Free Mosaic by Jo Bannister Page A

Oblivious of the gouging stones under his feet, he did not know he was leaving a blood spore.
    At the top of the lane he paused briefly, bent over his heaving chest, then turned left. He did not know where the cottage lay or where he might find help. He knew he needed people: not one or two, that a man like Vanderbilt would kill cheerfully to cover his tracks, but dozens—a village, a pub, a full bus. He chose left because that way the road fell, whereas to the right it went on climbing—a distinction that mattered not at all to a man in a car but meant everything to one on foot.
    Remembering the car warned him of the certainty of pursuit. He did not believe he had put Vanderbilt out of commission for more than a scant few minutes: long before any prospect of help drove up this lonely upland road, Vanderbilt would. Even if he turned the wrong way—if he was dazed enough not to guess that a tired man would want to run downhill—he would come back after a mile. If he stayed on the road Grant was as good as caught; and caught, as good as dead.
    The roadside was lined on both sides with stone walling, most of it topped with barbed wire. When he came, still running, bent almost double with a pain like fire in the muscles of his arms, to a place where the rusty wire had broken and coiled back on itself, he rolled over the wall and dropped into its shadow, pressing his back against the stones and his cheek into the wiry wind-flattened turf.
    Almost at once he heard the car.
    Vanderbilt was pinching his bleeding nose with one hand, steering with the other. He was not driving fast and his big face, though bloody, was calm. He was not so much angry, even with himself, as absolutely intent on rectifying the situation before it could slide beyond salvage.
    He came up the green lane without pausing, because there was no other way for Grant to have gone, and at the top he turned down the hill because he knew the running man would be feeling the cramps of exertion by then. From there on, however, he drove slowly and kept a careful watch. He could not guess if Grant would run until his lungs burst, gambling on finding some help or sanctuary in the few minutes his gambit had bought him, or whether he would go to ground. There was plenty of cover, if a man knew how to use it. Grant would: now he would, now that he had started thinking like a soldier again.
    Vanderbilt was aware that he had underestimated Grant. Frightened, hysterical, arguably psychotic, he was still the product of a rigorous military training which owed as little to the Marquis of Queensberry as it did to the Geneva Convention. The fact that he had left all that did not mean that it had left him: in his mind he might have retired to a staid and timid civilian existence, but given the right circumstances his body would always react as a soldier’s. Now that Grant knew that too he would be harder to handle. He would also be harder to find.
    Vanderbilt drove beyond the furthest point he thought Grant could have reached—he had been badly dazed by the unexpected attack but he had not entirely lost consciousness or an awareness of the passage of time—then turned the car. Then he crept back, studying the fields on both sides, scrutinizing the walls for signs of disturbance and the middle distance for movement. He saw none. On one side there were sheep grazing, their scattered pattern and steady cudding a guarantee that no one had gone that way. On the other side of the road the land fell steeply towards a swift little river swirling brown from recent heavy rain up on the moor.
    At intervals of fifty metres Vanderbilt got out of the car and leaned over both walls to check their shadows.
    He was almost back at the lane which led to the cottage when, returning to the car from such a sortie, he saw the blood. It was not copious, only a smear he could never have seen from a moving car, but he recognized it at once and knew what it meant. He silenced the