A Cast of Vultures (18 page)

I heard a crackle and fizz. Static. A radio. This wasn’t Baldy & Co. And they weren’t Kew employees either. They were the police.

I knew that I should slide down to the main post again, where they would be able to see me, but when I tried to, neither my muscles nor my brain would allow me to move. The muscles were cramped from hours of hanging on, and stiff from the able-to-leap-tall-buildings-in-a-single-bound antics I’d put them through. My brain wasn’t cramped, or stiff, it was just frozen. Earlier, fear had moved me from implausible plan to impossible action with nothing in between. With what looked like a rescue team below me, my brain was telling me what any sane brain would have said all those hours ago:
If you climb down there you will die
.

I attempted a shout, but my voice had frozen along with my muscles. I had to clear my throat several times before even I could hear myself. And then it took a few more tries before it was loud enough for anyone on the ground to hear. ‘Hello? Hello? Up here.’ Even to myself the words were feeble, but past experience had failed to give me any indication of what to say when perched in a tree before dawn in a botanical garden. A gap in my education.

Finally I broke off a small branch and threw it down. That, together with a peeved ‘Hey!’ made two of the torches shift sharply upwards. I shook the branches and shouted again. Voices came nearer, and a torch beam traced out a path along the strut to the trees. Then a man called, ‘Are you Samantha Clair?’

What, there were two women up trees in Kew Gardens in the middle of the night? It was a more exciting place than I’d thought.

That was not, however, a sensible response, so I settled on a croaked ‘Yes’. It sounded like a tree frog was speaking.

The torches gathered around, and I could see the shouter in their light, his hand cupped around his mouth as though I were a steamboat he was hailing in a dense fog. ‘Hang tight,’ he called.

Ya think?
One of the beams found me among the branches. I ducked to get the light out of my eyes. ‘Stop that. It’s dangerous,’ I snapped, as though sitting in treetops was a recommended activity when performed torch-free.

The light moved away from my face. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ I’d kept relatively calm all night. Now the cavalry had arrived, I was going to pieces.

The person on the ground came to the same conclusion. ‘They’re coming,’ he said in the tone people use on frightened children and kittens. ‘They’ll only be a few minutes.’ Nice kitty.

I heard an engine, but it was on the other side of the tree, and I couldn’t see anything until it pulled up under the walkway. The light of the torches showed it was one of those open carts, a cross between a golf cart and those things that take oldies to their gate at airports. Even before it came to a halt, a shadow in the front seat was out and jogging over, to pull up short under the pole with hands on hips.

‘Jesus fucking Christ, Sam!’

Jake.

Just as one day I will be able to pretend I had a plan when I dived over the railings, so too I would like to believe that one day I will be able to pretend that everything went
smoothly after that, that I was helped down in a dignified manner, that I gave an orderly, maybe even bullet-pointed statement to the police, and then went home, still dignified, to rest quietly. I would like to believe that I will be able to tell the story this way one day, because the reality swung from embarrassing to outright humiliating.

After twenty minutes or so of people hanging about on the ground and staring up at me, a cherry-picker drove up and parked beside the golf cart under the walkway. Its arm was raised until a platform nestled next to me. Standing in it was a middle-aged man in Kew overalls. He opened a gate in the side and said, in broad Glaswegian, ‘In you get, hen.’

The pretend me smiled a polite-middle-class-female smile, thanked him graciously for his help while apologising for putting him to so much trouble, before stepping daintily onto the platform that was now firmly beneath me. The real me, however, clung ever more tightly to the metal strut, burst into tears and shook my head wildly from side to side. It wasn’t even that I was scared, or thought I might fall. It wasn’t anything rational.

You would think the man in the cherry-picker had been plucking wailing women out of trees for years. ‘I’m Walter,’ he said, ‘and I know you’re Samantha.’ And after that he didn’t say anything that could be accurately transcribed, just a litany of
All right now, hens
, and
Shhhs
. He didn’t try to make me let go of the strut, or lift me away, just petted me like a small animal. I don’t know what they teach them at horticultural college, but Walter must have gone for an advanced degree.

After a few minutes he pulled back and looked at me. ‘Ready to try?’

I nodded, and he slowly unwound one of my arms from the strut, wrapping it around his shoulder before moving to the other arm. Then my legs followed, and I was clinging to Walter instead of the support, with my face mashed into his neck. We descended like that, and even when we reached the ground he kept holding on to me, his murmurs as soothing as a mother cat’s rough licks.

I felt another hand on my back, also petting the shuddery kitten, and I turned my head. When Walter saw I recognised Jake, he transferred me across, never letting my feet touch the ground.

‘Can you stand?’ Jake asked. ‘Do you want to?’

I shook my head and wiped my nose on his shirt before I looked up. ‘But I really need to pee.’

I said it wasn’t dignified.

Jake gave a bark of a laugh and smoothed my hair back. ‘If you’ve been up there all this time, you probably do. Let’s get you cleaned up.’ And he carried me over to the golf cart, saying to someone as he passed, ‘Back at the offices.’

We drew up to a building that looked like an elementary school, but I barely saw it as Jake carried me straight through to what must have been the staff loo. He put me down once the door swung shut behind us, and said, ‘A paramedic is on the way.’

I waved it off with one hand, but clutched the sink hard with the other for support. ‘Don’t need one. It’s just scrapes.’

‘Humour me.’

I looked in the mirror and worked at not shrieking. My hair looked like the big reveal on a programme starring David Attenborough. My face had a great raw patch on
one side, where I’d scraped it on the metal strut. My hands were ripped to shreds. He was right. ‘And a tetanus jab.’

Back in someone’s office, I sat on a desk and had my face and hands disinfected and bandaged. The scrapes ran down my neck, and I removed what was left of my shirt so that they could be cleaned too.

‘What’s that?’

Jake was glaring at the side of my ribs. I craned my neck round to see. Bruising. ‘That must be where he kicked me.’

He closed his eyes. I recognised that look. I’d been the cause of it before, but I couldn’t see how this was my fault. I tried to distract him. ‘Do you think the gift shop has a T-shirt I could wear?’

He took a deep breath, then opened the door and spoke to someone outside. By the time the paramedics had finished, a T-shirt had materialised, illustrated front and back with the wildflowers of Kew. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but then, spending the night hanging onto a metal pole wasn’t on my first-choice list either. I put the shirt on and the paramedic wrapped a shiny metallic blanket around me. It was only then I realised I was shivering.

Tea followed, with the paramedic adding four spoons of sugar. My dentist was going to have a heart attack at my next check-up. I tried to take the cup, but the shaking was too strong. Jake held it to my lips. ‘Sip,’ he said. I did. ‘Again.’ I did.

We kept on that way until I’d had half. Then, ‘You need to tell us what happened. It can’t wait.’

I knew it couldn’t. ‘Of course.’

Four uniforms filed in, a woman and three men. The
woman and one of the men were introduced, but I didn’t listen to their names. Jake moved closer to me and looked over at the woman. ‘OK if I begin?’

She gestured:
Be my guest
.

‘Start from where I left you,’ said Jake. ‘What did you do right after?’

That was easier than trying to work out what was important and what order to put it in. ‘I stayed up on the top of the pagoda. There were footsteps.’ And slowly, with a lot of I-forgot-to-says and doubling back to fill in, I told them everything.

As I knew from experience, the police never feel you’ve had the full benefit of the giving-a-statement experience until you’ve repeated a story a minimum of three times, although they prefer to aim for double figures. The woman took me through everything again, and her colleagues joined in, asking me to go over what the men had said in particular, then their appearance. I described Sprained Ankle at least five times. Baldy got less attention: I’d only glimpsed him briefly from above.

After they pressed me on Sprained Ankle’s appearance a sixth time, I asked, trying to tamp down any sign of exasperation, ‘Don’t I get to go somewhere and look at mugshots, or is that just on television?’

The woman smirked. ‘We’re technologically advanced. I’ll email you a link, and you can look online.’

The miracles of modern life: on the one hand, you no longer had to sit in a police station drinking instant coffee, on the other, you develop carpal tunnel.

Then one of the men who had not been introduced said, ‘Do you think they actually had a weapon?’

I blinked. ‘They discussed shooting me. What else would they have meant?’

Jake’s expression said he thought it was a sensible question. ‘They might have been trying to frighten you, so that you’d come down if you thought they’d shoot.’

I considered that. ‘I believed them, but whether that’s because I’m not up on thugs, or because they really had a gun, I can’t tell you. Does it matter?’

‘If they were armed, it points towards professional criminals rather than violent amateurs.’

Was I supposed to be miffed that whoever wanted me dead hadn’t been willing to spring for top-of-the-line thugs, or relieved that they’d cheaped out on entry-level brawn?

No one said anything for a few minutes. Finally Jake moved on. ‘Where were they from?’

I stared at him. ‘I only request photo ID before an assault: I never thought to ask for proof of address. And as luck would have it, we didn’t have time for them to show me photos of their seaside cottage before it got dark.’

One of the uniforms turned a laugh into a pretend cough. Jake knew me well enough that he just continued as though I’d said something rational. ‘Did they have accents? Were they Londoners?’

I played it back in my head. ‘Yes. Probably. I don’t know.’ I leant against him. ‘Maybe estuary?’ I never claimed to be a good witness.

He pushed the tea towards me again. By my count I was on my third cup, but I knew he was right, and I needed it, and at least I’d reached the stage where I could hold it without spilling. I drank. Then, ‘Please can I go home? I know you need more, but later? Tomorrow?
Please.’ I closed my eyes. I was going to cry again.

I was still leaning against Jake, and I could feel him turn towards the woman. She must have agreed, because the others stood, and Jake pulled away. ‘Come on, tiger. Can you walk?’

I slid off the desk and found that yes, I could. And we went home.

In books, after the heroine is rescued, it says ‘And we went home’. The authors omit that the heroine is wrapped in a silver blanket and wearing a Wildflowers of Kew T-shirt. Or that, even though she’s filthy, the bandages on her hand are bulky and have to be kept dry, so her partner has to brush her teeth and wash her and help her in the loo. Which is why books are so much better than life.

But even in real life I was eventually clean and dry, and I headed straight for bed. Jake piled the spare duvet, which I keep for when someone is sleeping on the sofa bed, on top of ours. Then he vanished, returning with a hot-water bottle – from Mr Rudiger, I learnt later. I was vaguely aware when he tucked it in by my feet. I felt his hand on my head, and nodded into it when he said, ‘I’ve left a message with Miranda to say you’re ill, and I’ve let Helena know you’re home in one piece,’ but I was asleep before he’d reached the end of the sentence.

It was early afternoon when I woke up, and the flat was silent. I shuffled down the hall to the kitchen, and there was Mr Rudiger, stirring a pot on the stove. ‘Ready for lunch?’ he asked, as if he frequently dropped by my flat to cook while I slept. ‘It’s minestrone.’ What I love most about Mr Rudiger is that he never bothers with the superfluous – no ‘How are you feeling?’ when the answer was plainly ‘Like
death on toast’ – and he never talks for the sake of talking.

Instead he dished up the soup and cut me some bread from a baguette, both of which he must have brought downstairs with him, because neither had been in my kitchen when I went out the previous day. We sat in silence and ate. With a little effort, I managed to lift both the spoon and my glass without spilling. When I’d had enough, Mr Rudiger washed the dishes. I was too – not even tired – I was too apathetic to move. Initiating anything was too much effort, so I sat and watched him, and when he finished I let him lead me to the sitting room and guide me to the sofa. He covered me with a blanket, and then sat in an armchair across the room, picked up his book, found his place and started to read. He was, said his withdrawal, there if I needed him, but I didn’t have to interact. So I didn’t. I stared at nothing for a while, and then I slept some more.

It was dark when I woke, and Mr Rudiger was no longer in his chair, although the book was open, face down, which suggested he hadn’t gone far. I heard voices down the hall, but staring into space still seemed like enough activity for the moment, so I did that again. Eventually the voices drew nearer: Mr Rudiger and Jake.

When he saw I was awake, Jake switched on a lamp behind me. Mr Rudiger collected his book silently. I sat up, and Jake came over to sit next to me. After a few minutes he said quietly, ‘You know I need to ask you more, don’t you?’

I did, but first it was my turn. ‘What happened last night?’