Part 51 (2/2)

'I'd have to wave a long time to send him on with two-fifty on the meter,' Lonnie grunted, and walked over to the curb. On the other side of Crouch Hill Road, the two small children were still giggling. 'Hey!' Lonnie called. 'You kids!'

'You an American, sir?' the boy with the claw-hand called back.

'Yes,' Lonnie said, smiling. 'Did you see the cab over here? Did you see where it went?''

The two children seemed to consider the question. The boy's companion was a girl of about five with untidy brown braids sticking off in opposite directions. She stepped forward to the opposite curb, formed her hands into a megaphone, and still smiling - she screamed it through her megaphoned hands and her smile - she cried at them: 'b.u.g.g.e.r off, Joe!'

Lonnie's mouth dropped open.

'Sir! Sir! Sir!' the boy screeched, saluting wildly with his deformed hand. Then the two of them took to their heels and fled around the corner and out of sight, leaving only their laughter to echo back.

Lonnie looked at Doris, dumbstruck.

'I guess some of the kids in Crouch End aren't too crazy about Americans,' he said lamely.

She looked around nervously. The street now appeared deserted.

He slipped an arm around her. 'Well, honey, looks like we hike.'

'I'm not sure I want to. Those two kids might've gone to get their big brothers.' She laughed to show it was a joke, but there was a shrill quality to the sound. The evening had taken on a surreal quality she didn't much like. She wished they had stayed at the hotel.

'Not much else we can do,' he said. 'The street's not exactly overflowing with taxis, is it?'

'Lonnie, why would the cabdriver leave us here like that? He seemed so nice.'

'Don't have the slightest idea. But John gave me good directions. He lives in a street called Bra.s.s End, which is a very minor dead-end street, and he said it wasn't in the Streetfinder.' As he talked he was moving her away from the call box, from the restaurant that sold curries to take away, from the now-empty curb. They were walking up Crouch Hill Road again. 'We take a right onto Hillfield Avenue, left halfway down, then our first right . . . or was it left? Anyway, onto Petrie Street. Second left is Bra.s.s End.'

'And you remember all that?'

'I'm a star witness,' he said bravely, and she just had to laugh. Lonnie had a way of making things seem better.

There was a map of the Crouch End area on the wall of the police station lobby, one considerably more detailed than the one in the London Streetfinder. Farnham approached it and studied it with his hands stuffed into his pockets. The station seemed very quiet now. Vetter was still outside - clearing some of the witchmoss from his brains, one hoped - and Raymond had long since finished with the woman who'd had her purse nicked.

Farnham put his finger on the spot where the cabby had most likely let them off (if anything about the woman's story was to be believed, that was). The route to their friend's house looked pretty straightforward. Crouch Hill Road to Hillfield Avenue, and then a left onto Vickers Lane followed by a left onto Petrie Street. Bra.s.s End, which stuck off from Petrie Street like somebody's afterthought, was no more than six or eight houses long. About a mile, all told. Even Americans should have been able to walk that far without getting lost.

'Raymond!' he called. 'You still here?'

Sergeant Raymond came in. He had changed into streets and was putting on a light poplin windcheater. 'Only just, my beardless darling.'

'Cut it,' Farnham said, smiling all the same. Raymond frightened him a little. One look at the spooky sod was enough to tell you he was standing a little too close to the fence that ran between the yard of the good guys and that of the villains. There was a twisted white line of scar running like a fat string from the left corner of his mouth almost all the way to his Adam's apple. He claimed a pickpocket had once nearly cut his throat with a jagged bit of bottle. Claimed that's why he broke their fingers. Farnham thought that was the s.h.i.+t. He thought Raymond broke their fingers because he liked the sound they made, especially when they popped at the knuckles.

'Got a f.a.g?' Raymond asked.

Farnham sighed and gave him one. As he lit it he asked, 'Is there a curry shop on Crouch Hill Road?'

'Not to my knowledge, my dearest darling,' Raymond said.

'That's what I thought.'

'Got a problem, dear?'

'No,' Farnham said, a little too sharply, remembering Doris Freeman's clotted hair and staring eyes.

Near the top of Crouch Hill Road, Doris and Lonnie Freeman turned onto Hillfield Avenue, which was lined with imposing and gracious-looking homes - nothing but sh.e.l.ls, she thought, probably cut up with surgical precision into apartments and bed-sitters inside.

'So far so good,' Lonnie said.

'Yes, it's - ' she began, and that was when the low moaning arose.

They both stopped. The moaning was coming almost directly from their right, where a high hedge ran around a small yard. Lonnie started toward the sound, and she grasped his arm. 'Lonnie, no!'

'What do you mean, no?' he asked. 'Someone's hurt.'

She stepped after him nervously. The hedge was high but thin. He was able to brush it aside and reveal a small square of lawn outlined with flowers. The lawn was very green. In the center of it was a black, smoking patch - or at least that was her first impression. When she peered around Lonnie's shoulder again - his shoulder was too high for her to peer over it - she saw it was a hole, vaguely man-shaped. The tendrils of smoke were emanating from it.

SIXTY LOST IN UNDERGROUND HORROR, she thought abruptly.

The moaning was coming from the hole, and Lonnie began to force himself through the hedge toward it.

'Lonnie,' she said, 'please, don't.'

'Someone's hurt,' he repeated, and pushed himself the rest of the way through with a bristly tearing sound. She saw him going toward the hole, and then the hedge snapped back, leaving her nothing but a vague impression of his shape as he moved forward. She tried to push through after him and was scratched by the short, stiff branches of the hedge for her trouble. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse.

'Lonnie!' she called, suddenly very afraid. 'Lonnie, come back!'

'Just a minute, hon!'

The house looked at her impa.s.sively over the top of the hedge.

The moaning sounds continued, but now they sounded lower - guttural, somehow gleeful. Couldn't Lonnie hear that?

'Hey, is somebody down there?' she heard Lonnie ask. 'Is there - oh! Hey! Jesus!' And suddenly Lonnie screamed. She had never heard him scream before, and her legs seemed to turn to waterbags at the sound. She looked wildly for a break in the hedge, a path, and couldn't see one anywhere. Images swirled before her eyes - the bikers who had looked like rats for a moment, the cat with the pink chewed face, the boy with the claw-hand.

Lonnie! she tried to scream, but no words came out.

Now there were sounds of a struggle. The moaning had stopped. But there were wet, slos.h.i.+ng sounds from the other side of the hedge. Then, suddenly, Lonnie came flying back through the stiff dusty-green bristles as if he had been given a tremendous push. The left arm of his suit-coat was torn, and it was splattered with runnels of black stuff that seemed to be smoking, as the pit in the lawn had been smoking.

'Doris, run!'

'Lonnie, what - '

'Run!' His face pale as cheese.

Doris looked around wildly for a cop. For anyone. But Hillfield Avenue might have been a part of some great deserted city for all the life or movement she saw. Then she glanced back at the hedge and saw something else was moving behind there, something that was more than black; it seemed ebony, the ant.i.thesis of light.

And it was slos.h.i.+ng.

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