Nightmare in New York

by Anthony Masters

  NIGHTMARE

  IN

  NEW YORK

  Anthony Masters

  To my brother Paul with much love –

  and with the hope of a closer future

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  A Note on the Author

  Chapter One

  I was happy that summer in Formentera. The old gang had gathered as usual for the August holiday. My father Tim, my stepmother Jennifer, my sister Kate, my uncle Alex and Cousin Norman. And me, Colin. The six of us always managed to enjoy every minute.

  The high point of our holiday was always the beach barbecue and that’s where the nightmare began.

  It was six o’clock on a drowsy Mediterranean evening – all shimmering white and baking blue. We had clams and mussels and hot dogs, and steaks roasting on the spit that Tim and Alex had rigged up. I’d just come in from wind surfing and Jennifer was pulling beer out of the cold box.

  ‘Had a good sail?’ Tim asked.

  I didn’t think he was looking so well. Normally he was the most energetic person I knew. If he wasn’t cooking he was playing some game or reading or writing or telephoning. But this holiday he’d been quieter, and there were lines of fatigue on his face that I had never seen before. He was a complete contrast to his brother Alex, who always looked cool and confident.

  We were about to start eating and my snotty-nosed cousin Norman was trying to get Kate to sit next to him when Tim got up very suddenly and announced he had to fetch a surprise from the house. He said he would be gone for about half an hour and that we were to start eating.

  ‘Can’t it wait, honey?’ asked Jennifer.

  ‘No,’ snapped Tim and he went striding off.

  We waited for about three-quarters of an hour before Alex got up and said he’d check the house. He went off, leaving wimpish Norman to say, ‘Maybe he got kidnapped. And Pop will have to pay the ransom.’

  That was the kind of stupid remark that Norman would make. Alex is a Congressman and certainly is rich, but Norman always makes such a production of it.

  Alex didn’t come back for ages and when he did, he came running across the beach in a funny stumbling sort of way with his face all twisted up. As he reached us I could see that he had been crying and when he spoke he sobbed. For a while I couldn’t make out what he was saying but Jennifer could and she made us follow him round the corner to the next beach. We could see something by the tideline; it was Tim’s shorts and T-shirt and dark glasses, neatly piled on the sand. There was a note held down by a stone. It read:

  SORRY. CAN’T HOLD OUT ANY LONGER.

  I didn’t feel anything then. I remember staring down at the clothes and thinking, this is some kind of joke. I saw my sister Kate looking down too, thinking the same thing. We both just stood there, silently staring down at Tim’s clothes.

  There’s only a small police station on Formentera and it’s not often very busy. Soon its two elderly policemen stood staring at the heap of clothes as if they were mesmerised. They stood like statues on the beach, talking to Alex. He was speaking very fast, very urgently. Then the policeman turned away and walked back to a beaten-up Seat and muttered something about organising a search with a boat. This left us all still standing there, still staring down at the heap of clothes, still not believing what we saw.

  We began to search the island. Alex and Norman went back to search the house, Jennifer wandered along the beach, staring out at the sea and Kate ran up the sand in the opposite direction, calling for Tim. I couldn’t bear that so I walked inland just to get away from the sound of despairing cries. She sounded like a lost child. Now she was believing. But I wasn’t. Not yet.

  As I turned away from the beach I saw a flotilla of boats leaving the harbour. One of them came inshore and I saw Jennifer wading out to it and clambering in. Then I saw Kate running down the beach from the opposite direction and splashing into the boat. I was glad, for Kate would have something to distract her now. The light was fading and I looked at my watch. It was eight and would be dark in an hour. I had this hopeless feeling that we should be doing more. But I didn’t know what.

  I gazed down at the sea, watching the lights on the yachts and the dark sky and water on which there was hardly a ripple. Then I had a thought. A ridiculous, wonderful, hopeless thought. Maybe Tim was on some kind of job, and had swum out to a yacht for some reason or other. He was a powerful swimmer. But I knew the thought was no more than a fantasy. The wording of the note drummed in my mind: SORRY. CAN’T HOLD OUT ANY LONGER.

  I must have stood for ages. Gradually the panic feeling spread to every part of my body and I felt I couldn’t move. For a while I had been sure I would wake up out of this misery and Tim would be there. But not now.

  When I returned to the beach Jennifer was standing by the still glowing barbecue. She was gazing out to sea. The boat search had obviously been futile.

  ‘Where’s Alex?’ I asked.

  ‘Up in a helicopter,’ she replied woodenly. ‘Searching.’

  ‘You don’t think anything’s really happened to Tim, do you?’ I asked stupidly, trying to make a grown-up reassure me, but she didn’t even reply.

  Kate came up to break the silence. ‘Daddy’s OK,’ she said, her voice trembling.

  ‘I know he is,’ I said quietly. What I had wanted from Jennifer I was now giving to Kate. There was a sense of completeness about it. I put my arm round her thin shoulders. Somewhere in the distance we heard the throb of a helicopter and seconds later we saw a searchlight probe the sea. Somehow, the thought of Alex in the helicopter was reassuring.

  Kate looked down at the barbecue. There was a plate on the table beside it with a steak.

  ‘That was going to be Daddy’s,’ she said. She went over to it. ‘It’s still quite warm.’

  Alex didn’t come back and we lay around the house all night talking about Tim. At least Kate and I did. Jennifer sat silently, staring out of the window. Norman, I have to hand it to Norman, he hardly spoke at all. Then Alex came in, gaunt-eyed.

  ‘We’ll start again in the morning,’ he said.

  No one replied.

  Chapter Two

  By the next afternoon there was still no news of Tim. When I wasn’t walking the beach with Kate I was walking the dusty interior of Formentera in a kind of daze. I drifted past the stunted bushes, the glazed heat of the white churches and the hard red rock that flanked the cliffs. For an hour I sat in the shadow of a windmill, trying to avoid the intense heat. I didn’t dare go in the sea. I looked across the flat sunbaked landscape and saw Tim coming towards me, his hands outstretched. He shimmered and dazzled in the sun and then was gone as he neared me. Time and again I saw him; time and again I stood up to hug him. But he always disappeared.

  I noticed a tiny church nearby in the square of a small ramshackle village. As I walked towards it hens scurried across the baked earth and an old lady in black made the sign of the cross as I approached her. She was sitting on the veranda of a small stone house and the whole square stank of cow dung.

  In the sudden coolness of the church I felt more relaxed. Sitting down under one of the stations of the cross I looked at a brightly painted statue of Our Lady. She held the baby Jesus in her arms and her plaster face was tender. The air in the church was heavy with incense and I closed my eyes, trying to accustom myself to the fact that Tim was dead. No tears came. I told myself over and over again that I wou
ld never see his face again. I tried to picture him at the bottom of the ocean, lying on a sandy rock. But every time the picture came into my mind I saw him rise up and stretch out his arms to the ocean ceiling above.

  Unable to bear it any longer I came out and went to sit under the windmill again. I knew the old lady was watching me, and after what seemed like an eternity I heard the heavy dragging sound of her footsteps. I looked up at her wizened, weathered face. She began to speak but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. I stared into her little black nugget eyes. What could she mean? Was she mad, or perhaps giving me some kind of religious advice? Or merely asking for money? Or complaining that I was trespassing? I saw her take something out of the capacious pocket of her overall. She dropped it into my lap. It was a small black crucifix. Then she walked away.

  It was early evening now and I realised that I was desperately thirsty. I walked slowly back towards the house, dreading the hopeless bustle that I was bound to find inside.

  Jennifer appeared in the doorway. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

  ‘Prowling about. Any news?’

  ‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘They’re calling off the sea search.’

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  She nodded. ‘It looks like it.’

  I felt angry now. Angry with her as I stared with fierce misery into her doll-like eyes. Jennifer was small and smart and beautiful, but she was someone Kate and I had never understood, although she always tried to be friendly. We reckoned she tried too hard.

  I looked at the wall. Tim’s face swam into my mind. ‘Why did he do it?’ I asked her.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Where’s Kate?’

  ‘Asleep. She’s exhausted. Colin – ’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I want to help you.’

  ‘Help me?’ I sounded suitably outraged. ‘You?’ I wanted to be as cruel as I possibly could. If I could hurt her I could feel something. Maybe. And I had to feel something. The numbness was creeping back and I couldn’t see Tim’s face in my mind any more. However hard I tried.

  ‘I don’t know why he did it,’ she repeated.

  ‘There must be a reason.’

  ‘Why should I know about it? We’ve been happy. I know we’ve been happy.’

  You may have been, I thought. But what about him? Alex had introduced them and that was the only thing I could curse him for. She had come to London with him, combining a profile with some rubbish on Beefeaters for an in-flight magazine. They had got married last year but I still felt she was a stranger.

  ‘You drove him to it!’ I yelled, looming over her. I was Tim’s build: broad shoulders, skinny waist, long legs, dark features. Now I was almost black with rage.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You must have done. He must have been unhappy. You made him unhappy. You bitch, you drove him to it!’

  I was centimetres away from her face, practically spitting into it. Yet her bland expression didn’t change – not one bit. She kept staring at me and her lips moved soundlessly. Suddenly the fury drained out of me and I looked at her blankly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You’re overwrought,’ she replied.

  The word was such an understatement that I began to laugh. I went on laughing until she slapped my face.

  I lay in bed, knowing I would never sleep, the dreadful events of the day buzzing round my mind. I had never felt so awake, so impatient to be doing anything but sleep. Tim’s face continually appeared before me. He was – had been – a freelance journalist, an investigative reporter. Mum had pushed off when I was a kid and for a long time it was just Tim and me and Kate living in the London flat. And it was those days that I dwelt on. I could see us all sitting round the dining-room table, talking, laughing, swopping news. I heard Tim say –

  I couldn’t bear it any longer. I got up and went to the window, pulling open the curtains, looking down at the gentle swell of the ocean. He was out there somewhere. I stayed watching until dawn.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ said Kate.

  We looked at her miserably. It was breakfast time the next day and we had all had a sleepless night. Why couldn’t they find him? How long did it take for bodies to get washed up out of the tideless Mediterranean?

  ‘There’s always hope – ’

  ‘Shut up, Norman,’ I said.

  Alex looked at me bleakly.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said quickly.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘He’s not dead.’

  I turned to Alex. His head was almost entirely bald. Behind his rimless glasses, his light blue eyes were darting from face to face, as if assessing our moods. Clearly he had something to say.

  ‘Listen to me, folks.’ His clipped New York accent sounded harsh and ugly. We were sitting on the terrace of our little house. ‘We have to face facts. Tim is missing.’

  ‘Presumed dead,’ said Jennifer. She looked very pale this morning and there were dark bags under her eyes.

  ‘I’m not going home,’ said Kate.

  That afternoon I walked up the beach with Alex. We arrived at a spot we all loved: a tiny rocky cove where the snorkelling had always been good. We clambered out on to some rocks.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I asked him and my voice broke.

  He put his arm round me. It was strong and steady and somehow soothing. Why? I wondered. I hardly knew him. All I had seen was a competitive human dynamo with a dry wit and a fund of anecdotes. He had never been real to me, except when he was in New York. There Alex seemed at home.

  ‘We’re going to stick it out, Colin,’ he said, breaking into my thoughts. ‘Take one day at a time.’

  ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘It doesn’t look too good.’ He turned away from me and with a shock I saw that there were tears running down his face. Tears? Alex? I had never ever thought of him as a man with feelings. It was weird. ‘I love him.’ Alex sounded as if he was talking to himself. ‘I love him so.’ But he still kept his arm round my shoulders. And it was still steady. I just didn’t know what to say. Then abruptly he seemed to recover.

  ‘We were very close when we were kids.’ His voice was soft but even. ‘Your grandfather drove us. He made me what I am. A main-chancer. Your father escaped the system. Just in time.’

  Dad didn’t talk about his parents much. They had died in a plane crash before I was born, when Dad and Alex were in their twenties.

  ‘Were you good friends when you were kids? Or did you fight?’

  ‘We were good friends and we fought. We’re not that dissimilar in temperament, you know. Both of us has got a driving force inside us. But it comes out in different ways. High school, college – we were in everything. Up to here in it. Sport. Work. Social life. We had to be on top.’ He paused. ‘And if we weren’t the old man would have seen to it that we were.’

  ‘What was my grandmother like?’

  ‘She wasn’t like us,’ said Alex. ‘And she kept her distance.’

  He abruptly got up and we walked back in silence.

  I really hadn’t known Alex at all until he started coming to Formentera. He was very American, unlike Dad who had become very British. I always felt that Dad had left the States to avoid competing with him. There were four years between them. Alex was a lawyer at that time, I think. A fast-paced New Yorker, who had got through two wives during his race for Congress.

  But despite all his hustling I liked Alex. Physically he was shorter, less powerfully built than Dad and he was lame, the result of a premature birth. His limp gave him a sort of determined look.

  When we got back from the cove Alex bustled round making arrangements and I assumed they were to do with whatever had to happen if someone was ‘presumed dead’. He and Jennifer had managed to convince Kate that we had to go home but I was really worried about her. She was like an automaton; eyes expressionless, motionless on the patio for hours, always staring at the sea.

  On the day we were due to lea
ve Formentera I went into the herb garden and sat there with the crucifix the old lady had given me. I had found an old chain in one of Tim’s suitcases. I hadn’t the courage to go through his things but the chain I managed to take. Amazingly it was thin enough to fit through the ring on the crucifix and I clasped it round my neck and then sat down in the early morning sunlight. The scent of the herbs was almost overpowering and I had almost fallen asleep when I was interrupted by Norman. I looked at him with distaste. He had his father’s build – short and skinny – but he also had a large head which seemed too big for his puny body.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You don’t like me, do you?’

  ‘Norman, this isn’t the time.’

  ‘What have you got against me?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Just because I like Kate’s company …’ His voice tailed away. It was just breaking and sounded absurdly squeaky. Suddenly I wanted to hurt him.

  ‘My pop’s in trouble,’ he said after a very long pause.

  I looked at him irritably. Wasn’t there enough trouble?

  Norman was silent again. Then he said: ‘I know it’s not the right time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I’ve got to talk to someone.’

  Suddenly there was a difference in him.

  ‘What trouble?’ I asked.

  ‘It started last month. Pop has something on his mind.’

  ‘What started?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But I’ve never seen him so spaced-out.’

  I looked at Norman impatiently and he blinked back.

  He didn’t tan easily and he was as pale and mole-like as when he came out here.

  ‘I haven’t noticed anything. He’s seemed quite normal all the time.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Norman squinted up at the sun. ‘But underneath he’s all chewed up – like something’s eating away at him.’ He paused. ‘There’s some trouble in Harlem and he’s up to his neck in it.’

  ‘What trouble?’

  ‘It’s real complicated. Something about redistributing the blacks. Anyway, he’s getting flak and he can’t take it. And there’s this Sandman scare …’