The Case of the Missing Bronte (20 page)

Then Tingvold came round behind me, and prodded me with the gun.

‘Get going,' he said.

I started out into the hall in an eerie silence. Their torches lit the way, but I stumbled on the frayed carpet of the stairs. Ratikainen kicked me again. Tingvold picked out every stair with the beam of his torch, and on and up we marched. It felt a bit like getting out of the tumbril and walking up the steps to the waiting invention of the good Dr Guillotine. Though one thing you could say for
the guillotine: it was fast.

Up on the landing, Tingvold went around closing all the doors to the bedrooms. Then he switched on the landing light. A dim bulb of low wattage hardly made the scene more comfortable. Knut Ratikainen's face acquired menacing shadows. It had resumed its impassive expression, but the eyes seemed to sparkle more.

‘We put him in the bathroom, eh, Rolf? Put him on the seat, then run a bath. Maybe the British police need a bit of cleaning up. I think that's what we do.'

So they shoved me forward into the bathroom, and sat me down on the lavatory. The dim light from the landing just penetrated here, so they pulled down a blind. Then they tied my feet. Knut Ratikainen stood over me with his knife, while Rolf Tingvold ran the bath. The cold tap. In the quarter light the dark water looked as uninviting as the Dead Sea. He turned off the tap, and the two of them stood there waiting, in that eerie silence. They enjoyed the silence. It was one of their weapons.

‘What we do,' said Ratikainen, putting his face close to mine, ‘is, we shove you in, then we shove you under, and we hold you there till your lungs are bursting. Then we let you up, and you get a few breaths of air — right? — and then we shove you down again and the game begins again. That's a real nice game. Real fun game. That's just to freshen you up for what comes after. You like that. What comes after. P'raps I give you a little taste of that in advance, eh?'

For some reason there flashed through my mind a picture of my father. Perhaps I was thinking how much he would have enjoyed this. But as it did so, Ratikainen leant over, ever so slowly, and took hold of my shirt. He ripped it down slowly to the waist.

‘Shine the torch, Rolf, so he can see.'

And he put the knife down against my abdomen. Then, forcing himself against my legs to prevent my
kicking, he delicately pushed it in an inch or so, then slowly, lovingly, twisted the knife round. I tried to scream with the pain, but the gag choked me. Ratikainen kept his face close to mine, watching me, the ends of his mouth turned upwards in a parody of a smile. Saliva gathered at the corners of his mouth. Then he slowly took the knife out, and wiped it on the rags of my shirt.

‘You see? Just a little taste. Show you what we can do. I been looking forward to this, you can't imagine, Mr Police. Ever since the tennis I been looking forward to this. Shall we try another game now? Another little bit of fun? Or shall we have one more little bit of knife fun first?'

And he pushed himself against me again, and started bringing the knife slowly forward, a few inches above the first wound. He was just about to shove it in, when there was a noise from downstairs.

The two of them jerked upright, and stood frozen to the spot like two bits of monumental masonry from Vigeland Park. If I'd been in the mood to laugh, it would have been rather funny. Like one of those moments in a Rossini opera when, at the height of the brouhaha, there's a knocking at the door or something, and everyone goes completely quiet, and starts whispering
‘Che sara?'
or whatever in unison. But, as I say, I wasn't in chuckling mood at the time.

The noise came again.

‘Window!' said Rolf Tingvold.

‘Downstairs,' said Ratikainen. ‘The manuscript.'

They moved to the bathroom door and out on to the landing with a speed and silence that was creditable in men their size. I heard them move to the head of the staircase. Shafts of light were still coming in from the landing, but I heard a tiny creak as they began to move down the stairs. Fine — I still had some light. I looked around me, and fiddled my fingers to see that there was
still feeling in them. There was a little pair of nail scissors on the edge of the bath. Useless. Bathrooms are the silliest places to get oneself tied up in. Nothing in the way of sharp knives at all. Then I saw, on the shelf above the washbasin, Miss Boothroyd's lady's razor. Not the equal of a cut-throat, but at least she hadn't gone electric. If only I could get it, and, having got it, not drop it. I stood up, manoeuvred myself over to the washbasin, stood tiptoe against it and grasped the handle of the razor in my tied hands. The wound in my stomach sent shafts of pain darting through my body. I clutched firmly to the razor handle, and the pain began to abate. I sat down on the edge of the bath. Warm blood was oozing again over my shirt and the top of my trousers, but I took no notice. Worse things than flesh wounds were going to happen to me if I didn't get free. I began to work the blade of the fragile little razor over one strand of the rope. One strand, thank God, would be enough.

Suddenly I was startled out of my wits by a crash, and shouting, from downstairs. I nearly dropped the razor, but clutched on to it at the last moment and went on shaving away at the rope for dear life. Please God the fighting didn't bring them upstairs. Every stroke I made with it hurt my wrists, from the harshness of the rope still around them. From downstairs there was sudden silence. I was beginning to find silence menacing. The rope began to get looser. Suddenly, just as it seemed to be getting intolerably urgent, the one strand came apart. I had got through. I pulled my hands apart and the rope fell off. I brought my hands round to my front and began to rub life into my wrists. I bent down — God, the pain! — and pulled furiously at the rope around my ankles. When it came loose, I threw the rope aside, grabbed a hand towel and shoved it around my bleeding stomach, wrenched the gag from my mouth and slipped out on to the landing.

Silence, still, from downstairs. If only Miss Boothroyd
had had a phone extension upstairs I could have got help. I peered into each of the bedrooms, turned on the lights. No. I didn't expect it. Selina Boothroyd was emphatically not the type who went in for phone extensions. At the top of the stairs I listened. All was not so silent as I had thought. Talk was going on downstairs. Talk of a kind. It came in bursts, some of them loud. Then there were long pauses — tense, Pinterish silences. Some kind of negotiation, it seemed, was going on. At any rate the Scands hadn't squashed the intruder into the floorboards. Another burst of talk came. Could I get down the stairs during those bursts and out of the front door to the phone-box without being heard? I wasn't too sure. On the other hand, the options weren't enticing. Do a Tarzan through the evergreens from the bedroom window and risk them coming straight out and taking me? Stay upstairs and wait for little endearing to do another corkscrew job on my abdomen? Anything was better than that. If only Miss Boothroyd had a weapon of some kind. But it wasn't worth investigating. I didn't believe the maiden ladies of Leeds had yet started sleeping with a gun beside their beds.

I started off down the stairs.

By some blessed dispensation they did not creak. I kept to the sides, but by now the talk in the back room was becoming less sporadic. There were several voices, several different brands of hum. With infinite precaution I gained the bottom, and stood irresolute in the hall. Should I make for the front door and get help? Help could be an awfully long time coming. The voices from the back room were now audible, and they shook my resolution to get out — they enticed me, like sirens' songs. Through the half-open door at the other end of the passage I could see splashes of torchlight, and some dark, lowering shapes. Clearly the two sides were split up, one group by the window, the other by the door.

A wavering torch beam gave me a glimpse of the desk, with the manuscript in two piles at either end of it. I didn't want to leave it. My decision was made for me by the voice of Amos Macklehose, rising above the subdued hum. It was now less stage-parsonical than when he had talked to me, and it veered between broad North Country and the vernacular of California. It was still not an attractive voice, but it doubtless expressed the real Amos. I listened like a three years' child.

‘You seem to forget who started all this. Perhaps you haven't been told. Well, it was me gave your boss the info. He'd never have heard about this if it ‘adn't been for me.'

‘We don't know nothing about that,' said Rolf Tingvold. ‘You talk it over with him, right?'

‘Oh yes — talk it over with him. Where would that get me? Even if I could find him to talk to, which he'd make good and sure I couldn't, I know what I'd get: “I've never soiled my hands with anything dubious — ” and all that baloney. I had all that in his reply to my letter. “Mr Parfitt thanks you for the information, and would be interested in acquiring the item you mention from its legal owner. But he asked me to emphasize that in no eventuality could he engage in a transaction of uncertain legality.” Him and his eventualities! Toffee-nosed git! I knew some classy stinkers in California, but California class wears hobnail boots compared to your East Coast aristocracy!'

It seemed to occur to Rolf Tingvold that Macklehose was in no position to be sure who his employers were. He said:

‘Well, you take that up with this Parfitt, whoever he is. And we get on with our job, right?'

‘Don't give me that — ' began Amos.

‘What say we offer them a deal, Dad?' said another voice. One of the Macklehose sprigs, of course. So that was the line-up. I pictured it. Three heavies out of
condition against two heavies in condition. I'd back the duo, but it could be a damned close-run thing.

‘Yes, right, well, what about it, boys?' came the oily Macklehose voice, suddenly tuned for ingratiation. ‘There'd be a lot in it for you. Say we split it sixty-forty, eh? I can't say fairer than that, can I?'

‘Which way?' said Tingvold, in a voice that suggested mere academic interest.

‘Mine, of course.' Macklehose's voice had a self-righteous note in it, and he got very shirty when the two Norwegians laughed unpleasantly. ‘I don't think you quite realize that I'm the legal owner of this stuff.'

The Norwegians laughed even louder.

‘Why don't you go and see a lawyer, then, Grandad?' said Ratikainen.

‘The legal owner is what I am. Miss Carbury, that's the last owner of this stuff, left me all the family items. Says so in the will. She just made a muck-up of the phraseology, silly old cow. I've got my lawyer on to it, don't you worry. Meanwhile, you and me ought to be able to come to a little agreement, eh, boys?'

‘Hmmm,' said Ratikainen, the real little sadist. ‘I don't know. I think we let the lawyers settle it, don't you, Rolf?'

‘Safest thing, Knut,' said Tingvold, playing along. ‘Always stick within the law's our motto, right?'

‘Aw, come on. You can do a lot better out of this by coming in with me.' In the flickering torchlight I could see Amos Macklehose leaning forward in an agony of evangelical sincerity. ‘After all, what are you going to get from this Parfitt guy, eh? A good wage — that's about it, isn't it? Whereas, you throw in your lot with me, and you get part of the sum. I bet you don't know what a thing like that's worth, do you? Look, if I said a million dollars I'd be pitching it low, very low. Think what you could get out of it. What Parfitt's paying you would be peanuts by comparison.'

‘Don't give me all this Parfitt this, Parfitt that,' came Rolf Tingvold's voice, with a nasty edge. ‘We don't know him. An' I tell you this: if I had to choose between a crooked millionaire and a crooked priest, I choose the millionaire every time.'

I had to hand it to Tingvold. He had his priorities right.

‘And I tell you another thing,' Tingvold went on. ‘OK, so we do a deal with you, and we pull in the moneys. Very nice. For a time. But what happens then, eh? We don't get no more jobs, that's what happens. Nobody don't trust us no more. Because that's what they know about Knut and me. They give us a job and we do it. Straight along the line, like they say. Sometimes we play it gentle — get results. Sometimes we play it a bit rough — give Knut a bit of fun — get results, just the same. And what they want us to do, we get done, quietly. We get hold of this or that for them, we make somebody disappear, we put the screws on somebody else — all gets done. We fix it. And fix the rap on someone else, if that's how they want it. They hire us because they know we're straight. And we aren't going to do nothing that blows all that — right? We got our reputations to consider.'

He was so respectable he was beginning to sound like a Scandinavian Trade Union leader. At any rate, he seemed to have got through to Macklehose, because when Amos spoke again, his voice was fluttery and unconvincing.

‘Now, look, boys. I'm not asking you to break your trust. Would I do that — a man of God? What you've got to remember is that, like I say, I'm the legal owner of this stuff, and — '

But the continued negotiation was all a blind. In mid-sentence he broke off and made a sudden lunge for the manuscript. There was a flailing searchlight of torches as the others realized what he was up to. Then all hell broke loose.

I guessed at once what he was up to. The idea was that he should grab the manuscript while his young hopefuls kept the heavies busy. In the hysterical confusion of torch beams I saw his hands grab at the large pile of manuscript, while the four others threw themselves towards him and started grappling with each other. It was a real battle of Titans, like something out of Beethoven at his least
gemütlich.
I withdrew into the doorway of the front room, as sounds of grunts, kicks and a shout of anguish suggested that the Scandinavian team was not going to be long in getting the upper hand. As I stood in the darkness of the room, the drab-clad figure of Amos Macklehose emerged running from the study and made along the hall towards the front door.