Gunner Kelly

and they gave me the wrong direction then—”

“All right!” The Inspector cut short the explanation. “Is the back locked?”

“Locked, guv‘? Naow. There’s only the pianer in there—”

“Russell. Go round the back and have a look inside . . . You stay here, where I can see you . . . and you over there—Mr Nabb, is it?

— you stay where I can see you, too! I have business in Duntisbury Royal when I’ve dealt with this man and his vehicle.”

Benedikt started to move.

“What are you doing?” shouted the Inspector.

Benedikt continued to move, past the blanket-covered, lashed-down object in the centre of the cargo- space.

“Keep yer ‘air on—I ain’t goin’ anywhere. I’m jest goin‘ to phone the missus to tell ’er I’ll be late ‘ome.”

Benedikt smiled to himself in the darkness. Whether he was on guard duty or not, Blackie Nabb had put two and two together satisfactorily, and was about to warn the Eight Bells of the impending after-hours raid.

But meanwhile, the business of the night was beginning at last, because from outside, at the back of the van, there came the sound of the scrape and clunk of the locking-bar which secured the doors.

He sank on to one knee beside the piano—it probably was a piano, and maybe Jack Worsdale was a van-driver, and the police really dummy1

had intended to raid Duntisbury Royal to catch after-hours drinkers.

His finger touched and ran along the rough bark—it felt like genuine tree-bark—which covered the Special Air Service’s cylinder, past the false branches—genuine plastic—until they felt the cord at the end, with its wrist- loop.

One of the doors banged open and a bright torch-beam transfixed him.

“Nothing in here, sir,” called the policeman. “Just the piano, it looks like—like he said. It’s all clear.”

The policeman moved away, leaving the door open, sweeping the bushes with his torch.

Now it had to be done quickly. It was all clear, and the policeman would have scouted round with his torch to make sure of that, in so far as it was possible. And Blackie Nabb was in the phone-box, and it was unlikely that they’d have more than one guard this far from the village.

The cylinder was unnaturally heavy—heavy not because of its contents, but because it had to float correctly and unobtrusively, like a water-logged tree-trunk. But he was ready for its weight, and the van’s position—front wheels already in the water, within a metre of the footbridge alongside it—cut the distance he had to move to a minimum. Half a dozen noiseless steps took him into the water, and if he made any splash it was covered by the extra banging the policeman made as he closed up the van. Even before that had finished he had ducked down under the footbridge into the darkness and deeper water downstream, cradling the cylinder in his dummy1

arms.

The immediate need was to put distance between himself and the vicinity of the ford, in case Mr Nabb strayed round to the footbridge, for the reflected light from the headlights of the furniture van illuminated the pool that was scoured below the bridge by the flow from off the hard surface of the ford. But the action wasn’t as easy as the thought, for though the water took the weight of the cylinder from him, the thick mud of the river-bed sucked down his feet, holding him back.

River— R. Addle— River Addle—the map had called the blue line which straggled along the margin of Duntisbury Chase. But a river it was not; perhaps in mid-winter, or when the spring floods rose, it might aspire to that description; but here, even in this deeper pool in the middle of a damp English summer, its mud and water between them could only submerge him to chest-height.

His feet came free at last, and he was able to push forward, half-swimming, half-walking, in the wake of the cylinder, which had already begun to drift away on the sluggish current.

At least the distances were miniature, though: a dozen noiseless strokes and trailing branches brushed his head as he reached the exit from the pool; and then, as utter darkness closed around him, he could already see a paler area ahead of him, like the night outside a tunnel, which marked the end of the woods surrounding the ford, and the beginning of the open fields through which the River Addle flowed, with only occasional willow-trees on its banks, until it reached the trees of the Roman villa site on the edge of the village.

dummy1

River, indeed! thought Benedikt contemptuously, as his feet sank into another shallow part of the bed of the ‘river’, and one of his hands touched the SAS cylinder, which had snagged on a tree-root

—

What am I doing here, encased in a wet-suit, crawling up a muddy English ditch like this towards an English village, for all the world as though I’m penetrating a high-risk Comecon installation, somewhere east of the line? It’s ridiculous!

He pushed the cylinder aside and waded out into the open, beyond the last straggle of undergrowth. An image of the air photograph Colonel Butler had shown him reproduced itself in his brain: from this point he had perhaps a mile of river to negotiate, little more, along the valley bottom, although the road he had travelled a few hours before—the rolling English drunkard’s road—had meandered for twice that distance.

What am I doing here?

Herzner’s voice answered him: Whatever it is he wants you to do, within reason— do it. This has the smell of one of their domestic scandals, so it may be tricky . . . But Colonel Butler is a man of honour, as well as influence in high places. If we assist him he will not forget