The Fountain in the Forest

by Tony White

  At the far right-hand corner of the paint frame and mounted against the wall was a large butler sink, and above it, hanging by its handle from a large iron hook that had been driven into the bare brick wall, was a big old-fashioned Roberts radio. Rex walked over and turned it on, then went and stood in front of Milo, Couvoir, or whatever his name was, next to the narrow workbench.

  ‘We won’t be disturbed now,’ he said. ‘If the light’s on, the radio’s always playing when there’s a job on.’

  ‘Well,’ said Couvoir, as if pleasantly surprised to see Rex. Was he trying to turn on the charm? Was he mad? ‘In happier circumstances—’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Rex. ‘What I want to know is, what’s rattled your cage after all this time?’

  It’s nothing but a sprout, but it’s well budded out,

  By the work of our Lord’s hand …

  The road sign said they could pick up the A303 at the roundabout, but JJ saw that instead the convoy was turning off down a side road to the left. He couldn’t understand why, but he could see a police chopper hovering above the trees. Perhaps there had been an accident. JJ had a better view of the road ahead than Milo in this left-hand-drive Citroën, and as they drew closer he could see that the main road was blocked by what looked like a tipper truckload of gravel, and behind that were numerous coaches and police vans. It was as if they had brought their own convoy; bussed in the heavy mob. Of course they had. Standing in front of the piles of gravel were dozens of police officers, all directing the traffic down this smaller side road.

  ‘D’accord,’ said Milo. ‘Get out.’

  JJ was puzzled. ‘What?’

  ‘Vite!’ said Milo. ‘Out! Maintenant!’ His expression suddenly turned. The laughter and the easy intimacy of the past few months was gone, replaced with what looked like pure hatred, or something even colder and more impersonal: contempt.

  Bewildered, and by now tripping off his nut, JJ slid the passenger door open and stepped out on to the road. ‘What?’

  ‘Casse-toi!’ said Milo, dead-eyed and practically spitting out the words, then, when JJ had clearly still not understood, ‘Va-t’en! Fuck off, you idiot.’ And with that he leaned over and roughly slid the van door shut.

  There was no time to take stock. Up ahead, JJ could see smoke rising above the trees. He could hear women screaming and engines revving, and that sound which wasn’t sleigh bells after all, but breaking glass. Looking back the way they had come, half a mile away but getting closer all the time, were yet more police. They seemed to be walking casually along the line of traffic with axes and truncheons in their hands, smashing the windows of every vehicle they passed, then dragging people out through the broken windows and peeling away, only for more police to take their place. JJ wasn’t about to hang around and find out what they’d do to him.

  Just up ahead on the right was a gap in the hedge, and some people were sawing through the bars of a wooden fence. Once they’d broken through, they ran back into their vehicles and drove right through it, into the field beyond.

  For some reason, JJ decided that right now there might not be safety in numbers. He would go the other way. He ducked around the front of the van, scrambled up the verge on the opposite side of the road and pushed through a small gap in the hedge into the relative safety of the field. He didn’t move then, but simply lay there in the long grass, beneath the cover and shade afforded by the hawthorn branches.

  On the other side of the hedge, dozens of vehicles managed to get off the road and through the fence before scores of police on foot and in cars and vans arrived to block the way and stem the flow. What those who had managed to get off the road didn’t know was that they had driven into a trap.

  Go down in your dairy and fetch me a cup,

  A cup of your sweet cream,

  And if I should live to tarry in the town,

  I will call on you next year …

  As he pulled the SIG Pro from his pocket, the expression on François Couvoir’s face was one that Rex recognised immediately. He’d seen it before: pure contempt.

  ‘Joseph Jonathan King,’ he said, ‘I am arresting you for the murders of Béatrice Serpolet, of Élise Burnet and Tobie Burnet, of Victor Peretz, André Houlette and’ – here he paused – ‘Sylvie Maronier. And since we are in England, old bean, I might add that you do not have to say anything, but it may ’arm your defence if you fail to mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court, and anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

  Rex might have been a bit green when he’d first met Milo, but he wasn’t now. If he went along with this, he’d most likely wind up dead. Commissaire Divisionnaire François Couvoir hadn’t come to arrest Rex, but to kill him. He was tidying up. Rex well knew that there were greater infamies in Couvoir’s past than La Fontaine-en-Forêt. Things that, if they got out, would certainly mess up any forthcoming retirement with honours.

  Well, perhaps Rex had some tidying up of his own to do, but if so he’d better start thinking fast.

  Luckily that was something Rex was good at.

  Thinking quickly had got Rex a long way.

  ‘Now you’re really having a laugh,’ said Rex, ‘because we both know I was nowhere near La Fontaine-en-Forêt when whatever happened happened, because we were at the Beanfield, you and me. Weren’t we, eh? Oh, and I’ve got a bone to pick with you about that and all. I saw you later on, and you know it. The only thing I couldn’t figure out at first was why you’d be spying on Pythag and Co. – then I realised that you were there to keep an eye on André Houlette.’

  ‘What do you know about Houlette?’

  ‘Let’s face it, I’ve had long enough to think about it,’ said Rex, ‘and to dig around. I know you wanted him out of the way. It was Houlette and his men who blew up the bridges, wasn’t it? He wasn’t just lying low in La Fontaine. He must have still had his cache of weapons and explosives in the bakehouse and the cellars and stayed there to keep an eye on it. Somebody – I hate to think, either Béatrice or Sylvie? – decided to test out the oven before I got back? Am I right? What I can’t forgive is that you knew this, and yet you let me go ahead and open up the bakery! It’s as if you were deliberately goading Houlette. You positively encouraged me to do it – “You’ve got to have a métier,” you said! – even knowing that the shell of the oven was filled with enough unstable high explosives to set everything off?’

  Couvoir was in no hurry. He had Rex covered, so was happy to let him talk.

  ‘Under arrest?’ said Rex. ‘It should be me arresting you, you bastard. You killed them, not me. Élise too! How could you? Your mob must have had Houlette under low-level surveillance for years, he wasn’t going anywhere, but they really fucked up when they sent you in. You started enjoying yourself too much, so you bought yourself a bit of time by saying you were infiltrating an ETA cell; cooking up a story that was just convincing enough. Pretty fucking tenuous, though, wasn’t it? Sure, Pythag and Élise were from Basque Country, but that’s about it.

  ‘Pythag and Béatrice weren’t even charged that time they were picked up for panhandling in Antibes, I remember it well, but the mugshots were there on file so why not use them, eh? They were just a convenient smokescreen, weren’t they? All of us. Collateral damage! Boost that story with a bit of spectacle and you’ve got what to all intents and purposes looks like a terrorist act, to make it seem like you’d been a good boy and to divert attention from what’s about to go down in New Zealand? They were disposable and I was just fucking cover. You might as well have killed Sylvie with your own hands! Was it because you couldn’t bear that it was me she wanted and not you? Or was it just to make yourself look good?’

  Rex paused for a moment. ‘You forget, I saw you and Frédérique Bonlieu together! Next thing I know, her face is all over the news for the Rainbow Warrior. Were you her handler or was she yours? It must have been just before she got posted down to New Zealand as ship’s cook or whatever her story was. How the fuck have you
managed to keep your involvement in all that a secret? Jesus, the Festival d’Eau! All those rainbows! It was like a fucking premonition! So what then? Did you pretend to be Bonlieu’s boyfriend when you turned up on the Rainbow Warrior, or just an old school friend on a gap year, who happened to be in New Zealand and was good with his hands?’

  Neither of them spoke for a while. Rex had talked himself out.

  ‘Ah, well, you are right, of course,’ said Couvoir eventually, ‘but those were different times, non? There was a cold war, remember? And besides, fortunately I have the gun, and it is me who has arrested you, so it is you who will be taking the blame, not me. Although, you are quite correct. I’d rather not test that in a court of law, if you know what I mean, so I’m afraid that in a minute or two there will be a struggle. You will resist arrest, my friend, and unfortunately I will have no choice—’

  ‘I’m not your friend,’ said Rex, ‘and anyway, why try and save face now? No one’s going to hold you to it. Everyone’s happy with the official version of events. No one associates you with either bombing. Everyone’s forgotten all that shit apart from you, and maybe a handful of conspiracy-theory lunatics.’

  ‘And you, apparently,’ said Couvoir.

  ‘Well, yes, okay: and me,’ said Rex.

  ‘That’s why,’ said Couvoir.

  There was a commotion outside, a movement on the other side of the door.

  A branch of May, my dear, I say,

  Before your door I stand,

  It’s nothing but a sprout, but it’s well budded out,

  By the work of our Lord’s hand …

  The sound of breaking glass and boots on tarmac.

  Peering through the greenery, JJ saw the police stop at Milo’s van and order, not pull, him out. So if they were in Wiltshire, why were these coppers speaking with Yorkshire accents? Bored up there since the end of the strike, were they? Got a bit too used to advancing in the old Roman-shield formation? Twiddling their thumbs now, without any heads to crack? They handcuffed Milo and led him away, but not before one of them, as if acting on an afterthought, turned back and raised his arm, bringing the baton down to smash the Citroën’s windscreen. Then, putting one knee on the doorsill, he reached under the driver’s seat to retrieve a plastic carrier bag: Milo’s stash. JJ was stunned. It was as if he had known where it would be. Could they have been under surveillance all this time? Had someone been following them, watching everything they’d done since arriving at Dover? JJ couldn’t quite tell if this paranoia was a result of the Spider’s Web acid or not, but it got worse: had someone been spying on them as they had travelled up through France? Could one of Milo’s dealers in Fréjus have been a plant?

  The hedges and the fields they are so green,

  As green as any leaf …

  Was that the last time he’d seen Milo, until now?

  Not quite.

  Our Heavenly Father waters them

  With his Heavenly dew so sweet …

  The overhead fluorescent lights began to flicker as if there was a fault, before going off altogether; not a fault, then, but a power cut. Rex was running down the stairs back to the cells because he’d just found out that no Reasons had been issued to the 81 who was brought in. No one was even getting in the door at Holborn without an IS81, but as soon as the IO handed them over, an IS91 had to be issued within four hours, and an IS91R – the reasons for deportation – had to be issued to the detainee him-or herself within the same time frame. And this time, surprise surprise, that had failed to happen. The fucking idiot fucking IO hadn’t torn off the fucking Reasons, so Rex was covering his back by making it right, because if it wasn’t right and the 81 didn’t have his Reasons, and if the shit should hit the fan, then as SD lead it would be Rex standing here with this trousers down, and he wasn’t having that.

  Fucking IO!

  So Rex was running down the stairs now, with the Reasons in his hand.

  Down the stairs two at a time, back to the cells.

  ‘Reasons,’ he said to the Custody Sergeant. ‘Where’s that eighty-one that just came in? Fucking IO didn’t give him his fucking Reasons.’

  ‘Interpreter?’ said the Custody Sergeant.

  ‘Does he need one?’ said Rex, looking for the 81’s name on the sheet, then handing it over. ‘Yeah, fair enough. That’s your job. Give Jinksy a bell. He’s got the list. Tell the eighty-one his interpreter is on the way.’

  They were both distracted by the sound of a scuffle.

  When I am dead and in my grave,

  And covered with cold clay,

  The nightingale will sit and sing,

  And pass the time away …

  How JJ found himself off his tits and sitting up a tree, he didn’t know. Well, the acid he knew about, but how long had he been sitting here? The sun was getting low in the sky so it must have been hours. A police Transit pulled up and four coppers piled out to unload the cases of wine from Milo’s van. Stretching away along the road in both directions were a hundred or more stationary vehicles, windows smashed in and some in flames.

  From where he sat, he could see over the hedge on the other side of the road, and into the large field beyond. The last remnants of the convoy, it looked like, were still driving around the field trying to find a way out, but there wasn’t one, not apart from the way they’d come in, and that was blocked by police. JJ had never seen so many police in one place. It was impossible to say how many: hundreds, certainly, or maybe more than a thousand. Some were in uniform, but many more wore unnumbered black boiler suits and visored helmets. Were they soldiers, like the rumours said had been brought in during the Miners’ Strike, plus random headcases from other parts of the security services or the MoD? Ex-Paras recalled for duty at a time of need? Anyone in a vehicle seemed to be driving around for as long as they could, trying to put off the inevitable: the batons through windscreens – smash! – and being dragged out by the hair. Three or four officers piling on to each hippy. Putting the boot in: smash! Mothers and children too. Fracturing skulls: smash! Dragging them away. Children and babies separated from parents. An old yellow British Telecom van pulling a caravan: smash!

  JJ watched as one coach crashed into another and the police swarmed all over both of them, axes and batons raining down: smash!

  A baton under the chin and a knee in the balls.

  A punch in the mouth.

  A well-aimed boot in the small of the back; tried and tested techniques.

  A woman pulled through the broken window of one coach – smash! – then on the floor and restrained with a knee in the back.

  A flash of breasts and knickers and ‘I don’t fancy yours much’ as she’s dragged away by three officers and thrown in the van.

  A couple of dozen vehicles were still moving but trapped in a dodgem dance, each one pursued by half a dozen police at least. Piling on, mob-handed. Two men pulled out of the observation turrets of a pink-painted armoured patrol vehicle with Rasta colours on its radiator grille: smash!

  ‘Okay! Okay! Just don’t hit me any more.’ The traveller was buried beneath a pile of black-boiler-suited men with helmets and shields, a hail of blows. ‘Okay! Please!’ then a sickening crunch as the blunt end of an axe-head fractured his skull.

  Take a Bible in your hand,

  And read a chapter through,

  And when the Day of Judgement comes,

  The Lord will think on you …

  A pair of splayed legs emerging from beneath a pile of four officers, Bill and bloody Ben among them.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Resisted, didn’t he,’ said Bill.

  ‘Well, he’s not resisting now, is he?’

  ‘No, skip,’ said Ben, but they didn’t move.

  ‘So fucking get off him, then!’

  Sheepishly they disentangled themselves and stood up, straightening ties, to reveal a black man of around thirty years old, smartly dressed in corduroy trousers and what looked like a grey long-sleeved Fred Perry. He was not l
ying back or leaning back against the wall, as Rex might have expected, but instead had been doubled over so that his head was lolling above his knees; arms handcuffed behind his back. There was a pool of vomit or saliva on the carpet between his legs.

  ‘Fucker resisted, didn’t he,’ said Bill again. ‘Said he was having an asthma attack. Strong guy and all. Took all of us to hold him down.’

  ‘Didn’t you know he had asthma?’ Rex asked.

  ‘Yeah, but still, I thought he was trying it on, skip.’

  Rex knew he needed to start thinking fast, but thinking fast was something he was good at.

  ‘He’s been booked, I take it. Gnat’s Piss, the lot?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘Where’s he headed?’ asked Rex.

  ‘In there,’ Bill said, nodding at the open cell.

  ‘Well, get him bloody well in there, then! Check his airways and put him in the recovery position now,’ said Rex. ‘And for Christ’s sake, call an ambulance.’

  I have a bag on my right arm,

  Draws up with a silken string,

  Nothing does it want but a little silver

  To line it well within …

  ‘That you, Rex?’ said Terence, right on cue. ‘Tea’s not gonna fucking make itself, mate!’

  Couvoir turned and made to cover the door to his right. Not for long – a split second – but long enough that, in the moment of distracted confusion that followed, Rex was able to grab the closest thing to hand. The heavy tin of paint hit Couvoir square in the chest. At the same moment, Terence had pulled the Frenchman’s arm down and around, locking the elbow and headbutting him in the process, before knocking the gun out of his hand. Mercifully it had not gone off.