‘No!’ Sheila cried, overwhelmed by the sudden feeling that too many lights were going out tonight. She could not bear the darkness.
‘I mean,’ she said, as they both looked at her, ‘Denny might come here, after all. You never know. And if he finds the place in darkness, he’ll go away again. But if there’s a light on, he’ll know you’re coming back, and he’ll wait for you.'
‘True,’ Rembrandt said, almost as though he knew what she really felt. He reversed the switch and light sprang into the room again. He closed the door quietly on the silent canvases and followed them up the stairs, leaving the dim hall light on, as well.
‘It’s this way.’ Gaining the pavement level, Rembrandt took the lead, at a pace fast enough to suit even Sheila. The urgency of the situation seemed to be filtering through his quick artist’s imagination. She felt he was sensitive to all the nuances which Peter had omitted in his swift potted version of the night’s events. Also – she felt a faint warming glow –like Peter, he was a friend of Denny’s.
The thought of the telephone drew her, yet repelled her. After Peter had used it to direct the search for Denny into a fresh direction, she must call the hospital. Ask how Mum was, find out if she were still alive. Either way, the answer must be almost more than she could bear.
If Mum had died, then she must live with the knowledge that it was partly her fault. She could never forget that – thinking she was being so clever, thinking that she was sparing Mum an ordeal – she had kept Vera from Mum’s bedroom. Vera, who could recognize the difference between natural sleep and a coma. She had deliberately done everything in her power to prevent Vera from going near Mum. For the rest of her life, she must wonder whether that extra time would have meant the difference between life and death. Vera wouldn’t hurl it in her teeth – give Vera that –- it was she herself who would sit in unending judgement through long sleepless nights.
And if Mum lived – if she were to survive, and they failed to find Denny in time – what then? Attempted suicide wasn’t a criminal offence any more. But murder was. Peter was already bearing down on all the conciliatory phrases: ‘mitigating circumstances’, ‘diminished responsibility’, ‘manslaughter’, that betrayed the way the law was thinking. And it was too late to try to hush anything up. The police, out searching for Denny, knew all about it. The solemn majesty of the law was already on the march. Would Mum have to stand trial? Go to prison?
‘Just around the corner here,’ Rembrandt said, and the telephone kiosk loomed out of die mist ahead of them.
Peter lengthened his stride, moving away from them. He was already dialling when they reached the kiosk. In another moment, he began to speak. Obviously, the phone was in working order.
He looked splendidly real and solid in the light of the kiosk. In contrast, she felt as insubstantial as the mist swirling about her. She leaned weakly against the building behind the telephone kiosk.
‘Careful,’ Rembrandt said, gently pulling her away from it, ‘you’ll get your coat all dirty.’ As though she hadn’t long ago passed into a world where such things were inconsequential. ‘Someone’s been playing silly b’s with chalk around here.’
Absently, she focused on the thick chalk scrawls, while something about them tried to register on her exhausted brain. Inside, Peter looked out at her and made a hopeful grimace.
‘Denny!’ she cried. ‘It’s Denny!’ Rembrandt looked at her oddly.
‘Don’t you see?’ She gripped his arm earnestly. ‘That’s what Denny drew on the bedside table.’ She pointed to the curling hair, now recognizable as such. ‘Denny’s been this way tonight.’
‘I see.’ Rembrandt looked at the hair, and at the delicate profile limned beneath it.
‘That,’ he said decisively, ‘is no cocker spaniel.’
DENNY
From the corner of the street, he had seen her in the lighted window, the bright beckoning glow of her hair unmistakable. He had just been going to wave when the bad man came and pulled her away.
He had to get to Merelda and help her. Denny straightened, pulling himself away from the supporting lamp-post and trying to force his lethargic legs to a faster pace. Merelda needed him.
It was certainly getting foggy. The road ahead of him blurred and wavered. Everything seemed hazy and unreal. He felt all wobbly, too. As though, when he put his feet down, there might not be any road underneath them, or they might not hold him up. He’d never felt so strange before.
It wasn’t far now. He could make it. Her steps were the ones with the flower-pots at the top. And the key was underneath one of the flower-pots. It would be easy to find. He’d probably feel better, too, once he was inside the house. It would be warm in there, and there wouldn’t be this fog getting in front of his eyes. He just had to keep going, not think about stopping to rest, and he’d be there.
The cement steps loomed up before him, looking steep and high enough to reach the sky. At the top, he sat down, breathing heavily.
The flower-pot was heavier than it looked, he had to use both hands to lift it. And then the key wasn’t under it. Not that one. There were three along each side of the ledge enclosing the steps. All the same size, all heavy. As he looked at them, they blurred and receded. Fog was getting worse.
He rubbed his eyes, repressing a yawn, and the flowerpots reappeared sharply and clearly. Unsteadily, again with both hands, he lifted the next flower-pot and replaced it. Then the third, the one nearest the steps. The blurring fog rolled in again as he set the pot down and he missed the ledge. It rolled down the steps, shattering as it hit the pavement, spilling dirt across the cement like blood from a wound. He wondered if the poor plant was hurt, in pain – and then whether anyone had heard.
Fearfully, he glanced up at the lighted window, but no shapes moved behind it. A sound like thunder seemed to come from above. Vaguely, he distinguished drums and loud brass. Maybe they hadn’t noticed anything, after all, if they were listening to noisy music.
The key was under the flower-pot nearest the door on the opposite wall. Had Merelda told him that? She might have. He couldn’t always remember so well, and he couldn’t always tell left from right, either.
He held his breath, fumbling to get the key into the lock – that was always the hardest part –and then the door swung open. As he stepped inside, the hall dipped and swirled about him. He stumbled, recovered himself quickly, and shut the door. It slipped out of his grasp and slammed, the noise hitting his eardrums with an almost physical pain. But no door opened at the head of the stairs, no grim figure stood there to demand what he thought he was doing.
He knew what he was doing, what he had yet to do. The study door was invitingly ajar and a dim light burned just inside. Merelda had left it on for him. His heart glowed at her thoughtfulness. Merelda was his friend. And he would help her, as she had asked. Then she would continue to be his friend, for ever.
Smiling, he went to the desk. Easing the drawer open, he groped inside for the gun. It was still there, as she had said it would be. He took it out with difficulty, his hands were beginning to seem as though they didn’t belong to him. They weren’t responding properly to the commands from his brain. His fingers curled awkwardly around the butt of the gun, giving him no assurance that they might not suddenly let it drop. The room grew darker and was unsteady again.
Without closing the drawer, he went back into the hall way. The stairs were straight ahead now and the drawing-room was behind the closed door at the top. Even as he looked at them, they seemed to grow steeper and higher.
He couldn’t manage them carrying all this stuff, but Merelda had said he’d have to have the gun. He bent and deposited the airline bag at the foot of the stairs. Blackness swooped at him like a bat as he straightened up.
He clung to the stair rail until his head cleared. Then, slowly, he began to climb. He wished the music wasn’t so loud and noisy. It hurt his head, the thunder on the drum vibrating through him, accentuating the heavy pulsing of his blood. The stairs were beginning to s
way in evil rhythm with the drums, too. He’d never reach the top, it was like trying to go up a down escalator, no matter how many steps you took there still seemed to be the same endless number to go. He dosed his eyes and that made it a little better. When you couldn’t see how far you had to go, it didn’t seem so bad.
The stairs lurched under him abruptly and he had to fight to open his eyes, they wanted to stay closed. He had reached the top. He shifted the gun to his right hand and stood there, staring at the closed door.
He wanted to sit down on the top step and rest a while. He wanted it more than he could remember wanting anything in his whole life. More than a puppy dog, even. Much, much more than being home in his own bed – that had been earlier. Now, he was so far from home, in distance and in time, that it might have been just a pleasant dream he’d had once. The reality was here, in the aching weariness, all the things he still had to do, and the shadows reaching out to close around him.
He crossed to the door and leaned against the wall beside it. Even that little had cost him nearly as much energy as climbing the stairs. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if he sat down and sort of rested for a few minutes before –
On the other side of the door, a woman screamed. Or was it something to do with the music –a singer hitting a high note? He couldn’t be sure. But Merelda was behind that door with the bad man. He couldn’t rest now – maybe she was being hurt.
He fumbled for the door knob, but it slipped away from his grasp. He had to try again, pushing at the door as he did so. Then, abruptly, he was in the room with them. Blinking in the bright light, he brought the gun up to point at the man.
They were both on the couch, Merelda leaning back against the cushions, the man’s hand at her throat. They froze as they saw him.
‘You leave her alone!’ he blurted. ‘You stop hurting her!’
They seemed to move in slow motion. The man withdrew his hand, Merelda turned her head. Very carefully, they levered themselves to a sitting position. The woman’s voice screamed again – it was coming from the record machine.
‘I –’ The man swallowed and spoke in a cautious, conciliatory tone, his eyes on the gun. ‘I’m not hurting her, lad.’
‘You’re not?’ Denny asked uncertainly.
‘I wouldn’t hurt her for the world. She’s my wife – you know that, don’t you? I love her.’
‘You do?’ Denny looked at him in confusion. He didn’t seem like a bad man. Not like Merelda had said. He wondered if he’d got the right man. But this was the man who had pulled her away from the window, had had his hands round her neck. Still uncertain, he turned to Merelda.
‘Why, Denny ...’ Her face lit with a welcome only he could see. ‘What a surprise. What are you doing here? And –’ her eyes slid sideways to look at her husband – ‘and where did you get that gun?’
‘In the desk,’ he said amply. ‘It was right where you said it was.’
‘What’s that?’ The man whirled on Merelda. ‘Were you fool enough to –?’
‘Don’t you touch her,’ Denny said quickly. ‘You leave her alone!’ He waved the gun, reinforcing his commands.
‘I’m not touching her.’ The man subsided, his eyes darting from the gun to the expanse of carpet separating him from Denny.
‘Then don’t.’ Denny began to feel vaguely pleased. It was all going the way Merelda had said. The man was scared. Now, what else was it he had to do? Oh, yes.
‘Promise,’ he said. ‘Promise you won’t hurt her again.’
‘I never hurt her,’ the man said. ‘I’ve never raised a finger to her.’ He looked at the pointing gun again and abandoned argument. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘if it will make you feel better, I promise. I’ve never hurt her – and I never will.’
‘That’s good.’ Denny lowered the gun. He looked at Merelda in elation, waiting for her praise. He’d helped her, saved her. Now they could all be friends.
But Merelda was frowning. And she seemed so far away. The whole room seemed remote, misty and swaying. What was the matter?
“Oh, Merelda.’ He sank into a chair, blackness swooping around him again. ‘Merelda, I feel awful.’
SHEILA
Peter finished his call and rang off. He came out of the telephone kiosk to stare at the sketch with them. ‘They’ll check the area where I saw Denny with the pup,’ he said glumly. ‘But, if he wasn’t thinking about dogs –’
And he wasn’t, they knew that now. He was thinking about women – probably one particular woman. And that meant – Sheila pressed her hand against her lips, battling the impulse to cry, to scream, neither of which would do Denny any good right now. That meant they were really lost – he was lost. Somewhere in this big city – on his way to some unknown woman.
And what about Mum? She ought to call the hospital. She started into the kiosk, but Peter put his hand on her arm, stopping her.
‘There’s no news,’ he said. ‘I asked. “Doing as well as can be expected.” That’s all they’ll ever tell you, anyway.’
‘If I can get Aunt Vera,’ she said, ‘she might tell me more.’ But she flinched from talking to Vera, from hearing the veiled eagerness in Vera’s voice when she enquired about Denny. From the false heartiness that would assure her, ‘Everything’s going to be all right’; knowing that, for her and Vera, ‘all right’ meant two different things. It was all right with Aunt Vera if Denny died.
She allowed Peter to draw her away from the door. They went back to staring hopelessly at the sketch on the wall – it told them so much, and so little.
And yet, there was something it ought to tell her. She tried to concentrate her mind, push Mum into the background. Mum was already in hospital, everything possible being done for her; talking to Matron, or Aunt Vera, wouldn’t change anything. It was Denny they had to think about now. Denny.
She tried to think back. To earlier today, aeons ago, the world on the other side of the chasm, when everything had been calm and safe and normal, when getting the tea ready on time had been the heaviest problem she had to face.
Tea. And Denny, sitting at the table, smiling and happy, and trying to confide something to her in his inarticulate way. But half her mind had been on Mum, worrying about what the doctor would tell her. She hadn’t been paying much attention to Denny’s wanderings. But he had said something –
‘Is she local?’ Rembrandt asked. The two men were still squinting at the sketch.
‘Hard to tell.’ Peter turned his torch on the drawing, holding it close, as though additional light might tell him something more. ‘It isn’t much of a portrait, you know.’
‘It’s as good as you could get with your Identikit,’ Rembrandt argued. ‘You ought to be trained to distinguish suspects at a glance.’
‘If I’ve seen them before,’ Peter said. ‘What about your artist’s eye? And you work this area a lot. If she’s local, perhaps you’ve seen her before.’
‘If she’s local,’ Rembrandt said. They both stared soberly at the drawing.
‘The river!’ It came back to Sheila suddenly. ‘Denny said he’d been to tea this afternoon with a pretty lady who lived along the river.’
‘It’s a long river,’ Rembrandt said slowly.
‘But Denny passed this way.’ Peter turned towards the river. ‘There’s no pathway downriver from here, it’s cut off by playing fields. That means he must be heading upriver. It’s a residential district, plenty of houses and blocks of flats.’
They began walking towards the river. Sheila tried to be calm – it was ridiculous to hope. Just because the search had narrowed a bit. It was still a long river, as Rembrandt had pointed out – and Denny, with his long loping stride, could cover a lot of territory in an hour or so. There was no knowing how much of a head start he had on them. He could be anywhere by this time.
Where was he going? And what did he think he was going to do when he got there?
‘Her name was Merelda!’ Sheila remembered. Neither Peter nor Rembrandt reacted. The name w
as no help to them.
They turned a corner and were at the river. It flowed, dark and deep, below the embankment on the opposite side of the street. Along this side, a row of town houses looked out over the misty depths. They were blank and anonymous, giving no clue to the identity of their occupants. Denny could be inside any one of them.
Or he could be lying in a heap in some shadowed doorway, or on the river bank. The street itself was deserted, except for themselves.
‘I’ll just check.’ Peter left them, crossing the street to flash his torch over the wall. ‘All clear to the end of the row,’ he reported, coming back to them.
A cold wind blew in off the river, carrying the mist before it. Sheila was not the only one who shivered, and the increasing chill had nothing to do with it. The street stretched endlessly along the river, at least a mile to the next bridge. After a brief giving way to the commercial district crouched at the end of the bridge, the residences took over again, continuing for miles. What chance had they of finding Denny in time?
They began walking, by tacit consent, down the street, towards the distant bridge, Sheila between the two men. Not too quickly, their urgency slowed by the need to look twice at each clump of black shadows, eyes probing to make certain no human form lay curled there.
They passed one cross-street, then another. The row of houses immediately ahead had something odd about it, struck a jarring note not instantly discernible. There was just a certain disorder about it which reminded one instinctively of Denny. Sheila quickened her steps, the others kept pace.
Midway down the row, a flower-pot lay shattered at the foot of a flight of steps. Other flower-pots flanked a doorway in tipsy array. Denny’s handiwork? They stopped in front of the house, staring up at k.
‘A dog,’ Rembrandt said uncertainly, ‘or a cat. It doesn’t prove anything.’ They would have to go inside to prove anything. Ask questions. They were not quite prepared to take those steps yet. The evidence was indicative, but not conclusive.
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