Black Widow (9 page)

‘You think?' I asked, indicating my scepticism. I was trying to make him less at ease, more fearful that he had offended me. I don't know why. It was moot anyway, because it wasn't working.

He held up his plastic glass, inviting mine.

I let out a sigh and couldn't help but smile. I tapped my beer against his and we both took a pull to seal the deal.

‘Past it instantly,' I said.

‘Although we now have to get married,' he replied.

There it is. Read into it retrospectively what you will.

‘Why?'

‘Because it would heal the rift between our great houses. No longer would surgeons and hospital IT staff be hostages to the bitter divisions of the past.'

‘It would never work,' I told him.

‘Why not?'

‘You told me you're bad at seeing your ideas through.'

‘Then eternal war it must be.'

The lights went down shortly after that and the band took the stage, removing the need for small talk. The place was busier than when I arrived, but still less than half full, and the response from the audience was a long way south of rapturous. I didn't imagine a tribute act elicited much hysteria. I had never seen one before, and I had no idea of the dynamic, of what was motivating the people in here who hadn't come along in a genuinely desperate attempt to defer a mid-life crisis.

The sound was discordantly trebly. At first I wasn't sure whether it was supposed to be like that and I was simply too out-of-touch to dig the aesthetic, but halfway through the second number somebody evidently noticed that a cable was unplugged, and the improvement was considerable. It sounded solid and powerful, though I wondered whether the ropey start had the same boost effect upon my perception as Peter turning up late.

It would be fair to say I didn't consider myself au fait with the Blink oeuvre, and not being familiar with the songs, it was difficult to engage. My mind began to drift, though it couldn't drift that far, thrashing guitars precluding any profound contemplation. I asked myself again what I was doing here, and thought about what a waste of my time it was to be watching a tribute act to a band I had no interest in. I wasn't much for going to gigs anyway, so seeing Blink-182 live was hardly on my bucket list. Watching three guys
pretend
to be Blink-182 surely couldn't be of any cultural value that I could discern, so I didn't envisage any way in which this could enrich me, or what meaning I could take away from it. My inner tutor was acutely aware that this was time I could be spending reading up on the latest journal papers, or watching CME-credited online lectures.

The band began singing about getting a blowjob from your mom. I turned to Peter and he gave me a look: part amused, part bashfully apologetic.

The number lasted less than a minute, before the band segued into a song I actually recognised. It must have been popular when I graduated, because it took me right back to that time.

Then something very unusual happened.

I began to enjoy myself.

Ali slowed down after passing through the hamlet of Ordskirk. There was frost on the ground and the bends became sharp along this stretch as the road hugged the meandering course of the river.

Rodriguez peered out of the passenger-side window. The water was barely discernible as a slightly more shimmery blackness than all the other blackness surrounding it. It was fast-moving here, rocks jutting above the surface occasionally picked out by the patrol car's headlights as they approached a bend.

‘If a car went off the road and into that, we'd see it,' Rodriguez predicted. ‘Doesn't look like it would go in deeper than the wheel-arches.'

‘Yes, but that's not where she said it happened. This is the wrong side of the waterfall.'

Ali pulled into a layby beyond the signpost Cathy had mentioned. There was a turn-off nearby, a gravel track leading to picnic benches near a viewing point for the falls. Forest trails led off from here too, marked by colour-coded signposts along the way.

She engaged the runlock system to keep the engine turning for the headlights, though there was scant danger of somebody nicking the car out here.

The wind was whipping along the glen, biting into her cheeks. Above it she could hear the white-noise rumble and hiss of the waterfall. Merely the sound of it made her feel colder.

The night was very dark: cloud cover obscuring the moon and stars. They were going to need all the light they could get. She went to the boot and pulled out a couple of torches, though definitely not a pair.

‘Why do I get the tiddly one?' he asked.

‘It's not tiddly: it's police issue. The Surefire is my own.'

She played the light across the surface of the road. Frost twinkled on the tarmac, which made it easier to pick out the fresh tyre marks.

‘Somebody slammed on the anchors pretty hard here,' she said.

Rodriguez pointed his own beam along the marks and beyond, trying to follow the line of where the car's momentum would have taken it. The tracks seemed to indicate that it careered off on the opposite side to the river, which would have angled it into the side of a hill.

‘She definitely said the car was approaching from this end?'

‘Yes. But it sounded like it fishtailed, so if the skids curve right at this point, then it would have veered left again further on.'

‘Can't find another set of fresh marks,' Rodriguez observed. ‘Though there are plenty of older ones.'

‘It's an accident blackspot. And a well-named one, at that.'

‘Uidh Dubh?' he attempted. ‘How's that well-named? I can't even pronounce it.'

‘It's Gaelic for black ford. But the English name is a phonetic corruption of the original. You hear that rush of water over there?'

‘Yeah.'

‘It's known as Widow Falls.'

I can reasonably consider myself an expert on many things pertaining to the human condition, but relationships are not among them. Nonetheless, I know enough now, from personal experience, to state that anyone who says ‘opposites attract' is talking utter rot. It derives from a misunderstanding not only of the concept of opposition, but of the very nature and purpose of gender. Male and female are not opposites. Their relationship is complementary.

I can see where the confusion comes from. In a relationship – in a marriage – it's the things you have in common that bond you, but nonetheless it's the things you don't have in common that fascinate you about one another. This, I suppose, is what people call chemistry. Maybe they should call it alchemy, because it's a far more mysterious and less logical transformative process than could be governed by any chemical equation. I know this because all of the reasons why our relationship shouldn't have worked became all of the reasons that it did.

Peter turned my head. That's what a disapproving mother or a concerned pal says about a boyfriend when they don't understand why a girl is with him. It was true, though. He changed how I thought, how I looked at the world. And I did the same to him. The way I understood it, we made each other believe differently about ourselves, and that made us believe in
us
.

I spent much of that Saturday thinking about him, or at least consciously trying not to think about him; wrestling over how I could interpret last night, and castigating myself for how desperate and implausible some of those interpretations seemed. I couldn't stop it, though, no matter how I was occupied. It ruined my concentration, like I was some silly teenager with a crush.

Last night I had held back several times from calling him to cancel. That day I had to hold back several times from calling on any number of embarrassingly flimsy pretexts, simply to hear what he might say: what clues I might infer as to what, if anything, was going on between us.

Then, around eight in the evening,
he
called me.

Before I answered, having seen his name appear on the screen, I let out an involuntary sound. I believe it was what my young brother Julian would call a squee.

‘I was calling on the off chance that you're free tomorrow. My friend who couldn't make Friday night is still down with man flu, so he's cancelled on me for Sunday as well. I know this makes me sound like a complete Billy No-mates but to be fair I've not long moved here.'

‘Before I say whether I'm free, am I allowed to ask what you've got in mind? Or does that kind of give away the fact that I am free?'

‘Little bit. All I'll say is that you'll need a decent pair of walking boots and outdoor clothes.'

‘You can't tell me more than that?'

‘Not can't, won't. If I tell you what it is, you'll say no. But I promise: if you do it you'll enjoy it.'

‘Like I've never heard a guy say that before,' I told him, surprising myself.

He spluttered.

‘Well, fair enough. I'll be straight up: it does involve some pain, but you'll find that does play a part in the pleasure.'

‘Okay, now I'm intrigued so much that I'll have to go along just to find out.'

He picked me up early: seven thirty. I dressed in a couple of layers of Trespass gear, and asked him if I'd need more, indicating the heavy jacket I was carrying. It was minus two according to my phone, though the sky was clear and there was barely a breath of wind. He said the jacket would be too much, so I slung it in the back seat, where it landed on top of a sheet of grey canvas. There was something hidden under it, but I couldn't work out what from the shape. I only hoped it wasn't fishing gear.

We talked about what we'd normally be doing at that time of a Sunday. In my case, I'd be out for a run, or at the gym if it was raining heavily. Peter admitted he'd be asleep.

‘I had an early night because I knew I was doing this today, but ordinarily I'd be up late. Sometimes I get caught up in coding, and suddenly it's three a.m.; though I'm as likely to be up till three playing games or watching TV. You know what it's like: you decide you'll watch one episode of something on Netflix before bed and you end up watching five.'

I didn't. I really didn't. There were shows I watched, but it was irresponsible to stay up too late if there were cases in the morning. Weekends weren't much different, in that I couldn't sit up watching TV until the small hours because I didn't want to sleep in and miss half the day. I couldn't imagine reaching Sunday night and realising I had got nothing read or written because I'd wasted hours and hours on meaningless distractions.

I didn't tell him this, of course, but I didn't lie either. Instead I nudged the subject on to what shows we each liked, and was pleasantly surprised by some of his favourites. I thought it would be all guy stuff, but he shared my enthusiasm for
Orange is the New Black
and
Borgen
. Obviously he was into a whole lot of guy stuff as well, but there were layers to him, evidently.

We had been driving for about half an hour, heading into the wilds, when I asked him to tell me where he was taking me.

‘All will be revealed. You've come this far. Best find out for yourself.'

‘Okay, I think I will,' I replied, and reached into the back, tugging at the grey canvas.

‘No, don't,' Peter commanded, but it was too late.

It snagged on something, but enough came away to reveal the stock and bipod of a huge and very sophisticated-looking rifle. It didn't look like anything you could legally own. I was sure I spied a machine gun too: a compact automatic with a curved magazine.

I literally gasped, thinking: Oh my God, I'm the clichéd idiot victim of a serial killer. I went along despite him refusing to tell me where we were going, even as we headed into the middle of nowhere.

Peter stopped the car then and there and put the handbrake on so that he could lean back and replace the canvas.

‘Need to keep that concealed. Don't want somebody seeing it and getting the wrong idea. Last thing we want is the police sending out an armed response unit.'

‘So what is the right idea? What is this stuff? Are we hunting?'

‘Kind of. Hunting humans.'

Two hours later, I was face-down in an undulation between two rows of regularly planted pine trees, my body flat to the ground to stay hidden. I was trying not to breathe too loudly but I was panting from the last sprint to temporary safety, my heart thumping from the adrenaline and exertion. Peter was lying a few feet from me, his rifle held along his body out of sight, not daring to raise it right then for fear of giving away our location to the six or seven enemies who were closing in from unseen positions on all sides.

I was a grown woman playing at soldiers: running through the woods firing toy guns, or airsoft weapons as they were known. They were perfect replicas that shot plastic pellets, albeit at three hundred feet per second.

‘How are you for ammo?' he asked.

I ejected the magazine from the mp5k slowly, giving it a gentle shake. We could both hear the rattle of only a handful of pellets within. Somewhere to my left I heard the whir of a motor and the rattle of a volley against a tree trunk. It was speculative fire. These guys sprayed off rounds like popcorn, but I was almost out.

Though sweat was running into my eyes, I couldn't take my mask off. The safety protocol would require me or Peter to call out ‘mask off, mask off' in order to suspend fire, but that would give away where we were. That would be game over, and I really wanted to win.

Peter was right. I wouldn't have gone if he'd told me it was an airsoft site. I could think of few activities that were less me, but now that I was here, I was losing myself in it. I had initially been concerned that having too few layers would leave me cold, as well as it being more painful when I got hit. After about forty minutes I was so warm I was pondering the trade-off between increasing the pain and streamlining down to a single layer. I reckoned also that the greater threat from the former would make me concentrate more keenly, take fewer risks and think more carefully about my tactics.