'I hadn't thought of it like that before,' said the Pastor. 'We have much to feel guilty about.'
In the darkness the Saudi delegate smiled. He was thinking wistfully of Eichmann.
Far to the north, Slymne drove down the M1 at ninety miles an hour. He wasn't wasting time on side roads and the Major's suggestions, made at frequent intervals, that they stop the night in a hotel had been ignored. 'You heard what the Head said,' he told the Major. 'This could be the ruination of us all.'
'Won't be much of me left to ruin at this rate,' said the Major and shifted his weight on the inner tube.
Chapter 20
Halfway down the drive the Countess paused in her flight. Too many days in the kitchen hadn't equipped her for long-distance running and anyway she hadn't been shot at. Nobody had chased after her either. She sat down on the wall to get her breath back and considered the situation grimly. She might have saved her life but she'd also lost her life savings. The seven little gold bars in the suitcase had been her guarantee of independence. Without them she was tied to the damned Château and the kitchen stove. Worse still, she might have to go elsewhere and struggle on satisfying the whims and lusts of men, either as someone's cook, housekeeper and general bottle-washer or, more distastefully still, as a wife. She would lose the bungalow in Bognor Regis and the chance of resuming her interrupted identity as Constance Sugg safe in the knowledge that her past was well and truly behind her. It was an appalling prospect and wasn't helped by the fact that she was fat, fair and forty-five. Not that she cared what she looked like. The three Fs had kept the fourth at bay but they wouldn't help her in a world dominated by lecherous men.
It was all the more galling that she would have escaped if it hadn't been for Glodstone's clumsiness. Another damned man had fouled things up for her, and an idiot at that. Baffled by the whole affair, she was about to move on when another thought struck her. Someone had certainly come looking for her and having found her they'd let her get away. Why? Unless they'd got what they'd wanted in her suitcase. That made much more sense. It did indeed. With a new and nasty determination the Countess climbed off the wall and turned back up the drive. She had gone twenty yards when she heard footsteps and the sound of voices. They were coming after all. She slipped into some bushes and squatted down.
'I don't care what you think,' said Glodstone, as they passed, 'if you hadn't come out with that bloody gun and yelled "Freeze" she wouldn't have run off like that.'
'But I didn't know it was the Countess,' said Peregrine, 'I thought it was one of the swine trying to get round behind me. Anyway we rescued her and that's what she wanted, isn't it?'
'Without her suitcase with all her clothes in it?'
'Feels jolly heavy for clothes. She's probably waiting for you at the bridge and we can give it back to her.'
Glodstone snorted. 'Frighten the wits out of the poor woman and you expect her to hang around waiting for me. For all she knows I'm dead.'
They passed out of earshot. In the bushes the Countess was having difficulty understanding what she had just heard. Rescue her? And that was what she wanted? What she wanted was her suitcase and the madman with the gun had said they could give it back to her? The statements resolved themselves into insane questions in her mind.
'I must be going crazy,' she muttered as she disentangled herself from the brambles and stood in the roadway trying to decide what to do. It wasn't a difficult decision. The young lout had her suitcase and whether he like it or not she wasn't letting him disappear with it. As the pair rounded the bend she took off her shoes and holding them in one hand ran down the drive after them. By the time they reached the bridge she was twenty yards behind and hidden by the stonework above the river.
'What's that over there?' asked Glodstone, peering at the wreckage of the police van and the remains of the driver's seat which had burnt itself to a wire skeleton in the middle of the bridge.
'They had some guards there,' said Peregrine, 'but I soon put paid to them.'
'Dear God,' said Glodstone, 'when you say 'put paid to'...No, I don't think I want to hear.' He paused and looked warily around. 'All the same, I'd like to be certain there's no one about.'
'I shouldn't think so. The last I saw of them they were all in the river.'
'Probably the last thing anyone will see of them before they reach the sea, if my experience of that bloody torrent's anything to go by.'
'I'll go over and check just in case,' said Peregrine. 'If it is all clear I'll whistle.'
'And if it isn't I'll hear a shot I suppose,' muttered Glodstone but Peregrine was already striding nonchalantly across the bridge carrying the suitcase. A minute later he whistled but Glodstone didn't move. He was dismally aware that someone was standing behind him.
'It's me again, honey,' said the Countess. 'You don't get rid of me quite so easily.'
'Nobody wants to get rid of you. I certainly...'
'Skip the explanations for later. Now you and me are going to walk across together and just in case that delinquent gunslinger starts shooting remember I'm in back of you and he's got to drill you before he gets to me.'
'But he won't shoot. I mean, why should he?'
'You tell me,' said the Countess, 'I'm no mind-reader even if you had a mind. So, let's go.'
Glodstone ambled forward. In the east the sky had begun to lighten but he had no eyes for the beauties of nature. He was in an interior landscape, one in which there was no meaning or order and everything was at variance with what he had once believed. Romance was dead and unless he was extremely careful he might join it very shortly.
'I'm going to tell him not to do anything stupid,' he said when they reached the ramp.
'It's a bit late in the day for that, baby, but you may as well try,' said the Countess.
Glodstone stopped. 'Peregrine,' he called, 'I've got the Countess with me so it's all right. There's no need to be alarmed.'
Behind the wrecked police van Peregrine cocked the revolver. 'How do I know you're telling the truth?' he shouted, and promptly crawled away down the bank so that he could get a clear line of fire on the squat figure silhouetted against the sky.
'Because I say so, you gibbering idiot. What more do you want?'
'Why's she standing so close to you?' said Peregrine from a different quarter. Glodstone swung round and the Countess followed.
'Because she doesn't trust you with that gun.'
'Why did she ask us to rescue her?' asked Peregrine.
But Glodstone had reached the limits of his patience. 'Never mind that now. We can discuss that later out of the way.'
'Oh all right,' said Peregrine who had been looking forward to bagging another victim. 'If you say so.'
He climbed up the bank and Glodstone and the Countess seamed past the shell of the police van.
'OK, so what's with this business of my wanting to be "rescued?" asked the Countess, pausing to put her shoes on. 'And who's friend with the itchy trigger finger?'
'That's Peregrine,' said Glodstone, 'Peregrine Clyde-Browne. He's a boy in my house. Actually, he's left now but '
'I don't need his curriculum vitae; I want to know what you're doing here, is all.'
Glodstone looked uneasily up and down the road. 'Hadn't we better go somewhere more private?' he said. 'I mean the sooner we're out of the district the less chance they'll have of following us.'
It was the Countess's turn to hesitate. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to go anywhere too private with these maniacs. On the other hand there was a great deal to be said for getting the hell away from burnt-out police vehicles. She didn't fancy being questioned too closely about the little gold bars in her suitcase or what she was doing with several different passports, not to mention her son's housemaster and a schoolboy who went round shooting people. Above all she wanted to put this latest piece of her past behind her. Bognor Regis called.