Part 23 (2/2)

'We've pa.s.sed three.'

'Too near the station.'

Because of the noise was her first, ridiculous thought. Though what he meant was, hotels by the station were the first places they'd come looking.

Whoever they were.

He came to a stop at a corner, just out of the reach of a streetlight, and looked both ways, like a man checking out enemy terrain. Sarah caught up, and stood in the light. 'Who are you? Really?'

'Not here.'

'Where then? I'm not coming without answers.'

'I'm the guy who shot the guy who tried to kill you. Happy?'

'I'm sorry.'

'I'd have killed him anyway.'

'Your name's Downey. You're supposed to be dead.'

He didn't answer.

'You were Singleton's friend.'

'I told you that.'

'And you were both killed in a helicopter crash.'

Before he could react to this, he reacted to something else: footsteps over the road, chopping little pieces off the quiet. Downey pulled Sarah into the dark and she tensed at this unexpected contact. The smell of sweat and loose clippings of hair. He hadn't shaved, just hacked at the beard with a pair of scissors. From a distance, he could have been riding the fas.h.i.+on. Up close he looked like an accident in a garden shed.

The footsteps stopped. 'Who's there?' It was a querulous tremor, an old woman's voice, attached in this instance to an old man. 'I heard you over there. I'm not afraid.'

They stood in their doorway, a chemist's shop doorway, huddled like startled lovers. But he couldn't see them, and they made no further noise.

'Winston? Come on, Winston.'

And the dog wheezed after its ancient owner: a boxer with a clumsy punch-drunk waddle, as if four legs were too many, or not enough. The tapping of the footsteps resumed, only to falter a few yards later while their maker hawked noisily into the gutter; possibly a gesture of contempt, or maybe just a symptom of the condition that had him wandering the streets at this G.o.dforsaken hour.

'See?'

'What?' she snapped.

'We can't hang about. There's a place up ahead.'

Which was the last one Sarah would have chosen. She'd have thought he'd go for a backstreet boarding house; the kind of refuge where the arrival of a bedraggled couple in the early hours simply meant another marriage had hit the deck. But the hotel ahead bore the same relation to a travelling reps' dive that a cruiser does a tug; an imposing stone building which looked like it had graced the town since time out of mind, and only begrudgingly hosted unt.i.tled members of the public. 'You've made reservations?'

'Think they'll turn away cash? Not on your life.'

He fumbled in his canvas bag again, and this time pulled out a folded stack of currency held by a rubber band.

'Not on your life,' he repeated.

This time, Sarah believed him.

II.

Seven in the morning three hours' sleep and Amos Crane was back at his desk, back at his screen, hacking his way through railway timetables: an obvious place to start. Maybe Michael Downey used a car. Well, if so, Crane would just have to wait until he broke surface, but in the meantime here he was, chasing trains a pair of fugitives might have hopped in the small hours.

They might have split up, too, but he doubted that.

So he made a list of all possible departures, allowing a generous window of ninety minutes, then cut the London trains, because that's what he'd have done: only amateurs think you can get lost in the big city. And then cut the north train too, because the only point in heading north was putting down distance, and Downey wouldn't spend three-four hours on a train if he was expecting pursuit. Not if it meant making it as far as Durham to find a squad car waiting . . .

. . . and it occurred to him he was playing the game by trying to think like Downey; maybe he should be zeroing on the woman instead . . .

. . . but no, it was too early for that: the state she'd be in, the best you could hope was she'd follow instructions without too much fuss. But Downey would keep her for the moment, at least until he'd found out what she knew. Which wasn't anything, which was f.u.c.k all, but that was the beauty of the information game: you never knew how ignorant you were without going over everything twice. Downey needed to hear her story. Which meant he'd want to hole up as soon as possible, get the debriefing under way . . .

Crane sat back, and drank coffee from a takeaway cup. He was thinking: if it had been him, he'd have bought two sets of tickets; putting down a false trail was standard. And the second pair, the real pair, wouldn't have been identical: he'd have bought two tickets on the same line, but for different stations. But Downey was hampered. That time of night, relatively few people about, he couldn't have risked going to the window twice: the ticket clerk might have recognized him. So he'd have sent the woman. And one person buying tickets for two different stations, that was memorable too. So Crane had to a.s.sume Downey was missing a trick. Two sets of tickets, right, but each an identical pair.

In the old days this was the point at which flatfeet wandered from booth to ticket-booth, photograph in hand, hoping to get lucky. For Crane, it was a finger-hop and skip technically illegal, he reminded himself, but that was what the word 'technically' was for. He didn't come up with many pairs. Late evening, it was mostly businessmen singles. With luck, he'd pinpoint them.

He took another gulp of coffee. Miles away, Sarah woke up.

She had slept fitfully, wakened at three by aeroplanes exploding overhead, a noise which resolved into thunder once conscious- ness set in. But the rain that followed soothed her, its rhythmic drumming against the wide windows was.h.i.+ng her mind clean, for a while, of the horrors, and when she woke next the sun pouring through the gaps in the curtains evidenced a morning so perfect, there was probably a patent pending on it.

Michael sat on the end of the bed.

He had spent the night in the armchair, and sometime early had finished the job he'd started on the train, and shaved. Revealed was a thin, dark face; not much older than her own, but more travelled. A harsh crease on his chin suggested a healed scar. His brown eyes, neither friendly nor threatening, were distinctly matter-of-fact. 'You've lost weight,' he said. He didn't look well himself.

She cleared her throat. 'Thanks.'

'Are you a junkie?'

Oh, G.o.d. She closed her eyes. 'What makes you ask?'

'Because it'll save a lot of pain if you say so now.'

'No. I'm not a junkie.'

She opened them again, and looked round the room. A large room, big windows, a king-size double bed. En-suite bathroom. Trouser press. A TV she knew would get cable. Everything you looked for in a hotel room, really, down to the emergency instructions on the back of the door, and the aura of mild depression hanging over it all: the inescapable conclusion that you were here on a temporary basis. As if she needed reminding of that.

Her clothes clung to her uncomfortably. She had slept fully dressed.

She sat up, rubbed her face in her hands. She was in a strange room with a strange man: it scared her. On the other hand, he had saved her life last night, and subsequently slept in the armchair.

Afterwards, Sarah looked back on this day as a series of snapshots, small moments that became shuffled in her mind. But this was always the first of them: waking and finding him sitting on the end of the bed. The hand that pulled the trigger rubbing an unfamiliar chin.

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