He was sitting in his armchair by the fire, his stick beside him and Rogan sat in the opposite chair drinking coffee. He was shocked at the obvious deterioration in the old man’s condition. The face was grey, the skin hanging from the great jaw in loose, yellow folds and a two-day growth of beard didn’t improve matters.
‘When did you last see a doctor?’
O’More shifted uncomfortably in his chair and made an impatient gesture. ‘Don’t start worrying about me. I look a damned sight worse than I am. We’ve got something more important to discuss.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Rogan took out a cigarette and lit it with a splinter of wood from the fire. ‘What do you think?’
‘Of the plan?’ O’More chuckled. ‘It has just about the right mixture of simplicity and cold nerve I might have
expected from you.’
‘You think it could work?’
‘I can’t see how it could fail, not if you get your timing right.’
‘What about flaws?’
The old man stuffed tobacco into his pipe, a slight frown on his face. ‘There’s a goods train due in at Rigg half an hour after the mail train. Unloads things like cattle fodder and heavy machinery for local farmers.’
Rogan shrugged. ‘That would still give us a margin of twenty-five minutes to get away.’
‘But you couldn’t get across here in that time and once the news is out, the whole area will be buzzing with peelers. There aren’t many roads through these mountains, remember. They’ll have no trouble in closing them.’
‘As long as we can make it back to Costello’s farm at Scardale I’ll be satisfied. We’ll come here on Saturday.’
O’More frowned. ‘They’ll be stopping everything in sight.’
‘I’ve got an idea that should take care of that.’ Hannah came in from the kitchen with fresh coffee and he held out his cup. ‘The worst thing you can do in that sort of situation is to get hold of a fast car. I proved that time and time again in the old days with the Resistance in France. A battered old van or truck that had all on to do twenty miles an hour with a load of hay or turnips or a couple of pigs in the back was the best bet. The important thing is to look as if you belong, as if you’re just going about your normal business.’
‘Which is logical enough. What have you in mind?’
Rogan turned to Hannah. ‘You said your uncle had been selling off his sheep lately? Where exactly?’
‘Sometimes to some wholesale butchers in Kendal, sometimes at cattle auctions on market days.’
‘Is there a market anywhere on this side on a Saturday?’
She nodded. ‘Millom. That’s about five or six miles south of here.’
‘Good enough/ Rogan said. ‘We’ll drive over in Paddy Costello’s old cattle truck with a dozen or fifteen sheep in the back. I don’t think the police will give us much trouble.’
‘There’ll be plenty of other farmers on the same road,’ Hannah said.
‘That’s settled then.’
Colum O’More nodded, a slight frown on his face. ‘There’s just one thing I’m not happy about. From what I know of the way this security van firm works generally, the driver will contact County Police Headquarters on the radio telephone twice. Once to signal his arrival at Rigg, and then again to let them know that the job’s complete. How are you going to get over that second call? If the police don’t get it, they’ll send out a local car to check straight away, just as a matter of routine.’
‘I thought of that one, too,’ Rogan said. ‘There’s only one way out. We’ll have to get them to phone in for us from the mail train. Tell them the set’s gone dead in the van or theie’s been an accident or something. It’s reasonable enough. That sort of thing must happen occasionally.’
They sat there in silence for several moments and then the old man slapped his knee. ‘By God, I think it’ll go, Sean.’ He turned to the girl. ‘What do you say, Hannah?’
‘You’re the experts.’ She picked up the tray. ‘I’ll make something to eat.’