Made to Pay: Part Seven

The wind picked up, as the Green Man turned back towards the wide-eyed Sian Rule. She thought she saw the glint of a tear in the eye of the legendary figure.

"It has been many years since those events," the Green Man told her. "Without the information lost with Sparrowhawk's mind, I could not know who the wicked men were. But a few weeks ago I made a shocking discovery. I vistied a young man who was responsible for the death of his pregnant girlsfriend. I meant to beat him up, but in the course of taking him to the spot where his abandoned girlfriend had slain herself, he told me that he had friends, powerful friends. Men who had slain Sparrowhawk.

"I beat the truth out of him. He told me that he had worked as a runner for the spy-ring that Sparrowhawk had been chasing. He had been one of the men who had attacked Sparrowhawk. I told him he would pay for that.

"He begged for his life, told me the name of the leader of the ring. A man called William Gwynn, a lecturer at the University. Then I hanged him, for a traitor and as one of the men responsible for the fact that the bravest girl I ever knew is now a pale-faced childish thing who can barely talk and needs help to do anything." There was steel in the voice of the Green Man.

Sian Rule shuddered. This was likely to be very brutal and not a little bit scary.

"But what do I do?" she asked.

The Green Man managed a grim smile.

"You are to play a most important part, Miss Rule," he told her. "You are going to trap this man into a confession. My sources tell me that the plans of the new Roval Navy aircraft carriers have been secretly copied and will be smuggled out of the country through the same route that Sparrowhawk and I were tracking. This time they suspect nothing. And so vengeance will be accomplished."