No Enemy but Time (42 page)

‘What's the quickest way to Kells? I've a job waiting an' I'll lose it if I'm stuck behind this fella for a good half-hour.'

‘More like a good hour,' the officer said. ‘He's got a puncture and all. Reverse back there and take the second to your right. Follow the signs to Clonkelty. It's a bit of a detour sure enough, but quicker than waitin' for this lot to clear.'

Michael Harvey grunted his thanks and sped back to the car. He was turning and twisting round the narrow side roads, watching his rear mirror out of habit, and cursing the delay. It had put a good forty minutes on to the journey. Gorman lay dead on the floor of his kitchen and if his killers were in front, then there was little hope of Harvey doing anything. They'd reach Claire Fraser and she'd be gone by the time he arrived. He was a man who'd learned to trust his instincts. On more than one occasion they had warned him and saved his life. They didn't warn him now. He felt somehow that luck was with him, and the pathetic old man had either not known, or died rather than disclose where Claire was heading.

It was crazy, no question about that. So crazy that only someone born and bred in the country would have taken it seriously. A man on the run for his life taking refuge in a fox's hide.

No crazier than the man who had built it as a refuge for himself in his reincarnated form. Harvey could just imagine what his superiors would make of a story like that. But he believed it. He knew the country and the people, and he knew that the Arbuthnot brother and sister would make use of it if need be.

He was back on the main road again. No doubt the lorry and its driver were still beached on the road, with a jam building up for miles behind them. He swung off to the east towards the ancient town of Kells, with its Celtic cross in the centre and the history of Ireland's greatest treasure, the monastic Book of Kells, the rarest survival of the golden age of Celtic culture before the Norsemen came to burn and ravage.

If he had guessed wrong, and that tale told by an English swimming pool in the heart of very English Gloucestershire was just a tale, then Harvey had come over for nothing. Claire Fraser could be anywhere, looking for the renegade brother. But once committed to a course, Harvey had been trained not to doubt. He put his foot down on the open road and swung round the last corner into the town of Kells itself. Cloncarrig was beyond the Headford estate, some six or so miles on the map. But he didn't know where the house would be. And he had to find the house before he could track down the folly Claire had described. He didn't risk going on through Kells and hoping to find it. He stopped, then sauntered into a seedy roadside lounge named Loughlin's. It was bare-floored and dim, with a stale sour smell of cigarettes and spilt drink. A man in shirt-sleeves and braces was reading the
Sporting Life
behind the bar. Two old women sipped Guinnesses in a far corner and raised their heads like turtles to look at him as he came in. He noticed a juke-box and space game in a corner. Progress had reached even here.

He bought twenty Carrolls cigarettes and a box of matches and asked where the old Reynard house might be. The man stared at him, nursing the sporting paper under one arm.

‘It's over at Cloncarrig,' he said. ‘It's empty.' He counted out Harvey's change. ‘Been empty for years.'

‘Can you see it from the road?' he asked, looking him boldly in the eye.

‘No. It's set back up a drive. Nobody lives there,' he repeated, questioning why anyone should ask about it. ‘It's fallen down by now, I'd think.'

Michael Harvey scooped up the coins. ‘I'm lookin' for lead,' he said. ‘To buy. Thanks a lot.'

The man watched him go, the lounge door swinging behind him. ‘Buy is it?' he muttered.

One of the old women giggled; they'd been listening to the exchange. ‘Buy me arse,' she chuckled. ‘Divil a bit of lead he'll find. Our lads have had it all!'

Even the dour old barman joined in her laughter.

He passed the magnificent gates of the Marquis of Headford's estate. He drove on down the road, watching the miles on the clock, and almost missed the faded little signpost to Cloncarrig. It was a hamlet, a cluster of grey stone houses either side of the street, with a big ugly church at one end, and signs saying Kelly's Lounge Bar, and another Loughlin's, cheek by jowl with a mean little shop with a green post office sign outside it. A large, dirty dog with prominent ribs scoured the gutter for scraps and looked up briefly as the car passed. Two young girls, both wheeling prams, walked side by side in deep conversation. He wondered what the people did for work. The hamlet was gone like a dream blinked away, and the road was open before him, with fields and belts of tall trees. Rooks nested in them; their clumsy flight and raucous calling reminded him of long ago when he walked the woods with his father and his first rifle. Pests, they were, killing off the nestlings of other birds. For all their clumsiness, they were clever and difficult to shoot.

He took his foot off and slowed down. Nothing following him, and nothing in front. Up a drive, the man in the lounge had said. That meant some kind of gates maybe, certainly an entrance. It would be overgrown, but still there. He saw something on the left, and slowed right down. There had been gates, but they'd gone. Only the tall stone piers were left; one was crumbled half away and both were robed in triumphant ivy. He turned the car in and found the remains of a drive. Pot-holed, muddy, carpeted with weeds. A wind had blown down some branches from the trees on either side. Light, twiggy things, the car passed over them. As another car had done, he noticed, seeing the broken branches. One, quite substantial, had been laid at the side. He saw the house at the end, revealed by a turn in the approach, and for a moment, just as Claire had done, he thought it was inhabited. But only for a moment. There was no roof, no window glass. The front door leant like a drunken man on two hinges, and the flight of steps leading to it was green with moss and sprouting couch grass through the cracked stone. It reared up in front of him, sightless and open to the air. He'd seen many houses like it before.

There was no point in stopping; he had to get his bearings and put his car out of sight. And where better than in the place designed for cars, if it still stood – round by the back, under a handsome archway, through the dripping trees and crowded bushes that had become a jungle, and there were the garages, and beyond was what had been the stable block, with a weathervane of a horse turning idly in the breeze on the skeleton of its roof. All the slates had gone, and the clock in the clock tower had been shattered by stones. He drove in under shelter; there was a door that actually closed if heaved by brute strength across the entrance.

He took the automatic rifle out of the boot, packed the ammunition in the pockets of his anorak, checked the gun and lodged it in his belt. Then with the car hidden, he skirted the old mansion and came out on the west side, facing a sheet of grey-green water that had once been a fine lake. Beyond it, like a pencil tip writing in the sky, Harvey saw the first of the follies, three long fields away. He set off at a slow, jogging run that covered the ground at a surprising rate.

From the windows of the empty house, the birds roosting in the ruins inside watched the figure of the man get smaller, and the danger to themselves diminish with him.

Marie Dempster stood by the window in the house. Pat, the professional from Cork, with the brutish Willie driving, had set off for Kells. And behind them, in a separate car, Hugh Macbride followed as back-up.

‘Spy,' she said bitterly to Sean Filey. ‘He's gone to spy and report back if something goes wrong.'

Filey shrugged. ‘He can't do either of us any harm,' he said. ‘We have our own council down here; they have theirs in the North.'

‘He can make trouble for me,' she said. She touched her bruised face with a timid finger. ‘He'll find a way to blame me if they don't find her.'

Sean knew that she was afraid.

‘We know where the car is; the place is empty and derelict. She knows Arbuthnot better than anyone in the world. If she's gone there, it's because she expects to find him. We'll get them both.' He turned away from the window. He looked at his watch. The gesture made her want to scream. ‘I have to look in on a patient at the Rotunda,' he said. ‘Phone me there if anything comes up. Otherwise I'll go straight home.'

‘And what about me?' she demanded.

‘You wait here,' he said. ‘Don't you want to be on the welcoming committee?'

She let the curtain drop and swung away from him. He couldn't help turning the knife. Maybe it was a reaction from the patient kindness he needed in his profession. It was difficult to imagine him being sympathetic, but she knew his reputation. She knew that he spent longer with the poor in the state mental hospitals than he did with the rich neurotics who could pay. He had a heart somewhere, but she had never seen evidence of it. Whoever said the Irish were all hot blood and impetuosity? Some of them were cold as charity. He left and she heard his car drive away.

She was alone, and she didn't know for how long. It might be many hours before the others came back. It might be soon. The suspense was tearing at her with sharp teeth. She couldn't sit still. She walked in and out of the few rooms on the ground floor, and then found herself drawn to mount the stairs and pass along the narrow passage. There was the room where he'd been kept. She opened the door and stood on the threshold. One hand reached out and switched on the light. The window had been whitewashed. There was the bed where he'd been confined. And the few drops of his blood staining the bare floor.

‘Oh, God,' she said aloud. ‘God, how I hate you. If you'd loved me, none of it would have happened. But it was her, you bastard. She was the one.' She leant against the door frame and began to cry. No tears came, only the anguished sobs of a woman suffering past endurance. And then the storm was over. Filey was right. She'd never be at peace till Arbuthnot was dead. Maybe then she would stop loving him.

She went back down the stairs to sit and wait.

Hugh Macbride followed the other car at a safe distance. He had lived with searches and road blocks most of his life. He knew the real meaning of living in the midst of a savage civil war. The Dublin heavy and the self-proclaimed hard man from Cork didn't impress him. They'd managed to kill the old fellow at Riverstown and got nothing out of him for their pains. He grunted and swore when he thought of that. He was following, and he'd be close enough when the action started to take over if it was necessary. He had his own gun, concealed in the car under the seat, and he wouldn't hesitate to use it on Mrs Fraser if she made any resistance. He knew how to disable without killing. The killing was the easy part. He'd leave that to Filey's men.

There was heavy traffic, unexpected at that time of the early afternoon. He scowled, moving a few yards at a time. Willie's grey Cortina was there ahead of him, likewise slowed to a crawl. He found the reason on the Dundalk road. A huge lorry had come to grief and been moved far enough over to allow one lane of traffic under the control of a policeman. Once past the obstacle, the cars picked up speed, as drivers vented their frustration and drove fast to make up lost time.

Turning down the main road into Kells he saw Willie's indicator flashing. The Cortina pulled into the side. The one called Pat got out and walked back to Macbride. He put his head through the open window.

‘Willie's goin' to make sure of the road. The map doesn't show it.'

Willie had gone into Loughlin's lounge. The car with Gorman's number plate had been sighted under some trees on the old Reynard estate by a man out walking his dogs. But it was off the main road. Willie didn't buy cigarettes as Major Harvey had done. The same man was behind the bar, wiping it down with a wet cloth.

Willie said, ‘I'm lookin' for a place off Cloncarrig Road. Mount Reynard. D'ye know it?'

The man nodded. ‘I do,' he said. ‘You're the second asking about it today.'

Willie stiffened. ‘A woman, was it?'

‘Not at all.' The barman dismissed the suggestion. ‘A youngish fella. Lookin' for lead, he says. Lookin' to steal some, says I to meself. I told him the way. You wouldn't be after lead, would ye?'

‘No,' Willie answered. ‘Was he a dark sort of a fella?'

The barman put his rag below the counter. He didn't much like the type of a man, with his nasal Dublin way of speaking, and that nasty look in the eye.

‘Not dark at all,' he said. ‘More reddish. Is there anythin' you're wantin'?'

‘Only what I asked,' said Willie. ‘The best way to the place off the Cloncarrig Road.'

For a moment, Loughlin, who owned his own lounge and could heave a trouble-maker through the door if he had to, was tempted to tell him the wrong way. But he thought better of it. There was something about the man; he didn't like the look of him at all. He'd be the kind who'd come back. He gave directions, and watched Willie hurry out.

Macbride saw him coming towards the car.

‘There's someone else gone ahead of us,' he said. ‘A man, askin' the way.' He saw the question coming. ‘Not
him
. Ginger-haired, the man says. Askin' about lead.'

‘Why wouldn't it be true?' Macbride demanded.

Willie shook his head. ‘Ye heard the Doctor say. It's been empty for years. There'd not be a slate or a lead pipe left be now.'

Macbride narrowed his eyes for a moment. ‘Forewarned is forearmed,' he snapped. ‘Let's get goin'.'

They set off, and now Macbride eased his gun out from under the passenger seat and slipped it into his pocket. Another man asking the way to a derelict house on the same day. Coincidence? Maybe. Macbride didn't like coincidences. They usually meant that things went wrong.

It was a quarter to three; Neil Fraser had just come back from a visit to the Prime Minister. It was brief but sympathetic. The Prime Minister had been informed by the security services and was keeping in close touch. Major Harvey was an expert, and had in fact rescued a hostage in similar circumstances in the North. Neil said thank you, and pretended that he was optimistic, but he left the building with his head bowed and little optimism in his heart. He went back to his office, because he could be alone there.