He glared at it and then around him. The entire landscape looked paralysed by moonlight, inert as the windmill beside the bridge. The stillness felt like a refusal to help him. To his left, beyond the river that perspective had engulfed, the sky above Liverpool glowed the amber of a warning. To his right the distant sea bared its rim, the whiteness of which reminded him of the top of a blank page in a typewriter. Behind him the ridge led past the windmill to the defunct observatory, both of whose buildings were locked and no use to him. The sea and the river were too far to walk to. The trains had stopped running, and it sounded as though he couldn’t even trust the motorway to offer traffic that would leave the package unrecognisable or at least wipe out any evidence of wrapping. Over the bridge the hill sloped down to Birkenhead, where the streets would be just as unhelpful. He turned to aggravate the stinging of his eyes by staring along the ridge, which the darkness softened so much that he could imagine burying the package in it. He mustn’t let his imagination stray, he’d wasted enough of the night—but then he remembered the view from the train.
Beneath the motorway was a field where people walked dogs. He was sure that it was muddy even now, at the height of summer. Facing the railway across the field, below the far end of the ridge, were allotments. Some of the sheds must contain tools—a spade. Reality was on his side again. He opened his mouth to give the package some sense of the good news and saw that it was inching towards the brink. “Not yet,” he declared, digging a finger and thumb into its shoulder to haul it clear.
It writhed in his grasp. As he wiped his hand on his trousers, the package planted its feet apart on the rock, a gesture suggesting defiance even before it waggled its fingers in his general direction to show it expected its hands to be freed. “I said not yet,” he told it. “We’re still too close to people.”
While the fingers and the lump of a head drooped, it maintained its stance. Was it trying mutely to argue with him? “Turn around. More. I didn’t say stop. Stop. Straight ahead,” he instructed and watched it trudge back the way it had come. “It’s just as tiring for me, you know. Soon you’ll be able to lie down.”
So would he once it was safely tucked away where nobody would ever find it. He thought he might sleep for days. No doubt the package didn’t understand or care how much the chore of directing it took out of him. By now single syllables sufficed—“Up,” he kept saying, and “Down”—but the sense of power this gave him was starting to pall, especially since the package seemed to be in no hurry to reach the end of its trek. He had to use his imagination so as to remain interested. “You’re walking on a dinosaur. Those are its scales. Careful you don’t wake it up,” he said, and later “That’s a lip you’re stepping off. There’s mouths all round you. Watch out or they’ll have your feet.” He felt as though he was dreaming aloud, but his audience showed not the least appreciation of his creativity. He clenched his teeth on his temper as he passed the observatory and came in sight of the downhill slope.
A lane separated the foot of the hill from the allotments. The rectangular plots put him in mind of graves with sheds for markers. As he followed the package down a narrow grassy track the plots appeared to expand as if they were greedy for a burial. No doubt they would be a pleasure to dig, but mightn’t the owner notice if Dudley found an extra use for one? He’d better be content with borrowing a spade. Even then he might have to act like a criminal and break into a shed. “Look what you’re going to make me do,” he muttered as the package hesitated irritatingly at the bottom of the slope. “No danger. Straight on.”
This sent it to a gate in the hedge that bordered the allotments. The gate was fastened only with a latch, but the lever was stiff with rust, and Dudley had to lean on it. The latch gave with a click as loud as the fall of the bar of a mousetrap, and the gate emitted a shrill creak on swinging inwards. All this might have been designed as an alarm, because it roused a muffled shout. “What’s that? Who’s there?”
The speaker sounded newly awakened, and Dudley felt as if he had been as well. As the door of a shed a hundred yards away burst open he clamped his hands over the ears and forced the lump of a head out of sight behind the hedge. A man almost as broad as the shed blundered out of it and shaded his eyes to peer towards the gate. “What’s the game?” he shouted. “After somewhere else to vandalise?”
Dudley took a firmer grip. He could have fancied he was covering a child’s ears to prevent it from hearing anything unsuitable, particularly since the package was so small. “Do I look like someone who’d break the law?” he retorted.
“I can’t see what you look like, matey. Maybe I should come and see.”
The hulking silhouette detached itself from the equal blackness of the shed, and Dudley saw that it was brandishing some kind of club. He almost threw the package face down on the gravel and trod on its neck to keep it unobtrusive. “I don’t mind,” he said, willing the man not to take him at his word. “I just wanted somewhere private.”
“Going to leave us a bit of manure, were you? You think we’ve put in all this work so you’ve got a toilet. Sounds like a vandal to me.”
“I couldn’t see where I was.” Though Dudley wasn’t forcing the head unduly low, the package had begun to struggle as best it could; it almost dealt him a backward kick before he sidled aside, still holding on. “I only saw the hedge,” he was enraged to have to plead.
“Shy type, are you? Bit too shy for your own good.” The man dropped the end of his weapon with a clunk on the dim path and leaned on it so as to shade his eyes again. “Who’s that with you? What are they up to?”
“Nothing. They’re why I needed the hedge,” Dudley said, cursing its thinness.
“Can’t they speak for themselves? Let’s be hearing from them.”
“They can’t at the moment.” As the man advanced a step, dragging his club with a thick rumble over the path, Dudley felt as if the dark was squeezing his brain to a crumb of blackness. “They’re, they’re a bit ill,” he stammered.
“Drugs, is it? Or don’t they want me knowing who they are?”
“That’s it,” Dudley said and flattened his hands on the lump of a head as a kick narrowly missed him. “You don’t need to when we didn’t do anything, do you?”
“Depends what you were going to.” The man leaned over the club, and his voice became something like quizzical. “Are you sure you weren’t both off behind the hedge?”
Dudley swallowed nausea. “All right, we were,” he said, though it tasted like sickness.
“Dirty little buggers. Couldn’t you wait till you got home?”
“I’m not one of those,” Dudley objected, because the notion felt still worse. “She’s a girl.”
“You want to be more romantic then, son. Buy her some flowers. Take her to a decent restaurant. Take her dancing. Show her you care and then you’ll both want it. That’s how it was with me and my wife.”
The voice had grown nostalgic, which aggravated Dudley’s revulsion. He had to refrain from trying to crush the sticky head between his hands. He was dodging another kick when the man called “Get going, then. I’ll be watching.”
Dudley almost couldn’t speak for disgust. “What are you asking me to do?”
“I’m telling you both to make yourselves scarce while I’m feeling sentimental. Don’t bank on it lasting. This’d nearly be our anniversary, that’s all.”
Dudley saw the silhouette bow its head. He let go of the ears and gripped the package by its shoulder to urge it alongside the hedge. “Go on,” he said low but sharp enough to penetrate the tape. “Faster. Keep on straight. No rest yet. Soon.”
When they reached the corner of the hedge he glanced back. Though the silhouette had raised its head, he thought it could distinguish as little about him and the package as he could of the man. Now that he was barred from the allotments, the plots reminded him even more enticingly of graves. A scent of recently dug earth teased his nostrils, and he had to wipe his mouth. He turned away in a rage, only to
notice that the route he seemed to be proposing would lead him home. Then he realised it could take him further—to the old graveyard at the end of his road.
So his mind was functioning, however sleepily. Perhaps it had needed the hint of the allotments, though he was more inclined to believe that the thankless business of guiding the package had distracted him. How many hours did he have until dawn? Where was he to find a spade? He would have to improvise, and surely life would side with Mr Killogram. All the slates were missing from the roof of the church in the graveyard; he could use one to dig. “Keep going,” he ordered, and eventually “Right. Not stop. Go right, you brainless dummy.”
The lane had met the road that led to his. The road climbed between walls of exposed rock, which gave way to houses that were quite as lifeless. He urged his plodding burden past them, and barely resisted the impulse to kick it along. It might take umbrage at that, perhaps even turn defiant, and he had no time to waste on its antics. All that mattered was to speed it to its grave. At least he wouldn’t have to kill it. Burial would solve that problem.
He dodged ahead of it to the crossing that sloped down to the main road. He’d heard a car. It passed without appearing and left behind a stillness that the murmur of the city emphasised. He directed the package to step off the pavement and onto the next one, which led past his house. “Not much further,” he said and had to grin, because the undertaking seemed to have enlivened the package; it increased its pace, at any rate. He was in sight of his house when he heard a car behind him.
As he twisted to look it poked its nose around the intersection. He was able to imagine that it was borrowing its whiteness from the moonlight until it swung into his road. It was a police car.
He had only an instant to think as he hid his face from it so swiftly that pain flared up his neck and clutched his skull. An instant was enough for Mr Killogram. As the vehicle caught up with him he overtook the package and made to hide it with his body while he shoved it down the nearest front path. There wasn’t time; the gate was yards away. Instead he had to clasp the package in his arms and apply his mouth to the bulge in the tape that contained the lips.
The bound hands squirmed as if they were trying to express his disgust. Even the taped lips attempted to wriggle, and he could have thought they were struggling to reach his. From the corner of one stinging eye he managed to gather that the police car had sped past him and his house. When the brake lights brightened outside the graveyard he let go of the package and rubbed his mouth savagely with the back of a hand. “Don’t worry, that’s all you’re getting,” he said through his teeth.
The police car had halted by the graveyard. As the doors sprang open, several figures dashed out of the gates and fled up a path onto the hill. “That’s right, chase them out,” a woman’s voice exulted from a bedroom window next to the churchyard. “Let them stick their needles in themselves somewhere else.” The police from the car ran after the fugitives, and Dudley glimpsed flashlights in the graveyard. He couldn’t take the package there or back onto the ridge.
He had to hide it where he could while he had the chance. He kept his mouth close to one blurred ear to make sure the police didn’t hear him, although the notion of touching the package again with his lips sickened him. He talked it to his gate and through, and sidled around it to the front door. He fumbled his keys out of his pocket and nearly dropped them from exhaustion. As he scraped the key into the lock, he heard a rumble like a thunderclap above him, and Brenda Staples leaned out of her bedroom window.
She was craning towards the graveyard. He turned the key and pushed the door open in a single movement, then gripped the package by a shoulder. “Up,” he said in its ear as its toes nudged the front steps. He propelled it into the hall and glanced up. Brenda Staples was still intent on the chase. He bared his teeth at her and nearly slammed the door to make her jump. He eased it shut and bolted it as he turned to the package, which was loitering near the foot of the stairs. “Keep on,” he said. “Step up. Step up.”
It obeyed him until it was halfway upstairs, at which point doubts appeared to set in. It inched its feet forward on two adjacent treads to identify the location or take a firmer stance. “Don’t stop or you’ll fall,” Dudley was amused to improvise. “There’s nothing either side of you to stop you falling.” Perhaps the situation he’d described was too vivid to be helpful. The package wavered and toppled towards him until he planted a foot in the small of its back. “You’ll be all right if you do as you’re told,” he said. “Step up. Step up.”
This took it as far as the landing, where it almost fell over with the unexpectedness of no more climbing. He enjoyed the idea that it was terrified of straying over some unseen edge. “Straight ahead,” he directed while he grinned. “Stop there.” It was in the bathroom now, and unaware of standing in front of the bath. “Turn round,” he said as he retrieved the last roll of tape from beneath the sink. “Keep turning. Stop.”
Although he liked the sound of unsticking the tape, that might alert the package, and so he took a minute to pick a stretch loose with his nails. He crept up on the package as the sightless lump of a head began to pivot back and forth, and sank to his knees, holding the section of tape behind the package at arms’ length. “Don’t think I’m kneeling to you,” he muttered. “I’m not praying for you either.” He bound the tape around the ankles, pulling it tight, and as the package commenced struggling for balance he wrapped the ankles a second time, and a third and a fourth. He was able to bind them yet again as the package toppled over the side of the bath, where only its sudden forward crouch saved it from thumping its head rather than its shoulders against the wall. As it writhed in search of a less awkward position, he had no trouble in pulling off its shoes before hoisting its legs with his foot into the bath.
He’d done enough for one night. Tomorrow he would call his mother at work and tell her that he needed to be left alone until Tuesday. He could buy a spade for tomorrow night’s job in the graveyard. As the package started thumping its feet against the sides of the bath he shut the door to keep the noise in and lay down on the mattress. The package would tire of its racket eventually, and he wouldn’t be surprised if by that time he was asleep. “That was research. That was the rehearsal,” he called and made his head more comfortable on the pillow. “Don’t worry, next time it’ll be real.”
THIRTY-SIX
As Kathy wheeled her suitcase away from the hotel Dudley’s mobile rang six times, and then he gave in. “Dudley Smith, writer and scriptwriter,” he said. “Me and Mr Killogram must be busy. Leave us a message.”
When had he changed the response? She had never heard that before. “I just wanted to check how things are going,” she told him. “I’ll try again in a bit.” Perhaps his train to work was in a tunnel. She pocketed the mobile and hurried through the mainline station, where the sunlight through the glass roof was uttering pronouncements like a god. She bumped her suitcase down the escalator and bought her ticket on the way to riding more stairs to the underground platform.
It was hot with commuters and with her inability to use her mobile. She begrudged every one of the five minutes the West Kirby train took to arrive. She sat at the front of the first carriage, where her luggage could take some of the space left for wheelchairs. She felt like a child pretending to drive the train—urging it not to loiter underground, at any rate. As soon as it emerged into the open beyond Conway Park she tried Dudley’s number again, but he was still only a message.
Might he be stuck in the tunnel? Her train had passed another in there, but she was as certain as she could be that Dudley hadn’t been aboard. She phoned a third time as the train swung away from Birkenhead North towards Bidston, offering her a view of allotments across a field and reminding her how close to home she was. Could he have switched off the phone so that he wouldn’t be disturbed, only to oversleep? She had to smile wryly at wondering how much of a mess she would find. At the very least Dudley was going to help her clear up.
Perhaps Monty was right, and she indulged Dudley too much. Even if his writing was the most important aspect of his life and so of hers as well, that needn’t mean he had to be deficient in any other way. She would be less of a mother if she let him. It wasn’t too late for them to change. The train halted at Bidston and admitted a hint of a breeze, and Kathy was tempted to make for her house. She imagined dragging her suitcase for miles under the sun, and resumed her seat. Surely if he’d been writing all weekend he deserved a day off from his other job.
She couldn’t spend nine hours wondering where he was. She didn’t want to spend any. She managed to wait until the carriage rose level with the ample houses of Hoylake before she called again. Only the recording answered. “I’ll keep trying,” she said as she had to stand up.
Mr Stark was unlocking the office on the main road around the corner from the station. Kathy’s colleagues turned as they heard the rumble of her luggage. “Been on your hols?” Mavis suggested.
“Something like that.”
“Don’t say you’ve had a wicked weekend,” Cheryl cried.
Kathy didn’t, nor anything else, though she produced a fleeting smile as she hurried her case to the staffroom. The office would be open in five minutes, which meant that Dudley’s workplace would be, and someone must be there by now. She found the number on the list behind the counter and snatched out her mobile. “I’ll just be a minute,” she told Mr Stark.
She was longer. The phone in the Birkenhead office rang for at least two minutes before it was picked up. Kathy opened her mouth and left it open, because whoever had answered immediately hung up. “I’m phoning Birkenhead,” she informed Mr Stark with some vehemence and tried again. In rather more than another minute the ringing ceased. “Don’t cut me off,” she said at once.
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