Ashes by Now

by Mark Timlin

  Charming, I thought. That’s me you’re talking about.

  ‘Where?’ asked Millar.

  ‘The marshes,’ said Collier. ‘We can lose his body and no one will ever find him.’

  This was serious. They were talking calmly about killing me, and I was letting them. I had to try and pull myself together. I licked the water off my lips and swallowed it as if somehow it would help.

  ‘Can’t we do for him here?’ asked Millar.

  ‘No. See if he can still walk. I don’t want to have to carry him out. I want him on two legs however bad he is. Anyone who sees us will think he’s pissed or stoned. How unusual round here.’

  Millar tugged me to my feet. I held on to him for support as a terrible agony ran down my spine. Fuck me, I reckoned they’d be doing me a favour if they did top me. He shoved me against the wall and snarled up into my face. ‘Don’t say nothin’ to nobody as we go or we’ll do for you in front of them. Understand?’

  I was silent and he backhanded my face. ‘Understand?’ he roared.

  I managed a nod, but that was about all.

  Collier and Millar hustled me out of the flat and down the stairs, my feet dragging as I went. Outside I was hauled over to the Sierra which now stood alone, and Collier opened the driver’s door, reached in and released the lock on the passenger door behind it. He yanked it open and Millar shoved me inside, and then joined me on the rear bench seat, slammed the door behind him and savagely slapped down the button that locked it. Collier got behind the wheel and started the engine.

  I sat with my head against the lining of the car. I kept floating in and out of consciousness as Collier steered the car through the dark streets of the estate towards the main road. I knew I was a goner unless I did something. But what? I focused my eyes on the lock button of the door on my side. It was less than two feet from my hand and my only chance.

  ‘This is a right fuck-up,’ said Millar to the back of Collier’s head as we went.

  ‘Will you relax?’ said Collier. ‘Everything’s been all right up to now, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Till that git Grant got out of prison and webbed up with this one.’ Millar dug me viciously in the ribs and a red mist came down over my eyes.

  ‘It’s sorted,’ said Collier. ‘He’ll be out of our hair in an hour.’

  ‘Too many bodies,’ said Millar’s voice from somewhere on the edge of the galaxy.

  ‘We’re minted,’ said Collier. ‘We’ve still got that paper.’

  ‘You have, you mean,’ said Millar. What the hell were they talking about?

  ‘I earned it,’ said Collier. ‘If it wasn’t for me we wouldn’t be sitting here now.’

  ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’ said Millar. ‘A fat lot of fucking good it’ll do us if all this comes out, even after all this time.’ And he was silent.

  We turned on to the main drag, which even that late still had some pedestrian and vehicular traffic. But I knew that the closer to the marshes we got, the fewer people would be about and that I would be done for. I concentrated all my attention on the door button and prayed that the child-proof locks weren’t on. If they were I was fucked. Collier slowed for a red light and I made my move. I lunged for the lock, flipped it up, hit the door handle and kicked at the door with all my remaining strength. It opened, and I pushed back against the seat and threw myself out of the car. I tried to roll myself into a ball, landed with a jolt on my shoulder, and tumbled along the blacktop, the impact of my flesh on the tarmac sending more spasms of pain through my already abused body.

  The Sierra skidded to a halt, fifty yards up the road with a scream of rubber. I turned my head in its direction and saw the reversing lights come on, and then from between two buildings in front of me came the most beautiful sight of my life. A uniformed constable strolled into view. I reached out one hand towards him as, with a crash of gears, the Sierra leapt forward and took the next sharp corner on two wheels, and I fell forward on to the kerb and everything went black again.

  17

  Things got weird from there on in. I can’t remember everything, but what I do remember still comes back from time to time. I don’t have a choice of nightmares now. They’re always the same.

  I woke up in the ambulance, although I didn’t know it was an ambulance then. All I could see was a man’s face peering down at me. I was wearing an oxygen mask, I suppose. I know that I couldn’t speak. But I lifted my hand and saw the streaks of blood that were drying on it.

  I woke up again in the hospital. Or maybe I was already dreaming. I was being rushed along a corridor. I tried to speak again, but nothing came out.

  Then things got really weird.

  I was in an operating theatre. Lying there with doctors and nurses clustered round me. I couldn’t move or speak. The ECG machine was bleeping quietly away, and everything appeared to be serene. As I looked, I didn’t have a worry in the world. Then I heard a voice speak my name, and I looked round. Standing there behind the doctors and nurses was Sailor Grant. He was naked and dead, but it was his voice I heard speak my name, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world. As I looked into Sailor’s face there was a sudden commotion amongst the doctors and nurses standing round me. Everyone in the room was moving fast, and I saw the ECG machine go flat-line all of a sudden and start to sound a high-pitched scream.

  I knew then that it was my choice. If I wanted to live, I could live. If I wanted to die, I could die. I looked up at Sailor again as a doctor laid two paddles on my bare chest, shouted ‘clear’ and attempted to start my heart.

  ‘You can come with me or stay,’ I heard him say. ‘But if you stay you must finish what you started all that time ago.’

  I knew what he meant. Carol Harvey’s murder. I knew that if I decided to live I had to do the right thing by her. I looked up at Sailor’s face again as the doctor fibulated me for the second time and I made my decision. Shit, I thought, at least they should let you die in peace.

  I woke up under crisp hospital sheets with a pretty nurse smiling down at me. ‘We thought we’d lost you,’ she said.

  My throat was so dry I couldn’t speak. She gave me a plastic beaker of water, with a straw sticking out, and I sipped a drop, and it tasted like nectar.

  ‘Bad pennies,’ I croaked. ‘It’s harder to get rid of us than you think.’

  ‘Don’t talk,’ she told me. ‘I’ll go and fetch a doctor.’

  I lay back on the pillow and admired the design on the plastic curtains that surrounded my bed.

  About two minutes later a balding thirty-something in a white coat bustled through a gap in the curtains and stood looking at me.

  ‘So you’re back,’ he said. ‘It’s something of a miracle.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There’s plenty of time for that,’ he said brusquely. ‘Let me have a look at you first.’

  He gave me an examination, and stood up from the bed shaking his head.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here at all,’ he said. ‘You were clinically dead for a while there.’

  ‘I’ve got something to do,’ I told him. ‘Something important.’ But he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, and right then neither did I.

  He left after that, and the pretty nurse came back. She smelled like clean sheets herself, and I must confess to having carnal thoughts about what she was like under that starched uniform of hers. I had to be getting better.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, and begged for more water.

  ‘You’ve had lots of visitors,’ she said. ‘Your wife and daughter were here.

  ‘Ex-wife,’ I told her. ‘Are they here now?’

  She smiled. ‘No. That was weeks ago. You’ve been unconscious for ages.’

  I suddenly felt alarmed. ‘How long?’
I demanded.

  She looked at my charts. ‘You were brought in here over six weeks ago.’

  ‘Six weeks,’ I said. ‘Christ, what’s the date?’

  ‘September the first.’

  Jesus, I thought. That’s impossible.

  ‘And your two girlfriends keep coming in to see you.’

  ‘Dawn and Tracey?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. They’re ever so nice. They said they’d come in and entertain the patients if we wanted.’

  ‘I bet they would,’ I said. ‘Trouble is they might kill some whilst they’re at it.’

  ‘And the police,’ she said. ‘They want to know what happened.’

  ‘So do I,’ I told her. And I did. Because at that precise moment I couldn’t remember a damn thing.

  So she sat down on the chair beside the bed and told me what she did know.

  18

  Which wasn’t a great amount. I’d been brought into King’s College Hospital, after being picked up from the gutter. I’d been badly beaten.

  I had a ruptured spleen, a couple of broken ribs, a collapsed lung, a fractured collarbone, extensive bruising. Plus a lot of superficial cuts and mild concussion. I’d been rushed to theatre for an operation on the spleen. There had been complications on the operating table, and my heart had stopped. The doctors had called a crash code, and I’d been brought back to life after dying for half a minute or so.

  I’d been out of it for six weeks. Not in a coma as such, but pretty close. I’d mumbled and shouted, and fought the people who were trying to help me, but I hadn’t opened my eyes until earlier that day when, alerted by the fact that I was trying to speak again, the nurse had come to my bedside.

  Simple.

  Except I couldn’t remember what had happened.

  Not then.

  That had been the middle of July. Now it was the first of September.

  The last thing I did remember was a Sunday night out with Dawn and Tracey. A simple trip down the pub, followed by a Chinese meal, and a fuck with Dawn. But I knew that had been in June. Just after my birthday. After that nothing.

  Not then.

  ‘Well, nurse,’ I said. ‘Another fine mess I seem to have got myself into.’

  ‘Do you want a mirror?’ she asked.

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Did you have to do plastic surgery?’

  ‘No. I thought you just might like to see.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘You’re the boss.’

  She gave me a mirror from inside the drawer of the cupboard next to my bed. I looked at myself. My face was thinner. My hair was longer, but apart from that I was pretty much as I remembered. Not that I’d exactly call that pretty. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s me all right. Who’s been shaving me?’

  ‘I have,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s been a pleasure. Do you want me to tell anyone you’re back in the land of the living?’

  ‘Not the taxman,’ I said.

  She giggled. ‘You’re funny,’ she said.

  I looked at the swell of her breasts under the starched uniform and wondered again what she looked like without it.

  ‘You could tell Dawn and Tracey.’

  ‘I’ll call them for you. They left a number with sister.’

  ‘You’re very kind. What’s your name by the way?’

  ‘Pru.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘So I’ve been told. I’ll go and make that call.’ And she left.

  She wasn’t gone for long, and when she did come back, she didn’t bring good news. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A policeman. There’ve been lots.’

  ‘I just bet there have.’

  ‘This one’s been before. He’s horrible.’ She shuddered.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

  Suddenly the curtains round the bed were pushed aside, and an unkempt figure in a greasy old raincoat stuck his head and shoulders inside. He smiled when he saw me.

  ‘Inspector Robber,’ I said.

  ‘Who were you expecting?’

  ‘Columbo. But I see you got your dibs on the mac today.’

  ‘Amusing, Sharman. I see they didn’t knock your sense of humour out of you. I’m glad about that.’

  ‘Who didn’t?’ I asked.

  ‘Whoever knocked the other seven kinds of shit out of you. Beg your pardon, miss.’ And he gave Pru a cheesy smile that showed where he’d missed with the toothbrush that morning.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she said sniffily. ‘I’ve heard worse. But I thought I told you to wait outside until I found out whether Mr Sharman wanted to see you or not.’

  ‘As if he wouldn’t,’ said Robber.

  ‘As if,’ I said. ‘It’s OK, Pru. Let him stay.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  I nodded, and she left with a swish of starched skirts.

  ‘Pru, is it?’ said Robber. ‘You don’t waste much time.’

  ‘Charmers like us don’t have to. You must have noticed that yourself.’

  Robber didn’t reply, just drew up a chair and sat down. It gave me a chance to give him the once over.

  He hadn’t changed. He still looked exactly like the last time I’d seen him, when I’d got involved in a case he’d been working on. It had finished in tears, but then most of my cases did. He still didn’t know the whole story, and he never would.

  His hair was greasy. His skin was greasy. His mac was greasy. His shirt was a disgrace, and his neck bulged over the dirty, too-tight collar fastened with a safety pin under the knot of his greasy old tie. His trousers had never met an iron, and his shoes were ill-acquainted with polish. In short, he was a mess. I could never work out what he did with all the money he earned.

  ‘So what’s the story?’ he asked when he was comfortable and had a cigarette lit.

  ‘No smoking in here,’ I said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Give us a drag then.’

  He did. The end was wet, but the smoke tasted good.

  ‘Who did it, Sharman?’ he asked.

  ‘Good question. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Excuse no. 65A. I don’t remember, your honour. Me mind’s a complete blank.’

  ‘Your honour, bollocks. I’m not on trial, am I?’

  He shrugged again.

  ‘Well, am I?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘As far as I understand, it was me that took a beating. Maybe if you found out who did it, they might be on trial.’

  ‘Who, is difficult,’ he said. ‘Why, might help.’

  ‘Jack,’ I said, taking the liberty of using his Christian name. ‘If I knew, I’d tell you. Honest. But the last thing I remember is going out with two young ladies some time in June. After that I’m a blank.’

  ‘Don’t tempt me,’ he said, and dogged his ciggie out in a bedpan. ‘If you do remember anything get in touch.’

  ‘Is this official?’ I asked.

  ‘Half and half. I’m interested.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  ‘So you should be.’ He stood up to leave.

  ‘Is that it?’ I asked.

  ‘For now. I shall return.’

  ‘Like General MacArthur.’

  The remark went right over his head.

  ‘No “I’m glad you’re better”?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t fuck about, Sharman. You know the world would be a better place without you.’ He pushed out through the curtains again.

  My, but that stung.

  19

  That night they must have cut my medication. Or maybe it was because it was my first night back in the world. Or something. Who knows?

  But whatever it was, it was the f
irst night that I had the dreams. The nightmares that still come back regularly to haunt my sleep.

  They turned off the main lights in the small ward at about ten. I lay and looked into the shadows until I fell asleep. Then I dreamt about what happened all those weeks ago. Starting at the end and working backwards.

  First I was in the operating theatre with the paddles on my chest, and my body jumping as the electrical current went through it. I saw Sailor Grant’s dead body and I remembered his words, and decided that, however shitty it was, living was preferable to dying. Then I was in the hospital corridor being rushed to the theatre, then the ambulance.

  Then I started to remember the really bad bits.

  It was like the memory of an acid trip. Or a film that had been burnt and melted.

  I dreamed about being driven along almost deserted streets, and a conversation about a piece of paper, that somehow was important, but I didn’t know why. And leaping from the car to bounce across the tarmac until I ended up in the gutter and saw that copper. The man who saved my life. After that I dreamed I was being beaten. Beaten hard by experts. Collier and Millar. Punching, kicking and gouging, until they nearly killed me. And then hearing that was what they intended to do.

  I dreamed of Sailor’s dead body on the toilet, and then that memory got mixed up with the Sailor Grant I saw in the operating theatre, and in the Live And Let Live. All asking for my help. And all being turned down.

  I came awake in the middle of the night, struggling to sit up, a silent scream bubbling in the back of my throat.

  Then I remembered.

  I remembered everything, and resolved to do something about it.

  I had to stay at King’s for another three weeks, convalescing.

  I had lots more visitors.

  My mother roused herself from deepest Sussex to make the pilgrimage to the big, wicked city, and brought me some sandwiches. Thanks, Mum. She didn’t stay long. Just as well probably.

  My ex-wife and daughter came down again from Aberdeen. Judith had grown up since the last time I’d seen her. A real young lady, dressed in the latest rave fashions. It made me feel quite old to look at her. Laura was ageing well. Maybe it was the Scottish air. They looked more like two sisters than mother and daughter. Mind you, her disposition hadn’t improved much. She moaned and groaned so much about the cost of the air fares down to London that I offered her a cheque to pay for them.