And then I lay back on the bed and drank the scotch.
Alcohol never helps. Well, alcohol always helps, but when there are things you need to keep at bay, alcohol never helps. Dennis Farlowe's appearance had disturbed me. Dennis's appearances inevitably did, though on most occasions I could mask the visible symptoms: could smile, give a cheery hello; ask him how things were going while I maneuvered my way into my own kitchen, stood behind my own wife, put my hand on her shoulder, still smiling. All that newer history I mentioned. The history in which Michelle and Dennis had reestablished the relationship we'd once all enjoyed, before the older history had smashed it all to pieces.
That history didn't end with Dennis's wife's murder. Ten days after Jane Farlowe's body was found, a second victim came to light, in a town some distance from ours. I was at a conference at the time—that phase of business life was already in full swing—so didn't see the local press reports until they were old news. Wounds on the body indicated that the same man was responsible for both murders. You could sense our local tabloid's frustration at the vagueness of this detail, as if it had hot gossip up its sleeve it was bound not to share. Gossip relating to the nature of those wounds.
"Have you spoken to Dennis?” were my first words to Michelle on reading this.
"I tried calling him."
"But he wouldn't talk?"
"He wouldn't answer."
He would have been in shock, of course. Just a week and a half since his own wife's body had been found: Did this make it worse for him? To understand that his wife's end was sealed by random encounter, not precise obsession? Because there was surely—can I say this?—something of a compliment buried in the murder of one's wife, if it was intended. If it didn't turn out that the murder was just one of those things: a passing accident that might have happened to anyone's wife, had she been in the wrong place at the right time.
The random nature of the murders was confirmed with the discovery of a third body: a little later, a little further away.
I poured more scotch. Switched the TV on. Switched it off. It was suppertime, but I didn't want to eat. Nothing was happening outside. The rain had eased off, and I could see the puddles dancing under the streetlights’ glare.
In the gap between the discovery of the first two bodies—Jane and the second woman, whose name I've forgotten—Dennis Farlowe had suggested that I was the man responsible. That I was a rapist and murderer. We had been friends for years, but in his grief he found it possible to say this: You wanted her. You always wanted her. The police would have interviewed me anyway—as they did all Jane's male friends—but Dennis's words no doubt interested them. Though they subsequently had to spread their net wider, with the second death, and wider still with the third ... A local murder became a two-county hunt, but the man responsible was never caught, though he stopped after the third death. Not long after that, Dennis moved abroad.
He returned to England years later, a quieter, more intense man. Our friendship could never be what it was, but Michelle had done all she could. Jane was gone, she told me (I didn't need reminding). Dennis's life had been shattered; his attempt to rebuild it with a second marriage had failed too. With Michelle, he seemed to rediscover something of his old self, but between the two of us were barriers which could never fall, for all our apparent resolve to leave the past behind.
And it occurred to me that Dennis's old accusation—You always wanted her—could as justly be levelled at him. Wasn't his relationship with Michelle a little too close? How often had he dropped round in my absence; little visits I never heard about? Some evenings I'd find small evidences littered about: too many coffee cups draining on the board, a dab of aftershave in the air. But it's easy to paint pictures like that when the canvas has been destroyed. And doesn't this sort of tension often arise when couples are close friends?
Not that Dennis was part of a pair anymore, of course. And who could tell what effect a violent uncoupling like his might have had?
These thoughts chased me into sleep.
Where dreams were whisky-coloured, and stale as prison air.
* * * *
10.
She puts her hand to the wall of plastic. It gives, slightly; she has touched it at a gap between two of the objects it shields. An image startles her, of an alien egg sac pulsing beneath her palm, about to spawn. But this is not an egg sac, nor a wall; it is, rather, dozens upon dozens of two-litre bottles of mineral water, plastic-wrapped in batches of six, the wrapper stretched tight across the gaps between the bottles. That's what her palm lit on: a plastic-shrouded gap between bottles.
And opposite, the wall of tin; hundreds upon hundreds of cans of food. If they reach seven foot deep—which they might, if this room's as wide as the one adjoining—and reach ten foot in height, which they seem to, then...
But the number outreaches her ability to compute. Thousands, for sure. Possibly tens of thousands.
Put another way, a lifetime's supply.
* * * *
11.
Next morning the rain had ceased, and though roads remained down all over Shropshire—and in neighbouring counties, marooned villagers waved at helicopters from the roofs of submerged cottages—it was possible to be on the move. But there were no shortcuts. Nor even reliable long cuts: Twice I had to turn back at dips in B-roads, where the runoff from waterlogged fields had conjured lagoons. In one sat an abandoned van, rust-red water as high as its door handle. I reversed to the nearest junction and consulted my map. I should have brought a thick fat marker pen. Instead of marking possible routes, I could have deleted impossible ones.
But if progress was slow, it was at least progress. At last I reached the car park of The Yard of Ale, not much more than some poorly tarmacked waste ground opposite the pub. Three other cars were there. I'm not good on cars. I've been known to walk past my own while trying to remember where it was. But for some reason, one of those vehicles struck a chord, and instead of heading over the road, I sat for a while, trying to work out why.
There was nobody around. A stiff breeze ruffled the nearby hedge. The more I looked at the car, the more it troubled me. It was the configuration of the windscreen, I decided. But how? One windscreen was much the same as another ... At last I got out and approached the offending vehicle, and halfway there, the penny dropped. A parking permit on the driver's side was almost identical to one on my own windscreen. Same town, different area. This was Dennis Farlowe's car.
The breeze continued to ruffle the hedge. After another moment or two, I got back into my car and drove away.
* * * *
12.
It was dark when I returned. The intervening hours, I'd spent in Church Stretton, partly sitting in a coffee bar, trying to make sense of events; the rest in one of the town's several camping shops. I'd intended to buy binoculars, but ended up with a small fortune's worth of equipment: the ‘nocs, but also a torch, a waterproof jacket, a baseball cap, a new rucksack—with no real idea of what I was doing, I had a clear sense of needing to be prepared. I bought a knife, too. The instructions (knives come with instructions: can you believe it?) indicated the efficient angle for sawing through rope.
I believe in coincidences—if they didn't happen, we wouldn't need a word for them. But there's a limit to everything, and coincidence's limit fell far short of Dennis Farlowe's presence. He'd looked at Michelle's postcard, hadn't he? At the picture side, with the pub's name on it. How long would it take to Google it?
Another possibility was that he already knew where it was, had already intended to come here. Which opened up various avenues, all reaching into the dark.
Whatever the truth of it, if not for the weather, I'd have been here first.
This time I parked half a mile short of the pub, then walked the rest, weaving a path with my new finger-sized torch. There was little traffic. When I reached the car park, my watch read 6:15. Dennis's car was still there.
For four and a half hours I waited in the cold. Lurked is probabl
y the word. Behind its thick velvety curtains the Yard was lit like a spacecraft, yellow spears of light piercing the darkness at odd angles. I could picture Dennis in the restaurant, enjoying a bowl of thick soup, or pork medallions with caramelised vegetables. Memories of my own last meal were too distant to summon. When I could stand it no longer—and was certain he was holed up for the night—I trudged back to my car and drove to a petrol station, where I ate a microwaved pasty. Then I returned to my lay-by, crawled into the backseat, and tried to get some sleep.
But first I rang The Yard of Ale and asked to speak to Mrs. Farlowe. There was a puzzled moment while it was established that there was a Mr. Farlowe in residence, but no Mrs. It must have been the inverse of a familiar sort of conversation, if you worked at a hotel desk. I hung up.
Sleep was a long time coming.
* * * *
It was light by seven, but looked set to be a grey day. I drove back to the pub and a little beyond, hoping to find a vantage point from which I could keep an eye on Dennis's car. But nowhere answered, the best I could manage being another lay-by. If Dennis passed, I'd see him. But if he headed another way, he'd be history before I knew it.
I sat. I watched. I'd have listened to the radio, but didn't want to drain the battery. All I had to occupy me was the road, and the cars that used it. My biggest worry was the possibility that he'd drive past without my recognising the car, and my next biggest that he'd see me first. There was a third, a godless mixture of the two, in which Dennis saw me without my seeing him: this further confusing a situation which already threatened to leave me at a waterlogged junction, rust-red water lapping at my throat. Is it any wonder I fell asleep? Or at least into that half-waking state where nightmares march in without bothering to knock, and set up their stalls in your hallway. There were more prison visions. Stone walls and tiny barred windows. I came back with a start, the taste of corned beef in my mouth, and a car heading past, Dennis at its wheel. In the same alarmed movement that had brought me out of sleep I turned the ignition, and drove after him.
* * * *
I'd never tailed anyone before. When you get down to it, hardly anyone's ever tailed anyone before, and few of us have been tailed. It sounds more difficult than it is. If you're not expecting it, you're not likely to notice. I followed Dennis from as far behind as I could manage without losing track, once or twice allowing another car to come between us. This led to anxious minutes—he might turn off; I could end up following a stranger—but at the same time had a relieving effect, as if the intermission wiped the slate clean, leaving my own car fresh and new in his rearview mirror when I took up position again.
But it turned out I couldn't follow and pay attention to road signs at the same time. I've no idea where we were when he pulled in at one of those gravelled parking spots below the Long Mynd, leaving me to drive past, then stop on the verge a hundred yards on. I grabbed my equipment—the new rucksack holding the waterproof, the torch, the binoculars, the knife—and hurried back.
It was midweek, and there was little evidence of other hikers. Besides Dennis's, two other cars sat sulking; the rest was empty space, evenly distributed round a large puddle. The surrounding hills looked heavy with rain, and the clouds promised more.
On the far side was a footpath, which would wind up onto the Mynd. That was clearly where he'd gone.
Stopping by the puddle, I pulled the black waterproof from the rucksack, tugged the cap over my eyes. From the puddle's wavery surface, a bearded stranger peered back. Far behind him, grey skies rolled over themselves.
The footpath dipped through a patch of woodland before setting its sights on the skyline. Just rounding a bend way ahead was Dennis. He wore a waterproof, too: a bright red thumbprint on the hillside. If he'd wanted me to be following, he couldn't have made it easier.
* * * *
13.
Twenty minutes later, I'd revised that. He could have made it easier. He could have slowed down a little.
To any other watcher, it might have seemed odd. Here was a man on a hike, on a midweek morning—what was his hurry? Dennis moved like a man trying to set a record. But I wasn't any other watcher, and his speed only confirmed what I already knew: that this was no hike. Dennis wasn't interested in exercise or views. He had a specific destination in mind. He'd always known where he was going.
I couldn't tell whether his thighs ached, or his lungs burnt like mine, but I hoped so.
The red jacket bobbed in and out of view. I knew every disappearance was temporary; no way could a red jacket weave itself out of sight forever. But it also seemed that Dennis wasn't heading for the top. Every time the footpath threatened to broach the summit, he found another that dipped again, and some of them couldn't entirely be called footpaths. We crossed hollows where newly formed ponds had to be jumped, and gaps where I couldn't trust my feet. I needed both hands on the nearest surface: rock, tree limb, clump of weed. More than once, a fallen tree blocked the way. At the second I was forced to crawl under its trunk, and an absent-minded branch scratched me as I passed, leaving blood on my cheek.
* * * *
From the heavy grey clouds, which seemed closer with every minute, I felt the first fat splatter of rain at three o'clock.
I'm not sure why I'd chosen that moment to check my watch. Nor whether I was surprised or not. It can't have been later than ten when we started, though even that was a guess—what I really felt was that I'd never been anywhere else, doing anything else; that all the existence I could remember had been spent in just this manner: following a man in a bright red jacket through an alien landscape. But I do know that two things followed immediately upon my establishing what time it was.
The first was that I realised I was overpoweringly, ravenously hungry.
The second was that I looked up, and Dennis was nowhere in sight.
* * * *
For some moments I stood still. I was possessed by the same understanding that can fall on a sudden awakening: that if I remain acutely still, refusing to accept the abrupt banishment from sleep, I can slip back, and be welcomed open-armed by the same waiting dream. It never works. It didn't work then. When I allowed myself to breathe again, I was exactly where I'd been. The only living thing in sight, nature apart, was a worm at my foot.
I took two steps forward, emerging from a canopy of trees. The ground sucked at my feet, and the rain picked up a steadier rhythm.
In the past hundred yards, the terrain had changed. Not four steps ahead, the path widened: I was near the bottom of one of the many troughs Dennis had led me through. Against the hillside rising steeply up to meet the falling rain was sketched the brick outline of what I assumed was a worked-out mine—Michelle and I had seen others like it on our holiday. On the opposite side, the incline was less steep, though you'd have needed hands and feet to scale it. Had Dennis gone that way, he'd have been pinned like a butterfly on a board. And as for directly ahead—
Directly ahead, the valley came to a dead end. The incline to my right became steeper on its passage round this horseshoe shape, and the cliffside in front of me was obscured by a rustic tangle of misshapen trees and unruly bushes. With no sign of Dennis, unless—and there it was: a ribbon of red flapped behind a bush, then merged again with the brown, grey, and green. A strap from a jacket, nipped by a gust of wind. The rain was coming down harder, as loud as it was wet, and Dennis must have thought this the right place to take shelter.... Had Dennis really thought that, though? Or had Dennis just had enough of playing cat-and-mouse?
Hard to say when the game began. When I set off after him on the footpath? When his car passed mine in the lay-by near The Yard of Ale? Or further back, even; back in my kitchen, with Michelle's postcard in front of him and an unused notepad next to the phone? He might have picked up on that clue. Dennis wasn't a fool. No one could call him a fool.
In fact, now I thought about it, you could almost say he'd drawn it to my attention.
Which might have been the moment to pause. I
could have stood in the rain a little longer, my cap soaking to a cardboard mess as memory made itself heard: He reached behind him for the writing tablet on the sill, and scrawled something on it ... tore the uppermost leaf from the pad and pushed it towards me. Was there more to it than that? If Dennis wanted me here, that was a point in favour of being anywhere else. I could have turned and retraced that long, long ramble. Reached my car, eventually, and got in it, and driven away.
But I didn't. Momentum carried me forward. Only my cap stayed behind; plucked from my head by a delinquent branch just as I reached the bush I was after: Surprise! Dennis's jacket hung like a scarecrow, flapping in the wind. What a foolish thing. The man must be getting wet.
Something stung my neck, and if it had been a mosquito, it would have been the biggest bastard this side of the equator. But it wasn't a mosquito.
Brown, grey, and green. Green, grey, and brown. Grey, brown, and...
I'd forgotten what the third colour was even as it rushed up to meet me.
* * * *
14.
"Do you remember?” he asks.
Well, of course I do. Of course I do.
"Do you remember we used to be friends?"
It was long ago. But I remember that, too.
I'll never know what Dennis Farlowe injected me with. Something they use to pacify cows with, probably: It acted instantly, despite not being scientifically applied. He must have stepped from behind and just shoved the damn thing into my neck. I lie now on a three-inch mattress on a concrete floor. The only light spills from a barred window nine foot or so above Dennis's head. There is a strange object behind him. It reaches into the dark. My rucksack, with all it contains—the knife, especially—is nowhere.
Vision shimmers left to right. I feel heavy, and everything aches.
I say, “Where is she?"
"She's dead."
And with that, something falls away, as if a circle I never wanted completed has just swum into existence, conjured from the ripples of a long-ago splash.
"But then, you already know that. You killed her."
EQMM, December 2009 Page 14
