Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller (23 page)

“Fire away, Gavin. Fire away. I don’t mind. Your big guns mean jack shit to me. Evidence? I have evidence? Funds? I’ll show what I have to any national newspaper and I’ll get all the backing I need.”

Miller squirmed uneasily in his seat, but his face remained calm. “You’re bluffing,” he said.

Carl shrugged, unconcerned. “Read the manuscript yet? I doubt you’d have destroyed it without first taking a peek at it.”

“Not all the way. It’s as garbled as the others. I take it you have, in spite of your assurances.”

“What do you take me for, an imbecile? Course I’ve read it. I have a copy of it. I have copies of them all. I have the originals, too. Things you’ve not even clapped eyes on, Gavin. Very revealing things.”

“So what do they prove? I know where they came from. They’d hardly stand up in a court of law, would they?”

“Can you risk that? You don’t know what I have.”

“Like I said, you’re bluffing.”

“Look, I’m not really a bad man, Gavin. I’m just an ordinary guy with a shitty job that pays crap. All I want is a little understanding.” Carl’s eyes were wide with expectation and he had to turn away from Miller to disguise an uncontrollable grin.

“What you’re talking about is blackmail.”

“Please, Gavin,” said Carl, holding up his hands and twisting his features into mock disgust, “that’s an insult. Blackmail’s illegal. I just need a little help from you, that’s all.”

“Financial help, I take it,” Miller spat, his eyes narrowing. “You’re a scheming little bastard, Carl, that’s all. Don’t pretend you’re something better.”

“And were you as nasty with Mrs. Randolf? Did you ever accuse her of blackmail?” He was delighted with Miller’s reaction, albeit subtle jumping of the jaw muscles. “How do you justify the vast amounts she’s taken from you? Helping out a friend? You see, I’ve been doing some checking up of my own, and, surprisingly, Mrs. Randolf has never been in any financial situation that qualifies her as capable of paying Overton Hall fees like she’s been doing all these years. Far from it, as you know. Not unless, of course, she has someone like wealthy Gavin Miller to pay them on her behalf. But why would he do that, I ask myself? It’s been a small fortune over the years. What would make a man fork out so much to keep such an imbecile in such comfort? Two things, I surmised, were powerful enough. Friendship and fear. Or perhaps a bit of both. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“You’re clutching at straws, Carl.”

“Am I really?” His brows dropped and he moved closer to Miller, bending down to him so that their faces were mere inches away from each other. “Enough of this,” he began evenly. “I’m tired of it. Don’t take me lightly, Gavin, you’ll regret it, believe me. But – and I guess it’s because I’m a Gemini – I have another side to me. I’m also a very generous man. I’m giving you a little breathing space. I want you to go home, finish reading the manuscript. Let’s see if you come to the same conclusions as I have. Then maybe we’ll get back together when you’re more amenable, discuss a few arrangements. Because, as you’ll find out, there’s more to this than pure plagiarism, as bad as that is. Things start to get really serious when murder’s involved.”

*  *  *  *

I didn’t see Max for twenty years.

Say it fast and it doesn’t sound so bad. But twenty years… Where did all those intervening years go?

Twenty years and then I came here to Eilean Mor.

If only I knew then that I would never leave…

The bay, shaped a little like one of those two-pronged prosthetic claws, took some of the sting out of the storm-tossed sea, but the swells were still strong enough to cause the boat to buck uncertainly.

The pilot manoeuvred the boat alongside the wood and concrete jetty, and at any moment I was sure the waves would carry us into it, smashing the wooden sides to a pulp and plunging us both into the frigid sea. Not a pleasant thought, as it brought to mind a certain freezing canal and reminded me that I still couldn’t swim. I glanced at the pilot, but he looked right through me with eyes of blue ice, totally unconcerned, the wind whipping around his face and causing his already sodden hair to lick out like streamers. His granite expression never faltered, even when a particularly strong gust shoved us with alarming speed towards the jetty. He skillfully brought the tiny craft under control, however, and then motioned at me with a red hand to jump across the small divide to a metal ladder. I frowned, thinking he must be joking, that he must surely be going to pull alongside and tie her up first, but his face didn’t possess a single humorous muscle, I decided.

“It’s too far to jump!” I yelled above the din of the wind and sea.

His eyes rolled briefly to the heavens. Bloody tourists, I thought I read in his tired expression. He motioned impatiently with his hand to the ladder.

“Listen, Popeye, I’ll fall in!”

“Then I’ll turn back!” he grumbled. “Have it your way. I don’t care one way or the other.”

Cursing under my breath, I launched myself into the spray-drenched air and landed, thankfully, with a loud clank against the ladder, hauling myself up to the boards of the jetty. I shook my hands of water, and the next moment my suitcase was flung up and landed beside me, skidding across the boards. Then another. I lifted them, one in each hand, shouted at him that there might be something valuable in them, but he waved as if I’d paid him a compliment.

“What now?” I called, but the wind tore away my voice and ripped it to indecipherable shreds. He waved again and the boat reversed away from the jetty, spray shooting up in sheets as a wave hit the stern. “Wait a minute!” I yelled. “Where do I go? You can’t just leave me here!” Obviously he thought he could. The craft spun around and chugged away, and I decided I was in the better place, judging from the way it was being tipped perilously from side to side. Had I really come all that way in that thing – in this weather, I thought? I watched as it became a brilliant white speck on a thunderously grey ocean, merging with the breakers as it dipped from sight every now and then into the swells, the engine noise swallowed by the wind. It rounded the headland and vanished.

I turned at last to view the island of Eilean Mor up close, a weighty suitcase in each hand, the rain beginning to pelt down, driven by the wind and cutting across in front of me like tiny spears of ice. There was a narrow shingle beach, at that moment its pebbles hissing stridently as the waves threw themselves relentlessly and foaming onto it; seaweed, of various colours and hues, was strewn about the place like discarded plastic garlands following a party; a couple of huge gulls squabbled with each other over something that might once have been living, but it wasn’t easy to tell. Beyond this and straight ahead rose what can only be described as a wall of a hill, studded here and there with tough clumps of sparse, dark vegetation that looked to be shivering in the gusts of wind which tore noisily over the grey, lichen-spotted boulders. Part of the hill at some recent time had collapsed down onto the beach as if some tremendous ice-cream scoop had been at work.

I strode along the jetty and stepped off onto the shingle beach, putting my suitcases down by my side. To my left I could discern a narrow track that scoured its way over the hill; to my right there seemed no easy way to scale the earthen beast, the view that confronted me seemingly comprised of nothing but misshapen boulders and rocks weathered smooth by nature, and the incessant moaning and sighing of agitated water.

What do I do? Do I wait here, or do I set off and head for the track? I thought that Max would have at least sent someone to pick me up. You can’t just leave a person stranded in the middle of nowhere, I thought, the cold fingering its way beneath my damp and not too suitable clothing. It’s not like I’d stepped off a bloody bus. This was as close to wilderness as I’d ever been, and it became more unsettling the longer I was left to consider my lonely position.

Lonely position.

Wasn’t that always the case?

How do you describe the passage of time when that time is so full of dross that it might as well be full of nothing? So full of nothing it ceases to exist. Standing on that deserted beach I looked back at all my life in that way. Like it was a void, a timeline with nothing marked on it. Zero. Everything happened, and nothing happened. It felt to me like when Max took that eraser and wiped out Walton’s maths questions.

Twenty years. It had been twenty years since I last saw Max face to face. It makes no difference how fast you said it, I thought as the gale stirred up past emotions and past memories, as if they were there all the time hanging loosely in the air, waiting for this moment to be bundled together, twenty years is a long time to let slip by so easily, and not to be able to account for it properly seemed a tremendous sin. What would I tell him when we met again? Yeah, sure I’m doing OK. One affair, one divorce, two parents dead, living all alone. Moved out of that grotty job, though, at Boulton’s. What am I doing now? I work at a supermarket. Remember the
Chronicle
building? Well they pulled the whole lot down; the area’s an industrial estate now, supermarket, bowling alley, McDonalds drive thru. Someone bought the South Yorkshire Chronicle brand, though, and was about to start the paper back up again. But me, yeah, that’s right, I’m working in that supermarket by the canal. I’ve moved full circle, back to where I began, by the canal. Back to that fucking canal.

I sat down on my suitcase, wet head in wet hands, body all scrunched up against the chill. I hadn’t seen Ruby either, not for – I didn’t even want to think about it. The thought cut.

Ruby divorced me, eventually. Like a cumbersome and aged car we tried our best to keep the marriage going, patching it up, taking it out for a little spin, breaking down, repairing the damage. In the end the marriage was taken to the divorce courts and scrapped. There was immense sadness, and immense relief also. Adultery on my part meant we could get it over and done with faster. Remember the girl from Boulton’s tills? The one with the A Levels? Yeah, well, I needn’t say any more. I can’t blame Ruby, far from it. I blame myself entirely. You can want to hold onto something so tight you squeeze it to death, and I’d been strangling Ruby. She needed air, space. Her space, not mine. It was me who choked the life out of our marriage like a clumsy, pared-down Lenny.

When mum and dad died I moved into their old house, which became my old house once more, and I shared the place with dusty old memories that refused to budge even after the application of gallons of magnolia paint and reams of fresh wallpaper. I wanted to sell it, move out, but the simple truth was I couldn’t afford to, not on supermarket wages. So rather than take out a mortgage on something that wouldn’t be half as good, I decided to hang onto a house that was, after all, fully paid for. That’s what I told myself, anyway.

Mr. Radunski died, but not before his business had taken a nosedive after the miner’s strike, from which it was never to recover. And he kindly left me a gold crucifix I once admired in passing, which I remember he said he’d had for thirty years, but which turned out to be gold plated. I still hung onto it. Sentimental reasons. I wondered whether he might finally feel safe now that the Russians couldn’t get at him. I hoped so. He spent so much of his life nervously waiting for them he deserved a rest. Mrs. Radunski married again and moved away. The butcher’s shop closed down eventually, becoming a storage place for a man who did house clearances, a man who openly used to pray for bad winters so that the older folks would catch flu and die so that business might pick up. I used to pass it sometimes, looking up to see the room which Ruby and I had started our married life, now crowded with the looming shapes of dark-veneered wardrobes and bric-a-brac, the tired flotsam of someone else’s lost existence.

I still don’t know what happened to all those intervening years, and why so little could take up so much time. I used to pity Mr. Radunski, but in many ways we were very similar. When I wasn’t working I sat alone in the house, pretending to make a life out of watching TV, or listening to the hi-fi. My friends were my work colleagues, and any friendship was always terminated with clocking off. One by one my relatives either died or moved away, or I quite simply forgot to visit, until they were mere smudges at the back of my mind, only given real substance by the perfunctory sending and receiving of Christmas cards. Occasionally I had women friends. None of them stayed long. Perhaps I still used Ruby as a measure, and perhaps that measure had become too tall an order for others to compete with. Relationships were thus intense and fleeting. So like Mr. Radunski I sat and I waited, but I guess I didn’t know what I was waiting for. At least his waiting had a point, a focus, even if it was rooted in fear. I allowed myself to rot away, any hopes and ambitions smothered by the aching dullness that was my life, by my own canker-like self-pity that corrupted and tainted my thoughts. I grew to despise myself.

And all the while Max taunted me.

Not directly, of course, because Max wasn’t around anymore. But we all knew of Max, the local boy from Overthorpe made good. If there was ever a light held up to brighten the sordid reality that was my hometown, then Max was inevitably that light. And rightly so, I guess. He took a job with BBC Radio, briefly, then moved on to television, doing exactly what we didn’t know, but there were all manner of rumours circulating, aided by Connie who thrived on rumours. I saw him a few times on the local news programs, but he seemed to disappear in the way people do that you’ve once known but lose track of.

My fragile world collapsed a little more when the impossible happened, the unthinkable thing that still affects me now.

Connie died.

Forgive me, for I know this is sounding like an obituary, but as you approach a certain age that’s when your life starts to disassemble at the edges like a ragged piece of material, and realization sets in that death is to be expected, is too in-your-face to be denied, or merely associated with the unfortunate lives of others. But even then, Connie’s death hit me hard.

She wasn’t old, and somehow I’d expected her to go on forever, unlike many others around me, people I felt had long ago used up their lives, were ready to wither and die as a natural next step. What’s more there was no reason for her to die. She was perfectly healthy, had achieved a modicum of happiness. But die she did, in her sleep. She stopped breathing and never woke up. The autopsy shed no further light on the matter. Inexplicably she simply stopped living. As always, even in death, she was guaranteed to start tongues wagging.

I went to see her, and was struck to the core by her still, ashen face, her skin even then reasonably young looking, her features still undeniably beautiful, aged but at the same time holding up some kind of youthful shield, and I could not believe she was actually dead, that not a single breath escaped those now bloodless lips, nor that her painted eyelids would ever again blink in unalloyed excitement.

I reached out and allowed my fingers to comb through her hair, musing that it had been something I’d always wanted to do but afraid to admit it. I half expected her to sit up with a start, her shrill voice chiming mischievously, “Collie, what on earth do you think you’re doing?” I smiled fondly as memories cascaded around her marble-like face, and I had the urge to bend, to touch my lips briefly to hers, my final goodbye, but something nudged at my conscience and I refrained.

I could not bring myself to think that already, even as I peered down on her lifeless form, her own body was silently devouring itself, her body fluids dissolving greedily fat and tissue, inevitably everything that had been Connie becoming a stinking soup of corruption. I could not bear it. I had often wondered how an educated man like D.G. Rossetti could ardently believe that the body of his wife, Elizabeth Siddall – exhumed to retrieve a book of poetry he’d buried with her – was as fresh as the day they interred her. Now I had some inkling. Connie was my very own Elizabeth. She would never crumble into dust. Even as I think of her now, I see her as complete as she had been in life. I see her as she appeared to me then. Serene, at peace. And beautiful for all eternity.

Days later her body was removed, presumably at Max’s instructions – there were no other relatives – the destination unknown. And, perhaps fittingly, Connie was snatched from my life as mysteriously and as suddenly as she’d entered it.

My mind often wandered to linger on the whereabouts of Max, accompanied by the rather selfish thought that, because I wasn’t doing particularly well, his fortunes were somehow mirroring mine, those fortunes following a steady downward trend. He had long ago, I liked to think, fallen foul of someone high up in the BBC and his temper had gotten the better of him, landing him the sack. He was scraping a living somewhere deep in the bowels of some ghastly inner-city slum or other. Better still he was unemployed within that same slum. And on days when I felt particularly sorry for myself he was homeless and attempting in vain to flog copies of The Big Issue. In the rain, naturally.