Longshot (25 page)

He glanced my way as he put the car into gear and started forward. “Do you think so? He keeps coming back. He’s on our doorstep every day. Every day, a new pinprick, a new awkward bloody circumstance. He’s building a cage round me, bar by bar.”

“He’s trying to break your nerve,” I said, guessing. “Once he’d arrested and charged you, the papers would have to leave you alone. He’s letting them have a field day, waiting for someone to remember something and waiting for you to crack and incriminate yourself. I shouldn’t think he’s tried to stop any of the leaks since the press found out where the girl was lying and he had to make an official statement. Maybe he’s even organized a leak or two himself; I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Harry turned the nose of the car towards Reading to travel by the hilly route that would take us through the Quillersedge Estate. I wondered why he’d gone that way but I didn’t directly ask him.

“Yesterday,” he said bitterly, “Doone asked me what Angela Brickell had been wearing. It’s been in all the papers. He asked me if she’d undressed willingly. I could have strangled him ... Oh, God, what am I saying?”

“Shall I drive?” I asked.

“What? Oh, yes—we nearly hit that post . . . I didn’t see it. No, I’m all right. Really I am. Fiona says not to let him rattle me, she’s being splendid, absolutely marvelous, but he does rattle me, I can’t help it. He tosses out these lethal questions as if they were harmless afterthoughts ... ‘Did she undress willingly?’ How can I answer? I wasn’t there.”

“That’s the answer.”

“He doesn’t believe me.”

“He isn’t sure,” I said. “Something’s bothering him.”

“I wish it would bother him into an early grave.”

“His successor might be worse. Might prefer a conviction to the truth. Doone does at least seek the truth.”

“You can’t mean you like him!” The idea was an enormity.

“Be grateful for him. Be glad you’re still free.” I paused. “Why are we going this way?”

The question surprised him. “To get to where we’re going, of course.”

“So we’re not just out for a drive?”

“Well, no.”

“All around you,” I said, “is the Quillersedge Estate.”

“I suppose so,” he said vaguely. Then: “Dear God, we go along this road all the time. I mean, everyone in Shellerton goes to Reading this way unless it’s snowing.”

A long stretch of the road was bordered on each side by mixed woodland, dripping now with yesterday’s rain and looking bare-branched and bedraggled in the scrag end of winter. Part of the woodland was thinned and tamed and fenced neatly with posts and wire, policed with no-trespassing notices; part was wild and open to anyone caring to push through the tangle of trees, saplings and their assorted undergrowth. Five yards into that, I thought, and one would be invisible from the road. Only the strongly motivated, though, would try to go through it: it was no easy afternoon stroll.

“Anyway,” Harry said, “the Quillersedge Estate goes on for miles. This is just the western end of it. The place where they found Angela was much nearer Bucklebury.”

“How do you know?”

“Dammit, it was in the papers. Are you doubting me now?” He was angered and disconcerted by my question, then shook his head in resignation. “That was a Doone question. How do I know? Because the Reading papers printed a map, that’s how. The gamekeeper put his X on the spot.”

“I don’t doubt you,” I said. “If I doubted you I would doubt my own judgment too, and in your case I don’t.”

“I suppose that’s a vote of confidence.”

“Yes.”

We drove a fair way along the roads and through villages unknown to me, going across country to heaven knew where. Harry, however, knew where, and down a mostly uninhabited lane turned through some broken gateposts into a rutted drive leading to a large sagging barn, an extensive dump of tangled metal and wood and a smaller barn to one side. Beyond this unprepossessing mess lay a wide expanse of muddy gray water sliding sluggishly by with dark wooded hills on the far side.

“Where are we?” I asked, as the car rolled to a stop, the only bright new thing in the general dilapidation.

“That’s the Thames,” Harry said. “Almost breaking its banks, by the look of things, after all that rain and melted snow. This is Sam’s boatyard, where we are now.”

“This?” I remembered what Sam had said about useful squalor: it had been an understatement.

“He keeps it this way on purpose,” Harry confirmed. “We all came here for a huge barbecue party he gave to celebrate being champion jockey ... eighteen months ago, I suppose. It looked different that night. One of the best parties we’ve been to ...” His voice trailed off as if his thoughts had moved away from what his mouth was saying; and there was sweat on his forehead.

“What’s making you nervous?” I asked.

“Nothing.” It was clearly a lie. “Come with me,” he said jerkily. “I want someone with me.”

“All right. Where are we going?”

“Into the boathouse.” He pointed to the smaller of the barns. “That big place on the left is Sam’s workshop and dock where he works on his boats. The boathouse isn’t used much, I don’t think, though Sam made it into a grotto the night of the party. I’m going to meet someone there.” He looked at his watch. “I’m a bit early. Don’t suppose it will matter.”

“Who are you going to meet?”

“Someone,” he said, and got out of the car. “I don’t know who. Look,” he went on, as I followed him, “someone’s going to tell me something which may clear me with Doone. I just ... I wanted
support ...
a witness, even. I suppose you think that’s stupid?”

“No.”

“Come on, then.”

“I’ll come, but don’t put too much hope on anyone keeping the appointment. People can be pretty spiteful, and you’ve had a rotten press.”

“You think it’s a hoax?” The idea bothered him, but he’d obviously considered it.

“How was the meeting arranged?”

“On the telephone,” he said. “This morning. I didn’t know the voice. Don’t even know if it was a man or a woman. It was low. Sort of careful, I suppose, looking back.”

“Why here,” I asked, “of all places?”

He frowned. “I’ve no idea. But I can’t afford not to listen, if it’s something which will clear me. I can’t, can I?”

“I guess not.”

“I don’t really like it either,” he confessed. “That’s why I wanted company.”

“All right.” I shrugged. “Let’s wait and see.”

With relief he smiled wanly and led the way across some rough ground of stones and gnarled old weeds, joining a path of sorts that ran from the big barn to the boathouse and following that to our destination.

Close to, the boathouse was if anything less attractive than from a distance, though there were carved broken eaves that had once been decorative in an Edwardian way and could have been again, given the will. The construction was mostly of weathered old brick, the long sidewalls going down to the water’s edge, the whole built on and into the river’s sloping bank.

True to Sam’s philosophy, the ramshackle wooden door had no latch, let alone a padlock, and pushed inward, opening at a touch.

Windows in the walls gave plenty of light, but inside all one could see was a bare wooden floor stretching to double glass doors leading to a railed balcony overhanging the swollen river.

“Don’t boathouses have water in them?” I inquired mildly.

“The water’s underneath,” Harry said. “This room was for entertaining. There’s another door down by the edge of the river for going into the boat dock. That’s where the grotto was. Sam had put colored lights all round and some actually in the water... it looked terrific. There was a bar up here in this room. Fiona and I went out onto the balcony with our drinks and looked at the skyful of stars. It was a warm night. Everything perfect.” He sighed. “Perkin and Mackie were with us, smooching away in newlywed bliss. It all seems so long ago, when everyone was happy, everything simple. Nothing could go wrong ... And Tremayne had a spectacular year and to crown it Top Spin Lob won the National... and since then not much has gone right.”

“Did Sam invite Nolan to his party?”

Harry smiled briefly. “Sam felt good. He asked Dee-Dee, Bob Watson, the lads, everyone. Must have been a hundred and fifty people. Even Angela . . .” He stopped and looked at his watch. “It’s just about time.”

He turned and took a step towards the far-end balcony, the ancient floorboards creaking underfoot.

There was a white envelope lying on the floor about halfway to the balcony and, saying perhaps it was a message, he went towards it and bent to pick it up, and with a fearsome crack a whole section of the floor gave way under his weight and shot him, shouting, into the dock beneath.

I
t happened so fast and so drastically that I nearly slid after him, managing only instinctively to pivot on one foot and throw myself headlong back onto the boards still remaining solid behind the hole.

Harry, I thought ridiculously, was dead unlucky with cold dirty water. I wriggled until I could peer over the edge into the wet depths below and I couldn’t see him at all.

Shit, I thought, peeling off my jacket. Come up, for God’s sake, Harry, so I can pull you out.

No sign of him. Nothing. I yelled to him. No reply.

I kicked off my boots and swung down below, holding on to a bared crossbeam that creaked with threat, swinging from one hand while I tried to see Harry and not land on top of him.

All that was visible was brownish opaque muddy water. No time for anything except getting him out. I let go of the beam and dropped with bent legs so as to splash down softly and felt the breath rush out of my lungs from the iciness of the river. Letting the water buoy up my weight, I stretched my feet down to touch bottom and found the water came up to my ears; took a deep breath, put the rest of my head under and reached around for Harry, unable to see him, unable with open eyes to see anything at all.

He had to be there. Time was short. I stood up for a gasp of air, ducked down again, searching with fingers, with feet, with urgency turning to appalling alarm. I could feel things, pieces of metal, sharp spiky things, nothing living.

Another gasp of air. I looked for bubbles rising, hoping to find him that way, and saw not bubbles but a red stain in the water a short way off, a swirl of color against drab.

At least I’d found him. I dived towards the scarlet streaks and touched him at once, but there was no movement in him, and when I tried to pull him to the surface, I couldn’t.

Shit ... Shit ... Stupid word kept repeating in my brain. I felt and slid my arms under Harry’s and with my feet slipping on the muddy bottom yanked him upwards as fiercely as I could and found him still stuck and yanked again twice more with increasing desperation until finally whatever had been holding him released its grasp and he came shooting to the surface, only to begin falling sluggishly back again as a deadweight.

With my own nose barely above water I held him with his head just higher than mine, but he still wasn’t breathing. I laced my arms around his back, under his own arms, letting his face fall on mine, and in that awkward position I blew my own breath into him, not in the accepted way with him lying flat with most things in control, but into his open nostrils, into his flaccid mouth, into either or both at once, as fast as I could, trying to pump his chest in unison, to do what his own intercostal muscles had stopped doing, pulling his rib cage open for air to flow in.

They tell you to go on with artificial respiration forever, for long after you’ve given up hope. Go on and on, I’d been told. Don’t give up. Don’t ever give up.

He was heavy in spite of the buoyancy from the water. My feet went numb down on the mud. I blew my breath into him rhythmically, faster than normal breathing, squeezing him, telling him, ordering him in my mind to take charge of himself, come back, come back ... Harry, come back ...

I grieved for him, for Fiona, for all of them, but most for Harry. That humor, that humanity; they couldn’t be lost. I gave him my breath until I was dizzy myself and I still wouldn’t accept it was all useless, that I might as well stop.

I felt the jolt in his chest as I hugged it in rhythm against mine and for a long second couldn’t believe it, but then he heaved again in my arms and coughed in my face and a mouthful of dirty water shot out in a spout and he began coughing in earnest and choking and gasping for air ... gasping, gulping air down, wheezing in his throat, whooping like whooping cough, struggling to fill his functioning lungs.

He couldn’t have been unconscious for long, looking back, but it seemed an eternity at the time. With coughing, he opened his eyes and began groaning, which was at least some sign of progress, and I started looking about to see how we were going to get out of what appeared to be uncomfortably like a prison.

Another door, Harry had said, down by the river’s edge: and in fact, when I looked I could see it, a once-painted slab of wood set in brickwork, its bottom edge barely six inches above the water.

Across the whole end of the building, stretching from the ceiling down into the river, was a curtain of linked metal like thick oversized chicken wire, presumably originally installed to keep thieves away from any boat in the dock. Beyond it flowed the heavy main stream, with small eddies curling along and through the wire on the surface.

The dock itself, I well understood, was deeper than usual because of the height of the river. The door was still six inches above it, though ... it didn’t make sense to build a door high if the water was usually lower ... not unless there was a step somewhere ... a step or a walkway even, for the loading and unloading of boats ...

Taking Harry gingerly with me, I moved to the left, towards the wall, and with great relief found that there was indeed a shelf there at about the height of my waist. I lifted Harry until he was sitting on the walkway and then, still gripping him tightly, wriggled up beside him so that we were both sitting there with our heads wholly above water, which may not sound a great advance but which was probably the difference between life and death.