'Don't,' I said. 'Remember he'll kick you if you make a noise. Now, what is your name?'
'John Smith.'
'Try again,' I said, backing Admiral a pace nearer.
The taxi-driver gave in completely, his mouth trembling and sweat breaking out on his forehead.
'Blake.' He stumbled on the word.
'First name?'
'Corny. It's a nickname, sort of.' His eyes flickered fearfully between me and Admiral's hind legs.
I asked him several questions about the working of the radio, keeping the horse handy. When I had learned all I wanted I untied the reins from the tree and fastened them to a sapling a few feet away, so that when it grew dark the horse would not accidentally tread on the taxi-driver.
Before leaving them I gave Blake a final warning. 'Don't start yelling for help. For one thing there's no one to hear you, and for another, you'll upset the horse. He's a thoroughbred, which means nervous, from your point of view. If you frighten him by yelling he's strong enough to break his reins and lash out at you. Shut up and he'll stay tied up. Get it?' I knew if Admiral broke his reins he would not stop to attack the man, but luckily, Blake did not. He nodded, his body sagging with fear and frustration.
'I won't forget you're here,' I said. 'You won't have to stay here all night. Not that I care about you, but the horse needs to be in a stable.'
Admiral had his head down to the grass. I gave his rump a pat, made sure the knots were still tight on the demoralized driver, and picked my way quickly through the bushes to the taxi.
The signpost was important, for I would have to come back and find it in the dark in miles of haphazard woodland. I wrote down all the names and mileages on all of its four arms, just to make sure. Then I got into the taxi and sat in the driver's seat.
Inside the taxi one could hear the radio as a voice and not as a clatter. The receiver was permanently tuned in so that each driver could hear all messages and replies going from taxis to base and base to taxis.
A man was saying, 'Sid, here. No sign of him. I've got a good mile and a half of the road in view from up here, nearly the whole side of that wood he's in. I'll swear he hasn't got across here. The traffic's too thick for him to do it quickly. I'm sure to see him if he tries it.' Sid's voice came out of the radio small and tinny, like a voice on the telephone, and he spoke casually, as if he were looking for a lost dog.
While he spoke I started the engine, sorted out the gears, and drove off along the road going south. The daylight was just beginning to fade. Half an hour of twilight, I calculated, and perhaps another ten minutes of dusk. I put my foot down on the accelerator.
There was a short silence on the radio. Then someone said, 'He has got to be found before dark.'
Even though I had been half-hoping, half-expecting it, the husky timbre-less whisper made me jerk in my seat. I gripped the steering wheel tightly and the muscles round my eyes contracted. The voice was so close it seemed suddenly as if the danger it spelled for me were close as well, and I had to reassure myself by looking out sideways at the deserted heathland, and backwards in the driving mirror at the empty road astern.
'We're doing our best, sir,' said a quiet voice, respectfully. 'I've been driving up and down this ruddy road for nearly an hour. Two miles up and two miles back. All the parked cars in my section are still in position.'
'How many of you have guns?' said the whisper.
'Four altogether, sir. We could do with more, to be sure of him.'
There was a pause. Then the husky voice said, 'I have one here, but you haven't time to come in for it. You'll have to manage with what you've got.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Pay attention, all drivers. Aim for the horse. Shoot the horse. The man is not to be found with bullets in him. Do you understand?'
There was a chorus of assent.
'Fletcher, repeat your orders.'
The polite taxi-driver said, 'As soon as we spot him either in the trees or breaking cover, we shoot, aiming for the horse. Call up all drivers, chase and catch the man. We are to – er – restrain him as necessary, place him in one of the taxis, and wait for your instructions.'
Half-way through this recital of plans for my disposal, I recognized his voice. The polite tone, in the first instance, gave him away. I had heard it on the Maidenhead road, luring me with its false respectability into a waiting trap: he was the driver of the horse-box. Fletcher. I made a note of it.
Suddenly, as if someone had pressed a switch, a light flooded into my brain and I remembered the fence at Bristol. I remembered the pouring rain on my face and the greyness of everything, and now clearly I remembered the horse-box driver cutting the wire down from the fence, rolling it up, and hanging it over his arm.
There was something else, too- but before I could pin it down I came to a halt sign at a main road. I turned left from my empty by-road into a stream of traffic, and began to look for a signpost which would tell my how far away I was from Brighton. After half a mile I found one. Eleven miles. Say, twenty minutes to my destination.
I thought back to the Bristol fence, but the shade had come down again in my memory, and now I was not even sure that any gaps in it remained. My fingers wandered of their own accord to the scar on my cheek and traced along it gently, but it was a gesture I had caught myself in once or twice before, and I attached no importance to it. Besides, the immediate future needed all my thought.
All the way to Brighton I listened to the husky voice. Its tone grew both more urgent and more violent. I found it weird at first to eavesdrop on a man-hunt of which I was myself the quarry, but after a few minutes I got used to it and paid it less and less attention, and this could have been a catastrophic mistake.
'Have you anything to report, twenty-three?' said the husky whisper. There was no reply on the radio. I was only half aware of it. More sharply the voice said, 'Twenty-three, Blake, have you anything to report?'
I came back to the present with a jerk. I picked up the microphone, clicked over the switch, and said 'No' in as bored and nasal a tone as I could muster.
'Answer more quickly next time,' said the husky voice severely. He was apparently checking that all the outlying taxis were still in position, for he went on to ask three more drivers whether they had anything to report. I thanked heaven, as I switched off the microphone, that I had not had to impersonate Blake's voice for more than one second, for any attempt at conversation would have found me out. As it was, I listened more intently than before to the exchanges on the radio.
The whispering voice began to acquire tone and characteristics as I became more familiar with it, until it formed a pattern of phrasing and emphasis which tantalized me at first because I could not remember its origin.
Then I knew. I knew for sure, at last.
You can start on a plan that you think touches the limit of what you can do; and then you have to do much, much more. Once more into the breach- only the breach had got bigger. Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood- and bend up every spirit to his full height. There was no one like Bill Shakespeare for bounding things in a nutshell.
I drove into the outskirts of Brighton very thoughtfully indeed.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A taxi-driver asking the way to the main police station would be enough to arouse suspicion in a moron. I parked the taxi in a side street and hurried round the corner to ask directions in the nearest shop.
It was a tobacconist's, and busy, so I buttonholed one of the customers, an elderly man with watery eyes and a cloth cap. He told me the way quite clearly, though with frequent sniffs.
'You in trouble, mate?' he enquired inquisitively, eyeing my dirty, dishevelled appearance as I thanked him.
'Lost my dog,' I said, smiling, pulling out the most unexciting reason I could think of for wanting the police.
The watery-eyed man lost interest. I walked quickly back to the taxi and found two small boys listening open- mouthed to the radio. I got into the taxi, winked at them, and said, 'It's a thrilling story on children's hour, isn't it?'
