Looking Down (20 page)

‘Forgive me, I must have been mistaken,’ John said, as the scarf, having illustrated its own strength, was twisted and wrapped tightly round Edwin’s sinewy neck. ‘But did I also hear a myth about the existence of ravens?’

Edwin turned his face east, shaded his eyes, watching the broken end of the cliff, then turned back. There was something like adoration in his eyes. He began to shake his head, then stopped.
He cannot lie about birds,
John thought. Nor can he not boast.

‘Yes, there are ravens. Four young. They’ll be ready to go soon. Look, I only told you about a
body
to put you off. I can’t have anyone going near the nest.’

John did not believe him, which did not stop him being mortally afraid.

‘Where’s the nest?’

‘Over there. They’ve built so big, under the overhang, I’m scared they’ll pull it down. Not long now, though, before they can all fly far away.’

John followed the direction of Edwin’s outflung arm.

‘I want to see it.’

‘You couldn’t. You have to climb from the other side and get above. Wouldn’t see nothing of them just now anyhow, they go a long way to forage. Listen, Doc, do you want to be fished out of the sea ten miles up the coast? You say a word, it’ll happen.’

John stood his ground, but he knew his fear was as clear to Edwin as the colour of his coat. And he wanted to live. Yes, Edwin would kill him without a second thought.

‘The young need a few more days, and food, and then they’ll
be OK,’ Edwin was murmuring. ‘And now, since I don’t have a car, perhaps you could give me a lift home.’

He would kill me now if he hadn’t remembered the car. Someone would find the car. Edwin cannot drive. Cars are harder to hide than bodies.

John nodded and let Edwin lead the way back up the narrow, muddy path. There were so many variations of insanity. He recognised Edwin’s to be of the kind that switched on and off, like a light, with no known limitations.

They drove back, wordlessly, Edwin sniggering and triumphant, alpha male. The car was rank with his smell and his triumph.

‘Here will do,’ Edwin said. They were at the car park where the path began. An inaccessible mile or three from the ravens. Edwin’s mood seemed to change. A return to the old camaraderie; now that he had got his way, remembering an old respect. It was as if he did not like to see an old friend so beaten and cowed.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t like threatening you, you know. We’re mates.’

John remained silent, bracing his hands on the steering wheel to keep himself steady.
Oh no, we were never that. You wanted to be friends. It was I pushed you away, as well as everyone else. Just get out, for fuck’s sake.

‘But I can’t have anything disturbed up there. Not until the chicks can survive. Any time now. I don’t like doing threats, Doc. I’d rather trade. Tell you what, you keep quiet, I’ve got something to give you.’

‘There’s nothing I want from you, Edwin.’

Edwin shuffled. He smelled of blood, sweat and madness.

‘Oh yes there is. Something I found.
Maybe
from that girl. Something from that girl.
They
found it. My beauties.
They
found it and gave it me.’

He was gone.

When John finally stopped shaking, he helped himself to whisky from his cocktail cabinet, thought of his options and knew he had none. He turned the car round and went back, beyond the field where he had parked before, until he found a space. This time he went north of the broken headland, where there was no path, forcing his way between bramble and hawthorn, trudging through wilderness, until he was at the edge where nothing grew. He was good at measuring distances, translating the map into metres and landmarks. Ignoring vertigo he walked almost to the edge, and when within feet, with the wind, thankfully, blowing hard off the sea, shoving him back rather than forwards, he crawled the rest of the distance on his hands and knees until he gripped the very last bit of damp springy turf and looked over. He estimated that the nest, if it existed, was immediately beneath. Down below, there was a plateau of rocks, just above high tide, invisible from any path, perhaps accessible on steady feet when the tide was low. He pressed binoculars to his eyes and watched.
If
the nest was below, it would be invisible from this angle, and the scramble to reach this terrifying point was futile. Then he saw them.

The birds were sleek and black, and feeding. The juveniles were uncertain and much smaller, screaming and yelling, hopping with outstretched wings on the rocks, but the parents were entirely focused. With concentrated industry, they pecked at the ribcage of a narrow torso, flesh bleached faintly pink. He guessed it was the remains of a large dog. The tip of the cliff seemed to shake as the sea ate away at the base with a steady breathe-in breathe-out impact. John could feel the tremor of the onslaught of water, could not take his eyes from the ravens. He crawled backwards and was sick in the grass.

There had been a second body. Part of it formed the ravens’ meal.

They had practised on the first.

He needed to go back to the painting.

An hour to midnight and lonely, Steven wanted to speak to his sister, but whatever else he felt, he could not initiate it. He could not do a single bloody thing, except dream of tomorrow, in between occasional bouts of sheer anxiety about what kind of fool he must be to give Lilian his mobile phone number, like making himself a hostage to fortune, the final insanity, apart from arranging to meet. When his mobile went, his feet left the ground. It was a disappointing relief to hear the voice of his sister, issuing a single, surprising command. Get here.

He was only a street away, unable to do anything but haunt the vicinity where Lilian lived. Lilian, whom he would see again tomorrow. Sitting in a pub, nursing a single malt, and dreaming, when he was not also thinking of his sister and how to prise that painting back without facing her anger, and there she was, obliging him. God was kind and the world was marvellous and everything would work out.

He went to Sarah’s, and was inside in ten minutes, horribly, deliciously conscious that Lilian was upstairs, and he felt a fool for blowing a kiss down the hallway in that direction.

Sarah ushered him into her tiny kitchen.

‘Listen,’ he gabbled, ‘I’m
sorry,
I’m really sorry. But I’ve got to have that painting back. I’ve met Lilian, and she wants it, I’ve got to have it.’

So much for diplomacy.

She seemed to understand the whole situation without further explanation and she smiled. She could terrify him when she smiled, and her face, in the harsh light of the kitchen, was hard.

‘Ah, I did rather hope you might say that.’

‘Pardon?’

‘That you
really, really
wanted it back.’

She pushed him ahead of her into the living room, where Steven found himself opposite a tableau of people sitting on her old sofa, facing the cow. It was a real work of art, he always thought, definitely gave zing, but not now.

‘You want that painting back, darling,’ Sarah said, ‘you have to climb.’

Not quite a tableau, but the two of them had spread themselves on the sofa. Steven recognised Fritz, from a nodding acquaintance, and waited for an introduction to the woman who sat next to him. Sarah provided it, doing the rounds like a hostess.

‘Fritz? You’ve met my brother, haven’t you? Steven, this is Fritz. Not his real name, I think, but that doesn’t matter. What’s in a name? Often wonder what fool dreamt up Fortune. And this is Mrs Fritz: Mrs Fritz, my brother, Steven. He’s a thief in his spare time, but not too bad otherwise. Would you all like more coffee?’

There were two sets of nods. Steven sank into the armchair, gazing at Mrs Fritz. She looked like a gypsy, and he was distracted by her face, wondering why he made that assumption, trying to recall the memory of a painting somewhere featuring gypsies. A slightly insulting generic term, he thought, and then he was remembering a Modigliani painting,
Gypsy Woman with Child,
yes, she was a little like that. Modigliani’s gypsy had bright red cheeks and that was where the resemblance lay, although in Mrs Fritz’s case, there was nothing gypsy-like about her drab
clothing, and she would have suited a scarf round her neck to go with the flushed planes of her face. In face, at least, Mr and Mrs were an unlikely couple, he rounded and pale beneath a coffee skin, she squared and rosy. They looked embarrassed as well as determined.

‘Steven, dear, don’t get too comfortable, and drink your coffee soonest. Do you need anything to eat? I do hope not. I know you prefer to climb on an empty stomach, and we do need you to climb.’

Sarah filled the china cup he was nursing in his hands. He could feel the heat of the liquid through his fingers, sipped it. There had been far too much coffee today. He put the cup down on the floor and waited for whatever might happen next, fingering the fabric of the chair in which he sat, disapprovingly. It was something to do with his nerveless hands. He looked at his sister. Her face turned into Lilian’s face.

‘Climb?’

‘Burgle, climb, however you put it. Come on, Fritz, explain.’

Mrs Fritz stirred, restlessly, clasped her fingers and leaned forwards, earnestly.

‘Is Minty,’ she said. ‘Upstairs.’ Then nodded, as if that said it all, and sank back on the sofa. Steven thought he had seen worse, far more obscure films than this. Her accent was indecipherable and he looked at her with greater interest. These days it was impossible to define people by nationality. Modigliani had already proved that.

‘Over to you, Fritz,’ Sarah ordered.

What a silly name. He looked like . . . he looked like . . . They all looked like Lilian, since that was the face imprinted on the inside of his eyes. He had to get that painting back, then he would hear her laugh. Fritz cleared his throat as if for a speech. He spoke peculiarly imperfect English.

‘I know you, Mr Steven, ’cos you come here. And I know you
are doing this climbing, maybe burgling business up the back when you lose your keys. I tell her,’ he nudged his wife, who nodded vigorously, ‘and she is saying, OK, what harm, he is being Sarah’s sister. Having jokes. No complaints so what the hell, hey?’

He tried to laugh, but he was far too miserable.

‘I deny it,’ Steven said. Fritz spread his hands.

‘OK, OK, is someone looks like you. Only a coupla times, OK? No worries. You climb, he climbs, who cares? No security at back. Even on top floor. So, you go or that other bloke who looks like you, he goes.’

‘Why and where do you want me to climb?’ Steven asked, mildly.

Sarah took over.

‘Steven, dear, in the top-floor flat, a sort of penthouse, lives a strange Chinese couple, running what is loosely described as an import–export business. For several months they had a servant called Minty. They locked her up most of the time, until they seemed to trust her not to escape, but even so she was more of a slave. They are alternately sloppy about security or paranoid. Haven’t yet established who she is, except she’s probably a Romany from the same part of Kosovo as Mrs Fritz, here. The most stateless persons in the world. I told you about Minty, to your great disinterest, and I must confess I did little enough to assist, figuring people usually find their own way out. Anyway she escaped, with a lot of help from these good people, who put us to shame. Only, it seems, she’s been got back. And now she’s really locked up.’

Steven remembered the girl stumbling upstairs with her captors while he crouched in Sarah’s doorway two nights before, felt guilty, remembered in time to keep quiet, because there was another face he remembered better. Revealing such a sighting and his own failure to do anything about it would put him at a
further moral disadvantage and he was feeling thoroughly outclassed as it was. He was struggling to remember the geography of the block, a jumbled map in his mind, jarring alongside the deep feeling of shame for the fact that he had forgotten the girl on the stairs, and the fact that his climbing up and down the well of the building had never been secret. Who thought he was so clever then? Wouldn’t want Lilian knowing that. Shame made him blush. On top of all that, there hovered the sweet sensation of her, one floor away, and how much he needed to retrieve that sodding painting of her husband’s she valued so much, to prove himself. This was bargaining time, and with the scent of her so near he did not give a shit if he was being asked to ascend into heaven without a rope, or descend into an icy hell with crampons. His mind worked overtime. He brushed his hand through his hair. It stood up in short spikes.

The phone rang. Sarah ignored it. Mr and Mrs Fritz sat to attention.

‘Mr and Mrs Fritz believe Minty was brought back the other night,’ Sarah went on, reverting to the voice of the lawyer sent upon earth to clarify things to befuddled fools. ‘Certainly there’s someone up there wanting to get out. And a lot of coming and going in between. But without proof of nefarious activity, slavery or whatever, it all gets a bit difficult. Could be a crying child—’

‘Who turns the door handle,’ Fritz interrupted.

‘Or Minty, or someone else,’ Sarah continued. ‘But we can’t call the so-called authorities, for obvious reasons. So be a dear, Steven. Just go up there and find out. You don’t even have to start from the bottom. You can start from here.’

‘Doesn’t Fritz have keys? He’s the caretaker.’

The phone rang again. Fritz was shaking his head.

‘No, I don’t have no keys to flats unless people give ’em me when they go away. But if you got a burglar alarm, like the Beaumonts do, and the Chinese do, you gotta post a code with
me, so I can turn it off from downstairs if it goes on and on. Security firm comes automatic, but I can make it quiet. Chinese don’t know that. I fix with security firm ’cos it kept going off. And there’s no alarms at back. Too pricey, looks safe at back, not worth it. You know that,’ he added, nodding at Steven. ‘Sorry, man who climbs up and down there,
he
knows that.
He
gets in back, comes out front, OK?’