Shrine

by Herbert, James

  ‘Wait a minute,’ the New Yorker said. ‘Has he signed any agreement yet?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  Fenn smiled thinly. ‘I just heard you say you had the contract ready. That means he hasn’t signed.’

  The Express reporter wasted no more time with words. He whipped open the door and sped through, slamming it hard behind him.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ The tall, bearded barman blinked through his glasses as the crowd barged through the doorway in pursuit. He welcomed the business, but wasn’t too keen on the rowdiness of the journalists.

  Outside in the carpark, a silver-grey Capri was revving up its engine and the Express reporter was running towards it. He pulled open the passenger door as the car moved off and jumped in.

  Fenn and those who had followed him from the pub had to step back to avoid being hit.

  ‘Where’re they taking Pagett?’ Nancy Shelbeck yelled.

  ‘Probably to some nearby hotel. They’ll keep him locked away for a few days where no one can find him.’

  ‘That can’t be legal.’

  ‘It is if he agrees to it.’ Fenn broke away, heading for his Mini. He climbed in, thankful that he hadn’t locked the doors. Through the windscreen he saw the other journalists scurrying for their own vehicles. The Capri was disappearing into the High Street. His passenger door swung open as he started the engine.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Nancy said, and she was laughing. ‘It’s like the goddam Keystone Cops!’

  Fenn didn’t have time to enjoy the humour, nor to tell her to get out of his car. He shoved it into first and roared across the carpark, swinging left into the High Street, barely looking to see if the coast was clear. He was in luck: the Capri carrying Len Pagett and the two journalists had been forced to stop at a zebra crossing while two old ladies, lost in conversation, ambled across.

  He slapped the steering wheel in triumph. ‘Got the bastards! They won’t lose me now.’

  Nancy laughed aloud. ‘I don’t believe this!’

  Tyres burnt the road as the Capri screeched off. Heads turned as Fenn pushed his foot down and followed suit.

  ‘Take it easy, Fenn. It isn’t worth getting killed for!’

  Both cars roared down the High Street as others, driven by the slower journalists, began to emerge from the carpark. Vehicles were parked on both sides of the road, making its centre a narrow channel and forcing the two cars to slow down when they met others coming from the opposite direction. Fenn was aware that it would be tougher to keep up once they were through the village and out on the open road, but he had an advantage: he knew the roads. He guessed they were heading for Brighton, using one of the many hotels there as a hideaway, and cursed them (although he didn’t blame them) for their opportunism. Somehow, because of his involvement, he felt proprietor of this story and that the other newspapers were infringing on his territory. From what he had learned of Len Pagett, and from what he had surmised of the man himself, he wasn’t surprised he had sold out to ‘cheque-book journalism’. No one had to be famous any more to make money from selling their own personal story; they just had to know somebody who was.

  The Capri was fifty yards ahead, approaching the end of the village. Fenn could see the road junction in the distance, the small roundabout, the garage next to it, the convent. Clear of parked vehicles, he increased his speed, desperate to keep up with the Capri, guessing it would turn left at the roundabout, keeping to the main road rather than carrying straight on into the minor one. The High Street was busy with shoppers, many of whom shook their heads in disgust at the racing cars, perhaps resigning themselves to the advance symptoms of what their once peaceful village was about to become.

  Next to him, Shelbeck bit into her lip, amused by the chase but a little alarmed also.

  They were nearing the roundabout. Shoppers were hurrying in and out of a grocery shop on the left, bags full, purses not so full. A huge yellow and green tanker stood in the garage forecourt on the right, shedding its load into the tanks beneath the pumps. Fresh virgin cars gleamed in the large showroom windows by the side of the service bay. A green, single-decker bus negotiated the tiny roundabout, rolling over the white-painted bump in the road as it headed into the village. The driver was accelerating as his bus straightened up.

  The Capri barely slowed as it approached the roundabout.

  Fenn did not know why he glanced ahead at the cream walls of the convent; the compulsion was just there.

  He saw the small white face at the window, blackness behind giving it prominence. Instinctively he knew it was Alice. Watching the High Street. Looking at the cars.

  Too late he saw the car in front weaving from side to side as though the driver had no control. He was almost upon it. Nancy was screaming. He was trying to turn the wheel, trying to avoid crashing into the erratic Capri. But the wheel had no say in what direction the vehicle took. It moved in its own wild direction.

  He jabbed hard on the footbrake, but it was too hard, too panicked. The wheels locked, the car skidded.

  The green bus, horrified faces peering from its windows like a row of peas in a split pod, turned to avoid the wildly-spinning Capri, but there was only one direction the driver could take. Into the garage forecourt. Where the tanker was emptying its contents.

  The Capri smashed into the front corner of the bus, its bonnet buckling instantly, its engine rising up and shearing through its own windscreen into the screaming faces of the two men in front. The bus driver went forward with the impact, through the large front glass of his cab, hurtling beneath the tanker a split second before his bus hit it. Mercifully he was dead before he could realize what was going to happen.

  As the long tube pumping fuel into the underground petrol tanks was sheared by screeching metal, sparks flew in all directions showering into the spilling volatile liquid.

  Fenn saw the crash and cried out as his own car smashed through the showroom window. He was only vaguely aware of the blinding flash and the thunderous whoosh as the petrol tanker exploded.

  23

  ‘Your life is finished,’ and he threw her down, dragged her into the room by her hair, struck off her head on the block and chopped her into pieces so that her blood streamed all over the floor. Then he threw her into the basin with all the others.

  The Brothers Grimm, ‘Fitcher’s Bird’

  Someone was shaking him. He groaned, but the effort to open his eyes was too much. His cheek rested against something hard.

  A single voice began to filter through the cacophony of sounds, sounds which he wasn’t sure were inside or outside his head. He groaned. Christ, his head hurt!

  Tentatively he forced his eyes open, the effort exhausting, like trying to will himself awake from a nightmare. A face was nearby, a woman’s face, someone he vaguely recognized.

  ‘Fenn, are you all right?’

  He wasn’t ready to reply.

  Hands reached around his shoulders and he was pulled off the steering wheel back into his seat. He felt his jaw clutched and his head shaken. He opened his eyes again and this time it was hardlly any effort at all. There was something wrong with Nancy’s face, but he couldn’t figure what. It was smeared red; thick cherry juice, dark red ink. No, blood. Her face was bleeding. He struggled to sit upright.

  ‘Thank God,’ he heard her say.

  ‘What happened?’ he managed to gasp, and it all flooded into his head before she replied. The careering Capri, the green bus, the petrol tanker – oh Jesus, all those people. His mind snapped into instant attention.

  The Mini’s windscreen was a spider’s silver web of shattered glass, but through the side windows he could see the gleaming bodywork of that year’s models. Yet there was a darkness out there that puzzled him until he realized it was swirling black smoke. A figure rushed by the window, arms waving, shouting incoherently. Fenn turned to the woman next to him.

  ‘You okay? Your face . . .’

  ‘It’s okay. I hit the windscreen wh
en we went through the showroom window.’ She put a hand to her forehead and brought it away smeared with blood. ‘It doesn’t hurt; I think it’s just a gash.’ She clutched his arm. ‘We’ve got to get out of here, Fenn. The tanker . . . the tanker out there exploded. The whole place is going up in flames . . .’

  He pushed open the driver’s door and the heat hit him immediately, even though the car showroom was partially shielded by a side wall. The smoke was growing thicker by the second and he began to cough as the acrid fumes poured into his nose and throat.

  ‘Come on, quick!’ he urged her.

  ‘My door’s stuck! It’s jammed up against a car you hit!’

  He pushed his own door open as far as it would go, denting the side panel of the new Rover standing next to the crashed Mini. He jumped out, then reached back inside to help her across. Nancy came scuttling through, almost throwing herself into the open. Fenn held her steady and quickly took in his surroundings.

  Not much was left of the showroom window his car had smashed through; huge, lethal-looking shards of glass hung from the top like transparent stalactites. Smoke poured through the opening, filling the area with its choking dense-ness, and fire was already spreading across the width of the broken window. Flames filled the glass doorway by the side of the window and this suddenly exploded inwards with the heat. Fenn realized burning petrol must have spread all over the garage forecourt and was attacking anything flammable.

  He pulled Nancy back, closing the door of the Mini so they could squeeze through the cars towards the rear of the showroom. ‘Keep low!’ he yelled at her. ‘Try to keep under the smoke!’

  To the rear of the display area was a glass partitioned office and he quickly ascertained that there was no back exit from it. The office was empty of people, the figure he had seen rushing by moments before obviously the salesman or manager who had occupied the room. Nancy doubled over, her body wracked by choking coughs.

  Holding her tightly, giving her support, Fenn looked around for some other means of escape. He thanked God when he saw the door to his left.

  Nancy almost collapsed to her knees when he tried to drag her towards the door. He allowed her to sag for a few moments, kneeling beside her, waiting for her coughing spasm to ease. Her eyes were streaming tears and her face was now a red mask from smeared blood.

  ‘There’s a way out, just over there!’ he shouted over the rumbling, burning sound and the splintering of glass, the cracking of burning wood.

  ‘Okay,’ she gasped, at last controlling the seizure. ‘I’ll be okay! Just get me out of here!’

  Fenn half-lifted her to her feet and she leaned against him as they made for the door. Such was their momentum that they stumbled against it and Fenn pushed out a hand to cushion the impact. He quickly pulled his hand away. The wood was scorching hot.

  He pulled Nancy to one side, his back against the wall beside the doorframe. She looked at him questioningly, but all he said was, ‘Keep back!’

  Crouching, he reached for the door handle. It, too, was hot and he ignored the pain as he gave it a twist and flicked the door open.

  Nancy screamed as flames roared through, bursting into the showroom as though exhaled from the jaws of a dragon. They both fell back to escape the intense heat and lay panting on the floor in a tangled heap as the fire withdrew to lap around the edges of the opening. Within seconds the door itself was blazing.

  They rose and staggered away, collapsing against the bonnet of a Maxi. Both were retching now, their vision blurred by smoke-caused tears. Fenn tore off his overcoat and pulled it over their heads as they lay half-across the bonnet.

  ‘We’ll have to go out the front way – through the window!’ he yelled.

  ‘It’s too hot there! We’ll never make it!’

  ‘We’ve got no choice! There’s no other way!’

  But by now, even that choice was not open to them.

  They raised their heads from the overcoat and stared in disbelief at the wide showroom windows. The broken one, the window Fenn’s Mini had smashed through, was totally filled with yellow-red churning flames, tongues of fire licking inwards to scorch the ceiling. A thick column of concrete separated it from the adjacent window, where the glass was already beginning to crack with the heat. The fire had spread across at least half its surface, the ground outside molten hot as the petrol gushed forth and flowed burning across the concourse outside.

  ‘Oh my God, we’re trapped,’ Nancy moaned.

  Fenn looked around wildly. There had to be another way out! The ceiling, a skylight. Through the billowing smoke he could tell the ceiling was solid as he realized there were offices above, not a roof. A stairway then, there had to be a way up. No stairway. It had to be through the doorway behind him, which was now no more than an opening into the furnace beyond. The fire was moving in, greedily pouncing on the hard plastic tiles of the showroom, creating fumes that were more choking and more lethal than the smoke above.

  The display windows were the only way out.

  He pulled the reporter upright and bent close to her ear. ‘We’re going out the front way!’

  She shook her head. ‘We’ll never make it!’

  Fenn wiped his sleeve across his eyes, then reached for a handkerchief, spreading it across his mouth and nose. He tugged at her roll-neck sweater, unfolding the material at the neck so it covered her lower face. Yanking her off the bonnet and holding the overcoat before them as a shield, he led her towards the front of the showroom in a stumbling run. He left her crouched between his own Mini and the Rover parked next to it and raced towards the still unbroken window. He ducked as a long jagged crack appeared in the glass and a sound like a gunshot rang out. For one long, dreadful moment he thought the window would shatter inwards to flail his body with shards of dagger-like glass, but the huge panes held. He went forward again, one arm holding his coat out to protect himself from the terrible heat. The display windows were the type that slid back into each other, depending on which side the salesman wanted to drive a car through, and Fenn went to the far corner, to the side that had been furthest from the fire; only now the scene outside was almost obliterated by the spreading flames.

  He pulled at the handle and cried out as the red hot metal burned his fingers. Using the material of the overcoat to protect his hands, he tried again, but to no avail: the window was either locked, or the metal frame had swollen with the heat, jamming it solid within its housing. He swore, more of a scream of frustration than a curse.

  The heat and fear of the glass exploding inwards forced him back. He returned to his companion who was slumped against the door of the Rover.

  ‘It’s no good! The window won’t open!’

  She looked at him fearfully, then yelled, ‘Shit!’ She grabbed his lapel and pulled him down to her. ‘Can’t you break the goddam window?’

  ‘Even if I could the fire out there would roast . . .’ He broke off. ‘Prick!’ he called himself.

  He shoved her away from the car door and swung it open, groaning with disappointment when he discovered there were no keys in the ignition. Quickly he stood, then rolled over the Rover’s bonnet to the Marina standing next to it. He yanked open the door and was once again thwarted: no keys. He went back over the bonnet and landed next to the woman.

  ‘The keys must be in the office!’ he shouted. ‘You wait here!’

  Then he was running back, crouching low behind a car as he passed the open doorway where the fire raged, noticing the floor around it was now blazing. Coughing and spluttering into the handkerchief, Fenn reached the rear office. He hurriedly pulled open drawers, spilling their contents onto the floor in his haste. No keys, no keys, no bloody keys! He looked around wildly, desperately. Where the fuck . . .? He groaned aloud when he saw the hooks in a cork notice board on the wall; labelled keys were hanging from each hook. He rushed to them, examined the labels, found two tagged ‘Rover’. Taking both sets he dashed back into the showroom.

  The suffocating heat hit once more a
nd he knew that soon the whole area would be in flames. His breathing was laboured, drawn in in short, sharp gasps. The oxygen was being eaten by the heat and what remained was smoke-filled. He was staggering by the time he reached the woman.

  He climbed into the Rover, Nancy crouching at the open door beside him. ‘There won’t be any gas in it!’ she shouted.

  ‘Course there bloody will! How d’you think they get them in here?’ He jabbed in the first key, praying it would be the right one. It was. The engine roared into life. ‘Jump in the back and keep down!’ he screamed at her over the noise.

  Without further bidding, she slammed his door shut, opened the one behind, and leapt in. The car was moving forward before she had slumped into the back seat. She tucked in her legs just as the Rover’s momentum swung the passenger door shut.

  Tyres screeched against the plastic floor as he stuck his foot down hard on the accelerator. The car zoomed towards the window and Fenn raised his arm to protect his face, hoping nothing solid was just beyond the flames outside.

  Nancy screamed as the Rover burst through the huge panes of glass.

  Shards flew back at the windscreen but it withstood their onslaught. The car was engulfed by the fire and Fenn kept his foot down, holding the steering wheel straight, expecting the vehicle to explode into flames at any moment.

  It could have been little more than two seconds before they broke free of the fire, but for both of them it seemed like an eternity. The smell, the heat – the fear – was overpowering, and the sight of blinding, twisting flames all around was a nightmare that they would never forget. Self-preservation rather than coolness kept Fenn’s foot down.

  He yelled in triumph as they emerged from the inferno, the cry turning into one of panic as he saw the stationary car immediately in his path. He swung the wheel hard to his right and the Rover went into a curving skid, smashing sideways on into the other vehicle. His body bounced off the driver’s door to be thrown across the passenger seat. Crushed metal made fierce rending sounds and the car jerked violently as its engine cut out. One of Fenn’s hands was still on the steering wheel and he used it to pull himself upright. Without thinking he switched off the ignition.