' That's good,' Mr Davis said mechanically, driving her back.
She began to talk rapidly about anything which came into her head. She said, 'I wonder what this gas practice will be like. Wasn't it terrible the way they shot the old woman through her eyes?'
He loosed her at that, though she hadn't really meant anything by it. He said, 'Why do you bring that up?'
'I was just reading about it,' Anne said. 'The man must have made a proper mess in that flat.'
Mr Davis implored her, 'Stop. Please stop.' He explained weakly, leaning back for support against the bedpost, 'I've got a weak stomach. I don't like horrors.'
'I like thrillers,' Anne said. 'There was one I read the other day...'
'I've got a very vivid imagination,' Mr Davis said.
'I remember once when I cut my finger...'
'Don't. Please don't.'
Success made her reckless. She said, 'I've got a vivid imagination too. I thought someone was watching this house.'
'What do you mean?' He was scared all right. But she went too far. She said, 'There was a dark fellow watching the door. He had a hare-lip.'
Mr Davis went to the door and locked it. He turned the wireless low. He said, 'There's no lamp within twenty yards. You couldn't have seen his lip.'
'I just thought...'
'I wonder how much he told you,' Mr Davis said. He sat down on the bed and looked at his hands. 'You wanted to know where I lived, whether I worked—' He cut his sentence short and looked up at her with horror. But she could tell from his manner that he was no longer afraid of her; it was something else that scared him. He said, 'They'd never believe you.'
'Who wouldn't?'
'The police. It's a wild story.' To her amazement he began to sniffle, sitting on the bed nursing his great hairy hands. 'There must be some way out. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anyone. I've got a weak stomach.'
Anne said, 'I don't know a thing. Please open the door.'
Mr Davis said in a low furious voice, 'Be quiet. You've brought it on yourself.'
She said again, 'I don't know anything.'
'I'm only an agent,' Mr Davis said. 'I'm not responsible.' He explained gently, sitting there in his stockinged feet with tears in his deep selfish eyes, 'It's always been our policy to take no risks. It's not my fault that fellow got away. I did my best. I've always done my best. But he won't forgive me again.'
'I'll scream if you don't open that door.'
'Scream away. You'll only make the old woman cross.'
'What are you going to do?'
'There's more than half a million at stake,' Mr Davis said. 'I've got to make sure this time.' He got up and came towards her with his hands out; she screamed and shook the door, then fled from it because there was no reply and ran round the bed. He just let her run; there was no escape in the tiny cramped room. He stood there muttering to himself, 'Horrible. Horrible.' You could tell he was on the verge of sickness, but the fear of somebody else drove him on. Anne implored him, 'I'll promise anything.' He shook his head, 'He'd never forgive me,' and sprawled across the bed and caught her wrist. He said thickly, 'Don't struggle. I won't hurt you if you don't struggle,' pulling her to him across the bed, feeling with his other hand for the pillow. She told herself even then: it isn't me. It's other people who are murdered. Not me. The urge to life which made her disbelieve that this could possibly be the end of everything for her, for the loving enjoying I, comforted her even when the pillow was across her mouth; never allowed her to realize the full horror, as she fought against his hands, strong and soft and sticky with icing sugar.
5
The rain blew up along the River Weevil from the east; it turned to ice in the bitter night and stung the asphalt walks, pitted the paint on the wooden seats. A constable came quietly by in his heavy raincoat gleaming like wet macadam, moving his lantern here and there in the dark spaces between the lamps. He said, 'Good night' to Raven without another glance. It was couples he expected to find, even in December under the hail, the signs of poor cooped provincial passion.
Raven buttoned to the neck went on, looking for any shelter. He wanted to keep his mind on Cholmondeley, on how to find the man in Nottwich. But continually he found himself thinking instead of the girl he had threatened that morning. He remembered the kitten he had left behind in the Soho café. He had loved that kitten.
It had been sublimely unconscious of his ugliness. 'My name's Anne.'
'You aren't ugly.' She never knew, he thought, that he had meant to kill her; she had been as innocent of his intention as a cat he had once been forced to drown; and he remembered with astonishment that she had not betrayed him, although he had told her that the police were after him. It was even possible that she had believed him.
These thoughts were colder and more uncomfortable than the hail. He wasn't used to any taste that wasn't bitter on the tongue. He had been made by hatred; it had constructed him into this thin smoky murderous figure in the rain, hunted and ugly. His mother had borne him when his father was in gaol, and six years later when his father was hanged for another crime, she had cut her own throat with a kitchen knife; afterwards there had been the home. He had never felt the least tenderness for anyone; he was made in this image and he had his own odd pride in the result; he didn't want to be unmade. He had a sudden terrified conviction that he must be himself now as never before if he was to escape. It was not tenderness that made you quick on the draw.
Somebody in one of the larger houses on the river-front had left his garage gate ajar; it was obviously not used for a car, but only to house a pram, a child's playground and a few dusty dolls and bricks. Raven took shelter there; he was cold through and through except in the one spot that had lain frozen all his life. That dagger of ice was melting with great pain. He pushed the garage gate a little further open; he had no wish to appear furtively hiding if anyone passed along the river beat; anyone might be excused for sheltering in a stranger's garage from this storm, except, of course, a man wanted by the police with a hare-lip.
These houses were only semi-detached. They were joined by their garages. Raven was closely hemmed in by the redbrick walls. He could hear the wireless playing in both houses. In the one house it switched and changed as a restless finger turned the screw and beat up the wavelengths, bringing a snatch of rhetoric from Berlin, of opera from Stockholm. On the National Programme from the other house an elderly critic was reading verse. Raven couldn't help but hear, standing in the cold garage by the baby's pram, staring out at the black haiclass="underline" 'A shadow flits before me, Not thou, but like to thee; Ah Christ, that it were possible For one short hour to see The souls we loved, that they might tell us What and where they be.'
He dug his nails into his hands, remembering his father who had been hanged and his mother who had killed herself in the basement kitchen, all the long parade of those who had done him down. The elderly cultured Civil Service voice read on: 'And I loathe the squares and streets, and the faces that one meets, Hearts with no love for me...'
He thought: give her time and she too will go to the police. That's what always happens in the end with a skirt, —'My whole soul out to thee'— trying to freeze again, as hard and safe as ever, the icy fragment.