The German Numbers Woman

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Do you know how many millions this is going to cost us?’ Waistcoat said, as if at the moment it was more important to save his precious cargo than get at Howard. ‘It’s not all mine. If we lose it they’ll get me as well.’

  ‘I’d rather lose a billion than go inside again. I’ll have your guts for garters if we go up the spout. Your number will be well and truly up.’ Cleaver turned, put himself face to face. ‘It’s the luck of the draw, so shut your scabby box.’ Cork Light was coming up to’ starboard, meaning they were still less than three miles from shore. ‘Wait till we’re in the clear. The blind man won’t get away from me.’

  ‘Two boats coming up,’ Cannister called out. ‘They’re boxing us in left and right.’

  ‘When they’re closer, alter course dead north. We’ll get behind. I’ll tell you what to do after that.’

  Richard knew that all conviction had gone, especially from Cleaver, who would do more than anyone to save himself. As for the rest of us, we might just as well shut ourselves in the state room for a few last drinks. ‘Here’s to you! It was good while it lasted – happy days! We’ll celebrate again when we get out! Oh yes, don’t worry, lads, it might not be as long as you think.’ No one had yet found the heart to throw the cargo into the water. ‘Take over,’ he told Cleaver. ‘I need some air.’

  ‘You can run like a rat, but they won’t get me.’

  As he went along the deck Richard glanced at the boats bearing down, streaks of white light more powerful than any their clogging vessel could produce. All he had to do now was keep Waistcoat away from Howard. A promise was a promise, and though Laura might not thank him for it, Howard’s girlfriend doubtlessly would.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The spin of the boat pulled her out of her dream: hard to remember the point, didn’t suppose there had been one: Howard and Carla among palm trees on an esplanade, white boxy houses scattered up a hill, black clouds coming together, a fur-covered round table ringed with bottles, no one willing to drink. All very awkward, right? The landscape was painful to let go of, but it vanished utterly, and going back to search for it would take the rest of the night.

  She stood naked to throw a jersey over her chest, pulled on knickers and slacks, tied her shoelaces. Got to see the fun on shore, would coax Howard from his radio to a pew by the rail, and after the unloading they’d pack their bits and pieces, shake goodbye hands at everybody, and make for the nearest bus or train. However long and dark the road they could stop any time for a kiss and cuddle, and think what to do on their first day of freedom.

  The boat swung again, no straight run so what last minute change of plan had flooded the skipper’s brain? St Vitus’ Dance wasn’t in it. Banging her shoulder against the bunk, she rubbed at the ache. Howard must be at his perch by the stern, as if watching all past life go by. What else could a blind man do? There’d be no more of that once they were on terra firma.

  Shouts and more than the usual cursing from the bridge told that their arrangements had gone wrong. The boat was sheering away from the coast. She flashed her pocket torch at the deck, keeping the beam low. ‘So here’s my lover-boy!’

  He whispered. ‘Put it out.’

  ‘The light? How did you know?’

  Couldn’t unravel the microdot to explain the impossible. ‘I’m the Flying Dutchman, and you’re the German Numbers Woman.’

  ‘Oh yes, thank you very much, but what’s that supposed to mean?’

  The shadow drifted. ‘A fantasy. A little joke.’

  ‘You saw something. Hey, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’m in trouble, and I don’t want you in on it.’

  ‘I’m mystified. You can’t stop me, though. Where you go, I go.’

  ‘Better not. The chief’s gone berserk. He’s out to kill me. But let’s not talk. Somebody’ll hear us.’

  She knelt, fingers along his cheek before a kiss. ‘I don’t care. Only stop messing about. Your face is wet.’ She pressed the torch button, crying: ‘I don’t believe this. Who did it? Oh, I shouldn’t have gone to sleep, but how could I know?’

  ‘It’s nothing. We’re changing course again. North, by the feel of it. They won’t get away.’

  ‘You must have banged into something, but it’s not like you.’

  ‘I got into a fight with the chief. I alerted the coastguards. I’ll vouch for you when they come. He caught me sending morse.’

  Everything was in her tone, from thinking him the world’s fool, to supposing that what he had done was beyond explanation. ‘Oh, why? What the hell for?’

  ‘It was the reason I did the trip.’ Yes it was and no it wasn’t. The truth was impossible to go into, a built-in yes and no to all questions, a cloud of wasps best to avoid. ‘I really came to meet you.’

  ‘I just don’t understand.’ She held him. ‘You’ve got me flummoxed. Has everyone gone crazy? You’re not blind after all. What is this?’

  ‘I can’t say.’ A break in the barrier of darkness came from one angle and then another, a shade here and a form there, her shadow for one thing, yet silhouetting by the moment, which had to be mostly in the mind, because why now? ‘Bits of my sight are breaking in. I didn’t lie about it.’

  ‘He’s down there somewhere,’ Waistcoat said. ‘But he won’t be for long. Root him out.’

  ‘Not me.’ Scuddilaw walked away. ‘Do your dirty work yourself.’

  He couldn’t see more than anyone else on the blacked-out boat, but Howard smelled aftershave, whisky, and the rancid vegetation of a cigar, saw a flash of him as Judy moved in front.

  ‘Get out of the way, you tart. He’s mine.’

  ‘Leave him alone.’ She ran forward, but was thrown back. ‘I don’t care what he’s done.’

  ‘He’s sold us down the river, you stupid bitch.’ Braced against the rail, he was uncertain where to set his aim, a double murder not in the scale of things. ‘Fuck off out of the way, or you go with him.’

  Paralysis stopped her running, wanted to but didn’t know how. ‘If you touch him, I’ll kill you,’ was all she could say. Waistcoat wrenched her arm. She cried out at the pain and kicked back – all right to hurt such a man – to gain time. Two shots splattered the air, a brilliant pyrotechnic clearance for his purpose, but under fire Howard saw his chance, as if the old aircrew energy had taken root again – tinsel and confetti though he supposed it might be.

  He reached for her hand, pulled her forcefully along the deck. Dimly uprising steps seemed made out of knitted wool, solid enough on climbing, and at the top she said: ‘Two boats are heading this way. Do you see them?’

  ‘The lights? Yes, I can.’

  ‘Half a mile off. Less, maybe.’

  ‘So we’ll be all right.’ Lamps in the blackout were doubted for a moment, then he couldn’t deny they were real, two distinct top points of a V, a sight putting him in the spirit of what seemed to have been inexplicably given back. ‘Let’s have your torch.’

  He buttoned out morse at the starboard boat, a steady and unmistakable SOS, the artful dots and dashes wonderfully sharp. Before dowsing the light he saw the cap and white face, a handgun circling the air. Fingers screwed into the injured eye brought clarity out of the moonlight. Waistcoat, taller than he had imagined, glanced at the boats, crying in a tone of hysterical despair: ‘See what you’ve done? The fucking boats have got us.’

  Judy ran in front, but Howard elbowed her away. The Luger was steady in Richard’s hand: ‘Leave him alone, Chief.’

  ‘You can’t frighten me with your replica.’

  ‘It’s real enough. So step aside.’

  She pulled Howard into the darkness, as if the lights of the incoming boats had switched off, or never been there. The flash of the first shot wiped out interior scenes of ragged robin, clover pinkish among the green, hound’s tongue, snake’s head, deadly nightshade and blood-red poppies. Light was opening, but the flowers went. He grasped at her, all he could do. Another shot, though not for him, and the returned sight wavered as
he fell into her arms, ice of water after a long time covering, as if they were going down together, the skin of consciousness bursting under anaesthetic.

  ‘No!’ she screamed. ‘Love you!’

  Richard’s reflex had been a wasted effort. He leaned over the rail, a stab in the ribs threatening to bring up vomit. Nothing to do but watch the boats closing, lights again showing the slumped body of a fool who couldn’t be saved, his own victim in the stupid game he had played. He pointed to Waistcoat’s body. ‘Get that over the side.’

  ‘Why did you have to kill him?’ Cannister said. ‘Wasn’t one enough? I take no more orders on this boat. And put that shooter away. You can’t frighten me.’

  His will went into meltdown at Judy’s wailing. ‘He’s my boyfriend, don’t you know?’ She would yammer even more when the customs men came on board, babble till somebody (and it might well be me) smacked her in the chops to bring her right mind back. ‘He’s the one who put you wise,’ she would inform them. ‘He told me all about it. We planned it together but they shot him instead of me. Look though, he’s still breathing.’ Easy to know her thoughts, as she leaned against the rail to send a prayer over the water.

  Not needing a weapon anymore he threw his Luger overboard, the first and last time he’d fired it. Let them drag the sea if they want evidence. Putting his shoe against Waistcoat’s body he rolled it over and, taking the weight with both hands, let the bag of rubbish rest a moment, then heard its satisfying plunge into the water. The fishes would swim in loathing from it.

  Blood smeared his shirt. Should have kept the carcass on board, but it was too late to make good. Always too late to make good. It would be scummed up on some holiday beach, already rotting so that a little boy building a sandcastle runs horrified to daddy, and daddy goes pale at the creaming snot of the water hitting the sandcastle’s towers to bring them low, Waistcoat’s dull eyes at the battlements he finally failed to climb.

  Searchlights from the cutters – a crowded wheelhouse bristling with aerials – pinpointed the boat. His binoculars were a pair of the best eight-by-thirty Barr and Stroud, given by the old man before Richard set off for his first job at sea. ‘They used to make range-finders as well, Barr and Stroud did, for the Royal Navy. This pair’s been with me on all my voyages, but now I’m handing them on to you, so take good care of them.’ Tears streaked his left cheek, recalling the death of his wife who hadn’t lived to see this solemn moment with their son – otherwise as if the whole fucking merchant marine was stood to attention and looking on.

  A bow wave opened like the ill-omened wings of a giant bird, the law-enforcing vessel on its unstoppable track, the air so still he could hear the engines. No need to look at both, he turned away and settled the magnification on a Martello tower squat against the moonlight. Hardness of heart was the order of the day. Let the sky come down and the moon as well. Behind him, in Slaughterhouse Lane, Judy was raving as if to get Howard back to consciousness: ‘He isn’t dead. I know he isn’t. He can’t be.’

  Another bullet to finish the job would cost little enough in will or treasure, but the gun had been jettisoned and he wouldn’t search for Waistcoat’s. Nothing to be done or that he wanted to, musing as he walked away that Howard might have a chance if left alone, though if he died he ought to be buried with Waistcoat, a bit of old England in the same posh box. No doubt the blind fool would get a medal, if he pulled through, for giving away the biggest drug haul in history. Promotions all round, and twenty years in a high security jail for the rest of them.

  The police and customs launches had heard the shooting, and there must be someone on board who knew first aid. They would rush up the side with dogs and axes, as the boat under his feet slowed on the last pint of fuel.

  ‘I’m just the cook.’ Ted Killisick wrapped a red and white woolly scarf around his neck, as if going down to his local for a pint and a sling or two at darts. ‘They’ve got nothing on me. I was hired as a cook, that’s all I know.’

  And so the shopping and squealing would go on, while he would be too exhausted not to answer everything. The others would tell what lies came, though not for long. Stuck pigs would have nothing on them. ‘Where’s Mr Cleaver?’

  Cinnakle straightened his tie. ‘He went starkers over the side, a plastic bag with his precious sextant, and a length of rubber tube in his mouth. He must have more lives than a Siberian tomcat.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s the first time he’s made this sort of a getaway,’ Richard said. ‘But let’s say he was never on the boat, right?’

  ‘He kept the log’ – Cinnakle’s hands shook – ‘didn’t he?’

  ‘Go to the bridge then, Ted, and get shot of it. I don’t care how. One of us might as well go scot free.’

  Killisick was glad to do something he was told. ‘Yeh, I reckon he was the only real man among the lot of us.’

  Judy’s face, turned to the light as she cradled Howard, showed the tragic side of the moon. She keened like a banshee: ‘He’s losing all his blood.’

  It had painted much of the deck. ‘I can see that,’ no help to give her, nor wanted to. Howard would be a hero if he lived, and have a good woman thrown in as a bonus.

  ‘We need a helicopter to get him to a hospital,’ she said. ‘Send a mayday. You’re a wireless man. Oh, please!’

  The boats were as close as made little difference. A chopper would get lift off from the nearest base the moment they saw, because hadn’t Howard always said that the RAF looked after its own?

  He put cigarettes, clean shirt and underwear into his bag. Having shaved an hour ago, the smoothness would take him till midday tomorrow, and experience told him where he would be by then. It was good to look your best – and feel it – when questions came as from a pump-action shotgun. A final polish of his shoes got rid of Waistcoat’s blood and, setting his cap at an angle proper to the occasion, he went out to welcome the boarding party. ‘Always do everything in style,’ was another axiom from the old man.

  But what to say? Nothing to do with me. The skipper hired the boat, and took me on as one of the crew. How was I to know what the trip was all about? But such lies as the rest would tell wouldn’t wash, though it might give time to think up a better story. Nothing would come of that, either. They tangled you up in no time. No need to say anything, for as long as you had the gall to keep quiet. In any case they would tell you what they wanted to hear. Howard would be the prosecution’s witness, blind or not, and the stuff was there to find. It wasn’t brown sugar they had picked up in the Azores, though he would leave them to say that, if such was their wit, which it certainly would be, smiles at all corners of their mouths.

  No need to look hangdog. Englishmen never did – or so he had heard. He put all lights on, three boats lit up like Guy Fawkes night. They were as caught as caught could be, and the bumping and shouting would start any moment. He went to welcome them aboard: ‘What’s all this about, then?’

  Judy pushed by, making a plain enough statement: ‘We have someone wounded here on deck. Please be quick. He needs looking after. It’s serious.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  The stream was set apart from the village, though the map placed the small agglomeration of houses upon it. Even so, it wasn’t a long walk to the bridge where one could look down from the parapet at weeds on either side of the water divided by a low rock further down, furrowing thereafter on its self chosen route, a rural scene in a rarely visited part of the Wolds that he could look at forever. In its infant meandering from a spring up the hill the stream’s hypnotic power calmed whatever spinal shivers might disturb his peace, though there was little enough beyond the minor worries of domestic life.

  He’d heard it said that old habits died hard, but those discarded due to altered times only waited to be brought out again when needed. Habits were precious because they defined you, so he carried a wolf-headed walking stick to roam the lanes and fields, sometimes as slowly as during those never forgotten decades in the dark.

  He
put on his cap at the first touch of rain, drops from heaven making small craters in the water, concentric circles colourless yet visible. When Arnold was a year or so older they would follow the stream as a playful friend to where another brook came sidling in, two arms of silvery water widening until they joined the Witham and flowed through Boston to the Wash.

  Arnold would enjoy the stroll on a summer’s day, ceaselessly asking questions which Howard answered whether true or not so as to satisfy and not discourage. The miracle of his eye and heart would chase butterflies and beetles, take handbooks from his purple rucksack to identify flowers, adjust binoculars to magnify birds in flight.

  No other spot to stand on than this little humpbacked bridge and watch the stream lapping its southerly way, no traffic beyond the leisurely come and go of the village, no better place for a quiet and anonymous life. Judy had fetched him from the hospital and driven around the county saying that somewhere in it there would be a place to live. ‘For the rest of our lives, right?’ She laughed. ‘I sometimes feel I’ve kidnapped you!’

  ‘Turn left here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘At the next fork. I don’t know why. It was me who inveigled you, you know that.’

  ‘Yes, but we fell in love, didn’t we?’ She had driven from Lincoln along lanes between the bare Wolds seemingly remote, and slowed for him to check the map, by a pub and a low wooden meeting hall on a curve of the village street, crows arguing in a winter tree by the churchyard.

  He pointed. ‘That’s a house for us.’

  ‘Oh, you beat me to it.’ She stopped the car. ‘The garden gate’s open. Let’s snoop around.’

  The plain brick building had a slate roof, neat and square, about a century old, a wooden porch at the front door, tidy round about from whoever had recently left. An acceptable offer was put in the same afternoon, the For Sale sign adjusted to say so. ‘Isn’t it a bit sudden?’ he said on their way back to the hotel in Lincoln.

  ‘We like it, don’t we?’