The Chinese Egg (28 page)

“In the van.”

“How can we? At nights and everything? Where'll we sleep?”

“You'll see.”

“We don't have to stay in the van all the time, do we, Skinner? We'll go out for our meals, won't we?”

“You won't,” Skinner said.

“I'll have to get Linda's feeds warm,” Maureen said, feeling that no one could deny this.

“You'll do that in the van, too.”

“Won't I ever get out?”

Skinner didn't answer that and Maureen asked it again.

“You won't if you want to stay alive,” he said then.

“Won't there be anyone else? Only you and me and Linda all the time?”

He imitated her voice. “Only me and you and Linda. That's all. And if you aren't careful it'll end up only me. Got it?”

It wasn't even so much the words that made Maureen really frightened. She'd felt, like an animal, the threat of people under pressure, frightened themselves and therefore dangerous, while she'd been in Fred's mother's house. Now, from Skinner she could almost smell fear and violence. For the first time since she'd taken over the baby, she felt mortally afraid. Not just afraid of being hit, but afraid for her life. For the first time since they'd left London she dimly began to think about escape.

But Maureen's brain wasn't the sort which occupies itself with plans for anything, even at such a moment. Anyway, what could she do now, in the van, with Skinner right beside her and the baby in the back? And she was very, very tired. Before they were more than ten miles outside Greater London, Maureen slept.

She woke once or twice, generally when the van pulled up abruptly and she was thrown forward with a jerk. Once her head fell sideways on to Skinner's shoulder and he pushed it off. Once when she couldn't see in front of her, the windscreen looked like the window in a bathroom that you weren't meant to be able to see through. When she'd realized the van was still moving, she'd said, “Stop, Skinner, I'm frightened!” But he hadn't stopped,
though she could feel the van skidding about. He'd pulled at the knobs in front of him and then the wipers began to sweep across the windscreen and she could see out again. To her surprise they were right away from houses, there was just a big white sort of wall on one side, and on the other something grey and white and heaving and a whole lot of it. It took Maureen a minute to realize that this was the sea. She'd seen the sea several times when she'd gone with the school on days' outings, but she'd never seen it look like this before, so restless and angry it made her own stomach heave to look at it. She said, “Are we going to the seaside, Skinner?” but as usual he didn't answer, and after she'd looked at it for a bit they came to some houses and he turned away from the sea. They drove through a sort of town and past a church that had a clock on the tower and Maureen saw it was nearly four o'clock. This reminded her about the breakfast she hadn't had, and now the lunch. She'd have to give Linda her feed too. Skinner must have been hungry, because without her saying anything he drew up just past the shops and got out of the van. He said, “I'm getting something to eat. You stay there. If you move or say anything I'll do you.” Maureen sat quite still and didn't speak to anyone, and in five minutes Skinner was back with fish and chips and bottles of fizzy stuff and some chocolate. He drove a bit further till they were out of the town on a road that went a long way up a hill, and then he pulled up in a side road and they ate the food, and he let Maureen go out to go behind a bush which she needed terribly. The awful rain had nearly stopped by now.

When the van stopped moving Linda woke up. She seemed to have liked the movement, she'd been ever so quiet all the way, but now she started to cry.

“What'll I do about Linda's bottle?” Maureen asked Skinner.

“Give it to her if you have to. We can stay here for a bit.”

“But I'll have to have water to make it up. And warm it up.”

He showed her the inside of the van which she hadn't seen properly. Slightly comforted by the meal she'd just had, Maureen was quite interested. There was a paraffin stove, and a cupboard with crockery in it, even a tiny wash-basin. Two bunks and a flap table you could pull out from the wall. It was like a little house. If
she hadn't been so scared, and if she hadn't had to be there with Skinner, she could even have enjoyed it. There was water in two big bottles. She was able to feed Linda and change her, and after she'd been put back in the cot, the baby didn't go to sleep again, but lay and talked to herself. Maureen had heard her do this before, after she'd got better at knowing what to do for her, getting her wind up and that. She'd woken one morning in the beetly basement and heard at first what she'd thought was pigeons, and then she'd realized it wasn't birds, it was the baby making that cooing murmur. It sounded as if she was happy. How could she be happy in this van, with Skinner so nasty and not knowing what was going to happen to them? But, of course, being a baby, she wouldn't know about that. All she knew was that she'd had her feed and she hadn't got a pain because Maureen had brought her wind up for her, and she was clean and warm. It didn't take much to make a baby happy, then. Only things that she, Maureen, could do. It was wonderful, Maureen thought, to be able to make someone, even only a baby, happy so that she sang that funny, tuneless, wordless song to herself. Fancy being able to do that for anyone!

“Stop snivelling. You don't know when you're well off,” Skinner said.

She hadn't realized she was crying. But she couldn't explain to Skinner that it wasn't because she was miserable she was crying, it was thinking about the baby and being able to make her happy. Even though she herself wasn't happy at all.

They stayed quite a bit in this place. Maureen rather liked it, there were big green hills all round, very smooth. If only the rain hadn't started again she wouldn't have minded staying there, but presently Skinner said they'd got to move on, they'd got to find somewhere to park for the night before it got dark.

“Where'll we park for the night, Skinner?” Maureen asked.

“In a street where there's other cars,” Skinner said.

“Why not stay here? It's quiet,” Maureen said.

“And have some nosey cop come up to ask us why?”

He made her get in the back of the van after this. She lay down on a bunk and dozed, while the van drove on, she hadn't a clue where. Once or twice she woke up properly and felt the van sway
and shake, as if some giant hand had nudged it. She tried to look out of the little windows at the back, but it was raining again and she couldn't see anything. They stopped once or twice, and she heard the wind roar round the van and push it sideways, so then she knew what had nudged it before. They seemed to go up and down hill a lot, and then they went slowly and she could just make out through the windows that they were in a town. Presently the van stopped and didn't start up again. Skinner opened the door between the driver's seat and the back and said, “We're stopping here. I'm off for some food. You keep quiet.”

“Where are we, Skinner?” Maureen asked.

“Brighton.”

Brighton! Maureen was amazed. She'd heard of Brighton. Kitty had been there with Maureen's Dad. She'd said it was all lights and lots to do. She'd liked Brighton, wanted to go back. But all Maureen could see out of the front window was a long street of small houses, with lace curtains in the windows and cards stuck up on the frames. She read the nearest one with difficulty. It said
VACANCIES
. She didn't know what that meant.

“Isn't there sea at Brighton?” she asked.

“Enough to push you into so you wouldn't come back,” Skinner said.

There were lots of other cars parked in front of them, and some people walking along the street. Maureen felt glad there were people. It occurred to her now that perhaps she wouldn't have liked to be out in the country alone with Skinner with no one else who'd hear if she called out.

“Linda's asleep. Can't I come out too?” she asked.

“Didn't you understand? I said, No. You stay here. All the time. And if you've got to do another lot for the kid, you'd better do it now while you can see, 'cos you aren't going to get any lights when it's dark. The van's got to look empty, see?”

“But Skinner. . . .”

“What now?”

“I'll have to go to the toilet some time. How'll I manage that?” “You'll have to manage with the street when it's dark,” he said and left, locking her in. He didn't come back till a lot later, when she'd been asleep for a long time. She'd fed Linda, but there
wasn't anything for her to eat. He'd brought her a cold meat pie when he came back, and she was grateful even for that. She was grateful too that he got into the other bunk and went to sleep at once. He'd had something to drink, she could smell it on his breath. She lay awake for a little, still hungry and very frightened. But she still hadn't made up for the broken night she'd had before and presently she went to sleep too.

Sunday

There was an appeal on the nine o'clock news on Sunday for information from anyone who had noticed an unfamiliar van, or car, possibly with a London registration number, parked anywhere in the South of England. The description of the driver was detailed, but less was said about his companion. “Crazy. A couple with a baby and a London registration number! At this time of year! We can't possibly follow up every car near the coast. Fine weekend like this one, half the population of London's on its way to the sea,” one of Price's colleagues grumbled. And it seemed that he might be right. Information poured in and the force was overwhelmed and angered by the number of useless leads they'd been given. If they'd also been told the source of Price's knowledge of the van they might have been angrier still. “Crazy. I can't understand how an intelligent officer like you can be taken in by that couple of schoolchildren,” Andrew Wilmington said.

“We'd never have known about the ransom demand your wife tried to meet if it hadn't been for them,” Price said, sitting stiffly in the handsome library in Kensington Walk.

“And that wasn't much help, was it?”

“She might have handed over the money and not got the baby back.”

“There's no proof that they didn't mean to give her the baby back. And since your men frightened them off, that's something we shall never know.”

“There's also the possibility, which seems not to have occurred
to you, that she was in a very vulnerable position herself. If she'd really been there entirely alone, in that fairly lonely spot, what was to prevent them taking her off with them and asking you for double the amount?” He saw from Andrew Wilmington's face that this was a new idea to him. He added, “And in the children's account of this scene in the car by the sea yesterday, they told me there was a violent rainsquall. It was windy, too. Now when they told me that yesterday afternoon, the day in London had been bright and sunny. A bit, of wind, not much. But along the Sussex coast yesterday afternoon there were gusty winds and some quite heavy rainfall. It's details like that I find convincing. Against my better judgement, mind you.”

“I must remind you that there are such things as advance weather forecasts. They only had to listen to one of them to have a pretty good idea of what might happen.”

“You put more faith in these weather forecasts than I do. They're as often wrong as they are right. I checked on the forecasts yesterday up to midday, after which they certainly didn't hear one, because they were with me. The rain was quite unforeseen. The forecast for the whole of Southern England was dry and bright with moderate winds. The experts were taken by surprise, as they so often are.”

Andrew Wilmington said, “So. What next?”

“I would like to say emphatically that if there should be another ransom demand, I must be told. At once.”

“Certainly.”

“Since this lot obviously know that the phone in this house is monitored, they wouldn't come through to you here. Probably ask you to ring a call box number again, as they did your wife. In that case you will let us know all the details so that we can take the necessary steps.”

“I'll do that.”

“Meanwhile all we can do is to go on looking. I shall let you know any news we have as soon as possible.”

“Do you mean the news your psychic pair give you? Or what is so realistically called ‘hard news'?”

“I'll let you know anything I can,” Price said discreetly and left. Andrew Wilmington felt vaguely dissatisfied. He went into the
little sitting-room and found Sally sitting, as she usually did now, with a book in her hand. Not reading. Not doing anything. Just sitting. If she wasn't doing nothing, like this, she'd be engaged on some activity which she worked at feverishly. Turning out cupboards, going through old letters, rearranging books. Always looking lost and drawn and haggard. He'd hardly have recognized the girl he'd married.

“No news, darling,” he said quickly, before she could look at him with that awful questioning hope which made him feel so sick.

“Couldn't we go there, Andrew?”

“Where, darling?”

“Down to the coast. If that's where they think she is?”

“Darling! What use would it be us going? We haven't any idea where to look. Even if this ridiculous story of Price's were true, he hasn't a clue which bit of the coast it might be. What could we do there?”

A day or two ago she'd have argued this. Now she said, “No. I expect you're right,” and sank back into silence and immobility.

“I promise you if there's any reason to think one place is more likely than another, I'll go there straight away. I promise,” he said again, trying to engage her attention by any statement, however rash.