Secret Story (37 page)

Did he imagine she was in his? It seemed crucial to think of some way to remind him she was real. Failing to comply with his directions might do the trick. She advanced a step and felt her footing level out. As if she’d given him a cue he said “Not there. Go right.”

She planted her other foot on the surface, which was absolutely level. It felt more reassuring than anything else had since she’d strayed into his clutches. Could his attempt to steer her away be another cruel joke? As she hesitated he said “Hurry up. Go right and we can say goodbye.”

That mustn’t be a joke. He surely couldn’t imagine that she would continue to obey him if it proved to be one. “More right,” he said once she moved in that direction. “Now straight. Bit left. Stop there. Stop.”

The last word sounded like the threat of his grip on her shoulder, and she halted on what felt like the top of a slope. She could only think he meant to send her downhill and then make his escape unseen. She braced herself in case he pushed her, and willed him just to speak. When he did, his words confirmed her expectations. “You’ll be going down in a moment. This shouldn’t hurt,” he said.

“This shouldn’t hurt.” He meant pulling off the tape, but he didn’t think that falling forty feet would either, nor hitting the road. There was no need for him to imagine that she would experience any more pain than her predecessors just because he knew her better. Ought he to wait for a car to make sure the job was finished? He could free her wrists while he was waiting, but how close would the car have to be when he unwrapped her head and gave her a last push? He was peering down at the deserted road that curved away to vanish between the jagged rocky slopes towards the thin sharp white horizon of the black sea when the package wavered forward. “Careful,” he shouted. “Step back a step.”

Perhaps his choice of words confused the package, or else it lost its footing. Its toes were an inch from the edge, and it seemed content to teeter. The sight was all the more frustrating because
he would have enjoyed it and the result if it hadn’t been premature. He couldn’t let the package fall while it was wrapped up, or whoever found it would know its end hadn’t been an accident. With an effort he abandoned his excitement at the spectacle and pinched a shoulder to drag the package away from the brink. “I said get back,” he whispered through his teeth and let go as soon as the package was safe.

He wouldn’t waste time awaiting a car. He could trust the fall to finish his task. Rather than shove the package over the edge, he would trip it up so that it fell head first. How large and soft was the impact going to be? He grinned with anticipation as he stooped to find the end of the tape around the wrists—and then he straightened up so fast that the blackness overhead seemed to fill his aching skull.

His lack of sleep must be hindering his ability to think, and the other distractions wouldn’t have helped: the illusion of a watcher in the observatory, the fox, the police helicopter. He couldn’t let the package be discovered so close to his house, especially when it was supposed to have gone to London. The fact that it would have been useful to him alive mightn’t prove his innocence. Even if he walked all night with it, would that take it far enough away that nobody could associate it with him? There was also the problem that it might retain traces of its wrappings. Hadn’t he ignored faint marks on its ankles as if they were too insignificant to betray him? By far the best solution would be that it was never found at all.

He glared at it and then around him. The entire landscape looked paralysed by moonlight, inert as the windmill beside the bridge. The stillness felt like a refusal to help him. To his left, beyond the river that perspective had engulfed, the sky above Liverpool glowed the amber of a warning. To his right the distant sea bared its rim, the whiteness of which reminded him of the top of a blank page in a typewriter. Behind him the ridge led past the
windmill to the defunct observatory, both of whose buildings were locked and no use to him. The sea and the river were too far to walk to. The trains had stopped running, and it sounded as though he couldn’t even trust the motorway to offer traffic that would leave the package unrecognisable or at least wipe out any evidence of wrapping. Over the bridge the hill sloped down to Birkenhead, where the streets would be just as unhelpful. He turned to aggravate the stinging of his eyes by staring along the ridge, which the darkness softened so much that he could imagine burying the package in it. He mustn’t let his imagination stray, he’d wasted enough of the night—but then he remembered the view from the train.

Beneath the motorway was a field where people walked dogs. He was sure that it was muddy even now, at the height of summer. Facing the railway across the field, below the far end of the ridge, were allotments. Some of the sheds must contain tools—a spade. Reality was on his side again. He opened his mouth to give the package some sense of the good news and saw that it was inching towards the brink. “Not yet,” he declared, digging a finger and thumb into its shoulder to haul it clear.

It writhed in his grasp. As he wiped his hand on his trousers, the package planted its feet apart on the rock, a gesture suggesting defiance even before it waggled its fingers in his general direction to show it expected its hands to be freed. “I said not yet,” he told it. “We’re still too close to people.”

While the fingers and the lump of a head drooped, it maintained its stance. Was it trying mutely to argue with him? “Turn around. More. I didn’t say stop. Stop. Straight ahead,” he instructed and watched it trudge back the way it had come. “It’s just as tiring for me, you know. Soon you’ll be able to lie down.”

So would he once it was safely tucked away where nobody would ever find it. He thought he might sleep for days. No doubt the package didn’t understand or care how much the chore of
directing it took out of him. By now single syllables sufficed—“Up,” he kept saying, and “Down”—but the sense of power this gave him was starting to pall, especially since the package seemed to be in no hurry to reach the end of its trek. He had to use his imagination so as to remain interested. “You’re walking on a dinosaur. Those are its scales. Careful you don’t wake it up,” he said, and later “That’s a lip you’re stepping off. There’s mouths all round you. Watch out or they’ll have your feet.” He felt as though he was dreaming aloud, but his audience showed not the least appreciation of his creativity. He clenched his teeth on his temper as he passed the observatory and came in sight of the downhill slope.

A lane separated the foot of the hill from the allotments. The rectangular plots put him in mind of graves with sheds for markers. As he followed the package down a narrow grassy track the plots appeared to expand as if they were greedy for a burial. No doubt they would be a pleasure to dig, but mightn’t the owner notice if Dudley found an extra use for one? He’d better be content with borrowing a spade. Even then he might have to act like a criminal and break into a shed. “Look what you’re going to make me do,” he muttered as the package hesitated irritatingly at the bottom of the slope. “No danger. Straight on.”

This sent it to a gate in the hedge that bordered the allotments. The gate was fastened only with a latch, but the lever was stiff with rust, and Dudley had to lean on it. The latch gave with a click as loud as the fall of the bar of a mousetrap, and the gate emitted a shrill creak on swinging inwards. All this might have been designed as an alarm, because it roused a muffled shout. “What’s that? Who’s there?”

The speaker sounded newly awakened, and Dudley felt as if he had been as well. As the door of a shed a hundred yards away burst open he clamped his hands over the ears and forced the lump of a head out of sight behind the hedge. A man almost as
broad as the shed blundered out of it and shaded his eyes to peer towards the gate. “What’s the game?” he shouted. “After somewhere else to vandalise?”

Dudley took a firmer grip. He could have fancied he was covering a child’s ears to prevent it from hearing anything unsuitable, particularly since the package was so small. “Do I look like someone who’d break the law?” he retorted.

“I can’t see what you look like, matey. Maybe I should come and see.”

The hulking silhouette detached itself from the equal blackness of the shed, and Dudley saw that it was brandishing some kind of club. He almost threw the package face down on the gravel and trod on its neck to keep it unobtrusive. “I don’t mind,” he said, willing the man not to take him at his word. “I just wanted somewhere private.”

“Going to leave us a bit of manure, were you? You think we’ve put in all this work so you’ve got a toilet. Sounds like a vandal to me.”

“I couldn’t see where I was.” Though Dudley wasn’t forcing the head unduly low, the package had begun to struggle as best it could; it almost dealt him a backward kick before he sidled aside, still holding on. “I only saw the hedge,” he was enraged to have to plead.

“Shy type, are you? Bit too shy for your own good.” The man dropped the end of his weapon with a clunk on the dim path and leaned on it so as to shade his eyes again. “Who’s that with you? What are they up to?”

“Nothing. They’re why I needed the hedge,” Dudley said, cursing its thinness.

“Can’t they speak for themselves? Let’s be hearing from them.”

“They can’t at the moment.” As the man advanced a step, dragging his club with a thick rumble over the path, Dudley felt
as if the dark was squeezing his brain to a crumb of blackness. “They’re, they’re a bit ill,” he stammered.

“Drugs, is it? Or don’t they want me knowing who they are?”

“That’s it,” Dudley said and flattened his hands on the lump of a head as a kick narrowly missed him. “You don’t need to when we didn’t do anything, do you?”

“Depends what you were going to.” The man leaned over the club, and his voice became something like quizzical. “Are you sure you weren’t both off behind the hedge?”

Dudley swallowed nausea. “All right, we were,” he said, though it tasted like sickness.

“Dirty little buggers. Couldn’t you wait till you got home?”

“I’m not one of those,” Dudley objected, because the notion felt still worse. “She’s a girl.”

“You want to be more romantic then, son. Buy her some flowers. Take her to a decent restaurant. Take her dancing. Show her you care and then you’ll both want it. That’s how it was with me and my wife.”

The voice had grown nostalgic, which aggravated Dudley’s revulsion. He had to refrain from trying to crush the sticky head between his hands. He was dodging another kick when the man called “Get going, then. I’ll be watching.”

Dudley almost couldn’t speak for disgust. “What are you asking me to do?”

“I’m telling you both to make yourselves scarce while I’m feeling sentimental. Don’t bank on it lasting. This’d nearly be our anniversary, that’s all.”

Dudley saw the silhouette bow its head. He let go of the ears and gripped the package by its shoulder to urge it alongside the hedge. “Go on,” he said low but sharp enough to penetrate the tape. “Faster. Keep on straight. No rest yet. Soon.”

When they reached the corner of the hedge he glanced back.
Though the silhouette had raised its head, he thought it could distinguish as little about him and the package as he could of the man. Now that he was barred from the allotments, the plots reminded him even more enticingly of graves. A scent of recently dug earth teased his nostrils, and he had to wipe his mouth. He turned away in a rage, only to notice that the route he seemed to be proposing would lead him home. Then he realised it could take him further—to the old graveyard at the end of his road.

So his mind was functioning, however sleepily. Perhaps it had needed the hint of the allotments, though he was more inclined to believe that the thankless business of guiding the package had distracted him. How many hours did he have until dawn? Where was he to find a spade? He would have to improvise, and surely life would side with Mr Killogram. All the slates were missing from the roof of the church in the graveyard; he could use one to dig. “Keep going,” he ordered, and eventually “Right. Not stop. Go right, you brainless dummy.”

The lane had met the road that led to his. The road climbed between walls of exposed rock, which gave way to houses that were quite as lifeless. He urged his plodding burden past them, and barely resisted the impulse to kick it along. It might take umbrage at that, perhaps even turn defiant, and he had no time to waste on its antics. All that mattered was to speed it to its grave. At least he wouldn’t have to kill it. Burial would solve that problem.

He dodged ahead of it to the crossing that sloped down to the main road. He’d heard a car. It passed without appearing and left behind a stillness that the murmur of the city emphasised. He directed the package to step off the pavement and onto the next one, which led past his house. “Not much further,” he said and had to grin, because the undertaking seemed to have enlivened the package; it increased its pace, at any rate. He was in sight of his house when he heard a car behind him.

As he twisted to look it poked its nose around the intersection. He was able to imagine that it was borrowing its whiteness from the moonlight until it swung into his road. It was a police car.

He had only an instant to think as he hid his face from it so swiftly that pain flared up his neck and clutched his skull. An instant was enough for Mr Killogram. As the vehicle caught up with him he overtook the package and made to hide it with his body while he shoved it down the nearest front path. There wasn’t time; the gate was yards away. Instead he had to clasp the package in his arms and apply his mouth to the bulge in the tape that contained the lips.

The bound hands squirmed as if they were trying to express his disgust. Even the taped lips attempted to wriggle, and he could have thought they were struggling to reach his. From the corner of one stinging eye he managed to gather that the police car had sped past him and his house. When the brake lights brightened outside the graveyard he let go of the package and rubbed his mouth savagely with the back of a hand. “Don’t worry, that’s all you’re getting,” he said through his teeth.