Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  And then she told him her story. It was after their separation. She was in financial difficulty and met Irwin around the same time. She had no idea, initially, about his criminal links (she still didn’t know for sure) or even any suspect associates. He was just a super-intelligent, suave and charming suitor and she fell for it. She fell under his spell. And this, plus her fiscal worries and her desire to continue to succeed in the rapidly declining world of journalism, led her into being talked into taking part in what she now realised was a money laundering operation. At the time, she probably knew it wasn’t legit, but she just thought it was some tax thing and she certainly had no idea about the sums of money they were talking about…

  Anyway she was asked for her bank account details and told to say nothing if anything unidentified should come in, just to hold on to it and not to touch it. Trouble was, she’d accidentally given them Jon’s account number instead of her own – the account she’d meant to give them wasn’t one she used very often, and all her account numbers were still written down at the back of the same diary, still side by side with Jon’s account numbers.

  She didn’t realise any money had been transferred and just assumed they’d had second thoughts, so thought nothing more of it.

  And then, recently, they’d come for the money. It was all done through Irwin of course. Was all very ‘civil’. So when she realised her mistake – and whose account number she’d given them – the next thing she knew Irwin was asking her all these questions. About Jon and who his solicitor was. Paul Brilling of course, the one they both shared.

  ‘I had no idea you hadn’t changed your will, Jon. I promise.’

  ‘But you found out.’

  ‘No. I didn’t. But Irwin could have.’

  ‘Brilling could have told him?’

  ‘I expect Brilling could have showed him,’ she said.

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me? About the money?’

  ‘I didn’t think it would come to this. Irwin said he’d…’ She seemed to lose her train of thought.

  ‘Yes? Get rid of me?’

  ‘No! I thought they were going to set up a meeting with you.’

  ‘A meeting. Yeah, sort of.’

  ‘That I’d be the go-between. When the time came.’

  ‘And then the time came.’

  ‘I started becoming suspicious about… what their plan was. And then… that phone call. The night of the fire at your house. Irwin cut the call somehow.’

  ‘I was wondering about that.’

  ‘I was scared, Jon. I was under so much pressure.’

  ‘So was I.’

  ‘I was told to say nothing to you or, basically… I was dead.’

  ‘So why are you still seeing him for fuck’s sake?’

  ‘I…’ She was shaking her head. ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘What. He’s… raping you is he? I assume you’re sleeping with him. You said you were pregnant.’

  She started sobbing again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said after a while. ‘I was pregnant. As far as Irwin’s concerned I still am.’

  They were both silent for a moment. Jon, because he was forcing himself to. Trying to avoid saying something he’d regret later.

  Romy was staring out into space – out the kitchen window – when her eyes suddenly widened.

  ‘Oh… God…’

  And there, in the back yard, was the man Jon had seen leaving the place earlier. Making his way up from the back fence, and past a neglected rose bush. There, it would seem, was Irwin.

  ‘Run, Jon. Now.’

  ‘Is the door locked? The back door?’

  Jon’s question was answered a moment later though, when the back door clicked open, and the scorpion in the business suit walked in. The time for running had passed.

  Irwin just stood there and stared. At Jon. Didn’t move a muscle. And then the beginnings of a smile. A fake smile.

  ‘You’re Jonathon Marriner,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Brave man.’ He had an indeterminate accent, part Oxbridge possibly, with a touch of Northern or Eastern European (but what would Jon know). His smile erupted, momentarily, into a short laugh.

  ‘Brainless man,’ he added, and then the smile disappeared altogether. ‘What’s he doing here?’ The question was intended for Romy, but he was still staring at Jon.

  ‘You do know that’s burglary,’ Jon said. ‘You’ll get done, one of these days.’

  ‘I said…’ Irwin maintained his gaze. ‘… what is he doing here.’

  ‘Unless you’re not intending to commit an offence, but you’re looking a little like you are.’

  ‘Irwin, it’s OK,’ Romy said. ‘He just came around to―’

  ‘Don’t tell me it’s OK,’ Irwin said calmly, this time to Romy directly. ‘Don’t tell me it’s fucking “OK”, just tell me what… the fuck… is he doing here.’

  ‘I’m trying to explain. He came about the money. OK?’

  ‘Oh did he? And you just let him in here, did you? You stupid, stupid bitch.’

  ‘All right that’s enough,’ Jon said. ‘You don’t speak to my ex-wife like that, mate. Leave now or I’m calling the police.’

  Irwin laughed. ‘Yeah. Ex-wife, you’d do well to remember that. And listen to me, you fucking moron. You’re the one that forced your way in. So you just sit down and I’ll decide what happens next.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jon, pulling his phone out. ‘We’ll see what the coppers have to say about that then shall we?’

  He was in the process of pressing 9-9-9 when Irwin, as quick as a striking snake, slapped the phone out of his hand. It sailed across the kitchen, crashed into a shelf, rattled across the floor. At the same time, Irwin shoved Jon hard into the kitchen table, painfully crushing his hip. Jon then lost his balance and tumbled over onto the floor, trying unsuccessfully to grab hold of the table on his way down.

  Irwin reached a hand in under his jacket.

  ‘I didn’t want to ever have to do this in front of you.’ Irwin was apparently speaking to Romy. ‘Business and pleasure and all that.’

  He pulled out a handgun and then, separately, a silencer. He began screwing the silencer into the barrel, keeping a steady eye on Jon.

  ‘Irwin,’ Romy pleaded. ‘What are you doing? No!’

  ‘No? No what? You have no idea. This is your fuck-up. Your fault. I told you to use your head, woman.’

  He finished attaching the silencer and released the safety catch. Raised the gun. Jon had barely enough time to get off the floor. It was a summary execution and Irwin obviously wasn’t the type for speeches.

  Romy screamed. It was ear-piercing and enough to make Irwin hesitate for a split-second. And that split-second was enough to allow Jon, who was already in a crouch, to leap at Irwin, under his raised arm, and put a shoulder into him rugby-style.

  He pushed Irwin back, slamming him into the kitchen wall. He thought maybe Irwin had hit his head, not enough to put him out, but enough to give him time to…

  ‘Run!’ Romy yelled, as she hurled herself onto Irwin. She was pathetically clutching, reaching up for the gun in Irwin’s hand, and Jon caught the look in her eyes, a look of desperation, pleading with him both to run and, at the same time, to help her. Another one of those impossible requests that women had a habit of making of you.

  Jon grabbed the nearest weapon he could find which turned out to be a glass blender jug with a handle. It was empty and perfectly positioned for him to pick it up with his right hand and in one continuous movement drag it in a fast arc through the air and across Irwin’s crew-cut.

  There wasn’t the crack that he’d been hoping to hear when the glass came into contact with Irwin’s skull, but Irwin went down all the same. He was ready for a second swipe, clenching the jug with a white-knuckled fist, but it wasn’t required. Irwin wasn’t moving.

  ‘Is he dead?’ he asked, picking up the gun.

  Romy just shook her head, which he took to mean either no, or she didn’t know. Or she couldn’t believe
this was happening. Jon decided to give Irwin the benefit of the doubt. He kept the gun pointed at Irwin as he retrieved his phone from the other end of the kitchen floor. Miraculously, it appeared unharmed. Alastair’s phones may not have been up to much, but they were tough.

  ‘Keep the gun on him,’ Romy said. ‘I’ll check.’

  With obvious distaste, she got as close as she dared. ‘He’s alive.’

  Jon knew he shouldn’t have been, but he felt strangely relieved. He’d never killed anyone before.

  ‘So who do we ring first,’ he said. ‘The police or the ambulance.’

  ‘You should get out of here. You’re meant to be dead, remember?’

  ‘But Romy, the guy’s just tried to―’

  ‘What do you think’s going to happen if you go to the police? Do you know how many friends he’s got in the ranks? And even apart from that, this problem that you have, and I have, it’s not going to go away. Maybe, if we’re lucky, the police’ll charge him, and lock him up. Maybe he even gets convicted. A year down the track. In the meantime, do you think you’ll still be alive to see it? Or me? Irwin’s not the only one, so… We have to be cleverer than that and you know it. You’ve known it for the last week, haven’t you? That’s why you haven’t gone to the police, isn’t it?’

  He knew she was right.

  ‘If you’ve got somewhere to go,’ she said, ‘where no-one’ll find you, then go there. Let me deal with this.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘Same as you. I’m out of here. I need to grab some things upstairs first.’

  ‘Well I’ll wait while―’

  ‘No! Please, you’ll just make it worse. I’m begging you. Leave now. And take the gun.’

  It was still in his hand and he looked at it closely for the first time. It was a Beretta. Not only had he never killed anyone before, he’d never fired a handgun either.

  ‘Don’t forget to put the safety catch on.’

  Was she an expert with guns now, or had she picked that up from the TV? He kept the thought to himself.

  He put the safety on, and unscrewed the silencer and put the gun in one coat pocket and the silencer in the other. They were heavy and felt ridiculous. But what choice did he have?

  ‘Are you sure you’ll―?’

  ‘Go Jon, fuck. The longer you hang around…’

  ‘OK. But give me your phone number. I don’t know what this one’s is.’

  She wrote it down on a tear-off pad and handed it to him. ‘Ring me,’ she said. ‘And then I’ll have your number. Now get out of here.’

  He picked up his BOAC bag on the way out. It wasn’t until he’d reached Fulham Road almost five minutes later that it hit him. What was he thinking of, leaving her with that psychopath? Just because she’d begged him to leave… It was true, he’d as good as reformatted the guy’s C-drive with that blender, or it looked like he had, but for how long? And what if he hadn’t? He immediately rang her with the number she’d just given him. No answer. Don’t do this to me Romy. He tried again. Still nothing.

  He swore, attracting a few stares from Chelsea pedestrians and did a quick about-face. Walked and almost ran back to the house in Carlyle Square.

  When he got there, the front door was ajar. He was certain he’d pulled it shut when he left. Had Romy run off without bothering to close it? He looked up and down the street – no-one – and then, moving close in to the front door, he pulled out from his coat pockets the Beretta and the silencer. Screwed the silencer back into the gun barrel. Released the safety. He didn’t know how to check the number of rounds, so had to trust his instincts on that one. He doubted Irwin was the sort who needed to make empty threats.

  He eased the door open with his foot, and once inside, he lifted the gun up to shoulder height ready to fire. Crept as silently as he could, through to the kitchen.

  The first thing he noticed was that Irwin’s body had gone. And there was no sign of Romy.

  He checked the whole house, but it was deserted. Including Romy’s bedroom which showed worryingly few signs of its occupier having left in a hurry. Had she left already without taking anything? What had she done with Irwin?

  On his way out, he checked the kitchen again. And there, sitting on the table where she’d left it, was Romy’s mobile phone. And he found her house keys too, in the bowl near the front door where she’d always put them. There was only one plausible explanation.

  Irwin had taken her.

  62.

  The sheet lightning crackled across the sky above the Chelsea streets, lighting up stony-faced gargoyles perched high on the red brick building next to him. It was still only 4pm, but it felt like night. Runion, who minutes ago had emerged from the jaws of the Sloane Square tube station, was almost home. He knew there was a big Atlantic storm on its way, but it wasn’t due for at least another couple of days. It had been sunny too, when he’d entered the Underground at Cannon Street. Whatever the cause, he’d been regurgitated into a very dark afternoon indeed.

  For some reason, something he’d been wrestling with for the last twenty-four hours suddenly came to him: the identity of the man in the corner at the Garrick Club. Nigel Stephens. Odd chap, no idea what he did for a living. And always in grey suits – what did he have against navy? – and those awful brown shoes. Letting the side down somewhat, in Runion’s view. A small effort was called for when visiting the club – not a mammoth one, just a small one. Speaking of mammoth, and this perhaps explained the man’s general unkempt appearance, Stephens was not exactly slim. Larger men often had greater difficulty keeping their clothes under control. Nevertheless he wasn’t all that large and, once again, a small effort was really all that was required.

  Speaking of the club, what in the dickens had happened to Bridges? He’d promised to call before the end of the day about their “little problem”. It wasn’t like him, he was usually so reliable as a rule. Runion hoped nothing untoward had happened.

  And then the strangest thing occurred. First, he experienced an overwhelming sensation of being watched. It was so strong that he actually stopped and turned, as if there were someone behind him who needed him. Someone he knew.

  And there was. Because when Runion turned around and looked back, towards Sloane Square, towards the station past the end of the street… he was standing there. Stephens. The man himself. In his grey suit and bloody awful brown suede shoes. And was that a crooked smile underneath those glasses? Runion couldn’t tell, it may have been more of a grimace. What on earth was he doing?

  It was definitely Stephens, though. How extraordinary that he’d just been thinking about him!

  The man was certainly behaving oddly. Although Stephens was looking straight at Runion, he wasn’t making any attempt to acknowledge him. As Runion didn’t want to stare and make a fool of himself, he continued on his way, albeit in a somewhat rather different frame of mind.

  A rolling fusillade of thunder interrupted his thoughts – thoughts which had been sombre enough to start with – and he shivered as he imagined, for some reason, one of the gargoyles dislodging and plummeting into his skull.

  63.

  It was just after 4pm and a stubborn mist was advancing over the sea. There was hardly a breath of wind and Jon’s footsteps echoed in the heavy air.

  After the shock of the incident at Romy’s and his initial panic that Irwin had kidnapped her, he’d decided he was overreacting. There was very little he could do anyway. Something must have happened, that much was clear, but he didn’t have to fear the worst. For one thing, Romy had said she was getting out of there herself, and there was still a hope that she’d done just that. Perhaps Irwin had regained consciousness, and she’d made a dash for it. More to the point, there was nothing he could really go to the police with. And the story that he did have, how would it sound? It got worse the more he thought about it.

  To straighten his head out as much as anything, he’d resolved that it was as good a time as any to head south, to the sea air and Lucinda.
He retraced his steps to Fulham Road and then on to South Kensington where he caught the Tube to Victoria Station. Once there, he booked a seat on the 1.47 to Lewes and for the third time that day he sat down in the main hall for a coffee (his fourth), and waited.

  Changing at Lewes, he made it to Newhaven Town station just after three. He chose to walk to Peacehaven, it was a few kilometres but it would do him good. Crossed the river – the Ouse. “Ouse” was a common name for rivers, he knew, although he couldn’t remember where any of the others were. Somewhere in his catalogue of useless facts was the snippet that told him “Ouse” was the Celtic word for “water”. Something that made sense, at a time when little did.

  By the time he’d arrived at Peacehaven and was walking along The Promenade, that mist was already beginning to roll in (it had been sunny when he’d left London, too). Someone had told him (was it Alastair?) that there was a storm on the way, but there was certainly no sign of it yet. The sea – the English Channel – was as flat as a proverbial pancake, almost glassy. The only sound was the gentle lapping of the water and Jon’s patient footsteps.

  When he reached the corner of the street Lucinda was in – Dorothy Avenue, it was Lucinda in Dorothy, very Alastair when he thought about it – he could see up ahead to what he knew was the Prime Meridian monument.

  Lucinda herself was modest and plain – as the nicest girls usually were. She was a small, single-storey, semidetached house made of light, mottled brick and with a white garage door and a dark slate roof. Not a mansion, but as long as Irwin wasn’t on the other side of that common wall, Jon didn’t care. Lucinda was, maybe a hundred metres from The Promenade and the ocean loomed large at the end of the street.

  Inside, and things became even more spartan. Bare brick walls, empty bookshelves (empty apart from a small pile of motoring maps), no pictures other than a torn travel poster in a cracked plastic frame (a picture of a volcano, with the words “Réunion Island”), no carpet (and no television). Through a doorway, a small kitchen with little more than a refrigerator, and with no china except for the one sad “kung fu for idiots” coffee mug. Cutlery consisted of two forks and a spoon. Two bedrooms which looked out onto a bare backyard. On the plus side, there were a number of Persian rugs tossed around the place and, critically, the main bedroom was large and came with a bed (queen-size) with a mattress. There was even – unbelievably – clean linen in the cupboard, and a duvet.