Shooting in the Dark

by Baker, John

  ‘This’s never happened to me before,’ Sam said. ‘I come out of an AA meeting and there’s a guy on a bike waiting for me. Is it symbolic?’

  ‘I didn’t want to miss you.’ JD told him about Christine Moxey’s visit and how the missing bicycle had turned up at the café.

  Sam grinned. ‘So she’ll be coming out around six o’clock. JD, you go there now, for half an hour or so. I’ll get Marie to relieve you. Then we’ll meet up at five and follow the girl home together.’

  All heiresses are beautiful. Angeles Falco was no exception. She had a face that could come back and haunt you. She was wearing a faded red cotton shirt, the top two buttons unfastened. Red lips and a faint blush to her cheeks, could’ve been painted on or it could’ve been natural. If he’d been forced to guess, Sam’d guess it didn’t really matter. Heavy cord strides, looked like they were three sizes too big for her, and abb socks in hand-spun, undyed wool.

  She looked like she was glad to see him. ‘Where’ve you been? I thought it was your day off.’

  ‘It is,’ he said. ‘I was with JD, talking philosophy, we solved a few global problems then I went to an AA meeting.’

  ‘Philosophy,’ she said, managing a satirical spin on the word.

  ‘You disapprove.’

  ‘No. It’s just that much of philosophy seems to cloak medium-sized ideas in large words.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re a jacket job, you know that?’ Angeles shook her head. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A jacket job. Something that drives you mad.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you kindly. Men think all women are jacket jobs, don’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know what other men think.’

  ‘But you know what you think.’

  Jesus, he thought. We’re flirting. This’s not just me flirting with her. She’s coming back at me. He wondered briefly if it had just started, or had it been going on for a few days without him noticing? ‘Concerning women,’ he said. ‘It was different when I was younger. But now I have to approach them on the strength of my beautiful nature and my wealth and fame rather than count on dazzling the eye.’

  ‘You seem quite proficient at that. And I’m sure you could dazzle a girl’s eye as well, if she had one.’

  ‘It’s low animal cunning,’ he told her. ‘Usually gets me where I want to be.’

  She was quiet for a couple of beats, long enough to make him wonder if he’d gone wrong. ‘There’s been a lot of women, hasn’t there?’

  ‘I’ve been round the block at least twice.’

  He looked around the room for a seduction-sized couch. But it was his room and the furniture hadn’t been properly thought through. He took a step towards her and she stepped back into the corner, voluntarily trapped between the door and a huge oak cabinet that had been in the house longer than Sam.

  He came close enough to hear and feel her breath on his face. She reached up and placed her hands on his chest. He lifted her face and brushed her lips with his own and felt her arms go around his back. She had her eyes closed, which was something to think about some other time.

  The feel of her body moving under his touch was an invitation to a sweet and tumultuous chaos that sent his mind swimming. He bore down on her mouth with a gentle force that she returned with short, sharp, seemingly uncontrolled movements. She took his lower lip between her teeth and pulled it down and out, releasing it only a moment before pleasure turned to pain.

  He lifted his head to give her space to breathe, to allow her to reconsider, but she reached for him greedily. She growled.

  A moment later the telephone rang. Sam and Angeles were by now committed to follow their emotions to the inevitable end and neither of them intended to answer the call. After four rings the answer-machine kicked in and Janet’s voice came down the line.

  ‘Sam,’ she said. ‘Sam, if you’re there, pick up the phone. The police are here. Ralph’s been killed. I need some help with Geordie.’

  Sam took a step back and left Angeles on the wall. ‘Sorry,’ he said. He picked up the handset. ‘Janet, you still there?’ He paused. ‘Save it,’ he said. ‘Gimme ten minutes. I’m leaving now.’

  Angeles had let her shoulders slump but her head was high, pressed against the wall, her eyes closed, her arms by her sides.

  ‘I’ll be back later,’ he said.

  She straightened. ‘No, wait, I’ll come too. Janet’ll need someone.’

  Sam looked at her. She was a champ.

  Angeles opened the side window and let a stream of icy air into the car. She felt it carve a shallow bowl out of her waxen features. Sam drove fast, grim and tight beside her; she had to brace her body each time he took a corner. The high-pitched whine of protest from the tyres was barely audible, treading only on the fringes of the human ear’s capability.

  When they arrived Sam described the scene to her in clipped sentences, like a parody of one of the guides who showed tourists round the town. ‘Police car outside, badly parked. Young copper standing by. Janet at the window, coming to the door now.’

  Angeles had her hand on his shoulder. She’d never been here before and all of her senses were on alert. She’d set up a grid inside her head and was busy placing herself inside it, noting the objects, the barriers and the pathways around her. She’d felt the heat from the bonnet of the police car as they passed it; and she’d been expecting some kind of gate or an outer approach to the house, but there didn’t seem to be one. A house door opened a couple of metres in front of them and she heard Janet’s voice.

  ‘Sam, thanks for coming.’

  Sam’s shoulder raised as he embraced her, and Angeles felt Janet’s hand squeeze her own at the same time.

  ‘How is he?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Not too good. He’s just staring at the wall.’

  Sam moved away and Angeles felt Janet lean forward and kiss her on the cheek. There was the scent of the mother about her; that soft fleshiness to her lips and cheeks, the heavy pull of her breasts. It seemed to Angeles that Janet’s entire being was an enticement. In close proximity she was suddenly reminded of the awesome power of sexuality. That’s twice in one day, she thought. Which is pushing up the average for a girl who spends most of her time in bed with an audiotape.

  Inside it felt dark and oppressive, like the House of Usher. Angeles could have walked straight to the spot where Geordie sat, so strong was the emanation of his disbelief and his grief. He was like a cold, raw diamond that occupied the centre of the house, and a low mist of despondency and woe issued from him. His breathing was four-four time, largo.

  From the mumbled voices she discerned two policemen in the room and one woman apart from herself and Janet. One of the policemen was extremely tall and there was an embarrassed catch to his voice, as if he would easily bubble over into laughter. All of them hugged the room’s periphery, anxious not to be contaminated by Geordie’s despair. Only Sam had moved in there with him and he must have wrapped his arms around Geordie because there was the rocking sound echoed in the cushions on the couch. Sam’s voice whispering, Geordie, over and over like a mantra, Geordie, Geordie.

  She felt a hot flush of tears behind her eyes as the bloody pity of it all touched her.

  ‘Can we go outside?’ she whispered, and Janet led her through the kitchen. The remains of last night’s meal lingered in the air: olive oil, garlic, tomato. A door led them into the garden, where frosty fingers made them both shiver.

  ‘Maybe this is not such a good idea?’ Angeles said. ‘We’ll be all right for a few minutes. I can hardly bear to be near Geordie when he’s like that.’

  ‘Does anyone know what happened?’

  ‘Ralph was crucified against a tree in the garden. The man next door found him and came round to tell us. Geordie heard it happening last night.’

  ‘Crucified?’

  ‘His hands were nailed into the trunk,’ said Janet. ‘It was horrible. We couldn’t get him down. Geordie started to fade when he saw him. I was frightened. I thought he mig
ht disappear.’

  Angeles reached for her and Janet took a step forward into her arms. They clasped each other for a full minute. Angeles hummed a Klezmer chant, something she had heard on one of her outings with Felix and which suddenly seemed apt for the occasion. Janet stiffened and then relaxed, let the music seep into her. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Angeles said. ‘In the West people sing when they’re happy, but Jews and Slavs sing when they’re unhappy.’

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ Janet said.

  Angeles didn’t answer. But, yes, she thought. If you have a soul and you hear music like that, you can only be moved.

  47

  Sam had taken Geordie to the morgue, waited while he identified the body as his brother, Ralph, then he had driven him back home, picked up Angeles and taken her back to his own house. ‘What a day,’ he said. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting JD at five.’

  Angeles felt the protruding digits on her wristwatch. ‘You’ll be late,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going on the bike.’ He threw the car keys on to the table.

  ‘You’ll be even later, then. Why the bike?’

  ‘JD’s got a lead. I’ll tell you when I get back.’ He dragged his bike out of the garden shed and pedalled into the centre of town.

  Something else she’d said on the ride back from Geordie and Janet’s house. ‘He watches people but he doesn’t see them.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘He watches me, but it’s like he’s looking at a picture. He doesn’t see the me that I see me as. He sees something static, something that he’s brought with him. It’s the same with Isabel and Ralph; he couldn’t have killed them if he’d seen them. You can only destroy people if you’re blind to their hopes and aspirations and weaknesses. A successful murderer is someone who can’t see. He looks but he misses the point.’

  ‘Yeah. Guys like this are obsessed with themselves. They see others, but they only see them as distinct from themselves. They don’t invest us with human characteristics. They see objects.’

  JD was leaning against a brick wall behind Pavement, his bike parked on the kerb. He was smoking a small J, the whiff of weed almost visible in the frozen atmosphere. ‘You’re late,’ he said.

  ‘You’re stoned,’ Sam replied.

  ‘Yeah, I’m stoned, but at least I’m here.’

  ‘I got involved,’ Sam said. ‘They found Ralph’s body nailed to a tree in Geordie’s garden. They think he’d been pumped full of something they use to cull elephants.’

  JD whistled. ‘He was a big lad,’ he said. ‘But not that big.’ He took another toke on the J and his eyes shone in the frozen evening air.

  ‘You gonna be OK if we run into trouble?’

  ‘I’m a little stoned, Sam. All I’ve got to do is ride my bike, find out where the girl lives. I’m not gonna get into trouble. If trouble happens, I run away, you know that.’

  ‘You get stoned,’ Sam told him, ‘you sometimes run the wrong way.’

  ‘Don’t be a Puritan, it doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘I take it nothing’s happened here? The girls haven’t started coming out yet?’

  ‘Two separate questions,’ said JD. ‘No, the girls haven’t started coming out yet. But that doesn’t mean nothing’s happened. I had a long conversation with the lovely Marie. I think she’s starting to break down. She really fancies me, you know.’

  ‘You’re out of your skull,’ Sam said. ‘How many of those things have you smoked?’

  ‘First of the day,’ JD said, grinding the roach under his heel. ‘If I’m high, it’s with life’s possibilities.’

  Sam shook his head as the back door to the café opened, sending a shaft of light across the road. Two girls emerged with bicycles: a blonde with a red racer and a small brunette with a green Raleigh mountain bike. The second girl had a protruding jaw and small eyes and her bike had a Mickey Mouse bell.

  ‘This’s us,’ Sam said. ‘Don’t lose her.’

  JD pushed away from the kerb and wobbled over the road in pursuit of the girls. Sam rode behind him, carefully keeping his eye on the rider of the green Raleigh. Watching Geordie at the morgue, he had been struck by the fact that he could only see his friend from one point. Every observer was limited to a view from a single point but they themselves were observed from all possible angles.

  The killer of Isabel, the one who was almost certainly responsible for the death of Ralph, was an observer. If he could see his victims from another point of view, would he decide to draw back? If he could see Angeles from Sam’s point of view as well as his own, would he still be a threat to her life? And the people who observed him, the people he lived and worked with, this girl on the bike, perhaps, did any of them see him as a killer?

  The girls made a right turn on to the Stonebow, where the traffic was tailed back and cars and buses were at a standstill. The cyclists wove in and out of stationary vehicles and a slight mist came down. When they separated the blonde carried on along Peasholme Green towards Foss Bank, while the quarry took a left into Aldwark and then a right again into one of the closed courtyards.

  Sam drew level with JD and they dismounted. ‘Stay with the bikes,’ Sam told him. ‘I’ll take a look. If you hear a scream, come and save me.’ The mist was swirling now and when Sam looked back JD and the bicycles were already swallowed up.

  It was clear in the courtyard, however, and the girl with the green Raleigh only gave him a cursory glance as he came through the gate. She was wheeling the bike into a garage. Sam stood at someone’s front door and pretended to ring the bell.

  When she disappeared inside he made a note of the house number and spent the next half-hour trying to look inconspicuous as several residents arrived home from work. Finally a blue Mazda pulled through the gates and drew up to the same garage that the girl had used. Sam felt himself stiffen as soon as the driver got out of his seat. There was a shift in tension as he realized that this could be the man who attacked Angeles. Sam had not seen his face that night but he had gained an impression of his bulk and height, and the figure who was now opening the garage door fitted the bill.

  Sam kept to the shadows, watched and waited until the man let himself into the same flat as the girl, then he returned to JD.

  ‘So?’ JD said.

  ‘We’ve got the girl with the bike and a guy with blond hair about the same shape and size as the guy I saw in Angeles’ garden. We know where they live, next we have to find out who they are.’

  ‘So we follow him?’

  ‘Bright and early tomorrow morning.’

  Sam was on his bike now, but JD was kneeling at the front of his, fiddling with the dynamo. Sam waited.

  JD stood and looked at the bike then he walked around it, passing it from one hand to the other. The saddlebag was leaning over to the left and he adjusted the right strap to get it back in line. He became aware of Sam watching him and looked up, smiling.

  ‘All set?’ Sam asked.

  JD swung his leg over the crossbar. You know something, Sam? I never cared who was the president of the US after Kennedy was killed. Bobby, that is.’ He stood on the pedal and pushed away from the kerb.

  Sam followed. He said, ‘JD, don’t let anybody ever tell you different: you are a fountain of wisdom.

  48

  Geordie had gone to look at plots in the old York cemetery; Janet’s idea. Something to keep him moving, get him out of the house. Plus, it was a practical job which needed doing. The cemetery was a quiet place, a haven for wildlife, and Geordie would be able to collect his thoughts there, maybe remember that he had a wife and child as well as a dead brother.

  Janet called on Angeles at Sam’s house, but she’d gone to work and there was nobody home. At the office she found Marie. ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked. ‘It’s like a grave in here.’

  ‘Celia’s gone to the bank. Sam and JD are on a stakeout. They think they’ve found the guy.’

  ‘Hope so. Who is it?’
/>   ‘That’s what they’re working on. He lives in Aldwark with a girlfriend who’s a waitress.’

  ‘Waitresses always end up with shit,’ Janet said. ‘I hated it. The worst job in the world.’

  ‘Worse than nursing?’

  ‘Dunno. Probably about the same. Whenever I stopped working in a café or a restaurant I’d throw all my clothes away. They’d stink. All the fat and whatever it was they cooked in the place, it’d get into the weave. You could wash a shirt five, six times and it’d still smell of rotten food.’

  Marie looked up from her desk. ‘How’s Geordie?’ she said.

  ‘He’s gone to the cemetery, look for somewhere to plant Ralph. I don’t wanna talk about that. How’s your love life?’

  Marie raised her eyebrows and kissed the air.

  ‘That good? What’s he called, Davy?’

  ‘David. David Styles.’

  ‘Are we talking lurve, here?’

  ‘Yes. I’m in love with him and he’s in love with his children. At the school, his class.’

  ‘And not with you?’

  ‘Oh, he likes me,’ Marie said. ‘He’s attentive. But if we were in a sinking ship, he’d get the kids out first.’

  ‘D’you mind?’

  Marie nodded. ‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I want him to be mad about me. I want him to feel like I do, to wake up in the morning and be thinking about me rather than the lesson he’s got to teach.’

  ‘That’s like JD,’ Janet said. ‘He wakes up in the morning thinking about you and then he goes through the day thinking about you, and you don’t even want to see him.’

  ‘Yes, he’s as loyal as a Dobermann pinscher.’

  ‘And it’s not enough.’

  A smile passed over Marie’s face. ‘Crazy world, isn’t it, Janet? The sex is better than I thought sex could be. It’s like the kind of sex you dream about when you’re not getting it. But I’m looking for something else. Sex can give you a sense of self-discovery and fulfilment, but it’s just as likely to leave you overwhelmed by loneliness.’