Waking Caliban

by Mike Cartlidge

  Chapter 16

  I reached the M6 motorway and settled the Toyota at something close to the speed limit, which meant a steady stream of cars passed me in the right-hand lanes. As I drove, more clouds appeared from the west, as if to remind me that this was England and the weather gods’ trade union had strict rules about the number of hours of sunlight allocated to any one person in any given week.

  I was just passing over the Warwickshire border again when my mobile rang. I answered it, slowing down and signaling a change of lanes as, with an irritatingly warm feeling of recognition, I heard Miranda say my name.

  “I can’t talk for long,” I told her. I pulled into the car into an emergency lay-by and turned off the engine. “I’m on my way to my friend’s funeral.”

  “I’m sorry, Hastings,” I heard her say. “I hadn’t realized…”

  “That’s OK. A couple of minutes won’t hurt.”

  “I heard on the news that another man had been killed in Stratford.”

  I was mildly surprised: I hadn’t had time to buy a morning newspaper and I’d had the car radio turned off. “The police had a chat with me about it.”

  “They figured you knew something about it?”

  “I don’t know what they figured. They knew I had a connection with the men who’d died previously and they probably didn’t have too many other suspects to hand.”

  “They’ve let you go, though.”

  “They have.” A juggernaut lorry hurtled past in the slow lane, its slipstream causing the small car to rock on its suspension. “But I think they’d quite like me to keep in touch.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” she said. “You’re a fascinating guy. Did you find out anything else while you were in Stratford?”

  “I found out I’m not the new Hercule Poirot.”

  “Can’t manage the Belgian accent, huh? So, no new leads? No more information about what Roden might have been on to?”

  “Nothing worth mentioning.”

  She hesitated and I could picture the little half-smile at the corners of her mouth. “You wouldn’t hold out on me, would you, Hastings?”

  “After all we’ve come to mean to each other?”

  “That’s what I figured. So you’d tell me if there was anything else?”

  “You’d be the first person I’d call.”

  “I still want us to partner on this, Hastings. We’d be good together, you and me.”

  “Let’s take it as it comes. If something new turns up and it looks as though we could work together, let’s work something out then.”

  “Fair enough. I guess there’s no reason why you should trust me. Though I have to say I’d be real hurt to think you didn’t.” She paused. “It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to think I’m putting you on, but I’d really like to see you again.”

  “I do think you’re putting me on.”

  “I said you would. See how well I understand you? Will you meet me, though?”

  The clouds finally caught up with me and large drops of rain splattered like dead bees on the windscreen. I counted reasons why I should meet with her again. Number one: she was as good a lead as any I had to getting a fix on what caused the deaths of Brett Young and Geordie Thorpe. Number two: well, the only other reason I could think of was that I just wanted to see her. At least I could be honest about it. “OK,” I told her, “let’s meet up when I get back to London.”

  She said she’d call me and hung up. More trucks went by, competing with themselves to see whether their slipstreams could not only roll my little Toyota over but blow it clean off the lay-by and into the neighboring fields. Next time I hired a car, it was going to be something bigger. I started the engine and flicked the wipers to clear the windscreen as I waited for a gap in the traffic. When I finally pulled back onto the motorway, I turned the radio on and caught a news bulletin that referred to the spate of deaths in Stratford. The bulletin drew parallels between the four deaths by shooting and hinted at some sort of involvement by organized crime but added nothing to what I already knew. There was a passing reference to the agency but, I was relieved to hear, none to me.

  I tuned the radio to a music station and continued to drive through the rain, stopping once to refuel and buy myself a sandwich, then pushing on over the Sussex downs. The rain was easing as I drove into the sleepy seaside resort of Worthing and I pictured summer holidaymakers pushing back the lace curtains of their bed-and-breakfasts and trying to work out if they could conjure up an hour of beach time for the kids. I followed the signs for Littlehampton, coasting along a dual-carriageway past suburbs and fields, and stopped for directions to the crematorium as the road narrowed and wound its way over a railway bridge into the town.

  I made it to the crematorium’s chapel – a gleaming brick and stained-glass building a few blocks back from the sea front – with minutes to spare. It looked as though the funeral would be well attended. The car park was full and people milled around outside the chapel’s entrance. Men wearing conservative suits and women in dark dresses dragged sullen children who would clearly have preferred to run wild amongst the surrounding trees.

  I drove the Toyota on to where, on the other side of the road, a brilliant pink Bentley was drawn up to the curb. The car dated from the mid-sixties and, according to George, had once been owned by one of the Rolling Stones. I managed to park just opposite it and got out, dodging a puddle in the road, just as one of the Bentley’s rear doors burst open.

  Chantelle was wearing a black sheath of a dress which extended from her neck to her knees and was only slightly darker than her skin. As she climbed from the car and straightened her long body, the tight dress made her look taller than ever, like one of those impossibly slender Tutsi tribeswomen you see on natural history programs. I walked over to her. I could smell her perfume as she took my hands in hers and bent slightly to kiss my cheek.

  “You okay, Honey?” she whispered. I nodded and she stepped back and half-turned. Behind her, Brabant had eased his immense frame from the driver’s seat and was holding a rear door open for Madame George. She was, for her, dressed in subdued style. Her dress was pink, but I knew she’d have felt obliged to match the color of the car. She had, however, omitted the usual extravagant hat in favor of a simple scarlet beret which perched on top of her fluffy blond hair. She gave me a sympathetic smile and, as she came up to me, tossed my arm a light punch, as if, after all this time, she’d decided to become one of the boys again.

  “I’m glad you could come,” I told her.

  “We thought you might need some immoral support,” she whispered. She stood back and I guessed she was giving me the option of walking a few steps ahead of her, to avoid embarrassment if I saw anyone I knew. I caught her wrist and slipped it under mine, collected Chantelle on my other arm, and we walked together down the road and into the chapel.

  The place was almost full but, three rows from the back, Chantelle and George squeezed into a pew, leaving room for me on the aisle. Heads turned as we settled in and one or two people craned their necks to get a better view of the show. George pulled me closer and whispered seriously in my ear. “You shouldn’t have worn that bright tie with a dark suit, Hastings. You’ve got everyone staring at us.”

  I left them to walk to the coffin. I could hear shuffling and the murmur of voices as more people turned to look but I stared straight ahead. The casket was open and raised on some sort of dais. Below it, a conveyer belt led to a set of black curtains that shielded the congregation from whatever lay beyond. Flowers lay around the box and I saw a wreath from the Regiment propped up against its base. The air was thick with the scents of roses and polished wood.

  Inside the casket, I saw that Thorpe’s head was unmarked, which meant he must have taken shots to the body. Thoughtful of his killers, I thought bitterly. I gazed down into his face, thinking it looked more like a sculpture than a once-living man. Memories came to me of our times together in Germany and Cyprus and the
middle east and the Balkans. There were so many things between us that had once seemed vital and which only the two of us had known. Now I was the only one with the information and I wondered if it would matter when I died and all was finally lost. I reached out a hand and touched his wrist. His flesh felt like cold leather. I bent over his face and muttered an inadequate goodbye.

  This time, when I turned back to the aisle, I looked at the faces around me. The agency was represented, Isbey sitting one row back alongside a big, solid man I recognized as Charles Sturt, the CEO. I worked out that the desolate woman in front of them must be Julie Thorpe and I walked over to her and introduced myself and murmured more clichés and she tried to smile at me through her tears and pulled her blank-faced children closer to her. Then I walked back down the aisle, towards the rear of the chapel. A vicar had appeared by the altar and was probably wondering why more people were looking at me than him. It was, I knew, hardly surprising. A good number of the mourners would be former comrades of Thorpe’s, which meant that some would know me and a lot more would know of me. I recognized a few of them: some of them nodded towards me, their faces lean and impassive as chiseled granite, and only a couple – both men who had been brother officers during my time with the Regiment – made a point of ignoring me. Near the back of the chapel, Spence, the corporal from my first platoon, half-rose and flicked me a bent-hand salute. The private views of the Toms would rarely coincide with those of the Army high command and most of them would have no trouble justifying the death of terrorists. Especially when those terrorists were known to have ambushed and killed a number of their comrades.

  I walked slowly up to Chantelle and sat down beside her.

  The service was drab and, inevitably, as clichéd as my words of regret. Part-way through, the vicar announced the singing of what he described as Thorpe’s favorite hymn, Morning Has Broken. I couldn’t picture it myself but George was delighted. She stood with the rest of the mourners and boomed out the words in an off-key baritone that made people in the pews in front of us wince and hunch their shoulders.

  We were onto the last verse when, from the corner of my eye, I noticed movement in the chapel foyer. I glanced over my shoulder and saw two men push their way between the back of the last pew and the wall. For a moment, I thought they may be ex-Paras. There was something familiar about them, although it took me a few moments to work out what it was. They were both heavily-muscled big men, six-four to six-six in height, and, unlikely as it seemed, their size and shapes matched those of the unwelcome visitors in my hotel room, the night Roden disappeared.

  This was hardly the time or place for me to confront them. Instead, I watched them surreptitiously. The man closest me was in his mid-thirties and had dark, close-cut hair and a bull neck. His nose had been broken, probably several times, as a result of which it spread sideways across his face. His eyes, possibly compensating for the plasticine lump of proboscis in front of them, seemed slightly out of focus. The second man had blond, shoulder-length hair with narrow-set eyes and a curious, almost effeminate mouth. I noticed he had a line of teardrop tattoos, starting small and becoming steadily larger as they flowed down his cheek. Both men wore good quality suits over plain white shirts and dark ties. The clothes had to have been tailor-made: both men’s bodies were pumped like air-beds with the bulges of obsessive exercise and, most likely, steroid ingestion.

  After a few moments, the dark man’s eyes caught mine and we stared at each other. His face was carefully blank for a few moments and then he gave me a slow, serious wink. I forced myself to remember where I was and looked back towards the front of the chapel. By now, one of Thorpe’s old comrades was standing in front of a lectern, telling stories – undoubtedly censored for a family audience – of their times together as young privates in Cairo and Singapore.

  After a few minutes, I glanced back towards the newcomers. Chantelle noticed and followed my eyes, then turned to me with a question in her face. I shrugged. I was sure both men were aware of me looking at them but, since the initial eye contact, they’d kept their faces turned towards the coffin.

  I turned my attention back to the service. There were more tributes from former comrades and a sad, weeping address by Julie, with both of the children speaking words of loss for their dead father, all three of them repeating invitations to the mourners to travel on to their home for the wake.

  It was only as the proceedings ended and the coffin disappeared between the black curtains on its trip towards the furnace that I looked back towards the two men. They were already moving towards the exit and, as if on cue, they both looked at me, the blond for the first time. The dark man stared and then winked at me again while his companion seemed amused, the smile that played about his soft lips faint and menacing, like the murmur of a storm on distant hills. I asked Chantelle to excuse me and pushed past her but people were already beginning to move and the aisle was full of slow-moving bodies. I shoved my way forward, apologizing as I attracted irritated glares from departing mourners. Still, my progress was infuriatingly slow and, by the time I got outside, the two big men had disappeared. I walked a few steps along the footpath and looked around but cars were already starting to drive away from the crematorium and there was no way of knowing if they were in one of them.

  ***

  Chantelle and George had to return to London in time for the traditional Saturday night event. I stood on the wet footpath as a sea breeze blew occasional drops of rain against my face, watching as Brabant drove them away and they turned to wave at me through the back window of the Bentley.

  I’d thought about giving Julie Thorpe my apologies as far as the wake was concerned and then decided that failure to attend would be interpreted by others as cowardice. I drove the Toyota behind the funeral cars to the Thorpe’s simple bungalow, the drizzle on the streets matching my mood. When I got to the door of the small bungalow, Julie welcomed me but then abandoned me to look after her other guests. Spence, my one-time corporal, came and talked to me for a while but then I saw the children, standing by French windows that looked out over a neatly-trimmed garden, and went over to tell them what a good man their father had been. I told them about a time in Kosovo when we came under fire from a sniper and had a man down and Thorpe broke cover and ran across a street in front of the house the gunman was using so that he could drag the wounded man behind an armored Land Rover. And how he stayed, leaning over him, until we cleared the area. The boy gave no sign of having heard but Thorpe’s daughter smiled sadly and thanked me, as if grief had made her wise beyond her years.

  I said my goodbyes and, recovering my car, headed back, first east along the coast, then north towards London. Forty minutes on, as I turned through a roundabout and drove up a hill towards Leatherhead, I noticed a dark blue Jaguar that I thought had also been behind me as I’d left Littlehampton. I told myself that the traffic was increasingly heavy and mostly headed northwards, as day-trippers returned from excursions to the seaside, but still the coincidence bothered me. A couple of times, I slowed down and then sped up and, for a few minutes, I thought I’d lost the Jag until I saw it again, several cars back. On an impulse, I signaled and turned the Toyota into a lay-by, watching the stream of traffic in my mirrors. The Jaguar went past without slowing but when I looked at the passenger’s seat I caught a glimpse of the blond man’s teardrop tattoos as his companion concentrated on the road.

  Chapter 17

  I signaled to pull out behind the Jaguar but the traffic was heavy and nobody was keen to let me in. I floored the pedal and pulled out anyway, using the small car’s puny acceleration to annoy the hell out of a BMW driver, which I figure is always worth doing if you get the chance. Beemer Man managed to hold down his horn and shake his fist at the same time but I was more interested in the Jaguar which, by this time, was four or five car lengths ahead. I pulled the Toyota towards the centerline, looking for a chance to pass the asthmatic Ford in front of me, but I guessed the Jag driver could see me in his rear-view mirror an
d, when it came to dodgy overtaking maneuvers, he had a lot more horsepower at his disposal. He came to a stretch of road ahead of an intersection and pulled over to the middle, causing cars coming the other way to swerve to avoid him, and then accelerated past a line of vehicles and through a just-changing set of traffic lights. The traffic ahead of me came to a halt and I had no choice but to watch as the Jaguar disappeared into the distance.

  The traffic got heavier as I drove closer to the city and it was past ten by the time I returned the car to the central-city hire depot. The night was warm and I walked the short distance home. I could hear the noise from inside the big house well before I walked through the open front door. Saturday night at Madame George’s. In the hall, Brabant was busy trying to separate a pair of arguing drag queens. As I pushed past, one of them blew him a kiss and draped her feather boa over the his bald head. I caught his eye and winked and then walked into the lounge, hoping to find George and Chantelle so I could thank them again for coming to Littlehampton.

  The room was packed. To my left, the junior cabinet minister who’d been here the previous week was clinging to the arm of an effete-looking blond boy while, to my right, a raven-haired woman and a long-haired man were standing with their foreheads touching, singing an excerpt from Il Traviata: they were good, too, from what I could hear, but none of the other guests were taking the slightest notice of them. I slid between sweaty bodies, said hello to a couple of the working girls, finally located George draped over her chaise longue, a glass of champagne in one hand and a long-stemmed rose in the other. She smiled when she saw me and climbed up to peck my cheek, waving away my words of gratitude, telling me it was the least she could do for one of the few people she truly loved. I returned her smile, told her I loved her too, then excused myself and carried my overnight bag up to my room.