Sam Bourne - Pantheon

At last the cab was here and they were bumping back down Forest Road towards and into New Haven. He would go to see McAndrew right now. He would storm in there if necessary and demand to know the truth. If the Dean could provide no answers, then James would refuse to leave his office until McAndrew had ordered an internal investigation, preferably calling the head of the Yale University postal service into the room, right there and then.

James stared out of the cab’s passenger window, breaking his stare only once, to glance in the rear-view mirror — and he did not notice it at first. His mind was too full to register it.

But then some other zone of his cerebral cortex processed the information for him. He checked the tyres of the vehicle behind, to see if they had the telltale white rims on the wheels. They did. There was no mistaking it: the same car that he had seen on the way up to Hopkins Grammar was now behind him. It had tailed him then and it was tailing him now. He would not try to make rational excuses for it, not this time. He was being followed.

‘Driver, can you take the next left turning, please.’

‘But we don’t want to go-’

‘Just turn left!’

The driver did as he was told and, sure enough, the car behind — stately and solid — followed suit. Right, thought James: he would add that to the list of questions he would hurl at McAndrew the second he saw him. Why the hell am I being followed?

Through side streets and residential avenues, the cab eventually arrived outside the administrative building that housed the Dean. The black car parked up just a few yards away, brazen in its refusal to conceal its purpose. James marched towards the entrance, past the commissionaire and barged straight into the office where he had been less than twenty-four hours earlier. He only realized what a determined, even crazed, expression must have been etched on his face when he saw the way Barbara the secretary looked up at him as he strode in. She was aghast — and petrified.

Without speaking to her, James made straight for the inner office occupied by the Dean. He grabbed the doorknob as if these rooms were his own, making no concession to good manners. As the door flung open to reveal an empty room he heard Barbara’s plaintive cry behind him: ‘The Dean’s not here! He’s on leave.’

‘On leave?’ James bellowed, wheeling around to face the secretary, on her feet and quite pale. ‘On LEAVE? Where the hell has he gone?’

‘I can’t tell you that, Dr-’

James took a step forward, prompting the woman to leap backward in a panicked, animal gesture of retreat, clearly afraid that he was about to hit her. The sight of that terror halted him. He could now hear his own breath; he was, he realized, panting.

A moment longer and he would, he knew, be escorted out of the building and into the arms once again of the Yale Police Department. He gathered his strength and, walking backwards — so that he was able to see the lines of anxiety on Barbara’s face gradually smooth out as the threat receded — he left.

James rushed out through the lobby and into the street. He looked to his right: the black car, which he now identified as a Buick, was still there. Right. That was it. He stormed across the street, plunging into the middle of it with barely a glance at the traffic that now dodged around him, and marched right up to the car, slapping his hand on the bonnet.

‘Get out!’ he said in a loud, clear voice. ‘Come on, out with you.’ He rapped on the window, hard. ‘Don’t be a coward. Show your face, come on.’

He banged on the glass again. ‘I want to see you, you bloody coward!’ He was shouting now; people were staring at him. Dropping into a squat so that he could see inside the car, he realized that he had been banging on the wrong side; he was looking at the passenger seat. But there was no one in the car anyway. It was locked and dark.

He let out a long sigh of exasperation. He was chasing shadows. Chilling though it was to know he was being followed, and infuriating though it was to let his pursuers go unpunished, he knew this was a diversion. It was not them he had to find, it was Florence and Harry.

The immediate task was to make a call. He looked around and spotted a telephone booth on this side of the street, no more than thirty yards away. He sprinted over to it.

Maddeningly, he didn’t know what to do, having to read the laborious instructions on the printed card above the telephone. Eventually he heard the voice of an operator.

‘ Yale Daily News, please.’

He knew he was playing with fire, making this telephone call. The sensible thing would be never to see or speak to her again. And yet who else could he turn to for the information he needed this very instant?

There was a click and then a voice on the end of the line, announcing the name of the newspaper.

‘May I speak with a Miss Dorothy Lake, please?’

‘Is she a typist?’

‘She’s a reporter, I believe.’

‘Hold the line.’

He heard a hand placed incompletely over the receiver and then a muffled voice calling out for Dorothy. There was a rustle and then her breath and then her voice.

‘Miss Lake, it’s James. James Zennor.’

‘Well, how are you, my disappearing Englishman? I was beginning to get worried about you.’ He could tell that she was smiling. He could picture her lips, full and slightly parted in that same knowing, playful expression he had seen over dinner last night.

‘I’m well, Miss Lake,’ he replied, his voice overly stern and businesslike. ‘I’m afraid I need your help. I need to go and see the Dean right away.’ He checked his watch. It was quarter to eleven. ‘I need his home address.’

‘Well, that’s easy.’

‘Really?’

‘The Dean has an official residence. It’s on St Ronan Street. Number two hundred and forty-one.’

The map was trembling in James’s fingers as he searched for St Ronan Street. His eye went west: York, Park, Howe, Dwight Streets. No sign of St Ronan. He checked east: High, College, Temple, Church. Now he looked north: Wall Street, Grove, Trumbull. Where the hell was St Ronan Street?

He looked outside the centre of New Haven, his finger running along what appeared to be one of the main arteries northward, Prospect Street. Nothing here. He looked across to the east, tracing the long Whitney Avenue. Nothing here either There it was, between the two main roads. It was a long way, but not complicated. He would not walk there: he would run.

As he pounded down Wall Street, ignoring the stares of the mid-morning strollers, he wondered how it had come to this: running through strange streets in a strange country, searching for his family. That he was now confronting an enemy — faceless and unknown — he did not doubt. But he could not deceive himself that that was why he was in this situation. Whatever evil his unseen adversary had wrought, this was still his fault. Florence would never have so much as considered leaving Norham Gardens, let alone England, if he had been the strong husband, the good father, she thought she had married. Instead, within months, he had become a stranger to his wife — a seething geyser of rage and resentment, a man who had turned inward, away from the two people in the world who most loved and needed him. His wife was young, vibrant and beautiful; yet what happiness had she known in recent years? They did occasionally go to the theatre or a concert, but only after she had cajoled and persuaded him. As for parties, she had learned not even to suggest such a thing. If she wanted a good, long walk in the countryside, she had had to turn to Rosemary Hyde and her Brownie pack rather than to her own husband who, when he did venture into the outdoors and the fresh air, did it alone and at dawn, when there was no danger of meeting another soul. His wife was a woman who flourished in the sunlight and he had kept her in the dark. It was not a shock that she had left him when the fear of invasion became too much. It was a surprise that she had not done it earlier.