Hasson was watching a slaty triangle of sky opening out to receive him when something struck the car with enough force to make it rock slightly on the suspension. The impact appeared to have been on the roof, but nothing that could have caused it bounced down on to the pavement.
Theo sat up straight. “What was that?”
“I think we’ve got company,” Hasson said. He trod gently on the brake pedal and at the same instant a flier made a swooping descent to land on the road about a hundred metres ahead. The flier was a big man who was wearing a black suit, a harness with fluorescent orange straps and — in spite of the fading light conditions — mirror-lensed sun glasses. Hasson immediately recognised Buck Morlacher and made a simultaneous guess that his partner, Starr Pridgeon, was at that moment perched on the roof of the car, having matched velocities in the air and dropped on to it. A wave of irritation, rather than anger, caused him to react as his former self. The car was still losing speed gradually as it neared Morlacher, but Hasson kicked down on the brake and jolted the vehicle to a halt. A blue-suited figure tumbled down the sloping windshield, struck the nose of the car and slid the rest of the way down on to the road.
Hasson, now regretting his impulsive action, sat perfectly still as the figure sprang to its feet and he saw the thin, venomous face of Starr Pridgeon coming towards him. Pridgeon wrenched open the driver door and his eyes widened in surprise.
“Hey, Buck,” he called. “This ain’t Werry — it’s his Goddamn cousin from Goddamn England.”
Morlacher paused briefly, then continued his approach to the car. “I’ll talk to him, anyway.”
“Right.” Pridgeon put his head right inside the car until his face was almost touching Hasson’s. “What was the idea?” he whispered. “What was the idea puffin” me down on the road like that?”
Hasson, numb with apprehension, shook his head and somehow chose the exact words Pridgeon had used earlier when he had felled Al Werry. “It was a pure accident.”
Pridgeon’s expression became murderous. “You want me to drag you out of there?”
“It was an accident,” Hasson said, gazing straight ahead. “I’m not used to this sort of car.”
“If I thought you had enough…”
“Come out of there,” Morlacher said to Pridgeon, appearing at his elbow. Pridgeon withdrew, scowling, walked round to the other side of the car and stared in at Theo Werry. The boy remained motionless, his face calm.
Morlacher stooped to look in at Hasson. “What’s your name? Halford or something like that, isn’t it?”
“It’s Haldane.”
Morlacher appeared to digest the information for a moment, the two triangles of red glowing on the pink background of his face. “Where’s Werry?”
“Over on the east side,” Hasson said, submitting to the interrogation. “There was an AC.”
“A what?” Morlacher demanded suspiciously.
“An aerial collision. Two people dead. He had to be there.”
“He should have been there before somebody got killed.” Morlacher was speaking in tones of barely suppressed rage, a fact which Hasson noted and found slightly puzzling — Morlacher had not struck him as being particularly humanitarian or public spirited in his outlook. He was pondering the matter when he heard a click on his right and turned his head to see that Pridgeon had opened the passenger door and was peering in at Theo with a kind of brooding, clinical interest. Theo, although he must have heard the noise and felt the influx of cold air, did not move in any way.
Hasson tried to put aside the distraction. “It’s hard to show up before an accident.”
“Accident my ass,” Morlacher growled. “That was no accident. Those hopped-up young punks get away with murder. We let them get away with murder.”
“One of them got killed as well.”
“You think that makes things right?”
“No.” Hasson had to concede the point. “But it shows…” “The other man who got hit wasn’t just anybody, you know. He was an important visitor to our country. An important visitor — and look what happens to him!”
“Did you know him?” Hasson’s attention was distracted from the subject of the dead flier by the fact that Pridgeon had spread one of his hands out and was holding it a bare centimetre away from Theo’s nose. The boy sensed its presence almost at once and jerked his head back. Pridgeon’s mouth twitched with amusement behind the wispy tendrils of his moustache and he repeated the experiment, this time holding his hand a little further away. Hasson stared down at his own hands gripping the steering wheel and tried to comprehend what Morlacher was saying.
“… in all the media tonight,” the big man thundered, “and what will the message be? I’ll tell you what the message will be. They’ll be saying it isn’t safe to fly north of Calgary. They’ll be saying this is cowboy country up here. I tell you, it’s enough to make a man…” Morlacher’s peg-like front teeth came together with an audible click, shutting off a flow of words as his anger went beyond the limits of articulation.
Hasson gazed up at him, mute, helpless, baffled, wondering what was coming next, wondering if the predatory strangers would resort to violence against a sick man and a blind boy. Beside him, Theo was rocking his head from side to side in an effort to escape the unseen proximity of Pridgeon’s hand. “When you see Werry tell him I’ve had enough,” Morlacher said at last. “You tell him I’m full up to my back teeth with this sort of thing, and that I’m coming over to his place to see him. Got that?”
“I’ll tell him,” Hasson said, relieved to see that Morlacher’s hand was now resting on the flight control panel on his belt.
“Come on, Starr — we’ve got work to do.” Morlacher moved a switch and was hurled upwards into the sky, disappearing from Hasson’s restricted field of view in a fraction of a second. On the other side of the car, Pridgeon snapped his fingers loudly in Theo’s face, causing the boy to flinch, then performed his intimidatory trick of suddenly fixing Hasson with a bleak, hostile stare. He backed away from the car, still staring, leaped upwards and was gone. There was a silence disturbed only by the flustering of the breeze in the car’s open doors.
Hasson gave an uncertain laugh. “What was all that about?”
Theo compressed his lips, refusing to speak.
“It was nice of them to drop by and see us,” Hasson said, trying to make light of his sense of inadequacy and shame. “Friendly people you have around here.”
Theo put out his right hand, pulled the passenger door shut and shifted slightly in the seat, signalling that he wanted to go home. Hasson took a deep breath as he closed his own door and set the car rolling again. They emerged from the cutting. Scattered houses, some of them already showing lights, became visible far off to one side. In all other directions a vast unfamiliar land stretched away to the dimness where the snow was turning as grey as the sky. Hasson felt totally alone.
“I wasn’t quite sure what to say back there,” he ventured. “Only having been in town a few hours … not really knowing anybody… I wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation.”
“It’s all right,” Theo replied. “You handled it exactly the way my father would have done.”
Hasson weighed the comment and understood that he had been insulted, but he decided against trying to put up a defence. “I can’t understand why Morlacher is so upset — is he the city mayor or something?”
“No, he’s just our friendly local gangster.”
“Then what’s on his mind?
“You’d better ask my father about that. He works for Morlacher, so he should know.”
Hasson glanced at Theo and saw that his face was pale and stern. “That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?”