Chase the Morning

Secretaries … There were faces I didn’t see. I leaped up and ran around to my own office. When I reached it I stopped dead in the doorless frame. The other day’s devastation was nothing compared to this. The place had been quite literally torn apart, every stick of furniture shattered. Even the partition between the inner and outer offices had been smashed down; and as for my terminal, my desk, my chair even, I was hard put to it to recognise them. They lay shattered and trampled, stamped into a shapeless pile. One of the rugger players was helping Dave up from the floor below his desk. ‘Dave!’ I shouted. He blinked confusedly at me through his unswollen right eye. ‘Dave! is Clare all right?’

He only mumbled ‘Uh – Clare? Take Clare –’

I seized his shoulders and shook him. ‘Where is she?’

The insurance man pulled me off. ‘Leave him, Steve! Can’t you see he’s concussed?’

I let him go, and pushed past. She wasn’t in the wreckage of her own office; nor, fortunately, was she under the mess here. If she’d been elsewhere when the attack came … I looked in every office, but there was nobody left. With a numb, leaden feeling inside me I stalked back around through the milling, chattering crowd, peered into the typists’ room, the photocopier room, the gents, even into the ladies; none of the girls mopping up their injuries there gave me a second look. And none of them was Clare.

‘Clare!’ I shouted above the hubbub. ‘Has anyone seen Clare?’

One of the typists, gulping down water, gave a sudden squeal and dropped her glass. ‘Clare! They were carrying her –’ Then she dissolved into hysterics.

That was enough. I barged out into the lobby and ploughed through the crowd, now swelled by arriving ambulance men, and down the stairs at full gallop. Down at the bottom was Barry, with a police sergeant, staring at a track of blood that led across the hallway from the liftshaft. ‘Pretty tough punks, if you ask me, to drop four floors and just crawl away – and why the hell –’

Barry saw me and waved me down. ‘Sergeant, it was Steve here who –’

I shook loose. ‘Later, dammit, Barry! They’ve taken Clare!’

The sergeant plucked at my arm with a heavy and practised hand. I tried to pull loose, but it almost jerked me off my feet. In a sudden, desperate rush of frustrated anger I whirled around and smashed my fist into his face. Even a day earlier I would never have done it; and I would never have dreamed I could hit so hard. He literally seemed to fly backwards off his feet, and hit the wall in a crumpled heap.

I turned and ran, hearing Barry trumpet ‘What the hell –’ from behind me, and then, more urgently ‘Steve!’

I owed Barry a lot, but I didn’t dare listen. I’d no intention of waiting, for him or for the police; I didn’t dare. I ran. Out into the street, scattering the crowds of doughy-faced gawkers; one made a tentative step into my path, thought better of it and sprang back. I reached the car-park, fumbling with my keys, flung the door wide and thumped down behind the wheel. I twisted the car back in a roaring arc, hunching it down on its suspension like a springing cat, and drove straight out. My mirror showed me blue uniforms spilling out of the door, but they didn’t worry me. The mouth of the little street was so choked with ambulances and gawkers that they’d never get after me in time, and it was one-way; the far end would be clear. They’d put out an alert, of course; but all the local cars were probably here already, and once I was out of the area spotting my car among all its anonymous look-alikes in the late afternoon rush would be a matter of sheer chance.

Provided, of course, I drove sensibly and didn’t draw attention to myself. I had to be careful about that. It was oddly exhilarating, playing the fugitive, for all the sick worry underneath. Oddly, because it didn’t sound like the man I saw in my shaving mirror. I’d always been a law-abiding type by nature – still was, come to that. I’d no malice against the police, none at all, no wish to make a hard job harder. Sooner or later I’d have to face the consequences of what I’d done. No question what it would look like, punching the policeman, bolting from the scene like that; they’d figure I knew something – and they’d make damn sure I told them. All right, I’d try, mad as it would sound; but I just couldn’t let them get in my way, not now. It was a higher, older law I was obeying now.