Incarnate (40 page)

It was no use telling himself that it had been Guilda’s project, not his, and he wasn’t going to try. Even if he hadn’t caused whatever had happened, he felt he had made it worse. Something had caused the subjects to experience collective hysteria and perhaps hallucination—he suspected it had affected Guilda, it had almost affected him—and then by trying to reason the subjects out of their hysteria afterward, back to reality, he’d simply aggravated their condition. He ought to have stuck to handing out tranquilizers. Every time he remembered what he’d said to them, said with the calm of total insensitivity. he squirmed. He’d lost more than one girl friend because they’d said he analyzed too much, and by God, he had eleven years ago. Of course remembering so vividly was analyzing too, and so was realizing that it was, and his mind would turn into Chinese boxes if he wasn’t careful. He’d reached the conclusion that he ought to stop analyzing himself long enough to see if he could help.

It didn’t seem as if he had. The only letter that had provoked a response was the one to Molly Wolfe, and that had brought him Martin Wallace. Perhaps Wallace was a friend of Wolfe, perhaps he hadn’t been wanting to investigate Stuart, but Stuart wasn’t fool enough to take the risk. Wallace had left him feeling more responsible and more helpless, for Stuart had gained the impression that Wolfe was still affected by her stay here, though he wasn’t clear in what way. Were the others ignoring his letters because they had nothing to tell him, or because they had too much to tell? He’d thought some of them were on the edge of sanity that night eleven years ago.

That thought made him squirm too. Insanity was his secret fear; that was why he felt so bad about having helped put Wolfe’s mind and the others at risk. Even now he didn’t know what Guilda’s research had achieved: they’d found a higher proportion of common dreams than average, there might have been a higher incidence of verifiable or likely prophecies; he was prepared to accept that some form of telepathy had been shown to occur, perhaps even that it had proved too intense for the subjects. All that didn’t seem to justify the way the subjects had been put at risk.

The bowed heads lowered even more over the desks. Someone groaned, someone capped and uncapped a pen: pop, pop, pop. Stuart sat up so determinedly that half the heads jerked upright, and the man who’d been playing with his pen started to blush. There was no point in Stuart’s blaming himself or Guilda for taking risks that had become apparent only retrospectively, but every point in making sure the subjects didn’t need help now. The problem was that he felt Guilda would know better how to help.

He shoved his chair back, its rubber feet juddering on the linoleum, and began to pace again. He’d tried every way he could think of to trace Guilda, but the only research establishment she’d worked for after leaving here hadn’t heard of her for years. Perhaps she’d left the country; he was still waiting for replies from Europe and America. He hoped one of them would tell him what he needed to know, hoped that he hadn’t acquired this belated concern for her subjects and his only to be unable to help.

The industrialists were turning their papers face down to signify they’d finished, they were gazing expectantly or resentfully at him. Christ only knew how the subjects would look at him if he met them. He must contact Guilda first, maybe persuade her to meet them with him. More and more he was convinced that she and her notebook held the key to what had gone wrong eleven years ago. Besides, he wanted to discuss with her the notion he’d had, not quite strongly or clearly enough to mention it in the letters: that in some way it might now be dangerous for the subjects to dream.

40

T
HE FIRST PERSON
to oust Molly from the phone box was carrying an empty jerrican. Molly stood in the glare of the streetlamp and thought the pavement was whiter than it had been when she’d taken refuge less than ten minutes ago. The night was intensely cold: her hands and the breath in her nostrils began to ache at once. She stamped her feet and peered round the phone box at the tower block and across the South Circular Road at the Datsun. She thought it was empty until the vague dark shape that was Terry Mace raised a hand to acknowledge her. She wasn’t on her own yet, but she wondered how long she would be once she was inside the tower block.

The man on the phone told someone twice to start dinner without him and stumped out, grimacing as if it were Molly’s fault that the light in the phone box wasn’t working. At least that helped her hide and made it easier for her to watch. She dodged back into the phone box, which smelled of petrol now as well as pipe tobacco, and willed Rankin to appear. The longer she waited, the more nervous she would grow. Deep breaths wouldn’t help, not with the smells in the box.

When someone jerked open the door she swung round, heart pounding like a wound, fists clenched. It was an old woman with a stick and a fierce fixed stare. “Who’s there?” she cried. “I want to phone.” As Molly squeezed out past her, she wondered if the diversion could have let Rankin past without her noticing. Surely he couldn’t have been so quick. She lurked behind the box while the old woman kept shouting, “I can’t do that, I’m blind,” though her stick wasn’t white, and then Molly realized she needn’t hide, she could very well be waiting to use the phone. She might fail to see Rankin if she hid behind the box. All the same, when she ventured into the open she felt exposed and vulnerable.

She had to step back when the old lady stormed out of the box, waving her stick. Molly dragged the door shut behind her, since the metal arm was reluctant to do so, and tried running on the spot to tame her shivering. If she wasn’t careful it would make her feel she was afraid. And then she caught sight of Rankin crossing the road.

He was beside the Datsun. For a long moment she thought he’d spotted Terry. But Terry was still in the passenger seat, and leaning forward now to watch as Rankin crossed to her side of the street. She ran toward him. “Mr. Rankin,” she cried.

At first she thought he hadn’t heard. He continued talking toward the tower block, a leisurely self-assured walk that looked studied. He grasped the handles of the doors as she came into their light. “After me again, are you?”

“I didn’t know if it was you at first. I need to talk to you.”

“That’s your story this time, is it?” His small sharp face wore an exasperating grin. “Just passing by, were you?”

“I was looking for a phone that worked.”

“Well, you can’t use mine,” he said, and opened the doors as wide as his arms.

“I wasn’t asking to. I just want to talk to you. I can tell you about drugs.”

“Changed your tune, have you? Come and tell me all about it tomorrow at the station.” He turned back as he stepped into the lobby. “Want to know where it is? On Bays water Road near the TV station.”

She blocked the doors as they swung in her face. “I don’t want to go there, I can’t.”

“Afraid someone’ll see you there?” When she followed him he leaned against the wall between the pair of lifts, one of which was out of order. “You could be right. So tell me now.”

“Not here. Anyone could see us.”

“Anywhere in Britain that does suit you?”

“Couldn’t we go upstairs for a few minutes?”

“That’s what you’re after, is it?” He raised his eyebrows ambiguously and reached inside his overcoat. “Right enough, nobody’s going to follow us up there.”

She glanced through the doors as he turned to the lifts. Terry had got out of the car and was watching across its roof. She willed him not to follow too quickly: he knew where she would be. When she looked back at Rankin she found he was unlocking the lift, first the door and then the controls. “That’s the way to keep the vandals out,” he said. “Only tenants have a key. My idea.”

Terry would have to walk up. She’d prepared enough of a story to keep Rankin occupied until he did. The lift drudged upward, emitting a creak and a muffled twang at each floor, and she felt trapped in the cramped box with Rankin and his sharp pinched face, his skinny restless hands with their nails pared to the quick. It was too like her dream of the police cell. That dream was dealt with; now all she had to do was keep Rankin talking until it was time for what she had foreseen. When she stepped out on the eleventh floor she couldn’t separate her nervousness from her relief.

A token burgundy carpet led past identical doors, featureless except for locks and letterboxes. Rankin selected another key. “What kind of a place do
you
live in?”

“Pretty much like this.”

He grinned as if that were what he had expected her to say. “Ever make you think of prison?”

That was exactly what his bunch of keys had made her think of. “No,” she said, “it’s better than where we used to live,” and was afraid he would ask where that was. All he said as he unlocked his door was, “Maybe it should.”

Standing aside for her made him visibly resentful, and she wondered why he bothered. She would rather have followed him in, so that he wouldn’t see her hesitating, though he could hardly guess it was because the thought of confronting the place she had already seen in her dream was almost paralyzing her. She made herself step forward, and there everything was: the chest expanders and the wrestling magazines, the immigration reports under the table, the shelf of horror novels, the low cupboard where she knew the rifle was. Venetian blinds hid the windows, a doorway led to a dark kitchen. Though she hadn’t noticed the chairs in her dream, canvas on tubular frames, they looked familiar. None of this mattered as much as the ivory figure on the mantelpiece, the identity bracelet round its neck. She made herself look at anything but that, and was sure the newspaper clipping underneath the figure was about Lenny Bennett too.

Rankin chained the door before he followed her along the hall. He threw his overcoat into the bedroom and came uniformed into the main room, where he sat down on a canvas chair and pointed at the nearest. “So let’s hear your tale. Nobody can see or hear you now but me.” His Finger lazily indicated the walls around him. “Soundproof,” he said.

Her apprehension was sharp as a headache: this hadn’t been in the dream. “Completely?”

“Just about, I reckon. No reason that should bother you, is there?”

“There won’t have to be, will there?” She was thinking frantically as she sat down: Terry was supposed to whistle “Rule Britannia” in the corridor to signal he was there, but they had never considered the possibility that she mightn’t be able to hear him. She was trying to plan when Rankin demanded, “Well?”

She could waste time by acting stupid, but she felt as if she was. “Well what?”

He sat back and crossed his legs comfortably. “Well, Nelly. That’s what you called yourself, isn’t it? Well, Nelly, are you going to tell me what you came up here for?”

She mustn’t let him feel he was wasting his time. “I’ve come for someone who can’t speak for himself.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Whichever.” There was no point in playing with ambiguity when it might trip her up. She must tell her lie straight and trust her dream, trust Terry to realize that she couldn’t hear him, if she couldn’t, and knock at the door. “He doesn’t like the police,” she said.

“But you do?” His grin was wider, his foot in the air was dancing. “What’s his name?”

“Luther.”

“Not Martin Luther?”

“That’s right,” she said, trying to think how she and Terry could make sure of Filming if Rankin opened the door to him. “Don’t ask me his last name, he said I mustn’t tell.”

“Martin Luther, eh? Wasn’t he the one who started the church? You’d wonder where they get these names from. You’d wonder who gave them their names.”

She struggled to keep her lie in mind, for the unnatural quiet of the flat reminded her of those times she had thought so deeply that she’d lost herself in silence. It made her more nervous than he did. “Well, get on with it,” he said.

“There’s going to be a big consignment of resin coming in next week. They’re flying it in and Luther knows where. He was going to be involved but now he’s got frightened. The consignment’s too big and the people involved are.”

“Got out of his depth, has he? You’d be surprised how easy it is to do that when you’re committing a crime.”

Not quite so easy, she thought suddenly. She’d heard someone coughing beyond the outer door. For a moment she thought it was Terry, who was starting a cold, then she heard the faint slam of a door. She could hear. “I suppose so,” she said.

“So where are the drugs going to be landed?”

“I don’t know. Luther knows.”

He uncrossed his legs and stood up so abruptly that she jumped. “No use to me then, are you?”

“He’ll tell me if I can tell him he won’t get into trouble.” The silence had closed in as if the coughing had never been. How much longer would it take Terry to climb the stairs? “He’s afraid he’ll be arrested,” she said.

“Why, because he’s black?”

“Maybe.” She resisted glancing at the figure with the bracelet round its neck, made herself stare at the wrestling magazines behind him. “He wouldn’t be arrested, would he?”

“You tell me.” Without warning he stalked forward and stood so close to her that she couldn’t get up unless she pushed back the chair. “No, I know what you can tell me—what you’re looking for.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been looking round ever since you came up here as if I’m hiding something. Let me tell you, I don’t need to. Not from you.” ’

She mustn
‘t
move or look away. She had a sudden glimpse of Terry toiling up the stairs, and then she wondered if the street doors could have locked themselves, if Terry wasn’t in the building at all. “I wasn’t looking for anything,” she said, “just at your magazines and things.”

“Wondering what a wanker like me was doing with them, were you?” He stooped and before she could stop him, picked up her handbag and put it on top of the wrestling magazines against the wall. “I’ll show you something. Don’t mind if I use this, do you? Haven’t got a camera in it, by any chance?”

“No, why should I?” His skeptical look as well as his question made her suddenly more apprehensive. “What do you need my bag for?”