Night Must Wait (46 page)

The snow ended, clouds breaking when the sun set in the early afternoon. Wilton watched it from her room, looking out over the porch with its white painted columns and the drift of snow that lay unevenly across the top of the stone wall at the end of the garden. A motor started, then she glimpsed the nose of an elegant gray car as it turned and moved down the driveway. Sedate and respectable.

The gardener came out and walked all over the thin snow of the side yard, poking into the bushes at the verge of the open area, then traveling in a random pattern that went some distance into the trees of the woods before circling back. He walked as if his feet hurt, as if the shoes did not fit him. Late for him to work, with everything outside gone blue.

She waited, turned on her table lamp as the darkness intensified. The automatic lights came up and cast yellow ovals on the trodden snow. In a little while a knock came at her door, then the buzz of the lock disengaging. She heard the door open and close, waited for the buzz to stop, but it didn't. She turned then.

Doctor Lowenstein stood by the door, his hand resting on the door frame, his blue eyes wide as if he'd seen something frightening. She felt the tension in him, the tightness.

"Wilton, Gilman warned me. She was right. A man came for you today, asking that I release you to him. He's Nigerian. He has a name, but I don't believe the one he uses is real. I said he needed other papers than the ones he had. He'll return with what I requested. There's nothing wrong with his procedurals, so I'll have to let you go with him if you're here in the morning."

He stopped, swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing under the skin. She wondered how it would look to cut the skin there, then slant the blade up to deepen the cut at the jugular.

Gouts of blood all over the floor, her hands and the pillows with their neat print of flowers and ferns. Layers of pinkish tissue in the throat after the blood had spurted and ebbed. The tissue of the voice box would look whitish, cartilaginous.

"I have four thousand dollars in cash divided between a wallet and an envelope that Gilman left for you. Put them in different places, some bills in your shoes so if you're robbed, you'll still have resources. I am putting these on the table. I hung my minus-twenty down jacket on the holly bush against the west side of your wing. You have good shoes, I see. Here's a small knapsack. Take your warm things. I have a water bottle in the knapsack and some candy bars in the pockets for energy.

"I'm sure they're watching. The man left too easily. So if you choose to go, you must go alone and on your own. On Route 101 you have a good chance of getting a ride hitchhiking, especially on a night like this. I'll deactivate your door sensor so it looks like it got a bug. Awfully coincidental, but there's no help for it."

He pulled a screwdriver from his pocket and set to work on the door. Wilton saw his hands tremble. She took the knapsack and packed it fast, but with each part folded and tucked in, no loose ends.

"I'll try to contact Gilman, but her landlady isn't reliable. I'll try the London hospital too, but there aren't any guarantees I'll get through."

She nodded to Lowenstein as the buzzer stopped. He saw she did not want to pass close to him, so he stepped back away from the door. Out of the door and down the corridor with sure feet, hardly a sound.

Hours later, each step cost. Wilton couldn't feel her feet except as a jolt when one struck ground. She imagined them as stumps now they were beyond pain, long past the pins and needles, long steeped in the bitter cold, a sensation like wetness in the socks. She couldn't tell whether or not the damp was real, but other than a distraction, an amusement for her brain, it didn't matter.

But she wouldn't fall. She must not. Wilton tried to stay on the plowed surface, less effort than plunging through the snow, but the way was packed with slippery ice. She'd fallen once. It seemed like hours ago. No clock, no time, no change in this fierce night cold.

Lights, and her heart pounded. Headlights. She moved back a step from the road and put up her hand, waving her numb arm. If only this was someone she did not know.

Chapter 106: Gilman

December 1971

London, England

The ward lay quiet tonight. Time to head back to dinner and sleep. Gilman shrugged on her raincoat, put up the collar and tucked her scarf ends in. The ward light reflected in drops of rainwater on the darkened windows. She crossed the ward and hurried down three flights of stairs to the ground floor, out into the wet wind of a cold London night.

She strode along the evening streets toward the Euston Square underground station, past the lowering and sooty facades of the now-deserted university buildings. Traffic was sparse. The splash of her footsteps rang on the wet pavement. She passed the hospital administrative offices, drew up, and listened. An electric rush of adrenaline shot through her veins and she strained to hear.

For five weeks now, Gilman had felt she had a shadow. From the hospital one night, to her door the next. When she stopped to listen, the sound vanished. She never saw anyone in the drifting evening mists around the hospital or the winding alleys near her flat.

Hastening toward the lights of Euston Square, her foot slipped on a soggy bit of newspaper. She flinched. Paranoia. There's no one there. There's no crime in London. A woman can walk anywhere alone at night in perfect safety. Even Jantor would agree. Believe it. Battle fatigue, that was it. You've been in the jungle too long. You're jumpy from lack of sleep.

Gilman reached the lobby of the station, where she pumped two shillings into the ticket machine. She snatched the yellow card from its slot and hurried to a descending escalator.

She hated the steep moving wooden stairs whose creaking descent into the city's underground tunnels took several minutes. If only she could walk instead of balancing trapped on the escalator, but the subterranean passages where the trains came and went burrowed so deep that the station's long and treacherous staircases were barricaded, for emergency use only.

Gilman rode down to the train platforms. She thought for the hundredth time of the London blitz, when thousands of citizens abandoned their homes to the mercy of the Luftwaffe and swarmed into these tunnels to escape the bombing. She stared at the posters that adorned the subways displaying rows of huddled forms sleeping on the train tracks. People burying themselves alive to elude death.

In a way the blitz was the best of times, the old Londoners told her. Camaraderie shared by strangers in the streets. Maybe, but she wondered about the old people's stories. The legend of the blitz, of transcendence and comradeship had led her to Nigeria, in search of the best in herself and her friends. A time of war, of heroism—she blinked against the harsh lights of the escalator passage. Now she wondered if rats on a sinking ship ever pulled together, whether London overcame the bombing or merely survived it.

Gilman found the tunnel to the Westbound's stop where a busker was packing his violin. Quiet save for a cluster of young people who seemed to all know each other. Gaily dressed people returning from the theater. A drift of perfume in the dank air. She shifted her stance, stifled a yawn. The later it grew, the further apart the trains ran. Gilman welcomed the approaching rumble of the westbound Baker Street line.

She stepped aboard the train and selected a seat by the back window. Then a flash of odd movement in the rear car caught her eye, the gesture of an arm, like a phrase spoken in another tongue. Gilman glanced through the small windows between the cars. She recognized the stance of the short muscular man boarding the train, and distinctive facial scars. Yoruba tribe. She jerked upright. His woolen muffler had slipped. Now he rearranged it over his mouth and chin. The doors hissed shut, and the train surged into motion.

Gilman told herself thousands of Africans lived in London. Africans with tribal scars. It didn't work. She knew someone followed her, knew she hadn't seen the man on the broad expanse of platform. He'd concealed himself until the last possible moment. The train rushed and swayed through the black tunnel.

Warren Street, Great Portland Street. She felt in her pocket for the revolver she no longer carried.

The train slowed for Baker Street.
Christ
. If she got off…Had the man followed her for days? Weeks? Did he know where she lived? If he knew that she'd finally seen him, he'd have to make his move.

If she stayed on the train, it would carry her farther and farther into the suburbs, to fewer and fewer people, no place to go, no trains back at this hour. But if she could lose him, then get home first, find the revolver in the bedside table drawer, call the police, get out of town, do something…

She couldn't bear to wait. Five lines converged at Baker Street, with nine platforms, three levels. Staircases, winding tunnels, construction, made a subterranean maze. She could lose him. Gilman lurched into the aisle of the braking train.

The opening hiss of automatic doors and Gilman hit the platform, running for the intersection of the tunnels. She allowed herself one look back, catching a glimpse of her pursuer struggling through the group of theatergoers disembarking from his car. No time to stop and con the maps of the station—Gilman ran. Down the first tunnel she came to, spiraling to the right, down flight after flight of steps. Down the passage along the flat.

The bright posters flashed by, then she felt the slant of the tunnel floor begin to rise. She encountered no one, could hear nothing over the clattering echo of her own shoes. Gilman wanted to look back, just once, to see if he followed. You don't look back. You keep moving.

In an instant the tunnel was plunged into total blackness, the overhead lights flashing out. Was the station closing? Had her pursuer found the master switch?

Gilman had to stop to allow her eyes to adjust. There was no adjusting. No light crept down the tunnels of the London underground. She could only hear herself gasping. Her skin prickled at the soundless dark. Her hands shook, but she groped and stumbled along the wall.

The air lightened into a thick gloom. There were large black letters in the haze, and she strained—St. John's Wood.
Christ
. This northbound line into the country closed an hour ago. She could make out the wide expanse of the platform and the deep pit where the train tracks lay. Then Gilman strained up for the source of the faint illumination, up the sheer cement walls three stories high to a brighter blackness, the stars peeking from ragged masses of cloud.

Something slammed into her, tearing a scream out. An arm hooked her neck. She struggled wildly, like any trapped animal, but the vise tightened, choking her into submission. With his free hand the Nigerian worked to loosen the large knot of scarf which protected her jugular.

At the touch of dry fingers on the skin of her throat, adrenaline dizzied Gilman. Don't pass out. His knife glinted, pressing cold, sharp, like the pain of a paper cut.

"Do not scream again, Doctor Gilman. I do not wish to hurt you. I shall take you to see your old friend."

His formal, even polite warning spoken, her attacker loosened his grip to let her breathe. He'd take her to Lindsey like a pig to slaughter. She gulped for air and her head cleared a little, and the arm circling her throat recalled another. How many times had she fought her way clear of Jantor's grip? His deep cool voice came to her now in the damp subway.

"Adrenaline will give a woman the strength of three grown men. If you have nothing to lose by fighting, use it."

Her attacker pulled her backwards into the mouth of the tunnel. Gilman turned her chin into the crook of his elbow, shielding her throat from the blade of his knife. She jerked her chin down, slumped heavily against the man when he backed up, jammed her left heel into the tender hollow above his left knee and thrust down with all her weight, feeling the patella give beneath her shoe.

The man fell, grunting, dragging Gilman down with him, choking her, the uncontrolled knife biting into the collar of her raincoat. She fell on top of him, heard the air gasp from his lungs, twisted herself free. She scrambled up and the man struggled after, slashing with his knife.

He rose on his good leg and she buried her foot in his stomach, driving him back to the pavement. Kicked him alongside the head. Then she stamped on the hand that held the knife, again and again. The stubborn fingers opened at last. Somewhere Jantor spoke again.

"Never leave an enemy able to follow you."

She aimed a final kick at the skull of the writhing man on the floor, then bolted for the now-welcome blackness of the tunnel. Was he alone? He couldn't be alone…There had to be others waiting somewhere. She'd forced him to a premature attack. She had to get out, get back. An image of her stained and homely bedside table and its yellow lamp rose in her mind.

Twice, running sightless in the tunnel, staircases leapt up at her and she fell. At last the dim lights of the closing city platforms blurred before her, brightening. Leaden-legged and gasping, she ran up the now-silent steps of the endless escalator two at a time. She shoved through the turnstile in the lobby and trotting feet came after her.

"Madam, your ticket please!"

Gilman whirled on the official of the London Transport, cursing like a madwoman and fumbling desperately through her pockets. No ticket. She flung a handful of coins, and exploded through the revolving doors of the station, followed by a shrill Cockney screech of the fat man who squatted to pick up the scattered coins.

"Crazy bloody bitch!

The cold air and drizzle beat on her hot face. Gilman ran into the street to flag down a black Austin cab. She threw herself into the back seat and gasped out the name of her street. She locked her door and leaned back into the seat, chest heaving, tilting her head to catch her breath and trying to still the pounding of her heart. She wiped at the sweat running down her face, pushed the damp hair back from her temples, fumbled with the buttons of her coat. For the first time she felt the thin sticky trickle of blood that ran from her throat down her shirt.