‘You mean she’s dead?’ he said quietly.
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Then what’s the idea?’
I could hear his harsh breathing and feel his agitation; the Rafferty’s rules style of the real hard men were becoming clear to him, and he must have seen his own little coup was a panto by comparison. I didn’t feel like easing up on him.
‘Ever hear of drowning? The lungs fill up with water and life stops. Happens every day and it’s hard to prove that one person drowned another.’
‘Christ’, he said. ‘Hurry.’
The way he said it reminded me that he’d been in Vietnam. I turned at the cosmetics factory, cut the engines and the lights and let the car roll down to the back of the blocks of flats near the water. Short was out of the car before me.
‘How do we get down to the water?’ he asked.
‘There’s usually a right of way.’ I pointed to a gap between two block of flats. ‘Have a look along there, I’ll look up here.’ He scooted off and I moved up towards the end of one block. I turned back when I heard a low whistle; he’d found the right of way-an overgrown brick path with a derelict handrail that led down to the water. We stumbled down the path and across a stretch of grass to the half acre or so of lighter platforms linked together like chain mail. An outside light from the flats cut through the gloom but the end of the lighters and their far edges were in darkness. Dark, lumpy shapes stood up here and there, piles of boxes and other debris-cover. Across the water the container terminal was working; the machinery ground and grated and there was an occasional crash as a heavy load touched down hard.
‘We go out to the end’, I whispered, ‘and if there’s nothing there we work around the sides. Keep under cover and listen for a boat, could be a motor, oars, anything.’
Short nodded and we stepped over the gently lapping edge of the water onto a platform. It was slow, nervy work trying to avoid the collapsed and rotting timbers and keep under cover. About half way out we heard noises off to the left. Getting closer I could see movement; shoulders and heads against the light thrown out from the container dock. There was a boat in the pool of light and Selina Hope was sitting up in it; her hands were tied and there was something across the bottom half of her face. Mustard Cleary was picking up a box a few feet back from the water and the other man was untying a rope that ran from the boat to a cleat on the lighters. Short touched my arm and showed me the iron bar he held ready to hit with or throw. His readiness for action impressed me. I stepped out and moved up close with the. 38 held out police style.
‘Police’, I yelled. ‘Don’t move!’
Cleary dropped his load swearing; he ducked low and rushed the gun. I fired over his head and the sound was cancelled by a metallic crash from the container wharf, but Cleary heard it, and stopped. He bent down to grab something and I came forward quickly and crashed the gun butt down on his neck. He crumpled and I nudged him again on the way down.
When I untangled my knuckles and straightened up I heard heavy breathing and scuffling off to the side and saw that Short had moved to the edge of lighters for a bit of hand-to-hand with the other man. The rope had been untied and the boat had drifted off a little; Selina sat ram-rod straight, watching the action with terror in her eyes. Short’s opponent was swinging a bit of timber and Short was giving ground; then he seemed to lose his footing and he was hit on the shoulder. Some more swings, some more backing from Short, then another stumble; the timber swinger jumped forward to go for the head but Short swayed aside and smashed his elbow with the iron bar. The timber hit the platform and Short put the bar to his knee, balls and elbow again, quickly and scientifically. The guy screamed and begged him to stop. I moved in with the gun, feeling a little superfluous.
‘Good’, I said, but Short was hauling on the rope.
We got Selina aboard and free and she babbled and held on to Short as if he were the last sane man in a world gone mad. I eased them apart after a while and suggested that we be on our way.
‘What about them?’ Short asked. I was covering Cleary and his mate with my gun in a vague sort of way; Cleary was conscious but was more in a lying-down than standing-over mood. I gave Short one of my hard looks and held out my hand.
‘Give me the money.’
He looked pained but he handed the envelope over. I put the envelope down beside the man who was rubbing his genitals thoughtfully. ‘Tell Xavier to forget it’, I said. ‘Tell him to go to confession and do the stations of the cross, and forget it. It’s over, finished. Got it?’
He nodded and I patted his shoulder. ‘Wait here a while and then you can go home. Unless you’d like another go at him?’
He shook his head. We left them there with their aches and pains and thirty grand and walked across the lighters to the distant shore.
Back at the car Short made a clean breast of things, putting himself in the best possible light. He pleaded necessity, swore he intended to protect her and so on. Selina had been scared witless by Carlton’s boys: she said she’d done nothing but scream and cry and hadn’t told them anything because she hadn’t understood what was happening. She still didn’t, properly, but she’d seen Short fight like Lancelot in the lists for her and that was enough. They were both experiencing a sort of danger and deliverance high, and I felt like a voyeur. I drove them to Selina’s place and made her promise to ring Athol Groom with the good news before she did anything else.
It was after nine on a clear, mild night but I was feeling far from clear and mild myself. There were things about Colin Short that niggled at me, but I had bigger problems. I stopped at the Toxteth and bought whisky for me and gin for Cyn. Maybe we could sit out on the bricks with the insects and take a little tobacco and alcohol and talk things out. Maybe. The house was dark and the front gate stood open but not welcomingly. I went in and found Cyn’s note on the kitchen table: it said she was sorry, it said she had left and would collect her things tomorrow, it said good luck.
I poured a big drink, made some cigarettes and sat down to think. Like every married man I’d fantasised about being free; well, here it was and how did I like it? I didn’t like it much. I drank some whisky and I still didn’t like it. I thought that the talk wouldn’t have gone well anyway and that it would have come to this and it was better to have missed that last fight. I drank and got angry and wanted the fight. She had no right to deny me the fight. Upstairs the bed was made, the ashtrays were empty, the books were stacked. She’d taken some clothes and things for beautifying herself. I looked around and mentally separated her possessions from mine. It was surprisingly easy to do.
I drank some more and self-pity ran strong and I thought sourly about Selina and Short and trust and love. I poured the rest of the whisky back into the bottle, drank two cups of strong coffee and went out to the car.
Breaking into Short’s studio took about two minutes, locating his life’s treasures took a little longer. Some marks on the floor and a certain artfulness about the ashes in the grate told me that all was not as it seemed. A section of the brick fireplace had been taken out to accommodate the heavy, brass-bound chest. I pulled it out, waited a few minutes to be sure that errant torch beams weren’t attracting attention, and tickled it open with a skeleton key.
Colin Short was a great photographer, he had a particular talent for men in the public eye and attractive young women. I recognised a politician and radio announcer and could probably have identified a few other faces if I’d tried. A couple of films had a similar cast list.
One bundle of pictures showed a young, dark woman playing games around a swimming pool with a couple of very interested middle-aged men. The hair was different in style but it was Selina Hope. I took these pictures and a few samples of the rest and put the chest back.