Death Toll

28

John Joe Murray adjusted the oars so that they just brushed the surface, like the legs of a water boatman, skating on the sea. Ahead, in the flooded moonlit marshes, he could see his destination: the old coal barn, brick built, on its island of sand and reeds. He didn’t look up, because he knew he’d see the lights of Wells if he did, and that would wreck his night vision which let him see the world in grey, black and silver. There’d be the lights inland too, along the crest of the north Norfolk hills. He’d known this stretch of coast all his life — all his life with Lizzie. They’d helped Bea choose Morston House back in 1983, and they’d come whenever they could to escape from the Flask. And as the years went by he’d come more often on his own, sailing up the river to the sea, then hugging the coast.

So if he looked up he knew what he’d see. The little seafront, Bea’s house by the boatyard, the tower, and its single lit room. Bea would be there at the window, waiting for him to signal from the barn when he was safe. Bea had always been there for him and Lizzie, and John Joe knew that was because she’d always wanted Ian to be happy, because the boy was all that was left of the mess she’d made of her life, the one thing she was proud to leave behind. She wasn’t proud of John Joe, she was tolerant, but he was thankful, even for that. So Bea hadn’t asked questions when he’d tied up after dark. But when he’d told her why he was there, Bea had said he was crazy, confused, because who would want to kill him? He couldn’t tell her the truth — she was the last person he could tell. So he’d told her nothing. Just that he had to get away, to vanish. She mustn’t tell anyone. Not Ian. Not Lizzie. It wouldn’t be for ever, or even for very long, but now — right now — he needed a haven.

But he did know why his life was in danger, even if he couldn’t share it.

The night of Nora Tilden’s wake he’d gone to Freddie Fletcher’s table and they’d talked about Pat Garrison: the black kid who’d dared to look at Lizzie like that, with his dark, watery eyes. The black kid who was going to get all this — the Flask, right in the heart of their community — get everything, said Fletcher, their fathers had fought for. And Sam Venn was there too. And he had his own little hateful song to sing: that God was watching, and God would punish them for wanting to mix their blood — the blood of cousins. So they’d drank some more and decided on a plan: they’d wait for the kid in the cemetery, corner him and teach him a lesson. Break a bone. Bruise that unblemished skin. But they needed a weapon. So John Joe slipped back behind the bar and found an optic bottle that needed changing — the malt whisky — lifted the ivory key ring so that he could unlock the cellar. He’d seen Alby the Christmas before with a gun: a grey metal revolver he said he’d salvaged off the Stanley. And he knew where he kept it — up in the attic, in a sea chest. So he slipped upstairs and opened it up: but the revolver was useless when he finally got it out of its box, more like a child’s toy than the real thing. Then he’d seen the billhook, and he’d stood there in the moonlight by the window, testing the heft of it, and liking what he felt.

When he got back to the bar Sam and Freddie were gone and he thought they’d lost their nerve. He sensed that both were cowards, because they had so much hatred in them, so much belligerent energy. Then he saw Sam through the bay window, out on the deck by the river. Sam whispered in John Joe’s ear so that he could smell the whisky on his breath. ‘He’s getting his coat.’ And Fletcher was there, whispering with Kath Robinson. The three of them slipped out to wait for him in the cemetery: Murray, Venn and Fletcher. And Kath had watched them go.

And now they’d found the kid’s bones in Nora’s grave.

If John Joe hadn’t felt so ill, so sick with worry, he’d have gone to the Shipwrights’ Hall lunch with Freddie and Sam, because they agreed they had to go on, live their lives as if nothing had changed. When he’d heard that Fletcher was in intensive care up at the Queen Victoria he’d felt not fear, but the ghost of a fear. Did someone know? He’d gone up to the hospital to see him and found him in a small side room off the main ward — and his fear blossomed, because he knew what that might mean, because that was where they put people they thought would die. He’d looked at Fletcher, sprawled on the bed, his skin like lard, swirled with black hair, and told himself that it wasn’t possible. This was chance, an accident. If death came for Freddie Fletcher it would be a random killing. He stilled his panic. To banish it he just needed to see Sam Venn, to check that he was all right. Davey Howe, the friend who’d bought his ticket, had told him that Venn had been sick at the Shipwrights’ Hall, but recovered and taken a cab home.

Venn lived in two rooms over the London Road Shelter. Downstairs the kitchen and meeting room were locked up for the night, although the smell persisted in the sticky doorway: cabbage and sweat and damp cigarette butts. He’d thumped his gloved fist on the metal grille. Looking up, there’d been no light, but he knew that if Venn wasn’t at the church then he’d be at home, and he’d seen Pastor Abney on Explorer Street, and he’d said the church was closed because only Sam could work the boiler, and he was ill, and it was freezing, wasn’t it?

So he had to be home. There was an alley down the back of the building and from there he could see a light — not in the bedroom, but dimly in the little window that let on to the stairwell.

The door with the sign that read warden was unlocked. He rested his hand on the brass handle and pushed it open; it flew back, banging on the concrete wall and then rebounding, almost back to closed, so that he’d seen what was inside for only a few seconds, and then the image was gone. Neat, swept wooden steps, and halfway up a jacket, then a scarf above that, and shoes at the bottom, discarded. He pushed the door open again and looked at the shoes. The laces were still done up. He shouted up the stairs. On the fifth step there was a pool of something viscous, a pale fluid which he thought gave off the faint odour of high tide.

He climbed the stairs, stepping over the little puddle, and shouted again. The door slammed at the bottom and that made him jump so badly that he could hear his heart lurching in his chest like a rocking horse.

He found Sam Venn in his bed. He’d died with a bible on his chest, open at Leviticus. Vomit lay in a pool by his neck where it had run from his mouth. John Joe looked at him for only a moment, just long enough to know that he was looking at a dead man, and just long enough to think how odd that was — that as the rigor mortis had taken hold it had equalized the features of his face, so that the lop-sidedness had gone. And the left arm, his good arm, was held as awkwardly as the right, both half-crossed over his chest, resting on the Bible, holding it open. He knew Sam Venn well, and guessed that he’d arranged himself to be found like this, like a martyr. And he thought how pathetic it was that he’d got the Bible upside down, so that he couldn’t have been reading it at all.

Standing there, his blood had run cold: ice in his veins. Because now the impossible was just a bit more possible. If death had come for Sam Venn, and death was waiting for Freddie Fletcher, then perhaps it would come for him. Perhaps someone did know. Perhaps someone wanted revenge. But he asked himself the question again. Who? Kath had seen them go. But there must have been others. And Kath wasn’t his enemy. She was family. But he did wonder then, standing at the foot of Sam Venn’s deathbed, if that was enough.

The tide was drawing him out from the land, so he stowed the oars and let the boat drift. The salty air and the fear had made him thirsty, and he wondered if there was anything to drink in the picnic basket Bea had given him. And food — he hadn’t eaten all day, because there was a coldness in the pit of his stomach. His boat edged seaward, so silently, so effortlessly, that he had the brief illusion he wasn’t moving at all, but that the world was slipping under him, sliding past, so that it felt as if the island which held the old coal barn was edging towards him under its own power.

He waited for the inevitable meeting of wood and stone, then edged the boat along the rubble quay, using an oar like a punting pole, around the barn until he was on the north side, hidden from the coast. It was high tide, but the coal barn, all that was left of an old harbour, stood clear of the water. Rising sea levels had inundated the rest since the last boats had brought in coal in the early twentieth century. Now it provided John Joe with all he needed: a place to be, where no one came.

As he tied up his boat snowflakes fell out of a clear night sky. The door, still weatherproof, swung easily on iron hinges, and by torchlight he climbed the stone stairs to the first floor, spread a blanket on a pile of nets and opened the picnic basket. Inside he found food in a supermarket bag, which he hung from a hook in one of the roof beams, and a two-litre bottle of water from which he drank immediately. Then he looked about him: a pile of firewood was stacked along one wall and the fireplace was clean. By the time he’d gathered some dry reed heads from the bank outside and set the fire with shreds of old newspaper it was nearly midnight.

Only when the red light from the flames began to flicker and light the room did the old memories come alive: he saw, strobe-lit, Lizzie’s naked back, arched with pleasure, a leg stretched wantonly across a warm blue blanket. He felt guilt then: that he’d just left her without a word. There would be a time for the truth when he was safe, but not now.

He wrapped himself up in the blanket by the fire but couldn’t sleep, so he went outside and sat on the stone step looking at the frosty planetarium of stars, and wished he’d had the presence of mind to bring his guitar. But he did have the penny whistle, he always had that, and so he sat and played a tune. He’d played only one verse when he remembered the signal — so he went and got the boat’s lantern and set it on the south bank, facing the coast, and sat beside it, feeling better, content that the only person in the world who knew where he was, was Bea. She’d be there, looking north, because she’d promised to wait until she saw the light. And of all the people he trusted, he trusted Bea the most.