The meanest Flood

by Baker, John

  She came over to the bath and found the chair on which Sam had placed his clothes. She gathered them in her arms and took them through to the bedroom. Through the doorway Sam saw her place them on a low table at the foot of the bed. She removed her jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her sweater. When she returned to the bathroom she sat on the chair and reached for the soap.

  ‘What you up to?’ he asked.

  ‘Sit up,’ she said. ‘I want to scrub your back.’

  Sam struggled into a sitting position and let her go at it. ‘You like?’ she asked.

  ‘Mmmm, magic.’

  She lathered him again, kneading the muscles on his back with the knuckles of both hands. ‘It’s good to have you back,’ she said.

  Sam tried to think of something to match it but the words wouldn’t flow. He reached up and touched her face. When she left him he finished washing and cleared the condensation from the mirror to check there was something left. He knew what it was about the beard, made him look like a social worker. He towelled himself down and walked through to the bedroom. Angeles was in the bed, her clothes lying on the carpet where she had dropped them.

  He got in and put his arm around her. He couldn’t stop thinking of it as an interval, that when it was over he’d have to go out again and grapple with reality. He began to talk and Angeles listened and they turned out their minds for each other without realizing what they were doing.

  When they’d been quiet for a while Angeles said, ‘Do you believe in magic?’

  ‘There’s so much we can’t explain. I believe in sleight of hand and I believe in miracles. I know there are rhetoricians who can talk up a storm and moments and places that are charmed.’

  ‘And this man, Sam, this magician, do you think you can take him down?’

  ‘I never had any doubts about that,’ Sam said. ‘I only needed to know who he was.’

  ‘And do you know now?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘But I’m beginning to get a picture.’

  Angeles sighed. She said. ‘Have you ever read Stephen Crane?’

  ‘Red Badge of Courage. I read that.’

  ‘He said that people were not nouns, but adverbs modifying a series of events.’

  Sam kissed her on the lips and slid down in the bed. He felt the tension in her arms around his back and couldn’t think of any place on earth he’d rather be. Couldn’t seem to concentrate on the adverb thing.

  Later, as they lay sleeping in a tangle of cotton sheets, the boy came back to Sam in a dream.

  And, yes, he had been called Danny. Sam couldn’t remember the woman’s name, even in the dream. Apart from the Madonna braids he couldn’t see what she looked like, either. But he could see the boy. The boy was clearly defined against a white background. He was hysterical, screaming and crying, and all of his anger was centred on Sam.

  The woman kept grabbing at the boy, trying to get him upstairs to his room, but he wasn’t having any. He was a tornado, howling, spitting and leaping around the room to evade her reach. Sam couldn’t hear the words but he could see and feel the single-minded vehemence as it crackled out of the child.

  Sam came awake and turned towards Angeles. She was sleeping with one arm covering her face, her breath coming and going with the softness of a feather. Sam turned away from her and looked back at the dream. Fifteen, twenty years had gone past since that time. He was aware of two different Sam Turners; the one he knew now, who viewed the image of the boy with a degree of compassion, and the one from the past who saw the boy as an irritation.

  That the dream corresponded to an actual event, he had no doubt, though his recollection of it was at best shaky. He couldn’t remember his conscious mind referring to it on one single occasion since it had happened. It was something he’d put aside, another one of those things he’d decided not to deal with.

  And there was another scene from around the same time but buried even deeper. Sam remembered Marie asking him if he’d ever hit a woman. He’d avoided the answer even though it was twenty years since the act. But he’d punched the woman with the Madonna braid in an argument about a bottle. Laid into her with both fists, blackened her eye and cut her lip, and this was part of who he was. The details were blurred, the memory only really kicked in at the point when his attack on her came to an end. He saw himself standing with his legs apart, looking down at his fists. The woman was huddled in a corner, her hands covering her face. Sam had been lost for a hundred years and he had suddenly found himself in a body and a mind-set he didn’t recognize.

  He didn’t know why he had beaten the woman and he didn’t know why he had stopped beating her. What had prevented him going on to kill her? Some residue of conscience? Some isolated, civilized remnant in his soul?

  He’d walked away. Found another bar to prop him up. And the woman with the Madonna braid and the broken face had gone home to her son.

  And all the while, as he grew into manhood, the boy had kept it as fresh as the day it happened, perhaps built upon it, elaborated its magnitude, until it had driven him to a frenzy of killings.

  But what had it meant to the child? Was it simple jealousy over the body of his mother? Or had he somehow contrived to see Sam Turner as the root of all his troubles? Was Sam the scapegoat for the loss of his father, the disappointment of his mother, or had the boy’s damaged mind invented something worse?

  Thinking on it all for the first time stimulated Sam’s memory. He recalled seeing the boy again. Some time later, after that first screaming fit, but this recollection was even dimmer than the first. The boy had not been screaming and yelling this time, he had been quiet and watchful. And he had not been in that house with his mother. He had been alone. Sam was with another woman, a blonde bimbo, they were on a park bench, drinking, planning how to score another bottle. And as he looked out over the freshly cut lawn Sam had come into eye-contact with the boy. I’m being stalked, he’d thought. And he told the blonde woman about it and she looked for the boy but he’d already disappeared, like magic.

  And after that Sam Turner had put it aside, left it alone, preferring not to engage with anything that took him away from his own boozy calling. But now it looked as though he might have been right. Young Danny Mann had been stalking him. For years and years and years. All his life. And now he’d stopped the stalking and moved into a different phase.

  Sam Turner eased himself out of the bed and dressed in the fresh clothes Angeles had brought for him. When he was ready he leaned over the bed and kissed her on the cheek. He left the hotel room and closed the door quietly behind him. It was time to put a stop to it. Enough people had died. He couldn’t afford to lose anyone else.

  He arrived at Alice’s house shortly after four o’clock that afternoon. Alex Richardson came to the door with a can of Caffrey’s in his hand. He smiled nervously when he realized it was Sam standing there behind the beard.

  He said, ‘Can I help you?’ He didn’t mean it.

  ‘Is Alice here?’ Sam asked.

  Richardson did something weird with his shoulders, pushing them forward at the same time as pulling his head back. He frowned, craning forward to look along the street.

  ‘I’m alone,’ Sam said. ‘Is Alice here?’

  Richardson took a gulp from his can. ‘She went to meet you,’ he said. ‘Pick Conn up.’

  ‘Meet me where?’

  ‘What I heard, you phoned and asked her to come to your place. You’ve got Conn, right?’

  ‘No,’ Sam said. ‘I only got back here around midday. I haven’t seen Conn and I didn’t make any phone call.’ Alex Richardson let that sink in while he poked a finger up his nostril. ‘That can’t be right,’ he said. ‘Hannah said...’

  ‘Is she here?’ Sam said.

  ‘No, she went round to your place.’

  ‘Both of them? They went together?’

  Richardson shook his head. He opened his eyes wide and closed them for a moment. He could be patient. He was used to dealing with idiots. He took ano
ther drink from the can. ‘No, they didn’t both go. Alice went round there to pick up Conn, but Hannah is still here in her room. That’s how I know Alice went round to your place, ’cause Hannah passed on the message.’

  ‘Get her down here,’ Sam said.

  ‘Now just a minute, this is my house and...’

  ‘Just get her down here,’ Sam said. He stepped over the sandbags, pushed past Richardson and went to the foot of the stairs. ‘Hannah,’ he shouted, and then again: ‘Hannah.’

  Richardson said, ‘Jeez, c’mon, you’ve spilt my beer.’ A door opened and a small girl in a mini-skirt came to the top of the stairs. ‘D’you want me?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Richardson said. ‘Whose house is this?’

  ‘Shadup,’ Sam said. He looked up the stairs at Hannah. He spoke quietly and clearly. ‘What was the message from your mother? Where is she and who phoned her?’

  ‘You don’t have to answer him,’ Richardson shouted, his voice cracking. ‘He doesn’t live here.’

  Hannah paid her father no heed. She looked at Sam for a moment. ‘There was a man rang. Mother didn’t hear it so I picked up and he asked to speak to her. I didn’t listen to them. When they’d finished talking Mother got dressed and went out. She said she was going to your house. She said Conn was there.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Sam said. The last remnants of youth drained from his face. He turned and pushed past Richardson in the hallway, spilling more of the guy’s beer.

  He jumped over the sandbags and splashed along the street. Alex Richardson followed him, rubbing at a wet patch on the front of his trousers. ‘I pay the bloody mortgage, here,’ he shouted. ‘I’m the man. I’m the owner.’

  Sam didn’t look back. He had never been able to work out whether Alex Richardson was kidding him or if he really was like that.

  When Sam got to Bishopthorpe Road he flagged down a taxi and gave the driver his address. He asked to be dropped off before they reached the street where he lived. Sam knew the routine by now. Danny Mann would be waiting and watching. He wouldn’t kill Alice until Sam entered the street, to make sure that the time of death coincided with Sam’s presence.

  It was as if he was being conjured into existence in this place at this time. The magician didn’t give him an option. If Sam arrived at the site of the murder then the spell had worked. But if Sam didn’t arrive on site, like in Oslo, if he kept out of the way, then the victim would die anyway and Sam would still, somehow, be implicated.

  This wasn’t something he could handle alone. He knew very well that the magician could see the entire street from the windows of his house.

  Standing out of view he hit Menu on his mobile: Phonebook, Select, J. He thumbed through the first couple of Js until JD’s number showed in the display panel. He held the phone to his ear and listened to the speed-dialling, dimly aware that he was being approached by someone who had been leaning against a shop window.

  The bleating of the engaged tone allowed him to look up in time to see the guy. The one who had taken his photograph that day, the guy who’d kneed him in the balls. Sam had time to sidestep as the big man raised his fist and came at him hard and fast. What was it with this guy? Black shirt and leather trousers today, something swinging round his neck... a shark’s tooth? Sam couldn’t remember what he was wearing last time, something just as showy. Was he connected to the magician? And if so, how?

  Sam slipped his mobile into his inside pocket and concentrated. The guy had put him down last time, but Sam had been sloppy then. This time around he had his wits about him. But don’t be complacent, he told himself. The guy’s packing a lot of weight. If he landed a good right Sam would spend the rest of the day sleeping.

  Best to finish it quickly.

  The big man turned. There was real hatred in his eyes. He came again, pushing his chin forward, wrapping the fingers of his right hand into a tight ball of bone and gristle. Apart from the time with the camera Sam had never seen him before. If it had been the magician he could have understood it. He wouldn’t have liked it any better, but he would’ve had some idea where the guy was coming from. As it was Sam couldn’t fathom why this guy hated him so much.

  But it wasn’t question time. Sam stood his ground as long as possible. He balled up his own fist, made it look as though he was going to trade punches, which was what the big guy would have loved. He saw the punch coming from way back but waited until the guy was totally committed, saw that extra twist of the shoulder as the man anticipated Sam’s nose transformed into a spray of gore and cartilage.

  Sam ducked, he went down low and heard the fist whistling past his ear as it careered onward into oblivion. At the same time he sprang forward, aiming his head into the fast-approaching solar plexus of his attacker, keeping his knees bent to absorb the impact.

  He heard the guy groan as the air was knocked out of him. But the velocity kept the man moving. As Sam came up the big guy’s legs left the ground and he went into an involuntary somersault, coming down on his back, somehow contriving to break the fall with the palms of both hands. Sam spun around, adrenalin shooting through his body, and before his opponent could think of getting back to his feet Sam took a well-aimed kick at one of his shins. The man didn’t have enough air left to scream with the pain, but it registered on his face and the reaction of his leg quivering on the pavement left Sam feeling almost sorry for him.

  A small group of women had come out of the shop and were standing around the doorway giving all their sympathy to the loser and looking at Sam as if he’d crawled out of an old cheeseburger.

  He reached for his mobile again and hit redial. But JD was still engaged.

  He looked down at the man on the pavement. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked. ‘You wanna tell me about it?’

  The big man rolled on to his side and propped himself on an elbow. His lungs still didn’t function like he expected. ‘You killed Kitty,’ he gasped.

  Sam shook his head. He remembered the police telling him Katherine had a boyfriend in Nottingham. And that was the accent, that Black Country inflection which was still in the man’s speech when everything else had been knocked out of him.

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ Sam said.

  ‘You were there,’ the big man said. ‘I found the place you stayed. The landlady remembered your face.’

  ‘That’s why you took my photograph?’ Sam said. ‘Yes, I was there, but I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anyone. I was set up.’

  The man on the pavement tried to laugh but his lungs wouldn’t go further than a cough. ‘You killed her,’ he said. ‘There isn’t anyone else.’

  Sam walked away from him. He rang JD again and this time he didn’t get the engaged tone. He left the big man on the pavement and leaned back on the shop window with the phone pressed to his ear. The women took some steps away. The phone carried on ringing. Sam watched the big man struggle to his knees as JD’s message service kicked in.

  Sam switched off in case he had to listen to it again. He went back to the guy who was on his feet, but limping.

  ‘The man who killed Katherine,’ he said. ‘He’s in my house.’

  The big guy shook his head. ‘I’ve just come from there. There’s nobody answering the door.’

  ‘He’s waiting for me to show,’ Sam told him. ‘He’s got a woman with him and when he sees me coming down the street she’ll get the same treatment as Katherine.’

  ‘A woman went in there,’ the big man said. ‘Duffel-coat and a long scarf.’

  ‘That’s Alice,’ Sam told him.

  ‘Why’re you telling me this? It was you killed Katherine. You lied to the police.’

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ Sam said. ‘If I’d told the police I was in Nottingham that night, what d’you think would’ve happened?’

  ‘They’d’ve banged you away,’ the big man said. ‘And fucking whoopee.’

  ‘I need help,’ Sam said. ‘And I need it now, or another woman is gonna die.’

  ‘You’ve done for my le
g. Even if I believed you I wouldn’t be no use.’

  ‘You could hold the guy’s attention at the front while I go round the back.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘If I’d killed Katherine,’ Sam told him, ‘I wouldn’t be standing here. I’d walk away and disappear. I don’t have anything to gain by asking you to hammer on the front door of my house.’

  The big man thought about it. Eventually he said, ‘If you’re shitting me, I’ll strangle you.’ Then he said, ‘One other thing.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘This guy in the house, the one you say did for Katherine... I want him.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘No way.’

  The big man didn’t move. ‘No deal then.’

  Sam shrugged. ‘You can have him for two minutes, max.’

  ‘I’m not going to shake your hand,’ the big man said. ‘Because even if you didn’t kill her you gave her a shit time.’

  ‘Have it your own way.’

  ‘But you can call me Ruben. And if it turns out you’re taking me for some kind of ride, every time you hear that name it’ll be me getting closer to you.’ He took a couple of steps and almost fell over. ‘Why’d you do that?’ he said. ‘Kick me in the shin. Jesus, I was already on my back.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Sam said. ‘I was motoring. It seemed like the right thing to do.’

  Ruben shook his head. ‘You never hear of Queensbury Rules? How’m I gonna deliver milk on one leg?’

  ‘This isn’t our immediate problem,’ Sam told him. ‘Not for you it isn’t. But it’s gonna be my problem tomorrow morning. Plus there’s the depression, and I was just getting on top of that. Something like this could bring it all back.’

  Sam held up his hand. ‘You wanna do this thing? Get the guy?’

  ‘Sure,’ Ruben said. ‘How we gonna work it?’

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