Dying Fall

by Judith Cutler

  At last, having cycled and rowed and birthing-chaired with such dedication as must have convinced any casual bystander that I was a genuine fitness freak, I left for the changing area, emerging with a towel wrapped sarong-wise around me. Dean was already there. As I entered, he passed me a notice to hang outside: SORRY OUT OF ORDER.

  Dean’s skin, normally a rich purple-brown, had faded to a patchy grey. His face was swollen, but not as badly as I’d feared. His usually elegant movements were cramped. He’d done what I should have done: used the phone. His contacts had come up with a couple of names, but recommended extreme caution.

  ‘Where?’ I prompted.

  His answer stunned me. But on reflection it shouldn’t have done. Not sleazy back-street gyms, where poor black kids were encouraged to make money damaging other kids’ brains, but an extremely couth city-centre Health and Beauty Club used by anyone who was anyone, a video shop and, of all things, a health-food shop. Then he’d had a brilliant idea. He’d follow Jools. I thought that must have been a long shot, to say the least, but he’d had some luck, he said. She said she’d got to cut short her session because she’d got to do some shopping. And something in the way she said it made him think it was something she shouldn’t be buying. Normally he finished every conversation telling her not to be an idiot. This time he tailed her. To the video shop. She left with a carrier bag. Just an ordinary carrier bag, as if she’d been borrowing Rambo or whatever. He went in and asked – this was where he made the mistake, he said – for what they’d just lent to Jools.

  And they’d offered him cocaine.

  ‘Gobsmacked, I was, Soph. Bloody gobsmacked. So I said, no, I wanted the steroids, see. And they sold me them. Easy-peasy. But just as I was about to pick up my bus home, these two heavies invited me to have a conversation with them. Told them I don’t talk to no strangers. When they tried it on –’ he touched his face –‘and I grounded them both, blow me if this third chap didn’t come up and slosh me. Sock full of sand, I reckon. Went out like a bloody light.’

  ‘I know it’s a daft question, but if there were three of them and you were unconscious, how come you got away with … with your life, Dean?’

  ‘Bit of luck. There was this woman at the bus stop when I came round. Said a funny-looking woman had stopped them. Just like that. And they’d all scarpered. Just like that. Christ, Soph, I’m bloody scared. And so should you be.’

  ‘Got to be the fuzz, Dean. Got to be.’

  ‘You promised – you said you wouldn’t fucking call them!’

  ‘You don’t call this lot. You ask permission to go out. I can’t go to the bloody bog without them knowing. And I’m not bugged. Wouldn’t let them, because I’d promised you, right. But I want you to tell them. One of them. He’ll believe you if I do.’

  ‘That stringy chap you came with the other day? Thought you looked kind of good together.’

  ‘Gee, thanks. As a person – well, sometimes he’s OK, others he’s a total pain in the arse. But I think he’s a decent cop, honest enough.’

  Dean evidently thought that was an oxymoron, even if he didn’t know the term.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t, Soph.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘I mean – Christ, there may be no one to stop them next time. Never been so fucking scared.’

  ‘Police protection?’ Not that I could recommend it with wholehearted enthusiasm. But at least Dean liked pop music.

  ‘How long for? Even when they’re in the nick, these guys can still get at you. Have you thought of that?’

  I hadn’t. I ought to have done. I’d have that to live with, wouldn’t I?

  He took my hand. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset you, Soph. But it’s right, isn’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘But we’ve both got a marginally better chance with them on our side. No one’ll notice a couple of unrelated deaths unless someone knows who the corpses are. At least we might get avenged.’ I can’t say that reassured him.

  ‘Tell you what: I’ll sleep on it. I’ve got me mate to pick me up tonight. I’ll shake down on his floor. And I’ll call you, let you know what I decide. Right?’

  ‘Right. But – but if you need help, or if anything happens – to you or to me – promise me you’ll call Chris Groom.’ I’d memorised the number. Now Dean did the same.

  What I wanted to do was tell Chris and Seb everything, but I owed it to Dean to keep quiet. At least while Dean made up his mind. The silence in the car was uncomfortable, even hostile. When I got home, I couldn’t stop shaking. Tina had to peel the potatoes. At last I realised what a mess I’d got myself into. Me, and Dean, and possibly Aftab, and possibly even Khalid’s family. I’d had regular progress reports from Chris so I knew he’d left hospital yesterday evening. I should have phoned. I could phone now. But I was suddenly afraid – how illogical can you get? – that even a simple telephone call might draw danger to his door. I pushed the phone away. One of Tony’s gin and tonics called me, loudly. But all it did was make me weepy.

  Tina had obviously not heard the phone above the sound of her sewing. At my suggestion she had installed an electric machine and yards of material and lining in my spare bedroom, and was hoping to produce curtains for the whole of her new flat – it seemed preferable to her going out of her mind with boredom, now Seb had gone to pursue other callings. The rest of Sunday promised to be very boring. Or very lonely and frightening.

  I’d long since finished Persuasion. Everything else on my shelves seemed to have been soiled by the activities of my intruder. Needless to say I had no new library books.

  Radio Three was into thirteenth-century religious music. It didn’t take me long to discover that I was not. I’d decided that this was the moment when I really ought to write to my more distant relatives who didn’t justify an expensive phone call, and was digging in my bureau to find paper, when I found George’s holiday snaps. The phone rang. I dropped the photos and snatched up the handset. Maybe it would be someone I could gossip to, even someone solidly reliable like Chris. But it was not Chris.

  ‘Hi,’ this lovely American voice said softly. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you?’

  ‘Stobbard! No, anything but –’

  ‘Tony tells me things haven’t been so good with you. And your telephone message: I’m very concerned.’

  ‘Nothing life-threatening – not for a while. But I seem to have lost my nerve. When I was really in danger I was quite cool. Now I’m just a gibbering mass of potential hysteria.’

  ‘Are you – the police aren’t stopping your visitors?’

  ‘They don’t let me open the door. And Tina did say she ought to search Tony.’

  ‘That’s awful! A total violation of –’

  ‘I was joking. She rather liked the look of him. Any groping would have been strictly friendly.’

  ‘Oh.’ He did not sound amused. ‘Does she have to check everything? Your mail? Things like that?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She’d been too entertained by Tony’s carriers to do more than shake them hopefully. ‘She did try to stop me handling those lovely roses, Stobbard, but –’

  ‘You liked them?’

  ‘Loved them. Really.’

  ‘I was wondering if I might see you.’

  ‘Were you? Oh, that’d be wonderful. Shall I – would you like a meal?’

  ‘I guess it might be late. I’m still stuck in Devon or some goddamn place. Where did you say it was, Tony?’

  There was a muffled murmur.

  ‘Guess it’ll be an hour or more, Sophie. See you then.’

  Tina was not altogether sure that she ought to leave me while she bought champagne at the off-licence down the road, but I wanted something less pragmatic than ready-mixed gin and tonic to offer him. In any case, she was back in time to let him in, much to my embarrassment. We might have been two spotty adolescents for all the poise we exhibited for the first few minutes. He sat as awkwardly as if my room were a dentist’s waiting room. I talked too much. E
ventually he consented to drink coffee, if it was not too much trouble, but did not follow me into the kitchen. I spilt grounds everywhere, chipped a mug, and could find only stale biscuits.

  But suddenly it didn’t matter; from my living room came the sound of Cole Porter. He was playing my piano.

  ‘There’s only one problem, Sophie.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t play and dance at the same time. So I bought you these.’

  CDs. Two of them. Not the entire Mayou oeuvre, but, as he said, ‘Guess we could dance to these. Always liked Gershwin and Cole Porter – even though they did insist the singers should be opera stars, not show singers. Can’t stand the big vibrato these operatic people are trained to use. Just doesn’t sound right with these intimate little numbers.’

  I nodded and demonstrated, making my voice wobble ludicrously.

  He laughed.

  But still we did not kiss. He accepted the little social peck I gave him as thanks. It was a pity I did not have a CD player.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, putting his hands to the small of his back and easing his shoulders. Evidently the piano stool was the wrong height for him. ‘Why do they keep you in the back row? That’s some little voice you’ve got there.’

  I leaned against the piano and smiled. ‘But it is little. Wouldn’t fill the Music Centre now, would it? And in any case, I’m not reliable. Because of my job, I can’t get to all the concerts. Every year I miss all the ones I really want to do: Barbican, Festival Hall, the Maltings. But the Chorus Master puts up with me since I can usually manage Birmingham gigs.’

  He closed the volume of Schubert songs and riffled through Brahms and Schumann. I slipped out, returning with glasses and the Moët. I wanted to celebrate the music-making apart from anything else – can you imagine the joy of singing your favourite lieder with a world-class musician as accompanist? Although he demurred that he was no pianist, he could still play better than any of my friends, his hands, with their elegant long fingers and strong palms, easily spanning a couple more notes than the eight notes of a scale, and stretching further if necessary. The first bottle took us through some Debussy, which I couldn’t manage, to some Weill I could.

  Suddenly, he pushed away from the piano. ‘Come on! Guess we can dance anyway!’

  So, to the accompaniment of our own voices, we waltzed around and around my living room. At first it was strictly ballroom stuff, not at all erotic. But as we sang more and more softly, and the pace slowed, I grew more aware of him – and by the feel of him against me, he was beginning to want me as much as I wanted him. We slowed almost to a stop, our hands exploring in a way that would have had us instantly debarred from Come Dancing. It was then he discovered that my T-shirt separated quite easily from my jeans. Shame it was only a Marks and Sparks bra. I’d have liked something more seductive. But I found it didn’t matter. Forget about dancing. Forget about everything but his lips agains my skin. And it seemed that he was, after all, a man for small breasts.

  ‘You’re so beautiful: God, I just want to fuck the ass off you,’ he whispered. ‘But not here. Not with her up there. I’ll call a cab. Come back with me. Now.’ His tongue did wonderful things to my left nipple. His hand was busy elsewhere.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Can’t that officer take it?’ he murmured, dabbing little kisses on my stomach between words.

  ‘No. She only answers doors.’

  ‘Do you have to take it?’

  With great strength of mind, I eased myself away. It took me a couple of seconds to reorientate myself and work out who was speaking.

  ‘Khalid?’

  Not that it was anything like his normal tones: he was shouting into his end so much it hurt at mine.

  ‘I said, I’ve bloody cracked it!’ he yelled.

  ‘Cracked it?’ For a moment I could only think he meant his injured arm. Then I realised: ‘Khalid! Really? The computer stuff? But they’ve only just let you out of hospital.’

  He wouldn’t tell me, he said; he’d show me. He was well enough to get into the Computer Department at the university now, he insisted; he’d spent the afternoon there, in fact.

  ‘But it’s Sunday.’ And Stobbard was exploring my pubic hair.

  ‘Is it? Oh. Doesn’t matter. I’ve got my own key, and the security guards all know me. So come on round. Now.’

  ‘But it’s after midnight!’

  ‘Shit! Security will have locked up the main doors. And there’s some outside course on tomorrow morning: they won’t let us in till twelve-thirty.’

  ‘But if it’s so important –’

  ‘Don’t suppose a couple of hours’ll make any difference. In any case, I’m due at Outpatients at nine going on twelve.’

  ‘What about Chris?’

  “Chris?”

  ‘The Chief Inspector who said you must be crazy to have anything to do with me.’

  ‘OK, bring him. And any of his boffins who want a lesson in logic. Come straight to the room I’m working in.’ I wrote it down carefully on my pad. It was recycled paper, rather thick and garishly coloured. The sheet was vermilion. So was the sheet underneath, but I would soon be moving on to an altogether more restful green.

  On impulse, I took it up to Tina. It might do her career some good if she were the one who told Chris. It meant fastening my bra and reorganising my pants and jeans as I went up the stairs.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, hand-finishing her curtains. She looked at me quizzically. ‘God, I’ve heard some weird ways of making love, but caterwauling at each other takes the bleeding biscuit.’

  ‘Oh, you know what Shakespeare said – “If music be the food of love …”’

  ‘Planning a bit of a banquet, were you?’

  I blushed. Then I thrust the note at her. She winked, and pretended to stuff it down her bra. She could use the extension in my bedroom.

  When I got downstairs Stobbard had the telephone directory open and was looking up taxi firms.

  ‘Guess it’s late,’ he said, with no insinuation in his voice. ‘Nine-thirty rehearsal tomorrow. Can’t understand you Britishers. They say they’d rather have a free afternoon. Back home we sleep in the morning, rehearse in the afternoon, then everyone’s ready for the evening show.’

  I could think of nothing to say, except to apologise when he picked up the handset to dial and found he couldn’t because Tina was already talking. I expected him to fling it down in temper, but he replaced it slowly and thoughtfully. Turning from me, he drained his glass of champagne, but gestured a refusal when I lifted the bottle to offer him a refill. At last the phone pinged. Tina had done her job.

  I watched while he dialled, regretting that those long fingers were engaged in nothing more than poking telephone digits. It appeared that the person answering was not cooperative; but then I could hear her laugh as she lapped up his suggestions: ‘Don’t just try – try hard.’

  There wasn’t much to say after that. Nor much time, actually. At least, as we heard the diesel chug of the taxi, he turned and kissed me, with the sort of expertise I’d hoped he’d show in other areas. He managed, in a very short space of time, to thrust his tongue into my mouth in a particularly erotic way, to nip little kisses in my lip, and to run his mouth over my eyes, down my neck and on to what in my case passes for a cleavage. As he got into the taxi, he blew another kiss. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he called softly.

  ‘And what the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’ asked Tina. ‘Christ, don’t you know better than to stand nicely framed and outlined with a light behind you? All anyone’s got to do is aim for the middle of your silhouette!’

  I shut the door, quickly. She snapped off the hall light. ‘And I suppose you think a piece of plate glass is bullet-proof.’

  I sat on the stairs, my head in my hands.

  ‘Chris says he’ll collect you at eight tomorrow morning,’ she said, more mildly. ‘There’s no way he’ll wait till the afternoon. And he’s arranged for this boy wonder of yours to do his stuff on a po
lice computer.’

  ‘Can you do that? Hack from another computer?’

  Tina sighed. ‘Don’t you know anything at all? Even my kid brother knows more than you!’

  ‘He’s the right generation,’ I said. ‘Did Chris say anything else?’

  ‘One or two rude words when I told him how you were spending your evening.’

  ‘But he can’t be afraid – surely he knows I’m safe with Stobbard?’

  ‘Depends which way you mean safe.’ She giggled. ‘Oh, and he said you were right about that Datsun blowing up well after the crash. Seems some clever bugger fixed some sort of remote-control device, probably in the petrol tank.’

  ‘How on earth did they work that out?’

  She sighed. ‘You’ve seen the television news, where they have these pictures of policemen crawling inch by inch over some bit of a field or summat? Right. They don’t do it for their health: they do it because they’re looking for –’

  ‘Clues?’

  ‘All right. Clues. Bits and pieces that mean summat to the lads in Forensic.’

  I didn’t bother to correct her. ‘So these bits were fragments of something electronic that the bod triggered as he ran away,’ I said.

  ‘Right. And tell you summat else: you know you were hiding from someone on a motorbike? Well, the geezer was just some innocent passer-by who didn’t reckon cars should be left burning on a public road and went to the trouble of going to the nearest police station to complain about it.’

  ‘Bona fide?’

  ‘Eh? Well, he was the bishop’s chaplain, so he ought to be bona.’

  I’d better go and tidy up. The remaining champagne was warmish and flat. I poured it down the sink. I washed the glasses and dried them carefully. I reached a fresh loaf from the freezer, wrote a note to myself to take milk for our coffee into work – it was my turn. My carrier bag already bulged with my marking. I stood staring at nothing.

  ‘Come on,’ said Tina kindly, padding in behind me, winding her alarm clock, ‘it’s time for bed. Everyone feels like that after too much booze.’