14

If they didn’t speak,” he asked her, “how did they find out who you all were?”

There were dark smudges under her eyes and lines around her mouth he didn’t think had been there before. But the shaking had stopped. Her thin hands lay calm in her lap. And her voice was steady.

“After the Struthers were brought in, Tattoo came back and gave us each a bit of paper. They were torn-off scraps of a lined writing pad. He didn’t say anything, but as I’ve said, none of them ever did. Kitty Struther was lying on the bed crying and moaning that she wanted to go away on her holiday. It was bizarre. There we were in that awful situation and she kept whining about her holiday that had been ruined. Tattoo just put her bit of paper beside her, but her husband picked it up and filled it in for her.

“It just said ‘name,’ which we took to mean they wanted our names. Owen Struther said they were criminals and terrorists and he wasn’t doing anything to gratify criminals but when Roxane told him how they’d hit her—she had a great bruise on the side of her face by that time—he did it all the same. He said he’d compromise for his wife’s sake. We all wrote our names down and after a while Tattoo came back and collected them.”

“You didn’t tell him who you were?”

She looked at him inquiringly. “I wrote down ‘Dora Wexford,’ if that’s what you mean. Oh, I see. I didn’t say I was married to you. I suppose I thought they’d know that—but no, maybe not.”

How many people would recognize his name? Not all that many. True, in the past he had several times appeared on television in connection with previous cases, to appeal for witnesses, for help from the public, but no one remembers the names of policemen in these broadcasts. No one remembers the names of policemen who get their pictures in the papers.

“Remember they never spoke to us, Reg,” she said. “And on the whole we didn’t speak to them much. Well, Roxane spoke to them. And the first time they brought us food Kitty said thank you and that made Roxane laugh, only Tattoo got hold of her by the shoulders and shook her till she stopped. But the rest of us hardly said a word to them. I don’t think they ever knew the investigating officer was my husband.”

They did by Friday afternoon, he thought, they found out, and that’s why they let her go. It was too much for them, the idea of having his wife among the hostages, a hassle they could do without. It must have come as a shock to them. Besides, releasing her was a sure way of getting their message to him. But how had they found out?

“You’ve said how Tattoo struck Roxane Masood when she tried to attack him and Rubber Face, right? Why didn’t he or they strike Kitty Struther?”

Dora considered. “Kitty didn’t attack him, she only screamed and yelled.”

“She spat at him. Most people would find that pretty inflammatory. Later on Tattoo got hold of Roxane and shook her and that was only for laughing when Kitty thanked him for the food.”

“Well, I don’t know, Reg, I can’t answer that. I know they didn’t like Roxane. You see, she was trouble from the start. Owen Struther talked a lot about not doing anything conciliatory, ‘not giving any quarter to the enemy’ was his phrase, he wasn’t old enough to have been in the Second World War, though he talked as if we were all prisoners of war, but it was Roxane who put up more resistance than any of us. Not that first time but the second evening we had food brought, it was the Driver and Rubber Face, she took one look at it and said, ‘What’s this filth?’ and threw it on the floor.

“It was cold baked beans and bread, quite edible really if you’re hungry and we were, but she threw it on the floor. Rubber Face hit her again and she was going to fight back, it was horrible, but this time Owen Struther intervened, and they stopped. He didn’t do much, just told them to stop and put his hand on Roxane’s shoulder. Anyway, I suppose he had an authoritative manner or something and it was effective. Kitty started crying again and he sat with her, stroking her head and holding her hand. Then Tattoo came in and cleared up the mess on the floor.”

“You all slept in the basement room that night?”

“At about ten Rubber Face and Tattoo came in, switched off the light, and took the bulb out of the socket. Oh, and they did the same in the washroom. They always came in pairs, by the way. After all, we were five, although I don’t suppose Kitty or I could have done much. It was very dark in there after, though after a while a little light filtered in through the rabbit hutch on the window.”

“Artificial light, you mean?”

“Light that might have been from a street lamp or the outside light on a house or a porch light. Not the moon, though we did get moonlight on the Thursday night. There was a blanket on each bed but no pillows. It wasn’t cold. We none of us took our clothes off—how could we? Well, I took off my skirt and jacket. One thing that will make you laugh …”

“Really?” he said. “I doubt it.”

“It will, Reg. I’d got a toothbrush in my handbag. They took my bag away next day but I had it then. I’d bought three new tubes of toothpaste the day before and it was one of those offers you get everywhere now, buy three and you get a free toothbrush with a small tube of toothpaste, all in a plastic case for traveling. Well, I don’t know why, but I’d put this in my handbag and there it was. We all shared it. If anyone had ever told me I’d share my toothbrush with four strangers I’d never have believed them.

“We all lay there in the dark and Owen Struther started talking about its being the first duty of a prisoner to escape. There was no way out of the washroom, so the main door remained and the window with its bars and its rabbit hutch, but he said the window was a possibility. In the morning he’d examine the window.

“Ryan Barker had hardly said a word while the light was on, but he seemed to gain a bit of courage in the dark. Anyway, he said he’d like to try to escape and he’d help. Owen said, ‘Good man,’ or something equally daft and Ryan said his dad had been a soldier. It was as if he was talking to himself in the dark. He said his dad had been a soldier in some war, he didn’t say which war then, and had died for his country. It was quite strange hearing him say that in the dark. ‘My dad died for his country.’

“Anyway, Kitty was crying again. She wanted Owen to ‘hold her,’ she said, which was a touch embarrassing for the rest of us, and anyway he couldn’t. Those beds were only two feet wide. She lay there moaning that he had to care for her, he had to look after her, she was so alone, she was so frightened.

“I didn’t think I’d sleep, but I did. After a while. I was trying to work out how they’d done it, managed the Contemporary Cars driving, I mean. With four of them it could quite easily be done. Anyway, there were more than four, and I’ll come to that. Working that out must have sent me to sleep, but the bed next to me shaking woke me up. It’s funny—or perhaps it’s not—but talking to you like this has stopped me shaking. I feel quite reasonably okay.

“I didn’t shake in there, but Roxane did. It was Roxane’s trembling making the bed shake. I put out my hand to her and she clutched it and said she was sorry but she couldn’t stop, it wasn’t fear, I mean fear like Kitty’s, it was claustrophobia.”

“Ah,” said Wexford. “Yes.”

“You mean you knew?”

“Her mother told me she was claustrophobic and that it was a severe form she had.”

“It was. It is. She whispered to me that it was all right in the light but in the dark it affected her badly. It would have been all right if the door had been open but of course it never was.

“She was really a very sensible girl, Reg, in many ways, only she was too brave for her own good. We pushed our beds a bit closer together. Holding her hand seemed to help, so I went on doing that and after a time we both went to sleep.

“In the morning our breakfast was brought in by Gloves and Rubber Face. That was the first time we’d seen Gloves. He had a gun.”

“He had a gun?” Wexford said. “A handgun?”

“If that’s the name for a pistol or a revolver, yes. But I think it was a toy or a replica, I wouldn’t know, and Owen, who surely would know, said afterwards that it wasn’t real. So probably the gun Rubber Face had in the car wasn’t real either.

“The gun got used later. Oh, don’t look like that, no one was hurt.” Dora reached out and took hold of his hand. “They didn’t put the bulbs back, they never did. It wasn’t very light in there, though the sun was shining outside. Light never really penetrated through the bars and the rabbit hutch. Gloves unlocked the window and opened it. That wasn’t as generous a move as I’ve made it sound because the bars made it impossible to squeeze anything thicker than an arm between them. At any rate, we got some air into the room.

“Our breakfast was slices of white bread—you know, Mother’s Pride or something, presliced—an orange each and a cake each, a sort of dry muffin thing, jam in small containers, the kind you get in hotels, five mugs of instant coffee, and three plastic pots of nonlactic soy-milk stuff. I suppose we got such a big meal because we weren’t to have anything else till the evening. Owen talked a lot of nonsense about sharpening the one spoon that came with it and turning it into a screwdriver—he was thinking of unscrewing the door hinge—but Rubber Face came back and checked on everything before taking the trays. Shall I tell you about the rest of the day now?”

“No, my dear, I’m going to send you to bed. I’ll bring you up a hot drink in bed. More talk tomorrow.”

He sat there alone for a while, trying to think what it was that she had said which rang such a jangling of bells in his mind. It came to him at last. The nonlactic soy milk, that’s what it was, the milk substitute the hostages had been brought for their breakfast. He had had it in the tea he had with Gary and Quilla on the previous afternoon and it had left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. It all seemed a hundred years ago now, so much had happened since.

But those two had known he was a policeman though not his name. He had told them he was called Wexford and, now he looked back, he remembered how Quilla had seemed to start at the name. At his rank, he had thought then, but suppose it had been at the name?

At around five-thirty on Friday afternoon outside the Framhurst Teashop he had told Quilla and Gary his rank and his name. Four hours later preparations were under way for releasing Dora.

It was strange ground for him, all unfamiliar, new, untried. Some of the time he felt as if he were finding his way through a dark wood where all the trees were exotics, the obstacles unidentifiable, and the wild animals threatening in an indefinable way. The taking of hostages, the demanding of a ransom that was of a political nature, all that was something he never expected to have to handle and if asked would have suggested its handling by some different, even remote, authority.

So on this Sunday morning he seemed to have reached an impenetrable part of the wood but one which he must penetrate. He hardly knew what his next move should be. The computers now held a mass of information, details of every lead that had been followed, background—curricula vitae, if you like—of every person named in the investigation, coincidental and cross-matched activities, possible sites and safe houses, transcribed interviews. Then there were the tapes. There was the letter to the Kingsmarkham Courier and the versions of the later messages. In it all he could see nothing concrete, nothing to make him feel the time was approaching when he could order a certain place to be pinpointed and one or more persons to be targeted.

He had sent DS Cook and DC Lowry to find Quilla and Gary and bring them to Kingsmarkham Police Station. If they were still at the Elder Ditches camp, he thought, if they hadn’t departed the day before with so many others. Dora had still been asleep when he was preparing to leave and he was wondering what to do when Sheila phoned. Sheila, who had spent the night at Sylvia’s, would come in on her way home, now or as soon as the hire car arrived, and stay with her mother until he returned. He had left, feeling one anxiety lifted.

Blind in the dark wood, he had nevertheless come to a decision. All the hostages’ families should be fetched in, assembled in the old gym with those of his team who were available, and told the present state of things, told too that the story would break on Monday morning. Whatever the Chief Constable might say about continental practice, they had involved the hostages’ families and must continue to do so. Now, as he looked at them all sitting there, he wondered if he had done the right thing—but how did you know the right thing when there was no precedent?

He remembered how Audrey Barker had asked him if she could be put in touch with the other mother and form a support group. He had refused, largely to reduce to a minimum the chances of a breach of secrecy. They could do it now if they wanted to, perhaps discussion would be a comfort to them, but he had noticed that now the opportunity had come, each sat isolated, silent, giving no more than an occasional suspicious glance at the others.

Mrs. Peabody hadn’t come, so her daughter was the only member of the group without support. Hers was a lonely figure, her head bowed, her hands folded in her lap, her face paper white. Despair seemed to enclose her, a misery that the news of her son’s safety had done nothing to dispel. By contrast, Clare Cox had a hopeful air. She looked practical, resolute, above all she looked different. A jacket and skirt, a pair of black pumps, transformed her appearance. Her hair was tied back with a black silk ribbon. Masood, in a smart dark suit with a purple sheen, had accompanied her but without his second family. Wexford noted, with as much amusement as he was capable at present of summoning up for anything, that they were holding hands.

Whispering from time to time in Bibi’s ear, Andrew Struther looked tired and strained. The girl wore white shorts and a red tank top which left her midriff bare. But he was formally dressed in a white shirt and tie, linen jacket, and dark trousers. They too were holding hands but in a far more demonstrative way than Roxane’s parents, an almost libidinous way. Bibi’s hand enclosed his caressingly and moved it to rest on her pale golden thigh. Distress hadn’t touched her, but then why should it? It wasn’t her parents who had been kidnapped.

Wexford got up on the impromptu platform and began talking to them. He told them how the facts of the case that had been presented to the press on the previous Wednesday would no longer be embargoed after this evening. The media would be free to use these facts with the other, more recent information, which Kingsmarkham CID would pass on to them today.

He believed they already knew that Sacred Globe had released his wife. It was she who had been able to give them so much information about the present condition of the hostages and to tell them that on Friday when she left all were alive and well. She had also carried with her the message that Sacred Globe would begin negotiations today, Sunday, but no word had yet been received as to what negotiations they might have in mind. Nor, he said, could he say that these putative discussions were of a kind into which the police—or, come to that, the hostages’ families—would be prepared to enter.

They listened. He asked them if they had any questions. He knew he hadn’t been entirely open with them or perhaps he hadn’t been entirely open with himself. That “alive and well” business—how true was that? Now he thought he had forborne to question Dora any more, had postponed further questioning, because there were things about Roxane Masood particularly and the Struthers to a lesser extent he hadn’t wanted to hear before he spoke to these people. Their fears were somewhat allayed. Was there any point in giving rise to more fear at this juncture?

Audrey Barker put up her hand like a child in a classroom—or a child in a classroom in his day.

“Mrs. Barker?”

Her eyes, her strained stretched face, had the look of someone who has just witnessed something terrifying. Seen a ghost, perhaps, or a bloody motorway pileup.

“Can you tell me a bit more about Ryan?” she asked. It was the voice of a woman on the edge of tears. “How he was, I mean, how he’s taking it?”

“He was fine on Friday evening. His spirits were good.” Wexford didn’t add that from then on the boy would have been alone. “The hostages appear to be adequately fed, there is no problem there. They have washing facilities, beds and blankets.”

Don’t ask me if they are all together, he prayed silently. Don’t ask where the girl is. No one did. Clare Cox seemed to take it for granted that Roxane was also in that room when Dora left it. Masood, having disengaged his hand from hers, had been writing something in a small leather-bound notebook. He looked up and asked, “Can you please tell us who’s looking after them?”

“There appear to be five men or four men and a woman.”

“And perhaps by now you have a clue as to where they are?”

“We have clues, yes, many clues. Leads are being followed all the time. As yet we have no firm knowledge of where the hostages are being held, only that it’s somewhere within a radius of about sixty miles. Tomorrow’s publicity may be of considerable help to us there.”

The question was bound to come. It always did. Andrew Struther asked it.

“Yes, all right, that’s all very well, but why haven’t you done more to find them? It’s how many days now? Five? Six? What exactly have you been doing?”

“Mr. Struther,” he said patiently, “every officer in this area is working all-out to find your parents and the other hostages. All leave has been canceled. Five officers from the Regional Crime Squad have joined them.”

“Miracles we do at once,” said Masood, as if the aphorism was witty or new. “The impossible will take a little longer.”

“We must hope it won’t prove impossible, sir,” Wexford said. “If there are no more questions perhaps you’d like to confer among yourselves for a while. There has been talk of forming a support group that might be helpful at the present stage.”

But they hadn’t quite done with him. The other question he had almost believed wasn’t inevitable was suddenly put by, of all people, Bibi.

“Bit funny, wasn’t it, I mean, a bit peculiar, that your wife was the one to be released? I mean, how do you account for that?”

The kind of rage he must never show welled up inside him, the kind that made hypertension an actual physical sensation, blood pressure pounding. He drew breath, said calmly and at that moment with perfect truth, “I can’t account for it. I can only hope that the truth about that and everything else will soon emerge.” Another long deep breath and he added, “You will of course all be prepared for a good deal of media attention. As far as the police are concerned, no restriction will be placed on anything you may choose to say to the press or any interviews you give.” He raised his head and looked at them all. “Keep your spirits up. Be optimistic.” They stared back as if he had insulted them. “Thank you for your attention,” he said.

He stepped down from the platform, feeling a strong desire, which must not be indulged, to get away from these people. They stood about, rather, he thought, as if they expected refreshments. Then a strange thing happened. The two mothers gravitated toward each other. Until then he could have sworn there had been no rapport between them, scarcely recognition of a shared plight, but now, as if the things he had said had brought home to them their common anxiety, they approached each other, eye meeting eye. And as if following a stage direction on the same script, each reached out and they closed together in an embrace, they fell into each other’s arms.

Men would never do that, he thought. So much of awkwardness, of embarrassment, had been left out of women. He was aware of a certain degree of embarrassment even in himself, something that surprised and very nearly amused him, while Masood looked the other way and Struther said something to the girl that made her giggle.

Wexford coughed tactfully. They would keep in touch, he told them, and to remember that all this would break in the media by the morning.

Dora, fetched by Karen, sat in his office, a pleasanter place than the old gym. A good night’s rest had improved her appearance, taken away that tired drawn look. Some of her natural vivacity was back and she had dressed herself carefully in a skirt and top he hadn’t seen before, blue and beige, flattering colors for her.

Burden was also in the room and the recorder had just been switched on. At first a little stiff and inhibited by the device, Dora now spoke as freely as if it hadn’t been there.

“Chief Inspector Wexford has entered the room,” said Burden, “at ten forty-three.”

That seemed to amuse Dora, who smiled. “Where was I? Had I got to the first morning?”

“The morning of Wednesday, September fourth,” Burden said.

“Right. I’ll go on calling them the Driver, Gloves, Rubber Face, and Tattoo, if that’s all right.” Their smiling nods encouraged her. “Oh, and the fifth one, the—what’s the word?—not transvestite. Oh, yes, hermaphrodite.”

“What?” said Burden. “You’re not serious?”

“I don’t know if it was a man or a woman. No faces, you see, and no voices. It was wise of them not to speak, wasn’t it?”

“Clever villains don’t speak,” Burden said. “We know all about that round here. Go on, Dora.”

“The others wore black sneakers but the Hermaphrodite wore those big clumping shoes with heavy tops and thick soles—are they Doc Martens?—and I did wonder if that was to make the feet look bigger—if it was a woman, that is. He or she moved like a woman, a bit more graceful than the others, less deliberate, lighter—oh, I don’t know, does one know?

“As soon as we were left alone that morning Owen Struther got hold of Ryan—well, sat beside him and started talking to him. It was this doctrine of escape of his and I think he picked on Ryan because although he wasn’t yet fifteen, he was the only other male there. And Ryan is six feet tall. I didn’t like it because, after all, he may be the size of a man but he’s only a child still in many ways.

“Owen kept telling Ryan to be a man. It was up to them to defend us women because they were men, that was part of their role in life, and the most important thing was for Ryan never to show fear, and a lot of other rubbish like that. I left them to it, I went into the washroom and did my best to wash myself all over. I spent a good deal of time in there trying to keep clean, and apart from anything else it was a way of passing the time.

“Roxane washed herself too and we both used my toothbrush. I told Kitty the washroom was free, but she barely took any notice of me. She’d paced about earlier, pounded her fists on the walls and all that, but then she’d collapsed onto her bed, she’d had some coffee but no breakfast, and she seemed to have simply succumbed to despair.

“It was strange, her husband so active and determined and full of energy, so much the audacious officer in an old war film, and she as feeble as if she was actually going through a nervous breakdown. Well, there was the spitting and the bad language but that was momentary and all in the past by then. You couldn’t understand how two people who were married to each other, and presumably had been for years and years, could have such different attitudes to life.”

“What were these escape plans?” Wexford asked.

“I’ll come to that. I spent the morning talking to Roxane. She told me about her parents, her father is this quite rich entrepreneur, he was born in Karachi but came here as a child, and worked his way up from nothing. She’s very proud of him but more sorry for her mother than proud. Her mother would never marry Mr. Masood, though he wanted her to. Roxane could remember him still pressing her mother to marry him when she was ten years old. But Clare—she calls her Clare—put her career first and said marriage was obsolete, though apparently her career never amounted to much. Then Mr. Masood married someone else and had more children. Roxane minds a lot about that, she’s jealous, she doesn’t like her stepmother, I’m afraid she gets a tremendous kick out of her stepmother being overweight while she, of course, is slim as a reed.

“She told me about wanting to be a model and her father helping her and then we got on to her claustrophobia. She said it came from her grandmother—that is, Clare’s mother—shutting her in a cupboard as a punishment when she was a toddler. I mean, if that’s true it’s quite terrible, one can hardly understand such a thing, but I did wonder myself if it could really be the cause. These psychological things are always more complex than that, aren’t they?

“Anyway, I mustn’t go on about her. She was claustrophobic, but she could just about manage in that room, only it did make me wonder how she’d manage if this modeling got off the ground and she had to stay in small hotel rooms. But maybe she’ll be another Naomi Campbell and only stay in suites.

“They didn’t bring us any lunch. They didn’t come near us for hours. Owen Struther examined the whole room, taking Ryan around with him, paying particular attention to the window and the door. The window was still open, but it was still impossible to see much, only the greenness and that gray something that was a sort of concrete step, and it was virtually impossible to reach out of it either. Owen’s arm was too thick to get between the bars, but Ryan could squeeze his out. Not that there was any point in it. He put his arm through the bars as far as he could and managed to touch the wood of the rabbit hutch. He said he felt rain on his hand, but we could already see it was raining …”

“Could you hear the rain?” asked Slesar.

“You mean, drumming on the roof? No, nothing like that. I had the impression there was at least one and probably two stories above the basement room. It wasn’t a barn or a freestanding garage.

“I’ll come back to Owen Struther. His idea was that the only possible method of escape would be while they were inside feeding us or fetching our tray and the door was unlocked. Closed but unlocked. He and Ryan would do it with Roxane to help them. I don’t think he thought much of any potential strength I might have and, of course, his poor wife was hopeless.

“Roxane was to distract the attention of one of them. I don’t know what he had in mind at that point, maybe make another attack and we all knew what that resulted in. But I don’t think he’d have cared. He was obsessed. They would pick a time when the Hermaphrodite was one of the pair because he or she would be easier to handle. Incidentally, that would have been all very well if they’d been in and out every few minutes, but as I’ve said we hadn’t seen them for hours. Still, the whole escape plan wasn’t very practical. While Roxane was busy with one of them—being beaten up, I suppose—he would handle the other and Ryan would make his escape by way of the door.

“I intervened then and asked him if he realized Ryan was only fourteen. For one thing, he couldn’t drive a car. What did he think he was going to do out there in the middle of God knows where? So the plan was changed and he was to go out through the door while Ryan and I handled the other one.

“In the event, it didn’t work. It was disastrous. But I’ll come to that later, shall I?”

There are about twenty-five different varieties of wild blackberry growing in the British Isles. Most people think only one kind is to be found, but you have only to look at the difference in leaf shapes, not to mention the size, shape, and color of the berries, to understand how they vary. The frail-looking young woman in a faded tracksuit who was picking blackberries, filling a wicker basket, and eating as many as she picked informed Martin Cook of these facts unasked.

“Interesting,” said Cook. “What are you going to do with those?”

“Cook them with elderberries and crab apples. Make an autumn compote.” She gave Burton Lowry an appraising look. Cook was used to that. His DC attracted black and white women alike. “I don’t suppose you’ve come here for a lesson in Elves’ cuisine, have you?”

“I’m looking for Gary Wilson and Quilla Rice.”

“You won’t find them here, they’ve gone. Had a bit of harassment in mind, did you? I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with me.”

Cook ignored that. He wouldn’t go on ignoring such provocation, but he would for a while.

“And what might your name be?”

The young woman shrugged. “It might be any number of things. My mother wanted to call me Tracy and my father liked Rosamund but in fact what they actually called me is Christine. Christine Colville. What’s yours?” When she got no answer she said to Lowry, “Would you like a blackberry?”

“No, thanks.”

Cook turned away and looked into the depths of the wood. The first tree houses at Elder Ditches were just visible in the distance. He could see someone sitting in a clearing, apparently holding a musical instrument, but all was silent.

“Is there someone”—he hardly knew how to put it—“well, in charge here?”

“You want me to take you to our leader?”

“If you’ve got one, yes.”

“Oh, we have one,” she said. “The King of the Wood. Haven’t you heard of him?”

The name came back to Cook. He remembered the statement to the Kingsmarkham Courier. “He’s called Conrad Tarling?”

She nodded. She picked up her basket, turned to them and beckoned. “Follow me.” As she walked along she plucked bunches of elderberries from the bushes which filled about an acre before the tall trees were reached. Cook and Lowry walked along behind her.

“I’ll come back for the crab apples,” she said. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of the King in the Wood, have you?”

“You just said it was Tarling.”

“Not that one,” she said scornfully. “In Italy, by the lake of Nemi, in ancient times. This man was called the King in the Wood. He walked round and round this tree, nervous and afraid, armed with a sword, ever watchful, because he knew men would come and fight him, would try to kill him, so that the killer could be the next King.”

“Oh, yes?” said Cook, but Lowry said, “He was a priest and a murderer and sooner or later he would be murdered and the man who killed him would be priest in his stead. Such was the rule of the sacred grove.”

Christine Colville smiled, but Cook said, “The what?”

It sounded a lot like Sacred Globe to him. She eyed his puzzled face and began to laugh. Cook hadn’t the faintest idea what she and Lowry had been talking about, but he was pretty sure she at least was sending him up. When they reached the trees, when they were among them, Christine Colville set down her basket, lifted her head, and whistled. It was a whistle like a bird calling—pu-wee, pu-wee.

Faces appeared among the branches.

“Someone needs to talk to the King,” she said.

It was then that Conrad Tarling showed himself, as if called forth by the magic word “king,” the Open Sesame word. He emerged from a tree house onto the platform on all fours. He was naked to the waist, his shaven head bluish and gleaming.

“Police,” said Cook. “I’d like to talk to you.”

Tarling retreated behind the flap of tarpaulin that served his crow’s nest as a front door. Cook was wondering what to do now when he reappeared, wrapped up this time in his all-enveloping sand-colored cloak. For a moment Cook thought he would swing down from this considerable height, hand over hand on this branch and that, foot over foot on protuberances on the gnarled trunk. But instead he flicked his fingers at someone unseen and within minutes Christine and a man in shorts and anorak had propped a ladder up against the tree.

Face to face with Cook in the clearing, he was a good six inches taller. His head was rather small, his neck long. The face was an arresting one, hard, clean-cut, as if carved from wood.

Cook asked him about Gary Wilson and Quilla Rice, but the King of the Wood wanted identification before saying a word. Having gravely studied Cook’s warrant card, he asked in a grand manner what the police wanted them for.

“To ask them a few questions.”

Tarling laughed. He had an audience now, half a dozen Elves squatting on the platforms of their tree houses, listening, while Christine Colville and her companion in the anorak sat close by, cross-legged on the grass. Tarling’s voice was very deep and soft, yet ringing. They could probably hear what he said in Pomfret, Cook thought bitterly.

“That’s what you always say. The words of totalitarianism. A few questions. A spot of interrogation. A smidgen of inquisition. And then the fun and games in the police cell—is that it?”

“Where do you people keep your vehicles?”

Another laugh, this time directed at the gallery. “Ugly sort of word that, isn’t it? ‘Vehicle.’ It’s what I’d call a police word, like ‘proceeding’ and ‘inquiry.’ Those of us who have vehicles keep them in a field kindly, very very kindly, and I mean that, lent to us by Mr. Canning, a farmer who is an angel of light compared with others of his kind and, like us, opposed to this damnable bypass.”

“I see. And where might this angel’s field be?”

“Between Framhurst and Myfleet. Goland’s Farm. But Quilla and Gary didn’t use it. They haven’t a vehicle. They must have hitched, they usually do.” Picking up his basket and turning his attention to an elder tree, Tarling said less aggressively, “They’ll be back in a week or so. For your information, as you’d doubtless put it your good self, they’ve gone to the SPECIES rally in Wales and they’ll soon be back. No one believes this environmental assessment is the end, you know. Things don’t happen so easily as that.”

“And you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you have a”—Cook rejected the offending word—“a car?”

If Cook was unacquainted with the works of Lewis Carroll, Lowry was not. Wexford too would have recognized the quotation but to Cook it was gibberish. He turned away in disgust. Tarling’s words and the tree people’s consequent laughter pursued him.

“I have answered three questions and that is enough,” Said his father, “Don’t give yourself airs. Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off or I’ll kick you downstairs.”

Walking back to the car, he said to Lowry, “I’m getting a bit pissed off with you pulling your university rank on me.

“What did I do?” said Lowry indignantly.

Barry Vine was in the car with Pemberton. They had been at the Savesbury Deeps camp but appeared to have learned less than Cook had. Half of the tree people had gone, many of them on other pilgrimages to seek other violations and injustices.

“Your words?” said Cook belligerently.

“Theirs,” said Vine with a shrug. “I’m off to Framhurst, have a cup of tea in the village.”

A surprised glance was the response to that. Vine explained.

“I’d like to know where they get that muck from they call nonlactic soy milk. I mean, can you buy it in a supermarket, or is it only supplied to restaurants as against retail outlets? And when we’ve refreshed ourselves Jim and I will go and have a word with Farmer Canning.”

Nicky Weaver knew a lot about Brendan Royall’s Winnebago by this time. She knew its registration number, that its color was white, that it was three years old, and that he was usually but not invariably alone in it.

The best piece of information she had about it was that it had been seen that morning on the M25, heading for the M2, by a police car on speed control. That rather reduced the impact of the piece of news she had just had phoned in from the Elder Ditches camp by DS Cook, that Royall might be found at a SPECIES rally in Wales. Of course, she had checked out the rally and discovered it was to be in Neath, near Glencastle Forest, and due to start on Tuesday. Please God, they would have found those hostages by Tuesday …

If Royall was planning to go there he had been heading in the wrong direction. It wasn’t likely he would go near his parents, but she couldn’t take that for granted. On the other hand, it was practically certain he would pay a visit to the Panicks.

She walked among the desks in the old gym, looking at computer screens, watching for anything new that might have come in. Everyone knew about the SPECIES rally by now. It was an important event in the protesters’ calendar. Should the force be there, a presence, among all those activists?

She glanced out of one of the long windows on the car park side. A car was coming in that she didn’t recognize, a small white Mercedes, probably come to fetch Dora Wexford. Back in Myringham, at the Regional Crime Squad, she would have known every car that came in and out and would have questioned any unfamiliar one. They were nearly all unfamiliar here … No harm in noting down the registration number though. Better safe than sorry. She did so as the car turned the corner around the back of the building and disappeared from sight.

“Let’s just get this straight,” said Burden. “Gloves, the one in gloves, you saw less of him than of any of the others. You saw him on the Wednesday morning at breakfast but not again till you were due to leave. Is that right?”

“Not quite. I saw him on the Wednesday but not again till the Friday, only it was at midday on the Friday.”

“Right. Now food. What did they give you to eat? No, I’m perfectly serious. Food could be a clue as to where you were.”

“Do you mean, what did they give us that Wednesday evening?”

“For a start, yes.”

“I don’t think it will be of much help. There were three large pizzas, cooked but cold, some more of the white bread, five slices of processed cheese, and five apples. The apples were badly bruised. Oh, and more instant coffee and that nonlactic stuff. If we wanted anything else to drink we just got it ourselves from the water tap. And since we didn’t have a cup or a glass or anything we had to put our mouths under the tap.”

Dora drank some of the tea Archbold had brought in to them and took a chocolate biscuit with the appreciation of someone who has recently subsisted on a diet of cold pizza and sliced bread.

“It was Tattoo and the Hermaphrodite that evening. Tattoo and Rubber Face were probably the strongest and the most—well, the most ruthless of them, or that’s the impression I had, but the Hermaphrodite was certainly the weakest, and I could see the moment they came in what Owen had in mind.

“What Roxane did, it wasn’t deliberate, I mean it wasn’t part of a plot, it was just spontaneous. She jumped up and said to Tattoo that she wanted to talk to him. ‘I want to talk to you,’ she said. And then she said, ‘And I want you to talk to us.’ He just stood there, looking at her. Or I suppose he was looking at her—you can’t tell when a person’s wearing one of those hoods.

“ ‘You’ve left us all day without food,’ she said, or something like that. ‘You’ve left us all day without anything to eat. It’s outrageous what you’re doing,’ she said. ‘What have we done? We are innocent people. We have done no one any harm. You give us hardly anything to drink,’ she said, ‘and this is the first food we’ve had for ten hours. What is it you’re doing?’ she said. ‘What do you want?’ He didn’t say a word, just stood there, very close to her.

“The Hermaphrodite was holding the tray, a large heavy tray with all that food on it. I could see Owen keying himself up and Ryan too, poor kid, playing at adventures. The door was shut but it wasn’t locked. Roxane—oh, she’s a courageous girl—she looked into Tattoo’s face, his mask, it was about six inches from her face, and she said, ‘Answer me. Answer me, you bastard!’

“He hit her. He hit her as hard as he could across the head. That was when his sleeve fell back, he was wearing a shirt with quite loose sleeves, and I saw the tattoo, a butterfly on his left forearm. As Roxane fell over on the bed Ryan made a rush for the Hermaphrodite. Well, the Hermaphrodite dropped that tray and food went everywhere, pizzas upside down on the nearest bed, apples rolling across the floor, and the tray making a terrific crash. Ryan had hold of him or her by the shoulders, Tattoo sprang round and pulled out a gun. Owen had got the door open but he never actually got out.

“Everything happened at once, it’s quite hard to sort it all out, but the gun went off. I still can’t tell you if it was real or not. It made a loud bang and whatever was fired out of it went into the woodwork around the window. Would a replica gun make a noise like that?”

“It might,” said Burden. “Any sort of gun makes a noise.”

“I don’t actually think it was aimed at anyone. Kitty was screaming her head off. She was lying on her bed, drumming her fists into the bed and screaming. Maybe it was that or maybe it was the gun, but Owen hesitated and you know what they say about the person who hesitates. The Hermaphrodite aimed a kick at Ryan, a really high hard kick, and it caught him in the stomach and sent him flying, clutching at his body. Roxane was groaning, holding her face. I didn’t do anything, I’m afraid, I just sat there. That gun going off had rather mesmerized me.

“Tattoo must have had handcuffs with him because he got them onto Owen. It was quite remarkable the way while this was all going on neither of those two spoke a word. Owen was shouting and cursing, threatening them with all sorts of punishment to come, ‘They’ll shut you up in high security forever,’ that kind of thing, Ryan was rolling on the floor whimpering, Roxane was groaning, and Kitty was screaming, but those two were utterly silent. I can tell you, it was sinister, it was a lot more effective than anything they could have said.

“It dehumanized them, you see. People are people because they speak and these two had become machines. They were science fiction creatures. Anyway, you don’t want the philosophy. I’ll tell you what happened next. I suppose they always carried handcuffs because they put a pair on Ryan and another pair on Kitty, who sobbed while they did it. Tattoo manhandled Roxane into the washroom and locked the door.

“That frightened me because I knew how she felt about enclosed spaces. But I thought that if I told them that, it would make things worse, not better. So I said nothing. Tattoo stayed with us while the Hermaphrodite went away and came back with hoods for the Struthers. The hoods were put on and the Struthers were taken away and that was the last I ever saw of them. It was at about half-past seven on the Wednesday evening.”

Burden interrupted the narrative once more. “You never saw them again?”

Dora shook her head, realized this movement would not be recorded, and said, “No, I never did.” She went on, “But I’ve no reason to think any harm came to them. I think they were just taken to somewhere Tattoo thought would be safer. Kitty was sobbing all the time they were being taken out of there.

“Ryan was more or less all right, just very shaken. Later on a terrific bruise came up on his stomach. He got himself up and said something about knowing better than to have tried that on. But I was extremely worried about Roxane. There was an awful silence from behind that door and I thought perhaps she’d fainted. I thought of trying to break it down. Have you ever tried to break a door down?”

They all had. All had succeeded, but it hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t been like on television where a shove and a kick will do it.

Wexford said, “Did you try?”

“Yes, because the silence didn’t go on. She started screaming and pounding on the door. It wasn’t like Kitty’s screaming, this was real phobic terror. I put my shoulder to the door and I kicked it. Maybe I’d have succeeded, but after a moment or two Rubber Face and Tattoo came in. They moved me out of the way, Rubber Face just lifted me and dumped me on my bed. Don’t look like that, Reg. I wasn’t hurt.

“They let Roxane out but not at once. It was nasty what happened. They looked at each other, those two—well, the heads in the masks turned, and I just had this feeling they knew and they, or one of them, were enjoying it. They’d discovered her fear of enclosed spaces and they were pleased. They stood there listening to her pounding on that door and her pleading.

“Eventually, they unlocked the door. She staggered out and fell on her bed, sobbing bitterly. It was awful, it really was dreadful. But life in there had to go on. I hugged her and tried to comfort her.

“Then Rubber Face and Tattoo found my handbag and Kitty’s—Roxane didn’t have one, they don’t at that age—and took them with them and went away, I don’t know why, having left Ryan handcuffed. The handcuffs didn’t come off him till next morning and he was very uncomfortable and in pain.

“We just settled down the three of us to make the best of things. I picked up the food that wasn’t filthy or otherwise ruined, the pizzas were all right, and I washed the apples. I got them to sit down with me and eat as best they could and then we talked. We played a sort of game, each of us to tell a true story about a member of our families. It was dark, you see, they never brought the light bulbs back.

“Well, I started the ball rolling by telling a story and then Roxane told one about her aunt meeting Gershwin when she was a child. It was in New York. And Ryan told one about his father winning some county athletics championship. Still, you won’t want to know any of this. We all went to sleep. Even Roxane did, though she was in pain with her face. It was very swollen and black with bruises and a cut on her temple was bleeding. They were to take her away the next day, but I didn’t know that then.

“I was the only one who hadn’t been hurt in some way and that made me feel guilty. Ridiculous really, but I suppose people in my situation do feel guilt …”

DC Edward Hennessy went out to the car park just before four. His car happened to be parked alongside Chief Inspector Wexford’s. Between the two cars, on the tarmac, stood a dark brown fiber suitcase, with the initials DMW on its side, and beside it two large full plastic carriers, one green, one yellow.

Hennessy didn’t touch any of it. He went back inside, knocked on the door of Wexford’s office, and told him. Dora Wexford was still there, taking a break from recording. She jumped up. “That has to be my case,” she said. “And it sounds like my parcels.”

She was right. The carriers contained her presents to Sheila, baby clothes, a shawl, a kimono for a nursing mother, two new novels, a flacon of perfume and one of body lotion. She identified the case as hers and watched while it was opened to reveal her undisturbed, carefully folded clothes.

On top of them was a sheet of paper, on which were printed the words of Sacred Globe’s next message: “No more delays, please. The media must be told at once. This is the first step in our negotiations. We are Sacred Globe, saving the world.”