‘By car. As per instructions.’
‘And when you arrived?’
‘I told them I was a member of the Dockwra Society and I was directed to a bedroom in Hut No. Eleven. Pettitt himself was in the other bedroom in that hut. Well, when we’d all arrived, we had a sort of little get-together in one of the other huts – Number Twelve – when we were all sort of introduced to each other. It was a purely social occasion. We were told that we were to get down to the real business – whatever that might be – on the following morning. That was the Saturday, of course.’
‘You met everybody else at this session? Including Knapper?’
‘Yes. There was Knapper, Mrs Hall, Braithwaite, the strong-arm laddie called Mike Ruscoe whom I’ve already mentioned, and another chap called Valentine. Oh, and Pettitt himself, of course.’
‘Pettitt was in charge?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, we had supper and a few drinks and then went to bed. To be perfectly honest, there wasn’t much else to do. Nobody seemed to know what we were there for. Pettitt obviously did, of course, but nobody had the nerve to ask him. They place rather a lot of emphasis on blind obedience in the Steel Band.’ MacGregor nodded. He could well believe it. ‘And on the Saturday morning?’
‘We all gathered in the common room in Hut Twelve again. Mike Ruscoe and I carried out the routine security checks and then we all settled down to listen to what Pettitt had to say to us.’ Osmond paused and, getting his handkerchief out, wiped his forehead and then the palms of his hands. ‘It came as something of a bombshell, I can tell you.’
‘Oh.’
‘He said that there was a traitor in our midst.’
Twelve
Even Dover opened his eyes. He hadn’t really been asleep, of course, though that bed was comfortable enough to . . .
MacGregor was nodding understanding^. ‘And you thought it was you he was talking about?’
‘Not half!’ Osmond looked quite sick. Talk about time standing still! And then the relief when I cottoned on it was this Knapper fellow they were putting the black on – poor sod.’
‘But, in that case, why were you there?’
Osmond looked across at MacGregor in surprise. ‘Well, I was part of the court, wasn’t I? That’s what we’d all been got together for – to try Knapper for betraying the movement.’
‘In a bloody holiday camp?’ That was Dover making one of his rare but penetrating contributions to the discussion.
Osmond swung round. ‘Why not? It was a damned good choice, if you ask me. The place was virtually empty at that time of year and our little collection of huts or chalets or whatever was quite isolated. Nobody came near us the whole weekend because we were on the cheapest rates and so we didn’t get any service. We had to make our own beds and, if we wanted any cleaning done, we had to do it ourselves. Meals, of course, we took in the main restaurant which was at least half a mile off. No, I take my hat off to whoever thought that place up. It was brilliant. There weren’t even any telephones so Knapper couldn’t have phoned for help, even if he’d got the chance. He’d been instructed to travel by train to Bowerville- by-the-sea so that he’d no hope of making a getaway by car and that Holiday Ranch was too far from everywhere to try running for it on foot.’
Dover frowned horribly and snapped his fingers for another cigarette. ‘But some of you had cars up there, didn’t you?’
‘All of us except Knapper, as it happens. But almost the first thing Pettitt did was confiscate all our car keys and hide ’em away somewhere.’
‘Interesting,’ observed Dover, sinking back and closing his eyes the better to picture the scene. ‘Fancy.’
Osmond glanced across at Sven who permitted himself the very faintest shrug of his shoulders. Actually, Sven was just beginning to experience a tiny twinge of doubt. Could all this mowing and moping and general air of seediness be merely a blind? Was Dover, in fact, cleverer than he looked? Well, yes, he’d have to be, if only to keep breathing – but Sven meant really clever. Could there perhaps be a brilliant detective lurking beneath that unbelievably sordid exterior? Sven told himself‘no’, but he was still plagued with this niggling sense of unease. Had he made a disastrous mistake in letting somebody from the CID get a peep at one of Special Branch’s more exotic operations? The CID were always such an envious, vindictive, jealous bunch. As a rule, of course, Sven felt more than capable of running circles round them, but if they were going to produce somebody subtle and devious enough to go around playing the village idiot . . . Sven decided to batten down a few hatches, just in case.
He cleared his throat, caught Osmond’s eye and smiled very sweetly. ‘I should keep it as short as you can, Trill, old chap,’ he suggested casually. ‘We don’t want to bore everybody with a lot of unnecessary detail.’
A nod is as good as a wink. ‘OK,’ said Osmond. ‘Well, like I said, Pettitt was the boss and he was the one who knew what was going on. His job was to act as president of the court and as prosecutor. He’d been supplied with all the evidence against Knapper. The rest of us formed a sort of jury. Mike Ruscoe – he’s a Trooper Colonel in the Special Force – and I were also detailed off to guard Knapper and see he didn’t take a powder. We had him handcuffed to a tubular steel chair with two sets of handcuffs. Ruscoe kept one set of keys and I kept the other.
