Murdo's War (24 page)

He hurried along the wall that skirted the stand of trees and turned over a cattle grid between grand ornamental gate-posts. The long drive wound ahead through leafless birches and dark twisted pines. He passed the end of a line of stables and other out- buildings, all in good repair, then the house was before him, a fine sandstone lodge with a gravelled courtyard. He ran to the big oak doors and thundered on them with his fists.

‘Hello! Hello – quick! Quick!’

His blows boomed in the great hall, and faded into silence.

‘Is there anybody there?’

There was no reply. Then he saw that all the windows stood bare and un-curtained. No tracks save his own, and those of one or two birds and some small animal, disturbed the snowy courtyard.

Quickly he circled the house, hoping there might be a keeper’s cottage, but there was not. The lodge was completely deserted.

Briefly Murdo hesitated. He longed to hide, to give up the unrelenting effort and cast himself into the hands of fate. He had tried to the limit of his power, and he had failed; surely he was now entitled to the easy way out. But even as he looked around the buildings he knew that hiding was no use, for they would certainly find him. Then it would have been better, much better, to have given himself up on Strathy beach, or even at the graveyard. So much had happened since that he could expect little mercy. The time of second chances was long past, now they would shoot him on sight. He knew it, and in his mind’s eye he saw the rifle and the finger on the trigger, heard the report, felt the terrible bullet and the black emptiness of falling. The image made him desperate. At that moment the German invasion meant nothing beside his own survival. He did not even think of it. What should he do?

The sight of his footprints gave him an idea. Since the lodge was deserted and they must know how tired he was, the Germans would expect him to hide. He crossed swiftly to the outbuildings and opened a couple of stable doors, leaving them just ajar. Then he climbed a flight of stone steps to a loft, and descending again ran on to other doors to confuse his tracks. Finally he returned to the lodge itself, peering through the windows. Drawing his jacket sleeve tight, he jerked an elbow through the pane of what appeared to be the dining-room. The glass tinkled to the floor. He reached inside, pushed back the catch, and heaved up the heavy window. A few seconds later he was standing in the room, scattering little lumps of snow on the carpet. It was the work of a moment to push the window down again and press the catch back, hard, trying to make it jam. Then, stamping the snow from his boots and taking great care not to scatter more as he went, he crossed immediately into the fine oak-lined hall.

His plan was to run straight through the house, but at once his eyes fell on the black telephone on a rosewood table. He seized the receiver and pressed it to his ear. It was stone dead. Angrily he banged the rest up and down, and dialled 999, but nothing disturbed the muffled silence. He put the receiver down again and started away, then paused. The Germans too would find it, and realise that he had not been able to summon help. With a fierce jerk he ripped the cable from the wall.

Swiftly then he continued to the sitting-room at the far end of the hall. He pushed the door shut behind him and crossed the thick, green and gold carpet to the window. It faced east, away from the courtyard and road, with a fine view of the hills on the far side of the valley. He eased back the catch, and being careful not to disturb the ornaments on the broad window sill, pushed the window up, scrambled through to the ground, and pulled the window shut behind him.

Then, keeping the house between himself and his pursuers, and avoiding open stretches of snow so that his tracks would not be too conspicuous, he made a wild dash across the end of the lodge garden, through the trees, over the wall, and away across the moors in the other direction, heading for a clump of conifers several hundred yards away.

He made it without being seen, and as he ducked and weaved beneath their sheltering branches, the first snowflakes of the day floated by, and fell softly to the ground.

The Germans came cautiously into the courtyard. They had no idea of the reception that might be awaiting them, and their rifles were at the ready. But a glance was enough to reveal that the buildings were deserted, and with relief that the chase must be nearly over, Henry Smith led his men forward. He saw the stable doors open and the scuffed snow on the window sill beneath the broken pane of glass. Leaving Gunner and Arne to keep watch, quickly he followed Murdo’s initial circuit of the building. In the lightly falling snow he did not see the half-hidden line of tracks heading away into the moors, and a minute later was back in the courtyard. Sinking against a big dog kennel to take the weight off his weary legs, he dispatched Arne into the house and Gunner into the stables to hunt the boy out.

‘Be careful, mind,’ he called after them. ‘Give him a chance and he’ll put a pitchfork through you – young savage.’

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. It had been quite a chase, but they had made it in the end. The thought of shooting the boy did not appeal to him, especially a boy like Murdo, who he knew and reluctantly admired. It was one thing to hunt him down, quite another to kill him in cold blood. Still, it had to be, they could not take him all that way back. He broke open the breech of his rifle and snapped it shut again.

The snow was thickening. He looked around the grey-black buildings, imagining what they would be like in the summer, with horses and dogs in the courtyard, women and children walking about the lawns. It was good. He would like a place like that.

But they were taking their time about hunting that wretched boy out.

‘Come on! Get a move on!’ His voice was harsh.

There was a pause, then Arne flung open an upstairs window on the far side of the courtyard.

‘I don’t think he’s here,’ he called. ‘The house looks empty.’ An uneasy twinge made the hair prickle on the back of Henry Smith’s neck.

‘Have you looked everywhere?’

‘Not yet. The place is huge, full of attics and cellars. Great big cupboards. But I’m sure he’s not here.’

‘Look everywhere,’ Henry Smith called up to him, standing and brushing the snow from the seat of his trousers. ‘Everywhere.’

‘All right. Can I have the torch.’

Henry Smith threw up the little flashlight he had used for map reading, and the window banged shut.

Gunner came out of the stables and sneezed. A few straws and wisps of hay adhered to his clothes.

‘Well, he’s not in there.’

A stronger twinge of uncertainty passed through the leader. ‘You’re sure?’

Gunner raised his thick eyebrows. ‘Yes.’

‘What about the other sheds?’

‘They’re not open.’

‘Look at the footprints! Check them!’

For a few minutes longer he waited. The snow settled on his jacket and tickled his face. He moved into the shelter of a projecting stable roof.

Arne pushed up the broken dining-room window of the lodge, and almost simultaneously Gunner came from the last of the out-buildings and pulled the door shut behind him.

‘Well, he’s definitely not here,’ he called across the courtyard through the falling snow.

‘Have you looked round the back?’

‘Yes, but there’s nowhere to hide. He must be in the house.’

‘I’m afraid not,’ Arne called back. ‘And he’s been at the telephone. Pulled the cables out of the wall.’

‘What!’ Henry Smith was stunned. ‘Was it working?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can you fix it?’

‘Yes. It will take a few minutes, though. I’ll have to find some- thing to take out the screws.’

‘Well you get on with that. Gunner and I will take a look round the outside.’

‘Right.’ The cropped blond head and red-rimmed eyes vanished into the gloom of the house.

‘You stay here and keep your eyes open in case he is hiding, and tries to slip back to the road. I’ll look round the other side again.’

Moving more slowly Henry Smith followed the boy’s foot- prints to the end of the lodge. As he rounded the corner the wind- driven snow struck in his face. He turned the top of his head into it and pulled his collar close. The visibility was deteriorating all the time. Carefully he made his way along the front of the lodge, between the broad bay windows and the lawn. Sheltering his eyes from the snow, a second time he failed to see Murdo’s half-hidden tracks, and soon was at the far gable wall. He paused, dissatisfied. Clearly the boy had not gone that way, for a flawless stretch of snow- covered grass, broken only by their earlier prints, led back to the end of the courtyard. Henry Smith turned, and retraced his steps. Suddenly he spotted the ruffled snow on the window ledge, and looking below saw the line of footprints heading away from the house. Murdo had walked along the sunken edge of a flower patch beneath a high bank of rhododendrons, his tumbled foot-falls hidden between the edge of the lawn and snow-covered remnants of summer flowers. Already the snowflakes were filling them in, moulding the edges, smoothing them over. Silently Henry Smith looked away through the drifting veils of white. A few hundred yards off stood the dim silhouette of a copse of fir trees. Beyond that all was grey and blind.

A slow rage of frustration mounted within him, the culmination of all he had endured at the hands of the two Scots. He relieved it in a passionate outburst of oaths and curses, stamping his feet and beating his fists in the air. In a matter of seconds the stormy fit had run its course and he relaxed, panting and more calm.

Gunner heard the noise and appeared around the end of the house. Glad that the responsibility was not his, he shook his head half admiringly.

‘He’s some boy,’ he said.

‘He’s a damned pest, I know that,’ Henry Smith replied sharply. Together they returned to the courtyard and waited for Arne beneath the overhanging stable roof. Impatiently the leader strode across to the dining room and shouted for him to hurry up.

Five minutes later Arne appeared once more in the window, a kitchen knife in his hand. ‘It’s all right,’ he called through the thickening snow. ‘The line’s dead.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

A warm flood of relief made Henry Smith sink back momentarily against the stone wall. ‘Right. Come on over here, then.’

Swiftly Arne tidied up in the lodge, pulled down the broken window, and joined them at the stable.

Henry Smith brushed some of the snow from his shoulders. ‘He’s away again,’ he said with no preamble. ‘Out the far side towards the hills. I want you two to go after him. If you catch up with him you know what to do. Cover his body with a few rocks, or snow and heather: it will be safe enough for a week or two, that’s all we need. I’ll head down the road in case he tried to circle back to the village. The snow’s filling in his footsteps all the time, so you’d better get cracking. We’ll meet again here, in the stable. There’s plenty of straw, and there might be some food in the house.’

Arne nodded.

‘What about Peter?’ Gunner said.

‘I’ll keep a look out for him.’

‘And if we don’t find the boy,’ said Arne, ‘and he doesn’t cut back to the village?’

‘In that case,’ Henry Smith replied, ‘he’s probably dead. There’s nothing out there but hills and more hills.’ He paused and made a rueful face. ‘But I suppose I’d better get in touch with the Colonel and let him know. See what he wants me to do.’

Arne and Gunner exchanged glances, then looked back at their leader.

‘Von Kramm?’ Gunner said softly.

‘Of course. Who else?’ Henry Smith’s voice was sharp. He felt the anger welling up inside him once more. He would cut a poor figure when the facts became known. ‘Still, that’s my business. You’ve got your work to do, what are you hanging about for? Get moving.’

Arne pushed himself from the wall, buttoning the collar of his jacket, and slung the heavy rifle to his shoulder. Gunner shook the snow from his hair and settled his own rifle in the crook of an arm. More hills lay ahead, more rough ground. He blinked with fatigue and braced his shoulders.

‘Remember,’ Henry Smith told them, ‘he’s quite as tired as you are.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ Arne said.

Gunner raised his eyebrows ironically, and thought of the warm comfortable straw in the stables, behind them. Not in the least encouraged by their leader’s empty platitude, he clapped Arne heavily on the shoulder.

‘Ah well,’ he sighed. ‘Come on.’

Together they trudged away across the courtyard and round the corner out of sight.

For a minute Henry Smith watched the snow drifting and whirling by. Wearily he pulled the map from his inside pocket, unfolded it, and held it up against the stone wall. For a long time he pored over it, his brow wrinkled, trying to work out what route a resourceful but tired and frightened boy might follow. The great strath ran north and south. To the east, the way he was heading, lay nothing but a waste of hills, gashed with rivers, which beyond the watershed ran eastward into the North Sea, twenty miles away. Unconsciously and almost imperceptibly he shook his head. The boy had no chance. The only danger lay in the village of Kinbrace. If he saw the houses he might try to cut back along the foot of the hills and seek help there.