by Tom Trott
More field entrances opened on each side, some just gaps in the fences, some with wide wooden gates. Most of them were steep tracks into muddy fields and could never be traversed by anything less than a tractor. After two more fields the road swept back to the left, following the meandering watercourse of some ancient river. Just as the road was about to sweep right again a clump of trees appeared ahead beside the road, and behind the trees was a cottage. I pulled the car up by the front gate of the property and turned off the lights and engine.
We observed through the car windows in silence. The cottage was tiny, surrounded by a little fenced garden, and beyond the fence was surrounded by trees on all sides except the front, from where we watched the windows and the doors. No lights were on. I looked at my watch, it was 11:31 p.m. There was a silver 2009 Honda Jazz in the overgrown not-quite-driveway.
I wound down my window. There were no sounds on the night air. Nothing. No birds, no wind. The cottage, the bushes, the fence, the trees, and the hills, were all black shapes against the midnight blue sky. Eventually, after a minute of silent staring, I could make out wisps of steam drifting from a boiler flue on the side of the cottage. I started the engine again and we continued to crawl down the lane.
We passed no other properties until we came to the familiar turning that led left, up the slope to the farmhouse. There was now a freestanding sign at this turning that read “PRIVATE ROAD - KEEP OUT”.
‘That’s new,’ I remarked.
‘Uh-huh,’ Tidy replied, ‘and I doubt someone flew here from Turks and Caicos to put it there.’
According to the OS map the road continued for a quarter of a mile past the turning to some farm buildings and terminated there. We decided to check it out, intuition guiding us.
We crawled even more slowly down the road, just using sidelights now. The only sounds were the gentle purr of the engine, the soft rumble of rubber on tarmac, and the occasional squeal of shingle scraping between the two.
After two hundred metres we passed a dilapidated brick building with a wooden roof that had collapsed in. We jumped out and inspected it, but there was nothing inside except a pile of bricks and timber and overgrown weeds that threw dancing shadows from the light of our torches.
After another two hundred metres of driving we reached five corrugated steel shells, barely buildings. The road stopped here. The area between the buildings was a pool of mud, but I risked getting stuck to swing the car round and reverse into one of the steel shells, hiding the Kia from most angles.
I killed the engine and tried not to whisper when I spoke.
‘Ready?’
‘For what?’ she inquired.
I smiled and shrugged and climbed out of the car into the mud. Buttoning our coats tight, we squelched out from the cover of the metal building into the brown pool, on the surface of which drifted little brown icebergs. This clump of structures marked the entrance to another field, and what can only be described as giant smears of mud stretched from the pool up the slope into the field. The field was overgrown with hardy grass, frozen by the cold winter night and barely swaying in the wind. Two channels of flattened grass had been carved by a wide vehicle entering and exiting the field. They stretched up the hill and out of range of my torch.
I kept the beam pointed down by our feet as we trekked up the slope, following the unmistakable track. After five minutes we were already halfway up to the ridgeline and looking behind us we could see beyond the black hills to the south, onto the yellow lights of the city stretching to the sea, all the way to the wind turbines in the English Channel, blinking on the horizon. There was no moon, but the sky was clear and the stars were enough to light the sea. The closest thing, closer even than the farmhouse, was the white Chattri monument on the ridge of the hill, ghostly in the starlight, a silent memorial.
‘It’s a shame we can’t stop and have a picnic,’ Tidy remarked quietly, hushed by the atmosphere.
I mumbled agreement and we continued following the crushed grass track. After two more minutes it stopped and revealed an area of unevenly crushed grass where the vehicle had circled round to turn back. At the centre of this new patch was a small spot of churned mud no more than two metres in diameter. The water in this muddy patch drained to the centre, where it disappeared beneath the turf. It looked as though a tiny explosive had been buried and detonated, or perhaps a tiny meteor the size of a cricket ball had struck the earth.
I knelt down at the centre of the muddy patch with the torch pointed where the water drained. I flipped the knife out of my multi-tool and began to poke at the earth. It was a pool of liquid mud, half frozen on the cold night. I wondered what I hoped to learn by poking it.
‘Get down!’ Tidy suddenly whispered.
I dived for a grassy patch, then crawled over to where she was crouched behind tall grass. She was staring back down the track. I couldn’t see anything.
‘What?’ I asked.
She shushed me urgently.
I couldn’t hear anything, but a moment later headlights appeared down in the valley, on the road we had driven toward the farm buildings. I crouched next to her in the tall grass and we watched in silence.
The headlights stopped where the road stopped, and waited. Nothing happened for a minute until a torch beam appeared beside the stopped vehicle: the driver had got out. The beam shone on the Kia, lighting up the reflectors in the headlamps. The beam walked a full circle round our car, inspecting it. Then the beam darted to the tracks we had followed, but it had no hope of reaching us this far away. Finally, it darted in all directions, before returning to the vehicle, where it disappeared.
Another minute passed, and then the vehicle performed a three-point turn and with a squeal of tyres sped back down the road. The red rear lights peeked out from behind trees then disappeared over the crest of the hill.
‘Come on,’ I said, conscious that there was only one road in and out, ‘we had better leave whilst we can.’
We marched back down the field, staying in the long grass, and trying not to let adrenaline get the better of us.
‘What do you think that was up there?’ Tidy asked.
‘I have no idea,’ I replied honestly.
We reached the bottom of the field and stepped quickly through the muddy pool to the Kia. I clicked the central locking and the car flashed its indicators. Just then, as I moved to the driver’s door, a torch beam shone in my face.
‘Stop right there.’
I froze.
‘Get back.’
I took three steps back, away from the car.
A man was standing in the shadows at the back of the metal shell, behind the car. I couldn’t see Tidy. I instinctively held my hand up to shield my eyes, then I shone my own torch into the man’s face. It was George Meek.
‘Hi, George,’ I said matter-of-factly.
He was bigger than he used to be, and greyer, now almost fifty, only his size and his blunt voice (used to barking orders) made him intimidating. He was wearing a grey shirt with the word “Security” embroidered in yellow above his breast pocket. Hooked to the pocket was a walkie-talkie with a six-inch antenna, he held the talk button and spoke into it:
‘I’ve got them,’ he said, then he released the button and pointed the torch at Tidy who was hiding in the shadows: ‘you, over there!’
He pointed with his torch beam for her to join me and she casually sauntered over.
‘You’re on private land, Joe,’ he grunted.
‘We must have got lost,’ I replied calmly.
He laughed gruffly and mirthlessly.
I smiled at him, trying to make it look careless and genuine. ‘How long have you been working security?’
‘Couple of years now.’
‘Pay well, does it?’
‘Better than police.’
I nodded. ‘It seems like ages since we last saw each other.’
‘You mean since the day you cost me my job.’
I scoffed, trying not to feel too
offended. ‘I mean, come on, George; you cost you your job. And I gave you the means to get your job back. But it turned out you had other paymasters to appease.’
His face dropped into a dead mask. He despised me.
‘This is your plan for getting us out of here?’ Tidy whispered through a clenched jaw.
‘By all means, be my guest,’ I replied under my breath.
Her demeanour suddenly changed, she became floppier somehow, fiddling with the hem of her jacket, shoulders hunched with shyness. She span round slowly, looking at everything as though drunk or high. Unbalanced, she stumbled, ending up close to George. She looked at him. He looked at her.
‘I’m glad you found us,’ she cooed, ‘I was getting quite scared out here in the dark.’
He frowned, unsure. She reached out and touched his shirt as though adjusting a button, running her fingers up his chest.
‘You hear all these stories about women in vulnerable situations, alone in the dark, at the mercy of a big strong man.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he grunted, flushed in the face.
Oh god. The only thing worse than watching her try it was going to be watching him fall for it.
Whilst her right hand was on his chest I saw her left slip into her back pocket, but at that moment the headlights returned round the corner. He quickly pushed her away and marched past us both so that he was between us and the new arriving vehicle, his back to it.
It was a long white pickup truck, the type with back seats too before a covered trailer, making the whole thing about four miles long. The engine idled as we heard the wrench of the handbrake and a man descended from the driver’s seat.
‘What do we have?’ he asked in a rich and jovial voice.
I let my torch beam drift over his face and my mind reeled. It was Mr X, the man I had been hired to identify by Mrs Swan, the white Audi driver, the one I had followed to the fish restaurant rendezvous with Ben McCready. He was as well-dressed as that day, a smile on his bald black head.
He shielded his eyes. ‘Do you mind?’ he asked casually. I lowered the beam.
‘This one’s a shamus,’ George explained, ‘I don’t know about the babe.’
‘Who are you?’ Mr X asked her.
‘None of your business,’ she replied with a smile.
He paused for a moment, calm. ‘Fine, what are you doing here on this land?’
‘We got lost,’ she explained.
‘You know you could be prosecuted for trespassing. What were you looking for?’
‘A B&B,’ I butted in, ‘do you know if there are any nearby?’
‘I see we have a pair of comedians.’ He turned to George. ‘Empty their pockets, his first.’
I let George search me, my pockets wouldn’t reveal anything he didn’t already know.
He passed the bundle of items to Mr X, who went through them one by one. First the key to the Kia.
‘This is your vehicle?’ he asked.
‘Rented,’ I explained.
He nodded and chucked me back the key. Next was my multi-tool, then my brass knuckles which he tutted about, and finally my wallet. As I put away the multi-tool and knuckleduster he went through it card by card.
He read one of my business cards aloud: ‘“Grabarz Investigations. Discreet, professional investigations to suit any budget. Surveillance, background checks, information retrieval. Brighton’s No.1 Private Investigations agency.”’ He held it up. ‘Can I keep this?’
‘Go ahead,’ I drawled.
He closed my wallet and threw it to me. ‘Now her.’
George moved over to Tidy, frisking her far more thoroughly than he had me. He ran his hands up each leg, over her arse, round her waist. I heard him whisper, ‘Want to pick up where we left off?’ then he ran his hands over her breasts. She span away from him and there was a crack that even I heard. Then he was on his knees, clutching at his wrist and screaming in pain.
Tidy and I stood still. Mr X pulled a snubnosed revolver from his inside pocket and held it casually in his hand, pointed in no particular direction. It was only by staring at the gun hand that I noticed a spider tattoo across the back of it, as though it had suddenly crawled out from his sleeve.
He sauntered over to George, grabbed his wrist and held it up to inspect it, which made George howl.
‘That’s broken.’
He let it go, George howled some more. He marched over to the two of us, instinctively we moved closer together. He pointed the gun at us, level with our bellies.
‘That wasn’t very nice,’ he told Tidy, ‘and it can’t go unpunished.’
There was a sudden flash of silver and the revolver struck the side of my head. I crumpled to all fours, my ears ringing, the world bloodshot.
‘Now get out of here.’ His voice was muffled in my ears.
I felt Tidy’s strong hands under my armpits and she helped me to the Kia and fished the key from my pocket. Before I knew what was happening, I was rocking in the backseat as the car sped down the lane.
✽✽✽
We pulled into my allotted space and soon we were in my bathroom, me topless, sitting on the edge of bath, her dabbing witch hazel on the point where my scalp had split. It stung like a bastard. Diluted blood ran the length of my head and dripped off my chin.
‘That was quite hot, what you did,’ I remarked.
‘Really? Want me to do it to you too?’ she purred wickedly.
‘Why on earth did he hit me?’ I moaned.
‘You’d rather he’d hit me?’
‘I’d rather he’d shot me, it would hurt less.’
‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you must have had worse.’
She ran a finger over a scar on my side by my right lung, then over a lump of rib just under my left nipple that pokes out slightly further than the rest.
‘Everyone has scars,’ her low voice seemed to shake the bathtub, ‘they’re just aesthetic.’
‘Some go deeper than that.’
‘Those ones can make us weaker, or stronger, it’s our choice.’
‘Or just older.’ I gave an exhausted smile.
She kissed my wound. Then she kissed my cheek. Then she bit my ear. I pushed her off me, back against the sink. Her hair fell over her face. My toothbrush fell in the sink. She was panting, her chest heaving. We launched at each other, my hands in her hair, her hands on my arse. She tore at my lips, nibbled my chin. I kissed her breasts and her stomach. She ripped the belt from my trousers, I pulled the jacket from her back and peeled the trousers from her legs. We were down to our underwear as I carried her from the bathroom to the living room floor, almost tripping over the arm of the sofa, plonking her down on the rug by the glass doors to the balcony. I pulled off her vest top and pushed her down but she pushed back, pushing me over, pulling off my boxer shorts and flinging her bra and knickers over her head toward the kitchenette, where we would find them in the sink in the morning. She climbed on top of me and pinned me to the hard wood floor. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t resist. She rode me hard, one hand on my chest, one behind her back, and I screamed, ‘Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!’
12
Mr X
‘How do you know him?’ Tidy asked, sprawled naked on the rug smoking a cigar.
‘It’s complicated,’ I replied, sprawled naked on the sofa, sipping a Hemingway Daiquiri. ‘He used to be a sergeant, back when I would help the police with their more difficult cases—’
‘—you would help the police?’ she interrupted.
‘Sort of, I’ve probably made it sound more significant than it was. They used to like me. Some of them, anyway. Back then George would often be the one to liaise between me and some miserable DI who reluctantly needed my help.’
‘And the powers-that-be signed off on this?’
‘No, of course not. On the books I was a confidential informant, the type they’re allowed to pay for information. Up to a certain amount. Only unlike most CIs they told me what information they wanted first and then I
went and got it. Anyway, George did the back-and-forth and when I had my own jobs I would pay back some of that CI money in return for something only George could get: a police record, an address, or whatever, something from the files. Over the years changes were made at the top of the force, and when the tide turned against me he fell out of favour with the new regime. As a favour I gave him some vital evidence against Robert Coward, a big drug kingpin, so he could win back his reputation. He took the evidence to Coward instead.’ I sipped my drink. ‘I blame myself: I should have guessed that since he took money from me he probably took it from other people, and Coward had plenty to spend.’
‘What happened in the end?’
I took a gulp of my cocktail. ‘Someone got to Coward.’ I pressed on quickly: ‘but I’m not interested in George, I can guess where he fits into this. It’s the other man, Mr X, I want to know about, but sadly the only person who might have answers hates me.’
‘Fancy that,’ she mocked.
‘Actually, you might be able to help.’
A smile broke across her face like sunshine into the room. ‘Lover, I thought you’d never ask.’
✽✽✽
Hove School is situated in that green part of Hove, near the park, near the Neville, near the recreation ground, the rugby club and the hockey club. A three-bedroom house on Neville Road will go for more than half a million, and there are four and five-bedroom houses on that road. Sure, there’s the dog track, but there’s a Waitrose to make up for it. All things considered, it’s a very nice neighbourhood indeed.
Hove School itself gets a good Ofsted report, has tennis courts, and ample playing fields where in summer kids can be seen running in shorts and heard screaming with laughter. And yet the school has more to offer than grazed knees and oxygen; like all schools they pride themselves on what they offer beyond the core curriculum, the “enrichment opportunities”. Every school offers their distinct selection, whether it be a sculpture class or graffiti workshop, Ultimate Frisbee or Quidditch; but an important part of every Sixth Form’s enrichment programme is the politics society. And on this particular cold school day the Politics students, and any other keen attendees, were eagerly awaiting the wisdom that would be gained by a speech from Hove Park ward city councillor Benjamin “Ben” McCready.