Watching You, Chapters Seven and Eight

Chapter Seven

 

Black loafed into the car park, deserted already, but there was a rusty portable rectangular frame enclosing a message chained to the ticket machine that looked as though it had been used a thousand times before, ‘Car Park closed until June 25^th.’ The red printed message went on to explain that a fair was due at the weekend. Obviously, the meeting place would be out of bounds for a while, though he thought that Main Man already knew of it. He kept abreast of most things; Black had to grudgingly admit that much.

He’d entered from the side nearest the arches, checking the camera’s direction first. It had been aimed towards town. One thing he knew, and that was the girl with the corn coloured hair wasn’t on duty – he’d have known if she was, felt the heat of her presence. But one of these days, he was going to cross her path, knew it as surely as he knew her face. Couldn’t explain how, just the strangest notion.

A noise disturbed the silence. Somebody was kicking about under the arches; he could hear the metallic echo of stones hitting the side of the old cooker that had been dumped there. It had better be Delivery Boy – this was no time for uninvited guests. Particularly as he had other things to attend to. If Delivery Boy was on time for once, he might just loathe the guy a little bit less. Black turned into the arch that housed the cooker and saw the scrawny wretch turn as though he’d been a schoolboy caught on a prank.

‘So who’s keeping who waiting this time, eh?’

‘Cut your lip; let’s see the goods. It had better be right.’

‘Sure it is.’ Delivery Boy laughed nervously, his right hand digging deep into a pocket of his baggy black jeans. The envelope was large, and Black nodded approvingly.

He took the envelope greedily, examined it, and sniffed. ‘Seems about right,’ he replied. Lowering his holdall to the ground, he reached in and tossed a package at Delivery Boy. ‘Okay, here’s the digital.’

‘Careful man …’ Delivery Boy fumbled, managed to grasp it at the second attempt, Black smiling thinly at his awkwardness and then scowling. ‘Main Man know there’s a fair on?’

The youth shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘Search me; he never said anything.’

Black drove his foot at a scruffy grey stray that darted beneath the arch, missed by a mile. ‘Well, he better had. There’ll be no dealing on the edge of a fucking fairground.’

Delivery Boy gave Black the sort of look that said, That’s not for you to decide, and for a moment, he thought of slapping him. But there were more important things than Delivery Boy’s attitude. ‘Stay in touch, and don’t run your battery flat.’ Black snatched the mobile phone from Delivery Boy’s belt, slung it high in the air, so it almost hit the arch roof, and then as the skinny youth’s mouth fell open, caught it with his right hand like a cricketer taking a catch.

‘That’s how you catch things,’ Black said as he walked away.

‘See yer,’ Delivery Boy said resentfully, but if Black heard him, he gave no answer. He was bound for another piece of business close by, not exactly Main Man’s domain, but what Main Man didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

He crossed the river bridge to the north bank, shit from the funnel of an engine on the steam railway billowed into the air, sweeping over him with the breeze. He came perilously close to colliding with a cyclist who almost clipped him as he passed by.

He cursed the old guy, felt like aiming a kick at his rear wheel that might have taken him into the drink. Would have served him right – why wasn’t he dozing on his patio somewhere? Looked the sort, checked cap and all.

The birds ran up a chorus in the evening sun, and his mobile rang as if in competition. No surprise, he’d been expecting a call.

‘Where are you, mate? I can’t hang around here much longer – this place is busier than you …’

‘Don’t get yer knickers in a twist. I can see yer from here, won’t be more than a couple of minutes.’ He couldn’t see him, but he didn’t want his contact becoming edgier than he already was. The business he was about to conduct demanded the bloke’s equanimity.

It took him five minutes longer in all. Black might have increased his pace a little, but despite the urgency, he didn’t rush. He never rushed anywhere – it was bad for the system.

Coulson was on the jetty when he arrived, scuttling around like a headless chicken. ‘For fuck’s sake calm down and get inside.’ Pushing Coulson inside, Black made to duck into the barge’s dark void but experienced an irresistible urge to look to his right, across the water towards the pub and the patio that fronted it. He picked out a face straight away, that all too pretty face that had haunted him of late, and although he’d never met her before, he knew instantly who it was.

The woman with the corn-coloured hair.

Their eyes locked, and immediately he began to feel that terrible heat rush through him like molten lava.

It was then he realised she wasn’t alone …

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

Kelly sat back in her chair, McCain having returned inside to order the food, nothing too special for her, just plain scampi and chips. McCain had elected for chicken curry; she suspected he was quite partial to it. She’d smelt it on his breath from time to time.

From her vantage point overlooking the moorings, Kelly had seen the youth with the baseball cap talking on his mobile, the phone clenched to his ear as he strode back and forth along the wooden jetty. Judging by his manner, he seemed agitated. She wondered what was making him so in such a peaceful setting as this.

‘Table sixty-three, right?’

Kelly turned at the sound of McCain’s voice; he’d been quick. ‘That’s what it says.’ She prodded a forefinger at the circular bronze indent bearing the number and looked into McCain’s eyes. There was a definite sparkle about them that stirred a glow inside her.

‘Jees, but you look pretty tonight, all the ladies in Dublin’s fair city couldn’t …’

‘Cut the crap, McCain; you’re littering the place.’ Kelly slammed the palm of her hand on the vacant chair at her side, pretended to be unimpressed, but inside she smiled. This was such a change for her; it was so nice.

She wouldn’t have minded if McCain had taken her hand again, perhaps ran his fingers up her arm, something childish like that, but he didn’t. He gave a sideways glance that suggested examination.

‘So what have you got to tell me?’

‘What?’ Kelly screwed her forehead, tilted her face towards him. It was as if she were harbouring some kind of guilty secret, and if the truth were known, there was an element of guilt about being here, alone with McCain.

‘About what?’

‘Ah, but you’re a hard one to get through to sometimes.’ McCain spread his brawny arms across the table, hairs flowing from them like small horse manes, his fingers outstretched, a little apart from hers. ‘Well, I’m not wanting to know your whole life history, but a little detail or two would be useful, sure it would.’

Whatever happened to the noble art of conversation, but should she mind? His eyes with their green twinkle were so appealing. His strong face was so alluring.

‘I’ve led a boring life, McCain, not much to tell really …’

‘Ah, but there’s a certain look about you, a kind of character about you that tells me you might have been a wild one once, possibly still could be, I’m thinking.’

‘I guess if that were so, it’s well and truly buried now.’

Wild one, she had to laugh. Perhaps she had been before she met Joe. There were some wild gigs, some all-nighters on broad back lawns with the air fragrant with cannabis, although she never touched the stuff. Drunk under the table perhaps, laughing herself into hysterics without really knowing why. Pub lock-ins until two or three in the morning, car drives at the speed of light, wind whistling through her hair – adrenaline flying higher than a kite – and that was village life, what was it about people that made them think that country life was dull?

And then she’d met Joe, moved to this godforsaken place, with its weirdos, cranks, winos, you name them, this place had them – for Cumberton read Pitston …

‘Ah, you’re away with the fairies. I can see I’ve struck a cord …’

‘Have you, McCain, have you really? I wonder about that.’

He met her gaze, face suddenly serious, ‘Why do you wonder?’

‘Why you really asked me out.’ She took a sip of wine, placed the glass gently back on the table. ‘You just thought I needed my spirits lifting, right?’

‘Oh, to be sure, didn’t I say that very thing …’ McCain stopped talking – Kelly’s eyes weren’t locked on him the way they had been.

Kelly was vaguely aware of McCain, but something else had drawn her attention as if by an electrical impulse towards the jetty. Because down below, the youth had stopped prancing about. Through the passage between the thickets, another figure emerged, a taller, slender man in his twenties with dark hair. A white tee shirt hung over his baggy slacks, and he carried a holdall on his back. Suddenly she might have been alone in the world, alone with this new figure; neither McCain nor the youth was present in this scenario.

Because as soon as he’d arrived on the jetty, the newcomer turned his head, inclined it directly at her. She saw the dark eyes, the same glaring stare she was used to. But not at close proximity, not at this range. Now she wasn’t looking down at him from a monitor, this was for real, and he knew who she was – by the way those unblinking eyes stared at her, he knew who she was, generating a surge of energy that pulsed unease and then indescribable fear into her veins just the way it had when she’d viewed him on the streets.

Only deeper now – before she could have tried to convince herself it was all imagination, plain stupid imagination, but this was different, this was reality.

It had only taken a second or two, but he knew who she was.

Her hand seemed to move without prompting from the brain. Shot out, caught the wine goblet, sent the half-consumed contents spilling into McCain’s lap.

‘Oh no – I’m sorry, I don’t know what …’

‘Jees,’ but McCain’s fiery gaze wasn’t directed at her; down below, Carl Black’s eyes were still locked on Kelly Stafford, and McCain had picked up their track.