Comes the Dark Stranger - Jack Higgins [1]
There were some metal lockers in one corner of the room and he examined them quickly. Most of them were padlocked, but one opened to his touch. Inside he found a tin mug, some greasy overalls and a pair of steel-capped industrial boots. He sat on the edge of the bench and pulled them on. They were a size too large, but he quickly laced them up and moved back to the window.
It was quiet outside and for a moment he listened to the rain drumming into the ground and the faint, faraway sounds of traffic in the main road, before he swung a leg over the sill and scrambled out into the alley.
He pulled the window down and a voice said harshly from the darkness. ‘Hold it right there!’
A young constable moved into the lamplight, rain streaming from his cape, and reached out towards him. He moved slightly, the light falling directly on to him, and the constable stood quite still. His face turned yellow and sickly in the lamplight, and there was sudden fear in his eyes. ‘My God, Martin Shane!’ he said.
Shane didn’t give him a chance. His right foot kicked out viciously, the steel toe-cap of the boot catching the constable under one knee so that he screamed and fell back against the wall. There were tears of agony streaming down his face and he fumbled for his whistle with one hand. Shane slammed a fist against the unprotected jaw and turned and ran along the alley towards the main road.
The clock in a shop window said six-thirty. It was that period on a late-autumn evening when the streets are almost deserted. Just after the workers have gone home, but a little before the people bent on pleasure have come out. As he stood staring stupidly at the luminous hands of the clock, the pain in his head suddenly increased and he turned and lurched blindly across the road.
The pain was a living thing and the pavement stretched before him into infinity. He began to move forward, hugging the wall, lurching unsteadily from side to side like a drunken man. The wind lifted into his face and the raindrops stung like pellets of lead. He paused as he came to a brightly lit window and stared into it. There was a tall mirror in the back of the window and a man looked out at him.
Black hair was plastered across the high forehead. One eye was half-closed and the right side of the face was swollen and disfigured by a huge purple bruise. The mouth was smashed and bleeding and the front of the shirt was covered in blood.
For some reason he smiled, and that terrible face creased into a painful grin. As he turned away, a couple passed and he heard a shocked gasp from the woman, followed by a burst of excited conversation. He crossed the road quickly and plunged down a narrow side-street.
He kept on walking as fast as he could, turning from one street into another, moving farther away from the centre of the town. Gradually the streets began to change their character until he was walking through an old-fashioned residential neighbourhood with decaying Victorian houses rearing into the night on each side. The streets were lined with chestnut trees and the pavements were slippery with their leaves. Once or twice he stumbled and almost fell, and each time he had to rest against a garden wall.
The street lamps stretched into the darkness, and he progressed painfully from one patch of yellow light to the next. As he paused at the end of one street, the insistent jangle of a bell shattered the quiet and a police car turned a corner and came towards him. He dodged through a garden gate and huddled behind a hedge until it had passed. As the sound of the bell faded into the distance, he moved out of the garden and stood on the corner of the street.
The rain suddenly increased in volume, bouncing