Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

"Nothing, if we reach him first. Now -"

"I mean he's left his gear here, hasn't he? That's his bag in the corner, innit? And the cops standing there asking me if I knew anything and all the time it's his gear they're looking at. I mean-"

"I'll take it away," Maxim soothed him. "Now, any idea where he might go?"

Tanner thought for a moment and shook his head.

"Think. We're assuming he's wounded and had to hide nearby. When you're hurt, you regress. I mean, you want to run home to mother. Okay, so he hasn't got a mother. But he might go back to some part of his childhood. "

"I don't see him going back to the Council,"Dannsaid banteringly. Maxim shot him a furious look.

"He might not be hurt," Tanner temporised.

"If he's not, he's probably in Norwich by now and still running. But we have to look at the worst possible case. Is there anywhere round here?'

There was a long silence. Then Tanner said slowly: "We had this sort've a gang, once. Just when we was kids. I mean, wehad this sort of hideout, meeting place. It was an old air-raid shelter, I think. Only they'd blocked up the way in, like, and you could only get in through… I dunno, maybe it was some sort of ventilation thing. If you kept that covered up, most people didn't even know it was there. "

"Show us."

George had switched to drinking coffee laced with cognac – "The complete cycle, the disease and the cure in one simple package," and Agnes had muttered something about vitamin C and gone across the big room to play a Mozart piano concerto on the stereo. She felt drained. It had been a long day at the end of a busy week, but that wasn't all of it. At dinner in Littlehampton she had acted perfectly, had been friendly but not familiar, always cheerful, talking enough but not too much – but always acting. There were so few homes where she could relax and, without talking about the hidden things, not be consciously hiding them. It was that, the holding of your thoughts like holding your breath, that broke so many of them in their forties. She had seen it far too often: the self-inflicted divorces, the ones you had to talk to before lunch because the rest of their day was an alcoholic marsh, those shunted to a not-too-responsible job in the Registry or an early pension-Peace hath its victims no less renowned than war. I have perhaps ten more years. Will it all have been worth it?

Suddenly Mozart seemed too busy and clever, and she started sorting in the cupboard under the turntable until she found a record of Papillons, and lay back surrounded by Schumann's fluttering primary colours.

George looked around. "If I'm not to be allowed Mozart, why not somebody with an appropriate gloom quotient like Mahler? What are we doing back in the nursery?"

"I suppose it was that meeting. You remember Sladen talking about Wilhelmina Linnarz, the pianist defector? I'd been wondering what made me think of Schumann."

He grunted. "You're regressing, young Algar… There must be a file on that woman. "

"I'll dig it out tomorrow. Late tomorrow. "

"Why the hell hasn't Harry rung in?"

"He's probably been arrested."

George glared and said provocatively: "How did you get on with him today? He likes piano music too, I recall."

"Count Basic."

"Pure race prejudice."

Agnes closed her eyes. "George, you're not going to get me as bad-tempered as you are."

"Me? Balls!"

But I wonder if Harry has ever listened to Schumann? she thought. And maybe I should try that Basic trio he was going on about. Maybe we… Maybewe nothing, she told herself angrily. You stayaway from that man; he isbad news. Of all the people you do not want to get mixed up with he is the first and the last. Losing your temper with him wasunforgivable.

The phone rang and her heart gave a jerk. She got up quickly, since she was nearest.

"If it's Harry," George called, "and he's gotany good news, just throw a fit and I'll get the general idea. "

Agnes said: "Speaking," and listened for a minute, then put the phone down. "The one in hospital: dead."

The dock was fenced off, but not the way it had been as a real dock, with real cargoes to steal. This one was bodged together from old planks and doors from wrecked houses, intended as little more than a defence in court for the demolition company when some child got through and broke his neck amongst the rubble. There were several places kids obviously did get through; Maxim widened one by yanking loose another plank and ducked in. The other two followed, Dannreluctantly. He was wearing Maxim's car coat over his thin shirt, but his shoes were still canvas and the ground beyond the fence was a mudpond laced with sharp lumps of concrete and old ironwork. Maxim had a torch which he used very cautiously, but at least they didn't have to whisper in the steady drone of rain.

'"Ell," Tanner said, looking around. "It all looks sort of different, now."

Indeed it did, to anybody who remembered or could visualise it as a busy dock. Level, as all docks must be, it was a soggywasteland stretching to the edge of the river. Cranes, warehouses, offices-all had been stripped away, leaving just a small site office and an abandoned bulldozer outlined against the damp glow on the far bank.

"I think it was over here…" They followed him. He stooped a couple of times to shift a sheet of corrugated iron or warped plasterboard, but didn't find anything.

He straightened up, shaking his head and wiping rain out of his eyes. "I just dunno. I mean, they could've filled it in. I mean…"

Maxim looked around. There were no flashing blue lights -the police would have walked over this ground, but hours ago – and they were well away from any inhabited buildings.

"Blagg!" he shouted. "Corporal Blagg!"

They listened but heard only the steady rain.

"Blagg!"

He had just taken breath to shout again when there was a muffled bang.

"It came from there," Tanner said.

"Over there."Dannsuggested another direction.

Maxim wasn't sure himself, but he was sure he had a lot more experience than they in locating the origins of gunshots. He stumbled away in the direction of his own idea; they followed.

When they found him, the water had just reached his nostrils.

Maxim lifted him very gently to a sitting position. The dragging breath and the bullet holes at front and back gave him an easy diagnosis. Thank God there were two, and not too low down. Blagg had tried a brief smile when Maxim flashed the torch on himself for identification, but didn't speak. The Spanish pistol was still clutched in his right hand; Maxim took it away and dropped it in his own pocket.

It took all three of them to lift him out of the reeking waterlogged shelter through an opening just big enough for one of them at a time. It was easy to see why the police would have missed it: from outside, it was just a concrete hardstand, perhaps the foundation for an old shed, and the opening ledthrough a shallow pit that was usually jammed with rubbish and covered by a corrugated iron sheet. But at last, panting steam, they had Blagg propped almost upright in the rain.

"Fireman's chair," Maxim said. "Grip your own wrist, then mine, under his arse. " But Dannknew all about that. Tanner was half his age, but Maxim turned instinctively to the trainer for important work. "Dave, you support his back. Don't let his head fall forward. "

They staggered and slithered the hundred yards or miles to the fence, sweating into clothes already soaked, swearing breathlessly. So now Maxim had to bring the car up. It would have been suspiciously obvious parked near nothing but a gap in the fence, so he had left it by the nearest flats. The three of them stayed just inside the fence while he went for it. By now the rain was easing.