Out of the Night (12 page)

W
e weren’t out of the woods yet ourselves. The beach we were now on had no way off that I had ever used or seen. Unless I could find the old route Jimmy had mentioned, we would face the same fate as Borovsky’s men. I wished now I’d got him to write it down.

Sandstone, Jimmy had said. As we jogged along the beach, with sheets of water pushing us ever closer to the foot of the cliff, I was looking out for a sandstone bluff that came down to ground level – sea level, actually. I was also looking out for anywhere else where there was a possibility of getting off the beach before the tide took us.

Sasha was keenly aware of the danger, too. ‘Frank, you know the way out of here?’ she panted.

‘I’m looking for it.’

She grimaced and shut up – for which I was grateful – and kept running.

We were halfway along the beach. So far I had seen nothing. I wouldn’t say I was beginning to despair, but I wasn’t far off. By now we were slapping along in shallow water. The incoming tide had used up most of the beach and was pressing us ever closer to the base of the cliff.

It was no good. I stopped running. I stood still and looked
around desperately. We had no more than a couple of minutes left before we would be swimming, or washed away like the rest of the flotsam and jetsam.

Then I saw it. I’d been looking in the wrong place.

From what Jimmy had said, I had assumed the sandstone wall came down to the bottom of the cliff. But it didn’t. It stopped about ten feet above the beach. It was right above us. I knew we were in the right place because I could see a couple of short iron bars protruding from the cliff face.

‘This is it!’ I said.

Sasha just looked at me.

‘Our way off the beach.’

I pointed. She looked up, stared and then nodded. She had seen what I was pointing at. If she was unimpressed by it as a route, she didn’t say so. She just looked at me expectantly.

There were no footholds, or handholds either, close to the ground. Somehow we had to get up to the first of the iron bars, ten feet above us. Anything lower down had been eroded away, leaving a sea-smoothed blank wall.

‘You first,’ I said. ‘On my shoulders.’ I pulled off my leather belt and handed it to her. ‘Drop this down for me to grab.’

Then I braced myself against the cliff wall. Sasha seemed to understand what I had in mind. She climbed onto my back, stood upright on my shoulders and then could easily reach the first of the bars.

‘There is a place for my feet,’ she called down.

‘Good. Use it!’

I felt her weight leave me as she transferred to a thin foothold on the rock. Then I waited impatiently, sea water washing up to my waist, as she threaded the belt round the
bar. I gritted my teeth against the cold and tried to ignore the big waves pounding in towards me. Soon. I knew I had to go soon.

Fully extended, the belt was a tantalizing few inches above my outstretched fingers. I tried to jump, but it was difficult in deep water. I couldn’t reach the end of the belt. Desperately, I kept trying, but it was no good. I couldn’t do it.

Suddenly, a boot appeared above my head, a few inches lower than the end of the belt. Sasha had taken hold of the stanchion with both hands and lowered herself until she was hanging full length. She had understood my predicament and was inviting me to use her as a human ladder.

I grasped her boot with my right hand, placed my right foot against the rock and heaved myself up so that I could catch hold of the belt with my left hand. Then I transferred my right hand to the belt, as well, taking my weight off Sasha. I was on my way, and I didn’t pause until I was standing precariously alongside her on the same foothold.

Keeping tight hold of the iron bar with my left hand, I reached my right arm round her and gave her a hug to express my gratitude and appreciation. She grinned and pressed her forehead into my shoulder.

I glanced upwards and my eyes traced the route. The way ahead was now clear. The booming of the sea hitting the cliff and the lash of spray made it too noisy for conversation between us but I pointed to the holds leading upwards and urged her to go first. She didn’t hesitate and began to move quickly and surely up the cliff, seemingly unintimidated by the exposure and growing drop below.

It wasn’t too bad. Usually there were decent holds for
either feet or hands, and if there were none there were more iron bars that some old-timer had spent precious hours cementing into holes drilled into the rock.

We made it, and at the top we both collapsed on the ground not caring about wind, sleet, mud, or anything else for a couple of minutes. It was glad-to-be-alive time.

‘You didn’t warn me, Frank,’ Sasha said eventually.

‘About what?’

‘That we would have to go mountaineering.’

‘Would you have come, if I had?’

She grinned and shut up. We both knew we had been lucky.

We moved on down the coast. Just north of Port Holland we dropped down onto a little beach and sought refuge in another fisherman’s hut. This one looked to be a class up from Jimmy’s place – it had a lock on the door. By then, though, we were so cold and wet no lock in the world would have stopped me getting through the door. I stamped it open.

‘Luxury!’ I said with satisfaction, once we were inside.

And it was. A wooden table and two matching chairs. Bunk beds with bedding. A stack of logs and kindling by the stove. Even a gas hob attached to a propane cylinder.

Sasha made straight for the hob. I held my breath and watched with interest, and with hope. Neither of us had dry matches. Sasha fiddled. The hob burst into flame; it was self-igniting.

She turned to me with a smile, even though she was shaking with cold.

‘Well done!’ I told her.

We were both absolutely sodden as well as dangerously
cold. But now we had a flame we could fire up the wood-burning stove. I got to work. As soon as the kindling took, I started stripping off my outer clothes. I turned to Sasha to urge her to do the same, rather than sit in wet things, only to find her ahead of me. Already she was in next to nothing at all, and hanging her clothes up to dry.

‘You have seen my body already,’ she said with a smile. ‘I have no surprises for you.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ I said with feeling.

And I didn’t. She was a bundle of surprises, one way or another. I could scarcely believe how capable she was, and how resilient in adversity. Neither fear nor hardship had thrown her off course. Altogether I thought her remarkable. And I hadn’t even seen any of her paintings.

‘We’ll concentrate on getting ourselves a bit warmer, and drying our clothes,’ I said, for the sake of something sensible to say, ‘and then we’ll talk about what comes next.’

‘I agree,’ Sasha said, for all the world as if we were taking joint decisions. ‘And then we will talk some more about Misha.’

Maybe, I thought. Alternatively, we might just forget about bloody Misha – and concentrate on ourselves!

If we were to do anything about Misha, it seemed to me, we needed to move fast. What I had seen of the men loading crates, and what Sasha had told me, suggested pressure was building up in Borovsky’s little empire.

‘So something is going to happen soon at Meridion House?’ I said. ‘Borovsky is building up to something?’

‘Yes.’

I waited but nothing more was forthcoming.

‘What’s he going to do?’

‘Do you like me in this?’

I turned. She was wearing an old fisherman’s smock in paint-spattered blue. It didn’t look very clean.

I smiled. ‘I liked you better before!’

She grinned and turned to continue rummaging through the heap of old clothes she had found. ‘There is one for you,’ she said, holding out a bundle of something in faded yellow.

‘No thanks. I’ll stick with what I have.’

‘This is warmer than nothing,’ she said, her hand smoothing the mucky old thing she was wearing. ‘And it is dry.’

True, but I couldn’t help thinking she didn’t look as good in it.

‘So what’s going to happen at Meridion House?’

She shrugged. ‘Borovsky will leave soon, I think.’

‘Permanently, or for a holiday?’

‘Permanently. He will soon have what he wants, what he is waiting for.’

‘Which is?’

She just shrugged again. Perhaps she didn’t know. I didn’t press her. She had given me enough to think about.

But I was still in the dark. In a sense, what Sasha had just said made things worse, certainly so far as Misha’s prospects were concerned. If Borovsky was ready to leave, and if he gave up on catching Sasha, I wouldn’t give much for Misha’s prospects.

Sasha took off the old fisherman’s smock and stood smiling at me for a moment. I forgot all about Misha then, when she moved towards me and demanded that I let her into my sleeping bag. In truth, I forgot all about everything but her for a while. And, if anything, she was even hungrier than me to forget the world outside.

‘You like me now?’ she asked afterwards, as we lay in each other’s arms, listening to the world going mad outside the hut.

I smiled. ‘I’ve always liked you.’

‘But now you like me more?’

I laughed and squeezed her.

‘I think you do,’ she said firmly. ‘I am glad. That makes me very happy.’

It occurred to me that thoughts of Misha didn’t seem to have got in the way of Sasha’s happiness at all. But perhaps I was being ungenerous.

We settled down for a while after that, with food from our rucksacks and heat from the stove. Our soggy clothes began to steam. Outside, the wind continued unabated. Sleet still rattled the hut from time to time. There was no other human presence on that beach.

Thoughts of Misha did return, to me at least. We weren’t far now from Port Holland. It was time to take stock and make plans. If Sasha’s priority remained Misha, I had to work out a way of trying to reach and hopefully to rescue him.

‘Where are they keeping Misha? Do you know?’

‘I am not sure. But there are cellars.’

‘Beneath Meridion House?’

‘Yes.’

One of them, then. It seemed likely. Maybe I could find him. Then, if I couldn’t get him out myself, I could blow the whistle and get Bill Peart’s uniforms to do it.

It was a plan. Sort of. Lots of unknowns, though, stretching way back to the beginning.

‘Sasha, you’ve never told me how you escaped. What happened that night when you first arrived at my house? How had you got away from them?’

I looked at her. She stared out of the window. I was becoming used to her now. I knew she was debating what and how much to tell me. That was irritating. We ought to have been past that point in our relationship.

‘You’re not my client,’ I pointed out. ‘You haven’t hired me. I’m trying to help you – and Misha.’

She turned and smiled. ‘I am sorry, Frank. It is hard for me to accept that someone simply wishes to help me.’

Some life she must have led, was my thought.

‘So?’

‘They had decided to dispose of us both, like the others. So they took us north of here, along the coast. We did not know for sure what would happen, but we guessed. It was a difficult time for us.’

I’ll bet! I thought. How about that for understatement?

‘There were four men guarding us. They had guns. We drove, we stopped and then they made us go down to the beach with them. It was very cold but they made us take our clothes off. They laughed and said it would be easier for them
if we did that. If we refused, they said, it would be more painful for us.’

She shrugged. This had to be incredibly difficult for her, but I needed to know.

‘Then what?’

‘They wanted to shoot us and put our bodies in a big pool. I knew that. There were four of them, and they were strong men with guns. But they were careless.

‘Misha distracted them. He had warned me he would try to do something, and when he did I should be ready to run. So he pushed into two of the men. They were startled. I grabbed a gun and held it at the head of another guard.

‘I ordered the others to release Misha, but they would not. Misha told me to go, to look after myself. So I did, with the guard. But first I told them that if anything happened to Misha I would go to the authorities and tell them everything. I told them to make sure Borovsky knew that.’

‘So you left, taking one of the guards with you as hostage?’

‘At first, but not far. Maybe twenty metres. Then we fought and he was too strong for me. The gun fell. I could either try to get it back or I could run. So I ran. I ran faster than him.’

So there it was. At last I knew now what had happened. There were still plenty of questions, but my respect for Sasha and her capabilities was, if anything, even greater.

‘T
ell me about Meridion House. Do you know anything about a tunnel, for example?’

‘Yes, there is a tunnel. I have not been in it, but I know it exists. It is how they take things to the ship.’

Ah! So it did go all the way to the house.

‘How many men does Borovsky have?’

‘Normally, at the house there are perhaps six or eight.’ She shrugged and added, ‘Then there are the crew from the ship. I don’t know how many.’

It added up to a lot of manpower.

‘Art forgery must pay big money,’ I said. ‘Borovsky has a lot of wages to pay.’

She shrugged again. ‘Big money, yes. It is true. There are many rich men now, not only in America. Russians, Chinese…. They like such things – Rembrandts and Picassos. They are investments, and much safer than money in banks or shares in companies that go up and down.’

But were forged Rembrandts and Picassos such good investments? Sorry, I mean
new
original Old and Modern Masters!

‘Borovsky also has other business interests,’ Sasha added, ‘many interests.’

‘Such as?’

‘I don’t know everything.’

Perhaps not, but I knew she was right in principle. A man like him really would have all sorts of business interests. He wouldn’t allow himself to be totally dependent on the art market, in case all those new oligarchs stopped liking his pictures and the bottom dropped out of it.

‘You really do believe he’s about to leave?’

‘Yes. He will go soon.’

I wondered why she thought that, and if there was a reason. No point asking her again, though. I would just get another of those shrugs.

She might have been guessing, but I felt she probably knew more than she was telling me. That was how she was. Information was leaked slowly, and grudgingly. It was hers, and she did her best to keep control of it.

I stepped outside for a few moments. The light was fading fast now it was mid-afternoon. Conditions had improved, though. It was still cold, but the sleet had stopped and the wind had died down.

The hut was warm when I went back inside, deliciously warm. My coat hanging up above the stove felt quite dry. So did my trousers. My boots weren’t bad either. I began to dress.

‘What are you doing?’ Sasha asked.

‘I’m going to scout around a bit. See if anything’s happening. I’ll not be long.’

‘Shall I come?’

‘I’d rather you didn’t. Concentrate on keeping warm and
getting your clothes dry – you’re going to need them eventually!’

She laughed, and I left her.

It wasn’t much more than a mile to Port Holland. I wanted to take a look down there, to see if anything was happening. For that, I was better on my own. Besides, I needed space in my head to sort out some of what Sasha had told me. I needed to join the pieces of information together a bit better in order to make a clearer picture. Sasha might know exactly what was going on, but I certainly didn’t.

And if she was right about something being about to happen, we needed to rescue Misha very quickly. If Borovsky really was planning on leaving soon, it was a safe bet that Misha wouldn’t be going with him.

I started off along the beach. When I could go no further, I found a way up the crumbling cliff. I took to a footpath along the top. The old harbour came into view and I found a place where I could just sit and watch what was going on for a while. I settled in the lee of a stunted hawthorn bush. From there, I could see the jetty and
Meridion
. I could also see the entrance to the tunnel, which was closed.

Nothing much was happening. Occasionally a figure appeared on the deck of the boat. I saw a man walking his dog on the beach. A couple of little squalls blew in and made me duck my head and blink away the bits of sleet. The entrance to the tunnel stayed shut. The day faded.

Then the gloomy light began to play tricks on me. I saw movement when there couldn’t reasonably be any. I blinked hard and stared. Again I saw it. Down below me, thirty or
forty yards to my right, a small clump of reeds was shaking when the tall grass stalks all around were still. There was something there. Then the reeds moved, and transported themselves. They were not now where they had been.

I squinted and concentrated. It wasn’t a trick of the light. The reeds had moved. I was certain of it. A rabbit? Possibly a rabbit, or a small bird. A stoat even. Something, anyway. It wasn’t an illusion.

The clump of reeds moved again and then stopped. I held my breath and concentrated even harder. Now I could make out the shape of part of a man. A human shoulder? Two men, actually. One had moved sideways to be closer to the other, perhaps to confer.

I smiled with satisfaction; I knew what I was seeing. So I withdrew stealthily from my position, rejoined the track and walked on a little further. I saw no one else. No vehicle either. But that wasn’t a surprise. There wouldn’t be. Not close by.

Any vehicle they had would be parked up some distance away, and either hard to spot or out in the open, where it would attract no attention at all. That was how they worked. They were good at it, too, and they would be absolutely livid if they ever found out I’d spotted them, even if it was by accident.

There was no point going any further now. Sasha would be concerned about my long absence. So I turned round and set off back towards our base. Once I was a safe distance away from the cliff top I called Bill Peart on my mobile. I was surprised it was still working after its immersion in salt water.

‘Can I interrupt you for a moment, Bill?’

‘Sure you can. I’m happy to put this paperwork aside for a moment. What’s happening?’

‘Nothing much. Don’t worry.’

‘That’s a relief!’

‘Remember you warned me off the art centre?’

‘I remember.’

There was suddenly a cautious note in his voice. I pressed on. ‘National security, you said. Can you tell me anything more at all?’

‘Is that why you’ve called me?’

‘It would be helpful to know at least something of what’s going on,’ I countered. ‘Is it terrorism, or what?’

‘Not that.’ He paused and then added, ‘I can’t tell you anything.’

I guessed he was being so circumspect to avoid saying anything, perhaps even just a stray word, that might cause ears to prick up.

‘We spoke of one or two possibilities when the bodies were discovered. Did any of our speculation cover it?’

‘It’s in hand, Frank. Power and authority greater than we can bring to bear are at work. Leave it. Just leave it! Don’t get in the way. You might get your nose put out of joint, or your head blown off if you do. We wouldn’t want that, would we?’

All said in a light-hearted tone. All said for the benefit of someone who could overhear a conversation on a colleague’s phone. Or someone who might, at a later stage, be examining the tapes of a recorded conversation. I understood.

‘Have you been by my place lately, Bill?’

‘Not lately, no.’

‘You should call in. It’s always worth a visit. You can tell me if it’s still standing.’

‘Why didn’t I think of that? I’ll take you up on it sometime.’

I switched off and hurried on. I wasn’t in much doubt now about what I’d seen. National security, indeed. I’d just caught a glimpse of the SAS on the job. It doesn’t come much more serious than that.