Red Anger (17 page)

Still, she merits a fairer description, though I do not much wish to recall her to mind. I must allow her an ivory skin, severe but delicate features, a perfect figure and lustrous hair drawn
back into a coil of black snakes. Her large eyes disturbed me. Sometimes they were quite expressionless; sometimes they emanated a glow of passion in reserve, no doubt as serviceable in politics as
in sex. Alwyn had admired her intellect and fiery honesty. Her Minister, fascinated by the other promise of the eyes, went hell-bent for that.

She was oddly insistent on taking Alwyn back to his hide. It seemed to me the last place he ought to be. He too knew that but agreed, saying that he could not swim as far as the cruiser which
appeared to have no other boat. So the three started up the path as dusk closed in.

At this point I determined to take a hand. Alwyn’s original plan was to trap at least Rachel, and that now could be done. The lecturer fellow was scrambling up at a panicky speed and
making so much noise that none of them could hear me moving silently along behind them. Near the top I caught up, signing to John to show himself but to stay well behind.

‘I am a Customs Officer and I have reason to believe …’

That was enough for higher education. I thought it would be. He had a fairly level stretch of grass ahead of him and showed a turn of speed straight from the university playing fields before
vanishing into a farther belt of trees.

Rachel was too intelligent to be bluffed and required me to identify myself. The difficulty, as I saw it, was to keep her quiet. I thought she might scream for help or force Alwyn to take some
thoroughly awkward action which he could not refuse. Wild inspiration came to me.

‘My name is Ionel Petrescu. After this man was safely on board, the boat was to come back for me.’

‘Is your car still here, Ionel?’ Alwyn asked.

Rachel was then completely muddled. Ionel Petrescu, she remembered, was an unknown wanted by the police. That much was in his favour. But apparently Petrescu knew who had organised this rescue
which Alwyn was not supposed to know. Yet Alwyn and Petrescu were acquainted.

I replied that my car was up the lane and broke off to have a word with John further down the path, telling him not to recognise Alwyn and to escort the pair to the car. Then I went on ahead to
warn Eudora to keep out of the way until we had Rachel safely stowed away in the boot.

Eudora showed her intense relief by remarking sharply that Alwyn seemed more efficient when using boyhood experience of huts and mudbanks than when trying to run security single-handed. She
nipped into the bushes with a flurry of long American legs and vanished like an elderly wood nymph.

As soon as the others arrived I told Rachel that the driver and I had perfect cover for our activities but that she herself would have to travel in the boot for a few miles. When she protested
and Alwyn made a pretence of backing her up I threatened to leave the pair of them unless they obeyed me. So we curled her up into the boot; Eudora silently got into the car; and John drove us as
far as the ford below the bracken path where Eudora hid again while Rachel, Alwyn and I got out.

It was now dark. Rachel had never visited Cleder’s Priory and was inclined to start at rabbits as we walked over the ridge and down. We took her through the back part of the house, across
the walled garden and up to the room over the kennels where I had been temporarily imprisoned. I noticed that the meat for the hounds had been very bloodily butchered and that the boiler was
alight. Rachel averted her eyes. The sight was far from reassuring for a woman whose knowledge of the country was limited to conference hotels and discreeter week-ends at more romantic inns.

When we entered the kennel room we found Eudora perched on the table like a white-crested vulture. Sack-and-Sugar had come with her and was on his hind legs busily investigating the only hole in
the room—that which led down to the manure heap—and chattering with annoyance because the pipe was too steep and slippery to be explored. Eudora greeted Rachel with every appearance of
gratitude and friendship and waved her into the broken arm-chair. I squatted on the floor, a tired but very sinister Petrescu.

Rachel said she was so relieved to find herself among friends and waited for us to explain where she was and why—a point which Eudora cordially ignored as if the woman had dropped in
unexpectedly after her car had broken down in the district. As Rachel’s responses were a little forced Eudora carried on a monologue first about Tessa, then about Sack whom she pretended to
have caught wild and tamed. She added a few amusing stories of how he fussed over his meat which had to be fresh so that he could lick up the blood.

Meanwhile Alwyn had slipped off to reassure Tessa and warn her to keep out of the kennel room. After taking a shower and changing he joined us—the first time I had ever seen him decently
dressed as a country gentleman. He started on Rachel with every sign of sympathy.

‘How on earth did you get dragged into this? You had done enough. I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I thought we were going to pick you up tomorrow in your wood,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know anything about a boat being arranged for today.’

‘Well, what happened?’

‘I had just gone out after breakfast to post a letter and he drove alongside me in the van and said I had to come with him then and there.’

Myself I did not spot any special implication in the ‘had to’ but Alwyn was on it at once.

‘I thought he was a pal of yours from the libertarian left.’

‘He is. That’s why I couldn’t let him down.’

Alwyn congratulated her on her courage, saying that he himself would have been alarmed at being picked up so early in the day and told he had to go straight down to Devon.

‘After all, nobody knows where you are,’ he added.

‘It doesn’t matter. The only thing that bothers me is how to get back now that he has bolted with the van. What made you tell him you were a Customs Officer, Mr. Petrescu?’

‘Oh, I just wanted to get rid of him,’ I said. ‘I don’t like amateurs.’

‘He’s no amateur with those useful connections. Could he possibly have fooled you, Rachel?’ Alwyn asked.

She laughed at this, saying that she had known him for years, but Alwyn pretended nervousness. It covered his interrogation of her so that she thought he only wanted to be reassured.

‘When did he tell you about the boat?’

‘Not until we were nearly there.’

‘It looks as if he didn’t trust you.’

‘Perhaps he didn’t. I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.’

Then she herself started to put questions and he very cleverly allowed it.

‘Where were you going to ask the captain to put you ashore?’

‘Brittany, if he could make it.’

‘You were a bit trustful yourself, weren’t you, Alwyn?’

‘It was a chance and I had to take it.’

‘What I have never understood is why the security people believed you were in Moscow. How did you do it?’

‘Very easy for anyone in my position. I flew to Berlin and called on a colleague who did not yet know I was suspect. I booked a seat on the Moscow plane and another—secretly—on
the Paris plane leaving at nearly the same time. When the Moscow flight was called my friend saw me go to it. He did not see me switch to the queue of passengers for the Paris flight, where I
landed an hour and a half later. France to England clandestinely—which was not difficult for someone who earned his living trying to prevent any such thing. So there you are! The flight to
Moscow was easy as pie for our people to trace except that I was never on the plane—and the Russians, if I know them, would never say whether I was or was not until they saw what was to be
gained.’

I imagine that all this was true, though at some time he must have used a second passport with a false name. His object was plain: to give Rachel confidence and put her off her guard.

‘Where did you mean us to take you in the van tomorrow?’ Rachel asked.

Alwyn continued to let her think she was in command and replied nervously that he preferred not to say.

‘This friend of yours might give me away to the police. I have to know who he was and why you chose him when I asked you to help.’

‘Well, he seemed just the right person.’

‘Is he your boss or are you his?’

‘Neither of us, of course.’

‘You said you
had
to go with him.’

‘For your sake, Alwyn.’

‘Then why did he come to see me alone yesterday?’

‘I didn’t know he had. Perhaps he did not quite trust me, as you said.’

‘Or perhaps he wanted you on the shore to give me confidence. I might have refused to go at the last moment.’

‘Yes, it must have been that.’

‘I wonder why he only told you when you were nearly here. Unknown plan, unknown risks—I suppose you might have refused to take part.’

‘There was nothing I could do.’

‘So he was your boss?’

‘No! I’ve told you he wasn’t!’

‘But since you went with him without arguing he must have been able to give orders.’

‘He couldn’t give orders to anyone,’ she snapped.

‘Weak?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then who sent him to me yesterday and told you nothing about it?’

‘He won’t give you away,’ she said, avoiding an answer.

‘What is there to give away if he did not know who I was?’

She tried hard to stumble her way out of that one but could not. Eventually she admitted:

‘Well, yes. He did know you were Alwyn Rory.’

‘And he dealt with that hot potato all by himself?’

‘He has a brilliant brain.’

‘Not much use in this sort of thing unless directed. What has the KGB got on him?’

‘The KGB? I don’t understand.’

‘Rachel, your first act after I asked you to help me was to report to the KGB and take their orders.’

‘How can you think such a thing? There were no orders.’

‘Was the rope quickly tacked down inside the sofa?’ Alwyn asked.

That shot went right home. She was silent far too long before demanding with a smile what on earth he was talking about.

‘Ionel, tell her how Mornix escaped!’

I gave her the story which lost nothing in the telling. She continued to smile and said it was nonsense. There had never been any rope and Special Branch had cleared her.

Eudora slid off the table and recovered Sack who was burrowing into the aged mattress on the bed and throwing out the stuffing behind him.

‘So it was you who entered Alwyn’s flat and looked at his bank accounts and faked the evidence!’

‘What have bank accounts to do with it?’

Eudora dropped Sack on the floor close to the chair on which Rachel was lounging, insolently relaxed. His eternal curiosity was aroused. A ferret does not sit erect on his tail like a stoat, but
will stretch up with forepaws against anything perpendicular such as a post, a box or a human leg to have a good look round. He found the edge of Rachel’s chair very satisfactory—good
grip for the claws, pleasant darkness beyond. She stiffened, not daring to move until he disappeared up her skirt. Then she shrieked and tried to grab him. Sack, who preferred to be removed gently
from such intimate exploration, chattered, twisted and bit.

Eudora gathered him up while Rachel stood against the wall, mouthing words which would not quite come out and paddling her hands in the air. It was the rapport between Eudora and her savage,
serpentine bundle of twisting fur which terrified her as much as the bite. She may have shared the uneasiness with which our ancestors observed the relationship between a sinister woman and her too
familiar pet. In fact the conversation going on between Eudora and the indignant Sack was no more mysterious than between a little girl and a puppy.

‘When did you enter Alwyn’s flat?’ Eudora asked.

‘I never did. I don’t know what the evidence against him was. They wanted me to find out.’

‘Then you do work for the KGB!’

‘Take it away! I don’t know anything of bank accounts.’

I reminded Alwyn that I had good reason to believe she was telling the truth. He made no comment but took over the interrogation again.

‘No one knows where you are, Rachel. You said that did not matter.’

‘I’ll be found. They’ll soon find me.’

‘The KGB will be very glad if you can’t be found.’

‘The police will find me. Take it away! You’ll all be caught.’

‘The police? I don’t believe it.’

‘You’ll see! You daren’t touch me!’

‘What was that letter you put in the post this morning?’

‘To a friend. I swear it.’

It was an obvious lie. Her voice gave it away.

‘Willie, hold her down!’ Eudora ordered.

I had some faint stirrings of chivalry. One cannot help feeling it even if a woman tells you to use violence on a woman. Rachel was a pitiable sight, nerve gone and always dabbing at her upper
thigh from which a thread of blood was showing below the knee. It was only a tiny trickle from the inner skin of the thigh, but I can see that it did suggest to an excitable character that Sack
could be very careless where he bit.

It was not necessary to hold her down. She was shivering against the wall when Eudora pinned her there and set down Sack close to her feet. He promptly stood up against her leg. She was not to
know that he could not climb tights and she had no idea what the beast was—mink, wolverine or she might have imagined some little horror specially bred for MI5. He could just reach the bottom
of the thread of blood and his little rose-pink tongue licked it up without malice.

‘Well, would you believe he could touch it?’ Eudora exclaimed in a full American accent, and then burst into good Devon: ‘Doan ’ee frit yerself, Za-ack! Zuck, Za-ack!
Rabbits, Za-ack!’

Rachel backed away, remorselessly followed by Eudora with her familiar wriggling in her hand. He had caught the atmosphere as animals always do, and I would not have cared to play with him.
Rachel broke down completely.

Yes, the letter had been addressed to Scotland Yard. She described the wood where Alwyn was and gave the time when the van would arrive to rescue him. She had hoped to restore her reputation and
to avert all suspicion against her by standing up in court and giving evidence for the prosecution. She had sent her letter
EXPRESS
so that if the Post Office for once paid
some attention to the label it should already have reached Scotland Yard.