He came in with a roar and Devlin feinted with his right and smashed his left fist into the ugly mouth, splitting the lips so that blood spurted. He followed up with a right under the ribs that sounded like an axe going into wood.
He ducked in under Seymour's next wild punch and hit him under the ribs again. 'Footwork, timing and hitting, that is the secret. The Holy Trinity, we used to call them. Father. Learn those and ye shall inherit the earth as surely as the meek. Always helped out by a little dirty work now and then, of course.'
He kicked Seymour under the right kneecap and as the big man doubled over in agony, put a knee into the descending face, lifting him back through the door into the mud of the yard. Seymour got to his feet slowly and stood there like a dazed bull in the centre of the plaza, blood on his face.
Devlin danced in. 'You don't know when to lie down, do you, Arthur, but that's hardly surprising with a brain the size of a pea?'
He advanced his right foot, slipped in the mud and went down on one knee. Seymour delivered a stunning blow to his forehead that put him flat on his back. Molly screamed and rushed in, hands clawing at Seymour's face. He threw her away from him and raised a foot to crush Devlin. But the Irishman got a hand to it and twisted, sending him staggering into the barn entrance again.
When he turned, Devlin was reaching for him, no longer smiling, the white killing face on him now. 'All right, Arthur. Let's get it over with. I'm hungry.'
Seymour tried to rush him again and Devlin circled, driving him across the yard, giving him neither quarter nor peace, evading his great swinging punches with ease, driving his knuckles into the face again and again until it was a mask of blood.
There was an old zinc water trough near the back door and Devlin pushed him towards it relentlessly. 'And now you will listen to me, you bastard!' he said. 'Touch that girl again, harm her in any way and I'll take the shears to you myself. Do you understand me?' He punched under the ribs again and Seymour groaned, his hands coming down. 'And in future, if you are in a room and I enter, you get up and walk out. Do you understand that too?'
His right connected twice with the unprotected jaw and Seymour fell across the trough and rolled on to his back.
Devlin dropped to his knees and pushed his face into the rainwater in the trough. He surfaced for air to find Molly crouched beside him, and Father Vereker bending over Seymour. 'My God, Devlin, you might have killed him,' the priest said.
'Not than one,' Devlin said. 'Unfortunately.'
As if anxious to prove him right, Seymour groaned and tried to sit up. At the same moment Mrs. Prior came out of the house with a double-barrelled shotgun in her hands. 'You get him out of here,' she told Vereker. 'And tell him from me, when his brains are unscrambled, that if he comes back here bothering my girl again, I'll shoot him like a dog and answer for it.'
Laker Armsby dipped an old enamel bucket into the trough and emptied it over Seymour. 'There you go, Arthur,' he said cheerfully. 'First bath you've had since Michaelmas, I dare say.'
Seymour groaned and grabbed for the trough to pull himself up. Father Vereker said, 'Help me. Laker,' and they took him between them across to the Morris.
Quite suddenly, the earth moved for Devlin, like the sea turning over. He closed his eyes. He was aware of Molly's cry of alarm, her strong, young shoulder under his arm and then her mother was on the other side of him and they were walking him towards the house between them.
He surfaced to find himself in the kitchen chair by the fire, his face against Molly's breasts, while she held a damp cloth to his forehead. 'You can let me go now, I'm fine,' he told her.
She looked down at him, face anxious. 'God, but I thought he'd split your skull with that one punch.'
'A weakness of mine,' Devlin told her, aware of her concern and momentarily serious. 'After periods of intense stress I sometimes keel over, go out like a light. Some psychological thing.'
'What's that?' she demanded, puzzled.
'Never mind,' he said. 'Just let me put my head back where I can see your right nipple.'
She put a hand to her torn bodice and flushed, 'You devil.'
'You see,' he said. 'Not much difference between Arthur and me when it comes right down to it.'
She tapped a finger very gently between his eyes. 'I never heard such rubbish from a grown man in all my life.'
Her mother bustled into the kitchen fastening a clean apron about her waist. 'By God, boy, but you must have a powerful hunger on you after that little bout. Are you ready for your meat and potato pie now, then?'
Devlin looked up at Molly and smiled. 'Thank you kindly, ma'am. As a matter of fact, I think I could say with some truth that I'm ready for anything.'
The girl choked back laughter, shook a clenched fist under his nose and went to help her mother.
.
It was late evening when Devlin returned to Hobs End. It was very still and quiet on the marsh as if rain threatened and the sky was dark and thunder rumbled uneasily on the far horizon. He took the long way round to check the dyke gates that controlled the flow into the network of waterways and when he finally turned into the yard, Joanna Grey's car was parked by the door. She was wearing WVS uniform and leaning on the wall looking out to sea, the retriever sitting beside her patiently. She turned to look at him as he joined her. There was a sizeable bruise on his forehead where Seymour's fist had landed.
'Nasty,' she said. 'Do you try to commit suicide often?' He grinned. 'You should see the other fella.' 'I have.' She shook her head. 'It's got to stop, Liam.'
He lit a cigarette, match flaring in cupped hands. 'What has?'
'Molly Prior. You're not here for that. You've got a job to do.'
'Come off it.' he said. 'I haven't a thing to lay hand to before my meeting with Garvald on the twenty-eighth.'
'Don't be silly. People in places like this are the same the world over, you know that. Distrust the stranger and look after your own. They don't like what you did to Arthur Seymour.'
'And I didn't like what he tried to do to Molly.' Devlin half-laughed in a kind of astonishment. 'God save us, woman, if only half the things Laker Armsby told me about Seymour this afternoon are true, they should have locked him up years ago and thrown away the key. Sexual assaults of one kind or another too numerous to mention and he's crippled at least two men in his time.'
'They never use the police in places like this. They handle it themselves.' She shook her head impatiently. 'But this isn't getting us anywhere. We can't afford to alienate people so do the sensible thing. Leave Molly alone.'
'Is that an order, ma'm?'
'Don't be an idiot. I'm appealing to your good sense, that's all.'
She walked to the car, put the dog in the back and got behind the wheel. 'Any news from the Sir Henry front?' Devlin asked as she switched on the engine.
She smiled, 'I'm keeping him warm, don't worry. I'll be on the radio to Radl again on Friday night. I'll let you know what comes up.'
She drove away and Devlin unlocked the door and let himself in. Inside he hesitated for a long moment and then shot the bolt and went into the living-room. He pulled the curtain, lit a small fire and sat in front of it, a glass of Garvald's Bushmills in his hand.
It was a shame - one hell of a shame, but perhaps Joanna Grey was right. It would be silly to go looking for trouble. He thought of Molly for one brief moment, then resolutely selected a copy of The Midnight Court in Irish from his small stock of books and forced himself to concentrate.
It started to rain, brushing the window pane. It was about seven-thirty when the handle of the front door rattled vainly. After a while, there was a tap at the window on the other side of the curtain and she called his name softly. He kept on reading, straining to follow the words in the failing light of the small fire and after a while, she went away.
He swore softly, black rage in his heart and threw the book at the wall, resisting with every fibre of his being the impulse to run to the door, unlock it and go after her. He poured himself another large whiskey and stood at the window, feeling suddenly lonelier than he had ever felt in his life before, as rain hurtled in across the marsh in a sudden fury.
.
And at Landsvoort there was a gale blowing in off the sea, with the kind of bitter drenching rain that cut to the bone like a surgeon's knife. Harvey Preston, on guard duty at the garden gate of the old farmhouse, huddled against the wall, cursing Steiner, cursing Radl, cursing Himmler and whatever else had combined to reduce him to this, the lowest and most miserable level of his entire life.
10
During the Second World War, the German paratrooper differed from his British counterpart in one highly important aspect - the type of parachute used.
The German version, unlike that issued to Luftwaffe pilots and aircrew, did not have straps, known as lift webs, fastening the shroud lines to the harness. Instead, the shroud lines connected directly to the pack itself. It made the whole process of jumping entirely different and because of that, on Sunday morning at Landsvoort, Steiner arranged for a demonstration of the standard British parachute in the old barn at the back of the farmhouse.
The men stood in front of him in a semi-circle, Harvey Preston in the centre, dressed, like the others, in jump boots and overalls. Steiner faced them, Ritter Neumann and Brandt on either side of him.
Steiner said, 'The whole point of this operation, as I've already explained, is that we pass ourselves off as a Polish unit of the Special Air Service. Because of this, not only will all your equipment be British - you'll jump using the standard parachute used by British airborne forces.' He turned to Ritter Neumann. 'All yours.'
Brandt picked up a parachute pack and held it aloft. Neumann said, 'X Type parachute as used by British Airborne forces. Weighs around twenty-eight pounds and as the Herr Oberst says, very different from ours.'
Brandt pulled the ripcord, the pack opened, disgorging the khaki chute. Neumann said, 'Note the way the shroud lines are fastened to the harness by shoulder straps, just like the Luftwaffe.'
'The point being,' Steiner put in, 'that you can manipulate the chute, change direction, have the kind of control over your own destiny that you just don't get with the one you're used to.'
'Another thing,' Ritter said, 'With our parachute the centre of gravity is high which means you get snagged up in the shroud lines unless you exit in a partially face-down position, as you all know. With the X type, you can go out in the standing posture and that's what we're going to practise now.'
He nodded to Brandt, who said, 'All right, let's have you all down here.'
There was a loft perhaps fifteen feet high at the far end of the barn. A rope had been looped over a beam above it, an X type parachute harness fastened to one end. 'A trifle primitive,' Brandt announced jovially, 'but good enough. You jump off the loft and there'll be half a dozen of us on the other end to make sure you don't hit the dirt too hard. Who's first?'
Steiner said, 'I'd better claim that honour, mainly because I've things to do elsewhere.'
Ritter helped him into the harness, then Brandt and four others got on the other end of the rope and hauled him up to the loft. He paused on the edge for a moment or so, Ritter signalled and Steiner swung out into space. The other end of the rope went up, taking three of the men with it, but Brandt and Sergeant Sturm hung on, cursing. Steiner hit the dirt, rolled over in a perfect fall and sprang to his feet.
'All right,' he told Ritter. 'Usual stick formation. I've time to see everyone do it once. Then I must go.'
He moved to the rear of the group and lit a cigarette as Neumann buckled himself into the harness. From the back of the barn it looked reasonably hair-raising as the Oberleutnant was hoisted up to the loft, but there was a roar of laughter when Ritter made a mess of his landing and ended up flat on his back.
'See?' Private Klugl said to Werner Briegel. That's what riding those damn torpedoes does for you. The Herr Leutnant's forgotten everything he ever knew.'
Brandt went next and Steiner observed Preston closely. The Englishman was very pale, sweat on his face - obviously terrified. The group worked through with varying success, the men on the end of the rope in one unfortunate lapse mistaking the signal and leaving go at the wrong moment so that Private Hagl descended the full fifteen feet under his own power with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. But he picked himself up, none the worse for his experience.
Finally, it was Preston's turn. The good humour faded abruptly.
Steiner nodded to Brandt. 'Up with him.'
The five men on the end of the rope hauled with a will and Preston shot up, banging against the loft on the way, finishing just below the roof. They lowered him till he stood on the edge, gazing down at them wildly.
