The Alamut Ambush (19 page)

He said softly, ‘Does it matter, Mary?’

‘It matters to me. Of all of them, Hugh, Alan was my special one. Betty was ill when he was little, and I practically brought him up.’ She paused. ‘I’m not bargaining – I’ll tell you everything I know. But I’d – I’d feel better if I knew that he died to some purpose, and not because of a silly mistake he made in his work.’

The rules said ‘no’. The rules said he must always wear a double face and tell outsiders nothing more than was needed to make them co-operate. But the rules were not ends in themselves, just as the interest and security of the realm was not an end in itself.

So to Mary the rules must say ‘yes’, or go straight out of the window: her peace of mind was what it was all about.

‘It wasn’t an accident.’ He put his hand over hers. ‘It looked like an accident, but it wasn’t. And I don’t believe it had anything to do with his job, Mary. It wasn’t a particularly dangerous job. But he saw something, or maybe heard something, while he was down here on leave, and he was killed before he could report it. And he didn’t feel a thing – I promise you.’ Mary remained silent for a moment.

‘Thank you, Hugh,’ she said at length. ‘I’ll never tell anyone what you’ve told me, not even Betty.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘And now you must ask me your questions – you want to know what Alan did on his leave.’

‘I think it’s just that Tuesday morning that matters – the day he left. He left in a hurry, didn’t he.’

‘
In
a frightful rush,’ Mary nodded. ‘He was going to go after lunch, but when he came back from the Beacon he’d changed his mind.’

‘He’d walked up to the Beacon?’

‘He rode up on Sammy – Penny’s horse. She’s half his horse, actually. She was, I mean … He paid half Sammy’s bills on condition he had first choice during his leaves. He always used to take Sammy out on the hills first thing in the morning. Then he used to spend the rest of the day pottering. He was fixing up the two-way speaker in the porch this leave, so that I could answer the door from here when the family was out. I don’t believe he went out anywhere else during the whole time he was here.’

Like Harry, Alan had always used home for relaxation and family life: his London existence had been frenetic, and Firle was where he recharged his batteries.

‘He rode up to the Beacon, then.’

‘He walked Sammy up the steeper parts – he liked to get to the top as quickly as possible. I used to watch him through the telescope – he’d wave when he reached the top.’

‘And you watched him on Tuesday.’

She looked at him in despair. ‘Hugh, I didn’t – not on Tuesday. I had a bad day on Tuesday — I try not to take the pills the doctor gives me. They make me whoozy and I want to keep them for when I shall really need them. But I just had to take one that morning, and I didn’t feel up to anything after that. I’m sorry.’

Roskill couldn’t hide his disappointment. It had been a black Tuesday indeed – not only because Alan had chosen to ride to the Beacon at that fatal moment in time, but because twice thereafter the chance of learning what he had seen had been lost.

‘But you saw him when he came down.’

‘Only very briefly. I was resting and he only came to borrow a stamp, and then to say goodbye. He was always very considerate when I had a bad day, and I’m not very good company then.’

‘Did he say anything?’

‘He said he was writing to you. He was excited, Hugh – he certainly wasn’t frightened. I do remember asking him why he wasn’t staying for lunch, because Penny was cutting the asparagus for him. But he just said “The sooner I’m off, the better” – I think he said.’

Like Harry, Alan had a broad streak of ambition in him. And if he’d had some idea of what he’d seen, he might also have had an inkling that it might be dangerous as well as important. And that would account for the letter, and for his leaving it to Penelope to post, as well as for the quick getaway. It might even account for his not leaving his new address.

But it all added up to nothing new, except that what he’d seen had been on the Beacon itself – and that the only lead lay in Penelope’s identifying the dishy young man.

He stared forlornly past the shining brass case of the telescope to the hillside beyond. But looking wouldn’t turn the clock back four days to betray what had taken place up there, six hundred feet above him.

Yet the hill drew him. It was hard to imagine that Alan had unwittingly seen his death up there, if that had been how it had been. There was nothing up there but the birds wheeling and diving over the grassland. On warm, windy days the gliders joined the birds, and in summer there were wild strawberries – he’d picked them with Harry and had brought them down here to this very room.

He got up and began to move towards the window.

‘Don’t go near the window, Hugh,’ Mary said suddenly. ‘There’s something else.’

Roskill froze in mid-step.

‘Go directly behind the telescope,’ Mary ordered him. ‘Now look through it at the Beacon.’

Obediently he focused the telescope on the top of the hill. It was a splendid instrument, heavy yet moving smoothly and freely on its mounting. The hilltop came up sharply, every feature of it clear even though no direct sunlight came through the grey clouds above it. But there was nothing to see on it except the grass shivering in the wind.

‘Come right along the skyline, away from the long barrow towards the tumuli – the tussock of grass on the right at the base of it. Do you see anything?’

As a fire order it left something to be desired: there were a whole series of mounds up there, most of which were not visible at this angle, or at
least
not visible to Roskill’s eye except as slight irregularities in the grassland. Mary knew this landscape like the back of her hand and she could –

But there
was
something up there, snug down beside the trailing edge of one hump. And not something, but someone.

‘Have you got him? Deerstalker hat and binoculars. I spotted him more than an hour ago, just after breakfast – it was the flash of the binoculars that gave him away. A bird-watcher I took him for.’

A bird-watcher? Well, there were birds up there right enough.

‘And I thought what a very silly bird-watcher he was.’

‘Silly?’ Roskill turned his eye away from the hilltop towards her.

‘He can’t see much ground from there. The hill falls away too quickly in front of him. And even if he could see enough ground, the Beacon is the last place I’d go to bird-watch. Far too many people go tramping over it – quite enough to spoil it for him, anyway.’

Roskill squinted through the eye-piece again. Deerstalker and binoculars, and the suggestion of a dark jacket.

He turned back to Mary again. ‘You think he’s watching us?’

‘I thought he was watching this house an hour ago, but I thought I was imagining it because I couldn’t think why anyone would want to do that. But now – ‘ she trailed off. ‘Now I don’t know what to think.’

No one had tailed him to Firle – the MG had seen to that. So whoever was watching up there had to be directly connected with Alan’s death – and that meant Hassan.

He stared back up the hillside longingly now. So near, and yet so impossibly far! Ensconced up there, on the highest point for miles around and with tracks leading away in at least three directions, the bastard was laughing. He could see from afar who was coming, and could stay or go as he chose.

He shook his head in a mixture of resignation and frustration. It wasn’t as if he could call up assistance, even if there was time to do so: the Firle trip was strictly off the record.

‘You’d like to know who it is, wouldn’t you, Hugh? To see whether it really is a bird-watcher?’

‘I’d have to be a little bird to do it.’

‘Not necessarily.’

Mary met his gaze, so she wasn’t kidding him, evidently. Again he looked up towards the skyline. She could hardly envisage a breakneck cavalry charge by car; it wasn’t that the MG couldn’t do it – the West Firle approach was easy even for sedate family saloons, and the mile of trackway along the ridge was perfectly usable if the farm gates were unlocked. But he’d never get up close unnoticed: the watcher would have spotted the MG already.

‘How, Mary?’

‘Go straight up, of course – the way Alan used to.’

The way Alan used to?

She swivelled the chair and propelled it into the shadow to the left of the curtains.

‘Come here, Hugh, by my shoulder … That man up there, he thinks he can see everything, but he can’t – he can’t see what’s right in front of his nose. Look – ‘

Roskill followed her pointing finger. Five, six years she’d been a prisoner of the chair, and for the years before that increasingly handicapped. But she was born and bred to this countryside, had walked and ridden it before he was born and knew every inch of it.

‘ – You go out of this house at the back past the stables and into the spinney. Then the hedge beyond is in full leaf now, and it hasn’t been laid for years. After that there’s the patch of woodland, and you come out just
there
.’ The finger stabbed decisively.

‘And from where he is he can’t possibly see you beyond those last trees, because the slope of the hillside in front of him blocks the view. There’s the little path up the side of the hill there, that Alan used – it’s steep, but Alan used to lead Sammy along it, under that bit of furze. So you’ll come up away on his left.’

She was right. If he followed that little worn path he’d end up on the very shoulder of the ridge, little more than a hundred yards, maybe only fifty, from the deerstalker hat.

Except that he didn’t fancy even those last few yards if the watcher really wasn’t watching birds. He’d be as obvious and out-of-place – and as vulnerable – as a fox in the stubble. The very suddenness of his appearance would make his position doubly dangerous: it might panic the man into doing something frightful.

But Mary was looking at him fiercely, and he could hardly admit just how cold his feet were.

‘You don’t think it would work?’

‘It’d work all right – up to that last hundred yards, And then he’d spot me.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want to run him to earth or to scare him off – I just want to get a good look at him.’

‘And he’d recognise you?’

‘I’m afraid he would.’

The truth was he was altogether too distinctive in his neat grey city suit to go tramping over the hill, apart from the damned beard. They’d tagged him at the Ryle reception, and by now the word would be out on him for sure. Even if by any remote stroke of luck it hadn’t reached the bird-watcher, those field-glasses would have caught him walking from the car to the house. He’d been in full view of the hill there – he’d even paused to look up at it: just to make the job easier.

Mary sighed, and then gave him a small understanding smile. ‘You’re quite right, Hugh – I’m afraid I’m just a silly old woman who watches too much television. From this chair everything always seems to look either too easy or too difficult. He’s probably just a bad bird-watcher anyway.’

Her understanding only made it worse. He rubbed the beard, scowling at himself in the gilt mirror oa the wall behind her. He’d secretly been rather proud of it, at least until Penelope had found it sexy. Now, the sooner it came off, the better.

The sooner it came off!

He stared at the reflection in the mirror intently, no longer scowling. The beard and the suit were mere trappings, not integral parts.

‘Mary – is there a razor in the house?’

She looked up at him in surprise. ‘There’s an old cut-throat of Charlie’s – ?’

‘And some old clothes of Alan’s? And a rucksack or something like that?’

But now she was already ahead of him. ‘And Charlie’s old hat and an old pair of spectacles too, with clear glass in them.’ She paused for breath. ‘But don’t take a rucksack, Hugh – take Sammy!’

Roskill frowned at her, perplexed for a moment.

‘The horse, Hugh – nobody would look twice at a horseman on the hill. There’ve been riders up there already this morning. They went straight by him.’

He looked at her doubtfully. He’d not been in a saddle since heaven only knew when. But if he could stay on top it would double his mobility, never mind his credibility…

‘I’m not much of a horseman, Mary.’

‘Sammy’s not much of a horse.’

He couldn’t disappoint her now, and – damn it – he dlidn’t want to. Besides, it might actually work. ‘Hell, Mary – I’ll give it a try,’ he said.

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER
he wasn’t quite so sure the horse had been such a good idea.

She was a docile enough creature, undeniably, easy to ride on the flat and tolerably sure-footed on the hillside. But however many times she had been up the sheep-track – he supposed it was a sheep-track, though there was no sign of any sheep – she hadn’t learned to traverse it willingly: he was already sweating with the effort of dragging her up and he suspected that only the near impossibility of turning round kept the beast going. In fact there was now no turning back for cither of them – they were saddled with each other.

He scanned the escarpment above him for movement. At least Mary’s memory of the lie of the land had been exact, and only the skyline of bare tuft was above him.

And one thing was established anyway – he felt it in his bones: this had been how Alan had unwittingly created the necessity for his own death. He had ridden out innocently for his early morning exercise using his favourite route, and had set up his own appointment in Samarra.

It was a thought that turned the sweat on his back clammy. Moreover, the deerstalker might even be the man Alan had seen, in which case he might recognise the horse, even if he failed to recognise her new rider.

He looked critically at the mare. No, that was hardly possible: Sammy – it was an unlovely diminutive for Samantha – was a most anonymous horse, a very common, brown, ordinary horse without a single distinguishing mark.

He toiled on up, past the wire fence with its strands conveniently looped for easy passage — Sammy knew the drill of old and waited patiently while he refixed them — and then on under the furze patch. Beyond it the going was easier and the skyline was still empty.