‘I see.’
‘You know how that happens, sometimes?’
Eh?
Kane frowned and cocked his head.
‘Although I’m not sure if he ever…’ the German muttered, distractedly.
Pause
‘…I’m not sure if he ever actually gave it to me. The number. I just plucked it from…How to describe it? I just plucked it from the air. From…from the ether.’
Longer pause
‘Isn’t that odd? Do you think that’s odd?’
Kane cleared his throat, nervously, not really sure how to answer.
Silence
‘Perhaps you could leave him a message?’ he finally suggested (impressed by the quiet, somehow. It didn’t drag. It was dynamic. It crackled. Was that a German thing? Did the Teutonic races have some special kind of strangle-hold on the high-quality conversational hiatus?).
‘Beede’s son…’ The German mused, reflectively, as if calling something very peripheral to mind.
Kane said nothing.
‘Beede’s son, Kane…’ he repeated, this time rather more emphatically.
Kane merely scowled.
‘Kane. Yes. But of course…’ (a connection was suddenly established), ‘now I remember: you shared a coffee together, didn’t you, earlier this morning?’
Was that a question, Kane wondered, or just a bald statement, posing as one?
‘Although – and I’m being brutally honest here,’ the German confided, ‘when I actually looked over towards the window – the window where he pointed (and I can see it now, very clearly, in my mind’s eye) you were gone. The window was empty. So there was no way of really…of really knowing…’
‘We did meet,’ Kane butted in, impatiently, ‘quite by chance. Just before lunch. At the French Connection.’
‘That’s it!’ the German sounded gleeful. ‘That’s right! That’s exactly right! The French Connection! Ha!’
Kane took a small, nervous step back, a move which the phone line gently resisted.
‘What did you say your name was, again?’ he asked, feeling a sudden, sharp twinge of paranoia.
‘So you’re absolutely positive, then,’ the German barrelled on, determinedly, ‘and I mean totally certain that you met Beede there for coffee this morning?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Kane fired back, defensively.
‘God, yes…I remember the fort…’ the German muttered (heading off, without warning, on a sudden tangent) ‘…the children’s fort. The fort is significant, but I’m not entirely sure…uh…’
‘Who are you?’
Kane was now officially freaked out.
‘Isidore,’ the man answered plainly (perhaps a little startled by Kane’s forceful tone). ‘Didn’t I say so before? I’m sorry. How incredibly rude. Forgive me. I’m Isidore. Dory. Beede and I do the tours together.’
‘Pardon?’
Kane didn’t follow.
‘The Ashford Tours. I’m the chauffeur. Beede’s my guide.’
‘Ashford Tours?’
Kane still wasn’t quite up to speed.
‘Yes…Although it’s just a side-line, really. And your father’s been so caught up in his work at the laundry lately…Security’s our main function – keeping keys, guarding empty properties, a little light detective work…’
‘Beede is your guide?’
Kane was struggling to catch on (I mean Beede? A guide? That old sourpuss? Welcoming people? Putting on a show? Being informative? Friendly? Obliging? Beede being positive? About modern Ashford of all places – the source of all his gloom? The heart of all his disappointments? Had the world finally gone absolutely bloody barking?).
‘A great guide. A brilliant guide. Your father is quite a remarkable man,’ the German observed, dryly (was it dryness, or something else?), ‘but I’m sure you’re already very well aware of that fact.’
‘Oh yeah…’ Kane mumbled, with a vague smirk, ‘absolutely.’
His mind was momentarily drifting elsewhere. The children’s fort. Fort –
Eh?
What was that?
He drew a sudden, sharp breath as he registered an unpleasant, pinching sensation in his forearm. He glanced down. He realised that he was now supporting the phone receiver against his shoulder and that his right hand was clutching – very tightly – on to his left arm (where the old sunburn scars were) –
Ow!
He blinked. He relaxed his grip –
What?!
The outer edges of his scar tissue had been reddened by the roughness of its manhandling. He scowled.
‘But of course,’ he suddenly found himself saying, ‘it must’ve been you – on the horse.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. You…Tall. Fair-haired. Wearing some kind of…of navy-blue uniform.’
The German seemed bewildered by this revelation. ‘Me? On a horse? Riding? You actually saw me on horseback?’
‘Yeah…Well, no. You were climbing off. You’d climbed off.’
‘And you were there with Beede, you say? In the restaurant? Having coffee?’
Kane grimaced, impatiently. ‘I think we already established that.’
He leaned forward and picked up the stray magazines from the carpet.
Silence
‘And then?’ the German asked, tentatively.
‘What?’
As Kane carefully placed the magazines back on to the pile again he noticed a bank statement which’d been preserved, flat, between a couple of the editions.
‘Then Beede left?’ the German persisted. ‘Is that how it happened?’
‘Uh,’ Kane considered this for a moment, eyeing the statement, casually, ‘yeah. Quite soon after. Once the chiropodist arrived.’
‘The chiropodist?’
The German’s voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘You mean Elen? The chiropodist? She was there?’
Elen
Of course
Kane glanced up, smiling.
‘My wife was there?’
Kane’s smile faltered.
‘Good God.’
The German seemed overwhelmed by this idea.
‘Although in actual fact,’ Kane frowned as he remembered, ‘the boy almost had me convinced that there were two horses…’
‘Sorry? What? A boy?’
‘Her son,’ Kane paused, ‘your son. A sharp little character. He said that there were two. But if there were, then they were pretty much indistinguishable…’ He paused again ‘…which I suppose they’d need to be, really, for the trick to work.’
‘You’re telling me that there were two horses?’
The German – rather slow on the uptake, Kane thought – swung from excited to panicky.
Kane stared down at the statement again, distractedly, then his brows suddenly shot up –
What?!
Holy fuck…
‘Was Beede on one of them?’
Kane continued to stare at the statement, as if mesmerised.
‘Hello? Are you there? I said was Beede on one of them?’
‘No!’ Kane snapped, exasperated. ‘Beede was with me. I saw one horse. But the boy said that only by using two horses could you have managed the change-over so quickly. The swap. Like in a trick. A magic trick…’
‘Swap? Who swapped?’
The German sounded terrified.
‘You and the other man. The…’ Kane struggled to describe him, ‘the strange…the creepy…’
‘Which man?’ The German rasped.
Kane closed his eyes and tried to visualise –
Black
Yellow
Black
He shuddered, ‘The dark man…’
And then he found himself hissing – ‘…Ssssssss!’
With no forewarning, his mouth was –
Good God!
It was hissing – ‘Darkmansssss.’
Kane quickly clamped his errant lips shut –
Where?
How?
&nb
sp; What the…?!
Isidore hung up.
PART TWO
FLEET
‘There are many ways in which Fleet is much, much more advanced than all of the other children in his class,’ Mrs Santa explained, encouragingly, ‘his hand–eye coordination – for one thing – is really quite astonishing. And I mean really quite astonishing…’
She glanced over towards the play area in the corner of the classroom where Fleet was currently sitting and boredly constructing a small, neat structure –
A fort, was it?
– out of plastic bricks.
Elen detected a kind of anxiety in the glance. She felt a spontaneous knuckle of rage forming in her stomach (how dare she look at him like that? He was her son. She loved him), and then a balancing knuckle of sympathy (Oh God, he made her feel that way herself, sometimes).
These two contradictory knuckles were Elen’s constant companions; and her gut was the boxing ring in which they staged their spats. ‘Motherhood,’ she told herself, bleakly: ‘the pride, the humility.’
She tried to take a deep breath –
Breathe
Breathe from the stomach
(just like Dory said)
Kinking the back
Diaphragm flat, out, up…
They were sitting on two tiny chairs at a tiny table, like a couple of lady Gullivers amongst the Lilliputians. Elen couldn’t actually remember entering the classroom, or how she’d actually got there. It was all just a blank, a fug. She stared over at the teacher, frowning.
‘But then he might go and do something like…like that for example…’
The teacher indicated (perhaps slightly irritably) at the methodical way in which – before he finally positioned each and every individual brick – Fleet would run the nail of his thumb along the smooth plastic edge, then push the indented side, firmly, into his lower lip.
‘He’ll do that for whole hours at a time. And I mean whole hours, literally. That same, odd little ritual…’
This time her glance extended over towards the door.
Elen’s own eyes followed, hard upon –
Oh my God
The Head Teacher –
Standing guard…
‘He has a phenomenal memory…’ Mrs Santa returned, somewhat doggedly, to her positive sales pitch, ‘although he’s highly selective about the kinds of things that interest him. Very…uh…particular…’
Elen wasn’t paying attention. She was still thinking about the Head Teacher and why he was out there –
Back-up?
Is something wrong?
Does she hate me?
She put a self-conscious hand to her cheek –
Is it the mark?
‘But on the down-side…’ Mrs Santa paused, stuck out her chin, gave a small, Jewish shrug –
Is she Jewish?
Elen stared at her. She was tiny, plump, wore her dark hair – pushed back today with a navy-blue alice-band – in a neat, sharp bob –
Is she?
‘…his language skills are lagging way behind most of the other children’s in his class. And his social skills are still very shaky – even after our previous initiative with the Bradleys’ youngest…’
Elen blinked, snapping out of her reverie –
Oh my, yes –
The Bradley boy…
That ended badly
‘He’ll fall asleep at the drop of a hat – sitting at the table, or when I’m reading a story. Or he’ll just curl up in a corner,’ Mrs Santa twisted the engagement ring on her finger, smiling, almost fondly, ‘like the dopey little dormouse in Alice in Wonderland.’ She cleared her throat and then waited for a response. None came.
‘It’s not that he’s bored – at least I certainly hope it’s not that…’ she drew a quick breath, as if anticipating some kind of heartfelt affirmation of her teaching skills from Elen (she waited in vain), ‘but he’s definitely tired. And yet when he is awake, when he’s on the ball…’ she adjusted a gold link on the bracelet of her watch, ‘he goes straight to the opposite extreme. He focuses too much…’ she paused, speculatively. ‘I’m sure you’ll be aware of this yourself. He can try too hard. He can get too involved in certain projects – certain situations – and then get incredibly frustrated if things don’t work out properly…’
‘Is Fleet causing trouble in class?’ Elen butted in, almost hopefully (there was something so reassuringly normal about the thought of a naughty, disruptive little boy).
Mrs Santa looked shocked. ‘No. Absolutely not. In fact quite the opposite. If anything he’s actually…’ she winced, putting up a small hand to adjust the tiny, faux-Hermès-style silk scarf around her neck ‘…too well behaved. And too hard on himself. Extremely hard…’ Elen frowned. This was definitely not good.
‘So you called me in today,’ she spoke calmly and evenly (purposefully misinterpreting what the teacher was telling her –
This is a game, Elen –
Come on, girl,
Play)
– ‘because he’s too well-behaved?’
‘Yes.’ Mrs Santa nodded.
‘And you really think that’s a problem?’
Mrs Santa smiled. ‘Problem seems rather a harsh way of putting it…’
‘Right. Fine.’
Elen could feel herself growing defensive. She sensed a degree of soft-soaping. And, worse still, bobbing around, perniciously, beneath all those suds and lather: a hidden agenda. She glanced over towards the door again. The Head Teacher had ducked out of view, but she was certain he was still there.
‘Some children find it difficult to concentrate,’ Mrs Santa tip-toed onward, ‘and some children are just…’ she struggled to find the correct word, then gave up ‘…too concentrated. Fleet finds himself in this second category. He’s very grown up for a boy of his age. In fact we’ve all noticed – myself, the classroom assistants, some of the mothers who like to help out sometimes – how much better he seems at interacting with adults than with other children of his own age…’
‘Yes,’ Elen was perfectly willing to take this on board –
Unreasonable?
Me?
‘…Fleet’s an only child,’ she murmured, ‘I suppose that must impact on him at some level…’
‘We all think he’s experiencing a certain amount of…of stress,’ Mrs Santa rushed on (emboldened by Elen’s apparent compliance), ‘and that he’s expressing it through particular…’ she paused, as if searching for the least damning formulation ‘…behaviours. Tasks. Symptoms. Habits.’
‘I see.’
Elen’s voice was clear as a glass of spring water.
‘He never seems quite able to switch off…’
Elen was quiet.
The teacher cleared her throat, nervously. ‘We wondered whether there might be anything…anything unusual going on at home at the moment which could offer some kind of…of…?’
She gazed over at Elen, appealingly.
‘…Perhaps a recent family bereavement? The loss of a job…?’
Elen said nothing. Mrs Santa filled the awkward silence by commencing a detailed inspection of the heel of her black court shoe.
‘We have a hole in the roof,’ Elen eventually volunteered, ‘the roof’s leaking.’
‘Really?’
Mrs Santa seemed relieved by Elen’s input, and yet somewhat nonplussed. Elen had a sudden sense of how it might feel to be a student who wasn’t excelling in Mrs Santa’s class (that atmosphere of ‘tolerant’ disappointment; of ‘accepting’ disquiet). She didn’t like it. The angry knuckle tensed itself up inside her stomach again –
Cow
– then the second, gentler knuckle – the pacifier –
She’s his teacher –
She just wants to help…
– predictably balanced it out.
‘I know it mightn’t sound like much,’ Elen explained, patiently, ‘but it’s leaking directly above Fleet’s bedroom. We’ve had to move all
his…his toys down into the living-area. Everything’s a little chaotic.’
‘Ah.’
Mrs Santa tried to appear as if she’d been enlightened in some way by this explanation. She failed. She glanced down at her hands, then back over towards Fleet again. Fleet did a tiny, involuntary jump, for no apparent reason.
‘Did you just see that?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘That little jump? That “tick”. He does it fairly regularly.’
‘Does he? Yes. Well that’s…’ Elen bit her lip ‘…that’s something he…he does, occasionally.’
She smoothed down the fabric of her skirt and folded her hands across her lap. She knew she wasn’t helping matters. She felt frustrated – impotent. There was so much she could contribute –
Darkmans Page 15
