The Flood by John Creasey Read Free Book Online Page B

life. Every rock was shelter; every patch of clear ground a torment. He kept treading in holes and on stones, but nothing tripped him up.
    He heard another shot.
    He didn’t even look round. The pounding of the blood in his ears and of his own feet made the only sound. Then, he reached the road again; just ahead, it curved sharply, and he dared glance round.
    Both men had climbed up on to the rocks above the road, to a point where they could see him the moment he went farther. One would wait up there, the other chase him out of this place of safety.
    A man began to scramble down the rocks.
    Woburn couldn’t fight a man with a gun; even stones—
    He heard the sharp beat of a motor-cycle engine.
    There was the smashed radiator and bumper of the little sports car to prove everything that Woburn said, and there was the huge boulder, too. The nearest loose boulders like it were a mile away; this one had been rolled to the point of greatest danger. The motor-cyclist patrolman made sure of that before he radioed a message for Campbell. Then he drove along the road, but there was no sign of the two men. Woburn tried to describe them, but it wasn’t easy. The man on his left had just been a shape, but the one who had run towards him had been short with a low, wrinkled forehead, a pointed chin. But it was expression more than feature which Woburn remembered.
    “Better get back to the cross-roads, sir,” the motor-cycle patrolman advised, “the Inspector would like ye to meet him there. Were you going to the Castle for anything important?”
    “It can keep,” Woburn said.
    “You could telephone from the A.A. box.”
    “Ah, yes,” Woburn said. “Good thought. Thanks.” He wanted to be pleasant; he wanted to be grateful; but he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but fierce, burning anger, and now he had someone to rage at. Two men, one whom he would know again and one whom he wouldn’t, had tried to kill him. First to crash, then to batter him to death and, when both attempts had failed, to shoot him.
    Kill at all costs—
    Why?
    On the back of the patrol-machine, he soon reached the A.A. box. Campbell’s car was coming along from the road to the village. An emergency post had been set up as near the fallen road as the police thought safe to venture, and rescue parties were already finding their way down the village itself. Small boats were moving where streets had been, and the grim task of recovering the bodies had started. Behind Campbell’s car came an ambulance, moving slowly.
    Campbell looked shaggy and solid, and more in command of himself; brisker, too.
    “Hallo, Mr. Woburn, hear you’ve run into some trouble.”
    “It was waiting for me,” Woburn said.
    “Like to do something for me?” asked Campbell, almost bluffly. “Keep the report confidential, sir. Harris.”
    The patrolman said smartly: “Yes, sir?”
    “I don’t want a word of this to anyone else. Make out your report yourself, and give it to me personally. Don’t report to the sergeant at the station. Is that all clear?”
    “All clear, sir.”
    “Um, thanks,” said Campbell, and turned to Woburn again. He looked as if he were searching for the exact words. “Mr. Woburn, I’m sorry I can’t be more free with my information, but we’re verra worried about what’s happened, verra worried indeed. I had an urgent request from the Home Office when I telephoned you, and I was asked to make sure you didna give any details to anyone except the gentleman who’ll be coming at nine o’clock.” He looked at a big steel watch on a hairy wrist. “Plenty of time, it’s only half past seven. The instructions were verra emphatic, sir, and while no one said anything about such an attack as this happening, I think my instructions apply to that as well. Confidential, sir, top secret.”
    Woburn didn’t speak.
    “And if you’d be good enough to co-operate—”
    “I can keep my mouth shut, if it’s necessary,” Woburn said. He didn’t like