"You're drowning me," she spluttered.
"Serves you right." He set her on her feet again and turned off the tap.
"You asked for passion," she said, dripping water over the quarry tiles. "Don't you like it now that you've got it?"
He tossed her a towel. "Hell, yes," he said with a grin. "The last thing I wanted was a wife who understood. I will not be patronized, woman."
She shook her head in fury, splattering the kitchen with droplets. "If one more person calls me patronizing," she said, "I will do them some damage. I am trying to be charitable towards some of the most useless and self-indulgent egotists it has ever been my misfortune to meet. And it's bloody difficult." She rubbed her hair vigorously with the towel. "If the world was made up of people like me, Jack, it would be paradise."
"Well, you know what they say about paradise, old thing. It's heaven until the horned viper pops his head out from under the fig leaf and spots the moist warm burrow under the bushes. After that all hell breaks loose."
She watched him pull on his old donkey jacket and take a torch from the kitchen drawer. "What are you planning to do exactly?"
"Never you mind. What you don't know can't incriminate you."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
His dark face split into a grin. "What for? So you can stitch him back together again when I've finished with him? You'd be a liability, woman. Anyway, you'd be struck off if we were caught, and someone's got to stay with Ruth."
"You will be careful, won't you?" she said, her eyes dark with concern. "In spite of everything, Jack, I am really very fond of you."
He touched a finger to her lips. "I'll be careful," he promised.
He drove slowly up Palace Road, located number twenty-three and the white Ford transit outside it, made a circuit of the block and drew into a space which gave him an unobstructed view of the house but was far enough away from it not to attract attention to himself. Yellow lamplight gleamed along the street, throwing pools of shadow amongst the houses, but few people were abroad at eight o'clock on a cold Thursday evening in late November, and only once or twice did his heart jump at the unexpected appearance of a dark-clad figure on the pavement. An hour had passed when a dog emerged into a swathe of light ten yards from the car and began to rootle amongst some garbage by a dustbin. It was only after several minutes of watching that Jack realized it wasn't a dog at all but an urban fox, scavenging for food.
So prepared was he for a long wait, and so entranced by the delicate scratchings of the fox, that he missed the door of number twenty-three opening. Only the noise of laughter alerted him to the fact that something was going down. With narrowed eyes, he watched a group of young men piling into the back of the van, saw the doors slam and a figure disappear round the side.
Impossible to tell if it was Hughes. Ruth had described him as tall, dark and handsome, but, as all cats are black in the night, so all young men look the same from thirty yards distant on a winter's evening. Jack, gambling on something else she had said, that the van was his and he always drove it, pulled out behind it as it drove away.
The doctor has written "heart failure" as the cause of Father's death. I had difficulty keeping a straight face when I read it. Of course he died of heart failure. We all die of heart failure. Mrs. Spencer, the housekeeper, was suitably distraught until I told her I'd keep her on while she looked about for another niche for herself. After that she rallied with surprising speed. That class has little loyalty to anything except money.
Father looked very peaceful in his chair, his whisky glass clasped in his hand. "Taken in his sleep" according to the doctor. How very, very true, in every respect. "He drank far more than was good for him, my dear. I did warn him about it." He went on to assure me that I need have no fears about him suffering. I made an appropriate response, but thought: What a pity he hadn't. He deserved to suffer. Father's worst fault was his ingratitude. James was really very lucky. Had I realized how easy it was to get rid of drunks, well, well ... enough said.
Unfortunately, Joanna saw me. The wretched child woke up and came downstairs just as I was removing the pillow. I explained that Grandpa was ill and that the pillow was to make him more comfortable, but I have the strangest feeling she knows. She refused to go to sleep last night, just lay looking at me with that very unnerving stare of hers. But what possible significance could a pillow have for a two-year-old...
*15*
Half an hour later and well into the better side of town, the van drew to a halt in the shadows of an expensive-looking house to pick up the wide-eyed adolescent girl waiting there. The hairs began to crawl on the back of Jack's neck. He watched her climb with gawky eagerness into the passenger seat, and he knew that she was as unprepared as Ruth had been for the surprise that Hughes had waiting for her in the back.
The van took the coast road east towards Southbourne and Hengistbury Head and, as the traffic thinned, Jack allowed the distance between it and him to lengthen. He toyed with one possibility after another-should he stop to call the police and risk losing the van altogether?-should he ram the van and risk injuring himself and the girl?-should he try to deter them by drawing in beside them when they parked, at the risk of their driving off and giving him the slip? He discarded each idea in turn, seeing only their weaknesses, and suddenly felt a deep regret that he hadn't brought Sarah with him. He had never wanted the comfort of her friendship quite so desperately.
The van turned into a deserted car park on the sea front, and more by instinct than design Jack killed his lights, thrust the gears into neutral and freewheeled to a stop beside the kerb some fifty yards behind it. Every detail of what happened next was lit by a cold, clear moon, but he knew what to expect because Ruth had described Hughes's MO in all too graphic detail. The driver, Hughes for a certainty, flung open his door and jumped out on to the tarmac, dragging the girl after him. There was the briefest of scuffles before he pinioned her in his arms and carried her, kicking and struggling, to the back of the van. He was laughing as he wrenched the rear door open and flung her like a sack of potatoes into the lit interior. The square of light shone out briefly before he closed the doors and strolled away towards the sea shore, lighting a cigarette as he went.
Jack could never explain afterwards why he did what he did. In retrospect he could only really remember his fear. His actions were governed entirely by instinct. It was as if, faced with a crisis, normal reason deserted him and something primeval took over. He focused entirely on the child. The need to help her was paramount, and the only method that presented itself was to open the van doors and physically remove her from danger. He eased into first gear and motored gently towards the transit, watching Hughes as he did so to see if he picked up the throb of the engine above the wash of the waves against the shore. Apparently not. The man stooped lazily to gather stones from the beach and send them spinning out across the black water.
Jack coasted to a halt behind the van and left the engine purring while he unbuckled his belt, drawing it from around his waist and wrapping the end about his fist. He took the heavy rubber torch in his other hand, clicked open the door and slipped out on to the tarmac, sucking in great draughts of air to still the thudding of his heart.
In the distance, Hughes turned round, took in the situation at a glance, and started to pound up the beach.
Adrenaline plays tricks. It floods the body to galvanize it into colossal and spontaneous effort, but the mind observes what happens in slow motion. Thus time, that most relative of phenomena, ceases to exist in any meaningful way, and what Jack would forever insist took several minutes, in reality took seconds. He burst the van doors open and brought the torch down on the head of the man nearest him, bellowing like a bull. The startled white face of another youth turned towards him and Jack flicked the belt across it in a vicious backhand swipe, crooking his elbow round the first man's neck as he did so and pulling him backwards on to the tarmac. He released his hold and brought the torch round in a scything arc to smash under the chin of the face he'd whipped, toppling the youth off balance into thin air behind him.