The Count of Eleven

by Ramsey Campbell

  "Not unless he's got a second family hidden somewhere."

  "Or a little niece or nephew."

  "Not even one of those," Julia said. "We've just got us."

  The woman bowed over her stick and gazed at Jack as though she was determined not to move until she recalled where she had previously encountered him. She opened her mouth, looking almost sure of what she was about to say -perhaps that Jack had been taking a neighbour's baby for a walk. She pursed her lips instead and jammed the sunglasses over her eyes before trudging towards the woods, slashing at the undergrowth. "Sorry to have bothered you," she called as an afterthought.

  "What was up with her?" Laura said.

  "People get stranger as they get older."

  "As you can tell by looking at me," Jack said.

  Julia threw a handful of grass at him. "Maybe she saw you somewhere when Laura was still in the pram."

  Jack sat on the edge for a few minutes to ensure that they didn't meet the woman on their way to the van. He felt he'd learned something today on the hill. The feeling persisted as he drove home, and lingered as he lay in bed. It seemed entirely benign, no reason for him to lie awake.

  In the morning Julia learned that she hadn't been short listed for the job regarding which she had been interviewed at the hotel. She had resigned herself to the possibility in advance, and Laura was doing her best to seem resigned too. "Only thirty-three days to Crete now," she said.

  Jack realised she was being cheerful, but he felt as though she was telling him to be quick. Belatedly he realised why the woman on the hill had seemed an omen. He'd learned from their encounter that even if people looked straight at him they didn't see a criminal; he was invisible because nobody could know what he meant to do. Thirty-three days, he thought: what could be clearer? It wasn't just time enough, it was like hearing the Count undertaking to finish his labours before he and the family left for Crete.

  THIRTY

  Jack came downstairs looking for his briefcase. He couldn't go to work without that, he thought; he couldn't do the job. Of course he knew not to ask Julia where it was, and in a few moments he remembered that it was still in the back of the van; where else would it be? He was opening the front door, intending to wait on the path until she was ready to go, when she called "What do you think about this in the paper?"

  "What?"

  "Come and see."

  He closed the front door with his heel and used the impetus to send him towards the front room. Julia was sitting on the couch, holding the local newspaper, which she folded inside out and then in half horizontally before passing it to him, one finger indicating a paragraph. "What do you think?" she said again before he'd had time to look.

  It was among the job vacancies. COMPUTER TUTOR, the heading would have said, except that the typesetter had spelled the last word 'tuter'. The job required applicants with a knowledge of financial management and word processing, and it was at a college in Withens Lane, no more than fifteen minutes' walk away. "Should I give it a try?" Julia said.

  "Definitely. I'm amazed you're even asking."

  "But they say they'd prefer someone with a teaching degree."

  "You earned one of those at Rankin's."

  "That isn't what they mean."

  "Then it should be. Anyway, you won't know unless you try, will you?"

  "Do you think I should write to them now?"

  "I do. And while you are I'll go for a stamp."

  "For a tramp, you mean."

  "Vagrants have enough to put up with without me going for them."

  Julia groaned and waved him away, and he walked to the news agent which sold postage stamps. "We've thirteens and sevens in now if you want some," the news agent said.

  "I'll take one of each."

  She seemed to feel rebuffed, as if she had put herself out on his behalf, and so he bought half a dozen of each; the encouragement she'd given him was worth at least that much. Like the woman on Helsby Hill, she'd shown him that he needn't be afraid of anyone who remembered having seen him. By the time he strolled home Julia had written her letter and sealed the envelope. "What did you put?" he said.

  "Myself on a piece of paper."

  "I'd like to see anyone try and reduce you to that." As he gave her the stamps he said "Maybe you shouldn't tell Laura you've applied for another job unless she asks."

  "Why?"

  "Just in case, and I mean just in case, she might be disappointed."

  "There's that," Julia admitted, and looked askance at him, the thirteen penny stamp resting on her tongue. She picked the stamp out of her mouth and smoothed it onto the envelope. "If she has to be we'll let her show it, won't we? She's at one of the times of her life when she needs to let her feelings out, and there's nothing wrong with that. You aren't afraid of yours, are you?"

  "No, not at all."

  "No need to be," she said as if she thought he wasn't being entirely honest with her. "Well, let's send me off to try my luck."

  On their way to Birkenhead she posted the letter in King Street, where Jack had bought and subsequently donated the pram. Less than fifteen minutes later they were at Charing Cross, a five-armed star of shopping streets. "Shall I buy you some trunks?" she said. "I should think even you might learn to swim in Greece."

  "Fish and chips do, but it isn't worth more than a couple of quid to find out."

  "You just have to learn not to be scared of water," she said, jumping down as the traffic lights changed.

  Jack followed the most direct route to the motorway and was there in eleven minutes, feeling as though nothing could stop him. When the motorway rose towards Ellesmere Port he had a sense of not being there to be seen. Today was his day off from the library, and he meant to make at least two visits. Past the merging of the motor ways he raced along the stretch where a thirteenth junction would have been, and left it at junction 11. Though the next exit would have been closer to his first destination, this one seemed too good an omen to waste.

  Where the road through the fields forked he turned right beneath a gathering of foliage. The route would take him through the outskirts of Warrington, where two of his subjects lived. Depending on how well his visits went, he might have time to make a third before heading home.

  Soon the road led him through villages Stockton Heath, Grappenhall half-submerged in suburbs. Grappenhall was where, to quote the directory precisely, Edw Byrne Cobbler worked and perhaps lived. Beyond a new estate a humpbacked bridge led the van onto a cobbled road, where Jack heard the briefcase jumping about behind him. The cobblestones gave out, and the road bridged a canal to a main road. He knew that the address wasn't beside a canal, but it was more by instinct than by consciously recalling the map that he crossed into a side street which brought him to a major road. Among the blocks of long thin houses were occasional clusters of shops, and the cobbler's was in the second clump he passed.

  Jack drove to the next shops and parked outside a bookmaker's, then took the briefcase out of the van and walked back half a mile. Around him everything was luminously defined: the milky drip about to fall from the pointed base of an ice-cream cone which a small boy beside the opaque window of the bookmaker's was licking, the molten spillage of sunlight which slid over the window of each car that passed Jack, the tiny bright round eyes of a sparrow bathing in the dust of a yellowing front lawn. Everything was as clear as he himself was unnoticeable, even if there had been anyone on the pavement to see him.

  The cobbler's was beyond a restaurant that was closed until the evening and the frosted windows of a bank. There was no name above the cobbler's, but surely there couldn't be two such businesses on this road. Jack opened the door without glancing around him and stepped into the shop. It was a small room that smelled of leather, and a small leathery man was at work behind the counter piled with hanks of shoelaces and circular tins of polish. He was fitting a boot onto a last in the gloom among a copse of shoetrees and whistling through his teeth as though he would know the tune and rhythm once he
heard them. "Give us a minute," he grumbled, apparently speaking for the boot as well as for himself.

  If the blinds on the door and the window were down, nobody would be able to see into the shop. Jack shifted the briefcase into his left hand and reaching his free hand over his left shoulder, coughed to cover the sound of the catch on the lock. The cobbler must have thought he was expressing impatience, because he hunched over the last to show he wasn't to be hurried. Watching him, Jack thought his skull resembled a kind of last onto which his face had been tugged until the bald scalp fitted snugly, while the rest of the face grew looser and more wrinkled the closer it approached the chin. Eventually the cobbler gave the boot a grudging nod and stared over the sole as if Jack had prevented him from doing his best. "Got your paper?"

  "It depends what—"

  "No goods without a receipt," the cobbler said with relish.

  "I knew that was what you meant. I'm not collecting."

  Jack barely hesitated, but the cobbler nodded hard at his briefcase. "Well, open it up if you're opening and give us whatever you've got."

  Jack didn't need reminding that he should be quick, but hasty was another matter. "You're Edward Byrne?"

  "I'm Byrne. Who wants to know?"

  "Edward Byrne," Jack repeated, suddenly wondering if the contraction in the directory could have denoted Edwin.

  "Edward Byrne wants to know if Edward Byrne is Edward Byrne?" The cobbler had begun to slap his open palm with a metal shoehorn. "Shape up, son. Some of us have better things to do than talk tripe."

  "I was just making sure it was you I wrote to. Now I am—"

  Byrne struck the counter with the shoehorn. "Don't want any. These are the laces I stock and that's the polish. They're what my customers want, and if they don't they can bugger off."

  "I'm not a salesman, Mr. Byrne."

  "Are you anything at all besides a bloody nuisance?"

  The clang of the shoehorn was still reverberating in Jack's brain. It reminded him of the sound the tank of the blow lamp had made on coming into contact with Stephen Arrod's head. "I'm just a man like you," he said, taking hold of the lock of the briefcase.

  "We've all got our jobs to do, right enough, those of us who don't sit around all day whining about how no bugger will give us one." The cobbler gave Jack what for Byrne might be a relatively sympathetic look. "I'll wish you better luck wherever you're off next, but that's the best I can do."

  He turned away from the counter and threw out his arms to shoot back the cuffs of his shirt and jacket. As Jack quietly opened the briefcase he thought Byrne resembled a crucifixion viewed from behind. He was reaching into the briefcase when the cobbler swung round. "What did you write to me? When?"

  A few weeks ago, to give you the chance to turn ill luck into good."

  Byrne exposed his teeth in something like a grin and tapped them several times with the shoehorn. "How was that?"

  "Don't you remember the letter?"

  "I won't forget it as long as I live, son. What I'm asking is why I was lucky."

  Jack felt a sigh of relief building up inside him. "I suppose because the letter must have worked for you if you did as it said."

  Byrne came to the counter and leaning on it, thrust his face at Jack. "What I'm asking you is why you singled me out when I've never seen you before in my life."

  "Will it make a difference?"

  Byrne raised his left hand and made a gesture of crushing an object between finger and thumb. "That much."

  Though Jack wasn't conscious of tilting the briefcase, the blow lamp seemed to fit itself into his hand. "So I don't need to ask what you did with the letter."

  "You're quick, you are. If I blink I reckon I won't see you going."

  Jack's fist closed around the blow lamp He wanted to be fair, despite the exhilaration which had begun to make him feel elevated, viewing himself from above. "What did you do with it, Mr. Byrne?"

  The cobbler shoved himself away from the counter so violently that the shoehorn fell off the edge with a resounding clang. "Wrote to thirteen other lucky buggers, what do you think?" he shouted. "Now if you're satisfied, some of us have to work for a living."

  Jack let go of the blow lamp He felt abruptly deflated and in danger of being confronted by himself. If he went out now he would feel as though he'd left some task unfinished and then a thought struck him. "I don't suppose you sell shoes as well as mend them."

  "There's a few people never called back for," Byrne allowed with some reluctance.

  "That's what I should be here for. I promised weeks ago to buy a chap a pair."

  "What size?"

  "Mine would fit him. Nine."

  Byrne scowled and trudging to the back of the shop, began to rummage in the gloom. He was making so much noise that Jack didn't bother to muffle the sound of releasing the lock. He had just released it when Byrne stalked forwards and dumped two stout black boots on the counter. "That's the only pair of nines I've got."

  Jack was reminded of playing cards with the family. "You win," Jack Awkward might have said now, or even "Beats my ace of spades." Instead he asked "How much?"

  "Call it a tenner," Byrne said as if he would have accepted less to see Jack out of the shop.

  "Sounds too good to be true." One ten to buy nine twice -two sets of figures that each made eleven. Jack closed the briefcase and dug in his pocket for a ten-pound note, which Byrne received with little grace. "I've no bags," Byrne said, morosely enjoying that triumph.

  "You've given me all I need." Tucking the boots under his arm, Jack went to the door. He grasped the latch and said "You really did mean—"

  But Byrne was at his last again, whistling louder and more haphazardly. Of course he'd spoken the truth about the letters, Jack assured himself, pulling the door open. He stepped out backwards, watching in case Byrne glanced up and let Jack see his eyes, but the cobbler seemed intent on his work. Jack shut the door and bumped into a policeman.

  The policeman appeared not to notice him. He was talking into a receiver which emitted a hiss like an imperfectly doused fire before each response. As Jack walked around him, murmuring an apology, he headed for the bank, whether answering a call or on his own behalf wasn't clear.

  Jack walked to the van, hearing cars dusting the road, feeling satisfied with a job well done and ready for another. "I'm invisible when I have to be," he told the clown on the key-ring as he started the engine. "Invisible and invincible, they're the Count's Is."

  He closed his eyes so as to visualise the map before moving off. The road would bring him to a bridge, beyond which he should turn left and follow a road alongside the canal. He did so, and drove steadily beside the water, keeping an eye out for a sign for Walter Foster, Waterways Bookseller. When the next road bridge brought an end to the houses, however, he had seen no shops at all.

  Two vans which he presumed belonged to fishermen were parked in a lay by near the bridge. He left the van behind them and walked back. He was at the start of the house numbers, and number 155 would be several minutes' walk away, which was all to the good. A hedge obscured his view of the canal from the pavement in front of the pairs of houses. He could hear water coursing gently, and birds fluttering in the hedge. Now and then a fishing-rod would rear up beyond it, or dip towards the canal as a hook plopped into the water.

  By the time Jack came in sight of the address on the letter, the canal opposite seemed to be clear of fishermen, and nobody was to be seen in any of the front rooms. He went swiftly up the drive beyond a wooden gate which someone had left open, and rang the doorbell.

  A garage concealed him from the ground floor of the next pair of houses, even when he stepped back a few feet to scrutinise the house. Both of its front windows, upstairs and down, had their curtains drawn. He pressed the brass button again, longer this time, but the ringing was the only sound within.

  His sense of being let down had returned, stronger than it had been in the cobbler's. Could he have mistaken the address? He squatted by th
e briefcase on the doorstep and leafed through the envelopes. Assuming that he hadn't copied it wrongly, the number was correct. He clutched the briefcase shut and rose to his feet, and was staring at the house as though that might conjure up its owner when a voice said "Who are you after?"

  Taken off guard, Jack had to resist the impulse to hide his face with the briefcase. "If you're after books," the voice said from the canal path, "you're out of luck."

  "Is Mr. Foster away?"

  "He's here."

  It wasn't the same voice. Whereas the previous speaker's accent had been plummy and cultured, this man sounded proud to hail from Lancashire. Jack could do nothing if the bookseller wasn't alone, but a retreat at this point would look suspicious. He crossed the road and craned over the hedge that bordered the canal.

  There was only one person on the towpath, a shirt-sleeved man sitting on a canvas stool. He'd turned to peer through the hedge, a flat tin in one hand, the hook at the end of his line in the other. He wore half-moon spectacles low on his nose, making his already lofty forehead seem even higher. "Walter Foster?" Jack said.

  "You've found me out."

  "I thought you were with someone."

  "Just my little wriggling friends." Foster held up the tin of bait. "This is how I answer the phone," he said in the cultured voice, then let the accent drop. "Buying or selling?" he said as though either would be a trial.

  "Not precisely either."

  Foster squinted at the label on the tin. "Are we waiting for you to be precise?"

  "Let me come down and talk to you," Jack said, and strode two hundred yards or so along the hedge to the nearest gap. All the way sunlight showed him empty front rooms, and once he stepped through the hedge he was out of sight from the road and the houses. As he walked along the dusty unkempt path, Foster shuffled round on the stool to meet him. "Fancy some lunch?"

  "That's very kind," Jack said, then saw that Foster was offering him the tin, in which fat white grubs were squirming. "I'm saving myself, thanks," Jack said.