Bernard Cornwell - Wildtrack

“I’ll drive you,” Jill-Beth said.

I hesitated.

“For Christ’s sake, Nick!” She was angry that I did not trust her.

She held out her car keys. “Do you want to take my car?” I let her drive me. “Who is he?” she asked.

“A newspaper reporter.”

“You’re a fool,” she said scornfully.

“Not me!” I snapped. “You’re the bloody fool! Just because Kassouli’s rich doesn’t mean that he’s right!”

“His daughter was murdered!”

“And who did that to Micky?” I waved towards the Land-Rover which was a mile ahead of us on the road. “You brought your thugs along, didn’t you?”

“No!” she protested.

“Then who, for Christ’s sake?”

She thought about it for a few seconds. “Did you drive straight here from London?”

“No. I went…” I paused. I’d gone to Bannister’s house and seen evidence that Fanny Mulder was there. I hadn’t thought, not once, to check that anyone had followed Micky and I to the moor. “Oh, Jesus,” I said hopelessly. “Mulder.”

Jill-Beth shrugged, as if to say that I’d fetched this disaster on myself. We drove in silence until we reached the hospital where the Land-Rover was standing at the entrance to the casualty department. An empty police car, its blue light still flashing, was parked in front of it.

Jill-Beth killed her engine. “I guess this means you’re not going to help us, Nick?”

“I won’t be the hangman for a kangaroo trial.”

“You don’t want the money?” she asked.

“No.”

Jill-Beth shrugged. “It wasn’t meant to be this way, Nick.”

“What wasn’t?”

“Americans against the Brits. Truly it wasn’t. Kassouli believes his daughter was murdered. If you shared that belief you’d be helping us.”

I opened the car door. “It isn’t America against us,” I said; “it’s just a conflict of old-fashioned honesty, that’s all. You don’t have proof. You don’t have anything but suspicion. You’re playing games to make a rich man happy, and if he was a poor man you wouldn’t be doing it at all.”

She watched me get out of the car. “Goodbye, Nick.” I didn’t reply. She started the motor, put it in gear and drove away.

The hospital smelt of disinfectant. It brought back memories I didn’t want. I waited beneath posters which told me to have my baby vaccinated and that VD was a contagious disease. I waited for news that, at last, was brought to me by a very young detective constable.

Mr Harding had a fractured skull and three broken ribs. He was unconscious. Why had I come to the hospital and asked after him?

Because he was a friend of mine.

Had I seen the accident? No.

Was I aware that Mr Harding was a newspaper reporter? Yes.

Was I a newspaper reporter? No.

Had we gone to the moor together? Yes.

Why had I not seen the incident? Because I’d gone into the trees for a piss.

Did I know who had assaulted Mr Harding? No. Privately I was certain it was Mulder, but I could not prove it, so I repeated my denial.

How had I reached the hospital? In a friend’s car.

Who was the friend? No one who mattered.

Would I go to the police station and give a statement? No, I would not.

I refused because it would be so utterly hopeless to explain. I was to accuse one of the world’s richest men of threatening economic blackmail against Britain? I felt suddenly tired. And scared. Mulder, if he had the tape, would already be on his way back to Bannister.

I needed to reach the river and stop Terry Farebrother murdering Mulder, because Mulder, as likely as not, would look for me on Sycorax . The last thing I needed to do now was sit in a police station and spin a tale that would most likely land me in the nearest mental hospital. “Mister Harding’s just an old friend,” I told the policeman.

“We went to the moor for a walk, nothing more.”

“In the rain?”

“In the rain.”

The policeman, professionally suspicious, looked at me with distaste. “Very close friends, you and him?”

“Fuck off, sonny boy.”

He closed his notebook. “I think you’re coming to the station whether you want to or not.”

“No,” I said. “I’m going home. And what you’re going to do is telephone Inspector Harry Abbott. You know him? Tell him I need a lift home bloody fast. Tell him the Boer War has broken out. So open your book and write down my name. Captain Nicholas Sandman. And remember the bit about the Boer War. Do it!” I snapped the last two words as if I was back in the battalion.

The policeman had read too many thrillers. “Is this special business, sir?” He stressed the word ‘special’.

“It isn’t your business. Phone him. Now.”

I knew Abbott would give me hell when he got the chance, but he came through like a trooper on the night. I got my lift home. I told the copper to stop the car at the top of the hill and that I’d walk the rest of the way.

I was scared. Mulder was on the warpath, and didn’t know just what an evil-minded bastard was minding the boat. Micky Harding was unconscious. I wasn’t sure how, but I’d screwed up.

Things had gone wrong.

I stopped halfway down the wooded slope. The tide was rising in the river. The rain was lessening now, but it was still driven by a brisk westerly wind that shook the branches above my head. I was soaked to the skin. There were lights in Bannister’s house, but none down by the boathouse or near my wharf.

I went like a wraith down that slope. It was hard, for I was out of practice and my limp made me awkward, but I went as though I was on night patrol and a trigger-happy bastard with a full magazine waited for me. I stared for a long time at the shadows behind the boathouse. Nothing moved there, and nothing moved when I flicked a piece of earth into the rhododendrons to stir a hidden watcher’s attention.

I crept down the last stretch of the hill and hid myself in the boathouse shadows. “Terry?”

“Been listening to you for the last ten minutes, boss. Bleeding noisy, aren’t you?”

Relief flooded me. “Any trouble?”

“Not a bloody flicker. How did you get on?”

“Bloody disaster. Mouse got stitched up. We should have had you there, not here.” I climbed down on to Sycorax ’s deck. “Poor bugger’s in hospital. Lost the bloody tape, too. Anything happened here?”

“One car arrived ten minutes after you’d gone. Another came an hour ago.”

The first car would have been Bannister and Angela, the second Mulder. I suspected Mulder was in the house now with Micky’s tape. He was telling Bannister and Angela that I’d met Jill-Beth Kirov on the moor. The implication was that I had been plotting against Bannister all along. The tape would bear that interpretation, too, but it was also possible that it would serve to warn Bannister of the real dangers of attempting the St Pierre. At this moment, though, I cared more about what Angela might be thinking of me. I stared up the slope to where a dark figure flitted across a lit window of the house. “I’m going up there,” I said to Terry.

“Want me?”

“Yes, but keep out of sight.”

I was going to the house because I could not let Angela think that I had betrayed her. I wanted her to know what had happened, and why I had met Jill-Beth. I would explain everything, not only to her, but to Bannister as well. Things had become muddled, but now was the time to let truth untangle the mess. That’s the advantage of truth; it cuts through all the deception and muddle. I like truth.

Terry and I climbed the steep lawn and went on to the wide terrace. Terry whistled softly when he saw the luxury through the big windows. “Bleeding hell, boss. She’s tasty.” The tasty one was Angela, who looked expensive and beautiful in black trousers and a lilac shirt. She was sitting, head bowed, apparently listening, and I could see the spools of a big tape-recorder revolving. The machine was part of the bank of electronic gadgets that decorated one end of the room. Bannister stood behind Angela’s chair while Mulder and two of his crewmen stood respectfully to one side.