He was hungry, but he couldn't risk changing a note; he hadn't even a copper to pass him into the lavatory. After a while he got up and walked the station to keep warm among the frozen smuts, the icy turbulence. At eleven-thirty he saw from behind a chocolate machine Mr Cholmondeley fetch his luggage, followed him at a distance until he passed through the barrier and down the length of the lit train. The Christmas crowds had begun; they were different from the ordinary crowd, you had a sense of people going home. Raven stood back in the shadow of an indicator and heard their laughter and calls, saw smiling faces raised under the great lamps; the pillars of the station had been decorated to look like enormous crackers. The suitcases were full of presents, a girl had a sprig of holly in her coat, high up under the roof dangled a bough of mistletoe lit by flood-lamps. When Raven moved he could feel the automatic rubbing beneath his arm.
At two minutes to twelve Raven ran forward, the engine smoke was blowing back along the platform, the doors were slammed. He said to the collector at the barrier: 'I haven't time to get a ticket. I'll pay on the train.'
He tried the first carriages. They were full and locked. A porter shouted to him to go up front, and he ran on. He was only just in time. He couldn't find a seat, but stood in the corridor with his face pressed against the pane to hide his hare-lip, watching London recede from him: a lit signal box and inside a saucepan of cocoa heating on the stove, a signal going green, a long line of blackened houses standing rigid against the cold-starred sky; watching because there was nothing else to do to keep his lip hidden, but like a man watching something he loves slide back from him out of his reach.
2
Mather walked back up the platform. He was sorry to have missed Anne, but it wasn't important. He would be seeing her again in a few weeks. It was not that his love was any less than hers but that his mind was more firmly anchored. He was on a job; if he pulled it off, he might be promoted; they could marry. Without any difficulty at all he wiped his mind clear of her.
Saunders was waiting on the other side of the barrier. Mather said, 'We'll be off.'
'Where next?'
'Charlie's.'
They sat in the back seat of a car and dived back into the narrow dirty streets behind the station. A prostitute put her tongue out at them. Saunders said, 'What about J-J-J-Joe's?'
'I don't think so, but we'll try it.'
The car drew up two doors away from a fried-fish shop. A man sitting beside the driver got down and waited for orders. 'Round to the back, Frost,' Mather said. He gave him two minutes and then hammered on the door of the fish shop. A light went on inside and Mather could see through the window the long counter, the stock of old newspapers, the dead grill. The door opened a crack. He put his foot in and pushed it wide. He said,'
'Evening, Charlie,' looking round.
'Mr Mather,' Charlie said. He was as fat as an eastern eunuch and swayed his great hips coyly when he walked like a street woman.
'I want to talk to you,' Mather said.
'Oh, I'm delighted,' Charlie said. 'Step this way, Mr Mather. I was just off to bed.'
'I bet you were,' Mather said. 'Got a full house down there tonight?'
'Oh, Mr Mather. What a wag you are. Just one or two Oxford boys.'
'Listen. I'm looking for a fellow with a hare-lip. About twenty-eight years old.'
'He's not here.'
'Dark coat, black hat.'
'I don't know him, Mr Mather.'
'I'd like to take a look over your basement.'
'Of course, Mr Mather. There are just one or two Oxford boys. Do you mind if I go down first? Just to introduce you, Mr Mather.' He led the way down the stone stairs. 'It's safer.'
'I can look after myself,' Mather said. 'Saunders, stay in the shop.'
Charlie opened a door. 'Now, boys, don't be scared. Mr Mather's a friend of mine.' They faced him in an ominous line at the end of the room, the Oxford boys, with their broken noses and their cauliflower ears, the dregs of pugilism.
'Evening,' Mather said. The tables had been swept clear of drink and cards. He plodded down the last steps into the stone-floored room. Charlie said, 'Now, boys, you don't need to get scared.'
'Why don't you get a few Cambridge boys into this club?' Mather said.
' Oh, what a wag you are, Mr Mather.'
They followed him with their eyes as he crossed the floor; they wouldn't speak to him; he was the Enemy. They didn't have to be diplomats like Charlie, they could show their hatred. They watched every move he made. Mather said, 'What are you keeping in that cupboard?' Their eyes followed him as he went towards the cupboard door.
Charlie said, 'Give the boys a chance, Mr Mather. They don't mean any harm. This is one of the best-run clubs—' Mather pulled open the door of the cupboard. Four women fell into the room. They were like toys turned from the same mould with their bright brittle hair. Mather laughed. He said, 'The joke's on me. That's a thing I never expected in one of your clubs, Charlie. Good night all.' The girls got up and dusted themselves. None of the men spoke.
'Really, Mr Mather,' Charlie said, blushing all the way upstairs. 'I do wish this hadn't happened in my club. I don't know what you'll think. But the boys didn't mean any harm. Only you know how it is. They don't like to leave their sisters alone.'
'What's that?' Saunders said at the top of the stairs.
'So I said they could bring their sisters and the dear girls sit around...'
'What's that?' Saunders said. 'G-g-g-girls?'
'Don't forget, Charlie,' Mather said. 'Fellow with a harelip. You'd better let me know if he turns up here. You don't want your club closed.'
'Is there a reward?'
'There'd be a reward for you all right.'
They got back into the car. 'Pick up Frost,' Mather said.
'Then Joe's.' He took his notebook out and crossed off another name. 'And after Joe's six more—'
'We shan't be f-f-finished till three,' Saunders said.
'Routine. He's out of town by now. But sooner or later he'll cash another note.'
'Finger-prints?'
'Plenty. There was enough on his soap-dish to stock an album. Must be a clean sort of fellow. Oh, he doesn't stand a chance. It's just a question of time.'
The lights of Tottenham Court Road flashed across their faces. The windows of the big shops were still lit up. 'That's a nice bedroom suite,' Mather said.
'It's a lot of f-fuss, isn't it,' Saunders said. 'About a few notes, I mean. When there may be a w-w-w-w...'
Mather said, 'If those fellows over there had our efficiency there mightn't be a war. We'd have caught the murderer by now. Then all the world could see whether the Serbs... Oh,' he said softly, as Heal's went by, a glow of soft colour, a gleam of steel, allowing himself about the furthest limits of his fancy, 'I'd like to be tackling a job like that. A murderer with all the world watching.'
'Just a few n-notes,' Saunders complained.
'No, you are wrong,' Mather said, 'it's the routine which counts. Five-pound notes today. It may be something better next time. But it's the routine which matters. That's how I see it,' he said, letting his anchored mind stretch the cable as far as it could go as they drove round St Giles's Circus and on towards Seven Dials, stopping every hole the thief might take one by one. 'It doesn't matter to me if there is a war. When it's over I'll still want to be going on with this job. It's the organization I like. I always want to be on the side that organizes. On the other you get your geniuses, of course, but you get all your shabby tricksters, you get all the cruelty and the selfishness and the pride.'
You got it all, except the pride, in Joe's where they looked up from their bare tables and let him run the place through, the extra aces back in the sleeve, the watered spirit out of sight, facing him each with his individual mark of cruelty and egotism. Even pride was perhaps there in a corner, bent over a sheet of paper, playing an endless game of double noughts and crosses against himself because there was no one else in that club he deigned to play
with.
Mather again crossed off a name and drove south-west towards Kennington. All over London there were other cars doing the same: he was part of an organization. He did not want to be a leader, he did not even wish to give himself up to some God-sent fanatic of a leader, he liked to feel that he was one of thousands more or less equal working for a concrete end—not equality of opportunity, not government by the people or by the richest or by the best, but simply to do away with crime which meant uncertainty. He liked to be certain, to feel that one day quite inevitably he would marry Anne Crowder.
The loudspeaker in the car said: 'Police cars proceed back to the King's Cross area for intensified search. Raven driven to Euston Station about seven p. m. May not have left by train.' Mather leant across to the driver, 'Right about and back to Euston.' They were by Vauxhall. Another police car came past them through the Vauxhall tunnel. Mather raised his hand. They followed it back over the river. The flood-lit clock on the Shell-Mex building showed half-past one. The light was on in the clock tower at Westminster: Parliament was having an all-night sitting as the opposition fought their losing fight against mobilization.
It was six o'clock in the morning when they drove back towards the Embankment. Saunders was asleep. He said, 'That's fine.' He was dreaming that he had no impediment in his speech; he had an independent income; he was drinking champagne with a girl; everything was fine. Mather totted things up on his notebook; he said to Saunders, 'He got on a train for sure. I'd bet you—' Then he saw that Saunders was asleep and slipped a rug across his knees and began to consider again. They turned in at the gates of New Scotland Yard.
Mather saw a light in the chief inspector's room and went up.
'Anything to report?' Cusack asked.
'Nothing. He must have caught a train, sir.'
'We've got a little to go on at this end. Raven followed somebody to Euston. We are trying to find the driver of the first car. And another thing, he went to a doctor called Yogel to try and get his lip altered. Offered some more of those notes. Still handy too with that automatic. We've got him taped. As a kid he was sent to an industrial school. He's been smart enough to keep out of our way since. I can't think why he's broken out like this. A smart fellow like that. He's blazing a trail.'
'Has he much money besides the notes?'
'We don't think so. Got an idea, Mather?'
Colour was coming into the sky above the city. Cusack switched off his table-lamp and left the room grey. 'I think I'll go to bed.'
'I suppose,' Mather said, 'that all the booking offices have the numbers of those notes?'
'Every one.'
'It looks to me,' Mather said, 'that if you had nothing but phoney notes and wanted to catch an express—'
'How do we know it was an express?'
'Yes, I don't know why I said that, sir. Or perhaps—if it was a slow train with plenty of stops near London, surely someone would have reported by this time—'
'You may be right.'
'Well, if I wanted to catch an express, I'd wait till the last minute and pay on the train. I don't suppose the ticket collectors carry the numbers.'
'I think you're right. Are you tired, Mather?'
'No.'
'Well, I am. Would you stay here and ring up Euston and King's Cross and St Pancras, all of them? Make a list of all the outgoing expresses after seven. Ask them to telephone up the line to all stations to check up on any man travelling without a ticket who paid on the train. We'll soon find out where he stepped off. Good night, Mather.'
'Good morning, sir.' He liked to be accurate.
3
There was no dawn that day in Nottwich. Fog lay over the city like a night sky with no stars. The air in the streets was clear. You have only to imagine that it was night. The first tram crawled out of its shed and took the steel track down towards the market. An old piece of newspaper blew up against the door of the Royal Theatre and flattened out. In the streets on the outskirts of Nottwich nearest the pits an old man plodded by with a pole tapping at the windows. The stationer's window in the High Street was full of Prayer Books and Bibles: a printed card remained among them, a relic of Armistice Day, like the old drab wreath of Haig poppies by the War Memorial: 'Look up, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget.' Along the line a signal lamp winked green in the dark day and the lit carriages drew slowly in past the cemetery, the glue factory, over the wide tidy cement-lined river. A bell began to ring from the Roman Catholic cathedral. A whistle blew.
The packed train moved slowly into another morning: smuts were thick on all the faces, everyone had slept in his clothes. Mr Cholmondeley had eaten too many sweets; his teeth needed cleaning; his breath was sweet and stuffy. He put his head into the corridor and Raven at once turned his back and stared out at the sidings, the trucks heaped with local coal; a smell of bad fish came in from the glue factory. Mr Cholmondeley dived back across the carriage to the other side trying to make out at which platform the train was drawing in. He said: 'Excuse me,' trampling on the feet; Anne smiled softly to herself and hacked his ankle. Mr Cholmondeley glared at her. She said: 'I'm sorry,' and began to mend her face with her tissues and her powder, to bring it up to standard, so that she could bear the thought of the Royal Theatre, the little dressing-rooms and the oil-heating, the rivalry and the scandals.
'If you'll let me by,' Mr Cholmondeley said fiercely, 'I'm getting down here.'
Raven saw his ghost in the window-pane getting down. But he didn't dare follow him closely. It was almost as if a voice blown over many foggy miles, over the long swelling fields of the hunting counties, the villa'd suburbs creeping up to town, had spoken to him: 'any man travelling without a ticket,' he thought, with the slip of white paper the collector had given him in his hand. He opened the door and watched the passengers flow by him to the barrier. He needed time, and the paper in his hand would so quickly identify him. He needed time, and he realized now that he wouldn't have even so much as a twelve-hour start. They would visit every boarding house, every lodging in Nottwich; there was nowhere for him to stay.
Then it was that the idea struck him, by the slot machine on No .2 arrival platform, which thrust him finally into other people's lives, broke the world in which he walked alone.
Most of the passengers had gone now, but one girl waited for a returning porter by the buffet door. He went up to her and said, 'Can I help and carry your bags?'
' Oh, if you would,' she said. He stood with his head a little bent, so that she mightn't see his lip.
'What about a sandwich?' he said. 'It's been a hard journey.'
'Is it open,' she said, 'this early?'
He tried the door. 'Yes, it's open.'
'Is it an invitation?' she said. 'You're standing treat?'
He gazed at her with faint astonishment: her smile, the small neat face with the eyes rather too wide apart; he was more used to the absent-minded routine endearments of prostitutes than to this natural friendliness, this sense of rather lost and desperate amusement. He said, 'Oh yes. It's on me.' He carried the bags inside and hammered on the counter. 'What'll you have?' he said. In the pale light of the electric globe he kept his back to her; he didn't want to scare her yet.
'There's a rich choice,' she said. 'Bath buns, penny buns, last year's biscuits, ham sandwiches. I'd like a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee. Or will that leave you broke? If so, leave out the coffee.'
He waited till the girl behind the counter had gone again, till the other's mouth was full of sandwich so that she couldn't have screamed if she'd tried. Then he turned his face on her. He was disconcerted when she showed no repulsion, but smiled as well as she could with her mouth full. He said, 'I want your ticket. The police are after me. I'll do anything to get your ticket.'
She swallowed the bread in her mouth and began to cough.—She said, 'For God's sake, hit me on the back.' He nearly obeyed her; she'd got him rattled; he wasn't used to normal life and it upset his nerve. He said, 'I've got a gun,' and add
ed lamely, 'I'll give you this in return.' He laid the paper on the counter and she read it with interest between the coughs. 'First class. All the way to—Why, I'll be able to get a refund on this. I call that a fine exchange, but why the gun?' He said: 'The ticket.'
'Here.'
'Now,' he said, 'you are going out of the station with me. I'm not taking any chances.'
'Why not eat your ham sandwich first?'
'Be quiet,' he said. 'I haven't the time to listen to your jokes.'
She said, 'I like he-men. My name's Anne. What's yours?' The train outside whistled, the carriages began to move, a long line of light going back into the fog, the steam blew along the platform. Raven's eyes left her for a moment; she raised her cup and dashed the hot coffee at his face. The pain drove him backwards with his hands to his eyes; he moaned like an animal; this was pain. This was what the old War Minister had felt, the woman secretary, his father when the trap sprang and the neck took the weight. His right hand felt for the automatic, his back was against the door; people were driving him to do things, to lose his head. He checked himself; with an effort he conquered the agony of the burns, the agony which drove him to kill. He said, 'I've got you covered. Pick up those cases. Go out in front of me with that paper.'
She obeyed him, staggering under the weight. The ticket collector said: 'Changed your mind? This would have taken you to Edinburgh. Do you want to break the journey?'
'Yes,' she said, 'yes. That's it.' He took out a pencil and began to write on the paper. An idea came to Anne: she wanted him to remember her and the ticket. There might be inquiries. 'No,' she said, 'I'll give it up. I don't think I'll be going on. I'll stay here,' and she went out through the barrier, thinking: he won't forget that in a hurry.