A Time to Kill (11 page)

‘Couldn’t tell ’ee,’ he said, ‘but I saw a big grey motor car down to Mr Fallot’s this morning.’

‘Sure it wasn’t yesterday?’

‘’Course I’m sure it weren’t yesterday.’

‘Children in it?’ I asked.

The quarryman didn’t know, but one of the summer visitors took his pipe out of his mouth and remarked:

‘There was one child in it. I saw the car go through the village.’

I remembered George’s habit of always going to sleep curled up on the back seat during a long journey; he couldn’t be seen.

The evidence was muddled, inexplicable, illogical, as any other attempt to make clear sense out of human activities, yet it was somehow promising. Pink and I finished our pints and went away over the fields to have a look at this Mr Fallot’s house from the other side of the valley in which it lay.

The house had been built in the between-war years, when anyone who chose to foul the cliffs of England by fastening his suburban nest on them was perfectly free to do so. This one, however, must have been planned by a first-class architect; little could be seen but a belt of shrubs, and behind them a squat face of Purbeck stone which was as natural a part of its surroundings as any quarrymen’s cutting. Indeed the house looked as if it had been built on the floor of a shallow quarry. That was hopeful. Underground rooms or cellars could easily be formed out of the old diggings.

From the end of the valley track, above which the house stood, a narrow gully led down to a ledge of rock. This was surrounded by a crescent of cliffs, about three hundred yards across the horns. The ledge, formed by the cutting away of all the overlying stone, fell in a series of low steps to the sea – the lowest of all being about on a level with the mean high-tide mark. Old iron rings, cemented into a roughly squared slab and rotten with rust, showed that the place had once been a handy quay to those who knew how and when to use it.

So much we saw during a casual walk along the cliffs and a scramble out to the edge of a low promontory from which we could look into the crescent. To keep watch on Mr Fallot’s house was far more difficult. Those Purbeck uplands, bordering the sea, were a bright green desert. The steep side of the valley opposite the house was smooth enough for a man to slide down two hundred feet without tearing his trousers. A few stunted trees and thorns crouched in the hollows, and on the slopes were sparse patches of gorse and bramble; but there was no real cover except the loose stone walls that bounded the fields – typical moorland fields, empty and windswept.

It took a good deal of innocent wandering and lying about in the sun to find the shelter we wanted – an old home-guard trench cut precariously on the edge of the cliff, from which there was a fine view, through friendly grass and thistle, of Fallot’s drive and front door. Pink wanted to plunge straight into it, but, as a once skilled infantryman, I wasn’t having any. The strongest position isn’t much use if the enemy has watched you occupy it.

And so I wasted more precious time. We pretended to admire the evening light on the water, and lay around like ecstatic townsmen, and not once did we look at Fallot’s house until we had gradually disappeared into dead ground and so into the trench.

The house leapt close in the field of Pink’s magnificent glasses. There was nobody about. On the drive, which perfectly fitted my memory of a short, sharp slope, I could see the recent tracks of cars. A chimney was smoking. The place had no electricity or telephone. It looked innocent and respectable, even charming.

After about twenty minutes a man and a boy came out of the front door and went to the garage. I sprang on to the parapet to get a better view, but the boy wasn’t Jerry or George, and the man I had never seen before. He took a large grey car out of the garage. He then stood at the front door saying goodbye to his host, and him, too, I had never seen before. They made a happy group together. I turned to Pink, yelping curses and obscenities. We had wasted an hour and a half of daylight, since we were at Worth, keeping watch on an obviously inoffensive house.

‘Come on, old son! Let’s not miss a lift!’ said Pink.

We raced down the slope and were standing on the valley track when the man and his son drove past. He willingly gave us a lift up the hill. They were so happy, those two, excited by the wind and sun of the day. I asked, hopelessly, if he had seen another grey car with children.

‘Odd that you should ask that,’ he replied. ‘We certainly did, didn’t we, Jo?’

‘That poor little chap who was frightened,’ said Jo.

He was only about nine himself, but a thoroughly fatherly small boy.

‘When?’ I snapped.

The father looked at me with surprise.

‘When we were driving down yesterday. Just like a grown-up, I said what a naughty boy he was. And Jo explained that he wasn’t naughty; he was frightened.’

‘Where? For God’s sake, where?’

This admirable chap stopped his car and turned to me.

‘They were parked by the roadside near Kingston, and we passed them about midday or a little after. Two men and two boys in a grey car. I say, is there anything wrong?’

I pulled myself together. There was nothing to be gained by starting a vast deal of local excitement until I had a direction in which to lead it.

I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘The fact is I’m a bit overwrought. A spot of trouble in the family. Would you mind running us up as far as Kingston?’

At Kingston we easily got on to the track of my car. It had been parked on a quiet bit of road outside the village between twelve and two the day before. What had happened was now clear. After dropping me at the house, the black van had returned to Kingston; and the children, when they arrived, had been transferred from car to van. Enquiries about a plain, black van led us only to Mr Firpin again.

We offered a drink to our kindly driver and ice-cream to his son. They had both been fascinated by all this mysterious asking of questions.

‘Look here,’ said the man, ‘don’t think I want to butt in or anything, but aren’t you police?’

Before I could reply, Pink took his nose out of his pint, and whispered:

‘Revenue.’

You couldn’t have doubted him. His tough face, brown above and red below, where two days’ sun and salt had whipped the skin long protected by his beard, could only have been that of a criminal or some adventurous officer of the state; and since he had never lost his naval eyes nor his general air of authority, criminal was out of the question.

‘After smugglers?’ whispered our friend, and his son’s eyes glowed in the setting sun.

‘And bigger than that,’ Pink answered. ‘Now, sir, I think you yourself could help us a bit.’

The man seemed somewhat startled.

‘Fire away if you’ve anything to ask,’ he said.

‘When did you arrive at Mr Fallot’s?’

‘This morning about ten. We stayed last night here at Kingston.’

‘He asked you to come today?’

‘Well, not exactly. Any Saturday, he said, if I liked to bring the boy down to the sea and have some lunch. So I thought …’

‘Did he look at all worried when you arrived?’

‘No,’ said the man doubtfully, ‘not worried, really. Busy, perhaps. He didn’t have his servant with him, and kept us waiting a long time before he opened the door. But then he was cordial as you could want. You don’t think there’s anything wrong with Fallot, surely?’

‘Lord, no!’ Pink lied. ‘I just wondered if he would be the right sort of chap to help us. Might be useful with a house right on the sea. Have you known him long?’

‘Off and on, since the war. I buy a bit of stuff from him, you see. Theatrical jewellery and such-like. That’s my business – masks, fancy dress, fireworks, comic tricks and high-class used clothing.’

‘I always thought that was a Jewish trade,’ said Pink.

‘I am one,’ replied our friend with delightful simplicity.

Pink’s face pleased me, even among all my troubles. He had evidently liked this helpful and wholly English shopkeeper as much as I did, and just couldn’t make him square with his favourite fascist theories. I felt certain that he was going to say
you don’t look it
. He avoided that insult with an effort, but the next question rang too sharply.

‘Do you buy watches from Fallon?’

‘I do not,’ the man answered. ‘But if ever you wish to prove it, here is my business card!’

‘Is Fallot a Jew?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Does he sell watches?’

‘Yes, naturally. Well, gentlemen,’ he said rather sadly, ‘I must be getting on.’

I tried to cover Pink’s sudden change of manner by the sincerity of my thanks. There was no more I could do without giving away his offensive imitation of a suspicious revenue officer.

When the grey car had driven away, I fear I showed temper. Self-control was growing a bit thin, in any case, as the sun went down.

‘Can it, Roger!’ Pink said, unmoved. ‘This is what I was after. Fallot may be in the same sort of jam that I was. Suppose he is smuggling in a big way, and suppose some old cloak-and-sickle got to know of it. Right! Then, Mr Fallot, you’re going to run what we like when we like, as well as your bloody watches. Or else!’

I told Pink it was absurd conjecture, and demanded evidence.

‘Firpin’s van,’ he answered. ‘Look here – we’ve asked about the black van till we’re hoarse. Nobody’s seen it, and everybody’s seen it. Now, I’m a chap who likes to accept what’s under his nose without looking any farther. It’s Firpin’s van that you and your children travelled in. It must have had false registration plates when you saw it, but I’ll bet it hadn’t as soon as you were out of sight.’

I said wearily that I couldn’t believe in my fellow Dorset-man, Firpin, Fruit and Vegetables, Deliveries Daily, handing over his precious old van to the Soviet Secret Police.

‘It’s a damn sight easier than believing Yegor Ivanovitch is God Almighty,’ said Pink, ‘and can whistle up ships and plain vans whenever he likes, and use ’em without any cover. I tell you he’s got Firpin in his pocket. Why? Because Firpin has been running up and down to the sea and carrying whatever Fallot gave him under the vegetables.

‘Lord, Roger, it’s just like those communists! They blackmail two perfectly decent smugglers, and before the poor chaps have time to look round they find they’ve become proper criminals and are doing whatever they’re told to do. Even so, I bet you anything, they don’t know it’s a political gang they are working for.’

Well, it was possible. Indeed, it was nearly certain that the black van was Firpin’s. But was Firpin’s chief or partner Fallot? If Pink was right and if his smugglers had to accept any yarn that was served up to them and didn’t know in whose power they were, then any of those seemingly innocent cliff-top farmers were as likely as Fallot.

Pink had to agree, but stuck to his Birmingham jeweller. It was well known, he said, in Tangier that a man could soon retire on the proceeds of running watches and jewellery into England.

It was now half-past eight. We dared not waste time looking for Firpin – who, if he had any sense, would be providing himself with an alibi far away from home – and we could not call in the police. Help from them on any scale big enough to be effective was inconceivable; we had not the evidence to be convincing, and we had not the time. About all we could do was to get the local cop or coastguard down to Fallot’s house – just enough to forewarn Ivanovitch into final disposal of the children.

We had, at any rate, details sufficient to take action ourselves. Pink could not prophesy any hour for the arrival of whatever craft was coming. He himself would choose, he said, half tide or low tide, when the pattern of the ledges would be clear and a dinghy could be paddled in as easily as to a quay. Our objective was to delay the embarkation by frightening off the ship. I was to watch Fallot’s house, and meanwhile, Pink would take
Olwen
to sea and watch the two or three miles of coast to eastward, where there were other possible houses, even lonelier than Fallot’s, and other rock ledges accessible from the cliffs. We reckoned that we could upset the nice timing of their arrangements – merely, for example, by holding any strange boat in the beam of
Olwen
’s Aldis lamp – and that by dawn we would have proof solid enough to bring in the police, and search and cordon the whole district.

Pink jumped on a bus and went down to Swanage. I struck across country in the last of the light, aiming for the side of the valley above Fallot’s house. There was no one about. The quarrymen had gone home or to the pubs. The farmers were enjoying their Saturday night. There weren’t even any campers along the cliffs, which were too bleak and windswept to be inviting.

First of all I fixed in my memory the exact point on the cliff path which was directly above two huge cavemouths cut by the quarrymen. Pink knew their position and thought he might even be able to pick them up in his night-glasses. He was to keep one eye on the skyline above the caves for my flashes of light in case I wanted to signal to him.

When it was already deep dusk, I wriggled silently down over the turf slope until I was on the edge of the rough cutting in which Fallot’s house had been built. Lying there – with my heels rather higher than my head, but firmly anchored – I looked down on the garden and the yard outside the back door. The front of the house was hidden from me, but I could see anyone who stepped away from it into the drive; and over my right shoulder I could watch between the headlands a black arc of sea. It was a perfect position – murderous if I had had a rifle and a legal right to use it. As it was, I had no weapon but Pink’s Norwegian knife which he had insisted on leaving with me.

Fallot’s house seemed abnormally quiet and dark for a place where the owner was at home and presumably enjoying whatever after-dinner relaxation he fancied. There wasn’t a sound until, about eleven, somebody opened the back door and put the cat out. This innocent, domestic act gave me a moment of utter despair. There was I, fooling about on a dark hillside when my boys were in imminent danger.

The unknown lit a cigar and took a couple of turns round the garden and down to the gate, where he stood listening. There was nothing to listen to. The sea down on the ledge was so calm that at this distance its splashing was indistinguishable from the faint hiss of utter silence. Then he returned to the backyard and picked something up. I couldn’t see what it was. There was haze high up in the atmosphere, and the night was black velvet.