"I have nothing to say to you — please go away."
"Mr Phillipson — what's the matter? Can I help? You can certainly help me."
"Please go away!" The voice was high enough to be described as a shriek of protest. It was the voice of a child or a very old man. Someone bullied—?
"Mr Phillipson—"
"No!"
"Please—!"
"Go away!"
Massinger knew that the taxi driver was watching him, that he had heard Phillipson's desperation and terror. Yes, it was terror.
Phillipson had spoken to someone — someone in Helsinki, London, anywhere, it didn't matter — and that person had frightened him into complete silence. That someone might—
Might be behind the door, standing next to the frightened Phillipson, hand firmly upon his arm.
Massinger shivered. "Then be damned to you, Phillipson!" he called defiantly through the door before turning on his heel. The taxi driver's head flicked round and the man stared through his windscreen. Massinger stamped down the wooden steps, using his stick to make as much noise as possible. The fading afternoon light between the massed pines was like darkening smoke. The clearing seemed tiny, imprisoned. Massinger wanted to hurry, to urge the driver to accelerate, but he merely gestured wearily and said, "I'm afraid I'll have to change my plans. Let's go back to Helsinki."
The driver nodded and let off the brake. The car's rear wheels slipped slightly, then gripped with their studded tyres. Massinger did not turn his head to look back at the lonely cabin as they bounced down the rutted, snow-covered track towards the main road. No other tracks, he told himself. You fool. There was no one else there.
He wouldn't have talked. He was afraid for his life.
He folded his arms tightly across his chest and tried to relax into his seat. The taxi turned onto the main road. There was a hurry of traffic heading in the opposite direction, away from Helsinki. The afternoon darkened into evening, a red sun little more than a thumbnail on the horizon. The short winter day was already over. They passed through Haarajoki, then joined the moottoritie into Helsinki. The traffic thickened and headlights rushed at them out of the darkness.
Massinger gratefully allowed himself to doze, refusing to acknowledge that somehow he had run out of will, energy, even purpose. He hardly realised that the taxi left the motorway in the outer suburbs of Helsinki, diverted because of an accident and the subsequent traffic jam. Dimly, he glimpsed the grubby edges of the city; light industry's chimneys, low factory blocks on snowbound plots that still appeared scrubby, wire fences. Bungalows, tower blocks, two-storey houses invested the spaces between the chimneys and the factories. His eyes were open as they passed the circle of a concrete stadium, preyed upon by its floodlights.
He dozed again, to be woken by the coughing of the taxi's engine. It faded, caught again, then died and the taxi began to slow down. The driver steered it to the kerb, then turned to Massinger apologetically, shrugging his meaning rather than speaking. Massinger pursed his features and nodded impatiently. The driver got out and went to the taxi's boot. Massinger saw him waving a petrol can at the window, nodded again, and then watched him in the mirror as he began to trudge back the way they had come. Massinger had no idea when they had last passed a garage.
Massinger sighed. He had no desire to be left to his own devices in the back of a taxi in the suburbs of Helsinki. He was suddenly hungry, and he needed the satisfying narcotic of alcohol — half a bottle of good wine, if his hotel stocked any. He wanted something to stifle the procession of speculations regarding Phillipson that had paraded through his fitful dreams.
The driver had left his radio on after reporting his whereabouts and his delayed return. Its splutter of incomprehensible Finnish grated on his nerves at first, but he found a superficial reassurance in it after a while. It was normal; utterly normal. He settled further in his seat, pulling his overcoat closer around him. The car was growing cold without the heater.
There were houses and bungalows set back from the quiet road; mere slabs of darkness without feature, pricked or squared by lights. Occasionally, a car passed him. His body continued to register the rapid drop in temperature inside the car. The windscreen and the windows began to steam over. He almost dozed again.
A bleep from the radio and another burst of Finnish woke him. He stretched his eyes, and saw the car, parked without lights across the quiet road from him. A pale Mercedes. He could see nothing behind the dark windscreen, but he sensed people inside. It was parked on the main road, not in the service road, and he knew it belonged to neither resident nor visitor.
Then the voice on the radio began speaking in heavily-accented English. It did not seem addressed to him — he knew it was but the voice never made that clear— but it referred to him by name. It referred to the taxi, to the taxi's delay, to the American passenger of the taxi. It was the despatcher at the company office informing someone of the temporary fate of the taxi Massinger had hired. Nothing more or less than that. But the voice spoke in English which he knew he was meant to understand and fear. Involuntarily, he glanced across the road at the parked car. No lights, but then the flare of a lighter or match. Then nothing again.
There was another scratch of static from the radio, followed by mumbled messages, replies from the despatcher, all once more in Finnish; incomprehensible. He fumbled with the handle, opened the door and climbed out of the taxi. The air chilled him. He stood with his hand still gripping the handle; whether for security or support he was uncertain. The darkened Mercedes remained still and lifeless, gathering menace. Two cars passed in quick succession, and then the road was silent and empty once more. Massinger was aware of the tiny distance that separated him from the Mercedes.
He stood there for minutes which had no precise shape or division. Then the headlights of the Mercedes flicked on and off three times, and the engine fired. The car pulled out and away, heading north. Massinger was gripped by a fear that it meant to make a U-turn and come back for him, but its tail-lights eventually disappeared over a slight rise in the straight road.
Massinger realised he was shivering uncontrollably, with relief and with the lingering sense of menace. Someone was trying very seriously to frighten him — had frightened him. He opened the door of the taxi and slumped like a boneless old man into the back seat. His heart was racing. He felt nauseous, weak and unwell, and pressed his hand against his thumping chest as if to quiet it. He felt perspiration growing chill on his forehead and around the collar of his shirt. He no longer wanted to go on with it or have anything at all to do with the fate of Kenneth Aubrey.
CHAPTER SEVEN:
The Zone of Occupation
If she kept her eyes closed, tightly closed for just one more moment, her father would walk out of that bright, wet haze where her tears refracted the sunlight through the branches of the old tree. It wouldn't just be Simmonds in the Bentley, or even Mummy sitting in the deep rear seat — it would be her father, smiling…
Margaret Massinger snapped upright in her chair, lifting her head, shaking it to remove the insidious past. Present, she reminded herself. Her attitude was still childlike, unevolved since the age of six, since times like the one she had just remembered, the end of the 1947 summer term at school. Even many months later, she still believed he would come. Mummy had made certain of that.