She asked again, 'Where are we going?' watching all the time for her chance. He didn't answer.
'Do you know this place?' but he had said his say. And suddenly the chance was there: outside a little stationer's where the morning posters leaned, looking in the window filled with cheap notepaper, pens and ink bottles—a policeman. She felt Raven come up behind her, it was all too quick, she hadn't time to make up her mind, they were past the policeman and on down the mean road. It was too late to scream now; he was twenty yards away; there'd be no rescue. She said in a low voice, 'It must be murder.'
The repetition stung him into speech.' That's justice for you. Always thinking the worst. They've pinned a robbery on to me, and I don't even know where the notes were stolen.' A man came out of a public-house and began to wipe the steps with a wet cloth; they could smell frying bacon; the suitcases weighed on their arms. Raven couldn't change his hands for fear of leaving hold of the automatic. He said, 'If a man's born ugly, he doesn't stand a chance. It begins at school. It begins before that.'
'What's wrong with your face?' she asked with bitter amusement. There seemed hope while he talked. It must be harder to murder anyone with whom you'd had any kind of relationship. 'My lip, of course.'
'What's up with your lip?'
He said with astonishment, 'Do you mean you haven't noticed—?'
'Oh,' Anne said, 'I suppose you mean your hare-lip. I've seen worse things than that.' They had left the little dirty houses behind them. She read the name of the new street: Shakespeare Avenue. Bright-red bricks and tudor gables and half timbering, doors with stained glass, names like Restholme. These houses represented something worse than the meanness of poverty, the meanness of the spirit. They were on the very edge of Nottwich now, where the speculative builders were running up their hire-purchase houses. It occurred to Anne that he had brought her here to kill her in the scarred fields behind the housing estate, where the grass had been trampled into the clay and the stumps of trees showed where an old wood had been. Plodding on they passed a house with an open door which at any hour of the day visitors could enter and inspect, from the small square parlour to the small square bedroom and the bathroom and water closet off the landing. A big placard said:' Come in and Inspect A Cozyholme. Ten Pounds Down and a House Is Yours.'
'Are you going to buy a house?' she said with desperate humour.
He said,' I've got a hundred and ninety pounds in my pocket and I couldn't buy a box of matches with them. I tell you, I was double-crossed. I never stole these notes. A bastard gave them me.'
'That was generous.'
He hesitated outside 'Sleepy Nuik'. It was so new that the builder's paint had not been removed from the panes. He said, 'It was for a piece of work I did. I did the work well. He ought to have paid me properly. I followed him here. A bastard called Chol-mon-deley.'
He pushed her through the gate of 'Sleepy Nuik', up the unmade path and round to the back door. They were at the edge of the fog here: it was as if they were at the boundary between night and day; it faded out in long streamers into the grey winter sky. He put his shoulder against the back door and the little doll's house lock snapped at once out of the cheap rotten wood. They stood in the kitchen, a place of wires waiting for bulbs, of tubes waiting for the gas cooker. 'Get over to the wall,' he said, 'where I can watch you.'
He sat down on the floor with the pistol in his hand. He said, 'I'm tired. All night standing in that train. I can't think properly. I don't know what to do with you.'
Anne said, 'I've got a job here. I haven't a penny if I lose it. I'll give you my word I'll say nothing if you'll let me go.' She added hopelessly, 'But you wouldn't believe me.'
'People don't trouble to keep their word to me,' Raven said. He brooded darkly in his dusty corner by the sink. He said, 'I'm safe here for a while as long as you are here too.' He put his hand to his face and winced at the soreness of the burns. Anne made a movement. He said, 'Don't move. I'll shoot if you move.'
'Can't I sit down?' she said. 'I'm tired too. I've got to be on my feet all the afternoon.' But while she spoke she saw herself, bundled into a cupboard with the blood still wet. She added, 'Dressed up as a Chink. Singing.' But he wasn't listening to her; he was making his own plans in his own darkness. She tried to keep her courage up with the first song that came into her head, humming it because it reminded her of Mather, the long ride home, the 'see you tomorrow'.
'It's only Kew To you, But to me It's Paradise.'
He said, 'I've heard that tune.' He couldn't remember where: he remembered a dark night and a cold wind and hunger and the scratch of a needle. It was as if something sharp and cold were breaking in his heart with great pain. He sat there under the sink with the automatic in his hand and began to cry. He made no sound, the tears seemed to run like flies of their own will from the corners of his eyes. Anne didn't notice for a while, humming the song. 'They say that's a snow-flower a man brought from Greenland.' Then she saw. She said, 'What's the matter?'
Raven said, 'Keep back against that wall or I'll shoot.'
'You're all in.'
'That doesn't matter to you.'
'Well, I suppose I'm human,' Anne said. 'You haven't done me any harm yet.'
He said, 'This doesn't mean anything. I'm just tired.' He looked along the bare dusty boards of the unfinished kitchen. He tried to swagger. 'I'm tired of living in hotels. I'd like to fix up this kitchen. I learned to be an electrician once. I'm educated.' He said: '"Sleepy Nuik". It's a good name when you are tired. But they've gone and spelt "Nook" wrong.'
'Let me go,' Anne said. 'You can trust me. I'll not say a thing. I don't even know who you are.'
He laughed miserably. 'Trust you. I'd say I can. When you get into the town you'll see my name in the papers and my description, what I'm wearing, how old I am. I never stole the notes, but I can't put a description in of the man I want: name of Chol-mon-deley, profession double-crosser, fat, wears an emerald ring...'
'Why,' she said, 'I believe I travelled down with a man like that. I wouldn't have thought he'd have the nerve...'
'Oh, he's only the agent,' Raven said, 'but if I could find him I'd squeeze the names...'
'Why don't you give yourself up? Tell the police what happened?'
'That's a great idea, that is. Tell them it was Cholmondeley's friends got the old Czech killed. You're a bright girl.'
'The old Czech?' she exclaimed. A little more light came into the kitchen as the fog lifted over the housing estate, the wounded fields. She said, 'You don't mean what the papers are so full of?'
'That's it,' he said with gloomy pride.
'You know the man who shot him?'
'As well as myself.'
'And Cholmondeley's mixed up in it... Doesn't that mean—that everyone's all wrong?'
'They don't know a thing about it, these papers. They can't give credit where credit's due.'
'And you know and Cholmondeley. Then there won't be a war at all if you find Cholmondeley.'
' I don't care a damn whether there's a war or not. I only want to know who it is who double-crossed me. I want to get even,' he explained, looking up at her across the floor, with his hand over his mouth, hiding his lip, noticing that she was young and flushed and lovely with no more personal interest than a mangy wolf will show from the cage in the groomed well-fed bitch beyond the bars. 'A war won't do people any harm,' he said. 'It'll show them what's what, it'll give them a taste of their own medicine. I know. There's always been a war for me.' He touched the automatic. 'All that worries me is what to do with you to keep you quiet for twenty-four hours.'