The Mind of Mr Soames (26 page)

The warmth enfolded him like a blanket, while the rain kept up its incessant rattling on the sloping glass lights of the roof. Gratefully he inspected his surroundings. Slatted wooden staging formed two benches at waist height on either side of a central gangway, with narrow shelves mounted higher and nearer the roof. It seemed to him that every available inch of shelf space was taken up with seed boxes and pots, and even the space beneath the benches was stacked with empty pots and boxes, buckets, syringes and other utensils of unknown function. On both sides, close to the floor, ran a narrow copper pipe which was warm to the touch, and it was this, he decided, that supplied the comfortable level of heating in the greenhouse.

He put down his bag and began to move boxes and pots from under one of the benches, pushing them to one end of the central gangway. The floor was of grey concrete, but it was quite dry and apparently clean. With a feeling of luxurious relief he sat down and removed his shoes, and then, item by item, stripped off his wet clothing, spreading it out across the floor so that it might dry off a little.

When he was completely naked he crawled under the staging of the bench and sat huddled up, his knees drawn close to his chin, close to the heating pipe. There he remained, hardly moving at all except for occasional bouts of shivering, and presently the fever of his head and body sent him into a light, uneasy sleep.

❖

He awoke suddenly at the sound of a door opening. Cold wind swept across his folded body, bringing goose-pimples up on his burning skin. A rugged masculine voice somewhere above his head said in great surprise: ‘What the hell...’

For a few seconds he was completely unable to orientate himself, not recognising the grey floor with the damp clothing strewn over it and the wooden benches covered with boxes and pots. But immediately within his restricted field of view was a pair of muddy rubber boots folded back at the top, and brown baggy trousers glossy with wear.

Now fear swamped him in an icy wave, sharpened by the knowledge of his naked vulnerability. The rubber boots advanced two paces, then stopped.

‘What the hell...’ the voice repeated.

Any moment now the newcomer would look under the bench to find him huddled and helpless and shivering by the pipe, and what would happen then could hardly be imagined. He visualised himself pinned down by one of those heavy rubber boots planted firmly on his stomach while the stentorian voice shouted for help—for the police, perhaps. To be trapped so helplessly, so foolishly...

There was no scope for quick movement or action; the space beneath the bench was too cramped and his limbs were stiff and painful from being held in the same position for too long.

Cautiously he unlocked his knees and flexed the muscles of his arms, but in that same instant the other man did the inevitable—he stooped down and peered under the bench. His face was red and fleshy, with a bristling brown moustache that gave him an air of truculence. The blue eyes were surprised and suspicious.

‘Whup!’ said the man, with an edge of triumph in his voice. ‘All right, you. Come out.’

A brown metal-tipped stick appeared and jabbed aggressively under the bench. It poked his naked chest several times and hurt, turning his fear into inflamed anger. He grabbed at the stick and held it tightly.

‘Whup!’ said the man again. ‘You would, would you!’

The stick jerked violently backwards and forwards and broke free despite his efforts to hold it. An instant later it swung in an arc to strike him viciously across the face. Pain roared in his head like a hungry furnace.

‘Come out, you bastard,’ the man shouted. ‘Come out, 01 I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.’

He came out in a hurry, rolling over and scrambling on hands and knees into the central gangway. The stick swung twice more, catching him across the shoulders and back with forceful violence. He stood up shakily, holding on to the staging fox support.

‘Naked, eh?’ said the man, his expression waspish, holding the stock poised ready for another blow at the slightest provocation. ‘One of them sex maniacs I’ll be bound. What d’you think you’re up to, eh?’

‘I wanted to dry my clothes,’ he explained, trying to control the angry trembling of his voice.

‘Not in my bloody greenhouse, you don’t.’ The man’s eyes became suddenly shrewd. ‘I’ll bet you’re the one in the papers who’s been sleeping out in all that rain—the one they said escaped from that mental asylum. I’ll bet you are. You got about the right build and the right coloured hair, and the papers said he might be somewhere in this part of the world. I’ll bet that’s who you are.’

‘No—I am Mr For...’ The name eluded him for an agonising moment, and then arrived suddenly in his conscious mind. ‘Mr Forsyth.’

‘That’s a likely name when you can’t even remember it properly.’ The stick waved belligerently in the air. ‘You stay here, and don’t you touch those clothes. I want the police to find you just as you are.’

The man backed away towards the door of the greenhouse, went out into the rain, closing the behind him, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

‘George!’ he bellowed in the direction of the farm buildings. The sound of the shout acted as a trigger. It was if all the nerves of his aching, burning body sprang into simultaneous life. His right hand, acting almost as if of its own volition, seized a large clay pot packed with moist soil and bearing a seedling plant, then flung it at the bulky shape of the man beyond the glass door. The pane splintered with a tremendous crash and the pot continued on its trajectory to strike the other man on the side of his head. There was a roar of utter fury as the man turned, flung open the shattered door, and lumbered back into the greenhouse brandishing the stick.

He flung another pot and yet another and then, as the stick swung viciously through the air towards his head, ducked low and picked up a bucket containing soil. The stick swished past him, striking the staging and unsettling a flat pot which toppled to the floor and smashed. Next instant he was swinging the bucket in an arc, blindly and instinctively. He did not witness the actual impact, but he saw the man collapse to the ground with blood running down the side of his face. Still possessed by a fierce animal desperation he picked up a big heavy pot and hit the other man with it until it broke, scattering friable soil over the bloodstained face.

He stopped at the point, gasping for breath and resisting the black sickness that threatened to engulf him. There was no time to waste. It was impossible to know whether the unseen George had heard the shout or not, or whether the astringent sound of breaking glass had attracted any attention. The farm was quiet and grey under the leaden sky, and the only sounds were the hissing of his own breath and the pounding of his heart, and in the background the incessant patter of rain on the sloping glass roof.

Quickly he dressed, pulling on the wet clothes with trembling hands and fumbling with saturated material that kept sticking to his skin. He abandoned the overcoat, for it had taken the worst punishment from the rain overnight and was badly soiled with mud. Instead he took a black waterproof cape from the shoulders of the man on the floor, wiping off flecks of blood with his bare hand, then picked up his canvas bag and went out into the rain once more, glancing back only once in the direction of the farmhouse. There was no sign of pursuit or alarm as he passed through the small wooden gate that led to the safety of the open country, and he knew that luck was still with him.

He hurried on across the fields in the driving rain.

❖

‘We’re getting somewhere at last,’ Detective-Inspector Bryce said to Dr Breuer late that evening. ‘We think we now have Soames pinned down to a relatively small area north of the village of Harnwell.’

He was sitting in Breuer’s office smoking a cigarette and breaking up a match into tiny fragments with his fingernails.

‘How did you manage to find him?’ Dr Breuer asked.

‘A Mr Henderson who has a smallholding about eight miles from Harnwell was attacked rather brutally in his greenhouse. Later in hospital he was able to make a statement. The attacker was a naked man answering to the description of Soames.’

‘Naked?’ Breuer queried, frowning. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

‘I don’t think it points to anything sinister. Soames had left his clothing all over the greenhouse floor to dry. Apparently he received a thorough soaking the night before and he thought this would be a safe place to rest up and dry off. Mr Henderson found him under the bench, crouching near the heating pipes.’

‘Poor devil,’ Breuer commented.

‘The poor devil,’ Bryce went on sardonically, ‘came out of hiding and promptly attacked Henderson with a bucket and a succession of flower pots until he beat him into unconsciousness. I’m afraid our Soames is a dangerous character,’

‘Yes, yes—I’m not denying it, under the circumstances.’

‘And there was the incident of the dog. We’ve established as a near certainty that it was Soames who virtually kicked it to death. Fortunately it happened to be a dog and not a man.’ Breuer sighed and poured himself a whisky. ‘You think there might be further violence?’

‘We must assume so. He will go to any length to prevent recapture.’

Bryce inhaled deeply on his cigarette and blew out smoke as if he hated it. ‘When he escaped from the greenhouse he left a grey overcoat behind. We’ve traced the owner—a Mr Richard Dewison of twelve Alderney Way, Harnwell—and dug up a nest of lies and double-talk which we’re still investigating. One thing emerges, that Soames has apparently added sexual assault to his crime record.’

‘I find that difficult to believe,’ Breuer protested. ‘After all, he wouldn’t even know...’

‘Apparently the thing was, as it were, demonstrated to him unwittingly while he was resting in a wood. He stole the jacket of a man named Forsyth who did not report it to the police for fear that his wife might learn the true circumstances under which the theft took place. In the same way Dewison’s wife did not report the fact that she had been assaulted by Soames to the police, because she was afraid the full truth of how they found Soames might come to light.’

‘This is getting just a little too deep for me,’ Breuer said, frowning in concentration.

‘Well, the story is that the Dewisons were driving back from a party the night before last when they found Soames lying unconscious by the side of the road in the open country. It appeared that he had been hit by a car, but not badly injured. So they kindly took him back to their home and put him into a spare bed.’

‘But surely they should have taken him to hospital or notified the police.’

‘Exactly, but for one minor difficulty. Mr Dewison already had a conviction and disqualification for drunk driving to his credit. The disqualification has lapsed, but he was afraid it might be thought that
he
had knocked Soames down in his car. He admits he had had a few drinks at the party although he denies being drunk.’

‘Perhaps he
did
,’ Breuer suggested. ‘I mean, perhaps it
was
his car...’

‘We think it probably was. There were a few threads of fibre adhering to part of the nearside front wing, trapped under the chrome strip. The lab boys are checking, though we can’t be sure they’re from Soames’s stolen coat until we find Soames himself.’

Breuer finished his drink and poured himself another. Bryce refused the offer of whisky or even a beer, but contented himself by stubbing out his cigarette and lighting another.

‘According to Mrs Dewison, Soames slept until late morning while she cleaned up his clothes to make them respectable. The name on letters and cards in the jacket was Forsyth, so naturally she did not suspect it was really Soames. Apparently Soames woke up, had a bath, and repaid her for her hospitality by getting drunk on gin, raping her, stealing her husband’s overcoat and ten pounds of her money, and then clearing off without so much as a thank you. And she still thought it was Forsyth.’

‘I don’t know,’ Breuer said in bewilderment. ‘I really don’t know. How much of this can be true?’

‘All of it, or very little of it, but there’s no smoke without fire. Certainly Soames was there, and certainly he left with Dewison’s overcoat. It was the one we found in the greenhouse.’

‘But the accusation of... rape?’

‘We can’t be sure, but it’s a factor we have to take into account. We have to assume the worst—that Soames is not only capable of irrational violence, but also sexual assault.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. One can’t afford to take chances.’

Bryce stood up, balancing himself squarely on his feet, arms behind his back and cigarette drooping idly from his lips.

‘It is a matter of utmost urgency that we find him without further delay, Dr Breuer, and since we are dealing with a man who is irrational and irresponsible by normal standards, I should be grateful for the assistance of one or more members of your staff in the final stages of the chase.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Breuer said vaguely, ‘though it’s a little difficult to see exactly what they could do...’

‘Soames in a corner may prove to be very dangerous. One or two of the staff doctors who are familiar to him may be able to exercise persuasion and authority. I think it is possible that he is a frightened and lonely man, living under appalling conditions of exposure he could never have anticipated, and wishing he had had the good sense to stay in his own room here at the Institute.’

‘You may well be right. I take it you would like a member of my staff to accompany the police—to be part of the spearhead, as it were...’

‘That’s the general idea.’

‘Very well,’ Breuer agreed. ‘I think perhaps Dr Conway, as he knows Soames best, and...’ He broke off and eyed Bryce thoughtfully.

‘There’s one other man who also understands Mr Soames but in a different way. He might well know more about the way his mind would react under conditions of stress—if he was driven into a corner, for instance. He may not be willing to spend a night out in the rain on a cross country chase, of course, but I’ll try.’

He lifted the internal telephone.