Chapter 12
Closing Time
The wall was gone, and then the floor was gone, and then there was grass.
He did not see how it happened. There was the black gap at the east end, and the heat on his back like a hand, and a roar behind him that got into his ribs. Then his boots went from concrete to something soft. He took four more steps. Then his knees folded, and he went down on the lawn with Chris on top of him, and lay there with his face in cold wet grass, breathing.
It smelled wonderful. It smelled of earth and rain. It was the best thing he had ever smelled in his life.
"Are we out?" said Chris, into his shoulder.
"Yes."
"Are we out out?"
"We're on the lawn."
"Oh, that's lovely. I like a lawn." Chris gave a hoarse little laugh that turned into a cough. "I'd like to lie on it for a bit. I might never get up."
Ethan rolled onto his back.
The Mill was on fire.
It stood against the sky a hundred yards behind him, huge and square and black, and every window in it had turned the color of the inside of a stove. A sheet of flame was standing up from the ground floor, straight and thick, with a sound like a flag in a gale. Sparks went up in a spiral, bright as stars, and blew away over the poplars. The whole front of the building was moving. The air above it wavered and bent. And at the top of the chimney, in the roaring orange light, he saw the white letters running down the shaft, as clear and plain as the day he first came to work, M E R C E R, with the fire behind them.
He looked at it for as long as he could. It was not long.
"Don't," said Chris. "Don't look. It's no good. I looked at mine once and it never went away."
"What's yours?"
"A hospital. The day my dad died." He wiped his face. "We can talk about it."
"Not tonight."
"Not tonight." He lifted his head, and his voice changed. "Mr. Cole. You've got a gate behind you."
He sat up.
The floodlights had been turned round. They stood in a row along the top of the wall, white and hard, and they were pointing at the lawn, so that everything on it was lit up like a stage. The gate stood open. It was a tall iron arch, thirty yards off, with a drive going away beyond it, and in the drive was a car. It was gray, long, with its back door open and its interior light on. A small bald man in a dark suit stood beside it with both hands held out at his sides, palms forward, and an expression of terrible politeness.
Beside the car, with its back doors shut, stood a van.
Two men were leaning on it.
They'd straightened up when Ethan came out. The thin one had stepped away from the bumper, and stood quite easily, with his feet apart, holding a shotgun across his chest, the barrels pointing at the sky. The other was bigger, with a thick black beard and a heavy brown coat, and a cigarette in his mouth. He had not moved. He was watching the fire, with the light on his face, in a thoughtful, patient, bored kind of way, as a man watches a kettle.
"Evening," said the thin one.
Ethan said nothing.
"Hell of a night."
"Yes."
"I'm Ron. This is Hank. It's the end of the shift, and we've come to pick up." He smiled. He had a boy's smile, rather sweet, and a gap in his teeth. "You're the winner."
"I'm not."
"Course you are." Ron took a step forward. "It's you. Mr. Cole. I've got your picture. It's on my phone." He did not take it out. "You're through the gate. It's two minutes past. We said ninety seconds, but Mr. Vance said, Let him have a bit more. He's got a soft heart."
"I switched on every check-in."
"That's right. You did. You're the only one I've heard of who never missed." Ron's smile widened. "You got through the gate. That's all it says. We've got to give you the, there's a little presentation. In the van."
"In the van."
"It's quite comfy. There's a seat."
"I'm not getting in the van."
"Come on, man."
"No."
"It's cold out. You're soaked. God, you've had a terrible night. Look at you." Ron's voice was warm and persuasive. "Put your friend down. We'll look after him. We've got a medic, in the back. He'll have that leg sorted in five minutes. And you can have a cup of tea."
"I'm not getting in the van."
"Hank," said Ron.
The big man took the cigarette out of his mouth.
He did it unhurriedly, between a finger and thumb, and dropped it, and put his boot on it. He took a step. He wasn't carrying anything, as far as Ethan could see. His hands were empty. They hung from the cuffs of the brown coat, large and square and very clean, and he looked at Ethan across thirty feet of grass with a pair of small dark deep-set eyes that had no expression whatever.
"Easy way or the other," said Hank.
It was the first time he had spoken. His voice was deep, flat, a little hoarse.
Ethan got to his feet.
He did not do it quickly. He stood, with the roaring heat on his back and the cold grass on his hands, and Chris lay at his feet and made a small thin sound. He looked at the van. He looked at the car. He looked at the little man with his hands out, who was standing quite still, quite pale, in his good suit, with the fire in his glasses. He looked at the two men, and at the gate.
There's nobody coming.
I did the one thing. I went back. And it didn't make a difference.
It never would have. It's just a thing you do.
And then, very slowly, he reached up to his chest, and took hold of the little yellow whistle that hung on its cord, the one the woman at the table had given him, in a gray coat, by a lamp. He put it between his teeth. He took a breath.
He blew.
It was not a loud sound.
It was thin, and high, and flat, like a bird or a kettle, and it went across the lawn in the roar of the fire like a needle through a heavy cloth. It rang. It cut. It hung in the air for a long clear second, and in the whole length of the lit lawn, every head turned.
Ron laughed.
"What's that for? Man, that's a whistle. You can't."
"Rule nine," said a voice.
It came from the gate.
It was not a loud voice. It was dry, level, quiet, a voice you had to lean toward to hear. But it carried. And from the shadow of the arch, from behind the iron pier where the floodlight did not reach, a tall lean figure in a blue jacket stepped out into the white, with a flask in one hand and a small black book in the other.
"Rule nine," said Jack Ford, again. "Section two. A Runner may concede the game at any point by sounding the whistle provided. On the sounding of the whistle, all Hunters will cease their pursuit. The Runner will be collected by a member of the staff and returned to his place of origin. No prize shall be paid, and no further action shall be taken."
Ethan stared at him.
"It's never been used," said Jack, after a moment, to nobody in particular. "Not in four games. It's in the schedule that the client signs, and Mr. Vance's people don't mention it to the Runners, and I'd say that was no accident. A man who knew he could stop would stop. And then there'd be nobody to watch."
The whistle. The woman at the table said, hold on to it.
Jack walked down the drive.
He did it at a slow, steady pace, with his cap pulled low. He came to a halt beside the car, ten yards from the van, and stood with his feet slightly apart, and opened the book on his palm. He did not look up. He turned a page.
"It's here. In black and white. It's page eleven."
"Jack," said Ron. His smile had gone a little stiff. "Come on. You know that's been revised."
"By who?"
"By the management."
"I see." Jack turned another page. "I've got the signed copy. It's got a client's initials on every sheet. H.R. In blue. At the bottom. No change to the terms is valid unless countersigned by the client." He looked up, mildly. "Has Mrs. Reeves countersigned a revision?"
"I wouldn't know."
"I would. She hasn't."
Ron glanced at Hank.
Hank had not moved. He stood, with his big square hands at his sides, and his small dark eyes went from Jack to Ethan, and from Ethan to the car, and back. He seemed to be adding something up. It did not seem to take him long.
"Mr. Ford," he said. "You've been told."
"I have."
"He wrote the rules."
"He wrote them for a client," said Jack. "He's the House."
There was a silence.
It was a very long one. It was broken only by the sound of the fire, the steady tearing roar, and the soft crash of a falling beam, a long way off, somewhere in the Mill. Behind the arch, in the dark of the drive, a night bird called once, and was quiet.
"Pierce," said Jack.
The little man in the suit jumped.
"Yes, Mr. Ford?"
"You heard the whistle."
"I did."
"Under the schedule."
"I know the schedule."
"What does it say?"
"That I'm to take him," said Pierce. His voice shook. He cleared his throat, and tried again. "That a Runner who concedes is collected by a member of the staff. That I am the staff. That it's my duty."
"And will you?"
Pierce looked at the big man with the beard.
He looked at the van. He looked at the long gleaming back seat of the car, and the open door, and his own two hands, which had begun to tremble. He wore a small gold ring on his left. There was a small bright bead of sweat on his forehead, and the fire shone in it. He was a tidy, quiet, ordinary man in a suit that did not fit. And he stood on the drive in front of three armed men with the expression of someone who has just been asked, at a very formal dinner, whether he would like to be the first to say grace.
"Hank," he said. "I'm very sorry."
"Get in the car, Pierce."
"I'm going to take the gentleman home." He drew a breath. "It's the only thing I do. I'm a driver. I've driven forty-three people to this gate. I've driven none of them home." His voice cracked. "I'd like to drive one."
"You'll lose your job."
"I'd imagine so."
"You've got a wife."
"I'm aware."
"And two cats," said Hank, quite gently.
Pierce shut his eyes.
"Yes," he said. "I'm aware of the cats."
It happened very quickly after that.
Ethan never remembered the order of it. He remembered pieces. He remembered Ron saying Oh, for God's sake, in a tired, injured voice, and swinging the shotgun down from his shoulder in one smooth flat movement, like a man lifting a bag. He remembered the long cold muzzle swinging past him, past Chris, past the whistle on his chest, and coming to rest, quite steadily, on the tall figure at the car.
He remembered Jack not moving.
He stood with the book in his left hand. His right was empty. It hung at his side, loose and open. He looked at the shotgun, and his face did not change, and he said, in a flat quiet voice, as though remarking on the weather:
"That's forty-three, Ronnie."
"What?"
"If you do it. I've got a count. I'll have to put you down."
"Mr. Ford, I'm very sorry. They pay me."
"I know they do."
"I've got a kid."
"I know you have, son."
"I've got a kid."
"Then don't."
The shotgun came up.
It was Hank who moved.
Nobody saw him. He had been standing by the van, quite still, all through, as a man stands at a bus stop when somebody next to him drops a coin. Now he turned. He did it with a surprising swiftness, for a man of his size, and a hand came out of the brown coat. It held something small and black and square, and it was not pointing at Jack. It was pointing across the lawn, at Ethan, and the boy at his feet.
"Ethan!" screamed Jack Ford.
It was the first time he had used the name.
And in the very last instant, with a short, tidy, practiced movement, like a man who has done a thing a thousand times, Jack pushed himself off the car and crossed the grass. He did not run. He took four long quick strides, and stepped into the line, with his arms a little out, between the black gun and Ethan, like a man stepping into a doorway.
Hank fired twice.
It was a flat, big, brutal sound, much louder than the first, and Jack went back a step, and then another. The little black book flew out of his hand. It turned in the air, a little black rectangle, and landed in the grass, open. Ron stared. The shotgun in his hands sagged toward the ground. Jack stood quite upright. He looked down at his own chest, with an expression of mild inquiry. Then he put out one hand, in front of him, as if to check for rain, and he went down on one knee.
"Aye," he said. "That's about right."
Ethan found afterward that he was on his feet. He did not remember getting there. He was running. He was running straight across the grass toward the bearded man in the brown coat, with his arms out, his mouth open, and a high thin yell coming out of him that he did not recognize, and the man turned, quite slowly, and raised the gun.
He stopped.
He stopped because there was nothing else to do. He stood on the lawn six feet from the black muzzle with his arms flung wide, in the glare of the floodlights, with the Mill roaring behind him, and he thought, very clearly, This is it.
He thought of the blue horse.
Hank looked at him. He looked from under the heavy lids of his small dark eyes, steadily and without hate, as a butcher looks at a carcass.
"Sorry, man," he said.
There was a roar.
It was not the gun. It was an engine. It came from the left, a deep, sudden, throaty roar, and a pair of headlights swung across the lawn like a searchlight, and the long gray car, with its back door still wide open and its dome light burning, came across the grass in a single bounding rush with a small bald man at the wheel. He was hunched over it. His eyes were shut. His mouth was open in a long, high, formless yell. The open door caught Hank on the hip and spun him round like a top, and the front bumper took him at the knees, and the whole heavy car carried him six yards across the lawn and pinned him against the side of the van with a crunch that Ethan would hear for a year.
The black gun went spinning away into the grass.
The engine stalled.
There was a very long silence.
Pierce sat at the wheel with both hands on it and his eyes still shut. His glasses had gone. After a time he opened one eye. He looked at the windshield, and the van beyond it, and the big man folded over the hood, groaning, with his beard in the headlamps.
"Oh dear," said Pierce. "I'm so sorry. I'm afraid I've never done that before."
And then, from the shadows of the gate, there was another sound.
It was a siren.
It was far off, thin and rising, and it came up the drive from the main road, wavering, rapid, a whole pack of them. Blue lights came flickering over the roofs. Headlights swept the wall. A voice boomed out, amplified, huge and flat and tinny, over the roar of the fire: ARMED POLICE. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DROP YOUR WEAPONS.
Ron looked at the lights. He looked at the shotgun in his hands, and at the car on top of his friend, and at the man in the blue jacket kneeling on the grass. He looked, for a moment, almost relieved. He laid the shotgun carefully on the lawn, and sat down beside it, and put his face in his hands.
"I've got a kid," he said, to nobody.
They came in a rush.
There were a dozen cars. There were men in black, with helmets and long guns, running low across the lawn. There were ambulances. There was a fire engine, a big red one, nosing through the gate in a bellow of horn, with men in yellow coats leaping from the back. The whole lawn was full of noise and light and shouting. Someone threw a blanket over Ethan's shoulders. Someone else took his arm. He heard voices, and none of them made sense.
He did not resist.
He was led across the grass like a drunk. He saw Chris, on a stretcher, with a mask over his face, giving a thumbs-up. He saw Ron, being led, with his hands behind him, still saying that he had a kid. He saw Hank, being lifted off the hood of a car by six men at once. He saw Pierce, sitting on the running board with a blanket over his head, shaking.
He saw Jack.
They had put him on the grass. He lay on his back, with his cap off, and a paramedic bent over him, a heavy woman with short red hair, cutting away the blue jacket with a pair of shears. There was a lot of blood. Ethan saw it, and looked away, and looked back. The old tracker's face was gray, and perfectly calm. His eyes were open. They were looking at the sky. They were looking, with a kind of mild close attention, at the sparks as they went up.
"Mr. Ford," said Ethan.
The eyes moved.
"Aye," said Jack. His voice was quite clear. "It's you."
"You're hurt."
"I've been worse."
"They're going to take you to a hospital."
"Aye." A faint ghost of a smile. "I shouldn't wonder."
"Why did you?"
"Why did I what?"
"Step in."
Jack Ford seemed to consider. It took him some time. The paramedic said something sharp, and he took no notice of it. He was looking at the stars.
"It was in the book," he said. "The Hunter shall not take an unfair advantage. I've always been rather particular." He moved his head, very slightly, on the grass. "The notebook. The black one. It fell. I'd like you to get it. Give it to the lady."
"Which lady?"
"The principal. She'll know what to do with it. She's the right face for it. It's forty-two names." A breath. "Forty-three, now. I'll put Ronnie in, if he doesn't."
"He's alive."
"Good. That's good." His lips moved. "Tell Ellen. My wife. She's at home. There's a girl." The voice was getting fainter. "Tell her I got the cake."
"I will."
"The cherry one."
"I'll tell her."
"Good lad."
The paramedic said, "Sir. Sir, I need you to move," and Ethan moved. He stood a little way off, in the wet grass, in his blanket, and watched them lift the tall gray figure onto a board. They took him away, between two men, at a trot. As they went, the old man turned his head. For a moment, his eyes found Ethan. And very faintly, very quietly, across the roar and the rush of the lawn, he began, in a thin thread of a voice, to hum.
Abide with me.
The notebook was lying in the grass where it had fallen.
It was open, face down, with one corner in a puddle. He picked it up. He turned it over. The page was soaked, and the pencil had run a little, but it was perfectly legible, in a neat upright hand. It was a list. A short column, quite plain, one under another.
41. D. Harris. Ohio. Quarry. Tuesday.
42. G. Wise. Calder. Bridge. Saturday.
And under it, in fresh pencil, a line he must have written that morning, in the loading bay, with a stub of cinnamon in his mouth:
43. E. Cole.
It was crossed out.
He looked at it for a long time. Then he closed the book, and held it in both hands, as one holds a very small animal, and put it inside his coat, next to the letter and the whistle.
"Mr. Cole."
It was a small, tidy, trembling voice. He turned. Pierce was standing beside him, with the blanket slipping off his shoulders, holding out Ethan's own bag, which he must have fetched from somewhere. His glasses were gone. His hands would not stay still.
"I thought you ought to have it. It was in the car."
"Thank you."
"I wanted to say." Pierce swallowed. "The page. In the phone. I put one in every phone I could reach. I had a, there was a roll of tape in the glove box. I wrote don't trust anyone on the bottom. It was only what I could think of." He looked at his hands. "Three of them found it. You're the first who read it."
"It helped."
"Did it?"
"It's why I kept the phone."
"Oh," said Pierce. His eyes filled. "Oh, I'm so glad."
He wandered off, in his stocking feet, to see about the car.
A man was coming across the lawn.
He was tall, and broad, in a dark overcoat, with a gray crew cut and a heavy square lined face, and he walked with the stiff, slow, heavy tread of a man who has been up since four. Behind him came two uniforms and a woman in a pale raincoat. He stopped three feet away. He looked Ethan up and down.
"I'm Captain Brooks," he said. "County Sheriff's Office. I'd like to know what the hell has been going on in my district."
"I can tell you."
"I'm sure you can." The voice was gruff. He rubbed his face. "I've had a call, from a woman, at nine fifty-three. She was extremely persistent. She rang my house. She said she was a friend of my daughter's principal, and I thought, oh, God. She said there was a murder. She said it was happening at that moment, in a derelict mill, and that I was to bring everybody I had." He gave a bark of a laugh. "I said, Madam, there's a permit. And she said, Colin Brooks, I taught you to read."
Ethan stared at him.
"She rang from the lobby of a hotel on Dock Road. Five minutes from here. I drove round and picked her up myself. She wouldn't wait in the car." He jerked his head. "She's by the gate. She'd like a word."
Ethan turned.
At the foot of the arch, in the white glare, a woman was standing alone.
She was smaller than he remembered.
She wore a dark blue coat, buttoned to the chin, and sensible black shoes, with mud to the ankle. Her gray hair was untidy. She had lost her handbag. She had come across forty yards of wet ground in the dark, in the last half-hour, with a flashlight, and her stockings were torn, and there was a long scratch down one cheek, as of a bramble. She stood quite straight, with her hands folded in front of her, and looked at the burning Mill.
She did not look at Ethan.
She stood there for a very long time. The fire was reflected in her glasses. She did not seem to blink. Behind her, across the lawn, the whole bright chaos of men and lights went on, voices, radios, the scrape of a stretcher, the long rising whine of an engine. She stood in the middle of it, quite still, like a post in a river.
He came up beside her.
He stopped, a yard off. He did not know what to say. He had thought, for seven years, about what he would say to her, in the long dark in the small hours, and none of it was any use. He stood with his blanket on his shoulders and his hands hanging, and looked, as she was looking, at the fire.
"It's a very large fire," said Helen Reeves.
"Yes."
"I hadn't thought it would be so large."
"It was an old building."
"It was." She inclined her head. "Robert's grandfather built it. He'd have been horrified." She was silent. "Is the rack still there?"
"I think so."
"I see."
"I lifted it. With the hoist."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"I wondered if somebody would."
He turned his head.
She was looking at him now. She had turned, quite slowly, and she was looking up into his face, a small gray woman with a long plain scratched face and a pair of pale hard clear eyes. They were very bright. They had no tears in them. They went over his face carefully, feature by feature, as one reads a page.
"I used to stand under it," she said. "After. They let me in, when the inspectors had gone. I stood on the floor, in the ashes, exactly where he had been. And I looked up. I'm not mechanical. I'd never thought about the ceiling. But I looked, and there it was. A great black hook. On a beam. Right above."
"I'm sorry."
"I knew that nobody had thought of it. I knew that if one of the men had thought of it, he might have lived. And I used to stand there and think, whose fault is it, that nobody thought?"
"Mine."
"Yours?"
"I'd worked there four years. I'd used it a hundred times. And I didn't think of it. I just ran."
"Mr. Cole." She said it very quietly. "Do you know what I decided, after about a year?"
"No."
"I decided it was nobody's." She looked back at the fire. "I decided it was only a thing that happens. A frightened man and a boy. And a beam, and a hook, and nobody looking up. I decided I could not blame the hook."
"But you wanted to see."
"Yes." She nodded. "I did. It was a dreadful thing to want. I knew it as I wrote the letter. But I could not stop. I thought, if he goes back, I can put it down. And if he doesn't, I can hate him. And either way it will be done."
"And?"
"And I've been standing here with my heart in my mouth. And I find that I can't tell which I wanted."
He took the whistle off his neck.
He did it slowly. He lifted the green cord over his head, and held it in his hand, and the little yellow thing swung from it, scuffed and cracked. He held it out.
She looked at it.
She did not take it at once. Her hand came up, slowly, to her mouth, and rested there, and for a long moment it seemed that nothing in the whole world would ever move again. Then her fingers came out. They were thin, and chapped, and trembling. They closed round the whistle. They took it from him, quite carefully, like a woman taking a communion wafer.
"It said If lost, blow," said Ethan.
"I wrote that. The first one wouldn't stay on. He kept pulling it off. I wrote it in biro." Her voice shook. "He said, Mom, it's embarrassing."
"I nearly didn't go back," said Ethan. "I want you to know."
"I know."
"I stood in the doorway. I looked at the gate. There was a car. I had my back to him. I'd made up my mind." He heard his own voice, hoarse and flat. "It was less than four minutes. But I had made up my mind."
"Why are you telling me?"
"Because you'd think it was easy. You'd think, he went back. But I didn't go back like a man who goes back. I turned round." He couldn't say it. "I don't know why I did."
Helen Reeves looked at him.
It was a long, close look. It was the look of a principal, he thought, a woman who has sat across a desk from a great many boys, and known, in the first moment, which ones were lying. When she spoke again, it was in a voice that he had not heard from her before. It was low, and rough, and almost tender.
"I played it for you."
"I heard."
"I've had it seven years. I have never let anyone hear it." She smiled, with a kind of grim and shaking pride. "He was wrong about so many things. He said you'd be back. And I thought, over and over, he was wrong. The last thing he ever said was a mistake."
"He was. I didn't come back."
"You did," said Helen.
She said it with great gentleness.
"It took you seven years. It was the wrong night. It was the wrong boy." She looked at him. "But he said you'd come, and you came. I don't know what that is. I don't think it's forgiveness. I'm not capable of that, not yet. I'm sixty-four, and I've had a very long day." She drew a long breath. "But I don't think my son was a fool."
"No."
"I'd like you to take that away."
He nodded. He couldn't speak. He stood on the wet grass in the roaring orange light, with his head bent, and the tears ran down his face and fell on the blanket, and he did not try to stop them. She did not touch him. She stood beside him, a yard off, quite straight, with the whistle clutched in her fist against her heart, and they watched the building burn.
At twenty past ten, the chimney fell.
It went all at once. There was a long deep groan, and a crack like a rifle, and the whole tall white-ringed column began very slowly to lean. It leaned for a long time. It seemed to hang, against the stars, like a man deciding. Then it broke in the middle, and the top half came down, in one piece, in a great slow soft arc, and hit the roof of the Mill with a roar that shook the ground. Sparks went up in a fountain. A wave of heat rolled over the lawn, and the whole company, policemen and firemen and nurses, flinched and turned their faces away.
When Ethan looked again, the letters were gone.
M E R C E R.
There was only a long black gap in the sky, and a column of smoke, and the stars.
"It's gone," said Helen.
"Yes."
"I'm glad."
"Are you?"
"I think so." She drew a breath. "I always hated that name."
A figure came out of the fire.
He saw it first as a movement at the east door of the Mill, where the black gap in the wall glowed like the mouth of a furnace. It was a small thick shape, bent a little forward, walking slowly. It came out of the smoke into the glare of the floodlights, and stopped, and brushed down its coat. It carried a large knitted bag on one arm. The coat had been lilac. It was scorched now, along one side, and there was a long black smear down the back, and the silver curls were singed at the front. But the walk was the same. It was the walk of a woman crossing a church hall with a tray.
Nobody stopped her.
That was the strange thing. There were forty policemen on the lawn, and a dozen firemen, and a crowd of paramedics, and every one of them was busy. They looked at her, and saw an elderly woman in a damaged coat, coming away from a fire, and they made way. One of them said, "Are you all right, madam?" and she said, "Quite, thank you, dear. Just a little warm."
She crossed the grass to a place about thirty feet from where Ethan stood. She chose a spot where the ground was dry, close by the foot of the wall, and lowered herself onto it with a small grunt, and arranged her coat round her knees. She opened the bag. She took out a ball of yellow wool.
"Ethan," said Helen Reeves, very low. "Who is that?"
"Her name's Linda Pratt."
"She looks like one of my mothers."
"I know."
A young policeman had noticed. He came over from the cordon, with a hand on his belt, and stopped a yard from her and cleared his throat. She did not look up. She was finding the end of her row.
"Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me. I need to see what's in the bag."
"There's a pistol in the bottom," said Linda Pratt, pleasantly. "On the left. Under the wool. It's a nine millimeter. It's quite hot, I'm afraid. I'd use a handkerchief." She smiled up at him. "You'll want to put me in handcuffs, I expect. I'll come quietly. I'm only finishing a row. It won't take a minute."
The young man hesitated. He looked about for someone to ask. Nobody was looking. He gave a small helpless shrug, and took out his handkerchief, and knelt, and lifted the pistol out of the wool with the very tips of his fingers, and she watched him do it, nodding, like a woman watching someone put away the shopping.
She went on knitting.
She did it for about four minutes. The needles clicked. The wool slid. The policeman stood beside her with the gun in a handkerchief and a look on his face of perfect misery. She reached the end of the row, and turned the work, and gave a little satisfied sniff. Then, for the first time, she lifted her head, and looked across the thirty feet of lawn, straight at Ethan.
He felt it go through him.
She did not look angry. She looked tired, and old, and very kind. Her small pale eyes, behind the singed pink glasses, rested on his face for a long, still, thoughtful moment, and then moved, quite gently, to the woman beside him.
"Good evening," she said. "You're the lady who's paying."
"I was," said Helen Reeves.
"I thought so. You've got the look." Linda nodded. "I think we'd have got on."
"Perhaps."
"We're about the same age. I lost mine tonight."
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry for yours."
They looked at each other for a while across the grass, two small gray women in torn coats, with a burning building behind them. A man went by with a hose.
"He held on," said Linda.
She said it to Ethan.
"Didn't he? On the stair. I only saw the end. But I'd noticed, when I got to the landing, there was a mark on the wall. Where a hand had been. It went down about a yard. He'd tried to grab. And somebody'd had him by the sleeve."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"A minute. Perhaps more."
"Did he say anything?"
He did not answer at once.
"He said, Whoopsie," said Ethan.
The old woman's face did not move. She sat quite still, on the grass, with the wool in her hands. Then, very slowly, something happened to it. It was not a smile. It was the shape that a smile leaves, in the place where it has been. It trembled, and held, and she lowered her eyes to her knitting.
"He would," said Linda Pratt.
She closed her bag.
"I shall think about it," she said. "I told you I would. I'll do it properly. I've a good deal of time." She got to her feet, with the young policeman's hand under her elbow. "I don't think I'll hate you, Ethan. I rather thought I should. But I think it will be much more difficult than that."
She held out her wrists.
They were small and plump and dimpled, with a little gold watch on one of them. The policeman looked at them. Then, with the face of a young man doing something he'd never been taught, he took out a pair of handcuffs, and put them on, as gently as if he were fastening a bracelet.
"Mind the little jacket," said Linda.
"Ma'am?"
"It's for my granddaughter."
He took the wool from her lap, with great care, and put it into the bag, and the bag over his arm. They walked away together across the lawn. She was talking to him, in a pleasant, rising, motherly voice. At the edge of the light she paused, and looked back, once, and lifted her chained hands in a little wave.
Then the dark closed over her.
"Well," said Helen, after a time, rather unsteadily. "That's the first time I've ever seen a murderer ask for a handkerchief."
After a time she said, in a small dry voice, as though remarking on a book: "There is a matter of money."
"No."
"There is. It's the prize. I'd arranged it. A great deal of it. It's Robert's money, and I'd have said it wasn't mine to give." She made a small, helpless gesture. "You blew the whistle. Under the rule, you're owed nothing. I know that. I wrote that rule into the schedule myself, without thinking it would ever matter. But I'm going to pay it anyway."
"I don't want it."
"It's five million dollars."
"I know."
"It would change your life."
"I know that too." He turned to her. "I left your son under a rack. I don't deserve a cent."
"That isn't the question."
"What is?"
"The question," said Helen Reeves, "is who does."
He stared at her.
"There's a woman in this country called Jean Wise," she said. "Her husband was a night watchman, at the water board. There's a boy who stacked shelves, who has a mother who calls him by his father's name. There are forty-two names in a black book." She spoke steadily. "I'll find them. I have people. I'd like to give it to them. All of it. Every dollar. And I'd like you to help me find out who they are."
"All of it?"
"I'll keep enough for the lawyers."
"And me?"
"You'll have the fifty thousand. It's yours. You were given it." She smiled thinly. "And you'll have something else, if you'd like it. It's not much. I wondered if you'd come to tea."
"Tea."
"On a Sunday. When it's all over." She looked at the whistle. "I should like to hear about the horse."
"The horse?"
"The one your daughter draws." She said it quite stiffly, with her chin up. "Mr. Ford mentioned it. On the lawn, when they brought him in. He said, he's got a little girl who does a blue one." A faint flush had come up her cheeks. "I've never had a granddaughter. I should like to see it."
"It's very good."
"I'm sure."
"It's got a hat."
"A hat?"
"A gold one. It's a different horse." He found, to his astonishment, that he was smiling. It hurt his face. "He's a captain. He's very fair. He doesn't let anyone get left behind."
Helen Reeves looked at him.
For a moment she did not say anything at all. She stood in the white light of the arch, with the burning Mill behind her, a small gray woman in a torn coat with a whistle in her fist. The corners of her mouth were doing something odd. They trembled. They turned up, and down, and up. And at last, quite suddenly, with a kind of cracked and astonished sound, like the first creak of a thaw, she began to laugh.
She laughed for a long time. She put her hand over her mouth, and her shoulders shook, and the tears ran down her face. It was not a pretty sound. It was dry, and high, and rusty, like a gate that has not been opened in seven years. He did not know what to do. He stood beside her, in the glare, and after a moment, very gently, he put out his arm.
She leaned.
She did it stiffly, without a word, as a tree leans in a wind. She put her forehead on his shoulder. And the two of them stood there together on the lawn at the gate of Mercer Mill, a man in a blanket and a woman in a coat, in the smoke and the glare and the long blue flicker of police lamps, while all about them the night went on with its shouting, and neither of them said anything, and the fire burned down.
At eleven, they put him in an ambulance.
He did not want to go. He had said he was fine. A young paramedic had looked at his hands, and said, Man, they're hamburger, and he had looked at them and agreed. They sat him on the tailgate, with a cup of sweet tea in a foam cup, and put a silver blanket round him, and a policewoman with a notebook came and sat on the step.
"Mr. Cole," she said. "I'm going to ask you some questions. Is that all right?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to start at the beginning."
"It's a long story."
"I've got all night."
He thought about it.
He sat on the back of the ambulance with the tea in his hands and watched the Mill burn, and a great wide weariness came over him. It was the tiredness of a man who has been awake for thirty hours. But it was not unpleasant. It was heavy, and warm, and slow, like a hand on a forehead. He looked at the policewoman's round, kind, anxious young face, with its freckles and its blue eyes.
"It started on Wednesday," he said. "With a friend. In a car wash."
"Yes?"
"He gave me a number. And then a parcel came, with a joker in it."
She wrote it down.
And in the pocket of his jacket, pressed against his ribs, he felt a small hard coin of glass and a black book and a folded piece of paper and a key. He touched them one by one, with his thumb, through the cloth. Jack. Helen. Danny. He had never in his life been so full.
Maya, he thought.
Sunday.
It's Sunday. It's nearly Sunday.
He looked at his watch.
It was ten minutes to midnight. He had been awake for more than thirty hours. He had lasted. He had not won, not in the way they had meant. He had lost a great deal. He'd lost his peace, and his money, and the thing that had been sitting in his chest since the second of November seven years ago. He felt the place where it had been. It was a sore, clean, open hollow, like a pulled tooth, and he could feel the cold air going in.
He thought it would hurt for a long time.
That's all right, he thought. It's supposed to.
The ambulance doors closed.