Border Princes t-2

by Dan Abnett

  A man walking a dog frowned at Jack as Jack bombed past.

  ‘Afternoon!’ Jack called. Twenty yards to the corner, then right. He jinked around two men carrying an old bath out to a skip. He reached the corner, and skidded around it.

  Jack’s intercept prediction had almost been bang on. Left to his own devices, the young man in the suit would have doubled back again, and run headlong into Jack coming the other way.

  But the young man in the suit hadn’t made it that far. A few yards in from the opposite street corner, James had him pressed against the wall in an arm-lock.

  Jack trotted up, breathing hard. The young man was struggling and mouthing off.

  ‘Be still!’ James told him. He looked around at Jack. ‘Got him,’ he said.

  ‘How?’ asked Jack

  ‘I ran like a bastard and caught up with him,’ said James. ‘How do you think? Be still, I said!’

  ‘Last time I saw you pair, he had thirty yards on you,’ said Jack, panting.

  ‘All in the finish,’ James replied. ‘He went off too early. Soon as he began to flag, I had him. It’s pacing, Jack, pacing.’

  ‘My ass it is. He was flying.’

  ‘Are you going to help?’ James asked. The young man in the suit was struggling harder.

  ‘Get your hands off me! Get your filthy hands off me! I know my rights! Police brutality!’

  ‘Turn him round,’ Jack instructed. James manhandled the wriggling young man around to face him. The young man was sweaty and flushed, sucking painful breaths in after his exertions.

  ‘You think we’re police?’ Jack asked him.

  ‘Get your hands off me!’ the young man replied.

  ‘Do you think we’re the police?’ Jack asked him again, more slowly and deliberately this time.

  ‘Y-yes?’

  ‘Boy,’ smiled Jack. ‘This is going to be fun.’

  They walked back to the SUV.

  ‘OK,’ Jack admitted. ‘Not so much fun as I’d hoped. Or success.’

  ‘You sure we should have let him go?’ asked James.

  ‘I’m telling you, that wasn’t our guy.’

  James pursed his lips. ‘Unless, of course, he was, and he just hypnotised us the way he hypnotises his other victims, and we fell for it. Did you consider that?’

  ‘Come on, that moron couldn’t have hypnotised a… a…’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Something that gets hypnotised very easily,’ Jack replied, fishing the carkeys out of his coat.

  ‘So you’re certain it wasn’t the man we’re looking for?’

  ‘You saw him as well as I did,’ said Jack, slightly plaintively, ‘You heard him. He was just a chancer, trying to case likely-looking homes by pretending to be doing a consumer survey. No cover story is that believably lame.’

  ‘I suppose. He did seem scared.’

  ‘Too right he was scared. Petty housebreaker, messing with me. Shame though, I thought he was the one.’ Jack blip-blipped the key fob to unlock the SUV and they got in.

  ‘Did he hit you?’ Jack asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘While he was struggling? Did he catch you?’

  ‘What? Why?’ James replied.

  ‘Your nose is bleeding a little there.’

  ‘Huh? Oh, yeah, I think he did.’

  It wasn’t yet three o’clock. Even with the secret, that was good going. Once you had them, you had to ease them in the direction you wanted them to go in, very gently. Some visits, that was slow going. Dean imagined it was a bit like steering a punt, although he’d never actually done that. He’d seen it on telly, however. Some fly-on-the-wall about arsehole toffs, punting.

  Sometimes, during a visit, they resisted, due to inhibitions he didn’t yet understand. Sometimes, he had to apply quite a lot of effort to get them moving the way he wanted them to go. Occasionally, there was nothing to get a purchase on, nothing but soft mud when he sank his punting pole in, so to speak.

  Dean thought he ought to write a seminar. He could train people to use the secret, and he’d heard there was really big money in sales training. Not that he was about to give the secret away to anyone, of course. It was his.

  Dean came out of number eight, and said goodbye to Mrs Menzies. She seemed very pleased with her imaginary loft insulation and replacement windows. Dean was certainly very pleased with the eight hundred and sixty-six not-imaginary-at-all pounds he’d been given by Mrs Menzies. He’d made sure to collect up all his bits of paper, all the forms he’d had her sign, here and here and here. They were only mail-away coupons and inserts from magazines, but the client always saw pukka, press-hard-you’re-making-four-copies contract blanks. He tried not to ever leave any behind, but if he did, no one would give them a second look.

  He walked down the street, whistling. He waited to cross back to his vehicle, and allowed some traffic to go by. A couple of saloon cars, a hatchback, then a monster black 4x4, a Porsche Cayenne or a Range Rover. It had gone past before he’d got a proper eyeful. Tasty. That’s what he wanted next. A really nice ride like that. Yes sir.

  He unlocked his own vehicle. It’d do the trick for the time being. No one ever looked at it.

  Dean sat down, and flipped through his sheaf of electoral roll printout. Time for one more, then he’d call it a day.

  The park would be closing soon. The sign at the wrought-iron gates advertised that they would be locked at nightfall in winter. Another half an hour. The white-gold sun was slipping behind the empty trees, and long dark shadows were running out across the grass like ploughed furrows. There was a slight autumnal haze, a softness in the light, and a smell of leaves decaying.

  People were walking dogs. A few kids were playing, most of them on their way home from school, laden with knapsacks. A golden retriever chased energetically across the grass, hunting down a frisbee. Its owner shouted the dog’s name. Leaves fluttered as it snatched up the red plastic disk and turned with it in its mouth.

  Mr Dine sat on the top of the War Memorial, basking in the last of the sun. He was secure. No one could see him up there. He was out of sight to anyone passing by on the ground, and to anyone looking on from a distance. Besides, no one would expect a person to be up there. The Council had never bothered fencing the War Memorial with railings, because it was patently unclimbable.

  He’d crashed, predictably, then switched to recovery mode. A warm glow that wasn’t the sunlight suffused him. He could hear the distant, constant hum of traffic.

  The upload had restarted about an hour earlier. Not an alert, just a routine data review. He sat listening to its melodious chunter. Key link-strands had not yet been clarified and restored to satisfaction. There was still some concern, expressed via the upload, that the Principal’s status might yet be compromised and unsafe. A possibility of damage. Mr Dine was to monitor this carefully in the coming hours.

  Mr Dine opened his hand and looked at the livid burn the adversarial object had left on the flesh of his palm. The wound was repairing, but it had gone through to the bone in places.

  ‘You’re joking! And?’ asked Gwen.

  ‘Well,’ said James, ‘he went off down Brunswick Way like he had an Exocet up his jacksie, and Jack and I went after him. This is the third time in one afternoon, bear in mind. I was not in the mood for another sprint. Anyway, he gets past me and Jack rugby tackles him on a traffic island.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s only a Jehovah’s Witness, isn’t he?’

  ‘No!’ Gwen exclaimed with a snort. ‘Not really?’

  ‘I swear. He starts trying to club Jack off him with a rolled up copy of The Watchtower.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Gwen asked, raising her wine glass.

  ‘We apologised,’ James grinned.

  ‘But he’d run. Why had he run?’

  ‘Apparently, two of his colleagues had been duffed up by youths in that area recently, and he thought we were out to get him.’

  ‘Poor bugger.’

 
‘Yeah. To make things worse, Jack sends him on his way with a cheery “Next time I see Jehovah, I’ll put in a good word for you”.’

  The waiter brought the bill over. Gwen waved it to her.

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said James.

  ‘I invited you out, remember. My treat.’

  She gave the waiter her card. ‘Did Jack really say that?’

  James nodded. He sipped the last of his wine and laughed to himself. ‘He’s a menace.’

  ‘So, you never got him, then?’

  ‘No, we didn’t,’ James said, sitting forward again and shaking his head. ‘We’re back on it tomorrow. Jack’s quite fired up now, a matter of principle, I think.’

  ‘Captain Jack always gets his man,’ said Gwen.

  ‘Well, Captain Jack was off his stroke this afternoon. Zero for three. First the oik casing houses, then the window cleaner who thought we were wanting words about a pliant hausfrau he’d dallied with. Then, the Jehovah’s Witness.’ James counted them out on his fingers. ‘We were up and down Pontcanna all afternoon like a fiddler’s elbow.’

  ‘I thought that was in and out?’

  ‘You’re right. What’s up and down?’

  ‘A whore’s drawers?’

  ‘Thank you. I haven’t run so far in years. My calves are like toffee apples.’

  ‘What, crispy and sweet?’ Gwen asked, smiling to the waiter as she punched her PIN into the reader he offered her.

  ‘No, baked hard and round and… OK, not toffee apples. Either way, I’m totally exhausted.’

  ‘Not totally, I hope,’ she winked. She took her card and the tear-off strip from the waiter. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Not totally, I suppose,’ James said. ‘Well, you paid for all this, and very nice it was too, but weren’t we supposed to be talking?’

  ‘We were talking.’

  ‘I told you all about running around Pontcanna like a nong. We didn’t talk about… talky stuff.’

  ‘The night’s still young,’ she said.

  James helped her on with her coat. They thanked the girl working the restaurant’s front of house, and went out into the clear, chilly night. Fairy-light stars and an elegantly simple waxing moon stood out in the glassy blackness over the Bay.

  ‘I paid extra for that,’ Gwen said.

  They walked along the Quay, hand in hand. The restaurants and bars were throbbing with music and bodies.

  ‘You wanted to consult me, I believe,’ James said.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Consult away.’

  Gwen leant on the railing. The oxide tang of the water was sharp.

  ‘Rhys and I have been together for a long time. We’re like socks that get rolled up together and dumped in the wash, week in, week out, just because we match. Never mind the holes that need darning.’

  ‘But you match?’

  She nodded. ‘Always have. Never mind the holes. You can live with holes. That’s why God made shoes. To hide the holes in your socks.’

  ‘Can I ask, at this point, what shoes are representing in this elaborate analogy?’

  Gwen chuckled. ‘Bugger only knows. Daily life? I didn’t really think that one through.’

  James looked pensive. ‘And — just so I’m clear, you understand — are you saying you only wash your socks once a week?’

  She cuffed him on the sleeve. ‘I’m being serious.’

  ‘So am I,’ James replied earnestly. ‘Living with a woman who only washes her socks once a week, that could have long-term consequences.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Long-term? This is my point, you see? There’s only one reason I’m even considering breaking Rhys’s heart, and that’s us. You and me. It’s not a road I’m even going to think of going down unless there’s you and me at the end of it.’

  ‘I see. I thought you were tired of him?’

  ‘I don’t know what I am, as far as Rhys goes. Settled. Inert. Static. I’m being selfish, I know. I bloody know that, but I also know I want more. However, I don’t want to hurt him over nothing. I’d only do it if it was truly important.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And for all I know, this may just be a bit of fun to you. A laugh. A fling. That’s fine. I’d understand. But that’s why I have to consult you. I’d like to know where you stand.’

  ‘OK,’ James said. There was a pause.

  ‘No rush, no pressure.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘In your own time,’ she added.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Bearing in mind I paid for dinner and this whole romantic seaview.’

  He looked very solemn. ‘So… whether you dump Rhys or not depends on whether I see a future for us? Or not?’

  ‘In a nutshell,’ she said.

  ‘You like to put people on the spot?’

  ‘It’s in my nature as a policewoman.’

  ‘Gwen,’ he said softly. ‘We’ve had a great time, this week. Despite everything.’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he began.

  Her face fell. ‘It’s OK. Just say it. Just say it, James, so I can hear it.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ he whispered.

  ‘Right. That’s all right, that’s-’

  He hushed her with a finger on her lips.

  ‘I’m really, truly sorry, but you’re going to have to break Rhys’s heart.’

  They caught a cab from the rank on the Quay. They sat as far away from one other as they possibly could on the back seat. Too close, they’d become volatile elements, intermix and explode. They didn’t even look at each other as the street-lamps strobed by overhead.

  ‘Keep the change,’ James told the driver, the cab’s engine purring hot gas into the night cool.

  ‘Really, mister?’

  ‘Oh yeah, really.’

  ‘Have a nice night,’ the cabbie called as he pulled away.

  Gwen laughed as James failed to get his key in the lock at the fourth attempt.

  ‘Not a good omen,’ she giggled.

  ‘Shush, my hands are shaking.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The door opened and they blundered inside, wrapped around one another. The deep kisses felt like the first they’d ever shared. It was weird, charged, startling.

  ‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘hang on a sec.’ Pulling open the last few buttons of his shirt and ditching it, he headed into the kitchen. She heard the fridge door thump open, followed by a clink of glasses.

  James reappeared with a bottle of Moët and two crystal flutes.

  ‘I came by earlier, and put this in the fridge,’ he said. ‘In case… just in case we had something to celebrate tonight.’

  ‘Oh God, that’s so sweet,’ she whispered.

  Two hours later, they remembered the champagne and opened it. It was warm by then, but they didn’t care.

  EIGHTEEN

  Flicker. Fast-cut: a bridge, a river, a palace. Shades on the high walls.

  Too fast to follow, too jerky and chop-cut. Flicker. Edit. Edit. Smash-cut: the bridge, very old, very worn. Smash-cut: the thundering torrent of a river boiling along a deep, stone-cut channel under the bridge. The river is a mile wide. The bridge, therefore, worn and crumbling though it seems, is a mile wide too.

  Smash-cut: the palace, made of silver-green bricks, towers reaching up into the clouds. The palace shimmers. Its high, silver-green walls are like the lustrous scales of a sleeping reptile. The sky is a silent bowl of black, marked by pinpricks of fire.

  Smash-cut: the lurching segue of dream logic. Someone is running across the ancient bridge. Running fast. Fast footsteps on stone. Someone is running away from the palace across the ancient bridge. It’s him. He’s running away across the ancient bridge. Why is he running?

  The shades on the high walls stir. Alerted by distant sirens, they begin to move, leaping and scurrying, like shadows, like whispers, like wraiths. They are barbed, and armed for killing.

  They run fast
er than he does. Of course they do. They were made that way. They run faster, faster… faster than he could ever run. Leaping, bounding, they close the distance. They are catching up with him.

  They are silent. They make no sound. Not even footsteps.

  Still running, he looks over his shoulder. The shades are there.

  One leaps-

  * * *

  He wakes. Bolt upright, wet with sweat.

  ‘Babe, what is it?’ she asks, head buried in the pillows beside him.

  ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Weird dreams. Go back to sleep.’

  Thursday morning, six o’clock. Still dark. Dean Simms gets up, and makes tea by the light of his single bulb. The B amp;B is quiet. He sneaks along to the bathroom and takes a quick shower.

  Back in his room, he suits and boots as he sips his tea and checks over the electoral roll. Tovey Street. As good as any. He does his nails, digging the quick with the nib of a fresh orange stick. A splash of smelly. He pulls on his jacket and flicks his tea bag into the bin. Got everything? Keys? Briefcase? Secret?

  He strokes the soft lump for a moment before zipping his briefcase closed. All set.

  He goes out, locking the door behind him.

  Outside, it’s sharp and clear. Frost on the pavements. Glitter in the bushes. He hears a milkman clinking on his rounds down the street, the rising then falling hum of the milk float coasting point to point.

  Dean crosses the street. The milkman nods good morning as he whirs past on his chinking float. A good day, a clear day. Dean takes a deep breath. Cold air.

  A tabby cat slinks by along a wall, tail down. Dean reaches his vehicle and unlocks it.

  He gets in. The vinyl seat is cold. The hard plastic wheel is cold. When he starts the engine, cold air breathes through the vents. There’s frost on the screen, but nothing the wipers can’t handle.

  Mirror, signal. He pulls out of his parking slot into the street.

  Gonna be a good day, he promises himself. Game on.

  As the kettle boiled, Davey Morgan spooned out cat food into a bowl. He set the bowl down on the kitchen floor. There were two other bowls there already, untouched. He picked them up, banged their contents out into the bin and washed them up.