Mark Sennen - Touch

The driver’s window purred down and Mitchell sat staring ahead.

‘Harry,’ he whispered. ‘Thank God you’ve come!’

‘Well, you know-’

‘You and me, Harry, we understand the world, we understand things don’t appear as they should, plans don’t transpire the way we want them to. The brave press on. The accomplished performer improvises. The fallen runner gets up and attacks with renewed vigour.’

Harry’s mouth hung open. Mitchell spouted gibberish, but it went with the territory he supposed. He let Mitchell continue.

‘Check the boot. Bit of a problem.’ Mitchell didn’t move. He just continued gazing into the distance.

Harry went round to the rear of the car and sprung the boot lid. There was a rubber dinghy folded up and crammed in there, not the sort you could buy on the seafront, but a heavy inflatable from a chandlers. He didn’t say anything, just stared and wondered what the hell was going on in Mitchell’s head.

‘Get the fucking dinghy out and see what is underneath.’ Mitchell’s voice floated out from the window.

Harry tried to pull the dinghy out but it took all his effort to get even part of it over the lip of the boot. Then he saw the hand poking out from underneath the rubber. Pink nail varnish. The odour of perfume mixing with the PVC smell of the new dinghy.

Clunk.

Mitchell got out of the car and stood beside Harry.

‘Bit of a problem,’ he repeated, as if Harry hadn’t heard him the first time.

Harry groaned. This was bad. He didn’t need this sort of trouble. The rapes were one thing, but Mitchell had gone too far this time.

‘Let’s get this pumped up and down to the beach.’ Mitchell grabbed the dinghy, his voice calm and ordered as if they were on a day out at the seaside. The dinghy rolled over the lip of the boot and flopped onto the floor, lifeless. Harry peered in the boot. Hand connected to arm, to body, to some hessian material. The girl was hooded with a sack tied tight around her neck. He looked down at her body. Light brown skin wrapped in a baby-doll nightdress, a silver cross on a chain nestling in ample cleavage, toned muscles, a little tattoo of a dolphin high on her left inner thigh.

‘The Spanish girl?’ Harry said, feeling quite unwell and putting a hand out to steady himself against the car.

‘Precisely.’ Mitchell said. ‘The pretty Spanish girl who knows a bit too much about the English. I’ve given her a little something to help her forget.’ He reached into the boot and took a bellows-type foot pump out. ‘Possibly a bit too much of a little something. Couldn’t call an ambulance, could I? Too many questions. Too many silly little questions.’

‘I thought she had gone back to Spain?’ Harry struggled to get the words out, aware of the quiver in his voice.

‘She had.’

‘And?’

‘She came back again. Unwillingly, of course. Came through customs with her on the back seat covered with a blanket.’

Harry could imagine Mitchell doing that. Crazy.

Mitchell began to pump the dinghy. The air made short hissing noises as it forced its way passed the valve. Like sharp intakes of breath. Like the sound the girl had made as Mitchell and RT had fucked her as she lay tied to the bed.

‘But why?’ Harry asked. ‘Wasn’t it better with her over there? Out of the way?’

‘Out of the way. Exactly.’ Mitchell said. But he shook his head. ‘RT’s fault. The blindfold came off. Afterwards he realised that he knew the girl.’

‘Richard? Afterwards?’

‘That’s what I said to him. A bit bloody late in the day. Fucking idiot. Anyway, couldn’t risk her blabbing once she was safely home so I brought her back. Kept her round my place for a bit. Had a bit of fun. Seemed a shame not to!’

Harry said nothing. He didn’t know what to think. Mitchell was grade one rocket fuel. Unstable. One little spark and he would blow and take Harry with him into oblivion.

‘Help me!’ Mitchell lifted one end of the dinghy and nodded at Harry to grab the other end. He did so and they stumbled across the car park and down the steep path to the beach. They manhandled the little boat across the wet sand and rock to the sea and Harry felt icy cold water surge around his ankles as they staggered into the surf. Mitchell left him holding the painter as the boat bobbed around on the swell and he ran back to the car park. A couple of minutes later he staggered into view again, the girl thrown over his right shoulder in a fireman’s lift and a grab bag with something heavy in it in his other hand.

Mitchell dumped the girl down and she slumped onto the edge of the dinghy now, a pretty marionette with all the life gone out of her.

‘Get her out there,’ he said, gesturing with his arm somewhere in the general direction of France. ‘Chuck her overboard with something to weigh her down.’ He pulled a length of heavy chain from the bag, bent down near the girl’s ankles and grinned. ‘This should do!’

Harry wondered if Mitchell was quite right in the head. But of course he wasn’t. The two of them were here on a beach in the middle of the night with a corpse and Mitchell was smiling.

‘Harry! What has happened to you? We are living man! That was why I told you to stop taking the pills. Experience things as they really are. Live on the edge. Did you think that was only talk?’

Harry gazed down into the inky water, feeling the sand shift beneath his feet as another wave frothed by. The dinghy bounced against his legs, spinning, alive. The girl lay still, the only noise the surf and a small hiss as if air was escaping from a leak somewhere. Harry prayed the police would be along soon and they would be caught, but at least he would be safe. Pulled back from the brink before he went one step too far. He was aware of Mitchell staring at him, but he didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. He was too scared.

Suddenly the girl twitched and a leg shot out catching Mitchell on the left knee. He staggered backwards and fell into the surf, cracking his head on a rock. Blind from the sack the girl flailed her arms at nothing, jumped up, stumbled and tripped on the painter line on the dinghy. For a second she thrashed in the surf, but then she was on her feet, running away across the beach, her hands clawing at the sacking, a nightmarish figure disappearing into the gloom.

Mitchell was up now, grabbing the bag in his right hand and roaring at Harry.

‘Bloody bitch! Come on!’

Harry jumped up and followed him, the sand already sapping his energy with every stride. Mitchell loomed somewhere ahead, thump, thump, thump, thump. He looked back and gestured for Harry to hurry up. The girl had run along the beach, but she was running west, away from the car park, where there was only a rocky foreshore with steep cliffs blocking the way to the coastal path. A vast plateau of rock stretched out to the sea and the girl was stumbling across it. Harry could see her ahead now and it was plain that they were going to catch her. All of a sudden she disappeared from view, she had gone down a fissure in the rock, a sandy finger that led to the sea. Mitchell gestured again and Harry understood his plan. He wanted him to go to the next crack farther on so he could cut off any chance she had of escape, for that was the only other way out from the plateau.

With renewed vigour Harry sprinted the remaining distance and reached the second fissure. He stopped with hands on hips for a moment, panting.

‘Harry!’ Mitchell’s voice rung out, echoing off the rocky cliffs. ‘Down here!’

Harry took a deep breath and jumped down onto the sand and headed seawards.

‘Quickly!’

Harry raced along the sand, half-groping in the dark, afraid he might trip and smash his head on a rock. Then a bright light in his eyes blinded him for a moment as Mitchell pointed a beam from a torch at him. Right in his face. The girl cowered against a boulder, knees drawn up to her chin and Mitchell stood over her, one hand clamped on her shoulder.