by Dick Francis
After Billy went away it was about an hour before I saw anyone again, and then it was Alf. He shuffled into my sight round the corner of the box I was tied to, and stood looking at me with one of the disposable mugs in his hand. His lined old face was, as usual, without expression.
‘Alf,’ I shouted. ‘Untie me.’
There wasn’t anywhere to run to. I just wanted to sit down. But Alf either couldn’t hear, or wouldn’t. He looked unhurriedly at my ribs, a sight which as far as I could see produced no reaction in him at all. But something must have stirred somewhere, because he took a slow step forward, and being careful not to touch me, lifted his mug. It had ‘Alf’ in red where Mike had written it that morning, in that distant sane and safe lost world of normality.
‘Want some?’ he said.
I nodded, half afraid he’d pour it out on the floor, as Billy would have done; but he held it up to my mouth, and let me finish it all. Lukewarm, oversweet neo-coffee. The best drink I ever had.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He nodded, produced the nearest he could do to a smile, and shuffled away again. Not an ally. A non-combatant, rather.
More time passed. I couldn’t see my watch or trust my judgment, but I would have guessed it was getting on for two hours since we had turned. I had lost all sense of direction. The sun had gone, and we were travelling into dusk. Inside the cabin the air grew colder. I would have liked to have had my shirt on properly, not to mention a jersey, but the mares behind my back provided enough warmth to keep me from shivering. On a full load in that cramped plane eight horses generated a summer’s day even with icing conditions outside, and we seldom needed the cabin heaters. It was far too much to hope in the circumstances that Patrick would think of switching them on.
Two hours flying. We must, I thought, have been down near Albenga when we turned, which meant that since then, if we were still going east and the winds were the same as in the morning, we could have been crossing Italy somewhere north of Florence. Ahead lay the Adriatic, beyond that, Yugoslavia, and beyond that, Roumania.
It didn’t matter a damn where we went, the end would be the same.
I shifted wearily, trying to find some ease, and worried for the thousandth time whether Gabriella was winning, back in Milan. The police there, I supposed, wrenching my mind away from her, would be furious I hadn’t turned up. They still had my passport. There might at least be a decent investigation if I never went back for it, and Gabriella knew enough to explain what I’d inadvertently got caught up in. If she lived. If she lived …
The plane banked sharply in a steep turn to the left. I leant against the roll and tried to gauge its extent. Ninety degrees turn, I thought. No; more. It didn’t seem to make much sense. But if—if—we had reached the Adriatic I supposed it was possible we were now going up it, north west, back towards Venice … and Trieste. I admitted gloomily to myself that it was utter guesswork; that I was lost, and in more than one sense.
Ten minutes later the engine note changed and the volume of noise decreased. We had started going down. My heart sank with the plane. Not much time left. Oncoming night and a slow descent, the stuff of death.
There were two rows of what looked like car headlights marking each end of a runway. We circled once so steeply that I caught a glimpse of them through the tipped window, and then we levelled out for the approach and lost speed, and the plane bumped down on to a rough surface. Grass, not tarmac. The plane taxied round a bit, and then stopped. One by one the four engines died. The plane was quiet and dark, and for three long deceptive minutes at my end of it there was peace.
The cabin lights flashed on, bright overhead. The mares behind me kicked the box. Further along, the other pair whinnied restlessly. There was a clatter in the galley, and the noise of people coming back through the plane, stumbling over the chains.
Patrick came first, with Billy after. Billy had screwed the silencer back on his gun.
Patrick went past the flattened box into the small area in front of the two washroom doors. He moved stiffly, as if he couldn’t feel his feet on the floor, as if he were sleep walking.
Billy had stopped near me, on my right.
‘Turn round, pilot,’ he said.
Patrick turned, his body first and his legs untwisting after. He staggered slightly, and stood swaying. If his face had been white before, it was leaden grey now. His eyes were stretched and glazed with shock, and his good-natured mouth trembled.
He stared at me with terrible intensity.
‘He … shot … them,’ he said. ‘Bob … and Mike. Bob and Mike.’ His voice broke on the horror of it.
Billy sniggered quietly.
‘You said … they would kill us all.’ A tremor shook him. ‘I didn’t … believe it.’
His eyes went down to my side. ‘I couldn’t …’ he said. ‘They said they’d go on and on …’
‘Where are we?’ I said sharply.
His eyes came back in a snap, as if I’d kicked his brain.
‘Italy,’ he began automatically. ‘South west of …’
Billy raised his gun, aiming high for the skull.
‘No.’ I yelled at him in rage and horror at the top of my voice. ‘No.’
He jumped slightly, but he didn’t even pause. The gun coughed through the silencer and the bullet hit its target. Patrick got both his hands half-way to his head before the blackness took him. He spun on his collapsing legs and crashed headlong, face down, his long body still and silent, the auburn hair brushing against the washroom door. The soles of his feet were turned mutely up, and one of his shoes needed mending.
Chapter Fourteen
Yardman and John edged round Billy and the flattened box and stood in the rear area, looking down at Patrick’s body.
‘Why did you do it back here?’ John said.
Billy didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on me.
Yardman said mildly, ‘Billy, Mr Rous-Wheeler wants to know why you brought the pilot here to shoot him?’
Billy smiled and spoke to me. ‘I wanted you to watch,’ he said.
John – Rous-Wheeler – said faintly ‘My God,’ and I turned my head and found him staring at my ribs.
‘Pretty good shooting,’ said Billy complacently, following the direction of his eyes and taking his tone as a compliment. ‘There’s no fat on him and the skin over his ribs is thin. See where I’ve got every shot straight along a bone? Neat, that’s what it is. A bit of craftsmanship I’d say. These lines are what I’m talking about,’ he was anxious to make his point, ‘not all that black and red around them. That’s only dried blood and powder burn.’
Rous-Wheeler, to do him justice, looked faintly sick.
‘All right, Billy,’ Yardman said calmly. ‘Finish him off.’
Billy lifted his gun. I had long accepted the inevitability of that moment, and I felt no emotion but regret.
‘He’s not afraid,’ Billy said. He sounded disappointed.
‘What of it?’ Yardman asked.
‘I want him to be afraid.’
Yardman shrugged. ‘I can’t see what difference it makes.’
To Billy it made all the difference in the world. ‘Let me take a little time over him, huh? We’ve got hours to wait.’
Yardman sighed. ‘All right, Billy, if that’s what you want. Do all the other little jobs first, eh? Shut all the curtains on the plane first, we don’t want to advertise ourselves. And then go down and tell Giuseppe to turn those landing lights off, the stupid fool’s left them on. He’ll have ladders and paint waiting for us. He and you and Alf can start straight away on painting out the airline’s name and the plane’s registration letters.’
‘Yeah,’ said Billy. ‘O.K. And while I’m doing it I’ll think of something.’ He put his face close to mine, mocking. ‘Something special for your effing Lordship.’
He put the gun in its holster and the silencer in his pocket, and drew all the curtains in the back part of the plane, before starting forward to do the rest
.
Rous-Wheeler stepped over Patrick’s body, sat down in one of the seats, and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.
‘Why do you let him?’ he said to Yardman. ‘Why do you let him do what he likes?’
‘He is invaluable,’ Yardman sighed. ‘A natural killer. They’re not at all common, you know. That combination of callousness and enjoyment, it’s unbeatable. I let him have his way if I can as a sort of reward, because he’ll kill anyone I tell him to. I couldn’t do what he does. He kills like stepping on a beetle.’
‘He’s so young,’ Rous-Wheeler protested.
‘They’re only any good when they’re young,’ Yardman said. ‘Billy is nineteen. In another seven or eight years, I wouldn’t trust him as I do now. And there’s a risk a killer will turn maudlin any time after thirty.’
‘It sounds,’ Rous-Wheeler cleared his throat, trying to speak as unconcernedly as Yardman, ‘it sounds rather like keeping a pet tiger on a leash.’
He began to cross his legs and his shoes knocked against Patrick’s body. With an expression of distaste he said, ‘Can’t we cover him up?’
Yardman nodded casually and went away up the plane. He came back with a grey blanket from the pile in the luggage bay, opened it out, and spread it over, covering head and all. I spent the short time that he was away watching Rous-Wheeler refuse to meet my eyes and wondering just who he was, and why he was so important that taking him beyond Milan was worth the lives of three totally uninvolved and innocent airmen.
An unremarkable looking man of about thirty-five, with incipient bags under his eyes, and a prim mouth. Unused to the violence surrounding him, and trying to wash his hands of it. A man with his fare paid in death and grief.
When Yardman had covered Patrick, he perched himself down on the edge of the flattened box. The overhead lights shone on the bald patch on his skull and the black spectacle frames made heavy bars of shadow on his eyes and cheeks.
‘I regret this, my dear boy, believe me, I regret it sincerely,’ he said, eyeing the result of Billy’s target practice. Like Rous-Wheeler he took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘He really has made a very nasty mess.’
But only skin deep, if one thought about it. I thought about it. Not much good.
‘Do you understand what Billy wants?’ Yardman said, shaking out his match.
I nodded.
He sighed. ‘Then couldn’t you … er … satisfy him, my dear boy? You will make it so hard for yourself, if you don’t.’
I remembered the stupid boast I’d made to Billy the first day I’d met him, that I could be as tough as necessary. Now that I looked like having to prove it, I had the gravest doubts.
When I didn’t answer Yardman shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Foolish boy, whatever difference would it make, after you are dead?’
‘Defeat …’ I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘Defeat on all levels.’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Communists are greedy,’ I said.
‘Greedy,’ he echoed. ‘You’re wandering, my dear boy.’
‘They like to … crumble … people, before they kill them. And that’s … gluttony.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Rous-Wheeler in a vintage Establishment voice.
‘You must have read newspaper accounts of trials in Russia,’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘All those “confessions”.’
‘The Russians,’ he said stiffly, ‘are a great warm-hearted simple people.’
‘Oh, sure,’ I agreed. ‘And some are like Billy.’
‘Billy is English.’
‘So are you,’ I said. ‘And where are you going?’
He compressed his lips and didn’t answer.
‘I hope,’ I said, looking at the blanket which covered Patrick, ‘that your travel agents have confirmed your belief in the greatness, warm-heartedness and simplicity of the hemisphere you propose to join.’
‘My dear boy,’ interrupted Yardman smoothly, ‘what eloquence!’
‘Talking,’ I explained, ‘takes the mind off … this and that.’
A sort of recklessness seemed to be running in my blood, and my mind felt clear and sharp. To have even those two to talk to was suddenly a great deal more attractive than waiting for Billy on my own.
‘The end justifies the means,’ said Rous-Wheeler pompously, as if he’d heard it somewhere before.
‘Crap,’ I said inelegantly. ‘You set yourself too high.’
‘I am …’ he began angrily, and stopped.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘You are what? Feel free to tell me. Moriturus, and all that.’
It upset him, which was pleasant. He said stiffly, ‘I am a civil servant.’
‘Were,’ I pointed out.
‘Er, yes.’
‘Which ministry?’
‘The Treasury,’ he said, with the smugness of those accepted in the inner of inner sanctums.
The Treasury. It was a stopper, that one.
‘What rank?’ I asked.
‘Principal.’ There was a grudge in his voice. He hadn’t risen.
‘And why are you defecting?’
The forthcomingness vanished. ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘Well it is rather,’ I said in mock apology, ‘since your change of allegiance looks like having a fairly decisive effect on my future.’
He looked mulish and kept silent.
‘I suppose,’ I said with mild irony, ‘you are going where you think your talents will be appreciated.’
For a second he looked almost as spiteful as Billy. A petty-minded man I thought, full of imagined slights, ducking the admission that he wasn’t as brilliant as he thought he was. None of that lessened one jot the value of the information he carried in his head.
‘And you,’ I said to Yardman. ‘Why do you do it? All this.’
He looked back gravely, the tight skin pulling over his shut mouth.
‘Ideology?’ I suggested.
He tapped ash off his cigarette, made a nibbling movement with his lip, and said briefly, ‘Money.’
‘The brand of goods doesn’t trouble you, as long as the carriage is paid?’
‘Correct,’ he said.
‘A mercenary soldier. Slaughter arranged. Allegiance always to the highest bidder?’
‘That,’ he said, inclining his head, ‘is so.’
It wasn’t so strange, I thought inconsequentially, that I’d never been able to understand him.
‘But believe me, my dear boy,’ he said earnestly, ‘I never really intended you any harm. Not you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said dryly.
‘When you asked me for a job I nearly refused you … but I didn’t think you’d stay long, and your name gave my agency some useful respectability, so I agreed.’ He sighed. ‘I must admit, you surprised me. You were very good at that job, if it’s of any comfort to you. Very good. Too good. I should have stopped it when your father died, when I had the chance, before you stumbled on anything … it was selfish of me. Selfish.’
‘Simon Searle stumbled,’ I reminded him. ‘Not me.’
‘I fear so,’ he agreed without concern. ‘A pity. He too was invaluable. An excellent accurate man. Very hard to replace.’
‘Would you be so good as to untuck my shirt?’ I said. ‘I’m getting cold.’
Without a word he stood up, came round, tugged the bunched cloth out of the back of my trousers and pulled the collar and shoulders back to their right place. The shirt fronts fell together edge to edge, the light touch of the cloth on the burns being more than compensated by the amount of cool air shut out.
Yardman sat down again where he had been before and lit another cigarette from the stub of the first, without offering one to Rous-Wheeler.
‘I didn’t mean to bring you on this part of the trip,’ he said. ‘Believe me, my dear boy, when we set off from Gatwick I intended to organise some little delaying diversion for you in Milan, so that you wouldn’t embark on the trip back.’
I said
bleakly, ‘Do you call sh … shooting my girl a little diversion.’
He looked distressed. ‘Of course not. Of course not. I didn’t know you had a girl until you introduced her. But then I thought it would be an excellent idea to tell you to stay with her for a day or two, that we could easily manage without you on the way back. ‘He,’ he nodded at Patrick’s shrouded body, ‘told me you were … er … crazy about her. Unfortunately for you, he also told me how assiduous you had been in searching for Searle. He told me all about that bottle of pills. Now, my dear boy, that was a risk we couldn’t take.’
‘Risk,’ I said bitterly.
‘Oh yes, my dear boy, of course. Risk is something we can’t afford in this business. I always act on risk. Waiting for certain knowledge may be fatal. And I was quite right in this instance, isn’t that so? You had told me yourself where you were going to lunch, so I instructed Billy to go and find you and follow you from there, and make sure it was all love’s young dream and no excitement. But you went bursting out of the restaurant and off at high speed to an obscure little bakery. Billy followed you in Vittorio’s cab and rang me up from near there.’ He spread his hands. ‘I told him to kill you both and search you under cover of helping, as soon as you came out.’
‘Without waiting to find out if there was anything in the bottle except pills?’
‘Risk,’ he nodded. ‘I told you. We can’t afford it. And that reminds me; where is Searle’s message?’
‘No message,’ I said wearily.
‘Of course there was, my dear boy,’ he chided. ‘You’ve shown so little surprise, asked so few questions. It was clear to me at once that you knew far too much when Billy brought you back to the plane. I have experience in these things, you see.’
I shrugged a shoulder. ‘In my wallet,’ I said.
He drew on his cigarette, gave me an approving look, stepped over Patrick, and fetched my jacket from the washroom. He took everything out of the wallet and spread them beside him on the flattened box. When he picked out the hundred dinar note and unfolded it, the pieces of writing paper and hay fell out.
