Authors: Merryn Allingham
Back in the sitting room, she slumped onto the stiff sofa and stared at the floral wallpaper. Peonies in this room, she noticed. At least they were a change from the ever-present roses, but the furniture was every bit as uncomfortable as she’d imagined. Several sad pictures drooped from their hanging chains:
The Monarch of the Glen, The Stag at Bay.
Someone had had a taste for Landseer and Scottish landscape. Her mind wandered over the conversation she’d just had. Corrigan was Grayson’s friend, so of course he was going to defend him. But he was right nonetheless. Grayson had proved the best of friends to her and none of this—Willa, Gerald—was his fault. She was the one who’d chosen to see it that way. She was the one who’d chosen to involve Grayson in the first place. If she hadn’t gone to Baker Street that day, they would never have met again. If she hadn’t asked him for help, he wouldn’t have put his career on the line to get those papers. And Gerald? Would he be dead? The man who killed him had done so not because of the papers, but because he suspected Gerald would disrupt whatever hideous plan he was concocting. So, yes, he would probably have died still.
Gerald’s face as she’d last seen it came clearly to mind. Pale, calm, stripped bare of its worry lines. Just that one round hole in the side of his head to suggest that all was not well. The bomb had torn his clothes to rags but left him whole. That at least had been a mercy. Her husband
was dead. He’d been dead once before and then come back from the grave. No possibility of a return this time though. Her marriage was finally over, but no matter how many times she said the words, they seemed to have no meaning. These last few days, she had been rubbed raw, her heart chewed to pieces and her emotions made so sharp they seemed to stab through her skin. Peace was what she craved, peace to go back to the hospital, back to the ward and her patients. She wondered when that would be, and hoped against hope she would not be long in this bleak house. Her thoughts were her only distraction and they were far from happy. She swung her legs up on the sofa and waited for the bell to ring.
I
t was several hours before she heard it. She must have fallen into an uneasy doze for she felt anything but rested. Mind and body ached in unison and the sleep had done nothing to make her feel better. The bell rung out and she counted. One long, two short peals. She staggered to her feet and tugged on the shoes she’d abandoned. She was cold, she realised, and wrapped her nurse’s cape tightly around her as she padded across the lino of the hall. The bolts had been a little stiff when she’d closed the door and, opening it, she had almost to wrench them free.
There was just the key to turn. ‘I’m getting there,’ she said loudly, in case Briant thought she’d gone back to sleep.
With a loud puff of air, the door slammed back towards her. A man stood on the threshold.
Not Briant, not Briant
, her mind drummed. Momentarily dazed, she stepped back and tried to shut the door in his face, but the man’s shoulders had already barricaded her in. She turned to run—to the bedroom, to the bathroom, anywhere with a lock. One black-gloved hand reached for her arm and yanked her back. Another circled her head and held her painfully close.
She kicked out at her assailant but it was useless. She was locked in his grasp. She saw him raise a hand and then felt a sharp tingle in her neck. The prick of a needle, she thought, and her eyes closed.
It was a pity about the girl, Sweetman reflected, as he loaded her body into the boot of his car. Up close she was pretty, very pretty, a sweet, delicate-looking woman. But he couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t allow himself to have qualms, not at this late stage. In the last few hours, the future he’d imagined for himself had changed dramatically. He’d been very clever. He no longer needed to die for the cause. No martyr’s death after all—he would do what he had to and flee. But, while the girl lived, there would always be danger since her evidence could hang him. He had to get her out of the way, somewhere so secure that no one could ride to her rescue. He’d fixed on the very place and it had the touch of genius about it. He wouldn’t need to kill her. Something in him baulked at that. He could just leave her there and time would do the necessary. She would probably never be found.
It was a stroke of luck that the red-haired man had taken her to this shabby house in Highgate. More than luck; it could not have been more fortuitous. By following them, he’d learned exactly where the crucial meeting with Patel was to take place. And when. He’d thought it would be tomorrow at Baker Street and had intended to keep watch
there, once he’d dealt with the girl. But he’d have been badly wrong-footed. They’d panicked. They’d changed the timing of the meeting and the location. Intercepting her protector had proved a masterstroke, and now he had all the information he needed. Of course when he’d followed the car, he’d no idea who the driver was or where he was going, but when they’d drawn up outside the house, he’d seen the man look this way and that, checking on the neighbourhood before he produced a key from his pocket. The red-haired man was no sympathetic passer-by, as he’d first thought. And he was no friend either. Sweetman had established that from the start. In which case he had to be an intelligence officer, not the one he’d seen her meet before, but a colleague. And this was a safe house. It had been this man’s bad luck to be chosen to drive her, but whatever the woman had told him, it would be going no further. As soon as the SIS man left, he’d followed him from a distance. It hadn’t taken long to catch him alone on a road and ram him into an obliging lamp post. That had been an excellent move. The man was disabled, possibly dead by now, but what was certain was that he wouldn’t be contacting his office any time soon to pass on information.
And he’d had even more luck when he’d slipped from his car and walked over to the still steaming vehicle. If anyone turned into the road inopportunely, he had his excuse ready. He had stopped to help. But no one came and he was able to search uninterrupted. A security badge was the first treasure he found and then an encrypted message. It had
to be about the meeting and it hadn’t taken long to work out. Code-breaking was his speciality and he soon had the time and the place. Midnight. They must be taking the threat from him seriously, and so they should. He would take the man’s jacket as well. That was the icing on the cake. It would allow him to survive and return to India a hero. It was a pity about the red hair, but if he wore his trilby pulled low, what guard would know the difference in the pitch black? In no time he would be on his way to the coast and to freedom.
Daisy lifted her head and retched. The side of her neck felt sore and swollen, and whatever she’d had pumped into her was making her nauseous. She tried to prop herself into a sitting position, her hands grappling against icy flagstones. A sheet of steel cut through her forehead and her stomach was heaving. She knew she was going to be very sick. A hand came out of nowhere and shoved her roughly against a wall and she felt its dank plaster seep into her back. She tried to prise her eyelids open, but there was nothing to see; the world was coloured black. Gradually, though, her eyes began to pick out shapes and she realised that the faintest sliver of light was percolating from the very top of the wall opposite. It hurt to move her head, but she tried very slowly. First left, then right. She made out two, three large shapes squatting immobile in this cold, cold room. Large stone shapes, coffin shapes.
They
were
coffins. Or at least tombs of some kind. She was lying in a morgue.
‘You are in a mausoleum,’ a voice said, half flint, half amused.
She tried to fathom where the voice had come from and felt, rather than saw, a figure moving. Then, out of the blackness, a man’s face was hanging over her. She could make nothing of his features but she knew him nevertheless.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Rohan Sweetman, as I’m sure you know.’
‘I don’t know. How could I? And what do you want with me?’ She tried to sound braver than she felt.
The man said nothing.
‘Why am I here?’ she repeated. ‘I’ve done nothing to harm you.’
‘I will be the judge of that, Miss Driscoll. It is Miss Driscoll, isn’t it? I think I heard the name from one of your companions.’ He spoke with the very slightest trace of an accent, but it was one she couldn’t place. ‘You are here because you recognised me today. Need I remind you? You know far too much about me, and you cannot be so foolish as to think I would allow you to roam free and tell your tales.’
What tales? she thought. That she might be able to identify him as the man she’d seen in Kingsway? There was no point in assuring him that she’d hardly seen the kidnapper, and had described him to no one. He wouldn’t believe her.
She steeled herself to fight. ‘What if I’ve already told my tale?’ she taunted. ‘Isn’t it a little late to imprison me?’
‘That has been dealt with. Whatever information you passed to the man, he will bother us no more. And my plan will go ahead.’
What man was he talking of? Grayson? Mike Corrigan? They knew no more than she, but in her captor’s twisted mind, they were a threat to be destroyed. She felt even sicker. ‘What have you done?’
‘We will not discuss it. We will not discuss anything. I intend to remain here a while longer and silence is necessary.’
His voice mesmerised her. She tried to work out where she’d heard a similar inflection. It wasn’t a true Indian accent. No, not Indian, she thought, but Anglo-Indian. When she’d lived in Jasirapur, she’d had few dealings with Anglo-Indians—she’d been strongly advised to keep her distance. The British refused to consider them social equals and the Indians despised them for not being sufficiently Indian. Unenviably, they were a group caught in the middle.
She decided to disobey his injunction. ‘You’re an Anglo-Indian, aren’t you?’
‘I’m an Indian,’ he said harshly.
‘I don’t think so.’
His hand shot out and grabbed her arm, twisting it until she cried out. ‘You would do well not to anger me, Miss Driscoll. No one will hear your cries.’
Her bravado collapsed under his assault. ‘Where are we?’ Her voice faltered a little. ‘And what have I ever done to hurt you?’
‘We are in a cemetery, a very large cemetery. And you are here because you have chosen to involve yourself in business that is not yours.’
‘You’re wrong. I haven’t.’ Her arm was still throbbing, but her stomach had settled a little and the pain in her head was gradually clearing.
‘Dear me, you do have a tendency to contradict. Really you would do well not to annoy me further.’
‘I’m speaking the truth.’ Her voice had grown stronger. ‘I have no notion what your business might be.’ That wasn’t strictly true but if the SIS had no clear idea of what this man was planning, how could she?
‘You were intimate with the man who lived in Ellen Street. You were seen talking to him on a number of occasions.’
‘That’s hardly unexpected since he was my husband.’
‘Your husband?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘Yes, my husband. I was helping him to leave the country.’
‘He was a spy.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
She didn’t care how much she upset him, since it was plain now that she had nothing to lose. His plan was becoming clearer and it was horrible. He had brought her to this place of the dead where nobody visited, where
nobody would think to search, and he would leave her here to die—unless he killed her first. That would almost be preferable.
‘Ridiculous,’ she repeated. ‘Gerald was no spy.’
She heard the man moving around a few feet away. He seemed agitated, but she had no idea why. She couldn’t think he felt any remorse for the murders he’d committed. It was probably that, having decided Gerald was a spy, he didn’t like to be proved wrong. Fanatics, she imagined, rarely did.
‘I’m sure he knew the special intelligence officer,’ he was insisting. ‘And you knew him too.’
‘The officer is an old acquaintance of ours from India. He was helping Gerald to get papers that would allow my husband to travel. The papers had just arrived when you killed him. There was no need to kill him. No need at all. He was on his way to America.’
Her abductor stopped pacing. ‘That is what you English call
water under the bridge.
Your husband had to die,’ he said with decision. ‘He saw something he shouldn’t, something that would have endangered my mission.’
‘You killed your friend, too,’ she continued to needle. ‘Did he endanger your mission as well?’ She couldn’t see how angering this man might help her escape, but she had no other weapon.
‘He was no friend.’
‘Your fellow spy then.’
‘He was useless.’
‘You mean he didn’t like your plan.’
‘How would you know? You have no inkling of what I intend, or so you claim.’ He had come closer now, and bent his face to peer down at her.
‘I haven’t, but I imagine you don’t take too well to people who disagree with you.’
‘He would have ruined everything.’ The man had forgotten his vow of silence. He wanted an audience, it seemed. ‘He had to go. He was mediocre.’
‘And you are brilliant? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘I am a patriot. That’s all you need to know.’ He straightened up and began to walk away. ‘We will stop talking now.’
But she refused. ‘If you’re a patriot, why aren’t you in India, helping to defend your homeland from the Japanese?’
‘The Japanese are our friends.’ He’d been stung by her remark. ‘They will help us. They will help us to independence.’
‘If you think that, you’re really not as brilliant as you claim. The Japanese aren’t your friends. They will treat India as a pawn.’
‘As the British have done for centuries, you mean.’
It was her turn to fall silent. Her last conversation with Anish, her very last, sprang painfully alive. He, too, had been convinced the Japanese would bring freedom to his country. It seemed strange, though, that an Anglo-Indian was so committed to the same cause. Unless his real purpose was something quite different. Revenge possibly,
retribution? An Anglo-Indian might easily bear a personal grudge against the Raj. But such a motive was a far cry from Anish’s clarion call to freedom.