kitchen, found another
tea-towel and blindfolded her. He also moved away from her various gardening tools
that might have been put to use cutting the washing-line. Before he left the house
he used a bread-knife on the telephone lead, and wiped up the bits of tooth, the
blood and the pool of urine under the kitchen chair with a dish-cloth. Apart from
the sabotaged telephone there was no sign that anything untoward had occurred. If
one of her parents came back in the afternoon they might think she had gone out
for a walk and that would give him more time.
Twenty minutes after he had entered Growton farmhouse he was
back in his Cortina and driving towards London airport fifty miles to the east.
Somewhere along the M4 it occurred to him that if she was expecting a reporter he'd
have quite a little scoop. He wondered how long it would take the police to find
out who had beaten her up and how much they would care.
He didn't regret what he'd done in the least. It was, he said to himself, necessary.
He didn't have time for the luxury of prolonged interrogation and at least he had
left her alive which is more than her bloody boyfriend had done for Emma. Fancy
the bitch thinking he wanted to rape her. Then, to his shame, he began to enjoy
the notion. Concentrate on killing Koller, he thought. After a while this did the
trick. He noticed he was sweating, and his arms and shoulders ached.
Dove had been gone almost an hour when Ruth managed to partially
remove the blindfold by making downward strokes with her face against the rough
brick wall. In doing so she developed another graze on her forehead, but uncovered
her left eye. By arching her back she managed to get her fingers to the line around
her ankles and pulled at the knots until they were sufficiently loose to allow her
to crawl about on her knees.
In this fashion, and in the half-gloom, she painfully climbed
the six cellar steps on her knees. Twice she almost fell backwards and just kept
her balance by hunching her shoulders so far forward that she was practically crawling
up the flight on her belly. When she got to the top she tried to raise the latch
on the cellar door with what was left of her front teeth. It was very tender work
for a bruised mouth and she took her time about it. As she was half-blind and could
make out only the most definite objects this operation also needed considerable
concentration. She bent her head and felt for the latch, first with her tongue,
and then with her teeth. Her head was still ringing from Dove's punches. She began
to feel dizzy. The latch was stiff. Three times she almost lifted it only to have
it fall back into position. Her head ached. She felt sick. Then she was spinning
off the edge, dissolving into a nauseous limbo. For a second or two she fought against
it, but it was so much easier to let go. She fell backwards and with some violence,
her legs bent under her, hands tied behind her back, banging her head hard against
the last two steps. When she had finished her fall she lay very still and her breathing
was barely audible.
11. A Loose Net
'Shloms?' The young Detective-Sergeant
who had been so nervous when they raided Ruth's flat often had difficulty in understanding
Fitchett. The older man mixed his generation's slang with words of his own device.
'Yeah. That's what the governor thinks. Shloms.'
'Who?'
'Shloms ... Solomons ... Israelis, you know,' said Fitchett,
impatiently revealing the word's curious derivation. He'd picked it up years ago
from a mate in the old Palestine Police.
'What do you think?'
'I'm not so sure. A couple of years back when they had those
teams over here and in Europe' - Britain would never be in Europe as far as Fitchett
was concerned - 'I'd have been more sure. But then they overstepped the mark and
clobbered the wrong bloke in Norway. And the French were getting pissed off with
scraping the right blokes off the pavement even before that. One of the Funnies
told me they'd promised to
tea-towel and blindfolded her. He also moved away from her various gardening tools
that might have been put to use cutting the washing-line. Before he left the house
he used a bread-knife on the telephone lead, and wiped up the bits of tooth, the
blood and the pool of urine under the kitchen chair with a dish-cloth. Apart from
the sabotaged telephone there was no sign that anything untoward had occurred. If
one of her parents came back in the afternoon they might think she had gone out
for a walk and that would give him more time.
Twenty minutes after he had entered Growton farmhouse he was
back in his Cortina and driving towards London airport fifty miles to the east.
Somewhere along the M4 it occurred to him that if she was expecting a reporter he'd
have quite a little scoop. He wondered how long it would take the police to find
out who had beaten her up and how much they would care.
He didn't regret what he'd done in the least. It was, he said to himself, necessary.
He didn't have time for the luxury of prolonged interrogation and at least he had
left her alive which is more than her bloody boyfriend had done for Emma. Fancy
the bitch thinking he wanted to rape her. Then, to his shame, he began to enjoy
the notion. Concentrate on killing Koller, he thought. After a while this did the
trick. He noticed he was sweating, and his arms and shoulders ached.
Dove had been gone almost an hour when Ruth managed to partially
remove the blindfold by making downward strokes with her face against the rough
brick wall. In doing so she developed another graze on her forehead, but uncovered
her left eye. By arching her back she managed to get her fingers to the line around
her ankles and pulled at the knots until they were sufficiently loose to allow her
to crawl about on her knees.
In this fashion, and in the half-gloom, she painfully climbed
the six cellar steps on her knees. Twice she almost fell backwards and just kept
her balance by hunching her shoulders so far forward that she was practically crawling
up the flight on her belly. When she got to the top she tried to raise the latch
on the cellar door with what was left of her front teeth. It was very tender work
for a bruised mouth and she took her time about it. As she was half-blind and could
make out only the most definite objects this operation also needed considerable
concentration. She bent her head and felt for the latch, first with her tongue,
and then with her teeth. Her head was still ringing from Dove's punches. She began
to feel dizzy. The latch was stiff. Three times she almost lifted it only to have
it fall back into position. Her head ached. She felt sick. Then she was spinning
off the edge, dissolving into a nauseous limbo. For a second or two she fought against
it, but it was so much easier to let go. She fell backwards and with some violence,
her legs bent under her, hands tied behind her back, banging her head hard against
the last two steps. When she had finished her fall she lay very still and her breathing
was barely audible.
11. A Loose Net
'Shloms?' The young Detective-Sergeant
who had been so nervous when they raided Ruth's flat often had difficulty in understanding
Fitchett. The older man mixed his generation's slang with words of his own device.
'Yeah. That's what the governor thinks. Shloms.'
'Who?'
'Shloms ... Solomons ... Israelis, you know,' said Fitchett,
impatiently revealing the word's curious derivation. He'd picked it up years ago
from a mate in the old Palestine Police.
'What do you think?'
'I'm not so sure. A couple of years back when they had those
teams over here and in Europe' - Britain would never be in Europe as far as Fitchett
was concerned - 'I'd have been more sure. But then they overstepped the mark and
clobbered the wrong bloke in Norway. And the French were getting pissed off with
scraping the right blokes off the pavement even before that. One of the Funnies
told me they'd promised to
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