Or had she? He’d been back again today. He’d come just when she was meaning to go off to the Knightsbridge place, and she’d been in a fever to get rid of him. He seemed as if he would stay for ever. It had been almost as if he suspected she wasn’t telling the truth. He’d asked her again and again, “Are you sure you haven’t had another demand for money?” She’d had to keep on saying No. He’d said, “You know, if they asked you to take any action without telling anyone, say your husband or us, it could be dangerous. We’re dealing with a very ugly crowd. I don’t think there’s anything they’d stick at.” If he meant to frighten her for herself, he’d taken the wrong line by saying that. If there was nothing they’d stick at, what about Caroline Ann? What would they do to Caroline Ann if Andrew went on refusing to pay up? So she’d just said politely that she did understand and that of course she wasn’t going to do anything silly, and would he excuse her, she’d got an appointment to keep. The moment she’d got rid of him she’d been on her way to Knightsbridge.
Damn! She was going too fast again. And the minute hand on her watch still only just after the hour. She was passing the Heston Services, she’d be at the Henley exit in another quarter of an hour. Fifteen minutes to get into Henley and out the other side. There was a fair amount of traffic on the road, you expected that on a Friday night, but it was too late for the rush hour at the end of the office day and too early for the theatre crowd. She might have to find somewhere in Henley where she could have coffee. She wouldn’t drink anything stronger, she must have her wits as sharp as they could be. Would that count as hanging about? No, she didn’t know a soul in Henley, and if anyone remembered afterwards seeing her there, it wouldn’t matter because by that time she’d have Caroline Ann. Andrew was going to be late tonight, he’d got a business dinner out of town that didn’t start till nine. That meant he couldn’t possibly be back before midnight, probably later. She’d be back long before he was, and when she’d explained why she’d taken the picture and her furs and the rings and things, and shown him Caroline Ann, he’d see that she’d been right, he’d be glad. What did furs and pearls and pictures matter, anyway, compared with Caroline Ann? She’d get the picture back for him anyway if he wanted it.
She wouldn’t think about the possibility that she might come back without either the money or the baby. Price had said to her, “You do know, don’t you, that with this sort of criminal you can’t trust what they promise? They’re quite capable of taking the money and not handing over your baby.” But Sally wouldn’t listen to this, except to say inside herself that it was a risk she had to take. If there was the smallest chance of getting Caroline Ann back she was going to take it.
She reduced her speed again.
But all those warnings had made her extra cautious. She didn’t want to find she’d been followed. Price might have taken it into his head to have all her movements watched. So she’d told the man on duty outside the house that her husband was out that evening and she was going to drive out to her mother’s outside London. She’d be back late. And when she’d set off she’d gone round-about, not straight on the M4, looking all the time to make sure no police car was following her. Several times she’d pulled up and watched the traffic go past. When she felt safe, she drove out west. She’d rung her mother and said she was on her way, but she was having trouble with the car and might not be able to make it. She meant to ring again later and say she’d had to stop in a garage and wouldn’t be able to get there. Then if the police checked on the story, there’d be nothing to make them suspicious. The only precaution she hadn’t taken was to change cars. She was driving her own little Fiat. But she didn’t think Price even knew about it, it had been in the double garage each time he’d been to the house. She hadn’t taken it out once in all this dreadful week. She couldn’t think of anything she’d done wrong.
After she’d got off the motorway, there was more traffic and she had to slow up a lot. She didn’t get into Henley until a quarter to ten. She parked in the space by the side of a hotel on the river and went in and asked for coffee, but when it came, she couldn’t drink it, just the smell made her feel sick. She went to the loo and then got back in the car again. She was shaking so much she could hardly start it up and pull on to the road. It was dark, of course. She was terrified of missing the turning, she’d better leave and risk being a minute or too early. She was out of town, was driving on a country road again. No trees near at hand yet. Uphill, then the road straightened out between hedges. She must have gone at least three miles. The trees were closing in over her head before she realized. Her headlights lit up the silvery boles of smooth beech trunks. Above were the flat, layered branches, fat buds just beginning to leaf. She was going very slowly now, looking to her right all the time. A clock very far away tolled the hour, and she panicked. She was late, they’d have gone, she’d never see Caroline Ann again. She increased her speed and at that moment saw the sign. Mocking End mile. She turned, the trees closed out all light from the sky, the wheels crunched on stones and grit.
She saw the headlights of the stationary car ahead of her and drew to a halt. She took the packet in her hand and got out of the car. A voice called, “Dim your lights, can’t you?” She reached back into the car and turned the headlights down. Then she started walking towards the stationary car, dazzled by the light coming from it, unable to see. She held the packet out in front of her. Her lips were forming words, she was talking almost out loud. “It’s all I can get. I promise you shall have the rest. I promise. . . I promise Give me my baby!”
Whoever was in the car with the blazing lights sat very still, very quiet. She was coming near it now. The wood was very quiet.
Suddenly she heard something else. Very quiet, but unmistakable, the sound of wheels on the unmade road in front of her, beyond the other car. Immediately there was a tumult, the engine of the other car roared into life, someone shouted, there was a shot, two shots, and the other car came racing towards her. She jumped sideways and fell, scratching her face on a tangle of briars. The car flashed past, grazed her Fiat and roared out on to the main road. She heard another engine start up and go in pursuit. She got up shakily and began to walk back towards her own car. She was crying, gasping for breath, the packet was still in her hand.
A voice called out, “Mrs. Wilmington? Stay where we can see you, will you?” Not one of Them. Price appeared out of nowhere on the side of the track and came up to her and took her arm.
“Did they hit you?”
“No. I jumped. Just scratches, that’s all.”
“If it’s any comfort to you, we don’t think they had your baby there,” he said gently.
“How did you. . .? I didn’t tell anyone. How did you guess?”
“I’ll explain everything. Now we’d better get you home. Do you think you can drive?” He looked at her. “No. I’ll get one of my men to take your car back. You’d better come in the other one with me.”
He was very good. He only once said, “I told you so,” and Sally was too exhausted and too miserable to offer any defence.
Thirty
Price blamed himself for the shambles the evening had been. There had been one serious mistake after another. If only he’d had more time, so that he might have set up a proper monitoring system to cover all Mrs. Wilmington’s movements, then he’d have got his ambush posted on site before those bastards arrived and he’d have copped the lot. If only she, Mrs. W., hadn’t lied to him when he tried to get her to tell him about a further ransom demand. If only—and he’d no one but himself to blame here—if only he’d believed those children and forced the truth out of her. But a policeman’s natural scepticism and caution had obliged him to go round checking up and verifying. If only he hadn’t been thrown off the scent by finding no record on the monitored telephone line of any such conversation. That had brought back all his doubts about the children’s story. It was only late on Friday afternoon that he’d seen the possible significance of one of Thursday’s phoned messages: wo
uld Mrs. Wilmington ring a number, 148-394X at twelve o’clock midday. He checked and, of course, it was a call box. How did they know she’d ring from outside the house? Because she had a standing appointment with her hairdresser at that time on Thursdays. Too easy to check that she was going that day.
Price groaned. There were brains behind this operation. It wasn’t just an amateur effort.
By the time he’d worked that out, and got a grudging admission from the manager of her bank that though professional discretion forbade him to give any information concerning the private affairs of a client, if the Chief Superintendent stated that Mrs. Wilmington had inquired about drawing out a large sum in cash, he wouldn’t categorically deny it—by the time all the tiresome, long-winded business of checking was done and he knew that the children were right, she’d given them the slip. Drove off in her little Fiat towards the middle of London and was lost. He put out a call to every man on duty to look out for the car, but it was too easy to miss. If only the children’s account could have given him some idea of what direction she’d be heading for! But a quiet road with beeches could describe a hundred places within driving distance of Kensington. Even when they’d had their first piece of luck and had a report of the car on the M4, there were too many exits to guard with no time at all to get the men there. Then she’d been spotted coming out of Henley and they had a car following her as soon as possible, but not soon enough. They’d lost her on the Oxford Road, it was only chance that Potter had seen the headlights blazing through the trees and thought it was worth having a look. Of course, coming in without proper precautions like that they hadn’t a hope of surprising them, it was just a question of catching them in the resulting chase, and they hadn’t even succeeded in that. Potter had said they drove like devils and someone in the car must know the country round there backwards. Probably lived there as a kid. Twisting roads, high hedges, everything to make it as difficult as possible for even an experienced police driver who didn’t know the roads. They’d got clear away, and he was no nearer getting them. Nothing. Not a bloody thing to go on. He just hoped the girl Vicky had been right too about their not having the baby with them. If they had had, he wouldn’t give much chance for its hope of survival. That sort of crowd weren’t too particular what they did when they got frightened. And they’d missed getting the money as well. It looked black for the Wilmington baby. What the hell was he going to do next?
It was ten o’clock. He’d only had a couple of hours’ sleep before coming to the office, and he was dead tired, but he couldn’t rest.
He read a report from the woman who’d been investigating the Brady Drive angle. A girl answering to the description given by Mrs. Plum had lived at number 26 but had left a few weeks before. Name, Maureen Hollingsworth. Had been living with a father and young stepmother. When interviewed, the stepmother said that Maureen wasn’t very bright. As far as she knew she’d never been in any sort of trouble with the police. She and Maureen hadn’t got on too badly. They didn’t have much to say to each other, that was all. She thought Maureen hadn’t liked her father marrying someone who wasn’t all that much older than she was herself. Maureen hadn’t left as the result of a quarrel, she’d just said one day she was going to share a flat with a friend and she’d walked out. No, she hadn’t thought it was all that funny. Maureen was eighteen, she had a right to go where she wanted. She’d thought the friend was probably a boy-friend, because Maureen suddenly started getting a lot of new clothes, things she’d never have bought herself. Also she stopped moaning about never being asked out by boys. Before she’d left she’d been out most evenings, sometimes not come back all night. Maureen’s father had said he wasn’t worried either. Maureen was old enough to look after herself. The policewoman had got the impression that both of them were glad to have the place to themselves and weren’t anxious to try to find the girl or even to know what had happened to her. The father explained that she was a bit slow and that Kitty got impatient with her sometimes. He’d kept on saying that it wasn’t natural for a girl of that age to want to stay at home. He seemed to think it quite natural that she should go off and not tell them where, or ever come back to see them.
A name, that was all. She’d worked in Woolworth’s but no one there knew anything about her. She hadn’t made any friends there. One girl had heard her boasting about a boy-friend who had plenty of money, but she hadn’t believed it. “She wasn’t the kind of girl who’d get a fellow with lots of money.” A photograph of Maureen, a poor snapshot taken some years earlier, provided by her father, seemed to confirm this.
Price picked up the telephone and dialled the number of the Rawlinson house. It was a woman who answered. He asked for Stephen and heard her calling his name. Then Stephen’s voice. “Hullo?”
“It’s Superintendent Price speaking. I want to ask you a favour.”
He could hear Stephen’s surprise. “What?”
“Could you and Vicky Stanford come to the Yard?”
“I can. I could find out about Vicky. When?”
“As soon as possible. This morning if you can.”
“I’ll go round to Vicky straight away. If she’s not at home, do you want me alone, or. . .?
“No. I want the two of you. I’m going to ask you to do some of your magic.”
Stephen didn’t care for the word magic and said stiffly, “Did anything happen about the last one?”
“It certainly did. I’ll tell you when I see you. And. . . .”
“What?”
“I shall be really grateful if you two can help me.”
It was an apology for his past disbelief.
“I’ll have to take the egg with me. Vicky must have her bit too,” Stephen thought.
Price recognized that they were touchy, uncertain of their status as young adults, embarrassed by their inexplicable power of seeing forwards as well as backwards, suspicious of him as an expert and an authority. He also felt today a shift in their own relationship; something not firmly established, perhaps not even conscious, but there was a solidarity of purpose, an awareness of each other that hadn’t been there, he’d swear, the first time he’d met them. In no time at all they would know they were in love, he thought, and he envied them a good deal and pitied them a little. He wondered how they’d deal with it when they knew. Judging by the general opinion of how young people went about things nowadays, he supposed they might be in bed with each other within hours of the discovery, and he hoped if it happened like that, they’d be good for each other and that no one would get hurt too much. Both of them were sensitive and intelligent, love for boys and girls like this was a dangerous game. The odd thing was that however much you ached, you didn’t wish it had never happened. What an old cynic he was, thinking first of the pain and ignoring the sudden irradiation of joy which could accompany the realization that you were loved in turn! Like a rocket exploding out of the dark night. The feeling of being, for the first time, alive down to the most insignificant cell of your body and to the shadow of every thought. You were weightless, you flew, your feet skimmed the ground, you were so blessed you felt you had only to look at a sick person and you would heal them. He himself had felt all that when Laurie had said she loved him. And when she left him, he’d been through the consequent hell.
He came back to the present. He was treating them with extreme seriousness and a politeness which he hoped wasn’t exaggerated. They’d arrived in his office just before midday, and after telling them about the events of the night before—the events which had so completely proved them right—he took them out to lunch in the snack bar portion of a Westminster pub much patronized by politicians. There weren’t many of those around on a Saturday, but he was able to point out one well-known face and to tell a few anecdotes about other figures in the public view. He could feel that his methods were succeeding. Both the boy and the girl became more relaxed, let down the barriers they’d put up. By the end of the meal they were both talking naturally about ordinary things; they asked him abou
t his job, and he was careful to answer seriously. He told them about the slog that goes into detective work, the detailed, boring drudgery that has to be put in behind every brilliant guess and intuitive response. “That’s where I went wrong yesterday. I should have accepted your story and acted on it straight away. Instead of which I went round checking, like a mole burrowing underground when what he’s in search of is daylight,” he said. He knew that to admit that he’d been in the wrong would reassure them and make them more accessible for what he wanted them to do.
Back in the office he told them what this was.
“We’re stuck. Those devils got away last night and they’ll have been properly frightened off. We’ve no idea where to look, even. If they’re in London, they could be anywhere and there’s nothing to prevent them just sitting tight in the house of one of their friends who won’t give them away. They won’t risk going into lodgings again. We’ve got their descriptions and the pictures, but a change of clothes or of hairstyle could make them virtually unrecognizable. There must be hundreds of thousands of young couples with babies. We can’t check up on them all.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Will you try if you can see them? If you could just tell me what they look like now, it’d be an immense help. If you knew where they are, of course, that’d be even better. And I want to know about that baby. I haven’t told its mother but I’m seriously concerned about its safety. After last night they might do anything. I don’t know, you see, whether they’ll risk another demand for money. And if they aren’t expecting to get the money now, the baby becomes a liability. They don’t need to keep it alive.”
The Chinese Egg Page 20
