Warned Off

by Joe McNally

  Halfway along the hall was a staircase of around thirty steps, fairly steep, the carpet bordered on each side by polished wood. I started climbing, listening ... no more cries. Squeaks. Every stair squeaked. My leg hurt. I was bleeding on the carpet. After ten steps my left leg would no longer push my body up. I resorted to one step at a time.

  When I reached the top the muscle in my right thigh throbbed from doing all the work. On the first floor there were eight rooms, none locked. I searched three then realised how long it would take to do the same on every floor. I settled for a quick look in the others. The furnishing in most was sparse and there was no one crying for help. I set off up the next flight.

  It took me a while to reach the top floor. I checked every room. Most were empty of even a chair, many had no carpets and, even in this early summer, they seemed damp and cold. I wondered why Stoke didn’t just move to a smaller house and furnish all of it.

  As I opened the door of the next room I heard a sharp intake of breath. I went in. Charmain Stoke stood by the bed looking at me. She wore a silk nightgown. Her hair, long and loose, shone as the sun caught it through the window behind her.

  Her face was perfectly made up and her fingernails and toenails were painted pink.

  On her left ankle was a broad gold bracelet. On her right ankle was a steel manacle. The chain attached to it lay in coils, its tail anchored to a square steel plate bolted to a side wall. The green curtains, the pale pink of her gown, the yellow of her jewellery and the silver glint of the chain and manacles were the only things in the room that weren’t white.

  The bed was a white four-poster with white linen. The carpet was white and deep. There was a long dressing table, two high-backed padded chairs, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a footstool; all were white.

  Charmain stood motionless, staring blankly at me. A man she obviously didn’t recognise was in her bedroom bleeding on the white carpet, yet she seemed perfectly calm.

  Her brow creased, quizzical, though her mind seemed miles away; she spoke quietly, ‘I know you.’

  I nodded. ‘We’ve met before.’

  She turned to face me full on. ‘Why are you here?’

  I shrugged. ‘I want to ask you some questions.’

  33

  Charmain stared at me, her eyes going blank again. I wondered if she was in shock. Taking two steps back, she sat on the bed. Pushing her hands under her thighs she swung her legs to and fro as a child might, the chain clinking lightly.

  After a long silence she glanced sideways at me and the patch of carpet I stood on.

  ‘Is that blood?’ Her voice still carried the flat tones of disinterest.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  She got up and came toward me, the chain swishing through the carpet like a pet snake. ‘Let me see,’ she said.

  I turned and leaned against the door resting my leg on the toe of my boot to expose the injured thigh. She squatted down and I felt her gently holding apart the torn material. ‘Did the dog do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘The dog?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘In one of your stable boxes at the back.’

  ‘Did you lock it in?’

  I hesitated. ‘It isn’t your dog, is it?’

  ‘It’s Mr Skinner’s.’

  ‘Well, it’s dead.’

  ‘Did you shoot it?’ Still her voice showed no emotion.

  ‘I stabbed it with a pitchfork.’ I said.

  She stood up and I turned to face her. She was smiling. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I’m glad it’s dead.’

  She wandered over to the window and stood perfectly still, staring out. The sunbeams pierced her gown and I could see the outline of her body. I spoke quietly.

  ‘Was it Howard who chained you up?’

  She nodded. ‘And Howard brought the dog,’ she said, still staring out.

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  ‘Yesterday.’

  I limped over and stood by her side. ‘Does he always do this when he goes away?’

  She looked through the window at the high gates and the dark trees; the prison grounds. The sun highlighted the very fine down on her profile, more noticeable as her top lip quivered faintly. Her eyes glistened wet. ‘It’s been worse for a few weeks.’ It came out thickly past the obvious lump in her throat.

  ‘I’ll help you if you want to get out of here,’ I offered. She didn’t reply, didn’t turn to look at me, but the water built up in her eyes till finally she blinked, pushing out a big tear which rolled into the ridge between her lips. The tip of her tongue came out and licked it away.

  Quietly, I asked again. ‘Charmain, do you want me to help you get away?’

  She nodded slowly and on the third nod her head stayed down and she sobbed softly. Six inches beyond Charmain’s reach with the chain fully extended, Stoke, with his sense of fun, had hung the manacle key on a small hook. I gave her the key and putting her foot up on the bed she freed herself.

  She was suddenly brighter, more positive. ‘Can we go now?’

  ‘You’d better get dressed. I can wait outside.’

  ‘I haven’t any clothes.’

  I looked at the thin pink gown.

  ‘It’s all I have left. Howard burned all my clothes two days ago.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll have to find you something when we get out.’

  She nodded briskly, waiting like a puppy for me to lead the way, and I got a glimpse of the happy schoolgirl of not that many years ago. Maybe Stoke hadn’t killed her spirit completely.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ And I turned, all the weight on my good leg, and took a step forward on the bad one which immediately balled up into twisted thigh muscles as an agonising cramp bit deep. Stumbling, I reached toward the wall for support. I felt Charmain grab me from behind, trying to keep me upright.

  ‘Can I sit down?’ I gasped. ‘I’ll have to get the leg straight.’

  She pulled my left arm over her shoulder and I consciously held my hand away from her breast where it would have rested. She got me to the bed and I bumped down heavily, trying to keep the leg up.

  ‘Can you hold my foot and press the toe down? And very carefully straighten my leg ...’

  She started pushing. The pain got worse.

  ‘Charmain! Slowly!’

  The pain from the wound quickly overtook that from the cramp. ‘Leave it!’ I shouted.

  ‘Sorry, am I going too fast?’

  ‘No, no ... you’re doing all right but the pain’s too much.’

  She looked at me. I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth.

  ‘Will I put your foot down now?’

  I nodded. Sweat broke on my forehead. I opened my eyes and looked up at Charmain, at the concern on her face. I didn’t delude myself that the worry was more for her escape than my survival.

  ‘I can probably find something to bathe it.’ she offered.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Shall I help you off with your trousers?’

  I shook my head. ‘Never get them on again.’

  She went through a door and came out with a white towel and a porcelain bowl of hot water laced with disinfectant. Between her teeth a pair of scissors gleamed. She helped me roll over to lie on my stomach, then carefully cut away the bloody material around the wound. ‘This might sting a bit,’ she said. I braced myself, but not well enough. When the sting bit, my heel came up in shock and she gasped as it caught her in the stomach.

  ‘I’m sorry! You all right?’

  She coughed. ‘It’s okay. I’ll try again.’ She leaned from the side this time, avoiding my feet.

  I spent the next two minutes trying not to scream.

  Charmain supported me as I hobbled down the stairs. I pictured her trying to climb the big gate in her nightgown. I pictured me trying to climb it in a bandage and a lot of pain.

  ‘Is there a key for the main gate?’ I asked.

  ‘I think there’s one on th
e back ledge of the mailbox’.

  There was.

  We walked round the bend under the dark trees and I felt a sudden apprehension that the car might not be there but it was exactly as I’d left it.

  ‘Should I drive?’ Charmain asked.

  I gave her the key. She adjusted the seat and the mirror and rearranged her gown as I lowered myself into the passenger seat.

  Mechanically, she checked face and hair in the mirror. Some level of confidence was coming through, replacing the quiet resignation she’d shown when chained up in her room. She turned to me. ‘Ready?’

  For the first time in months my sense of the ridiculous took over and I laughed, albeit quietly, and rolled my head from side to side on the headrest. Charmain didn’t speak, she just looked at me, waiting for an explanation. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t make up my mind whether this is a murder mystery or a farce.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Me bleeding through a hole in the seat of my pants, you wearing nothing but a silk nightgown ready to drive us to God only knows where and you don’t even remember my name.’

  ‘I do. You’re Eddie Malloy, you used to fancy me at school.’

  ‘How did you know I fancied you? I never told you.’

  ‘You didn’t have to, I ...’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. But I do remember you from school.’

  ‘But that was years ago, I could have turned into a madman for all you know, I could be taking you anywhere for any purpose.’

  She glanced down. ‘I doubt you’ll be doing much in your condition,’ she said. ‘I think I can cope.’

  She started the engine, and released the handbrake. Then she pulled it on again. Reaching to the floor below her seat she brought out a small pink nylon case, something between a purse and a cosmetics bag.

  I hadn’t noticed her carrying it from the house. She looked inside, closed it again, stuffed it under the seat then picked slowly away into a neat turn.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know, let’s just get away from here.’

  She didn’t look back. I did, at the big white prison with the green curtains and I suddenly remembered where I’d seen that colour before – on the jockey who rode the Champion Hurdle winner, Alan Harle. The colours belonged to the phantom owner who retained him to ride all his horses, Mr Louis Perlman.

  The sun, though sinking, was still bright and the road was clear and straight. We decided to visit the nearest hospital so I could get some treatment and Charmain, wearing an old raincoat I carried in the back, could call a friend whom she reckoned would take her in ‘till the heat died down’. God knows when that will be, I thought. Once Stoke discovered she’d gone, the temperature could only go up.

  ‘Doesn’t Howard know this friend?’ I asked. ‘Won’t he go there looking for you?’

  She shook her head confidently. ‘Doesn’t know her. I haven’t seen her myself for ages.’

  The Greenlands Hospital Casualty Department was empty when we arrived and the doctor saw me within five minutes. Half an hour later I got back in the car and sat tenderly on eleven stitches and an anti-tetanus injection.

  Two paracetamol were supposed to have made things easier, as yet they hadn’t.

  Charmain, looking a good deal more anxious than when I’d left her, stared straight ahead through the windscreen, biting ferociously at her lip.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘Kate’s gone to Italy.’

  ‘Your friend?’

  She nodded.

  ‘When’s she due back?’

  ‘Next month.’

  I cursed silently, selfishly, knowing what the outcome of this was going to be. ‘Is there anyone else?’ I asked. Still not looking at me, she shook her head in short sharp jabs.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, with more confidence than I felt. ‘We’ll find somewhere.’

  She turned to me, the hunted look already etched deep in her face. ‘Where?’

  I shrugged. ‘With me, if needs be.’

  It didn’t ease things for her. ‘But doesn’t Howard know you?’

  ‘He knows me all right but he’d have no reason to suppose you were with me.’

  Eyes vacant, she nodded slowly, not really taking it in. ‘Okay,’ she said, starting the car. ‘Which way?’

  ‘That way.’ I pointed west and we lowered the visors against the gradually setting sun.

  It was the best I could come up with. Going back to the cottage for any length of time was out of the question. Stoke’s men would eventually come looking.

  34

  During the next hour Charmain grew increasingly nervy, biting her nails and rubbing her mouth hard with the back of her hand like she was wiping saliva away.

  When she strayed over the central white lines on the road for the second time, I spoke to her. ‘You okay?’

  She looked round suddenly at me as though I’d only just appeared beside her. ‘Yes ... yes. I’m okay.’

  Her skin was pale. She didn’t look okay. ‘Is your husband going to be at York till Friday?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘What were you supposed to do for food while he was away?’

  ‘He leaves a supply of fruit in a cupboard.’

  ‘Fruit! For three days?’

  She was right back in the seat, neck rigid, arms dead straight on the wheel as though trying to hold a runaway horse. ‘Howard said it helped me keep my figure.’

  ‘Why didn’t you leave him?’

  ‘I had my reasons.’

  I waited.

  ‘He’s not an easy man to leave,’ she said.

  ‘Has he always used Skinner’s dog as well as the chain?’

  ‘Today was the first time. He told me it was there but I only half believed him.’

  ‘What has he got on Skinner?’

  ‘Skinner owes him a lot of money. Howard lets him run up big debts then calls in his favours.’

  ‘What kind of favours?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know specifics but Howard’s seen a lot of Skinner these past six months or so.’

  These past six months. Felt more like years.

  The talking seemed to be relaxing Charmain a little and she leaned forward into a more natural driving position. Her next question surprised me.

  ‘Is it Skinner you’re after or Howard?’

  ‘Who do you think?’

  She kept staring at the road. Since we started the conversation she hadn’t looked at me. She shrugged and frowned. ‘Well, I don’t know.’

  ‘But I should be after somebody?’

  ‘You must be. People don’t go around killing dogs and breaking into houses for nothing ... And asking questions.’

  ‘I’m trying to find out who killed Alan Harle.’

  Our speed dropped suddenly as her foot eased right off the gas pedal then surged as she realised what had happened and pressed down again. Her knuckles were white on the wheel and she bit hard at her bottom lip.

  ‘You knew Alan.’ I made it a statement. Still she wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘I’m very tired,’ she said. ‘I feel a bit faint. Can we stop a while?’

  ‘Okay, pull in at the next lay-by.’ That suggestion seemed to stress her even more. ‘No, not a lay-by, somewhere with a toilet, somewhere I can eat. Maybe a cup of sweet tea, something like that.’

  ‘Okay, the next place you think is suitable.’

  She nodded, but the tension didn’t ease and by the time we stopped at a small transport café her concentration had deteriorated so much she couldn’t have driven any further.

  The place looked okay for truck-drivers but not for pretty women in pink nightgowns. Charmain didn’t seem to mind. If anything, her stress diminished as she reached for my old coat in the back.

  ‘Can I use this again?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘Why don’t you stay in the car and I’ll go and get some food?’

>   ‘No!’ She almost shouted. ‘I can’t stay in the car ... I have to go to the toilet.’

  I looked at her. She avoided my eyes. ‘Okay, you go to the toilet, I’ll get some food and drinks and meet you back here.’

  She nodded, stepped out, pulling the coat round her shoulders, picked up her little pink bag and hurried off toward the white pebble-dash buildings.

  Suspicion had been growing but I knew then almost for certain that she’d return calm, smiling and self-assured.

  I was right.

  Charmain sipped the tea but wouldn’t eat. The colour was back in her cheeks and she was bright and chatty. Her eyes shone.

  ‘Pretty uplifting toilets, those,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm.’ She smiled.

  ‘Take away hunger and tension and tiredness. Think a visit would do my leg any good?’

  She just kept smiling, reached for the recliner handle and wound the seat back. She looked perfectly relaxed.

  ‘I know where I can stay,’ she said.

  I waited.

  ‘A friend of mine has a boat. It’s on the Oxford canal near a little village.’

  I wondered for a moment if she meant Skinner but I didn’t think so. ‘What’s your friend’s name?’

  ‘Phil Greene, he’s a jockey.’

  I waited for it to dawn on her but it didn’t. ‘You’ve got a short memory, Charmain, Phil Greene’s hardly cold in his grave. You were at his funeral.’

  Eyes still closed she frowned for a few seconds then smiled again. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got a key.’

  ‘For what?’

  She looked at me. ‘The boat.’

  ‘So it doesn’t matter that Phil Greene’s dead as long as you have a key to his boat?’

  ‘I’m not saying it doesn’t matter. He was a sweet kid and I know he would have wanted me to stay at the boat if I was in a spot.’

  ‘So why didn’t you think of that first before your rang your friend back there?’

  She shrugged. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘You forgot or you didn’t realise how short of heroin you were?’

  It didn’t faze her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that until you went it to that toilet and shot some of the stuff into your arm you didn’t realise how little you had left.’