The Chinese Egg (26 page)

She saw the headlights of the stationary car ahead of her and drew to a halt. She took the packet in her hand and got out of the car. A voice called, “Dim your lights, can't you?” She reached back into the car and turned the headlights down. Then she started walking towards the stationary car, dazzled by the light coming from it, unable to see. She held the packet out in front of her. Her lips were forming words, she was talking almost out
loud. “It's all I can get. I promise you shall have the rest. I promise. . . I promise Give me my baby!”

Whoever was in the car with the blazing lights sat very still, very quiet. She was coming near it now. The wood was very quiet.

Suddenly she heard something else. Very quiet, but unmistakable, the sound of wheels on the unmade road in front of her, beyond the other car. Immediately there was a tumult, the engine of the other car roared into life, someone shouted, there was a shot, two shots, and the other car came racing towards her. She jumped sideways and fell, scratching her face on a tangle of briars. The car flashed past, grazed her Fiat and roared out on to the main road. She heard another engine start up and go in pursuit. She got up shakily and began to walk back towards her own car. She was crying, gasping for breath, the packet was still in her hand.

A voice called out, “Mrs. Wilmington? Stay where we can see you, will you?” Not one of Them. Price appeared out of nowhere on the side of the track and came up to her and took her arm.

“Did they hit you?”

“No. I jumped. Just scratches, that's all.”

“If it's any comfort to you, we don't think they had your baby there,” he said gently.

“How did you. . .? I didn't tell anyone. How did you guess?”

“I'll explain everything. Now we'd better get you home. Do you think you can drive?” He looked at her. “No. I'll get one of my men to take your car back. You'd better come in the other one with me.”

He was very good. He only once said, “I told you so,” and Sally was too exhausted and too miserable to offer any defence.

Price blamed himself for the shambles the evening had been. There had been one serious mistake after another. If only he'd had more time, so that he might have set up a proper monitoring system to cover all Mrs. Wilmington's movements, then he'd have got his ambush posted on site before those bastards arrived and he'd have copped the lot. If only she, Mrs. W., hadn't lied to him when he tried to get her to tell him about a further ransom demand. If only—and he'd no one but himself to blame here—if only he'd believed those children and forced the truth out of her. But a policeman's natural scepticism and caution had obliged him to go round checking up and verifying. If only he hadn't been thrown off the scent by finding no record on the monitored telephone line of any such conversation. That had brought back all his doubts about the children's story. It was only late on Friday afternoon that he'd seen the possible significance of one of Thursday's phoned messages: would Mrs. Wilmington ring a number, 148-394X at twelve o'clock midday. He checked and, of course, it was a call box. How did they know she'd ring from outside the house? Because she had a standing appointment with her hairdresser at that time on Thursdays. Too easy to check that she was going that day.

Price groaned. There were brains behind this operation. It wasn't just an amateur effort.

By the time he'd worked that out, and got a grudging admission from the manager of her bank that though professional discretion forbade him to give any information concerning the private affairs
of a client, if the Chief Superintendent stated that Mrs. Wilmington had inquired about drawing out a large sum in cash, he wouldn't categorically deny it—by the time all the tiresome, long-winded business of checking was done and he knew that the children were right, she'd given them the slip. Drove off in her little Fiat towards the middle of London and was lost. He put out a call to every man on duty to look out for the car, but it was too easy to miss. If only the children's account could have given him some idea of what direction she'd be heading for! But a quiet road with beeches could describe a hundred places within driving distance of Kensington. Even when they'd had their first piece of luck and had a report of the car on the M4, there were too many exits to guard with no time at all to get the men there. Then she'd been spotted coming out of Henley and they had a car following her as soon as possible, but not soon enough. They'd lost her on the Oxford Road, it was only chance that Potter had seen the headlights blazing through the trees and thought it was worth having a look. Of course, coming in without proper precautions like that they hadn't a hope of surprising them, it was just a question of catching them in the resulting chase, and they hadn't even succeeded in that. Potter had said they drove like devils and someone in the car must know the country round there backwards. Probably lived there as a kid. Twisting roads, high hedges, everything to make it as difficult as possible for even an experienced police driver who didn't know the roads. They'd got clear away, and he was no nearer getting them. Nothing. Not a bloody thing to go on. He just hoped the girl Vicky had been right too about their not having the baby with them. If they had had, he wouldn't give much chance for its hope of survival. That sort of crowd weren't too particular what they did when they got frightened. And they'd missed getting the money as well. It looked black for the Wilmington baby. What the hell was he going to do next?

It was ten o'clock. He'd only had a couple of hours' sleep before coming to the office, and he was dead tired, but he couldn't rest.

He read a report from the woman who'd been investigating the Brady Drive angle. A girl answering to the description given by Mrs. Plum had lived at number 26 but had left a few weeks
before. Name, Maureen Hollingsworth. Had been living with a father and young stepmother. When interviewed, the stepmother said that Maureen wasn't very bright. As far as she knew she'd never been in any sort of trouble with the police. She and Maureen hadn't got on too badly. They didn't have much to say to each other, that was all. She thought Maureen hadn't liked her father marrying someone who wasn't all that much older than she was herself. Maureen hadn't left as the result of a quarrel, she'd just said one day she was going to share a flat with a friend and she'd walked out. No, she hadn't thought it was all that funny. Maureen was eighteen, she had a right to go where she wanted. She'd thought the friend was probably a boy-friend, because Maureen suddenly started getting a lot of new clothes, things she'd never have bought herself. Also she stopped moaning about never being asked out by boys. Before she'd left she'd been out most evenings, sometimes not come back all night. Maureen's father had said he wasn't worried either. Maureen was old enough to look after herself. The policewoman had got the impression that both of them were glad to have the place to themselves and weren't anxious to try to find the girl or even to know what had happened to her. The father explained that she was a bit slow and that Kitty got impatient with her sometimes. He'd kept on saying that it wasn't natural for a girl of that age to want to stay at home. He seemed to think it quite natural that she should go off and not tell them where, or ever come back to see them.

A name, that was all. She'd worked in Woolworth's but no one there knew anything about her. She hadn't made any friends there. One girl had heard her boasting about a boy-friend who had plenty of money, but she hadn't believed it. “She wasn't the kind of girl who'd get a fellow with lots of money.” A photograph of Maureen, a poor snapshot taken some years earlier, provided by her father, seemed to confirm this.

Price picked up the telephone and dialled the number of the Rawlinson house. It was a woman who answered. He asked for Stephen and heard her calling his name. Then Stephen's voice. “Hullo?”

“It's Superintendent Price speaking. I want to ask you a favour.”

He could hear Stephen's surprise. “What?”

“Could you and Vicky Stanford come to the Yard?”

“I can. I could find out about Vicky. When?”

“As soon as possible. This morning if you can.”

“I'll go round to Vicky straight away. If she's not at home, do you want me alone, or. . .?

“No. I want the two of you. I'm going to ask you to do some of your magic.”

Stephen didn't care for the word magic and said stiffly, “Did anything happen about the last one?”

“It certainly did. I'll tell you when I see you. And. . . .”

“What?”

“I shall be really grateful if you two can help me.”

It was an apology for his past disbelief.

“I'll have to take the egg with me. Vicky must have her bit too,” Stephen thought.

Price recognized that they were touchy, uncertain of their status as young adults, embarrassed by their inexplicable power of seeing forwards as well as backwards, suspicious of him as an expert and an authority. He also felt today a shift in their own relationship; something not firmly established, perhaps not even conscious, but there was a solidarity of purpose, an awareness of each other that hadn't been there, he'd swear, the first time he'd met them. In no time at all they would know they were in love, he thought, and he envied them a good deal and pitied them a little. He wondered how they'd deal with it when they knew. Judging by the general opinion of how young people went about things nowadays, he supposed they might be in bed with each other within hours of the discovery, and he hoped if it happened like that, they'd be good for each other and that no one would get hurt too much. Both of them were sensitive and intelligent, love for boys and girls like this was a dangerous game. The odd thing was that however much you ached, you didn't wish it had never happened. What an old cynic he was, thinking first of the pain and ignoring the sudden irradiation of joy which could accompany the realization that you were loved in turn! Like a rocket exploding out of the dark night. The feeling of being, for the first time,
alive down to the most insignificant cell of your body and to the shadow of every thought. You were weightless, you flew, your feet skimmed the ground, you were so blessed you felt you had only to look at a sick person and you would heal them. He himself had felt all that when Laurie had said she loved him. And when she left him, he'd been through the consequent hell.

He came back to the present. He was treating them with extreme seriousness and a politeness which he hoped wasn't exaggerated. They'd arrived in his office just before midday, and after telling them about the events of the night before—the events which had so completely proved them right—he took them out to lunch in the snack bar portion of a Westminster pub much patronized by politicians. There weren't many of those around on a Saturday, but he was able to point out one well-known face and to tell a few anecdotes about other figures in the public view. He could feel that his methods were succeeding. Both the boy and the girl became more relaxed, let down the barriers they'd put up. By the end of the meal they were both talking naturally about ordinary things; they asked him about his job, and he was careful to answer seriously. He told them about the slog that goes into detective work, the detailed, boring drudgery that has to be put in behind every brilliant guess and intuitive response. “That's where I went wrong yesterday. I should have accepted your story and acted on it straight away. Instead of which I went round checking, like a mole burrowing underground when what he's in search of is daylight,” he said. He knew that to admit that he'd been in the wrong would reassure them and make them more accessible for what he wanted them to do.

Back in the office he told them what this was.

“We're stuck. Those devils got away last night and they'll have been properly frightened off. We've no idea where to look, even. If they're in London, they could be anywhere and there's nothing to prevent them just sitting tight in the house of one of their friends who won't give them away. They won't risk going into lodgings again. We've got their descriptions and the pictures, but a change of clothes or of hairstyle could make them virtually unrecognizable. There must be hundreds of thousands of young couples with babies. We can't check up on them all.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Will you try if you can see them? If you could just tell me what they look like now, it'd be an immense help. If you knew where they are, of course, that'd be even better. And I want to know about that baby. I haven't told its mother but I'm seriously concerned about its safety. After last night they might do anything. I don't know, you see, whether they'll risk another demand for money. And if they aren't expecting to get the money now, the baby becomes a liability. They don't need to keep it alive.”

Stephen and Vicky looked at each other.

“I know you don't like being asked to do it. I know it must seem as if I was expecting you to perform some sort of trick. But don't think of it like that. Think of it more as if you had some special kind of scientific instrument which I can't get hold of. An electronic microscope, something like that. I'm asking you to use that instrument to give me information I can't get on my own,” Price said quickly.

“I will if Stephen will,” Vicky said.

Stephen said, “All right.”

“Any idea how long it will take?” Price asked.

“No. We've never done it like this. Tried, I mean.”

“Suppose I leave you here in my office for the next hour? I've got to go along to look up something in the files. You can stay here. I'll tell the switchboard to put my calls through somewhere else, so you won't be disturbed.” He picked up a couple of files and left.

“I'm glad he left us alone,” Vicky said.

“I wouldn't have tried if he'd been going to be sitting there watching us, would you?”