‘I’m not going to be a sitting duck, or play snowman’s roulette,’ Alfred said.
Nor was anyone. Daniel’s state of half-sleep dimmed his pain. He heard, but didn’t want to show that anything concerned him in case they baited him for being the cause of their peril. Tied to a chair, he wouldn’t be able to move, the only person in the hotel. The pale and leaded sky of dawn was showing. They had abandoned him, and fled to save themselves. His evil latched on to a greater evil in them, so who would be the first to suggest the fate which he pictured? What they didn’t realize was that fuses, being what they were — if there had been clumsiness, or carelessness, or any subtle fault whatever in the connections, or the timing, or the wiring — could send the van sky-high any minute. To assume all would be well until eight o’clock was optimistic.
‘So we put the kaibosh on that one,’ Keith said. ‘Still, it might have worked, to get together in a room furthest from the van, and hope for the best. The trouble is that the van’s parked halfway along the hotel wall, which would reduce our chances somewhat. So that option, such as it is, would be too much of a gamble, every life being precious, mine included. Even his, who got us into it. Though he never knew a moral twinge in his life, he’s as valuable as the rest of us, and we can’t abandon him. When we’re safe he’ll have a long enough time to think about how brave and clever he’s been.’
‘You should have been a bloody parson,’ Garry said, ‘with all this jabber.’
‘You wouldn’t know what to do with a bagful of words if they was put around your neck in a stable,’ Eileen shouted.
They were like brother and sister, Keith thought, when she laughed and sat down. Cousins, perhaps. He was amazed at how well people of that sort got on. Quarrelling was a way of them getting to know each other. They would have a set-to and then start laughing and talking about the good old times. He felt more connected to their verbal liveliness than to the glum mood of the others.
Alfred liked the way Garry wasn’t afraid to throw in remarks against big-headed Keith. He would have said the same himself, but Garry had got there first, so why waste your breath? ‘You’re a plumber by trade, then?’
‘What’s it to you?’
He glanced towards the fire to be sure his father slept, then knelt, not wanting anybody to know his business. ‘I bought a nice plot of land near Matlock, and I’m going to have a bungalow built for Janice my daughter. She’s the eldest. You understand?’
‘I’m not deaf, am I?’
‘I didn’t think so.’ Alfred smiled. ‘I’m sure there’s nobody less deaf. Nor less sharp, either. Are you all right, though? You look pale.’
‘I’ve got a bit of gyp in my leg, that’s all. Just get on with it.’
‘This bungalow’s going to have a lovely view over the Derwent. I want it to be a little gem.’ When the old man kicked off there’d be more than enough to pay for it. He would be in clover, though the death duties would drop it by plenty. ‘I’ve got to have a man of your trade to plumb the place up. A nice kitchen and bathroom. I know a plumber, but I don’t trust him, neither his prices nor his work. Could you give it a try? Make a good job, I mean?’
A house was a lot to take on, even if only a bungalow, but you have to start somewhere. ‘You mean you want an estimate?’
‘That’s right. Can you do it?’
‘Don’t keep asking me if I can do it. Do you want bloody references or something?’
‘Oh no, just an estimate. I’ve had one already, and if yours is anywhere near, you’ve got the job. You don’t get into a situation like this and not make friends you can trust. Anyway, I like to give a hand to somebody who’s up-and-coming. I was very happy at the way you sorted that bastard out upstairs. If I had been thirty years younger I would have been with the rest of you, believe me.’
Garry was laughing inside. A whole house to play with! ‘I’d have to take on extra help, but I’ll do it.’ He would go to the library and get an instruction manual, swot up a bit, take it little by little. He had already fathomed the basics, and you didn’t need A Levels to be a plumber, not a good one anyway. Apart from anything else, once he had made a start Alfred wouldn’t be able to get rid of him, though he’d be sure to do as good a job as he could because if it was known that he had fixed up one house it wouldn’t be hard to get a contract for another, and soon he would have his own firm. When things got hectic and he had more work than he could handle he would take on people to help him, and become one of the youngest big employers in the Midlands. He would do it all on the quiet, a deal with each chap so that they would pay no tax and he would buy no stamps, everyone in it for love and money. After a year or two he wouldn’t even need to get his hands dirty but would send his men out in little rainbow-coloured vans while he sat in a centrally heated office during the winter with his feet on a desk, winking at a gorgeous secretary in charge of the paperwork. The house he lived in would have the plumbing done by one of the best firms in London. There would be a Harley in one garage and a BMW state-of-the-art bike in the other. The picture built up in a few seconds, all pell-mell but vivid and desirable as a future, even to the extent of getting his old mother out of that damp rat trap in the valley and buying her a proper set of teeth.
‘Shake on it, then.’
Alfred was glad to, because though Garry was only a jobbing plumber, he had a notion that he would see better work from him than anybody else.
‘Another option’ — Keith had been some time thinking about the matter — ‘could be to wait till half-past seven in the morning, then make a run for it. The blizzard might have lessened, but at least it’ll be light enough to see where we’re going. Five hours will give us plenty of time to kit ourselves out for the elements.’
‘That might be cutting it a bit fine, because what if they put the clocks on during the night?’ Eileen joked. ‘I mean to say, it would just be our luck, wouldn’t it, not to have heard the news? All of us arsing around at half-past seven when — bang, we’re dead.’
‘They don’t alter the clocks in the middle of winter,’ Lance said.
Whether they were dazzled by his expertise or stunned by his imbecility, Keith found the simple badinage hopeful in facing whatever peril came with the blast. But the more optimistic he was, the most despondent also. He would have as much talking to do to the police as Daniel when they came. I had no intention of killing her, I just wanted to give her a good shaking because her words filled me with an agony impossible to bear. Accident it was, manslaughter if you like, but not murder.
She obsessed him more now than when she had been alive, unless he was talking. ‘To run for it would be the worst possible thing. Perhaps I do sound like a parson, but I don’t want to get you either to Heaven or Hell one minute earlier than necessary. Nor do I want to go, before my time. Even a blizzard has its charms.’
She loved him. He was a card, a comedian no less, no tension in him while addressing them. He didn’t altogether believe in his talk, you could tell (or she could), but he was thinking and at the same time trying to entertain them so that they wouldn’t be frightened.
‘If we went out now, in which direction would we go? The nearest farm, according to Fred, is half a mile or more. To struggle through twelve-foot drifts, which was what the newsflash said they were, before the batteries of the radio ran out, would mean death from exposure. And those who wouldn’t be able to keep up, what would we do with them? Leave them behind?’
‘I could climb on the roof and send an SOS with a flashlight,’ Lance said. ‘Somebody might see it, and pass it on.’