Darkmans (15 page)

‘But if he finds out…’ Elen covered her mouth with her hand and stared at him, over her fingers, almost in panic. ‘He’s grown so suspicious. So paranoid. If he has
any
kind of inkling…’

‘I know. I
know.
’

‘And if he realises that we met up earlier…’

Beede stiffened. ‘The trick is not to deny anything. If the worst comes to the worst, say you took Fleet out to do some shopping, that you stopped at the restaurant, that I was there with my son…’

‘That’s true,’ she nodded, ‘you were.’

She nodded again.

‘The critical thing,’ Beede continued doggedly, ‘is that you need to get some rest – you both do; you
and
Dory – otherwise neither of you will be able to function properly.’

Elen patted her eyes with the tissue, then unfastened her hair to try and disguise their blotchiness.

‘And as I said before,’ Beede persisted, ‘there’s Fleet to consider…’

‘It was such a surprise,’ she said softly, changing the subject (exchanging one son for another), ‘to see Kane there this morning.’ ‘I know,’ Beede grimaced, ‘apparently he goes there all the time. I had no idea.’

‘I hadn’t seen him in so long…’ she smiled, vaguely. ‘Not since…Well, since Heather…’

Beede tipped his head, momentarily at a loss, then his brows lifted. ‘But of
course
– you would’ve met him as a boy…’

‘He…’

Elen began to say something, then suddenly checked herself. ‘He had a…’ she gesticulated, vaguely, ‘on his arm. He had a
burn.
He showed me.’

Beede frowned. ‘On his arm?’

‘Yes. He said he got it in the desert. In America.’

‘I don’t actually…’ Beede slowly shook his head, then something
struck him; a memory ‘…
Yes.
He does have a burn there. He got sunstroke as I recollect. It was very severe…’

He still wasn’t quite following her.

Elen touched her own arm, ruminatively, in exactly the same place. Beede frowned, perplexed. ‘Did he mention it for some reason?’

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could answer, they were interrupted by a quick knock. A member of staff thrust an impatient hand into the office, proffering an invoice. Beede scrambled up and followed them outside. A terse conference took place, and then they headed off, Beede cursing, towards the storeroom.

When he returned to his cubby (five minutes later) Elen had gone. On his blotter she’d scribbled, ‘Danny – Thanks. And SORRY. See you later. Godbless.

E.’

He ripped the page out, turned it over, sat down, picked up a pen in one hand and the phone receiver in his other. He pressed it between his cheek and his shoulder and he dialled the line for Casualty, then waited. As it rang he quickly wrote: Eva Barlow. He stared at it for a moment then scratched it out. Eliza Barlow (his next attempt). He crossed this out, too.

He frowned, gazing out into the middle distance, racking his brains to remember the proper name of the client Elen had mentioned with the malfunctioning pace-maker.

‘
Liz?
Lizzie Brownlow?’

He grimaced.

‘Damn.’

He slammed down the receiver.

‘
Damn.
’

He leaned back in his chair, ruminatively.

‘Cunning,’ he eventually murmured, ‘two names I would’ve remembered. But the nickname on top…’

He threw down the pen.

‘That was clever.’

He picked up his mug of tea and took a quick sip of it –

Cold

He leaned over and took a hold of Elen’s mug –

Virtually untouched

His eye casually alighted upon the tea-stained tissue where he’d rested the spoon, previously –

What?!

He peered around him, thoroughly puzzled –

But where…?

It never rang; not
ever.
The last time Kane could actually remember (and the fact that he could still clearly recall this occasion – and in florid detail – said it all, really) was when his Great-Aunt Glenda (a true family gem) had died, aged ninety-six, in 1994.

To mark her passing, Beede’s cousin, Trevor (who was horribly burned to death – a mere eight months later – in a tragic house blaze), had rung him up on that distinctive, brick-orange phone with a complex assortment of funeral arrangements:

1. All mourners to wear pink (she’d considered it a ‘sacred’ colour).

2. Lengthy, heartfelt readings to be performed (and then distributed in the guise of a commemorative pamphlet within a one-mile radius of her home in Esher, Surrey) from Kahlil Gibran’s
The Prophet
, Joyce’s
Dubliners
and
Problems of Reconstruction
by Annie Besant.

3. A proper, old-fashioned High Tea to be served, accompanied by home-made egg-custards, cinnamon buns (from Fitzbillies’ traditional bakers in Cambridge), tumblers of apricot wine and her own
very
smoky blend of Lapsang Suchong.

4. Marigolds to form the centre of
all
her flower arrangements (she’d been a devoted gardener, but had suffered from chronic hayfever, and this cheerful, brightly coloured genus had been one of its main perpetrators. In consequence of this fact, she’d thought it might be ‘a bit of a hoot’ to make her final journey in a coffin absolutely
swathed
in the damn things: ‘Bring along a jemmy,’ she’d said, ‘and if you hear a sneeze, then be sure and prise me out…’).

She’d died – inevitably – in the depths of winter. Not a single humble British marigold to be had. The import costs had been astronomical and Beede had been furious (although his objections – he’d insisted – weren’t so much monetary as environmental –

Yeah, right
…)

Kane had just
loved
her for that.

And then –

But of course…

– there was his father’s magnificently choleric expression as he stood, in church, determinedly booming forth one of Gibran’s more flowery flights of fancy dressed in a crazily lurid, salmon-coloured shirt –

Absolute fucking class!

Even now, all these years later, Kane could distinctly recall over-hearing that landmark conversation through the cracks in his linoleum. He’d been upstairs stewing in the bath at the time – eight…nine Christmases ago. Ten, even.

And the phone had barely rung since (so far as he was aware – I mean he didn’t stand
guard
over it or anything). It lived a very quiet existence (what could it comprehend, poor soul, of the advent of touch-tone, of texting and the internet?). It was almost superfluous (like Sleeping Beauty, in the midst of that great, big doze); to all intents and purposes, it was pretty much
dys
phonic.

Beede was resolutely ex-directory and nobody but distant (and now mainly dead) family had ever been privy to that particular number (even Beede’s brother only ever contacted him via the hospital laundry).

But it had a fantastic bell. When it rang it produced an astonishingly pure, clear, old-fashioned sound; an elevated, almost ecstatic ‘peal’, a rousing, piercing,
energising
clamour.

Kane loathed phones. He really did. It was one of the few chinks in his easy-going armour. Yet it wasn’t the technology itself that he objected to (Come
on
– he prostrated himself, hourly, at the altar of the disk and the drive and the chip), so much as the inbuilt element of surprise; the sense of a demand being made, then registered, then automatically responded to (‘What am I?’ he’d sometimes mutter. ‘A dog to be whistled at?’).

He used his own phone continuously (had to, for work), but he chiefly relied on its texting facility, and if – by chance – he was awaiting an urgent call, he’d set it on to vibrate (a vibration he could just about tolerate – it didn’t shriek or keen or
insist
) and then shove it, carelessly, into the front pocket of his denim jacket.

The brick-orange phone continued to sing.

Kane re-entered the flat, strolled over to Beede’s desk, placed his hands on to his knees (bending from his hips, keeping his legs tensed
– like a linesman at a tennis match) and gazed down at the phone, scowling.

Still –
still
– it rang. He expostulated, sharply, then crouched down and curled his arm around the pile of magazines (accidentally snagging the top few with the turned-up cuff of his jacket and pulling them down on to the carpet –

Damn!
)

He grabbed the receiver –

Wow…

Heavy

– then placed it, tentatively, to his ear. He didn’t speak.

And at the other end of the line?

Silence.

‘Hello?’ Kane whispered, finally.

(Was this an entirely different world, this Beede-phone world? Was he speaking into some kind of supernatural vacuum, into a sphere utterly beyond everyday concepts of the here and the now?)

‘Beede?’

Male. Young-ish. A pronounced German accent.

‘No.’ Kane stood up, smartly (the highly coiled, creamy-white wire connecting the receiver to the phone stretching itself, languorously).

‘No. This is Kane, his son.’

‘Kane?’

‘Yes.’

Kane nodded.

‘Beede’s
son
?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Beede there, by any chance?’

‘Uh,’ Kane glanced nervously around him, ‘no. No, he isn’t.’

‘Oh.’

Long pause

‘I suppose you could always try him at work,’ Kane volunteered, helpfully.

‘Yes.
Yes.
That’s true. I could. In fact I
was.
But this number suddenly just…it just popped into my head. Out of the blue. It was really…really quite
odd.
So I grabbed the bull by the horns and I just…I
rang
it.’

‘I see.’

‘You know how that happens, sometimes?’

Eh?

Kane frowned and cocked his head.

‘Although I’m not sure if he ever…’ the German muttered, distractedly.

Pause

‘…I’m not sure if he ever actually
gave
it to me. The number. I just plucked it from…How to describe it? I just plucked it from the air. From…from the
ether.
’

Longer pause

‘Isn’t that odd? Do
you
think that’s odd?’

Kane cleared his throat, nervously, not really sure how to answer.

Silence

‘Perhaps you could leave him a message?’ he finally suggested (impressed by the quiet, somehow. It didn’t drag. It was dynamic. It
crackled.
Was that a
German
thing? Did the Teutonic races have some special kind of strangle-hold on the high-quality conversational hiatus?).

‘Beede’s son…’ The German mused, reflectively, as if calling something very peripheral to mind.

Kane said nothing.

‘Beede’s
son
, Kane…’ he repeated, this time rather more emphatically.

Kane merely scowled.

‘
Kane.
Yes. But of
course
…’ (a connection was suddenly established), ‘
now
I remember: you shared a coffee together, didn’t you, earlier this morning?’

Was that a question, Kane wondered, or just a bald statement, posing as one?

‘Although – and I’m being brutally honest here,’ the German confided, ‘when I actually looked over towards the window – the window where he pointed (and I can see it now, very clearly, in my mind’s eye) you were gone. The window was empty. So there was no way of really…of really
knowing
…’

‘We
did
meet,’ Kane butted in, impatiently, ‘quite by chance. Just before lunch. At the French Connection.’

‘That’s
it
!’ the German sounded gleeful. ‘That’s right! That’s
exactly
right! The
French
Connection!
Ha!
’

Kane took a small, nervous step back, a move which the phone line gently resisted.

‘What did you say your name was, again?’ he asked, feeling a sudden, sharp twinge of paranoia.

‘So you’re absolutely positive, then,’ the German barrelled on, determinedly, ‘and I mean
totally
certain that you met Beede there for coffee this morning?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Kane fired back, defensively.

‘
God
, yes…I remember the fort…’ the German muttered (heading off, without warning, on a sudden tangent) ‘…the children’s fort. The fort is significant, but I’m not entirely sure…
uh
…’

‘Who
are
you?’

Kane was now officially freaked out.

‘Isidore,’ the man answered plainly (perhaps a little startled by Kane’s forceful tone). ‘Didn’t I say so before? I’m sorry. How incredibly rude. Forgive me. I’m Isidore.
Dory.
Beede and I do the tours together.’

‘Pardon?’

Kane didn’t follow.

‘The Ashford Tours. I’m the chauffeur. Beede’s my guide.’

‘
Ashford
Tours?’

Kane still wasn’t quite up to speed.

‘Yes…Although it’s just a side-line, really. And your father’s been so caught up in his work at the laundry lately…Security’s our main function – keeping keys, guarding empty properties, a little light detective work…’

‘Beede is your guide?’

Kane was struggling to catch on (I mean
Beede
? A
guide
? That old sourpuss? Welcoming people? Putting on a show? Being informative? Friendly? Obliging? Beede being
positive
? About modern
Ashford
of all places – the source of all his gloom? The heart of all his disappointments? Had the world finally gone absolutely bloody
barking
?).

‘A great guide. A
brilliant
guide. Your father is quite a remarkable man,’ the German observed, dryly (was it dryness, or something else?), ‘but I’m sure you’re already very well aware of that fact.’

‘Oh yeah…’ Kane mumbled, with a vague smirk, ‘absolutely.’

His mind was momentarily drifting elsewhere. The children’s fort.
Fort
 –

Eh?

What was that?

He drew a sudden, sharp breath as he registered an unpleasant, pinching sensation in his forearm. He glanced down. He realised that he was now supporting the phone receiver against his shoulder and that his right hand was clutching – very tightly – on to his left arm (where the old sunburn scars were) –

Ow!

He blinked. He relaxed his grip –

What?!

The outer edges of his scar tissue had been reddened by the roughness of its manhandling. He scowled.

‘But of
course
,’ he suddenly found himself saying, ‘it must’ve been you – on the horse.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You…Tall. Fair-haired. Wearing some kind of…of navy-blue uniform.’

The German seemed bewildered by this revelation. ‘Me? On a horse? Riding? You actually saw me on
horse
back?’

‘Yeah…Well,
no.
You were climbing off. You’d climbed off.’

‘And you were there with Beede, you say? In the restaurant? Having coffee?’

Kane grimaced, impatiently. ‘I think we already established that.’

He leaned forward and picked up the stray magazines from the carpet.

Silence

‘And then?’ the German asked, tentatively.

‘What?’

As Kane carefully placed the magazines back on to the pile again he noticed a bank statement which’d been preserved, flat, between a couple of the editions.

‘Then Beede left?’ the German persisted. ‘Is that how it happened?’

‘Uh,’ Kane considered this for a moment, eyeing the statement, casually, ‘yeah. Quite soon after. Once the chiropodist arrived.’

‘The
chiropodist
?’

The German’s voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘You mean
Elen
? The chiropodist? She was
there
?’

Elen

Of course

Kane glanced up, smiling.

‘My
wife
was there?’

Kane’s smile faltered.

‘Good
God.
’

The German seemed overwhelmed by this idea.

‘Although in actual fact,’ Kane frowned as he remembered, ‘the boy almost had me convinced that there were
two
horses…’

‘Sorry?
What
? A
boy
?’

‘Her son,’ Kane paused, ‘
your
son. A sharp little character. He said that there were two. But if there were, then they were pretty much indistinguishable…’ He paused again ‘…which I suppose they’d
need
to be, really, for the trick to work.’

‘You’re telling me that there were
two
horses?’

The German – rather slow on the uptake, Kane thought – swung from excited to panicky.

Kane stared down at the statement again, distractedly, then his brows suddenly shot up –

What?!

Holy fuck…

‘Was
Beede
on one of them?’

Kane continued to stare at the statement, as if mesmerised.

‘
Hello?
Are you
there
? I said was
Beede
on one of them?’

‘No!’ Kane snapped, exasperated. ‘Beede was with
me.
I saw
one
horse. But the boy said that only by using two horses could you have managed the change-over so quickly. The swap. Like in a trick. A magic trick…’

‘
Swap?
Who swapped?’

The German sounded terrified.

‘You and the other man. The…’ Kane struggled to describe him, ‘the strange…the creepy…’

‘
Which
man?’ The German rasped.

Kane closed his eyes and tried to visualise –

Black

Yellow

Black

He shuddered, ‘The
dark
man…’

And then he found himself hissing – ‘…
Ssssssss!
’

With no forewarning, his mouth was –

Good God!

It was
hissing
– ‘Darkman
sssss
.’

Kane quickly clamped his errant lips shut –

Where?

How?