Keep Me Alive

by Natasha Cooper

  One of the dogs barked, then the others took it up. Will snapped off his torch and ran. He hadn’t seen everything he needed, but there’d been enough to confirm the suspicion that had been with him for days now. Whether or not this place had anything to do with the infected sausages, it was definitely an illicit meat factory. And it dealt with far more carcasses than could be brought here in one small plane once a week. Like he’d said to Trish, this was a major scam.

  His only concern though was with the meat the plane did bring in. All he had to find out now was where it had come from. It could be anywhere. But he was convinced some at least originated at Smarden Meats. Why else would the furious slaughterman who worked there be starring in Jamie’s film?

  Through the ragged, furious barking of the dogs, Will could hear men’s voices. He didn’t stop to listen to what they were shouting. It was only a few more yards to the road and therefore the car. Would it still be there?

  He was at the hedge. The gate had to be somewhere here. He couldn’t use the torch now without bringing the men straight to him. They probably had guns too. His only hope was to keep himself as dark as the hedge and find a way through it. Running his hands along the bushes, ripping his skin on their vicious thorns, he felt for an opening. More shouts sounded as though the men were closing in on him. He couldn’t breathe properly. Fighting to get oxygen further into his body than the base of his throat, he fumbled on.

  Clanking chains, then running feet and panting told him they’d loosed the dogs. He gave up all thought of the gate and flung himself up the hedge, clawing at the sharpest of the branches until he was perched on top, then over it and dropping on to the road. His ankle slipped under him, sending pain shooting up his leg. He put his weight on it as an experiment. Thank God, it wasn’t a sprain or a torn tendon. He could cope with the pain so long as he knew the joint would hold him up. Blood was making his hands sticky. He raised his palms one after the other to lick them before wiping them on the back of his combats.

  They weren’t too bad. They wouldn’t slip on the steering wheel. But the key. Where was the car key? He felt in both main pockets. Nothing. He bent further down as he ran towards the dusty little Deux Chevaux, feeling in the knee pockets of the combats. Still nothing. Only when he put one sore hand to his chest to hold down the leaping of his heart did he feel the comforting hardness of metal.

  Of course. He’d hung the key on a thong around his neck.

  The dogs were at the hedge now. He could hear them snuffling and tearing at the lower branches. They must have found his blood.

  He had the key in the lock and turned it. However pathetic the car, he thought absurdly, at least they’d kept the locks oiled. Then he was in, crunching the back of his thighs on the exposed metal edge of the seat. What did that matter? The engine fired straight away. He stalled, trying to move the car on. But a second later he was away.

  When he reached the crossroads that would take him back to Sainte Marie-le-Vair he began to laugh. Who’d have thought anyone could make a getaway in a car like this?

  By the time he was the other side of the village, he was singing, belting out all the old songs his mother had liked: sea chanties, ancient British marching songs, and a few plaintive folk tunes like ‘Oh Waley, Waley’. When he couldn’t remember the words, he added his own and pressed down harder on the accelerator.

  A vast meat lorry thundered past him, bringing back all the memories he’d managed to forget and cutting off any urge to sing. Resentment ate into him like acid, as he thought of all the trouble he’d taken to source his meat properly, rejecting anything that didn’t have a clear traceable line from farm to abattoir to his factory, or via a wholesaler, sometimes paying far more than he’d had to. They’d come to respect him in the end, those meat traders. His own customers had liked him, too. And sodding Furbishers had taken it all away.

  The last of the songs died in his head as he asked himself what on earth he thought he’d been doing, running about the French countryside, like a schoolboy playing escaped prisoners, when his life was still up for grabs. And it wasn’t really an escape in any case. If they’d wanted to catch him, they’d have driven after him. Pretty much anything could have caught a Deux Chevaux. Maybe that’s why they hadn’t even tried to come after him. Once they’d seen his car, they’d probably half-killed themselves laughing at it. They must have decided he was a harmless local, brought by curiosity and running away because he’d been frightened by the dogs.

  He drove on more slowly. Would Trish and the terrifying Antony Shelley ever manage to swing the case and get him enough damages to make any difference?

  The car lurched under him, as though it had suddenly gone lame. A bloody puncture, he thought.

  The last thing he needed. And if the state of the car was anything to go by, the spare wouldn’t be much good. But he couldn’t drive like this. The verge was quite shallow here, so he nudged the car up on to it and set about finding out how to open the boot. Thank God he had the little torch with him. There was no other light, except the thin gleam from the stars and the mean slice of moon. Holding the torch between his teeth to shine straight in front of him, he felt around in the boot for the tool and spares.

  Some bastard had done up the wheel nuts far too tightly and it was ages before he could get them to shift. The tears in his hands opened again before the old wheel was off and he had to shake them at intervals to make the pain bearable. But he had it done at last and was back on the road and driving towards the port again. He was hungry and cross, so he stopped for another pression and a jambon au beurre sandwich. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.

  There was a phone in the bar, too. He thought he’d better ring Trish. If something were to happen to him now – and it still might – she had to know what he’d found. Stuffing his hand in his trouser pocket, he brought out the last of the money she’d lent him. There wasn’t much left and he might need coffee to stay awake long enough to drive back to the car rental place. He wondered whether she would accept a reverse-charges call.

  Chapter 15

  There had been nothing more Trish could do, so she had let Pete Hartland go. Watching him speed off towards Vauxhall Station, she had felt a lot more than her fifteen years’ seniority. After a while, she turned the other way and set off towards Southwark and her own flat. She decided to phone Andrew Stane and warn him about Pete, and then leave it at that. He, at least, wasn’t her responsibility.

  Lots of taxis passed with their lights on, but it was a fine evening and her shoes were flat so she ignored them. She was glad of the exercise, and of the chance to walk off the fear that she’d screwed up by going to the pub.

  Ahead, all her favourite buildings glowed palely in the mixture of moon- and lamplight. She settled down to enjoy the walk. The distances were deceptive, and it took her a good half-hour to walk round the curve of the river, skirting the old red-brick wall of Lambeth Palace and then the hospital to get to Waterloo Station. Turning right at the roundabout, she plunged under the station’s bridges and hurried through the scary emptiness so that she could reach The Cut.

  She hadn’t realized how late it was until she saw theatre-goers pouring out of the Old Vic, but it was good to have the streets full of people again. So far she had never even had her bag snatched, but her flat had been invaded more than once and she would never feel completely safe on her own in London after dark.

  There was a savoury smell of roasting meat, as though one of the restaurants had just opened its kitchen door. She pushed through the crowds streaming up towards Waterloo Bridge and saw two men huddled over a brazier on the little square opposite the theatre. They were wearing old overcoats and were surrounded by plastic and canvas bags. The smell of meat was stronger here. One man turned his dirty bearded face towards her, and she saw he was tearing a roasted pigeon in half to eat.

  It was like a scene out of a medieval judgement painting. His round, startled eyes and straggly beard, as much as the charred meat in his hands,
made him look just like one of the minor devils in the bottom corner of the painted hell she’d once seen on the west wall of a small country church.

  Sobered, she walked on. What had happened to her city that homeless men were reduced to cooking and eating vermin on the streets, inches away from people who had just paid upwards of thirty pounds each to sit and watch a play?

  Plunging into darker, emptier streets after she’d crossed Blackfriars Bridge Road, she walked under more railway bridges and past the bulk of more rough sleepers. She hurried on, looking straight ahead. At last, she was at her own iron staircase and a moment later inside the flat and double-locking the door.

  The phone was ringing. She reached for it.

  ‘Allo? Allo?’ said an unmistakably French female voice, before asking whether she would accept the charge of a call from Calais.

  Curious to know who could possibly be phoning her from France, she agreed to pay for the call and a moment later heard Will’s voice, breathless with gratitude.

  It took some time before she could understand what he was trying to tell her, but then she grasped his need to give someone all the information he’d collected in case something prevented him getting home with it.

  ‘If I could’ve found an Internet café I’d have emailed you, Trish,’ he said. ‘But I can’t. The only one I’ve seen is shut, and I haven’t got a mobile with me to text with. Can I tell you?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  To pacify him, as well as to get the facts clear, she switched on her laptop and, with the phone between her ear and her shoulder, quickly typed up everything he was saying, without thinking very much about any of it. Even so, she had plenty of questions to ask. They would have to wait until he was calmer and she wasn’t having to type with the phone clamped between her chin and her neck, sending pain shooting through her.

  ‘I’ve got all that down,’ she assured him.

  ‘On your computer?’

  ‘Yes, Will, on my computer.’ What did it matter how she’d recorded it?

  ‘Will you run Jamie’s video again then, and see if you can make out any markings on the plane?’

  ‘What, now?’ She tried not to feel like an impatient nanny.

  ‘God, no. The call must be costing you a fortune anyway. But as soon as I’m off the line. And if there are some markings, will you find out what they mean? Where it’s registered or whatever little aeroplanes have to be. There must be a number on it somewhere.’

  ‘OK. Now, are you all right, Will, after all those adventures?’

  ‘Sure. A bit hacked about the hands, and I’ve got nettle rash all over my face, and a wrenched ankle. Otherwise I’m fine.’ He laughed and she hoped he was telling the truth. ‘Can I come and see you tomorrow? There are things we need to talk about.’

  She felt tired at the prospect, but there was no good reason why he shouldn’t. Ashamed of her reluctance, she told him to meet her at the flat at eight in the evening.

  ‘I’ll feed you,’ she added, out of some obscure impulse to make up for his torn hands and nettled face. And maybe to make up a bit for disappointing Pete Hartland. And definitely out of conscience for London men so poor they had to catch and cook a street pigeon.

  ‘Great, so long as it’s not sausages from the local deli. Bye, Trish. You’ve been fantastic. I’ll pay you back for all of it as soon as I can.’

  He clicked off the phone. It rang again almost at once.

  ‘Trish?’

  ‘Hello, Antony. What’s up?’

  ‘You’ve been out.’ He paused, waiting for her to tell him where.

  ‘I told you: I had things to do.’

  ‘So you did. Well, I’ve been dining at the Oxo Tower with friends,’ he said. ‘They’ve gone off now, so I thought I might come and take a cup of coffee off you. You’re only about five minutes’ walk from here, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am, but I’m on my way to bed.’

  ‘Perfect. I could join—’

  ‘I’m sure they can get you a cab at the restaurant,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘Let me come and talk to you, Trish. I’m not going to ravish you.’ There was enough mockery in his voice to make believing him a matter of pride. ‘You must know that.’

  ‘All right. I’ll put some coffee on. See you in five minutes.’

  When she’d filled the kettle, she flung cold water over her face and rubbed it dry on the nearest tea towel. No one could walk along the streets where she’d been this evening and keep her face clean. Seeing the grime on the tea towel, she was glad she’d thought of it. There wasn’t time to brush her hair, so she pushed it behind her ears, and left the tarting up at that.

  The kettle boiled. She poured it over the coffee grounds, breathing in the scent with pleasure, and looked for biscuits. She never ate them, but she couldn’t believe George would have left himself without any emergency rations, even in a part-time abode. No, here they were: delicious-looking foreign ones covered in thick dark chocolate. She put them on a tray, added coffee cups and the pot. There was no need to bother with milk or sugar. She knew Antony’s tastes as well as her own.

  He arrived just as she was putting the tray in the middle of one of the black sofas by the huge open fireplace that divided the eating from the sitting ends of her main room. When she opened the door, she saw he was wearing much less formal clothes than usual: a loose buff-coloured linen suit and no tie. The light over the door sparkled on his blond hair, and the shadows it cast took away the ordinariness of his square face. She couldn’t see much of his eyes.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, standing aside.

  He kissed her cheek, then tugged gently at one of the muddled strands of her hair. ‘What on earth have you been doing to yourself?’

  ‘Nothing. I walked a long way this evening and it got tousled.’ She led the way to the sofa, telling him about the men and their pigeon.

  ‘Ugh, don’t, Trish. It’s hardly the most romantic subject. And I had pigeon breast for dinner.’ He touched his throat. His long fingers were tanned, but the skin of his neck, which hardly ever saw the sun, was very pale.

  ‘Sorry.’ She poured coffee into both cups and offered him one. He took it but didn’t drink.

  ‘And this isn’t very romantic either, Trish. You must know I didn’t really come for coffee.’

  ‘No, I don’t. You said you weren’t going to ravish me.’

  He laughed. ‘True, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t hoping you might ravish me. The prospect has been haunting my dreams these last few weeks.’

  ‘Antony, we need to get something straight. I don’t think you can have believed me when I told you that in all respects except the straightforwardly legal, I’m married to George.’

  ‘So?’ The wicked seducer’s glint was in his eyes, making them brighter than ever, and his eyebrows were peaking. That reassured her.

  ‘What d’you mean, “so”?’

  ‘Trish,’ he said, putting his cup down on the tray and peering into her eyes. ‘You’re not telling me you’ve never made love with anyone else, are you?’

  ‘Since George and I got together?’ she said, leaning away from his scrutiny and the significance of the surprise in his voice. ‘Of course I haven’t. That’s what I meant. I didn’t think you could have believed me.’

  ‘Then why have you never married the poor brute?’

  ‘He’s not a poor brute, Antony,’ she said, summoning up all her hard-learned advocacy skills. Now, if ever, was the time to use them; she had to make him understand. ‘Although if we’d married, either he or I would probably have become one by now.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Trish. That’s taking cynicism too far.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve never seen a marriage in which both parties were completely equal. George and I are. We’re like free sovereigns of independent states. And that’s why it’s safe.’

  Antony didn’t say anything, but she was glad to see no sign of a sneer on his broad-cheeked face. He looked around the big room, as
though searching for clues to her character.

  ‘If you feel like that,’ he said at last, ‘why do you always give the impression that you could walk away tomorrow?’

  ‘I didn’t know I did.’

  ‘You do. Take it from me.’

  She smiled. How to explain her reality to someone for whom commitment clearly didn’t meant what it meant to her?

  ‘I couldn’t walk away,’ she said, surprising herself, ‘but if George did, I would survive.’

  ‘Is that what you’re afraid of?’ Suddenly he was gentle. She had to look away, knowing her face would be naked. ‘Trish? Are you so unable to believe in yourself that you think George might leave you? By God, you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She frowned. No one else had ever made her explain her philosophy and so she’d never had to think it through. ‘But even that would be better than being trapped in the kind of marriage so many people have, where they spend their whole time finding devious ways to punish each other.’

  ‘Come on, Trish! There aren’t many that are that bad.’

  ‘Of course there are.’ Now it was her turn to be surprised. ‘Have you never listened to couples sniping? Or seen the hurt that makes the victims’ eyes go dead? And then, later, watched how they take revenge? I see them everywhere and wonder how anyone could bear it.’

  He seized the coffee tray and carried it over to the table, then came back to pull her to her feet. He put both arms around her and she felt one of his hands cradling the back of her head. She was too tall to tuck her head under his chin.

  ‘You’re nuts, you know. George is besotted with you. It’s written all over him. And you’re more than tough enough to deal with anything he or anyone else could do to you.’ He rubbed her back, then let her go. However clumsily she’d expressed herself, she could see that she’d done what was necessary.