Wednesday I lost track of whether it was noon or evening, and the idea of days and days more of that existence was demoralising. Dammit, I thought mordantly. Shut up, shut up with the gloomsville. One day at a time. One day, one hour, one minute at a time.
I ate some cheese and felt sleepy, and that at long last was Wednesday done.
Thursday mid-day, I heard a noise.
I couldn’t believe it.
Some distant clicks, and a grinding noise. I was lying on my back doing bicycling exercises with my legs in the air, and I practically disconnected myself getting to my knees and scrambling over to the rear doors.
I pushed the canvas away from one of the windows, and shouted at the top of my lungs.
‘Hey... hey... Come here.’
There were footsteps; more than one set. Soft footsteps, but in that huge dead silence, quite clear.
I swallowed. Whoever it was, there was no point in keeping quiet.
‘Hey,’ I shouted again. ‘Come here.’
The footsteps stopped.
A man’s voice, close to the van, spoke very loudly.
‘Are you Roland Britten?’
I said weakly, ‘Yes... who are you?’
‘Police, sir,’ he said.
12
They took a good long while getting me out, because, as the disembodied voice explained, they would have to take photographs and notes for use in any future prosecution. Also there was the matter of fingerprints, which would mean further delay.
‘And we can’t get you out without moving the van, you see, sir,’ said the voice. ‘On account of it’s backed hard up against a brick pillar, and we can’t open the rear doors. On top of that the driving cab doors are both locked, and the brake’s hard on, and there’s no key in the ignition. So if you’ll be patient, sir, we’ll have you out as soon as we can.’
He sounded as if he were reassuring a small child who might scream the place down at any minute, but I found it easy to be patient, if only he knew.
There were several voices outside after a while, and from time to time they asked me if I was all right, and I said yes; and in the end they started the van’s engine and drove it forward a few feet, and pulled off the canvas cover.
The return of sight was extraordinary. The two small windows appeared as oblongs of grey, and I had difficulty in focusing. A face looked in, roundly healthy, enquiring and concerned, topped by a uniform cap.
‘Have you out in a jiffy now, sir,’ he said. ‘We’re having a bit of difficulty with these doors, see, as the handle’s been sabotaged.’
‘Fine,’ I said vaguely. The light was still pretty dim, but to me a luxury like no other on earth. A half-forgotten joy, newly discovered. Like meeting a dead friend. Familiar, lost, precious, and restored.
I sat on the floor and looked around my prison. It was smaller than I’d imagined: cramped and claustrophobic, now that I could see the grey enclosing walls.
The jerry-can of water was of white plastic, with a red cap. The carrier was brown, as I’d imagined it. The little calendar stack of five empty packets lay in its corner, and the hardening pieces of cheese from my counting machine, in another. There was nothing else, except me and dust.
They opened the doors eventually and helped me out, and then took notes and photographs of where I’d been. I stood a pace or two away and looked curiously at my surroundings.
The van was indeed the white one from Cheltenham, or one exactly like. An old Ford. No tax disc, and no numberplates. The canvas which had covered it was a huge dirty dark grey tarpaulin, the sort used for sheeting loads on lorries. The van had been wrapped in it like a parcel, and tied with ropes threaded through eyelets in the tarpaulin’s edges.
The van, the police and I were all inside a building of about a hundred feet square. All round the walls rose huge lumpy heaps of dust-covered unidentifiable bundles, grey shapes of boxes and things that looked like sandbags. Some of the piles reached the low flat ceiling, which was supported at strategic points by four sturdy brick pillars.
It was against one of these, in the small clear area in the centre, that the van had been jammed.
‘What is this place?’ I said to the policeman beside me.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ he said. He shivered slightly. ‘It’s cold in here.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Where exactly are we?’
‘It used to be one of those army surplus stores, selling stuff to the public. Went bust a while back, though, and no one’s ever shifted all the muck.’
‘Oh. Well... whereabouts is it?’
‘Down one of those tracks beside what used to be the railway branch line, before they closed it.’
‘Yes,’ I said apologetically. ‘But what town?’
‘Eh?’ He looked at me in surprise. ‘Newbury, of course, sir.’
The town clocks pointed to five o’clock when the police drove me down to the station. My body’s own time had proved remarkably constant, I thought. Much better than on the boat, where noise and tossing and sickness had upset things.
I was given a chair in the office of one of the same policemen as before, who showed no regrets at having earlier thought I was exaggerating.
‘How did you find me?’ I said.
He tapped his teeth with a pencil, a hard-working Detective-Inspector with an air of suspecting the innocent until they were found guilty.
‘Scotland Yard had a call,’ he said grudgingly. ‘We’ll want a statement from you, sir, if you don’t mind.’
‘A cup of tea first,’ I suggested.
His gaze wandered over my face and clothes. I must have looked a wreck. He came somewhere near a smile, and sent a young constable on the errand.
The tea tasted marvellous, though I daresay it wasn’t. I drank it slowly and told him fairly briefly what had happened.
‘So you didn’t see their faces at all, this time?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Pity.’
‘Do you think,’ I said tentatively, ‘that someone could drive me back to the motel, so I can collect my car?’
‘No need, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s parked beside your cottage.’
‘What?’
He nodded. ‘With a lot of your possessions in it. Suitcase. Wallet. Shoes. Keys. All in the boot. Your assistants notified us on Monday that you were missing again. We sent a man along to your cottage. He reported your car was there, but you weren’t. We did what you asked, sir. We did look for you. The whole country’s been looking for you, come to that. The motel rang us yesterday to say you’d booked in there last Saturday but hadn’t used the room, but apart from that there was nothing to go on. No trace at all. We thought you might have been taken off on another boat, to be frank.’
I finished the tea, and thanked him for it.
‘Will you run me back to the cottage, then?’
He thought it could be arranged. He came with me out to the entrance hall, to fix it.
A large man with an over-anxious expression came bustling in from the street, swinging the door wide and assessing rapidly the direction from which he would get most satisfaction. My partner at his most bombastic, his deep voice echoing round the hall as he demanded information.
‘Hello, Trevor,’ I said. ‘Take it easy.’
He stopped in mid-commotion, and stared at me as if I were an intrusive stranger. Then he recognised me, and took in my general appearance, and his face went stiff with shock.
‘Ro!’ He seemed to have trouble with his voice. ‘Ro, my dear fellow. My dear fellow. I’ve just heard... My God, Ro...’