Читать книгу Darkmans - Nicola Barker - Страница 14

It never rang; not ever. The last time Kane could actually remember (and the fact that he could still clearly recall this occasion – and in florid detail – said it all, really) was when his Great-Aunt Glenda (a true family gem) had died, aged ninety-six, in 1994.

To mark her passing, Beede’s cousin, Trevor (who was horribly burned to death – a mere eight months later – in a tragic house blaze), had rung him up on that distinctive, brick-orange phone with a complex assortment of funeral arrangements:

1. All mourners to wear pink (she’d considered it a ‘sacred’ colour).

2. Lengthy, heartfelt readings to be performed (and then distributed in the guise of a commemorative pamphlet within a one-mile radius of her home in Esher, Surrey) from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Joyce’s Dubliners and Problems of Reconstruction by Annie Besant.

3. A proper, old-fashioned High Tea to be served, accompanied by home-made egg-custards, cinnamon buns (from Fitzbillies’ traditional bakers in Cambridge), tumblers of apricot wine and her own very smoky blend of Lapsang Suchong.

4. Marigolds to form the centre of all her flower arrangements (she’d been a devoted gardener, but had suffered from chronic hayfever, and this cheerful, brightly coloured genus had been one of its main perpetrators. In consequence of this fact, she’d thought it might be ‘a bit of a hoot’ to make her final journey in a coffin absolutely swathed in the damn things: ‘Bring along a jemmy,’ she’d said, ‘and if you hear a sneeze, then be sure and prise me out…’).

She’d died – inevitably – in the depths of winter. Not a single humble British marigold to be had. The import costs had been astronomical and Beede had been furious (although his objections – he’d insisted – weren’t so much monetary as environmental –

Yeah, right…)

Kane had just loved her for that.

And then –

But of course…

– there was his father’s magnificently choleric expression as he stood, in church, determinedly booming forth one of Gibran’s more flowery flights of fancy dressed in a crazily lurid, salmon-coloured shirt –

Absolute fucking class!

Even now, all these years later, Kane could distinctly recall over-hearing that landmark conversation through the cracks in his linoleum. He’d been upstairs stewing in the bath at the time – eight…nine Christmases ago. Ten, even.

And the phone had barely rung since (so far as he was aware – I mean he didn’t stand guard over it or anything). It lived a very quiet existence (what could it comprehend, poor soul, of the advent of touch-tone, of texting and the internet?). It was almost superfluous (like Sleeping Beauty, in the midst of that great, big doze); to all intents and purposes, it was pretty much dysphonic.

Beede was resolutely ex-directory and nobody but distant (and now mainly dead) family had ever been privy to that particular number (even Beede’s brother only ever contacted him via the hospital laundry).

But it had a fantastic bell. When it rang it produced an astonishingly pure, clear, old-fashioned sound; an elevated, almost ecstatic ‘peal’, a rousing, piercing, energising clamour.

Kane loathed phones. He really did. It was one of the few chinks in his easy-going armour. Yet it wasn’t the technology itself that he objected to (Come on – he prostrated himself, hourly, at the altar of the disk and the drive and the chip), so much as the inbuilt element of surprise; the sense of a demand being made, then registered, then automatically responded to (‘What am I?’ he’d sometimes mutter. ‘A dog to be whistled at?’).

He used his own phone continuously (had to, for work), but he chiefly relied on its texting facility, and if – by chance – he was awaiting an urgent call, he’d set it on to vibrate (a vibration he could just about tolerate – it didn’t shriek or keen or insist) and then shove it, carelessly, into the front pocket of his denim jacket.

The brick-orange phone continued to sing.

Kane re-entered the flat, strolled over to Beede’s desk, placed his hands on to his knees (bending from his hips, keeping his legs tensed – like a linesman at a tennis match) and gazed down at the phone, scowling.

Still – still – it rang. He expostulated, sharply, then crouched down and curled his arm around the pile of magazines (accidentally snagging the top few with the turned-up cuff of his jacket and pulling them down on to the carpet –

Damn!)

He grabbed the receiver –

Wow…

Heavy

– then placed it, tentatively, to his ear. He didn’t speak.

And at the other end of the line?

Silence.

‘Hello?’ Kane whispered, finally.

(Was this an entirely different world, this Beede-phone world? Was he speaking into some kind of supernatural vacuum, into a sphere utterly beyond everyday concepts of the here and the now?)

‘Beede?’

Male. Young-ish. A pronounced German accent.

‘No.’ Kane stood up, smartly (the highly coiled, creamy-white wire connecting the receiver to the phone stretching itself, languorously).

‘No. This is Kane, his son.’

‘Kane?’

‘Yes.’

Kane nodded.

‘Beede’s son?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Beede there, by any chance?’

‘Uh,’ Kane glanced nervously around him, ‘no. No, he isn’t.’

‘Oh.’

Long pause

‘I suppose you could always try him at work,’ Kane volunteered, helpfully.

‘Yes. Yes. That’s true. I could. In fact I was. But this number suddenly just…it just popped into my head. Out of the blue. It was really…really quite odd. So I grabbed the bull by the horns and I just…I rang it.’

‘I see.’

‘You know how that happens, sometimes?’

Eh?

Kane frowned and cocked his head.

‘Although I’m not sure if he ever…’ the German muttered, distractedly.

Pause

‘…I’m not sure if he ever actually gave it to me. The number. I just plucked it from…How to describe it? I just plucked it from the air. From…from the ether.’

Longer pause

‘Isn’t that odd? Do you think that’s odd?’

Kane cleared his throat, nervously, not really sure how to answer.

Silence

‘Perhaps you could leave him a message?’ he finally suggested (impressed by the quiet, somehow. It didn’t drag. It was dynamic. It crackled. Was that a German thing? Did the Teutonic races have some special kind of strangle-hold on the high-quality conversational hiatus?).

‘Beede’s son…’ The German mused, reflectively, as if calling something very peripheral to mind.

Kane said nothing.

‘Beede’s son, Kane…’ he repeated, this time rather more emphatically.

Kane merely scowled.

‘Kane. Yes. But of course…’ (a connection was suddenly established), ‘now I remember: you shared a coffee together, didn’t you, earlier this morning?’

Was that a question, Kane wondered, or just a bald statement, posing as one?

‘Although – and I’m being brutally honest here,’ the German confided, ‘when I actually looked over towards the window – the window where he pointed (and I can see it now, very clearly, in my mind’s eye) you were gone. The window was empty. So there was no way of really…of really knowing…’

‘We did meet,’ Kane butted in, impatiently, ‘quite by chance. Just before lunch. At the French Connection.’

‘That’s it!’ the German sounded gleeful. ‘That’s right! That’s exactly right! The French Connection! Ha!’

Kane took a small, nervous step back, a move which the phone line gently resisted.

‘What did you say your name was, again?’ he asked, feeling a sudden, sharp twinge of paranoia.

‘So you’re absolutely positive, then,’ the German barrelled on, determinedly, ‘and I mean totally certain that you met Beede there for coffee this morning?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Kane fired back, defensively.

‘God, yes…I remember the fort…’ the German muttered (heading off, without warning, on a sudden tangent) ‘…the children’s fort. The fort is significant, but I’m not entirely sure…uh…’

‘Who are you?’

Kane was now officially freaked out.

‘Isidore,’ the man answered plainly (perhaps a little startled by Kane’s forceful tone). ‘Didn’t I say so before? I’m sorry. How incredibly rude. Forgive me. I’m Isidore. Dory. Beede and I do the tours together.’

‘Pardon?’

Kane didn’t follow.

‘The Ashford Tours. I’m the chauffeur. Beede’s my guide.’

‘Ashford Tours?’

Kane still wasn’t quite up to speed.

‘Yes…Although it’s just a side-line, really. And your father’s been so caught up in his work at the laundry lately…Security’s our main function – keeping keys, guarding empty properties, a little light detective work…’

‘Beede is your guide?’

Kane was struggling to catch on (I mean Beede? A guide? That old sourpuss? Welcoming people? Putting on a show? Being informative? Friendly? Obliging? Beede being positive? About modern Ashford of all places – the source of all his gloom? The heart of all his disappointments? Had the world finally gone absolutely bloody barking?).

‘A great guide. A brilliant guide. Your father is quite a remarkable man,’ the German observed, dryly (was it dryness, or something else?), ‘but I’m sure you’re already very well aware of that fact.’

‘Oh yeah…’ Kane mumbled, with a vague smirk, ‘absolutely.’

His mind was momentarily drifting elsewhere. The children’s fort. Fort –

Eh?

What was that?

He drew a sudden, sharp breath as he registered an unpleasant, pinching sensation in his forearm. He glanced down. He realised that he was now supporting the phone receiver against his shoulder and that his right hand was clutching – very tightly – on to his left arm (where the old sunburn scars were) –

Ow!

He blinked. He relaxed his grip –

What?!

The outer edges of his scar tissue had been reddened by the roughness of its manhandling. He scowled.

‘But of course,’ he suddenly found himself saying, ‘it must’ve been you – on the horse.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. You…Tall. Fair-haired. Wearing some kind of…of navy-blue uniform.’

The German seemed bewildered by this revelation. ‘Me? On a horse? Riding? You actually saw me on horseback?’

‘Yeah…Well, no. You were climbing off. You’d climbed off.’

‘And you were there with Beede, you say? In the restaurant? Having coffee?’

Kane grimaced, impatiently. ‘I think we already established that.’

He leaned forward and picked up the stray magazines from the carpet.

Silence

‘And then?’ the German asked, tentatively.

‘What?’

As Kane carefully placed the magazines back on to the pile again he noticed a bank statement which’d been preserved, flat, between a couple of the editions.

‘Then Beede left?’ the German persisted. ‘Is that how it happened?’

‘Uh,’ Kane considered this for a moment, eyeing the statement, casually, ‘yeah. Quite soon after. Once the chiropodist arrived.’

‘The chiropodist?’

The German’s voice was hoarse with excitement. ‘You mean Elen? The chiropodist? She was there?’

Elen

Of course

Kane glanced up, smiling.

‘My wife was there?’

Kane’s smile faltered.

‘Good God.’

The German seemed overwhelmed by this idea.

‘Although in actual fact,’ Kane frowned as he remembered, ‘the boy almost had me convinced that there were two horses…’

‘Sorry? What? A boy?’

‘Her son,’ Kane paused, ‘your son. A sharp little character. He said that there were two. But if there were, then they were pretty much indistinguishable…’ He paused again ‘…which I suppose they’d need to be, really, for the trick to work.’

‘You’re telling me that there were two horses?’

The German – rather slow on the uptake, Kane thought – swung from excited to panicky.

Kane stared down at the statement again, distractedly, then his brows suddenly shot up –

What?!

Holy fuck…

‘Was Beede on one of them?’

Kane continued to stare at the statement, as if mesmerised.

‘Hello? Are you there? I said was Beede on one of them?’

‘No!’ Kane snapped, exasperated. ‘Beede was with me. I saw one horse. But the boy said that only by using two horses could you have managed the change-over so quickly. The swap. Like in a trick. A magic trick…’

‘Swap? Who swapped?’

The German sounded terrified.

‘You and the other man. The…’ Kane struggled to describe him, ‘the strange…the creepy…’

‘Which man?’ The German rasped.

Kane closed his eyes and tried to visualise –

Black

Yellow

Black

He shuddered, ‘The dark man…’

And then he found himself hissing – ‘…Ssssssss!’

With no forewarning, his mouth was –

Good God!

It was hissing – ‘Darkmansssss.’

Kane quickly clamped his errant lips shut –

Where?

How?

What the…?!

Isidore hung up.