The Fish Kisser

by James Hawkins

  And then he thought of Trudy.

  “Oh my God,” he screamed, suddenly wide awake. “What will happen to Trudy?”

  chapter three

  A strident, demanding tone of a car alarm was echoing along Junction Road, Watford; the noise coming from an old Volvo abandoned on a patch of wasteland where number 33 had stood until a bomb had blasted the two-up and two-down terraced house to smithereens in 1940, at the height of the Blitz. The owners had never rebuilt. A volunteer fireman had found their mangled remains—still sheltering in the cupboard under the solid wooden stairs in strict accordance with the Ministry of Defence Air Raid Manual. But what to do if a direct hit collapsed the staircase on top of you? “Pray. And be damn quick about it,” was the only advice the fireman had to offer a scared sorrowful neighbour: a thirty-year-old housewife wearing the wartime cares of a fifty-year-old in her mother’s polka-dot pinafore dress, with her prematurely greying hair pushed up under an old beret. “That’s all you can do m’luv if they drop one right on top of yer,” he said. “Put your hands over yer ears and pray.”

  The dead couple’s nearest relative, a son packed off to his aunt in Australia—”For the duration,” in the jargon of the day—had intended to return home one day to sell the land, or even rebuild the house as a tribute to his parents. Now he was too old to bother, and too rich to care.

  It was only 3:30 a.m. in Watford, a full time zone to the west of the SS Rotterdam, and the rising sun was still an hour shy of trying to brighten up Junction Road, with its tarnished terraces of turn-of-the-century red brick houses.

  Finally, fed up with the constant whining of the car’s alarm, Mrs. Ramchuran, at number 70, slipped a dressing gown over her silk pyjamas, tied on a scarf, and stepped into the chilly pre-dawn air. With uncanny timing, her next door neighbour, the “guardian” of Junction Road, readied himself with an arsenal of advice for the offender and snapped open his door.

  “Is that your’s, Mr. Mitchell?” his neighbour enquired, nodding to the Jaguar.

  Caught off-balance, he laughed, and even his laughter had a clipped cockney ring. “Bugger off, will you. Nah, I’ve not seen it afore. ’T’aint anyone’s round here.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “Nah, waste of bloody time. They can’t be boverred with this. Anyhow, they’ve got more important fings to do.”

  Mrs. Ramchuran wondered, aloud, if either of the residents on the other side of the road, closest to the noise, had phoned the police.

  “Doubt it,” said Mr. Mitchell, an elderly widower who could have turned his knowledge of the street into an entire category of Trivial Pursuit. “There’s no one in at 34, and old daft Jack at 35 would never hear anyfing. He’s as bloomin’ deaf as a post.”

  The alarm stopped, mid-sound, as if an unseen hand had wrenched off the battery. Mrs. Ramchuran was startled by the sudden silence. “Oh,” she gave a tiny jump. “Thank God for that.”

  Mr. Mitchell, George to his friends at the British Legion, was uncharacteristically wrong about his neighbours—there was someone in at number 34. Trudy was there, Roger’s Trudy. She’d been there nearly a week, although George had not seen her and, as he and Mrs. Ramchuran went back to their beds, hoping the noise would not recur, Trudy was lying in bed, Roger’s bed wondering where Roger was and what he was doing.

  “I’ll only be away for a couple of days, Love,” Roger had said the previous evening, “I’ll miss you, Trude.”

  Sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, sorting through computer discs, choosing those that might come in handy as he prepared for his Dutch trip, he repeated, tenderly, “I’ll miss you.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “I’m sorry … I know you hate being on your own but I don’t have any choice,” he continued, still shuffling discs. “The company says I have to go. I wish you could come with me though. Maybe next time, eh? When you’re feeling better.”

  She nodded slowly. Her sad young eyes pleading, “Take me … Don’t leave me here alone.” But she could not ask.

  “I’ll be back Friday,” he explained, as he packed selected discs into an old brown briefcase.

  She’d been alone before—most days—with Roger at work in the city. But this wasn’t just another day at the office; this would be three days and two nights—it would seem like a week, or a month.

  She projected a silent plea to the back of his head, but her thoughts failed to sink in, and he continued, “I’m getting the ferry to Holland tonight. That’ll get me there tomorrow morning about seven …” Pausing to examine the label on one of the discs his brow furrowed in concentration, then he blew down his nose. “Hum … What do you think, Trude?” he asked, showing her the disc. “Do you think I should take this?”

  She looked away, fraught with fear—every young partner’s fear: fear of abandonment, fear of someone else—someone prettier, sexier, more exciting, more willing, perhaps; fear he might never return.

  “Don’t go—please don’t go,” she willed inwardly, knowing she could not ask.

  “I’ll have plenty of time to drive to The Hague,” he continued, unaware of her desperation. “I don’t have to be there until eleven. My speech is at two. Then I’ll get the ship back tomorrow night and, bingo, I’ll be back before you’ve even missed me.”

  As if suddenly aware of Trudy’s needs, Roger paused in his task, brought his face close to hers and ran his fingers across her cheek. Perfect, he thought, absolutely perfect, as he sensed the softness of her fresh, young skin, then stroked her long dark hair and exposed a delicate ear. He loved her ears, adored them—could play with them for hours, gently stroking, teasing, and squeezing, as he controlled his computer with his other hand. But now, as he bent to kiss her ear, she twitched, like a horse bothered by a fly and lashed his face with her ponytail. He shrugged off the rejection and turned back to sorting his computer discs. “It’s exiting isn’t it,” he said, meaning his trip, the tone of his voice matching his words. “Are you excited, Trude?”

  She nodded again, but her dark brown eyes swelled with tears.

  Roger packed the last of the discs, gave Trudy a triumphal glance, then turned back to his computer—more important things on his mind. Behind him, Trudy’s silent tears kept flowing, glistening droplets trickling down her cheeks, congregating into little puddles on the wide band of foul-tasting sticky tape plastered over her mouth.

  Trudy, now wide awake, felt disembodied—her thoughts hovering in mid-air, refusing to be part of the carnage that lay below her on the filthy bed—wondering what had hit her, and how she’d been stupid enough to get in the way. Beneath her, the bruised and bleeding body was in agony; hands and arms the worst: Blood and pus oozed from a huge blister on the side of her fist where she’d pounded against the rough brick walls; her shoulders and upper arms were blue from being repeatedly slammed against the solid wooden door—a living battering ram which had rebounded as readily as a tennis ball off concrete—and the wreckage of her nails, used as screwdrivers on the door hinges, stung constantly. But, at least Roger had left her unbound and had even pulled off the tape—once she’d promised not to scream for help or try to escape.

  The hands of her watch (”Happy sixteenth,” her mother had said giving it to her a few weeks earlier) were stuck at 6:23, the time she’d first crashed her fragile body against the door—Roger’s door, the door to the outside world. Now, as she stared at the smashed watch, she found a mirror of her fragmented life in the few sharp shards of glass still held in place by the square gold frame, and screamed. Pain, torment, fear, and loss merged into despair with the subconscious realization that the last strand of her mother’s umbilical cord had been severed.

  The computer could have told her the time had she really wanted to know; the only lighting in the room came from its screen; the only sound, its constant “shhhhhshing.” She stared at the screen, detesting it for what it had done, yet pleading with it to help. “What the hell is his password?” she shouted across the diml
y lit room, then waited, almost expecting it to respond.

  An idea eased her off the bed, drawing her to the computer, and she winced as she pressed a few keys. The message “ENTER PASSWORD” flicked onto the screen and she typed her name. “TRUDY”

  “INCORRECT PASSWORD PLEASE TRY AGAIN”

  “Shit,” she shouted, convinced she had been right. “What about, ’Trude’?” she asked, trying again. The computer responded soundlessly, “INCORRECT PASSWORD—PLEASE TRY AGAIN”

  “This’ll never work,” she muttered. “There must be millions of different words.”

  After several more rejections, she quit. Without his password she would never be able to connect with the outside world. Finally, frustrated and angry, she typed. “ROGER—PLEASE COME BACK. PLEASE LET ME OUT. I’LL DO ANYTHING YOU WANT. I LOVE YOU.”

  Sitting back, drained, thoughtful, she changed the typescript to a larger font and wrote again. “ROGER— I LOVE YOU—COME BACK”

  Roger was not coming back—not at the moment, anyway. His floppy body was still trampolining up and down on top of the life raft mid-ocean. He was alive, conscious, and still wondering why the SS Rotterdam had not returned for him. They threw me a life raft, he reasoned, so they must’ve known where I was.

  Nosmo King felt the shift in momentum as the search was called off. No longer wallowing as it steamed slowly round the search area, the ship was now leaping and bucking as it ploughed through the water, back on course toward Holland; as anxious to make up the lost time as the passengers and crew. Ignorant of what was happening, and with a nagging feeling he were being deliberately shut out, King slipped out of the little office and poked his head around the bridge door.

  “Come in Mr. King, I forgot all about you,” called the captain, noticing the tired, unshaven and dishevelled man, thinking now he would have looked at home in an airport following a crash—pacing amongst a crowd of worried relatives, anxiously awaiting news.

  King moved toward the captain with his eyes captivated by the huge, green waves breaking over the bow. He jumped as a streak of lightning lanced down into the water right in front of the ship. Isolated from the mayhem by huge armour plated windows, the bridge seemed a tranquil place in comparison.

  “It’s like watching a movie of a storm,” he breathed, mesmerized, then turned to address the captain. “I was just wondering if you needed me any more. Only I’d like to get a bit of sleep before we arrive.”

  “I don’t think we need you Mr. King. Hang oh a minute though, I’ll just check with our detective.”

  D.I. Bliss, unseen by King, was in the radar cubicle, still studying the screen for signs of the missing life raft or the missing man.

  “Inspector Bliss, do you need Mr. King for anything?” the captain sang out and Bliss emerged from the cubicle with a puzzled expression.

  “Um,” he hummed, “I’m not sure,” and turned to King, “G’morning Nosmo. Ahh … Could you just hang on for a minute. There’s one or two things I just want to check with the captain. Do you mind?”

  The unspoken words hung in the air for a few seconds as King struggled for an answer. Did he mind? Yes, he minded, minded very much; minded being left out of the loop, minded being ostracized. There was a time … he was thinking when he realized that the epithet, “ex-police,” carried with it a connotation of exclusion incomprehensible to someone who had never been in the force. His mind was in turmoil; desperately wanting to know what was going on; what they were saying about him; what they thought about him; how they had taken his story. But Bliss and the captain were watching and waiting.

  “I’ll just have another look at the radar.” King acquiesced eventually, breaking the stalemate, and he wandered toward the cubicle, his head pounding with the knowledge that somewhere on the ship, Billy Motsom, his client, his tormentor, would be searching for him, desperate for news about LeClarc.

  “Something’s going on,” Bliss whispered, nudging the captain to the far side of the bridge. “He knows more than he’s saying.”

  “How do you work that out?”

  “Well… Did you tell him we’d called off the search?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. So how come he didn’t ask? All he asked was, did we need him ’cos he wanted to get some sleep. So why’s he suddenly lost interest in what happened to our man?”

  The captain grasped the point. “I agree, but I don’t see what we can do. He’s stuck to the same story right from the beginning.”

  “Do me a favour, Captain. Just keep him here for about ten minutes, will you, then make sure he leaves by that door over there.” The captain nodded as Bliss continued, almost to himself, “I’ve got to make some arrangements.” Then, as an afterthought added, “I’ve also got to find LeClarc before we dock.”

  Precisely ten minutes later, Nosmo King left the bridge, following a compulsory guided tour. “He was as jumpy as a jib in a hurricane,” the captain told Bliss later. “I’ve never known anyone turn down a chance to have a few minutes at the helm before.”

  “You were right, Sir. He’s gone to a cabin,” D.C. Wilson’s voice crackled over the radio a few minutes later, as Bliss was back at the purser’s office, still trying to find LeClarc on a list—any list.

  “What number?” he called back. “I’m at the purser’s office, I’ll look it up.”

  “2042.”

  Running his finger down the list he found the cabin number. “The name on this list says “Motsom” but I wouldn’t guarantee it,” he said, then caught a nasty look from the purser as he added, “These guys don’t seem too sure what they’re doing.”

  “What do you want us to do, Sir?” asked the other detective, sobered by time and the sergeant’s accident.

  “I don’t know. Just find out what’s going on. Use your loaf if you’ve got one.”

  Bliss snapped off the radio and turned back to the purser who had decided he may as well take command of his office early. Roused out of his bunk in the middle of the night, like everyone else, he wanted to make sure his records were straight, just in case there was an inquiry.

  “O.K., Sir,” said Bliss. “So how soon will we know for sure if someone’s missing?”

  The purser scratched his stubbly chin, realised he’d forgotten to shave in the upheaval, and thought deeply. “Hum. It’s not quite that simple. You see, in theory we know exactly how many people are on board, but, aah,” he hesitated, “in practice …” Pausing, he threw up his hands, shrugged his shoulders, and picked his nose before committing himself. “Anybody’s guess really.”

  “What are you saying?” Bliss questioned, incredulously. “Are you saying you wouldn’t miss the odd one?”

  “Oh no …” he started, then stopped, tilted his head to one side, threw open his hands, and disclaimed all responsibility. “Well yes, I suppose so, if you put it like that. With nearly two thousand passengers you can never be sure. It’s not like an aircraft—we don’t assign seats, and we often get strays.”

  “Strays?” enquired Bliss. Dogs, cats, what? “Strays?”

  “Yeah … friends of crewmembers smuggled aboard for a freebie; hitchhikers in the back of trucks, even people hiding in car’s trunks so they can avoid the fare. The vehicles aren’t searched by British Customs on the way out, and the Dutch authorities don’t care if you bought a ticket as long as you’ve got a valid passport.”

  “So, how will we know if you lost someone in the night?”

  The purser’s shrug told the story, but Bliss heard him out. “You won’t. Not unless a friend or relative reports them missing, or we find luggage in a cabin, or a car on the car deck after everyone’s left.”

  Billy Motsom, cabin 2042, tired, furious, and very worried, was having similar thoughts and had a spotlight on King. “So, Mister, what are you goin’ to do if the poxy little shit did go over the side, eh?”

  “Look, I was hired to follow him that’s all. Nothing else—nothing dodgy. I don’t know why you want him and don’t care. You paid me …”<
br />
  “Correction,” cut in Motsom. “We was going to pay you.”

  “You’d bloody better. I’ve done my job. I followed him around for three bloody weeks. It was me that found out about this trip. There’s nothing else I can do.”

  King rose toward the door but was forced back with a snarl. “You ain’t goin’ anywhere until I tell you—now sit down.”

  He sat, sensing the simmering violence. Not that he hadn’t been warned. “Real nasty piece of work,” one of the few ex-colleagues still prepared to talk to him had said, “though he hasn’t got any serious convictions.”

  “O.K., let me put you in the picture,” continued Motsom, sounding helpful. “This ain’t no game of hide and bloody seek, it’s big business and you’re part of it, like it or not. So we may as well be friends. O.K.?”

  King said nothing, unsure whether to be more fearful of Motsom as an employer or a friend, and he buried his head, mumbling into his hands, “Why did I get mixed up in this?”

  “Money—Nosmo. Just like me.”

  “No. Not like you …” he started, but Motsom cut him short.

  “The only difference between you an’ me,” he sneered, “is you’ve done time. You’re an old lag, an excon, a bent cop.”

  King, stung by the suggestion, stared into his fingers, thinking: First I get shut out by a snotty D.I., then a piece of dog turd calls me bent. Who’s the criminal here? I didn’t take back-handers; I wasn’t shaking down drug addicts for part of their stash; I’m no crook. But he had no answer, he was trapped by his past.