Ship Ahoy! (A Cliffhanger Novel Book 3) Read online

  ‘Could be just a Pimple.’

  ‘All the more reason to fill it with somebody.’ She started to puff away fiercely. I knew what this was leading to. She was like one of those bull-terriers that Micky Travers used to keep. Once she got hold of something, there was no letting go.

  ‘Don’t you worry Mrs B. If that’s what you want, I’ll bury you there myself. Council or no council.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘You leave it to me. Are we talking flesh-and-bones here or gravy granules?’

  ‘Well, I used to favour the dust to dust method, but lately, I don’t want to end up as smoke, not with the state of the ozone layer. I want to be buried.’ She knocked her drink back. It had got to her, this talk of death. She’d been thinking about it. Maybe for the first time in her life, she’d been thinking about it.

  ‘Well, you let me know when the time comes that’s still what you want, and I’ll be up there with my trencher. On the Q.T. of course. You might have to go through the official channels first. But I’ll get you up there, even if it means robbing the graveyard and getting you up there in a wheelbarrow.’ She squeezed my hand tight.

  ‘My feet dangling over the edge. But I wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble Al, not after all you’ve been through. But what a trip eh, sitting up there,’ she took a long drag, her voice coming out all Rainy Day, ‘leaning out my wheel-barrow, digging everything.’

  She held out the joint for one last pull.

  ‘And are you too?’’

  It needed to get back. I had things to do. First I had to fish out my Hendrix CD, see if I could spot Mrs B amongst the flesh. I couldn’t, but one of them had a body not unlike Audrey’s when she’d been on that beetroot regime the Hollywood stars had once been crazy about. The stress that diet had put on our septic tank was something terrible, though the bird on the album cover seemed happy enough. Audrey, she seemed to be everywhere.

  I decided to start on Mrs Durand-Deacon’s shark. The sooner I finished it the sooner I’d get her off my back. I dragged out the last railway sleeper from out the back of the garage and put a fresh chain on the saw. I lifted the block on the pair of trestles and walked around it a couple of times, to get to the feel of it. They might be only blocks of wood, but it’s funny, the sense you get, how each shark is going to turn out before you even start. I didn’t like what I saw. Every angle I looked at it, I could only see one shape, one face looking back at me. Audrey’s. I got the feeling that however hard I tried not to, this shark would end up looking like Audrey, and who’d want that on their patio? I’d be stuck with it. And maybe that would be just the beginning. Maybe now that she was let loose, I could only make sharks looking like Audrey. What a terrible thing that would be. I might as well forget sculpting sharks altogether, and make statues of her instead, hundreds of them, over and over again, a great army of Audrey’s straddled all over the country, arms folded, feet apart, not going anywhere. Everywhere you looked there’d Audrey be looking down at you, in the shopping malls, in the car parks, even by the seashore, scaring the life of those poor donkeys. And it would all be my fault.

  It was doing my head in, just thinking about it. I gave up, went inside, sat in the lounge until dusk fell, sat there until there was nothing left out there save the empty bottle and the dark. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went to bed, put my head under the duvet, fell asleep, dreamt about cruises and sun decks and me leaning over the side, while Mrs Durand-Deacon swam alongside, jumping through the hoop I was holding like a floppy whale.

  Then I felt Em come into the room. I could hear her moving about. Thank God, she hadn’t stayed the night with her folks. Trust her to come back when I really need her.

  ‘Sweetheart! Trust you to come back when I really need you,’ I said, turning over. ‘I had this horrible feeling that I might never see you again.’

  ‘Oh Al. I never knew you cared.’

  That wasn’t right.

  I sat up, switched on the light. Audrey was sitting on the edge of the bed, a bicycle pump in her hand.

  ‘I have reason to believe you have been drinking,’ she said. ‘Would sir mind blowing into this?’

  THREE

  I’d only been breathalysed once, driving the Vanden Plas on the way back from a wedding I was covering over at Blandford Forum. Dead embarrassed the policeman was when he saw the happy couple slumped in the back of the car, but he had to go through with it. The car stank of drink, as did I, but that was because the groom had just thrown up his three bottles of Gewürztraminer over my shoulder as we negotiated the Winterborne Whitechurch roundabout, hence the unaccountable wobble that the copper had witnessed as we came out of the curve, and which he had over-hastily attributed to an illegal amount of alcohol in my blood stream. Luckily I hadn’t touched a drop. I didn’t at weddings. They put me right off.

  There might be good money in weddings, but you paid the price, watching everyone stuffing their faces with cheap salmon and warm champagne, toasting the couple’s happy ever-after future. I mean who are they kidding? Look around you. It’ll all end in tears. Then you have to have to sit on your hands while seven varieties of sorry Herberts start sticking their tongues down whatever available women are out there on the dance floor. But you can’t, even if you wanted to. You’re part of the staff. The tastiest bite you’ll have is half a slice of wedding cake that someone’s stubbed their fag out on three hours back. Horrible stuff wedding cake. It looks all right on top, all bright and beautiful, a fairy tale palace reaching to the sky, but as soon as you bite into it, you discover it’s more like a breeze block bungalow, full of flat tasteless sponge that goes on and on and on, with only a quick of squirt of gunk to relieve the monotony. Bit like marriage itself in my opinion. That’s about the only thing Em and me didn’t see eye to eye on, marriage.

  Not so Audrey. Audrey was like me in the nuptial department. I hadn’t wanted to get married to her, and she hadn’t wanted to get married to me. Perfect. It was her dad who made us when she got pregnant with Carol and guess what, the old bastard dropped down dead not seven years later, thank you very much. I almost applied for a divorce there and then, but it was too late. Once you’re married, you’re married. You’re man and wife. Even when aren’t, even when you’ve split up you’re still man and wife, all that history tied round your neck. And so here she was, Audrey, back in our man-and-wife bungalow, sitting on our man-and-wife mattress. She had a prison warder’s uniform on, cap too. It was kind of unnecessary I thought, the headgear.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here,’ I said. ‘Love the hat by the way.’

  She didn’t answer. She was clocking the picture above my head.

  ‘Is that meant to be you?’ she said.

  ‘Who else is it going to be?’

  ‘Why is Tonto that funny colour? Looks like he’s been smothered in bilberry jam. Is that what you get up to with your fancy piece? Christ Al, thank God Carol isn’t here to see this. The younger woman, the older man. I mean, it’s pathetic.’

  She did have a point. I like looking at my own Tonto as much as the next man, but Em had drawn him like he had swallowed a fish bone and was having difficulty breathing. Odd shape too, like one of those spoons that Uri Geller used to bend with his mind. Still, I wasn’t going to take any lectures from Audrey on Miss Prosser’s paint brush technique. It’s how Em saw him, busting like he was ready to choke, I knew that. Or perhaps it’s how she wanted to see him. Who knows? I mean I only saw Tonto from my point of view, a clever bastard who took pride in his appearance. Em, being a woman, would most likely come at him from a different viewpoint. That’s what art is all about isn’t it? Interpretation, perspective. Fat lot Audrey knew about it.

  ‘Pathetic is it? Not as pathetic as you coming back to the scene of your crime. How did you get here anyway?’

  ‘I phoned from the prison wine bar Al, and hired a taxi, how do you think?’ She leant in closer. I could smell the pong on her ‘I cycled all the way, night mostly. I’ve been hiding in that ca
ravan of yours for three days, waiting for you to come back. Jesus, don’t you ever think of cleaning it?’

  She was acting up, but there was something else behind it, something I’d never seen before. I put my hand out. The jacket was sodden. She was soaked to the bone. Cold too, cold like she’d never been before. I tried not to feel sorry for her.

  ‘Waiting for me?’ I said sharpish. ‘Why me Audrey? What have I done to deserve this. Haven’t you done enough to me already?’ It was like I’d stuck a pin in her. I could almost hear the air rush out.

  ‘Oh Al,’ she said, all shrunk and shrivelled. ‘Where else was I going to go?’

  If only I could have chucked her out there and then. I don’t know why I didn’t. It wouldn’t have taken much. I wanted to and yet I didn’t. This was Audrey for Christ’s sake. Oh, I knew what she’d done, but hadn’t I done things too? Hadn’t we done some of them together, even when we hadn’t? And I’d changed, put all that behind me. Maybe she had too.

  ‘Bad was it, prison?’

  ‘The worst.’ I nodded. I knew what she was talking about.

  ‘I thought I wouldn’t mind paying for what I did. But banged up like that, I did. I’d rather do anything else than that. Christ, I’d rather you pushed me off that cliff. That was the plan wasn’t it?’

  She said it all calm, no side to it at all. What could I say?

  ‘You need to get out of those clothes, Audrey, before you catch your death. Have a soak why don’t you, get some heat inside you. You remember where the bath is I suppose, turn left at the end of the bed? You’ll find a load of my old clobber in that bottom drawer there. Help yourself.’ She looked put out.

  ‘I left some clothes of mine here, in the spare en suite. I had hoped…’

  ‘I burnt them all. Funny that. It’s me or nothing. None of Emily’s stuff would fit. She’s a mite younger than you.’

  ‘There’s a surprise. I bet she’s not as fit. Have you got any food in? I’m starving. Another thing that caravan of yours lacked. A decently stocked fridge.’

  She tapped her stomach, like it was an empty drum. Well starving or not, she wasn’t getting her hands on my prime cut of Aberdeen A.

  ‘There’s half a veal and ham pie if you like. I could throw in a peanut butter sandwich to go with it. Bread’s a bit stale but if you’re hungry…’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I’m sorry Audrey. I didn’t realise this was a guest house for escaped convicts. What does madam require?’

  ‘Something good and hot, something to fill me up. I know. I could murder a curry.’

  Not the most sensitive of phrases under the circumstances, but I let it pass.

  ‘At this hour? It’s miles away. What’s wrong with a veal and ham pie?’

  ‘It’s stone cold, that’s what’s wrong with it. Jesus Al, you tried to push me off a cliff. Fetching me a curry is the very least you could do. Mr Singh’s still going I presume?’

  ‘No idea. I haven’t been there for a while.’ I tried to say as if it didn’t matter, but she caught on fast enough.

  ‘A bit of a curry-wimp is she, your little Miss Van Gogh?’ she said, that know-all smirk of hers spreading across her face. ‘How many months then, since you had a decent blow-out? Two, three?’

  I wasn’t telling her, but it was three years, almost to the day. I’d taken Em as a kind of celebration, after selling my first shark. I’d expected her to follow my lead and go for broke, go vindaloo barmy, tuck into that suicide pickle, swig down the lager but no, she’d settled for a glass of wine, a bowl of lentils and one of those horrible yoghurt and cream concoctions that wouldn’t give a new born baby wind. It was embarrassing, seeing Mr Singh’s face, trying not to look me in the eye as he took down her order, embarrassing for me to sit opposite her as she tucked into it. It looked unnatural, perverted almost, unholy. We never went again.

  ‘I haven’t counted,’ I said, as light hearted as I could. ‘Times change Audrey. Her and me have different appetites than what we did.’ She snorted, like she knew what I was trying to hide.

  ‘Not for ages then. Bet you’re dying for one. Bet you dream of it eh? Wake up in the night, all raring to go?’

  I don’t know how she knew, but it was true. The last few months I had started dreaming of curries, laid out on crisp white table cloths all hot and steamy and surrounded by foaming glasses of Cobra, gleaming like they pillars in a golden temple. And I’d take a mouthful and then another and then reach out for a colder than cold gulp, grip the glass hard so I could feel the wet chill, lift it to my mouth and wake up sudden, with this terrible burning feeling spreading down below like a bush fire, like I had Mr Singh’s lime-pickle spread over me. Sometimes I had to get up and walk down to the nymph, touch the cold swollen shape of her, just to cool down. Didn’t always work out though. She was something else, that nymph.

  Audrey gave the duvet a little shake.

  ‘Come on Al, stir your stumps. You got a good twenty minutes to get there before he closes. I’ll phone the order through while you’re in the car.’ She started to pull the cover off. I grabbed it back from her, quick.

  ‘A little privacy Audrey if you don’t mind. I’m not one for bed wear, if you recall.’ She reached up, stuck her cap on my head.

  ‘My, my,’ she said, pulling it down over my eyes, ‘aren’t we the virgin bride.’

  She got off the bed, turned left into the en suite. I could hear the water running into the bath, hear her hand swishing the water round, hear the fall of that uniform. She started to whistle, one of those songs from Oklahoma. It was like she’d never gone away.

  I got dressed, drove over to Mr Singh’s Curry House. It was a pleasant night, the road all quiet, a slice of thin moon peeking down through the trees. I would have enjoyed it, if Audrey wasn’t in there with me, mind if not in body. So she knew what I‘d done, what I’d tried to do. Michaela Rump must have told her I guess. Thank the Lord Audrey didn’t know who I’d pushed off, or what had happened to Robin. No knowing what she’d do if she found all that out.

  I drew into the car park. Mr Singh came scurrying out, carrying two brown bags. He looked fat and cuddly like he always did. He had new fancy slippers though, curved up at the toe. Em and I would look dead good in them, in our little gallery. Dead artistic. Authentic. I opened the door took a deep breath. It was like I was in heaven.

  ‘Mr Al,’ he cried out, a great beam on his face as big as the moon. ‘You naughty man. We haven’t seen you in years. Not since the legal brouhaha.’ His face was glowing.

  ‘The pleasure’s all mine Mr Singh, I assure you.’ I pointed down. ‘Should have ordered a pair of those too. They’d fit me a treat when I’m working. Where’d you get them from?’

  ‘Handmade Mr Al. A very clever, younger cousin, very skilful with his hands. Suits, smoking jackets, honeymoon trousseaus.’

  ‘Not cheap then, I’ll be bound. Still, perhaps we could come to some arrangement. I’m a sculptor now, fish in the main. I could do you a small fish to put in your foyer, or outside here in the car park, put a turban on him or something. In return you could give me a couple of pairs of those. What do you say?’

  He didn’t say nothing, just handed me the bags. I should have brought a donkey.

  ‘The order as madam requested,’ he said. ‘All your old favourites. One fish jalfrezi, two mutton vindaloo, one king prawn chilli masala, four onion bhajees, two plain naans, one pilau rice, six cans of Cobra lager and twelve poppadums.’

  ‘Did you say twelve?’ He shook his head.

  ‘I put one in extra for luck! Also…’ he tapped his nose, ‘a jar of my lime pickle. Mrs Al was always fond of my lime pickle. The only person I know who could eat it naked with a spoon.’ I knew what he meant. Knew what he was suggesting too.

  ‘Pity she won’t be eating it now then, considering she’s not here.’

  ‘A very great pity. Brings tears to my bloody eyes.’ He put his head to one side and giggled.

  I gave him forty
quid, waved away the change and drove away. I thought she might have got the table ready, warmed the plates, put the beer glasses out, but when I got back, the kitchen was empty.

  ‘Audrey?’

  There was no reply. I walked into the bedroom. She was lying on her side, in one of the Lady Di’s First Class Dressing Gowns, with Do Not Remove stitched across the shoulders. I waved one of the bags in the air.

  ‘Grub up!’

  There was no reply. She was out of it. I pulled the duvet cover up to her chin, stuffed the food in the fridge and went into lounge. There was a fresh bottle of whiskey on the sideboard. I broke the seal, poured myself a full tumbler’s worth, drank it down, not that I noticed. I could have drunk the bungalow dry and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

  Audrey was back.

  What the fuck was I going to do now?

  I woke up to the smell of bacon sizzling. The best smell in the world, as long as you’re not cooking it. My neck was all stiff, legs too. I’d crashed out on the sofa, stayed there all night. For a moment I couldn’t quite remember why I was there, and then I saw the prison warder’s cap on the table in front of me.

  I rubbed my legs awake and went into the kitchen. Audrey was standing by the cooker. She had both frying pans going, one full of my best bacon, the other with a half a sliced loaf crammed in it. She’d always been as sucker for fried bread.

  ‘Morning campers,’ she said. ‘One egg or two?’

  I crossed over to the sink, yanked the blind down.

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at. Anyone could see you from the road. You’re a known face round these parts. You’ll get us all nicked.’

  She waved the ladle about.

  ‘I’d have thought a blind drawn down first thing in the morning would attract just as much attention. Besides I look different from when they last saw me.’

  That much was true. I seen her before, natch, when she visited me in the nick that time, but round here, what the short blonde hair and the stronger, slimmer figure, she was almost a different person. Until she opened her mouth.