The Yellow Glass (21 page)

“I daresay that’s Caribbea Wharf.”

There was a ramshackle effort of a bridge protruding
thirty feet from a flat-faced building and leading down to the barge.
 
A length of corrugated iron had been bent and
nailed over the top of the bridge to protect it from the rain . . or to provide
some privacy.
 
We walked over to
investigate.

The warehouse had impenetrable, fortress-like walls of
soot-blackened brick with not a window to be seen.
 
I gazed up at it, studying the surface.
 
There
had
been windows at one time, high up on the walls, but they’d been bricked over -
and not so very long ago, at that - for the shape of them was clearly visible
in paler, cleaner brick.
 
Reg Arkonnen
wasn’t risking the chance that anybody might get a glimpse of his wares.
 
I put an ear to the wall, but heard
nothing.
 

I gave the warehouse up for a bad job and turned back
to the river, just in time to see Jay Tamang spring from the shore like an
acrobat, grasping the underneath of the bridge with both hands.
 
Passing hand over hand, he swung himself along
the underside of the bridge, out over the water and all the way down to the barge.
 
He jumped on-board and waved at me, grinning.
 
He made it look like a piece of cake.
 
I didn’t believe it had been, not for a
minute, but I thought I’d better give it a go and just about managed to save
face (with a rather more ungainly landing, it had to be said).

The barge was approximately ninety feet long, with a
big rudder on the stern, a low wheelhouse, or brig, before that, and a couple
of masts - not too tall, so that she could pass beneath the Thames bridges.
 
Despite the masts, I was prepared to bet that
she’d been fitted with a motor in recent times.
 
Her sails were furled and bound tight to the unusual rigging those
London barges have and were the colour of dried-blood, as the sails of the
older style of sailing barge had always been.
 
She was in pretty good condition for her age and unusually clean, but,
then, I was guessing that she didn’t carry bricks or coal as her sisters so
often did.
 
There wasn’t much to be
learnt from the wide deck, save that I noticed that she’d been named ‘The
Humber’, presumably in homage to the Arkonnen family’s background.
 
The large hatch in the stern was bolted shut,
with an expensive lock attached.
 
However,
a low whistle from Jay Tamang called my attention to a smaller hatch in the
bow.
 
He’d already slipped the bolt, slid
the hatch open and was halfway down the ladder before I got there.

Below deck was utterly different.
 
To begin with, the tiny berth was lined with
steel, like a submarine, and the entrance to the rest of the hold was sealed
off; what had once been a door was now welded shut.
 
But, of more interest than this, was that
somebody had been at home until very, very recently.
 
A pair of metal bunks took up most of the
available space, and the lower had been neatly made up with clean sheets and
blankets, with a copy of that day’s Daily Mail lying on the pillow.
 
A quick snoop revealed that the kettle on the
hob was still warm, that there was fresh bread in the bin and - lifting a fancy
glass lid - a fruitcake on the table.
 
There
was a bowl of apples, too and a small fridge which proved to contain milk, a
strawberry blancmange and a Tupperware box filled up with a great deal of what
looked like chopped chicken livers.
 
I
sniffed at it, reluctantly.
  
One
certainly hoped it was chopped chicken livers.
 

Tamang and I glanced at one another and turned to leave,
but not before I’d inadvertently banged my shins on a square, metal chest that
had been shoved underneath the ladder, wedged against a narrow door to a
rudimentary lavatory.
 
I swore, under my
breath and bent to take a look inside.
 
It was a well-stocked first aid box.
 
I closed the lid and put a foot on the bottom rung . . and that’s when I
clocked that others had come on board.

A great thump heralded their arrival, followed by
several lesser thumps.

“Feet first!”
 
Came a young, female voice.
 
“I
said feet first, you deaf or somethin’?”

There was no time for anything smarter than rolling
under the bottom bunk and cowering against the wall.
 
It was a tight squeeze, but I thanked our
lucky stars that Tamang was so small.
 
The thumping and bumping carried on, gaining momentum.
 

“There!
 
Get ‘im
on the bed and cover ‘im with that blanket and that’s us done,” said the
girl.
 
“What a blast, eh?”

The mattress above our heads sagged, dramatically,
with the weight of the new occupant, bashing us on both our skulls.
 
At which, my elbows gave way and I fell flat
on the floor, breathing hard against the dust.
 
Tamang was so silent, I’d never have known he was there.
 
Had I given us away?

“Get your hands off!”
 
The girl exclaimed, abruptly.

Did she mean me?
 
I stayed where I was, peeking at her scuffed sneakers from beneath the
bunk.

“She won’t mind us havin’ a bit of cake, Gloria,” a
boy protested.
 
“Not after all we’ve
done.”

“She didn’t say nothin’ about cake, so best not.”

The boy sighed, aggrieved.

“’E was that ‘eavy,” he sighed.
 
“What about a cuppa, then?”

“No,” said Gloria, clearly top dog.
 
“We’ve gotta split.
 
Terry’ll be waiting at the Dissenters,
remember, to divvy up the takings.
 
She
said we’ve gotta leave the car here and get the tube.”

“The chube?!”
 
The boy whined.

“D’you ever get your licence, Gloria?”
 
Asked another young male voice.

“Do I look old enough to get my licence, blockhead?”
 

“Ha, ha . . bloody good driving, then!”

The sneakers took themselves off and the laughter
dissipated.
 
We waited.
 
Not a murmur came from the heavy being
weighing down the mattress above our heads.
 
Whoever it was made no sound and never stirred.

“Come on,” I whispered, eventually, bored to tears
with waiting.

We slid out from beneath the bunk and shook ourselves
down, Tamang tut-tutting as he picked dust balls from his new duffle coat.
  
Then we took a good, long look at the new
arrival.

The Commie traitor, Magnus Arkonnen, was out for the
count and wrapped up in bandages.
 
What
on earth had happened to him?
 
Another
alarming thump at the top of the hatch made us jump, but we hadn’t a second to
hide ourselves before a blur of marmalade fur threw itself down the ladder and
belly-flopped onto the bottom bunk.
 
It
was the journalist’s cat.

 
Nobody could sleep through an animal the size
of Pablo purring and flexing his claws on their chest.
 
Pablo’s purrs sounded like his vocal chords
had got rusted and he was about to vomit them up.
 
And his breath stank of hot rubbish
bins.
 
It was that great to see him.

“Hey, boy!
 
What’re you doing here?”

He rubbed his broad, orange face against mine, turned
round and flopped down, right at the point where my ribs ended and my
intestines began.

“Oomph!”

“Looks painful,” said a voice.
 
“In fact, it
all
looks exceedingly painful.”

I angled my head around the mass of ginger fur and
found I was staring into the chilly eyes of Rosa’s uncle, the spy.
 
Another face popped up behind his shoulder; a
dead-pan Chinese, or possibly Malay, lad wearing a duffle coat.

“What the hell . . ?”

“ . . are
we
doing here?
 
I might ask the same thing
of you, Magnus Arkonnen.”

“I . . .”
 
Then
I noticed the metal walls and metal floor: metal everywhere, even the metal
springs of a metal bed inches above my head.
 
This wasn’t hospital.

“I don’t know.
 
What
am
I doing here?
 
What’s going on?”

Rosa’s uncle crouched down by the side of my pillow
wearing his menacing face.

“Well, it looks like you’ve been gathered into the
fold, Magnus.
 
Tea and cake and a first
aid box; all mod-cons provided.
 
I’d
suggest that somebody wants you to recuperate from whatever you’ve been
through, somebody
very
close to home,
indeed.
 
Your uncle, say.”

“My uncle?
 
What
are you talking about, man?”
 
The mists
were beginning to clear a fraction and I remembered something.
 
“I was abducted from hospital . . that was
it!
 
A nurse doped me with chloroform and
ran off with me!
 
I’ve been
kidnapped!”
 

My breath began coming in fits and starts and a cold
sweat tingled on my upper lip.

“Now stop that.
 
No need to get yourself into a lather.”

“I’ve been in a car crash and got two broken arms and
two broken legs and now I’ve been kidnapped, man!”
 

I’d started to make whooping noises between words and
even the cat panicked and leapt off my chest.

“I said, calm down.
 
It’s all in the family, don’t you see?”

I didn’t see anything - hadn’t seen anything for days
- except that I’d a cracking headache and had turned into this man who wore his
nerves on the outside, like his coat.

“Mr Upshott,” the lad tapped on the spy’s
shoulder.
 
“Excuse me, Mr Upshott.”

“Not now, Tamang.
 
This is rather interesting.”

“Mr Upshott, I
really
think you should . .”

“Why the abduction, I ask myself?
 
They wanted him out of hospital because we’d
have found him and be questioning him any minute, that’s a given, but . . why
the abduction without his consent?”

“We are moving!”
 
The lad shouted.

“Christ, we’re not are we?
 
Up on deck.
 
No time to lose.
 
Jump in and swim
if you have to.”

I heard them go, their footsteps clattering against
the metal floor.
 
Odd words pierced the
red mist of panic.
 
Deck?
 
Swim?
 
Were we on a boat?
 
What the hell
had happened to my life?
 
There was no
time to come up with an answer to my own question because the footsteps came
clattering right back.

“Under the bed.”
 
The spy’s face re-appeared, inches from mine.
 
“Mention we’re here and we’ll show no mercy,
Arkonnen.
 
The judge will come down so
hard on you, thirty years of hard labour in a Siberian mine would be a picnic
by comparison.”

I gaped at him.
 
I’d reached the far side of astonishment, mystification, whatever you
wanted to call it.
 
I didn’t understand
anything and no longer expected to.
 
Either I turned my face to the wall, or I didn’t (not that I could move
it much, either way).
 
So, bring it on, I
thought.
 
Bring the madness on.

 
And that’s when
my Aunt Dilys showed up.

“How are you, Magnus?
 
Feeling any better?”

She had a pink dress and a bobbly, white cardigan on
and was clutching the cardi around her, like she was feeling the cold.

“I haven’t got my sea-legs yet,” she said, pulling the
only chair in the room up to the side of my bed.
 
It screeched against the metal floor.

“I fetched your cat for you.
 
I expect you’ve seen him.”
 

She sat down, crossing beige stocking-ed legs and
folding her hands in her lap.
 
I noticed the
hands twitch; like fish when they’re nearly, but not quite, dead.
 
It came to me that I liked this woman even
less than I liked her husband.
 
There was
silence while she waited for me to ask her what was going on.
 
I didn’t.

“You should be quite comfortable.”

I cleared my sand-papered throat:

“You couldn’t have waited until I’d got out of
hospital?
 
For this trip to wherever it
is we’re going?”

“No,” she answered, flatly.
 
She was wearing a bracelet of multi-coloured
beads and began to twist it round and round.
 
“This is for the best.
 
No point
in hanging about in hospital when you could be with your family, is there?
 
Reginald thought I should look after you
until you’re quite better and it’s all blown over, Magnus, and I’m happy to do
it.
 
This is
all
your uncle’s idea.”

A dab of a smile, so quick it’d been and gone before
you knew it.

“All what’s blown over?”
 
I asked.
 
“I thought you said I’d saved Uncle Reg’s life.
 
What needs to be blown over, Aunt Dilys?”

“We have a nice place in Kent, near the sea,” she
ignored me, “and we’ll have a pleasant trip down and make a bit of a holiday
out of it.
 
Let’s hope the weather stays
fine.”
 
She carried on twisting that
bracelet round and round her wrist; her wrist so thin, I could see blue veins
beneath the white of it.
 
“Reginald is
already there, so he can answer any questions you might have later.”
 
She glanced around the cabin.
 
“Would you like a cup of tea and a slice of
cake, Magnus?
 
It’s nearly teatime . .
oh!”

Her bracelet came apart in her hand and red and green
beads bounced onto the floor, rolling all over, under the chair, the table, the
bunk I was lying on.

“Oh, that’s too bad!”
 
She exclaimed and went to bend down to retrieve them from beneath the
bed.

I blinked and saw Rosa Stone running down the road in
her red dress and green shoes.
 
My cousin
Terry.
 
Uncle Reg’s black sedan, his hand
sticking out of the window with a gun in it.

“It’s all come back,” I said, abruptly.
 
“I’ve remembered the whole thing.”

She paused with her knees bent and, slowly,
straightened up.
 
Nothing in her face
altered in any way.

“Uncle Reg tried to abduct my friend Rosa,” I
said.
 
“We were in his car and he was
threatening her with a gun and I jumped on top of him to try to stop him
shooting at her.
 
And that was when we
crashed.”

“Oh, no,” she said, calmly, “I don’t think that can be
right.
 
Reginald would never do a thing
like that, Magnus.
 
You’re not well,
dear; don’t you worry about it at the present moment.
 
Reginald will clear it all up for you later,
as I said.
 
Now,” she was distracted, “
where
do they keep the broom?”

Aunt Dilys opened and closed a few cupboards.

“Bother!”
 
She
said.
 
“Bother, bother, bother!
 
And I
liked
that bracelet, too.”
 
She headed to the
ladder that led up on deck.
 
“Let me just
find the broom; I can’t abide all this mess about the place.
 
Then we’ll have a cup of tea and a slice of
my nice Dundee.”
 

Her footsteps receded, her heels tap-tapping on the
metal ladder that led out of the metal cabin where she’d imprisoned me.
 
I moaned, but it wasn’t from any pain; it was
sheer, blind panic.
 
There wasn’t a pain
in the world that could make me panic like this.
 
Had he killed Rosa, or had I managed to
divert the car in time?
 
Waves of panic,
each one bigger than the last, crashed over my head and I started whooping
again.

There was a rustle from under the bed and the spy and
his sidekick slid out on their backs.

“His wife!”
 
The
spy exclaimed.
 
“Who’d have thought
it!
 
My secretary is Reg Arkonnen’s
wife
.
 
And you appear to be an innocent party in all this, Magnus.
 
What a turn up for the books!”
 
He bent over me.
 
“That’s an odd sound you’re making.
 
Not got whooping cough, have you?”

“Mr Upshott, there is no time for that.
 
The lady will return and we cannot hide
beneath the bed, not when she is so determined to sweep,” the sidekick cried.
 
“Do you have a plan?
 
Should we hit her on the head with a
frying-pan and commandeer the boat?”

The spy ran a languid hand through his thick, black
head of hair and considered his options.

“Well now, I’m not sure that is such a good idea,
tempting though it may be.
 
Far better to
let her take us to her husband, Trojan horse-style, if you see what I mean.”

“Excellent,” said the lad, speaking very quickly,
“then you hide on the top bunk, pressing yourself against the wall as much as
possible, and I will lie on the far side of Mr Arkonnen, underneath his
blankets.
 
And . .” he cocked his head to
listen, “ . . we will do it
now
.”

He made a neat job of diving across me without
disturbing any of my injuries.

“Jayagaon Tamang,” he said.
 
“Hello,” and then he buried himself under my
blanket.

The whooping stopped, but I let out another deep,
despairing moan.
 

“Bad pain?”
 
A
muffled voice whispered beside me.

“It’s not the pain, man.
 
It’s my friend.
 
I think my uncle may have murdered her.”

“Oh dear,” he whispered.
 
“I am so sorry to hear that.”

“Ssh!”
 
A sharp
hiss came from the top bunk.

“Rosa!”
 
I
moaned.
 
“Oh, Rosa!”

“One minute . .”
 
Mr Tamang’s face popped up right next to mine.
 
“I don’t think . .”

“Ssh!”

There was a light clanging of careful footsteps on the
metal ladder and Mr Tamang shot back under the blanket.

“There we are!”
 
Said Aunt Dilys.
 
“We’re just past
the Tower of London and about to go under the bridge.
 
The river’s a bit whiffy, but it’s a
magnificent view, I must say.
 
Just think
of all the terrible deeds that went on in that place, Magnus; all the
disembowelling and torture and that,” she went on, gaily, as she swept.
 
“I’d plump for the rack as my favourite.
 
So simple and yet so clever.
 
What’s yours?”

I didn’t reply, but tried turning my face to the wall.

“Ow!”
 

“Hurts, does it?
 
Would you like a couple of aspirin?”

“No, thank you.”