She had to stay awake or Lara would get away, she had to stay awake or Lara would get away, she had to stay awake or…. She fell soundly asleep.
25
Tender Moments
Somehow it felt a little disquieting for Judith to sit there with nothing to do but wait until it was time to go and pick up Sult and Amba. An hour is a long time, especially when you are sitting next to a cat with no one else for miles to come to your aid should that cat suddenly turn hostile.
It was a silly thought, and she knew it. They had been friends for a good few years now, and though he had never come out and revealed what he really was in all that time, she had somehow always suspected the truth. The way he had treated Amba, the light that glowed in his eyes when she entered the room, even despite the contact lenses he wore constantly as a part of his disguise. And always the way she looked so unambiguously at him when they were together. Love simply oozed from their pores for each other.
As she thought about it, she told herself there were too many reasons to count why he wasn’t about to attack her. Friendship was the strongest, of course, but there was also the small detail as to how he might explain her absence to Sult.
Her line of thought bothered her. Why would she think that he might want to harm her after all these years of being friends? Not counting the small detail that Judith was actually putting herself on the line to rescue Amba, in the end it came down to the attack on Sou’nd. How had Joseph taken that? Would he too seek revenge for the atrocities that had been performed against his people by striking out against her kind? No, no, he wasn’t the type. He was a good friend, and he was more interested in his wife than in all the other members of his race. She had nothing to fear from him, she hoped.
She then noticed that he was looking at her, a gentle, almost cute smile on his lips. She turned her head to face him, and once again certain fears seemed to bubble to the surface of her mind.
‘I, er,’ he said calmly, ‘I need to go and stretch my legs for a minute or two. Will you be all right on your own, mate?’
‘You’re going out in this weather?’ she asked, surprised and maybe even a little shocked at the idea. ‘But you’ll get soaked.’
‘Perhaps,’ he replied, ‘but it’s something I have to do. I’ve been up since about two this morning and…’
‘Oh,’ she smiled, almost grinned at him, and said, ‘I see. Well, okay, off you go then. See you when you get back.’
He nodded and got out of the car, crossing the road to a small area beyond and disappearing amongst the trees.
She watched him until he was out of sight, and then she turned her attention back to the road ahead of them. They had parked not too far from the main road. In fact, if you looked hard enough you could even see little specks of the gray of that road through the foliage of the trees. It was one of the reasons they had chosen this spot in the first place. From here they had been able to see the truck when it had passed by on its way to the rendezvous at the cottages.
Joseph had naturally wanted to pursue the truck the second they had seen it pass, but Judith had had to remind him that they had promised Sult they would wait a full hour before following. That hour was beginning to drag. Surely it wouldn’t take them that long to make the exchange and get out of sight again. Perhaps it would be safe to follow the truck now, or at least when Joseph got back from his impromptu usage of nature’s facilities.
Joseph got back into the car a short time later, damp from his adventure in the rain but looking a great deal more relaxed. He eased back into the molding of the seat and turned on the car’s air fan to help dry him off.
‘Perhaps we should go,’ Judith suggested to him.
‘You think so?’ He turned his head to face her. ‘We’ve only been here thirty minutes or so since we saw the truck pass. There’s another thirty to go.’
She was hesitant to press the issue. After all, it had been she who had stopped him from leaving immediately after they had seen the truck pass. Perhaps he would have stopped himself, had he been alone, but somehow she doubted it. ‘Thirty more minutes, then,’ she muttered reluctantly.
‘Well, twenty-seven,’ he corrected, having taken a moment to check the clock on the car’s dashboard.
Judith turned her attention back to the road ahead once more and closed her eyes; she was surprised just how tired she was. She had had a sleepless night. She never could sleep when she was excited about what the following day might bring. The first night they had performed together as a newly formed group, she hadn’t even tried to sleep. She had paid for it later, though; her performance that night had been very poor. If Joseph hadn’t been willing to offer her a second chance, claiming, ‘I know you can do better; you were good in rehearsal,’ there was a very good chance she would have been out there and then. Then again, had that happened, she probably wouldn’t have been here now.
Joseph brought the engine to life with his thumbprint. And with little more than a quick check that the road was clear, he pulled out onto the main road and started following the route back to the cottages, the route the truck must have taken.
Judith looked at him, surprised, and then she glanced at her watch. They had been there for a full hour, and yet just a second ago Joseph had said there were still twenty-seven minutes to go! How was that possible?
‘Have a nice nap, mate?’ he asked as if reading her mind. As he spoke, he turned his head towards her for a moment and then turned back to the road.
‘Nap?’ she commented. ‘Did I fall asleep?’
‘Afraid so,’ he replied calmly, his eyes glued to the road as he negotiated a chicane with trees that reached across the road from both sides, forming a natural arch that blocked out the sun and made traversing it even more awkward. ‘I considered waking you earlier, but decided you probably had some catching up to do, especially if you got anything like as little sleep as I did last night.’
‘I got no sleep at all last night,’ she told him. She gave a little yawn. She had tried unsuccessfully to stifle it, but it had been quite insistent.
‘Until I picked you up,’ he told her in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You napped between me picking you up and arriving at Sult’s.’
Judith looked at his face, but with all that makeup he was wearing, she couldn’t tell from his features whether he was serious or just playing games with her. She decided to let it go and turned her attention back to the road. Besides, she was feeling very tired, so maybe she had grabbed a quick nap at the time. Now that she thought of it, she didn’t remember a lot of the journey to Sult’s apartment, but then again, he only lived a few minutes from her.
Generally the journey wasn’t too difficult. It had taken only a few seconds to reach the road that they had seen the truck travel along from where they had been parked. From there, although the road twisted and turned a fair bit and although there were trees growing on both sides of the road, some of which gave the illusion that they were lurking in ambush, the route to the cottages was nevertheless as direct as the road would allow. There were no other turnoffs; there was no chance they might get lost.
One of the reasons that Sult had suggested the cottages for a meeting place was their position to the road. They were positioned just before a bend, on the concave side of it, but coming from the direction that Joseph and Judith would be approaching from, there was a good two hundred to three hundred yards to the next bend. The idea was that the two should have plenty of time to see that the meeting was over and the truck had gone before they arrived. Except that the truck was still there.
Joseph, on seeing the truck, seemed to panic a little. He hit the brake, slowing the vehicle down to a virtual crawl.
Judith stopped him. ‘No, drive normally, and try not to look suspicious. Just drive on past them as if we’re just on our way somewhere else. We are totally uninterested in whatever is taking place over there. We can always turn round and head back a little bit later on.’
‘Thought they would be done by now, mate,’
Joseph told her a little grumpily. He sounded so disappointed that they hadn’t finished the transaction yet. He sped the vehicle up again.
It was obvious to Judith that he loved Amba so very much and that any unexpected delay verged on being unbearable for him. ‘Me too,’ she commented, turning back to face the road ahead. ‘I hope they won’t be too much longer; someone might come looking for them!’
Had it been a clear day, they might have seen what had actually happened to the rear of the truck from as far away as three hundred yards. As it was, they were less than fifty feet away from it when Judith noticed that something was definitely wrong.
‘The doors at the back of the truck look as if they’ve been forced open. One of them seems to be hanging onto the truck by a single hinge, or whatever they call them. And I think I can see…yes, there’s someone lying on the ground nearby,’ she said. Suddenly her voice carried the astonishment and worry she felt as she finished with, ‘I-I think they’re dead!’
Something had gone terribly wrong.
‘Where’s Sult? Do you see Sult anywhere? Does he have Amba with him?’ Joseph was almost shouting. He turned his head to look at the scene Judith had described. ‘Perhaps we ought to stop, find out what’s been going on!’
‘I don’t see Sult anywhere,’ Judith replied. She seemed fairly calm by comparison, though the sight of the body lying near the back of the truck had shaken her more than just a little. She was deliberately not looking towards the back of the truck where the body lay, but everything else in the area met her eyes at least once. Then she saw him. ‘There he is, standing next to the far wall of the second cottage. He’s seen us and is waving. Maybe you had better stop.’
Joseph didn’t need to be told twice, and as soon as he had passed the truck, he pulled the car off the road and onto the sandy gravel that had once served as a driveway for the two cottages.
‘What happened?’ Judith yelled to Sult almost before she had fully climbed out of the car.
Sult seemed hesitant to reply at first. It was unusual to see Sult nervous, and even though as he spoke he kept his voice calm, and though he tried to keep his face neutral, it betrayed the fact that he had seen something that had scared him. ‘I’m not really sure. I’ll try to explain what I saw, but it won’t help much!’
Wondering where Joseph was, she glanced quickly round for him. He had climbed out of the car at about the same time Judith had, and she would have expected him to be there with her and Sult no more than a few seconds after her.
Instead he was running as quickly as his legs would carry him towards the rear of the truck. He had almost reached it when she saw him. She had to concentrate on him, trying not to see the body that lay on the ground near there. Joseph simply seemed to totally ignore it. Perhaps corpses just didn’t bother him in the same way they did Judith. It was probably something to do with the way he had been brought up among the cats. Joseph disappeared into the back of the truck without even a glance in their direction. Judith could understand that he’d be worried about his wife, but it would have been nice if he’d come over to check that Sult was okay first.
She turned back to face Sult with the half smile of someone who is unsure of what they are about to suggest. ‘Maybe we should go and join him.’
Sult didn’t give Judith a chance to change her mind. Instead he walked across to where he had left the now sodden envelope filled with the counterfeit notes and then, having collected it, he began the short trek to the rear of the truck. Judith followed. She felt a little as if she was being led, despite the fact that it had been her suggestion that they should go. She tried not to think about the small detail of the dead body they were headed towards, but she couldn’t help wondering if there might be more in the truck itself.
‘So what happened?’ she said. It gave her an excuse to look at Sult rather than the corpse, and his story might help take her mind off where they were going.
Sult never broke his stride as he turned his head towards her for a moment, then looked back to where they were going and started to talk. ‘Everything was going according to plan. I was sitting over there.’ He pointed to a rock that seemed to be of an ideal sitting height, located just beyond where the truck was now parked. ‘And I waited until the truck came into sight. And I waved to the driver in much the same way as I waved to you just now.’
Judith followed where his arm was pointing to the rock. She did her best to ignore that the body was in her line of vision as she did so. She was the odd one out here. The sight of corpses upset her, whereas both Joseph and Sult were probably old hands at finding bodies of one type or another. She would just have to grin and bear it.
They had already covered nearly half the distance to the truck as he continued, ‘Well, I went up to the driver (Johnson, I think his name was) and began to talk to him about our agreement and to ask him to let Amba go. Almost immediately we could hear noises in the back of the truck. We weren’t sure what the noises were, but it sounded as if there was fighting going on; perhaps one of the prisoners had broken loose or something. Anyway, we had to open the rear doors to conduct our transaction anyway, and we would find out what was going on then. So we went to the back of the truck.’
At this moment Joseph’s head appeared at the rear of the truck and looked straight at them. He yelled at them, his voice garbled a little as if by tears. ‘What the hell has happened here? There are three dead guards, and Amba is barely breathing.’ Then, without waiting for an answer, his head disappeared back into the rear of the truck.
Sult sped up the pace at that moment. Judith had to run to catch him at the new speed. It wasn’t that much further to the back of the truck, but there was enough time for Sult to finish his story. ‘As we reached the rear doors of the truck, they were suddenly flung open, broken from the inside, and a cat carrying another over her shoulder rushed out, moving faster than I would have thought possible. She killed Johnson in one blow, and I think she would have killed me too if I hadn’t turned and ran. I’ve little doubt she could’ve caught me if she’d really wanted to, though. Seriously, I’ve never seen someone move that quickly. Just what have the cats discovered? What are they capable of? I think I’m lucky to be alive!’
‘You’re sure it was a cat?’ Judith asked as they reached the truck.
‘She looked like a cat. And other than the guards, there was no one else in the truck,’ Sult replied placidly. ‘It must’ve been a cat.’
‘You’d think she’d have rescued or at least released the others in the truck,’ Judith suggested. Her eyes had found the body of Johnson again, so much easier now that they were virtually standing over him. She would have to do something about it.
‘I don’t know,’ Sult told her. ‘She may have had a good reason for rescuing just the one she did. Perhaps that was all she wanted. Most of those in the truck were domesticated, and generally speaking, the wild cats don’t get on too well with those that are domesticated.’
Judith gritted her teeth and knelt down then where the body of the driver had fallen. Of the three of them, she felt she had the least experience with death, and yet this task seemed to be being left to her. Joseph had ignored him, and Sult didn’t seem to be willing to do anything either. ‘We need a sheet or something to cover him with.’
Sult nodded and took off his jacket. He emptied the pockets of the few small items it contained and then said, ‘Here you go, use this,’ as he handed it to her. Then, after quickly finding new homes for the items he had salvaged, he swung himself into the back of the truck, leaving the task of actually covering the body to Judith.
Judith joined the other two in the back of the truck no more than a few seconds later, her grisly task done.
Sult was over by one of the guards, checking for a pulse and looking a little upset when he failed to find one. Joseph was kneeling by the seat that Amba occupied, and there were tears in his eyes as he tried to tend to her.
Sult lifted the body of the dead guard on his shoulders and carrie
d him to the rear of the truck, where he stopped just long enough to speak to Judith. For once, his voice filled with emotion. ‘His name was Fredrick Hughes, Guardsman Hughes. He was probably my best friend, outside of the band. I talked him into helping us; it’s my fault he’s dead.’ Then without waiting for a reply, he carried the body off the truck and placed him next to where Johnson lay.
Judith had wanted to assure him that it wasn’t his fault that his friend had offered to help them out of his own free will, but she couldn’t find the right words, and she didn’t really know what pressure, if any, Sult had brought to bear on his friend to influence his decision.
She looked about her, lost. There was a third corpse she could help Sult with, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to handle him. There was just something spooky about the way the body lay there crumpled on the floor of the truck with his eyes open, staring back at her, and his head hanging at a very weird angle as if the neck no longer had enough rigidity to support it.
Sult was back on board a moment or two later and took the problem away for her, throwing the body over his shoulder as he had with the body of Hughes. Then, staggering just a little under the extra weight, he carried the last of the three guards off the truck.
Judith felt a little spooked by the experience, the way the dead guard’s eyes had seemed to be fixed on her as Sult walked past her. A shiver went down her spine. How could anyone ever get used to this sort of thing?
‘Judith,’ Joseph called, the anxiety plain in his voice, ‘can you ask Sult if he knows how to unlock these things? I don’t see anywhere to insert a key. They could be D.N.A. sensitive, in which case I have no idea how we’ll get them open. They may be keyed to someone at their intended destination and not one of the guards.’
Sult returned to the truck’s interior a minute later, and Judith relayed the problem to him almost word for word.
London Wild Page 48
