Blind Needle (33 page)

She screams suddenly, ‘Let me go! Let go of me, you bastard!'

When he lets go of her she skids about, arms flailing, comically trying to run, and the harder she tries the deeper she sinks. Up to her calves now, arms doing a wild backstroke, she flops full-length and lies imprinted in the black radioactive mud.

He reaches down and bunches the front of her silk-satin jacket in his fist and hauls her up. On her smooth blonde hair she looks to be wearing a black skull-cap. She clings to his arm.

‘Please don't hurt me, I beg you.'

‘Come on.'

‘Don't. You can't.'

He starts to laugh. ‘Who's going to stop me?'

‘Listen to me,' she moans, ‘please listen … I'm your wife.'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘Yes! I am!'

‘Liar.' He strikes her across the mouth and starts dragging her. It is
impossible to locate the exact spot where he saw his own body lying in the mud, but it was somewhere around here. Anywhere here will do: they are up to their knees.

‘I'm your
wife
. For God's sake—'

‘You can't be, can you, if she's dead?'

‘I'm not dead.'

‘Not yet.'

‘Swine! Why are you doing this? Why?'

‘I've already told you why, Mrs Holford. Your husband, murdering bastard, killed my wife. So now I have to kill you. Don't you see? It's simple …'

They are both stuck fast. Further movement is impossible. In the fleeting wash of moonlight her mouth is a dark muddy smear where he struck her. She says with utter loathing and contempt, ‘You won't kill me, you can't, you daren't, and you know it. Because you're a zero, a nothing, a non-person.' She hawks and spits in his face. ‘You don't even exist.'

‘Then I can't kill you, can I? Lucky for you.' He wipes the spittle away and grins at her. ‘That's logical, isn't it?'

A quivering sigh flutters out of her mouth, seeming to deflate her. ‘You just want to scare me, that's all – isn't it? You won't really harm me, will you? You won't really kill me.'

It is a chant: solace in the power of words.

‘I can't harm you if I don't exist,' he says, smiling at her. ‘Not me. But watch out for Smith.'

‘Who?'

She stands without moving, a cloud obscuring her face, stands there uncomplaining, the needle embedded in her throat, and with his thumb he presses home the plunger, discharging the rose-coloured fluid into her. She looks puzzled, though he can't be sure in the shifting light. Her frown might be a dark cloud obscuring the moon. She kneels down at his feet and pulls the empty syringe out of her throat. She looks at it in her hand. That's careless of him, forgetting to take it out of her, and with his fingerprints on it. Foolish – and unjust – if he were to be apprehended and accused of a murder Smith had committed.

He throws the empty syringe far off into the darkness.

She claws at his knees, bubbling in her throat, and slowly subsides face down and curled-up, hugging the last bit of life left in her. Then he has to wait for what seems ages: it takes far longer than he imagined it would for her to sink.

She was right, of course. He didn't and doesn't exist. He's been dead for some time, since they dumped him in the harbour. He knows this for a fact because he's seen the evidence for himself – his own pale and bloated body on the mortuary slab. Inspector Blend confirmed it was him.

His final thought is: ‘That's that then. Over and done with. The two of us lying together, husband and wife, side by side, at last and forever.'

By the green quartz clock on the walnut fascia it was one-thirty-eight.

I sat in the driver's seat in my muddy shoes, my wet trousers caked and clinging up to the knees, shivering while I thought what to do. But it was the cold wet mud that made me shiver; inwardly I felt serene and nerveless, aware of my own presence, in possession of myself. Those mud-stained hands on the wheel were my own, and it was my heart I could feel beating.

I reached across and opened the glove compartment, which contained a thick clothbound road atlas, some maps, and an AA members' handbook. I tore a page out of the handbook – something to write on but nothing to write with – there wasn't a pen or even the stub of a pencil. Then, in one of the little shelves underneath the dashboard, I found a lipstick, and wrote ‘Flight to Arras' on the torn-out page in thick red letters, folded it and put it in my pocket. I knew I had to write it down while I still remembered it, and before another blank dead patch sucked my memory into a black hole, as had happened only a few minutes ago (or so it seemed) when I had been strapped in the chair and Wayne had turned towards me with the enamel tray in his hands …

And then what? How had I got from there to here – sitting in the driver's seat of the Mercedes with mud on my shoes and caked up to the knees? I remembered moonlight behind heavy broken cloud. The woman's hair a silvery cap and a shadow obscuring her face. We had been in the harbour – that explained the mud – it was slowly coming back to me. But then my memory began to falter and fragment, as if I had two separate memories of the same events, one laid on top of the other.

I shivered again and touched my lips. Had she actually kissed me and murmured that she loved me? No, that was ridiculous, quite fantastic. She had wanted to kill me, hadn't she? She had told Wayne to go ahead and use the needle. And the fat

Murdering Bastard!

had been about to, had turned towards me with that greedy smile on his lips, his eyes puffy slits of hatred.

It was then that the black hole had sucked me in, and I became deaf, dumb and blind –

Suddenly I gripped the wheel so hard that my hands turned white.

You murdered her

No. No I didn't—

Yes you did

You murdered once before

And now you've done it

Again

It wasn't me. It was Smith.

Same difference

Getting to be

A habit

Isn't it?

No!

Getting a taste

For it

Aren't we?

You and me

I'm not you.

Then who are you

If not me?

I'm not you. I'm … I'm …

Cat got your tongue?

I never murdered anyone.

Diane said you did

She found the cuttings

In your diary

Careless of you

Leaving them there

To be found

It isn't my diary – it's yours.

And now you've gone

And done it

Again

I unwrapped my bloodless hands from the wheel and stared at them. If the blonde woman, Susan, Benson's mistress, wasn't dead, then where was she?
Where was she?
I could see the needle sticking in her white throat and I could see myself carrying her through the mud to safety. Which one was true, and which one false? They couldn't both be true. She was alive or dead. Not both. Alive or dead. But which?

A thin musical note sounded, as if someone was striking a child's toy zylophone. I had never been in a car with a radio-telephone and it took me a moment to realise what it was. The high thin note went on and on, pettishly calling attention to itself. Glancing down I saw the cradled handset in a walnut box. A red light like a tiny ruby winked on and off.

I picked up the handset.

The voice was so intimately near it startled me.

‘Susan? Susan, are you there … ?'

I could even hear breathing as Benson waited for a reply.

‘Is that you? Susan, for God's sake!' Benson's voice rose a pitch higher, then just as suddenly sagged. ‘I'll do a deal with you. Let her go, let Susan go. That's all I'm asking. You're free to leave Brickton, go anywhere, nobody following, I promise. Nothing will happen to you if you let Susan go, you have my word … Do you understand? Say something! Just answer me …'

I dropped the handset back in its cradle. On the small panel I found a switch marked ‘Call Alert' and switched it to OFF.

Benson had sounded to be very close – here in town perhaps – though with these new-fangled gadgets I really had no idea: he might have been miles away or as near as the tattoo parlour. He knew that Susan was missing, however, which meant that Wayne must have been onto him like a shot and reported what had happened. Just for once, then, Benson was in a situation outside his control: instead of throwing his weight about and crushing everything that stood in his way,
Mr Big of Brickton found himself trying frantically to make a deal with someone he normally would have squashed like a gnat.

Startled, I shied away from the window as a white fist appeared and rapped hard on the glass. Outside I could vaguely make out a pale smudge of face inside a hood. It took me a moment to locate the right button on the panel to wind the window down.

‘They're coming this way – I've just passed them on the street!'

When I didn't immediately respond Diane Locke said even more urgently, ‘Get out of there, they'll be here any minute now! Come on, my car's down the track. Move!'

The interior light came on as I opened the door and she saw the state of my clothes. She said faintly, ‘Oh my God, what happened? What have you done? Where's the woman?'

I got out, wearily shaking my head. ‘I don't know. She might be dead …'

Diane Locke made as if to grab me by the shoulders and shake me. She checked herself instead, and backed away with both fists clenched. ‘You bloody fool. Didn't anything I say sink in? Everything I told you about your wife and her illness was true – you loved her, you bloody fool. That woman isn't your wife. She was never your wife. She means
nothing
to you. Oh God what have you
done?'

Her face became ugly, as if she was about to cry.

‘You couldn't have harmed her, could you? You couldn't do it, I just know—'

‘No you don't,' I said. ‘I don't know myself. Part of me went through with it. I stuck the needle in her throat and saw her die, curled up in the mud – but another part of me was carrying her in my arms, and she was safe.' I heard my voice trembling. ‘I thought she was my wife, come back at last. But she wasn't. My wife is dead.'

I felt oddly at peace saying this. It was the immensely relieved sensation of at last letting go, of relaxing a stranglehold grip, and allowing yourself to drift with the current. The tide swept you in, swept you out, and given time, with luck, would sweep you back again.

The interior spotlight stayed on for a moment or two after I shut the car door. It went off, leaving us in complete darkness. The moon struggled to free itself of entangling grey clouds. As it did so, and its thin watery light washed over us, we both turned at the sound of footsteps
and saw figures coming towards us along the track.

Diane Locke grabbed my sleeve and started pulling me to where the Datsun was parked, twenty yards away next to the chain-link fence. We had covered about half the distance before the realisation dawned that the figures were nearer to the car than we were. I started to retreat, but by then it was too late, and we dithered halfway, caught stupidly in no-man's land between the Datsun and the Mercedes.

The figure in front – obviously Wayne from his squat bulk – saw us and broke into a waddling run. Gaz easily overtook him and raced on ahead.

I kicked at the torn, sagging fence and scrambled through, holding aside the sharp ends of broken wire. As she ducked to follow me, Diane Locke said breathlessly, ‘There must be another way out – mustn't there?' She sounded hopeless, as if she already knew the answer.

We kept as close to the fence as we could, where a thin crust of cinders lay over the mud, and worked our way towards the black shapes of the half-submerged hulks. Soon there was more mud than cinders, and then it was all mud, so that each step became a torturous effort, the age-old nightmare of floundering with leaden limbs and aching muscles as you flee from the dreadful spectre of your worst imaginings. I thought of Trafford in his slanting home, himself and all his possessions heaped in a corner. Now it seemed very inviting, a private lair like Trafford's. Wayne and the others couldn't search every hulk in the harbour before daybreak, and it was physically impossible for us to go on much further: we desperately needed a corner, a hole to hide away in. Trafford had found refuge here, and so might we.

In the shifting waves of moonlight I saw a square black shape a few yards in front of us. It looked too small to be a ship or even a fishing boat, but it didn't matter and we didn't care. We slithered towards it in near total exhaustion. The sides were steep and pitted with rust. It was too steep to climb, I thought, straining up to my full height and reach. My fingers curled over a projecting rim, and I hung on until I got another handhold. Diane Locke shoved from below, and I hauled myself up and hooked my leg over, sitting astride the scaly rim of what I now saw was a massive iron dredging bucket. I pulled Diane Locke up after me. We couldn't speak, we just barely had the strength to
cling there, perched uneasily on the rim, and it was then – as if a magician had waved his wand – that the vapid moonlight vanished and the entire dark sky was instantly transformed into bright, dazzling daylight. In a trice the harbour and the flat basin of mud with the corroding wrecks stuck in it was brutally exposed under a football stadium glare of floodlights.

As were we, perched up there, for the few seconds it took the shock to register, before we skidded down to the slimy bottom, half-blinded by the raw sodium-yellow light pouring down from the gantries.