The Savage Day - Jack Higgins [33]
'Ask for Mr Berger,' I said. 'If anything goes adrift, we'll meet back at the boat.'
She said nothing. Simply glanced at the piece of paper briefly, dropped it into the fire and walked out.
Binnie said, 'When I was a kid on my Da's farm in Kerry I had the best-looking red setter you ever saw.'
I tried some more lager. 'Is that so?'
'There was a little flatcoat retriever bitch on the next place and whenever he went over there, she used to take lumps out of him. You've never seen the like.' There was a heavy pause and he went on, 'When he was run over by the milk lorry one morning, she lay in a corner, that little bitch, for a week or more. Would neither drink nor eat. Now wasn't that the strange thing?'
'Not at all,' I said. 'It's really quite simple. She was a woman. Now get the hell out of here with your homespun philosophy and hire us a car at the local garage. I'll wait here for you.'
'Leave it to me, Major,' he said, his face expressionless, and went out.
The door closed with a soft whuff, wind lifted a paper off the bar, the fire flared up.
What was my reason for killing? That's what she had said. I tried to think of Kota Baru, of the burned-out mission, the stink of roasting flesh. It had seemed enough at the time - more than enough, but there was nothing real to it any more. It was an echo from an ancient dream, something that had never happened.
And then it was quiet. So quiet that I could hear the clock ticking on the mantelpiece, and for no logical reason whatsoever my stomach tightened, dead men's fingers seemed to crawl across my skin and I suddenly knew exactly what Meyer meant by having a bad feeling.
There had been no car available at the town's only garage, but Binnie had managed to borrow an old Ford pick-up truck from them, probably by invoking the name of the Organization although I didn't enquire too closely into that.
He did the driving and I sat back and smoked a cigarette and stared morosely into the driving rain. It was a pleasant enough ride. Green fields, high hedges, rolling farmland, with here and there grey stone walls that had once been the boundaries of the great estates or still were.
He had picked up an ordnance survey map of the area and I found Randall Cottage again. The track leading to it was perhaps a quarter of a mile long and the place was entirely surrounded by trees. The right kind of hidey hole for an old fox like Meyer.
I gave Binnie the sign when we were close and he started to slow. A car was parked on the grass verge at the side of the road a hundred yards from the turning, a large green Vauxhall estate with no one inside.
God knows why, that instinct again for bad news, I suppose, the product of having lived entirely the wrong sort of life, but something was wrong, I'd never been more certain of anything. I clapped a hand on Binnie's shoulder and told him to pull up.
I got out of the car, walked back to the Vauxhall and peered inside. The doors were locked and everything seemed normal enough. Rooks called in the elm trees beyond the wall that enclosed the plantation and Randall Cottage.
I walked back to the van through the rain and Binnie got out to meet me. 'What's up?'
'That car,' I said. 'It worries me. It could be that it's simply broken down and the driver's walking on to the next village for help. Pigs could also fly.'
'On the other hand,' he said slowly, 'if someone wanted to walk up to the cottage quiet like ...'
'That's right.'
'So what do we do about it?'
I gave the matter some thought and then I told him.
* * *
The track to the cottage wasn't doing the van's springs much good and I stayed in bottom gear, sliding from one pothole to the next in the heavy rain. It was a gloomy sort of place, that wood, choked with undergrowth, pine trees un-thinned over the years cutting out all light.
The track took a sharp right turn that brought me out into a clearing suddenly and there was Randall Cottage, a colonial