CHAPTER 13

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Paid on All Sides

JANUARY 1

CLARE MASSINGER WAS at the wheel of the Citroën, following the two cars of armed police. On the back seat, Elena bit her nails and Sergeant Deacon offered up silent prayers as Clare executed hair-raising but controlled skids round the corners of the snowy road. Beside her, Nigel studied a large-scale map. Eggarswell was now four miles away. They were to approach it from the south—the opposite point from which Petrov had driven towards the village. To their left, as they rushed along the switch-backing coast road, lay the sea. The police cars ahead stopped for a moment while Sparkes had a word with the driver of a yellow snow-plough. Then they turned off this road, due north, into the minor one which led to the village. When the three cars had passed, the plough began making its snow-block.

Nigel studied the map. Smugglers’ Cottage, ringed in red ink, was half-way up the contour lines above Eggarswell to the east. A winding dotted line represented the track which connected the cottage and adjacent farm with the village: Nigel was trying to calculate from the contours how far they could drive up this track and still be in dead ground, invisible to any watcher from the cottage. Three or four hundred yards, he estimated. Not enough.

‘How did the Super get on to this place?’ he asked, turning round to the sergeant.

‘Easy, sir. I was born in Eggarswell. Recognised the cottage at once from the description you telephoned. Those pointed windows on the first floor the little girl mentioned. And there’s the conical hill with a tree clump on it—see? We’ll skirt round that in a minute. My God!’ he ejaculated as the car sidled and slewed under them, hitting a deeper patch of snow.

Clare stamped on the accelerator, and the car clawed its way through and straightened up.

‘Who owns it?’

‘An Oxford gentleman; doesn’t use it very often now, I believe. A week or two in the summer perhaps. Lends it to friends, or rents it. Lonely sort of place. Not my idea of a holiday. Used by smugglers once, they say: two hundred years ago maybe. They brought the stuff in from the sea on carts and stored it in a cellar there till the coast was clear to distribute it.’

‘The cottage was well-placed strategically for that, I suppose.’

‘That’s right, sir. Good field of fire from it, if needs be, though I never did hear there was any battles went on.’

‘Could one approach it from the hill at the back?’

‘On foot, yes. Depends how deep the snow is lying. The Super’s going to send a couple of chaps round that way if he can, just in case they try to escape up the hillside. Bloody fools if they do—begging your pardon, madam.’

‘Oh, hurry! please hurry!’ muttered Elena, twisting her long fingers together. They had passed the conical hill and were driving through broken, choppy country, with patches of snow-covered scrub, copses, bramble-bushes to their left and rough pasture-land mounting gradually on the other side.

‘That’s Tom Blodgett’s stack. Only a mile now. Jesus!’

Rounding a corner, Clare saw the back of a police car stationary thirty yards ahead. If she braked hard she would infallibly skid or collide. In the narrow lane there was no chance of passing. She did a racing change down and let the accelerator up, braking gently: the Citroën slowed as if it had run into a wall of feathers. Clare changed down again, came to a stop six feet behind the police car, from which men were now jumping.

Nigel got out and ran forward. The road in front of the Super’s car was blocked by a heavy van, with whose driver Sparkes was having a heated altercation.

‘Who the hell d’you think you are? Stirling Moss?’ yelled the driver from his cab.

‘None of your lip. Get out of our way. We’re on an urgent call.’

‘You expect me to back this bloody thing for a mile? Use your loaf.’

‘That’s just what you are going to do, my lad. After we’ve searched it. Open up the rear door, and look sharp about it.’

The driver got down, grumbling, and unlocked the back of the van. Sparkes climbed in.

‘What’cher looking for? Stolen goods?’

‘Yes,’ shouted Sparkes from inside.

‘That’s defamation of character, that is,’ remarked the driver with misguided relish. ‘You wait till my boss hears about it.’

‘All right,’ said Sparkes, jumping out. ‘Now back this bloody object till we can get past.’

‘Pig’s arse,’ muttered the man, climbing into the driver’s seat.

It was one of those tall vans, with no view to the rear unless the driver held the door open and craned his head out. This one took his time about it. First, his rear wheels revolving rapidly got no grip and merely beat the snow into a harder, more slippery surface. It took eight policemen, shoving like demons, to get the heavy van off this ice-patch. The driver reversed, slowly as a maimed snail, for some thirty yards. Here, there was another sharp bend in the road. And at this bend, whether from bloody-mindedness or the awkward configuration of the road, keeping too far from the ditch on his left and unable to see the one on his right, the driver put a rear wheel into the latter. There was a sullen crack. The van canted over, its ancient back axle broken. The road to Eggarswell was irremediably blocked now. …

In the garage at Smugglers’ Cottage, Petrov fumed while Paul Cunningham tried to start his car. He had placed the luggage in the boot five minutes ago. But the self-starter ground away, and there was no spark of life from the engine—not even an apologetic cough.

‘When did you run this goddammed heap last?’ Petrov angrily inquired.

‘Oh, a day or two ago. It was all right then.’

‘Didn’t you have orders to warm up the engine every day?’

His words were lost in another clanking outburst from the starter. He got into the driver’s seat, thrusting Paul aside. ‘Look, you’ve over-choked it, you stupid bastard.’

‘All right, start the bloody thing yourself,’ Paul muttered sulkily.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that. Open up the bonnet: you’ll have to clean the plugs.’

‘I don’t know how to do that,’ Paul faltered.

‘You don’t seem to know anything but how to screw your boy-friends.’

‘Look here! I——’

‘Shut up, and show me where your tool-kit is. I suppose you’ve got a box-spanner, or did you lose that as well as your head?’

Paul handed him the kit, and opened the bonnet. Petrov started detaching the leads, his head bowed over the engine. Paul stealthily took a large spanner from the kit lying on the floor . He had never hated a man so much as this cruel giant. He marked the spot on the back of the thick neck where he would strike the first blow, and raised the spanner.

The next instant he was sent flying at the garage wall. One powerful hand gripped his lapels, and the other struck him savagely three times, fracturing a cheek-bone. Paul slumped against the wall, writhing and whimpering.

Petrov did not even bother to look up again. Neatly, he began to remove the plugs and clean them. His movements were as unhurried as if he had the whole morning for it: he whistled through his teeth, every now and then taking a cautious look from inside the garage door. No one was approaching along the track. A man drove a tractor from the farm down towards the village. Icicles hung from the garage eaves like the teeth of a huge broken comb.

In five minutes the plugs were replaced. Petrov pressed the starter. The engine turned, broke into life. He let it warm up for a couple of minutes. The gauge showed that the petrol tank was three-quarters full. Petrov switched off and got out. He inspected the chains on the rear wheels: they were secure. He inspected Paul Cunningham, sitting against the wall nursing his cheek, meditated whether to finish him on the spot, and finally, opening the rear door, slung him into the car instead.

‘You stay there. We’ll be out soon.’

The young man, utterly cowed, gave a sickly smile and nodded. Petrov took the ignition key and walked back into the cottage… .

‘Road’s blocked good and tight,’ said Nigel, returning to the Citroën.

‘What the hell do we do now?’ Clare asked.

‘Sparkes’s men’ll have to walk the rest of the way. We’d better do the same. Wait a minute, though.’ He turned to the sergeant. ‘You know this bit of earth well. Can we do it cross-country?’

‘Walk? Well yes, sir, but——’

‘No, drive. Through that gate. Could we cross a field and get back on to the road ahead of the block?’

‘She’d never make it.’

‘This car,’ said Clare, ‘will go over anything except a river or a house.’

The sergeant’s eye lit up. ‘It’d be a matter of several fields, I reckon, and old Tom’s farmyard.’

‘O.K., tumble in. Hey, Sparkes!’ he shouted. The Superintendent came pounding back along the road. ‘We’re going to try through this gate. Open it up, will you?’

‘You must be crazy.’

‘The blizzards have blown a lot of the snow off the slopes into the lanes. Fields mayn’t be too deep with it.’

Sparkes flung the field gate open. Clare put into its top notch the lever beneath the dashboard which raised the body of the car from the ground, paused a minute while the Citroën elevated till its passengers felt as if they were sitting in an elephant’s howdah, then bumped over the ditch, shallower here, into the field.

‘Wait a minute, I’m coming with you.’ Sparkes bellowed at his men up the road. One crew was to double along to the village on foot; the other he ordered to reverse their car and follow the Citroën.

Nigel’s sergeant, sitting by Clare now, had a good memory or an X-ray eye. ‘Follow the track, missus,’ he said.

‘What track?’

‘Goes diagonally across the field. Gate at far corner.’

In bottom gear they bumped and bucked over the pasture. Yes, there was a gate. Sparkes leapt out from the back and opened it.

‘Now you can see Tom’s farm. Beyond the next hedge. Make for the hedge just below that chimney. Another gate there.’

Looking back before he jumped in again, Sparkes saw the police car stuck in the middle of the field. It had followed in their track, but with its low clearance had been arrested by a snow-deep little hollow through which the Citroën had clawed its way.

‘If you can’t get it out, follow on foot,’ he shouted to the crew.

Clare reached the gap in the hedge. Another gate was opened, and she drove through it, the car shaking like an ague-patient as it negotiated the bit of ground where cart ruts and the pock-marks of hooves had hardened to iron under the snow.

‘Round the corner of the barn there, miss. Keep to the edge of the yard, it’s Tom’s midden. That’ll bring you on to the drive, and we’re back on the road in fifty yards.’

As they turned past the barn, disturbing a drift of hens and geese, and sending five piglets flying before them, an aged red- faced man bellowed at them, inarticulate with shock and rage. He looked as if he might charge the car with his pitch-fork and toss it into the ripe-smelling midden.

His gaping mouth at last managed to frame words—‘What the bloody hell you’m doing here? Get off my land!’

The sergeant stuck his head out of the window. ‘Morning, Tom. Sorry you’ve been disturbed. Had to take a short cut. Police business.’

‘Well, I’ll be buggered! Young Charlie Deacon, isn’t it? Haven’t seen you for a tidy long time.’ The farmer advanced towards the car, lowering his pitch-fork. ‘Who’s the young lady?’

‘My chauffeur. Got Superintendent Sparkes in the back. Load of V.I.P.’s.’

The farmer stood in front of the bonnet, struggling to get some mental grip upon this extraordinary visitation.

‘We’re in a hurry, Tom. Can’t stop. Drive on, miss.’

Clare put the car in gear and crawled towards the immobile farmer, who at the last moment stepped out of the way into the midden. As they passed him, the sergeant, who was showing signs of acute euphoria, stuck his head out of the window and remarked, ‘See you later, Tom. We’re off to blow up Smugglers’ Cottage.’

‘Don’t make sense,’ said the farmer to his wife a few minutes later. ‘Young Charlie didn’t have no cannons in the car.’ But by this time, the Citroën was entering Eggarswell.

‘Where’s that bloody patrol car?’ asked Sparkes.

‘Far end of the village, sir. You told Enticott to wait there.’

Outside the village shop a huge tractor stood, drumming quietly away to itself: as they approached, the driver emerged from the shop—a man wearing Wellingtons, an old army great-coat, and a red knitted hat with a bobble.

‘Stop!’ Nigel ordered.

Clare executed a long, dead-straight glissade, skating the Citroën to a halt a few feet from the tractor while the sergeant averted his eyes and went pale.

‘Are you Jim?’ asked Nigel, leaping out.

‘That’s right.’

‘We want your tractor.’

‘Mebbe you do. But you’re not getting her,’ said Jim eyeing this tall, thin maniac cautiously.

The sergeant got out and explanations were soon made, while Sparkes hurried down the village street to find his patrol car. Yes, Jim was the chap Lucy had described: he worked at Mr Thwaite’s farm. No, he had not seen the child at Smugglers’ Cottage for the last day or two. At this information, Nigel’s heart sank. He told Jim rapidly how Lucy had been substituted for the boy ‘Evan’. Jim told him that this supposed boy had run into his employer’s farm the other night and had been taken back by the ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’, who said he was delirious.

‘It was you who picked up a paper dart thrown from the window.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And posted it?’

‘No, mister. Shoved it in my pocket and thought no more of it. My own kids started playing with it, I remember. They must have read the message and put it in the post, without telling me or their ma.’

They’ll get a reward for that.’

By this time every woman and child in the village was standing at the cottage doors, obscurely aware that something momentous was afoot: to have had a police patrol car in the village for two hours, filled with grim-looking and uninformative men, was sensation enough. Now they saw the heavily-built man in dark overcoat and felt hat pounding back down the street.

Rumour grew wings and flew round the village uttering an ever weirder selection of gossip—Jim had been arrested for murdering his employer; the squire had been caught red-handed taking part in an orgy with four beautiful Russian spies.

‘Sparkes, Jim here will take us up to the farm on his tractor,’ said Nigel.

The Superintendent, breathing heavily, stared at him. Then he got the point. ‘Good for you. The only vehicle they won’t suspect if they’re on the lookout.’

Jim climbed into the driving-seat. Nigel got on at the back. Sparkes rattled off a series of instructions to his sergeant, telling him what to do when the reinforcements arrived, then climbed up, gave a hand to Elena Wragby and hauled her after him on to the narrow platform at the rear of the tractor, an area already congested enough with iron stanchions, the apparatus of the winch, two oil lamps, several containers of milk, and other miscellaneous fixtures and cargo.

‘Standing room only,’ remarked the Superintendent.

Nigel looked down at Clare. ‘You stay here. Shan’t be long,’ he shouted above the thumping of the engine.

Her LIps formed the words, ‘Good luck. Be careful. Darling.’ She was wearing the secretive, charmingly sly look Nigel knew so well: he doubted if she would stay put here, but there was no time to argue about it.

The great tractor rolled down the street, followed—it seemed—by the whole of Eggarswell (Pop. 532).

‘The bodyguard’s awkward,’ said Nigel.

Sparkes made gestures at them, like swatting a cloud of flies, and received a ragged cheer in response.

‘Try making a speech instead.’

‘Bah!’

The procession was halted a hundred yards on by the crew of the patrol car who, letting the tractor past, lined across the road and shooed the population of Eggarswell back towards their houses. Jim at once turned sharp right on to the track that led to the farm.

In the car and in the village it had been sheltered. Now, high up on the huge machine, unprotected, they felt the north-east wind tearing and chewing at their faces like a wild beast. The tractor reeled slowly uphill, with its enormous tyres scrabbling on patches of ice, lurching sideways like a small boat struck by a wave, when a wheel went in and out of one of the deep, bone-hard ruts.

Nigel, his foot painfully jammed between two iron fixtures, put his arm round Elena to steady her. He could feel her body shivering: her face was white and set. She gripped his hand, her rings digging into it. ‘If only she’s alive,’ Elena kept muttering, like a prayer.

Half-way up the track, Nigel said, ‘This is where we become invisible. Let’s hope.’

The roof of a cottage began to appear above the bleak skyline ahead. The passengers bent low as they could behind the stalwart frame of their driver. If anyone was on the lookout, he would see the familiar sight of Jim returning to the farm on his tractor.

Jim turned right into the farmyard, stopping behind an outbuilding that cut them off from view of Smugglers’ Cottage. They got down and hurried into the farmhouse, where they were met by the patrol-car man who had been ordered to keep the cottage under observation.

‘Anything moving?’ asked Sparkes.

‘No, sir. But you’re only just in time. A big chap—I reckon he’s the one whose description you circulated—came out with another man, fifteen or twenty minutes ago. They went into the garage. Trouble starting their car, maybe. The big chap’s only just gone back into the house. The other one must be in the car or the garage still.’

‘Good. That’s two of them. Did you see any others?’

‘No, sir.’

‘No sign of the child?’

‘Afraid not, sir.’

‘Right. Back to your post.’

The constable ran upstairs.

Sparkes turned to Nigel. ‘Looks as if they don’t suspect anything yet. We can’t do anything till my chaps get here. That’ll be ten minutes, maybe. We don’t know how many of them there are in the cottage. All we know is they’re going to make a break for it any minute. If the child’s alive——’

‘The child is alive. We’ve got to act on that assumption.’

‘Right. They’ll try to take her out with them. They can’t get very far, but I daren’t risk her being involved in a gun battle. On the other hand, if they saw us moving in on them now, I’d be equally afraid for her life.’ He turned to Elena. ‘Mrs Wragby, it’s all yours now. Try to keep them talking as long as you can. And try to keep them away from the windows. We’ll be with you as quickly——’

‘Don’t worry. I understand you.’

Sparkes hesitated a moment, then shook his prisoner’s hand, wished her good luck and let her free.

From a bedroom window they watched her walk unfaltering up the track, knock at the cottage door …

‘Go and answer it,’ Petrov ordered Annie. ‘I must keep out of sight.’ He had not seen the figure of the woman pass the sitting- room window: Annie had, and assumed it to be some visitor from the village come to inquire about ‘Evan’s’ health. So, when she opened the door and the visitor said, ‘Good morning, I’ve come to ask about——’ Annie interrupted fulsomely, ‘Oh, that’s very kind of you. Evan’s better. His father’s come to take him back to London. We’re just off. I’m afraid I must ask——’

Annie’s voice trailed off, for the visitor’s pale face froze into an expression so formidable, so fierce that it might have been the Medusa confronting her.

‘Ivan’s father? Ivan’s father has been dead for years. I am Ivan’s mother.’

Annie stared at her in bewilderment. Petrov had never told her the exact provenance of the boy. But she recognised now the visitor’s voice: it was the voice of the woman who had telephoned to her from the Guest House—Mrs Wragby.

She tried to shut the door, but Elena thrust her aside and stepped into the hall. ‘It’s Lucy I’ve come for. Where is she?’

Annie’s face turned a sicklier yellow. Before she could speak, Elena flung open a door and made an entrance grander and more dramatic than ever she had made on the stage.

‘So it’s you,’ she said to Petrov.

‘How the hell did you get here, Mrs Wragby?’

Elena crossed to the window-seat—thank God there’s only one window, she thought—and sat down. ‘I drove to the village, inquired for this house, then walked up.’

‘And how did you know about this house?’ Petrov’s voice was a silky rumble.

Elena explained about the message Lucy had managed to smuggle out. ‘The letter reached me this morning. It was addressed to my husband. I opened it.’

‘You opened it?’

‘My husband could hardly do so, being in hospital.’

‘Hospital?’

‘You did not quite succeed in killing him,’ said Elena in a cold, matter-of-fact voice. She glanced at Petrov contemptuously. ‘You need not look so alarmed. He is unconscious still. He has told the police nothing. I don’t understand why you thought it’d be necessary to kill him, once you’d got the information from him.’

Petrov’s little, wild-boar eyes probed at her. ‘That is none of your affair,’ he said at last. ‘You informed the police about this letter from Lucy, no doubt?’

‘Informed them? I?’ Elena’s voice was weary and exasperated: she did not make the mistake of sounding indignant. ‘What on earth do you take me for? I’m in this too deep to go running to the police.’

‘Then how did you find your way here alone?’

‘The envelope had a Longport postmark. I remembered seeing a cottage, like the one Lucy described, while my husband and I were motoring around here last year.’

‘Well, go on.’

‘I was allowed to go into Belcaster this morning. I said I wanted to visit my husband in hospital. I was not allowed to see him—he’s too ill. Then I drove over here.’

‘With the police following you. That was a stupid thing to do. Stupid, or worse.’

‘I made quite sure there were no police cars behind me. I’m quite used to throwing off shadowers—from the old days.’

‘When you tried to betray the People’s government.’

Elena shrugged. ‘I’ve paid enough for that, haven’t I?’

‘You may yet have to pay more. And I’m still asking, what have you come here for? Make it snappy. We’ve got to get off.’

Elena reached for the handbag on the window-seat beside her. Petrov pounced, with fantastic alacrity for so cumbrous a man, tore it from her hands, opened it, shook out the contents on the floor.

‘No revolver. What a nervous man you are, my poor Petrov,’ said Elena pityingly. ‘Perhaps you should take off your overcoat. You’re in a muck-sweat, as the English say.’

‘I asked you a question.’

‘What have I come here for? To ask you two questions. First, where is Lucy? Is she alive?’ Elena raised her magnificent, carrying voice on these last six words. Upstairs, Lucy faintly heard them, recognised her step-mother’s voice. The past week had taught her caution. She repressed the impulse to call out, and reached for her skipping rope.

‘Lucy?’ babbled Annie, who had been listening to all this with hypnotised attention. ‘Oh, she’s not here any longer. She was moved elsewhere last night, she tried to run away, and we thought——’

‘Shut up!’said Petrov.

The faint thump of feet skipping could be heard from somewhere overhead.

‘That answers my first question,’ said Elena. Her impassive face gave not the slightest inkling of the joy that flooded her heart. Lucy is here, and alive. But somehow I must keep her alive. Time, time, play for time. She dared not even glance out of the window to see if the police were closing in. ‘My second question is, why did you kill Ivan?’

‘I did not kill Ivan.’

Elena gave him a look that would have made anyone but a Petrov quail. ‘Do not add futile lying to your other despicable qualities.’

‘Annie, we must be off in five minutes. You were going to get us a drink. Bring one for Mrs Wragby too.’ When the woman had gone out, he turned to Elena. ‘Ivan’s death was a mistake. I regret it very much.’

‘You regret it!’ she said in a searing tone.

‘Yes. A stupid young man, who was helping Annie over this affair, took him to the station. There was a blizzard, it seems: the car stuck in a drift, quite near Longport, and this young fool lost his head and told Ivan to walk the rest of the way.’

Elena’s face, white and hard as marble, gave no hint of her feelings.

‘We made a bargain,’ she said quietly. ‘In return for my help, you were going to give me Ivan and get us back safely to our country. I see I was a fool to trust a man like you.’ She added two words in Hungarian that brought sparks of fury into Petrov’s eyes.

‘I had every intention of keeping the bargain,’ he angrily protested.

‘But the bargain was not kept. Why should I believe this story of yours? You are incapable of the truth. You have told so many lies in your life that you have forgotten what truth is. I pity you.’

‘And what about the lies you told your husband? You to talk about lying—a woman who could betray her husband and his little girl!’

‘I am not proud of it.’ Elena’s voice became broken and appealing. ‘I have nothing left to live for. That is why I offer you a bargain. Let Lucy go, and you can do whatever you like with me. Kill me, make me your mistress, anything.’

‘Well, well, well. Why should I want a stringy, dried-up old bitch like you for a mistress?’

‘Perhaps not. But you love killing, don’t you? Don’t you, Petrov? Maybe you’ve never killed a woman before. You’d find it most enjoyable. And you’d be in no danger from me any more.’

This statement, made in Elena’s most thrilling, intense voice, disconcerted Petrov: it turned their encounter into a kind of fantasy he could not cope with. Certainly this woman must be disposed of; but that she should encourage him to do it made him feel, for a moment, profoundly uneasy. His immediate reaction was to think she must have some card in her hand ready to trump him. He moved to the window, pushing her aside: no, the farm away to his right seemed quiet as ever.

Annie came in with a tray of drinks. Brandy, soda, a glass of lemonade. A silent look passed between them. Annie nodded slightly, reassuring Petrov that the lemonade and one of the brandies were doped. ‘Where’s Paul?’ she asked.

‘Waiting outside.’

Petrov handed Elena the brandy glass Annie indicated. His mind was working fast again, its animal cunning restored. Let her drink the doped brandy. They’d have to make room for her in the car. She’d asked him to kill her. Very well, she too should die the death he had planned for Paul and Lucy.

‘Cheers,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Come on, Mrs Wragby, drink up: you must be cold, and we’re in a hurry.’

‘I do not drink with pigs. I offered you a bargain. Do you accept it?’

Petrov glared at her. ‘Fetch the child,’ he commanded Annie. …

The armed police from the stranded cars had arrived in Eggarswell five minutes before. Charlie Deacon, whom Sparkes had told to wait for them, sent two on a detour to approach Smugglers’ Cottage from the back and prevent any escape that way. The rest he had led up the hillside to the right of the track, keeping the farmhouse between them and the cottage—six armed men panting after their mile run, and himself. From boyhood escapades, he remembered every fold in the ground, every gap in a hedge. Silently they filed through the farm’s paddock gate and in at a side door.

‘The Super’s upstairs,’ said Mr Thwaite. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘All present and correct, sir,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ve got two of them working their way round to the back. They should be in position in three or four minutes.’

‘Good lad. I want the two best shots up here with the rifles. Halford and Bright. If the big chap tries to get away, they’re to nail him.’

Charlie ran down and fetched the two men upstairs.

‘Hallo,’ said Sparkes, still peering through the window. ‘There’s a chap coming out of the garage. That’s the other one, eh? Wambling about a bit.’

The figure of Paul Cunningham disappeared through the front door.

‘Right,’ said Sparkes. ‘The rest will come with me.’ He ran downstairs, Nigel and Charlie following. ‘We’re going to move in,’ he told the four men. ‘Hope Charlie’s lads are in position. Any of you want a medal?’

The policemen grinned uncertainly.

‘You may get one today. There’s a man in the cottage who’s a killer. There may be others. We’ve got to jump them before he harms the little girl. The cottage has no windows at this end. So unless someone’s getting a crick in his neck watching sideways out of a front window, they won’t see us till we’re close. We’re going to move out of the farmyard, cross the track, walk up along the grass on its left-hand side. That way, we’ll soon have the garage between us and the cottage. When we get there, if we get there, we can have a cosy chat about the next move. And now put these on.’

Sparkes handed out four milkmen’s overalls he had borrowed from Mr Thwaite. ‘Won’t catch the eye so much in those against the snow. Keep your weapons hidden underneath them.’ He stood back to admire the effect. ‘Lumme, what a shower you look! They’ll take you for a deputation of cricket umpires.’

The men laughed. Charlie protested:

‘What about me, sir?’

‘You can set up a first-aid post here, Sergeant.’

The men laughed again.

‘Haven’t you got a white coat yourself, sir?’

‘Don’t fuss, Charlie boy. I’m going to lead this shower from behind. Off we go.’

Annie Stott pushed Lucy into the room. For a few moments Elena failed to recognise her, and Lucy didn’t see Elena, sitting with her back to the window through which the snow-glare dazzled the child.

‘Hallo, darling,’ said Elena gently. ‘What have they done to you?’

Lucy’s eyes widened. Then she ran into Elena’s arms.

‘I knew you’d find me! Have you come to ransom me? Where’s Papa?’

‘He’s in hospital. Don’t worry, he had an accident, but he’ll soon be well again. He’s sorry he couldn’t come with me.’

‘When he’s well, we can all go tobogganing, can’t we?’

‘Yes, darling,’ said Elena, wincing.

‘Will my hair grow again?’

‘Of course it will. And go back to its natural colour.’

Lucy beamed at her. ‘You’re a super mother, Elena.’

Elena hid her face a moment in the child’s shoulder. Oh God, why don’t they come? I can’t keep this up any longer.

Lucy turned in her arms. ‘Who’s that man?’

‘Don’t point, darling. He’s a friend of this lady here.’

‘Aunt Annie’s friend. She said he was coming. But I don’t understand——’

‘So this is Lucy,’ said Petrov, coming over and putting his hand on the back of her thin neck. ‘A pretty little girl. Well, Lucy, we’re all leaving now. Here’s a nice glass of lemonade. Drink it up quickly, and we’ll start.’

Lucy took the glass, remembering what Annie had told her. Annie sat tense, hardly daring to breathe. She felt confused and helpless: she could not think what Petrov had in mind—did he intend to take Mrs Wragby to the same death as he’d planned for Paul and Lucy, or was he going to accept her bargain? A sense of failure and foreboding overcame Annie: the mission she had so proudly accepted and so efficiently carried out was lost in a fog of unreality, which had been thickening during the last few days, blotting out any possible shape of the future.

She saw Lucy pretending to sip the drink, wandering across the room towards a potted plant in one corner. She must distract Petrov while Lucy poured it away. For that plucky kid to die now would be a pointless waste, serving no purpose but Petrov’s ruling passion. Annie got to her feet, moving to put herself between Petrov and Lucy. Then she stopped, thinking it might be better if Petrov forced the child to drink—better if she were asleep when Petrov killed her.

Elena Wragby sat silent, passive, withdrawn: as though, Annie thought, she was praying or waiting for something—an issue which was now taken out of her hands.

‘Haven’t you finished that lemonade yet?’ barked Petrov, moving over to the child.

The door flew open and Paul Cunningham staggered in. He had got out of the car a few minutes before. Though the farm buildings blocked out from the cottage any view of men approaching it up the fields from Eggarswell, the garage, thirty yards to the right of the cottage, gave a different angle of vision. Glancing through the garage window, Paul noticed the tail-end of the file of policemen moving into the farm paddock: their caps and the muzzles of rifles showed above the hedge.

For a minute or two, Paul was paralysed with despair and indecision. This was the end of everything. Disgrace, long imprisonment. It could be less long if he went straight over to the farm and told the police everything. But Petrov might see him walking away; and he feared Petrov far more than the police. Feared him, hated him, but in a perverse way felt bound to him, as an adolescent is bound to a harsh father infinitely stronger and more resourceful than himself. Petrov’s contempt for him rankled, like the pain of his cheekbone. The contempt would change to gratitude, admiration even, if he stood by Petrov, went in and told him what he’d seen, like a loyal son. Perhaps Petrov, with his ruthless cunning, could even now fight his way out of the trap and take Paul with him. He started the engine, then hurried towards the cottage, staggering in the snow.

‘I told you to stay in the car,’ Petrov shouted.

‘Police! I saw them going into the farm. The engine’s running. They’ve got guns,’ Paul gasped.

Petrov swung round on Elena, looming above her like a cliff about to fall. ‘You treacherous bitch!’ He drew the revolver from his overcoat pocket and clamped a hand on Lucy’s neck. He would run to the garage, holding the child as a shield between him and the armed police, and make a break for it.

‘Don’t you touch the child!’ Elena leapt to her feet, but he thrust her back on to the window-seat.

‘Back door,’ said Paul. ‘They’ll have the front covered.’

Elena made another rush at him, but he swung Lucy between them. ‘Get out of my way, or I’ll shoot you both.’

He backed into the passage, through the scullery, and with the hand that held the gun felt for the door-knob behind him. Elena was after him like a tigress. As he pulled the back door open, she snatched Lucy from him. ‘Run!’ she cried. She was between Lucy now and Petrov, who stood on the threshold.

Petrov shot her in the body. With her last strength she slammed the door in his face and locked him out.

Nigel, from the bedroom window of the farmhouse, heard the shot and went pelting downstairs, out into the yard. The tractor was there, its engine turning, Jim in the iron saddle. ‘Wait there!’ Nigel shouted, and ran to peer over the low hedge between farmyard and track. Sparkes and his file of men had only just gone out: they were moving along the grass verge to the left of the track. Charlie’s two men were stumbling down the hillside at the back of the cottage, still fifty yards away from it.

Petrov slunk along the deep passage behind the cottage, invisible to them, reached the garage and slipped inside before the riflemen in the farmhouse could fire. Sparkes, leading his men from in front, broke into a run; but he was still twenty yards from the garage door when the car shot out of it, skidded on to the track and accelerated.

Sparkes’s detachment desperately tried to get out the weapons they were carrying under their milkmen’s overcoats, but while they were still fumbling, Petrov was almost past. Sparkes leapt at the running board, and was flung back sprawling on to the snow. His men began to fire at the receding car, and one of the farmhouse riflemen shattered its windscreen. But the driver was apparently unhurt.

Nigel had seen the car plunge out of the garage. He gesticulated and yelled to Jim, ‘Drive out! Block the track!’

Jim was not in time to do that, for the tractor stalled at the first, over-excited acceleration. But he started it again instantly, and began trundling out of the farmyard towards the track. He could hear the crack of rifle-shots. From his high seat he saw over the hedge the roof of a car speeding downhill, ten yards away. He accelerated. The tractor hit the car amidships, flung it on its side over the verge of the track, and continuing its impetus struck the shattered car again. The front wheels mounted. The tractor came to a stop, like a great blue and red heraldic beast rampant over its prey.

‘Rammed the bugger,’ Jim remarked to himself with satisfaction. It was worth the pain of the sprained wrist and the bruises he had received from the collision, desperately gripping the wheel so as not to be flung out of his seat.

Sparkes and Nigel, running up now, saw a terrible thing. With the huge weight of the tractor recumbent upon it, the body of the car, already weakened by the first impact, began to cave in, slowly crushing the driver. Through the torn metal and shattered glass they saw Petrov’s excruciated face and heard him screaming, like an animal trapped.

There was nothing they could do. The tractor was immovably couched upon the wreckage beneath.

A man came running back from the cottage. ‘Kid’s all right, sir. Mrs Wragby’s dead. She tried to stop him taking the kid away, and he shot her. We’ve got two others under guard.’

‘Thank God for that,’ came Clare’s voice from behind them. She had walked up the track, unnoticed in the confusion. If Petrov had got away, thought Nigel, he might well have run her down in his berserk career.

‘Go to Lucy!’ he said.

Petrov had stopped screaming at last. It seemed to leave a hole in the air. Everything was hushed again, silent as the expanses of snow that stretched into the distance all round. Gradually this silence filled up the jagged hole left by Petrov’s screaming.

From the cottage, as Clare approached it, a man and a woman emerged, handcuffed, policemen on either side. Their faces were drained of all emotion. They moved like puppets.

In the sitting-room a sergeant had Lucy on his lap, trying to comfort her. Men were coming from the farm with a hurdle on which to carry Elena’s body away.

When she saw Clare, Lucy began to cry again. Clare took her from the sergeant.

‘He tried to shoot me,’ Lucy sobbed.

That’s all over, darling. You’re quite safe now. Nigel and I are taking you back to your papa. He’ll be so proud of you—to hear what a brave girl you’ve been. It was a marvellous idea, writing that story about Cinders and making a dart with the paper.’

‘Well, I thought it was rather a super idea myself; but I never thought you’d get the letter.’ Lucy gave only a stifled sob now.

‘We did. I’ll tell you how, later. There’s a nice sergeant called Charlie who used to live in the village, and he recognised this house from your description. So we all piled into cars and drove here at blinding speed, through drifts and fields and farmyards——’

‘You didn’t!’ Lucy’s eyes began to shine.

‘We did. Two fields and one farmyard anyway. Scattering ducks and hens and pigs before us. It was a great lark.’

‘And Elena came with you?’

‘Yes. She was the one who really rescued you.’

Lucy fell silent for a moment, puzzling out something in her mind. Two men passed the window, but the body they carried on a hurdle was invisible below the level of the sill.

‘Were they really spies?’ asked Lucy.

‘Oh yes. They kidnapped you: they wanted to exchange you for an important scientific secret your father has.’

‘I see. But he didn’t give them the secret.’

‘No.’

‘That big man—he was the chief spy?’

‘Yes. Your papa had a fight with him. That’s why he’s in hospital. He put up a splendid fight, but Petrov was much stronger.’

‘Poor Papa.’

Clare judged it was now the right moment. ‘You’ll have to be extra nice and loving with him for a bit.’

‘And Elena too.’

‘You’ll have to make up for Elena, darling.’

Lucy took Clare’s hand, bracing herself. ‘You mean she’s dead?’

‘Yes. Petrov shot her. She died saving you.’ Clare went on quickly, ‘He would have tried to take you away with him, but Elena stopped him. She——’

‘I know. She snatched me from him and told me to run, and I ran into this room. There was an awful bang.’ Lucy gulped.

‘Elena was a real heroine. Never forget that. She wasn’t sorry to die, because she knew you were safe.’

Lucy was quiet, digesting this. Then she trembled. ‘He won’t be coming back?’

‘Petrov? No fear! He was trying to escape in the car, and your Jim drove into it with his tractor. There was quite a battle before that. I expect you heard the rifle-shots.’

‘Yes, I did … You mean, Jim killed him?’

‘Yes. The tractor squashed the car flat, with Petrov inside it.’

‘Good,’ said Lucy, her grey eyes sparkling. ‘Sardined him.’

‘Sardined him is right.’ Clare was relieved that her instinct had been correct. Lucy was only a child, with a child’s ignorant and wholesome delight in gory detail. Soon, with any luck, the last week would seem no more than a fairy-tale to her—a tale in which the ogre came to a sticky and satisfying end.

‘Can we go and see Papa soon?’ Lucy asked.

‘Let’s go now.’

THE END