Blood Falls

by Tom Bale

  Danny was standing at the entrance to the university car park, thumping his leg in frustration as he gazed up and down the street. In Danny Morton’s world, buses were strictly for the poor and the weak. It wouldn’t occur to him that Joe might escape on something so slow and inefficient.

  As the bus nosed out into the traffic, Joe’s last glimpse of Danny saw him stalking towards the railway station, one fist rubbing angrily at the scar on his cheek. Joe let out a long sigh and shut his eyes for a moment. Too close for comfort.

  Then he made a call on his mobile. Ryan answered, his voice subdued: ‘You’re all right, then?’

  ‘Just about, but they won’t be happy. It occurred to me that they might pay you another visit.’

  ‘Yeah, same thing crossed my mind. I’ve rescheduled a couple of inside jobs for this week. And I just recruited my cousin Dex to help out.’

  ‘The bouncer?’

  ‘Cage fighter, he is now.’ A short laugh. ‘He’s a crap decorator, but he’ll watch my back.’

  ‘Ryan, I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess.’

  ‘Not your fault, really. I just hope you manage to find a way out of it. I mean, you can’t live all your life on the run, can you?’

  The comment provoked a rueful smile from Joe. ‘Actually, I thought I could. More fool me.’

  Five

  SHE WOKE TO a headache like nothing she’d ever experienced. Her first waking breath was a gasp of pain. She longed to be unconscious again, but it seemed like a hopeless ambition.

  Her eyes fluttered, and might have opened, but no light came in. She shut them tightly, kept her breathing as shallow as possible, her whole body tensed and utterly still, as if immobility would lessen the pounding in her skull. It made no difference.

  Some time passed, and maybe she did drift off. Not sleep, but a kind of disassociation. She stepped away from the pain, moved to a state where she could assess it with some objectivity.

  A blow to the head, perhaps. But surely that would be more localised? This was a sensation that seemed to fill her skull to bursting point; it went rolling down her spine, it leaked from her eyes like tears, or blood.

  Blood. She lifted a hand to her face, touching the skin reluctantly, as though it belonged to someone else. It felt hot and puffy, damp in places and slightly sticky. But she didn’t think it was blood; more like sweat and grime.

  Beneath her head, then? She couldn’t lift it, not when her skull was filled with molten lead, but she could turn it, she could feel the dry scrunch of her hair as she moved. It felt normal, without the tight, gloopy sensation that she associated with lying in a pool of blood.

  She wasn’t bleeding. She wasn’t stuck, or restrained. So why …?

  She drifted off again. Her brain was clogged up, as though submerged in oil. Every thought came out tarred, contaminated by the greasy after-images of a nightmare: dirty jokes and dirty hands; street lights sliding beneath the roof of a car.

  If she wasn’t injured, had this been self-inflicted? God, she’d had hangovers before, dreadful ones, but nothing like this. She imagined her parents, offering their usual caution about drinking to excess: ‘Now then, ———, we know—’

  The memory came to a grinding halt.

  Her name was missing.

  What was her name?

  She might have laughed, if she hadn’t been so afraid. She had forgotten her own name, the way you sometimes forget the name of an actor on TV. Her mum was always doing that: Isn’t he the one who was in that thing with what’s-his-name, the detective? In real life he’s married to the woman from those silly adverts, you know the one I mean. She’s got long hair and a really irritating voice …

  Okay. Start with Mum and Dad. They worried about her overdoing the booze. She worked to produce a picture of them in her mind, but all she could summon was a generic middle-aged couple: grey hair, no distinguishing features. Who were they?

  The absence was so disturbing that she let the question sink back into the tar. Another stray thought bobbed to the surface, like an air bubble.

  Party.

  There had been a party—no, talk of a party. She’d been in a pub, or perhaps a cafe, and the idea had been to move on.

  Dirty jokes and dirty hands; streetlights sliding above her as she sank across the seat …

  Somewhere better than this, he had said. In another town, not too far away. ‘Come on, Jenny. You won’t get a better offer than this.’

  Jenny. She was Jenny.

  Sweet relief. She had a name. An identity.

  And maybe, just maybe, the pain in her head was easing slightly. She stopped trying to think and instead she focused on breathing better: slow and deep, not fast and shallow. More time passed, the pain receding like an outgoing tide, and when she felt calm and relatively clear-headed she opened her eyes to find—

  Nothing.

  She blinked, felt the tickle of her lashes. There was nothing over her eyes, nothing impeding her vision. She was in absolute darkness.

  She lifted her arm in front of her face, only inches away, and couldn’t see a thing. The panic squeezed her heart. She could be in a cavern or a coffin.

  Not a coffin. Please, not that …

  Tentatively, she raised her arm again, stretching, waving, and met no resistance. The air she stirred was cool and vaguely damp. Musty. There was no echo from the sound of her breathing. She wasn’t in a coffin, at least. Probably a room of some sort. An underground room.

  A cell.

  And she was warm: a fever heat. She placed her hands on her face. Her cheeks were burning, her palms much cooler, almost cold. She patted her neck, her chest, and gasped. Her hands quickly moved down, confirming what she’d already feared.

  She was naked. She had been stripped.

  Gently, she slid her hand between her legs, provoking a fresh wave of pain so sharp that it made her retch. There was something sticky on her thighs, which dried as she rubbed it with her fingertips. This was blood.

  She must have trusted him. But she wasn’t a fool. How could she have been so careless?

  Come on, Jenny. You won’t get a better offer than this.

  He’d taken her somewhere. She had to find the name. It started with T. Tre … Treb … Tren …

  No. Trel … The first letters were T.R.E.L.

  Concentrate, for God’s sake. Find the name.

  That was Jenny’s brave voice, the one that made her strive for independence. But there was always a competing voice, lazy and cynical, that said: Why? What difference does it make?

  It means I can think clearly. And if I can think clearly, I have a chance …

  She nearly had it. The name of the town floated above her like a banner towed by an aircraft, just a little too high to read. But she remembered him telling her where it was. Along the coast from Port Isaac, not far from that place where the famous chef lived.

  Padstow. The chef was in Padstow.

  And Jenny, Jenny was in …

  Six

  TRELENNAN.

  The name had eluded Joe at first. It eventually came to him on the bus to Weston-super-Mare. Later, in WHSmith’s, he looked it up in a road atlas and plotted his route to the north coast of Cornwall.

  In Bristol he’d been wary of boarding a train at Temple Meads. Too much chance that Morton and his men would be prowling the stations. Instead he took another bus. It was an hour’s journey to Weston, which gave him time to think about where he should go next.

  The cash he carried with him wouldn’t last long. He needed someone who could offer him sanctuary. Not family or friends: too dangerous. It had to be a connection that pre-dated his involvement with the Mortons.

  One name popped into his head: Diana Bamber.

  Before leaving Bristol, other precautions had been necessary. In Marks and Spencer he’d used the toilet to clean up, scrubbing flecks of paint from his face, and in the menswear department he had bought a zip-up beige jacket and a flat cap.

  Together with a sandwich, so
me chocolate and a bottle of water, the bill had come to just over sixty pounds. A lot of money in the circumstances, but the clothes represented a simple but effective disguise. By stooping, and walking more slowly, Joe could make himself appear a good twenty years older. From now on he wanted to avoid being recognised by anyone – and that included on CCTV.

  Once in Weston he made a final call on his mobile phone. Lindsey Bevan sounded far less agitated than Joe had expected. The Astra had been abandoned outside his property, but because there were no reported injuries and the only other damage was to the gatepost, the police hadn’t shown a lot of interest.

  ‘They’re sending someone along, but goodness knows when,’ Lindsey told him. ‘Is this connected to the men who were looking for you earlier?’

  ‘Could be,’ Joe admitted. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They claimed a relative of yours had passed away. Apparently they’ve been searching for you for months in order to make sure you receive a substantial legacy.’ He snorted. ‘I was extremely suspicious, not least because of their manner and appearance. A pack of lies, is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry. They showed me a photograph. My instinct was to deny knowing you, but alas Audrey happened to walk past.’ Lindsey tutted. ‘Honestly, that woman. No attempt to gauge the mood. She just pipes up, at the top of her voice: “Oh, that’s our Joe, isn’t it?”’

  Joe sighed. ‘It’s not her fault. I brought this on myself.’ He told Lindsey that he’d have to relinquish the room and wasn’t sure when he’d be able to collect his clothes. He made no mention of the valuables hidden in the loft. What Lindsey didn’t know, he couldn’t let on to anybody.

  He also promised that he would one day pay for the damage to the wall. Lindsey wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘I have more than adequate insurance. You just take care, Joe. If you need anything, you know where I am.’

  After the call Joe ditched the phone and bought a replacement for thirty pounds, which included ten pounds’ airtime. Then to the railway station, where the cost and the convoluted nature of the journey nearly forced a change of plan – except he knew that he had no real alternative.

  Trelennan it was. Another forty pounds from his rapidly dwindling funds.

  And when he got there, if he couldn’t find Diana – if she’d moved away, or was on holiday – then he knew he might end up sleeping on the streets tonight.

  It took him more than six hours to reach the town. Three trains: starting with Weston to Taunton, then on to Plymouth, on a fast modern service that had come all the way from Dundee. Racing through the drab autumnal landscape, Joe quickly found himself dozing, his head lolling on his chest.

  When he woke it was raining hard and already growing dark, the low cloud hastening the dusk. The sleep hadn’t done much to refresh him. He felt tired and thick-headed, his body rimed in sweat.

  Reaching Plymouth at a quarter to six and boarding a local train to Bodmin, he envied the returning commuters the mundane certainty of their evening plans: warm homes, welcoming families. Food and drink and mindless television. Oh, to be comfortably numb …

  It was a close-run scrape with self-pity. Joe deflected it by concentrating on the question that was uppermost in his mind; the question he was almost afraid to ask.

  How had they found him?

  He must have made a mistake somewhere. Either that or he had been very, very unlucky. The third possibility, the one he was loath to contemplate, was that he had been betrayed.

  No one in Bristol knew his true identity. He was simply Joe Carter, an itinerant manual worker. And no one else, no one from his past life, knew where he was.

  There was only one former colleague he trusted enough to keep in touch with: Maz Milani. Even then, they mostly communicated via email, Joe preferring to use various Internet cafes in Bristol rather than his landlord’s computer.

  During Joe’s period in exile, Maz had represented the only link to his past life. Two weeks ago, at Maz’s instigation, Joe had contacted his brother Peter, who had sombre news. Their mother Ruth, now aged seventy-four, had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. It was in the early stages, and the prognosis was good, but Pete had urged him to get in touch. It would be just the tonic she needs. If there’s any way you can do it, please call her.

  So he had. From a phone box in Newport, a location he’d selected at random and reckoned was far enough away from Bristol to be safe.

  She had been delighted to hear from him, although it had taken Joe the best part of ten minutes to reassure her that he was all right. Whenever he tried to discuss her condition she brushed his concerns aside, insisting that it was his well-being that mattered most.

  Growing tearful, she’d said, ‘I haven’t given up, you know.’

  ‘Good. Pete said the treatment has a high success rate.’

  ‘Not that. I mean you and Helen, and the girls. I’m still praying that one day I’ll see you all living as a family again.’

  ‘So am I, Mum,’ he’d said. ‘So am I.’

  It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it had felt to Joe that his voice lacked conviction. To hear his dream articulated by someone else served only to emphasise how unlikely it was ever to be realised.

  That night, back in Bristol, he had drunk himself into oblivion at the knowledge that his entire family had been fractured by his stupidity and stubbornness, condemned to live in miserable isolation from each other. And rather than diminish over time, with each passing year, each month, each week, the pain of that isolation seemed to grow more intense.

  Now Joe had to face the likelihood that the Mortons had tracked him down through the people he cherished the most.

  Seven

  FROM BODMIN HE caught a bus to Wadebridge, where he discovered that the services to the coast had finished for the day. He was given the number of a local taxi firm and negotiated a price: fifteen pounds to take him to Trelennan.

  The taxi arrived five minutes later. The driver was in his fifties, shaven-headed and overweight, rolls of fat wrapped around obsolete muscle. His thick forearms were a mass of crude tattoos and he wore a heavy gold crucifix round his neck. When he demanded the money up front, Joe didn’t argue.

  They chatted agreeably for the first few miles, until the conversation veered on to the subject of immigration. Within seconds the taxi driver was virtually foaming at the mouth, ranting about ‘subhuman scum, bleeding us dry’ and bemoaning the weakness of politicians who lacked the will to ‘just round ’em up and send ’em back where they fucking came from.’

  ‘And what if they come from here?’ Joe asked.

  ‘I don’t give a toss what they try to claim—’

  ‘You’d send them back, anyway?’ As the driver nodded enthusiastically, still assuming he was talking to a like-minded individual, Joe added: ‘Any of your family fight in World War II?’

  ‘Uh? Yeah, my grandad and his brother. What about it?’

  ‘Just strikes me as ironic, that’s all. They fought a war against genocide and racism, and here you are talking about immigrants the same way the Nazis talked about Jews.’

  The driver said nothing. The remainder of the journey was completed in a tense, glowering silence. The only illumination came from the taxi’s headlights, their beams catching individual raindrops in glints of silver. The hedgerows lining the road were high and close, obscuring any sense of the landscape around them. It was like driving through a long, bleak tunnel.

  Its engine straining, the car laboured up a gradual but punishing slope. As they crested the hill the lights of a pub blinked into view. The road widened enough to acquire a centre line. Here and there they passed driveways, the entrances to farms and country cottages.

  ‘Where d’you want dropping?’ the driver asked, in a tone that suggested the answer ought to be: Off a steep cliff.

  ‘Town centre’s fine.’

  The driver grunted. ‘Tell you what, this’ll do.’ He braked hard, pulling over to the side of the road. ‘
You said Trelennan. Here it is.’ He raised his left arm to point, his elbow almost jabbing Joe in the face. ‘Centre’s that way.’

  He was clearly spoiling for a fight, but Joe had nothing to gain and much to lose if he rose to the bait. Climbing out, Joe muttered, ‘Safe journey back.’

  With matching insincerity, the driver cackled, ‘You’re gonna fucking love it here, you are.’

  Joe watched the taxi driver execute a messy three-point turn and roar away. The night was chilly, with a brisk wind, but at least the rain was light enough to endure. He was already cold and tired and hungry: a bit of damp couldn’t make it worse.

  As far as he could tell, the town was laid out on a steep hillside, curving around a narrow bay. The road he was on appeared to follow a winding course down the hill, and he assumed it would lead eventually to the seafront. That seemed like the best place to begin his search.

  He passed a development of relatively modern bungalows, then the road narrowed as it descended through an older part of town: an attractively chaotic jumble of stone cottages, mostly well-maintained, adorned with hanging baskets and a variety of wall plaques. Lots of parked cars, slotted into every available space, but no passing traffic, no pedestrians. Barely eight p.m. and the town was asleep.

  The severe slope put a strain on his ankles and shins. Joe found himself leaning back so as not to break into a run. Glimpsing the lights of distant properties to his left and right, his impression was of a bowl-shaped settlement, hidden away from the rest of the world. Directly ahead, the horizon was blotted out by cloud and rain. Somewhere below it the sea lay dark and forbidding: an absence of land rather than a presence in its own right.

  He took a left turn into a wider street that looked to be a more direct route to the front. The homes along here were bigger, mostly rendered and painted white, with brick chimneys and roofs of slate or tile. For the first time there were pavements, and grass verges, and even a little passing traffic. Joe found himself watching every car closely, his muscles tensed for flight.