The Count of Eleven (16 page)

“Please don’t touch my bicycle,” Laura said, fighting not to let him see that her mouth was growing almost unmanageably stiff. “I’m sorry if your cousin’s bicycle was stolen, but this isn’t hers.”

“Well, someone stole her by-sickle,” he said, wagging his head like a puppet’s. His brothers burst out laughing close behind her she didn’t realise how close until one of them grabbed the back wheel. “Clint nicked it for her,” the youngest crowed.

“Shut up, you little fucker.” The raw-scalped boy raised his upper lip, exposing an incomplete set of stained teeth. He looked like a dog preparing to attack. Laura’s mouth was about to start trembling, her heart was hammering, she could hardly distinguish her hands from the rubber grips they were trying to keep hold of. She twisted the handlebars, so suddenly and violently that they were wrenched out of his hands, and kicked him on the shin as her other foot tramped on the pedal.

Someone screamed behind her, and the bicycle jerked to a halt, having travelled only a few inches. Two of the youngest boy’s fingers were jammed between the frame and a spoke of the back wheel. “You cunt, you hurt my fucking brother,” shouted the boy she had kicked. “You’re dead meat, bitch.”

The youngest boy had fallen to his knees and was trying to pry his fingers out of the trap. “Get away or I’ll hurt him worse,” Laura said, biting her lip. “Both of you go right down to the beach and then I’ll let him loose.”

That had to work, she thought: it made sense. Then the oldest boy plodded forwards and leaned on the rear mudguard, apparently oblivious to the pain he was inflicting on his brother. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, slow and thick.

“You’d better let me go,” Laura said at the top of her voice. At the far end of the wall, where the promenade rose before sloping to Seacombe, a man and a cavorting puppy were crossing the tarmac. Though they were several hundred yards away, surely the man must have heard her. Perhaps he was too intent on the dog as it bounded down a slipway to the beach. Laura sucked in a shaky breath and shouted “Help!”

At least, she almost did. She had just breathed out the first letter when the oldest boy reached for her as though his mind was on something else entirely and punched her in the throat. It felt as if she was choking on a hard sweet which she couldn’t swallow and which was growing bigger in her windpipe. The man with the dog took three quick strides, and Laura saw his head bob down, down, down, and vanish below the edge of the promenade. “Get off the fucking bike, bitch,” the sandy boy said.

Harpo had dressed up as Groucho and was trying to convince him that he was Groucho’s reflection. Though it was Jack’s favourite Marx Brothers scene, he was nodding after the dinner Julia had made to celebrate his success in Ellesmere Port. Momentary dreams kept interrupting the antics of the two bespectacled moustached men in nightshirts and nightcaps, and Jack found that he was gazing into a mirror. He leaned his head gingerly around the edge, and a clown’s grinning face craned around to meet him. “Do you know what I’d like to do?” someone said.

“Yes.” The night shirted figures were hopping in unison across a frame which had contained a full-length mirror. The clown winked at Jack, who felt his own eyelid droop. “What?” the voice said.

“What,” Jack agreed, and the clown nodded too, the head swaying up and down so extravagantly it seemed the neck must snap. The head would topple out of the mirror for Jack to catch, and how would that affect him? “I said, do you know what I’d like to do?” Julia said.

Now Chico appeared disguised as Groucho beside Harpo, destroying the illusion of the mirror. “Sorry,” Jack mumbled, shaking his head to waken himself. “What would you like?”

“To go and meet Laura and then have a drink in a beer garden.”

“Go ahead.”

“I was thinking we could take the van and put her cycle in the back.”

“We’ll both go, of course,” Jack said, struggling awake. “Maybe not the van.”

“It’s running, isn’t it?”

“Not too happily. I’ll have it looked at before I start work. Just let me rewind the tape and we can stroll down to the prom.”

He watched the digits on the counter racing backwards. For a moment they seemed to stop at thirteen, but he must be looking at the number twelve, because it was immediately transformed into eleven; then the digits arrived at zero with a loud click. He withdrew the cassette from the machine and put it with the comedy tapes, and followed Julia out of the house.

They crossed the Crazy Golf course, where a seagull was dwarfing a windmill on a concrete mound, and gazed along the promenade. The evening light lent the road and its users a muted precision, but there was no sign of anyone on a bicycle. “She said she was going where it’s open to traffic,” Julia said.

When they walked as far as the first roundabout, from which they had a view of the rest of that end of the promenade, Laura was nowhere to be seen. “She must have gone home along the top road,” Jack said.

“I expect so.” Julia sounded a little uneasy. An ashen pair of headlamps sprang alight beyond the second roundabout, dazzling Jack and leaving on his eyes a charred patch which first expanded then shrank. Was that Laura near the bowling alley? If so, where was her bicycle? The blackness shrank, and he saw that neither of the girls sitting on the wall was Laura. “There’s someone from her class at school,” Julia said.

It was Jackie Pether, whose grandfather had helped cause the fire at Fine Films. The memory of fire unnerved Jack momentarily as Julia headed for the girls. Jackie whispered to her friend, and both girls shrieked with laughter. “I have that effect on people,” Jack said.

Julia stood and looked at them until they stopped laughing. “Have you seen Laura by any chance, Jackie?”

“She went off that way.”

“About how long ago?”

“Twenty minutes,” Jackie said, shrugging.

“Thank you. Shall we see if we can meet her?” Julia said to Jack. “I expect she’s on her way back. It’ll be dark soon.”

Beyond the bollards which put an end to traffic the promenade ran straight for several hundred yards before curving inland to Vale Park and gradually outwards again. From the beginning of the curve one could see to the end, and at once Jack saw a cyclist just beyond the park. “Is that her?”

“It might be,” Julia admitted, waving tentatively as she quickened her pace. Apparently in response to her wave, the cyclist dismounted and sat in a shelter. It was impossible to see into the shelter from more than a few yards away, but when they came abreast of it the Orchards found that neither the cyclist nor her machine was at all familiar. “She could be home by now and wondering where we are,” Jack said.

“Shall we just go to where we can see the rest of the prom?”

“We may as well.”

When a bell jingled behind them Jack turned smiling, but it was the cyclist from the shelter. She rode away up a sloping street beside Mother Redcap’s rest home as he and Julia turned the corner to the next stretch of the promenade. The bell rang again as he saw what was there, and allowed him to feel momentarily that he was seeing an illusion. A bicycle was hanging from the railings above the beach.

Both wheels had been kicked or stamped on. Most of the spokes were missing, and the rims were twisted wildly out of shape. The frame was bent in the middle as though someone had done their utmost to snap the bicycle in half. “It isn’t Laura’s, is it?” Jack wished aloud.

As Julia went to the bicycle at a run which looked crippled by anxiety, a dog came bounding towards her along the promenade, yapping. “Come back here, Ruff,” its owner shouted.

He was several hundred yards away, and had been stooping over a bench against the wall. Someone was lying on the bench, Jack saw. At that distance, in the twilight and the shadow of the wall, it was impossible to make out the face, but when he narrowed his eyes he was able to distinguish that the still figure had long red hair like Laura’s, dangling over the edge of the seat, and was wearing dungarees patterned like hers. A sour taste of panic flooded his mouth as he ran past Julia, who was leaning over the railings to peer down at the beach. He wanted to see what had happened before she did.

He would have except for the dog. It romped at him and almost tripped him up, and when he bent to pat it and push it away it kept leaping to lick his face. By the time its owner had persuaded the puppy to sit, Julia was at the bench. “It’s all right, love,” she said in a voice so nearly calm that the hint of anguish she couldn’t suppress pierced Jack like a physical pain. Whatever he was afraid to see as he went forwards, what he saw was worse.

Laura was sitting up gradually, trying to pretend it didn’t hurt to do so. Her T-shirt was torn almost to her waist, and she was holding it shut with one hand. She seemed to be having difficulty both in breathing and swallowing. Her face was on the way to becoming unrecognisable; her lips were split and puffed up, her left eye was hidden by a blackened swelling. At first Jack thought her nose was broken, then he saw that it was only bleeding, as if that wasn’t bad enough. Julia sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulders as gently as she could, though even that caused Laura to flinch. “What happened, love? Who did this to you?”

“Boys,” Laura said, and a tear crept out of her swollen eye as though the bruise had burst.

“How could they?”

Laura swallowed painfully. “They tried to steal my bike.”

Julia clenched her free hand and punched the wall. “Oh, Laura, why didn’t you let them?”

“Because you and Dad gave it to me.”

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Jack pleaded, taking Julia’s hand and kissing the scraped knuckles. “How do you feel, Laura?”

“How in God’s name do you think she feels?”

Jack had known the question sounded inane but hadn’t known how else to phrase it. “I only I meant, can she walk?”

“I think so,” Laura said, her open eye turning towards the wreck of her bicycle.

The dog’s owner had been crouching and patting the dog so as not to seem intrusive; now he stood up. “If you can help her as far as the corner I’ll run you to the hospital.”

“That’s kind of him, isn’t it, Laura?” In the same breath Julia said to him “Did you see who did this to her?”

“I did. What’s more, I know them. I’ll show you where they live on the way to the hospital.”

Laura pushed herself up from the bench and winced as her right foot touched the road. “It’s only twisted, I think,” she said, holding onto Julia’s waist.

“We can manage,” Julia said when Laura had hopped a few steps. “You go ahead with this gentleman and get the details, Jack.”

Presumably she didn’t want Laura to be further upset, and Jack could tell that the man was relieved to be talking solely to him. “What did you see?” Jack muttered once they were well ahead.

“Just the end of it, worse luck. When we saw them trying to chuck the bike over we came up and chased them off. I’ll tell you what, though, your girl gave as good as she got. I’d lay odds neither of the big ones will be much use to their girlfriends for a while.”

Jack tried to feel proud of her, but only felt helpless: however bravely she had defended herself it hadn’t been enough to keep her safe. “Can you give me a name for them?”

“I can think of a few.” The man seemed to feel he was trespassing on Jack’s feelings, however, because he cleared his throat and said “Elevens.”

The darkening promenade appeared to darken at a rush. “I didn’t hear you. Who are they again?”

“Glint and Lee and what’s the runt’s name, Eli. Heavens,” the man said with a snigger.

“Their last name?”

That’s right.”

If there weren’t gaps in the conversation they must be in Jack’s head. “What is?”

“I keep telling you, Evans. Let’s have the leash on you before we go on the road.”

He was talking to the dog now, and he must originally have said “Er, Evans,” not a number at all. “We’ll wait for you here, shall we?” Jack said.

The sight of Laura hopping towards him seemed a cruel joke at her and Julia’s and his expense, a joke which both he and old Mr. Pether had somehow rehearsed. He felt unbearably responsible for her condition and yet unable to think how he was. When he started back towards her, to be able at least to feel he was trying to help, he was suddenly afraid that she and her mother would recoil from him. “Our lift won’t be long now. Lean on me if you like while we’re waiting,” he said to Laura, thinking that she couldn’t be any more grateful for his support than he was for her acceptance.

About ten minutes later an ageing blackish Ford Capri cruised down the hill, flashing its wall-eyed lights, and swung round on the promenade so as to point uphill. Laura sat in front, where she had room to stretch out her legs. As she pulled her safety belt around her, Jack saw a surreptitious tear trickle down her cheek.

The driver eased the car onto the main road, trying to brake as little as possible. A minute or so later, as they came in sight of the police station, he turned along a side street. “This isn’t the way to the hospital,” Julia said.

“It’s where the Evanses live, at number thirty-one. The boys who the driver said, and left it at that.

The broad dilapidated house was shaded by a blighted cherry tree from whose branches hung several knotted ropes. The larger of the front downstairs windows exhibited a neighbourhood home watch sign and net curtains so discoloured Jack could almost smell the mustiness. “It’s bigger than our house,” Laura said.

Jack heard her saying that was unfair, and he wished he could make her some kind of promise. Just now his thoughts couldn’t struggle from beneath his sense of helplessness. He tried to force his mind to work as the car sped along the motorway to the hospital. The driver skirted the packed car park and pulled up outside Casualty. “Do you mind if I leave you to it?” he said, and scribbled his name and address on the back of a used envelope. “That’s me if you want to tell the police.”

The hospital smelled of disinfectant which reminded Jack of the smell of fuel. The heat started his palms sweating as soon as he stepped into the lobby. While Julia supported Laura he went to a receptionist, who wrote down Laura’s details and told the Orchards to take a seat. “Just one?” Jack said.