Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  Jess started chuckling.

  ‘Don’t breathe a word,’ Nero told the people in the wardrobe. Then he closed the door and raised his left eyebrow at Eastlight, as if for praise.

  6.

  Eastlight was whistling by the time he arrived home. Whistling past the graveyard, he had joked to himself in the car. It was a nervous whistle.

  The house was dark and silent. No burnt offerings sizzled in a ruined pan; no smoke bustled in the kitchen. Massimo had not started on their evening meal. The house was cold.

  Has he left me?

  Calling his partner’s name as he prowled the ground floor, Eastlight paused only turn on the stereo and flick PLAY. The music was a two-decade-long project: a selection he’d made of his favourite songs from the annual Eurovision Song Contest TV programme. As Eastlight climbed the stairs, Cliff Richard sang ‘Congratulations’ – a tad ironically, Eastlight spent a second thinking.

  Although it wasn’t Massimo’s way to pass out on the bed, it was not unheard of either, and Eastlight wanted to check to be sure. The bedroom was empty. So was the bathroom: Massimo had not fallen asleep in the bath. He wasn’t home.

  Back in the lounge, the selection had moved on to ‘Puppet on a String’ by Sandi Shaw. (Was anything free from coincidence?) Whistling along, Eastlight called Massimo’s mobile. When he heard the peculiar dialling tone he turned down the music in case he’d heard it incorrectly: it was not the usual tone, it was the tone he had heard when calling someone overseas – longer beeps – and Eastlight’s immediate thought was that Massimo had absconded to Naples. He’d had enough. He’d got scared. He’d run away to stay with his sister Violet, perhaps.

  Just when I need him most.

  No; perhaps this was –

  This dial tone died. No connection. No answer service.

  – perhaps this was for the best. With Massimo back in Italy – back in the motherland – Eastlight was free to do what he needed to do with the five prisoners in Eggington. Might be a blessing in disguise.

  Eastlight turned up the music. Now it was his favourite: ‘Diggy-Loo Diggy Ley’ by the Swedish band of brothers, The Herreys – the song of which he was always reminded when he saw or thought of Vig; the song that had lent Vig the nickname Viggy-Loo (which he was more than reasonably certain that nobody else comprehended). The thought of Vig made him smile and stop whistling. He sang along to the tune about the golden boots; as ever, he pictured the lead singer and imagined the man beating him off while wearing nothing more than the eponymous footware. Then the singer’s face melted into Vig’s… and an idea dawned.

  If I’m quick… Eastlight thought.

  As he usually did, he changed the song’s chorus to ‘Viggy Loo, Viggy Lay/Let’s all bum and be gay’ – and he continued the recital at full voice as he stepped outside and unlocked the car. Wouldn’t matter that he’d left the CD running. By paying a call on Vig he would buy himself an alibi, however flimsy. At the very least his unannounced appearance would annoy that haughty slag Dorota. And with any luck he’d be able to frustrate Don Bridges too – the old fool. He was not about to forgive Don’s crack about shattering his knees, irrespective of what happened in the meantime.

  He slipped into the car.

  7.

  When Eastlight arrived at Vig’s pile, the front gate was open; he drove in behind a car that he didn’t recognise, wondering if Vig and Dorota were expecting guests for a party of some sort. If so, why hadn’t he been invited? Had he been invited? Perhaps the invitation had gone to the house and Massimo had accidentally buried it beneath a stratum of gas bills, fliers for laser eye treatment, waterways holiday brochures, and Council Tax final demands. But this was good! If more than a few people witnessed Eastlight’s presence at Vig’s do, how could he have been in Eggington? He’d only been home for ten minutes! So he’d gone to the rendezvous in Milton Keynes, picked up the weapon, and driven straight here.

  No. He’d gone shopping in Milton Keynes – an anniversary present for Massimo.

  No. He hadn’t bought anything – that wouldn’t work. He’d need a receipt.

  He’d gone browsing in Milton Keynes; found nothing appropriate; then decided to drop in on Vig and Dorota, as a good estate agent will, to ensure that they’d settled in nicely. The party was a surprise…

  Party?

  Probably not, Eastlight concluded. Not enough cars. Or too early for the main event?

  The vehicle ahead splattered gravel in its wake. Some of it pinged against Eastlight’s bodywork, so Eastlight decreased his speed: he was all but tailgating the twat in front.

  The cars drew up to the house. Eastlight recognised the man who got out of the other vehicle. He had met him at Vig’s barbecue. Eastlight flicked through his memory files.

  ‘Good evening, Roger!’ he called, having exited.

  The man looked angry and preoccupied. Because of the tailgating?

  ‘Charlie Eastlight,’ Eastlight continued.

  ‘Yeah, I remember.’ Roger Billie set off on foot – to Eastlight’s surprise – away from the main building. ‘Are you with the mob?’

  What mob?

  ‘Need to straighten this out one way or another,’ Roger continued.

  He was walking in the direction of the woods, as if towards Don’s hut.

  Eastlight said, ‘I agree.’

  ‘Well come on then.’

  Eastlight followed him.

  The Edlesborough House

  1.

  Massimo turned off his phone; then he silenced his car’s engine and killed the headlights. And breathe, he told himself. He had parked coincidentally close to where Connors and Dorman had parked on their return visit to Edlesborough, on the night in question; but even if he’d known this and had read something of an omen into the coincidence, he would not have re-parked. He wouldn’t have been able to. There was nowhere else. Two schoolboy football teams were slugging it out on the floodlit pitch on the village green. The match had attracted a good audience, and the players’ parents had been forced to park up wherever there was space. It was here or half a mile away.

  Keeping his mood as chirpy as possible, Massimo experienced the tickle of rain on his bald spot, and set off up the road on foot. In the five minutes it took him to walk to the house, the atmosphere made up its mind: a light shower commenced; a wind shoved at his shoulders. Nervousness had provided him with a semi.

  A woman left Number 11 and crossed the front lawn instead of taking the path. If she hadn’t fitted Benny’s description so adroitly, her uniform would have given Massimo all the evidence required. She had obviously come straight from a shift and hadn’t changed.

  The nurse. Bernadette.

  Had she been inside the house? How had she got in? What had she found?

  Bernadette turned left out of the drive and walked on, towards her own home.

  Massimo watched her. Then he walked around the side of the building, into the back garden, where it was dark and awash with shadow.

  The field at the bottom of the garden was grey and beige. No life was evident: it might have been a field on the moon. Massimo paused. That field was probably where Connors had been washed away; where Dorman had lost half of his incompetent head… The deduction was sufficient to engender a certain emotion in Massimo: it was a second or two before he understood that he’d just experienced empathy. Empathy of all things! And then something else flooded his system, something much more recognisable and familiar.

  Hatred.

  And telling himself that he would do this for Connors – but especially for Dorman – he strode to the conservatory, feeling empty of belly but charged up.

  Much of the glass had been boarded up; very little of it had survived the explosion, or the clearing-up process that had followed. This would be easier than he’d dreaded… Massimo pulled from an inside jacket pocket the small hammer
that Benny had loaned him. Without a further thought he set to. Using the hammer’s claw, he tugged at a board that he chose at random. If the noise alarmed a neighbour, he would have to deal with that on the spur of the moment.

  The board popped free of the structure with little resistance. Such was the feeling of achievement that this produced that Massimo attacked a second board, directly above the first, with flat-out gusto and determination. This one clung a little more tenaciously; but Massimo was on a roll, and no sheet of fucking plywood was going to thwart his plans tonight. Not now: not now that he’d made his decision to get in. After two minutes of grunting and under-the-breath insults, Massimo felt a rivet pop and give: it shot past his body and bounced on the patio with a tink.

  And then Massimo turned around quickly. Breath crammed his throat.

  ‘Mind telling me what you think you’re doing?’ the woman who had crept up on him said.

  It was the nurse. Well, Benny had advised him that she might be trouble, but Massimo had not expected to have been so easily outwitted or cornered.

  The hammer was heavy – nice and heavy – in his left hand. Three strides in that interfering bitch’s direction, a quick swing of the arm… It could all be done efficiently enough, Massimo reckoned. No different from what he had planned for Nero and Jess. Drag her into the house and Open Sesame.

  Suddenly the ludicrousness of what Benny had told him returned – with a punch. His body was wet with panic-sweat; his bladder felt full to bursting. He scarcely dared breathe.

  ‘I’m going in,’ Massimo told her, tripped up and forced to state the obvious.

  ‘So I see. I’m coming with you,’ the nurse replied. ‘Hurry up and make us a door.’

  2.

  Inside, the house stank of mould. If any fresh air had made it past the plywood slabs and through the spaces where once there had been glass, it hadn’t been enough. The smell was dense – a fog of stench – but there was something else in the miasma, was there not? Risking his lungs’ safety (or so he imagined), Massimo inhaled deeply and searched for a memory. The underlying aroma was one that he knew.

  Bernadette recognised it too. She found the file in her databank first.

  ‘Do you smell seaweed?’

  That was it! Seaweed on a beach – a holiday – any number of holidays – the sea gone out, having deposited its cargo of rotting strands.

  ‘Yeah I do,’ said Massimo very quietly – his voice so low why? Did he fear that he and his new compatriot would cause the disruption of something that had settled? ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Bernadette replied.

  ‘Medically speaking.’

  ‘This isn’t a medical matter.’

  ‘But if it was. In your professional opinion, is there anything that might account for a sea smell in a landlocked village house conservatory?’

  Bernadette snickered in the darkness. ‘Yeah. The sea… Let’s find some lights, eh?’ She flicked something that she held in her right hand and a narrow beam of light poked out.

  ‘Good thinking: a torch,’ said Massimo.

  ‘I went home to get it… when you thought I didn’t see you outside. I have a feeling the electricity’ll be off, but let’s try.’ Bernadette used the torch beam to locate some dimmer switches on the wall. As she’d predicted, no light was forthcoming when she turned the dials. ‘Dead.’

  The carpet underfoot was marshy; their footfalls squelched as they stepped carefully through the debris, following a line of torchlight like passengers exiting a plane in an emergency. All evidence of human life was in their path. Swollen cushions like undersea plants; a disembowelled television; a broken-spined electric guitar… Massimo acknowledged that old devil called Empathy once more. The sight before them – made better or worse by the limited illumination he could only guess – was tragic. Full-on heartbreaking. Someone’s home. That old couple who’d gone to the funeral in the north of England…

  How had Benny known that they’d be away at that funeral that evening?

  It was a question that Massimo had meant to pose but had forgotten to do so. Why specifically that night, from an intra-rationalist point of view?

  Filing the question away for a later opportunity, Massimo led Bernadette from the conservatory into a dining room. Reflexively he reached for a light switch; the lights were in the same inoperational state. It made sense that the power would have been turned off, Massimo supposed. Lot of water around.

  In fact, the room had been drenched. If anything, the damage in here was worse than it had been in the conservatory. A sideboard had been pulverised in the deluge, its chinaware innards smashed to pieces and scattered with such force that shards were embedded in the wall like rock formations. Wedding photographs lay trampled in muddy pools. The table was upside down, a gesture of defiance or submission. A display cabinet had been made ovoid with wood-warp, its glass front nothing now but an owner’s memory.

  ‘What’s your name, by the way?’ asked Bernadette.

  ‘Massimo. And you?’ the man asked, keeping up appearances.

  ‘Bernadette. Are you connected in any way with the two men who came to my door the night this happened?’

  ‘Came to your door?’

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes then,’ Bernadette said behind Massimo’s shoulders. ‘Just for my own curiosity… was it also them who burgled my house?’

  Massimo walked from the dining room into the kitchen. Underfoot he crushed crockery into smithereens, his hands reaching out for the light switch once again (the light was dead) and then for anything else that he might be able to identify by touch alone.

  ‘Do you think you can keep that torch steady?’ he asked.

  Bernadette turned off the torch.

  The room darkened and expanded; though the kelp-smell (or whatever it was) was less pungent, the room had the same density of soured atmosphere. Without the torchlight it went on forever, and simultaneously closed in on Massimo’s chest.

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘Turn the light on, Bernadette,’ Massimo ordered. He spun quickly and lashed out with the hammer… which whistled through empty air. She had either kept a step or so back from him, or he’d spun too far or not enough. Deprived of any solid point of physical reference, Massimo was disoriented and wrongfooted.

  ‘Please,’ he added gruffly. Or I’m going to kill you, he added silently.

  ‘Were they the same men who burgled me?’ asked Bernadette. Her voice came from a slightly different place, as if she’d managed to creep further into the room, past where he stood. Of course. She had a house up the road; she’d be familiar with its layout if she’d spent any time there longer than a week or so.

  ‘Yes. They went to the wrong place. You were a mistake.’

  ‘My dog bit one of them on the arse,’ Bernadette said.

  ‘That was Dorman. A dog bite’s the least of his worries, believe me.’

  ‘I know. He was decapitated… Was he a friend of yours?’

  ‘A colleague. Bernie, please: the torchlight. I don’t like this…’

  Bernadette thumbed the torch back on. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. ‘I appreciate your honesty,’ she told Massimo. ‘You didn’t know they came back to me that night, did you?’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  Bernadette positioned the torch so that it beamed up from underneath her chin. Her face patched in shadows.

  ‘You gave em a bollocking and they came back to this house. What were they looking for?’

  Massimo paused and calculated.

  ‘If I promise I’ll tell you when we’re out of here, would that be good enough?’

  Bernadette had kept the light on her own face. Her ‘No’ came out ghostly and cold.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because my dog has never been seen since that night.
Wherever your other man went – the younger one – my dog went too.’

  This did not feel as much like being caught out as Massimo had imagined it would. The fact that someone else knew something of what Benny had discussed – or seemed to at any rate – was uplifting.

  ‘So tell me what we’re looking for,’ Bernadette went on. ‘I want my dog back.’

  ‘I can’t promise you anything like that.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to promise me anything. What are we looking for?’

  ‘A gateway… or a door. Something tells me you know what.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Are you an intra-rationalist too?’

  Bernadette turned the torch on Massimo. ‘A what?’

  ‘Never mind. It’s a door – a hole. I don’t know exactly. My informant says it goes to another… dimension. Now get that light out of my eyes.’

  ‘Sorry. Do you want to take the upstairs and I’ll finish down –‘

  ‘No. We stick together,’ said Massimo. ‘It’s too weird to be alone. What room’s through that door?’ He pointed to his right.

  ‘In my house, that’s the larder.’

  ‘Well are you ready to open it?’

  ‘As ready as… Yes, I’m ready.’ Bernadette pointed the beam at the door in question, the one that Massimo had been able to make out in the torch-created shadows. And then she added, ‘Do you dream of that place?’

  ‘No. You do, I take it.’

  ‘I don’t. But my partner does.’

  ‘And where’s he right now?’

  ‘At a game. He’s a gambler.’

  ‘Did you leave him a note?’ Massimo asked. ‘Saying where you might be.’

  ‘Do you think I should have?’

  ‘If I didn’t believe in something I wouldn’t have come: that’s what Benny said.’

  ‘Who’s Benny?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Massimo reached for the door. ‘Take a deep breath…’ in case there’s another surge of water, he did not need to explain.

  He pulled open the larder door…