Harold

by Catherine Cookson

  When I saw the Mohican slide to the ground with the blood spurting from his neck my heart seemed to bleed too as my mind yelled, ‘Oh, no. No!’ and one of the men cried, ‘You blasted fool!’ and the man throwing the knife down whined back, ‘He would have grassed anyway.’

  ‘Not until he talked, you bloody idiot!’ the man growled. Then turning to his companion, he said, ‘Come on! Let’s get goin’, and pronto!’

  ‘What about this ’un? She’s in on it!’ my assailant yelled.

  ‘Throw her in the back.’

  And that’s what he did, he literally picked me up as if I were a feather and threw me onto the floor of the car, where I lay stunned for a moment until I felt his feet on me, and then I let out a high piercing scream which was half smothered by the grinding brakes of the car.

  A voice above me said, ‘Shut her up!’

  The next moment a hand came on my face and grabbed my nose. I opened my mouth naturally to yell again, and something was stuffed into it, almost choking me.

  The voice above me said something again which I couldn’t make out, but I soon knew when I was roughly turned over onto my face with the ease of someone lifting a shopping basket. And when my arms were wrenched behind my back my whole being screamed out, but silently, with the agony. When my ankles, too, were tied I was lying in such a position that I felt I couldn’t bear it and prayed to lose consciousness. I didn’t; I was kept awake through fear, petrifying fear. Tommy was right, they’d all been right, the Mohican had not been what he seemed, and now he had paid for it. Oh, the poor Mohican.

  And me, what would they do to me? I had no doubt in my mind that these were dreadful men and that because I had seen their faces they would never let me go. And there was Harold. Oh Harold, Harold. Oh my dear Harold. And Tommy. Strange, but Tommy was fated not to have me. Dear God, why did these things happen to me? Why had I to get mixed up with such men, me of all people?

  I must have lost consciousness for I didn’t remember being carried from the car or arriving in this room or wherever I was for I was lying on a bed or a couch. It was soft and for a moment I didn’t feel any pain; but just for a moment, for when I tried to move I experienced the feeling through my flesh and bones that I could only put down to being crucified. The last thing I could recall was being kicked. I had wriggled on the floor of the car and the boot had come into my side.

  I was aware of the people talking. They were quite near. I kept my eyes closed. It was a woman’s voice that got through to me first. She was arguing, shouting. Or was she pleading? She was calling someone Bunty. I couldn’t imagine any of those men being called such a silly name as Bunty, but she was saying, ‘Now you won’t do anything here with her, Bunty, will you? Promise me?’

  ‘Be quiet! Be quiet!’

  ‘I’ll not be quiet. This is my place and so far I’ve been with you all along the line. But not that. And even if you did, you’ve still got to get rid of her. And what then? I tell you, Bunty, I’m havin’ no Benson affair here, not above me shop. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t live here after.’

  ‘Will you shut up, Liz!’

  ‘No, I won’t shut up, I won’t.’

  ‘I don’t want to have to make you.’

  ‘Now don’t you start with that on me, Bunty. I’m warnin’ you, I’m no green kid, you should know that.’

  ‘It could be done quietly, Liz, with the needle.’

  That was a different voice, and now the woman’s voice came again, louder now. ‘You shut up, Trucker,’ she said, ‘else you’ll find that nose spread to your ears, I’m tellin’ you. Give her the needle, you say, and then what? Little parcels goin’ out of the door? You’re a bastard. You always have been, always will be. If I had my way … ’

  A third voice entered into the conversation now, a soft voice. It said, ‘Couldn’t you get her to promise to keep her mouth shut? Put her on the stuff … keep her for a time … ’noculate her like?’

  There was dead silence. I strained my ears, thinking they had closed the door or gone. I moved my head to the side. Then the first man’s voice said quite quietly, ‘Danny, when this load goes through I’m goin’ to see to it that you go to a shrinker; he’ll open up that bloody head of yours and insert a new brain, a monkey’s will do because it’ll be better than the one you’ve got.’

  ‘You’re funny, Bunty.’ There was the high voice again; it was almost like a woman’s. ‘I was only thinkin’.’

  ‘Well, don’t!’ It was a bawl from the man now. Then the woman’s voice came in, saying, ‘And about this lot? When are you goin’ to get it out of the storeroom?’

  ‘All in good time, Liz.’

  ‘Never mind about good time. I spew every time I see a copper pass the window.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to go on spewin’ because I can’t let it go all at once; I don’t know what that bloody Indian was up to.’

  ‘He and Patsy took the last lot to Liverpool, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, they did. But why was Patsy picked up at the customs later? He’s made that trip to Ireland fifty times before. Could he have been a police nark, the Indian?’

  ‘No, Danny, no’—it was the first man talking now—‘I’ve had him watched. Anyway, he’s disposed of too many lots himself. No, he was featherin’ his nest, startin’ the game on his own, thinkin’ he was a big boy because he had a bit of education. They always come a cropper that lot. And now he won’t need his education any more.’

  ‘I’m not interested in what’s happened to the Indian’—it was the woman again—‘I’m only wantin’ to know what you’re goin’ to do about her. But whatever it is you’re not doin’ it here.’

  ‘Why don’t you give her the needle and walk her over the cliff?’

  ‘Just like that: give her the needle and walk her over the cliff.’ It was the voice of the big man now, the one that had held me, the one with the flat nose.

  Again there was a silence, longer this time; then the man I had come to think of as the ringleader, the one who was associated with the girl called Liz and whom she called Bunty, said, ‘I take it back, Danny, about havin’ your head seen to. Why don’t we give her the needle and walk her over the cliff? Now, now, now, that’s a very … good … idea.’

  The last words brought Harold vividly to mind for they were mimicking Max Bygraves, and again my mind leapt away from my present situation and cried, Oh, Harold. Harold. Then, Tommy, Tommy. And I felt I was choking and I wanted to be sick.

  I was brought back to the voices again by the man Trucker saying, ‘Beachy Head, Eastbourne.’

  Then the thin voice, ‘No, not Beachy Head; that bloody sloping green gives me the jitters. Hastings, that’s it. You can take the car a good way along towards the cliff top there, up Fairlight way you know. Then what would be wrong to see a young girl … well, if you don’t look at her face, her build gives you that idea, walking along with her mother and father, say.’

  ‘No, you don’t! You bloody well don’t get me on anything like that. Oh, no! Have another think, Bunty. Mother and father indeed! If you’re doin’ that kind of dirty work you’re doin’ it without me.’

  The man’s voice held no offence as he said, ‘Well, she could be walkin’ along with two friends, her father and her brother, me or Trucker or Danny there.’

  ‘Not me, Bunty, I’ll be sittin’ in the car waitin’. You know.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, Danny, you’ve got a weak stomach. Something will have to be done about it, and soon.’

  ‘Well, that’s settled then. She has the needle and she thinks she’s out for a trip to the seaside.’

  The woman’s voice came to me again, asking now, ‘What has she to do with this business anyway?’

  ‘Quite a bit I should say,’ came the reply, ‘on the sideline with the Indian. She lives in a posh house, and he’s been there visitin’. We got the tip off the Tiger who used to go round with him. He said the Indian’s girlfriend’s ma worked for the dame. She was supposed to be a writer,
but it was a cover-up. She’s a bit of a hard case by all accounts: tried to do her first man in with a bottle or two on his head, but she got off; then he tries to murder her, supposedly, and he was doing twelve years for it when not long ago he hanged himself in stir; at least, that’s what they said. And on top of that, about the same time I reckon, she had two blokes fightin’ over her; she’s adopted a boy and the kid’s old man went for her boyfriend. Oh, I don’t think we need cry over her demise. Anyway, that’s settled, so come on there, Liz, I need a drink.’

  ‘You can get it yourself. I’ve got a shop to see to and Jessie’s got as much brain as Danny there when she’s left to herself. By the way, you’re sure nobody saw you comin’ in the back way?’

  ‘Does anybody ever see us comin’ in the back way?’

  ‘Yes, they do. I had to explain to old Nosey Wheatley across the lane last week when the car blocked her doorway that you were a rep, and that you’d got a ticket for parkin’ too long in the front.’

  ‘Well, she would see nothin’ today. We used some black polythene to carry the lady inside. If Ma Wheatley remarks on it, it’s a dressmaker’s dummy.’

  I was going to be sick; I was choking; I heaved and with the reaction my knees came up, and I opened my eyes. The next minute I was hoicked into a sitting position which racked my bones and brought from me a shuddering muffled groan.

  I did not at first take in my surroundings, only the face hanging above mine. It was thin, as was the hair above it, and its owner said, ‘We’re awake then, are we?’ and he straightened up as the woman spoke again, saying, ‘If you want her to do any walkin’ you’d better untie her else you’ll really have to carry her like the dressmaker’s dummy.’

  The man moved back from me now, saying, ‘Take her coat off, Trucker.’

  I looked toward the man with the flat nose. He too was stepping back, saying, ‘Not me; that short arm of hers gives me the creeps. Had a job to pull them together. There’s things I don’t mind ’andlin’, but not that.’

  ‘God Almighty! Did you ever hear anything like it, coming from that mouth? I’ll have two Dannys on my hands shortly.’

  The man called Danny, the youngest of the three I now noted, said brightly, ‘I’ll do it. I don’t mind strippin’.’

  ‘There’s no strippin’, just untie her and get her coat off.’

  ‘What about the gag?’

  ‘Leave that; we don’t want her screamin’.’ It was the woman’s voice now.

  ‘What if she takes it out?’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be some minutes before she can use her arms. By that time she won’t want to.’

  He was quite right about the time it would take me to use my arms. I screamed aloud inside when the rope was taken off my wrists and I tried to bring my limbs forward.

  The man with the thin face came towards me. He wrenched my good arm forward, pushed up the sleeve of my blouse, and when I saw what he was going to do I suddenly became convulsed and managed to half rise from the couch before he knocked me back.

  When the needle was rammed into my flesh I remembered thinking, Oh, dear God, let me die now. And when a voice said, ‘Hold her still, you fool!’ the man called Danny sat with a plop on my lap, winding me for a moment, and when my head hit the back of the wooden rim of the couch I went limp and dizzy. Then, as if I was going into sleep with my eyes open, everything inside me settled into a quiet acceptance, and when the gag was taken from my mouth I can remember saying, ‘Water.’

  The figures had moved away from me. I was looking down a room which was part sitting room and part kitchen-cum-diner. There was a trelliswork some way along the room with a plant entwined in it. I saw the back of the woman and I heard a tap being turned on; then I saw her hand a glass to one of the men, but she herself didn’t turn round. From the back she looked smart: she was wearing a blue summer dress, and her hair was a light blonde and dressed high on top of her head. I heard her say, ‘I’m goin’ down now; keep it quiet.’ Then she disappeared from my view.

  When I saw the glass of water being held before my face I went to lift my hand to take it, but, as in a slow-motion picture, it didn’t reach it. The man put the glass to my lips and I gulped on the water and choked, and gulped again and choked; and it dribbled down my chin and onto my neck, but I did nothing about it.

  I sat on that couch a long, long time and it was an equally long, long time before I could make myself utter the word, ‘Lava … tory.’

  When the flat-nosed man pointed to a door, a voice barked him down, saying, ‘Bloody fool! There’s a window in there.’

  ‘Well, what can she do now?’

  ‘You never know.’

  I watched the man now walk over to a phone attached to the wall and speak into it, and after a few minutes the woman entered the room. She came straight towards me. Her eyes were downcast, almost completely hidden by her false eyelashes; she was heavily made-up and I could see that she wasn’t young … well, she was older than me, around forty I would have said. She took hold of my hand and when I was on my feet I swayed and would have fallen had she not steadied me.

  Whilst walking to the far door I seemed to be picking my feet quite high from the floor; and yes, there was the window. I recall that all the time I was in the bathroom the woman leant her back against the door while continuing to look at me, and every now and again she would move her head from side to side. I can’t remember her leading me out nor what happened afterwards, except that someone gave me a cup of tea and offered me a biscuit from a plate, and that as I looked at the plate I thought of Harold, not with any regret but just with a sadness because I knew I would never see him again. Yet, all the while there was a great unrest in me: I was dimly aware that some part of me was fighting to get out, it was wanting to scream, but I knew that I couldn’t supply the energy.

  One after another the men went out, but the one that seemed to penetrate my lethargy and reach that tearing part of me in which there was fear, was the man called Danny, the young one. Once he sat close beside me on the couch and the fear almost got control when he started to fondle me, until a voice seemed to come from nowhere, yelling at him, ‘Out of that, you!’ And I was surprised it was the woman’s voice because it was so loud and angry-sounding. She went on talking rapidly at the man who was now saying, ‘Oh, Liz. Oh, Liz, it was only a bit of fun.’ And then she said, ‘If it’s the last thing I do I’ll see that Bunty kicks your arse out of here. It’s in the loony-bin you should be, you perverted little bastard.’

  Yet all the while she was upbraiding him he kept smiling at her. I recall she did not leave the room until her boyfriend came back, and then she spat words at him, too, and he seemed to be trying to placate her. But when she had gone he said nothing by way of a reprimand to the man Danny.

  As time went on the lethargic feeling seemed to weaken and that part of me that was screaming got stronger. Once, it forced me to my feet and I was stumbling towards a window when there was a shout and I was hurled bodily back to the couch.

  ‘That wasn’t stiff enough, boss.’

  ‘We want her to walk, don’t we?’

  Although I struggled with them I knew I had as much chance as a fly had against a swatter. The needle stabbed me again and once more my inward yelling gradually receded.

  It seemed that I’d sat on that couch for a lifetime watching the comings and goings before the woman helped me into my coat. When she had buttoned it I saw her bow her head and mutter, ‘Christ Almighty!’ And then she turned on the men, her voice a hiss now and hardly audible: ‘This is the last,’ she said; ‘I’m finished, through. And as for you two, don’t put your faces in here again or else you’ll find yourselves takin’ a long jump, and it’ll be quicker than any you dish out for I’ll shoot you both, I’ll promise you that. And you, big boss, can have the job of disposing of the bodies. You’re good at that. Now get her out of here before I do something I’ll be sorry for an’ so will you.’

  When they drew me down the room I w
alked slowly but steadily with them; then on down the stairs, and as we reached the bottom it was the flat-nosed man who said, ‘She’s another one that’ll have to be seen to if you ask me anything.’

  ‘You shut your trap. You lay a hand on her and by God! I’ll finish you off meself. An’ that goes for you too.’ He turned to the younger man. ‘Now I’m warnin’ you. I’m also warnin’ you she meant what she said, so it’s up to me to save your skins and get somebody else to come back and do the loading.’

  They now sat me in the back seat of the car, my body crushed tightly between them; and then the car was backed out of the yard and we were away.

  It seemed a long time before we reached the country, at least before I glimpsed green fields and hedges.

  When the flat-nosed man, for the second time, took a drink from a bottle the man Bunty said, ‘Cold feet, Trucker?’ and Trucker, looking across at me laughed and said, ‘You know me, Bunty. I always wear woollen socks.’

  The shaking of his body penetrated mine and seemed to force a crack within my mind that held the fear, and when I wriggled the Trucker man said, ‘She’s laughin’ at it,’ and the other answered, ‘I wouldn’t reckon on it.’ Then he leant towards the driver asking now, ‘Will we get there before it wears off, Danny?’

  ‘Yes, plenty of time, and it’ll be on dark,’ the young man answered.

  ‘It’ll be a good two hours before it’s dark.’

  ‘But we’re not halfway there yet, are we? And anyway’—the young man laughed now—‘we can sit and look at the view. That’s what people do in their cars along the seafront there, they sit and look at the view, ’cept when they go to sleep.’ His head came back and he laughed again, and his boss said harshly, ‘We’re not bloody well goin’ into Hastings.’