Airs Above the Ground (31 page)

At the same moment, an upstairs light came on.

I left my hiding place, and ran like a hare across the intervening space towards the kitchen window.

All hell had broken loose in the kitchen. Lewis, of course, had had to jump blind for the window and,
though he must have heard Sandor at the telephone, he could only guess at the situation inside. Quick though he had been, Sandor had had a moment’s warning, for even as Lewis jumped for the sill, Sandor slammed the receiver back and whirled round, reaching for his hip.

But he never got his gun levelled. Lewis shot. He didn’t shoot to kill: it seemed he was content with shattering one of the blue dishes on the dresser; but the shot had its effect. It managed to freeze Sandor where he stood, and then at a barked command he sent his gun skidding across the floor to Lewis’s feet.

I heard Sandor say incredulously: ‘Lee Elliott! What in hell’s name?’

Lewis cut across him. ‘Who is this man?’

‘Why, Johann Becker, but what in the devil’s name—?’

I said breathlessly, from the window: ‘A light went on upstairs. Someone’s awake.’

Sandor’s face, as he saw me, changed almost ludicrously. It held amazement, then calculation, then a kind of wary fury. ‘You? So it’s you who are responsible for this crazy nonsense? What’s she been telling you?’

Lewis had neither moved nor turned at the sound of my voice. He said: ‘Come on in. Pick up that gun. Don’t get between me and Balog.’ Then to Sandor, curtly: ‘Who else is in the house?’

‘Well, Frau Becker, of course. Look, are you crazy, Elliott, or what? If you’ll listen to me, I can—’

‘Keep back!’ snapped Lewis. ‘I mean this. It won’t be a plate next time.’ As Sandor subsided, I slid quickly
in through the window and stooped for the gun. ‘That’s my girl,’ said Lewis, still with eyes and gun fixed on Sandor. ‘Have you ever handled one of those things before?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then just keep it pointing away from me, will you? It doesn’t much matter what happens to Balog, but I want you to keep Frau Becker quiet with that, so—’

Sandor said furiously: ‘Look, will you tell me what this is about? That girl – the gun – what the hell’s she been telling you? You must be crazy! She thinks—’

Lewis said impatiently: ‘Cut that out. You know as well as I do why I’m here. I’ve heard pretty well all I want to know, but you’ll save yourself a lot of trouble if you’ll tell me just where Becker and his wife come in—’

He got no further. The door of the room was flung open, and in surged one of the most enormous women I have ever seen.

She had on a vast pink flannel nightgown with a blue woollen wrapper over it, and her hair was in tight plaits down her back. She may have been roused by Sandor’s arrival, but it was the sounds of the first scuffle that had lit her window, and now the pistol shot had brought her downstairs. It hadn’t apparently occurred to her that a pistol shot in the night was anything to be afraid of; what she had apparently come to investigate was the sound of broken crockery. I can only assume that she thought her husband and his visitor were indulging in some kind of drunken orgy, for she swept into that room like Hurricane Chloe, unhesitating and unafraid – and poker in hand.

I jumped to intercept her, thrusting the pistol at her much as David must have waved his little sling at Goliath.

She took no notice of it at all. She lifted an arm the size of a York ham to sweep me aside, and bore down on the men. And I’m sure it wasn’t the sight of her unconscious husband, or the raging Sandor, or even Lewis’s pistol, that brought her up all standing for one magnificent moment in front of the dresser.

‘My dish! My dish!’ It was only later that Lewis translated for me, but the source of her emotion was unmistakable. ‘My beautiful dish! You destroy my house! Burglar! Assassin!’

And, poker raised high, she bore down on Lewis.

I’m still not particularly clear about what happened next. I jumped for the woman’s upraised arm, and caught it, but in her attempt to wrench herself free of me she sent us both staggering across the room, and for a moment we reeled between Lewis and Sandor.

Lewis leaped to one side to keep Sandor within range, but it was too late.

Sandor went for Lewis’s gun hand like a tiger to its kill, and the fight was on.

I didn’t see the first stages of that fight; I was too busy with Frau Becker. If Lewis was not literally to be weighted clean out of the battle, it was up to me to keep the lady out of it. Even he, I supposed, could hardly shoot the woman.

It was all I could do not to shoot her myself. For two or three sizzling minutes all I could hope for was to hold on madly to the hand which held the poker, and
prevent my own gun from going off, as I was shaken about that room like a terrier hanging on to a maddened cow.

Then suddenly she collapsed. She folded up like a leaking grain sack, and went down as if I had indeed shot her. By the mercy of heaven a chair was in the way, and into this we went together, me on her ample lap, still hugging her like an avid nursling. I thought at first that the chair had smashed under our combined weights, but it was a rocking-chair, and, tossing like a ship at sea, it shot screeching backwards to fetch up against the door just as Timothy, white-faced and bright-eyed, came hurtling through the window, tripped over the prostrate Becker, swept a mug off the table in falling, and landed on the floor in a pool of coffee.

Whether the sight of a third assassin was too much even for Frau Becker, or whether (as I suspect) the smashing of the mug had finally broken her spirit, she was finished. She opted out of the fight, sitting slumped there in the rocking-chair, massive, immobile, wailing in German, while I picked myself up off her and took the poker from her, and Tim rolled off her husband and took the poker from me, and then together we turned to watch the other hurricane that was sweeping that hapless kitchen.

The two men were evenly matched, Sandor’s strength and sheer athletic skill against Lewis’s toughness and training. Sandor was still hanging on to Lewis’s gun hand, while Lewis fought grimly to free himself and regain control with the gun. At the
moment when we turned they were both, tightly locked, hurtling back against the hot front of the stove. It was Lewis who was jammed there, for two horrible seconds; I was too distraught to hear what he said, but Timothy told me afterwards with unmixed admiration that he had learned more in that two seconds than he had in six years at public school – which, I gathered, was saying a lot. I know that as Lewis cursed, I screamed, and Tim jumped forward, and then Lewis’s wrist was brought with a crack across the edge of the stove and his gun flew wide, to go skittering under the table, and then he kneed Sandor viciously in the groin and the locked bodies reeled aside and came with a back-breaking slam against the table’s edge, while Tim’s poker, missing them by inches, smashed down on the stove top to send the kettle flying.

‘My kettle!’ moaned Frau Becker, galvanised afresh.

‘
Tim! The other man!
’ I shrieked, holding her down.

Becker was moving – was even on his feet. Sandor saw him, gasped something, and the man lurched forward.

But not to help. He was making for the telephone. He was at it.

Lewis said, quite clearly, ‘Stop him!’ and somehow swung Sandor away from the table. One of Sandor’s hands, those terrible steel hands, was at Lewis’s throat. I could see the flesh bulge and darken under the fingers. The sweat was pouring off both men, and Sandor breathed as if his lungs were ruptured. Then instead of pulling away I saw Lewis close in. He had Sandor round the body; he heaved him up and across, somehow
twisting his own body . . . then suddenly brought him slamming down across his knee in a back-breaker. Before Sandor could roll painfully free, Lewis had dragged him up again, and I heard the sickening sound of bone on flesh as he hit him hard across the throat.

Becker wasn’t lifting the receiver. He was yanking at the wires with all his strength.

I yelled: ‘Put that down!’ and swung the useless gun away from the struggling men, towards Becker. He ignored me. I didn’t know if I had a mandate to shoot him, and I doubt anyway if I could have hit him even at that range. I reversed the gun and jumped for him.

I was just too late. Tim had whirled, jumped, and struck, just as the telephone wires came away with a scatter of plaster and a splintering of wood, and poor Becker went down once more, and lay still.

‘My dish!’ wailed Frau Becker. ‘My beautiful cups! Johann!’

‘It’s all right,’ I said feebly, desperately. ‘We won’t hurt you, we’re police. Oh, Tim—’

But there was no more need of Tim and his poker. The fight was over.

Lewis was getting to his feet, and dragging Sandor up with him. The latter’s breathing was terrible, and though he still struggled, it seemed to be without much hope of breaking the cruel grip that held him.

I think I started forward, but Tim caught at me and held me back. He had seen before I had what was happening.

Sandor was being forced, step by sweating step, towards the stove.

It was all over in seconds. I still hadn’t grasped what Lewis was doing. I heard Sandor say, in a voice I didn’t recognise:

‘What do you want to know?’ And then, quickly, on a sickening note of panic: ‘I’ll tell you anything! What do you want?’

‘It can wait,’ said Lewis.

And with the other’s wrist in his grip, he dragged the arm forward, and began to force it out towards the stove where the kettle had stood.

Sandor made no sound. It was Timothy who gasped, and I think I said: ‘Lewis! No!’

But we might as well not have been there.

It happened in slow motion. Slowly, sweating every inch of the way, Lewis forced the hand downwards. ‘It was this hand, I believe?’ he said, and held it for a fraction of a second, no more, on the hot plate.

Sandor screamed. Lewis pulled him away, dumped him unresisting into the nearest chair, and reached for the gun I was still holding.

But there was no need for it. The man stayed slumped in the chair, nursing his burned hand.

‘Keep your hands to yourself after this,’ said my husband, thinly.

He stood there for a moment or two, getting his breath, and surveying the results of the hurricane: the unconscious Becker, the wrecked telephone, the woman snuffling in the rocking-chair, Tim with his poker, and myself probably as pale as he, shaken and staring.

Timothy recovered himself first. He went scrambling
under the table, and emerged with the gun – the precious Beretta – held carefully in his hand.

‘Good man,’ said Lewis. He smiled at us both, pushing the hair back out of his eyes, and seeming suddenly quite human again. ‘Van, my darling, do you suppose there’s any coffee left? Pour it out, will you, while Tim and I get these thugs tied up. Then they can tell us all the other things I want to know.’

Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails
.

Keats:
The Eve of St Agnes

As Timothy and I emerged from the Gasthaus, it came somehow as a surprise to realise that it was full light. Cloud or mist still hung around the summit of the mountain, so that it was impossible to see into the distance, but the visibility was now two or three hundred yards, and clearing every moment. The air seemed thin, grey and chill, but the coffee had worked wonders for us.

I said: ‘Have you the foggiest idea what time it is? I didn’t put my watch on.’

‘Nor did I, but I noticed the time by the kitchen clock. It’s about half-past four.’

‘It’s a mercy that didn’t get smashed, too. Poor Frau Becker. Lewis seems pretty sure she knows nothing about it, so the worst she’ll suffer is being deprived of her husband’s company for a bit.’

‘I’d have said the worst was the bust dishes.’

‘You’ve got something there. Oh gosh, and the grass is wet. It’s beastly cold, isn’t it?’

‘What’s that to us?’ said Timothy buoyantly. ‘Intrepid, that’s us. Archie Goodwin also ran.’

I said, a little sourly: ‘You got some sleep, I didn’t.’

‘There’s that,’ he admitted. ‘And then you’ve had a pretty rough time, belting about like that on the roof.’

‘I suppose you don’t reckon you had it rough, being hit on the head by Sandor in the stable? Or do you take that kind of thing in your stride? Look, for goodness’ sake, don’t try to go at such a speed. This grass is beastly slippery, and there’s a lot of loose rock about. And you’re carrying that thing.’

‘That thing’ was Sandor’s automatic, which Timothy handled with what was to me a terrifying and admirable casualness.

‘I hope you do know all about those things?’

He grinned. ‘Well, yes, it’s dead easy. As a matter of fact this is rather a neat little thing. My grandfather had an old Luger left over from the war. The first war. I used to go potting rabbits with it.’

‘You loathsome boy. I wouldn’t have thought it of you.’

‘Oh,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I never got one. Have you any idea how difficult it is to pot at rabbits with a Luger?’

‘I can’t say that I have.’

‘As a matter of fact, it’s impossible. My hands so far are pretty clean of blood, but at this rate whether they’ll stay so or not I just have no idea. I say, that was some scrap up there in the kitchen, wasn’t it? Why did he burn Sandor’s hand? To frighten him and make him talk?’

‘I don’t think so. It was a private thing.’

‘Oh? Yes, I remember, he said so. You mean they got across one another in the circus or something?’

I shook my head. ‘Sandor hit me.’

His eyes flew to my bruised face. ‘Oh . . . oh, I see.’ I could see myself that his admiration for Lewis had soared to the edge of idolatry. I thought with resignation that men seemed in some ways to pass their lives on an unregenerately primitive level. Well, I could hardly cavil. I had had a fairly primitive reaction myself to my husband’s eye-for-an-eye violence in the kitchen. That I was coldly ashamed of it now proved nothing.

‘Well, whatever it was for,’ said Timothy, ‘it did the trick. He didn’t know how fast to spill the beans. Did you understand any of it?’

‘No,’ I said. Lewis’s quick interrogation – since it included the Beckers – had been in German. ‘Suppose you tell me now.’