“I didn’t see any. It was all dark. Someone was running. . . she was crying. . . it’s horrid. Something really bad. . . .”
“A flash! You’ll have to tell that other Super,” Chris said.
“What, though? I didn’t see anything. Just the dark. . . and the person crying.”
“Stephen saw headlights. He must have seen where it was.”
“I didn’t. Just a road and grass. Only for a moment, then the headlights went off.”
“What sort of road? Steve! What sort of road?”
“Nothing special. Not a big road. With grass verges. I’ll tell you what, though! It was on a hill. Quite steep. Looked like an edge.”
“There must have been something else!” Chris said, impatient.
“There was a sound,” Vicky said.
“You said. Someone crying.”
“Not that sort of sound. Not a person.”
“What then? Steve, did you hear anything?”
“I think I did. I know! It was the sea.”
“There’s sea everywhere round here.”
“Only this wasn’t like you hear it on the beaches. It was a long way off.”
“Down below,” Vicky said.
“Of course! It was up on a cliff!”
“That’s why I had that feel about falling.”
“There must be thousands of cliffs round here,” Chris said, disappointed.
“Not all that many. Brighton’s got a flat beach,” Stephen said.
“It could help them, then. They might be able to guess where it is. Which way was the van moving, Steve?”
“It wasn’t moving. What I mean is, the headlights weren’t moving. If it was the van, it was parked on a road somewhere,”
“We’d better tell them. Quickly.”
“If only they’ll believe. . . .” Vicky began.
“What is it?”
“It could happen any minute now and they wouldn’t have time to get there.”
“No it couldn’t! You said it was quite, absolutely dark.”
“Look out of the window.”
Stephen and Chris looked. The sky, which had been overcast and grey when they’d first sat down in the room, was now an inky black. Vicky said what they all three thought, when she said, “It could be happening now. He’s going to kill her. And the baby.” Neither Stephen nor Chris contradicted her.
Thirty Seven
Monday night
20.35 Price rang Andrew.
“Mr. Wilmington? We’ve got a lead. Van’s possibly been seen half an hour ago on the road between Hastings and Eastbourne. Back of Pevensey Bay. Unfortunately we lost it again after that. We think it may be in Eastbourne itself. Trouble is there are too many blue Bedford vans on the roads, and all we’ve got to identify this one is the damaged off-side wing. However, we shall carry on searching.”
Andrew said, “I’m coming down,” cautiously because he didn’t want Sally to hear. She was supposed to be in the living-room, but she was so restless, he couldn’t be sure how near she might be.
“There’s really no need, sir. In fact. . .”
“I’m coming,” Andrew said. It was only after he’d rung off that he realized he didn’t know where he was coming to. Price had gone down to the Brighton station, he’d go there. He went in to tell Sally that he’d been called out to see an American business associate who was in London on a flying visit, he’d got to drive out to see him at Heathrow. “I’ll ring from there to tell you when I’ll be back,” he said. Sally accepted it as she did everything now in her numbed misery. He kissed her hair and said, “Go to bed, darling, and take a pill. No point in staying up for me, I don’t know when I’ll be back.” She might have said, “No point in taking a pill, I’m beyond that,” but she didn’t. She just let him kiss her. When he looked back from the door of the room she was still sitting there, not looking at anything, her hands idle in her lap.
21.15 No further sign of the van. Price, in a control car driving round Eastbourne, searching the back streets like the one in Brighton where the van had parked the night before last, sending men on foot to investigate parking lots, dead-end streets, deserted warehouses, was getting desperate. It was now a dark overcast evening with a fine drizzling rain. Somewhere round here, within perhaps twenty or thirty miles’ radius, that young thug might be quietly getting rid of the girl and the baby. Price’s anxiety made him extraordinarily short-tempered. When his driver suggested going out and having a look on the front, he bit his head off. Then apologized. Immediately did it again.
21.30 Chief Superintendent Cole couldn’t understand it. Since he was a conscientious officer and obeyed orders, he’d transmitted immediately the extraordinary, garbled message produced by the three youngsters. A story of a road on the side of a hill, grass, headlights, a cliff, the sea. He didn’t understand what it was supposed to mean. He wondered if these three were in radio contact with the kidnapping lot. It seemed unlikely. In spite of his knowledge of the need for urgency it took him a little time to sort out what he was being told, to add it up in his mind, and when he spoke over the radio telephone to Price, his voice told how much value he placed on information got this way. He repeated what Stephen had told him. Said doubtfully that there were quite a lot of cliffs between Brighton and Eastbourne, but the obvious one would be Beachy Head. Well-known place for suicides. Sheer drop at one point, two hundred feet to the rocks below.
“How close is the road to the edge there?” Price asked.
“Fifteen feet? Right on top you can drive off the road right up to the verge, drive the whole thing over if that’s how you feel.”
“There’s a police rescue post there, isn’t there?”
“That’s right.”
“Doesn’t sound so likely then. How far away is this other place where the road’s so close to the edge?”
“Five hundred yards? On the descending road, going towards Birling Gap. There’s a dip in the coastline, then the ground goes up again this way, towards the old lighthouse.”
“Popular area? Many people about?”
“In this weather? No one at all.”
“I’m going there. I want six more cars as reinforcement. Take anyone you can off the flat ground and concentrate those I’m not wanting on other cliffs that have roads reasonably near. We’ve got to do this quietly, I want the van, if it’s there, surrounded and surprised. Hurry. We haven’t any time to waste.”
Cole issued the instructions. He had to. “What does he mean, no time to waste?” Even if the place is right, it’s ten minutes since those three told me what they knew. Whatever was going to happen up there must have happened by now. “Crazy,” he thought. But with Jim in this mood, he, Cole, wasn’t going to ask questions. He was going to obey orders and wait till it was all over for explanations.
21.45 Andrew, having exceeded the speed limit wherever possible, arrived at the Brighton police station, introduced himself and asked for Price.
“He’s out looking for the van, sir,” Cole said.
“Where?”
Cole hesitated, then said, “The thing is, sir, if he finds it he’s hoping to get it surrounded and then surprise the driver. He thinks that way there’d be less risk of violence.”
“Where is he?” Andrew said again.
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, sir. Instructions, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“God damn it, I’m the child’s father!”
“I know, sir. I know how you must be feeling, but it’s impossible for me to tell you anything more. If you’d like to stay here for a while, I’ll see to it that every piece of news that comes through to us is passed on to you directly, sir.”
With a very bad grace, Andrew sat. But he was too restless to remain here, just as he’d been too restless to stay at home in London. He got up and prowled. He went outside and looked at the dark wet night. He came indoors again and was going back to the room he’d just left when he saw a boy coming out of a door ahead. He said, “You!” and saw on Step
hen’s face just the look of surprise and dislike that he knew must be on his own.
“What are you doing here?”
“Superintendent Price brought us,” Stephen said.
Andrew’s immediate response was one of violent anger. His baby’s life, Sally’s sanity, lay in the hands of a gullible, incompetent policeman who was staking them on a story which sounded like the inventions of a fortune teller looking into a teacup. If the worst happened he’d make sure that Chief Superintendent Bloody Price lost not only this case but his reputation as well. For a moment he couldn’t speak, then he controlled himself and said, “I suppose you know exactly what’s going on and where he is just now? Or doesn’t your second sight tell you anything as practical as that?”
Stephen flushed, but he didn’t turn away. He said, “I think he’ll have gone towards a beach somewhere.”
“Since we’re on the south coast and there are several hundred miles of beach here, that’s safe enough.”
Stephen said, steadily, “I don’t know the country round here. We thought it was high. Cliffs. But when we told the Inspector in there, he said beach, or something.”
“What do you mean, you thought it was a cliff? What was?”
“Where the van is. Or where it’s going to be. But the Superintendent had gone and we had to tell the Super here what it looked like. I wouldn’t have thought it was a beach, but he did say something about one.”
Andrew suddenly saw himself as a small boy in grey flannel shorts on a school expedition. He said, “Beachy Head!”
“That’s it! That’s what he said!”
“That’s where Price has gone? You sure?”
“I think he must’ve.”
“On your recommendation? Another of these glimpses of the future?”
“He asked us to try to see. . . .”
“And you conveniently did?”
Stephen didn’t answer this. He said, “Have you got a car?”
Andrew raised his eyebrows. He answered, “Since you’re interested, yes, I have.”
“Will you take us there? The Inspector won’t, and we can’t get there by ourselves in time.”
“Take you there?”
“To that place. The place you said. Either the van’s there or it’s going to be. Vicky and I, we’ve got to be there. We just might. . . . Please. It wouldn’t hurt you. Even if you think we’re making the whole thing up, you can’t afford not to take the chance. Don’t you see? Vicky and me—we’re the best hope you’ve got.”
If he’d been angry, or if he’d been apologetic, Andrew wouldn’t have listened for a second, but his quietness was impressive. Even so, he remained furious, sceptical, at this moment hating everyone, including himself. He opened his mouth to tell Stephen that he hadn’t come to Brighton to give him and his girl-friend rides about the country, when he remembered Sally. Sally had asked him if he’d do anything to find Caroline Ann, and he’d said he would. Even if there was nothing but these children’s stories to go on. He’d meant it at the time. Did he mean it less now? He stood looking at Stephen without speaking, so that Stephen thought he couldn’t have heard, but at last he said, “All right. Come on.”
“Vicky’ll have to come too.”
“I said, come on,” Andrew said and walked out of the station. His MG was parked just down the street. He unlocked it and saw that there were three of them, the two girls who’d come to his house as well as the boy. But it didn’t seem to matter. The whole thing was so crazy anyway, what did it matter if he turned up on the top of Beachy Head with a crowd of schoolchildren? He said, “You’ll be very cramped in the back,” as the girls climbed in. The boy sat beside him and he started up. Stephen, even in the heat of the moment, noticed how quickly the speedometer needle climbed. He’d never been driven so quickly.
22.00 “Any sightings of the van? Anything seen of it on the road leading up towards Beachy Head?”
“No reports of a sighting, sir. Will keep you informed.”
“Thanks. Over and out.”
“Over and out. What a horrible expression just now and just here,” Price thought.
22.00 Maureen hadn’t thought she’d ever be able to sleep when she was as frightened as she was now, but what with the dark and the movement of the van, she did doze off from time to time. Presently the van stopped and she woke right up, sure that Skinner was going to come in and do for her. She stayed for minutes, listening, with her hand on the paraffin stove, the only thing she’d found that she thought she might be able to hit Skinner with if he started coming at her with the knife. But there were no movements and Skinner didn’t unlock the door or speak to her through the front partition, and after a while she felt a bit better and dozed off again.
When she woke, with a start, the van was moving again, faster than before and more as if Skinner knew where he was going. Nothing to be seen outside, but after a time Maureen could feel that they were going uphill again. Because she was sleepy, and because of nothing awful having happened the last time they stopped, Maureen was taken by surprise when the van pulled up with a great jerk, and she heard Skinner’s voice from the cab in front.
“Ready for nosh?” he said, and he sounded friendly again, like he used to be, so that Maureen said, “Yes, Skinner,” joyfully, forgetting all the bad things she’d been thinking about him in the last few hours, and looking forward to chips and steak or fish and a big ice-cream, and lights and people and music from the discotheque like they’d had before all this fuss with Linda. Only she wouldn’t look very nice with her hair all short and raggedy. She heard him get out of the cab and come round to the back doors. But when he opened them it was all dark and quiet, except for a sort of sighing noise ever so far below, almost as if it was under the ground beneath. And the ground was just grass. Maureen had been badly frightened before and she began to be frightened again. She said, “I can’t see any restaurant. Where is it?”
“Other side of the van,” Skinner said.
“Why aren’t there any lights, then?”
“Come on, and I’ll show you. Round the next corner, that’s all.”
Maureen looked at all she could see, the dark shape of Skinner, and hesitated.
“Come on! You must be hungry. You aren’t still sore at me because of that mistake I made this evening, are you?”
If he hadn’t said that about the evening, Maureen might have believed him. But when she heard him say it, she remembered again the way he’d looked at her and the way the van had come straight at her. She drew further back into the shadows of the van and said, “No, Skinner. I don’t want to.”
“You’ve got to, you stupid bag. Come on! D’you want me to come and get you?”
Maureen, terrified, squeezed herself against the side of the van. The only advantage she had against Skinner with the knife, which she imagined as well as if she’d seen it, was that she was looking out of the more intense darkness. She could just make out his shape against the sky. He was looking in and couldn’t see anything. She saw him wait for a moment before he put his knee on the van’s floor, ready to hoist himself up. In that moment, Maureen put out her hand and felt the paraffin stove. She got it in both hands, and just as Skinner began to pull himself up into the van, Maureen brought the stove down on his head as hard as she could. She heard him cry out, and he must have fallen. The stove, which she’d let go of, fell too, with a loud metallic noise, and went rolling away downhill.
Maureen waited. She couldn’t hear anything, except that sighing noise below, coming and going, now louder, now softer, but never giving up. It couldn’t be the wind, because there wasn’t any, the air was cool and damp and very still. It sounded almost like a huge animal with rattling uneven breaths waiting at the bottom of the hill for the van to come down again. Like Skinner might be waiting down there, just out of sight, so that when she got out he could run her down again or go for her with the knife.
She waited a bit longer, and then, too frightened to stay, she began to climb out. She let he
rself carefully down. One foot touched the ground, the other touched something softish, that gave, and she drew it back, shaking with terror. It was Skinner, she was sure of it. But no hand came out to grab her ankle and nothing moved. Very slowly she got herself right out of the van. She could just see Skinner’s huddled shape lying on the ground. He lay very still. If he was waiting to jump on her, the sooner she got out of the way the better. Maureen backed away down the road and the darkness closed in on her.
She’d gone perhaps twenty paces, feeling with one foot in front of the other, sobbing loudly and stumbling, often, when she stopped.
She’d remembered Linda.
She’d left Linda behind.
Into Maureen’s confused, feeble mind came a series of pictures. Of Linda with her bottle. Of Linda crying. Of Linda on Mrs. Plum’s comfortable shoulder. Of the way Skinner looked at Linda. Of Sharon throwing the baby on to the bed and saying, “It’s all yours.” Of Linda smiling. Of Skinner coming after the both of them. Of Maureen hiding somewhere with Linda while Skinner roamed around with his knife out, all ready to use it again, and of Linda crying just then, so that he found them. Of the pictures she’d been to with Skinner once, where a fellow and his girl had gone round killing people mostly for fun, and of the blood and the car full of bullet holes and the girl sitting dead in her seat with blood running down all over her nice white skirt. That’s what she would look like if Skinner got at her with his knife.
There was something else. Out here in the dark it was scary, frightening. Maureen had never liked to be alone in the dark. If she had Linda with her, it would be some sort of company, it wouldn’t be as awful as it was being here all by herself.
But suppose Skinner had woken up by now and was just waiting there for her to come back?
It was the most dreadful thing Maureen had ever done. She went up the road slowly, seeing the bulk of the van in front of her up on the grassy slope. Her foot kicked against something hard that rattled and made her jump. Then she realized it was the paraffin stove. She picked it up. It made her feel a little braver to have it with her. She’d hit Skinner with it once, maybe she could hit him again. He was still lying where she’d left him, but when she’d climbed back into the van, she heard him move and give a sort of snore like he did sometimes when he was asleep. She had to be quick. She felt around the van and found Linda. It was difficult to get down again without losing hold of Linda’s clothes so that she couldn’t roll away down the sloping van floor, but she managed it. Skinner was making more and more horrid snoring noises and moving a bit, and she’d have liked to hit him again to keep him asleep a bit longer, but she couldn’t do it without losing hold of Linda and she didn’t dare do that.
The Chinese Egg Page 26
