There were four separate lines of filling, corking, labelling and capping machines, a capacity way beyond the jobs in hand. The machines themselves, like the vats and hoses, were new compared with the buildings. It all looked bright, clean, orderly, spacious and well run.
‘I somehow expected something dark and Dickensian,’ Gerard said. ‘Where do we look?’
‘Those big wooden slatted crates standing around probably contain empty bottles,’ I said, ‘but some might have full ones ready for labelling. Look in those.’
‘What are those glass booth things?’
‘The actual bottling machines and corking machines and automatic labellers are enclosed with glass for safety and they don’t work unless the glass doors are shut. One set of the machines looks ready to go. See the corks in that transparent hopper up there? And up there,’ I pointed, ‘on that bridge, see those four vats? The wine or whatever is pumped along from those huge storage vats in the long hall through the hoses up into these vats on the bridge, then it feeds down again by gravity into the bottles. The pumps for those vats look as if they’re up on the bridge. I’ll go up and see if there’s anything in those feeder vats, if you like.’
Gerard nodded and I went up the stairs. The bridge, stretching from side to side of the bottling hall, was about twelve feet wide, railed at the sides, with four feeder vats on it standing taller than my head, each with a ladder bolted to its side so that one could go up to the entry valves on top.
There were four electric pumps on the bridge, one for each feeder vat, but only one was connected to hoses. In that one case a hose came up from the floor below and a second hose ran from the pump to the top of one of the feeder vats. In that vat I thought I might find more of the ‘St Estèphe’, and I squatted at the base of it and released a few drops through the small valve there.
Gerard was rattling bottles in the slatted wooden crates, looking for full ones. The crates were about five feet square, four feet high, very heavy, constructed of rows of timber rather like five barred gates. One could see the bottles inside glinting between the slats, hundreds in each crate.
I had become so at home in my more or less natural surroundings that I’d forgotten to be frightened for the past ten minutes: and that was a fundamental mistake because a voice suddenly spoke from directly beneath me, harsh, fortissimo and threatening.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Back off, put your hands up and turn round.’
Twenty-one
He was speaking not to me but to Gerard.
He advanced from below the bridge into my vision, young, bullish, dressed in jeans and padded jacket, carrying a short-barrelled shotgun. He had his back to me and he hadn’t seen me, and I crouched on the bridge in a frozen state, incapable of movement, muscles locked, with the old clammy chill of abject fear sweeping over my skin and setting in my gut.
He was the one, I was intuitively certain, who had shot us before.
He was probably Denny. I called him Denny in my mind.
Gerard turned slowly towards him and raised one hand, the other being still in its sling. He didn’t look up to the bridge. He could have seen me perhaps if he had, even though I was down behind the railings and between two vats. He did nothing, said nothing, then or later, to let Denny suspect I was there.
‘Stand still,’ Danny said, ‘or I’ll blast you.’
Another voice said, ‘Who is it? Is it Beach?’; and that was worse. I knew the voice too well.
Paul Young’s voice. Stewart Naylor.
‘That’s not Beach,’ he said.
He appeared from below me and stood beside Denny.
I could see the black hair, the heavy shoulders, the glint of glasses, the hearing aid behind his ear.
‘Who is it, then?’ Denny said.
‘The one who was with him. Older, greyer, wearing a sling. That’s him. Some name like Gregg, Lew said.’
Who was Lew...
‘What’s the sling for?’ Stewart Naylor demanded.
Gerard didn’t answer. After a silence Naylor said, ‘You said you hit someone in a car at Beach’s shop. Was this him?’
Denny said, i couldn’t see who it was.’
‘I don’t want him shot in here,’ Naylor said forcefully. ‘Too much sodding mess. You just keep your sodding finger off the trigger. And you, Gregg, take your arm out of that sling and turn your back to me and put both your hands on the top rail of that bottle-container crate, and you do just what I tell you or you’ll get shot again, mess or not.’
Gerard did as he was told. I’ve got to do something, I thought, and couldn’t think what. Couldn’t think. Listened in hopeless horror.
Stewart Naylor walked to Gerard and patted him all over, looking for weapons. Gerard didn’t move. Naylor reached round into Gerard’s jacket and pulled out his wallet, stepping back a few paces to look at the contents.
‘Gerard McGregor,’ Naylor said, reading. ‘Where’s your friend Beach?’
‘Don’t know,’ Gerard said, shrugging.
‘How the hell did he turn up here?’ Denny said. ‘I don’t like it.’
With suddenly spurting alarm and anger Naylor viciously said, ‘He’ll sodding wish he hadn’t!’
I watched in despair. He had found in the wallet the fake labels from upstairs. He was holding them out as if in disbelief.
‘He’s seen the press,’ he said furiously. ‘He knows too bloody much. We’ll kill him and dump him. He’ll have had no chance yet to tell what he’s seen. We’ll be all right.’ He sounded convinced of it.
Gerard’s apparently untroubled voice rose as if in courteous discussion. ‘I did of course leave word of where I was going. If I don’t return safely you’ll find the police at your door.’
‘They always say that in movies,’ Denny said. ‘It’s never bloody true.’
After a pause Naylor said, ‘Hold him there, Denny. I’ll be straight back,’ and he turned and walked under the bridge and out of the bottling hall, and I thought about trying to jump onto Denny... who was too far away for it to be practicable. He would whirl when he heard me move and he would shoot while I was climbing the railings to launch myself far enough out to have a hope of reaching him in one jump... he would shoot either Gerard or me for sure before we could overpower and disarm him. I didn’t see what else to do and I was certain that that jump would be literally fatal perhaps for both of us, and I was worrying also and cringing inside with fear that the reason I didn’t move was fear... Not caution, just cowardice. One could fling one’s life away trying to prove to oneself one was brave... and maybe for some people it was worth it, but not to me.
Stewart Naylor came back carrying a small package which he zipped open as he walked.
The contents were wide white bandage.
I felt sick.
I should have jumped, I thought. I should have risked it while I had the chance. Why hadn’t I?
Commonsense, emotion, logic, bravado... they could whirl through the mind in a jumbled mess, and how could one tell which was right.
Naylor walked over to Gerard and with great speed tied the wrist of his injured arm to the rail with the bandage. A strong tremor ran visibly through Gerard’s body and he turned away from the crate, trying to tug himself free, trying to escape. The lines of his face were set rigid, the eyes hollowly dark.
He’s afraid too, I thought. He knows what that bandage is. He’s as human as I am... and he’s terrified.
He didn’t look up at the bridge.