Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  ‘I’d better go.’

  Phyllie laughed briskly. ‘You’re great to tease – and one of these days…’ she began.

  ‘G’night, Phyllie.’

  ‘Night, Bill Gates. Think about my indecent proposal, won’t you? One of you in my bum…’

  The phone line died. An hysterical pitch to her laughter now, Phyllie raced up the stairs to startle Roger in the shower and to tell him verbatim how the conversation had gone… Who knew? Perhaps it would be enough to turn him on once more.

  2.

  It was enough to turn him on once more, and Phyllie collapsed into a satisfied slumber before the semen had had a chance to dry on her forehead. The satisfied slumber, however, was not set to last. Strange dreams pursued her: strange dream that started promisingly enough – Roger and Vig holding hands, naked, on a zebra crossing; teaching tomorrow’s class on the subject of igneous rock while stark naked, to a room full of kids (also naked) and her much-missed parents, fully dressed and frowning their combined disapproval – but which morphed into unrecognisable shapes, loud noises, bad aromas. When her unconscious woke her at a little after two a.m. she felt packed out – stuffed – with an answer, or set of answers, that she couldn’t read, to a question that she couldn’t remember.

  Her hand on her pregnancy bulge, Phyllie padded downstairs, into the kitchen. Although she was not experiencing cravings (she hadn’t since the first month), and although she wasn’t hungry, she removed some celery from the fridge and ate it sitting on the edge of the table. Her bottom was sore; she fancied a glass of the white wine in the fridge door. She didn’t dare: but she wanted to. Munching celery and thinking about her ragged and roughed-up catflap, then, Phyllie experienced a flash of what had come to her in her sleep. Not so much a dream as a premonition – a solution… Jessica Olney, the missing girl, had entered her classroom, nude, and had beckoned to Phyllie, saying I’ll show you where. Hand in hand they had floated up Vig’s driveway, but not as far as the house: they had crossed the wide lawn to the right and gone into the trees. Can you hear me crying? Jess had asked her.

  Yes.

  I’m in the birdkeeper’s house, aren’t I?

  And Phyllie had nodded her head. Yes you are, Jess.

  ‘Yes you are, Jess,’ Phyllie said aloud. So long did she stay motionless, rearranging snippets in her mind, that a bite’s-worth of celery turned to mush in her mouth, the flavour leaking out into swallowed spittle.

  Could it be? The quiet ones, she heard her father say to her from two decades earlier, are the ones you have to watch out for. But Birdkeeper Don… a kidnapper? It sounded preposterous.

  Spitting her mouthful of celery into the bin that swung out on the door under the sink, Phyllie tried to free her mind of these silly night notions. But the thought persisted; in fact, it flourished – it flew. It carried her on wings of fear and deposited her into her room. From the next bedroom came the rattle and hum of Roger’s snoring. She wanted to wake him and tell him what she’d concluded, however fanciful or lame it sounded: she wanted him to tell her that she was being ridiculous. Perhaps it would break the spell. But she didn’t wake him. She didn’t have the heart.

  3.

  ‘Roger Billie,’ said Roger into the phone.

  ‘It’s me. Can you talk?’

  ‘Sure; I’ve got a meeting at ten.’

  ‘It won’t take a minute. I’ve been thinking about Jess – it came to me in a dream, if that doesn’t sound pretentious enough.’

  ‘What did?’

  Phyllie recited her theory and asked her husband if she was being a wet. Roger hissed a sigh into her ear. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.

  ‘It might be worth a call to the police, do you reckon? I wouldn’t want them to laugh at me but if I don’t say anything and I’m right…’

  ‘Have you spoken to Vig?’ Roger asked.

  ‘No. I wouldn’t know what to say.’

  ‘You’d say what you’ve just said to me… Where are you calling from?’

  ‘The Head’s office. His secretary let me in; it was too noisy in the staffroom, and I didn’t want anyone…’

  ‘No, I see. Let me think now… Can I call you when this meeting’s over?’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘About twelve?’

  ‘I’ll be with 8G then, and I’m teaching all afternoon. This is a bit now or never, Rog.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll go,’ Roger told her.

  ‘Go where? To Vig’s place?’

  ‘And see for myself. Why not? I’ve an offsite assessment to do at one-thirty. A G.P. referral: she’s threatening to cut her wrists if she runs out of milk – a new case on the book.’

  Phyllie interrupted him. ‘Charming as I find your enthusiasm for your job,’ she said, ‘I need to be quick. Breaktime’s nearly over. So you’ll do what? Go out to Vig’s after you’ve talked the crazy bitch down from a ledge?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Okay, thanks. And I’ll apologise in advance if this is a wild goose chase.’

  ‘Apology accepted. Do you have his number?’

  ‘Whose? The birdkeeper’s? No, I –‘

  ‘No. I meant Vig’s. To let him know…’

  ‘No, don’t call Vig. He might say something to Don, even if you ask him not to. And that gives Don a couple of hours to do whatever he needs to do. To cover his tracks.’

  Roger paused. ‘Do you suspect Vig?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not at all. But think about it, Roger: if someone said to you there’s a certain thing hidden in our house, the first thing you’d do is go and look for it, wouldn’t you? I think the element of surprise is best.’

  ‘Then how am I supposed to get in?’ Roger protested. ‘They’ve got a big fuck-off gate, and I forgot to put my pole-vaulting stick in my briefcase this morning.’

  ‘My simple darling,’ said Phyllie in her very best patronise-the-class tone. ‘You ring the bell.’

  ‘And what if no one’s home?’

  ‘…Then you’ll have to be punished,’ she answered.

  ‘Oh goody gumdrops. I was rather thinking a spot of spanking this evening. Leading to a course of Virginia.’

  ‘I’m afraid Virginia’s off the menu for a couple of nights, Rog. We didn’t use enough baby lotion – I’ve been bleeding like a butchered baboon. I’ve got jamrags front and back at the mo. I’m padded like an American football player.’

  Exiting the office and intending to thank Sandra for allowing her to use the Head’s phone, she was shocked to find the Head, her manager, right outside the door in the outer office.

  ‘Alistair! You made me jump!’

  ‘Not half as much as you’ve put even more white hairs in my beard, Miss Reydman.’

  Phyllie suffered a churning in her stomach. Trying desperately to sound light and breezy, she said, ‘I hope you didn’t have to hear too much of that phone conversation.’

  ‘Only the last part, Miss Reydman,’ Alistair replied. ‘You told Sandra you had a plumbing issue, but that wasn’t quite the sort of thing I pictured.’

  ‘Oh Christ. Sorry. It’s not what…’

  ‘It’s not what it sounded like. I’m sure it’s not. I hope it’s not anyway. But I can’t interfere with that: nor would I want to. But what I will say is this: make personal calls on your own time, Phyllie. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘As crystal,’ Phyllie told him, a blush surging north, up from her chest to her face.

  Alistair entered his office and slammed the door.

  4.

  Dorota was waiting at the head of the steps leading up to her front door. She gave Roger a crisp wave as he drove closer; Roger waved back and a few seconds later shushed the engine. Stretching out of the Saab, he thanked her for letting him in.

  ‘Vig’s off shooting with Curtis,’ she informed him.
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br />   ‘Shooting? With a gun?’

  ‘Presumably. I can’t think of a better instrument, can you?’

  The thought of a gun appealed to Roger. It wasn’t so much that he wanted to use one, or even that he knew how (he did not); it was more that if Don cut up rough, the presence of a firearm might take some of the wind from the man’s sails.

  ‘You have guns?’ Roger wanted to clarify.

  ‘Not yet; I think Vig’ll get one eventually. They’re at Broomfields – the shooting club… Roger, what’s this all about?’

  As mindful as possible of any sense of loyalty that Dorota might have towards Don, Roger explained the reason for his visit, there outside the house, with a turbid sky scaly with clouds overhead – a cosmos-sized fish that had evolved to speak one word: rain.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Dorota decided. ‘Right now.’

  ‘…You don’t want to wait for Vig?’

  ‘Why? Don Bridges is an old man – between the two of us? He won’t know how many different ways his arse has been kicked. And Vig might be hours: he only left at two. And if there is a girl in there – Jiminy Christmas! He might be starving her!’ Dorota took off at a fair clip. Calling over her shoulder she added: ‘Besides, it might be pissing down in twenty minutes and I’m a girl who doesn’t like to get her hair wet.’

  For a split-split-second, Roger’s heart hastened; he wondered if he might be in love. As Dorota galloped away from him, Roger locked in a memory of her (for future masturbatory material) – her buttocks mounted and muscular in a pair of tight white jeans; the bagginess of a lumberjack shirt (probably Vig’s originally); the rippling zigzags of her strawberry blonde hair – and then he was in, if not exactly hot, then at least lukewarm pursuit. He wanted to stay behind her to watch her Khyber.

  They entered the woods, and immediately the quality of sound was different: pressed, harried, anxious. The light too: something squinty, horrid and ancient. Or such, at least, were Roger’s initial impressions. And in truth he was far from comfortable. The ground underfoot was springy; it made him think (absurdly, surely) of the misdemeanour of squashing frogs. With every single step he was pulverising a rotund amphibian – into the ground. The thought was hideous; it made Roger grin. He pressed his muscles on, picking up the pace in Dorota’s slipstream.

  The cabin was small, weather-whipped and incongruous (Roger thought) – out of place among all these spruce and poplars, the elevated bonnets of which sponged up what existed of the afternoon’s sun. For the first time it occurred to Roger that Don might not be inside, and he had no appetite for kicking down the man’s door or breaking a window. ‘Innocent until proven guilty’ was literal, beanshoot-eating anorak-wearing bullshit, as everyone knew, but Roger had no intention of bruising a shoulder or earning himself so much as a hangnail. He’d go home. If Don wasn’t home, he’d go home.

  Don was home.

  Dorota knocked: small pale fist to brown-painted wood (streaked with white wormy lengths of bird poop): and Don opened the door, something quizzical and perturbed on his face.

  Declining the opportunity to sweeten the pill by one granule, Dorota asked, ‘Do you have a child in there?’

  Don blinked. ‘A child, Miss?’

  ‘A child. Do you have one?’

  ‘Well no, Miss. The wife and I weren’t offered the Lord’s grace on that score, though it would’ve been a blessing, sure and true… May I ask what you and Mr Billie would be referring to?’

  Impressed that the birdkeeper had remembered his name, Roger said, ‘A couple of kids the other night – they heard crying from in here. A child.’

  When Don smiled, his face cracked into a twoscore of isosceles triangles. ‘I heard about the twins’ spirit of adventure, sir. I can assure you it was nothing in here, but you’d be welcome to take a look if it would soothe the itch on your skin. It wouldn’t take long.’ As a gesture of goodwill Don stepped aside from the doorway. ‘A small lounge, a small bedroom, a small khazi, a small kitchen: take you all of forty seconds to explore my domain, it would, sir.’

  ‘That won’t be ness –‘ Roger began.

  ‘Thank you, Don,’ said Dorota, stepping over the threshold and wiping her heels on a mat that read IT AIN’T MUCH BUT IT’S HOME TO ME.

  The estimate of forty seconds proved conservative. The inspection conducted by Dorota and Roger took half that. And was fruitless. Less than two minutes after arriving, the two of them were back on their way through the woods, towards the house, their tails not wagging, their voices muted.

  5.

  ‘I think some things were said that we didn’t mean.’

  ‘Not by me, sir.’

  ‘Well, allow me to refresh you memory, Don. You said, quote unquote, if I called you Donald Duck again you would shatter my knees.’

  ‘I did indeed.’

  ‘You did say that? You remember?’

  ‘Sir, it wasn’t me who was drunk that evening. I remember everything.’

  ‘… Well, this is a turn-up, I must say. I had it in mind that you’d be grovelling for an apology.’

  ‘To a cunt like you, sir? You must be drunk again. There’s not a chance.’

  ‘All right then… Donald Duck.’

  Don sprang up out of his favourite chair and grabbed the mallet from the table. He bounded into the kitchen and swung the mallet at Eastlight’s knees.

  The effect was remarkable. Not only did the bones in his victim’s left knee disintegrate, the entire leg exploded.

  Blood, bone and remnants of trousers formed a blizzard in Don’s home.

  Don swung again, this time at Eastlight’s head. The head was knocked clean off the shoulders. Then the torso caught fire – and Don woke up.

  ‘Bloody hellfire,’ he muttered; and the dream’s sticky burrs stayed with his brain as he unlocked the back door and barefooted it bollock naked across the clearing to his spot to piss.

  Looking up as he peed, he saw the moon in tortured fragments, cracked open by branches that were still in a rare absence of breeze. Sometimes he fancied that he could hear the moon: he could hear it as it sang, as it wept. Tonight, however (or this morning, to be accurate) it was as silent as a tomb; it was keeping mum.

  Don had thought of telling Vig and Dorota what he’d said to Charlie Eastlight at the barbecue – the threat he’d made. Such was the guilt he felt at having made the threat, and at not apologising in the aftermath, that his sleep was being affected. Not badly; but a bit. (He had never been a talented sleeper, not since his stable boy days – and certainly not since the halcyon days of his first big wins in the saddle.) Days later, would a full confession be helpful, or would it rake up old ground? If Eastlight had intended to retaliate, wouldn’t he have done so by now?

  No, Don answered himself; not if his style of retaliation went further than a ratting phone call to Vig and Dorota. And Don couldn’t help thinking that a grassing-up was not Charlie’s style.

  Don could not remember if he had thought Eastlight capable of wrongdoing from the very first second he’d met him, but it wasn’t long afterwards, if not.

  It takes one to know one, Don thought, slipping back into the cabin for the purpose of dressing. It didn’t matter that the luminous hands on his alarm clock said 3:25: the Devil made work for idle hands; there was always something productive to do.

  6.

  Don closed his eyes and lifted the little girl out of the emergency hideyhole: not her regular hole under the rug in the kitchen, but the hole that enveloped the septic tank. He had sensed their approach. After all these years, if he didn’t know the woods, what did he know? Their arrival had silenced birds; it had created its own sounds, its own energies. So Don had removed her from the kitchen, taken her outside. For the little girl, perhaps it was a day out. Don might hide her with the septic tank more often, even though he remained confident that no one else would come to pry.
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  Night Pursuit

  1.

  Pretending that he was working on another assignment for college, Yasser had spent every available minute on the internet, researching how to be a private detective. Was he worried? Worried wasn’t the word: Yasser was terrified. He thought it ironic that he had driven into a travellers’ camp and taken a baby away with him, suffering held-in-check but nonetheless minor discomfort; yet the thought of handing Maggie back her financial retainer broke him out in the night sweats. And not just because he’d already spent it: Yasser was frightened of the sense of failure, true, but in an acknowledgement of a rare racial slur, he was also frightened of being looked down on by a people over whom he felt ethnically and morally superior.

  The very real problem, however, was that he didn’t have a clue how to proceed. Aware that sulking in his bedroom wouldn’t cut it, Yasser had spent time and petrol (and chewed-up, spat-out fingernails) on interviewing people around the camp, fishing with the least nutritious of bait, against Maggie’s explicit wishes and advice. She told him he’d learn fuck all there: and he had! He had learned a great big handsome pile of fuck all.

  In addition he had interviewed people in Hockliffe – or he’d tried to. At least the residents of the camp had got wind of the fact that Yasser was present for a good reason, and had more or less cooperated with a suitable expression on their faces. (A message about not stealing his hubcaps, letting down his tyres, scratching his paintwork, or setting fire to his vehicle seemed to have gone around as well.) The residents of Hockliffe were of a different stripe. Suspicious, for one thing: wary that this Asian lad would want to know anything more than directions to one of the pubs – or even to Woburn, to Milton Keynes. For another thing, they were largely clueless about the abduction anyway. While standing outside the CostShop, in the rain, willing neighbours to have an inkling of what he was talking about (and urging himself to formulate a better interviewee selection process), Yasser thought that there must be more to life than this. More than several times he had almost phoned Maggie: to tell her to sod it, she could have back the wonga: it wasn’t worth catching his death of cold for.