Fish Tale (Cliffhanger Book 2)

by T. J. Middleton

  ‘As I said. It was slippery.’

  ‘Just as well, considering. Is this your modus operandi then, pushing people off cliffs in inclement weather?’

  I’d never thought of it quite like that. Robin, the mystery woman, there were similarities there. Points of convergence Miss Prosser would have called them. Even old Poke Nose tumbling down the stairs shared elements. It might not have been a cliff or a mountain she went over, but fall she did, all the way down.

  ‘Very funny. Listen, I’m glad you came over. I’ve got you something.’ She batted her eyelids, trying not to look pleased.

  ‘I hope this isn’t some sort of reward for sexual favours, Mr Greenwood. What is it? A piece of jewellery?’ I took her to the conservatory, pulled it out from under the sun-lounger.

  ‘It’s Audrey’s old oilskin,’ I said. ‘I found it in the garage. I thought you might consider wearing it up top, recreate the scene for me, help me get my memory back.’

  ‘Are you serious? After what I’ve just heard. You want to try and push me off again?’

  ‘I’ve never tried to push you off even once. ’

  ‘You thought you had. Perhaps this time you thought you’d do it for real. Perhaps you’re addicted to it, pushing people off cliffs. What was he like, Carol’s fiancé?’

  ‘Robin? He had a beard, very distinctive. You’d have recognised it if you’d seen it.’

  ‘Recognised it? I don’t follow?’

  ‘Listen, forget about Robin for a second. I’m serious. I talked to one of Carol’s friends yesterday. She said the woman going to the pimple said something. One word.’

  I looked round. I had a horrible feeling Carol was hiding somewhere in another room, listening to every word, waiting for me to trip myself up. Michaela tapped her foot.

  ‘Well?’ I took a deep breath.

  ‘She said “Twerp”.’

  ‘Twerp?’

  ‘Yes. She said it going past the kiosk, just before you met her. Mary Travers thinks she was on her mobile. She didn’t say anything like that to you, did she, this woman, call you a twerp for being out in that weather? ’

  ‘You know what she said to me. I’ve told you.’

  ‘And she wasn’t on the phone.’

  ‘Not when I met her.’

  ‘And there was no one else up there near you?’

  ‘Apart from you, hiding behind the gorse bush. Not that I knew that at the time.’

  She was staring at me again. I didn’t know what to do, admit it or dance round it, like we’d been doing the last few days. It was getting closer, all of it.

  ‘You see she said something up there, I’m sure of it now. And I thought, if I could just go back to that afternoon, put myself where the gorse bush used to be, and you came up, dressed up the right way, all agitated like she was, it might just all click back into place.’

  ‘And I might just fall off a cliff.’

  ‘You’re safe with me, you know that.’

  ‘Do I? Anyway, an oilskin in this weather? Do you have any idea what it would do to my skin?’

  ‘You like a bit of spice, you said so yourself. What could be spicier than this, up there, all hot and sticky, not knowing what’s going to happen next. Afterwards we can do whatever we want. Without the gorse bush.’

  ‘What would we need a gorse bush for?’ She brushed her lapel. I was beginning to recognise the sign.

  ‘That’s my thinking exactly. Who needs a gorse bush when there’s all that grass to roll about on.’

  ‘I’m on the ground now am I?’

  ‘Over and over, nearer and nearer the edge. You’d remember that one.’

  ‘I remember all of them. I’m like Bobby Fisher that way. Do you know he could remember every chess game he ever played?’

  ‘I bet he couldn’t remember every game of scrabble though. We could have a game if you like, afterwards.’

  ‘Up there, on the pimple?’

  ‘Why not? That’s what a travelling set is for isn’t it. So you can do it wherever you fancy.’

  ‘And you like that don’t you? Doing it wherever you fancy.’

  She stood there tapping her foot again. She reached out, took the oilskin under her arm.

  ‘I might. I might not. There’s no telling is there, a woman’s mood. Keep your eyes peeled, that’s my advice. Meanwhile, I’ve got something for you too.’ She poked about in her bag, brought out two mobile phones. ‘One for me, one for you. Just in case we need to talk to each other when we do it. When we’ve finished, we just throw them away. Keep it on from now on.’

  I stuffed it in my pocket, then remembered something.

  ‘Hang on. Adam Rump told me once you refused to have a mobile. He said you thought they gave you cancer.’ She gave one of those goat snorts.

  ‘I just told him that. That way not only would he never be able to get hold of me when I was out, but I’d have a cell phone all to myself, one that he didn’t know about. I’ve always had a mobile.’

  ‘What if it went off when he was there?’

  She gave me a pitying look.

  ‘OK. But he never looked in your bag?’

  ‘He’s a policeman. If it’s not under their noses they can’t see it. And besides, he trusted me. Now, I better send this photo off to Audrey. Set her mind at rest.’

  ‘That would be a first. Posting it are you, with a letter or something?’

  ‘No, with this.’ She fished in her bag again and waved the postcard at me. She moved it about so I couldn’t see the writing, but I wasn’t looking. My eyes were fixed on the photo on the front.

  Sydney Opera House.

  Mickey Travers came round with his chainsaw, two spare blades, a can of chain oil, and a small hand axe I got him to throw in for good measure. I hauled the first sleeper up on the wall on the edge of the patio, got the magic markers I’d bought down at the Post Office, and started to draw the outline of a koi on one of the sides. Carp are more or less the same shape whatever their breed, though the size can vary. It’s the marking that make the real difference, the colours, the patterns, the scalation. It’s them that bring out the beauty. That’s what Torvill was all about, the swirling blue markings on her, like she was dancing even when she was floating still. I wanted my first sculpture to be in memory of her, not a replica as such, I already had her stuffed on the mantelpiece, but something which would bring out the spirit of her, the way she dipped and dived, the way she broke my heart. I brought Torvill out and stood her on the patio table for a while, tried to copy her lines onto the wood, but it was no good. She wasn’t alive any more, not in that way.

  ‘Sorry gorgeous,’ I said, and put her back inside, tried again. The wood wasn’t as smooth as I thought neither, and the pen kept bouncing around where I didn’t want it to. Forty minutes later she looked more like Pinocchio with a hernia truss than a koi slipping through water.

  ‘Having trouble?’

  Alice was looking over the fence, a fez stuck on her head and a two-foot spliff dangling from her fingers. I’d seen thinner duvets.

  ‘It’s this flippin wood Alice. It won’t keep still. No wonder Damien Dipstick got a real live dead one to stick in his poxy tank. This drawing business is a bastard to nail.’

  ‘That’s because your approach is all wrong,’ she said, chucking me the joint. ‘You got to be the fish, feel its essence. Close your eyes Al, float in liquid gardens. You know who said that?’

  I knew who said that. I used to have mum’s original album with all the naked birds on the cover, the one he hated. I took a deep drag. Jesus Christ.

  I picked the chainsaw up. It was a good size, not too heavy, not too light, one you could swing around regardless without having to go on anabolic steroids for a month previous. The blade was greased up, the teeth wicked and shiny looking, a bit like a shark’s teeth themselves. A bit like Toblerone too. That would be something. A chain saw made out of chocolate. Not Toblerone though. Something dark, no honey or bits of nut to get stuck between your teeth.
One more blast and I pulled on the starting handle. First time. Put-put-put, a little two stroke doing its thing. It’s deceptive that, because up to this point, your average chainsaw engine sounds just that, ordinary, average. Nothing mindless butchery about it at all. Then you press the trigger.

  The saw lurched in my hand, like Monty used to do on a walk when he saw a pram. The blade belted round, screaming for a limb to chop off. I came up firm, straddled the sleeper, legs akimbo. Pinocchio didn’t know what he was in for. I looked over. Mrs B was rolling another.

  ‘Liquid gardens,’ she said again. ‘Float in them.’

  I brought the blade to the wood, half way down the right hand corner, where the head was going to be, then dug the blade in, trying to make it go like a wave across the back. It was funny but as soon as the blade bit, I could feel the power pumping through, running up my arms into the rest of me. I was there. I didn’t know what, and I didn’t know how, but I was there, ready to rip. Back in prison with Miss Prosser and Bernie the screw standing in for the Burgers of Ghent wasn’t in the same league. There was no freedom to it there, everything bound up in the rulebook. Here there was nothing, nothing but me and the fish and the blade in between. I came back to the front, lopping off the top of her head some more, then jumped to the left and tore into the other side. It was raw and all angles, but you know what, it looked a bit like a head already, kind of thin and flat at the front, flowing into the body. I attacked the flanks next, thick slices of wood falling off like I was shearing a sheep, remembering to leave bits sticking out for the fins, then carved the first cut of vertical at the back where the tail would be. Back and forth I went, dancing round it, whittling and sculpting like there was no tomorrow. That twerp Hirst didn’t know what he was missing, using all them assistants to do his donkey work. I mean where’s the fun in that? This, this was great. No wonder Miss Prosser used to get all red in the face talking about the artistic process and the synchronous marriage between mental and physical intensity. It got everything going.

  Half way through Mrs B handed another one of her homemade hand grenades and a cup of builders’ tea, three sugars. How she got in I don’t know. Perhaps she climbed the fence. Perhaps she flew. Could be ‘cause that’s what I was doing. That’s the thing see, once you’re in there, you’re away with the fairies, big time. Filling up with more oil, changing the blade, going for a Jimmy Riddle, none of it matters, you’re still flying on clouds six, seven, eight and nine. Queer that. At some point Michaela opened the back door to see what was going on, but she wasn’t wearing the yellow necessary, so I didn’t take much notice, and even if she had been, I don’t know if I would have bothered. I was somewhere else then. No matter my arms were shaking like mum’s lemonade jelly, no matter the sun was burning the skin off my back, I was merciless, single-minded, stalking my wooden fish.

  And then I was done. I wiped the dust from me eyes, took a pace back.

  ‘Well?’ I said. ‘What do you think Damien would make of it?’

  She didn’t answer for a bit. It didn’t look like Torvill, it didn’t look like Dean. I wasn’t even sure it looked like a fish. More like a badly shaved beaver with height issues. But it had something, like it was going to swerve and have a go at something.

  ‘Do you think I should shove some holes in it? Soften him up a bit.’ She shook her head.

  ‘It’s yours, Al. Not Henry’s. Not Damien’s. Yours. No one else’s.’ She passed me her latest incendiary.

  ‘We’ll have to paint it next,’ I said. ‘It will look more like a koi then, a koi with attitude. I’ll have a quick go at his mouth with the axe first. Put a bit more botox in the lips.’

  ‘Not until you deal with this.’ She patted her stomach. ‘I got the munchies.’

  I knew how she felt. I was bug-eyed for something tasty too.

  ‘I got the very thing.’

  I got up, went inside. My legs felt all funny, like I was walking uphill on a rowing boat. Chain sawing must have done that. I knew I shouldn’t but I did it anyway, went straight to the freezer, pulled out one of Carol’s giant Toblerones, tore off the wrapping. It was quite heavy in the hand, like a large spanner is. You could do a lot of damage with a chocolate bar like that.

  I went back outside, laid it on the table, a bottle of vodka, two shot glasses alongside. Mrs B put her fingers to her mouth. It wasn’t what she was expecting at all.

  ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ She licked her lips.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that big. What’s it called?’

  ‘Toblerone.’

  ‘I mean its pet name. A thing like that should have a name of its own.’ I nodded. I didn’t expect it to, but it made a kind of sense.

  ‘Tonto,’ I said. ‘It’s called Tonto and I’ve been saving it just for you.’

  ‘Al!’ She gave me a prod.

  ‘It’s true. Who else am I going to give it to? Mrs Rump? She’d probably have it arrested. Go on, give Tonto a nibble.’

  She picked it up, one bony hand on the jagged shaft, the other wrapped around the end. I could see the tip digging into the palm of her hand.

  ‘He’s very cold,’ she complained.

  ‘Well warm him up a bit then.’

  She shut her eyes, tried to break it off. It wasn’t going easy.

  ‘I can’t Al. He’s frozen solid.’ She banged it a couple of times on the table. Nothing happened.

  ‘Here,’ I said. ‘This will cut him down to size.’

  I handed her the axe. She tested the blade with her finger, then did a few practice chops, like a golfer preparing for a swing. Then, all of a sudden she flung her arm back, crying out like I’d poked her hard in the stomach. I don’t know what it was. Perhaps the handle was a bit greasy, perhaps trying to break it in two had loosed her grip, whatever, the handle flew off behind her, somersaulting in the air like Hiawatha’s party trick, through the conservatory windows behind us, smack into my shark, catching him right between the eyes. I mean it was brilliant. One moment he was about as fierce as a teddy bear waiting for his bedtime cocoa, the next he’d been brought right back to the killing zone, those mean little eyes of his gone cross eyed, staring at the handle sticking over his murderous snout. Talk about spatial awareness. This bastard had just had his awareness chopped straight into his brain.

  Alice made to get it back but I pushed her back down. I wasn’t having her spoiling it.

  ‘There’s only one thing for it. Do you mind?’

  I lifted her little fez hat off her head, laid it on the ground, under the lip of the table. I fired up the chain saw and brought it over. Tonto was shaking.

  ‘Hold him still Alice, and mind your fingers. We’re going to do a bit of scalping.’ Alice took a shot of eighty proof and pushed the first segment over the edge. I pressed the trigger, brought the blade to bear, watched Tonto drop piece by piece down into Mrs B’s hat. No wonder those women used to sit by the guillotine having a knit and a natter. It was dead satisfying, cutting him down to size like that, the certainty of it. Fifty seconds and we’d done him. He wouldn’t be giving the Lone Ranger any more lip.

  I sat the hat on the table. We chomped through a couple of wedges. They were thawing out fast. After a while I brought out the paint brushes and the cans of red and white paint. Alice drew the patterns and I filled them in. Another hour and a half and we’d finished. My first proper effort. He didn’t look like a beaver any more, more like a fish with a weight problem, but koi can get like that, if they eat too much or don’t have a enough pond to swim about in, and let’s face it, this one hadn’t done any swimming at all.

  ‘How much do you think this one will go for,’ I asked Mrs B. She put her head to one side.

  ‘You don’t want to sell the first ones Al, not right away, not when you’re trying out techniques, exploring the boundaries of perception. You want to hang on to them, because later on, as your work becomes more widely known, they’ll become collector’s items, worth
a lot more.’

  She sat back. We watched the sun go down.

  Chunks of Toblerone, shots of Stolichnaya, the occasional puff?

  It’s not a bad life, being an artist.

  9

  I got breakfast in for Carol, a spot of lunch too, but she didn’t show. A bit thoughtless I thought, considering. I was all for her having a good time with her mates she hadn’t seen for twelve years, but it wouldn’t have taken much to lift up the phone and let me know what was going on. She’d never done it when she was living here, but that was exactly my point. She should be showing some appreciation, trying like I was, to mend fences, put the past behind us. We was blood, whatever she thought.

  Michaela was making herself scarce too. Perhaps she was waiting for the weather to turn, but I’d kind of expected to see her hoofing up that path in the yellow oilskin ready for the fray. She wanted to as much as me, I was sure of it, and yet here she was, keeping me hanging on. Still, it’s what women do isn’t it, all except old Poke Nose. She didn’t let you down. She must have been quite something when she was younger. She was quite something now.

  That’s not to say I wasn’t busy. First thing I went to the garage, fished out the two cold boxes we had in the loft. Audrey had bought them for our holiday with Robin and Carol up in the Lake District, for when we went on picnics, but we never had any picnics, so we never used them, not then, and not afterwards. We weren’t really a picnic couple, Audrey and me. They were both the same size, both white, though one had a red lid and one had a blue. I thought the red would be more suitable to carry Rump’s fish from his pond to here, suit her colouring. Besides, the blue reminded me of Torvill, and she wouldn’t have approved of what I was doing, removing one of her kind from her home. I gave the box a thorough washing, then filled it with water and dropped the sterilising tablets in. I might be going to steal his fish, but she wasn’t going to suffer, not if I could help it.

  Next I had to drive over to Dorchester, to see my lawyer, Mr Pritchard. Apparently the Compensation Board were having second thoughts about my money. There was the matter of Mr Singh’s curry paste, the stuff I’d rubbed over poor old Jacko’s face, when I thought it was he who’d killed Torvill and Dean and not Audrey. Easy mistake at the time, though unfortunately it had meant Jacko had lost the use of his taste buds and could only see out of his right eye. Anyway, I’d been done for that as well, the sentence running concurrently with the murder rap. Three years I got for that, which meant I’d only been in prison a year longer than I should. They were now offering me ten grand, the cheapskates. Ten, for what I’d been through! Ten wouldn’t even cover the cheque for Alice Blackstock’s Citroën. I told Pritchard twenty-five, nothing less, left not in the best of moods.