Cry of the Hunter - Jack Higgins [71]
The floor around him was covered with blood. It had seeped through his jacket. The left sleeve and side of his trenchcoat were saturated in it. The match flame reached his fingers and he dropped it and sat staring into the darkness. His mind was crystal clear and he felt curiously calm. He braced his hands between the packing cases and the wall and pushed himself upright.
He started to move, walking slowly and carefully, feeling his way with outstretched hands. His fingers scraped against the sliding door and they gripped the edge of it and pulled hard. A sudden drift of rain was blown through the door into his face. He held on tight to the handrail and leaned in the opening staring out.
It was dark outside and raining quite hard. The train was passing through a maze of tracks and some distance away he could see a lighted platform. A moment later they rumbled past a signal box and he glanced up quickly to see the name of the station. It was Castlemore. Underneath the sign there was a large, illuminated electric clock. The hands pointed to half-past six. He lit the cigarette and slid down to the floor and considered the position.
The train he had boarded at Stramore had left at noon. He had jumped from it perhaps half an hour later. That meant he had been lying unconscious for something like six hours with his life’s blood draining out of his body. Panic moved in him and he pulled himself up in the doorway and stood erect. A man couldn’t bleed for six hours – there wasn’t that much blood in him.
He slipped a hand inside his jacket and gently probed the wound. The bleeding seemed to have stopped. He tried to think calmly. Obviously the wound had been wrenched open by his clumsy fall from the train. He must have bled for a while and then the blood had clotted. After all, the bandage was still in position. He laughed shakily. There was no need to worry. No need for panic. He was still on his feet. There was a chance yet.
He sat down on the floor again and looked out at the lights of Castlemore as they receded into the darkness. The next stop was Carlington. All he had to do was sit tight. He could leave the train outside Carlington and reach the border on foot. He could be home by morning.
The train travelled along at ten or fifteen miles an hour, and he looked back at the lights and lapsed into a reverie. He remembered that first morning when he had walked through the town in the rain and Murphy had followed him. He could see the boy now, bareheaded in the timber yard, brushing the mud from his cap and cursing. Poor Johnny Murphy – looking for the high adventure and all he had found was death.
And then there was Anne – lovely Anne Murray. It had taken him a while to realize that she was beautiful or perhaps he’d known it all along. Perhaps he simply hadn’t wanted to admit it. He stared into the darkness and for a moment her face seemed to materialize out of the night. Her eyes were deep pools and he was drowning in the depths of them. He laughed high pitched and unearthly. There was no hope for him there – no hope at all. To receive it was first necessary to give and he had given her nothing – nothing at all.
He laughed bitterly. It was almost funny. Everything he touched he destroyed. Murphy, Rogan, and Anne Murray – perhaps her most of all he had destroyed. There was only one thing he wasn’t sorry about. He’d come over the border to save a man and had ended up by killing him, but he wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t sorry at all. There were some men who were not fit to live and Patrick Rogan had been one of them.
He frowned and his wandering mind tried to grapple with the problem of how you told a woman you have promised to help, that you had failed her. How was he to stand before Maureen Rogan and tell her that he had killed her son? How was he to make her understand? He sighed and leaned back against one of the packing cases and then the train shuddered and began to skid to a halt as the brakes were applied.
There was a sudden silence that