Gunner Kelly

they were going through, but there was still no room for error.

He ducked down into his own darkness again, and looked at his watch. It was 2242 exactly—three minutes to the police car.

The engine noise ceased suddenly, and a thin bar of yellow light filled the gap. For a few moments the map rustled on the other side of the partition, and then the light went out.

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“There’s someone out there—” The driver hissed the words “—I can see a torch . . . I’m getting out.”

The cabin-door clicked, and there was a scrape of boots on metal as the driver swung himself out. The van shuddered slightly.

“Aw— fuck!” exclaimed the driver angrily.

Benedikt raised his ear to the edge of the gap, and was rewarded with the sound of a splash. The driver swore again. Cautiously Benedikt turned his head, just in time to catch the lancing beam of a torch directed from the other side of the water towards the side of the van.

“Are you arl-roight there?” The question came across the water from the source of the torch-beam, in a rich peasant accent.

“No, I’m fucking not, mate!” The driver answered irritably, in his own townsman’s accent. “I’m up to my fucking knees in fucking water—that’s what I am!”

“Arrr . . . You didn’t ought to ‘ave stopped there.” The voice was unsympathetic. “You want to get out of there—you’re in the water there, you are.”

The driver didn’t swear in answer to that, but emitted a throaty sound of exasperation. There came another splashing sound, and then a stamping of boots on tarmac.

“Where you goin‘, then?” the voice challenged.

The stamping stopped. “Where the fuck am I, mate?”

“Where d’you want to be?”

The driver swore. “Not bloody ‘ere, I don’t think. ’Old on mo‘, an’

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I’ll tell yer . . . Norton somethin‘ . . . ’old on ... Norton Down—

The Old Vicarage, Norton Down—name of Winterbotham . . .

Major E. H. Winterbotham, The Old Vicarage, Norton Down.”

“Norton Down?” The voice echoed the name incredulously.

“Yeah. Major Winterbotham—you know ‘im?”

“This aren’t the way to Norton Down.” Scorn had replaced incredulity.

Benedikt looked at his watch again. The police were due any second.

“Fourth turning, they told me. Down the hill till the road forks, an‘

it’s signposted there, to the right.” There was a pause. “Left goes to Cucklesford St Mary an’ right to Norton Down— bloody stupid names!” Another pause. “But I can’t see any bloody sign!”

“Arr . . . nor you can! Because there ain’t none.” The peasant belittled the townsman. “You took the wrong road— that’s what you don. Cucklesford St Mary an‘ Norton Down’s on t’other side.”

The driver grunted helplessly. “Can I get through from ‘ere?

Where am I?”

“Na ... If I was goin‘ to Norton Down from wherever you come from I wouldn’t start from ’ere. What you want t’do is to turn round an‘ go back where you come from . . . an’ then—”

The fierce headlights of the police car and the sound of its engine arrived almost simultaneously, to cut off these extraordinary directions in mid-flow. They must have coasted down the ridge from the main road to arrive so silently, with the kink in the final approach, and the trees themselves, cutting off the warning of their dummy1

arrival until the final bend.

But now the speaker on the other side of the water, who had been hidden behind his own torch-beam outside the van’s headlights, was suddenly caught in the glare as the police car pulled alongside the van, outside Benedikt’s vision.

He heard a car door slam.

“What’s this, then?” It was strange how the official voice was the same the world over—confidently suspicious and suspiciously confident. “Is that you over there, Blackie Nabb? What are you doing here?”

“Arr . . . Mr Russell?” The voice parried the question. “Is that Mr Russell?”

“You know me, Blackie. Why aren’t you in the Eight Bells?”

“The Eight Bells?”

Now, there was a difference, from the world over, thought Benedikt: there might be suspicion both ways here, between Mr Russell and the man over the water . . . but there was no fear in either of them—and—what was a greater difference—there was no hatred either!

“The Eight Bells, Mr Russell?” False incomprehension filled the question. “But it’s gone closing time—an‘ I’ve been over to my sister’s, at Cassell’s, anyway... So what would I be doin’ at the Bells, then?”

The other police-car door slammed.