Walking with Ghosts (13 page)

The door did not move, but it was easy to imagine that it was moving. Easier still to imagine the rat was unstoppable, that it would gnaw its way through the door. Then begin on William himself. Gnawing its way into his brain.

He took his knife from the sheath and lightly ran his thumb along the blade. Then he threw the door open again, smashing it back with force against its hinges. He caught a glimpse of the scaly tail as it disappeared down the stairs. With the blade of the knife flashing in his hand, he gave a shriek that strained his lungs and plunged down the stairs after the predatory monster. Leaping five or six steps at a time, yelling at the top of his voice, William strove to narrow the gap between himself and his prey. He followed it through the doorway of the ground-floor front room of the house.

The rat slipped greasily through a blackened hole in the floorboards.

William threw himself full-length on the floor and pushed the knife through the hole, stabbing wildly at the blackness within. When he connected with nothing, he forced his arm deeper into the hole, until he had it in up to his shoulder. The knife sparked against the foundation wall beneath the floorboards and spun away, out of his grip. William retrieved his arm and pushed his face up close to the hole. He looked and listened. Although he could see nothing, he could hear small cries down there. And his nostrils and lungs were filled with the stench of the rat’s domain.

His right hand was cut and bleeding, and he peremptorily wiped it on the leg of his trousers. He could feel adrenalin rushing through his veins. This animal may be crafty and fierce, but it would soon discover that it had met its match. Rats and men had been pitted against each other through the ages, and would continue the fight until the end of the world. But the battle, for this particular rat, was almost over.

In the kitchen William found an old axe with a rusted head and brought it back to the front room. Working close to the black hole into which the rodent had vanished, William smashed his way through the floorboards. The timbers fractured and split as he pulled them away from the cross-beams. The cut on his hand widened and deepened and beads of blood splashed along the floor. William sucked at the wound and sprayed the blood and dirt in an arc behind him.

He collected the splintered floorboards and threw them to the side of the room. Now he could step down into the foundations, among the mess of paper and household rubbish that had accumulated there. He carefully poked amongst it until he retrieved his knife.

The nest was located in a corner, beneath one of the cross-beams. It was a loose construction of chewed crisp packet, what appeared to be a shredded newspaper, and some dried vegetable matter - grass? leaves? - perhaps a mixture of the two. The litter consisted of ten blind and naked young, each intent on fulfilling its genetic destiny, crawling over each other in an instinctive panic to escape annihilation.

Go... and get long poles.

Poke out the nests and block up the holes!

William sensed a movement over to his left, and he gazed in that direction until his eyes adjusted enough to see her. Mother rat. Crouched on a split board, her body, together with the tail, took up a space of almost eighteen inches. Omnivorous. Fecund. Her long snout twitched. Her red eyes processed information, but she did not move. She waited for William to do that.

He deliberately pushed the tip of his knife through the head of one of the litter. He held out the tiny body to mother rat, made sure that she saw what he had done. Then he dropped the carcass to the floor and crushed it under the heel of his boot.

William smiled in the direction of the mother as he skewered another of her offspring, this time through the eye. He took them one at a time, varying the procedure slightly with each kill. The fifth suckling he sliced like a sausage, the sixth he decapitated. The seventh he disembowelled, scraping out the tiny contents with his thumb and throwing them fiercely at the mother. She moved fractionally to one side, so the innards of her nestling flew past, missing her by an inch and a half.

Only when William moved to take the last of the litter did the mother rat attack.

And folks who put me in a passion

May find me pipe after another fashion!

It was as if she had grown wings. She rose up from her perch with a shriek that sounded almost human. She hovered briefly on her hind legs and flew forward with a velocity that defied the eye. William realized instinctively that the target of her leap was his throat, and he brought up his hands to ward her away. He was fast, he had anticipated such an attack, and was confident that he would be capable of dealing with it. But mother rat was faster still.

As William brought up his hands, she flew between them and he caught her fetid scent as her jaws closed over the fold of skin below his larynx. He was pushed backwards by the force of her landing, but somehow managed to remain standing. All four of her feet scrabbled for a grip of his shirt and his chest. In a flash William saw his own death approaching like an express train, but his mind remained calm and collected, his will absolutely focused.

The rat needed a couple of seconds, perhaps only a few fractions of a second to consolidate its position. Once it had established a secure base with its feet and tail, it would commence ripping and tearing at William’s throat. The soft skin would offer no resistance, and in moments the larynx and trachea would be shredded, cutting off the oxygen supply to his lungs. At that point the battle would be over William vanquished, and mother rat victorious.

Without a hint of fear or emotion, and in one movement, William took hold of the body of the rat with his left hand. He lifted her clear of his chest. Her teeth were still clamped to his throat. Holding her body horizontally, feeling her long scaly tail winding its way around his forearm, he brought up the knife in his right hand and severed the body from the head.

Mother rat’s warm blood spouted like a cloud-burst over his face and chest. He laughed wildly as it flowed between his lips and raced along his tongue, feeling rivulets of plasma running into his eyes and watching while his world turned a scarlet hue.

16

Janet was sitting on the edge of the bed in her nightgown. ‘It’s happened,’ she said. Geordie looked at her and tried to guess what it was that had happened. She wore a pair of scuffed slippers, and the right one was dangling from her foot, looking as though it might fall off. He looked at her face, but couldn’t read it. She said, ‘I’m pregnant.’

Geordie couldn’t respond. It was such a mechanical word. He had to think what it meant. He knew what it meant, of course, but he had to translate those two sharp-sounding syllables into a meaning with a human perspective. He looked at the lamp by the side of the bed, the soft light coming from it. He licked his lips and tasted salt. A dry stickiness inside his mouth. ‘A baby?’ he said.

Janet allowed herself a smile. ‘Not yet, but that’ll be the end result, if we let it.’

‘Let it?’

‘Yeah. If we want it.’ She flicked her foot and the slipper fell to the carpet, bounced, rolled over, and was still.

Geordie picked the slipper up and took it over to her. He knelt in front of her and put it back on her foot. He looked up at her. ‘If we want it?’

‘You’re like a parrot,’ Janet said. ‘You repeat everything I say.’

‘Because I can’t believe you’re saying it. “If we let it... if we want it...” What d’you think? Don’t you want to have it?’

Janet was beautiful. Most of the time Geordie thought she Was beautiful. But sometimes her face turned to stone. It Was at times like this. When she wasn’t sure about something. When she felt insecure. Geordie walked forward on his knees and got up on the bed with her. He put his arms around her and pulled her to him. He tried to turn her face towards him, so he could kiss her, but she pulled away.

‘No, Geordie, don’t.’ She kept her face away from him but didn’t move his arm from around her shoulders. ]-je could feel the stiffening of her body beneath the flimsy material of the nightgown. ‘Before I did the test I was fairly sure I’d caught. And then when it was positive, I was glad about it. I’d never thought it would happen, and it was like a confirmation of something. It felt like an achievement, that it was something I’d gone out and done. Like pass a driving test or getting a raise at Christmas. I was going to ring you at work and tell you over the phone.

‘But then I thought you wouldn’t like the idea, and the next thing I knew I was crying my eyes out. And everything I’d thought before was swamped. Instead of passing a driving test it seemed more like a biological accident. Something that happens to women whether they want it or not.

‘And it’s the kind of thing, you tell the guy, the father, and he waves goodbye and heads for the horizon very bloody quick.’

Geordie tightened his grip of her. ‘So why am I still here?’

‘Because you’re stupid,’ she said. ‘You’re not a real man.’

He turned her towards him and kissed her wet face. She didn’t resist this time. She laughed between the tears.

‘I know it’s your decision,’ he said. ‘But if it was up to me there’d be no question about it. A baby, Christ, Janet, that’d make us into a real family. What’re we gonna call her?’

Marie had the car so Geordie walked to Portland Street. He was twenty minutes early and called in at Cassady’s secondhand record shop to see if he could find some Irish music for Sam. There was a Bonnie Raitt GD playing. A song about an Angel from Montgomery. Geordie knew it wasn’t Irish and knew that Sam’d love it, so he told the guy behind the counter he’d take it.

The guy smiled. ‘Sorry, it’s mine. Not for sale.’

‘You got any more like it?’

‘Not here. I’ve got them all at home.’

‘What about Christy Moore? Irish singer, you got anything by him?’

‘Not on CD. There’s a couple of tapes on the shelf over there.’

‘I wanted it on CD,’ Geordie said. ‘Sam’s got a cassette player in the office, but at home he’s only got CDs.’

The guy shrugged. ‘They’d brighten up the office.’

Geordie held his hands up and backed away from the counter. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You giving me the hard sell, now.’ The guy laughed. ‘D’you want ’em or not?’

‘How much?’

‘Three-fifty each.’

‘All I’ve got,’ Geordie told him, ‘is this valuable gift voucher bearing an engraved portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and personally signed by the Governor of the Bank of England.’ He handed it over the counter. ‘I’m completely at your mercy.’

The guy put the two cassettes into a brown paper bag and handed Geordie three pounds change. He winked. ‘All the time I spent in salesmen’s school’s beginning to pay off.’ Geordie pocketed the change and left the shop. He took in a lungful of exhaust fumes and followed a zigzag path through the stationary traffic in Gillygate.

Portland Street was quiet. The house with the shabby curtains at the upstairs window was not particularly inviting, and looked as though it might be unoccupied. He walked down the short path and glanced around. There was no one else in the street.

He pressed the bell and listened for the ring inside the house, but heard nothing.

After a moment, though, there were footsteps on the stairs, and the door was opened by a girl with blond hair and a black eye. ‘Doesn’t work,’ she said. ‘The bell. It’s never worked, not as long as I’ve been here.’ She looked past Geordie, up and down the street. ‘D’you wanna come up?’

‘I’ve got an appointment to see Miss Prine,’ Geordie said. ‘Joni Prine.’

‘Yeah, yeah. That’s me. You’re Geordie Black. I’ve been waiting for you, saw you come down the street. There’s nobody else in, anyway, apart from old crusty knickers at the front.’

Geordie followed her up the stairs. Her legs were blotchy, but she wore a short skirt so she could share them with the world. She turned to face him on the first landing. ‘Got an eyeful, did you?’

Geordie blinked and nodded. There was no point in denying it. It was an eyeful he could have done without, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

A baby was crying in the room. Not a full-scale yell, a half-hearted attempt to bring the world to its cradle. It wasn’t a breathless cry, and Joni Prine wasn’t fazed by it. While Geordie was still reeling from the pungent odour of unwashed nappies and ammonia, she plucked a dummy from the cot, dumped it into a huge jar of raspberry jam, and stuck it into the child’s face. The crying stopped.

‘Come and sit down,’ Joni said, collecting a mound of clothing from a worn sofa and plonking it on the threadbare carpet.

Geordie placed himself in the space thus vacated, and Joni Prine placed herself right next to him, seemingly oblivious of her skirt riding up to the rim of her pants.

‘And?’ she said, turning to face him.

‘Sorry,’ said Geordie. ‘And what?’

‘And what you here for, love? It’s not a café, is it? How’m I supposed to help you?’

What Geordie was really grateful for, was that she hadn’t offered him a drink. Tea or coffee. He knew she was trying to confuse him with sex and legs and the way she’d handled the baby, and now sitting so close to him that their thighs were touching. And she could do all that, and think she was getting away with it - Geordie didn’t mind what she thought. ‘What I said on the telephone,’ he said. ‘We’re investigating a claim by Edward Blake, and we understand that you are acquainted with him.’