Festival, page 9
‘That’s good work. Where was it?’ Piet asked.
‘Well, really it was the inspector who found it.’
‘Aye, Mr Norton, but only because you worked out where we ought to look.’
‘And where was that?’
‘I reckoned that the drug would take a little time to keel her over, so that the one place where there couldn’t be a syringe was where she fell. Assuming that she tripped over the tent rope, which is what seems likely, that gives us a rough direction of where she was walking from. Go back about a hundred yards in this general direction and you come to a group of three tents, set up with a kind of open square between them. The square gives a certain amount of privacy, and it was there that Inspector Donaldson found the syringe, trodden on and broken by somebody, but a hypodermic syringe all right, and with analysable quantities of some drug still in the broken shaft.’
‘I’d like to see where you found it, and the bits of the thing itself.’
‘Sure. The inspector’s got it wrapped up ready for sending away, but it won’t take a moment to unwrap it.’ Donaldson opened an envelope and showed Piet the broken bits of what had been a hypodermic syringe of apparently quite high quality. Lovell was still with them, and he and Piet walked with the other officers to the little square formed by the three tents. ‘There you are – you can still see the marks on the ground,’ Inspector Donaldson said.
He was obviously delighted with the discovery, which indicated sharp eyes on his part, though he had loyally given credit to the deputy chief constable for suggesting where they should look. Piet got down on his knees and studied the patch of earth into which the syringe had been trodden. There were still some tiny flakes of powdered glass lying on the ground. ‘We ought to get photographs,’ Piet said. ‘I think these little stars of powdered glass would probably show up quite well.’
‘We’ve sent for a photographer, Piet,’ Norton said. ‘I think that’s probably him coming across now.’
It was. ‘Good work,’ Piet said again.
*
‘I gather that you have identified the dead girl here with the driver of a Mini van that may have been involved in snatching your daughter,’ Victor Norton said. ‘Have you any idea of her name?’
‘Not yet, no.’ Piet felt the purse burning a hole in his pocket – he had taken the first, probably irreversible step, in concealing evidence. Why? If he tried to analyse his reasons they looked like neurotic response to Jo’s disappearance, and yet he was acting on them. As he moved away from the patch of ground where the trodden fragments of the syringe lay, a shaft of sunlight came round the edge of the tents and lighted the disturbed earth. He stopped suddenly – yes, it was unmistakeable. The hard ground didn’t take footmarks well, but in the disturbance where the syringe had been trodden in were marks that he was convinced he had seen before – a piece of the same sole-pattern as on the path beside his house. He wondered if Inspector Lovell had noticed it, but he said nothing. More concealing of evidence? Well, it was done now, and the photographs would be available later for anyone to notice whatever might show up on them.
*
‘Poor Piet, you must be going through absolute, utter hell. I wish I could think of something practical to help,’ Victor Norton said.
‘You are helping. You’re being splendid – everybody’s being splendid. There’s one rather grim job that, perhaps, you could take from me. Having discovered that the van was probably mixed up with Jo, obviously we’ve got to search the Downs, or this part of them, anyway. I haven’t much hope of finding anything, but it’s routine work that can’t be neglected, and you will understand that it’s harrowing for me. May I leave it to you, Victor? I should probably be tempted to waste time by keeping men on the job for too long. You must be dispassionate, and ruthless. Call off the search as soon as the main area has been covered.’
‘You must leave that to me, Piet. I’m honoured to take on the job, and none of us is going to give in lightly.’
‘Well, that’s up to you now. The search party should be at work by this time – perhaps you’d go and direct things. It would be as well if Inspector Lovell went with you – he walked here with me from the van, and he can show you the route we took. We reckoned that the direct route was the most likely, and we didn’t deviate from it. Of course you may have other ideas.’
A direct lie there. Piet did not look at Lovell. If you are going to trust somebody, you trust him.
*
Norton and Lovell departed to join the search party, and Inspector Donaldson, saying that he’d better get the remains of the syringe to the laboratory, went off, too. Piet was not sorry to be on his own. Asking his driver to wait for him by the gate, he wandered into the festival crowd. Noise surged round him, but there was a hypnotic quality about it so that in a sense you ceased to notice noise as such. It was a few minutes before six, and he remembered that the Space Orchids were due on at six. There was a considerable crowd round their bandstand or playing-platform, and he stood at the back, where nobody took any notice of him.
The group was tuning up, or what Piet supposed might be called tuning up. There were two guitarists now, the lead guitarist whom he had already met, and a tall, fair boy, who looked not much more than sixteen, who was presumably the bass guitar. A few plangent notes, magnified and maintained in a kind of continuous hum by their electronic resonance, came from the guitars, and the drummer was warming himself up with a roll or two on his drums. The vocalist was not yet on the platform.
‘Come on, Spider,’ somebody in the crowd yelled. Nothing happened, and the other voices took up the call, chanting ‘Spi-der . . . Spi-der . . . We want Spi-der.’ It was all quite good-humoured. Nobody seemed to expect the performance to begin actually on time.
Ten minutes late the thin, dark vocalist climbed on to the platform, and the group broke into a rhythmic beat of guitars and drums. For three or four minutes the music seemed to be rhythmic without any particular pattern to it, and then it changed suddenly to the song ‘You’re Born For The Dole’. Piet timed the performance carefully. Ten minutes late in starting, four minutes or so of extemporising, and then the song.
Pop music had played little or no part in Piet’s own youth; indeed, he had not been much concerned with music generally. His instincts and emotional experiences were visual, and music moved him most when he could fit visual images to the pattern of sound – as in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, for instance. He accepted that lack of a more direct response to music was a deficiency in his personal makeup, and he respected the creative use that other people made of music. It was typical of him that when he knew that he was going to be responsible for policing the Earl’s Down festival he did what he could to learn about the variety and content of music roughly classed as ‘pop’. He had bought a number of records by different groups, to which he and Sally listened seriously, and tried to understand. His secretary’s fourteen-year-old son was an intelligent boy, with a deep interest in ‘rock’, particularly the variety known as ‘hard rock’, which seemed to have the most intellectual content in the world of ‘pop’. Kate Rimmell, the boy’s mother, was a wise woman who set herself to understand the appeal to her son in ‘rock’, and she had learned a lot about it. Piet had had long discussions with her, and he had been to her home to listen to her son’s records. Clearly, there was much more to ‘pop’ than a cult of noise for mindless youth; to dismiss ‘pop’ like this was to dismiss literature as consisting solely of pulp magazines. Much ‘pop’ doubtless was tenth-rate stuff, as ephemeral as the material in girlie magazines, but within the cult, or culture, or subculture, was a core of creative work of real, perhaps even of outstanding, merit. Piet had listened to some of the work of David Bowie which seemed to express a kind of existentialist philosophy reflecting an important strand in the collective mood of a generation. If it was a sombre strand it was not less genuine as a reflection of mood, for many thinking young people looked to a sombre and uncertain future.
The Space Orchids were not a group that he had heard of before coming to Earl’s Down, but in listening to them now he thought that they would probably attract a good deal of attention – if they stayed together, and went on. As far as he could classify them, they belonged to the intellectual minority of the ‘hard rock’ school, with music of most subtle rhythmic patterns, and lyrics that were poetry in themselves, and not merely the words for songs. They were excessively gloomy. ‘You’re Born For The Dole’ offered nothing but the harsh statement that most children were doomed to lives of total futility. It was followed by ‘Dark Streets’, which insisted that man walked in the dark only because he himself had put out the lights:
There’s a run of dark streets
Where we live
There are lamp-posts, oh yes,
Leaning like drunkards
With their lamps smashed . . .
There is power to the poles, oh yes,
But no light,
Nothing for the power to reach.
What do we do with that power?
Piet could have gone on listening to the group, but after ‘Dark Streets’ he decided that he couldn’t spare any more time. The estimate of roughly ten minutes a song was about right. The girl Susan, introduced as the group’s business manager, had said that at their lunchtime performance yesterday they’d sung two of their songs twice. From what he had heard this evening he could work out some approximate times, though he didn’t know how late they might have been yesterday in starting. That could be gone into, if it seemed to matter. Tonight he had other things to do. At least it now seemed that there was a second discrepancy to be explained.
He found his driver, and asked to be taken home. The visit to Earl’s Down and listening to the Space Orchids had taken up a lot of time, and he was much later in getting home than he had intended to be. Instead of Sally, he was met by Dr Macdonald. ‘I’ve persuaded Sally to let me give her another injection,’ the doctor said. ‘She has gone to sleep now, and with luck she should sleep peacefully for most of the night.’
‘Oh, Lord . . . I mean, thank you. I know you acted for the best, but it’s made things damned awkward for me. I shan’t be able to talk to Sally now.’
‘Why on earth not?’ The doctor was completely puzzled.
‘I’m glad you’re here – I was going to ask you to call, anyway. Come into the study and have a drink. I want to talk to you very seriously indeed.’
Still puzzled, Gavin Macdonald followed Piet, and accepted a glass of whisky. Having made sure that door and windows were shut, Piet said, ‘I’m going to trust you, Gavin, and I hope you can trust me.’
‘Of course. But what’s it all about? You’re under an appalling strain, Piet. Let me give you an injection, too.’
‘It’s not that. I want you to give me an illness.’
‘My poor Piet! It could be that you are ill.’
‘No. This is where you have to trust me. A young woman has been murdered at the Earl’s Down festival, and there’s no doubt that the murder is in some way connected with Jo’s kidnapping. I can’t explain any more because there’s a great deal that I don’t know yet, but I’ve come across some evidence that I don’t like, and I’ve got to follow it up myself. I can’t delegate – again, this is where you have to take my word for it. So I want to disappear for a few days. I thought I might have a nervous breakdown, so that you can put me in hospital with strict orders that nobody, not even Sally, is allowed to visit me. Of course I don’t intend really to go to hospital. It’s asking a lot of you, Gavin, but will you help me? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it literally a matter of life or death – Jo’s life, and perhaps some other people’s lives, too.’
The doctor didn’t reply for a minute or two. Then he said, ‘You’re asking me to risk my professional future. I’m prepared to do this for you, but do you realise that you are risking your own career as well? Chief constables who have nervous breakdowns are likely to be asked to resign.’
‘I’ve considered all that. I think, perhaps, that you’re covered by acting under my orders. Obviously there’s risk for me, but it’s a risk I’ve got to take. If I win, it won’t matter. If I lose – well, in a way it won’t matter either.’
‘All right. But I don’t like nervous breakdowns. I think something more explainable physically – say a cardiac emergency –might be better. That would require absolute rest, and we can issue a statement to try to keep the Press off the scent for a bit. They’ll be on your side, anyway, because there’s national sympathy for you over Jo. But I may need some help. May I take –’ he mentioned an eminent surgeon – ‘into my confidence? He is an old friend, and I think he would help if necessary. And he is absolutely trustworthy.’
‘We’re trusting each other, Gavin, and you must do exactly as you think fit. I can’t make conditions – except that I want to disappear, and it must not be known that I’m still in action. I want to go off tonight, but before I go I’m going to call on Sir Gervase Warrinder, and take him to some extent into my confidence. As chairman of the Police Authority he could certainly help you if anything went wrong, particularly as I shall make it clear to him that you are acting on my personal instructions.’
‘You’ve enough to worry about without worrying about me. But I think it’s probably a good idea to see old Warrinder. He’s no fool, and I’m sure he can be trusted, too. What about Sally?’
‘That’s the hellishness of your injection. I can’t tell her what I’m doing.’
‘You can leave a note.’
‘No. There’s too much at stake to risk putting anything in writing. It’s cruel to her, but it may actually help if she thinks I’m really ill and too sick to see anybody. I must leave that to you. You mustn’t tell her the truth, but I’m sure you can help her by looking in pretty often and saying that I’m making progress, or something.’
‘How long has this got to go on for? I’ve got to work out what hospital to put you in.’
‘Up to three days. I don’t think we can hope to keep up play-acting for longer than that, and even three days is rather a long time. If I’ve got nowhere in three days, I’ll get in touch with you and we’ll have to unwrite the play as best we can.’
‘I think I might manage a nameless hospital for three days.’
‘That would be a great help.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘It’s a dreadful thing to say, but I’m afraid that like Sally she will have to suffer. With so many journalists around I daren’t risk letting her know what’s really happening – it’s not that I don’t trust her, but I’m frightened of clever questioning and putting two and two together. She’ll know that I’ve come home, because she will have seen the car, but I’m not even going to talk to her before I go off again. Will you help me there, too, Gavin? Tell her that I had to leave at once, and that you are going to see me at headquarters later on. You might add that you’re a bit worried about me – that will prepare her for the shock of whatever announcement you make.’
‘I’ll do my best, Piet. I don’t like any of it, but I suppose you know what you are doing. Having said I’ll help, I’m not going back on my word.’
‘God bless you, Gavin. And may God bless Jo, and Sally, and my mother, and all of us.’
*
General Sir Gervase Warrinder was regarded by those of his political opponents who did not know him as a typical Colonel Blimp – landowner, ex-Regular Army, dyed-in-the-wool Conservative. Those who actually knew him as chairman of the County Council (and of the Police Authority) might dislike his politics, but they could not help respecting him personally. He had been an intelligent and able soldier, who had commanded a division with distinction during the war at an exceptionally early age. After the war he served in a variety of Staff posts but had retired from the Army relatively young when he succeeded to his father’s estate. He had never sought to be an MP, though he could certainly have become one, preferring to devote himself to the County Council. Piet suspected –rightly – that it was Sir Gervase Warrinder’s confidence in youth that had got him his job as chief constable. He had regular official meetings with Sir Gervase, but could scarcely feel that he had acquired much personal relationship with him. Piet, however, could judge men too, and he had no hesitation in going to Warrinder Hall without telephoning first. He sent his driver back to headquarters with the police car and set off in his own car with a hurriedly packed bag, and one or two other things thrown in the boot.
*
Sir Gervase had just finished dinner, but asked Piet if he could do with anything to eat. When Piet declined Sir Gervase offered coffee or liqueur whisky. Piet settled for coffee, which was quickly brought to the library, a beautiful eighteenth-century room that Sir Gervase also used as his office. ‘My dear boy, I’m thankful to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve kept out of your way, though I hope you got the message I sent as soon as I heard the dreadful news.’
‘Yes, sir, and I was much moved by it. I’m afraid I have nothing to report about my daughter. I’ve come to ask your help in what seems to me to have become a critical investigation.’
‘You don’t need to ask my help. Any help that I can give at any time is yours without any need of asking.’
‘I know that, sir, and I appreciate the constant support that you have given since I became Chief Constable. But the circumstances are irregular, and what I want to do may strike you as highly irregular. Before you commit yourself, it is only fair that I should try to make a case to you. I take it that there is no chance of our being overheard in this room?’
‘I hope not! As far as I know it is not bugged, and we can keep well away from the window if you consider such precautions necessary.’
Piet ran his hand wearily through his hair. ‘You may think I’m being over-dramatic, sir, but if my suspicions are anything like being even nearly right we may be up against an organisation capable of almost anything.’ He told Sir Gervase about the death of the girl found unconscious at Earl’s Down, of his reasons for regarding the death as murder, and of his reasons for linking the death with the kidnapping of his own daughter. He said nothing about his finding of the purse on the Downs, and he did not mention the two discrepancies that worried him. He intended to keep his own counsel about the purse, but he had given Sir Gervase the facts which seemed to him to embody discrepancies, and the chairman could draw his own conclusions. Piet went on, ‘In all the circumstances, sir, I am bound to consider it possible that some highly-placed people may be involved, people in positions of authority. I cannot leave the investigation to subordinates in my own Force, and if I call officially for help from any of the specialised branches of New Scotland Yard it may alert the very people I am concerned to find.’ He explained his wish to continue the investigation by himself, and of his need to disappear in order to have a free hand. Sir Gervase listened to it all in complete silence, without asking a single question. Then he said, ‘There have been times in my life when I have been given orders that I knew would cost the lives of men I commanded, and perhaps also my own life, without being given any explanation of the strategical plan behind the orders. It is a soldier’s job to obey, and while sometimes I had my own reservations about what I was commanded to do, naturally I obeyed. But I am not a soldier now. You have not given me a full explanation of your real reasons for wanting to act as you suggest.’
‘Well, really it was the inspector who found it.’
‘Aye, Mr Norton, but only because you worked out where we ought to look.’
‘And where was that?’
‘I reckoned that the drug would take a little time to keel her over, so that the one place where there couldn’t be a syringe was where she fell. Assuming that she tripped over the tent rope, which is what seems likely, that gives us a rough direction of where she was walking from. Go back about a hundred yards in this general direction and you come to a group of three tents, set up with a kind of open square between them. The square gives a certain amount of privacy, and it was there that Inspector Donaldson found the syringe, trodden on and broken by somebody, but a hypodermic syringe all right, and with analysable quantities of some drug still in the broken shaft.’
‘I’d like to see where you found it, and the bits of the thing itself.’
‘Sure. The inspector’s got it wrapped up ready for sending away, but it won’t take a moment to unwrap it.’ Donaldson opened an envelope and showed Piet the broken bits of what had been a hypodermic syringe of apparently quite high quality. Lovell was still with them, and he and Piet walked with the other officers to the little square formed by the three tents. ‘There you are – you can still see the marks on the ground,’ Inspector Donaldson said.
He was obviously delighted with the discovery, which indicated sharp eyes on his part, though he had loyally given credit to the deputy chief constable for suggesting where they should look. Piet got down on his knees and studied the patch of earth into which the syringe had been trodden. There were still some tiny flakes of powdered glass lying on the ground. ‘We ought to get photographs,’ Piet said. ‘I think these little stars of powdered glass would probably show up quite well.’
‘We’ve sent for a photographer, Piet,’ Norton said. ‘I think that’s probably him coming across now.’
It was. ‘Good work,’ Piet said again.
*
‘I gather that you have identified the dead girl here with the driver of a Mini van that may have been involved in snatching your daughter,’ Victor Norton said. ‘Have you any idea of her name?’
‘Not yet, no.’ Piet felt the purse burning a hole in his pocket – he had taken the first, probably irreversible step, in concealing evidence. Why? If he tried to analyse his reasons they looked like neurotic response to Jo’s disappearance, and yet he was acting on them. As he moved away from the patch of ground where the trodden fragments of the syringe lay, a shaft of sunlight came round the edge of the tents and lighted the disturbed earth. He stopped suddenly – yes, it was unmistakeable. The hard ground didn’t take footmarks well, but in the disturbance where the syringe had been trodden in were marks that he was convinced he had seen before – a piece of the same sole-pattern as on the path beside his house. He wondered if Inspector Lovell had noticed it, but he said nothing. More concealing of evidence? Well, it was done now, and the photographs would be available later for anyone to notice whatever might show up on them.
*
‘Poor Piet, you must be going through absolute, utter hell. I wish I could think of something practical to help,’ Victor Norton said.
‘You are helping. You’re being splendid – everybody’s being splendid. There’s one rather grim job that, perhaps, you could take from me. Having discovered that the van was probably mixed up with Jo, obviously we’ve got to search the Downs, or this part of them, anyway. I haven’t much hope of finding anything, but it’s routine work that can’t be neglected, and you will understand that it’s harrowing for me. May I leave it to you, Victor? I should probably be tempted to waste time by keeping men on the job for too long. You must be dispassionate, and ruthless. Call off the search as soon as the main area has been covered.’
‘You must leave that to me, Piet. I’m honoured to take on the job, and none of us is going to give in lightly.’
‘Well, that’s up to you now. The search party should be at work by this time – perhaps you’d go and direct things. It would be as well if Inspector Lovell went with you – he walked here with me from the van, and he can show you the route we took. We reckoned that the direct route was the most likely, and we didn’t deviate from it. Of course you may have other ideas.’
A direct lie there. Piet did not look at Lovell. If you are going to trust somebody, you trust him.
*
Norton and Lovell departed to join the search party, and Inspector Donaldson, saying that he’d better get the remains of the syringe to the laboratory, went off, too. Piet was not sorry to be on his own. Asking his driver to wait for him by the gate, he wandered into the festival crowd. Noise surged round him, but there was a hypnotic quality about it so that in a sense you ceased to notice noise as such. It was a few minutes before six, and he remembered that the Space Orchids were due on at six. There was a considerable crowd round their bandstand or playing-platform, and he stood at the back, where nobody took any notice of him.
The group was tuning up, or what Piet supposed might be called tuning up. There were two guitarists now, the lead guitarist whom he had already met, and a tall, fair boy, who looked not much more than sixteen, who was presumably the bass guitar. A few plangent notes, magnified and maintained in a kind of continuous hum by their electronic resonance, came from the guitars, and the drummer was warming himself up with a roll or two on his drums. The vocalist was not yet on the platform.
‘Come on, Spider,’ somebody in the crowd yelled. Nothing happened, and the other voices took up the call, chanting ‘Spi-der . . . Spi-der . . . We want Spi-der.’ It was all quite good-humoured. Nobody seemed to expect the performance to begin actually on time.
Ten minutes late the thin, dark vocalist climbed on to the platform, and the group broke into a rhythmic beat of guitars and drums. For three or four minutes the music seemed to be rhythmic without any particular pattern to it, and then it changed suddenly to the song ‘You’re Born For The Dole’. Piet timed the performance carefully. Ten minutes late in starting, four minutes or so of extemporising, and then the song.
Pop music had played little or no part in Piet’s own youth; indeed, he had not been much concerned with music generally. His instincts and emotional experiences were visual, and music moved him most when he could fit visual images to the pattern of sound – as in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, for instance. He accepted that lack of a more direct response to music was a deficiency in his personal makeup, and he respected the creative use that other people made of music. It was typical of him that when he knew that he was going to be responsible for policing the Earl’s Down festival he did what he could to learn about the variety and content of music roughly classed as ‘pop’. He had bought a number of records by different groups, to which he and Sally listened seriously, and tried to understand. His secretary’s fourteen-year-old son was an intelligent boy, with a deep interest in ‘rock’, particularly the variety known as ‘hard rock’, which seemed to have the most intellectual content in the world of ‘pop’. Kate Rimmell, the boy’s mother, was a wise woman who set herself to understand the appeal to her son in ‘rock’, and she had learned a lot about it. Piet had had long discussions with her, and he had been to her home to listen to her son’s records. Clearly, there was much more to ‘pop’ than a cult of noise for mindless youth; to dismiss ‘pop’ like this was to dismiss literature as consisting solely of pulp magazines. Much ‘pop’ doubtless was tenth-rate stuff, as ephemeral as the material in girlie magazines, but within the cult, or culture, or subculture, was a core of creative work of real, perhaps even of outstanding, merit. Piet had listened to some of the work of David Bowie which seemed to express a kind of existentialist philosophy reflecting an important strand in the collective mood of a generation. If it was a sombre strand it was not less genuine as a reflection of mood, for many thinking young people looked to a sombre and uncertain future.
The Space Orchids were not a group that he had heard of before coming to Earl’s Down, but in listening to them now he thought that they would probably attract a good deal of attention – if they stayed together, and went on. As far as he could classify them, they belonged to the intellectual minority of the ‘hard rock’ school, with music of most subtle rhythmic patterns, and lyrics that were poetry in themselves, and not merely the words for songs. They were excessively gloomy. ‘You’re Born For The Dole’ offered nothing but the harsh statement that most children were doomed to lives of total futility. It was followed by ‘Dark Streets’, which insisted that man walked in the dark only because he himself had put out the lights:
There’s a run of dark streets
Where we live
There are lamp-posts, oh yes,
Leaning like drunkards
With their lamps smashed . . .
There is power to the poles, oh yes,
But no light,
Nothing for the power to reach.
What do we do with that power?
Piet could have gone on listening to the group, but after ‘Dark Streets’ he decided that he couldn’t spare any more time. The estimate of roughly ten minutes a song was about right. The girl Susan, introduced as the group’s business manager, had said that at their lunchtime performance yesterday they’d sung two of their songs twice. From what he had heard this evening he could work out some approximate times, though he didn’t know how late they might have been yesterday in starting. That could be gone into, if it seemed to matter. Tonight he had other things to do. At least it now seemed that there was a second discrepancy to be explained.
He found his driver, and asked to be taken home. The visit to Earl’s Down and listening to the Space Orchids had taken up a lot of time, and he was much later in getting home than he had intended to be. Instead of Sally, he was met by Dr Macdonald. ‘I’ve persuaded Sally to let me give her another injection,’ the doctor said. ‘She has gone to sleep now, and with luck she should sleep peacefully for most of the night.’
‘Oh, Lord . . . I mean, thank you. I know you acted for the best, but it’s made things damned awkward for me. I shan’t be able to talk to Sally now.’
‘Why on earth not?’ The doctor was completely puzzled.
‘I’m glad you’re here – I was going to ask you to call, anyway. Come into the study and have a drink. I want to talk to you very seriously indeed.’
Still puzzled, Gavin Macdonald followed Piet, and accepted a glass of whisky. Having made sure that door and windows were shut, Piet said, ‘I’m going to trust you, Gavin, and I hope you can trust me.’
‘Of course. But what’s it all about? You’re under an appalling strain, Piet. Let me give you an injection, too.’
‘It’s not that. I want you to give me an illness.’
‘My poor Piet! It could be that you are ill.’
‘No. This is where you have to trust me. A young woman has been murdered at the Earl’s Down festival, and there’s no doubt that the murder is in some way connected with Jo’s kidnapping. I can’t explain any more because there’s a great deal that I don’t know yet, but I’ve come across some evidence that I don’t like, and I’ve got to follow it up myself. I can’t delegate – again, this is where you have to take my word for it. So I want to disappear for a few days. I thought I might have a nervous breakdown, so that you can put me in hospital with strict orders that nobody, not even Sally, is allowed to visit me. Of course I don’t intend really to go to hospital. It’s asking a lot of you, Gavin, but will you help me? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it literally a matter of life or death – Jo’s life, and perhaps some other people’s lives, too.’
The doctor didn’t reply for a minute or two. Then he said, ‘You’re asking me to risk my professional future. I’m prepared to do this for you, but do you realise that you are risking your own career as well? Chief constables who have nervous breakdowns are likely to be asked to resign.’
‘I’ve considered all that. I think, perhaps, that you’re covered by acting under my orders. Obviously there’s risk for me, but it’s a risk I’ve got to take. If I win, it won’t matter. If I lose – well, in a way it won’t matter either.’
‘All right. But I don’t like nervous breakdowns. I think something more explainable physically – say a cardiac emergency –might be better. That would require absolute rest, and we can issue a statement to try to keep the Press off the scent for a bit. They’ll be on your side, anyway, because there’s national sympathy for you over Jo. But I may need some help. May I take –’ he mentioned an eminent surgeon – ‘into my confidence? He is an old friend, and I think he would help if necessary. And he is absolutely trustworthy.’
‘We’re trusting each other, Gavin, and you must do exactly as you think fit. I can’t make conditions – except that I want to disappear, and it must not be known that I’m still in action. I want to go off tonight, but before I go I’m going to call on Sir Gervase Warrinder, and take him to some extent into my confidence. As chairman of the Police Authority he could certainly help you if anything went wrong, particularly as I shall make it clear to him that you are acting on my personal instructions.’
‘You’ve enough to worry about without worrying about me. But I think it’s probably a good idea to see old Warrinder. He’s no fool, and I’m sure he can be trusted, too. What about Sally?’
‘That’s the hellishness of your injection. I can’t tell her what I’m doing.’
‘You can leave a note.’
‘No. There’s too much at stake to risk putting anything in writing. It’s cruel to her, but it may actually help if she thinks I’m really ill and too sick to see anybody. I must leave that to you. You mustn’t tell her the truth, but I’m sure you can help her by looking in pretty often and saying that I’m making progress, or something.’
‘How long has this got to go on for? I’ve got to work out what hospital to put you in.’
‘Up to three days. I don’t think we can hope to keep up play-acting for longer than that, and even three days is rather a long time. If I’ve got nowhere in three days, I’ll get in touch with you and we’ll have to unwrite the play as best we can.’
‘I think I might manage a nameless hospital for three days.’
‘That would be a great help.’
‘What about your mother?’
‘It’s a dreadful thing to say, but I’m afraid that like Sally she will have to suffer. With so many journalists around I daren’t risk letting her know what’s really happening – it’s not that I don’t trust her, but I’m frightened of clever questioning and putting two and two together. She’ll know that I’ve come home, because she will have seen the car, but I’m not even going to talk to her before I go off again. Will you help me there, too, Gavin? Tell her that I had to leave at once, and that you are going to see me at headquarters later on. You might add that you’re a bit worried about me – that will prepare her for the shock of whatever announcement you make.’
‘I’ll do my best, Piet. I don’t like any of it, but I suppose you know what you are doing. Having said I’ll help, I’m not going back on my word.’
‘God bless you, Gavin. And may God bless Jo, and Sally, and my mother, and all of us.’
*
General Sir Gervase Warrinder was regarded by those of his political opponents who did not know him as a typical Colonel Blimp – landowner, ex-Regular Army, dyed-in-the-wool Conservative. Those who actually knew him as chairman of the County Council (and of the Police Authority) might dislike his politics, but they could not help respecting him personally. He had been an intelligent and able soldier, who had commanded a division with distinction during the war at an exceptionally early age. After the war he served in a variety of Staff posts but had retired from the Army relatively young when he succeeded to his father’s estate. He had never sought to be an MP, though he could certainly have become one, preferring to devote himself to the County Council. Piet suspected –rightly – that it was Sir Gervase Warrinder’s confidence in youth that had got him his job as chief constable. He had regular official meetings with Sir Gervase, but could scarcely feel that he had acquired much personal relationship with him. Piet, however, could judge men too, and he had no hesitation in going to Warrinder Hall without telephoning first. He sent his driver back to headquarters with the police car and set off in his own car with a hurriedly packed bag, and one or two other things thrown in the boot.
*
Sir Gervase had just finished dinner, but asked Piet if he could do with anything to eat. When Piet declined Sir Gervase offered coffee or liqueur whisky. Piet settled for coffee, which was quickly brought to the library, a beautiful eighteenth-century room that Sir Gervase also used as his office. ‘My dear boy, I’m thankful to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve kept out of your way, though I hope you got the message I sent as soon as I heard the dreadful news.’
‘Yes, sir, and I was much moved by it. I’m afraid I have nothing to report about my daughter. I’ve come to ask your help in what seems to me to have become a critical investigation.’
‘You don’t need to ask my help. Any help that I can give at any time is yours without any need of asking.’
‘I know that, sir, and I appreciate the constant support that you have given since I became Chief Constable. But the circumstances are irregular, and what I want to do may strike you as highly irregular. Before you commit yourself, it is only fair that I should try to make a case to you. I take it that there is no chance of our being overheard in this room?’
‘I hope not! As far as I know it is not bugged, and we can keep well away from the window if you consider such precautions necessary.’
Piet ran his hand wearily through his hair. ‘You may think I’m being over-dramatic, sir, but if my suspicions are anything like being even nearly right we may be up against an organisation capable of almost anything.’ He told Sir Gervase about the death of the girl found unconscious at Earl’s Down, of his reasons for regarding the death as murder, and of his reasons for linking the death with the kidnapping of his own daughter. He said nothing about his finding of the purse on the Downs, and he did not mention the two discrepancies that worried him. He intended to keep his own counsel about the purse, but he had given Sir Gervase the facts which seemed to him to embody discrepancies, and the chairman could draw his own conclusions. Piet went on, ‘In all the circumstances, sir, I am bound to consider it possible that some highly-placed people may be involved, people in positions of authority. I cannot leave the investigation to subordinates in my own Force, and if I call officially for help from any of the specialised branches of New Scotland Yard it may alert the very people I am concerned to find.’ He explained his wish to continue the investigation by himself, and of his need to disappear in order to have a free hand. Sir Gervase listened to it all in complete silence, without asking a single question. Then he said, ‘There have been times in my life when I have been given orders that I knew would cost the lives of men I commanded, and perhaps also my own life, without being given any explanation of the strategical plan behind the orders. It is a soldier’s job to obey, and while sometimes I had my own reservations about what I was commanded to do, naturally I obeyed. But I am not a soldier now. You have not given me a full explanation of your real reasons for wanting to act as you suggest.’
