Secret Story (29 page)

They started trembling at once. She couldn’t hold on for long. She gripped so hard that every finger throbbed, and so did the thumbs at the small of her back as she attempted to swing her legs over the side. The task was even harder than she’d feared. If she had been able to support herself on one leg while the other made its bid for freedom she was certain she would have succeeded, but both legs bound together were more than twice as cumbersome. As she strained to hook them over the side of the bath she was suddenly afraid they would be blocked by the wall of the room. They fell short of the edge, and her left foot slid down the inside of the bath.

She managed to set it down with almost no impact. She took a breath that dragged smells of glue and plastic into her head. With a final effort that bruised her fingers she grasped the edge at her back and supported her entire body on them while she hauled it up. She was shaking from head to foot by the time her left ankle scraped over the side of the bath, but at least she’d encountered no wall. She was going to have to let herself down gradually onto the bathroom floor, otherwise there was far too much risk of alerting her captor. As soon as both feet were over the side she rested her ankles on it, though it dug into them, and settled most of her weight on her trapped hands. She had to bear the posture while she regained some strength, but she couldn’t stay like that for long. She was grasping the edge so that she didn’t topple helplessly onto the floor, and her hands were growing painfully numb, when she heard Dudley’s voice.

She redoubled her grip so as not to fall and strained her ears. He’d sounded so distant that she had been unable to distinguish his few words. Had his mother come home? The possibility felt so much like hope that Patricia almost let her feet drop to the floor
to make her presence known. Instead she set about swinging her legs over the edge. She might not have shifted even an inch when an object settled on top of her head.

It was hard and rough. It was the sole of a shoe. It was Dudley’s, and as he pushed her down, the thought that he’d been viewing all her efforts was almost worse. Her position cramped her stomach into an aching lump until he kicked her legs into the bath. “Clumsy,” he said in her ear.

Did he expect a response? She thought his face was continuing to hover over hers. “Better try and get comfortable,” he said. “You won’t be going anywhere.”

His voice was both louder and somewhat more distant. Patricia emitted a mumble, mostly through her nose. Its inarticulacy didn’t matter; indeed, it might lure him close enough for her to butt him. Surely if she did so hard enough he might be knocked out until she somehow escaped. But when he said “Don’t understand you” his voice was still more remote.

Patricia struggled into a sitting position and tried again with even less of an attempt at speech. “Sounds like you’re buried alive,” Dudley said. “That’s a help. That could go in a story.”

This time she made all the vocal noise she could. It was high and protesting but not, she wanted to believe, as uncontrolled as a scream. When her breath gave out at last he said “I can put that in too.”

She repeated the protest and began to swing her feet back and forth, thumping the sides of the bath. However muffled the sounds were to her, mightn’t the neighbours hear them? Her hopes seemed to be confirmed at the same time as dashed when he trod on her ankles. “Can’t have you breaking anything,” he said. “Looks as if you aren’t as well brought up as you try and make everyone think. You’re like the others after all.”

As she felt him undoing her trainers she squeezed her feet together and threw her upper body forward in case she could injure
him. It was no use; her legs were too outstretched. She couldn’t even prevent Dudley from pulling off her shoes. She heard a faint thud as he dropped them or flung them away, and then he finished treading on her ankles. “Thump all you want now,” he said. “Thump like a rabbit if you like and I’ll write it. Nobody’s going to hear you but me, however much noise you make.”

Patricia grew quiet and motionless, though very far from calm. If she gave him absolutely nothing to observe, might he be unable to work? Could that mean he would have to let her go, or would he torment her until she inspired him? The notion made her body clench around her stomach, and it was almost a relief to hear him speak until she understood what she was saying. “Don’t worry, you won’t ever be alone. I’m sleeping in here.”

Did he resent it? Just now the worst of being blind and virtually deaf was her inability to be sure of his tone or see his expression. It was pretty nearly as bad to have no idea of the time of day. Surely it was night if he was talking about sleeping, and so it couldn’t be long before her parents wondered where she was. If they rang her, might Dudley be careless enough to answer? She no longer had her mobile, and so he must have it. In any case, Vincent and Colin knew she had gone off with him and would be bound to tell the police when questioned. It couldn’t be long before the police came to the house. She did her best to believe this with such force that it fended off his voice. “I’ll never be far away,” he said. “I’ll be thinking up plenty this weekend.”

At last Kathy slept, but never for long. Far too many thoughts were jostling for space in her head.
Watch Out For The Wife
hadn’t proved to be the kind of comedy she was expecting. A young Liverpool woman drowned her violent drunken husband while they were on holiday in Tenerife, only to decide once she returned home that some of her friends’ husbands deserved putting down, and eventually husbands of strangers too. Although she was arrested in the end, she looked more than ready for a sequel. Quite a few of the women in the auditorium cheered her actions, and several of the couples around Kathy came out arguing. She supposed that might be the point, in which case it didn’t concern her. She was too worried that the film might make life harder for Mr Killogram.

Surely there was room for two films about Liverpudlian serial killers. The woman hadn’t convinced her half as much as he did.
Kathy wished she knew how Dudley’s research was helping him. Visiting the scene of a death ought to have given him ideas, but would he be able to use them? Mightn’t he encounter the same problem he’d had with the girl at Moorfields? Kathy had switched on her phone as soon as she’d left the cinema, but there was no message—nothing from him.

She lay in the narrow bed under the hotel window that admitted shouts and the smashing of bottles and the labouring of taxis up the hill. She oughtn’t to keep feeling she was the only person Dudley could turn to. She mustn’t be jealous if he found a girlfriend. She was sure that he was more interested in Patricia Martingale than he thought his mother realised—and all at once she was wide awake and staring up at the mocking twinkle of a star. So much had happened since Dudley had found her work on his computer that she’d forgotten she had invited Patricia to the house.

They’d agreed that Patricia would wait for her call, but Kathy’s address book with the number in it was at home. Surely Patricia wouldn’t try to contact her until at least mid-morning if at all. Kathy had to head that off in case the girl phoned her house. She dragged her legs out of the hot tight bed and consigned some of the effects of her nervousness to the toilet before calling the first enquiry line that came to mind. The number for Martingale in Hoylake was ex-directory, a woman in India informed her.

They should know it at the
Mersey Mouth
. Would anybody be at the office yet? When she obtained the number, Patricia answered at it. She was only a machine, apparently too replete with messages to accept one. Kathy took refuge in the shower, but the cramped cubicle made her feel more imprisoned than refreshed. She dressed and tried the magazine again without success, then knelt on the bed as if to pray, in fact to watch the empty street extinguish its lights beneath long thin gilded clouds. Once the sun began to hurt her eyes she stood up.

In the basement a sullen waitress brought her tea and faintly tinted bread to represent toast, and more tardily a plate scattered with a sausage and a pinkish rasher, not to mention a fried egg with a burst yolk beside a partially flayed tomato. Kathy’s calls kept tasting of all this as she climbed the stairs and lingered in her room. She’d lost count of her attempts, and was wondering if she should walk across town to the office, by the time a live voice answered, though not one she had anticipated or was likely to welcome. “North and south, it’s
Mersey Mouth
. East and west, we’re the best.”

“May I speak to Patricia Martingale?”

“I reckon she’s having a lie-in this morning. Are we expecting Pat?” Monty shouted, and translated an inaudible response into “We don’t think we’ll be seeing her today.”

“Then may I have her number, please?”

“Don’t know if we give them out. I’m not the receptionist, you may have noticed. I’m just the poet that picked up the phone. Do we tell anybody anybody’s number, Walt?” he asked in order to transmit “Who wants to know?”

Kathy saw that she ought to have foreseen this, and felt trapped and stupid. “Dudley’s mother.”

“It’s never Kath.”

“I should say it has to be. I’m the only one who went through having him.”

“I had a bit to do with it, didn’t I? As I remember I already said sorry for not wanting to let them down at the gig I was doing the night he came.”

“I’m sure you must have. Are you able to tell me the number? It could be quite urgent.”

“What are you after her for? Is it something to do with Dud?”

“It’s an arrangement I have to break.”

“Girly stuff, is it? Didn’t Pat want you having her number?”

“It isn’t to hand where I am.”

“All right, Kath, no need for your office voice.” Somewhat less to her he said “It’s Dud’s mam.”

“I guess it should be fine. Go ahead.”

After almost enough of a pause to goad Kathy into demanding the reason Monty said “We’ve got her home and a mobile, Kath.”

“If it isn’t too much trouble I’d like both.”

“Got some scribbling material?”

“Certainly.”

“You’ll be a writer yet.” As she finished copying the digits onto the pad for which the shelf barely had space, Monty said “You’ll be seeing her tonight, won’t you?”

“Not unless you know something I don’t.”

“You’re not coming to see Smith and Son at their first gig?”

Kathy had forgotten the event in the midst of so much else. “If Dudley’s there of course I will be.”

“You reckon he mightn’t? I’d better talk to him.”

“Please don’t do anything of the kind. He’s having to work to a very important deadline. You’ll be taking him away from it tonight in any case.”

“It won’t hurt him to buck up his image. Maybe you shouldn’t encourage the stuff he’s been writing so much.”

“I rather think your employer’s pleased with it.”

“Buggeration, that was low,” Monty said, and she imagined him clutching his groin.

“I’m just asking you not to disturb him at his work when he’s already under so much pressure. That’s why I wanted Patricia’s number, to put her off coming round today.”

“Round where? I thought you weren’t at home.”

Kathy supposed she had implied that, and cursed herself for carelessness. “I will be soon.”

“You’re going to remind him about tonight, are you?”

“Of course, if it’s necessary.”

It wouldn’t be, she knew. However fiercely she wished that Dudley wouldn’t interrupt his writing, she was sure he would never let his father down. “Where are you on?” she said.

“The Political Picket Club in Everton. By the old washhouse, if you know where that is.”

When Kathy tried Patricia’s mobile it answered with silence not even enlivened by static. This yielded to an imitation of a bell, and after six twinned rings she heard “Hi, it’s Patricia.” The voice was so lifelike that she almost greeted it before it added “I can’t talk now. If you want me, don’t be shy. Leave a message.”

“Patricia, it’s Kathy Smith. I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel this weekend. We’ll see if we can do it next week if that’s not too late for you,” Kathy said and called the Martingales’ number.

It had hardly started ringing when the phone was snatched up with a clatter. “Patricia?”

“Is that Mrs Martingale? It’s Kathy Smith, Dudley’s mother.”

With an audible effort at politeness or professionalism Patricia’s mother said “Is it to do with the magazine?”

“It is. Could I speak to Patricia?”

“She isn’t involved any longer. If you still want her you could try her mobile.”

“I have, but I couldn’t raise her.”

“Then that makes three of us. Gordon? It’s Dudley Smith’s mother. The writer.”

In rather more than a couple of seconds a man’s voice said “Mrs Smith? I’m Patricia’s father.”

“Do call me Kathy. Forgive me, did I just upset your wife somehow?”

“I’m sure you didn’t. The problem’s closer to home, or more accurately the opposite.”

“I think you’ve lost me.”

“Not only you,” Gordon Martingale said and cleared his throat. “Has Patricia let you or your son down as well?”

Kathy heard a muted protest in the background as she said “I’m not clear what the situation is.”

“She’s left her mother’s magazine and gone to London.”

“Good Lord, that’s sudden, isn’t it?”

“So sudden she couldn’t be bothered to mention it. The first we knew was when she texted her mother last night.”

His resentment was beginning to infect Kathy. Had Patricia left without telling Dudley she was quitting the magazine and him? “Has she got another job?” she restrained herself to asking.

“She apparently thinks she’s found a better one. Supposedly if she weren’t there today it would go to someone else. Now you know as much as she’s troubled to tell us. I rather think she was ashamed to say any more to her mother, or at any rate she ought to be.”

As the phone conveyed another muffled objection Kathy said “I hope you’ll wish her luck from me and Dudley anyway when you’re back in touch.”

“No doubt she’ll put in an appearance when she needs some clothes. For the record, why did you want her?”