The wagon jolted again, Cussane’s eyes opened and he turned quickly, up on one knee, and checked his watch. ‘One-thirty. I must have slept for a long time.’
‘You did.’
He peered out through the slats and nodded. ‘We must be moving into the sidings at Penrith. Where’s my bag?’
She pushed it across. He rummaged inside, found the
medical kit and gave himself another morphine injection. ‘How is it?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘No trouble. I’m just making sure.’
He was lying, for the pain, on waking, had been very real. He slid back the door and peered out and a sign for Penrith loomed out of the dark. ‘I was right,’ he said.
‘Are we getting out here?’
‘No guarantee this train goes any further and it’s not much of a walk to the motorway.’
‘Then what?’
There’ll be a service centre, a cafe, shops, parked cars, trucks. Who knows?’ The pain had faded again now and he managed a smile. ‘An infinite possibility to things. Now give me your hand, wait till we slow right down, and jump.’
It was a longer walk than Cussane had anticipated so that it was three o’clock when they turned into the carpark of the nearest service centre on the M6 and approached the cafe. A couple of cars moved in off the motorway and then a truck, a freightliner so massive that Cussane didn’t see the police car until the last moment. He pulled Morag down behind a van and the police car stopped, the light on top of it lazily turning.
‘What shall we do?’ she whispered.
‘Wait and see.’
The driver stayed behind the wheel, the other policeman got out and went in the cafe. They could see him clearly through the plate glass windows. There were perhaps twenty or thirty people in there, scattered amongst the tables. He took a good look round and came out again. He got back in the car and was speaking on the radio as it drove away.
They were looking for us,’ Morag said.
‘What else?’ He took the Tarn O’Shanter off her head and stuffed it in a nearby waste bin. That’s better. Too much like advertising.’ He fumbled in his pocket and found a five pound note which he gave to her. They do take-outs in these places.
Get some hot tea and sandwiches. I’ll wait here. Safer that way.’
She went up the ramp and into the cafe. He saw her hesitate at the end of the counter, then pick up a tray. He noticed a bench against a low wall nearby, half-hidden by a large van. He sat down and lit a cigarette and waited, thinking about Morag Finlay.
Strange how right it seemed to think of her. It occurred to him wryly, with the usual priest’s habit of self-doubt, that he should not be doing so. She was only a child. He had been celibate for more than twenty years, had never found it in the slightest degree difficult to manage without women. How absurd it would be, to fall in love at the end of the day with a little sixteen-year-old gypsy girl.
She came round the van with a plastic tray and put it on the bench. Tea and ham sandwiches and what do you think of this? We’re in the paper. There was a stand by the door.’
He drank the scalding hot tea carefully from one of the plastic cups and unfolded the paper on his knee, reading it in the dim light falling across the carpark from the cafe. The newspaper was a local paper, printed in Carlisle the previous evening. They had Cussane on the front page, a separate picture of Morag beside him.
‘You look younger,’ he said.
‘That was a snap my mother took last year. Granda had it on the wall in his caravan. They must have taken it. He’d never have given it to them.’
‘If a local paper had this last night, I’d say we’ll be in every national newspaper’s first edition later on this morning,’ he said.
There was a heavy silence, he lit another cigarette and sat there smoking it, not saying anything.’