The Judas Pair Page 18

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I wish it was.’ Drummers like Tinker are notorious moaners, worse than farmers.

  ‘Better for business when tastes vary,’ I said, nodding to Dick, who’d just come in with traces of the boatyard still on him. Dick waved and gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  ‘I like things tidy,’ said Tinker, except for Dandy Jack the untidiest man I knew.

  ‘I like collectors,’ I answered just to goad him and get a mouthful of invective for my trouble.

  A couple of new dealera were in from the West Country and, unaware of my recent history, latched affably on to me and we did a couple of provisional deals after a while. I earmarked for them a small folio of antiquary data, drawings of excavations in Asia Minor and suchlike, done by an industrious clergyman from York about 1820. It was supported by abstracts from the modern literature, photographs and articles, plus the diary of a late-Victorian lady who’d spent a lengthy sojourn near the excavations and described them in detail. All good desirable script. They in their turn came up with a Forsyth scent-bottle lock, which they showed me there and then, an early set of theodolites they’d bring to the pub next day and what sounded a weird collection of early sports equipment I’d have to travel to see. Knowing nothing about early sports gear, I fell back on my thoughtful introverted expression and said I was definitely interested but I’d have to think about it. They asked after a Pauly airgun, but I said how difficult it was to find such rarities and I’d see what I could do. I might let them have a Durs airgun in part-exchange.

  Ted the barman, pleased at my appearance of complete normality, was only too glad to serve me when I asked for pie, pickle and cheese.

  ‘Nice to see you up and about again, Lovejoy,’ he beamed.

  ‘Thanks, Ted.’

  ‘Completely well now, eh?’

  ‘A bit shaky on my pins now and again,’ I said.

  With transparent relief he said it was understandable.

  ‘The wife had one of these viruses too,’ he said. ‘She was off work a month. Time them researchers got on to things like that and left smoking alone.’

  So my collapse had to be down-graded (or up?) to a virus. Ah, well, if that was the party line I’d stick to it.

  Back in my old surroundings with Dandy Jack and the rest popping in and out for the odd deal, I passed the time in utter contentment. I honestly admire antiques dealers, like me. They are the last cavaliers, surviving as an extraordinary clone against fantastic odds by a mixture of devotion, philosophy and greed. The enemy, it practically goes without saying, is the succession of malevolent governments who urbanely introduce prohibitive measures aimed at first controlling and then finally exterminating us. We don’t bow to them. We don’t fit neatly into their lunatic schemes for controlling even the air everyone breathes. The inevitable result is hatred, of us and of our freedom. It includes the freedom to starve, and this we do gladly when it’s necessary. But we are still free, to be interested in what we do, to love what we practise and to work as and when we choose. And we work on average a good twelve hours a day every day, our every possession totally at risk every minute we live. And these poor duck eggs in the civil service actually believe they can bring us to heel! It’s pathetic, honestly. Our ingenuity will always be too profound for a gaggle of twerps – I hope.

  Listening to the banter going on hour after hour in the bar, my troubles receded and my fears vanished. We ranged over subjects as far apart as Venetian gondoliers’ Renaissance clothing to Kikuyu carvings, from eighteenth-century Esquimaux gaming counters to relics from the early days of the American wild west. It was lovely, warm and comfortable.

  Then I noticed it was dark outside.

  Chapter 15

  I ROSE AND left amid a chorus of good nights, quite like old times. The two strangers promised they’d be back about noon the next day, same place, and I promised I’d fetch my stuff.

  The road to the cottage seemed endless. Worse still, it was quiet to a degree I’d never before experienced. My old car seemed noisy. Its engine throbbed a beat out into the dark either side of the road only to have it pulsed back to reintensify the next chug. In the centre of a growing nucleus of contained deep pulsation the motor moved on between high hedges behind its great rods of beamed headlight. A moon ducked its one eye in and out of static cloud at me. It was one of those nights where moon shadows either gather in disquieting clusters or spread across moon-bright lanes making sinister pools where the ground you have to tread is invisible.

  The probing lights turned across the hedges down by the chapel. Unfortunately, nobody was about or I could have bolstered my courage by giving them a lift. With a sinking heart I swung into the path and curved to a stop outside my door. The silence, no longer held back by the throb of the great engine, rushed close and paused nearby in the darkness. I switched my door alarm off using the key and went in.

  Even the cottage seemed worried. The electric light had a wan air about it as if it too was affected by concern. I examined me miniature hallway for marks but found no signs of intrusion. My unease persisted. I pulled the curtains to and flicked on the living-room lamps to make it seem cosier. Putting the TV on seemed a wise move until I realized that I would be deaf to the sound of anyone approaching as well as blinded by the darkness. Easy meat for whoever was watching out there.

  To encourage what resolution I had left I made a rough meal I didn’t want. I hit on the idea of putting the radio on for a few moments. That way, when I eventually switched it off it might seem as though I had begun preparations for bed. With another stroke of genius I turned the hall light out and cautiously opened the front door a chink, just enough to get my arm out and insert the alarm key in the raised box on the door alcove. I usually didn’t bother to set the alarm when I was indoors but it might prove one more thing to lessen my many disadvantages. With the door safely closed and barred again I felt pleased at my inventiveness. Nobody could now pierce my perimeter, so to speak, without Geoffrey being roused at his police house. It would admittedly take some while for him to come hurtling over on his pedal-cycle, but I could hold me chap until he came.

  A braver man would have decided to be bold, perhaps take a weapon and stalk the blighter out there in all that darkness. I’m not that courageous, nor that daft. Whoever was outside would see me leave from either door, while I would be treading into the unknown. Let the cops pinch him if he tried any funny stuff, I thought. They get paid for looking after us. Geoffrey had had my break-in and two chickens with fowl-pest and that had been his lot since Michaelmas. Big deal.

  I’ve never really believed very much in all this subliminal learning stuff they talk about nowadays. You know the sort of thing, showing a one-second glimpse of a complex map in semi-darkness and getting psychiatrists to see if you can remember its details twenty years later. Nor do I go in for this extrasensory perception and/or psychomotive force, spoon-bending and thought-transference. Yet as I forced my food down and swilled tea my discomfiture began to grow from an energy outside myself. It was almost as if the cottage had been reluctantly forced into the role of unwelcome spectator to a crime about to be committed. That energy was, I became certain, generated by the watcher in the copse. Either I was acting as a sort of receiver of hate-impulses, or I was imagining the whole thing and he was at home laughing his head off knowing I was bound to be getting hysterical. My plan to flush him out by the advertisement and my enquiries had backfired. He was now forewarned, and I was set up for reprisal.

  Humming an octave shriller than usual I went about my chores, finished the food and washed up. It was important not to vary my routine. I got my bed ready in the adjoining room, leaving the bedside lamp on for about half an hour to simulate my usual reading-time. Then I switched it off together with the radio and the whole place was in darkness.

  Living so far from other people – a few hundred yards seemed miles now – the cottage always had alternative lighting about: candles, a torch, two or three oil-lamps. It would be safe to
use the torch only if I hooded it well, say with a handkerchief or a dishcloth, and was careful to keep the beam directed downwards. There was no need of it indoors because I knew every inch of every room, but there might come an opportunity to catch him in its illumination like a plane in a searchlight. I’d get a good glimpse of him and just phone the police. Notice that my erstwhile determination and rage had now been transmuted through fear into a desire for an army of policemen to show up and enforce the established law – another instance of Lovejoy’s iron will.

  The curtains were pale cream, a bad mistake. Anything pale is picked out by the moon’s special radiance, even a stone paler than its fellows being visible at a considerable distance. Were I to pull them back from the kitchen window the movement would be seen by even the most idle watcher. Still, it had to be risked.

  I got the torch ready in my right hand and moved stealthily towards the window. Do everything slowly if you want your movements to be unnoticed, was what they used to tell us in the Forces. Not fast and slick, but silent and slow. Feeling a fool I tiptoed towards the sink. By reaching across I could pull the curtain aside. There was no way to step to one side close against the wall because of the clutter in the corner. A derelict ironing board stood their with other useless impedimenta. The slightest nudge would raise the roof.

  Holding my breath I gently edged the curtain aside. The copse, set jet-black above a milky sheen of grass, seemed uncomfortably close. I hadn’t realized it was so short a gap, not even pacing it out the previous day. Nothing moved. But I knew he was there. Exactly in the way I was peering out at him, so he was staring at me. Could he see the curtain? I’d moved it without squeaking its noisy runners but their was the danger of the moonlight exposing a dark slit between pale material. I let the edges meet and exhaled noiselessly.

  To my surprise I was damp with sweat. Peering eyeball-to-eyeball with a murderer was no job for a growing lad. Maybe the best course would be to telephone Old Bill. Then, what if Scotland Yard arrived in force only to discover an empty copse without any trace of a lurking murderer? Imagine their annoyance when discovering they’d been summoned by a nervous idiot with a recent history of a nervous breakdown. That would be crying wolf with a vengeance. I’d have to wait until I had proof he was there. Probably it would be up to me.

  The view from the other windows was the same quiet, too quiet scene. No breeze moved the trees, and shadows stayed put. I began to feel somewhat better, a little more certain of myself. No matter what he tried I was certainly a match for him. He was only one bloke. If he had a gun along with him, well, I had a few too. On the other hand, if he was waiting for me to make another mistake, such as going out for a nocturnal car-ride without remembering to set the alarm or something making another burglary easier, he was going to be sadly disappointed.

  I waited another thirty minutes. Let him think I was sound asleep. My one bonus was my conviction he was out there. He, on the contrary, knew I was in the cottage but he had no way of knowing I was certain he was sitting on the tree stump and waiting. Sweat broke over me like a wave. What the hell was he waiting for? What point was there in watching a silent cottage when I was supposed to have retired for the night? Nothing could possibly happen until dawn when I awoke – or could it? My increasing nervousness took hold. It was ridiculous to let it but I could not withstand the rush of adrenalin.

  Shading the torch, I read the time on the wall clock. Ten minutes to twelve. A plan evolved in my mind. I would wait until dawn when he was probably dozing, then rush outside, down the path to the lane, sprint across into my neighbour’s drive and hide deep in the laurel hedge. Of course, I’d have a gun with me, maybe my Durs air-weapon, which could shoot three, possibly four, spherical bullets without needing a further pumping up. With that relatively silent weapon I could prevent him leaving the copse from the far side. His bike would be useless.

  This cunning plan had an undoubted risk, but there were two advantages. One was that it postponed any action at all, true Lovejoy-style, so I needn’t do anything dangerous just yet and maybe by dawn, he would be gone. The second advantage was that, in rushing out, I’d set off the police alarm. He’d be trapped. All I’d have to do would be to sit tight and threaten him with the air-weapon. He’d recognize it, collector that he was, with its great bulbous copper ball dangling beneath the stock. No mistake about that. Unfortunately, though, he might guess I would try a morning sprint and simply move towards my path. I wouldn’t care to meet him face to face with him sitting ready and me disarrayed and running.

  The front-door bell rang.

  I dropped the torch from cold shock. A strange echo emitted from the walls about me, taking some seconds to the away. Fumbling along the carpet I found the torch again and dithered, really dithered. Holding it in fear now, I peered out of the dark living room towards the door. The moon was shading the front of the cottage. Anyone could be there. My heart seemed to boom at every beat. Why does sweat come when you are cold from terror? The shelling I’d endured years ago had been nothing to this. It was somehow worse because whoever waited now at my door was in a sense unknown.

  It could be Margaret. She might have sensed my fright and come to make sure I was all right. Why not telephone instead? Surely she’d do that, a far more sensible approach. Maybe she’d wanted to see for herself. I was on my way down the hall towards the door when the obvious flaw came to my mind – the cottage had been still as death. I’d been listening for the slightest sound for nearly an hour now, and had not heard a thing. And the path outside was gravel. You could even hear a rabbit cross it. But not a clever, oh-so-clever, murderer. Nobody creeps up to a door then rings the bell.

  Sweat trickled from my armpits. It dripped from my forehead and stung the corners of my eyes. Should I call out, asking who was there? Not if he had the Judas guns with him, which might be used to shoot me down as soon as he located me.

  I didn’t dare creep closer to the door in case he fired through. And if I crept back to the telephone for the police he’d hear the receiver go and me dialling. Would he honestly dare to break in? Panicking now, I slithered out of the hall and pulled the carpet back from over the priest-hole. I needed no light to find the iron ring in its recess. Astride the flag I hauled it upwards and rested it against the armchair as I usually did. Cursing myself for a stupid unthinking fool I clambered down the steps into the chamber. By feel alone I found the Mortimer case and extracted the duellers. The Durs air-weapon might have been more useful, but I’d relied too much on having the upper hand. Positions were bitterly reversed now.

  The slab lowered in place, I covered it with the carpet. Where was he now? Would he still be there at the front door, or was that a mere bluff to draw attention while he crept round the side and gained entrance there? I stood, armed but irresolute, in the living room. Waves of malevolence washed through me – all from the external source he represented. He was there outside, watching and waiting. It was all part of his game. His hate emanated towards me through the walls. I could practically touch it, feel it as a live, squirming tangible thing. The pathetic unpre-paredness of my position was apparent to him as well as to me.

  Something drew me towards the kitchen window. Had he given up lurking by the front door and gone back to his place in the copse? I tried turning myself this way and that, stupidly hoping my mental receivers would act like a direction-finder and tell me exactly where he was. Perhaps my fear was blunting the effect. If he was in process of moving through the copse I might see his form. It seemed worth a try. If only it wasn’t so utterly dark in the shadows from that treacherous moon.

  The difficulty was holding the torch and the Mortimers. I finally settled for gripping one dueller beneath my arm and holding the torch with my left hand. Leaning across the sink I slowly pulled the curtain aside.

  For one instant, I stood there, stunned by sudden activity. The glass exploded before my eyes. A horrendous crackling sound from glass splinters all about held me frozen. Behind me inside the living-roo
m a terrible thump sounded which made even the floor shudder. The curtain was snapped aside and upwards, flicked as if it had been whipped by some huge force. I stared for quite three or four seconds aghast at the immensity of this abrupt destruction before my early training pulled me to the floor. There was blood on my face, warm and salty.

  Something dripped from my chin on to my hands as I crawled on all fours back to the living-room. I had lost one of the Mortimers but still held the torch. Broken glass shredded my hands and knees as I moved, a small incidental compared to the noise I was making. I rolled on to the divan to get my breath and see how much damage I’d sustained.

  My face was bleeding from cuts, presumably due to the glass. They’d prove a handicap because they might dampen the black powder if I had to reload, but for the moment they were a detail. My handkerchief I tied round my left hand, which seemed in the gloom to look the darker of the two and was therefore probably bleeding more profusely. To my astonishment, I was becoming calmer every second. The situation was not in hand, but was at least clearly defined. Even a dullard like me could tell black from white. The issue couldn’t be clearer. He was outside shooting at me, and there was to be no quarter. Simple.

  I crawled messily towards the telephone. Even as I jerked the receiver into my bandaged hand I knew it would be dead. The sod had somehow cut the wire. Okay, I told myself glibly, I’d wait until morning when the postgirl would happen by and bring help. She came every day, rain, snow, hail or blow.

  Except Sunday, Lovejoy.

  And tomorrow was Sunday. And my neighbours opposite drove to Walton-on-Sea every Saturday for the weekend.

  Depressed by that, I set to working out the trajectory of his missile. Naturally, in my misconceived confidence I’d not drawn a plan snowing the position of his stump relative to the windows. That would have helped. Knowing it roughly, however, I peered through the gloom at the corner farthest from the kitchen alcove and finally found it, sticking half buried in the wall. A bolt, from an arbalest.