Читать книгу Furnace - Muriel Gray, Muriel Gray - Страница 12

Thank God it was over. They’d made the delivery and everything was in order. Bernard Epstein didn’t like his job any more than his companion did, but as he got back into the car, Harry gave him a long look.

He returned the stare and shifted the driver’s seat back so that he could unzip his overalls.

‘She say anythin’?’

Harry’s tone was accusing.

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. Like what we do next, I reckon.’

Bernard wriggled out of the top half of his suit and lifted his buttocks to slip the legs off.

‘You know what we do next. Nothin’. That’s what we do.’

Harry looked forward out of the windshield to the gracious sweep of the street. ‘You done it before, ain’t you?’

‘Yeah. The once.’

‘So that’s all I’m askin’. Like what next?’

‘It’s different each time. Has to be.’

Harry looked at his hands. ‘Delivery’s the same.’

Bernard pulled the last of the overall from his foot and turned to look at his companion with a sigh. ‘She doin’ well, huh?’

Harry blinked at him.

‘Huh?’

‘That daughter of yours. The one you got in that fancy twenty-thousand-dollar-a-term college up in New Hampshire.’

‘Yeah. She’s doin’ fine.’

Bernard waited a beat, his eyes never leaving Harry’s, then nodded. ‘Mighty glad to hear that. Can we get back to the sawmill now? Them backs ain’t gonna stack themselves.’

While Harry looked at the floor and cleared his throat, Bernard crumpled up the overall and threw it in the back seat beside the other one. The blood would come off in the wash. It had stained the green cross and half the word ‘paramedic’, but it would be fine with some rub-on detergent before the rinse cycle.

And anyway, they wouldn’t need them again for a long time. They were woodsmen. They had their own work-wear.

Pace helped Josh into the passenger seat as though he were an elderly female relative visiting for Thanksgiving, then climbed breathily into the driver’s seat and drove off slowly at policeman’s speed. Josh looked across at him, waiting for an explanation. Pace kept his eyes forward.

‘How were you feeling before the accident? Just when you thought you saw the woman.’

Josh’s temples throbbed. He put a hand to his head. How had he been feeling? He had been feeling guilty, sad, screwed up and crazy without sleep. That’s how. So crazy he even thought he might have invented the woman to chastise himself for driving away from his problems. Remember, Josh? Remember? Oh, he remembered all right, and he wrestled with the truth of it before answering.

‘I felt fine. Hungry. That’s all. I needed something to eat.’

What else could he have told this man? That he had fallen asleep at the traffic lights, then woken thinking about how his girlfriend was going to kill his baby? Just seconds before he killed someone else’s?

Pace nodded as though that was what he wanted to hear, and steered the car carefully into a wide tree-lined avenue. Josh looked away in shame and turned his attention to their destination. If Furnace’s suburbs had been impressive then this was even more so. They had arrived in the land of the seriously rich. The houses here were set far back from the road, and the maturity of the gardens, ringed with ancient oaks and high rhododendrons, told the story that they’d been here a long time. The same uncomfortable alienation that had introduced him to this town was returning. He turned back to Pace.

‘What’s the deal with this town? Where’s the money coming from?’

Pace raised an eyebrow as if the question was not only irrelevant but also impertinent. He shrugged. ‘Same as anywhere. Rich folks here got old money, poorer folks do what poor folks do. Work.’

Josh shook his head, undeterred by this oblique answer. ‘No, I mean what’s the bottom line? Farming? Mining? What?’

Pace looked like he was thinking hard. ‘Well, I guess that’s a good question. I reckon mostly it’s land and timber, but we got a few people here deal mostly in money, know what I mean? Like they don’t make nothing, they just sit on the phone or the fax and move money around the world. Seems to make more.’

‘Up here? In the mountains?’

‘You got a phone and a fax it don’t matter if you’re on the moon. I guess they like the mountain air.’

Josh nodded, disappointed at the mundane explanation. The easy resolution of the mystery did little to make him feel better. But then he was far from feeling good. He was feeling worse than he’d ever felt in his life. The image of that tiny foot, that thick black blood, bobbed to the surface of his consciousness like a plastic ball held under bath water and released. He swallowed hard, fighting back his horror, as Pace brought the car to a stop outside a sprawling white house. The sheriff cut the engine and sighed deeply. He tapped the wheel thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to Josh.

‘This is out of order and I ain’t no psychiatrist but I reckon if you meet this lady you’re goin’ to realize that you made a mistake.’

Josh felt cold. My God. This was her house. John Pace was going to make him talk to her, make him look again into those eyes that had drilled him just before she …

‘But I don’t want you tellin’ her why we’re here, you understand? That’s important. No way am I goin’ to treat Councillor McFarlane like a suspect. This here visit is just so you can straighten things out in your mind and get on your way again. Can you handle that?’

Josh looked up to the dark windows of the great house and knew he had to see her. He nodded. Pace studied his face for a moment returned the nod, then got out of the car. Josh followed him, a few steps behind.

The arrival of the police car had already made one of the drapes twitch. A child’s face looked out from behind pale flowery material, and opened its mouth in naked delight that the sheriff was coming up their driveway. The drapes fell and swung as the child dived away.

Pace rang a doorbell that buzzed deep inside the house. There were voices, children’s and an adult cheerfully telling them to be quiet, and then the mock-period door swung open.

She opened it. The murderer.

Councillor Nelly McFarlane was wiping her hands on an apron that hung loosely around the waist of a plain denim knee-length dress. Her red hair was tied back in a knot and her open friendly face was without make-up. Clinging to her skirt was a girl of about nine or ten, and in the background a younger boy and a slightly older girl hopped around with open curiosity.

Nelly McFarlane looked at them both and smiled, showing those fine white teeth that graced her campaign handbill.

‘John! Hi! Come in.’

She motioned to the men to enter, but looking questioningly at Josh. He was aware that he looked like a criminal. Take a trucker from his truck and he always does. He was well used to being followed round factory outlet malls by store detectives who fixed on his clothes and haircut like pointer dogs on a duck. But right now, he was more aware that he was looking at a criminal. A first-degree murderer. Pace put a hand behind Josh to push him gently forward, speaking to the woman as he did so.

‘I want you to meet Josh Spiller. He’s a trucker from Pittsburgh.’

She widened her smile and raised her eyebrows. Josh was grateful that she didn’t offer a hand to shake. He was barely in control, but to have been forced to touch the flesh that had launched the baby into oblivion …

The children scuttled away inside and vanished, satisfied that the police visit was to be a dull social one.

Josh hesitated, his heart racing in his chest. The space between his shoulderblades told him that he was about to be clubbed from behind with a baseball bat, but his eyes, his logic, his head told him he was the unannounced guest of a bewildered and respectable Furnace citizen. He stepped into the large, cool hall. In the spacious living room to which she led them, a television was blaring cartoons to a room now vacated by children. Nelly McFarlane moved to a low mahogany coffee table, picked up the channel changer and silenced the noise.

Josh flicked his eyes to it just in time to see a coyote being pursued on a dusty road by a huge rolling rock before the picture fizzled away to black. He looked away quickly, a hot, sick feeling returning to his head. She sat down on a long sofa and motioned for the men to do the same on an identical one on the opposite side of the coffee table. They sat, and Pace clasped his hands on his knee.

‘Sorry to trouble you, Nelly, but there’s been a real bad accident.’

Josh watched her face carefully as a line of fear and confusion passed over its undoubtedly handsome structure. She was much younger than he’d thought. In her late forties maybe. It was hard to tell. But she looked good. He held his breath. He was confused and light-headed. Pace saw what she was thinking and hurried along to halt it.

‘Alice Nevin’s baby was killed this morning.’

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh sweet Lord. Alice? Berry Nevin’s girl?’

Pace nodded.

‘How?’

Her voice was croaky.

‘It was out the front of the mall. Maybe you saw some of the commotion if you were in town early?’

He looked at her carefully, but if there was to be any flicker of guilt or duplicity it was not going to register on this woman’s sympathetically open face.

She shook her head slowly, her hand now at her neck.

‘We haven’t been out yet, John. What happened?’

‘Stroller rolled right out into the street. I’m here to tell you ’cos I know that’s a big piece of your campaign, Nelly. To get them metal barriers up in front of the store.’

She was shaking her head in disbelief now, and Josh watched her, seeing only a woman in genuine distress at an appalling tragedy. Pace was continuing.

‘Mr Spiller here, well, he was the real unfortunate one who just happened to be passing by slowly in his truck. Just shows you, you were right about an accident waitin’ to happen. He was way under the speed limit, braked an’ everythin’, but there was nothin’ he could do. Little Amy rolled right under there. Didn’t stand a chance.’

She silently mouthed the words ‘little Amy’ to herself, then turned her eyes on Josh. There was a fleeting second, no, less than that; a fraction of a second, in which a cold wind blew across his heart and he imagined he saw the same cold reptilian eyes that had stared him down at seven o’clock this morning, light years away.

And then his bruised mind allowed him to see what was really in front of him. Two eyes that were already glazing with tears and regarding him with an expression of horror that the killer, albeit an unwitting one, was here in her house, which was being replaced with some obvious effort by a sympathy that seemed so warm and genuine he felt tears prick his own eyes again.

John Pace looked concerned. ‘You okay, Nelly?’

She swallowed and waved a hand at him. When she spoke, she was still visibly wrestling with revulsion and compassion. ‘I don’t know what to say. You poor man.’

Pace looked at his feet.

‘Like I say, Nelly, if those barriers had been up like you’ve been shoutin’ for, this’d never have happened. I just wanted Mr Spiller here to know that it ain’t never goin’ to happen again. Kind of put a bit of his mind at ease.’

Josh stared at her, his mind spinning. How did he get here? A few hours ago he was on the interstate trying to find his breakfast, and now he was in a living nightmare that he was never going to wake from. Nothing would ever be the same again. He had killed a child. Not her. Not this middle-class, bland and ordinary woman who spent her life campaigning for tiny small-town victories. Him. He had been sleepless and crazy. Seeing things. He had seen some dumb poster on a wall and his mixed-up, fucked-up brain had concocted that stuff. It was no one else but him. He was the killer.

She got to her feet. Her face told the story that she was still unsure of him, almost as though she were reading his guilty mind, and as she spoke her next hospitable words, her eyes suggested she was thinking of running to get a gun.

‘Can I fetch you something, Mr Spiller? A coffee? A cold drink?’

Josh shook his head. ‘No. Thank you.’

She paused, staring at him with an expression that was difficult to read, then spoke gently. ‘Well let me give you this. Please.’

She went to a drawer in an elegant sideboard, took out a small yellow pamphlet, crossed the room and handed it to him.

Josh took it and looked down at its cover. It showed a poor drawing of a family, a mother and father straight out of the Brady Bunch, all big collars and bad seventies haircuts, and two apple-cheeked children encircled by their parents’ arms. At the back of the family, the figure of Christ was holding his shepherd’s crook out and beaming great rays of light over them. Large-seriphed type declared, ‘Jesus, the head of the family of man. His love heals all.’

He looked up at Nelly McFarlane in dismay. She had almost lost all trace of uncertainty and dismay, but now adopted the brain-damaged expression of the born-again Christian, beaming at him as though she had given him some delightful gift.

‘Are you a believer, Mr Spiller?’

He looked at the pamphlet again to avoid her eyes. ‘No. I’m afraid not.’

‘Please read it anyway. It might help you. Jesus wants to help the unbeliever not only to be at peace, to be healed, but also to come to Him and embrace the word of God.’

Pace was looking at the table, his hands still clasped, and it was impossible for Josh to see if it was out of embarrassment or piety. The woman turned her attention back to the silent sheriff.

‘Should I go round there, do you think, John?’

‘She’s been taken to the clinic, Nelly. She’s pretty shook up. I reckon you should wait a piece.’

She nodded, then turned back to Josh.

‘May I pray for you, Mr Spiller?’

Josh felt awkward and silly. ‘Sure. Thank you.’

‘Then I will. I’ll pray very hard. You must be in terrible pain.’

He nodded and then looked to Pace, telegraphing that he was desperate to leave. The sheriff read the face of his companion and stood up. Josh did likewise.

‘Anyhows, Nelly, I’m real sorry to intrude, but like I say I thought you should know. Hope it’s helped Mr Spiller here, too, knowing that it’s something that’s goin’ to get fixed.’

Nelly McFarlane stood up, moved quickly round the table and grasped Josh’s arm. He recoiled, but her touch was not the horror he had dreaded. Her hand was warm and soft.

‘You can be sure of that, Mr Spiller. Barriers are going up on that sidewalk if I have to build them myself. But for the moment, while the pain of this is still crippling you, try and let Christ into your life. He can help too.’

Josh nodded dumbly and shifted his feet. She scanned his face for a few more moments then led them into the hall. At the door Josh unzipped his jacket pocket to put away the pamphlet, and as he did so the handbill that Pace had given him poked out of the corner. She saw it, smiled and pointed with a slender finger, clipped clean nails without varnish. The finger of a neat, God-fearing mother. Not the painted nails of a terrifying harpy.

‘Guess you hoped I’d be a slice more glamorous if you saw that picture before we met, Mr Spiller. Sorry you caught me in Grandma mode.’

Josh managed a weak smile.

‘You look just fine.’

She responded with the coquettish grin of a woman flattered. ‘Well I just throw that old pink suit on when I need to look like I mean business. This is me really.’ She lifted the sides of her denim skirt like a little girl.

Josh gave an embarrassed upward nod of acknowledgement. The sheriff shook her hand, asked to be remembered to Jim, and they walked back to the car. She watched them go then quietly pushed the door shut.

Josh was silent for the first few minutes of the return journey, gazing out at the passing houses and their uniform blankets of velvet gardens. Pace broke the silence.

‘Well?’

Josh remained quiet, thinking. Agonizing.

Pace looked sideways at him.

‘That your murderer?’

Josh hesitated. It was still so real. But of course it couldn’t be. That woman, that ordinary woman wasn’t capable of anything more than boring the nuts off you at a church social. There was no other explanation. He was ill. He hadn’t slept. He’d made it up.

‘I guess not.’ Josh continued to stare out of the car, then turned to his driver. ‘Why are you being so kind?’

‘You think I’m being kind?’

‘Yeah. I do. I reckon some of your deputies would be mighty pleased to see me strung up.’

Pace drummed the wheel with a finger, his eyes still forward.

‘You made a mistake forgettin’ to log, Josh, but we both know the accident weren’t your fault. Now there’s already one person dead. We can’t change that. But I’m damned if I want you freakin’ out on the highway out there and have me come and scrape up some more mess. I seen men confused and lost about a lot less than you been through.’

Pace sighed through his nose and then spoke again wearily as though this kind of bizarre incident happened on a daily basis.

‘Now. Want to change your statement?’

Josh chewed at a fingernail. ‘That necessary?’

When Pace replied, his tone was one of irritation. The concerned policeman was disappearing: he sounded like a man who had proved a point and needed to get about his business.

‘Sure it’s necessary. You change your mind about what happened, you have to change your statement.’

Josh said nothing, but they drove back to the sheriff’s office in the silent understanding that the favour was over and it was time to clean up. The problem was he had no idea what he would say in a new statement. How could he say the stroller rolled with the wind, when he didn’t see that? He’d seen it being pushed. He had. He closed his eyes and the picture was still there.

Suddenly Josh wanted Elizabeth very badly. He wanted to be held in her arms, have her run her hands over the shaved nape of his neck the way she did, and smell the clean, sweet smell of her body. He needed her to tell him it was going to be okay. Only it wasn’t okay. A baby was dead and he was losing his mind. Panic rose in his throat again, and he turned his attention to the sanitized landscape of Furnace’s tidy houses to help battle it back.

Moments later he was back in the small room they had left less than half an hour ago, walking with his eyes fixed firmly on the man’s back to avoid even the tiny task of thinking about where to take his next step.

He was lost and dazed and the emotions were so alien to him that he reeled from them. Once, lounging on the sofa at home, he and Elizabeth had been watching that dumb TV game-show where the glazed-eyed contestants begin by describing their own characters. She’d laughed and made him do the same. He recalled pulling a serious face and adopting a joke manly voice to say,

‘Hi. I’m Josh Spiller and I get things done. I take control.’ Would he say that today and still expect her to laugh? The truth wouldn’t make either of them laugh. Try ‘Hi. I’m Josh Spiller. Things happen. I run away.’ Right now he was seriously out of control and there was nowhere to run. He sat back in the shaky wooden chair and let his arms flop heavily onto the table.

The deputy who’d taken the statement returned, bringing with him a pile of paperwork, arranged himself at the table and looked to the sheriff for instruction. Pace nodded and the man smoothed a new piece of paper with his hand, held his pen expectantly and looked to Josh.

‘You want me to read you back your first statement and amend it, or just start from new?’

Josh looked at him with dull eyes, still unsure what he could say that would replace the one he’d given. He stalled for time.

‘Can I hear it back?’

The man straightened his shoulders and started to read haltingly like a shy child standing up in class.

Josh listened, his mind playing the movie that went with the words, fighting to make himself believe that his clear and accurate account was the product of a temporarily fevered brain. As the deputy reached the description of the woman, Josh slid the crumpled handbill picture of Nelly McFarlane out of his pocket and onto the table in front of him. He gazed down at the woman’s open, friendly face as the man’s voice droned in the air like some monotonous tour guide in a national monument.

‘… hard to tell her age, but older than the mother, wearing a little too much make-up, and a tailored pink suit. Her hair …’

Josh looked up.

‘Wait.’

Pace, who had been picking at his thumbnail, apparently bored and barely seeming to listen, looked up at Josh.

Josh was excited, his eyes flashing with impatience. He spoke quickly, turning to Pace to make his point.

‘Pink. You hear? I said it was a pink suit.’

Pace put his wide hands out palms up, and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Josh stabbed at the handbill with a finger.

‘You heard her as we left, sheriff. She mentioned this pink suit, the one in this picture.’

Pace was still looking quizzical, but Josh could detect falsehood in that expression, could see the conclusion to his observation being born behind the sheriff’s narrowed eyes before Josh spoke it.

‘If this is what I saw, how could I have known the suit was pink? This picture is black and white.’

John Pace looked across at his deputy and then back at Josh, who was breathing more quickly now. The deputy’s mouth remained slightly open, as though he wished to continue his reading aloud. Pace spoke slowly.

‘Well now, that’s a fair point. A fair point.’

He turned to the deputy, his voice casual and light.

‘Archie. Any of these posters around town in colour?’

The man with his mouth still open closed it, and scanned Pace’s face carefully before speaking.

‘Eh, I can’t rightly say.’

Pace rubbed his chin. ‘I guess the only explanation is that there must be.’

Josh’s heart raced. ‘But it’s something you can find out.’

‘For sure.’

‘And if there aren’t any in colour then where does that leave our theory about how I’d seen her before?’

There was a pause. A long pause, and then Sheriff John Pace clasped his hands together in front of him and looked Josh straight in the eye.

‘Up shit creek, Josh.’

Josh sat back in the chair and almost smiled. But there was very little to smile about.

‘Then I stick by my statement. Until you find out about the poster.’

Pace paused again for an awkward length of time, then unclasped his hands and wagged a finger like he was scolding an invisible dog.

‘Okay. We’re gonna get right on that. But after you’ve paid your fine for that dumb stunt with your log book, there ain’t no reason to keep you here any more. You feel up to drivin’?’

Josh nodded, unsure how the atmosphere in the room had changed, but certain it had.

‘Sure. I kinda feel better already knowing I might not be crazy.’

This time, Pace snorted. ‘Yeah? You saw Nelly. Even if a decent woman like that could have slipped in and out of town in broad daylight to do the deed unseen by anyone but you, what motive would she have for doin’ somethin’ as wicked as happened?’

‘How should I know? Jesus freaks are always missin’ a few floorboards upstairs.’

As soon as he’d said it, Josh knew he shouldn’t have. Archie made a blowing motion with his mouth and Pace’s voice dropped an octave and darkened to the same degree as his face.

‘Now I reckon you ought to keep that smartass truckin’ talk to yourself. Specially when you’re referrin’ to good folks who choose to follow the Lord’s path.’

Archie said a quiet ‘Amen’ and they both looked at Josh with matching contempt. Josh ran his hand over the stubble of his hair and looked from one man’s face to the other.

‘Sorry. No offence.’

Pace’s face told him that offence had indeed been taken. He stood, pulled Josh’s licence from his pocket, dropped it on the table and waved a hand at the paper in front of Archie.

‘Sign your original statement, take a copy. When you’ve paid your fine, Deputy’ll give you back the truck keys.’

Josh opened his mouth to speak and was silenced by a fat finger held up and pointed rather too directly at his face.

‘We’ll be in touch if we got anythin’ to tell you.’

Pace turned to leave the room, speaking as he went with his back to Josh.

‘Drive careful.’

The two men were left in the room, facing each other over the table. Archie Cameron turned the statement towards Josh. It had been neatly typed, presumably when they were out on their less than social visit. He read it through then held out his hand for Archie’s pen. It was given with bad grace, and retrieved with the same.

‘You wait here. I’ll have this photocopied and you get to keep one.’

The deputy left the room. Josh rocked back on the legs of his chair and exhaled deeply. His mind was racing with more than his embarrassing error. The sheriff had almost convinced him he’d seen McFarlane’s poster and subconsciously dropped her into his mad and confused recollection. Now he didn’t know whether to be pleased or dismayed that the theory wouldn’t wash. His mind was working like an abacus, clicking possibilities, fantasy and realities together like wooden balls on a wire. Except nothing was adding up.

The baby’s mother slid uncomfortably back into those thoughts. Why would she, the most important and relevant witness of all, say it was an accident? He let the chair bump forward again and ended up with his head in his hands, elbows on the table. Josh looked miserably through his wrists at the papers in front of him, a pile of official-looking forms, mostly handwritten. He glanced up at the door, then put a hesitant hand out and rotated the papers towards him. The top sheet was a scrawl of notes and observations on the position of the truck and the time of the incident, but the next two pages had a hastily-written list of witnesses’ names and addresses. He scanned it quickly, found Alice Nevin, and before understanding why he was doing it memorized the address and turned the papers back to face the empty chair in front of him.

The deputy’s return was abrupt, but he was formal to the point of a lawyer serving a summons in making sure Josh took his copy of the statement. ‘This here is yours. You take that now.’ He held out a brown business envelope with the neatly folded paper protruding slightly from the open end.

Josh took it from the deputy’s hand and was observed carefully as he pressed it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

‘And you get these back.’

From another larger brown envelope the man brought out a plastic bag of Josh’s personal belongings that had been removed from his pockets when they put him in the cell.

He watched Josh as he removed the items and started putting them back in his jacket. When it came to the wallet the deputy smiled unkindly.

‘Guess you’re gonna need that all right. I’ll get Deputy Busby to bring in the paperwork for your ticket.’

He walked to the door, opened it and called down the corridor. As Josh suspected, the man who answered the call was the angry policeman who had led him from the cell. He was holding a pad of tickets, a credit card swipe machine, and he was grinning.

Archie Cameron left the room with a long look at Josh and Deputy Busby took a chair.

‘You take a copy of your statement to keep?’

Josh nodded numbly, trying hard not to think of the horror contained in the words that were tucked so neatly inside his jacket.

‘Yeah.’

‘Yeah? Well here’s another souvenir from Furnace, Virginia.’ He slid the square of paper towards Josh.

‘One thousand bucks.’

Josh stared at him, his eyes narrowing. ‘The maximum? Even though my stopover checked out?’

‘Mister, if I were you I’d be pretty thankful for walkin’ outta here at all after what you done. Looked in your wallet and I guess those hundred and forty-five dollars ain’t goin’ to cover it. Pleased to tell you we take Master Card.’

Josh was about to protest further, but the policeman’s face told him it was useless. Part of Josh wanted to pay a fine. A huge fine. But no amount of money would undo his deed.

The transaction was performed in an uncomfortable silence until the deputy folded up the credit card receipt and a copy of the ticket into an envelope and handed it to Josh. He watched Josh’s face as he took it.

‘You keep hold of that now.’

Josh looked at him suspiciously, since the man’s tone was of a dishonest merchant who has successfully swindled a fool. The deputy read his face and added with a glare of indignation, ‘In case anyone needs to check up on you. Believe me. I’m goin’ to make damned sure they do.’

Only when the envelope was safely away, did Deputy Busby hand Josh the keys to Jezebel and the licence that he’d scooped up from the table.

‘You need a ride back to the truck? I’m supposed to ask.’

Josh shook his head. ‘It’s only a few blocks. I need the walk.’

‘Good. Cause you ain’t gettin’ a ride.’

Josh stood up and pocketed his keys. He looked long and hard at the man’s face, but any aggression he might have been able to muster before today was dissipated by the knowledge of his own inner guilt. He broke the stare first, turned and left the room.

John Pace was gone from the main office and Josh was oddly disappointed he hadn’t stayed to say goodbye. He’d heard enough horror stories from other drivers about the consequences of committing a violation in backwater towns, to know that by the sheriff, at least, he’d been treated fairly and with respect. But even though the law had decided he’d done nothing wrong, as he walked down the concrete steps to the clean sidewalk, he felt like a man being released from prison.

The air smelled sweetly of catkins and sap, and a gentle breeze moved the young chestnuts that lined the street. Josh walked slowly at first, then picked up speed as the fresh air revived and invigorated him.

Alice Nevin. The woman who started today with two children and ended up with one. Thanks to him. He knew she wouldn’t be home. He could almost see her now, lying on a hospital bed somewhere, her pupils dilated with tranquillizers and her thin arms lying immobile by her sides. But maybe something … anything …

Josh had no idea what he was going to do. He just wanted to go to her house. There was a drugstore at the end of the block. He pushed open its glass door and walked to the empty counter. A pretty but dull-eyed girl stopped stacking packets of sanitary towels, walked slowly over and filled the space behind the cash register.

‘Yeah?’

‘You know where Strachan Boulevard is from here?’

She looked at him. He knew she’d be weighing up the hair, the clothes, the earring. But he moulded his face into contours of friendly expectation and she broke into a half smile as she decided to co-operate.

‘Okay. You want to make a right here, then take a left into Frobisher Place and then two blocks down you’re there.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

As he turned to go Josh’s gaze swept past a telephone on the wall. His heart lurched. Elizabeth. He should phone Elizabeth. He felt in his pocket for his wallet and found his phone card. He could feel the girl’s eyes burning into his back and knew that although this call, of all the calls in the history of time, should be made in private, he couldn’t wait any more.

He punched in the complex code, waited for that monotonous and irritating voice to tell him how much time he had and then at last heard the long ring of his own phone. There was a click then the heart-sinking hiss that meant the answering machine had kicked in. His own voice.

‘Hi. You’ve guessed. We’re out. Try the numbers that follow, call back or leave a message. Here we go, the shop number is …’

He hung up. He hadn’t left the answering machine on, so at least that meant she’d come home and been there to switch it on. So she was safe. Cold comfort. She wasn’t answering.

He stood for a moment and let his heart slow down. What would he have said if she’d picked up the phone? This was new territory. Josh Spiller was a man, and a man who drove forty tons of truck around America. Yet right now, he wanted to put his forehead against this wall and weep. For a moment he saw himself reflected in the shiny chrome of the telephone, saw himself as he knew the girl behind the counter was seeing him; a haggard, haunted face that belonged to someone he barely recognized.

He dug his fingernails into his palm, took a breath and walked quickly out of the store. Movement. As always, it was the only cure.