The Claw

Thirteen

That night Alan couldn't sleep. Either the heat was tropical, or he'd had too much to drink at the hotel. Long after Liz had fallen asleep he lay awake beside her, sweating and prickly, bothered by the vague idea that there was something he had to do. 'All right,' he found himself muttering at the dark, Til do it, I'm going to do it tomorrow.' But still his compulsion wasn't satisfied; it kept jerking him back from the edge of sleep, stranding him in the rumbling seaside dark with fragments of the day – Joseph stumbling backward as the raw intestine unravelled; Joseph helpless on the ground with the policeman on top of him, himself carrying Anna asleep in his arms, out of the hotel to the car. Why did all these memories make him feel uneasy?

He slept at last, and woke late, feeling as if he'd run for miles. By the time he'd rushed through washing, shaving and dressing, Anna was sitting by Liz on the bed, and Liz was blinking herself awake. He kissed them both, then grabbed his briefcase and hurried out to the car. As he passed the living-room he glimpsed the empty space on the mantelpiece where the claw had been before he had packed it in his briefcase, and felt intensely relieved.

He backed his dented car out of the garage and drove to Norwich. Soon the sea fell behind. Golfers and hikers wandered over the green landscape, barges roamed the waterways. Luckily there wasn't much traffic on the roads – for he was driving before he was fully awake – and he drove through the villages without mishap. A postman cycled from house to house, women with wicker baskets chatted outside shops – but Alan barely noticed them, intent on his driving.

He reached Norwich earlier than he had expected. The train reminded him of the railway museum, for his carriage was faded and empty. Why did these musty old carriages always seem so dim, even on sunny days like this? He sat and gazed along the ranks of deserted seats, settees crammed together. His briefcase was on the floor beside him. He pushed it away a little with one foot, so that it wouldn't be quite so near him.

The carriage was still empty when the train jerked forward. The jerk felt like an awakening – except that he was still trying to struggle awake five minutes later. The landscape was rushing past faster now, but it hardly changed at all and wasn't enough to distract him from the contents of his briefcase, nor from the muttering of his thoughts. He wasn't sure if he believed his intuition of yesterday. Hadn't he been thinking too much like a writer, trying to make everything fit together too neatly? Could such an insignificant object really have influenced Joseph so profoundly? But if not, why had the anthropologist been so anxious to get rid of it? It didn't matter what Alan thought; whatever his reasons he had to deliver it to the Foundation.

That relieved his anxiety, a little. The train was rocking him back to sleep, and there was nothing in the landscape that his mind could seize upon to stay awake. He moved over on the seat and placed the briefcase between himself and the window. In a few moments he was nodding. There was something he had to do. His head was nodding, it seemed to agree. His body knew what he had to do; why couldn't it let him into the secret? One more nod that he was distantly aware of, and then he was lost in a dream.

Perhaps it was the answer, for he was close to home. He had to find Anna. There she was, running through the murky fields ahead. He didn't know exactly where he was, but he could hear the sea, though it sounded as he thought a rainstorm in a jungle might sound. He had to catch up with Anna, for a shape was running beside him on all fours, a naked shape with a human face, a shape that glistened red all over, even in the dark,. Now he had outdistanced the shape and was running effortlessly, his feet hardly touching the ground. In a moment he would catch Anna. That was when she looked back, and he saw the terror in her eyes. He felt as if the ground beneath his feet had fallen away. She knew that he hadn't been chasing her to save her. He sprang at her, raising the claw that had been in his hand all the time.

Had he closed his eyes so that he couldn't see what he'd done? Certainly he'd had a blackout of some kind, because now he was somewhere in the jungle, stumbling through the greenish light beneath enormous dripping trees. Now he knew: the scene with Anna hadn't happened yet, and he was here to prevent it from ever happening. Here was a clearing with a few conical huts, a pot steaming over a fire, a thin leathery man with small blank eyes like a spider's, squatting with his back to a tree. Alan stumbled toward the man with the spidery eyes, for he was Alan's one chance to stop what was going to happen. Then, for a moment too brief to grasp, he realized what he would have to do in order to make sure of that chance, and it was so dreadful that he woke shrieking.

The carriage was still deserted. He wished there were someone there, even though it might have been embarrassing. Beyond the window at the end of the carriage, more seats lurched back and forth; beside him a blur of hedges raced by. He'd already forgotten what he had to do in the clearing in the jungle, and he was trying to forget his dream about Anna too, but there was one thought he couldn't avoid: the dream hadn't been entirely false to his feelings about her. He had to admit that he was relieved to get away from her.

At least, in a sense he was… But being away from her also allowed him to consider his feelings about her. He'd been uneasy whenever they were alone together, ever since he'd come back from Nigeria. All of a sudden she was getting on his nerves. Couldn't that be because his work was giving him trouble? Yes – but that wasn't the whole of it. Whenever he was alone with her, he felt that there was something he had to do, if only he could think of it. Perhaps he didn't need to think of it, just let his body act it out for him. For some reason he was remembering their last day on the beach, when he'd chased her and caught her, more and more roughly…

He found he couldn't think of that for too long. It made him feel guilty and nervous, exactly as the dream had made him feel. If only he could wake fully he might be able to deal with it, but his thoughts were blurred, like something left in an attic for years. Most frustrating was the notion that the dream should have made clear to him what the claw was.

He was still trying to grasp the impression, when the train pulled in at Liverpool Street. What was wrong with him, letting a dream bother him so much? God knows, he needed a clear mind for his meeting with Teddy, especially if he was going to break the news that the book might be late. He grabbed his briefcase and made for the taxi-rank.

By the time he arrived on Queensway it was almost lunchtime. London was crowded with tourists, and half the shoppers in Oxford Street had been wearing robes -it was almost like a continuation of one of his dreams of Africa. Yesterday he'd been fairly sure he'd know what to say to Teddy when the time came, but now he felt sure of nothing, except that he wanted to deliver the contents of his briefcase as soon as he could. He wished he'd arranged to go to the Foundation first.

Teddy was 'in a meeting'. Editors always seemed to be 'in a meeting' – when they weren't out to lunch. Alan sat on a leather sofa in the foyer, a high-ceilinged room elaborately decorated with plaster vegetation, and leafed through Publishers Weekly, glancing at a full-page advertisement for himself – 'Britain's leading thriller writer up there with Deighton and Le Carri.' A few years ago he'd never have dared dream that a publisher would spend that kind of money to advertise his books. He should have felt more pleased, but the sense of something to be done was still nagging at him.

Soon Teddy came up from the basement. He was a tall Canadian with a youthful face that always looked scrubbed as a schoolboy's at a prize-giving. Though he was thirty-two, Alan had seen barmen refuse to serve him because he looked under age. Today he wore jeans and a T-shirt printed with a marihuana leaf. 'I hope you're starving,' he said.

That and the T-shirt meant they'd be lunching at the pizza parlour. 'Pretty much,' Alan said. At least a leisurely meal might help him relax and choose his words.

Small chance. The moment they sat down at their table, decorated with a large American flag, the waitress bobbed over to them, a pert girl with a stars-and-stripes apron and a Cockney accent. She brought them a carafe of white wine as soon as she saw Teddy.

Alan had just ordered his pizza and taken a mouthful of wine when Teddy said, 'How's Out of the Past coming?'

'Not too well,' Alan said, bracing himself for the worst.

'Yes, I had that impression last time we spoke. You don't think you can deliver on time, am I right?'

'Not without rushing it.' Alan wished he knew what Teddy thought of him, but the editor's face was bright and blank as a poster. 'I'm sorry,' Alan said. 'I don't want to seem temperamental.'

'Nobody thinks that. You're one of our most professional writers. You take it at whatever pace feels right to you. It shouldn't take you more than a couple of months past the deadline, should it?'

Just now Alan didn't know, and wondered if Teddy was flattering him in order to make him commit himself. 'I hope not,' he said.

'Well, keep me up to date on how it's going. Just don't feel too pressured, that's the main thing. Anyway, I wanted to tell you, we're giving you an excuse for deliv- ering it late. You'll recall we're doing the first paperback of Spy on Fire in September, and we very much hope you'll agree to a signing tour.'

Alan should have been delighted. At the start of his writing career he'd often dreamed of one day being important enough to tour the country at his publisher's expense, signing his books. But now he felt he was agreeing only because he could think of no reason to refuse. As soon as they'd finished their pizzas and cheesecake and coffee, he declined another drink in Teddy's office and ran for a cab to take him to the Foundation for African Studies.

The Foundation was an elegant cream stucco building near Russell Square, with a pedimented doorway flanked by round windows, portholes of gleaming white plaster, and the air of a miniature country house. Lions the size of cats perched on the gateposts between black railings, and a man was clipping the lawns in front of the building with long-handled shears. Alan wondered vaguely if he could be a plain-clothes guard, then dismissed the idea as fanciful. Perhaps he could work it into a future book: he filed the image away in his mind.

The front door was open. The man, whose shears were almost as tall as himself, glanced up as Alan went in. Beyond the door was a foyer with a graceful staircase, at the foot of which a young woman with braided hair sat at a switchboard behind a desk. A small neat man with glossy black hair that almost hid his gleaming cranium scurried out of a room near the desk and frowning abstractedly at Alan, hurried upstairs. 'May I help you?' the young woman said.

'I'm supposed to see Dr Hetherington.'

'Why, there he is. Dr Hetherington!' she called – but already the small neat man had turned and was descending the stairs.

So much for Alan's image of a tall stooped white-haired professor. At least Hetherington seemed as fussy as he sounded on the phone. He gazed at Alan, then his frown cleared. 'Ah, yes, of course,' he said. 'You're bringing me the Leopard Men's claw.'

He led the way upstairs to his office, a sunny spacious room overlooking the lawns, and lined with books in glass-fronted bookcases, out of reach of the sunlight. Through the open window came the murmur of traffic, and from closer by, the sound of clipping. Flicking a switch on his intercom, Hetherington called for tea, while Alan sank into a leather chair that sighed. Now Alan could ask the question that had nagged him all the way upstairs. 'You said the Leopard Men. The Nigerian secret society, you mean?'

'Correct.' Hetherington was obviously glad of a chance to lecture. 'At least, they were last heard of in Nigeria,' he said. 'That was in the Forties, when they were simply killers, sometimes for hire. But the Leopard tradition was found across a wide belt of Africa, from Guinea through Sierra Leone and Liberia to Nigeria and Cameroon, on through Chad and the Sudan to Uganda and even Kenya – though there were only scattered reports there. Its influence was powerful while it lasted. One wonders if it has died out completely, even now.'

A secretary came in with a teapot, mugs and milk and sugar on a tray. Hetherington poured the tea himself, giving all his attention to the task. Alan felt that if he asked a question he wouldn't be heard. There was something he needed to know, but was afraid to ask. Hetherington brought him a mug at last – 'Do tell me if the tea isn't as you like it' – and Alan took it.

'They used to dress up in leopard skins and masks, didn't they?' he said. 'They lay in wait for people and killed them with the metal claws.'

'Yes, in some areas there was a ritual robing. There were many regional variations. In the Western Congo, for example, where the tradition came from Gabon, they would tear off their victim's thumbs with their bare hands, and all the flesh between the eyes.' Suddenly he had the look of a teenage girl squirming at her first horror film.

'The important element seems to have been to tear out the heart while the victim was still alive.'

Why did Alan feel nervous? 'You mean they were cannibals?'

'So we're led to believe. Only the Leopard societies, of course, not the cultures in which they occurred. Supposedly they devoured their victims as a way of achieving power. Some cannibalism appears to be based on the belief that by consuming the victim you take on his powers, but it seems the Leopard Men were trying to reach back to some older form of magic, one that demanded human sacrifice and cannibalism. I mean, of course,' he added primly, 'that is what they believed.'

Alan now realized why he was nervous: because he didn't know what he was afraid to hear. Outside, the sound of the clipping continued. The blast of a horn on the road seemed so loud that he jumped, almost spilling the tea.

'The tradition seems to be traceable back to the Ju-ju men of the nineteenth century,' Hetherington was saying. 'Before that, there is no documentation. That was David Marlowe's task, to trace it back to its origins. It seemed an impossible task to me, but he was a brilliant researcher. I wonder,' he said sadly, 'if the research affected his mind. The way he seems to have become obsessed with the claw that he gave you, for example. Heaven knows how many people it may have killed. Certainly I should never have given it house room.'

And yet he had expected Alan to do so. Still, it had been Alan's own decision to put it on display. Now, presumably, it was Hetherington's, whether he wanted it or not. Alan sipped his tea automatically, though it seemed to be making him hot and light-headed. The clipping of shears felt as if it was nipping at his brain.

'David set out to interview surviving Leopard Men, and I understand that he succeeded,' Hetherington said. 'We shan't know until we see his notes, and we'll have to wait until the Nigerian police have finished with them for that. Perhaps it was the interviews that caused his breakdown – the strain of having to be polite to such men. I could never have done it myself. I don't believe in treating murderers like normal human beings – and these men were worse than murderers. Presumably each one of them must have gone through his own disgusting initiation ritual.'

'What was that?' Alan said, though he wasn't sure by any means that he wanted to know.

'Why, the killing of the child. One can only hope that some of them refused when they found that was what they were required to do – even if refusing meant being killed in their turn. You'd have thought that a man who had the courage to face those who'd chosen him would also have the courage to make them remove the compulsion. But of course these were superstitious savages. They would have been too scared to refuse.'

Alan was gripping the mug so hard he thought it might shatter, thick as it was. 'What did you mean about killing a child?'

'Each man had to give his young daughter to the cult before he could be accepted – a girl child of his own or his wife's blood. They would send the child running down a path through the bush at night. When they caught her they would tear her to pieces and eat her.'

Alan managed to set down his mug on the carpet, though he could hardly see. He was blinded by a flood of memories – the dream of chasing Anna and bringing her down with the claw, his feelings about her since he'd brought the claw home, the dream which suddenly came flooding back to him – the chase dream he'd had on the plane out of Lagos. It must have started then, the influence on him. He groped for his briefcase, snarling under his breath. He had to control himself, or when he got hold of the claw he wouldn't be able to stop himself flinging it at Hetherington, this small intolerably smug man who had let the influence gain such a hold on him.

He shuddered as he groped in the briefcase, for the touch of cold leather made him feel for a moment as if he were groping inside a corpse. He must calm down, he must shake off his fears in order to be able to look. But he'd already felt the contents of the briefcase, and that was why his fears were worse. He wrenched the case wide open, thinking sickly of Joseph tearing open the goats, and peered in. He couldn't believe it, even when his vision cleared. He hadn't brought the claw with him at all.