Stephen and Vicky looked at each other.
“I know you don’t like being asked to do it. I know it must seem as if I was expecting you to perform some sort of trick. But don’t think of it like that. Think of it more as if you had some special kind of scientific instrument which I can’t get hold of. An electronic microscope, something like that. I’m asking you to use that instrument to give me information I can’t get on my own,” Price said quickly.
“I will if Stephen will,” Vicky said.
Stephen said, “All right.”
“Any idea how long it will take?” Price asked.
“No. We’ve never done it like this. Tried, I mean.”
“Suppose I leave you here in my office for the next hour? I’ve got to go along to look up something in the files. You can stay here. I’ll tell the switchboard to put my calls through somewhere else, so you won’t be disturbed.” He picked up a couple of files and left.
“I’m glad he left us alone,” Vicky said.
“I wouldn’t have tried if he’d been going to be sitting there watching us, would you?”
“Don’t know. If it was the only way I might’ve.”
“I feel stupid,” Stephen said, going over to the window and looking down at the road beneath.
“So do I. Someways it’s better when we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“I don’t feel as if anything would.”
“It’s got to! If they really might hurt that baby.”
“Perhaps he said that just to make us keen.”
“I thought he really was worried.”
Stephen continued to look out of the window.
“Do come and sit down, Stephen.”
“Why? It hasn’t ever mattered before what we were doing. You don’t have to be sitting down and concentrating.”
“You aren’t trying.”
Stephen said, “Oh, all right!” and sat down on one of the hard chairs opposite Vicky.
“Do you think we should hold on to the bits of the egg?”
“We can if you think we ought to.”
“And not talk.”
Twelve immensely long minutes passed. Vicky was sitting with her eyes shut most of that time. When at last she opened them, Stephen said, “It’s no use. I didn’t get anything and I’m sure you didn’t.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Well, then!”
“There’s still three-quarters of an hour left,” Vicky said looking at the synchronized electric clock on the wall.
“I can’t go on like that for that long.”
“I don’t think I’ve got the right sort of mind. I can’t go on thinking about anything all the time. I keep on thinking about other things. Silly. Like what we had for lunch,” Vicky said.
“I’m like that too. I kept on thinking about my Ma’s shopping this morning. She’d gone out to get some steak, and the butcher persuaded her to have pork instead, and she spent hours trying to decide how she could cook it so my father wouldn’t know the difference.”
“Why should he mind?”
“I daresay he wouldn’t if only she’d just tell him she’d changed her mind. Only she always starts by saying, Tm sorry, but. . . .’ You know. So then he thinks there’s something she ought to be sorry for and starts telling her off. Not exactly telling off, more explaining to her why she’s done the wrong thing again.”
“She ought to say she did it on purpose,” Vicky said.
“That’s what I’m always telling her.”
“Oh! I’d forgotten,” Vicky said, remembering.
“So had I.”
“Shall we try again?”
“I’ll tell you what I think, Vicky. I don’t think we ought to try. I think what’s wrong is, we’re looking at it too hard.”
“How do you mean?”
“When I first got the egg, it was all in pieces. I went on and on and on and I couldn’t even fit two pieces together. And then I stopped trying like that and just sort of sat and didn’t think about it, and it began to get into one piece again. I mean, it was my fingers doing it, of course, but I wasn’t telling them what to do, and it worked much better. I think that’s what we ought to be doing now. Not making it happen. More like letting it.”
“I know if you say we should sit still and make our minds a blank I won’t be able to. I tried once, when Chris wanted to do Yoga with one of her boy-friends and they tried to teach me. I kept on thinking of the most awful things. I wasn’t blank at all.”
“We won’t try to go blank. We’ll just not think about that.”
“How?”
“We could talk to each other.”
“What about?”
“Or, I’ll tell you what! We’ll play a game.”
“A game?”
“Animal, Vegetable and Mineral. You know, like they do on the radio. Twenty questions. You think of something and I have to guess what it is.”
“All right. If you think that’ll work.”
“You weren’t thinking about what was going to happen the other times, were you?”
“No. . . o. No, I wasn’t. I was talking to Chris.”
“Then?”
“All right.”
“You start.”
Vicky thought and then said, “Vegetable and mineral. I don’t think it’s got any animal in it.”
“Can you wear it?”
“Not exactly.”
“Have you got one?”
“I’ve got half a one.”
“What do you do with your half? I mean, is it useful?”
“Half isn’t. I mean, Chris and me have got one between us. Then it’s useful.”
“Where do you keep it, indoors or out of doors?”
“Indoors.”
“Can you carry it, or is it too heavy to lift?”
“Not heavy at all.”
“Do you use it in the kitchen?”
“No.”
“In the bathroom?”
“No.”
He went on asking. Vicky had forgotten to keep a count of his questions but finally they agreed he must have had more than twenty and he gave it up.
“An umbrella. That’s why we keep it indoors, but we don’t use it there.”
“What on earth made you think of an umbrella on a day like this?”
“Don’t know. Now you think of something.”
“Vegetable,” Stephen said.
“Can you eat it?”
“No.”
“Is it made into something? Or is it just a vegetable, like a tree?”
“It’s made into something.”
“It’s the egg!”
“You’re too quick. Yes, it’s the egg. . . .” He didn’t finish what he had been going to say because at that moment the flash happened.
Vicky was looking out through the windscreen of a car. Rain was lashing outside with such fury that she couldn’t see out at all. She heard a girl’s voice say, “Stop, Skinner, I’m frightened!” She was aware of two heads between her and the streaming windscreen, then suddenly the wipers came into action, the water cleared and she saw that the car was driving along a road that lay between chalky walls on one side, and on the other an angry grey sea, whitened with the storm of raindrops hitting up little spouts of spray as they struck its surface like arrows. The car swerved and Vicky shut her eyes. Then she opened them again and saw Stephen opposite and knew he’d been there too.
Thirty One
“It was the same girl. But, the back of her head looked different,” Stephen said.
“How different?”
“The one I saw saying that about the baby had a lot of hair. This one didn’t.”
“Short hair?” Price suggested.
“Almost as if she hadn’t got much. Sort of straggly, all ends and bits sticking up.”
“As if someone not very expert had cut it?”
“That’s right!”
“That’s probably just about what did happen. How about him?”
“I didn’t really see,” Vicky said.
“Did you get the impression from what you did see that it could be the same man?”
“I suppose so. He was the same sort of shape. Only this time he was wearing a hat.”
“That fits Purfitt. He doesn’t like showing his hair. The landlady in Edmonton said he wore a hat whenever she saw him.”
“She calls him Skinner.”
“It’s one of his nicknames.” She hadn’t known that. A further confirmation of this extraordinary story.
“Does it help?” Vicky asked.
“It could. This means they’ve left London for the coast. It’s a pity, of course, that such a lot of English coastline is chalk, practically the whole of the south from Kent to Weymouth. Still, it does give us something to go on. You didn’t happen, either of you, to notice anything else about the road? Whether there were street lamps? Was there a pier? An esplanade? Houses? A bus stop? Anything like that?”
“I don’t think there were any houses,” Vicky said.
“There wasn’t a pier or a proper esplanade. I don’t remember a bus stop,” Stephen said.
“Any cliffs in the distance? A lighthouse?”
“No. Just sea, I think.”
“Notice anything about the car? The dashboard, for instance? Any indication of the make?”
Stephen hadn’t, but Vicky said, “I don’t know if it helps, but I was sort of surprised how high up it was.”
“You mean the road? High above the sea? I thought you said. . . .”
“Not the road, the car. You know how when you’re in a car you don’t feel very high above the road? Well, this one was. You couldn’t have thought you could touch the ground with your feet.”
Price puzzled over this, half inclined to write it off as a piece of over-elaboration which he’d in a way invited, by asking too many questions, till Vicky said, “More like a bus.”
“That’s it! Ever been in a Land Rover?”
“Yes, like that! Only this wasn’t open at the sides like a Land Rover.”
“A van. A Commer Van. Or a Volkswagen. That’s what they’ve gone off in. Of course. That makes sense.”
“What are you going to do?” Stephen asked.
“Take your hint about the girl’s hair and change the description. Get them alerted all along the south coast. We’ll get them somehow, even if it means stopping every van between Axminster and Dover. Which side of the car was the sea, by the way?”
“On the left.”
“That means they’re heading west. Doesn’t tell us a lot, but it might give us a lead.”
“And the rain,” Vicky said.
“What about the rain?”
“It isn’t raining here.”
“You’re quite right. Now that might really tell us where they are. It was a sudden storm, you thought?”
“Because he hadn’t turned the wipers on. As if he hadn’t expected it and then couldn’t find the right switch.”
Price dialled a number on the telephone and asked for the meteorological reports for the south coast.
“You’ve forgotten something, though,” Stephen said.
“What?”
“I’m afraid the rain may not help. Because all this hasn’t happened yet.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“We’ve always seen it before, not after.”
“But it could happen any minute,” Vicky said.
“It was daylight, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Only not very light because of the rain.”
“So they might not have left London yet,” Price said, wondering whether it was worth putting a watch on all the exits to the south of the city and deciding that as a precaution he’d have to. Though what was he to tell his men to look out for? Any van driven by a young man in a hat? He didn’t know the make, the colour, the size. The girl very likely wouldn’t be visible either, she’d probably be kept in the back with the baby. At which point in his thoughts, Vicky asked, “Do you think the baby’s still all right?”
Price said gravely, “I hope so. One thing I’m thankful you’ve told me is that the girl’s still around. As long as they’ve got her, I think it’s probable they’ve got the baby. She’s just there to look after it for them, obviously. She’s not the sort of girl they’d take round otherwise.”
“But if she wasn’t there?”
“Then I would be very much afraid they might have decided the risks were too great and that they wouldn’t keep either of them, the girl or the baby.”
“But not give it back?”
“No.”
“But they want the money! They’ve got to have the baby to give back if they ask for the money again, haven’t they?” Vicky cried.
“It has been known that the ransom has been asked for and paid and the child hasn’t been returned. I don’t trust this lot. Especially after last night’s caper. That’s why we’ve got to find them. Before the baby comes to any harm.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Keep me informed of any. . . messages you get. I’ll leave it to you to get in touch with me, I shan’t keep bothering you. I’d only ask you to ring me fairly regularly—say twice a day, just to say you have or you haven’t anything to tell me.”
“Don’t you take any time off?” Stephen asked, surprised. “Not when I’ve a case like this on my hands. I daren’t,” Price said, thinking of James Henry Purfitt, whose record showed he’d as soon use violence as not, careering along the south coast with a dim-witted girl and a baby, either of whom he might at any moment decide would be better out of the way. It wasn’t a pretty thought. He only hoped that at least the bastard knew how to drive.
Thirty Two
They drove on and on. Maureen’s eyelids kept on dropping, then she’d wake up again with a start as the van jerked and Skinner muttered bad words. She’d had a terrible night. Skinner had been out and not come in till it was nearly morning. Then he hadn’t been to bed, he’d told her they’d got to get off as soon as Bus brought the van round. Maureen said, “What van?” but Skinner didn’t answer. He almost never did. When Bus’d come with the van, she’d heard him say to Skinner, “Smithy says to keep going. He’s going to have another try and you’ve to be ready to hand over the goods.” It meant nothing to Maureen. She’d just put the carry-cot in the back like she was told to, and got into the front seat, when she saw Bus wasn’t coming with them. And here they were, hours later, still going through endless streets, all looking to Maureen just the same. Once she said, “Where we going, Skinner?” but he didn’t answer until she’d asked a lot of times. Then he said, “You’ll know when we get there, won’t you?” Another time she said, “I didn’t know you could drive, Skinner,” and he’d said, “Anyone can drive.” But from the way the van jerked about and other drivers leaned out of their cars and swore at him, Maureen didn’t think he could have learned very long.
Presently they started seeing more trees and things. Fields, houses with big gardens. It was like country. The sun was shining very bright and Maureen cheered up a bit. She was glad to be out of the basement with the beetles, and Fred and his mother. Perhaps they’d go to lodgings again and there’d be someone to talk to and the telly to watch. She’d like that. She felt a bit braver and she asked, “We going to stay in rooms again?”
“No,” Skinner said.
“Where’ll we stay, then?”
“In the van.”
“How can we? At nights and everything? Where’ll we sleep?”
“You’ll see.”
“We don’t have to stay in the van all the time, do we, Skinner? We’ll go out for our meals, won’t we?”
“You won’t,” Skinner said.
“I’ll have to get Linda’s feeds warm,” Maureen said, feeling that no one could deny this.
“You’ll do that in the van, too.”
“Won’t I ever get out?”
Skinner didn’t answer that and Maureen asked it again.
“You
won’t if you want to stay alive,” he said then.
“Won’t there be anyone else? Only you and me and Linda all the time?”
He imitated her voice. “Only me and you and Linda. That’s all. And if you aren’t careful it’ll end up only me. Got it?”
It wasn’t even so much the words that made Maureen really frightened. She’d felt, like an animal, the threat of people under pressure, frightened themselves and therefore dangerous, while she’d been in Fred’s mother’s house. Now, from Skinner she could almost smell fear and violence. For the first time since she’d taken over the baby, she felt mortally afraid. Not just afraid of being hit, but afraid for her life. For the first time since they’d left London she dimly began to think about escape.
But Maureen’s brain wasn’t the sort which occupies itself with plans for anything, even at such a moment. Anyway, what could she do now, in the van, with Skinner right beside her and the baby in the back? And she was very, very tired. Before they were more than ten miles outside Greater London, Maureen slept.
She woke once or twice, generally when the van pulled up abruptly and she was thrown forward with a jerk. Once her head fell sideways on to Skinner’s shoulder and he pushed it off. Once when she couldn’t see in front of her, the windscreen looked like the window in a bathroom that you weren’t meant to be able to see through. When she’d realized the van was still moving, she’d said, “Stop, Skinner, I’m frightened!” But he hadn’t stopped, though she could feel the van skidding about. He’d pulled at the knobs in front of him and then the wipers began to sweep across the windscreen and she could see out again. To her surprise they were right away from houses, there was just a big white sort of wall on one side, and on the other something grey and white and heaving and a whole lot of it. It took Maureen a minute to realize that this was the sea. She’d seen the sea several times when she’d gone with the school on days’ outings, but she’d never seen it look like this before, so restless and angry it made her own stomach heave to look at it. She said, “Are we going to the seaside, Skinner?” but as usual he didn’t answer, and after she’d looked at it for a bit they came to some houses and he turned away from the sea. They drove through a sort of town and past a church that had a clock on the tower and Maureen saw it was nearly four o’clock. This reminded her about the breakfast she hadn’t had, and now the lunch. She’d have to give Linda her feed too. Skinner must have been hungry, because without her saying anything he drew up just past the shops and got out of the van. He said, “I’m getting something to eat. You stay there. If you move or say anything I’ll do you.” Maureen sat quite still and didn’t speak to anyone, and in five minutes Skinner was back with fish and chips and bottles of fizzy stuff and some chocolate. He drove a bit further till they were out of the town on a road that went a long way up a hill, and then he pulled up in a side road and they ate the food, and he let Maureen go out to go behind a bush which she needed terribly. The awful rain had nearly stopped by now.
The Chinese Egg Page 21
