The meanest Flood (48 page)

He reached for his mobile again and hit redial. But JD was still engaged.

He looked down at the man on the pavement. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked. ‘You wanna tell me about it?’

The big man rolled on to his side and propped himself on an elbow. His lungs still didn’t function like he expected. ‘You killed Kitty,’ he gasped.

Sam shook his head. He remembered the police telling him Katherine had a boyfriend in Nottingham. And that was the accent, that Black Country inflection which was still in the man’s speech when everything else had been knocked out of him.

‘I didn’t kill her,’ Sam said.

‘You were there,’ the big man said. ‘I found the place you stayed. The landlady remembered your face.’

‘That’s why you took my photograph?’ Sam said. ‘Yes, I was there, but I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anyone. I was set up.’

The man on the pavement tried to laugh but his lungs wouldn’t go further than a cough. ‘You killed her,’ he said. ‘There isn’t anyone else.’

Sam walked away from him. He rang JD again and this time he didn’t get the engaged tone. He left the big man on the pavement and leaned back on the shop window with the phone pressed to his ear. The women took some steps away. The phone carried on ringing. Sam watched the big man struggle to his knees as JD’s message service kicked in.

Sam switched off in case he had to listen to it again. He went back to the guy who was on his feet, but limping.

‘The man who killed Katherine,’ he said. ‘He’s in my house.’

The big guy shook his head. ‘I’ve just come from there. There’s nobody answering the door.’

‘He’s waiting for me to show,’ Sam told him. ‘He’s got a woman with him and when he sees me coming down the street she’ll get the same treatment as Katherine.’

‘A woman went in there,’ the big man said. ‘Duffel-coat and a long scarf.’

‘That’s Alice,’ Sam told him.

‘Why’re you telling me this? It was you killed Katherine. You lied to the police.’

‘I didn’t kill her,’ Sam said. ‘If I’d told the police I was in Nottingham that night, what d’you think would’ve happened?’

‘They’d’ve banged you away,’ the big man said. ‘And fucking whoopee.’

‘I need help,’ Sam said. ‘And I need it now, or another woman is gonna die.’

‘You’ve done for my leg. Even if I believed you I wouldn’t be no use.’

‘You could hold the guy’s attention at the front while I go round the back.’

‘Why should I believe you?’

‘If I’d killed Katherine,’ Sam told him, ‘I wouldn’t be standing here. I’d walk away and disappear. I don’t have anything to gain by asking you to hammer on the front door of my house.’

The big man thought about it. Eventually he said, ‘If you’re shitting me, I’ll strangle you.’ Then he said, ‘One other thing.’

‘Yeah?’

‘This guy in the house, the one you say did for Katherine... I want him.’

Sam shook his head. ‘No way.’

The big man didn’t move. ‘No deal then.’

Sam shrugged. ‘You can have him for two minutes, max.’

‘I’m not going to shake your hand,’ the big man said. ‘Because even if you didn’t kill her you gave her a shit time.’

‘Have it your own way.’

‘But you can call me Ruben. And if it turns out you’re taking me for some kind of ride, every time you hear that name it’ll be me getting closer to you.’ He took a couple of steps and almost fell over. ‘Why’d you do that?’ he said. ‘Kick me in the shin. Jesus, I was already on my back.’

‘Sorry,’ Sam said. ‘I was motoring. It seemed like the right thing to do.’

Ruben shook his head. ‘You never hear of Queensbury Rules? How’m I gonna deliver milk on one leg?’

‘This isn’t our immediate problem,’ Sam told him. ‘Not for you it isn’t. But it’s gonna be my problem tomorrow morning. Plus there’s the depression, and I was just getting on top of that. Something like this could bring it all back.’

Sam held up his hand. ‘You wanna do this thing? Get the guy?’

‘Sure,’ Ruben said. ‘How we gonna work it?’

42

The magician put tape over Alice Richardson’s eyes. It was something to do with the way she looked at him. The others had looked at him and he hadn’t minded too much, but with this one it was unnerving. He wondered if it was because she was a mother. He wondered how his own mother would have looked at him if it had been her tied to the bed instead of Alice Richardson and he thought she would have had the same look.

These were not the kind of thoughts to be having. He had to be professional about it. It was a performance, like any other, and it was coming round to the finale. If it worked right he would kill the woman as Sam Turner came into the house. The detective would come up the stairs and Danny would give him time to see that she was dead. Then he would plunge the bayonet into Turner’s stomach.

He would watch Turner die. He would wipe the handle of the bayonet and place Turner’s hands around it, so that his prints were all over it. And then he would take the life of the blind woman, the detective’s last love.

The police would see that Turner had killed again and committed suicide. Danny’s mother would be avenged. The case would be closed. The illusion would remain.

The magician stripped in readiness. He folded his clothes neatly and placed them on a chair by the window. He stood far enough back so that he couldn’t be seen from the street but could still watch the length of it. Magic is like an iceberg, most of it is not visible, happening beneath the surface; so much of it is confined to preparation and unseen by the audience. It’s such a waste, Danny thought inside his head, hearing his mother’s voice speaking the words.

And he watched the big man with the shark’s tooth around his neck come back into the street. The something different about him was so pointed and obvious that for a while Danny couldn’t understand what it was. The man had developed a limp, and it wasn’t a slight injury that Danny could have overlooked the first time he came to the door. It was as if he had been in a road accident of some kind. He winced every time his foot touched the pavement and the bad leg shot up into the air and described a wide arc which upset the man’s balance. From time to time as he came along the street he had to reach out for the support of a wall or a gate.

Go away, Danny said under his breath. Everything was set now, the last thing he needed was this great oaf banging on the door again. If he was collecting debts, Sam Turner would never come home while he was waiting on the doorstep.

The crippled man stopped at the door and lifted the knocker. He hammered it rhythmically for nearly half a minute. The sound penetrated every corner of the house. The woman on the bed struggled against the rope that bound her.

Danny crouched and did some deep breathing exercises. He tried to wish the man away, astral travelling in reverse; he pictured a spiritual wind taking the man up and away from the house, depositing him on the steeple of some distant country church.

But the hammering on the door started again, that same rhythmic beat,
rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat.

The urgency of his knocking demanded a response, he obviously refused to consider there might be no one in. Danny wondered if the man had been standing on the street corner and had seen the woman arrive. Because if he had he obviously wasn’t going to go away until he got some satisfaction.

The magician crept down the stairs clutching his bayonet. He stood by the front door and listened to the knocking. For a moment it stopped and the big man on the street pushed open the letter-box and looked inside. ‘I know you’re in there,’ he shouted. ‘I’m not going until you answer the door.’

Danny sighed. He couldn’t place the accent. Somewhere in the Midlands. Might be Leicester or Derby but he didn’t think so.

When the big man closed the letter-box and started banging again the magician decided to answer the door. He walked across the room towards the stairs. He’d have to dress again first, but there didn’t seem to be another way round it.

‘I’m coming,’ he yelled. The banging stopped abruptly. ‘Give me a couple of minutes,’ Danny shouted.

The banging on the door started up again and he took the stairs two at a time. This was ridiculous. Some neighbour might take it into her head to ring the police, complaining about noise pollution.

At the top of the stairs he was about to enter Sam Turner’s bedroom to get his clothes when he heard something from the back bedroom, a sound like a footfall. Although he was already in motion to deal with the banging on the front door and didn’t want to be distracted, two other thoughts entered his head simultaneously. One was to investigate the new sound and the other was the dawning realization that he had been set up, that Turner was in the house with him and that the woman was still alive.

Before he had time to move in either direction the back bedroom door opened and Sam Turner came at him along the landing. Danny lifted the bayonet, realizing that this wasn’t how it had been planned. The woman was supposed to die first. Turner came at him with a doublefooted drop-kick, something the magician had never witnessed in real life and never imagined would be used against him. He recognized it only from watching wrestling on the television with Jody on a Saturday afternoon.

He slashed at Turner’s legs with the bayonet and caught a glimpse of blood before Sam Turner’s booted feet connected with his bare chest. He tottered there for a moment, at the head of the stairs, but he always knew that he was going down.

He grabbed for the banister, missed and dived headfirst down the staircase. The magician had never been particularly physical but he had dived twice before, when he was a teenager, in the public baths. The first dive had been a belly-flop and it had hurt; the second dive had been perfect, the instructor said the water parted without a sign of a splash. The present dive would be a combination of the two; there wasn’t going to be a splash this time either, and it was certainly going to hurt.

But Danny managed to break his fall with his forearms and elbows. He slithered the rest of the way down the stairs and got to his feet. When he looked up Turner was standing at the top of the stairs with the bayonet and a face like a thunder-storm.

In his professional career the magician had never abandoned a trick. There was always something you could do to save the day. But when he saw Sam Turner take a step towards him, the German bayonet clutched in his hand, Diamond Danny Mann decided to make a run for it.

He got to the door and saw Alice Richardson’s Wellington boots. There was a coat that must belong to Turner hanging on the back of the door. Danny didn’t want to go into the street naked but he knew he didn’t have enough time. The boots would be too small for him and as Sam Turner’s footsteps clattered down the stairs he decided to ignore the coat also. He turned the Yale and ripped open the door.

He tried to run around the big man and when that didn’t work he tried to run through him. Same result.

‘Let me get past,’ he said. ‘I’m not who you want, he’s behind me.’

The big man grabbed his arm as he tried to wriggle around to the street.

‘Let me go!’ Danny yelled, pulling away with all his might. He slipped the man’s grasp for a moment and found himself free and able to run. But before he could turn his freedom to his advantage he realized that the man had him by the arm again and was swinging him round.

He saw the big man’s fist coming at him and closed his eyes. It was as though if he didn’t see it it wouldn’t hurt so much or do so much damage.

Wrong again.

43

Marilyn started the car when Danny appeared on the doorstep. She manoeuvred it out of the parking space and hit the horn, wondering with one half of her mind why Danny was naked. But the rest of her consciousness was concentrated on getting him out of there. It was obvious that the big man was going to lay into him.

Before she could get to them the big man hit Danny. Marilyn was inside the car when it happened and the engine was revving and the windows were closed but she heard the bones go. The big man howled and cradled his fist in his other arm as if he’d smashed his knuckles or some other bones in his hand. But he’d broken Danny’s jaw. Danny went over in the street, not a stitch of clothing on and his chin and jaw seemed detached, hovering over his left shoulder.

Marilyn drove the car on to the pavement, blocking the entrance to the house and forcing the big man to jump out of the way, so the car was between him and Danny. She leaned over and opened the passenger door and yelled for Danny to get in. He struggled to his feet and fell into the seat. He was saying something but his broken jaw distorted the words so it was impossible to make sense of it.

As she reversed back into the street another man came out of the house clutching a long and bloody bayonet in his hand. He ran for the car and tried to hang on, slashing at the windows and the paintwork with his weapon. But when Marilyn hit the accelerator he lost his grip and rolled into the gutter. She didn’t look back; as Danny fastened his safety belt she screeched around the corner and headed towards the town.

She felt a rush of euphoria go through her body as she realized what she’d done. She’d snatched Danny from almost certain death. The first man, the huge one, wouldn’t have stopped at smashing Danny’s jaw if she hadn’t driven the car between them. And the second one, the one with the bayonet, was obviously looking for blood.