A warm soot-haze filled the tunnel as the distant rumbling grew louder.
Moments later a crimson southbound train burst free from the tunnel and roared in. The few waiting passengers stepped back from the platform edge. There was a sudden commotion on the opposite side as William Whitstable was discovered by one of the policemen.
Bryant saw arms flailing as people were pushed aside.
Suddenly he knew that Whitstable would escape unless he did something to prevent it. He rushed on to the platform, stepped through the open doors of the stationary southbound train, and found his way to a seat, watching from the window as his quarry appeared, running along the empty platform, to jump between the closing doors three carriages further along.
As the train moved off, Bryant rose and moved forward. He had walked through the second carriage when he spied Whitstable standing in the aisle of the third. The train was already starting to decelerate as it approached the downhill gradient to Belsize Park station. If he managed to alight before Bryant could stop him, Whitstable would be faced with the choice of reaching the surface via the lift or the stairs. Bryant knew that if his quarry took the stairs he might lose him. He reached the door to the third carriage just as the train rattled over points. The carriage lights flickered ominously. He tried to twist the door handle, but it would not budge. Whitstable was turning to face the doors, readying himself to jump through.
The train slowed as Belsize Park’s platform appeared.
Bryant threw his weight down on the red metal handle, but was unable to shift it. He stared through the glass at William Whitstable. The pair were immobilized, hunter and hunted, unable to fix a course of action.
A muffled explosion slammed the tunnel air against his eardrums. He looked up to find that the window in the connecting door had suddenly become coated with dark liquid. For a moment he thought that Whitstable had thrown paint around the walls, in an act reminiscent of his attack in the gallery. As Bryant stumbled towards the next carriage, he could hear shouts of panic as passengers fought their way free of the wrecked compartment. A shocked young woman with spatters of blood on her face tipped herself into his arms. Before he could ask what had happened, she turned and pointed back at the smoking detritus which had embedded itself in the walls of the train.
“He exploded,” she screamed at him and kept on screaming. “He was just standing there and he exploded!”
? Seventy-Seven Clocks ?
8
Horology
The familiarity didn’t lessen the fear.
Soles slapped on familiar cobbles, slipping and splashing in shallow puddles. Breath came in ragged gasps as the figure vanished around each corner, tantalizingly out of reach. Once again she was running through high-walled alleyways, the flickering lantern held aloft, illuminating the sweating brickwork.
Again, she found herself stopping dead in her tracks. He was turning now, laughing, wanting to be recognized. His arms were coated with blood, as if they had been plunged into a terrible wound.
And Jerry was awake, the pillow saturated in sweat, the house silent around her. In the corner of the room, a nightlight glowed. The alarm clock beside her bed read four thirty-five a.m. Gwen and Jack were asleep at the end of the corridor. She groped for the light switch, knowing that only brightness could dispel the chill touch of the dream.
She had returned home late to find that Gwen had left a glass of chilled white wine with her plated meal. It was the first time her mother had ever done that. Perhaps it was a gesture to show that she understood her daughter was growing up, even if she refused to allow her to leave home.
Jerry knew she meant well. It was a fact that made Gwen harder to dislike. Angry with her mother’s underhand tactics, Jerry had deliberately slammed around in an attempt to waken the house, but no one had appeared to reprimand her. Her mother was contemptuous of her need for a nightlight, and refused to accept the reality of her fears. Her solution was to book extra therapy sessions. Jerry’s father would explain his position on the subject by launching into one of his stories that began, “During the war…” During the war he could turn a Chieftain tank on a threepenny bit in pitch darkness with blackout curtains tied around it. Or something equally boring and stupid.
Back then, he would explain, nobody was afraid of the dark. Men were decent God-fearing chums who kept their chins up and their lips stiff whenever the Hun forced their backs against the wall. Not any more, though, judging by the way Jack instantly obeyed his wife’s every command. Gwen ruled the house with an iron fist in a Dior glove.
Jerry sat up and flattened her unruly hair. She wished Joseph was staying at the house. She had enjoyed their evening together. After the play, he had taken her for something to eat, and they had squashed in beside each other in a dingy Spanish restaurant, watching the red wax drip from the chianti bottle while they made loud small talk above thundering guitar music.
Joseph had graduated from college with a portfolio of designs that were about to be realized in the grandest way imaginable. His work had been chosen over hundreds of designs from other young hopefuls. Jerry had talked as little about herself as possible, painting a picture of domestic ease with her parents. She explained that she was temping in the receptionist’s job until she could start art college. For a brief moment, as she watched the candlelight leaping in his brown eyes, the thought crossed her mind that he wanted to be with her all night. But the moment passed and they parted awkwardly on the steps of Waterloo Bridge, and she supposed that tomorrow the status quo of guest and employee would be restored. A pity; she liked him because he was everything she wasn’t. There was something appealingly insolent about him, in the way he swung his arms as he walked, in the sunny, careless looks he threw at strangers. She was sick of being surrounded by men her mother approved as acceptable role models. It was time to choose her own friends.
The thought of Joseph dissolved her nightmares into harmless light. She knew now that she could find untroubled sleep with such a guardian angel to invigilate her dreams.
¦
“You’re in early. Couldn’t sleep? Sign of a guilty conscience.”
May hung up his overcoat and took a look around the office. His new roommate had been hard at work. Over a dozen crates of books had been unpacked. The shelves now groaned with forbidding procedural volumes, psychotherapy manuals, and medical texts. There was a particularly nasty-looking plant on the window ledge, possibly the remains of a diseased aspidistra. Bryant looked pale and out of sorts. He was trying to lever open the main window by wedging the tip of a screwdriver beneath the lintel.
“I don’t sleep much any more,” he said, cracking a spray of paint chips from the window frame. “I don’t want to waste time by being unconscious. It’s not every day a suspect explodes on you. Have you seen today’s papers? It’s been a godsend to the gutter press. They were all preparing features on Princess Anne’s wedding gifts when this landed in their laps. Now they can start running hate columns on the IRA again. If I catch any of those weasels near my witnesses there’ll be hell to pay. Give me a hand with this window.”
The press wasn’t the cause of Bryant’s anger, and May knew it. He had seen this mood too many times before. “You couldn’t have prevented his death, Arthur. Nobody knew he was carrying an incendiary device.” Together they shoved at the window until it burst open in a cloud of dust and dried paint.
“Are you sure it was a bomb?” asked Bryant. “Four witnesses saw a sudden ball of flame appear at Whitstable’s midriff. What kind of explosive can kill a man in a halffull railway carriage without injuring anyone else? First his lawyer, and now him. Tell me it’s a coincidence if you dare. What else have you got on Jacob?”
May pulled out a handful of papers. “Some scuff marks by the sinks in the Savoy toilet that the cleaners managed to miss, looks like Kiwi brand boot polish from Jacob’s right shoe. The pattern of marks will most likely confirm that he was attacked there. Some tiny scraps of linen at the site of the scuffle, a standard Indian blend, possibly from a pocket lining. No fibre match with Jacob’s clothing. One thing – the cottonmouth venom doesn’t have to come from a live snake. It maintains its potency, which means that it could simply have been injected from a syringe into his neck.”
“There were two puncture holes, like snake fangs.”
