Watcher in the Shadows (8 page)

“You must have full police protection at once,” Ian insisted. “Don’t you care whether you’re alive or not?”

“Very much. I have a lot of work still to do on the red squirrel.”

I am told that was what I answered. It seems unlikely but possible. At that time I felt that my executioner had a good deal of perverted right on his side. The same memories which obsessed him were, after ten years, still present in my own mind too. So I was not then in love with life for its own sake. Being a healthy animal I was afraid of death. Indeed I was never far from the edge of panic. That can be taken for granted; I needn’t describe it over again. But I found it hard to give a good reason — beyond the red squirrel — why I should live.

I asked him to forget about the police for the moment. What I needed was a witness, preferably him. And then I drew him the sketch map which I reproduce here:

“The trap is timed for the very last of the light,” I explained. “That is when he will come, for he can’t see to shoot later. Here is the layout:

“I am sitting in the alder at A, pretending to watch badgers. He will not take the footpath from the Stoke-Hernsholt road because I could see him as soon as he could see me. He is assuming that I feel well hidden in this bit of country and pretty safe — but I should not be feeling so safe that I would allow an unknown person to approach me after dark.

“He won’t come across the stream because the banks are boggy and he would make a lot of noise. So he will come down the footpath from the north. He has soft turf under foot, and he is hidden from the alder all the way. So he has only to put his hand round the edge of that patch of thick stuff where the badger sett is in order to drop me out of my tree with absolute certainty at a range of five yards. If no one pays any attention to the shot —and why should they? —he has all night at his disposal to finish me off.

“But this is going to be the catch in it. You will work your way back into the brambles at B. It’s all dead stuff, and you can cut out a hole with a pair of garden clippers. Get your legs on soft earth down the badgers’ back door and pile their old bedding — there’s plenty of it about — underneath your body. You won’t be too uncomfortable.

“You will see him long before I do. In fact I shall never see him at all till we’ve got him. When he raises his revolver or automatic to fire, order him to drop it and put his hands up. He won’t. I am sure of that. So you’ll have to let him have it with a twelve-bore. I’m afraid he is bound to lose a hand or a foot at that range and I’m not too sure of my law. But I take it we are only using reasonable force when the intention to murder is plain.”

Ian refused to play without the presence of the police. Naturally enough. I had no reason — beyond my own need —to expect him to have preserved a wartime mentality.

“I’ll telephone the chief constable at once,” he said. “He’s a personal friend. At the shop with me.”

I replied that I had no objection provided the chief constable could, at such short notice, provide us with a policeman guaranteed to he fairly motionless for four hours and not even slap at a midge for the last two of them. What he would give us would be a detective who was very good indeed at sitting in a car or standing inconspicuously on a street corner.

“But he can trail the man,” Ian said, “now that you have predicted his movements.”

I ridiculed that. “‘Good evening, sir, I am a police officer and it is my duty to inquire your business.’ ‘I am enjoying the cool of the evening, officer.’ ‘Your name and address?’ ‘With great pleasure.’

“And he will give it,” I went on, “the correct address where he is staying and the false name he is staying under. But he can’t be detained. And he won’t be there in the morning. There’s not a thing the police can do until they have some evidence of a crime.”

“They can prevent it.”

“They can indeed. But tonight only. And two months later the detective responsible for me is bluffed by a gentleman of obvious respectability who pretends to be the Inspector of Inland Revenue or a Commissioner of Church Lands and calls at half a dozen houses before mine.”

“What about the description? Heavy build? Thick, black eyebrows?”

“He may not have them. I’m doubtful about the eyebrows already. As for the weight — don’t you remember Vasile Mavro and his pneumatic stomach?”

Ian smiled at last.

“It took Vasile weeks to learn to walk as if he were really carrying that stomach,” he said. “After all, this fellow hasn’t been trained by us.”

“Hasn’t he? If he was in Buchenwald or had friends who were, it’s very likely that he was trained by us or some organization nearly as good.”

“But then he can make rings round any county police!” Ian exclaimed.

“Round Special Branch, too —provided that his motive is perplexing, and that he is working alone, not for any political organization. Look at it this way! It was you who first brought up the tiger metaphor. Well, imagine he’s an experienced tiger with a taste for man! I gather that the difficulty is to make and keep contact. In fact it can’t be done without tying out a bait. That’s what I am. I have to be, because we don’t know any other which would tempt him. If you or the police refuse to let me hunt him in my own way I shall be killed in his.

“And here’s one other point! I’d like to talk to the tiger. Suppose I am the last on the list? The murders of Sporn and Dickfuss are nothing. I’d give him a medal for them. If I think he has finished, if I can convince him who and what I really was, I may not hand him over to the police at all.”

“You have forgotten the postman,” Ian protested.

“Punishing him is not going to bring the postman back to life. That could remain between the tiger and his God, so long as he doesn’t force us to send him to hospital.”

It was this argument —the weakest of all —which, I think, persuaded Ian. He had been wavering ever since I suggested the obvious truth that we were dealing with someone who had been a colleague or ally during the war.

“But you’re not going to sit on that nest or machan of yours if the tiger is examining it right now,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Thorns. Didn’t you say you had considered drawing-pins?”

I assured him that was only panic. No one except a pathologist could do much damage with a surface scratch. And anyway there were no thorns on an alder, so why arouse unnecessary suspicion by putting them there?

“What time do I get into position?”

“Let’s say he has finished going over the ground now or half an hour ago. Then he will want a meal, because he didn’t have any lunch. The sooner you are in position the better, but not later than six.”

The mention of meals at once brought out the regimental officer. Ian reproached himself for not realizing earlier that I had eaten nothing since lunch the day before—in fact I had had plenty, though in bits and pieces — and insisted on bringing back some food before he went to ground with the badgers.

Since I had to give way on the question of bringing in the police somewhere, we agreed that Ian should telephone his friend, using a vague and deprecating English manner, to the effect that it was just possible that he had come upon the trail of the parcel which blew up the postman, and that he should give a description of the suspect.

That was sound sense. If the dark gentleman, wounded or not, got away from us after showing his intention, it was a straight police job to hold him for inquiry until Ian could identify him. It was impossible to guess which way he would go, but, since his line of communication was across the Long Down, a patrol car on the far side of it had a chance of picking him up. Ian was also going to ask for police at the corner where the Stoke road entered Hernsholt. He thought he could manage all that on an old boy basis without giving too much away.

His farm was only some three miles off, so that he was back at half past five with a cold chicken and a bottle of wine. He had been able to arrange that two traffic patrols, in the course of their normal routine, should cover the roads leading away from the Long Down between nine and midnight and should keep an eye on parked cars. He could not get police to watch the Hernsholt end of the Stoke road as well and had detailed the invaluable Isaac Purvis for this duty —with strict orders not to interfere in any way with the big man in the brown suit and to telephone police immediately if he appeared to be hurt.

Ian was going to leave his car in Stoke and walk from there. His movements could be watched from the firs or the stream as far as the badger fortress but no farther. Once he had rounded that tangle of thorn and bramble he could hack his way into it. Rather belatedly I remembered that he was over fifty, and advised him to leave all violent action to me if there had to be any.

He replied that he was a hard-working farmer and far fitter than he had been at the end of the war; he guaranteed to carry me any time a hundred yards farther than I could carry him. No, his chief objection to the whole plan was that he had to walk across somebody else’s land carrying a gun and couldn’t think of any convincing excuse if he met the owner.

I ate my chicken and drank half the bottle. A little after seven there was a sharp, freshening shower. I was glad that Ian, farmer or not, was safely tucked into the badger fortress where hardly a drop would penetrate. The evening turned out to be one of gold and gray, innocently English and less glaring than the previous night, which stuck in my mind as black and crimson.

At half past eight I set out and took the field path down from the north, for I was not going to trust myself to the Stoke road. Ian was in position. His field of fire was deadly, but he had made himself a bit too comfortable. The dark hole under dead brambles was obvious as I came along the tiger’s expected line of approach. I bent down a branch and tied it inconspicuously so that the leaves drooped across the mouth of the tunnel.

Then I went round the end of the badger fortress and, presumably, into full view of my executioner if he had already returned to the firs or to the bridge. The nearest patch of cover on that side gave him a range of a hundred and forty yards. I felt at first a little naked, in spite of being certain that he wouldn’t draw attention to himself by carrying a rifle; that if he did have one I should long ago have been found dead in the cottage garden.

I climbed into the alder and sat still. The sun set, and the world became pearl gray. It was such a familiar world. How many times I had watched my gentle, nervous little mammals under exactly similar conditions! I heard badger cubs yelping underground that it was time to go out. They stopped that very suddenly. A sharp nip from mother had probably impressed upon them that there were two smelly boots down the back door and that long and careful exploration was needed before going out of the front.

Partridges called from the tussocky grass behind me. A little owl landed on the hawthorn opposite with what was probably a shrew in his talons. That was the only sign of any violence at all in the hunting dusk. Cows had been let into the field across the stream since the afternoon, and slowly shifted their groupings as they tore at and chewed —most peaceful of sounds —a last bite of the rich grass along the water.

There was no moon, and under the overcast sky the fight faded early. I no longer fussed about the range of a hundred and forty yards; what began to matter was how much we two enemies could see at ten. The stream and its boggy edges protected my front. Out to my right there was featureless meadow upon which anything which moved could be spotted. Behind me was rough grass on a slight but uneven slope, terraced and pitted by the paths of sheep and cattle through the winter mud. I felt confident that my trained ears would hear anyone who tried to move over this; and anyway it was partly covered by Ian. To my left and overshadowing me was the black bulk of the badger fortress, which smothered all possibility of seeing and listening. The darker it got, the more certain I became that my assassin could not miss the opportunity I had arranged for him, and that the trap would work. From moment to moment I expected to hear Ian’s challenge and shot.

The tiger was leaving it late. I wondered again how much he knew of naturalists. In the unlikely event of a badger leaving the sett on my side I would only have seen his streak of white. There was no conceivable point in staying up in the alder unless I intended to take flashlight photographs. And I was not carrying a camera.

For distraction I gave the badgers some of my attention. One had possibly crossed the stream and was keeping his usual obstinate course, for a cow blew hard and moved away. That aroused a question in my mind, but thereafter the movements of the cattle were perfectly natural. I could hear the tearing gradually die away as one by one they lay down. Two or three followed the course of the stream and I could just see the black bulks across the water. Out of sight, immediately below the fortress, another squelched through the boggy ground, then passed across my front and vanished.

After that there was absolute silence. I heard Ian cautiously change position. I knew what the faint crackle was, but the tiger could not possibly know — if, that is, he were anywhere near and not enjoying his after-dinner coffee miles away or waiting for me at the Warren. I decided that I had finished with that cottage. It was a good base for attack if the enemy had given me plenty of time to observe him and his ways, but it was hopeless for defense.

I began to feel drowsy and changed position. It did not matter how much noise I made except from the point of view of putting on a convincing act. The muscles beneath my thighs were sore and painful from resting across a narrow branch, so I drew up my feet and squatted knee to chin. From a distance I must have looked like a bulky, shapeless bird roosting dangerously close to the ground.

It was that movement which saved me. Out of the tail end of my eye I saw the silhouette of the lower end of the badger fortress harden, detach itself and charge. There might have been just time to shoot, but shooting had never been in my mind. From my coiled-spring squat I sailed into the air out of the alder and came down feet foremost on to the great dome of thorn and bramble like Brer Rabbit hitting the briar patch. I sank up to my chest, for the moment not noticing at all the little furies of thorns. I thought I was a better target than ever, but I cannot have been. The longer stems of hawthorn opposite my face must have masked me, though I could see clearly through them.