She sensed a rapid movement behind her, said a quick prayer of gratitude that one of these stupid men had finally broken free of his paralysis, let herself be thrown free of Diss, and looked up from the floor to see which of them had got the gun.
Pasquino and Lakenheath remained where they had been before. Standing in the middle of the room wielding the weapon with expert menace was Malcolm Upas.
‘That was most kind of you, Zeugma,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you and Mr Diss would now move across and join the others.’
‘Nice to see you again, Humpty,’ said Pasquino in his most infuriatingly condescending voice.
‘When,’ asked Lakenheath in tones reminiscent of her old Whitethorn housemistress, ‘are you going to learn how to come into a room properly?’
16
Some apprehended a purifying virtue in fire, refining the grosser commixture and firing out the Aethereal particles so deeply immersed in it.
‘I suppose,’ said Zeugma, ‘when we get out of this, the statutory romantic ending requires that we discover we’ve loved each other all along, fall passionately into each other’s arms and get married.’
Lakenheath looked at her in alarm and moved away from her as best as his hog-tied arms and legs would permit.
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘I’m not ready for marriage. Far too immature.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said firmly. ‘You’re just prejudiced against endomorphs. It’s merely another facet of your gross self-conceit.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’ve nothing against short fat girls. I just happen to prefer long, slim girls who look elegant at Ascot and who can cross their legs twice and still have enough left over to fit into a pair of button-up boots. Pale girls too. I like pale girls, anaemic, consumptive, corpse-like girls with dark blue shadows beneath their eyes, and cheek-bones so prominent they can put your eyes out. That’s what I like. You wouldn’t consider a diet, I suppose?’
‘Certainly not!’ Zeugma exclaimed. ‘I’m not fat either. I’m just plump. But I’m going to get fat, I tell you that. I’m going to eat my way through my husband’s bank balance, getting fatter and fatter, so that eventually I may explode. Simultaneously I shall get redder and redder, till the traffic will screech to a halt every time I appear in the street. And I’ve no intention of ever going near Ascot.’
‘That’s one consolation, at least,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘You mean you’d be a stay-at-home bringing-up-the-kids discover-old-country-recipes kind of wife?’
‘Not on your life ! I’d be a roam-the-world follow-my-own-career I’m-as-good-as-any-man kind of wife.’
‘In that case, perhaps you’d better stick with the professor.’
They fell silent, both very aware of the forced jocularity of the exchange. But it was a source of comfort to them as was the proximity of their bodies which Lakenheath now re-established, rolling back so they lay side by side once more.
‘Very touching,’ said Jonathan Upas, coming into the boiler house. He had turned up only five minutes after Zeugma, looking she was glad to see, very cold and muddy. But his arrival had made his brother’s task much easier.
Zeugma had cursed herself for her impetuousness in attacking Diss, who Lakenheath assured her very confusingly was an American internal security man doing some follow-up work on something called the Healot case.
He had woken up to find that Pasquino had vouched for him and the American was almost apologetic. He and Pasquino were ostensibly on the same side but Lakenheath sensed a kind of tension between the two men. This was explained in part when it emerged that Diss had been assigned to watch over Healot in the States and had lost him on the night he went to his fatal rendezvous with Upas. His interest in recovering the urn and its contents was not merely patriotic; it had to do with re-establishing himself in the shadowy world he inhabited. Pasquino on the other hand only wanted the cash. Yet Lakenheath felt that he was the better bet.
But further revelation of who knew what was prevented by the arrival of Malcolm. And finally and most disastrously, herself.
The reunion with Leo had lacked something of the intense emotionalism with which her imagination had been endowing it over the past few days. His only revealed emotion had seemed to be one of near paternal annoyance that she had got herself into such a scrape.
But the reunion had been shortlived too. Pasquino and Diss had been taken upstairs – a separation of the important from the ignorant, Lakenheath called it as he quickly exchanged stories with Zeugma. Mention of Crow had made his spirits rise for a moment, but Zeugma’s description of the man’s condition last time she saw him quickly depressed them again. And, though neither put the thought into words, they both realized after their exchange that the Upases would have little desire to see them roaming free and every reason for wishing them dead.
Now Jonathan’s entry made both their hearts contract at the thought that perhaps the moment had come.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Lakenheath, trying to appear cool.
Surprisingly Jonathan seemed disposed to answer.
‘We’re anxious to find out just what those two upstairs know – and of course who else knows it. They’re not being very helpful, I’m afraid. Pasquino in particular. It’s more difficult with the other; for all we know, he’s as pig-ignorant as he looks. But Pasquino, he knows something. He knows where Healot’s urn is, for a start. Given time, he would talk. But we’re in a hurry and I don’t want to risk pushing too hard and killing the poor fool.’
‘A humanitarian ! ’ marvelled Lakenheath.
‘On the other hand,’ grinned Jonathan, ‘he may prove less resistant to pain when it’s applied elsewhere. To Miss Gray, for instance. What do you think, Miss Gray?’
Zeugma didn’t answer. She couldn’t, not without revealing the waves of terror which were beginning to run through her body again. And that, she instinctively sensed, was what Jonathan was looking for.
‘What about you, Lakenheath? Do you think you could put up with the lady’s screams when a word from you could bring them to a halt?’
Lakenheath looked up at the handsome young man and tried to find the reaction which would give the least pleasure.
‘We’re all en route for death,’ he said indifferently. ‘So you can make us scream a bit on the way? So what?’
Jonathan bent, undid the bonds round Zeugma’s ankles, and dragged her to her feet.
‘A stoic, Mr Lakenheath?’ he said. ‘Well, keep your ears pinned back, as they say.’
At the door Zeugma resisted his pulls and turned back to Lakenheath. Not the tearful farewell, he begged mentally. She spoke. ‘Life is just an idiot’s delight and as I speed through the dark night into the abyss of oblivion, I can only say thanks, thanks for the memory. Judy Garland. Babes in Arms.’
‘I thought it was Little Nellie Kelly,’ he answered. ‘In fact, I’m sure it was.’
‘No,’ her voice drifted back down the stairs. ‘Babes in Arms.’
‘Want to bet?’ he shouted, but there was no reply.
Now he rolled over and over, wrestling vainly with his bonds, till finally he lay back exhausted and waited for the screaming to start. Their only hope now was Crow. A distant hope, from what Zeugma had told him. But if he could somehow have recovered sufficiently to overcome this formidable female Upas, if he could have summoned help or even got back to the centre himself, if …
He heard a footstep on the stairs. Hope and fear clashed in his mind and held his body in a neutral paralysis. A figure appeared at the door, the guttering candle threw out its dying rays then all was darkness. His body slackened, the battle won.
This was not Crow. The final flickers of light had scarcely reached the doorway, but he had seen enough to know that the new arrival was a woman and that in her hand she held a knife.
It must be Amine. Which meant Crow must be dead.
Her footsteps were in the room now. They came nearer.
The killing was not yet over.
‘You understood? Clever you,’ said Jonathan cheerfully. ‘Yes, that was it. I have great faith in her perception. I hope she is right. Torturing an immortal used to be a pleasure reserved only for the gods.’
‘Jonathan,’ said Malcolm harshly. ‘Be quiet.’
They were in the old common room where Lakenheath had begun his ill-fated vigil. Someone, Malcolm probably, had brought a couple of oil-lamps and these supplemented the torches to provide a sufficient if rather sinister light. Diss lay against the wall looking very bloody. But his breath came deep and evenly and Zeugma felt that here was a man still to be reckoned with.
Pasquino looked less battered, the result she assumed of the Upases’ fear of losing him rather than of any special compassion.
‘Hasan,’ she said. He turned and looked at her but she could find no more to say. She saw him still as the man she had known in Cairo; civilized, amusing, attentive; her lover. A few words overheard at his house; they could mean anything. A garbled story of blackmail and intrigue second or third hand from Lakenheath; he could have got it all wrong.
‘Hasan,’ she said. ‘What’s happening? Why don’t you stop all this nonsense and …’
Her Whitethorn scolding voice died away as she heard it and recognized its absurdity. ‘All this nonsense’ was Pasquino in chains, Diss’s blood-caked face in the lamplight, Lakenheath lying in bonds below, his cousin and her friends killed with an obscenity her own recent experience let her imagine fully, Crow crumpled and broken in a smoke-filled room, Healot swinging by his neck in an aseptic anonymous American hotel room. That was ‘all this nonsense’; and all the good common sense and all the sympathetic reasoning of all the rational, wordly wise schoolmistresses in the world could never put Humpty together again.
Malcolm nodded as if reading her thoughts and agreeing with her conclusions.
‘Forget everything, Zeugma,’ he said. ‘No appeals to the past. Just concentrate on getting Leo to talk, then we can all go home.’
‘Home?’
‘Why, yes.’ He sounded surprised. ‘Once we lay our hands on Healot’s urn, that’s it. Off we go, back to the sun and the sand, you wriggle out of your bonds and give the local constabulary a thrill and we can have a laugh together about all this in the Cairo Hilton by midsummer.’
Zeugma was taken aback by the charming effrontery of this.
‘People have been killed,’ she said. ‘Sayer, Healot. Probably Crow. How do you imagine we could ever laugh together again?’
‘Good girl,’ said Diss. ‘You tell the bastard. Ah !’
He cried out as Jonathan side-footed him in the groin. Malcolm shrugged indifferently.
‘Let me put it another way,’ he said, ‘Leo, unless you tell us where in your estimation the urn is hidden, I’ll turn Jonathan loose on Zeugma.’
Pasquino looked from one face to another. Something he saw in Jonathan’s must have decided him.
‘It’s only a theory you understand,’ he said wearily. ‘Healot said something about Pharaoh’s tomb. It might be just a figure of speech, meaningless. But the only spot round here to resemble an Egyptian tomb is one of the fuel silos.’
‘What?’ Malcolm grabbed excitedly at the large-scale plan of the centre which lay on the floor. ‘The silos. Of course. But how …? The pipes were concreted over, surely. He would not leave it where he could not get at it, would he?’
‘Why not?’ asked Jonathan. ‘It was the knowledge that he had it which he believed to be his strength.’
‘No. His was not that kind of mind,’ said Malcolm. ‘If it is there, it’s retrievable.’
He pored over the plan once more.
‘Here’s something. But what … that fellow, Lakenheath, he must know this place well. Get him up here !’
Jonathan moved to the door, but Diss interrupted him.
‘Don’t bother,’ he said in resigned tones. ‘When they build silos like these, they need to be able to get into them for inspection and maintenance from time to time. There must have been tunnels to the inspection hatches as well as flow pipes.’
So, thought Zeugma, looking scornfully at Diss, the American’s appearance of strength and fortitude was delusive. He believed something could be bought by appeasement, the common error of statesmen in the face of thugs.
‘Yes. This dotted line … but has it too been concreted over? Jonathan, watch these people. Just watch!’
Malcolm left, carrying the plan and Jonathan drove Zeugma against the wall with the shotgun.
‘If the urn is there,’ asked Diss, ‘what are you going to do with us?’
‘Oh stop whining!’ snapped Zeugma. ‘He’s going to kill us, can’t you see? And in the nastiest way possible, if he has any choice.
‘To travel painfully is better than to arrive,’ mocked Jonathan. ‘A little accident will occur. A fire. Mr Lakenheath’s obsession with this place is well known to the police. You drop him here, go back to pick him up after a pleasant evening with your friends. The professor insists that he accompanies you, concerned as he is for your safety. And then, the accident ! ’
‘This place won’t burn easily !’ said Pasquino confidently.
‘Help has been arranged,’ said Jonathan.
‘And what about me?’ asked Diss.
‘You are nothing,’ said Jonathan. ‘You will remain nothing and no one will notice whether you move or are still. Perhaps I will give you to my sister.’
He paused after mentioning Amine and his face became still, as though listening for some remote sound to be repeated.
Behind him the door slowly opened, creaking slightly. It seemed impossible for Jonathan not to hear, but it seemed that what he was listening for was more distant than the door and the figure who now appeared was able to enter the room undetected.
Zeugma recognized her with a shock of disbelief.
It was Miss Peat and in her hands she clutched Lakenheath’s walking stick.
It seemed imperative to try to cover the sound of her approach.
‘What makes you think Amine’s in a fit state to want him?’ demanded Zeugma.
But the words were counter-productive. Jonathan snapped back to here and now, looked at her enquiringly for a second; Miss Peat took another step and, warned either by his ears or something in Zeugma’s face, Jonathan spun round with the shotgun levelled. The woman was still well out of attacking range, but she tried. She flung the stick forward, Upas parried it easily with the shotgun barrel and laughed. Then Diss rolled himself from the wall with all the strength he could muster and scythed his legs viciously against Jonathan’s calves.
The young man kicked his feet in the air like a chorus girl and tumbled backwards, still clutching the gun. But he was lithe as a cat and rolled sideways avoiding with ease Miss Peat’s desperate dive. It looked as if the battle was still going to go his way.
So Zeugma kicked him at the base of the neck. Fortunately she had not come to Cumberland prepared for much socializing and the shoes she wore were solid and sensible rather than flimsy and frivolous. And she had a good kick. Jonathan subsided with a pleasantly rattling groan and Miss Peat plucked the shotgun from his unresisting fingers.
‘You took your time,’ accused Diss.
‘Sorry,’ said Miss Peat. ‘I went to the cellar first. But there was only Lakenheath there, and he couldn’t come upstairs with me without rousing the whole county.’
She put the shotgun down and produced a knife.
‘Turn round, my dear, and we’ll get you loose,’ she said to Zeugma. Her whole manner of talking and moving had changed; the vegetable slowness of her previous appearances had disappeared entirely.
‘You knew she was coming?’ said Zeugma to Diss. ‘So that’s why you told Malcolm about the inspection tunnel.’
‘That’s it,’ said Diss. ‘Also, if he’s foolish enough to open up any
of those hatches without proper breathing apparatus, he’s got a surprise coming. There should be enough vapour still hanging around in there to give him a nasty moment.’
Zeugma’s bonds were almost loose when there was a movement at the door. She turned and saw it was Lakenheath standing there. She smiled broadly at him, recalling their last conversation and feeling a new bond between them. But her smile froze as some unseen force suddenly thrust him into the room, sending him crashing to the floor.
Behind him stood Malcolm, clutching the torch he had just struck Lakenheath with. Miss Peat bent for the shotgun as Jonathan came to life and launched himself at her legs in a rugby tackle which brought her to the floor. Lakenheath meanwhile had found sufficient strength to get back to his feet and was grappling with Malcolm in the doorway. It was a brave but doomed effort. Lakenheath’s ankle had been under too much strain already that night and though he hopped around on the other foot with all the agility of a Long John Silver, it was no contest. But he hung on tenaciously taking a vast amount of punishment in his efforts to keep Malcolm from the shotgun.
The shotgun. That was the key, Zeugma realized. Who would get there first. Peat or Jonathan? Malcolm or Lakenheath?
Or herself. The loosened ropes finally parted at her wrists and she was free. Peat was doing a good job of anchoring the still dazed Jonathan to the floor, but Lakenheath, though still draped round Malcolm’s neck, was being bludgeoned into insensibility.
Zeugma stooped and picked up the shotgun. Hunting, shooting and fishing had been available at Whitethorn, but a girl who felt as menaced as she did could never derive any pleasure from slaughtering the uncomprehending and the defenceless. But Malcolm was neither of these and she levelled the gun with as much assumption of expertise as she could muster.
‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Stop it!’
Beyond the Bone Page 18
