Страница 22 из 50
Most of the audience drifted back to the bar; some of them left; and one of them resumed his seat on the dais. In five minutes the girl would be repeating her routine, Edward was aware of that-as he was also aware of someone who had just sat down beside him.
'Fancy another pint?' asked Morse.
Edward looked as guilty as someone just accused of stealing from a supermarket; but he nodded: 'Yes, please.' Morse was a little surprised at this; and as he stood waiting for two further pints he wondered if the boy would take his chance to get away. Somehow, though, he knew he wouldn't. He just managed to beat the second lunge of bodies to the dais, where he managed a considerably closer view of a now more sinuously synchronized Fiona. The beer, too, was begi
'Do you come here often?' asked the boy.
'Not every lunch-time,' Morse said lightly. 'What about you?'
'I've been once or twice before.'
'Shouldn't you be at school?'
'I've got the afternoon off. What about you?'
Morse was begi
But Edward ignored the question. 'Why did you follow me here?'
'I wanted to know why you lied to me, that's all-'
'Lied?'
'-about the note Ms. Scott left for you.'
The boy took a deep breath. 'Hadn't we better sit somewhere else?'
For a start he was evasive; truculent even. But he had little chance against Morse. In some strange way (the boy felt) Morse's eyes were looking straight into his thoughts, alerted immediately to the slightest deviation from the truth. It was almost as if the man had known this truth before he'd asked, and was doing little more than note the lies. So, in the finish, he told Morse everything about A
Two things surprised Morse about his time with Edward Murdoch. The first was to discover what a pleasant and engaging lad he was, and to realise that others must have found this, too: his mother, his friends, his teachers-including Ms. A
The boy had gone now, and Morse debated whether he should stay on for Act V of the stripper's scheduled stint. But even the anticipation had now grown as cold as the experienced reality. And he left.
Chapter Seventeen
Go on; I'll follow thee.
– Hamlet Act I, scene iv
At eight thirty that evening, George Jackson was crouching behind a hedge, his bicycle lying a few yards away in the dark undergrowth. He had carefully reco
The light blue Rolls Royce appeared from the direction of the A40 roundabout, travelling slowly along the bus lane. Jackson could see the driver fairly clearly, and he felt the pulses jumping in his wrists as he moved slightly forward and watched intently. The Rolls was doing no more than 10 m.p.h. as it passed the kiosk and covered the short distance to Field House Drive, its left blinker startlingly bright as it turned into the Drive and stopped-still almost completely visible. The driver got out, slammed the door to, and locked it. With the car keys still in his hand, he walked to the boot of the car, unlocked it, peered inside, and closed and relocked it, without removing anything. Then he disappeared (though for no more than a few seconds) from Jackson's view, and must obviously have opened something on the obscured nearside of the car, for almost immediately another door was closed with an aristocratically engineered 'clunk'. The man was in full view again now, and this time he carried a brown carrier bag in his right hand. He appeared quite calm, glancing neither to his left nor right in curiosity or apprehension.
As he came directly opposite, Jackson could see him plainly beneath the street lamp: a thickset man of medium height, about forty to forty-five, his thick, dark hair going grey at the temples. He was dressed in an expensive dark blue suit, and looked exactly as Jackson thought he would-fortunate and prosperous. Not for a second did the staring eyes behind the hedge leave the man as he walked up to the kiosk, went inside, lifted the receiver, came out again, thrust a hand in his pocket as if to find loose change, and then re-entered the kiosk as a grey-haired woman went slowly by with her white-haired terrier. Jackson's body suddenly felt numb with panic as the man in the kiosk appeared to be speaking into the telephone receiver. Was he ringing the police? But, just as suddenly, all was normal again. The man came out of the kiosk, thrust the carrier bag swiftly into the ivy behind it, and then walked back to the Rolls, fingering his car keys as he did so. The Rolls turned in a slow and dignified sweep and, with a momentary flash from the polished silver of the bo
Jackson was now in a dilemma which his limited mental capacities had not foreseen. Was he to leave his vantage-point immediately, grab the bag, and cycle off as fast as he could down the nearest back streets into Jericho? Or was he to wait, take things coolly, saunter over the road when he could convince himself the coast was completely clear, and then cycle sedately down the well-lit reaches of the lower part of Woodstock Road as if nothing were amiss? He decided to wait. Five minutes; ten minutes; fifteen minutes. And still he waited. Suddenly a light flashed on in the front room of the house behind him, and he crouched down further as a young woman pulled the curtains across the window. He had to move. Feeling his way carefully along the i