‘I never will.’
‘You think this is Kung-fu Castle?’
He didn’t like my humour, either. ‘I’ll kill you, first chance.’
‘Try it, yeller-belly.’ I spoke from the corner of my mouth, and put the gun in my pocket, hoping he didn’t have another stashed away. The loony swine might shoot to kill. ‘Give me the key.’
He threw it in the hottest part of the fire. Time was moving, ten minutes gone. A crowbar leaned against the wall, but I needn’t have bothered. The door was rotten. I went up the lighthouse-type stairs and into the first room. A small bearded man wearing a black Russian-style fur hat sat writing by a calor gas lamp. There was a mug of something by his side and half a dozen beer cans at his feet.
‘Wayland Smith?’
He looked up. ‘What do you want?’
‘I’m taking you out of this.’
He smiled, but didn’t stand. ‘What was the fighting about?’
‘Move,’ I shouted.
‘No.’
I was genuinely interested in his stupidity. ‘Why not?’
‘Who are you, anyway?’
‘I’m springing you, Sunshine.’
‘You’re jolly well not. I could have escaped any time, but I didn’t want to. This is the most peaceful time I’ve had. I’ve no worries, and I can write and think. So clear off and leave me alone. I’m getting on very well with Mr Blemish, and don’t want to be rescued. I’m also closing in on Moggerhanger. I’m onto something big.’
He was. You could see it in his eyes. ‘You’ll be into something small if you don’t do as I tell you.’
He picked up a bundle of papers. ‘This is only half. I’ll have the rest if I stay. I’ve got more information on Moggerhanger’s drug empire than anybody ever had before. It’ll be a great documentary.’
I admired his courage in risking his life for a television company, but gave him a head-on close-up view of the revolver. ‘Move, or you won’t live to tell the tale.’
He took an anorak from a nail on the wall. ‘If it’s like that.’
‘Have you got any luggage?’
He had a sense of humour. ‘They didn’t let me pack before jumping on me.’
I followed him down. We stood in the living room. ‘Say goodbye to Mr Blemish.’
Percy ignored him.
‘I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Smith said.
It was a diversion. I snatched his bundle of papers and threw them to the back of the fire. He burst into tears. ‘Why did you do that?’
An arm went towards the flames, but I got him with the full butt of my shoulder, so that he flew one way and his cat-hat another. If anyone was going to get Moggerhanger it would be me. I pushed him towards the door. ‘I’m saving your life. You’ll be kicking up daisies if they find that bumf on you.’
‘I can remember every word.’
‘Keep ’em in your head.’
Blemish sat in his armchair, interested only in a Sidney Blood yarn. I didn’t see how Moggerhanger could get anything like duty out of him. ‘Write and tell me how it ends.’
Dismal followed us up the hill, zig-zagging from side to side as if not knowing that our job was done. We stumbled through potholes and soaking ferns. Fat-arsed clouds slid across the sky. Wayland was in difficulty because he couldn’t get used to the dark, but Dismal nudged him on when he slackened. I whistled as we got near the car.
‘I thought it was you,’ Clegg said. ‘Who’s that?’
‘A bloke I rescued. He doesn’t seem to appreciate it.’
‘They never do.’
Maybe he was right, and it was the shock of freedom. ‘Wayland, this is Mr Clegg, my first mate.’
I sat on the step and changed back into my boots. Wayland had gone. Not even Dismal had seen him skive off. That was all I needed, a midnight chase for the Shropshire lad. I couldn’t go back to Festung Peppercorn because Blemish, realising what I’d done, would be walking in circles with the manic energy of a hornet’s nest. To go near him again might mean death for both of us. I got Dismal by the nose. ‘Find him,’ I said angrily, ‘or I’ll stop your Bogie.’
He whined, and ran off with his nozzle to the ground. I walked as if I was blind, here, there and everywhere. The gateway from one field to another was pitted by the hoofmarks of cows. Each foot had gone into the mud and, when withdrawn, had left a circular hole of water. There were scores of them in the beam of my flashlight, I tried to step onto dry spaces between the holes as I went along with my loaded shotgun, but the grass broke down under pressure, and mud that welled over my boot tops came in through the lace-holes.
Something moved, a rabbit running away. Why it strayed from a snug burrow on such a night I couldn’t imagine. I cursed Wayland Smith, and got to the top of the hill. Peppercorn Cottage was in deep shadow to my right. Lights twinkled on a hill in the distance. A loud cracking of twigs sounded near the path, and I heard a bark from Dismal.
‘Get him off! He’ll bite me. The brute!’
He hadn’t had any Bogie for an hour, and might well be squaring up for a nibble, so I put on a spurt. A low branch tripped me and I half stunned myself when I did a header. The shotgun, luckily on safety, flew in front. I landed on grass, which turned my overcoat greener.
Wayland was in a snivelling mess but, my boots and trousers being splashed with mud, I gave him such a shove he nearly went flying off the hillside back to Birmingham. ‘What the hell do you think you’re up to?’
‘You gave me no alternative,’ he gasped.
I prodded him as we made tracks to the car. ‘It’ll be all the more to put in your article.’
‘Documentary,’ he said, in a normally offended voice. I blindfolded him with a piece of rag in case he thought to find his way back after I threw him out of the car. He’d obviously been brought in the same way, because he didn’t grumble when I pulled it tight. We trundled down the track in the Roller, and after Clegg let us through the gate we were soon back on signposted lanes.
I began to wonder what I would do. I didn’t even know where I was. I drove in circles, having lost my sense of direction. Looking at the map made no difference. The twists and undulations of the sunken lanes, the unfamiliar names of hamlets and villages, and above all the darkness, plus the presence of three conflicting spirits in the car, made my hands shake in a punchdrunk fashion. I stopped at a fork — hoping the middle-of-the-night milkman wouldn’t come smashing into me — and got out the map again.
‘You’re exhausted,’ said Clegg.
‘Thanks for nothing.’ What I wanted was a dose of alcohol, but it was more than I dared do. I never drank when driving, and even less when I was knackered. I looked at the dashboard. It had just gone two. Apart from the nap at Upper Mayhem I’d been on the go for fourteen hours. I’d taken part in the robbery of the year, met an old acquaintance and given him a job, and liberated a kidnapped member of the media. I had also hijacked the loot from the aforesaid robbery, which was an indescribably stupid act and meant I was as good as dead. All I craved to bring me back to life was a sight of the super-intelligent face and beautifully creamy bosom of Frances Malham. But it was no good. She didn’t love me. No sooner had I discovered the love of my life than I had done something to lose life itself.
‘Give me the map.’
Clegg walked to the signpost, turned the map round a few times, then came back. I lifted my head from my hands. ‘Well?’
‘We’re only five miles from where we came from. Where do you want to go?’
‘Shrewsbury,’ I whispered, so that Wayland Smith wouldn’t hear.
‘Turn left at the next fork. In half a mile you’ll hit a B road. Go right, then left almost immediately. After another couple of miles it should be signposted. It’ll be just over twenty miles from that point.’