Shooting in the Dark

by Baker, John

  A couple of university students on their way to the Spread Eagle found him and rang an ambulance. Ralph had hated students all his life but those two were OK. One of them had a thick woollen overcoat and he took it off and wrapped it around Ralph’s body, kept him warm until the ambulance arrived.

  Janet had got Echo off to sleep and Geordie was telling her about his conversation with JD. ‘He reckons we’re genetically programmed to recognize beauty. Men like women with big eyes and lips and boobs.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘And women like tall handsome guys who put it around.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Geordie. There’s someone for everybody.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, but what we think is beautiful, the things we think are beautiful, JD reckons that’s the same for everybody. Things like good skin, small lower face, and the way the face is proportioned.’

  ‘Theories like that worry me,’ Janet said. ‘They seem to leave so many people out.’

  Geordie opened the door of the stove and put another log in. He almost stood on Barney, who was stretched out on the rug, and the dog opened one eye for a moment, lifted his tail clear of the floor and held it there.

  ‘He told me about this guy who lost his memory for faces. Student, was in a car crash, and he had these head injuries. So the medics put all the pieces back together again and the guy was good as new, except he couldn’t recognize faces. He lived a more or less normal life, got married and had a bunch of kids, held down a job. But he couldn’t recognize his wife or kids or any of the people he worked with. He never recognized anyone by their face. He’d look at people and it would be like a light show, but a different light show every time. There’d be no clue to who it was. Can you imagine that?’

  ‘Barely. Poor guy.’

  ‘Anyway, the point I’m getting at,’ Geordie continued, ‘he still knew who was attractive and who wasn’t.’

  ‘What’s considered attractive is a matter of fashion,’ Janet said. ‘It changes from generation to generation. There’s no such thing as universal beauty.’

  ‘Yeah, JD said the same about fashion, but he reckons there are a few basic proportions and lines that our genes respond to, and those things don’t change.’ He laughed. ‘Have you noticed how Echo stares at you?’ he said. ‘She just lies in your arms and looks up into your face as if you’re the best thing she’s ever seen.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t seen that much yet.’

  ‘Even if she had, it’d still be the same,’ Geordie told her. ‘You’re the best thing I’ve seen.’

  ‘You’re not too bad yourself,’ she said. ‘Tall, anyway.’

  ‘You give me the silver tongue like that, it makes me wonder what you’re after.’

  ‘Cup of tea’d be nice,’ she said. ‘If you fancy making one.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to take Barney for a walk.’ The telephone rang while Geordie was in the kitchen. Janet picked it up. She registered the message, replaced the handset and waited for Geordie with her hands folded together in her lap.

  He came through with two mugs of tea, placed one of them on the low table next to her chair and took his own over to the couch. ‘Who was that?’

  ‘The hospital,’ she said. ‘Ralph’s been in some kind of accident.’

  Geordie was back on his feet again. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Is he OK? Where is he? I’d better go.’

  ‘He’s not dead or dying, Geordie. They want to keep him in overnight.’

  Her tone must have got through to him because he sat on the couch. His face was a series of question marks. ‘What’s going on, Janet?’

  ‘Will you come up to his room with me?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He followed her up the stairs. ‘What kind of accident? Did they say?’

  ‘He was in a fight. He’s gonna be OK.’

  She lifted the mattress in Ralph’s room and showed Geordie the evidence. Geordie’s thinking was a transparent process; you could see the physical workings of his brain reflected on his face. He took the copy of Loaded and flicked through it, stopping at a page which had had some text cut out. He read the text, his lips moving as his eyes scanned the line. When he came to the missing words he filled them in, using his memory of the blackmail note as an aid. He picked up the roll of Sellotape and looked at Janet. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Ralph?’

  ‘The scissors were up here, too,’ she said. ‘I took them downstairs.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Janet.’

  She touched his hand and he spread his fingers and let her take it. ‘That’s not everything, Geordie. Ralph’s been coming on to me since he arrived. Trying to get me into bed.’

  She watched him shake his head from side to side. Suddenly there were tears behind her eyes and one of them got away, slid down her cheek. Geordie looked up at her and wiped it away with his finger. ‘You should’ve told me.’

  She nodded her agreement.

  ‘What d’you want to do now?’

  ‘I don’t want him in the house,’ she said.

  ‘No. I’ll tell him he’s got to go. And I’ll talk to Sam about the blackmail note.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘The hospital said he’s sleeping now, they don’t want him disturbed.’

  They were still sitting on the floor next to Ralph’s bed an hour later when Echo woke for her feed. Geordie went downstairs to check on the stove and the kittens and take Barney for his walk. Janet felt peace descend on the house like a physical presence. It was similar to the time she had the fever as a child. When it was at its height, she remembered, a cool hand had passed over her brow.

  There was an old git in the bed on his right who would have been better off dead. The other side was a guy whose face was swathed in bandages and he had some kind of metal contraption, looked like it was designed to keep the guy’s head on. The nurses were all ugly, ’cept for one who gave Ralph a bone every time she walked through the ward. Looked like she went to a gym and ate healthy. Maybe she needed a personal trainer?

  They wouldn’t give him breakfast until the doctor had been round, so he watched the rest of them tucking into bacon and egg and cornflakes, toast and jam. ‘More coffee, Mr Smithson?’ The old git packing it away like he had something to live for.

  Ralph sipped at a glass of lukewarm water.

  The doctor said he could go home. He’d have to take it easy for a while. He had a cracked rib but the other injuries were superficial. ‘You have someone who can look after you for a while?’

  ‘Yeah, my brother’s wife. I live with them.’

  ‘Lucky man. Light exercise. Nothing strenuous.’

  No change there, then.

  A nurse with a face like a robber’s dog told him he could get dressed but he wouldn’t be able to leave until his medicine came up from the pharmacy. ‘And there’s someone here to see you,’ she said.

  Sam Turner, not Geordie or the sexy sister-in-law. Warning bells went off in Ralph’s head, but there was nowhere to run.

  ‘We found the magazine, everything you used to write the blackmail note.’

  Just like that. Straight into it. No question of asking a guy how he felt after being half-kicked to death by a fucking psychotic pimp. ‘You been going through my room?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m thinking of turning it over to the police.’

  ‘What for? A joke? It was just a laugh.’

  ‘And all the harassing of Janet? Was that just a laugh?’

  ‘Harassing? What’s she been telling you?’

  Turner didn’t raise his voice. He took a slim wad of twenties from his pocket, put it down on the cover of the bed. ‘It’s all over for you here, Ralph. Janet wants you out of the house and I want you out of the town.’

  ‘What’s Geordie got to say about this? It’s Geordie’s house just as much as Janet’s. I bet he doesn’t want me to go-’

  The detective raised his eyebrows. ‘You mess about with somebody else’s woman, how do you think the guy’s gonna feel? There’s two hundred qui
d there,’ Turner said, fingering the wad. ‘Enough to get you wherever you want to go, keep you in a bed and breakfast for a few days. If you’re still around tomorrow, I’ll pass the evidence of the note over to the fuzz.’

  Ralph watched him go. He walked to the door of the ward and saw Turner’s broad back disappearing along the corridor. He walked back to the bed and picked up the twenties, slipped them into the back pocket of his jeans.

  They gave him some dinner at midday and the little nurse with the body told him his brother and sister-in-law were here to see him.

  ‘What do they want?’ Ralph asked.

  She smiled. ‘To see how you are, I should think. They’ve got a bag with them.’

  ‘Tell them to leave the bag,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna see them.’ The reproachful looks from young Geordie he could live without. And Janet would be on her high horse, strutting about as if she’d got something left in. To hell with them, he’d managed OK without them all his life, now it would just go on as normal. Ralph thought he’d probably go back to his wife and family, somewhere to crash until he came up with some new ideas.

  A couple of hours later they gave him a cup of tea and then his medicine arrived on the ward at four o’clock. Pain-killers and some swabs for the cuts on his face. ‘Is this it?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been waiting all day for this?’

  The nurse shrugged. ‘You can go now, Mr Black.’

  No offer of a lift to the station. A cracked rib, aches and pains all over, and there you go, Mr Black, on your own, Mr Black. Only a couple of miles to the station. He picked up the bag and walked outside. Dark already and a sharp frost in the air. He could manage the bag but the weight caused a pain in his chest. He kept swapping it from hand to hand.

  He cut through Bridge Lane and across the grounds of Bootham Park. Some of the nurses’ flats were lit but most were dark. As Ralph put the bag down for a minute, give himself a rest, a tall guy overtook him, striding along in the same direction. The man looked back and stopped. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. Ralph gave him the once over. It wasn’t really necessary though; the guy’s voice gave him away. A doctor, maybe, something like that. At least a social worker or a teacher, but this being the hospital grounds, he’d be a doctor. You could bet on it. And look at the state of him, his bearing, the blond hair, the suit, the overcoat. Could be a consultant.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ralph told him. ‘Just having a rest.’ He winced to show the guy his chest hurt. ‘Cracked rib.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be carrying that, then.’ The guy walked back along the path and bent to pick up Ralph’s bag. ‘I’ll give you a hand. Going far?’

  ‘The station.’

  ‘No probs.’

  ‘I’m not sure, really,’ Ralph said. ‘I was going to the station, but I could go to my brother’s place.’

  ‘There’s a café in Gillygate. You could have a coffee and take the time to decide.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ralph said. ‘Good idea. Specially if the café’s a pub.’

  On the corner of Union Terrace the doctor said, ‘This is really very heavy.’ He changed hands and walked alongside Ralph until they got to the Wagon and Horses.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ralph said. ‘You’re a real gent.’ He took his bag back and went into the pub. He got himself a pint of lager and felt better even before he took the head off.

  He didn’t make a decision about what to do. He spent the evening in the pub and drank at the expense of Sam Turner. Funny how the lager always tasted better when somebody else was paying for it. Towards the end of the evening he had a few whisky chasers. Why the fuck not?

  But now, at this time of night, there was no way he could go to the station and buy a train ticket. He ordered a taxi and when it came he told the guy to take him to Geordie’s house. There’d be plenty of time to sort his life out tomorrow. And, anyway, there was his passport, all his official papers locked in the drawer of his room.

  Ralph paid the taxi off and picked up his bag. There was a sharp pain like a sliver of glass in his chest, so he dropped it back to the pavement. He tried to lift it again, this time with his other hand, but the pain was just as bad.

  ‘Still giving you some trouble, is it?’ said a voice he recognized. It took him a few moments to put the voice and the face together, though. The doctor, whatever he was, who’d carried his bag to the pub. Must be a doctor. What the hell was he doing here?

  The guy came up close. He looked at Ralph and squinted. ‘You know that dressing’s coming off your forehead.’ He shifted Ralph’s bag with his foot. ‘Let me fix it.’

  Ralph bent to allow him to stick the dressing back in place and as he did so he felt a sharp pain in the side of his neck. Could’ve been a bee sting, something like that, except you don’t get bee stings in the dark in the middle of winter. Must be one of those goofy nurses’d left a pin in his shirt collar.

  As he drew back something flashed in the doctor’s hand. Ralph focused on it for what seemed like an age before he saw that it was a syringe. He wanted to protest, tell the guy he didn’t need no injection, and still time went by until he realized there was no point in saying anything: the guy had already given him it.

  Then he fell over. Thought the guy must’ve pushed him. Hell, no, not another kicking. But it wasn’t the guy pushed him over, his legs had refused to hold him. He couldn’t move his arms, either. His head was at an awkward angle, his neck twisted to one side, but he couldn’t do anything about it. It was as if he was paralysed.

  The doctor dragged him through Geordie’s gate and down the side of the house into the back garden. Then he disappeared for a while and came back with the bag.

  The guy was kneeling by him now. Ralph wanted to ask for help. He wanted to say, Come on, you’re a doctor, you can help with this. I don’t want to be paralysed for the rest of my life.

  The guy had the syringe. Ralph couldn’t tell if it had anything in it. Leant low over Ralph, put his mouth next to Ralph’s ear. He said, ‘You shouldn’t have sent the note.’

  Ralph felt the needle go in again. He would have flinched if he could have moved at all. Whatever it was, he felt it enter his bloodstream as the guy depressed the plunger on the syringe.

  Then he was gone.

  Ralph realized he was completely alone. He couldn’t shout for help and he couldn’t move. Where he lay, just off the path, it was dark and cold. He thought he might have to lie there all night, but then his heart missed a beat, and another one. It started up again, but he couldn’t get his breath. His mouth filled with saliva and the saliva ran down his throat.

  The next thing he knew the man was hauling him to his feet. Ralph couldn’t stand, none of his muscles would respond. The doctor hitched him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried him to a tree next to the shed. Ralph was half-placed and half-flung against the trunk. The skin on the back of his head split open as it cracked against the rough bark. The pain set up a throbbing in his temples. The drug had killed his ability to move or protest but it in no way affected his ability to experience pain.

  The doctor appeared from behind him. He smiled at Ralph. He produced a couple of six-inch nails and a hammer. ‘This won’t take long,’ he said, stretching Ralph’s arms out as though he was on a cross. ‘We don’t want you falling down, now, do we?’

  The few stars that Ralph could see in the early evening sky seemed suddenly much closer than he had ever imagined. Off the Great Barrier Reef, he remembered, the stars had seemed huge, but never as close as this.

  He’d been a sailor, that was his last thought before the agony began; and sailor the last word, only the silent screaming that ran through his body had obliterated the last syllable. I was a sail...

  I watched him go with the prostitute and he looked perky enough then. I presume her pimp gave him the beating. The prostitute was a small, even frail woman, and I cannot imagine her inflicting those injuries on him even if he begged her. He was the kind of man who would not appreciate the joy of pain; he would only understand it
s role in the acquisition of power.

  The master/slave relationship is probably as old as prostitution and each of them would be poorer without the fertilization of the other. If it ever comes to it, Miriam will make a fine whore. She understands the theory and practice of libido with her body. I have always discounted Lawrence’s musings in Fantasia of the Unconscious, preferring the more obviously flawed reasoning of Freud. But since meeting Miriam I have had to reassess Lawrence’s opinion. The physical body is an older and deeper mechanism than the human mind and it contains a primal knowledge that is equal to the sum total of our experience.

  Miriam finds enjoyment and fulfilment in pain because it is more real than pleasure. What we euphemistically call pleasure is a fleeting emotion. It is something that barely touches us. But pain is far-reaching. It lasts much longer, sometimes for ever.

  *

  Drugs are wonderful things. And Viagra is one of the best. When I took it (for Miriam, of course) the result was a dark, cruising sexuality, which lasted, quite literally, for hours. It was not particularly good or bad, it was interesting. Now we know what it is and what it can achieve, we won’t bother with it again.

  In my profession there has been a predictably mixed reception for the drug. Most of them think it’s wonderful. They point to the benefits that it will bring to the impotent. I do not subscribe to that view. What we have in Viagra is a drug that acts by forcing a chemical reaction in the body. It does not act on the mind.

  It is a sex drug. And having taken it, you are expected to have sex. You are expected to have lots of sex. Great sex. If you take Viagra and refuse to have sex, or decide that the drug isn’t working for you, you are, clearly, a failure.

  Who would do that, anyway? Who would take a dose of Viagra and then turn round and say, ‘No, I don’t feel like it tonight’? The only person who would say that is a wimp. Someone who looks around him and sees the expectations of the world and immediately begins to crumble. That man would probably be impotent.