Gunner Kelly dda-13

by Anthony Price

  He knew exactly what was coming. And it would be better to meet it as a volunteer than to wait for the order which would be couched as a request, from one ally to another.

  He shrugged. “Major Herzner has lent me to you for a week, Colonel. I could go back . . . But if Dr Audley has contacts of his own ... I do not resemble Dr Wiesehöfer very closely. So I do not think my cover will last so long—always supposing that it has survived this afternoon.”

  “Forty-eight hours, at most—if you go back,” said Chief Inspector Andrew. “He’ll have to get back to Germany. Herzner’s got it buttoned up here.”

  “No.” Butler shook his head. “Forty-eight hours is too much—it’s making pictures we’d like to see. And with Audley you don’t make pictures. We’ll go for another cover.”

  “Another cover?” Benedikt couldn’t conceal his disappointment. It wasn’t that Colonel Butler’s lack of confidence in his Roman roads disappointed him—it was good that the Colonel preferred to plan for the worst, rather than the best. But anything which reminded him of Papa had its own special virtue, and the gentle study of small irregularities in the ground for signs of the passing of mighty Caesar’s legions had recalled happy memories of the old man’s boyish enthusiasm, and his own happiest days.

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  “Don’t worry, Captain! I have a cover much closer to your real skin in mind.” The Colonel misread his face. “But I won’t send you naked back into Duntisbury Chase. And I won’t forget what you are doing for Her Majesty’s peace, either.”

  It was an old-fashioned way of expressing gratitude, thought Benedikt—it was like granting him a Mil Eliot zu Ruhm und Sieg battle-honour of his own. Indeed, it was almost embarrassing . . .

  except that it gave him an insight into Colonel Butler which the Kommissar had not printed out.

  “And I’ll give you something better than that.” The Colonel became matter-of-fact again. “I’ll tell you what I particularly want to know which shouldn’t be too difficult to find out.”

  He was almost diverted from his concentration on what Butler was saying by the change in Chief Inspector Andrew’s expression, which graduated in that instant from proper subordinate interest to equal concentration.

  “Yes, sir?” What the Colonel was giving him now was something new to the Chief Inspector also.

  “I told you no lie when I said that we don’t know much more than what the Anti-Terrorist Squad knows—other than what we know about Audley being there, of course.” The Colonel bridged the huge gap effortlessly. “But what you’ve told me— the fact that you confirm what we’ve suspected . . . that helps me to see it through Audley’s eyes. And because of that I can see a lot more than I saw before.”

  The Chief Inspector’s face confirmed his impression: he was in on dummy1

  a new picture of what was happening in Duntisbury Chase.

  “Unfinished business. That’s the only thing which could bring back the bomber to Duntisbury. So the bomb didn’t do the job . . .

  and he’s dealt with bombers before—and bombs— Audley has. I should have thought of that before, too!” Butler castigated himself for his error.

  Bombs—

  Benedikt had dealt with bombs, too: bombs were the dirtiest killing method, because no matter what the bombers said—and even when they said it honestly in their hearts—bombs were in the end indiscriminate, counting the risk to the innocent passerby as incidental to hitting the target; and while that might have to be a harsh necessity in war, in peace—in Her Majesty’s peace—

  “Unfinished business,” repeated Colonel Butler.

  In peace, bombers were the dirtiest killers, never taking the face-to-face risks—killing the bomb-disposal men when they failed to hit their targets—

  The chasm opened up at Benedikt’s feet, which he was trained to avoid: Why shouldn’t the bastards be killed like mad dogs? What was so wrong with what the ‘slip of a girl’ and the peasants of Duntisbury Chase planned to do?

  “What unfinished business?” Andrew addressed his superior more sharply than he had done before.

  “Kelly, of course. Gunner Kelly, man!” Butler snapped back at him.

  “Kelly—?”

  “He should have gone up with the car—with the General.” Butler dummy1

  reacted to the snap harshly. “You’ve been telling me that from the start, damn it! Loyal Gunner Kelly—wasn’t he distraught when they tried to talk to him? Wasn’t he so sick that he couldn’t even go to the funeral? Maybe he thought someone was going to take another shot at him! Or maybe he was busy doing something else, perhaps.”

  “But—”

  “But he was with the General in the war? And he’s been back with him for the last four years?” Butler stabbed a finger at Andrew.

  “But where was he in between? And what’s more to the point. . .

  where is he now?”

  The Chief Inspector said nothing, and the Colonel encompassed them both. “If you think about what we know, that the Squad doesn’t know—Audley maybe knows ... is that it isn’t finished, what happened in Bournemouth—and Gunner Kelly should have been finished there, with the General.”

  Pause.

  “So what I want to know—from you, Andrew—is the life-story of Gunner Kelly, from Connemara or wherever, until the day he didn’t drive the General’s car a fortnight ago.”

  Pause.

  “And what I want to know from you, Captain Schneider, is whether Gunner Kelly is in Duntisbury Chase now—because he’s supposed to have gone away for a holiday somewhere, but I think he is there . . . And if he is there, I want to know what he’s doing there.”

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  IV

  The burniture removal van lurched abruptly left and then right in quick succession, following the driver’s scripted indecision, and then suddenly juddered to a stop.

  Benedikt stood up in the darkness and applied his eye to the narrow opening which had been left for him in the little sliding hatch in the partition which separated the cargo space from the driver’s cab. The headlights blazed ahead undipped, out across the darkly rippling water of the ford, illuminating the road ahead, and the telephone box, and the overhanging trees.

  “You there?” The driver didn’t turn round.

  “Yes.” He divided the gap between eye and ear.

  “We’re at the water’s edge. I’m going to switch on the cab light so I can look at the map. Then I’ll get the torch, and get out and look for a signpost. Okay?”

  “Yes.” The repetition of orders was unnecessary, but it was reassuringly exact. It wasn’t Checkpoint Charlie they were going through, but there was still no room for error.

  He ducked down into his own darkness again, and looked at his watch. It was 2242 exactly—three minutes to the police car.

  The engine noise ceased suddenly, and a thin bar of yellow light filled the gap. For a few moments the map rustled on the other side of the partition, and then the light went out.

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  “There’s someone out there—” The driver hissed the words “—I can see a torch . . . I’m getting out.”

  The cabin-door clicked, and there was a scrape of boots on metal as the driver swung himself out. The van shuddered slightly.

  “Aw— fuck!” exclaimed the driver angrily.

  Benedikt raised his ear to the edge of the gap, and was rewarded with the sound of a splash. The driver swore again. Cautiously Benedikt turned his head, just in time to catch the lancing beam of a torch directed from the other side of the water towards the side of the van.

  “Are you arl-roight there?” The question came across the water from the source of the torch-beam, in a rich peasant accent.

  “No, I’m fucking not, mate!” The driver answered irritably, in his own townsman’s accent. “I’m up to my fucking knees in fucking water—that’s what I am!”

  “Arrr . . . You didn’t ought to ‘ave stopped there.” The voice was unsympathetic. “You want to get out of there—you’r
e in the water there, you are.”

  The driver didn’t swear in answer to that, but emitted a throaty sound of exasperation. There came another splashing sound, and then a stamping of boots on tarmac.

  “Where you goin‘, then?” the voice challenged.

  The stamping stopped. “Where the fuck am I, mate?”

  “Where d’you want to be?”

  The driver swore. “Not bloody ‘ere, I don’t think. ’Old on mo‘, an’

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  I’ll tell yer . . . Norton somethin‘ . . . ’old on ... Norton Down—

  The Old Vicarage, Norton Down—name of Winterbotham . . .

  Major E. H. Winterbotham, The Old Vicarage, Norton Down.”

  “Norton Down?” The voice echoed the name incredulously.

  “Yeah. Major Winterbotham—you know ‘im?”

  “This aren’t the way to Norton Down.” Scorn had replaced incredulity.

  Benedikt looked at his watch again. The police were due any second.

  “Fourth turning, they told me. Down the hill till the road forks, an‘

  it’s signposted there, to the right.” There was a pause. “Left goes to Cucklesford St Mary an’ right to Norton Down— bloody stupid names!” Another pause. “But I can’t see any bloody sign!”

  “Arr . . . nor you can! Because there ain’t none.” The peasant belittled the townsman. “You took the wrong road— that’s what you don. Cucklesford St Mary an‘ Norton Down’s on t’other side.”

  The driver grunted helplessly. “Can I get through from ‘ere?

  Where am I?”

  “Na ... If I was goin‘ to Norton Down from wherever you come from I wouldn’t start from ’ere. What you want t’do is to turn round an‘ go back where you come from . . . an’ then—”

  The fierce headlights of the police car and the sound of its engine arrived almost simultaneously, to cut off these extraordinary directions in mid-flow. They must have coasted down the ridge from the main road to arrive so silently, with the kink in the final approach, and the trees themselves, cutting off the warning of their dummy1

  arrival until the final bend.

  But now the speaker on the other side of the water, who had been hidden behind his own torch-beam outside the van’s headlights, was suddenly caught in the glare as the police car pulled alongside the van, outside Benedikt’s vision.

  He heard a car door slam.

  “What’s this, then?” It was strange how the official voice was the same the world over—confidently suspicious and suspiciously confident. “Is that you over there, Blackie Nabb? What are you doing here?”

  “Arr . . . Mr Russell?” The voice parried the question. “Is that Mr Russell?”

  “You know me, Blackie. Why aren’t you in the Eight Bells?”

  “The Eight Bells?”

  Now, there was a difference, from the world over, thought Benedikt: there might be suspicion both ways here, between Mr Russell and the man over the water . . . but there was no fear in either of them—and—what was a greater difference—there was no hatred either!

  “The Eight Bells, Mr Russell?” False incomprehension filled the question. “But it’s gone closing time—an‘ I’ve been over to my sister’s, at Cassell’s, anyway... So what would I be doin’ at the Bells, then?”

  The other police-car door slammed.

  “What’s this, Russell?” A senior-officer voice, not so much confident as super-confident, and alien for that reason, cut in.

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  “Who is this?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Mr Russell answered his officer evenly, also without fear. “But that’s Mr Nabb over there, who runs the taxi-service in the village.”

  “Oh, yes?” The senior officer sounded as though he had heard of

  ‘Mr Nabb’. “And where’s his taxi?”

  No answer came from over the water, and Benedikt began at last to understand the dimensions of the drama to which he was a witness, which Chief Inspector Andrew had enlisted to serve Colonel Butler’s purpose.

  “I don’t think he’s on duty tonight, sir. It looks like he’s visiting his sister, Mrs Tanner. . . She’s married to Mr Tanner, who’s manager at Cassell’s Farm, sir.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  Benedikt’s dislike of the officer voice—the inspector voice—

  blossomed with his understanding: it had suited Colonel Butler’s plan that the local police were busy in this part of Dorset, leaning on after-hours drinking in public houses, which was in contravention of Britain’s archaic licensing laws—it had suited him that the Eight Bells in Duntisbury Royal, although not a primary target, had been one of the subsidiary targets to which Chief Inspector Andrew with his special contacts could divert one particular attack at short notice.

  What he had not understood until now was that, while the inspector wanted to catch the Eight Bells regulars drinking happily after hours, the local constable— Mr Russell—had no such ambition . . .

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  Because Mr Russell, at the very first opportunity, had warned Mr Nabb what he was about, and close to a convenient phone-box.

  “Oh, yes?” The Inspector had made some of those same connections, if not all of them, by the sound of his voice. “And who are you, then?”

  He had come back to the van-driver, realised Benedikt.

  “Eh?” The van-driver sounded not one bit abashed by the question.

  “What the fuck is that meant to mean—who am I?”

  He had to adjust, thought Benedikt: the Inspector must know what he was doing, and this was all for Mr Nabb’s benefit—‘Blackie’

  Nabb’s benefit—if he was on duty at the ford, as they had expected someone to be on duty here, as the first trip-wire in Duntisbury Chase’s defence system.

  But the corollary of that was that the Inspector must behave as he would have behaved in real life—so that ‘Blackie’ Nabb should react in the same way, to warn the Chase of the arrival of the police within that same defence system.

  But ... in the meantime . . . the van-driver had to react also—and this was England—rural England in the 1980s—and that in itself was educational.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Doing?” The van-driver echoed the verb insolently. “I wish to fuck I knew, mate!”

  “There’s no need to use that sort of language with me—not if you want to stay out of a cell tonight.” The Inspector remained coolly unmoved by the insolence, he merely pitched his voice so that it dummy1

  could be heard on the other side of the water. “I’ve got a warrant-card in my pocket. . . and we’ve had enough burglaries round here for me to inquire what you’re doing in these parts at this hour of the night. So you can argue the toss with me, and I can put the constable here behind the wheel of your vehicle and take you back to the nearest police station—if you like . . . And we can sort you out there.” Pause. “Or you can answer the question. Take your pick.”

  Two seconds—five seconds—

  “Well?”

  One second—

  “All right, guv‘!”

  “Well?” The repetition was lazy with dominance.

  “Worsdale, guv—Jack Worsdale . . . Easy Removals—you can ring my gaffer, Mr Page, if you don’t believe me—straight up!”

  This pause, thought Benedikt, covered a pointing finger at the phone-box, to support the surrender. “Takin‘ an upright grand—a grand pianer—to Major Sidebotham— Winterbotham ... at Norton

  —Norton Down—The Old Vicarage, Norton Down.”

  “At this hour of night?”

  “There was an ‘old-up on the M3—on the Alton junction— wiv’ a tail-back . . .”

  Pause.

  “There was a crash on the M3, sir. Junction 5,” said Constable Russell, almost apologetically. “Early this evening. The road was blocked for nearly two hours.”

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  “An‘ I ’ad a blow-out near Stockbridge.” The van-driver achieved a genuine whine. “Took m
e another hour— and they gave me the wrong direction then—”

  “All right!” The Inspector cut short the explanation. “Is the back locked?”

  “Locked, guv‘? Naow. There’s only the pianer in there—”

  “Russell. Go round the back and have a look inside . . . You stay here, where I can see you . . . and you over there—Mr Nabb, is it?

  — you stay where I can see you, too! I have business in Duntisbury Royal when I’ve dealt with this man and his vehicle.”

  Benedikt started to move.

  “What are you doing?” shouted the Inspector.

  Benedikt continued to move, past the blanket-covered, lashed-down object in the centre of the cargo-space.

  “Keep yer ‘air on—I ain’t goin’ anywhere. I’m jest goin‘ to phone the missus to tell ’er I’ll be late ‘ome.”

  Benedikt smiled to himself in the darkness. Whether he was on guard duty or not, Blackie Nabb had put two and two together satisfactorily, and was about to warn the Eight Bells of the impending after-hours raid.

  But meanwhile, the business of the night was beginning at last, because from outside, at the back of the van, there came the sound of the scrape and clunk of the locking-bar which secured the doors.

  He sank on to one knee beside the piano—it probably was a piano, and maybe Jack Worsdale was a van-driver, and the police really dummy1

  had intended to raid Duntisbury Royal to catch after-hours drinkers.

  His finger touched and ran along the rough bark—it felt like genuine tree-bark—which covered the Special Air Service’s cylinder, past the false branches—genuine plastic—until they felt the cord at the end, with its wrist-loop.

  One of the doors banged open and a bright torch-beam transfixed him.

  “Nothing in here, sir,” called the policeman. “Just the piano, it looks like—like he said. It’s all clear.”