Fish Tale (Cliffhanger Book 2)

by T. J. Middleton

  I picked up the spade. ‘What do you think this is for. Picking my nose?’

  ‘I was rather hoping it was to bury this eyesore that’s stuck on my wall.’

  ‘I was going to start digging the pond out. If I do nick this fish, I’m not having any harm come to it. Understood? ’ She thought for a moment.

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘She goes back to him in the same condition as she leaves. So, first I have to dig out the pond, get it ready. That’s what I’m going to start on this afternoon. You can make yourself useful if you like, get some industrial lemonade in or something, trot over with a cold glass whenever I feel the need. It’ll take a while.’ She looked at me, a kind of pity on her face.

  ‘I’m a physical woman, Mr Greenwood. Didn’t you know? I was going to book myself into the gym this afternoon, but if it’s hard graft you need… ’

  She put her hand on the wall and jumped straight over, landing on her feet, like she was vaulting over one of those stuffed horses they have in gyms. She smacked her hands together, took the spade from me.

  ‘Where do I start?’ she said. I stood looking at her. Below the pink jacket she was wearing light tan jeans over spanking new trainers.

  ‘You can’t dig in that lot,’ I said.

  ‘No?’ She came up to me, tucked me under the chin. No one had done that for a long time.

  ‘I can dig in whatever I want to, Mr Greenwood,’ she said. ‘They are my clothes, see. I can put them on, I can take them off. I can go riding in them, I can go to the opera in them, I can even jump off a cliff in them. My clothes, my body. It’s called a woman’s right to choose.’

  She draped her jacket on the wall and put the hat on the nymph. By the time I got back from the shed with the spare, she was cutting through the ground like it was Irish turf. The last time I’d seen muscles on a woman like that had been on a fairground boxer in Weymouth. No wonder she ate her steak raw. I got to the other side, began working my way in. It was heavy work, hot too. After about forty minutes I took my shirt off, the sweat starting to run down the length of me, my back, my chest, the creases in my stomach. I looked across. It was greasing her up too. I couldn’t see it but I could sense it, the way her T-shirt rode up her back all reluctant, the way she wiped her forehead on the flesh of her arm. There’s nothing to beat it in my book, sweat on a woman.

  My hands got muddy. So did hers. My face got muddy, my knees. So did hers. I had to lie flat on the wet ground, jam my fist up the connecting pipes pulling out all the goo that had piled up over the years. So did she. It was a wet, slippery world we were living in. We could hear it sucking and squelching at us, feel it sliding through our fingers, sticking to our skin. We were working apart but with every dig of the spade we grew nearer, like a bowline had been thrown between us and we were hauling ourselves over, hand over hand, muscle by muscle, getting closer and closer, not just physical but in the head too. It was like that time in Shane when Alan Ladd and Van Heflin push that tree stump down, like it meant something to us, like, Christ Almighty, we were joined. The sun had gone down by the time we’d finished but we’d done it. The nymph stood by an empty pond once more, proud and erect. She had mud on her too, her shoulders, her legs and the curves in between. Michaela went up to her, stuck the hat back on her head, and with her arm draped round her, turned to me, her face all triumphant. Her jeans were torn, the red of her lips smudged half across her face, the stripes on her shirt stuck on her front like wet paint. God was I in the mood. She picked the jacket off the nymph, slung it over her shoulder.

  ‘You look like that bird in The African Queen,’ I said, trying to keep my voice straight. ‘Katharine Hepburn, all covered in swamp.’

  I pulled out the garden hose, sluiced the pond down, then turned it on the nymph. The mud slid off her like it was thick cream, like it was my insides moving. Michaela couldn’t take her eyes of it either.

  ‘Your turn next.’ I said.

  ‘Just you try it, Bogie.’

  I grabbed her and pulled her to the bathroom, stood her in the shower and hosed her down while she was getting out of her clothes. She kicked them into the corner, grabbed the showerhead and started on me, but I couldn’t wait for that. I yanked it out of her hand, leant her up against the tiled wall, the showerhead skittering around the floor like a cut snake, jets of water playing on us like an eight-fingered octopus.

  ‘Did they do this on the African Queen?’ I said. ‘I don’t quite remember.’

  ‘Humph didn’t have a shower unit,’ she said. ‘And she was a missionary.’

  I jammed my hands underneath her, hoisted her all around me.

  ‘Not to worry,’ I told her. ‘We’ll get to that later.’

  It was dark and two rooms later by the time we were done. She only mentioned her friend Nelson twice, once in the conservatory, once on the hallway floor on the way to the bedroom. I got us a couple of whiskeys and took them back. She was sat up in bed, the sheet pulled across her, with Robin’s little propelling pencil in her hand, drawing something on the back of the score pad.

  ‘I remember Adam’s sensor thing,’ she said. ‘It comes on when you walk out on the veranda.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So don’t walk out onto the veranda. See?’ She handed over her drawing. She’d made a little map. ‘We come in from the sea and the beach. No car, no drive down the cul-de-sac, no policeman and no Japanese music.’ She made it sound almost plausible.

  ‘And what am I going to use as a landing craft?’ I said. ‘I’m not rowing all the way in one of Mickey’s boats.’

  ‘That bay’s a very popular bathing area,’ she said. ‘We’ll hire one of those pedalos, the two of us in the front and the net and a cold bag between us.’

  ‘In broad daylight? Are you mad?’

  ‘Well you’re not going to catch her in the dark are you?’

  She had a point.

  ‘It’ll be easy Al. We land the pedalo onto the beach just like any other holidaymaker. You go behind the brush, climb over the fence, grab the fish, and hotfoot it back with her safe and sound in the cold bag. We paddle back to the hire place, get in the car, come back here, put the fish in the pond and wait for the money.’

  She folded her hands in front of her like it was done and dusted.

  ‘I was wondering when we were getting to that. How are you going to let him know what we’ve done? A postcard? An e-mail? An advert in the Police Gazette?’

  ‘You can leave what they call a ransom note. Stick it somewhere prominent. One hundred thousand pounds or Mother Teresa gets it.’

  ‘I thought you said he had two hundred.’

  ‘It might be less. You know how rumours get exaggerated. It’s still a lot for a fish. Even if she is a saint.’

  ‘And how do we pick this cash up? It’s the weakest link usually, getting your hands on the loot.’

  ‘The same way, only different. When he gets the money, we tell him to hire a pedalo and paddle out with the money and his mobile phone. You’ll be watching discreetly from the shore. When he’s reached a specific point, you’ll instruct him to throw the weighted packet into the water, where I will be waiting, underwater. I’ll swim to the next bay, discard the breathing equipment, tie the packet to one of the anchors in the bay and swim ashore, and join you for a spot of sunbathing. When we think it’s safe, I’ll swim out and collect it.’

  ‘You got it all worked out.’

  ‘I got it all worked out.’ She patted her hair, the sheet falling from her front. She looked quite at home.

  ‘Shall we run through it again?’

  ‘No I’m quite clear. We drive down, we hire the boat…’

  ‘No No. Not that Al. The other thing. Mm?’ She lay back, kind of glowing. We ran through it again, a little more slowly this time, a little more thoughtful.

  ‘This is pleasant,’ I said. She lifted her hips up and down.

  ‘Did you know, statistically speaking, the Welsh consume more linoleum than the rest of G
reat Britain put together, including Ireland?’

  ‘It wasn’t something I was immediately aware of, no.’

  ‘Adam’s family was Welsh. He had linoleum in the bedroom, put in specially would you believe for when I moved in, turquoise, like a pool, he said. I had it ripped up after the first night. Shall we up the tempo a bit?’

  ‘In the bedroom?’

  ‘Expensive too. Not too hasty now. We don’t want to train to arrive at the station without all the passengers on board do we? How much do you think it was a roll.’

  ‘Do you know I have no idea? How many metres in a roll anyway.’

  ‘About fifteen. Oooh. I’m rattling over these points, aren’t you?’

  ‘A good length then.’

  ‘A good length is always welcome. Shall we? Right to the finish?’

  ‘Why not.’

  We got to the finish. I sat on the edge getting my breath back. She looked quite pleased with herself, quite pleased with me too. Now was the time.

  ‘Well, how about telling me what this woman said then,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll tell you the first part.’ She patted the space beside her. I didn’t move.

  ‘As you will.’ She pulled the sheet back up. ‘I was walking down and she was walking up. As we passed I slipped. In the mud.’ She opened her eyes up at me. ‘You remember what mud looks like on me, don’t you.’

  ‘Get on with it. Michaela. I’m past all that for a good forty-eight hours.’

  ‘She caught my hand as I tried to regain my balance, held it real tight, like she didn’t want to let go. “Careful,” she said. “Treachery lies on every path,”’

  I waited

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s it for now.’

  ‘What did she say next? Come on Michaela, you can tell me. I’m going to steal your poxy fish, you know that. Not just because of this woman, either. There’s other things in play here now.’

  She leant back on the bed-rest, poked one of her legs out, prodded me with it, like she did the first time. I knew what she was doing.

  ‘She said, “Is the pimple still there?”

  ‘She knew about it then?’

  ‘So it would appear. I told her that I’d just been standing on it, taking a last look at the sea before I went abroad.’

  ‘You told her all that?’

  ‘I wanted to tell someone what I was doing. She asked me how long I was going away for and I said probably for good, that this would be the last time I would see it. That’s why I was there, in that terrible weather.’ She held her glass up to the light, swirled the last mouthful round.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She said not to worry, she’d see it for me. She was going to be there regularly.’

  I swallowed hard. Not a jumper then.

  ‘You didn’t ask her why she was going up there?’

  ‘I just told her to be careful. The wind up at the top was fiercesome. But of course, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘Not quite. She wished me a safe journey, I wished her the same. Then she did something strange. She said, “Would you mind telling me your name? You’ll be the last person to be there before him.”’

  ‘Him? Who’s him?’

  ‘How the hell do I know? I took her for some religious nut. I was right too, because when she picked up her bag…’

  ‘Bag?’

  ‘The bag she’d dropped when she’d grabbed me, one of those hippy canvas things, quite unsuitable for the terrain or the weather. When she picked it up I thought I saw a Bible stuck on the top. A Bible and a thermos flask.’

  Christ, I’d pushed off a Christian.

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘That was it. I told her my name, she thanked me, said she’d think of me every time she went up there, send me a little message over the ether, that’s how she put it, and up she went. Where you were hiding behind the gorse bush.’ She held out her glass. ‘Another whiskey if you please, and then if you’d be so kind as to fetch my jacket from outside, I’ll be off.’

  ‘What did she look like, this woman?’

  ‘Hard to say, the rain was lashing down. She had a round face. Her hair might have been on the reddish side.’

  ‘How did she talk? Scottish, London, from the north?’

  ‘I don’t know. I find your regional accents so hard to tell. There was a sing-song quality about it I suppose. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘Not that long. How about her age?’

  ‘Forty? Forty-five? Something like that. Looked a little care worn I thought. Would have looked a lot more careworn probably, had she known what was waiting for her up at the top.’

  ‘Yes all right, we know what you think. I haven’t admitted anything.’

  ‘You don’t have to. Your questions say it all.’ She waggled her glass again. ‘Whiskey? The jacket?’

  I got her the whiskey, brought the jacket in from out the garden. We went over a few things: the drive down to the beach to check out the lay of the land, how long it would take me to get the pond up and running, how we were going to find out when Rump wouldn’t be home. That was no problem she said. She had a friend in the force. She’d find out from them what his rota was like. She got out of bed, buttoned her jacket up, all slow and careful, like I wasn’t even in the room.

  ‘Next time,’ she said, taking her time over every word, ‘we could have that game of scrabble. Official rules of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I wouldn’t have minded playing it then, I wouldn’t have minded her staying the night, but I didn’t say it. I followed her as she collected her wet clothes, wondering why the hell I was doing this. I didn’t want Rump’s money. I didn’t want his fish either. I didn’t even know how much I wanted to find out who I’d pushed off any more. I mean how easy was that going to be? But I wanted all this. I wanted Michaela, what she brought. I liked the way she was using me, the way she didn’t like me much, the way we rubbed up against each other. I even liked the way she called me Nelson when she wasn’t thinking straight. It meant I was doing something to her that stirred her up, like she was doing something to me. I hadn’t been stirred up for a long time.

  I went back into the front room, opened up Robin’s scrabble set, poured out the letters, laid the words out of the board, Michaela, Mini Ha Ha, Adam Rump, Twerp. Maybe I was the twerp doing this. I wasn’t sure about this cold bag idea of hers. It would be quite cumbersome, the fish and the bag full of warm water, heavy too. I could get a hernia lifting something like that over a ten foot high fence. What I needed was a long box, just big enough for me to slip the carp in while I got out of there. I could transfer it into a proper bag once I was over the other side.

  I cleared the letters from the board, took out a couple more blind, just to see what they would throw up. I got an S and an A. South Africa. Michaela again. And then I thought, no, not Michaela. S for shark, S for sculpture, S for chain-Saw. And A? There was only one A. and she’d been in my mind all evening, Audrey on the carpet with Michaela, Audrey on the carpet with me, Audrey in my old Vanden Plas, bashing Miranda’s head in with a stone. I knew what she’d be doing now. She’d be lying on her bunk in her prison cell, thinking what I was thinking, thinking about Miranda, thinking about Michaela, thinking about me, wondering what we were doing, who we were doing it with, never for one moment imagining…or perhaps she was. Prison does that to you. Leads you to places where all sorts of nasty ideas suddenly click into place. Yes, one day it would jump into her head without warning, the idea of Michaela and me, and once in, would never go away. It would be so obvious to her, see, the sort of thing I would love doing, just for the hell of it. Michaela too. Al and Michaela. Michaela and Al. She could picture it right before her eyes. She could hear it ringing in her head. Alone at night she’d even bloody feel it, lying on her bones. It would keep her awake for hours and hours, night after night, drive her crazy. And there was nothing she could do about it.

 
Sometimes life is wonderful.

  7

  It took me the best part of the next day to get the pond going, driving into Poole for some essential replacements, a couple of koi handbooks to make sure I was doing it proper, but then, I’d done it, the waterfall, the pumps, the electric water heater, the UV filters, everything running a treat. It would take a day or two for the pond to get up to the proper temperature, but it was all there, like it had never gone away. Trouble was, it was horrible really, empty, dead, like a seaside fairground closed for the winter, all the life, all the fun, gone out. It was soft of me I know, but I went inside and fetched Torvill out, stood her by the edge, so she could see it again, like when I first built it for her. She stared out over the water, all alone, not moving a muscle, not blinking an eye. Nearly broke my heart. Alice had been watching me out of her first floor window all through the day, came out in one of her Nicole Ghandi outfits to take a look.

  ‘I ought to chastise you, but I won’t. Starting the fish up is good, Al. Means you’re re-engaging with life.’ She stared at me hard. ‘What’s the matter? Something upset you?’

  ‘No, no.’ I wiped the front of my face. ‘Poked my eye out putting this bastard filter in, pardon my French. I’m not going to keep fish as prisoners anymore Mrs B. That’s all in the past. Being behind bars myself brought home what you said about the right for all God’s creatures live au naturel. But I thought if I’m going to go into this sculpting proper, I thought I’d get the pond going, you know, to create the right ambience for my creations. Look, what do you think?’

  I grabbed the shark from off the wall and propped him up by the nymph so that his head was within an inch of snapping off her leg. Alice started to laugh, then saw Torvill standing there on her own. She looked so small, so forlorn. Hard to believe how she’d once ruled this place like a queen.

  ‘You going to keep her there too?’ I shook my head.

  ‘She’s going back on the mantelpiece. I just brought her out to…you know.’

  ‘I know.’ Her voice had gone all soft. ‘It was a cruel thing Audrey did,’ she said, and then wanting to change the subject, added, ‘I see you’re getting on with our new neighbour then.’ She tried not to smile.