The next turn brought the answer. Glowing windows and a lighted sign beside the road ahead. A public house, of course, he had passed it countless times without even noticing it. No reason to. Jan slowed the car. “The Iron Duke,” the board read, with a portrait of the Duke himself, aristocratic nose held high. But not so aristocratic, the clientele; not a car about and bicycles racked along the front wall. No wonder he had never noticed it before.
He hit the brakes. Of course! He would stop here for a drink, talk to people. There could be nothing wrong in this. The customers would surely be pleased to have him. Bring a touch of interest to a cold evening. What a very good idea.
Jan closed and locked the car and stamped across the hard ground to the front door. It swung wide at his touch and he entered a large brightly lit room, the air thick with the clouds of cheap tobacco and marijuana smoke. A loud, very boring piece of music was pouring from wall speakers and drowned out any sound of conversation from the crowd of men at the bar, seated at the small tables. No women, he noticed with interest. In a proper pub at least half — or more — of the customers would be women. He found an opening at the bar and rapped for attention when the barman did not notice him.
“Why yes, sir, very pleased to have you here, sir,” the man said, hurrying over with a warm smile on his fat lips. “What will be your pleasure?”
“A large whiskey — and something for yourself as well.”
“Why thank you, sir. I’ll have similar.”
Jan didn’t notice the brand name; it was rougher than the whiskey he usually drank. But fairly priced. The round was less than a single at his local. These people had no cause for complaint.
There was more space at the bar now — in fact he had it almost to himself. Jan turned about and there, at a nearby table, sat Radcliffe and some of the other workers from the Walsoken Plant. Jan waved and walked over.
“Well, Radcliffe, relaxing a bit?”
“You might say so, your honor.” The words were cold and formal; the man seemed embarrassed for some reason.
“Mind if I join you?”
There were some wordless mutters that Jan took to be assent. He pulled an empty stool over from the next table and sat down and looked around. No one met his eyes; they all seemed to be finding things of interest in their liters of beer.
“Cold night, isn’t it?” One of them drank noisily, the only answer. “And the winters are going to stay cold for the next few years. It’s called a little climatic, a small weather change within the larger cycles of weather. We won’t have another ice age, not at once, but we can count on these cold winters lasting awhile.”
His audience was not exactly bursting with enthusiasm and Jan had the sudden realization that he was making a fool of himself. Why had he come in here in the first place? What could he learn from these stolid dolts? The whole idea was stupid. He drained his glass and left it on the table.
“Enjoy yourself, Radcliffe. All of you. See you at work in the morning and we’ll really get cracking on the maintenance. A lot of work to do.”
They muttered something which he didn’t stay to hear. The devil with theories and blond-haired girls in submarines. He must be going out of his head to do what he was doing, think what he was thinking. The hell with it. The bite of cold air was sharp and good after the reek of the pub. His car was there with two men bent over the open door.
“Stop there! What do you think you’re doing?”
Jan ran toward them, slipping on the icy ground. They looked up quickly, a blur of white faces, then turned and ran into the darkness.
“Stop! Do you hear me — stop!”
Breaking into his car, criminals! They weren’t getting away with it. He ran after them around the building and one of them stopped. Good! Turned to him…
He never saw the man’s fist. Jan felt the explosion of agony on his jaw. Falling.
It was a hard, cruel blow, and he must have been unconscious for a moment or two because the next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees, shaking his head with pain. There were shouts around him, more running footsteps, and hands on his shoulders pulling him to his feet. Someone helped him to walk back to the pub, into a small room where he dropped heavily into a deep chair. There was a wet towel then, cool on his forehead, stinging on his jaw. He took it and held it himself and looked up at Radcliffe who was alone in the room with him.
“I know the man, the man that hit me,” Jan said.
“I don’t think you do, sir. I don’t think it was no one who works at the plant. I have someone watching the car, sir. Nothing taken that I can see, you were too quick. Looks like a little damage where the door was jimmied open…
“I said I know him. Had a clear view of his face when he hit me. And he did work at the plant!”
The cool cloth helped. “Sampson, something like that. Remember, the man who tried to burn the place down. Simmons — that’s the name.”
“Couldn’t have been him, sir. He’s dead.”
“Dead? I don’t understand. He was in perfect health two weeks ago.”
“Killed himself, sir. Couldn’t face going back on the dole. Studied for years to get the job. Only had it a few months.”
“Well you can’t blame me for his incompetence. You agreed with me, as I recall, that firing him was the only thing to do. You remember?”
Radcliffe did not lower his eyes this time and there was an unaccustomed note of hardness in his voice.
“I remember asking you to keep him on. You refused.”
“You aren’t implying by any chance that I’m responsible for his death, are you?”
Radcliffe did not answer, nor did his empty expression change. Nor did he lower his eyes from Jan’s. It was Jan who turned away first.
“Management decisions are hard to make sometimes. But they have to be done. Yet I swear that man was Simmons. Looked just like him.”
“Yes, sir. It was his brother. You can find that out easy enough if you want to.”
“Well thank you for telling me. The police will deal with this matter easily enough.”
“Will they, Engineer Kulozik?” Radcliffe sat up straight and there was a timbre in his voice that Jan had never detected before. “Do you have to tell them? Simmons is dead, isn’t that enough? His brother is looking after the wife and kiddies. All on the dole. For all of their lives. Do you wonder he was angry? I’m not excusing him; he had no business doing what he did. If you would forget it there would be some grateful people around here. He hasn’t been the same since he found his brother dead.”
“I have a duty…”
“Do you, sir? To do what? To stay with your own kind and leave us alone. If you hadn’t come nosing around here tonight, pushing in where you’re not wanted, none of this would have happened. Leave well enough alone, I say. Get in your car and get out of here. Leave things as they are.
“Not wanted… ?” Jan tried to accept the thought, that these men could feel that way about him.
“Not wanted here. I’ve said enough, your honor. Maybe too much. Do whatever you want. What’s done is done. Someone will be by the car until you’re ready to go.”
He left Jan alone. Feeling more alone than he had at any other time in his life.
Five
Jan drove slowly back to his hotel in Wisbech in a poisonous frame of mind. There was a crowd in the bar at the White Lion which he passed by swiftly and on up the creaking stairs to his room. The bruise on the side of his face felt far worse than it looked. He bathed it again in cold water, holding the damp cloth to his face and staring at himself in the mirror. He felt an absolute fool.