Shooting in the Dark

by Baker, John

  He started the engine and pulled into the stream of traffic. He glanced across at her. She was facing forwards, a trace of a smile on her lips.

  ‘I don’t think it’s terminal,’ he told her quietly. ‘I’ll book it into the garage. They can usually fix these things.’ She was quiet for a long time. Sam concentrated on getting through the traffic without using the breaks.

  ‘You’re a realist, then?’ she said eventually. Sam had just turned into his street. He cruised up to the gate and parked. She was looking straight ahead. The ghost of a smile was the only thing that gave her away.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, beginning a laugh that took up all the spaces in the car. ‘Me an’ old King Canute.’

  She took his arm and let him lead her along the path to the front door of his house, where she hesitated. ‘I’m not entirely sure about this,’ she said.

  ‘The way round it,’ he said, ‘is for me to move into your house. But I can’t be there all the time and the guy who attacked you is gonna try again.’

  He could see her listening. She was standing on the threshold with her head cocked to one side, leaning into the house. ‘You think you can hear something?’ he asked. ‘There’s no one there. Nothing moving.’

  She followed him into the house. ‘I know that,’ she said.

  ‘I was listening to the silence. I’m used to the silences that I create around myself. Sam Turner’s silences are altogether different. Something I’m going to have to get used to.’

  ‘I’ve got CDs,’ he said. ‘A radio. There’s a television somewhere. You can make as much noise as you like here. There’s no one gonna complain.’

  ‘I don’t believe you’re that insensitive,’ she told him. ‘You think it’s manly to be indifferent to the finer nuances. But it just makes you callous.’

  ‘Social conditioning,’ he said. ‘I was brought up to pull the heads off flowers.’

  ‘Well, don’t do it when I’m around.’ She let him guide her hand to a chair, which she explored quickly and efficiently. She pulled it around to the right and sat down. ‘Just be still and quiet.’

  Sam did as he was told. He closed his eyes and listened. There was nothing to hear. A great ballooning emptiness. From the kitchen a tiny whine, the fridge motor, occasionally giving a cough. And upstairs somewhere a window must be open, setting a door banging against its frame. Rhythmical sound, four beats to the bar, common time.

  ‘What do you hear?’

  He told her about the fridge motor, said it was probably going the same way as the car engine. ‘All the motors and engines in my life,’ he said. ‘They’re getting ready to crack up. The chain on my bike broke yesterday.’

  She held her hands to her ears, made her look like one of the three wise monkeys. ‘And something else,’ he said. ‘I can hear Dora.’

  ‘Your wife?’ she asked. ‘The one who died?’

  ‘Yeah. It was her house. Before I came on the scene. She lived here with her first husband, her kids. Died in the front bedroom.’

  ‘What do you mean, you can hear her? Like a ghost?’

  ‘Kind of. I suppose that’s what people mean when they talk about ghosts. She had a way of being. She was a strong woman before she got sick, had an effect on the physical world. The house feels more like her house than it’ll ever feel like mine. She’s been dead eleven, nearly twelve months, but it’s still her place.’

  When Angeles spoke it was as if her voice came from far off. ‘That’s what I heard when you first opened the door,’ she said. ‘It felt hostile, but maybe it was just testing me, being defensive.’

  Sam shook his head. ‘I’m shaking my head,’ he told her. ‘Dora didn’t need to be defensive when she was alive. She certainly doesn’t need to now. She’s not here any longer. If you can hear her, like I can hear her from time to time, it’s because I want her to be here. What you hear is not Dora, or Dora’s ghost. It’s just some inadequacy in me, my idea of what it would be like if she was still around. If some part of her was still around. That’s all. Nothing real.’

  ‘Like the knocking in the engine,’ she said.

  ‘What about you? What does my house sound like to you?’

  She smiled. ‘Mildew,’ she said. ‘Damp. It sounds as though it’s been loved at one time, filled with children’s voices. But now there’s just a private detective rattling around rooms that are far too big for him. There’s neglect here, Sam. The house carries the sound of weeping. You ought to do something about it.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I keep thinking I should give it away, some kind of homeless charity. Childhope or Shelter? One time we thought of moving the office here. It needs more than I can give it.’

  ‘I’ll stay for a while,’ she said. ‘As long as I can. Maybe the two of us together can bring some life back to the place?’

  ‘Hope so,’ he said. ‘The alternative’s got an altogether too final ring about it.’

  ‘You know, there’s something else I’ve learnt today.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t want to sound patronizing, but it’s good to know that you can think.’

  ‘That’s not patronizing,’ he said. ‘That’s downright superior. But you’ve got to think, Angeles, that’s the only thing that separates us from the lentils.’

  He slumped in the big armchair and listened to her exploring her room upstairs. Heard her opening and closing drawers, putting her clothes away in the ancient wardrobe, stumbling on the frayed carpet. He knew what it was behind all the other sounds in the house. That dull murmur was always there if you really tried to listen. It was all the times that had been, and were here no longer. It was all the times that had gone.

  Celia rang the doorbell and Sam showed her through to his sitting room. ‘I was going to make coffee,’ he said.

  She sighed and sank into a chair. ‘It would save my life, Sam. I promise I won’t stay long. There’s a couple of things for you to sign, then I’m going home for an early night.’

  Sam took a step towards the kitchen. ‘Take it easy for a few minutes. I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Sam’s business would have been impossible without Celia. What he brought to the job was all dogged inspiration. He knew people and what they were capable of and he could sniff out a lie at the stage where it was still being contemplated. But Celia could organize people, money, and filing systems. She was good at protocol and knew how to design a letterhead and keep accounts. Celia knew the difference between an invoice and a statement, and she could explain it to Sam in a way that made him wonder why he hadn’t twigged it years before.

  When they’d first met Celia had been a retired Quaker schoolteacher, kind and twinkly-eyed but as dry as a biscuit. Sam had been an alcoholic chancer desperate to drown himself in the arms of a million women. By all the laws of social convention they should never have met, but despite their difference they had each inspired the other to expand their individual horizons.

  Celia had soon forgotten that she was almost seventy and she had delved into kitsch in a big way. Her neck and wrists were festooned with bangles and beads. Tonight she was wearing a purple cape over a beige mid-length dress with tassels. And she wore a gold anklet above a pair of shoes that wouldn’t have looked out of place doing the tango.

  Sam sometimes fell off the wagon, but usually he was dry. He fell off the wagon whenever he gave way to the heartbreaking obsession that he was in control. Sometimes he thought it was getting easier to deal with. And often he knew it wasn’t. The craving never went away: over the years he’d evolved a way of hiding from it. You hid from the craving by ignoring everything that had happened yesterday and paying no attention to anything that might happen tomorrow.

  Yesterday was gone and nothing would bring it back. It was in the realm of accomplishments and failures. Yesterday’s word had been spoken, and old Khayyam was right, all the piety and wit in the world would not erase a jot of it.

  Tomorrow: she’s always unborn. She’ll arrive with burdens
, there’s no doubt about that, and there’s even a chance that parts of her will be splendid. But until she arrives we can only be certain that we have no knowledge of her.

  Which leaves a perfect hiding place. Today. And any man can fight the batdes of just one day. Any day you like, be it as bright as the sun or as black as Hell, Sam Turner can get up at dawn and take anything you care to throw at him. He’ll keep going until nightfall. It’s only twenty-four hours.

  Today has no possibility of madness or disillusionment. Today you can get through without taking a drink. And it sure beats sitting in a cell.

  He dampened the coffee beans and took in the aroma. He waited a few moments for the water to go off the boil before pouring it into the filter. When it was ready he transferred the coffee into bright red mugs and put them on the tray with milk in a small jug. Celia was used to things being presented properly. She would never criticize, no matter how things were served, but in her silent expectation she managed to raise the standard for everyone.

  ‘Is she here?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sam. ‘I collected her a couple of hours ago. She keeps walking into things. She knocked the radio off the kitchen shelf; went into the garden and couldn’t find her way back. It’s not gonna be easy for her. She’s upstairs feeling her way around.’

  ‘Nice,’ Celia said, sipping from her cup. ‘This house needs a woman.’

  ‘If I say things like that, everyone jumps on me for being sexist.’

  ‘That’s because it would be if you said it,’ Celia told him. She sipped from her cup, her face wreathed with steam.

  ‘And another thing,’ Sam said. ‘When you say the house needs a woman, what you really mean is that I need a woman. That it’s time I settled down, all that stuff.’

  ‘Well, it is time you settled down, Sam. You can’t go through life on one-night stands. It’s not good for your health.’

  How does she know that, Sam thought. As far as he was aware Celia had never had a sexual encounter in her life. She’d never alluded to one, anyway. Until the last five or six years her life had been devoted to literature and religion and taking care of an invalid mother. Still, it could’ve happened and she’d just decided to keep shtoom about it. Ships did pass in the night, presumably anybody’s night.

  ‘You like her, don’t you?’ Celia asked.

  ‘Yeah, she’s fine. Bit uppity sometimes, but I like her. We’re not setting up house together, Celia. I like her well enough, but she’s a client, and somebody’s trying to do for her. I think she’s safer living here for the moment. But that’s as far as it goes.’

  Celia looked at him with a pair of eyes that had once belonged to an owl. She blinked them slowly. She dipped into her bag and came out with a sheaf of papers, which she passed over to Sam.

  He glanced at them and patted his top pocket. When he looked up Celia was handing him a pen. He took it from her extended hand and signed the letters: one to the bank manager explaining why last month’s payment on the overdraft hadn’t materialized, and another one, almost identical wording, to the landlord.

  ‘We must owe these guys a fortune,’ he said.

  ‘They can afford it, Sam. They know you’ll pay up in the end.’

  ‘It’s criminal, though, taking that much cash off a guy for doing nothing.’

  ‘That’s how they make their money.’

  ‘Interest and rent,’ he said. ‘Villains have used the same tactics since time began.’

  ‘Is this going to get political?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll stop. I don’t make it political. It’s the other guys hassling for money all the time. The middle classes. All criminals are middle class.’

  ‘Seems like a sweeping statement, Sam.’

  ‘But it’s not. Under the veneer of respectability we’re ruled by a middle-class Mafia. We choose not to see it most of the time because it’s too hard to live with. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. I’ve never met a member of the middle classes who wasn’t a criminal either in fact or by aspiration.’

  ‘Long live the revolution?’

  ‘Too right.’

  ‘I’m middle class, Sam. What are you going to do about me?’

  ‘You’re not middle class, Celia. You just talk posh and read books. Anyway, we’re gonna build in special dispensations for people like you. We’ll stop your pension and make you take in washing. It’ll be hard at first but you’ll get used to it.’

  ‘Similar to the present government?’ she said.

  Sam often thought that Celia was the sharpest tool in the box. Nothing much went past her. Maybe that’s how you got if you spent your life reading books?

  ‘It must feel good, though,’ she said. ‘To have Angeles living in the same house.’

  Tell them anything, he thought, remembering a maxim from his misspent youth. ‘Celia,’ he said, ‘it’s bloody marvellous.’

  In the night Sam peered up through the darkness towards the ceiling of his room. Through the wall he listened to the occasional creak as Angeles Falco adjusted herself to the vagaries of a new bed. Somewhere around them, perhaps close at hand, was the man who had killed Isabel Reeves, Angeles’ sister. The man who had attacked Angeles and who wanted her dead. He eased himself out of the bed and walked over to the window, looked down at the garden in the moonlight, the spreading branches of the ancient pear tree almost touching the glass in front of his face.

  Something moved over by the hedge. Not a maniac killer, nothing as human as that. Something small and quick, a rat or stoat. There’d been reports in the press about escaped mink in the area.

  If death was close by tonight, he was wearing different shoes. An Italian moccasin, maybe, fashioned from soft leather, whereas at their last encounter he’d worn hobnailed boots.

  He checked the windows and doors downstairs, beginning at the front of the house and working his way towards the back. Everything was secure; nothing had been tampered with. If the killer were still intent on Angeles’ life, he’d have to come here for her. He’d have to get past Sam Turner.

  There was a good possibility that the man didn’t know she was here. Unless he was able to spend all his time watching the hospital, he wouldn’t know she’d been discharged.

  Assume he doesn’t know she’s here, Sam thought, because he wanted life to get back to normal. But then he felt his face crinkle into a smile. Assume nothing, he said to himself. You’re dealing with someone who is in the grip of an obsession.

  He unlocked the back door and stepped out into the night. Half a dozen steps took him under the shelter of the pear tree. The combination of moonlight and branches put a dappled pattern on his forearms, a natural camouflage, giving him a degree of invisibility.

  He watched the house and let his mind go back to the time he’d seen the shadowy figure in Angeles’ garden. The guy, whoever he was, was also blind in a way. He couldn’t see the obvious: that the death of Angeles wouldn’t actually solve his problems.

  Over to the west, high in the sky, a surveillance satellite blinked as it photographed suspect installations and beamed them back down to its controllers. The collective sum of military paranoia was increased minute by minute with each click of the shutter of its high-powered camera. In the old days men used to stand on the earth and watch the stars, perhaps wonder if the stars were watching us. Now there is no doubt about it. We are under observation.

  This was a tough case. One of the most complicated Sam had undertaken. Why would anyone want to kill a couple of sisters, one of them blind? Neither of them had any links to organized crime, they weren’t running drugs or girls. As far as he knew, they didn’t have reason to fear anyone. Yet there was a man out there who had already killed one of them and had a good attempt on the life of the other.

  Why?

  For some reason Sam’s mind kept wandering towards a symbolic or mythological solution. Maybe it was connected to Angeles’ blindness? The only figure he could think of who was blind was Samson, after Delilah had cut his h
air. And thinking about Samson and Delilah didn’t get him anywhere. Maybe there were other mythological figures who would throw up a connection. He’d talk to Celia about it, and JD. JD would be better.

  Except mythological solutions only happened in detective books and American movies. In the real world no one got killed because of a mythological story. People got killed because of money or power or jealousy or revenge.

  Angeles was jerked awake from another dream in which the blood from the man’s thumb had congealed in her mouth. She listened to the night. He was there, somewhere. Not in the house but somewhere close by. He was not going to leave her alone.

  She fought the image of him standing at the end of her bed. He was not there. This was Sam’s house, and Sam was there to protect her. The man who was stalking her had insinuated himself into her head, so that she carried him with her wherever she went. But he was an illusion most of the time. The trick was to learn when he was illusion and harmless, and when he was reality and dangerous.

  She put her earphones on and listened to the audiotape of Le Carré’s The Naive and Sentimental Lover. But it was too creepy and made the fact of being watched only more obvious.

  But I’m not going to let this undermine me, she thought. I’m going to go on living my life. Even as she thought it, she wasn’t sure if she meant it or not, if she would be strong enough to overcome the more or less constant fear that rolled her innards into a tight fist.

  A stair creaked and she held her breath. Nothing. An imagination. But there it was again, closer now, and she heard herself shouting out Sam’s name without thinking about it.

  The door to her room opened immediately and she was already scrambling back against the pillows, trying to force herself through the headboard before she realized that the voice belonged to Sam Turner.