Bones in High Places (15 page)

Once in the open we retraced our steps, as before taking the short-cut over the hillside – now fortunately bare of slugs. The climb was tiring, and at the stile into the lane we stopped to draw breath. Henri lit a crumpled cigarette, and Ingaza, clearly itching to take another look at the swastika, unwrapped its covers and began to drool over his find.

‘Not bad at all,’ he murmured, running his fingers appreciatively over the gems and elaborate metalwork. ‘Could be quite valuable. I’ve got a mate who might –’ He broke off, turning it over to inspect the back. ‘There’s something written here – some sort of inscription.’ The lettering was obviously small for he screwed up his eyes and peered intently. There was a long pause. And then he said quietly, ‘Good Lord … I don’t believe it.’

‘What?’ demanded Primrose. ‘What does it say?’ He handed it to her silently. After a brief scrutiny she shrugged impatiently. ‘It’s all Greek to me, it’s in German!’

‘What would you expect?’ I asked.

‘Yes, well, we didn’t all do Kraut verbs in the fourth form,’ she retorted. ‘Here, take a look.’

I have to admit that my schoolboy smattering yielded only one or two recognizable words, but in that tiny Gothic script a name leaped to my eyes – ‘Rudolph Hess 1940’. I gazed at it incredulously, and then at Nicholas. ‘It’s to do with Hess!’ I exclaimed. ‘1940 – the year before he flew to Scotland.’

‘Observant, dear boy. But it is not “to do” with Hess, it is
from
him. Listen …’ And he proceeded to translate: ‘To my dear friend D.F. in gratitude for our little chats and in fervent hope of amity between our two great nations. You have set my course. Yours, Rudolph Hess 1940.’

‘
Mon Dieu!
’ rasped Henri.

‘Crikey!’ exclaimed Primrose.

‘How is it your German is so good, Nicholas?’ I asked curiously. ‘Thought you read classics at Oxford.’

He shrugged indifferently. ‘More to the point is what do the initials D.F. stand for? Presumably the father-in-law or his brother of your widowed pal Elizabeth. Quite the eager little collaborator it seems … Interesting tale, I should think. You know, this thing could net a fortune in the right hands and with the right contacts.’ He smiled musingly, in that silky, heavy-lidded way that with Ingaza invariably precedes images of lucrative gain.

I was piqued by the phrase ‘your pal Elizabeth’, but before I could respond I saw his smile vanish as he looked up towards the figure coming down the hill. ‘Wouldn’t you know,’ he muttered. ‘Here comes our revered prelate. Quick, give me the bloody thing!’ He snatched the swastika and stuffed it in his pocket.

‘Ah,’ Clinker hailed us, ‘enjoying the last of the sunshine, I see. Been for a stroll, have you? Amazing how hot it still is.’ He was about to mop his brow, but seeing Henri, paused quizzically. The latter was not at his best. Unshaved, uncollared, black garments besmirched from his recent exertions and nether lip adorned by the inevitable Gauloise, he looked less like Al Capone than an inmate of Alcatraz.

‘This is the Reverend Martineau, curé of Taupinière – a village just north of Le Touquet,’ I explained. ‘He is having a little break down here.’ Henri removed his cigarette and gave a friendly leer.

‘Breakdown?’ asked Clinker warily. ‘Yes … well, I hope he gets over it soon. These rural parishes, they can take their toll …’ And with a cursory nod in the curé’s direction, he turned hastily to Primrose.

‘I must say, this Birtle-Figgins business is all rather dreadful – I mean, not the sort of thing one expects to happen to one’s host, especially when one doesn’t know him very well.’

‘Ah, you mean it would be easier if he had been a close friend of yours?’ said Primrose.

‘Er … well, no, er, of course not,’ he replied uncomfortably. ‘I mean, it’s just that one doesn’t know quite how to play it. Ideally we would tootle off pretty quickly – a sort of tactful retreat, if you get my meaning. But the wretched motor is still in dock. And in any case, there’s that police inspector who seems to think we should stick around while he pursues his enquiries. Myrtle is furious, says she’s never been suspected of anything questionable in her whole life.’ (No need for suspicion, I thought, the evidence was only too patent.)

‘Mind you,’ he said in a muttered aside to me, ‘one good thing has come out of it – at least now I shan’t be continually pestered to suck up to Canterbury about that canonization idea. It’s an ill wind …’

‘How is Lavinia coping?’ enquired Primrose politely.

‘A bit dazed, of course, but on the face of it quite well – spends a lot of her time in the kitchen trying out recipes.’

‘Recipes?’

‘Yes. I’ve noticed the food seems to have taken on a new lease of life. We actually had steak the other day.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Although it wasn’t terribly good; and to tell you the truth, it rather played havoc with my digestion. Been so used to nothing but carrot gruel and lettuce stalks, the old tum must have taken fright!’ He laughed heartily.

‘Hmm,’ Primrose said, ‘A sort of therapy, I suppose – cooking can be very soothing.’

‘Don’t know about that,’ he replied, ‘she gets enough soothing from that Turnbull fellow. He’s done nothing but dance attendance ever since Boris’s death.’

‘Good to have friends,’ remarked Primrose vaguely.

‘What about the campers?’ I interjected nervously. ‘Seen much of them?’

‘Odd you should ask that,’ he answered. ‘As a matter of fact I saw them only this morning – or rather that plush car of theirs. Whizzing down the road hell for leather towards that Folly place. Bit of an eyesore if you ask me – but perhaps it’s part of the tourist itinerary. No accounting for tastes …’

I froze. ‘You – you saw them this morning?’

‘Yes, I’ve just said so – going towards the Folly. Lavinia told me she had been jawing to one of them last night about a Nazi dagger or some such hidden in the château. I wasn’t listening really – far too occupied trying to stop my stomach playing up. Gladys has found some excellent pills, they –’

‘Christ!’ I gasped.

He looked at me, startled. ‘Really, Oughterard, that hardly seems the appropriate –’

The rebuke was never completed, for at that moment another voice intervened, one gratingly familiar. ‘Well, well, well! Good afternoon, gentlemen – and
lady
, of course.’ We spun round. And there, emerging through the trees from the path to our left, came Climp and Mullion, the one smirking, the latter with a set expression that belied the genial tone.

‘So we meet again,’ continued Mullion sardonically. ‘What a coincidence! But then, as we’ve all been seeking the same thing, perhaps not. Well, not that we were actually
seeking –
just waiting and watching. Oh yes, we saw you go in and waited for you to come out – easy really. Let others do the dirty work, I always say … you wouldn’t believe how often chance favours those who bide their time.’

‘Well, you can go and bide your time somewhere else,’ snapped Nicholas. ‘Buzz off!’

Climp sniggered. ‘That’s the jammy one. A right hoitytoity bugger he is.’

‘Got the right word there, Ken,’ laughed Mullion mirthlessly. ‘
Just
the right word, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Nicholas flushed. Not, I think, from discomfort but from mounting anger. Before he had a chance to retaliate, Clinker thrust himself forward. ‘Now look here,’ he said severely, ‘I have no idea who you are or what you want, but I find your tone most offensive and I should be obliged if you would kindly return to the tent out of which you crawled this morning.’ It was a stout effort but horribly counterproductive.

Mullion’s eyes hardened, and walking up to the bishop he said quietly and evenly: ‘Shut your face, Pop, otherwise you might just find yourself flat on the ground. And you wouldn’t like that, would you? Not with my boot in your teeth, you wouldn’t.’ Clinker gaped at him in stunned silence. Such responses being rare among his clerical brethren, he was unprepared.

As were we all. For in the next instant Climp reached down into the long grass and picked up a short metal rod. Whether it had been lying there by chance or by design I do not know. What I do know is that, gripping it in his hand, he was advancing upon me in a manner far from friendly.

‘Look here,’ I protested, ‘keep that damn thing –’

‘Just watch it,
Francis
. Move an inch and you’ll get egg on your face – or blood. Hand the swastika over right now … NOW!’ The word was barked out as if we were on a parade ground, and I think I was more shocked by the sudden bellow than by the weapon. I wondered fleetingly if this was how he handled his wards at the prison.

‘Lay off, Ken,’ Mullion shouted. ‘He won’t have it. It’ll be the smarmy one – or Pedro here.’ He nodded towards Henri who politely raised two fingers … a pointless gesture in view of the pistol that Mullion suddenly produced.

‘My God,’ cried Primrose, ‘you’re insane, you can’t …’

But her words were drowned in a deafening fanfare of trumpets and drum roll, as down the lane hurtled Clemenceau, orchestral collar at full throttle. Seeing us, the truant gave a roar of recognition, swerved, leaped the stile, and to the defiant notes of the Marseillaise rampaged manically in our midst. Mullion jumped back but was too late to avoid the dog’s onslaught; losing his balance he fell heavily, dropping the revolver. The combination of canine gaiety and blasts of fervid French patriotism must have struck a chord in Henri, for with a spluttered oath he suddenly biffed Climp on the nose, and in the next instant was scrambling up the bank towards a mass of dense undergrowth. With the aggressors momentarily wrong-footed, we clambered after him and forced our way through the foliage on to a thin track. However, before we could draw breath, Nicholas cried, ‘Watch out, he’s got the gun again!’ And peering down through the brambles we saw the two men charging towards the foot of the bank. A shot rang out, and then another.

Like a ferret out of hell, Henri took off along the narrow track, ducking and weaving among the trees and boulders, his spindly legs moving with the assurance of a mountain goat. Even in my consternation I was struck by the agility of his performance and its contrast with his normally shambling gait. Clearly the survival instinct is an amazing goad. And thus stirred from shock, we followed as best we could: stumbling, panting and cursing over the impossible terrain. Surprisingly Primrose was in the lead (something to do with her hockey days, I suppose) followed by Ingaza, while Clinker and myself brought up a straggling rear.

‘I say, Francis,’ the bishop gasped, ‘this is a bit much, isn’t it! Where the hell are we going?’

‘No idea, sir,’ I responded helpfully, ‘but if they go on like this they’ll run out of bullets.’ Another one whistled close to my ear.

‘Assuming they miss,’ retorted Clinker, acid even
in extremis
. He was beginning to puff like a grampus and I wondered which would get him first, heart or bullet. I grabbed his arm, physically and mentally propelling him onwards. We pounded along the path, and although the shots had ceased I could sense our pursuers gaining ground. I looked wildly for some gully or recess into which we might fling ourselves but nothing presented itself. In fact, as I glanced to the left hoping for some shelter, I was horrified to realize we were running along the brink of a precipice, its sheer drop only partially veiled by wispy saplings. To our right there loomed a blank escarpment of granite. I peered ahead, trying to catch a glimpse of the others, but saw nothing except the ever narrowing path insidiously mapping the rim of the cliff. The sun was blazing, the air windless; yet I felt like some benighted figure in a bleak allegorical landscape, driven by the elements and the merciless forces of evil: lost, desolate, doomed … However, such mental theatricals were cut short by Clinker’s voice gasping angrily, ‘For God’s sake, Oughterard, look where you’re going, man, that’s my foot!’

We wheezed on, lurching and limping over rut and jagged stone … until, rounding a bend, we were brought up sharp by a stark clearing. Trees, scrub, boulders – all had vanished, and were replaced by great sheets of grey unyielding rock. Huddled in the midst of this was a tableau of figures – Henri, Primrose, Nicholas. They were standing irresolute, gazing ahead and downwards into the immeasurably beautiful and horribly vertiginous valley … It was a cul-de-sac with no way out except backwards or over the cliff’s edge.

We froze, helpless and nonplussed. There was the sound of rushing feet; and turning sharply, we were confronted by the figures of Climp and Mullion sweating and triumphant. Climp was still gripping his iron bar, but Mullion was the one with the pistol. They advanced slowly and confidently – presumably emboldened by years of rounding up recalcitrant Broadmoor residents. And like those residents, we faced them wary and afraid.

‘Nicholas,’ commanded Clinker in a good imitation of authority, ‘give him the wretched swastika and then we can all go home.’

‘
Vite, vite
, Neek,’ chimed Henri, ‘
donnez-lui le truc. Je ne veux pas mourir!
’

‘Don’t care what you want, old fruit,’ Ingaza snapped, ‘he’s not bloody getting it.’

He put a hand in his pocket as if to grip the thing tightly, and Mullion loosed another bullet which, ricocheting off a rock, spun close to his shoulder. Nicholas turned white but stood his ground – though possibly uncertain rather than resolute. We stared paralysed, too shocked to move. Then suddenly I heard my sister’s voice.

‘Don’t be absurd, you stupid little man. You haven’t a chance in hell – and in any case, even if we do hand it over, you are far too bonkers to make use of it!’ Scathing, excoriating, this was a tone I knew well (having been its recipient often enough), and I felt proud of her nerve – but this time it was sure to cut no ice.

My fears were confirmed, for the next moment and to my horror, Mullion strode towards her, brandishing the gun, his face contorted with fury. ‘Stupid, am I, you bitch?’ he shouted. ‘I’ll show you who’s stupid – you and your namby-pamby murdering brother and that pink-eyed pansy over there!’ (He gestured towards Nicholas.) I felt sick as I saw him lunge at Primrose, give her a hefty backhander, and then put the gun to her throat and drag her within feet of the cliff’s edge. And I just knew that he would shoot – or worse.