It was as she straightened to move away that Famy thrust his hands from under the cover of the bag and grabbed at the leg that was closest to him.
For a moment his fingers were lost in the folds of the skirt, until, just short of panicking, he felt the hardness of her ankle. His whole weight followed, dragging her off balance, pulling her down. The torch fell to the floor boards, clattering and then shining its beam away from them. The surprise was complete. By the time she had realized what had happened she was on the boards, face down, her right arm twisted high behind her back, gripped by Famy, whose knee was indented into the pit of her back. The shock had been too great for her to scream.
'McCoy! McCoy! Come here.' He hissed the command out, and the other man stirred on the far side of the room.
'What is it?' the voice came low across the floor.
'I have the little bitch, I have her here.'
There was a flurry of movement and McCoy crawled through the darkness till he bumped into the mass that was the girl and Famy. His hand reached out for the torch, which he shone into the pale, fear-stricken face. She tried to swing her head away from the light, but he grasped at her hair, and as she cried out he pulled her back into the beam.
'Get your fucking hands off me,' she spat the words at him, and with his free hand he hit her hard across the mouth, and the metal of the battery container caught her lip, bulging and reddening it until the skin broke, and the trickle, highlighted by the softness of her skin, made its way down to the side of her throat. She started to struggle then, without feeling the pain in her head as McCoy clung to her hair, and oblivious of the numbing ache in her arm where Famy had twisted it behind her. With her other hand she reached into the void behind the light, and her fingernails found the flesh of McCoy's face. She heard him cry out in a mixture of pain and astonishment as she raked her nails across his cheeks. The hand let go of her hair, and before she could affect the grip across her back McCoy's foot had lashed into her head. She tried to turn away, but again the foot came, guided now by the light.
Accurate and vicious, striking through the long hair that offered no protection to her ear.
Then McCoy was on his knees beside her, hands in her hair again, and this time there was no resistance. She moved her head toward him, following his will, and saw the long weals across his face, saw his eyes, alive with rage.
Famy tightened the grip on her arm, so that she convulsed, then lay inert, the struggle over.
Famy said, 'She searched your things, then mine.'
'Roll the bitch over.' McCoy was panting, and they pushed her so that she lay on her back. The Arab had his weight across her legs, high on her thighs, and he had pinioned her arms to the floor above her head. She closed her eyes and felt McCoy begin to search her. He started at her neck and worked quickly and expertly across her body, running over her breasts, down her waist, rough and uncaring till they fastened on the note-book in the pocket at her hips. Fingers forced their way inside the fold of the material and pulled the pad out. She opened her eyes fractionally and saw him peering at her close, tight hand-writing, flicking the pages over, torch close to the paper.
'What does it say?' said Famy, impatience growing as the other man concentrated.
'She's a bloody tout,' said McCoy.
'What's that?' said Famy, his voice rising.
'An informer. A spy. There are names here, people living in the house, times and dates of arrival. We're here too, when we came in, when we went out yesterday. She's a clever little cow. You've no tags, no maker's marks in your clothes, right?'
'We took them out before we came.'
'Well, it's written down here.'
McCoy waited, the big eyes delving into the young face beneath him. She could sense the chill in his voice, horrible and without pity.
He said, 'Who are you? Tell me why you came.' The glazed, fear-filled face peered vacantly back toward him and beyond.
'Who are you, you cow?' He hit her again, this time with the edge of his hand, finding the tip of her chin bone, jerking her head back, banging it on the boards. Still she said nothing, and he struck her with his fist clenched hard into the softness below her rib cage. She gasped for air, fighting to force it down into her lungs, tried to draw up her knees from under the Arab to protect her defenceless body.
'You'll get it again.'
She started to try to speak, but there were no sounds at first, just the effort. Her chest heaved and writhed before the words came. There was a final act of defiance.
'Get off me, you pigs. I'm a police officer. Get your pig-shit hands off me.'
The thought in Famy's mind was immediate. Just two days earlier on the road to Boulogne the police had been waiting for them. Now here, in the supposed 'safe house', the police were again close to him.
'How did they know?' he shouted. 'How did they know we would be here?'
McCoy saw her reaction to what Famy had said, the flick of her head forward to stare at the shadowy face above her. It was that movement that sealed his resolution.
His hands came down, settled on her throat, and tightened.
She tried to speak of drugs and hippies, but the air was already denied her. Then there was nothing, only the sinking, and pressure of the hands and the blackness when she tried to see.
When McCoy had finished he realized that Famy was no longer beside him. It had been easy. In the world in which he moved and fought the penalty for touts was clear-cut. There was coughing in the far corner.
'Pull yourself together, you stupid bugger,' he said. 'Get your things in your bag. We're moving out.'
The house was quiet, at rest, as they went down the stairs, through the door and on to the street.
While McCoy drove, fast and with studied concentration heading south toward the river, Famy sat rock-still beside him. The Arab's mind was moving at pace. It was the first time that he had encountered violent death, and the speed with which life had been crushed from the girl amazed him its simplicity, its suddenness. And the doubts he had felt about McCoy had vanished in those few seconds. When the time came the Irishman too was prepared to kill. Famy knew, and it was a feeling he had not entertained before, that they were now a team. In the darkness of the attic bedroom the links between the two men had been irrevocably joined, and with that his last lingering uncertainties about the success of his mission had gone.
'Where are we going now?' Famy asked.
McCoy did not take his eyes from the road ahead.
'Down into the hills south of London. Into Surrey, where the guns are.'
'And where do we sleep?'
'We sleep rough tonight and tomorrow. We have to ditch this car, get another. Come back to London on Tuesday, probably late. This car will do us for a few hours more, but when the balloon goes up we'll have to have another.'
'How long do you think before they find her?'
'Some time, not immediately. And when they do they'll have the bloody commune on their hands. And they won't make much headway with them.' it was necessary to kill her.' Famy said it quietly, but as a statement.
"Course it bloody was.'
'She knew who we were?' The question again.
'Shouldn't think so.' McCoy sensed the other man's surprise at his answer. He went on. 'Probably there on the drugs scene. Could have been bomb squad and out Provo-hunting. You've got two alternatives. Bluff it out, or the other. And when you start knocking shit out of the girl that narrows it down to the other.'
'How far do we have to go?'
'About another hour and a half. Get some sleep.' It was an instruction. McCoy wanted to drive without chatter in his ear.