set.
“Either knock on her door or turn around and go home,” he told Jerry. “Make a decision. My blood’s slowing down.” He watched as she stared across the glittering lawn, grinding her teeth. “Maybe I should go with you.”
“No, I can handle it by myself.” She made a fist. “So tough. What are you going to do, fetch her a punch up the bracket when she questions you? Assault and battery. Great.”
She was about to reply when the front door opened. After pausing to examine her gold pocket watch in the hallway, Peggy Harmsworth stepped on to the drive in a full-length mink coat and head scarf. They pressed back against the trees as their quarry set off across the estate on foot.
“Get on the bike,” Joseph hissed. “We can follow her with the engine off.” He kicked away the stand and they mounted the Triumph, rolling silently into the road. Mrs Harmsworth marched purposefully to the far side of the street, then turned into the thickening fog within the cul-de-sac.
“She can’t get out of there,” Joseph whispered over her shoulder.
“Maybe she’s visiting a neighbour.”
When she reached the end of the road, Peggy Harmsworth skipped between two tall mock-Tudor apartment buildings and faded from sight.
“Damn, there’s an alleyway.” After several hundred yards the path opened out onto a hill. On the other side stood the iron gates of Highgate Cemetery.
“Where the hell is she going?” Joseph rolled the Triumph to a standstill. Ahead of them, Mrs Harmsworth rattled a padlock in her hands and let it drop, passing through a smaller gate set within the large entrance. “Jesus, she’s got her own keys.”
The padlock was refastened on the other side of the railings, and the figure in the mink coat began to retreat once more into the mist.
“We’ll lose her if we’re not quick,” warned Jerry, helping to lean the motorcycle against a tree. She stowed her helmet in the rear pannier and pocketed the ignition key. Then she headed for the gates.
“Wait a minute,” said Joseph. He had agreed to go with Jerry to ask this woman a few friendly questions, not follow her into a graveyard. “We can’t get in there, and even if we could – ”
Too late. Jerry was already halfway over the gate.
High heels clicked on cement as the mink coat moved through the thickening fog. They followed as closely as they dared, the cemetery gates lost somewhere behind them. The main path was illuminated to deter dopesmoking hippies, but the light barely reached the ground.
Mrs Harmsworth switched from the main route on to a smaller path that led uphill, through a less accessible part of the cemetery. Jerry and Joseph could barely keep pace with her. Here, new graves gave way to the older family vaults.
Despite their general air of neglect, several monuments had fresh wreaths at their feet. As she passed, Jerry glimpsed the half-eroded epitaphs. There were Germanic Victorian names and grim little platitudes carved in stone, children ‘Joyously Accepted into the Bosom of the Lord’ as if death were a privilege; adults ‘Departing This Vale of Tears for Eternal Peace’. She sensed lives of dutiful toil passed in the anticipation of acceptance into a golden kingdom. She saw crumbling monuments to the Victorian conviction of everlasting life. And she watched as Peggy Harmsworth stopped before an ivy-stranded mock-Grecian mausoleum of disproportionate immensity.
Instinctively dropping from sight, Jerry knelt behind a gravestone. Seeing her, Joseph did the same. Mrs Harmsworth descended the few stone steps and produced another key, inserting it into the portal. She shoved back the door, stepped inside, and pulled it half-shut behind her. Jerry mouthed, “Now what?”
“Wait,” Joseph signaled back.
The chill settled about them. Water droplets coated Jerry’s jacket in a gelid frost. Far in the distance a lorry laboured up the hill, engine noise fading in the encroaching silence. A light showed faintly through the doorway of the crypt.
“What can she be doing in there?” Joseph whispered. Somewhere nearby, a branch broke beneath a shoe. They looked at each other and dived back behind their respective gravestones. A figure appeared beside the crypt, moving with a spiderlike gait, a man wearing a brown slouch hat and a tattered greatcoat. As he paused before the door, Jerry looked over at her accomplice, puzzled.
After waiting for a moment or two at the entrance, the tattered man stepped through the gap, entering the crypt. Barely able to contain her excitement, Jerry ran over. “That’s the man,” she said. “The one who attacked me in the theatre. At least, I think it is.” Uncertainty nagged at her.
“Well, is it or not?”
“He’s dressed the same, but – he’s a lot taller.”
“Great,” said Joseph. “A murderer who changes height. Why not?” He rose, exasperated. “Why not add it to the rest? Add it to the vandalism, explosions, and poisonings. What
Before she could think of a reply, there was a guttural grunt followed by a squeal, and the door of the crypt was shoved open. As they ran towards it, the tattered man emerged. Peggy Harmsworth had fallen to the floor of the mausoleum and was thrashing from side to side. Joseph ran down the crypt steps towards her, only to slip over in the blood that had been smeared across the flagstones.
The tattered man threw something aside as he ran, an instrument that shone with a steel edge. Jerry closed in behind him, running hard. The figure in front moved quickly across the slick grass between the gravesites, coattails flapping behind. For an instant, the tunnel of trees and the fleeing dark figure threw her back into the searing panic of her nightmares and she stumbled, slamming her hip against a memorial slab.
By the time she had pulled herself up and resumed her pursuit, the tattered man had almost reached the main gate. Jerry ran back on to the path and limped toward the cemetery entrance, just as he flew at the lock with a kick that smashed open the small gate through which Peggy Harmsworth had entered. Then he dashed across the road, hauling himself into a small white van parked at the side of the road. Seconds later, Jerry reached the Triumph and painfully straddled it, keying the ignition.
The van pulled away down the hill with a squeal of skipping tyres. Jerry jerked out into the road, her crash helmet still locked in the rear pannier. The bitter wind tore at her skin, blasting aside rational thought. Although she’d borrowed the bike before, she’d never ridden it at high speed. She tried to keep the van in her sight, but the fog grew thicker with their descent.
Van and motorcycle shot across one junction, then another. The roads were virtually deserted this close to Christmas. For the moment no other vehicle appeared in their way. Then the van swung right so hard that it seemed it would topple over, and cut across the path of an oncoming bus.
Sounding her horn, Jerry skidded in an arc around the vehicle, mounting the pavement but holding her position behind the van. Together they raced over Dartmouth Park Road and down towards the city.
She tried to pull out ahead of the van, intending to force it over, but the blinking amber lights of open roadworks warned her back. Her quarry was still picking up speed.
Jerry knew that if she jumped the lights, collision with another vehicle would be unavoidable. The only way to cut off the van would be to do it right now. She twisted the throttle, opening it wide, praying that her tyres would keep their grip on the shining road surface.
In the next moment she had drawn alongside the van. The figure within had opened his window and was waving something in his hand. As soon as she saw the shotgun, Jerry’s grip on the bike throttle instinctively relaxed, and the Triumph fell back, wheels slipping as they tried to bite on wet tarmac.
They hit Kentish Town Road at seventy-seven miles per hour. An oncoming Peugeot and a Morris Minor swerved as the van burst from the fog, catching the first car by the front bumper and spinning it into the path of the other. Jerry pushed ahead as the van struggled to right itself, taking to the oncoming lane of the road as she raced towards the red and green Christmas lights of Camden.
The Triumph drew along the inside of the van, and then into the lead. As the van’s radiator grille touched her rear mudguard, she knew that the driver was planning to push her off the road. The grille slammed against her back wheel as the van accelerated.
A crowd of pub-crawling revelers scattered in their path. Jerry swung the bike aside, resuming her position at the rear of the speeding vehicle. It was a stalemate.
Where the hell were the police when you actually wanted to be pulled over? They usually swarmed all over
