Blind Needle (32 page)

Somehow he has to get up and out of the chair, but he doesn't know how.

It is the blonde woman who decides it for him.

He has been too busy concentrating on holding the needle steady, on the threat of Wayne lurking near, on Ray's savage expression, so that he nearly misses the blur of movement as Susan swings at him, all
the lines of her face seeming to converge in a single focal point of fury. Twisting in the chair the man lets go of Gaz and grabs her flailing wrist and slams it down hard on the leather arm of the chair, holding the point of the needle above the fine tracery of veins. She gasps with the suddenness and the shock, her body bent at an awkward angle as he holds her there, wrist upturned, needle poised.

For a moment nothing at all moves, and then Wayne's tongue creeps out like a pink nervous worm and slithers over his upper lip.

‘All right, Gaz.' The man is panting as if he's run a marathon. ‘Move away. Slow as you like.' The plastic syringe is slippery in his fingers, and I'm afraid that any second he's going to lose it.

Gaz sidles back towards the frosted glass partition. During those few seconds the man knows the syringe is starting to slide through his fingers. He waits for Gaz to get clear and then jerks the blonde woman forward in front of him, and in the same movements brushes the sweat off the syringe on her silk or satin jacket, and brings the point of the needle up to touch the side of her neck, near to where he judges the main artery lies.

He eases in close behind her, getting a firmer hold on her thin shoulder, feeling the bony projections underneath the shoulder-pad of the shiny jacket.

Wayne is slowly shaking his head, his eyes puffy slits. ‘If you hurt her, squire, you're dead. Believe it. You're dead meat.'

‘That's okay then,' the man says, ‘because by then she'll be dead too. Just make sure you don't bury us together.'

This is glib and flippant, but understandable, because he feels giddy with fear, and so weak that had Susan thought to reach up and take the syringe away from him he couldn't have stopped the unfaithful, conniving bitch from doing it.

But she is shaking too – he can feel tremors down her spine as they move backwards, pressed close together. Something snaps under his heel, and he scuffs a broken needle out of the way, searching with his foot for the enamel tray so that he doesn't slip on it, and in this crabbed fashion the two of them retreat over the cracked linoleum until they're behind the partition. The frozen silhouettes of Wayne and Gaz loom on the frosted glass – though not Ray's, he notices, because Ray was further back in shadow, beyond the arc of the lamp,
and the man begins to imagine Ray creeping along the passage and out the back door and padding silently round the block, scheming a sneak attack. He'll have to be damn quick though – bloody quick – because it takes less than ten seconds to get Susan through the door onto the pavement and into the car. He bundles her across from the passenger side into the driving seat, the needle aimed at her throat. Her skirt becomes entangled with the automatic shift lever, and the man wrenches it free, splitting the seam.

The savagery of his movements spurs her into life, gives her back some of her icy defiance. She even glances at him pityingly. ‘How far do you think you can run? And where to? You're finished—'

‘I'm not running anywhere,' I hear him tell her. ‘I've stopped running, Susan, darling.'

‘What?' she says quickly.

‘There's no need to run anywhere, now that I know what I have to do.'

She gazes at him with an odd mingled expression of fearful curiosity and vivid bright alarm. 'What do you mean – what you have to do? Do what?'

Suddenly there is a huddle of figures in the shop doorway. The pale smear of Wayne's face stares out, a glaze of impotent hatred in his slitted eyes. The three of us in the car leave him staring and drive slowly down the empty street past the darkened windows of the E GA FOO S ORE and turn left at the corner into another empty street. This one goes more steeply downhill, becomes part of the labyrinth of back-streets leading eventually to the harbour.

‘Are you familiar with this town?' Susan asked me, hinting slyly that I might be lost and our steady, smooth progress an aimless wandering.

‘Well enough by now,' I said.

‘So you know where you're going?'

‘Oh yes. Just keep driving.'

The streets petered out to a cindery track with water-filled potholes. The last of the houses here were abandoned, boarded-up, vandalised. She drove slowly, the Mercedes' fat tyres crunching through cinders and broken glass, swaying portentously on its suspension, the headlights picking out the chain-link fence to our right, here and there sagging, in places torn down. She said breathlessly: ‘This leads nowhere. It's a dead-end.'

‘That's right,' I said. ‘You can stop.'

With the engine silent and the headlights switched off, she started to panic. The sheen of her jacket trembled.

‘Why here? There's nothing here …' And then with a note of vindictive triumph: ‘You're trapped! They've got you cornered. Do you think you'll get away? And you won't use that stuff on me. You daren't. They'll put you away for life—'

‘Get out of the car.'

‘No.'

I took her gently by the throat and let her feel the point of the needle an inch below her left ear. Her throat worked inside my palm. I said, ‘Calm down and get out of the car. I don't have the same faith in Wayne that you do. I think this stuff sends you crazy before it kills you. What do you think?'

‘You can't expect me to walk in these shoes,' she complained when we were standing on the cinder track. She shivered in the thin, expensive jacket. ‘Listen to me for a minute, just listen. Please.'

‘All right. I'm listening.'

‘This is all a stupid mistake.'

‘Is it?'

‘Yes! I – I don't even know your name …'

‘Of course you know my name, darling. We were married for eight years before you ditched me and went off with Benson. And then you had me put away in the Oxtoby Clinic. Surely you remember that.' I pushed her in front of me. ‘Through here.'

‘Where? I can't see …'

‘The gap in the fence.'

‘No, please … why? What are you doing?'

‘Showing you the harbour by moonlight.'

Inside the fence the cinders gave out and the ground became sticky, sucking at our shoes. After a few steps she lost hers, the heels stuck in the mud. I grabbed her arm as she slithered in her stockinged feet.

There was a little moonlight breaking through the heavy clouds, barely enough, but just enough, to make shadows of the ships' hulls with their broken superstructures and peeling funnels, leaning this way and that, ready to topple but held in terrific suspension.

We went on, sinking up to the ankles.

She started to gabble suddenly. ‘What was I supposed to do? You don't remember what happened, do you? You had a breakdown. You tried to kill me. The brakes of the car, remember?'

‘I must have had a reason,' I said.

‘I had to put you in the clinic. I had no choice. You were ill … Peter. I did the best I could for you.'

‘Funny,' I said, supporting her, shoving her on, ‘and all the time I had this crazy idea that you were dead. I was certain of it.' We were both panting now. ‘What made me think that?'

‘I don't know. Oh Peter – '

‘Sometimes, you know, I was convinced I'd killed you. I thought you'd gone off the road near where you used to meet Benson on the sly – when the two of you were having an affair. You must remember that. Your affair with Benson. Then other times I thought you'd committed suicide. I even thought you'd gone blind. Isn't it stupid? The mind plays all sorts of tricks.'

‘That was your illness.' She was panting hard, sucking in air like
sobs. ‘Oh listen to me! Peter. Yes, I was seeing Neville – it's true – and you found out. We weren't happy together, you and me, don't you remember? I wanted a divorce.'

‘No, sorry,' I said, ‘that part's gone. The shock treatment. Not far now.'

‘You broke down when I told you – you had a breakdown.'

‘Never mind, darling,' I said, ‘not to worry. That's all in the past now, gone and forgotten. Yesterday's dishwater.'

She screamed suddenly, ‘Let go of me, you bastard! You're not my husband! He's dead!'

When I let go of her she skidded about, arms flailing, comically trying to run, and the harder she tried the deeper she sank. Up to her calves now, arms doing a wild backstroke, she flopped full-length and lay imprinted in the black radioactive mud.

I bunched the front of her silk-satin jacket in my fist and hauled her up. On her smooth blonde hair she looked to be wearing a black skull-cap. She clung to my arm.

‘Please don't hurt me, Peter, I beg you.'

‘Come on.'

‘Don't. You can't.'

I started to laugh. ‘Who's going to stop me?'

‘It was for your own good – '

‘Was it really?'

‘Peter,' she moaned, ‘you can't do it. I'm Susan, your wife!'

I could feel her heart beating against my fist.

She went rapidly on, ‘I've done wrong, I know, I admit it. But you won't hurt me, you can't, because you still love me. I know you do.'

‘You think because I still love you that I won't hurt you,' I said. ‘Is that what you think?'

‘Peter, darling – ' She leaned against me. Her hand caressed my neck. ‘It was him, not me. Benson made me do it.'

‘To have me put away?'

‘Yes, he forced me to do it. At the time you thought you'd killed me by tampering with the brakes of the car, and he said – Neville said, “Let him go on believing it. Don't tell him or let him see you're alive and he'll think he really did do it.” That's why you came here, I mean came back, looking for him … because you thought I was dead and Benson was to blame.'

‘I can't get it straight in my mind,' I said. ‘Sometimes it was Benson that killed you and other times it was me. You went blind before you died, did you know that? We lay side by side, in the darkness, and when I woke up you were gone. I just knew you were dead and somebody was to blame …'

‘I'm not dead, darling. And you're not dead. The two of us are alive, here and now, together.'

She pulled my head down and I felt her lips, full and warm and soft, envelop mine. My senses started to slide. Again I had the strangest feeling – the same feeling as before, in the kitchen – of being a stranger in my own body. Was this really the woman I had married? Or the right woman and the wrong me? Her hot breath whispered against my cheek.

‘Take me back to the car, Peter. I love you.'

Her arms tightened around me. I picked her up and turned clumsily, dragging my feet out of the black mud. With my eyes closed I stumbled blindly on, this woman in my arms, back to the memory of another woman stumbling blindly towards death, and helped along the way.

‘Are you familiar with this town?' the blonde woman asks him, hinting slyly that he might be lost and their steady, smooth progress an aimless wandering.

‘Well enough by now,' he says.

‘So you know where you're going?'

‘Oh
yes
. Just keep driving.'

The streets peter out to a cindery track with water-filled pot-holes. The last of the houses here are abandoned, boarded-up, vandalised. She drives slowly, the Mercedes' fat tyres crunching through cinders and broken glass, swaying portentously on its suspension, the headlights picking out the chain-link fence to their right, here and there sagging, in places torn down. She says breathlessly: ‘This leads nowhere. It's a dead-end.'

‘That's right,' he says. ‘You can stop.'

With the engine silent and the headlights switched off, she starts to panic. The sheen of her jacket trembles.

‘Why here? There's nothing here – ' And then with a note of vindictive triumph: ‘You're trapped! They've got you cornered. Do you think you'll get away? And you won't use that stuff on me. You daren't. They'll put you away for life – '

‘Get out of the car.'

‘No.'

He takes her gently by the throat and lets her feel the point of the needle an inch below her left ear. Her throat works inside his palm. He says, ‘Calm down and get out of the car. I don't have the same faith in Wayne that you do. I think this stuff sends you crazy before it kills you. What do you think?'

‘You can't expect me to walk in these shoes,' she complains when they are standing on the cinder track. She shivers in the thin, expensive
jacket. ‘Listen to me for a minute, just listen. Please.'

‘All right. I'm listening.'

‘This is all a stupid mistake.'

‘Is it?'

‘Yes! I – I don't even know your name …'

‘Of course you don't know my name. I came here looking for your husband, Peter Holford. He killed my wife, did you know that? In cold blood. Injected her. Murdering bastard!' He pushes her in front of him. ‘Through here.'

‘Where? I can't see …'

‘The gap in the fence.'

‘No, please … why? What are you doing?'

‘Showing you the harbour by moonlight.'

Inside the fence the cinders give out and the ground becomes sticky, sucking at their shoes. After a few steps she loses hers, the heels stuck in the mud. He grabs her arm as she slithers in her stockinged feet.

There is a little moonlight breaking through the heavy clouds, barely enough, but just enough, to make shadows of the ships' hulls with their broken superstructures and peeling funnels, leaning this way and that, about to topple but held in terrific suspension.