No Mercy (42 page)

The wind, which had created an unnerving howl, died
away and the awful silence closed in, broken only by the
sound of a passing car or juggernaut. One large vehicle's
engine made such a row she seized her chance, leaned with all her weight against the large rock. It fell off the megalith
without making a sound as it thudded on the scrubby turf.
Now she had a clear view of the road. Charmian, absorbed
with his night glasses, checking each vehicle as it passed, did
not notice the absence of the rock.

To prevent her body becoming as stiff as the megaliths, she frequently worked her legs, pinioned at the ankles, up
and down. She worked her arms and her wrists as far as she
could. She soon realized she could never get free. She was
frightened, frustrated, cold. She wet the gag with saliva but
again realized she could never get rid of it. She heard a
vehicle approaching slowly, saw it was a Land Rover, the
single driver impossible to see because he had the visor well
down. It crawled past and proceeded along the A303.
Moments later a juggernaut thundered past, blaring its horn
nonstop as it continued along the A303. Why?

Charmian, confident she was helpless, never gave her a glance. Standing close to a giant megalith, he concentrated
on gazing through his night glasses. Several more cars and
trucks swept past, mostly along the A303, then another
Land Rover appeared, moving much faster. Peering through
his glasses Charmian saw a driver and no one else. The rear
of the vehicle was covered
with canvas, doubtless covering
some product for delivery.

Time passed and Paula knew she was reaching screaming
pitch. She forced her body to relax, took in slow deep
breaths and overcame the threat of hysteria.

Charmian was dressed for the occasion. He wore a polo-
necked sweater under his wool-lined windcheater. There was
no glove on his right hand, which gripped the Glock
handgun — a diabolical weapon which could blow a man's head off his shoulders. His head was protected by a woollen
hat and occasionally he would drink water from a pocket
flask. He never offered any to Paula, whom he regarded as
no more than a key object of his assignment.

Paula gritted her teeth. In the distance, coming down the
road from London, she had seen Tweed's car. She looked
desperately around for something that would make a noise.
Then she looked down to where her feet just touched the
ground. A broken chunk of megalith was resting on the edge of a small slope.

Charmian jerked round as he caught movement out of the
corner of his eye. He stared in sheer bewilderment. Coming
up over the top of the slope from the direction of the A303
was a tall figure, walking slowly. It was the way the figure was
clothed that shook the assassin. The figure was clad
completely in black. A long black coat reached to its ankles.
On its head was a wide-brimmed black hat. All round its
neck was a white collar. In its left hand it held a cone-shaped
vessel at the end of a thin chain. He was swinging it gently from left to right, then back again. Water dribbled from the
vessel. Charmian was shocked. A priest.

He knew a little about Stonehenge. Several years before,
he got off a train in Salisbury. His assignment: to assassinate
an ex-prime minister. Immediately he'd entered the town he
knew he was in danger. Someone had spread the news of his
intention. The place was crawling with police - on foot, in
slow-moving cars. He had slipped into the nearest pub to escape detection. There he had met a farmer who had told
him about Stonehenge, its origin long ago as a place of
ancient worship. He had offered to drive Charmian to show
him Stonehenge since it was on his way home.

Charmian had accepted with relief, seeing his way of
escaping safely from Salisbury. One man on foot would be
suspicious. Two men in a car would mean nothing. On a
lonely road close to Stonehenge Charmian had expressed a
wish to relieve himself. The moment the car stopped he
strangled the driver, threw the body into a deep pond and
used the car to drive to Newhaven. Here he had caught the ferry to France.

All this came back to him as he stared, bewildered, at the
distant figure walking slowly, swinging his vessel, spreading water. He must be consecrating the ground for some strange
reason. Paula also was gazing at the figure, which in some
way seemed familiar.

Tweed's car arrived and Charmian jerked his attention
away from the priest. To his surprise, instead of taking the
left-hand fork up the A344, the vehicle cruised slowly along
the A303. He heard it stop. He raised his Glock, aimed it at
the crest of the slope.

Tweed climbed out of his car, suppressing a mixture of
terror and fury. Silhouetted against the moonlight, he had
seen the forlorn figure of Paula, on the fallen megalith. At
least she was alive. He puzzled briefly over the parked Land
Rover ahead, its hazard lights flashing. He began climbing
the slope, head well down, leaning forward, Walther in his
right hand. He knew reaching the crest would be crisis time. He would have only one chance, if he had any chance at all.

Paula guessed Tweed was on his way up. Her nerves were
screaming. She took a deep breath of the cold air,
suppressed her fear. She had to guess the correct timing. Her
face froze with determination. She stretched her right leg down as far as it would go. The rope round her waist dug deeply into her, tied to the fallen megalith. She counted,
trying to imagine how many steps it would take Tweed to reach the crest.

Charmian stood very still against the giant megalith. Both hands gripped the Glock. He swivelled it back and forth over
a small arc. He was trying to estimate where Tweed would appear. The silence over Stonehenge seemed even heavier.
No traffic for the moment.

Paula's right foot touched the rock chunk resting above
the small slope. She took another deep breath. It happened
so quickly it appeared to have been synchronized. Paula
kicked the rock chunk. It rolled forward down the small
slope, stopped. The sound distracted Charmian for barely a
second. His head jerked round, jerked back. Tweed had
leaped up the last few feet of the crest, was standing on it. He pressed the trigger. At the same moment the 'priest' had produced an Armalite from under his black habit, aimed it,
seen the assassin's face in the cross-hairs, fired the explosive
bullet. At the very same moment, a millisecond before the
assassin could fire his Glock, Tweed's bullet slammed into
his stomach as the Armalite's bullet hit the bridge of his
nose, shattering his head, spraying the megalith with blood
and flesh and bone and brains. His headless body sank to the
ground. Marler, still holding his Armalite, tore off the long
black coat, threw the hat down. Paula opened her mouth to
speak and nothing emerged as she sagged, still conscious but
exhausted with tension.

Tweed ran forward to Paula but Marler had already reached
her. With a pocket knife he cut the ropes binding her to the
fallen megalith, cut the ropes round her wrists, cut those round her ankles. She slid off the stone, tried to stand up,
began to fall. Tweed grabbed her round the waist. She
buried her head against his chest, trying to speak in a
choking voice, then Marler removed the gag.

'God! I was so worried about you
...
so worried I felt I was . . . going insane.'

'Sound sane enough to me,' Marler said briskly. 'Like
some water . . . ?'

'Oh, yes, please,' she begged hoarsely.

Marler unscrewed the cap from a flask he'd extracted from
a pocket. He held it away from her as she reached for it, his voice stern.

'Listen to me. You take a few sips, then pause. Then a few
more sips. Another pause. You can drink more soon.'

She nodded to show she had understood, grasped the
flask, forced herself to ration herself to a few sips. The water
trickled down a throat that felt parched. She coughed,
waited, took a few more sips. They went down without her
coughing. She waited. Then she gradually drank normally.
Life seemed to return to every part of her body.

'Thank you,' she said in her usual voice, handing back the
flask. 'I damned well needed that.'

Standing still, she bent her legs gently several times and
soon they felt they would support her. She walked back and
forth, Tweed on one side, Marler on the other, talking.

'The way you walked, Marler, seemed familiar, but I never
guessed it could be you.'

'Why the fancy dress?' Tweed asked, introducing an
element of humour deliberately.

'I phoned Paris. Loriot told me Charmian was a Catholic.
Not a churchgoer but attended confessionals. I gambled he
wouldn't shoot a priest. It came off. Now we clear up, get rid
of the evidence.'

'How?' asked Tweed.

'Come with me.' Marler looked at Paula, decided she
needed something to occupy her mind, however gruesome.
He pulled a large white cloth from inside his overcoat and
handed it to her. 'Think you could clean the mess off that megalith? If it drops on to the body so much the better.'

His psychology was good. Recovered from shock, Paula
welcomed a task to busy herself with. She gave the corpse
only a brief glance as she stepped over it and used the cloth
to wipe the side of the megalith. She knew this hideous
creature was going to kill her after he had murdered
Tweed.

Tweed followed Marler a short distance along the top to
where he stopped, pointing downwards. A large metal grille
with slim steel bars covered a square hole in the ground. A lock was closed at one end. Marler bent down, took out the
lockpick he always carried. He was wearing gloves as he
gripped the lock with one hand, to prevent it slipping down
between the bars. He opened it with his lockpick.

'A drain,' he explained. 'Must piss down with rain up here
and gullies channel it to this drain.'

'It rains cats and dogs,' Tweed agreed. 'What's the plan?'

Marler didn't reply at once. Grasping a large stone, he
dropped it down the drain after lifting the cover, which was
hinged. They listened. After what seemed an hour they
heard a distant splash.

'Deep enough. Now I'll get the body.'

He picked up the large black coat he had thrown off.
Earlier he had removed the costumier's labels. Carrying it to
where Paula was working, he found she had cleaned the side
of the megalith clear of Charmian's remains. She looked
calm as Marler took the filthy cloth off her, dropped it on the
headless body streaming with blood at the neck. He lifted it
and she slipped the black coat under it, following his orders.
He wrapped the coat round the body, with plenty of cloth
round the neck. Then he lifted it round the waist and carried
it to the drain, followed by Paula.