Quickening his pace, as the drizzle began to fall with more weight, he passed round the church. As he walked by the trees on the far side of the building, where they screened it off from the bleak back walls of a derelict mill, he again noticed something move. Was it a dog? he wondered, though it had seemed a little large. He whistled, though there was no response other than a thin, frail echo.
He strode between a row of ornate monuments of polished marble. Was that someone there, crouched in the bushes?
‘Excuse me!’ he called enquiringly. Then stopped. Calling out to a dog, indeed! he thought as he glimpsed what he took to be a large black hound — perhaps an Irish wolfhound — scutter off out of sight between the trees.
As he walked back to the street, he decided that it was about time he got on his way to the canal before the rain got any worse.
The rain did worsen. By the time he reached the towpath of the canal, he was beginning to regret having come out on a morning like this on such a pointless exercise. The rain covered the fields on either side of the canal in a dull grey veil. What colours there were had been reduced to such a washed-out monochrome that the scene reminded him of that in an old and faded photograph. Facing him across the dingy waters of the canal were rows of little sheds and barbed wire fences. Crates of neglected rubbish had been abandoned in the sparsely grassed fields, together with the tyreless carcasses of deserted cars. The fields rose up to the back of a grim row of tenements whose haphazard rooftops formed a jagged black line against the sky. Only the moldering wood of the derelict mills and their soot-grimed bricks on his side of the canal stood out with any clarity.
A dead cat floated in a ring of scum in the stagnant water at his feet, its jellied eyes sightlessly staring at the sky with a dank luminescence.
As he took the stone head from his pocket, Lamson heard someone move behind him. Having thought that he was safely alone, he spun round in surprise. Crouched deep in the shadows between the walls of the mill, where a gate had once stood, was a man. A long, unbuttoned overcoat hung from about his hunched body. It was a coat that Lamson recognized instantly.
‘So it was you those kids were shouting at,’ Lamson accused, as the tramp tottered out into the light. ‘Have you been following me?’ he asked. But there was no response, other than a slight twitching of the old man’s blistered lips into what he took to be a smile, though one that was distinctively malignant and sly. ‘You were following me last night, weren’t you?’ Lamson went on. ‘I heard you when you slipped, so there’s no point denying it. And I saw you this morning when those kids were having a go at you. I thought they were being cruel when they shouted out at you, but I don’ t know now. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps you are a dirty old man, a dirty, insidious and evil old man.’ Even now there was no more response from the tramp than that same repugnant smile. ‘Haven’t you got a tongue?’ Lamson snapped. ‘Grinning there like a Gargoyle. Well? You were talkative enough when we met on the moors. Have you taken vows of silence since then? Come on! Speak up, damn you!’ He clenched his fists, fighting back the impulse to hit him in the face, even though it was almost too strong to resist. What an ugly old creature he was, what with his pockmarked face all rubbery and grey and wet, and those bloated, repulsive lips. Was he some kind of half-breed? he wondered, though of what mixture he could not imagine. A thin, grey trickle of saliva hung down from a corner of his mouth. There was a streak of blood in it. As he stared at him he realized that he looked far worse, far, far worse than before, as if whatever disease had already swollen and eroded his features had suddenly accelerated its effect.
The tramp stared down at the stone in Lamson’ s hand.
‘Were you after gettin’ rid of it? Is that why you’ve come to this place?’ he asked finally.
‘Since it’s mine, I have every right to, if that’s what I want to do,’ Lamson said, taken aback at the accusation.
‘An’ why should you choose to do such a thing, I wonder? You liked it enough when I first showed it to you on the bus. Couldn’t ’ardly wait to buy it off o’ me then, could you? ’Ere’s the money, give us the stone, quick as a flash! Couldn’t ’ardly wait, you couldn’t. An’ ere you are, all ’et up an’ nervous, can’t ’ardly wait to get rid o’ the thing. What’s the poor sod been doin’ to you? Givin’ you nightmares, ’as it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What should I mean? Just a joke. That’s all. Can’t you tell? Ha, ha, ha!’ He spat a string of phlegm on the ground. ‘Only a joke,’ he went on, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
‘Only a joke, was it?’ Lamson asked, his anger inflamed with indignation at the old man’s ill-concealed contempt for him. ‘And I suppose it was only a joke when you followed me here as well? Or did you have some other purpose in mind? Did you?’
‘P’raps I was only tryin’ to make sure you came to no ’arm. Wouldn’t want no ’arm to come to you now, would I? After all, you bought that ’ead off o’ me fair an’ square, didn’t you? Though it does seem an awful shame to me to toss it into the canal there. Awful shame it’d be. Where’d you get another bit o’ stone like that? It’s unique, you know, that’s what it is right enough. Unique. Wouldn’t want to throw it into no canal, would you? Where’s the sense in it? Or the use? Could understand if there was somethin’ bad an’ nasty about it. Somethin’ unpleasant, like. But what’s bad an’ nasty about that? Don’t give you no nightmares, now, does it? Nothin’ like that? Course not! Little bit o’ stone like that? An’ yet, ’ere you are, all ’et up an’ ready to toss it away, an’ no reason to it. I can’t understand it at all. I can’t. I swear it.’ He shook his head reproachfully, though there was a cunning grin about his misshapen mouth, as if laughing at a secret joke. ‘Throwin’ it away,’ he went on in the same infuriatingly mocking voice, ‘Ne’er would ha’ thought o’ doin’ such a thing— old bit o’ stone like that. You know ’ow much it might be worth? Can you even guess? Course not! An’ yet you get it for next to nothin’ off o’ me, only keep it for a day or so, then the next thing I knows, ’ere you are all ready to toss it like an empty can into the canal. An’ that’s what you’ve come ’ere for, isn’t it?’
‘And if it is, why are you here?’ Lamson asked angrily. The old man knew too much — far, far too much. It wasn’t natural! ‘What are you?’ he asked. ‘And why have you been spying on me? Come on, give me an answer!’
‘An answer, is it? Well, p’raps I will. It’s too late now, I can tell, for me to do any ‘arm in lettin’ you know. ’E’s ’ad ’is ’ands on you by now, no doubt, Eh?’
Lamson felt a stirring in his loins as he remembered the dream he had woken from barely two hours ago. But the old man couldn’t mean that. It was impossible for him to know about it, utterly, completely, irrefutably impossible! Lamson tried to make himself leave, but he couldn’t, not until he had heard what the old man had to say, even though he knew that he didn’t want to listen. He had no choice. He couldn’t. ‘Are you going to answer my questions?’ he asked, his voice sounding far more firm than he felt.
The tramp leered disgustedly.