The Claw

Nineteen

It was almost dawn before he slept. He paced the long room for hours, shuddering from head to foot whenever he remembered what he'd almost done or thought of himself at all. If he couldn't be trusted with Anna he had no right to stay here, he kept thinking. More than once he found himself heading for the front door, but where could he go? Perhaps down to the beach and into the waves until they were too strong for him, until he couldn't come back. Sometimes his shuddering turned into a groan of disgust with himself, but with a consideration that seemed grotesque under the circumstances, he tried not to make any noise in case it woke Anna or Liz. He hardly knew what he was doing. When at last he huddled on the couch, it was to hide from himself.

The phone woke him. He knew he ought to answer it before the ringing of the extensions on each floor woke Liz and Anna, but he was listening to the sea, slow and distant as his breathing heard at the edge of sleep. Then he remembered why he was on the couch, knew why he didn't want to wake.

He struggled to his feet in the early morning light. He felt cold and outcast and contemptible, unrecognizable to himself. As he grabbed the phone he remembered grabbing the piece of driftwood, remembered feeling that the moment when the nail in the wood bit into flesh would be as satisfying as the drag of a fishhook buried in a prize catch. He was close to fleeing, running in the hope he could lose himself. Instead he ground the receiver into his ear as if the pain could suffice.

The voice, when it came, was distorted by jagged static and its closeness to the mouthpiece at the other end. 'May I speak to Mr Alan Knight?'

The man's politeness seemed exaggerated, made Alan think of the police. If they had found him out, that might be the best thing for everyone. 'Knight speaking,' he said, and felt as if he were giving himself up.

'My name is Banjo.'

That sounded like a bad joke, not merely pointless but unbearably tasteless, and Alan was about to drop the receiver into its cradle when the other said, 'Dr Hethering-ton told me where to reach you.'

The name made Alan grind his teeth, as much to hurt himself as anything. 'You're a friend of his, are you?'

'A friend of a colleague of his.' The other hesitated. 'He called me to find out if I knew you. You seem to have shaken him up.'

There was no satisfaction in that, not now: no reason to go on talking, no point to the call. 'Well, what do you want?' Alan demanded.

Again the hesitation, and now the static and the way the man was speaking into the mouthpiece told him it was a long distance call. It sounded, he thought miserably, like Nigeria. 'Dr Hetherington told me that the talisman you took back to England was stolen from you,' the other said.

'So?'

A longer pause. 'Have you any children?'

Was he accusing Anna of stealing the claw? For a moment Alan felt protective of her, until he remembered how inappropriate that was. 'I have one daughter,' he said, appalled how guilty and hopeless saying that made him feel.

'Is she safe?'

'What do you mean?'

The voice repeated it, slowly and clearly. 'Is she safe?'

All at once Alan understood that they both knew what that meant. 'No,' he said in a voice he hardly recognized as his.

'And you've been having dreams you can't explain.'

Alan thought of the dream of hunting Anna, the fleshless man with the spidery eyes, the resolution that had been too terrible to remember when he awoke. 'How do you know all this?' he said when he could.

'Because I think I am responsible for what is happening to you.'

Alan's fist clenched until the receiver groaned. 'Where are you?'

'Lagos.'

'Called up to gloat, have you?' Alan managed not to shout, for fear of waking Liz and Anna. It wasn't consideration, he realized now: he was simply afraid to face them.

'No, Mr Knight. I want to help you. I did my best to help David Marlowe, but I was too late.'

'You helped him, did you!' Alan swallowed his bitter laughter before it carried upstairs. 'My God, you certainly have some results to show for it, don't you! And now you want to do the same to me!'

'Mr Knight, Marlowe was ray good friend. I worked with him and knew him well. I saw what was happening to him and told him to get rid of the cause however he could. That is why he gave the talisman to you.'

'Getting rid of it didn't help him much, did it?' Alan hissed.

'No, not at all. I told you, I was too late.' The voice was subdued now. 'For you there is still time. Now I know better what has to be done.'

'Why should you want to help me? I don't even know who you are.'

'Isaac Banjo, translator at the University of Lagos.' He caught his breath audibly. 'I want to help because of what I have already done. I have daughters of my own.'

'How can you help me?'

'First you must come here. I give you my word that it is necessary. These are not issues that can be discussed at a distance, particularly on a line like this.'

Good God, he was talking telecommunications now! 'You're really asking me to come all the way to Nigeria?'

'Yes, on the first available flight. What else can you do?'

Dismayingly, that made sense. 'Just to talk?'

'To do what you must to regain yourself. That can only be done here.'

Alan had to believe him; he was the only person in the world who seemed to be offering hope. At least Anna couldn't be in danger from her father at that distance and besides, he wanted to come face to face with the man responsible for what had happened to him. 'All right,' he said.

He copied down the numbers where the translator could be reached, he told him he would let him know when he would be arriving at Ikeja, and felt he was doing all this in a dream. Before the end he had to shout over a crossed line. When he put down the receiver, wondering if he had any right to hope, he realized Liz and Anna were awake.

He went up at once, to get it over with. He stood outside the bedroom door and was tempted to listen to their murmured conversation, to hear what they were saying about him. That made him so frightened of himself that he knocked hastily and went in.

Anna was in the double bed. She looked small and vulnerable. Liz was standing beside her, and turned to stare at him, her eyes utterly unwelcoming. 'Look, I have to go away,' he said.

'Yes, I think you better had.'

She managed to make him sound both outcast and unreasonable to be leaving. He couldn't argue, he could tell her anything except that he was going back to Nigeria. He closed the door with a gentleness that made him want to weep. It wasn't Liz's attitude that sent him to the phone to find out how soon he could leave for Nigeria, it was the way Anna had hidden behind her mother as soon as he'd entered the room.