“Where are we?” he mumbled.
“Almost there,” said Blott, managing to slow the crane down. Mr Edwards took another swig of vodka.
“Show me the way to go home,” he sang, “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”
“Not yet,” said Blott and turned the crane up the drive towards the Bullett-Finches’ house.
It was one of Mrs Bullett-Finch’s pleasanter qualities from her husband’s point of view that she went to bed early. “It’s the early bird that catches the worm,” she would say at nine o’clock every night and take herself upstairs, leaving Mr Bullett-Finch to sit up by himself and read about lawns in peace and quiet. And lawns interested him. They held a charm for him that Ivy Bullett-Finch had long since relinquished. Lawns improved with age, which was more than could be said for wives and what Mr Bullett-Finch didn’t know about browntop and chewing fescue and velvet bent was not worth knowing. And the lawns around Finch Grove were in his opinion among the finest in the country. They stretched immaculately in front of the house down to the stream at the bottom of the garden. Not a dandelion scarred their surface, not a plantain, not a daisy. For six years Mr Bullett-Finch had nurtured his lawns, sanding, mowing, spiking, fertilizing, weedkilling, even going so far as to prohibit visitors with high heels from walking on them. And when Ivy wanted to go down to the orchard she had to wear her bedroom slippers. It may have been this insistence on his part that the front garden was sacrosanct that had contributed to her nervous disposition and sense of guilt. What the garden was to her husband, the house was to Ivy, a source of obsessive concern in which everything had its place, was dusted twice a day and polished three times a week so that she went to bed early less out of indolence than from sheer exhaustion and lay there wondering if she had turned everything off.
On this particular night Mr Bullett-Finch was deep in a chapter on hormone weedkillers when the lights went out. He got up and stumbled through to the fusebox only to find that the fuses were intact.
“Must be a power failure,” he thought and went up to bed in the dark. He had just undressed and was putting on his pyjamas when he became aware that something extremely large and powered by an enormous diesel engine appeared to be making its way up his drive. He rushed to the window and peered out into two powerful headlights. Temporarily blinded, he groped for his dressing-gown and slippers, found them and put them on and looked out of the window again. What looked like a gigantic crane had stopped on the gravel forecourt and was backing on to his lawn. With a scream of rage Mr Bullett-Finch told it to stop but it was too late. A moment later there was a winching noise and the crane began to swing. Mr Bullett-Finch pulled his head in the window and raced for the stairs. He was halfway down them when all concern for his precious lawn disappeared, to be replaced by the absolute conviction that Finch Grove was at the very centre of some gigantic earthquake. As the house disintegrated around him – Mr Edwards’ claim to be a demolition expert entirely vindicated – Mr Bullett-Finch clung to the banisters and peered through a duststorm of plaster and powdered brick while the furnishings of which his wife had been so rightly proud hurtled past him from the upstairs rooms. Among them came Mrs Bullett-Finch herself, screaming and hysterically proclaiming her innocence, which had until then never been in doubt, and he was just debating why she should assume responsibility for what was obviously a natural cataclysm when he was saved the trouble by the roof collapsing on top of him and the staircase collapsing underneath. Mr Bullett-Finch descended into the cellar and lay unconscious, surrounded by his small stock of claret. Mrs Bullett-Finch, still clinging to her mattress and the conviction that she had left the gas on, had meanwhile been catapulted into the herb-garden where she sobbed convulsively among the thyme.
From the cab of his crane Mr Edwards regarded his handiwork with pride.
“Told you I could do it,” he said and seized the bottle of vodka from Blott who had been steadying his nerves with it. Blott let him finish it. Then he dragged him down from the cab and climbed back to wipe any fingerprints from the controls. Finally, hoisting Mr Edwards over his shoulder, he set off down the drive.
By the time he reached the Royal George Mrs Wynn was back from Worford, and washing glasses by candlelight.
“Look at all this mess,” she said irately, “I leave you to look after the place for one day and what do I find when I get back. Anyone would think there had been an orgy here. And what’s been going on in the village, I’d like to know? The place looks like it’s been bombed.”
Blott helped with the glasses and then went out to the Land-Rover. Mr Edwards was still sleeping soundly in the back. He drove slowly out of the yard and turned towards Ottertown. It was a longer way round but Blott didn’t want to be seen in the High Street. He stopped at the caravan site where the motorway workers lived and deposited Mr Edwards on the grass. Then he drove on towards the Gorge and Handyman Hall. At two o’clock he was in bed in the Lodge. All in all it had been a good day’s work.
In Dundridge’s flat the phone rang. He groped for it sleepily and switched on the light. It was Hoskins. “What the hell do you want? Do you realize what time it is?”
“Yes,” said Hoskins, “as a matter of fact I do. I just wanted to tell you that you’ve gone too far this time.”
“Gone too far?” said Dundridge. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“Don’t give me that,” said Hoskins. “You and your random sorties and your task forces and assault groups. Well you’ve certainly landed us in it this time. There were people living in that fucking house, you know, and it wasn’t even scheduled for demolition in the first place and as for what you’ve done to Guildstead Carbonell… I hope you realize that the motorway wasn’t supposed to go within a mile of that village. It’s a historical monument, Guildstead Carbonell is… was. It’s a fucking ruin now, a disaster area.”
“A disaster area?” said Dundridge. “What do you mean a disaster area?”
“You know very well what I mean,” shouted Hoskins hysterically, “I always thought you were mad but now I know it.” He slammed the phone down, leaving Dundridge mystified. He sat on the edge of his bed and wondered what to do. Clearly something had gone wrong with Operation Overland. He was just about to call Hoskins back when the phone rang again. This time it was the police.
“Is that Mr Dundridge?”
“Yes, speaking.”
“This is the Chief Constable. I wonder if I could have a word with you. It’s about this business at Guildstead Carbonell…”
Dundridge got dressed.
Sir Giles parked his car outside Wilfrid’s Castle Church. It was an unfrequented spot and nobody was likely to be out and about at two o’clock in the morning. It was one of the great advantages of a Bentley that it was not a noisy car. For the last five miles Sir Giles had driven without lights, coasting past farmhouses and keeping to back roads. He had seen no other vehicles and, as far as he could tell, had been seen by nobody. So far so good. Leaving the car he made his way down the footpath to the bridge. It was dark down there under the trees and he had some difficulty in finding his way. On the far side of the bridge he came to a wire mesh gate. Using his torch briefly he unlatched it and went through into the pinetum. The gate puzzled Sir Giles. It was a long time since he had been over the bridge, not since the day of his wedding in fact, but he felt sure there had been no gate there then. Still he hadn’t time to worry about little things like that. He had to move quickly. It wasn’t easy. The pinetum was dark enough by daylight. At night it was pitch black. Sir Giles shone his torch on the ground and moved forward cautiously grateful to the carpet of pine needles that deadened his footsteps. He was halfway through the wood when he became conscious that he was not alone. Something was breathing nearby.