by Trevor Hoyle
Gaz had no choice but to support me as my leg gave way. I heard Benson say, ‘All right, cut it out, that’s enough. Not in front of my daughter.’
We moved as a group across the gravel and into the kitchen. Once inside, Ruth Benson rounded on her father. ‘I don’t get this. Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Why don’t you call the police?’
‘Ruth, darling, I’ve already told you, this is business—’
‘Stop treating me like a bloody child!’
‘Neville.’ Susan glared at Benson, her face taut and hard under the harsh lighting. ‘Please make your daughter go to her room now, this instant. Will you do this small thing for me?’
Benson nodded grimly and practically manhandled his daughter across the kitchen to the door. She struggled and tried to turn round to look at me, and as I started to say something Susan gave Gaz a quick flashing glance that brought his wrist hard against my throat, making me choke and cough.
Benson got his daughter out of the kitchen. Ruth Benson’s voice could still be heard, faintly but querulously protesting, through the connecting door. She was, or had been, my last and only hope, and now that hope was dead and gone.
The blonde woman went out and came back a minute later lighting a cigarette with a gold lighter. She pushed back her sleeves and leaned against one of the island units, taking in deep lungfuls of smoke. ‘Christ what a mess,’ she murmured to no one in particular. ‘What do you want out of this?’ she asked me. ‘Money?’ Are you trying to blackmail us or what? And why go around calling yourself after somebody who’s dead?’
She blinked several times and opened her eyes very wide. Something that almost resembled a smile flitted across her smooth face.
‘You were in the clinic, weren’t you – but you didn’t have a beard then, and your hair was different, it was cropped and grey … I remember now, when I was visiting Peter, I saw you!’ Then she did something that was unexpected and completely out of character: she threw back her head and gave a shrill peal of laughter, her teeth small and white against the red roof of her mouth. ‘Christ, that’s it – that’s how you came to know Peter. You’re one of Morduch’s head cases …’
‘Why don’t we just dump him then and get shut?’ Wayne said. ‘If he’s a nutter nobody’s going to miss him. Another swift harbour job.’
‘Not without first getting the tape back. Suppose the police get hold of it, or that old buffoon, Councillor Potter? That’s all he’d need, and we can kiss the EC grant and the marina development goodbye. And my dear departed husband’s name crops up on it too, remember? The man who was going to blow the whistle before you gave him a terminal tattoo.’
Gaz held me close, breathing down my neck. Susan smoked her cigarette and looked at me narrowly across the bright kitchen as if deciding and debating with herself what to do. Benson came in, white-lipped and angry, and listened as she repeated more or less what she had just said. Benson twitched as if shrugging off the whole miserable business; he seemed distracted, almost disinterested.
‘Do what you bloodywell like.’ He turned his back on her.
‘All this is for your benefit,’ Susan said contemptuously. ‘If you were half a man you’d do it yourself.’
Wayne unzipped the soft leather pouch, and Benson said rapidly, ‘Not here, not in this house, I won’t have it.’
‘We mustn’t disturb poor Ruth, must we? Of course not. Let’s keep her pure and unsullied.’
For a moment they stared at one another, the blonde woman’s gaze like a laser beam. Then she tossed her cigarette into the sink and walked past him, ignoring him, speaking to Wayne. ‘All right, put him in the Mercedes. We’ll take him to the shop.’
It was very strange, because it bothered me less what was about to happen to me than that this wasn’t the woman I thought I had loved. Not the same woman. Those years of marriage had happened not to me but to someone else. Susan wasn’t Susan and I wasn’t me. She was a stranger, and I was stranger to myself, inhabiting my own body. The marriage had been between two other people we didn’t know: the unfamiliar stench of her perfume told me that.
The blonde woman, Susan, Holford’s wife, Benson’s mistress drove, Ray next to her, with me in the back between Wayne and Gaz. After driving for a while in hushed pneumatic splendour along dark country lanes we arrived at the main road. As the car turned onto it, surging smoothly forward with muted power, Ray leaned his sharp face towards the windscreen and said, ‘Shit and corruption, what’s that? What’s going on?’
The car slowed almost immediately, coasting down to walking pace. There were flashing blue lights, a striped barrier, figures in yellow waterproofs laying out cones. Distantly a siren wailed.
In a panic, Ray gabbled, ‘Go back. Turn round. It’s the fuzz.’
Headlights from behind illuminated the interior of the car.
The blonde woman in the driving seat said calmly, ‘I can’t turn now, they’ll think something’s wrong.’ She spoke over her shoulder. ‘Keep him quiet. I don’t care how you do it.’
A hand waved us down and the car rolled to a stop in front of the barrier. A policeman in a cape and chequered cap stepped forward. Susan operated the electric window. Gaz’s arm was like a sandbag across my shoulders. But they couldn’t shut my mouth, not without at least a struggle. I waited for the policeman to approach, getting ready to yell, scream, anything, and then I heard a soft metallic chink, and Wayne was holding my hand in his bandaged hand and murmuring confidentially as between friends, his breath like sewer gas, ‘Can you feel that against your wrist, squire? Loaded up and ready to squirt. A full dose into the artery and straight to the heart if you so much as squeak.’
‘Accident half a mile down here, madam. A petrol tanker on fire, road completely blocked. Where are you heading for?’
‘Brickton.’
‘Bear left and follow the cones. Detour via Blindcrake. It’ll bring you back onto the A595 north of Granthelme.’
In the reflected glow of headlights from the car behind the point of the needle glinted against my exposed wrist. I was incapable of sound or movement. I listened to the blonde woman thanking the policeman, who was stepping back and waving us through, and the window purred shut as the car gained speed, following the slanting line of cones. We slid past the barrier and the flashing blue lights into the dense blackness of a country lane, on the way to Blindcrake, the caterwaul of an ambulance siren rising in the distance.
‘Jesus fucking Nora,’ Ray said in a shuddering breath. He slumped back in the front passenger seat.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Susan said, her voice like a slap. ‘Keep your gutter language to yourself or get out and walk.’
Wayne said: ‘Shame about missing that. I enjoy a good blaze. Tankers burn great.’ Grinning fatly, he held up the syringe for me to see, which had been empty all along.
3
There was nobody at all on the streets of Brickton. The traffic lights signalled to imaginary traffic. A burglar alarm above a discount jeweller’s steel-meshed window drilled on heedlessly. The Mercedes turned off the main road and glided down a side street. On the corner the E GA FOO S ORE was in darkness. I wondered whether Mrs Patundi and her remaining child were still living in the barricaded hole of their tropical basement.
Wayne unlocked the door and Gaz pushed me inside. I could hear Wayne fumbling behind the partition, and then the light came on, and blinking painfully I saw his amoebic shape rippling across the frosted glass, an alchemist in his lair, scuttling amongst his magic potions and secret powders and jars of bats’ viscera.
‘Get that overcoat off,’ Wayne said, and when I made no move Ray took great pleasure in grabbing my collar in his pale hairless hands and dragging the coat off my back. His nostrils were clogged with blood, the breath whistling through his teeth. He had a lumpy brownish swelling on his left cheekbone.
Gaz pushed me into the chair. The walls were a vibrant gloss yellow, a ragged patchwork of colour magazine pictures breaking up the terrib
le glare. Underneath a dusty anglepoise lamp, on a bench covered in newspaper, a mottled mirror with a broken edge was propped against a shelf, and next to the mirror a tray of instruments attracted the light and flicked it across the room in tiny splinters.
‘Shove his sleeve up.’
Gaz unbuttoned my shirtsleeve and pushed my coat sleeve and shirt up to the elbow. Ray started hopping about. ‘Hang on, I’ve got to go for a slash.’ He grinned sheepishly at the blonde woman and crept out through the door at the back.
Meanwhile Wayne was busy with his preparations, leaning his belly against the bench as he unzipped the leather pouch and laid out the syringe, needles and ampoule on a shallow enamel tray. He did this very neatly and carefully, with professional pride. I could feel the tremor of panic building up in my chest. What would happen if I screamed? Would anyone hear? Would anyone come running? And Gaz would choke it off at once with the crook of his elbow. Still I knew I would start screaming the instant Wayne turned and came towards me with the needle. Just as I screamed when Dr Morduch turned and came towards me with the needle in his gloved hand, his waxy yellow face looming over me and growing larger and larger like a vast yellow moon with black craters for eyes. I screamed then all right, and kept on screaming, until they taped my mouth shut and muffled my screams.
No
Not this time
The voice had come back. I wasn’t alone any more.
Not this time
Never again
‘What is that stuff?’ inquired the blonde woman, watching as the fat boy fits the needle to the syringe, withdraws the plunger, and begins to draw off rose-coloured fluid. She is standing further along the bench, her hands in the pockets of a loose sea-green satin or silk jacket.
‘One of my special brews,’ Wayne tells her, smiling his brown and red smile as he drains off the last of the fluid. ‘It’ll give him the screaming hab-dabs.’
‘He’ll tell us?’
‘Oh yeh, he’ll spill his guts. He won’t know what he’s saying.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘After what?’
‘What happens afterwards?’
The fat boy shrugs. ‘Dunno. If he’s got a bad ticker he might snuff it.’ From the back room comes the noisy gush of a lavatory. Wayne places the loaded syringe on the tray and wipes his fingers on his shirt-front. He says briefly over his shoulder, ‘Okie-dokie, strap him down.’
Come on then
Murdering Bastard
Come on
Just try it
And see
What you get
This time
I beg you
Gaz loops a leather strap over my left forearm, threads the end through the buckle and jerks it tight. The fat boy turns from the bench with the enamel tray, the broad back and whale-blubber neck reflected in the mottled surface of the mirror leaning against the shelf. Like a surgeon requiring the assistance of a nurse for a tricky operation, he hands the tray to the blonde woman to hold, then flexes his fingers, relishing the moment. ‘You’ll hardly feel a thing,’ he says throatily, as in the mirror I see him reaching for the man’s wrist. ‘Just a tiny prick.’
Also in the mirror I see that the man in the chair has a frozen smile on his face, and it strikes me that he must know a secret that no one else knows. I wonder what it is.
I watch him rear back in the chair and bring his leg up. The chair spins round on its mounting and his swinging kick sends the tray flying. There is a soft thud as the loaded syringe impales itself in the shiny leather arm of the chair, where until a second ago his hand had rested. Gaz is quick to see the danger. He regains his balance, planting his bulk solidly behind the chair, and hooks his arms around the man’s neck, using all his muscle to drag the man’s head off. I feel the man start to gag and choke, and then see him pluck the syringe from the leather arm and hold the point to the hairy wrist tight against his throat, the point of the needle pressed against the skin, his thumb on the plunger.
He feels Gaz stiffen, go still and quiet as a rock.
The fat boy takes a lurching step forward, fists bunched, and the man croaks through his tingling throat, ‘Tell the fat lump of lard to back off or I’ll use this.’ He digs the point of the needle a little deeper, almost but not quite puncturing the skin.
‘Get away,’ Gaz says huskily. ‘He’s got the fucking thing stuck in my hand.’
In a low, venomous voice the blonde woman says, ‘Hit him. Why don’t you hit the bastard!’ Though whether this is meant for Wayne or Gaz, or perhaps both of them, isn’t clear. But neither one of them makes a move. Somebody’s heart is thumping, jarring the man’s skull; it might be the man’s or Gaz’s, the man isn’t sure, nor am I.
I feel the man swallow to ease his cramped throat. ‘Undo the strap, Gaz. And do it slowly.’
Gaz reaches forward with his free hand and unbuckles the strap. His fingers leave damp stains on the leather. From the corner of his eye the man becomes aware that Ray is standing in the doorway, his face pinched and twisted. He is stupid enough, filled with enough hatred, to make a blind rush. The man realises he has perhaps ten seconds before he does, and then he sees the expression in Ray’s eyes and knows he has five or less.
Somehow he has to get up and out of the chair, but he doesn’t know how.
It is the blonde woman who decides it for him.
He has been too busy concentrating on holding the needle steady, on the threat of Wayne lurking near, on Ray’s savage expression, so that he nearly misses the blur of movement as Susan swings at him, all the lines of her face seeming to converge in a single focal point of fury. Twisting in the chair the man lets go of Gaz and grabs her flailing wrist and slams it down hard on the leather arm of the chair, holding the point of the needle above the fine tracery of veins. She gasps with the suddenness and the shock, her body bent at an awkward angle as he holds her there, wrist upturned, needle poised.
For a moment nothing at all moves, and then Wayne’s tongue creeps out like a pink nervous worm and slithers over his upper lip.
‘All right, Gaz.’ The man is panting as if he’s run a marathon. ‘Move away. Slow as you like.’ The plastic syringe is slippery in his fingers, and I’m afraid that any second he’s going to lose it.
Gaz sidles back towards the frosted glass partition. During those few seconds the man knows the syringe is starting to slide through his fingers. He waits for Gaz to get clear and then jerks the blonde woman forward in front of him, and in the same movements brushes the sweat off the syringe on her silk or satin jacket, and brings the point of the needle up to touch the side of her neck, near to where he judges the main artery lies.
He eases in close behind her, getting a firmer hold on her thin shoulder, feeling the bony projections underneath the shoulder-pad of the shiny jacket.
Wayne is slowly shaking his head, his eyes puffy slits. ‘If you hurt her, squire, you’re dead. Believe it. You’re dead meat.’
‘That’s okay then,’ the man says, ‘because by then she’ll be dead too. Just make sure you don’t bury us together.’
This is glib and flippant, but understandable, because he feels giddy with fear, and so weak that had Susan thought to reach up and take the syringe away from him he couldn’t have stopped the unfaithful, conniving bitch from doing it.
But she is shaking too – he can feel tremors down her spine as they move backwards, pressed close together. Something snaps under his heel, and he scuffs a broken needle out of the way, searching with his foot for the enamel tray so that he doesn’t slip on it, and in this crabbed fashion the two of them retreat over the cracked linoleum until they’re behind the partition. The frozen silhouettes of Wayne and Gaz loom on the frosted glass – though not Ray’s, he notices, because Ray was further back in shadow, beyond the arc of the lamp, and the man begins to imagine Ray creeping along the passage and out the back door and padding silently round the block, scheming a sneak attack. He’ll have to be damn quick though – bloody quick – because it
takes less than ten seconds to get Susan through the door onto the pavement and into the car. He bundles her across from the passenger side into the driving seat, the needle aimed at her throat. Her skirt becomes entangled with the automatic shift lever, and the man wrenches it free, splitting the seam.
The savagery of his movements spurs her into life, gives her back some of her icy defiance. She even glances at him pityingly. ‘How far do you think you can run? And where to? You’re finished—’
‘I’m not running anywhere,’ I hear him tell her. ‘I’ve stopped running, Susan, darling.’
‘What?’ she says quickly.
‘There’s no need to run anywhere, now that I know what I have to do.’
She gazes at him with an odd mingled expression of fearful curiosity and vivid bright alarm. ’What do you mean – what you have to do? Do what?’
Suddenly there is a huddle of figures in the shop doorway. The pale smear of Wayne’s face stares out, a glaze of impotent hatred in his slitted eyes. The three of us in the car leave him staring and drive slowly down the empty street past the darkened windows of the E GA FOO S ORE and turn left at the corner into another empty street. This one goes more steeply downhill, becomes part of the labyrinth of back-streets leading eventually to the harbour.
Chapter Fifteen
‘Are you familiar with this town?’ Susan asked me, hinting slyly that I might be lost and our steady, smooth progress an aimless wandering.
‘Well enough by now,’ I said.
‘So you know where you’re going?’
‘Oh yes. Just keep driving.’
The streets petered out to a cindery track with water-filled potholes. The last of the houses here were abandoned, boarded-up, vandalised. She drove slowly, the Mercedes’ fat tyres crunching through cinders and broken glass, swaying portentously on its suspension, the headlights picking out the chain-link fence to our right, here and there sagging, in places torn down. She said breathlessly: ‘This leads nowhere. It’s a dead-end.’