Hand In Glove Part 60

He grinned ruefully. "A piece of cake, wouldn't you say?"

"No. I wouldn't."

"No." His grin froze. "Neither would I."

She stepped towards him. "Derek, I . . ." Even as she began to speak, she sensed his eagerness to respond, his absurdly repressed desire to please her. Affection for him-for all his characteristics that were so like her own-swept over her. But, before she could yield to them, Frank Griffith entered the room.

"I'm ready." His announcement was bleak, his glance at them un-sympathetic-or, more likely, unaware.

"Let's go, then," said Derek.

"Before you do-" Charlotte began.

"No more words," said Frank. "There have been too many already." His face was blank and hard, the lines as stark upon it as the crevices in a cliff. "I'll wait for you outside." With that he turned and walked out, leaving Charlotte and Derek smiling at each other in bemus.e.m.e.nt.

"I'd better be off," said Derek. "If we're to be at Dover in good time for the ferry-"

It was impossible, in the end, to let him go without some acknowledgement of what she felt. Rushing forward, she kissed him and was glad when he kissed her back and encirled her with his arms.

"Be careful," she murmured. "Please be careful."

"That's what I told you once. Do you remember what you replied?"

" 'Being careful won't help Sam'?"

"Exactly. Nevertheless, I will be. Very."

"There's something else, though. Another reason why you should be. I-"

"Don't say any more." He pressed his fingers gently against her lips. "Frank was right. There have been enough words. Many more and I shan't be able to go through with this. But I must. We both know I must. So . . ." He stepped back and released her. "Goodbye, Charlotte.

Don't wish me luck. I'm very much hoping I won't need any."

368.

R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

Ten minutes later, Charlotte was alone, oppressed as much by doubts about the wisdom of what they had decided to do as by the knowledge that now there was n.o.body she could confide in. If their plan was to succeed, she would have to keep her own counsel as the days ebbed away towards 11 October and whatever it might bring. She would have to pretend she was as helpless as everybody else to save Samantha, while contending silently with the possibility that she was wasting their only chance of doing so. And there was another secret she had to protect now, one she would have shared with Derek if he had not stopped her, one that preyed guiltily on her mind as the solitary morning slowly pa.s.sed and drove her ultimately to pick up the telephone and dial a well-remembered number.

"Bourne End 88285."

"h.e.l.lo, Ursula."

"Charlie? Well, this is a surprise." A veil of sarcasm fell across Ursula's voice. "What do you want?"

"I thought I should .. . Well, I just wanted to know how you were."

"How do you think?"

"Look, I-"

"Can you tell me this won't be the last week of Sam's life, Charlie?"

"No . . . Of course I can't. I only wish-"

"So do I. But wishes aren't enough, are they? What else do you have to offer?"

"Well . . . Nothing, I suppose."

"Then leave me alone. It's all I ask."

"But, Ursula, isn't there-" The burr of a dead line interrupted and left her more certain and ashamed than ever that if it came to a choice, as conceivably it might, Derek's safety mattered more to her now than Samantha's. But, by letting him go with Frank, she had ensured that the choice, if it did arise, would not be hers to make.

CHAPTER.

FOURTEEN.

To drive to Galicia in two days would have been an exhausting experience under any circ.u.mstances. To do so in a battered Land Rover which transmitted every unevenness in the road as a bone-jangling jolt was, Derek discovered, to turn exhaustion into a form of torture. The effect was heightened by Frank Griffith's un-communicative nature. Try as Derek might to relieve the boredom of endless rattling kilometres along featureless French autoroutes by starting a conversation, Frank was not to be drawn. He would say no more than he already had about what they would do when they arrived. Aside from navigational necessity, he scarcely seemed willing to speak. His jaw was clenched as firmly as his hands were fixed upon the wheel and his eyes upon the road ahead. Their destination was all that mattered, its attainment all that concerned him. The rest was silence-and a hunched intensity Derek found increasingly disturbing.

Studying his companion in lengthy interludes of idle discomfort between such unconsoling road signs as TOURS 107-POITIERS 211, Derek began to regret the promise he had made. He knew why he had volunteered to come and he also knew how pitiful the reason was.

To impress Charlotte. To convince her of his loyalty. To demonstrate his love without declaring it. But what had any of that to do with a girl he had met only once? Or with an old man he could not trust because he could not fathom? Nothing. Nothing for sure and certain. Yet still he found himself in search of one along with the other. At first the impetuosity of what he had done had excited him. Now, left with too much time for thought and doubt, his self-confidence had all but vanished. From the flat grey horizons on every side, reality was encroaching.

They spent Sunday night at a motel near Bordeaux. From there Derek made his first scheduled telephone call to Charlotte. It was rea.s.suring to speak to her again, to remind himself there really was a sane and vital purpose to what he had embarked upon. But neither could find much to say. Both were waiting upon events. And it was for Derek to set those events in motion.

370.

R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

They set off again early the following morning and crossed the Spanish border well before midday. It was raining now and continued to do so as they drove west along the Cantabrian coast, the sky descending to meet them in black and churning cloudfuls. The sea, when they glimpsed it, was grey and wind-whipped, the countryside a misty switchback of dank green hills. This was not the Spain Derek had sub-consciously expected, not the arid sun-charred land of his Costa Blanca memories. The contrast depressed him still further. He felt cold and tired and faintly ill, hopelessly unfit for whatever lay ahead. Yet one glance at Frank told him it could not be avoided.

There was a gleam in the old man's eyes, a flush of colour in his cheeks. He showed no sign of fatigue or irresolution. And Derek knew he would not-until he had done what he meant to do.

Where Galicia began in their westward progress Derek could not have defined. But, as the rain intensified and they turned inland, the landscape and the settlements huddled within its creases acquired for him a sullen and ever less welcoming character. The patchwork fields and mud-choked farmyards, the ancient black-clad women labouring behind lethargic oxen, the stark concrete skeletons of buildings begun but never finished: all these offended his English sense of order and efficiency; and reminded him how far he had strayed from the world he understood. He did not want to be here and would secretly have given a great deal not to be. But here he nonetheless was, tasting the tomb-damp air and peering vainly through the curtain of rain.

They reached Santiago de Compostela in the gloom of late afternoon and approached the centre through narrow crowded streets. The stone buildings rearing on every side looked centuries old to Derek, but the students bustling between them seemed oblivious to the drip-ping gargoyles and lichen-rimmed archways. To them it was just a picturesque old university city, whereas to him it was a place of men-ace and uncertainty.

Weary and dispirited as he was, he was glad he had telephoned ahead from Bordeaux to book rooms at the best hotel, physical comfort offering the only kind of security he could hope to find. Frank had viewed this as a needless extravagance, but, since Derek was paying, he had grudgingly consented. The hotel in question, the Reyes Catolicos, was housed in an old pilgrim inn forming one side of the plaza at the heart of the city. Glancing along its gorgeously carved faade, then back to where the cathedral's still more intricately H A N D I N G L O V E.

371.

worked and vastly higher west front loomed through the mist, Derek felt awed and intimidated by such largesse of antiquity. He was not here to worship at the shrine of St James, nor even to admire the baroque architecture, but, without such a motive, his true purpose seemed foolish and inadequate, a fleeting delusion flying in the face of piety and wisdom.

If such thoughts crossed Frank's mind, he did not show it. No sooner had they stowed the Land Rover and booked in than he was quizzing the concierge in rusty Spanish about the exact location of Pazo de Lerezuela. A map was produced and directions given. The village of Lerezuela lay twenty kilometres south of the city and the pazo "muy cerca"-very close by. All too close, Derek could not help reflecting as they trailed behind the porter through moss-damp courtyards and echoing corridors to their adjacent rooms. He needed more time to adjust to his environment, more time to plan and prepare. But even if delay had been possible, Frank would have opposed it.

"Shall we meet for dinner?" Derek lamely enquired as they parted.

"No. I'll have them send me something. I don't want much-ex-cept a good night's sleep. We'll leave at nine in the morning."

"So early?"

"Why wait?"

"No . . . no reason."

"Then we'll leave at nine."

With which Frank closed his door, leaving Derek to unpack the little he had brought and wash away some of the grime of the journey before calling Charlotte.

Once again neither of them had much to report. Charlotte had telephoned Fithyan & Co. as planned, claiming to be Derek's cousin in Leicester, with whom he had been spending the weekend when struck down by influenza, a fiction which seemed certain to win him a few days' grace. For his part, he could only say they had arrived and would tomorrow seek the meeting with Delgado on which their hopes were pinned. Charlotte wished him luck and urged him as ever to be careful. He rang off in a manner he feared she might think abrupt, but it could not be helped. To say any more would have been to risk revealing just how deeply his misgivings ran.

With the Spanish hour for dining still some way off, he went to the bar and downed several bottles of the local beer without achieving the 372 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

faintest degree of intoxication. Trepidation and sobriety went hand in hand, he concluded, wandering out into the plaza and surveying the floodlit majesty of the cathedral from the shelter of a colonnade.

"Don't worry," he told himself. "Tomorrow we'll learn Delgado's dead. Or senile. Either way, not guilty. Of the kidnapping, that is. But then . . ." He rubbed his eyes and swore under his breath at the folly of what he had done. All this way and all this risk-of embarra.s.sment or dismissal or far far worse. And for what? Charlotte had not said she loved him. She had not even implied it. Yet it was for her sake that he stood alone in this city of rain and darkness. And for her sake he must remain.

CHAPTER.

FIFTEEN.

It was still raining when they set off the following morning, though somewhat more fitfully than the day before. The clouds rolled in ugly clumps around the hilltops and spilled along the valleys like drifting gunsmoke. South of Santiago, the countryside was a succession of mournful woodland and sponge-wet farmland from which the water drained in bubbling torrents beside and across the road. Far sooner than Derek had expected, they reached a dismal sprawl of dwellings not unlike several others they had pa.s.sed through but which, a mud-spattered sign proclaimed, was Lerezuela.

Frank pulled up in the centre-a row of shops whose modern concrete structures seemed to have worn less well than the ancient stone cottages of the outskirts-and entered a bar to seek directions.

A glimpse of the cavernous interior, where the flickering of a television revealed nothing save one pot-bellied customer propping up the counter, made Derek glad to wait outside, which he did not have to do for long.

"Close by, as the concierge said," Frank announced on his return.

"First right, second left. No more than a few kilometres."

"Did you mention Delgado's name?"

H A N D I N G L O V E.

373.

"No. But the barman did. With some slant of meaning I couldn't catch. He asked if Delgado was expecting us. When I shook my head, he laughed. Not humorously."

"What do you make of it?"

"Nothing-yet. Let's go and find out."

Their route took them out of the village along a narrow but well-maintained road between a conifer plantation on one side and a high stone wall on the other. At intervals, a coat of arms appeared, carved in the face of the wall, depicting a boar and a sea-horse supporting a quartered shield beneath a helm and crest. The Vasconcelez family, whose land Delgado had acquired by marriage, had evidently been of proud lineage.

This became even more apparent when, at a point where the road ahead deteriorated dramatically, a wide courtyard opened to their left, with a manicured lawn and a fountain at its centre. The boundary wall comprised one side of the yard, facing an ornate tree-bowered chapel. The third side was the colonnaded frontage of a large house, stone-built and terracotta-tiled, with tall balconied windows on two floors above the yard and ornately carved figures decorating the arches and bal.u.s.trades. The central arch was higher than the rest, disclosing a porch and a firmly closed pair of wooden doors.

Wealth and seclusion had suddenly revealed themselves where Derek had somehow thought only poverty and privation were to be found.

He was, for the moment, taken aback.

Not so Frank, who drove boldly into the yard, pulled up by the chapel and climbed out. He was already marching towards the entrance when Derek caught him up. "Remember," he cautioned breathlessly, "we must take this slowly."

"We must take it any way we can."

"But diplomatically. It's our best chance."

Frank cast him a sidelong glance by way of answer and walked on.

A sign fixed to the door ahead proclaimed PRIVADO-PROHIBIDO EN-TRAR, of which Derek required no translation. But there was a bell-pull beside it and Frank yanked at this without hesitation. No sound penetrated from the other side and Frank had raised his hand to ring again when a judas flap slid back for a second and was followed by the slipping of a bolt. Then a wicket-gate set in the right-hand door opened just wide enough to reveal a bulky figure dressed in jeans and a black polo-necked sweater. He was of medium height but broad-shouldered 374 R O B E R T G O D D A R D.

and muscular, with a blank intimidating face on which a Viva Zapata moustache did its best to conceal a substantial scar. He did not speak, but eyed them with interrogative coldness. There was absolutely no suggestion in his bearing of courtesy or welcome.

"Buenos dias," ventured Frank. "Senor Delgado, por favor."

The man did not reply. Behind him, across a cobbled yard, Derek could see another fountain and beyond that the clipped hedges and shrubs of a formal garden. Then, clanking its chain as it loped into view, there appeared a huge alsatian dog. Derek looked away before he caught its eye.

"Senor Delgado," Frank repeated. "El general."

The man's gaze narrowed. Then he said, in scarcely more than a mumble: "No est."

"Not in," murmured Frank. "To us, anyway. I'll ask when he's due back. That should reveal something. Cuando vuelve? "

The man shrugged.

"Hoy? Manana?"

Another shrug.

"Habla usted ingles?"

The man smiled. "S. I speak English. You are . . . Americanos? "

"No. But that doesn't matter. We must see Senor Delgado. It's very urgent. Muy importante."

"No, senor." The smile broadened. "It is muy impossible. Senor Delgado sees n.o.body."