Cry of the Hunter. Jack Higgins

the place Fallon had picked out on the map. There was a track into the wood running between two ancient stone gateposts. The gates had long since disappeared and Murphy turned the car in between them and ran a little way along the track before cutting the motor. ‘Couldn’t be better,’ he said. ‘I can park up here tonight away from the main road.’

      ‘Wait for me here,’ Fallon said. He got out of the car and trudged along the narrowing path that led in amongst the trees. Within a couple of minutes he passed through the wood and came out on to the side of the track. For several minutes he stood in the cold rain looking at the track in an abstracted fashion. He felt completely deflated and drained of all emotion. My God, he thought, I’m not even excited. He sighed and a half-smile came to his lips. ‘Must be getting old,’ he said softly, and turned and went down through the trees back towards the car.

      It was about four-thirty when they reached the church again. Murphy turned off the engine and Fallon said, ‘Give me the keys to the doors.’ The boy took the two necessary keys off the ring and handed them across and Fallon went on, ‘I want you to park the car somewhere and go home now. I don’t want your sister to start worrying about where you might be.’

      ‘She doesn’t know I’m working for the Organization,’ Murphy told him.

      ‘Then keep it that way,’ Fallon said. ‘Go home, have your tea and read a book or something. Leave the house eight-fifteen. Drive straight to the rendezvous.’

      ‘What about you?’ the boy said. ‘Don’t you want me to pick you up?’

      Fallon shook his head and got out of the car. He closed the door and leaned in at the window. ‘I’m going to hole up here until train time. I’ll go to the station on my own.’

      Murphy reversed the car and Fallon moved towards the door in the wall. As he stopped to insert the key the boy’s clear young voice said softly, ‘Good luck, Mr Fallon. Up the Republic!’

      Fallon turned and half-raised one hand. ‘Good luck, lad. If that train doesn’t stop, go home and forget you ever heard of me.’

      ‘No fear of that,’ Murphy said with a reckless, confident smile and the car roared away in a shower of mud.

      The vault was cold and dreary. Fallon lay on the truckle bed and stared at the ceiling and smoked a cigarette. The grey October evening drew to a close and the light dimmed as it filtered through the iron grill. Faintly, from somewhere in the depths of the church, came the sound of an organ, and a little later the brittle sweetness of boys’ voices raised in song. He felt no particular dread at the prospect of action to come. He felt curiously detached from the whole thing as if he wasn’t there at all but somewhere outside, looking in on all this.

      He began to think of Anne Murray and of what she had said. She was right, of course, but he found that he wasn’t thinking so much of her words as of the girl herself. He remembered how she had looked when she opened the door, with the fair hair tumbled over her brow and the sleep heavy in her eyes. He smiled softly in the darkness. She had the kind heart. She had found him sleeping on her bed and had taken off his shoes without waking him. But why had she got so angry with him? He couldn’t understand that at all. There had been no need for hot words. For a brief moment her green eyes seemed to challenge him out of the darkness, and when he turned his head on the pillow it was as though he was back on her bed, surrounded by that elusive fragrance that was peculiarly her own.

      He was sitting between two men in a railway compartment. The train was travelling at a nightmare speed, rocking and lurching from side to side. Suddenly through the window he could see the wood, but the train didn’t stop. The men in the carriage began to laugh and he looked down and saw the handcuffs on his wrists and he turned to the man on his left and cried, ‘It’s a mistake! It’s Rogan you want – not me. It’s a mistake.’ The man continued to laugh and as he laughed he changed into a judge in black cap and Fallon cried out and said, ‘It’s a mistake I tell you. It’s Patrick Rogan you want – not me.’ And then everybody began to laugh at him, heads thrown back, and the laughter mounted into the skies and he screamed as he felt the rope touch his neck.

      He awakened, bathed in perspiration, and lay, panting and gasping for breath, for several moments. He had been dreaming. It had been only a dream. A sob issued from his mouth and he swung his legs to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed, head resting in his hands. It was completely still and quiet, and suddenly he jumped to his feet and looked at his watch. The luminous hands pointed to eight-fifteen. He sighed with relief and stumbled through the darkness to the switch in the corner. There was a piece of blanketing lying on the floor by the grill, and when he picked it up he saw that it fitted on two hooks to make a primitive curtain. He got ready quickly. He found a canvas grip behind the boxes and packed half-a-dozen smoke bombs into it. He checked the action of his Luger, reloaded it carefully, and then put on his hat and coat and let himself out into the graveyard.

      It was still raining heavily as he walked through the town towards the station. There was very little traffic about and few people on the streets. The station restaurant was full of people driven in by the rain, and Fallon smiled to himself. That was a break, anyway. He got a cup of tea at the counter and squeezed his way through the crowd until he was standing by a window that looked out on to the platform and the ticket barrier.

      The train was standing at the platform, a wisp of steam drifting up between its wheels. He glanced at his watch. It was only twenty-to-nine. He sipped his tea slowly and waited. At five-to-nine his patience was rewarded. A large dark car drove into the station entrance and stopped a few yards from the ticket barrier. The police were large men, in shabby raincoats and trilby hats, but the man that walked handcuffed between two of them was small and broad, with dark hair swept back from a white face. He was wearing an open-necked shirt, the collar spread out over a tweed jacket.

      Fallon pushed his way out of the restaurant and hurried across to the barrier. As the detectives passed through with their prisoner, he offered his ticket to the collector and smiled pleasantly at the uniformed constable who was leaning against the barrier. ‘Excuse me, but this is the Belfast train, isn’t it?’ he said in his finest English accent. The constable nodded and winked broadly at the ticket collector. As Fallon moved away they both laughed.

      Rogan and his escort got into the coach next to the guard’s van, and Fallon walked quickly along the platform, glancing eagerly into the windows as if looking for an empty compartment. As he reached the last coach he sighed with relief. Rogan and the detectives were settling down in a reserved compartment, but the rest of the coach was occupied by ordinary passengers. Porters were running along the platform slamming doors shut, and Fallon boarded the train quickly and passed along the corridor. Rogan and his escort were in the end compartment and Fallon took a seat in the next one to it. The only other occupant was a large, fat gentleman who looked like a commercial traveller. He was already sleeping peacefully in a corner seat.

      For a moment there was silence and then the whistle blew. The train jerked a few times and began to move out of the station. Within five minutes they had left Castlemore behind in the darkness and were speeding through the rain towards Belfast. Fallon lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deeply into his lungs. He felt completely calm and fatalistic about the whole thing. He glanced at his watch and made a swift calculation. They must have covered just over half the distance to the wood. He stood up and passed quickly along the corridor, glancing briefly into the next compartment as he did so. Three of the detectives were playing cards and Rogan was handcuffed to the other one. They had taken his shoes off and he sat with his feet propped up on the opposite seat.

      Fallon went into the toilet and closed the door. He counted up to twenty slowly and then opened the door to go back to his compartment. He walked straight into one of the detectives. The man laughed and started to apologize and Fallon smiled pleasantly, and then recognition flickered into the other’s eyes. ‘Fallon!’ he said. ‘Martin Fallon!’

      In that split second of recognition Fallon reflected bitterly that you could never trust in any plan because the unexpected always happened. At the same moment, before the detective could raise the alarm, he raised a knee into his crutch and rammed his fist into his stomach. The man’s face turned purple and, as he keeled over,