Silence. They stand side by side, straining their ears for a sound. It feels weird, thinks Ashok. Like it did before, when I was alone: like someone’s out there, listening.
Tony shakes his head. ‘Badger.’
‘Badger?’ asks Ashok, incredulously. ‘Do you get badgers in towns?’
‘Well I dunno, do I?’ says Tony. Looks down at his trousers, hoicks his zip. ‘C’mon.’ He turns away, starts back towards the fence.
Ash waits a couple of seconds, listens some more. There’s nothing out there now: just the sound of shuffling on the pavement and the rustle of the leaves by his shoulder. It’s nothing, he thinks. Just the sounds you hear sometimes. Things moving and settling, stuff slipping off roofs.
A cry, from the darkness: frightened, gurgling, cut off. That wasn’t a badger. A girl. That was a woman’s voice. Out there somewhere.
He hears Tony swear; hears the others, their voices suddenly alert. In the bushes something thrashes, bucks, falls still.
‘Shit,’ says Tony again. ‘Fuck. That was… Jesus.’
Rav and Jez crash through the fence, shove the last bolt from its mooring. ‘What was that?’ asks Jez.
‘I don’t…’ says Ash. ‘I think it was a…’
Tony’s running clumsily over the piled-up bricks in the middle of the yard, always the leader. ‘Hello?’ he shouts. ‘Where are you?’
In the far corner, they hear a struggle, another gasp cut short. The three laggards set off in pursuit of their friend, spread out, run towards the noise. I’m scared, thinks Ash. I’m not a hero. I don’t do this sort of thing. He catches a trainer on the corner of something sharp, stumbles, bangs his shoulder into Jez’s arm. Feels a hand shoot out and push him upright.
Tony scrambles up the slope towards the bushes. He can see something behind now: something unnaturally white, something that doesn’t fit. It moves. Christ. It’s a man. There’s a man in there.
‘Over here!’ he shouts. Isn’t thinking now, is just doing: pushes aside the branches as he hears the others’ footsteps veer towards him.
A body plunges outward, catches him round the knees, sends him tumbling. Tony screams, with shock, then with anger as he hits the ground and feels the sharp crack and slice of glass entering his skin. The guy’s on top, but he’s not staying there. He’s struggling to disentangle himself, using Tony’s crotch as traction as he prepares to make another run.
‘Fuck!’ howls Tony. This hurts. The fucker’s got his knee on his hip, is sliding about. Tony grabs at his white shirt, pitches and rolls. Gets on top as the others arrive, pins the man down. He sees a flash of dark hair, a gold earring. Then Jez is there, pushing the man over, pinning him down.
The woman struggles for air behind the bushes. Ash and Rav push past. Tony can hear their voices: aggressive with alarm, trying to sound calm, self-assured. ‘It’s OK. It’s all right. We’ve got you. It’s all right.’
She’s pale and plump and barely conscious; huddles with her dress rucked up over her hips and her hands in front of her face. ‘It’s OK,’ says Ash, and tries to reach out to her. She sees his hands and starts to scream – a hoarse, shattered sound, as though her throat is damaged – as she swipes at them with broken fingernails. He has to grab her wrists to stop her, kneels in front of her, his knee between her naked thighs.
‘Aaah,’ she yelps. ‘Aaah no, aaah!’
Pale light casts through the shadow and he sees her face, a foot from his own. It is pulped, bloody: her nose leaking, an eye so swollen he’s not sure if there’s anything behind the lid. ‘It’s OK,’ he says again, helplessly. ‘You’re safe now. It’s OK. We’ve got you.’
Behind him, he hears the swish of boots through air as his friends begin to kick the fallen man.
Chapter Thirty-one
Martin knows he needs to do something, but he doesn’t know what. The shock was too great last night: the discovery of the links within links, the awful plots he doesn’t understand, left him reeling helplessly, whirling in rage and impotence. His anger was so fierce, so near-erotic, that he almost went up Mare Street again to see if anyone had taken over Tina’s patch, but at the last moment self-preservation held him back. He got lucky last Saturday. Can’t expect for a moment that such dumb luck will hold again. If he’s going to repeat the experience, he needs to be a lot more careful.
So he plans and he thinks, and in the meantime he sticks to his usual routine. Which, on a Sunday morning, is to treat himself to a sausage roll and a bar of chocolate while he does his washing.
Sunday morning is a good time to go to the launderette. The usual trade – holidaymakers and families whose washing machines have broken down – don’t make it down there on a Sunday morning, and he usually gets a machine straight away. And the warm, steamy benches make for a cosy, intimate atmosphere. Once, he struck up a friendship with a young woman called Carly, who worked as a cashier at the amusement arcade on the pier. They talked three Sundays in a row, but just as he was about to invite her to dinner her shift changed and her laundry routine with it. He dropped in to the arcade a few times, hoping to find her working, but he never saw her again.
It’s a beautiful morning. Weak sunshine breaks through last night’s clearing clouds and a million hanging raindrops glitter on the promenade balustrade. It’s one of those days when Whitmouth, washed clean by the rain, looks its sparkling best. Martin hoicks his bag of bedclothes over his shoulder and hurries through the sharp air. The street is surprisingly busy. There’s a knot of people outside the police station, just staring at the door as though they expect it to burst into flames. He doesn’t think anything of it. The station has had a magnetic effect on the press at start and close of play every day this summer. He brushes past and turns up Canal Street, skirts round a pile of uncollected cardboard boxes outside the gift shop on the corner.
The launderette is empty. A couple of machines churn in the middle of the row, but no one is about. Through the bubbled window of the office door he can see the pixellated version of the overalled Romanian woman who runs the place. She’s talking on the phone and he sees her throw her head back and laugh. Martin chooses a machine, puts the open mouth of his bin bag into it and tips. He never has to sort: you only have to sort if you don’t plan ahead. Everything he owns has been deliberately chosen to fit within the narrow spectrum of dark blue, grey and black. He adds the measured-out freezer-bagful of powder from his anorak pocket, dials it up to sixty. He’s about to slam the door when he catches a whiff of his anorak and realises that it must be a year since he bought it. He turns out the pockets on to the bench – coins, a couple of sticks of chewing-gum he remembers buying before his first date with Jackie Jacobs and a spare chip fork – and throws the coat in on top of the rest. Then he goes to the shop to buy his treats for the day. The wash cycle will take an hour. Martin would never waste money on a service wash, but he’d never waste time either.
As he steps out into Canal Street, he almost collides with someone hurrying along the pavement. It’s Amber Gordon – but not as he knows her. She’s a strange shade of pale grey, and hasn’t brushed her hair. She’s walking so fast she barely avoids him; lurches as she passes. For a moment he thinks that her backwards jump is a personal slight, but then he sees that she hasn’t clocked his face at all. He waits for her to acknowledge him, feels piqued when she doesn’t. Her eyes are rimmed red, and she looks as though she’s got dressed in the dark.
‘Sorry,’ she mutters absently, and hurries on down the road. Shaking his head, he walks on. Doesn’t really care what’s going on in the woman’s life, but feels a tweak of pleasure at having witnessed her distress. I hope something’s happened. It would serve you right. Bring you down to earth.