Shooting in the Dark

by Baker, John

  ‘And just as tragic,’ said Sam.

  ‘Yeah. But you wouldn’t have guessed it then. They looked like they ruled the world. And when Jenkins showed us the medal, I’ve never seen a kid look more proud.’

  Sam got to his feet, ready to go. Sly walked around his desk but the telephone rang and he picked it up without thinking. ‘Sly Beaumont.’

  ‘I’m off,’ Sam said. ‘Thanks for the info.’

  Sly covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘It’s a pleasure, Sam. Any time.’

  ‘See you.’ Sam left the office, walked down the stairs and out into the street. He turned back towards the town and hadn’t gone more than a hundred metres when he heard Sly Beaumont calling after him.

  He waited for the old reporter to catch up with him. ‘Going my way, Sly?’

  ‘No.’ Beaumont was breathing hard. ‘I’m not going anywhere at all.’

  55

  Scopophilia. The art of deriving sexual stimulation by watching. Voyeurism to you. Except that the voyeur is someone who watches without participation. I am an active player.

  There are two women in the house. The blind one and a young woman with a baby. At the front door there is a uniformed policeman. This is a complication. I don’t want complications. I want to finish it now. I shall have to be strong.

  The first thing I do is retrieve the roll of syringes and Suxamethonium from its hiding place by the swimming pool. I fit the microphone of my voice-activated recorder to the lapel of my jacket; the recorder itself goes in my shirt pocket. I notice the hard crust of ice which has covered the surface of the pool. I touch it with two fingers to test its strength and I see a vision of a saint floating in the dark water below.

  I put emotion and feelings to one side. For the task ahead I need to be cool and calm and collected.

  The next job is to cut the telephone connection, to isolate the occupants of the house. I move stealthily, like a cat.

  In the garden shed I find a piece of hacksaw blade and put it in my pocket. There is also a lump hammer, a crowbar, a long Phillips driver and several metres of old rope smelling of tar. I take these objects back to the shadow of the house. I carry the lawn-mower in my head.

  The telephone wire enters the house via a conduit along the outside wall. By following it I find a break where the engineer had to run the cable around a corner. I saw through it, making sure that the ends of the wires are not touching.

  I fill two of the syringes with enough Suxamethonium to pacify a bask of crocodiles. The moon is high and it has a face just like it did when I was a child. I review the plan in my mind, double-check to make sure I’ve reduced the element of chance to a minimum. My toes are numb with cold; my fingers stiff. I have been too busy to notice the cold.

  I climb the fence into the next-door garden. I walk down by the side of the house and when I draw level with the policeman on the blind woman’s doorstep I stop and say good evening.

  He nods his head, fingers the collar of his coat.

  I ask him if something is wrong, ambling across the driveway towards him. ‘Because I thought I heard something round the back.’

  He moves towards me, reaching for the radio on his belt. ‘You’d better show me, sir,’ he says.

  I let him go ahead of me and push the syringe into the fleshy spot behind his right ear. He turns. The radio is in his hand; he holds it there while I watch his eyes go dead. Then he drops to his knees and I take the radio away from him an instant before he falls on his face. I drag him to the rear of the house, bind and gag him and lay him on the floor of the garden shed.

  Now I am ready. I reason that the best way to get into the house is to knock on the front door. Whichever of them opens it I simply have to rush them. I have surprise on my side. If they refuse to open the door, they will be trapped inside. They cannot telephone out. I shall have ample time to go around the back and throw the lawn-mower through the sitting room window.

  If I don’t win with my first strategy, I still can’t lose.

  This is a nice neighbourhood. Professional people who keep themselves to themselves. Socio-economic class 1-1.2. They don’t go prying into each other’s business. The likelihood of someone calling round to borrow a cup of sugar is remote.

  With real estate of this value the boundaries are strictly observed. High hedges mark off each householder’s title and these people are so rich that they aren’t actually interested in their neighbours’ activities. To acquire and maintain great wealth the ego must be constantly tumescent.

  As I tap lightly on the front door I am in a state of high excitement. The blood is rushing through my veins like a swollen river. I can feel the pressure as it passes my temples on its way to oxygenate the brain. There is movement inside the house and I have to keep telling myself to breathe as my ears strain to hear the approaching footsteps. It is not Angeles Falco’s voice that I hear: ‘Someone at the door. I’ll get it.’

  The latch is lifted and like something out of the storybooks we had as children, I am bathed in the soft light from the hallway. The woman looks at me and smiles and in the same instant she recognizes me. Angeles Falco’s voice comes floating down the stairs: ‘No, don’t answer it.’ There is despair in her voice.

  As the woman who has opened the door is rearranging her facial expression - from a happy smile of welcome to something between revulsion and sheer terror -1 move in. I go for her throat but the needle actually enters the side of her neck. I shoot a dose of the drug into her and she pulls away. For a moment I wonder if I have injected any of the substance into her, but I don’t have to wonder for long.

  ‘What have you done?’ she asks. She’s looking at the syringe in my hand. She raises her hand to her neck and looks at it. But already I can see the drug going to work. She totters for a moment, then falls into the pile of the carpet.

  I have a back-up syringe but I’m not going to need it. The one I am carrying is still more than half-full.

  Soft footsteps on the stairs. ‘Janet, who is it? Is there someone there?’ I stand by the fallen body and hold my breath. She comes around the corner, into the hallway, and stops dead. Her feet are bare. She cannot see anything. She feels that something is wrong but she doesn’t know what it is. ‘Janet?’ She speaks the woman’s name quietly. She knows I have come for her and she doesn’t want me to hear.

  She is so close to me that I can see the network of small creases around her eyes. I can hear the way her respiration has become jerky and unreliable. Her lips are trembling and I can smell whisky. If I stretch out my arm towards her, still holding my breath, the point of the syringe is only half a metre from her neck. She takes an involuntary step backwards, her blind eyes staring, her nostrils flaring. She is like a thoroughbred filly spooked by a wolf.

  To fight or take flight. This is the age-old formula with which she is faced. All animals display the same characteristics when they are trapped. But most animals know what it is that they have to fight, and they know from what they have to flee. This woman knows nothing. Except, perhaps, that she cannot win. That whatever she does will lead to the same result.

  She takes another step backwards and moves her right arm towards the phone. She picks it up and holds it to her ear. Another flash of panic crosses her face. She depresses the hook-switch and listens again. The silence gags her, it sends a tremor of certainty through her body.

  ‘I’ve come to collect,’ I tell her.

  She drops the telephone, lets it slip out of her hand, but she doesn’t move. Her hand remains where it was, near her face, as if she was still holding the instrument. ‘Who are you? Where’s Janet?’

  I don’t reply. She knows who I am. I take a step towards her and she reaches for the wall. ‘Where’s Janet? What have you done with her?’

  ‘Take three steps forward,’ I tell her. ‘Short ones, or you’ll stand on her.’

  She hesitates. She moves forward by feeling the area in front of her with her toes. It is as if I had directed her through a maze or an area
of open country littered with animal traps. She is fearful that a set of iron claws will snap around her legs. She takes the third step and nudges the inert body with her foot. She comes with a tiny cry and falls to her knees. Her hands are on the woman’s face. She cradles her head, relieved that Janet is still alive, that she can feel her breathing, however lightly.

  ‘What have you done to her?’ she asks. ‘What do you want of me?’

  I can reach her easily now. I push the point of the syringe into the back of her neck and depress the plunger. ‘You bastard,’ she says. ‘Leave us alone.’

  She goes down like a tree. Within a few seconds there is a mound of unconscious female flesh in front of me.

  I open the front door and bring in the lump hammer, the crowbar, the screwdriver and the rope. I drop the latch and lock the door with the mortise lock as well; good-quality stuff, several levers to impede the most determined thief.

  They are like dead lovers, these women. A tangle of arms and legs. I separate them and even within their paralyses they seem to cling to each other. Their mouths are gaping and their bodies are convulsed by uncoordinated muscular contractions. The blind woman is salivating copiously, sputum discharging on to the carpet.

  I truss Janet like a turkey, her hands and legs bound together behind her back. With a sharp knife from the kitchen I cut a strip from her skirt and use it to gag her. The finished result is somehow fashionable, everything neatly complementing each other. I don’t mind for myself, but I know women are keen to appear at their best even in the most extreme situations. Miriam, if she were here with us now, would be very happy with the work I have done on Janet. If there are photographs in the newspapers, it could even catch on. One of the top fashion designers will wrap it up as a revival of bondage chic.

  Using the rope between her hands and feet I lug her through to a small alcove in the sitting room where her baby is sleeping in a pram. They can be together there, out of the way.

  The blind woman I secure less rigorously. Her hands behind her back and her legs tied together at ankles and knees. There is no need for a gag. I lift her on to a couch.

  I found Doncaster prison interesting from a professional point of view. It was, of course, a flagship prison when it was opened. The idea of a privately run prison had not been discussed in the community and was introduced by a government that was already rife with corruption. It was soon, and rightly, christened Doncatraz.

  The initial teething problems are over now but the place is overcrowded and there have been at least ten suicides of inmates within the last five years. I saw much blood there and many of the prisoners looked little more than children.

  I look at the policeman’s radio. It crackles occasionally and coded messages are passed back and forth. There is no mention of this road or the Falco name. I know it is only a matter of time, but I have to wait for the blind woman to come round.

  I slashed my wrist as the prison officer approached my cell. He was very good, didn’t panic at all. He removed his tie and used it as a tourniquet. Not only did he save my life; I didn’t actually lose much blood. It was messy, of course, the blood spurting out with every beat of my heart. But it was not as bad as it looked.

  I feigned unconsciousness while they rushed me to the hospital. The same guard accompanied me all the way, stayed with me while they hooked me up to the transfusion equipment. I remember watching him in the chair with his sodden tie rolled up in his hands. I slept for several hours. A peaceful, dreamless sleep.

  No one stopped me. You don’t stand in the way of destiny.

  I walk over to the window and part the curtains so that I can see the street. All is quiet out there. My moment is approaching. I place my worries out of reach.

  I found Wells’ The Country of the Blind in the prison library and read it for the first time in my life. Perhaps I should have given fiction more of a chance, but I always preferred to read scientific, factual texts, or religion, or philosophy.

  The Country of the Blind is a satirical story about a man who accidentally falls into a secluded valley. The people who live there have all lost their sight and been blind for the last fifteen generations. As a result they have developed their own religion and creation myths and have lost all of the words for sight. They sleep by day and work by night.

  The central character, who can see, is called Nunez, and he expects that he will have an advantage over the people of the valley, that he will be their king. But every attempt on his part to show his superiority is met with failure. The blind people regard him as clumsy and insensitive and when he falls in love with one of their women they are reluctant to allow the marriage in case it corrupts their race.

  The solution, of course, is that he agrees to allow the blind surgeons to remove his eyes. If he goes ahead with the operation, everything will be his. His life in the valley will be a fulfilled and fulfilling experience because the valley is a kind of paradise containing ‘all that the heart of man could desire’.

  But rather than conform to that society by giving up his eyes, Nunez decides to attempt an impossible escape by scaling the sheer mountain walls. He chooses to die in a small cleft of rock almost a mile high, content and with a smile on his face. The human spirit soars away from the pain of conformity and acceptance, though the cost may be physical extinction.

  I read the story at a sitting, then I read it again. I put the book down and thought about what I had read and wondered at the workings of destiny. What had brought me to Doncatraz where the book was waiting? I read The Country of the Blind a third time.

  I check the street through the curtains again. Then I bring some water in a glass tumbler and sprinkle it on the blind woman’s face. She doesn’t move. I check the back garden through the window of the patio door. All is dark and frozen. The swimming pool is a village pond.

  There was an altercation between the prison guard and the hospital authorities. The doctors wanted to keep me in the hospital for another day, but the prison guards wanted me back in Doncatraz. They put me on a trolley and wheeled me down the long corridor to the waiting van that would take me back to my cell. The original guard, the one who saved my life, was still with us. He had a new tie on, there was no trace of my blood on him, but it was the same man. I insisted on standing when we got to the hospital exit. The guard came to help me and I lifted him off his feet and rushed him into the wall. He was on his back on the floor, trying to get to his feet. I grabbed the trolley and rammed it at him, crushing his head between the wall and the heavy metal wheels.

  I turned to take on the hospital porters, but they didn’t want any trouble. Not one of them made a move towards me.

  The blind woman moans and stirs on the couch. I wait until she is fully conscious, then I drag her into a sitting position. There is a feral odour to her and I imagine some kind of vaginal discharge has occurred.

  ‘He should have left you in the dark under the ice,’ I tell her.

  ‘I don’t want to die.’

  ‘He should have left you there.’

  ‘Who? What are you talking about?’

  I laugh. ‘You know exactly who and what,’ I tell her. ‘My father gave his life for you.’

  ‘This is a mistake. No one gave his life. If something happened to your father, I’m sorry. But it has nothing to do with me.’

  I want to cause her pain. I want to go to her and take different parts of her body and crush them. I want to hear her screaming.

  ‘Be careful what you say,’ I tell her. ‘I’m on a knife-edge.’

  ‘Start again,’ she says, placatory now. ‘I’ll try to understand.’

  ‘You and the other one,’ I say. ‘You’re on the ice.’ She looks genuinely puzzled. Shakes her head from side to side. ‘We were children,’ she says eventually. ‘You mean on the pond, when we were children?’

  ‘He comes on a ladder.’

  ‘Yes, the fireman came on a ladder. He saved our lives.’

  ‘You go under the ice and he dives in after yo
u. He pulls you out of the water but he stays behind. He sinks to the bottom. It was your grave and he died in it.’

  ‘He didn’t die,’ she says. ‘This’s a mistake. The fireman didn’t die. No one died.’

  ‘The fireman was my father,’ I tell her. ‘He never came home again. He died that you might live.’ Somehow I am falling apart. My personality is fragmenting. I have to use all my energy, all my willpower to maintain my identity and my purpose.

  ‘No one told me,’ she says. She has been quiet for a while and now, when she speaks, it is in a whisper. ‘But it fits. They wouldn’t have told us. We were too young.’

  I leave her words there. I let them echo. I do not say that I was too young as well, but that no one could hide it from me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘In the country of the blind,’ I tell her, ‘the one-eyed man is king.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, as if she has never heard it before.

  ‘If you had been a good woman,’ I tell her, ‘it would have been all right. I would have accepted it. But your life has been useless.’

  ‘I can make it up,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know he’d died. I can try to make it up to you.’

  ‘It would have been better for the world if he had lived and you had died. I’m here to put that right.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  I laugh a wild uncontrolled laugh. It is something that I’m not surprised to find inside me, although I never knew it was there. ‘We’re going skating,’ I tell her. ‘Ice skating.’

  56

  Geordie was sitting alone in the house when the police came looking for Rod Jenkins, the guy who had killed Ralph. He talked to them on the doorstep. ‘Keep your doors locked,’ said the auburn-haired WDS Hardwicke. ‘He killed your brother so he might have something against you as well.’