23. The drop

Braxton Hicks outlined the plan to us soon after—there was an hour to go until the drop. This was Jack Schitt’s way of ensuring that none of us tried to make our own plans. In every way this was a Goliath operation—myself, Bowden and Victor were only there to add credibility in case Hades was watching. The drop was at a redundant railway bridge; the only ways in were by two roads and the disused railway line, which was only passable in a four-by-four. Goliath men were to cover both roads and the railway track. They were ordered to let him in, but not out. It all seemed pretty straightforward—on paper.

The ride out to the disused railway line was uneventful, although the phoney Gainsborough took up more room in the Speedster than I had imagined. Schitt’s men were well hidden; Bowden and I didn’t see a single soul as we drove to the deserted spot.

The bridge was still in good condition, even though it had long since ceased to function. I parked the car a little way off and walked alone to the bridge. The day was fine, and there was barely a sound in the air. I looked over the parapet but couldn’t see anything remiss, just the large aggregate bed, slightly undulated where the sleepers had been pulled up all those years ago. Small shrubs grew among the stones, and next to the track was a deserted signal box from where I could just see the top half of a periscope watching me. I assumed it to be one of Schitt’s men and looked at my watch. It was time.

The muffled sound of a wireless beeping caught my attention. I cocked my head and tried to figure out where it was coming from.

‘I can hear a wireless beeping,’ I said into my walkie-talkie.

‘It’s not one of ours,’ responded Schitt from the control base in a deserted farmhouse a quarter of a mile away. ‘I suggest you find it.’

The wireless was wrapped in plastic and stashed in the branches of a tree on the other side of the road. It was Hades and it was a bad line—it sounded as though he was in a car somewhere.

‘Thursday?’

‘Here.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘How are you? I’m sorry I had to do what I did but you know how desperate we psychopaths get.’

‘Is my uncle okay?’

‘In the pink, dear girl. Enjoying himself tremendously; such an intellect, you know, but so very vague. With his mind and my drive I could rule the globe instead of resorting to all this banal extortion.’

‘You can finish it now,’ I told him. Hades ignored me and carried on:

‘Don’t try anything heroic, Thursday. As you must have guessed, I have the Chuzzlewit manuscript and I’m not afraid to disrupt it.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Tut, tut, Thursday, who do you think you’re talking to? We’ll discuss terms for your uncle’s release just as soon as I have my money. You’ll see on the parapet a karabiner attached to a length of wire. Place the money and the Gainsborough on the parapet and clip them on. Once that’s done I’ll come and pick them up. Until we meet again, Miss Thursday Next!’

I repeated to the others what he had said. They told me to do as I was told.

I placed the Gladstone with the money on the parapet and attached it to the Gainsborough. I walked back to the car, sat on the bonnet and watched Hades’ booty intently. Ten minutes went by, then half an hour. I asked Victor for advice but he just told me to stay where I was.

The sun became hotter and the flies buzzed merrily around the hedgerows. I could smell the faint odour of freshly turned hay and hear far off the gentle thrum of traffic. It looked as though Hades was just testing us, a not unusual occurrence in the delicate task of paying ransoms. When the Poet Writer General was kidnapped five years previously it had taken nine attempts before the ransom was successfully delivered. In the event the PWG was returned unharmed; it turned out that he had engineered the whole thing himself to boost flagging sales of his decidedly lame autobiography.

I got bored and walked up to the parapet again, ignoring Schitt’s request to back off. I toyed with the karabiner and absently followed the thin high-tensile cable that had been hidden in the brickwork. I traced its course to the loose soil at the base of the parapet, where it led off the bridge. I pulled it up slowly and found it attached to a bungee cord, coiled like a snake beneath some dried grass. Intrigued, I traced the bungee back to another length of high-tensile braided cable. This was taped carefully to a telegraph pole and then stretched ten feet above my head in a large double loop to another pole at the far end of the bridge. I frowned as the low growl of an engine made me turn. I couldn’t see anything but the engine was definitely coming towards me, and quite quickly. I looked along the gravel bed of the old railway, expecting to see a four-wheel-drive, but there was nothing. The noise of the approaching engine increased dramatically as a light aircraft appeared from behind an embankment, where it had obviously flown in low to avoid detection.

‘Plane!’ I shouted into my walkie-talkie. ‘They’ve got a plane!’ Then the firing began. It was impossible to say who started it, or even where it came from, but in an instant the quiet countryside was filled with the sharp, directionless crackle of small-arms fire. I ducked instinctively as several rounds hit the parapet, throwing up a shower of red brick dust. I pulled out my automatic and released the safety as the plane passed overhead. I recognised it as the sort of high-wing observation planes they used in the Crimea for artillery spotting; the side door had been removed and sitting half out of the plane with one foot on the wing strut was Acheron. He was holding a light machinegun and was blazing away quite happily at everything he could see. He peppered the dilapidated signal box and the Goliath men returned fire with equal enthusiasm; I could already see several holes open up in the plane’s fabric. Behind the plane, swinging in the slipstream, trailed a grapnel hook. As it passed over, the hook caught the wire strung between the telegraph poles and whisked off the Gladstone bag and the painting, the bungee cord taking the initial strain out of the pick-up. I jumped up and started to fire at the retreating plane, but it banked steeply away and dived behind the embankment, the bag and the Gainsborough flapping dangerously on the end of the rope. To delay now would definitely mean losing them and maybe the last real chance to catch Hades, so I sprinted to the car and reversed out in a shower of earth and small stones. Bowden clung on grimly and reached for his seat belt.

But the aeroplane had not quite finished with us. The small craft went into a shallow dive to gain more airspeed then pulled up into a near vertical left bank, the port wingtip scraping through the top of a large beech as the pilot turned back towards us. A Studebaker full of Goliath men had set off after the aircraft but braked violently as the aeroplane came skidding towards them, the pilot booting full left rudder to allow Acheron a better view of his target. The black car was soon a mass of small bullet holes and it swung into a ditch. I stamped on the brakes as another Studebaker pulled in front of me. It too was peppered by Acheron and careered into a low wall approaching the bridge. The aircraft flew on over me, the Gainsborough now so low that it banged on the bonnet of my car, the rattle of gunfire now only weakly returned by Schitt’s men.

I pressed hard on the accelerator and drove off in pursuit of the aircraft, past the two shattered cars and over the bridge. There was a straight road ahead of us and Hades’ plane was labouring against a slight headwind; with a bit of luck we might catch them. At the end of the straight there was a fork and a gated entry to a field straight on. The plane carried straight on. Bowden looked at me nervously.

‘Which way?’ he yelled.

In answer I pulled out my automatic, aimed it at the gate and fired. The first two shots missed but the next three hit their mark; the hinges shattered and the gate collapsed as I bounced into the field, which happened to be populated by a herd of bemused cows. The plane droned on, and while not exactly gaining on it we did at least seem to be keeping up.

‘In pursuit of suspects in aeroplane heading, er, east, I think,’ yelled Bowden into the police wireless. An aircraft was the one thing none of us had thought of. Although a police airship was in the area it would be too slow to be able to cut off the plane’s escape.

We carried on down a shallow slope, dodging heifers and making for the far end of the field, where a farmer in his Land Rover was just closing the gate. He looked perplexed as he saw the mud-spattered sports car fast approaching him but opened the gate anyway. I yanked the wheel hard over, turned right and slewed broadside down the road with one rear wheel in the ditch before I recovered and accelerated rapidly, now at right angles to where we wanted to go. The next turning on the left was into a farm, so in we went, scattering frightened chickens in all directions as we searched for a way out into the fields beyond. The aircraft was still visible, but detours like this only increased the distance between us.

‘Hollycroft farm!’ Bowden shouted into the wireless as he tried to keep anyone who might be interested informed of our progress. I found my way past the farmyard and out through the orchard by way of a barbed-wire fence that put five deep horizontal scratches along the paintwork of the car. We drove faster across the grass, bumping heavily over hardened ruts made the previous winter. Twice the car bottomed out, but at last we were making headway. As we pulled up beneath the plane, it abruptly banked left. I did likewise and entered a forest on a logging track. We could just see the aircraft above us through the foliage that flicked and rushed above our heads.

‘Thursday—!’ shouted Bowden against the rasp of the engine.

‘What?’

‘Road.’

‘Road?’

‘Road.’

We hit the road at full speed and were lifted off the ground by the camber. The car flew through the air, landed slightly askew and skidded sideways into a bramble thicket. The engine stalled but I quickly restarted it and headed off in the direction taken by the aeroplane. I accelerated up the road and emerged clear of the forest; the aircraft was ahead of us by only a hundred yards. I pressed the accelerator again and the car surged forward. We turned right into another field and tore across the grass, gaining on the plane, which was still flying into the headwind.

‘Thursday!’

‘What is it now?’

‘We’re coming to a river!’

It was true. To left and right of us and not more than half a mile distant, the broad expanse of the Severn blocked our route. Acheron was heading off to Wales and the Marches and there didn’t seem to be anything we could do about it.

‘Hold the wheel!’ I yelled as we drew closer behind and beneath the aircraft. Bowden eyed the approaching riverbank nervously. We were doing almost seventy across the flat grassland, and it wouldn’t be long before we passed the point of no return. I took careful aim with both hands and fired into the aeroplane. It jinked and banked violently. For a moment I thought I had hit the pilot but the plane quickly changed direction; it had merely gone into a dive to gain speed.

I swore, stamped on the brake and pulled the wheel around. The car skittered on the grass and drifted sideways through another fence before sliding down a bank and coming to rest at the water’s edge with a front wheel in the river. I jumped out and fired at the retreating aircraft in a futile gesture until my gun was empty, half expecting Acheron to turn about and make a low pass, but he never did. The aircraft, with Hades, a forged Gainsborough and ten million pounds in dud notes, droned away into the distance.

We got out and looked at the damaged car.

‘A write-off,’ murmured Bowden after making a last position report over the wireless. ‘It won’t be long before Hades realises that the money we have given him is not of the highest quality.’

I stared at the aircraft, which was now a small dot on the horizon.

‘Heading into the Republic?’ suggested Bowden.

‘Could be,’ I replied, wondering how we should ever get to him if he took refuge in Wales. Extradition agreements did exist but Anglo-Welsh relations were not good and the Politburo tended to regard any enemy of the English as a friend.

‘What now?’ asked Bowden.

‘I’m not sure,’ I replied slowly, ‘but I think that if you’ve never read Martin Chuzzlewit you should do so as soon as possible. I’ve a feeling that as soon as Acheron finds he’s been hoodwinked Martin will be the first for the chop.’

Hades’ plane vanished into the distance. All was quiet except for the gentle lap of the river. I lay down on the grass and closed my eyes, attempting to get a few moments of peace before we were thrown back into the maelstrom of Goliath, Hades, Chuzzlewit and all the rest. It was a calm moment—the eye of the hurricane. But I wasn’t thinking about any of them. I was still thinking about Daisy Mutlar. The news about her and Landen was both expected and unexpected at the same time; he might have mentioned it, of course, but then, after a ten-year absence, he was under no obligation to do so. I found myself wondering what it would be like to have children and then wondering what it would be like never to know.

Bowden joined me on the grass. He took a shoe off and emptied out some gravel.

‘That post I was talking about in Ohio, you remember?’

‘Yes?’

‘They confirmed the appointment this morning.’

‘Terrific! When do you start?’

Bowden looked down. ‘I haven’t agreed to it yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘Have you ever—um—been to Ohio?’ he asked in an innocent tone of voice.

‘No; I’ve been to New York several times, though.’

‘It’s very beautiful, I am told.’

‘A lot of America is.’

‘They are offering me twice Victor’s pay.’

‘Good deal.’

‘And they said I could bring someone with me.’

‘Who do you have in mind?’

‘You.’

I looked at him, and his urgent and hopeful expression said it all. I hadn’t thought of him as a permanent boss or partner. I supposed that working with him might be like working under Boswell again. A workaholic who expected much the same from his charges.

‘That’s a very generous offer, Bowden.’

‘Then you’ll consider it?’

I shrugged. ‘I can’t think of anything beyond Hades. After living with him all day I had hoped that I would be spared his presence at night, but he is there too, leering at me in my dreams.’

Bowden had had no such dreams, but then he hadn’t seen as much of Hades as I had. We both lapsed into silence and stayed that way for an hour, watching the river flow languidly past until the tow truck arrived.

I stretched out in my mother’s huge iron bathtub and took a swig from the large G&T I had smuggled in with me. The garage had said they would have been happier to scrap the Speedster, but I told them to get it back on the road no matter what, as it still had important work to do. As I was drifting off to sleep in the warm pine-smelling waters there was a knock at the door. It was Landen.

‘Holy shit, Landen! Can’t a girl have a bath in peace?’

‘Sorry, Thurs.’

‘How did you get into the house?’

‘Your mother let me in.’

‘Did she now. What do you want?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘No.’

‘You spoke to Daisy.’

‘Yes I did. Are you really going to marry that cow?’

‘I understand you’re angry, Thursday. I didn’t want you to find out this way. I was going to tell you myself but you kind of dashed off the last time we were together.’

There was an awkward silence. I stared at the taps.

‘I’m getting on,’ said Landen finally. ‘I’ll be forty-one next June and I want a family.’

‘And Daisy will give you that?’

‘Sure; she’s a great girl, Thursday. She’s not you, of course, but she’s a great girl; very

‘Dependable?’

‘Solid, perhaps. Not exciting, but reliable.’

‘Do you love her?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then there seems little to talk about. What do you want from me?’

Landen hesitated.

‘I just wanted to know that I was making the right decision.’

‘You said you loved her.’

‘I do.’

‘And she will give you the children you want.’

‘That too.’

‘Then I think you should marry her.’

Landen hesitated slightly. ‘So that’s okay with you?’

‘You don’t need my permission.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I just wanted to ask if you think this could all have had some other outcome?’

I placed a flannel over my face and groaned silently. It wasn’t something I wanted to deal with right now.

‘No. Landen, you must marry her. You promised her and besides—‘ I thought quickly. ‘—I have a job in Ohio.’

‘Ohio?’

‘As a LiteraTec. One of my colleagues at work offered it to me.’

‘Who?’

‘A guy named Cable. Great fellow he is, too.’

Landen gave up, sighed, thanked me and promised to send me an invitation. He left the house quietly—when I came downstairs ten minutes later, my mother was still wearing a forlorn ‘I wish he were my son-in-law’ sort of look.