by Oliver Tidy
I nodded, clutching the blood-soaked rag to my throat and she ran from the building without stopping to inspect her handiwork.
I was feeling light-headed and cold and, if the truth be known, I was frightened for myself. I concentrated on keeping still, keeping awake and keeping alive.
The rain had eased to a light patter and I was suddenly glad of its efforts. With the beating on the roof I didn’t feel so alone.
Julien lay like a slaughtered horse and the blood had begun to seep out from under him to form a border around his head and shoulders. I couldn’t look at him for long, the poor bastard. I switched my attention to the other two and heard one of them groan. It sounded like Gaston.
He was trying to extricate himself from under his inert father. I watched on helplessly as he finally managed to push the old man off him and roll up on to his knees. Gaston stood up, clutching his shoulder. Blood soaked through his clothing around the entry wound. He looked very pale and in pain. He had a right to.
He saw me sitting on the floor propped up against the workbench, hanging on to the cloth at my neck like I was hanging on to life, and his wickedness returned to settle on his features like crows returning to their roost after a good scare.
‘It’s not over till it’s over, Mr Booker. I see that you have killed my brother, which will be useful as mitigating circumstances in my defence. Where is your little whore?’
The room was darkening for me. I was finding unconsciousness hard to battle against. I just wanted to close my eyes and rest. In the failing light I watched him bend to retrieve something. I caught a sucking noise and then something reflected dully in his hand. I forced my eyes to open and focus. He shuffled over and squatted down in front of me with a grimace. The grotesque hunting knife was back in his grip and pointing at me. His father’s blood dripped from it on to the floor.
‘Look at me. I want you to watch me take your life like I took your uncle’s and your aunt’s. I like to see the light die in the eyes. It is a remarkable thing to take a life. I believe it makes one stronger.’
There was movement behind him; a shadowy presence moving slowly across the room. My blurring vision couldn’t distinguish the form and then it was gone and it could have been a figment of my imagination, or the Reaper come to claim me.
‘What was it all for?’
He laughed a sick little laugh. The perspiration stood out on his forehead. ‘What is it always for?’
He opened his mouth to speak again, but he had already used up all his words on Earth. Jo had sneaked back into the building and picked her way silently across the distance between the door and us. She had soundlessly collected something metal and heavy on her way, which she brought down on Gaston’s head with enough force to send fragments of his skull deep into his brain and kill him outright, which according to the subsequent medical reports is exactly what happened.
***
Epilogue
Compared with the fortnight before, it’s been an uneventful few days. Lying in a hospital bed in France with little to read other than a few tatty, dated paperback thrillers and a laminated sign saying, Nil-pas-la bouche, which I understand to be the French version of our Nil-by-mouth.. No one to talk to either, apart from the occasional visiting police officers – a miserable bunch on the whole. Still, at least I’ve had plenty of time to think and record my recollections of this colourful episode in my life.
I understand that when I return to the UK, recovered enough, if not totally fit and well – French hospitals don’t want foreigners cluttering up their beds any more than their British counterparts – I’ll be receiving visits from people in authority there. And they will have their questions and they will require answers. But it’s not so much to account for my actions, or for posterity, that I’ve taken the decision to document what I can remember of events, although it’s been an interesting exercise. I have done this for Jo.
She is accountable to people and organisations in ways I am not. Recent events have brought her a lot of grief. She’s responsible for the position I currently find myself in – hooked up to drips and machines, lying between starched white sheets in the lap of mediocrity instead of dead. I owe her. I owe my life to her, probably twice over. Now that’s a debt.
When Jo landed the blow with the wrench that shattered Gaston’s skull like a cheap ceramic pot at a Greek wedding he was pitched forward on top of me, instantly dead. That was the good news. The bad news was that the knife he had been pointing at my chest was still between us and the impetus of his body slumping on the hilt drove a couple of inches of it through my ribcage and into a lung, nicking some important blood vessels – aren’t they all? – on the way.
They said that if there hadn’t been an ambulance not far off I would have been the fourth fatality at the scene. That experience has turned my already-healthy fear of hunting knives into something of a phobia. I think that is understandable when one has experienced the sight, sound and feel of such a knife slashing one’s throat and penetrating one’s chest cavity. At least I will now have some decent scars to show off next time I find myself sitting around the table with Dreyfuss and co.
Jo is currently on what I believe is euphemistically referred to as ‘gardening leave’. If she had a family, she would have the opportunity to be spending a lot more time with them. It could have been that fatal blow of questionable force that has led to her suspension; it could have been the four bullets she put into the giant’s chest, or it could have been the fact that she had gone off the procedural piste with me and ended up causing an international incident. More than likely it is a combination of all of it. Mavericks, I understand, are not to be tolerated in the British police service. She has not visited. I understand her distance is a necessary condition of the enquiry she is embroiled in and it is something I must accept.
There are things I don’t yet know. Where did they meet? How did they get involved in PLUTO? Where did the idea come from? But with all of them dead I’m not expecting any answers and I don’t think I’ll be looking for them. Like distant cousins invited to a family gathering, if they turn up I’ll embrace them. I don’t imagine my lack of knowledge and understanding is going to keep me awake at night. I will have the ghosts of my loved ones for that.
If Gaston was to be believed – and why would he lie under the circumstances? – I got one thing very wrong. Without proper thought, I’d dismissed the claims made by Dennis in his email to Mather and Platt about simply wanting to get the pump working for a museum piece. If things hadn’t ended so personally tragically for me such a misunderstanding might have gone on to be funny.
It angers, appals and frustrates me beyond words to think that the lives of my decent relatives were ended so pointlessly, so needlessly, so prematurely, so abruptly. Such an utter, cruel waste. At times my despair and rage swamps me. But I have nothing to focus these feelings on. In calmer, more objective phases I wonder whether perhaps I should be so incredulous that the right to life can be disregarded so casually, that life can be ended so callously, so brutally. Human life is fragile. It is easily ended. One stupid thoughtless action, the product of a momentary loss of control, of reason, and it’s over. The driver who remonstrates with a pair of lads who throw a half-eaten chocolate bar into the open window of his car; the young man who can’t ignore being bombarded with conkers by a gang of youths; the proud old men who get out of their cars to fight over a supermarket parking space. Every incident real. Every incident reported in the news in recent years. Every incident ending with someone dying, families devastated, lives ruined. All of them products of the wrong place and the wrong time, and human stupidity. But my uncle’s death was a far more sinister and disturbing thing: calculated cruelty of a type rare in society. I’m glad his murderer is dead.
I have to hope that with time I can make some kind of sense of it all and move on. I have good people to bury and then I have my new life to get on with.
Insanely, I received some post at the hospital. Just one large envel
ope delivered by hand by courier. It was from my Turkish wife, or more accurately her solicitors. She was suing me for divorce and clearly she was in a hurry – that Mediterranean temperament and Turkish impatience for everything. It made me smile more than sad.
Apparently, she is suing me for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. In the envelope were glossy photographs of Jo and me enjoying a meal together at The Woolpack; Jo and me standing in my back yard looking friendly; there were fuzzy images of us walking together carrying our Chinese take-away down Dymchurch high street – this image suggested strongly we were walking arm in arm, which we most certainly were not. I would have remembered. And they say the camera never lies. At least this explained those feelings I had experienced of being watched and I was glad of that.
I’m not going to contest anything. I intend to write back accepting the blame, wishing her well and meaning it. I’d had a wonderful time in one of the most vibrant cities in the world, but like all good things it had come to an end and this episode provided me with the means with which to finish it. I will not be returning to Istanbul. There is no one I have left behind that I will miss and nothing that I won’t now be able to afford to replace. I do wonder whether my soon-to-be-ex-wife commissioned my beating. Maybe it was all part of the surveillance team’s service: free roll of film and a good kicking with every order.
Things change. Life goes on. Live and learn.
Flashman senior was a surprise and uncomfortable-looking visitor to my hospital bedside. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him and relaxed only when he produced some fruit and duty-free booze. The sight of a bottle of expensive whisky made the nil-by-mouth instruction harder to swallow than hospital food. Still, none of it got wasted.
He told me that because I hadn’t given him the opportunity for satisfaction he didn’t have to honour his offer of signing the yard over to me. I was phrasing how to tell him I had never wanted it anyway and he should have saved himself a journey when he went on to say that, far from being angry with me, he appreciated that I had kept him out of it and ultimately out of gaol and from the subsequent ruination of his business and lifestyle. Because of my losses, his son’s part in them and the idea that for him biblical justice had been seen to be done, he told me he was having the land transferred to me anyway.
I could understand why he wouldn’t want to set foot in there ever again and I wasn’t sure I wanted to with the ghosts it held. But it would have seemed rude to decline his most generous offer and perhaps, with the inheritance I have coming and the plans I have for my future, I can do something with it my relatives would have approved of.
This brings me nicely on to my plans for my future. I do not now intend to complete the order I came back to the UK to help with. I will write to the buyer and explain my change of heart and my reasons. I will be honest with him and, from what I understand of him through our couple of exchanges, I have good reason to expect him to be sympathetic and even positive about things.
I am going to give living on Romney Marsh another try. I have something to offer it, it has something to offer me and when the inheritance comes through I will have the means with which to realise my plans.
As for Detective Cash and me, let’s just say that I hope to see a lot more of her once this is all over.
I have had the closest of brushes with the Grim Reaper. That can change a person. The doctor who sewed me up seemed to take pleasure in informing me in his broken English of how fortunate I had been with my injuries. I didn’t feel particularly fortunate to have had my throat slit and my heart almost punctured by several inches of cold steel.
Apparently, another centimetre with either wound and I would have bled to death on the dirty floor of that stinking old Nissen hut on a miserable night in northern France quicker than you could look up who said, ‘Good wombs have borne bad sons.’
The End
Hello,
Firstly, I’d like to say thank you for taking a chance on downloading this book whether you have paid for it or not. I hope you found something in it to enjoy.
Secondly, I would like to invite you to visit me at http://olivertidy.wordpress.com/ where you can find out more about other books I’ve written.
Thirdly, if you enjoyed the book, please leave a comment to that effect on Amazon. That sort of thing is really important for an author-publisher. Readers’ comments are all we’ve got to go by. Alternatively, I would be genuinely pleased to receive any comments, corrections or suggestions regarding any aspect of this book and my writing at the web address above where I have made a page available for feedback.
Once again, my thanks to Martin for his encouragement, proofreading and editorial suggestions.
Best wishes
Oliver Tidy
E-book titles available in my Romney and Marsh Files series:
#1 Rope Enough http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enough-Romney-Marsh-Files-ebook/dp/
#2 Making a Killing http://www.amazon.co.uk/Making-Killing-Romney-Marsh-ebook/dp/
#3 Joint Enterprise http://www.amazon.co.uk/Joint-Enterprise-Romney-Marsh-ebook/dp/
#4 Matters of Life and Death. This is a provisional title for the fourth in the series that will be available in ebook form in the first half of 2014. Please see my website, mentioned above, for details.
E-book titles available in my Acer Sansom series:
#1 Dirty Business http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dirty-Business-Acer-Sansom-Novels-ebook/dp/
#2 Loose Ends http://www.amazon.co.uk/Loose-Ends-Acer-Sansom-Novels-ebook/dp/