The Grass Widow's Tale

safety would keep him back, because thought had nothing to do with his processes.

The giggler could have passed for normal any time he liked. He was big and rosy, and looked like a country butcher, well-fleshed but not yet run to fat. There was nothing at all suspect about him, except the slightly hysterical pitch of his laughter.

And the other man, the one who had been posted well down the rock path to intercept them, sat hunched in one of the big chairs now, with his left trouser-leg rolled up above the knee, painfully sponging at his calf, where Luke’s shot had torn its way straight through to ricochet from the rock behind. He had bled a lot, the water in the bowl at his feet was red. He pawed self-pityingly at the thick white flesh, and took no notice of what the others were doing. The giggler had fetched down gauze and wool and a bandage for him from the bathroom cupboard, and the victim was totally absorbed in nursing his wound. And indeed, thought Bunty, eyeing the damage, he must have been in a good deal of pain. When he had finished his bandaging, and got up gingerly to try his weight on the injured leg, all he could manage was a slow hobble, clinging to the furniture for support.

He was the biggest of them, and the oldest, a massive, muscular person with a white, sad, fleshy face. His hair was receding, and his expression was anxious and defensive. The small dark one had called him Quilley. There was something odd in the attitude of the younger ones to him, the way they left him out of their calculations, or included him only as an afterthought. Or perhaps it was not so odd, in such a world as theirs, that a man’s stock should crash when he’s disabled, or has got the worst of an encounter. He was a doubtful asset now, and a potential liability. Some wild animals, the kind that hunt in packs, kill off their injured or infirm members, as some sort of measure of social hygiene.

“It’s here, though,” said the small dark man with certainty. “It’s here somewhere. Either we find it, or he tells us where. The place ain’t that big. You sure about the car, then, Skinner?”

“I’m sure,” said the giggler cheerfully, spinning the garage key round his finger with absent-minded dexterity. “Clean as a whistle.”

“You didn’t miss out on anywhere? Under the back seat? Down the upholstery?”

“I didn’t miss out on anything. There’s nothing there.”

“What you wasting time for?” the boy with the levelled gun demanded querulously, without removing his unwinking stone gaze from his charges. “I could get it out of him easy. Or her!” The flick of excitement on the last word indicated that he would rather prefer that alternative. Bunty supposed that in its obscene fashion it was a compliment, but if so, it was one she could well have done without. She could feel Luke’s muscles stiffening beside her, his whole body rigid with anxiety. She cast one glance at him, and found his fixed profile almost too still. The cheek nearer to her was bruised and soiled. His mouth was drawn and stiff with fear for her.

“Yeah, I know!” said the dark man sardonically. “And all at once we got no clues and no witness. If anybody shuts this one’s mouth for good, it ain’t going to be while I’m in charge. Think the boss’d wear that from anybody but himself? Sooner you than me, mate! But till he gets here, you take orders from me, and my orders are, lay off. OK?”

“Well, OK, Blackie, it’s all one to me. I’m only saying…”

“You always are. Quit saying, and just keep your eye on ’em, that’s all, while we take this room apart.” He cast a long look round the airy living-room, and ended eye-to-eye with Luke. He wasn’t expecting anything to come easily, but he went through the motions of asking. “You could make it easy on yourself and us, kid. In the end you may have to, you know that? What did you do with the money?”

“What money?” said Luke.

Skinner, dismantling the drawers of the writing-desk one by one, giggled on his unnerving high note. “Get that! He knows nothing about any money. What money!”

“All right,” said Blackie, sighing. “You want it the hard way, you can have it. We’ve got time. But don’t say I didn’t ask you nicely. If you think better of it, just say, any time. We’re going to find it in the end.”

And they set to work to find it, emptying books from the shelves, letters from the bureau, rolling back the rugs for loose blocks in the parquet, but discovering none. They took the living-room to pieces and put it together again, neatly and rapidly but without haste, with the thoroughness of long practice. But they found nothing of interest. And Bunty and Luke, so close to each other that their arms brushed at every slight movement, sat and watched the search with narrow attention, and kept silent. They had nothing to say in these circumstances, even to each other. They hardly ventured to look at each other, for fear even that exchange should give something away. Yet something had passed between them, tacitly and finally. Neither of them would dream of giving in, unless or until the case was beyond hope. Perhaps not even then; they were both stubborn people. He didn’t know what Bunty had done with the parcel of notes, but if she’d had the presence of mind to hide it even out there in the dark, pursued and ambushed as they’d been, then she certainly wasn’t going to give away its whereabouts now without the toughest of struggles. And Luke couldn’t because he didn’t know.

“Clean as wax-polish in here,” concluded Blackie, looking round the room. “Let’s have a go at the kitchen.”

The kitchen, compact though it was, was full of fitments that would keep them busy for quite a while. Blackie sized up the job in one frowning stare, and jerked his head at the youth guarding the prisoners.

“Hey, you, Con… hand over to Quilley and come and give us a hand here.”

“What, and leave nobody but him between this lot and the front door?” Con said disrespectfully. “With the lock broke? Or did you forget?”

With impassive faces and strained senses Bunty and Luke filed away for reference one more scrap of information that might, just might, with a lot of luck, be relevant and useful. They’d had to break the lock to get in. The bolts hadn’t been shot, so there might still be those to contend with, supposing a chance ever offered; but on the whole it was unlikely that they would have bothered to shoot them home now. They were expecting the boss; and the boss sounded the sort of man who would expect all doors to open before him without delay.

“Watch it!” said Blackie, without personal animosity. “You’re nearly too fly to live with, these days, you are. So if he can’t sprint, he’ll still have a gun, won’t he?”

“Yes, and instructions not to do any real damage with it!”

Con talked too much for his own good. That little weakness might have been there to be discovered in any case, but there’d been no need to spell it out and underline it. For the sake of the information they—or one of them— held, Bunty and Luke must at all costs be preserved alive until they had confided it. Once the secret had been prised out of them, of course, they were expendable enough.