Out of the Night

by Dan Latus

  Then I smiled ruefully as one of Jimmy Mack’s many criticisms of me came to mind. I didn’t need to go looking for trouble, he had once said. All I had to do was stay where I was, and it came to my door. This looked like more of the same.

  She was lying down again when I went back downstairs, her coffee mug empty.

  ‘Feel any better?’

  She nodded, and managed to avoid using her stock phrase again.

  ‘I’ve found you some clothes of mine. They won’t fit but at least they’ll keep you warm.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Would you like a hot bath first? That would help.’

  She hesitated and then said she would. I helped her up and steered her to the stairs, still wrapped in the quilt. Somehow we got up them. Then I ran the bath while she watched.

  ‘Can you manage now?’

  She nodded. I hesitated a moment but decided she probably could. ‘I’ll bring those clothes up for you,’ I said. ‘You carry on. If anything is too difficult, give me a shout. My name is Frank, by the way.’

  She nodded and actually smiled. Things were looking up.

  After that I checked the bed in the spare room and threw an extra quilt on top. Then I returned downstairs and waited. A long soak would do her good.

  A loud thump on the ceiling twenty minutes later suggested things were not going so well upstairs. I raced back up and found she had extricated herself from the bath but was now sitting in a heap on the floor, the towel wrapped around her.

  At least the shivering had stopped. I picked her up with difficulty and carried her to the spare room, where I laid her down and covered her with the quilt again. I could see plenty of nasty scrapes and bruises on her legs, and her feet were a mess, but any serious bleeding had stopped.

  She was almost asleep now. So I decided any further attention, let alone questions, could wait till morning. At least she was a bit better now, if battered and exhausted. She was out of danger. The resilience of youth.

  But I wasn’t sure I was OK. In manoeuvring my visitor around, something had gone pop in my back. So the best place for me, too, was bed.

  Downstairs, I checked the locks, collected the shotgun and switched off the lights. Then I, too, sought refuge in sleep. I was tired and sleep didn’t take long in coming.

  I woke up about 7.30 a.m., my usual time in the winter months. It was just starting to get light by then. I lay still for a minute or two, recalling the events of the night, sorting my head out. Then I got up, pulled on a few clothes and went to check on my visitor.

  She was gone. The bed was empty and cold.

  4

  Iwas shocked. Pulse racing, I started checking. The bathroom – empty. There was nowhere else upstairs. I ran downstairs. No sign of her. By then I was really worried.

  I went through the cottage again, more carefully this time. There were no signs of a struggle, no signs of an abduction. I knew there couldn’t have been anyway – I would have heard it. The bedroom, and the rest of the house, were simply empty.

  All the windows were intact, closed and locked still. Both external doors were shut, undamaged and locked with the Yale locks. The back door was also fastened with a double cylinder, deadbolt lock. The serious lock on the front door was open. It had been opened with the key, which was still in place.

  That was it. My inescapable conclusion was that she had let herself out and departed voluntarily. There was no other explanation. I opened the front door and took a quick look outside. No one there, and nothing unusual in sight.

  Back indoors, I checked through the house once more and discovered that she had taken a few things with her. Not much, though. Just enough. Understandably, she had kept the clothes I had given her. She had also taken an old jacket that I kept hanging behind the front door and a pair of lightweight walking boots. The boots would be too big for her, like everything else, but she had to have something on her feet in this weather.

  What the hell was going on? I swore savagely and slammed a door or two. It wasn’t because of the stuff she had taken. That didn’t matter. It was partly because this mystery that I didn’t need had been dumped on me. It was even more because I feared for her. It’s not often a girl has arrived on my doorstep in the middle of the night. Not uninvited anyway. And never in such condition.

  Whoever she was, she was obviously in serious trouble of some sort. And now I was involved. I had seen her naked, touched her, carried her, helped her – and done my best for her. I was involved. I didn’t want her to end up as another headless, handless body on the beach. There might not have been any connection at all between my visitor and what had happened at Port Holland, but I didn’t believe that for a moment. She was in trouble.

  I made some scrambled eggs and coffee for breakfast, and took my time over it. There was no hurry, and I needed to work out what I was going to do next.

  Briefly, I thought about Bill Peart. Briefly. Bill was officialdom, and one thing the girl had impressed on me was that she didn’t want the official world alerted. Given that she had sounded foreign, I suspected that was because she was here unofficially. Perhaps illegally.

  So no Bill Peart.

  I decided to look for her myself. It was possible that she had left Risky Point far behind, perhaps by hitching a lift, but it was also possible that she had not gone very far at all. I tried not to consider the possibility that I might find her at the foot of the cliffs, without her head, but I couldn’t rule it out.

  Risky Point is a strange, abandoned place, a ruined village on top of high cliffs that are constantly retreating. To the north is Boulby, with higher cliffs than anywhere else in England. To the south, more cliffs – all the way down to Whitby and beyond. Once a railway ran along the top of these cliffs. And at the base of them are countless industrial sites and relics, places where men have for centuries quarried and dug out a living from ironstone, alum shale and jet, as well as from fishing.

  On top, too, there have been plenty of shafts and quarries dug by men mining the seams of iron ore that run through Cleveland. Often in these places, as at Risky Point, villages were built for the men who worked there and their families. Many survive still, communities where people now commute or eke out a living in ways that once would have been unimaginable. It’s a strange, hard and yet still attractive landscape that is as impressive as any I know. It’s also one with great opportunities for concealment, if you want to hide and stay hidden.

  I started my search outside my own front door. To my relief, I didn’t find a body in the first hundred yards. That strengthened my optimism. I pressed on.

  It was a raw morning. The cloud was low and dark, and there was a biting wind coming off the sea, bringing with it flurries of needle-tipped sleet. I walked northwards first. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I was looking for things out of the ordinary. Most of all, I was hoping I wouldn’t find a woman’s body.

  I walked north for a couple of miles and then turned round to come back and let the wind freeze the other side of my face. I kept on going until I reached our cottages, still with the same vague objective in mind. But I had seen nothing. In a way, I was reassured. Unless she had fallen over the cliff edge, which I was inclined to rule out, I was starting to believe she had managed to get well away. Somehow she had. Good luck to her. My mind was slightly easier, despite the enduring mystery. I hoped she had a good life, and a long one, ahead of her.

  I called in on Jimmy Mack, just to say good morning. He was in a funny mood. Grumpy and bad tempered. He didn’t say much. He was in his shed, re-arranging his tools and generally being uncommunicative.

  ‘You didn’t see or hear anything last night, did you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Just the usual.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Why?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Any more bodies yet?’

  ‘I hope not. Bill Peart came over yesterday afternoon. I think it’s wearing him out already.’

  ‘That’s easy done, when you start finding folk wit
hout their heads.’

  He shook his own head, as if he didn’t know what the world was coming to.

  ‘What do you think, Jimmy?’

  ‘Me? I haven’t made my mind up yet. But there’s plenty going on around here. I can tell you that. We haven’t heard the last of it, not by a long chalk.’

  He wasn’t feeling sociable and he didn’t offer me coffee. He seemed determined to be enigmatic. So I moved on and walked a mile or two to the south. Still nothing. By then, I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. I suspected it might be a long time, if ever, before the night’s events were explained. I could live with that.

  As I trudged northwards again the cottages came into view, about half a mile ahead. I saw a car travelling along the access track towards them. It stopped outside my place. Two men got out. One of them knocked on the front door while the other went round the back.

  I broke into a run. By the time I reached my gate, one of them was inside my shed and the other was working on the lock on the front door. I yelled at the one on my front doorstep. He looked over his shoulder at me and then carried right on.

  5

  Iyelled again at him, telling him to get away from the door. He ignored me and carried on.

  I launched myself at him, grabbing him by the shoulder and spinning him round. He dropped into a fighting crouch and stabbed the tool he was using at my face. I dodged and stepped back off the step. He kept on coming, his face a vicious snarl.

  He was higher than me now. I stooped, grabbed his lead leg and heaved it up. He toppled backwards. I stepped in and stamped hard with my heel on the hand holding the tool. He grabbed my leg with his other hand. I pulled back and kicked out.

  Then I was hit by a hurricane from behind. The guy’s mate had arrived. I slammed into the wall with my face. Somehow I rolled sideways and turned to meet him. He stepped back and pointed a knife at me.

  ‘Come on, then!’ I snarled, enraged. I brushed my face quickly with the back of my hand, getting blood and grit out of my eyes.

  He stepped back another pace but he wasn’t really backing off. He was giving himself space.

  ‘You don’t want trouble with us,’ he sneered.

  No more chat. I went for him, ducking and throwing a punch that fell short, moving from side to side. I wanted to get it over with before the other one was back on his feet.

  But he kept moving away, holding the knife low in front of him, warding me off. I ducked and weaved, and kept going, crowding him, working to back him up against the stone wall.

  Suddenly I had him. He was all backed up, nowhere to go. But it was too late. Out of the corner of my eye I had seen the first guy getting to his feet, and he was behind me. Well, the one with the knife was going down, whatever else happened. The fighting madness was in me now. I coiled, ready to spring.

  An explosion tore through the air. I paused, shocked. But only for a moment. The guy with the knife turned sideways to look. I hit him hard, slamming his head against the wall. I grabbed his knife hand and banged his face into the wall again, hard. He dropped. But I kicked him anyway.

  ‘That’ll do!’ I heard Jimmy Mack boom in his gravelly voice.

  I pulled the knife free and spun round. Jimmy had his shotgun at the ready, pointing at the first guy. The man had stopped moving and was weighing up his options, fists dangling by his sides.

  I stepped away, doubled up for a moment to catch my breath and then straightened up again. I nodded at Jimmy. He had his elbows on the top of the wall, holding the shotgun rock-steady.

  I kicked the one on the ground hard again, making sure he was out. Then I reached down to go through his pockets. Apart from the knife, which was a serious-looking, commando-style weapon, he carried only car keys and a thin wallet. The wallet contained fifty quid and a couple of bank cards. I kept it and threw the car keys at the other guy. They hit him in the face and fell to the ground.

  ‘What were you after?’ I demanded.

  He stared at me with fierce hatred. ‘You’ll regret this,’ he said. ‘You’ll live to regret the day you were born!’

  American accent, I noted.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I told him. ‘I really don’t think so. What were you looking for?’

  He glared at me with ferocity. I smiled back and considered what to do next. I could call the police, but how long would they take to get here?

  And now the other guy was sitting up and preparing to stand. Could we hold them long enough, without shooting at least one of them? And, if that, how long would police inquiries and the inevitable court case take? I could see the headlines now: ‘Householder arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm, and attempted murder’. Would we live long enough to see it through?

  Anyway, I knew pretty well what they were looking for. I didn’t need them to tell me.

  And they had been thwarted. If Jimmy hadn’t been there I might have taken the chance to work on them and find out for sure. On the other hand, of course, if Jimmy hadn’t appeared I wouldn’t have had the chance.

  ‘Get him in the car,’ I said to the one still on his feet, ‘and get the hell out of here.’

  He glared at me.

  ‘You don’t frighten me,’ I told him. ‘You may not know who I am, but I can tell you now you’ve picked on the wrong man. I’ve come across a lot uglier pieces of shit than you. Now get moving before I change my mind!’

  A last lingering look of pure hatred. Then he moved. He got his mate on his feet, and them both into the car. Then they took off.

  We watched them disappear down the track. As their car turned onto the road, Jimmy turned to me and said, ‘What was all that about?’

  I shook my head. ‘It beats me.’

  Then I relented. ‘You came at just the right time, Jimmy. Thanks. Fancy a cup of coffee, or a thimble of something else?’

  ‘It’s a bit early for me,’ he said slowly. ‘For the coffee, I mean.’

  I grinned and turned to open the door with a key, the way it should be done.

  6

  ‘You’ll not know them fellows, I take it?’ Jimmy said, as he sat nursing his whisky at my kitchen table.

  ‘Never seen them before in my life.’

  ‘Thought as much,’ he said dryly. ‘What were they after?’

  ‘Beats me.’ I shook my head. ‘Burglary?’

  ‘They didn’t run,’ Jimmy pointed out. ‘Pretty tough burglars.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I wondered whether to tell him about my midnight visitor. Instead I made coffee for us both. He would drink it, whatever he’d said about it being too early, and I needed it.

  ‘I don’t think they were from round here, Jimmy.’

  He kept whatever thoughts he had on that subject to himself. He just nodded and looked around with a fresh eye. ‘I should fix my place up like this,’ he said. ‘Nice curtains, new furniture, and everything. And china,’ he added, turning his coffee mug round so he could study the pattern on the side.

  Made there, as well, I thought but didn’t say. I didn’t want him turning the mug upside down to have a look.

  ‘It’s all right, your place. What’s wrong with it?’

  He grinned. ‘All right for me, you mean?’

  ‘That’s what counts, isn’t it?’

  I don’t suppose Jimmy’s cottage has been changed much since his parents passed away. It’s still a fisherman’s cottage, a time capsule. One of these days it will be discovered by a television company and hailed as a cultural relic of outstanding national significance. Not outstanding natural beauty, though.

  ‘Don’t forget, Jimmy. When you want to tackle that hole in the kitchen roof, let me know. I’ll give you a hand. That polythene sheet won’t last through another winter.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll let you know.’

  ‘I could even do it for you, if you don’t feel up to it. That’s the least I could do for the man who’s just saved my life.’

  ‘Would it be done right, though?’ he asked mildly, un
impressed by the flattery.

  ‘Well … I replaced the whole roof on this cottage. It seems all right, doesn’t it? Keeps the weather out.’

  ‘We’ll see. There’s some funny things going on these days,’ he added.

  I looked at him, wondering where we were now.

  ‘Bodies on the beach,’ he said. ‘Strange folk around. Now this – gangsters.’

  I digested that for a moment. ‘You’ve seen other … people?’

  ‘A few. I don’t know where they’re coming from, mind. But there’s something going on.’

  Something going on? Well, yes. Quite a lot, actually. He was right there. And I suspected he knew more than he was saying.

  ‘You said yesterday there would be other bodies found – more than the three?’

  He nodded and drained his glass. ‘The beaches along this coast are funny places. Lots of nooks and crannies. Fisher folk have always known that. Why would three be all there is?’

  Why, indeed. Why stop there?

  But I wondered if he was just talking riddles now, and didn’t know anything more.

  ‘That’s a big fancy boat, as well,’ he added.

  I looked at him.

  ‘At Port Holland. Supposed to be a yacht, but it’s not what I would call a yacht. More a rich man’s toy. To me, a yacht has a sail, and goes with the wind.’

  ‘To me, too,’ I said gravely. ‘Who does this boat belong to?’

  ‘Some artist fellow. Foreign, I think. Plenty of money, anyway. Like that other one – Picasso, is it?’

  ‘He’s dead, Jimmy.’

  ‘Is he now?’ He looked surprised. Then he gave me a grin that suggested he was having me on. ‘Well, you can’t take it with you, can you?’

  I was becoming impatient with the conversation. It was always the same with Jimmy. Instead of just telling you things straight off, he always had to wrap it up in mysteries and riddles. I could never decide whether he couldn’t help himself or if it was for his own entertainment.