It was still daylight when he awoke but the room seemed very much colder than before. He lay flat on his back, hands gripping the bedding as if to prevent him from falling upward while he fought off the spell of the nightmare. It had been a very basic affair, he told himself. Hammer Films stuff, and utterly ridiculous to a waking adult; but the room was undeniably colder. He got to his feet, shivering, and turned up the gas fire, causing a white front of incandescence to move up through its ruined ceramic temples, followed by bands of violet and sienna.
Run! Stay!
Perhaps he should have pulled up stakes as soon as his car was stolen. It might have been best to have got going immediately, not even returning to the house for the night. But he had been drunk at the time, and rapidly becoming sick, and it had seemed that the thief had done him a good turn by removing a troublesome piece of unwanted property. Now he was uncertain, and glands which had been triggered by his dream were urging him to run. He left his room and wandered slowly down the stairs, pausing at different levels in the structure as though he could and might decide to move horizontally through the air at any one of them. A woman’s voice floated up the stairwell. It was Jane Atwood speaking to someone on the telephone, cheerful, privileged to communicate with her friends outside. Hutchman felt a pang of loneliness, and he decided to ring Vicky. It’s possible, he thought in wonder. I can pick up the phone and speak to her. Dial a line to the past. He moved on down to the hall, where Mrs. Atwood was hanging up the phone.
“That was George,” she said curiously. “A man’s been to the shop asking about you. Something about your car.”
“Really?” Hutchman gripped the smooth wood of the banister. ”Was your car stolen, Mr. Rattray? You said it broke down when you were. …
“I’m not sure — it may have been stolen afterward.” Hutchman turned and sprinted up the stairs, moaning inwardly with panic. In his room he threw on his jacket and ran back down to the hall. Mrs. Atwood had disappeared into another part of the house. He opened the front door and glanced up and down the street to make sure nobody was coming, then walked quickly away from the house, choosing to go in the opposite direction to the main road. Near the end of the street he saw a dark-blue Jaguar sweep round the corner. It was driven by a thick-set, gray-haired man who appeared not even to see Hutchman, but the car slowed down at once and rolled gently down the street, its wheels mushing through decaying leaves. The driver was examining the numbers on the houses.
Hutchman continued walking normally until he had rounded the corner into a wider and empty cross-avenue, then began to run. The act of running required no effort, his breath seeming to come easier as though constrictive bands had been torn away from his chest. He sped along a line of trees, hardly aware of his feet touching the ground, moving so silently that he twice distinguished the pulpy sound of chestnuts dropping onto the pavement. Near the end of the avenue he abruptly became self-conscious, slowed down to a walk, and looked back over his shoulder. The blue Jaguar was backing out between the lines of trees, wallowing slightly with the lateral forces of the turn. It came in his direction, alternating through light and shade as it ghosted past the trees.
Hutchman began to run again. He emerged into a long canyon of three-storey terrace houses, saw a narrow street opening on his right, and darted down it. This street was freakishly long and featureless, running slightly uphill until its perspectives faded into the gathering mist. There was no time for Hutchman to turn hack. He loped along an irregular line of parked cars, zig-zagging to avoid groups of playing children, but now running was becoming less dreamlike and more difficult. His mouth began to fill with a salty froth and his ankles to weaken, allowing his feet to slap the ground almost uncontrollably. He looked back and saw the Jaguar in its noiseless pursuit.
Suddenly Hutchman noticed a ragged break in the confining lines of houses. He slanted toward it and entered a desolate plain which had been created by a slum clearance and redevelopment program. Its surface was composed of tumbled brick and fragmented concrete, with children moving through a low-lying mist, like members of a small alien race, bands of expeditionary Hobbits. Hutchman launched himself in the direction of the opposite boundary, another row of terrace houses beyond which the blue-white lights of a main road were already beginning to shine through the dusk. Behind him he heard the Jaguar slither to a halt. Its door slammed, but there was no time for him to take even one glance to the rear because running on the new surface was dangerous. His ankles threatened to give way every time he was forced to leap over a block of concrete or one of the rusted reinforcing rods which rose Out of the ground like snares. He aimed for what appeared to be an opening in the perimeter houses, then discovered he had wasted his strength by running. The redevelopment contractor had sealed the site off with a galvanized iron fence — and Hutchman was in a box.
He turned with the absurd idea of trying to mingle with a group of urchins but, using the well-developed instincts of their race, they had faded into the surroundings. The gray-haired man was only fifty paces away, running strongly in spite of his bulk, looking strangely incongruous in an expensive tweed overcoat. He was carrying a slim-bladed knife in a way which suggested he knew how to use it.
Sobbing, Hutchman moved to one side. His pursuer altered course to intercept him. Hutchman lifted a half-brick and threw it, but had aImed too low and it struck the ground harmlessly. The gray-haired man jumped over it, landed awkwardly and pitched forward, his face driving into a thicket of steel rods which projected from a slab of concrete. One of them punched its way into the socket of his right eye. And he screamed.
Hutchman watched in horror as a surprisingly large white ball, blotched with red, sprang from the socket and rolled on the ground.
“My eye! Oh God, my eye!” The man groveled in the dirt, his hands searching blindly.
“Stay away from me,” Hutchman mumbled.
“But it’s my eye!” The man got to his feet with the obscene object cupped in his hands, holding it out toward Hutchman in a kind of supplication. Deltas of black blood spilled down his face and over his clothes.
“Stay away!” Hutchman forced his body into action. He ran parallel to the fence for a short distance and angled away toward the point where he had entered the site. Children darted out of his path like startled pheasants. He reached the blue Jaguar and got into the driving seat, but there was no ignition key. His pursuer had been taking no chances. Hutchman got out of the car as several children appeared in the gap in the houses. They were going back into the site, but moving differently, with an air of authority which suggested they had the backing of adults. Hutchman hurried toward the street and encountered two middle-aged men, one of them in slippers and rolled-up shirtsleeves.
“There’s been an accident,” he called, pointing back across the desolation to where a single figure wavered in the slatecoloured mist. “Where’s the nearest telephone?”
One of the men pointed to the left, down the hill. Hutchman ran in that direction, back the way he had come, until he was in the wider tree-lined avenue. He slowed to a walk, partly to avoid looking conspicuous and partly because he was exhausted. The easier pace also made it possible for him to think. He had a feeling the man he had encountered was not a British detective or security agent — it would all have been handled differently — but no matter how much anybody might have learned from Andrea Knight, how could they possibly have found him so quickly? There was the car, of course, but surely that would have brought the police down on him rather than an anonymous man carrying a knife. Regardless of what had happened, he decided, Bolton was no longer safe for him.