Before Bill Knapman went outside he told George to put on the porch light.
“Just to let Tom see who it is,” he said, smiling again at Louise. “Wouldn’t want him thinking I’m Henry Niles or nothing. You’d better stay inside, they know me.”
He opened the door and stepped out in the open-fronted porch.
“Hullo then, Tom,” he called. “What’s all this then, out lookin’ for rabbits on a night like this?”
“I’m lookin’ for Niles.”
“Now now, Tom, us don’t want no trouble here like, do us?”
Bill Knapman walked out into the garden. He was still smiling.
“You’m bein’ a bit stupid ain’t you, Tom? What’s all this chuckin’ bricks through these folks’ windows, eh? You’m ought to have more sense, man.”
Tom Hedden had heard that voice all his life. Big farmers telling him he didn’t ought to drink so much, bank managers telling him he couldn’t borrow money, landlords telling him he’d had enough to drink, agricultural inspectors telling him he wasn’t farming right, always the same voice saying the same things, come off it, Tom Hedden, stop drinking, Tom Hedden, give up your farm, Tom Hedden, pity about your little girl, Tom Hedden, can’t do nothing for your little girl, Tom Hedden, put her in a home, Tom Hedden, we can’t take her in a home, Tom Hedden, change your ways, Tom Hedden, treat your wife right, Tom Hedden, work harder, Tom Hedden, go into a factory, Tom Hedden, right from the start, the same men with bigger farms, with more money, looking down on him, making jokes at him, always the same thing, having to borrow from those men, having to be polite, to hold his cap in his hand.
He raised the shotgun till its double barrels pointed just above Bill Knapman’s head.
“You tell’m I want that Niles,” he said. “You’m tell’m, Bill Knapman, or I’11 come in an’ get’m.”
“Don’t be so bloody stupid.”
Bill Knapman walked towards Tom Hedden. Snowflakes hit his cheeks.
Tom Hedden thought of all the times he’d heard Bill Knapman talk to him like that. All right for him, he’d started off all right. He didn’t have bad land. He didn’t have a poor little girl who wasn’t right. Oh no, not Bill Bloody Knapman, he was one of them, friends with the Colonel and the vicar and all that sort. Oh yeah, and friends with that bloody yank. Him that was protecting the murdering devil Niles.
There’s a good chap, Tom Hedden. No more of your foolishness, Tom Hedden.
“Come on, Tom, you bugger, give us that bloody gun and stop all this nonsense!”
“Nonsense! What about my Janice then? It weren’t one of your’n, Bill Knapman! No, it were my Janice. Her never had a chance, from the day her were born. He come here and did it to my Janice. I’m goin’ to kill him!”
Bill Knapman saw the others coming up behind Tom Hedden.
“Hey, you lot, Norman Scutt! You get hold of Tom and get him out of here. There wont be nothin’ said if he goes now.”
“What’s it got to do wi’ you then?” Norman Scutt shouted back. “You’m think you’re the bloody police or somethin’?”
“You’ll know all about the police if you don’t clear out of here,” Bill Knapman replied, angry now. This riff-raff needed to be shouted at. He’d been faced with this kind of thing years ago in the Military Police. He knew how to deal with it. Sharpish.
“I want that gun, Tom, you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing.” He walked forward. “And you lot bugger off, bloody trouble-makers.”
“That madman killed his Janice,” Norman Scutt shouted back. “If he didn’t kill her he knows where her is.”
“Shut up, Scutt!”
He went at Tom Hedden, walking fast, hands out for the gun.
“Leave me alone,” Tom Hedden said, his voice low with bitterness and hate.
Bill Knapman got his hands on the barrel. He tried to pull it out of Hedden’s hands.
Phillip Riddaway had listened to everything. Most of all he’d listened to Norman. He jumped to help Tom Hedden. Bill Knapman had hold of the barrels of the shotgun. He and Tom Hedden swayed as they pulled in opposite directions. Phillip Riddaway tried to push Bill Knapman in the chest. The other three moved closer.
George Magruder saw them from the front door, dark figures locked in a slow moving dance. Should he go out? Would that make it worse?
Boom!
One of the figures jumped backwards as though jerked by a string. For a few moments it tottered on its heels and then went down, backwards. It threshed about for a few, never-ending moments. Then it lay still, a dark hole in the snow.
The other figures stood still. George Magruder gripped his upper lip between finger and thumb until the pain made him wince.
They’d shot Bill Knapman!
“You dirty bastards,” he shouted, moving out of the doorway into the porch. They looked at him. “You dirty murdering bastards!”
“Here, he’s hardly got no head left at all,” Chris Cawsey exclaimed, bending over Bill Knapman’s body. “You’m done for him proper, Tom.”
Phillip Riddaway couldn’t understand it.
“You didn’t want to kill nobody,” he said, his great face in a frown.
“You guys will pay for this!” George Magruder shouted.
“Shut up and give me that Niles,” Tom Hedden shouted back.
Bert Voizey wanted to run and hide.
“We’m better off out of here, Norman,” he said. “I didn’t reckon on murderin’ nobody.”
“That’s too bad for us is all in it now.”
“I never killed nobody!”
“Tell that to the coppers. It’s the law. It don’t matter who done it, us is all in it together. We all get the same blame, equal.”
“What’ll us do, Norman?” Phil Riddaway asked. He sounded plaintive.
Norman Scutt knew he was the leader. He had the brains. He knew the law. They’d all get done now for manslaughter. At the very least. There was nowhere they could hide, the Yank knew their faces.
“I’m buggered if I’m goin’ to gaol for that devil Niles!” He knew what their only hope was.
They all thought of prison. It was the most terrifying thing they could imagine. They were trapped.
“You’m killed one,” said Norman Scutt. “Another won’t make no difference. Nobody but him and his wife knows it was us. I don’t want to be in gaol till I’m an old man.”
Chris Cawsey giggled. Ever since he’d been a boy he’d wanted to see what people looked like when they were dead.
George Magruder couldn’t move. At the back of his mouth he was choking. His insides had gone all cold. His jaw hung slack. He could feel a heavy pulse beat hammering in his brain. His eyes saw the four men standing in the snow, but his brain stood still. It was as if a flash bulb had gone off in darkness, a brilliant moment of blinding light.
Had he seen Bill Knapman catapult to the ground? Was that Knapman, that dark shape in the snow? Who were these men? Why?
“I want that Niles, do you hear me?”
He saw the man with the gun come forward. Still he couldn’t move. His tongue seemed to swell and fill his mouth. His throat heaved. A thick spurt of vomit sprung from his stomach and poured out of his mouth. He gasped for breath.
“I WANT THAT HENRY NILES!”
He shuddered. The sight of death, real death, had shocked his whole body. There was nothing he could do. They moved towards him.
“George!”
Louise’s scream cut into the paralysis which had blanketed his brain.
He turned and grabbed for the door. He slammed the door shut and fumbled for the chain. His fingers couldn’t make the catch fit into its slide. Leaning his whole weight against the door he fought to get the brass fitting into its hole. Then it was home. The door was held by a Yale lock and a heavy latch and the chain.
As they started kicking it, he grabbed Louise’s elbow and pushed her into the sitting-room.
“Quick, the light,” he said. She didn’t move. He banged against her as he jumped for the light switch. Then they stood in the red glow of the Esse, listening to the din of the men at the door.
“They shot Knapman,” he said to her, whispering. “A shotgun. If it’s dark they can’t see us. Get upstairs.”
“Oh my God, what’s going to happen to us?”
“HENRY NILES!”
“They can’t get in the door,” he said. “They’ll try the windows. You get upstairs. I’ll –”
Something heavy crashed against the front door. He pulled her away from the sitting-room door.
“Snap out of it, Louise, those men are serious! They’ll do anything to get Niles.”
“They’ll kill us! Let them have Niles! They’ll kill us!”
“No! Get upstairs before I hit you, Louise.”
“You wouldn’t –”
“Get upstairs, you stupid bitch!”
His fingers sank into the firm flesh of her upper arm. He forced her across the darkened room and gave her a shove. She stumbled on the first stair. He slammed the door behind her.
Then he moved along the wall to the window. Keeping his body against the side wall he reached his arm across and pulled the curtains open. With the room in darkness he could see them outside but he didn’t think they’d be able to see him. The sittingroom window had four panes, possibly just big enough for a man to squeeze through – unless they got an axe and smashed away the wooden framework.
Where else was there? He had a flashing image of women loading rifles, of men crouching beneath small windows in log walls, of Indians...
“Look, George, this is madness!” She was back in the sittingroom, her panic seemingly gone. “If you think I’m going to stay in here and let these men smash the windows in – Karen’s scared to death. I want you to shove Niles out of the door. Let them do what they want to him!”
Why save Niles? It would be easy, open the door six inches and shove him out in the snow. Let them kill him if they were that crazy. They’d go away. Who cared whether Niles lived or died? What was his life compared to theirs?
“No,” he said. “They’ll kill him.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do. We’d just be buying peace for ourselves. Look, it won’t be that bad. I can keep them out of the house. They’ll go away. Bill Knapman was an accident. I don’t think they meant to kill him.”
“How can you keep them out? They’ve got a gun, haven’t they? I’m telling you to get Niles out of this house, George, right now. If you don’t I will.”
That would be even easier. Let Louise give them Niles. Nobody would blame him. He could say he was fighting them off in another room. Nobody would blame them.
“No! We said hanging Niles would be a crime, didn’t we?”
That was just talk.”
“Maybe it was. It’s real now. We just give up – the first time anything real happens?”
“Don’t be silly. This isn’t a bloody film!”
They hammered on the door again.
He felt angry. Who did they think they were, crashing into his home?
“We give them Niles now, they’ll kill him. We hold on for a little while and the police will be here. It’ll all be forgotten. You want to give up that easy?”
They heard something in the kitchen. He ran to the diningroom door. To reach the light switch he crouched, moving across the room in the shelter of the table. He switched off the light. He tried to remember where the light switch was in the kitchen. It had been an ordinary house before this, a house he hadn’t even liked very much. Now it was their refuge. It suddenly seemed very important to keep them out. Niles was only part of it. They’d lived in these rooms and now a pack of wild men wanted to break in. They were not going to, not if he could keep them out. It was as simple as that. If you let men smash their way into your home you were a nothing.
Where was the switch? The kitchen curtains were still drawn, stiffish bamboo slats on a brass rail. Standing against the wall he peered round the corner of the kitchen door. The switch was about four feet along the wall.
Above the Aga cooker, hanging on a hook in the wall recess, he saw the thin poker he used each morning to rake ashes from the bottom of the fire. His hands needed something like that.
There was a scraping noise behind the curtains. They were trying to force the catch again.
He had to take a chance that the man at the big window wasn’t the one with the shotgun. Treading softly on linoleum, he moved round the corner of the wall and reached his left hand for the switch. When the light went out the noise stopped. He moved quietly to the cooker and felt for the poker. Then he groped his way along the sink until he was beside the window. Was it better to have the curtains closed or open? Open, with the lights off. He could make out their shapes but to them the room would be in pitch darkness.
He eased the bamboo curtain along its rail, holding himself tightly against the wall. He saw somebody on the other side of the glass. The stainless steel poker felt very light. He tried to imagine what it would be like to hit a man with it.
He didn’t want to hit anybody. If he could make the windows secure they’d probably get tired and go away. Right now, when they were at their craziest, was the vital time. He wondered how he could secure the two window catches. If the catches could be tied together across the post neither half of the window could be opened without smashing the glass. And that noise would give him time to stop them.
Taking a chance that it wasn’t the man with the gun, he went to the window and rapped the glass with his knuckles. He thought he saw the figure move away. He went back through the dining-room.
“Louise?”
“Where are you?”
She sounded very angry. Whenever she spoke he felt foolish, as though she thought he was playing some kid’s game, He moved across the sitting-room.
“Louise?”
Then he saw her, a darker shape against the faint whiteness of the wall. That gave him an idea. If they switched on the upstairs lights, all of them, they’d throw a good light down on the ground all round the house. That way he could see them but they wouldn’t be able to see him.
“Listen,” he said, standing beside her, “you go upstairs and switch on all the lights, bathroom, lavatory – Christ! Niles! Is he still in there?”
“Karen!”
They bumped into an armchair as they crossed the sitting-room floor. He ran up the stairs. The lavatory door was still bolted.
“You still in there?”
“I’m cold,” Niles said, a whine in his voice.
“You’ll be colder if you come out.”
He went into the bathroom and switched on the light. Normally they didn’t bother to pull any of the upstairs curtains. What was the point when your nearest neighbour was a mile away?
“Have we any kind of rope?” he asked Louise.
“Rope! Are you going mad?”
He stared at her, their faces only a foot apart. He felt a wave of rage coming over him. This wasn’t how those wives behaved, those pioneering women. They stood by their men, through thick and thin.
“I’ll show you who’s mad,” he said, his mouth tight with anger. He grabbed her by the shoulder, consciously digging his fingers into the bone, hoping it would hurt. “Come here to the window, come on, these are your friends, stand at the window. See anybody? See the guy with the gun? Open the window and shout to him, go on, you think it’s just a game. See what he does.”
She tried to pull back. He held her close to the window.
“What’s wrong, Louise, not frightened, are you? They wouldn’t shoot at you, would they?”
“Of course they wouldn’t...” but still she pulled to free herself and move away from the window.
“If we can keep them out they’ll go away,” he said. “They’ve worked themselves up, that’s what it is. Drink and hysteria. You saw what happened to Knapman, for Chrissake. He got killed trying to talk to them.”
“It must have been an accident. You said it was an accident.”
“Yeah, well we don’t want any more accidents. Is there any rope, I want to tie up the window catches.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think!”
“There was a washing line, it was somewhere,” she said.
“Where?”
“Oh I can’t remember now, it was just a washing line!”
“Think! It’ll make all the difference.”
“It might be in the kitchen, I had it before the snow, I can’t remember where I put it –”
This time the noise came from the other end of the house.
“The study,” he said.
Glass broke. At the same time there was more kicking at the front door. He went down the stairs two at a time, the thin poker in his right hand. The study door had an old-fashioned latch. As he flicked it up with his thumb he wondered how long it would hold out against a man’s weight. Not long. In the darkness of the room the curtain still blew in long, billowing folds, like a woman’s diaphanous scarf.
A man’s head was inside the broken window, an arm trying to twist round so that a hand could reach the catch. The breaking glass they’d heard was the man clearing the jagged pieces from the framework.
“Get out of my house,” he snarled at the man’s head. The arm stopped moving. George knew he had all the advantages. The man was helpless, his shoulder and neck pressed tightly through a collar of broken glass.
It would be easy to grab his collar, pull him farther into the trap, hit him on the head. Hit him so hard he would never – he felt disgusted.
“Go away,” he said. All his life he’d fought against violence, signed petitions, written letters, taken unpopular lines in discussions. Violence was an obscenity.
He was glad to find that even now the thought of crossing the threshold from anger to violence made him shudder. He was a civilised man.
The young man caught in the window struggled to free himself, pulling backwards, his face twisted in apprehension. It was a boy’s face, narrow, soft-skinned. There was a smell of bad liquor.
“You tell your friends, go away now,” George said, looking down. “Nobody’s getting inside this house. That clear?”
Ridiculously, he felt sorry for the boy-man who twisted to escape. He knew how simple people could work themselves into situations they couldn’t control or understand. He knew how they must have felt, when the girl went missing and then Niles turned up in the village.
If it had been Karen...
There was nothing he could do to this twisting head. He was a civilised man, refined to a point where physical violence was impossible, even in self-defence. If defending himself meant breaking this kid’s skull then he couldn’t defend himself. He was a modern man, he needed locks and doors and bolted windows and policemen. Objects defended him. He had lost the ability to stand alone and fight.
Almost wearily, he pushed the boy-man’s arm.
“Leave us alone, for Christ’s sake,” he said, and felt a surge of relief when the boy pulled his head back.
“Here’s the washing line, George,” said Louise, standing in the gloom of the hall. “It’s some kind of flex, you could cut it with this.”
She held out the carving knife, handle first. The blade gleamed in the weak light. Some men could use a thing like that.
“There isn’t much point,” he said. “It’s hopeless. If they really want to get in we can’t stop them. You might as well open the front door and ask them to step inside and help themselves to Niles.”
“But you said –”
“I said! Don’t tell me you actually listened to anything I said!”
“But they shot Bill Knapman!”
“It was his own fault. It’s only Niles they want. If we try to fight them we’ll only get hurt, you and Karen.”
Louise had been almost at a point where she felt guilty, ashamed at her own bitchiness in the face of George’s determination. Now he seemed to have given up.
“Do you think they’ll – they’ll harm Niles?”
“What else? You think they want him to play snowballs? They’re crazy! We don’t have a chance. If they get Niles they’ll leave us alone. At least none of us will get hurt.”
They both realised that there was no noise outside. They listened.
“Maybe they’ve gone away,” she said.
“Maybe. I know, we’ll phone the Inn. Why didn’t I think of it before. Surely there’s somebody in this goddam place who hasn’t gone mad.”
But when he picked up the phone it was dead...
Norman Scutt, Chris Cawsey, Phillip Riddaway, Bert Voizey and Tom Hedden stood together in the rickety old shed across the lane.
“We’ve got to get in,” Norman Scutt said, biting hard on his thumb.
He knew the others – apart from Tom Hedden – were beginning to collapse. They’d never been in prison, they couldn’t imagine it would happen to them. He knew, though. Ten years for manslaughter.
“He’s a funny bugger that Yank,” said Cawsey, sniggering as he told them what had happened when he’d been caught halfway in the window. Norman Scutt interrupted him.
“So he knows you all right, Chris then,” he said. “You’re good for ten year.”
“Oh aye, he knows me all right.”
“And Bert and Phil and me were in the house and he knows us. And Tom. So what d’you want to do then, you lot, go home and wait for the coppers to come for us in the morning?”
“What’re us standin’ here for then?” Tom Hedden demanded. “I’ll get in that house, I’ll get that Niles and –”
“How’re you getting in then, Tom? Think you’re going to kick a hole in the door? Look, you buggers, us’ve got to use our brains. Plans. That’s what counts. Us use our brains and us’ll be in the clear.”
“I don’t think they’ll send we to prison for Tom shooting Bill Knapman,” said Bert Voizey.
“That’s your bloody trouble, Voizey, you’m spend all your time with rats. I’ve been inside, haven’t I? You know what it’s like – in gaol? For ten year or more?” Then Norman had an inspiration. Already he saw himself as the brains behind a gang of desperate men. “Don’t you lot remember what happened all them years ago in Soldier’s Field? They killed that fellow then, didn’t they? And nobody ever got caught. You know why? They’m knew what they were doing. They all stuck together and nobody ever breathed a whisper.”
“They’m all took a turn with the knife,” said Chris Cawsey.
“But if one of us gets any smart idea he can get off...”
“I won’t say nothin’,” said Bert Voizey, his voice a mixture of fear and indignation.
“All right then. Us stick together. Folk in Dando won’t be tellin’ the cops nothin’. They ain’t goin’ to take their side against us, are they?”
He knew he had them now. Phil was just a big lump with no brains. Maybe he thought he could have a go at the Yank’s wife. Cawsey was just dying to get his knife into somebody. Bert Voizey was too scared to run away. Tom Hedden was like a mad bull, he was crazy to get at Niles.
And himself? He’d had as much rum as the rest but he knew he was the brains. He knew what was facing them. He knew what ten year inside meant. With his brains they’d never be caught. It would become history – like the soldier. Nobody had ever said a word to the police about the soldier. All the wives must have known. Lots of people must have known. Nobody ever told. Dando folk stuck together. They’d be heroes, for doing away with Henry Niles.
There were other thoughts going round his head. He’d been in Bristol when they hung that chap, the one that had killed the farmer. They’d hung him, the last hanging in the whole country. That night they’d battered their tin mugs on the bars and shouted and sung all night.
Sometimes they’d seen the hanging chap in the yard, exercising on his own. He’d come to chapel – they were practising carols for the Christmas service – but he’d been put behind special screens, separating him from the ordinary villains. All the time everybody had said they hated the idea of hanging a man. What was it like to kill somebody? Better than hitting a girl over the head? Better than getting into a posh house and turning it into a shitty mess? Better than stealing gear and going into pubs with the money and knowing you were smarter than everybody else? Better than laughing at mugs who had to work their guts out? Better than two of you getting hold of a bit of class stuff and getting her into a wood and ramming her till she would do anything for you?
He’d done all these things and now he remembered how he’d felt at the time.
“Right then, we’m goin’ to get in that house. Phil, you have a go at the back door, Chris you go for that window you were in before. Tom’s got the gun, you try the front door, I’ll try and slip in the window at the other end. And Bert – you got any matches on you?”
“Yeh.”
“Well then, see if you can’t get some of them curtains burning, maybe us’ll smoke ’em out. That Yankee bugger won’t know what hit him.”
They had another pass round of the rum bottle. As they began to cross the lane Chris Cawsey’s cap blew off. He slipped and fell as he tried to catch it. He laughed loudly as he scrabbled on all fours for the cap, which the wind kept blowing away from his stretching hands...
Sister Brady left the casualty ward without looking at the woman in the yellow coat. She didn’t want to know what Frank Pawson’s wife looked like. She had just been told by the casualty ward sister that Pawson had multiple skull fractures and, almost certainly, a broken spine. Shocked as she was, she was still able to think clearly. Frank was lucky he had a wife to look after him. A thing like that could often bring people together again.
Whatever happened, she told herself she was very lucky. It was the wife’s duty to look after her man. Life was cruel but these things often turned out for the best. When she got a man he was going to be a proper man, not a permanent invalid.
Bobby Hedden opened the door in his stockinged feet, a blackhaired boy of fifteen with a scowl on his face. With his father away and his mother sleeping and his brothers in bed and Janice missing he’d had his first chance of a proper look at his father’s books. He’d accidentally discovered them hidden under some sacking on the water tank in the attic, but he’d never been alone in the house since.
He’d been up in the attic with a torch when he’d heard the noise at the door.
Standing on the doorstep was Doctor Allsopp, his coat caked with snow, blood dried hard on his forehead and cheeks. His eyes were almost closed.
“You’m had an accident, Doctor?”
“Tom’s got a gun,” the doctor mumbled. “Must get to the...” He swayed. Bobby didn’t want to touch him. The doctor was important, not like them.
“I’m...”
The doctor began to fall, his hands clawing for a grip on the doorpost. Bobby tried to catch him but the man’s weight was too much. They both fell into the kitchen, the doctor a dead weight on his legs. Bobby Hedden dragged himself free. The doctor was moaning. Bobby gripped him by the shoulders and dragged him across the kitchen floor to the battered sofa by the fire.
He had often helped his mother to pull his father on to the sofa when he’d come home drunk from the pub. First he swung the feet up, then he caught hold under the armpits and lifted his dead weight, bracing his knee under the doctor’s back, wrestling him on to the sofa.
He couldn’t smell drink on the doctor’s breath. It must have been a crash. Where was Chris Cawsey? They couldn’t have been driving very fast in that snow. Maybe the doctor had been fighting Niles the murderer? What did he mean, Tom had a gun? Of course he had, he’d gone into the backroom for it when they’d left to go to Trencher’s. The doctor opened his eyes.
“Tom’s got a gun –” he seemed to notice Bobby for the first time. “You run to the Inn, tell them your father’s got a gun... he’s – he’s gone to Trencher’s, you get to the...” Then he went out again.
Bobby didn’t understand. Maybe he ought to fetch the doctor – but Dr. Allsopp was the doctor. What did he mean, go to the Inn? Bugger that for a lark. Somebody would be coming shortly. That reminded him he was on his own, the only chance he had of a good look at his father’s books. He’d never seen pictures of women like that, hardly any clothes at all. What was his father doing with books like that on top of the water-tank? He wanted to see them again. The doctor would be all right here in front of the fire.
Bobby Hedden went back up to the attic. If anybody came he would hear them and have time to put away the books.
Snow turned to water on the doctor’s hair and face and coat and trousers and rubber boots. Soon little wisps of steam hovered above the damp folds of his clothing. He didn’t move.