The Tightrope Men / The Enemy (5 page)

The walls of the tunnel were a blur and the lights flicked by and he caught sight of an illuminated number 5. Four more circuits to go before the bottom. The car jolted and pitched suddenly and he fought the wheel which had taken on a life of its own. It did it again and he heard a nasty sound from the rear. He was being rammed. There was another sound as sheet metal ripped and the car slewed across the whole width of the tunnel.

He heard - and felt - the crunch as the rear off-side of the car slammed into the opposite wall, but Denison was not particularly worried about the property of the Hertz Company at that moment because he saw the dipped headlights of a vehicle coming up the Spiralen towards him. He juggled madly with wheel, clutch and accelerator and shot off to the other side of the tunnel again, scraping across the front of the tour bus that was coming up. There was a brief vignette of the driver of the bus, his mouth open and his eyes staring, and then he was gone.

The front fender scraped along the nearside tunnel wall in a shower of sparks and Denison wrenched the wheel over and nearly clipped the rear of the bus as it went by. He wobbled crazily from side to side of the tunnel for about a hundred and fifty yards before he had proper control, and it was only by the grace of God that the bus had not been the first in a procession of vehicles.

Level 2 passed in a flash and a flicker of light in Denison’s eyes, reflected from the rear-view mirror, told him that the car behind had also avoided the bus and was catching up again. He increased speed again and the tyres protested noisily with a rending squeal; the whole of the
Spiralen would be filled with the stench of burning rubber.

Level 1. A brightness ahead warned of the approach of another vehicle and Denison tensed his muscles, but the tunnel straightened and he saw it was the daylight of the exit. He rammed down his foot and the car surged forward and came out of the tunnel like a shell from a gun. The feecollector threw up his arms and jumped aside as the car shot past him. Denison screwed up his eyes against the sudden bright glare of sunlight and hurtled down the hill towards the main street of Drammen at top speed.

At the bottom of the hill he jammed on his brakes and wrenched the wheel sideways. The car heeled violently as it turned the corner and the tyres screamed again, leaving black rubber on the road. Then he literally stood on the brake pedal, rising in his seat, to avoid ploughing into a file of the good people of Drammen crossing the street at a traffic light. The car’s nose sank and the rear came up as it juddered to a halt, just grazing the thigh of a policeman who stood in the middle of the road with his back to Denison.

The policeman turned, his face expressionless. Denison sagged back into his seat and twisted his head to look back along the road. He saw the pursuing car break the other way and head down the road at high speed out of Drammen.

The policeman knocked on the car window and Denison wound it down to be met by a blast of hot Norwegian. He shook his head, and said loudly, ‘I have no Norwegian. Do you speak English?’

The policeman halted in mid-spate with his mouth open. He shut it firmly, took a deep breath, and said, ‘What you think you do?’

Denison pointed back. ‘It was those damn fools. I might have been killed.’

The policeman stood back and did a slow circumnavigation of the car, inspecting it carefully. Then he tapped on the window of the passenger side and Denison opened the door. The policeman got in. ‘Drive!’ he said.

When Denison pulled up outside the building marked POLISI and switched off the engine the policeman firmly took the car key from him and waved towards the door of the building. ‘Inside!’

It was a long wait for Denison. He sat in a bare room under the cool eye of a Norwegian policeman, junior grade, and meditated on his story. If he told the truth then the question would arise:
Who would want to attack an Englishman called Meyrick?
That would naturally lead to:
Who is this Meyrick?
Denison did not think he could survive long under questions like that. It would all come out and the consensus of opinion would be that they had a right nut-case on their hands, and probably homicidal at that. They would have to be told something other than the strict truth.

He waited an hour and then the telephone rang. The young policeman answered briefly, put down the telephone, and said to Denison, ‘Come!’

He was taken to an office where a senior policeman sat behind a desk. He picked up a pen and levelled it at a chair. ‘Sit!’

Denison sat, wondering if the English conversation of the Norwegian police was limited to one word at a time. The officer poised his pen above a printed form. ‘Name?’

‘Meyrick,’ said Denison. ‘Harold Feltham Meyrick.’

‘Nationality?’

‘British.’

The officer extended his hand, palm upwards. ‘Passport.’ It was not a question.

Denison took out his passport and put it on the outstretched palm. The officer flicked through the pages, then put it down and stared at Denison with eyes like chips of
granite. ‘You drove through the streets of Drammen at an estimated speed of 140 kilometres an hour. I don’t have to tell you that is in excess of the speed limit. You drove through the Spiralen at an unknown speed - certainly less than 140 kilometres otherwise we would have the distasteful task of scraping you off the walls. What is your explanation?’

Denison now knew what a Norwegian policeman sounded like in an extended speech in the English language, and he did not particularly relish it. The man’s tone was scathing. He said, ‘There was a car behind me. The driver was playing silly buggers.’ The officer raised his eyebrows, and Denison said, ‘I think they were teenage hooligans out to throw a scare into someone - you know how they are. They succeeded with me. They rammed me a couple of times and I had to go faster. It all led on from that.’

He stopped and the officer stared at him with hard, grey eyes but said nothing. Denison let the silence lengthen, then said slowly and clearly, ‘I would like to get in touch with the British Embassy immediately.’

The officer lowered his eyes and consulted a typewritten form. ‘The condition of the rear of your car is consistent with your story. There was another car. It has been found abandoned. The condition of the front of that car is also consistent with your story. The car we found had been stolen last night in Oslo.’ He looked up. ‘Do you want to make any changes in your statement?’

‘No,’ said Denison.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

The officer stood up, the passport in his hand. ‘Wait here.’ He walked out.

Denison waited another hour before the officer came back. He said, ‘An official from your Embassy is coming to be present while you prepare your written statement.’

‘I see,’ said Denison. ‘What about my passport?’

‘That will be handed to the Embassy official. Your car we will keep here for spectrographic tests of the paintwork. If there has been transfer of paint from one car to another it will tend to support your statement. In any event, the car cannot be driven in its present condition; both indicator lights are smashed - you would be breaking the law.’

Denison nodded. ‘How long before the Embassy man gets here?’

‘I cannot say. You may wait here.’ The officer went away.

Denison waited for two hours. On complaining of hunger, food and coffee were brought to him on a tray. Otherwise he was left alone except for the doctor who came in to dress an abrasion on the left side of his forehead. He dimly remembered being struck by a tree branch on the chase along the trail, but did not correct the doctor who assumed it had occurred in the Spiralen. What with one thing and another, the left side of Meyrick’s face was taking quite a beating; any photographs had better be of the right profile.

He said nothing about the wound in his side. While alone in the office he had checked it quickly. That knife must have been razor sharp; it had sliced through his topcoat, his jacket, the sweater and into his side, fortunately not deeply. The white sweater was red with blood but the wound, which appeared clean, had stopped bleeding although it hurt if he moved suddenly. He left it alone.

At last someone came - a dapper young man with a fresh face who advanced on Denison with an outstretched hand. ‘Dr Meyrick - I’m George McCready, I’ve come to help you get out of this spot of trouble.’

Behind McCready came the police officer, who drew up another chair and they got down to the business of the written statement. The officer wanted it amplified much more than in Denison’s bald, verbal statement so he obligingly
told all that had happened from the moment he had entered the Spiralen tunnel on top of Bragernesasen. He had no need to lie about anything. His written statement was taken away and typed up in quadruplicate and he signed all four copies, McCready countersigning as witness.

McCready cocked his eye at the officer. ‘I think that’s all.’

The officer nodded. ‘That’s all - for the moment. Dr Meyrick may be required at another time. I trust he will be available.’

‘Of course,’ said McCready easily. He turned to Denison. ‘Let’s get you back to the hotel. You must be tired.’

They went out to McCready’s car. As McCready drove out of Drammen Denison was preoccupied with a problem. How did McCready know to address him as ‘Doctor’? The designation on his passport was just plain ‘Mister’. He stirred and said, ‘If we’re going to the hotel I’d like to have my passport. I don’t like to be separated from it.’

‘You’re not going to the hotel,’ said McCready. ‘That was for the benefit of the copper. I’m taking you to the Embassy. Carey flew in from London this morning and he wants to see you.’ He laughed shortly. ‘
How
he wants to see you.’

Denison felt the water deepening. ‘Carey,’ he said in a neutral tone, hoping to stimulate conversation along those lines. McCready had dropped Carey’s name casually as though Meyrick was supposed to know him. Who the devil was Carey?

McCready did not bite. ‘That explanation of yours wasn’t quite candid, was it?’ He waited for a reaction but Denison kept his mouth shut. ‘There’s a witness - a waitress from the Spiraltoppen - who said something about a fight up there. It seems there was a man with a gun. The police are properly suspicious.’

When Denison would not be drawn McCready glanced sideways at him, and laughed. ‘Never mind, you did the right thing under the circumstances. Never talk about guns
to a copper - it makes them nervous. Mind you, the circumstances should never have arisen. Carey’s bloody wild about that.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t say that I blame him.’

It was gibberish to Denison and he judged that the less he said the better. He leaned back, favouring his injured side, and said, ‘I’m tired.’

‘Yes,’ said McCready. ‘I suppose you must be.’

Denison was kept kicking his heels in an ante-room in the Embassy while McCready went off, presumably to report. After fifteen minutes he came back. ‘This way, Dr Meyrick.’

Denison followed him along a corridor until McCready stopped and politely held open a door for him. ‘You’ve already met Mr Carey, of course.’

The man sitting behind the desk could only be described as square. He was a big, chunky man with a square, head topped with close-cut grizzled grey hair. He was broadchested and squared off at the shoulders, and his hands were big with blunt fingers. ‘Come in, Dr Meyrick.’ He nodded at McCready. ‘All right, George; be about your business.’

McCready closed the door. ‘Sit down, Doctor,’ said Carey. It was an invitation, not a command. Denison sat in the chair on the other side of the desk and waited for a long time while Carey inspected him with an inscrutable face.

After a long time Carey sighed. ‘Dr Meyrick, you were asked not to stray too far from your hotel and to keep strictly to central Oslo. If you wanted to go farther afield you were asked to let us know so that we could make the necessary arrangements. You see, our manpower isn’t infinite.’

His voice rose. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t have been
asked
; maybe you should have been
told.
’ He seemed to hold
himself in with an effort, and lowered his voice again. ‘So I fly in this morning to hear that you’re missing, and then I’m told that you isolated yourself on a mountain top - for what reason only you know.’

He raised his hand to intercept interruption. Denison did not mind; he was not going to say anything, anyway.

‘All right,’ said Carey. ‘I know the story you told the local coppers. It was a good improvisation and maybe they’ll buy it and maybe they won’t.’ He put his hands flat on the desk. ‘Now what really happened?’

‘I was up there walking through the woods,’ said Denison, ‘when suddenly a man attacked me.’

‘Description?’

‘Tall. Broad. Not unlike you in build, but younger. He had black hair. His nose was broken. He had something in his hand - he was going to hit me with it. Some sort of cosh, I suppose.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I laid him out,’ said Denison.

‘
You
laid him out,’ said Carey in a flat voice. There was disbelief in his eye.

‘I laid him out,’ said Denison evenly. He paused. ‘I was a useful boxer at one time.’

Carey frowned and drummed his fingers. ‘Then what happened?’

‘Another man was coming at me from behind, so I ran for it.’

‘Wise man - some of the time, anyway. And…?’

‘Another man intercepted me from the front.’

‘Describe him.’

‘Shortish - about five foot seven - with a rat-face and a long nose. Dressed in jeans and a blue jersey. He had a knife.’

‘He had a knife, did he?’ said Carey. ‘So what did you do about that?’

‘Well, the other chap was coming up behind fast - I didn’t have much time to think - so I charged the joker with the knife and sold him the dummy at the last moment’

‘You
what
?’

‘I sold him the dummy. It’s a rugby expression meaning…’

‘I know what it means,’ snapped Carey. ‘I suppose you were a useful rugby player at one time, too.’

‘That’s right,’ said Denison.

Carey bent his head and put his hand to his brow so that his face was hidden. He seemed to be suppressing some strong emotion. ‘What happened next?’ he asked in a muffled voice.

‘By that time I’d got back to the car park - and there was another man.’

‘Another man,’ said Carey tiredly. ‘Description.’

‘Not much. I think he wore a grey suit He had a gun.’

‘Escalating on you, weren’t they?’ said Carey. His voice was savage. ‘So what did you do then?’

‘I was in the car by the time I saw the gun and I got out of there fast and…’

‘And did a Steve McQueen through the Spiralen, roared through Drammen like an express train and butted a copper in the arse.’

‘Yes,’ said Denison simply. ‘That about wraps it up.’

‘I should think it does,’ said Carey. He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘Regardless of the improbability of all this, I’d still like to know why you went to Drammen in the first place, and why you took the trouble to shake off any followers before leaving Oslo.’

‘Shake off followers,’ said Denison blankly. ‘I didn’t know I was being followed.’

‘You know now. It was for your own protection. But my man says he’s never seen such an expert job of shaking a tail
in his life. You were up to all the tricks. You nearly succeeded twice, and you did succeed the third time.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Denison. ‘I lost my way a couple of times, that’s all.’

Carey took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. ‘You lost your way,’ he breathed. His voice became deep and solemn. ‘Dr Meyrick: can you tell me why you lost your way when you know this area better than your own county of Buckinghamshire? You showed no signs of losing your way when you went to Drammen last week.’

Denison took the plunge. ‘Perhaps it’s because I’m not Dr Meyrick.’

Carey whispered, ‘
What did you say?
’