Newton and Jordan left their positions at the rear of the house and came round to the front. It was clear that nothing was going to escape from that inferno now. They helped Layard get Trask into the truck; and while they busied themselves with preparations for their leaving, still Roberts watched the house burn, and so was witness to the end of it.
The thermite had done its job and the earth itself was on fire. The house no longer had foundations on which to stand. It slumped down, leaned first one way and then the other. Old brickwork groaned as timbers sheared, chimney stacks toppled and windows shivered into fragments in their twisting frames. And as the house sank in leaping flames and molten earth, so its substance became fuel for the fire.
Fire raced up walls inside and out; great red and yellow gouts of flame spurted from broken windows, bursting upward through a rent and sagging roof. For a single instant longer Georgina Bodescu was silhouetted against a background of crimson, searing heat, and then Harkley House gave up the ghost. It went down groaning into a scar of bubbling earth that resembled nothing so much as the mouth of a small volcano. For a little while longer the peaked gable ends and parts of the roof were visible, and then they too were consumed in vengeful fire and smoke.
Through all of this the reek had been terrible. Judging by the stench, it might well have been that fifty men had died and been burned in that house; but as Roberts climbed up into the passenger seat of the truck and Layard headed the vehicle down the drive towards the gates, all five survivors, including Trask who was now mainly conscious, knew that the stench came from nothing human. It was partly thermite, partly earth and timber and old brick, but mainly it was the death smell of that rendered down, gigantic monstrosity under the cellars, that ‘Other’ which had taken poor Gower.
The mist had almost completely cleared now, and cars were beginning to pull up along the verges of the road, their drivers attracted by the flames and smoke rising high into the air where Harkley House had stood. As the truck rolled out of the gates onto the road, a red-faced driver leaned out of his car’s window, yelled, ‘What is it? That’s Harkley House, isn’t it?’
‘It was,’ Roberts yelled back, offering what he hoped looked like a helpless shrug. ‘Gone, I’m afraid. Burned down.’
‘Good Lord!’ The red-faced man was aghast. ‘Has the fire service been informed?’
‘We’re off to do that now,’ Roberts answered. ‘Little good that’ll do, though. We’ve been in to have a look, but there’s nothing left to see, I’m afraid.’ They drove on.
A mile towards Paignton, a clattering fire engine came tearing from the other direction. Layard drew dutifully in towards the side of the road to give the fire engine room. He grinned tiredly, without humour. ‘Too late, my lads,’ he commented under his breath. ‘Much too late — thank all that’s merciful.’
They dropped Trask off at the hospital in Torquay (with a story about an accident he’d suffered in a friends garden) and after seeing him comfortable went back to the hotel HQ in Paignton to debrief.
Roberts enumerated their successes. ‘We got all three women, anyway. But as for Bodescu himself, I have my doubts about him. Serious doubts, and when we’re finished here I’ll pass them on to London, also to Darcy Clarke and our people up in Hartlepool. These will be simply precautionary measures, of course, for even if we did miss Bodescu we’ve no way of knowing what he’ll do next or where he’ll go. Anyway, Alec Kyle will be back in control shortly. In fact it’s queer he hasn’t shown up yet. Actually, I’m not looking forward to seeing him: he’s going to be furious when he learns that Bodescu probably got out of that lot.’
‘Bodescu and that other dog,’ Harvey Newton put in, almost as an afterthought. He shrugged. ‘Still, I reckon it was just a stray that got into . . . the grounds . somehow?’ He stopped, looked from face to face. All were staring back at him in astonishment, almost disbelief. It was the first they’d heard of it.