Unfamiliar with the discipline of faith, they did not know what they wanted to do. Only faith could guide them into defeating him, but since they did not have it (and he did, both in himself and in his Cause) he would stay safe long enough to become the vanquisher.
He had already been through many lives in his refuge, saturated himself in the past so as to be reinforced for what future he could make. Out of the past all answers come. Only the past tells you what you are, and how to act in a crisis. Pure faith and hardness of purpose make it unnecessary to distinguish between good and evil.
It was dark except for the inner light such thoughts provided. To escape and survive he had to deal with brutal people, the squalor of conflict which no one consumed by pure ideals could avoid. So far he had only contributed by driving a van of explosives, but now he was trapped, and to escape would mean contact with the lowest form of an impossible-to-enlighten enemy, who killed the believer only for what he believed and not out of what they believed. They were as unthinking as the blizzard which had them all trapped.
Sooner or later they would come to get him, but they could only squeeze through the trap door one at a time. Strait is the gate which would save him, because when hand or head appeared he would smash them with a post of wood which the attic had providentially provided. Strong enough to cause confusion among his assailants, the first to try his redoubt would never forget how foolish they had been. The brutalism of the idealist would defeat the savagery of the unbeliever.
His mother had also said: ‘As long as you believe, you are safe.’ Fighting for survival might muddy the distilled water of your ideals, but belief survives and the water will become clear again. She may have meant her words to be taken in a different spirit, but whenever did those who spoke the Word have any control over how others interpreted what they said?
‘First you tell us,’ Keith said, ‘then you say you think you made a mistake.’
‘Yes, I was convinced. But now I’m not so sure.’
‘Nor was I, till he locked himself in the attic. Then I went to look in the van, so I know that what you said in the first place was right.’
Fred turned the gas lamp to a white glow on the bar. ‘I heard him going walkabout just now, so why don’t we get him down?’
‘Not through one little trap door,’ Keith said. ‘It’s too dangerous to go up one at a time.’
‘We’ve got helmets,’ Garry said, ‘and thick gloves. It’s no problem for The Queen’s Own Biking Hussars.’
‘You never attack head-on.’ Keith wished he had taken such advice for himself in the past. ‘You create a diversion. Since there’s only one trap door, we’ll make another, break a hole in the plaster. One man goes up sharpish through the one our terrorist can’t defend, and we’ve got him.’
‘Let me be the spearhead,’ Garry said. ‘Lance can go through the other, because he’s got thin raps. And Wayne can catch him when we drop him down like a sack of spuds.’
‘I’d like to go up and talk to him,’ Sally said.
Fred was uneasy about the structure of his hotel. ‘I don’t want you breaking up my ceiling. There’s been enough damage done already.’
‘If the police did the job,’ Keith said, as if to reassure him, ‘they’d have the whole roof off. At least we’ll try to do it neatly.’
Wayne extinguished the nearest candleflame with his thumb. ‘Tear gas would be best, if we had any. A smoke canister lobbed in. Then we would shut the lid and wait. It’d be better if we chucked in a couple of thunderflashes first. We could go in like the Israelis. The bastard would really get the chop.’
Sally became more and more scared of their talk. ‘I could bring him down peacefully. You wouldn’t have to make the other hole in the ceiling then. I’m just thin enough to get through. That would save him or anybody being injured. It’s got to be tried.’
‘Common sense at last.’ Fred stood by a candle to light his cigar, favouring a solution to stop further vandalization. Gas lamps and a scattering of candles didn’t sufficiently illuminate the room, and gave a sinister urgency to their talk.
Garry turned to Keith with a grin. ‘I apologize in advance for swearing, but if you ask me,’ he said to Sally, ‘you’re fucking barmy. You’re totally unrealistic. If you got up there and tried to talk to that looney he would either butcher you, or take you for a hostage. Then we would really be in the shit.’
The virtue of keeping quiet and letting others state your opinion was not new to Keith, and he was gratified at hearing his own views so tersely put, needing only to add: ‘If he took you or anyone else hostage we would have to tear the ceiling apart and really go in and get him. Nor would anyone worry overmuch if the hostage was killed in the process.’
He spoke so quietly that Sally hardly heard. She did not know what other way there was but couldn’t believe theirs was the only solution, though she recalled the half-whispered implications of Daniel’s fervent monologue and again began to believe that what he had said may well have been the truth. Yet to get him down with the enjoyable and ebullient violence which had taken hold of the others didn’t seem the proper course.
Keith held Fred’s arm, and drew him to his feet. ‘Bring that ladder from Trap Door Number One, and provide us with any saws, hammers, crowbars and axes you can find.’ He felt luxuriously in harmony with the crisis, but in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs at home he had done something which had put a stop to his existence, and made all that he was doing now seem like the action after death of an animal still making sound and movement until the millrace of the blood finally abandoned the heart. Her head crashed against the bannister again and again into a mass of blood and hair and brain, her astonished then horrified face fading into death.
He held his hands together, as if to stop them vibrating uncontrollably, but they were still. ‘And you,’ he said to Alfred, but indicating Aaron and Parsons as well, ‘can stay one at each door down here to look after the women and the old man, in case he tries to make a run for it. Sit on him if he does. We’ll hear the racket, and come right away.’
Aaron, at his ease, thought that if Daniel tried for a getaway the kindest action would be not to hinder him. When he had phoned Beryl to say he was stranded she told him that the police had called that afternoon, wanting to interview him. They had asked where he was, so the only thing for him to do, she went on, was get back home as soon as possible.
The charge would mean ruination whether or not they made it stick. It wouldn’t be difficult. The buyers and experts were understandably enraged, and chemistry would do the rest. He would be lucky not to get jailed, but felt defeated more than guilty because knowledge and skill, rather than his conscience, had been called into dispute.
He had worked patiently night after night and, if one reckoned up the hours of labour spent on his various forgeries, he had netted no more than a few pathetic thousands. It began when he went to inspect a cache of books for sale in a local vicarage. Let into the attic to root among shelves and in trunks, he came across several quires of paper a century old when, for example, Conrad was getting into his prime. The manufacturer’s date was still on the packets, the watermark plain. The vendor willingly put them in with the books he bought.
His steady hand had gone scores of times over a signature until no one, or so he would have thought, could have said it wasn’t written by the celebrated writer. The edition of the book, the paper and ink had to match (no problem for a man of his old trade), as had the date, the place, and the inscription of friendship. Then came the letters …