“Why yes, sir, very pleased to have you here, sir,” the man said, hurrying over with a warm smile on his fat lips. “What will be your pleasure?”
“A large whiskey — and something for yourself as well.”
“Why thank you, sir. I’ll have similar.”
Jan didn’t notice the brand name; it was rougher than the whiskey he usually drank. But fairly priced. The round was less than a single at his local. These people had no cause for complaint.
There was more space at the bar now — in fact he had it almost to himself. Jan turned about and there, at a nearby table, sat Radcliffe and some of the other workers from the Walsoken Plant. Jan waved and walked over.
“Well, Radcliffe, relaxing a bit?”
“You might say so, your honor.” The words were cold and formal; the man seemed embarrassed for some reason.
“Mind if I join you?”
There were some wordless mutters that Jan took to be assent. He pulled an empty stool over from the next table and sat down and looked around. No one met his eyes; they all seemed to be finding things of interest in their liters of beer.
“Cold night, isn’t it?” One of them drank noisily, the only answer. “And the winters are going to stay cold for the next few years. It’s called a little climatic, a small weather change within the larger cycles of weather. We won’t have another ice age, not at once, but we can count on these cold winters lasting awhile.”
His audience was not exactly bursting with enthusiasm and Jan had the sudden realization that he was making a fool of himself. Why had he come in here in the first place? What could he learn from these stolid dolts? The whole idea was stupid. He drained his glass and left it on the table.
“Enjoy yourself, Radcliffe. All of you. See you at work in the morning and we’ll really get cracking on the maintenance. A lot of work to do.”
They muttered something which he didn’t stay to hear. The devil with theories and blond-haired girls in submarines. He must be going out of his head to do what he was doing, think what he was thinking. The hell with it. The bite of cold air was sharp and good after the reek of the pub. His car was there with two men bent over the open door.
“Stop there! What do you think you’re doing?”
Jan ran toward them, slipping on the icy ground. They looked up quickly, a blur of white faces, then turned and ran into the darkness.
“Stop! Do you hear me — stop!”
Breaking into his car, criminals! They weren’t getting away with it. He ran after them around the building and one of them stopped. Good! Turned to him…
He never saw the man’s fist. Jan felt the explosion of agony on his jaw. Falling.
It was a hard, cruel blow, and he must have been unconscious for a moment or two because the next thing he knew he was on his hands and knees, shaking his head with pain. There were shouts around him, more running footsteps, and hands on his shoulders pulling him to his feet. Someone helped him to walk back to the pub, into a small room where he dropped heavily into a deep chair. There was a wet towel then, cool on his forehead, stinging on his jaw. He took it and held it himself and looked up at Radcliffe who was alone in the room with him.
“I know the man, the man that hit me,” Jan said.
“I don’t think you do, sir. I don’t think it was no one who works at the plant. I have someone watching the car, sir. Nothing taken that I can see, you were too quick. Looks like a little damage where the door was jimmied open…
“I said I know him. Had a clear view of his face when he hit me. And he did work at the plant!”
The cool cloth helped. “Sampson, something like that. Remember, the man who tried to burn the place down. Simmons — that’s the name.”
“Couldn’t have been him, sir. He’s dead.”
“Dead? I don’t understand. He was in perfect health two weeks ago.”
“Killed himself, sir. Couldn’t face going back on the dole. Studied for years to get the job. Only had it a few months.”
“Well you can’t blame me for his incompetence. You agreed with me, as I recall, that firing him was the only thing to do. You remember?”
Radcliffe did not lower his eyes this time and there was an unaccustomed note of hardness in his voice.
“I remember asking you to keep him on. You refused.”
“You aren’t implying by any chance that I’m responsible for his death, are you?”
Radcliffe did not answer, nor did his empty expression change. Nor did he lower his eyes from Jan’s. It was Jan who turned away first.
“Management decisions are hard to make sometimes. But they have to be done. Yet I swear that man was Simmons. Looked just like him.”
“Yes, sir. It was his brother. You can find that out easy enough if you want to.”
“Well thank you for telling me. The police will deal with this matter easily enough.”
