The meanest Flood

by Baker, John

  ‘I can take most of it,’ he said. ‘Evening’s bad and during the day, that’s bad too. But mornings are the worst. Waking up there’s a surge of optimism because it’s a new day, you know, just before you open your eyes. Then it all comes back. Bang. Another shit day. I’m still chasing a guy I don’t know who he is. I know what he’s done and what he’s doing. I know where he’s heading. But I don’t know who he is. And you’re not here, and whatever happens during the day you’re still not gonna be here tonight.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere else,’ she told him. ‘I’m waiting for you.’

  He let the words hang there, trying to imagine her with the phone cradled against her ear. Dark curls and her skin with its hint of Buenos Aires, a genetic inheritance from her Argentine father. And close by there would be the long white cane, a substitute for her eyes.

  ‘I’m signing off,’ he said.

  ‘When will I see you?’

  He shook his head. Reached to switch off the phone. |

  ‘I love you, Sam,’ she managed to say before he broke the connection.

  He mouthed the words back to her though she was gone. They wouldn’t convey what he felt anyway. His life i had been littered with small loves but Angeles was different. And yet each of those small loves had seemed possible at the time. Sam had a genius for wrapping potential in glitzy paper and convincing himself it was reality. He’d taken many a girl off the street under the illusion she was a princess.

  He should be there with her, not tearing from country to country in pursuit of some madman. All the women in his life were in danger. How long would it be before this guy, whoever he was, was turning his attention to Angeles, or to Marie or Celia, the women who were part of Sam’s life now? According to the pattern, the sequence, the next one would be Alice, but what happened after that?

  Sam would have to make sure that he never got to Alice. He didn’t know how, he just knew that he had to do it.

  He crossed the Svinesund bridge and felt the hairline prickle at the back of his neck as the Norwegian/Swedish border came in sight. There were a couple of lights on in the custom buildings and someone in a uniform by a large container lorry. But the road wasn’t manned and the stream of traffic continued on into Sweden without interruption.

  Sam changed the tape, pushed the play button on the audio system and listened to the opening strains of the first of the Five Preludes by a Brazilian guitarist who had known Villa-Lobos and who had had his brow touched by the hand of God.

  He settled back in the well-upholstered seat of the V70 and aimed it towards Gothenburg. He drove into the night thinking about women who had accompanied him on shorter or longer journeys and who had shared his past. He thought about Geordie stuck back in Oslo and he thought about Angeles in York. And as the kilometres passed he began to focus on Alice Richardson, tried to imagine her in her house in Clementhorpe with her husband and her children. He knew that he wasn’t the only one thinking about her, that the man who had already murdered three of Sam’s previous partners also had her on his mind.

  ‘But I’ll beat you this time,’ Sam said out loud. ‘Whatever it takes, you’re not having Alice as well.’

  He parked the V70 on the top deck of a multi-storey car park in the middle of Gothenburg. Bought a ticket for it and stuck it on the windscreen.

  He had breakfast in a fast-food joint, baguette with bacon and Brie and two cups of strong black. He pumped the assistant for directions to the docks. He felt good in the new Finnish suit, it took ten years off him, and when he’d handed over the cash it felt like that many years’ earnings.

  But if that was how much it cost to keep him on the street then it was worth the money. If he was picked up now they’d lock him away and leave him to rot. And there’d be no hope at all for Alice.

  The Stena Germanica was at her berth but wasn’t due to leave for Kiel until 7.30 that evening. He bought a single ticket and sat in the waiting room with a coffee machine and a German tourist with a limp for four hours. They both attempted to breach the language barrier and failed almost completely. Sam discovered that the German liked his new suit but was unable to discover which part of Germany he came from. They settled on sign language eventually and were able to express joint disgust over the warm sludge which the machine served up if they fed it enough Swedish Kroner.

  When they got on board Sam went to his cabin and locked the door. He showered and lay down on his bunk, pulling the single white duvet around him. He listened to the chugging of the huge engines and felt the rolling of the ship as it left the shelter of Gothenburg behind. With his eyes closed he allowed his mind to gnaw at the bone of facts and suppositions about the killer. The guy was almost there, still emerging from a welter of leads and clues and random inklings. Sam was looking for a miracle, something that would collect the disparate facts together and deliver an exact portrait of the killer. His choice of language on the phone when he was gloating over the death of Nicole. When your ex-partner was transformed, he’d said. That single word, transformed. It had to be significant. And in Oslo, when he used the word Katha like an incantation, before axing Geordie. Katha was not an incantation, it was a meditation or a prayer of some kind.

  When he thought of the killer in terms of his language Sam imagined a mystic, a holy man or a latter-day hippie. If that was the case the killings would appear to be sacrificial.

  But language wasn’t the only thing that was known about the man. The braid on his trousers - that was so odd that it had to be significant. On the other hand he was good at disguising himself. Geordie had recognized him as two, probably three, different characters in Oslo. So the braid could be a blind lead.

  And then there was the pubic hair. The distinct possibility that he might have a doll. He could be a ventriloquist, perhaps? Sam shook his head. Ventriloquism brought him back full circle to language again.

  It didn’t matter how many times he went over the facts the guy refused to come into focus. He was almost there, as if he was tantalizing Sam, standing in the shadows of consciousness. No matter which way Sam came at him he managed to stay out of the light. He was a silhouette, a ghost. He didn’t seem to be threatening. Unless your name was on his list.

  Sam got out of his bunk and dressed. He went to the ship’s buffet restaurant and gorged himself on poached salmon, prawns and tiny squares of herring in mustard sauce. He got himself a clean plate and went back for blue mussels and crayfish, a pile of fresh salad. Ate so much he had no room left for pudding. The profiteroles looked real nice, too good to leave behind, so he put a couple of them in a bag for breakfast.

  He ordered coffee and the limping German came over to his table and sat down opposite him. ‘Guten abend,’ he said.

  ‘How you doing?’

  They smiled at each other for a while. The German pointed at Sam’s cup and said, ‘Gemein kaffeesatz.’

  Sam took a sip, letting the aroma fill his nostrils. ‘After the stuff we drank from that machine,’ he said, ‘this is bloody marvellous.’

  The German laughed. ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he echoed. ‘Komisch.’

  Sam laughed along with him. He didn’t get the joke but he knew what people meant about travel broadening the mind. Here he was on the tip of Scandinavia learning the German language without even trying. Wunderbar.

  There must’ve been every woman he had ever known in his life in the dream. He couldn’t remember which ones were dead and which alive. He looked at them and thought about it real hard, trying to tell the difference, but he couldn’t get it. He thought it should be important but in the dream there was a different value system. Death was a thin line on the ground, a chalk line that you stepped over if you felt like it or were pushed, it really didn’t matter. Whichever side of the line you were on you could cross back to the other side. There were no absolutes. Life and death were a continuum. Nothing mattered.

  The ship’s address system woke him and he pulled on his new clothes and went up on deck and watched Kiel approaching t
hrough a mist. It was a setting from a horror story, the grey sea and sky, the hazy images and ship’s horn moaning at the silent morning. Other passengers on deck were like zombies hanging over the rails in search of a lost mortality. Perhaps the grim reaper had boarded them in the night, slipping from cabin to cabin, leaving behind him a trail of broken promises.

  Huge cranes appeared on the dockside, derricks and warehouses and other ships much bigger than the Gothenburg ferry. As the morning mist lifted, the extent of the Baltic harbour was revealed. Gulls soared. The tang of salt was everywhere.

  Sam walked through passport control and stayed on the main road. Heavy lorries shipped their loads from and towards the docks. The bulk of them were German but there were Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish trucks and others from Eastern Europe and the UK.

  On the outer edge of the dock area Sam found a truckstop. He stood in line with a tray and scored some rye bread with cheese and Spanish chorizo; a large mug of coffee which tasted greasy, as though it had been fried. He sat at a table by the window so he could see the trucks pulling in to the car park. Didn’t move for two hours, until he saw a huge Scania V8 with a British registration loaded with a high-sided container. He watched as the driver shifted off the road and circled the cafe to pull neatly into a space only thirty metres from where Sam was sitting.

  The driver was young and athletic. He jumped down from his cab and his knees flexed easily to take the strain. He had a mop of black hair and a ring in each ear. Around his neck was a knotted silk scarf and when he entered the cafe his face and arms were slick with sweat. He scanned the room without acknowledging anyone and turned to the counter where he bought a can of Coke and a concoction of hard-boiled eggs and herbs swimming in yoghurt and sour cream.

  When the driver was settled at a table Sam went back for another mug of coffee and sat down opposite the guy. Sharp blue eyes flashed up at him. Sam smiled. ‘You going back home?’ he asked.

  The driver took a forkful of the egg mixture. ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘Call me Sam.’

  ‘And what can I do you for?’

  ‘I’m looking for a lift.’

  ‘You got a passport?’

  ‘Yeah, but I’d rather get through without it.’

  The driver smiled with everything except his eyes. ‘More than my job’s worth, mate.’ He looked around the room. ‘Let’s walk outside.’

  He left his meal half-finished and led the way to his truck. The mop of black hair wasn’t as thick as Sam had first imagined. You could see right through to the scalp. He climbed up behind the steering wheel. Sam got into the passenger seat, inhaling an aroma of engine oil and stale sweat. The cab was wedge-shaped and behind the seats was a full-length bunk and beyond that a control centre and what looked like a wardrobe. Couple of pinups on the door, photographs of teenage girls with pumped-up breasts, one of them reaching down between her legs to hold her labia apart.

  ‘The going rate’s a grand. That’s non-negotiable.’

  Sam looked over at him but the guy’s eyes were fixed on some spot the other side of the windscreen. ‘You’ve got the cash?’

  ‘I’ve got it, yeah.’

  ‘A mile along the road there’s a lay-by. I’ll be there shortly after dark. You’ll need drinking water and something to eat. A torch with a spare battery. There’s a couple of other passengers, and you’ll be together in the container. It’s not comfortable and you could be inside for up to forty-eight hours. If you don’t have the cash, don’t bother showing. I’m not a charity.’

  ‘When do we sail?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Tonight, just after ten. Croatian rust-bucket called Ivan Mazuranic. ETA Immingham Tuesday morning.’ Sam walked into Kiel and found a supermarket. He bought two-litre bottles of Evian water and a selection of German sausage and cheese, a loaf of bread, oranges and pears, and a couple of bars of Swiss chocolate. At a hardware store he bought himself a Maglite flashlight and some spare long-life batteries; a Walther Solace knife with a three-and-a-half-inch blade and a lanyard so he could hang it around his neck under his shirt. Picked up a small plastic cutting board in the same shop, imagining it would double as a platter from which he could eat his food. And at the chemist next door he got a roll of Elastoplast and a bottle of Olbas oil.

  At a confectioner’s he had coffee and apple-cake and used the lavish gentlemen’s room to sort through his purchases. He put one thousand pounds in twenties into an envelope and stuck it in the side pocket of his rucksack. The rest of the cash he’d brought with him and the two passports he taped to the side of his body with the Elastoplast.

  When he’d finished he walked back to the harbour and looked for the Ivan Mazuranic, to make sure the ship existed. When he found her he wished he hadn’t bothered looking. She was so neglected that rust-bucket was a term of endearment. The Ivan Mazuranic was an unloved and unlovely vessel coated in a thick film of grease and dirt. Black as fuck. Her sides were crusted with red rust and she appeared to be abandoned. There were no sailors on her decks and no sounds emanated from her apart from the wavelets of the harbour lapping gently against her bows.

  While Sam was wondering if she’d make it across the North Sea a taxi arrived and pulled up to her gangplank. The two men who fell out of its doors were blind with drink. The taxi driver left his cab and came around to them. He took a wallet from the back pocket of one of the men and extracted a wad of notes from it. Then he counted off his fare and stuck the wallet and the change back into the guy’s jacket.

  When the taxi had left the two of them crawled up the gangplank. They’re probably the captain and the chief engineer, Sam told himself. He knew from first-hand experience what alcohol was about. In excess it allows you to fail. And failure can be gratifying, even liberating; it relieves you of the need to aspire. Sam had seen it all, done it all, and he couldn’t remember half of it.

  There was still time for them to sober up before the ship set sail. Sailors drank, everyone knew that. They wouldn’t be sailors at all if they didn’t manage the odd bottle of rum. Didn’t mean they were going to send the Ivan Mazuranic to the bottom of the sea.

  Though it would be ironic if Sam met his end because of someone else’s drunken behaviour. To get himself off the drink and to stay more or less dry for all these years only to find himself on the bottom of the ocean with a couple of Bosnian soaks. On the other hand, he consoled himself, I started out with nothing, and I still have most of it.

  On his way back to the lay-by where he would meet up with the trucker Sam forgot about the ship. He’d be in the container anyway, locked away from the Ivan Mazuranic and its filth, its rats and its paralytic officers. Claustrophobia wasn’t one of Sam’s problems and he hoped that it wouldn’t affect his fellow passengers.

  The moon was a gold coin on the horizon and the layby was void of people or vehicles. The hum of Kiel was audible in the still night air and off to his left the unnatural light of the city gave the illusion of warmth.

  The Scania V8 came along the road with dipped headlights and pulled up alongside Sam. The trucker leaned over and unlocked the passenger door, allowing Sam to climb up beside him.

  ‘Fares, please,’ the trucker said, a smile on his lips. If anything his hair had got thinner during the afternoon. His forehead was on its way to meet the back of his head.

  Sam dug the envelope from his rucksack and handed it over. The guy ripped it open and took out the wad of notes. He flipped through them without counting. He took two twenties from the centre of the wedge and held one in each hand, working them with his thumb and forefinger. He held them up to the light above his door and wrinkled his eyes and his nose for a while until he decided to accept that they were real money.

  ‘There’s a lot of cops about,’ he said. ‘Down by the docks area. They could be after you.’

  ‘I’m not hot,’ Sam told him. ‘Nobody’s looking for me.’

  ‘I should charge you a supplement.’

  ‘They don’t care about blokes like me,’
Sam said. ‘They’ll be looking for an escaped prisoner. Somebody important.’

  The trucker gave him a long look. ‘I’ll show you to your room, sir,’ he said. He kept that same grin on his face, never varied it. It was an all-weather, multi-tasking, guess-if-I’m-happy facial expression that was designed to hide rather than expose the little boy that crouched behind it.

  Sam followed him to the rear of the truck and waited while he manipulated the rods and handles that released the locks on the end of the container. The trucker pulled down an aluminium ladder and Sam climbed up into the darkness above him. ‘See you in Immingham,’ the guy said as he closed the door behind him. The locking mechanisms clanged and echoed around Sam as he went down on one knee, feeling around in his rucksack for the torch.

  Two young men, sallow-skinned, hollow-eyed, were sitting on the base of the container with their legs outstretched. ‘How you doing?’ Sam asked.

  ‘I am Omed,’ one of them said, stretching out a hand. ‘This is my friend, Rachid. We are coming from Iraq.’

  ‘I’m Sam. Coming from Oslo, on my way to York.’

  ‘You are English?’

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘I love England,’ Omed said. ‘I am a scientist. I can work. I would like England to be my home, where the government will not try to kill me. I can marry English girl and my children will be English.’

  ‘Just take it one step at a time,’ Sam told him. Rachid, the friend, leaned forward. ‘You have food?’

  ‘Some,’ Sam said. ‘You hungry?’

  ‘Very hungry,’ Rachid said. ‘Very, very hungry.’

  ‘Tell me when it gets bad,’ Sam said.

  He moved on along the container, between boxes and packing crates. In a small clearing were a family group: a father with a grey moustache and his wife with staring eyes. When Sam appeared she gathered her three children around her, seeming to bury them in her skirts. ‘What’s your story?’ Sam asked the father.

  ‘We are from Bolivia,’ he said. ‘We have been in Switzerland but they were going to send us back. My wife’s brother is an informer against the robbers. You understand robbers?’