(2005) Rat Run (52 page)

'How do we go? We have to find a little boat.'

'What if, Dean, we don't find a little boat?'

'We walk and we swim - but I think we will find a little boat.'

They did.

It was up on grass. It was as small as the boat, twenty years back, that Mikey might have hired for an hour down at Folkestone or Margate - if he'd been out of Wandsworth or Pentonville on a nice summer Sunday - and no way Sharon would have gone in it.

The rowing boat was upturned on the grass and a frayed rope tied it to a rotted stump. Ricky thought the man had faith in luck, or faith in God, for thinking he'd find a boat. They had damn near walked into it. When they'd tipped it over, the man took the flashlight, switched it on for a few seconds at a time and ran his hands over the planking as if that way he'd find a hole in it; there were oars too.

They dragged the boat away from the grass and down on to mud. The man pulled it by the rope and Ricky pushed it. The mud clung to him. Next it would be his bloody shoes going down in the mud and bloody lost. He took them off, and his sodden socks, and shoved them into his outer pockets. At each step the mud seemed to pull him back, but he had his shoulder against the wood of the boat; funny, but Ricky Capel, who could strut in any company, found that he needed not to fail, had to show his worth to this man, was not going to be found bloody wanting. For two whole hours, with one rest time of not more than five minutes, they scraped the boat over the mud and then they reached the water. The surf came in spurts up to their knees, then ran back.

When they floated off, when the man dragged on the oars, Ricky lay in the floor of the boat and water sloshed round him. He found, under his back, a saucepan tied with string to the boat's side, and began to use it to ladle out the water. As fast as he did so, the boat filled. The water level crept up - the saucepan could not compete with it. It lapped at the top of his knees and up his hips, but he kept bailing because he could not let the man see him fail.

They grounded across the channel. The moon had come up and he could see the line of a shallow hill in front of them. They stepped out, water up to their thighs, went down in a hole and crawled out.

'Well done, Ricky. That was good.'

He flushed at the praise, and a little of his exhaustion fled.

If she had asked, Malachy would have said, 'Perhaps Timo Rahman'll drop them by the ferry or have them brought over in a fast craft. They'll link up with a boat offshore, use a radio for it. The size of boat that can get across the North Sea would be too large to come in close, so it'll have to launch a dinghy and come right in to the beach, somewhere along the stretch we walked. They can use a radio for the final contact with the boat but they'll have to signal an exact spot for the dinghy, and my guess is that they'd use flashing lights to guide it in. That won't be easy - of course, I'm not a seaman and don't have exact knowledge - because of the surf that the storm's knocking up. I hope to see them when they've put the light on. It'll be when their plan is most vulnerable, but they'll know with the weather that no living soul is going to be out and watching for them, which will give them confidence.

I'm not reckoning, where we are, that we can miss the light they'll use, could be tonight or could be tomorrow night - maybe right now they're lying up.

We'll see that light. I want to hit them when they think they're on the last leg - they're coming down from the dunes and they're out on the beach without cover . . .

I want to screw it up for Ricky Capel. You've your own target and that's your business - mine is with Ricky Capel. I want him out there in the sand and unable to get to his dinghy - for him the whole thing is failure on a mind-blowing scale. It's only a gesture, but it's what I want... I want to hear him scream, and then I can walk away.'

She was beside him and her sleeping-bag was

already half buried in the sand that the wind pulled off the beach. He could hear the steady rhythm of her breathing. He sat hunched, and his eyes raked the shoreline and the upper points of the dunes as he watched for a light. The same sand that covered her was caking on his chest and shoulders, on his lips, cheeks and around his eyes. He would have liked to listen to his voice telling her that he would hit Ricky Capel, then walk away, but she slept and would not have heard him.

He sat on an upper point of the dunes, and the rain was back, and the pledge made to Malachy was broken.

He watched and she was huddled on her side in the sleeping-bag, eyes clamped shut, sand carpeting her hair. When the drizzle had started, he had carefully lifted the bag's neck so that her mouth and nose were covered; through her misted spectacles he could see that her eyes stayed closed. The pledge, broken, had been that he would watch till two in the morning, and then she would take her turn, and he would sleep. He had not roused her.

He glanced regularly at her, a few seconds in each two or three minutes, but his focus was on the sea, where a boat would come. More likely the boat would reach them at night, guided by lights, but he thought the weather - rain that drove up on to the dunes, mist, low cloud that shortened the horizon - gave enough cover for a dinghy to be launched. It was as if the few clustered houses by the harbour where the ferry docked were detached from the rest of the wilderness of the island. The voices he heard were those of gulls that ducked and dived in the wind. The tide was up and they had fewer acres of sand to feed from, so their hunt for shells to split open was harder and more frantic. Other sounds were from the wind's thrust in the dunes, and its singing in the low branches of the few trees behind him. He thought she would wake soon because her breathing was less regular than it had been during the night.

The expanse of the beach was being steadily sub-merged. The tide rolled in. In the gloom, sometimes, he saw the light of a buoy, but no boats came past it.

She woke. Sudden movement. Wriggling in the

bag and fighting to get an arm clear, trying to see a wrist and a watch. Cursing. Head lifted. Spectacles snatched off and wiped crudely on the underside of the bag. Spectacles replaced. Looking around, eyes fastening on him.

'Damn you.'

It amused Malachy to see her annoyance. 'Good morning, Miss Wilkins.'

'You promised.'

'An earthquake wouldn't have woken you.'

Her fingers were in her hair and sand flew clear. She shook her head violently. 'Damn you because you promised to wake me. If you didn't know it, that is insulting.'

He turned his eyes back to the sea. What had he seen? Nothing. What could he now see? Nothing.

Why had he not woken her?

'There was nothing worth waking you for.'

'We were supposed to share the watch. You half and me half.'

'I thought you needed the sleep,' he said vaguely.

'That is what's insulting. I need the sleep and you don't? That's a cheap shot.'

He remembered Roz, remembered manufactured

arguments, remembered vicious, spiky arguments coming out of a clear blue sky, remembered her ability to rouse a dispute from a half-thought-through remark. He watched the surf where the gulls danced, and saw the buoy's light.

'Right . . . You've seen nothing, so what was so important for you that you could let me sleep?'

'The chance to think.'

'Thinking about today, or thinking about your bloody past?'

Malachy felt himself stiffen, as if there was a catch in his throat. The past,
his,
was never gone from him.

Worse at night when he slept, but he would not field that to Polly Wilkins as an excuse for not waking her.

Bad in the day because it was the small pain that came and came again. Then he was free of it, then it was back.

She would have seen his mouth stiffen. She was close to him and was kicking out of the sleeping-bag. She had a gimlet gaze on him. He did not know whether she'd intended it, but memories flooded his mind.

She said, spat, 'Your problem, you're in denial.

You're hiding. My people fed me the stuff. I'm not ignorant, I know what the accusation against you is, Malachy. It's a pretty bloody one . . . I don't know of anything that beats it, what you were called. So, what's your answer? It's pathetic:
I don't know what
happened.
Being in denial isn't good enough and hiding from it means you'll never clear it. All of this stuff, thrashing around and trying to play hero, won't clear the stigma. You have to face facts, kick some dirt in your own eyes.'

'Have you finished?'

'God - it's just that denial isn't a cure.'

'Can we move on?'

'I'm trying to help.'

'Please, don't.'

Her voice rattled in his ear above the wind and the rumble of the surf. 'Can't you understand anything?

Malachy, I'm not looking to humble you - I'm not in the bloody queue that was whacking you. Denial doesn't help you. Just repeating
I don't know what
happened
won't lift you. It's shit.'

She sagged back.

'Thank you. I'll do my own suffering,' he said grimly.

Her lips pursed, head down, she started to dig in the rucksack. She found what she searched for. The size of an ironed and folded handkerchief, it was layers of silver baking foil. She said quietly, as if it were important to prove herself, that she was trained and could keep her head down when she squatted and knew about burying the stuff and tinfoil masked smells, and she said she had food. She was on her hands and knees and near to him.

She touched his arm. Her hand was on his wrist.

'I think I've realized it, the truth. You really don't know what happened. Each time you say it, it's honest. You don't know, it's the truth . . . I'm batting on - like some bloody shrink - about denial, but you actually don't know what happened. I can see that now. What I'm saying, Malachy, for going on like a pig, I'm sincerely sorry.'

He saw the regret on her face. He took her hand, small and cold, lifted it, brushed his lips against it and dropped it. He watched her crawl away, then

disappear down into a gully, go clear of the wind, and resumed his watch on the sea, the waves and the surf.

She was, he realized, the first person who believed him - and no other bastard had. Except her, they had all rushed to judgement, vindictive or ignorant.

27
April 2004

He was led by the client from the hallway and into the
living room, and young Kitchen was following him.

'Oh, that's a fine room, excellent dimensions, right for a
family,' Horace Wield enthused. He owned his high-street
business outright, did not have the clutter of partners. He
liked to believe that, as an estate agent, he provided a better
service than the chains that competed with him. It was all
about reputation and building confidence with clients,
whether they were buyers or sellers. This was a seller, and
his first estimate was of an asking price of £449,000, and a
bottom limit if the going was tough of £419,000. 'So much
you can do with a room like this - have a bridge party,
friends in for a football game on the telly, a kids' session,
relatives round at Christmas ... I'm confident that a house
with a room of this size will, absolutely, not hang around,
and it's very nicely decorated. People like that - spend an
arm and a leg on the house and want to enjoy it, not have
to rip the wallpaper straight off. Very tasteful. .. Thinking
of going somewhere smaller, are we?'

They were. Their son was on the move, but they had a
daughter up north and wanted to be closer. A mass of silver-framed photographs stood on the mantelpiece over the gas fire

- small children, the daughter and her husband, and a young
man standing proudly in profile, wearing mess uniform.

'The carpets and curtains look best quality. Do I assume
they'll be staying, available to a buyer? Always good if they
can be left. . . Mr Kitchen will note that.'

Well, he'd taken a chance on that young man, and Horace
Wield had built a flourishing, trusted business on following
the instinct of his nose. When he had advertised in the local
free sheet for a trainee assistant agent he had been bombarded by youths with earrings and bulky women in
trouser suits with shoulder pads, and there had been young
Kitchen, who was ten years too old to be a trainee assistant,
but had a bearing about him, and damn fine shined shoes.

Had something of sadness and something remote, distant, a
presence and a good voice, had come out of the army,
wanted civilian life. Horace Wield had gone with his nose,
and it was a Friday that marked the end of young Kitchen's
first week. Of course, the money was rubbish for a man of
his age, but he'd drilled the magic word 'prospects' into him

- come Monday when he had Rotary, or Tuesday when he
had golf, he would seriously consider letting young Kitchen
out on his own, if the property was at the market's lower
end. Truth was, he liked him, and thought a bit of polish
walked with him.