Last Ditch (21 page)

Ferrant lounged against the table with unconvincing insolence. Syd lay on his bed and looked seldom and furtively at Ricky. Nothing was said and, grotesquely, this silence had the character of a social hiatus. Ricky had some difficulty in breaking it.

‘What is all this?’ he asked, and his voice sounded like somebody else’s. ‘Am I kidnapped or what?’

‘That’s right, Mr Alleyn,’ Ferrant said. ‘That’s correct. You are our hostage, Mr Alleyn.’

He was smoking. He inhaled and blew smoke down his nostrils. ‘What an act!’ Ricky thought.

‘Do you mind telling me why?’ he asked.

‘A pleasure, Mr Alleyn, A great pleasure.’

Ricky thought: ‘If this was fiction it would be terrible stuff. One would write things like “sneered Ferrant” and “said young Alleyn, very quietly”.’

He said: ‘Well, come on, then. Let’s have it.’

‘You’re going to write a little note to your papa, Mr Alleyn.’

For the first time an authentic cold trickle ran down Ricky’s spine. ‘To say what?’ he asked.

Ferrant elaborated with all the panache of a B Grade film gangster. The message Ricky was to write would be delivered to the Cove police station: never mind by whom. Ricky said tartly that he couldn’t care less by whom: what was he expected to say?

‘Take it easy, take it easy,’ Ferrant snarled out of the corner of his mouth. He moved round the table and sat down at it. He cocked up his feet in their co-respondent shoes on the table and levelled his gun between his knees at Ricky. It was not a pose that Ricky, himself in acute discomfort, thought that Ferrant would find easy or pleasant to sustain.

He noticed that among the litter on the table were the remains of a meal: an open jack-knife, cups and a half-empty bottle of cognac. A piece of drawing paper lay near the lamp with an artist’s conté pencil beside it. There was a chair on that side of the table, opposite Ferrant.

‘That’s the idea,’ said Ferrant: (‘ “Purred”, no doubt, would be the chosen verb,’ thought Ricky.) ‘We’ll have a little action, shall we?’

He nodded magnificently at Syd, who got off the bed and moved to Ricky. He bent over him, not looking in his face.

‘Your breath stinks, Syd,’ said Ricky,

Syd made a very raw reply. It was the first time he had spoken. He hauled ineffectually at Ricky and they floundered about aimlessly before Ricky got his balance. It was true that Syd smelt awful.

Obviously they wanted him on the chair, facing Ferrant. He managed to shoulder Syd off and sit on it.

‘Now then,’ he said. ‘What’s the drill?’

‘We’ll take it very nice and slow,’ said Ferrant, and Ricky thought he’d been wanting to get the phrase off his chest, appropriate or not, as the situation developed. He repeated it: ‘Nice and slow.’

‘If you want me to write you’ll have to untruss me, won’t you?’ Ricky pointed out.

‘I’m giving the orders in this scene, mate, do you mind?’ said Ferrant. He nodded again to Syd, who moved behind Ricky but did not release him.

Ricky had pins and needles in his forearms. It was difficult to move them. His upper arms, still pinioned, had gone numb. Ferrant raised the gun slightly.

‘And we won’t try any funny business, will we?’ he said. ‘We’ll listen carefully and do what we’re told like a good boy. Right?’

He waited for an answer and, getting none, began to lay down the law.

He said Ricky was to write a message in his own words and if he tried anything on he’d have to start again. He was to say that he was held as a hostage and the price of his release was absolute inactivity on the part of the police until Ferrant and Syd had gone.

‘Say,’ Ferrant ordered, ‘that if they start anything you’ll be fixed. For keeps.’

That was to be the message.

How many strata of thought are there at any given moment in a human brain? In Ricky’s there was a kind of lethargy, a profound unbelief in the situation, a sense of non-reality as if, in an approaching moment, he would find himself elsewhere and unmolested. With this, a rising dry terror and an awareness of the neccessity to think clearly about the immediate threat. And, overall, a desolate longing for his father.

‘Suppose I won’t write it,’ he said. ‘What about that?’

‘Something not very nice about that. Something we don’t want to do.’

‘If you mean you’ll shoot me you must be out of your mind. Where would that get you?’ Ricky asked, forcing himself, and it cost him an enormous effort, to take hold of what he supposed must be reality. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘What do you want? To do a bolt because you’re up to your eyebrows in trouble? The hostage ploy’s exploded, you ought to know that. They’ll call your bluff.
You’re
not going to shoot me.’

Syd Jones mumbled, ‘You ought to know we mean business. What about yesterday? What about –’

‘Shut up,’ said Ferrant.

‘All right,’ said Ricky. ‘Yesterday. What about it? A footling attempt to do me in and a dead failure at that.’

To his own surprise he suddenly lost his temper with Syd. ‘You’ve been a bloody fool all along,’ he shouted. ‘You thought I was on to whatever your game is with drugs, didn’t you? It wouldn’t have entered my head if you hadn’t made such an ass of yourself. You thought I sent you to see my parents because my father’s a cop. I sent you out of bloody kindness. You thought I was spying on you and tailed you over to St Pierre. You were dead wrong all along the line and did yourself a lot of harm. Now, God save the mark, you’re trying to play at kidnappers. You fool, Syd. If you shot me here, it’d be the end of you. What do you think my father’d do about that one? He’d hunt you both down with the police of two nations to help him.
You
don’t mean business. Ferrant’s making a monkey of you and you’re too bloody dumb or too bloody doped to see it. Call yourself a painter. You’re a dirty little drug-runner’s side-kick and a failure at that.’

Syd hit him across the mouth. His upper lip banged against his teeth. Tears ran down his face. He lashed out with his foot. Syd fell backwards and sat on the floor. Ricky saw through his tears that Syd had the jack-knife in his hand.

Ferrant, in command of a stream of whispered indecencies, rose and was frightening. He came round the table and winded Ricky with a savage jab under the ribs. Ricky doubled up in his chair and through the pain felt them lash his ankles together. Ferrant took his shoulders and jerked him upright. He began to hit him methodically with hard open-handed slaps on his bruised face. ‘This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me,’ Ricky thought.

Now Ferrant had the knife. He forced Ricky’s head back by the hair and held the point to his throat.

‘Now,’ whispered Ferrant, ‘who’s talking about who means business? Another squeal out of you, squire, and you’ll be gagged. And listen. Any more naughty stuff and you’ll end up with a slit wind-pipe at the bottom of the earth bog behind this shack. Your father won’t find you down there in a hurry and when he does he won’t fancy what he sees.
Filth
,’ said Ferrant, using the French equivalent. He shook Ricky by the hair of his head and slapped his face again.

Ricky wondered afterwards if this treatment had for a moment or two actually served to clear rather than fuddle his wits and even to extend his field of observation. Whether this was so or not, it was a fact that he now became aware, beyond the circle of light cast by the single lamp, of suitcases that were vaguely familiar. Now he recognized them – The ultra smart pieces of luggage (‘
Très snob presque cad
’
-
who had said that?) suspended from Ferrant’s gloved hands as he walked down the street to the jetty in the early hours of the morning.

He saw, blearily, the familiar paintbox lying open on the table with a litter of tubes and an open carton beside it. He even saw that one tube had been opened at the bottom and was gaping.

‘They’re cleaning up,’ he thought. And then: ‘They’re cooking up a getaway with the stuff. Tonight. They saw me watching the pad, and they saw me up by the pine-grove, and they hauled me in. Now they don’t know what to do with me. They’re improvising.’

Ferrant thrust his face at him: ‘That’s for a start,’ he said. ‘How about it. You’ll write this message? Yes?’

Ricky tried to speak but found that his tongue was out of order and his upper lip bled on the inside and wouldn’t move. He made ungainly noises. Syd said: ‘Christ, you’ve croaked him.’

Ricky made an enormous effort. ‘Won’t work,’ he hoped he’d said. Ferrant listened with exaggerated attention.

‘What’s that? Won’t work? Oh, it’ll work, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Know how? You’re going down to the pier with us, see? And if your papa and his bloody fuzz start anything, you’ll croak.’ He touched Ricky’s throat with the point of the knife. ‘See? Feel that? Now get to it. Tell him.’

They released his right arm and strapped the left to the chair. Ferrant pushed the drawing paper towards him and tried to shove the pencil into his tingling hand. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Go on. Take it. Take it.’

Ricky flexed his fingers and clenched and unclenched his hand. He felt horribly sick. Ferrant’s voice receded into the distance and was replaced by a thrumming sound. Something hard pressed against his forehead. It was the table. ‘But I haven’t passed out,’ he thought. ‘Not quite.’

Syd Jones was saying: ‘No, Gil, don’t. Hell, Gil, not now. Not yet. Look, Gil, why don’t we gag him and tie him up and leave him?
Why don’t we finish packing the stuff and stay quiet till it’s time and just leave him?’

‘Do I have to go over it again! Look. So he doesn’t turn up. So his old man’s asking for him. Marie reckons he’s suspicious. They’ll be watching, don’t you worry. All right. So we leave him here and we walk straight into it. But if we’ve got him between us and look like we mean business, they won’t do a bloody thing. They can’t. We’ll take him in the dinghy as far as the boat and tip him overboard. By the time they’ve fished him out, we’re beyond the heads and on our way.’

‘I don’t like it. Look at him. He’s passed out.’

Ricky stayed as he was. When Ferrant jerked his head back he groaned, opened his eyes, shut them again, and, when released, flopped forward on the table. ‘I must listen, listen, listen,’ he thought. It was a horrid task – so much easier to give up, to yield, voluptuously almost, to whatever punch, slap or agonizing tweak they chose to deal out. And what to do about writing? What would be the result if he did write – write what? What Ferrant had said – write to his father.

‘Go on,’ Ferrant was saying. ‘Get to it. You know what to put. Go on.’

His head was jerked up again by the hair. Perhaps his scalp rather than his mouth hurt most.

His fingers closed round the conté pencil. He dragged his hand over the paper.

‘Kidnapped,’ he wrote, ‘OK. They say if you’re inactive till they’ve gone I won’t be hurt. If not I will. Sorry.’ He made a big attempt at organized thinking. ‘P.A.D.’ he wrote as a signature, and let the pencil slide out of his grip.

Ferrant read the message. ‘What’s this P.A.D.?’ he demanded.

‘Initials. Patrick Andrew David,’ Ricky lied, and thought it sounded like royalty.

‘What’s this “Ricky” stuff then?’

‘Nickname. Always sign P.A.D.’

The paper was withdrawn. His face dropped painfully on his forearm and he closed his eyes. Their voices faded and he could no longer strain to listen. It would be delicious if in spite of the several pains that competed for his attention, he could sleep.

There was no such thing as time, only the rise and ebbing of pain to which a new element had been added, cutting into his ankles as if into the sorrel mare’s near fore.

It took much longer than they had anticipated to get their search-warrant. The magistrates court had risen and Alleyn was obliged to hunt down a Justice of the Peace in his home. He lived some distance on the far side of Montjoy in an important house at the foot of a precipitous lane. They had trouble in finding him and when found he turned out to be a fusspot and a ditherer. On the return journey the car jibbed at the steep ascent and wouldn’t proceed until Fox had removed his considerable weight and applied it to the rear. Whereupon Alleyn, using a zigzagging technique, finally achieved the summit and was obliged to wait there for his labouring colleague. They then found that there was next to no petrol left in the tank and stopped at the first station to fill up. The man asked them if they knew they had a slow puncture.

By the time they got back to the Cove dusk was falling and Sergeant Plank had twice rung up from Leathers.

Mrs Plank, the victim of redundancy, reported that there was nothing to report but that he would report again at seven-thirty. She offered them high tea which they declined. Alleyn left Fox to take the call, saying he would look in for a fleeting moment on Ricky, who would surely have returned from his walk.

So he went round the corner to the Ferrants’ house. Ricky’s window was still shut. The boy, Louis, admitted Alleyn.

Mrs Ferrant came out of her kitchen to the usual accompaniment of her television.

‘Good evening, monsieur,’ she said. ‘Your son has not yet returned.’

The idiot insistence of a commercial jingle blared to its conclusion before Alleyn spoke.

‘He’s rather late, isn’t he?’ Alleyn said.

She lifted her shoulders. ‘He has perhaps walked to Bon Accord and is eating there.’

‘He didn’t say anything about doing that?’

‘No. There was no need.’

‘You would wish to know because of the meal, madame. It was inconsiderate of him.’

‘
C’est pen de chose.
’

‘Has he done this before?’

‘Once perhaps. Or more than once. I forget. You will excuse me, monsieur. I have the boy’s meal to attend to.’

‘Of course. Forgive me. Your husband has not returned?’

‘No, monsieur. I do not expect him. Excuse me.’

When she had shut the kitchen door after her, Alleyn lifted his clenched fist to his mouth, took in a deep breath, waited a second and then went upstairs to Ricky’s room. Perhaps there would be a written message there that he had not, for some reason, wished to leave with Mrs Ferrant.

There was no message. Ricky’s manuscript, weighted by a stone, was on his table. A photograph of his parents stared past his father at the empty room. The smell of Ricky – a tweed and shaving-soap smell, mixed with his pipe – hung on the air.