The Summons

PATH ACROSS THE FIELDS. M.

The gibe annoyed Diamond, mainly because Mountjoy knew that at this stage some personal abuse wouldn’t abort the mission. He pocketed the receipt and looked to his right to see what lay ahead. Another stile, inevitably. In the low moments that sometimes troubled his conscience after stepping off scales he had never contemplated anything so drastic as a country walk. In theory he supported the Ramblers’ Association in their campaigns to keep public footpaths open. He also supported the Lifeboat Association, but he didn’t go to sea in a storm.

Grudging each step, he ambled toward the stile. Things could be worse, he tried telling himself. It wasn’t raining. In fact for October it was a tolerably good morning, with a pale blue sky and a light breeze. In a raw east wind this place- what, eight hundred feet above sea level-would be bleak in the extreme. Yes, how lucky I am, he thought, to be stepping out in this splendid landscape to meet a murderer I put away. Lucky, my arse.

Having heaved himself over the stile, he started through the copse, up a gentle rise with glimpses between the trees of the traffic speeding along the Lansdown Road. Common sense told him that Mountjoy would want a view of him alone in open country before he risked coming out of hiding. At the very least he faced a twenty-minute hike.

There was no chance of missing the route. Numerous signs and arrows marking the Cotswold Way sent him steadily higher to a point where he presently emerged from the wood and started along the track beside a drystone wall speckled with yellow lichen. The direction was still gently upward, making his legs ache, but the terrain had changed to turf uncluttered by trees or bushes, a band of dark green across his vision meeting the skyline not far ahead. He must have been walking for three more minutes when a spectacular view opened to his right over the fields and across the Lam Valley to Charmy Down. The climbing was over for the time being. And there was no human being in sight.

The slight hope remained of hearing a voice at some point from behind the drystone wall that stretched ahead for a long distance. The wall was above head height, yet there were small gaps in the structure here and there that a man on the run might use, firstly to spy through and secondly as a kind of confessional screen-except that confession was probably farthest from Mountjoy’s mind. Even so, when a magpie suddenly took flight on the other side Diamond stopped and crept closer and waited, ear to the wall, willing to play the part of the priest. Without result. Sheepishly he set off again and in time came to a gap in the wall. On stepping through to check, he confirmed that he was, indeed, the only living soul in that vast landscape.

Then it had to be down the steep hillside, where, no doubt, some of the less brave of the soldiery had made their escape from the conflict three hundred and fifty years before. History had not made much impression on Diamond in his schooldays and his sense of it here was slight, but he had a strong affinity with anyone of independent mind. Mostly his thoughts were less ethereal. His feet ached. This was harder on the feet than climbing. His immediate concern was at which point he should give up and turn back. There was a limit to the distance he was prepared to go along this path, pretty as the views might be.

There were farm buildings visible in the valley, so there ought to be some sort of lane or track that linked eventually to the road he had left. He didn’t fancy toiling back up the hill to the monument.

Some way down the hillside he remembered his promise to phone Stephanie. She would sigh and put this down as another lapse. Over the years she had assembled quite a dossier of broken promises. He couldn’t argue with most, but this time he had remembered. Why did it have to be in such an inconvenient place?

The descent became less steep as he approached the floor of the valley. Ahead was a stream with a ford where-he was pleased to discover-a track crossed. Good news: the crossing point was marginally above the level of the water, so he kept his feet dry. The next obstacle was a cattle grid. Having crossed that without turning an ankle he paused for thought; he must have tramped more than a mile and a half. A decision had to be taken. The signpost by the ford invited him to continue up the other side and along the Cotswold Way, but that could mean trudging on for a hundred miles through the whole of the Cotswold Hills into the heart of Gloucestershire.

There was a limit to his good nature and he’d reached it.

Propped against a five-barred gate, he eyed the scene. The track that snaked through the valley was not the prettiest thing he had seen since he started this excursion, but it was the most welcome. Some attempt had been made to tarmac the surface, presumably for cars, because to one side an area of grass had been leveled and laid with gravel. He’d noticed a sign that mentioned angling access, although today there were no cars and no fishermen. It all added up to a shortcut back to the main road.

He was thinking he could do with a drink, wondering how pure the stream might be, when he became conscious of an engine note from the direction of the farm somewhere to his left. The sound was pitched too high for a tractor or a lorry. For one sour moment he wondered if it could be Commander Warrilow’s helicopter. Then he saw it coming along the lane at speed, a motorcycle. The rider was in black leathers and a red crash helmet with a black visor.

A volley of thoughts attacked his brain. Then the bike was skidding to a stop a few yards from him. Without lifting the visor, the rider turned and unfixed a second helmet from the passenger seat and threw the thing at Diamond’s feet.

Diamond ignored it. There was no point in saying anything. The engine drowned all sound.

The rider beckoned vigorously. He seriously expected a fifteen-stone man to put it on and ride pillion.

Diamond folded his arms and looked in the other direction.