JUNK

Chapter Six

Ray Doyle was blithely unaware of being followed. It wasn't that the operative was still slightly unglued even after learning that his partner's injuries were less severe than he had imagined. Nor was age (per his not-yet-advanced years) dulling his reflexes. It was simply that his stalker was invisible.

Al amused himself thinking up nasty or at least odd names for the man who'd (as Al saw it) ruthlessly interrogated his friend. "Nozzle" was of course an old standby and favorite, but as Doyle worked diligently at a borrowed desk, phoning around the Isle after a few elusive passport numbers; trotted down hallways to collect data from various departments and from Cowley himself; R.T.'d with Bodie, Jax, Spalding and Murphy as those gentlemen staked out various known abodes, hangouts and other likely territories (including M.P. Bowers' estate); phoned the garage to have his own little Escort, complete with fresh tyres and a repaired front driver's seat, delivered to HQ so he could drive home; wandered around his own drizzly neighborhood in what Al (correctly) read as a blue funk, deftly using chopsticks to scarf a quick Chinese lunch and checking his home messages (there were none), the Observer came up with the following: Curly Sue, James Bond, Knucklehead, Bonebrains, Manhole Cover (he wasn't quite sure why but he liked that one), and of course D'Oyley Carte. Despite himself he was impressed with how hard the man was working, even if most of his efforts were directed at capturing Sam. He was obviously weary, yet he didn't allow himself to relax at all. He read Mbake's papers while he ate. He made notes in a little book while listening in vain for messages. He took his white sweater-jacket into the bathroom and used a little Dreft to scrub at the streak of soil that marred it. He R.T.'d Bodie so often the latter growled "Lay off, Mom," and still Doyle checked in a half an hour later. He requisitioned an interrogation room and covered one wall of it with a map of Britain and a time chart. On the map he stuck different colored pins where his prey had been spotted, or thought to be spotted, or thought to be headed, and on the time chart he noted every incident, every child missed, every child found, every known location of everyone even remotely involved, including the M.P., and including Bodie and himself. He swore at himself as he wrote, fidgeted with pins and gathered more and more data.

"Shoulda done this months ago," he grumbled. Al agreed. "Bloody fool." Al could not but concur.

About five in the afternoon, Doyle fell asleep perusing a document which, leaning in close, Al found to be in French. Al sighed. He should check in with Sam. He should check on Luther. He should return about five calls from Tina. Well, at least he could check in with Gooshie without abandoning his post. This he did, and Gooshie fed some of Doyle's discoveries, theories and plain guesses to Ziggy. Ziggy purred back something highly interesting, and when the R.T. startled Doyle out of his socks (it was Susan, with some interesting information of her own), no one was there to eavesdrop.

"Rat poison?" Sam shook his head. "Not if I can help it!"

"Well of course you're going to help it, Sam. You're here to help it." Al did not, of course, mean the "here" of Sam's actual current locale, which was a men's room in an Aberdeen department store. Madeline was off buying some Scottish yarn but Rose was sticking close to Sam. At least she hadn't followed him in here!

"How?" Al had no immediate answer for that one. "Look, we're skipping Loch Ness because Steve's Bude friend wants to see him. He got the contract for the oil thing up here and the Bude friend wants in on it. There's a lot of money involved. No wonder Rose is so spoiled!

"So anyway we're back the way we came in the morning, then to Tintagel. They plan for us to be back in London by Saturday the seventh."

"Okay, according to Ziggy your... Luther's... body is found at fifty-four Churchmouse Street in London. Poisoned. Saturday the seventh." He looked at Sam.

"Should I... should I not return until after then? Or should I come back sooner?"

Al shook his head. "Sam, without more information I wouldn't change anything. Stay with the Whatleys. At least they care about you. You should be safe if you're not caught. I'll keep digging. And Sam... if you feel a little sedated, that's Luther. He's doing very badly now. Sorry. Uh-oh, Tina's calling me. See ya later, kid..." He disappeared before Sam could protest.

Sam came out of the men's room to find Rose waiting for him. She didn't see him at first so he had a chance to observe her. There was a calmness to her, even a glow, that had not been hers when they'd met in Leicester Square. Yes, saving lives can do that, thought Sam. He supposed he glowed quite a bit less, also having lost lives. Al would have shaken his head at these morose thoughts. Although Sam thought of himself as a good person, he also berated himself regularly for what he saw as his own selfishness: he wanted to leap; he wanted to go home; he wanted things to go easily and his way. Al, on the other hand, thought of Sam as the most selfless person he had ever met, and found himself constantly reminding Sam to take care of himself when Sam was more inclined to take care of others. Al was, of course, not only not present (even as a hologram) but not able to read minds anyway, although Sam's was easier for him than Tina's.

"Hey," said Rose, smiling. "You know what?"

"What?"

"I'm kinda getting used to this place."

"Something to tell your grandchildren," agreed Sam. "Life's not so tragic after all."

Rose stopped smiling. "Yes it is." They walked outside, down some stairs and onto the street. "Oh, Larry, I never saw anything like that before. That poor man." She hesitated. "His poor family." They stood on the street, their heads down, not embracing or touching at all.

"Rose?" She looked up. "Stuff like that goes on all the time. Sometimes it's somebody's fault and sometimes it's just plain dumb bad luck, but it happens. The question is... who are you gonna be when it happens?"

"What do you mean?"

They walked aimlessly away from the sea, into neighborhoods of granite houses, painted iron fences, dead end streets and sweet little enclaves surrounded by grimmer habitats. "Who lives here?" asked Sam. "Are they happy or not?" He wasn't sure what he wanted to teach Rose just now, or whether Aberdeen would be a good tool for the lesson. In fact it had nothing to do with any city, any time or any certain people. Sam was longing to teach Rose how to be Sam. He'd have laughed to realize what he was doing. Of course he meant to teach Rose to be Rose. "Can you tell whether they're happy?"

"I wouldn't be."

"You might be. You might have your friends here, your teachers, your dreams. These streets might be where you played when you were very little. You might love them. And a storm might come and blow everything away."

"No," whispered Rose. "If that happened I would save them all."

"Or a terrible illness might sweep the town."

"Then I'll be a doctor! I'll still save them all!"

"You can never save all, Rose." No, this wasn't what he wanted to say, either. This was supposed to be Rose's lesson, not his own. He did feel a little groggy, and thought that might be the effect of Luther's sedation. He shook his head to clear it. "But you're right, Rose! You're right! Save them all! What am I saying?"

She looked around with new interest at the little rose gardens, front stoops, the occasional Mum with a baby carriage or a child in tow, the church or small shop, even the minor flow of traffic on the lanes. "I'd be happy here if I came from here, or else I wouldn't be, and I'd go somewhere else and be happy. Or maybe I couldn't go anywhere and I'd be unhappy. Or I could just be happy anyway?" She pushed him away then. "Why am I asking you? You're just a kid too!" She hugged him, pushed him away again, spun where she stood. "How can you tell if anything's beautiful if you don't know how to look? How can you tell if it's dangerous? How can you tell if it's fantastic?"

"Anything's possible," said Sam, without realizing that this was precisely what he'd meant to say all along.

"Then I'm going to be a counselor," decided Rose, "on an Indian reservation."

"Uh... That's a good thing to be."

"We still have reservations, you know."

"Yes, I do know."

"I'm going to help them to stop drinking and not kill themselves and be whatever they want to be, and stay if they want to and go if they want to, but... whatever they want to be!"

"That's a good thing to do."

"What are you gonna do, Larry?"

They started back toward the stairs that led to the shops. They had to meet Madeline. "I don't know," he said, truthfully. "Get completely straight. Finish school. Learn a trade or a profession. Make something of myself."

"You're already someone, Larry." Sam blushed. "And you can be whoever you want to be, too."

Cowley was pleased with his men's activity but he'd be damned if he'd show it. "We know who these people are," he snapped, flinging folders across his desk at Doyle, "but we haven't a clue where in the Kingdom they are."

"They'll turn up," said Doyle, trustingly. "Personally I think they'll be back in Bude one of these days."

"Oh, personally? And would you care to share the basis for your intuition with the rest of us, Doyle?" Said "rest" consisted of Spalding, Jax, Murphy and Bodie, all of whom had replacements at their various posts, and Susan, still on desk duty and noticeably antsy.

"No, sir."

"I would, sir."

"Yes, Bodie?"

"As you know, sir, we've bugged Mbake's phone..."

"Yes, Bodie, I did that myself, as I recall."

"... but there's been no activity there. The place is dead, sir. Billy's place likewise. All abandoned. No one comes in or goes out, unless it's from another apartment in the same complex."

"What are you saying Bodie?"

"We have it staked out, sir, from the front. From a car. We don't know what goes on in the other apartments. Angela could be with a neighbor. For that matter so could Billy. We'd never know."

Cowley looked at Doyle to see how he was taking this. The young man was beaming with pride in his partner. Cowley shook his head. "That's brilliant, Bodie, just brilliant, but for one thing. We've already interviewed the neighbors. And no one has seen Angela or Billy going into that building or coming out of it. If they're being hidden they're keeping very low indeed. Hardly affords them any opportunity to carry on any business whatsoever."

Bodie was not ready to give up quite yet. "They may be coming and going in disguise, sir."

Cowley glanced at Doyle once more. He was trying to believe but looked dubious. "It's hardly All Hallow's Eve, Bodie. Come on, is that the best you can do?"

"No, sir. There's more." Doyle brightened. Cowley waited. "It's M.P. Bowers, sir." Cowley frowned. The M.P. was a friend of his. "He's been to Finnegan's flat. I don't know what the connection is, sir, but there is one. He went in person."

Spalding spoke up. "Sir, we have a tail on Mrs. Bowers now too. She goes to a very funny church indeed. It's called Angels of Vengeance."

Cowley exploded. "For God's sake, do we follow them into the bedroom too?"

"If necessary, sir," said Bodie. Doyle snickered. Susan glowered. She had spent the night catching up on this case and was still full in the horror of it.

"'Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,'" quoth Murphy.

"Mrs. Bowers' church is her own affair. This is not how we use our authority!"

"But sir..."

"No but sirs. Leave it."

"We're looking for lost lambs," said Doyle, firmly.

"Find them somewhere else," snapped Cowley. "The woman's lost her only daughter. Let her take her comfort where she can find it."

"What's up his arse?" complained Spalding, back in Doyle's little interrogation-room-cum-information-headquarters.

"You," said Bodie, defending the man he himself loved to badmouth.

"It's because it's children," said Susan. "We're all on edge because it's to do with children." No one disagreed with that.

"Murphy and I are flying back to Bude," said Doyle, "via Plymouth." Murphy looked surprised but assented. "Susan, can you take over and coordinate from here? Maybe an outside view will help."

Susan, already making corrections to Doyle's timeline, nodded without looking back, but asked,

"How closely have the parents been checked?"

"Beg pardon?"

"For connections, Doyle. To each other. What have they got in common apart from their mutual tragedy." Doyle and Bodie looked at one another. "All right, then. I'll be doing that."

Doyle, approving, continued: "Spalding, you get your unauthorized butt back to the Bowers estate and you follow that woman wherever she goes, be it church, bedroom, convent or luxury cruise. If Cowley doesn't like it he can have it out with me. Bodie, you keep doing what you do so well. Cherchez les femmes. Jax, you keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't get smashed in his great bonehead with any cricket bats... unless you're the batter." Jax pantomimed just such a clobbering. Bodie didn't so much as crack a smile. He drew Doyle aside.

"You got a new partner, then?"

"I want Luther alive."

Bodie snorted and dismissed this with a wave. "So Doyle," he asked, loudly, at the door, ignoring Jax's tugging at his sleeve, "how do you know they'll be back in Bude?"

"They have to be," said Doyle, simply. "I've no other ideas."

Doyle and Murphy flew, then drove another hired Audi. ("Is this all they ever have anymore?" complained Murphy, who would've liked something sportier.) The Whatleys plus one rode Britrail. Consequently, the hunters arrived in Bude quite a bit earlier than the hunted and looked in vain for signs of their prey. No Texan families had checked into accommodations, hired transportation or otherwise shown their faces in the vicinity. Murphy watched his companion for signs of stress but Doyle was calm. "Tintagel," he said.

"Why Tintagel?"

"What's in Bude?"

Murphy drove the little brown Audi, much like the one they'd hired before, down the coast, marveling at the scenery while Doyle tried to imagine all the places an American family might stash a British criminal.

"Well, as I understand it ," mused Murphy, "King Arthur's castle is sorely lacking in the roof department. They'd be hard put to hide there."

"Any of the little towns in the area," said Doyle, consulting a brand new map. "Treknow. Trebarwith. Trewarmett."

"Quaint names."

"Quaint enough to get good and lost."

"If they're even there." The two agents decided to explore the castle and the town of Tintagel. They found not a trace of their prey there but the sea was lovely. Murphy sighed. "Me mum would love this."

"Your mum. Your mum. Get a social life, Murphy. Get a girl."

"Can't, you know, with Bodie reserving all available talent." This made Doyle laugh. He gazed out over the sea himself. "Do you really think they're here?"

"No," sighed Doyle. "But they have been or will be. All we can do is keep looking and keep asking."

While Doyle and Murphy looked and asked (Murphy charmed the local police into lending him a desk and a telephone while Doyle walked over the cliffs from Tintagel, past Treknow down to Trebarwith - this was not a place tourists wintered; he thought the locals would remember any foreigners they'd seen, or even any strangers at all), Sam and the Whatleys arrived at Bodmin Parkway, hired a brown Audi not unlike the one Murphy had been driving, and began the road journey to Bude. Rose, tired and grumpy, dozed against Sam in the back seat.

"I think it's helped for her to have such a nice friend during this trip," said Steve.

"Strange how responsible this guy is compared to that trash she runs with back home. They look respectable but they're trash all the same. This guy's a junkie and a fugitive, and he's got her acting like a normal human being again."

"He confided in me in Aberdeen," said Madeline, quietly. "He's in worse trouble than we thought, and I believe in him absolutely. He hasn't got a bad bone in his body."

"What kind of trouble?"

"I'm still not sure but he told me he'd been tortured. Steve, I think he tried to hide this from me, but if they catch him again they may kill him."

Steve considered this. "Well," he drawled, "we could spirit him out of the country after all, I suppose, but wouldn't that beat all - leaving Rose here and taking Larry back with us instead. Or I suppose we could bring them both back. She might be okay if we brought him."

"I don't know, Steve. It might be a good idea but the truth is, I already offered and he turned me down. He wants to stay and get himself out of trouble. I'm afraid he won't be able to do it alone."

"Then," decided Steve, "we have to stay and help him."

By the time one brown Audi was parking in a quiet driveway in Bude, the other was parked in front of a pub outside of Trebarwith, the deserted beach town where the operatives had easily found a room. The pub managed to be full and noisy despite the season. Everyone was talking about the coming storm; indeed the wind was already high. "Tomorrow," said some. "Day after," other asserted. Doyle ordered a beer and after some thought Murphy did likewise, then drank only half of it. It was a short drive to their digs but this was hill country and a storm could make things difficult.

"So we stay the rest of the year waiting for these folks?"

"If need be," said Doyle, gulping down the beer and ordering another.

"Easy, Doyle. They could walk in here right now, you know. Don't wanna be sloshed."

"Piss off," said Doyle, drinking. "Nobody gets sloshed on two beers. Anyway they won't be in here tonight."

"You're sure of that, just like you're sure we'll find them on this end of the world. Are you ever wrong, Doyle?"

"No. That's Bodie's job." Thinking of Bodie, then, he slowed down and indeed didn't even finish the mug. He sighed. "Bodie asked me why I brought you here instead of him."

"Just my luck I guess," said Murphy.

"No. Nothing to do with luck, mate. If Bodie found Luther first, Luther'd be a tiny speck on the sand, like this." He indicated a drop of froth on the side of Murphy's mug.

"So what? Doesn't he deserve it? Or are you just trying to keep the heat off Bodie? Who would investigate? No one minds, really, if you wash scum back into the sea."

Doyle frowned at Murphy. Indeed, sometimes he also felt that way, despite another part of him that viewed every life as sacred, though surely sacred isn't the word he would've used. It was still disconcerting to look into Murphy's long-lashed, innocent face and hear him casually condoning murder. Yes, he feared that Bodie would murder Luther, and yes, he was more worried about Bodie in that case than about Luther, but there was something else as well. The little junkie had provoked his ire in the train yard, knocked him out in Room 11 and run him ragged in a wearying, uncertain chase that wasn't over yet, but God help him, Doyle liked the lad, and he could no more fully believe that someone he liked would commit the atrocities attributed to him than he could believe that Bodie... what could he not believe of Bodie? That Bodie would kill in cold blood? He did not doubt that. That Bodie sometimes considered himself above, or at least beside, the law, and acted accordingly? This was also undeniable. That Bodie would fail to be there for him? That was it. He could no more believe these dreadful things of the confused but likable boy than he could believe that Bodie would ever fail to be there for him, Doyle. That much was certain. No matter what happened, when, where or why, if Bodie were alive, he would be there for Doyle. Murphy was returning Doyle's frown with a smile. Murphy, too, was a good man. Doyle trusted him. If they were not willing to die for one another, how could they work together? Still, between partners it was different, and beyond partnership, Bodie was different.

"To Bodie," said Doyle, and the two men lifted their glasses.

Steve and his friend talked all night about North Sea oil (and Texas beef) while the friend's family, Steve's family and Sam all slept. By morning the deal had been concluded. Steve was to send a team to MacCulloch Field and his friend would be among them as a supervisor. The expected storm hadn't arrived and indeed wasn't even looming. The wind was high but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. "So much for business," said Steve. "Let's go down to Tintagel and see King Arthur's castle." Madeline, Sam and Rose piled into the Audi and Steve drove them down the coast, closely following the route Murphy and Doyle had taken the night before. Rose rolled down her window and stuck out her head, her short hair fluffing out in the wind. Sam laughed.

They decided to park the Audi in the town of Tintagel and walk up the cliff to the castle, which wasn't as impressive to either Rose or Sam as the view therefrom. While the parental Whatleys explored the ruins, the two youngsters wandered south along the cliffs, climbing over stiles from small field to small field until they came to a little promontory that pleased Sam. He stood on the edge and looked down.

"Wow," said Rose, also looking.

"Like Gloucester," murmured Sam.

"What?" said Rose. Sam didn't hear her; he was entirely engaged in looking down and across. What he saw was at once stark and lush. It quite took his breath away. Then something did take his breath away, and he half-swooned, teetering there at the cliff's edge. Rose caught him and was nearly pulled over, but she had the sense or the good fortune to throw herself or fall backwards, away from the edge, bringing Sam down on top of her. She hit her head on a rock but was not knocked unconscious nor even more than slightly scratched. Sam, on the other hand, was a dead weight across her body and she struggled to push him off. "Hey," she said, and he seemed to hear that, for he made some sign of trying to help.

Between the two of them they managed to get both of them sitting up, though she had to support him. He looked at her with glazed eyes and a slight smile on his lips.

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. "You haven't been out of my sight," she said, "but I could swear you just shot up."

"Shot up," repeated Sam, also narrowing his eyes.

"That's right, Sam," said Al, and Sam didn't even blink at his friend's sudden appearance. "It's like you just shot up. I'm sorry, but we had to."

"Had to what?"

"Had to what what?" asked Rose.

"We had to give Luther a little something. Not much, really. Just enough to keep him from falling completely apart. Trust me, Sam, we had to."

"Trust you."

"I should hope so," said Rose. "So tell me."

"I guess what's not much for Luther," admitted Al, "is one hell of a shot for you, though. Gee, Sam, are you going to be all right?"

"All right."

"You sure? Because you look kinda goofy, you know what I mean?"

"I'm waiting," said Rose. Sam looked at her, seeing her for the first time.

"Waiting?"

"You are too much."

Al, too, was muttering "too much" at the hand link. "Sam," he added, "just make her get you to a safe place. Lie down or something. We'll talk later."

"Safe place," said Sam, and then, "don't go!"

"I'm not going anywhere without you," said Rose, helping him to his feet, but Al was gone. "Come on, cowboy."

Once they had begun to walk along the cliffside, Sam found that he could move all right, and even think, but he didn't feel much like doing either. He felt good - very good, euphoric, even - but lethargic. Somewhere deep inside he felt bad about feeling good, but that was a very far somewhere and he ignored it. He barely noticed the magical country around him. The cold wind made no impression. The smell of the grass and the sea below did not even reach him. His entire sense of well-being came from a drug circulating in the blood system of a young man across that very sea and a whole lot more land, more than a decade in the future.

Doyle, leaving Murphy in Trebarwith to carry on his desk work with the police of that village, walked the long way around, along a slightly inland path instead of the cliffs. He had a feeling the Whatleys might stop in Treknow and had directions from the pub where to turn, but somehow he managed to walk right by the little road, could find no other turn past that and ended up in Tintagel, where he was surprised to see the Audi parked on the street. He looked around for Murphy but didn't see him. What could Murphy be doing here but looking for him? He decided to proceed to the castle, where one might after all expect to find tourists. Maybe Murphy was there looking for him. No, that made no sense. He turned back to the car. Maybe this was not their Audi after all. But look, there were tags identifying the car as hired. He looked more closely and saw that the car had been hired not in Plymouth but in Bodmin Parkway. His heart pounding, he raced up and down the little street, peering into such shops as were even open in the winter, but he couldn't find the Whatleys or Luther. He sprinted off toward the castle, where indeed Madeline and Steve still lingered. He saw them and, with a shock, recognized them from the videotape. They were staring up at the cliffs. Doyle thought of apprehending them but then, coming closer, thought they were not just admiring the view but waiting, a little worried, for someone to appear up there.

"Luther," murmured Doyle, turning away from the Whatleys and climbing up to find the boy himself. He wished that Murphy were here but he would if necessary be a one-man minesweeper, covering the cliffs, the fields and the path all at once.

Rose had figured they were by now closer to Trebarwith Strand than to Tintagel, so at first she led Sam that way, but they met an unlikely distraction: cows.

A herd of at least a dozen were grazing within an enclosed field; Rose was getting good at surmounting stiles and Sam hadn't had a problem with them until he'd been hit with Luther's fix, so they'd already gone over one into the cows' domain by the time they realized they were not going to pass unchallenged. The cows all turned to look at them. A brown and white one with black spots on its face stepped forward and then, as if by agreement, they all marched purposefully over to the two startled humans. Again as if by agreement they stopped and let the leader go the last few feet alone. "Hello," said Sam, who'd grown up on a dairy farm. Rose had grown up with oil but there was beef in her family.

"Hey now," she said, familiarly.

The head cow gave them both the once-over, and the twice-over, and decided they were just fine folks out for an afternoon stroll. It turned aside, and the other cows, gathering from this that everything was hunky dory, also went back to their own affairs, albeit en masse. However, Rose took a look at half-doddering Sam and decided she could use her parents' help. She turned him around and helped him back over the stile. He was walking independently and might have been able, too, to engage in actual conversation, except that the wind had risen to the point that normal conversation could not have been heard.

About halfway back to the castle their solitude was disturbed by the appearance of a figure loping so rapidly across a field toward the narrow cliffside path that they could only assume it was coming for them, and they stopped to wait for it. Then Sam murmured, "No no," and backed up, rather dangerously.

"Luther!" called the figure, whose auburn curls could now be seen flying about in the strong wind. "Just move away from the girl, Luther." This last command was somewhat unnecessary, as Sam was still backing away from both Doyle and Rose.

Rose looked from one to the other and without understanding a thing knew that this was bad, very bad. The intruder was not tall but looked strong... and determined. Larry was pitifully outmatched. There was only one thing to be done. She flung herself upon the stranger. "You leave him alone!" she screamed, beating Doyle with her fists and kicking at him. "Larry, run!" Doyle just pushed her to arm's length and held her there, still watching Sam, who had stopped backing up and was now coming back toward him.

Sam couldn't run and wasn't about to leave Rose in Doyle's hands anyway. He shouted, "Rose, get out of here now. You have to tell your parents - tell them CI5! CI5! Go on!" He virtually tore her from Doyle's grasp, then backed off as quickly as he could. "Go!"

"We don't want you, little girl! We want him!"

Rose didn't see any "we" but she did see that she could do no good here. "I love you, Larry!" she wailed as she ran back across the cliff toward the castle, as fleetly as any cowherd, disappearing within moments.

There in the grassy field the two men faced off as they had in the train yard about a week before. Now, though, each had mixed feelings about the other - a curiosity about each other's motivations undermined the pure animosity that otherwise would have held sway. Neither particularly wanted to kick the other in the head, and at the same time neither particularly wanted to be kicked in the head. They moved in wary circles, never taking their eyes off one another's eyes, into which the strong wind whipped their hair: Luther's long locks and Ray's unruly curls. It also stole their breath, and they gasped occasionally, though not together. Their hands were raised like tigers' paws. Their feet twisted in and pivoted out like dancers' feet.

"I don't want to hurt you, Luther," shouted Ray, against the wind. "Come quietly now." His bandaged hand was drawn back, his free one half extended.

"I can't," Sam shouted back, thinking, Where will I go? Why not give myself up?

"Have it your way," said Ray, inaudibly, and feinted at Sam, stopping just shy of him. Sam reacted by stepping out of the way, but Ray was ready and really did leap onto him this time, pushing him backwards into the grass and sitting on him. He quieted the lad with a single left-handed punch, rolled him over and climbed back onto him, pinning his arms with most of his body while struggling with the bandaged hand to get the cuffs from his own back pocket. When he had him subdued and secured, he got off of him, but Sam didn't move.

"Come on then," said Ray, "you're all right. We'll get up now." He lifted Sam to his feet and dusted him off. He brushed a little clod of grass and earth from Sam's mouth. "You're all right."

Sam sneezed and Ray laughed. He took Sam by the arm almost companionably and led him through the field, helped him over a stile, escorted him into another field, just about dumped him over another stile, then walked behind him without touching him as they trod a long way down a narrow path, with nothing but the sounds of birds and wind to disturb them. Sam stopped short once as a brown and blue butterfly flew quite close to his face; Ray reached out an arm to give him a push, then saw the butterfly too, and didn't. What kind of a murderer stopped to look at butterflies? Sam looked back at him, sighed, and proceeded down the path, Ray right behind him.

The path became steeper and Ray had to hold onto Sam, not to prevent his escaping but to keep him from falling - and to keep himself from falling, too. Soon they were climbing down pink-veined black rocks, toward a sandy beach and the small beach town of Trebarwith. "Wait," said Ray, when they were both in danger of sliding down the black rocks toward certain injury and possible death. He sat Sam down on a rock and balanced himself on a flat patch of path. "You won't run," he ordered.

"I don't think I could," admitted Sam, a little hoarsely; he hadn't spoken for a while.

"Okay then." He turned Sam sideways and unlocked the cuff that circled Sam's left hand. He placed the metal ring around his own left wrist and snapped it shut. "There. 'The Defiant Ones.'" Sam didn't quite understand, but laughed anyway. The two of them helped each other down the black cliff to the Strand.

Murphy was waiting for them at the little sundries shop. He shook his head at the sight of Sam. "All this for just that?"

"Don't underestimate him," said Ray. "He's a stone killer."

Murphy couldn't understand why the young man who'd led them such a chase burst out laughing so hard at Ray's words. He solemnly allowed the criminal to be detached from Ray and attached to him, so that Ray could stretch and rub his wrist and even, to Murphy's further surprise, dance a little jig as they trod around to the car park.