Chase the Morning

Chapter Four

Only the next morning brought the reality home to me. It struck as my eyes opened, a singing shock of memory that snapped me bolt upright and shaking in my bed before I was fully awake. That light!

My pyjama jacket clung clammily to my back. The air seemed close and stale with the stink of fear. I’d come face to face with … Something I’d never believed in, not even as a child. Something that seemed utterly impossible here, in my own bedroom, all smooth cool greys and hi-tech decor, with bright light only the touch of a switch away. And yet – What other word was there?

With a demon.

I’d seen it gulp a man down like a mayfly. I’d seen killing done. God, I’d killed a man myself! The awful thump of the cutlass blade, the sinking, jerking impact … Sickness bubbled up in my throat. What had I done? God, what had I done? I’d only wanted to help!

My hands were sticky. I stared down at them in horror, but of course it was only sweat, not blood. Had I really done anything? Or had it all been some kind of mad dream again? I’d had plenty of those. Awful figures had stalked through my sleep, stooping over me with leering faces; horrible images had haunted my dreams, half alluring, half menacing, visions of bizarre cruelties and lusts. Three times at least they’d woken me with titanic drumbeats roaring in my ears, shaken by gusts of fear and shame. But as my pulse subsided those nightmares had faded, leaving only shapeless shadows of fear. The wharf, the warehouse, the light – those things hadn’t faded. I wished to hell they would. I sank my head in my hands – and winced as I touched the raw patch left when I hit the cobbles. That kind of confirmation I didn’t need.

It proved nothing. There was no proof. I might be mad, or I might not; I couldn’t tell. And who else was there? I was alone. Very methodically, very neatly, I’d arranged my life that way. As deliberately as I’d styled my flat, cool, spacious, uncluttered, scrupulously tidy – empty. It could have been the set for an upmarket TV commercial, though I’d never thought of it that way before; and if I had, it would probably have pleased me. It didn’t, now. I was alone in a sterile melamine box, alone with my terrors and my delusions, and there was nobody to care. I ducked back under the bedclothes and buried my face in the pillow, I felt awful; I didn’t want to get up and go to work, I wanted to hide.

But habit in itself is a kind of hiding place. Soon enough it had me up and in the shower, and under the hot water the horrors and tensions of the night seemed to slough gradually away. In no time I was dressed, gulping down my muesli and black coffee off the kitchen counter, clattering down the stairs to the car-park, almost eager to face the pale drizzle and the fearful rush-hour traffic. Jockeying for position in its swirling streams I sailed past Danube Street without so much as a glance. I was even a little early when I strode purposefully into the office, and when I reached my desk, freshly aromatic with polish, I sank back into my armchair with a luxurious sigh. When Clare came in with the post I was already hard at work.

She eyed me narrowly. ‘You’re looking tired,’ she said accusingly. ‘You’re sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard, Steve? I mean –’ She shrugged. She seemed less certain, less bossy today.

I fended her off with a confident grin. ‘Hey, what’s all this? Still fussing? Come on, I’m in my element – you know me. Pig in clover, that’s me here.’

‘Well, okay,’ she remarked ruefully, tugging at a lock of hair. ‘I’ve got that general idea! But – you will be sure and take care of yourself outside work, too? Try to relax a little? I mean, you know what they say about taking stress home …’

I nodded reassuringly. She deserved to be taken seriously. ‘I’ll be careful,’ I said, and meant it. After last night I was going to stick to my old regular life so closely you could put me on rails. Last night? Just the thought of it made me dizzy. Had I got drunk or high or something and doped the whole thing up? Or worse? Unlikely. Whatever had hit me this morning, it was no hangover. And I’d never have touched anything else capable of cooking up last night. Whatever my taste in clothes, designer drugs weren’t exactly my bag. I began remembering shreds of a Sunday supplement article on schizoid fantasies – or was that paranoid? Either way I wanted no part of it. What was this, the first signs of burnout? A psychoanalyst might tell me, but no way was I ready to go running to one just yet; these things get about. But could I possibly have just dreamed up anything so fantastic? Clare was on her way to get my coffee when I called after her.

‘Er – one thing,’ I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to ask her this – but, after all, who else was there?

‘Look, I know it sounds a silly question, but … You wouldn’t ever call me the over-imaginative type, would you? Sort of fanciful? Not really?’

She stared back at me for a moment, wide-eyed. Then she seemed to quiver from head to foot, and jammed her knuckle to her lips again. Dave appeared in the doorway, gaping like a fish. His face crumpled, and he doubled up, slapping his knee and howling with laughter. That set Clare off. She shook her head violently and fled into the outer office with shaking shoulders, giggling unmercifully. Dave straightened up, tears streaking his burnished cheeks. ‘Thanks very much,’ I said dryly. He was about to ask something, but I discouraged him. ‘Thanks a heap. That’s all I wanted to know. Absolutely all.’

In no time I was digging back into my work again, squeezing every minute detail out of it the way I’d always enjoyed. Now, though, it was a deliberate exercise. I knew what I was doing; I was deliberately tightening my grip on normality, upon real things. Upon safe things; they were my anchors, my moorings. I was afraid of being swept away.

So went the day. But all through it memory sat at my side, tugging constantly at my elbow, rising up suddenly and scattering my thoughts. So did Clare; she still fussed over me, more lightly than before, perhaps, but she seemed determined to hover. She kept coming up with all kinds of things that demanded my personal attention and sitting beside me while I ploughed through them. Every time I looked up I met those eyes of hers, contemplating me. Why do they always say dark eyes are inscrutable? Hers were as clear and cheerful as a cloudless July sky, and as unfathomable.

‘Wish she’d come bouncing round me like that!’ grinned Dave as he watched her saunter out.

‘Don’t wish too hard,’ I said disapprovingly, ‘or – what’s his name? – Stuart the Prop will be coming to bounce you around!’

Dave grinned. ‘Bit behind in the gossip, aren’t you? Big Stu’s old news. She gave him the heave-ho months back!’

‘Oh? Who is it now, then?’

Dave blinked thoughtfully in his own cigarette smoke. ‘Don’t know there’s anyone in particular, right now. Hey! Speaking of which, I met this amazing girl at a dance last weekend –’

Dave had a unique gift; he could describe any number of girls in minute detail, and still make then all sound alike. He was probably right, at that. I let the anatomy lesson chatter on; it was something else familiar, and I needed everything I could get. I couldn’t drive away the night. It obstinately refused to fade; indeed, little details kept leaping back at me, bright and clear – the gleaming patch of water and its entangled masts, the heavy tang of those roots, the woman’s jewellery jingling lightly as she drew sword, the hidden tremor in Jyp’s voice. There was no getting away from it. Last night either something had happened, something had been unleashed – and I did not like to think what – or I was steadily going mad. I couldn’t say which idea scared me more.

At last Dave went in search of coffee, and left me alone to face my dilemma. Faced it had to be. Why couldn’t I just let this fade, he way it had the first time? Or was that only madness, too? I could run the same computer checks again, but what would that tell me? Couldn’t I remember any other solid facts but that one ship name? Then I hesitated. There was something … The jingle of that woman’s jewellery, Mall’s jewellery – that voice of hers telling the Wolves to get away, get back on board that hulk …

Pretty evidently she’d spat out the name of the Wolves’ ship, or of one crewed by them. What if I –

Quickly, looking around anxiously to see if Clare or anyone was coming, I logged onto the harbour register once again, and tapped in the name as I guessed it must be spelt. Chorazin …

The search screen stayed up only a second or two. Then it blinked and scrolled down into the usual file card.

I closed my eyes. What next? If I typed in Flying Dutchman, what was I going to find? Captain Vanderdecken, overdue at the Europoort-Scheldt with a cargo of ectoplasm?

But there the entry was, when I opened my eyes. There was no fooling myself, not this time, no writing this off as drunken romanticism or nightmares. After last night I knew the difference only too well.

I wasn’t even mad. And if I wasn’t, perhaps a great many other people weren’t, either. Beneath the blandly obvious surface of things there must be all kinds of dark undercurrents stirring; and perhaps they, like me, had swum blindly into one and been borne away, kicking, far beyond their depth.

Jyp had been right to boot me out. I was a creature of the surface, of the shallows; I’d no resources to help me cope. Suddenly I was afraid to confront the world I knew, the world I thought I’d come to some kind of truce with. Never mind sticking to everyday life now, moving on rails – I wouldn’t even dare trust that, not any more. How could I believe the blandly ordinary appearance of things now? How was I to know some other, stronger current wasn’t lurking in the depths beneath, ready to sweep me away?

The telephone on my desk began to ring. It had a soft, warbling call, but I jumped and sat staring, heart pounding, as if it were the chatter of a rattlesnake. Then Dave came back in, and with a hasty snort I extinguished the screen with one hand and picked up the phone with the other.

‘A Mr Peters to speak to you, Steve,’ said Clare. ‘About a private shipping matter, is all he says, so he wants you personally. Are you feeling up to dealing with him?’

‘Oh, put him on,’ I sighed. Every company in our line gets its share of private individuals wanting to ship Auntie’s armchair or their bargain grandfather clock over to America, that kind of thing; we usually referred them to specialist movers. But when the smooth voice came on the line I changed my opinion.

‘Mr Stephen Fisher? But of course!’ The English was too impeccable, and accented. A lawyer, was my immediate reaction, or a broker, or some other kind of fixer. ‘My name is T.J. Peters. Accept my apologies for breaking into your busy day. But I have a matter in hand of a substantial goods consignment I wish to import. The nature of it I would rather not disclose –’

‘Then I’m sorry –’ I began. Once in a while we also attract cagey characters wanting to exploit our reputation to ship large anonymous crates without attracting customs attention; them we fend off, hastily.

‘Over the telephone, I should say. To you in person, of course, there need be no problem of commercial security. But the matter is urgent. If I might assume the liberty of calling upon you later this afternoon, say around four-thirty, would I find you in?’

Of course he would; I could hardly say anything else. But as the afternoon wore on I wished more and more I had put him off. The sky outside had stopped drizzling, but looked heavier and greyer and more thundery as the day passed. It was stifling; but worse still was the growing sense of oppression that hung in the heavy air. The whole office seemed to feel it; people snapped at one another, made stupid slips or just gave up working and sat staring into space. Dave fell silent; Clare made me three cups of coffee in twenty minutes. Gemma went off home with a headache. There was something almost menacing about it. I longed for honest thunder and rain to break the spell. Thanks to Mr Peters I couldn’t just slip off home; and I was glad of that, in a way. I didn’t want to be alone right now. The thought of it kept me working, though I didn’t seem to be getting very far. At last, around four-fifteen, I decided I needed some air to wake me up before my client came, and mooched out along the back corridor.

The glaziers had finished with the back door, and I swung it open and stepped out onto the balcony leading to the metal stairs. A few breaths of air were stirring here, freshened by the trees beyond the wall of the car-park; faint drops of rain sprinkled onto my face, like tears. I drew a few deep breaths, thought of climbing one floor up to the top, but decided against it. Mr Peters should be here in ten minutes, and I wanted to brush up, straighten my tie and so on. I was glad I’d put on my Cagliari suit today; these Continental types were more impressed by Italian tailoring. I went back inside, and was just passing the back of the office next to mine when I heard the first voices raised, a rising scale of protest, outrage, and sheer fright. Then the crash came.

In that sullen quiet it was appalling. It might have been thunder; but the shriek that followed froze my blood. Now there were other voices, angry shouts, cries and sounds of smashing, crashing, things falling – and more shrieks.

I froze, with every nerve in me raw and shivering. Before last night I might have gone running to see what was the matter; and who knows what might have happened then? As it was, it took all the strength of will I had to inch forward. And as I did so, I saw, blurred behind the ribbed glass partition of my office, tall shapes that strode back and forth amidst a crescendo of booming and splintering crashes. Then suddenly one stopped, loomed up with frightening speed right against the glass, and I saw a weird spiked crest bobbing, heard that harsh reptilian croak again, raised now in a crowing rasp of triumph.

Wolves.

That unfroze my limbs. I moved; I ran. As well I did; the glass exploded outwards above me. A huge fist burst through in a shower of splinters and spraying blood, clutching just where my head had been. There was no going back. I sprinted along the corridor, dived around the corner as I heard the back door of my office burst open behind me and boots come clashing out into the corridor. But I was just far enough ahead. I dashed out into the front hall, a devastated mess with nobody in sight. I skidded violently on the tiles, avoiding the overturned bookcase, and clutched at the sagging front doors. One came away in my hand, lurched sideways and fell; I sprang through the opening and out onto the landing. There were the stairs; but in four floors they’d have me. The lift – I risked a precious instant to lunge at it, jab the button. And miracle of miracles, the doors slid open.

I plunged in, slammed against the wall and just as the first of the Wolves came crashing out of the offices, I stabbed a finger at the control panel. The sudden look of relief on my face must have puzzled the Wolf, because he and the others at his heels halted, gaping, as if expecting something to happen. But nothing did. The doors stayed open. And I remembered in a sudden flood of terror that there was always a few seconds’ delay –

The look on the lumpen grey face changed suddenly to oafish triumph. Saliva gushed between the gravestone teeth, and he hurried himself forward, arms outstretched. With a soft mechanical sigh the doors clunked together in his face. Something crashed against the outside with jarring force; but the lift was moving. I sagged with relief again; but still I felt something was wrong the lift began to slow, the extra weight lifted off my shoulders – and only then did I realize what it was.

In my panic I’d pressed the wrong button. The lift had gone up. There was only one floor above, and nothing to stop the Wolves running up after me. I reached for the down button, stopped myself just in time; they’d page the lift on the way back. The cage bounced gently to a halt, and the doors clunked open. I flinched back, expecting to see tall shapes waiting, or coming spilling up out of the stairwell. There was nobody, nothing except clattering from below. I dashed to the railing and – very gingerly – peered down.

The Wolves were battering at the lift doors. One huge lout with a bristly shaven head was struggling to force what looked like a crowbar between them, bracing his huge boots against the frame and slamming his heavy shoulders against the door. I goggled, and ducked back. They weren’t even looking up or down the stairs. Daft as it seemed, they couldn’t have the faintest idea what a lift was. They must think I was still shut in that little room there, behind the metal doors.

There was a sudden screech of metal, and then an even louder howl that seemed to echo away into the distance. Then, out of that same distance, an equally echoing crash cut it short. I had to cram the back of my hand in my mouth to stifle a whoop of hysterical laughter. The Wolves had valiantly forced the doors, and at least one of them, the crowbar boy probably, had fallen a full four storeys down the shaft. Behind me the lift alarm clanged into sudden life, with enough volume to bring the whole building running. For good measure I smashed the glass of the fire alarm – I’d always wanted to use that little hammer – and thumbed it too. From the floors below came the sound of doors slamming. I turned, to see the switchboard girl from this office peering nervously out through the doors.

‘What – what’s all’a noise?’

I grabbed her and ducked back in. ‘Have you called the police yet? No? Christ, didn’t you hear –’ I heard the tinny jangle from the headphones of the walkman on the desk. ‘Never mind!’ I dived for the switchboard. ‘Are you the only one up here?’

She made a face. ‘Aye. They’re all off early wi’ the weather. I’ve gotta wait f’ me boyfriend t’pick me up’.

‘Worse luck for you! The back door – locked? Then find somewhere you can shut yourself in, the ladies’ maybe – Operator? Police, please – fast!’

And fast they were. There must have been a patrol car nearby; it was only a minute after I’d put down the phone, and I was still fighting the temptation to go and lock myself in the ladies’ as well, when I heard the approaching siren. It gave me enough nerve to snatch up a weighted ashtray stand and go cautiously back out. There was no one visible on this landing or ours, nothing to hear above the row except a rising hubbub from the street, where the fire alarm had decanted the lower floors. I sidled down the stairs, wishing my heart would steady up a little; still nothing. I reached our landing, dithered momentarily whether to go in, but showed some sense and fled hell-for-leather down the stairs. When I came back up a minute later it was with two policemen at my back, one huge, and three rugby forwards from the insurance brokerage below.

I don’t know what I expected to find. I dreaded the thought. But to my great relief the first thing we came on was Barry, blood all down his expensive shirtfront, ministering to Judy from the switchboard. She was stretched out on the visitor’s seating, with a black eye, and, by the looks of it, a broken arm; but at least they were both alive.

‘Steve!’ he said, rising and grabbing me. His nose started bleeding again, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘They didn’t get you? It was you set off the alarms? Christ, that was timely thinking! You saved our bloody bacon! Those bastards! Kicking us round like footballs one minute, then one ring, and off like bloody bunny rabbits! Should’ve seen ’em run! Bloody cowardly maniac punks –’ I gave him my handkerchief. He dabbed gently at his swelling nose, and I saw it shift slightly, it was broken. ‘She tried to call,’ he mumbled. ‘Knocked her flat an’ tipped her desk over on her … Bastards! Utter frigging bastards …’

He ran down into shaky swearing, and I helped him to a seat by Judy. The police and the others hadn’t hung around; they’d charged swiftly through the offices, and I heard them shouting that the bastards had got out the back. Other police were arriving now, and the office staff were beginning to appear. By the looks of it they were all walking wounded, nobody actually dead or crippled, but they still made a hell of a sorry sight – a limping parade of black eyes, bloody shins, split mouths, lacerated ears and blossoming purple bruises everywhere. Some had scalp wounds, bleeding like pigs, others streaks of vomit over their clothes. It looked as if the Wolves had roughed everyone up just as a matter of course, men and women alike, especially about the head. I’d heard of muggers doing that, to disorientate their victims. Most of the typists and younger secretaries had had their clothes ripped half off, too – by the looks of it, more to humiliate than harm. Even Gemma’s PA, five years off retirement, was clutching her elegant blouse closed as she helped one of her secretaries along, green with shock.

Secretaries … There were faces I didn’t see. I leaped up and ran around to my own office. When I reached it I stopped dead in the doorless frame. The other day’s devastation was nothing compared to this. The place had been quite literally torn apart, every stick of furniture shattered. Even the partition between the inner and outer offices had been smashed down; and as for my terminal, my desk, my chair even, I was hard put to it to recognise them. They lay shattered and trampled, stamped into a shapeless pile. One of the rugger players was helping Dave up from the floor below his desk. ‘Dave!’ I shouted. He blinked confusedly at me through his unswollen right eye. ‘Dave! is Clare all right?’

He only mumbled ‘Uh – Clare? Take Clare –’

I seized his shoulders and shook him. ‘Where is she?’

The insurance man pulled me off. ‘Leave him, Steve! Can’t you see he’s concussed?’

I let him go, and pushed past. She wasn’t in the wreckage of her own office; nor, fortunately, was she under the mess here. If she’d been elsewhere when the attack came … I looked in every office, but there was nobody left. With a numb, leaden feeling inside me I stalked back around through the milling, chattering crowd, peered into the typists’ room, the photocopier room, the gents, even into the ladies; none of the girls mopping up their injuries there gave me a second look. And none of them was Clare.

‘Clare!’ I shouted above the hubbub. ‘Has anyone seen Clare?’

One of the typists, gulping down water, gave a sudden squeal and dropped her glass. ‘Clare! They were carrying her –’ Then she dissolved into hysterics.

That was enough. I barged out into the lobby and ploughed through the crowd, now swelled by arriving ambulance men, and down the stairs at full gallop. Down at the bottom was Barry, with a police sergeant, staring at a track of blood that led across the hallway from the liftshaft. ‘Pretty tough punks, if you ask me, to drop four floors and just crawl away – and why the hell –’

Barry saw me and waved me down. ‘Sergeant, it was Steve here who –’

I shook loose. ‘Later, dammit, Barry! They’ve taken Clare!’

The sergeant plucked at my arm with a heavy and practised hand. I tried to pull loose, but it almost jerked me off my feet. In a sudden, desperate rush of frustrated anger I whirled around and smashed my fist into his face. Even a day earlier I would never have done it; and I would never have dreamed I could hit so hard. He literally seemed to fly backwards off his feet, and hit the wall in a crumpled heap.

I turned and ran, hearing Barry trumpet ‘What the hell –’ from behind me, and then, more urgently ‘Steve!’

I owed Barry a lot, but I didn’t dare listen. I’d no intention of waiting, for him or for the police; I didn’t dare. I ran. Out into the street, scattering the crowds of doughy-faced gawkers; one made a tentative step into my path, thought better of it and sprang back. I reached the car-park, fumbling with my keys, flung the door wide and thumped down behind the wheel. I twisted the car back in a roaring arc, hunching it down on its suspension like a springing cat, and drove straight out. My mirror showed me blue uniforms spilling out of the door, but they didn’t worry me. The mouth of the little street was so choked with ambulances and gawkers that they’d never get after me in time, and it was one-way; the far end would be clear. They’d put out an alert, of course; but all the local cars were probably here already, and once I was out of the area spotting my car among all its anonymous look-alikes in the late afternoon rush would be a matter of sheer chance.

Provided, of course, I drove sensibly and didn’t draw attention to myself. I had to be careful about that. It was oddly exhilarating, playing the fugitive, for all the sick worry underneath. Oddly, because it didn’t sound like the man I saw in my shaving mirror. I’d always been a law-abiding type by nature – still was, come to that. I’d no malice against the police, none at all, no wish to make a hard job harder. Sooner or later I’d have to face the consequences of what I’d done. No question what it would look like, punching the policeman, bolting from the scene like that; they’d figure I knew something – and they’d make damn sure I told them. All right, I’d try, mad as it would sound; but I just couldn’t let them get in my way, not now. It was a higher, older law I was obeying now.

A law of the instincts, perhaps. The thought of anyone innocent in the hands of those creatures was bad enough – but Clare … What was she to me? A junior colleague. Hardly even a friend. I’d been careful to keep it that way; hardly ever saw her outside work, didn’t know much about her life. Yet she’d been my secretary for four years. In that time, whether or not I’d meant to, I could hardly have helped getting a pretty clear idea of her personality, the essential Clare. A better sense of what made her tick, maybe, than any of her come-and-go boyfriends. To update an old saying, nobody’s a hero to his secretary. Yet she’d stuck to me; and I’d reason to know she’d taken my part fiercely when it counted. It surprised me a little how fiercely I wanted to repay that. I told myself it must be sheer guilt. I was responsible for her; yet I’d brought this on her, by my lunatic compulsion to delve into things better left alone, things I should have forgotten as Jyp told me to. But there was more to it than guilt, than the wish to help I’d have had for anybody in that plight. I could see her in my mind’s eye, and it took a lot of effort to drive slow, keep safe, to run with the traffic and watch the shadows gather ahead, beneath the slowly reddening sky.

I had to face it. I was fond of the girl, as fond as I could be of anybody. All this time some kind of feeling had been building up, creeping through all my neat defences, where I’d thought every chink had been stopped; all this time my instincts had been playing me traitor. Now they were whipping me into something like a frenzy. God, what must she be suffering now? What must she be thinking? If she was still alive to think, even –

I had to help her, whatever the cost, wherever I had to go.

I knew what that would mean. I’d have to open a gate that was closed, retrace a forgotten path, recross a forbidden threshold. That way neither reason nor memory had ever opened; my instincts were the only guides I had. And from the moment that policeman laid his fat hand on my arm those same instincts had shrieked a warning. He and the authority he represented were part of a narrower world. With them or any others in tow I’d never find the way, not if I circled those dark streets forever. Where I was going was for me alone.

The way there felt interminable. I ran into snarl-up after snarl-up, and the ring-road lights seemed to blaze red every time they saw me coming. I’d have been ready enough to run them tonight, but I didn’t dare be caught, for Clare’s sake. Worst of all was coming down towards the roundabout, when I heard a siren somewhere behind me; but it was some ways back, and a couple of heavy trucks were blocking it from view. I wasn’t too worried. It might not be me they were after; and even if it was they couldn’t possibly catch me up before the turn-off. I reached the roundabout, and I was just signalling to turn when my wing-mirror suddenly filled with another car, roaring around the outside right into my path. One bump would have bounced me into the other lanes and almost inevitably caused a multiple pile-up; I flung the wheel over just in time, to a torrent of hooting and shouting from behind. All aimed at me, of course, as if they hadn’t seen the real offender; I got only a glimpse of a glittering red sports car and a swarthy face, yellowish and sneering, behind the wheel, as he sailed tranquilly past and away up Harbour Walk. While I had to filter around the roundabout again to reach the turn-off, and hear the cobbles under my tyres at long last. The high walls closed around me, and the sound of the siren seemed to fade into the distance.

Except for a truck or two Danube Street was empty, and I could put my foot down. But a new doubt assailed me; would the car itself be a problem? Shouldn’t I park it, and go on foot? But I’d managed all right with Jyp; and there wasn’t time to risk it. A likely-looking side-street opened before me, and without stopping to wonder I turned down it, zigzagged with it around the back walls of warehouses, forbiddingly topped with rows of spikes, or embedded glass fragments that gleamed coldly in the low light. Out into another street, stared down on by the boarded windows of a derelict factory, like a blinded sentinel, and down to a junction where my instincts faltered a moment. Streets opened to either side in every direction, long shadows stretched out along them, lazy and enigmatic. I wound down the window, and smelt the sea on the wind, heard the cries of gulls; looking up, I saw them wheeling against the threatening clouds. But they gave me no clue which way to turn. Then, looking leftward, I saw the longest shadows crowned with jagged, spiny crests, a tangled interlace of thorns; and that jungle of crosstrees and rigging sprang to life in my mind. I spun the wheel, and the car seemed to fly across the cobbles. Leftward I turned, and those shadows fell across me like giant fingers. For there before me, at the street’s end, the majestic forest of mastheads lifted stark against the lit horizon.

I didn’t stop; I accelerated, and turned with tyres squealing right onto the wharf itself. The high dark hulls loomed over me; in the last warm daylight they seemed less daunting, less monolithic, lined and decorated with bright paintwork, and even delicate traceries of gilt. Mellow brasswork gleamed along the rails, and round the portholes in some of the sleeker, more modern-looking craft. But there was little sign of life aboard them, save a few figures in the rigging or leaning over the rails; a gaggle of men were unloading one of them, swinging bales ashore in a net dangling from the end of a boom, something I’d never seen outside a nineteenth century photograph. A horse-drawn dray stood ready to receive them; but both men and horse watched me with incurious stares as I roared past. The wharves seemed to stretch without a break as far as I could see in either direction. But on the brickwork of the central building, in bold Victorian capitals almost bleached and crumbled away by a century or more of sun and salt air – FISHER’S WHARF. And below it, even less visible, arrows pointing to left and right, and beneath them long lists of names.

Stockholm

Trinity

Melrose

Danziger

Tyre …

I didn’t stop to read the rest. It was the way I was heading. I stamped on the accelerator and surged away, bouncing and rattling across the rough stones. Four wharves down, past warehouses that rose as high and ancient as any castle walls, and as mysterious; strange savours mingled in the wind, among the stink of tar and hides and stale oils. And at last, on a wall ahead, I saw, in Gothic script, the faded legend Danziger Wharf and swung the car around to a screeching stop. I jumped out, ran a few steps … and stopped.

There, for the first time in all that great phalanx of ships, there was a breach. Three berths held tall ships like all the rest; but the fourth berth stood empty, and through the gap the harbour waters rippled golden with the sunset light. From the capstans and the iron bollards at the quayside short lengths of heavy rope lay strewn like so many dead snakes across the wharf, or dangling down over the edge. I ran forward, stooped to one and saw that its end was clean, unfrayed. In deep despair I sank down, staring at the empty waters. I’d made good time; but the Wolves, in their own strange way, had been faster. They’d cut their cables, and were gone. And Clare with them …

But how long ago? It couldn’t be more than a few minutes, half an hour at most. It took time to get those huge sailing ships stirring. Surely they’d still be in sight! I sprang up.

But then, slowly, I sank again to my knees on the rough stones. It was almost an attitude of worship. I was beyond doubting my sanity any longer. I was ready for great wonders – so I thought. But nothing I had ever imagined could prepare me for the sight I saw then.

Ahead of me the harbour walls opened onto the borderless expanses of the sea, grey and forbidding as the gathering mantle of clouds above, save where the last light of sunset burned a great slashing gap. And in that gap the thin tongues of cloud, tinged with glowing fire, formed an image of radiant sunlit slopes, edged with gold, bordering a stretch of misty azure. I knew the pattern of those slopes, I remembered them all too well, though I saw them now from yet another angle. It was the archipelago among the clouds, the same as I had seen before, opening now before me above the empty sea. And down the heart of that stretch of azure, wide and blue and glittering as an estuary studded with islands, bordered with broad golden sands, I saw the high ornate stern of a great ship, its sails outspread like wings, beating up and away into the fathomless depths of the sky.