Gently in Trees (24 page)

‘64. A sort of north–south spine road.’

‘How much further?’

‘Most of a mile. The Battle Area is straight ahead.’

He gunned the Wolseley to fifty, which was fast going over the bumpy surface. Sections of Corsican, Scots and larch went flickering by on either hand. They saw nobody and no vehicle. The evening forest appeared deserted. Ride after ride went spoking past, each departing emptily into its own twilight. After all, was this a mistake? A reading fostered by a piece of inspired cunning? When the forest was empty it seemed very empty, as though nobody would ever again set foot there.

Then, ahead, the rusty mesh fencing, with behind it deep undergrowth.

‘Now!’ Keynes breathed. He slewed left into a boundary track which Gently recognized. But still there was some distance to go, over a surface that reduced the speed to near walking pace. At last a bend, and then the gate. Keynes slammed to a stop and they jumped out. The gate was open, and fresh tracks of car tyres showed in leaf-mould beyond it.

‘Easy!’ Gently warned. ‘We want to catch him.’

‘Oh, to hell with that!’ Keynes exclaimed.

He raced forward into the underbrush, crashing through the bracken and elders. Gently went too, but holding back, trying to keep the scene under observation. They burst through the honeysuckle and mounted the bank. Below, in the dell, sat the red Hillman.

‘Oh, the devils, the devils!’ Keynes panted.

Beside the Hillman stood a grey gas bottle. A hose ran from it through the driver’s window. In the rear of the car lay a huddled figure.

‘Come on – come on!’

Keynes sprinted down the slope. He snatched the hose away from the car. He grabbed the door-handle and yanked; but the door had been left locked.

‘Sorry!’ Gently panted.

He picked up the bottle and sent it crashing through the window. He heaved the door open, flipped the seat forward, and dragged out the body to tumble on the bracken.

It was Turner, and he was still alive, though he was cherry-faced and snoring. His mouth was sealed with surgical plaster, which Gently at once ripped off. His wrists and ankles were bound with Scotch tape and there was a heavy contusion on his scalp. For the rest he seemed uninjured. They had probably got there just in time.

‘Do you know mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?’

‘Yes.’

‘Give it to him.’

Keynes dropped on his knees in the bracken, manipulated Turner’s tongue, and began. Gently rapidly checked through the car, expecting and finding nothing. In leaf-mould near it, partial footprints, flat, made probably by a sandal. Then further off another print, leading deeper into the belt. And another. After that, they were lost in bracken and drifted needles.

Chummie, waiting for Turner to die, had retreated into the belt when Gently and Keynes had disturbed him.

There were fresh crashing sounds up above, and two patrolmen came down the slope. They stared at the scene round the car with curious, hard eyes. Gently came back to the car.

‘Has the ambulance arrived?’

‘Yes, sir. But it can’t nicely get up the track. They’re bringing a stretcher.’

‘How many up there?’

‘A couple of cars, sir, and us.’

‘A dog?’

‘They’re sending one, sir.’

Gently nodded to the trees. ‘Chummie is in there. You stay here. If he shows, no nonsense. Understood?’

‘You bet, sir,’ the patrolman said.

Gently departed up the slope. He passed the S.J.A.B. men coming down, one with a rolled stretcher on his shoulder. Jammed in by the gate were the three patrol cars, and a van, which had just arrived.

‘Is that the dog?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Take him in. See what he can pick up at the car.’

The dog, a coal-black Alsatian, jumped eagerly from the van and set off enthusiastically with its handler.

‘Who is senior man?’

A sergeant stepped forward.

‘I want this fence patrolled along its length. If chummie slips over it into the forest we may be hunting him all night. Can you do it?’

‘Yes, sir, I reckon. I’ll put in a call for another dog. We’ve got patrols towards Brayling and on the Latchford Road. I’d say that would have it covered, sir.’

‘Where does Mogi’s Belt end?’

‘Near Starveacre Farm, sir.’

‘Can you get a dog and two men in at that end?’

The sergeant considered. ‘Yes, sir, I reckon. It should be safe on this side of the fen.’

He touched a salute and turned to give orders. Two of the cars bumbled off along the track. Gently hurried back to the scene at the car, where the S.J.A.B. men were belting Turner on the stretcher.

Turner’s breathing was quieter now, and his colour less hectic, but he showed no sign of returning consciousness. His lips were parted, showing bloodstained teeth: it gave him the macabre aspect of a clubbed rabbit.

‘Where are you taking him?’

‘Latchford and District.’

Gently beckoned to one of the patrolmen. ‘Call in for a man to be stationed at the bedside. Then come back and wait here.’

‘Hold on!’ Keynes exclaimed. ‘I’m going with Lawrence.’

Gently shook his head. ‘I want you with me.’

‘But why?’

‘Because you may be able to identify chummie. I have a notion that you could know him.’

Keynes stared at him oddly. ‘Well, if you say so. But Webster’s kind and I don’t mix.’

‘He is probably someone Lawrence knew,’ Gently said. ‘Someone you could know. I want you along.’ He turned to the dog-handler. ‘Any luck?’

‘No, sir. The gas must have taken off the scent.’

‘He can’t get it from the footprints?’

‘He’s had a smell at them, sir. But I wouldn’t like to promise too much from that.’

‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘You follow in the line of them. The rest of us, spread out. If chummie tries a break, let the dog go. Otherwise, we pick him up quietly.’

The four of them fanned out across the belt and began to move forward under the trees. The patrolman was on the left flank, nearest the boundary with the Battle Area; then came the dog-handler, then Gently and Keynes. They advanced slowly, having to penetrate an underbrush of bracken, elder and bramble. The dog worked busily, but without direction. After they left the dell there were no more footprints.

They advanced some hundreds of yards up the silent belt.

‘Do you think he’s still about?’ Keynes murmured to Gently.

‘He’s still about. He had to be waiting here – he couldn’t leave Turner with his hands tied.’

‘He’d have been watching Lawrence die.’

‘What else?’

Keynes shuddered. ‘I don’t know him. Anyone capable of that I could spot. Webster’s the only one I know.’

‘Get further over to the fence.’

Keynes veered towards the flank. His face was pale and his mouth tight. Now the dog was working further to the left, though possibly only on the scent of a rabbit. The belt was too still. Above, the low sun was yellow in the tops of the pines. Below there was dimness in the screens of brush, a promise of an early, deep twilight. Then the dog set up an excited growling.

‘What’s he saying?’ Gently said.

‘I’m not quite sure, sir. But if he’s on the scent, I’d say that chummie isn’t far away.’

But where? The spot they had come to was rather more open than some parts of the belt. Bracken had thickly colonized the area and the only underbrush was low brambles. Along the lip of the belt, where it dropped steeply to the bogland, the great pines stood in massive line, but further in they were spaced widely, which perhaps had encouraged the growth of the bracken. Yet the dog continued to growl.

‘Let him go.’

The handler released him. The dog lifted its muzzle, snuffling, emitting growls of deep menace. Then it took off suddenly, like a black missile, towards one of the huge pines at the edge of the belt.

‘Follow up!’

But before they could obey a figure stepped from behind the pine. It raised its hand. There was a crack. The dog went rolling over in the bracken.

‘You bastard!’ the dog-handler shouted.

‘Keep back!’ Gently snarled. The gun cracked again. A bullet smacked into a tree, and a plume of pine needles drifted down. The man stood for a second with gun poised, daring them to make a move towards him; then he jumped back past the tree and down the slope that bounded the belt.

‘Right – keep him in view!’

They pounded through the bracken to the spot where the man had vanished. He had cleared the slope and its thickets of gorse and was making plashy tracks through the bog beyond. He turned to snap another shot at them.

‘I’m going after him, sir!’ the dog-handler cried.

‘You’re not!’ Gently rapped. ‘That’s an order. As from now he belongs to the Army.’

‘But he shot my dog, sir!’

‘It’s happened before. Nobody is following that man in there.’

The handler gazed after the gunman with anguished eyes, then groaned and threw himself down by the pine tree. Gently looked round for Keynes.

‘Well?’ he said.

Keynes had the appearance of wanting to retch, but he nodded his head. ‘Yes, I know him. There’s a photograph of him in adrian’s study.’

‘Stoll’s son?’

‘Yes, Marcus.’

‘Who collects the better part of Stoll’s estate.’

‘Yes.’ Keynes closed his eyes. ‘Oh God almighty – a parricide!’

Now the figure was wading knee-deep in bog, and once sank in as far as his waist, but he recovered energetically to haul himself to firmer going. Then he was through it, and ploughing up a sand slope to the cover of stunted birches.

‘You stay here,’ Gently said to the patrolman. ‘Make sure he doesn’t double back. And make sure this officer stays here with you. I don’t want any heroics at all.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the patrolman said, saluting.

Gently motioned to Keynes and set off for the cars. But they had gone barely a dozen yards when there was a soft, almost leisurely explosion from the distance of the Battle Area.

‘Sir – sir!’ the patrolman shouted.

They hastened back to where he was stationed. From among the small birches across the bogland a tendril of grey smoke was loitering into the air.

‘He . . . he must have kicked into a mine, sir!’

The explosion was followed by complete silence. The grey smoke unrolled in the evening sky and slowly vanished. Then there was nothing.

M
ARCUS STOLL DIED
with a receipt for a bottle of gas in his pocket. A second receipt was found among his possessions in a rented room in Westbridge Road. Found also was a letter from his mother, expressing pleasure that he was staying with her ‘old friend Ivan’, and warning him to keep away from his father ‘to avoid disillusioning the old square’. From the letter it was plain that Stoll’s provision for his son was familiar ground to both writer and reader.

Thus Turner’s statement would scarcely have been necessary to incriminate Marcus Stoll, but it formed the basis of charges against Webster calculated to double his effectual sentence. It related how Turner, visiting London as Stoll’s guest, had spent an evening with Webster and his followers, among whom had been an American, known as ‘Chuck’, who was staying at Webster’s flat. Turner had felt there was something familiar about ‘Chuck’, but at the time he could not decide what, and it was not until his memory had been spurred by the shock of suspicion that he connected ‘Chuck’ with the photograph in Stoll’s study. Even then the identification had seemed far-fetched, and he hadn’t dared to mention it to Gently; instead he had sought to verify it by a further meeting with ‘Chuck’. Unfortunately, ‘Chuck’ divined his purpose. Turner found him alone in Webster’s flat; ‘Chuck’ invited him in, gave him a drink, then coshed him from behind and bound and gagged him. Several hours passed before Webster returned, when there was a conversation which Turner didn’t hear; but eventually Webster had helped ‘Chuck’ to load Turner into the Imp, and to cover him over with a rug. There followed a conversation which Turner did hear. Webster spoke of ‘setting it up’ with a telegram. He arranged a pick-up spot with ‘Chuck’ at the junction of the road and Warren Ride. Following a short further interval, presumably when ‘Chuck’ went out to buy the bottle and hose, Turner was driven to the forest and his presumed suicide set in motion. The effect of the gas was watched with interest by ‘Chuck’, but he departed just as Turner was losing consciousness.

No case was offered against Nina Walling, who was almost certainly an accessory after the fact of Stoll’s death; while the fraud charge against her father subsequently foundered on a curious technicality. Only the offensive weapons charge stuck: Walling was fined one hundred pounds.

The trial required Gently’s presence in the district, and he paid a visit to Keynes before returning to London. He found the writer packing gear into the blue-and-white Dormobile, which stood polished and handsome in his cottage drive. Keynes came out smilingly to greet Gently.

‘Does this suggest unusual callousness?’ he grinned.

Gently ghosted a shrug. ‘A van is a van. And we only live in the present moment. Are you off somewhere?’

Keynes nodded happily. ‘Off to Scotland in the morning. Maryon has rented a cottage at Balquhidder. They’ve taken Lawrence and gone already.’

‘To get him away from it all.’

‘Yes, it’s been a ghastly time for Lawrence.’

‘Lawrence is young.’

Keynes pulled a face, but the smile had left his eyes for a moment.

‘I didn’t see much of you in court,’ Gently said.

‘Did you expect to?’ Keynes asked.

Gently hesitated. ‘Perhaps not. Though it should have interested a student of human nature.’

Keynes shook his head. ‘This came too close. I had seen all I wanted in Mogi’s Belt. Now I want to forget it, if forgetting’s possible, to try not to think of those things again.’ He glanced quickly at Gently. ‘Do you forget them?’

‘I’m a tough professional,’ Gently shrugged. ‘I have a case waiting in Kent at the moment – a rape and strangling. It doesn’t stop.’

‘No, it doesn’t stop,’ Keynes said sombrely. ‘Something’s chronically rotten in the state of Denmark. A disease of egoism, I think. A false imagining of self.’ He perched on the Dormobile’s step. ‘Do you believe there’s a direction to reality?’ he said. ‘A progressive motion towards love, and a retrogressive motion towards hate?’