The Stars’ Tennis Balls

firm hand hold, which he tested by tugging on it with all his strength until he could be sure that the cloth would not rip and that the screws would hold fast.

Ned now laid the lid on top of the crate, lining up the nails with their original holes. He pushed down and saw that three of the nails, instead of finding their holes, jumped up proud. He readjusted each one and tried again. When he was reasonably sure that each nail would find home he pulled off the lid once more and laid it upside down crossways over the crate.

He gave a final look around the room, kicking the toolbox under the table into its original position. He glanced about the shelves and down at the floor. With the exception of the lid lying across the crate, everything was as it had been when he had first walked in.

Drawing in a deep breath, Ned switched off the light and moved slowly forward in the pitch darkness until he felt his leg bump against the table. He climbed onto it and stood slowly up, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. He picked up the lid and felt at it until his fingers closed on the loop of cloth. He lifted the lid by this handle and, holding it in front of him like a Norman shield, he stepped into the crate and lay back on his bed of polythene. Manoeuvring the lid into position and satisfying himself that, so long as he pulled down on his plaited handle, all was well, Ned concentrated so hard on staying awake that he fell asleep almost instantly.

The bang of the store-room door opening awoke Ned with a jolt. Tiny slivers of light pierced the darkness of the packing-crate and at first he was convinced that too much time had passed. Perhaps they had decided to keep the body longer and send it on an evening boat. Babe would already have been discovered in Ned’s room and the hunt would be up. He cursed himself for sleeping. If he had stayed awake he might have realised that too much time had passed and managed to escape another way. Babe had assured him that the island was at least thirty miles from land, but attempting to swim for freedom would have been better than ignominious discovery here.

The sound of weary morning voices yawning and moaning reassured him. Working his hand into the cloth loop, Ned pulled down on the lid as hard as he could and waited, hardly daring to breath.

Two male voices spoke in Danish.

‘We’ll take it on our shoulders.’

‘What’s the rope on the ends for?’

‘Yah, but it will bite into our hands. Believe me, I’ve done this before. On our shoulders. You first, one, two… three.’

‘I thought it was going to be an old man. Christ, he’s heavy.’

‘It’ll be the wood mostly. Come on.’

‘Ow!’

‘What is it?’

‘You were supposed to hammer the nails in. I just cut my finger!’

Ned lost all sense of direction as his body bumped back and forth inside the crate. He was dropped onto the floor twice when doors had to be unlocked and opened and each time Ned was fearful that the lid would bounce up and he would be discovered. He prepared in his mind the possibility of having to fight for it and run.

Finally, cold morning air seeped through the sides of the box and he heard the cry of gulls followed by the groaning creak of a sliding van door. The crate was pushed with bone-jarring carelessness onto a metal floor, the door slammed shut and an engine started.

Ned recalled the infernal torture of his last journey in a van. He saw again the two dead eyes of the men who had kicked him to unconsciousness and heard the rhythmical flipping of tyres over a ribbed causeway. He remembered Mr Gaine and he remembered every detail of those two brutal men. He could not, however, reassemble in his mind the identity of the Ned who had undergone those infernal torments of soul and body. That Ned had been as innocent, terrified and blinded by the world and its cruelty as a newborn puppy. He had been a particle, without will, direction or purpose. That Ned had been dead for almost twenty years: all the life had been snuffed out of him the day Rolf had dislocated his left shoulder and murdered his last remaining shreds of hope and faith. The Ned who travelled now was an entirely different being, a man of iron will, an avenging angel – an instrument of God.

Ned stood up on the rocks and turned to look at the ferry half a mile out to sea. When she put in, the crew would carry the wooden box, now weighed down with sea-chain and iron tackle, to the dock where, after a time, it would be opened and the deception discovered. Perhaps the island had already sent a message to shore and Ned was already a wanted man.

He shivered and unwound from his aching shoulders a large yellow oilskin bag that he had stolen from the captain’s locker on board the ferry. In the locker he had also found clothing and a wallet containing two and a half thousand Danish kroner. He had no idea whether it was a fortune or barely enough for a small breakfast.

Half an hour later he walked into a crowded café on the Еrhus road. He had not been surprised to discover that he was in Denmark. Babe had told him that the hospital island lay in the Kattegat, somewhere between the Swedish coast and northern Jutland. Ned marched straight to the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and a plate of eggs and bacon. He took a seat and looked around him. He had seen five large lorries parked outside and decided that his best course was boldness and speed.

‘Hey!’ he called out above the noise of the juke box. Everyone in the café looked up and stared at him. ‘Anybody here going south? I need to be in Germany by tonight. I’ll go halves on the fuel.’

Most of the men in Ned’s eyeline shrugged and looked back down at their plates. One or two shook their heads regretfully, but no one responded. Damn, thought Ned, what do I do now?

A voice behind him spoke up in broken Danish. ‘I have to be in Hamburg tonight. You are welcome to ride with me.

‘Fantastic!’ cried Ned, in German. ‘You’ve saved my life!’

‘Oh, you’re German,’ said the other. ‘Thank Christ for that. Danish is a nightmare.’

‘I know,’ said Ned with a sympathetic smile. ‘Trying to speak it gives you a nosebleed. Let me buy you a cup of coffee, you don’t mind waiting while I dive into a quick breakfast do you?’

‘No problem,’ said the other, coming round to join Ned at his table and extending his hand. ‘Dieter, by the way.

‘Karl,’ said Ned. ‘Pleased to know you. Ah, prachtvoll!’ He smiled up at the waitress as a plate was put in front of him. ‘And a cup of coffee for my friend here,’ he added in Danish.

Someone had left a newspaper on the table and Ned searched it for a currency table. With relief, he worked out that he was carrying over two hundred pounds. Unless inflation had gone entirely insane over the last twenty years, he reckoned it should be enough to get him where he wanted to go.

Ned rode up front with Dieter, who told him that he had picked up a consignment of paper pulp in Skagen fifty miles north of the roadside café they were leaving, which was just outside the port of Еlborg. Ned calculated that they still had a drive of a hundred and fifty miles south to the German border. The ferry would be putting in at the harbour in Еlborg now. It was all a question of whether or not Dr Mallo had decided to alert the police. He would have discovered that there were papers missing from his filing-cabinet and Ned was confident that this would prevent him from contacting anyone in authority. Perhaps Mallo would call Oliver Delft, probably he would not dare. In Mallo’s position, Ned would fabricate a death certificate and try and forget that the troublesome Englishman had ever existed.

Dieter was not a demanding conversationalist. His world appeared to revolve around his wife Trude and their children, of whom there were photographs displayed all around the cabin, and football of which Ned knew little. What he did know was confined to what he had learned of the Scandinavian leagues from Paul. The doings of Trondheim held no interest for Dieter whatsoever.

‘Not much traffic,’ Ned remarked at one point.

‘April sixteenth,’ said Dieter. ‘It’s a public holiday here. The queen’s birthday, so they tell me.’

‘Ah, of course.’

They stopped for lunch outside Еrhus and here Ned made his first mistake. They were sitting at a table and Ned picked up a small object that Dieter had brought with him into the café.

‘What on earth is this?’ he had asked, holding it in his hand and staring at it in bewilderment.

‘You’re joking!’ Dieter smiled broadly. His eyes narrowed when he saw that Ned was completely serious. ‘Are you telling me that you don’t know what this is?’

Ned realised that he had blundered and tried to laugh it off. ‘What I mean to say is,’ he said, ‘I’ve not seen one like this before

‘Not seen one like this? Look around you, man!’

Ned glanced at the other tables and saw at least six almost identical objects.

‘Well, it’s the colour really…’ he said, with an attempt at heartiness. ‘Yours is red, the others are mostly black and grey.

‘Where have you been the last ten years?’ Dieter asked. ‘Where on God’s earth is there a place without mobile phones?’

Phones! Mobile phones. Ned cursed himself for not working it out for himself. Now that he looked he could see two people speaking into them. ‘I’ve… I’ve not been well,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in a hospital.’

‘A prison more like.’

‘No, no, a hospital. You must believe me, Dieter. I’m fine now. Totally well, but I have … you know, missed out on some things.’

Dieter let Ned back into the lorry, but he was more silent as they continued the journey south towards Еbenrе and the German border. Ned sat beside him, thinking furiously. He came to the conclusion that his best recourse was a kind of limited honesty. The last thing he wanted was for Dieter to flag down a police car. It would be hard to explain the quantity of drugs packed into his oilskin bag.

‘I’ll be straight with you, Dieter,’ he said at last. ‘I’ve escaped from a Danish hospital. My family put me there because of a drug problem, but I’m fine now. Really. Absolutely fine. I’m heading for Hanover to be with my girlfriend. I’ve messed up my life, but I’m better now. I just need help to get home.’

‘How long were you there?’ asked Dieter, his eyes firmly on the road.

‘Nearly a year.

‘Nearly a year and you don’t know what a mobile phone is?’

‘They gave me electric shock therapy. I forget things sometimes. What can I say? I’m not a bad man, Dieter, I promise you that.’

‘Sure,’ said Dieter and he fell quiet again.

After an agonising silence which Ned did not dare break with pleadings or further justification, Dieter spoke again, shyly and with some embarrassment. ‘Me, I