Nothing happened. Instead of the gun’s explosion, the stillness was rent by an unholy whine, a throaty roar and the sound of frenzied revving. Noise bludgeoned the air.
As if yanked by a puppeteer’s string, Bewley thrust the gun aside and leapt up exclaiming, ‘Those bloody motorbikes! I’ve told them before – this isn’t a dirt track, it’s council land! They’ve no right to—’
On pure instinct and like an automaton myself, I too leapt up, seized the discarded pistol, and turning, hurled it as far as I could into a gulley of prickly gorse bushes. Let him crawl for that! I thought with satisfaction. At the sound of screeching brakes I turned back, and to my astonishment saw Bewley flat on the ground, face down and arms flung wide. Not crawling but sprawled and motionless.
‘Christ!’ a voice yelped. ‘It weren’t my fault – he tripped and fell.’
I gazed at the muffled figure on the solitary motorbike, the heavy boots and leather gauntlets, and experienced a spasm of déjà vu. The rider dismounted, cautiously approached the recumbent figure, and squatting down turned him over and looked long and hard.
‘He’s a gonner,’ Phyllis announced.
‘No!’ I gasped.
‘Oh yes,’ she said firmly, a finger on his pulse, ‘there’s no doubt. There’s blood everywhere – it’s that big flint he’s hit. Pierced his brain it looks like. He won’t be going nowhere.’ She paused, and then muttered, ‘Poor sod.’
‘Yes,’ I whispered faintly, ‘poor sod.’ And then looking at Phyllis, who by now had removed her helmet, I said, ‘Er, I think we may have met before. You kindly delivered my cat and dog from—’
‘Oh yeah, those crazy loons! You’re Miss Oughterard; I’d know you anywhere.’
Quite why she thought she would know me anywhere I wasn’t sure. But I shelved the question, there being more urgent matters to consider. One of those matters was that I felt suddenly faint and had to sit down quickly on the bench.
Phyllis regarded me sympathetically. ‘You look awful,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got just the thing that’ll put you right. It never fails, or so my Uncle Eric says. He gave it me for my birthday.’ She went to a pannier and returned with a hip flask. ‘’Ere, this’ll put the roses in yer cheeks again. I could do with a nip myself. Not used to blokes running out in front of me and falling flat on their faces – especially when they turns out dead!’
For about a minute we sat in ruminative silence, sharing the hip flask and contemplating the placid downland and now and again the figure collapsed on the turf in front of us. It occurred to me that it might be seemly to cover his face. I removed my cardigan, performed the ritual, and then despite the sun’s warmth felt freezing cold. A small penance in view of what might have been.
‘A friend of yours, was he?’ Phyllis asked.
I said he was not exactly a friend but an acquaintance and that we had met quite by chance while taking afternoon strolls. ‘Actually, he is fairly important locally; he is Mr Reginald Bewley, chairman of the town council – though living in Brighton I don’t suppose you would know him.’
‘No,’ she said slowly, ‘I don’t know him but some of my mates do. They used to call him Bastard Bewley. He had a thing about motorbikes, couldn’t stand them and was always making complaints about our lot using this area for practice rides. Said it was an appalling desecration, or some such. But they reckoned it was a really good bit of ground, which is why I came up to give it a trial run. It’s my first time here and, Sod’s Law, look what’s happened!’ She gave a puzzled frown. ‘But what was he doing running out like that?’
Omitting to mention he had been about to kill me, I explained that he had been sitting on the bench but when he heard the noise of the engine he had leapt up, bounded forward and then slipped and fell.
‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘So what you are saying is that it was my fault he came a cropper, that if he hadn’t heard my bike he would never of got up and would be here on this bench now. So I suppose that indirectly I was the cause of his death.’ She looked at me glumly.
‘No!’ I cried aghast. ‘Certainly not! In no way were you responsible, Phyllis. It was his own fault, he was chasing a rabbit.’
‘But you just said that—’
‘Yes, but he didn’t like rabbits either – rabbits and motorbikes, he had an aversion to both. The rabbit appeared just before the noise of your bike. I assure you he was already on his feet.’
It always amazes me how fertile my imagination can be in moments of crisis. Nevertheless, Phyllis gave me what is known as an old-fashioned look. Actually, I have never been entirely sure what that term means but assume it to be a look of steely scepticism. If so, that is exactly what her face registered. But she took the point well enough, and said, ‘Ah, so that’s what we tell the cops is it when we make our report? That he snuffed it seeing off a rabbit.’
‘Our report?’ I said vaguely.
‘Oh yes, we’ll have to do that pronto. Otherwise they’ll have us up for harbouring a stiff. Cor, Uncle Eric would go bananas!’
The reference to Eric Tredwell naturally brought Ingaza to mind and I winced. Barely six weeks ago he and I had been involved in just such a subterfuge, and to learn that I had been now similarly engaged was unlikely to give him joy. I closed my eyes, hearing only too vividly the nasal stream of mordant invective.
‘’Ere, it’s no use shutting your eyes, Miss Oughterard,’ the girl broke in. ‘We’ve got to get weaving! I mean we don’t want the old sheep getting at him, do we?’
‘No,’ I agreed firmly, ‘we don’t.’
Thus replacing her helmet and snapping down its visor, Phyllis ushered me to the bike which, after some hesitation and awkwardness, I managed to straddle.
A varied life I may have had, but those variations did not include riding pillion on a motorbike whose driver clearly saw the machine as some sort of medieval war horse. With snorts of equine power we set off at an alarming rate, scattering turf and flints in all directions and – although I dared not turn my head – doubtless leaving hordes of disaffected rabbits in our wake.
I will draw a veil over the course of that ride. Suffice it to say that we reached our destination unscathed, and that despite shattered nerves and sinews I mustered dignity, and with Phyllis bringing up the rear entered the police station and announced we had left a dead body unattended on the Downs.
‘Is that so?’ said Sergeant Wilding.
‘It most certainly is so,’ I replied, adopting my most authoritative tone. ‘And if officers don’t go up there forthwith it will be eaten by the sheep.’