The Old Silent

is that when you go down you go down dead. It's High Noon time. The press over here's a killer. In one column I could demolish some poor metal band that hasn't got the fans yet. It doesn't work that way in the States.'

'So why was Roger Healey into your territory?'

'Because the creep was dying to trash Keeler is my guess.'

'You didn't like Healey?' asked Wiggins.

Duckworth just shaved them a look.

' Why did this man have such a solid-gold reputation with everyone else we've talked to? Including Martin Smart?' said Jury. 'He's no fool.'

'He's also no musician. He gets these rags out and he's good at it. Healey-okay, I give him credit for knowing his Bach and Paganini-probably not as much as some guitarists I know. Healey was a musician, not precisely a killer pianist from what I've heard, and I think it drove him fucking crazy. You had to look close, reading his reviews, to see some of those lines were etched in acid. He was a weirdo. You been talking to our Mavie? So he was screwing her.'

'Anyone else you know of?'

Morpeth Duckworth shrugged. 'No one I know. He was obviously more discreet than that.'

'Where's this club Keeler plays?'

'Mostly the Nine-One-Nine. Quint Street off Shephards Bush Road. It's a walkdown. You won't even see it unless you fall on the steps. There's no sign, just the street number.'

Jury rose; Wiggins pocketed his pen.

'Thanks for the help.'

Duckworth pulled the chairs back over, stuck his feet up again. 'No problem.'

As they were walking out, Jury turned and asked, 'Who's Trane?'

Wiggins stared at Jury; Duckworth's feet hit the floor. 'Trane.'

'I heard someone refer to Trane the other day. Just wondered.'

Dead silence.

'John Coltrane.' Duckworth looked at him as if the superintendent had lost his mind.

'Oh.'

'He played sax,' said Duckworth.

'Oh.'

'Twenty years ago.'

'Something wrong?' asked Jury, as Wiggins slammed the passenger door. 'You look like you could use a tourniquet; an artery's going to burst.'

Wiggins unglued his thin white hand from his mouth and said grimly, 'John Coltrane. John Coltrane just happened to be possibly thegreatest saxophone player ever. Why didn't you ask me? It's absolutely embarrass--' Wiggins looked down at the seat where Jury was fiddling with a small machine. 'What's that?'

'Sony Walkman.' Jury dropped in a tape and some of the sweetest sax music this side of heaven started up. 'Research.'

As the car tore away from the curb, the sound that came from Wiggins was like a death-rattle and Jury was having his first real laugh in a week.

32

Abby was furious.

If someone thought she was going to die out here on the moor, they were crazy.

Snow had got down into her boots and was soaking her socks, but she'd rather have her toes freeze than risk giving herself away by making a lot of squelchy noises trying to yank them off. Anyway, with only the low wall of the shooting butt to hide her, she didn't want to do too much moving about.

It surprised her that Tim was managing to be so silent, lying here beside her. Of course, Tim was used to lying about the barn, but he seemed alert, the way he kept looking first to one side, then to the other, then to her.

Abby knew nothing about guns, nothing at all except for the few times she'd come out to these grouse butts with the Major and watched him as he scrambled up, swung his gun quickly to his shoulder, took aim, and missed an entire skein of grouse flying about two feet from his cap. The Gun: that's what the Princess called him.

Until this evening, that had been her only experience with guns. But she'd never forget the crack of the shot that had barely missed her and ricocheted off the wall. How long ago had it been? Probably only a few minutes because the sky had begun to darken as she'd been climbing the stile. The shot had come as she'd got to the top and she'd fallen back to the ground, sorting out her choices: either a dash to the stand of trees or to the line of grouse butts. Knowing what she did about her aunt's death, it didn't take long to drop the stand of pines as an alternative.

They thought she didn't know her aunt was shot. Didn't they ever stop to wonder if children listened outside doors and windows? She had an idea that the Scotland Yard policeman did because he seemed to know everything else about her. Abby had his card in her jumper pocket. She pulled it out and read it again, though it was getting too dark to read.

Where was Stranger? Where? She knew he wasn't shot because there'd only been the one.

Abby pulled at her damp hair, grabbed two fistfuls, and yanked it down like a lid to keep her thoughts from leaping up like flames out of control, as if she were a fiery furnace, which was what she felt like. She had been mad all her life and she didn't see any reason to stop now.

She reached out carefully from the grouse butt, scooped up snow, and rubbed it all over her face to keep the blood going. The Major liked to talk to her about 'survival in the wilds' because she loved to tramp the moors. He wasn't in any danger of not surviving, she thought. He always made sure he had three sandwiches and a little flask of whiskey before he even put a foot out of the front door.

There was no sound, nothing now but a whisper of wind in the bog rush and bracken.

Her waterproof was yellow. Yellow. Mrs. Braithwaite had made sure she wore a bright waterproof when she walked to school so if a car came round a bend it would see her. She'd argued the roads were too narrow for any car to go fast and she'd rather have a black waterproof. This one was like those reflecting lights on Ethel's bicycle. The moon was like a spotlight, and in this bright yellow she'd be like a shooting star if she tried to dart from the butt to the wall. She looked down at Tim. A yellow slicker, a full moon, and a white dog. God hated her.

One of the reasons she'd liked Jane Eyre at first was because she'd thought God hated her, too; but then when Jane went to work for Mr. Rochester, Abby knew what was coming and decided God didn't hate Jane at all; he was just 'trying' her.

Like Job. Her aunt made her go to church school where Abby had to sit and listen to the minister talk about Job and his three Comforters with crazy names. She'd just sat there thinking about Job, wondering why he didn't get off his dung heap and beat the Comforters up. After she'd said this and a few other things in church school, her aunt had told her she didn't have to go back.

Abby lowered her head, thinking about Aunt Ann, trying to feel bad about her. But she couldn't, and her mind wandered off to Stranger again. Stranger had been trailing her and Tim, straggling after them, exploring what was left of the snowbank against the far wall over there, and had got way behind.

He was out there, somewhere.

And here she was with a crazy person with a gun, the Gun, the same Gun that had killed her aunt, she was sure.

And here she was with nothing. Only her crook, which she would gladly beat the Gun to death with, smash his brains all over the moor; Ethel's dog, a heeler that she would gladly signal to rip the heels of the Gun to shreds, and then all the rest of him. But her head drooped, her fisted hands pressed her temples, and