The Yellow Glass (22 page)

“Suit yourself.”
 
She finished sweeping and sat down to pick the beads of her bracelet out
of the dustpan, placing them on the table one by one.
 
“But I’m sure you won’t say no to a nice cup
of tea.
 
Let me just finish this and I’ll
put the kettle on.”

I watched her in amazement, sorting out those beads
like she was panning for gold in the Klondike.

“How can you live with yourself, Aunt Dilys?”
 
I burst out.
 
“Knowing your husband is a cold-blooded criminal who may have killed a
young girl?”
 
I gave it to her hot and
strong.
 
“And your son’s no bloody
better; a juvenile delinquent who’d do God knows what for the price of a fizzy
drink.
 
They may have kept you in the
dark, but you should know that aiding and abetting is a bloody serious
crime.
 
You could do a good, long
stretch
for this, woman.”

She jumped up from her chair with her hands on her
narrow hips.

“Don’t you ‘woman’ me, young man,” she hissed.
 
“What kind of a way is
that
to speak to your elders and betters?
 
And all that bad language, too!
 
Your mother would turn in her grave if she
could hear the way you speak.”

“Ha!”
 
I laughed
in her face.
 
“You’re talking semantics
when you’re up to your neck in murder and kidnap.
 
Get your bloody priorities straight.”

“
There
you
go again; it beggars belief!
 
And with
all the education you’ve had.
 
It’s
wasted on you, do you know that?”
 
She
was spitting at me now, she’d got so cross.
 
“Some of us . . well . . who knows
what
we could have become with your education . . but your generation . . you’re all
the same . . handed it on a plate . . you just don’t know you’ve been
born!”
 

Her white face had become blotched with pink and she
was actually trembling.
 

“Louts!”
 
It
shot out of her mouth like she’d gone into spasm.
 
“Hooligans, the lot of you!
 
We work our fingers to the bone and we get
nothing . .
nothing
. . in
return.
 
Look what I’ve done for you
here,” she gestured around the cabin, “ . . why, I’ve a good mind to rip the
blanket off your lazy back and tip you off the bed; let you sleep on the cold,
hard floor and douse you with bilgewater!”

That’s when I should’ve come up with something to
placate her, should’ve
 
apologised for my
dirty mouth and asked for some of her damn cake.
 
(I curse myself for the hothead that I am -
that I couldn’t say those simple, simple things.)
 

“You’re off your rocker, woman!”
 
I rose to the bait like a dead fish.
 
“Clap me in irons and put me to the bloody
rack, why don’t you?
 
That’d be right up
your street!”

So she took hold of the corner of my blanket and
ripped it clear off the bunk and there was Mr Tamang, crouching by the wall.

“Aargh!”
 
She
leapt a foot in the air. “Who . . ?
 
What
. . ?”

“Jayagaon Tamang,” he said.
 
“So sorry to disturb you.”
 

He rolled over me as delicately as before and stood
up.
 

“Good afternoon, Mrs Arkonnen . . for I gather you are
Mrs Arkonnen.”

Aunt Dilys grabbed the broom and brandished the handle
at him.

“Don’t you come another step further!”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Who’s this Chinaman, Magnus?”
 
She panted.
 
“What’s he doing in your bed?”

It was difficult to know what to say, to be
honest.
 

“Wait a minute . .” she nearly dropped her broom, “I
know
you, don’t I?
 
I’ve seen you at the office.
 
You’re a spy!”

“It’s kind of you to say so, Mrs Arkonnen, but I am
not a spy.
 
I work in the technical
department.
 
And I believe you are on the
secretarial side, is that correct?”

She didn’t reply, but whipped around and grabbed the
cake knife from the table behind her, so that she grasped the broom in one hand
and the knife in the other.

“Now we’ll get some answers.
 
What are you doing here?”

“I am sorry,” he bowed his head, “I cannot disclose
that information.
 
But you may rest
assured, Mrs Arkonnen, that I know very little of your case.”

“You’ve been ear-wigging since the barge set off,
haven’t you?”

She approached him warily, as if he were an unfamiliar
animal from the outer reaches of the world, and jabbed at the air around his
face with her knife.

“Who sent you?”
 
Jab, jab.
 
“What are you
after?”
 
Jab, jab.

“My name is Jay Tamang and I am a mere observer.
 
May I ask that you please stop doing that,
Mrs Arkonnen?”

His politeness seemed to get right up her nose,
because she revved up with the cake knife, swiping it round his body like she’d
taken up fencing.
 

“Please, Mrs Arkonnen,” he asked, quietly.

“Stop it, Aunt Dilys!”
 
I cried.

But she wasn’t having any, she was that busy working
herself up into an uncontrolled frenzy.

Mr Tamang’s hand shot up, so fast it was near-on
invisible to the naked eye, and relieved her of the knife, at which she
promptly swung her broom handle and dealt him an almighty conk with it.
 
The man crashed, head-first, onto the metal floor.
 
And stayed there.
 
He lay spread-eagled on the ground,
unconscious if not worse.
 
It felt like
whole minutes passed and, still, he didn’t move.
 
A trickle of red seeped out from behind his
black hair and collected in a small pool on the silver floor.

“Look what you’ve done now, you bloody madwoman.
 
Have you killed him?
 
Have you?”
 
I shouted at the top of my voice.

She glanced at me, still breathing heavily, her
complexion still patched with pink like some terrible skin disease.

“Shut up, you,” she said, and her eyes looked like
they’d died in her face.

Then she straightened up and, carefully, propped her
broom up against a cupboard, before bending to pick up the cake-knife that was
still lying in Mr Tamang’s hand.
 
She
wiped the handle on her skirt and replaced it next to the cake.
 
Then she went over to the ladder and shouted
up to the deck.

“Severs!”
 
She
shouted.
 
“Mr Severs!
 
Down here, please.
 
Straight away.”

Somebody shouted back down at her.

“I’m sure it can steer itself for a second.
 
Just leave the steering, please.
 
Come down here and bring the strongest rope
you’ve got, Mr Severs.”

A stocky, middle-aged man in a flat cap and
collar-less shirt appeared in the cabin, dragging a coil of rope that must have
been six inches in diameter.
 
When he saw
Mr Tamang lying on the floor, his eyebrows shot up.

“How did ‘e get aboard?”

“I don’t know, Mr Severs, but I’m very cross about
it.
 
Goodness knows what Reginald will
have to say when he finds out.”

“Is ‘e dead?”

She leant over Mr Tamang and prodded his coat with one
finger.

“I don’t know.
 
Possibly.
 
Possibly not.
 
Serve him right if he is; trying to attack an
English lady with a knife.”

She went over to the kitchen tap and washed her hands
thoroughly, dousing the sink with bleach while she was at it.

“Just truss him up and carry him up on deck, please,
Mr Severs.
 
If he’s still alive, I have a
few ideas that should encourage him to speak.
 
If not, we’ll drop him in the Thames.”
 
She looked thoughtful.
 
“Out past
Rotherhithe, perhaps, where the tides are stronger.”

I was speechless.
 
I think I opened and shut my mouth and some kind of horrified squawk
emerged of its own accord.

“And as for you, young man,” she shook her head, sadly
as she followed her lackey - the small, rope-bound figure of Mr Tamang in his
arms - up the ladder.

 
“No cake for
you
.
 
Not until you learn how to behave.”

 
The spy waited until they’d gone before he
clambered down from the top bunk.
 
He sat
on the only chair, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered me
one.
 

“She won’t be back for a bit,” he observed.
 
“She’s got other fish to fry.”
 

He lit our fags with his lighter and held mine for me
while I inhaled deeply.
 

“Are all your family complete lunatics, Magnus?”

Anger flared up inside.
 
That and the aftermath of shock.

“Where were
you
,
then?”
 
I spat out.
 
“What kind of spy leaves his partner to fend
for himself like that?”

“The kind of spy who can see the bigger picture, I
suppose.”
 
He let out a sigh.
 
“Well, Magnus Arkonnen, what the blazes am I
to do with you?”

We stared at one another.
 
  

“I suppose I’d better let you in on the game,” he finally
looked away, off into thin air.
 
“Its
codename is Operation Crystal Clear . . and it’s all about
glass
.”

He took a sound drag of his cigarette, held it deep
down in his lungs, then blew a perfect smoke-ring in the air.

 
I screamed and a hand came from behind and
clamped itself so hard on my open mouth that
 
I nearly swallowed my tongue.
 
A
knee stabbed into my lower back, pushing me flat against the wall of the shed
and holding me there while he unlocked the padlock.
 
His hand travelled from my mouth to my hair,
gathering up a great clump of it and yanking.

“Ow, ow, ow!”

“Get in there, snoop.”

He flung me inside so violently that I went flying
into the far corner and dislodged a shelf-full of paintbrushes and
screwdrivers.
 
Nuts and bolts rained down
on top of me, then made a pinging sound as they scattered far and wide over the
steel floor.

“Ow!”

He slammed the door shut and I heard him lock it again
from the outside.

I uncurled slowly, bruised in all known parts of
me.
  
Shaking my hair from my eyes, it
dawned on me that I, too, had begun to glow fluorescent green.
 
My spread fingers waved like starfish in an
aquarium, my hair cleaved to my shoulders like fronds of seaweed.
 
On top of a rough table cobbled together from
planks of wood, the pile of glass pulsed, as if it were alive.
 
Sentient.
 
Fear swooshed in like the tide - not the Big Dipper fear, that unstable,
gulping panic - but something so much worse; as if my lungs were collapsing
under the pressure created by fathoms of water.

When I managed to stand up, I saw his face in the
window, squinting through the bars at what he’d caught.
 
The milk-white of his pupils looked like
empty craters gouged over that fleshy mouth.
 
How could I have forgotten Arko’s mouth?
 
Then he was gone, leaving me to the poisonous glass, which appeared to
shimmer between green and yellow, changing as I watched, waning under the brief
magic of twilight.
 
I glanced around the
interior of the shed.
  
He’d wrapped it
up in sheets of steel, as if it were his strong-box.
 
All was so terribly silent, sliding back into
the dark . . until a breath of sea wind sighed through the gap beneath the
steel door and Mr Dexter’s corpse shifted on its hook once more.
 
Tears sprang to my eyes and I threw myself
down at the foot of that door, mouthing at the gap.
 
I didn’t want to die; oh, how I didn’t want
to die!
 

Lying there in the dark, I sobbed and howled myself
into near stupor.
 
(I’d imagined how
brave I’d be if ever an occasion such as this arose, but it was all pie in the
sky because I hadn’t an atom of bravery in me; was nothing but a useless,
selfish, blob of incoherent matter.)
 
Would he come for me and finish me off, or leave the glass to do it,
radioactivity seeping into my pores, drip by deadly drip?
 
Maybe it had already entered every cell I
possessed.
 
Maybe I was already
dead.
 
The wind shrieked under the door
and something struck me on the back of my neck.
 
I raised my head and rubbed my swollen eyes.
 
It was Mr Dexter’s foot, still clad in a
nice, brown loafer.
 
I hiccupped and got
up.

Poor Mr Dexter was so very, very, dead.
 
There was a neat hole through his heart and
his clothes were rusty with dried blood.
 
This
was death and it looked
nothing like me.
 
I reached up and
unhooked him from that foul hook; it was the least I could do, to stop him
looking like a slaughtered pig in an abattoir.
 
I wrenched at the stiff rope around his neck and took his weight in my
arms, before I laid him on the floor, to rest.
 
I sat down next to him, in a strange way glad of his company.
 
I wished, with all my heart, that he were
here to tickle my neck; whatever other misdeeds he’d performed in his
relatively short, but handsome, life,
that
had been such a little one.
 
I could have
allowed him that.
 
I let out a rueful
sigh and rubbed the remains of my tears away with the tail of my shirt.
 

I don’t know how long I sat by him, but long enough to
grow accustomed to the dark.
 
In time, I
got myself up and began to look around the shed, sniffing.
 
Amongst the paintbrushes and everyday tools
were glass-maker’s instruments that I took to be blowpipes and pontils, bags of
salts, some test tubes sitting upright in a rack and a basket full of
Swedish-made brass blow-torches with the name ‘Sievert’ engraved on their
handles.
 
I found a number of rolled-up
scrolls of paper, secured with lengths of raffia, standing upright in a basket
and I felt the beginnings of my old interest stir.
 
I lifted them out of the basket and knelt on
the floor, to get a better look.

The first chart I unscrolled was of the English
Channel, moderately large-scale - I peered at the corner, but the scale print
was too small to read in that light - and included Dover and St Margaret’s
Bay.
 
There were a lot of dark patches in
the sea and minuscule numbers that I hadn’t a hope of making out.
 
I let the chart roll itself up and tried
another one.
 
The second was of the
Pacific Ocean, centring on the Channel Islands; not
our
Channel Islands, but those islands off the coast of Los
Angeles, in the Gulf of Santa Catalina.
   
The third was further north up the Pacific coast of America, near San Francisco;
another thickly hatched and patched area of sea.
 
Peering intently, I could just make out the
tiny word ‘
Farallon
’.
 
I ran my finger over the dark areas,
wondering what they could be; what was hidden beneath the sea there.
 
Might they be wrecks, or particularly deep
trenches in the ocean floor, sea-beds that were geologically rich in oil,
perhaps, or gas, or various minerals?
 
And what connection did they have with the Bering Strait . . ?
 
I was reaching for a fourth chart when I
heard the wind call my name.

“Rosy?”
 
It
called under the door.
 
“You there,
Rosy?”

I jumped up and ran to the window, thumping on the
thick glass.

“I’m here, Uncle Albert!
 
It’s me!
 
I’m here!”

His dear, round face appeared on the other side of the
window, as pale as the moon.
 
I pointed
to the door and flung myself down at the gap.

“At the bottom of the door, Uncle Albert,” I cried,
“it’s the only way we can hear each other.”

“’elp?” he asked, as if from a great distance away.

“
Yes,
you
can!
 
You’ve got to get me out of here as
soon as possible, do you understand?”

“’elp?”

“
Yes
,
yes
,
yes
!
 
Fetch the police!”

“Coppers?”
 
He
sounded doubtful and I remembered that he didn’t like the police.

“Major Dyminge, then.
 
Fetch him straight away, Uncle Albert.
 
As fast as ever you can.”

“Oh, the old Major!”
 
He was relieved.
 
“
Impendin’ Danger
she come in at twenty
to one!”
 
And he chuckled.

“That’s good,” I said, “but . . what’s that noise?”

An odd, rhythmical clanking was distinctly audible at
ground level, faint at first, but growing louder by the second.
 
The earth shook with it.
 
I froze with fright.
 
Something beyond my comprehension was heading
for Uncle Albert.
 
Something
terrible.
 
I could scarcely think for the
waves of terror and pity that swept over me; was knocked sideways by the most
unusual sense of how somebody else might feel besides myself.

“Run, Uncle Albert!”
 
I screamed.
 
“Save yourself!”

I cannot say exactly what happened after that, just
that I heard my uncle wail, softly, like a small child waking in the night and
I thought it the most terrible sound I’d ever heard . . until I registered the
unmistakeable whip crack of a pistol.
 
I
flew to the window and pounded on it with my fists, goggling into the dark,
unable to see or understand.
 
Minutes
passed and nothing happened, while I ran between the foot of the door and the
barred window and then back again, trying to see and then trying to hear and
managing neither.
 
I felt as if I might
explode with frustration and dread, with trying to block out what I knew in my
heart must have happened; knew with as much certainty as I’d known anything
about another human being in my entirely self-centred life.
 
The most appalling thing had happened to
somebody I loved.
 

I was weeping, uncontrollably, when the key turned in
the padlock and the thick chain plummeted, clanging against the steel frame of
the door as it fell.

Arko’s padded radiation suit filled the doorway, an apparition
from a tale of horror.
 
I was rooted to
the spot.
 
His face was concealed behind
a mask, the bottom half distended into a ridged, snorkel-like apparatus that
snaked into a cylinder attached to his back.
 
His feet looked to be encased in metal and he walked towards me,
treading heavily - clank, clank, clank - as if he were a deep sea diver negotiating
the ocean floor.
 
In one gloved hand he
held a small pistol.
 

I came to my senses, grabbed an iron blow-pipe and
swung it at him before he had a chance to take aim, but it made little
impression against the protective layers of his suit.
 
His arm jiggled, momentarily, then he pointed
the gun straight at me, but, even as he did so, he set his right foot down on Mr
Dexter and was thrown off balance; unnerved by the sudden appearance of a
corpse at his feet, when it should have been hanging from a coat hook by the
door.
 
The bullet hummed across the shed,
pinged smartly against the steel-clad back wall and rebounded straight into his
mask.
 
He toppled over backwards under
the sheer force of it.

I leapt over him, and through the shed door.
 
There, lying outstretched on that mean,
concrete passageway, was my Uncle Albert.
 
I ran at him, scooping him up into my arms, trying to contain the
awkward, bird-boned entirety of him, but a gangly, flannelled leg flopped from
my embrace.
 
I rocked him and kissed his
cheek - as if to galvanise him into resistance by doing things he so hated in
life - but he did not respond.

“Rosa, thank God!”
 

Major Dyminge burst around the corner of the bungalow,
hatless and breathing hard.
 
He had a gun
in his hand.
 

“We’ve been hunting high and low for you.
 
Where’s . . ?”
 
Then he saw the contents of my arms and came
to a grinding halt.

“Mr Smith.
 
What
. . ?”

I pointed to the shed, scarcely able to speak through
my tears:

“Help me,”
 
I
sobbed.
 
“Arko shot him.
 
I th . . think he might be dead.
 
Please help me, Major Dyminge.”

His face was entirely expressionless; an old soldier’s
face.
 
He whipped a linen handkerchief
from his pocket and flung it at me.

“Staunch the flow of blood,” he ordered.
 
Then he nodded at the shed door:

“Still in there, is he?”

“Ye . . yes.”

He cocked his pistol and ran straight into the shed
without a moment’s hesitation, while I dabbed, uselessly, at Uncle Albert.

“Flown the coop,” he came back out.
 
“There’s a suit affair on the floor, but
nobody in it.
 
There must be a back door
hidden somewhere, I can’t see in this light.
 
Did you know there’s a dead body on the floor?
 
What in damnation has been going on here,
Rosa?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, but bent to look at
Uncle Albert, his face grim.
 
He felt the
pulse point on Uncle Albert’s neck and then he sighed.

“Let’s get out of this hell-hole and call the
police.
 
I’ll take Mr Smith, shall
I?”
 

He laid his hand, lightly, on my shoulder and looked
at me with his kind eye.

“B . . but should he be m . . moved?”

“I’m afraid it will make little difference at this
stage, my dear.”