The Gropes (13 page)

The next morning Horace emptied the contents of the bucket out the porthole and got out the map of Europe he had bought in London. He had to face up to the fact that he was entirely without sea legs and the thought of enduring another night in such awful conditions and in such a wretched condition was more than he could stomach. He would jump ship at Holland and might still keep his route secret if he carried on the journey via the various railway lines that would be most unlikely for any long-distance traveller to take. But the map was not detailed enough to show any railway lines other than
the main ones carrying high-speed trains between large cities.

Cutting his losses, Horace decided to head for Berlin by the most circuitous route he could find. Ditching most of his luggage he disembarked and only got to the city a week after he’d started out from London. On arrival he immediately changed a large sum of pounds into euros at a number of different banks and exchanges. That evening he caught a bus into the eastern part of the city which had been in the Russian zone and spent the night in the cheapest room in the cheapest hotel he could find. He had decided to alternate between buses and trains, and take a zigzag route back out of Germany. Where he would end up he had no idea. His sole object was to prevent anyone tracing him and wherever he stayed he intended to give a different name. Best of all he bought a passport from a drunk Englishman who’d come to Munich to watch a football match and followed this up by buying a second one from a man with a beard in Salzburg. He spent two fruitless days cultivating his whiskers but in the event he didn’t have to use either of them to successfully pass the border crossing into Italy.

At Grope Hall Esmond had no idea what a furore his and Belinda Ponson’s disappearance had aroused.

This was partly because he had no way of knowing where he was and partly because he was still recovering from his alcoholic hangover and the sleeping pills he was given each night. They weren’t strong ones but they were more than enough to make him dozy. Being called Joe Grope made things worse and having to call Belinda darling instead of auntie didn’t make the situation any more comprehensible. Every now and then he climbed off the bed to look out the window in the hope of seeing something he could understand, like houses, only to be confronted by endless fields of rough and tufted grass with, in the far distance,
what appeared to be a grey stone wall. Nearer the house there were flocks of sheep munching away and down below the window pigs had turned the ground into a large patch of muddy earth with their snouts and hooves. More alarmingly there seemed to be two black bulls roaming the grounds completely untethered.

There was no sound of the passing cars he was accustomed to in Selhurst Road. Only the occasional gust of wind shook the glass as he stared out. Occasionally he thought he could hear the murmur of voices coming from the room below. One at least seemed to be that of a man because it was deeper and less frequent than that of what he took to be the women, though he couldn’t be sure. The floor was too thick and deadened by moss for him to hear much but every now and again he could definitely make out laughter, albeit brief laughter, before the discussion or perhaps the argument resumed.

In fact, what remained of the Grope family – Myrtle and Belinda – were mostly discussing the problem of getting rid of the old Ford Belinda had driven up in from Essexford. It was still in the barn but on the off-chance it was spotted it would provide a very good clue for someone to pass on to the police. Belinda had already removed the number plates with the help of Old Samuel who had obliterated the numbers with the flat head of a large hatchet but getting rid of the car itself was far more difficult.

‘We could always drive it down the drift mine and bury it out of sight under tons of soil from the roof,’ Old Samuel suggested.

‘And where are we going to get the coal we need for the stove if we block the main tunnel to the coal face?’ asked Myrtle.

‘Oh, there are lots of side tunnels with no coal left in them. All we’ve got to do is drive into one of those and then bring the roof down.’

‘And if someone starts digging through it, what then?’

‘Barbed wire. Lots of it,’ said Old Samuel, getting quite carried away at the thought of it. ‘Rolls of it going back under the roof fall for twenty yards. Of course, we could have a locked iron gate as well to stop people stealing coal.’

‘But no one ever comes down past the bulls and the dogs.’

‘True, but just in case …’

‘Anyway, how are you going to bring the roof down?’ asked Belinda.

‘With explosives.’

‘What explosives?’

‘Never you mind. You wouldn’t want to know,’ Old Samuel sniggered. ‘But I’m going to need the young fellow’s help.’

Excited by the thought of at long last using his stockpile of explosives Samuel hurried from the room tugging the door shut behind him.

Once they knew they were alone the women began to discuss Esmond’s future.

‘Now about this marriage,’ said Myrtle. ‘It will take place in the chapel. And if he doesn’t give you girl babies, we’ll send him back to his mother and father in Croydon and look for another one.’

‘Or he can stay on here,’ Belinda said hastily, blanching at the thought of Esmond going home and telling either his mother or his Uncle Albert where he had been held captive and who had taken him there. ‘We need more men to work the farm and there’s lots of space here in between the bulls and the sheep for lurking. Not that he’ll have much time for that. What he doesn’t know about farming and mining Old Samuel can teach him.’

At this both women cackled loudly and Esmond, listening from above, wondered once again just what the joke could be.

At Essexford Police Station, Albert needed no teaching: he had already learnt that it didn’t pay to demand to have his lawyer present when he was being questioned as a suspected terrorist and a murderer of two people into the bargain.

It was made worse by his lawyer being a former suitor of the woman he was supposed to have killed. The superintendent himself had explained the situation to him and the lawyer had suggested they knock the truth out of ‘that shit of a murdering bastard’. The superintendent shared his opinion. No one apart from the police knew that Albert Ponson was in custody. The newspapers were having a field day writing about the presumed explosion at a
heavily armoured house and lost no time in linking it with al-Qaeda as a storage place for bomb-making materials.

In the meantime the house had been sheathed in an enormous blue tent and more police had been brought in to keep the public as far away as possible. There were yellow ribbons stretched across the road and men and women in white jumpsuits were examining every inch of the interior. Samples of blood from both the bungalow and the DIY slaughterhouse were undergoing analysis and the extent of gore at the latter site had excited the police into believing that this was a quite appallingly organised crime.

The mixture of various animal bloods made the police work exceedingly difficult. They took samples to the top forensic laboratory where even world-renowned experts found it difficult to distinguish between the DNA of animals and that of slaughtered humans or even those who had merely cut themselves in their amateurish effort to kill their struggling beasts.

‘Whoever thought up this conglomeration of blood certainly knew exactly what he was doing. I’ve never come across anything like it in my life,’ said the head of the forensics team.

Much the same could be said for Albert Ponson. He’d never known what it was like to be cross-examined by a superintendent who had come up the hard way from an ordinary copper and who was brutally ambitious.
And who was still suffering twinges from a badly stitched forehead.

‘You bloody well wait. I’m going to teach you to kick me in the balls twice,’ Albert squealed, after he’d been kicked there the second time.

‘Hardly, mate. I won’t be around by the time you come out of prison. Like in forty years. Wrap your head around that one, you murderous terrorist! Come to that, you’ll be lucky to be released in your own lifetime. We’ve got some other charges against you.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like killing two of my men and maiming three others when that roof came down.’

‘But I didn’t do that!’ shouted Albert, seriously worried now. ‘I told you the front would come off when you pulled the gate down.’

‘Did you now?’ said the superintendent and turned to the chief inspector. ‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Of course he didn’t, the lying bastard. He said he couldn’t get out and with all that bulletproof metal and glass we couldn’t get in. We were just trying to help the sod. And where’s his wife and that youngster Esmond, I’d like to know?’

‘Dead as like as not. His missus must have known too much and may have tried to blackmail him. He killed her first no doubt, and then he tried to bump his nephew off with an overdose of alcohol. Didn’t just try either. Forensic says there was enough vomit on that carpet to kill a hippopotamus. Whisky, brandy,
just about every booze, including absinthe, you can think of. Talk about drinking the poor bastard into an early grave.’

‘That’s a bloody lie,’ shouted Albert. ‘I never gave the brute any absinthe.’

The superintendent grinned.

‘Didn’t give him any absinthe. Caught you that time. Meaning you gave him just about every other hard liquor in the house. That would be plenty enough to do his liver in. I know it would finish mine just looking at the empty bottles lying about the floor. Dear God and I’ve got to go and question the poor lad’s loony mother. Just keep this swine awake and go on giving him hell.’

The superintendent left Albert’s cell and dawdled down to the hospital, fingering his bandaged forehead. He certainly wasn’t looking forward to telling Vera that her darling Esmond had disappeared and was almost certainly dead.

To his continued befuddlement, Esmond had been set to work at the end of the week. He was helping Old Samuel in the side shaft of the coal mine. ‘You bore two holes in the roof with this,’ Old Samuel told him, passing over a large hand drill. ‘And I’ll get the dynamite ready.’

‘Dynamite? Where did you get dynamite?’

‘Found it. Must have been left over from when they first began to dig for coal. They had to use it because it wasn’t possible to get a railway track through the rock. I’ve kept it dry far away from the Hall where no one would find it.’

‘But isn’t it dangerous?’

‘I reckon not. I sealed it in a watertight container.
Anyway, we’ll see if it’s still good. Now you fetch the stepladder first – you aren’t tall enough to reach up there – and then drill two holes in the roof.’

Esmond did as he was told and presently was busy with a drill.

‘What’s next?’ he asked when he’d made the holes Old Samuel wanted.

Old Samuel had fetched a big china basin and was sitting on a box outside ladling gunpowder from the basin into a couple of twelve-bore cartridges from which a thin copper wire protruded. The wire came from a drum and when he had measured fifty yards he knotted the wire together. After that he fetched the sticks of dynamite and with the aid of the ladder put them up in the holes in the roof with the cartridge cases wedged underneath them.

‘That ought to do the trick,’ he said as they went out into the yard. ‘I don’t see that rock staying up there much longer. Now stop lurking around the place and go and bring the old Ford down here.’

Esmond was fascinated. He’d always wanted to blow something up. He went back to the barn and fetched the old Ford. It fitted easily into the tunnel and while Old Samuel’s back was turned Esmond climbed onto the bonnet and carefully checked that the cases were fully pressed up into the holes he’d drilled. In fact, they fitted exactly and only one of the two needed extra wedging with a sliver of wood. Meanwhile, Old Samuel had fetched an electric
generator and was waiting for Esmond, whom he called Joe or Mr Grope, to help him bring down some bales of barbed wire.

‘Not that we’ll need it but it’s best to be on the safe side. We’ll explode the roof first to make sure the powder works as it should do. After that we may have to get an iron gate. That will deter people coming in, not that anyone’s likely to. Those black bulls keep them away from the house in any case. Oh no, Grope Hall is known for being a place to avoid. From what I’ve heard in the kitchen you’re safe here. Mind you, no man has ever got away from here unless they want him to, “they” being them in the kitchen.’

‘I don’t want to,’ said Esmond, surprising himself with the sudden realisation. He’d always had a hankering for blowing things up and he’d discovered how much he enjoyed looking after the pigs. Above all he felt free. The thought of going back to the house in Croydon sickened him. Out here, wherever ‘here’ was, he felt he could be himself instead of having his mother suffocating him and calling him her darling, never mind his father attacking him with a carving knife. Looking back over his life he was conscious that he had never for a moment really known who he was. Here in this wild countryside he felt he finally did. Even if he wasn’t entirely certain quite what he was called.

‘Might as well see if the cartridges work,’ said Old Samuel and attached the main copper wire to the electric generator. ‘Stand by, I’m going to start it now.’

He turned the generator on, and a dull rumble came from the side shaft along with a cloud of powdered earth. When it had cleared they went in and peered at the result of this improvised explosion. There was no sign of the old Ford.

‘Better get the flashlight, Joe. It looks as if the whole roof is down. Mind you, that will save us using the barbed wire.’

All the same Old Samuel was taking no chances. That night he painted a large warning notice which read ‘DANGER. BEWARE FURTHER ROOF FALLS’ and fixed it to a post beside the entrance.

‘That ought to do the trick,’ he said.

And so for the first time since his arrival, Esmond was given no sleeping pill and slept happily.

The same couldn’t be said of Vera. By the time the superintendent returned to the hospital she was, to put it mildly, distraught but had recovered sufficiently to ask questions and to try to answer some. The inspector, on the other hand, was determined to get his own back for her assault on him and for having ten stitches in his head.