Damnation For Beginners Part 4

DOWN BY THE HARBOUR OR SO I'M TOLD LINE OF TUMBLEDOWN HOUSES stood ten yards back from the water's edge, their windows ablaze with colourful paper lanterns and candles that spilled fans of light across the wharf. Music and laughter came from within each place, producing a riotous cacophony that drifted out over the dark quiet shapes of the battleships moored in the harbour.

Jack waited under the shadow of one of these metal hulks. He had been here for ten minutes already. A couple of lights shone above him, marking the place where a steep gangplank connected with the hull, but the decks and bridge all seemed devoid of life. The sailors were making the best of their sh.o.r.e leave.

He returned his attention to the brothels. There were six of them, and he did not know where to start. All appeared to be as raucous and unwelcoming as the next. Was he expected to pay at the door? He reached into his pocket, and counted out a meagre three ducats in coins. Jack shoved the change back into his pocket, tugged his suit jacket collar tighter around his neck, and walked towards the lights.

He chose a door with a green lantern shining above, and stepped inside.

A wave of heat and noise engulfed him. He found himself in a richly decorated lounge packed from golden drape to ta.s.selled curtain with a whole battalion of rough and ugly sorts. Women draped themselves over sailors reclining on garish couches, or shrieked and giggled and spilled wine, while hands reached inside bodices and fumbled under skirts. Groups of men cl.u.s.tered around the bar, where a small hook-nosed man in a white shirt worked endlessly pouring spirits into ranks of shot gla.s.ses. In one corner, a red-faced man tortured a squeeze box, while his spidery companion plucked at the strings of a long-necked mandolier. A pall of cigarette smoke hung in the air at shoulder level, having already pa.s.sed innumerable times through the lungs of the sailors and their wh.o.r.es. The carpet clung momentarily to the sole of Jack's shoe when he took a step, releasing him as a wound releases a bandage.

Jack stood there, confounded by this whirlwind of sweating bodies, until a young woman staggered over and flopped her hot, damp arms around his neck. She raised her chin and breathed up at him with practised sultriness, albeit tempered by a veneer of boredom. "You want to buy me a drink?" she said. Her breath smelled of liquor and marzipan.

He disentangled himself. "I'm looking for my wife."

"A wife?"

"My wife," he said. "Her name is Carol Aviso."

Her interest in him evaporated; her gaze moved off in search of other clients.

"Do you know her?"

"Unlikely," she said, wandering off.

Jack made his way across to the bar, and squeezed into a s.p.a.ce between two groups of sailors. The bartender continued filling shot gla.s.ses, and didn't glance up. Hundreds of bottles cluttered the wall behind, their labels screaming countless unlikely proclamations. A narrow-shouldered man to Jack's left turned his back on his companions, and regarded Jack with bleary eyes.

"Bank worker," he said.

Jack ignored him.

"You are a bank worker," the sailor repeated.

Jack glanced his way, then returned his attention to the barman.

"Am I right?"

Jack looked back at the sailor. "I was."

"I knew it. I can always tell people. It's like..." His gaze slurred all over Jack's suit jacket. "You know..? I can always tell."

Jack nodded.

"She's like the Port Road," the sailor said.

The barman was still busy pouring drinks, taking money from people, putting it in a leather pouch on his belt. He hadn't even bothered to acknowledge Jack's presence.

"More traffic, in and out," the sailor said. "You know what I mean?" He grinned and lifted a fist. "The Port Road."

"Who is?"

"The girl," the sailor said.

"What girl?"

The other man frowned. "What do you mean, what girl? The girl, man. The girl."

Jack just nodded again.

"So what do you think about that?" the sailor asked.

"About what?"

"The Port Road."

"I don't know what you mean," Jack replied.

The sailor screwed up his face with frustration. "Avelina," he said. "That's what I'm saying." He raised his gla.s.s to his lips before noticing it was empty, then gazed at it suspiciously, as if trying to determine how this could possibly have happened. He pulled out a fistful of coins from his pocket, spilling most of them across the floor, then stooped to pick them up, wavering like an invalid on the very brink of death.

Jack began to suspect that the barman was deliberately ignoring him. "Excuse me," he said.

The barman didn't turn round, but took an order from another customer instead.

The sailor next to Jack had by now gathered up a handful of coins. He tipped them onto the bar beside his empty gla.s.s. "Bank worker," he drawled. "You know how I know that?"

"The suit," Jack said.

"That's right."

Jack wasn't getting anywhere with the barman. He turned to the sailor. "Do all the girls in here work for Mr Sill?" he asked.

The sailor thought about this for a long time. Eventually, he said, "I think they work for Mr Sill."

"What about new girls?"

The other man nodded. "Sometimes," he said, "but not all the time."

"Where do they bring the new girls?"

"To the boat," he said.

"What boat?"

"Have you got any money?"

"What boat?"

"In the harbour."

"There's a boat in the harbour where they bring the new girls?"

"Of course there's a boat," the sailor said. "Why isn't there?"

"Where is the boat?"

The man waved his hand in a lilting manner. "In the harbour."

Away from the bordello lanterns, moonlight picked out lines of shipsteel and cable in the darkness. Silver flecks danced upon the water, stretching out towards the seaward harbour wall. Jack hurried along the wharf, searching for a sign of revelry-music or lights-among the great naval shadows, but the warships each crouched in their own vast swathes of gloom. Destroyers and cruisers hunched against the dock like sleeping giants, while fat black pipes hummed oil into their engine rooms. From here to the end of the wharf, Jack could see that the remaining ships were all military vessels, and thus unlikely candidates for his search. He turned back to search in the opposite direction, and ran straight into a young woman.

Her manner of clothing suggested she had come from one of the bordellos, although Jack couldn't recall seeing her in the place he'd visited. She was rakishly thin, but pretty, and carried herself in the stooped and brittle fashion of someone always ready to flinch. A minor disfigurement marked her lip, perhaps a burn or a scar that had tightened the skin and raised one side of her mouth, giving her the merest suggestion of a sneer.

"I didn't want to shout," the woman said, "but you just kept on walking. I'm not supposed to be out here."

Jack looked at her. "You know something about my wife?"

She hesitated. "Maybe. Did she come from the wheel?"

He nodded.

"What did she look like?"

"About your height, but fair. She was wearing a grey jacket-"

"No," the woman cut in. "They dress them all before they bring them down here. You won't find Sill's boat, anyway. It's out at sea now."

The news tightened itself around Jack's stomach.

"But something happened today," the woman said. "You need to know about that." She glanced back along the wharf in the direction of the bordellos. "One of the girls tried to run," she said, "and two of Sill's men went for her. There was a scuffle. I don't think they meant to hurt her, but..." She hesitated. "There was an accident. She hit her head, and..."

"Where?"

"She hit her head really bad. I can show you where they left the body."

Jack's blood drained from his limbs, leaving him suddenly weak and numb.

"I don't know if it's her," the woman said.

"What did she look like?"

She hesitated. "Fair, like you said."

The woman led Jack back the way he had come, past the row of bordellos with their bright paper lanterns, towards the southern end of the harbour. She said her name was Eloise and she'd seen it all from her window. Two of Sill's men had taken four girls to the boat, but one was crying and refused to board. They'd struck her, and she'd tried to run. One of the men captured the screaming girl and threw her to the ground. But she'd fallen hard, and cracked her head against the corner of a concrete block, the base of one of the loading cranes. She hadn't got up again, and the man had kicked her in the stomach before the other one shouted at him to stop. There had been blood on her face, but not much. Some of the girls had come out from one of the bordellos to help, but they'd been ordered to go back. And then the port constable had appeared and he helped Mr Sill's men carry the stricken woman up the gangplank and onto the boat. They took her below decks, and when they carried her back out again ten minutes later, she'd still wasn't moving. The port constable had watched while Mr Sill's men threw her body into the harbour.

Jack listened to all of this while a thousand different thoughts reeled through his head. He tried to convince himself that this woman couldn't have been Carol, that the Reclamation Men he'd met earlier would have made some comment if this had indeed been the case, but he couldn't quell the clawing sense of dread. Eloise fell silent as they approached a quieter part of the harbour, where three wooden jetties struck out from the main wharf underneath the southern breakwater. Half a dozen yachts lay moored in the darkness. She led him down some steps onto the third jetty, then squatted down by the water's edge and pointed.

"There."

Jack peered into the gloom between the yachts. Water gurgled and slapped the jetty pillars under his feet. At first he couldn't see anything. But then he spotted an indistinct shape floating four yards out from the sh.o.r.e.

He jumped in.

Cold seawater crashed over his head, tightened around his chest. He broke the surface, gasping, then swam over towards the body-for there was no longer any doubt in his mind that that was what it was. She was wearing a light summer dress that had partially distended, jellyfish-like, above her shoulders. Her hair drifted like a mat of weed, bobbing in the waves. Her pale arms floated just below the surface of the water.

Jack rolled his wife over and looked into her lifeless eyes.

MEETING MR HENRY SILL.

FTERWARDS, HE WOULD BARELY remember how he managed to drag her from the water. By the time he finally pulled his wife's body onto the jetty, Eloise had disappeared. He recalled sitting beside Carol for a long time, shivering and sobbing, while the music and laughter from the bordellos drifted out into the night.

He hadn't wanted to leave her there, but she had been too heavy for him to carry. At some point, he had decided to return to Marley's house for help, but he had no recollection of that particular journey at all.

Marley had handed him a gla.s.s of frighteningly strong liqueur, and then sat grimly on his chair beside the fire while Jack wept and convulsed. The old timer hadn't said very much, but his eyes had been full of grave concern. He'd offered Jack a change of clothes, but Jack refused.

"Do you think she's in h.e.l.l?" Jack said.

"I don't know, Jack. The Priests of Rys might be able to tell you."

"I can't just leave her body lying there."

Marley swallowed his drink, winced, and reached for the bottle. "We could bring her here," he said, "but by rights it ought to be a matter for the port constable."

"The constable watched them dump her," Jack said.

Marley was silent for a long time. Jack could see the mechanism of his mind working behind those tired old eyes. Finally the old man stood up and said, "Let me see what I can do." He went upstairs, and when he returned he had on a long woollen coat and a dark cloth cap. "You'd better stay here," he said. "I'll speak to the constable alone."

He was gone for over an hour. Jack waited in the old man's front room and listened to the tick of the mantle clock and the crackle of coal in the hearth. He drank and he thought about Carol: sitting on their couch in Highcliffe, tying knots in his socks while he tried to read the application form she'd brought back from the bank. He remembered the picnic they'd taken in Alderney, where he'd asked her to marry him, the square blue sheet laid out on the gra.s.s, the smell of the wine, her happy bemus.e.m.e.nt turning to concern over his terror of wasps. The day they'd carried their furniture up the stairs to their apartment, the sweat on her brow as she struggled with the lower end of the dresser, the red headscarf she's been wearing. The way she'd drink from a mug still stained with grime without washing it first. He thought about their wedding, their small reception in the Gold Theatre parlour. Carol's friends Anne and Mar had been there; George and Beth, too; Aunt Jem and the pair from Unta; some actor and his girlfriend; all reeling to the Horse Race and the Captain's Lead Lady and other dances from Brome and Caldera while someone's children ran about and shrieked-a whirling of faces he hadn't really cared about or wanted to see again. He'd been drunk then and it occurred to him that he was getting drunk now. He took great gulps of Marley's foul liqueur, savouring the burning in his throat. It felt like anger. And ultimately his thoughts returned to the incident this morning: His wife's shoes slipping on the rocky ground as the Reclamation Men took her away.

It was after midnight when Marley returned. The old man looked weary as he took off his cap and jacket and dumped them over the back of a chair. "They've taken her to the mortuary," he said. "I'll make arrangements for the funeral tomorrow." He sat down and gave a heavy sigh. "You won't be able to attend that, Jack."

"The constable's men took her to the mortuary?"

Marley nodded.

"How much did it cost you?"

Marley reached for the bottle, but stopped when he noticed it was empty. He shrugged. "Little enough. I don't want you worrying about that."

Jack stared at his own empty gla.s.s. "Will you help me do something, Marley?"

"What?"

"Help me kill Henry Sill."

Marley sighed again. "No, Jack. I won't. You should get some sleep."

Jack didn't sleep well. He lay on Marley's couch, drifting in and out of nightmares in which the Reclamation Men led Carol through the streets of Cog City. They were always turning the next corner, and no matter how hard he ran after them he could never catch up. He woke up to find his stomach bucking, and ran to retch into the kitchen sink.

He splashed water over his face and gazed out of the window. Marley's kitchen overlooked a tiny courtyard, a stone cell trapped between the surrounding tenement blocks. The windowsills and drainpipes existed as ill-defined grey shapes in the pre-dawn gloom. Someone had set out clay pots packed with soil, but there was nothing growing there yet. Jack opened the drawer next to the sink and took out the largest of Marley's kitchen knives. He cleaned the blade carefully under the running tap, and dried it with his handkerchief, before slipping it into his jacket pocket.

He left the apartment before Marley got up, stepping out into the chill morning mist that always pooled in the streets down by the sh.o.r.e. He felt wretched, woollen headed, and yet still driven by the same bleak determination that had haunted his dreams. Few people were about at this hour: a couple of market traders carrying rolls of canvas and poles in the direction of the river; a street cleaner following a pail cart with his broom.