Free Turquoiselle by Tanith Lee Page B

Merc continued to favour this type of manoeuvre. It would
indiscreetly hug him, then slip aside and vanish for miles – before abruptly
resurfacing out of some often unexpected turning or lay-by, so displaying an
enviable SatNav, or personal acquaintance with the map of local roads. Carver
himself kept doggedly on, as if he was either too dumb to have noticed, or too
stoical to struggle. He had attracted the tail and might as well keep it busy.
    He
stopped the first time by driving into the small car park of a pub. The Merc
sailed by and vanished at a twist of the lane. But Carver was ninety-five percent
convinced once he had drunk the non-alcoholic lager, got back in his car and
set off again, the Merc would rejoin him, which indeed it did, at a handy T-junction,
shambling out on to the road with bumpy clumsy enthusiasm.
    There
seemed to be only the driver in the vehicle. He was blank-faced and
nondescript, dressed in some sort of woolly jumper, death-grey to match the
car.
    They
played this match all that short late-year afternoon, driving between fields,
along narrow, bad, lumpy tracks, past leaning old barns and ruined fences. Now
and then Carver gave them a turn on a trim motorway. He also stopped twice more
before they reached Tunbridge Wells, once at another pub, and once at a farm
shop, which involved a gravelled hiccupping jolt of a pathway, on to which the
Merc did not even attempt to propel itself.
    Day
was on its last legs in the sky by the time they got into Tunbridge proper.
    Carver
parked near the Royal Ash Tree Restaurant, and getting out, found the Merc had bumbled
off again.
    He
idled about for an hour or so, traipsing through the Pantiles, and from force
of habit buying a silver-black and onyx necklace for Donna, in a pillared
burrow with bulging windows.
    By
then the dark had opened up and the lighted shops were beginning to close. ‘There
was no more sign of the Merc, or the woolly-jumpered driver.
    Carver
caught the train. With a suitable change, it would drop him close to the Tenterden
pickup point, where the other car, the ‘cab’, would be waiting. His own car he
would collect from Lynchoak tomorrow for the drive into London.
    The
train was full, buzzy with mobiles, laptops and miniaturised fried music, if
not conversation. When Carver glanced around, he felt a jab of almost inert
shock. The man from the Merc was already installed, only a few feet away among
the seatless and standing commuters. He balanced there, clamped by other
bodies, yet swaying and sore-thumbian, woolly grey . He did not look at Carver.
    Carver
reviewed the best moves to get shot of him before picking up his transport. If
evasion was out of the question, Carver thought he would have to wait before
heading for the pickup. To let the ‘cabby’ give a vehicle the slip was one
thing, but a direct foot-follower might pose a more immediate threat. Carver
had not been advised either of this possibility, or of how best to tackle it.
    He
made a decision. He would get out at the next halt, secure a real cab, and
drive in that over to Tenterden.
    The
train was approaching another station. As Carver rose, the coatless jumper man
turned and looked straight at him. The flat stodgy face broke in a wide and
familiarly friendly grin. Carver ignored it. He eased his way towards the
further set of doors. The train had slowed and now stopped. Along with a clump
of uninvolved others he stepped off on to the platform.
    Carver
paused a moment then, watching as the train absorbed its new dose of
passenging customers. The man was just visible, no longer smiling, only blank,
and as the train resealed itself he and it glided away, a collective piece of characterised
scenery removed from the stage.
     
     
    The ‘cab’
dropped him without argument just at the edge of the village, by the church. He
and the driver had exchanged the normal bare minimum of words. A few of them centring
on the driver’s discontent. His engine had started acting up.