Philian Gregory

by Simon J. Stephens

  “What transfer?”, they could just about understand her through the gag.

  “Patience, Amanda,”, Powell insisted, “all will become clear soon. Now, where was I? Oh, yes, the transfer. By now, you’ll understand we’ve been watching you for a while and yes, we saw the transfer you made to buy yourself a boat. It all checked out with us then and we didn’t even bat an eyelid when you sold that same boat not long after. In fact, the sale made us laugh at the time. Poor little rich kid decides that she needs a canal boat, then realises that it just so very cold and basic on board. We let it go. Now, we’d like to revisit that purchase.”

  “You see,”, Hendricks took over the explanation, waving a printout in front of Amanda’s face as he did so, “what we failed to see, our very sophisticated search program just couldn’t overlook. Certain people buy canal boats. They vary in many respects, but they all fit into a limited number of personality types. It makes something of a mockery of the notion that we follow our hearts, but it also helps us understand how misplaced our perceived individuality is. Narrowboat buyers share common characteristics that form a general set of profile. Your own profile simply doesn’t equate to any of those types. Then, there are the practical aspects. Nobody just makes a transfer and buys their first boat. Apparently, you did. Your computers show many interesting searches around many unusual topics, but you never once hit on a brokerage site or on any forums, websites, blogs and the like that were related to canals. You see, it was what you didn’t do that the computer flagged up for us. You just bought a boat having done nothing to investigate buying boats. I could go on. I could tell you that people who enjoy skiing and sun-drenched beaches don’t have narrowboats. That extremely financially competent people don’t destroy any records of large purchases that they make, and yes, we know that your Canal and River Trust profile has been purged. And we could tell you that there has never been an instance where a profile matching your own has taken a hire-boat out on the English canal network. But that’s just the detail. What we need now is to find that boat. The boat we assume you bought for Philian.”

  They eased the gag down over her mouth and waited for her reply.

  “I can’t argue with you,”, she sighed, “even if I told you the program was wrong, you wouldn’t believe me. But that doesn’t mean that I’m in a position to tell you anything more. You’ve checked the records already. If there was a boat, it’s been renamed, written-off, re-registered as a different vessel, and bought and sold many times over. That’s all I’ll give you. It’s all I can give you. You won’t find him.”

  “There are thirty-five thousand boats out there.”, Hendricks explained, “Give or take. We have the resources. We’ll track him down. When we do, we’ll tell him how helpful you were to us.”

  “Don’t underestimate him.”, she replied, “He’s avoided you so far. My money would be on him to stay off the radar. And good luck to him.”

  “But we still have more to discuss.”, Hendricks continued, “Things that might make you a tad less confident. The phone number for example. That would be a start. You destroyed it, but it’s still in that pretty little head of yours, isn’t it? Whether you like it or not, we know it’s there. That’s another aspect of Amanda Courtney that we discovered, your mnemonic abilities. An IQ well above Mensa entry requirements and a memory that absorbs numbers and can’t let them go. So, shall we take it peaceably or by force?”

  “I’m not giving you anything else.”, she replied.

  “Such a shame.”, Powell sighed, “Such a waste of a great talent. You do know that we will force you to give us what we need, don’t you? Even though that number may be a dead-end, it at least gives us something. Is keeping it a secret really worth losing your life over?”

  “Mr Powell, Mr Hendricks,”, Amanda looked on her captors pitifully, “you appear to be clutching at straws here. What you don’t seem to realise is that I know you won’t be letting me go. I know that you’ll kill me. It’s the way you seem to operate. Maybe my own superior mental capabilities are as adept at profiling as your computer program. You don’t fit the mercy profile. So be it. Nothing I can do will change that. You may as well get it over with.”

  “Either you are a lot braver than we thought,”, Powell leaned closer to her as he spoke, “or you put on a very good front. I respect your honesty and, in return, I will be as honest to you in return. Yes, I’m afraid that we will need to terminate you. Not simply because it is a normal function of our torture methods, but also because it eliminates the only means of support that Gregory has open to him. In a way, we have to kill you to stop you helping him again. The difficulty we have is the information that dies with you. That number would be a start. If you give it up, we’ll go easy and make it quick. What do you say?”

  “They may not make any headlines,”, Amanda told them, “but these are my last words. Go to hell!”

  The gag was placed back onto her mouth and the two men walked away to discuss their next moves. They knew what they had to do. It was expected of them. Strangely, this was one time when they really didn’t feel in the mood for it. Then again, the job had to be done.

  “You first?”, Hendricks asked.

  “Yeah, why not.”, his friend replied.

  It was at this point that a long-ago-buried and secret part of Amanda’s history returned to her and allowed her to switch off from all that was happening. As a teenager, she’d been raped by burglars who had seen her as an extra bonus when they’d arrived at what they’d presumed was an empty house. She was fifteen and that had been the first time that she’d chosen to stay at home whilst her parents holidayed abroad. Reconciling what had happened had taken a long time. There was the learning to love her violated body again. There was the dealing with the decision that she’d made thinking that she was old enough to enjoy the house all to herself. And then, there was the hardest part. She’d had to try and put the past behind her and not let them steal the rest of her life in the way that they’d stolen her virginity.

  She knew what they were doing. First, it was Powell, then Hendricks, then Powell again. She heard the different intonations in their voices and she smelt their unique odours. But she wasn’t really there. Her past experience had taught her that she could take herself away. That she could retreat into her own world where the real Amanda, not the flesh and blood Amanda that was being so ruthlessly used, could find a place one step removed from where she was. The deeper she retreated into that place, the further away she went. There was no point in hankering for what might have been or in bemoaning the injustice of it all. She’d made her choices. If this was the price that she had to pay for the time she’d had with Philian and others, for the pleasure she’d derived from her career and for the full life she’d enjoyed from the ashes of a wretched past, then so be it. It would be over soon. She hadn’t told them anything, nor would she. Even after the abuse stopped and the knives started cutting her, she held out by switching off.

  Hendricks and Powell were disappointed in her. She yielded up her spirit far too quickly and without helping them in any way. Sometimes, it was like that in their job. Sometimes, they faced an opposition that they couldn’t break. As they cleaned up around the corpse, they avoided looking into the dead eyes that stared at them. They were eyes that showed no fear. Eyes that took any satisfaction away from the two men as they sought to shame them with forgiveness and pity. That night, they couldn’t get away from the place fast enough. They’d achieved something, but they were only fractionally closer to Carrington and Gregory. That was how it was sometimes. They’d simply have to work harder in the future.

  Chapter Thirteen

  March gave way to April, bringing with it the usual mix of excessive rainfall followed by sunny intermissions where the temperature hit Summer levels. In the past, Philian Gregory had disliked this time of the year. A time of year when you had to scramble for packed tube trains or scurry through rain-sodden streets, the moisture
and the dampness seeming to become a part of your being, refusing to leave even when you were settled in an air-conditioned office. The flashes of bright sky, were they to appear when they could be enjoyed, were little consolation and never compensated for the dull, grey days that they bracketed.

  That was the past. Now, the rain was welcome. It filled the canals and it kept the fair-weather boaters away. The sunshine promised lazy reading sessions sprawled out on the towpath, and even the in-between times of cloud and haze felt different. It was like being blanketed in the elemental security of creation. Getting wet was part of the journey, as was drying out in front of the wood-burner. It wasn’t ideal of course, but it certainly felt a lot better than it had in the past. This was something they both agreed on.

  Philian and Nathan agreed on quite a lot these days. They shared duties according to their desires and abilities and they worked together to bring in the income that sustained them. Nathan gave the tips, Philian travelled around placing the bets and collecting their winnings. Always enough. That had been their agreement. When they needed money, they invested what they had and generated the income they required. It was a simple existence and a frugal one but it meant that they could glean what they needed from the cash economy of local bookies without raising suspicions.

  Aside from maintaining the boat, earning a living and getting to know each other better as they flopped down with a pint in hand in one or other of the pubs they passed, there had only one other thing that they had to do. They kept moving. Not as rapidly as they’d first planned however. It was all very well setting out a course that would see you traversing the entire national waterways network in a year or two, but such plans didn’t account for making the most of the spots they moored up in.

  They could stay for up to two weeks in most locations. That was a little too much, most of the time. Instead, they kept an open mind at every point they reached and moved when they felt like it, often only a few miles away. Wherever they were, having made the necessary moves to change not only the appearance of the boat but also its licence number and ownership details, they felt as anonymous as they ever could. It had been Carrington who’d proposed the changes to the boat and who had developed the simple plan that they’d followed. They’d found a similar looking boat on hard-standing at one boatyard, paid for the minimum work to be done to re-float it and then had it re-registered. They towed that same boat for a day or two until they found a spot where it could be easily lifted back out of the water by a local scrap dealer. They didn’t ask anything of him other than a signed note to confirm that the boat had been destroyed. Prior to that, they’d swapped the boat’s plates of course. It was simple and it was effective.

  Nothing about their appearance and nothing about the boat they lived on gave anything of their past away. They’d made the clean break that they’d wanted to and they’d done it without the need to disappear into the gutter. Carrington understood how much his friend had done for him. Philian Gregory had addressed the same situation in a way that offered a better resolution. He’d appreciated this enough that he’d reined back on the booze and chosen to help out in whatever way he could. The empty, broken shell of a life that he had accepted as his lot, was now just that little less empty. There wasn’t much in the future, he was reconciled to that, but at least he could live out his final years in relative comfort and without the begging and the beatings and the degradation of street life.

  That life had shown Nathan Carrington the best and the worst that was to be found in people. Philian Gregory had discovered the same as he’d shuffled along in rags and been spat on by some, fed by others. Now, on the canals, they’d found a home where they enjoyed being a part of a community of like-minded people who were as excluded as the homeless, but who didn’t suffer for that exclusion. Fellow boaters gave no credence to your power and status beyond the thin strip of dirty water on which they found you. Everyone was equal. Those who had a need, asked and received help. Those who wanted to help had ample opportunity. If you wanted companionship, it was always close at hand. If you wanted solitude, others respected that.

  Having been together for quite a time now, they knew each other much better. Leisurely days of cruising and relaxing evenings at the pub were filled with snippets of information about each other’s lives that both surprised and shocked the listener. Philian Gregory’s story was shorter and less eventful than Nathan Carrington’s but there were things in there that he had forgotten about and Carrington did all he could to encourage Philian to open up. In return, Philian wanted to know much more about Nathan. His was a life that had imploded on itself and for which the past could only be a painful memory, and yet, it seemed right that Philian encourage him to share a little of it. The deepest revelations were few and far between, but when they came they left the two men exhausted by the telling.

  It had been a few weeks ago, when they’d completed an exhausting lock-flight and were drifting off to sleep on the boat when Philian had made the punt and spoken to his friend.

  “You seemed out of it today.”, he said quietly, “Like you were miles away. Anything you want to talk about?”

  “You ever read any psychology?”, Carrington replied after a long silence.

  “Not really. Only what I pick up from the papers and a few courses I went on. They were more about selling techniques and stress management. Why?

  “There’s a notion, isn’t there, that talking about things helps?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”, Philian replied, “But I’m not really that much of a touchy-feely person. Then again, I haven’t really faced the sort of issues that need airing. Why do you ask? You want to tell me something?”

  “I don’t know.”, Carrington replied, “It’s just that since I’m spending more time without the booze dulling my mind, I can feel things from the past coming back. I thought I had everything resolved. Now, I’m not so sure.”

  “I’m here to listen if you want.”

  “I know that, mate. I know that and I appreciate it. But that’s not the problem. We’ve talked about a lot in the past and we know each other pretty well. What’s bugging me now is deeper than all that though. It’s the sort of stuff that I may well want to unload, but which I worry you may not be able to handle.”

  “What sort of stuff?”

  Carrington appeared not to hear the question, choosing instead to stretch out his legs and empty the glass of whisky that he’d been nursing for the past half hour. Philian waited as he reached out for the bottle and poured another, before passing the bottle across and nodding for him to do the same.

  “The death and bereavement stuff.”, Carrington sighed, “I’ve learnt to live with. The prison time and all that that entailed, I can also reconcile. Man, even the homelessness and the disappearance onto the streets, I can accept as something that just had to be. But all of that is wrapped up in something that I’ve never shared with anyone. And, believe me, it’s not something I want to burden another person with. You see my problem?”

  “You’re talking about your time in The Circle?”, Philian asked.

  “Exactly. Can I tell you about it? I’ll understand if you say no.”

  Philian said nothing but simply turned a little to face his friend and held his arms out in a gesture that he hoped would encourage him to continue.

  “You read about stuff in the papers,”, he began, “and you think you’ve caught a glimpse of some of the evil that people are capable of. If that’s not enough for you, you’ve also got the internet to trawl through and that takes things down to an even deeper and darker level. The worst thoughts of ordinary people, the most imaginative writing of the horror specialists and the sickest images you bring up on your screen. All of them can make you recoil in shock, but none of them represents the worst. Whatever you imagine as the foulest, there are things going on that are fouler. But, we seem to be able to handle that sort of stuff because there’s a disconnect betwe
en what we see in detached, distant images and the reality of the lives we lead. When those two separate worlds collide, it’s hard to live with.”

  “I was teaching a class of undergraduates when the police called me out of the classroom.”, he continued, “As soon as I saw the uniforms and the looks on their faces, I knew they weren’t there with good news. Patty had been missing for over a week. There was nothing else we could do but wait. I’d chosen to hide in my teaching. Martha had stayed at home. The rest of that time is pretty much a blur. That is, until Patty was dead and buried and life around us began again. I eased off the tranquilisers that I’d been prescribed and I began to process what the post-mortem report told me.”

  “Don’t worry,”, he tapped Philian’s hand as he paused for a moment, “I’m not going to go into all that with you. I won’t even ask you to try and imagine it. What’s important is that it led me to act. I knew the police were doing what they could, but I also knew that they were giving me no answers. So, I went searching for them myself. I could have let it lie. I could have been there for Martha and maybe we’d have come through. But I made the choice. And I made it because I knew in my heart that Martha only had one way to go. The search for justice became my purpose. Martha had nothing left. Seeing her every day spurred me on. Burying her spurred me on the more. You sure you’re okay with this?”

  “Believe me,”, Philian replied, “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  “You ever read Dante’s Divine Comedy?”

  “No.”

  “But you’ll know about the idea, that hell is a series of descending circles, each the worse?”