Red Crystal (4 page)

‘Right,’ said one, ‘I have a warrant to search these premises …’ He rattled rapidly through the technicalities.

Gabriele watched incredulously. She’d never seen a small-minded bureaucratic Hitlerite in action before. It was unbelievable.

The second man pointed at Tobago. ‘You! Downstairs!’

Gabriele shouted, ‘Leave him alone. He’s done nothing!’

The first one turned in exaggerated surprise. ‘Oh? And how do you know that, love?’

The outrage shot through Gabriele. ‘Don’t you
love
me!’

The policeman took a step forward and said condescendingly, ‘Now, let’s be a good girl and get dressed.’

‘Not with you looking on, you dirty litttle man!’

‘Believe it or not, I wasn’t planning to watch,’ he said with heavy sarcasm. ‘Anyway, I didn’t think you lot minded that sort of thing.’

‘My God – ! Go to hell!’

She went to the bed and, slowly and deliberately, got in.

The first policeman sighed. Gesturing to the other man, the two of them got either side of the bed and pulled her out. Their hands were firm and uncompromising on her arms. Gabriele thought: I can’t take this.

She knew what she should do: stay
cool
. And for a moment she did manage to fight off the claustrophobia and stay passive. But then, as they pulled her to her feet, the panic rose in her, white hot and angry, and, catching them unawares, she pulled free and lashed out. There was a brief satisfying
ughh!
as her elbow hit soft flesh. She grabbed for her alarm clock, a heavy round metal one, and swung it through the air. It caught one man on the side of the head and his hand shot up to clutch the wound.

Then both men recovered from their surprise and their hands tightened like vices on her arms. She felt a new wave of panic and lashed out with her feet. But they were pushing her down and down, backwards. The bed came up against her back until she was lying helplessly on the mattress.

Suddenly a weight descended on her middle and with a shock she realized that one of them was
sitting
on her.

‘
Get off!
You bastard, get
off!
’

‘No chance,’ came the reply. ‘Not until you promise to come downstairs quietly.’

Gabriele felt the bitter taste of humiliation. She must look like a complete fool.

Four more people came into the room, including two women in plain clothes. One man started searching the room, but the others came over to the bed and regarded her coldly. She realized they were going to move her by force. One of the women asked, ‘Well, are you going to come quietly then?’

Gabriele shook with anger. ‘If you lay a hand on me, I’ll kill you.’

‘That’s not very sensible, is it?’ said the woman. Then, without another word, they went for her arms.

Ryder stood a little way up the street and waited impatiently. It was the right house, he was sure of that. Not only was it the only one with a purple door, but he’d checked on the place very carefully at six that morning, first with the newsagent on the corner, then with an early-rising neighbour. Both knew that the place was inhabited by hippy-type students. The
Ban the Bomb
and
US Out of Vietnam
posters in the windows had confirmed it.

Nevertheless the right address was no guarantee that the brick-lobbing Stephie would actually be there, and he watched the house impatiently.

He wondered what was taking so long. The raiding party – all Special Branch officers – should have got the inmates out by now.

Noise started coming from the house: shouts, some abusive language, and the crash of furniture. A moment’s silence then a long agonized scream echoed across the street. Ryder shivered. What the hell was going on in there?

The front door opened and Ryder stood back so that he wouldn’t be seen. First a black man was escorted down the steps and into a car. Ryder was surprised. There were no black activists in this group, neither had a black activist been seen at the demonstration. Next came a stream of ragged, jeans-clad individuals. Ryder counted ten of them. Good God, how many lived in the place? Finally a thin girl with long mousy hair and a flowered jacket came sullenly down the steps. Ryder allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation.
Stephie
. Perhaps she was the one who had screamed.

They were driven away. Ryder ran up the steps and into the house. The remainder of the raiding party would be searching the place by now, and he wanted to see if they had found anything in the way of political tracts and pamphlets.

He pushed open the door and nodded to the officer in the hall. The officer, a constable of about twenty-three, made a face and indicated upstairs. Another scream reverberated through the house and Ryder looked upwards.

A group of four officers, two of them women, were at the top of the stairs, descending slowly, a thrashing figure in their midst. All Ryder could see were some long bare legs kicking out wildly from behind the leading policeman. Then he glimpsed a head twisting from side to side, the long dark hair obliterating the face. The unsteady group finally reached the bottom of the stairs and Ryder stood back. In the space of the hall the group opened up and Ryder saw that the girl was tall and slender and that she was covered by nothing but a towel.

The girl sobbed and writhed and all of a sudden the towel was on the floor. Ryder had a momentary impression of a slim lithe body and a pair of firm white breasts. Then he looked away.

A male voice shouted viciously, ‘Leave that!’

Ryder looked back and saw that one of the women was reaching for the towel. The male voice snapped again, ‘
Leave that
! Just get her in the van!’

Ryder muttered ‘For Christsake …’ as the men half lifted the writhing body out of the door. The girl let out a long low moan, as if in pain, and then she was being carried down the steps and into the street in full view of the staring onlookers. At last she was bundled ignominiously into a police car, and handed back her towel. Ryder felt a spasm of shame.

The officer in the hall was nodding as if the whole thing was to be expected and Ryder realized that it hadn’t occurred to him to look the other way. Ryder asked, ‘Was that really necessary?’

The man regarded him with surprise. ‘She was resisting arrest, sarge. What do you expect the lads to do?’

‘I know, but …’ He shook his head.

‘Come on, sarge. She’s not shy. I mean it’s all free love for them, isn’t it?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Besides,
she
was shacked up with the West Indian. I mean …’ He gave a knowing wink.

Ryder sighed inwardly. Sometimes he thought he was in entirely the wrong job.

T
HE VALLEY LAY
behind the downs, a rich pocket of verdant pasture and tranquil woodland tucked between the long ridges of the chalk hills. A narrow road, no more than a lane, ran from the main Salisbury road down into the valley, arriving, after many twists and turns, at Cherbourne St Mary, a pretty unspoilt village built of soft grey Wiltshire stone and boasting a particularly fine early Gothic church.

Victoria Danby drove slowly through the village, which appeared to be totally deserted. But then it was Saturday, and still early. She glanced at the estate agent’s directions balanced on her knee. Another mile. At first she thought she’d missed the turning but then it appeared, a rough road off to the left with a large
For Sale
board on the corner.

The track was full of pot-holes and she had to weave the Mini from side to side to avoid the worst craters. She wondered if the estate agent would be there yet.

She angled the driving mirror towards her face and took a quick look. She grimaced in despair. Wild fair hair hopelessly frizzy, an undistinguished nose that she’d always disliked and far too many freckles. An angry spot on her right cheek glowed conspicuously through the cover-up stuff she’d applied that morning, and there were signs of another brewing on the other cheek. It was horribly unfair. Almost as unfair as eating nothing but one bowl of home-made muesli – no sugar, skimmed milk – twice a day and staying at a remorseless eleven stone.

The track ran between tantalizingly high hedgerows that hid the ploughed fields on either side, then threaded its way into the latticed shadows of a delicate woodland. Elms sprinkled with buds of palest green reached overhead in tall archways. As the end of the tunnel grew near Victoria caught a glimpse of sunlit meadows ahead, and then the Mini emerged into the open.

Victoria stopped the car and stared. She remembered the estate agent’s details – two lower pastures fed by a stream, two fields of cereals, and some medium-quality grazing on the higher land. Twenty acres in all. Not a lot. In fact it was more of a smallholding than a farm.

But the house!

It lay at the end of a small valley, just above the stream, and was bound on two sides by rising ground. She loved it instantly. It was built of mellow grey stone with two dormer windows set into a slate roof. According to the agent it was a hundred and fifty years old, but it looked as though it had been there for ever, staring serenely across the tranquil valley.

Victoria just
knew
the others would love it too.

She drove on. The track dropped down into the valley through rich pastureland, passed over the stream at a narrow stone bridge, and rose up to the house. She parked in front of the house on rough gravel and, getting out, wandered round to the side where various sheds and outbuildings surrounded a concrete yard. Beyond were hen houses and a kitchen garden full of overgrown vegetables. She strode past the garden and up the hill, climbing higher and higher until she paused, panting, near the top. From here it was possible to see the whole property spread out below. Small, yes – but it had everything they would need to be self-sufficient. Well,
almost.

High on the opposite side of the valley was the woodland through which she had driven. It had the effect of screening off the farm from the neighbouring property, making it somehow self-contained, almost
secret
. Victoria liked that.

In fact she liked everything about it.

At the same time she must be rational. It was a big decision. But if there was a catch, she couldn’t see it. There was work to be done, obviously, things like painting and clearing up and general repairs, but that was part of the attraction, part of the challenge. Anyway, with eight people to do the work nothing would take very long.

She strolled along the side of the hill, picking at wild spring flowers, basking in a sense of contentment and home-coming. This was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to her, she just
knew
it.

The stillness was broken by the sound of a car bouncing down the track to the house.

The estate agent. Victoria ran down the hill and found an earnest young man getting out of his car.

He stared at her and blinked in surprise. ‘Miss Danby?’

Victoria said a firm ‘Yes’, and realized he was taken aback by her age – or was it her clothes? Both probably. She looked younger than twenty-five and she was wearing one of her more psychedelic flower dresses. Doubtless he’d been expecting a farming type with brogues and a headscarf.

She said, ‘It was nice of you to come on a weekend.’ She offered him a spring violet. ‘Have a flower.’

The young man took the flower awkwardly, then nodded in a knowing way, as if the tiny violet gave a clue to Victoria’s appearance. News of the flower power movement had obviously reached this corner of Wiltshire.

They went into the house. The kitchen was dark and dirty, but Victoria was delighted to see that it had hardly been modernized at all. There was a coal-fired range, two stone sinks, a cool larder and, best of all, a large scrubbed kitchen table. The two living-rooms each had a ghastly thirties-style tiled fireplace, but these could soon be ripped out to reveal the originals underneath. Upstairs the four bedrooms had dark paint and gruesome wallpaper, but that could be stripped off in no time. Mentally she allotted the nicest bedroom to herself and Mel.

In the main hall was a door which led down some steep stone steps to a pair of large cellars, dark and cool, ideal for storing fruit and vegetables.

They went outside again. Victoria stood back and imagined the house in a year or so’s time. Inside, everything would be bare wood and bright paint and Indian rugs. In the outhouses they’d have their craft workshops and storage for the farm implements. On the land they’d have goats and pigs, a few cows, a field of vegetables, an orchard of fruit. They’d work hard all day, and have discussions in the evenings, and music and singing …

It would be a real community.

‘I’ll take it.’

‘Pardon?’ said the agent. ‘Er – you don’t want a survey … or a look at the yields?’

‘I’ll take it, just as it is.’ She smiled at her own rashness. Also at the pleasure in having surprised this rather straight-laced young man.

As she drove away she stopped and looked back.

Hunter’s Wood. That was its name.

Hunter’s Wood. Still and benign in the clear morning light.

She thought: I love it already.