Moriarty Returns a Letter (8 page)

And then one cold afternoon he had trudged up from the dock, smelling of fish and bait, his knuckles scraped raw, his fingers with a new set of slivery cuts, his palms roughened with another layer of calluses—and he found she was gone.

After a couple of trips in vain to London to persuade her, he realized that there was no bringing her back.

He was himself still young then. He had that going for him anyway, for a time. Blond and tanned, as lean and muscular as a shark, he was still a popular figure in the pubs about town; he could do a passable imitation of one particular Australian movie star when occasion required.

But the next lovely lass did not come along right away, not that year, nor the year after. And Cheeverton gradually discovered that while at first the problem was that the local girls did not sufficiently impress him, eventually the problem had become that he did not sufficiently impress them, either.

And then thirty years slid by, to that evening last autumn. Blond and tanned had long since become gray and leathered, and gravity and pints had done what they do. Even so, he was playing darts with a rowdy crowd in Blackheath and everything was fine for a while; he was managing to forget that his sixtieth was approaching with no hint of planned celebration.

But then the evening wore on, and the crowd thinned. So he took a seat at the bar and stared up at the big-screen telly, where a soccer match was over and the late-night news had come on.

The anchor toff on the screen was reporting that there had been some sort of a row over at the Tower Bridge. A Black Cab had driven past the barricades and warning lights, just as the two separate bridge spans were rising to let a high-masted yacht pass beneath—and the cab had actually managed to get stuck between the two spans as they parted. The bridge spans won that contest, and the vehicle got torn in two.

There were two people in the cab at the time—one passenger, and the driver.

The passenger in the cab was Laura Rankin, a London actress in her early thirties, whom Cheeverton thought he might have heard of once or twice before, even aside from the unusual event of the cab getting stuck on the spans of the bridge.

That actress had managed to escape the cab just in time, and was in the hospital.

But the twenty-five-year-old female cabdriver—who, according to the telly, was suspected of actually abducting the actress and doing some other bad things as well—was less fortunate. She had plunged into the Thames.

“That’s why I never go into the city,” said the barmaid, a well-rounded woman of about fifty.

Cheeverton, lost in his thoughts, just stared at the telly and nodded.

“Perk up, mate,” she said. “It’s last call.”

“Then what?” he said.

“Then go home to your wife, like everyone else.” She said that without thinking, and then she caught herself—she did not know Cheeverton; he had only been in occasionally on her shift; but she was usually more perceptive. He wasn’t wearing a ring. And there were other signs; he had that look about him. It wasn’t good practice to remind paying customers why they were still hanging about and spending their money in the pub at closing.

“Home is home, anyway,” she offered. “I know lots of gents would prefer to just have the peace and quiet.”

Marlowe, the only remaining gent in the pub other than Cheeverton, came up to the bar now to get his last pint. He looked up at the telly screen, which was showing a taxi company pic of the woman who had been driving the Tower Bridge cab.

“A shame,” said Marlowe. “That’s a lovely bird right there. Too bad she’s fish food now.”

“She’s wanted by the police,” said the barmaid. “She killed a man, they say. Maybe two.”

Cheeverton looked up at the telly now, at the shape of the woman, and it reminded him—in a general sort of way—of the shape of the young woman who had married and abandoned him thirty years ago.

That was the past, of course. He knew such shapes would not come his way again.

“Still a shame,” he said, out loud.

As the two men stood waiting for their beers, Marlowe put an advert card—peeled from the inside of a phone box in London—on the counter in front of Cheeverton. In glossy pink, yellow, and purple, it showed a very buxom bare-breasted young woman, advertising her services. There were some specifics.

“Last time I was in London,” said Marlowe, “I rang this one.”

Cheeverton looked down at the card. He’d seen such adverts many times before of course; nearly every phone box in London was plastered with them. He had rung some of those numbers and tried some of those services, not infrequently, at an earlier time. But those ladies were expensive. And patronizing them did not seem to recapture what he felt had been lost.

“What’s she mean by that bit there—‘genuine GFE’?”

“Genuine girlfriend experience,” said Marlowe.

“But just exactly what does she do? It says she wants twice as much when that’s included,” said Cheeverton.

The barmaid had extricated herself from the conversation, so the barman came over and put the last pints down in front of them.

“It means she fixes your breakfast in the morning, don’t it?” said the barman.

“No, it doesn’t,” said Marlowe. “It just means she’ll smile when you take her to dinner and she’ll try to make everyone who sees you believe she’s for real—that she’s with you voluntarily.”

“You mean you have to take her to dinner?” said Cheeverton.

“Not likely anyone will believe it anyway, with you lot,” said the bar lady, passing by.

“Even with GFE, you still fix the breakfast yourself, and she’ll just eat some of it if she wants,” said Marlowe.

“In my book, that’s not much of a girlfriend experience then,” said the barman, in what sounded like bragging, and then he went to put up the chairs from the tables.

Cheeverton finished his pint and departed the pub. He wasn’t at all sure that he felt any cheerier now than when he had first arrived.

He walked to the dock, where he had tied up his boat. He got on board, cast off, started the engine, and puttered off into the fog.

And a short while later, he began to feel better. He was on his boat, he was on the river, back in his element and standard routine, and that helped a bit.

The tide was on its way out; with the current in his favor, he was making good time. Within a few minutes he was past the Thames tide barrier. There was no wind, and no other river traffic that he could see. The motor on the little boat chugged in a regular rhythm, and the water parted in front of the bow in a regular pattern.

The self-pity induced by too many beers was beginning to ease. He reminded himself that the sunlight on the estuary in the morning would always be there. And there was still hope that he might someday get a new boat.

And a pint was still a pint.

And then, chugging along ten miles below the Tower Bridge, he saw it.

Saw her.

Moonlight on white skin in the dark gray water.

It caught his eye and made him sputter the little boat closer.

And now he could see her clearly, though it was such an unusual sight that he did not believe it at first.

It was a woman. Her body was completely nude, floating vertically in the water, her black hair spread outward and upward, as though reaching for the surface.

Cheeverton immediately shut off the motor and turned the rudder to bring the boat around.

He reached over the gunwale and grabbed the woman under her shoulders. It was not an easy angle for lifting; she was light, relatively speaking, but the water was heavy. Still, he managed to lift her enough to get her into the net. He cranked the net to pull her out of the water and onto the boat, and then he got both arms under her and lifted her out of the net.

He was certain that she must be already drowned. Almost certain.

He laid her out flat on the long wooden board that was used for preparing bait.

He’d been on or near the water all his life, and he’d seen CPR done more than once. He’d never done it before himself, but he knew how, and he did it now.

And it worked.

Her eyes opened—emerald green, glinting like scales on a live fish in the water—with an expression that Cheeverton would have described as astonishment. She immediately tried to inhale, on reflex, and then her upper body bent forward in spasmodic, painful jerks as she expelled river water from her lungs.

He did his best to help, as she alternately threw up water and drew in air. And then, when the spasms subsided, he picked her up again, his arms under her bare thighs, her breasts within inches of his leathered face in the cold night air, and he carried her below.

She had not spoken, hadn’t even tried. Neither had he. He could see her eyes darting back and forth in wild surprise, as though trying to understand where she was. He laid her down on the bunk.

She looked to be in her mid-twenties. She had a perfect shape. Just for a fleeting instant, Cheeverton recalled an image of what life was like thirty years ago.

He got a gray woolen blanket and threw it over her; she would freeze otherwise.

“You are on my boat,” he said, as he tucked it in around her. “You are safe now.”

She still said nothing, but she stared back at him, her eyes focusing, and her breathing began to even out.

And then—because it was almost automatic, because he knew without having to think about it that it was the proper thing to do—he went to his band radio to call the Thames emergency patrol.

It shouldn’t take them long to get there; he’d been seeing patrols up and down the river during the day, because of that thing on the Tower Bridge.

But then he stopped. He had turned the radio on; he had tuned the dial past the static—but he didn’t place the call.

He remembered the face he had seen on the telly back at the pub—the lovely female cabdriver who had plunged into the Thames.

And he was pretty sure he knew who he had.

He put the shortwave radio mike down and returned to the interior cabin where he had placed her on the cot. He looked in. She was breathing more calmly now. She was awake, and no longer in obvious distress. She propped herself up slightly on her elbows, and she stared back.

To Cheeverton, those green eyes seemed to be looking at him in a way that no woman had looked back at him in a very long time.

Or perhaps ever.

He decided not to call the Thames patrol just yet.

Instead, he started the boat’s engine and began motoring as quickly as he could through the night, heading for his home on Canvey Island.

He made Earl Grey tea in the galley and took it below to his catch, and was glad to see that although she still seemed unwilling or unable to speak, she quite willingly drank the tea.

He went back topside. They were almost home. He knew this, even in the dark, because they were passing the town of Croydon—which, unlike Canvey Island, still had an active oil and gas refinery; the gas vents were alive with fire, glowing bright orange as he cruised past.

He stayed on the south side of the river long enough to dodge the oil tankers heading out from Croydon; then he turned the rudder and motored at a sharp angle to the north side, to Canary Creek.

He reached Smallgains Marina well before dawn. That was good. He was glad to be there before anyone else was getting ready to shove out that morning.

He dropped anchor and tied the boat up.

Then he wrapped the woman more securely in the gray blanket; he pulled a wool cap down over her head, almost completely obscuring her face. He told her and himself that it was to keep the cold out, which was true, but it wasn’t the only reason.

Then he picked her up and half-walked, half-carried her nearly a mile to his little wood-frame house, near the industrial section of Canvey Island Harbor.

His arms were aching as he carried her inside. He set her down in the only cushioned chair, the one he used himself for watching the telly.

She was fully conscious now, and out of danger, and as he settled her in he talked to her—much as he had begun to talk to himself in recent years when at home—describing his actions as he did them.

“There,” he said. “This will keep you warm. And now I’ll fry us up some nice bacon; you’d like that, wouldn’t you? And we’ll have stewed tomatoes, and beans, and toast. And orange juice, if there is any. Ahh. Yes. There is.”

She didn’t say anything in response. But he proceeded to do just as he had said, cooking up a large breakfast and putting it before her on a little folding table, all the while prattling on about who he was, and how he had come to live there all his life, and a little but not very much about his ex-wife.

She appeared to be listening, or at least paying attention—her green eyes followed his every move.

She did not speak a word. But when he put the breakfast in front of her, she dug into it ravenously.

As she did, he went into the bedroom. That was more or less instinctive, but once in there he realized it was because he had to figure something out.

There was only one bedroom. And there was only one bed in it. It was a full-size bed, not a queen, not even a double; it was only as much of a bed as had made sense for him, living alone.

He suddenly realized that he dared not put her in it. He wasn’t sure why, given that this should only be for a few hours or so. But even so, his chest tightened, as though he had created a great dilemma for himself.

And then he thought of the small folding cot, the spare one for the boat, that he kept in the storage room next to the kitchen. He went there—her eyes following him again, as she looked up from the stewed tomatoes and beans—and he found the cot, mercifully.

He pushed the telly into the corner and managed to make just enough room to put the narrow cot against the wall.

And then, a short time later, he set her down on it.

She was asleep almost instantly.

Cheeverton went back into the kitchen, ate what remained of the bacon and toast for himself, and tried to think things through.

Once more he thought about calling the Thames patrol. Again he decided not to. If he called now, he would have to explain why he hadn’t just called right away when he found her earlier. He supposed he could claim that his radio was out of order. Still, it would get complicated.