by Oliver Tidy
‘What if I said I felt sorry for you?’
‘Pity?’ I shook my head. ‘I’d be crushed.’
‘How about I had nothing better to do?’
I shook my head again. ‘Insulted.’
‘Victim support initiative?’ she tried.
I gave her my is-that-the-best-you-can-do face.
‘Maybe it’s a bit of all three. Or maybe it’s something entirely different. Didn’t your mum teach you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?’
‘We never got the chance to be that close. She died when I was in my early teens.’
‘Shit. Sorry.’
‘Forget it.’ I was suddenly exhausted. ‘Look, you’ve done a great job, been a brilliant help and I really appreciate it. But to be honest, I’m knackered. I think last night is properly catching up with me. I’m going to call it a day down here.’
She didn’t seem overly bothered by that. She took it as a cue to leave and I didn’t try to talk her out of it. I hadn’t been lying. It was all catching up with me and all I wanted was to just lie down and rest.
I thanked her as profusely as I could find the words for and meant every one of them. After seeing her out and waving her off – even though it hurt – I took myself back upstairs opened a can, popped some more pills and went to lie down on the sofa. It was the middle of the afternoon.
***
24
The sofa was turning out to be something of an irresistible soporific. I woke in the dark. There was no traffic to hear. It felt like small-hours-late. I went to sit up and the pain in my side made me yelp. I took it slowly and with much grimacing got upright. I experimented with the limits of my available movement, just so I knew, and decided to head for bed before I came fully awake.
It took me a few minutes to navigate my way in the dark. Turning lights on would have risked a keener state of wakefulness, something I wished to avoid.
My bedroom window had been open all day. It was nice and chilly up there.
As I entered the room I heard the unmistakeable noise of people trying to disagree quietly somewhere outside. And I could guess where. I froze. I checked the gently glowing numbers of the digital alarm clock by the bed: two thirty. I padded silently over to the window and looked through a chink in the curtains to Flashman’s yard below.
There was just enough moonlight to make out the shape of a familiar van and two people standing in front of the yellow container. One of them was huge – a mountain of a man. The doors were open. There was another vehicle too. It looked like Flashman junior’s pick-up. Curiouser and curiouser.
A couple of evenings before a similar scene hadn’t meant as much as perhaps it should have done to me. And I’d all but forgotten about it as more important events had taken precedence. It was the middle of the night and people were behaving suspiciously in virtual darkness in a run-down builder’s yard. It meant something to me now. What with everything that had happened and been revealed it meant I should view anything suspicious with equal suspicion – start paying greater attention.
I strained to hear something of what they were saying but it was impossible – just muted muffled sounds indicating disharmony.
Someone emerged from inside the container. He was tall, slim and well built, making me think it was Flashman junior. A torch beam played around.
The back doors of the van were opened with only a hint of sound that carried. The three figures moved some boxes from the van to the container. I counted six trips. Then the doors of the container and van were closed. Someone must have oiled the hinges on the container because there was not the shriek of metal on metal I’d heard the previous time. The tall one fiddled around with the door of the container, probably applying a lock. And I realised the van would be soon leaving.
I decided quickly. I hurried out of the room and down the stairs as swiftly as my injuries would permit. I snatched the keys to the shop from the wall and moved fast down the next flight of stairs. Into the shop and across to the front door. I breathed in and out heavily and it pained me. I realised I had nothing on my feet. I swore at myself.
The impulse that had set me on this course of action was that I should try to catch the number plate of the van and make sure the pick-up was Flashman’s. It could be something. The suspicion I’d experienced upstairs had fermented rapidly into an idea that involved my relatives’ disappearances.
I unlocked the shop door, stepped out in my socks, pulled the door quietly shut behind me and, after scanning the quiet street left and right, scurried along the pavement in the direction of the alley. I slipped into the darkened recess of the baker’s doorway.
When I got there I realised it was no cover at all, despite it being set back a metre and darkened by an awning. If anyone were even to glance in my direction I would be discovered. I cowered down below the cill, balled up like some homeless person seeking shelter, though my cramped posture hurt my side incredibly. I consoled myself that I could possibly pass for a drunk if discovered, so long as no one tried to smell my breath.
As I thought about the danger of my exposed position and maybe quickly retracing my steps I heard the idle of the van’s diesel engine reverberating off the buildings that flanked the access track.
It emerged ten feet to my right and I dipped my head low. As before, it eased on to the main road and turned right. I looked up and was able to get a clear view of the number plate. As the vehicle accelerated away into the night, again – west towards St Mary’s Bay – I recited the registration over and over under my breath.
The deep burble of the pick-up’s meaty engine gently filtered up from the darkened passageway like the throaty rumblings of some terrible beast disturbed in its lair. It had paused. I heard the gates being pulled shut and a chain being threaded through them. I should have gone then. I had time. But I stayed where I was. As I waited to see whether this was indeed Flashman’s vehicle, I continued reciting the van’s registration to myself.
The pick-up growled up the alley and stuck its nose out into the high street. I dipped my head again. As I did, I considered with a pang of alarm that if it was Flashman he would not turn right as the van had but go left and travel past me in the direction of where the Flashmans lived out at Burmarsh.
I squeezed myself down and back and had to bite my lip at the pain my contraction caused my ribs.
As the pick-up eased past, I didn’t risk the little movement of lifting my face to try to see the driver. It moved away. It went twenty metres or so and I let my breath go. And then it stopped sharply, the twin brake lights glowing brightly like the widely spaced eyes of a demon crouched to pounce. I risked a look. Thin wispy fumes rose in the still night air from the pair of wide stainless steel exhausts as the monster’s throaty engine idled.
The red lights changed to white – the driver had engaged reverse. My body prepared for flight. He didn’t move. Maybe he’d forgotten something. Maybe he’d seen the bundle that was me and was wondering. I remained motionless.
If I were the driver and I was up to no good, I’d investigate. It would be worth the minute of my night and the peace of mind.
The wheels began turning slowly backwards. Adrenalin, nature’s pain-reliever, had dulled my soreness. I scrambled up and bolted to my right. I took the alleyway and as I was swallowed up in the darkness I heard the little squeal of rubber on tarmac as the driver planted his foot on the accelerator.
The track was a tunnel of night. Thirty metres of uneven unmade ground covered with loose stones. And I had nothing on my feet. I sprinted along the familiarity of it, gritting my teeth as I punished my soles. Behind me I heard the engine whine and then again the squeal of rubber as he braked hard.
Just as he leapt forward to fill the passageway with the brightness of his full-beam headlights I dodged around the side of the building and began running across the pea shingle.
The truck accelerated up the track and slewed to a halt behind me. I heard a car door bang and understood Flashman was pursuing me on f
oot. That was not good for me. I hadn’t brought the keys with me. The spare was no longer under the pot by the back door and even if it had been I doubted I would have had time to have found it, fumbled it into the lock, got in, locked up behind me and then through the door the other side of the airlock space before he had caught up with me. I hadn’t done anything illegal, but I naturally didn’t want to be discovered.
So I bolted across the car park. It was beyond gloomy at the back of the high street. I didn’t have the luxury of time to consider my options so I just ran, aiming to put as much distance as possible between my pursuer and me. In truth, my flight was more of a hunchback’s scuttle than anything as graceful as running, but it was effective.
My only way of getting back into the building was through the front door in the well-lit high street. And that door was standing unlocked with all that it would imply to the casual investigator.
I heard fast-moving heavy tread negotiate the pea-beach behind me. He was chasing. He could probably make me out. I had to hope he couldn’t make out enough to know my identity. My altered shape would help.
I trod on something that sliced my foot through my sock; a shot of sharp pain carried up my leg. I hopped a couple of steps and risked a look behind me. He had a torch and the fat intense beam was slashing the darkness like a machete of light slicing through my cover as he came. Hiding would be out of the question.
I slipped between the five-bar gate and a tree trunk on to a strip of tarmac that ran down behind the Martello Cafe. I would run quicker on that. There was some thin tree cover.
I heard his voice behind me and instantly understood he was on his mobile phone. I could guess who he was talking to – the two in the van. They would have been only a mile away, perhaps less. They’d turn quickly, drive fast and I’d make a visible quarry running along the high street. I didn’t like to dwell on what would happen if they caught me. Not if they were responsible for my relatives’ deaths, which with every passing second terrified me more and more.
There were no alleys and so no opportunity to cut up between the shops that lined the high street and backed on to the car park. I had to go all the way around. If I got to the high street I’d have a two-hundred-metre laboured scramble to my front door. I’d be illuminated by the street lights. If I didn’t have greater than a two-hundred-metre start on my pursuer, he would easily see me slip back inside the shop. And if the white van made the far end of the high street before I got home I’d be cut off front and back with nowhere to run or hide.
I cut across the main road, round the low front wall of the cafe on the corner and up the slip road towards the sea wall.
I went left. Left would take me away from the van I had convinced myself would be heading back to the village. There was also greater opportunity for evasion and concealment that way. It was all about escape and the fear of discovery and I hadn’t yet fully rationalised why. But as soon as I’d embarked on my course of flight I’d labelled myself as guilty of something and as one against a potential nasty three I preferred what flight offered me. If discretion cannot always be the better part of valour it can certainly seem sensible when one is outnumbered.
I was breathing heavily and suffering for it. I got myself well away from the slipway before I stopped, ducked down and peered around the concrete wall I’d hidden behind. I saw no one. Perhaps Flashman had not pursued me across the main road. Perhaps he had not realised I had fled in that direction. I could only hope. I felt my feet. My socks were damp with my blood. Both of them. The pain began to filter through nature’s sedative.
I waited a good fifteen minutes. I sat still and quiet with my back pressed to the low wall and as my body calmed my brain became more active. There was an idea that loomed big and ugly and it fitted my relatives’ disappearances. It was the only idea I or the police had had and as such it made it commendable: what if they’d simply seen something they shouldn’t have? What if my relatives had been snatched from their home because of something they’d witnessed?
I remembered the desk diary I had found in their upstairs office. The entries that looked like times on dates, spaced a few days apart and not lasting long, times that matched with two nights of activity I had witnessed. Clearly either my uncle or my aunt, perhaps both, had been recording those entries. To record them they must have been observing. Perhaps they had been seen. My thoughts got darker. If they had been taken and killed because of something they had witnessed then it logically followed that whatever they had witnessed had been significantly illegal to warrant such a response.
That would make Flashman junior involved. That would make what was going on in the yard important. Important enough to kill for and now, if he had an idea it was me who he had pursued across the car park, I would be in grave danger – in danger of the grave, perhaps.
***
25
I had sweated profusely and now, in only a thin top, I was cold. My feet hurt and a gentle throb had returned to my side as the adrenalin had ebbed. I had heard no sounds other than the easy and repetitive action of the sea. Time to try home. I would be conspicuous making my way along the sea wall so I dropped down on to the polished stone slabs where it was darker.
It took me a cagey and painful fifteen minutes to get to a point on the sea wall where I would be able to see something of the high street outside the bookshop. There was no white van, no pick-up, no movement; there were no dark figures skulking in the shadows. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I didn’t like putting myself down there, but I had no choice if I didn’t want to spend the night under the stars.
I watched the road for another ten minutes. Nothing. I went back to the slipway and edged my way down it. I could see the length of the high street. Nothing. Quiet as an empty corridor in a long-abandoned factory. Just as eerie.
Keeping to the shadows of the shop fronts, I picked my way on my sore feet along the opposite side of the road to safety. No sign of anyone. Perhaps they’d all gone home. Perhaps the white van had never come back. Perhaps my imagination had just run away with me. Perhaps I’d just run away from my imagination. After a last anxious look up and down the street, I crossed quickly and pushed open the front door. I closed it fast and quietly behind me and leant my back up against it, my heart thumping. I let out a long breath.
A fierce torch beam blinded me and something hard and heavy put my lights out.
*
The next time I was able to register anything of my surroundings I was in pitch dark. I was freezing cold. My head felt like someone was standing on it. I was lying on cold, hard wooden flooring and my hands and feet were bound behind me. There was something stuffed in my mouth – a rag that threatened to make me gag – and some sort of bag over my head. I was shivering uncontrollably.
We were moving and I guessed I was in the back of the van. For confirmation, the diesel engine rattled and vibrated up through the chassis and my body. The sounds of our progress ricocheted around the interior.
Even with the keen memory of a good kicking still fresh in my mind, I couldn’t remember ever feeling worse.
We rocked and bounced along for a few miles. If I’d been conscious from the start of the journey I might have been able to understand something of where we were, the direction we were heading in. I might have been able to trace our route with my knowledge of the area as we swung left and right, curved around bends, accelerated up long straights, rose over a bridge, perhaps. As it was I could be in Scotland for all I knew.
I concentrated solely on alleviating some of my pain. In truth, the more I thought about easing it the more I thought about the causes of it, and the more I thought about the causes of it the more I suffered. I was in a fairground of misery and the rides were agony, discomfort, frustration and despair.
I was spared further unhelpful reflections as we slowed and I felt the vehicle turn off the smooth tarmac of the road and bump down a rutted track. The focus of my mind swung to my immediate future. When we stopped and the engine w
as killed it was very quiet. For a few agonising seconds it was just the ticking of the cooling engine block.
The vehicle rocked as people got out of the cab either side. Then there was talking – indistinguishable words but not whispered. I believed a phone call was being made.
The side door was thrown open and there was a fresh blast of the chilly night air. I was pulled across the floor by strong rough hands. Then hoisted up on to a shoulder in a fireman’s lift that sent a spasm of pain shooting through my damaged side. I could only guess at the strength of the man who did this. I was of average height and build and yet he hefted me effortlessly and high.
He walked quickly about ten metres and stopped. My wits had returned enough to make me fear I could be about to be thrown into or off something that would end my life. And I tensed in pointless and hopeless preparation. Instead, a door that sounded like it belonged to an abandoned building creaked open. We went in. I got a whiff of harvested crops and livestock feed before I was discarded into it. He bucked me off his shoulder to fall on to what I was sure were hay bales. I couldn’t keep the noise of my pain to myself as my ribcage was agonisingly compressed. I lay still. My driver went away and the door banged shut. I heard the vehicle start up, make a five-point turn and then drive away. Silence descended.
I had managed to work myself into a realistic state of fear for my life. Nothing else mattered. I would trade everything I had in the world to survive. I would plead and beg for my life if they gave me that chance.
I tested my bonds, which soon put paid to any romantic notion of breaking free of them to flee. I was trussed up like a sacrificial chicken. And all I could do was await my fate, which, given the fate that had befallen my relatives, would inevitably involve my premature death.
The thought of certain death brought a fresh suffocating wave of panic and terror to swamp my spirits, something as powerful as if I’d been immersed in the icy waters of the sea already. It made me thrash and pull frantically and fruitlessly at my bonds in my complete and utter frenzied desperation. When I realised the futility of that, I allowed the hopelessness of my situation to defeat me.