To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

her, though how many had pursued her was debatable. But my given name is common, and anyway he might know it. How else had he located the house?

“Roy.”

“Roy.” He rolled it round his tongue. “That means King, doesn’t it?”

Did it? Maybe. Roi, Roy…

I tried the coffee. It tasted like nothing; usually the coffee was good here. Even so I hoped it could steady me. “Mr…”

“Joseph.”

“If you prefer. No one does anything for no reason at all.”

“Perhaps they should.”

“Are you saying you’ve come after me like this simply because you thought you should?”

He smiled.

I thought, He is mad. Possibly he’s escaped from some lunatic establishment.

Given that premise, I could only humour him.

But what was I to do with him?

If he refused to leave me alone, I would have to give him the slip somehow, and then run to the nearest police station. I wracked my brains. Harris might have helped but Janette wouldn’t. There was nobody else. I heard again the voice of my helpful father, If they think you’re afraid.

“All right, then,” I said, and smiled at him in turn. “The breakfast here is good. You’ll enjoy it.”

“Will I?” At once, that ironic edge of danger, of challenge in his voice.

“Well, I hope you will. Why don’t you tell me something about you?”

“You first.”

A knot of sheer anger was forming in my gut. I ignored it. “Very little to tell, I’m afraid. My wife and I…”

“You’re not married,” he interjected instantly. It was not a question but a statement.

Jovially I answered, “I’m sorry, Joseph, if you somehow didn’t discover that one important item about me. I am married.”

“Then where is she?”

“She’s out this morning. She’ll be back for lunch.”

“And what’s her name?”

“Lynda.”

“Right. But she wasn’t there last night, was she?”

“How can you possibly know she wasn’t, if you weren’t here yourself last night? I believe you said you arrived only this morning.”

“Actually I don’t think I did say that. Sorry, Roy. I haven’t lied. But you have, haven’t you, saying you have a Lynda.”

“Lynda was away last night, staying with her elderly mother. She will be back home later this morning.”

“Well I look forward to meeting her.”

“No, Joseph, that isn’t a good idea. Lynda’s mother hasn’t been well, and anyway…” inspiration – “my son and his girlfriend will be coming back with her.”

Joseph Traskul widened his black glowing eyes and said, “If I didn’t know you better, I might just believe you.”

“But, Joseph, you don’t know me better.”

“Want a bet?”

The girl came up then with the large oval plate piled with breakfast. She laid it all out in front of him, and with the extra chips and toast the table became crowded. I moved my coffee back to make room.

This time he didn’t thank her. He had eyes only for the food.

He did seem genuinely extremely hungry. I wondered if he was.

He plunged in knife and fork and began to eat, quite couthly but fast.

“I’ll just go and pay. Get it out of the way.”

The rhyme now was lost on me.

He murmured, an assent.

I took my chance. I got up, went to the counter and paid the bill, and all the while he never once looked up that I saw.

That done, I turned smartly and went straight out of the door.

Outside a boiling panic filled me. I didn’t even look back to see if he was already up too and on my track. Pure luck – the crossing was already working. I ran across. I ran back along the road and into the Crescent.

I am not especially fit, certainly not athletic, but being thin gives me some advantage. I made it all the way through into Old Church Lane and, gasping, along to my gate. Only there did I look behind me. No one now was on my track.

Through the front door I rushed, locked and bolted it.

I checked every window, and the back door. The day was warm again but nothing could be unsealed.

I stood in the hall and picked up the phone. This time I did call 999.

IX

(‘Untitled’: Page 124)

THE clock on the ancient tower above the Artisans’ Quarter was striking leadenly for midnight, and not a creature, asleep or waking in the great City, did not hear it. Its deadly voice entered dreams, entered reveries and fevers, and bats circling the ruined cathedral on the Hill of Kolosian, cambered in a cheeping wave away into the dark. The moon had set. The end of its light had a sombre finality.

Vilmos had left the bed of the whore Shosa. She was quite dead, he had taken care to see to it. Despite the fact he knew she had had little choice, he permitted no woman to betray him.

Her blood had dripped down upon the floor, but by now, an hour after the act of murder, its movement had ceased.

Vilmos washed his hands and face in the basin. The night was very hot and now, as the clanging of the clock came to an end, its ominous weight seemed to increase, heavy as a stone lid upon the City.

No one met him as he descended the stair. From the door the old toothless portress had gone off about some affair of her own.

Outside in the alley no lamps were visible, only the thinnest starlight. Beyond opened the Street of the Silver Workers, and even there only occasionally the narrowest of illuminations was revealed between ill-closed shutters.

Vilmos bent and drew up an empty bottle from the cobbles. With a sudden unpredicted motion he flung it violently against the darkened window of the tailor, Mirk, who had cheated him.

Thereafter Vilmos did not break into a run. He sauntered on along the thoroughfare, and indeed no one appeared to detain or upbraid him.

It was not until he had got on to the Flavel Bridge that Vilmos once again paused. Here he stayed some while, staring over at the blackness of the wide river, which poured on the northern side down to the City from the far mountains, and westerly