Streaking

by Brian Stableford

  As if to endorse his flight of fancy, twenty-three people had offered respectful greetings to him by the time he reached the market square, and a further fifteen greeted him deferentially while he paused there, looking around at the darkened shops and imagining that Lissa Lo was by his side, hanging on his every word.

  One shop, of course, was still blazing with light in spite of the fact that it was nearly eleven: the fish-and-chip shop. Customers were still trickling in, mostly one by one, and trickling out again—more than usual, thanks to the hangover from the funeral—but Canny could see through the window that there were four people who remained in the shop, not eating but chatting: Ellen Ormondroyd’s sisters and their respective husbands. Ellen and her husband were behind the counter, as usual.

  Eventually, Canny left the ghost of Lissa Lo behind and walked into the shop.

  “Haddock and chips, please,” he said, as he approached the counter.

  A slightly uncomfortable silence had fallen when he walked in, and he judged that it would not be easily broken, so he took the burden upon himself. “Nice to see you again,” he said to Alice and Martin Ellison. “Hello Lydia—you must be Ken. I hear you’re in Manchester, now. Thanks for coming over. It’s been a very long day. I had to get out of the house, away from the atmosphere. I didn’t have time to eat at the reception, even if I’d been able to stomach it—my appetite’s only just getting back into gear.”

  That speech invoked several sympathetic nods, but even Alice was casting about for something to say that wouldn’t seem rude or stupid.

  “I used to come in here once a week when I was a kid, you know,” he went on, addressing himself to Alice’s Martin and Lydia’s Ken. It was before Jack’s time, let alone Ellen’s. Daddy used to give me money to pay for my supper, but what was more important was being allowed to walk down here on my own, even after dark. It wasn’t like going to school—it was real life. Sometimes, it was the only part of life that did seem real—but that’s not a complaint. I always knew how lucky I was. Always.”

  “Are you all right, Canny?” Ellen finally plucked up the courage to ask, while Jack Ormondroyd sprinkled salt and vinegar on his fish and chips.

  “I’m fine,” Canny said. “Sorry if I’m rambling. Long day.

  “Open or closed?” Jack asked.

  “Open,” Canny said.

  “You can send Bentley down to collect now,” Jack observed, as he arranged the paper artfully into a basket. “That’s what your Dad allus did, when the fancy took him, on cook’s night off.”

  “He would,” Canny said.

  “Do you want to turn out for the team on Saturday, Lord Credesdale?” Jack asked. “I think we’re one short.”

  Canny remembered his casual offer to drop into the shop if he wanted a game; Jack had obviously mistaken his motive.

  “You would be one short if I said yes,” Canny said, handing him a five pound note. “Thanks for asking, Jack, but I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll come down to watch the game, though—hang around the score box making a nuisance of myself, the way I used to.”

  “You’d be very welcome,” Jack said, dutifully counting out his change.

  Canny nodded, and nodded again to Martin Ellison as he turned away. “I’ll ring you,” he promised. “Bye, Ellen, Lydia, Alice, Ken.”

  By the time he’d reached the end of the catalogue of names Canny was already in the doorway. Their murmured answers combined into a ragged chorus as the door swung shut behind him.

  Canny made his way slowly back through the village streets, eating as he went. His appetite had indeed got back into gear, and he realized that it really had been a long time since he’d last taken the opportunity to eat. A further dozen people greeted him politely; he didn’t try to count the pairs of eyes that watched his progress from afar, or to estimate the thoughts that might be going through their minds as they contemplated their new landlord.

  “This is what it’s like, you see,” he said to the ghost of Lissa Lo. “This is the greater part of the Kilcannon luck. It hasn’t just been a quantitative thing, reflected in shrewd gambles and good business. This is what we’ve made of ourselves. We’re not glamorous, by any means, and we don’t do a lot of smiling, but we’re worth something. We’re solid.”

  By the time he finished that imaginary speech, however, he’d passed beyond the reach of the street lights into the gloom of the path that ran beside the stream to the bridge that carried the approach-road to the house over the beck. The night was fairly clear, but the moon wasn’t full and stars seemed weak. He could find his way easily enough, but he still, seemed to be walking through a vast and ominous shadow. For the first time, it seemed to him that he could feel the absence of his luck, the failure of his early-warning systems.

  He had no idea what Lissa Lo intended, in the longer run. He had no idea whether she would have any further interest in him, once he had given her the child she wanted.

  He had no idea, either, how the outcome of that experiment might affect them, if they were indeed to be punished for their temerity in challenging the rules of fate.

  But the haddock tasted wonderful, and the chips had exactly the right texture.

  “We all live dangerously,” he said—aloud, since there was no one who could possibly overhear him—“who live at all. And we all die but once, no matter how good or bad our luck might be. How many men are lucky enough to get the chance of intimacy with one of the ten most beautiful women in the world, under any conditions?”

  There was, of course, no answer—but none was needed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next day was the busiest of Canny’s life, and the one after was little better but he coped well enough. He spent all day Monday at the Mill, and returned again the following morning, but Tuesday afternoon was spent in Leeds, at the three banks where his various companies held accounts, and the offices of the two solicitors who handled various aspects of the family business. As five o’clock approached, however, he found time to call in at the headquarters of Robert Stanley and Associates, a firm of inquiry agents that his father had employed to carry out various kinds of research. He was immediately ushered in to see the top man, and asked him to put together a dossier on Lissa Lo and her family.

  “Use publicly-accessible sources, as far as you can” he said. “Don’t do any kind of digging that would advertise the fact that you’re on the job—but I need facts, not gossip. Pay particular attention to her matrilineal ancestry—I’m not interested in her father’s family.”

  “It might be expensive, sir,” Bob Stanley warned him. “If you want me to go deeper than journalistic crap and the kind of fluff that comes up when you type a name like hers into a search engine, I’ll have to use contacts outside the country. I’ve got links with good agencies in Hong Kong, the U.S.A. and Bangkok, but the cost....”

  “Check with me if it looks like running over five thousand,” Canny said, “but for that kind of money, I expect a thorough job. I need it done quickly. As soon as humanly possible.”

  Stanley, once he was reassured that Canny knew what he was committing himself to, agreed readily enough. He didn’t ask what Canny’s interest in Lissa Lo was, and gave the impression that the former Earl of Credesdale had given him tasks to carry out that were odder by far. The bank managers, too, had given him the impression that their dealings with the Kilcannon family had never been excessively mired in orthodoxy and expectability—although Canny had been glad to find, when he went through his father’s private papers, that his newly-acquired business interests were all perfectly legal. A family as lucky as the Kilcannons obviously had no need, any longer, to be involved in anything more than slightly shady.

  He spent Wednesday in London, traveling back and forth by train, and Thursday at the Mill. Friday was again divided between the Mill and Leeds. Every evening was spent reading, although none of his reading material came from the library shelves.

  By Saturday afternoon, Canny felt in such desperate need of a break
that he decided to take up Jack Ormondroyd’s second invitation and walk down to the green to see how the cricket team was doing.

  He arrived no more than an hour and a half after the match had begun, but it seemed that he had already missed the greater part of the crucial action. Cockayne’s players were in the field and the visitors were seven down for sixty-five, which the local spectators thought a highly satisfactory score. Frank Langsgill, the butcher’s eldest son, had bowled an entertainingly aggressive spell but had now retired, red in the face, to long leg, where he was patiently awaiting a mistimed hook.

  Canny sat down in front of the pavilion to watch for a while, Only one more run had gone up on the board when Ellen Ormondroyd came bustling out of the back room where she’d been helping with preparations for the tea interval and said: “Have you heard?” There was a catch in her voice which told him immediately that the news was bad.

  “No,” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s Alice’s Martin. He’s dead.” The word “dead” fragmented into a strangled sob.

  “What?” Canny felt his heart lurch, but that was only natural. “When? How did it happen?”

  “Last night. He caught two lads breaking into his car—just kids, they think, although they haven’t caught them. He tried to stop them—you saw what a big bloke he was, for a professor, so it must have seemed the right thing to do. One of them hit him with a crowbar—five or six times, although he must have been knocked silly after one or two. Fractured his skull. The hospital’s only a mile away, but the ambulance couldn’t get him there in time. Dead on arrival, they said.”

  Ellen had been standing up while she spoke, but now she flopped down on the bench beside him. Tears were rolling down her face.

  “Jesus,” was all that Canny could find to say. He put his arm out tentatively, making as if to put it around Ellen’s shoulder, but withdrew it when her teenage daughter, who had come out of the pavilion behind her, sat down on the other side and took the responsibility upon herself.

  “You shouldn’t be doing the teas, Mum,” Marie said.

  “Alice said not to go over to hers,” Ellen said—to Canny, not to her daughter. “Mum’s gone, but Alice said she didn’t want a crowd. Carry on as normal, she said—and Jack wasn’t about to miss his cricket unless he absolutely had to, and Alice gave him the excuse he needed, so I thought I’d best take it too, in spite of...well, Dad’s minding the shop, so I...only I thought you’d want to know, with you having read his books, and invited him to dinner and all. Sorry about the waterworks.”

  “That’s okay,” Canny told her. “Marie’s right. You shouldn’t be here, even if Jack can’t let the team down and you’re not needed in the shop. Shall I walk you home?”

  “I’ve go to get the teas,” Ellen said.

  “It’s all done but what Ginny I can take care on, Mum,” Marie told her. “Look—you’re distracting Dad.”

  Jack Ormondroyd was indeed peering at them from mid-wicket, even though the bowler had begun to run in.

  “It’s silly,” Ellen complained, mopping at her face with a screwed-up handkerchief. “It’s not as if I knew him right well. Only met him half a dozen times.”

  The batsman took a mighty swipe at the ball, hitting it high and wide. Canny winced in expectation of its arrival before realizing that it would fall within the field. Frank Langsgill was already running round to position himself beneath it, while Jack Ormondroyd bellowed: “Catch it!”

  The shout was counterproductive. The butcher’s boy fumbled the ball and it went to ground. The spectators groaned.

  “That’s not the point,” Canny assured Ellen, when he was able to return his attention to the more urgent matter. “It’s Alice you’re feeling for. She’s your little sister.”

  “Go on, Mum,” Marie said, again. “Go home. I’ll see to the teas.”

  Ellen consented to be raised to her feet. Canny took her arm, although he knew that every pair of eyes that had previously been fixed on Frank Langsgill was now on them, and would remain on them until the bowler contrived his next delivery.

  “Come on, Ellen,” he said. “It’s not far. Jack will understand.” He led her around the side of the pavilion and away from the green.

  “It’s such a stupid way to go,” she said. “Young bloke like that—only thirty, younger’n you and me. At the university and all. Beaten to death by a Chapeltown yob over a car stereo. It’s not as if you can get anything for them any more—worse than TVs. So stupid.”

  “He was unlucky,” Canny said, feeling an oddly foul taste in his mouth. “It could happen to anyone.”

  “You see it every day on the news,” Ellen went on, aimlessly. “People run down by their own cars, stabbed to death for a few quid or a bag of shopping. Old ladies beaten up. They wanted to come back to Cockayne, Canny—Alice thinks it’s the last safe place on Earth. It used to be, didn’t it? Still is, I suppose, if only because everywhere else has got so much worse.”

  “Things don’t seem to be improving,” Canny agreed. “I was mugged myself a little while ago.”

  “Not here?”

  “No—in Monte Carlo. I was lucky. The mugger just took some money I’d won at the casino, and didn’t shoot me. If I hadn’t had the money...who knows what might have happened? Poor Alice. Will your Mum bring her back here?”

  “If she’ll come. Knowing Alice, she won’t. Doesn’t run away, our Alice, Not that it would be running away, but...well, you know how things can seem.”

  They reached the door of the fish-and-chip shop. When Canny opened the door Ellen’s father lifted up the counter and came out to meet her. She collapsed into his arms.

  “Make her a cup of tea, Jem,” Canny said. “She’ll be okay—it was my fault. She saw me and thought she had to tell me what had happened, but when she told me...it all broke loose.”

  “Thanks, Lord Credesdale,” Jem Proffitt said, a trifle warily.

  “His name’s Canny, Dad,” Ellen said. “We’re his friends—aren’t we, Canny? We’ve known one another forever.”

  “Yes, we’re friends,” Canny said. “If there’s anything I can do....”

  “That’s okay,” Jem Proffitt said, swiftly. “Everything’s taken care of. Madge is with Alice. I’ll see to Ellen.”

  Canny nodded, and backed away.

  “Thanks, Canny.” Ellen said. “Best get back to the game—that lot won’t last much longer, and us’ll knock off the runs in no time. You could have played, you know—wouldn’t have made any difference.

  “It would if I’d been at long leg instead of Frank,” Canny said. “I’d have caught it.” With my eyes shut, he didn’t add.

  “Aye,” said Ellen, not at all skeptically. “I bet you would, at that.”

  Canny didn’t go back to the green though; he headed up the slope instead of down. As soon as he got back to the house he went to the library, where he’d left the business card that Martin Ellison had given him. He looked at the phone number for a few seconds, then reached for an A-Z of Leeds and looked up the address.

  He decided that it might be a trifle ostentatious take the Bentley to a murder scene, so he looked into the living-room to ask his mother if he could borrow her Citroen.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “A man I know was murdered last night,” he said, shortly. “I ought to see the widow.”

  She frowned, but didn’t ask for more details; she went to her purse and handed over the keys.

  “Will you be in for dinner?” she asked.

  “Probably,” he said. “Don’t wait if I’m not back, though.”

  The Citroen seemed very cramped by comparison with the Bentley but it handled the narrow roads much better and accelerated smoothly enough once he hit the A64, which took him all the way in to the junction with Woodhouse Lane. He found the street easily enough, although it was closed to traffic, so he had to park in the next street along. The taped-off area containing the car that Martin Ellison had presumably died defending was thirty yard
s further on than the address on the card, although there was no competition for parking spaces now.

  The policeman on duty at the end of the street stopped him, but he only had to mention his name and explain his relationship to the population of Cockayne to be allowed through.

  No one answered the door when he rang the bell, but he waited and then rang again. At the third attempt the letter-box opened and a female voice he didn’t recognize told him that Mrs Ellison didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  “I’m a family friend,” he said. “Canavan Kilcannon—the Earl of Credesdale.”

  The door opened, but only by a crack. “ID?” the voice asked.

  Canny slipped his driving license through the crack. He heard the voice call out, announcing his name to someone at the back of the house, but the reply was muffled.

  The door swung open to reveal a young woman, no older than Alice and perhaps a little younger. “Sorry about that,” she said, as she looked up and down the street to make sure that Canny was alone. “I’m P.C. Willis, the family liaison officer. Come in. Mrs. Ellison and her mother are in the kitchen.”

  Alice and Mrs. Proffitt looked at him in open astonishment, even though they had been told of his arrival by the policewoman. “Ellen told me about Martin,” he said, briefly. “I’m very sorry. She said that you wouldn’t come home, because you thought it would seem like running away. She thinks you’d be better off in the village—so do I.”

  “I’ve been telling her that for hours,” Mrs. Proffitt put in. “Maybe she’ll listen to you.”