Peter Corris - The Marvellous Boy

Coming to was like being born — I struggled down a long, dark tunnel, not wanting to get to the end but not in control of what was happening. I was pushed and pulled towards a circle of light which grew bigger and bigger until it filled my whole field of vision and blinded me. I felt as if I’d been folded in half and put in a box. In fact I was sitting with my knees drawn up to my chin: I tried to lower my legs but they only got half way before they bumped into something. I shook my head and forced my eyes open and saw a wall; I felt a wall behind me and a hard surface under me. I was in a shower stall, my hands were tied behind me and my feet were strapped together at the ankles. Pains like cramps were shooting through me and my throat was as dry as a chalk duster. At first I thought the light tapping I could hear was inside my head but I found it was a steady drip from the shower rose. The drop fell about a foot in front of me but I couldn’t lean far enough forward to get my tongue out to it — my whole body was thirsty. It was torture.

I had no idea of the time, lights were on in the room but I couldn’t see a window. It could have been midnight or midday. I wasted some time cursing myself for carelessness and incompetence, and wasted some breath by shouting for help. Then I calmed down and became more practical: I listened, the house was dead quiet. I pulled at the cord holding my ankles and at whatever was around my wrists — nothing gave. I looked around as best I could but the stall was tiled and smooth, there was nothing to cut with or rub against. So I shouted again and choked and was sick all over my legs and everything was just that much worse. I tried kicking at the wall but the thing was built solid and I only succeeded in sending jarring pains shooting up into my crutch. I tried to roll and found that my wrists were tied to something firm — no rolling.

It was hard. The thirst and the cramps and the smell were bad but the feeling of helplessness was destructive. It washed over me in waves making me rave and struggle and then leaving me defeated, almost indifferent. The drug was still working; I blanked out a few times. I had bursts of cold anger and mushy self-pity; I did no clear thinking. I was in one of the indifferent stages when I heard the noises — a door opened far away, there were footsteps and other indeterminate sounds. I hardly cared, or thought I was imagining it. I smiled and felt the caked vomit on my face crack — ho hum. Then the noises were closer and then they were going away with a final sound to them. They were real. I shouted and thumped my feet on the wall; I howled like a wolf.

High heels rang on the tiles and the shower curtain jerked aside: Bettina Selby stood there, the most wonderful person in the world, a goddess, a saint.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she breathed.

I croaked up at her: ‘Water, and get a knife.’

An hour later I was sitting in her kitchen with a third cup of coffee and wearing one of her husband’s shirts. I was shaved, fairly clean and if not quite back to normal at least I could remember what normal felt like. Bettina had been fast and cool with the necessaries. She told me that she’d planned to stay a week with a friend but had come back for something she’d forgotten — the thought of a week in the shower stall made my guts turn over. I drank coffee and made a cigarette; I hadn’t explained one damn thing to her and it was time. She was wearing an off the shoulder dress in a floral print and big wedge heels and looked good enough to eat. It was 11 a.m. on Tuesday, she told me, as she poured herself a hefty brandy. I accepted a slug of the same in my coffee.

‘So, Mr Kennedy, was it?’

‘Hardy,’ I said. ‘That was all a line. What did your husband say after our fracas?’

‘Business trouble. But it’s not is it?’

‘No. It’s family trouble, I’m working for your mother — I’m a private detective.’

She’d seen me flatten her husband and she’d found me trussed up like a chicken and covered in vomit. She knew I’d lied to her once; she drank some brandy and looked interested but sceptical. I got out the photoprints, unfolded them and passed them across. She took a quick look.

‘A boy and a man,’ she said. ‘Not bad looking. So what?’

‘That’s your son, Betty.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ she snapped, and then the message reached her and she pulled hard on her drink.

‘Ridiculous.’

‘It’s true. He’s thirty-one years old. Take another look, he’s the dead spit of your Dad.’

She looked, looked hard and nodded slowly. Her knuckles were white around the glass and beads of sweat broke out along her hairline. She reached for the bottle.

‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘Try and face it. This should interest you, it’s a change from booze and bad husbands.’

She smiled and that strength and intelligence that made her arresting shaped the planes of her face.

‘I really gave you the business the other day didn’t I?’

‘You weren’t yourself. I suppose you can guess what this’s all about now?’

‘Some of it. The old battle-axe wants to find him,’ she tapped the pictures, ‘and cut him in.’

‘I think she intends to give him the lot.’

Her eyes opened and she took a thoughtful, not desperate, sip of her drink. ‘How would you know that?’

‘It’s a guess really. There seems to be something strange about your father’s will, or maybe your mother’s. Your hubby’s had a good sniff at that. Miss Reid is out for herself and there’s someone else in there looking for an angle.’

She touched the pictures again. ‘Him?’

‘Could be.’

I told her everything then, more or less the way it had happened. She took Henry Brain’s demise without a blink and cried a bit over Nurse Callaghan. She asked me what I knew about her son.

‘Nothing good,’ I said. ‘He was a star athlete and pretty bright but he got lost somewhere. There was no serious score against him before all this that I know of, but he might have killed the old people. It’s tricky.’

‘I can see that. You want to deliver him all clean and shiny.’

‘That doesn’t look very likely now. Happy endings are hard to come by but you never know. Have you got a place on the river?’

‘Yes, I mean…’

‘Come on, it’s out in the open, you’ve got to see it through now.’

She looked stubborn and we both drank some more and kicked it around for a while. She confirmed that her husband was keenly interested in her mother’s property and had big plans for using it. I told her that it looked as if her husband was trying to get control of it one way or another — through her, or Verna Reid or the grandson.

‘That’s the way he thinks,’ she said, ‘he likes to cover all the angles.’

‘He’s doing all right isn’t he?’ I let my eyes drift around the gadget-laden kitchen.

‘Yes, but he’s ambitious, he wants to be big.’

‘Why?’

She shrugged. ‘Don’t know, something to do I suppose. He’s not interested in me or the girls. What’s your next move, Mr Hardy?’ She looked at the bottle and I had the feeling that she was the sort of boozer who rewarded herself with a drink before she tackled anything hard just in case she didn’t make it. I moved the brandy out of reach.

‘I’m going after them, it’s time to break up their little game, get the thing running my way. Where’s this river place?’

She looked at me with her mother’s eyes, calculating.

‘Would you like to go to bed with me?’

‘Sure. Some other time.’ I thought of Kay again as soon as I spoke. I was fifteen hours late with my call; I felt impatient, eager to get the Chatterton case wrapped up, anxious to get on with what might be called my life.