PearlHanger 09

by Jonathan Gash

  I'd risen to leave despite efforts to pull me down. Sweat poured off me. Nothing to do with this farce, of course. Only, the stupid room's heat was practically boiling me alive. The others were simply too stupid to notice it, that's all. Sandy was looking at me, ashen.

  "To warn against the death in threes," Beatrice said in that same unnerving chat-show voice. "Is the message complete, Seth?"

  It frigging well wasn't. "There were only two deaths," I croaked.

  "A third is near. Friend shall strike friend."

  This was ridiculous. Sweat trickled down my flanks. It stuck in a cold ring round my neck. If I wasn't scared of Barney I'd have given Bea a clout for fooling about like this, because three minus two leaves one.

  140 .

  Their daft game was too much. I had a plane to catch and here I was tarting about while Bea played silly sods.

  "Which friend?" I said nastily while the others were being scandalized at my spoiling the show.

  Beatrice suddenly opened her eyes, which happened to be fixed straight on me, only pure chance. Owd Maggie's gravelly voice said straight from her mouth, "Thee, Cockalorum."

  IS

  Even when I was a virgin—practically before Adam had a lass—I knew that women were born pests. Apart from that brief exhilaration when consummation first equates with life, I've remained pretty well immune to them because I'm reliable, and everybody knows that this quality and women are immiscible, like oil and ale. They have this dyed-in-the- wool knack for nuisance, like horsehair. The old dears who taught me, determined grannies, threatening aunties, lovers, friends, the lot. I'm reasonable and tolerant, and they're not. Simple as that. This incompatibility's bound to cause problems, and invariably I'm the one who comes off worst because fair-minded people always do.

  Sandy and Mel drove me back from Beatrice's after I'd developed a bit of a headache at that bloody seance. That's all it was. Everybody gets a headache now and again.

  "It was the heat," I told Lydia for the umpteenth time. They'd collected her on the rainy drive to my cottage.

  Sandy was delighted at the rain because his rotating musical wing mirrors had new neon striplights. "It's your karma, Lovejoy," he said.

  142 .

  "I hadn't realized Bea could even do impersonations," I explained. "Anybody would be shaken, hearing Bea impersonate an old friend who'd pegged out, right?"

  Lydia was white as a sheet. I felt mentally spread-eagled.

  "Thank you for the journey and your pleasant company, Sandy," Lydia said formally, hands clasped and feet together. It's her way of saying you can't come in.

  "We'll come for you at four, cherubims," Sandy trilled. "Today's scoop: Watch my rear lights."

  We watched, numbed, as the vast old Rover bowled into the lane. Inevitably two huge red headlamps beamed back at us, the offside dowsing in a horrid slow wink. Even over the motor's din we heard his shrill laughter.

  Gone.

  Lydia insisted I lie down on the divan while she brewed up. The stunning silence was gradually whittled by normal household sounds. Outside, a bird recovered from Sandy's visit and gave an experimental chirp. Lydia tutted because coat hangers wouldn't behave when she was tidying. The divan creaked as I turned on my side. A cup chinked. Two garden birds squabbled. A spoon tinkled in a saucer. Lydia ahemmed for the crunch.

  "Lovejoy?"

  "Mmmmh?" My eyes were closed against any more shocks.

  "How would it be—dear," she managed the endearment with resolve, "if we asked Constable Ledger for assistance?"

  "Why?"

  "The police can effect a resolution far more speedily than you alone, Lovejoy."

  She went on in this vein but you can't just lie there taking it.

  "Police don't assist. They do what they like."

  "They represent the law, Lovejoy," the innocent little thing said gravely. Every truth is daft to somebody. I had to explain this.

  "Law's trouble for us vulnerables, love. Those who moan hard enough become exempt. Silent folk like you and me get crushed or keep out of its way. The majesty of the law is for those who dispense it."

  Her expression closed into despair, and I knew immediately what she was going to do. Because of Beatrice's silly ventriloquist's trick—ridiculous what grown people will get up to—Lydia was going to phone Ledger. Far more logical to accept that, if I got there quickly and secretly enough, there'd be no third death anyway. Clear as day.

  "I am entirely confident," this endearing little creature said, "in Vanessa's skills as an aviator. I insisted that Mel ascertain that she is in possession of an authorized pilot- instructress's license. But your abilities, Lovejoy, cause concern."

  Time to lull suspicions. "You're probably right, love. Shall I pour?"

  At half-three I decided to have a stroll up to the village shop for some envelopes, and put on a great show of being casual. I asked her for some shredded cheese for the robin and chucked it out. Then ostentatiously I ambled up the lane, darted back along the hedge for my bike, and pedaled off like hell toward Boxenford without a single helper, and therefore in a better state of preparedness for survival than

  I'd been for many a long day.

  *

  144 .

  The plane hadn't arrived when I reached the flying field two hours later. It looked like no airport I'd ever seen. In a way I was quite glad. Personal service.

  Vanessa turned out to be a pleasant lass in oily overalls. She was mending a tiny outboard engine in a shed. A scruffy leather-clad yokel was at a workbench singing to a noisy trannie. A few other blokes were around, one or two busy on other engines. A big kite was laid on the grass. Somebody nearby was using a buzz saw, judging by the big-wasp sound.

  "Wotcher," I said.

  "You Lovejoy?" Vanessa offered me some tinned beer but it always tastes flat as printers' ink. "Mel says you want to land near that big house beyond Pearlhanger. Between the sea and the sandy spit. That right?"

  I avoided her eyes. "Mmmmh."

  "We've the equipment, if you've the money."

  A pause. I usually try for credit. I've found it goes further. "What's it cost?"

  She smiled, pretty. "A Japanese helmet, miniature. My brother's an antique dealer in Norwich."

  He would be. "Fake or genuine?"

  "Either."

  "You're on." Apart from the lacquer it's the cheapest forgery you can do. Starch, shredded paper, sawdust and that's it. I settled down to wait. A few old posters were fraying on the walls. No hope that they'd be as valuable as the one John Lennon defaced in an American hotel—and which Sotheby's auctioned as lot 460 for a fortune—but . . .

  "Lovejoy?" Vanessa was calling. She was outside, by an orange sheet fixed to an outboard motor. Pause.

  "Yes?" I said. "Has it arrived?"

  The others looked up. Expectancy dwindled, transformed into puzzlement.

  "Worried about the wind, mate?" one of the blokes asked kindly. "You'll be all right. There's hardly a breath."

  They were expecting me to take off. I looked into their seven waiting faces, and Vanessa's brow suddenly cleared. "Lovejoy. You weren't really expecting an airplane? Like a Cessna?" That buzz saw sounded closer.

  I swallowed with difficulty. "Well, I assumed that flying meant using a frigging plane, love."

  "You're standing on it." She wasn't without sympathy but inwardly she was rolling about. You can tell. The kind bloke guffawed. The others shook disbelieving heads. I stepped aside. Plane?

  "Dave's landing one now, Lovejoy." Vanessa pointed down the field. "Microlight. Dave can do seventy miles an hour. Some microlights have flown higher than sixteen thousand feet."

  Dave was a distant man-shaped shadow dangling from a noisy orange kite, arriving in the distance with petrifying slowness and at frightening risk. The shadow touched earth, its little legs going like the clappers on the green grass. The engine coughed, spluttered, stopped. I found I'd sat down on the grass. These lunatics weren't aircrew at all. They flew cloth kites
, bloody morons.

  "Some people are just scared of the idea," the kindly bloke was saying.

  "Here, mate." Vanessa sacrificed a tin of warmish ale. I sipped while the field settled into place. The intrepid bird- man's figure plodded nearer. The blokes went back to work, one laughing aloud.

  "Vanessa, love," I began, eyeing the wretched thing on

  146 .

  the grass beside me. "There's just no chance of me flying a motorized hankie."

  "Why not?" She was frankly unable to see the problem. "You just face the breeze and trot forward. Simple as that."

  "Quietness," I said, delighted at my brilliant mind. "It has to be silent, you see. Haven't you got a helicopter?"

  "You get a hundred decibels of noise even inside a helicopter," she said scornfully. "And ninety-six percent of helicopter pilots get the 'leans.' And slow-low copter flight's famous for its pitch, roll, and yaw, as well as its three-axis linear acceleration in controlled hover. In twenty-nine percent of Royal Navy night hovers over water, disorientation occurred ..."

  "Great," I said to stop the flow. Dave merged with the others by the workshed. "So how do I land without attracting attention on that spit?"

  "Hang glider?" Vanessa suggested. It was no joke. I'd got a serious girl here, though as a salesman she'd starve. I listened dully because you have to humor cranks and women, and she was both. "The trouble is that up to ten percent of reported accidents are fatal. Over forty percent of major injuries are leg fractures, but do keep it all in perspective."

  I'd do that all right. "In perspective, love," I said wearily, "if I won't fly a sodding blanket with an engine, you're daft supposing I'll fly one without."

  "You're chicken, Lovejoy." She was disappointed, shook out her hair like they do. She was politely avoiding saying I'd been brave until I'd realized I wasn't going by Pan Am.

  "There are no windows on the house's top floor that side ..." I offered.

  "Look." She hesitated, played with a blade of grass to help a thought. "Lovejoy, can you swim?"

  "Yes. But. . ."

  She rose, brushed herself down and smiling held out a hand. "Come on. I'll get you there safely. Cross my heart." Warily I let her pull me up. An enthusiast's a dangerous creature.

  12

  About a million years ago, before funny money and frothy coffee, long before nuns grew legs, folk had reasonable attitudes. Think back. Words were for communication. Gasmen and plumbers turned up. Trains ran with metronomic regularity. A bloke who whined a lot was simply a whiner. Now, his whining means the world has to feel guilty for simply ignoring the miserable so-and-so. Trustworthiness has gone. What I'm on about is that while Vanessa drove us down to Salcott in a toytown motor she gave me her sales talk for Boxenford Flying Club, whose main pursuit seemed to be taking to the air without significant assistance. More odd modern behavior.

  "No, ta," I said for .the umpteenth time. I'd enough trouble on the ground without combing the stratosphere for more.

  "You're thinking of accidents," she urged. "Don't. They usually happen on landing—sixty-eight percent—or when taking off, twelve."

  Sixty-eight plus twelve equals eighty, which leaves a

  . 149

  measly twenty percent to survive in. "No, ta." Modern means lunatic.

  There's a cluster of boat sheds alongside the third ramification of the creek above the point at Pearlhanger. I'd only ever been down there once, and had a hard time remembering where I was. Even as countryside it's dead. There's only these acres of flooded gravel pits where little lads fish and a few apple farms struggle against the North Sea's whippy gales. The trees actually grow bent over, like on moors. A real drag.

  Not that it's uninhabited, not like I'm making it sound. Far from it. Hence my need for some form of concealment. Where you get coasts and countryside you'll always find oddities who actually like being there. Bird-watchers hang about, and a few artists dash off occasional masterpieces among the marshes. Speed-boaters race there. Most of the villages have annual regattas. Writers are often found swaying about the boozers arguing adverbs.

  Vanessa was smiling. "Now, Lovejoy. I want to say two things. First: I'm the east coast waterski champion." Her bad sales tactics were showing. "Second: Trust me."

  Well, yes. As long as she meant trust her with her. Trusting her with me was a different matter.

  She drew up near some boat sheds. I followed her down an overgrown path. Most women's bottoms these days are in welded briefs that slice their bums into multiple segments of an arc, four to each cheek. Vanessa's shape was natural. My spirits rose. If she had that degree of innate good sense . . .

  "Right, Vanessa," I said. "I'll trust you." For which daftness one hour later I was wobbling on waterskis in a wet suit like armor. Tenth try without a rest, and I was knackered.

  This elderly pipe-smoking man, Tom, steered a small powerboat for me as I floundered on the rope time after stunning time. Vanessa, who had divested with a champion's threatening calm, came with me into the water and kept showing me how. I felt a right prawn and kept begging for a rest.

  Tom laughed at me, said I was a sight. Happy as a lawyer at a burial. He hadn't changed, just popped on a bowler hat. I saw with amazement that it actually fitted. Which meant. . .

  "Here, Tom," I puffed, sprawling on the mud. "Where were you a gamekeeper?" William Coke invented the bowler as protective headgear for gamekeepers on his Norfolk estate. It's really hunting and shooting gear. Tom Bowler made the first of these rabbit fur "Billy Coke" (hence billy-cock) hats. They still make them the proper way in Stockport, on a potter's wheel and everything, strong enough to stand on. Laborers all wore them a century ago, the first ever worker's helmet. Personally marked ones made by Lock's of St. James' are the ones to go for.

  "Bowler gave me away, eh?" Tom was saying. "Here, in the riverside estate. A mile of banks upstream. Now the woods are a disgrace. Mr. Deamer only thinks of the river, bad cess to him. Nobody dares go on his stretch any more."

  Interesting. Vanessa caught my gaze on her. Her face looked a pure creamy oval in the black suit, a lovely cameo medallion on an Edwardian lady's elegant black silk dress. Beautiful. She avoided my gaze. I avoided hers.

  "Keep trying, Lovejoy," she said. "You'll not get near the house unseen, except on skis. Swim, and the current'll take you. Sail and they'll see you. We'll waterski you past the point. You let go. I'll be down in the boat, slip out and replace you."

  . 151

  "I realized," I said huffily. "I'm not thick." A little lad was helping with a long rope, asking Tom for instructions and calling him granddad.

  We were about two miles from where Deamer's unseen house stood. To the left, the narrowing river's course. To the right, the wide estuary and sea beyond with the distant line of white cottages at Salcott. Tinker was probably in the boozer by now, lucky lad.

  "Right, Lovejoy. Time for work."

  "Your turn," the kid said. The little psychopath actually thought I was impatient to have a go. He'd stayed to watch the show.

  "Shut your teeth," I told him.

  "Don't bother Lovejoy, Billy," Vanessa ordered. "He's scared."

  "Sorry, Mum," the kiddie said. I'm a bit slow sometimes. My mind was going. If Tom's little Billy's granddad, and Vanessa's little Billy's mother, then the old ex- gamekeeper is Vanessa's—the boat jerked me forward so I engulfed a gallon of estuary. I let go of the rope and floundered.

  "No, Lovejoy," said Billy. "Point your toes to heaven."

  it-

  Six o'clock and the skies darkening. Vanessa had done a last demonstration run. I was a wobbler, but definitely near vertical.

  "Time to go now, Lovejoy. Dad'll give you a practice run upriver first as far as the narrows," Vanessa said, still panting. "Stay hold of the bar. Lean right back, straighten up as the speed increases."

  "Toes to heaven," the titch piped.

  Disgusted, I grabbed the towbar and stood into the

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  skis. I couldn'
t look good even to this little lad. He stood on the jetty practicing the shoreman's critical gaze.

  "Tom," I bawled. "Get us out of here for gawd's sake."

  Vanessa squealed alarm and leapt into the boat. I leaned back, my heart thumping.

  "Arms outstretched, toes ..."

  I said, "I'll thump you, you little bugger." The engine growled. Burglary time.

  *

  The daylight was fading. I was bruised and my chest was bubbling river water. But I was in there, breathlessly balancing and splashing along on the end of the towbar while the boat ahead created a hell of a disturbance. The problem was the waves, which thumped unexpectedly under your feet. Nobody'd warned me about those.

  My gaze was on Vanessa, who was applauding and signaling from Tom's boat. She'd never once wavered, always smiling and picking me out of the water whenever I'd floundered, though I think she was less concerned about me than losing the skis.

  Vanessa's instructions had been simple. "Judge the speed, Lovejoy. There's that segment where you can't be seen from the house. When you're in that blind spot, let go of the towbar. Dad will see to direction. You'll keep moving and can wade ashore. Leave the rest to me."

  She ducked down out of sight. Old Tom had this arrangement of mirrors.