No Enemy but Time (40 page)

‘Wake up! Oh, wake up, darling. For God's sake.'

He started up, alarmed, and saw by the look of her that it wasn't bad news.

‘He may be all right,' she said. ‘He may have gone into hiding! If he was threatened, that's what he did! Oh, Neil, it's a chance. If he's not found and there's no ransom or communiqué from those brutes, it's a very good chance! He even said something like that. I was in such a state last night I forgot all about it.'

‘Well, maybe that's the explanation. If he thought they were going after him, it makes sense. But where would he be?'

She looked down at her hands. It was their secret. She wouldn't mention it to Neil. He'd dismiss the idea as a piece of Irish lunacy and she couldn't afford that. If he took that last hope away, she'd never forgive him.

‘He didn't say,' she said. ‘But he'd know somewhere.'

Marie laid the tray down on the bed. It was the morning of the second day. He hadn't spoken a word or responded to her taunting. The silence maddened her. She wanted him to rise to her, to curse and abuse her. Anything but that contemptuous look, as if she were the dirt under his feet.

Willie alternated with the dour Pat. One stayed the night, the other relieved him the next morning. Marie spent time in her Howth flat, and slipped out to cook for the man on guard and torment their prisoner.

‘The police came to see me yesterday,' she mocked him. ‘I told him we'd not seen each other for weeks. I said I was so sorry, but I'd no
idea
where you might be.'

Willie was sick of standing there with the gun while she nagged and jeered. It was a waste of his bloody time, and she wasn't getting anywhere with the sullen bastard.

‘Come on out of it,' he muttered.

Frank spoke to him. ‘I want to go to the lavatory.'

‘Use the piss pot!'

‘It's full.'

Willie jerked his head at Marie. ‘That's yer bad luck. Come on,' he repeated.

Frank didn't expect he'd be taken to a lavatory, but it was worth trying. He couldn't shift the frame of the bed. The handcuffs were a sophisticated type that couldn't be picked open, even if he'd had anything thin and sharp to do it with. But he'd made a small hole between the floorboards with the fork he was allowed to eat with. He didn't try to keep it; that would have been noticed immediately. He eased himself over the edge of the bed, crouched down and dug away at the wood. It was difficult; the fork was a miserable tin thing which could easily bend. The hole was tiny, not deep enough to let him hear them talking clearly in the room below. He listened to the sound of their steps going downstairs, and then began to work gently, scratching out a few splinters at a time.

There was a routine. Marie brought the tray twice a day. They gave him ten minutes, and then Willie or the sinister Pat came in and collected it. The smell of the chamber pot was sickening. It was emptied at night, and left under the bed all day.

He ate the food quickly. It was a slab of stale ham, with a hunk of bread and a rancid-tasting margarine.

‘I'm afraid it's not
haute cuisine
,' that fiendish woman had simpered at him, mispronouncing the French words. ‘But it'll just have to do!'

He was hungry. He was better and the headache was only a slight discomfort now. But he mustn't seem too strong. He lay down and pretended to be sleeping when they came. By the evening, if he got the fork again, he might be able to distinguish what was being said.

But the evening came, and Marie wasn't there. Pat brought him a saucepan of tinned soup and a spoon. It had a blunt end which wouldn't go between the boards.

Friday and Saturday passed. Claire stayed by the television set, watching every news bulletin. Neil assured her they'd be told before anything was released to the media, but she insisted on listening to the hourly radio news bulletins as well. Neil played with the children. He tried bringing them to Claire, but she was unable to draw comfort from them. At the end of that long, agonizing Sunday, she said to him, ‘I think he's gone to ground. Oh, Neil, how can I find out?'

‘You can't,' he said. ‘You'll just have to be patient and keep your spirits up.'

He only hoped her optimism was justified. Private enquiries through their liaison with Dublin didn't support her theory. Quite the opposite. If a ransom demand was not made within the next forty-eight hours, then Arbuthnot had been summarily executed by his old associates in the IRA. They might decide to leave his fate a mystery and consign the body to one of the deep primeval bogs. A major Sunday newspaper carried the story as their second lead. Frank Arbuthnot was written about in terms that made Claire throw the paper down in helpless rage.

‘What a pack of lies! All that stuff about millionaires and giving money to the Provos – God, I've never read such filthy lies in my life.'

‘I'm not exactly pleased with it myself,' her husband pointed out.

Claire dismissed that. ‘It can't hurt you, Neil. Stop thinking of your bloody career for five minutes, can't you? Everyone knows what you think about Ireland, you've said it often enough. They've made my brother out as some kind of thug.' Then she said, ‘Oh please, not Lucy and Peter. Go back to Iris, darlings, Mummy's got a headache. No, Lucy, I said no. Go back to the nursery. Where the hell is Iris?'

And then his patience snapped for the first time. ‘There's no need to take it out on the children. They don't know what's happened. You've made Lucy cry.'

‘Just because she can't get her own way. And don't talk to me like that in front of them.'

Neil ushered the bewildered brother and sister out, calling for their nanny. Then he came back into the room. Claire was smoking. She had chain-smoked and eaten almost nothing since Thursday night.

‘Claire,' he said. ‘You've got to pull yourself together. I know you're upset, but I won't have the children treated like that. Most mothers would find them a comfort.'

She turned to him slowly. She looked pale and ill, but by now he was too angry to feel sorry for her. Nothing counted with her but that half-brother. Nothing! He was near breaking point himself.

‘You may as well know I've decided to go to Ireland.'

Instinctively he'd known that was coming too. He said, ‘You can't do that. It would be insane to go there at this time. I absolutely forbid it.'

‘Because it would look bad in the press? Bad for you, I mean?'

He held himself in. ‘Yes, it would look very bad. But that's not my reason. I don't want you going to Ireland because you could be in real danger. You can't do that because of Peter and Lucy, even if you don't care about me.'

She said quietly, ‘I can't stay here. I can't stay at home not knowing what's become of my brother. If you loved me, Neil, you wouldn't expect me to.'

‘I love you,' he said. ‘But I expect you to put your family first. You're not to think of going to Ireland. Your own mother said the same.'

‘She's not Frank's mother,' Claire answered. ‘I'm the only person in the world who loves him. I'm the only one he's got. Don't make this an issue, Neil. Please don't.'

‘It is an issue. And it's you who's making it. I've lived with him coming between us for ten years. I've had enough of it. If you walk out on us now, it's for good.'

She didn't answer. She walked past him out of the room. He left for London on Monday morning without seeing her again. She drove Peter to school on Monday. She hugged and kissed him.

‘I'm sorry I was cross yesterday, darlings. I just had a nasty headache and I felt grumpy.'

Peter looked up at her. He had a shy, uncertain mannerism that sometimes made her think of Frank when he was very young.

‘Will you play with us when I come home, Mummy? You're not going to London to stay with Daddy, are you?'

For a moment she hesitated, but only for a moment. Neil's accusation had hurt, because it was partly true. She saw her son's anxious face and changed her plans. One more day. She owed the little ones that.

‘I'm not going to London,' she said. ‘We'll have a special game and you can have supper with me tonight, Peter.'

One more day to be endured to prove to herself that she loved her children. One more day of torturing suspense that ended like the others. No new developments, the bulletins said. No ransom demand, no fresh clues.

On Tuesday morning she hired the car in Broadway and set out to catch the night boat to Dublin.

Kevin Ryan flew home to the States a month early. He packed up and left the Half House with Mary Rose and his son Patrick, and nobody asked him why. The headlines about his nephew's disappearance glared at them from every newspaper. Mary Rose was pink around the eyes. They didn't speak on the drive to the airport, and when Patrick started asking questions, Kevin took his head off. Mary Rose glanced sideways at her husband when they were strapped into their seats. They'd been twenty-five years married and she was still trying to come to terms with the man who'd said of his own flesh and blood, ‘He's turned traitor, the dirty bastard. He deserves all he gets, and that's an end of it! No more, God damn it! Rose, shut your mouth, I tell you!'

For a moment she'd seen his balled fist lifted to strike her and recoiled.

Next morning he said briefly, ‘We're going home. We'll come back when this trouble's over.'

He was her husband and there were things it was better for a woman not to know. She had to accept it. She'd spent a long time praying for Frank Arbuthnot, wherever he might be. She dared not contemplate what might have happened to him. As the plane taxied and took off she had an unthinkable thought: ‘I never want to see Ireland again.' Then she slipped her hand into her pocket and began to say the rosary.

Kevin Ryan looked out of the little window as the grey shreds of cloud sped past and suddenly changed to a dazzling sun-filled blue as they reached thirty-five thousand feet. He felt bitter, as if there were bile in his mouth he couldn't spit out. Bitter and old. And the explanations lay ahead of him. There was no greater shame than betrayal by a member of the family. He had to fan his anger. It kept the sorrow in him at bay.

Frank got the fork back on Sunday. It was thrust into a plateful of tinned stew. He couldn't wait for the brutish Willie to go out. Then he was over the side of the bed and down on his knees, picking away at the gap between the boards. This time desperation made him careless. He bent the edges, but he'd made a sizeable hole. There wasn't time to do more. He swallowed half the tepid mess on the plate and set to straightening the tines of the little tin fork. Marie hadn't shown herself. He was thankful for that mercy at least. The plate was taken away, no word was spoken to him, and he was alone. He'd be alone until the evening now. He got down to the floor again and tried scratching with his fingers. A few slivers of wood came away. One spiked him under the nail. He pulled it out and went on. The hours passed. His fingers were raw, but the gap had widened.

They'd taken his watch so he had no idea of time. He heard a noise and scrambled back on to the bed. His pinioned arm was numb from the pressure of the metal bar round his wrist. He heard the door open and pretended to have been asleep, blinking and rubbing his free hand across his eyes. She was standing there. A shadowy figure was behind her as always; the distant light in the passage glinted on the levelled gun.

‘I've brought your supper,' Marie announced. ‘I hope you haven't missed me.'

She moved towards him, holding the tray in front of her. Frank had a wild impulse to kick out as she came within reach and send it flying backwards into her face. But that would have pleased her. That would have proved she'd reached him at last. He looked past her to the doorway. It was the gunman – Pat, this time – standing guard.

‘Willie says you didn't eat your lunch.' She stopped, admonishing him. He refused to look at her. He didn't see the angry colour flood her face.

‘You answer me when I speak to you, you bastard! You'll get no food tonight!'

He couldn't let that happen. ‘Don't take it away,' he said. ‘I'm hungry.'

She paused and a slight smile touched her lips. ‘Are you now? Ready to speak to me at last, are you?'

He had to play for time. He had to get the fork once more. ‘Why are you doing this?'

She said in a shrill voice, ‘Because you're a dirty betrayer. Turned against us on account of that snivelling loony at Sallins. That's all Ireland meant to you – a filthy old snot-nose, and you're ready to shop our lads on account of him! Here – take your dinner. I hope it chokes you!'

She banged the tray down on the foot of the bed. Then she had gone and the door was shut and locked. He worked feverishly at the hole in the floor. It was wide enough to see the thin line of white plaster underneath. He did the same as he'd done in the morning. He shovelled in the food. Baked beans this time.

Pat came to take the plate away. He stood in the doorway. He didn't come close like Willie. This was a real professional.

‘Put that tray on the ground. Now push it over. Use your foot.' He was well beyond reach when he picked it up.

Frank said, ‘What about the pot? It needs emptying.'

The eyes stared at him, glowing with hate. ‘I'll empty it over you,' was the reply. Then he was gone.

Frank sat quietly for a few moments. He was going to be killed. He knew that the man who would pull the trigger had just left him. He could sense his impatience. But why delay? Why keep him alive and take any risk? He could have been shot dead after they'd seized him, and thrown out on to the road, a warning to anyone else who might think of changing their mind.

He could hear voices below him, and music. It was muffled but louder than he'd ever noticed before. He got down and, straining to the limit, managed to get his head down and his left ear close to the hole he had made.