George tried to avoid Louise’s eyes. Perhaps she expected him to open the door and throw these men over the garden wall. Perhaps he didn’t want her to see that he was frightened. He knew very clearly the difference between a stray brick hurled through a window and the overt hostility of attacking their front door. These men were serious about getting Niles. Something had changed.
“Go away,” he shouted.
“I want that Niles,” came back Tom Hedden’s high-pitched voice.
“You’re not getting him, go away.”
They went on kicking.
“Don’t worry, the door’s very solid, it’ll stand up to a whole army,” he said to Louise.
“Will it? Is that all you’re going to do, stand here and let them kick it? For God’s sake, George, make them stop it.”
“How? Pour boiling oil on them from the bedroom window? Listen, to me, Louise, I know how they feel, I’d be the same way if it was Karen out there. They’re not criminals. If I open the door they’ll probably do something they’d regret tomorrow. They’ll get tired of it.”
The phone rang.
“Oh thank God,” she said. “Maybe it’s the police.”
He picked it up, standing about three feet from the door.
“Who’s this?”
“Hallo, Mr. Magruder? This is Knapman here.”
“Hallo.”
“Int this snow terrible? I never seen such a bad night of it.”
“You’re not kidding.”
George realised that Knapman probably didn’t know they had Niles in the house.
“I’m sorry to bother you and that, but Jean wanted to know about your turkey –”
“Turkey?”
“The one you ordered for Christmas like? Jean thought your wife might want her tonight, get her in the oven maybe.”
“I dont think we’re too worried about the turkey, Mr Knapman. Right now we’ve got this man Henry Niles inside the house and a gang of drunks kicking the door down.”
He explained about Niles.
“Do you know who ‘tis outside?”
“There’s a young guy, with sideboards, and a big guy, very big, got a red face. They were in the Inn one night I went down, I don’t know their names.”
There was a pause.
“Look, Mr. Magruder, I was out looking for Janice, I just came back to make sure Jean and the kids were all right, I’m comin’ down that way anyway, I’ll bring the turkey. I’ll be about ten minutes, I’ll talk to them, everybody’s a bit jumpy with this Janice going off like that. You know how it is.’
“Yeah, sure, I just wish they’d stop kicking the door. Tell them to go and get drunk somewhere else.”
When he rang off the kicking had stopped. He listened. Except for the wind in the trees he could hear nothing. He went into the sitting-room. Niles turned his head, staring at them.
“That was Knapman, he’s coming over,” he said to Louise, patting her arm. “He’ll tell them to push off. I don’t think they’d listen to me.” He looked at Niles. “Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked, speaking as he would to a deaf man or a foreigner, with exaggerated lip movements.
“That blood wasn’t my fault,” said Henry, shaking his head. “It wasn’t me, promise. Gentle Jesus meek and mild.”
George and Louise exchanged horrified looks. Niles began to cry.
“It wasn’t my fault, promise!” he sobbed. “It was a game, Mr. Pawson put the belt round me.”
“OH MY GOD,” Louise shrieked.
“Louise, keep calm for Chrissake.”
She screamed, her hands at her lips, her eyes wide with terror. Niles shut his eyes and blubbered like a baby.
At that moment the room was suddenly filled by what seemed like an explosion. The curtains moved as though punched by a giant fist. A brick fell on the stone floor under the window ledge.
He ran to the window. This time they were standing close, faces peering in at him from the darkness, their shadowy silhouettes traced by snowflakes.
“Us want that Niles.”
It was a silly thing to say at a moment like this, but it was the first thing that came into his head:
“Get off my land.”
“Us’ll burn the bloody house down if us don’t get him.”
“I’ll give you one more warning. Go away now and there won’t be any trouble. But lift another finger and so help me I’ll have you in jail!”
He let the curtain fall back. He had to hope that they’d be shaken by a show of confidence.
“Let them have him, for God’s sake!”
“Keep a grip on yourself, honey. Why don’t you go upstairs and see to Karen? She’ll be terrified at all this noise.”
“I don’t –”
“Louise! I know this is a hellish situation but please don’t make it any worse.”
She gave him a look of such contempt he thought she was going to spit in his face. Then she went up the stairs.
“That blood wasn’t me,” Niles groaned, his face red and blotchy with tears.
“Shut up, you,” George snarled.
Niles went into a fit of crying. He was so much like a child George almost got down on his knees to comfort him.
Instead he closed the door at the foot of the stairs. The thing was to stay cool. Outside in that weather the drink would soon wear off and they’d go home.
“Mibbe us oughter clear off, Norman,” said Bert Voizey. The little rat expert didn’t like this kind of business. One thing to get your own back on somebody by slipping poison to his pigs, but not to go fighting like this, face to face.
“Nah, the cops won’t be here for hours. I’ll smash every window in the bloody house. Us’ll get that Niles, I tell you us will. He don’t have no right to live, an animal like that. Them coppers get him and what’ll they do, eh? Put him back in Two Waters, that’s all. An’ he killed them kids – and Janice. I’m fed up wi’ lettin’ them get away wi’ it.”
“I want that Niles,” roared Tom Hedden, who didn’t seem to care, or even notice, what the others were doing. “I’ll blow his bloody brains out I will!”
Phillip Riddaway kept thinking of what Norman had told him. That Niles was a human devil, he’d got hold of little Janice Hedden and done awful things to her, like them other kids. He was an animal.
In all his life Phillip Riddaway had only once gone farther than fifteen miles from Dando Monachorum, when they’d sent for him to take army tests. He hadn’t liked the town, all them people pushing and shoving and staring at him. It had turned out all right, for the army had written to his mother saying they didn’t want him. He was forty-seven, stronger than any man in Dando or Compton. Everybody knew that. Norman was always telling him how strong he was. Norman was his special pal. Norman had told him what it was like to do things with a woman. Norman had been in gaol and had travelled to hundreds of different places. Norman said a man had only one or two real pals and he ought to stick by them. In prison, Norman said, the men didn’t like these animals who did awful things to little kids. Norman had told him how one of these devils had come to Norman’s prison and the men – Norman’s prison pals – had got a razor blade and cut chunks out of the bugger’s backside. Norman knew a lot about it. Norman said that all them posh people didn’t care what happened to folks like them, even little girls. That made him very angry. Just because he didn’t have any little girls of his own didn’t mean he would let a devil like this Henry Niles do awful things and get away with it. He felt very angry. Norman was right, they ought to burn the house down.
“Us want to get into the house and get Niles without that yank seein’ us like,” said Bert Voizey.
“Aye, you’m be a bloody burglar, Norman,” said Chris Cawsey, “you’m show us how to get into her.” He laughed. His hand was resting on his knife. When he pushed the sheath the tip would touch his john thomas. That was good. If he could get in there he’d use his lovely knife. Better than sheep! Nobody knew the kind of high jinks he got up to with his lovely knife. He thought of the American man’s wife, he’d seen her walking about in the village. She’d have lovely big tits on her. It made him want to laugh out loud, just thinking about them. And the knife. What it would do to them!
“Us goin’ round the back,” said Norman. “Kick the door, Tom, us’ll slip in a window and have that Niles out dead easy.”
George Magruder was trying to stick squares of cardboard over the broken panes with Scotch tape when he heard a noise from the kitchen. He knew the back door was locked, but there was a big window in the kitchen. The other windows in the house were fairly small, the panes hardly big enough for a man to crawl through head first, but the kitchen window would be easy to get through. Before he left the sitting-room he looked at Henry Niles, who seemed to have sobbed himself back to sleep. It was hard to realise that all this passion had been aroused by that small, scruffy baby-man. You looked at him sleeping, an ugly little thing of a human being, and you tried to imagine those hands tearing the life out of a child. It made you feel sick.
But that wasn’t the point. When they’d hit him he’d been wandering about on the road, half frozen. The girl had only been out of the school fifteen minutes at the most. He couldn’t have – unless... unless she’d run up the hill... unless Niles was walking up the hill when they’d hit him... how long did it take? He shuddered. If only the damn police were here. If only they weren’t stranded in this desolate hole. It was ridiculous to think that in this day and age, in England, a man could find himself under siege by a gang of crazy drunks and have nobody to call on for help. Ridiculous.
He heard the noise again. He ducked his head to avoid the beam which straddled the doorway between the small dining-room and the kitchen. Through the kitchen window he saw a man’s face and hands. They were trying to force the latch.
He felt angry. And sick. There was something nauseating about people trying to force their way into your house.
“Go away,” he shouted.
The man vanished. Through the glass he could see only snowflakes. He checked the window latch. It was that kind with a swan-neck handle and a short, thin bar of metal which slipped upwards into a slot in the centre window post. The two frames moved outwards from the centre post. At the bottom of each frame there was a long metal bar with holes for fitting over a metal peg. Once the glass was broken a man would only have to put his hand inside and both the metal bar and the catch would open in two seconds. He couldn’t see a way of securing the catches.
He checked the door which opened into the small kitchen porch. That had a Yale lock and a fairly strong bolt. He didn’t think they could force it. The outside porch door was probably unlocked. Still, it wouldn’t do them much good to get into the porch.
He went back to the sitting-room. Henry Niles was sitting up, the blankets round his waist.
“I need the lavvy,” he said. George wondered what kind of accent Niles had. Not from these parts. Niles had been about twenty-three when they’d caught him that first time. What kind of life had he had before? How long had his warped mind been preparing him for the moment he got his hands on a little girl? Or had he been doing it for a long time before they caught him, gradually working up to a murder? What did it all mean? A man like that, the mind perverted. Child-like, but warped what did it all mean?
“I need the lavvy,” Niles said again.
“It’s upstairs,” George said. “I’ll show you.”
That was another thing. Although he knew the man was a murderous lunatic he still found himself adhering to the normal rules of politeness. Was he frightened he might hurt Niles’ feelings? What could he do, ask the guy what it felt like to be a child-murderer?
This pathetic little man, who could hardly walk by himself to the foot of the stairs, was he the symbol of the age, the personification of blind, unthinking evil? The ultimate in perverted lust? How could you say he was perverted when you knew he had the mind of a child? You couldn’t punish him – that was what progress and civilisation meant, if it meant anything at all. Yet they’d hung the Nazis. Were they responsible? Were they perverted beyond the stage where normal human rules applied?
Perhaps it was too much to ask people to excuse the evil done by Henry Niles. Perhaps it would be better all round to have him extinguished. A hundred million people had been killed this century – by normal men. What was so special about Niles’ case? Did it matter? What a pointless exercise in so-called progress it seemed, to make a principle out of this shaking little body, climbing the stairs the way Karen had when she first learned to walk, one step at a time, hand clutching the rail.
He showed Niles into the lavatory, the blanket hanging round his shoulders, like a boy playing Red Indians.
“Can you – will you manage?”
Niles nodded. He let the blanket slide to the floor. George turned his head away, disgusted at having seen Niles like that. It was akin to being on good terms with evil. He bolted the door on the outside. It was only a small bolt, but he didn’t think Niles was in any state to force it. He went along the corridor and tapped gently on Karen’s door.
“Louise?”
She came out, her face drawn with worry.
“Is she sleeping?”
Louise shook her head.
“Come on, I want to speak to you. Better lock her door.”
What did he want to tell her? That he was scared? That he was sorry? Sorry for what? Why did she make him feel guilty – inadequate? Was he inadequate – as simple as that?
“They’re still outside,” he said. They stood in the darkness of their bedroom. He wanted her to reassure him. What was the point of fighting for principles if you couldn’t maintain a relationship with your own wife? Was that why some men threw themselves into such battles – as compensation for personal inadequacies? Did those old pioneers tolerate this kind of disruptive influence from their wives?
“If they want him as badly as this we can’t stop them,” she said. She sounded bored. “They wouldn’t hurt him, they only want to know what he did to Janice Hedden –”
“You know as well as I do he couldn’t have been anywhere near Janice Hedden. So do they. They’re all steamed up, you can see that as well as I can. That young one who tried to hit him – do you think he cares a nickelsworth about Janice? The hell he does! They want blood, that’s all.”
“What does it matter?”
“Don’t you care?”
“No. Why did it have to be us, that’s all I care about. Oh my God, my head’s splitting.”
“You’d better lie down for a bit.”
“With all this going on, silly idiots playing Cowboys and Indians? That’s all it is. Stupidity.”
Downstairs there was another explosion, glass breaking with a popping noise, the sound a bottle makes when smashed against a brick wall. She drew a deep breath. She thought she was going to vomit.
“Oh let them in! Christ Almighty, George, you know that noise goes right into my nerves.”
“Is that all it means to you? I’d better go downstairs.”
He was half-way down the stairs when he remembered Niles. He ran back up.
“Louise! Niles is in the john. Stay with Karen.”
“Don’t leave him up here!”
“Just stay with Karen, damn you.”
He ran down the stairs. The noise seemed to have come from the study. He went through the hall. When he opened the study door the room was completely black except for a faint light at the window, where a white gauze curtain blew out in ghostly folds. He felt along the wall for the light switch.
A man’s arm was pushed through the pane of broken glass, a hand twisting for the window catch. He felt a wave of revulsion. He had to force himself to go up to the window. He stared at the motionless hand, wanting to hit it, nauseated at its proximity. On the window-ledge there was no possible weapon, only his notes for Branksheer.
“What’s wrong with you people?” he shouted. “We’ve got the police coming. Why don’t you go away?”
The hand pulled back through the jagged hole. He couldn’t see if the man had run away or was standing outside in the darkness.
Then he heard a voice. Somebody was shouting. Above the wind the words were only noises.
For the first time he began to feel real fear. If more of them had arrived – suppose they’d found Janice murdered? The villagers might come in force, a lynch party. From what he’d seen of Dando folk they were capable of anything. Mysterious people.
Somebody knocked at the door. He went into the hall.
“Go away,” he said, lacking the energy to shout. He felt weary.
“It’s me,” said a muffled voice.
“Yeah. Who’re you?”
“Bill Knapman.”
“Oh. Just a minute.” He opened the door with the chain still in its catch. He saw that it was Knapman. “Come in.”
He chained and bolted the door again.
“You got through the enemy lines okay then?” he said. “Come into the sitting-room. Maybe they’ve run out of rocks.”
“I told them to clear off. Tom Hedden’s out there, Norman Scutt and Phil Riddaway. Been drinking. Reckon Tom’s fair gone crazy with this business.”
He didn’t say anything about the shotgun. There was no point in telling the American, Tom might get in trouble just for carrying the gun. Bill Knapman was sure they would go away now that he was on the scene.
“The wife sent this down,” he said, bringing the turkey out from under his coat, holding it by the neck. George Magruder laughed.
“Where’s Niles then?” Knapman asked.
“He’s upstairs attending to the call of nature. As a famous maniac he’s a disappointment in the flesh – about the size of that bird and not as healthy looking. Come on up and have a look at him. Boy, am I glad you’re here. Those guys had us worried. They’ve heaved three rocks already.”
He slipped the bolt on the lavatory door. Niles was still on the lavatory seat, his underpants round his ankles, the blanket round his shoulders.
“I’ve got the runs,” he said, looking up at them, more than ever like a pathetic child. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Bill Knapman shook his head. George saw Niles staring, then he realised it was the turkey. It would be easy, for a man like Knapman, to break Niles’ neck. Get it all over with. Like spearing a boil.
“Shout when you’re finished,” he said.
“I’m cold,” said Niles.
“Yeah, well don’t sit there all night.”
He closed the door.
“Not much to look at, is he?” said Knapman, shaking his head. “Why they don’t hang them buggers I’ll never know. What good is he to anybody? Better off dead I reckon.”
They went along to the bedroom. George was glad in more ways than one that Knapman had arrived. Maybe his presence would cheer Louise up.
“You go on downstairs, I’ll just see to Karen,” he said.
She had her head almost under the blankets but her eyes were wide open.
“It’s all right, honey, they’ve gone away now,” he said. “Why don’t you go to sleep? Well take care of everything. You weren’t scared, were you?”
“I hate it here.”
“So do I, honey. We’ll see about going home, first thing. But it’s all right for tonight. Give Daddy a goodnight kiss. Sleep tight, old bean, chin up and all that, eh?”
She managed a little smile.
“Good job I brought something along, like,” said Chris Cawsey, taking a full bottle of rum out of his big outside pocket. He pulled the cork and took a pull. He touched Tom Hedden’s arm with the bottle. Tom Hedden had a pull.
“Bugger Bill Knapman,” he said. They were standing in the shelter of the old shed across the road from the farmhouse. Bert Voizey had pulled Tom in there before he could start anything with Bill Knapman. “It’s my Janice he took, weren’t it? What’s bloody Knapman stickin’ his nose in for?”
“He’s a knowall that Knapman,” said Norman Scutt. “Thinks he can push people about.”
“That Niles is an animal,” said Tom Hedden. “He’s goin’ to pay for my Janice.”
“Too bloody right, Tom. He’s goin’ to pay this time. They won’t let him get away with it again, dirty murderin’ pig!”
They stood together watching the front of the house, the rum bottle passing round. All of them thought of different things, yet they were all there for the same reasons. They were the men nobody took notice of. They were the men who’d never had any luck. All their lives other people had told them what to do, had insulted them, put them in gaol, sneered at them, kept them poor. All the years of resentment were now at flash point. They had the best reason in the world, the one reason that could bring them together, out in the open, face to face with an enemy. Tom Hedden’s chest heaved with anger. Bill Knapman had told him to clear off, as though he was a village kid, a nobody. What had happened to his Janice didn’t matter, oh no, that Niles could come here and murder his daughter and they didn’t care, just old Tom Hedden’s girl, not right in the head anyway. Oh no, they didn’t care. It wasn’t their daughters that had been took, only a Hedden brat.
Norman Scutt, the burglar and petty thief, had come there because Niles took him back to a world where he was somebody, the world of prison. Men like Niles were the lowest of the low. He made a thief feel like a judge. Norman Scutt had slept in the same bed with three younger brothers until he was sixteen – when he’d first been sent to a Borstal. Norman Scutt liked to burgle houses. Being in a well-furnished room with a big bed and thick carpets and women’s stuff on a dressing-table gave him erections. He lusted to be in houses like that. He hated the people who lived in them, because he couldn’t understand why they lived in posh bedrooms and he’d slept with three young brothers. He liked to chuck their drawers on the floor, to stub fag ends out on their swanky carpets – best of all, to make a mess on their carpets, right where it would hit them in the face.
Chris Cawsey liked to touch his own body with the knife. It made him giggle and then pant with excitement. He liked to cut into things. Cats as a boy, kittens, hens... then sheep. Now he felt like giggling. To do it in a gang, that was better than dodging about in fields on his own. He’d already had a bit of fun that night, just enough to give him the taste.
Bert Voizey liked to poison rats because it made him the man who poisoned rats. People knew him as the rat man, people didn’t like rats, they were frightened of rats. They looked at him in a funny way because he knew all about rats. It wasn’t often he did things with other people. Other people didn’t like him. Now he was with mates, they liked him.
Phillip Riddaway just liked being with Norman. Norman was his pal. Norman didn’t laugh at him.
“I want that Niles,” said Tom Hedden. “I don’t care what that Knapman says, I’m goin’ to get that Niles.”
“Wait till Bill pushes off, Tom,” said Norman.
“No, bugger him, I’m after that Niles.”
Tom Hedden left the shelter of the old shed and started across the lane, a strong, thickset man, a jerkiness about his walk, half-drunk, his feet stumbling through the snow.
“GIVE ME THAT NILES,” he roared at the curtained windows of the farmhouse. “HE DONE IN MY JANICE.”
Bill Knapman was about to leave when they heard the shouts. He looked through the curtains.
“It’s Tom Hedden, I’d better go out and speak to him,” he said to the Magruders. He could see they were frightened. He felt very confident. These people were outsiders, they didn’t know the Dando folk. In the absence of police – or any other authority – it was up to somebody like him to take a lead. “Don’t worry about old Tom, he’s just over-wrought, that’s all. I know him, he’ll do what I tell him.”
George Magruder took a look through the curtains.
“Is that a gun of some kind he’s carrying?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think old Tom would have a gun,” Knapman said, smiling at Louise. “They’re a bit crazy at times round here but they aren’t that bad.”
“Do you think you should go out?” said Louise.
“I’m not worried about Tom Hedden,” said Knapman.
George felt secure. Knapman was a local, he knew all these people, he spoke their language.
In the shed across the road the other men had a last swig of rum and then they came out across the lane, to see what was going to happen.
“I’ll shoot the door down if I don’t get that Niles,” Tom Hedden shouted.