The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE MAN INSIDE the house is anxious, but reasonably calm. The phone rings stridently, imperiously, several times during the late afternoon and early evening. But he does not answer it, for he has seen the post-office van repairing (repairing!) the telephone wires just along the road. Clumsy and obvious. They must think him stupid. Yet all the time he knows that they are not stupid, either, and the knowledge nags away in his mind. Over and over again he tells himself that they cannot know, can only guess; can never prove. The maze would defeat an indefatigable Ariadne, and the ball of thread leads only to blind and bricked-up alleyways. Infernal phone! He waits until the importunate caller has exhausted a seemingly limitless patience, and takes the receiver off its stand. But it purrs — intolerably. He turns on the transistor radio at ten minutes to six and listens, yet with only a fraction of his conscious faculties, to the BBCs City correspondent discussing the fluctuations in the Financial Times index, and the fortunes of the floating pound. He himself has no worries about money. No worries at all.

The man outside the house continues to watch. Already he has been watching for over three and a half hours, and his feet are damp and cold. He looks at his luminous watch: 5.40 p.m. Only another twenty minutes before his relief arrives. Still no movement, save for the shadow that repeatedly passes back and forth across the curtained window.

If sleep be defined as the relaxation of consciousness, the man inside the house does not sleep that night. He is dressed again at 6 am. and he waits. At 6.45 am. he hears the clatter of milk-hordes in the darkened road outside. But still he waits. It is not until 7.45 a.m. that the paper boy arrives with The Times. It is still dark, and the little business is speedily transacted. Uncomplicated; unobserved.

The man outside the house has almost given up hope when at 1.15 p.m. the door opens and a man emerges and walks unhurriedly down towards Oxford. The man outside switches to 'transmission' and speaks into his mobile radio. Then he switches to 'reception', and the message is brief and curt: 'Follow him, Dickson! And don't let him see you!'

The man who had been inside the house walks to the railway station, where he looks around him and then walks into the buffet, orders a cup of coffee, sits by the window, and looks out onto the car park. At 1.35 a car drives slowly past — a familiar car, which turns down the incline into the car park. The automatic arm is raised and the car makes for the furthest corner of the area. The car park is almost full. The man in the buffet puts down his half-finished coffee, lights a cigarette, puts the spent match neatly back into the box, and walks out.

At 2.00 p.m. the young girl in the maroon dress can stand it no longer. The customers, too, though they are only few, have been looking at him queerly. She walks from behind the counter and taps him on the shoulder. He is not much above medium height. 'Excuse me, sir. Bu' have you come in for a coffee, or somethin'?'

'No. I'll have a cup o' tea, please.' He speaks pleasantly, and as he puts down his powerful binoculars she sees that his eyes are a palish shade of grey.

It is just after five when Lewis gets home. He is tired and his feet are like ice.

'Are you home for the night?'

'Yes, luv, thank goodness! I'm freezing cold.'

'Is that bloody man, Morse, tryin' to give you pneumornia, or somethin'?'

Lewis hears his wife all right, but he is thinking of something else, 'He's a clever bugger, Morse is. Christ, he's clever! Though whether he's right or not. ' But his wife is no longer listening, and Lewis hears the thrice-blessed clatter of the chip pan in the kitchen.