He drew the Mauser, aimed rapidly, and squeezed off two shots. The heavy old gun jumped in his hand so that he had to compensate by aiming low before firing twice more. Then he rolled again, feeling pinned to card by the moonlight whitening the lawn. The marksman by the wall was an unmoving bundle but there were others now, hardly visible against the fretwork of the fruit trees, and awareness of them dragged at him like clinging mud until he sat up on the lawn, on the edge of the pool where lily leaves still floated but the plants had turned to dry sedge and there was wire to keep herons from the fish. The shadow of the sundial sliced across the lawn, amputated one of his legs. He fired twice, swung the Mauser, held stiffly in both hands, and fired three more shots. He rolled over and got to his feet, running in a crouch until he was a fly against the white wall attracting their fire then a shadow then simply darkness as he slipped round the side of the house, out of the moonlight.
He leaned against the door for a moment, clutching his shoulder as the awareness of pain pushed through his quivering excitement, his elation, and his hand came away wet, very wet. He turned the door handle, sorry, so sorry for the mistake, for the sudden twitching aside of the cloud curtain and sorry for Maureen and the baby — and alive enough to finish Drummond.
There was a shadow in the hall, against the panelling, but the moon was gone again and he could not make it out.
Then, "Michael?" and he fired into the centre of the shadow and it fell away to one side. Then the light came on and he saw the grey uniform and heard the voice again, this time behind him, and even as he turned to the sound of his name he felt the bullets enter, their force knocking him sideways, sending his feet from under him as a rug moved. He fell over, tried to raise the Mauser at Drummond who was at the foot of the stairs, but the effort was far beyond his draining strength. Drummond looked sorry, but it was almost too late to distinguish expressions. He just heard the door bang open and the first pair of jackboots before the light faded and he rested his head lightly on the wooden floor and closed his eyes.
Drummond came and knelt by his body for a moment, feeling for the absent pulse. A German officer began to apologize, but Drummond dismissed him curtly. He was safe now, but it was too early to take comfort from the thought. McBride's dead face looked up, youthful and innocent. He looked no more than lightly asleep. Drummond was sorry — almost — that he had come back, though he had always known he would.
"David, you simply can't do it! We are so close now. I assure you it's a matter of hours, not days." Walsingham stared out of the window of the Cheltenham hotel he had booked into, down the length of the Promenade, wide pavements full of shoppers, the sun filtering down, barred and sliced, through the trees. Guthrie's telephone call, diverted to him by the police switchboard, came as a naked, open shock, encompassed him in a momentary futility until the ego narrowed perspective to the purely personal.
"I'm sorry, Charles. It will come out anyway, I'm certain of that. The meetings can be less harmed by my resignation on the grounds of illness or overwork than they would be if I tried to carry on, and got found out. I'd not be forgiven, by anyone, for that." He tried to chuckle confidently. His whole vocal presentation was a charade, Walsingham decided, and suddenly he was tired of Guthrie and the niceties above the salt. Guthrie could go to hell, but Emerald would never go public.
"I'm sorry you have no greater faith in my assurances, Minister," he snapped dismissively. Guthrie sounded chastened and deflated when he replied.
"It's no reflection on you, Charles, as I'm sure you realize. I am going to do what I feel has to be done to protect my initiative over Ulster. And I can best do that by retiring from the scene — not just temporarily, but permanently." He cleared his throat to make room for a new portentousness. "My resignation will be with the PM this evening. I felt, however, that you should be informed."
Walsingham wanted to tell him that people were dead to protect his precious skin and office and initiative over Ulster, but the bile that rose in him simply drained him, made him feel very old and wish only to end the conversation.
"Thank you for telling me, Minister. Goodbye." He put down the telephone without taking his eyes from the window. Somewhere out there, in all probability, McBride was considering his next step. Walsingham looked at the afternoon edition of the local paper on the telephone table. It was folded to reveal most of the headline concerning the murders in the Cotswold cottage and the police search for Professor Thomas McBride of Portland. Was McBride reading it at that moment, was he wondering when to call? Walsingham could feel the American like another presence in the room, and he was eager for their meeting as a younger self might have been for love or fornication.
He turned his eyes back to the window. Trade-off. If not, then McBride had to be eliminated like the others.
Where was he? Where?
Thomas Sean McBride sat in the restaurant in the Cavendish House department store on the Promenade, attired in an outfit he had purchased via credit card in the men's department, drinking tea and picking idly with a fork at a huge Danish pastry. The evening newspaper was folded on the tablecloth in front of him. His nonchalance was assumed, the pastry a necessary prop. He had cleaned himself up as thoroughly as he could in the washroom of a pub in Andoversford, and had eaten bread and cheese, washed down with beer, before catching the bus into Cheltenham.
The cops were talking to him, through the newspaper. It was a threat and perhaps a plea. No, he decided, reading the details of the double murder again, it was a threat. The cops had killed the woman and Moynihan.
He still could not give her her name back, not even now she was so evidently dead — unless it was a bluff, but he had already rejected the idea because Hoskins" staring, sightless eyes had come back into his mind, looking out of the first cup of tea. It was unnerving, but something in him concentrated more vividly on the woman and on her death than on his own danger. But he still could not name her.
He felt a curious invulnerability sitting there amid the inherited formalities of afternoon tea, premature fur wraps belying the day, jewellery cording old, wrinkled throats or blazoning shrunken bosoms, chatter brittler than glass, or lumpy as the crockery. The newspaper story also served to distance the cottage at Andoversford and the police hunt for him. They had no idea where he was, the story was meant to bring him in. They wanted to trade.
His removal from the sharp, cutting edges of his recent experience made him reluctant to think about Goessler, or about Drummond. One had been the author of his predicament, the other his father's murderer. To think of either of them made him feel tired, incapable of effort. Nothing in his surroundings or his mental landscape prompted him to action. He was being told in the newspaper he could go nowhere, he was on his own — why not drop in and discuss your problem?
He didn't think he wanted to do that.
McBride finished the Danish pastry then took his bill to the cashier. He paid again by credit card. He had only a few pounds in his wallet and could not foresee how to gain access to more cash.
He passed telephones on his way to the lift. He stopped, and a smile crept onto his face, took hold, broadened. Why not? He ducked his head into the plastic bubble, and consulted the directory. He rang the police HQ in Cheltenham.
"My name is McBride," he said. "Don't keep me waiting or I'll hang up. McBride — who wants to talk to me?" Then he listened to the clicks and splutters and the muffled voices until someone spoke to him. A cool, clear old man's voice, a hint of suppressed excitement behind the bland tones.