“We’ll take Pullinger’s car. Gissing will recognize it, and it will fool him. I can wear Pullinger’s coat and hat, too.”
Marino ran thumb and fingers over his chin.
“Go and get that Chevy,” he said. “My God, you British are stubborn! I’ll go on. We’ll meet at the restaurant, a mile along the road.
• • •
Pullinger had said that Gissing would wait twenty minutes, but that could have been bluff. It could have been in earnest, too. The tumult of the hold-up was stilled, but a new storm blew, and Roger’s mind’s-eye picture of Ricky Shawn’s face hid everything else. The bright, frightened eyes and the plastered lips, the frail arms with the cruel steel bracelets round them, were all vivid. There was nothing Gissing would not do. It had been a mistake to say that he would take Marino’s men in the car, he ought to go alone. Alone, he might be able to bargain; with others, Gissing would know that the end was inevitable and might kill for the sake of killing. These thoughts pressed sharp against Roger’s mind as he stood outside the restaurant by the side of the Lincoln, with several clean-limbed men standing nearby, waiting for Marino’s orders. Marino was talking to the man in charge.
Roger went to him.
“You all ready, Roger?”
Roger said: “Whenever you like.” He hesitated, looking straight into Marino’s eyes. Then he said very carefully: “Tony, I know I’ve a wife and two sons waiting for me in England. I know the risks. I still want to go alone. Give me the chance. In half an hour you can come and get me.”
Did Marino know exactly what he meant? Did Marino know that he was saying that whatever Lissa felt about him, there was a call from England that he would never be able to resist? He wished he could guess what was passing through the maimed man’s mind. Whatever it was took a long time.
Then Marino said abruptly: “Half an hour. All right. But listen, Roger. In half an hour, a light bomber will fly over that farmhouse and drop a bomb in the garden. It will shake them so badly they won’t have any fight left, and my men will be in the house before the echoes have died away. Do you understand?”
“Nice work,” Roger said.
Tell him how to get there, Stan,” Marino said to his driver.
The directions were easy — he must continue along this road from Trenton for a mile and a quarter, then take the first turning to the left on to a dirt road which dropped down towards a creek, swinging left again before the creek, uphill, with bush on either side, then down again to the farm-house and the outbuildings. Roger followed the route carefully, and soon the Chevrolet was swaying along the rough road towards the rippling stream. At the brow of a hill he looked down over the farm, a big white weatherboard building, emerging from fruit trees and bushes.
Nothing, no one moved.
Approaching the house, he passed a cow-byre. Beyond it, pigs were rooting and Roger wrinkled his nose at the stench. A few hens scratched, one of them close to the front door, which had once been painted white but was now dirty, the paint peeling. Mud had splashed up in the rain, more than two feet from the ground. Roger sat in the car for a few seconds, to give anyone inside time to know that he was there and to make sure that he was alone. Then he got out and stood upright, looking round. He knew that eyes were turned towards him, that each window threatened, but nothing happened. He walked stiffly down two cement steps to the door, and banged on it
Still nothing happened.
He clenched his fist and banged again, and when no one answered, he turned the handle and pushed the door. It opened. Would Gissing leave it unfastened? Would he let him walk in, like this? Were the watching eyes and the menacing demons all in his imagination? Was the house empty, and the Shawn child gone?
He stepped straight into a low-ceilinged room. The windows were small, and the light poor. The room was crowded with old furniture, and a spinning-wheel stood in one window with a chair drawn up beside it, as if some old woman had been working there only a few minutes ago.
Doors led to the right and left. He went towards that on the left, with his hands in sight, and his face clear of expression, all his fears held on a tight leash. He was prepared for anything — even for the voice which came from behind him.
“Don’t move,” a man said.
24
TERMS
He heard footsteps behind him, and he steeled himself for whatever would come next. For a moment he heard heavy breathing, as hands touched his sides and ran over his body, feeling for guns in pockets or in a shoulder-holster. He carried none. The breathing was hot on the back of his neck, and then coolness followed as the man backed away.
“Okay, just move forward, up them two steps.”
These steps led into a dining-room, a room almost as crowded with furniture as the first He had been here for five minutes, and Marino wouldn’t give him a second beyond his half hour.
“Turn right, and up the stairs,” the unseen man ordered. It sounded like McMahon.
The stairs led off a small hall, a flight of narrow, steep steps covered with carpet. He steadied himself by the handrail. The stairs creaked, and one tread sagged badly.
“Room on the right.”
He turned right
He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was. Ricky lay on a bed in a corner of a narrow room, exactly as he had been at Webster’s house — only more frightened, much more frightened. But at least he was alive.
Roger paused, steadied, then went into the room. He forced himself to smile without strain, raised a hand to
