The Count of Eleven (26 page)

His grin was hidden under his face now, where it felt more fixed than ever. He resented having been forced to give Julia the impression that he was uncaring, a resentment which was likely to intensify until he found who was responsible. It seemed to harden the five o’clock sunlight and hold his surroundings still so that he could see everything clearly a vandalised branch hanging from a sapling on the edge of the car park, a lowlying fog left behind by an elongated motorcycle as it roared towards the main road, the remains of a cigarette smouldering as a breeze sent it rolling across the tarmac. “That could be dangerous,” Jack said, waiting by a line of parked cars until the butt ventured close enough to tread on. The sensation of the object yielding and dying beneath his heel invigorated him. He scraped it in an arc, leaving a trail of fibres of tobacco and cork like a sketch of a comet with an ashen head, then he climbed into the van and swung the vehicle out of the parked rank.

The lights which were doling traffic onto the main road delayed him for five minutes, and the procession of cars crossing the bridge towards the motorway might have been heading for a funeral. Speeding at last up the ramp onto the motorway felt like an awakening of purpose. Slender chimneys rose to meet him, bearing flames or pennants of white smoke so keenly outlined they looked unreal, and beyond them the Mersey curved towards distant hills. The stilted road followed the curve of flames and water to the Manchester motorway, where a bunch of lorries joined the race. Jack outdistanced them, though the van suffered a fit of the shakes. He heard the pram thumping the partition at his back as though it was impatient to get going. “Nearly there,” he said, and left the motorway at the next junction.

He’d already traced his route on a road map in the library. “Third time lucky,” he murmured to the clown’s head dangling from the ignition as he drove around the roundabout at the top of the ramp. Surely a repairer of musical instruments had to be sensitive and would listen to Jack more sympathetically than Jeremy Alston had or Veronica Alan would have. Jack tuned the dashboard receiver to Radio 3, and a Chopin sonata began an ungainly dance as he sped along the Helsby road.

He had just reached the edge of the village, where each side of the road bore a 30 on a pole, when a sports car red as a traffic light caught up with him. The driver, a flat-capped man with a puffy face, appeared to be mouthing at Jack. Was he drunk or mad? The car veered around the van as Jack slowed to the limit, and he realised from a snatch of music which the sports car left behind that the driver had been singing along with a car radio. It was too easy to call people mad; most folk maybe everyone must seem that way sometimes, especially when nobody was there to see them.

At the end of half a mile of semi-detached houses interrupted by a petrol station Jack turned right where the road forked. A humpbacked bridge led him to a steep road called The Rock, on which garden paths were carved out of the hillside which a row of houses climbed. Two blond children stood at a garden gate and watched a horse cantering up and down a field across the road. At the top Jack steered left at a crossroads and drove between scattered cottages until he reached a signpost indicating a walk over the brow of the hill. He urged the van up the steepest road yet and parked by a stile at the edge of a wood.

Two crows flapped croaking out of a tree as he walked around the van, and a transistor radio so muffled he could hear only the percussion of a rock song was playing in one of the houses on the slope he’d just conquered, but those were the sole signs of life. His timing seemed perfect. The locals were all in their houses, and in any case nobody would remark on a vehicle which had been left at the start of a walk. He unlocked the rear doors of the van and wheeled the pram out, then he headed back towards the crossroads.

He had to dig his heels into the road all the way down the slope. The pram or its contents seemed more eager than ever to arrive at their destination. Pushing them uphill again might give him some trouble, except that now he felt ready for anything. But he wasn’t ready to be hailed as he pushed the pram alongside the cottages at the foot of the slope.” “Has the little man been up on the hill?” a woman was calling to him.

Jack turned, jerking the pram to a stop. She was in her seventies, wearing tweeds and muddy boots and leaning on an eccentric stick with which she thumped the tarmac as she bore down on him. “Sorry, who?” Jack stammered.

“The wee fellow. Been out for some air, has he?”

Jack was struggling to cope with his growing hilarity, wondering whether she was referring to some legend of fairies on the hill or accusing him of having exposed himself, when she halted in the middle of the road. “You men,” she said, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t know which end to put the nappy on if we didn’t tell you which.”

“Oh, you mean the baby,” Jack said, rocking the pram as he used to rock Laura’s to put her to sleep. “It’s a girl, that’s why I didn’t know who you meant. I’d better keep moving in case she wakes.”

He took one step, and the woman came thumping three-legged after him. “Don’t cover up the poor mite like that. Here, let me show you how she ought to be.”

“She’s fine. That’s how my wife has her in the pram. That’s how she likes it herself,” Jack said, walking and pushing, cursing the woman’s rude rustic health that was letting her catch up with him. “And the doctor approves.”

“I’ve never had to call a doctor in my life, and that’s because I was always out in the fresh air. It’s cruel to deny light and air to a child on a day like this.”

She was still gaining on him. He imagined trying to outrun her, dashing away with the pram while she sprinted after him, waving her stick. That’s me, Mr. Unobtrusive, he thought wildly as she said “Can’t I at least see her little face?”

“Believe me, you don’t want to come face to face with this baby.” He wasn’t sure which of him might have said that, his old self or his new, but at once he knew what to say aloud. “She doesn’t like being wakened by strangers. If you waken her she’ll scream all the way home.”

“Good heavens, I’ve had longer than you to learn how not to waken babies. I’ve put a good few to sleep in my time. I’m a nurse.”

She was about to grab the pram, Jack thought. She would lift the cover, and then … At that moment he heard a car approaching swiftly up a side road just ahead of him. If the driver didn’t see the old woman in the roadway … But she retreated to the corner of the junction and leaned on her stick, ready to take up the chase again as soon as the car passed.

Jack wheeled the pram past the junction while she was trapped by the car. “If it’s all the same to you I won’t take the risk,” he called across the wake of fumes. “I’d have to answer to her mother when I got home.”

If that didn’t satisfy the woman it at least confirmed her opinion of him. “You men,” she said, digging her stick into the triangle of verge at the junction as though she was thinking of launching herself after him, then contented herself with a parting shot. “What’s her name?”

Jack took a long breath and released it through his nostrils. “Bernie,” he said.

She didn’t think much of that, and shook her head as she plodded down the side road. Jack watched her out of sight before he set off for the crossroads. He could already see his destination, a house standing by itself several hundred yards beyond the shimmering cross of tarmac. “Let’s hope we won’t need to wake you up, Bernie,” he said.

The house was a steep-roofed block of red brick, almost featureless except for a satellite dish protruding from beneath the gutter like a toadstool from a tree. The large square garden was surrounded by a six-foot privet hedge. At first Jack thought the metallic gleam within the hedge was an illusion caused by the quivering of the air above the tarmac. He was almost at the gate before he realised that the inside of the hedge was reinforced with barbed wire. The plaque on the gate, which he’d assumed showed the name of the house, proved on closer acquaintance to say NO TRESPASSING. He pushed the pram across the gateway and stopped with one hand on the latch.

A wiry man dressed in slacks and sandals was lying on a striped recliner beside the cobbled path to the front door. One arm lay across his eyes, the other held a tumbler half full of what Jack deduced was gin and tonic balanced on his bushy chest. As Jack unlatched the gate the man raised his head and shaded his eyes to squint unwelcomingly at him. “Mr. Arrod?” Jack said.

“Nobody else here, so I must be.”

“Stephen Arrod?”

“I’ve said so.” He peered past Jack and saw the pram. “Ah. No thank you,” he said at once.

“Excuse me, what do you think you’re saying no to?”

“Whatever. Newspapers, household goods, free samples. I want none of it, whatever it is.”

“It’s nothing like any of those.”

“You aren’t telling me you’ve got something for me to repair in there.”

“In a way I suppose I have,” Jack said, and pushed the pram through the gateway.

“You’re a beggar, aren’t you.”

Jack assumed Arrod meant that to express some kind of grudging admiration; at least, he did until he turned from closing the gate and saw Arrod staring at the pram. “No trespassing means no beggars,” Arrod said. And if you think your brat can soften my heart you’re out of luck.”

“I’m not here to beg, Mr. Arrod.”

“I don’t want you here at all. You’re interrupting my cocktail hour. And I especially don’t allow brats on my property. I’ve taken enough pains to keep them out.”

He was referring to the barbed wire, Jack thought, shivering. The shiver was at least partly of fear on Arrod’s behalf. He pushed the pram towards Arrod, and felt the contents stir as the wheels trundled over the cobbles. “You’d be doing yourself a favour by listening to me,” he said.

“I don’t do favours for anyone. Incidentally, before you leave, how the devil do you know my name?”

“It was on the letter I sent you.”

“What letter?”

“One like this,” Jack said, reaching beneath the cover of the pram.

“Don’t bother. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know. The only thing I want to see is you out of the gate.”

“Please, Mr. Arrod. For your own sake,” Jack said, unfolding the letter.

“What the devil’s my sake got to do with you?” Arrod swung his legs off the recliner and dumped the tumbler on the lawn, where it toppled over, spilling gin and ice-cubes. “It’s yourself you should be worrying about,” he snarled. “Worry about what’ll happen to you if you aren’t gone before I call the police.”

As Arrod shoved himself off the recliner Jack ran the pram along the path and used it to block the front door. “No need for that, Mr. Arrod. I haven’t harmed you.”

Arrod’s face darkened so instantly it put Jack in mind of a special effect in a film. He lurched at Jack and trod on an ice-cube. His sandal led foot slipped from beneath him, and Jack watched him sprawl backwards on the recliner, which gave way, depositing him on the ground with all his limbs flung out. Swallowing his mirth, Jack went towards him, the letter fluttering in his hand as a wind trembled the hedge. “Here, let me ‘

Arrod screamed with rage and tried to heave himself to his feet, only to sprawl again. “Don’t you come near me or it won’t be the police who fetch you, it’ll be an ambulance,” he shouted. He managed to get his knees under him, and as he staggered upright he saw the letter Jack was holding. For a moment Jack thought the writhing of his face was a distortion caused by heat in the air. “It was you who sent me that, was it?” Arrod said.

“One like it.”

And what do you think happened to it?”

“I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”

“Shall I give you a hint? Shall I tell you what to do with the one you’ve got there? If you’re so hard up, use it to wipe your brat’s arse.”

As he finished speaking he rushed at the pram and ripped back the cover. Jack imagined him doing that to a pram with a sleeping baby in it, and felt a grin tighten over his teeth. Arrod stared into the pram and turned to Jack, still staring. “What the blazes is this for?”

“I wish you hadn’t done that, Mr. Arrod.”

Arrod swung back to the pram and reached in. “Who are these, my fellow victims?”

He had picked up the letters and was reading the names and addresses on the envelopes. Up to that moment Jack had intended to give him a choice, but now Tut them down,” he said through his teeth, and strode forwards. “They’re none of your business.”

Arrod dropped a handful of envelopes into the pram. Still peering at them, he seized the blow lamp from beside them and heaved it up with one hand. Apparently he meant to use it as a shield or a weapon, but its weight took him unawares. He let go of the handle with an outraged cry as it bruised his fingers, and then he gave a howl which hurt Jack’s ears. He’d dropped the blow lamp on one sandal led foot.

As the blow lamp rolled onto the grass Arrod hopped backwards wildly as if he could somehow outdistance the pain. He appeared to have no idea where he meant to go, except perhaps away from Jack. He didn’t stop hopping until he had backed into a corner of the hedge, where he began to struggle and jerk.

The wire fence must be electrified, Jack thought. Arrod’s eyes bulged as he flung himself back and forth; even the hair on his head was quivering. Jack lifted the blow lamp with both hands and advanced on him. By now his jerking had grown so violent that in the midst of his uncontrollable hilarity Jack pitied him. He raised the blow lamp as high as his arms would reach and brought the tank down with all his strength on Arrod’s skull.

He was afraid that a single blow wouldn’t suffice, especially when Arrod stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and reproach as the dull knell of the impact continued to resound in the tank. Perhaps that lasted only a second or two, but it seemed much longer. Then Arrod’s eyes rolled up to show the whites, an effect Jack had thought was purely a cliche manufactured by films, and his head and torso slumped into the hedge.

His hair continued to quiver, and so did the top of the hedge, in a wind. The fence wasn’t electrified after all. The belt of Arrod’s slacks had caught on the barbed wire; his jerking had been a desperate attempt to free himself. Jack had never seen such panic. At least he would be putting the man out of his misery, he thought, now that Arrod had read the envelopes and left him no choice. He put down the blow lamp and made sure that nobody was in sight; he jumped several times to see over the hedge. Then he stood upwind of Arrod and lit the gas with his lighter, and covered his nose and mouth with his free hand, and closed his eyes until he could see only the flame.