The challenge of the game had been more tempting than the profit, his only incentive to return being that in court the evidence of the prosecution would show how he had been found out, as if the explanation of his failure must be so interesting that it would make up for his chagrin at being a felon in the dock.
Beryl had suggested the forgeries as an amusing pastime on winter nights after the catalogues were finished and the last orders hauled in canvas bags to the post office, but he would not hint that she had been involved. Nor would she expect him to, therefore he must return before she implicated herself. She now knew the name of the hotel, and when the police came again she would tell them, though he doubted they would send a helicopter to pluck him out of the blizzard.
He didn’t want to go back. Enid was sleeping nearby, and if it hadn’t been for the snow he would have driven south with her and had a good time in the days that were left. Paradise would never come again, so it would be going against life not to take advantage of it now.
If Daniel broke free it would be merciful to let him escape into the snow, and also sensible to do the same himself. He felt comforted to know that there was more than one option open.
TWENTY-FIVE
The box room cum linen cupboard at the end of the corridor on the second floor was the best place from which to excavate another entrance into the attic. Keith set a Calor lamp on a chair to light up the exact position. They were, he told himself, laying siege in medieval fashion, by opening a way into the fortress from below, before mounting their final attack.
Fred took out sheets and blankets, sidling in spite of his girth around the angled ladder to reach the shelves, yanking down loads as big as could be carried and leaving them in haphazard positions along the corridor where they would be safe from plaster.
His activity amused them, but Keith made way for him when he could, however inconvenient (and his rescue of the precious linen said much in his favour), because he liked his populist and splenetic spirit that would never countenance the likes of the man upstairs. All terrorists and their helpers should be put to death, Fred had signified, preferably at the point of capture so as to save hearing the garbage of their crackpot slogans from the dock.
A mighty blow from the top of the ladder sent Garry’s crowbar through the plaster, Fred wincing as if the cold steel had entered his own flesh. The odour of un-aired long-stored linen, pressed against his nose as he took it out, brought poignantly back how he and Doris had worked night after night in their own small sitting room when the guests had gone to bed, hemming and repairing, folding and smoothing with almost obsessional neatness, writing letters or totting up the accounts between them, while the wireless played mindlessly on low. Hard days with never a moment to spare, and not much time for sleep either, were recalled as months of happiness because there had been no slot of idleness in which to quarrel.
Fred looked through the doorway, the air so full of flying powder he saw only the outline of a muscled arm drawing back for another exultant smash. Keith brushed bits of wood and dust from his clothes, and when there was a hole big enough for a head to go through Garry lifted the visor of his knightly helmet and called down: ‘We’ll be there in a bit.’ He paused to sneeze. ‘I’ll need the axe, though, to snap these bits of lath off.’
Lance in the lumber room slotted a carpenter’s saw between the edge of the trap door and the ceiling, and cut through the wedge holding it in place. When it fell open towards him he immediately thrust his saw into the space like a weapon should anyone jab down. ‘He won’t surrender, I know Old Ferret. He was a strict bastard at school, the only teacher who wouldn’t let us arse around.’
Wayne at the foot of the ladder spat, and dodged the ricochet. ‘And now we know why. A killer, that’s why. Here’s the hammer. Knock it around, to make him think we’re about to have his guts for garters.’
‘It’s a claw hammer.’ Lance tossed it from haft to head as if it were an ivory-handled gun in the Wild West, then banged a jungle rhythm around the gap. ‘A real murder weapon. He was all right, as well, though. He tried to teach us summat.’
‘Yeh, about how great England was,’ Wayne said. ‘He used to cry a bit when he said it, just so’s we’d believe him. As if we needed that wet prick to tell us what we already knew. Here, let me have a go. I’ll make his fucking tripes jump.’
At a signal, Lance came down. ‘They’ve smashed a hole in the other place,’ Fred whispered, ‘and everything’s ready. But the Captain says you’ve got to be dead quiet.’
Wayne pressed against the ladder to keep it firm. The only sound was an uneven moaning of the wind from beyond slates and walls. Lance went through the trap door slowly so that his leather jacket pressing at the edges wouldn’t give warning by its squeak.
Reaching for the cosmos, you had to shift slates from between the rafters, and pull them out as do prisoners in hencoop Victorian jails. He would root a way through, roll in a blanket of snow, and go down the sloping roof, no stars in the blizzard to light his escape, moiling clouds holding them off. He would fall through space into the yard, break from his shell and fight each hypothermic step till a safe haven was gained.
While the vivid scene comforted, he restrained his stave from smashing the first slate, knowing that whatever he did could only bring the end closer. The fearful banging began, and because it wasn’t feasible to defend two places at once, he would gladly descend peacefully if they would let him, knowing that his ex-pupils turned yobbos could be dealt with — though not the man Keith, who had them under his barbaric control. If the bikers had not succumbed to such a person they might have merited redemption at some future hour, but they had found their natural ally and master, and been set on hounding someone whose mission had crosswired into a dead end because his mother foretold it.
Hearing her mini-mouth saying that God had turned his back on him, he recollected with loathing her theological platitudes. Regardless of cuts at his numbed fingers, he pulled shards and shavings clear so that he could unhook more slates. A flat undersurface of packed snow broke into crystals and fell against eyes and hair.
Light from far off picked out the beams, as he frantically pulled at the covering roof, showing himself to heaven before the pack closed in. There was no time to climb through and escape, but he would wreck as much of their refuge as he could. He stabbed into the snow, lunging as if to draw blood from the Almighty God who would not use His power to save him. Heavy and sharp, the slates became easier to rip away, till water ran down the warmth of the chimney, larger pieces of snow slopping around him. He sent a slate spinning, which broke to pieces on hitting a strut, the noise making him smile and forget his peril.
A wet sleeve turned his arm heavy and cold, the second slate falling uselessly between the beams. ‘When you are sent on a mission you’re on your own, but we assume you will get there. We’re mature people at the game, and nothing is expected to go wrong through human error.’ They had come up through the ranks, so who could deny them their purblind assumptions, their power? They weren’t an army fair and square for all to see. They were an underground gang or gangs, as much on the hooks of fate as he was. Things went wrong, by chance, or betrayal, sudden inexplicable despair, or excess of confidence, or because of the weather. In the beginning was the word, and the word was luck. In his memory of arguing with them he always spoke with an Irish accent — ever perfecting his shibbolethic passwords — but he hadn’t, not at all, not in actuality, because somehow he had neither the mouth nor throat for it.