The Boat House (10 page)

Her eyes shone in the warm tallow light.

Pete felt a stirring of apprehension then, rising like a deepwater fish to the sunlight; and although he tried not to let it show, Alina seemed to perceive it.

"Wait," she said, moving into the room. "Wait, I know what you're thinking."

"I'm not thinking anything."

She stood before him, looking up into his eyes. "Yes, you are," she said. "Look, I'm not about to invade your life. But I like this place, Peter, I like this valley. Today I got a job."

"What kind of a job?"

"A waitress job." She gestured at the table. "So, don't get the wrong idea about all this… tonight I get to practice on you, so tomorrow I don't look so stupid."

"A waitress job?" Pete said. Was this girl a fast operator, or what? She saw his expression, and grinned.

"I know," she said, "I'm shameless. You wouldn't believe what I had to do to get an introduction to the sisters. But now I'll meet more people, I'll begin to feel at home. And then as soon as I can find somewhere else, I'll move out and leave you alone. I'm nobody's charity case, and I won't be a burden to you. You've been good to me, Peter, I wouldn't want to see you hurt by having me around."

"Really, it's all right," Pete protested.

But there was a sadness in Alina's eyes now, unlike anything that he'd seen there before; a sadness not for what had been, but for what could never be.

"No," she said. "It isn't all right."

And then she turned away, and went over to check on the stove.

She was, almost without exception, the worst cook that Pete had ever come across. Worse even than Ted Hammond, who'd once closed the yard for three days with the aftereffects of a home made chili. This meal was a haphazard trawl of the village store's shelves, an unappealing source of supply at the best of times; Pete realised with a sinking feeling that he'd no choice other than to put his head down and plough on through like a pig at the trough. Alina seemed to think that everything was fine.

The alphabet pasta, that floated in a sauce of over-thickened packet soup.

The frozen peas, that she'd fried.

The…

Oh, God, he didn't even want to think about it.

Fortunately, the conversation was better. There seemed to be a sense of ease in their company that hadn't existed the night before, and she opened up a little on her background. She'd been a schoolteacher once, she told him. She'd lived in Leningrad for ten years but she'd had no work for the last two of them. Her father was dead but her mother was still alive, and had managed to hang onto the old apartment where she now used the extra space to accommodate short-stay workers who needed a bed in the city. As soon as she could, Alina planned to write to her.

He asked her about the place so much like the valley, the place where she'd been born. She said, "They moved everyone. Nobody lives there now."

It was weird. They could speak the same language, but there was almost nothing else in their past that they'd shared. She'd read Shakespeare, Pete hadn't; not unless you counted
Julius Caesar
at school, which he'd managed to get through with a lot of patience and a set of Coles' Notes. Alina, on the other hand, had never even
heard
of James Herbert.

One thing that he noticed; every now and again she'd glance at the uncurtained window, as if she was checking the progress of the oncoming darkness. Perhaps she was edgy about something, Pete wondered; but if she was, she kept it well concealed.

Finally, the conversation came back around to the subject of Alina's new job.

She told him that as soon as she had some money she wanted to buy some decent clothes, the kind that she could wear to her work in the evenings. Pete, thinking of the Venetz sisters' reputation for efficiency and attention to detail, asked her if she'd hit any problems over having no social security records or documentation; she currently had the status of an illegal immigrant, after all, and had even dumped her hot French passport as she'd walked out of the air terminal. Alina said, no, no problems… and then amended this to well, not yet. Pete suggested that in a few days' time he could take her out to the nearest big town on the coast, and there she could look for clothes in the department stores and check out the library for the addresses of any useful organisations or people to contact. The sooner she made a move to get some kind of official recognition, the better. She said that this sounded fine. But he wondered if he'd convinced her.

"That is what you want?" he said.

"Of course."

Pete was now beginning to wonder if she was feeling ill; it was almost as if, for the latter part of the evening, she'd only been keeping up a show of enjoying herself and now the strain of the charade was getting through to her.

Or maybe it was the food. That wouldn't have surprised him at all.

He asked her if she was all right and she said, "I'm fine," but it was with a weak smile and her eyes barely focussing on him. "I think I'm just tired." And then she glanced at the window; the darkness outside was complete.

"You go on," Pete said. "I'll clear away."

But Alina got to her feet, causing the candles immediately around her to dip as if in sudden fear. Some of them had burned low, and didn't recover.

"No," she said. "I think I'll take a walk."

"But it's late."

"I know. But I like to walk at night. It helps me to think. Don't worry, I lived in the country before, I know what I'm doing."

"At least take a torch."

"There's a moon. That's all I'll need. Don't wait for me."

The moon was hardly more than a pale sliver, and surely not enough to see by. Pete stood on the porch and tried to make Alina out as she climbed the path toward the highest part of the headland. From there she'd be able to go down to the lakeside if she chose, or else pick up one of the shore paths that would take her further into the valley.

It bothered him to let her go like this, but she'd insisted; for a while he couldn't see her at all, until she reached the skyline and stopped for a moment.

The silence of the valley was like the stillness that sometimes follows a hard rain. Somewhere far off a dog barked, one small sound in a vast and empty theatre.

Alina kicked off her shoes and then went on, descending from sight.

TWELVE

Sometimes it was hard for Gazzer to believe how stupid some people could be.

Take this one, for example; walking along the canal towpath at this late hour of the night, as if it was the park on a pleasant Sunday afternoon and life held no dangers for him at all. The canal route was dark and it was deep and it was a secret vein that ran through the heart of the city, and only the scum dropped down here after hours and expected to survive. Up at street level, on the other side of a high wall, the town centre traffic moved and the neon club lights flickered and police vans stood on street corners waiting for trouble to start. But even the police didn't come down here. Only tramps and serious drunks, and occasionally Toms seeking out shadows in which to do business when the client didn't have a car, and people like Gazzer who didn't give a shit. Gazzer was twenty two years old and had been compared in looks to a pit bull, entirely to the dog's advantage. He wore a T shirt regardless of the season of the year and kept his hair cropped short enough to reveal the half dozen tiny scars on his head where the stubble wouldn't grow. Gazzer had been seriously disappointed in love on this night. His mates had all scored and he inexplicably hadn't, in spite of the money he'd blown on all those lime green cocktails for the bleached slag in the dress with all the red spangles. It was clear that she'd been taking him for a ride, in that there was no ride in it for him at the end of the process. When the evening had ended she'd disappeared into the pub toilet and from there she'd disappeared, full stop.

Gazzer was not only pissed off, he was seriously out of pocket. He didn't mind spending the money if it brought a result, but something like this put the whole world out of balance. Never one to wallow in self pity, he'd started by mugging a couple of Indian kids in bright shirts behind the bus station and then he'd followed a Yuppie type from his bank's Cashcard machine to the stairway of a multi storey car park, where they'd had some dealings involving a Rolex and all the wad in the Yuppie's wallet. After that he'd come down and hopped through a hole in the fence where the canal ran alongside some waste ground, and now he was staying off the streets as he made his way across town and toward home ground. The Indian kids wouldn't matter, but the Yuppie type might get half an hour in the back of a police car checking the pavements and the pub car parks for some sign of his attacker.

Now this. A bonus. An innocent who'd somehow wandered down into the rat run, just asking to get bitten. Gazzer only had to stand in the middle of the towpath and wait as the man approached him. There was nowhere else for the man to go other than back, or into the canal itself.

There were yellow sodium lights down here, but most of them had been broken by kids throwing stones. Odd survivors burned like overhead beacons; there was one under the bridge just ahead, and another one about a hundred yards beyond. They showed the narrow dirt towpath, the black water, the broken windows of empty warehouses…

And the silhouette of the stranger, still walking toward him.

Gazzer flexed his fingers. They cracked like static.

The stranger stopped.

"I'd like to pass, please," he said, and Gazzer's heart soared. A foreigner. He need have no trace of conscience at all.

"Only when I get your money and your watch, fuckface," he said.

"I need money myself," the stranger said pleasantly. "May I see your knife?"

"I don't need a knife," Gazzer said, and he took a step forward to close the gap between them.

Something went wrong.

Gazzer aimed his headbutt, and the stranger moved; he tilted his own head and Gazzer's brains exploded.

That was what it felt like, anyway. Gazzer's legs went and he sat down heavily in the dirt, his nose smashed and his eyes full of tears. The stranger stood over him. He was rubbing the top of his skull just at the hairline, but seemed otherwise unaffected.

Gazzer started to rise. But the stranger reached down and took hold of his nose.

"I wouldn't," he said, as he twisted the broken cartilage and Gazzer's brains went nuclear. His arms flapped in panic, and he screamed. The scream echoed in the depths of the brick canyon.

"The bone can work its way in, you see," the stranger explained as he knelt and checked Gazzer's pockets with his free hand. Gazzer felt the roll of notes being removed from his jeans, but only as some distant background sensation. He reached for the stranger, but the stranger gave his nose another warning tug.

He screamed again.

"I've been down here half the night, waiting for someone like you," the stranger said. "You can keep your watch, I already have one of my own. But I really do need the money."

Gazzer blinked away the tears, and looked into the stranger's face. He was fair, he was young, he was nothing special; but with rare insight, Gazzer saw beyond all of that.

He knew that this was no accidental encounter. He knew that he'd fallen for bait like a fool. And he knew with certainty that the stranger would be capable of doing anything that he threatened.

Anything.

The man released his nose, and straightened.

"Thank you," he said pleasantly.

Gazzer coughed, and spat blood in a terrifying wad.

But the stranger had already turned and walked off into the night, back along the towpath in the direction from which he'd come.

THIRTEEN

Angelica Venetz stands at the rail of the restaurant's terrace. She's watching Walter Hardy - seventy years old, and still the Bay's most reliable handyman - as he moves out with waders and a boathook to take a look under the terrace's decking. Walter is small, thickset, and white whiskered; he does everything with patient slowness and, once started, he's impossible to stop.

"Is there a problem?" a voice from behind Angelica says, and she turns in surprise. She hasn't heard Alina walking across the terrace, and hasn't even been expecting her for another half hour. Alina stands there, her hands in her overcoat pockets, hair tied back and ready for business. She's been with them now for just over a month, and Angelica has never known a worker like her.

"You can bet there's a problem," she says. "Something's stuck under the terrace, and it's drawing the flies."

"What is it?"

"That's what we're going to find out."

Walter, down below them and with the waters getting perilously close to the tops of his waders, says, "Something's rotten under here. You been burying the people you've poisoned?"

"Go on, Walter," Angelica says. "You know perfectly well we put them in the curry."

"Buryin' 'em at sea," Walter persists, and he lifts the boathook and starts to stir around in the darkness beyond the terrace's supporting pillars. The boathook is usually kept on the wall behind the bar. It's a relic from the building's yacht pavilion days, and was originally used for hauling drunks out of the water. Now it catches on something, and Walter's round face tightens with the effort of pulling it free.

"Something there," he says, and he plunges the hook in again, this time with the intention of getting a secure hold so that he can heave out whatever it is into sight. If he can't, Angelica's thinking, it's probably going to mean the expense of having a part of the terrace decking taken up and relaid.

Alina leans on the rail beside Angelica, both of them looking down on Walter as he makes another thrust into the darkness beneath them. Angelica's thinking that a bag of garbage has probably been carried along on the night swell and has become caught up amongst the pillars and the metal cross ties; there will always be somebody who'll think that a couple of heavy stones and a drop out over the deepest part of the lake are an adequate way of disposing of all their empty cans and peelings and plate scrapings.