He rode on, pedalling urgently to increase his speed, as if trying to ride back into sanity. As he saw the lychgate of the church ahead of him he dismounted and propped the bike up against the flint wall.
Moments later, as went in through the gate, a short, very serious-looking man in a tweed jacket and dog collar came out of the church and headed down the path towards him. As they crossed, Ollie asked him, ‘Excuse me, do you know by chance where I can find the grave of a lady called Annie Porter?’
The clergyman walked straight past him without any hint of acknowledgement, as if he had not seen him.
Ollie turned. ‘Excuse me!’ he called out. ‘Excuse me!’
The man went out through the lychgate and turned left towards the vicarage.
Rude bastard, Ollie thought.
The more recent graves were towards the rear, behind the church, he recalled. That was where he had found the O’Hare family, and there had been quite a bit of open ground beyond them, no doubt to accommodate more graves in the future. He hurried up the path, anxiously, and although it was steep, he was pleased that neither the exertion of the cycling, nor of this fast walking, was giving him the breathlessness and tightness in his chest he’d been experiencing just recently.
He reached the grand marble headstone of the O’Hare family, then saw a further row of headstones beyond it that he didn’t recall from his previous visit here.
He shone his phone torch along the newer headstones and then stopped, in disbelief, as he read the inscription.
2016? Ollie thought. This was not — not possible. Somehow, whatever was going on inside his messed-up brain, he was seeing into the future, or at least imagining he was. But suddenly, it no longer seemed to matter. It didn’t bother him, he was just mildly curious — as if he had become aware in a dream that he was dreaming. He would wake up in a few moments and everything would be fine. Back to normal.
Out of curiosity he moved along to the next headstone. It was a similar size to Annie Porter’s, but it looked more expensive, a fine white marble.
Then, as he read the carved inscriptions, he felt the ground suddenly dropping beneath his feet, as if he was in a plunging elevator.
He stared, rooted to the spot. The twenty-first of September was today.
57
Ollie turned on his heel and sprinted through the churchyard, out through the lychgate, grabbed his bike and, without wasting time to switch on the lights, rode as fast as he could back up through the village.
Then, as he approached the pub, he saw it was back to how it had been before. Slightly gloomy and shabby-looking, the sign, ‘The Crown’, in need of some maintenance. The smithy was still there, too, as it had been before. And the ‘Bed & Breakfast’ sign was back.
Normality again.
But he was shaking. He was scared rigid. He wanted to get back to Caro and Jade. Had to stop them from leaving the house. They must stay there, be calm, wait, get through the night and into tomorrow. To 22 September. To make sure what he had seen was just a dream, part of the weird stuff that was going on in his head, and not a time-slip into the future.
He was finding the exertion of pedalling hard. A short distance up the hill, he stopped and dismounted, panting hard and sweating profusely. Then as he stood, slowly getting his breath back, a figure loomed out of the darkness, striding down the hill towards him, with a pipe in his mouth. Moments later he could make out the white hair and the goatee beard of Harry Walters.
‘Harry!’ Ollie said.
Walters strode straight on past him as if, like the clergyman in the graveyard just now, he had not seen him. Then he stopped a short distance along the road and turned his head. ‘You should have listened to me. I told you to leave while you could. You stupid bugger.’ Then he marched on.
Ollie dropped the bike and sprinted after him. ‘Harry! Harry!’ Then he stopped. Right in front of his eyes, Harry Walters had vanished into thin air.
An icy slick of fear wormed through him.
He turned and walked back up to his bike. As he stooped to pick it up, he heard the roar of a powerful car coming up the hill, fast. Then he saw its headlights. He stepped to the side of the road to let it past, although with the road closed ahead for the accident, it wasn’t going to get very far, he thought.
As it drew alongside, still travelling at speed, too fast for this narrow lane, he saw it was a massive, left-hand-drive 1960s Cadillac Eldorado convertible. The driver’s window was partially down and Ollie could hear music blasting out. The Kinks, ‘Sunny Afternoon’.
Then, as he watched its huge tail lights disappear round a bend, he smelled a rich waft of cigar smoke in the air.
He remounted and pedalled on, wary of meeting the Cadillac coming back down. It would not get through the police roadblock. Then, after only a couple more minutes riding, as he drew level with Garden Cottage, he had to stop again for a rest. What the hell was wrong with him, he wondered? Why was he so short of breath?
As he stood panting he was distracted by the cottage gate. It was back to how it had been, shabby and hanging badly from its rusty hinges.
He didn’t have the energy to ride any more, so he pushed the bike on up the hill. He was greeted by the grinding sound of cutting equipment as he rounded the bend. A blue and white ‘Police Accident’ sign had been placed in the middle of the road, and an officer in a yellow fluorescent jacket and white cap, holding a torch, stood beside it.
As Ollie reached him, panting hard, and staring with a deep chill at the work going on around the crushed car, he said, ‘I live just up there — Cold Hill House.’
‘OK, you can come through, sir, but I’ll have to accompany you.’
‘Can you tell me anything about what’s happened?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid not, sir.’
‘I think the people in that car were coming to see my wife and me,’ he said.
‘Friends of yours, sir?’
‘The local vicar and another chap. I recognize the car. That tractor driver — he’s a bloody reckless idiot — tears up and down here like it’s a racetrack.’
‘But you didn’t witness the collision, did you, sir?’
‘No, I didn’t. I think I may have heard it.’
‘Thank you, all right, if you could move along please, sir, there’s a hoist just coming up the hill.’
‘Yes — sure. Er — can you tell me, where did that Cadillac go, just now?’
‘Cadillac?’
‘Yes, a great big 1960s convertible — it went shooting past me a couple of minutes ago.’
‘It didn’t come up here, sir, I’d have stopped it. It must have turned off.’
Ollie nodded and said nothing as he pushed his bike, shivering with shock as he passed the wreckage, and went in through the gates. But he knew.
Knew that from the point where the Cadillac had passed him, to here, there was no turn-off.
58
Two alpacas trotted over through the misty gloom, as Ollie stopped again for a rest, halfway up the drive. He was feeling so exhausted that if he’d had his phone with him, he might have called Caro and asked her to come down and pick him and his bike up in the Range Rover. But in his haste he’d left it up in his study.
He had a bug, clearly. He needed to go to bed when he got home. Maybe he should have gone to bed over the weekend to shake it off.
He was feeling sick and feverish. Images of two crushed bodies, bleeding, maybe some of their internal organs exposed, went round in his mind. Friendly, caring Roland Fortinbrass. Crushed. The Minister of Deliverance whom he had not met. Crushed.