The Lively Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  “I was wondering where the little bastard had got to,” said Mr Ambrose. “Now that’s better. You sit quiet, Lydia, or I’ll pull one of his ears off. Now, listen to this. You go to the police after, you make any complaint, and my friends will get to him. I’ve got one particular young friend who is very interested in teaching little boys a bit of a lesson. You get it? Where’d you find these pans. They’re trash.”

  Lydia was particularly proud of her cooking pans because none had cost more than tenpence. She’d picked them up over the years off junk stalls, and even out of skips. She’d straightened dents, found lids that fitted, rivetted handles firm, scoured all shiny. They were part of her personality, far more cherished than any row of matching copper-bottomed pans at eight quid a go could have been. Mr Ambrose snatched one off the shelf, twisted its handle free, bent one side inwards and crumpled the rest together almost as though it had been foil. Think, Lydia muttered to herself. Think. She felt Dickie stir in her arms as the catatonic tension of fear became the willed tension before action. Mr Ambrose pulled the saucepan shelf off the wall—with something of an effort, Lydia was glad to see, because she’d fixed it.

  “Pretend to be a bit frightened,” she whispered to Dickie under the cover of the clattering pans. “Don’t move till I tell you.” No other useful thought would come. She reminded herself that this was a demonstration only, and the sensible thing was to appear to be impressed by it, otherwise he would merely escalate the violence. He kicked a lid across the room, snapped a couple of plastic plates in two, then paused, looking round the room, faintly baffled. He pulled out the sink drawer and tipped its contents on the floor.

  “Trash,” he said, sounding now disappointed as well as disgusted.

  Suddenly Lydia saw his problem. His technique depended on material possessions. The poorest family, living in the lousiest basement, still own things that they value, the half-paid-up telly, the wedding album, Gran’s basket of china fruit. You make a token mess, smash a few worthless objects to prove your ruthlessness, then you pick up this treasure, this particular central icon which will make your victim scream “Not that!” But the Timmses had no icons. There were no material hostages.

  “Trash” muttered Mr Ambrose again. He stood in the middle of the room, moving his lower lip up over his upper lip and then sucking it down again. Lydia was just wondering why there had been no mess of this kind in Mrs Newbury’s room when he suddenly stirred.

  “Come here, you little bastard,” he said.

  “Don’t move, Dickie,” said Lydia, holding him tight, but beginning to wriggle herself sideways so that she could spring free. “Come here, I told you,” said Mr Ambrose.

  “If you touch him you’ll get at least six years,” said Lydia. “Leaving the country next week,” said Mr Ambrose. “You won’t have woken up. Come here, bastard.”

  Lydia twisted, spilling Dickie into the recesses of the chair, and half rose, shunting the chair back as she did so. Mr Ambrose moved slowly this time, smiling. This was what he had been manoeuvring for, a situation where she should attack him and he could punish her, slowly. Her whole object was to see that it happened in such a way that Dickie had a chance to escape. She didn’t notice the door opening.

  “Can I help?” said Paul. “I heard your SOS, Dickie.”

  Mr Ambrose stood still and glanced over his shoulder.

  “Out,” he said.

  Lydia snatched Dickie out of the chair and dragged him behind it. Paul raised his eyebrows at her.

  “Please could you go and telephone …” she began.

  Mr Ambrose moved, springing at Paul like a cat at a bird. As he did so his right hand came flailing round, the rings on it glistening. Lydia seemed to see a collision of bodies but couldn’t interpret it because it happened so fast, and because she was trying to work round, taking with her Dickie and the slithery barricade of the chair, to where her kitchen knives hung on their magnetic rack. The house shook with a deep quiver, like the thud of a bomb. But Paul was on his feet, apparently untouched, backing into the middle of the room. Mr Ambrose was turning in the doorway, shaking his head. Somehow he had managed to miss Paul and had cannoned into the door-post.

  “Stay in the corner,” said Paul. “I’ll deal with this.”

  Lydia did as she was told, taking the chair with her, poised to ram it into Mr Ambrose’s path if she got the chance. Mr Ambrose stood by the door as if planning his tactics. With a swiping gesture he swept the telephone off its shelf, ripping the cord from the wall. The snap of the trap seemed only part of the larger racket. He tossed the machine, uncaring, into a corner then began to move slowly, legs well apart, towards Paul. Paul backed away a bit more, watching him. Lydia sidled with Dickie and the chair towards the inner wall.

  “Stay where you are,” said Mr Ambrose. “Stay where you are.”

  His deep, gentle voice had acquired a sing-song note, almost like that of a medium in trance.

  He feinted a couple of attacks, then moved in with a rush, but this time his left-handed swipe was also a feint; as Paul ducked from it he seemed to duck into Mr Ambrose’s other fist as it came looping round in a low arc; but there was no smack of impact as Paul continued his movement and swivelled it to his left while his right arm, flung out at first seemingly for balance, blurred into a whip-like slash. By this time his whole body was close to the floor, twisting so that its energies all culminated in the karate blow that caught Mr Ambrose behind his right knee as Paul flowed away to his own left. The movement was dance-like, formal, and as Paul turned he struck a pose which, though poised and springy, had an artificial and theatrical quality like that of a performer finishing a turn in a ritual dance. And the two thin streaks of blood where the rings had grazed his cheek gave his white face the look of a dancer’s mask.

  Mr Ambrose had grunted when his blow had missed and the grunt had become a sort of snort when Paul hit his knee. He almost tumbled, clutched at the sink for support, then turned.

  “You’re thick, punk.” said Paul.

  Mr Ambrose lurched towards him, but as soon as he put his weight on his right leg he halted. His head swung away from Paul and glared for an instant at Lydia. Then he was rushing towards her, clumsy now, but still very fast.

  “Door, Dickie!” she shouted. “Run!”

  She threw all her weight on the chair, whooshing it forwards. Mr Ambrose side-stepped but was no longer nimble enough. The seat of the chair caught him just below knee-level and he tumbled thuddingly forwards, grabbing as he fell. Her own impetus behind the chair carried her on into his grasp. The huge hand closed on her forearm, locked, twisted. She shouted with pain and tried to drag away, but was forced to her knees beside the chair, with her shoulder-joint also twanging with agony. The chair jolted under an impact. Something gave in her shoulder, but then she was loose. She stood up, sobbing and blind with pain, shaking her head.

  By the time the mists cleared the two men were locked together on the ground with Mr Ambrose underneath and gripping Paul round the shoulders with one arm. Lydia checked that Dickie was clear of the room, then ran for the knife-holder.

  Her best big knife was a French one, with a dull triangular blade and a black wood handle. As she snatched it down she knew it was no use. She couldn’t do it. She could not, even in hot blood, choose her spot on the brown flesh and drive the sharp blade home. She looked over her shoulder, hoping that Paul was winning, but he wasn’t. Mr Ambrose was still on his back. Paul had some sort of lock on his legs and had forced his left arm into a spread-eagled position. Mr Ambrose’s turban had fallen off, revealing a bald scalp puckered with scars from some old beating-up. Without it he seemed not mysterious at all, no longer the swami of violence, not even Indian, just a thug.

  Now the whole fight was concentrated into small, shuddering spasms as Mr Ambrose strove to hug Paul’s body down towards his own, which would break Paul’s leverage on the arm he held. Paul needed
his own left arm to force himself back against the gross muscles, but he was losing the fight. Both of them were gasping for breath. A grunt from Mr Ambrose broke the spell.

  Lydia dropped the knife and snatched from the shelf beside the holder her blue flour-bin. She took the lid off, ran forward and tilted the flour over Mr Ambrose’s face. There were five pounds of wholemeal flour in the bin. She poured carefully, making sure the first cataract filled the open mouth, then concentrating on the nose and eyes as the big head threshed from side to side. Mr Ambrose began to choke, sending up white puffs of fine flour like the momentary eruptions of a volcano. When his mouth opened to choke Lydia poured more flour into it.

  “Stand clear,” snapped Paul.

  She backed off. He convulsed and broke free, but instantly darted in again, seized a flapping wrist and with a violent jerk flipped Mr Ambrose clean over onto his face. As he leaped in to straddle the back his hands closed round the blubber-protected neck, felt, shifted, tightened. A thumb sank deep but precisely into a fold below the lobeless ear. Mr Ambrose bucked once, feebly, then lay still. Paul seemed to be counting to himself. At last he relaxed his grip and stood up. The blood from the two gashes in his cheek had streamed down his face and smeared his jersey.

  “Have you killed him?” whispered Lydia.

  Paul shook his head. He laughed in excited triumph.

  “Perhaps you have,” he said. “That’s something they never taught us.”

  He sounded even faintly hysterical.

  “Are you all right?” said Lydia. “Your cheek’s a mess. Here’s a clean cloth. I’d better go up to your room and ring the police. He bust my phone.”

  Paul stood, panting still with triumph. Suddenly he seemed to collect himself. He took the cloth from her and dabbed musingly at his cheek, thinking hard.

  “Yes,” he said. “I don’t think you can keep the police out. That would look very strange. Got any cord? He’ll come to in a minute.”

  Lydia always kept spare sash-cord. They used some to lash Mr Ambrose’s arms and legs and then to strain the two sets of lashings together. While they were at it Mr Ambrose gasped and choked, then vomited hugely over the carpet. Paul dragged him clear of the mess.

  “He’ll do,” he said. “Here’s my key.”

  Dickie was waiting by the door of the hall, holding Mrs Pelletier’s hand. They had the front door open and seemed ready to make a dash for it. Mrs Pumice was peering down from the half landing with Trevor in her arms.

  “It’s all right,” said Lydia. “We’ve managed to get him quiet. Thank you for looking after Dickie.”

  “He’s been looking after me, more like,” said Mrs Pelletier and burst into tears.

  “Come up to Mrs Pumice’s,” said Lydia. “She’ll make us all a cup of tea while I phone for the police. You come with me, Dickie.”

  She shook the two women off outside Mrs Pumice’s rooms and went on up with Dickie to Paul’s. She hadn’t been in since he’d taken it, but she found it almost unaltered. Paul had imported no furniture of his own apart from a big hi-fi system. The ghost of Mrs Newbury seemed still to breathe from the room despite the new wallpaper. Lydia was astonished to find that she couldn’t lift the phone to her mouth with her right hand, and that made her realise for the first time how much her shoulder was still hurting, and that in turn made her furious with the police at Sirdar Road when they were slow at grasping that there was any real urgency in the situation. At last the desk sergeant said “All right, madam, we’ll have a couple of men round there as soon as poss.”

  “At once,” snapped Lydia.

  “Oh, very good, madam.”

  When she put the phone down she saw Dickie standing by the hi-fi control panel.

  “Don’t touch, darling.”

  “But it’s supposed to be going. Always. I think it’s this one.” He jabbed at one of the buttons.

  “Get me a doctor,” said Mr Ambrose’s voice, thick and grunting. “I got that stuff in my lungs.”

  “Bother, that’s the wrong one,” said Dickie, pressing another. “That’s right. They’re going round now.”

  The tapes revolved in silence. Lydia stared at them, half hypnotised, half in a daze with the pain in her shoulder. She sat on the edge of Paul’s bed and pulled Dickie against her with her good arm. Something was wrong, she felt. Paul had come down because of Dickie’s SOS, in Morse. Her brain didn’t begin to clear until she remembered that other set of tapes revolving in the musty dark beneath her own floorboards. In the silence a bell rang. She got up and pressed the stop button.

  “Come on, darling,” she said. “That’s probably the police.” It felt very strange to be running down stairs actually to welcome them.

  Chapter 26

  The offices of Get Notted were decorated in an amazing green and purple swirling design and smelt of dust, Nescafe and pot. A very dirty girl in the outer office was talking to a smart young negro but stopped the moment Lydia came in and stared at her as though she were an enemy.

  “I think Tony’s expecting me,” Lydia said.

  “Through there,” said the girl, pointing.

  Tony was in a tiny room which might have been a lavatory when the house had been a house instead of a bit of urban blight. He was typing very fast with two fingers.

  “G-got something?” he said. “I’m s-sorry. It was m-much nastier than I expected. What happened?”

  “He dislocated my shoulder,” said Lydia. “It’ll be all right. I don’t think I’ve got anything much use to you, but I want to listen to something and I can’t at home. I hope you’ve got a spare machine.”

  She took the tape canister out of her sling and put it on the table.

  “Can d-do,” said Tony. “What happened, though?”

  “I’ll tell you after I’ve heard this. It depends what’s on it. It didn’t really start until after most of the talking was over, but I’ve made some notes about that. OK?”

  While Tony fetched and fixed the machine she sat brooding, going over for the tenth time every inch of the living-room in her night-and-day search for the hidden microphone. No new thought came, only the old anger and disgust making it impossible for her to think coherently. In her mind the microphone had become another fungus, creeping into her privacy, rotting her love and trust.

  Sometimes, if she closed her eyes and tried to relax, she saw against her eyelids a mycelium web of intricate wiring, fruiting all over with electronic sporophores. With another part of her mind she began to be afraid that the obsession might herald a breakdown of her own hitherto solid personality.

  At last Tony pressed the “Play” button. There was a crash, then another as the telephone hit the wall. A short, shuffling pause. “Stay where you are,” sang Mr Ambrose’s voice, trance-toned. “Stay where you are.”

  “That’s him,” said Lydia.

  “Ps-psychopath?” asked Tony.

  The first flurry of thuds and grunts took less than fifteen seconds. Paul jeered briefly. More thuds. Lydia screamed to Dickie to run and now heard, for the first time, his footsteps going, but drowned suddenly by her own yelp of pain. Then more uninterpretable drummings and suddenly, and strangely ghastly even if you didn’t know what it was, the sound of Mr Ambrose choking on flour. Proper voices began again, hers and Paul’s, both almost in whispers. Then came Paul’s Rupert-of-Hentzau laugh.

  “That’s something they never taught us.”

  “Who t-taught who?” said Tony.

  “I don’t know. Shh. We’re coming to where I left the room … That’s tying him up…and that’s him being sick … Now!”

  But for a long time there was a silence, broken only by a few scratchings. Paul said, “Lie still, Jones,” a couple of times.

  “How did he know the n-name was Jones?” said Tony.

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  She waited, dreary with disap
pointment.

  “Get me a doctor,” said Mr Ambrose’s voice, thick and grunting. “I got that stuff in my lungs.”

  “Nothing the prison doctor can’t cope with,” said Paul’s voice. “Now listen to me, Jones. You’re going to go quietly and you’re going to plead guilty.”

  “Bollocks to you, pansy-face,” said Mr Ambrose.

  “You are a very stupid man, Jones. Have you not asked yourself how there comes to be a man in this house able to deal with you?”

  “I’d have got you if that bitch hadn’t …”

  “Shut up and listen. You belong to a little organisation which controls a few streets, and you think you’re a king. Now you’ve run into a much bigger organisation. Much bigger. When your bosses learn about it, do you know what they’ll do? They’ll pull out. They’ll know they can’t fight us. They’ll tear your guts out if you try.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Jones, we have only recently become aware of you. Listen, you fool. We’ve had nine days since we learnt of your existence, and already my friends have photocopies of every file in that back room above the Organic Traveller Restaurant. You see? You understand what that means?”

  Even through the scourer tin the grunt was audibly one of surprise.

  “We know what happened at the Durley Bridge murder, Jones.” Silence.