The Runaways by Victor Canning Page B

at the sheen she had worked on one of the boots and said, ‘I know Crockerton well. Hillside Bungalow? Can’t recall that, Johnny. Where is it?’
    Smiler hadn’t the faintest idea where it was because he had just made up the name without giving it a location. But he gathered his wits and said, ‘ Well… it’s sort of… Well, you know, not in the village and not exactly outside of it.’
    Miss Milly grinned. ‘That’s a good description for finding a place on a dark night. New, is it? One of the new bungalows?’
    Smiler wasn’t going to be pinned down, so he said, ‘ Well… it’s not really new. Nor old either. It’s sort of past the post office and then down a little sidepath towards the river.’
    â€˜Near the old millhouse, you mean?’
    â€˜That’s right. Miss Milly.’
    â€˜Well ride home carefully.’
    From Mrs Lakey he got a different farewell for the day. As he wheeled his bicycle out of the yard, Mrs Lakey came round the corner on Penny which she had been exercising in the paddock. She pulled up, looked at her wrist-watch, and said, ‘Finished for the day, Boy?’
    â€˜Yes, Ma’am … I mean, Mrs Lakey.’
    â€˜Shut the hens up?’
    â€˜Yes, Mrs Lakey.’
    â€˜Good. Well, Boy, we’ll make something of you. You move well. Should stay the course if your wind holds. Right, cut along, Boy. Get a good night’s rest and come back fighting in the morning.’
    She moved off on Penny and Smiler rode down the drive, accompanied by Tonks as far as the gate.
    In Heytesbury he stopped at a garage and bought himself a bicycle lamp with the last of his hoard of fivepenny pieces. The garage assistant looked at the money, looked at Smiler, winked and said, ‘Been robbing the poor box, then?’
    Yarra left her tank shelter not long after first light. Outside she stretched herself and then spent some minutes giving herself a good grooming. It was a clear, almost cloudless day with a brisk wind blowing across the plain from the south-west. A solitary lark, emboldened by the bright sun, climbed aloft and held a short song practice for the promised coming of Spring.
    Her grooming finished, Yarra loped away down hill from the tank. At the bottom of the dip she found a pool of rain water and drank. For the next two hours she circled wide over the plain and saw many other old tank targets dotted along the down sides and hill crests. She was on the eastern portion of Salisbury Plain, an area about six miles long and five miles deep. The whole plain was about twenty to thirty miles long, a vast expanse of rolling, dun-coloured grass and downland broken here and there by smooth, shallow valleys and combes and an occasional isolated clump of trees on a ridge. In some of the deeper valleys were scrub and thorn areas. Over the whole stretch there was not a plough-patch to be seen, not a domestic animal to be found grazing. The land all belonged to the Ministry of Defence and the public for the most part was excluded. When people were admitted on special days or at the week-ends they had to keep to the rough tracks and roads which criss-crossed the plain and which were marked at frequent intervals with notices that read:
DANGER–UNEXPLODED MISSILES
DO NOT LEAVE THE CARRIAGEWAYS
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
    When the red flags were flying at the Army entrance points to the plain, known as Vedettes, nobody was allowed entry except the military personnel engaged in training or manoeuvres. For the whole of the great expanse of the plain there were five Land Wardens who patrolled the roads and tracks in Land-Rovers to see that no unauthorized persons came into the area. For the eastern portion of the plain, where Yarra was, there were two Wardens.
    Great tank tracks scored the slopes and plateaux of the plain. Where the tanks had permanent road crossings these were marked with black-and-yellow-topped posts to warn car