Simon Clark - The Fall

Sam noticed Carswell standing, resting his elbows on the safety rail of the launch. He had a large glass tumbler in his hand.

‘Did you see anything?’ Sam called.

Carswell nodded, then took a swallow from his glass before returning to his lounger.

Sam Baker stiffened as if someone had just slapped him. He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. Carswell looked about as concerned as someone seeing those two swans on the water.

Sam walked in angry strides to the foot of the gangplank. ‘There’s a man in the water. You mean you saw it and did nothing?’

‘Don’t trouble yourself about it,’ Carswell said dismissively.

‘What the hell are you saying, Carswell? That you’ve just sat there and watched a man drown?’

‘I sat here, but I didn’t watch.’

‘You callous bastard.’ Sam took five more angry steps up the gangplank and onto the deck of the boat. ‘Why didn’t you try and help?’

‘The old man knew what he was doing. He deliberately took his own life.’

‘But you—’

‘But nothing, Baker. Why the hell should I interfere in another man’s decisions if those decisions do not have any impact on my own life? And, by the way, Mr Baker, I didn’t invite you onto my boat, did I?’

‘You know where you can stick your fucking boat, Carswell.’

‘He wouldn’t help,’ the man in white was saying in a dazed voice. ‘He wouldn’t lift a finger.’

Sam scanned the river from the deck. From there he could see more of the broad expanse of water that stretched out more like a lake than a river at this point. The water was smooth, unbroken.

There was no sign of an old man.

The current must already have drawn him down. Nevertheless: ‘We could still make a search of the river if we use both boats,’ Sam said. He glared at Carswell, who stretched out on the lounger and rotated the glass between his two palms so the ice chinked against the sides.

‘No can do, Mr Baker. The man wanted to die. I drink to his sensible decision. And I, for one, wish more people would follow suit. Now, Mr Baker, kindly get yourself off my fucking boat.’

The man’s once polished accent had vanished. The tones were raw, with a dangerous edge. And his glass-bead eyes began to flash dangerously. Sam saw clearly enough the crude violence simmering beneath Carswell’s skin, like molten rock ready to blow the top from a volcano.

‘Don’t worry, I’m going,’ Sam told him, disgusted.

Jud was already untying the lines to his narrow boat. ‘We’ll use mine,’ he shouted. ‘If we head downstream we might still be able to pick him up if he’s on the surface.’

He wasn’t. The old man must have got what he wanted. A quick and, Sam hoped, a relatively painless end to his life. Jud Campbell returned the narrow boat to the mooring. By this time the sun was dropping towards the hills.

Jud told them that people who drowned in the river would remain submerged for a week or so before floating to the surface. In days gone by men would stand on the river banks and fire guns over the water in the belief that the vibration from the shots would loosen the bodies from the hold of the river bed. Now the police dragged the river with cables or sent in the divers.

Sam watched Jud deftly tie the mooring rope to the metal ring set into the timber landing posts. ‘I suppose we should report this?’

‘Report what exactly, Sam? That we saw an old man drown in the river? If they can’t find the body but somehow trace the man’s identity from his walking stick, what happens when they call at his house? Remember, there are two identical copies of the man now. One lying on the river bed – and one at home, probably grilling a kipper for his tea. If we weren’t charged with wasting police time they’d laugh in our faces, as likely as not. Ah, here comes your friend.’

Sam turned to see Zita walking down the grassy slope to the timber landing stage.

‘I saw you go out on the boat. I take it you weren’t running out on me. What happened?’

Sam told her. Occasionally he shot glances at Carswell’s launch moored behind Jud’s far more modest and homely narrow boat. The man himself sat drinking on his lounger.

Every so often a girl of around 18, wearing a little black dress, would come clicking in high stilettos across the deck to pour him another drink. Once Carswell squeezed her leg. It didn’t look like a gesture of affection; rather a pinch intended to hurt.

Sam Baker liked the man less and less.

‘Right,’ Jud said gently. ‘Can I offer anyone a drink and perhaps something to eat if you’ve the stomach for it?’

Brian Pickering, the man who sold ice cream, shook his head. ‘Thanks, Jud. But I think it’s time I was going home.’

‘Is that wise, Brian? After all, you’re going to find an identical copy of yourself there.’

‘I’ll work something out.’ He grinned, but to Sam it looked more like a frightened kind of snarl. ‘The wife won’t know which way to turn with two husbands, will she?’

‘Just take it easy with her, won’t you? It won’t be easy.’

‘Don’t worry about me, Jud.’ Again he tried to speak lightly, but there was a distinct waver in his voice. ‘I’ll be all right.’

‘Sure you will,’ Jud said kindly. ‘See you later.’

For a moment they watched Brian Pickering go. A stumpy man, half walking, half running up the slope back to his ice-cream van in the car park.

Sam felt for him. He sensed the man’s anticipation of meeting himself. Clashing with that was probably a hefty wedge of fear, too.

Zita was astonished. ‘How could you let him go like that? Imagine the shock of seeing what is basically a carbon copy of yourself coming through the door!’

‘I don’t think we need worry about him,’ Jud said evenly. ‘Something will happen to Brian Pickering between here and Casterton.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because he never met himself. After all, he never mentioned meeting himself to us, did he?’

Sam nodded. ‘Point taken. But tell me, Jud. Where were you on June 16 th?’

‘Twenty miles upstream… fortunately. I’d taken the boat to have her engine serviced. So there’s no immediate danger of me coming face to face with myself.’ He smiled. ‘Who’s for that drink?’

He stood back on the landing stage and held out his hand towards the gangplank, inviting them on board.

Sam Baker took one step forward. But he was never to have that drink.

Because at that exact moment, whatever had happened earlier in the day went and happened all over again

The dream was the same.

Sam Baker sat alone in the amphitheatre. Planted squarely in the centre of the stone altar, which in turn stood in the middle of the amphitheatre stage, was a huge wooden cross. Spikes sprouted from the cross like thorns on a rose bush. And impaled on the spikes was the young man with red shoes and a dirty towel tied around his waist.

As he hung there, the spikes punching through his flesh in 20 different places, he looked beseechingly at Sam.

Blood pooled in the bowls scooped out of the stone altar. In a dreamlike way, Sam stood up.

The softly-sung words appeared to leak from the stone beneath his feet. They were so sweetly intoned, the voice little more than a whisper.

He opened his eyes.

People sat in the amphitheatre seats. Instantly there was a kind of startled Oh! sound as people experienced that sharp burst of shock when they realised they were back again.