Pirrie nodded. “You?”
“No. John Custance here.”
Pirrie surveyed John briefly. “Very well. Now, the weapons. I will set them out, and you can start carrying them to your car.”
They were taking out the last of the ammunition when a police constable strolled towards them. He looked with some interest at the little boxes.
“Evening, Mr Pirrie,” he said. “Transferring stock?”
“This is for your people,” Pirrie said. “They asked for it. Keep an eye on the shop, will you? We’ll be back for some more later on.”
“Do what I can, sir,” the policeman said doubtfully, “but I’ve got a beat to cover, you know.”
Pirrie finished padlocking the front door. “My little joke,” he said, “but your people start the rumours.”
As they pulled away, John said: “Lucky he didn’t ask what your two helpers were up to.”
“The genus Constable,” Pirrie said, “is very inquisitive once its curiosity is aroused. Providing you can avoid that, you have no cause to worry. Just off St John’s Wood High Street. I’ll direct you particularly from there.”
On Pirrie’s direction, they drew up behind an ancient Ford. Pirrie called: “Millicent!” in a clear, loud voice, and a woman got out of the car and came back to them. She was a good twenty years younger than Pirrie, about his height, with features dark and attractive, if somewhat sharp.
“Have you packed?” Pirrie asked her. “We aren’t coming back.”
She accepted this casually. She said, in a slightly Cockney voice: “Everything we’ll need, I think. What’s it all about? I’ve asked Hilda to look after the cat.”
“Poor pussy,” said Pirrie. “But I fear we must abandon her. I’ll explain things on the way.” He turned to the other two. “I will join Millicent from this point.”
Roger was staring at the antique car in front of them. “I don’t want to seem rude,” he said, “but mightn’t it be better if you piled your stuff in with ours? We could manage it quite easily.”
Pirrie smiled as he got out of the car. “A left fork just short of Wrotham Park?” he queried. “We’ll find you there, shall we?”
Roger shrugged. Pirrie escorted his wife to the car ahead. Roger started up his own car and cruised slowly past them. He and John were startled, a moment later, when the Ford ripped past with an altogether improbable degree of acceleration, checked at the intersection, and then slid away on to the main road. Roger started after it, but by the time he had got into the stream of traffic it was lost to sight.
They did not see it again until they reached the Great North Road. Pirrie’s Ford was waiting for them, and thereafter followed demurely.
They had their suppers separately in their individual cars. Once they were out of London, they would eat communally, but a picnic here might attract attention. They had parked at discreet distances also.
Roger had explained his plan to John, and he had approved it. By eleven o’clock the road they were in was deserted; London’s outer suburbs were at rest. But they did not move until midnight. It was a moonless night, but there was light from the widely spaced lamp standards. The children slept in the rear seats of the cars. Ann sat beside John in the front.
She shivered. “Surely there’s another way of getting out?”
He stared ahead into the dim shadowy road. “I can’t think of one.”
She looked at him. “You aren’t the same person, are you? The idea of quite calmly planning murder… it’s more grotesque than horrible.”
“Ann,” he said. “Davey is thirty miles away, but he might as well be thirty million if we let ourselves be persuaded into remaining in this trap.” He nodded his head towards the rear seat, where Mary lay bundled up. “And it isn’t only ourselves.”
“But the odds are so terribly against you.”
He laughed. “Does that affect the morality of it? As a matter of fact, without Pirrie the odds would have been steep. I think they’re quite reasonable now. A Bisley shot{80} was just what we needed.”
“Must you shoot to kill?”
He began to say: “It’s a matter of safety…’ He felt the car creak over; Roger had come up quietly and was leaning on the open window.
“O.K.?” Roger asked. “We’ve got Olivia and Steve in with Millicent.”
John got out of the car. He said to Ann:
“Remember—you and Millicent bring these cars up as soon as you hear the horn. You can feel your way forward a little if you like, but it will carry well enough at this time of night.”
Ann stared up to him. “Good luck.”
“Nothing in it,” he said.
They went back to Roger’s car, where Pirrie was already waiting. Then Roger drove slowly forward, past John’s parked car, along the deserted road. It had already been reconnoitred earlier in the evening, and they knew where the last bend before the road-block was. They stopped there, and John and Pirrie slipped out and disappeared into the night Five minutes later, Roger restarted the engine and accelerated noisily towards the roadblock.
Reconnaissance had shown the block to be held by a corporal and two soldiers. Two of these could be presumed to be sleeping; the third stood by the wooden barrier, his automatic slung from his shoulder.
The car slammed to a halt The guard hefted his automatic into a readier position.
Roger leaned out of the window. He shouted:
“What the hell’s that bloody contraption doing in the middle of the road? Get it shifted, man!”
He sounded drunk, and verging on awkwardness. The guard called down:
“Sorry, sir. Road closed. All roads out of London closed.”
“Well, get the flaming things open again! Get this one open, anyway. I want to get home.”
From his position in the left-hand ditch, John watched. Strangely, he felt no particular tension; he floated free, attached to the scene only by admiration of Roger’s noisy expostulation.
Another figure appeared beside the original soldier and, after a moment, a third. The car’s headlights diffused upwards off the metalled road; the three figures were outlined, mistily but with reasonable definition, on the other side of the wooden barrier. A second voice, presumably the corporal’s said:
“We’re carrying out orders. We don’t want any trouble. You clear off back, mate. All right?”
“Is it hell all right! What do you bloody little tin soldiers think you’re up to, putting fences across the road?”
The corporal said dangerously: “That’ll do from you. You’ve been told to turn round. I don’t want any more lip.”
“Why don’t you try turning me round?” Roger asked. His voice was thick and ugly. “There are too many bloody useless military in this country, doing damn’all and eating good rations!”
“All right, mate,” the corporal said, “you asked for it.” He nodded to the other two. “Come on. We’ll turn this loudmouthed bleeder’s car round for him.”
They clambered over the barrier, and advanced into the pool of brightness from the headlights.
Roger said: “Advance the guards,”{81} his voice sneering.
Now, suddenly, the tension caught John. The white line in the centre of the road marked off his territory from Pirrie’s. The corporal and the original sentry were on that side; the third soldier was nearer to him. They walked forward, shielding their eyes from the glare.
He felt sweat start under his arms and along his legs. He brought the rifle up and tried to hold it steady. At any fraction of a second, he must crook his finger and kill this man, unknown, innocent. He had killed in the war, but never from such close range, and never a fellow-countryman. Sweat seemed to stream on his forehead; he was afraid of it blinding his eyes, but dared not risk disturbing his aim to wipe it off. Clay-pipes{82} at a fairground, he thought—a clay-pipe that must be shattered, for Ann, for Mary and Davey. His throat was dry.