Cannonbridge

by Jonathan Barnes

  WHEN MARIA AWAKES it is full dark. It must be the small hours of the morning as the gas lamps have been extinguished on the street outside. Indeed, the darkness is so total that it seems to her to be almost the darkness of the countryside. Her first thought is that, by some miracle, she has been returned home, that she has woken in St John’s once more and that all is well.

  Gradually, she remembers and becomes aware of her surroundings. Boston. The Kittiwake. She must be in his room, she realises. He must have placed her in his own bed. But if she is in the bed, then where…?

  A voice in the darkness: “You’re awake.”

  “Yes.” The word is whispered. She scarcely dares to move. “Have you been… watching over me?” The concept ought to be a disquieting one and yet, somehow, for all her grave experiences, in this place, with this man and at this time, it does not seem so. Rather, she feels, unexpectedly, a certain comfort in his proximity.

  “Is there anything that I can fetch for you? Food? Water?”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  “I want you to understand that, so long as you remain here, you are quite safe. You are under my protection now.”

  “Thank you. But I need… to get to New York.”

  “I see. Then, perhaps, you’ll let me help?”

  “Why ever would you want to, sir? I can offer you nothing.”

  “I try to help people. Where I can.”

  “You must be a man of god.” For the first time since she has awoken, the woman seems a little afraid.

  “No.” Her saviour sounds uncertain. “At least, I do not think so. Rather what I do… I think it is as a kind of penance, I think, for deeds yet to be committed.”

  “How is that possible, sir?”

  “I do not know. I do not know.”

  Only silence between them. Then, very softly, the man speaks again.

  “Will you tell me now, if you wish, why those men are pursuing you? I sense that they possess… considerable determination. A certain ruthlessness also.”

  The woman does not reply.

  “I promise that whatever you say shall make not the slightest difference. I have promised to protect you and that pledge shall stand. I make no judgement of any man or woman.”

  “I think…”

  “Yes?”

  “That you should tell me first.”

  “Me? Of what?”

  “I am… curious. Your words are strange. You are not, I think, quite as other men are.”

  “Madam, I am far from certain what manner of man I am. Indeed, I have travelled widely and sought much wisdom upon the subject yet still I have no firm conclusion. Merely suspicions, you see. Merely bad dreams.”

  “Yet you try to do good?”

  “As much as I can. Fortune seems to strew such opportunities in my path. Yet there remain… moments when I seem to have no life of my own at all. I simply fade from the world.”

  “Perhaps you are unwell, sir. It might behove you to consult a reputable physician.”

  “I have visited many such men yet they have found no physical cause for my… uncertainties.”

  “Then a doctor of a different kind, perhaps? Though, not, sir, for the sake of your own soul, I beg you, a priest.”

  “Now there you speak from experience, I think?”

  “I do, sir.” And she shudders, Maria Monk, she shudders in the night.

  “You spoke of the soul. I have of late begun to fear for the sanctity of my own. I believe, you understand, that it is in some manner encircled and in the gravest peril. I fancy myself like some winter traveller alone in the forest who, strayed too far from the path, discovers, in a hideous moment of realisation, that he is quite surrounded, by wild wolves, that they have tracked him in the snow and that they are now but a leap from his throat.”

  “I do believe I know, sir, whereof you speak.”

  “Yes. I sensed somehow that you might.” Cannonbridge shifts uneasily in his chair. “Maria, I have been told that there is some change due to take place within me, some transformation which will mean that, quite soon now, I am no longer to be the person that you find today. And I have begun to suspect—I have begun to fear—that my apotheosis is almost at hand.”

  “You should not be so fearful, Mr Cannonbridge, lest fear make of you its servant. In spite of all that I have witnessed, all that I have endured, I still believe in my heart that goodness is inherent in man and that it shall in the end prevail over evil.”

  “Then I admire your courage, madam. You spoke of what you have endured. You need tell me nothing if you do not wish it but I should be happy to hear you speak further of those dark times.”

  Maria stares into the gloom, her eyes blank and glassy. “Tell me, Mr Cannonbridge, have you heard tell of the Black Nunnery of Montreal?”

  It seems that the woman has succeeded in shocking even Mr Cannonbridge. He leans forward in his chair and his voice is laced with horror. “Then…” He murmurs, swallows hard. “The rumours are true?”

  “Worse, Mr Cannonbridge. Whatever the nature of the gossip that you have heard, the truth, believe me, is unutterably worse.”

  He is about to ask her to continue when there comes a knocking at the door. It is not a ferocious nor is it an insistent sound. Rather it is sly. It is careful. It is insidiously polite.

  It comes again, a gentle tapping, which might almost be that of a lover who, treading lightly down the corridor in the watches of the night, comes to pay amorous court to his mistress.

  Both occupants of the Chrysalis Suite, however, know that this is far being from the truth. In a single, swift and sinuous motion, Cannonbridge rises to his feet.

  “Stay here,” he hisses. “Whatever you hear, however frightened you become—I pray you, do not leave this room.”

  His tone is, as she has come to expect, sympathetic and even kindly, yet freighted with a species of subcutaneous menace.

  Miss Monk does as she has been asked and we should doubtless do the same. We will not follow Mr Cannonbridge from the safety of that expensive boudoir and step with him out into the corridor where, with quiet fury in his heart, he goes to meet his callers. No, rather shall we stay here, within, in relative safety and in the company of Maria.

  Let us instead examine her face as she listens to what transpires in the hall beyond.

  At first, her expression is watchful, careful, unsurprised. She is well-used to pursuit. Much of her life has been spent as the quarry, of one kind or another, of men. She knows of their appetites, their clumsy lusts, their petulant brutalities. She wonders for an instant, almost hopeful, if she might have found in Cannonbridge one of that sex whose instincts are gentler and more complex, only to dismiss the notion after a spell of sombre reflection—a shift half-wistful, half born of cynical experience.

  So now she listens as her ally treads softly to the door and opens it upon what she knows to be her pursuers. She listens to what shreds of conversation can be heard—the low, determined tones of Cannonbridge, the voices of the men in the bottle-green suits, first wheedling, then flecked with menace before bursting into roars of insistence.

  No. No, in this last observation she must be mistaken. No roar of demand is this but rather one of surprise and of pain. There itcomes again. And there is movement also—the noise of flesh on flesh and bone upon bone, of shattering and dislocation, of the expert appliance of force to the frail physical form. There follows what sounds like a protracted whimper, cut short. Then, for a time, there is silence. Then, a soft, male approach.

  She braces herself, sits up against the headboard and gathers the sheets around her as the flimsiest protection.

  A figure enters the darkened room. It is Cannonbridge, evincing no sign of exertion, treading with smooth, feline confidence.

  “Those gentlemen,” he says, “shall not trouble you again.”

  Maria gazes up at him, wide-eyed in the murk.

  “How can I thank you?” she begins before, growing sterner, despising herself a little for h
er girlishness: “They will send others.”

  Cannonbridge nods. “Then we should leave at once. For now, at least, we still possess the advantage of surprise.”

  With the ease of one long accustomed to violence and change, Maria rises and prepares, dispassionately, to leave.

  Cannonbridge examines his reflection in the mirror, adjusts his hair and slips a pouch of money from the top drawer of the escritoire into his jacket pocket. He leaves a folded note for the staff to find in the morning.

  Soon, the girl nods. She is ready. The man takes her hand.

  “Come with me,” he says, “but, please, I implore you, when we pass those gentlemen in the hall outside, do not look at their faces.”

  But as they step out into the corridor Maria cannot resist a few quick, darting glances downwards as they pass the two sprawled bodies which the author has propped neatly against the wall. She sees at once what has been done to them—the breakages and abrasions, the bruising and subtle lacerations, the deft, almost painterly remodelling of bone—and finds that she cannot withhold her dark respect.

  Then they are away, her hand in his, out of the hallway, down the stairs, before, escaping the hotel itself, they run out into the night, fleeing into darkness, throwing themselves into the maw of the city.

  NOW

  AT FIRST, TOBY believes that he is woken by a woman’s scream.

  The sound, which he takes to be that of a keening shriek, penetrates his sleep and urges him back to consciousness. He wills his eyes to open, stirs with a grouchy drowsiness, wriggles upright in his too-big double bed and listens.

  Only silence. For a moment the dream from which he has been summoned flickers across his memory, and is gone. He feels the sense that something of importance has been taken from him but then the noise comes again and this mournful sense too is lost.

  It is not, of course, the sound of weeping which has woken him. He recognises it now that he hears it again whilst clearer in his mind and he wonders how it was that he was ever so mistaken. There has been no woman, after all, in this place for weeks.

  The doorbell is ringing—shrill and insistent.

  Something about the sound of it, its vigour and duration, persuades Dr Judd that the caller is no postman or crank, no Jehovah’s Witness or door-to-door canvasser, no mendicant or pamphleteer.

  The ball is in motion, he thinks, unsure where the thought has come from, as he rises hurriedly, steps out of the bedroom and treads towards the door. Gravity is at work and descent has already begun.

  One final, mechanical shriek and Toby answers, wrenching open the door without consideration as to how he will appear to his visitor: tangle-haired and unshaven and unkempt, his skin pouchy and raw.

  “Yes? What do you want?”

  There is a stranger standing before him—or so, at least, Toby believes before he appreciates the truth. My perception is decaying, he thinks, wondering, with an arm’s-length curiosity, if he might not, quietly and without any particular fuss, be going mad.

  The man who has woken him is stocky, well-built and thicknecked. He wears a t-shirt which has a slogan written upon it for one of the most famous corporations in the world. A billboard, Toby thinks, a walking billboard idling on my threshold. Then he looks again and sees purpose in the man’s eyes, a suggestion of authority.

  Toby says: “Sergeant Angeyo.”

  Angeyo shrugs. “Off duty now. Call me Isaac.”

  “Then you must call me Toby,” says the academic vaguely, kneejerk politeness trumping any other reaction. “But, can I ask, what are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in, Toby? We’ve got to talk. Talk about something important.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  Angeyo runs a hand across his chin in an oddly nervous gesture. “You see, there’s something bothering me. Something which just won’t let me go.”

  DR JUDD AND Sergeant Angeyo are sitting at close quarters in Toby’s stuffy sitting room. Both have a cup of milkless tea before them. Toby has been to the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face whilst the policeman waited on the sofa, tapping with an awful jumpy restlessness the face of his watch.

  Somewhere outside a lawnmower or a strimmer or a mechanical leaf-blower has been pressed into service. Its shrill roar sounds like something furious and trapped.

  The Sergeant leans forward and frowns, an expression which somehow does not suit his young and relatively unlined face. How is that possible, wonders Toby, almost giddily, to be a policeman and not to frown, to see what he must surely see yet still possess such innocence?

  “I want you to know, Toby, that I’m not here in any professional capacity. OK? All this, everything I’m about to say, is strictly off the record.”

  Judd swallows—he has a dry throat and the beginnings of a headache. “Of course,” he says, trying to seem more collected than he feels, as if this is the sort of thing that happens to him all the time. “That’s absolutely understood.”

  “It’s about the dead man. About Russell Spicer.”

  Toby says nothing. Outside, the lawnmower or whatever it is (chainsaw? digger? pneumatic drill?) screams louder.

  “I’m…” The policeman flinches. “Look, I’m sure it wasn’t suicide. There’s just no question in my mind.”

  Outside, after a diminuendo, the mechanical implement falls silent, as if observing a few moments of remembrance of Spicer, its blades sombre and still, its petrol waiting respectfully in the tank. Between the two men there is an awful, intense quietness. At last, with a tremor in his voice, Toby asks: “Are you sure?”

  And then, when the officer of the law says nothing in response but only looks unblinkingly on: “Why?”

  Isaac Angeyo speaks slowly, with stately patience. “It was expertly done, sir. Almost perfect. There was the illusion of suicide.

  They must have been professionals of some kind. You see, it was savage. Savage yet exact. Savage yet… plausible.”

  Schooled by years of TV thrillers, Judd is expecting to be asked whether he knew of anyone who would wish the dead man harm or if Toby himself can account for his whereabouts on the night in question but Angeyo, tired, perhaps, himself of such rituals, merely states his suspicions, his own cool extrapolation. “Whoever was responsible had money. I know how to see these things. This wasn’t some thuggish opportunist. This was planned. There were resources at work here.”

  Toby feels a sudden urge to impress this quiet and solemn man. His words are second-hand, borrowed from the screen: “A contract killing, then?”

  “We don’t actually use that phrase, sir. But yes. Yes.”

  “He must’ve had enemies?”

  “Yes, sir. It seems he had enemies. The blood had soaked into the pillow, sir. It looked like a halo.”

  “Can I ask? I mean, why are you telling me this?”

  Outside, its pause of respect apparently complete, the sound of whirring metal begins again.

  Angeyo glances behind him, seemingly made uneasy by the noise. “My superiors don’t know I’m here. They wouldn’t like it if they found out. And I’m off-duty. But I don’t think you’re safe, sir. I think you’re in huge danger. Whoever the people responsible are they’re not the kind you want to tangle with. I think you need to leave town, sir, and go to ground.”

  Whatever Toby had imagined that the man might say— whatever the reason for this particular visit—it was most assuredly not this.

  “I’m surprised,” he says. “Well, that’s an understatement.”

  “I’m serious, sir. Deadly serious.”

  “Yes. Yes. I can see that.”

  “Is there somewhere you can go, sir? Somewhere you can’t be traced? Somewhere you can stay out of sight?”

  “Can’t you tell me more? Can’t you tell me why?”

  “I’ve already said too much. My job, you see…” He hesitates.

  “Look, so I was cataloguing the dead man’s possessions. Seeing if there was anything useful. And let’s just say you’re connected.”
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  “How? Why?”

  Angeyo, reluctantly: “There was evidence. There was a list.

  Your name was at the top of it. Do you believe me now?” Toby draws breath.

  “Yes. Yes, I do.”

  “Will you leave for a while? I’ll be in touch, I promise, just as soon as I know more. I’d take you into custody for your own protection but I’m not sure you’d be safe even here.” Toby’s throat burns. “What are you saying, Sergeant?”

  “I’m asking you to run for your life.”

  There is no melodrama in his voice—nothing but professional sincerity with, Toby realises now, something horribly like panic deep beneath.

  A high-pitched bleeping, a parodic melody which seems almost grotesque. Angeyo tugs his phone from his pocket, stabs briskly at a button and rises adroitly to his feet.

  “I have to go, sir. But please—do as I ask. I’ll be in touch. I promise.”

  “There’s so much more,” Toby protests. “So much to ask you.”

  “I’m doing everything I can, sir. As soon as I can, I’ll tell you. But for now pack your bags and… run.”

  In the pause that follows, Toby’s decision is made. Sensing this, perhaps, Angeyo turns and leaves.

  Judd lets him—hears the soft click of the front door. He stands in his little lounge, listening to the machine outside, his imagination filled up with the policeman’s words. And then, moving quickly, almost at a sprint, he strides to his room and starts to pack.

  NOT MORE THAN ten minutes into this process—hurried, indiscriminate, edged with mania—the landline in the sitting room rings, its antiquated trill demanding and imperious. Toby sets down the tattered sports bag into which he has been decanting the best of his admittedly limited wardrobe and approaches the telephone, warily, as one might a sleeping animal. To silence its clarion, Judd picks up the receiver.

  “Hello?” The line is bad, crackling and patchy as if the call originates from some far-distant country, as if (and Toby is not altogether certain from whence comes this disquieting thought) it originates from the past.