OUT OF THE DARK
Chapter Three
He had reached the fringes of the Lake District and it was late in the afternoon when his passenger awoke. It was just this faint, rattling noise of the door handle unfastening cautiously that had alerted him. He pulled over and turned his head round.
"Don't make any foolish moves, laddie. All the doors are locked and you've nothing to fear from me, anyway." He got no answer. He went on. "You are not in the power of the MI6 mob any more; don't worry. I won't harm you. I can help you if you allow me to."
The boy kept silent for a long while. Then: "I want to get out." The voice was curiously blank and subdued. Cowley sighed. "I promised you would. But we have things to set right first." It wasn't the place or the moment to elaborate. He felt compelled to speak slowly and softly, as with a mildly backward child. He smiled, reassuringly. "And the first thing to fix is food. Aren't you hungry?"
"No," was the not very cooperative answer.
"Well, I am." His lunch was getting old and had been pretty light anyway. But the drugs that were meddling with Bodie's brain and nerves seemed to have had a negative effect on his appetite. Unless the lad was just trying to be contradictory. Cowley's inner voice was telling him that in his present condition he wasn't to be trusted, neither to be left alone in the car, nor to be taken to a public place. That was going to be a problem. And he loathed thinking of the solution to this problem. Except he had no choice.
They had just passed a village and the road was bordering a not too large but thick beech wood. Cowley drove the car in a dirt lane and parked in a sort of narrow path. The spot was remote and dark. With luck, nobody would notice the car from the road or hear…anything suspicious. He opened the glove compartment, blessing the darkness.
"I've got cheese biscuits. Would you like some?"
Bodie didn't answer but proffered his hand, thoughtlessly. With the swiftest of moves, Cowley slipped one manacle around the young man's wrist and, in a split second, he had fastened the other to the steering wheel. Boy! You must be very low to be caught by the oldest trick in the book.
In a flash of belated insight, Cowley realised his mistake when he saw, coming towards him with terrific might and speed, a huge fist propelled by a strong muscular arm, which missed his neck by a hair's breadth and landed on the dashboard, smashing the speedometer dial. The vision of his companion's face contorted with rage and despair was enough to scare any man less prepared for dire situations than George Cowley. As fast as a bolt, he had opened the door and jumped outside.
"Sorry, lad, I can't let you destroy this car." Now he really had no choice. This madman was attempting to tear out the wheel from its frame. He had to stop him, and the best means for that purpose, he had it at hand, in the inner pocket of his jacket: something he had mutely sworn he would never use when Harrington had given it to him with his last, well-meaning recommendations about the way to deal with this difficult patient and his furious fits of violence.
Half bent as he was over the front seat, Bodie offered an easy target. A perfectly applied karate chop had him knocked out flat on the wheel. Then, the needle in the neck muscles to finish the job. The powerful drug would provide four hours of sleep at least. No need for manacles now. His soundly sleeping passenger would retrieve his former position on the rear seats, and he himself was now free to leave the car to make a few necessary purchases and phone calls. The risk of some idle stroller intruding was quite negligible. The negative point being of course that he couldn't drive.
He wasn't far from the village, hardly more than a ten minute walk by a short-cut through the fields; but the ground of the lane was uneven, muddy and covered with slippery weeds. He limped his way downhill to a grocery he had spotted beforehand while driving and was relieved to see that the small, all-purpose shop was still open though its owner was obviously on the point of putting down the shutters.
"You are lucky," he grumbled, "that this ass Frankie was so late with his delivery. What do you want at this ungodly hour?"
The mentioned delivery displayed a large stack of rye bread, still in its cardboard box. Cowley took two packs of them, a sack of potatoes, some apples and bananas, sliced ham and bacon in convenient quantity, and two dozen eggs (he was certain the stock of tinned food left in the cabin last time he was there would be quite sufficient for at least two weeks); eventually he also bought a small flask of motor oil, which was of no use to him but could explain the presence of a formally dressed stranger without a car wandering around the country-side at seven in the evening.
"Trouble with your car?" asked the man who, actually, did look a little curious.
"Just an oil leak; saw it too late," replied Cowley briefly; "Needs a repair but that must wait till my arrival."
"Take this bag," proposed the seller amiably; "it's stronger; the potatoes are no light weight: about a stone, and it's my smallest package. I hope you are not parked too far away."
"No, thanks; I stopped near the beech wood." (No sense lying about that).
"Well, it's not next door. Watch out: yesterday's downpour has left a lot of mud on the road."
How true. Twenty minutes later he was testing the veracity of this assertion as he was striving for his balance while painfully walking back to his car, uphill. The winding road was less steep than the short-cut but much longer and almost as slippery. Fortunately the loose hemp bag given to him by the shopkeeper was of the kind you can hang on your shoulder; he wondered if he would have been able to carry it by hand otherwise. He cursed in turn himself, Bodie and the British road maintenance. Only the grim prospect of having to live two weeks on canned food, and the growing certainty he'd have to stick to Bodie like a tick to a dog as soon as the boy woke had brought him to buy the potatoes and the fruit, not to mention twenty four breakable fresh eggs.
He had managed to get his cousin on the phone. The phone box smelled of cat piss and the receiver looked damaged, but it worked. He hadn't tried to tell tales. Angus was a retired Navy officer and had spent his post-war years in the Services. He was well informed about Cowley's occupations and more than willing to help, without asking too many questions. However there was no way he could stay hiding, undiscovered, at his cousin's place more than 48 hours, and cheating the authorities would be disastrous in his position, anyway. He had to be open with them. The talk with the Home Secretary, shortly following another one, more important, with his political mentor by the PM, had been trickier to negotiate, but he had succeeded in winning both their backing. Bodie could be an invaluable source of information about the Palestinian support networks and it was of prime importance to prevent the MI6 spooks from botching the case.
Besides, it was the honest truth. At least that was what Cowley wanted to believe. And if he was able to convince himself, there was a good chance that he could convince anybody else.
The way back was a nightmare. Limping more and more heavily, staggering and slipping at almost every step, he reached his car at last and slumped in the driver's seat. A quickly made ham sandwich and a can of light beer helped him to recover somehow. He made a gesture to the flask of whisky and held it back with a groan. He had still nigh two hundred miles to drive before he could indulge his alcohol craving safely.
Bodie was still as stone. Cowley checked his breathing and pulse, and was relieved. The blow to the head and the drugging didn't seem to have done any grievous harm to the man, as far as he could tell. Young and healthy as he was… Cowley's thoughts were drifting back to a time when he had got through much direr plights himself, got through pain, loss and treason, licked his wounds, and healed. But had he healed? A lame leg and a distrustful mind were not the only sequels, nor the worse. What the hell! He refocused on the job at hand and drove off. The lad would pull through, no doubt.
The rest of the journey was remarkably uneventful, that not meaning quiet or peaceful. After half-an-hour of unnatural calm, Bodie had started moaning and stirring feverisly in his sleep. This was not only slightly irritating but also, in some manner, predictive of the upcoming difficulties of the situation. Cowley strove hard to keep his thoughts strictly professional. First he had to regain the boy's trust. That was a prerequisite to anything he would attempt to help him retrieve his memory. Without trust, nothing could possibly work. Especially if he had to cheat him again, he remarked to himself with a bitter irony that, from him, was not so much a mark of cynicism than mere experience-born lucidity. Yet, it still depressed him sometimes. And this time more than ever.
He began to feel better long before he had reached Glasgow: Appeased, breathing fully, more alive, more himself in a way (his part of English blood – wool merchants from the Cottswolds, settled in Glasgow for centuries – had been so diluted by repeated Scottish matrimonies that only his family name reminded him of it). Crossing the border of Scotland always had a soothing effect on him, even if the Lowlands weren't so different from their English counterparts. Once on the Scottish soil, it was strangely easy to forget or, at least, to keep at a distance London, the ever conflicting "services", the Government's contradictory demands and his own burden of duties. This time however, was not vacation time. He had brought his current "duty" with him. And this one wouldn't let be forgotten so easily...
Desirous for obvious reasons to avoid the most populated areas, he skirted Glasgow by North-East, leaving on his right the road to Kilsyth, where MacLaren's parents lived, and – obliquing westwards, then North - headed for Drymen, hoping he would be spared the bad luck of being spotted by Frannie while driving through. Not very likely at this hour of the day. She should be riveted to her TV screen. Or playing cards with her bunch of old bats.
There was no real closeness between Cowley and his elder sister, just a sort of acrimonious familiarity. And yet, he couldn't count the number of times he had declined her invitations. The last time he had accepted (it was Christmas' eve and he was there mostly for their other relatives) she had tried to pair him with the daughter of a lady friend of her, twenty years younger than him, and ugly as sin. He was still shuddering at the reminiscence.
Though, to be honest, he admitted to himself, had she been as pretty as a rosebud that it wouldn't have changed anything to his reluctance. Womanhood, he mused, was a strange territory, one to which he would always feel alien, so much so actually that, after two – fairly awkward - incursions therein, he'd prefered it to remain for him "Terra Incognita".
The majestuous prospect of Loch Lomond on his left with its huge expanse of water and its many man-made islets, everything in the surrounding space now tinted with unlikely shades of colour by the sunset (a not so uncommon occurence), tore him away from this perillous turn of mind. He pulled over, opened the windows and stayed there for a while, letting him being washed over by the warm, soft glow of the downing light and the cool, enlivening sea breeze, welcoming them as if they were some secret blessings from the Land's spirit.
His (fairly pagan, he thought guiltily) meditation was cut off by a faint rustle from behind. He turned round. Damn! His passenger had awakened earlier than expected. He was sitting very upright and stiff, staring at him, expressionless.
"Bodie, you're awake? How do you feel?" he said, very gently. The man kept staring, not moving.
"Do you remember who I am?"
"No", he looked bewildered.
"George Cowley. I took you from the hospital; you asked me to. Don't you remember anything?"
"I remember you hitting me."
"Well," Cowley retorted, "I remember you hitting me first." He omitted to recall the circumstances. "I couldn't let you wreck the car. You were very agitated. I had to calm you down."
Smiling reassuringly, he bent forward fractionally, and the other man flung himself backwards, hands profered in a clumsy gesture of defence. For a fleeting moment he looked like a scared rabbit. Nothing in him to remind the lethal fighter of late. Then he slid back in its previous state of withdrawal. So, the drug was still working at some level. Fine for now.
"You've nothing to fear from me; I won't do you any harm."
"You hit me." repeated the young man with a sort of dumb stubbornness. He didn't mention the drugging or the manacles and Cowley thought wiser to leave that uncleared.
"I'm sorry, Bodie, really sorry; but I couldn't do anything else." He got no reaction and went on. "How do you feel? Any headache?"
He was beginning to be truly worried, actually, and the sincerity of his tone seemed to get at his companion.
"Yes – no," he answered hesitantly, "I feel... strange. What...what happened?"
"You were held in this hospital, Repton, after I brought you home from Africa. You were on watch for a week, then interrogated by MI6 people. They treated you ...roughly; you wanted out; you asked me to take you out and I promised you I would. I kept my word, as you can see."
Cowley couldn't tell whether his explanations had been in any measure absorbed, or lost completely on the young man's foggy brain. Only mute distress and disorientation were showing on his handsome features. He was obviously still deeply confused. Confused but docile enough to accept being moved round to the passenger's front seat without further question. Better to have him there than behind, though there was little he could do if the man happened to get berserk again. This was a risk to run. The whole thing had been a risk to run, as all in Cowley's life had always been.
End of Chapter Three