I didn’t; but I agreed that I did. I said it wasn’t all that difficult for a man, even a wanted man, to get out of Britain, with or without accomplices. Boats could be stolen from almost any beach along the south coast … there was so much small boat activity all around the coasts these days. It would be far from impossible, I said, and Freyard would stand a better chance of evading the law in his own country than in Britain.
“But it is not Freyard you are after, Commander Shaw.”
“Isn’t it?”
He frowned, and again his lips thinned enough to show the glint of gold. “You will please tell us precisely why you are in France.”
“Impasse,” I said. “I’ve already done so.”
The tall man was starting now to show impatience. He said, “You will tell me what you know.”
“About what?”
“You must answer your own question.”
I said, “Really, I’ve nothing more to say. I repeat, this matter’s personal. I was fond of the girl who was killed.”
He jeered at that. “Your organisation would not permit an agent on a personal mission. That is not how 6D2 works.”
“You seem to know a lot about 6D2,” I said.
“Yes. Now, tell me what you know, what is secret from us. What you have been told by your HQ in London.”
In point of fact, Focal House hadn’t told me anything. The only secret so far as I was aware was the identity of the dead man in the Zonguldak’s funnel – Robert Alexander Neskuke. I still had no intention of mentioning that name. I wondered why the tall man hadn’t asked me anything at all about that fumed corpse; he must certainly have been aware of it – if nothing else, someone would have reported back on the British newspapers. Admitted Neskuke’s identity had never been given to the press; my interrogator may well not have known it was Neskuke, may not have been interested. However, I reckoned he would have been. So why not ask me that? Perhaps because he would ipso facto give too much away?
I said, “There’s nothing more I can tell you. I suggest you stop all this nonsense and drive me back to Cherbourg.”
Again the grimace. “I have heard you are a hard man, Commander Shaw. We shall see how hard, how resistant. It has been said that every man has his price. Also that equally every man has his pain threshold, the moment when he breaks.” He gestured to the woman and said, “Tanya.”
She unfolded her arms and came across the room towards me. She stood in front of me and slowly brought out a cigarette and lit it. She drew on it and when the end was glowing she blew smoke over my face. I felt my arms seized from behind and twisted across my back and she placed the end of the cigarette on my neck, below the right ear. The pain was intense. The tall man laughed. “So easy to burn out the eye,” he said, “if we need to.”
*
They didn’t burn out my eyes, but they had plenty of other tricks to use. The woman Tanya was a sadist. Her eyes glowed liked the cigarette when she saw pain, saw the sweat pour. I was stripped and again a cigarette was used. I was held by the guards and hit repeatedly in the face by the tall man. Blood dripped from nose and mouth, from cuts made by a heavy ring as the man slashed me across the cheeks, right and left, right and left, times without number. A rope was put around my neck and twisted tight so that I was on the verge of strangulation before it was released.
And other things, dreamed up by Tanya, taking pride and pleasure in her work, but I didn’t say anything further and finally they gave up and I was taken back to the filthy cellar. On the way I heard again what I was certain was the cry of a child and I saw Tanya scowl and hurry away to the rear along the passage, and before I was pushed down the stone steps I heard a shriek of pain and violent sobbing. I wondered if the child could be Tanya’s. Tanya: a Russian name? Russian … Neskuke had been attached to the Moscow embassy when he’d disappeared, but there didn’t have to be any connexion now. Yet it was interesting, and it gave me something to fasten on as I sat huddled in the clothing they’d put on me in Cherbourg, nursing my various hurts in the fetid filth and stench and slopping water of the cellar. If I was left there too long I reckoned I could fester to death, quite literally, but they would know that too and I didn’t believe they meant me to die. Not yet, anyway. Even if I didn’t talk, I supposed I could be useful as some kind of hostage, though for what purpose I couldn’t begin to guess. Did Neskuke fit, and if so, how? And Louis Leclerc alias Jean Bois, who also had not been mentioned by name? My mind roved endlessly and uselessly, getting me nowhere. I’d said in that interrogation room that it was an impasse, and that was just what it was.
I had been right in my assumption that my death was not yet required. Water was brought, and bread, and a thick soup, largely vegetable with a little meat, and this I found gave me back some strength.
It was brought by an uncommunicative man, not one of those who had brought me from Cherbourg. With two other men behind him, armed and covering the steps, he lumbered down with his load, deposited it and went away again. I’d asked him questions and got no answers. I was left to eat in the dark. There was no spoon and I drank the soup from the bowl. I gnawed the bread and washed it down after with water from a jug.
The utensils were collected. While the door was open, I heard that crying again, a wail of despair. I said, “So you torture children too, do you?”
No answer; no reaction at all. I’d spoken in French; maybe the man didn’t have much French, or maybe he just didn’t have any reactions to the child’s evident torment. He looked, in the light coming down from the passage, like a bear, big shoulders, thick body and a lot of facial hair. Hairy-backed hands as well, like paws. A real strong-arm thug, with a low forehead and pig-like eyes, very small. But when he had gone away I gave him a few moments and then I got down on hands and knees and grubbed about on the scummy floor because I had seen him drop something as he’d been gathering up the jug and bowl. Searching around in the slop of water, raising more stench as I did so, I found something. It felt like a coin, one with plain edges, not serrated. I held the object close to the luminous dial of my wrist-watch and fancied I caught the gleam of gold. Or maybe brass – I couldn’t say. I certainly couldn’t make out any details – heads of monarchs or presidents, dates and so on. I tried to interpret by feel, but that was no use either.
Anyway, I slipped it into my pocket. If ever I got the chance to have a proper look, it might prove useful in identifying nationalities for instance.
A few minutes after this, I heard sounds of the door being opened up again. Frankly, I don’t know why I bothered, but quickly I took the coin from my pocket and pushed it under a small gap beneath the bottom step of the stairway, which I’d seen in the light earlier. Then the door opened. The armed men stood there, pointing their guns. The bear-like man came down and gripped my arm tight. He spoke to me in very laboured French, barely understandable. But I got the message.
He’d dropped something. He intended to search, and I was to remain where I was. A lot of fuss, I thought, about a coin, unless perhaps it really was gold. Anyway, I was glad I’d made that sudden decision to hide it. The bear-like man flicked on a torch and looked all around the floor, muttering to himself. Of course, he found nothing. This being so, he searched me, tearing off the rough garments and going through them carefully, also without result. He seemed in a real tizzy: I got that message, too: what he’d dropped couldn’t be just a coin, even a gold one. There was what looked like the sweat of fear, droplets on the facial hairs, and there was the look of fear in his eyes.
He went back up. A few moments later I was in darkness again. For the time being I left the object where it was, safe beneath the bottom stone step.
Five
They came for me again, three of the ex-Cherbourg guards this time. I expected another interrogation but this wasn’t the intent: I was to be moved. They didn’t say why. Having passed the movement information, they had an interruption, the woman appearing at the head of the stone steps and sounding urgent, though I couldn’t in
terpret what she said. They all went up the steps and the door was banged shut again and I took the opportunity of bringing the coin out from its chink and hiding it away on my body.
A few minutes later the men came back, crowding the doorway, and I was told to come up. Along the passage again, across the hall and into the garage, where the exit door was shut and the car stood ready. Again I was put on the floor in the back and feet held me down hard. There were also guns, fitted with silencers. The door went up and the car was backed out. I saw that once again night was approaching. That was all I could see. We drove off very fast, the car rocking, swaying on corners taken dangerously. I wondered what the hurry was: had someone got onto them, maybe as a result of representations by my good friend Madame Chaumet in Cherbourg? Hardly: she wouldn’t have known who had cut me out from that bedroom. But she did know I’d been interested in Captain Kubat of the Zonguldak and something may have jelled in the minds of the gendarmerie. Just might have.
*
We drove for a very long way. Uncomfortable though I was, I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke we were still driving at that breakneck speed, rushing through a dark night. I heard an argument in progress. I didn’t know what the argument was about, but the driver was being pretty vociferous, taking his hands off the wheel and gesticulating, turning half round in his seat to yell at the men behind, a dangerous proceeding that was to bring its own retribution very quickly. We had been climbing and twisting, negotiating a mountain road, and now we were descending at breakneck speed.
That, I remember.
The next thing I was aware of was waking up in dawn’s dim light electrically assisted and seeing women hovering, and then a man coming along in a white coat. There were sheets; and I lay on a mattress, more comfortable than the car’s floor or the filthy cellar.
I had shut my eyes again; now the eyelids were pulled back and a light was shone directly into my eyes and the man spoke to me in French, seeing I had returned to consciousness.
He asked me how I felt.
“Bloody,” I said.
“He is English,” the man said – the doctor, as I supposed: I was clearly in a hospital. He spoke in an aside. The women were nurses, not dressed like English nurses. They were, I believed, nuns of a nursing order. The doctor spoke again, this time addressing me in fair English. He said, “There is little physical injury, you have been very lucky, m’sieur, a sprained wrist only.”
I was surprised. “Which one?” I asked. It was the left one; I realised now that it had been bandaged.
“There was, however, much old blood, dried, and a head injury. Also burns.”
“Yes,” I said. “There was.”
“You must rest, m’sieur.”
“How long?”
“Until we are certain your head injury has not left behind it concussion.”
I said, “I’m in something of a hurry. Can you tell me what happened, and where, precisely, I am?”
It turned out that I was in the town of Clermont-Ferrand, in the department of Puy-de-Dome. A long way from Cherbourg, rather more than halfway to the Mediterranean coast. The car had come off the road at a bend in the mountain pass. It had fallen a longish way and had been brought up short by a sticking-out crag. It had been seen by a motorist behind, across the valley, and he had alerted the gendarmerie and the ambulance service. Two of my friends, as the doctor naturally assumed them to have been, had been killed.
“The other two?” I asked.
The doctor gesticulated across the ward. “They are there, m’sieur.”
“Fancy that,” I said, laughing to myself at the very sudden change in our circumstances. “How are they making out?”
“They are very ill persons, m’sieur, I am sorry.” The doctor paused, lips pursed. The nursing nuns crossed themselves. “I believe they will not recover.”
That galvanised me. I said, “They have to recover, Doctor. That’s vital, and – ”
“We shall do our best, m’sieur, I assure you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said, “but there’s more behind this. I’d like the availability of a telephone, if you please.”
“There must be no exertion, none at all, m’sieur – ”
“There’s not much exertion in using a telephone.” I tried to struggle up to a sitting position and found my head swimming and I felt sick. I was pushed down again, firmly, by one of the nuns, and my head was gently held and my pillow fluffed up.
“You see?” the doctor said. “To move too soon is very foolish. There must be time for recovery.”
“Time,” I said, “is what I may not have.” I had begun to sweat; beads of it formed on my forehead and ran down my face. “I have to contact the police and other persons. I say again, the matter’s vital.” I added, because the doctor was looking adamant, “There’s been a murder.”
He looked at me sharply, then withdrew a little way and spoke to one of the nuns. He approached my bed again and said, “Outside there are police, the gendarmerie.” “Because of those two?”
“Yes.”
I said, “Well, that’s something.” Obviously, the guns had been found in the car’s wreckage and the gendarmes would want to ask questions. I asked the doctor to tell the gendarmes I was conscious and had to have a word with them urgently. He pursed his lips again and lifted his hands palms upwards, shrugging his shoulders deeply. He muttered something about someone I took to be his consultant. The decision was not his to make; the boss would have to come along.
I lost patience. “For Christ’s sake!” I said, and the nuns looked shocked. The doctor shrugged again, maybe saw that his patient was upsetting himself, and moved for the door to the ward. He came back with a gendarme amid a lot of excited talk and gesticulation. The gendarme didn’t look too bright. He didn’t speak much English but my French was adequate. I reported my recent experiences of interrogation and cellar captivity. I got the idea he didn’t entirely believe me and I wasn’t surprised. He asked where the house was. I said I had no idea, not even a vague one, except that it was a long way off and somewhere between Clermont-Ferrand and Cherbourg. There was a Pekinese, I said. Disregarding this, he asked who I was.
“The name’s Shaw,” I answered.
“Shaw?”
“That’s right.” I added, because the nuns had clustered round the bed of one of the villains and I took this to be possibly a bad sign, “6D2, London.”
The gendarme looked blank. I asked, “You’ve never heard of it?”
He hadn’t. I blasphemed again and urged him to contact his HQ and get the brass along, pronto. Delay, I said, would be dangerous for him personally.
*
Maybe things don’t work very fast in France. Never mind my threat, some delay took place. I lay sweating with impatience and while I was so doing I saw feverish activity round the bed of one of the villains, a lot of machinery being involved, and then things being disconnected and the machines removed so that a sheet could be drawn over the face in the bed – the corpse in the bed as it now clearly was. I cursed savagely: just one left, who might be made to talk.
I sat up again, allowed a minute or so for the swimming sensation to stop, then I got out of bed. I stood up firmly enough and went towards the telephone trolley, reaching it before I was spotted. When I was spotted there was consternation, but this I brushed aside, taking a few liberties with the truth, taking a few names in vain.
“Security,” I more or less shouted above the hubbub. “Quai d’Orsay, Paris. M’sieur le President. NATO, EEC. Kindly connect the telephone immediately.”
They didn’t like it, but they did as told. A rather pretty little nun, as nervous as a kitten at the goings-on, held the instrument to my ear, acting as my left hand, while I dialled a number in Barfleur. Marcus Bright’s number; and to my immense relief he answered quickly.
I said. “Shaw here. Speaking from Clermont-Ferrand.”
I heard the note of surprise and relief. “Good God! What’s been happening, can you say?”
“Not at this moment. But I’m all right, just about. Has anyone been on the line?”
He would know I meant Max in London. He said, “I reported, of course.” I guessed he’d have picked up some of the gen; that was what he was there for, and Madame Chaumet would naturally have contacted the gendarmerie in Cherbourg. “There was no comment. Not then. But something’s come through since.” Marcus Bright paused. “Can you get hold of a security line?”
“When the local cops tick over and come along,” I said, “I’ll be asking for one. I’ll call you again, soonest possible. Then I’ll be heading north.”
I rang off, and the little nun removed the handset from my face. I thanked her; she still looked terrified, but I smiled at her and she responded. They all wanted me to go back to bed but I said I felt fine and had work to do and I proposed to discharge myself. They said something about the gendarmes and I got the idea I was being held until the local police were satisfied about my status: I could still be one of the gun carriers for all anyone knew. While I was demanding that my clothes, such as they were, should be brought – and hoping that little gold trinket would still be with them – a pompous little fat man entered the ward, dressed in a dark suit and highly-polished black shoes. He could have been the chief of police, he could have been the consultant. Whichever one he was, the other of the two possibles arrived hard on the heels of the first and the two of them stood conferring with the medical staff and giving me suspicious and unfriendly looks. I sorted them out when the second arrival began issuing medical terms from a slit mouth, and the other man spoke of custody. I preferred what should be a brief period of custody to an indeterminate hospitalisation and butted in to say I was fighting fit.
“In that case,” the pompous fat man said with authority, “he comes with me. I insist.”
The other man shrugged me off. “It is his own responsibility, M’sieur le Prefet. And, of course, yours.”
“That I understand, m’sieur.” The police chief turned to me peremptorily. “Dress, and then come with me.”
The Boy Who Liked Monsters (Commander Shaw Book 19) Page 5
