40
THE FIRST PERSON to oust Molly from the phone box was carrying an empty jerrican. Molly stood in the glare of the streetlamp and thought the pavement was whiter than it had been when she’d taken refuge less than ten minutes ago. The night was intensely cold: her hands and the breath in her nostrils began to ache at once. She stamped her feet and peered round the phone box at the tower block and across the South Circular Road at the Datsun. She thought it was empty until the vague dark shape that was Terry Mace raised a hand to acknowledge her. She wasn’t on her own yet, but she wondered how long she would be once she was inside the tower block.
The man on the phone told someone twice to start dinner without him and stumped out, grimacing as if it were Molly’s fault that the light in the phone box wasn’t working. At least that helped her hide and made it easier for her to watch. She dodged back into the phone box, which smelled of petrol now as well as pipe tobacco, and willed Rankin to appear. The longer she waited, the more nervous she would grow. Deep breaths wouldn’t help, not with the smells in the box.
When someone jerked open the door she swung round, heart pounding like a wound, fists clenched. It was an old woman with a stick and a fierce fixed stare. “Who’s there?” she cried. “I want to phone.” As Molly squeezed out past her, she wondered if the diversion could have let Rankin past without her noticing. Surely he couldn’t have been so quick. She lurked behind the box while the old woman kept shouting, “I can’t do that, I’m blind,” though her stick wasn’t white, and then Molly realized she needn’t hide, she could very well be waiting to use the phone. She might fail to see Rankin if she hid behind the box. All the same, when she ventured into the open she felt exposed and vulnerable.
She had to step back when the old lady stormed out of the box, waving her stick. Molly dragged the door shut behind her, since the metal arm was reluctant to do so, and tried running on the spot to tame her shivering. If she wasn’t careful it would make her feel she was afraid. And then she caught sight of Rankin crossing the road.
He was beside the Datsun. For a long moment she thought he’d spotted Terry. But Terry was still in the passenger seat, and leaning forward now to watch as Rankin crossed to her side of the street. She ran toward him. “Mr. Rankin,” she cried.
At first she thought he hadn’t heard. He continued talking toward the tower block, a leisurely self-assured walk that looked studied. He grasped the handles of the doors as she came into their light. “After me again, are you?”
“I didn’t know if it was you at first. I need to talk to you.”
“That’s your story this time, is it?” His small sharp face wore an exasperating grin. “Just passing by, were you?”
“I was looking for a phone that worked.”
“Well, you can’t use mine,” he said, and opened the doors as wide as his arms.
“I wasn’t asking to. I just want to talk to you. I can tell you about drugs.”
“Changed your tune, have you? Come and tell me all about it tomorrow at the station.” He turned back as he stepped into the lobby. “Want to know where it is? On Bays water Road near the TV station.”
She blocked the doors as they swung in her face. “I don’t want to go there, I can’t.”
“Afraid someone’ll see you there?” When she followed him he leaned against the wall between the pair of lifts, one of which was out of order. “You could be right. So tell me now.”
“Not here. Anyone could see us.”
“Anywhere in Britain that does suit you?”
“Couldn’t we go upstairs for a few minutes?”
“That’s what you’re after, is it?” He raised his eyebrows ambiguously and reached inside his overcoat. “Right enough, nobody’s going to follow us up there.”
She glanced through the doors as he turned to the lifts. Terry had got out of the car and was watching across its roof. She willed him not to follow too quickly: he knew where she would be. When she looked back at Rankin she found he was unlocking the lift, first the door and then the controls. “That’s the way to keep the vandals out,” he said. “Only tenants have a key. My idea.”
Terry would have to walk up. She’d prepared enough of a story to keep Rankin occupied until he did. The lift drudged upward, emitting a creak and a muffled twang at each floor, and she felt trapped in the cramped box with Rankin and his sharp pinched face, his skinny restless hands with their nails pared to the quick. It was too like her dream of the police cell. That dream was dealt with; now all she had to do was keep Rankin talking until it was time for what she had foreseen. When she stepped out on the eleventh floor she couldn’t separate her nervousness from her relief.
A token burgundy carpet led past identical doors, featureless except for locks and letterboxes. Rankin selected another key. “What kind of a place do you live in?”
“Pretty much like this.”
He grinned as if that were what he had expected her to say. “Ever make you think of prison?”
That was exactly what his bunch of keys had made her think of. “No,” she said, “it’s better than where we used to live,” and was afraid he would ask where that was. All he said as he unlocked his door was, “Maybe it should.”
Standing aside for her made him visibly resentful, and she wondered why he bothered. She would rather have followed him in, so that he wouldn’t see her hesitating, though he could hardly guess it was because the thought of confronting the place she had already seen in her dream was almost paralyzing her. She made herself step forward, and there everything was: the chest expanders and the wrestling magazines, the immigration reports under the table, the shelf of horror novels, the low cupboard where she knew the rifle was. Venetian blinds hid the windows, a doorway led to a dark kitchen. Though she hadn’t noticed the chairs in her dream, canvas on tubular frames, they looked familiar. None of this mattered as much as the ivory figure on the mantelpiece, the identity bracelet round its neck. She made herself look at anything but that, and was sure the newspaper clipping underneath the figure was about Lenny Bennett too.
Rankin chained the door before he followed her along the hall. He threw his overcoat into the bedroom and came uniformed into the main room, where he sat down on a canvas chair and pointed at the nearest. “So let’s hear your tale. Nobody can see or hear you now but me.” His Finger lazily indicated the walls around him. “Soundproof,” he said.
Her apprehension was sharp as a headache: this hadn’t been in the dream. “Completely?”
“Just about, I reckon. No reason that should bother you, is there?”
“There won’t have to be, will there?” She was thinking frantically as she sat down: Terry was supposed to whistle “Rule Britannia” in the corridor to signal he was there, but they had never considered the possibility that she mightn’t be able to hear him. She was trying to plan when Rankin demanded, “Well?”
She could waste time by acting stupid, but she felt as if she was. “Well what?”
He sat back and crossed his legs comfortably. “Well, Nelly. That’s what you called yourself, isn’t it? Well, Nelly, are you going to tell me what you came up here for?”
She mustn’t let him feel he was wasting his time. “I’ve come for someone who can’t speak for himself.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Whichever.” There was no point in playing with ambiguity when it might trip her up. She must tell her lie straight and trust her dream, trust Terry to realize that she couldn’t hear him, if she couldn’t, and knock at the door. “He doesn’t like the police,” she said.
“But you do?” His grin was wider, his foot in the air was dancing. “What’s his name?”
“Luther.”
“Not Martin Luther?”
“That’s right,” she said, trying to think how she and Terry could make sure of Filming if Rankin opened the door to him. “Don’t ask me his last name, he said I mustn’t tell.”
“Martin Luther, eh? Wasn’t he the one who started the ch
urch? You’d wonder where they get these names from. You’d wonder who gave them their names.”
She struggled to keep her lie in mind, for the unnatural quiet of the flat reminded her of those times she had thought so deeply that she’d lost herself in silence. It made her more nervous than he did. “Well, get on with it,” he said.
“There’s going to be a big consignment of resin coming in next week. They’re flying it in and Luther knows where. He was going to be involved but now he’s got frightened. The consignment’s too big and the people involved are.”
“Got out of his depth, has he? You’d be surprised how easy it is to do that when you’re committing a crime.”
Not quite so easy, she thought suddenly. She’d heard someone coughing beyond the outer door. For a moment she thought it was Terry, who was starting a cold, then she heard the faint slam of a door. She could hear. “I suppose so,” she said.
“So where are the drugs going to be landed?”
“I don’t know. Luther knows.”
He uncrossed his legs and stood up so abruptly that she jumped. “No use to me then, are you?”
“He’ll tell me if I can tell him he won’t get into trouble.” The silence had closed in as if the coughing had never been. How much longer would it take Terry to climb the stairs? “He’s afraid he’ll be arrested,” she said.
“Why, because he’s black?”
“Maybe.” She resisted glancing at the figure with the bracelet round its neck, made herself stare at the wrestling magazines behind him. “He wouldn’t be arrested, would he?”
“You tell me.” Without warning he stalked forward and stood so close to her that she couldn’t get up unless she pushed back the chair. “No, I know what you can tell me—what you’re looking for.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been looking round ever since you came up here as if I’m hiding something. Let me tell you, I don’t need to. Not from you.” ’
She mustn‘t move or look away. She had a sudden glimpse of Terry toiling up the stairs, and then she wondered if the street doors could have locked themselves, if Terry wasn’t in the building at all. “I wasn’t looking for anything,” she said, “just at your magazines and things.”
“Wondering what a wanker like me was doing with them, were you?” He stooped and before she could stop him, picked up her handbag and put it on top of the wrestling magazines against the wall. “I’ll show you something. Don’t mind if I use this, do you? Haven’t got a camera in it, by any chance?”
“No, why should I?” His skeptical look as well as his question made her suddenly more apprehensive. “What do you need my bag for?”
“Just a little demonstration.” His face looked almost disinterested as his fist shot out and smashed her bag against the wall. She heard her perfume spray break, and something else that must have been her pen. She was on her feet at once, her mouth wide open. She’d forgotten who she was meant to be, but it no longer mattered. “Not bad for a wanker, eh? They teach you how to handle yourself in the police,” he said. “Maybe now you’ll tell me what you’re looking for, Nelly Swain.”
He pronounced the name with such contempt that it made her shudder. She mustn’t make for the door, she hadn’t heard Terry. “Why did you break my things?” she cried, like her alias or herself. “You’ll have to pay for them.”
“Oh, I’m terrified. I’m shitting myself, can’t you smell it?” Suddenly his face was wild, his thick tongue was out more than an inch and licking his lips. “There’s what you came for,” he said, pointing at the mantelpiece. “Go and see.”
She went, because it put distance between them. She faltered before she reached the mantelpiece. The cutting that was pinned down by one corner by the figure looked familiar, the silence was closing in as if she were losing consciousness. By the time she was close enough to see the rust that was blood on Lenny Bennett’s bracelet she had recognized that the cutting was about her, complete with photograph.
“There it is,” he said, “and there you are. And one more thing in case you don’t know it—this is the last time you’ll try and make a fool of the police.”
His delighted eyes were almost as moist as his lips and chin. He came toward her with small steps that looked delicate. His fists were half open, beckoning her or ready to seize her. The silence had closed in, and Terry wasn’t there. She was stiff with panic, yet somehow she felt the silence was hers if she could only use it. “Don’t you touch me,” she whispered. “Just you try.”
“Oh, don’t scare me. I can’t move.” His voice was parodying a wail, his paces toward her were even smaller and more studied; yet it seemed to her as if he were really almost wailing, and that he couldn’t walk. She knew suddenly that she had to go toward him, confound him that way. She had taken only one step when he fell.
Perhaps he had tripped on the carpet. Perhaps the excitement of what he meant to do to her had proved too much for him, or the sight of her not cowering but coming toward him had. As she moved to stand beside him. well out of reach, he tried to turn toward her, his face growing an agonized purple. He couldn’t even shuffle on his knees; he fell on his side. “What are you doing?” he snarled.
She hoped she wasn’t doing anything. It was enough that he thought she was. Though her heart was pounding so hard she could hear it, she was no longer afraid. “Someone was whistling in the corridor, Terry was, and she ran to the door.
Rankin began to scream at her as she opened the door: “I’ll get you for this, you bitch.” Terry gaped at him along the hall. “Jesus X. Christ,” he said, and had to be told to start filming. The door of the flat opposite wavered and then opened to reveal two middle-aged women in dressing gowns. “What’s wrong with Mr. Rankin?” one said hoarsely.
“He wants to tell us something,” Molly said, so convinced of it that she didn’t bother to think. Terry turned from filming Rankin—who had levered himself to his knees with an effort that left him panting—and the trophy as the women ventured into the room. He filmed them as Molly said, “Who killed Lenny Bennett?”
Rankin’s mouth was working, perhaps struggling not to answer, as the camera returned to him. His eyes pleaded savagely with the women from across the hall, who stepped back, afraid of him. At last his mouth opened as if someone were prying at it. “I did,” he mumbled, choking.
It mightn’t be enough. “You did what?”
His streaming eyes were growing red with effort or with hatred. “I killed Lenny Bennett,” he said in a harsh voice that was almost a shriek. “But it wasn’t only me.”
“Who else?”
“Inspector Maitland.” He seemed to be trying to grin viciously until his mouth shook. “Stop, stop.”
As Molly turned away to look for the phone, he crumpled and fell into a fetal huddle on his side. “I’ll call a doctor,” she said, and as the women began to retreat, “We’d all better stay until the doctor comes.”
Terry was still filming as he came over to her. “That was incredible,” he murmured. “How did you do it?” She wished he hadn’t asked; inexplicably, he had almost made her panic. Suddenly she felt that unknowingly she had started something from which there was no turning back.
41
DANNY gazed through his window at the auditorium. Under the bright lights the faded seats looked like almost white cardboard. Mandy and Karen had chased out the last of the audience, three boys who’d been hiding in the Ladies’, and now the girls were searching for lost property. He had plenty of time, nothing was going to go wrong. He’d teach Dr. Kent to try and drive him mad. Tonight she would learn how mad he could be.
Mr. Pettigrew was padlocking the exit doors beside the screen. As he came toward Danny, before vanishing below his field of vision, he glared up at him as if he meant to keep him back after hours.
Danny didn’t care. He would still be in time if he ran. His resentment made him feel clear and intense and purposeful, above being confused.
Seven Sisters Road
was black with ice. He felt cold as a knife, and as dangerous. Under the streetlamps everything •looked flat and thin and unthreatening, a stage for him. He ran up the concrete staircase to his home.
When he heard the television, he went into the parlor. Sydney Greenstreet was saying, “You’re the man for me, sir,” and Danny saw him swelling like a balloon, saw the seams of his suit begin to give, until he looked away: he mustn’t let that happen again, especially not now. “I’m going straight to bed.”
“That’s right, Danny, you try and have a good sleep.” His mother gave him a brave, forgiving smile, his father glowered. Danny slammed his bedroom door to make sure they heard, and thought of sighing loudly as if he had climbed into bed, but decided that was too much. He hauled back the blankets and ran lightly to the wardrobe for the newspapers he’d been begging from his mother all weekend.
He’d already tied the pages in knots. Once he had arranged them on the bed and draped the blankets over them, the shape looked very much like someone asleep, even more so when he turned off the light. He crept out of his room and eased the door shut; he tiptoed along the hall and sneaked out the front door, drawing it toward him with his key so the latch wouldn’t click.
He was on his way at last. Waiting through the weekend had given him time to enjoy what was coming. His mother seemed afraid of him ever since he’d disconnected the television to stop things changing, and his father hadn’t spoken once to him. His eyes were warning Danny not to upset her again, as if Danny wanted to. Danny no longer minded the helpless anger it made him feel: it was something else for Dr. Kent to pay for.
The black street seemed hardly there, it was slipping by so fast. Danny trotted the last few yards and turned ttie comer. Dr. Kent was waiting on the steps of the Hercules. This time she didn’t take him by surprise, not like New Year’s Eve. He glanced along Seven Sisters Road. The pavements were deserted—it was hardly a night for walking—and there wasn’t a car on the move. He selected his key as he strode up the steps to her. “Well, Danny,” she said, “you certainly like to keep a lady waiting.”
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