Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Two - Part Seven

7

BRISTOL

The police sirens were distinct now: no more than half a mile away, probably less. Sam figured he might have a slightly shorter time than that before one of the hotel guests emerged to check on him.

The lock on Lucy’s boot broke easily in less time than it would have taken to wish he’d picked up her car keys when he took the ones for her flat.

Inside: 1 tent, 2 roll-out mattresses, 1 unframed painting on card. Even outdoors now the light was low. It was the frustrating time between daylight and dark. He held the painting under the inbuilt light in the hatchback door: it was small and unfinished, one foot by two; a portrait in pastels. The shape of the head had been sketched in white, the hair quite thick for a man’s and blond; no more than one sitting’s work. The face showed no detail, the subject’s identity was a mystery, but Sam knew who it was supposed to be; he knew who created it. It was a self portrait of the man who had murdered his sister.

He lowered it slightly, considering other things, his thoughts almost blank. Then he felt something again in the back of his skull: instinct; premonition; something.

The man who killed his sister was still alive. He was still alive and he would be making his way back to London.

Absolutely no way he could know that fact; no way the bastard could have survived the leap off the bridge. Sam didn’t believe in presentiment or any kind of fantasy but he knew that Jack was alive. It didn’t matter how he knew. He knew.

A police car span round the corner at the top of the hill, lights flashing in the gloom, siren still blaring. It stopped too fast outside the hotel, wheels skidding into the pavement. The siren switched off but the lights remained flashing as the policemen got out. Sam was twenty yards away. They weren’t going to spot him but it was time to go. The two cops hurried up the steps of the hotel and in through the front door into the crowd that had assembled there.

Every extra day he remained in England, he risked arrest and prison; but his sister was dead; the man who had done it was free. He could not leave it like that.

Sam looked back at the self portrait, at the blank features that could have given him a perfect simulacrum of the face he was trying to find. He sneered. Then he lifted the picture and brought it down hard on his knee.