some benighted wood he might as well get thoroughly pissed. Then to his surprise he saw the lights of a vehicle through the trees to his left. It was a good distance away but at least it indicated that civilisation in the shape of a road existed down there. Wilt had begun to value civilisation. He stuffed the bottle into the pocket of the anorak and set off again. He had to reach that road and be near people. He no longer cared if he couldn’t find a village. A barn or even a pigsty would do as well as a B&B. Just somewhere to lie down and sleep was enough for him now and in the morning he would be able to see where he was going. For the moment it was impossible. Weaving his way downhill he banged into trees and blundered through bracken but he made progress. Then suddenly his foot caught in the root of a thorn tree and he was falling head first into space. For a moment his knapsack, caught in the thorn, almost stopped his progress. Wilt continued falling, landed on his head in the back of Bert Addle’s pick-up and passed out. It was Thursday night.
Across the lane and a field, Bert Addle was watching Meldrum Manor from the gate to the walled garden. He had driven down in a pick-up he’d borrowed from a mate who’d gone to Ibiza for a spree of drugs and booze and, if he had any energy left, some sex and a few fights. Bert was beginning to wonder if the lights in the house would ever go out and the bastard Battleby and Mrs Rottecombe go off to the Country Club. All he had to do now was get the keys from the beam in the barn and let himself in through the kitchen door when Battleby left. Finally at 10.45 the lights went out and he saw the couple shut the back door and drive off. Bert waited to make sure they’d had enough time to get to the Country Club. He’d already put on a pair of surgical gloves and half an hour later he was inside the kitchen and using his torch upstairs to find the cupboard in the passage opposite the bedroom. It was precisely where Martha had told him and in it were the things he needed. He went downstairs with them and found the plastic garbage bin in the kitchen. He pulled it away from the sink, and put some oily rags and a gumboot he’d brought with him in it. ‘There’s got to be plenty of smoke to attract the Fire Brigade,’ Aunt Martha had told him and Bert meant to see that she got what she wanted. The gumboot would smoke and smell to high heaven as well. But first he had to move the Range Rover out of the yard and put the porno mags and some of the other S&M equipment in the front seat. That done and the Range Rover’s doors locked he returned to the kitchen and lit the oily rag. As it began to smoulder he went out through the back door, took the keys out of his pocket and locked it. He whipped across the yard into the barn and put them back on the beam. Then he was running back to the pick-up, threw the hood and two whips and a couple of porn magazines into the back and drove up the lane to the road a mile beyond. His next visit had to be Leyline Lodge. The Rottecombes’ house was two miles further on and conveniently secluded. No lights were on. Bert drove on, stopped, got out and reached over the back to get the whips and hood and was horrified to feel Wilt’s leg. For a moment he questioned his own findings. A man lying in the back of the pick-up? When had the bastard got in? Must have been in the lane. Bert wasn’t wasting any more time. He threw the S&M gear into the back garage, let down the back of the pick-up and hauled Wilt out with a thump on to the concrete floor. Then he was in the driver’s seat and had left Leyline Lodge in a hurry. It was a wise move.
At Meldrum Manor Mrs Meadows’s hopes that smoke would attract the attention of the Fire Brigade had exceeded her wildest dreams. They’d exceeded her worst fears as well. She had failed to take the Filipino maid’s extravagant taste in exotic and extremely pungent air fresheners, and Battleby’s detestation of them, into account. The previous morning he had hurled six pressurised cans of Jasmine Flower, Rose Blossom and Oriental Splendour into the garbage bin and told her never to get any more. As a result of Bert Addle’s activities they wouldn’t be needed. The smoke he had found so satisfying when the gumboot began to smoulder had slowly but surely turned into a raging fire. By the
