alone. You don’t think I
‘You don’t have to.’ Bossie was backing cautiously away along the rope, feeling his way. Not that it was going to do him much good even if he could dodge round to the other side and make a dash for the door, because he had watched his enemy withdraw and pocket the keys. ‘Nobody’s making you do anything. And if you know what’s good for you you won’t try, because my friends who were here with me this afternoon are coming back for me. They’ll be here any minute, you won’t have time to get away.’
‘What a hope!’ said his enemy with a tired and petulant smile. ‘You’ve made it clear enough that nobody knows where you are, and nobody’s going to know where you disappear from. I’ve got plenty of time.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. There are five of them who know exactly where I am, and if I don’t show up again they’re going to tell…’
He wasn’t believed, of course. There was no way of making that story convincing now. And he had reached the place where the piled junk and the hand-cart narrowed the way, and was feeling his way blindly past the obstructions when his foot slipped over the edge of the excavated section, and slight though the drop was, it threw him off balance. He fell against the rope, and rolled under it, and then a large hand had him by the back of his blazer, hauled him upright, and slammed him against the stone wall, and its fellow was clamped over his mouth just too late to suppress a single yell of indignation, rage and terror.
As if that one shout had set off a chain reaction of unnerving assaults upon the silence of the night, there was a sudden thunderous salvo of knocks on the locked door, a violent rattling of the handle, and a peremptory voice ordering: ‘Open up in there! This is the police! We’re here in force, you can’t get away. Unlock this door!’
Silence again, absolute silence. No querulous baritone and no reedy, wavering treble to be heard now inside the long room, not the least sound of movement or even breathing. Outside the door George leaned with an ear against the wood, straining to hear if any indication of struggle or distress stirred within, but there was nothing. Behind him Sam and Toby stood painfully still.
Presently George began to talk, clearly, reasonably, deliberately, without haste.
‘We know you’re in there now. We know the boy is with you. We know there’s no one else in there. Whatever happens to him will be your doing, no one else’s. Your responsibility. Think about it! What a fool you’d be to harm him now! You can’t get away. Touch him, and you destroy yourself. Only the desperate do that, and why should your case be desperate? You’re a reasoning man, you can see what’s in your own best interests. It’s only a matter of time, why prolong it? You may as well open the door now, it will make no difference in the end, and spare you and us a great deal of trouble. Mitigating circumstances always count.’
Between sentences he waited, but still silence, never a word in reply. A slightly less intense silence and stillness in there, perhaps, the faint suggestion of slight movements, of people breathing, even the stealthy suggestion of furious thought. But no words.
‘If you harm that boy, you’re done for, you understand that, don’t you? Up to now you’re not in any desperate case, are you? But there’d be no shadow of doubt about that, and you’d pay for it to the limit. Why not see reason? To start with, prove you haven’t harmed him already. That will be something in your favour. Let him speak! Just enough to say: Yes, I’m here, yes, I’m all right. Bossie, are you listening?’
If there was the kind of response a gagged mouth can make, it was barely loud enough to reach the listeners straining their ears outside the door, but there was something else, a sudden sharp crack, as though a foot had back-heeled stone, and then a suppressed gasp and the brief flutter of a very unequal struggle, instantly suppressed. Then silence again.
‘Get Grainger,’ said George in a whisper, and one of the constables slipped away. ‘Jack, take a look at those windows – though I think they’re too high and too small to be any use. And, Sam, could you bear to go back to Jenny, and try to keep her there, out of this? Leave us to do what can be done, you know we’ll stick at nothing to get him out. You look after Jenny.’
‘Yes, I’ll go.’ There was nothing Sam had been able to do so far but stand and listen and suffer. And if nobody told Jenny anything pretty soon, she’d be coming to find out. He felt his way quietly along the wall to the archway, and departed.
‘He is there,’ Toby whispered. ‘I think he’s still OK. He couldn’t use his tongue, but he used his feet. That’s Bossie! He won’t hurt him now, surely! What good would it do him?’
None, true enough. But these cases who get themselves into a state of siege, with hostages, sometimes take their revenge on the world that way. It made no sense, no. Bossie might be more than half the case against Rainbow’s murderer, if it came to a charge, but where that left the killer at least a chance of acquittal and freedom after trial, killing Bossie now would leave him no chance at all. But that was an argument of reason, not of spite, and spite can argue, too. All they could do was go on talking to him in reasonable terms, urging his best interests on him, talking him into exhaustion, if need be, but never into frenzy.
‘All right, we can afford to wait. You can’t get away. But what are you gaining? You may as well come out now, and spare yourself some uncomfortable hours. We’re patient people, we shan’t tire and go away.’
Sergeant Grainger came, placidly muting his skeleton keys, a big man stepping as lightly as a cat. And hard on his heels came Barbara and Willie the Twig, asking no questions, already apprised of what was happening. That was an idea! Perhaps Barbara’s voice, coming unexpectedly, might jolt the young man within out of another fragment of confidence and resolution, make him more amenable to reason, if not to resignation. George drew her aside to let Grainger come to the lock.
‘Barbara, we’re going in, and I want to keep the operation covered and his attention distracted while we deal with the lock. You try talking to him, he’s not expecting you.’ Getting in might be a ticklish moment, but they would have to play it as cautiously as possible, no rushing their quarry into panic.
She asked in a whisper: ‘Is it John Stubbs?’
‘Seems so. He’s nowhere else to be found. Try it! Keep talking gently till we get through.’
Her voice was one of her particular beauties, deep, clear, slightly husky, an admirer could never mistake it for any other. She stood pressed against the hinged side of the door while Grainger worked, handling his tools gently, without a sound, until metal edged metal inside the lock.
‘John, is that really you in there? This is Barbara. John, that’s a friend of mine you’ve got in there with you, and I want him safe, you wouldn’t do anything to hurt him, would you? I’ve got a present for him that he hasn’t even seen yet. I don’t know how you got into this mess, John, I thought I knew you, at least a little. I still think so, and this isn’t your style at all.’ She would have liked to pause and listen to the quality of the continued but subtle silence within, for it seemed to be passing through as many changes as the inflections of speech, but she could not break the thread, because of the tiny sounds of metal on metal, engaging and slipping, and gripping again. ‘Don’t go on
