Vintage Stuff (25 page)

Only Pastor Laudenbach and Sheikh Fahd bin Riyal, united by their faith in a spiritual future
and certain unspoken prejudices, remained unmoved. 'It is the will of Allah. The Western world is
decadent and the infidel Botwyk was clearly a Zionist. He refused to acknowledge that the return
of Jerusalem and all Arab lands can only be achieved by force of arms. It is the same with Berlin
and the occupied East Bank of your country.'

'I hadn't thought of it like that before,' said the Pastor. 'We have much to feel guilty
about.'

In the darkness the Saudi delegate smiled. He was thinking wistfully of Eichmann.

Far to the north, Slymne drove down the M1 at ninety miles an hour. He wasn't wasting time on
side roads and the Major's suggestions, made at frequent intervals, that they stop the night in a
hotel had been ignored. 'You heard what the Head said,' he told the Major. 'This could be the
ruination of us all.'

'Won't be much of me left to ruin at this rate,' said the Major and shifted his weight on the
inner tube.

Halfway down the drive the Countess paused in her flight. Too many days in the kitchen hadn't
equipped her for long-distance running and anyway she hadn't been shot at. Nobody had chased
after her either. She sat down on the wall to get her breath back and considered the situation
grimly. She might have saved her life but she'd also lost her life savings. The seven little gold
bars in the suitcase had been her guarantee of independence. Without them she was tied to the
damned Château and the kitchen stove. Worse still, she might have to go elsewhere and struggle on
satisfying the whims and lusts of men, either as someone's cook, housekeeper and general
bottle-washer or, more distastefully still, as a wife. She would lose the bungalow in Bognor
Regis and the chance of resuming her interrupted identity as Constance Sugg safe in the knowledge
that her past was well and truly behind her. It was an appalling prospect and wasn't helped by
the fact that she was fat, fair and forty-five. Not that she cared what she looked like. The
three Fs had kept the fourth at bay but they wouldn't help her in a world dominated by lecherous
men.

It was all the more galling that she would have escaped if it hadn't been for Glodstone's
clumsiness. Another damned man had fouled things up for her, and an idiot at that. Baffled by the
whole affair, she was about to move on when another thought struck her. Someone had certainly
come looking for her and having found her they'd let her get away. Why? Unless they'd got what
they'd wanted in her suitcase. That made much more sense. It did indeed. With a new and nasty
determination the Countess climbed off the wall and turned back up the drive. She had gone twenty
yards when she heard footsteps and the sound of voices. They were coming after all. She slipped
into some bushes and squatted down.

'I don't care what you think,' said Glodstone, as they passed, 'if you hadn't come out with
that bloody gun and yelled "Freeze" she wouldn't have run off like that.'

'But I didn't know it was the Countess,' said Peregrine, 'I thought it was one of the swine
trying to get round behind me. Anyway we rescued her and that's what she wanted, isn't it?'

'Without her suitcase with all her clothes in it?'

'Feels jolly heavy for clothes. She's probably waiting for you at the bridge and we can give
it back to her.'

Glodstone snorted. 'Frighten the wits out of the poor woman and you expect her to hang around
waiting for me. For all she knows I'm dead.'

They passed out of earshot. In the bushes the Countess was having difficulty understanding
what she had just heard. Rescue her? And that was what she wanted? What she wanted was her
suitcase and the madman with the gun had said they could give it back to her? The statements
resolved themselves into insane questions in her mind.

'I must be going crazy,' she muttered as she disentangled herself from the brambles and stood
in the roadway trying to decide what to do. It wasn't a difficult decision. The young lout had
her suitcase and whether he like it or not she wasn't letting him disappear with it. As the pair
rounded the bend she took off her shoes and holding them in one hand ran down the drive after
them. By the time they reached the bridge she was twenty yards behind and hidden by the stonework
above the river.

'What's that over there?' asked Glodstone, peering at the wreckage of the police van and the
remains of the driver's seat which had burnt itself to a wire skeleton in the middle of the
bridge.

'They had some guards there,' said Peregrine, 'but I soon put paid to them.'

'Dear God,' said Glodstone, 'when you say 'put paid to'...No, I don't think I want to hear.'
He paused and looked warily around. 'All the same, I'd like to be certain there's no one
about.'

'I shouldn't think so. The last I saw of them they were all in the river.'

'Probably the last thing anyone will see of them before they reach the sea, if my experience
of that bloody torrent's anything to go by.'

'I'll go over and check just in case,' said Peregrine. 'If it is all clear I'll whistle.'

'And if it isn't I'll hear a shot I suppose,' muttered Glodstone but Peregrine was already
striding nonchalantly across the bridge carrying the suitcase. A minute later he whistled but
Glodstone didn't move. He was dismally aware that someone was standing behind him.

'It's me again, honey,' said the Countess. 'You don't get rid of me quite so easily.'

'Nobody wants to get rid of you. I certainly...'

'Skip the explanations for later. Now you and me are going to walk across together and just in
case that delinquent gunslinger starts shooting remember I'm in back of you and he's got to drill
you before he gets to me.'

'But he won't shoot. I mean, why should he?'

'You tell me,' said the Countess, 'I'm no mind-reader even if you had a mind. So, let's
go.'

Glodstone ambled forward. In the east the sky had begun to lighten but he had no eyes for the
beauties of nature. He was in an interior landscape, one in which there was no meaning or order
and everything was at variance with what he had once believed. Romance was dead and unless he was
extremely careful he might join it very shortly.

'I'm going to tell him not to do anything stupid,' he said when they reached the ramp.

'It's a bit late in the day for that, baby, but you may as well try,' said the Countess.

Glodstone stopped. 'Peregrine,' he called, 'I've got the Countess with me so it's all right.
There's no need to be alarmed.'

Behind the wrecked police van Peregrine cocked the revolver. 'How do I know you're telling the
truth?' he shouted, and promptly crawled away down the bank so that he could get a clear line of
fire on the squat figure silhouetted against the sky.

'Because I say so, you gibbering idiot. What more do you want?'

'Why's she standing so close to you?' said Peregrine from a different quarter. Glodstone swung
round and the Countess followed.

'Because she doesn't trust you with that gun.'

'Why did she ask us to rescue her?' asked Peregrine.

But Glodstone had reached the limits of his patience. 'Never mind that now. We can discuss
that later out of the way.'

'Oh all right,' said Peregrine who had been looking forward to bagging another victim. 'If you
say so.'

He climbed up the bank and Glodstone and the Countess seamed past the shell of the police
van.

'OK, so what's with this business of my wanting to be "rescued?" asked the Countess, pausing
to put her shoes on. 'And who's friend with the itchy trigger finger?'

'That's Peregrine,' said Glodstone, 'Peregrine Clyde-Browne. He's a boy in my house. Actually,
he's left now but '

'I don't need his curriculum vitae; I want to know what you're doing here, is all.'

Glodstone looked uneasily up and down the road. 'Hadn't we better go somewhere more private?'
he said. 'I mean the sooner we're out of the district the less chance they'll have of following
us.'

It was the Countess's turn to hesitate. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to go anywhere too
private with these maniacs. On the other hand there was a great deal to be said for getting the
hell away from burnt-out police vehicles. She didn't fancy being questioned too closely about the
little gold bars in her suitcase or what she was doing with several different passports, not to
mention her son's housemaster and a schoolboy who went round shooting people. Above all she
wanted to put this latest piece of her past behind her. Bognor Regis called.

'Nothing like burning your bridges,' she said. 'Lead on, MacDuff.' And picking up her bag she
followed Glodstone across the road and up the hillside. Behind them Peregrine had taken her words
to heart and by the time they reached the ridge and paused for breath, smoke had begun to gather
in the valley and there came the crackle of burning woodwork.

'That should keep them quiet for a bit,' he said as he joined them. Glodstone stared back with
a fresh sense of despair. He knew what he was going to see. The Château looked deserted but the
wooden bridge was ablaze.

'Quiet? Quiet? every bloody fire-engine and policeman from here to Boosat is going to be down
there in twenty minutes and we've still to break camp. The idea was to get back to the car before
the hunt was up.'

'Yes, but she said '

'Shut up and get moving,' snapped Glodstone and stumbled into the wood to change into his own
clothes.

'I'll say this for you, boy,' said the Countess, 'when you do something you do it thoroughly.
Still, he's right, you know. As the man said, the excreta is about to hit the fan.' She looked
round the little camp. 'And if the snout-hounds get a whiff of this lot they be baying at our
heels in no time.'

'Snout-hounds?' said Peregrine.

'Tracker dogs. The ones with noses the cops use. If you'll take my advice, you'll ditch every
item back in the river.'

'Roger,' said Peregrine, and when Glodstone finally emerged from the undergrowth looking his
dejected self it was to find Peregrine gone and the Countess sitting on her bag.

'He's just destroying the evidence,' she said, 'in the river. So now you can tell me what this
caper is all about.'

Glodstone looked round the empty dell. 'But you must know,' he said. 'You wrote to me asking
me to come down and rescue you.'

'I did? Well, for your information, I...' She stopped. If this madman though she'd written
asking to be rescued, and it was quite obvious from his manner that he did, she wasn't going to
argue the toss with him in the present fraught circumstances. 'Oh well, I guess this isn't the
time for discussion. And we ought to do something with Alphonse's suit. It reeks of
mothballs.'

Glodstone looked down at the clothes he was holding. 'Can't we just leave them?'

'I've just explained to young Lochinvar that if the police bring dogs they're going to track
us down in no time.'

But it was Peregrine who came up with the solution when he returned from the river. 'You go on
ahead and I'll lay a trail with them that'll lead in the wrong direction,' he said, 'I'll catch
you up before you get to the sawmill.' And taking the suit from Glodstone he scrambled down to
the road. Glodstone and the Countess trudged off and two hours later were on the plateau. They
were too preoccupied with their own confused thoughts to talk. The sun was up now and they were
sweating but for once Glodstone had no intention of stopping for a rest. The nightmare he had
been through still haunted him, was still with him in the shape of the woman who quite evidently
didn't know she had written to him for help. Even more evidently she didn't need helping and if
anyone could be said to have been rescued Glodstone had to admit she'd saved him. Finally, as
they reached the woods on the far side of the Causse de Boosat, he glanced back. A smudge of
smoke drifted in the cloudless sky and for a moment he thought he caught the faint sounds of
sirens. Then they were fighting their way through the scrub and trees and after another half an
hour stumbled across the overgrown track to the sawmill.

The same atmosphere of loneliness and long disuse hung over the rusting machinery and the
derelict buildings, but they no longer evoked a feeling of excitement and anticipation in
Glodstone. Instead the place looked sinister and grim, infected with death and undiscovered
crimes. Not that Glodstone had time to analyse his feelings. They rose within him automatically
as he made his way across to the shed and thanked God the Bentley was still there. While he
opened the doors the Countess dropped her suitcase and sat down on it. She had ignored the pain
in her right arm and her sore feet, and she tried to ignore them now. At least they had a car,
but what a car! Yeah, well, it fitted. A vintage Bentley. You couldn't beat that for easy
identification. A one-eyed man in a Bentley. Even if they didn't have road-blocks up the cops
would still stop them just to have a look at it. On the other hand, vintage car owners didn't
usually go around knocking off Professors. And there was no going back now. She'd just have to
say she'd been kidnapped and hope for the best.

In the shed, Glodstone replaced the plugs and started the car. He had just driven it out when
Peregrine appeared, panting and dripping with sweat. 'Sorry I'm late,' he said, 'but I had to
make sure they wouldn't come this way. Went down-river a couple of miles and found an old man
who'd been fishing so I stuffed those clothes in the bag of his moped and waited until he rode
off. That'll keep them busy for a couple of hours. Then I had to swim about a bit before doubling
back. Didn't want to leave my own trail.'

'Go and shift those trees,' said Glodstone, getting out and shutting the shed doors. The
countess climbed into the back seat and five minutes later they were on the road. On the wrong
side.

'Drive on the right for Chrissake,' squawked the Countess. 'We aren't in England and at this
rate we won't be. And where do you think you're going?'