Comes the Dark Stranger. Jack Higgins

       2

      It was raining heavily on the afternoon Shane arrived in Burnham, and there was a touch of fog in the air. As he emerged from the station a gust of wind kicked rain into his face in an oddly menacing manner, as if warning him to turn back before it was too late. He shrugged the feeling off and started to walk along the wet pavement towards the centre of the town.

      He found what he was looking for within a matter of minutes, a sleasy, third-rate hotel in a quiet back, street. When he went in a young girl was sitting behind the reception desk reading a magazine. She looked up, a sudden sparkle in her eyes, and smiled brightly.

      ‘I’d like a room for a week,’ Shane said.

      ‘With or without a bath?’ she asked, twisting the register round and handing him a pen.

      He told her he’d have the bath, and she took down a key, lifted the flap of the reception desk, and led the way up the stairs.

      She was wearing a tight skirt and high-heel shoes, and from the rear she presented a not unpleasing picture. The general effect was spoilt by the fact that she had no breasts worth speaking of and a generous sprinkling of acne in the region of her mouth that no amount of make-up could hide.

      The carpet was badly worn on the top corridor, and she caught her heel and stumbled so that he had to reach out to prevent her falling. She leaned heavily against him and smiled. ‘This is your room, Mr Shane.’ She pushed the key into the lock, then stood to one side and he went in.

      It was no better and no worse than he had expected. There was a dressing-table and a wardrobe in Victorian mahogany that the management must have picked up cheaply at a sale, but the bed was clean and the bathroom adequate. The room had that unpleasant, musty odour, peculiar to such places and redolent of old sins, and he went to the window and threw it open.

      When he turned, the girl was standing just inside the room regarding him with what was supposed to be a mysterious smile. ‘Will that be all?’ she said.

      He moved across the floor, took the key from her hand, and gently pushed her out of the door. ‘I’ll let you know if I want anything, kid.’

      As he closed the door she smiled eagerly. ‘If there’s anything – anything at all, Mr Shane, just ring.’

      It was very quiet in the room when she had gone, and suddenly the pain was with him again, moving inside his skull like a living thing, taking his breath away and sending him reeling into the bathroom.

      He quickly turned on the cold tap and filled a glass with water; and then he took a small glass bottle from his pocket and unscrewed the cap with trembling fingers. He poured two red pills into the palm of his hand, hesitated for a moment, and then shook out two more. He crammed them into his mouth and swallowed the water. For a moment longer he stayed there, eyes closed, leaning heavily on the wash-basin, and then he lurched into the other room and fell across the bed.

      It was the worst attack he had ever known. He lay with his face turned into the pillow, sweating with fear, and then, abruptly as it had always done before, the pain left him and he could breathe again.

      He pushed himself up slowly and sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments with his head in his hands. After a while he reached for his canvas grip and unzipped it. He took out a half-bottle of whisky, pulled the cork, and took a generous swallow.

      The liquor seeped through his body, warming him with new life, and he lit a cigarette and peeled off his sweat-soaked shirt. After he had pulled on a clean one he stood in front of the wardrobe mirror and examined his face anxiously. A strong neck lifted from wide shoulders, but the skin of his face was pale and stretched too tightly over the prominent cheek bones.

      The eyes were black and expressionless, deep pools set too far back in their sockets. From the right eyebrow a jagged, red scar bisected the high forehead and disappeared into black hair.

      He gently traced the course of the scar with one finger, but there was no further pain and he sighed with relief and quickly finished dressing. He pulled on his trench coat, and then he got the glass from the bathroom and poured himself another shot of the whisky.

      As he was drinking it he stood looking down at the canvas grip, a slight frown on his face. As if coming to a decision, he finished the whisky in one quick swallow, fumbled in the bottom of the canvas grip, and took out a Luger automatic pistol. He checked the action, then slipped it into his inside breast-pocket and left the room, locking the door behind him.

      He walked quickly through the centre of the town, hat pulled down low over his eyes against the heavy rain, hands thrust deep into his pockets. It had been a long time, and it took him almost an hour to find the place he was looking for. It was a small bar in a back-street not far from the university, and when he went inside the place was deserted except for an old, white-haired barman, who was polishing a glass and listening to the radio.

      Shane stood just inside the door, his eyes passing quickly over the old-fashioned Edwardian booths and the leather-covered stools that stood in front of the marble-topped bar. Nothing had changed. He ordered a beer and sat on the stool at the far end of the bar, staring at himself in the ornate gilt mirror and for a brief moment time stood still and he was back eight years. Back to the Monday after the start of the Korean war, sitting on that same stool and listening to the call for volunteers over the radio.

      The door swung open behind him, and he turned in alarm as if expecting some ghost from a dead past, but it was only a small man in a wet raincoat and cloth cap, cursing the weather and ordering a drink from the barman. They started a conversation, and Shane took his beer into the telephone booth at the back of the bar and closed the door.

      He lit a cigarette and took a small notebook from his pocket. Inside were several names and addresses. The first was that of a man called Henry Faulkner, and he quickly flipped through the telephone book. After a moment he gave a grunt of satisfaction, and compared the address with that in the notebook. A moment later he dialled the number.

      It seemed very quiet there in the phone booth, and the ringing at the other end of the wire was from another world. He drummed softly with his fingers on the wall, and after several moments replaced the receiver and dialled the number again. There was still no reply, and after a third attempt he picked up his beer and went back into the bar.

      The barman and the other customer were arguing about the probable result of a local football match on Saturday, and Shane stood quietly at the end of the bar, sipping his beer and thinking. Suddenly, he was filled with a distaste for the place. It never paid to return to anything. He had been a fool to come here. He quickly swallowed the rest of his beer and left.

      Outside the rain was falling as heavily as ever, and he walked back towards the centre of the town until he came to a taxi rank. He gave the driver Faulkner’s address and climbed in.

      For five or ten minutes the cab passed through a grimy, industrial neighbourhood of factories, with terraced houses sandwiched in between, and then they turned into a road that wound its way through trees in a zig-zag, climbing higher and higher