‘You said that before. What is a Link – a member?’
‘Yes. Many Links make the chain,’ Hassan said solemnly. ‘And the complete chain makes the Circle. Every new Link learns the Brothers’ Grip. I showed you before, like this.’ He caught Hunter’s hand and twined his fingers in it.
‘I think I’d better have a look round. I haven’t got much time.’
‘Hush.’ Hassan looked at him sidewise. ‘Later I will help you. Now we are to sing the Song of the Circle.’
Hassan took Hunter’s right hand, and twined his fingers in the Brothers’ Grip. At the same time his left hand was taken by the Indian with gold-rimmed spectacles. All over the room little circles were being formed by the interlaced hands. Except that their hands were not crossed, it was strongly reminiscent of Auld Lang Syne. Someone clapped, and Hunter saw through the archway the awkward figure of Mr Rawlinson bob up on what seemed to be an improvised platform. The Adam’s apple moved up and down.
‘We will now – ah – sing the Song of the Circle,’ he said. Somebody put on a gramophone record and they followed the words, their voices ragged at first, but gathering strength and unity after a couple of lines. As they sang they moved round together slowly.
Workers of hand, workers of brain,
Forge the Links that make the Chain,
The Chain that with its Brothers’ grip
Joins us in deepest Fellowship.
From deserts, islands, lands of gold,
Come black and white, come young and old,
To join hands in the Brother’s grip
And sing of Empire Fellowship.
At one side of him Hassan sang the words with deep feeling. On the other the Indian seemed under the impression that he was singing a dirge. There were several verses, and Hunter found his attention wandering after four or five of them. At the other end of the room, beyond the archway, there was some sort of movement. For a moment he saw in the doorway the thin, nervous, handsome face of Pine. This face looked rapidly round the room as if in search of something or somebody, the lips moving. Then it was withdrawn.
In the next moment he saw Anthea. She was in one of the circles in the other room, near Rawlinson. She was wearing a green frock, cut low at the back. He glimpsed her profile, classic and severe, and then the movement of the circles hid her from him. He tried to break out of his own circle but Hassan and the Indian held their fingers tightly laced with his. Hassan gave him one reproachful glance, shook his head slightly, and went on singing. When at last the song was over, he spoke.
‘You must not break the Circle, it is strictly forbidden. It means you are a weak Link.’
‘If you will excuse me,’ the Indian said politely, ‘I should like to discuss with you the question of the Empire. Are you of the opinion that the best way to preserve the bonds of Empire is by absolute possibility of self-determination for all peoples?’
‘Some other time,’ Hunter said. ‘I must just talk to someone.’
He pushed his way across the room, after Anthea in her green dress. It was like trying to move through a sea of flesh. Impermeable bodies and the faces attached to them, black, yellow, pinkish, nodding like flowers on their stalks, barred his way. Beneath the continual babble of sound he tried to order his own thoughts, to understand the meaning of Anthea’s presence. Noise can intoxicate, in its different way, as much as drink, and his head was fuzzy with it. ‘Mr Smith,’ a voice said, as at last he reached the archway, ‘I say, Mr Smith.’
A hand grasped his arm. He turned his head. Rawlinson’s face, the false teeth in full grin, was inches from his own. ‘How delightful to see you, Mr Smith,’ he said.
‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’m looking for Miss Moorhouse.’
Rawlinson stood directly in front of him now, blocking his path. ‘Always extremely glad to see new faces. This is one of the get-togethers I told you about, if you remember. Have you signed the Bond?’
Hunter tried desperately to look beyond him. ‘Miss Moorhouse was quite close to you during the song. You must have seen her.’
Among the noise of voices, it seemed really impossible to make verbal contact. Rawlinson now, with his smile fixed like the grin on a skull, said, ‘The Bond is for every new Link. In it you agree to do your level best to strengthen the ties of Empire–’
Hunter took Rawlinson by the arm and shook him slightly. ‘Anthea Moorhouse. Where is she?’
Rawlinson’s eyes protruded like those of a fish. ‘Miss Moorhouse? Why, I haven’t seen her.’
Hunter pushed him away. Now the once-impermeable crowds seemed to melt under the glow of his anger, so that it was suddenly easy to get across to the bar. But where was Anthea? Hunter saw her in the green dress with her back to him, standing near the door. Anger spurted in him again, anger that she should have so utterly deceived him. He walked over, placed his hand on her bare shoulder and spun her round, saying harshly, ‘Anthea.’
The girl in the green dress stared at him. She was not Anthea, she was not even like Anthea, now that he saw her full face. There was a similarity of profile, nothing more. The girl’s face was red with annoyance. She raised her hand and struck Hunter on the cheek. He mumbled something, inarticulate words of apology, and turned away to face, on a level well below his own, the china blue eyes of Tanya Broderick.
In her precise little voice she said, ‘You newspapermen really do get around, don’t you? Where’s your friend?’
‘He’s working this evening.’
‘Finding the vital witness? Such a funny man with that long nose.’ Her voice mocked him openly. Tonight she wore a frock the colour of her eyes, and her nails also were enamelled blue. The shoes she wore were like stilts, but even so she hardly came up to his shoulder.
‘What are you doing here?’ Hunter asked. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you’re a Link.’
‘Of course.’ She giggled and then looked serious. ‘But you’re not. What are you doing here, I should like to know. What do you want?’
‘I’m here to find a girl named Anthea Moorhouse.’
‘You’re a bit behind the times. She’s been kidnapped.’
‘I read that. I want to talk to Pine.’
‘She has been kidnapped, hasn’t she? If you know anything about it, tell me.’ The anxiety in her voice puzzled him.
‘That’s what the papers say. But I believe Pine knows something about it.’
‘Why should he know anything? Anyway, she’s not here.’ Now the anxiety in her voice was unmistakable. ‘You’d better get out.’
‘I’ll go after I’ve talked to Pine.’
‘You’re out to make trouble, I can see that. You’re no more a newspaperman than you’re my Aunt Fanny. Don’t think you ever fooled me. Not for a minute you didn’t.’
‘You’re very smart. But I still want to see Pine.’
‘You do? I’ll tell you something. You’re a fool.’
She was turning away when Hassan’s voice said, ‘Excuse me. Am I an interruption?’
Hunter said, ‘Why no, Hassan. I’m glad to see you.’
The boy looked at him, and then began to giggle. ‘Please forgive me, Mr Hunter. It looked very funny, although I am sure embarrassing.’
‘What was that?’
‘The little incident a minute or two ago. You made a certain suggestion, as English newspapers say, and it was repulsed.’
‘That’s not the way it was at all.’
‘Ah, no. I am only saying what appeared, if you understand me. I know that is not the case, because you are my friend, Mr Hunter. I wish to help you.’
‘Then can you find Miss Moorhouse?’
‘I have not seen her this evening. But I think I can help you to find Mr Pine. That will do just as well, if you understand me.’ Hassan giggled again. ‘Come with me.’
They went out of the door again into the passage. Hassan led the way upstairs.
Chapter Thirty-three
Upstairs the roar of the party was subdued again, as it
had been from outside. Hassan led the way to the back of the house, tapped gently on a white door, and opened it.
They entered a sitting room with sofa and armchairs, shabby but comfortable. There was a door leading out of it, presumably to a bedroom. The room was dimly lighted by a standard lamp, but Hunter saw the range of gleaming silver cups on the mantelpiece. Beneath the lamp Pine sat in an armchair, his head back and his eyes closed.
Hassan closed the door softly behind him. When he spoke he was restraining a giggle. ‘I have brought up a friend of mine, Arthur. He wanted to see Anthea, but I told him you would do just as well.’
Pine opened his eyes. He seemed to have difficulty in focusing them, and his voice was thick. ‘What?’
‘A very good friend of mine, Mr Bill Hunter,’ Hassan said.
Now Pine’s eyes focused. He looked at Hunter with a stare which, for a moment, held pure terror. He said to Hassan, ‘You brought this man up here?’
Hassan looked from one to the other of them. ‘Was it wrong? He is not –’
‘You’ve done nothing wrong,’ Hunter said. ‘I’d have got to see him, with your help or without it. We’ve got a little business to settle.’
Hassan ignored him. ‘Arthur,’ he said questioningly, and moved lightly across the room to the chair. ‘Arthur.’
Pine struggled up, like a man swimming upwards through water. ‘It’s done now. You’d better leave us alone.’
‘But is he –’ Hassan left the sentence uncompleted.
‘I’m not from the police, if that’s what’s worrying you,’ Hunter said. ‘Now get out.’
‘Arthur, please tell me that I have not done wrong.’ Hassan’s voice was pleading.
‘You couldn’t help it. And now, you heard what he said. Leave us alone.’
Hassan went out and closed the door. Before closing it he spoke two monosyllables to Hunter.
Pine got out of the chair now, stood up, walked over to the mantelpiece. He gestured at the cups behind him. ‘Looking at these? Sporting trophies. Used to be a sprinter five years ago. Just a little out of condition.’
Now Hunter saw photographs on the walls too, Pine breasting the tape, receiving cups from vaguely-recognisable dignitaries. He said nothing.
‘Didn’t understand that remark of yours about the police,’ Pine said. ‘What the devil did it mean?’
‘It’s simple enough. If I hadn’t been stupid I’d have understood it long ago. You’re part of a drug ring. You distribute drugs with that crackpot PFC as a cover. Anthea’s an addict and she helps with the distribution, which is always the difficult part for people running drugs. She acts as distributor by a simple but ingenious method. Rawlinson pretty well told me what it was when I came to see you in the office.
‘The PFC has a list of people who make regular contributions to its funds, and they make these contributions when Anthea calls on them. At the same time she delivers their supplies. For doing this Anthea gets her own drugs for nothing, and you also give her money. No doubt you’ve got other agents doing the same thing, as well as boys like Hassan. The drill is that the agents call at the office to collect supplies. They have a key to one side of the desk. There they find packets sealed up ready for delivery. They look like little wage packets, and I suppose in a way that’s just what they are.’
Pine’s face was pale. The tic worked in his cheek. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Hunter took the two health salts bottles out of his pocket. Pine sucked in his breath, held out a hand and drew it back. In a voice that, absurdly, sounded indignant, he said, ‘You’ve burgled the office.’
‘Let me make this clear. I’m not interested in these bottles. I’m not interested in you. I want to find Anthea.’
The shot Pine had taken before Hunter’s arrival was taking effect. Standing with his back to those brightly-shining cups he said almost gaily, ‘I only know what I read in the evening papers. Anthea appears to have been kidnapped. Hadn’t you seen? But perhaps you’ve stopped reading the papers since that business about Bond. Reading the papers can get you into trouble.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I really have no idea.’
Hunter felt the initiative slipping away from him. ‘She came into the PFC office and saw you on that Monday morning. I know that.’
‘Why shouldn’t you know it? The police do, too. Anthea came in, asked about doing some more canvassing, and left. That’s what I told the police, and as far as I’m concerned anybody else is welcome to know it too.’ Now Pine was mocking him openly. ‘You forget, Hunter, that I’m a respectable man. I used to run for England. People forget athletes quickly, but they haven’t forgotten me yet. I’m not a convicted criminal.’
‘You know who I am,’ Hunter said slowly. ‘You knew me when I came into the office that day. What else do you know about Anthea and me?’
Pine shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘When Anthea’s a little high she’ll tell anybody anything. Or when she’s low and in need of a shot. She isn’t a girl to keep secrets. And perhaps I ought to say, so that you and I know where we are, that she isn’t a one-man girl either.’
Behind Pine’s mockery Hunter detected some sort of insecurity. What was its cause? ‘Did she tell you what she was going to do?’
‘She told me that she was coming into money, a lot of it. Would that be news to you, now? I doubt it. And where would Anthea get a lot of money. Could it be from her stepfather?’ Pine seemed to cut himself off in mid-speech, as though conscious of having said too much. From somewhere, perhaps from outside, came a noise closer than the hum below. It might have been the sound of a foot scraping on the floor.
But had Pine said too much by revealing that he knew something about the kidnap plot? What did it matter, after all, when he could not find Anthea? Wearily, he got up to go. Pine faced him with a smile that was belied by the tic working in his cheek.
‘Monday morning at your office was the last time you saw Anthea, then?’
‘Of course.’ Pine put up his hand to hide the tic.
It was as he turned away from Pine that he saw, placed carelessly between two of the cups, the spectacles, the blue-rimmed spectacles with ornamental edges that Anthea had worn for the passport photograph.
He turned back to Pine, and there must have been something frightening in his look as he said, ‘Where is she?’
The thin man backed away from the mantelpiece, across the room. ‘I told you, I don’t know.’
‘Those are her spectacles. She has been here since Monday morning. She’s here now.’
‘No.’
‘You’ve got her in there.’ Hunter pointed to the inner door. ‘I heard a noise.’
‘No.’ Pine was cringing now. Hunter went over, took him by the neck, twisted his arm. The arm was thin and brittle, like a stick.
‘Oh, please,’ Pine said, and said it again. ‘Oh, please. You’re hurting me.’
‘Go and open that door.’
‘It’s no use. Don’t be so beastly. Anthea’s not in there.’
Hunter flung Pine aside hard, so that he knocked over a chair and lay on the floor, whimpering a little. He walked over to the inner door and opened it. A man was standing there waiting for him, a man who held a gun in his right hand. He looked hard and long at the man’s face and felt the dark gigantic shadow of the past, a shadow stretching farther back than he would have believed possible, spread over him like a shroud.
Chapter Thirty-four
The name, on his lips, was like the answer to a riddle. ‘Brannigan.’
The square face, strong and vicious, the cropped light hair above it, had not changed very much. Experience had put some lines into a face that had been smooth. The face was fatter, the mouth thinner. In the grey eyes there had been, twenty years ago, some glimmer of light – the light of idealism, of belief in something. Or was that merely a sentimental invention about the past? Certainly there was no such light in the eyes that looked steadily at him now.
‘Bill O’Brien,’ Brannigan said. He had always been proud of the fact that his voice showed little emotion, Hunter remembered. Now it lacked any kind of emphasis or colour. It was the voice one would expect to hear from a robot.
‘Get back into the room, Bill.’ Before the gun, Hunter moved backwards. ‘Sit down,’ Brannigan said, and he sat in one of the armchairs. Pine scrambled up, picked up the blue-rimmed spectacles and dropped them in his pocket. Then he stood again with his back to the mantelpiece.
‘I told you to be careful,’ Brannigan said to Pine. Although the words were colourless Pine flinched as though he had been burned. Brannigan spoke to Hunter with the same mildness. ‘You’ve caused a lot of trouble, Bill.’
Looking at him Hunter did not see the present Brannigan, a puffy snake in a well-cut dark suit. Twenty years had, after all, made some differences. He remembered the hard young IRA captain of long ago giving orders to the three of them, and giving the orders in a way that showed clearly enough his contempt for the human material he was using. He had known long ago, listening to Brannigan in a little candle-lit room, that the man giving them orders did not care whether they lived or died so long as they carried out the job. He relived the moment in which the smoke rose from his revolver and the night watchman, that old man with the ridiculous name, half turned round slowly and then fell down, crumpling from the knees like a doll.
‘You work for Mekles,’ he said. ‘You told him about my record, and my real name.’
‘That’s right, Bill.’ The gun in Brannigan’s hand did not waver. ‘The governor had the idea that he wanted to appear on this programme. I thought it was a bad idea, but it was what he wanted. I was able to give him a little information about you. He always likes to have a little information about the people he’s working with. Not that he uses it unless he has to. You made him use it.’
‘It was an accident.’
‘That was unlucky. For you, I mean. If what you’re saying is true.’
The Gigantic Shadow Page 16
