The Boat House

by Stephen Gallagher

  He knew that he ought to slip out quietly. Leave her, walk away. He'd already done more than most people ever would.

  But he kept turning the strange syllables of her name over and over in his mind.

  And, for the second time and without any prompting, he found himself wondering what they'd make of her in the valley.

  He couldn't even think of taking her back with him, that much was certain. Imagine the complications. Everyone would jump to the wrong conclusion, even Ted Hammond; especially Ted Hammond, who worried over Pete like a mother hen. He kept hinting at how Pete, though hormonally sound, wasn't getting any younger, while the supply of eligible women in the valley was meagre at its best. There was the passing-through traffic of summer, but Pete didn't find that he was much tempted by the seductive signals of bored rich women — or rather, bored women with rich husbands — of a certain age. The men came to play with their big boats, their wives cast an eye along the dock and saw Pete. Maybe it was the way that he had to clamber aboard and ram in the pump nozzle when they called by for fuel, started them thinking and gave them all kinds of ideas. He didn't exactly have to beat them off with a stick, but some of them were so upfront it could be embarrassing. They tended to have tight, well kept figures, expensive bleach jobs, and the skin tone of a crocodile handbag after a lifetime's forced tanning. Thanks, but no thanks.

  Somebody like Diane Jackson, though… that was a different proposition entirely. She was a Mrs, but as far as he'd been able to ascertain her husband had long ago been booted out into the street with his hat thrown after him. She'd arrived in the valley only a few months before, to work on the Liston Estate at the head of the lake. She lived in the big house, she sometimes came down to the yard on Estate business. They'd kind of eyed each other and although nothing had exactly happened yet, there was something in the air that said that it might. Something like the highlycharged sense of impending lightning.

  Or maybe he was kidding himself.

  Maybe, for all that he'd been thinking, he really wasn't anything more than a walk-on in the drama of her life. A couple of lines to say, not even a name to be remembered. Whatever the case, he could be sure of one thing; come home with a good-looking stranger in tow, and his chances with said Mrs Jackson or anybody else would nosedive within hours of the gossip mill getting to work.

  Ah, well. Then it would be back to his daydreams of Deborah Harry and a baby oil massage, and wait until some other prospect might open up in his life.

  Alina's hand was out from under the cover and turned slightly, so that the inside of her arm caught the faint electric light from the almost-closed bathroom door. The edge of her sleeve had fallen back to show a line of tiny, puckered scars down the soft part of her forearm. He frowned. There was always the possibility that she was actually an addict, and that the rest of it had been a lie; but these were white and long-healed, more likely a permanent record of an abuse that had once been inflicted upon her.

  So it probably was all true. He didn't doubt it now, and hadn't really needed this evidence to persuade him.

  "I only wish I could do something more," he whispered, mostly to himself.

  And she heard him.

  "You don't know what you're saying," she said from the darkness. She spoke softly, but she sounded as if she was fully awake. "But it doesn't matter. After tonight, you won't see me again."

  "What do you mean?"

  She raised herself onto one elbow, and the duvet slid from her shoulder. "I mean that I'd hurt you. I'm like a rusalka."

  "A what?"

  "You'd say, a heartbreaker. I have it on the best authority."

  He moved around the sofa, and crouched down before her. As once before, her face was in shadow with only the slight, bright flicker of her eyes to betray her attentiveness.

  He said, "Listen, don't worry about me. I can look after myself."

  "That makes no difference. I'm not just an ordinary runaway, it's not that kind of a situation at all. I could be the worst thing that could ever happen to you. I use people, and then I betray them. It's not a choice that I make. But it happens, again and again."

  He shook his head, half smiling. "I don't understand you," he said.

  "That's right," she said. "You don't."

  At which point, there was a sharp knock at the apartment's door.

  Alina shot upright, any hint of drowsiness gone, as tense as a hunted cat getting a scent of the pack. "It's probably nothing," Pete said, rising, but as he turned to go to the door he could sense her wary, watchful presence behind him. The fact of it was, he was a little uneasy himself. When it came down to it, he'd no right to be here other than on Mike's say-so, and that could prove to be an authority of little substance. And then when the shit that he'd handed you hit the fan, Mike was the kind of person who'd shrug and then offer to sell you a washcloth.

  A woman stood outside.

  She seemed surprised to see Pete. She was around forty, trim and well preserved, anxious-looking and in a dressing gown. She said, "I'm sorry. I saw the light and I thought… I thought Doctor Singer had come back."

  "I'm a close friend of his," Pete improvised quickly.

  "Oh." she hesitated. "I'm sorry to ask, but…"

  "Is something wrong?"

  She picked her words carefully, uncertain of being misunderstood by someone she didn't know. "Well… there's a strange character hanging around outside. I'm not sure, but he seems to be looking in all the windows."

  Pete felt himself unwind a little. A peeper? Here was something that he could handle, much better than being put on the spot as a squatter. He said, "Just give me a minute," and he stepped back inside. Alina had switched on the table lamp next to the sofa; she looked rumpled but alert, and presumably she'd heard what had been said.

  "I have to go out for a few minutes," Pete told her. "Will you be all right?"

  "Of course," she said, and she glanced at the woman in the doorway.

  "I'm sorry," the woman said. "I won't keep him long."

  Alina nodded briefly, as if to show that she didn't mind. Pete told Alina to lock the door behind him, just in case; and as they went out into the stairwell, Pete couldn't help reflecting on the woman's attitude. She'd been deferring to Alina.

  Borrowing her man.

  They went down to the next floor.

  FIVE

  Her name was Janis, and she was a nurse; a senior staff nurse, and she'd known the occupant of the upstairs apartment well. Pete decided to say nothing on the subject, or risk betraying some fundamental ignorance. Her flat was larger than the one they'd left, with two bedrooms and a decent length of lounge. It was in the semi-chaos of redecoration with the furniture all sheeted, the walls stripped down to the plaster, and the smell of drying paint in the air.

  "Sorry about the mess," Janis said. "I'm doing it all myself."

  "No worries," Pete said, stepping over books which had been stacked in the middle of the room and protected by old Sunday colour supplements spread out over the heap. "Does this happen a lot?"

  "Two or three times a year," she said. "You get a lot of single women in the flats. It's a bit of a magnet for peculiar types."

  He stood at the window. They were on the opposite side of the block now, facing across the street to where the grounds and towers of the hospital complex stood. With the curtains open and the lights behind him, Pete's silhouette would be easily visible to anyone who might be prowling around out there.

  He said, "Where did you see him?"

  "By the road. He was just… watching. Looking at all the windows. Then he disappeared for a while, then he came back."

  "I don't suppose he could have been looking for someone he knows."

  "For nearly an hour?"

  Pete looked all over the grounds immediately below. These were the same open plan gardens as around the back, dotted here and there with windblown litter. Concrete-set lights illuminated a paved walkway which led up to the street, casting deep shadows from the bushes on either si
de.

  "Well," Pete said, "he doesn't seem to be there now."

  "So now you'll think I imagined him."

  "Hey, come on. He could be circling the block, looking in some of the other windows. Don't you usually call the police?"

  "Only as a last resort. You don't like to cry wolf too often. Hospital security used to send a man over once or twice a night, just to keep all the nurses happy." And then, after a moment in which she realised what she'd just said, she started to colour up red. "I didn't mean that the way it sounds."

  "I get the idea," Pete said quickly.

  "But they don't do that any more. Money's tight, and this is a private block. It's really nothing to do with the hospital. A lot of us live here, that's all."

  Pete said, "Switch the lights off, for a minute."

  "Can you see something?"

  "I'm not sure."

  The glare of the unshaded light in the room wasn't doing much to help Pete's night vision; most of what he could see was his own reflection. The room went dark, and Janis came to join him as he scanned the bushes where he thought he'd seen a movement.

  There was an almost immediate response. One of the shadows moved, stepping out into the low-level light of the path.

  A young man, fit-looking, with short, fairish hair; pale skinned and unfashionably dressed, he was staring straight up at their window.

  "Is that him?" Pete said.

  "He's the one." Janis's voice had the kind of tome that she'd probably use to point out a particularly unappealing patch of slime.

  "Well, he's seen me."

  The prowler was still staring. There was no doubt about it, their window was the one that interested him above all the others; and far from being scared off by Pete's appearance, he'd actually moved out to become visible himself.

  Janis said, "It doesn't seem to have discouraged him much, does it?"

  "No." Pete took a step back, and drew her with him. "Have you got a big flashlight, something really bright?"

  "There's one I use with the car. But I don't want you doing anything stupid."

  "Me? No chance of it. I'm just going to ask him what he thinks he's at. It's the only way to deal with these people." Either that, he was thinking, or slug 'em with the flashlight. The bigger and heavier, the better.

  Janis was dubious. She didn't like what she'd started, but she was a single woman living alone and she'd been around enough to know that she'd be fooling herself if she didn't get nervous at something like this.

  She brought the flashlight from her kitchen. It was of a square, freestanding type with a carrying handle on the top. Pete did his best to meet her concern with confidence.

  "Don't worry," he said. "I'll bring it right back."

  Pete didn't switch on the stairwell light for his descent. He slipped out into the grounds unseen.

  Once in the cool night air, he stopped for a moment and told himself that he was going to have to slow down; otherwise, he might be heading for a nasty surprise. He didn't have to impress anybody — and even if, for understandable reasons, he felt that he did, he wasn't going to do it by taking on more than he could handle.

  He doubted that the prowler was going to be much of a problem.

  Adequate people didn't get their kicks from watching bedroom windows — or at least, that was the theory.

  He moved out into the shadows beside the path, and at first he didn't switch on the flashlight. He saw no one. So then he cautiously checked the dark spaces in the undergrowth with the beam, but again with no result. The peeper had guessed that someone was coming and had run, that was the only explanation that Pete could see.

  He was about to go back, when he heard voices from the direction of the street.

  So, moving quietly, he went to take a look.

  It was a big and anonymous-looking saloon, pulled in close to the kerbside and just far enough along to be screened from the apartments. Two men sat inside. A third stood on the pavement with the nearside door open, talking to them.

  The third man was the prowler, as seen from the second floor window.

  A sense of wrongness, hard to explain and impossible to ignore, began to take root somewhere deep inside Pete McCarthy. Since when did perverts hunt in threes? The two in the car, shown up by the interior light, seemed to be taking more interest in their trays of carry-out food than in what was being said to them. The one on the pavement, in contrast, seemed to be taking the whole thing more seriously. The man in the passenger seat — leather jacket, bearded, a face you could see and then forget — was nodding over his fried rice in a way that said Yeah, sure, you carry on and let us know when it's all over. The man on the pavement straightened, and Pete took a step back into deeper shadow.

  The young man turned. Under the yellow streetlights his face was a deathmask, a short-lived effect that faded as he walked back to the pathway. Pete, still in the bushes and now feeling like a prowler himself, held his breath as the man passed him no more than a few feet away. A dozen yards further on the man stopped, raised his head, and laseredin on the same second-floor window as before. Janis had kept her lounge in darkness, but there was enough spill from one of the inner rooms to make out her moving shadow with surprising clarity.

  Pete moved onto the concrete path in silence, out of the sight of the car again. The blatancy of this really pissed him off. His outdoor job kept him reasonably fit and even gave him a certain physical grace developed on narrow ladders and slippery decks, and he knew that he could look mean as long as he didn't smile. He didn't think there was much danger of him smiling now.

  He reached out with the flashlight, and pushed the man on the shoulder.

  "Seen anything you like?" he said.

  The man spun around, startled, but Pete was well back and out of reach. He held the flashlight ready, a weapon for if he needed it.

  "So," he went on. "What's the idea? This isn't some free show."

  They faced each other.

  The man was struggling for words. Shock made the struggle almost physical, like that of a beached fish for air. There was something strange about him, something off-key.

  And then he spoke.

  His accent was like Alina's. Only more so.

  "I need to see her," he said. "She has to talk to me."

  Suddenly Pete didn't need to ask who. How long had they been following, the three of them in the car? He felt blind, he felt stupid. He felt like a man who'd picked up an exhausted

  hare and then turned to see the dogs bearing down on him. He swallowed, hard, and wondered what the hell he was going to do now.

  "Listen," the man said, with a glance toward the road; he was holding up his hands as if to fend Pete away, or to show that he wasn't going to attack. "Those two men in the car, they're British policemen. Once I've identified her, they'll come for her. I don't want that to happen until I've at least had the chance to talk to her. Will you tell her that? Tell her you saw Pavel and he wants to talk. Please."

  The man was circling, heading back for the car and keeping safely out of range. Pete glanced up at the window again, long enough to see that Janis was there and staying well back in the room. She was a shade, a silhouette; at this distance, she could have been anybody.

  "Please," the man said again, still backing off, and with a note that was like desperation in his voice.

  A moment later, he was gone.

  Pete watched the space where he'd been; a light breeze shook the bushes, and a car horn sounded somewhere faroff. Then he turned, and briefly switched on the flashlight to signal to the block that everything was okay.

  One thing was clear to him. The prowler — Pavel, or whatever his name was — had been looking at Janis's outline and thinking that he was seeing Alina. As long as this mistake went uncorrected, they had time.

  Back indoors, Pete spent a couple of minutes in exploration before he knocked on the door of the third floor flat.

  Alina opened it.

  "You found your burglar?" she said as Pete came in a
nd made sure that the door was closed behind him; he then set the flashlight on the teak effect sideboard, and turned to face her.

  "Does the name Pavel mean anything to you?" he said.

  Her reaction was instantaneous. Astonishment. Fear.

  She said, "I don't understand."

  "He's the one, the man outside. He knows you're here."

  "But how?"

  "I don't know. Could anyone have told them where your flight would be taking you?"

  "Nikolai," she said bleakly.

  "Well, it looks as if somebody near the airport must have seen me picking you up. They'll have put out a call on the make of the car. They'll think we're around here somewhere, but they won't know exactly where. You know what that means?"

  "No," she said uncomprehendingly, and she sat heavily on the sofa. She put a hand to her forehead. "No," she repeated; but Pete was already on the move, grabbing her few possessions together.

  "We're still one ahead," he said. "They're watching the wrong window on the wrong side of the building. We can sneak out and be away before they know it.

  "Away to where?"

  He stopped by the window, and checked on the view.

  Nothing moved.

  He said, "I'm taking you home with me."

  He looked at her then, and found that her gaze was already on him; but what he saw in it was nothing like what he might have expected. It wasn't relief, it wasn't even apprehension; it was something cool and remote and yet strangely compelling, as if there could only ever have been one outcome to the night and both of them had somehow known it all along.

  Rusalka.

  Heartbreaker.

  Wasn't that how they said it?

  PART THREE

  Out of Darkness

  SIX

  Daybreak tended to steal up gently on the valley, re-inventing a fresh landscape out of the leftover mists of the night; lake breezes would then strip away the shrouds one by one to uncover the forests and the shores and the mountains behind. Three Oaks Bay was a small resort town on the lake's eastern side, busy in the season and almost dead outside of it. The Bay had a square, two pubs, a promenade walk overlooked by three medium sized Victorian hotels, and a restaurant with a terrace that stood out over the water. It rated one resident policeman and a mention in the Shell Guide. People came in the summer to walk and to sail and, if development plans succeeded and the roads could be kept clear, they'd soon be coming in the winter to ski.