"Miss Patricia Quin, I presume?" Hyde asked. The girl said nothing. Her face, however, was voluble with confession. Alletson got up lithely and stood in front of her.
"What do you want?" he asked.
"The lady in the case."
Alletson took the warrant card, inspected it, then thrust it back into Hyde's hand. "Harassment?" he asked.
"This isn't about smokes or shots, Jon-boy," Hyde drawled. "It isn't really any of your business. You get on rehearsing or composing or something." Whiteman was standing now, just behind Alletson. Long blond hair, his frame bulkier with good living than two years before. He looked healthier.
"Why don't you piss off?"
"Why did they let you in?" Alletson demanded.
"They'd have been silly not to."
"What sort of copper are you?" Whiteman was a Londoner. "You're a bloody Aussie by the sound of it."
"Too true, Blue. I'm the sort that wants to help her. Can I talk to her?"
"Not unless she wants to."
"Stop it, Jon. It won't do any good." Tricia Quin pushed to Alletson's side, and held his arm. "Who are you?"
"My name's Hyde."
"I didn't think it would be Jekyll — he was the goody, wasn't he?" Whiteman sneered.
"He was. Look, Miss Quin, I'll talk to you with your friends here, if you wish, as long as they can keep their mouths shut." He looked steadily at Alletson and Whiteman, then continued. "You are in danger, Miss Quin. It's stopped being a game. You know there are people after you?"
"You are."
"No, not me. Not even my side."
"What's he talking about, Trish?"
"What do you mean?"
"The men in Sutton, at your mother's house?" She nodded, fear flickering in her pale eyes. Cleverness, too. "That wasn't us. Our bloke got kicked in the balls trying to look after you. You need protection — mine. Will you come back with me?"
She shook her head. "No, I won't. I'm safe here."
"I can't risk that, Miss Quin. We want you and your father safe. You could lead the KGB right to him." She was shaking her head violently now. Her fair hair flopped about her pale, small face. She looked vulnerable, afraid but determined.
As if her shaking head was some signal, Alletson stepped up to him and aimed his knee at Hyde's groin. Hyde bucked backwards and the blow struck his thigh. Off-balance as he was, Alletson pushed him against a tall metal locker. Hyde, watching Tricia Quin move towards the door, jarred his head and shoulder against the locker, then slumped into the corner of the dressing room.
"Trish!" Alletson called, but the girl was already out of the door. Two hopeful flash-bulbs exploded. Hyde got shakily to his feet.
"You stupid buggers!" Hyde snapped, rubbing his shoulder. "She's a menace to herself at the moment, as well as to her father. Christ — you stupid buggers!" He opened the door, and yelled to the PC on duty. "Which way did the girl go?" Someone laughed.
Towards the hall."
"Who is she?" someone asked.
"It'll be pot," someone else answered. "Poor bitch."
Hyde forced his way through the press, jabbed uncomfortably more than once by the lens of a camera, then he was running. At the far end of the corridor, the door into the hall was open. He rubbed his thigh as he ran, his resentment against Alletson growing not because of the pain but because of the girl. Stupid bugger, silly bitch, he chanted to himself, grinding his teeth at the opportunity that had been spoiled. He had had the girl safe, for a moment. It was only a matter of getting her to his car, getting her to Aubrey — shit!
In the hall, lighting gantries were being pulleyed up to the ceiling, mirrors were being positioned for the light-show that the band used, and the roadies were still working furiously to rig and test the amplification equipment. Two grubby girls passed him without a glance, pushing one of Whiteman's electronic keyboards. Up the ramp and on to the stage. He was standing just below the stage. Lights, mirrors, amplifiers, instruments — and Tricia Quin picking her way delicately like a cat through the maze of boxes and wires. She must have taken the other turn in the corridor to enter on to the stage itself.
She saw him. Part of her slow and delicate passage across the stage was due to her continual backward glances. She began to move more quickly, upstage towards the far side. Even as he moved, she disappeared into the wings. He pushed past the girls with the keyboard, and ran as quickly as he was able through the maze of cables and boxes — someone yelled at him — and then he was in the semi-darkness of the wings. He paused, listening. Above his heartbeat and breathing, footsteps. Running. He blundered forward again, sensing rationality disappearing and panic encroaching. He suddenly knew that the KGB were out there, and that she was running towards them. He shook his head, cannoning off a wall as he rounded a bend in the corridor.
Lights again. The foyer and main corridor connecting Hall 5 with its companions and with the railway station. A handful of people moving slowly, and one slight figure running. He did not call after her, merely pursued her, his feet pounding, his blood beating in his ears. He felt a sickness of self-recrimination, an anticipation of disaster.
A tunnel of lights down which she fled, a small dark shape. The scene wobbled in his vision. He seemed no nearer to her. The station concourse was at the end of the wide tunnel. She was almost there, sixty or seventy yards away.
Someone turning, moving with her, after her. She was oblivious to whoever it was, didn't even look round for him as she reached the concourse. He began running, impelled by the certainty of disaster now. Someone had recognised her — other men, two of them in overcoats, just come in from the cold of the car park outside the station, moving to intercept her.
He reached the concourse. The girl had disappeared. Two men had pushed into the small queue for tickets, one of them arguing. He hadn't imagined it. They were stereotypes. The girl must have gone down on to the platform. Two of them, three — where was the other one, the one who had turned in the tunnel, recognised her?
Petrunin. Hyde could not believe it. Standing beneath the announcement board, impatiently watching his men create the wrong kind of disturbance, then turning to the platform ticket machine and banging it because it appeared jammed or empty. No, girl, no girl —
Petrunin, London Resident. KG-bloody-B. Where the hell was the girl? Petrunin. The clever bugger must have worked it out. Tickets being issued, the small queue silenced by embarrassment. Petrunin almost hopping from foot to foot. Train announcement, the next train arriving, Petrunin turning his head from side to side as if regretting something or because he had lost something — and seeing him. Knowing him not so much by his face as by his colour and heaving chest and wary, tense posture.
Hyde ran at the barrier, Petrunin moved to cut him off, slowly drifting, so it seemed, on a collision course. The next train arriving, for Birmingham — special train? He saw the dark, frightened face of the ticket collector, then he vaulted the turnstile, almost stumbling on the far side, hearing the noise of the train. He ran headlong down the flight of steps to the platform, round the corner, skidded, righted himself, flung open the glass doors.
She was almost alone on the platform. He saw her immediately. And she saw him. Policemen, too. Clattering footsteps behind him, but it was all right. Policemen. All round them, policemen. He hadn't lost her. He called to her as she stood looking at him. The noise of the train covered his words as it slowed, then came to a stop.
One of Petrunin's men grabbed him from behind. He turned, lashed out to try to prevent a second man passing him, heading towards the girl. Then they seemed to be drowning in bodies as the special train from Huston debouched hundreds of rock fans on to the platform, every one of them intent on reaching the exit first. Noise assailed Hyde, and perfume. He was brushed aside, the only certainty the hand holding his collar. He raised his fist, but the crowd trapped it against his chest, pinning it there as in a sling. Petrunin's man had his arm above the heads of the crowd. He was waving a rubber cosh. He struck slowly down. The movement was awkward because he was being relentlessly pushed back towards the exit. Hyde lost sight of the girl, of Petrunin who seemed to have retreated back up the steps, and of the cosh which struck him across the neck and shoulder, numbing him after the spurt of fire through his head. Then the Russian's hand was gone from his collar and he stumbled forward, flung sideways to his knees. Then on to his chest. Feet pressed on his back, compressing his lungs. People began surging over him. He was drowning for a moment, then he could not breathe, and then it was dark.