He damn well jumped. If he hadn't jumped then the car would have hit him. He jumped for the pavement and a small car swept past him. He saw a woman in the rich blue of a nursing uniform at the wheel. She didn't acknowledge him. She drove up the drive. Past more small, stone houses. A man came towards him.
The man was elderly, bearded, bow-legged in his farm boots, and his old army greatcoat was fastened at the waist with twine, and the man carried a broken shotgun across his forearm. The man didn't give way, and Erlich stepped into the road to let him pass. Past the pub, and the noise of laughter and the music of a jukebox and the bell chime of gaming machines. He was at the end of the village. He stood beside a muddy soccer pitch.
The rain dripped down his neck. His shoes and his feet were soaked. His raincoat was heavy with damp.
Colt's village.
He heard the car squelch to a stop behind him.
They drove back the way they had come. They stopped in the next village two miles away. They stopped at the modern bungalow that was the home and office of the local police constable.
He was Desmond, he was young and bright and flattered that a man had come from the Security Service to see him, and agreeably surprised that a Field Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had ended up in his stockinged feet in his front room. Desmond's wife brought them tea and a sponge cake that was still warm.
The rain drummed on the windows.
Erlich had out his ballpoint and his notebook.
Desmond said, "I've never seen the lad. I was posted here barely a week after he went missing. But what you have to understand is that he's the biggest thing in these villages, so he has to be the biggest thing in my life. What I normally do is vandalism, poaching, driving without insurance, petty opportun-ist larceny. Master Tuck faces Attempted Murder, Arson… and if you're here then, I suppose, it has to be worse than that. ..
Start with the name. Round here he's Colt. Not just because of his initials, but because of what he is, young, unbroken, wild.
He represents something exciting to this community, two fingers to the authorities. O. K., so he was involved with the Animal Liberation Front, serious crimes. What I hear, people talk to me, took a time but they do, is that the Front was just a vehicle for him, that there were no deeply held principles in it, more that he was in love with the danger, the risk of arrest. I'm not a psychologist, but I read, and I would say that attitude gives him a colossal arrogance.
" T h e Serious Crime Squad come down, and sometimes I'm told when they're on my patch, most times I'm not, they keep the Manor House under observation, on and off, but they've not picked up any scent of him. Recently, they've been more often.
His mother was big in his life and she's, well, she's not long to live, it seems. It's sad, actually, she's a very respected woman in the village. His father's respected, but in a different way. She's respected and she's loved. If Colt knew, then he'd be back, but it looks like he never made contact from the day he disappeared, so he won't know. He had a girl here too, but I doubt that meant too much, as wild as him."
They had drained the teapot, finished the cake and Erlich offered his thanks. He understood more, much more, of the man who had looked into Harry Lawrence's face, and shot him dead.
They booked into a guesthouse on the far side of Warminster, and they had time to get into the High Street before the shops closed to buy Erlich a pair of Wellington boots, and a rainproof coat that wasn't so City, and a hat.
"Absolutely out of the question."
"It's not as if I'd ever touch on…"
" W e do not go outside and give lectures."
" D o I have to spell out to you how important this is to me?"
" D o you think you are the only one who is asked to give lectures? Myself, I get a dozen invitations a year… Basil, he must get 50. But one doesn't give it a thought. One has no choice."
"But this is absurd, it wouldn't be about my work…"
"Frederick, you are being truly stupid. Anything you talk about is of interest to outsiders, because of where you are employed. And how can you lecture about anything other than your work? What have you the chance to know about other than your work?"
"That's offensive, Reuben, and your attitude altogether…"
"Frederick, I am very busy, I have lost a day in meetings…
I appreciate that your vanity was stirred by this invitation, and of course I understand your regret at having to decline it, but frankly I think your friend is a little jejune. He knows perfectly well what the rules here have to be."
"Is that your last word?"
" M y last word. Good night, Frederick."
He had allowed himself to hope. He had looked forward to a day in the sun, the simple admiration of colleagues, young scientists. There were tears of frustration in his eyes when he was back in his office and scrawling his letter of regrets in longhand to his former tutor. He was a prisoner in the Atomic Weapons Establishment. The best years of his mind he'd sacrificed to this godforsaken place and precious little did he have to show for it.
7
He sat in the old chair beside the bed. It had not been recovered since the black cat had massacred the upholstery, and the black cat had been buried under one of the beeches more than ten years. Colt's fingers played with the short lengths of frayed yarn.
His mother was still sleeping,
The sight of the lost flesh on her face had shocked him because he had not, quite, stopped to consider how he might look.
Getting there, that had been his aim, Finding her alive, his only hope.
He was very still. His breathing was regular and matched the breathing of his mother
They had done him well, The organisation had been better this time than in Athens. An empty stree, just the old woman. That Wasn't organisation, that was luck. The old woman had been looking not at him but at her dog. The taxi drivr hadn't been looking at him either, head down in his change bag. A sprint to the end of the street, the cut through to the footpath, the lock-up garage. The small Bedford van, and the bag with the change of clothes. He had seen no one on th footpath, and no one saw him go into the lock up garage, he woukl have sworn on that. Driving the Bedford van along the fringe of the capital, south to west, over Putney Bridge, hitting the small streets of Fulham, and all the instructions had been precise. A second lock-up garage behind an arcade of shops, The van into the second lock-up garage The chance to squirm out of the overalls, strip off the rubber gloves, discard the woollen cap, get into the new set of clothes, put the pistol in the pocket of the overalls in the bag. On the other side of the yard from the second lock-up garage had been the Escort.
He had driven away. He had felt a new man. He reckoned that when they were sure he was clear they would send someone down to drive away the Bedford van, to retrieve the Ruger, and return it to the Embassy arsenal. He had driven out of London on the M4, past Heathrow, and then taken the Hungerford turning, and then turned again for Marlborough. He had slept after he had killed the man on the road that led arrow-straight south of Perth, He had slept, back in the apartment on the Haifa Street Housing Project, after he had killed two men in Athens.
He had come off the Marlborough to Devizes road, bumped onto a mud track in a forestry plantation and slept so that he could be at his most alert when he approached home. He had slept while the evening had closed on the afternoon, until night had overtaken the evening.
There was a grey light seeping between the heavy drape curtains at the window. The room had been his childhood refuge. He had always come to this room when he was small and his father made a play at disciplining him.