One More Unfortunate

by Kaitlin Queen

  Matthew spoke. It was something he could do well, a part he could play. He was much as Nick remembered from their meeting the previous morning: that public school veneer overlaying everything. "Please," he was saying, staring straight out of the television at Nick. "If you were in the area, let us know. Even if you saw nothing." Today it was clear what an effort it was for Matthew to retain his outward composure. Behind every word, behind every gesture, there was a barely concealed pulse of grief, an anger Nick had sensed the previous morning but which had been more successfully contained.

  Nick stared at the screen, struck by how the two men had been affected in such different ways by what had happened. He remembered the pistol Matthew had kept in his desk. Nick realised now that if he had gone to gloat, Matthew would have shot to kill—he would have been unable to stop himself.

  He continued to speak, maintaining the thin skin of civility over his grief. "If you know someone who has been behaving unusually since last weekend," he said. "If you know someone who was out alone that night ... someone who might have been upset the next day for no accountable reason, someone who may have been excited the next day. Anything. Please call. Nobody should be faced with what we..."

  Marsh put a hand on Matthew's shoulder, and the flow of words stopped.

  Matthew turned, and for a moment his eyes seemed to meet those of Jerry's father. And then the three embraced: the widower, the grieving parents. It was a moment that reached out to Nick and twisted his gut. The Gayles had lost a daughter, he saw, but Matthew was still family, despite all that had been revealed.

  Nick sat alone in the pub, with his orange juice and his untouched plate of ham sandwiches. Twenty-six, and a faltering old car and a few books and clothes were all he had.

  Suddenly, he felt terribly low. He recognised the feeling and knew it would be so easy to just let it all slide.

  Delayed reaction, he thought. The shock of what had happened was finally filtering through to him. Or perhaps he was simply jealous. Matthew Wyse had money, family, respect. He had even had Jerry, at least for a time.

  Nick stared at his orange juice and he knew that if he could he would get himself thoroughly drunk tonight. But even that would evade him.

  Maybe he would just make himself ill, instead. A couple of vodkas and the sickness and headache would at least blot out another evening, another night. Maybe even a good part of tomorrow.

  He left his sandwiches untouched and went out into the drizzle. He knew he should take a grip on himself before the slide became a fall. He knew he should get away from this place, but he was too stubborn to flee.

  He lowered his head and made his way towards the sea front. A walk along the beach, out past the holiday camps. Leave Bathside behind him just for the afternoon. Out alone, with the sand, the salt-marshes and the sea.

  Clear his head. Get his brain working again.

  Stop the slide.

  Chapter 14

  Sunday evening, down in old Bathside. Nick Redpath chose a pub to suit his mood.

  The place was called the Anchor and once it had probably been quite grand. In about 1920, for example.

  It hadn't been decorated since then, Nick guessed. The drab wallpaper was scuffed and torn; the ceiling was brown with age and cigarette smoke. The lights were dim, the windows dirty, partially concealed by dark, sagging curtains.

  The place was packed.

  His walk, that afternoon, had lifted his spirits a little, as he had hoped it would. He had gone out along the beach as far as the first big creek, impassable except at low tide. Beyond, there was an old concrete block-hut, settled at a rakish angle into the mud. It had survived for more than fifty years, despite the pounding of the waves and the undermining efforts of coastal erosion. It would probably still be there in another fifty.

  Its endurance gave Nick a kind of perspective. In a few years' time he would be able to look back at all that had happened. He didn't know how he would see it, but the simple fact that he would be able to look back was the thing to hang on to.

  He still felt low, shabby even, but at the same time he felt the old energy seeping back into his body, and his brain. And that was why the Anchor, with its air of bursting at the seams decay felt so right: run down, but beneath it all alive.

  His thoughts were fixed on his present circumstances. The only thing tying him to Bathside now was the mystery of Jerry's death: he was determined to find some kind of explanation for what had happened on that awful night. So much jumble and confusion in his head ... he needed to get it straight, tidy up the loose ends in his mind.

  The only people left for him to speak to were Trevor Carr and Mandy Kemp. The next thing he had to do was go out to the university to talk to them. Maybe they could help him work through it all again: find a definite sequence of events, a framework by which he could begin to understand.

  He took his Coke over to the pool table, working his way slowly through the crowd. He watched the game in progress, then put some coins on the edge of the table and waited his turn.

  He wasn't going to get drunk tonight, or even try. No quickly swallowed pint to wipe out some time and make himself feel ill. He didn't want to wake up tomorrow with a fierce headache and a stiff, aching body. The Anchor may well be shabby enough to match his mood, but all these vibrant people, the shouts and laughter... He felt his spirits beginning to lift.

  His turn came around and he said to the overweight teenager who had just won, "Fancy a game?"

  The kid nodded, a little drunk. "Don't see why not," he said. He could only have been about sixteen.

  Nick broke and a ball went down. "Stripes," he said, and potted another. With the crowd, it was difficult to make room to cue at times, and he became aware that a number of nearby people were watching. After a few minutes he realised that the boy was good and he began to enjoy himself.

  He lost the game, but he had made it close, missing a chance on the black.

  The boy sank the last ball at his first attempt.

  He grinned and shook Nick's hand. "You move your head on the shot," he said. "Got to hold it still."

  Nick offered him a drink. "You move your head too," he said.

  The boy shrugged. "Either you've got it or you ain't," he said, and his eyes wandered.

  Nick fetched the drinks, and then leaned against a wall to watch the boy take on his next victim. There were two young women at the table by his side. Dark clothes, pale Goth faces. He'd noticed them earlier—watching the game, sipping at their drinks—but he hadn't looked closely. Now, one of them caught his eye. She gave a little smile and said, "You almost 'ad 'im, then." Turning to her companion, she added, "Didn't 'e nearly 'ave 'im?" Like a lot of Bathside natives, the ability to pronounce the letter H had atrophied at an early age.

  Her red-haired friend giggled into her drink and looked away, but Nick barely noticed. He was trying not stare at the one who had spoken. With her dark hair stacked up on her head and her slightly rounded features, she looked—as he saw her properly for the first time—just like the married estate agent, Karen Ferguson.

  She caught him staring and smiled again.

  He looked away.

  She didn't really look like the estate agent, he decided. Just the hair and the shape of her face. The eyes were different, the movements, the pale make-up. The voice and accent.

  He watched the pool. The overweight boy was running through this game as if it was potting practice. "You could've 'ad 'im if that black 'ad gone down," she said again.

  He shrugged. "My action's not right," he said. "He told me."

  She was rocking her glass from side to side, swilling the last mouthful around.

  He nodded at the bar. "Another one?" he asked. He was feeling reckless, now. He'd never picked anyone up in a pub before in his life: it just wasn't the place. It never seemed to work out like that.

  She took a long time making her mind up, then she glanced at her friend and said, "'Kay then. Two B and C's. And whatever you're having."


  He left the two of them giggling to each other. They were only winding him up, he realised. Get a free drink out of him, have a laugh. He didn't mind. He could share the joke for a while, maybe play some more pool, and then get back to his bed in a far better state of mind than he had found himself in at around lunch-time today.

  They were still at the table when he returned with the Bacardi and Cokes and his own plain Coke. "I'm Nick," he said, lowering himself onto a stool.

  The two of them broke into another fit of giggles.

  "It's okay," said the talker, at last. "It's just... I'm Nick, too: Nicky." It wasn't that funny a coincidence, but he laughed anyway. "An' this is my friend, Nichola."

  They were winding him up again.

  They found out that they were all from Bathside. All had lived away for a time, too. All three had worked as a bouncer at a nightclub. It passed the time.

  Sometimes, as the crowd parted, Nick noticed a group of young men at two tables by the door. Whenever he glanced across he was sure they had been looking at him. He half-recognised one of the faces, but he never had a chance to get a good look.

  "Those guys by the door," he said to Nicky at one point. He had wondered, at first, if they might be police, but quickly dismissed the idea. "They seem to know us." He thought they might be friends of the two female Nicks, maybe old boyfriends or something. He hoped it didn't mean trouble. "Do you know them?"

  Nicky and Nichola, as they still called themselves, leaned their heads together and peered melodramatically across at the group.

  "D'you recognise 'em, Nichola?" Her red-haired friend shook her head quickly, and Nicky turned, wide-eyed, to Nick. "No," she said. "Never seen 'em before in our lives. D'you recognise 'em, then?"

  Nick shook his head. "Never seen them before," he said, and they all laughed again.

  Eventually, he had another game of pool with the fat kid. With every shot he was careful to hold his entire body steady, only his cue-arm free to glide through its motion.

  He reached an easy black while his opponent still had three to pot. "Told you," said the boy. He didn't seem bothered that he was about to lose for probably the first time that night. He even seemed pleased that Nick had learnt from his advice—maybe that counted as a victory anyway, in his own personal reckoning.

  Nick chalked his cue and glanced across at his table. Quiet Nichola had disappeared, and not just to the toilet or bar—her coat and bag had gone too. Nicky smiled and mouthed, "Go on."

  It seemed that tonight was turning out quite well despite everything, and it had all been set in motion when he lost the first game. He wasn't superstitious, but he wasn't going to take any chances either. He hit the black too hard and watched it as it rattled around the jaws of the pocket and then rolled back into the middle of the table.

  "Nearly," said his opponent, and Nicky slumped her shoulders in a theatrical show of disappointment.

  He returned to his stool a few seconds later. "I guess the balls just aren't running for me tonight," he said, and finished his Coke.

  The bell had rung for last orders during the game and now the crowd was beginning to thin. Nicky had pulled on a lightweight black coat. "Walk me home?" she asked.

  He looked into her pale face, the dark make-up smeared around her eyes. He nodded, stood, offered her his arm. She slipped a hand into the crook of his elbow and, together, they went out into the night.

  "Where to?" he asked, as they turned past the old town pond and into Castle Crescent.

  "Lets just walk for a bit, shall we?"

  It was a still night, the air mild, almost muggy. The sounds of people in the streets, turned out from the pubs, seemed to carry forever.

  Nicky's grip on his arm was tight through the leather, and that made him feel good.

  Castle Crescent was named for the nineteenth century martello tower tucked away behind the curve of the road and the adjacent row of houses. It had been built by the forced labour of French prisoners during the Napoleonic wars. He struggled to think of the right thing to say, but it wouldn't come. Nicky had become quiet too, her mood changed now that they were free of the intense atmosphere of the pub and her drunk friend.

  The road ran alongside the sea-front for a short distance and when the two diverged they stayed on the Prom.

  "Where do you live?" Nick asked, eventually.

  "In a house," she promptly replied.

  "Where?"

  "In a town." She giggled, and then continued, "In a county, in a country, on a continent. The world, the solar system, the universe. Think you can find it?"

  "Sure," he said. "No trouble."

  Ahead, Stone Point stretched out into the sea, a straight, dark line. To the right, Beacon Hill loomed, its outline scabbed by the angular silhouettes of the derelict War Department buildings.

  "Lets go somewhere quiet," said Nicky, squeezing his arm even tighter. "Somewhere we can ... talk. 'Kay?"

  "Sure." Although it was quieter now, there had still been occasional knots of people in the streets. Even on the Prom, there was a man taking his retriever out for a late walk.

  They plunged into the deeper shade of the footpath which cut across Beacon Hill. Soon, the grass and trees on either side of the path were replaced by the dark shells of the old gun emplacements and other army buildings.

  They walked on for a little way and Nick's eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom.

  They stopped by a small open area and Nicky turned to Nick, put a hand up to his face so that her fingers could toy with his hair and an ear. "You give me a minute, okay?" Her voice was pitched so low he had to struggle to make out her words.

  "Sure," he said, yet again.

  She smiled, gave his cheek a playful little pinch, then backed away from him until she was off the path. She stumbled a little, caught herself, and then she walked slowly up a grassy mound, opening up her long, flimsy coat, sliding it down across her shoulders, tossing her hair.

  At the top of the mound she paused and glanced back at him, then she took her coat right off and disappeared behind a brick wall.

  He waited, impatient. He wanted her. There on the grass, up against the wall, he didn't care.

  He kicked at the ground, his hands sunk deep in the pockets of his leather jacket. He looked around at the dark shapes, the tangled undergrowth.

  He began to wonder what on earth he was doing here.

  "Okay," she said, and he left the path, impatient.

  The dark figure which appeared at the top of the mound was not Nicky.

  Its outline was more bulky, a baseball cap perched backwards on the head. It was a man. He stepped out of the shadows and stood there in silence.

  He was carrying what looked like a length of metal piping and he was smiling.

  Nick stopped and immediately glanced over his shoulder but his retreat had been cut off by two more dark figures. He turned again towards the first one and saw that there were two more. They were all young and tough-looking, in jeans and big boots, torn, baggy jumpers and sweatshirts.

  And they were all carrying clubs or lengths of piping or pieces of wood.

  He looked at the first man again and nodded at his length of pipe. "Plumbers convention, right?" he said. He could handle maybe two of them at a time, but not all five. If he could take the initiative it might just throw them, give him a slim chance.

  Then he recognised them as the group from the pub, and then he placed that half-recognised face.

  It was Jerry's brother, Andy Gayle.

  "Look," he said, realising that he was out of his depth. "You might be just about to make a mistake I'm going to regret." He resisted the urge to back away, remembering that he was surrounded.

  Andy Gayle shook his head slowly. "It's no mistake," he said. "You fucking sicko."

  "Pervert." A voice from behind.

  "Pervert." "Fucking nonce." "Sicko." "Gonna have your balls, man." A chorus rose up from all around him.

  "The pigs don't know how to deal with shit like you," said Jerry's
brother. He swung his weapon through an easy arc. "You going to start begging?"

  Cautiously, Nick turned on the spot, looking for gaps, for who might be the weakest link in the chain containing him. "I don't beg," he said. "And you are making a mistake. You hear me? Have you spoken to Matthew Wyse? He'll tell you I'm okay."

  "That wanker?"

  His only hope was to keep them talking, carry them past the crucial moment, steal their momentum.

  "Maybe a wanker, but he loved your sister, didn't he?"

  But he had forgotten that there were five of them. The first blow, a glancing thump to the shoulder, came from behind while he was still trying to stall Jerry's brother.

  He gasped, twisted sharply at the waist. He felt surprise rather than pain.

  The one who had swung at him had moved, left a gap.

  Nick charged and all five shouted. If he could only break through he knew he could outrun them.

  Something hard caught his heel and his legs tangled beneath him. He hit the ground.

  He tried to roll over, still winded, and a heavy boot struck him in the face.

  For an instant, everything was numb, distant, then something hit him in the side. He looked up and saw the shape of someone above him, a club raised, then coming down fast... A sudden burst of pain in his side again.

  He lunged and managed to grab the man's wrist before he could raise his cudgel again. Despite the sharp pain from his ribs, he hung on desperately. The man tried to kick him and as he fought for balance Nick managed to wrestle the weapon from his hands.

  Nick rolled, changing his grip on the club.

  He tried to rise to his knees so that he could counter-attack but they were all around him now, kicking, swinging wildly.

  Someone grabbed him. Tried to pull the club from his hands and he used their momentum to get to his feet in a low crouch.

  A sharp elbow to the neck sent one of them rolling away. A swing of his weapon momentarily cleared some space around him.

  It was hard to see, through tear-blurred vision and an eye that wouldn't open properly. "You got it wrong," he said. Hard to speak through puffy lips, a mouthful of blood. "One on one," he said, club in one hand, beckoning them towards him with the other. "Come on. One at a time."