Healer (11 page)

“I've changed my mind,” whispered Pinkie. “I think I'd better stay here after all.”

For a moment Barry felt a shock of relief. The whole ugly, dangerous problem was going to be taken away. Then Pinkie reached out and took the little bear out of his hands.

She lifted her head from his shoulder. A wedge of chill seemed to slide down between them.

“No,” he said. “We've got to get you out of here.”

“There's no hurry.”

“Yes, there is. He's a loony. If what he's giving you now doesn't do the trick, what's he going to try next? Yes, listen. Say something to Mrs. Butterfield while you're having tea about seeing funny lights around people because of what he gave you. Tell her whenever that sort of thing happens. So there's somebody you've told beside me. Got it?”

“I've told her before.”

“Okay. We'll try for one night next week. Better be a night before a Harmony Session … “

“Oh, no!”

“Why not? The more old Freeman's got to cope with, the more chance we'll have …

“All those people. Hoping. Please, Bear.”

“Okay, okay. Night after, then. I'll come fetch you. Listen, you know the stable block—you can see it out of your end window in the nursery?”

“Course I do.”

“Top floor, three windows along from the left, that's my room. I've got a cloth I polish my shoes with—bright yellow. Look for it on my windowsill every morning. If it's there, it means we're going that night. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“I'll come fetch you. All you've got to do is have a good rest that afternoon, after the session. Then, when you go to bed, make sure your clothes are easy to find. Warm clothes. Hang on. There's an alarm on your front door here, isn't there?”

“Yes.”

“Where does she keep the key?”

“On her ring.”

“Is it only on the door? I mean, can you move about at night without setting it off?”

“Yes.”

“Is she a good sleeper?”

“Sometimes she takes pills.”

“Might mean anything. Okay. I won't come back to see you again unless things go wrong. I've got a hell of a lot to sort out. One thing about being on night shift—it means I've got my days free. Look after yourself. Act normal. I'll be seeing you.”

“Seeing you.”

He let her slide out of the cupboard and then unwound himself, creaking with stiffness. The harp was twangling on, a proper piece of music now. He picked up his shoes and stole through the door into the passage. Five and a half paces between the bedroom door and the hatch. Next, how to get the doors of the hatch shut behind him.

He had put his shoes on and was sitting on the sill of the hatch, working out the necessary sequence of movements, when he realised that the harp music was coming to a close. You can always tell. A gulp like sickness constricted his throat. The music stopped. The stillness of mid afternoon seemed dense as water. She'd hear the slightest movement. He should have left by the door and risked it. Then he heard the faint rattle of paper, a ripple of wires, and a new piece of music starting. He let out his breath, half twisted onto his right buttock, and reached his left leg out and down, feeling for the topmost rung. The doors were no problem, but it would be different when he had Pinkie to cope with. The tinkle of Mrs. Butterfield's harp followed him down the shaft. He could still hear it as he crouched on the lift at the bottom, listening for footsteps in the stone passage.

Going to be a lot more moments like that, he thought.

Part Three

12

Perhaps it was Barry's own nervousness that made Norah touchy. She couldn't have known tonight was the night—nobody did except him and Pinkie—but she sniffed at the pork chop and growled deep in her throat. Her dark hackles rose. She sensed something was wrong. She was supposed to go hungry all night, so that she would roam the grounds in a hunting mood and then be given her meal next morning when the night porter put her back in her cage. She knew Barry by now and accepted him. He'd assumed she would still do so if she met him out in the grounds in the dark but had decided to make doubly sure by taking the edge off her hunger.

It was a mistake. She was instantly suspicious, being offered the wrong food at the wrong time in the wrong place. He tossed the meat away, and it fell on the grass beside a large rhododendron. The growling died, and her hackles lay flat, and then, when he loosed her from the stubby leash, she sidled over and sniffed again at the chop. With a thief's quick glance she picked it up and slipped off around the bush. A sudden spatter of rain rattled on the big leaves. Barry glanced up. There was a steady, moist wind blowing from the southwest, and the night-black clouds looked low and heavy. He could do without rain, but the forecast had been bad. Anyway, it was too late to change. Everything was set and ready, equipment in places, signals and messages sent. Rain or no rain, tonight was the night when it was all going to have to work. At least rain might keep Norah under cover.

He let himself in at the back door, switched the alarm system on, and immediately went to the lift shaft. The lift hung there, empty. As he wound it the extra eighteen inches down, he heard the old wooden gears groaning far above. With luck no one would notice the brief rumble among the general stirring of the Foundation, but in the small hours, when all was still, it would have boomed a warning through the whole building. That done, he went to the porter's booth, hung up his keys, and started his normal night routine as though nothing was going to happen different from any other night. Four and a half hours later he climbed the lift shaft.

He took it slowly, using the climb as practice, getting his hands and feet to know without thinking exactly where the next rung would come. This wasn't like the first time; everybody had been in the Hall of Harmony then, but now, perhaps within two or three feet of where the shaft passed through the upper floors, there might be someone sleeping or even, possibly, lying awake in the dark, wondering about the faint creak or scuffle from beyond the wall. Indeed, at one moment Barry was sure he could hear a steady, deep breathing, almost a snore.

The top of the shaft was groping black. Not a glimmer this time to show him the position of the doors and the hatch sill. Clinging with one hand to the topmost rung, he took a flashlight from his breast pocket, switched it on, and gripped it between his teeth. The light shone sideways, but just enough was reflected off the walls of the shaft to let him see the jut of the sill. He took a deep breath, heaved, reached, and was there with barely even a thud. His left hand pushed at the doors, gripped the far edge of the sill. A few seconds later he was sitting with his legs dangling down the shaft and his head and shoulders out in the nursery passage.

He waited, listening to silence. With the flashlight he rechecked the details of the shaft, trying to fix them in his mind so that he could explain to Pinkie exactly what he wanted her to do on the return trip. Nothing stirred. Nobody seemed to breathe. Using his palm to screen the beam down to a glimmer, he lowered himself to the carpet and stole the five and a half paces to Pinkie's door. He gripped the handle and pulled gently, and then more firmly, before he started to turn it. Slowly. Slowly. The catch came free with a click that he could feel but not hear. He opened the door and went in.

There was a stir of movement from the bed. He flicked the beam across. Pinkie was sitting bolt upright, reaching for her glasses on the bedside table. He turned the beam onto himself and put his finger to his lips, then picked up one of her slippers, put it by the doorjamb, and pushed the door almost shut against it. He crossed to the bed and lifted her quilt off her. As she swung her legs over the side of the mattress, she put her mouth against his ear.

“I did sleep a bit,” she whispered.

He nodded, picked her clothes off the chair where they lay folded, and put them on the bed beside her, shining the flashlight on them so that she could see to dress. She'd hidden a good thick pullover under her pillow, presumably so that Mrs. Butterfield shouldn't notice it when she said good night. Typically she started putting it on back to front, and he had to switch it around for her. But she seemed perfectly calm. When she'd finished dressing, he put his mouth against her ear and explained about getting down the hatch. Twice, to be sure. She nodded. He crossed the room and wedged the door open.

When he came back, she was settling her little teddy bear neatly into the middle of her pillow. She had rearranged the quilt. He realised that she was deliberately leaving a Pinkie signal, clear as a written message, so that Mrs. Butterfield should know she had left of her own free will. He picked her up, carried her out into the passage, settled her feet on the hatch sill, and showed her how to grip the top of the hatch and lean her body over to the side so that she left room for him to climb through.

He was sitting on the sill, poised to begin the twisting and reaching-downward movement, when all of a sudden he became overwhelmingly conscious of the drop below. It was something to do with the dark, something to do with the tension of action, something to do with having slightly less room to manoeuvre in because of Pinkie standing at the edge of the opening. Every muscle in his body locked itself still with the terror of falling, going tumbling down in the dark, thumping a couple of times against the timber lining and smashing into the lift top thirty feet below. Stupid. Come on, Bear. You've done it before.

He willed his muscles to move, and they did, but it wasn't going to be any good. He had almost three feet to reach before his left sole touched the first rung, but after only six inches he found his hands and forearms were still clinging grimly to the sill, trying to drag his body back into the passage. A little farther, and there'd be a point of no return, beyond which he'd be unable to hoist himself back up.

As he hung there, trying to curse himself through the barrier, something brushed his cheek—the back of Pinkie's hand. Perhaps she was just reaching down, puzzled at the delay, to see if it was time for her to begin, but she moved her hand around and laid it against the back of his head, tousling her fingers through the thick hair. The tension seemed to flow out of him. His arms relaxed, and he swung himself easily down and sideways, his foot landing precisely on the rung as though it was a movement he'd practiced a hundred times. He let the impetus flow into the next stage, down onto the second rung, and came to rest with his right hand reaching up to grip the sill and his left on the top rung.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Quick. I can't hold this long.”

She seemed to him to make much more noise than he had as she settled onto the sill. Her shoe thumped slightly against the wood as it felt for his shoulder. It scraped by his ear, nudged around, settled. The other foot found his left shoulder. Still holding the sill, she knelt, put a hand around his neck, dropped.

It was just as well he had braced himself for the shock because she seemed to sling herself down, totally trusting, not afraid of the drop or the dark. Her arm jerked chokingly against his windpipe until her other arm came slithering down his and found a hold. He let go of the sill and lowered himself another rung, then rested.

Now, down.

It turned out tougher than he'd expected. No single move was especially difficult, but Pinkie's extra weight and the need for silence, which meant that everything had to be done with unnatural slowness, turned the muscles he was using into hard bars of pain. Soon he was having to will himself not to grunt with the effort. He lost count of the rungs so that when at last he reached down for the lift top, it wasn't there, and he had to climb on down two more to find it. His whole body was quivering by the time he let Pinkie slither down to stand in the dark beside him. When he pushed the hatch doors open, the light from the passage seemed so glaring that for a moment he imagined Sergeant Coyne must be there, shining a flashlight in, having known all along what was happening.

The passage was empty. He slithered down, helped Pinkie to follow, and closed the lift doors. He grinned at her, and her tiny mouth smiled back.

“That was the stiff bit,” he whispered. “Now on, it's easy, except that it's sheeting with rain.”

He led the way to the back door and held up his hand for stillness. Yes, no mistaking the steady tinkle of water down an iron drainpipe and the slop of overflow from a blocked gutter. He pulled out a black garbage liner from where he had hidden it among the stack of old newspapers that were stored against the wall. Pinkie stood while he pulled it down over her until her head poked out through the corner he had cut off. The cut piece made a clumsy sou'wester. He fastened it in place with a rubber band.

“Miss Refuse Collection 1985,” he said.

“What about you?”

“I'm going to have to get wet. There's a guard dog called Norah out there. She knows me. At least she knows me in my uniform. She mightn't, got up like that. But listen, if she does show up, don't run away or anything. Stand still. I've given her a chop, and with a bit of luck she'll be under cover because of the rain. Wait here. I shan't be a second.”

He switched off the alarm circuit at the box in the storeroom and came back.

“Funny how things work out,” he said. “Freeman put me on night duty to keep me clear of you, but really he was giving us our best chance. I hope he works that out.”

She nodded, very definitely, as if he'd been putting forward a serious argument which she had then accepted. It was all right for her. She just took it for granted that old Bear would get her clear. Probably thought H.E. was giving them a push, arranging the lift shaft and the keys and everything so that it all worked out. He shrugged and un-locked the door. Glistening rain sliced down through the lit dark and bounced off puddled cobbles. He shoved her out, nipped back to switch the alarm circuit on, and returned. Jesus, it was raining! He pulled his uniform cap from his pocket and put it on, but it was soaked through in an instant.

With his hand on Pinkie's shoulder to guide her they moved along by the wall, quickly across the lit gap between the main buildings and the stables and into the darkness beyond. There must have been a goodish moon behind the storm clouds because the night was not pitch-black. As soon as his eyes were used to it, he could see the loom of the great cedars and the main blocks of bushes. He had strolled this way by daylight several times, making a mental note of such landmarks, choosing a path that would take them well clear of invisible obstacles like flower beds. The rain drenched down, slobbering his cap onto his head, soaking through to his shoulders. He seemed to breathe wetness. Each step across the lawn felt like wading through marshland. The bike ride was going to be no kind of fun. Good thing he'd allowed a spare hour—they were going to need it.

Beyond the lawn and trees lay a big walled garden full of vegetables, and to the north of this was a neglected orchard. Between the two ran an area of small outbuildings—potting sheds, boiler rooms for the greenhouses, huts for mowers, even a few old pigsties. Only the ones nearest the house were still used, and as you went farther toward the outer wall, they became more and more neglected, with roofs gappy or collapsed and nettles everywhere. Barry switched on the flashlight to guide their way along the last stretch. The narrow path ended at a door with a bolted padlock. The wall itself was ten foot high and topped with barbed wire.

“Hold it here a sec,” Barry said.

He fetched a little hacksaw from the plastic bag he had hidden under a pile of rotted stakes.

“Right,” he said. “You hold the light for me. This'll take about ten minutes, I should think.”

The padlock was a new one, made with good hardened steel, but the bolt itself was old, and there was room to work at it in the gap between the door and the frame. The new blade bit fast, whining into the metal. No hurry. Easy. You're doing fine…He was about halfway through and had straightened for a rest and a change of grip when out of the dark behind him came the noise. In the instant before the impact he thought it was some kind of machine, some trap or alarm he had triggered which made this snarling racket, but then something hit him violently between the shoulder blades, slamming him into Pinkie and then down sprawling on the gritty old ash path. What had hit him did so again but stayed this time, pressing him down, and the snarl became a series of sharp, deep barks.

“Oi!” he yelled. “Norah! It's me! Off! Off! Down! Easy!”

He tried to twist sideways under her, but immediately the barking changed to a freezing snarl close against his nape. He lay still. Jesus! What now? Get Pinkie back to bed; then he could say No hope. Norah must have been sheltering in one of the sheds, heard the hacksaw or the voices … Nobody'd hear her, night like this. Lie still, give her a chance to ease off.

The barking had begun again, but now it faltered, drying to a grumbling snarl. Silence.

“It's only Barry,” said Pinkie's stony little voice. “That's a good dog. It's only Barry, Norah.”

The weight lifted. Barry rolled carefully to one side. A half growl began as he moved, mixed with Pinkie's calming murmurs. Shakily he rose. Pinkie had managed to hang on to the flashlight somehow, and in its small glow he could see Norah's head and shoulders, the bright, distrustful eyes and bared fangs, the fur glistening with wet, and Pinkie's hand resting not on Norah's collar but on the dark, puzzled brow. He wanted to yell at Pinkie for the risk she'd taken—kids have got killed by guard dogs—but he knew the yell would be mainly the expression of his own fright. They stood on a balance now, the three of them.