The funny thing is it never occurred to me that I’d actually made it. All I could think of was that I was entombed deep in a hill and sick of trying to get myself not killed by everybody. Getting the goon out of the crawl-way was a nightmare of ugliness. I don’t know what happened to the torch or his gun because I never found them. It must have taken me hours to pull him free. I stopped a million times to be sick. Hell can’t be as bad, that’s for sure. The silver had pierced his face, rammed through the facial structure and created a terrible porridge of bone slivers and tissue. His shoulders kept sticking as I pulled and pulled. When he finally tumbled, like a cork from a bottle, I was nearly carried down into the frigging well with him. He seemed all limbs. I just managed to get both arms wound round the rail when his falling body made me overbalance. The metal sagged but held, creaking and bouncing slightly. As his body glugged and squelched, far down, I thought a weary prayer for him. People have to do whatever lights their candle. I admit that. Pity that his had snuffed out, but that wasn’t my fault, wash? The way out was open and free.
Chapter 19
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE in the outer chamber was that I could see the bottom of the well-shaft down which I’d climbed. Very vaguely, but definitely. My eyes must have become accustomed to the faint washes of light, such as they were. I could see the rail lines in the grey-black on the ground under the shaft. I never glanced back once I came out through the aperture. My clothesline lay in a heap, but there was a natty rope ladder dangling, twice as long as needed. They’d come better prepared than I had. I fell over it from trying to go easy, frightening myself because I still couldn’t bring myself to trust the floor. They’d brought a pick and shovel. There was a spare torch, but I didn’t need extra weight any more. And I wasn’t too keen on inspecting myself, either, I knew I’d come through smeared with blood, brains, caked with dried mud. And some of the blood was mine. My feet felt swollen. To my surprise I was limping.
I unwrapped the silver engine and used the only legitimate water I owned. I peed on the object to wash it, then dried it on my socks. My singlets and shirt I left there. The engine just fitted into my underpants. I held one hem in my teeth, making sure it was evenly contained and wouldn’t slip out of the leg holes. There was no question of resting. When you’re in a tomb the first thing is to get out.
The distance between each brick foothold felt enormous at the start of the upward climb. My heart was banging like a train. I had to pause and hold on every second reach, and it wasn’t just that I was going up this time, not down. I was simply done for. Time had gone, yet without me knowing how. In fact, I was so useless that I almost nodded off in mid-climb from weariness as the shaft curved towards the horizontal. The silver piece nearly slid out of the cloth, but I held it between my chest and the brickwork until I got myself straight again. I could see light ahead. Lovely, dazzling, glaring light. I crawled forward on my hands and knees, grinning, weary but jubilant.
Astonishing, it was still daylight. I caught on the edge of the hole, blinded by the brilliance of the grey overcast sky. One last haul got me up and sprawled panting on the stubby grass under the gorse bush. I could have wept with relief.
‘It’s Lovejoy. The bastard’s naked.’
Fergus and Jake were smoking cigarettes further up the hill, and staring incredulously down at me. They appeared set for a long wait, judging from the scattered fag ends and the sandwich wrappings blowing about. Both rose, Fergus on a stick. I almost fell back in the hole.
‘You’re in a fucking mess, Lovejoy.’ Fergus wasn’t beaming any more.
Jake asked, bewildered, ‘Where’s Jim and Cooney?’
With a squeal I turned and staggered at a low run as he moved at me, and plunged downhill through the gorse line. If I could reach the pub ahead of them I’d survive. People would be on the road by now, surely to God. I heard Jake give a shout. Then they were after me, shouting and swearing at each other. Down on the road a car crawled by. I tried waving, but nearly dropped my prize. Anyhow, stopping to help a filthy blood-smeared maniac sprinting down a hillside is nobody’s idea of a tea-time tryst. So I just ran and ran down, really only falling forwards and forcing my legs to be there to catch me. This way I kept going, but only just.
With two hundred yards to go to the pub car park I glanced back. Jake was nearer. I found myself slowing, though I tried to keep going. Weariness enveloped me. I’d not make it. I was gasping this to myself when Elspeth Haverill suddenly rose in my way, just rose out of the ground, her eyes wide. She gave a faint scream. I collided with her and we rolled over, down in the tussocky grass. I cut myself yet again, this time on her frigging clip-board.
‘Fergus.’ Jake had halted uncertainly when I looked at them. Fergie was limping after, eyes hard. Elspeth was trying to compose herself. She was frightened stiff.
‘Lovejoy!’ She gazed at me, open-mouthed. There were small piles of clothing laid out in a row in front of her.
Fergus waved to his mate. ‘Get it, Jake.’
I sat down, bone weary. I’d had enough. I thought of throwing Elspeth the silver, but she was winded by our collision.
‘Right.’
They were moving down towards us slowly, Jake first, when I heard it. It was lovely. A beautiful sound of footsteps plodding and flopping along the hillside, and the rasping sound of middle-age in the torment of exercise. Round the hill, flabby and rotund, trundled six of Elspeth’s runners. They were dishevelled and looked pathetic, but I’d never seen a lovelier sight.
I couldn’t even rise to watch them come. They were on us in a few weak strides. They slowed to a stop and stood panting, staring. One pointed at me in astonishment, his belly heaving, and his sweating face a mottled purple. I must have looked in a hell of a state. The others edged closer. One, brighter than the rest, glanced at Jake and Fergus, back to Elspeth and me. Then he stepped closer and picked up a stone. Two others did the same. It wasn’t much of an army, but for the first time in my life my side outnumbered everybody else’s. Jake looked at Fergus. Fergus looked at Jake.
‘Here,’ I wheezed suddenly. ‘What are you doing?’
Elspeth was fiddling with my middle.
‘Putting this towel round you, Lovejoy.’ Of course. I was naked.
I let her. We all watched Jake and Fergus turn and go. Their car was parked across the rear of mine. I couldn’t have got it out unless they shifted theirs first, anyway. We saw Jake heave a cobblestone through my windscreen. He looked back at us defiantly. I bowed to annoy them as they pulled out.
‘What’s all this about, Miss Haverill?’ the front runner asked.
‘This gentleman fell down a crevice in the hillside,’ Elspeth said glibly. In the forecourt below the car started. One or two of them thought to ask more but Elspeth wasn’t having any. She clicked a stopwatch.
‘I would remind you that it’s twice round,’ she instructed. ‘Starting now.’
The team plodded off, some casting glances back at me. I watched Fergie’s car out of sight, going towards town along the river road.
‘I owe you, love,’ I told Elspeth.
‘What happened up there, Lovejoy?’
‘Tell you later. Look. What do I do?’ If I set off in my crate in this state I’d be arrested at the first traffic lights.
‘Sit here and rest,’ she commanded. ‘You’re exhausted. When the others come back, I’ll take you home. We’ll pretend you’re one of my exercise team, and that you fell and hurt yourself. I have a sponge bag and towel. We can get some of that filth off in the meantime. What is it? Maybe my men can lend you some spare clothes, if they have any.’
‘Why are you here?’ I lay on the grass, clutching the silver still wrapped in my underpants. ‘I thought the run was from the surgery.’
‘Oh, I fancied a change.’ She got a cold wet sponge and started on my legs. ‘I knew you’d come here, you see. From your questions. I went to your cottage, then drove here and saw your old motor. So I fetched my runners along.’
‘What if I hadn’t showed up?’ I asked from curiosity. ‘What would you have done?’
‘Mind your own business.’ She squeezed the sponge over my middle and made me gasp. She tapped my silver. ‘Is that toy train what you were looking for?’
I looked at the exquisite silver engine properly for the first time, holding it up against the sky from my supine position. Quite like an offering to a world full of beautiful space and air and light.
‘Yes. Isn’t it beautiful?’
‘Quite nice,’ she said critically. ‘But it’s bent.’
I said, ‘So it is. Wonder how that happened?’
*
Elspeth got me home. One of the runners promised to drop my crate off at the White Hart for Tinker to collect. A sweaty track-suit was provided from somewhere.
‘You know,’ I explained as she drove, ‘Poor old Jonathan Chase must have had a nerve.’
‘Can’t you put that toy on the back seat, Lovejoy?’
I was holding it in my lap. I trusted her, but said, ‘It’s too valuable.’
I wondered about the respectable Right Honourable gentleman. He had obviously arranged for an explosion to take place and cause a landslip. Of course, his plan was a risk. I felt a twinge of my subterranean fear return momentarily, and wound the window down for air. In fact, it nearly killed him outright. The plan was to halt the little carriage at the one fixed reinforced spot of the tunnel that had withstood the earth’s subtle shifts from time immemorial. That was where the tunnel bisected the well-shaft.
The carriage had stopped. On cue, the explosion had caused the landslip. Chase had dug his way through to the well, pulled the bricks out and climbed up. At the top he had simply pulled gorse in the hole, to cover it up. And there it jrew, year after year.
He’d had to have some luck, because his plans had gone slightly askew. I could tell that. The landslip had gone faster and further. than predicted. But he’d made it, done his act, and successfully lived to finance the rival route. The clever, wicked old devil.
His two engineers would have been in on the plan. They had to be. But why those two tough men had ended up at the bottom of the well when the Right Honourable had managed to escape probably didn’t bear thinking about. They probably got a percussion ball in each earhole, from one of those folding trigger pistols we antiques dealers are always after. The truth was obvious. Jonathan Chase, pillar of Victorian society, was a scoundrel. And old Doc Chase, maybe not realizing how valuable the silver piece would be, and anyway fearful for his family’s reputation – as if that ever matters – kept watch over what he knew to be the terrible evidence of his ancestor’s perfidy. You couldn’t blame an old bloke of his generation, though. It was only natural. I suppose it needs a scrounger like me to ignore reputations.
‘What will you do with it?’
‘Eh? Oh.’ I thought for a minute and cleared my throat for a lie. ‘Give it to the museum, I suppose.’
‘Will you? Honestly?’
She looked so moved I was moved too. ‘Hand on my heart,’ I promised with sincerity.
She smiled radiantly. ‘I’m so pleased, Lovejoy.’ She squeezed my arm. ‘He would have loved that.’
‘In memory of him,’ I said piously. Being praised is quite pleasant.
‘Will there be a formal presentation?’ She was already planning a new frock.
‘Er, no,’ I said, all modest. ‘I wouldn’t like people to think I was blowing my own trumpet.’
‘You’re really sweet, Lovejoy.’ She turned to me mistily.
‘Stop a second.’ I actually felt sweet, grotesquely smug.
There was a phone-box at a crossroads. I dialled emergency. The operator clicked me breathlessly through to a narky policewoman who wanted to start filling in forms.
‘Hark,’ I interrupted her questions. ‘You’ve got a grouser called Maslow on your books. Tell him Lovejoy rang.’
‘We don’t pass on personal messages through this telephone exchange,’ she told me with asperity. ‘This is for emergencies.’
‘This is for murder,’ I continued. ‘Say I’m prepared to make a statement of evidence.’ Now I need not say anything about Sue being the other witness. When Fergie and Jake got their ugly mugs in the papers the Brummie mob would start asking nasty questions about their missing pair of nerks. Jake and Fergie would be for it either way. Poor lads, I thought, smiling.
Elspeth chatted happily all the way home. She assumed I had phoned my decision to the museum, and was so pleased. I didn’t disillusion her.
The cottage felt as if I had been away for years. Elspeth gasped at the sight of all the furniture and the treens everywhere, but I ran a bath and didn’t explain. We decided to go out and celebrate. Elspeth had enough money for us to have a real splash.
I was drying myself when this car came screaming down the lane in third gear. It stopped in the gateway, and Moll emerged, dressed in a smart new green suit. She knows I like green. See what I mean about women? There’s no letting up, minds always on the go.
I honestly wasn’t trying to keep out of the way, but it didn’t seem my sort of scene. I’d had the silver model in the bath with me, soaping it. None of your scraping and sanding for precious silver, please. Mild soap and ordinary water is about the limit, followed by a cold but gentle towel. Having to leave the presentation case was a pity, but I wasn’t going back for it at any price. I’d knock up a quick fake instead. That would really set it off, pretty as a picture. Imagine the millions of people who’d get pleasure from seeing it beautifully displayed in our Castle Museum. I finished wiping the silver surface dry while Moll and Elspeth nattered at the door.
‘Lovejoy’s rather busy,’ Elspeth’s voice announced, frosty.
‘Not to me, he isn’t, dear.’ Moll sounded confident and oversweet.
‘For everyone. Dear.’ Elspeth was obviously going to stand her ground. I made no noise.
‘I’m in a somewhat different category,’ from Moll.
‘That’s quite possible, Mrs Maslow,’ Elspeth shot back.
I slipped on my clothes and wrapped the silver in a dry towel. Time for Tinker to bowl up. The idle swine was still swigging ale somewhere, though I’d phoned him almost an hour ago on the way back. I’ll cripple him, I thought furiously.
‘Tell Lovejoy I’m here,’ Moll ordered.
‘If this is in the course of police investigations . . .’ Elspeth’s voice turned the sugar on.
‘Lovejoy is my partner.’
I gasped from behind the bathroom door. Partner was beginning to have a nasty permanent ring about it. She must have read more into buying all that bloody treen than I had.
‘He hasn’t a partner.’
‘Where do you think he acquired this houseful?’
It was time I left, even if it was on foot. I ducked and crawled between the furniture. There is a back door, but the hedge is thick and there’s no way through. I’d have to make it round the side and somehow cut out of my gate.
The sound came when I was crawling round my little unfinished wall at the rear of the cottage. The beautiful, melodious clattering of my sewing-machine engine. Tinker, with my crate, bless him. I was still blazing, but if I was quick . . . Get down there before they saw me. And before he turned into the garden.
A rapid sidle round the cottage wall, ducking beneath the sill to avoid being seen through the kitchen window, worse than any gangster in a shoot-out. Flattened against the side wall I peered round. The spluttering sounded nearer and nearer.
‘It isn’t a question of being obstructive, Mrs Maslow.’ They were still at it, with Elspeth gaining the upper hand. She didn’t seem to have let Moll in yet.
‘Don’t you think you are rather misunderstanding your functions?’ Moll’s voice. The chips were down. ‘You’re behaving rather like a wardress –’
It was warming up. I knew from the sudden easing of the engine’s chug that Tinker had reached the chapel. Only one place to turn, about a hundred yards up. Now.
/>
I clutched the silver in the towel and ran. On tiptoe, like a bloody fool, as if grass echoes. I drew breath and ran straight into the hedge as gently as I could. Luckily Moll’s car blocked the gateway. I was round it in a flash and scarpering up the lane as my crate rumbled into view. Tinker was driving, and he had Lemuel with him. He knows I hate Lemuel in the crate, because he always leaves a liberal sprinkling of fleas behind. I spend a fortune on those sprays.
Tinker saw me waving frantically and screeched – well, creaked – to a stop. I hurtled up, signalling him to turn. He was already backing when I undid the door and fell in.
‘Get going, Tinker,’ I gasped.
‘I fetched Lemuel for the aggro,’ Tinker explained, desperately wobbling the gear stick. It’s a bit loose. I’ll have it mended when I get a minute. Luckily, we dealers always carry blankets. I wriggled under one and lay still, pleading, ‘Hurry, for gawd’s sake, Tinker.’
We rumbled forward.
‘No scrapping, Lovejoy?’ Lemuel quavered thankfully.
‘It’s all done, Lemuel.’ Already I was beginning to itch.
Another car sounded ahead of us. A horn tooted. ‘Sod it,’ from Tinker. We stopped.
‘Tinker.’ Sue’s voice. ‘Is Lovejoy home?’
‘Er, just dropped him off there, lady.’
‘Thank you.’
And she was gone. ‘Great, Tinker,’ I told him, still muffled under the blanket.
‘That all right, Lovejoy?’ Tinker asked as we pulled away again. ‘Here. What happened to the Brummies?’
‘What Brummies?’ I said under my blanket. ‘There aren’t any Brummies.’ It was hellish uncomfortable bumping on the motor’s tin floor. If only the springs hadn’t gone. Sue usually brings cushions.
‘Course there are, Lovejoy,’ Lemuel croaked earnestly. ‘That Fergie’s got two frigging big hard nuts to do you –’
His voice was nudged to a thoughtful silence, probably by Tinker’s elbow.
Spend Game Page 21
