Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [37]
‘He might have meant you,’ said Binny. ‘You could go.’ She didn’t really mean it and would much rather have Simpson take any risk that was called for, but it was like those rare occasions when she visited relatives with the children and they refused to help with the washing-up or to talk about O levels. One was forced to show them up.
‘Out there,’ said Edward, ‘the police are watching our every move.’ He pointed dramatically at the shuttered windows. ‘They know everything that’s going on. They have manpower, resources, know-how. The most sophisticated areas of psychology and technology are being explored and utilised. They don’t need us to throw a spanner in the works. They can probably hear every word we say.’
The women looked at him, impressed. Aware that he had their full attention, he struggled upright. Dumping Binny on her feet, he strode to the fireplace and tapped the wall authoritatively; he felt like a military instructor pinpointing the danger spots on the globe. ‘Behind there they are taping our conversations. Every sentence we utter. We don’t need to endanger our lives to pass on information, we have merely to speak to the wall.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Simpson sceptically. ‘They’d need to push wires through the bricks. We’d have heard noises.’ He wished to God Freeman would stop playing head boy. It was bloody irritating under the circumstances.
‘The sort of device I’m thinking of is far more advanced than that,’ Edward informed him severely. ‘You’ll have to take my word for it. We really mustn’t have any more foolish talk about diversions, and mock heroics in the backyard.’ It was imperative, he thought, to nip Simpson’s ridiculous bid for escape in the bud. The man was itching for glory and only thinking of himself. While he was gallivanting over walls, others would be left to cope with his wife.
Alma tiptoed to the hearth. She leaned against the flowered wallpaper and whispered urgently to a leaf, ‘Hallo, hallo. Are you there? Over and out.’ She waited. ‘Is it similar to that thing at the doctor’s?’ she asked Edward. ‘When he listens to your chest?’
‘Same principle,’ he agreed. He returned to the table and like a conscientious mother scooped Binny once more on to his knee. ‘I feel so damned uncomfortable,’ he confided miserably, nuzzling into the dark curls on her neck. Deep down he was thinking that no technological breakthrough on earth was going to remove the pressure on his bladder, or make Helen understand what he was doing in a house she’d never heard of when he’d implied he was going to Simpson’s office. Part of him, now that midnight had passed, welcomed an extended imprisonment. The longer he remained captive the better; it would give Helen time to come full circle from anger to relief. With any luck she’d be so grateful finally at his release, that she wouldn’t insist on divorce. I’ve been a fool, he heard himself telling her. But by God I’ve paid for it.
‘You wouldn’t need to make holes in the brick,’ said Alma, kneeling on all fours and putting her head in the grate. ‘They could dangle a little bug thing down the chimney.’ She felt about in the darkness for wires.
Simpson averted his eyes from her buttocks. He said stubbornly, ‘I’m not prepared to sit here and do nothing. Personally it won’t give me any satisfaction at all to know my groans are being recorded when I’m trussed up like a turkey. I want to know the lay-out down there.’
‘Down where?’ asked Binny.
‘The garden. How many steps are there into the garden?’
‘Six,’ said Binny, after some thought.
‘Eight,’ corrected Edward. He detested inaccuracy.
‘And what’s at the bottom of the steps? Flower pots . . . garden furniture?’
‘There’s nothing,’ Binny said. ‘Except for a rabbit hutch against the back wall. It’s just a yard.’
Alma returned to the table and told them that when she was little she thought Father Christmas lived up the chimney. ‘My Uncle Len used to stand in front of the fire on Christmas eve and shout in a funny voice,