Stone Cold (8 page)

He appeared around the corner a few minutes later, and I greeted him with the raised walking stick in a threatening mode. “Get out of here, Molloy, go back and don’t come near me again.” As I said it I was thinking that he might protest that he had no ill intent and had just gone for a walk in the country, when a second man appeared. It had not occurred to me that he might come with a companion.

The other man was a thuggish looking individual, the kind of man who sets out to look thuggish, wearing a t-shirt despite the chill on the mountain, with tattooed arms and close-cropped hair. I was angry and also frightened.

Molloy stepped aside and the man moved forward. I didn’t wait for him to announce his intentions. Propelled by a combination of panic and anger I swung the stick at his head. He raised his arm and blocked the blow but took what must have been a painful crack on the forearm. Then I swung back and hit Molloy on the head. It knocked him over and blood began to drip. I turned back to the thug. If he got his hands on me it could be the end. I had the stick raised but he came forward under it so I lowered it, put it against his middle and pushed.

I don’t know what I intended to. What I did was push him backwards, and then he somehow staggered sideways, and fell over the edge. We heard the thud of a body hitting soft earth a moment later. I stood silent, breathing hard, horrified. Then there came a strangled shout of, “George, help me!”

Keeping a cautious eye on Molloy, I went to the edge and peered over. He had fallen about twelve feet and landed on an outcrop, sprawled in the brown earth. He was lying there, evidently in some pain. He had probably broken a leg or some other bone.

I was badly shaken, and was breathing hard. I said to Molloy, who was white-faced and clutching his bleeding head, “You heard him. Help him.” He did not respond. After another cry from down below. I said, “Have you got a mobile?” He nodded mutely. “Well then,” I said, “phone the emergency service, tell them your friend has had an accident.” I gripped my stick to show who was in charge.

I was shaking inside but Molloy was shaking outside. He seemed incapable of speech, and for a while I thought I would have to make the call. But eventually, he took the phone out of his pocket and pushed some buttons, and then said, pushing out the words with difficulty, “There’s been an accident.” His voice was so faint that he had to repeat it. I decided to get away from the scene. I set off up the path and heard him behind me trying, in his enfeebled voice, to explain his location.

When I had gone a little way I sat down again. I was trembling and I was not sure that I could go on walking anyway. But I felt good. Someone had attacked me and I had fought back and won. I have never thought of myself as a violent man, still less a cruel one; I was horrified for a moment when he went over the edge and I thought I had killed him. But I am ashamed to say that I felt a barbaric pleasure in having won the battle.

After a little while I heard the sound of a helicopter, and then saw it shuffling sideways along the mountainside. I had given the mountain rescue service some work.

I stood up and found I was looking down directly on the rooftops of Adimurcham. I singled out Bridey’s mansion. The iron fence ran right around it; the back door was padlocked; the ground floor windows were barred.

Forget giving up on this assignment. You don’t give up that easily. Was there any way in to that fortress? I looked at it as a military exercise. Yes, there was, I decided. The place was secure in only two dimensions. It was vulnerable from above. Two windows on the top floor were open. That was its point of vulnerability. A very clever parachutist could drop down on the roof and clamber down into a top floor window. If there was a parachutist good enough to land on a bull’s eye, and if he had an aeroplane to jump out of. I had never done a parachute jump and I did not have an aeroplane.

I went on fantasizing. I remembered reading about the German blitzkrieg in 1940. A masterstroke was the capture of a key Belgian fort by glider troops on the first day. The fort was defended by hundreds of troops, but eighteen German special forces men landed on the roof by glider at night, catching them by surprise, and they disabled the fort. You could land on Bridey’s roof by glider, taking off from this mountain. If you had a glider and an aircraft to tow it and if you knew how to pilot one. Only you couldn’t because the only flat space was in the centre and it was not large enough for a glider to land on.

Then an idea occurred to me. You could get on to the roof. You could do it the way I’d had to cross a river during a punishing period of physical training in Officers’ Candidate School. Yes!

*

The next morning I drove to Dundee, bought some sport fishing gear, came back with it in the car, and then sat down in the front seat and did some work on it. Then I sat in the Highlander’s back garden and retreated from the hostile atmosphere of Adimurcham to China, by way of my book, until nightfall.

The whole village seemed to be asleep by midnight. Unless some insomniac decided to take a walk, there would be no one about. I put the gear in the boot of the car and set out from the hotel, noting with relief that it was a cloudy night with little moonlight, just enough to see outlines.

There were several trees near the railings around the Bridey house. I picked one that was close and had low branches. I wanted an easy climb, since I was carrying a harpoon fishing gun and a coil of rope. I did not need to go high. I climbed until I was just above the height of the railings and nearly level with the roof. I had a thick branch to sit on.

I had attached a loop of rope to the harpoon and I aimed it at the roof. I could only see the shape of the roof and the loop didn’t catch the first couple of times, but then it caught on a point of the balustrade. I tugged hard to make sure it would hold my weight, wedged the spear gun in a fork in the tree trunk, and started to climb along the rope, just as I’d done crossing a river in the exercises, with hands and feet on the rope, moving slowly. About halfway across I began to tire and also to think that this might not be such a good idea. If I’d fallen in the river during the OCS exercise, I would have got wet. If I fell here I would probably break a few bones.

When I got to the sloping roof I was not so happy that it was a dark night. I had to feel my way around. But eventually I got to the edge, leaned over the parapet and looked down. I found what I had been aiming for: an upstairs window with a light on inside, open at the top. I clambered down on to the window ledge and pushed through the window the letter I had prepared.

It said:
Dear
Mr
Bridey
,
I
understand
that
you
are
keen
to
be
secure
from
burglars
or
unwanted
entry
.
But
you
are
vulnerable
,
as
you
see
.
I
think
we
can
repair
that
vulnerability
.
I
am
staying
at
the
Highlander
. I enclosed my business card from Fitzwilliam Harvey Security.

Then I slid down the rope, spent an awkward half hour jerking the rope until the loop was loose from the parapet and dropped to the ground. I attached it to the railings and climbed over. When I was finished I was sweating, despite the night-time chill.

I went back to the hotel, went to bed, got up, had orange juice, kipper, and toast and marmalade for breakfast and waited for a call. While I was having my breakfast in the bar, Mr and Mrs McFarlane were discussing the accident on the mountain. “I told you,” she was saying. “When we heard the helicopter overhead, I said, ‘I bet it’s the mountain rescue service.’”

“Aye, you did,” he replied. “Another idiot climber who didn’t ken where he was going or how to get there.”

The call came at lunchtime. There was no telephone in my room so I took the call in the bar, ignoring McFarlane’s open curiosity. It was Bridey himself. He sounded nervous. I agreed to go to see him at three in the afternoon. I was admitted by the same elderly man who had turned me away brusquely when I had come with my message, and ushered into the drawing room.

Bridey was wearing a sweater and jeans, and he seemed affable. He still had something of a film star’s confidence. “Your message gave me a bit of a shock, I must say. Finding it on the floor of my bedroom. I don’t know how you got in.”

I let that sentence hang. I wasn’t going to tell him just yet. When it was clear that I was not going to respond he went on, “Clearly, there’s a security gap.”

“It’s our business to find gaps,” I said. “And repair them. That’s what FHS does.”

He said, “Before we get down to business, would you like some tea?” He pressed a button and a comfortably plump middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway. “Could we have some tea, please, Teresa?” he said. Then, to me, “My wife is out visiting, I’m afraid.”

The tea came with some oat biscuits and, as we started on it, he asked how I liked the village and whether I found people friendly. “They were friendly until I mentioned you,” I said. “They’re certainly guarding your privacy.”

“Aye, they’re my people,” he said. “I’ve had some reporters asking questions here a couple of times. I wasn’t very well when I came here, and I didn’t want to see strangers. As you know, I’m quite concerned about a possible break-in. This house is rather isolated, and no doubt some people believe I’m a rich man. Also, I have had unfortunate experiences in the past.” There was a slight American sound in his vowels but the soft Scottish burr was prominent and a few of his words were completely Scottish.

“You’ve had a break-in?”

“Not here. Somewhere else. You don’t read the film gossip, do you? It was written about at the time.”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“No, you’re a sensible man and I’m sure you have better things to do with your time. Now, Mr Root, perhaps you can tell me what you can do for me, and what your fees are.”

I hesitated. “I can tell you what the weak points are. Or show them to you, which I think I’ve already done. We have experts who will know what best to do about them. As far as our fees are concerned, you’ll have to talk to our head office in London. They will send someone up to do what is necessary. I just carry out a survey.”

“A rather dramatic one,” he said with a grin.

I gave him the address of FHS in London. I reckoned that Jeremy would have no trouble contracting out the job of beefing up security on the roof. Then I said, “Mr Bridey, you can do something for me in exchange for what you call my rather dramatic survey of your property. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“What’s that?” He was wary.

“It’s a diamond you used to own.”

“I don’t have any diamonds now.”

“But you had one. A big blue one. A very special one.”

“I think I know the one you mean.”

“I want to know where it came from.”

“It came from Uzbekistan. That’s what I was told, anyway.”

“People who are knowledgeable about diamonds think that maybe it didn’t. Anyway, we want to know.”

“Why is that?”

“Fitzwilliam Harvey Security wants to know. Or one of our clients wants to know. Quite frankly, I risked my life exposing the gap in your security. It would help my career enormously if you would tell me about the diamond. Anything you can. Particularly where you got it from.”

He paused and thought about this. “OK. But tell me first, how did you get in?”

“From the roof. I climbed across a rope onto your roof.”

“You climbed up a rope?”

“Not up a rope. Across a rope. From a tree outside your wall.”

“I see. That was quite a feat.”

“If I can do it, other people can. I’ll explain all that to my office back in London. Now, please, tell me where you got the diamond.”

“I got it through a dealer.”

“Can you tell me any more?”

He leaned back in his chair and there was a long pause. Then he said, “I could tell you a lot more. Mr Root. That diamond meant a lot to me in several ways. Most of them the wrong ways. It changed my life.” He paused again, and looked at the floor. He was wondering how much he should unburden himself, I thought. I just had to wait and see.

Finally, he said, “All right, you’ve done me a service. So I’ll tell you about that diamond, if you like. But I need to know – you’re not a reporter in disguise, are ye?”

“No, I promise you.”

“And nothing I say now will appear in print?”

“I promise.”

“All right. Because I’ve had some experiences with reporters in the past. Now, if I tell you about the diamond, I’ll have to tell you about myself.”

“If you don’t mind telling me, that’s fine.”

“Good. Because there’s a lesson for us all there. Perhaps you also. Mr Root, are you a Christian?”

“Not seriously.”

“I am. I was raised to be a Christian right here in this village, to follow in the beliefs of my father and his father before him. Simple beliefs. To heed the message of Christ, and live as the Lord instructed us to live.