Plender

by Ted Lewis

  As my feet touched the floor I heard way above me the sound of a door opening and the voices of Knott and the girl as they came out of the studio.

  KNOTT

  I was the way I always was, afterwards. I could hardly speak with the feeling of sickness I had. All I wanted to do was to get rid of this girl and rush back to my wife and sit with her in front of the telly and afterwards kiss the soft cheeks of my two kids as they lay in bed asleep. I wanted to climb into the luxury of a hot bath, the door locked behind me, and lie there and think about absolutely nothing. I wanted to wake up the next morning and lie between the cozy sheets and listen to the church bells and have my kids fall all over me and let them make me forget what an evil bastard I was.

  Eileen couldn’t understand what had happened to me now that it was all over. Not that she was in a fit state to understand very much at all. She’d had more to drink than she’d thought she’d had and her brain was trying to take in what had happened after the formality of the catalogue shots. Not that she’d minded very much but some of the shots I’d taken once we’d stopped pretending and started doing just that must have struck her as being at least original. But now my present coldness was causing her to have second thoughts about her willingness. Dumbly she pulled her coat round her shoulders as I opened the studio door to get us out and I remembered that earlier I’d helped her off with it as proof that I was a gentleman. Oh, for Christ’s sake, I thought as she went by me, just let me get her home and that’ll be an end of it. Except for the pictures. But then when I developed them they wouldn’t seem real. That wouldn’t be a real girl in the prints, somebody I’d known and made love to. She’d be someone I’d dreamed up, unreal, a fantasy for masturbation.

  I closed the door behind me and looked at Eileen. She was standing near the single rail of wood that acted as a banister, her foot on the top step, her back to the staircase. She was looking down at her toes, her face all still, silent and regretful. I wanted to say something to make her feel better but to do that would have required more effort than I was capable of, so I said nothing at all and began to turn back towards the door so that I could lock it. But as I moved, Eileen moved at exactly the same moment, reaching out for me, for some kind of comfort. And seeing what was coming I completed my turn more abruptly than I’d intended, to avoid her gesture by pretending not to have seen it. But in her hurry to touch me before I turned, her foot slipped off the top step and she lurched towards me, falling against me just as I reached the end of my turn, as I pushed the key into the lock. The thrusting movement of my shoulder caught her in the chest. She spun round and was forced to begin trotting down the top few steps as the momentum carried her downwards.

  She would have been quite all right if she hadn’t reached out and tried to stop herself by hanging on to the banister rail with both hands. But when she did that her upper body was jerked to an abrupt halt while her legs shot out in front of her and instead of landing on the stairs they swung out into the space of the stairwell so that she was left dangling in the blackness of the stairwell, her fingers locked together round the banister. For a moment I couldn’t move. Then, slowly, as if any speed might cause her fingers to slip apart, I began to walk down the stairs to help her.

  Her coat miraculously was still clinging to her shoulders. As I drew close to her it slipped off her and half of it lay on the edge of the staircase, the other hanging in the empty space. I stared, fascinated, at the slow movement as the weight of the lower half dragged all of the coat over the edge and away out of sight. A moment later there was a soft slap as the coat hit the paved floor below. It was then, exactly as the coat made the sound, that Eileen’s fingers parted and slipped from round the banister. She didn’t make a sound. One second she was there, the next she was on her way down to her death.

  I heard her hit and I screamed.

  Then I sat down abruptly and still with my mouth open but now unable to scream I stared at the space where Eileen had been. My brain seemed to be paralysed. It refused to put any thoughts in motion, as if by freezing, it denied what had happened. If I sat there long enough, just staring, perhaps forever, then everything would be all right. Everything would become normal again. I would take Eileen home and drive back to my wife and kids and tomorrow would be Sunday and everything would be fine.

  I sat there a long time trying to pretend it hadn’t happened but it was no use. At the bottom of the stairs there was a dead seventeen-year-old girl and I’d been taking pornographic pictures of her and when the police came they’d know and my wife and my kids would know and my parents and Kate’s old man would know and it would be the end of everything. And all because of an accident. That’s all it had been. She’d tripped and she’d fallen. Misadventure, didn’t they call it? Death by misadventure. And her misadventure had been coming out with me. I was responsible for her accident. Above all, I couldn’t stand anybody to know that. That I was responsible for stopping someone living out the rest of their life.

  I had to put Eileen somewhere else. Nobody would connect her with me. They couldn’t. Nobody knew I’d even spoken to her.

  Except Peggy.

  Sickness welled up inside me. If her picture was ever in the paper, would he remember her? She hadn’t even stood at the bar. I’d taken her straight to the booth. And Peggy, being the way he was, had perhaps refused to look into her face. Or maybe he’d looked too closely. God, oh my God. Perhaps I ought to go to the police right now and tell them exactly what had happened. It had been an accident. They’d probably believe me. There was no reason they shouldn’t. No, it wasn’t the police I was afraid of—it was the people I knew that terrified me. They’d hold me far more responsible than any unbelieving judge could. My life would be changed just as effectively as if I were charged for manslaughter. So I had to alter what had happened. Take a chance on Peggy. But dare I do it. Supposing . . . I pressed my hands against my face.

  What was I going to do? A dead girl, alive two minutes ago. Dead because of a phone call from me. Seventeen years old. Lying there still warm and full of drink. What would she look like, dead? How had she landed? Would I be able to look at her? Would I be able to touch her?

  I forced myself to stand up and made for the banister rail. I gripped the rail as tightly as she had done and leant forward and looked over into the blackness. The pale neon washed over the warehouse floor casting long shadows from the body of Eileen. Seeing her lying there made me close my eyes and jerk back from the edge. Seeing her lying there finalised the reality in my brain. Eileen was now a dead girl, dead because of me.

  PLENDER

  I waited out of sight in the shadows.

  There wasn’t a sound from above for at least five minutes. Then I heard the footsteps, distant and slow at first, but as they got closer to the bottom of the stairs they became quicker.

  Peter Knott stepped on to the warehouse floor and looked at the girl’s body. He only looked at it briefly. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and hurried over to the door that opened on to the street and climbed through and disappeared.

  The silly sod, I thought. He’s panicked. What a bastard. But I stayed where I was for a few minutes more, just in case. Which was just as well because a little later I heard the Mercedes draw up outside the warehouse. Knott stepped back into the light and walked over to the body and then straight past it, towards me.

  I stopped breathing.

  He came to a halt about three feet away from where I was. He seemed to be looking straight at me. I waited for him to speak. Instead he bent down and began to rummage about in the darkness, sorting through something which in the gloom I couldn’t make out. Then I noticed the smell of dust in the air, rising into my nostrils from where Knott was rummaging. Sacking. The smell was unmistakable. Dusty sacking. I smiled to myself. Peter Knott had made a decision.

  KNOTT

  I let one of the sacks drop to the floor and stood by the body holding th
e other one in both hands, as though I was waiting to do the gentlemanly thing and slip a coat over a lady’s shoulders. I looked down at Eileen’s body and tried to forget that it had any connection whatsoever with my-self or with death.

  But her eyes were open and shiny and the lipstick she’d put on before we’d left fought with the redness that crept from her tongue. (Perhaps if she hadn’t put the lipstick on then this wouldn’t have happened: we would have come out of the studio at a different time and in a different way and by now I would be turning the car into her street and saying goodnight to her probably arranging to see her again next week.)

  I tried to stop thinking and bent down near her head and lay the sack with its open end near her hair. I tried to slip my hand under the back of her head in order to lift her up slightly so that I could lay her head on the lower lip of the mouth of the sack. But my fingertips discovered that the back of her head didn’t exist anymore.

  I tried very hard not to be sick.

  The only thing I could do to separate her head from the flagstones was to take hold of some bunches of her hair and pull. There was a sound that made me shudder. Then I let go of her with one of my hands and slid the sacking beneath her head and neck. I tugged the sacking under her shoulders then I covered her head with the top lip of the sack and I didn’t have to look at her face anymore.

  PLENDER

  I watched Knott drag the sack over to the warehouse door and wondered how the bloody hell I was going to get out. I should have chanced it when he went to get his car from the car park. Now it looked as though I was going to get myself locked in. What a bloody idiot I was. Not that I wouldn’t be able to get out; a place like this was kids’ stuff. No, it would mean missing out on Knott’s plan of action, which was something I didn’t really want to do. I cursed again.

  When Knott reached the warehouse door he let go of the sack and stood there sizing up the best way of getting the bundle through the doorway. A thought must have struck him because he left the bundle where it was and walked back past me and past the loading bay right to the other end of the warehouse and began to trundle one of those porter’s handcarts, the kind you see on railway stations, over to the doorway. He lifted the trolley through the doorway then, after he’d checked there was no one about; he manhandled the sack out into the night. Which gave me my chance. The minute Knott and the sack disappeared through the opening I shot over to the warehouse door and pressed myself behind a jutting brick return that flanked the doorway.

  I could hear the iron wheels of the trolley on the pavement outside. The sound stopped and there was silence for a while until I heard the car boot slam. Then the trolley was trundled back to the doorway. Peter Knott lifted it through and pushed it back to exactly where he’d found it. And while he was doing that I nipped through the doorway and raced across the road to the car park.

  KNOTT

  As I drew away from the warehouse the gates at the level crossing began to close. There was nothing I could do without risking an accident so I slowed down and stopped the car and waited.

  I sat with both hands gripping the steering wheel and stared straight ahead beyond the crossing gates, up into the night sky where the low cloud was breaking up and turning into rags that raced across the new moon, its face as pale as death. I felt nothing. There were no emotions churning about in my stomach. It was as if I’d locked off any feelings by closing some kind of airtight door somewhere in my chest; my guts were no longer affecting my brain. Anything I thought now about what had happened was initiated only in my mind; I couldn’t afford for the rest of my body to affect me. Not now, at any rate. Now I had to find somewhere to leave Eileen’s body, a place where it wouldn’t be found for a long time, at least until any trail had had time to go cold. Also a place where no one would remember seeing a brand new Mercedes SL. A place where I would leave no tyre tracks. A place I had to find within the next hour or two, so that my wife wouldn’t suspect me of being unfaithful again because I’d got home late; any questioning that was directed at me tonight might activate the perverse in me and cause me to confess.

  There was only one place I could think of. On the way home, off the main road, there was a track that led down to the river. At one point it forked. If you went right, you got to the sailing club. The clubhouse was built on the edge of a vast, disused brick pit. I was a member of the sailing club: I went there quite often but more for the drinking than the sailing.

  But if you went left at the fork, the track led to the remains of the attendant brick works. One of the buildings was still in fairly good shape, a kiln house. In the kiln house there were ovens. One of them still had its cast iron door attached to it.

  That was where it had to be. If I passed another car driving down there I’d just make for the sailing club. If I didn’t, then I’d switch off my lights and turn left for the brick works. On my way back I’d still keep my lights off and watch for any approaching headlights; that way I’d know when it was safe for me to pull out of the brick works road.

  It was the only thing for me to do.

  There was no sign yet of the approaching train. Come on, I thought. For Christ’s sake.

  A movement in the driving mirror caught my eye. The white jet of headlights swung out of the car park then flared up in the glass in front of my eyes. A silver grey Cortina rolled to a halt behind me. I began to sweat. It was as if the boot were wide open and whoever was driving the Cortina could see the bleeding body of Eileen frozen in the car’s headlights.

  I pulled myself together. Nobody in the world except myself knew what was in the boot of my car. Nobody else would know. The only way I would be discovered would be if I panicked. And a silver grey Cortina parked innocently behind me was no reason for me to panic.

  The train appeared. A two coach deisel. Then the gates staggered open and I rumbled the car across the rails. I looked in my driving mirror. The Cortina paused for a moment before pulling away.

  PLENDER

  I kept a good fifty feet between us all the way. He really began to get worried when he found I was still with him on the river road. He tried to shake me by putting on a burst of speed. In that car he could have lost me any day of the week, but he wasn’t going to risk anything by letting his motor do its stuff. So I stayed with him when he accelerated away and slowed down when he slowed down still keeping the same difference between us.

  I smiled to myself. What he must be thinking. A body in his boot and a Cortina up his arse.

  I wondered where he thought he was going to get rid of it. Not down on the river, surely. He may as well have dumped it on top of Queen Victoria’s statue in Princes Square. Five minutes. That’s how long it would take before somebody fell over it. He must have seen too many British pictures.

  KNOTT

  I’d be at the turning in five minutes. What the Christ was I going to do? The Cortina had stayed behind me all the way. It couldn’t be the police. Didn’t all police cars have to be marked? But supposing it was? Supposing I’d been seen putting Eileen in the boot. Supposing the driver was just following me and waiting to see what I was going to do? Didn’t they sometimes just follow you in order to throw a scare into you? That had happened to Kate once, one time when she’d driven down to London. She’d been over the limit and a patrol car had stayed right behind for a good ten miles. She’d thought she’d had it until they suddenly pulled out and overtook her and went haring off in front of her.

  But even if there was nothing more to it than the fact that the Cortina’s driver just happened to be taking the same route as me, I couldn’t chance going through with my earlier plan. The Cortina’s driver would be bound to remember my car when Eileen’s body was discovered, when the news went out on television, when Peggy the barman remembered seeing the two of us together—Christ, what a bloody fool I was. Why didn’t I turn round and take Eileen’s body back and go to the police and tell them exactly what had happened? And
then the thought of losing everything I’d got because of a bloody stupid accident flooded back into my mind. Could I risk that happening? I thought of the body lying all twisted up in the boot. No one should have to lie like that, alone. I shouldn’t have to feel responsible for someone lying there like that. If only I’d never phoned her. God, what was I going to do?

  PLENDER

  I thought it was time I gave old Knottsy a bit of a hand.

  We were only a couple of miles from where he lived, if he hadn’t moved since he’d had his address put in the phone book. The road we were on was at its closest point to the river. There were a number of narrow access roads running down to the bank. He must have decided to dump her down there. Christ, if he went any further he may as well leave her out on his front lawn.

  No, he really did need the fairy godmother bit at the moment. So I went ahead and gave it to him.

  KNOTT

  I dipped my headlights as a car rounded the bend in front of me, coming from the opposite direction. But the minute I dipped, the Cortina behind me began to pull out. The fool was going to try and overtake. There wasn’t the time or the room. He must be able to see that. Any fool could see that. But he kept coming, accelerating all the time. He drew level with me. The other car was almost up to us. Then at the last minute the Cortina dropped back and tried to tuck in behind me again, but he misjudged my speed and his own speed and the length of our cars and just about every bloody thing else because he swung his wheel to the left too soon and clanged into the back of my Mercedes.

  I don’t know how I managed to keep the car on the road. The back end swung towards the curb. I whipped the steering wheel from side to side until I thought I was out of trouble but the fool didn’t even attempt to slow down after he’d swiped me and, as I tried to hold the Mercedes steady, the Cortina hit me again, ramming hard into the boot. I knew by the sound he’d done a lot of damage. Supposing he’d caused the boot to snap open. I had a mental picture of the body flying out into the road, sliding out of the sack, illuminated by the Cortina’s headlights. I jerked the steering wheel hard over and bumped the Mercedes on to the grass verge and stood on the brakes.