Fleet hit her then, with his open hand, deliberately and yet not too hard. He took pleasure in weighing and measuring the blow nicely, to jerk back her head and send a jarring shock down her spine without, as yet, doing her any damage. And Bunty laughed.
“You think you can open my mouth that way? I should have to find living more uncomfortable than dying before I’d be driven to talk. And I like living. I’ll put up with a lot for it. By the time you’d got me to the amenable stage, I should be incapable of telling you. anything at all. I’m not the kind that dies easily. Either way, you’ll never know.”
Luke, crumpled at her feet, heaved a deeper breath into him, and moaned. Ignoring the guns, Bunty slid from her place and crouched upon the parquet beside him. She lifted his head into her lap, and stroked back his lank hair. A spasm dragged his face awry for a moment, and smoothed out again into the indifference of unconsciousness.
“Boss,” said Blackie in a low voice, “I reckon you’d be wasting time on her. I don’t believe she knows. He’d never trust her that far. Damn it, he only picked her up last night, on the run. It’s
She gathered the limp body more closely into her lap, arched over him jealously. Let them think that, by all means, until Luke showed signs of coming round. Until then, he was safe. There was nothing they could do to him, and nothing effective they could do to her. To keep silence might be a slow sentence of death, but to speak was instant death, and between the two there was not much doubt of her preference. Time, if it took sides at all, was on her side, hers and Luke’s. Things become very simple when you have no choice, when there’s nothing left for you but to endure as long as you can, and survive if you can.
“Get him round, then,” Fleet spat viciously. “Pour cold water on him, anything, only bring him round, quick.”
Bunty laid her hand on Luke’s forehead, holding him at rest, willing him to remain absent.
“
Bunty uttered a brief, furious cry, and flung herself across Luke’s helpless form, spreading her own arm and shoulder to ward off the blow. The face that glared up at Fleet, with bared teeth and flashing eyes, was the face of the antique woman that Caesar respected, the red-haired Celtic Amazon who emerged at need to fight shoulder to shoulder with her menfolk, huge, noble and daunting. Bunty’s Welsh ancestry went back beyond the small dark men. She saw Fleet start back from her in astonishment, almost in dread, so unused was he to people who forget to be afraid. She saw the gun in his hand prick up like a live snake, its cold eye fending her off; and she laughed, staring it down defiantly, with Luke gathered close into her arms from harm.
“Go ahead, then, shoot! Shoot, and then hunt for your money till your heart bursts, and much good may it do you,
His mouth fell slack, he drew back from her a step in almost superstitious recoil; and in the moment of stricken silence they all heard Quilley’s voice calling down the well of the stairs in agitation, and trailing a hollow echo after it :
“Boss… boss! There’s a boat-load of men coming in towards the inlet. They’ve put out their lights… they’re coming in to land…!”
Fleet turned and rushed to the window, dragging the curtains aside and craning to see down into the inlet, to the faint phosphorescent glow that was the sea, palpitating and shimmering with almost imperceptible movement. Skinner, who was nearest to the door, made for the stairs and went up them three at a time. Crouched on the floor with Luke inert in her arms, Bunty heard their footsteps crossing the boards overhead, Skinner rapid and blunt, Quilley dragging like a crippled beast, crossing and re-crossing from front windows to rear, and back again. Con and Blackie crowded to the window behind Fleet’s hulking shoulders, peering, straining their eyes, holding their breath.
They had forgotten her. In a moment of time everything had gone into reverse. She could have risen and walked out at the front door, and she felt that no one would ever have noticed. Fear, anger and stress withdrew and stood at gaze, distant in the dark corners of the room, still present but now almost dreamlike, unable to touch the island where she kneeled with Luke’s heavy head in her arms. She made no move, she said nothing, she had no conscious thoughts; there was no longer any need for her to think or act, and because there was no more need, suddenly she had no more power.
Distantly, like something remembered, she heard Skinner’s voice calling urgently down the well of the stairs:
“Boss, they’re over the other side, too… among the trees, five or six of ’em…”
There had been no sound of a car, no glimpse of headlights. They had drawn in as silently as the night itself; so they knew what kind of hunt this was, and what to expect when they sprang the trap. Could this be all on account of Rosamund Chartley and her mythical address in Hereford?
There was a hoarse, muted shout overhead, a rush for the stairs. Skinner came bounding down in three stumbling leaps, fending himself off from walls and furniture with flailing arms.
“Boss, it’s the police! We better get out of here fast… they’re all round us…”
A sudden pale eye of light stroked its way down the wall, dimmed and diffused by the drawn curtains, probing at the window and passing in absolute silence. In a moment they saw it through the open door of the living-room, spilled in a lace of pallor on the floor of the hall, patterned by the frosted glass in the front door. When it passed from there, there would be darkness across the stretch of gravel to where the Jaguar stood in the shelter of the trees, turned and ready to run.
“That’s it, then,” Fleet said in a clipped whisper, meant for no ears but his own, though Bunty heard it with the exaggerated clarity of voices in dreams. He knew the game was up. He knew when to throw in his hand.
The light passed on from the hall, and left the front door in darkness again.
“Now!” hissed Fleet. “
And out they went, tumbling, jostling, thrusting, all in something so like silence that their flight became more dreamlike than their lingering. Fleet was first out of the door, fast and light on his feet, a man well named; and after him Blackie, hurtling like a terrier, Con, outlined for a moment in the doorway all arms and legs, Skinner pounding along heavily in the rear and rolling like a half-filled barrel. All the darkling crew streamed out across the open court before the cottage, night-birds startled from their carrion. Bunty sat dazed with all the accumulated weariness of a night and a day, and listened to their flight.
