Eye of the Needle(98)

“What happened?” Faber called from upstairs.

“I dropped a cup,” she shouted. She couldn’t camouflage the tremor in her voice.

The bed creaked again and there was a footfall on the floor above her. But it was too late now for her to turn back. She picked up the gun, opened the back door and, holding Jo to her, ran across to the barn.

On the way she had a moment of panic—had she left the keys in the jeep? Surely she had, she always did.

She slipped in the wet mud and fell to her knees. She began to cry. For a second she was tempted to stay there, and let him catch her and kill her the way he had killed her husband, and then she remembered the child in her arms and she got up and ran.

She went into the barn and opened the passenger door of the jeep. She put Jo on the seat. He slipped sideways. Lucy sobbed, “Oh, God!” She pulled Jo upright, and this time he stayed that way. She ran around to the other side of the jeep and got in, dropping the gun onto the floor between her legs.

She turned the starter.

It coughed and died.

“Please, please!”

She turned it again.

The engine roared into life.

Faber came out of the back door at a run.

Lucy raced the engine and threw the gearshift into forward. The jeep seemed to leap out of the barn. She rammed the throttle open.

The wheels spun in the mud for a second, then bit again. The jeep gathered speed with agonizing languor. She steered away from him but he chased after the jeep, barefoot in the mud.

She realized he was gaining on her.

She pushed the hand-throttle with all her strength, almost snapping the thin lever. She wanted to scream with frustration. He was only a yard or so away, almost even with her, running like an athlete, his arms going like pistons, his bare feet pounding the muddy ground, his cheeks blowing, his naked chest heaving.

The engine screamed, and there was a jerk as the automatic transmission changed up, then a new surge of power.

Lucy looked sideways again. He seemed to realize that he had almost lost her and flung himself forward in a dive. He got a grip on the door handle with his left hand, and brought the right hand across. Pulled by the jeep, he ran alongside her a few paces, his feet hardly touching the ground. Lucy stared at his face, so close to hers—it was red with effort, twisted in pain; the cords of his powerful neck bulged with the strain.

Suddenly she knew what she had to do.

She took her hand off the wheel, reached through the open window and poked him in the eye with a long-nailed forefinger.

He let go and fell away, his hands covering his face.

The distance between him and the jeep increased rapidly.

Lucy realized she was crying like a baby.





TWO MILES from her cottage she saw the wheelchair.

It stood on the cliff top like a memorial, its metal frame and big rubber tires impervious to the unending rain. Lucy approached it from a slight dip, and saw its black outline framed by the slate-grey sky and the boiling sea. It had a wounded look, like the hole left by an uprooted tree or a house with broken windows; as if its passenger had been wrenched from it.

She recalled the first time she had seen it in the hospital. It had stood beside David’s bed, new and shiny, and he had swung himself into it expertly and swished up and down the ward, showing off. “She’s light as a feather—made of aircraft alloy,” he had said with brittle enthusiasm, and sped off between the rows of beds. He had stopped at the far end of the ward with his back to her, and after a minute she went up behind him and she saw he was crying. She had knelt in front of him and held his hands, saying nothing.

It was the last time she had been able to comfort him.

There on the cliff top, the rain and the salt wind would soon blemish the alloy, and eventually it would rust and crumble, its rubber perished, its leather seat rotted away.

Lucy drove past without slowing.

Three miles farther on, when she was halfway between the two cottages, she ran out of petrol.

She fought down the panic and tried to think rationally as the jeep shuddered to a halt.

People walked at four miles an hour, she remembered reading somewhere. Henry was athletic, but he had hurt his ankle, and even though it seemed to have healed rapidly, the running he had done after the jeep must have hurt it. She must be a good hour ahead of him, she figured.

(She had no doubt he would come after her; he knew as well as she did that there was a wireless transmitter in Tom’s cottage.)

She had plenty of time. In the back of the jeep was a half-gallon can of fuel for just such occasions as this. She got out of the car, fumbled the can out of the back and opened the tank cap.

Then she thought again, and the inspiration that came to her surprised her by its fiendishness.

She replaced the cap and went to the front of the car. She checked that the ignition was off and opened the hood. She was no mechanic but she could identify the distributor cap and trace the leads to the engine. She lodged the fuel can securely beside the engine block and took off its cap.

There was a spark plug wrench in the tool kit. She took out a plug, checked again that the ignition was off, and put the plug in the mouth of the fuel can, securing it there with tape. Then she closed the hood.

When Henry came along he was certain to try to start the jeep. He would switch on, the starter motor would turn, the plug would spark and the half-gallon of gas would explode.

She was not sure how much damage it would do, but she felt certain it would be no help.