The Chinese Egg (33 page)

Stephen said, “Can't we come with you?”

“No you can't. One, I promised Vicky's mother I wouldn't take either of you anywhere near what could be a nasty situation. Two, if you're with me it takes just that much longer to get whatever news you have round to all the patrol cars, whereas if you're here it can go out to every single one and that might mean saving precious minutes. Three, I don't think Vicky's fit, I want her to stay here with you. Now, I'm off. Wish me luck, I shall need it. And. . . I know you'll do your best.”

The coffee arrived, hot and sweet and nothing like Stephen's mother's coffee, but welcome for all that. There were biscuits too, and Vicky was surprised to find that she could swallow mouthfuls of crumbs washed down with coffee and that she did feel better afterwards. But she still felt tired. So tired she ached all over. She'd have liked to be able to lie down, but in the little room which, by Price's orders, they had to themselves, there were only chairs, hard, wooden, and a table equally hard. So she just sat beside Chris, leaning both elbows on the table, and looked across at Stephen who looked back at her.

“How d'you feel?” he asked.

“I'm tired,” Vicky said.

“You look it,” Chris said.

“Stephen. He really thinks. . . doesn't he? That they're going to. . . that he mayn't be able to get there in time?”

“He's doing everything he can,” Stephen said.

“I wish we could do something.”

“I suppose we ought to try,” Stephen said.

“But I was trying. All the way down. And absolutely nothing happened. You were too, weren't you?”

“Yes.”

“It's hopeless. It's no good trying, you said so. You've got not to try, like you did before,” Chris said.

“You didn't expect us to start playing Twenty Questions in the car in front of that other chap? The driver. I couldn't have. Anyway I don't believe it would have worked.”

“It wouldn't have,” Vicky said with unusual decision.

“But you can't just sit here! You must do something! That's why he brought you here,” Chris said.

“I know.”

“Steve! You
must!
Don't you see? He said every minute counted. You can't not!”

“I suppose so,” Stephen said again.

“Why don't you then? Vicky, why don't you? Oh, I wish it was me,” Chris said impatiently.

“Chris! You don't understand. . . .”

“What don't I understand?”

“It's because. . . . What we see hasn't happened yet. You know that.”

“That's why you've got to do it quickly.”

“But we might see something that isn't going to happen for hours. . . .”

“Then it's all the more important to do it now.”

Vicky looked at Stephen.

“What is it, Vicky?”

Vicky said, “I'm frightened.” She shivered.

“But Vicky. . . .”

Vicky said, “If the Super's right. . . and they're too late. . . .
Don't you see, Chris? I don't want to see. . . what he finds. . . the baby. . . .”

There was a silence. Neither of the others had thought of this.

“Vicky, I'm sorry! I do see. Only I still think you ought to. I know it'd be awful. But if there's a chance of saving it. . . Vicky! you must!”

Vicky looked across at Stephen. He said, “Chris is right, Vicky.”

“I didn't know it would be so. . . bloody awful,” Vicky said.

“But you will?”

Vicky nodded.

Stephen said miserably, “I suppose we've got to play that stupid game?”

“We don't know any other way of doing it, do we?”

“It seems all wrong somehow. As if we didn't care.”

“Of course you care,” Chris said.

Vicky said to Stephen, “You start.”

He thought. He couldn't fix his mind on anything. He looked round the drab, pale-green-distempered room and at the dirty concrete floor. He looked at the high window and saw that outside the light had almost faded. He looked at the flyspotted single lamp hanging from the ceiling. He said, “It's no good. I can't. I absolutely can't.”

“Vicky?” Chris said.

Vicky shivered again. “Suppose I can't either?”

“Try!”

She shut her eyes. Stephen and Chris watched her, Stephen aching for the turmoil which he knew must occupy her mind, Chris with unquenchable hope. The room was very quiet.

Suddenly Vicky cried out. She threw out a hand and cried, “No!” She said, “I don't want. . .” and stopped. She opened her eyes and saw Chris and Stephen. She said, “It wasn't a flash. It was like. . . . You know when you're just going to sleep sometimes you dream. . . you're falling. . . .” She shivered. “It was. . .” Chris, busy putting an arm round Vicky and making comforting noises, didn't realize that it was at this moment that the flash hit both Stephen and Vicky. She felt Vicky shiver again. She looked at Stephen and saw that he was coming back to the present at the
same instant as Vicky's exclamation, “It's dark. I can't see. . . .”

“Headlights,” Stephen said.

“I didn't see any. It was all dark. Someone was running. . . she was crying. . . it's horrid. Something really bad. . . .”

“A flash! You'll have to tell that other Super,” Chris said.

“What, though? I didn't see anything. Just the dark. . . and the person crying.”

“Stephen saw headlights. He must have seen where it was.”

“I didn't. Just a road and grass. Only for a moment, then the headlights went off.”

“What sort of road? Steve! What sort of road?”

“Nothing special. Not a big road. With grass verges. I'll tell you what, though! It was on a hill. Quite steep. Looked like an edge.”

“There must have been something else!” Chris said, impatient.

“There was a sound,” Vicky said.

“You said. Someone crying.”

“Not that sort of sound. Not a person.”

“What then? Steve, did you hear anything?”

“I think I did. I know! It was the sea.”

“There's sea everywhere round here.”

“Only this wasn't like you hear it on the beaches. It was a long way off.”

“Down below,” Vicky said.

“Of course! It was up on a cliff!”

“That's why I had that feel about falling.”

“There must be thousands of cliffs round here,” Chris said, disappointed.

“Not all that many. Brighton's got a flat beach,” Stephen said.

“It could help them, then. They might be able to guess where it is. Which way was the van moving, Steve?”

“It wasn't moving. What I mean is, the headlights weren't moving. If it was the van, it was parked on a road somewhere,”

“We'd better tell them. Quickly.”

“If only they'll believe. . . .” Vicky began.

“What is it?”

“It could happen any minute now and they wouldn't have time to get there.”

“No it couldn't! You said it was quite, absolutely dark.”

“Look out of the window.”

Stephen and Chris looked. The sky, which had been overcast and grey when they'd first sat down in the room, was now an inky black. Vicky said what they all three thought, when she said, “It could be happening now. He's going to kill her. And the baby.” Neither Stephen nor Chris contradicted her.

Monday night
20.35 Price rang Andrew.

“Mr. Wilmington? We've got a lead. Van's possibly been seen half an hour ago on the road between Hastings and Eastbourne. Back of Pevensey Bay. Unfortunately we lost it again after that. We think it may be in Eastbourne itself. Trouble is there are too many blue Bedford vans on the roads, and all we've got to identify this one is the damaged off-side wing. However, we shall carry on searching.”

Andrew said, “I'm coming down,” cautiously because he didn't want Sally to hear. She was supposed to be in the living-room, but she was so restless, he couldn't be sure how near she might be.

“There's really no need, sir. In fact. . .”

“I'm coming,” Andrew said. It was only after he'd rung off that he realized he didn't know where he was coming to. Price had gone down to the Brighton station, he'd go there. He went in to tell Sally that he'd been called out to see an American business associate who was in London on a flying visit, he'd got to drive out to see him at Heathrow. “I'll ring from there to tell you when I'll be back,” he said. Sally accepted it as she did everything now in her numbed misery. He kissed her hair and said, “Go to bed, darling, and take a pill. No point in staying up for me, I don't know when I'll be back.” She might have said, “No point in taking a pill, I'm beyond that,” but she didn't. She just let him kiss her. When he looked back from the door of the room she was still sitting there, not looking at anything, her hands idle in her lap.

21.15 No further sign of the van. Price, in a control car driving round Eastbourne, searching the back streets like the one in Brighton where the van had parked the night before last, sending men on foot to investigate parking lots, dead-end streets, deserted warehouses, was getting desperate. It was now a dark overcast evening with a fine drizzling rain. Somewhere round here, within perhaps twenty or thirty miles' radius, that young thug might be quietly getting rid of the girl and the baby. Price's anxiety made him extraordinarily short-tempered. When his driver suggested going out and having a look on the front, he bit his head off. Then apologized. Immediately did it again.

21.30 Chief Superintendent Cole couldn't understand it. Since he was a conscientious officer and obeyed orders, he'd transmitted immediately the extraordinary, garbled message produced by the three youngsters. A story of a road on the side of a hill, grass, headlights, a cliff, the sea. He didn't understand what it was supposed to mean. He wondered if these three were in radio contact with the kidnapping lot. It seemed unlikely. In spite of his knowledge of the need for urgency it took him a little time to sort out what he was being told, to add it up in his mind, and when he spoke over the radio telephone to Price, his voice told how much value he placed on information got this way. He repeated what Stephen had told him. Said doubtfully that there were quite a lot of cliffs between Brighton and Eastbourne, but the obvious one would be Beachy Head. Well-known place for suicides. Sheer drop at one point, two hundred feet to the rocks below.

“How close is the road to the edge there?” Price asked.

“Fifteen feet? Right on top you can drive off the road right up to the verge, drive the whole thing over if that's how you feel.”

“There's a police rescue post there, isn't there?”

“That's right.”

“Doesn't sound so likely then. How far away is this other place where the road's so close to the edge?”

“Five hundred yards? On the descending road, going towards Birling Gap. There's a dip in the coastline, then the ground goes up again this way, towards the old lighthouse.”

“Popular area? Many people about?”

“In this weather? No one at all.”

“I'm going there. I want six more cars as reinforcement. Take anyone you can off the flat ground and concentrate those I'm not wanting on other cliffs that have roads reasonably near. We've got to do this quietly, I want the van, if it's there, surrounded and surprised. Hurry. We haven't any time to waste.”

Cole issued the instructions. He had to. “What does he mean, no time to waste?” Even if the place is right, it's ten minutes since those three told me what they knew. Whatever was going to happen up there must have happened by now. “Crazy,” he thought. But with Jim in this mood, he, Cole, wasn't going to ask questions. He was going to obey orders and wait till it was all over for explanations.

21.45 Andrew, having exceeded the speed limit wherever possible, arrived at the Brighton police station, introduced himself and asked for Price.

“He's out looking for the van, sir,” Cole said.

“Where?”

Cole hesitated, then said, “The thing is, sir, if he finds it he's hoping to get it surrounded and then surprise the driver. He thinks that way there'd be less risk of violence.”

“Where is he?” Andrew said again.

“I'm afraid I can't tell you that, sir. Instructions, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“God damn it, I'm the child's father!”

“I know, sir. I know how you must be feeling, but it's impossible for me to tell you anything more. If you'd like to stay here for a while, I'll see to it that every piece of news that comes through to us is passed on to you directly, sir.”

With a very bad grace, Andrew sat. But he was too restless to remain here, just as he'd been too restless to stay at home in London. He got up and prowled. He went outside and looked at the dark wet night. He came indoors again and was going back to the room he'd just left when he saw a boy coming out of a door ahead. He said, “You!” and saw on Stephen's face just the look of surprise and dislike that he knew must be on his own.

“What are you doing here?”

“Superintendent Price brought us,” Stephen said.

Andrew's immediate response was one of violent anger. His baby's life, Sally's sanity, lay in the hands of a gullible, incompetent policeman who was staking them on a story which sounded like the inventions of a fortune teller looking into a teacup. If the worst happened he'd make sure that Chief Superintendent Bloody Price lost not only this case but his reputation as well. For a moment he couldn't speak, then he controlled himself and said, “I suppose you know exactly what's going on and where he is just now? Or doesn't your second sight tell you anything as practical as that?”

Stephen flushed, but he didn't turn away. He said, “I think he'll have gone towards a beach somewhere.”