The outlook seemed bleak all around.
Insofar as Sayers had a plan, it was to make his way south. He certainly had few friends in this part of the country, and the sensational nature of the accusations against him would keep them fresh in people’s minds. They’d continue to study every lone stranger with suspicion.
The farther away he moved, the farther he’d be from the common people’s thoughts. If he could get as far as his house in Brixton without being noticed, he had a little money and some valuables stashed under the floorboards. The Tom Sayers hoard.
After a while, the rain began to ease. When it finally stopped, he looked at the skies and decided that if he didn’t get off the moors now, he’d be stuck out here for the night.
That wasn’t an enticing prospect. Nor were stealing food and sleeping out under hedgerows, but either was preferable to staying where he was. He’d realized that sheep used this building for rather more than feeding and shelter—it was going to take him a while to rid himself of the stink.
He turned up his collar and set off across the hill, picking up another lane on the other side of a gate in a wall. This lane was well used. After a while, it brought him within sight of a village: some rows of houses with the winding tower of a coal pit rising up behind them. It looked like the size of place that had grown up around a single family owned mine and could grow no more; colliers with their wives and children living in the cottages while the shops, school, and Wesleyan chapel were sized to their needs.
A bed for the night would be too much to hope for. Even if he was offered one, it would be too big a risk to take. But perhaps he could work for some food, before slipping away into darkness to seek out a suitable barn or outbuilding. He had to take
With this in his mind he walked into the pit village from its outskirts, passing through a row of allotments and pigeon sheds behind one of the streets.
The village had a store and a public house and a main square and a memorial. The chapel was the most imposing building in the square, and the memorial stood before it. Sayers would never know what loss or disaster the memorial had been set up to commemorate. He stopped at the sight of all the men mustering in front of it.
Before him milled a small army of policemen and special constables. Some had their helmets off, and most had mugs of tea. Trestle tables had been set up to serve them. Local women were handing out sandwiches. A number of volunteer miners in flat caps and silk mufflers had turned out to play a part, armed with staves and pickax handles. One man was sitting on the side of the public horse trough, rewinding the homemade puttees around his ankles. Behind them all, the town’s drill hall stood with its doors wide open and lamps blazing inside. Some police officers were walking out studying written orders, while civilian workers in brown coats and bowler hats were carrying in movers’ boxes and bundles of maps tied with ribbons.
Without realizing it, Sayers had walked into a place that, in the course of the past few hours, had become one of the base camps for his manhunt. Everyone here was so taken up with the business surrounding the chase that not one of them had yet noticed his presence.
A perverse thought crossed his mind. Did he dare to push his way through the crowd and help himself to sandwiches?
Alas, he did not. This was not some tale of adventure. His liberty and his life were at risk. He took a step backward into the shadow of a wall and, careful not to make any hasty movement that might attract the eye, he turned to walk away.
In three or four strides, he was again safe from view. He was learning; he did not run. He walked back through the allotment section behind the houses. As he passed by the pigeon sheds, a number of the birds suddenly fluttered up, startling him. He glanced back, but no one had followed.
He had thought himself safe. He was not. Those men back at the railway station had been only a beginning. His mind reeled with it.
Sayers was no criminal, and could not begin to think like one. The English countryside might be vast, but his pursuers had maps, manpower, and method, and he had none. His one thought was to keep moving. In an hour or less, it would be dark. The search might stop for the night, but he could not.
If he gave up, they would hang him. A few grim weeks of preparation might pass before it happened, but the outcome was assured. Strangers would strap his arms, bind his feet, put a bag over his head and a rope over the bag, and then drop him so hard that he broke. He could tell them his story as often as he liked. They would ignore it, just as Louise had. Even God would turn his face away as they dumped his remains into unhallowed ground.
For Tom Sayers, the hope of justice was no hope at all.
He’d now reached the spot from where he’d first set eyes on the pit village. He took a few moments to stop and look back for any signs of pursuit. As the daylight faded into a deeper and deeper blue, warm lights were beginning to show in the windows. The lights of home. Somebody’s home, if not his own. Those distant lights began to blur; he was growing so weary. His senses were no longer sharp. These people must have been all over the local countryside in the course of the afternoon; sheer ignorance had protected him as he’d walked through their lines.
Or perhaps God was not quite so set against him as he’d imagined. Could that be it? Heartened by that slender dash of hope, he turned to go on.
But he could not. There was a white horse blocking his way.
He blinked to rid himself of this hallucinatory image, but it did not go away. Astride the horse sat James Caspar. They had appeared as if from nowhere. Sayers had heard nothing of their approach.
“You’ve been standing there for the past ten minutes,” Caspar said. “I thought you were never going to move.”
Ten minutes? He exaggerated. Sayers was sure that he’d paused for a few seconds, at most. But the light had faded appreciably. Suddenly he was sure of nothing.
He stood, disoriented and probably exhausted, as Caspar walked the white horse toward him. Caspar was immaculate in heavy riding tweeds, as if the costuming for the part had been a significant element in the hunt’s attraction for him. He was also a surprisingly good horseman, stepping the horse sideways like a dressage animal with almost no obvious show of control.
He said, “I volunteered to help. What more can a good citizen do? Edmund’s offered to pay for a team of dogs to hunt you down.” He reached down across the horse’s shoulder. “But I don’t think they’ll be needed, do you?” He straightened up again as, from a saddle holster down by his leg, he drew out an expensive-looking shotgun.
Sayers did not run. He did not even move. It was as if he’d finally burned off all his fear and energy and had none left to spare. Caspar stretched out his arm and leveled the shotgun at him from about four feet away. It was a beautiful weapon, with a polished walnut stock and scroll engraving on the action. The single barrel was steady, and pointed at a spot somewhere in the middle of the prizefighter’s forehead.
Caspar said, “I could walk you back into the village and hand you over to the police. But who’s to say they won’t lose you again? How inefficient they are.” Without changing his aim he gave some invisible signal to his mount, which took a couple of sideways paces, bringing Sayers even closer.
Caspar said, “I was trying to think of a word to describe them and, do you know? It just came to me.”
He leaned forward slightly. The cold metal ring of the shotgun barrel pressed firmly into Sayers’ forehead, pushing his head back a little.
“Scatterbrains!” Caspar said brightly, and pulled the trigger.
Even allowing for the shifting of his mount, it was the first movement of Caspar’s trigger finger that gave the signal of his intention. Sayers reacted in the same instant. He knocked the barrel upward and the firearm discharged above his head. He felt its heat and, for a few moments, was completely deafened.
In silence, he saw the white horse rear up. In silence, he saw it spin around as Caspar fought it for control, the firearm now an awkward liability in his hand. Sayers felt the ground shake as the horse slammed its hooves down in an attempt to dislodge its rider and then reared again, this time casting him free. When Caspar was parted from the saddle he did not simply fall, but hurtled toward the ground as if flung. He bounced and rolled and lay still. All without a sound.
Sayers moved to the fallen shotgun and picked it up. The white horse had backed off to a distance and then stopped, shaking its head and stepping about and looking bewildered. Caspar, equally stunned and bewildered, was still on the ground but was attempting to move. Sayers put his free hand to one of his ears, expecting to find blood, but instead found that his hearing was beginning to return.
