Turn round — there's a gap just ahead where you can do it easily! Don't be an idiot!' Mitchell drew a deep breath and stared fixedly into the valley, with his chin almost into the dirt. 'No ... of course you're not going to — are you! You missed out once — and the old juices are pumping now: this is what turns you on — ' He stopped suddenly 'Yes . . .
'friends', Miss Fielding. He did a difficult contract job for ETA a few years back — one the Basques didn't fancy doing themselves for domestic reasons. It was a car bomb, actually.
Although he prefers guns to bombs, himself. But it was a big bomb: it blew the damn car clear over the block ... so they owe him one.' Just as suddenly he turned to her again. 'And a penny for your thoughts now, Miss Fielding?'
There was something not right with all this. 'I'd like more than a penny's-worth, Dr Mitchell — ' She caught the edge of dummy2
her own doubt: why was he giving her so much, when he didn't need to?
He looked away again. 'Well . . . we'll see, eh? I'll ration the pennies, maybe — Ah! He's moving again . . . very slowly . . .
and now he's stopped again, at the gap . . . well, well! Does he smell a rat — does he?'
'How did he know we'd be here, Dr Mitchell.'
'Now that is asking.' Mitchell's chin was on the dirt now. 'We didn't know for sure ourselves, not at first: we did it by logic first — what we might have done, in your shoes, if we were stupid . . . before we managed to frighten one of Mr Reginald Buller's friends into confirming.' He slid the rifle forward, and applied the eye-piece of the telescopic sight to his left eye, adjusting its focus. 'It could ... just be ... that your Mr Buller isn't as clever as he thinks he is — ' With a deft little movement, quickly and yet unhurriedly, he extracted a small screwdriver from the breast-pocket of his shirt and made an adjustment to the sight ' — or ... judging by the way he got out of England with his little fat chum . . . with a certain country's CD plates on his luggage ... it could be that the devil you raised — Mr MacManus's employer, that is — is a very smart devil, as well as a very stupid one — ' He applied the eye-piece to his eye again ' — that will do.' He lowered the rifle for an instant, and looked at her squarely. 'We won't know until we ask him — will we, Miss Fielding?'
She wanted, quite desperately, to raise her head. And . . .
how could he be so cold-blooded, damn him! 'How are we dummy2
going to do that, Dr Mitchell — if you are about to kill him?'
'Kill him?' Paul Mitchell frowned at her for only a fraction of a second, before rolling back to his rifle, and bringing it up to his shoulder, and settling himself comfortably — long legs splayed out behind him, ankles flat to the dirt (one foot gouging away a swathe of autumn crocuses regardlessly).
'What d'you think I am — a murderer ... not that it wouldn't give me the greatest of pleasures — the greatest of pleasure . . . and it'd be a bloody-sight easier, too — don't look: he may spot your little white face over the top — '
What stopped her from looking, even more than his final shout, was that he wasn't looking at her: he had known, without looking, that she couldn't resist looking at the last —
The rifle kicked, sending a tremor through him and deafening her as he fired in the very instant that his order held her motionless, so that she witnessed the unforgettable professionalism of his second shot — the practised bolt-action-empty-cartridge-flying-out-live-round-off-the-khaki-handkerchief-slid-into-the-breach — bolt- snapped — rifle-up — aim — FIRE!
And then the whole thing started again —
But then stopped.
And then Mitchell's face momentarily sank on to his rifle, his unshaven cheek distorting it, with his eyes squeezed shut.
And with that all bets — all shouted orders — were off, and Jenny was on her knees, above the rock —
dummy2
The little car was moving again: it was backing, in a cloud of dust, down the track — it was turning — swerving and skidding in its own dust into the gap in the track behind it, in a racing turn-about, to escape —
'What's happening — ?' As she spoke, Mitchell stepped up beside her. 'Did you miss?'
'Yes. I missed.' He didn't look at her. 'One does sometimes.'
The Citroen's tyres churned up the track, with its little engine screaming at them to get it moving, so violently that it rocked and bucked this way and that before engine and tyres were both fighting to obey the driver.
'My rifle fires high, and to the right,' continued Mitchell. 'But he wouldn't have missed: he had a rather special gun, I think
— a Voss Special, I think they call it.' He shook his head sadly. 'I've never seen one of them — I've only heard about them. They're like the old buffalo-hunters' long rifles, only better: on a windless day they can manage a couple of miles, supposedly . . . It's got a very long barrel and a marvellous sighting-device.'
Noise filled the valley, drowning out the rest of Mitchell's excuse: there were dust-clouds on the top of the cornfield, where she had trailed up behind Ian, with her feet hurting; and there was a dust-cloud coming up the track from the village, round the rise of the field which was deceptively dummy2
flattened by the height of the Greater Arapile above it.
And — God! — there was even movement in the railway station, in the middle of nowhere, with men fanning out of the gap between its two buildings — and from behind them, with a single
