by Joe McNally
I went outside. The air was warmer now, the low mist lifting. I watched the road, grey and empty.
Charmain was right. Neither of us would stand days of waiting, especially if her heroin supply ran out.
Rather than hide the fact we were here, I should have been advertising it. The sooner Stoke knew, the quicker he’d come.
I’d get my car back and leave it at the top of the towpath. It could only be a matter of time before one of Stoke’s buddies passed by. I told Charmain but her relief seemed marginal, about the same as a condemned man shows when you tell him his sentence has been brought forward.
I bought groceries in the village, and a pink track suit and yellow training shoes. The last two items were for Charmain, but by the time I got back to the boat I’d decided not to give them to her.
‘Why?’ she asked, as I stashed them in a small locker.
‘Because when Howard does come,’ I shut the clasp lock and straightened to face her, ‘I need him to think you’re being held prisoner.’
‘By you?’
‘Yes. And there’s a hell of a lot better chance of him believing it if you’re dressed just in your nightgown with no shoes.’
‘Why do you want him to think that?’
‘To protect you. So you’ll have to do your bit to convince him from the moment he comes through that door.’
She was looking nervy again. ‘What will you be doing?’ She asked.
‘I won’t be here.’
She stared at me. I went to the sink, filled the kettle again, and lit the stove. ‘Did you notice the old barge moored behind us?’ I asked. She nodded.
‘When he comes down the towpath I’ll be in there. When he gets through this door, I’ll slip out and ring the police from the lock-keeper’s cottage.’
‘What if the lock-keeper isn’t in?’
‘We’ll just have to hope he is, otherwise I’ll have to drive into the village.’
‘Then what?’
‘You convince him I kidnapped you. Tell him I’ve gone to buy some booze and that I’ll be back any time. I’ll speak to DS Cranley. He’ll make sure the police come quickly and quietly.’
I rinsed the coffee mugs. ‘When the police get here I’ll come back on board and make Howard incriminate himself loudly enough for the police to come in and get him.’
‘That’s silly.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s the best I can come up with.’
‘Howard won’t come alone, you know,’ she said.
‘We’ll have to wait and see. As long as they all come on board then I can still make the call.’
She stood, arms crossed, clutching her elbows tightly, ‘What if he doesn’t believe me?’
The kettle bubbled. I poured and stirred, ‘You’ll have to make him believe you.’ I carried the drinks over and we sat down.
She looked across at me, ‘What if he shoots you as you walk through the door?’
I sipped the coffee and shook my head, ‘He won’t, Howard will want to see me squirm, make me suffer.’ I looked at her, ‘don’t you think so?’
Despite the warmth from the fire and the hot coffee, she shivered and looked away. She knew I was right.
I locked her in, ducked through a gap in the hedgerow and set off across the field up toward the ruined farm I’d watched Greene and Skinner from. The binoculars swung from my shoulder.
Reaching the rock I’d used before, I settled down knowing I could wait days for one of Stoke’s men to come along.
Earlier that afternoon I’d gone to the lock keeper’s cottage and asked to use the phone. In the general small talk, I found that the couple who lived there had no plans over the weekend. At least there’d be a phone available when the ‘emergency’ came.
It was a fine, warm, windless evening. A tractor, orange light flashing lazily on its roof, chugged up the hill and turned off into a cornfield. The only other vehicles I’d seen after half an hour were six cars and a laundry van.
I’d been there forty minutes when I heard noises from the direction of the canal. I focused on the boat.
It was rolling heavily and unevenly in the water. Faint sounds of breaking glass or crockery reached me.
What the hell was she doing down there? No one got could have got on board without me seeing them. She had to be making all that noise on her own.
My first inclination was to run down the hill, but what would I be running into? The noise got worse. A metallic banging echoed as though she was hitting the draining board with a cooking pot. Was she trying to get out? Had a fire started?
A curtain moved. I concentrated on the window and saw her grip the curtain and tear it down. I set off half-limping, half-running toward the boat.
69
Charmain sat cross-legged on her bunk. A corner of the torn curtain lay over her shoulder, tucked under her chin, which was sunk deep on her chest. Her hair had fallen forward hiding her face. Her hands, white-knuckled, were clamped to her sides as if she were holding her ribcage in place. She was rocking to and fro making a tuneless sound somewhere between a moan and a hum, as though hoping to drown out something she didn’t want to hear.
The damage around her couldn’t have been worse if the boat had overturned. Every internal door was open; lockers, cupboards, fridge, cooker, toilet. Some of the smaller ones hung only from one hinge. All looked empty, their contents on the floor: books, magazines, towels, bedding, clothing, pictures, mirrors, twisted coat hangers, light bulbs, crockery, glasses, cutlery.
Many things were broken, bent, torn, mangled, smashed, spilled.
In the kitchen area, a mess of food lay over and among the wreckage. A slab of butter spread wide by her foot, blobs of corned beef with jelly clinging, raspberry yogurt bleeding from a cracked carton, a burst loaf, bruised apples, torn teabags, a trail of coffee grains, puddles of milk and orange juice, hundreds of loose matches, most with spent black heads, and, scattered over everything like corn-coloured snowdrops, thousands of cereal flakes.
The only object not on the floor was a plant pot on its side on the small table next to me; the contents, a short, vicious looking cactus, had been dragged out. Some of the spikes at the tip were bloodstained. I righted the pot. What was left of the soil inside bore Charmain’s scrabbling, desperate, heroin-seeking finger marks.
I went over to where she sat rocking.
Rolling back and forth with her, in the dip made by the nightgown between her open knees, was the empty heroin phial. I squatted in front of her to look up into her face.
‘Charmain, what happened? I thought you had enough to get you through?’
She didn’t answer, just kept rocking. Delicately, I reached for the phial, which had dropped into a fold between her thighs. Empty. I looked closely at the cap. It was cracked. By her side were the tattered remains of her little pink bag, the lining had been torn out. Gently, I parted her hair. A piece of the lining, sucked dry of the leaked drug, hung from her mouth like a desiccated tongue.
Whether it was shock or the beginning of withdrawal I don’t know, but I couldn’t rouse her. She was locked away, eyes still open, in her own little world. I thought of cleaning the place up then decided Stoke would be more easily convinced by our story if I left the mess.
I stayed by the window to keep watch as best I could while Charmain rocked and swayed on her bunk, hour after hour.
Come early evening she began moaning and whining.
I gripped her knees. ‘Tough it out. We’ll soon be away from here.’
She shook her head. ‘Can’t.’
‘You can.’
‘No! Get me some stuff!’
‘Charmain…’ I tried to make her look at me but she wouldn’t. I touched her chin, tried to bring it up.
‘Charmain…’ Slowly she straightened and looked at me with red, pained, pleading eyes. ‘Please…’ she moaned.
‘There isn’t any, Charmain. There’s nowhere I can get it. We’re in the middle of the countryside, it’ll soon be dark.’
She kept staring like a frightened child. ‘Just a little…’ The whine again. This was no good. I couldn’t face many more hours of this, never mind days. Somehow, I had to let Stoke know we were here. An idea came to me. I checked my watch.
‘Charmain, try to take in what I’m saying to you.’ I cupped her face in my hands. ‘Listen, concentrate. I’m going out for a while and for your own good, I’m going to lock you in. Try to stay calm and don’t call out, because I can’t come to you.’
She didn’t look up, didn’t make a sound. I squeezed her shoulders and turned, picking my way through the debris. Locking the door, I stepped onto the towpath, made for the car and headed for home. Leaving Charmain alone for a couple of hours was a gamble I had to take.
Back at the cottage, the place was cold but I couldn’t bring myself to build a fire, that would be too cheery. I sat silently under the light of a small lamp, accepting I was making the final admission to myself, knowing I was extinguishing the last dregs of hope for our relationship.
At 9.55pm, Jackie called and we spoke lovingly and I left her with the news of exactly where I was and who I was with. If she did her job as well as she had with Harle and Kruger, Stoke would soon be coming.
70
When I returned to the boat there had been no change in the pitch of Charmain’s whining. I tried to get through to her that Howard could be on his way and it was essential she stuck to the story we’d agreed. I was wasting my time. She took nothing in.
I doubted Stoke would come that night, Jackie couldn’t be that blatant about betrayal.
If he did come, I’d have real problems between Charmain and trying to rouse the lock keeper so I could use his phone. But I couldn’t take any chances, so I prepared for a night on the old barge. The only consolation was I wouldn’t be in the same room as Charmain and her moaning.
By midnight, the only life I’d seen was a fox trotting along the towpath. He’d stopped alongside Charmain’s boat, lifted a front paw and cocked his ears at the pathetic whingeing from inside. She’d kept it up non-stop for two hours. The fox trotted on out of earshot. He was lucky.
I spent an uneventful night disturbed only by the cold and Charmain’s moans.
When dawn came and Stoke hadn’t showed, the tension eased a notch and I was sorely tempted to try to get some sleep. But it was too risky.
I wanted a cup of coffee to warm me and keep me awake but I was apprehensive about going back inside the boat. There had been no noise from Charmain for over an hour. I guessed she’d fallen asleep so I didn’t want to wake her and find myself subject to another desperate pleading session.
And, Stoke might still arrive at any minute. As soon as I walked through that door, he could come coasting down the hill in his big quiet Rolls. I thought about it. I thought about the hot coffee. To hell with it, I’d make some.
Hoping not to wake Charmain I crept in quietly but she wasn’t asleep. She sat on the floor by the bunk, her knees drawn up to her chest.
As soon as she saw me, she scrambled up and stumbled forward, grabbing at my lapels, staring up into my face, her hair matted with stale sweat, her skin aspirin-white, making the rings around her bloodshot eyes look even darker. Her breath smelled bad.
‘Did you get any?’ she whined, eyes wide and wild.
I tried to ease her grip. ‘No, Charmain.’
‘Yes! You must have!’
‘I haven’t been anywhere! I’ve been in the boat behind you all night freezing to bloody death.’ I held her shoulders and turned her toward the bunk again. ‘Come on, I’ll make you a coffee.’
She tore herself away and pushed me so hard I overbalanced and fell against the table, the leg wound getting the worst of it.
She stamped once and clenched her fists and leant forward, her face inches from mine. A vein swelled in the centre of her forehead and a dozen sprung on her neck and, screaming every word at me she said, ‘I don’t want a fucking coffee! I want a fix!’
It might have been through some desire to calm her down, but I think it was mostly anger that made me stand up and slap her face. Reeling, she staggered back against the wall, tears welling in her mad pathetic eyes. Slowly, she let herself slide until she was sitting, knees up, on the floor. She stayed there, weeping quietly.
I made the coffee, brought a mugful for her and set it down by her side. ‘Black only. You spilled all the milk.’
Looking up at me, she shifted into pleading mode again. ‘Let me go…please!’
I leaned against the table. ‘Where to? Where would you go, Charmain, in that state?’
‘Roscoe’s.’
‘Why?’
‘There’ll be some stuff there, I’m sure there will. Alan could have left some, or Phil. Roscoe’s probably got some.’
‘And do you think he’ll give it to you?’
‘I’ll make him.’
‘Sure you will. How are you going to get there?’
‘Just gimme the keys, I’ll drive.’
I hunkered in front of her. ‘Charmain, you can hardly walk, never mind drive.’
With both hands, she rubbed her forehead, then her eyes. ‘I can,’ she wept, ‘I can.’
‘Charmain, listen…listen to me. You’ve got to be here when Howard comes. You’ve got to go through with what we agreed.’ She wouldn’t look at me. I said, ‘He’ll come before midnight tonight. I’m sure he will. Then we’ll get you away from here, get you sorted out.’
She just shook her head slowly and the quiet weeping gave way to heavy sobbing. I was fighting a losing battle and couldn’t spend any more time trying to console her. For all I knew Stoke was standing outside.
I turned and headed back to the old barge, locking Charmain in.
By noon, a combination of boredom, silence and a night without sleep had me dozing on my feet. I decided to risk another confrontation with Charmain for the sake of a coffee and something to read.
Anyway, she’d been quiet for a while, maybe she was sleeping.
Unlocking the door, I tiptoed in, wary of waking her. I heard the metallic clunk at exactly the same time as I felt the blow and I remember marveling stupidly at how synchronized it seemed as I slumped to the floor and sank into unconsciousness.
71
I opened my eyes and didn’t know where I was. My head hurt. I stared at a long narrow ceiling. Was I in a hallway in some big house? Rolling onto my stomach I slowly pushed myself up until I was kneeling. I looked around. I was still on the boat.
It was deserted. No Charmain, no Stoke, no bad men. Beside me, upside down on the floor, was the steel cooking pot I’d been hit with. It wasn’t even dented. Tenderly, I fingered my skull and found a painful lump over my right ear.
I got to my feet. The dizziness was slight. I walked a few steps toward the door…balance was okay. I went outside. Dusk was falling. The car had gone.
I remembered the other car parked half a mile away in Shipton and felt for the keys in my pocket.
Found them.
I set off in a running limp for the village.
I thought of Charmain as I drove. She’d be there by now, easily. How was she planning to find the stuff at Roscoe’s? Would she wait until dark and try to break in? She couldn’t wait. She’d be growing more desperate by the hour. What if she hadn’t told me everything? Maybe she was tied in with Roscoe too, the same as she’d been with Harle and Greene.
I drove fast, my leg wound pulsing at every ridge and pothole. Driving the route that led the last couple of miles to Roscoe’s brought scary memories of the scalding. The black shape of each large tree I passed reminded me of the one I’d woken up under, lying on the frosty road.
Half a mile from Roscoe’s I stopped, got the flashlight and lock-picks and quietly closed the car door. I felt only minor twinges in my leg as I climbed the small fence and set out across the fields.
No lights showed in Roscoe’s house, but I took a line toward the small cottage sitting alone on an incline about two hundred yards fro
m the main stable block. The head lad’s cottage, where Skinner was living now - it too was in darkness.
The door was unlocked. I checked the area before going in. Down to my left was the stable yard, dark and almost silent. The only sound came from a box in the corner where a shod hoof worked through straw bedding to scrape at the concrete floor. Softly, I turned the door handle.
My flashlight flared in the narrow hall, showing a door either side. I chose the one on the right and eased it closed behind me. I moved the beam a yard forward and in the spotlight was a foot. The yellow training shoe hung only on the toe. Above the shoe, the pale pink leg of the track suit, bought new the day before.
As the light moved upwards, something glinted on the floor: an empty glass phial. Her left sleeve was rolled up. Still hanging from her bare arm was the syringe, the plunger pushed fully home.
Her eyes were closed. No more cramps. No more shivering. No more loneliness chained up in the big house. Life’s agonies ended.
As I knelt in the darkness to ease the syringe from her arm, someone switched the light on. I was dazzled for a second then I turned round and Howard Stoke stood by the door, his hand still on the light switch. Roscoe, looking strained, was at his shoulder. Switching off the flashlight I slowly got up.
Stoke and Roscoe hadn’t spoken. Stoke’s fingers remained on the light switch. I considered yanking the door open and running, and then Stoke took his hand from the switch, put it into his coat pocket and brought out a gun.
72
Stoke pointed the gun at my head and I thought he was going to shoot me without saying even one word. I wanted to look at Roscoe to see if there was anything in his face to give me hope, but I couldn’t make my eyes leave Stoke’s trigger finger. Something told me that if I looked away he’d fire.
His lips drew back from his teeth.
‘Tell me how it feels, Mister Malloy?’ Stoke said. The level of control he needed to steady his voice frightened me much more than the silence had.
