77

‘You’re coming with me,’ he said.

Five minutes gone.

‘You fire that gun, you’ll have every sentry at the facility on alert,’ I said. ‘It’s goodbye, Adler Tag . I don’t think Vaughn’s going to thank you for that, do you?’

His eyes flicked to the house, up on the hill. I had no idea if what I’d said was true. In fact, it was highly doubtful. We were down in a hollow, where the noise of one shot from a rifle would be muffled by the topography.

But all that was beside the point. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. Put enough self-confidence into it and -people will believe anything.

Better than that, tell somebody what they want to hear, and they’ll believe you every time. Tommy Torson had made his name as a boxer. He’d been sent out with a gun, and I’d told him not to use it. That was music to his ears.

Torson grinned, and put the gun down, leaning it against a tree. A pleasurable interlude. Beat up the farmer, teach him a thing or two about boxing, pick up the gun again and report back to the house. They’d give him a prize, like in the good old days.

He strode towards me, rolling his sleeves up.

I ran.

*

I ran along the contour of the slope, along the fence, a grassy meadow on my right, with Vaughn’s gardens and house in the distance. Torson followed me, as I knew he would. He left the gun behind, as I knew he would. I ran faster than he did, so eventually I stopped, to let him catch up.

He gained on me, breathing heavily. He was built for power, not for speed.

I ran back towards him, surprising him. He stopped and put his hands out, but I ducked around him, like a boy playing British Bulldog in the playground. Now I was closest to the gun, and I was the faster runner.

He chased me, his boots pounding the ground. He put on a burst of speed, but the race was a foregone conclusion. I beat him to the gun with seconds to spare. Not long enough to get it to my shoulder and cock the hammer, but that wasn’t a problem. Sometimes you have to think outside the lines. The rifle was a multi-purpose weapon. Useful to fire small pieces of metal at speed, but it had other uses. I grabbed the barrel and swung it around like the Americans do with a baseball bat. Nice long steel barrel. Heavy oak stock. Beautifully weighted.

He ducked, thinking I was going for his head. It would have worked for him, but I was aiming lower. I’d been aiming for his knees, but him ducking brought his head into play. I adjusted the trajectory, like a batsman following a rising fast ball, and the oak stock hit the side of his head with a crack.

He slumped to the ground, and I swung the gun around for another blow, but it wasn’t needed. He was already dead.

Ten minutes gone.

I looked up towards the house, looming in the distance, its chimneys visible over the slope of the lawns and gardens. No windows in sight. Nobody would have seen.

But I had a problem. We were directly on the route from Vaughn’s house to the transmitter. In less than an hour, I’d be here again.

It would be dark, but they’d notice the body.

I grabbed it by the arms and dragged it along the line of the hill, following the route I’d run only a minute earlier. I kept my eyes on the woods below me, looking for a place I could leave the body. Suddenly, the woods looked a lot less wild than I’d expected. Tree trunks reached up to the canopy, but down below was a neat carpet of leaves. Nowhere to hide a body.

Worse still, I was leaving two gouges in the grass, where Torson’s feet were digging into the soft ground. Probably not enough to raise suspicion, but probably wasn’t good enough.

I bent down to shoulder the body, like putting on a heavy rucksack. I arched my back, stooping forwards, and I felt his feet lift off the ground behind me. An inch of clearance from the ground, but enough.

I staggered forwards, keeping my eyes on the far end of the grassy slope, fifty yards from me. The woods there looked thicker.

Torson’s head lolled next to my cheek. I felt liquid on my face, and I smelt blood. I concentrated on each step, fifty yards shrinking to forty, thirty, then halfway there.

There was a fallen birch tree on my left. Blown down in a storm, pulling up a large root ball. A hole where the roots should have been. I shuffled over to the edge of the hole and tipped the body in.

It lay there at the bottom of the hole, a man-shaped -silhouette against white sand.

I kicked in soil from the crumbling edge. There was a thin layer of soil and grass. Underneath that, sand and rock. I kicked soil, sand and rock into the hole, working my way along the edge until the body was gone. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

I checked my watch. Twenty to two.

Not enough time.

*

I’d left the window ajar but I needn’t have worried. Margaret was leaning out, ready to help me in. She looked at me quizzically and I shook my head.

‘What happened?’ Margaret whispered.

‘One of the Blackshirts was waiting for me,’ I said. ‘Are you all right to be in here?’

‘Vaughn made his move,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t do it. I told him I was going to make up with you, and if that meant I couldn’t be part of his game then so be it.’

There was a creak from the corridor outside the room. Someone was up and about. Margaret froze.

‘Get into bed,’ she said.

We got under the covers and listened for more movement. Footsteps, walking away.

‘Now what?’ Margaret asked.

Fifteen minutes left.

‘Wake me up at two,’ I said.