The One Safe Place

by Ramsey Campbell

  "You don't reckon."

  "Maybe I don't know all your laws yet, but I'd lay money that isn't one."

  The man's expression grew fixed and distant, which Don gathered was meant to indicate he'd given the wrong answer. "Realistic," he said with a laugh at himself. "You mean you think it is."

  The man's eyes appeared to be in danger of glazing over. Did he think the laugh had been directed at him? "If you're saying it isn't, I'm agreeing with you," Don said desperately, reflecting that he'd braved the pub only to become involved in an argument—more a forced monologue—about conventions of storytelling. "My point is that it doesn't, well, it matters in some ways, I suppose more to people who feel they're being portrayed or rather not portrayed, but not in purely literary, if that's not stretching it, literary terms."

  "Friend of yours, is she."

  "Yes, up to a point, yes. More to the, more relevantly, she's a local celebrity just as much as, I don't know, your football team. Support your local writers, that's always my refrain."

  "Sent you here."

  Don had interposed so much between that and the man's previous comment that it took him some seconds to put them together. "Ah. Yes, she is. Did."

  "Told you to bring something."

  "Here it is," Don said, and slapped the face of the book. He'd decided at last that there could be no doubt why the man had approached him. "She didn't say hers, you understand, but it seemed like a good sign."

  As he lowered his voice the players and the scrawny man moved away along the snooker table, and Don wondered whether everyone in the bar knew why he was there. "Good in the sense of, well, anyway," he said, progressively lower. "And you. I was told you would. Have something. For me."

  Each of his pauses was meant to coax out an answer, and each of them emphasised even more of the absence of one as the man's dispirited gaze continued to rest on the book. At last he said, "Hollow, is it?"

  "Hollow in the sense of..." For a moment Don thought they'd returned to literary analysis. "Oh, you mean as an object. You mean have I brought, yes, of course," he said, patting his three moneyed pockets to demonstrate.

  "How much?"

  "How much are we discussing?"

  "Three hundred. Pounds, in case you're wondering. Take it or leave it. Just be quick."

  "I haven't seen it yet."

  "You don't expect me to start waving it around in here, do you, you silly bugger? Pay us under the table and it's yours."

  Having provoked such a lengthy and expressive speech made Don feel as though he had gained an advantage. "What exactly am I paying for?"

  "Automatic with a spare clip. Real little beauty. It'll fit in your fist like your dick."

  "If it's that small," Don heard himself saying, and made himself go on, "surely you can give me a glimpse without anyone seeing."

  "They see everything, chum, including some I don't want seeing. Give us the price and it's yours."

  "Then what? You fetch it?"

  "No need. I'll tell you where to go."

  "In that case why don't we both go there and then I'll pay you."

  Rain slashed at the windows, which were even greyer than the room, and he thought he heard the glass tremble in the frames. The man stared unblinkingly at him as though the protrusion of his eyes was making it impossible to close the lids. "Cough up and I'll show you where to go, or piss off out of it."

  All at once Don felt that far more people, perhaps everyone in the bar, were watching him, but when he glanced away from the leathery man nobody appeared to be looking at him. He dug both hands into his hip pockets and brought the notes together, and passed the doubled wad under the table until it met a bunch of clammy fingers which closed on it like an octopus seizing its prey. "That's more than half," he murmured. "I'll give you the rest when we've gone an appreciable way farther."

  The man stared as though he was inserting his gaze into Don's eyes so that they couldn't blink. They were beginning to smart by the time he flipped his cap up from the table and caught his head in it as he rose abruptly to his feet. Don followed, feeling as if everyone's awareness of him was a medium thick as deep water through which he was struggling to walk.

  The man pulled the door open and dodged into the only corner of the sodden porch which the downpour was leaving untouched. Rain was pounding the parking lot; wherever it struck, a shard flew up like a fragment of the concrete. All the high-rise blocks which loured over the pub had been turned the color of the clogged sky. The man retreated into the shelter, though not far enough to make room for Don. "This is as far as I go, chum. I can see it from here."

  Don's glasses were already growing blurred with rain. He unbuttoned his breast pocket and dug the notes out with his streaming fingers and squeezed the wad in his fist. "Where?"

  "I won't take them off you if they're stuck together. You won't even be crossing the road, and I'm saying nowt else."

  As Don reached out his fist with rain bouncing off the back, the man's fingers dug under it like some kind of secret handshake. They snatched the wad, and Don immediately felt tricked. He didn't quite believe he'd grabbed the man's wrist, but his fingers immediately began to ache with holding on, and he heard himself saying, "Where?"

  "Coming the hard feller, are we?" The man's voice rose to a shout Don could feel on his face. Maybe the rain drowned the shout as it doused Don's scalp and his back, because nobody emerged from the pub to outnumber him. The man wrenched himself out of his grasp and said with what sounded like grudging respect, "Look under your car."

  "Which one is that?"

  "Don't you know, chum?"

  Don was questioning how the man had been able to identify it, but his waterlogged lenses were indeed hampering his own efforts to do so. "The same one you got out of," the man said, and before Don could interrogate him further, shouldered him aside and took refuge in the Hangman.

  Don was tempted to follow, if only for shelter, except that the rain was dashing the reality of the situation in his face. The mumble of the pub had acquired a mocking quality, but how could he charge in there unarmed to face however many would be ready for him? He ran almost blindly to the spreading red stain that was his car, the downpour drumming on his back. When he fell to his knees, or at least crouched as low as he could without actually kneeling on the swamped concrete, he felt as though the weight of rain was forcing him to abase himself and admit he'd been conned. The dry pale patch of concrete beneath the Volvo was emitting a reflected glow so faint he wasn't convinced he was seeing it until it showed him a package wrapped in black plastic and taped against the rear axle.

  It looked like a bomb. Suppose the Fancy family had planted it? Before this irrationality could prevent him he took three squelching paces to the rear of the vehicle and leaning down as if to examine the tires, grasped the far end of the insulating tape and tore it away from the chassis. A heavier package than he was expecting dropped into his free hand, and he felt metal objects knocking together. Then he had both hands around them, and shoved the package down the front of his drenched jacket, and straightened up as if he had been performing a routine check, and fumbled out his keys with his slippery fingers, and made to let himself into the wrong side of the car. He splashed round to the driver's side and twisted the key in the lock and dumped himself on the seat, the crooks of his elbows and knees growing soaked at once, and slammed the door.

  The windows had clouded over the moment he'd climbed in. He switched on the heater and the demister, then he picked the buttons of his jacket out of their saturated holes and gazed at the black package resting in his lap. He lifted it gingerly onto the passenger seat and peeled the tape away from the plastic, which tore as he unfolded it, turning it over and over like a spider with a fly. The wrapping revealed itself as a bin bag almost large enough to contain him. He opened its mouth wide to peer into the shiny blackness, and saw a grey angular handgun resting against a clip of bullets. The next moment lights blazed at him through the windshield.

  He saw his
hand reach for the gun, and felt as though a part of his mind he hadn't known existed was reacting. The lights went out as the car which had swerved into the parking lot drew up facing him, and each front door released a large blurred man, their broad flat heads butting the rain as they advanced toward both sides of Don's car. They cursed at the tops of their voices as they ran into the pub.

  Don took hold of the weapon and the clip through the plastic, which he wrapped around and around them before shoving the package under the passenger seat, where it crackled to itself. As soon as a patch of windshield large enough for him to see through had been cleared of condensation he set the wipers to scything the rain off the glass and drove away from the Hangman.

  11 Voices

  "Mrs. Travis..."

  "Something else I can help you with, Liu?"

  "We just wanted to say..."

  "Come back in and close the door, Rachel, if it's personal."

  "We're speaking for everyone," the student said, but nevertheless closed the door of Susanne's office. "We just wanted to tell you we're sorry, and if we can help..."

  "Do you two know something I don't? Sorry for... ?"

  "About what happened."

  "The machine breaking down this afternoon, you mean?" A moment after Susanne mistook that for the issue, she knew. "This is about my visit from the police."

  Both students nodded, looking so uncomfortable that Susanne said, "It was nothing to do with you, though, was it, surely? You're not telling me it was."

  Rachel cleared her throat, then Liu did. "We did know Elaine was selling pirate videos," the Chinese girl said.

  "But we never thought anyone could connect them with you."

  "We saw some of them, and they weren't like yours. Most of them had Dutch subtitles. Some had Greek."

  "So the police ought to be able to see they couldn't have been copied from yours. We were saying, not just us, we'd say so in court if you like."

  "That's kind, Rachel, kind of all of you. Maybe they'll have the sense not to push it that far, not with some of the movies they took. Just now I don't know what's in store for us, but thanks."

  The two students clearly felt they hadn't said enough. "Was your son upset?" Liu asked.

  "He's no fonder of intruders than the rest of us, but he's stopped lying awake waiting for another invasion."

  The girls made sympathetic noises, and Rachel said, "How about your husband?"

  "He's pretty good at getting a night's sleep."

  Rachel seemed to take this answer as a mild rebuff, though Susanne had meant it to lighten the mood. Liu coughed again and said, "We think Elaine went into selling those videos to get back at her mother."

  "Her mother's worse at home than she was with you on television, Elaine says."

  "I rather gathered as much."

  "And Elaine was selling them to make up her grant," said Rachel.

  "Only she didn't get the idea from your course, Mrs. Travis."

  "So you shouldn't feel responsible because her mother's taken her away."

  "I'll try not to," Susanne said. "Was that all? The player should be fixed tomorrow, or I can borrow one from Politics until it is, so let's make the most of our early finish and be ready to startle one another in the morning.

  "Thanks for your support," she felt bound to call after them. They seemed to feel they hadn't helped, or not enough. She squared a pile of essays on her desk and transferred them to her briefcase. A police siren went off like a distant alarm as she let herself out of her office and locked the door.

  Students were chasing their echoes along the stony corridors. Somewhere outside was a muffled thudding which felt as though it had lodged in the unreachable depths of her ears. She was rubbing the corners of her jaws beneath them, switching her briefcase from hand to hand, when she encountered Clement Daily on the wide stairs near his office. He tilted his head to peer over his cheekbones at her briefcase. "Ah, Susanne. Leaving us?"

  "Just for the rest of the day. Technical problems with a player."

  "Player of, ah."

  "Video recorder."

  "Of course, that kind of, obviously. And please don't think for an instant that I was, it goes without saying we'll be seeing you tomorrow. Let me reiterate the department is behind you, and if there's anything we can, within reason, you understand."

  "I do," Susanne said, which might sound like a sly joke at the expense of his fractured syntax. "I appreciate it."

  "Give my regards to the bibliopole, and your young also."

  "I certainly will."

  "I hope you'll excuse me if I, a meeting in, dear me, I should be there now."

  Susanne couldn't think of a verbal response to that. She gave him a smile with her lips shut and went down to the courtyard where students leaned against trees or cycled across the stone flags. Beyond the red-brick buildings, which were still bleeding with the recent downpour, the thudding sounded like a failing heartbeat. As she reached Oxford Road, which bisected the campus, she saw a man wearing overalls and headphones, or rather protectors to keep out the sound of the pneumatic hammer with which he was smashing the sidewalk. Behind him in the window of a block of small Georgian houses was a sign she hadn't previously noticed, directing customers to a relocated bookshop. That was worth telling Don when he came home, though maybe she'd say only that she knew something he would want to know until he told her whatever he was keeping from her.

  She found her way through the maze of vehicles in the parking lot and squeezed between her Honda and its neighbour. She had to steer the Honda back and forth six times before she was able to manoeuvre it past the vehicles which had been parked too close to its bumpers, and that was quite enough to make her mad at Don for thinking she wasn't aware he had been less than honest about his plans as he'd left the house.

  She coasted through a strolling crowd of students and restrained herself from more than touching the horn. The tires emitted a furious screech as she swung at last onto Oxford Road and outdistanced the cars which a pedestrian crossing let fly at her. Once the Indian restaurants began to multiply she turned left into the side streets, which became progressively quieter, so that by the time she drew up alongside the house there were no sounds but hers and those of a breeze scattering raindrops from plants on both sides of her path.

  Of the three the family had planted, Don's was putting on the best show by far. She picked a bud and rubbed it between finger and thumb to smell the scent before admitting herself to the house. Marshall wouldn't be home for at least an hour. She listened to the reassuring emptiness and extracted a pair of noonday bills from their dun envelopes, then flattened them on the hall table while the answering machine's tape gibbered backward until it was ready to talk.

  "Don Trovis? Jum Peesley hair frum Olster. Cuddn't reese yu at your shoap. I see yu've books by Ostin Forchaild in yure nu cotolog. I wus begunnung tu thonk I was the only follor whu'd hoard of hom. Raid hom yuresolf uf yu're ofter a gud loff. I'd lake yu tu sond me Daith of a Bodgie ond Socks un Rostoronts. Thonks."

  "You're welcome," Susanne murmured, reflecting that she would have to ask Don whether the second book was concerned with socks or sex. The machine held its breath for a couple of seconds before beeping to indicate the end of the message, and then she heard Don's voice. "Hi, Susanne?"

  "Hi."

  "Are you home?"

  "Can't you tell?"

  "Are you home yet?"

  "I'd say so."

  "Pick up the phone if you are."

  "Hey, Don, you can tell I'm..."

  "Sounds like you aren't, huh?"

  "If you'd waited maybe just a few minutes..."

  "I was only going to tell you, well, that's what I'm doing in fact, no, I'll wait until I see you."

  "Don, you're really starting to make me itch."

  "Let's just say why don't you come to the shop and bring Marshall if he finishes his homework, and we'll eat at the Turkish joint we all liked."

  "Are we celebrating something I don'
t know about? I hope you're going..."

  "You know, I'm beginning to think we might like to stay in this country for good."

  "I take it you're not about to share your reasons. You're not, are you? I don't believe this conversation."

  "Call me. I'll wait here until you do."

  "I'm glad you at least realise..."

  "By the way, I love you."

  "I should hope so after all that," Susanne retorted, a response which was pierced by the beep. If he'd called a while ago perhaps he might have left a more recent message.

  "Don Trovis? Jum Peesley ugon. I shude hov sod the nombors hum yure cotolog. Twonty-sucks and twonty-sovon. Ony chonce I cud hov fofty-sucks as wull, thot's Sockung the Volcano, and suxty-tu, Laije us a Murror? Thonks os uvor."

  "Don't monshon ot," Susanne couldn't resist saying as the beep put an end to him. She waited for Don to come up with an afterthought, but after the beep was only the silence of a caller who'd decided not to speak. Few traits irritated Susanne more, and this particular absence made her anxious to know who might have been there. No doubt she would never know. When the machine beeped again she stopped the tape so that Don would be able to rerun the messages from Jim Paisley of Ulster, and phoned the shop. Had the silent caller bothered her so much that she'd misdialed? Instead of ringing she heard a long lugubrious note like an alarm. She dialled again, and then again before she was convinced the shop phone was out of order.

  "Well, that's just fine," she said aloud. How long would it take Don to realise she couldn't return his call? More than once he'd come home hours late, apologetic every time, having lost himself in cataloguing books, and she knew better than to expect a little thing like the silence of the phone to intrude on his concentration. She could be at the shop in half an hour—less if she parked on the street outside. Maybe she should wait for Marshall to arrive home, though on second thought he wouldn't have found her there if her teaching hadn't been cut short. She tramped into the kitchen to brew herself coffee while she attempted to decide what to do, then switched off the lukewarm percolator.