Gunner Kelly dda-13

by Anthony Price

  God damn! It hadn’t been a shot at all—there was no one up there, above him. God damn!

  He shook the blasphemy from his head and sat up, fumbling in his pocket for his torch.

  Of course there were other pits like this—other man-traps waiting for their quarry. But they couldn’t cover all of them, so they had rigged up a trap-within-a-trap: the convenient rope-ladder offering its help to any thinking animal which might fall into the pit by day or night. . . Only the other end of the ladder wasn’t anchored at all dummy1

  —it was simply attached to some sort of explosive device, set in the same fashion as a trip-flare, but attached in this case to a warning maroon which would betray the intelligent prisoner as soon as he put his full weight on it.

  Benedikt ground his teeth in anger with himself—and with Audley

  —Colonel Butler had warned him that Audley would be tricky—

  and then with Colonel Butler, and everyone from Herzner at the Embassy— just a little job for Colonel Butler, Captain Schneider—

  to Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith and Benje’s Dad . . . and even Thomas Wiesehöfer—

  Thomas Wiesehöfer—

  Now they would be coming, summoned by that ear-splitting warning— and coming quickly—

  Still no sound from above.

  He brushed the dirt from his face. There was an egg on the back of his head which was tender to the touch of his fingertips—and . . .

  and a slightly raised contusion on his cheekbone, where the lump of chalk had hit him: it even boasted a sticky crater where the chalk had cut into his flesh—

  But there was no more time for thought: someone was coming—he could hear voices—

  “Help!” shouted Thomas Wiesehöfer, lost on his evening stroll in a dummy1

  foreign country and trapped in an incomprehensible pit.

  And now there was light as well as sound above—and he must get rid of his own tell-tale torch—

  “Help!” He stuffed the torch under the debris beneath him, and stood up on top of it, steadying himself on the nearest wall.

  “Help!” He achieved a note of desperation which was too close to the truth for comfortable analysis.

  The light intensified, finally shiningdown directly into his eyes.

  “Grüss Gott!” exclaimed Thomas Wiesehöfer fervently. “Please! I haff fallen into—into this place—this hole in the ground! Please to help me—I am wounded and bleeding.”

  The beam of the torch explored him.

  “Please to help me!” appealed Thomas Wiesehöfer.

  There was a pause above.

  “Please—”

  “It’s that bloody Jerry.” The voice ignored his appeal.

  “What?” Another voice.

  “That Jerry—from this afternoon . . . the one that was nosing around . . . the one that was in the Bells.”

  “What?” A second light entered the pit, fixing itself on Thomas Wiesehöfer. “You’m right.”

  “Please!” Thomas Wiesehöfer was running out of steam.

  “What’ll us do with ‘im, then?” The rich country voice behind the second torch also ignored his appeal.

  “Knock the bugger on the ‘ead an’ fill in the bloody ‘ole, I would, dummy1

  if I ’ad my way,” said the first speaker uncompromisingly.

  “Looks like someone’s already given ‘im one for starters. See ’is face there?”

  “Ah, I see’d it. Must ‘a done that when ’e went in. Serve ‘im right!” The first speaker was clearly unmoved by the state of their captive’s appearance. “Serve the bugger right!”

  Thomas Wiesehöfer decided to get angry. “You up there— do you not hear me? I haff fallen in this hole—you will help me out at once, please!”

  “Arr! So you fell into the ‘ole, did you now, Mister?” The first speaker echoed him unsympathetically. “An’ what was you doin‘

  out ’ere in the first place, eh?”

  “Poachin‘ on the Old Squire’s land, that’s Miss Becky’s now, mebbe?” The second speaker chuckled grimly. “Bloody foreigner—

  poachin’ on Miss Becky’s land! This’ll learn ‘im, then!”

  “What?” They were playing with him, the swine! “I do not understand—?”

  “Arr? Nor you don’t, don’t you?” The first speaker chipped in.

  “Well then . . . you just bide where you are, Mister—you just bide there—see?” The torch flashed out. “Keep clear of anyone we catches, is what they said—just make sure they stays where they are ‘til we can cast an eye on ’em—so that’s what us’ll do.”

  They? Damn them!

  “You down there—” the words descended through the darkness, which was once again complete “—I got a 12-bore an‘ I knows how to use it. So you stay quiet then . . . understand?”

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  Benedikt suddenly understood all too well. If the situation in the Chase was as Colonel Butler had believed it to be ... and everything which had happened to him confirmed that now beyond all doubt . . . then this trap had been built for a very dangerous animal, and the night-guards would have been warned to take no chances with it. Of course, being the amateurs they were, they had forgotten half their instructions immediately and had taken a careless look at their catch, chattering like monkeys; but now native caution had reasserted itself, edged with apprehension.

  So ... however Thomas Wiesehöfer might have reacted to that threat in all his injured innocence, Benedikt Schneider wasn’t about to argue with a shot-gun in the hands of a nervous peasant.

  Even the prospect of crossing swords at a disadvantage with Audley was to be preferred to that: here in England, with Colonel Butler as his last resort (however humiliating that might be, and more so than his present predicament), he could survive failure there. But a shot-gun was something else, and there would be no surviving that.

  So ... better to use what time he had to compose himself, and to rehearse the Wiesehöfer story, weak though it was.

  Audley wouldn’t believe it, of course. But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t accept it, if he judged the risk of turning the mysterious Wiesehöfer loose more acceptable than detaining him, which carried the equal risk of alerting whoever had sent him to—

  No. That was wishful thinking, because the risks weren’t equal—

  because he already knew too much about the Chase’s defences.

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  So Audley must detain him ... at least so long as he stuck to his Wiesehöfer cover . . . until the real target came into sight.

  Therefore, at the right moment, he would have to abandon Wiesehöfer for Schneider, in the role Colonel Butler had prepared for just such an emergency—

  Benedikt frowned in the darkness as the thought struck him that Colonel Butler might have reckoned all along that his tricky Dr David Audley would catch him. In which case—

  His ears, attuned to the slightest variation in the pattern of occasional sounds from above, caught something different, diverting him from further contemplation of the idea that Colonel Butler might have been playing a deeper game: someone else was whispering up there—but stretching his hearing to its limits he still couldn’t make out individual words, only the contrast of the new sound with the gravelly undertones of the two countrymen—it was softer, almost liquid . . .it was a sound which, if amplified, would become a clear, high-pitched cry, where theirs would become an Anglo-Saxon bellow.

  “Well now, let’s be seeing you then!”

  A light shone into Benedikt’s face, blinding him again. But it came from a different direction—the light came from one side of the pit, the voice from the other.

  “Easy now!” The voice tightened as Benedikt raised on£ hand to shade his eyes. “Let’s be seeing the other hand then, if you please!

  Because there’s a gun on you— slowly now—and I wouldn’t like for it to go off.”

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  Benedikt raised his other hand automatically.

  Kelly—


  The Irish voice was overlaid with years of English-speaking, but it was unmistakable.

  Gunner Kelly—

  “Please?” He packed the whole of Thomas Wiesehöfer into the appeal. “What is happening? I do not understand—?”

  “Of course you don’t.” Kelly agreed with him. “Mr Wiesehöfer, is it? Or Herr Wiesehöfer—so it is!”

  He hadn’t bargained on Gunner Kelly. With Audley he would have known where he was, but the old Irishman was an unknown factor.

  “Yes.” No—not quite an unknown factor, more an unexpected one at this stage of the confrontation; and he must not let mere surprise stampede him into error. The essential script still applied, subject only to appropriate amendment where necessary. “Who are you?”

  He sharpened his voice.

  Gunner Kelly— Michael Kelly, manservant to the late General Herbert George Maxwell—

  “Who am I?” The question seemed to surprise the Irishman.

  Who was he? Colonel Butler’s Special Branch officer had answered that all too sketchily, with the sort of facts a routine police inquiry might have unearthed about any honest citizen who had never tangled with authority until pure bad luck had placed him near the scene of a crime.

  Michael Kelly, born in Dublin 62 years ago, when Dublin had still dummy1

  been part of the still-mighty British Empire—

  “Who am I, you’re asking?” The note of surprise was edged with banter, as though it ought to be obvious to Thomas Wiesehöfer that such a question had no priority, coming from the bottom of a man-trap.

  Michael Kelly, formerly of Kelly’s Taxis in Yorkshire— but . . .

  Kelly’s Taxis was one broken-down Austin Cambridge until it ran off the road . . . but, much more to the point— formerly Royal Artillery, long-service enlistment—

  “Yes,” snapped Thomas Wiesehöfer stoutly, ignoring the reaction to his own question. “Are you the Police?”

  Silence.

  “Are you the Police?” Thomas Wiesehöfer, encased in the inadequate armour of injured and angry innocence, might take enough courage from that silence to repeat the question even more stoutly.

  “Am I the Pol-iss?” Incredulity. “The Pol-iss?” Derision. “Now, for why should I be the Poliss, in God’s name?” Derisive incredulity.

  What should Thomas Wiesehöfer do now—also in God’s name?

  Most likely he would not know what to do! And all Benedikt himself could think of was to consult his memory of Colonel Butler’s image of Gunner Kelly, based as it was more on the Colonel’s old soldier’s memory of old soldiers than on any precise and worthwhile intelligence about that man.

  “A long-service regular— twenty-one years. . . and the son of a dummy1

  soldier too . . . And mustered out in the same rank he started with.” (A curious softening of the expression there, at odds with the harsh bark: Colonel Butler recalling other faces from happier times?) “But don’t make the mistake of thinking him stupid, if you come up against him, Captain Schneider. You must have come up against the same type in the Wehrmacht— the old sweats who knew more about the service than you did, and knew what they wanted—

  the ones you tried to promote, who knew exactly how to lose their stripes short of a court-martial. . . If you could ever beat one of them at his own game you’d get the finest non-commissioned material of all— better than the ones who hungered for promotion, even . . . the villains, if you like— but it was St Paul who spread the Gospel to the Gentiles, remember— the biggest villain of all— not St Peter . . . So don’t you underestimate him, Captain . . . And an Irishman too— because with them it’s the heart they give, not the head, when they make the break: you can’t reason with them, and they’re ready for the best and the worst then— they’ll charge machine-guns head-on to save you, or they’ll shoot you in the back

  — and you ‘II never know which until it happens, because they’re what God made them, which is smarter than a cartload of monkeys, and not what you’d like them to be—”

  More silence. And then the movement of the man above, dislodging more of the surface above into the pit.

  “The Poliss—” Gunner Kelly’s voice lifted out of the hole as he delivered the words to those beside him “—would you believe that, now!”

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  Benedikt began to believe Colonel Butler’s theories absolutely.

  “You are not the Police?” But then a nasty thought dissolved his satisfaction: for where was David Audley? He should have been here by now, after the roar of that maroon. But he wasn’t—and this was therefore an unforeseen circumstance, in which Gunner Kelly might decide, heart over head, to “knock ‘im on the ’ead an‘ fill in the bloody ’ole”, with no more questions asked—that might be the easiest heart-way with an intractable problem.

  “Why should I be the Poliss, then?” The question came down to him challengingly, but reassuringly.

  Benedikt thought quickly. “You threaten me with guns— with firearms.” Only outraged innocence presented itself as a proper reaction. “By what right? You have no right to threaten me so!”

  “No right?” Kelly paused. “Rights, is it then? Well then, Mister—

  Mein Herr—you tell me by what right ye are on private property at this hour of the night, when every Christian man should be in his bed, with his loving wife beside him? Can you be telling me that, and I will be telling you about my rights in the matter then!”

  Anger for anger, he was being given. And how should poor Thomas Wiesehöfer react to that? He would be frightened, decided Benedikt instantly—he would be scared halfway to death, and not less so for being innocent.

  “But. . . but I do not know—I am lost in the darkness upon the hillside, and I saw a light—I do not know where I am!” he protested desperately. “What is this place?”

  Again no answer came back directly down to him. And that might dummy1

  mean the beginning of doubt up above . . . but, for sure, Thomas Wiesehöfer in his confusion would not be computing any such blessing: rather, far more likely, fear would be sharpening his wits

  —

  “Please—is this Duntisbury Royal?”

  Again there was no immediate answer, though this time he caught the soft murmur of whispering.

  “Is this Duntisbury Royal?” he repeated the question.

  “Ah . . . now how would you be knowing that then—if you do not know where you are?”

  “You know my name—you spoke my name . . . Please, if this is Duntisbury Royal, I wish to speak to Miss Rebecca Maxwell-Smith . . .or. . .to Mr— Dr. . . Dr David Audley—I am known to them, and they will speak for me.”

  The sounds from above increased, and someone stepping on the edge of the pit dislodged more debris on top of Benedikt just as he opened his mouth to repeat the request.

  He spluttered for a moment. “Please—I wish—”

  “Shut up and listen!” The Irishman cut him off. “There’s a ladder comin‘ down to you, Mister. But you come up easy now, an’ don’t try anythin‘ . . . Because there’ll be a light on you, an’ there’ll be a gun on you, an‘ him as holds the light won’t be him as holds the gun—do you take my meaning?”

  Benedikt took the Irishman’s meaning. “Yes.”

  The ladder came down with a slither and another miniature avalanche, but this time he was ready for the debris, with eyes and dummy1

  mouth closed. He fumbled in the dark for it, feeling quickly for the rungs with his foot before the Irishman could change his mind.

  “Easy now!” The moment he stepped off the ladder a hand grasped his arm tightly, swinging him round until he sensed that he was facing the pit again. A second later a flashlight from the other side of the pit blinded him. “Steady now!”

  They weren’t taking any chances: one push and he was back in the pit. He tensed against the pressure.

  Hands ran up and down him—they certainly weren’t taking any chances—practised hands, which knew where to look and how to loo
k through questing fingertips—trained hands, which were never those of any Dorset countryman. But he should have known that even without the soft Irish voice in his ear: Gunner Kelly was British Army-trained, and the British Army had kept up its skills over the years, searching black, brown and yellow as well as white for concealed weapons.

  “He’s clean.” Kelly completed his task by lifting Benedikt’s wallet, passport and spectacle-case from the inside breastpocket of the wind-cheater. “You can turn round, Herr Wiesehöfer.”

  There was something odd about the man’s voice. It varied slightly, oscillating between its native Irish brogue and the classless English which had been superimposed on it over two-thirds of the man’s lifetime: it was almost like listening to two different persons—the English-Irish soldier, trained and disciplined by his masters to automatic loyalty and obedience, and the soft-voice Irish boy who had crossed the sea all those years before, following his father in dummy1

  that hard service which had nevertheless consumed and conquered him at the last, turning him to vengeance.

  “Come on, then—follow the red light,” the voice commanded him, English-Irish.

  There were two lights: one, from a powerful flashlight, transfixed him; the other, a weaker blob of red, bobbed up and down ahead of him.

  “Joapey—you and Blackie cover this sector until you’re relieved.

  An‘ no lights, mind you!”

  Growl. “What we do that for? We got the bugger, ‘aven’t us?”

  “We got this bugger, sure. But suppose he’s just a scout—one of a matchin‘ pair of buggers?” The Irishman paused eloquently. “You get it through your head, Joapey—we’re not playin’ games on this one, like with the Squire’s keepers in the old days, an‘ you get a belt on the ear an’ a kick up the arse if you lose. This one . . . you get careless, you lose like the rabbit loses—you get your bloody neck stretched.”

  Growl. “I knows that. But you said they warn’t comin‘ yet, an’—”

  “I said I didn’t reckon on ‘em comin’ yet.” Curiously, the Irishmen echoed the man’s accent now, in a third voice unlike his other two.