The Empty House (25 page)

But he was safe, and he knew it.

He turned over on his side and lay breathing deeply as his heart slowed down. Then he wriggled around, got hold of the bailer, and finished bailing out the boat. He stopped once to be sick. The muscles of his stomach were still knotted with the effort he had made, and vomiting was painful. After he had cleared the boat, he stripped off all of his clothes, wrung the water out of them, and sat naked, trying to make his mind up whether it was worth putting them on again. The night wind quickly told him that it was.

His watch showed the time as nearly half past two. It would be light in an hour or so, and if the tide had not carried him close enough to the shore for him to swim to land, he could expect help from other boats. He started to shiver in short, uncontrollable spasms.

This was the bleak hour before dawn, the hour which he had experienced before, when the last drops of confidence and hope had drained away and nothing was left but apprehension and emptiness and despair. It was the lowest circle in the Inferno, below the hot hells of anger and pain and lust, far down into the unsounded gray depths. It was the cavern of treachery and defeat.

The trance he fell into could hardly be called sleep. It was a temporary release, into the blackness of the nether pit. When he opened his eyes there was light in the sky. The morning breeze, blowing off the sea, had helped the tide, and he was quite close inshore, near to the opening of a small river. It was not the Culme. He thought for a moment that it might be the Lynn, but that would have been much bigger and there would have been buildings in sight. It might, he guessed, be the Widd, a small stream which ran out to sea on the other side of Culme Point.

Using the bailer as a paddle, Peter managed to turn the bows of the boat into the river. The tide was making strongly now, and he was carried upstream at a fair speed. When he had rounded the first bend and was out of sight of the sea, he edged the boat to the bank and managed to beach it on a patch of stones and gravel under overhanging trees.

He was so stiff and so clammed with cold that the simple action of stepping ashore was beyond him. He levered his long legs over the side, slid forward onto his knees, put one hand onto the boat, and started to organise the effort which would get him back onto his feet.

As he did so, his eye fell on the footboard which had so obstinately resisted all his efforts during the night to remove it and use it as a paddle.

The reason for its immobility was clear. The board had been fastened to the cleat at either end. He could see the bright heads of the new screws which were holding it down.

Peter remained on his knees for a full minute while his tired brain grappled with the shocking truth that was staring him in the face. He realised that all his future moves would have to be replanned. And before he could plan anything, he had to find warmth and security and sleep.

Work it out slowly. There was something to be done before he moved away. A premium to be paid on an insurance policy against further attacks.

He realised that he was not strong enough to turn the boat over. Instead, he leaned his weight on the near side until the water started to come in, and held it down until the boat was half full. Then, sitting and using his feet, he kicked it out into deeper water and watched it as it floated sluggishly away upstream.

Then he set his face to the bank, climbed it, and started inland. This was Exmoor. Tilted fields which had had their first mowings. Hedges of beech saplings planted as winter windbreaks. Patches of stony outcrop, knee deep in heather. Sheep, seagulls, and rabbits. Once, as he crossed the bottom of a small valley, he came face to face with a fox galloping home from a night of villainy. It looked at him for a long moment with unblinking yellow eyes, then slipped into the bracken and was gone.

It was near six o’clock, and the sun was already high, when he found what he needed. It was an isolated construction, set at the top of a fold in the hills, served by a single rutted track which ran up to it and stopped. It was no more than a framework of upright angle irons, with open sides and a corrugated iron roof, and it was packed with the baled hay which would be used that winter to feed the sheep he could see scattered, like confetti, down one side of the valley and up the other. There was a pump, too, which was rusty, but which looked as if it might work, and a trough made out of an iron cask cut in half lengthways.

Energetic use of the handle eventually brought up a spout of clear water. Peter washed the salt from his face and hands and drank his fill. Then, hoisting himself up by one of the girders, he wriggled onto the top of the hay, made a space for himself between two of the bales, and went to sleep.

It was past midday when he woke. The heat under the iron roof was considerable. His clothes had dried on him, and seemed to have shrunk as they dried. Peter wriggled into a cooler spot on the north side of the stack and looked out.

There was a road running along the crest on the far side of the valley. It could hardly be a busy road, for during the afternoon he saw only two cars and a girl on horseback. Beyond the crest, down in the next valley, he could hear a tractor working. He guessed that it was pulling a harrow. It never quite came into sight, but each time it got close enough to the summit he could see its tail of white dust. A kestrel, suspended on an invisible string, swung across the valley, quartering it for rabbits. The sun moved by imperceptible degrees toward the west.

At this point it occurred to Peter to examine the contents of his wallet which must have suffered from his immersion. He took out the banknotes which it contained, separated them with some difficulty, and laid them out on the straw to dry. It was while he was doing this that he found the scrap of paper which he had removed from Kevin’s mouth. It was good-quality paper. Using his nails, he unpicked it and smoothed it out onto the palm of his hand.

It was a small piece torn off the top of a sheet of thick and expensive writing paper. The name and address had been engraved and were still quite legible:
M. Valentin Lasspiniere, Rue Belcourt 14, Boulogne-sur-mer. 62200.

Boulogne! His mother’s hometown. A place of memories. He had spent half the first fourteen years of his life there, and had visited it many times since. He thought he could even remember the Rue Belcourt, a quiet street behind the cathedral. The name Valentin Lasspiniere rang a faint bell. His mother would know it. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his notecase. What he had to consider was his next move.

His destination lay twenty miles or more to the south of him. With luck and judgment he should be able to cover that distance in the time available. On roads he could walk it in five hours. Across country he would have to allow eight. He had water to drink. The fact that he would have to go without food did not worry him. On other occasions, in order to test himself, he had gone without food for forty-eight hours, and on one occasion for sixty, and had found that it did not impair his physical capacity and actually sharpened his wits.

The first half of his journey would be across open country. He was not clear exactly where he was, but Dunkery would be on his right and Croydon Hill on his left. At some point he would have to cross the main north-south road from Dunster. After that, if he kept steadily south with a little east in it, he must come out into an area of small roads, and isolated villages and farms around Skolgate, Morebath, and Shillingford. Once he reached that area, there would be signposts to help him.

A factor he had not reckoned on was the difficulty of crossing Exmoor in the dark. A hillside which was open going by day was full of traps by night. The heather was knee high, and under the heather lay sizable rocks. He nearly came to grief almost at once, when he put his left foot between two such rocks and pitched forward onto his face.

He thought, for a bad moment, that he had broken his ankle, but decided, after a few cautious experiments, that he had only twisted it slightly. It was painful, but it would support him. After that he went a lot more slowly.

He had started at ten o’clock. It was close on midnight when he slithered down a bank, waded through a stream, climbed another and much steeper bank, and found himself on the main road. A signpost told him that he was three miles from Dunster. So, coming diagonally across, he had covered barely four miles in two hours. That was not good enough. He realised that he would have to abandon any idea of a cross-country march and use minor roads. There would be few cars out at that time of night, and he should be able to see their lights in time to get under cover.

After an unpleasant traverse up a hillside of brambles and nettles, he struck a road which seemed to be going in the right direction. As he found when he looked at the map later, it was the small road which ran parallel to the main road and a mile or more to the east of it. It served his purpose well. On the only occasion that he met a car he had ample time to take cover.

Counting his paces and timing himself as he went, he reckoned he had covered the best part of ten miles when he realised that he was being edged back toward the main road. He could see the lights of the cars in the valley to his right. It was time to strike across country again.

The moon was hidden by clouds, but some light was filtering through. His night vision was now good and he could make out the general lie of the land. He had reached the terminal shoulder of a ridge, and the ground fell off in three directions. To the right, the road he was on swung down into the valley to meet the main road. The scattered lights beyond would be Dulverton. In front and to the left was an even sharper descent into a thick belt of trees. Down below the trees, hidden in the steep-sided valley, must run the Hadden stream, which joined the Exe at this point. It would not be difficult to cross, and beyond it lay open country.

It was when he was halfway down that he realised just how steep the valley was. It had started as open pasture with occasional outcrops of rock. As he got farther down, the hill shelved sharply. He found that an effective, if undignified, method of progress was sitting and sliding. When he reached the wood, he realised, from the fact that the top of a considerable tree was almost on a level with him, that what he had to negotiate was not a slope but a precipice. He wondered for a moment whether he ought to go back, but rejected the idea. He was committed to the descent, and would see it through.

There were saplings which gave him a handhold, and there were toeholds in the broken rock. Perhaps it was not going to be too difficult. He could already hear the river below him. At that moment the sapling he was holding came away in his hand. He rolled onto his face, grabbed for another handhold, missed, and started to slip. As he slipped, he felt something sharp dig into his stomach. The first thing he realised was that he had stopped slipping. Next, that he was gaffed. A pointed branch had hooked itself into the front of his trousers. While he was wondering what to do about it, a slow tearing indicated that the front of his trousers was giving way. He scrabbled wildly with his feet, found a foothold, lost it, and started to slip again. It was not a rapid descent, but it was horribly uncomfortable. It ended with a bump as his feet hit solid rock. He turned cautiously. A few feet away the River Hadden ran past, chuckling.

“There’s nothing to bloody laugh about,” he said sourly. “How am I going to walk through North Devon with no front to my trousers?”

While he was thinking about this, he sat down on the rock, took the shoe and sock off his left foot, and soaked his ankle in the ice-cold water. Although it was now, more than ever, essential for him to arrive before full daylight, he reckoned that he would be the better for a short break.

It was while he was sitting on that ledge of rock, with one foot in the River Hadden, that he finally grasped the truth.

There was no particular reason for it. Or was it fantastic to suppose that it was because he was doing what Dr. Wolfe had done, crossing Exmoor by night? Cutting, admittedly, a very different figure. He had so often visualised the scientist, neatly dressed, picking his way by the route he had mapped out months before, a briefcase in one hand, a rolled umbrella in the other, a small knapsack, perhaps, on his back containing food and drink for the day he was planning to spend in the barn at Watersmeet Farm. Perhaps it was simply because he had been thinking about it so long that the solution, which was bound to occur sooner or later, came to him then.

Reduced to its essentials, it was a very simple syllogism.

If the letter and number on the note pad in Roland Highsmith’s office referred to a house which he had purchased in Cryde Bay for his ailing partner Mr. Westall, why had he taken such deliberate steps – first diverting Peter’s attention and then quietly removing the page from the pad – to make sure that Peter did not catch sight of it?

Two possible solutions had already occurred to him. First, that it was some other note on the pad that Highsmith wished to conceal. Alternatively, that Mr. Westall himself was somehow involved in the affair. Peter had thought long and hard about both these possibilities, considering various permutations and combinations of them, without arriving at any useful result. Now a third explanation, simpler and more logical, presented itself. As soon as he thought of it, he knew that he was on the right track.

The key to the problem was Roland Highsmith. What did he really know about him? Colonel Hay had suggested that Dr. Wolfe’s plans, his holiday plans in Europe and his final evasion plans, had revolved around assistance from his old friend. Where exactly did the friend fit into the picture? Peter remembered Captain Andy telling him that Highsmith had been born and bred in Cryde Bay and had opened his first office there. The partnership was called Highsmith and Westall, but Miss Wolfe had described it as a one-man firm. The nervous Mr. Quarles, too, had made it clear that Highsmith was the lynch-pin. If he went, the firm would fall to pieces.

What followed from this? That Highsmith was an exceptional man and had a very close connection with Cryde Bay.