Rupert Thomson - Dreams of Leaving

‘I have some extremely important research to do,’ he said. ‘In the museum.’

‘All right, dear.’ Hilda bit delicately into the triangle of toast poised between her finger and thumb.

‘It will probably be happening next weekend.’ He spoke through the clinking of china. It made his words seem less naked. It seemed to clothe his deceit. ‘Friday and Saturday, I should think. So don’t expect me home on Friday night.’

Torn between amusement and concern, Hilda abandoned her usual discretion. ‘You’re not going to sleep in the museum, are you?’ Her eccentric husband!

He was brisk, imperious. ‘Either that or I’ll use one of the beds in the station. It depends how things go. In any case, don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right.’

Hilda touched the handle of her tea-cup, traced its outline with a single lingering finger. ‘And when will you be back, do you think?’

‘Saturday night. Midnight. No later than that.’

Hilda nodded.

Watching her through the arms of the candelabra, he felt that she had taken the news too casually. He had to impress her with the gravity of the matter. He wanted it branded on her mind.

‘I don’t want to be disturbed, Hilda. Not by anyone. Is that understood?’

Hilda pressed a fingertip to one of the crumbs on her plate. Her bottom teeth gripped her upper lip. Now he had upset her.

‘It’s very important,’ he explained, more gently. ‘It’s only for twenty-four hours.’

‘I know, dear.’ She faced him across the table, and her slightly lifted chin suggested a quaint bravery. ‘I’ll make you some sandwiches and a Thermos of hot soup.’

He didn’t want bloody soup, but he said, ‘That would be very nice.’

For the remainder of the meal, they discussed less controversial subjects: trimming the box hedges, revarnishing the table in the hall.

The conversation with Sergeant Dolphin had necessarily taken a somewhat different course.

‘I’m going to be out of circulation for about twenty-four hours,’ he told Dolphin on the Monday morning, ‘and I want you to take over the running of the village.’

‘Take over the running of the village, sir?’

Peach turned towards his office window, so as to hide his smile. The second half of his announcement had distracted Dolphin from too close or too immediate an examination of the first half. As he had known it would.

He swung round again, hearty, irrepressible. ‘Be Chief Inspector,’ he said. ‘It’ll be valuable experience for you, Dolphin. Stand you in good stead for the future.’ He felt so expansive that he almost winked. ‘It’s high time you had the feel of the reins in your hands. The reins of power, Dolphin. I won’t be here for ever, you know.’

In his eloquence Peach had ridden over the poor sergeant. He had, in fact, been quite carried away by his own oratory. ‘Yes, sir,’ were the only words Dolphin managed to get in — and those edgeways.

‘I’m going to be working on a project in the museum. It’s very confidential and I need absolute privacy. Under no circumstances do I want to be disturbed. Under no circumstances. Do I make myself clear, Dolphin?’

‘Very clear.’

‘I want you to pretend that I’m not here.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Pretend that I don’t exist. Imagine, if you like, that I’m dead.’

He saw alarm go off in Dolphin’s face. Well, perhaps that had been going a bit far. Still, it was gratifying to know that you were going to be missed. And the point, though exaggerated, was a valid one.

‘Seriously,’ he ran on, ‘it’ll make things more realistic. If a crisis occurs you won’t be tempted to consult me. You’ll be on your own, Dolphin. Just for those twenty-four hours. I’ve got a great deal of faith in you. I wouldn’t be giving you this assignment if I didn’t. But I’m sure you understand that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Well, Peach had certainly given Dolphin something to think about. And first thing on Monday morning too, the sergeant’s eyes still foolish with sleep.

‘I’ll be briefing you on the exact timing later in the week,’ he concluded.

‘All right, sir.’ Dolphin scraped at the floor with the rim of his boot, then he looked up. ‘I appreciate the opportunity, sir. I’ll be looking forward to it.’

That’s my Dolphin, Peach thought.

*

It had all been so easy. On Friday of that week he organised the day patrols so that, for a period of precisely twenty minutes, the road that led southwest towards the village of Bunt would be left unmanned. Everything went as planned. At 6.30 on Friday evening he rode out of New Egypt on his bicycle. When he crossed the boundary he felt nothing. No hallucinations, no rush of adrenalin, not even a quickening of the pulse. Nothing. His feet pumped the pedals as before, the bicycle sped onwards. Once or twice he glanced from side to side as if the feelings he had heard about from previous escapees might be lurking in the hedgerow, waiting to spring out, infiltrate, be felt. He rode on. Still nothing happened. It was a pleasant evening in June.

Half an hour later he arrived at a small country railway station some eight miles west of New Egypt. He pedalled across the deserted car-park, his tyres silent on the tarmac. He dismounted behind a van with a shattered windscreen, and wheeled his bicycle through some bushes and down a crumbling mud bank into the copse that bordered the railway tracks. There, in the green gloom, among bleached cans of hairspray and the skeletons of motorbikes, he changed into civilian clothes. He folded his uniform and crammed it into his saddlebag. He locked the saddlebag. Then he dragged the bicycle behind a bush and camouflaged it with dead wood, brambles and leaves.

He walked into the Gents (hissing copper pipes, smells of pine and piss commingling) to check his appearance. When he saw himself in the mirror above the washbasins he thought how suspicious, how like a criminal, he looked. Partly the way he was dressed, he supposed. (He was wearing a beige check sports jacket, a green shirt, and a dark red tie which Hilda had given him for his birthday. His cavalry twill trousers had come out of a Christmas catalogue. On his feet, a pair of brogues. Respectable if somewhat characterless clothes. Deliberately so.) And partly the clandestine nature of what he was doing. His grey eyes watched him watching from beneath their heavy lids. His grey hair bristled like a bed of nails. The green shirt gave his face an unhealthy, slightly chilling pallor.

Still, he looked pretty vigorous for a man of his age.

*

If I were to die now, Peach wrote in a slightly unsteady hand, what would happen?

He sat back and considered the question. It would be a nightmare for Dolphin, of course. Though Dolphin wouldn’t think of it as a death. Not right away. He would probably call it a disappearance. Still, that was serious enough. Nobody disappeared in New Egypt. Least of all a Chief Inspector. What would he do? Check the museum first. His only lead. But he would find no trace of Peach. Not a single clue.

Absolute nightmare.

It wouldn’t be long before Dolphin began to suspect foul play. A kidnapping, for instance. Even, perhaps, a murder. (Peach’s forty-year reign as Chief Inspector, his merciless grip on the community, had always made that a possibility — though who would dare?) He would have to lift the news blackout. He would have to inform the village. And then? Instant pandemonium.

Would anyone suspect that he had (a) left the village and (b) left it of his own accord? Only the more cynical of the villagers. Highness, for instance (he could see that sardonic twisted smile). The greengrocer, too, perhaps (those puffy knowing eyes).