For the Good of the State by Anthony Price

windscreen, making him blink—when it had finally pissed down out of dark clouds over Ranulf’s bloody little ditches, and she had stood there watching him leave her in the lurch, and—
    Oh shit! thought Tom. He had forgotten to pay the bloody hotel bill!
    And there was another sign-post: Upper Horley that way, and Steeple Horley—
    He had left her in the lurch, and soaking wet, and with the bill. And there was that naval attaché, clean-cut and crew cut, and a good Anglo-Saxon Protestant out of Annapolis and Polaris—or Trident— whose father was a distinguished professor of something at Harvard, or Yale—
    Of Scythian Archaeology, maybe—?
    Tom gritted his teeth and jammed his foot on the brake simultaneously as he realized he was over-shooting the sign he’d been looking for, which was half-hidden in an overgrown tangle of hedge.
    The car bucked and skidded slightly under him, on the loose gravel of a road which was only half-a-car’s width wider than a track. But mercifully there was nothing behind him to slam into his backside, only a distant cyclist he’d overtaken half-a-mile earlier. But … it had said The Old House , hadn’t it—?
    It was very quiet, as much in the middle of a sudden sun-lit nowhere as he had been so happily this morning with Willy, under those rain-clouds. “ Rain at first, followed by bright periods spreading from the West” , the weather man had said on the radio this morning. But the truth was that ‘bright periods’ were all in the mind, not the sky.
    He engaged reverse gear savagely, scattering the gravel again for an instant before remembering the lone cylist and jamming on the brakes again in panic, gripping the wheel convulsively as he squinted into the mirror.
    But there was no cyclist in view now—
    Tom frowned into the mirror, first relieved, then angry with himself for his carelessness, and then mystified, in quick succession. Where had the cyclist gone—?
    He lowered the driver’s window and poked his head out of the car. The high curve of the downland was still there, sharp against an outrageously blue sky—the last rearguard of this morning’s clouds were far to the east now. But … if this was Steeple Horley, there was bugger-all to it—not a roof in sight, let alone a steeple.
    Then he saw the cyclist, watching from a gap in the hedgerow on the other side of the road, fifteen yards back, peering from behind a blackthorn tangle and a large pair of spectacles.
    ‘Is this—’ As Tom took a second breath to pitch his voice louder he couldn’t honestly blame the cyclist for taking cover from such a lunatic driver ‘—is this Steeple Horley?’ Manners! ‘Could you tell me, please?’
    The head vanished instantly, but the rear wheel of the bicycle came into view just below where it had been, as though the cyclist—it had been a boy in an American baseball cap—was readying himself for instant flight.
    ‘Steeple Horley, is this?’ Tom addressed the rear wheel.
    The head appeared again, hesitantly and partially, and then nodded. ‘Yes.’
    About ten years old, estimated Tom. And, as small boys must not talk to strange men, needing encouragement. ‘Where’s the steeple?’
    The boy drew breath. ‘Sixteen-thirty—it fell down then.’
    And ‘sixteen-thirty’ would be in the reign of King Charles the First, not at 4.30 yesterday afternoon: the spectacles somehow suggested precocious erudition to Tom, and encouraged him towards precision. ‘I’m looking for “The Old House”—where Dr David Audley lives—?’
    The boy stared at him for a moment. ‘Why?’
    That wasn’t at all what Tom had expected. But a straight question required a straight answer. ‘I have an appointment with him. He’s expecting me.’
    ‘Oh!’ The boy rose up on one tip-toe to apply his other foot to its pedal. ‘In that case … follow me! ’ Then he vanished again.
    Tom backed the car obediently, until he reached the hedgerow gap again, and saw that he had been right