Faces in the Pool

by Jonathan Gash

  Like a fool, I said, ‘No, ta. I can manage…’ and stopped.

  Behind me stood Hugo Hahn. God, but he looked tall.

  ‘Think I was trapped in the cabin, friend?’

  He laughed, all tan and teeth, sinewy the way blokes should be and never are because we’re idle and eat the wrong grub.

  ‘No,’ I said, eager to placate my way out. ‘I was worried water would come in and—’

  ‘You barricaded the wrong cabin, hey?’

  Typical of me to do right wrong. I’m pathetic. He reached, took a hook off me with such a swift motion I didn’t even notice. I’m so stupid I almost offered him my second hook. He shook his head in disbelief.

  His laughter was all Hollywood, a belly roar that cowboys in Indiana use to show their contempt for greenhorns.

  ‘So this is the great Lovejoy in action, hey?’ I wished he’d stop saying ‘hey’. It really annoyed me. He glanced behind and beckoned, his gun held so casually. He didn’t need to point it to threaten. He knew weapons. I didn’t.

  She came up the cabin steps looking demure as ever, except now she wore the look of the loved woman, her eyes puffy but exactly as I remembered her. They had betrayed all antiques, murdered my friend Tansy, sad Paltry, and poor old Smethie, who’d tried so hard to warn me, and Hahn could do almost anything, now he had all the antiques in the hold. Buy a Greek island, any political appointment, simply on the nod from a bent prime minister. International auctioneers in Bond Street, Park Lane, Manhattan, Switzerland or Austria would climb over themselves to serve him. In my daftness, I’d been the instrument of his success.

  He was smiling. ‘The penny finally dropped, Lovejoy, hey?’

  ‘Some, not all.’

  ‘Watch him, Hugo.’ She stood close to her man.

  ‘This lettuce?’ He did his Hollywood laugh. I was reminded of Burt Lancaster in his circus performer days. ‘With one bound he leaps free?’

  ‘Be careful, darling. He can be dangerous.’

  ‘You seriously think I need to be, woman? With this dolt?’

  ‘So what was it?’ I asked her, coming right out with it. ‘Remember when I said there’s only three kinds of love? Which sort was mine?’

  ‘There’s only one kind of love,’ Hahn said, interested despite himself. He still kept a weather eye on the sea, and had already clocked the two distant craft hurrying in our wake. He was a born killer made in the mould.

  ‘No, Hugo,’ I said. ‘Ask her. She knows all three.’ I looked directly at her. No watery eyes now. ‘Which was yours, in the end?’

  ‘Love is love, Lovejoy,’ she said, all defiance.

  ‘Three kinds?’ Hahn said, so I explained.

  ‘There’s larder love, Hugo – security, money, possessions. It’s a dog’s love for its master. The word cynic meant dog-like. It’s what moves a woman to leave one bloke for another, like catching a luxury express instead of some beat-up old trundler.’

  ‘Stop him talking, Hugo,’ she said. She was wrapped in a dressing gown, her hair mussier than I’d ever seen it.

  ‘Why shut me up when I don’t matter any more?’ I was talking for my life. ‘Hugo has a right to know where he stands. Didn’t you just promise him perfect sexual ecstasy for ever? I heard.’

  ‘Shut him up, darling.’

  ‘Let him talk, woman.’

  ‘The second kind of love is passion, Hugo.’ I kept my eyes on the face I’d loved with the same delirium I’d once believed only antiques could bring. ‘It is eagerness to vent, learn, take on human desire at its uttermost.’

  ‘Third?’ said the killer.

  ‘Third is in the spirit, Hugo. It doesn’t depend on greed or passion. It transcends, and is unconditional. I felt it once. I’m not sure any more.’

  ‘Hugo, darling, you see what I had to put up with?’

  ‘Interesting,’ her man said.

  ‘Most blokes hope a woman has the last kind, when it’s only greed or passion disguised.’

  ‘You’re right, bitch,’ Hugo told her. ‘He is a fool.’ I knew now I was to be eliminated. He held the bat. ‘Get below. Dress. Be back here in five minutes.’

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  And she really did simper at the command in his voice. Whatever power existed in their relationship was his, and she was his to rule. She wanted it. For a fleeting instant I was envious, but her betrayal of everything – antiques, friends – was beyond me. OK, I was angry. She’d only once said those words to me, the same words that she’d cried out to him.

  Stumbling forward, steadying myself on the rail, I saw the sea below going faster. The ship was not so steady as it felt the sea drift. He was strolling easily behind, called something cheery to Lydia.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ she answered. Had she ever said that to me in that way?

  Reaching where I’d been sick, I stepped over the ghastly patch. (Why do carrots never dissolve? Can’t the stomach handle the bloody things?) Knowing what was coming, I felt unsteady. The sickening realisation that Lydia of all people had betrayed me to join the vilest of killers, was the end. The trace memory of the woman standing near Tansy the instant before she fell to her death in Lincoln Cathedral, returned. He told me to stop. I clung one-handed to the railing and turned to be killed.

  If I’d been a hero I’d have tried to leap over the side, hoping to swim and somehow survive, though I’m a rotten swimmer.

  He slipped on the patch of vomit and cursed. I shoved forward, clumsily grabbed for the baseball bat. He let go to clutch the rail, his gun in his other hand. Gibbering with fright, I swung the bat, letting go of the railing to do it. I hadn’t the sense to try for the thin end, so only flailed with the wrong end. He raised his gun hand to shield himself. I felt myself start to fall but thought, What the hell, reversed the stick and swung it. It clapped him on the temple. The bastard was still smiling, like he was about to say, ‘What does this oaf think he’s up to?’ All in an instant blood spouted from his head, a splash dotting my eye, then he slid down to the deck and lodged halfway over the side. His chest stopped any further movement.

  Head down to the sea, he hung there. Hell, but we seemed to be going faster.

  I dropped the bat thing over the side – did they float? Wood should. With luck it would bob over to Eire, maybe plant itself and like Joseph of Arimathea’s Christmas-flowering hawthorn Cretaegus at mystic Glastonbury. I clambered to my feet. I’d not intended to kill him. Fear, probably, or trying to get away. And it was nothing to do with losing Lydia. I’m not that kind of person. I mean that.

  Wearily, I went to the bridge. No Lydia. She must be tarting herself up. I judged the ship’s position, and turned the wheel so the vessel dragged her head round. At a rough estimate, she was now some three miles out on the Irish Sea. Four boats were scurrying after me with that odd bouncy grace little vessels have. Police? Time to get clear. I could come alongside North Pier if I got the speed right before Blackpool’s finest caught me. I increased the ship’s speed by a knot or two – more guesswork – then lodged the wheel with the hook, and went down the steps and knocked.

  ‘Coming, darling!’ she trilled. Well, I’d always had little or nothing, and she was onto a winner with hero Hugo Hahn. Once. In life.

  Clambering back up to the bridge, I saw we seemed to be speeding. Had I misjudged the lever? Trembling, I was too tired to muck about. In any case, I wouldn’t know what I was doing. We were batting – sorry – along at a fair old pace towards the great North Pier. It didn’t look so pleasant now, but I could slow down to get off.

  ‘Is Lovejoy gone?’ she asked, bright as a button, coming up.

  She looked dazzling. Had she ever dressed up like that for me? Yes, several times. Beside her I must have looked a tramp. Why had she never been ashamed of me? Or had she just kept quiet?

  Her expression changed. She recoiled, staring. I realised I must be splattered with blood. Like a fool I raised a blood soaked hand to smooth my hair, with my usual success.

  ‘Hugo,’
she managed. Then with alarm, ‘Hugo?’

  ‘He had to go,’ I said, sorry for her. ‘He took the boat I came in.’

  Blood seemed to drain away from her face like berry juice from a tapped flask.

  ‘Lovejoy?’ she said, making sure.

  ‘What did you think he was going to do, Lydia?’ Hard to keep bitterness out. ‘Talk crops and weather? Invite me to be there, advise international buyers? I’ve already done that for him.’

  ‘No.’ Her voice was flat.

  ‘He wanted to kill me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He had a gun.’

  ‘That’s blood,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’ I didn’t say it was Hugo’s. I have a sensitive side.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I persuaded him not to kill me.’ Her eyes were on my scraped knuckles. ‘I said I mistook the antiques, and that the genuine ones were those left ashore.’

  ‘That can’t be true. They were all burnt…’

  ‘In Somnell House?’ By now well into lies, I didn’t care. For once let her do the guessing. I was fed up doing it all the time. Everybody leaves me to work out which are the true lies.

  ‘Hugo wouldn’t leave me.’

  ‘Well, he has, love.’ True, true.

  ‘Did you do something to him?’

  ‘Me? To the only man who could be what you want?’ It was the precious phrase she’d used. You are the only man who can be what I want. I’d once been awarded that.

  ‘He will come back for me.’

  ‘Yes. He said so, Lydia.’ My kindly side, still there.

  ‘I knew it! He wouldn’t leave without me.’

  Not strictly true. Uneasily, I glanced along the port side behind her, as if Hahn was going to come climbing back like in those double-ending Hollywood frighteners. In her voice was the contempt of a lifetime for the likes of me.

  ‘Did you always think that about me, Lydia?’

  ‘Of course. I finally saw you as the utter worm you will always be.’

  She stood by the cabin gangway, above the steps that had taken her down to bliss with Hugo.

  In that moment I saw how near we were to the pier. It was rising steadily from the dark sea and beginning to move at the bow of the ship with an alarming speed. What, a mile? Less? They measured distances in cables, nautical miles and such. Who knew what they meant?

  ‘Why did Hugo kill Tansy, Lydia?’

  She blazed into a cold temper – she never did do hot. ‘You need to ask, Lovejoy? You preferred that tart, so she had to go. Hugo explained it and it all became clear. I too could have a destiny. Me. I have a right to own, to love, to progress. To have ambition.’

  Hugo had done a good job in changing her. Or maybe it had simply been there in Miss Prim all the time, a murderous Lydia lurking latent within, waiting for the mighty Hugo Hahn to come along? I stared, appalled.

  ‘You killed Tansy?’

  ‘I had to. It was my commitment to Hugo.’

  Well, poor Hugo was committed now. I told myself I’d never had any intention of hurting him, not the way I finished up doing. I must have gone berserk. I’d been driven by fear, not anger, nor hate. I mean that most sincerely. I felt sorry.

  ‘And Paltry?’

  ‘Hugo had special advisors. Paltry overheard Hugo telling me his ideas. Hugo’s friends did it.’

  ‘Old Mr Smethirst?’

  ‘Hugo’s syndicate bought that private hospital. He has bought a Mediterranean island for me, my wedding gift.’

  She smiled tears at the beauty of their future together. Charming, truly romantic and full of gaiety. (And love. Mustn’t forget love.)

  ‘And me?’ I asked it without bitterness, because I love (sic) a sweet ending. Truly.

  The pier’s black line was rising hugely from the sea. We were near and closing. I could hear the sloshing sea and faint shouts.

  ‘You, Lovejoy? Hugo has definite plans for you. We should say goodbye.’ She smiled with certainty at thoughts of my doom.

  She pointed out to sea. Three chasing craft were closing in on us, the fourth racing for shore. One was hooting, searchlights wagging about the sky.

  ‘Hugo’s people, Lovejoy. He will leave you somewhere, I shouldn’t doubt. I shan’t mind where.’

  ‘Alive or dead, you mean?’ Two furlongs now at a guess, and lessening.

  ‘You expect me to plead for you, Lovejoy?’ Her luscious lip curled. ‘I wouldn’t lend a finger if you were in hell.’

  ‘Goodbye, Lydia.’

  She looked her surprise and almost laughed.

  ‘Yes, Lovejoy. Goodbye.’

  ‘And farewell, love.’

  She was still surprised as the bow struck the pier uprights and careered sideways in an ugly twisting movement that flung Lydia on her back down the gangway steps. She struck her head on the first of the cabin doors. I heard the horrid crack. I was carried by the ship’s impetus and thumped into the side of the bridge, my head and shoulder ramming the control panel. Something short-circuited with a blue flash and shed sparks. The ship started a horrid whining, engines coughing as she tried to shake free of the tangle of metal, pier and bow caught together. She worried the metal struts like an attack dog does a felon.

  Dizzily, I crawled to the hatch and made the side gangway. Down I slid, headfirst. The small craft was still there and afloat, its engine still muttering. I pulled the painter clear, got in and shoved off. People were yelling and sirens doing their whoop-whoop as I pushed the tiller and slowly sloshed clear to seaward. The Maeonia didn’t seem to be sinking.

  ‘Hey, you!’ some geezer bawled over some electric Tannoy thing.

  My boat was caught in a searchlight, a coastguard vessel standing some furlongs off.

  ‘You! Pull clear this instant!’

  ‘I’m trying! I’m trying!’ I bawled back. ‘Can I help? I was night fishing near the pier when that bloody great thing came crashing—’

  ‘Pull away eastwards. That is an order!’

  ‘OK, mate,’ I called, then added feebly, ‘Aye aye, sir,’ trying for maritime yak. Where the hell was east? I chugged away, anywhere, from the scene.

  The sea spray made my eyes sting so they ran sea tears all the way to the sandy shore. How long was it, five minutes? No, more.

  At the main beach, I nudged onto the sands and climbed out into the shallows.

  Shivering at the cold – probably it was only the cold – I walked unseen into the night sea and sat down gasping for breath as the water soaked me. I let myself flop about as if I were half-drowned, rolling over and over. I stayed there for maybe half an hour until I heard the hullabaloo lessen. By then I hoped the blood and the rest of the gunge had washed off me, or that it was at least mixed up with enough of the sea’s contaminants to raise doubt in the most dedicated forensic pathologists. Crawling eventually to the dry sand, I dropped my stolen jacket into the sea and stood trembling. Then I walked up onto the beach.

  Not once did I look back at the rescue ships and police boats clustering round the good ship Maeonia and the pier. I was just glad no flames had started. The antiques would be safe. They were sure to have packed them well. Great planners, after all.

  Love is never needing to trust, I suppose.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  slanting: thievery (Aus. slang)

  Cold as an eskimo’s tool, I woke on a promenade bench. A bloke was sitting nearby, shouting into a mobile, demanding his taxi. The people I least admire are reporters. Worse scavengers than me. The giant Pleasure Beach, with its spectacular Big Wheel and Big Dipper, and the wahwahs hurtling about had roused me. The newshound yelled he was ‘working against the odds’. He snapped his phone shut.

  ‘Hard night?’ he asked, not caring.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Couldn’t have been like mine.’ He spoke with the usual proud grievance. People who do sod all always want worship.

  ‘Bad? Good?’ Despite my exhaustion I felt interested. How would t
he local rags print my calamity? Was he airwave or muck – meaning a broadcaster or merely newspapers?

  ‘Brill.’ He felt compelled to talk. ‘Good for news. An ocean-goer got stolen, some maniac slammed it into the old North Pier. Didn’t sink. The plod’s gone berserk. Two dead aboard. Fucking Marie Celeste.’

  ‘Nobody was dead on the Marie Celeste.’

  He eyed me curiously. ‘Right. I tried to get to it. The plod blocked it. Couldn’t even hire a fucking boat. Like D-Day out there. Coastguard, fire engines. Nobody knows what the frigging hell’s going on.’

  ‘Whose boat?’ Two dead, he’d just told me. Hugo and… I wasn’t going to be the one who told Mavis.

  ‘Some old-money syndicate. Antiques cargo.’

  One of the open-topped trams, Art Deco in coloured livery, came slewing along the promenade doing its whoop-whoop. ‘One of the boats, so early?’ I said. A boat, in local parlance, is an open-topped promenade tram.

  He gave the tourist tram a glance. ‘Sightseers love destruction.’

  ‘Who got topped?’

  ‘A bloke, battered to death. Then a bird on a gangway. Police spokesmen are prats.’

  ‘So you got the story.’ I felt wobbly and wanted to scarper.

  ‘Some Fraud Squad goon is up from the Smoke. The bastard never heard of press freedom.’

  ‘Who is the goon?’

  He looked. ‘Do you know something I don’t? Tight-arse called Kine. Bela Lugosi from a Hammer Horror.’

  ‘What more do you need?’ I was drawn in.

  ‘Something’s going on. I’d get a frigging knighthood if I could dig it out. Big noon meeting in the Free Trade Hall.’

  ‘Manchester?’ Twenty miles off.