The Chinese Egg (34 page)

“Since we're on the south coast and there are several hundred miles of beach here, that's safe enough.”

Stephen said, steadily, “I don't know the country round here. We thought it was high. Cliffs. But when we told the Inspector in there, he said beach, or something.”

“What do you mean, you thought it was a cliff? What was?”

“Where the van is. Or where it's going to be. But the Superintendent had gone and we had to tell the Super here what it looked like. I wouldn't have thought it was a beach, but he did say something about one.”

Andrew suddenly saw himself as a small boy in grey flannel shorts on a school expedition. He said, “Beachy Head!”

“That's it! That's what he said!”

“That's where Price has gone? You sure?”

“I think he must've.”

“On your recommendation? Another of these glimpses of the future?”

“He asked us to try to see. . . .”

“And you conveniently did?”

Stephen didn't answer this. He said, “Have you got a car?”

Andrew raised his eyebrows. He answered, “Since you're interested, yes, I have.”

“Will you take us there? The Inspector won't, and we can't get there by ourselves in time.”

“Take you there?”

“To that place. The place you said. Either the van's there or it's going to be. Vicky and I, we've got to be there. We just might. . . . Please. It wouldn't hurt you. Even if you think we're making the whole thing up, you can't afford not to take the chance. Don't you see? Vicky and me—we're the best hope you've got.”

If he'd been angry, or if he'd been apologetic, Andrew wouldn't have listened for a second, but his quietness was impressive. Even so, he remained furious, sceptical, at this moment hating everyone, including himself. He opened his mouth to tell Stephen that he hadn't come to Brighton to give him and his girl-friend rides about the country, when he remembered Sally. Sally had asked him if he'd do anything to find Caroline Ann, and he'd said he would. Even if there was nothing but these children's stories to go on. He'd meant it at the time. Did he mean it less now? He stood looking at Stephen without speaking, so that Stephen thought he couldn't have heard, but at last he said, “All right. Come on.”

“Vicky'll have to come too.”

“I said, come on,” Andrew said and walked out of the station. His MG was parked just down the street. He unlocked it and saw that there were three of them, the two girls who'd come to his house as well as the boy. But it didn't seem to matter. The whole thing was so crazy anyway, what did it matter if he turned up on the top of Beachy Head with a crowd of schoolchildren? He said, “You'll be very cramped in the back,” as the girls climbed in. The boy sat beside him and he started up. Stephen, even in the heat of the moment, noticed how quickly the speedometer needle climbed. He'd never been driven so quickly.

22.00 “Any sightings of the van? Anything seen of it on the road leading up towards Beachy Head?”

“No reports of a sighting, sir. Will keep you informed.”

“Thanks. Over and out.”

“Over and out. What a horrible expression just now and just here,” Price thought.

22.00 Maureen hadn't thought she'd ever be able to sleep when she was as frightened as she was now, but what with the dark and
the movement of the van, she did doze off from time to time. Presently the van stopped and she woke right up, sure that Skinner was going to come in and do for her. She stayed for minutes, listening, with her hand on the paraffin stove, the only thing she'd found that she thought she might be able to hit Skinner with if he started coming at her with the knife. But there were no movements and Skinner didn't unlock the door or speak to her through the front partition, and after a while she felt a bit better and dozed off again.

When she woke, with a start, the van was moving again, faster than before and more as if Skinner knew where he was going. Nothing to be seen outside, but after a time Maureen could feel that they were going uphill again. Because she was sleepy, and because of nothing awful having happened the last time they stopped, Maureen was taken by surprise when the van pulled up with a great jerk, and she heard Skinner's voice from the cab in front.

“Ready for nosh?” he said, and he sounded friendly again, like he used to be, so that Maureen said, “Yes, Skinner,” joyfully, forgetting all the bad things she'd been thinking about him in the last few hours, and looking forward to chips and steak or fish and a big ice-cream, and lights and people and music from the discotheque like they'd had before all this fuss with Linda. Only she wouldn't look very nice with her hair all short and raggedy. She heard him get out of the cab and come round to the back doors. But when he opened them it was all dark and quiet, except for a sort of sighing noise ever so far below, almost as if it was under the ground beneath. And the ground was just grass. Maureen had been badly frightened before and she began to be frightened again. She said, “I can't see any restaurant. Where is it?”

“Other side of the van,” Skinner said.

“Why aren't there any lights, then?”

“Come on, and I'll show you. Round the next corner, that's all.”

Maureen looked at all she could see, the dark shape of Skinner, and hesitated.

“Come on! You must be hungry. You aren't still sore at me because of that mistake I made this evening, are you?”

If he hadn't said that about the evening, Maureen might have believed him. But when she heard him say it, she remembered again the way he'd looked at her and the way the van had come straight at her. She drew further back into the shadows of the van and said, “No, Skinner. I don't want to.”

“You've got to, you stupid bag. Come on! D'you want me to come and get you?”

Maureen, terrified, squeezed herself against the side of the van. The only advantage she had against Skinner with the knife, which she imagined as well as if she'd seen it, was that she was looking out of the more intense darkness. She could just make out his shape against the sky. He was looking in and couldn't see anything. She saw him wait for a moment before he put his knee on the van's floor, ready to hoist himself up. In that moment, Maureen put out her hand and felt the paraffin stove. She got it in both hands, and just as Skinner began to pull himself up into the van, Maureen brought the stove down on his head as hard as she could. She heard him cry out, and he must have fallen. The stove, which she'd let go of, fell too, with a loud metallic noise, and went rolling away downhill.

Maureen waited. She couldn't hear anything, except that sighing noise below, coming and going, now louder, now softer, but never giving up. It couldn't be the wind, because there wasn't any, the air was cool and damp and very still. It sounded almost like a huge animal with rattling uneven breaths waiting at the bottom of the hill for the van to come down again. Like Skinner might be waiting down there, just out of sight, so that when she got out he could run her down again or go for her with the knife.

She waited a bit longer, and then, too frightened to stay, she began to climb out. She let herself carefully down. One foot touched the ground, the other touched something softish, that gave, and she drew it back, shaking with terror. It was Skinner, she was sure of it. But no hand came out to grab her ankle and nothing moved. Very slowly she got herself right out of the van. She could just see Skinner's huddled shape lying on the ground. He lay very still. If he was waiting to jump on her, the sooner she got out of the way the better. Maureen backed away down the road and the darkness closed in on her.

She'd gone perhaps twenty paces, feeling with one foot in front of the other, sobbing loudly and stumbling, often, when she stopped.

She'd remembered Linda.

She'd left Linda behind.

Into Maureen's confused, feeble mind came a series of pictures. Of Linda with her bottle. Of Linda crying. Of Linda on Mrs. Plum's comfortable shoulder. Of the way Skinner looked at Linda. Of Sharon throwing the baby on to the bed and saying, “It's all yours.” Of Linda smiling. Of Skinner coming after the both of them. Of Maureen hiding somewhere with Linda while Skinner roamed around with his knife out, all ready to use it again, and of Linda crying just then, so that he found them. Of the pictures she'd been to with Skinner once, where a fellow and his girl had gone round killing people mostly for fun, and of the blood and the car full of bullet holes and the girl sitting dead in her seat with blood running down all over her nice white skirt. That's what she would look like if Skinner got at her with his knife.

There was something else. Out here in the dark it was scary, frightening. Maureen had never liked to be alone in the dark. If she had Linda with her, it would be some sort of company, it wouldn't be as awful as it was being here all by herself.

But suppose Skinner had woken up by now and was just waiting there for her to come back?

It was the most dreadful thing Maureen had ever done. She went up the road slowly, seeing the bulk of the van in front of her up on the grassy slope. Her foot kicked against something hard that rattled and made her jump. Then she realized it was the paraffin stove. She picked it up. It made her feel a little braver to have it with her. She'd hit Skinner with it once, maybe she could hit him again. He was still lying where she'd left him, but when she'd climbed back into the van, she heard him move and give a sort of snore like he did sometimes when he was asleep. She had to be quick. She felt around the van and found Linda. It was difficult to get down again without losing hold of Linda's clothes so that she couldn't roll away down the sloping van floor, but she managed it. Skinner was making more and more horrid snoring
noises and moving a bit, and she'd have liked to hit him again to keep him asleep a bit longer, but she couldn't do it without losing hold of Linda and she didn't dare do that.

She held Linda tight in her arms and started off along the road. Then she thought she'd better not stay on the road, because when Skinner got better, that's where he'd come and look for her. She went off on to the grass and felt her way along that, not knowing in the blackness where she was or where she was going, only wanting to get as far away from the van as she could. Only Linda was more of a weight to carry than she'd reckoned on and she couldn't go fast. She was frightened of Skinner and she was frightened of what might come at her out of the dark. She was frightened that in this cold, drizzling rain they might both get so wet they'd die. But most of all she was frightened that Skinner would get up and come after her. In a panic, Maureen wandered along the grassy verge of high chalk cliffs, listening to the sea worrying the shingle at their distant feet, clutching the baby and asking God all the time to please, please not let Linda scream.

22.15 “Where's this?” Stephen asked.

“Newhaven. Heard of it?”

“How far from where we've got to get to?”

“Far enough.”

22.25 The van stood solitary and dark, barely visible against the low sky. When it came into sight, Price heard the man on his stomach in the grass next to him, sigh. “Do you think we've a chance, sir?” he asked, and Price could only reply, “A small one.” But his heart sank. That bugger had fooled them. Must have been somewhere inland all afternoon ever since the lunch-time purchase, and had then made for Beachy Head from the west, through Birling Gap, while they'd been searching Eastbourne, Battle, the Hastings district. When they'd had the message about Beachy Head being a possible location, and had sealed off all the approach roads, he must already have been inside the cordon. Price didn't like the look of that solitary van, stationed so near the cliff edge, no one moving. He was thankful he'd refused to
allow Andrew Wilmington to come here with him. He hated to think what that van might by now contain.

“We've got to get right up to him, and then rush him,” Price said.

“He's very quiet,” the man next to him said.

“That's what I don't like.”

“Look!” the officer said, and Price looked. His eyes by this time were more accustomed to the dark, but even so it was difficult to make anything out. He felt his age as he said to the young man at his side, “What's going on?”

“The van's moving.”

“He hasn't any lights!”

“Crazy bastard! He's driving, though.”

“It isn't just the brakes slipping?”

“He's all over the road, but there's someone there.”

“Then we move in. Call up the others.”

The road in front of Skinner was suddenly ablaze with lights. A car across the narrow road. He pulled up with a screech of brakes and felt for his knife. But the blow on his head, though it hadn't incapacitated him for long, had slowed him down. He found himself out of the driver's cab, standing on the road, his arms held, surrounded by policemen. Price hardly looked at him, he was at the back of the van immediately. Unlocked. His heart dropped as he flung the doors open. As he'd feared. No sign of the girl or the baby.

“Where are they? What did you do with them? You Did they go over the cliff?” he asked Skinner, pushing his face right up to that mean one, feeling the need to hurt back, to repay violence with violence. Retribution, an eye for an eye. But if you are a respectable Chief Superintendent, you can't allow yourself the luxury of these human reactions, so he took his face back again and said to the officers, “Take him back to the car. I'll question him later. The rest of you cover the area for a mile around. There's just a chance they got away.” Though knowing what her father and stepmother had said about Maureen Hollingsworth he couldn't believe that that poor girl could conceivably have outwitted this young devil.

22.37 “Where's this?” Stephen asked.

“Birling Gap. We'll be up there in a minute or two. What's that?”