'No, I have to get back.' Marlowe was stuffing his handkerchief back into his pocket; in his huge hand it looked as if he'd picked up a woman's handkerchief by mistake. 'I need to get back to my family,' he said, with an expression so apologetic it looked guilty. He shook hands, then strode away without a backward glance.
Alan went through into the departure hall and wandered toward the bar, looking for details he might use in his novel and trying to think of a title. They had streamlined the terminal and called it Murtala Muhammed Airport -another airport named after an assassin's victim. A priest came down an escalator, his skin black as his cloth, his collar gleaming fluorescently. A group of Yorubas in robes and caps stood by the duty-free shop, greeting each other effusively. A Hausa family strode by in search of someone, the wives chattering behind their husband, all of them in dazzling white robes like the newly baptized. A Yoruba mother sailed along a walkway, her baby slung on her back. It reminded Alan of a koala cub, alert gleaming eyes and all.
He sat in the bar and sipped a glass of the potent Nigerian beer. He had the scenes he'd come to Nigeria for, but what was the book to be called? The lack of a title made him edgy, especially when he was so near to writing the book. His mind seemed fixed on the Nigerian episode; the narrator came here in search of a birth certificate, but after much travelling and bribery, went away empty-handed, unaware that the man whose double-dealing had lured him halfway across the world, along a trail of torture and murder, was his own father. So far all the titles he could think of revolved round that theme too: Family Plot and Family Circle were too obvious; Familiarity sounded like a Victorian novel, and would sell just about as many copies nowadays. Shrugging irritably, he went to the window to check the departure board. Then he was coughing into his beer, and had to restrain himself from dodging back out of sight at once. Out there in the departure hall, the man who had watched him in the car park was talking into a pay telephone and gazing straight at him.
Alan finished his beer as quickly as he could and emerged into the bright spacious hall. The man in white was no longer to be seen. Of course, it was just a coincidence – the man had had to look somewhere while he was talking; and anyway, why should he have known that Alan was in the bar? If he let himself, Alan could imagine that Marlowe's package was a bomb, that Marlowe's dislike of his job was so uncontrollable that he meant to wipe out the Foundation in London. That was nonsense. All the same, he was relieved that the number of his flight had come up on the screen.
The enclosed ramp to the plane was narrow. The aisle of the plane was narrower, and blocked by shuffling passengers, yet all at once Alan was easier in his mind. It was absurd, but somehow the British Airways plane felt like British territory. He hadn't realized how secretly vulnerable he felt in foreign places. As soon as the plane lifted off and rainclouds wiped out the landscape, he forgot about the package in his suitcase, and the man, who surely hadn't been watching him after all. Perhaps he would call them to mind if he needed them. Writing had that advantage – you could always use your experiences eventually, however unpleasant they seemed at the time.
In the cramped toilet he splashed cold water on his face. When he raised the plug the water was sucked down the plughole with a shrill rush of air. He resumed his seat as the stewardesses came round with meals on moulded plastic trays. Alan ate ravenously, though his red-faced neighbour was bending forward over a sick bag and staring lugubriously into its depths. Hangman's Dance, To Visit The Queen, The Sunday Assassin: he was pretty good with titles as a rule – why couldn't he think of one now? It reminded him of his early days of struggle, of going to his desk in the corner of the London flat without a thought in his head. He remembered sitting beneath the patch of damp that looked like a sneering face and grinding out paragraphs purely in order to get the story over with, the story that had excited him so much – until he'd actually sat down to write it. He had never felt the least involvement with the characters as he'd struggled to make them seem real. His pen and his brain had felt scratchy, Liz had been pregnant with Anna, the damp had crept over the walls, he'd been desperate to buy a house before she had the child – and he'd finished the book with no sense of achievement at all, without ever reaching that magical point where the characters take over and dictate their story to the writer. He'd already had two novels stuck in a drawer with bunches of rejection slips, and when he'd started he'd been convinced that this was the one that would sell. The end-product had depressed him so much that he hadn't even let Liz read the typescript before he sent it away. Yet that book The Sunday Assassin had been his first major success – 'all plot, and not a wasted word,' one review had said.
Now the days of struggle were over, more or less; now he only had to struggle for a tide.
How about Out of the Past? It sounded like a film, but he didn't think it was; perhaps it sounded like the film it might be made into. He couldn't resist it; it seemed too good an omen. He lay back in his seat, relaxing at last, and closed his eyes. The plane was bumping gently, rhythmically. He thought a hammock might feel like that, rocking in a breeze.
The hammock was in Africa, and so was he, trying to run home. He had been running for a very long time. Now the looming vegetation was too vague for him to make out where he was. He was trying to catch up with someone in the foggy dark, while something red loped alongside him, urging him on. He managed to turn aside at the last moment, into a clearing. A thin old figure leapt to its feet as it saw him, and Alan was stumbling, unable to keep his balance, falling into the restless arms of the figure, which had the smallest eyes and the longest nails he had ever seen. The ground had thrown him forward into its arms, because the ground was tilting, the plane was. He woke to find that the plane was landing at Heathrow.
He was bewildered to find he'd slept so long, and he was still trying to blink himself awake as he shuffled forward with the rest of the passengers, past the captain standing by the exit like a priest after a mass. What was it that he couldn't quite remember? Perhaps he would know when he woke up fully.
Chimes rang, amplified voices boomed high up in the airport hall. Suitcases appeared at the top of a ramp, slid down to the roundabout where their owners were waiting. It all had the unresolved quality of a dream; in a moment the scene might be transformed into parents watching their children on slides and roundabouts, invisible giants ringing bells overhead. He was nearly awake now. He grabbed his suitcase as it sailed by and staggered with it toward the Customs area, something to declare, nothing to declare. 'Nothing' seemed easier, and the sign was green for go.
As soon as he reached the counter he knew that he'd made a mistake. The officer behind the desk was young, and eager to show he was doing his job. You could tell he would relish body searches, even though he would never have admitted it, even to himself. He stood straight-backed as a dummy, eyes gleaming impersonally in the smooth scrubbed face, his hair and moustache clipped short, his manner precise. 'Have you read the notice?' he said, like a policeman cautioning a criminal.
'Yes, I have.' Alan was sure he had nothing on the list: jewellery, wines, spirits.. -. Nevertheless the Customs officer read out the items one by one. 'You're quite sure you're not carrying anything on that list?' he said.
'Yes, I am.'
A determined blankness spread over the officer's face. 'Will you open your case, please?'
Alan opened it readily enough. It wasn't even locked -that would only have risked someone breaking into it while it was behind the scenes. He should have felt smug, because he knew that the Customs man would find nothing, except that he could almost hear a warning deep in his mind. The young man was turning over shirts and underwear like an overseer in a laundry, searching primly for stains. Suddenly he poked a rectangular bulge under the towels. 'What's this?' he said.