At last it stopped.
Birdie dragged one leg free and used it to help her lever open the door. The cool night air cleared her head a little but did nothing to diminish her sense of horror and dismay. She pulled herself out of the kiosk allowing the door to swing shut, and stood leaning back against it for some moments. Several cars went by, but shrubs shielded her from the beams of their headlamps.
She opened the door once more, and held it open with her body while she knelt and put her face close to Grail’s. She heard no sign of breathing. Not knowing where to test for a pulse, she felt gently around the neck and under the shirt in what she supposed to be the region of the heart. She encountered not the slightest tremor.
There was a noise somewhere, though. An elfin squawking. Close at hand. Birdie looked up, her fear mounting again. Then she realized what the noise was. She reached and grasped the hanging phone.
“What the hell’s going on? Are you still supposed to want this recording?” Becket’s voice.
She spoke quietly, urgently. “Bob, now listen. Something absolutely bloody’s happened, Clive’s had a heart attack or something. He’s on the floor here, out cold. Bob...Bob, I think he’s dead.” She paused, but Becket made no attempt to say anything. She went on: “Look, one of you will have to get out here quickly. Run, walk, but quickly. It’s not far. I daren’t leave him. And someone will have to stay by the phone at the house in case the office comes back on. Whoever does come, for Christ’s sake be quick.”
She hung up, let the door close, and began her wait outside, an anxious sentry in the dark.
Chapter Thirteen
It was Lanching who came. Birdie could hear his footsteps, at a half run, and his laboured breathing before she discerned the figure, close to the side of the road.
“Ken?”
He stopped, looked about him, then hurried to the car.
Birdie took his arm. “He’s on the floor. In the telephone box.”
Lanching pulled open the door and knelt. His shoulders were still heaving with the effort of running. After a few seconds, he leaned low and listened closely, head on one side. He unfastened buttons and felt around. Again he listened.
“He’s dead all right. No doubt about that.”
She stared at Lanching’s upturned face, a white blur in the darkness. “But you can’t be sure. Not without proper tests.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We shall have to get him to hospital, that’s all.” The girl spoke firmly, but she made no move. When Lanching remained silent, she added: “We must, Ken. Christ, it’s the least that anybody could do.” But still she stood, irresolute.
“I agree.” Lanching opened the rear door of the car. “Look, if I pull him in from inside, will you help with the weight?”
It took them nearly ten minutes of rolling, pulling, dragging and hoisting to transfer Grail’s body from kiosk to car. When the door was shut at last, Birdie leaned back against the car and passed trembling fingers across her brow. Her pallor seemed in the dark to have taken on a greenish tinge.
“It’s so bloody undignified,” she said.
“Yes.”
“For him, I mean.”
“Yes, I knew what you meant.”
She walked to the-driver’s side. “At least the poor bastard won’t be worrying about snake bites this time.”
“Snakebites?”
“In that derelict station. He said there were snakes. Touch of the neurotikins, I should imagine.”
Lanching took his seat beside Birdie and watched her start the engine and steer the car in an arc until it faced the direction from which they had come.
“We aren’t taking him to hospital, then, I gather,” he said, quietly.
Her reply was little more than a whisper. “There doesn’t seem much point.”
He waited, then said: “He is dead, you know. I’m quite sure. This resuscitation business is only playing with reflexes. It’s cruel.”
It was almost midnight when the Rolls returned. Becket was standing framed against the open front door of the house. At once he went back inside. The others followed him to the sitting- room. Already he was asking where the hell they had been.
Silently, the girl poured drinks. She motioned the others to sit, then took a chair herself. She swallowed some of her brandy.
“There is no point,” she said at last, “in pretending that we are not, to some extent, in the shit. But this is the time for sensible appraisals, not for blowing of tops.” She gazed calmly at Becket. “You want to know where the hell we’ve been and I’ll tell you. Hell’s not a bad description, actually. We’ve carried poor old corpsikins Clive to that derelict railway station where he was hiding earlier. And we’ve dumped him. In the ticket office, actually. OK?”
Becket stared at her for several seconds, then turned away. “Christ...”
“As you say. Christ. But what should we have done, do you think? Assuming that you have been thinking.”
“Listen, girl, you’d have been thinking all right if you’d had a phone call all to yourself from that Aussie hard hat Richardson.”
Birdie and Lanching exchanged glances. “When was that?” Lanching asked Becket.
“About an hour ago. Fortunately, he didn’t take it into his head to ask if you were here, Ken. He third-degreed me about Birdie, though, as if it was her who’d been bloody kidnapped. The man just goes on and on. You can’t get anything across to him.”
“What did you say?” Birdie asked.
Becket shrugged impatiently. “Something about your having been called away. I don’t know—I left it pretty vague on purpose. In the end I got rid of him with your dodge about keeping the line open for kidnappers. And I might add that I felt a bloody charlie.”
“I’m afraid,” said Birdie, “that from now on none of us is going to be able to indulge in the luxury of embarrassment in face of melodrama. Unless, of course”—she paused to look steadily at each of the two men in turn—“unless you feel that the only way out of this mess is to tell the truth about it.”
“To the paper, you mean?” asked Lanching.
“To the paper, obviously. But also to the police. Poor Clive clinched that as soon as he had his heart attack, or whatever.” She smiled. “God, I shouldn’t put it past him to have kicked off deliberately. Awkward old sod.” The smile faded. She stared bleakly at her hands.
“The money was a bad idea.” Lanching’s voice was gentle, matter-of-fact.
“Oh, by the way...” Becket began.
Birdie interrupted, looking at Lanching. “How do you mean, bad?”