Jack Higgins - Dark Side of the Street

From there he had a clear view of the main road in the valley below shrouded in mist, a gleam of water beyond. A reservoir, perhaps a lake? He turned away and with something of a shock, found that Molly Crowther was standing watching him.

She made a strange melancholy figure, fitting perfectly into that dead landscape in an old black coat with the padded shoulders fashionable during the war years. A scarf was bound tightly around the strong peasant face.

"Hello there," Chavasse said, walking to meet her. "Did everything go all right?"

She nodded with a curious indifference. "The priest didn't waste much time. He was getting wet."

"Where's your father?"

"Gone into the next village with Billy. He dropped me down there on the road. It's quicker to walk over the hill and I wanted to check on the sheep."

"Do you look after them?"

"Most of the time. Billy helps me when he's in the mood. The trouble is he doesn't know his own strength. One minute he's fondling a lamb, the next its neck is broken. He isn't very reliable."

"I see your point." Chavasse hesitated and went on, "I'm sorry about your mother."

"I'm not," she said with brutal frankness. "She had cancer of the stomach during the last year of her life and refused to go to hospital. I had to look after her. It wasn't much of a time for either of us. She's well out of this place anyway."

"Don't you like it here?"

She turned on him in surprise. "Who could like a place like this?" She flung out an arm that seemed to embrace the whole wind-swept landscape. "Even the trees grow crooked here. It's a dead world. I sometimes think the only living things in it are the sheep and they're like Billy-witless."

"Why don't you leave?"

"I couldn't before-there was my mother to consider. Now it's too late. I'm squeezed dry. I wouldn't know where to go."

There was real pain in her voice and Chavasse felt genuinely sorry for her. "Perhaps your father could help. He may intend to now that your mother has gone."

"There's only one thing he wants to do for me-God knows he's tried that often enough." She laughed harshly. "My father died when I was three. He was a gypsy like my mother. She met Sam Crowther at Skipton Market ten years ago and married him within a week. The worst day's work she ever did in her life."

"You sound as if you hate him."

"And this place-all I ever wanted was to get away."

"Where would you like to go?"

"I've never really thought about it." She shrugged. "Some place where I could get a decent job, wear nice clothes, meet people-London, maybe."

From her vantage point it must have seemed as remote as the moon and just about as romantic. "Distance lends enchantment," he told her gently. "London can be the loneliest place on earth."

"I'd take my chances." They had reached one of the boundary walls and she leaned against it, arms folded under her breasts. "It must be marvelous to be able to go places-do exciting things-like Mr. Youngblood, for instance."

"Five years in gaol," Chavasse said. "Another fifteen to go if they catch him-perhaps more now. Nothing very romantic there."

"I mean before that," she said with a slight trace of impatience. "He was a smuggler, you know."

"Amongst other things."

She rushed on, looking animated for the first time since he had known her. "I read an article about him in one of the Sunday papers last year. They said he was a modern Robin Hood."

"I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Depends what the original was like."

"But it's true," she insisted. "They published an interview with an old lady who'd been treated with eviction because she couldn't pay her rent. Somebody told Mr. Youngblood. He gave her a hundred pounds and he'd never even met her before."

Chavasse could have told her that the incident had taken place just after a successful payroll snatch in Essex which was known to have netted Youngblood and his associates thirty-two thousand pounds and had put two armoured car guards in hospital, one with a fractured skull, but he knew when he was wasting his time.

He grinned crookedly. "He's certainly quite a man."

She nodded. "I hope he gets away, clear out of the country. I hope you both do."

"Do you get many people through here like us?" he said.

"About half a dozen this year."

"What about George Saxton and Ben Hoffa, Harry's friends? Did you see anything of them?"

Suddenly it was as if shutters had dropped squarely into place and when she glanced at him, the eyes were blank, the face devoid of all expression. "Yes, they were here."

"For how long?"

She hesitated and then said slowly, "I don't know. I didn't see them go."

Chavasse was aware of a sudden coldness in the pit of the stomach and his throat seemed to go dry. "Was that unusual?"

"Yes-yes, it was," she said hesitatingly. "The others were here for two or three days. I always saw them leave. My step-father took them in the car."

"Let me get this straight," Chavasse said. "You met Saxton and Hoffa down there on the road at night just like us and you brought them up to the farm?"

"That's right."

"Did you ever see either of them again after that?"

"Never."

They stood staring at each other dumbly in the rain, the ceaseless sighing of the wind the only sound.

"What happened to them, Molly?" Chavasse said.

"I don't know. Before God, I don't know," she cried.

"You mean you don't want to know, don't you?"

She shuddered violently as if at some secret unpleasant thought and he gripped her arms above the elbows, gentling her like a fractious mare. "All right, Molly-there's nothing to worry about. I'll handle it."

He started to walk away, paused and turned towards her. "Are you coming down?"

"I've the sheep to see to." Her hands were shaking so hard that she had to clasp them together. "Later-I'll be along later."

He didn't bother to argue and went down the hill on the run, his face grim. The possibilities implicit in what she had said were monstrous and yet, if he was honest, some sort of suspicion had been there at the back of his mind from the moment he had met Sam Crowther and his sinister shadow. He remembered the knob on the bedroom door turning silently in the night and his flesh crawled.

He climbed the stone stile, vaulted the wall and found himself face to face with Youngblood.

"Find anything?" Chavasse said.

Youngblood shook his head. "Not even a shotgun. I know where we are though. Found an old envelope. This is Wykehead Farm, near Settle." He frowned suddenly. "You look excited. Anything happen?"

"I'm not really sure," Chavasse said. "But I've just had a chat with Molly and I've a hunch there could be something very nasty in the woodshed."

"What in the hell are you talking about?"

"No time to discuss it now. Ask her about Saxton and Hoffa yourself and see what you make of it. You get a clear view of the main road from the top. The moment you see Crowther's car, come down and warn me. You'll have plenty of time."

He went down the hill quickly leaving Youngblood standing there, a frown on his face. After a while he turned, climbed the stile and went up the hill.

Although he had developed, and especially in his Navy days a genuine love of the sea, Harry Youngblood was a city animal and he paused to survey the strange twisted landscape with distaste. There was nothing here that appealed to him. Nothing at all, and he climbed on until he reached the spine of rocks on the crest of the hill and looked down to the road below. A truck moved along it, match-box size, but there was no sign of Crowther's old black Ford.

He turned and started towards the hut and suddenly realised that the girl was standing there looking at him, a lamb cradled in her arms. She disappeared inside and when he reached the doorway, he found her crouched down on the floor mixing some kind of bran with milk in a feeding bowl.