Bonecrack - Страница 29

But his focus shifted to somewhere behind me and the smile changed and disintegrated, first into a deprecating smirk and then into plain apprehension.

I turned round.

Enso stood inside the small white railed enclosure.

Enso, staring at me with the towering venom of the dispossessed.

I stared back. Nothing else to do. But for the first time, I feared I couldn't contain him.

For the first time, I was afraid.

I dare say it was asking for trouble to work at the desk in the oak room after I'd seen round the stables and poured myself a modest scotch. But this time it was a fine light evening on the last day in April, not midnight in a freezing February.

The door opened with an aggressive crash and Enso walked through it with his two men behind him, the stony faced familiar Carlo and another with a long nose, small mouth and no evidence of loving-kindness.

Enso was accompanied by his gun, and the gun was accompanied by its silencer.

'Stand up' he said.

I slowly stood.

He waved the gun towards the door.

'Come,' he said.

I didn't move.

The gun steadied on the central area of my chest. He handled the wicked looking thing as coolly, as familiarly, as a toothbrush.

'I am close to killing you,' he said in such a way that I saw no reason not to believe him. 'If you do not come at once, you will go nowhere.'

This time there were no little jokes about only killing people if they insisted. But I remembered; and I didn't insist. I moved out from behind the desk and walked woodenly towards the door.

Enso moved back to let me pass, too far away from me for me to jump him. But with the two now barefaced helpers at hand, I would have had no chance at all if I had tried.

Across the large central hall of Rowley Lodge the main front door stood open. Outside, through the lobby and the further doors, stood a Mercedes. Not Alessandro's. This one was maroon, and a size larger.

I was invited inside it. The American ex-rubber face drove. Enso sat on my right side in the back, and Carlo on the left. Enso held his gun in his right hand, balancing the silencer on his rounded knee, and his fingers never relaxed. I could feel the angry tension in all his muscles whenever the moving car swayed his weight against me.

The American drove the Mercedes northwards along the Norwich road, but only for a short distance. Just past the Limekilns and before the bridge over the railway line he swung off to the left into a small wood, and stopped as soon as the car was no longer in plain sight of the road.

He had stopped on one of the regular and often highly populated walking grounds. The only snag was that as all horses had to be off the Heath by four o'clock every afternoon, there was unlikely to be anyone at that hour along there to help.

'Out,' Enso said economically; and I did as he said.

There was a short pause while the American, who seemed to be known as Cal to his friends, walked around to the back of the car and opened the boot. From it he took first a canvas grip, which he handed to Carlo. Next he produced a long darkish grey gaberdine raincoat, which he put on although the weather was as good as the forecast. Finally he picked out with loving care a Lee Enfield 303.

Protruding from its underside was a magazine for ten bullets. He very deliberately worked the bolt to bring the first of them into the breach. Then he pulled back the short lever which locked the firing mechanism in the safety position.

I looked at the massive rifle which he handled so carefully yet with such accustomed precision. It was a gun to frighten with as much as to kill, though from what I knew of it, a bullet from it would blow a man to pieces at a hundred yards, would pierce the brick walls of an average house like butter, would penetrate fifteen feet into sand, and if unimpeded would carry accurately for five miles. Compared with a shotgun, which wasn't reliably lethal at a range of more than thirty yards, the Lee Enfield 303 was a dambuster to a peashooter. Compared with the silenced pistol, which couldn't be counted on even as far as a shotgun, it gave making a dash for it over the Heath as much chance of success as a tortoise in the Olympics.

I raised my eyes from the source of these unprofitable thoughts and met the unwinking gaze of its owner. He was obscurely amused, enjoying the effect his pet had had on me. I had never as far as I knew met an assassin before; but without any doubt, I knew then.

'Walk along there,' Enso said, pointing with his pistol up the walking ground. So I walked, thinking that a Lee Enfield made a lot of noise, and that someone would hear, if they shot me with it. The only thing was, the bullet travelled one and a half times as fast as sound, so that you'd be dead before you heard the bang.

Cal had calmly put the big gun under the long raincoat and was carrying it upright with his hand through what was clearly a slit, not a pocket. From even a very short distance away, one would not have known he had it with him.

Not that there was anyone to see. My gloomiest assessments were quite right: we emerged from the little wood on to the narrow end of the Railway Land, and there wasn't a horse or a rider in sight.

Across the field, alongside the railway, there was a fence made of wooden posts with a wooden top rail and plain wire strands below. There were a few bushes bursting green round about, and a calm peaceful late spring evening sunshine touching everything with red gold.

When we reached the fence, Enso said to stop.

I stopped.

'Fasten him up,' he said to Carlo and Cal; and he himself stayed quietly pointing his pistol at me while Cal laid his deadly treasure flat on the ground and Carlo unzipped the canvas hold-all.

From it he produced nothing more forbidding than two narrow leather belts, with buckles. He gave one of them to Cal, and without allowing me the slightest hope of escape, they turned my back towards the fence and each fastened one of my wrists to the top wooden rail.

It didn't seem much. It wasn't even uncomfortable, as the rail was barely more than waist high. It just seemed professional, as I couldn't even turn my hands inside the straps, let alone slide them out.

They stepped away, behind Enso, and the sunlight threw my shadow on the ground in front of me- Just a man leaning against a fence on an evening stroll.

Away in the distance on my left I could see the cars going over the railway bridge on the Norwich road, and further still, down towards Newmarket on my right, there were glimpses of the traffic in and out of the town.

The town, the whole area, was bursting with thousands of visitors to the Guineas meeting. They might as well have been at the South Pole. From where I stood, there wasn't a soul within screaming distance.

Just Enso and Carlo and Cal.

I had watched Cal in his efforts on my right wrist, but it seemed to me shortly after they had finished that it was Carlo who had been rougher.

I turned my head and understood why I thought so. He had somehow turned my arm over the top of the rail and strapped it so that my palm was half facing backwards. I could feel the strain taking shape right up through my shoulder and I thought at first he had done it by accident.

Then with unwelcome clarity I remembered what Dainsee had said: the easiest way to break a bone is to twist it, to put it under stress.

Oh, Christ, I thought: and my mind cringed.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I said, 'I thought this sort of thing went out with the Middle Ages.'

Enso was not in the mood for flippant comment.

Enso was stoking himself up into a proper fury.

'I hear everywhere today on the racecourse that Tommy Hoylake is going to win the Two Thousand Guineas on Archangel. Everywhere, Tommy Hoylake, Tommy Hoylake.'

I said nothing.

'You will correct that. You will tell the newspapers that it is to be Alessandro. You will let Alessandro ride Archangel on Saturday.'

Slowly I said, 'Even if I wanted to, I could not put Alessandro on the horse. The owner will not have it.'

'You must find a way,' Enso said. 'There is to be no more of this blocking of my orders, no more of these tactics of producing unsurmountable reasons why you are not able to do as I say. This time, you will do it. This time you will work out how you can do it, not how you cannot.'

I was silent.

Enso warmed to his subject.

'Also you will not entice my son away from me.'

'I have not.'

'Liar.' The hatred flared up like magnesium and his voice rose half an octave. 'Everything Alessandro says is Neil Griffon this and Neil Griffon that and Neil Griffon says, and I have heard your name so much that I could cut- your- throat.' He was almost shouting as he bit out the last three words. His hands were shaking, and the gun barrel wavered round its target. I could feel the muscles tighten involuntarily in my stomach, and my wrists jump uselessly against the straps.

He took a step nearer and his voice was loud and high.

'What my son wants, I will give him. I- I- will give him. I will give him what he wants.'

'I see,' I said, and reflected that comprehending the situation went no way at all towards getting me out of it.

'There is no one who does not do as I say,' he shouted. 'No one. When Enso Rivera tells people to do things, they do them.'

Whatever I said was as likely to enrage as to calm him, so I said nothing at all. He took a further step near me, until I could see the glint of gold-capped back teeth and smell the sweet heavy scent of his after-shave.

'You too,' he said. 'You too will do what I say. 'There is no one who can boast he disobeyed Enso Rivera. There is no one alive who has disobeyed Enso Rivera.' The pistol moved in his grasp and Cal picked up his Lee Enfield, and it was quite clear what had become of the disobedient.