by Joseph Hone
‘Do it how you want. You’re the undertakers.’ She turned and went up to the wheelhouse.
Panama was lying just beyond the galley, at the end of the corridor. Stretched out, his coat open, shirt stained red, torn, distended white stomach showing, belly up, like the filthy pike Ben had caught. The battery lights weren’t very bright, and I was glad of that. I couldn’t see much of him to begin with, as Ben laid the sheet out and started to turn his great body over on to it. But then, bending down to help him, I saw the pool of blood and a dark shitty mess seeping out on the floor, and the same on the sheet, as Ben turned him and covered him with it. And the stink. I held my breath, then gulped air in through my mouth.
We pulled him, slithering along the corridor, towards the steep steps that led up to the wheelhouse. Now the difficult part. Ben had tied the sheet firmly round the body, head and foot. Now on the first step, he started to lug it up. He didn’t get very far. Panama was really heavy. Ben stopped, panting for breath. Wrapped in the bloodied winding sheet, Panama now had his great rump on the third step, his back against the next three, his legs propped up crookedly on the floor.
On the top step above the body, Ben took the twisted end of the sheet and started to pull. This time he managed to get it right up, leaning against the sharply angled stairway. Then, stepping up into the wheelhouse, he started to pull again. But it was no use.
‘We’ll have to rope him, and both of us pull from the top.’ Ben left Panama balanced against the stairway and went up into the wheelhouse. I stood there, looking up at the grisly, bloodied mummy-fold.
And then the whole fat white cigar was falling forward, the body bursting out of the sheet, the heavy torso coming straight at me. I screamed. It almost fell on me, swollen and purple, brushing past my face and landing with a great squelchy thump, doing a belly flop on the floor beside me.
We got it up in the end, both pulling on a rope, into the wheelhouse. Ben tied on some big ballast bricks he found under the floorboards in the hold. The sun was nearly up. We dragged the body through the wheelhouse door, back to the stern, and then, with a last great effort, pulled it over the stern board, and let go. It fell into the placid water like a stink bomb, a cloud of gassy bubbles rising to the surface.
I stood back, and turned. The sun was just up over the horizon to our left beyond the willow trees. There’d been no sign of Headscarf throughout all this, but now she emerged from the foredeck with her gun. Ben was already going back to the wheelhouse.
‘Well done,’ she said. The first comment she’d made in anything like a friendly tone. Then she added, a concerned voice now, ‘You see – I was worried about him.’
Ben said nothing for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Right, let’s get out of here.’ He went into the wheelhouse, started the engine, and I went ashore, casting off, then leapt on board, as the boat moved off. I went downstairs to the cabin, into the tiny shower cubicle to wash. I saw my hands clearly then in the rising sunlight. Smeared with blood and shit. I saw my face in the mirror over the basin. The same. I started to retch. I turned just in time, spewing everything out into the Sanilav.
Later that morning, in the wheelhouse, Headscarf gave out the rules for our voyage to Strasbourg. ‘You’ll stay on the boat all the time, except when one of you needs to attend to the locks. You asked what the handcuffs were for. They’re for both of you, and that’s why Kurt had them, and should have used them. But he was daft. So I’ll be buying the food, and you’ll both be locked together in your cabin when I’m out.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Ben turned on her. ‘There’s no need, we’re not going to escape.’
‘No?’ She bared her teeth in a crooked smile. ‘Pull the other leg. You know I can’t drive this boat alone, so precautions are in order, for your own good. Because if you try to run I’ll shoot you.’
And so it was. Every day or so, moored for an hour at some village, she’d take her gun, direct us down to our cabin, throw Ben the handcuffs, and tell him to fix one cuff to his wrist and the other to mine. ‘That’s right, now click both cuffs shut.’ When she returned from shopping, and always keeping her distance, she’d throw Ben the handcuff key and the process would be reversed. With one difference. Before she threw him the key she always made sure both portholes were shut. I asked Ben why she did this. ‘So I won’t throw the key out later, after I’ve opened the cuffs. If I did, she’d be able to lock the cuffs again, but not to release us, to crew the boat.’
The handcuff business was painful. It meant Ben and I had to sit or lie on the bed right next to each other, for an hour or more, sweating in the heat. Otherwise the next week passed much as it had with Panama. We moved due east now, through wooded, hilly country, rising up the lower slopes of the Vosges, lock by lock, village by village, into Alsace.
Except that Headscarf was a good deal more vigilant than Panama, and far less interesting. She kept silent unless she had to speak, ordering us about on the boat, or down to our cabin. She asked no personal questions, was quite uninterested in us. She just wanted to get to Strasbourg and into Germany.
That afternoon, mooring at Chesnais-les-Eaux, she went out shopping, having gone through the handcuff routine and locked us in the cabin. We sat chained together on the bed.
‘She’s a tough cookie,’ Ben said.
‘She’s a fucking bitch.’ I was sweating, exhausted. I wanted to lie down, but Ben wanted a roll-up, as he always did after lunch, and normally he made a few beforehand, kept in reserve, for when we were locked together. This time he’d forgotten. He fiddled about with the paper, the tobacco pack, pulling my hand over to his as he worked at the cigarette.
‘Couldn’t you roll it with one hand?’
‘Christ – I’m not John Wayne!’
‘No. Been out of all this long ago if you were.’
‘All right – you play the heroine and make a run for it. I don’t want a bullet in my back. Then you’d have to tip me over the side, floating belly up – think of that.’
‘What I’m thinking is it was the worst moment of my life, meeting you.’ I rattled our chain furiously then, in frustration, so that his tobacco and paper fell on the floor.
‘For God’s sake! Just let me have my fag – a few puffs, and then we can lie down.’
He finally got his cigarette together, had a few puffs, and then we started to lie down. Quite a performance. His left hand was handcuffed to my right, so he had to lie on the inside. It was a struggle – careful positioning, levering about and leg swinging – but we were getting used to it. We made it, heads under the gilded cupids, lying as far apart as we could, arms outstretched, semi-naked, chained together – a thrilling picture, I’m sure.
‘You know something?’ he said when we were vaguely settled. ‘It’s just struck me – we wouldn’t have to go through all this manoeuvring, if we lay down the other way, heads at the end of the bed. Would we?’
‘Of course we would. Just the same bloody manoeuvrings, except I’d be on the inside then.’
He thought a moment. ‘You’re right. You would.’
‘Don’t you start losing your marbles.’
He said nothing. We dozed fitfully.
We reached Strasbourg port two days later, then through the huge Rhine-Marne connecting lock, and out onto the broad river. Ben asked which way she wanted to go – up or downstream, and where she wanted to be dropped off.
‘Upstream,’ she said shortly. ‘About ten miles, there’s a small town near the river, Erstein, and just after that there’s a marina and a riverside inn. We’ll stop there.’ Ben had got out another map in the locker, of the upper Rhine. ‘I see the town, Erstein. About two hours away.’
I was relieved. We had a port in view, an end. The weather had changed. It was still hot, but also humid, with huge purple-bruised clouds on the horizon, slowly gathering from the south. The fine weather was changing.
‘You’ll leave us our bag and things,’ I said. ‘Our passports. We’ll need them to get back home.’
‘Yes, you can keep your bag and passports with you.’
‘And some money. Maybe you could give us a little of that £3000 Panama took from my bag – just enough to get home with.’
‘Okay, but economy class.’ She spoke so reasonably I almost smiled in thanks at her.
Two hours later, passing Erstein, nestled beneath a tree-covered bluff of land, we saw a quay, some sailing boats, a line of buildings to our left, a red-tiled, conical-towered inn facing the river.
Closer up, we saw three jetties and a sailing marina, but Headscarf directed us to a smaller quay beyond the marina. We pulled in here. There was a chandler’s shop, a fuel pump and rubbish disposal facilities for motor cruisers. We moored below two other untended boats there. A big Mercedes van was parked some way back from the quay with two men standing by it. After we’d moored, they came on board. Nothing special about them. By comparison with Panama and Headscarf they were very ordinary. In their thirties, smart-casual dress, one of them in an expensive blue designer windcheater.
We were all in the wheelhouse. The barge rocked easily in the swell from the river. In a moment or two they’d all leave.
The man in the windcheater looked at us both quickly, then spoke to Headscarf in German. ‘The handcuffs?’ he asked her. They were in her bag. She handed them over. The other man took a gun out. Headscarf turned to us.
‘Now listen carefully – my friends don’t have much English. You’ll walk off the boat with us, and no fuss, no shouting – to the car. You won’t try and escape, because you’ll be handcuffed. And –’
‘But you said!’ I burst out. ‘That once we were in Germany, you’d leave us, we could go back!’
‘Go ahead,’ she said to the windcheater man, in German. ‘Before she starts to make trouble.’
While the first man covered us with his gun, Windcheater stepped forward with the cuffs, took my wrist, then Ben’s, and clipped them on to both our wrists in a flash.
‘Ben!’ I shouted. ‘Can’t you …’
‘Can’t I what? I told you, I’m not John Wayne.’
‘Well, what about the cats?’ I turned to Headscarf. ‘You can’t just leave them here to starve.’
‘You must be joking.’ She turned to Windcheater, in German again. ‘The stuff’s in the galley, underneath the sink, six Persil cartons, and get their rucksack, in my cabin. The cash, their passports and so on.’ The man went below. Returned a minute later with the cartons, went down again for our Disney rucksack, emerged again. The other man took the rucksack.
Windcheater made a stack of the cartons on the table, then picked them up.
‘Okay, let’s go.’ Headscarf looked around the wheelhouse, then turned to us. ‘Right – remember, no fuss. You walk across to the van, holding hands. Right?’ She smiled then, or as much of a smile as the bitch could manage. ‘Yes, holding hands, just like lovers.’
They locked the wheelhouse door, paid a mooring fee, and we set off for the van – leaving the cats, the Modi nude and Katie’s journal behind us, hidden under Panama’s bunk.
‘Why take us?’ Ben asked, as we walked towards the van. ‘We’re not going to squeal on anybody.’ Silence. ‘Where are we going?’ Silence. The van had a sliding side door, facing away from the quay, against a wall. They bundled us in. It was dark. ‘Lie down and shut up,’ Headscarf said. We lay down. The van moved off. We were chained hand to hand anyway, but Ben gripped my hand now. He knew what I was thinking. He’d told me. Headscarf had killed her lover without a qualm. She could do the same to us.
I had the feeling we drove south first, for an hour or more, along the winding river road, before turning off, up a steep hill rising from the river valley. Then we were moving fast and straight, over a motorway at one point, for I heard the rush of heavy traffic beneath us. The three in front barely spoke, and I couldn’t make out what they said anyway, except once, when one of them said to Headscarf – in German, of course, which they didn’t know I spoke – ‘They weren’t pleased to hear about Kurt.’ Headscarf raised her voice in reply – ‘I don’t care a damn what they think about Kurt,’ she said. ‘Kurt was my business. I loved him.’
After that I lost all sense of direction. We drove for about another hour, at speed, on a well-paved road, turned off onto a rougher road, in lower gears, continuing uphill. It started to rain, a hammering of rain drops on the roof of the van. Another turn and we stopped. A gate was opened. Then we bumped along a rough twisting track for about fifteen minutes, until we finally pulled up. They dragged us out of the van, and there, hidden in a clearing of thick forest, was a long ramshackle wooden lodge, raised off the ground on one side by a dozen pine trunks – since the lodge on that side straddled a roaring stream, rushing from a narrow defile in the rock behind. A long thatched roof, low sloping overhanging eaves, a witchy Hans and Gretel lodge, straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales.
So I was pretty certain I knew where we were – in the middle of the Black Forest. We were on higher ground. There was a smell of pine. It was still raining. There was a roll of thunder from beyond the trees.
Immediately behind the house the forest rose sharply, and it had clearly been raining hard in the woods for the stream was in full spate, running under the lodge before disappearing into the forest again lower down the slope.
An older man was at the door as we pulled up. Burly, in Bavarian lederhosen, long woolly socks, boots, braces, an embroidered shirt and a hat with a feather in it. A sour-looking man. We were dragged out of the van, then marched up some rough wooden steps to one side of the house, through an arched oak door and led into the hall. A large dark panelled hall set right over the flooding stream, a log-beamed ceiling high above, a long Gothic-style table in the middle, vast fireplace to one side, a rack of sporting rifles, and hunting trophies all round the walls. Deer, wild boar, the lot. It was an old hunting lodge. The air was warm and oppressive. I shivered.
‘Along here,’ Headscarf said to us.
‘What are we here for? What are you up to?’ Ben still had a dash of his old cheeky self.
‘You’ll see. Come on.’
Windcheater went behind us, upstairs, along a corridor. He opened a room at the end. A bedroom. A window looking over the front. A large bed with huge bolsters and a duvet with a folksy canopy. Chairs, a table, wardrobe, all in the heavy Bavarian style. The man slammed the door and locked it.
Ben pulled me over to the window.
‘For Christ’s sake! Stop dragging me about the place. I’m not a horse.’
‘Oh shut up. Want to see if there’s any way out.’
There wasn’t. The window had an iron grille outside. The rain was heavier now, so heavy that the water made a silvery curtain, almost blotting out the view. Beneath us the noise of the rushing stream increased. Ben pulled me over to the wardrobe, then the chest of drawers and the bedside table. He opened doors, drawers. There was nothing inside anything.
‘People sometimes leave interesting things in old cupboards and drawers,’ he said.
‘Like what? Hacksaws? Loaded revolvers?’
‘You never know till you try. You’re always bloody giving up.’ He bent down, pulling me with him, peering under the bed.
‘A chamber pot?’ I asked.
‘No.’ He pulled out a pair of old leather slippers. Flapped one in the air, glared at me. ‘Like to give you a good whack on the backside.’
‘Oh, so it’s macho-man woman-bashing now, is it?’ I started to struggle with him.
‘If I wasn’t chained to you I’d dump you, here and now, and you could go back to New York and stuff yourself with cheesecake ‘till it comes out of your ears.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’m only trying to save our lives, or aren’t you bothered?’
‘Yes, but I’m scared.’
‘So am I!’ He was shouting now.
We heard a car draw up outside. From the window we saw a Mercedes four-wheel-drive. Two well-dressed men in their forties got out, dark suit
s and ties. One carried a black briefcase. They went inside quickly.
Another minute, and we heard raised voices in the big hall immediately beneath us; Headscarf’s voice the loudest.
‘What’s she saying?’
‘Can’t get it – something about “deserved it”.’
‘Who?’
‘Must be about Kurt. In the car – the driver told her someone wouldn’t be pleased about her bumping Kurt off.’
‘I thought Kurt was Mr Big in this drug-running business?’
‘No. That guy with the briefcase more likely.’
We said nothing more, until I turned to Ben and said what must have been on both our minds. We were quite possibly going to die. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry for all these bad things we’ve both got each other into, and things I’ve said. I just wanted to say –’
‘No. Don’t say it.’ He put his cheek on mine, and kept it there, warming the skin. ‘God, you smell good.’
‘What?’
‘Like lemons. Lemony.’
‘You smell good, too. Like vanilla.’
We lifted our arms, and chained together, we did our best to hug each other. We hugged hard.
He drew back, our chained arms dropped, and he smiled. ‘Lemon and vanilla!’ His tone was surprised. He was charmed by the idea. ‘Well … they can’t take that away from us.’
‘No, they can’t.’ I felt better. If there was to be an end for us in a minute, it would matter plenty, but for those long moments, hugging and looking at each other, it didn’t.
A few minutes later the door was unlocked. One of the minders came in with a gun, and prodded us downstairs to the big hall. Headscarf and the other thug weren’t there. Still handcuffed, we sat down at the long table, opposite the older of the two smart-suited men. He had wispy reddish hair. His briefcase was open in front of him. He looked at us carefully, then down into his briefcase where he clearly had something relevant hidden.
‘Yes,’ he said to his companion in German. ‘It’s certainly them.’ He closed the briefcase. He must have been looking at a photograph.