Grandison was reading a pocket volume by the fireplace. Sangwill sat by the hall telephone. Here they all were as they had been twice before. But this time things were different. Bush had no doubt in his mind that Edward Shoebridge was Trader. It had become an article of faith with him. That they were going to be successful because they had been lucky would be known to very few people. All frustration was gone from him now. There would be no mark against his name. From the department he would go on to higher appointments. Well, in every man’s life there came a time when luck joined him. He accepted that now, but still wished that their success could have come from their own efforts. Tonight luck was with him and against Shoebridge. Tonight everything was against Shoebridge, thanks to the heavy-handed sleuthing of George Lumley, a George Lumley who would never know anything about the part he had played, and thanks to an impressionable old lady whose conscience had finally troubled her over her dead sister’s illegitimate child.

  The telephone rang. Sangwill answered it, speaking briefly. When he put it down he said, “She’s coming up now.”

  “She?” Bush’s voice showed his surprise.

  Grandison put his book into his pocket and stood up. “Naturally. Both Archer and Pakefield were smallish men. She could handle them from the van alone. But the Archbishop is heavy. The man would have to work that end this time.”

  “It’s a car. She’s driving herself.”

  Grandison nodded. “That fits. All the world knows about the first two times . . . a masked woman and then a man with a carnival mask. They wouldn’t risk having to deal with some long-memoried, heroic cab driver. It’ll be a stolen car, taken somewhere locally. A hospital probably. She was a doctor once.” He flipped a finger towards the door for Bush to meet the woman.

  Bush went out, angry with himself. It was an unimportant deduction which Grandison had kept to himself. But he should have made it for himself. (Four hours later it was confirmed that the car had been taken from the Andover War Memorial Hospital a few miles away. The hospital was five minutes’ walk from the station.)

  He went down the steps as the car came up the drive. As the car stopped all its lights were turned off. Bush stood there, the warm, unseasonal wind washing against him, blowing strongly across the open playing field where the waiting helicopter was parked.

  The woman was dressed as he had seen her before, her face swathed to the eyes in a black silk scarf, a raincoat belted closely around her, and a dark beret pulled close over her head, hiding all of her hair. For a moment it was possible to imagine she was some close-cropped man.

  She crossed from the car to the steps, paused and looked at him and then gave a little nod. She went up the steps past him and pushed open the door with a gloved hand. Bush went in after her.

  Watching her and her movements was like experiencing some familiar dream sequence. But there was no satisfaction in it. He had wanted it to be the man. He had wanted to have the man here, to stand and watch him and know within himself that the man was doomed, that bad luck had marked him. The woman was nothing. The man was their real prey. Bush felt that he had been cheated. The gods who had worked for them should have seen that this scene was played with proper irony.

  The woman tipped a scattering of stones free from the bag and began to examine them through the optic. She made three small piles and then weighed each pile on the carat scales. None of them spoke. She examined and weighed another sample of diamonds and then carefully put the diamonds back into the bag. She slipped the bag into her coat pocket, nodded at Grandison, and then moved towards the door.

  Bush followed her. The first time he had escorted her he had led the way. Now she kept ahead of him. She went down the drive and turned right-handed along the little shrub-lined path that led to the helicopter field. In the helicopter was the same pilot who had flown the mission twice before.

  A few moments later the rotor blades turned, their wind flattened the grasses and buffeted against Bush. He watched as the machine went up into the windy, cloud-pocked sky. The navigation lights were turned off and the machine was lost in the night while the sound of its flight was still with him. She would be sitting up there writing her directions on her notepad. There would be triumph in her. Let there be, he thought. Let her be full of it. She and her husband had almost sent him into limbo, marked for life. But the gods had said no. They had wheeled Miss Rainbird, Miss Blanche Tyler and George Lumley onto the scene and the whole pattern of the play had altered in his and the department’s favour.

  He went back into the hall and helped himself to a whisky. The others were already drinking. Grandison had his book out. Grandison, he knew, regarded this night as a routine matter. Grandison would be a different man tomorrow.

  Just over an hour later the helicopter returned. It landed on the playing field. The three of them met it. With them now was an ambulance with a driver and a doctor. The Archbishop was still very heavily sedated. They lifted him from the helicopter to the ambulance. The doctor made a quick examination, nodded his head, and within minutes the ambulance was on its way to London with Sangwill and the doctor in the back.

  Bush and Grandison took the helicopter pilot into the mess hall and gave him a drink. He had flown south-west on a line which would have taken him to the coast at Bournemouth. He knew the whole area well. They had landed in a clearing of the New Forest surrounded by trees which had a small road running close by. He had seen no car but the man had flashed them down with a torch. He had been waiting with the Archbishop, blanket-wrapped, on the grass and had helped load him aboard while the woman covered them with a gun. The man had worn a raincoat, cloth cap and gloves and the lower half of his face had been scarf-wrapped. The pilot was sure that it was the same man that he had seen before, the same height and the same build. When the Archbishop was aboard the man and woman had backed away into the trees. The pilot had made no attempt to search for them from the air.

  When the pilot had gone Bush spread the map of Southern England on the table. From the New Forest point to Blagdon would take a car anything between two to two and a hall hours. The time could well be longer if the pair deliberately took a roundabout route which they might do because they would assume that once the Archbishop was safely back there would be a police call out to check cars in the area. If the Shoebridges were the kidnappers then there should be a call from their man at Blagdon reporting their return to the house within the next three to four hours.

  The call came at a quarter to five that morning. It was made from a telephone box in the village of Blagdon. The Shoebridges had returned in a small van at twenty minutes past four.

  Bush, no doubt at all in his mind now, turned to Grandison. “They’re back. Half an hour ago.”

  Grandison nodded. “We’ll leave here at eight o’clock. That’ll give us two hours’ sleep and time for breakfast. Eleven o’clock is a civilised hour to call on a Sunday morning.”

  “Just you and I?”

  “Yes. It now becomes our private business. No publicity, no police, just a simple adjustment—meeting violence with violence. It’s the only way until men realise that you gain nothing by compromising with evil, that there are times when life must be sacrificed to make other lives safe. If it had been necessary Shoebridge would have killed the Archbishop. To be able to kill, you must already have accepted death for yourself as the due consequence of failure.”

  “We just drive up to the front door?”

  “Why not? The house is isolated. Visitors don’t come on foot. And they won’t know the car. We drive up and walk in, Bush. It’s a moment you must have thought would never come.”

  “Well, yes, that’s true.”

  Grandison smiled. “Prayer and luck, they’re two good horses to back. I did the praying and luck favoured you. A fair division. We’ll end it that way, too.” He took a coin from his pocket, spun it and trapped it on the back of his hand. “Heads you get the woman, tails you get the man. Agreed?” Bush nodded.

  Grandison uncovered the coin. “Tails. Your luck is holding. You wanted him, didn’t you?”

  Bush nodded again.

  * * * *

  Sunday morning, the first Sunday in April, the sixth Sunday in Lent, and Palm Sunday, puffballs of cloud racing over a blue sky, young green showing on the hawthorns and the wind tolling at the heavy heads of the daffodils, and George whistling contentedly to himself as he put out fresh food and water for his birds in the aviary. Albert sat outside and watched him. George was happy. Early that morning a village mother had come to him with her son, a big, strong, cheerful boy of sixteen whom George knew and liked, a neat, tidy boy who wanted to work for him. The scratch on the van could be fixed as good as new for a couple of pounds, and on Monday morning he started his first job. Everything was going to turn out right. He was going to make a go of the business. Lumley’s Sunshine Gardens Ltd. But not limited. Unlimited. He was going to go places. He could feel it in his bones.

  Sunday morning at Reed Court, the sunshine striking through the window of the breakfast room, setting the silver on the table ablaze, warming the cold snow of the damask table cloth, and Miss Rainbird in a bad temper because she had not slept well. For the last two nights she had not slept well, despite her sherry. She had known she had dreamt but on awakening could remember nothing. And awakening early she had lain in bed and found herself thinking more and more of the utter outrageousness and discourtesy of Edward Shoebridge’s dismissal of the Rainbird family. Someone, she thought, should teach the man a lesson in manners. Who did he think he was? Illegitimate, a product of Harriet’s stupidity, brought up by that loathsome chauffeur who had been Sholto’s crony— and calmly sending her a message telling her that she could keep her position, her money, Reed Court, all that the Rainbird family had stood for for over hundreds of years. He wanted none of it. The byblow of an Irish adventurer and that spineless sister of hers. It had been a wound to her pride which she could not take easily. Would not take. She was not a woman to be dismissed in such a cavalier fashion. If anyone was going to be peremptory then it would be her. She would go and see him and put him in his place, tell him that he had got the wrong idea from Madame Blanche, that Madame Blanche had been acting entirely without authority, that she, Miss Rainbird, had had no intention of offering him anything at all, that not in the remotest way had he any claims on the family so far as any pecuniary matters were concerned. She rang the bell for Syton and told him that she wanted the car in half an hour. Mr. Shoebridge might deal discourteously through an intermediary, but not her, not Miss Rainbird. If something unpleasant had to be done to restore one’s peace of mind, then one should do it oneself. That was something she had learned long ago.

  Sunday morning and ten minutes to go before morning chapel, which Martin Shoebridge meant to miss, no matter the trouble he would land himself in. Chapel was a bore and he was going to walk over to the farm where he kept his ferrets. A few days before he had bought a polecat ferret jill from a gamekeeper and he wanted to try her out along the farm hedgerows. There were plenty of young rabbits around now. He would be punished but punishment meant nothing to him. If you could be clever enough to avoid it you did, and he was becoming quite experienced in avoiding it, but if it were inevitable then you just took it. In two days’ time he would be home for the holidays. There was no punishment there, only understanding and a way of life which suited him absolutely. He walked, hands in his pockets, fair-haired, well built and wiry like his father, whistling to himself, fifteen years old and missing nothing, seeing the distant movement of sheep on the downs, the quick flirt of wren and blue-tit in the hedges, and the clumsy triangular spoors of a rabbit in the mud by a field gate. While he was with his ferrets the farmer’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Mabel, would probably come hanging around. Well, she would be unlucky this morning. He wasn’t going to waste any time mucking around in the hay of the big barn with her. A kestrel came down wind then hung hovering at the far end of the field. He stood watching it. It was a male, head lowered, watching the ground below. He suddenly saw the great sweep of the Mendip hills rolling away from Highlands House . . . He loved the place, but one day there would be another place, miles, miles better which he knew he would love more. His father had promised it. He walked on whistling gently. Life was full of promise and good things. You just had to know what you wanted, that was all, and then take it.

  Sunday morning and the wind was coming in west and warm from the sea. The Shoebridges had slept late and Edward Shoebridge had just awakened. His wife slept still. The bedroom was on the north side of the house and they slept always with their curtains drawn back. Lying in bed he could see through the crystal-clear air the long line of the hills and then their slow drop to the plain and the sea beyond. April was in and spring was taking the land. The big early-run salmon would be coming in from the sea to the rivers. The cliffs of Steep Holm and Flat Holm would be full of nesting seabirds. On the hill slopes the lapwings had long paired off and he could hear a morning lark singing. He lay drained of all feeling except contentment and found himself thinking of the Archbishop’s writings, which he had read through before letting the man take them away with him. They had formed an examination of Christian ethics, a criticism and a consideration which had interested him in a way no other theological work ever had. But he guessed that they were a personal statement and would not be published. In different circumstances he would have been interested to talk to the man about them. He quarrelled with nothing in them except their misunderstanding of the nature of man. The world would have had to retrace its steps to find the virtues that the Archbishop argued had to be cherished above all others. Adam and Eve had stepped out of paradise and within half a mile had taken the wrong turning. There was no hope for mankind. It was beginning to destroy itself. Nothing could halt the progress of slow annihilation. Even the small paradise which he was going to create for himself, his wife and his son would eventually be over-run in the time of the sons of the sons of his son . . . perhaps sooner, perhaps later, but it would come. There was no inviolable virtue in what he wanted to create. It was as personal and limited as another man’s ambition to become chairman of a company, head of a college or a church, but it was the thing that he had to do. If it could not be done then there was nothing he wanted. It was what the diamonds in the washleather bag on the dressing-table would give him. The world would soon become a rubbish dump populated by scavengers. All he wanted was to escape during his time and to take the people he loved with him.

  The front door bell rang. He looked at the bedside clock. It was a quarter past eleven. He got up and put on his dressing-gown. The bedroom window gave no view of the driveway. He went to the head of the stairs and looked out of the window over the front porch. He could just see the front of a car. It was an old Ford Capri, mud-splashed. There was no suspicion in him. What he had done had been well done. He went down the stairs and opened the front door.

  The two men stepped in quickly and killed his first movement of recognition and reaction. They held him expertly and the bigger of them clapped a hand over his mouth. The other ran a free hand over him quickly to check him for weapons. When they were satisfied that he was unarmed the big man moved his hand quickly from his mouth and squeezed his throat in a choking grip. The other flicked a scarf from his pocket and tied a gag around his mouth. The whole assault was a rapid routine in which they were well practised.

  They stepped back from him and he was covered by their two automatics.

  The big man, bearded, a monocle dangling loose over his breast, said, “We’ve met before, of course, but never been introduced. I’m Grandison and this is Bush. Just turn round and go quite normally to wherever your wife is. When we get to her we’ll take the gag off.”

  For a moment or two Shoebridge stood unmoving. There was no panic or fear or bitterness in him. Through the open door he could see the back window of the car. It was covered partly with crude holiday stickers of places visited, the flags and shields marking Weymouth, Brighton, Southend and Blackpool. Slowly he turned and led them along the hallway and up the stairs. Somewhere, something had gone wrong. To speculate on when and where and how was idle now because he knew his time was running out and there would be no satisfaction or comfort in knowing. Behind him were his executioners. He knew something of the department and its power by now. There would be no formalities, no law processes. These men worked with and without the law. They had nothing to fear.

  He paused by the shut bedroom door. Bush moved him aside and went in. The woman was sitting up in bed. She wore a black silk nightdress, her arms bare, and she was brushing her hair, hair as dark as the nightdress. She was good-looking and firm-bodied. For a moment she stared past him to her husband and Grandison behind, her right arm poised, frozen in the act of brushing her hair. Slowly her arm came down.

  Grandison took the scarf from Shoebridge’s mouth and said, “Get into bed with her.”

  Shoebridge moved to the bed and slid in beside her.

  “Keep your hands where we can see them,” said Bush. His eyes went swiftly round the room, cataloguing, absorbing everything. He saw the washleather bag on the dressing-table. He backed to it, picked it up and handed it to Grandison.