Closed Circle (38 page)

The key was in the ignition. Hope flared: the hope that I might actually survive the next few seconds, never mind the next few minutes. I whipped the door open, flung the bag across the seat and bundled in after it, aware that a bullet had just whined over the roof of the car. Swearing and praying simultaneously, I turned the key, pulled the starter and heard the engine burst into well-tuned life. I forced it into gear, pushed the accelerator towards the floor and felt my left foot begin to shudder violently as it raised the clutch. Then, with a squeal from the tyres, the car surged forward. A bullet splintered the rear near side window. The door flew wide open, bouncing back far enough from its hinges for me to grab the handle and slam it shut. Another bullet pinged off the bonnet. As I careered round a bend in the road, I glanced up at the rear-view mirror and saw, through a gap in the trees, two crumpled figures lying motionless on the grass. Then they were out of my sight.

"Concentrate!" I shouted to myself. "Straight ahead. Then left." There was the turning, as Charnwood had promised. I took it on what felt like only two wheels, saw the gate, narrower than the one I had entered the park by, drove through and swerved left onto the road beyond. Had I been thinking clearly, I might have taken the right-hand turning a short distance ahead and so put the park behind me as swiftly as possible. Instead, I sped past it and found the boundary wall of the park tracking my route, with the Wellington Monument visible beyond the trees. And suddenly Klaus, who must have calculated I would make just such a mistake, appeared in front of me, scrambling over the wall and jumping down onto the pavement. I would have been past him in the second it took him to rise, but that too he judged exactly. Still crouching, he steadied the gun in both hands, took aim and

I wrenched the wheel to the right, bending and flinching as the tyres shrieked and the wind-screen shattered. Glass was showering over me, my vision distorting as the car skidded. I saw something vertical in my path and stamped on the brake. But too late. With a smashing of yet more glass and a grinding of metal, the car struck a lamp-post on the other side of the road, lurched, juddered and slewed to a halt.

Suddenly, the only sound was a hissing from the fractured radiator. As the car had rotated to rest round the lamp-post, I had fallen across the seat and now found myself propped against Charnwood's bag, my brain adjusting all too slowly to the little I

could see from such an angle: a steam-blurred patch of Dublin sky, framed by the jagged remnants of the wind-screen; a twisted section of bonnet, the steam condensing into beads and rivulets on its polished black surface; and the near side wing-mirror, miraculously unbroken, in which the reflection of Klaus was growing larger and larger as he strode towards me, gun in hand. I glanced down at my own hand, blood trickling from a wound at the base of the thumb. A tiny triangle of glass, imbedded in the flesh, winked back at me. And I knew this was to be the end: stupid, undignified and brutal, before the blood on my hand had even begun to thicken. Before I had learned even one of the names of those who had ordained my death.

Then I saw it. On the floor in front of me, where it had been thrown from the glove compartment. A revolver. They had left a gun in the car. Loaded? If not, it made no difference. If it was -His shadow fell across me. He reached for the door-handle as I rolled forward, grasped the gun and rolled back, feeling the triangle of glass bite as I stretched my finger towards the trigger. The window slid across my sight as he yanked at the door. My arm straightened as I turned. His face loomed above me. A smile of satisfaction turned to a grimace of horror. Then I squeezed the trigger and learned the truth. The gun was loaded.

I lay there for several seconds, hearing nothing but the panting of my own breath. Then I sat up, clambered from the car and looked down at him. He lay supine in the road, blood draining from a hole above the bridge of his nose to form a dark and spreading pool beneath his right ear. His mouth was half-open. His eyes were staring blindly up at me. And the gun was still clasped in his hand. On the other side of the road, gaping at me, stood a fat man leaning on a bicycle. A cigarette dropped from his sagging lower lip as he stared, scattering ash down the bib of his overalls. I was beginning to tremble, beginning to lose control. But I still had to escape. I grabbed the bag and began to run, back the way I had driven, towards the turning I had not taken, away from the park, away from three deaths and my own so very near extinction. Where Faraday was I did not know. Nor could I stop to find out.

As I rounded the bend, I remembered the gun waggling in my hand, and paused to shove it into the bag. Then I ran on, down and over a stone bridge across the river, then up again past what looked like army barracks. I was aware of people staring at me and pointing, of one or two shouts in my wake. I reached a railway bridge and a busy cross-roads. An east-bound tram was picking up passengers to my left. I ran towards it and leapt onto the platform just as it was pulling away.

"Saints preserve us," said the conductor as I cannoned into him. "Aren't you in a tearing hurry to be somewhere else?"

I was. But where? Where exactly was I to go? Klaus and O'Reilly were surely not Faraday's only assistants. Others might be waiting for me at the Shelbourne. Yet I had no other refuge in this alien city. I was a fugitive with nowhere to hide. Except in England, of course. Except in the country I knew. I had a start on them, a precious start I was determined not to waste. And in my pocket I had a first-class return ticket to London. "Kingstown," I said abruptly. "I must get to Kingstown. Dun Laoghaire, I mean."

"Call it what you like, sir, I can't help you there. We only go to Eden Quay."

"I must get to Dun Laoghaire," I said, grabbing his arm for emphasis.

Then calm yourself. A stroll over the bridge from Eden Quay will bring you to Tara Street station. You can get a train to Dun Laoghaire from there every half hour at least."

Thanks," I let go of him. "I'm sorry."

"No need for your apologies, sir. Just your fare will make me a happy man."

The tram clanked and swayed on its agonizing crawl through Dublin's crowded streets. Watched suspiciously by other passengers, I bound my bleeding hand in a handkerchief and mopped the sweat off my face, glimpsing reflections of myself, wild-eyed and dishevelled, in the windows opposite. I held the bag in my lap, never once letting go of the handle, and tried desperately to order my thoughts.

How and when had Diana communicated with Faraday? It could scarcely have been before we left Dorking, unless it was during the hour I had waited for her in the library. But perhaps she had not needed to. Perhaps Vita had done it for her. In which case her letter to Charnwood had been intended to make him see me alone, sparing Diana the painful necessity of explaining her treachery to us and leaving the way clear for Faraday to surprise us.

Not that he had surprised Charnwood. The gun and the phial of prussic acid if it existed proved he had expected to be betrayed. And that proved Faraday right about the records of the Concentric Alliance. They were Charnwood's suicide note. They were his farewell to the world. And it was up to me to ensure the world received his farewell.

Speed was of the essence. The longer I delayed, the likelier it was I would fail. The Concentric Alliance was everywhere. But such an extensive organization might react slowly to events. If I could contact Duggan and exploit his Fleet Street connections, it was possible just possible that we might pre-empt them. But first I would have to reach England.

I was in luck at Tara Street, racing up the steps just in time to catch a late-running train to Dun Laoghaire. But the emptiness of the train should have forewarned me of the disappointment lying in wait at the other end.

"The Holyhead ferry left more than half an hour ago, sir," announced the ticket-collector at Dun Laoghaire station.

"When's the next one?"

"In just a little over ten hours, sir."

"What?"

"It'll give you plenty of time to see the town. A bit more than most folk would think it warranted, to be perfectly honest."

"Is there no other way I can get to England?"

"To be sure there is, sir. Go back into Dublin. If memory serves, there's a ferry to Holyhead from North Wall Quay about one o'clock."

Back into Dublin, with more than three hours to wait? No. It was not to be countenanced. Faraday was quite capable of studying a timetable and calculating my options. He would come for me long before any ferry did. "There has to be some other way," I insisted.

The ticket-collector scratched his head. "Well, now, you could go down to Rosslare, I suppose, and cross from there to Fishguard. But that's an evening sailing too. And more than three hours later than from here. No, no, you'd be much better off going from North Wall."

"Nevertheless, when is the next train to Rosslare?"

"Well, if you took the ten o'clock down to Bray, you could catch the ten thirty-five from there to Wexford and be at Rosslare

Harbour by ... let me see .. ." He thumbed through a dog-eared booklet. Twenty past three."

With six or seven hours to wait for the Fishguard ferry. But what did that matter? If it was the least logical choice, it was also the choice Faraday was least likely to think I might make. Rosslare it would have to be.

The shock of all that had happened can be the only excuse for my stupidity. It was another hour or so before my brain began to function properly. With a compartment to myself aboard the Wexford train, I reckoned it was time to examine the documents I had very nearly died for and for which three other men had died.

My mouth dropped open when I looked down at the bag and realized the enormity of my mistake. Faraday had only to travel to Dun Laoghaire and describe me to the ticket-collector" Englishman in a hurry with Gladstone bag' to be given a detailed itinerary of my future movements. The straight line of my flight had suddenly become the circular despair of a rat caught in a trap.

To my left, the Irish Sea stretched away, grey and tantalizingly smooth, towards the homeland I seemed destined never to reach. How far was the Welsh coast? Fifty miles? Sixty? It might as well have been a thousand for all the difference it made. But self-pity would not give me wings to fly with. I could not go on and I could not go back. There was therefore only one thing to do. At the next stop, I got off the train.

Though no doubt assured of a warm place in the hearts of its true-born sons, Wicklow struck me that chill November morning as just about the grimmest and least welcoming place I could have chosen to take refuge in. Old men in threadbare clothes leaned on every other door-post, slicking at pipes. Barefoot children crouched in the gutters, playing dibs. And huge-girthed women gathered at shop windows to gossip and gripe. Only the dogs paid me any heed, perhaps recognizing in the passing stranger some of their own furtiveness. The rest of the population of Wicklow seemed unaware of my existence. And that, I reminded myself, was just as well.

I made my way to the harbour, sat up on the wall, lit a cigarette and anxiously considered what I should do next. A wind started to get up and toss stray spots of rain in my direction. The barnacled assembly of coasters and fishing smacks began to bob at their moorings. And an idea took tentative shape in my mind. I lit another cigarette, and by the time I had finished it the idea had become a plan of action.

Docherty's Bar, hard by the quay, seemed as good a place as any to try my luck. The cavernous interior smelt like smoked mackerel soaked in Guinness and most of the customers looked old enough to be able to remember the Great Famine. But the barman seemed an amiable soul, one who might be willing to aid a romantic cause. And he evidently approved of my choice of whiskey.

"It's a pleasure to serve a gentleman of discernment," he remarked, casting a scornful glance at his other patrons.

"Perhaps you'd be willing to give me some advice, then," I ventured.

"What advice would you be after, sir?"

"I was wondering if you knew of somebody with a boat who might be willing .. ." I lowered my voice. "To run a gentleman of discernment over to the Welsh coast."

He squinted at me for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. "I might, sir. But, now, why wouldn't you be taking the ferry from Dun Laoghaire ... if you don't mind me asking?"

I smiled. "An affair of the heart is the problem. I have a certain young Dublin lady's retinue of muscular brothers on my trail. They'd be waiting for me in Dun Laoghaire."

"Would they, though?" He too smiled. "I see your difficulty."

"But can you see any way out of it?"

"Maybe I can, sir. Maybe I know just the man for what you have in mind. He'll be in later. I'll have a word."

"Thank you. I'd be obliged. Meanwhile ..." I drained my glass. "I'll have another tot of your excellent whiskey. And perhaps you'd care for one yourself."

Nearly an hour had passed, and I had retreated to a corner table, the bag stowed beneath it at my feet, when a short wiry man with a face like a monkey left a conversation with the barman to join me. Before he had said a word, his stained guernsey, woollen hat and weather-beaten complexion raised my hopes.

"Mick tells me you want to take a private cruise to Wales."

"I do, yes."

"I might be able to help you there. I keep a boat in the harbour.

Pretty little thing. The Leitrim Lassie. Sturdy as they come. I take fishing parties out in her in the summer. Week-enders from Dublin and such."

"And at this time of the year?"

"Oh, I tend to my lobster-pots in her. She's kept in trim, don't you worry."

"So, she might be ... for hire?"

"She might. At the right price."

"And what would that be?" I had sufficient cash about me to cater for most contingencies. But I knew he would expect me to haggle.

He looked me up and down, grinned and said without hint of irony: "Twenty pounds, sir. A bargain, I think you'll agree."

I laughed. "Out of the question."