The meanest Flood

by Baker, John

  Sam cut him some bread and sausage and cheese. Rachid took the bread and refused the sausage and cheese. He pointed at a pear and Sam handed it over and offered an orange.

  ‘My friend Omed has been sick,’ Rachid said. ‘But now he needs to eat and drink. I will take this for him and return for my own hunger? I can take the bottle?’

  Sam gave him the opened bottle. ‘Bring it back,’ he said. ‘These kids are gonna need some as well.’

  The Bolivian boy’s brother and sister came eventually, and later still his mother and father. Between them they cleaned Sam out of everything, a latter-day Jesus feeding the faithful with metaphoric loaves and fishes.

  They landed in Immingham, stiff from lack of exercise and anxious they would be discovered and taken away by the police. When the truck began to move and then again waited in line the occupants of the container held their breath. Sam had turned his torch off but he had a mental image of his fellow travellers sitting to attention, their ears cocked for any telltale sounds, the children covering their mouths with their hands in case unintentional utterance escaped them.

  The truck stopped and started again several times but eventually it hit open road. Must have been running alongside the river for a while before crossing the Humber bridge and taking off in a north-easterly direction. Half an hour later it slowed and took a turning, twisting route for another fifteen minutes.

  They came to a stop and listened to the sound of the driver’s door reverberating through the container. Then there was silence. The bastard’s gone into a truck stop, Sam thought. He imagined the guy tucking into a bacon sandwich, animal fat mixing with the motor oil and sweat on his face.

  But the rod mechanisms that locked the rear entrance to the container began to move. The back door was slowly lifted and daylight flooded in. The children and some of the adults cried out as the light hit their eyes. Sam kept his closed.

  The trucker pulled down the aluminium ladder and banged one of the rungs with a large wrench. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we haven’t got all day. Everybody out.’

  The people inside got to their feet, putting their belongings together, but they weren’t fast enough for him. He shinned up the ladder and grabbed hold of the arms of Rachid and Omed. ‘Move it. Let’s go.’ He pushed them towards the entrance and turned his attention to the Bolivian children. The youngest one screamed as he lifted her off her feet, arched her back and shouted for her mother in Spanish.

  Sam was on his feet and pulling the guy by the shoulder. ‘Put the kid down,’ he said.

  ‘I want you all out now,’ the trucker said, striding towards the entrance with the child under his arm.

  Sam grabbed him by what was left of his hair. ‘Put the kid down,’ he said.

  The guy dropped the small girl and turned towards Sam. He swung the large metal wrench at Sam’s head. He saw it coming from the moment the idea occurred to the guy and easily blocked it. He took the man’s wrist and twisted until the wrench fell to the floor. Rachid, who had come back to help, picked up the wrench and slammed it into the trucker’s spine. The trucker went down on his knees and closed his eyes, looked like he was praying for help but there was no one around who loved him enough to get involved.

  The occupants of the container slowly filed past the man and climbed down the ladder. They looked around them at England’s green and pleasant land, a view distorted by a fine rain and a sky the colour and texture of purple mould. Sam searched for his chariot of fire but it must’ve been parked somewhere else.

  They were in a passing place on high ground with no obvious landmarks. A twisting B-road with chalky fields and a ditch to either side, a couple of crows, a high tree and a biting wind that sent the rain into a forty-five-degree angle.

  Omed had climbed into the trucker’s cab and was now jumping back down again. ‘I have our money,’ he said, a wide smile on his face. ‘Which we paid him.’ The Bolivian man took back the money he had paid the trucker.

  Sam wondered about the ethics of taking the money. He turned himself inside out anguishing about it for a long, long second or two. But he was obviously in a minority so he went with the vote and pocketed the grand. ‘Things I do for democracy,’ he said under his breath.

  They dithered and parleyed for a few minutes and finally decided to go back the way they had come, a downhill route. They were a colourful procession for a tiny rural road in Yorkshire, turbans and woven bags, small mirrors sewn into the cloth of the children’s dresses, quilted and felted jackets and smiles of relief that their journey was over. Sam taught the children single English words as they followed the road. ‘Hedge,’ he said, pointing. ‘Tarmac, rain, hills.’ He said, ‘When you’re rich and famous, don’t forget who taught you the language.’ After a couple of miles they came to a crossroads. To the right was a sign to Market Weighton and York and to the left: a sign to Howden and Goole. ‘Where you all heading?’ Sam asked.

  ‘We have an uncle in Doncaster,’ Omed said. ‘Manchester,’ the Bolivian father said and repeated it, enunciating all three syllables, ‘Manchester.’

  ‘You’ve got a long walk,’ Sam told them.

  ‘No, we’re going to Manchester.’

  They took the left fork and Sam stood and watched them trooping off down the lane. The Bolivian kids waved until they disappeared around a bend. Sam turned and looked down on the Vale of York. The rain stopped falling and he could see the Minster in the distance. Between it and him the rivers had swollen and swept away their banks so the landscape was pitted with fields of glistening water, like tiny mirrors planted on the land.

  Angeles would be waiting for him, there in York. The killer as well. There was more violence and bloodshed in store. That was something you could always count on. But Angeles was something else. With her in his world Sam thought he could manage the violence and bloodshed. He didn’t know how he’d managed to land her, even less how he’d managed to hang on to her for so long. He couldn’t begin to think of a world without her.

  As he stepped out and down the steep hill towards Market Weighton a village bobby came by on a bicycle. ‘Morning.’

  ‘Morning,’ Sam said. And he smiled to himself as he thought what would happen when the cop caught up with the group of asylum-seekers.

  36

  The house was old but in good condition. The gables were freshly pointed and the lacquered tiles on the roof glistened in the sunshine. Marie had missed it on the first pass and drove to within a mile of Selby before turning around and finding it behind its hedge of conifers.

  The building had no name but a small plaque on the wall declared it to be the abode of J. C. Nott. Marie lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall on to the oak door. The place sounded hollow and evoked images from countless horror films. There would be nothing within apart from the odd cobweb and a door creaking in the draught from a broken window. There would be the barely audible creepy music to the beat of a pounding heart and the presence of something with enough attitude to make your hair stand on end.

  Marie shook the thought out of her head, smoothed down her hair and listened to the distant footfalls in the house, smiling briefly at her own conjectures as the sounds inside the building drew closer.

  He was young and down at heel, like a raggle-taggle gypsy or a moth-eaten angel. A slight man with tortoiseshell spectacles and spectacular hair-loss. It was as if an imaginary line had been drawn across his head from ear to ear and all hair-growth forward of that line had been banned while behind the line it was a free-for-all. Surprisingly, this didn’t make him unattractive. It added humour to his countenance but once you were over that, which in Marie’s case was soon, you had to come to terms with fine features, piercing blue eyes and a masculine jaw-line pitted with a day’s growth of blue beard.

  She waited long enough for him to be assaulted by another bout of uncertainty.

  ‘Mr Nott?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Marie Dickens. I want to talk to you about your work. Can I com
e in?’

  J. C. Nott shrugged and moved aside to let Marie pass. ‘First room on your right,’ he said.

  It was a high-ceilinged room with a desk and a battered grey-metal filing cabinet. There were modernist paintings on each wall and a stand-alone art-nouveau lamp. On the desk was the head of a woman cast in some form of plastic. The head had no eyes and a hair-style reminiscent of Princess Anne.

  ‘Are you a journalist?’ the man asked.

  ‘No, I’m a private detective.’ Marie indicated a chair. ‘May I?’

  ‘Please.’ He watched her sit then perched himself on the edge of his desk. ‘I’m not sure how I can help you.’

  ‘What is it you do, Mr Nott? How do you make your living?’

  ‘I’m an artist,’ he said. ‘I make models.’

  ‘And your customers?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Your customers. Who are they?’

  He shrugged. ‘A cross-section. I have customers all over the country, many overseas.’

  ‘Would you describe them as collectors?’

  ‘Some of them are collectors, yes. What’s this about?’ Marie glanced at the head on the desk again. It wasn’t comparable to the other models she’d seen. In spite of the lack of eyes there was something compelling about it and this compulsion wasn’t connected with any lifelike quality. The head was elongated, reminiscent of sculptures by Modigliani and Brancusi with their linear features borrowed from African and Oceanic tribal masks. It was undoubtedly modern and yet encompassed medieval carving and classical sculpture. She took in J. C. Nott’s long fingers and wondered if it was possible to combine art with the production processes she’d seen in Harrogate and Huddersfield.

  ‘If I wanted a model, Mr Nott, something that I could take to bed with me at night, would you be interested in the commission?’

  He barely hesitated. ‘I might, if I found it interesting. But you’re being hypothetical, aren’t you? You don’t want to commission my work, you want me to answer your questions.’

  ‘Suppose I wanted a model which had real hair, would that be possible?’

  ‘I can buy it by the hank.’

  ‘And pubic hair, can you buy that, too?’

  The man smiled, one of those dawning smiles of recognition. He had good teeth, Marie noted, and reflexively drew her tongue over her own teeth. There was a moment in the space of his smile when she thought she knew him. This was a man who made dolls for other men to take to their beds, but he had no need of a doll for himself. There was a quiet confidence about him. He knew the power in his hands, in his long fingers, and that was enough for him. Everything else would follow in its course.

  ‘We’re talking blonde pubic hair, aren’t we?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I was coming to. Was it so obvious?’

  ‘I made a model for a local customer,’ he said. ‘The stipulation was for blonde pubic hair from an organic source.’

  ‘And you found it?’

  ‘Eventually, yes. There’s a couple of salons which collect pubic hair for merkins. I was able to buy the raw product.’

  ‘Merkins?’

  That smile again. ‘A merkin is a pubic hair wig. Some people don’t have pubic hair for one reason or another, they don’t grow it, or they lose it and they’re embarrassed. So they wear a merkin. Used to be popular in the Middle Ages when there were plenty of lice around. The ladies would shave their hair off to get rid of the infestation, then they’d need a merkin for those special occasions. Nowadays it’s more of a fetish.’

  ‘And your customer’s name?’

  ‘Is a trade secret, Ms Dickens. If I gave out information like that I wouldn’t have any customers at all.’

  Marie crossed her legs. She leaned forward and said, ‘A blonde pubic hair with some kind of plastic residue on the stem was found at the scene of a murder.’

  He tried to do the smile again but this time it wouldn’t come. ‘That doesn’t make it the same hair I used,’ he said. ‘It could have come from anywhere.’

  Marie didn’t reply. She watched him.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘My customer wouldn’t be involved in anything like that. I know him. He was here last week.’

  ‘I’m not here to hang anyone,’ Marie said. ‘If the guy’s innocent I’ll look elsewhere. But I’ve got to check it out, you can understand that?’

  ‘There’s the Data Protection Act,’ J. C. Nott said. ‘I’m not allowed to give out personal information. It’s against the law.’

  ‘I’ll have to go to the police, then.’ Marie got to her feet.

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Yes, we’re talking about a murder here.’

  The man stood, then he sat again and played with a ring on his middle finger. He thought about the police.

  ‘Give me a break,’ Marie said quietly. ‘Just a clue. He’ll never know the info came from you.’

  J. C. Nott closed his eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Diamond Danny Mann,’ he said. ‘But he’s not a murderer, he’s a magician.’

  Back at Celia’s house on Lord Mayor’s Walk, Marie sat in the window of the spare room and watched the students from St John’s College spilling on to the pavement. The telephone was ringing downstairs but she didn’t answer it.

  Working a case was often like this, you gathered together small scraps of information, none of them seemingly important. Time moved slowly and it felt like you were wading about in treacle, getting nowhere. But once it started to crack all the pieces fell into place. One single pubic hair had changed the whole course of the investigation. And because of that seemingly insignificant item the veil which had hidden the culprit was now lifted.

  The braid on the man’s trousers, which Katherine Turner’s neighbour had seen, suddenly made sense. Full evening wear was a uniform to a professional magician. She made a note to check where Danny Mann had been working on the night of Katherine’s death.

  The telephone rang again. Marie tried to ignore it, wanting no interruption to her thoughts. But the caller was insistent, not willing to give up. She left the spare room and walked along the top landing. On the wall of the staircase was an antique picture of Jesus talking to some children. Marie went down the stairs and picked up the telephone.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Marie? It’s Janet, in Oslo.’

  ‘Hi, Janet. How are you? And how’s the patient?’

  ‘We’re fine. Me and Echo’re fine, and Geordie’s on the mend. We’re coming home tomorrow.’

  ‘So soon? Is Geordie OK to travel?’

  ‘They’re sending a nurse with us. He’ll be all right. But he wants to know about the boss, have you heard anything?’

  Marie shook her head. ‘Nothing. I don’t know where he is. But the case is beginning to crack. Tell Geordie not to worry.’

  When Marie put the phone down it rang again before she had a chance to let go of it.

  ‘Marie? Celia?’ It was Sam’s voice.

  ‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Market Weighton. I can’t get through because of the floods. No buses.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up,’ she said. ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘What about Geordie? You heard anything?’

  ‘He’s doing fine. Coming home tomorrow.’

  ‘Good. And the case? You know who it is who’s setting me up?’

  ‘I’ve got a good lead,’ she told him. ‘You know anyone called Danny Mann? A magician?’

  Sam was silent for a moment. ‘Danny Mann?’ he said. ‘Rings a distant bell, but that’s all. It’s not a name I can put a face to.’

  ‘Keep thinking,’ Marie told him. ‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’

  37

  Marilyn was feeling good at the wheel of the magician’s car. There was the more or less constant thumping sound from the boot but she tried to filter that out as she headed for Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast.

  This was all she had wanted, to be involved with the man. To b
e a part of his life. The other men, the ones who had decided to live their lives without her, they were the losers. She wished her mother had been at home when Danny called, that Ellen could have been there when she met him, and now, while she was driving Danny’s car, Marilyn smiled. Ellen’s face would be a picture when she heard about this. There’d be no more talk of medication.

  There’d be no need for medication. Because what Marilyn’s medication was about, it was about the lack of love in her life. Her medication was a substitute for a real and proper partner, someone who wanted to share his life with her.

  ‘I need you,’ Danny had said on the phone.

  He needed her because she was his other half. He needed her because he couldn’t function as a single entity without the love of his natural partner. Perhaps he’d been a little slow in recognizing the fact, in coming around to the realization of his limitations. But he’d got there in the end. He was a man, after all, not a gender best known for self-insight.

  ‘I need you to help me with something,’ he’d said. ‘Can we meet?’

  It wouldn’t have mattered to Marilyn what it was he needed help with. It was enough that he needed her. As a woman you have to be prepared to do whatever your man desires. Marilyn wasn’t stupid, she wasn’t looking for an easy life. She fully understood that a relationship with Diamond Danny Mann or with any powerful man would mean a certain sacrifice on her part. How could it not?

  He was the man. He was the magician. She was the hand-maiden. He performed the miracles, and he was capable of performing the miracles because she was there to do his bidding. This was the way of the world, it had always been like that and it always would be. The man got the glory, the adulation, because that was what he needed, his life blood. But the woman knew that his strength, what others saw in him, was the result of her input. There was a power behind the throne, and behind the throne of the magician there was Marilyn Eccles.

  And what did it cost, this abasement? This unselfish acceptance of her role? Not a lot, really. In this instance it cost her a day at home with her mother. It meant that she had to drive Danny’s car to Whitby and wait there until the evening when they would meet back at his house in York.