Chase the Morning

A law of the instincts, perhaps. The thought of anyone innocent in the hands of those creatures was bad enough – but Clare … What was she to me? A junior colleague. Hardly even a friend. I’d been careful to keep it that way; hardly ever saw her outside work, didn’t know much about her life. Yet she’d been my secretary for four years. In that time, whether or not I’d meant to, I could hardly have helped getting a pretty clear idea of her personality, the essential Clare. A better sense of what made her tick, maybe, than any of her come-and-go boyfriends. To update an old saying, nobody’s a hero to his secretary. Yet she’d stuck to me; and I’d reason to know she’d taken my part fiercely when it counted. It surprised me a little how fiercely I wanted to repay that. I told myself it must be sheer guilt. I was responsible for her; yet I’d brought this on her, by my lunatic compulsion to delve into things better left alone, things I should have forgotten as Jyp told me to. But there was more to it than guilt, than the wish to help I’d have had for anybody in that plight. I could see her in my mind’s eye, and it took a lot of effort to drive slow, keep safe, to run with the traffic and watch the shadows gather ahead, beneath the slowly reddening sky.

I had to face it. I was fond of the girl, as fond as I could be of anybody. All this time some kind of feeling had been building up, creeping through all my neat defences, where I’d thought every chink had been stopped; all this time my instincts had been playing me traitor. Now they were whipping me into something like a frenzy. God, what must she be suffering now? What must she be thinking? If she was still alive to think, even –

I had to help her, whatever the cost, wherever I had to go.

I knew what that would mean. I’d have to open a gate that was closed, retrace a forgotten path, recross a forbidden threshold. That way neither reason nor memory had ever opened; my instincts were the only guides I had. And from the moment that policeman laid his fat hand on my arm those same instincts had shrieked a warning. He and the authority he represented were part of a narrower world. With them or any others in tow I’d never find the way, not if I circled those dark streets forever. Where I was going was for me alone.

The way there felt interminable. I ran into snarl-up after snarl-up, and the ring-road lights seemed to blaze red every time they saw me coming. I’d have been ready enough to run them tonight, but I didn’t dare be caught, for Clare’s sake. Worst of all was coming down towards the roundabout, when I heard a siren somewhere behind me; but it was some ways back, and a couple of heavy trucks were blocking it from view. I wasn’t too worried. It might not be me they were after; and even if it was they couldn’t possibly catch me up before the turn-off. I reached the roundabout, and I was just signalling to turn when my wing-mirror suddenly filled with another car, roaring around the outside right into my path. One bump would have bounced me into the other lanes and almost inevitably caused a multiple pile-up; I flung the wheel over just in time, to a torrent of hooting and shouting from behind. All aimed at me, of course, as if they hadn’t seen the real offender; I got only a glimpse of a glittering red sports car and a swarthy face, yellowish and sneering, behind the wheel, as he sailed tranquilly past and away up Harbour Walk. While I had to filter around the roundabout again to reach the turn-off, and hear the cobbles under my tyres at long last. The high walls closed around me, and the sound of the siren seemed to fade into the distance.