As the driver dropped down to an even lower gear, the two men in the back stared out at the snow which had suddenly started falling in a blizzard. Sensing they might not make the rendezvous, the man tightened his grip instinctively round the butt of the revolver that lay in one pocket, warmed by his hand. The passenger next to him turned and raised his elegant eyebrows, putting two fingers of his left hand to his lips to indicate his need for a fresh cigarette. The thickset man beside him stared back at him for a moment, then slowly withdrew a treasured pack of Players from his other coat pocket, inspecting it carefully before taking out one of the two remaining cigarettes single-handed and lighting it himself before handing it over. The driver changed gear yet again, down to first now as the wheels of the large black Austin began to lose their grip on the snow. He glanced in his mirror, catching the eye of the man seated directly behind.
‘Keep going,’ his passenger muttered, sticking his pipe back in his mouth. ‘We haven’t got far to go now, and it’ll be a lot easier coming back down—’
He stopped speaking abruptly as the driver over-corrected the car, preventing it from going out of control, and caught the back of the seat in front.
The younger man, smoking his freshly lit cigarette, smiled to himself at their increasing difficulties, knowing very well that whatever happened to them during the last part of this particular journey, the outcome was inevitable.
He turned his handsome head and stared out at the snow that now blanketed the evening landscape. He liked snow. It had always excited him, never losing that boyish delight at seeing the first large flakes falling silently from leaden skies. Now lights shone ahead, torches being swung in the gloom by invisible people standing in the middle of the deserted road, a road he knew well since it bisected a large stretch of moorland that once had been his, an autumn paradise where with gun and dog he had loved to roam. Again he smiled as he considered the irony of the moment, how this time an expert shot would extinguish the life not of some fast fleeing grouse but of a rather easier target.
‘You can finish your cigarette,’ the man beside him muttered, tucking his briar pipe away in the top pocket of his jacket before producing a key to unlock the handcuffs that had linked the two men on their long winter journey. In front of them the driver had already half turned round to train the long barrel of a service revolver directly at the head of the prisoner.
Once again the captive raised eyebrows that appeared to have been carefully manicured, so perfect was their shape. He took one last draw on the cigarette before extinguishing it reluctantly in the ashtray beside him.
‘Goodbye,’ he said to the thickset man beside him, whose gaze he had observed seemed seldom given to blinking. ‘I do hope you get home safely.’
The man slowly took off his heavy-framed spectacles and nodded.
‘Goodbye,’ he replied, beginning to clean the lenses of his glasses slowly and carefully before turning to look at the driver, who read the signal at once.
‘Time to get out,’ he said to the man beside him, underlying his order with a significant nod of his head towards the snow-covered landscape.
The passenger hesitated, as if he was about to try to buy time by arguing his cause. But it soon became obvious that this was far from his intention, for he used the delay simply to smile and nod at both men. Finally, after catching the eye of the man to his right, at whom he stared without apparent emotion, he pushed the passenger door beside him open and got out to stand smartly to attention by the snow-covered automobile.
‘Heil Hitler,’ he said, all traces of his smile now gone.
The thickset man, who was sitting quite still in the back seat, stared up at the elegant figure standing to defiant attention in the blizzard. He put one heavy hand bearing a small crested signet ring on the driver’s arm as he was just about to disembark.
‘Tell them not to make a meal of it.’
The driver did not respond, simply getting quickly out of the car, slamming his door shut and disappearing into the snowstorm. His superior remained sitting in the back of the car, taking the last of the Players cigarettes from the battered pack and lighting it with a small gold lighter. He sat back, inhaling deeply, staring ahead at a windscreen now completely covered with snow.
In the bleak, dark and bitter winter evening outside, the tall, elegant man turned up the collar of his still immaculate cavalry coat.
‘This is what I would call a blizzard,’ he remarked. ‘Typical moor storm. Used to toboggan down here as a boy.’
‘Rather than toboggan, why don’t you take a hike, chum?’ a voice to match the wintry conditions wondered from behind him. ‘To make it fair, I’ll give you thirty seconds’ start.’
‘Not the most appealing of ideas,’ he replied. ‘Too easy to get lost up here.’
‘Go on,’ he was urged. ‘Be a sport.’
The man turned to try to identify the voice behind him, but thanks to the severity of the storm he could see even less than before.
‘Even better,’ the voice suggested, ‘why not go for a little run?’
He won’t run, the man still sitting in the back of the snow-covered car thought to himself. He’s not the type.
He took another pull on his cigarette, clearing the condensation off the inside of the window beside him with the back of one gloved hand as if to try to get a sight of the events taking place somewhere in the darkness outside. A flurry of snow falling against the glass immediately deprived him of any view, so, giving a deep shiver against the cold, he pulled the collar of his overcoat up round his neck and slumped further down in his seat in an effort to keep warm.
Even if there was a chance it would save his life, he still wouldn’t run, he concluded. He wouldn’t even run to save his skin.
‘At the command – run.’
‘And make it easier for you?’ the man wondered in return, staring up into the invisible skies above him as if at a starlit summer sky. ‘No – no, I don’t think I’ll bother, if it’s all the same to you.’
At the back of his mind he toyed with the thought that if he just stood his ground somehow he might be able to bluff his way out of it, until he heard the tell-tale sound of a safety catch being released, at which he changed his mind. Clearing his throat, he sunk his hands in his coat pockets and began to stroll off across the snow-swept moors for all the world like a gentleman taking an after-lunch constitutional.
They let him go a surprising distance, so far in fact that his heart gave a small leap as he realised that, given the distance he had covered in such appalling conditions, his executioner might actually have lost sight of him.
His attitude changed now that he thought he had a chance to outwit his enemies, people whom in comparision to himself, and those he admired, he considered to be stupid, slow and without imagination. The thought brought a sudden smile to his frozen features, and as he smiled he found himself running. Faster and faster away from the gunman who must surely now be marooned in an impenetrable wall of snow. As he ran he threw back his head and laughed, just as the man many yards away behind him fired several shots in quick succession.
The body fell forward into a drift of snow, the blood from it staining the white that surrounded it with surprising rapidity. The marksman went up to it, turned it over, and stared down. The cap had fallen from the head revealing thick blond hair, and such a startlingly handsome face beneath it that it seemed in death to have returned to a state of peace that was almost enviable, as if, in the ultimate mercy of its end, a life had been finally unravelled and returned to a childlike innocence.
‘Fool,’ the man in the back of the car remarked to himself, hearing the shots and then noting the flare the marksman put up. ‘You poor misguided, stupid fool – what in heaven’s name possessed you?’
Taking a last pull on his cigarette he opened the car door, and, with a sigh and a slow sorry shake of his head, walked off into the blizzard to help bring back the traitor’s remains.