Sleepwalker (21 page)

“But you're a man for dogs.”

Langton admitted that she was right, and then pursued the subject of the gray tomcat belonging, when it had belonged to anyone, to Mrs. Phillips. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Langton had the same trouble in France. Translating a newspaper into actual information took time. “Is the cat dead?”

“How did you guess that?”

“You told me, I believe.”

“I didn't.”

“How did it die?”

“The police don't know. They found him floating in the Ouse.” The river was pronounced
ooze
. Langton thought of ooze at the bottom of the river, and frogmen.

Jane's white skin.

“But there have been several cats gone missing in the last few weeks,” she continued. “And more than one or two found in the river.”

Langton admitted that this was a fascinating mystery, and then he could not speak. He had washed his hands, although they had not needed washing, and asked her to repeat all she knew about the missing cats.

“Well, I don't know how they died. Someone killed them, I suppose.”

“Poison?”

“I couldn't say, could I?”

Now he watched Harry nuzzle tussocks of grass. If it were poison, then that would be a relief. Because Peter had never used poison. He had used his hands, as Langton recalled. So perhaps someone was poisoning cats, and hurling the bodies into the river.

But would one do that, actually? A poisoner never really knows when the victim has eaten the tainted bit of liver. A poisoner would not throw victims into a river.

How many had she said? He couldn't remember. Enough to cause an interest in the press. There would have been others, then, that no one knew about. He would have to ask Mrs. Webster to look up the articles. He would have to reserve judgment until he knew more.

He would wait. Too many people had done too much in recent weeks. It was almost always better to do nothing.

Peter had not looked well recently. He had looked as though he had not been sleeping. There had been something cadaverish about him, and he had never been exactly plump to begin with.

And hadn't there, now that he thought about it, been a scratch on one of his arms? Peter had fingered it during a meeting. A cut, not at all well healed, much like the claw mark a cat might make.

But Langton knew nothing of Peter's sexual habits. Didn't like to give it a thought. There were torrid affairs in which a man might be scratched a bit. Langton remembered a night or two himself in which pleasure and pain had been confused. That was the way with passion. He was not a scientist, but he kept a broad view of things.

On his wrist. A claw mark.

Harry worked his nose into the grass around a white post.

If only Higg were back from near-death. Langton needed help. He was not made for this sort of crisis. What would Higg suggest? Something active. “We ought to go on down to his flat this very night and see what sort of mischief he's up to.” Or, at the very least, “Talk to that man the first thing tomorrow morning. You know there's something wrong.” But Higg would be so much better at confronting possible madmen than Langton would ever be.

Now Langton had indigestion. He would chew three or four Setter's and try to find something to read. Nothing with a crime in it, or a mystery.

He tugged Harry along the pavement. The entire chain of mishaps might have been Peter's doing. He certainly knew enough about machinery to cause a generator to blow up. It was not impossible that he had stolen the Skeldergate Man and sold him to the international market. One or two items of the Sutton Hoo exhibit had vanished a few years ago, he had heard, and only luck turned them up in a drug raid in Paris. There was always a potential for crime in archaeology. A dig could be salted with treasures in order to inflate its importance to the press, or to the foundation funding the dig. Finds could disappear. Langton had a good deal of experience, and everyone he knew had been honest and diligent.

Peter had seemed hardworking, and, ignoring his past, entirely respectable. But there was something wrong with Peter now, and Langton had, suddenly, too many questions to wait until morning.

But he had to wait. He couldn't go knocking people up at three or four in the morning to make wild accusations.

He couldn't, but Davis could. Davis would be pleased to do something—anything—to recover the missing bog man. He was the sort of man who loved action. Langton would ask for Davis's help before he confronted Peter. That was the way to handle it—no need to run a risk by taking on too much by himself.

Langton returned to his home, and sat trying to read a historical novel he had enjoyed years before. Unfortunately, the novel took place in Anglo-Saxon times, and this reminded him of the Skeldergate dig.

His wife tottered forth and asked him if he were coming to bed at all that night, or sitting up like a silly owl.

“Like an owl,” he said.

“How many more years of this will we go through, Charles?” she asked.

The question of retirement. She had aired this before, and he still did not know. He did not have to speak. She read his face, his posture.

She amazed him. Dishes and pots had flown across the kitchen, shattering like crockery in a hurricane, and yet now she was more than calm—sleepy. Sometimes women seemed wiser and stronger than men. She was a deep and lovely mystery.

“You'll wear yourself out,” she said.

He did not have to respond. She left him sitting alone.

Langton read, and watched the clock, praying that night would pass quickly.

26

Irene did not like the way the train rolled through the dark. It was fast enough for an ordinary journey, but not fast enough for this night.

The reason for her sudden trip was very simple: she understood what was happening. She had been walking across Russell Square, on the way to the Bloomsbury flat she shared with an old girlfriend, when she understood everything.

Peter is dangerous. He is too sick. Something must be done or a terrible thing will happen. She had understood, hurrying across the square in a sudden current of cold, what Peter had done.

She had not bothered to return to the flat, but had flagged a cab. She had a return ticket, so she was able to run and catch a train just as it was about to leave. She had been foolish not to see it before. And now so much depended on her. And on the speed of the train. There were delays, and a voice droned over the metal roar of the rails announcing a delay at Doncaster.

She clenched her fists. If the train was slow, rattling through the night, then she could do nothing.

She had not bothered to telephone Davis. Let him be surprised. Besides, she understood things that Davis was not yet ready to accept. She had always preferred to be independent. She would take care of everything. She wanted to hold Davis, and felt her hands tremble at the thought. She wanted to stitch a message through the darkness, across the blank, empty fields: Oh, Davis. Be careful. Be very careful.

Davis, she thought: Be safe. I am on my way.

Peter was a sick man, and sick men make mistakes. Irene nearly smiled, despite her icy hands, her icy feet. She would stop him herself.

It had gone magnificently. Better than he had dared to dream.

He folded his costume, and put it on the back seat, beside his passenger. They were all leaving. There was no reason to stay here any longer. He shut the door as quietly as possible. The Austin started, and he eased it into gear.

Peter forced himself to drive slowly. He crossed the Lendal Bridge, not shifting out of second. There was no traffic, and there were no police, as far as he could see, but he did not want to do anything wrong at this point.

“I don't want to make a mistake now,” he said to his passenger, who lay, as though drowsing, on the back seat.

“Don't want any mistakes at this point,” he continued, “after everything has gone so well.”

More than well. Perfectly.

He leaped from the car, and unlocked the gate. He shot the car through the narrow gap. This would not take very long at all.

It was a blessing. The chorus of voices in his head had stopped. The little sounds around him were clear again. The rasp of his work boot on the earth, the tinkle of the keys.

The dig was a well of darkness. It would be easy to make a mistake of another sort here, he thought, and fall into one of the trenches. Best be careful. Best be very careful.

And fast. The thing to do now was to flee. Get his few things together, his notebooks—mustn't let them see any of those. He might have scribbled something in a book that might tell them everything. He had made notes. He had used scissors from his desk to cut the burlap. Even a thread of cloth would betray him. Just a few minutes to clean his desk, and then he would be gone.

He did not know where, but there was no reason to expect that his genius would fail him now. He had a great talent. He was one of the most brilliant men in the world, and he did not have to worry about anything.

And the Man would be worth something. Wouldn't there be private collectors somewhere in the world who would crave such a possession? Necessarily secret, of course, but entirely unique. Switzerland, no doubt, with the Man folded easily like the leather handbag he very nearly was. He would be easy to hide. And no one would guess that Peter had done this. He would leave a note. “Professional pressures too great. Need a few days away.”

He parked the car as close to the office as he could. The ground was uneven, scarred with ruts, and pocked with puddles.

When the car's motor was switched off everything was quiet. His own breath was loud. “Yes,” he told himself. “I taught him a very good lesson. A well-deserved lesson. A very important lesson that he will never forget.”

How foolish people were! An intelligent man like Davis believed that a bog man could walk. Now Davis was probably dead. Peter certainly hoped so. Dead, his last moments hideous.

Peter laughed and laughed until the small car shook.

The most wonderful, most delightful joke anyone had ever played, and it was a pity Davis would never know what a tremendous joke it was. Peter wiped a tear. It was simply all too wonderful.

Every step had been brilliant. The night he stole the Man, for example—wrapping the Man's hand around the door handle for a moment had been a choice bit. That had no doubt pleased them no end. The police must be very happy indeed to think they were tracking a twelve-hundred-year-old fugitive.

If only he could tell the tale, thought Peter. How impressed everyone would be.

He unlocked the office Portakabin, and shut the door behind him quietly. Every sound seemed so loud. His breath seemed to roar. He switched on an electric torch, and turned the torch toward the wall. No one could see him here. He would be quick, and quiet. He tugged open his desk drawer.

Yes, here was a sketch, in this W. H. Smith notebook. The frame was drawn in pencil, the frame that even now gave the Man his structure. Peter tucked the notebook into his pocket. God only knew whatever else he had scrawled. He had been confused, even feverish, for quite some time.

But all that was over. Now he was going to be calm, and very careful.

He froze, and held his breath. A sound. A click, or a snap. A lock, perhaps. He listened, and heard only his own heartbeat thud like a machine. A heart made an ugly thump if you really listened to it, didn't it? Ugly, and loud, as well.

Then there had been the terrible thing that had happened, the thing that Peter groaned to think about. He would weep if he let himself remember it. He would weep, and be unable to sort this drawer.

He had too many notes. Computer printouts, scraps of paper. It was a good idea to clean this desk—he found a design, scribbled on a finds card, of the knee hinge. If you knew what it was, the secret was made clear. Otherwise, it looked like a bit of sloppy Leonardo. Clever, but enigmatic. He could take no risks. Keep it all perfect, he told himself. Leave them blind.

There was too much here. The best way to make sure he left nothing behind was to burn it all. He had what he needed, a box of matches. A fire would attract attention, though, and this was what he wanted to avoid.

He was weeping despite himself. It had been too terrible.

Jane had come into his flat, using a key he had given her long ago, and she had written him a note.

A kind note, affectionate. Not loving, but a note he would have treasured if he had not been forced to tear it into bits and flush it down the toilet.

He had found her dead in his flat. How she had died was a mystery, but the closet had been open. She must have looked into it and seen the Man, and died of shock. This was hard to understand, but he had found the Man lying next to her, as though she had taken it out of the closet and intended to take it with her, and then suffered a failure, quite literally, of heart.

A brutal discovery. The sorrow had made him tear furniture to bits, the blond pine table, and the two benches. He had torn them apart out of grief. Even now, hot tears kissed his hands as he worked.

Jane.

It had made him all the more determined that Davis suffer. He hoped Davis was lying even now with his face smashed in, teeth and pulp down his throat.

He wept. Gradually he gathered his thoughts, and breathed more easily.

He had committed her to the river. He could not run the risk of having the Man discovered, not while the intelligence breathed into his ear, not while everything was going so well.

But it had given him a bad thought, a thought that flowered in him even now: Maybe there was something to it. Perhaps—although it was impossible—perhaps the Man
was
able to move by himself. Something had nearly killed Dr. Higg, and certainly Jane was dead.

Peter forced himself to laugh. See how nervous he had become! He was as foolish as any of them, nearly as nerve-shattered as Davis.

But there was a sound. A real sound. He could not move as the door opened behind him with a dry, empty laugh of its hinges.