The Chinese Egg (32 page)

She climbed back over the gate into the lane and saw that Skinner was sitting waiting for her in the driver's seat, and he'd already started revving up the motor. She had a horrid feeling then that he meant to drive off and leave her there all by herself, not knowing where she was and with no money. She began to run towards the van, calling out, “Skinner! Skinner! Don't go off and leave me!”

But what happened was worse. He didn't drive past her, he drove at her. He came right up to where she was standing by the hedge. He came five yards, accelerated and there was the grinding of gears. Maureen screamed and tried to flatten herself against the prickling twigs of the hedgerow, but she'd have got hit if the engine hadn't stalled just as it so often had before on their journeys. Maureen got herself back to the gate and over it, before Skinner had the chance to get the motor started up again, and she stood there, shaking. Skinner leaned out of the cab and called to her. “Come back! What'd you think you're doing?”

“You tried to run me down!” Maureen said, hardly able to speak for shaking.

“Don't be crazy! Bloody thing got a bit out of control, that's all.”

“You came straight at me!”

“‘Course I didn't! What would I want to do a thing like that for?”

Maureen didn't know. Could he be right? Or if she came back over the gate would he try to do it again? While she stood there undecided, she heard the sound of some other car coming up along the road. She could see that Skinner had heard it too. It came into sight slowly, a red farm tractor. As it got near she could see it was driven by quite a young boy. It came right up to them and stopped and the boy leaned out and called, “You having trouble then?”

Skinner said, “No. Thanks all the same.” But the tractor didn't move away.

“I said, we're not having trouble,” Skinner said again.

“I'm going into that field,” the boy said, pointing at the gate where Maureen stood.

“Open the gate for him, can't you?” Skinner said to Maureen. She wasn't very quick at finding how the catch worked, but she did manage it in time and the boy said, “Thanks,” as he drove the tractor past her. Maureen watched him go on down into the field and wanted to say something to him, but she didn't know what.

“Come on! Don't stand there all day!” Skinner said.

She didn't know what else she could do, so she did as she was told. He came up behind her as she was climbing back into the van and locked her in as usual, then the van started going on its endless way. Maureen took Linda on to her lap for comfort, and sat there still feeling shaky. She wondered if perhaps she had made a mistake and Skinner hadn't really meant to hurt her. She couldn't see why he should want to do her in. She'd done everything he told her, hadn't she? But she hadn't liked the way he'd been looking all this afternoon and she didn't feel safe. She wished she could think of what she could do to get away from the van and Skinner and all. Poor stupid Maureen. She knew just enough to know that there was danger about, but she hadn't a clue how she could get away from it.

Another failure. Price was mad with himself, couldn't find enough bad. words for his own ineptitude. Everything had been set up with immaculate care. The young man they'd got to stand-in for Andrew Wilmington had been superb—looked like him, walked like him, even managed to speak like him. It had all looked to be going so well. The switch in Andrew Wilmington's club made so discreetly, the notes handed over exactly according to instructions. The young fellow who received them, observed as he walked away along the exit passage. Then that sudden unexpected dash into the women's public lavatory, and Price's realization that the fellow must have made a lightning change in there, and left by the exit on the other side, where the man on duty hadn't yet been alerted. He/she had got away. They were almost no further on. The number of the notes had all been taken, of course, but checking them would take time, and time was exactly what they hadn't got. Every half hour that elapsed was a further
threat to the life of the baby. Very possibly the actual handing over of the notes had signed the baby's death sentence, it might even have been better to risk an arrest on the grounds that if they were caught they might not want to add murder to the charge of kidnapping and extortion. What had actually occurred was probably the most disastrous thing possible. Price wondered why he'd ever gone in for this soul-destroying, disillusioning, heartbreaking job. He knew the answer, of course. If looking for the truth is what matters to you, even if it's the mundane awkward truth of whodunit, rather than the philosopher's stone, this is the only life you can contemplate. He'd rather, perhaps, have been an academic, sitting at a desk and playing with words, looking in books instead of into back streets, he would rather have conferred with professors and learned doctors than with impostors and criminals. Or would he? Wouldn't he have got impatient with theory and words, and have longed for the excitement of searching out facts instead of theories, of saving the innocent instead of confounding someone else's speculations? But was he, this time, going to save the innocent? Hadn't he today, by gross incompetence, put the lives of a girl and a child at the mercy of a psychopath roaming around the Sussex coast? Price got a line to the Brighton police station for the twentieth time. No news. No news.

Monday evening

At six-thirty on Monday evening, Price rang Stephen.

“Stephen? Anything for me?”

“I'm sorry. We did try this afternoon for a bit, and then Vicky had to get back home. She wasn't terribly well yesterday and her mother's anxious about her. I'm not sure that mightn't have been why nothing happened this, afternoon. She's in a state about the baby. I think she's trying too hard or something.”

“Is she really not well? I was going to ask. . . . But it won't work if we can't have her too.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I'm sorry. I'm not being at all clear. I don't feel it either. I was going to suggest taking both of you down with me to Brighton. I've got to go down there myself, and if I could have had you two with me, it might have been a help. But we've got to have Vicky, you're no good on your own.”

“I don't think she's exactly ill. . . .”

“You think her mother might let her come? If I went to see her and asked?”

“I suppose she might. For you,”

“I shall be round at your place in twenty minutes.”

In fact it was twenty-five. He'd called first at the Stanfords, since if he couldn't have Vicky, there wasn't much point in taking Stephen. Vicky looked pale and shadowed, smaller and younger than he'd remembered. Price simply said to her mother that he was short of time, that he had to take every chance there was of catching the gang before they harmed the baby. He thought
Vicky might be able to help since she'd seen the couple who'd made the snatch. He'd take every possible care of her, might he borrow her? Mrs. Stanford hadn't liked it. Vicky was to be taken off to the neighbourhood of a gang who might be violent? But no, Price promised, she wasn't going anywhere near them unless all danger of violence was over. He needed someone who could identify one or more of them after they'd been taken into custody.

“She wasn't well yesterday. I'd have liked her to get to bed early tonight,” Mrs. Stanford said.

“Mum! I wouldn't be able to sleep!”

“I wouldn't ask it if I wasn't desperate about this baby. And the girl whom we think is with her. I think they're both in danger,” Price said.

“You'll see Vicky's kept safe?”

That meant Vicky could go. Having given way so far, Mrs. Stanford couldn't refuse to let Chris go too. It would have looked. . . . But she wasn't easy about it, would have refused if she could, if it hadn't been for Chris's pleadings. When she looked at her Mum like that, it was difficult to say no. She did say, “I thought you and Paul were going out tonight? I thought that's why he came round this evening, to ask you.” But Chris said, “He'll understand, I've got to be with Vicky. I'll see him tomorrow.” So Price arrived at the Rawlinson house with Chris and Vicky in the back of a very unofficial-looking car, driven by a plain-clothes man. Price sat in the front passenger seat and during the drive south no one spoke much. Once Price said over his shoulder, “If anything I ought to know occurs to you, you'll let me know.” He didn't want to embarrass them by referring to their flashes in front of a third party.

Because it was such a grey day, the light had begun to fade early. Inside the van, Maureen sat and nursed Linda in the near dark. She was scared. If the doors hadn't been locked, she thought she'd have tried to jump out and make a run for it. The van wasn't going all that fast and she guessed they were still in little country roads. They kept on going uphill and downhill, and turning corners and twisting about. She could have jumped out very quick and hidden behind a hedge before Skinner would
know she'd gone. She might have been able to get right away and never see him again.

But the van doors were locked. She'd tried them. When she looked out of the little windows she could just see the black branches of trees against the heavy sky. Sometimes she saw a twinkling yellow window in a house some way away; when she saw this, it disappeared too soon, she'd have liked to feel that there were people about, that she wasn't alone with Skinner. He'd really frightened her just now when the van came right at her, and whatever he said about it being a mistake, she didn't feel sure he mightn't do it again. His face had looked really bad, as if he meant to hurt her and was sorry he hadn't managed it.

Suppose the next time they stopped, he tried again? He might just be waiting till it was really dark and there wasn't anyone else about, and then he'd go for her and do her in. He might be driving like this, what felt like round and round, away from streets and shops and people doing ordinary things, because when it was the middle of the night he'd have her all alone, away from everybody, and then he'd do it. Maureen remembered the knife and the way his hand had gone towards it when he'd been asking who she'd talked to yesterday. Once, what seemed like a long time ago, when she'd seen the knife for the first time, she'd asked, “What d'you want a knife for, Skinner?” and he'd said, “Everywhere I go, that knife comes too. And it's been used. It's not just for show.” Maureen found she couldn't stop thinking about that knife and what he'd do with it if he was angry with her. She made a little whimpering noise in the dark.

And now it was really dark. It was almost black inside the van, she couldn't see anything. If she had to give Linda another feed, she'd have to turn on the little light in the roof so as to see to make it up. But Skinner wouldn't like that. He'd told her she couldn't have any light. It was a good thing she'd given Linda a bottle before they'd left the last parking place, while there was still enough daylight. Now she might sleep till the next morning, if only Skinner kept quiet. But he might not keep quiet. He might come in and go for her. Maureen couldn't stop thinking about that knife, with its long thin blade. She wished she had a knife too.

She thought about this. She wondered if perhaps there might be a knife somewhere in the van. She put Linda down carefully in her carry-cot and began to feel about. But though there was crockery and some spoons in the little cupboard, there was no knife. She went on feeling about. Pillows and blankets on the bunks, that wasn't any good. Matches. She could start a fire and burn the van. But with her locked inside it, that wasn't going to help her, she'd just get burned to death, and she wasn't at all sure Skinner would trouble himself to let her out. She had a picture of Skinner standing looking at the van all alight with flames coming out of the windows and laughing because he knew she was choking and burning inside it. The thought made her more frightened than ever. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, being trapped in this nasty bumpy van, with Skinner waiting to kill her as soon as he thought it would be safe. She wanted out. More than anything ever in her whole life, she wanted out.

Price arrived at the Brighton police station just after eight thirty. Superintendent Cole met him with, “I don't know who told you about the special offer, but we've got it.”

“Where?”

“Little one-man grocery shop on the Eastbourne Road, five miles this side of Eastbourne. Chap called Jerningham, always has one or two special offers, and this week. . . .”

“That the only one in the district?”

“That's right. . . .”

“My god, and we've been thinking he went west all this time! Switch your men to the Eastbourne area, anywhere between there and Brighton and further still, Pevensey, Hastings, the lot. No notices to the public, he may have a transistor and it's vital not to alarm him. If anyone spots the van—it shouldn't be too difficult with that great dent on the off-side—give strict instructions that he's not to be rushed. As long as he's actually driving, they can intercept and get him, but if the van's parked it's got to be done without him seeing, if possible. Surround him, take him by surprise. And hurry! If we can't find him within the next two hours. . . .” He remembered Stephen and Vicky just behind him and checked himself.

“When was the van seen outside the grocery shop? Do we know how long ago? Yesterday? Today? If we knew that, we'd have a better idea how far east to look,” Cole said reasonably.

“We don't know. You've just got to get on with looking in an easterly direction.”

“He might have turned round. Or gone north.”

“Look north as well, then, only get on with it!”

Price took Vicky, Stephen and Chris into the station and ordered coffee. He was shocked at Vicky's appearance, she looked drawn, pinched, grey. If she was going to crack up on him now, not only would she be no help, he might find himself responsible for more than the deaths of a small baby and a moronic girl. He was surprised that he felt a quick personal pang at the idea. He said, “Coffee's coming, Vicky. You'll feel better after that. I've got to be off, but I've told Inspector Cole that if you give him any messages for me he's not to ask where they come from, he's to communicate with me by radio telephone immediately. Understand?”