Dark Oceans

by Mark Macrossan

  She turned, risked a quick look. He wasn’t immediately behind her at least.

  And now she’d gone and revealed herself to that Delia. A Japanese-looking woman asking about the Decagon. And then pulling it out. Stupid! What were the chances of her not telling anyone. And Drayle would get to hear about it, somehow, he had people everywhere. Maybe even Delia herself, the more she thought about it. What a fool she was. What a mess she was making of things.

  It was all their fault. For not contacting her and getting that thing off her hands. Right now she’d sell it if she could, she didn’t care anymore. Even throw it in the river, or the ocean, and maybe she’d still do that. Up in Aberdeen, throw it into the North Sea. Get rid of the temptation of trying to find out about it. Maybe it was worthless? Hardly likely though, not if Drayle was after it; it had to be worth a fortune.

  There were trees up ahead. That was good. She seemed to recall there was supposed to be a park somewhere along the way.

  By the time she’d reached the leafy splendour of Russell Square – a square of fading colours, ahead of the fast approaching northern winter – she had begun to relax a little. Think a little more clearly. One thing was plain: Bertrand or not, there’d been too many ghosts lately. She’d only been in London a week, not even that, and now she’d seen both Bertrand and some guy in a grey suit who she was sure she’d seen more than once and could easily have been one of Drayle’s men (although, unsurprisingly, London had even more grey suits than Cape Town). At least she hadn’t seen the yellow tow truck. Then she really could be sure she’d lost her mind!

  She’d do anything to be able to turn back the clock, though. Turn it back so that she could decide not to kill Bertrand. She should have just abandoned her mission and run away… the price of that couldn’t possibly have been as high as the price she was paying now. Because she’d had an awakening. The ghosts of Cape Town (and now London) had taught her a lesson. She didn’t care anymore about dying – she knew she deserved to, after what she’d done to Bertrand – but it was strange, something told her she was indestructible. Maybe that was the punishment.

  She’d get to Aberdeen and make her decision there; she couldn’t concentrate in London, she didn’t know why. The place spooked her. So why Aberdeen? She’d chosen it because it came first in an alphabetical list of Scottish cities and because it was on the sea. It was a fishing city, she liked that idea, and also she wanted to flush out anyone following her. Bring things to a head. And it was north, and colder. The colder the better, because it meant all the more clothing to cover the scar on her arm from the burns she received: instead of continuing to fade, after more than two months it now it seemed to be, if anything, growing more vivid.

  A ruddy-faced man with an orange cat wrapped around his neck like a scarf walked past her as she approached the fountain in the centre of the park. Gave her an odd look. London had a lot of peculiar people in it. It was much weirder than Tokyo, definitely.

  73. 51° 31' 11" N 0° 7' 32" W

  (Montague Street, near the British Museum)

  11.30am British Summer Time (10:30 UTC)

  Saturday, 26 October

  That wasn’t something that happened every day. Mind you, lately, not much was. (Which was just as well.) All he could hope for was that it wasn’t connected with everything else that had been going on. Hope for, but not expect.

  Jon had been walking through the streets of Bloomsbury when it happened. Earlier, after catching the 8.05 up from Newhaven, he decided to make his way from Victoria Station on foot, and to stick to the quieter streets where possible. Apart from a marked feeling of overexposure around the clubs of Pall Mall and the crowds and traffic of unavoidable Trafalgar Square, it was a pleasant enough stroll (in the circumstances) at a leisurely pace, taking the best part of an hour, the only negative being the sore hip he’d acquired from his latest encounter with Irwin. His chosen path took him up through Covent Garden and some of his favourite streets – New Row, Garrick (and its imposing club, possibly best given a wide berth now that he belatedly came to think of it), Monmouth – and on into Bloomsbury: ancestral home of the great publishing houses and bookshops, and the British Museum.

  When it happened, he’d just come out of Coptic Street onto Great Russell, where the museum was, and crossed the road, admiring the museum’s classical, Greek Revivalist facade and its forty-four columns in the Ionic style (lined up, he’d always felt, like a row of lugubrious rams, with their downward-curling horns) all carved from Portland stone, and was continuing to head in the direction of Russell Square, the nominated location of his latest rendezvous.

  The funny thing was, he was originally intending to avoid Great Russell Street, with its crowds, but something drew him there. It was, he guessed, either a sixth sense – which he didn’t believe in – or stupidity.

  As he was walking along, he noticed up ahead, not far, perhaps twenty yards or so, a Japanese or Chinese tourist talking to an old woman. Asking for directions most likely, but what drew Jon’s attention as he drew closer was her grey sports bag. Again he had no idea where it came from, but he experienced the strange sensation that this girl, or perhaps what she was carrying, was somehow important or relevant to him in some way.

  And then, when he was almost upon them, the girl pulled something out of the bag. It looked like a somewhat round jewellery box of some kind, but it was beautiful. It was covered in gemstones and sparkled in the sunlight. The design on it looked Islamic he thought – certainly geometric, with a complex pattern of jagged lines – and while he wasn’t the sort of person to notice decoration of any kind as a rule, his attention was certainly drawn to this object.

  When he glanced up at the girl, though, as he walked slowly past, she was staring at him. Her gaze, in fact, was so intensely focussed on him, that he may as well have been one of the Beatles – and one of the dead ones at that: there was a startling mixture of infatuation and fear in her eyes.

  Even if he hadn’t been paranoid to start with, and, to put it bluntly and without exaggeration, on the run, it still would have freaked him out. Her expression didn’t change and unsurprisingly the old woman turned to see what the girl was staring at. And then the girl just bolted – in a single movement: put the box back in the bag, a quick swivel of her hips, a twist of her shoulders and she was gone. Like a scared fish.

  What had that been about? Was his photograph in the newspaper? Or on a poster somewhere? This was not good. At the very least, it was a bad omen. It was also, no doubt, the cause of a song lodging itself in his brain – the words, which came to him subliminally, were the words to the Paul McCartney and Wings song “Band On The Run”, but with the word “barrister” inserted in place of “band”…

  ‘Watch out old chap!!’

  He’d been crossing the road at the corner of Russell Square when two things sped towards him. One of them just missed him – a white delivery van – and the other didn’t: the sonic boom from Alastair’s bellowed injunction. Some of the vehicles (not the van) actually slowed down. No doubt about it, Alastair’s voice was a traffic-stopper.

  ‘That’s twice I’ve saved you now!’ Alastair said/shouted. He was standing at the entrance gate to the Square, all ginger hair and stained tweed jacket (as well-worn as a favourite rug), and with the same life-and-death expression on his face he always had, whether he was having fun or not.

  ‘I’m sure it’s more than that. You’re my fullback, remember.’

  ‘Yes. Well. I would have been waiting at our agreed meeting point in there,’ Alastair said with emphasis, indicating the centre of the park, ‘except I came out to put Bertie back in the car.’

  ‘You drove in?’

  ‘Luckily it’s a Saturday, or I’d be risking the wrath of the powers that be, with that fucking congestion charge of theirs! Yet another excuse to keep tabs on us. I thought I’d take Bertie for a drive.’

  ‘Since when do cats like drives?’

  ‘Bertie does! Into the big smoke? Wouldn’t miss it
.’

  Jon looked over Alastair’s shoulder, trying to spot Alastair’s battered old, book-filled, burgundy Volvo, but it was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘So where’s your car?’

  ‘There.’

  Alastair was pointing at a bright yellow Ford Mustang coupé with twin black racing stripes. There had to be some mistake. But there wasn’t. Jon could see a small orange head behind the steering wheel, patiently watching them: Bertie.

  ‘Two thousand and five model,’ Alastair said. ‘Fifth generation.’

  ‘Since when were you a petrolhead?’

  ‘Won it in a competition. I really have the most amazing luck, you know.’

  ‘Clearly.’ Jon noticed the numberplate: MU55 TAN. ‘Muss Tan? Sounds like a botched spray-tanning job.’

  ‘All right Bertie darling?!!’ Alastair roared. Bertie remained impassive. ‘We got here early so I took him for a spin round the park.’

  ‘In the car?’

  ‘Good to see you’ve still got the attaché case, well done.’ Alastair had just noticed the BOAC bag over Jon’s shoulder. ‘Still got some cash left in there I hope.’

  ‘Pretty much most―’

  ‘Come on!’ Alastair was already ushering Jon through the gate into the fenced-off square. ‘Into the jungle. Away from prying eyes.’

  It was hard to imagine a single pair of prying eyes in the vicinity of Russell Square whose attention had not, by now, been well and truly grabbed by a canary yellow sports car and its foghorn-voiced owner with the little orange cat and the amazing luck.

  * * *

  Alastair had suggested the meeting after Jon had telephoned him early that morning after leaving Lucinda. Jon filled him in on recent ‘events’. (He’d phoned him, naturally, on the mobile with the prepaid SIM card provided to him, and conscientiously dumped it immediately after the call, as instructed, in the River Ouse, much to the amazement of a little girl who caught him in the act.)

  The business the night before, when he witnessed the assault of Emerald on Skype, had been sufficiently disturbing to compel him to get out of Peacehaven (as counterintuitive as that was). That, together with the Irwin incident at Romy’s. He didn’t feel he could simply hang around the East Sussex coastline and do nothing. There was that storm on the way too – still due on Monday supposedly – and gales weren’t really his thing. He’d detected a note of disappointment in Alastair’s voice when he told him, and it occurred to his cynical side that Alastair liked the idea of someone looking after his house when the storm hit.

  * * *

  At the hub where the radiating paths met in the verdant heart of Russell Square – still green enough, despite autumn having already begun its yearly task of wasting the trees and daubing them yellow – Jon and Alastair were sitting side by side on a wooden seat, facing the central fountain which was blithely bubbling away. Made it difficult for long distance eavesdropping devices. ‘Beware the bionic ear,’ Alastair had warned.

  Londoners and non-Londoners passed before them, each on his or her own private trajectory. Everyone with their own predicament. Surely none of these predicaments was as dire as Jon’s? Then again, London was that sort of town; you never knew.

  ‘Well my boy, things do seem to be going from bad to worse for us, don’t they…’

  The “us” was touching, at least on one view of it.

  ‘… particularly this latest business with Emily.’

  ‘Emerald.’

  ‘There is nothing these people won’t do.’ Alastair was staring fiercely at the fountain’s bubbling waters. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Bunch of cutthroat cat rapists. There is no more despicable life form on this planet. Every Eden and idyll has its antimeridian and that’s where you find them, these newt-headed neoplasms. Fucking parasites. They’re closing in on us, but I’m not sure it was such a brilliant idea you leaving Lucinda. You’re likely to trip over them in the West End, it’s where they hang.’

  Jon told him about the Japanese girl.

  ‘A Jap, eh? Figures.’ Suddenly a pained look fell across Alastair’s face like a dark shadow, and he chewed a nail.

  There was a pause in their conversation, and for a peaceful moment, the only sounds were the passing footsteps and the splashing of the fountain.

  ‘You obviously haven’t heard the latest,’ Alastair said finally. ‘A spot of bad news, I’m afraid.’

  And he knew as a certainty it was going to be bad.

  ‘They’ve identified the body, you see.’

  The body? But his mind had stopped functioning – it had crashed, its files lost, its screen an empty black rectangle save for the solitary cursor, blinking densely. Everything gone in a snap of the fingers, and that included whatever “the body” was that this mouth, in front of him, was going on about.

  ‘And I was right!’ Alastair exclaimed. ‘Which would’ve been a stunning achievement if it weren’t for the fact that I’d simply been stating the bleeding evident…’ He registered Jon’s expression. ‘The body they found in your house, it was the Armenian art dealer all along. Rattatroop! Didn’t I tell you?

  ‘Ratta…’ The screen blinked back to life.

  ‘Norton bloody Rattatroop!’

  ‘So… What in God’s name was he doing in my house?’

  ‘I very much doubt it was in God’s name but it probably wasn’t by choice either. Obviously he, and by that I mean his body, was placed there. Anyway it’s been confirmed. Dental records. Just about the only part of him that hadn’t melted to a primordial puddle of DNA. His teeth, and his Iron Cross. They say his father personally ripped it off a German general’s neck in the middle of the Battle of Stalingrad. So you can see the irony.’

  Jon tried to see the irony.

  ‘Fighting with the Russians,’ Alastair clarified. ‘I’m assuming that’s who’s responsible here. And you can bet your last gazoo they would have pulled his toenails out first, too.’

  ‘Jesus. You weren’t joking about the bad news.’

  ‘Bad news for Rattatroop, obviously. But he’s dead. It’s worse news for you, because now they know it wasn’t you in that body bag. Which means you’re no longer dead. Which means if you don’t watch your step, you very well could be.’

  The brutal simplicity of Alastair’s logic was hard to argue with.

  ‘Well I’ll definitely have to go to the police now. This changes everything… I mean, if they think that I’m―’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Alastair was a bright red beacon in a storm. ‘Have you not been listening to a single word I’ve been saying? Do you think you dreamt what happened to Romy? Dreamt this Irwin character? Dreamt that fucking lunatic who nearly shot Bertie?

  ‘And me.’

  ‘The killing of Rattatroop doesn’t change anything. Except for Rattatroop of course, but for you, my dear boy, not a thing.’

  ‘Except they’re going to think it was me who killed him. It’ll be Lord Lucan all over again.’

  ‘Well firstly he did kill the nanny and secondly, as everyone knows, John Bingham, the seventh earl of Lucan, is alive and well and living in Africa. In Ouagadougou, apparently. You, on the other hand, will be dead and unwell if you carry on with this nonsense about handing yourself in. If you want my advice, you could do a lot worse than taking a leaf or two out of Bingham’s book.’

  ‘So you’re saying I should abscond to Africa.’

  ‘Not unless you like boiled Black Mamba for breakfast. But you do have to remain under the radar at least. For now. Until something gives.’

  Jon just nodded, waiting for the rest. Alastair looked uncomfortable. There still was more to come, he could tell.

  ‘You’re right about one thing though,’ Alastair said. ‘Because unfortunately, according to the newspaper, you are now officially wanted for questioning.’

  ‘Oh great. Was there a photograph?’

  ‘It was small. Ish.’

  Jon groaned. ‘Well there you have it. Barrister on the run.’


  ‘On the run? That we all are. That we all are. You, me… Bertie. We’re accomplices, you know. Accomplices and harbourers.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jon said. ‘Luckily you have an inconspicuous car.’

  ‘If it’s my new coupé you’re referring to, yes, it is what you might call rather loud, but it’s so blindingly bloody bright, it’s the last place they’ll look. Always place yourself between them and the source of the glare.’

  ‘As in, beware of the Hun in the sun.’

  ‘Precisely! You’re invisible. They’re blinded by their own ignorance. Having said that, you’re going to have to abjure the joys of the mighty Mustang for a little while, I’m afraid. We need to take care not to be seen together.’

  ‘What about here?’ Jon asked, observing two men in navy suits walking past loudly conversing about “the regulator”.

  ‘You don’t think these wife-butcherers take the time to go to a park, do you? Go to a park and admire the trees? Take it from me, if you’re not on a road, or a footpath next to a road, you’re safe. A park to them is like stairs to a Dalek.’

  ‘I believe Daleks can now fly.’

  ‘Can they? God, what next.’

  He’d already given Alastair a potted summary on the phone, but Jon went over in more detail what Emerald had told him in Victoria Station – about the art dealer Richard Runion and the forgeries, about Dominique Drayle and Irwin and Paul Brilling the solicitor, about Martin Nevers and the extraordinary suggestion of paternity (and siblingship) and about “the bitch with the red hair” who’d been following him. None of it seemed to surprise Alastair, he just nodded sagely away, although Jon did spot the beginnings of a frown emerge on his face at the mention of Nevers. Similarly, when he described the business with Irwin at Romy’s house – and for Jon, the mere mention of Romy’s name was painful – Alastair remained surprisingly composed.