‘Gawd, we’re going to lose him!’
Gently sensed the danger and trod on the accelerator. The traffic lights blinked red but the road was clear, and the Humber soared through like an angry tiger. On the far side there was an S-bend ending in a murderous corner, and Gently, tempting providence, passed three vehicles while negotiating it. Then the road stretched away clear again up a long incline; once more they had the traffic ahead under surveillance.
‘He’s blinking gone and lost us, sir!’
It was woefully apparent. There was nothing now lying between the red-and-black car and the Zephyr.
‘He may have opened her out…’
Gently kept the Humber sailing, but at the top of the rise, from which a long stretch was visible, there was still no sign of the majestic green Bentley.
Viciously Gently braked and reversed into a fieldgate.
‘Get on to headquarters — tell them to put a net round Swardham!’
‘He didn’t turn into the town, sir…’
‘I know — which leaves two directions. Either he went south by that by-road we’ve passed or north at the T- junction — we take our pick!’
‘After the lights I never saw him again.’
‘We’ll take a chance and try the T-junction.’
Again he had to shoot the lights, this time creating no little chaos. A constable came running and waving his hands, but subsided into a breathless salute as he recognized the car.
The junction road led to Fosterham and contained very light traffic. Gently set his foot down and saw the speedometer needle straying over ninety. On either side flashed by stony fields reclaimed from heathy breckland; a plantation in the distance loomed a long time against the sky.
Then they came to a fork, right beside the plantation. The Fosterham road continued to the right, to the left a minor road extended to Castle Ashton.
‘Here — you over the hedge!’
The luck of good detectives was with him. A farm-worker had halted his team and drill to take a swig from a bottle of cold tea.
‘Have you seen a green Bentley go past this way?’
‘A big ole car-?’
‘Yes, that’d be it.’
‘Come by a coupla minutes ago — slowed to look at the signpost.’
‘Which way did it go?’
‘W’ up there to Ash’n Castle.’
The Humber ripped away in a flurry of gear-changes. Ahead the inevitable square church-tower rose proudly from a long, high ridge of land. On the left, surprising and spectral, stood a group of remains of some ecclesiastical building; opposite to them, appended to the ridge, brooded massive and bosky earthworks. Between the two lay the village, lifting embattled up the slope.
They crossed a stream which might have served as a moat and swung up through the houses of mellowed local brick. At the top was a flint gateway and beyond it the village green. Parked there, but empty, stood Pershore’s handsome car.
‘Where can I find the owner of this car?’
Here there were several informants, two of them women stood gossiping with their prams.
‘Didn’t he go up that way… towards the castle?’
‘That’s right, mister. That’s where you’ll find him.’
From the green a narrow lane led between a brick chapel and the wall of a private garden. Twisting over a bank, it plunged suddenly into the tree- and bush-choked castle ditch, some seventy feet deep, and could be seen fretting its way up the huge mound on the other side.
‘Quiet now — listen!’
Pershore couldn’t be very far ahead. At the most, he would just have had time to climb the earthwork, and might now be amongst the bushes and fragments of masonry which crowned it. Distantly, from further round the mound, came the bleating of tethered goats.
‘Follow me now — but keep it quiet!’
He went down the path half-walking, half-sliding. At the bottom it was curiously silent and airless, as though they had got to the bottom of a well. Going up the mound it was impossible not to make some noise. In places it was almost perpendicular, and one had to pull oneself along by the bushes and scrub.
Then, at the top, they were faced by the remains of a flint-rubble wall, with a fissure running through it just wide enough to scrape past. His head poking round it, Gently froze to a standstill. Either they were too early… or else they were too late!
From his vantage point he commanded the whole interior of the mound, a hollow amphitheatre sunk some thirty feet below the perimeter. To the south it fell away in a steep, bush-filled ravine, being protected at a lower level by outworks and the river. The wall which topped the perimeter was in places still substantial, and inside it ran a rough path a few feet in width. It was on this path that Pershore was standing only a short distance from the fissure; near him, but not too near, stood the elusive James Roscoe… a German Army-pattern Mauser sitting snugly in his hand.
‘You don’t have to look surprised, cock!’
Roscoe was a big man in his forties with a swarthy complexion and greasy dark-brown hair. He was wearing a green mixture Harris-tweed suit the jacket of which seemed tight across his shoulders.
‘Cor luvvus — what did you expect, after knocking off Punchy and Steinie? This is the way I trust you, matey, wiv the safety catch off and one up the spout! And if I let me finger slip it’s only taking bread from the hangman.’
He’d got the whip hand and he knew it, but he wasn’t going to let the knowledge betray him into an indiscretion.
‘Steinie, he was easy, wasn’t he? Never even took a razor wiv him, poor little bastard! Then there was Punchy, big but stupid — he could handle you, Punchy could!
‘But now it’s me, who’s big but not stupid, and what’s more, I’ve brought a little clincher wiv me. So this time it’s a deal, and you can thank your lucky stars — because if the bogeys ever gets me, matey, your number is up just as sure as Mick the Miller.
‘You’re not going to sit here stewing in lolly while Jimmy Roscoe rots in Wandsworth!’
‘There’s no need to be offensive, my man.’
It was almost a shock to hear Pershore being so coolly himself in such a situation. His back was turned to Gently, but his attitude was unmistakable; it was that of a leading citizen forced into distasteful conversation.
‘You’re no cleverer than your friends, as I think you’re going to find. And just be good enough to remember who it is you’re talking to.’
‘Who I’m flipping talking to!’
Roscoe sounded as though he couldn’t believe his ears.
‘That’s what I said. You’re talking to the next Mayor of Lynton. However smart you think you’re being, you’ll kindly bear that in mind.’
Was it shrewdness on Pershore’s part or couldn’t he really help it? Roscoe, his eyes narrowing, obviously thought the latter.
‘Oh, no you don’t, old cock!’
The Mauser prodded forward.
‘It’ll take a better man than you-’
‘Say “sir” when you speak to me.’
‘For your own good I’m telling you-’
‘I will have a proper respect!’
It was either madness or a naive form of cunning. Roscoe now was wavering, uncertain which to believe.
‘Cut it out, will you — let’s get down to business!’
‘First, my man, you will acknowledge who you’re doing it with.’
