Peter Corris - The Other Side of Sorrow

‘You’re in trouble, Talbot,’ I said. ‘I mean over the guard. But it’s not the end of the world. If you let Megan go and come with me it’ll be better for you. Something in your favour. You’re looking at prison but not forever. Harm her and it’s entirely different. Kidnapping plus more violence and you’ll be lucky to be out before you’re fifty.’

‘Fifty,’ he sneered. ‘Who cares about fifty.’

‘You will, believe me.’

‘Believe you? That’s a joke. I haven’t believed anyone but myself for…’

‘You’re talking to yourself. Stop it! Let her go. She hasn’t hurt you.’

‘The fuck she hasn’t. Everyone’s hurt me and I’m just starting to hurt back. If you want her still breathing drop the fuckin’ gun!’

There was no chance I’d let him have the gun. I ejected the magazine and threw it back into the passage. I dropped the gun onto the mattress and came forward.

‘Stay there!’ he yelled.

I stopped. I had to keep him talking, shake him somehow and give Megan a chance to get away. ‘What happened between you and the doctor, Talbot?’

‘That fat bastard. He lied to me like everyone else. He promised me… Back off!’

‘But he cut you loose when you killed the guard, right?’

He wasn’t listening and Megan wasn’t doing anything constructive. Talbot slid along the wall towards the French windows that gave out onto the deck. He was stronger than he looked, dragging Megan with him easily and keeping the knife where it belonged.

‘Smart arse. Fuckin’ smart arse. We’re leaving and you’re not going to stop us.’

Then I realised that she wasn’t resisting. She was going along with him. They reached the windows and Talbot leaned his weight against them. They sprang apart and the wind billowed Talbot and Megan’s clothes as they backed out onto the deck. I picked up the empty gun and followed. I had a spare magazine in my jacket but this didn’t seem like the time to produce it.

The wind was howling and the whole building shook as gusts hit it. The deck was in as ruinous a state as the rest of the house and Talbot’s boots slipped as he moved towards the corner of the house. There had to be some way down at the side – steps or a ladder – but I hadn’t seen it. This wasn’t too bad, Megan wasn’t fighting him but where could they go? If this continued on up to the van the odds’d be even.

‘There’s nowhere to go, Talbot,’ I shouted ‘Your van’s been disabled.’

‘I’ll take your car or whatever I can find.’ He cut her and the blood ran down her neck. I don’t think she felt it. She was going with him, backing around the corner.

‘Megan. Your brother’s up there. He…’

She screamed: ‘I haven’t got a brother! I haven’t got anybody!’

She pushed away from him like a middleweight breaking a lightweight’s clinch, and came at me with her fingers spread, thrusting at my eyes. I side-stepped and she hit the wall with a force that made the deck shake. Talbot lunged forward, then grabbed the rail and moved back around the corner. I slipped and skidded after him. The full force of the wind hit him; he staggered and the rail gave way. He went over the edge into the roaring torrent and disappeared.

‘Damien! No!’

Megan French came up beside me, shoved me aside like something weightless and for a moment I was sure she was going to jump from the deck into the surging water. I grabbed her arms and held her but there was no need. She sagged against me and I helped her back into the house. She dropped down onto the mattress and squatted there with her knees drawn up and her head in her hands.

‘He can’t swim,’ she said.

I crouched, careful not to loom over her. ‘It wouldn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Not in that.’

‘I nearly jumped in.’

‘I know, but you didn’t.’

I found myself minutely examining my feelings and reactions. I felt protective, relieved that she was safe, and slightly self-congratulatory that I’d seen things through to this point. Did I feel anything else? Paternal? I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell. Up close, wet and bedraggled as she was, the resemblance to Eve wasn’t striking. Professional instincts were taking over – she was a young woman, the subject of my enquiries, and in trouble.

She rubbed the sleeves of her sweater across her eyes, face and hair and looked at me. ‘What now? Police?’

‘I don’t know. What happened with the guard?’

‘It was a sort of accident really. Damien challenged him and the guard hit him with his torch. Damien lost his cool and took the torch away and…’

‘Did you see this?’

‘No. That’s what Damien told me. He was sort of pleased to have killed someone at last. Always knew he would. But he was scared, too.’

‘Why did you go with him?’

She shrugged.

‘Megan…’

‘Get fucked. Who’re you that I should tell you things?’

That’s when I made a decision. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You can come with me and see your mother and try to behave like a human being. If you do that I’ll try to protect you. Or I can just throw you to the cops as Talbot’s accomplice. Your choice.’

Too hard, I thought as soon as I’d said it. She’s too young to handle stuff like that. But I was wrong. The real measure of a person is in terms of what he or she has been through and Megan French had been through a lot. She looked around the dilapidated room and the few possessions she and Talbot had brought into it. Blood was still trickling from the cut but she was unaware of it.

‘I used to come here when I was a student.’

‘I know. Your… Mrs French, told me. That’s how I got here. She cares about you.’

‘Jesus, you really have been digging, haven’t you? What’s your name?’

‘Hardy. Cliff Hardy.’

She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. ‘Don’t tell me she’s pissed that bastard off?’

‘Her husband? No, she just got away from him for a bit. Just long enough.’

‘Poor dumb thing. If I go along with you, what about Damien?’

‘He’ll be found and it’ll be over.’

‘What about me?’

‘Things can be arranged. But I have to know a bit more. What did Dr Macleod promise Talbot?’

She looked at the duffel bag on the bed that had apparently belonged to Talbot. There was a packet of tobacco, a lighter, a paperback book. It wasn’t much to leave behind.

‘He said he’d set up a sort of conservation foundation with Damien as its head. He really did care about conservation, but… but he cared about smack more. The doctor supplied him.’

‘Okay. What’s it going to be?’

‘This is just a job for you, right?’

I could see and feel her gathering strength, sorting things out, making decisions and I wanted to help her, confirm the strength she was mustering, but I held off.

‘That’s right. A job.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing then.’

I recovered the magazine for the. 38 and made sure I’d left no signs of my presence in the house. Megan gathered up her things and didn’t touch anything of Talbot’s. She didn’t speak or look at me. She behaved as if I wasn’t there and that she was doing things of her own choosing in her own way. She was passive, remote. I was wary.

The rain had eased to a wind-whipped drizzle. Geoff was waiting by the van which was sitting up on its still-inflated tyres. He and Megan looked at each other as if each was a specimen in a glass jar.

‘Megan,’ I said. ‘This is Geoff Samuels.’

Geoff handled it well. He nodded neutrally to her, took a clean handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. She pressed it against the cut. He gave her just enough attention before turning to me. ‘Where’s Talbot?’