Chase the Morning

Chapter One

I braked hard and pulled up; but the car in front of me shot through the lights just as they changed. I sat cursing myself as I watched those tail-lights dwindle away into the gathering gloom, and the other endless lanes of traffic come swarming out after them. The idiot in the flash German sport behind me beeped his horn, but I was too irritated with myself to pay any attention to him. There had been time, the half-second or so before the other lights changed; I could have put my foot flat down and raced through. I’d been close enough to the lights to get away with it, but this was a difficult, twisty junction, with lousy visibility on all four sides. All it would need was somebody else as impatient as me … Damn it to hell, I’d done the safe thing! But then that was me all over, wasn’t it? Safe driver; safe car; safe job; safe life …

Then why was I so furious? At work it hadn’t been the sort of day that leaves you snarling; it rarely was. Momentarily, idiotically, I found myself wishing it had been, that I’d had something to snarl at, to tussle with, to put a sharper flavour into the day. I raised my eyes to the skies, and at once forgot all my irritation. The sun had already left the ground in gloom, but it was lighting up a whole new landscape among the lowering clouds, one of those rare fantastic sunset coasts of rolling hills, deep bays, stretches of tidal sands, endless archipelagoes of islands in a calm estuary of molten gold. This one was made even more convincing by the shallow slope of the road; I might have been looking down from some steeper hill onto the real estuary. Except that that was far less picturesque, a flat, grim industrial riverside first laid waste when ships and shipbuilding boomed, then stricken a second time when they collapsed. None of the goods I dealt with passed through the docks here now; they were as dead as that skyscape was alive.

A horrible blaring discord of horns jolted me out of my dream. The lights had changed again, and I was holding up the queue. With a touch of malice I stabbed my foot down and shot across the gap so fast the glittering brute behind me was left standing. But the ring-road opened out into two lanes here, and in seconds he’d overhauled me and gone purring past with ruthless ease. I had a terrible urge to chase him, to dice and duel with him for pride of place, but I refused to give in to it. What was the matter with me? I’d always loathed the kind of moron who played stock-car on overcrowded commuter routes; I still did, come to that. No question of cowardice – it was other people that sort put at risk. Anyway, we were coming back into speed limits again. Another car whined past me, the same make, model, year as mine, the same colour even. I had to look closely to be sure it really wasn’t mine – and swore at myself again. Was I feeling the strain, or something? It had leopard-skin seats, anyway, and a nodding dog on the parcel shelf. At least mine didn’t; but right then it might as well have had, the way I felt about it, and about myself. Christ, I ought to be driving a Porsche too! Or something less crass – a Range Rover, a vintage MG even, something to stir cold blood a bit more than my neat sports saloon. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t afford to. If I was the real high-flyer everyone said I was, the wonder boy, shouldn’t I at least be getting a little more fun out of it – instead of stashing all my cash away in gilt-edge and blue-chip and just a little under-the-counter gold?

I pulled off at the exit – the same, the usual exit, the fastest way home. Home to what? The prospect of my flat loomed up at me, my neat, empty, expensive little designer garret, warming up as the heating came on. The idea of cooking dinner suddenly sickened me, the prospect of eating something heated up from the freezer even more so; I changed gear sharply, signalled only just in time that I was changing lanes. I was going to eat out; and not in any of my usual places. I might regret it in the morning, but I was going to find somewhere more exotic, even if it wasn’t as well-scrubbed. Thinking of the docks had started me on that tack; I remembered there’d been lots of crazy little places there, when I’d last passed through – and lord, how long ago was that? I’d been in my teens; it might have been ten years ago, even. And that was just on a bus, looking out on my way to somewhere else. I’d been a child when last I’d trodden those pavements, the times when my father had taken me down to see the ships unloading. I’d loved the ships; but the docks themselves had always seemed rather sad to me, with weeds growing up between the worn flagstones and the crane rails rusting. Even then they’d been dying. I remembered dimly that there’d been attempts recently to tart up parts of them for tourism, as somewhere picturesque; but how, or with what success, escaped me.

Why had I never been back? There’d been no time, not with the job, not with the social life and the sport, all the other excitements and ambitions. Things that got me somewhere. I hadn’t actually set out to bury my taste for useless mooching about, but I’d had to let it slip away. Like a lot of other things. There was no choice, really, if I wanted to keep on the ball, to get ahead. And yet those trips to the docks, the sight of all those cases and containers with their mysterious foreign labels – they’d sparked off something in me, hadn’t they?

Not exactly steered me into my career; I’d thought that choice out very carefully, back at college. But they’d added something extra, a touch of living colour other likely jobs didn’t quite have. That hadn’t lasted, of course. You wouldn’t expect it to survive the rigours of routine, the dry daily round of forms and bills and credits. I hadn’t missed it much. Other satisfactions had taken its place, more realistic ones. But thinking about the docks just now, when I was feeling a bit adventurous, a bit rebellious, had woken a queer, nagging sort of regret. Maybe that was what had really sparked off this craving to go and eat there – the urge to rediscover the original excitement, the inspiration, of what I was doing. I did feel rather empty without it – hollow, almost.

I frowned. That brought back a less comfortable memory, something Jacquie had thrown at me years ago, in those last sullen rows. Typical; one of those daft images she was always coming up with, something about the delicate Singapore painted eggs on her mantelpiece. How they’d drained the yolk to make the paint … ‘You’d be good at that! You should take it up! Suck out the heart to paint up the shell! All nice an’ bright on the outside, never mind it’s empty inside! Never mind it won’t hatch! Appearances, they’re what you’re so fond of –’

I snorted. I shouldn’t have expected her to see things the way they were. But all the same … The turn-off wasn’t far, just at the bottom of the hill here was – what was it called? I knew the turn, I didn’t need the name, but I saw it on the wall as I turned off the roundabout. Danube Street.

All the street names were like that round here, as far as I remembered. Danube Street; Baltic Street; Norway Street – all the far-off places which had once seemed as familiar as home to the people who lived and worked here, even if they never saw them. It was from them their prosperity came, from them the money that paid for these looming walls of stone, once imposing in light sandstone, now blackened with caked grime. Herring and spices and timber, amber and furs and silks, all manner of strange and exotic stuffs had paid for the cobbles that drummed beneath my tyres now, at a time when the town’s prime street was a rutted wallow of mud and horse-dung. Some of the smaller side-streets had really arcane names – Sereth Street, Penobscot Lane; it was in Tampere Street I stopped finally and parked.

I hoped the name didn’t reflect the local habits, and that the car would be all right; but I couldn’t face being shut in it any longer. I wanted to explore on foot, smelling the sea in the wind. I felt a few drops of rain in it instead, turned back a moment, then looked up at the sky and caught my breath. Over the warehouse rooftop opposite blazed the last streaks of the glorious sunset; and against them, stark and black as trees in winter, loomed a network of mastheads. Not the simple mastheads of modern yachts, nor the glorified radar rigs of the larger ships; these were the mastheads of a square-rigged sailing ship, and a huge one at that, the sort of things you would expect on the Victory or the Cutty Sark. The last time I’d seen anything like them was when a Tall Ships rally had put in, and that only on local TV. Had the tourist bods moored one here, or something really old? This I had to see. I pulled my light anorak closer about me and walked on into the deep shadows between the wide-set streetlights. The hell with the weather, the hell with everything! I was a bit surprised at myself. No doubt about it, rebellion had me in its grip.

An hour and a half later, of course, I was regretting it bitterly. My hair was plastered flat to my wind-chilled scalp, my soaking collar was sawing at my neck, and I was desperate for my dinner. All those odd little places I remembered were just boarded holes in the high walls now, or seedy little cafés with fading pop posters and plastic tables barely visible through the grimy glass; and every one of them was closed, and might have been for years. The sea was within earshot, but never in sight; and there was no trace of masts, or of the signs you’d expect to a tourist attraction either. I would have been happy enough now with something microwaved at home, if I could only get back to my car; but just to cap everything, I’d lost my way, taken a wrong turn somewhere around those featureless warehouse walls, and now everywhere was strange. Or simply invisible; either some of the streets had no lighting, or it had failed. And there wasn’t a soul about, nor even a sound except my own footsteps on the cobbles and the distant breath of the ocean. I felt like a lost child.

Then I heard voices. They seemed to be echoing out around the corner of the street ahead, and so desperate was I that I’d gone rushing round before I’d realized that they didn’t sound at all friendly; more like a brawl. And that, in fact, was what was going on. At the street’s end was the sea, with only a dim glimmer to distinguish it from the sky above; but I hardly noticed it. There was a single light in the street, over the arched doorway of a large warehouse, now half-open; and before it, on a weedgrown forecourt, a tight knot of men were struggling this way and that. One tore himself loose and staggered free, and I saw that the remaining three – all huge – were after him. One swung at him, he ducked back, stumbling among the weeds and litter, and with a twinge of horror I saw metal gleam in the fist as it swung, and in the others as they feinted at him. They had knives, long ones; and that slash, if it had connected, would have opened his throat from ear to ear. They were out to kill.

I stood horrified, hesitant, unable to link up what I was seeing with reality, with the need to act. I had a mad urge to run away, to shout for the police; it was their business, after all, not my fight. If I hadn’t baulked at that stop light, perhaps, I might have done just that, and probably suffered for it. But something inside me – that spirit of rebellion I’d raised – knew better; it wasn’t seeking help I was after, it was an excuse to run away, to avoid getting involved, to pass by on the other side. And this was a life at stake, far more important than a stupid trick like running a light – far more important even than any question of courage or cowardice. I had to help … but how?

I took a hesitant step forward. Maybe just running at them, shouting, would scare them enough; but what if it didn’t? I hadn’t hit anybody since I had left school, and there were three of them. Then in the faint gleam my eyes lit on a pile of metal tubes lying at the roadside, beside a builder’s sign, remnants of dismantled scaffolding. They were slippery with filth and rain, but with a heave that made my shoulders crack I got one about seven feet long loose, heaved it over my head and ran down the slippery cobbles.

None of them saw me at first; the victim slipped and fell, and they were on him. I meant to shout, but at first only a ridiculous strangulated hey! came out; in the middle it cracked and became a banshee howl. Then they noticed me, all right. And to my horror they didn’t run, but rounded on me all three. I was past turning back now; I swung the tube at the first one, and missed by a mile. He leapt at me, and in a fit of panic I just clipped his outstretched arm on the backswing. He fell with a howl, and I saw a knife fly up glittering into the air. Another feinted at me, jumped back as I swung the tube, then flung himself forward as it passed. But it was slippery enough to slide through my hands; the end poked him in the belly and stretched him on his back on the cobbles. Hardly believing what I was doing, I swung on the third – and my feet skidded from under me on the wet smooth stones, and I sat down with an agonizing jar. He loomed up, a hulking shadow against the halo of light; I glimpsed white teeth in a contorted snarl, the knife lifting and slashing down.

Then something flashed over me, feet crashed on the cobbles, and the shadow drew back. It was the man they’d been attacking, a hunched, taut figure with a shock of red-brown hair, bounding and bouncing forward, dodging the clumsy slashes the bigger man aimed at him with an ease that looked effortless. Suddenly his own arms lashed out; there was a gleam of metal and a terrible tearing sound. They whirled into the light for a moment, and I saw long slashes in the tall man’s rough coat, and blood spurting from them. I struggled up, then flinched back in fright as the darkness seemed to burst out at me; I flung out a punch, and felt a stab of agony in my upper arm. I yelled with the sudden pain, and louder with the anger that hissed up like a rocket in my head. A leering, slobbering face, greyish and sickly in the dim light, shone out suddenly in front of me, capped by a cockatoo crest of green, a mass of gold ear-rings jangling. I smashed at it with my good arm, felt the blow connect and exulted – till the rocket burst, or so it felt, and my teeth slammed together with the force of the impact. I doubled over, clutching my head, unable to see or even think straight, my mind crazed across like a mirror by the blow. I heard a yell beside me, a burst of noise and expected the worst, the sharp agony of the knife or the blunt bite of boots. But my back bumped against a wall and I straightened up, grateful for its support, and forced my eyes open in time to see the three shadows go clattering away for their lives down the street towards the sea, one limping badly, another clutching his chest; the third they were dragging between them, his feet scrabbling helplessly at the rounded stones. A black trail like a snail’s glistened where he had passed.

The man they’d been after was crouched down against the wall to my right, by the doorpost, clutching his ribs and breathing heavily. I thought at first he was injured, but he looked up and grinned. An ordinary enough grin, on a lean, mobile face. ‘Now that’s what I call timing!’ he said, and chuckled.

‘Who were they?’ I managed to croak out.

‘Them? Just Wolves, as usual. Out for anything that’s not nailed down, and a good few things that are – you know!’ He looked up suddenly. ‘Hey – you don’t know, do you? You’re not from this side of town, are you?’

I shook my head, forgetting, and dissolved the world into needles of blinding pain. I swayed, stunned and sick, and he sprang up and caught me. ‘What’s the matter? Didn’t stop one, did you? Ach … not from this side.’ The questioning in his voice had turned to certainty without any answer from me. ‘Not a local. Might’ve known, the way you came barreling in like that.’ He propped me against the doorpost and searched my scalp with blunt fingers, causing me more bouts of agony. ‘Well, that’s nothing!’ he concluded, with infuriating briskness.

‘You try it awhile and say that!’ I croaked at him, and he grinned again.

‘No offense, friend. Just relieved your dome’s not cracked, that’s all. A bump and a little blood, no sweat. But that arm of yours, that’s different.’

‘Doesn’t hurt as much –’

‘Aye, maybe; but it’s a blade in the muscle. Could be dirty, if no worse. Hold on a moment …’ The blade he himself had used to such effect flashed in his hand, and I was astonished to see it was no knife, but a fully-fledged sword, a sabre of some kind; he twitched it adroitly into a scabbard on his belt, unhooked from beside it a ring of huge old-fashioned keys and locked the warehouse door behind him with one of them, muttering to himself the while. ‘C’mon now, nothing to worry about; I’ll see you right. Just lean on your old mate Jyp – that’s it! Just round the corner a few steps – lean on me if you like!’

That seemed a daft idea – he was such a short man. But as he bore me up by my good arm I was astonished to realize he was hardly any shorter than me, and I am over six feet. It was next to the others he’d looked unusually small; so how tall were they?

This close, too, he didn’t look so ordinary. His face was bony, hard-jawed, but his features were open and regular; a bit Scandinavian, maybe, except that expressions played across them like shifting light. Lines appeared and disappeared, making his age hard to guess; early forties, maybe, by the lines about the eyes. Below them the remains of a tan welded together a great blaze of freckles across his cheekbones. His eyes were calm, wide and intelligent. The look in them seemed remote and far-seeing, till I caught the twinkle that matched the mercurial expressions and the wry smile. I rarely take to people on sight, men especially; but there was something instantly likeable about him. Which was pretty damn surprising, as I couldn’t have placed him in any way. Liking, of course, doesn’t have to mean trusting; but right then I’d very little choice in the matter.

Together, like a pair of companionable drunks, we staggered down towards the seaward end of the lane; but before we reached it my old mate Jyp, whoever he was, manoeuvred us across the road and down a dank and evil-smelling back alley to emerge into a much wider street, like all too many I had tramped down that night. In this one, though, was what I’d been looking for all along; a single building bright with lights, and the unmistakeable look of a pub, or perhaps even a proper restaurant, about it. Grimy diamond-leaded windows glowed a warm gold between peeling shutters, and above them a sign spanned the building, brightly painted even in the dim light of the flickering lamps on the wall below. My head was clearing in the cold air, and I stared at it, fascinated; this must be one of the little specialty places. The sign read TVERNA ILLYRIKO in tall letters, red upon black, and beneath them Illyrian Tavern – Old Style Delicacies – Dravic Myrko, Prop. On a board above the door I saw repeated Taverne Illyrique, Illyrisches Gasthof, the name in every language I could recognize, and a good few I couldn’t.

‘Come along, we’ll get you fixed up here!’ said Jyp cheerfully, and added something else I wasn’t sure I’d heard.

‘What was that?’

‘Not a bad place, I was saying, so long as you steer clear of the sea-slugs.’

I closed my eyes. ‘I’ll try to. Where are they? On the floor?’

‘On the menu.’

‘Christ!’

That did it; I had to stop and retch, painfully and unproductively, while Jyp watched with sympathetic amusement. ‘Guts empty?’ he enquired. ‘Pity; a good puke can help, when you’ve had a dunt on the head. Like with seasickness; if you’re going to throw up, at least get something inside you to throw, that’s what I always tell ’em. Ammunition, as it were.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ I promised, and he chuckled.

‘All right now? Mind the steps, they’re worn.’ He kicked open the faded red door with a ringing crash. ‘Hoi, Myrko! Malinka! Katjka!’ he shouted, and bundled me inside.

Half an hour earlier I might have welcomed the gust of smells that came boiling out. There were a hundred I couldn’t put a name to and a few I didn’t care to, but there was also garlic and paprika and beer and frying onions. Now, though, the mix made my aching stomach shrivel.

‘It’s you, is it, pylot?’ came a hoarse answer from inside. There was the sound of somebody shovelling coal into a stove. ‘Malinka’s out, you’ll just have to make do with me.’

‘Got a friend here, Myrko,’ Jyp shouted. ‘Hey, what’s your name, friend? Stephen? Myrko, this here’s Steve, he pulled some Wolves off my back and stopped a knock or two while he was about it. Needs something to set him up. Katjka! You’re in demand! And bring your puncture repair kit! Now, me old mate, just you sit down there …’

I slumped onto a high-backed wooden settle, trying hard not to jolt my head or my arm, and stared around at the room. I’d seen touristy Greek bars trying for this kind of look. Now I realized what they’d been imitating. Here, though, the bunches of dried herbs and sausages dangling from the rafters, hams in sacking, huge slabs of salt cod, octopi looking like mummified hands, bloat-bellied wine-flasks with crude labels of dancing peasants, and shapes less identifiable, weren’t plastic; their fragrance hung heavy on the air, and the faintly trembling light of the lanterns that hung between them gave their shadows a strange animation. They were real lanterns, oil lanterns; you could smell them, too. I glanced around, and saw no sign of switches or power points anywhere on the walls; and come to that, the outside lights had been lanterns too. Their light was strictly local, and bright only in the centre of the room; the tables there were empty, but from the more shadowed ones in the corners I could hear the low buzz of voices, male and female, and the music of glasses and cutlery well wielded.

A tray clattered on the table in front of me, a bottle full of some pale liquid and a little narrow-necked flask of the same, no glass. A squat, rounded little man with the face of an amiable toad leaned over me and grunted. ‘On the house, friend! Anyone who takes a crack at Volfes does us all a favourrr!’ He had an accent as heavy as the spices in the air, heavy and guttural. There was a rumble of agreement from the shadowy depths of the room, and I was astonished to see the glint of glasses being lifted.

‘You should’ve seen him, Myrko!’ enthused Jyp. ‘They’d got me down, got my little sticker away, and he comes for ’em with a goddamn great iron bar! Three of ’em, and he fells two, the third gets a crack in before I get my blade back and open him up a bit! Went for ’em baldheaded, he did, just like that!’

Myrko nodded soberly. ‘Wish I had ssseen it! That was bravely done, my lad. Now get that down you, it’s for drrrinking, isn’t it? Sovereign rrremedy!’ I grasped the little flask gingerly, and tilted it to my lips. There was a trick to the shape of it; it shot the whole lot at the back of my throat. If you want to know what it felt like, tie a plum to a rocket and fire it down your gullet, preferably during an earthquake. I breathed out heavily, expecting to see the air glow, and Myrko poured me another while the flask was still in my hand. Suddenly the chill inside me lessened, my shivering stopped; I felt the blood pulsating in my veins, and the pounding in my head became bearable. I downed the second flaskful, and let him fill another before I held the bottle to see the label. ‘Tujika’ I said, with sudden understanding. ‘Slivovitz. But about three times as strong as any I’ve tasted before!’

Myrko grinned, looking ready to catch a fly any moment. ‘Sbliwowitch, yess, if that’s what you want to call it. Rrreal upland stuff, best this side of the Karrpatny. Hoi, here’s Katjka!’ I blinked. Out of the aromatic gloom a girl appeared – quite a girl. In that gaudy costume she went with the decor of the place; she might have stepped down off one of the wine labels, a picturebook peasant girl from somewhere on the upper Danube. Perhaps not a girl; a second glance put her in her late twenties. And perhaps not a peasant either; the embroidery on the flared red skirt and black stomacher was just too gilt and gaudy, the cut of the white blouse over her full breasts just a little too low, too strained. Her blonde hair looked natural, but the face beneath it was lean and foxy, not quite pretty, and the deep hard grooves either side of her mouth betrayed the kind of experience peasants don’t usually come by. Apart from that astonishing cleavage her eyes were the best of her, wide and grey and anxious.

‘What is it?’ she demanded urgently, her voice startlingly deep, her accent less noticeable than Myrko’s. ‘Who’s hurt, Jyp? Oh –’ Before anyone could answer she had swooped on me, clucking like a mother-hen and cursing the others for not calling her sooner. She had my anorak off my shoulders so swiftly and gently I hardly felt a twinge, and the buttons of my shirt seemed to fly apart as her nimble fingers flew down my chest; she slid that off too, leaving me shrivelling with embarrassment. But if anyone was staring I couldn’t see them, and there was no change in the buzz of voices; anyway, it didn’t seem to worry this Katjka girl. She pulled my head down to rest between her breasts without the least inhibition, and when Myrko came puffing up with the hot water she’d sent him for she began to clean and search my throbbing scalp with incredibly delicate fingers, and smooth on something pungent and seaweedy from a jar. ‘Relax …’ she crooned, but on that particular pillow it was both difficult and only too easy; in the end I just accepted the situation, and sagged.

It seemed to please her, but I wasn’t quite so sure; nice creature though she was, from my vantage I couldn’t help but notice one thing about her. It wasn’t that unpleasant, not the kind of rank stink you associate with squash-court changing rooms, but all the same it was there, and pretty strong. No worse than our ancestors, our great-grandparents even must have been, or folk in countries where baths were still a luxury. I remembered an Eastern Bloc coal export official complaining that girls back home never bathed enough because of constant fuel shortages; he should’ve talked. But in our enlightened land of Lifebuoy and hot water on tap there wasn’t any excuse; it wasn’t necessary, that was why it put me off. Or wasn’t it? I glanced up at the lights again. Maybe they weren’t just decoration, atmosphere; maybe this place genuinely didn’t have electricity or even gas. In which case she might well have the same problem. But what sort of place didn’t have one or the other, these days? Even Highland crofts could get bottled gas. And how could any kind of eating-house survive the hygiene inspectors without them?

With slivovitz and other things I was still a bit lightheaded, thoughts like that buzzing aimlessly around, getting nowhere. But gradually I found my head was clearing, and, wonder of wonders, that it was hardly throbbing any more. Katjka seemed to sense this, because she pushed me gently upright and with careful fingers set to work on my punctured arm. I glanced at it once, then away; it looked worse than I’d guessed, a fearful mess of clotted blood. Besides, I preferred looking at her; beautiful or not, she was a nice-looking creature. And now she was clasping my arm to that bosom of hers, and leaving my hand dangling loose in her lap; quite a distraction. Beside us I heard Jyp and Myrko talking, but what they were saying only filtered through to me gradually.

‘So say to me, pylot, how’s this all happen, then? How’d a fly lad like you let a few mangy Volfs get you down, anyhow?’

‘Just careless, I guess. Decoyed me to the door and jumped me. Kind of subtle, by their lights.’

‘Daj. Let’s hope they not learrning brains. But why so much trouble? What’s in that warrehouse, anyhow?’

‘Just the usual.’ Jyp sounded puzzled. ‘A few old loads that’ve lain there months now, and the stuff out of the Iskander, docked this morning from out West. Nothing unusual in that. Black lotus for Patchie’s, a couple of gross merhorse skins that Mendoza’s shipped up from Te Arahoa on spec and died on the market. A load of flamewood planks for the trade, indigo, peppers and coffee from Huy Brazeal, auk down – twenty bales of it! – and a few tons of dried Conqueror Root and Night-eye for the shops on Damballah Alley. Not the sort of stuff a man can pilfer to any profit; it’d take more’n three to carry off any worthwhile pickings. There was a load of black-devil rum, fifty hogsheads, but Sutler Dick picked that up not four hours after it come in.’

‘Maybe nobody tells the Volfs,’ puffed Myrko.

‘Maybe …’ echoed Jyp, but he didn’t sound convinced. I was just about to ask him what all those daft-sounding commodities were meant to be when Katjka distracted me – with a vengeance. I jerked rigid with agony, and all but kicked over the table. It felt exactly as if, having cleaned the wound off gently, she’d suddenly pulled it sharply open, sunk her teeth in it and sucked hard. I looked down and saw that that was exactly what she had done. What’s more, she was still doing it. I sank back trembling, unable to speak, and saw Jyp grinning at me.

‘Could be dirt in the wound, remember? Filthy things, Wolf blades, you never know. That’s how Katjka’s folk deal with it, and I can vouch for it working, b’lieve me. Mind you, they’re all vampires in her corner of the world, anyhow!’

Katjka looked up, and spat my blood accurately onto his trousers, which looked like glossy leather; he wiped it off with a snort.

‘The company you keep, you shouldn’t be so high and mighty, pylot! Not too painful now, no, my Stefan?’

I managed a grin of sorts, as she picked up the slivovitz bottle and began to wash the wound with the blazing spirit. ‘Can’t think of anyone I’d rather be eaten by,’ I managed, and she giggled.

‘Especially marinado? Okay! Then I put a little more salve on this, so, and bandage it up, and in a day or so you are right as rain – all right, daj?’

I breathed out hard, and managed half a smile. Jyp handed me the bottle, but I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but I’ve had enough. Got to drive home.’

‘With that arm? Think you’ll be all right? Better you doss down here for the night. Try Myrko’s robber steak, with french fries and a demi of old Vara Orsino – put hair on your chest and lead in your pencil, that! And for your afters a tumble with Katjka – set you up a wonder, she will! And you give him the very best, you hear, lass, the real sailor’s holiday! My treat, right? It’s Wolf-meat I’d be if it wasn’t for my old mate Steve –’

I blinked a bit and stole a glance at Katjka. Jyp’s casually commercial attitude didn’t seem to bother her, if anything it flattered her. ‘Well …’ I said, and she turned those large grey eyes on me. I had a suspicion they’d stripped many a seaman of his inhibitions, if nothing worse. But I reached for my shirt.

‘You’re not goink?’ she enquired in hurt disbelief. It was obviously a routine line, but she seemed to mean it. Or was that the routine as well? But Jyp and Myrko were looking just as crestfallen.

‘Hey, c’mon,’ protested Jyp, creasing up his young-old face. ‘I was goin’ to give you a party – I owe you, remember? Can’t leave me feeling like an ungrateful louse, can you? And Katjka all limbering up for it, too! Sit down! Stay! You’re among friends!’

That almost got me, that last word. Among friends – I was, I felt it, as I hardly ever had all my life. I faltered. Ahead of me that light was changing again, and all of me longed to put my foot down and race through it – away, out, into that dreaming sunset, chasing some new dream of my own. Some kind of fulfilment I couldn’t imagine – something to fill up the shell …

But I felt the twinge in my arm as I drew on my shirt, and my own blood stuck it clammily against my skin. I stamped on the brake. No more rushing in, not tonight. ‘I know. I’m sorry. Another time, maybe, but – I’ve got to go. If I can find my car, that is. I parked it in Tampere Street, wherever that is from here.’

For a moment I was horribly afraid they would all ask what a car was. But Jyp, though he was obviously hurt and disappointed, said casually, ‘Okay, Steve. I understand. Another time it is. Suppose I should be getting back to the warehouse myself. Tampere, right, that’s back behind here, round the corner ahead, past the big old bonded store, first left then right, right again and straight down; at the end you’ll see it. Got that? I’ll come show you the way.’

‘If it’s that simple, I’ll manage, thanks. You get back to your work. I don’t want to make things hard for you. And thanks – thanks for the puncture repair, Katjka. And – and the drink, Myrko … Thanks, all of you –’ I was sounding like an idiot. I was nervous, I didn’t want to offend these weird, warm people. Myrko just grunted, but Katjka smiled.

‘All right, Stefan. Make it soon, hah?’

‘Yah,’ laughed Jyp, ‘while I’ve still got some dough!’

‘Whether he has or not,’ said Katjka calmly.

Jyp turned on her with his bony jaw dropping; she menaced him with her fist, and he turned back to me. He looked me up and down a moment, as if sizing me up anew. ‘Yah, you come back, you hear? One way or t’other I’ll bet you will. And hey, be you looking for me, you can’t find me, you ask for Jyp the Pilot, right? Just that. Jyp the Pilot. Ask anyone, they all know me. Anyone, right! Be seeing you, Steve.’ He leaped up and wrung my hand with startling strength. ‘And thanks, man; thanks!’

I stopped at the door, and looked back, reluctant. It seemed dark and cold out there, and I didn’t want to let this fragile shred of life and colour go so easily forever. What chance is there you’ll ever come back to a dream? Myrko had vanished into the shadows, Jyp had his head in Katjka’s lap, but it was me she was watching. She smiled, and inhaled slowly. I looked down, and lifted the latch. The door creaked twice, and I was exiled into the sea-wind, bitterly cold and heavy with harbour stenches and the last few drops of rain. Hastily I raised my collar, and it whipped the points about my ears in mockery. The cobbles glistened and glittered now under a newly clear moon, and I had no trouble seeing my way. I turned once to look back, but the wind dashed stinging salt into my eyes and hurried me on with invisible hands.

Jyp’s directions were straightforward enough. Which was just as well, for there was nobody else to ask; the streets still seemed to be deserted. I saw the bonded warehouse ahead the moment I rounded the corner, a louring mountain of a place that had once been imposing; now eyepatches of rusty corrugated iron filled its lower windows, and barbed wire crawled about the broken crenellations of its outer walls. First left was obvious enough, too, but it didn’t look – or smell – very prepossessing; even as alleys went this was the dregs. I hesitated, could he have forgotten this, and meant some broader way further on? But when I stepped back to look I saw there wasn’t one; the road curved around to the right. Holding my breath, I was just about to take the plunge when I heard a slight scrape, and a flicker of motion caught my eye, back at the corner I’d just turned. But when I looked around there was nothing, and I thought no more about it. The alley was as foul as I’d expected, the water that plashed around my hapless shoes awash with pale shapeless things half floating, its muddy shallows releasing a terrible stench as I disturbed them. Fortunately it wasn’t long. When the puddle ended I stopped for a moment to tip the foulness out of my shoes and scrape them clean. But as I leant one-handed against the grimy bricks I heard that sound again, echoing slightly down the alley. Forgetting my squishy feet, I turned and looked suddenly back almost frozen to the spot. There came just a whisper of movement, no more than a flicker; but it seemed as if for one moment some huge bulky shadow had filled the alley’s other end, blocking off the light. Though it was gone almost at once, there was no way I could deny it, search though I might for such a shadow among the broken cobbles. I swallowed. Somebody didn’t want me to see them. Why? Because they were following me, that was why; it had to be. But who? Jyp, maybe, seeing his guest safe – no, hardly. But I could find out easily enough. All I had to do walk right back around that corner and confront – him? Them? Or … what?

Except, fortunately, that I wasn’t quite that stupid. I thought of Wolves; but there was no scaffolding here, hardly even an unbroken brickbat, let alone Jyp with his sword. I turned and hurried as quietly as I could out of the other end of the alley. In the street beyond, turning right, I stopped a moment, listening for the splash of that inescapable puddle. There was nothing – which meant they either weren’t coming, or they were coming with greater stealth. I swallowed and strode on. Just as I reached the next corner, another right turn, I dared to glance back again. Nothing – except –

A sudden tremendous splashing erupted from the alley, as if something was charging headlong through that puddle, charging with heedless ferocity. Perhaps I yelled; certainly I fled. Down the street I pounded, noticing only that it was mercifully wide and short on shadows, and had smooth cinder pavements that scuffed muddily under my feet. My breath seemed to go shallow very suddenly, and bands of agony sprang up around my head; my injuries were beginning to tell. Where now? Where next? I couldn’t even remember. I stopped, bewildered, panting, and looked up at the skies. And what I saw there drove out all other thoughts, even of what might any moment round that corner behind me.

The moon was afloat, it seemed, sailing above a sea of cloud. By its light the clouds were transformed, spread out beneath it into a landscape of shimmering night-bound beauty, low hills and the sea beyond, the sea and islands. But that alone could not have held me, in the state I was. What bound me to the spot was the almost tangible shock of recognition. Beyond all possibility, yet equally beyond all doubt, it was the same landscape the sunset had shown me, at least three hours earlier. The same, yet – as you might expect – seen from a slightly different angle. I began to shake; had the blow affected my brain? Yet I’d never felt more sure of anything; both visions burned together in my brain, the seas of gold and silver. Bewildered, I looked down, and saw, above that landscape mirrored in a stagnant gutter, a sign on the grimy wall. Beneath the gutterings of spray paint it read, quite clearly, Tampere Street. I ran forward wildly, and there, not a hundred yards from the corner, was my car.

Forgetting all else, I bolted for it. But now, somehow, the wind was in my face, whirling up cinder dust to sting my eyes, buffeting me on the slippery cobbles; it felt like a hand holding me back, barring me from my refuge, my escape. A filthy rag of polythene hissed out of the gutter and tangled itself lovingly around my ankles; I kicked it free and trampled on it like some living menace. But I was there, my hand fell on the wing, its steel cold beneath the smooth paintwork. I fumbled for my keys, barely catching them as the wind sought to whisk them from my numbed fingers into the drain beneath, yanked the door open and plunged in.

It was slow to start; I almost flooded the carburettor in my impatience. I forced myself to sit still a moment while the wind buffeted the car, staring into my rear-view mirror at the darkness I’d come out of. Then I tried again, my foot light upon the pedal, and heard the blessed cough and rumble of the engine, felt its vibrations stronger than the wind. I slipped it into gear, twisted the wheel and all but threw the car out from the kerb, growling across the cobbles. Only once I looked back, but the street’s end was in deeper shadow still; anything or nothing might have been lurking there. Then I turned out into the main road, into Danube Street where there was lighting that worked, cold and orange though it was, and the prospect at least of the noise and colour and company, the safety of the city I knew. It came crazily into my head how for the ancient Romans the Danube was a barrier of civilization, holding barbarism at bay; but it was not a comforting thought, for at the end that barbarism had come rolling across the Danube in an overwhelming wave. I slowed, waited at the junction and turned, and there it all was. Noise, colour, company, safety – but all of it strange, all men about me strangers. Safe, but strangers. Suddenly the trade didn’t seem so good, the escape less of an escape. Had that light really been red? Or had I just been afraid to see it was amber? I couldn’t answer. I was tired, sore, and I hadn’t eaten.

I went home, and threw something into the microwave. Hard.