“Is Oliver on duty?”
“No — he’s on the late shift this week. Was it personal?”
Hutchman was encouraged. “No, not personal. I’m a good driver and I know Bolton like the back of my hand.”
Forty minutes later he had been issued with a “uniform”, which consisted of an engraved steel-lapel badge and a peaked cap, and was cruising through the town in a mustard-coloured taxi. For the best part of an hour he genuinely worked as a cabdriver, making two pickups to which he was directed by radio and locating the destinations without much difficulty. The second one left him on the south side of the town and instead of returning to his waiting station he radioed the office.
“This is Walter Russell,” he said, using the name with which he had signed on. “I’ve just picked up a gentleman who wants to spend the day touring the countryside around Bolton. What’s the procedure?”
“The daily rate is forty pounds,” the girl replied. “Payable in advance. Is that satisfactory to your customer?”
Hutchman waited a moment. “He says that’s fine.”
“All right — call in when you are free again.”
“Right.” Hutchman replaced the microphone. Having decided that the limited-speed taxicab might look out of place on the motorways, he drove due south for Warrington with the intention of traveling down England on the more homely linking roads. A short distance ahead of him he saw three teenage girls standing at the roadside thumbing a ride. They glanced at each other in consternation when he pulled up beside them and operated the lever which opened the passenger door.
“Where are you heading for?” he called, trying to sound benevolent in spite of his growing tension over the road-block he sensed must be close by.
“Birmingham,” one of the girls said, “but we’ve no money for a taxi.”
“You don’t need money for this taxi.”
“What do you need, then?” another girl demanded, and her companions giggled.
Oh, God, Hutchman thought. “Look, I’m going down to Ringway Airport to meet a customer. I offered you the free seats, but if you don’t want them that’s all right with me.” He made as if to close the door and the girls screamed and tumbled into the aft-facing seats. When the car was moving again they talked among themselves as though Hutchman did not exist, and he gathered they were on their way to a Damascus demonstration. He discovered, with a dull sense of surprise, that he had not thought about Damascus for days. That he no longer really cared about the ruined city and its indomitable seven-year-olds who would never see eight. It was a personal thing now. A triangle. Vicky and he and the antibomb machine.
There was a lengthy queue of cars at the police road-block, but the uniformed men glanced only once at the taxi and its occupants, and signaled Hutchman to drive on.
CHAPTER 16
It was past midnight when Hutchman got off the train in Hastings.
He had brought the little car south to Swindon, which was as close to his destination as he dared bring an obvious trailmarker, and had abandoned it in an untended taxi rank during the afternoon. From there he had taken a train to Southampton and another along the coast to Hastings, but the connections had worked out badly and the rest of the day had been spanned by periods of nervous waiting and incredibly slow travel.
His knowledge that there were now less than thirty-six hours to go until the deadline weighed heavily on him as he emerged from the station onto a sloping forecourt. The gray mildness of the morning had given way to a clean, cold rain which threshed noisily in the gutters, and which soaked Hutchman almost as soon as he stepped into it. Several taxis were waiting, but he decided that they represented too big a risk. He slipped past them in the shadows and set out to walk to Channing Waye. The journey took fifteen minutes and by the time he reached the house he was as wet as if he had fallen into the sea, and was shivering uncontrollably.
He opened the front door of the dark little house but paused before going in, gripped by a strange timidity. This was the penultimate point of no return, barely less final than the pressing of the black button itself. He had no subconscious yearning to be deflected from his course by an outside agency — his life had become so twisted and deformed that turning back would have been the only act less meaningful than going on. But once he went into the house, once he was swallowed by the dankness of the cramped hall and had closed the door, he would have severed all links with humanity. Even if he was traced to the house and men tried to break in, their only achievement would be to make him press the button a little earlier. He was the ground zero man, and he was committed…
The door was swollen with moisture and he had to use his shoulder to get it closed properly. He found his way upstairs by the vague radiance which seeped in through the transom from a streetlamp. Nothing happened when he tried the light but he was able to discern that the room had not been interfered with in his absence. It still contained its single bentwood chair, painted gooseberry green, and the components of his machine. He stumbled back down to the hall in squelching shoes, located a main electrical switch under the stairs, and turned it on. Hampered by the clinging coldness of his clothes, he backed out of the cubbyhole and went through all the rooms, putting on the lights and closing the blinds. The total effect was to make his tiny domain more bleak and depressing than before. He went out to the covered backyard, where the rain fretted against a glass roof, and looked into the concrete coal bunker. It contained barely enough fragments to fill a bucket, and no shovel. He cast around the yard, found some worn oilcloth on the floor of the outside lavatory, and used it to scoop up the coal and carry it to the fireplace in the back room. Being virtually a non-smoker, Hutchman had no lighter but he was able to light a piece of newspaper at the self-igniting gas stove in the kitchen. The oilcloth burned greasily, with a whirring sound, and even when supplemented with twists of newspaper would not trigger off the coals. He hesitated then, amazed at the tenacity of his inhibitions, took the wooden drawer from the kitchen table, smashed it underfoot, and fed it to the fire. This time the coals ignited, guaranteeing him a meager ration of heat for perhaps an hour.
He stripped off all his clothes and wrapped himself in the only material available, which was the loose covering of a large sofa, and settled down to wait for thirty-five hours. I dream of a small fire-lit room, he thought. And this time the tears came easily.
When Hutchman awoke in the morning he had a pounding headache and a raw sensation in the back of his throat. Each breath he drew was a torrent of icy air ripping through his nasal passages. He sat up painfully and surveyed the room. The fireplace held nothing more than a handful of gray ash, and his clothes were still damp. Trying to suppress his shivering, he gathered up the wrinkled garments and carried them into the kitchen. He lit the oven of the cooker and all four burners, then force-dried his clothes, absorbing as much heat as possible into his body in the process. As he waited he developed a powerful craving for tea. Not the delicate Darjeeling he used to drink with Vicky — but strong, cheap, pensioner’s tea, served hot and sweet. A conviction stole over him that a pot of such tea would cure his headache, soothe his throat, and drive the pains from his joints. He searched the kitchen cupboards, but his unknown landlord had left nothing at all in them.