Gordon Williams (19 page)

“YAHHH!” It was a noise to make, a bawl of defiance. The water went out through the window. At the same time he dropped the pot and grabbed at the curtains, holding his stomach against the wall. His palms closed on burning material, but he felt no pain. He tore the curtain down from its brass rail, dragging it on to the floor. Somebody yelped outside. A yelp of pain. He hoped the bastard had got the boiling water right on the kisser.

Then the flames were out. He wrestled with the curtain rod, until he could wrench it away from the wall. Now there was nothing they could set fire to. He’d have to tear the curtains down from the other windows.

He slipped along the wall, ducking when he came to the sideboard. Then he was back in the shelter of the sitting-room door.

“I think I got one,” he said to Louise. “Pity we don’t having boiling oil.”

The water had caught Bert Voizey on the chin and neck, some of it running down on to his chest. It hadn’t been boiling by the time it
was thrown, but his skin felt as though it was being torn off his body by barbed wire. He went on yelping and screaming and tearing at his clothes for several minutes, until the pain subsided into mere agony.

For a few moments he stood still, his chest heaving, a dull moan coming out of his mouth with each desperate breath.

“Give I the gun, give I the gun,” he suddenly yelled, trying to pull it out of Tom Hedden’s hands. “I’ll kill the bastard, I’ll kill him.”

If they had been at all doubtful up till then about what Norman Scutt said they had to do, the men outside Trencher’s Farm were now ready to tear the house to pieces with their bare hands. Each one of them knew that water could have blinded Bert Voizey. Or blinded them.

After they’d had a cup of tea, Sergeant Wills asked Picken if he thought he was fit to travel.

“It’s my feet,” said Picken, grimacing with pain. He’d taken off his boots and socks and put them in a big enamel basin filled with tepid water.

Davies seemed all right, teeth still rattling with the cold, but so were his own.

“If us had a phone you’m could phone the station like,” said the farmer. “But us don’t, like.”

“Yes, I know,” said Sergeant Wills.

“There’s a phone at the Endacotts,” said the farmer. “You’m could phone from there like.”

The farm with the phone was about a mile farther on. Sergeant Wills thought for a moment, looking at Picken’s feet. These young coppers were easy knocked out. When
he’d
started there was only him to cover three parishes, him and his bike. A little bit of snow
didn’t put him off in those days. But that was before they had cars and radios and scooters and all this modern paraphernalia.

“We don’t want to go in that weather, Sarnt,” said Davies. “It’s not doing any good, us going down with exposure.”

Sergeant Wills knew that the inspector wouldn’t blame them for not going on. Nobody expected policemen to be heroes these days. Ordinary men, that’s what they were supposed to be. Only he remembered the old days when there was him and his bike and gangs of poachers who’d as soon gaff a copper as a salmon. There had been no radios or cars when he’d got that call to the Fearncombe farm, when the Fearncombes’ daft son Nelson had gone wild with his father’s .22 and shot at the postman and the doctor because he thought they were coming to take him for the army.

“You stay here, Picken,” he said, standing up, reaching for his helmet. “Davies and me’ll push on a bit. Look bad if we’re sitting here drinking tea and Niles is at Dando. Thanks for the tea, Missus.”

Davies knew better than argue with Sergeant Wills. Picken groaned and bent down to look at his feet, anxious to make it clear
they
were stopping him, not anything else.

“Should take us no more’n another hour,” the sergeant said, cheerfully, as he and Constable Davies looked out across the snow-drenched yard. “Come on, lad, a policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”

Davies groaned. He’d joined the police to get into plain-clothes work, not to play bloody Eskimos.

It was just after eight when they left the farmyard. Sergeant Wills thought they’d be doing well to reach Dando by half past nine. Provided they didn’t lose their way again...

* * *

When Gregory Allsopp opened his eyes it was to find his feet on fire and a child yelling in another room. He could smell rubber. Pulling himself to a sitting position he found he was stretched on a sofa in front of a range fire. Smoke was rising from the soles of his rubber boots. Cursing with pain he dragged his feet off the sofa and pulled off his boots. The soles had gone soft.

“Is anybody there?” he shouted.

Then he realised his head was thundering with pain. For a moment he thought he was going to faint. He lay back with his eyes closed until he felt better.

“HALLO?” he called.

The child went on bawling. Where the hell was he?

It all came back when Bobby Hedden, a strange look of guilt on his flushed face, came into the farmhouse kitchen.

“Good God,” the doctor exclaimed. “How long have I been here like this?”

“Bout half an hour,” said Bobby. The doctor knew that look on a boy’s face. He made a mental shrug. The important thing was... what was the important thing?

“Good God! Your father hit me with a gun!”

Bobby Hedden stared uncomprehendingly. Gregory Allsopp knew bloody well the boy wasn’t as thick as he looked. What was he to do?

“Is it still snowing?” he asked, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

“Oh aye.”

He made a superhuman effort and stood up. It was as though his brains were trying to hammer their way out of his skull.

“Why did your father take a gun?” he asked, lifting up his boots.
They had stopped smoking. “You could’ve taken them off, I was almost on fire.”

“Oh.”

“Why did your father take a gun?”

“For that lunatic, weren’t it?”

“Oh Christ!”

The child went on bawling.

“Go and see to him,” he told Bobby. “I’m going to the Magruders’ house.”

“Be hard walkin’, won’t her?” said Bobby.

“The cold air may help my head. If anybody comes tell them where I’ve gone. Now go and see what’s wrong in there.”

His dizziness soon disappeared in the wind and snow. Tom Hedden had gone out of his mind. Janice! Cawsey had come to say this Niles chap was at Trencher’s Farm. Tom had fetched the gun. He must have gone mad. What the hell did he think he was going to do with the gun? What time was it? He couldn’t see his watch. There was a short-cut, across Soldier’s Field and one of Colonel Scott’s fields to the village.

Trying not to fall into the ditch he kept to the left side of the road, in the comparative shelter of the high bank. When he came to the gate which led to the path across the fields he floundered in waisthigh snow blown through the gap.

He scrambled up the verge to the five-barred gate. It was only five or ten minutes since he’d left the farm but already the terrible chill had penetrated his clothes. His fingers pulsed with a numbing ache. Blood pounded where Tom Hedden had hit him with the gun. He had to squint to protect his eyes against the snow and wind and the strain gave him a new pain, a nagging throb behind his forehead. As
he climbed the gate he looked for lights in the village, something he could use as a guide across the fields. There were pinpoints of light in the darkness but he could not be sure whether they were windows or spots in front of his eyes.

It was ridiculous to think that he could get lost, crossing two fields which he knew as well as he knew his back garden. He climbed down from the gate and started across the slow rise of the hill, the gale occasionally catching him full on the chest and threatening to blow him head over heels.

He saw dark shapes which he took for certain houses or trees. Yet when he blinked and peered again, to make sure, there were other shapes in different places. Or no shapes at all. Just blackness. He had heard of men dying on the Moor in blizzards like this – when they were less than fifty feet from houses. But that couldn’t happen to a sensible man. He could still feel that his left foot was on higher ground than his right. That meant he was crossing the face of the sloping field in the right direction.

It was then he tripped. His boots came down on something, a lump? A dead sheep? He fell sideways, his right ankle turning awkwardly.

As he struggled to right himself his hand touched something hard. His fingers probed in snow. Numb as they were, he found he was exploring the shape of a shoe. Trying to get up off his knees his right ankle gave way and he fell again. Wanting to cry out with the numbing pain in his hands, he got on all fours and felt about in the snow.

Using his hands almost like blunt instruments he pulled and pushed at the deadweight until he was in no doubt that he had found Janice Hedden.

When George went into the study to tear down the curtains he saw the shapes of two men crowded into the window opening.

Phil Riddaway had smashed another pane to get at the line which held Chris Cawsey’s hands tight to the window catches. He was twisting his great arms in the small space so that he could work the blade of his pocket-knife between Cawsey’s wrists and the flex.

Knowing now they were willing to shoot at him through the windows, George moved quietly along the wall until he was ready to strike.

“That’s one of the boogers,” Phil Riddaway said, grunting with the strain of his unnatural position.

George stepped out from behind the wall and jabbed at the big man’s face with the thin poker.

“GAAAH,” roared Riddaway, throwing up an elbow to protect himself.

Knowing he couldn’t do real harm with the poker, George struck
with full force, whipping the thin length of steel across Riddaway’s head and hands, hoping to knock the knife to the floor.

“LOUISE! GET THE WATER!” he yelled.

Immediately Riddaway tried to pull himself out of the small square of wood, slivers of glass cracking as his elbows and shoulders twisted and turned.

“Get me out of it, Phil.” Cawsey fought with his free hand to tear away the cord that held his other wrist to the centre post. Phil Riddaway couldn’t see into the room. He didn’t want boiling water on his face. With a wrench he dragged himself free and lurched back from the window. Cawsey went on yelping for help.

“Keep out of this window or your friend gets his face boiled!” George shouted.

By now he had a clear picture of the house’s weak spots. Like a good siege commander, he thought. The study window was one, if they could get the guy untied. The kitchen window was the other. The study and the kitchen, the two extremities. If they cottoned on and launched attacks on both at the same time he wouldn’t be able to run back and forth. One of them would get in. Then what?

Did they really intend to murder them all? Maybe they should retreat up the stairs – into the attic with Niles! Once the trapdoor went down they could never get up the folding steps. One man up there could sit on top of an army.

But they’d set fire to the curtains. A big blaze would suit them – and in the attic there was no escape hole.

“You hear that?” he snarled at Cawsey. “Tell your friends you get burned if they try to touch you.”

Cawsey pulled and tugged his wrist until the line cut into his skin. Like an animal in a trap, George thought. Only we’re in the trap.

He moved through the hall, ducking quickly past the small window at the telephone. A man couldn’t get through there, but a shotgun shell could.

Still, he felt confident enough. And still he hadn’t needed to cross any stupid thresholds. Tomorrow morning he’d be the man who had done the right thing. He’d have saved Niles, he wouldn’t even have used excessive violence on the mob. He remembered now what this situation reminded him of, the tree-house he’d made when he was a boy, in the deformed oak at the bottom of Wainwright’s meadow. Once he’d pulled up the rope ladder he’d been perfectly alone, the world shut out, safe in a shell.

“I suppose Karen’s all right now?” he said to Louise, who still crouched at the foot of their stairs.

“Will I go up and see?”

Louise’s voice made him feel even more confident. It was a quiet,
asking
voice, the smart-alec tone completely gone. He felt that he loved her a great deal. Maybe this had been a lucky –

SMASH!

Glass smashing, wood cracking, heavy bump. The kitchen!

Three of them, Scutt, Voizey and Riddaway, had found a long plank of heavy wood in the shed across the road. It was Norman Scutt who’d known what to do with it, smash in the frame-work of the kitchen window. A battering-ram.

George held himself against the wall as he looked round into the kitchen. He could see the plank, jutting into the room, the three men pulling at the other end for another go. They’d missed the centre-post. Where was the guy with the shotgun?

That’s what Norman Scutt wanted to know.

“Tom! Here, Tom!”

George knew he had only seconds to act. There was no sign of the gun. He strode to the
Aga.
The two remaining pans
had
to be boiling now. He got his fingers round a handle, his skin feeling the heat of the water. Holding it out from his hip he ran to the window and heaved it at them.

As he dived against the wall he heard two men yelling. In the split second after he’d swung the pan at the gaping window he thought he’d seen the smooth spew of water reaching them. Too low for their faces, though. Hands maybe. He had to get out of the kitchen before the other one, the shotgun, had a chance to spray the room with shot.

“Where is he?” That was him, the one who’d shot Bill Knapman.

“My hands, it’s my hands!” somebody else was roaring.

“Shoot him, shoot him,” Norman Scutt shouted.

George lay against the wall under the window. If he made a jump for the door they’d see him.

“Shoot him!”

“I can’t see nothin’. Where’s he gone?”

“Give me the bloody gun!”

“I’ll get him, I’ll get him, where’s he gone?”

Norman Scutt tried to pull the shotgun away from Tom Hedden. George heard them grunting. Slowly raising his head he peered over the window sill. Perhaps they were falling out among themselves? Divide and conquer? He waited till the gun was pointing at the ground.