A Cast of Vultures

by Judith Flanders

  I began to count again, but kept getting sidetracked by thoughts of ladders, or guns, and losing my place. I started to shiver. Excess adrenaline, I informed myself, based on extensive first-hand knowledge of crime fiction. But it wasn’t just internal. My clothes were clammy with sweat from the climb, and were clinging damply to my cooling body as I sat unmoving.

  No one returned, as far as I could tell: no lights, no voices. There were no vibrations to suggest climbing. I sat and shivered and clung to my perch. I didn’t really have any choice. The two men had failed to climb the tree because it had no branches for the first five metres or so from the ground. I had been pleased when I heard them say that, as it prevented them from getting up. It also now prevented me from getting down. The pole by the lift was worse, a full eight metres without a handhold.

  Small sounds filled the air. Night birds. Rustling in the grass, which at various points I attributed to the wind, to animals, and to my two attackers. I sat some more. I was hidden, I was fairly well supported, and if I could hang on until the gardens reopened, I would most likely be fine. I repeated this out loud. I tried it again, replacing ‘most likely’, which was beginning to sound sarcastic, with ‘will’: I will be fine, I will be fine.

  Gradually the adrenaline crash caught up with me. Fear should have kept me awake, but instead I was so tired I could barely hold my head up. I decided to make lists. Things I needed to do at home: the plant in the front hall needed watering; I still hadn’t completed my passport application; a button had come off a skirt long enough ago that the safety pin I’d been using as a temporary fix was itself in danger of falling off. I moved from there to thinking about Ben, and the conversation that we needed to have about his author. The management consultants kept me going for some time. Then for a while I sang to stay awake. I can’t carry a tune, but I didn’t think the Kew animals were in a position to complain, and if the men were nearby, they deserved to hear a ferociously off-key rendition of ‘Don’t You Feel My Leg’ (the Dirty Dozen Brass Band version).

  I moved on to worrying about Sam. With Connie representing him, and Helena prodding her along, I was sure he’d be fine, but it would have been good to have spoken to him, or at least have received confirmation that he’d been released. I thought about that prick Andrew Reilly, and Jake’s assertion that he was so nasty because he agreed with me about Harefield.

  That brought me back in a circle. Once I knew that this wasn’t a random mugging, it was impossible to think that the two thugs after me had nothing to do with Harefield’s death, or at least the fact that I’d been asking questions about the man. It might have been because I’d rejected a string of jacket roughs produced by the art department’s latest wunderkind, but somehow I doubted it. I mean, it was more than likely that the designer had said he wanted to kill me. Agents too had most likely said the same. And while I liked to think that every one of my authors loved me dearly, it might be that some of them wouldn’t have been brokenhearted to hear I was dead. But kill me? Kill me as in dead, not as in that-woman-is-such-a-pain-in-the-arse kill me?

  The last time someone had tried to kill me – I spent a few minutes distracted by the fact that my life had reached a place where I could formulate a sentence beginning ‘The last time someone had tried to kill me’ – the last time it had happened, a friend had been murdered. This time, no one I knew had been murdered. Dennis Harefield was dead, it was true, but I didn’t know him. And according to the police, he was a drug dealer who had died accidentally in the place he stored his drugs.

  But today, with Reilly, Jake had let slip that the police agreed with my view of the situation: that Harefield’s friends and colleagues thought the notion of him dealing was absurd. If that were the case, then perhaps my idea that the drugs that had been found in the shed were not his was not so far from the truth. But that didn’t explain how I came into the story, much less why someone wanted me dead. I tried to remember everyone I’d discussed Harefield with. I’d left a message with his colleague at the council, saying I was trying to locate him for a friend. I’d talked to Sam and Viv, but neither of them wanted to stop me: I was Viv’s garden seedlings connection, and she valued that too much to lose me. I couldn’t even think frivolously about Sam. Sam wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. Victor? Arthur? I briefly toyed with the image of Arthur haring through Kew Gardens, bent over and waving his stick, but while that was entertaining, it didn’t get any closer to answering the question. The only person I’d spoken to who seemed dangerous was Kevin Munroe. He knew I was asking questions. But he should know, too, that I didn’t know anything, and, from my cack-handed attempt to interview him, it was unlikely I ever would.

  And how would he know who I was, much less where I was? I hadn’t looked behind me after I’d left the market. It was possible that he’d followed me home, and then had sicced these two men onto me. But for what? Just asking questions? If he’d followed me and investigated me enough to find out who I was, he’d also have learnt I lived with a CID detective. Surely me dying, even accidentally, would cast more suspicion on those people I’d spoken to. Much as I’d have liked to pin this on Kevin, I couldn’t work out why he’d have done something so counterproductive.

  I thought about Azim, who was popping up everywhere, but that sounded even more far-fetched. Even if he was using his delivery boys to distribute drugs – and while the method was theoretically possible, there was no evidence that this was the case – and even if he thought I was suspicious of him, as with Kevin he had no way of knowing I was going to Kew, and even more reason than Kevin to make sure I didn’t die in suspicious circumstances. That was a dead end too.

  I tried from another angle. The men had said my death had to look accidental. What I knew was important enough that someone wanted me dead, but in addition, that no one should know that I had known it. I ran back through the idea, and it didn’t make much sense. But neither did someone trying to accident me to death. The word ‘accident’ took me back to the top of the pagoda. Someone had been there, and had carefully kept out of sight until Jake had left. Then they had begun moving towards me. If the children hadn’t appeared, what might have happened? Someone else, or possibly the same someone, had knocked into me on the stairs going up to the treetop walk. If I’d been a few inches taller I wouldn’t have bounced off the railing, I would have gone over it. I mentally apologised to the children I’d blamed. Soz, kids.

  All the while, I tried very hard not to think about Jake. He’d been called out to a crime scene, and when that happened, he often didn’t come back to the flat, which meant no one would know I wasn’t at home. Mr Rudiger would, because he had super-hearing and kept track of the people in the house. But I hadn’t promised to go up and see him, so as far as he knew I might be at Jake’s, or out at a party. There was no reason for him to do anything, call anyone. I couldn’t see if my handbag was still on the ground where it had been tossed from the walkway, but it was likely it was there: if my death was to look like an accident, they’d want it found near me. Jake might have texted to say he wasn’t coming home, but he wouldn’t expect a reply. If he’d gone back to his own flat, I was on my own.

  I didn’t know what time Kew opened. I prayed it might be early, for pre-work joggers and dog-walkers, but imagining a British institution might set its hours for the convenience of its paying customers was delusional, a sign I’d been sitting in a tree for far too long. My head snapped against the strut: I had nearly dozed off again. I gripped more tightly, and began to sing once more. If, at some future point in time, the lyrics to ‘Waterloo Sunset’ are needed to save civilisation as we know it, or for a pub quiz tiebreak, I expect to be in heavy demand.

  I was running through ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ for a second time when I heard voices. And they weren’t just talking. They were calling. It had to be Sprained Ankle and his friend, because the staff wouldn’t arrive before dawn, and even when they did start work, why would they shout? Maybe the men had lost track of which supp
ort I’d climbed? I pushed back more firmly into the leaves.

  The voices faded, and then came nearer once more. I could see a torch bobbing, then more than one. There were five, no six, torch beams swinging back and forth in measured arcs. Had Baldy got some colleagues to help? And did thugs call their fellow thugs ‘colleagues’? I thunked my head on the strut. This was not the moment for editorial nit-picking. I refocused on the lights, and then thunked my head again, even if I was going to give myself concussion if I stayed there much longer. They couldn’t be Baldy’s friends, because Baldy knew where I was: up. The people holding these torches didn’t. They were searching the ground.

  I heard a crackle and fizz. Static. A radio. This wasn’t Baldy & Co. And they weren’t Kew employees either. They were the police.

  I knew that I should slide down to the main post again, where they would be able to see me, but when I tried to, neither my muscles nor my brain would allow me to move. The muscles were cramped from hours of hanging on, and stiff from the able-to-leap-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound antics I’d put them through. My brain wasn’t cramped, or stiff, it was just frozen. Earlier, fear had moved me from implausible plan to impossible action with nothing in between. With what looked like a rescue team below me, my brain was telling me what any sane brain would have said all those hours ago: If you climb down there you will die.

  I attempted a shout, but my voice had frozen along with my muscles. I had to clear my throat several times before even I could hear myself. And then it took a few more tries before it was loud enough for anyone on the ground to hear. ‘Hello? Hello? Up here.’ Even to myself the words were feeble, but past experience had failed to give me any indication of what to say when perched in a tree before dawn in a botanical garden. A gap in my education.

  Finally I broke off a small branch and threw it down. That, together with a peeved ‘Hey!’ made two of the torches shift sharply upwards. I shook the branches and shouted again. Voices came nearer, and a torch beam traced out a path along the strut to the trees. Then a man called, ‘Are you Samantha Clair?’

  What, there were two women up trees in Kew Gardens in the middle of the night? It was a more exciting place than I’d thought.

  That was not, however, a sensible response, so I settled on a croaked ‘Yes’. It sounded like a tree frog was speaking.

  The torches gathered around, and I could see the shouter in their light, his hand cupped around his mouth as though I were a steamboat he was hailing in a dense fog. ‘Hang tight,’ he called.

  Ya think? One of the beams found me among the branches. I ducked to get the light out of my eyes. ‘Stop that. It’s dangerous,’ I snapped, as though sitting in treetops was a recommended activity when performed torch-free.

  The light moved away from my face. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ I’d kept relatively calm all night. Now the cavalry had arrived, I was going to pieces.

  The person on the ground came to the same conclusion. ‘They’re coming,’ he said in the tone people use on frightened children and kittens. ‘They’ll only be a few minutes.’ Nice kitty.

  I heard an engine, but it was on the other side of the tree, and I couldn’t see anything until it pulled up under the walkway. The light of the torches showed it was one of those open carts, a cross between a golf cart and those things that take oldies to their gate at airports. Even before it came to a halt, a shadow in the front seat was out and jogging over, to pull up short under the pole with hands on hips.

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ, Sam!’

  Jake.

  Just as one day I will be able to pretend I had a plan when I dived over the railings, so too I would like to believe that one day I will be able to pretend that everything went smoothly after that, that I was helped down in a dignified manner, that I gave an orderly, maybe even bullet-pointed statement to the police, and then went home, still dignified, to rest quietly. I would like to believe that I will be able to tell the story this way one day, because the reality swung from embarrassing to outright humiliating.

  After twenty minutes or so of people hanging about on the ground and staring up at me, a cherry-picker drove up and parked beside the golf cart under the walkway. Its arm was raised until a platform nestled next to me. Standing in it was a middle-aged man in Kew overalls. He opened a gate in the side and said, in broad Glaswegian, ‘In you get, hen.’

  The pretend me smiled a polite-middle-class-female smile, thanked him graciously for his help while apologising for putting him to so much trouble, before stepping daintily onto the platform that was now firmly beneath me. The real me, however, clung ever more tightly to the metal strut, burst into tears and shook my head wildly from side to side. It wasn’t even that I was scared, or thought I might fall. It wasn’t anything rational.

  You would think the man in the cherry-picker had been plucking wailing women out of trees for years. ‘I’m Walter,’ he said, ‘and I know you’re Samantha.’ And after that he didn’t say anything that could be accurately transcribed, just a litany of All right now, hens, and Shhhs. He didn’t try to make me let go of the strut, or lift me away, just petted me like a small animal. I don’t know what they teach them at horticultural college, but Walter must have gone for an advanced degree.

  After a few minutes he pulled back and looked at me. ‘Ready to try?’

  I nodded, and he slowly unwound one of my arms from the strut, wrapping it around his shoulder before moving to the other arm. Then my legs followed, and I was clinging to Walter instead of the support, with my face mashed into his neck. We descended like that, and even when we reached the ground he kept holding on to me, his murmurs as soothing as a mother cat’s rough licks.

  I felt another hand on my back, also petting the shuddery kitten, and I turned my head. When Walter saw I recognised Jake, he transferred me across, never letting my feet touch the ground.

  ‘Can you stand?’ Jake asked. ‘Do you want to?’

  I shook my head and wiped my nose on his shirt before I looked up. ‘But I really need to pee.’

  I said it wasn’t dignified.

  Jake gave a bark of a laugh and smoothed my hair back. ‘If you’ve been up there all this time, you probably do. Let’s get you cleaned up.’ And he carried me over to the golf cart, saying to someone as he passed, ‘Back at the offices.’

  We drew up to a building that looked like an elementary school, but I barely saw it as Jake carried me straight through to what must have been the staff loo. He put me down once the door swung shut behind us, and said, ‘A paramedic is on the way.’

  I waved it off with one hand, but clutched the sink hard with the other for support. ‘Don’t need one. It’s just scrapes.’

  ‘Humour me.’

  I looked in the mirror and worked at not shrieking. My hair looked like the big reveal on a programme starring David Attenborough. My face had a great raw patch on one side, where I’d scraped it on the metal strut. My hands were ripped to shreds. He was right. ‘And a tetanus jab.’

  Back in someone’s office, I sat on a desk and had my face and hands disinfected and bandaged. The scrapes ran down my neck, and I removed what was left of my shirt so that they could be cleaned too.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Jake was glaring at the side of my ribs. I craned my neck round to see. Bruising. ‘That must be where he kicked me.’

  He closed his eyes. I recognised that look. I’d been the cause of it before, but I couldn’t see how this was my fault. I tried to distract him. ‘Do you think the gift shop has a T-shirt I could wear?’

  He took a deep breath, then opened the door and spoke to someone outside. By the time the paramedics had finished, a T-shirt had materialised, illustrated front and back with the wildflowers of Kew. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but then, spending the night hanging onto a metal pole wasn’t on my first-choice list either. I put the shirt on and the paramedic wrapped a shiny metallic blanket around me. It was only then I realised I was sh
ivering.

  Tea followed, with the paramedic adding four spoons of sugar. My dentist was going to have a heart attack at my next check-up. I tried to take the cup, but the shaking was too strong. Jake held it to my lips. ‘Sip,’ he said. I did. ‘Again.’ I did.

  We kept on that way until I’d had half. Then, ‘You need to tell us what happened. It can’t wait.’

  I knew it couldn’t. ‘Of course.’

  Four uniforms filed in, a woman and three men. The woman and one of the men were introduced, but I didn’t listen to their names. Jake moved closer to me and looked over at the woman. ‘OK if I begin?’

  She gestured: Be my guest.

  ‘Start from where I left you,’ said Jake. ‘What did you do right after?’

  That was easier than trying to work out what was important and what order to put it in. ‘I stayed up on the top of the pagoda. There were footsteps.’ And slowly, with a lot of I-forgot-to-says and doubling back to fill in, I told them everything.

  As I knew from experience, the police never feel you’ve had the full benefit of the giving-a-statement experience until you’ve repeated a story a minimum of three times, although they prefer to aim for double figures. The woman took me through everything again, and her colleagues joined in, asking me to go over what the men had said in particular, then their appearance. I described Sprained Ankle at least five times. Baldy got less attention: I’d only glimpsed him briefly from above.

  After they pressed me on Sprained Ankle’s appearance a sixth time, I asked, trying to tamp down any sign of exasperation, ‘Don’t I get to go somewhere and look at mugshots, or is that just on television?’