The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (20 page)

To raise the bricks, starting from the wall where they were already loose, was easy, but earth beneath was nearly as hard as any concrete. Georges picked away with the bill hook while the colonel shovelled.

‘Hard labour for us till the small hours,' he said. ‘And what do we do with the earth, Georges?'

‘Into the septic tank. I hear the sediment is backing up into the well anyway. The plumber will wonder how so much soil got into it, but let him wonder!'

Mannering pointed out that the packing case would do to shift it, tipped the mouldy children's books out on to the floor and picked up
The Tale of Samuel Whiskers
.

‘I used to enjoy that one,' he said. ‘Tom Kitten lost himself in the flues of a chimney and was nearly put in a pudding just like you.'

‘Why wasn't I told the right chimney?'

‘No one to tell you. Each division has a top secret flue of its own. There's Gerald's MI5. Cunning lot of sods! He has now got his claws into a major organisation. It may be a year or more before they find out that every movement and every contact of theirs is known. Ruthless—that's what he is. I'll bet he wishes that you and that pretty little hell-cat of yours were down there with poor Irata. Then you could never give the show away in court. And there's his opposite number, MI6, with their own sooty flue. I believe there are still bits of MI14 about too, but I don't know what they do. And then there are harmless staff officers in MI(S). We just listen to people like Lukash.'

‘And what is Bridge Holdings?'

‘I haven't the least idea, Georges. Probably that question should be put to Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. But Herbert Spring likes you and we'll take his advice—for you're in deadly danger from the police and your safety from the KGB can never be guaranteed. I shall now dig a case full and you can do the next.'

It was long after midnight when the hole was deep enough for Irata and he was laid in it.

‘No salute. No Internationale on a brass band. No priest. What can we do for him, Georges?'

‘Nothing. He saved my life and I can give him nothing. I suppose he was an atheist.'

‘Let's hope that he was wrong, and that something can return to the land he so loved, even now.'

They filled the grave, stamped back the bricks and swept the floor with Georges's jacket. The surface of course had different irregularities to those that were before, but the general impression, they agreed, would be that age and the seepage of water had loosened what was an amateur job in the first place. Only Daisy might be puzzled by the changed pattern of ups and downs. Dust and cobwebs, however, showed that she never went down there.

‘Well, that's that, and I had better be off.'

‘Where is your car?'

‘At the Manor Farm.'

‘Won't the police ask why, and who you are?'

‘Let them! I am an old friend of Paul Longwill from Military Supplies at the War House. You see, Georges, how useful it is to be a simple soldier. We are below suspicion. Now, I am taking Zia and the brochures to safety at nine o'clock. Your turn will be at night. Since you are believed to be in Lille, you must not on any account be seen in the village.'

Georges consumed the last scraps of food and drink in the ice-house, stretched out his aching limbs and went to sleep. At dawn he heard a car turn into the gate and stop outside the house. Assuming that the colonel had changed his mind and decided to pick him up before Zia, he looked carelessly over the screen of bushes and instantly withdrew his head. A police car had thrown out two officers into the house and sent two more to the far corner to cover the back.

The party inside reappeared in ten minutes which proved that they had seen nothing wrong with the cellar. The Inspector in charge looked disappointed with their report, called in his men at the back and then held a long conversation over the car radio; evidently he had more to discuss than a dawn raid which had drawn a complete blank. Well, that stood to reason. Even a cursory look round would have shown that the badly wanted Irata had wheeled in his motorbike and recently wheeled it out again. The broken bottle was further proof. Georges and the colonel had scrubbed the pool clean and poured pure wine over the stain.

Later in the day, when police returned with their battery of devices, full investigation was likely to reveal the footsteps of Mrs Fanshawe and the murderer of Fyster-Holmes as well as a regular thieves' kitchen of other visitors. The variety of tracks in an empty house inspected by prospective buyers would muddle the issue, but it was too much to hope that police would leave the ridges unexplored. The ice-house was finished as a refuge.

A plain-clothes man was left behind, posted under the trees above him; so they still suspected that someone might seek safety in the house. All was silent till half past eight when he heard the beat of a horse's hooves cantering past the gate. Paul must be up to something, for nobody else in Alderton or a near village kept horses.

Shortly afterwards the car roared up to the house again. The inspector stood up and hailed his sentry under the trees.

‘Come down quick! We want every man. She's not far off.'

For a moment the constable seemed about to hurl himself at the impenetrable scrub, but he thought better of it and ran directly down the lane. As soon as he was in the car it shot off northwards.

Georges had assumed that he himself or the badly-wanted Irata was the object of the raid on the house; but the threat was far worse than that. They had Zia on the run, and since they had reason to suspect she was in Alderton it must mean that they had traced the connection between Mrs Fanshawe and Rivac and knew very well that he had been her accomplice in the mud of the Thames backwater.

Now that the sentry had gone from the top, he crawled up to take a look at the village. He could see Daisy's garden. The colonel was talking to her and in his hand he held something like a book. It could be the two brochures, for he knew where they were hidden and could have picked them out of the drainpipe if Zia had not had time. It sounded as if she hadn't with the police right on her tail. She could not get clear. He himself, who knew every yard of the country, would have little hope in daylight; he'd be picked up before nightfall running across the open or cowering in a ditch.

He guessed where she would go if she could possibly get so far. According to Mannering, she had spent Saturday night under hawthorn by a stream, but the colonel did not know where in Alderton Wood it was and would never find her. Georges could imagine her sitting there not once admitting defeat but desolate, well aware that Georges, wherever he was—and it was evident that she did not know—might see no reason to move, never realising that Mrs Fanshawe was very near the deadly exposure as Zia Fodor. Paul could not help. If Daisy's cottage and the Manor Farm had also been raided—which seemed pretty certain—Paul would not dare to guide a rescue when his every move might be followed.

No reason to move? To hell with it! He would have a try. The description of Georges Rivac must after all be a little vague. A bad passport photograph was probably the most they could lay their hands on unless one counted a portrait of him at the age of thirteen on Daisy's mantelpiece. It might not be difficult to reach the wood if he could openly walk the roads instead of inviting capture by rushes from one futile patch of cover to another.

With all his thoughts turned inwards to himself and outwards to Zia the last thing he had considered was his appearance. He now took stock of himself. His jacket was covered with brick dust, his trousers stained and shapeless. He could take to the road as a tramp, but tramps were no longer common and likely to be questioned by any passing cop when a criminal was loose. No, he had to be something grubby, agricultural and at work. He couldn't think what. The landscape of his bit of England was familiar but its social life had changed. His eyes fell on the bill hook. A useful property. He remembered hedgers always carrying with them a personal hook, shaped to and by the hand. There was the shovel too. Who the hell could carry a shovel? Well, a hedger might if he expected to have to clear a few yards of ditch as well. At any rate the solitary walker would not give the impression of a tramp and certainly not that of a French
commercant
from Lille. Carrying shovel and bill hook he wriggled his way up the slope. All was clear. Once on the upper road he settled down to the gait of an old fashioned farm-hand, quickening to a fast stride when hedges hid him.

Chapter Nine

When Zia was dropped at Daisy's cottage there was no awkward waiting at the front door. It opened, received her and closed. Daisy had observed the car through her lace curtains and recognised her.

‘Now you come into the kitchen, Mrs Fanshawe, and we'll 'ave a nice cup of tea what I expect you could do with.'

She picked Zia's pack off the chair where she had laid it down, separated coat from sleeping bag and bag from other possessions and put all away in different cupboards. The action was as immediate and instinctive as that of an experienced criminal.

‘I'm going to ask you if I may stay the night, Mrs Taylor. The man who left me is a colonel in the army and a friend of Georges.'

‘Of the general too, me dear?'

‘Mrs Taylor, you mustn't tease me. I think you know very well that there isn't any general. When we met before you said Georges might take up with a pair of Siamese twins. Well, I'm the twins and I'm not married and—and I don't know where he is and I must.'

‘There, there! Don't take on so! I'll take a message for you, Mrs Fanshawe, when the coast is clear.'

‘He and Mr Longwill talked about a cellar in his grandmother's house. He was going to be there with the Spaniard, Irata, but he wasn't.'

‘You've been looking for 'im?'

‘The night before last.'

‘Well, he is and he ain't in no cellar as you might say.'

Cautious old thing. But how right and sweet and trustworthy!

‘What has he told you about me?'

‘It were not what 'e said, me dear, but them eyes of his when 'e said it. Now I've known 'im since 'e was four and you can't never make 'im do nothing until 'e ain't jumpy and knows 'e wants to.'

‘He knows he wants to all right.'

‘Well, I only 'opes you treats 'im kind. He 'as a lot to learn about us, 'as Master Georges.'

‘Mrs Taylor, I shall treat him very kind. I intend to make him marry me if we are ever safe again.'

‘That do make a couple of the pair of you! And safe from what, may I ask?'

‘So much, Daisy—so much!'

Zia broke down in helpless sobbing. It was as if she had been longing to cry for days, deprived of tears as a prisoner deprived of the sanctuary of the sky, and without the warmth and comfort of another woman.

‘Now you 'aven't been sleeping, me dear, and in strange places I wouldn't wonder. So upstairs with you and a little supper in bed, like, and then I'm going to turn the light out and sit with you till you're off. Just tell me one thing now, so I can be easy. Will he be out of the trouble?'

‘I am sure he will be, Daisy dear, but he can never return to Alderton or Lille.'

‘Won't I never see 'im again then?'

‘Wherever we are, Daisy, there will be a ticket for you and a spare bedroom.'

‘Now to bed, my darling! And don't you dare to stir till I tell you and we'll be all ready in time for your nice, tall officer.'

Zia awoke refreshed and a new woman. She lay in bed listening to the silence and a dawn chorus of birds in which, unlike the full ensemble of Alderton Wood, the village prima donnas could be distinguished. She was at last confident that she was in good hands and her duty done. However many of these mysterious agencies there might be, at least one of them could see her safely and secretly back to Hungary and ensure that Georges Rivac remained unknown to British police.

Long before eight Daisy was in her room; a breathless Daisy.

‘Now don't you be alarmed, me dear, but one of the girls what does for Mr Longwill 'as come over to tell me that the 'ouse is fair swarming with police. They didn't allow no one out, but Master Paul says to 'er: “Marlene,” 'e says, “you get took all over queer and gibber at 'em as 'ow you're that feared of murder and the cops, and keep on screamin' until they turn you out 'ome. And then you nip down to Daisy,” 'e says, “and tell 'er they got on to a certain person through the 'otel.” Telephone and breakfast she says Master Paul said.'

‘And what about the colonel?'

‘She tells me there was another gentleman 'avin' 'is bath and told 'em to come in, which was 'ardly decent, and said 'e didn't know nought about nothing and would they kindly pick the soap up off the floor where 'e'd dropped it because they give 'im such a turn.'

Rivac. It was not a common name. Police knew without a doubt that Mrs Fanshawe had some connection with Irata and that she had been present at the death of Fyster-Holmes. They also knew, acting on the enquiry from Lille police, that Rivac had stayed in Alderton with Daisy and was a friend of Paul Longwill. And now Mrs Fanshawe and Rivac had both been in the Regency Hotel when he was supposed to have returned to Lille. He must be as badly wanted as she was herself.

‘They'll be here next,' Zia said, ‘unless nobody saw me arrive.'

‘It was quick enough, but village eyes are quicker. I'll say you're ill and mustn't be disturbed.'

Zia got her imagination to work on that one. The colonel must never say that he had driven her down from London; he had picked up a girl on the road, obviously feverish and ill, and had charitably taken her to Mrs Taylor having heard from some nameless passer-by that she also was charitable and would give her a bed.

‘That lets you out, Daisy, if you stick to it. You never dreamed that the poor thing was Mrs Fanshawe whom you only saw once. And we must get a message to Colonel Mannering at the Manor Farm so that he knows what to say when they ask him. He is really a colonel and they will have to believe him.'

‘Then get dressed in case you 'as a chance to run for it, me dear. And if it's any manner of good to drop out of the back window there, you'll land on a nice, soft flower bed and won't 'urt yourself.'

Daisy put her back in bed, now fully dressed, and arranged a fairly convincing show. She placed a bottle of medicine and a drink of lemon by the bedside, squirted the room with disinfectant, turned on a wholly unnecessary electric fire, covered up Zia's hair and put a cold compress over forehead and eyes.

‘And 'ere they comes!' she said, hearing a car draw up outside.

Zia listened to the rumble of the police apologies and the higher note of Daisy's protests. After searching the ground floor, the tramp of feet started to come upstairs. Somebody entered the room. Zia, groaning and tossing, did not even look up.

‘I don't doubt that she's ill, Mrs Taylor, but this may be the woman we want. I shall not disturb her till the doctor has had a look but I must post an officer outside the door. Meanwhile we will ask Colonel Mannering how and where he picked her up.'

The door was locked. Zia crept out of bed and watched the road from the front window of the darkened room. There was a small crowd of a dozen curious villagers outside the house. To her amazement she saw Paul Longwill ride upon the bay mare—the picture of an old-fashioned squire sorting out the troubles of the village. He may have thought he was in character, but the stares proved that nobody else did; she noticed that he was far from a competent horseman.

Waving back the curious, he slipped the reins far too carelessly over the gatepost and came in. Well, at least Daisy could make an opportunity to speak to him. The colonel, arriving on foot, joined the onlookers with an air of detached amusement.

But why? What was Paul up to? Was this ridiculous masquerade one of his affectations to impress the police? And then she saw it. Quietly she opened the back window and dropped. She walked steadily round to the front, saying a casual good morning to the bystanders. Before they could recover from their surprise at Daisy's unknown guest, or the police—if they were still inside—could leave the house, she was in the saddle and away. The colonel made a deliberately futile effort to snatch at the bridle. Paul dashed out into the road shouting that the blasted woman had stolen his horse.

Cantering down the street and breaking into a gallop on the green verge of the lane which passed grandmother's house she headed north. Once over the rise and out of sight of the village she took to the fields and into an inviting fold of the ground just deep enough to cover the mare and herself if she dismounted. She watched two police cars racing up the lane; it was a fair bet that when they came to the crossroads at Alderton Abbas one would turn right and the other left to cut her off. Behind them the lane was fortunately empty. She charged straight down into it, jumping the easy hedge, and was again hidden provided no traffic passed. There was then no instant way out to the west unless she jumped the opposite hedge. Any of her own horses could have taken a rabbit hop and cleared it, but there was no telling what the mare, seldom exercised and kept largely as a decoration, could or could not do. The jump could only be risked if she had room for half a dozen strides and a firm take-off from the verge.

She rode on desperately seeking the needed space on the right of the lane and found it in an open gate. Hoping to God that the mare had been trained as a hunter before being used as a rocking horse for Paul's girl friends she turned into the gateway and rode at the hedge. The mare, unhappy at the change to tarmac, took off too late, barged her way through the hawthorn, tripped, recovered and was away with a long, easy stride into the cover of willows round a pond.

Zia knew that somebody somewhere must have seen her, but if that somebody had no idea what was going on in Alderton it might be all of half an hour before she was reported. Meanwhile the police were off on the wrong track and she had time to think. Arrest in the end was unavoidable, yet if she could delay it for a few hours Gerald and the colonel might hit on some means of rescue. The right game was to go hard for the edge of Alderton Wood, come out into the long glade and gallop down it where no car, even if it could reach the glade at all, could possibly catch her.

Zia, rejoicing in the speed and excitement of the mare, did just that. Easily clearing a barbed wire fence—though she could not know it was going to be easy and almost closed her eyes—she arrived in a pasture at the end of the glade where there was a herd of Herefords and three horses among them, two of them bright bays and the third a chestnut. They presented to her the solution of her worst problem: how to get rid of her own dark bay mare. The police, she said to herself contemptuously, would call the whole lot brown and fail to distinguish one from another.

Turning into the trees she slipped off saddle and bridle, hiding them under a pile of rotten hay left over from winter feed, and after a quick rub down with handfuls of hedge parsley to remove the white salt of sweat, turned the mare loose into society. It might well be late afternoon before the owner of the field realised that a stray horse was among his own, and evening before the police contacted him or he the police.

There was now only one place to go and wait for the end. Georges could guess it, but he might know nothing at all of this frantic morning. Keeping in the shelter of the trees she walked on until she came to the stream and could follow up its course to the sanctuary under the canopy of tall hawthorn—the flowers were falling now—with its clumps of Honesty. The sand was ruffled by the ramblings of Appinger's busy gang; patches of bare earth among the trodden stems showed where they had smoothed over their excavations. Their efforts would have been encouraged when they found the clear footmarks of a man and a woman left a week ago by Georges and herself.

She crossed the stream into the jungle of hazels on the other side and worked her way through them into a bird's nest of dead mossy stumps where she would never be spotted unless a line of police combed the wood as mercilessly as beaters on a shoot. But that in fact was their practice. She remembered pictures of police looking for tiny clues to a murderer. Murderer—it was so absurd to think of Georges as a murderer. The word appalled her. Yet anybody in a moment of utter desperation could be one. She was one. She had thought of the drowning of Rippmann as an act of defence like that of a soldier who shoots before he is shot. Had it been really necessary? If only she had known all she knew now, she and Georges could easily have lost Rippmann in London. Yes, indeed they could; but Rippmann on leaving the ferry, standing behind her perhaps when she showed her passport to the Immigration Officer, would have had no difficulty in discovering the name of the woman who had been talking so intensely to Georges Rivac.

And now her name was going to be discovered anyway. Burn her passport—that was the only solution. She should have done it long ago, but exposure had never been so near as now. Police could be a long time finding out who she was and meanwhile the colonel would find some means of warning her mother and her uncle. She built a little fire of dead wood and burned the Hungarian passport then and there.

An hour later she heard someone approaching through the thicket on the opposite bank. Fool! The tiny column of smoke might have attracted one of the searchers. She sank into the hazels, all of her hidden but her eyes. She caught glimpses of a figure uniformly grey, bent low and carrying a spade. It might be police. It might be the ice-cream man returning. It might be Gerald coming to bury her as a nuisance to be got rid of. The recent contemplation of her own guilt reinforced panic. She felt terrified as never before.

The crouching and sinister figure passed out on to the sand and stood up. Zia burst out of the hazels, jumped the stream throwing up a sunlit sparkle of water as she landed short, and was in his arms.

‘How did you know it?'

‘Where else could you be? But I was sure I would get here first.'

‘Paul left a horse for me and I was away like a highwayman.'

‘Where is it?'

‘In a field at the end of the glade with other horses. Do they know I'm in the wood?'

‘They must think it likely. But we're safe here for hours perhaps. And it's a very big wood and I know it.'