The Mind of Mr Soames (27 page)

‘Put me through to Dr Takaito, please,’ he requested, then turning to Bryce, added: ‘After all, he’s the one who started all the trouble. He was in at the start and no doubt he would like to be in at the end.’

The detective inspector nodded and concentrated on his cigarette.

As
the day progressed his thoughts turned inward to the pain and fever of his own body so that he was hardly aware of the nature of the countryside as he traversed it. The rain had eased to a fine drizzle that was almost a mist in the air, but while the waterproof cape afforded protection it did nothing to help dry out the wet clothes clinging to his hot, shivering skin. His feet stumbled along rather than walked, for the effort of controlling his movements was proving too much for him, but he had to keep on.

Vaguely he knew he was retracing his steps in the direction of the village and the house where the woman lived. It was the only possible destination for him, and he knew now that he should never have left; she had helped him before and she would have continued to help him if only he had been firm enough to refuse to go. But it was still not too late to undo the damage.

He rested for a while among some trees on the side of a hill, wondering whether he ought to have some food, but there was no hunger in him, only sickness. When he moved on again he left the canvas bag and its contents behind. It was too heavy to carry, and the things it contained were useless: he did not want the food and he had no desire to shave or tidy his hair. All he needed was a warm, soft bed in which he could sleep until the fever in his body had burned itself out.

It came to him after a while that the land was unfamiliar and he was walking in the wrong direction. The village, he told himself, picturing the half remembered High Street where he had done his shopping, but he did not even know the name of the village. I will recognise it when I see it, he assured himself.

He avoided a distant town, keeping always to the fields and hedgerows. From time to time he drew close enough to a village to confirm that it was not the one he was seeking, and then he would change his direction to search elsewhere.

Later in the afternoon he curled up behind a brick buttress underneath a small bridge and slept for several hours while the waters of a narrow stream lapped and gurgled at his feet. He awoke, stiff and cold in every joint and muscle, to discover that the rain had finally stopped, although the sky was still a sombre grey. The daylight was fading with the approach of another night, and this unwelcome sign spurred him to greater efforts for unless he found the village and the house and the woman before dark he would obviously be forced to spend another night under the open sky with its dark rain-swollen clouds. But it was as if the village had disappeared from the face of the earth.

He saw them from afar as he reached the brow of a hill and acting on some inner caution dropped to the ground. There were six of them coming across the fields from a distant road on which a black saloon car and a small truck were parked. Four of the men wore drab khaki-coloured uniform and one of them had a big black dog on a lead, while the other two men had dark blue uniform with peaked caps. They were scattered in open formation across the countryside and advancing slowly but purposefully.

Alarm trembled in his brain. He dragged himself backward over the wet ground until he was far enough down the hill to be able to stand up safely, and then he began to run, forcing one unsteady leg in front of the other in headlong flight. They were after him, he was certain of that—six of them and the dog tracking him into the night across the open country. And there might be more of them, groups of uniformed men with dogs, closing in on him from other directions. The panic became deeper and more intense, twisting like cold steel in his stomach.

Among the trees of a small wooded copse he paused to regain his breath and look back, but they were not yet in sight. A few minutes later, however, when he was ready to move on again, the first of the pursuers appeared as a tiny bobbing silhouette on the brow of the hill. He hurried on in mounting fear and despair.

The evening thickened, bringing with it the concealing black curtain of night. Now they would not be able to see him at all, even if they drew near, and only the sound of his progress across the ground, the faint wet slopping of the grass against his shoes and the occasional crackle of a snapping twig could possibly betray his presence. But presently, climbing another hill, he looked back and saw six bobbing lights in the distance, advancing relentlessly through the night.

The fear sharpened and crystallised into a memory—the night when he had been hunted through the walled grounds of the Institute by men carrying blinding electric torches—and the memory in turn became an additional fear that seemed to drain the strength from his legs. When he came to a tree he held on to it for support until the trembling and shivering of his body quietened down. The bobbing lights were a little nearer, he thought.

If I could climb a tree they would miss me, he told himself. They would pass underneath and they might not think to look up. But even as the thought illuminated his mind with a gleam of hope he knew that he had not the strength to climb a tree, and that the only hope was to force his weakening legs to move on and on in search of a secure hiding-place.

Presently, breaking through a hedge, he thought he saw the lights of a village ahead, but as he watched the lights seemed to bob and weave about. He counted them in dismay, losing track of his numbering as he reached eleven. Quickly he glanced back to confirm that the other six were still to the rear, and they were, if anything closer than ever.

He recognised the uselessnesss of thought—of any attempt to think—in face of the growing crisis. The fact of encirclement plucked at his mind with icy fingers of terror... to be trapped and pinned down by sheer weight of numbers. More than eleven men and another six men with how many unseen dogs...?

He broke into a jog-trot, moving now to the right across the advancing lines in an effort to break through the narrowing circle while there was still time.

❖

‘What’s the position?’ Conway asked.

He and Dr Takaito were standing by the black police car that had brought them to Harnwell. They were in the village High Street, and four other police cars were parked in line close to the kerb, as if the street had been taken over as an operational headquarters. Detective-Inspector Bryce had been conferring with a uniformed superintendent and an Army captain, and his face seemed cynically smug.

‘No further developments. We’ve got two hundred troops and fifty policemen out, not to mention nearly forty Alsatian guard dogs. The police have walkie-talkies so the moment anything breaks we shall know about it.’

‘Won’t it be difficult at night?’ Conway asked.

‘He’s got to sleep somewhere, or break into a farm outbuilding. We’ve alerted all farms within fifteen miles radius. He won’t sleep in the middle of a field, so we’re taking special care to beat all woods and copses and hedges. We want to force him to break cover, that’s all. The moment he moves the dogs will have him.’

‘Yes, I see,’ Conway murmured. ‘I wish there were some other way. I hate to think of that wretched man being hunted like a wild animal.’

‘On the evidence that is more or less what he is,’ Bryce commented. ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he added, ‘I have to go and fix things up. We’re planning to take over the church hall as headquarters. It’s likely to be a long night.’

He went off to rejoin the superintendent and the captain. Conway looked at Dr Takaito, who so far had shown no inquisitive interest in the proceedings, and said: ‘What do you think?’

‘I think,’ said Takaito, ‘that it’s a cold night and I believe it is trying to rain again. We might as well sit in the police car until they take over the hall.’

Conway agreed. They sat in the back seat of the empty car. Conway lit a cigarette.

‘You think they’ll catch him tonight?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Takaito quietly.

‘I’m not happy about the dogs...’

‘The dogs are doubtless well trained, which is more than we can say for Mr Soames. But he has already had one encounter with a dog, so I imagine he will be wary.’

‘I hope, when they catch him, that they will treat him gently.’

‘Why should they?’ Takaito asked. ‘He will not treat them gently. We have seen how violently he can act in circumstances of desperation. We may yet see murder tonight.’

‘I wouldn’t mind so much if I didn’t feel quite so helpless. I can understand why they wanted us to be on the spot tonight, but what if the whole thing is suddenly over in a single bloody assault before we have a chance to intervene?’

‘Then it is over,’ Takaito said stoically, ‘and there is nothing we can do except make sure that Mr Soames is handled gently on his journey to prison, or prison hospital.’

‘I suppose there’s no alternative—to prison, I mean.’

‘None whatever.’

They sat in silence until Detective-Inspector Bryce returned. He opened the rear door of the police car and said: ‘We shall be moving into the church hall in about ten minutes and setting up radio equipment. Meanwhile the WVS are going to fix up hot tea and coffee.’

‘Thank God for the WVS,’ Conway said.

‘As a matter of interest, Mrs Jennifer Dewison happens to be a member of the WVS locally,’ Bryce said. ‘She asked if she could help, and I said yes.’

‘She was the woman who claimed to have been assaulted by Mr Soames, wasn’t she?’ Conway asked.

‘That’s right. She’s sticking to her story, confused though it may be. It occurred to me that as psychiatrists you may be able to dig deeper than we can—that is, if you can draw her into conversation. She seems very withdrawn, and I think she volunteered to help with refreshments purely as a gesture of good faith.’

‘We’ll see what can be done,’ Conway agreed.

The church hall, adjacent to the village church but set a little back, was hardly more than an oversized shed, but large enough to cater for Sunday classes, whist drives, unambitious dances and various social activities carried on in connection with the church. At one end was a stage with a curtain for simple theatrical essays, but the rest of the hall was a rectangular open space, with plain wooden chairs lining the walls. Some attempt had been made to polish the planked floor, but the effect was patchy and unsightly.

The police had rigged up a compact radio transceiver on the stage with a tubular aerial fixed to a wire near the roof, and a uniformed patrolman, his cap off and his blue jacket casually unfastened, was sitting on a chair by the equipment to carry out the duties of operator. On a table in the centre of the floor a number of Ordnance Survey maps of the area had been pinned. Detective-Inspector Bryce and other key officers of police and army were sitting around the table, making pencil marks on the map and talking together in subdued voices. At the other end of the room a trestle table had been taken over by the WVS and already an electric urn was producing boiling water for tea and coffee. Two women were in the process of cutting bread and making sandwiches. The elder of the two was a short plump woman with glasses, and the other, tall, quite elegant, with blue eyes and bronze-coloured hair, was obviously Mrs Dewison.

Quite attractive, Conway thought, looking her over from a distance. Old enough to be mature, but with faintly neurotic undertones in her manner—the kind of woman who might, if it came to the point, enjoy being raped, as she had alleged, by Mr Soames.

It was Dr Takaito who took the initiative so far as Jennifer was concerned. As soon as coffee was available he went over to the trestle table, closely followed by Conway, and asked for two cups. The plump bespectacled woman served with an effusion of amiable good will. Takaito then moved to the end of the table where Mrs Dewison was laying out cups and saucers.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, with a tremendous show of Japanese politeness, ‘but surely you must be the young lady who had the unfortunate encounter with Mr Soames yesterday.’

She studied him thoughtfully and rather uneasily for a few moments, then glanced quickly at Conway.

‘I have already discussed the matter with the police,’ she said. ‘I don’t really think there is anything else I can add.’

‘I understand perfectly, Mrs Dewison. Perhaps I ought to explain that I am Dr Takaito, and this is my colleague, Dr Conway. We are both from the Osborne Psychoneural Institute.’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘You may remember that I was the surgeon who performed the operation on Mr Soames’s brain, so in a way’—he smiled modestly—‘I feel responsible for everything that has happened since.’

The plump woman with the glasses was edging closer to eavesdrop on what was obviously a confidential conversation.

Takaito said: ‘I realise that you are very busy, Mrs Dewison, but if your partner could hold the fort, as it were, for a minute or two, perhaps we could talk quietly elsewhere over a cup of coffee.’

She looked at him uneasily, not noticeably reassured by his bland manner. ‘Well, I don’t know...’

‘It might be very important, for both you and Mr Soames.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said to her partner: ‘I’ll only be a moment, Elsie. I’ve got some private business to discuss.’

She poured herself a coffee, and the three of them retired to the chairs at the side of the room, Takaito and Conway sitting on either side of her.

‘I understand that you were assaulted by Mr Soames,’ Takaito said. ‘I should like to know more about it, in careful detail, if you would not object.’

‘I’m afraid I do object,’ she said coldly. ‘Surely as a doctor you must have come into contact with this kind of situation before, and you must know all the details.’

Takaito smiled deferentially. ‘Frankly, no. I specialise in dogs, but my colleague, Dr Conway...’ He nodded towards Conway, who immediately seized the cue.

‘Yes, Mrs Dewison,’ he said, ‘in normal psychiatric practice we frequently come across sexual deviation, including rape. In such cases we are dealing with ordinary adult people—that is, ordinary in the sense that they have had, in some degree or other, a conventional upbringing and education from birth. Whether they began as orphans in a home or spoonfed heirs in a mansion is beside the point—perversion enters all levels of society. In the case of Mr Soames the conventions do not apply. His mental age in terms of time is just a few months, and if you assess his IQ on that basis then he is mentally very advanced. On the other hand, during the period of his education to date he received no sex education whatever.’