Blackwater

by Conn Iggulden

  Blackwater

  Conn Iggulden

  To Matthew Arpino,

  who swam the Welsh lake

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  About the Author

  By The Same Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  I STOOD IN THE water and thought about drowning. It’s strange how the sea is always calmer at night. I’ve walked along Brighton beach a hundred times on cold days and the waves are always there, sliding over and over each other. In the dark the water is smooth and black, with just a hiss of noise as it vanishes into the pebbles. You can’t hear it in the day, over gulls and cars and screaming children, but at night the sea whispers, calling you in.

  The swell pulled at the cloth of my best black suit, reaching upwards in the gentle rise and fall of unseen currents. It felt intimate somehow, as if I was being tugged down and made heavier. Even the icy Brighton wind had grown easy on my skin, or perhaps I’d just gone numb. If I had, it was a welcome numbness. I’d spent too much time thinking and now there was just the final choice of walking into a deeper dark.

  I heard the crunch of footsteps on the shingle, but I didn’t turn my head. In dark clothes, I knew I would be almost invisible to the dog walkers or late night revellers, or whoever else had braved the cold. I’d seen a few pale figures in the distance by the pier and heard high voices calling to each other. They didn’t touch me. There was something wonderful about standing in the sea, fully clothed. I’d left the land behind me, with all its noise and light and discarded chips in lumps of wet paper. I tasted bitterness in my mouth, but I was free of fear and guilt, free of all of it. When I heard his voice, I thought it was a memory.

  ‘Now how bad can it be, to have you standing out there on a night like this?’ he said. My older brother’s voice. I could not help the spasm of nervousness that broke through my numb thoughts. I had been there for hours. I was ready to walk into the deep water until my clothes grew heavy and I could empty my lungs in a sudden rush of bright bubbles. I was ready, and his voice pulled me back, just as securely as if he had cast a line that snagged on my jacket.

  ‘If you go in now, you’ll drown us both,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to follow you, you know that.’

  ‘And maybe just one will come out,’ I replied, my voice rough. I heard him laugh and I couldn’t turn to face him. I’d feared him all my life, and if I turned I knew I’d have to look him in the eyes. I heard him chuckle softly.

  ‘Maybe, Davey boy. Maybe it would be you.’

  I thought of a boy we’d both known, a lad with a cruel streak a mile wide. His name had been Robert Penrith, though even his mother called him Bobby. I can see her face at his funeral, so white she looked as if she was made of paste. I’d stood at the side of a damp hole in the ground watching the box being lowered in and I remember wondering if she’d ever known how her son had terrorized us.

  He liked humiliation more than pain, did Bobby. His favourite was the simple thing of forcing you down to the ground with your legs right over your head, so pressed that you could barely take a breath. When he did it to me, I remember his face reddening with mine, until I could feel my pulse thumping in my ears. Even as young as I was, I knew there was something wrong with the way he grew so hot and excited. As a man, the thought of being so helpless makes me want to scratch myself.

  I think my brother killed him. I’d never had the nerve to ask outright, but our eyes had met as the coffin dropped down into the hole between us. I hadn’t known how to look away, but before I could he’d winked at me and I’d remembered all the secret cruelties of his life.

  Bobby Penrith had drowned in a lake so far north of Brighton it was like another world. My brother had dared him across on a day when the water was so cold it turned the skin blue. My brother had made it to the other side, to where we waited in a shivering group. He climbed out as if he was made of rubber, flopping and staggering before leaning on a rock and vomiting steaming yellow liquid onto his bare feet.

  I think I knew before anyone else, though I stared past him with the others, waiting for a glimpse of Bobby’s red scalp coming doggedly in. It took divers to bring him back in the end, beaching his body three hours later, with the lake busier than the tourist season. The police had interviewed us all, and my brother had been in tears. The divers had cursed with all the anger of men who fished for dead children on bitter days. We felt their scorn like blows as we shivered in rough red blankets.

  I’d listened while my brother told them nothing worth hearing. He hadn’t seen it happen, he said. The first he knew of the tragedy was when he reached the far bank alone. I might have believed him if he hadn’t seen Bobby hurting me only the day before.

  You never really know when a story starts, do you? Bobby had decided I deserved a special punishment, for breaking some rule of his. I’d been crying when my brother came by and Bobby let go. Neither of us was sure what he might do, but there was a hard tightness to my brother that even lads like Bobby found frightening. Just a glance at his dark eyes and a face that looked a little white over the bones and Bobby had dropped me straight away.

  The two of them had looked at each other and my brother had smiled. A day later and Bobby Penrith was cold and blue on the side of Derwentwater. I didn’t dare ask the question and it had settled inside me like a cold lump. I felt guilty even for the freedom it brought me. I could walk past Bobby’s house without the usual terror that he would see me and fall into step at my side. The boy had an evil streak in him, but he was not a match for my brother and only a fool would have tried to swim on a November day. Only a boy who had been frightened by an even bigger fish than he was.

  In the utter darkness of the Brighton shingle, I began to shiver with the cold. Of course he noticed, and I heard a note of amusement in his voice as he went on.

  ‘They say suicides don’t feel pain. Did you ever hear that, Davey? They cut and cut away at themselves, but they’re so wrapped up in their own heads that the cowardly little shits barely feel a sting. Can you believe that? It is a strange world.’

  I hadn’t felt the cold before. I thought it was numbness, but now it seemed to hit me all at once, as if the wind was tearing right through the skin. My hidden feet were aching with a cold that gnawed up the bones of my legs. I crossed my arms over my chest and I felt it all coming back to me. I would have given anything for numbness then. The alternative was terror and shame.

  ‘Are you going to tell me why my brave little brother would be out standing in the sea on a cold night?’ he went on. ‘The wind is freezing the arse off me, I can only imagine what it must be like for you. Davey? I’d have brought a coat if I’d known.’

  I felt tears on my cheeks and I wondered why they weren’t turning to ice with the cold that pierced me.

  ‘There are things I can’t bear any more,’ I said, after a time. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted that fine and simple mood I’d been in when he arrived, when I was calm. My bladder had filled without me noticing, and now it made itself felt. Every part of me that had been ruled by my misery now seemed to have woken and be screaming for attention, for warmth. How long had I been standing there?

  ‘I have an enemy,’ I said softly. There was silence behind me and I didn’t know if he had heard me or not.

  ‘How deep are you in?’ he said, and for an insane moment I thought he meant the water.

  ‘I can’t handle it,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I can’t… I can’t stop i
t.’ More tears came and at last I turned to face the man my brother had become. His face was still stretched over his bones and his hair was a dark bristle over pale skin. There were women who thought him handsome to the point of compulsion, though he never stayed long with one. It seemed to me that his cruelty was there for the world to see in that hard face and watchful eyes. I was the only one who thought this. The rest of the world saw what he wanted them to see. He had brought a coat, I noticed, despite his words. His hands were dug into the pockets.

  ‘Let me help,’ he said. The moon gave enough light to see the rising shingle behind him. A million tons of loose stone at his back should have made him insignificant, should have reduced him. Yet he was solidly there, as if he’d been planted. No doubts for the man my brother had become. No conscience, no guilt. I’d always known he was lacking that extra little voice that torments the rest of us. I’d always been afraid of it, but when he offered, I felt nothing but relief.

  ‘What can you do?’ I said.

  ‘I can kill him, Davey. Like I did before.’

  I could not speak for a long, slow breath. I hadn’t wanted to know. My mind filled with images of Bobby Penrith flagging as he swam in freezing water. My brother was a fine swimmer and it would not have taken much to hold him under, to exhaust him. Just a flurry of splashing and then the smooth strokes towards the shore, arriving as if exhausted. Perhaps he had been. Perhaps Bobby had struggled and fought back with all the strength of desperation.

  I looked into my brother’s eyes and saw all of the years between us.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DENIS TANTER WAS NOT the sort of man to frighten you on first meeting. In fact, when I was placed at his table during a New Year’s Eve party I hardly noticed him at first. He was short and compact, like a featherweight boxer. He’d been one in his twenties, I discovered later, and he still had the posture and freckled skin that flushed easily. He had a good grip, and red hair, which was just about all I took in before I was pulling crackers and trying to remember how I’d ended up sitting with strangers on a night meant for family. I didn’t see him as a threat and he really wasn’t at that point, not to me. I’ve met a lot of men like him over the years and they usually dismiss me after the first brief clasp of hands. I’m not one of the breed, or something. They rank me as harmless and move on. I could leave more of an impression if I tried, but I just can’t make myself care about the little rituals of life, especially between men.

  Maybe that has hurt me. My wife Carol was doing her usual social duty with the other wives, sounding each other out on income, children and education. I’ve seen attractive women who can raise female hackles up to fifty yards, but Carol slips under the radar, somehow. She always dresses with a bit of class and she’s one of those who seem to be able to match earrings with a bracelet so there’s always a polished feel to her. God save us from beautiful women. They have too many advantages.

  Once or twice I’ve caught the end of one of her private smiles, a glance or wink, or some more subtle signal that says ‘at least we understand’ to a complete stranger. It works to disarm women, but it also works on men. I usually see it coming, from the casual touching and standing a little too close to seeing them drive past me as I walk home. There’s nothing quite so depressing as peering into a car as it goes by in the rain. There used to be arguments. Once, when I still cared enough, I struggled with a man on wet grass until he scrambled away, leaving me with a broken nose. It’s amazing how sticky blood is when it’s on your hands.

  I wouldn’t have chosen the marriage for myself, not like that. We used to scream at each other, and twice she locked me out of the house. Maybe I should have left, but I didn’t. Some people just don’t, and I can’t give you a better reason than that. I loved her then. I love her now. I know she’s scared of a thousand things – of growing old, of having children. I tell myself she takes these men into our bed when she can’t bear herself any longer and that sort of lie helps more than you might think. These days I just don’t ask her about the nights she spends away. I don’t let her come to bed until she’s washed the scent off her, and somehow we get by, year after year. I love her and I hate her, and if you don’t know how that works I really envy you.

  When I was twenty-two I went with Carol to a club in Camden. I’ve known her forever, you know. My brother was with us and he had a pretty thing named Rachel on his arm, a girl who danced every Saturday at the club. She wasn’t paid for it, but they had a raised stage there and no one objected to the sight of her moving as well as she did.

  That club was almost completely dark and heavy with heat and music. Whenever you thought you could catch a breath, a dry ice machine would kick in and the dance floor would fill with choking whiteness. We got ourselves drunk on large bottles of Newcastle brown ale, and when the right tune came on we climbed onto that raised section to join her. It was larger than I realized and there were people against the wall behind us as we stamped and cheered. It was hotter than you’d believe and I had my shirt off, but I was slim enough and young enough not to give a damn what anybody thought.

  Some of that evening goes and comes in flashes, but I do remember my brother’s girlfriend whipping her hair round and round next to me, so that it struck my chest and shoulders hard enough to sting. I loved it.

  A man came out of the shadows by the back wall and asked Carol to dance. He was short and slim and swayed slightly as he stood there. I could see he was drunk and I didn’t think he was a threat, just as I missed Denis Tanter on that first night. Maybe that’s my problem. I just don’t see these people coming.

  Carol shook her head in that sweetly apologetic way she has and pointed to her loving husband, spoken for, sorry, you know how it is. He stared where she pointed before shrugging and turning away. That should have been it.

  I didn’t realize anything was happening until I was struck on the back of the head. Have you ever been knocked with very little force and had it hurt like you were on fire? There are pressure points all over your body, like little traitors to your self-esteem. The way that drunk hit me was the exact opposite. I felt it had been really hard, but somehow it didn’t hurt at all. I looked around in confusion, thinking I had been bumped by someone passing by. The little bastard was standing directly behind me, his eyes shining in the strobe lights. It was Carol who shouted over the noise of the music that he’d tried to butt his head into mine.

  He was completely blank with drink, and as he grinned at me I suddenly couldn’t bear it. I shoved him in the chest with both hands and he fell flat at the feet of a dozen strangers. I remember thinking that if he got up I’d have to jump down from the stage and lose myself in the crowd. I don’t fight people in clubs. I refuse to be ashamed of the fact that I don’t enjoy the rush of panic adrenalin the way others seem to.

  My heart was beating so fast that I felt lightheaded and ill. Acid came into my mouth and I swallowed hard, wincing. Carol came to stand at my shoulder and the pair of us looked down at him. He still looked harmless as he lay sprawled and his grin never faltered. Even then, even though he’d gone for me already, I didn’t think he was dangerous.

  My brother had managed to miss all the excitement with a trip to the bar. By the time he returned, Carol and I had moved quietly to one side of the little stage, with a solid wall to our backs. I’ve said I didn’t think he was a threat, that little man, but I didn’t want to dance with my back to him, either. My brother didn’t know anything about it, of course. He passed out the drinks and carried on dancing and whooping with the crowd. God, we were young then. He’d taken off his shirt as well, even prouder of his wiry frame than I was of mine.

  I saw my attacker coming out of the darkness. My brother was dancing where I had been dancing and he was dressed almost exactly the same. The man smashed a bottle over the base of his skull and the two of them hurtled off the stage to the dance floor, parting the crowd as they fell.

  I froze for a moment, and I’m not p
roud of that. It felt like the music had stopped, but of course it hadn’t. Carol screamed and then I moved, jumping down and grabbing hold of two slippery bodies, locked together. My brother had been taken completely by surprise, but as I heaved at them he was grunting and fighting like a madman. I could see the whites of their eyes and bared teeth. The pair of them were straining at each other’s flesh with desperate strength. I couldn’t break my brother’s grip. My hands slipped on the skin, and to my horror I realized there was a hell of a lot of blood coming from somewhere. There was broken glass everywhere and beer and blood on my hands. I reached down again, and at that moment the dry ice machine kicked in. Thick fog filled the dance floor and we all went blind.

  I strained to take a breath, terrified that I was going to be punched or cut while I couldn’t see. I still had a hold of slippery skin, and somewhere below me they continued to gouge at each other in a frenzy, causing as much pain and damage as possible.

  I heard the bouncers coming at last and there were pointing hands and shouting people everywhere. I felt strong arms pull me away. God knows where Carol had gone to at that point. I didn’t blame her for getting clear of it. I blamed the evil little drunk that the bouncers threw out of a back entrance.

  My brother was lifted to his feet looking like a wild man. He was dazed and covered in trails of blood right down his bare chest. The bouncers took him to their own bathroom somewhere in the back of the club, and I went with him to wash the muck off my hands. It really is amazing how blood can gum up your fingers. Even a small amount can go further than you think.

  We were alone in that echoing bathroom and I felt like an actor behind the stage. The music had continued right through what happened and we could still hear the thumping rhythms, though they were far away. All right, I hadn’t been involved, but I’d been afraid and I was bloody. I felt like I’d survived a battle. Away from the crowds and the danger my spirits rose quickly enough, even when I saw the gash in his neck from the bottle. It seeped sluggishly, producing a dark, heavy trail that would not be staunched.