Flying Finish

Chapter Fourteen

Yardman and John edged round Billy and the flattened box and stood in the rear area, looking down at Patrick’s body.

‘Why did you do it back here?’ John said.

Billy didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on me.

Yardman said mildly, ‘Billy, Mr Rous-Wheeler wants to know why you brought the pilot here to shoot him?’

Billy smiled and spoke to me. ‘I wanted you to watch,’ he said.

John — Rous-Wheeler — said faintly ‘My God,’ and I turned my head and found him staring at my ribs.

‘Pretty good shooting,’ said Billy complacently, following the direction of his eyes and taking his tone as a compliment. ‘There’s no fat on him and the skin over his ribs is thin. See where I’ve got every shot straight along a bone? Neat, that’s what it is. A bit of craftsmanship I’d say. These lines are what I’m talking about,’ he was anxious to make his point, ‘not all that black and red around them. That’s only dried blood and powder burn.’

Rous-Wheeler, to do him justice, looked faintly sick.

‘All right, Billy,’ Yardman said calmly. ‘Finish him off.’

Billy lifted his gun. I had long accepted the inevitability of that moment, and I felt no emotion but regret.

‘He’s not afraid,’ Billy said. He sounded disappointed.

‘What of it?’ Yardman asked.

‘I want him to be afraid.’

Yardman shrugged. ‘I can’t see what difference it makes.’

To Billy it made all the difference in the world. ‘Let me take a little time over him, huh? We’ve got hours to wait.’

Yardman sighed. ‘All right, Billy, if that’s what you want. Do all the other little jobs first, eh? Shut all the curtains on the plane first, we don’t want to advertise ourselves. And then go down and tell Giuseppe to turn those landing lights off, the stupid fool’s left them on. He’ll have ladders and paint waiting for us. He and you and Alf can start straight away on painting out the airline’s name and the plane’s registration letters.’

‘Yeah,’ said Billy. ‘O.K. And while I’m doing it I’ll think of something.’ He put his face close to mine, mocking. ‘Something special for your effing Lordship.’

He put the gun in its holster and the silencer in his pocket, and drew all the curtains in the back part of the plane, before starting forward to do the rest.

Rous-Wheeler stepped over Patrick’s body, sat down in one of the seats, and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.

‘Why do you let him?’ he said to Yardman. ‘Why do you let him do what he likes?’

‘He is invaluable,’ Yardman sighed. ‘A natural killer. They’re not at all common, you know. That combination of callousness and enjoyment, it’s unbeatable. I let him have his way if I can as a sort of reward, because he’ll kill anyone I tell him to. I couldn’t do what he does. He kills like stepping on a beetle.’

‘He’s so young,’ Rous-Wheeler protested.

‘They’re only any good when they’re young,’ Yardman said. ‘Billy is nineteen. In another seven or eight years, I wouldn’t trust him as I do now. And there’s a risk a killer will turn maudlin any time after thirty.’

‘It sounds,’ Rous-Wheeler cleared his throat, trying to speak as unconcernedly as Yardman, ‘it sounds rather like keeping a pet tiger on a leash.’

He began to cross his legs and his shoes knocked against Patrick’s body. With an expression of distaste he said, ‘Can’t we cover him up?’

Yardman nodded casually and went away up the plane. He came back with a grey blanket from the pile in the luggage bay, opened it out, and spread it over, covering head and all. I spent the short time that he was away watching Rous-Wheeler refuse to meet my eyes and wondering just who he was, and why he was so important that taking him beyond Milan was worth the lives of three totally uninvolved and innocent airmen.

An unremarkable looking man of about thirty-five, with incipient bags under his eyes, and a prim mouth. Unused to the violence surrounding him, and trying to wash his hands of it. A man with his fare paid in death and grief.

When Yardman had covered Patrick, he perched himself down on the edge of the flattened box. The overhead lights shone on the bald patch on his skull and the black spectacle frames made heavy bars of shadow on his eyes and cheeks.

‘I regret this, my dear boy, believe me, I regret it sincerely,’ he said, eyeing the result of Billy’s target practice. Like Rous-Wheeler he took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘He really has made a very nasty mess.’

But only skin deep, if one thought about it. I thought about it. Not much good.

‘Do you understand what Billy wants?’ Yardman said, shaking out his match.

I nodded.

He sighed. ‘Then couldn’t you... er... satisfy him, my dear boy? You will make it so hard for yourself, if you don’t.’

I remembered the stupid boast I’d made to Billy the first day I’d met him, that I could be as tough as necessary. Now that I looked like having to prove it, I had the gravest doubts.

When I didn’t answer Yardman shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Foolish boy, whatever difference would it make, after you are dead?’

‘Defeat...’ I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘Defeat on all levels.’

He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Communists are greedy,’ I said.

‘Greedy,’ he echoed. ‘You’re wandering, my dear boy.’

‘They like to... crumble... people, before they kill them. And that’s... gluttony.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Rous-Wheeler in a vintage Establishment voice.

‘You must have read newspaper accounts of trials in Russia,’ I said, raising an eyebrow. ‘All those “confessions”.’

‘The Russians,’ he said stiffly, ‘are a great warm-hearted simple people.’

‘Oh, sure,’ I agreed. ‘And some are like Billy.’

‘Billy is English.’

‘So are you,’ I said. ‘And where are you going?’

He compressed his lips and didn’t answer.

‘I hope,’ I said, looking at the blanket which covered Patrick, ‘that your travel agents have confirmed your belief in the greatness, warm-heartedness and simplicity of the hemisphere you propose to join.’

‘My dear boy,’ interrupted Yardman smoothly, ‘what eloquence!’

‘Talking,’ I explained, ‘takes the mind off... this and that.’

A sort of recklessness seemed to be running in my blood, and my mind felt clear and sharp. To have even those two to talk to was suddenly a great deal more attractive than waiting for Billy on my own.

‘The end justifies the means,’ said Rous-Wheeler pompously, as if he’d heard it somewhere before.

‘Crap,’ I said inelegantly. ‘You set yourself too high.’

‘I am...’ he began angrily, and stopped.

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘You are what? Feel free to tell me. Moriturus, and all that.’

It upset him, which was pleasant. He said stiffly, ‘I am a civil servant.’

‘Were,’ I pointed out.

‘Er, yes.’

‘Which ministry?’

‘The Treasury,’ he said, with the smugness of those accepted in the inner of inner sanctums.

The Treasury. It was a stopper, that one.

‘What rank?’ I asked.

‘Principal.’ There was a grudge in his voice. He hadn’t risen.

‘And why are you defecting?’

The forthcomingness vanished. ‘It’s none of your business.’

‘Well it is rather,’ I said in mock apology, ‘since your change of allegiance looks like having a fairly decisive effect on my future.’

He looked mulish and kept silent.

‘I suppose,’ I said with mild irony, ‘you are going where you think your talents will be appreciated.’

For a second he looked almost as spiteful as Billy. A petty-minded man I thought, full of imagined slights, ducking the admission that he wasn’t as brilliant as he thought he was. None of that lessened one jot the value of the information he carried in his head.

‘And you,’ I said to Yardman. ‘Why do you do it? All this.’

He looked back gravely, the tight skin pulling over his shut mouth.

‘Ideology?’ I suggested.

He tapped ash off his cigarette, made a nibbling movement with his lip, and said briefly, ‘Money.’

‘The brand of goods doesn’t trouble you, as long as the carriage is paid?’

‘Correct,’ he said.

‘A mercenary soldier. Slaughter arranged. Allegiance always to the highest bidder?’

‘That,’ he said, inclining his head, ‘is so.’

It wasn’t so strange, I thought inconsequentially, that I’d never been able to understand him.

‘But believe me, my dear boy,’ he said earnestly, ‘I never really intended you any harm. Not you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said dryly.

‘When you asked me for a job I nearly refused you... but I didn’t think you’d stay long, and your name gave my agency some useful respectability, so I agreed.’ He sighed. ‘I must admit, you surprised me. You were very good at that job, if it’s of any comfort to you. Very good. Too good. I should have stopped it when your father died, when I had the chance, before you stumbled on anything... it was selfish of me. Selfish.’

‘Simon Searle stumbled,’ I reminded him. ‘Not me.’

‘I fear so,’ he agreed without concern. ‘A pity. He too was invaluable. An excellent accurate man. Very hard to replace.’

‘Would you be so good as to untuck my shirt?’ I said. ‘I’m getting cold.’

Without a word he stood up, came round, tugged the bunched cloth out of the back of my trousers and pulled the collar and shoulders back to their right place. The shirt fronts fell together edge to edge, the light touch of the cloth on the burns being more than compensated by the amount of cool air shut out.

Yardman sat down again where he had been before and lit another cigarette from the stub of the first, without offering one to Rous-Wheeler.

‘I didn’t mean to bring you on this part of the trip,’ he said. ‘Believe me, my dear boy, when we set off from Gatwick I intended to organise some little delaying diversion for you in Milan, so that you wouldn’t embark on the trip back.’

I said bleakly, ‘Do you call sh... shooting my girl a little diversion.’

He looked distressed. ‘Of course not. Of course not. I didn’t know you had a girl until you introduced her. But then I thought it would be an excellent idea to tell you to stay with her for a day or two, that we could easily manage without you on the way back. ‘He,’ he nodded at Patrick’s shrouded body, ‘told me you were... er... crazy about her. Unfortunately for you, he also told me how assiduous you had been in searching for Searle. He told me all about that bottle of pills. Now, my dear boy, that was a risk we couldn’t take.’

‘Risk,’ I said bitterly.

‘Oh yes, my dear boy, of course. Risk is something we can’t afford in this business. I always act on risk. Waiting for certain knowledge may be fatal. And I was quite right in this instance, isn’t that so? You had told me yourself where you were going to lunch, so I instructed Billy to go and find you and follow you from there, and make sure it was all love’s young dream and no excitement. But you went bursting out of the restaurant and off at high speed to an obscure little bakery. Billy followed you in Vittorio’s cab and rang me up from near there.’ He spread his hands. ‘I told him to kill you both and search you under cover of helping, as soon as you came out.’

‘Without waiting to find out if there was anything in the bottle except pills?’

‘Risk,’ he nodded. ‘I told you. We can’t afford it. And that reminds me; where is Searle’s message?’

‘No message,’ I said wearily.

‘Of course there was, my dear boy,’ he chided. ‘You’ve shown so little surprise, asked so few questions. It was clear to me at once that you knew far too much when Billy brought you back to the plane. I have experience in these things, you see.’

I shrugged a shoulder. ‘In my wallet,’ I said.

He drew on his cigarette, gave me an approving look, stepped over Patrick, and fetched my jacket from the washroom. He took everything out of the wallet and spread them beside him on the flattened box. When he picked out the hundred dinar note and unfolded it, the pieces of writing paper and hay fell out.

He fingered the note. ‘It was plain carelessness on Billy’s part,’ he said. ‘He didn’t hide the canisters properly.’

‘There was a lot of money, then, on the plane?’

‘Wheels have to be oiled,’ Yardman said reasonably, ‘and it’s no good paying Yugoslavs in sterling. All agents insist on being paid in the currency they can spend without arousing comment. I do, myself.’

I watched him turn the scrap of his stationery over and over, frowning. He saw the pin holes in the end, and held them up to the light. After a few seconds he put it down and looked from me to Rous-Wheeler.

‘Men,’ he said without inflection. ‘And when you read that, my dear boy, you understood a great deal.’ A statement, not a question.

Gabriella, I thought dumbly, for God’s sake live. Live and tell. I shut my eyes and thought of her as she had been at lunch. Gay and sweet and vital. Gabriella my dearest love...

‘Dear boy,’ said Yardman in his dry unconcerned voice, ‘are you feeling all right?’

I opened my eyes and shut Gabriella away out of reach of his frightening intuition.

‘No,’ I said with truth.

Yardman actually laughed. ‘I like you, my dear boy, I really do. I shall miss you very much in the agency.’

‘Miss...’ I stared at him. ‘You are going back?’

‘Of course.’ He seemed surprised, then smiled his bony smile. ‘How could you know, I was forgetting. Oh yes, of course we’re going back. My transport system... is... er... much needed, and much appreciated. Yes. Only the plane and Mr Rous-Wheeler are going on.’

‘And the horses?’ I asked.

‘Those too,’ he nodded. ‘They carry good blood lines, those mares. We expected to have to slaughter them, but we have heard they will be acceptable alive, on account of their foals. No, my dear boy, Billy and I go back by road, half way with Giuseppe, the second half with Vittorio.’

‘Back to Milan?’

‘Quite so. And tomorrow morning we learn the tragic news that the plane we missed by minutes this afternoon has disappeared and must be presumed lost with all souls, including yours, my dear boy, in the Mediterranean.’

‘There would be a radar trace...’ I began.

‘My dear boy, we are professionals.’

‘Oiled wheels?’ I said ironically.

‘So quick,’ he said nodding. ‘A pity I can’t tempt you to join us.’

‘Why can’t you?’ said Rous-Wheeler truculently.

Yardman answered with slightly exaggerated patience. ‘What do I offer him?’

‘His life,’ Rous-Wheeler said with an air of triumph.

Yardman didn’t even bother to explain why that wouldn’t work. The Treasury, I thought dryly, really hadn’t lost much.

Billy’s voice suddenly spoke from the far end of the plane.

‘Hey, Mr Yardman,’ he called. ‘Can’t you and Mr Rous-flipping-Wheeler come and give us a hand? This ruddy aeroplane’s bloody covered with names and letters. We’re practically having to paint the whole sodding crate.’

Yardman stood up. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said.

Rous-Wheeler didn’t want to paint. ‘I don’t feel...’ he began importantly.

‘And you don’t want to be late,’ Yardman said flatly.

He stood aside to let the deflated Rous-Wheeler pass, and they both made their way up past the two boxes, through the galley, and down the telescopic ladder from the forward door.

Desperation can move mountains. I’d never hoped to have another minute alone to put it to the test, but I’d thought of a way of detaching myself from the mare’s box, if I had enough strength. Yardman had had difficulty squeezing the rope down between the banding bar and the wooden box side when he’d tied me there: he’d had to push it through with the blade of his penknife. It wouldn’t have gone through at all I thought, if either the box side wasn’t a fraction warped or the bar a shade bent. Most of the bars lay flat and tight along the boxes, with no space at all between them.

I was standing less than two feet from the corner of the box: and along at the corner the bar was fastened by a lynch pin.

I got splinters in my wrists, and after I’d moved along six inches I thought I’d never manage it. The bar and the box seemed to come closer together the further I went, and jerking the rope along between them grew harder and harder, until at last it was impossible. I shook my head in bitter frustration. Then I thought of getting my feet to help, and bending my knee put my foot flat on the box as high behind me as I could get leverage. Thrusting back with my foot, pulling forward on the bar with my arms, and jerking my wrists sideways at the same time, I moved along a good inch. It worked. I kept at it grimly and finally arrived at the last three inches. From there, twisting, I could reach the lynch pin with my fingers. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, I pushed it up from the bottom, transferred my weak grip to the rounded top, slid it fraction by fraction up in my palm, and with an enormous sense of triumph felt it come free. The iron bands parted at the corner, and it required the smallest of jerks to tug the rope out through the gap.

Call that nothing, I said to myself with the beginnings of a grin. All that remained was to free my hands from each other.

Yardman had left my jacket lying on the flattened box, and in my jacket pocket was a small sharp penknife. I sat down on the side of the shallow platform, trying to pretend to myself that it wasn’t because my legs were buckling at the knees but only the quickest way to reach the jacket. The knife was there, slim and familiar. I clicked open the blade, gripped it firmly, and sawed away blindly at some unseen point between my wrists. The friction of dragging the rope along had frayed it helpfully, and before I’d begun to hope for it I felt the strands stretch and give, and in two more seconds my hands were free. With stiff shoulders I brought them round in front of me. Yardman had no personal brutality and hadn’t tied tight enough to stop the blood. I flexed my fingers and they were fine.

Scooping up wallet and jacket I began the bent walk forward under the luggage rack and over the guy chains, stepping with care so as not to make a noise and fetch the five outdoor decorators in at the double. I reached the galley safely and went through it. In the space behind the cockpit I stopped dead for a moment. The body of Mike the engineer lay tumbled in a heap against the left hand wall.

Tearing both mind and eyes away from him I edged towards the way out. On my immediate right I came first to the luggage bay, and beyond that lay the door. The sight of my overnight bag in the bay made me remember the black jersey inside it. Better than my jacket, I thought. It had a high neck, was easier to move in, and wouldn’t be so heavy on my raw skin. In a few seconds I had it on, and had transferred my wallet to my trousers.

Five of them round the plane, I thought. The exit door was ajar, but when I opened it the light would spill out, and for the time it took to get on to the ladder they would be able to see me clearly. Unless by some miracle they were all over on the port side, painting the tail. Well, I thought coldly, I would just be unlucky if the nearest to me happened to be Billy with his gun.

It wasn’t Billy, it was the man I didn’t know, Giuseppe. He was standing at the root of the starboard wing painting out the airline’s name on the fuselage, and he saw me as soon as I opened the door not far below him. I pulled the door shut behind me and started down the ladder, hearing Giuseppe shouting and warning all the others. They had ladders to get down too, I thought. I could still make it.

Giuseppe was of the hard core, a practising militant communist. He was also young and extremely agile. Without attempting to reach a ladder he ran along the wing to its tip, put his hands down, swung over the edge, and dropped ten feet to the ground. Seeing his running form outlined on the wing against the stars I veered away to the left as soon as I had slid down the ladder, and struck out forwards, more or less on the same axis as the plane.

My eyes weren’t accustomed to the light as theirs were. I couldn’t see where I was going. I heard Giuseppe shouting in Italian, and Yardman answering. Billy tried a shot which missed by a mile. I scrambled on, holding my arms up defensively and hoping I wouldn’t run into anything too hard. All I had to do, I told myself, was to keep going. I was difficult to see in black and moved silently over the grass of the field. If I got far enough from the plane they wouldn’t be able to find me, not five of them with Alf no better than a snail. Keep going and get lost. After that I’d have all night to search out a bit of civilisation and someone who could speak English.

The field seemed endless. Endless. And running hurt. What the hell did that matter, I thought dispassionately, with Billy behind me. I had also to refrain from making a noise about it in case they should hear me, and with every rib-stretching breath that got more difficult. In the end I stopped, went down on my knees, and tried to get air in shallow silent gulps. I could hear nothing behind but a faint breeze, see nothing above but the stars, nothing ahead but the dark. After a few moments I stood up again and went on, but more slowly. Only in nightmares did fields go on for ever. Even airfields.

At the exact second that I first thought I’d got away with it, bright white lights blazed out and held me squarely in their beams. A distant row of four in front, a nearer row of four behind, and I a black figure in the flarepath. Sick devastating understanding flooded through me. I had been trying to escape down the runway.

Sharply, almost without missing a step, I wheeled left and sprinted; but Giuseppe wasn’t very far behind after all. I didn’t see or hear him until the last moment when he closed in from almost in front. I swerved to avoid him, and he threw out his leg at a low angle and tripped me up.

Even though I didn’t fall very heavily, it was enough. Giuseppe very slickly put one of his feet on each side of my head and closed them tight on my ears. Grass pressed into my eyes, nose and mouth, and I couldn’t move in the vice.

Billy came up shouting as if with intoxication, the relief showing with the triumph.

‘What you got there then, my friend? A bleeding aristocrat, then? Biting the dust, too, ain’t that a gas?’

I guessed with a split second to spare what he would do, and caught his swinging shoe on my elbow instead of my ribs.

Yardman arrived at a smart military double.

‘Stop it,’ he said. ‘Let him get up.’

Giuseppe stepped away from my head and when I put my hands up by my shoulders and began to push myself up, Billy delivered the kick I had avoided before. I rolled half over, trying not to care. The beams from the runway lights shone through my shut eyelids, and the world seemed a molten river of fire, scarlet and gold.

Without, I hoped, taking too long about it I again started to get up. No one spoke. I completed the incredibly long journey to my feet and stood there, quiet and calm. We were still on the runway between the distant lights, Yardman close in front of me, Giuseppe and Billy behind, with Rous-Wheeler struggling breathlessly up from the plane. Yardman’s eyes, level with mine, were lit into an incandescent greenness by the glow. I had never clearly seen his eyes before. It was like drawing back curtains and looking into a soul.

A soldier without patriotism. Strategy, striking power and transport were skills he hired out, like any other craftsman. His pride was to exercise his skill to the most perfect possible degree. His pride overrode all else.

I think he probably meant it when he said he liked me. In a curious way, though I couldn’t forgive him Gabriella, I felt respect for him, not hatred. Battle against him wasn’t personal or emotional, as with Billy. But I understood that in spite of any unexpected warmth he might feel, he would be too prudent to extend foolish mercy to the enemy.

We eyed each other in a long moment of cool appraisal. Then his gaze slid past me, over my shoulder, and he paid me what was from his point of view a compliment.

‘You won’t crack him, Billy. Kill him now. One shot, nice and clean.’