Rain by Stephen Gallagher By the same author CHIMERA FOLLOWER VALLEY OF LIGHTS OKTOBER DOWN RIVER -STEPH EH GALLMJHER NEW ENGLISH LIBRARY British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Gallagher, Steve Rain. I. Title 823'.914[F] ISBN 0-450-52460-4 Copyright (c) Stephen Gallagher First published in Great Britain 1990 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without either prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-34 Alfred Place, London we1E7DP. Published by New English Library, a hardcover imprint of Hodder and Stoughton, a division of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent TN13 2YA. Editorial Office: 47 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DF. Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk. Printed in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent. PART ONE. Death and the Maiden (I) CHAPTER ONE. The first time that he saw her was across the parking lot of a motorway service area. It was about a quarter to midnight, and it had been raining. He could see that she was tired and cold and that she'd probably been on her feet for some time. She didn't look much more than sixteen, although he knew that she was older. She shifted from one foot to the other, waiting with her awkward bundle of papers under her arm like some census-taker worn down by a few too many rebuffs. He saw her walk up and down under the forecourt's dripping canopy, watching her for about fifteen minutes as she killed time and waited for new arrivals; and then, after she'd covered the same piece of ground more often than he could count, he saw her turn and go back inside. He got out of his car, and followed. At the glass doors, he hesitated; now she'd stopped a lone driver at the foot of the overpass stairway, and although the sound didn't reach him at this distance he was able to supply his own dialogue track as she fumbled out her well-worn photograph and made her familiar pitch. "Excuse me. I wonder if you can help me". She'd been opening with the same line every time, trying not to catch them too much off-guard but still making them wary of some imminent request for money, or a lift, or worse. They'd look at her suspiciously, and the suspicion wouldn't entirely clear until they'd heard her through and were able to back away, shrugging and shaking their heads. After which she'd repack her papers, stuff the bundle under her arm again, and carry on. He knew how to observe without being seen. On the outside there were plenty of shadows but inside, and at this hour, there was no crowd to hide him, and so he waited before pushing through the glass doors to follow. She'd gone ahead into the cafeteria, a long gallery of blond wood and oatmeal-coloured tile at the far side of the concourse; from here to there was mostly dead space at nighttime, the Game Zone and the magazine shop darkened behind roll-down chain metal shutters. His footsteps echoed in emptiness as he crossed the vinyl floor. Once inside the cafeteria, its windows a long gallery of darkness overlooking the motorway, he made sure that he kept his distance from her. There were two or three dozen people already inside, most of them late-night, tired-looking, and slow. The haulage drivers were grouped together, spinning out their supper breaks; the rest were bleary tourists in twos and threes, huddled over trays of Danish and tall paper cups of Coke. He was the only one who sat alone. From a corner table, he watched. When she moved, he would move after. Two hours of this. It might even have been more. There was a pattern to what she was doing. For a while she'd stand out front as she had before, walking the length of the building and looking over the cabs of the lorries pulled nose-in toward it, and then as her energies and her attention flagged she'd go inside and sit for a while, and instead of cabs she'd scan faces, and edge nearer to lorry drivers' conversations as if in the hope of picking up something useful. Some of them knew her, some of them seemed to know her well. Sometimes she'd sit with a group of them although never, in any sense, did she seem to get close to anyone. He studied her. From every angle, at every distance apart from close-to. A mousy little kid with a self-administered peroxide job that had almost grown out, weary and driven and dressed in cast-offs like some refugee from an earthquake zone. He saw her tackling strangers, he saw her with her guard down at a corner table when she thought she was unobserved. There, she had the look of a child; some distance travelled, some illusions still intact. But then there would be a new influx of late-running haulage drivers, ambling in bantering and sometimes tousling each other's hair, and she'd rise to the occasion with a face that read business as usual. It grew late. Then it grew later. By now most of the tourists had moved out and even the professionals were beginning to disperse, some back to the road and others to sleep in their cabs. He knew that she'd noticed him a while ago; nothing special, just one new face in a night when there were plenty of new faces mixed in amongst the regulars, but it placed a limit on how long he could continue to stick around without making her suspicious. So then he went outside, and waited to see what she'd do next. He stood under the awning, as she'd stood some time before. Even at this hour, there was activity; freight and haulage vehicles had moved in and taken over the daytime car parking area, and their sounds were a backdrop to the night. The engines of static lorries beating time, the occasional hiss and release of air brakes, chains rattling and shackles crashing as furtive un couplings took place in the distant darkness. Way out beyond the trees there were even more of them, all crowded in together like sleeping cattle; and as he looked, his eyes were caught by the movement of a police Range Rover taking a slow cruise along one of the aisles. Another world, he thought. Another life, lived by another people. She moved among them, and they seemed to treat her like a mascot. He wondered if she knew how dangerous this might turn out to ( be. A big United Transport wagon, its cab backlit like a dark-faced jack o'lantern, was moving into one of the few empty spaces alongside the main building. Its lights were a smeared trail on wet ( asphalt; the rain was so faint that it was barely perceptible apart from where it showed up directly under the floodlights, but it was a presence that couldn't be ignored. Many of the nearby drivers had their engines running and their heaters on, their windshields steamy and streaked on the inside. He decided to go over and wait in the car. Sitting with his window half-open and the radio playing low, his attention was caught by the police Rover again. It was now beyond the diesel island, its lights snapping on after a prowl along the perimeter road without them, and he half-smiled in the darkness. When the night was long and at its lowest, perhaps it could take a little more than patience to get the boys through. Night games, he thought, just night games, and as the Rover passed behind his car he glanced in his mirror. He could just about make out the white blurs of the faces of its occupants, and the distinct yellow slash of the reflective bands that they wore over their uniforms. And then, as they moved on, he returned his attention to the night game that was his own. She came out only a couple of minutes later. Same spot, essentially the same routine. Jesus, did she never grow tired of it? He switched off the radio and leaned well back, but she wasn't even looking his way. She was sorting through her papers, looking at them, checking, compiling, rearranging as if for the thousandth time. He felt his heart go out to her as it might to some noble thing reduced to the indignities of a zoo where it could only repeat the same futile pattern of behaviour again and again. Someone came out through the glass doors behind her, catching her by surprise. CHAPTER TWO. "Excuse me," she began, but the man was ready. "No, sorry," he said. He was youngish, with a towel over his shoulder and a soap bag in his hand, his hair in dark spikes from a coldwater splash and a vigorous rub; he wore what had to be one of his oldest sweaters, out at the elbows, and he carried under his arm a two-litre Pepsi bottle that he'd filled at one of the washroom basins. He'd seen her through the glass, had probably decided that at the very least she had to be tapping people for spare change, and had taken the furthest of the doors with the intention of putting himself beyond her range as quickly as possible. He didn't even pause, or meet her eyes. "You don't even know what I was going to ask you!" she called after him as he hurried out and onto the tarmac. Perhaps it was the indignation in her voice. Or perhaps it was some streak of common decency, that faulty defence mechanism that forces people to sit through a sales pitch for something they know they don't want, and which sometimes even persuades them to buy. But he stopped, and he turned. "I'm sorry," he said, flinching a little under the faint, needling touch of the rain. "But I can't give lifts. It's a company rule." "I'm not looking for a lift." "Then i...
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