The Freedom Trap [= The Mackintosh Man]

I

I stared at the brandy in the glass. I had been thinking for a long time and I hadn’t touched a drop. The time for drinking had gone and the time for thinking had arrived. And I had a hell of a lot to think about.

Everything had gone as Mackintosh had planned. The crime, the trial, the nick, Slade — and the Scarperers. Then things turned sour. They were a clever mob and as keen on security as any professional espionage ring. Here I was, injected into their organization like a drug, and I was no nearer to cracking it than I had been in South Africa.

It was that damned hypodermic syringe in the moving-van that had turned the trick in their favour. I hadn’t expected that, nor had I expected this imprisonment. Still, I could see their point; they worked on the ‘need to know’ principle, and an escapee didn’t need to know how he had escaped — just that he had done so. This mob was too bloody professional to be true.

And I had lost Slade.

That was the worst bit, and Mackintosh would rip open my guts for it if ever I got past Fatface. His instructions had been oblique but clear; if there was any possibility of Slade getting clear then I was to kill him. I could have cut his throat with a blunt table knife while he slept, or strangled him with a length of electrical wire from the table lamp. I had done neither.

Of course, if I had killed Slade one night then next morning I would have been a dead man, but that wasn’t why I’d refrained. I had weighed the odds and made a number of assumptions — that Slade and I would be going out together; that I still had a chance of escape, taking Slade with me; that my cover was still secure. Not one of those assumptions had proved valid and now things were in one hell of a mess.

I lay on the bed with my hands clasped behind my head and wondered how they had tumbled to the substitution. Fatface was trying to convince me that he knew I wasn’t Rearden because of Rearden’s fingerprints extracted from his file at John Vorster Square. I knew that to be a damned lie because I had personally substituted my own fingerprints for Rearden’s in that very file, with Mackintosh looking on, and any prints coming from that file would match mine.

If Fatface knew I wasn’t Rearden it certainly wasn’t on account of fingerprints — so why in hell was he trying to kid me?

I thought hard, trying one hypothesis after another. For instance supposing Fatface only suspected I wasn’t Rearden — he might try to pull a bluff in the hope that I’d crack. I hadn’t cracked, and I’d put him in the position of having to produce those fingerprints which I knew damned well he hadn’t got or, if he had, would certainly match mine.

That was one hypothesis among many, but they all boiled down to the same thing — that either Fatface knew for a certainty I wasn’t Rearden, or he merely suspected it. And in both cases the problem was how the devil had he done it? Where had I slipped up?

I went back over my actions since my arrival in England and found no flaw. I had done nothing, in either word or deed, to break my cover, and that led me to the nasty suspicion that there had been a leak — a flaw in security.

I thought about Mackintosh. Now there was a tough, ruthless, conniving bastard who would sell his grandmother to boil down for soap if that soap would grease the runway of the Ship of State. I shook my head irritably. That was straining a metaphor pretty far which showed I was tired — but it was true, all the same. If Mackintosh thought it would serve his purpose to break security on me he would do it without hesitation.

I thought about it hard then rejected the possibility for the time being because I could see no purpose to it. And that left the super-efficient Lucy Smith whom Mackintosh trusted so much and about whom I knew damn-all. There were other possibilities, of course; either of them could have inadvertently broken security, his office could have been bugged by an interested third party, and so on.

I went into the bathroom and doused my face in cold water. To hell with Mackintosh’s devious ways! What I had to do now was to find a way out of this trap. There must be less thinking of how I had got into it and more on how to get out.

I wiped my face dry, went back into the bedroom, and sat at the table to review my armoury of weapons. A trained man in my position assembles his weapons as and when he can from the materials at hand. For instance, I had three meals a day at which pepper was on the table. In my pocket was a twist of paper containing enough pepper to blind a man, which could come in useful on an appropriate occasion.

After a few minutes’ thought I went to the wardrobe and took out a sock which I half-filled with earth from the row of pot plants on the window ledge, taking a little from each. I hefted the sock, whirled it, and swung it against the palm of my hand. It made a satisfying thump. It wasn’t as good as a sandbag — it wasn’t all that heavy — but it would do.

There are many ways of getting out of a locked room. You can shoot your way out — if you have a gun. You can set fire to the place, but that’s risky; there’s no guarantee you’ll get out, and it can have disastrous consequences — I’ve always kept in mind Charles Lamb’s story of burnt pig. You can use deception in its many forms but I didn’t think these boys would be deceived easily; I’d already tried to con Fatface into letting me walk in the courtyard and he hadn’t fallen for it.

That led me to think of Fatface and what he did when he came into the room. He was very careful; the door would click open and he would walk in, closing it behind him and always facing into the room with his back to the door. The man outside would then lock it. Fatface always kept his front to me. I had experimented a bit — trying to get behind him — but he’d never let me. He also carried a gun. When your life may depend on it you notice little details like that, and, no matter how carefully tailored the suit, the bulge shows.

So I had to get behind Fatface and club him with a sockful of wet leaf mould. And that involved a conjuror’s trick — he had to believe I was in front of him when I was really behind him. Short of hypnosis I didn’t see how I could do it but I tackled the problem.

Presently I went into the bathroom and flushed the water closet. It had no chain, being one of those low cistern contraptions operated by a short lever. Then I hunted around for a cord. What I really needed was a ball of string, but that I hadn’t got, so I had to improvise.

The light switch in the bathroom was operated, as good buildings regulations insist, by a ceiling pull-switch from which a strong cord hung to a convenient hand level. That gave me four feet. The bedside lamp was wired to a plug on the skirting board behind the bed, and the wire was two-strand, plastic coated, the strands spiralling around each other. When I separated the strands I had a good bit more cord.

There was another lamp on the dressing table which contributed more, but still not enough, so I was forced to consider other sources. My dressing-gown was of terry-towelling and had a cord which went around the waist. This cord unravelled into several strands which I plaited and, at last, I had enough. In fact, there was enough wire to make a garrotting loop — not as efficient as piano wire, it’s true — but I was in no position to complain.

I made a loop on the end of my long cord and slipped it over the lever of the cistern, then ran the cord from the bathroom, around the walls of the bedroom and right up to the door. I could have done with some small pulleys but, instead, I used the insulated staples which had held down the electric wiring and hoped they would hold.

They didn’t.

A gentle tug and nothing happened. A harder tug gave the same result. A very hard tug and a staple sprang from the skirting board.

This wasn’t working at all.

I went back to the bathroom and flushed the water closet again, using as little pressure on the lever as possible. It was obviously too stiff to be pulled down by my improvised cord, so I had to think of something else. I studied the cistern for a while, and then removed the top, revealing its guts — the ball valve and associated gimmickry invented by that unsung genius, Thomas Crapper. The action of the lever downwards resulted in the movement of a plunger upwards, and I figured it was the friction involved in this mechanism that stiffened the lever action. If I could disconnect the lever and work on the plunger directly I thought I could do it.

Half an hour later I was ready to try again. I had lengthened my cord by means of a strip torn from the sheet; it would show, but that didn’t matter in the bathroom. I left the bathroom door ajar and returned to my post at the other end of the cord. I picked it up, crossed my fingers, and pulled with a steady pressure.

The toilet flushed with a welcome and loud squirt of water.

I dropped the cord and carefully surveyed the room, making sure that nothing was out of place, that nothing would give the game away to Fatface when he entered. Everything was neat and tidy except for the bed I had stripped. I took the sheet I had ripped and tore it into long lengths. I would have a use for those. Then I remade the bed.

There still remained a few things to do. I opened the wardrobe and considered the contents. There was a suit of a decent dark grey, and there was a sports coat with non-matching trousers and brown shoes. I didn’t know where I was — country or town — and if I emerged into a town then the suit would be more appropriate; but if I was in the heart of the country the suit would stick out a mile whereas the more informal dress would not be out of place in a town. So I plumped for the sports coat and associated trimmings. I’d also take the hat and the raincoat.

I’d been on the run before and I knew that one of the most difficult things to do is the apparently simple act of washing and the general idea of keeping clean. If my beard grew out a different colour than my hair I’d be an object of attention — that blonde had warned me to shave twice a day. This question of cleanliness is something of which the police are well aware, and in searching for a man on the run a check is routinely made on all public washrooms in railway stations and large hotels.

So I was taking the shaver, a tablet of soap, a face cloth and a hand towel — all of which would fit conveniently into the pockets of the raincoat without bulging too much. I coiled my garrotting wire loosely and fitted it into the sweatband of the hat. Any copper worthy of the name knows one of those when he sees it, and if I was searched I didn’t want it to be obvious — I’d be thrown in the nick immediately if it were found.

That also went for the gun — if I could get hold of Fatface’s artillery. Which brought me to another question. How far was I justified in using a gun if the occasion arose?

The cult of James Bond has given rise to a lot of nonsense. There are no double-o numbers and there is no ‘licence to kill’. As far as I knew I didn’t have a number at all, except perhaps a file number like any other employee; certainly no one ever referred to me as number 56, or whatever it was — or even 0056. And agents don’t kill just for the hell of it. That doesn’t mean that agents never kill, but they kill strictly to order under carefully specified conditions. Elimination by death is regarded with distaste; it’s messy and irretrievable, and there are usually other ways of silencing a man which are almost as effective.

Yet sometimes it has to be done and an agent is detailed to do it. Whether this constitutes a licence to kill I wouldn’t know; it certainly doesn’t grant a general licence to commit unrestricted mayhem. You leave too many unexplained bodies lying around and the secret service stops being secret.

Now, Mackintosh hadn’t told me to kill anyone apart from Slade and that meant, generally speaking, no killing. Such unordered deaths are known in the trade as ‘accidental’ and any agent who is crass enough to cause such an accidental death quickly gets the chop as being unreliable and inept. For an agent to leave a trail of corpses in his wake would cause untold consternation in those little hole-in-the-corner offices in Whitehall which have the innocuous and deceptive names on the doors.

In fact, it came back to the old moral problem — when is a man justified in killing another man? I resolved it by quoting the phrase — ‘Kill or be killed!’ If I were in danger of being killed then I would kill in self-defence — and not until then. I had killed only one man in my life and that had made me sick to my stomach for two days afterwards.

That settled in my mind, I began planning arson. An inspection of the liquor cabinet showed a bottle and a half of South African brandy, the best part of a bottle of Scotch, ditto gin, and a half-bottle of Drambuie. A few tests showed the brandy and the Drambuie as being most flammable, although not as fiery as I would have wished. I was sorry I hadn’t developed a taste for rum — there’s some nice 100º stuff on the market which would have suited me fine — although God knows what it does to the lining of the stomach.

Then I went to bed and slept the sleep of the morally just.

II

There was no breakfast next morning. Instead of Taafe trundling his trolley before him he came in empty-handed and jerked his thumb at the door. I shrugged and walked out. It seemed as though the party was over.

I was taken downstairs and across the hall into the closely curtained room where I had signed the cheque. In the hall I passed an elderly couple, Darby and Joan types, who were sitting nervously on the edges of their chairs as though they thought it was a dentist’s waiting room. They looked at me incuriously as I walked past them into the room where Fatface was waiting for me.

There was a bleak look on his face. ‘You’ve had a night to think about it,’ he said. ‘Your story had better be very good, Mr Whoever-you-are.’

I went on the attack. ‘Where’s that dab-sheet?’

‘We don’t keep it here,’ he said shortly. ‘In any case, it isn’t necessary.’

‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘And if you think I’ve spent all night cooking up a cock-and-bull story just to satisfy you then you’re crazy. I don’t have much to do with my time, but I’ve better things to do than that.’ I was telling him the exact truth.

He made a noise expressive of disgust. ‘You’re a liar. Can’t you get it into your thick skull that the gaff has been blown? There’s just one little detail missing — your identity.’ He shook his head pityingly. ‘We know you’re not Rearden. All we want to know is who the devil you really are.’

Now, why did he want to know that? I had a fair idea, and I didn’t like it at all. If I wasn’t Rearden then he’d want to know if I’d be seriously missed. That’s an important thing to know if you’re contemplating murdering anyone. Was I important? Did I have important connections? For whom was I working? And why? All those were questions he would want answering.

And he was too damned certain that I wasn’t Rearden, which was faintly alarming. I heaved a deep sigh. ‘I’m Joseph Rearden. From what Cosgrove told me before you got me out of the nick you’ve done a thorough check on me. Why this sudden switch, Fatface? Are you trying to slip out of your obligations?’

‘Don’t call me Fatface,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t need fingerprints to tell me you’re not Rearden because you’ve just proved it yourself. Out there in the hall you passed a couple of old people, Mr and Mrs Rearden from Brakpan, South Africa. Your dear old father and your sainted old mother, you son of a bitch. You didn’t recognize them and they didn’t recognize you.’

There wasn’t much to say to that, so I kept my mouth shut. But my stomach did a back flip.

Fatface showed his teeth in a savage grin. ‘I said the gaff has been blown, and I meant it. We know about Mackintosh, and there’s no point in you denying you know him. We know all about that tricky little set-up, so you’d better get ready to tell the truth for a change.’

This time I really was jolted — and badly. I felt as though I’d just grabbed a live wire and I hoped it didn’t show on my face. For my cover to be blown could have meant any number of things; for Mackintosh’s cover to be blown sky-high was bloody serious.

I said, ‘For God’s sake — who is Mackintosh?’

‘Very funny,’ said Fatface acidly. He looked at his watch. ‘I can see we’ll have to take stronger measures but, unfortunately, I have an appointment and I don’t have the time now. I’ll give you two hours to think about those stronger measures; I can assure you they will be most unpleasant.’

Depressed as I was I nearly laughed in his face. He was acting like the villain in a ‘B’ picture. He had no appointment and the two hours were intended to break me down thinking of very imaginable tortures. And he wouldn’t be away for two hours, either; he’d be back in an hour, or possibly three hours. It was supposed to add to the uncertainty of the situation. Fatface was an amateur who seemed to get his ideas from watching TV. I think he was too soft-centred to get down to the torture bit and he was hoping I’d break down more-or-less spontaneously.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘If you want me to cook up a story, then I’ll cook up a story. It will take me two hours to think it up.’

‘We don’t want a story — as you put it. We want the truth.’

‘But you’ve got the truth, damn it!’

He merely shrugged and waved to the man behind me who took me upstairs again. The Reardens — if that’s who they were — had vanished from the hall. It struck me that Fatface might very well have been bluffing about them. But he still knew about Mackintosh.

Once locked in the bedroom I got on with what I had to do. I shaved quickly and put the shaver and the rest of the stuff into the pockets of the raincoat. I dressed and put on the tweed sports coat, grabbed my weighted sock and took up position behind the door, the end of the improvised cord held in my fingers.

It was a long wait and it seemed to be hours, but I had to stay there, exactly in that place, because in this thing timing was everything. I looked about the bedroom, checking to see that all was in order, and found it good. The bathroom door was ajar, but looked closed; the cord going around the room was invisible and wouldn’t be noticed by the casual eye. All I had to do was to stay behind that door and wait.

Although it seemed a long time he was back on the hour — I’d been right in predicting that. I heard the murmur of voices on the other side of the door and tightened my fingers on the cord. As soon as I heard the key in the lock I began to pull, exerting a steady and growing pressure on the piston in the cistern.

As the door opened the cistern flushed noisily.

Fatface came into the room alone and cautiously, but relaxed visibly as he heard the noise from the bathroom. He took a step forward, pushing the door closed behind him, and I heard the key turn as the outside guard locked it. He took another step forward without looking behind him. He could easily have seen me by a half turn of his head but the thought never came to him. After all, wasn’t I in the bathroom?

I wasn’t! I hit him with the weighted sock very hard, much harder than I’d hit the postman in the Kiddykar office. He gasped and his knees buckled but he kept his feet and he twisted his head slightly so that I could see his mouth was open and he was gasping for air and struggling to shout. I knew the sock wasn’t too efficient — not like a proper sandbag — so I hit him even harder, and then again, pounding unconsciousness into his skull.

I caught him as he fell. I didn’t want him thumping on the floor with a noise which might be heard outside. Even then, the repeated thud of the sock hitting his head had seemed to echo around the room and I paused for a moment, holding him in my arms, and waited to see if anything would happen.

Nothing did, so with a sigh of relief I lowered him to the floor. The first thing I did was to go for his gun. It was a neat flat automatic with nine rounds in the magazine but nothing in the chamber. I had been right; the man was an amateur, after all! To carry a gun with nothing up the spout is to carry a piece of junk metal. What’s the use of a gun which can’t be fired at a split second’s notice?

I put back the magazine, worked the action to jump a round into the breech, saw the gun was on safety, and put it into my pocket. And all the time I was talking aloud. The guard outside must not hear dead silence.

I stripped off Fatface’s jacket and took off the shoulder holster he wore. Then I trussed him like a fowl, using the strips of sheeting I had prepared, and not forgetting to stuff his mouth with a gag. He was breathing heavily through his mouth and I wondered for a moment if the gag would suffocate him, but he began to breathe through his nose rather noisily and I knew I hadn’t hit him too hard. Apart from the moral aspect of murder I wanted him alive. I had a use for him.

Swiftly, I went through the pockets of his jacket. There was a wallet, which, when flicked open briefly, displayed the edges of many bank notes. That was very good — I’d need money. I didn’t investigate it further, but stowed it away, together with a small notebook I found, and got on with the search. I found a handful of loose change which went into my pocket and a couple of spare magazines for the pistol, also well worth confiscating. Everything else I left, except for a penknife and a fountain pen, both of which could prove handy to have.

Then I went about the next part of the plan. I tossed the mattress on to the floor just by the door and ripped open the ticking, using Fatface’s useful penknife. There was a lot of beautifully inflammable cotton wadding which I piled in a heap ready for the conflagration, and I set the bottles of brandy and Drambuie close to hand.

Then I turned my attention to Fatface who was just coming round. He stirred a little and a heavy snoring noise came from his nose which would have been a groan if he hadn’t been gagged. I went into the bathroom, filled the tooth glass with cold water, went back and dumped the lot on his face. He snorted again and his eyes flickered open.

It must have been quite a shock for him to see the muzzle of his own gun held not a foot from his head. I waited until full comprehension came to him, then said casually, ‘If you think there isn’t one up the spout, you’re wrong. If I want to blow your brains out all I have to do is pull the trigger,’

He flinched and arched his neck, trying to pull his head away, while muffled noises came from behind the gag. ‘Take it easy,’ I counselled. ‘That way you won’t get hurt.’ I could see the muscles of his arms working as he tested the bindings on his wrists which were pinioned behind his back. When he had finished struggling, I said, ‘I’m going out of here — and you are going to help me. You can help voluntarily or involuntarily; take your pick. I have to warn you that one mistaken move on your part might mean your death. You’ll be in the middle and if any shooting starts you’ll probably stop a bullet.’

I didn’t wait to see his reaction to that — it didn’t really matter — but took the raincoat and hat and put them on, and checked the pockets to see if I had everything. Then I doused the mattress wadding with the spirits, pouring liberally until the room smelled like a distillery.

I returned to Fatface and cut his ankles free. ‘Get up — slowly!’

He staggered to his feet, hampered by the bonds on his arms. He stood quite passively, just looking at me, and I could read no expression in his eyes. I jerked the gun. ‘Walk forward to the door and stop a yard in front of it. I wouldn’t kick it, though; that could be fatal.’

He shuffled forward obediently, and I took his jacket and draped it across his shoulders so that the empty sleeves hung loose. Apart from the gag and the lack of hands he looked quite normal — normal enough to give me a fraction of a second’s advantage when that door opened. The trick is to keep the opposition off balance, and the guard would have other things to do with his eyes just at that moment.

I struck a match and dropped it on the pile of wadding, and blue flames ran over the surface. It wasn’t much of a fire but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I kept an eye on it until the first yellow flames appeared, then pressed the bell-push — the signal that Fatface wanted to be let out.

When the lock snapped I was right behind him, prodding him with the pistol to make sure he understood the spot he was in. The door swung open and I pushed him forward, the flat of my hand in the middle of his back, and yelled at the top of my voice. ‘Fire!’

I followed up fast as he staggered into the corridor and, over his shoulder, saw the startled face of the guard who was slow in reacting. He had some kind of a weapon in his hand, but he dithered as he saw Fatface lurch towards him and the flickering glow of the flames from the room. With the opening of the door a draught had swept into the bedroom and the fire really got going. I don’t think the guard saw me at all.

I gave Fatface another mighty push so that he collided heavily with the guard and they both went down in a tangled heap. A gun went off and someone screamed; it must have been the guard because Fatface had a gag in his mouth.

I jumped over the sprawl of wriggling bodies and ran down the corridor, the pistol in my hand with the safety catch off. The corridor was wood-panelled with doors on either side which I ignored. At the end was a stair landing with stairs going both up and down. I went up. I had made my decision on that one the previous evening. It’s a curious thing, but people escaping from a house always try to get immediately to the ground floor — which is why they’re usually caught. I suppose it’s an instinctive reaction, but the department that trained me worked hard to eradicate it.

The floor above was not so fancy — no wood-panelled walls — so I figured I was in the servants’ quarters, which meant I had to look out for Taafe, if he was that kind of servant, which I doubted. I moved fast, trying to make no noise, and heard an increasing uproar from downstairs. It was becoming too dangerous to stay in the corridors so I ducked into the nearest room — gun first.

It was empty of occupants, thank God, and I’d done it just in time because someone ran down the corridor with a heavy thumping tread. I shot the bolt and crossed to the window and found I was on the other side of the house away from the courtyard. For the first time I could see the surrounding country and it was very pleasant to view — rolling fields and areas of woodland with blue-green mountains beyond. About half a mile away a car sped along a road. There lay freedom.

For over a year and a half I had seen nothing but stone walls and my eyes had focused on nothing further away than a few yards. This glimpse of countryside caused a sudden lump to come to my throat and my heart thumped in my chest. It didn’t matter that dark clouds were lowering and that a sudden shift of wind sent a spatter of raindrops against the window. Out there I would be free and nobody was going to stop me.

I returned to the door and listened. There was a slice of chaos downstairs and it seemed that the fire I had started had got out of hand. I unbolted the door and opened it a crack, to hear Fatface shout, ‘To hell with the fire — I want Rearden. Taafe, get downstairs to the front door; Dillon, you take the back door. The rest of us will search the house.’

A deep voice said, ‘He’s not upstairs. I’ve just come down.’

‘All right,’ said Fatface impatiently. ‘That leaves just this floor. Taafe was at the bottom of the stairs and didn’t see him. Get moving.’

Someone else said, ‘Mother of God, will you look at it! It’ll burn the house down.’

‘Let it burn. We’re done for here, anyway, if Rearden escapes.’

I stepped out into the corridor and hastened away from the staircase and, turning a corner, came upon the back stairs. I trotted down quickly, depending on speed to get to the ground floor before the searchers spread out. And I made it, too, only to find the back door wide open and a man standing before it. That would be Dillon.

Fortunately, he was not looking in my direction as I came down the back stairs, but was staring up the wide passage which led to the front of the house. I oozed my way into a side passage and out of his line of sight and then let out my breath inaudibly. No doubt I could have overcome Dillon, but not without noise, and noise would have brought the lot on top of me.

The first door I opened led into a broom closet — useless because it had no window. But the second door led into a well-stocked larder and there was a sash window. I closed the door gently and tackled the window which evidently hadn’t been opened for years because it was very tight. As I forced it open it groaned and rattled alarmingly and I stopped to see if Dillon had heard it. But there was no sound apart from a few heavy thumps upstairs.

I attacked the window again and got it open at last, a mere nine inches or so, but enough to take me. I went through head first and landed in a bed of nettles, but fortunately screened from the back door by a large water-butt. As I rubbed my stinging hands I looked about and felt a bit depressed as I noted the high stone wall which seemed to encircle the house. The only gate within view was directly opposite the open back door and if I tried to leave that way Dillon would certainly spot me.

A trickle of water ran down my neck. It was beginning to rain really hard, which was in my favour. The wind was strong and blowing sheets of rain across the kitchen garden. If I could get into the open countryside I stood a chance of getting clean away because the low visibility was in my favour. But it wasn’t as low as that — Dillon could certainly see from the back door to the garden gate.

The water-butt wasn’t going to collect much rain; it was rotten and useless, and a stave had come away from the hoops. I picked it up and hefted it thoughtfully. No one, least of all Dillon, would expect me to go back into the house, and one of the major arts of warfare is the attack from the unexpected direction. I grasped the stave in both hands, sidled up to the back door, and then stepped through boldly.

Dillon heard me coming and must have noticed the dimming of the light as I blocked the entrance. But he was very slow in turning his head. ‘Found him?’ he asked, and then his eyes widened as he saw who it was. He didn’t have time to do much about it because I swung the stave at him and caught him on the side of the head. His head was harder than the stave which, rotten as it was, splintered in two — but it was hard enough to lay Dillon out.

Even as he fell I turned and ran for the gate, dropping the remnant of the stave as I went. The gate wasn’t locked and within seconds I was through and walking in a dampish country lane. That wasn’t good enough because it was too open, so I ran to the left until I found a gate leading into a field, over which I jumped and then sheltered in the lee of a hedgerow.

Rain dripped on to my face from the brim of my hat as I looked across the field, trying to remember the layout of the land as I had seen it from that upstairs window. If I went across that field I would come to a wood beyond which was the road I had seen. I set off at a brisk pace and didn’t look back.

Only when I was sheltered in the wood did I stop to check on my tracks. There was no sign of pursuit and, over the house, I thought I saw an eddying streamer of black smoke, although I could have been wrong because of the wind-driven rain.

I reached the other side of the wood and left by a gate and came out on to the road. But before I got to the gate I heard again the light clip-clip of hooves, together with a clinking sound and that pleasant fluting whistle. I opened the gate and looked up the road. A flat cart was just passing, drawn by a donkey, and a man was sitting holding the reins and whistling like a blackbird. A couple of cans which might have held milk clinked behind him on the cart.

I watched it go and tried to figure out which country I was in. The donkey cart looked as though it could be Spanish but, surely to God, it never rained like this in Spain except, maybe, in the plain. I watched the cart recede into the distance and found I couldn’t even tell which side of the road he was supposed to be on because he drove dead centre.

I turned and looked up the road the other way. In the distance I could see an approaching bus and, on the other side, a man was waiting by a bus stop. I noted that the bus was coming up on the left of the road so it was pretty certain I was still in England. I was surer of it still when I crossed the road and the man turned a shining red countryman’s face towards me, and said, ’ ‘Tis a grand, soft morning.’

I nodded, and the rain dripped from the brim of my hat. ‘Yes.’

Then my self-confidence received a sudden jolt because when I looked up at the sign above my head I found it was written in two languages, English and another, and the second wasn’t even in Roman script but in some weird characters I had never seen before, although they were vaguely familiar.

The bus was coming along the road very slowly. From where I was standing I could see the roof and the top storey of the house, from which a column of black smoke was rising. I switched my gaze back to the bus and wished the bloody thing would get a move on. I felt terribly vulnerable.

On impulse I put my hand into my pocket and fished out some of the loose change I had looted from Fatface. The first coin I examined was apparently a penny, but certainly not an English one. It depicted a hen and chickens and underneath was a single word in that odd script — a word I couldn’t even read. I turned the coin over in my fingers and nearly dropped it in surprise.

On this side was a harp and the inscription in the strange script, but this time it was readable. It said: ‘Eire — 1964.’

My God, I was in Ireland!