Cry of the Hunter (14 page)

When she returned she was wearing a coat and gloves. ‘Come on!’ she said. ‘We haven’t got much time.’ He got to his feet and she helped him into his trenchcoat and belted it round his waist. He paused at the door as a thought struck him, and went back and picked up his bloodstained jacket from the hearth where she had dropped it. He extracted the Luger from its holster and slipped it into his trenchcoat pocket and then he followed her out into the yard. She opened the back of the van and he climbed inside. There was a tiny glass window that looked into the cab and Fallon said, ‘If the police stop us for a search and find me in the back, I’ll tell them I was threatening you with the gun through that window. All right?’

She nodded. ‘All right, Mr. Fallon, but they won’t. Never fear.’ She closed the door and locked it. He heard her climb into the cab and then the engine started shakily and they moved out of the yard into the square.

He crouched in one corner of the van and leaned against the wall. He felt bad – his wound seemed to be on fire and the pain flared up into a sudden spasm of agony every few minutes leaving him sick and gasping for breath. It took them about ten minutes to reach the railway station. Once or twice the van had to slow down in heavy traffic, but they were not stopped. Finally he felt the wheels bumping over the cobbled square in front of the station and the van came to a halt. There was a quiet knock on the wall of the cab and he crouched by the little window. ‘I’m going for your ticket now,’ Rose said. ‘Keep quiet. There are quite a few peelers about.’

He remained in that position, kneeling by the small window, but his view was restricted and he could only see the backs of several other parked vehicles. Rose was only gone for a few minutes. When she climbed back behind the wheel she sat there for a moment pretending to examine a railway timetable and spoke quietly. ‘They’ve got two men on the main entrance and one at each ticket barrier. I’m going to drive round to the goods entrance now. The man on the gate knows me – I’ve been through many times. There’s bound to be another peeler there so don’t you be making a sound.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But if anything goes wrong remember what I said – I’ve been holding a gun on you.’

She made no further reply and a moment later the van reversed and moved off again. He slid down to the floor and scrambled towards the rear doors. He had hardly reached them when the van slowed and halted. He held his breath and waited. Steps approached the van and he heard Rose say loudly, ‘Come on, Tommy! Open up! I’ve got a couple of parcels for the noon train to Carlington.’

A man’s voice said, ‘Oh, it’s you, Rose.’ There was a snatch of conversation which he was unable to hear, and then another voice joined in. There was a sudden burst of laughter and Rose said, ‘Oh, quit your fooling and open the gate, Tommy.’ A moment later the van moved forward again and Fallon released his breath in a long sigh.

The van stopped and he heard her walk round to the rear of the vehicle. There was the unearthly shriek of a whistle and somewhere in the vicinity an engine was raising steam. Rose raised the bar that closed the doors and said quietly, ‘Be ready, Mr. Fallon. There are one or two porters about. When I pull these doors open jump straight out, then turn and help me pull out the parcels.’

‘I’m ready whenever you are,’ Fallon said. He closed his eyes as another wave of pain coursed through his body. He ground his nails into the palms of his hands and breathed slowly and deeply, and then the doors were suddenly jerked open.

He jumped to the ground, turned, and pulled one of the parcels forward. ‘Has anyone noticed?’ he said without raising his head.

Rose looked round casually. ‘No, it seems to have worked,’ she said. ‘Now bring one of those parcels and follow me.’

The parcel wasn’t heavy and yet the perspiration stood in beads on Fallon’s brow as he followed the girl up the ramp and along the greasy platform. The train stood waiting in a gentle drift of steam. Rose went straight to the guard’s van. For the moment there was no one there, and they deposited the parcels and moved back along the platform.

There were very few people on board. Fallon opened the door of an empty carriage near the rear of the train and they climbed in and stood in the corridor. ‘Better keep out of sight,’ he said. ‘There are too few people on that platform to give me any kind of screen.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, it would be a pity to get caught now.’ She smiled. ‘There were two of them on the goods yard gate. Luckily the porter on duty there knows me.’ She shook her head and said with a grimace, ‘I wouldn’t like to go through it again, though, I was shaking in my shoes in case they decided to search the van.’

He smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘You’ve been a real trooper.’ She was standing on the opposite side of the narrow corridor, facing him so that their bodies were almost touching. The station was quiet. There was an air of hushed expectancy over everything. The girl’s eyes, dark and luminous, were fastened on his face and suddenly tears sprang to them. He reached forward and clumsily patted her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be all right.’

‘Oh, I pray to God you will be,’ she said. She stared fixedly into his face and then she took a half-pace forward into his arms and kissed him passionately. For a moment she clung there and then she tore herself free, stepped on to the platform, and closed the door.

As the whistle sounded shrilly from the end of the platform, Fallon reached for his wallet. He pulled out all that was left of the money O’Hara had given him. There was just over a hundred pounds. He extracted five one pound notes and slipped them back into the wallet; then he pushed the bundle of money into her hands. ‘There, that’s for you,’ he said. ‘There’s over a hundred. Use it well. Get clear away from this place. Make a new life for yourself.’

Her eyes grew round with astonishment as she looked at the money. ‘But I can’t take this,’ she said. ‘It’s too much.’ The train began to move slowly and she walked along the platform keeping pace with him.

He shook his head. ‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘It isn’t any use to me now. Besides, you’ve earned every penny of it.’

The train was moving faster now and she started to run. Her eyes were brimming with tears. ‘I’ll never forget you, Mr. Fallon. Not as long as I live.’

A sudden lump moved into his throat and he said unsteadily, ‘I’ll never forget you, Rose.’ And then she was gone and the platform receded, carrying her away into the past.

He sat in the corner of an empty compartment and stared out of the window. Everything was in the hands of fate now. A few hours would see him at the border. Once there he would have to take his chances, but if he waited for darkness it shouldn’t prove too difficult to cross over on foot. Another spasm of savage pain lifted in his body. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the corner and after a while he drifted into a state somewhere between sleeping and waking.

About half an hour later he opened his eyes and realized that the train had stopped. It was standing in a tiny country station. He started to relax again, closing his eyes, and then he suddenly stiffened and sat forward. There was no scheduled stop before Castlemore on this train. He hastily pulled down the window and glanced out. At the far end of the train, next to the engine, a small group of men were talking. One of them was the guard, the other three wore the dark uniforms of the constabulary.

Fallon suddenly felt an insane desire to laugh rise up inside him. He was losing his grip. He should have thought of this. It was so obviously the clever thing to do. Even as he watched, the three policemen and the guard boarded the train and the platform started slipping away.

He moved quickly out of the compartment and along the corridor to the nearest door. As he put his hand out to open it the platform disappeared and the train moved out into the country again, gathering speed. For a moment he considered his position. He didn’t have very long. There weren’t many people on board and it would only take the three policemen ten or fifteen minutes to work their way through the train. He leaned out of the window and glanced along the track. There was a goods train standing on a side line a few hundred yards away. His mind worked rapidly assessing the risk, and then he smiled and opened the carriage door. There really was no risk in anything now. There was only what he had to do.

He grasped the hand rail firmly and closed the door behind him. The train was doing about twenty miles an hour and yet the stationary goods train seemed to rush towards him. He waited until it was twenty or thirty yards away and jumped.

In the split second before he landed he knew he had miscalculated the speed. His feet hit the gravel and he desperately tucked in his head as he somersaulted and crashed heavily to the ground.

For several moments he lay sprawled half-across the track upon which the goods train stood and his senses reeled. A small, insistent voice forced him to his feet and sent him lurching towards the goods train. His whole body was on fire with pain and his mind tried to take refuge from the shock of it. He reached the end waggon and reached up and pulled on the sliding door. The effort sent fresh waves of agony rippling through him. He gritted his teeth and heaved on the door and it opened. For a moment he rested there and then he pulled himself up into the waggon.

It was full of packing cases and there was little room between them. He leaned on the door with all his remaining strength and closed it. He turned and moved forward until he was standing in a small space between some packing cases and the side of the waggon. His head was swimming and the pain was a living thing that would not leave him alone.

There was something warm and sticky trickling down inside his shirt. Almost casually he reached a hand inside his coat and took it out again. It was covered with blood. His wound had broken open. For a moment he regarded it in horror and then, as the pain rose inside him, he half-stifled a scream and crumpled to the floor.

CHAPTER TWELVE

H
E
emerged from a deep well of agony and huddled on the floor in the narrow space between the packing cases and the side of the waggon, gasping for breath as the pain ebbed and flowed in his helpless body.

It was like that for a long time - a very long time. Gradually he forced the pain away from him, down to another place, below the level of his consciousness. It was there and yet it was not there. He giggled furiously and opened his eyes and found himself in darkness.

A slight feeling of panic moved inside him and he reached out through the dark and touched the side of the waggon as if to reassure himself that it was still there. The train was moving very slowly along the track and nearby he could hear the sound of other trains.

He felt light-headed and he searched his pockets until he found a packet of cigarettes. He pushed one into his mouth and his fingers fumbled for a match. It flared in his cupped hands and he leaned forward to light the cigarette and stayed in that position, the match burning in his right hand.

The floor around him was covered with blood. It had seeped through his jacket. The left sleeve and side of his trenchcoat were saturated in it. The match flame reached his fingers and he dropped it and sat staring into the darkness. His mind was crystal clear and he felt curiously calm. He braced his hands between the packing cases and the wall and pushed himself upright.

He started to move, walking slowly and carefully, feeling his way with outstretched hands. His fingers scraped against the sliding door and they gripped the edge of it and pulled hard. A sudden drift of rain was blown through the door into his face. He held on tight to the handrail and leaned in the opening staring out.

It was dark outside and raining quite hard. The train was passing through a maze of tracks and some distance away he could see a lighted platform. A moment later they rumbled past a signal box and he glanced up quickly to see the name of the station. It was Castlemore. Underneath the sign there was a large, illuminated electric clock. The hands pointed to half-past six. He lit the cigarette and slid down to the floor and considered the position.

The train he had boarded at Stramore had left at noon. He had jumped from it perhaps half an hour later. That meant he had been lying unconscious for something like six hours with his life’s blood draining out of his body. Panic moved in him and he pulled himself up in the doorway and stood erect. A man couldn’t bleed for six hours – there wasn’t that much blood in him.

He slipped a hand inside his jacket and gently probed the wound. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. He tried to think calmly. Obviously the wound had been wrenched open by his clumsy fall from the train. He must have bled for a while and then the blood had clotted. After all, the bandage was still in position. He laughed shakily. There was no need to worry. No need for panic. He was still on his feet. There was a chance yet.

He sat down on the floor again and looked out at the lights of Castlemore as they receded into the darkness. The next stop was Carlington. All he had to do was sit tight. He could leave the train outside Carlington and reach the border on foot. He could be home by morning.

The train travelled along at ten or fifteen miles an hour, and he looked back at the lights and lapsed into a reverie. He remembered that first morning when he had walked through the town in the rain and Murphy had followed him. He could see the boy now, bareheaded in the timber yard, brushing the mud from his cap and cursing. Poor Johnny Murphy – looking for the high adventure and all he had found was death.

And then there was Anne – lovely Anne Murray. It had taken him a while to realize that she was beautiful or perhaps he’d known it all along. Perhaps he simply hadn’t wanted to admit it. He stared into the darkness and for a moment her face seemed to materialize out of the night. Her eyes were deep pools and he was drowning in the depths of them. He laughed high pitched and unearthly. There was no hope for him there – no hope at all. To receive it was first necessary to give and he had given her nothing – nothing at all.

He laughed bitterly. It was almost funny. Everything he touched he destroyed. Murphy, Rogan, and Anne Murray – perhaps her most of all he had destroyed. There was only one thing he wasn’t sorry about. He’d come over the border to save a man and had ended up by killing him, but he wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t sorry at all. There were some men who were not fit to live and Patrick Rogan had been one of them.

He frowned and his wandering mind tried to grapple with the problem of how you told a woman you have promised to help, that you had failed her. How was he to stand before Maureen Rogan and tell her that he had killed her son? How was he to make her understand? He sighed and leaned back against one of the packing cases and then the train shuddered and began to skid to a halt as the brakes were applied.

There was a sudden silence that was broken only by the hiss of steam and then he heard voices coming along the track. He got to his feet and peered outside. There were lanterns moving towards him through the darkness. They halted and there was the sound of a door being opened. After a few moments the lanterns moved down to the next waggon and he heard another door being opened.

Fallon didn’t hesitate. Almost without thinking, he dropped to the ground and moved across the track. For a moment he stood poised on the edge of the embankment, straining his eyes into the darkness, and then he took a step forward and lost his balance. He rolled over and over down the bank, crashing through a plantation of young fir trees, the branches whipping his sides. The darkness became a whirling mass of coloured lights and the pain enveloped him. That terrible pain that started somewhere in his chest and flooded throughout his entire body, gripping his lungs in a paralysis so that he had to struggle for breath.

He came to rest against a larger tree and lay there for several minutes until his breathing was easier. When he got to his feet he stood swaying in the darkness, reaching out his hands before him as if looking for something to hang on to.

He started to blunder down through the plantation, the branches slashing across his face and a terrible panic moved in him and he began to run, staggering through the trees with his head bent and his right arm held up as a shield. He fell several times but each time scrambled to his feet and ran faster, as if something terrible and nameless was at his heels.

He crashed out of the plantation, caught his foot in a tussock of grass, and went sprawling down a short slope into a ditch. He clawed his way out of a foot of muddy water, soaked to the skin, and found himself on the main road. He started to run at a jog trot into the darkness, the rain lashing against his face. He didn’t know why he was running – it was simply that he had a long way to go and so very little time – so very little time.

Through the trees ahead of him he noticed a red glow staining the sky and he began to laugh foolishly. Perhaps it was hell that was waiting for him there in the darkness. He turned the bend in the road and halted. Some fifty yards along on the right hand side of the road there was a road house and a great, red neon sign sizzled in the rain. For a moment he stood there, swaying, and then he stumbled forward towards it.

He crouched down in the shelter of a low wall and peered over the top. The sound of music drifted from an open window and now and then a snatch of careless laughter. There was a car park over the wall and he moved cautiously towards the entrance. There seemed to be no one about. He moved quickly inside and ran from vehicle to vehicle trying the doors desperately. Within a few moments he had found an old van that was unlocked. He wrenched open the door and his hand probed across the dashboard. The keys were hanging where the owner had left them.

He put a foot on the running board and a hand grabbed him by the shoulder and a voice said, ‘Now then - what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

He didn’t bother to reply - he had no time for words. His hand jerked the Luger from his pocket and he turned and wiped it across the white face, dimly seen through the darkness. The man sank to the ground with a low groan and Fallon scrambled into the cab, pressed the starter, and reversed out of the car park. Within a few moments he was rushing through the darkness, the headlights slicing a path before him.

His lights picked out a white sign-post when he was still some little way from it and he braked hard and leaned out of the window to read the sign.

He was on the right road. Carlington was fifteen miles away. He moved into gear and drove away. The most the van would do was fifty and he pressed his foot flat on the boards and lay back in the seat, his hands steady on the wheel, his eyes peering into the darkness.

The night was playing tricks on him. At one moment it seemed dark and then it would lighten in some curious way. He screwed his eyes up tightly several times and shook his head. Perhaps it was the headlights. Only the headlights. And then it happened again, but this time, the light grew and grew until he seemed to see the whole countryside spread on either side of him. It was as if he was flying above it looking down and that wasn’t right. That couldn’t be right. He screamed and slammed his foot hard against the brake and the van slewed to a halt, drifting at an angle along the road.

He leaned against the wheel, his head down, and cried bitterly, the sobs tearing his whole body. I don’t want to die, he told himself. I mustn’t die. I must get home. I must get home. Suddenly he realized why it was so important. Anne was waiting for him. She was waiting there at his cottage across the border from Doone. She was waiting for him and he couldn’t let her down.

It was almost with a sense of surprise that he found himself driving forward into the darkness again. His hands were steady on the wheel and one small, firm corner of his mind was concentrating with all its power on keeping them there. The van lifted over a slight hill and down below him in a hollow he saw the lights of a small village. He passed along the village street, empty and forlorn in the rain, and ahead of him, on the right-hand side, he saw a round white bowl of light shining through the dark.

He stopped the van and scrambled out. The round lamp was perched on top of a tall, brick gate and etched on it in black letters was the name Patrick Quinn, M.D. Fallon opened the gate and walked towards the front door.

The path went on for ever and the door seemed to be receding from him. Suddenly it loomed over him and then it turned completely on to its side. It took him several moments to realize that his cheek was pillowed on the ground. Slowly and wearily he scrambled to his feet and fell against the door. He raised his fist and hammered weakly against it. It opened so suddenly that he fell in and then strong arms picked him up and a door opened and a hall stretched before him.

He was lying on a couch and there was a confused babble of voices and then a face was looking down at him – a narrow face, topped by white hair. A face full of sympathy and understanding. Fallon moistened his lips and tried to speak, ‘Lost blood,’ he croaked. ‘Lot of blood - been bleeding for hours. Help me. I mustn’t die.’ He half-raised himself. ‘I mustn’t die!’

A hand gently pushed him back and a quiet voice, the voice of one who had lived long and seen most things, said, ‘I’ll help you, son. Just take it easy and lie still.’

Hands lifted him upright and carefully stripped his coat and jacket from him and he was laid back against the pillow again. Something moved along his chest and he looked down and saw a pair of scissors neatly parting his shirt and the bandages underneath. There was a sudden, terrified gasp of horror and a woman’s voice said, ‘Oh, my God!’

He struggled up on one elbow and saw a young woman standing at one side of the couch holding a basin and then the scissors completed their work and the bandages were cut away. Immediately a dreadful smell became apparent. Fallon heard the old man say quickly, ‘Bandages – hurry. There’s no time to lose.’

Again he was lifted upright and he felt bandages encircle his body again. He was perfectly conscious of all that was taking place and yet it was as if he was an outsider looking in on all this - as if it were happening to someone else in another time - another place. The room began to undulate and the ceiling heaved. He was laid gently back against the pillow and closed his eyes. He was going to make it. He was going back to his cottage and Anne would be waiting. She would be waiting and nothing was going to stop him from getting there. Then why was he lying here?

The thought came as a complete surprise. A few miles away was the border and he was lying here. He opened his eyes and saw that a needle was fixed in his arm by a piece of sticking plaster and from the needle a tube ran to a bottle which was held above his head by the woman. ‘What am I doing here?’ he said. He pushed himself into a sitting position pulling on the tube so that she had to step forward quickly. ‘What am I doing here?’ he demanded again.

The woman’s eyes were round with fear and there were tears in them. ‘Please lie down,’ she said. ‘You must lie down.’

There was a moment of silence and through it he could hear the voice of the old man saying, ‘Yes - he’s here now. No - he’s not dangerous, you fool. Yes, I’m sure it’s Martin Fallon.’ There was a pause and the voice went on, ‘An ambulance as quickly as you can and if you can’t get one here within half an hour, you’d better send a hearse - he’s dying.’

Through the terrible soundless quiet that followed, Fallon shook his head awkwardly from side to side and great, heavy tears coursed slowly from his eyes. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not dying – I won’t die. I’m going home.’

He stood up and wrenched his arm away and the needle tore his flesh sending a bright spurt of red blood running over the white skin. His bloody jacket was on the floor and he dropped to one knee and fumbled in the pockets until his hand closed over the butt of the Luger. He came erect as the doctor burst into the room. The old man barred the door, arms outstretched and Fallon said, ‘Out of the way. I’m not dying. Got an appointment to keep. Got to meet Anne.’