by Jeff Gulvin
She eased her way gently through the familiar village of Brook and snaked between trees to where the road forked right for Bramshaw. She kept left and the darkness opened up on either side of her. Her lights caught the eyes of a New Forest pony, grazing by the roadside. For a moment she was startled, knowing they were there but still not expecting to see one so near to the road. Behind her the car seemed very close and she slowed to let it past. For a moment it dropped back then gears ground and it accelerated hard and was gone.
She relaxed a little after that; nothing worse than a driver up your backside on roads smeared by the rain. It had fallen all day. In the office this morning the darkness seemed to close like a fist about the window. It lingered into the afternoon and beyond. The hours had dragged by. She had watched the clock, something she never did. As it turned out she was late getting away and crawled south out of London with rain falling like stones on the roof of her car. In front of her now the glow of the other car’s tail lights bled to nothing.
Up ahead the car pulled off the road onto a dirt track. Lights out, door open, the driver stepped into the rain.
Jessica turned the music a little higher on the stereo and really began to look forward to the weekend. There would be dry wood at the cottage and if she was quick enough she could get a fire going before he got there. She smiled to herself, and slowed where the road swept in an arc. To her right the flicker of somebody’s house lights broke the depth of the shadows. Ahead the road was chipped and broken into hollows that brimmed with mud-flecked water in the sudden beam of her headlights.
A man stepped into the road and fell over.
Jessica cried out, stamped on the brakes and the car came to a halt with the back end swinging wildly. At the last moment she dipped the clutch and sat there breathing hard. She knocked out the gear and peered into the rain. The man lay on his side, facing away from her. He wore no jacket and his shirt was plastered to his flesh. She sat there. Far in the distance behind her she could see the glimmer of headlights.
Wait for the other car, she told herself. Wait for the other car. But she could not wait. The man lay too still. Opening the driver’s door she got out and the rain thrashed at her. Quickly now she fetched her coat from the back seat and walked forward into the darkness.
She got almost to where he lay. ‘Are you all right?’ Her voice sounded very small against the night. Clouds blocked any light thrown down by the moon. Behind her the headlights were brighter.
‘Are you all right?’ she said it again, louder this time. Still the man did not move. He was twenty, perhaps thirty, yards ahead of her car. She walked quickly now; already the rain was soaking through the flimsy material of the coat she held over her head. Still he did not move, arms stiff at his sides. She bent and hesitated then reached out and touched him. She recoiled suddenly, almost falling over on the tarmac. His flesh was stiff and hard. Not flesh, plastic. A dummy.
She got to her feet, heart high in her chest. Behind her the car drew closer. And now she panicked, the darkness and the rain and a dummy in the road at her feet. She pushed it aside with her foot, staring into the gloom by the roadside. Darkness pressed back against her. Back to her car, she jumped behind the wheel. The car was right behind her now, lights on full beam. Jessica rammed home first gear and pulled away with a squeal from her tyres.
The car behind her hooted, but she shoved in second then third gear and tore up the road with the needle climbing the speedometer. Another horse close to the road shied away from her and she wrenched hard on the wheel to avoid it. She could feel herself trembling, moist palms, the steering wheel slithering under her grip. Behind her headlights shone full in her eyes.
The road trickled out in a thin line of grey under the weight of her lights. On either side naked New Forest moorland swept into the darkness. The car was almost on her bumper, horn blaring, headlights flashing and dulling, flashing again and then dulling. Again a little cry that stuck hard in her throat. Faster and faster. She held the gear stick and pressed her foot to the floor.
Seventy-five, eighty miles an hour with the tyres screeching on the bends. The lights from the solitary house were gone now and she was alone with the road and the rain and the car up close behind her.
Her hands were white about the wheel, the muscles taut in her face. Concentrating so hard she almost missed the turning when it came. Hale and Woodfalls and Little Woodfalls where the twin cottages were perched side by side set back from the road. Just a few miles now, just a few miles. And still the car pursued her, lights so high she could see nothing else. In the end she twisted the mirror to one side to stop herself being blinded.
She took the next corner hard and behind her the second car slewed, nearly skidded then righted itself. A little space now, a moment or two to breathe. She pressed her right heel into the floor and the car leapt forward.
But still the other car pursued her, lights duller then getting more and more fierce as the ground was swallowed up between them. But the village was ahead of her now, only two more turns and then the driveway. She made the first turn, her wheels half over the white lines just missing an oncoming car which swerved hard to avoid her. Still a gap between her and her pursuer. Who was it? Joy rider? Idiot with nothing better to do than chase lonely women through the forest at night? She took the right-hand bend and there was the cottage banked in darkness on her left. Braking hard, she hauled the wheel over and gravel hissed from her tyres. She drove to the garage doors and then stopped, lurching forward in the seat as the brakes bit. At the bottom of the drive she saw headlights.
And then her fear turned to anger, indignation that burned suddenly in her chest. She jumped out into the rain and stalked down the drive with her fists clenched at her sides. As she got to the road she saw a man climbing from the driving seat of a dark-coloured saloon car.
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
He did not speak, glanced at her once and then sprinted past her up the drive.
Jessica whirled around. He got to her car and she saw that the back door was open. The man stood there, panting and holding his side. He straightened and came slowly back down the drive to her. His hair was long and thin, face pinched and beaten about the eyes.
‘Why didn’t you stop?’
‘What?’
‘I was trying to get you to stop.’
‘Stop? You must be mental. You scared me shitless.’
‘You should’ve stopped.’ He pointed back up the drive to her car. ‘When you were out on the road just now—someone got in your car.’
Two
VANNER TURNED OFF THE lane into the wide gravel driveway, and the Old Rectory lifted against the fingers of tree branches and above them the spread of the stars. He switched off the engine and glanced at Ellie, sitting next to him.
‘My father’s house,’ he said.
Lights flooded the steps from the hall as the front door was opened. Vanner got out and grabbed their cases from the boot. Anne came down the steps to meet them.
‘Aden. You made it. He’ll be so pleased.’
Vanner held the cases. He bent and kissed her cheek. ‘How is he, Anne?’
‘He’s okay.’
He looked into her face, eyes shadowed into her cheeks, hair pulled back as it always was, more grey than black now. She smiled at him then turned to Ellie, who stood selfconsciously next to him.
‘Sorry,’ Vanner said. ‘This is Ellie, Anne. Ellie, this is Anne. My stepmother.’
For a moment Anne looked at him. It was the first time he had referred to her as that. He knew it and he knew she knew it too. She shook Ellie’s hand and slipped an arm about her shoulders. Together they crunched over gravel and up the steps into the wide wooden floored hall. Vanner followed behind with the bags.
Anne led them through to the kitchen where a fire burned in the grate. Ellie shivered, moved towards it and bent, rubbing her hands together.
‘A fire,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to beat a fire.’
>
‘The lounge is so big and cold,’ Anne said. ‘We sit in here these days.’ She nodded to two wooden frame rockers with travelling rugs stretched over them that occupied the floor by the hearth. ‘It’s lovely just sitting in the firelight with the wind rattling the windows.’
‘It’s very windy up here,’ Ellie said.
‘Norfolk, my dear.’ Anne plugged in the kettle. ‘Nothing between here and Siberia.’
Vanner set the bags down on the floor. ‘I’ve put you in the back bedroom, Aden. The one you had last time.’
Last time. That was a year ago when he had been recovering from stab wounds inflicted by Ninja, a low-life drug dealer’s hardman. A year. He had promised them he would make it for Christmas but he hadn’t. Somehow he never did.
‘Where is he, Anne?’
‘Upstairs resting.’
‘Shouldn’t he be in hospital?’
‘Probably. But you know your father, Aden. Stubborn as the proverbial mule. He lasted all of three days.’
‘Which hospital was it?’ Ellie asked.
‘Norfolk and Norwich. He just wouldn’t stay in there.’
‘Ellie’s a nurse, Anne,’ Vanner said.
Anne spooned coffee into thick earthenware mugs and poured boiling water. ‘It’s his second heart attack, Aden. Not like the one he had when he was still working but the doctors told him to take it as a warning. He just has got to start saying No to people.’ She looked plaintively at Vanner. ‘He does too much. He’s supposed to be retired, but they will use him as a locum. Sometimes he travels half the bloody county to fill in for absent clergy.’
Vanner leaned on the sink. ‘He’d only get bored if he didn’t. Is he awake?’
‘Why don’t you go up and see?’
He climbed the stairs, listening vaguely to them talking in the kitchen. Ellie’s voice, unfamiliar in this house. This was the first time he had brought anyone here since Jane left him eleven years ago. The stairs creaked under his feet, the runner getting threadbare, the board dusty on either side of it. Light showed under his father’s door. For a moment he paused and thought about all the years that had passed between them. The years of strained silence, each of them unsure of his place in the other’s life. It all came back to him now; the Yemen, his unremembered mother dying. The old photographs and his army chaplain father in khaki shorts and rolled-up sleeves, face burnt to a cinder by Middle Eastern suns.
He placed his hand on the doorknob but still he hesitated. In his mind’s eye he could see him in younger days before his hair turned white, tall and thin and driving that battered Willis Jeep with no windshield. He opened the door and went in. His father lay on his back, the sheet tucked in about his chest, withered hands laid flat at his sides. His hair was thin now and his eyes were closed. Age hung in folds from his face.
Vanner closed the door. He leaned on it, hands behind his back. His father stirred, his eyes flickered and then registered. A thin smile creased withered lips.
‘Aden.’ His voice was low, husky, liquid in his throat. Vanner moved off the door and went over to the bed. He pulled up a chair and sat down. His father half-lifted his hand then lowered it again.
‘Last time it was me visiting you in bed.’
Vanner smiled. ‘How you feeling?’
‘Been better, son. Been better.’
‘Second time, Dad. You can’t afford many more.’
‘I’m seventy-three nearly. Not bad.’
‘Anne says you’re working too hard.’
His father smiled again.
‘She’d be lost without you, Dad. You ought to take things easy.’
‘She’s younger than me, son. A lot younger. She’s going to be without me.’
They were both silent for a while. Vanner could hear the wind lifting against the window.
‘Raining?’ his father asked.
Vanner shook his head. ‘Raining in London, Dad. Raining everywhere but here today.’
‘It’ll get here.’ His father half-closed his eyes again. ‘It’ll rain in the night. I like listening to rain in the night.’
He looked at his son then, lifted his hand, fingers stretching. Vanner looked at it, old and worn with age spots highlighting the skin that bunched over the blue of his veins. He reached out his own hand and clasped it. So much unsaid between them. The years rolled away once more and Vanner was a boy in a British army camp in some far-flung corner of the world, surrounded by the sweat of uniformed men, the straight-backed presence of a father and no mother.
‘How’s the job?’ his father asked him.
‘Okay.’
‘What you working on?’
‘Crack team. British blacks out of Harlesden.’
‘Big time?’
‘Big enough.’
‘Will you get them?’
‘If I have my way.’
His father closed his eyes again. ‘And how are you outside the job? Got yourself someone at last.’
‘She’s downstairs.’
‘Is she? That’s good.’ His father tried to move then. ‘Lying in one position,’ he muttered. ‘Never could get used to it. Too many years on a camp bed.’
Vanner got up then and went to the window.
His father followed him with his eyes. ‘What’s she like—this lady?’
Vanner half-turned. ‘Young.’
‘How young?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Not so young.’
‘Hell of a lot younger than me.’
His father grinned. ‘Take after your old man don’t you. Nurse is she?’
Vanner nodded. ‘You remember the one who patched me up last year?’
‘Vaguely. Not her is it?’
‘Her friend. Same ward. I met them one night when I was out with Sid Ryan.’
‘How is Sid?’
‘He’s okay. Got transferred to AMIP. Working with Frank Weir, the DI who replaced me last year.’
His father nodded. ‘I want to meet her before you go.’
‘We’re here till Sunday, Dad.’ Vanner moved back to the bed. ‘You’re knackered. Get some sleep now. I’ll be here in the morning.’
Downstairs Anne and Ellie were seated in the rocking chairs, drinking coffee. Vanner made a cup for himself and went to the back door, where he lit a cigarette.
‘You can smoke in here, Aden.’ Anne smiled at him from the fireside. He shook his head. ‘Bad for him up there.’ He looked at the glowing end of the cigarette. ‘Bad for me.’
He went outside then and walked alone in the garden. He could see them both through the kitchen window. Anne used to remind him of Jane, but that seemed a long time ago now. Upstairs, light still glowed around the curtains of his father’s bedroom. Vanner pictured him again, lying flat out, so still and pale he might have been dead. Wind toyed with the branches of conifer trees. The short cut grass was tight under his feet. He could smell the sea in the night air, east coast but a handful of miles away. He thought about the cottage then, perched so precariously now, all but on the edge of the cliff.
He walked and smoked and thought. His father, seventy-three. A second heart attack. He had been sat on a plot with Jimmy Crack and Sammy when Anne called him on the mobile. They were watching one of the posse Jimmy had brought to them. Little guy in a black VW, dealing out of the back of his car. Small-time player, well down the chain of command. He recalled how still he had felt when Anne mentioned the words heart attack and his father in the same breath. The past played out in slow motion and a lifetime of half-spoken words between them. What if he died, he had thought—What if he ever died?
He came to the kitchen door and dropped his cigarette, grinding it out on the path. Then he went inside, picked up his coffee and sipped at it. Ellie looked up and smiled at him. Vanner moved behind her chair and she caught up his hand in hers.
‘Was he sleeping when you came down, Aden?’
Vanner glanced at Anne. ‘All but.’ He sat down on the floor and crossed his legs, staring into
the low flame that licked its way around a fresh cut log. ‘He looks old, Anne.’
‘He is old.’
‘I guess.’ He caught her eye then and glimpsed the pain in it. But he was not sure whether it was pain for her or for him.
Jimmy Crack phoned The Mixer from his mobile as he drove home. Friday night, seven thirty already. It had been a long week and he was looking forward to a weekend with his wife and sons. They were supposed to be going out tonight, but there was one more thing he had to do before he went home. The Mixer answered the phone. ‘Mixer, it’s Selly.’
‘What’s happening?’
‘You got anything for me?’
‘Five grand this week.’
‘I’m passing the shop. I’ll toot my horn when I get round the back.’ He switched off the phone and pulled off the North Circular road at Dudden Hill before heading up into Neasden. The Mixer ran an electrical goods shop which ran a Western Union money transfer office. The crack team Jimmy had been working on for over a year now thought they had him in their pocket. They were smurfing cash out to Jamaica in lots under the five thousand pound disclosure limit. Sometimes they took in as much as twenty thousand and The Mixer broke it into smaller amounts and it was sent out under five different names and addresses. But he had nicked The Mixer on handling charges years back and he had been informing on them for a year. If they ever found out they would kill him.
He pulled out of the circle and pushed the old Astra down into second gear where it whined in protest. Crap car, so obviously job. When would they finally realise and get him another? Still the car was unofficial and he supposed he was lucky to have it at all.
A broken-up alley stretched the length of the shops at the back. Jimmy bumped over the pot holes until he came to the black door behind the shop where The Mixer mixed and matched second-hand electrical goods until they were fit enough to sell on. Jimmy bounced his fist off the horn and wound the window down. Rain spattered the sill.
He had to wait barely a minute and then The Mixer was leaning at his elbow, chubby Indian face and thick silver-rimmed glasses. Greased grey hair fell over his eyes.