It Alone (18 page)

‘We’ll try the back,’ Tim whispered. ‘It’s my bet the dump will break down into a tumble of useless outbuildings that nobody goes near any longer. Unless you feel it would be better simply to march up to the front door and ring the bell.’

Averell didn’t feel this at all, and they resumed their painful progress on a wide arc. When this was achieved Tim proved to have been right. The back of the house presented two abandoned wings straggling out in offices of diminishing consequence, and the fourth side of a large concreted area between them was closed by a large freestanding structure which seemed to hover in character between a warehouse and a barn.

‘The bloody van!’ Tim breathed. ‘With its trailer still. But where’s the crate? Gone!’

This was indeed the state of the case. The tip-up was parked before what must be the main back-entrance to the house, with its tarpaulin-covered load still piled up on it. But on the trailer there was nothing but its own tarpaulin, roughly folded and with a coil of rope beside it. It was – there could be no doubt of this – a spectacle of an indefinably sinister sort.

‘Freeze!’ Tim whispered.

This was an unnecessary injunction, since Averell was already very effectively frozen. Two men had emerged from the house and were climbing back into the cab of the truck. The truck then moved slowly across the yard and halted before the door of the barn-like building opposite. Simultaneously this was opened from within and two more men appeared. All four proceeded to strip the truck of its tarpaulin, unload its contents, and carry them into the interior of the barn.

As this operation was certainly of an illicit character one might have expected it to be carried out in a hasty and wary fashion amid evidence of guilt and unease. Nothing of the sort was evident. The four men worked with that sense of the worth of their own labour, and the moderate pace congruous with its dignity, which constitute (it may be thought) the true secret of England’s greatness. It was Averell who felt guilty. Never before in his recollection – or never since the innocent pastimes of childhood – had he acted the part of a spy, or of any sort of vulgar peeper through chinks and crevices. And now he was doing so in immediate physical circumstances of particular indignity, since he and Tim had wormed their way within a small rectangular enclosure of crumbling brick which might at one time have served to accommodate a favourite pig, promoted to the status of domestic pet and as a consequence brought virtually within the curtilage of its proprietor’s dwelling.

And might not this situation, so demeaning to two persons of some standing in the learned and academic world (for wasn’t Tim, after all, going to take the same sort of distinguished degree as he himself had done?), be the result of some gross error or misconception about the whole affair? Trucks such as the one now under their surveillance were common enough; it was not unknown for them to trail subsidiary conveyances behind them; and it was impossible to be quite certain that the present outfit had emerged from what was indeed the back premises of that abandoned butcher’s shop. Some unfortunate coincidence might have bedevilled their whole design.

These implausible misgivings, although perhaps the issue of wishful thinking, received some support from the totally innocent appearance of what was going on. One of the men under observation was whistling as he worked; another had paused to light and enjoy a cigarette; the remaining two were exchanging uncultivated but good humoured badinage as they passed one another in the course of their task. What was being unloaded so far was a number of cardboard cartons of identical size and seemingly no more than moderate weight; they might contain, say, packets of breakfast cereal or rolls of lavatory paper or some equally innocuous variety of merchandise.

Averell was about to communicate these disturbing dubieties to his nephew when he was arrested by a change in the character of the freight being dealt with. The cardboard boxes had all been carried inside, and the men were now unloading what appeared to be a large number of small but heavy blue canvas sacks. These struck with Averell what was for some moments only a vaguely familiar note. Tim, however, clarified the situation at once.

That’s the hard cash,’ Tim whispered with satisfaction. ‘They cleared out the copper as well as the silver, if you ask me. Quite a wholesale job.’

Averell was constrained to agree at once. These were, of course, just the sort of bags that one observes being humped in and out of banks by the beefy and helmeted and leather-clad men who man the vehicles of security firms. So it was no longer possible to place even a remotely innocent construction upon the spectacle now being afforded. The barn-like building in front of them was nothing less than the repository of the ill-gotten gains of atrocious criminals.

The unfortunate Dave, however, was another matter. If he had indeed – as now seemed too likely – been conveyed to this remote hide-out in circumstances of horrible discomfort, if not remorselessly inflicted agony, he had been judged worthy of the enhanced security of the house itself. And there could be no doubt why he was here at all. If he were simply (as Tim had been) in the position of knowing too much it was certain that he would simply have been promptly taken care of (as Tim himself, if abortively, had been). The gang had arrived at a realization that Dave, alive, was probably worth much more than the total spoil to be obtained from a not particularly distinguished branch of a trading bank. The gang, in fact, had moved promptly into an alternative line of business.

Averell now saw that – lurking as he was in this disgusting pigsty – an enormous responsibility had devolved upon him. He knew that Tim, so commanding and so given to hair-raising action, would, at a pinch, do as he was told by a senior man. (Public-school boys are brought up that way.) He himself had only to refrain from making suggestions and offering advice (which would be ignored) and, as it were, save up for the moment when an order must be given, and the thing would be on his own shoulders and not on his nephew’s.

So what was the position?

It was much more hopeful than it might have been. Here was a cardinal fact. The story that Dave’s father was the richest man in England was probably a picturesque exaggeration. Nobody in the world knows who is the richest man in England, although probably quite a number of people idly speculate from time to time as to whether they themselves fill the bill. But if one merely postulated great wealth in Dave’s family it was almost a certainty that the family would pay up quietly whatever feasible ransom was demanded rather than risk the sort of battle of wits with the kidnappers that the police would probably favour. But would they? Averell, as if a little infected by his nephew’s views on the fuzz, reflected that they mightn’t be all that keen on setting the sort of trap that risks ending in failure and a panic killing. A quiet deal was perhaps something that they wouldn’t, at least, very vigorously clamp down on.

So the broad facts of the case were simple. Dave’s life was in no present danger. So far as the bank robbery went, he was no longer any sort of threat to the robbers, since he was their prisoner and would remain so until they had effectively covered up their tracks for good. And the ransom project was something to which they could then turn their attention at leisure. A period of silence after a kidnapping of this sort was even – Averell appeared to recall – a standard softening-up technique.

Of course the validity of this line of thought depended a good deal on Tim’s confident assumption that the men with the truck had remained unaware of being followed; or that, failing this, they believed themselves to have successfully shaken off pursuit before the end of their journey. Were the criminals to conclude that their headquarters had been discovered by adversaries still at large the entire situation would change at once.

At this point Averell’s reflections were interrupted by an episode of minor drama. The truck had now been almost entirely emptied, but for some moments two of the men appeared to be struggling with a single remaining object of a bulky and awkward sort. They edged it to the ground with difficulty, and then with greater difficulty heaved it up between them and staggered with it into the barn. It was the case in which there ought to have reposed that Jumbo-sized musical instrument, a double-bass.

‘What made the penny drop,’ Tim whispered.

‘The penny?’

‘Inside Dave’s thick skull. Even Dave knows that a big fiddle oughtn’t to weigh a ton, since it’s no more than a few slivers of wood wrapped round vacancy. Of course they used it to smuggle in their heaviest gear – and the stuff’s in it now. Probably they had other bits and pieces in other cases, for bassoons and trombones and what have you. Cunning notion, smuggling themselves in as a band... Look, they’re calling it a day.’

This was evidently so. The four men had emerged from the barn, and one of them was locking its door behind them. Then, leaving the truck where it stood, they walked across the yard and disappeared into the house.

‘Come behind this wall,’ Tim said, ‘and we can at least stand up. How are you feeling, Uncle Gilbert?’

‘Rather like the Empress of Blandings, I’d say.’ Averell, whose reply had been prompted by a distinct impression that a faint porcine odour lingering in the sty had actually transferred itself to his person, wondered whether this literary allusion remained intelligible to one of Tim’s generation. ‘Or,’ he added, ‘like Sancho Panza tagging after Don Quixote. So where’s your next windmill, Tim?’

This was perhaps rather a testy joke, and inappropriate in the grim situation confronting them. Tim, however, took it in good part. Now behind the shelter of what might have once been a coal shed, he was helpfully dusting his uncle down with a flapping handkerchief.

‘The house itself, I’d suppose,’ he said. ‘That’s almost certainly where Dave is, so it’s from there that we have to rescue him. But let’s case that other building first. We’re unlikely to get into the part they’ve stacked up their loot in, I suppose. But there may be more accessible bits and pieces at the back. I’d like to have a look – do a bit of a recce, as you used to say in your army days. Do you mind? I’ve rather an idea about the place, as a matter of fact. There may be ammo in it. Red Indians always have to steal their ammo, being poor ignorant bastards without the know-how to manufacture it.’

‘Let’s have a look, by all means.’ Averell had felt something ominous about these remarks, having discovered by now that talking nonsense was often with Tim a prelude to outrageous action. But the ‘recce’ was at least preferable to an ill-advised march upon the house itself – which was certainly something that his nephew was perfectly capable of.

‘Then here goes, Uncle Gilbert. And I don’t think we need do any more crawling at the moment – do you? We just have to keep on the outer side of all these buildings to be safe enough. At least from bipeds, but of course one doesn’t know about dogs. Wouldn’t you expect these sort of people to go in for guard dogs? Alsatians and Airedales and Doberman Pinschers and Rottweilers. I don’t think I’ve met a Rottweiler. They’re said to be quite horrific.’

‘Stop being an idiot, Tim.’

‘Sorry.’ Tim was now walking confidently ahead. ‘But just keep your ears open for low growlings. You haven’t heard anything of the sort, so far?’

‘No, I have not.’

‘Perhaps the dogs sleep by day, and just come on duty at night. But I’d rather expect a day shift as well as a night watch. Let’s hope the no-dog effect isn’t sinister.’ Tim’s excitement was mounting, so that his uncle wondered what in God’s (or the Devil’s) name he was cooking up. ‘There’s something like that somewhere in Sherlock Holmes. “Precisely, Watson. The significant point is that the hound didn’t howl.” It’s something like that. The Hound of the Baskervilles had taken time off, and was simply basking in the sun.’

‘Tim, for heaven’s sake –’

‘Don’t look now, Uncle Gilbert.’ Tim had halted dramatically. ‘Or, rather, do. Take a good look, and tell me I’m not wrong. We’ve come bang on the kennels.’

This, like most of Tim’s simply factual statements, was true. They had rounded another outbuilding, just short of the larger barn-like structure that was their goal, and had come upon a railed-in enclosure big enough to be rather suggestive of a prison yard or even a concentration camp. But what it seemed actually designed to accommodate was a pack of hounds adequate to the purposes of some eminently respectable Hunt – say the Craven Farmers or the Old Berks. From it there came no sound. But there did come a doggy smell. It was much more pronounced than the piggy smell that had hung around their late lurking place.

They stood contemplating this appearance more warily than would normally have been appropriate before a spectacle witnessing to the continued vitality of the most harmless (except to foxes) of English rural pursuits.

‘I think I
do
hear something,’ Averell murmured. ‘But it’s not exactly a low growling. And I’m not sure that fox-hounds go in for anything of the sort.’

‘Then we’ll take a look.’ Tim walked boldly forward, and peered through the bars. ‘March breast forward, Uncle Gilbert,’ he said. ‘What we’ve arrived at is the Seven Sleepers’ Den.’

There were only three sleepers, and they certainly were not Christian youths of Ephesus, miraculously slumbering through two centuries of persecution. Tim, in fact, had spoken with decided poetic licence. And it wasn’t even fox-hounds that were on view. It was three enormous dogs of anomalous breed. They lay stretched out on the concrete with their eyes closed and their tongues lolling from slavering mouths. One of them was snoring in a fashion so entirely human as to suggest that Circe had been at work on some sexually unsatisfactory wanderer. The others were breathing stertorously but without any appearance of discomfort. It was a surprising but not particularly alarming spectacle.

‘I’d say they’d been drugged,’ Tim said prosaically. ‘What do you make of that?’

‘That it’s rather convenient from our own point of view. But Holmes may be right.’