The Boat House

by Stephen Gallagher

  His first move would be to find the airport's long stay car park and to switch the plates on his vehicle for those on one of the more recent arrivals. That would give him a week's grace at least, and then he'd do the same thing again in some other place to stay untraceable. He wasn't familiar with the model but he was sure that the car itself would be pretty unremarkable; police vehicles always were.

  He reversed out of the parking space, and braked too hard. He was used to heavier controls than this, but an hour's practice would make all the difference. When he'd switched the plates he'd have to give some thought to ways of raising a little cash to live on. He wouldn't need much — he could sleep in the car — but he'd still have to eat and buy fuel. There was no knowing how long this was going to take.

  He drove out through the unattended gateway, and joined the morning traffic on the airport perimeter road. He switched on the radio. It was some music he'd never heard before, but he turned it up loud anyway and took a deep breath and settled back into his seat.

  She could be anywhere now. Alone, in company, under another name.

  But he'd find her.

  He was certain of it.

  EIGHT

  Down at the one-time pavilion that was now the Venetz sisters's lakeside restaurant, Angelica Venetz had decided that it was time for the big old mallard's appointment in duck heaven.

  She'd watched him at his breakfast out by the terrace, and he could barely feed himself. She'd wondered briefly about trying to pass the job along to Adele, but knew right away that it wouldn't work out; she was supposed to be the unsentimental one, after all, the hard business head and the scourge of the tradesmen. The two sisters were both in their fifties, both ex-nurses, neither ever married; they'd taken on the restaurant as a late life decision when their father had died and left them a shared inheritance. They'd hesitated for almost a year before they'd made the move, finally spurred along by the fact that they'd grown sick of talking about it. The first two years had been the hardest — there was hardly a piece of equipment in the kitchen that didn't have a hospital property stamp on it somewhere — but things had grown steadily better since.

  You'll be doing him a favour, she'd thought, and so as he wandered past the kitchen on a mid-afternoon stroll she crept up behind him and grabbed him by the neck.

  His name was Donald. He squawked and he struggled, but she was stronger. The road accident that had left him lame had also worn him down. He fought and he flapped and made little gurgling noises, but Angelica hung on.

  And realised that she wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do next.

  She was hurting Donald, but he wasn't actually dying… there was some knack to this, and she didn't have it. So much for mercy killing. Her grip began to slacken and he kicked a little harder, perhaps sensing a reprieve, and he managed to turn his head around so that he could look at her. Why? his small beady eyes seemed to be saying, What did I do?

  "You're holding it wrong," a younger woman's voice said.

  Angelica looked up, feeling faintly ridiculous. She hadn't planned for a witness, but it seemed that she had one; the woman was over on the iron steps, watching her across the restaurant deck. Donald flapped and fought and struggled, damaged but not done for, and Angelica — not unaware of the absurdity of trying to maintain some kind of formality under such circumstances — said, "Can I help you?"

  "Perhaps I can help you," the young woman said, and she stepped forward onto the terrace planking. "You're holding it wrong."

  "Have you done this kind of thing before?"

  The woman gave a brief smile to show that it was no big deal.

  "I was raised on a farm," she said, and she took the duck from Angelica and efficiently flipped it upside down and twisted its neck. The bird's flapping became as frantic as a wind-up toy's for a few seconds, but this quickly petered out and its body became limp.

  She held it out to Angelica, and said, "For the kitchen?"

  "For the dustbin," Angelica corrected. The lake birds appeared to be healthy enough, but they were always scrounging food from the tourists and picking over the debris that washed up on the lakeshore. A menu featuring Canard aux Parasites wouldn't be much of a crowd-puller for the coming season. The woman handed her what was left of Donald, and Angelica said, "People feed them and they wander into the road… it's not surprising they get hurt. I know it has to be done, but it seems I'm no good at it. Would you care for a coffee?"

  "I brought no money with me," the woman said.

  "Restaurant's closed anyway. This is on the house."

  The woman shrugged, smiled, inclined her head — a gesture of polite acceptance in the continental manner, none of the foot-shuffling embarrassment of the local stock at all. Angelica loved the valley people — some of them, anyway — but at times she could find them… well, basic more or less summarised the idea. Had it not been for seasonal visitors, the list of locally popular dishes would have been depressingly brief; burned steaks, fried fish, and barbecued chicken. Preferred background music; anything classical that could be recognised from TV. Major fashion influence; the Kays catalogue.

  This woman was clearly different.

  Compared to some, she was almost a china doll. She seemed dressed for colder weather, in several layers of woollens and a heavy shawl; dull colours, nothing gaudy, and her hair was pulled back and had been pinned in a clasp. She followed as Angelica led the way toward the kitchen, careful not to hold the dead duck too close. The main part of the building faced the lake, and the half-glassed partition of the western wall could be rolled back in decent weather to allow a dozen or more tables to be set in the open air, right out over the water.

  As they were stepping inside, the visitor said, "This is a lovely place."

  Angelica, trying to place her accent but not managing it, said, "You should see it when the season gets going, it's madness. Let me take a guess. You're not on holiday."

  "No. I live here."

  "Since when? I'd better warn you, they've a bush telegraph around here that works faster than the speed of light."

  "I haven't been here for very long. I only just arrived."

  "That would explain it," Angelica said, pushing open the service door that led through into the kitchen. "So, what do you think of the valley?"

  The visitor smiled.

  "I plan to stay," she said.

  They were hit by the scents of baking and spices, the results of the afternoon's work put in by Adele Venetz. Adele, the younger of the two sisters although some privately reckoned that she looked a little drawn-in and slightly older than Angelica, was wiping down the flour from the big kitchen table as they came through the door.

  She fixed a baleful eye on Angelica, and said, "If ever they bring back hanging, I wouldn't advise you to apply for the job."

  "You were watching?"

  "I was listening. Couldn't help it, the racket you were making. Thank God you got some expert help or we'd have been hearing duck screams in our nightmares forever."

  "Just get a move on," Angelica said, "so we can use the table. And say hello to one of our neighbours." She pulled out the kitchen trash hopper, a laundry basket kind of affair on squeaky castors, and set Donald on his journey to duck heaven by dropping him into the grey plastic liner. "I'm Angelica, this is my sister Adele. All this is our place."

  "Ours, and the bank's," Adele put in.

  "My name's Alina Peterson," the young woman said.

  Angelica switched on the Cona machine and Adele brought an extra chair. They sat around one end of the work table, which now seemed vast and empty, and Alina Peterson explained how she'd walked down to the village to look around and, where it seemed appropriate, to introduce herself. Angelica said that such a gesture would certainly catch the local people off-guard; a new policeman had been appointed to the area about two years before, and everybody still referred to him as 'that newcomer'.

  "You don't think it's such a good idea?" Alina said.

  "Well," Angelic
a said, "I wouldn't want to discourage you. But I wouldn't say it was necessary, either."

  The oven timer buzzed, and Adele moved over to attend to it; Alina dug around inside her layers and brought out what looked like a colour postcard. "Well, what do you think of this?" she said, and slid it across for Angelica to see. "Is that a good idea, or is that not how they do things, either?"

  Angelica took the card and looked at it. The picture side featured some green and white palace, all columns and arched windows and with a couple of tourist buses parked off to the side. She turned it over, and read the situation wanted ad that Alina had drafted on the back.

  "I didn't make it up," Alina said. "I copied it out, mostly. I know they show cards like this in one of the stores, I saw it on the way over here."

  Angelica briefly held the card up so that her sister could see it. She didn't have to say anything more. Adele looked back over her shoulder, read it through, and then gave a brief shrug as if to say no objection.

  Angelica laid the card down, and looked at their visitor.

  She said, "Where are you living right now?"

  "On the headland to the north, the place I think they call the Step. I've a temporary room in a house there."

  "Anywhere near Pete McCarthy's place?"

  "Not too far from him," Alina said.

  "I'm not trying to pry, I'm only wondering how far you'd have to travel," Angelica explained. "You see, we usually take on a couple of girls locally for when the season picks up. I don't think we've anything fixed yet. Have you ever done restaurant work?"

  "You mean like a cook, or like a waitress?"

  "Waiting on, mostly, although you can get all sorts thrown at you. Of course, it's not the kind of thing that everyone would want to get involved in…"

  "Try me for a week," Alina said. "Two weeks, I'll take no money. You'll see how fast I can learn."

  "You want to be careful what you say," Angelica warned her. "You don't know how much we can throw."

  Alina stayed for about twenty minutes longer. They talked mostly about Three Oaks Bay, its people, its peculiarities. Angelica reckoned that she was a reasonable judge of people — one could hardly be a nurse for twenty years without picking up one hell of a lot of insight — and it hadn't taken her long to decided that Alina Peterson was either dead straight or very plausible. Given that she'd nothing in particular to gain, the chances seemed to favour the first of these options. She was bright and she was presentable, which meant that she already scored on two counts over the help that they'd hired last year. Her clothes were neat enough but her shoes were a giveaway, so old and worn under their polish that they almost telegraphed her need; there was a story to be told here, Angelica thought, and Angelica was a sucker for an interesting story.

  But Alina hardly talked about herself at all, not at this first meeting. They talked about hours to be worked, they quickly fixed a rate. She said that she was waiting for some of her belongings to be sent on, but she'd supply all her tax and National Insurance details as soon as they came. She said that she could start whenever they needed her; tomorrow, if they wanted.

  When they'd covered more or less everything and it was time for her to go, Angelica walked with her to the main doors. The empty restaurant lay in linen-and-silver silence behind them as she undid the bolts and opened up to the daylight.

  Alina said, "What time should I be here?"

  "Say eleven. It doesn't much matter what you wear during the day, but we'll find you something for the evenings."

  "You mean a uniform?"

  "No, just something plain."

  As they moved out onto the entrance steps, they saw a breakdown wagon thundering by and raising up dust in the square. Without warning, it suddenly let out a blast of the first line of Dixie on a five tone airhorn, so loud and so unexpected that it made Alina take a startled step back.

  "Ten to one that's young Wayne Hammond," Angelica said. "You'll probably get to meet him. He's a regular."

  Alina looked out to where the wagon was already disappearing from sight; and she nodded, barely perceptibly.

  "I'll get to know them all," she said.

  NINE

  Even though he was still only sixteen, Wayne had been driving the yard's vehicles around the quiet back roads in the off-season for the past two years. There was nothing unique in this; it wasn't uncommon in the lanes to find oneself stuck behind a slow-moving tractor with a twelve-year-old in the cab, using public highways to get from one piece of a farm to another. Ross Aldridge, the 'newcomer' policeman, must have been pretty well-briefed by his predecessor, because he restricted himself to friendly off-the-record warnings when the practice occasionally became too obvious. He couldn't really complain too much; not after the time that he'd run his patrol car into a ditch only three weeks into his new appointment, and the Middlemass girl (14) had turned up with a chain and towed him out.

  Wayne was driving now as they left the last of the houses behind, following the lake shore for a while until the wooded hillside of the Step rose up and screened it from their sight. Liston Hall was about a mile and a half further on, reached by its own private drive. The gates to this were kept permanently locked but there was a less conspicuous entrance, hardly more than a mud road, amongst the trees a hundred yards along.

  They pulled in onto a white gravel forecourt. The place wasn't huge by country house standards — two storeys, twenty-something rooms — but its main entrance was a covered carriage porch with stone pillars and broad steps leading up to the doors. The house wasn't run-down, either, but there were touches here and there betraying the fact that it hadn't been lived in for a couple of years; the windows that weren't shuttered weren't clean, and there were weeds pushing up through the gravel.

  "Wayne," Pete said as he opened the wagon's door to get out. "You're already driving without a license. Don't you think that the Dixie horn's pushing it a bit?"

  "I know," Wayne said sadly. "The devil makes me do it."

  Pete walked over to the steps. Seen from close-to, the columns were peeling; they were also heavily stained with pigeon crap. It was hard to think of a place like this as somebody's home. It looked more like a public building or a sanatorium. This was mostly a matter of scale; Pete's feeling was that you couldn't own such a place, you could only be owned by it. You could die or go bankrupt and the house would stay basically unchanged, still mouldering slowly and running up a ransom of a heating bill… unless you were so fabulously rich that you could afford not to give a shit, in which case all arguments foundered. The latter category could hardly include Dizzy Liston; otherwise, why would he consent to selling off his toys to cover his expenses?

  Pete found the bellpush, and pressed.

  Nothing seemed to happen, so he pressed again.

  Still no response. He glanced over at Wayne, and Wayne pointed helpfully to the Dixie horn.

  "Do you want me to..?" he said, leaving the offer hanging.

  "No," Pete said quickly. "No, thanks. Wait here, I'll check around the back."

  There was a brick path down the side of the house, and he followed it. There had to be somebody around, although from the state of the path he wouldn't have laid any bets on it being a gardener. The path brought him out into the rest of the grounds.

  This was obviously the side of the house that was meant to be considered as the frontage, with its six-foot windows and its first-floor parapet and views over formal gardens. It was, however, as lifeless as the forecourt area.

  Well, at least the place had atmosphere. It had something of the look of a decaying Italian palazzo, stone urns and all.

  "Anybody home?" Pete called out, and then two things happened very close together.

  Firstly, a couple of birds were scared up out of a nearby bush by his call; and secondly, there was a detonation so loud that he almost felt it as a physical shockwave. The birds squawked and flapped, and the very top of the bush seemed to be flicked by an invisible hand which knocked a few shreds of leaf out into t
he air. Pete didn't know whether to duck or run, and the choice was fairly academic anyway as for the moment his body seemed to be about as responsive as a sack of rocks.

  A woman with a shotgun stepped out onto the path some way ahead.

  Diane Jackson, the woman he'd come to see.

  "Sorry about the bang," she called, much as someone might apologise for slamming a car door too loudly, and she started to walk towards him. "It's the bloody pigeons. They've been driving me mad ever since I moved in, but as soon as I come out with a gun they all disappear. See up there?" She pointed. "Pigeon shit," she went on, without waiting for Pete to reply. "The roof's covered in it. I was going to blast a couple and then string them up to scare the others. Do you think that would work?"

  "It would with me," Pete said.

  He was pretty sure that she hadn't recognised him.

  Well, what could he expect… he'd been no more than another face around the yard on the two or three occasions that she'd been by, no reason that he should have made any lasting impression on her at all. She'd been polite, and he'd been too quick to imagine that it might signify something more. No big deal, it had happened in his life before; but suddenly he was intensely, intensely relieved that Wayne had stayed in the van and couldn't see this. And better he should get the hard lesson now, than later.

  She breezed on by, presumably expecting him to follow; she was heading for a side entrance to the house that was reached through an overgrown kitchen garden. At the second attempt, he got himself moving. His ears were still ringing from the gunshot. On the evidence of her marksmanship so far, the safest place to shelter would probably be squarely before the target.

  "I tried the bell at the front," Pete said as they went in through a whitewashed scullery. This led into a Victorian-style kitchen with a tiled floor and copper skillets hanging in the middle of the room.