Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  At first – fearful of blowing his cover – he tried to maintain a certain distance between his Merc and the Rover, but Dory’s progress was so gradual, so erratic, so halting –

  Brake –

  Accelerate –

  Brake –

  Accelerate…

  What the hell is he playing at?

  – that it was about as much as Kane could do not to plough straight into the back of him.

  He promptly solved the problem by casually over-taking; furtively observing – as he roared past – that Dory appeared to be deeply embroiled in a telephone conversation –

  Yeah?

  Well that certainly explains a lot…

  Three short minutes later and The Blonde was neatly slotted into the driveway of a vacant property (just two doors along from Dory’s home address) with Kane hunched down low in the driver’s seat, both eyes glued to his side-mirror. Twenty long seconds ticked by –

  Shit…

  Was this completely the wrong call?

  – and then –

  Ha!

  – just as he’d anticipated, Dory pulled into the street, kangarooed his way along it, and brought the Rover to a juddering halt at the end of the very driveway on which Kane himself was parked.

  Eh?!

  Kane immediately began to panic –

  Why’d he do that?

  – crouching down still further –

  Has the swine blocked me in?

  – uncertain where to look, taut, agonised, all his senses on red alert, when –

  YAAARGH!

  – his phone began shuddering inside his coat pocket –

  Jesus Christ!

  He almost leapt out of his skin –

  Fuck!

  He grabbed a hold of it, turned it off, hurled it, furiously, on to the back seat –

  There!

  – then sat, staring down at his tightly clenched hands, barely even daring to draw breath.

  Ten seconds –

  Twenty –

  Thirty –

  Forty –

  Kane slowly lifted his chin and peeked into his side-mirror –

  Diddly-squat

  Just the back bumper

  He glanced over to his left, but the mirror on that side –

  Damn!

  – had been knocked flat (by his earlier collision, he presumed), so all that was currently reflected back at him was the crown of his own, terrified head –

  Huh?

  He blinked –

  Am I thinning out a little on top, there?

  He gently patted his hair. Then he blinked again –

  Now just hang on a…

  He covered his face with both hands –

  FUUUUCK!

  WHAT IN GOD’S NAME AM I DOING HERE?

  Kane remained in this position for a further full minute, then he dropped his hands and began hunting around inside his coat pockets for the small, polythene bag of tablets which he’d recently offered to Laura. He couldn’t find them. He noticed a small hole in the lining and poked his finger through it. His search became increasingly frantic…

  Fuck, fuck, fuck…

  He found his cigarettes and pulled them out, hoping to unearth the spare spliff which he generally kept for emergencies in the bottom of the packet. He opened the box and peered into it –

  Nope

  – then threw it, disgusted, on to the passenger seat.

  He closed his eyes and tried to deepen his breathing –

  Okay, okay…

  Just tell him…

  His eyes flew open –

  Yeah!

  Say you’ve come to look at the house –

  Say you’re waiting for an Estate Agent…

  Say the Estate Agent’s running late…

  – he quickly glanced into his mirror again –

  Nada

  – then slowly twisted around in his seat, straightened his spine and peeked over his head-rest (like a startled chad, or a timorous prairie dog scanning the dry, mid-western plains for a skulking predator).

  Dory (it transpired) was still snugly ensconced in his car, apparently oblivious to everything around him. Kane squinted –

  Eh…?

  – He was leaning over the steering wheel and seemed to be scrawling something, frantically, into a small, black note-book –

  The diary?

  Kane recalled the earlier conversation between Elen and his father while scratching away at his arm –

  Bloody fleas…

  – his eyes still fixed on Dory, who continued to scribble –

  His written confession, perhaps?

  ‘He was pestering my wife, so I cornered him in a neighbour’s driveway and then…’

  Huh?

  Kane’s attention was momentarily distracted by the smallest, slightest, most insidious of tapping sounds. He abruptly stopped what he was doing, tipped his head and listened. The sounds persisted –

  Tap-tap, tap-tap-tap –

  Huh?

  Kane turned, with a grimace, and immediately recoiled –

  YAH!

  Standing directly in front of him – only a yard away, at best – was a bird –

  Starling?

  – the same pesky, black bird (he was certain) which’d attacked him, unprovoked, several days earlier.

  It was perched on the Merc’s bonnet, pecking away, determinedly, at one of the small, rubber discs – the washer – which helped to secure the Merc’s windscreen-wipers to its chassis.

  Kane glared at the bird. The bird paused for a moment and stared straight back at him (with a single, mean, yellow-rimmed eye). It was so close that he could see the magnificent, iridescent sheen on its feathers, the constellation of white dots speckling its plumage, the slight, blueish tinge at the corner of its beak, and then – as it turned (to recommence its violent assault on the washer) – its tail made passing contact with the windscreen and he was privileged to observe the tiniest, the daintiest of grease-stains left behind on the glass –

  Urgh!

  Kane threw out his hand, revolted, determined to scare it off, but the bird didn’t move. It wouldn’t budge. It seemed fearless.

  Urgh!

  He continued to inspect it with a mixture of fascination and abhorrence, soon noticing that – for all its apparent vitality – there seemed to be something inescapably awry with the creature. He looked closer and saw a sticky patch of soft down at the base of the bird’s chest (consistent with a puncture wound or bite, perhaps) and a dribble of shiny, partially dried blood running down one scraggy leg. The tail also seemed thinner than it might be – tatty – wonky – lop-sided.

  Even so, the bird still made short work of the rubber washer (tossing it aside within six or seven seconds) before calmly hopping forward to start jabbing away at the neat, black rubber trim around the Merc’s tinted windscreen.

  Kane expostulated, furiously, throwing out his hand again, but before he could make actual, physical contact with the glass, the bird had crouched down – with an angry squawk – and had taken wing – heading off – like a dark bullet – towards the scaffolding two doors along.

  Huh?

  Kane slowly twisted around and peered over his head-rest –

  Shit!

  It was Dory. Dory had finally stopped writing and had climbed out of his Rover. Kane ducked down, having observed (through the Rover’s still partially opened door) that he’d placed his diary on to the dashboard – directly behind the steering wheel – where a sharp gust of wind snatched at the pages, making them flutter, wildly, whitely, like the damp wings of a newly hatched moth.

  Kane heard the door slam shut, closed his eyes –

  Pretend to be asleep, yeah?

  Why not?

  – and steeled himself for a confrontation of some kind. He waited, listening out for the heavy thud of Dory’s footsteps on the cement driveway.

  He did hear footsteps (eventually) but they certainly weren’t on the driveway. They were
faint at first, then grew still fainter. Kane opened his eyes again –

  Now what?

  He drew a deep breath (almost irritated by the delay), twisted around and peeked over the head-rest. Dory was currently standing some distance away (in the middle of the street), staring over towards his own home, a thoughtful frown creasing his forehead. He was holding something rolled-up in his hand which he carelessly shoved into his back pocket…

  Kane squinted –

  The Missing Dog poster?

  He quickly sank down in his seat (still following Dory’s progress – almost obsessively – in his side-mirror) as the German turned and strolled back towards the Rover again, yanked open the boot, leaned down, scrabbled around inside it for a while and then withdrew holding –

  Oh shit!

  – a large, metal tool of some kind –

  Spanner?

  Wrench?

  Dory slammed the boot shut and paused for a second –

  Not the car!

  Please, God –

  Anything but The Blonde!

  – then turned and headed purposefully back down the road, drawing to a sharp halt in front of his home and calmly appraising the front of the property – his head at a slight angle, a speculative look on his face – before marching determinedly across the pavement, on to the lawn and directly out of Kane’s immediate sightline.

  Kane cursed the annoyingly lustrous evergreen bush growing directly to his left which meant that for the next few minutes the only real clues he could accrue as to Dory’s activities were those of a strictly audible nature.

  From what he could tell, Dory appeared to be engaging directly with the scaffolding (‘Shoring it up,’ he mused, ‘I guess…’), and from the sheer volume of the resulting clamour, he was undertaking this task with considerable enthusiasm.

  After several more minutes of idle speculation, the suspense grew too much for him and Kane hauled himself over, clumsily, on to the back seat –

  Ouch!

  – fishing out his mobile from under his thigh, observing how Dory was almost half-way up the scaffolding now (and climbing ever higher) as the dark bird – Kane shuddered – darted all around him; pestering him; squawking, flapping its wings and bouncing from metal bar to metal bar like some kind of crazed, avian supervisor.

  Kane reduced the volume on his phone and quickly checked his messages. One from Dina –

  Where’s Kelly? Why ain’t she answerin’ her mobile? If you see the little minx, tell ‘er Linda’s home. Tell ‘er Linda wants a quick word with ‘er…

  – and four more from angry clients, impatiently awaiting their deliveries –

  Nothing from Gaffar –

  Nothing from Peta –

  Kane shoved his phone away again, scowling, plainly frustrated by his own lack of professionalism –

  You really need to…

  Uh…

  He peered through the back window to see if it would be possible to reverse the Merc from the driveway without tangling with the Rover –

  Nope

  Luckily there was next to no proper planting in the adjacent patch of garden – just a brown, slightly frozen lawn (no gate, no fence). Kane calculated that – if the worst came to the worst – it’d be perfectly possible to reverse the Merc across it, over the pavement and down on to the road again without causing too much conspicuous damage.

  As he made this calculation his eye was drawn – almost irresistibly – to the diary on the Rover’s dashboard. Its pages were still rotating –

  Hmmn…

  Air conditioning left on?

  Kane grimaced, grabbed for the hem of his old crombie and began inching his way around it with his finger and thumb –

  Where’d my stuff get to?

  Is it lost in the lining?

  – but he couldn’t feel anything and soon grew restive –

  Need a smoke…

  – so snatched his cigarettes from the front seat and lit one, then lay down flat on his back and gazed over towards his quarry, speculatively –

  Nope.

  It’s no good…

  I just gotta…

  He shoved his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, rolled on to his belly, felt for the door handle and slowly released it –

  Click

  As he pushed it open a cruel blast of winter air hit him square in the face. He closed his eyes for a moment (as if secretly hoping that it might jolt him back to his senses) –

  Nah-ah

  – then slowly, carefully, he slid out of the Merc, crouched down on to his hands and knees and began crawling, awkwardly, along the driveway. He was initially shielded from Dory’s sight – at least partially – by the Merc’s square chassis, but once he’d reached the bumper it became abundantly clear that the actual gap between the two vehicles was quite a considerable one – 5 or 6 feet, at least – with every inch of them in plain view.

  Kane peeked around the Merc’s heavy rump and up towards Dory.

  Lucky for him, Dory still seemed fully preoccupied with the scaffolding, so Kane snatched his opportunity and scrambled over towards the Rover, rising to his knees when he reached the driver’s door and peering in through the window to check out the alarm system –

  Deactivated…

  I think.

  The black jotter continued to flap seductively on the dash. Kane applied his hand gently to the door handle, squeezed, heard the mechanism disengage, grinned, pulled the door open and leaned into the car to grab the book.

  As he leaned, a small portion of ash from the tip of his cigarette dropped on to the seat.

  Bollocks

  Kane quickly swiped it off with his hand – knocking it down on to the tarmac. As he swiped he sensed a vague shift in the atmosphere around him – a strange, almost indefinable sensation – as if the wind had changed direction, or the sun had passed – very briefly – behind a cloud. He frowned, glancing nervously over his shoulder –

  Nothing

  – then shrugged and straightened up –

  Oh shit

  He froze.

  Perched on the steering wheel, directly in front of him, was the bird.

  Kane stared at the bird. The bird scratched itself, vigorously (patently unconcerned by Kane’s close proximity), spraying an extraordinary quantity of fluff and skin-flakes into the surrounding ether.

  Kane flinched, revolted. The bird responded with a sharp sneeze, then shook out its remaining feathers and hunkered down (for the long haul, it seemed), its neck neatly disappearing into the black feather boa of its shoulders.

  ‘What do you want?’ Kane whispered.

  The bird opened and closed its beak a few times, but without making a sound.

  ‘You’re guarding the diary, eh?’ Kane mused, noticing how the bird’s third eye-lid kept passing slowly across the eye, in between blinks. ‘Well, whether you like it or not,’ he continued bolshily (screwing his courage to the sticking place), ‘I’m still gonna take the damn thing…’

  He reached out to grab the book and the bird instantly took wing. He cringed (automatically anticipating a physical assault of some kind) but the bird swooped gracefully over his head and out through the door, without so much as a sound.

  No actual, physical assault as such – no – but he did feel…