It was still dark, still silent. I didn't know what had woken me but it must have been something positive because I'd come awake with a rush. I lay and listened.
Far away, a lorry made a painful gear-change on a hill and wheezed out of hearing. Nothing else. I lifted my wrist to look at my watch. And a door clicked.
It could be Lois. It could be the wind. In a strange house it could be a dozen things I wouldn't know about. But I wanted to know. I reached for my trousers, my shoes, then the Mauser.
Outside the room I stopped, trying to remember the layout. Stairs to my right. I paused again at the head of them, and a cold draught breathed on my chest. The front door was open.
Down there, the dining-room was ahead on the right, the drawing-room back on the right, the study ahead on the left.
And that was where a faint line of light glowed and Vanished. Somebody was working by torchlight in there. It was the obvious place to begin, just as I had.
I kept right over against the wall where the stairs were least likely to creak and mousied my way down.
Halfway down, the door opened and a pool of torchlight wavered across the hall floor. Two figures, barely more than shadows, followed it. I leaned against the wall and held my breath.
The light shifted around indecisively, the figures blended, and an indecipherable whisper floated up towards me.
Then the torch flashed up the stairs, across me, away, and back, pinning me down like a butterfly in a case.
An incredulous voice said, 'Christ, it's Card!'
A younger voice yelped, 'He's got a gun!'
Something long glinted at the base of the light, the older voice shouted, 'Don't shoot!' and I threw myself against the bannister.
A gigantic double explosion slammed through the house and the air swirled around me. A red-hot fingernail scored across my back.
I got my hand out from under me and fired blindly down into the dazzle of the torch. The little Mauser snapped feebly in the ringing deafness after those bangs.
I'd fired three before I realised what I was doing and stopped. The double bang meant a shotgun, of course, and now an empty one. The torch tilted towards the floor, fell, and went out.
I shouted, 'Hold it! You're a lovely target in that doorway!' Then I stood up carefully and winced at the pain in my back. I could feel a trickle of hot blood slide down it. Behind me, a light went on, and Lois said, 'Jamie, what are you-' Then she screamed.
I didn't look round. I kept the gun pointed and moved slowly, carefully, down towards the two figures in the hall. I was beginning to tremble, and not just from the cold blast coming through the front door.
It was Mockby's chauffeur, Charles. It had to be, of course. And his young friend, still clutching the twelve-bore. Charles was holding his right arm out in almost a hand-shaking position, but as I watched, it began to drip blood.
'I got you,' I said. My voice sounded high and strained. 'You got me, too. That makes it all square, doesn't it? Perfectly fair, what? I was aiming at the torch, so it wasn't a bad shot, was it? Only a few inches off. I suppose none of the others got you, did they? Not like through the stomach? I'd like you to have got one through the stomach. It takes about five minutes to come on really strong, they say, but then it apparently feels like rather bad peritonitis. Rather jolly, that. I could stand watching you have peritonitis. You aren't saying much, are you?'
Both of them were standing rigid as ice statues, staring at the Mauser. It was shaking in my hand like the last leaf of summer, but it couldn't miss at that range. And a part of me, a part beyond legality and morality and common sense and probably humanity itself, wanted to squeeze the trigger and go on squeezing until the slide locked open. And they knew it.
I said, 'I think I'd better sit down,' and sat on the stairs. My voice must have sounded more natural because they both took deep breaths and relaxed. The younger one let the shotgun droop.
'You want to be careful with that thing,' I said cheerfully. 'You never know how being mistaken for a partridge is going to affect people. Some people take it one way, some another. You just can't tell, can you? I'm sorry about your arm, Charles, but I think we'd better both stay here bleeding until the US Cavalry arrives.'
At the top of the stairs, a phone bell gave a single ting.
Charles said evenly, 'We're having the coppers in, are we?'
'It sounds like it, doesn't it? I suppose it had to happen eventually. Not my decision, but it's probably all for the best. You know how frightfully jealous the fuzz gets when you try to keep gunshot wounds to yourself.'
He lifted his forearm until it was vertical; from wrist to elbow, his thin suede jacket was black with blood. He looked at it unemotionally and then at the young man with the shot gun.
'You stupid little sod,' he said wearily.
It took time; it always does. These things start fast but finish very slowly – if ever. A bullet leaves a gun at around a thousand feet a second, and it starts a file that they keep going until long after you're dead, just in case somebody wants to check back to that night when…
By five o'clock things had settled down a bit. Charles and I had been to the hospital and I'd come back; the other lad was down at the local nick talking over his past and future with a chief inspector. All I had on the far side of the dining-room table was a detective sergeant, name of Keating.
He had my statement – two long, laborious pages of the police prose that makes every action sound so mundane and planned. Even mine, almost.
' "Mrs Fenwick seemed worried at the news I told her and asked me to spend the night at Kingscutt Manor to protect her," ' he quoted. Then looked up. 'Is that correct, sir?'
I nodded dully; I felt tired and stiff and the casualty ward had smeared my back with something that itched like a forest fire.
'You do realise that the defence will get a big laugh from this in court, sir?'
I shrugged again. 'I doubt it. They'll dodge the whole issue of why I was here.'
He was a stocky, broad-shouldered type with the sort of gut detectives get in their forties through too much 'observing' in pubs. Normally, his face would have been stolid and impassive; at this hour, expressions kept slipping on or off and he had to pull the pieces together again.
He said, 'Why do you think that, sir?'
'Because any argument about why I was here keeps bringing us back to Paul Mockby. I say it was because I expected his goons to come around, and sure enough around comes his chauffeur, at least. He doesn't want that argument, and who d'you think's paying for the defence – Father Christmas?'
'Who pays for a defence isn't something we can bring out in court.'
'Sure. That'll be why he does it. Have you got hold of Mockby yet?'
The new expression went on like a slide in a projector: I'm-only-a-sergeant-and-I-only-work-here. 'I just wouldn't know about that, sir. Coming back to your statement,… The question of why you had a gun with you, the Mauser – that could come up.'
'Same answer – for Mockby. I brought a gun because I thought Mockby would etcetera and etcetera and so on. It's licenced, anyway.'
He nodded; he'd seen the licence. He'd still got the gun, if it came to that, him or one of his mates. All neatly labelled and tied up in a polythene bag and the spent cases in other bags and the three bullets being dug patiently out of the woodwork of the hallway outside.
He sighed. 'These Ministry licences are tricky things.'
'I wasn't carrying it in public. This is a private house even if it isn't my home.'
'It didn't walk from London to Kingscutt, did it? Sir? '
Just then Lois came in. Carrying a tray with an elegant enamel-ware coffee-pot, two blue-striped mugs, cream and sugar.
'I thought you might like something by now,' she said brightly. 'You haven't finished yet? How these things do stretch on.'
Keating was torn between annoyance and politeness to his hostess; he half got his backside out of the chair, decided that was polite enough, and flopped back.
Me, I was glad to see the coffee and her both. She was wearing a long housecoat in royal blue with gold trimmings, although there'd been plenty of time to change into anything else by now. Certainly she'd had time to put on exactly the right amount of make-up – very little – for entertaining early-morning gangbusters.
Or maybe I'm being bitchy. Some women retreat into choosing exactly the right clothes and make-up and coffee-pot for an emergency the way others go into hysterics or the brandy bottle. I preferred it this way. Certainly the coffee part.
Lois looked at me with her cheery baby-faced expression, but perhaps a hint of anxiety behind the eyes. 'Is everything all right, Mr Card?'
'Fine. Fine, thanks, Mrs Fenwick.'
That was the password. She smiled and swept out.
Keating shovelled sugar into his coffee in a way that suggested his tummy wasn't built on beer alone. 'I admire an old hand like you, sir,' he murmured. 'Taking your shirt and vest off before you got shot. Saves all that danger of infection from dirty fibres. Brilliant, I call that.'
I murmured back, 'Screw you, Sergeant.'
'No thank you, sir, you're not my type. But her – I might take my shirt off to defend her, if anybody asked me.' He took a sip of coffee, blinked, and slid back into the present time continuum. 'Now sir, are you prepared to sign this statement?'
'Sure.'
He looked momentarily surprised, then pushed it across to me. I signed. 'Will you need me in the magistrates' court this morning?'
'Ah, we're not charg-' Then his expression snapped into midday form. 'We don't need witnesses when we're asking for a remand in custody on this sort of charge – sir. You should know that.'
'Silly of me,' I inhaled coffee fumes and he watched me. 'Tell me one thing, Sergeant – am I going to be charged?'
His face went blank and meaningless as an official form. 'I really couldn't say, sir.'
'You must know this chief pretty well. What d'you guess?'
'It isn't my business to go guessing, sir.' He slipped my report into a thin black plastic-leather briefcase and zipped it shut. 'But you did have a shooter and somebody did get shot.'
'How very true. Are you trying to get Mockby on conspiracy or accessory before?'
'I still couldn't say, sir.'
'How would the chief like a plea of guilty from the two goons and no other people or charges involved at all?'
After a time, he said slowly, 'Do you think you could arrange that, sir?'
'I think it might soft of arrange itself.'
He sat very still, working out the implications of this. Then he got up. 'I'll see what he says. That's all I can do.'
I poured another cup and waited. The phone pinged in the distance and slow footsteps came in behind me. 'No luck, huh?'
He says to mind your own bloody business and he's not making any promises to anybody.'
'Okay. There comes a time when you have to guard your own back.'
'The police guard people – sir. If the lady felt she was in danger she could have asked us.'
'And would you have come?'
'Nobody'll ever know, will they, sir?'
I nodded and stood up and walked with him to the front door. Away to the east there was a dirty yellow smear in the sky, right down on the horizon.
He stood on the steps in the cold nibbling wind and buttoned his coat. 'Are you really going to bugger things up?' he asked politely.
'I really couldn't say.'
'I'd've thought a man in your business would need friends in the police.'
"My business is what I've just been told to mind.'
He just nodded and walked down to his car.
Back inside the house, it was suddenly quiet again. The last bright-eyed young detective constables had finished their measurements and sketched out their plans and gone while we were in the dining-room. The study door was locked and guarded by a chair for when the fingerprint boys came around (it wouldn't do any good; both of them had worn gloves). I leaned against the wall by the downstairs phone and waited for the energy to go ahead and bugger things up, just like the sergeant had said.
Lois came out from the kitchen door behind the stairs. 'Have they all gone, Jamie?'
'All gone.'
She came and put one arm round my neck and leaned her head on my shoulder. 'I wonder what ever they thought -about you being here.'
'Just jealous.'
She looked up and smiled, then went serious again. 'I suppose – will it all come out in court? I'm thinking of David.'
'I don't know. Maybe not. I want to make a phone call that could help.'
She stood back briskly. 'Go ahead. Like me to put on bacon and eggs now?'
'That'd be fine.' She went away and I sat down and started dialling.
It rang only twice and the voice answering was remarkably wide awake for that time of day. 'Yes? Who is it?"
'Hello, Mockers. Card here.'
'Don't you know what time-'
'I'm calling on behalf of Charles. And his friend. They're sorry they can't do it themselves, but they're in the nick. Well, actually Charles is in hospital right now, but he'll be in the nick when he comes out.'
Pause. Then, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'
'That's the spirit. Just keep that up and you may get away with it. Now, here's what you do: you get a solicitor and you get himfast. They've got the boy in the back room and they're working on him and they can do that for seventy-two hours unless somebody comes up with a habeas corpus writ. Then they'll have to charge him and stop questioning him. Same for Charles, of course, but it's not so urgent.'
Another pause. 'What the hell's all this to do with you?"
'Oh, I just happened to be staying at Kingscutt when your boys dropped in. It was me they fired that shotgun at."
'They did what?'That squawk was genuine, all right. Probably he'd told them not, repeat not, to take a gun and they'd known better.
'Afraid so. But most of it missed. Anyway, the point is they got them cold, on the premises, gun in hand, all the rest of it. So you spend a bit of time and a lot of money and you can get them to plead guilty.'
'What good's that to anybody?'
'You're not too bright at this time in the morning, are you? A guilty plea and there's no real trial: no jury, no witnesses, no cross-examination, no awkward questions about who sent them or Mrs Fenwick saying you'd rung up about that log-book – remember? But don't take it from me, ask your solicitor.'
'I will, boy. But when did you get elected Jesus Christ? -you're getting something out of this.'
'I damn well hope so. I'd like to keep out of it as much as possible, but if I'm in then you're in and I'm standing on your shoulders. Ask your solicitor aboutthat, too.'
He worried at this for a while, then said carefully, "You lousy stinking rotten little son-of-a-bitch. Get off the line; I've got calls to make.'
'Now you're sounding more reasonable.'
We ate in the kitchen and I tried to explain what I'd been up to. Lois listened thoughtfully, then asked, 'But I don't see why those characters should plead guilty – what have they got to lose?'
'Depends what they're charged with. In a case like this the police like to have a real banquet, and the menu starts with attempted murder. After that, it comes down to wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm and then unlawful wounding. They'd probably accept a plea of unlawful wounding plus a side dish from the Firearms Act. Possession with intent or carrying with criminal intent. They shouldn't get more than three years or so for that. But make a fight of it and it won't cost the cops any more to try for attempted murder and a life sentence. I think they'll plead.'
She mused on it, scooping delicately at a boiled egg. 'So Paul Mockby will get off scotfree?'
'I'd think so.'
'You don't sound as if you mind.'
'Maybe not… Iknow what he did. In a sort of way, knowing's enough. But it would never have been easy to involve him anyway. You can show Charles was his chauffeur, but it's a big long step to prove Mockby sent him down here. Even if Charles claimed it, no judge would let a jury convict on his word. And since Charles's pay has at least doubled since I talked to Mockby. I somehow doubt he'll do any implicating.'
'We implicated Paul, though, in those statements we made.' She pushed aside her egg and lit a cigarette.
'Witnesses' statements aren't evidence, not unless you try to deny them. Anyway, if they plead guilty there's no witnesses, no statements, nothing in court.'
'So – David won't have to know?'
I shrugged. 'You and I'll get mentioned at the trial; have to be. But maybe…'
'Well, I think you handled it all with great delicacy.'
'Don't sound so surprised.' I was wondering what a certain chief inspector would think of my handling when Mockby's solicitor suddenly landed on him waving a writ. I'd done more influencing people than making friends in the last night.
I looked at my watch – nearly seven, by now – and Lois caught the gesture. 'Are you off back to London now?' she asked, a little wanly.
I smiled as cheerfully as I could, and shrugged. 'I've got to go sometime, but…' I didn't really know what the hell Iwas going to do next I hadn't found the log, and it was a Saturday besides. "What are you going to do?'
'I've got to take the Rover down to the garage in the village; they're going to clean it and maybe make me an offer for it."
'You're not keeping it?'
'No. I can't think of it except as Martin's.' She shuddered at an abrupt memory. 'That means I've got to unpack it first. So I'd better get dressed.'
'Unpack it?'
'There's Martin's suitcase still in the trunk. I just kept putting off having to…'
'I'll do that.'
'You won't hurt your back?'
'No. I'll be okay.'
The garage was as cold as Caesar's nose, and I didn't waste time there. I hauled the solid black-leather suitcase out of the boot and slammed the lid. Actually it did make my back twinge a bit.
Back in the house I humped it up the stairs and into his bedroom and on to the bed and opened it. The log of the Skadi was the first thing I saw.