Stone Cold Dead Read online

  I shrugged, and left him to it.

  Outside, I stood in the cold white glare of the floodlights, which were way up beneath the eaves, and flicked agitatedly at my lighter. I had handled him badly, should have sympathized, and tried to discover what exactly was haunting him. After all, it was Mellie’s happiness that was at stake, and I would have hated to admit that Gerald Fulton had been correct, after all, and that Ray Torrance, policeman or not, was not a fit person to marry his daughter. So far, he hadn’t impressed me favourably.

  I tried to thrust the incident to the back of my mind, and put the scarf over my head, tying it beneath my chin and tucking the ends inside my anorak. Then, hoping that nobody would see me like that, I got the pipe going well and set out on my peaceful stroll in the night.

  It was now piercingly cold. The storm had blown itself out and the air was still, allowing the chill to press down on me, and on the locks. The floodlights were essential now, I realized, as I walked the twenty feet to the lock closest to me, the top one. The upper rim of it was constructed from blue coping bricks with rounded edges, which didn’t encourage too close an approach, especially as the surface beneath my feet felt slippy. One peep over the edge was sufficient for me. The light didn’t even reach the water at the bottom, as the level was low. The feeling was claustrophobic, if only by suggestion. I would have hated to be down there, even safely in a canal boat, though it would be logical that some sort of ladder would be provided, in case of accidents. I couldn’t see one, but the shadows were heavy.

  A spark fell from my pipe and spun down, down into blackness, my own tiny satellite disappearing into eternity—finally to be extinguished.

  I moved along to my left, to the central lock, where the water seemed to be even more distant. It was separated from its upper mate by a smaller chamber, which must have been one of the pounds that Colin had mentioned. I nearly stumbled over an awkward and ugly erection of ironwork, almost waist high and in the form of an ungainly rack thrusting upwards, held by a ratchet, but with a toothed pinion to lift it or to lower it. I couldn’t understand its use. But the huge, true gates, as I knew them, were familiar to me, their long arms reaching out, black and white. There was always this total lack of colour. White on black. It was probably the reason why canal boats are traditionally brightly painted—a reaction, a rejection.

  Here, between these two locks and spanning the pound, there was a six-foot wide footbridge. There seemed no reason for me to cross, to what seemed to be nothing but a stretch of grass, so I continued onwards, keeping to the safer side where I could watch where my feet stepped.

  I was now opposite the end of the house, so that the orange light above the parking space shaded into the white. Shadows became heavier, taking on a shade of blue. Here was the octagonal toll booth. From this, Colin would be able to scan the full extent of his domain. The white light slanted from behind me, my own shadow purple.

  Ahead of me there seemed to be nothing but darkness. No hint of light now softened the solid blanket of the sky, and all impression of colour was bleached from the angular shapes around me. Water rustled, but I could locate no source of the sound. I stood, held my breath, but nothing save a bitter, chilling sigh of leaking water broke the silence.

  More from a sense of proximity than from sight, I came to realize that there was no further access beyond the toll booth, certainly not on that side of the locks, but a squat, humped shape led away into darkness on my right. It seemed to be another bridge, but narrower. Hadn’t I seen this from our bedroom window? I felt for a parapet, and it was there. Gently, I eased along, until the surface below my feet was level. Its peak. I leaned forward and peeped over.

  Here, I seemed to be poised over a depth I could not estimate, and from which rose the water trickle, a hollow sound now, caught and trapped. Not removing my hand from the parapet, I moved along until the surface ran down to what had to be the far side of the locks. At this time I dared not move without my hand touching something for reassurance, something solid, the slimy surface of bricks, which, for some reason linked with memory, felt blue—or the rough and crumbly surface of eroding stonework, then the colder but more reassuring curve of metal, a handrail beneath my left hand, leading downwards.

  I paused and looked back, just to orientate myself, and was surprised that the house was closer than I’d expected. Venturing out into unknown shapes and shadows, I had felt as though lost there, poised over a fathomless pit, from which the rustle and tinkle of water came as a whisper. There is more, it hissed to me, more. Not to see, though, as the light snagged and trapped itself amongst the man-made angles and projections of stone and metal. Yes, metal this was beneath my hand, clammy and slippy, with a feel of all-pervading damp, or perhaps ice, and now not so reassuring as it had been at first touch. Angling down and away. A way. A prepared way, waiting, just imploring to be explored by a tentative foot. There were steps. They were barely detectable as steps, except that one level felt lower than the previous level, but the impression was blurred by the fact that there were no edges. Two hundred years of fumbling clogs to blundering hob-nails had rounded the treads. Each almost ran into the next, until it seemed like a slope, only barely impressed into a mockery of a run of steps.

  It lured me onwards. It was only on and down, it seemed, that I would be able to progress at all. The water echoed as in a hollow chamber, a minor leak that took on the guise of a torrent pouring free, and now, down and to my left, I caught a glimpse of it as it captured a ray of amber light and converted it to liquid, flowing gold. But...so small, this flow, a spurt, a trickle, but beating in my mind louder and louder.

  I paused, recognizing this feeling of intensification. It arose from an awareness, possibly an intuition sharpened and honed by my late profession. Now, although only a bare suggestion of light slanted and reached inside what seemed to be a cave, I could detect that this was in fact a squared and angular manmade recess, this the second of Colin’s pounds.

  I stood very still, afraid to move, because my impression was of confinement. Water seemed to surround me. There was a whispering, creaking sound, hiding behind the brittle water trickle. When I turned my head, I realized it was the hiss of static water in the bottom lock, as it eased its surface into an ice layer.

  There was now a level footing. This I felt through the soles of my shoes. The angular shape which was almost touching my knees I now realised was one of the rack and pinions. But—why here? Why low-down, almost beneath the footbridge that I’d walked across? It seemed to have no purpose, to be lost and abandoned. In this pit, the trickle of water seeming to be a constant echo completely surrounding me, I stood. The cold reached out to me; the rustle of water took on its own voice, and shapes were beginning to correlate. I felt that if I remained there it might engulf me. Yet I could not move.

  If I stood very still, would the slanting orange glow venture closer? If I concentrated, would I locate the source of the water’s trickle, and would I be able to reconcile a feeling of uneasiness?

  And indeed I did detect movement, way down, down in the whispering blackness, as an oily disturbance of the black surface. A crisp packet, discarded six months before, a mile up the canal? A beer can? No. No, not so symmetrical. And there it was again, lifted free of the water, turning restlessly, disturbed by my presence. Something white.

  I bent closer, as it had seemed to beckon. Fanciful, Richard, fanciful.

  It was at this thought—the choice of beckoning as a simile that I recognized the fact that what I could be seeing, though my logical mind rejected it, was a human hand.

  I crouched, then knelt, on the hard stone surround to the pound, peering and staring. Then again the water surface, two feet below me, stirred lazily and heavily, and a smoother shaped blackness seemed to bulge for a second on the oily flat surface. It moved, rolled, disappeared. And the whiter shape again flicked at me, beckoning, reaching. It was definitely a hand.

  Scrambling in the confined space, I managed to stretch out on to my c
hest. To my left was the rising face of the footbridge, and to my right, most awkwardly, was the strange shape that I now knew to be a rack and pinion. There was barely enough space for my shoulders to edge past it. All I could do was to lean forwards and stare at the blackness, and wait, wait for the surface to break again, so that I could reach down...and as I thought that, it did. Definitely, now, I recognized it as a human hand. It could be nothing else.

  I raised my head. Never before had I had to shout for help, but now I did. ‘Help! Help me!’ The sound I managed to produce seemed pitifully weak, lost in the chambers of the locks. Then somebody, no doubt Colin, switched off the white floods, as though my voice had signalled it. ‘Oh God!’ I groaned, and, ‘Help!’ I bellowed. It was a useless, baffled appeal.

  I was clearly not sufficiently low even to touch the water surface. All I could do was stretch out, rolling on my left hip, my left hand poised to plunge at the very first sign...but still the water was too far below me. Further over, now, I twisted on my stomach, legs spread behind me, my right arm hooked round the solid metal of the rack and pinion. I was poised, aching, my eyes straining for any movement, and I dared not raise my head.

  Then again the hand appeared. I plunged for it, but managed to do no more than touch the fingers. Then they twisted away. The water surface was too distant, down in the blackness, and I had to slide forward, the edge of stone almost down to my waist now, with the solid edge digging in beneath my ribs. My right arm slowly slipped from the rack. I had to allow it to do so. It was the only remaining chance of reaching far enough, and I tried to control the slip until my fingers, groping, locked themselves into the teeth of the rack. Slippy, slimy teeth. I hung on desperately, poised above the black water, the dead black water that now released stagnant fumes, foul and gassy.

  The hand! I plunged as it turned to sink, up to my elbow in iced water now, and felt the arm. My useless, frozen fingers failed to grip, and the arm, the hand, the fingers slid away from me. There was no longer any sense of touch in my left hand. I was soaked to well above my elbow and the cold was its own agony, gnawing away at my reserves of strength.

  It turned up again, raised high to the wrist from the surface of the water—a corpse’s last desperate attempt to be withdrawn to safety. I thought I detected a spark of light, and I slapped my left hand against it. In only that way could I detect that I had touched it. My mind instructed my fingers to close, and they seemed to obey, but achingly slowly.

  I thought then that I had the hand. Long, slim fingers were locked in my left palm, and I concentrated all my efforts on lifting, pulling, fighting against the weight of a body with its saturated clothing, and fighting the cold that was robbing me of strength. I heaved, groaning, and the hand barely lifted clear of the surface. My right hand, I was aware, was slipping away from the rack.

  Then, with no sensation of anything but agony from my fingertips to my shoulder, I knew that the hand was sliding finally away. I tried to grip more firmly, but my hand was useless, and the fingers slid from my palm. I drew back. Pain shot through my spine, and my right hand seemed frozen into the teeth of the rack. I lifted my head.

  ‘Help!’ I whispered hoarsely. ‘Help me!’

  No more than a feeble bleating sound emerged, drowned by my own mental curses of frustration. There was an awareness of a great loss.

  Time elapsed as I attempted to extricate myself from the restricted space. My left arm was useless, and I had to rely on my right. The fumbled grip on the rack proved to be impossible in taking my weight. My fingers slipped from it. I had to force my mind from the necessity of its being greased, and I cursed it for that necessity. The difficulty was in backing out. Slowly, I edged away until I could turn, still clumsily, and heard, as a distant and plaintive cry, Amelia calling out, ‘Richard, Richard! Where are you?’

  But my throat was constricted; I could do no more than whisper. Back, back, a few inches at a time. Then, my reaching left fist, which I seemed not to be able to open, touched something. I recognized it. The handrail.

  But the hand, which had clung to the wrist and slid from the fingers, still stubbornly refused to abandon that task. Right hand, then. Right hand crossed over my chest to the rail, I told myself, as my aching legs straightened. Greasy fingers to the rail. I could feel no security. Crawl up the steps. Yes. That would be best. Head down, I crawled. One step, two steps...My left hand still would not open. I had to allow knuckles to take the weight.

  ‘Richard! Oh...Richard!’

  Now her voice was closer, panic in it.

  ‘Here!’ I shouted. It emerged as a whisper, drowned by the rustle of running water. Crawled up another step. ‘Here!’ I croaked.

  ‘Richard...’ She was now directly above me, horror in her voice.

  ‘Fetch help,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t come...closer. Get help. Colin. Get Colin.’

  Amelia is very sensible. No arguing. She could see she could not help me physically. ‘I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘Rest. Wait. A minute. Just hold on, Richard.’ But her voice was unsteady.

  There was an age in that minute, a doddering old minute that took an eternity to absorb all sixty seconds. Then the white lights snapped on again, voices were raised. Shouting. Torches threw their weight around, and Colin was looking down at me from the footbridge.

  ‘What the hell...Ray, you come down with me. We can get behind him. Lights down here. Let’s see what we’re doing. Lights!’

  They came round behind me, two strong young men, one of whom knew every indentation of the worn steps, where to put a foot, in which direction to lift me, turn me, roll me, until others could find footroom to take my weight.

  Colin’s head was close to mine. He was whispering encouragement, and my legs were beginning to operate, weakly, but it was a relief to have confirmation that they were still attached.

  I managed to croak a few words. ‘Somebody in the pound,’ I whispered. ‘Couldn’t have left him. Or her. Her, I think. Slim hands, couldn’t hold on. Phone the police.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘In a sec’. You first. That’s it. Can you take your own weight? You’re doing fine. But you’ve got to keep moving.’

  Then Amelia was at my side. ‘Oh Richard, just look at you! What’ve you been doing?’

  I think I smiled, but if so it had to squeeze past the agony of my left arm. They got me into the bar. Oh, blessed warmth! Everybody was there, staring at me as though I was a demon raised from the depths. They sat me down. I could hear Colin on the phone, and I wondered how they would manage to retrieve the body. There was a pain in my left thigh.

  ‘You’re sure it was a person—somebody?’ asked Amelia anxiously.

  ‘Yes!’ I had spoken it with bitterness, and went on more gently. ‘Yes, love. Certain.’

  Ray Torrance held out a glass of whisky, offering it to my left hand. I shook my head, and put out my right. Now, with the circulation returning, my left arm was a rage of agony. I could barely restrain a cry of pain. But the spirit hit me, and the warmth flowed inside, anyway. It would take a while to reach my fingertips, or relieve a strange, hard pain in my left palm. My hand was still a frozen fist.

  They removed my anorak carefully. It was completely ruined, black grease all over the right side and the right arm, soaked and dirty all down the front. It wasn’t until Amelia gently removed the scarf from my head that I realized I was still wearing it.

  ‘My pipe,’ I said cautiously, my voice still unsteady.

  ‘In your anorak pocket,’ said Amelia. She drew it out in two halves. ‘I’m afraid it’s broken.’

  That accounted for the pain in my left thigh, I realized. I’d been lying on my pipe. It was my meerschaum, too.

  But now I was too busy trying not to cry out as my whole left arm went into a riot of pain. Still, my left hand wouldn’t open.

  ‘How on earth did you come to be down there?’ asked Gerald. He was clearly not pleased with the turn of events. It would disrupt the party, and cast a shadow on his daughter’
s formal engagement.

  So I told him my story in between sips of whisky, how I’d seen a white shape, why I had been so certain it was a hand—because I’d grasped it in mine—why I thought it had to be a woman’s, from the long, slim fingers.

  ‘She couldn’t possibly have been alive,’ I said. ‘Even when I first saw the hand, she couldn’t. I was just plain stupid. I could have done nothing for her—but I felt I had to try.’

  If I hadn’t, I would have found it difficult to live with myself.

  ‘Try a cigar,’ Gerald offered.

  ‘Thank you...but no,’ I said. I can’t smoke cigars. ‘There’s a spare pipe in the car.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Amelia offered.

  ‘No,’ I said, sharply, quickly. ‘It’ll wait.’ I tried to smile at her.

  I didn’t want her to leave my side. There was something I had to say, for her ears alone, and as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

  ‘I think I can walk now,’ I said optimistically. ‘The feeling’s come back into my legs.’

  Somebody helped me to my feet. I saw that it was Colin. We tried it together round the bar floor, his hand to my elbow, with everybody watching us anxiously, me limping.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You seem fine. Come along—the stairs could be tricky.’

  On that point he was correct. My thighs and knees had been in contact with bare stonework. I ached. Head to toe, I ached. But we made it up the stairs and to our room, where I sat with a thump on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll be all right now. Don’t let it interfere with your dinner.’

  ‘We’ll wait. There’s no hurry.’

  ‘No...really.’

  ‘I doubt anybody will feel like eating,’ he said, ‘knowing that there’s somebody in that pound. I’ll leave you now—and look in later. They’re coming.’ He cocked his head.