‘Yeah — she’s heading for Fosterham. They’ve got a flying club there, but surely he wouldn’t have the nerve…’
‘I’ll call back to HQ.’ Gently flicked the switch across. To him too it seemed unlikely that Johnson would use an operational airfield. But, for all the estate agent knew, his latest ploy was undetected, and he might be unwarily sitting in the club house at Fosterham.
‘Car ex-two calling ex-ex-ex… I’d like you to get in touch with the County at Fosterham. Johnson may be at the flying club… tell them to send a couple of men. And remind them that he’s armed… repeat that: armed!’
‘Ex-ex-ex replying to car ex-two… message received and understood, and I have one for you… Lady Stradsett reports the loss of a grey Jaguar convertible, believed to have been taken from Lordham Grange at around seventeen-thirty hours… do you want any independent action on this?’
‘Hallo ex-ex-ex… no independent action.’
The Wolseley drummed along at an unsteady sixty, with Hansom juggling rhapsodically with his brakes and throttle. It was in fact a good lick for that contorted country road, on which the stream of homing traffic was unceasing though irregular. On either side there was country which was typical of upland Northshire. It proceeded in gentle undulations with shaggy hedges and wistful trees. It had the muted and subdued charm of an unlistened-to sonata which, some day, one suddenly noticed had made a haunting and fixed impression. It was difficult to pin it down to any single feature. The villages, for example, had little truck with the picturesque. Like the landscape they were stern, but with an unaffected nobility, and one sensed a majestic strength which lay beneath the austere surface.
Farther on the contours were higher but the astringent flavour remained; only here one could see more into it, more deeply probe the secret amalgam. There were glimpses of square flint towers, of ranked plantations, like armies marching; of farmhouses glowing in rusty brick, and monstrous barns with huge, peaked roofs. And the fields were seen quilted with colour, the yellow of mustard, the green of beet; and everywhere, dashed with poppies, the tawny wheat and paler acres of barley.
Even from a Hansom-driven Wolseley one was compelled to observe and admire, and Gently, to whom the road was fresh, made a mental note to return in his Riley…
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two… passing through a small town… it’s Fosterham, I think.’
Gently jabbed to transmit: ‘Hallo ex-seven… watch carefully here
… she may turn off to the flying field.’
But half a minute later Stephens came through again:
‘We’re out at the other side… still driving in the same direction …’
So Fosterham was out. It wasn’t as simple as that. The wary ex-RAF pilot was doing nothing that might betray himself…
‘Any more suggestions?’ Gently tilted the map again, having just scrawled a cross on the far side of Fosterham. They too were approaching the town and would soon be hard on Stephens’s tail; there could not now be more than a few miles separating them.
‘If it was a question of boats, I’d say she was heading for the coast… as it is…’ Hansom frowned, giving a flickering look at the map. ‘The trouble is there’s two… no, three… old air-force dromes out that way, and they’re all in roughish country — just left to rot there, after the war.’
‘They sound a better prospect.’
‘Yeah… but it may not be so easy. It’s heathy country, you can see for miles — and chummie’ll have that angle covered.’
It went without saying. Johnson didn’t miss his tricks. If there was an advantage to be gained he could be relied upon to take it. Gently brooded for a few moments over the advisability of calling on help, but under the circumstances there seemed little open to them that would give them a better chance. In the first place, they didn’t yet know for certain where they were going…
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two… we’re turning off south about five miles from Fosterham. Signpost says By-road and there’s a straw stack beside it… half a dozen tar barrels parked on the verge.’
Gently referred to the map, but they were in a country of by-roads; narrow parallels, some dotted, straying out into blank spaces.
‘Calling car ex-seven… drop back as far as you can… you’re going into open country, you’ll be able to see her well ahead.’
Then they were in Fosterham, making the townspeople stare — Hansom wasn’t in a mood to defer to country towns. Gently received a snapshot impression of a street of plastered house fronts, a sleepy market square and a hovering flint tower. A pleasant place, probably — but the Wolseley whisked him past it. Beyond it, almost directly, they entered a sparser-looking tract of country.
Here the trees which had graced every hedgerow were become few and mean in appearance, and the fields, snowed with chalk-backed flints, supported thin and starve-acre crops. The hedges likewise had shrunk to mere scrub, soon to be choked and replaced by bracken; one saw far distances of brackened slopes scarred by gravel and by droves of sand.
‘Now you can see what I mean.’ Hansom made an embracing motion with his hand. ‘It goes on like this for miles, and farther down it’s a battle area. But I’d say she was making for Rawton, that’s what it sounds like, turning down there.’
‘Is there anything else in that direction?’
‘Yeah… she might find a way to Morsingdon.’
They identified the turning by Stephens’s description and found themselves on a road with a surface that made Hansom swear. It had patently been neglected for a number of years — in all probability, since the end of the war. A rusted service sign confirmed this conjecture. Farther on, they passed a dump of disintegrating barbed wire. On both sides of the road stretched the god-forgotten heathland, relieved only at long intervals by ragged and wind-sculptured firs.
‘Car ex-seven calling car ex-two… she’s going very slowly… not sure of the way. There’s practically no road… just a track of broken concrete… I’ve stopped behind a pill box… we’ll have to let her get ahead…’
‘Calling car ex-seven… do we just keep straight on?’
‘Calling car ex-two… slow down where you see a gun emplacement.’
Hansom was still bumping along at a stubborn forty-five, though the Wolseley was taking a hammering from potholes and sunken surfaces. Now, however, the metalled surface petered out entirely, giving way to a stony track which looked as aboriginal as the heath. In front of them it stretched away into a hollow or valley where the bracken-covered slopes shouldered closely to each other; it was deep enough to take a shadow from the westering sun, and was guarded by two tattered firs standing one to either side.
As they approached it they saw evident signs of a former occupation. A picket hut stood ruinous to one side of the track. Beside it lay a fallen gate and a W.D. property notice and, a little higher up, the gun emplacement referred to by Stephens.
‘They must have loved being stationed here…!’ Hansom clashed to a lower gear. The Wolseley slithered and yawed a little as it scrambled over some crumbling concrete. Almost immediately they were turning a corner, and then the need for caution was plain: they were coming out on the brow of a slope, from which they must be visible for at least a mile. Hansom jammed on the brakes abruptly.
‘If he was anywhere near her, she would have seen him…’
Gently nodded, puckering his eyes as he searched the sweep of country before them. The heath here was very level and without a lot of cover, though leftwards, to the south, it slowly rose into a shallow ridge. Down the track, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, one could make out a pair of battered pill boxes.
He flicked the radio to transmit:
‘Calling car ex-seven… report your movements.’
After a minute, when there was no reply, he repeated the call with greater urgency.
Still there was no response from Stephens. Hansom met Gently’s eye as he tried again.