Colin Forbes: By Stealth

`The police…' he began as his visitors hurried to the door.

`I told you I'd contact the Chief Constable,' Tweed reminded him. 'Thank you for your co-operation.'

Outside the large white building a spacious car park stretched away into the grey fog. Tweed had loaned his Ford Escort to Paula to drive Boyd into Lymington.

Parked next to it was Newman's Mercedes. Walford had followed them, stood in the doorway.

`Mr Tweed,' he called out, 'you said Special Branch – what was Boyd really up to?'

`That's right,' Tweed responded ambiguously. 'Must go. I'm in a hurry to let Andover know what's happened.' He lowered his voice. 'Paula, you know how to get us there. Why not take my Escort. We'll keep on your tail.'

She unlocked the door, slipped inside as Newman opened the driver's door of his Merc. and Tweed sat quickly beside him. In the distance they heard the siren of an approaching patrol car.

`That's why you were in a hurry to get clear,' Newman remarked.

Before Paula switched on the Escort's ignition she lowered her window. Despite the cold air she welcomed it to clear her mind. Near by she heard the screech of a seagull. The piercing cry, fog-muffled, sounded as mournful as the foghorn she'd heard at the end of the marina wall. A requiem for the dead.

`One thing's certain,' Newman remarked as he followed Paula's tail lights towards the car-park exit, 'whatever the rest of the night holds for us it can't be as great a shock as Paula had back there at the marina.'

It was a comment he was to regret making within the hour.

To Paula's relief, the fog disappeared on the outskirts of Lymington. With the map open on the seat beside her, she drove at speed along the deserted A337 with desolate heath on either side. She welcomed being on her own: it gave her a chance to restore her normal resilience. Concentrating on driving pushed out of her mind the dreadful experience.

Approaching Brockenhurst, she just caught sight of the right-hand turn-off to Beaulieu in time, flashed her indicator, swung on to a twisting country road which was the B3055, leading eventually to the first place of human habitation, Beaulieu.

Walford had warned her there was a long stretch of what he'd called the wilderness – the fringe of the New Forest. In her rear-view mirror she saw the comforting headlights of Newman's Merc. tracking her a short distance behind. Now she had to be sure not to drive past Prevent, the home of Sir Gerald Andover, buried in the woods as Walford had described it.

In the Mercedes Newman maintained the same speed as Paula but was careful to keep a reasonable distance from her. He guessed she might have difficulty finding the house and wanted room for an emergency stop if she pulled up suddenly.

`Was it a good idea to let her drive alone out here after such a shock?' he asked.

`I did it deliberately,' Tweed replied. 'She needs to get her act together as quickly as possible. She'll want to show me she can do just that. And she'll do it much better on her own for half an hour or so.'

`If you say so. I had a look at Boyd in the ambulance.' `And how did you manage that? They don't let just anyone examine a corpse,' Tweed remarked.

`Oh, I said, wouldn't you let his brother see him? They let me inside at once. Note I didn't say I was his brother. They just made the assumption.'

`One of your tricks from your foreign correspondent days. What was your impression? It wasn't a pleasant sight.'

`That a bloody great meat cleaver wielded by a Norse god had sliced away the side of his skull. No ordinary ship could have caused such a frightful clean-cut injury. It would break through the hull first, carrying some of the wreckage with it,' Newman pointed out.

`And Paula didn't hear the sound of any other vessel's engine. Only the chug-chug of Boyd's powerboat – until it stopped for ever. It's a mystery.'

`Another minor mystery is why did you come down to the Passford House Hotel? Very nice place – but you don't take holidays.'

`I had a call from Sir Gerald Andover asking me to come and stay there. He asked me to wait until he contacted me,' Tweed said.

`So you rushed down – and at the same time Paula's driving down to the same place with Boyd. What's going on?'

`I wish I knew. Another mystery.'

Newman reduced speed. The well-surfaced road, more hilly than he'd expected, was twisting and turning round sharp bends. On either side his headlights swept over bare trees, branches reaching up towards the sky like skeletal hands. A lot of oaks, and here and there a copse of dense evergreens. And mist was appearing in the Forest, curling forward between the trunks, masking his windscreen. He started the wipers going and Paula's red lights came up clearer.

`Who is this Sir Gerald Andover?'

`A near genius. For years he was research director on the main board of one of the biggest oil companies. His main job was to predict the future – how the world would develop globally. He foresaw the 1973 oil crisis long before it happened, even sent the PM of the day a report warning him the Arab sheiks would form a cartel and blackmail the West by rocketing the oil price. No one took any notice of him. Then, as you know, it all came true. I know him. Bit of an odd type.'

`Odd in what way?'

`Self-sufficient to an extreme degree. Never suffers fools gladly.'

`I can't stand stupidity myself. Draw me a picture of him.'

As they drove deeper into the Forest the grey mist thickened into a near-fog. Newman set his wipers moving at top speed. The atmosphere was becoming claustrophobic with the fog, the trees closing in to the road's edge. Not a sign of any other traffic.

`Andover is a tall, erect man in his fifties. A trim fair moustache. Slimly built. An authoritative manner. An old China hand.'

`Meaning precisely?' Newman probed.

`That was an exaggeration. He visited Hong Kong a lot but never settled there. Something strange happened about three or four months ago. At the height of his career he resigned overnight from the oil company and other directorships he held. Became a recluse. Out of character. Then this weird phone call to me.'

`What was weird about it?'

`I didn't even recognize his voice to start with – sounded as though he'd aged ten years since I talked to him five months ago in his club. He begged me to come down and see him. Forbade me to call him at his house – which I've not seen so far. I asked him where he was calling from. The answer was strange.'

`Don't keep me in suspense.'

`He said from a local phone box. Why not call me from his house? I didn't ask him. He sounded agitated. Totally unlike the calm, self-controlled man I knew.'

`Give you any hint why he was so desperate to see you?'

`Not a thing. I didn't ask him. He sounded too nervous – as though he wanted to get out of the call box as quickly as he could. Something is very seriously wrong at Prevent.'

`Strange name for a house,' Newman commented.

`Typical of Andover. He reckons his lifetime work is to look into the future, as I explained. Hoping that by warning the people of influence and power he'll help to prevent a coming catastrophe. And, I emphasize, he can think in global terms.'

`What's the domestic situation? If any.'

`Divorced his wife years ago for adultery. He has one daughter, Irene. Must be about eighteen now. They get on as well together as any daughter and father do these days. Lives at Prevent. Mad keen on horse riding.'

`This is the right place for it… Now what is Paula up to?'

Ahead of them, on her own in the Escort, a small car compared with Newman's large Merc., she was feeling the sensation of claustrophobia strongly as her headlights shone through a tunnel of trees and she swung round yet another bend.