Читать книгу The Only Game - Reginald Hill - Страница 10

Fear heightens perception.

Jane Maguire had spotted Dog Cicero the instant she stepped through the church door. One car in a line of traffic, one silhouette in a gallery of portraits, but her eyes had fixed on it. Then it had turned full face towards her and she’d been certain the magnetism was two-way.

Next moment, however, he’d spoken into a mike and driven away like a madman. She knew beyond guesswork what he’d been told and she almost felt a pang of sympathy for the young policewoman. Not that it had been her fault any more than it had been Jane’s plan. As she’d been wheeled down to X-ray, she’d heard the girl ask, ‘How long?’

‘Thirty minutes at least,’ had been the answer. In the event she’d been through in five, back in her room in ten. And she was alone, except for the almost tangible after-image of Cicero’s distrust. She saw again those coldly assessing eyes in the half-frozen face and she knew she’d made a mistake, not in lying, but in lying about things he could check. He would be back and she couldn’t keep fainting her way out of confrontation for ever.

It was time to go. Her body had made the decision before her mind and she was already out of bed and pulling on her clothes.

No one challenged her as she walked along the corridor to Reception and out into the chill night air. It was still raining. She felt it would never stop. Momentarily she got entangled in a small queue of mainly old people climbing into an ambulance. Instead of passing through, she let herself be taken up with them. Soon afterwards when the first passenger was dropped near Holy Trinity roundabout, she got down too. Every day she passed the church on her way to the Health Centre. If she noticed it at all, it was with a sense of relief that she’d shed that particular delusion. Now she went inside, rationalizing that she needed somewhere quiet to sit and think. But as the door closed hollowly behind her, the smell, the light, the sense of echoing space sent her reeling back to her childhood and she felt her controlling will assailed by a fearful longing for the cleansing darkness of the confessional.

A priest came down the aisle. Sensing her uncertainty, he asked courteously, ‘Can I be of any assistance?’ He was an old man with a kind face but his accent was straight out of O’Connell Street.

‘No, thank you,’ she said harshly, and turned on her heel and left.

Flight or victory? Would any other accent have had her on her knees?

Then she had seen Cicero and for one superstitious moment felt that perhaps God was laying her options unambiguously in view.

Now she watched his car out of sight before hurrying down the side of the church, following a gravel path that continued between mossy headstones till it reached a graffiti’d lych-gate which opened onto a quiet side street.

Here she paused, sheltering from the rain under the gate’s small roof, and summoning reason back to control. Where should she go? Not her flat. Cicero had told her he’d got someone waiting there. Run home to mother? That’s what she’d done last time, with mixed results. But she couldn’t do it this time, not with the news she would have to bear. Besides, Cicero of the unblinking brown eyes would soon ferret her mam out.

No, there was only one place to go, one person to turn to. No matter if angry words lay between them. There and only there lay her hope of welcoming arms, of a sympathetic hearing, of lasting refuge.

Putting her head down against the pelting rain, she began to walk swiftly towards the town centre.