I seized his shoulders and shook him. ‘Where is she?’
The insurance man pulled me off. ‘Leave him, Steve! Can’t you see he’s concussed?’
I let him go, and pushed past. She wasn’t in the wreckage of her own office; nor, fortunately, was she under the mess here. If she’d been elsewhere when the attack came … I looked in every office, but there was nobody left. With a numb, leaden feeling inside me I stalked back around through the milling, chattering crowd, peered into the typists’ room, the photocopier room, the gents, even into the ladies; none of the girls mopping up their injuries there gave me a second look. And none of them was Clare.
‘Clare!’ I shouted above the hubbub. ‘Has anyone seen Clare?’
One of the typists, gulping down water, gave a sudden squeal and dropped her glass. ‘Clare! They were carrying her –’ Then she dissolved into hysterics.
That was enough. I barged out into the lobby and ploughed through the crowd, now swelled by arriving ambulance men, and down the stairs at full gallop. Down at the bottom was Barry, with a police sergeant, staring at a track of blood that led across the hallway from the liftshaft. ‘Pretty tough punks, if you ask me, to drop four floors and just crawl away – and why the hell –’
Barry saw me and waved me down. ‘Sergeant, it was Steve here who –’
I shook loose. ‘Later, dammit, Barry! They’ve taken Clare!’
The sergeant plucked at my arm with a heavy and practised hand. I tried to pull loose, but it almost jerked me off my feet. In a sudden, desperate rush of frustrated anger I whirled around and smashed my fist into his face. Even a day earlier I would never have done it; and I would never have dreamed I could hit so hard. He literally seemed to fly backwards off his feet, and hit the wall in a crumpled heap.
I turned and ran, hearing Barry trumpet ‘What the hell –’ from behind me, and then, more urgently ‘Steve!’
I owed Barry a lot, but I didn’t dare listen. I’d no intention of waiting, for him or for the police; I didn’t dare. I ran. Out into the street, scattering the crowds of doughy-faced gawkers; one made a tentative step into my path, thought better of it and sprang back. I reached the car-park, fumbling with my keys, flung the door wide and thumped down behind the wheel. I twisted the car back in a roaring arc, hunching it down on its suspension like a springing cat, and drove straight out. My mirror showed me blue uniforms spilling out of the door, but they didn’t worry me. The mouth of the little street was so choked with ambulances and gawkers that they’d never get after me in time, and it was one-way; the far end would be clear. They’d put out an alert, of course; but all the local cars were probably here already, and once I was out of the area spotting my car among all its anonymous look-alikes in the late afternoon rush would be a matter of sheer chance.
Provided, of course, I drove sensibly and didn’t draw attention to myself. I had to be careful about that. It was oddly exhilarating, playing the fugitive, for all the sick worry underneath. Oddly, because it didn’t sound like the man I saw in my shaving mirror. I’d always been a law-abiding type by nature – still was, come to that. I’d no malice against the police, none at all, no wish to make a hard job harder. Sooner or later I’d have to face the consequences of what I’d done. No question what it would look like, punching the policeman, bolting from the scene like that; they’d figure I knew something – and they’d make damn sure I told them. All right, I’d try, mad as it would sound; but I just couldn’t let them get in my way, not now. It was a higher, older law I was obeying now.
A law of the instincts, perhaps. The thought of anyone innocent in the hands of those creatures was bad enough – but Clare … What was she to me? A junior colleague. Hardly even a friend. I’d been careful to keep it that way; hardly ever saw her outside work, didn’t know much about her life. Yet she’d been my secretary for four years. In that time, whether or not I’d meant to, I could hardly have helped getting a pretty clear idea of her personality, the essential Clare. A better sense of what made her tick, maybe, than any of her come-and-go boyfriends. To update an old saying, nobody’s a hero to his secretary. Yet she’d stuck to me; and I’d reason to know she’d taken my part fiercely when it counted. It surprised me a little how fiercely I wanted to repay that. I told myself it must be sheer guilt. I was responsible for her; yet I’d brought this on her, by my lunatic compulsion to delve into things better left alone, things I should have forgotten as Jyp told me to. But there was more to it than guilt, than the wish to help I’d have had for anybody in that plight. I could see her in my mind’s eye, and it took a lot of effort to drive slow, keep safe, to run with the traffic and watch the shadows gather ahead, beneath the slowly reddening sky.
I had to face it. I was fond of the girl, as fond as I could be of anybody. All this time some kind of feeling had been building up, creeping through all my neat defences, where I’d thought every chink had been stopped; all this time my instincts had been playing me traitor. Now they were whipping me into something like a frenzy. God, what must she be suffering now? What must she be thinking? If she was still alive to think, even –
I had to help her, whatever the cost, wherever I had to go.
I knew what that would mean. I’d have to open a gate that was closed, retrace a forgotten path, recross a forbidden threshold. That way neither reason nor memory had ever opened; my instincts were the only guides I had. And from the moment that policeman laid his fat hand on my arm those same instincts had shrieked a warning. He and the authority he represented were part of a narrower world. With them or any others in tow I’d never find the way, not if I circled those dark streets forever. Where I was going was for me alone.
The way there felt interminable. I ran into snarl-up after snarl-up, and the ring-road lights seemed to blaze red every time they saw me coming. I’d have been ready enough to run them tonight, but I didn’t dare be caught, for Clare’s sake. Worst of all was coming down towards the roundabout, when I heard a siren somewhere behind me; but it was some ways back, and a couple of heavy trucks were blocking it from view. I wasn’t too worried. It might not be me they were after; and even if it was they couldn’t possibly catch me up before the turn-off. I reached the roundabout, and I was just signalling to turn when my wing-mirror suddenly filled with another car, roaring around the outside right into my path. One bump would have bounced me into the other lanes and almost inevitably caused a multiple pile-up; I flung the wheel over just in time, to a torrent of hooting and shouting from behind. All aimed at me, of course, as if they hadn’t seen the real offender; I got only a glimpse of a glittering red sports car and a swarthy face, yellowish and sneering, behind the wheel, as he sailed tranquilly past and away up Harbour Walk. While I had to filter around the roundabout again to reach the turn-off, and hear the cobbles under my tyres at long last. The high walls closed around me, and the sound of the siren seemed to fade into the distance.
Except for a truck or two Danube Street was empty, and I could put my foot down. But a new doubt assailed me; would the car itself be a problem? Shouldn’t I park it, and go on foot? But I’d managed all right with Jyp; and there wasn’t time to risk it. A likely-looking side-street opened before me, and without stopping to wonder I turned down it, zigzagged with it around the back walls of warehouses, forbiddingly topped with rows of spikes, or embedded glass fragments that gleamed coldly in the low light. Out into another street, stared down on by the boarded windows of a derelict factory, like a blinded sentinel, and down to a junction where my instincts faltered a moment. Streets opened to either side in every direction, long shadows stretched out along them, lazy and enigmatic. I wound down the window, and smelt the sea on the wind, heard the cries of gulls; looking up, I saw them wheeling against the threatening clouds. But they gave me no clue which way to turn. Then, looking leftward, I saw the longest shadows crowned with jagged, spiny crests, a tangled interlace of thorns; and that jungle of crosstrees and rigging sprang to life in my mind. I spun the wheel, and the car seemed to fly across the cobbles. Leftward I turned, and those shadows fell across me like giant fingers. For there before me, at the street’s end, the majestic forest of mastheads lifted stark against the lit horizon.