Come Clean (1989) (23 page)

‘Too late to go there, anyway,’ Margot said.

‘I will all the same.’

‘Sarah, there’s no point. You’ll discover nothing.’

‘Not there,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘I can’t just stay here.’

‘But where?’

She hardly knew what to answer. ‘I know one of the people looking for him.’

‘Sarah, in a couple of days the police will say in the papers who it is.’

‘A couple of days? Am I suppose to wait?’

‘Or Desmond might tell you.’

‘Yes, he might, especially if it is Ian. Do I want to hear it like that? Do you think I do, Margot?’

‘There’d be no good way of hearing it.’

‘That would be the worst.’

They closed the ambulance doors and the vehicle moved slowly away. The group on the quay-side broke up and went to their cars, and they, too, drove off the dock. Sarah recognized none of these
vehicles, but that meant little: people like Desmond or Colin Harpur or other senior detectives could be driving any car from the police pool. She left the window.

Margot said: ‘Isn’t it far-fetched, Sarah? Someone you’re fond of is missing, so you assume all this?’

‘There’s somebody significant in that car.’

‘And is Ian significant?’

‘He could be.’

She could sense that Margot expected her to explain, but Sarah gave no more.

‘And what will you ask this man who’s supposedly been looking for Ian,’ Margot asked.

‘No, not supposedly.’

‘All right. But what will you ask him?’

‘If he found him, of course. If he dropped him in the fucking dock, or if he knows whether someone else did.’

‘And, naturally, he’s going to tell you. You’re only the wife of a chief policeman.’

‘I’ve got to ask him.’

‘It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Not much of what’s happening does.’

Margot seemed to give up her protests. ‘Who is this you’re going to see?’

‘Oh, a sort of go-between. A half-crooked nobody, maybe like Ian himself.’

‘Yes, but his name? Just in case anything goes wrong. It might be important to know where to start looking.’

‘Nothing will go wrong. Do stop fretting. I’m used to this kind of life now. I can look after myself.’ She knew she sounded strident again and full of phoney confidence, a
frail attempt to conceal her fears, and unlikely to convince a professional like Margot. Well, to hell with Margot, and her cardigan. Leave her to marriage manuals and the cats and the marina.

Sarah drove out to the Monty and, by the time she reached there, all her courage, even her false courage, had slid away. Ralph might be a nonentity, but he had the power to chill her, and to
make Sarah wonder why she had ever pushed her way with such determination into his kind of world. She was as much out of place in it as he had been in Rougement Place. Why wasn’t she playing
bridge somewhere, really playing bridge, or at home trying again to flog her way through Salman Rushdie? She knew there was a very simple answer: she had to discover whether Ian was safe, and he
inhabited that same world as Ralph’s. The need was obsessive. Once more Margot probably had things right, and it must be morbid fancy to assume that because someone had been recovered from
the dock it had to be Ian. Nothing could have stopped Sarah from trying to make sure it was not, though.

At this hour of the afternoon the club would be closed, between lunch-time and reopening in the evening. She parked a little way off and walked the last few hundred yards to the Monty’s
solid front door, passing the club yard on her way. One side was open to the street and she saw that the builder’s rubble container still stood there, still as innocent as ever, no doubt, now
loaded to the top. God, if she hadn’t been so foolishly and uselessly prying about that none of these anxieties would have come.

Then more anxieties arrived: standing in the porch and about to ring the bell she thought she heard from somewhere deep in the building, perhaps upstairs, a cry of pain and, immediately
following, a sound like something or somebody falling heavily to the ground. The cry had been male, she felt almost certain of that, though she could not tell whether it was Ralph. While she was
still trying to sort out in her head what might have happened, the sequence of sounds occurred again, though this time the cry struck her as weaker and the noise of a fall louder. Then she heard
what seemed to be a few words spoken, again a male voice, and the tone harsh, even savage.

Her fears soared and she drew back from ringing the bell. For a few seconds she thought of turning around, getting back to the car and driving home. Rougement Place and its spruce safety
insistently called to her, like a mother seeking a missing child, or the parable shepherd looking for the hundredth sheep. In fact, she left the porch hurriedly and had begun to walk back up to her
parking spot, assuring herself that, in any case, Ralph Ember would probably have no news of Ian, when she saw two men leave the club through the rear fire doors and quickly cross the yard. She was
looking from the side and from a little behind them, but she felt pretty sure she had seen both these men before, and quite certain that neither was Ralph. One seemed about thirty, dark-haired and
with a very powerful-looking body, especially the shoulders. The other looked older, thin, with sparse grey hair, and possibly wearing rimless glasses. Both had on smart, grey suits. Last time she
encountered the two it was inside the club, on the night the injured young man appeared, was surrounded by these two and others, and then disappeared.

Before they came out of the yard ahead of her, she turned around and walked at what she hoped was a casual, unostentatious pace, back towards the Monty’s front entrance, but did not stop
there, in case the men were behind her or glanced down the street and spotted her. She felt weak and terrified. For five minutes she simply kept going, then very gratefully turned a corner and
walked another few hundred yards, faster now, before entering a shop. She took her time buying some toffees and a newspaper, occasionally looking out to the street, through the window. The men did
not pass. When it came to paying, she found to her shame that her hands were shaking so much she could hardly cope with the coins, and the Pakistani woman behind the counter asked her if she was
all right, and whether she would like to sit down for a moment. No, she was not all right, but a chair wouldn’t change anything. It was fear of the two men and anxiety about Ian that had
taken away control of her muscles, and mostly fear.

Emerging from the shop, she looked about very very carefully, if necessary ready to keep on walking away from the club. But she saw nothing to trouble her in the street and forced herself to go
back up to the corner and look from there towards the Monty. The two men were still not in view and so she began to stroll in that direction again, pretending to read bits of her paper, and helping
herself to a couple of toffees in the hope that chewing would ease her nerves. Almost everything continued to tell her that she could not handle this situation and should give up the visit and exit
while she was able; everything except the need to find out about Ian, and the belief which would not go away, no matter how hard she tried to dispel it, that Ralph might know something after all.
This hope gripped her and still fought her fear.

She entered the club yard and saw that the fire doors had been left swinging open when the men hurriedly left. Giving herself no time to develop doubts, she quickly crossed to the doors and
entered the corridor where she had seen the blood trail on the tiles at the start of all this. She took a few steps inside, then went back and pulled the doors closed. That bothered her, seeming to
cut off escape and commit her to going on into the building. But, if the two men returned, and especially if they returned because they had been secretly observing her, she wanted it to be as
difficult as possible for them to get inside.

With the light from the yard excluded now, the corridor was dark and she went gingerly forward past the lavatories. She reached the door to the bar and opened it gently. That brought a little
pale light to the corridor from outside through the bar windows, and she felt slightly comforted. Stepping into the bar she stared urgently around. Nothing seemed to have been damaged or disturbed
here: the place had obviously been cleaned up after the lunch-time trade and was ready for the evening.

The sounds she heard when at the front door had seemed to come from upstairs and she decided she would have to try to look there. For a moment or two she sat on the bar bench she had last
occupied with Ian, assembling her courage, and then made for a door marked Private, behind the bar counter, which she knew gave on to stairs leading to the flat above. She opened this door and
stood for a few seconds on the second stair, listening. Ralph had a wife and family living here, yet there was no sound. Slowly, she moved up a few more stairs, then paused again. Although she was
tempted to call out, declare her presence, she decided to keep as quiet as she could for at least a short time yet, and put her feet down very softly as she climbed the last stairs to the
landing.

There was part of her that kept on saying she was behaving as stupidly and intrusively now as when she pushed herself and Ian into this business at the start: the same tiresome cockiness and
stupid nonchalance. Instincts and obsession drove her on, though. Some day she might get back to being just one person again, able to run her life according to reason and consistency and
intelligent fear, but that had not happened yet, and she did not really look forward to it very much. She was growing used to this battle in herself between what good sense said, and what her
wishes said; knew all the ins and outs of that recurrent fight and how to work it so that her wishes always won. Anyway, were the restraints really good sense? After all, if she – or when she
– went back to being one, unified, apparently contented person it would be as the worthy lady of Idylls, Rougement Place, and devoted to Des. That was sensible?

Half a dozen doors gave on to the landing and from the room behind one of them she thought now she could hear breathing, uneven, laboured breathing, occasionally broken by a snore, or perhaps it
was a groan. The door stood a little open and she went forward and pushed it gradually wide. She saw an unmade double bed with nobody in it, an old-style pine dressing table littered with cosmetics
and lacquers and a couple of pink, narrow, straight-backed wooden chairs with basket-work seats. If it had not been for the noise she would have assumed the room unoccupied. But the sound of
someone fighting to breathe had grown louder and seemed to come from the floor on the far side of the bed. Hesitantly, she went in and looked.

Ralph lay close to the bed, his face badly marked, and with blood running from his nose and a cut over the right eye forming a small pool on the purple carpet. Fully dressed in a brown, tired,
three-piece suit, he was on his back, unconscious, his eyes closed. For what seemed to her a minute or more he would appear to have stopped breathing and remain utterly still, but then his face
would contort and his hand twitch as he strove to pull in air. He was a bad colour, his cheeks greyish-blue and his lips very pale. At school she had learned first aid and she realized almost at
once now that Ralph had swallowed his tongue and would choke to death shortly if she did not act. All the same, she hesitated for a couple of seconds: he had always repelled her, his slippery
charm, the scar, his impenetrable, high-flown talk, his lying, and she drew back from contact with him.

Again she grew ashamed of herself. Christ, this was a dying man. What did it matter that his face had been marked or that he could stifle you with verbiage? And who was she to take against
anyone for lying? She knelt near him and immediately felt the blood on the carpet soak into the knees of her tights. Turning his head towards her she pulled Ralph’s mouth wide and put her
finger in and tried to hook his tongue forward from out of his throat. It was something she had been shown how to do all those years ago, but shown only on diagrams. She had never needed to attempt
it, and diagrams did not prepare you for the unnerving intimacy of poking about deep inside someone’s mouth.

At first now she did not succeed and felt herself begin to panic: she wanted to call somebody – a doctor, an ambulance, Desmond – anyone to rid herself of the responsibility for this
life. She knew there was no time for that, though.

Ralph’s whole body heaved and momentarily his teeth closed on her finger, as if in a fit, and she cried out in pain. Then he relaxed again, and she felt relief mixed with dread that
relaxing meant he had gone and was past fighting for breath any longer. As she fought again to pull this strangely resistant tongue clear, another thought came from somewhere and gave her a sudden
sense of hope. She decided that Ralph must have taken this beating because he had failed to find Ian for those men and whoever ran them – most probably Loxton. They might even have meant to
kill him and had been disturbed by the sound of her stepping into the porch.

It followed that, if Ralph had not found Ian, he might be still alive, not in the dock. Even as she struggled with Ralph, she realized that there was no evidence at all for this reading of the
situation, and perhaps no logic in it either. It was a guess, but one she could not prevent herself believing, because she wanted to believe it so much. Her mind took that road so often these days.
And then she felt the tongue become freed and she took her finger from his mouth. Her fears that she might be too late persisted, though. Ralph still lay still and she saw no chest movement to
signal breathing. Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation she had also learned at school, and actually practised at life-saving classes at the pool. Des had several times told her the police were no longer
keen to use it, because of the Aids danger, but she fixed her mouth over Ralph’s, held his nose, and began trying to force air and movement back into his lungs.

Thank God, he began to respond almost at once and, after a few minutes, she pulled back and let him breathe unhelped, deeply and regularly now. The frightening colours in his face began to fade
and, not long afterwards, she saw his eyelids start to quiver. Drawing one of the horrible pink chairs closer, she sat near him and watched while he gradually came back to consciousness. The blood
had spread down from the knees of her tights almost to her shoes and, in the dressing table mirror on the other side of the bed, she saw that her face was streaked with blood, too, picked up when
her mouth was on his. Altogether, she must look as if she had been in a road accident and she would need to do some careful cleaning up before she went home. As far as she could tell, no blood was
on the rest of her clothes, thank heaven. The tights would have to be junked.