He eased himself gradually into a sitting position. His mouth was enormously swollen, and when he opened his bathrobe he saw that his whole body was peppered with tiny scarlet wounds, as well as dozens of purple and yellow bruises. The last time he had felt as bad as this was when he had driven his Firebird into a sofa-bed that somebody had dropped in the middle of the San Diego freeway, and rolled over three times.
Outside his door he heard whistling and laughter and the scratching of dogs’ claws on linoleum flooring. His teeth ached so badly that he was almost tempted to bang his face against the bedrail and knock them all out. He tried to stand up, but the pain between his legs was unbearable.
He lay down again, and in spite of his pain, he managed to doze for a while. An image of Julia and her daisy kept spinning slowly through his mind, around and around. He hoped to God that she hadn’t suffered as much as this.
He didn’t hear Edridge and the Hooded Man come into his cell. He opened his eyes and there they were, standing over him.
Edridge said, “Feeling fit, Mr Winward? We’re going for a little ride.”
A black Ford V8 was waiting for them in the courtyard. The rain was lighter now, whirling down in a fine, prickling spray, but still enough to give them a soaking. One of the Hooded Men was already waiting in the front passenger seat, next to a uniformed driver with a haircut so short that the back of his neck bristled. But neither of them turned around as Josh was pushed into the back seat, sitting between a plain-clothes police officer in a brown double-breasted mackintosh and Master Thomas Edridge, in his hood.
“Let’s get cracking,” said Edridge. They drove out of Great Scotland Yard and headed east, along the Embankment. Josh was still feeling swimmy with shock, and every jolt was agony, but he kept thinking to himself that he still had a chance. What had they told him during his Marine training? “Every minute you’re alive, that’s an extra minute to take the advantage.” And what had he read from the Chinese scholar Lao-Tzū? “The Way is an empty vessel that may yet be drawn from.”
“Where are you taking me?” he asked Edridge, in a puffy voice.
“The Tower, you’ll be privileged to hear. We have some people there who are very good with blasphemers and subversives.”
“The Tower? Isn’t that where they used to lock up traitors?”
“What do you think you are, Mr Winward?”
The Ford’s transmission whined; the windshield wipers flapped feebly against the rain. The plain-clothes policeman began an elaborate exploration of his right nostril with the tip of his index finger. In another time, in another place, in another world, Josh would have said something sarcastic.
They had almost reached Blackfriars Bridge. On their left, an exit ramp led up to New Bridge Street. As they approached it, Josh was sure that he could see headlights coming down it, in the wrong direction, and coming down it fast. Other vehicles were swerving to the side of the exit ramp to get out of the way. As they came closer, Josh could see that they belonged to a huge dray lorry, loaded with wooden kegs of beer.
“Bloody hell!” said the police driver. “What the bloody hell does he think he’s—”
Edridge gripped the seat in front of him. Even the Hooded Man raised his arm to protect himself. But the dray came roaring straight down the ramp without slowing down at all, and collided directly with the front of their car. With an ear-splitting smash, they were spun around on their axis, and collided backward with the median strip. Josh was thrown forward, hitting his chin on the seat in front. The Hooded Man knocked his head so hard against the passenger window that it cracked.
“Get out of here!” Edridge screamed at the driver. “Put your foot down! It’s an ambush!”
The driver must have broken his ribs on the steering wheel, because his face was gray and he was whining for breath. Next to Josh, the plain-clothes policeman reached into his coat and produced a large Webley revolver. He wound down the window and jabbed it wildly at everybody that he could see, shouting, “Keep your distance! Keep your distance! Police! That’s an order!”
With a miserable slithering of tires, the driver managed to get the Ford moving. “Go!” screamed Edridge. But before they could cover more than fifteen feet, another car came hurtling toward them – a big black car like a Pierce-Arrow, its headlights blazing – and it crashed into them at nearly twenty miles an hour. They were hurtled backward, and the Ford hit the side of the Blackfriars underpass so hard that its trunk was flattened.
Josh, stunned, was aware of men in long flappy raincoats running across the road. The front passenger door was wrenched open and the Hooded Man fell sideways on to the tarmac. The plain-clothes policeman seemed to have lost his gun, because he was fumbling around on the floor, but then his door was pulled open, too. Josh saw an iron bar swing, and the policeman was cracked so hard on the side of the head that he dropped into the gutter, quaking.
Edridge was struggling to open his door, but it had been jammed by their last collision. He turned to Josh and both of his eyes were bloodshot, like a vampire’s. “You will pay for this, you and your friends! You will burn in hell, for ever and ever, as Latimer and Ridley had to burn!”
He was still struggling when his window was smashed open with a hammer, and he was showered with glass.
“I am Master Thomas Edridge!” he screamed. “You dare to touch me, on pain of execution!”
Two hands in grubby gray mittens reached in through the window. One hand snatched at Edrige’s little ponytail, and forced his head back, exposing his protuberant Adam’s apple. The other hand held an upholsterer’s knife, short-bladed and sharp. Edridge didn’t even have time to protest before it sliced across his throat. It happened so quickly that Josh didn’t understand what was going on; but the next thing he knew there was warm blood spattering his hands. The car door was heaved open, and Edridge tumbled out sideways, with a gargling noise.
The mittened hands took hold of Josh’s arm and pulled him across the back seat. For a terrible moment he thought that he was going to be killed, too. But then an urgent voice said, “Come on, Mr Winward. We have to skip out of here quick!”
Josh managed to climb out of the car. He supported himself on the roof for a moment, his eyes half-closed against the drizzle. Then he staggered: he could hardly walk. A tall young curly-headed man in a gray raincoat helped him across the street, his feet tripping and stumbling. Four or five young men and women were keeping watch all around them, in poses that were almost heroic. They lifted him into the back of the Pierce-Arrow, and climbed in beside him. He heard doors slamming, and then they were roaring away down Upper Thames Street.
They swerved left, and then right, and then up through all the steep side-turnings between St Paul’s and the river. The Pierce-Arrow was a huge car, with very soft suspension, and it collided several times with roadside bollards and parked cars and boxes of rubbish. But at last they skirted their way around St Paul’s Cathedral, and the first police car they saw with its blue light flashing and its bell ringing was speeding off in the opposite direction, back to Blackfriars.
A black face appeared over the top of the front seat, and gave Josh a wide and toothy smile. Ella – with her hair knotted up in a scarf, so that she looked like a 1930s scrubwoman.
“How are you doing, Josh? You look like something the cat sicked up.”
“Ella?” he said. He could hardly believe it.