‘What about her?’ said Usher.
‘She’ll keep. You’re not going anywhere are you, my dear?’
A final kick in the ribs and they were gone. She heard a key turn in the door; it seemed an unnecessary precaution; she had no intention of ever moving again.
Minutes ticked by. At least she assumed they did. She had no machinery, internal or external, for measuring their ticking.
She sat up. It was unpremeditated. It did not feel like a physical act at all. It would not have surprised her to find she was having one of those out-of-the-body experiences and would soon find herself floating around the ceiling, looking down at her own poor battered frame.
A stab of pain from her spine to her head persuaded her she was still inside that poor battered frame. This time she made a decision to stand up. It was not quite as effective as the previous unpremeditated move, but she finished up on her feet, leaning on the kitchen table.
What now? She thought of shouting, tried it, decided not to bother. At best that pathetic squeak was going to bring either Ashburton or Usher in to shut her up permanently.
But whoever was out there had to be warned. Did they know the cottage was occupied or were they merely coming up here on spec? Or perhaps they had no interest whatsoever in the cottage; perhaps some perfectly innocent stranger was going to be sucked into this mess.
Whatever the case, any chance she had of survival must rest with whoever was out there.
She launched herself from the table and reeled across to the sink. Her left leg did not seem to have any feeling at all and her right had a great deal too much. She took hold of the square of flowered curtain and pulled it aside. No welcome light flowed in, not even the pale glimmer of night sky. Of course the shutters were up, those impenetrable metal shutters with which Trent had kept out any casual thief who might disturb his plans.
No wonder Ashburton had been happy to lock her in here.
At least she might find herself a weapon. She dragged open the drawer in the old wooden unit which boxed in the sink. Memory dragged open too. Nothing had changed since last she had looked. A plastic spatula, a wooden spoon, a tin opener, and most ferocious of all, a cheap, flimsy knife and fork which would not need Yuri Geller to bend them.
She slid to the floor, partly in despair, partly to look in the cupboard under the sink. Nothing had changed here either. One small saucepan and three spare cylinders of gas for the cooker. She slumped forward and let her head rest on the smooth, cool, dully shining surface of the cylinders. Why couldn’t they be bombs? she thought in the crazy fantasy of despair. They looked like bombs, why couldn’t a merciful God turn them into real bombs?
Suddenly she opened her eyes and jerked upright so fast she cracked her head on the roof of the cupboard. She ignored what was after all only a fractional increase in pain and revelled in a huge increase in illumination.
Bombs? Who needed a merciful God? Of course these cylinders were bombs! Her intuition had been right. Her craziness lay in denying it. Weren’t they full of gas and wouldn’t gas explode?
But how? But how?
She tried to drag one of the cylinders out of the cupboard but in her weakened state could hardly move it. That was no use. But yet again she realized that she was not thinking straight, or perhaps was not thinking laterally, which was more like it. The cylinders were in an ideal spot already, in a confined space beneath the heavy sink but with plenty of cracks in the cupboard for gas to seep slowly through.
She grasped at the wheel which controlled the valve on the nearest one and tried to turn it. Nothing happened. She tried again. Again nothing.
Oh Christ, she thought; am I being the stupid little woman who doesn’t even know how to change a fuse? Let me think. Which way to open, which way to shut?
She concentrated on the thought of shutting off and turning on central heating radiators. Anti-clockwise to open. And that indeed was what she had been doing here!
The triumph of being right gave her fingers new strength. She turned, the wheel moved. Again, and gas was hissing out.
The others were easier. She rose, and closed the cupboard. Then, using the remnants of her new-found strength, she dragged the table across and wedged it as tight as it would go against the cupboard door.
Now what? To her surprise, she knew exactly what. She turned the jets in the oven on and closed the door. Then she switched on one gas ring, struck a match from the box which lay on the windowsill, and lit it.
Eventually something must happen. She did not know how long it would be or how devastating. Perhaps it would be too late, or perhaps it would be too feeble. It did not matter. She had done her best. There was nothing more to do.
For the first time it occurred to her that if the effect were devastating, she would be the nearest thing to be devastated. Did it matter? Probably not. Samson must have felt like this when he got hold of the temple pillar.
Me Samson! she laughed. Then she became indignant with herself.
I should think not! He was a thick macho thug who got stitched up by a clever woman. What would Delilah have done?
The answer was not pleasant, but the longer she looked at it, the more she could see it was the only answer.
Also the longer she looked at it, the more chance there was it would not do her any good anyway.
She staggered back to the freezer.
First thing was to turn it off. At least she would not freeze to death.
Second thing was to fix it so it would not lock itself on her.
She examined the handle and the catch, recalled reading that burglars did things with plastic credit cards but could not remember exactly what, and in any case she was right out of credit cards. Sod it! – she would just have to use a simple wedge and hope for the best.
She tore off her blouse, twisted it into a shank, knotted it round the freezer door handle and stepped inside.
It was quite ingenious. By pulling on the blouse she could bring the door shut tight enough to give her some protection while at the same time the thick shank of cloth prevented the door from locking her in. She felt the pride of real achievement. Whatever else they said about her, they would have to admit she had been clever in this.
Now there was nothing to do but wait. At first she relaxed her hold on the blouse so that a crack of light ran round the door.
Then she started thinking about gas seeping in here with her and the possible effect when it finally ignited. This made her pull the door shut as hard as possible till the thin line of light vanished.
She was shivering violently. She assured herself it had nothing to do with terror. Even though the freezer was switched off, the residual temperature was incredibly low and without even the flimsy protection of the blouse her upper body was trembling with cold. How she longed now for that insulating flab which years of Viennese cream cakes had layered her with.
No I don’t! she told herself sharply. All those layers of insulation, physical, emotional, economic, I’m better off without them! I’m like an old mural that’s been coated by time and decorators and improvers till it’s become an almost impossible task to strip off the addenda and reveal the original. Well, it may not be a masterpiece they’ve thinned me down to, but by God, it’s genuine!
But such defiant thoughts can only be sustained by any but the most self-important for a short while and Trudi soon found herself slipping into a frivolous rehearsal of her appearance before the great Judgment Throne in the sky where, asked how she had spent her last moments on earth, she replied, ‘Shut in a freezer, waiting for a bang!’
Which was a long time coming.
She could not resist opening the door a fraction to take a peep.
Simultaneously she heard someone unlocking the kitchen door.
Oh no! she prayed. Not this! Not anti-climax. I’ve come so far, I’ve done so well. Don’t take it all away from me now!
The door opened. Through her crack she saw Usher appear, his automatic still in his hand. In other circum
stances the drama-school look of disbelief which twisted his face would have been comic. He peered twice around the room, then shouted, ‘Ashburton, for Christ’s sake, the bitch has gone!’
A moment later the little solicitor appeared.
‘Gone? That’s impossible,’ he said.
His sharper eyes turned at once to the freezer and he laughed.
‘Not gone,’ he said. ‘Just rehearsing the next stage, I think. Get back out there and keep watch. I’ll take care of this.’
He began to advance, but Usher was now also looking at what was there rather than simply at what was not.
‘What’s that table doing over there?’ he said. ‘And why’s that burner on?’
Ashburton halted and looked towards the cooker. Suspicion pinched his face like frost.
‘Oh you cunning little bitch!’ he cried, as his sharp solicitor’s mind leapt to a conclusion.
He turned towards the freezer once more, his eyes promising vicious retribution. Then realizing that for once he had got his priorities wrong, he turned back towards the cooker and hurried forward to switch off the burner.
Those two seconds’ delay were fatal. His fingers reached the tap but they never turned it off. Trudi, leaning back in the freezer and pulling on her blouse with all her might in a last doomed effort to shield herself from Ashburton’s rage, heard the explosion like the roar of a space shot and felt its impact on the metal box like the force-waves from a rocket labouring from the gantry.
The first explosion was followed by a second large one. Perhaps the oven had gone first, then the cylinders in the cupboard. Trudi started to shriek. She knew that shrieking could do no good but she felt like shrieking and did not see why she should not indulge herself this once.
After the explosions and after the shock-waves came a silence. At least here in the freezer it was silent. She stopped screaming to listen to the silence. It was also dark, absolutely dark. And she realized that she was no longer pulling on the shank formed from her blouse, but holding it loose in her hands. She ran her fingers down till she came to the frayed charred end.
She pressed her palms against the door and pushed. Nothing happened. She pushed again and it was like pushing at a wall of rock. She was beginning to feel like shrieking once more. Oh for weight! Oh for strength! Samson, I’m sorry for bad-mouthing you like that! she gasped internally.
And flinging her whole body against the door, she felt it give, then slowly peel back from its magnetic strip and tumble like a gangplank straight before her.
It was early morning. A star-spattered sky was beginning to flush a pale peach at its cloudy edges. Birds, momentarily stilled by the rowdy human competition, picked up their parts again and resumed their song. All this was visible and audible through the ragged gap in the wall where the sink and cooker had been. There were flames too and a bit of smoke but nothing to bother a traveller newly returned from the Underworld. Besides, these old stone houses did not offer much sustenance for a greedy fire. But it seemed like a good idea to leave it to its feasting.
She walked forward, slowly, painfully, concentrating on keeping upright and not looking at the two sack-like objects her peripheral vision kept on insinuating into the corner of her eye. She got the impression that one of them had an old pot sink on top of it with a pair of little feet protruding like the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. The trouble with people who got what they deserved was their tendency to hang around afterwards and make you sorry about it.
She was out of the house now and standing knee-deep in damp grass. She breathed deeply. It was the best breath she had ever taken in her life. It was the best sky, the best birdsong, the best damp grass. There were people running towards her, voices shouting. Their figures and voices were both obscured by the morning mist. Funny, she hadn’t noticed the morning mist before.
Just before it came billowing up to smother completely her eyes and ears, she recognized the approaching figures as James and Jan. But when she opened her mouth to greet them, that let the mist right into the centre of her being and they were scarcely in time to catch her as she fell.
Part Nine
Still thou art blest, compar’d wi me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear.
BURNS: To a Mouse
1
For the next forty-eight hours Trudi swam in and out of consciousness, like a dolphin soaring briefly through air before vanishing again into the sea.
It was partly the sedatives the doctors gave her, but choice played a large part too. She enjoyed those turquoise depths as long as they held nothing but shells and bones and silence.
Janet grabbed her on one of her forays above the surface.
‘I had another couple of drinks after you left the hotel,’ she said. ‘All right, I let one of them toad-faces buy! I didn’t feel like driving home just then. And suddenly I looked up and saw James coming into the bar. He told me you’d left a message on his machine saying you were here, I told him you’d gone off to his place. We soon got ourselves into a real tizzy, I tell you. We got into his car and went looking. Hope House, Class-Glass, round and round. Nothing. I rang Ashburton, thinking he might have seen you after you left. When he didn’t answer either, I didn’t know what to think. He was such a little weed, you couldn’t really think any harm of him, could you, girl? Shows how wrong I usually am about men, doesn’t it? It was then I went to the police. Not that they showed much interest, asked if you’d been drinking, asked if I’d been drinking! Sauce. James got a bit of a grip of them but I couldn’t see them doing much before daylight. It was then I thought of Well Cottage. Seemed a long shot, but there was nothing else to shoot at, was there, girl? So out we came. When we saw a car parked outside, we started scouting around like a pair of Indians, I tell you. Then boom! suddenly war breaks out, the place goes up like a bomb. And then, like a bloody miracle it was, out of that hole in the wall, through the smoke and the flames, you come walking like you’re strolling over the lawn at a garden party. You were smiling, girl, bloody well smiling! I could have wept.’
Trudi smiled again and slipped back under. There were a couple of wrecks down there this time, old lives lying on their sides with their bare ribs open to the waters, the fish, and any curious mermaid.
James Dacre caught her next.
‘Trudi,’ he said. ‘Darling. I was wild with worry. I should never have left you by yourself. It’s not going to happen again, I promise you that. Trudi, I love you, I really do. Say you’ll marry me, say it!’
But Trudi was away with a back-flip and speeding down cliffs of pink coral in search of sunken treasure.
When she next broke surface, Herr Jünger was sitting by the bed.
‘Guten Tag, Frau Adamson,’ he said heavily. ‘A few points to clear up.’
She did not want to hear more but submerged instantly. Only this time the water seemed darker and not so warm as it had been, and something came floating slowly along, tumbled by invisible currents and nuzzled by hungry fish, and as it rolled by her she saw it was the body of Gerhardt Jünger.
She burst back into the air, gasping for breath.
Jünger did not seem to have noticed her absence. ‘Schiller-Reise is in the control of the courts and has ceased to do business,’ he was saying. ‘Most of its executives are in police custody for interrogation, as are several of its foreign representatives in their particular countries. It will be a long job to sort out the innocent from the guilty. Meantime we will assume they are all implicated equally.’
‘That’s a large assumption,’ said Trudi.
‘You think so? I found no problem with it,’ said Jünger, genuinely puzzled.
‘In England, things are done differently.’
‘You tell me so?’
Jünger glanced across the bed and Trudi realized for the first time tha
t Inspector Workman was in the room also. He smiled and nodded at her.
Jünger said, ‘In your statement, you said that Ashburton definitely implicated Dr Werner.’
Trudi was amazed. She had no recollection of having made a statement. Clearly there had been other visits to the surface which had gone unrecorded in her mind. But not, it seemed, in Jünger’s notebook.
‘What has happened to Werner?’ she asked.
‘He went suddenly on a study visit to South America,’ said Jünger gloomily.
‘What? No assumption of guilt?’
‘We had no evidence of direct links with the Schiller organization, only suspicion,’ said Jünger. ‘And your husband had been most assiduous in his refusal to implicate him.’
‘I suppose he thought that once he did that, you would wind the whole thing up, including him,’ mocked Trudi. ‘Perhaps he didn’t trust you. I can’t say I blame him.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ve misled me pretty consistently, haven’t you?’ she accused.
‘We were not sure of your rôle,’ he said unapologetically.
‘And you’re sure now?’
He didn’t answer and Trudi laughed. ‘So you can be honest, Herr Jünger. You really did think I knew where the money was, the twelve million! Well, I didn’t, and I don’t. Do you?’
Jünger said, ‘It is possible Werner found out. It is possible it is in South America and he intends to buy himself security there.’
‘Tell me, Herr Jünger, what would have happened to all that money if you had recovered it?’
Jünger looked at her in surprise and said, ‘It would have been confiscated by the State, naturally.’
‘And the State would have done what with it?’
‘Surely you know what states do with money, Mrs Adamson?’ said Workman, speaking for the first time.
‘With twelve million? Well, the British State would probably buy an American missile, or build another motorway for Eurojuggernauts, or give the top twelve hundred earners ten thousand pounds’ worth of tax relief each.’
Death of a Dormouse Page 26
