The Sleepless

by Graham Masterton

  Michael and Joe went into the kitchen with its plain scrubbed table and its big old-fashioned sink and its tinkling ceramic mobiles of swans and yachts and vegetables. Michael opened the icebox and took out two bottles of Michelob, tossing one over to Joe. Then he sat astride a chair and unscrewed the cap of his beer and took a quick, uptilted swig.

  ‘It definitely sounds like somebody’s trying to cover something up,’ he said. ‘The question of course is what, and whether it’s meaningful in terms of any insurance claim.’

  Joe said, ‘John O’Brien’s policy covers accidental death only. It specifically excludes suicide or homicide.’

  ‘And how much exactly is it worth?’

  ‘Two hundred and seventy-eight million dollars and change.’

  ‘So it’s obviously in Plymouth’s interest to show that he was killed deliberately, or that he planned his own death?’

  Joe swallowed beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, yes.’

  Michael thought for a while, taking regular swigs from the bottle. Then he looked up at Joe and said, ‘Good luck, then.’

  ‘You realize that I’m asking you to get involved,’ said Joe.

  ‘Joe – I quit. I don’t want to get involved. Patsy and I dropped out and we’re perfectly happy the way we are.’

  Joe said blandly, ‘You have a bank overdraft of 6,358 dollars and no prospect of any more money until the end of October, when your next royalty is due from Marine Developments, Inc., which I can advise you in advance will be something less than 1,500 dollars.’

  Michael stared at him. ‘How the hell did you find that out?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Michael, you know the routine. You don’t go duck hunting without a gun, do you?’

  Michael knew what Joe was talking about. It was standard practice for insurance claims investigators to check into bank accounts and credit ratings and confidential medical reports. Unlike the police, they didn’t have to be so particular about search warrants or the rules of evidence. During his nine-year career with Plymouth Insurance, Michael had regularly paid off bank officials to let him take a look at private bank statements. But now that he was a victim, he felt exposed and angry, and humiliated that Joe had found out how broke they were.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you had no damned right to do that, no right at all.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Joe, although he didn’t sound sorry in the slightest. ‘But, you know, if you’d been flush, it probably would have been a waste of my time driving all the way down here.’

  Michael said, ‘Believe me, it was a waste of your time, and mine too. I may need money but I don’t need it that bad.’

  ‘Michael ... I’m making a special effort to be nice here. You think I would have come down here for nothing? I hate the beach. All that sea. All that fucking sand. Look – it’s a one-off job. You go in, you sort it out, you collect your money and you go home. That’s all I’m asking.’ He paused to see what kind of an impression he had made, and then he crossed himself and added, ‘It’ll be the first and last time, I promise. You have my personal guarantee.’

  Michael said, Joe, you must have half-a-dozen guys who are easily as good as I ever was. Not only that, I’ve been out of it for nearly two years. Most of my contacts have moved away, or died, or been promoted. My Filofax is a museum-piece these days. Half the numbers ring and ring and nobody answers.’

  Joe swallowed beer and drummed his podgy fingers on the deal tabletop and looked out of the window. He cleared his throat. It was obvious that he had something on his mind, but he wasn’t going to say what it was, not without coaxing, anyway. At last, Michael said, ‘There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me?’

  A raised eyebrow. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t screw me around, Joe, you and I go back way too far.’

  ‘All right, yes,’ Joe admitted. ‘There’s something I’m not telling you.’

  ‘Well? What is it?’

  ‘It’s grade-one confidential. I got it right from the tippety-top. I had to swear that I wouldn’t tell you what it was unless and until you agreed to take over the O’Brien investigation.’

  ‘If you told me now, do you think that it would change my mind?’

  ‘Without a doubt.’

  ‘So what’s the problem? You don’t trust me, or what? I mean, who do you think I’m going to tell?’

  ‘Michael, Michael ... of course I trust you. But, you know, even beaches have ears. If I were to tell you, and you still didn’t agree to work on this investigation, and somehow this particular piece of information leaked out, then they’d hang my ass out to dry. And we’re not just talking reprimands. We’re talking ass jerky.’

  Michael stood up. Joe watched him without blinking as he circled around the table. ‘I’m sorry, Joe,’ Michael told him. ‘I don’t want to sound unappreciative, or anything like that. I mean, thank you for thinking of me. But, as far as I’m concerned, Rocky Woods was it. That was the finish. I’d rather be 6,358 dollars overdrawn in heaven than have an expense account in hell.’

  Joe was relentless. ‘I’ll pay you 25,000 and one half of one per cent of whatever you save us. Twelve-and-a-half thousand upfront, now, in whatever currency you care to name. Roubles, zlotys – Zambian kwachas, if you like, they’re about 2.16 to the US dollar.’

  ‘Joe ... I said no.’

  ‘Tell me at least that you want to think it over.’ Joe’s face was a mask of glistening sweat.

  ‘I don’t want to think it over. The answer is no. There isn’t anything that you can say or do that will make me change my mind.’

  ‘Thirty thousand, with 15,000 upfront? And I mean 15,000 here and now, cash in your hand, no more debts, no more worries, and I’ll take you all out to the Lobster Shack to celebrate.’

  Michael emphatically shook his head. All the same, he had to admit that he was very tempted. He and Patsy had struggled so hard since he had quit his job and moved down here, and yet all they had managed to do was to become poorer and shabbier. Recently he had been plagued every morning when he woke up by the most disturbing of self-doubts. What was he really trying to achieve, drinking beer and dreaming dreams, the owner of very little more than a tacky, tatty seashore vacation home, two pairs of jeans and a rusting Mercury with an oil haemorrhage? He knew in his heart that he would never have the drive to finish and market his board game, not the way in which Home and Abbott had striven to develop Trivial Pursuit. He would probably never mush across the ice to reach the magnetic North Pole, either. He would probably never achieve anything of any significance; and he would probably die more broke than he was now.

  But the memory of Rocky Woods was bloody and dark and pungent, like a childhood nightmare that comes loping after you even during the hours of daylight. He couldn’t even trust himself to think about it in a downwind way. Rocky Woods had been Hades on earth; the massacre of the innocents; fire and brimstone and buckets of blood. On March 17 two years ago, at 5:05 in the evening, an L10-11 of Midwest Airlines had exploded over Westwood, southwest of Boston, three minutes after taking off from Logan International. The fuselage had split ongitudinally, and 312 men, women and children had fallen 2,500 feet into the Rocky Woods Reservation.

  For over a minute and a half, it had literally rained people.

  Joe and Michael had been assigned by Plymouth Insurance to investigate the cause of the crash. They had spent all night and most of the next day following the ambulance teams from one body to another, counting them and identifying them and marking their positions. Michael had come across a birch tree that appeared from a distance to be blossoming. It was only when he approached it that he realized it was blossoming with human hands.

  He hadn’t slept properly for more than six weeks afterwards. Then one morning he had put down his phone in the middle of a conversation with the Boston Fire Department about melting-points, walked out of the offices, and never gone back. At first, Edgar B
edford had wanted to sue him for breach of contract, but Joe had showed Edgar Bedford some of the worst photographs of Rocky Woods and that had persuaded him (grudgingly) to go easy.

  Even now, eighteen months later, Michael still dreamed of making his way through those dark and smoky woods, with flashlights criss-crossing everywhere, and helicopters roaring overhead. He still dreamed of the little girl he had found, sitting under a tree with her eyes open, as if she were still alive. He had actually shouted out, ‘There’s one alive here!’ even as he realized that it was impossible for anyone to have survived a free fall from 2,500 feet, and that what he was looking at, in fact, was only half a girl, from the waist upward. She was still holding a blue Grover doll from Sesame Street, and her hair was fine and blonde like corn-silk.

  More than anything else, the memory of that little girl meant that he could never go back to his old job. He had even found out her name and address: Sarah-May Williams, from Alsace Drive, Indiana, aged four. Both her parents had died, too.

  Between them, he and Joe had looked at every one of the victims – all except for one, a sixteen-year-old girl called Elaine Parker. They had found her purse and her luggage and one of her shoes, but Elaine Parker had vanished for ever into Rocky Woods, as if she had never even lived.

  Joe said, ‘Give me a break, will you, Michael? Tell me you’ll think it over.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Joe. I don’t have to.’

  ‘Not even for old times’ sake?’

  At that moment, the kitchen door opened, and Patsy came in, flushed and hot, carrying an empty plastic pail. ‘That’s all done,’ she said. Then, ‘Not even what for old times’ sake?’

  ‘Not even nothing for old times’ sake,’ said Michael, putting his arm around her shoulders. ‘Joe and I were just catching up on some memories.’

  ‘He told me outside that he had an interesting proposition to put to you,’ said Patsy. She drew back the gingham curtain under the sink and put away the pail. Then she sat down and stuck out her left leg so that Michael could pull off her pink rubber boot. He put his hand under the heel and tugged it off. Patsy wiggled her toes. ‘My feet are all sweaty now. Was it anything good?’

  Michael shook his head. ‘Joe just thought that I might be able to help him out.’

  ‘What with? Come on, Michael, we could use a little more money right now, couldn’t we? Jason needs some new sweatshirts, and if we don’t have the car serviced soon, it’s going to give up the ghost for good.’

  ‘Attagirl,’ said Joe, lifting his beer bottle in salute. ‘That’s telling him.’

  ‘I don’t want to do it, that’s all,’ said Michael, defensively.

  ‘Well, what is it? It can’t be all that unpalatable, can it?’

  ‘Look,’ said Michael, ‘I gave up insurance work because I didn’t want to do it any more. I’m finished with it. Can’t you understand that?’

  ‘I told you,’ Joe said, slyly. ‘It’s a one-off job. In and out. No strings attached, nothing.’

  ‘No, Joe,’ Michael told him. ‘Absolutely and positively no.’

  Patsy linked arms with him. There were tiny beads of perspiration on her upper lip. She gave his arm a squeeze and said, ‘What does it pay?’

  ‘Michael’s being tough,’ Joe replied. ‘I offered him thirty big ones, with one half of one per cent of anything he saves us. But there you go. A moral principle is a moral principle. A no is a no.’

  Patsy stared up at Michael in disbelief. ‘He offered you 30,000 dollars and you turned him down?’

  Michael felt himself flushing. ‘Come on, sweetheart. I gave it up. If I can’t make a success of doing what I want to do, then what kind of a man am I supposed to be? It’s like admitting that I can’t hack it. It’s like throwing in the towel.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Patsy demanded. ‘Joe’s offering you a chance to do something you’re very good at. How can that be throwing in the towel? And talking of towels, we could use a whole set of new ones. Most of them are worn to rags.’

  Joe drank beer and grinned. ‘Do you know something, Michael?’ he said. ‘You can never win against a woman.’

  But Michael slowly shook his head. ‘I’m not doing it, Joe. Not for thirty million dollars.’

  ‘Michael –’ Patsy began, but Michael raised his hand and said, ‘Later, okay? We’ll talk it over later.’

  Joe stood up, and set his empty bottle down on the table. He picked up his hat, stared into it as if he half-expected to find something interesting inside, like money, or the answer to all of his problems, and then put it on.

  ‘You can’t say I didn’t try,’ he said, with genuine regret in his voice.

  ‘It was good to see you, whatever,’ Michael told him. ‘Why don’t you bring Marcia down sometime for Sunday brunch?’

  ‘Well, thanks for the invite, but I don’t think so. Marcia hates the beach as much as I do. Besides ... I wouldn’t like to take food from the mouths of a starving inventor and his family.’

  ‘Joe – ‘ Michael warned him, but Joe took hold of his hand and slapped him on the back and said, ‘Only kidding. Only kidding.’

  Michael walked him out to his car, a brand-new Cadillac Seville, in shining midnight blue metallic. Patsy stayed up on the boardwalk, her blonde curls fluffing in the breeze. A seagull flew overhead, keening and crying.

  ‘You know what they say about seagulls,’ Joe remarked, as he opened his car door. ‘They’re supposed to be an omen. Bringers of bad news.’

  ‘That’s what they say about you, too, Joe,’ said Michael, and he wasn’t really joking.

  Joe backed up his car on the sandy roadway, gave them a wave, and then drove off. Michael stood on the sidewalk for a long time watching him go, until the sun glanced sharply off his door mirror and then he was gone. Michael climbed slowly back up the wooden steps to where Patsy was standing, and made a resigned face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘He wanted me to look into that helicopter crash – the one that killed John O’Brien and his family.’

  ‘And you couldn’t face it?’

  Michael pursed his lips, and gave her a quick shake of his head.

  ‘But you wouldn’t have to look at the bodies, would you?’

  ‘Of course I would. You have to know how they died, where they died ... you have to check the positions where they were found.’

  ‘And you really can’t do it?’

  Michael stood close beside her, grasping the splintery wooden rail. ‘Ever since that night when Joe and I had to search through Rocky Woods, my head’s been as close to the edge as anybody’s head can get. I got out because it was either that or going totally Fruit-Loop. I can’t explain what that experience did to me, and I don’t really expect you to understand why I can’t take a job that would solve all of our money problems with one snap of the fingers.’

  Patsy took hold of his arm and kissed him. ‘Michael ... I don’t have to understand. I couldn’t understand, could I? Not unless I’d been there, not unless I’d seen it for myself. But I don’t have to understand because I trust you. I know you would have done it if you could. I trust you and I love you, and the last thing in the world I want is for anything to hurt you. I’m not going to sell your peace of mind for the price of some new towels.’

  Michael kissed her hair, and then her forehead, and then her lips. ‘Something’s going to turn up,’ he promised her. ‘I can feel it in the air.’

  The seagull wheeled and fluttered overhead, balancing itself against the wind. Every now and then it cried like a baby; or a long-lost child; or a bringer of bad news.

  He was lying in bed that night when the world opened underneath him and he plummeted into the darkness. For one long suspended moment he was hanging in mid-air, with the dark landscape slowly turning beneath him, and pinprick lights sparkling in the distance. There was no slipstream, rushing past his ears, only silence, but he knew that he was falling and he knew that he was falling fast.

  He was aware of other people falling, all arou
nd him, a silent hailstorm of people. Nobody was screaming, nobody was crying out. They were simply dropping together through the darkness, waiting for the moment when the trees would suddenly rush up to them and they would collide with the ground.

  He waited and waited. He was so frightened that he was scarcely able to breathe. Perhaps the ground wouldn’t come to meet him. Perhaps he would fall for ever, down and down, into the night. But he could see the lights going out, one by one, then faster, as the hills rose up all around him. He knew then for certain that he was going to die.

  Terrified, he flailed out with both arms, trying to grab hold of anything that might save him, trying to fly. He felt something against his left hand, and he snatched it, missed it, snatched it again. It was a young girl, who was falling beside him. She couldn’t save him: they were both doomed to fall together. But he held her close, held her as tight as he could.

  It was only then that he realized she was staring at him through the darkness. He could see the pale gleam of her open eyes. He thought: Oh God, she’s dead already, and he reached down and realized that he was holding only half a girl, a child’s torso with nothing below the waist but bloody rags.

  He screamed and twisted, but somehow the girl’s torso managed to cling on to him, and he couldn’t break free. He felt her chilly blood trickling down his thighs. He heard the hollow sound of the wind, as it blew into her empty body cavity. He felt the cold, moist touch of her cheek.

  Her lips came close to his ear, and he distinctly heard her whispering, Don’t let me fall! Don’t let me fall!

  Then both of them slammed into the ground and he opened his eyes and he was all rolled up tight and tense in bed, slippery with sweat, his teeth clenched, his muscles so tight that his calves were racked with cramp.